First Quarter 2003
Adult Sabbath School Lessons: "The Promise"
Special
Insights #5
Lesson
4: An Everlasting Covenant
January
18-24, 2003
(Produced
by the Editorial Board of the 1888 Message Study Committee)
As
we proceed through these 13 good lessons on the New vs. the Old Covenant,
we need to note the historical basis for the current view of the
Covenants. We cannot understand the present unless we remember the past.
Even
as early as 1851 serious minded Seventh-day Adventists were discussing the
Two Covenants. The problem was that non-Adventist opponents of the Sabbath
were charging that seventh-day Sabbath observance is living under the Old
Covenant. Our pioneers valiantly sought to defend observance of the law as
Christian duty. And they should!
As
early as the 1850s J.N. Andrews wisely published that "the law in
Galatians," the "schoolmaster," is the moral law. In 1854
J.H. Waggoner (father of E.J.) published a book in which he too maintained
that the law in Galatians is the moral law, but he also maintained that
the New Covenant was "an agreement" in which God promised to
bless Abraham on condition of his obedience to the law. He felt he had to
say this so as to defend Sabbath observance. He also saw the Covenants as
dispensations of time. None of the pre-1888 brethren seem (like E.J.
Waggoner) to have understood the two Covenants as matters of the heart and
not of dispensations.
Because
the brethren were trying to defend observance of the Sabbath, they tended
to embrace a legalistic view of the Covenants. In 1857 Stephen Pierce
persuaded them that the law in Galatians must be the ceremonial law. The
general view came to be that the Old Covenant was abolished at the cross
(dispensational). By the 1880s Uriah Smith, having become the theologian
of the church, saw the Covenants as dispensational, the Old extending only
to the cross, the New as being a "mutual agreement," and
the law in Galatians as the ceremonial one.
Finally,
our Elder Dudley M. Canright gave up everything, embraced the
Sunday-keeping churches' view of the Covenants and left the SDA Church
completely, becoming our most determined and bitter opponent in print. He
said, "No other subject perplexes Adventists so much as the
covenants. They dread to meet it." And still today the subject seems
perplexing to most Seventh-day Adventists.
Before
1890 Ellen White said very little about the Covenants. The brethren had
difficulty understanding her position. G.I. Butler, the president, was
sure she agreed with him about the law in Galatians, which if true would
mean she agreed with the "dispensational" idea and the
"agreement" or the "making-a-deal" view of the
Covenants. But she had wisely avoided making such statements. She was free
to listen to E.J. Waggoner at Minneapolis in 1888, saying she was prepared
to learn "from the humblest of God's servants." She was
overjoyed to hear his message; "every fiber of my heart said
amen."
But
not until 1890 did she emphatically, publicly endorse Waggoner's view.
Then she credited the settling of her convictions to a vision the Lord had
given her (in March). She hesitated to oppose the lot of the General
Conference leaders. But in August she took her stand in Patriarchs and
Prophets, declaring firmly that the terms of the Old Covenant were
"obey and live" (p. 372). (This brief historical sketch is
derived from Elder Paul Penno's excellent manuscript, Calvary at Sinai,
pp. 4-31).
The
record seems clear beyond dispute: "the Lord in His great mercy sent
a most precious message to His people" in 1888 that cleared up the
confusion regarding the two Covenants. When Waggoner and Jones presented
their message from Scripture alone, Ellen White loved it for that reason.
Their view was simple and clear as sunlight shining. None of the
Sunday-keeping churches had ever taught it so clearly. If received, it
would have enabled Seventh-day Adventists to present the Sabbath truth to
the world with convicting power.
This
is why the 1888 view was a breakthrough—the actual "beginning"
of the message of the fourth angel of Revelation 18 and of the
prerequisite latter rain which must come first.
Insinuations
of the pre-1888 "bargain" or "agreement" view
infiltrate our Lesson 4. We are asked, "What conditions, or
obligations, were attached to the [new] covenant?" The answer is:
none. We want the naked Bible to speak. And there it is, clear:
God's "covenant" to Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, is simply His
out-and-out, unilateral promise of an eternal inheritance as "heir of
the world" with the everlasting life and righteousness necessary to
inherit it—all by grace through faith. Scripture is clear, it had no
"obligations … attached" to it. Man's obedience would be the
natural fruit of "hearing of faith" (Galatians 3:2, 5), no
"bargaining," no "mutual deal."
What
seems so difficult for us to grasp is that "the gospel of Christ …
is [itself] the power of God unto salvation" (Romans 1:16). The words
sound trite—we've said them so often-but the power is in the word, in
the message itself. The "hearing of faith" imparts its power to
the believing heart. In the Word is the dynamite that delivers a human
heart from captivity to sin, not merely to pardon us while we go on
sinning. When God articulates His New Covenant promise, there is life in
the word itself. Astonishing as it may sound, God's plan is this:
just "hearing" Him declare His promise of everlasting
righteousness makes the believer "obedient to all the commandments of
God" if he doesn't resist it (Steps to Christ, p. 27). That is
what happened to the Galatians when they "heard" Paul's message,
and believed. Just that simple thing transformed them! "The hearing
of faith" was the dynamite. The reason is that "the hearing of
faith" is itself far more efficient than being "hearers of the
law." It produces the change of heart which is true obedience to the
law (see Galatians 3:1, 2, 5; Romans 2:13; 13:10).
The
idea of the New Covenant in the 1888 message was ready to revolutionize
the Seventh-day Adventist message. It was on its way to do so had it not
been resisted and "in a great degree" rejected and "kept
away" from the people and from the world (Selected Messages,
book one, pp. 234, 235). The miracle was like what the New Covenant
promise did when it was articulated or "made to a 99-year-old man
married to an old woman who had heretofore been barren" (Abraham and
Sarah, Tuesday's lesson) when the two finally chose to believe it! Think
of "144,000" triumphant "Sarahs" (literal or symbolic
number!) "laughing" for joy! Don't you want to be one of them?
Question:
Did God ask Abraham himself to walk between the divided halves of the
animal sacrifices (Genesis 15:8-12)? If so, God was asking him to sign his
own death warrant. Whoever did that was swearing on the throne of God a
solemn oath that if he failed to obey his own promise perfectly, he too
should be carved into two pieces like those animals.
Genesis
clearly says that God Himself passed between the pieces—thus binding
Himself to abandon His throne if He should fail to keep His promise to us.
But Genesis does not say that Abraham did, although the Israelites in
Jeremiah's time did so, due to their obsession with Old Covenant
principles (34:18, 19).
While
Abraham himself did it (Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 137), there is
nothing to indicate that God had asked him to do so. God only wanted to
emphasize His own oath, not force one from him. There
is a lack in Thursday's lesson—the idea in Galatians 3 that "the
hearing of faith" itself produces the obedience that is so desired.
Once let the human heart be won and melted by an appreciation of the love
revealed at Christ's cross, and lo, there is total obedience manifested in
the life. The reason? "Faith worketh by agape" (Galatians
5:6). What is lacking in the Quarterly is that motif of agape—its
power to "constrain" (2 Corinthians 5:14, 15). Because of
Israel's invention of the Old Covenant at Mount Sinai, that glorious
result was lacking in their corporate, national history from Sinai to
Pentecost—except for a few isolated, temporary exceptions. The first
time we see a real beginning of it was at Pentecost. Its last
demonstration will be in the latter rain, and in the subsequent loud cry
that finally lightens the earth with glory. When do we want it to come?
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