Herbert W Armstrong

   Yes, it's good news. But why, my friend, should it be news in this mid-20th century? 1900 long years after Jesus Christ first proclaimed it. Why has the true gospel of Jesus Christ been hidden from the world, buried under popularized pagan traditions and superstitions until now?

   Christ preached the gospel of the kingdom. Now, gospel means good news. It was news 1900 years ago. It's news today. It's the true message that God sent to the world by Jesus Christ. Now, the world crucified Christ, not because they hated the man, but because they hated that message that He brought from God. The very message that God Almighty sent to mankind, and men hated that message so much that they crucified its messenger. Then they appropriated His name. They took the name Christianity. They preached to the world that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ. They exalted, they extolled Jesus the man, but His message remained buried until now. They accepted a gospel of grace while they rejected the very terms and conditions for obtaining that free grace from God.

   Now, Jesus brought the good news of the kingdom, the Kingdom of God. Now, just to refresh your memory from the past two programs, Jesus did set up a kingdom on this earth. That kingdom was not some sentimental feeling set up in men's hearts. No, it was a real, literal kingdom. It was one of the nations, the governments of this earth, a national kingdom, the Kingdom of Israel. It was not the Kingdom of God.

   Now, there's a great contrast between the Kingdom of Israel of the Old Testament times, set up in the days of Moses, and the Kingdom of God that Jesus Christ proclaimed. Christ's gospel pertains to the Kingdom of God. But to understand, we need to know both the difference between the Kingdom of Israel and the Kingdom of God on the one hand, and also the relationship between the two, because there is a great relationship.

   Now, the Kingdom of Israel was set up many centuries before Christ in the days of Moses. The Kingdom of God, contrary to erroneous beliefs of our modern religious Babylon today, has not yet been set up. So just listen. I'm going to read that to you out of your own Bible. You have your Bible? Go get it. You're going to be amazed, you're going to be shocked and surprised at what you see in your own Bible. Get your Bible, open it, and listen.

   The Kingdom of Israel was God's government, but it was a purely mortal, national government among the nations of this earth. It was established by the ratifying of a covenant at Mount Sinai, way, way back in the days of Moses. Now, a covenant is an agreement. And God had said in Exodus 19, verse 5 (Exodus 19:5), as He made this proposal to the people, here were the conditions of the proposal of the covenant. "Now, therefore," God said, "if you will obey my voice indeed and keep my covenant, then here are the promises. You shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people, you shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, a holy nation. These are the words that thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel." And then in Exodus, the 20th chapter, you'll find recorded the giving of the basic law, the overall spiritual law, the Ten Commandments.

   Now, two other codes of law were given to Israel, but they merely sort of were supplementary. The main basic law was the Ten Commandments. Now, you're going to learn something about that that most of you never knew before. Listen carefully. Then we come to Exodus 34. We've been reading that the past few broadcasts, and there we read the ratifying of this covenant by blood. This covenant set up these descendants of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, whose name had been changed to Israel, the children of Israel, as a nation, as a kingdom. And then God also gave them a code of civil laws for their national government, the ritual laws for their church functions.

   Now, this nation, ancient Israel, was both church and state combined. As a church, they were called the congregation of Israel. As a nation, they were called the Kingdom of Israel. Now, this covenant, this binding legal agreement entered into by and between them and God, not only established them as a nation, it also was called a marriage covenant. It married them to the Eternal, their God, in a relationship of a wife who was to be obedient to her husband. This Old Covenant was made with a material people. It was based on material obedience on their part and material promises on God's part.

   Now, they were not offered any salvation. You've heard that under the Old Testament, they got saved by works and we got saved by grace. No, my friends, they were not offered any salvation at all. Nobody ever did or ever could get saved by works. There's only one way, and that's by grace. Most people don't even understand it. Many people talk about it today and don't even know what it is. They don't know how it works.

