It was three and a half decades ago that I first heard the voice of God. It was not an audible voice, but rather, a knowing of exactly what the spirit of God was saying to my spirit.
The information that I received was definitely not from my thought processes, as I knew my intellectual limitations. It was something far greater than me, and it was always accompanied by an indescribable sense of peace and well-being.
Over a six-month period of time, I received revelations daily and my eyes were opened to so many things of which I had been completely unaware.
Not only was God showing me things within the Bible, I was being shown the future about the direction that my personal life would be taking.
Pertaining to the Bible, I binged on the Gospels and I was led to read parts of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and some of the other prophets. However, God never once led me to read any of the writings of Paul.
I never gave Paul a second thought, but it was strange for me to read from the prophets, because that was the Old Testament.
At the time, I was a dedicated Christian, and I had been taught by the church that the Old Testament was the old covenant which had been fulfilled by Christ. So, why bother with it?
As Christians, we were taught that Christ was the new covenant and the New Testament was far more valuable for us. I believed the Christian doctrine that told me that we are God’s covenant people because of our faith in Jesus.
It wasn’t until many years after I had come out of the Christian religion, that God showed me the truth.
After investigating, I discovered where this new covenant teaching came from.
Interestingly, Christ never taught that he was going to be the new covenant. He referred to his teachings as new wine that needed new wine skins, but he never said anything about being a covenant.
That concept was coined by Paul who took the words of Jeremiah who had prophesied about a new covenant.
In order to even understand what this truly means; it is necessary to understand the history about what a covenant is.
The covenant is an ancient Mesopotamian practice that had made its way into first century Jewish culture.
We know this because Christ taught his disciples in the Sermon on the Mount to not make oaths. Christ called it an evil practice.
A covenant is the sealed deal when two parties perform an oath.
The practice is a ritual involving an oath maker and another person being promised something.
In the ritual, the oath maker, brings an animal to the one who has received the promise, and names the animal after himself. Afterwards, the oath maker dismembers the animal.
The slaying of the animal is a sign that if the oath maker reneges on his promise, then, that same brutal dismemberment will happen to him.
Therefore, by saying that Christ is the new covenant is like saying that God has made a promise to his people and used Christ as the sacrificial animal to seal the deal. And, if God reneges on that promise, then the same brutal treatment that Christ received will happen to the oath maker, God.
Just like Christ taught, do not perform oaths, but let your yes be yes and your no be no, for any more than that—is EVIL.
I guess Paul didn’t get that memo, and today there are billions of Christians on this planet who believe that they are the new covenant children of God by simply professing their faith in Jesus.
So, let’s look at the scripture in Jeremiah who writes about the new covenant, and see how Paul’s covenant teaching compares.
The scripture that Paul is referring to can be found in Jeremiah 31, and I will be quoting from the Hebrew Bible (JPS version).
See, a time is coming—declares the Lord—when I will make a new covenant with the House of Israel and the House of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their fathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, a covenant which they broke, though I espoused them—declares the Lord.
But such is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after these days—declares the Lord:
I will put MY Teaching into their inmost being and inscribe it upon their hearts. Then, I will be their God, and they shall be My people. No longer will they need to teach one another and say to one another, “Heed the Lord;” for all of them, from the least of them to the greatest, shall heed Me—declares the Lord.
For I will forgive their iniquities, and remember their sins no more.
Thus said the Lord, Who establishes the sun for light by day, the laws of moon and stars for light by night, Who stirs up the sea into roaring waves, Whose name is Lord of Hosts:
If these laws should ever be annulled by Me—declares the Lord—only then would the offspring of Israel cease to be a nation before Me for all time.
Thus said, the Lord: If the heavens above could be measured, and the foundations of the earth below could be fathomed, only then would I reject all the offspring of Israel for all they have done—declares the Lord.
This is a beautiful promise from God, that He will write his teachings on our hearts, and each of us shall know Him personally. There will be no need for men to teach others, because each one of us from the least to the greatest will be taught by God. And finally, He promises to never reject us, because we know that the heavens cannot be measured above; it is impossible.
This, is the new covenant.
Christ introduced the teachings of God, and was disrespected, disregarded, and brutally murdered. That bloody scene did not produce a covenant with God and his people as Paul teaches.
Jeremiah’s vision of the new covenant is simply God teaching his children individually to know Him and promising to never reject them.
Paul’s new covenant sets up a structure where men (Apostles) teach other men (Prophets), who teach other men (Evangelists), who teach other men (Pastors), who teach other men (the congregation) who teach their wives in private at home how to supposedly know God.
It is all wrong.
Jeremiah writes—See, a time is coming…
I’m here to tell you that the time is now. It is time to enter the new covenant that Jeremiah wrote about twenty-five hundred years ago and truly know God.
As we reject the blood sacrificial religious teachings of men and allow God to put His Teachings into our inner most beings, it is then that we partake in the new covenant of God.