The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 5
The New Covenant of the Kingdom
The New Covenant of the Kingdom.
"Behold the days* come saith the Lord that I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of man and with the seed of beast." The "house" here signifies their country, or the territory of the kingdom. "And it shall come to pass that, like as I have watched over them, to pluck up, &c., so will I watch over them to build and to plant, saith the Lord." "If the ordinances of the sun, moon, and stars depart from me, saith the Lord, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation† before me for ever,"&c.
—Jer. xxxi.
Under the Mosaic Covenant the Twelve Tribes were divided into two nations under two distinct kings, from the 4th of Rehoboam to the 6th of Hezekiah, being 256 years. But when they shall cease to be cast off, and instead of being called "Lo-anvmi," shall become a nation before Jehovah, "they shall he no more two nations, neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms any more at all;" "for thus saith the Lord God, I will take‡ the children of Israel from among the nations whither they be gone, and gather them in on every side, and bring them into their own land, and I will make them one nation in the land upon the mountains of Israel, and One King shall be king to them all"—Ezek. xxxvii. 21-22.
* "The latter days" of Moses and the Prophets.
† This affirms the doctrine that "the earth shall never be moved" in opposition to the popular Christianity, which declares its dissolution in the judgment fires.
‡ By means of the great proclamation and the execution of the written judgment upon the nations who hold them in captivity—the nations of the prophetic testimonies.
| David II., or "the beloved One."
First.—That the Covenant is not vet made with Israel and Judali.
Second.—That they are in the Loammi state.
Thirdly.—That they are not yet sanctified, because the Temple of Jehovah is not yet in the midst of them, and cannot be there until they are restored, and the Lord returns to build it.
Israel and Judah cannot be sanctified until the temple be rebuilt, for in carrving out the mercy of the New Covenant when "the Lord will forgive their iniquity, and will remember their sin no more;" a bullock for a sin offering is to be prepared for the Prince, and for all the people of the land at the celebration of the Passover, when it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God. This appears from the testimony of Ezek. xlv. where it says that the Prince shall give a meat offering and a burnt offering and peace offerings to make reconciliation for the House of Israel,† and these must be offered upon the altar, purged and purified for the purpose, when the temple should have been reconciled, or expiated. The everlasting Covenant of peace with the Twelve Tribes, which Jehovah promises to make, is termed a New Covenant in being an improvement upon the old—"Behold the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a New Covenant with the House of Israel and with the House of Judah, not according to the Covenant that I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, which my covenant they break, &c, but this shall be the Covenant," &c.—Ezek. xxxvii. 21, 22.
* Hence mortal men will be on the earth when the Christ reigns in Zion, for nations imply distinct communities. The immortals are all one in the Anointed Jesus, as partakers with him of the Divine range.
† A national reconciliation. The individual Israelites of Abraham's seed have been previously reconciled, or manifested in glory us the One Body.
‡ The Mosaic Covenant was done away by the work and righteousness of the Christ when He became the end of the law for righteousness to every believer, and thus He prepared the way for the institution of the New Covenant yet to be nationally ratified as a law of life.
The Mosaic Covenant was engraven on stones, but the New Covenant is to be inscribed on their hearts by the Spirit, for saith Jehovah, "I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them, and ye shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and ye shall he my people and I will be your God"—Ezek, xxxvi. 27. And, again, "I will hide my face no more from them, for I have poured out my Spirit upon the House of Israel saith the Lord"—Ezek. xxxix. 29). No sophistry can make this applicable to the past.
