Wednesday, February 12, 2014

The New Covenant - The Church's Declaration of Independence

By calling this covenant "new," he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and outdated will soon disappear. Hebrews 8:13, NIV

The King James says the same thing, but I like the plain rendering of the NIV in this case. First of all, you may rightly say, "Who doesn't know this?" The New Covenant is as basic to theology as the letter "A" is to the alphabet. This is true. I learned the letter "A" a long time ago, but I still use it today.

For this old man to even dare to write about our church's covenant could be interpreted as very bold or very stupid. I came out of a Covenant church, and they are highly educated classical scholars who despise my understanding of the term. Who am I to question the teachings of the great ones?

A pastor in my old church told me that he had always wanted to belong to a "limestone church". He finally made it. Of course marble, as in tombstones, would be better yet. For, to me, so called covenant theology is dead.

One of the greatest of such theologians in America was a pastor in my church. He keeps sending me Spam, asking for money. I delete them. Nothing personal of course, but he goes out of his way to mock the dispensationalists, of whom I am one. What sin did we commit?

Our division of the Bible into periods of time--in fact the very act of teaching the Bible at all--caused a division in his church. People found that they could study and understand the Bible without hearing it from a PhD. We are the hillbillys of theology. We often go to wooden or brick churches. All this over a silly subject of time!

People of this time division idea teach and believe that the New Covenant is New. There was a time when man was under the Old Covenant. When Jesus died he created a new covenant, simple as that. There is a whole theology that says Moses was in the church, that all the saints were under the New Covenant, all along.

Time, one of my favorite four letter words, changes things. It changes how God deals with man. A Bible search of the word "law" or the word "circumcision", quickly brings this out.

So why would a nationally famous "limestone church" man ask a dumb dispensationalist like me for money? Maybe to help repair his crumbling church.

In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you. Luke 22:20

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