Right through the Holy Scriptures (The Bible) God made covenants with various people, these covenants were established by God for all men and their descendants, their purpose was to help man to fellowship with Him and walk before Him by obeying the terms of His covenants. These terms were decided by Him alone, I mean that they were not put to the vote. The terms of each Covenant were to be obeyed; obedience to them guarantied the promised blessings. These promises of blessings in some of the covenants were temporary blessings, but some covenants are still bestowing everlasting blessings which will never end. God made a covenant with Noah when he and his family came out from the ark. The utter corruption of his generation made the flood unavoidable, but He found a godly man amongst them, his name was Noah, it is said of him: “Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God. Noah had three sons: Shem, ham and Japheth.” (Genesis 6:9-10) 

As one reads the Bible one discovers that God has always sought to find men like Noah, such men are never in the majority, yet God never overlooks even one. It is what one finds right through the Bible, God always deals with individuals, and faith is always rewarded by manifold blessings. Walking with God means that man believes in Him, and plans a life that is pleasing to Him. Noah found it possible to live a godly life even though the majority was corrupted with evil. His faith was greatly tried for it took Him a hundred and twenty years to build the ark; by his obedience he saved his whole family. Godly parents are the greatest inheritance for a child; they leave for their children something more precious than gold or silver. When Noah and his sons stepped out from the ark, he sacrificed a thanksgiving offering to God for He kept His promise. It was then that God made a Covenant with Him. 

“Then Noah built an altar to the Lord, and taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said in His heart: ‘Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.” (Genesis 8:20-21.)

It is through Noah and His sons that God started to replenish the earth, he became the patriarch of a new humanity. God established a Covenant with Noah and his sons, which still affects humanity today! Why? Because: “God said to Noah and to his sons; ‘I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you and with every living creature that was with you (in the ark) ~ the birds the livestock and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you ~ every living creature on the earth. I establish my covenant with you: Never again will there be a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth. And God said, ‘This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come; I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the Covenant between me and the earth”. (Genesis 6:8-11.) Have you ever heard about this covenant ? Most people have not, and they do not care, yet the faithfulness of God is such that men are still blest with the promise He made that long ago, which He sealed by a rainbow to remind men of His faithfulness. The covenant He made then with mankind will last for as long as a rainbow appears in the sky!

Every Covenant had a temporal application but some had also an eternal character. Following the fall of Adam and Eve God promised to send a deliverer who would free them from their bondage to sin into which, they had fallen: “God said to the serpent (Satan); ‘Because you have done this, (It was the devil had tricked Adam to sin against God) Cursed are you above all the livestock and all the wild animal! You will crawl on you belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed (offspring) and hers; He will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” (Genesis 3:14-15.) This deliver, just as God promised, has come, He is none other than Jesus, He is the only Saviour God has sent, the mighty deliverer, and through Him alone man can escape from every curse that sin has brought on the human race, it is called ‘being saved’.  The Bible says: “Believe on the Lord Jesus-Christ and you will be saved!”(Acts 16:31)

The severe punishment that God applied to Adam by casting Him and his wife out of the Garden of Eden, shows that God always means what He says. Eve was beguiled by Satan to believe that God would not do what He said, but she was wrong and Adam by listening to her disobeyed God, thus sin came in and by its power invaded their beings and they did die. The death of their spirit filled them with fear and they run into thick bushes to hide themselves from God. Since then, men think that by ignoring God they can hide from Him, they go as far as not to believe that He exits, but God is always there, so it is foolish to try and hide from Him or ignore Him, for sooner or later each will have to stand at the bar of the Great Judge. A day of judgement is clearly taught in the Bible.

The Bible shows that man, generally, did not submit to the will of God as establish by the terms of each Covenant, each time they disobeyed God and each ended with a severe judgement. The Bible shows that it is God who always initiated each Covenant, and that He established them for the good of man giving to them the means to relate with Him and by doing His will, they would reap the promised blessings. God created man to have in Him a friend, but sin spoiled that immense privilege, yet God by the means of a Covenant kept an open door to preserve the communion He so cherished. Communion and fellowship with Him were immense blessings, yet men always managed to break The Covenants and bring severe judgements, on themselves and their descendants, by their disobedience to His will. 

So, All the days of Adam were nine hundred and thirty years, as far as we know, through all those years Adam never disobeyed God. The lesson he learned in Eden had left a profound impact upon His soul, I am sure that he regretted deeply the loss of the relationship he enjoyed with His Creator.  But the future generations did not follow Adam’s way of life. It seems that each generation became more rebellious until men became so depraved that God had to destroy them with a flood, as mentioned above.  This happened in the year 1656 from Adam or 2342 before Christ. Although, because of man’s sinful and rebellious nature, and the inbred hatred they had towards God, He could have abandoned His plan of redemption and give it up, yet He did not, and in the coming of Jesus, His Only Son, God fulfilled the promise! The deliverer has come, and with Him came the promise of an ultimate victory which will bring the end of Satan and sin!

All the Covenants that God made have their effect on men today. History shows that God faithfully kept the terms of all the Covenants. The world in which God put man is His domain, for all creation belongs to Him, as such He has every right to direct the lives of everyone on it, and to legislate the conduct of His subjects. As yet He has not abdicated that right and He never will, to that end He remains the Sovereign and His sovereignty is shown in His desire to relate to man, so as to fellowship with him. He has not given man any say in the terms that He has included in each covenant, yet man has a choice to obey them and reap the blessings they offer, or disobey God and expect the judgements by which He ended each covenant. God never acted on a whim, He always gave to men the time to change and repent from their sin. Generation after generation prove that it is foolish to disregard God’s will. But mankind has disobeyed God to this day, and history proves that God keeps his word.

In my life time we have lived through the communist regime that spread like a cancer over the face of the whole earth. Under Stalin and those that followed him, millions of innocent people died because men with him, dreamt of ruling the world. Then came Hitler had plunged the world into the Second World War! It is now left to history to tell the world how great and terrible was the suffering of the people during those awful years. But worse is yet to come, because man has never learned the lesson. Men hungry for power have marred the existence of men to this very day; fear and distrust reigns amongst nations, wars between various nations never cease, not for the last eighty years. Why? Because there is, in every man, a power that fights God, this power is sin and a sinner, by nature, is an enemy of God.  

Although communism, as such, has apparently ceased to rule Russia and the world, not many trust the Russians, and they in turn do not trust anybody either. Yet the destruction of the Berlin Wall in 1989 still prevails and millions, over Europe are glad to be freed from the yoke of fear, that they have known for many years. The twentieth century saw man advance in knowledge as never before, yet it was the bloodiest century on record! with my wife, I often talk about the changes we have seen during our life time, they are immense. Since those years I have learned many things, one of the most important is that sin is the most destructive power on earth, it drives men to an eternal hell; yet they remain oblivious to God’s warnings, man pampers to his destructive ego, and until the last breath, he piles by his rebellion sins, whatever his sins may be, to be finally destroyed in the lake of fire, which is the second death! (Revelation 20)

When I read, over and over, the Bible stories of God’s dealings with men, I realise that the many evils that happened during man’s history had at some point led to an obligatory intervention of the Almighty, when He finally did so, he punished severely the perpetrators of cruelty which they imposed on their equals! In the days of Noah, as we have read, God had to destroy the earth and all creatures that breathed lost their lives. Yet, because the majority lives as it does, men think that all the writings found in the Word of God are but fables, things that never happened. So that Jesus, when he mentioned the times of the end which will precede His return said: “As it was in the day of Noah, so will it be at the coming of the Son of man.” (Matthew 24:37) So don’t be surprised when God punishes ungodly men as prophesied in the Bok of Revelation! 

The world, up to and after the flood, was of one language, there were no nations to fight with nations; wars, etcetera, came long after, and yet, in this oneness men managed to be at logger heads with each other so as to astound even God!  Through the life of one righteous man God replenished the earth: “Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his time; Noah walked with God”. (Genesis 6:9.) I repeat this because we must note that God never judges people without giving them plenty of time to amend their ways. He is always looking out for men that honour him and, like Noah, walk with Him, willing to listen to his pleading. During one hundred and twenty years, as Noah was building the ark, as God commanded him; he never ceased to warn them of the impending disaster; think of it. Through Noah’s pleadings, God was calling men of his generation to repent, never willing that anyone should perish. But it was all in vain; when the heart of men becomes that hard, there is no way of return to God.