By the New and everlasting Covenant of Peace the Twelve Tribes will be brought into legal possession of the land of their inheritance. Jerusalem will be safely inhabited; it will become the Lord's throne, and the nation will be constituted holy with an everlasting righteousness in the Lord their King, for "in the Lord shall all the seed of Israel be justified, and shall glory"—Isaiah xlv. 25. They will be justified in the Lord by faith in him, and Because they believe in him they glory in him. But before they can be justified in him, they must he introduced into him; the nation must put him on as "the Lord its righteousness." During the interregnum, an individual believer in Jesus and the things of the Covenant is introduced into Jesus as the Christ that he may be justified in the Lord by baptism into his Name; so the believing nation will he-baptised in the Red Sea into Jesus as it was before into Moses, when all its sins will be cast into the depths of the sea, and it will come to Zion to receive the law, or Covenant of Peace. In proof of this second passage of Israel through the Red Sea, see Psa. lxviii. 22; Isa. xi. 15, 1G; Zech. x. 10-12; Mic. vii. 19. Thus is the nation introduced into the Name of the Lord, in which "its new heart and new spirit," and its faith in Jesus are granted to it for repentance and remission of sins, and they are accepted. Henceforth they shall walk up and down page 35 "In his Name." They shall be settled after their old estate. "Their land that was desolate shall become as the Garden of Eden, and the waste and desolate and ruined cities fenced and inhabited." As for Jerusalem, it shall be called "a city of truth," and "its name from that day shall be Jehovah Shammah—the Lord is there"—Ezek. xxxvi-26; Acts v. 31; Ezek. xlviii. 35.
By faith in the promises, belief in Jesus, and baptism into Him as its Lord, High Priest, and King, the nation is "saved from its enemies and from the hand of all that hate them."
Thus saved, it will have become great and powerful, "serving God without fear in holiness and righteousness before Him all the days of its life," or mortal career. Immortality is yet before it, for it is destined to exist and flourish for ever. Immortality and glory, honour anil rank, in the Kingdom, are now accessible, and have been for ages past to individuals of the nation; but they judge themselves unworthy of it. When, therefore, the Kingdom comes, they can rejoice only in common with the nation in its territorial, civil, spiritual, and social blessedness. If they would live for ever, they must wait with patience till death shall be abolished from the earth, and "every curse shall cease" at the end of the millennium—Rev. xxi. 4; xxii. 3. Then all Israelites and Gentiles accounted worthy of exaltation to the higher or angelic nature will become immortal; and as one nation subject to Jesus and the Saints, will constitute an everlasting kingdom on the earth, when "all things shall be created new," and "the sea* shall be no more."
* Or aggregation of nations in separate organizations,—for each redeemed one will be equal to the angels, i.e., will be Deity in organic manifestation, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile, and thus the Word shall be fulfilled, which says, "Though I make a full end of all nations, yet will I not make a full end of thee (Israel).
Now the same analogy obtains in regard to the Twelve Tribes of Israel. Although justified in the Lord, and constituted a holy nation, they are still a nation of generations subject to mortality, because of the evil in their flesh, which nothing but the creative energy of Omnipotence can eradicate. So long, therefore, as the nation is perpetuated by a succession of generations, there must be a national religious service connected with the memorials of death, and performed for them by a priesthood, such as the blood of the Covenant of their sanctification demands. When death shall be destroyed generations will cease to be born and pass away, and the life of the nation will be sustained by a generation that shall consist of individuals who shall have all become immortal or "equal to the angels." The nation will then be free from the death principle. It will be intellectually, morally, and physically perfect. Its sin, as well as the sin of the world, will be thoroughly removed; there will, therefore, be no ground for a service in which gifts and sacrifices are offered for the erring or ignorant. The "law of sin and death" being extirpated from the nature of man, he will not err, or be the sport of ignorance. "God will be all in all;" as he now is in the Christ, so that His will will be as loyally and acceptably performed as though he were to execute it himself.* No service, therefore, will be needed to remind men of the impurity and mortality of their nature, and that their acceptedness is predicated on the perfect obedience of another, even unto death, whom God hath set forth as a propitiatory through faith in his blood. But, until this consummation be attained, a service will be neccessary "memorializing" these very things. And this necessity urges us on to the brief consideration of the—
* As the Spirit moves they move: the electric chain of the Divine Nature vibrates from the Supreme Source of their being into the innermost recesses of the heart, and causes each one to say, "Speak, Lord, for thy servant hearcth."