“The very first transaction we find taking place between God and the Israelites after they left Egypt which answers to the definition of the word ‘covenant,’ must be the first covenant, unless some good reason can be shown why it is not.”
So saying, U. Smith lights upon Exod. 19:7, 8, and calls the promise of the people there to obey God’s voice the covenant, and nothing more. Now we propose to give five very good reasons why that covenant comprehended more than the simple agreement.
First, Mr. Smith does not bring forward one single passage of Scripture in which that agreement alone is pointed out as the “first covenant” or the old covenant.
Our second very good reason for believing that Smith’s new discovery in Exod. 19:7, 8, alone is not the covenant that God made with Israel when he brought them out of Egypt, is this: The Scriptures positively declare that the covenant then made was the Ten Commandments that were written in stone.
- 1st proof-text, Exod. 34:28.
- 2nd proof-text, Deut. 5:3-22.
- 3rd proof-text, Deut. 4:13.
- 4th proof-text, Deut. 9:9.
- 5th proof-text, Deut. 9:11.
- 6th proof-text, Deut. 9:15.
- 7th proof-text, 1 Kings 8:21.
- 8th proof-text, Heb. 9:4.
These eight direct and positive statements of the Bible, besides many indirect proofs, are, we hope, a sufficient apology for not believing Mr. Smith’s contrary theory.
Our third reason is based upon the fact that Mr. Smith himself says, page 8, “That the Ten Commandments are called a covenant we admit.” With this concession, and the fact that it was made at the very time Jeremiah says that the old covenant was made, which Paul said had vanished away, I should think myself very foolish to accept his opposite theory unsupported by one direct proof-text.
Our fourth reason is this: A hundred things in the Bible might be picked on for which just as plausible a line of reasoning and arguments could be fabricated as that produced by Mr. Smith for his device. But let every mouth be silent before the Bible, yea, “let God be true and every man a liar.”
An argument against God’s description of the covenant is taken from Exod. 24:6-8, 12 and Heb. 8:17-20, and thus summed up: “Before Moses was called up to receive this law of Ten Commandments, which God had written, the first covenant had been made, closed up, finished, and ratified by the shedding of the blood. These facts throw a fortification around this point which it is not possible either to break or scale. The first covenant was dedicated with blood. But when that dedication took place, the Ten Commandments, in visible form, had not been put into the possession of the people; they had no copy of them; hence they were not dedicated with blood. Therefore, the Ten Commandments were not the old covenant” (p. 14).
We have only to attend to the Word of God to prove this boasted fortress is chaff, which the hail of truth shall sweep away. Reader, open your Bible and read in Exod. 19:16-19, and you will find that God had already come down upon Sinai in awful majesty,—“thunders and lightning, thick cloud, and the voice of a trumpet exceeding loud,” etc.
But the Lord sent Moses down to charge the people to keep outside the prescribed bounds of the mount, lest they should perish (vs. 21). Then chapter 20 begins with the voice of God speaking aloud to all the camp of Israel, and the very first things heard are the Ten Commandments, extending to verse 17. “And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet and the mountain smoking,” and requested that God would not speak to them, lest they should die; but that Moses would be their mediator (vss. 18, 19). Then the Lord instructed Moses concerning an altar and sacrifices, to the close of the chapter. Chapter 21 begins a long line of laws called “judgments,” extending to chapter 23:13. Then follows national feasts, and promises, etc. And in chapter 24:4 we read, “And Moses wrote all the words of the Lord, and rose up early in the morning, and builded an altar.” “And he took the book of the covenant, and read it in the audience of the people: and they said, All that the Lord hath said will we do, and be obedient. And Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people, and said, Behold the blood of the covenant, which the Lord hath made with you concerning all these words” (vss. 7, 8).
Now, if Moses “wrote all the words of the Lord,” he wrote the Ten Commandments also, for it cannot be denied that the Lord had already spoken them. You see, dear reader, Mr. Smith’s theory would require some parentheses foisted into the text, making the scripture read as follows: “And Moses wrote all the words of the Lord—excepting the Ten Commandments”; “All that the Lord hath said will we do—excepting the Ten Commandments”; for Smith says they were not included in the book of the covenant.
