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Signs of the Times, Vol. 4, No. 19.

General Articles
Earlier text: General Articles

THE TWO COVENANTS.

By Uriah Smith

"For finding fault with them, he saith, Behold the days come, saith the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah." Heb. 8:8.
It may be asked, how the ten commandments can be called "the covenant." We answer, That is just where the people are misled. They are never called "the" covenant, referring to the first or old covenant. That the ten commandments are called "a" covenant, we admit; but what kind of a covenant? and in what sense are they so called? Please read again Ex. 19:5: "Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant," &c. Then God had something which he called his covenant, which antedated the covenant made with Israel. It was already in existence, before any formal agreement whatever was made with that people. And this explains Deut. 4:13. Those who read that verse should be critical enough to observe that Moses does not call the ten commandments the covenant, nor a covenant, but his (God's) covenant. "And he declared unto you his covenant, which he commanded you to perform, even ten commandments." These, then, are what God referred to in Ex. 19:5, in the words, my covenant; and these were already in existence when the covenant was made with Israel. It should be noticed, further that the covenant of Deut. 4:13, is not a covenant made; but a covenant commanded; and surely any one can see the difference between an arrangement established upon the voluntary and mutual promises of two parties, and that which one party has power to enjoin with authority upon another party. But the covenant here mentioned, God did thus enjoin upon them without regard to any action on their part.
It is now easy to be seen why the ten commandments are called a covenant, and what kind of a covenant they were. They were simply the basis of that agreement recorded in Ex. 19:3-8. For the very first condition God proposed was, "If ye will keep my covenant." In this sense, and this only, are the ten commandments ever called a covenant.
And this brings us to the secondary definition of the term covenant; which is, "a writing containing the terms of agreement between parties." Thus the conditions upon which an agreement or covenant rests, are in a secondary sense called also a covenant. This may be illustrated by the relation which all good citizens sustain to their respective States. They are all in covenant relation with the State. The State says, If you will obey the laws of this commonwealth, you shall be protected in your life, liberty, and property. The citizens respond, We will obey. This is the mutual agreement, the covenant, virtually existing everywhere between the citizen and the State. But when we speak of the State alone, its covenant would be its laws which it commands its citizens to perform. These are the conditions of the agreement, and hence may be called the covenant of the State, because upon obedience to these are suspended all the blessings which it proposes to confer.
Such was the relation established between the Lord and his people. He had a law which the very circumstances of our existence bind us to keep; yet he graciously annexed a promise to the keeping of it. Obey my law, and I will secure you in the possession of certain blessings above all people. The people accepted the offer. The matter then stood thus: The people said, We will keep God's law. God said, Then I will make you a kingdom of priests, a peculiar treasure unto myself. This was the agreement or covenant made between them. But so far as God was concerned his law was his covenant, because it was the basis of the whole arrangement, and upon the keeping of that by the people, all the blessings were suspended which he proposed to confer.
1 Kings 8:21, may still present a difficulty to some minds. Does not Solomon here say that in the ark, where the ten commandments alone were, was the covenant which God made with the fathers when he brought them out of the land of Egypt? The key to the explanation of this passage lies in the antecedent of the word wherein. Solomon, speaking of the temple, says, "And I have set there a place for the ark, wherein is the covenant of the Lord." Does the word, wherein, mean in which ark, or in which place? Hebraists tell us that the grammatical construction refers it unquestionably to the place. "I have set there a place for the ark, in which place, not in the ark, is the covenant of the Lord," &c. Was the covenant always in the place where the ark was? See Deut. 31:26: "Take this book of the law, and put it in the side of the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God." That this book of the law is the same as the book of the covenant, see 2 Kings 22:8, and chapter 23:2. And the expression, in the side of the ark, means in a coffer or receptacle expressly prepared for it and placed by the side of the ark. See Prideaux, vol. 1, p. 152. Wherever the ark was there was this book of the covenant by its side. Hence Solomon could say, referring to the place where the ark was, that there, in that place, was also the covenant which the Lord made with that people when he led them out of Egypt.
Thus the strongest texts claimed to prove that the ten commandments constituted the old covenant, are found to contain not one shade of evidence in that direction. We have found in what sense the ten commandments are called a covenant, simply because they are God's covenant, the basis of the agreement which he entered into with Israel. In the same sense the tables are called the tables of the covenant, and the ark, the ark of the covenant, because they contained this covenant; but none of these expressions refer to the covenant made with Israel by the mutual pledges to each other of the Lord and that people, as recorded in Ex. 19.
We now return to that chapter and resume the examination of the covenant then made. When the people agreed to obey God's voice, verses 5, 8, they had not heard his voice, and knew not what conditions it might impose. But on the third day after this, the Lord came down in fearful majesty, and with a voice that shook the solid earth from pole to pole declared the ten commandments. Here for the first time the people heard God's voice which they were to obey. Then the Lord took Moses into a private interview with himself and gave him some instructions which the people were to follow in civil and religious matters, under this arrangement. This instruction is found in the latter part of Ex. 20, and chapters 21, 22, and 23 entire, and is an epitome of the civil and ceremonial laws given to that people.
In chapter 24 is resumed the narrative of the steps taken in the formation of this covenant. Moses appeared before the people a second time, and rehearsed in their hearing all the words which the Lord had communicated to him. And here the people, after having heard for themselves God's voice, and being told all that he had said to Moses, had an opportunity to answer again whether they would enter into this arrangement or not. At their first answer, Ex. 19:8, they did not know what would be required of them; now they understood all the conditions; and what will they answer now? Ex. 24:3: "And all the people answered with one voice, and said, All the words which the Lord hath said, will we do."