   Well, God gave them no promise of the Holy Spirit. Moses said nothing to them about being born again. There was no such message preached to the ancient Israelites for their day. They were a nation of flesh born people. And even though the Ten Commandments constituted a spiritual law, yet they did not have—now listen carefully—they did not have the spiritual love to fulfill a spiritual law. That is, the love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, as we now, as the New Covenant, are promised today and as we can have if we will.

   Now, Jesus came and magnified that law, the Ten Commandments. The Apostle Paul showed us that that law is a spiritual law. It's to be kept according to its spirit, not merely according to the letter. You read a lot of that in the New Testament, and very few people seem to know what that means. So, listen carefully. The ancient nation, Israel, was altogether carnal, not spiritual. They were not a spiritual nation. They did not have the Holy Spirit. They were given no access to, no promise of, the Holy Spirit. They were required merely to obey the law according to the letter.

   Now, you know, Paul talked a lot about not keeping it according to the letter but according to the spirit today. Listen carefully. I want you to understand it. All that they could do in that day was to keep it according to the letter. That is, they didn't break the law then against murder until they had actually killed a man, until that man was dead. But you know, Jesus came and magnified the law, and He showed us that according to the spirit today, we break that law if we even hate a brother without cause in our hearts. Now, they didn't break the law against adultery until they had actually committed the literal act. And yet Jesus showed that today, with the Holy Spirit, a man who looks upon a woman to lust after her in his mind has committed adultery with her already in his heart.

   And right there, my friends, is one great and basic difference between the Old and the New Testament. God has never changed His law. That same law is in force today, the basic spiritual law. God never abolished His great spiritual law. Oh, how we have become mixed up today. Israel of old was a carnal nation, flesh born. Listen, they didn't have the Holy Spirit of God that could enable them to keep that spiritual law according to the spirit. They were required merely to keep it according to the letter.

   But listen, God requires you today, my friends, to keep that same basic spiritual law in an altogether different manner today according to the spirit, because God promises to give you His spirit to make that possible. And it was, well, it was God's responsibility that it was not even made possible for them, but God does make it possible for you, and God does expect you to keep His law according to its spirit, its obvious intent.

   Now, the several codes given to Israel, of course, are not in effect today. God gave them a code of civil law that's not in effect today because we're not under Israel's civil government today, but the civil government here in America, of the United States of America. Now, the church rituals that God gave Israel were given to a fleshly nation, not to a spiritual church. The animal sacrifices were merely substitutes for the blood of Christ. And in Hebrews, you read that it's impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sin. It was merely a reminder of sin. It didn't do away with their sins. It was a substitute for Christ. Christ is the reality. Since He has come, we don't use a substitute, of course. So, we don't have animal sacrifices today. That's just simply a stop. The rituals consisted of physical duties and routines.

   Now, many of you don't realize the kind of law they had. This ritual law it consisted of physical work. It is called in the New Testament the works of the law. The Greek word is "ergon"—e-r-g-o-n, ergon—that is in the Greek language and the New Testament was written in the Greek, and it means physical work. The works of the law is referring not to the Ten Commandments. As you read of it in Romans and Galatians, it is written referring to this ritual system of physical work, of physical laws, physical duties, hard physical labor that they had to do in those days, morning, noon, and night.

   And now, why did God give them such a physical law? Well, it was to instill within them the habit of obedience. Since all they could do was obey the law according to its letter in a physical way, God gave them these duties, physical labor to do morning, noon, and night, to get them into the habit of obedience. They were physical substitutes then for the Holy Spirit today, we have the Holy Spirit, the very nature of God, to come within us if we surrender to God, if we accept Jesus Christ as Savior, if we are begotten of God as His own children, which they could not be at that time in the Old Covenant.

   Is this a little bit strange to some of you, my friends? That's in your Bible. Why don't you study your Bible more? Why don't you enroll for the Ambassador College Bible Correspondence Course and really come to understand your Bible? This correspondence course isn't giving you—well, it's not a denominational teaching in any sense at all. It's totally non-denominational, but it merely shows you where to find these things in your own Bible, how to study your Bible. We're not asking you for any money, but we do ask you to spend your time in studying your Bible. Oh, I tell you, we need to know these things.