Man is never in a situation in which he is forced to sin, he always has a choice to do good rather than evil. Whatever your life is at present, you can search your heart before God and find out just what place He has in your life, and if he does not guide it and if He does not lead it in obedience to Him, there is never such a time as now to come back to Him, and like Noah begin to walk with God. “Jesus said I am the way, and the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father but through me.” (John 14: 6) Try it! Pray to Jesus, ask Him simply to take over your life and He will save you, forgive you your sins and bring you into a new life.

In this twenty first century mankind is affected by the things that happened in the days of Noah. How? By remaining true to the Covenant, He made with Noah and all his descendants, which we are, He seeks to bless the world! Through that one family which came out of the ark, God replenished the whole earth, so we are all descendants of the faithful man, who sought after God and obeyed him! Yes, these eight people received from God words comfort for their future and ours! God made a covenant with Noah, his sons and all his descendants, by these words: “And I, behold I establish my covenant with you, and with your seed after you. And with every living creature that is with you, of the fowl, of the cattle, and of every beast of the earth with you; from all that go out of the Ark, to every beast of the earth. And I will establish my covenant with you; neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of the flood to destroy the earth. And God said. This is the token of the Covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations: I set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of the Covenant between me and the earth.” (Genesis 9:1-17)

Every time the rainbow appears in the clouds, to this day, God remembers the Covenant that he made with Noah and his descendants that long ago. Who else remembers it? Do you? You may not even have heard of it, but that rainbow is a sign that God is faithful even though men do not deserve it. It looks so awesome, beautiful, majestic, still reminding to us God said: “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.” Men simply take it for granted, yet at seedtime comes they saw the seeds, comes the summer they expect a harvest, but never stop to think and thank God for making them rich with the bountiful fruit of the earth. Shame on them, for they shall reap the fruits of their actions and shall perish forever, unless God grants them repentance!

But this Covenant, like the previous one, men have broken and denied the Almighty the right to govern them; it did not take long for them to forget God, and to rebel against Him all over again. The memory of the flood was still vivid in most of them, for Noah lived for three hundred fifty years after the flood, and during all that time he still walked with God. He never stopped to tell them of what happened, warning them of what God did and why. Nevertheless: Men began to worship the heavens;Mars Jupiter, the Sun the Moon and all other planets in the firmament, became the gods of the descendants of Noah, rebellious men who wanted to make for themselves a name, and find in their folly a god mightier than Jehovah, (or Yahweh). In their folly they sought to defeat their Creator, any god would do if only he would take Jehovah out of the way. In their war against the Almighty they said: “Come, let us build ourselves a city with a tower that reaches the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.” (Genesis 11:4)

This was decided as a direct refusal to obey God and replenish the whole earth as he commanded them in the words of the Covenant He made with Noah and His sons. No! They said: We do not want to replenish the earth, we want to remain were we are one united people, thua they rose up against the will of God. This first democratic decision drove them to worship the planets, and made themselves other gods, fruits of their imagination, and their sinful minds darkened by Satan, drove them to build a tower. This tower was to be an immense temple, in which they would assemble together to worship their various gods, on top of the temple they built an altar and sacrificed blood offerings to their idols. 

This is truly the spirit of Babylon, the mother of all harlots. That long ago, men sought to unite all religions into one, and create this dream of One World, one faith, one people. The will of the people is still the same, and what God has so far denied men to do and achieve, He will give it them, in His time, for His purpose. In God’s own time He will bring in the Anti-Christ, this man will be the very incarnation of Satan. Through his devilish craft he will rapidly rise to power and in no time, he will subdue the world to do what he wants and no man will be able to resist Him. In God’s time, this incarnation of Satan, “Will be given power…and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed.” (Revelation 13:15) What God Almighty never did the devil will ,and force every human being to worship the idol he will set up in God’s temple. Under him rebellion to God Almighty, will be at its worst. But Christ will come back to the earth and defeat Him and cast him into the lake of fire. (Revelation 20:7-10) This will bring all Covenants to their end, and under the promise of the Eternal Covenant, God will take home all His faithful, and they shall live with God forever!

The Anti-Christ will not spare anyone that will resist his dream to subdue men to worship him, and take the world under his control, politically and spiritually. Senseless men, will pay dearly for their rebellion against the Almighty to build for themselves an empire that would be stronger than their own Creator, and rid themselves of His demands! Wherever idols are set up and are worshipped that place is an abomination to God. A worldly church may have given to their idols the names of some supposed saints, which they have beatified, but the spirit is the same, they are still idols. The aim of Babylon has never changed, and wherever men govern their own affairs, without any reference to God or His will, they do so according to this Babylonian dream. 

These are relics of the past, when the ancestors of all nations did the same by bowing to idols of their own making, saying what was said by Israel when the nation sent Christ, their Messiah to the CROSS: “We will not have this man to reign over us.” (Luke 19:14) The cry of a rebellious world was the same to this day, and in their total blindness men are well described as fools: “For although they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to Him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.”(Romans 1:18-22.)

In the days of Noah, a world that rebelled against God, He destroyed, by the flood. In the days Of the Tower of Babel, God sent a mighty fire from heaven that burned down the temple, so that even rocks melted, and from there He scattered the people all over the world! Long after that, Sodom and Gomorrah fell into immoral depravity, to save the cities from destruction Abraham tried to find ten godly people and failed, all the warnings fell on deaf ears, but God saved Lot, Abraham’s nephew, whom angels drove out by force: “By the time Lot reached Zoar, the sun had risen over the land. Then the Lord rained down burning sulphur on Sodom and Gomorrah ~ from the Lord out of heaven… He remembered Abraham, and he brought out Lot out of the catastrophe that overthrew the cities were Lot lived. (Genesis 20:27-29.) There are many other instances that should speak to men of today, for they have gone the same way, for God poured His wrath on sinners and destroyed man, or groups of men, armies and empires, that crossed the line, and whose sins God could not overlook. I repeat it again; The World and all men in it belong to God, he blesses the faithful and rejects forever the unbeliever.

So, Bible History, shows that every Covenant that God made with man, by which He sought to relate with him as a friend, he disregarded it and rebelled against Him, despised Him and broke away from Him, but each time God ended their rebellion by a terrible judgement. It should have taught men that they cannot hope and continue to exist if they do not reverently fear God, and believe in Jesus Christ for the saving of their soul; but until now men have not changed, so an awful end is reserved for those who, by refusing to submit to God, choose wilfully to become slaves in mind and heart to the devil, by worshiping their own mystical gods. It is from such a situation that God called Abram, in the year 1915 B.C. into a life of faith. With him God made a new covenant an everlasting Covenant, and by appearing to Him God changed his name to Abraham, making him a father of all men that believe in and worship God by faith! This Covenant will be explained fully later on in this chapter. 

According to the clear teachings of Holy-Scripture, the Bible, which is also Called the Word of God, we learn that no man can have a relationship with God outside of the terms established by a Covenant. God created Adam and Eve, with them he conversed openly. They heard him each day walking in the Garden of Eden where He came to talk with them, it could be in the morning just at could be in the evening, but this He did faithfully. Their daily encounter with their Creator would have continued forever had they not broken the Covenant by eating of the forbidden fruit. There was nothing mystical about the fruit, as some like to think and invent their theory, or fables; it was a simple command that a child could have understood. But they broke the Covenant and fell under the power of sin, and died spiritually, God drove them out of the Garden of Eden and all contacts with them ceased. 

So, the Covenant was written off, God judged them and drove them away from the Garden with the promise of a redeemer. From then on humanity divides into two distinct groups of people, those that are for Him and those that are against Him and it started with Cain and Abel. The history, from then on, proves that the faithful were always persecuted and hated by the unfaithful, it is so until now! Nevertheless, as we have seen it, God left man with a hope of deliverance that would come by the birth of a deliverer, a Saviour, which was to be born of the seed of the woman. A virgin birth! No one fills this criterion but Jesus the Son of God! He alone can reconcile man with God, and save man’s soul: ‘From what’? We shall answer that question later on.

Since Adam’s exit from Eden God used Covenants to relate with men and conserve His Sovereignty over His entire Creation. These Covenants reveal how He wishes men to behave and obey the rules as demands each Covenant. Since God broke all direct contacts with men, that disobeyed the terms of the Covenant he made with Noah and all His descendants, all nations in their idolatrous position are dead in the eyes of God. Soon after the destruction of Babel, God called out a man called Abram, from Ur in the land of the Chaldeans. “So, Abram left, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out … for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there…The Lord appeared to Abram and said, ‘To your offspring’ – or seed—I will give this land’. So, he built an altar there to the Lord, who had appeared unto Him.” (Genesis 12: 1-7) With this man started a new relationship with God!