It would seem that this was all-sufficient. But the Lord moved very carefully in the matter, so that the people might have no opportunity to plead in after years that they did not know what they were doing in entering into this covenant with him. So he caused Moses to write out in a book all the words he had told him, that all points might be again carefully considered, and then to read it all over to the people. Verse 7: "And he took the book of the covenant, and read in the audience of the people." Here they had opportunity for the third time to reconsider the matter and change their decision if they so desired. And what was their answer this time? "And they said, All that the Lord hath said will we do and be obedient."
Moses then took blood which had been offered for the purpose, verses 5, 6, and sprinkled it on the people and said, "Behold the blood of the covenant which the Lord hath made with you concerning all these words." Verse 8. Here the covenant was closed up, sealed and ratified, by the shedding of blood.
Keep this scene in mind while we pass down fifteen hundred and fifty-five years to the days of Paul, and notice his remarks upon this event. Heb. 9:17-20: "For a testament is of force after men are dead; otherwise it is of no force at all while the testator liveth. Whereupon neither the first testament was dedicated without blood. For when Moses had spoken every precept to all the people according to the law, he took the blood of calves and of goats, with water and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book and all the people, saying, This is the blood of the testament which God hath enjoined unto you."
Paul here plainly states that the first covenant was dedicated with blood, the words testament and covenant meaning the same thing, being from the same original word. And to what scene does Paul refer? To the very recorded in Ex. 24:8, just described. Moses says, Behold the blood of the covenant; and Paul says that the covenant then and there ratified was the first, or old covenant.
Now to settle the fact, once and forever, that this covenant was not the ten commandments, we have only to remark that neither Moses nor the people had a copy of the ten commandments of any kind in their hands at that time. This will appear from the further record of Ex. 24. In verse 12, we read, "And the Lord said unto Moses, Come up to me into the mount, and be there, and I will give thee tables of stone, and a law and commandments which I have written, that thou mayest teach them." The idea that God had already caused Moses to write out a copy of these commandments, and that he had begun to teach them by having spoken them and read them in the ears of the people, verses 3 and 4, is utterly inconsistent with this statement, that God was about to put into his hands a law containing commandments that he had written, in order that Moses might teach them. But before Moses was called to receive this law of ten commandments which God had written, the first covenant had been made, closed up, finished, and ratified by the shedding of blood.
These facts throw a fortification around this point which it is not possible either to break or scale. The first covenant was dedicated with blood. But when that dedication took place, the ten commandments, in visible form, had not been put into the possession of the people; they had no copy of them; hence they were not dedicated with blood. Therefore, the ten commandments were not the old covenant.
Another line of thought showing just as clearly that the ten commandments were not the first, or old, covenant, is based on Deut. 5:2, 3, a passage to which our opponents appeal with such seeming assurance: "The Lord our God made a covenant with us in Horeb. The Lord made not this covenant with our fathers, but with us, even us, who are all of us here alive this day." Having assumed that the ten commandments were the old covenant, these verses are appealed to, to show that these commandments were here for the first time introduced, and hence came to an end with that dispensation. But the quotation is fatal to the assumption; for the ten commandments did exist before this time; hence they were not the covenant at that time made.
The book of Genesis, though so brief in its record that its fifty short chapters cover a period of over 2300 years; nevertheless abounds with indications that the principles of the ten commandments were well understood and acted upon, even from the creation down. Why was Cain condemned for killing his brother, if the law against murder did not exist? "Where no law is, there is no transgression;" and, "sin is not imputed when there is no law." By what standard was it shown that Noah and his house alone were righteous, while the rest of mankind were only evil and that continually, if there was no law for a standard in such matters? To be righteous is to be living in conformity with a standard of righteousness or right doing. "By the law is the knowledge of sin." On what ground were the inhabitants of the wicked cities of the plain given over to the vengeance of eternal fire on account of their vileness, if there was no law against unchastity? There was such a law; and Peter makes a statement which shows that it was as well understood then as now. He says that those cities were made an ensample unto all that should after live ungodly. This covers all time from that day to this, and onward to the end. And the ungodly of to-day may look back to Sodom, and learn how God will deal with them unless they repent. Are there moral principles binding on them now? So there were then, if their case is an example. Do men understand these laws now? So they did then. Is it an acknowledged principle now that a man cannot be justly punished who does not know or has not had an opportunity to know, the law? So it was then. It is heard of tyrants who posted their laws so high that no one could read them, and then struck off the head of every transgressor; but God does not so deal with his creatures. No; the law of God was in existence and understood in ancient Sodom, as well as in the numberless Sodoms of to-day.
But some may be ready to suppose that even if the principles of the other commandments were known, surely the Sabbath was neither known nor regarded before the time of Moses. We answer that if it can be shown that any other commandment was known, tenfold more proof can be given that the Sabbath was known, and a commandment given for its observance. In proof of this it is only necessary to refer to the record of Genesis 2:2, 3, which records the origin of the Sabbatic institution in Eden. God rested on the seventh day. He then blessed the day; not the day past, but the day for time to come. Then he sanctified it. Sanctify means to set apart to a sacred or religious use. This could not refer to past time, but to the seventh day for time to come. And it was to be used in this sacred or religious manner, not by the Lord; for he does not need it; but by man, for whom, says Christ, the Sabbath was made. Mark 2:27.
How, then, we ask, could the Sabbath be thus sanctified for man's use, or be set apart to be used in a holy or sacred manner by him? Only by telling man to use it in this manner. But just as soon as the Lord had told Adam to use the Sabbath in a sacred or religious manner, he had given him a command for its observance. The record in Genesis is therefore plain that a Sabbath commandment was given in Eden. And we should do no violence to the text if we should read it, And God blessed the seventh-day, and commanded Adam to sacredly observe it. But a command given to Adam under these circumstances, was a command through him to all his posterity.
No more need be said to show to all who respect the testimony of God's word, that the ten commandments were known through all the ages before the time of Moses, and that men were held under obligations to obey them. Therefore, these commandments were not the covenant made with Israel at Horeb, which covenant had no existence previous to that time.
U. S. (To be continued.)