   Well, what I'm giving you right now here in this broadcast is showing—I know it's showing thousands of you how little you knew about your Bible. And I tell you, it's the most interesting study you ever got into, and you really get into it. Now, let's see what this has to do with us today. Let's see what all this about ancient Israel and their rituals and their laws back there have to do with our salvation today, of us upon whom the ends of the world have come.

   So listen, now, those civil codes given are not in effect today. We're not under Israel's government, but the government of the United States. The animal sacrifices were a substitute for the blood of Christ. His blood has been shed once for all; there are no more sacrifices to be made. The rituals consisted of physical duties and routines, hard work to be done morning, noon, and night to instill in them the habit of obedience. We have the Spirit of God, the very nature of God, instilled in us today. We don't need to have a habit instilled; we have the Holy Spirit to be instilled within us. So, we have the reality, and the substitute, therefore, is replaced.

   But the great spiritual law, my friends, is the basic law of the entire duty and the way of life of God, the entire duty of man. And that goes right on in the New Covenant as well as the Old. But with one difference: we have the Holy Spirit now, the love of God shed abroad in our hearts, the very love to fulfill a spiritual law, that spiritual love, and God requires that we keep that law according to its spirit and not just according to the letter. And you find a lot in the writings of Paul about that as well as the teaching of Jesus.

   Now, once again, real quickly notice that by way of review, the third chapter of Jeremiah, the 14th verse (Jeremiah 3:14), where God had said to ancient Israel, "Return to Me I am married unto you." And then back in the 8th verse, "Whereby backsliding Israel had committed adultery, I have put her away, and given her a bill of divorce." Israel's God, Israel's Lord, had given Israel a divorce.

   Now, according to Old Testament law, you know, when a man put away his wife, if she went and married another, she could not be remarried back to her husband after she had been so polluted. And the marriage was binding as long as they lived. But a death severs the marriage, and then one is free to marry again.

   All right, Israel had gone and married other lovers, idolaters, ways to the pagans, and gone into the other nations of the world and obeyed them in their ways instead of their God. And so, Israel was called off. And I went into that in the preceding program, their hope was gone. But their husband, the husband of Israel, was the Eternal, the Spokesman who had always spoken, the very one that was with them back there in the days of Moses. And he was made flesh. He came from heaven. He was born of a virgin. He was made flesh, God with us in the human flesh, and He was made mortal. He was made human, as you read in Hebrew, for the very purpose of death.

   He not only died for your sins and mine to make our individual and personal salvation possible, yes, but something else that perhaps you haven't realized also: He died because He was Israel's husband and He freed Israel from that Old Testament divorce. Israel had been married to the Eternal, but He divorced her. And now, when He died, He freed her from that divorce. And now Israel is free to repent. Now, Israel is freed to be married to whomsoever she will. And if she will repent, if she will receive the Spirit of God and be born again, now even Israel can be married to the Eternal.

   So, in the preceding program, I had shown you how a Gentile, if a Gentile is Christ. If they are Abraham's seed, then they are heirs according to the promise, and all the promises pertain only to Israel. And it is Israel who is to be married to Christ in the New Covenant at His second coming. And Gentiles must be first begotten and then born into Israel, and they become Israelites.

   Listen. The New Testament Church, my friends, is not a Gentile church. It's an Israelite church, but it's not an Old Testament church. No, it's Israel, Israel of the Holy Spirit, Israel converted, changed by the very power of God. Israel converted, born again, that is, begotten at the present time with the very Spirit of God.

   You see, they are pictured as the branches of the olive tree, and they've all been broken off because of unbelief. But there is a tree that has the promises, and just as a Gentile, a branch of a wild olive tree can be broken off of this Gentile citizenship of its wild olive tree and grafted contrary to nature into the natural olive tree, this is the example that the Apostle Paul gives you in the 11th chapter of Romans. It is read Romans 11, and you'll get all of this.