Concerning His coming to earth Jesus said that He: “Came to seek and to save that which was lost.” (Luke 19:10.) All mankind is lost wondering in ways they know nothing about, but Jesus came specifically to call and gather men which the Father gave Him before the foundation of the earth. Jesus often mentioned His sheep, His lambs; He said that He was the good shepherd and that His: “sheep listen to His voice…He calls His own sheep by name and leads them out” .When He has brought all his own out from the rest of the world, He goes ahead of them and ‘His sheep’ follow Him because they know His voice.” So much can be said about this personal aspect of a tender and loving relationship.  This was never the Character of all previous Covenants. Much more will be said later, enough to say that those He calls out by name respond positively to His call and they follow Him because they know His voice!

This is the true Gospel as taught by Jesus and His apostles. Those who are called of God and believe, enter by their faith in Christ into the Covenant of grace, ratified by the blood of Christ shed on the cross, by God’s grace they live the new life here on earth, and they will enter into its fullness when Jesus return to take His sheep to heaven! He has gone ahead of them, and for them He will return!Life with Him, in the presence of God, shall never end! The Covenant of grace has replaced the Covenant of the Law, which, although fulfilled by Christ, remains important to the Nation of Israel to which they are bound because of their unbelief. 

Their refusal to accept that Jesus-Christ was their Messiah has forced them into an impossible position with God who has abrogated the Mosaic Covenant, by which they still try to establish their own righteousness through obedience the Ten Commandments. To understand it fully we must look into this Mosaic Covenant also called the Covenant of Law that God made with the Israelites, when they left Egypt, which contains: 1. The Ten Commandments, (Exodus 20:1-26). 2. The judgements, (Exodus 21:1 - 24:11) 3, The Ordinances. (24:12 – 31:18.) But obeying these commandments cannot offer them any hope of salvation which is only possible by faith in Jesus-Christ. There is now a church in the world which is outside of Christ; it abandoned the principles of grace to seek righteousness by the works of the Law, just as Israel has done. When the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus does not move men in the will of God, the return to the Law is all that is left, but it leads to death! 

THE MOSAIC COVENANT 

I invite you to consider seriously the following chapter, we cannot fully appreciate how blessed is the Covenant of Grace and the changes God offers by it to all men, unless we discover how hopeless was The Law and man’s efforts to attain his own righteousness, by obedience to the Ten Commandments.

To deliver the People of Israel from bondage God send them Moses. There came a time when the people Of Israel suffered greatly at the hands of their Egyptian masters who impose upon them forced labour. The favour they knew because of Joseph and his standing with the Pharaoh of Egypt, had long been forgotten. The Bible says: “A new King came to power in Egypt…….and put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labour, and they built Python and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh. They worked them ruthlessly. They made their lives bitter with hard labour and brick and mortar and with all kinds of labour in the fields; in all their hard labour the Egyptians used them ruthlessly.” (Exodus 1:11-14,) All the Good that God did for Egypt by the hands of Joseph had long been forgotten. 

During forty years God was preparing Moses, who had to flee from Egypt he reached the land of Midianmmmm, where he became a shepherd working for a man called Jethro, eventually Moses married Zipporah, his master’s daughter. Moses was born in Egypt to a man of the tribe of Levi at a time when, by a decree from the Pharaoh, every male child born to Israelites was to be killed, but miraculously God spared His life. When it became impossible to his parents to hide baby Moses any longer, they put him in a basket lined inside with bitumen and put him among some reeds in the Nile. The daughter of Pharaoh came regularly there to bathe and found Moses amongst the reeds, and took him to raise him as her own. But when Moses became a man he killed an Egyptian, who was ill-treating one of his Hebrew brothers, as it became known in the very courts of Pharaoh he had to run away to save his life. Being well versed in the customs and language of the Egyptians, he was the right man, raised by the Almighty to liberate Israel. God takes a long time to fulfil His promises but He is never too late! 

One day, when he was eighty years of age, as he was minding the sheep of Jethro his father in law, he was attracted by a bush that burned and would not consume. As he drew nigh to it, He heard a voice speaking to him from the bush. God said: “Do not come any closer; take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” (Genesis 3:5) The ground was not holy before, it was just like the rest of the desert near Horeb, the Mountain of God, but God’s presence makes everything holy, to the extent that man has to take the sandals off his feet, for all things of earth are polluted. Since the call of Abraham God had a hand in the making of a people for himself as he promised to Abraham its patriarch. God loved them, cared for them and the time came to deliver Israel, for this reason God spoke to Moses from a burning bush and said: “I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. At this Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.” Foolish are the people that do not believe in the existence of God, an awful lot of of people, throughout history, have seen Him and heard Him, to them He became very real!

God continued talking with Moses and said: “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So, I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land.” You can read this entire, lovely, true story in (Exodus 3.) So, sent by God to deliver the people of Israel from bondage came to Egypt, one man, Moses! accompanied by his brother Aaron. When men like this Pharaoh, continue their brutal life and subdue everything and everyone to their evil will, they do not realise that God is bringing them to a brutal end. After many signs and wonders Pharaoh had to eventually release the people of Israel and let them go. One man with God was stronger than all his armies. 

But Israel barely left Egypt that Pharaoh regretted that he let them go, so he sent his troops to bring them back, he realised that he lost the man-power that he needed to build His monuments, store houses, which were the great pyramids in which were buried the Pharaohs. So, with a heart that God had hardened ,he wished to bring Israel back by force, to slave for him and his people; but God had in mind to destroy the whole might of Egypt and the pride of Pharaoh, so He did it! After all, who was Pharaoh, to contend with Almighty God? What arms can one use to defeat one man appointed by God? They were like flies before the eyes of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, so he destroyed Pharaoh’s mighty armies and pride in the Red sea!  Egypt took a long, long time to recover from the effect of a little man whom God sent!

The people of Israel journeyed from the Red sea for three months, on the very day; they came to the desert of Sinai! Israel entered the desert and set up camp in front of the mountain. They were there to live through some amazing experiences for there, God revealed Himself to them in all His glory. He called Moses, whom He met in the desert, on Mount Sinai, there He told Moses what  to say to the people saying: “This is what you are to say to the house of Jacob and what you are to tell the people of Israel: You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagle’s wings and brought you to myself. Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words you are to speak to the Israelites.” (Exodus 19:3-6.) Having heard these words from the mouth of God, Moses descended and gathered the elders and told the people everything he heard from God on the Mountain.

After he shared faithfully the words God told him to say, he returned up the mount to tell Him the answer of the people, saying: “The people all responded together and said: ‘We will do everything the Lord has said”. Having heard the words of the people God gave to Moses new instruction. On the Mountain top Moses heard from God all the words of the Covenant that God was making with his redeemed people, the terms of which, are the Ten Commandments, which God wrote on tablets of stone. We have enumerated them already in our earlier study. 

Now, Moses stayed forty days in the presence of God, during which he received, together with the Ten Commandments, the plan God drew up for the making of a tabernacle; He desired the people to make it for Him and dedicate as an abode, for Him and to be the centre for the holy service of the priests; to offer the sacrifices as detailed in the book of Leviticus. Once this Tabernacle was made the priests were to erect it, so that God could abide in the midst of them in all His glory. All that happened to them was purely out of the love God had for Abraham, and to fulfil all the promises God gave Him.

God called him out of the land of the Chaldeans to walk before Him; He made with him a Covenant by which he promised Canaan for an inheritance to his descendants. God loved Abraham who remained true to him to the end of his life.  Near four centuries later God proved His faithful love to the Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and came down to were Moses was, in the desert, minding the sheep of his father in law.  To fulfil His word God entrusted him with the leadership of Israel and charged him with the instruction of His will as described by the Covenant, the Ten Commandments. People have to know what God has said. If men do not or cannot hear His words, how will they obey? “How will they believe? It has pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save those that believe.”

If to know the word of God and obey it was so important under the Law, to know the Gospel and what Jesus says is much more important, men must hear it, as says the Bible. “How can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? How can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent?” (Romans10:14-18.) Men sent of God are choice men; God prepared Moses from his birth to become His ambassador to the People of Israel. He talked with him directly, put His words into his mouth and what He said Moses taught it to the people. The people in turn had to teach their faith and the teaching of the laws to their children; this Covenant was for all generation. All Moses’ encounters with God have been faithfully recorded in the Bible.