Scripture References.

THE SABBATH.

1. THE word Sabbath is found in the Scriptures (in its singular and plural forms) 166 times; 106 times in the Old Testament, and 60 times in the New Testament. In the Old Testament the word refers as many as 81 times to the weekly Sabbath, called the Sabbath of the Lord, and the remaining 25 times it is used in reference to festival days, and sabbaths of the land. In the New Testament, the Sabbath of the Lord is mentioned 59 times, and those local sabbaths, which expired by limitation and ceased at the cross, are mentioned once.

THE SABBATH OF THE LORD.

4. Remarks on the New Testament. It was written by inspiration of God, in the Christian age, for the instruction of those who should live in this age; hence the inspired name of the seventh day of the week, in the Christian dispensation, is the Sabbath, while the next day following is simply called the first day of the week.
5. The Sabbath was instituted at creation. Gen. ii, 1–3; Ex. xx, 11; Mark ii, 27; Heb. iv, 4.
6. It was pointed out and enforced before the law was given at Sinai. Ex. xvi, 4, 22, 23, 25–30.
7. The Sabbath law is recognized in the New Testament. Matt. xii, 12; Luke xxiii, 56.
8. Apostolic example for the Sabbath. Acts xvii, 2; xvi, 13; xviii, 3, 4, 11; xiii, 42, 44.
9. The above texts, and also Acts xiii, 14, 15, 27; xv, 21, show that the apostles and evangelists acknowledged the name of the Sabbath as belonging to the seventh day in this dispensation.

CEREMONIAL SABBATHS.

New Testament. Col. ii, 16. The “days” mentioned in Rom. xiv, 5, 6, are annual feast-days. Compare with Lev. xxiii, 24–41.

TIME TO COMMENCE THE SABBATH.