It is a strange thing indeed that Moses would pass by the most solemn and awful words that God had spoken, and not write them. But he did write them. There is no supposition in the case. Happily, that “book of the covenant,” which Moses dedicated with blood, is still extant. Nor is it hid away as a sacred relic in some foreign museum; but, thank God, a copy of it lies open before our eyes. And in it we read the Ten Commandments recorded as the very first thing in Exodus 20, after which follow other laws, which Mr. Smith calls the covenant, leaving out the very part that God specially calls the covenant. Indeed, it would appear that the writer had forgotten that people generally are blessed with the Bible and can read it. He says that at the time of dedication of the book of the covenant (Exod. 24:7, 8), “the Ten Commandments, in visible form, had not been put into the possession of the people; they had no copy of them.” But turning back to chapter 20, we find that one of the first things in that book of laws given on Sinai is a copy of the Ten Commandments. God had spoken them; and before the dedication of the volume, “Moses wrote all the words of the Lord” (Exod. 24:4).
And as Paul words it, “When Moses had spoken every precept to all the people, according to the law, he took the blood of calves,…saying, This is the blood of the testament [the same as covenant] which God hath enjoined on you” (Heb. 9:19, 20).
The fact that the Ten Commandments constitute the covenant, and are the first part and foundation of the whole book of the law, is just the reason why it was denominated “the book of the covenant.” “Every precept according to the law,” includes the ten precepts. Paul says that Moses spoke them. But turning back to Exod. 24:7, we see that he read them out of the book which he had written.
So after the whole book of the law had been given, Moses was called up again on the mountain, and God gave him tables of stone in which was a copy of the Ten Commandments (Exod. 24:12), following which he gave him directions concerning the tabernacle and all its appurtenances, priestly robes, sacrifices, the altar, layer, etc., extending to chapter 32. There Moses was informed of the idolatry of the people, and told to go down to them. When he saw the golden calf, he threw down the two tables and broke them (chap. 32:19). Later he hewed two tables like the first, and went up into the presence of God on the mount (chapter 34:4). “And the Lord said unto Moses, Write thou these words: for after the tenor of these words I have made a covenant with thee and with Israel. And he was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights; he did neither eat bread, nor drink water. And he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments” (Exod. 34:27, 28). What can be more conclusive? He declared the contents of the first tables the covenant. And in repeating the same, he says, “After the tenor of these words I have made a covenant with thee and with Israel.” What utter folly to deny the Word of God! So the props fall, one after another, from the Adventist structure, as the hammer of truth strikes them, and light exposes their fallacy.
Speaking of the ten precepts of the covenant, Smith says, “They are never called the covenant, referring to the first or old covenant.” They are called “the covenant,” in Exod. 34:28; Deut. 9:9, 11; 1 Kings 8:21; Heb. 9:4. Here he contradicts the Word again.
The “darkness” of Sinai hangs over all their writings. Two more points, directly bearing on this covenant question, we shall notice. Alluding to the death of the old and the introduction of the new covenant, in Jer. 31:31, 32 and Heb. 8, “I will put my laws into their minds, and write them in their hearts.” This, he says, was the “law of God in the days of Jeremiah.” If it does not mean this, then it should read, “I will put a new law into their minds, and write it in their hearts.” Does it say, “I will write the old law in their hearts?” No, but it does say, “I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel.” “This shall be the covenant I will make: I will put my laws in their inward parts,” the law contained in the new covenant, of course. For we are told there was “a change of the law.” When the new covenant was confirmed in Christ, ‘He took away the first that he might establish the second’ (Heb. 10:9). He took away the old, which was written in “tables of stone,” that he might write the new in “fleshly tables of the heart” (see 2 Cor. 3:3).
All chapters from The Sabbath and the Lord’s Day.
The Sabbath and the Lord’s Day. By H. M. Riggle, 1922. Life Assurance Ministries, Inc.
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