The People, the Covenant and the Country they received by God’s promise, were bound together as one under God! There was no other nation on earth that enjoyed this unique blessing, this amazing blessing was: ‘To see His presence in their midst, see His glory and hear his voice’. The Mosaic Covenant was handed by God, written by His finger on tables of stone, and Moses was told to read it to the people of Israel. God wished to be the God of this People, whom He chose for Himself from amongst the nations of the world. The Covenant He made with them, are the ‘Ten Commandments’, and all that it entailed to fulfil them by various religious and civil administrations. With them God gave Israel promises of great blessings, which would never end if they obeyed Him. If a Gentile wanted to worship the Lord, ‘Yahweh’ the God of Israel, there was only one way he could do it, he had to convert to their faith, follow the teachings of Moses, and embrace the Covenant God made with Israel, and put away all his false gods; he then became what is called: ‘a proselyte’ a converted Gentile yet he could never become a son of Abraham!

God knew that the day would come that this people would turn away from Him and turn to the idols of the nations, among which they would dwell. This proves that seeing God and all His mighty miracles; hearing his very voice at which they trembled so much so that they asked Moses to speak to them rather than hear God directly, so awesome was God’s voice; but all these living manifestations of God did not suffice to keep them faithful and submitted to His will: ‘If we could see a miracle’, if we could see God and hear his voice we would believe! How often have people said it? But history proves that nothing is enough, men have a hard heart, a stiff neck and all by nature, Jews or Gentiles, resist God and rebel against His will.

To believe in God and love Him man needs a complete change of nature, man needs a new heart. God said to Moses: “Behold thou shalt sleep with thy fathers; and this people will rise up, and go a whoring after the gods of the strangers of the land, whither they go to be among them, and will forsake me, and break my covenant which I have made with them. Then my anger shall be kindled against them in that day, and I shall forsake them, and I will hide my face from them, and they shall be devoured, and many evils and troubles shall befall them; so that they will say in that day, are not all these evils come upon us, because our God is not among us? And I will surely hide my face in that day for all the evils which they have wrought, in that they are turned unto other gods.” (Deuteronomy 31: 16-18.) 

Man forgets that all he is and all he has is what God gave him. But instead of being thankful, pride fills his heart, he will not acknowledge that it is not his arm that causes the harvest to grow and fruit to ripen in its season. It is the blessing of God that causes the seed to grow and ripen for a bountiful harvest, man, obviously must do his part, but it is God that sends the soft rain to germinate it and the gentle heat to make all things grow and mature. Although man has turned away from God and became proud and thankless, Yet God remains true to the Covenant that He made with Noah, established centuries ago, by which He engaged Himself and said: “As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.” Each time we see the rainbow shining amongst the dark angry clouds, God remembers His Covenant. Nothing will alter it, not even global warming! In spite of man’s sins and rebellion, He still sends the rain in its season, just as he promised, not because men deserve it, but because His plan to save His elect is most important!

Nevertheless, the day is coming when all nations shall see the Lord come upon clouds of glory and all men will be judged for their wicked ways and their stubborn hearts. God has spoken to the earth as He spoke to Israel. This is made plain by the following statements: “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. Since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities ~ his eternal power and divine nature ~ have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to Him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened, although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.” (Romans 1: 18-22)

These statements of Holy Scripture are plain, so plain that there is nothing to add, they put men throughout time, up to this hour, in a hopeless position in the sight of God. By these words God condemns Jews, as much as Gentiles. If things were a bit different in the days these words were written, today we see that neither Jews nor Gentiles can say that they do not know! God says that all men know Him and all men have heard Him and they wilfully decided to turn away from Him, to serve the gods of their own making. Just as His blessings enriched the Israelites and made them great for a time of prosperity, so God has blessed all nations, by sending them rain and respecting the times of seasons just as He promised. (Genesis 8: 22.) 

Even today, what good would all man’s agricultural policies come to, if God broke the Covenant and send no more rain upon the ground? This He could do so easily, and turn the whole planet into a desert. But God is not man, that is why, He remains true for the sake of the elect, but He is determined, so the ultimate end will be the eradication of all evil from His creation. Talking of the elects, ‘Who are they’? They are the people, the sheep He calls by name, He foreknew them even before the foundation of the earth, a new people, born from above, all this happens to those that believe in Jesus-Christ, and to complete His plan of redemption, God will keep His Covenant He made with Noah, and all others, to keep the seasons, Summer and Winter, Spring time and harvest, until the time of the end!

History proves that although the people of Israel dealt treacherously with God Almighty, He did not let them go without warning, or without pleading with them to repent and return to Him. He sent prophets, who came to warn them of impending doom. Great prophets such as Isaiah who said: “Hear you deaf; look, you blind and see! Who is blind but my servant, and deaf like the messenger I send?  Who is blind like the one committed to me, blind like the servant of the Lord? You have seen many things, but have paid no attention; your ears are open, but you hear nothing’. It pleased the Lord for the sake of righteousness to make His laws great and glorious. But this people plundered and looted, all of them trapped in pits or hidden away in prisons. They have become plunder with no-one to rescue them; they have been made loot, with no-one to say: ‘Send them back’. Which of you will listen to this or pay close attention in time to come? Who handed Jacob over to become loot and Israel to the plunderer? Was it not the Lord, against whom we have sinned? For they would not follow his ways; they did not obey His law. So, he poured out on them His burning anger, the violence of war. It enveloped them in flames, yet they did not understand; it consumed them, but they did not take it to heart,” (Isaiah 42: 18-25.) 

Do not tire, read these words, they are capable to touch your hard heart and prove that God in His love and patience, warns and pleads so that men may hearken and repent and return unto Him, even you! If you reader, have not repented from your sins you should, right now, because your days may be near their end and after there is only hell for all unbelievers! Apart from the grace of God, sinners have nothing left but wait for His wrath to come. Are you a Jew, then listen again for worse is yet to come on Israel, until it realises that Jesus Christ is Lord ‘Yahweh’! Are you a gentile pagan? You too listen, because for two thousand years, the Gospel of Jesus-Christ has been warning people of all languages, saying that men today, are also rebellious sinners and that only though true repentance God, will He receive them, for salvation is only possible though faith in Jesus Christ. After all that God has said, all that he has done, Gentiles also have shut their ears and are also without excuse. There is an end foretold, the whole world will disappear in a flush of fire! In that day no-­one will have time to call on God for salvation; it will be too late!

I cannot read the story of Israel, as a nation, without feeling a deep sorrow in my heart, because unlike the pagan nations of the world, they heard and they saw the Lord. He was known to them, they prided themselves of having the Law, and for being God’s special people. They saw mighty miracles before they entered the Promised Land, through all the time they dwelt in it, and yet they turned against him and worshiped the idols of the nations, amongst which they dwelt! Amongst the many sins they committed to anger the Lord, the worst was idolatry, God regards it as the most polluting deed a man can do, and He cannot overlook it, that is why He has prepared a severe retribution on the world, knowing full well that men will ignore it and fall in the trap of this awful sin. 

It has been said that God took His people out of Egypt, but He did not take Egypt out of them. They spent four centuries plus, in the heathen land where idolatry was rife. They had barely sworn to God obedience and respect for His Covenant, saying: “We will do everything the Lord has said.” (Exodus 19:8) that  the absence of Moses for forty days, was enough for them to threaten Aaron, who in the fear of losing his life, made them a golden calf, before which they polluted themselves.  When God called Moses to meet Him on Mount Sinai to give him instructions concerning the building of His Tabernacle, He had to tell Moses: “Go down, Moses, because the people, whom you brought up out of Egypt, have become corrupt. They have been quick to turn away from what I have commanded them and have made themselves an idol, cast in the shape of a calf. They have bowed down to it and sacrificed to it and have said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.’ (Exodus 32: 7-8.) 

It was a sad day, for when Moses came down from the Mountain to find the people’s reaction to his absence, his anger flared up, with the help of the tribe of the Levites three thousand people perished by the sword. God decided to destroy the whole people and start afresh with Moses, but it took his pleading with God, for Him to repent from what he was about to do! History now shows that their attitude towards God never changed, they were with Him for a while, but when things got better and prosperity came their way, they forsook the Lord to worship the idols of the Canaanites, not once or twice, but over and over again. whether it was under the rule of the Judges or the Kings. Yet time after time, when they were overcome by their enemies, they never failed to cry to God, who never failed to set them free and bless them. He did it until He had enough and the time came He sent them into captivity. Nebuchadnezzar, the King of Babylon, was a ruthless man, and brutally he slaughtered thousands of Israelis, took the nobility into captivity, where they spent seventy-five years, then came the appointed time for them to be set free. 