1. The Sabbath is a memorial of Jehovah’s rest on the seventh day, after he had created all things in six days; hence it begins with the evening, according to the first division of time.
2. Every twenty-four-hour day begins with the evening. Gen. i, 5, 8, 13, 19, 23, 31; Lev. xxiii, 32; Neh. xiii, 19.
3. The evening begins with the setting of the sun. Lev. xxii, 6, 7; Deut. xxiii, 11; Judg. xiv, 18; Josh. viii, 29; x, 26, 27.
4. Christ healed the sick at even, or sunset. Matt. viii, 16, compare with Luke iv, 40; Mark i, 32.

FIRST DAY OF THE WEEK.

1. The first day of the week is mentioned only eight times in the New Testament, and not in a single instance is it referred to as a holy day, or Sabbath. Matt. xxviii, 1; Mark xvi, 2, 9; Luke xxiv, 1; John xx, 1, 19; Acts xx, 7; 1 Cor. xvi, 2.
2. In contrast with the above, we find the Sabbath of the Lord mentioned fifty-nine times in the New Testament, besides Rev. i, 10, which speaks of the “Lord’s Day,” which is proved by Ex. xx, 10; Isa. lviii, 13; Mark ii, 27, to be the seventh day.
3. As the testimony of the “Fathers” is invariably referred to in support of the first day of the week, it would not be amiss to give the opinion of Dr. Clarke on these writings.
“We should be cautious how we appeal to heathens, however eminent, in behalf of morality; because much may be collected from them on the other side. In like manner we should take heed how we quote the fathers in proof of the doctrines of the gospel; because he who knows them best, knows that on many of those subjects they blow hot and cold.” —Autobiography of Adam Clarke, p. 134, book III.

Thoughts on the Book of Daniel.

By Uriah Smith

CHAPTER XI—CONTINUED.

