Season 3 Podcast 134 Broken Covenants

Broken CovenantsI remember standing alone on a beach in Valdez, Alaska.  Towering over me, propped up by long trembling timbers, was an old disintegrating derelict that was once a proud ocean vessel that had braved the icy northern seas. Now it was old and rotting and listing and would never float again.  On the rotting planks of the splintered stern was emblazoned its once proud name—COVENANT.  A covenant is a binding agreement.  It may be oral or written.  It is formal and a key part of man’s relationship to God.  All laws of God with a promise are covenants between God and man.  If one fulfills the conditions of the covenant, God will deliver the promise. The primary purpose of the Holy Scriptures is to define God’s covenants with man.In slang terms one speaks of ‘bargaining with the devil.’  The famous story of Doctor Faustus brilliantly told by the English dramatist Marlowe and the German poet Goethe, tells of a covenant with the devil. They give powerful credence to the term ‘sold his soul to the devil.’It is hard to imagine anyone bargaining with the devil, but probably everyone in a crisis has bargained with the Lord. Though such wrangling is not strictly speaking a covenant, it is sacred, nevertheless, and should not be done lightly: "Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay." (Ecclesiastes 5: 5) I shall use the term covenant to represent only those binding agreements established by the Lord and set forth in his Holy Scriptures through his chosen prophets in which he sets forth his laws, conditions, and blessings.  But all such covenants originated in the beginning in the presence of God where all agreements are covenants, for God is the temple 22 And I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it.23 And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the lamb is the light thereof. (Revelations 21:22-23). Christ spoke of his body as a temple 18 ¶ Then answered the Jews and said unto him, What sign shewest thou unto us, seeing that thou doest these things?19 Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.20 Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days?21 But he spake of the temple of his body. (See John 2:18-21). We are also told that our body is “the temple of the Holy Ghost.” 19 What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?20 For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s. (1 Corinthians 6:19-20) The temple is where covenants are made with God. Dante reserved the lowest level of the Inferno, not for the “fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars" (Revelations 21:8), but for the covenant breakers.  That old poet who invented hell knew something that the world has lost.  Satan and the other Sons of Perdition, using their agency declared war in heaven against God, thus violating their sacred covenants and becoming a law unto themselves.