Because of their hard hearts prone to rebellion and unbelief, the people journeyed forty years through the wilderness. In times of test, it complained constantly and the people were a very; to Moses, a heavy burden to bear. Once in the Promised Land, during the life of Joshua and the elders that outlived him, the people remained faithful to the Lord, but once these faithful leaders died, the story is as always, the idols of the pagan nations seemed more attractive to them, than faithfulness to God and keeping His covenant. We read in the Bible “After that whole generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation grew up, who knew neither the Lord nor what He had done for Israel. Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord and served the Baals. (Meaning that they did it openly~ it was not done in secret. Baals were the gods of the Canaanites.) “They forsook the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of Egypt. They followed and worshiped various gods of the people around them. They provoked the Lord to anger because they forsook Him...In His anger against Israel the Lord handed them over to the raiders who plundered them. He sold them to their enemies all around, whom they were no longer able to resist. Whenever Israel went out to fight, the hand of the Lord was against them. They were in great distress.” (Judges 2: 10-15

Nations which God told Israel to destroy, it preferred to keep them alive to become their constant enemies which made them their servants. These nations were a constant thorn to the Israelites, and God willed it so, to test them and try them because of their unbelief. A period, called a ‘period of rest’saw Israel end up mingled with the nations they were supposed to conquer. The very reason, for which God raised them up to be His people, separate from all nations, had no value in their eyes, and they polluted themselves and worshipped their gods. God raised His people to bless them and show by their faithful lives and obedience to His precepts, how good it was to serve Jehovah, the living God, and draw these pagan nations to Himself, and be their God too. It follows that: “The Lord was very angry with Israel and said. ‘Because this nation has violated the Covenant that I laid down for their forefathers and has not listened to me, I will no longer drive out before them any of the nations, Joshua left when he died. I will use them to test Israel and see whether they will keep the way of the Lord and walk in it as their forefathers did.’ The Lord had allowed those nations to remain; He did not drive them out at once by giving them into the hands of Joshua.” (Judges 2: 20-23.) It is always dangerous for those who believe in God, not to listen to what He says. The whole history of Israel proves how disobedience to Him leads to its destruction.

This is what Israel suffered time and time again during all the time they lived in the land, the people never really knew real peace, because instead of being separate and sanctified to God by their living in obedience to the Covenant, they mixed with their neighbours and became like them, and worse! offending God they worshipped their idols. Three centuries of seeming ‘Rest’, under the rule of the judges, became their downfall. Their very identity and uniqueness was in danger of disappearing because they ignored to obey one of the main commandments. In the last discourse that Moses left them, as recorded in the book of Deuteronomy, God told them the following: 

“When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations~ The Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger than you~ and when the Lord your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy. Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their sons for your daughters, for they will turn your sons away from following me to serve other gods, and the Lord’s anger will burn against you and He will quickly destroy you. This is what you are to do to them: Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones, cut down their Asherah poles, and burn their idols in the fire. For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you out of all the nations on the face of the earth to be His people, His treasured possession.” (Deuteronomy 7:1-6.

We cannot imagine the blessings God had in store for them, but they were weak and constantly undecided, and disregarded completely all that God told them to do, to keep themselves Holy, separated from all Gentile nations around them and from worshipping their gods. I read few years ago the word of the head Rabbi of Jerusalem who said: ‘We are paying today, all the wrongs that committed are forefathers when they disobeyed God!’ Such a statement makes one think! “The Israelites lived among the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. They took their daughters into marriage and gave their daughters to their sons, and served their gods.”(Judges 3: 5-6.). We may find it difficult, at times, to appreciate what God wanted them to do! In the position that Israel was, it was a bit like royalty, they live among the people but they were not of the people, they were set apart, being set apart and share in God’s special blessings, did not suit them!

Men should never try to understand God; it is the highest form of pride to think that man can argue with his puny mind the unfathomable wisdom of The Almighty! The Bible is a spiritual Book, inspired by the Holy-Spirit, only those that are born of God and are filled with the Holy-Spirit, can begin to understand, step by step, the true sense of what God is really saying, reveals what He is like! After God brought Job out of all his hard trials, could say: “I know that you can do all things; no plan of yours can be thwarted. You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my counsel without knowledge? Surely, I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know… My ears had heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore, I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.” (Job 42: 1-6.) True humility is not a weakness it is true nobility, it secures for the humble man God’s constant pleasure. 

This is also why the world we live in, Jews and Gentiles alike, has gone wrong. Proud men think that they can fathom things too deep for them, and because they cannot they conclude that God does not exist. Men have achieved wonders, but all their gadgets are temporary. This generation thinks that they it is so clever not to believe. They say that the people of yesteryears were not so ‘Enlighted’ as they are today! They are so enlightened, that they became fools, God says, not me, ‘The fool has said in his heart there is no God!’ (Psalm 14: 1) In the book of Proverbs, in the Bible, the writer often mentions him, one of them says: ‘The way of the fool seems right to him…Reckless words pierce like a sword.’(Proverb 12: 15 & 18) Most of the people of what is known as the Christian part of the world, have taken the road of the evolutionists, in their empty existence God does not exist! It is the road to disaster, for when the blind lead the blind they all fall in the pit! We are more enlightened, far more educated, they say! More than ever in the history of man, erudite men come out from Universities with their degrees, proud as peacocks and they display their theories to impress bigger fools than themselves; but they only end up a bit wiser and all they have learned leads the world towards its destruction! These statements fit the majority, for they are, thank God, many that know a lot more, because they know the Lord, and honour His Name! They are called Christians, true ones, which Jesus is not ashamed to call His brothers.

Not that gathering knowledge is wrong, what is wrong is what man does with it. Many learned men have found that God is true, but these men do not hit the lime lights, this is why the Bible says: ‘that the foolishness of God is wiser than the wisdom of men!’ Man’s little brain cannot conceive how dangerous sin sis and how evil, in their outstanding wisdom they openly play with fire. Man must learn that God is only understood by men He chooses and endues with spiritual wisdom, these men under the guidance of the Holy Spirit can begin to get wise enough to speak of Him and for Him. Christians, I mean, believers in Christ, learn daily more and more about eternal things that blow their minds, so to say, for they are truths out of this world. However, as it is written, “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared to those that love Him.” (I Corinthians 2:9

We learn in God’s Word that to save the people of Israel from distraction, and annul their plans and way of life; God had to spoil their purposes. Like in Egypt, oppressed and enslaved to their new enemies, Israel had to cry to God for their salvation. After three hundred years in Canaan where they knew apparent peace, the Lord had to train them for war all over again, for His purpose cannot be frustrated, His plan for this planet is still being fulfilled, and until the end His people, the followers of Christ, as the Israelites in His days, have to fight the forces of evil! But their fight is not with human arms, for it is a spiritual war, and to fight it there are spiritual arms, the mightiest is prayer. Prayer is a very hard thing to do; I have not met anyone who has found it easy. One can easily say ‘our Father which art in heaven’, but to really pray one has to really know as His Father and overcome the feeling of impotence, for to pray is contrary to human nature. Yet, Jesus the very Son of God prayed continually so much so that He impressed His own disciples, they realised their need of help and asked Him to teach them how to pray. We, as Christians, have not much influence or any means, to make a difference in the world, but prayer changes things, it remains is our greatest weapon in the combat against evil.

When in Egypt Israel did not have to fight, it was God that delivered them by His almighty arm, and they saw His Holy weapons of war at work! But now, in Canaan, they had to conquer by force of arms, so in their oppression God send to them Judges, mighty men that with the anointing of the Holy Spirit led them to victory. The Bible states: “The Lord sent them judges, who saved them out of the hands of these raiders.” (Judges 2:16) Although they were in a mess, because of their rebellion and unbelief, God did not forsake, but after years of servitude to their conquerors, God raised up men of valour, to set them free! The raiders were the nations the Lord left to test all those Israelites who were not experienced in the art of war. The Bible states: “The Lord sold them into the hands of Cushan-Rishathaim king of Aram Naharaim, to whom the Israelites were subject for eight years.”(Judges 3)  Eight years in such circumstances is a mighty long time, and their suffering was, no doubt, more and more unbearable. I was a child of six when the Nazis armies swept into northern France, but when at eleven years of age, the region was liberated by the Canadians armies, even I realised what being freed means. So, I am not surprised that these people cried unto the Lord, and when they cried unto the Lord to send them deliverance from the hands of their enemies, He send them an old man of eighty years of age, no wonder that Pharaoh despised him. Who, in the world would send one man to make war against a great Empire? Yet, Moses, an old man of eighty brought it to its end, for God was with Him.

