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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 5

"Covenant" Defined

"Covenant" Defined.

A Covenant is a system of government indicative of God's chosen, selected, and determined plan or purpose, fixed by his absolute and sovereign will, and imposed on the people without the slightest consultation between them as to its expediency, fitness, or propriety. Jehovah is the testator, and the people or tribes of Israel are the legatees. Hence his covenants, testaments, or wills to the nation, require the death of the Testator because they are of no force while he lives. But Jehovah is a deathless being. He never died, nor can he die—1 Tim. vi. 15. His covenants, therefore, are ordained in the hands of Mediators subject* to death—Gal. iii. 19.

A Mediator is Jehovah's substitute who represents Him in all his dealings with his nation.

Moses was the Mediator of the Old "Will, which was dedicated by sacrifice, consumed by fire from heaven, and only partially carried out for forty years in the wilderness, but came into full force after his death, when Joshua gave the nation a rest, representative of a future Sabbatism for it in the same land under the Christ for 1000 years.

Jesus is the Mediator of the New Will, which was confirmed in the consuming of Abraham's sacrifices by fire—Gen. XV. 17; Gal. iii. 15-18. It cannot, therefore, be disannulled. For forty generations between Abraham and Jesus the Christ, this confirmed Will was of no force at all. But when Jesus, the page 18 Mediatorial testator of the Will died, it acquired force, and became partially effective to the impartation of the remission of sins, and a title to eternal life in the kingdom; to all who believed in the things covenanted or bequeathed, and in Jesus as the Christ, both Jews and Gentiles. It has not yet come into full force. It is destined, however, to become fully developed in all its efficiency, when Jesus shall come again and save the Twelve Tribes from their enemies, and from the power of all that hate them, and to perform the mercy promised to their lathers, even the holy covenant, the Oath which God swore to their father Abraham, &c.—Luke i. 60-75.

* Hence the necessity of the mortal nature of the Christ of God.

Orthodoxy says-men's substitute. Heneo the divergence is as faras the east is from the west.