   And so, the natural branches of Israel, and we are Israel as well as the Jewish people. The Jewish people are from Judah, and we are from Israel, all originally from the same nation, and we haven't realized it. Well, my friends, we've all been broken off because of unbelief. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. But every one, individual, can be grafted right back into that Israel tree again, just the same as a Gentile can. To the Jew first, as Paul said, but also to the Gentile. To Israel first, and also to the Gentile.

   Jesus said, "I am not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." And He sent His 12 Apostles to them and not to Gentiles. Oh, it was the Apostle Paul that was sent to the Gentiles. There again, there's so much of your Bible, my friends, that most of you just don't know. Oh, I hope you get it, and I hope you go into it very thoroughly.

   Well, the law and the prophets were the message of the Old Covenant scriptures. Now, I want you to listen carefully. Notice in Hebrews, the eighth chapter and the 13th verse (Hebrews 8:13), that Old Covenant is done away. "Now that which decayeth" Well, In that he saith a New Covenant is made the first old. Now that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away." So, the Old Covenant, as Paul said, is ready to vanish away.

   All right. Now notice verses 6 on to 10 (Hebrews 8:6-10) "But now hath he, Christ, obtained a more excellent ministry, that is, more excellent than Moses, by how much also He is the mediator of a better covenant, which was established on better promises." The New Covenant is a better covenant than the Old.

   Now, the New Covenant is also a marriage, and that new was set up not the kingdom of Israel, my friend, but the Kingdom of God. If you're saved, my friends, if you get salvation, you are to be born into the Kingdom of God. That's what it is to be born again, to be born of God, to become a child of God, and to get into the very Kingdom of God.

   And if you can understand it, if you can bear it, my friends, God is a kingdom. God is that kingdom. You have to be born into that kingdom. Now, Christ is a mediator of the New Covenant as Moses was of the Old. Now, let's get this connection. Let's get it carefully. Jesus obtained a more excellent ministry than Moses. His was a spiritual ministry that offers salvation. Moses' was a material, physical ministry that only offered physical dominance, material prosperity in this world if they obeyed God.

   Now, the New Testament offers a citizenship in the Kingdom of God, a spiritual kingdom, being born of God. But again, there's the "if," if we obey the same law, but this time according to the Spirit, and God gives us the Holy Spirit that makes it possible. Now, I want you to get this distinction. You've been hearing that the part of the Old Covenant was the law and that when the law was done away, it was the Old Covenant, but the Ten Commandments were done away.

   Now, you listen carefully, my friend, listen carefully. Christ is the mediator of a better covenant. What's better about the New Covenant? Not that the law is done away, it was established on better promises. Now, what are the promises of the New? Over here in the ninth chapter and the 15th verse, you read this (Hebrews 9:15): "For this cause, Christ is the mediator of the New Testament, that by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first testament, they which are called"—are you called to be converted, to be a Christian? Listen—"they which are called might receive the promise."

   What is the promise? The promise of eternal inheritance. You can't have eternal inheritance without eternal life. You are to inherit the Kingdom of God. Now, if you are Christ's, you are Abraham's children and heirs. Now, not an inheritor, only an heir at this time, but the promise is inheritance. And it's for all eternity, you have to have eternal life, my friends, to get in on that. Now, they were not promised eternal life. That's where the New Covenant is better than the Old. We have salvation, eternal life. They did not.

   Now, continue. Verse seven. I'm in the eighth chapter of Hebrews. Open your Bible. Hebrews 8, verse 7 (Hebrews 8:7): "For if that first covenant"—that's back in the days of Moses—"had been faultless, then should no place have been sought for the second." Well, now, what was the fault with the old? So many people today seem to think God made the mistake, the people. They think we're all right, but God was at fault. Oh, my friend, listen: "For finding fault with them." God found fault, and it was with the people. The people made the mistake. Finding fault with them, He saith, "Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a New Covenant."