The period covered by the rule of these judges, who functioned as military heroes and civil magistrates, was approximately four hundred years until the period of Eli and Samuel, the later was the last of the judges. Samuel’s story is one of the most wonderful stories in the Bible. Nevertheless, during all the period of the Judges, the People of Israel continued to resist the Lord their God, always returning to their spiritual prostitution in the worship of the gods of the pagan nations. They did so during the life of the thirteen Judges that God raised to deliver them! Each time, after years of prosperity, they returned to their old ways. The patience of God with them is a love story, yet even under the faithful direction of Samuel, their wicked and ungrateful heart turned them against the rule of God to ask of Samuel to give them a King. Thus, Israel rejected the rule of God! He never ceased to come to their rescue in time of need! But Israel time after time forsook the Lord and turned to the pagan nations, for they wanted to be like them. Democracy prevailed over theocracy, proving that the will of people is generally anti-God, and does not yield to His will.

Whatever form of government people have had to this very day, the voice of the people was never for God, there never came from an appeal from politicians to return to God and serve Him, but in Israel. During the reign of various kings, God appointed prophets, men powerful in the Spirit, anointed, sent by Him, they called the people to repentance, their message of pending woes was despised by the people, they despised the prophets; they jailed them and killed them. The voice of the people today, as represented by men that govern them, have been known to say: “We don’t do God”. After the flood as people multiplied, men united against the rule of God. From that spirit there rose to power a man called Nimrod, he became a self-made King; one can imagine what he was like! Under his rule the people were led into demon worship. This act of rebellion happened at the time of the Tower of Babel, which God destroyed by fire from heaven. Then He came down, confused their languages, and scattered them all over the earth! Yet to this day men have not learned that God has always the last word, it is utterly foolish to resist Him.

The nations that peopled, what is now called the Near-East, have always worshipped strange gods, horrible creations of fallen men, and at the time God called Abraham the people of Canaan worshipped the Baals. This is how low Israel fell, from the height of a glorious deliverance from slavery in Egypt, to that of demon-gods, idols of the neighbouring nations, whom they willed constantly to imitate. Their folly is well depicted in the book of the Judges where it is written how they forsook the rule of God with great impunity, then to crown it they demanded a king! The will of the people once more lead to the slippery slope to damnation. this demand of the people displeased Samuel very greatly, for as a man of God he realised what would follow such a terrible decision, and he was right, for the majority of the kings, except for a few led the Israelites away from the Lord their God, so the people of Israel was decimated by their unbelief. Nevertheless, whatever man may do to God or with God, it does not stop Him to rule or overrule the desires and plans of wicked men, as stated in the book of Daniel, God remains sovereign and His will prevails, eventually men meet that rock, God, whom no man can ignore, He is there, unmovable! 

This is the very short resume that the Bible has given us of the time Israel asked for a King. “When Samuel grew old, he appointed his sons as judges for Israel. The name of the firstborn was Joel and the name of the second was Abijah, and they served at Beersheba. But his sons did not walk in his ways; they turned aside after dishonest gain and accepted bribes and perverted justice. So, the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah. They said to him, ‘you are old, and your sons do not walk in your ways; now appoint a king to lead us, such as all the other nations have.’ But when they said: ‘Give us a king to lead us,’ this displeased Samuel; so, he prayed to the Lord. And the Lord told him: ‘Listen to all the people is saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their King. 

As they have done from the day I brought them out up of Egypt until this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are doing to you. Now listen to them; but warn them solemnly and let them know what the king, who will reign over them, will do…But the people refused to listen to Samuel. ‘No’ they said. ‘We want a king over us. Then we shall be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles. When Samuel heard all that the people said, he repeated it before the Lord. The Lord answered: ‘Listen to them and give them a king.’ (Samuel 8:1-21.) So, in the year 2903 from Adam and 1096 B.C. (approximately), Israel became a Monarchy, the charge against them still stands: “It is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their King.” It is during the reign of the kings that God began to send His prophets to speak to His people.

During one hundred and twenty year, under the kingship of Saul, David and Solomon Israel was a United Kingdom, and under the rule of David Israel were in possession of their land and he led them, under God, into some mighty victories. Unlike Saul who was anointed king by the desire of the people, David was God’s choice. It is God that commissioned Samuel to go the Bethlehem and anoint the future king of Israel, and the choice fell on David. God made a Covenant with David promising Him an Eternal King, who would establish his kingdom for ever. This promise was fulfilled in Christ who is appointed to return to earth, to take up His Kingdom, just as it was prophesied by Isaiah saying: “And the government shall be upon His shoulders.” (Isaiah 9:6) 

Under Salomon, Israel became a mighty nation, enjoying peace, throughout his reign; which he inherited strong and united, a direct result of all the victories of David his father. Salomon was a very wise man. It is he that built the amazing temple designed by David, and when it was finished and put in place, God’s glory came down and filled the Temple. Israel reached the peak of its checked history, the reputation of Salomon was known in every nation. As long as Salomon remained faithful to God, no nation could rise against him and overcome him, this applied to every King after him that remained true to the Covenant and the rules of God. But whereas Salomon wisely reigned over Israel and built of them a glorious nation, his love life ushered the beginning of its tragic decline. 

Solomon, to whom God gave this wonderful spiritual wisdom, became a fool. He married seven hundred wives and had three hundred concubines. They were foreign women, so he wilfully disobeyed the commandment that Moses left them, forbidding them to marry outside of their nation. And as God said, these women have led him into idol worship for which he built high places on Israeli soil, detestable gods that turned him away from the Lord the God of Israel.  Salomon’s unfaithfulness was the beginning of a unstoppable decline of the nation,  which after his death was broken up, only the two tribes, Judah and Benjamin, remained faithful to the Kingdom built under God by David, the greatest of Israel’s kings.

So, “God became angry with Solomon because his heart had turned away from the Lord, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice. Although He had forbidden Solomon to follow other gods, Solomon did not keep the Lord’s command. So, the Lord said to Solomon: ‘Since this is your attitude and you have not kept my Covenant and my decrees, which I commanded you, I will certainly tear the kingdom away from you and give it to one of your subordinates. Nevertheless, for the sake of David your father, I will not do it during your lifetime. I will tear it out of the hands of your son. Yet I will give him one tribe for the sake of David my servant and for the sake of Jerusalem, which I have chosen.” (1 Kings 11:9:13.) 

We cannot explain or fully appreciate such situations without actually writing the very words that are written in the Holy Book. If we try to explain certain important happenings, especially bad decisions of men that God took very seriously, and because of them He completely changed the character of His people Israel. The words of the Lord have such great power, and when we read them, we feel the presence of the Holy Spirit, because of Him these words add a convicting weight that causes our hearts to respond rightly to God’s righteous deeds. Here we have a man, Solomon, greatly blessed and set by God to reign over His holy nation; the children of Abraham the great patriarch! Yet he threw it all away, sin is an awfully destructive power, and man proved to be incapable to resist its constant solicitations?

Israel was a people that suffered greatly in slavery, but from Egypt’s yoke God led it to conquer the Holy Land. Having seen God’s power, which led them to do mighty exploits, suddenly let down by an ungrateful, selfish king, this special people was broken up never to rise again and be what they were under the rule of David, what a tragedy. What a dreadful thing is this fallen, sinful human nature that dwells in all of us, man that takes pleasure to stand against the will of God, digs his own grave.  How can a man bring so much evil on a whole nation? But what was allowed to happen then has happened throughout history, not only to Israel. The world is still suffering terrible wars, often started by evil forces under one man, with no respect for God or human lives, how can that be possible? But it is and it is always the people that suffer!

But God allows it for a reason, He alone knows the end. What care we Christians should take, to watch that we do not fall in the greatest form of pride which always precedes a fall! Centuries of history have shown the patience of God and how greatly God loved this people. Although they continually fell away from Him to serve foreign gods, His way of dealing with them is most moving, but God is faithful to His covenants so He is still at work, fulfilling the promise he gave to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, not forgetting King David, and because of His faithfulness this nation is now once again in their own country and more of God’s work is yet to come before the end of all things comes! So that when Jesus-Christ returns to earth, just a remnant of Israelis will be left to welcome Jesus-Christ as their Messiah He will descend from heaven to save them from total annihilation, by defeating the armies of the anti-Christ.  