Verse 35. And some of them of understanding shall fall, to try them, and to purge, and to make them white, even to the time of the end; because it is yet for a time appointed.
Though restrained, the spirit of persecution was not destroyed. It broke out wherever there was opportunity. Especially was this the case in England. The religious state of that kingdom was fluctuating, it being sometimes under Protestant, and sometimes under papal jurisdiction, according to the religion of the ruling house. The bloody queen Mary was a mortal enemy to the Protestant cause, and multitudes fell victims to her relentless persecutions. And this condition of affairs was to last more or less to the time of the end. The natural conclusion would be that when the time of the end should come, this power which the church of Rome had possessed to punish heretics, which had been the cause of so much persecution, and which had for a time been restrained, would now be taken entirely away; and the conclusion would be equally evident that this taking away of the papal supremacy would mark the commencement of the period here called the time of the end. If this application is correct, the time of the end commenced in 1798; for there, as already noticed, the papacy was overthrown by the French, and has never since been able to wield the power it before possessed.
Verse 36. And the king shall do according to his will; and he shall exalt himself, and magnify himself above every god, and shall speak marvelous things against the God of gods, and shall prosper till the indignation be accomplished; for that is determined shall be done.
The king here introduced cannot denote the same power which was last noticed, namely, the papal power; for the specifications will not hold good, if applied to that power. Take a declaration in the next verse: "Nor regard any god." This has never been true of the papacy. God and Christ, though often placed in a false position, have never been set aside and rejected from that system of religion. The only difficulty in applying it to a new power lies in the definite article "the"; for, it is urged, the expression "the king" would identify this as the one last spoken of. If it could be properly translated a king, there would be no difficulty; and it is said that some of the best Biblical critics give this rendering, Mede, Wintle, Boothroyd, and others, translating the passage, "A certain king shall do according to his will," thus clearly introducing a new power upon the stage of action.
Three particulars must be shown in the power which fulfills this prophecy: 1. It must assume the character here delineated near the commencement of the time of the end, to which we were brought down in the preceding verse. 2. It must be a willful power. 3. It must be an atheistical power. Or perhaps the two latter might be united by saying that its willfulness would be manifested in the direction of atheism. A revolution exactly answering to this description did take place in France at the time indicated in the prophecy.
The historian thus describes this great religious change:—
"It was not enough, they said, for a regenerate nation to have dethroned earthly kings, unless she stretched out the arm of defiance toward those powers which superstition had represented as reigning over boundless space."—Scott's Napoleon, Vol. i, p. 172.
Again he says:—
"The constitutional bishop of Paris was brought forward to play the principal part in the most impudent and scandalous farce ever enacted in the face of a national representation. . . . . He was brought forward in full procession, to declare to the convention that the religion which he had taught so many years was, in every respect, a piece of priestcraft, which had no foundation either in history or sacred truth. He disowned, in solemn and explicit terms, the existence of the Deity to whose worship he had been consecrated, and devoted himself in future to the homage of Liberty, Equality, Virtue and Morality. He then laid on the table his Episcopal decorations, and received a fraternal embrace from the president of the convention. . . . . The symbols of this degradation were followed by the renunciation of several apostate priests. . . . . The world for the first time, heard an assembly of men, born and educated in civilization, and assuming the right to govern one of the finest of the European nations, uplift their united voice to deny the most solemn truth which man's soul receives, and renounce unanimously the belief and worship of Deity."—Ibid., Vol. i, p. 173.
A late writer in Blackwood's Magazine says:—
"France is the only nation in the world concerning which the authentic record survives, that as a nation she lifted her hand in open rebellion against the Author of the universe. Plenty of blasphemers, plenty of infidels, there have been, and still continue to be, in England, Germany, Spain, and elsewhere; but France stands apart in the world's history as the single State which, by the decree of their legislative assembly, pronounced that there was no God, and of which the entire population of the capital, and a vast majority elsewhere, women as well as men, danced and sang with joy in accepting the announcement."
But there are other more striking specifications still fulfilled in this power.
Verse 37. Neither shall he regard the God of his fathers, nor the desire of women, nor regard any god; for he shall magnify himself above all.
The word for woman and wife are in the original the same; and Bishop Newton observes that this passage would be more properly rendered "the desire of wives." This would seem to indicate that this government, at the same time it declared that God did not exist, would trample under foot the law that God had given to regulate the marriage institution. And we find that the historian has, unconsciously perhaps, and if so, all the more significantly, coupled together the atheism and licentiousness of this government in the same order in which they are presented in the prophecy. He says:—
"Intimately connected with these laws affecting religion, was that which reduced the union of marriage—the most sacred engagement which human beings can form, and the permanence of which leads most strongly to the consolidation of society—to the state of a mere civil contract of a transitory character, which any two persons might engage in, and cast loose at pleasure when their taste was changed, or their appetite gratified. If fiends had set themselves to work to discover a mode of most effectually destroying whatever is venerable, graceful, or permanent in domestic life, and obtaining at the same time an assurance that the mischief which it was their object to create should be perpetuated from one generation to another, they could not have invented a more effectual plan than the degradation of marriage into a state of mere occasional cohabitation or licensed concubinage. Sophie Arnoult, an actress famous for the witty things she said, described the republican marriage as the sacrament of adultery. These anti-religious and anti-social regulations did not answer the purpose of the frantic and inconsiderate zealots, by whom they had been urged forward."—Scott's Napoleon, Vol. i, p. 173.
"Nor regard any god." In addition to the testimony already presented, to show the utter atheism of the nation at this time, the following fearful language of madness and presumption is to be recorded:—
"The fear of God is so far from being the beginning of wisdom, that it is the beginning of folly. Modesty is only an invention of refined voluptuousness. The supreme King, the God of the Jews and the Christians, is but a phantom. Jesus Christ is an imposter."
Another writer says:—
"In August 26, 1792, an open profession of atheism was made by the National Convention; and corresponding societies and atheistical clubs were everywhere fearlessly held in the French nation. Massacres and the reign of terror became the most horrid."—Smith's Key to Revelation, p. 323.
"Herbert, Chaumette, and their associates, appeared at the bar and declared that God did not exist."—Alison, Vol. i, p. 150.
At this juncture, all religious worship was prohibited, except that of liberty and the country. The gold and silver plate of the churches was seized upon and desecrated. The churches were closed. The bells were broken and cast into cannon. The Bible was publicly burned. The sacramental vessels were paraded through the streets on an ass, in token of contempt. The Sabbath was abolished, and death was declared, in conspicuous letters posted over their burial places, to be an eternal sleep. But the crowning blasphemy, if these orgies of hell admit of degrees, remained to be performed by the comedian Monvel; who as a priest of Illuminism said:—
"God, if you exist, avenge your injured name. I bid you defiance! You remain silent, You dare not launch your thunders! Who, after this, will believe in your existence? The whole ecclesiastical establishment was destroyed."—Scott's Napoleon, Vol. i, p. 173.
Behold what man is when left to himself, and what infidelity is when the restraints of law are thrown off, and it has the power in its own hands! Can it be doubted that these scenes are what the omniscient eye foresaw and noted on the sacred page when it pointed out a kingdom to arise which should exalt itself above every god and disregard them all?
Continue reading: The Order of Events in the Judgment