   Now, listen, you've been told, my friends, the New Covenant is to be made with Gentiles. Is that right? "I will make a New Covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah." There it is in your Bible. Hebrews the eighth chapter and the eighth verse, Hebrews 8:8. God says, "I will make a New Covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah." All of the covenants and the promises are for Israel. A Gentile must become an Israelite by being saved, by being converted, by spiritual begettal.

   Now, "not according to the Covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they continued not in my Covenant." They broke the Ten Commandments. They broke His laws. They went after strange gods and after pagan ways. Listen, "And I regarded them not, saith the Lord." No, He divorced them, and that's why He did.

   Now listen, for this is the Covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord: I will put my laws into their mind and write them in their hearts. God's laws. So many say, "I won't let God's laws come into my mind. No, sir, I want my own way. I want grace. I want salvation. I don't believe in any works." A lot of you think that today. You think that if you obey God, you will be under a curse. Oh, no, my friends, that's not the teaching of your Bible. And that teaching won't damn you at the Judgment Day.

   I want to tell you, my friends, you're going to be judged by this word of God, and you better get it straight, rightly dividing the word of truth because many false prophets are gone out into the world today. According to your Bible, God says, "I'll put my laws into their minds and in their hearts and their inward parts." And that's quoted directly from Jeremiah 31, beginning with verse 31. And here's that part of it. Let me read it to you back here, quoted from verse 33, Jeremiah 31, verse 33 (Jeremiah 31:33): "This shall be the Covenant that I will make with the house of Israel."

   This was written 600 years before Christ, my friends. Listen, 600 years before Christ, God wrote this and had Jeremiah write it: "After those days, saith the Eternal, I will put my law"—what was God's law 600 years before Christ?—"I will put my law in their inward parts and write it in their hearts and will be their God, and they shall be my people." God will put it in your inward parts, in your heart. How? By His Holy Spirit, by giving you the Spirit of God, the love of God that will fulfill a spiritual law.

   And in Romans 13:8, you read that love is the fulfilling of the law, and you have to fulfill the law. Yes, with the love of God sent into your hearts by the Holy Spirit. And listen, He says, "And I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people, and they shall not teach every man his neighbor and every man his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord,' for they shall all know me from the least to the greatest." When the New Covenant is made, they will all know the Lord. And you won't say, "Know the Lord." There won't be any evangelism going around over the world saying, "Know the Lord," because everybody will.

   Just read that, my friends. There it is in verse 11, Hebrews 8. Hebrews 8:11 that shows that the New Covenant has not been made. Yet, we're able ministers of it now, claiming it, and you can be begotten as a child of God. You can become an heir now, but you're not yet an inheritor. That, my friends, will have to come later. Now, flesh and blood can't enter into the Kingdom of God. You have to be born again. You have to be born of the Spirit. And that which is born of the flesh is flesh; that's what you are now. That which is born of the Spirit is spirit. You have to become spirit.

   So, the New Covenant is going to be made with spirit born people that are no longer mortal, no longer human, but have been converted and become spirit, have become divine, and they will have the law of God in their inward parts. What is the reward? Where are we going? What does it all mean? Well, you listen to this program every single day or morning or night at the same time, wherever you're listening in whatever part of the country. You read The Plain Truth, my friends. If God is opening your mind, if it is given to you to understand, you're going to be surprised, and you're going to get understanding such as you never had before. God help you to have it.

   Human life comes from a single pinpoint-sized egg cell. Beginning at conception, that cell grows, divides, and gradually develops into a small human being. The process by which the baby is delivered into the world is called birth. In speaking to a leading religious figure of his day, Christ referred to this process of human birth as an analogy to explain spiritual rebirth into God's family, saying, "You must be born again." Nicodemus wondered what Christ meant by the term "born again." Today's religious experience actually being reborn physically or what?

   For the complete story, be sure to read What Do You Mean Born Again? This free booklet brings you the Bible answer to this intriguing question. Request your free copy of What Do You Mean Born Again?