It is possible that King Rehoboam, Salomon’s son, did not know in detail what God said to his father, and in response to the rebellion of the people he assembled one hundred and eighty thousand men to make war with Israel to regain the kingdom, but to him God sent the prophet Shemaiah and told Rehoboam: “This is what the Lord says, ‘Do not go up to fight against your brothers, the Israelites. Go home every one of you, for this is my doing.’ So, they obeyed the word of the Lord and went home again, as the Lord had ordered.” (1 Kings 12:21-22.) 

Thus, Samaria became the capital of the new Kingdom of Israel. Nineteen kings reigned over it, all as bad as each other. They were all rebellious idolaters that never submitted to God, but none was as bad as Ahab, the Bible states: “In the thirty eighth year of Asa king of Judah, Ahab son of Omri, became King of Israel, and he reigned in Samaria over Israel for twenty-two years. Ahab, son of Omri, did more evil in the eyes of the Lord than any of those before Him.” (1 Kings 17:2934.)  He married the daughter of the king of the Sidonians, the infamous Jezebel, and began to worship Baal, and built for him a temple in Samaria. The two hundred and twenty-one years, in the year 721 B.C. this evil kingdom ended with its deportation to Assyria, this happened during Hosea the last of Israel’s kings and those ten tribes, which broke away from serving God, never returned to their homeland.

We need to know these events, because they underline the importance of God’s Covenants, and that He always works within their established order. Solomon broke the Covenant that God made with his father David; and brought a curse upon God’s People, God ended it and brought a terrible judgement upon the Nation, of which, the effects are felt to these days! So much for Israel rejecting the rule of God by wanting a king! These events show the power of God and His authority over the political leaders of not only His people, Israel, but of gentile pagan nations as well. We have to read the Book of Daniel to see how God humbles proud rulers, and replaces them with others just as He wills. The world without God does not admit it, but that does not stop the Almighty to rule over all human institutions.  

From the day of Jeroboam, the first king of Israel, until Hosea, the ten tribes of Israel were doing all they could to offend God. During all those years God still cared for them and sent eight mighty prophets, none greater than Elijah, to warn Israel of an impending disaster, because God had made up his mind to stop them in their folly, and destroy the evil smell of idol worship. The Bible states: “In the twelfth year of Ahaz king of Judah, Hoshea son of Elah became king of Israel in Samaria, and he reigned for nine years. He did evil in the eyes of the Lord, but not like the kings of Israel that preceded him. Shalmaneser king of Assyria came to attack Hoshea; he seized him and put him into prison… In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria captured Samaria and deported the Israelites to Assyria. He settled them in Halah, in Gozan on the Habor River and in the towns of the Medes. (2 Kings 17:1-7.) 

At the time of this deportation, the Assyrian empire enjoyed unprecedented prosperity. It spread from occidental Asia, from Persia to Egypt. The people of Israel were dispersed in the entire empire right up to the Caspian Sea. “All this took place because the Israelites had sinned against the Lord their God, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt from under the power of Pharaoh King of Egypt. At every high-place they burned incense, as the nations whom the Lord had driven out before them had done. They did wicked things that provoked the Lord to anger. The Lord warned Israel and Judah through all the prophets and seers. But they would not listen and were as stiff-necked as their fathers, who did not trust in the Lord their God.” (2 Kings 17: 7-23.)

The only reason God left two tribes, Judah and Benjamin, under the rule of Rehoboam, son of Solomon, is because of His faithfulness to King David, whose heart was entirely for the God of Abraham, and to prove, once again, the importance of the Covenants He makes by sticking to them, only men break them and pay the awful price of disobedience. God made a Covenant with David and promised him that a king will sit on his throne forever, foreseeing by it the coming of Jesus-Christ, who alone has inherited his right and has yet to come and reign over God’s world, this will happen when God ushers His kingdom upon earth.

The king of Assyria and his armies were brutal and violent invaders, and having destroyed Samaria they burned it to the ground.  One would have thought that seeing what happened to the ten tribes of Israel, seeing how complete was their destruction for all their rebellion, that the Kingdom of Judah would realise that God, after much pleading, does what he says, and that they would amend their way and return all heartedly unto the Lord, yet on the contrary, they became worse than the tribes of Israel, apart from few kings that honoured and served the God of their fathers, the rest followed the practices of the Israelites, and worse was to happen under the rule of their King Manasseh. His record in the Bible is one of the worst of all the kings that ruled Israel and Judah. We read in the Bible the following: 

“Manasseh was twelve years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem for fifty-five years. His mother’s name was Hephzibah. He did evil in the eyes of the Lord, following the detestable practices of the nations the Lord had driven out before the Israelites. He rebuild the high places his father Hezekiah, (who was a godly king), had destroyed; he also erected altars to Baal and made an Asherah pole, as Ahab king of Israel had done. He bowed down to all the starry hosts and worshipped them. He built altars in the temple of the Lord, of which the Lord had said: ‘In Jerusalem I will put my name.’ In both the courts of the temple of the Lord he built altars to all the starry hosts. He sacrificed his own son in the fire, practice sorcery and divination and consulted mediums and spirits. He did much evil in the eyes of the Lord, provoking Him to anger.” (2 Kings 21:1-6.)

Although all this was done time after time, although most of the kings of Judah and the people saw the difference that the faith of their godly kings brought upon them and upon the land by the hand of the Lord, they changed like a man changes his garment, and under the leadership of evil kings they did things worse than their neighbours! Nevertheless, God never acts without long persistent warnings, so by the mouth the prophets God warned them of impending doom, yet they hardened their hearts and would not repent. For years, under the reign of all these kings, God always waited for them to repent and turn to Him with all their heart; because His love endures for ever. However low a man can sink into the dirt and the mire of sinful living, if he repents with all his heart and turns to God, He will find that God is there ready to forgive and restore him; because His love endures forever!

In my estimation, one of the greatest prophets in the Bible is certainly Jeremiah, called the weeping prophet. He was called to serve God at the worst time of rebellion, ungodliness, idolatry and decline of the nation. The people Judah and their rulers despised him, and did all they could to silence him, they so abhorred the warnings God told him to pronounce on them, that by the decree of the King, He was thrown into a cesspit for how long I don’t know? At one point, Jeremiah said: I will not speak anymore in the name of the Lord. But then the word came from the Lord, it burned in him like a fire, and he could not keep quiet. The faithful servants of God have never had an easy time yet at times, some had it harder than others, just like Jeremiah; to this day, if men remain faithful and preach the oracles of God, they are despised and suffer the wrath of the people. Yet the worst is yet to come before God brings in His kingdom upon earth.

Approximately one hundred and eighty years have passed since the dispersing of the Israelites throughout the Assyrian empire. During those years Judah saw eight kings reign over them, amongst them Hezekiah who was one of the godliest king in Israel. The Bible states: “Hezekiah was twenty-five years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem for twenty years. During his twenty years of reign Judah, under his leadership returned to the Lord their God. The reign of all the kings of Judah, show how the importance of a good ruler. Not all the kings of Israel had a heart toward the Lord and some led Israel to their doom, whereas others were very godly and influenced the people to turn their hearts towards the Lord. But Judah was especially blest because of the Covenant God established with David, by which He promised him to have a king on his throne forever. 

King Hezekiah did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, just as his father David had done. He removed the high places, smashed the sacred stones and cut down the Asherah poles. He broke into pieces the bronze snake Moses had made; for up to that time the Israelites had been burning incense to it. (It was called Nehushtan - meaning bronze and snake and unclean thing) Hezekiah trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel. There was no one like him among all the kings of Judah, either before him or after him. He held fast to the Lord and did not cease to follow the commands of the Lord that he had given to Moses. And the Lord was with him; he was successful in whatever he undertook.” (2 Kings 18:1-8.) 

