There was something wrong with the first covenant, and the new covenant was issued for the purpose of correcting that wrong. The wrong was that God found fault with the people. What was the problem with the people? Whatever it was, God brought in a new covenant to correct this problem.

"They did not remain faithful to my covenant." The new covenant has been given because the Israelites did not remain faithful to the covenant, particularly the Ten Commandments. God found fault with the people because the people were not faithful in observing the conditions of the old covenant.

They made images and worshiped them. They misused the name of the Lord. They did not honor the Sabbath. They coveted. They stole. They committed adultery.

The new covenant, the Christian covenant, was given because the people of the old covenant did not remain faithful to it. They broke it on a massive scale until God sent them into captivity.

The question is, how does the new covenant remedy the problem God found with the old covenant?

There are at least two answers that may be given:

The new covenant enables the people to observe God's moral law.

The new covenant does away with the moral law and accepts man in his sinful condition.

The Christian teaching of today has adopted the second answer: the new covenant does away with the moral law and accepts man in his sinful condition. Current teaching has added the unscriptural concept that the purpose of the new covenant is to bring man to Heaven.

If wicked spirits had spent a thousand years developing a scheme to destroy God's intention, they could not have perfected a plan more effective than today's Christian teaching—that the new covenant relieves man of living righteously and asks only that he believe God has accepted him through Christ and will bring him to Paradise apart from his keeping the laws of God.

This monstrous error, which can be supported by a few verses of the New Testament taken out of the context of the New Testament, is destroying the vestiges of moral conviction of the Christians in the United States of America.

God desires that man be in His moral image, that he practice righteousness, love mercy, and walk humbly with God. This was God's intention under the old covenant and He punished the people severely when they did not keep His commandments.

God has never changed His goal concerning man and will never change His goal concerning man. Whether we are living under the old covenant or the new, God will punish us when we do not behave righteously, love mercy, and walk humbly with God.

We have made God's grace given through Jesus Christ an alternative to God's moral laws. For this reason the sword of Divine judgment hovers over the United States. It certainly will fall unless there is wholesale repentance on the part of God's people. And I don't think many of God's people will truly and thoroughly repent until they understand that God's grace through Jesus Christ is not an alternative to God's moral principles.

To be continued.