His life is like refreshing rain, because a faithful king was hard to find. He is like a shower after a long trying heat wave; it is like a glass of water to one ready to die from thirst. In comparison to the effects of the evil kings, his actions were refreshingly righteous; they prove that when God is honoured, like he was by King Hezekiah, not only is that man blest but the whole nation is blest with Him. This blessing is shown to be the norm throughout the reign of all the kings that obeyed the lord, the God of Israel. Whereas the reign of Hezekiah was so unique, it is distressing to find that such a man could be followed by a terrible son like Manasseh. For fifty and five years he led his nation into a real hell. His dreadful deeds and his satanic rebellion against God have already been mentioned previously, nevertheless the history brings to our knowledge the effects of his deeds for which God vowed to bring the reign of Kings to a sudden end, and great was the wrath of the Lord, the God of Israel. The people, in the days of Samuel desired a King to rule over them, so that they could be as the other nations, but they have become worse than all the nations around them. The prophet Jeremiah saw the fulfilment of this horrific day, and in his days God said: 

“Send them away from my presence! And if they ask you, ‘Where shall we go? Tell them, ’this is what the Lord says: ‘Those destined for death, to death; those for the sword, to the sword; those for starvation, to starvation; those for captivity, to captivity. I will send four kinds of destroyers against them,’ declares the Lord, ‘The sword to kill and the dogs to drag away and the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth to devour and destroy. I will make them abhorrent to all the kingdoms of the earthbecause of what Manasseh son of Hezekiah, king of Judah, did in Jerusalem.” (Jeremiah 15:1-3.) The decree was final, no intercession would be heard, in fact God told plainly to Jeremiah: “Do not pray for this people nor offer any plea or petition for them, because I will not listen when they call to me in the time of distress.” (Jeremiah 11:14.) God heard many intercessions for Israel, from that first prayer that Moses prayed and pleaded with God not to destroy the whole nation, for He was angry for their backsliding. Throughout the centuries up to that hour, time and time again the people turned against God to worship Baal, the pagan gods of the gentile nations surrounding them. But not now, pleading was too late, God would not hear it, now there was no redemption, nothing would prevail God has had enough and said: “Even if Moses and Samuel were to stand before me, my heart would not go out to this people.” (Jeremiah 15:1.) And so, in the year 3447 from Adam or 552 BC, Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, took the rest of Judah into captivity.  Here is a short resume of the terrible end that befell Judah.

 “Now Nebuchadnezzar made Mattaniah, Jehoiachin’s uncle, king in his place and changed his name to Zedekiah. Zedekiah was twenty-one years old when he became king and he reigned in Jerusalem for eleven years. He did evil in the eyes of the Lord, just as Jehoiachin had done. It was because of the Lord’s anger that all this happened to Jerusalem and Judah, and in the end ‘he thrust’ them from His presence. Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon. So, in the ninth year of Zedekiah’s reign, on the tenth day of the tenth month, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon marched against Jerusalem with his whole army. He encamped outside the city and built siege works all around it. The city was kept under siege until the eleventh year of king Zedekiah’s reign. By the ninth day of the forth month the famine in the city had become so severe that there was no food for the people to eat. Then the city wall was broken through, and the whole army fled at night through the gate between the two walls near the king’s garden, though the Babylonians were surrounding the city. 

They fled (King Zedekiah and his army) towards the Arabah, (the Jordan Valley) but the Babylonians army pursued the king and overtook him in the plain of Jericho. All his soldiers were separated from him and scattered, and he was captured. He was taken to the king of Babylon at Riblah, where sentence was pronounced on him. They killed the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes. Then they put his eyes out, bound him with bronze shackles and took him to Babylon. On the seventh day of the ninth month, in the nineteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, Nebuzaradan commander of the imperial guard, an official of Babylon, came to Jerusalem. He set fire to the temple of the Lord, the royal palace and all the houses of Jerusalem. Every important building, he burned down. The whole Babylonian army, under the commander of the imperial guard, broke down the walls all around Jerusalem. Nebuzaradan the commander of the guard carried into exile the people who remained in the city along with the rest of the populace and those who had gone over to the king of Babylon. But the commander left behind some of the poorest people of the land to work the vineyards and the fields. (2 Kings 25:1-12.) 

To have a full picture of the very troubled history of Judah, one should read the whole book of Jeremiah. In the light of all the ferocious proceedings of the Babylonian powers, we must realise that there was not a king, however great was his army, which ever succeeded to defeat Israel as long as they were faithful to the Covenant. And this was also the case of all those who trusted in God, men I have written about before Israel came into being, or after. Only eight were saved in the days of the flood. But they were enough to prove that one man, having found grace in the eyes of the Lord, one only was enough for God to prove that he will save that one; the name of that man was Noah! This is true today, because under grace, we are dealing with the same God. If a man repents and return to God with all his heart, that man will find a merciful God who will receive him and pardon his sins. But pride and folly always prevail; they remain man’s greatest enemies. One does not have to go far to meet them, today as ever pride and prejudice keep people from repenting and believing in God, who is a rewarder!!! Of them that diligently seek Him.

The people of Judah, in the days of Nehemiah and Zerubbabel, returned to their land, because God promised it, by the mouth of His prophet Jeremiah, that, after seventy years of captivity, he would restore them to their land. But, as a people, Israel was never the same. Idols were never mentioned or worshipped ever again. The walls of Jerusalem were rebuilt so was the temple; the priesthood was reinstated. But after Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi, the three post exilic prophets, God never spoke to Israel through a prophet until John the Baptist came on the scene. He was the last prophet appointed by God to introduce, into the world, the Jewish Messiah, none other than Jesus-Christ, His only Son. With Jesus God ended the Old Covenant, the Law, and introduced a New Covenant, there has not been another one, there is no need of another one, for under this Covenant Christ will usher all those that He has saved into eternity. This New Covenant is Eternal!

An important period of four centuries stretches between the close of the Old Testament and the beginning of the New. From various sources, none more than the writings of Josephus, the great Jewish historian, through them we can search out important information of these four centuries of the history of the Jewish people; a history of great oppression and bloodshed. But in their darkest hour a faithful company of men guarded faithfully, with their lives, the Holy Scriptures, which were collected by Ezra, they were some of the men that always hoped to see the coming of the long-awaited Messiah. 

The Old Testament ended under Persian rule, the New one started under the Roman rule. The History of the Maccabees, which were a family of Jews, consisting of Mattathias and his five sons, Jochanan, Simon, Judas, Eleazar, and Jonathan, who after a revolt against the oppression of the Syrian king Antiochus Epiphanes (175-165), established a dynasty of priest-kings which ruled until the times of Herod (40 BC). The years, from the first return of captivity, under Zerubbabel, can be divided into five periods. The end of the Babylonian empire in 539 BC~ Media-Persian empire ending in 332BC~ The Greek empire ending in 167BC~ A period of relative independence ending in 63BC and the Roman empire which saw the Birth of Jesus-Christ the Son of God who was born in the year 3999 from Adam. The period of the Old Testament ends when Jesus began His public ministry in the year 29AD. By the Preaching of the Gospel Jesus opened the door of faith by which men in believing in Him enter into eternity! With his death Jesus fulfilled the whole law, and as the pure lamb, the Lamb of God, He laid his perfect life as a sacrifice for sin. It is with His resurrection that God ushered the New Covenant, which is the Covenant of Grace! 

God is the true Master of History. Those that do not accept the times set in the Bible and the events as quoted, whether it be in Eden and out of it, the story of the flood, the judgement of God at Babel. which brought into being the nations which mothered the present world. Jesus was born in God’s appointed time, to fulfil God’s purpose and call from among the nations of the world the elect people ‘His Church’.  Sin is a killer of the soul; it remains God’s and men’s greatest enemy. This is plainly seen by the events which I have quoted in this chapter and previous ones. They show, clearly, the flagrant rebellion of the whole world to God, which is, to this very day, the sole reason for everything that is wrong in the World.

Jesus-Christ of Nazareth, lived a perfect life, being tempted in all points like we are, He never once yielding to all the satanic accusations or insinuations. By His total obedience Jesus fulfilled the Law, ‘The Ten Commandments’, the priesthood was abolished and Jesus became the High Priest of a new order, for the old one proved unable to lead men to perfection, due to the weakness of the flesh, (the ‘flesh’ is the fallen nature of man which is ruled by sin). But what no-one ever did, Jesus did and fulfilled it to the letter. In His total purity Jesus offered Himself and died on the Cross for the sins of the whole world. It was John the Baptist who said of Him:

“The next day John saw Jesus coming towards him and said: ‘Look the Lamb of god, who takes away the sin of the world! This is the One I meant when I said, ‘A man who comes after me has surpassed me because He was before me.’ I myself did not know Him, but the reason I came baptising with water was that He might be revealed to Israel.

Then John gave this testimony: I saw the Holy Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on Him. I would not have known Him, except that the One who sent me (God) to baptise with water told me. The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is He who will baptise with the Holy Spirit.’ I have seen and I testify that this is the ‘SON OF GOD.” (John 1:29-34)) On the third day Jesus was raised from the dead by God His Father. By His resurrection Jesus ushered the New Eternal Covenant, by which God reconciles an elected people, called from among the Jews and the Gentiles. This God does by pure grace, without the slightest merit on their part, and brings them by a new birth into a new life which is eternal. They are the new people that God is raising and preparing for the eternal order, that will follow the end of our planet.

To understand the full impact of this Covenant, which incorporates eternal, magnificent promises, please read the next chapter.