THE most conclusive reason why the Jews could not keep the law covenant is that all of them were imperfect. These imperfections resulted from the sin of Adam. God created Adam a perfect man. When Adam violated God's law the sentence of death was the inevitable result. To enforce this judgment he was expelled from Eden. It was after this, and while undergoing the sentence, that Adam exercised his God-given power to beget children. It was impossible for the condemned and now imperfect man, undergoing the judgment of death, to produce perfect children. Hence all his children were born imperfect. Every creature imperfect before God is condemned, that is to say, disapproved. Therefore, by the disobedience of Adam sin became active and he was sentenced to death, and condemnation resulted to all his offspring. Hence all were born sinners.
This is exactly what the prophet of God says: "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me." (Ps. 51:5) No matter what man might do, his children must be born sinners until God exercises his power to remove the disability. Every human being on earth is, of course, descended from Adam; hence every one is condemned as a sinner.
The law covenant promised life to every one who should keep it. But no one could keep that law. Even if the Jews had been obedient to the law to the best of their ability, they could not have kept it perfectly. What advantage, then, to them in having the law? If they had done their best and kept the spirit of the law, they would have been blessed in the field and in store; blessed in their homes and blessed in their families; and blessed with health and strength; relieved from disease and wars and famines, and would have lived long on earth in peace and in happiness. Had they loved God and tried to serve him, they would have learned that he has a great plan for their salvation, and not for the Jews only, but for all mankind; and that some day he would put that plan into operation and give all the obedient ones life. Without a doubt that law was intended as a teacher or schoolmaster that would lead the Jews in the way that would bring eternal life to them.
After repeated attempts to keep the law, and failing, the Jews must have realized that the difficulty was due to the sin of Adam, which made them imperfect. This knowledge must have been handed down from generation to generation to the time of Israel. Those who really familiarized themselves with what Moses and the other prophets said must have realized that Adam's disobedience had brought them imperfection. Abraham had not known a law covenant, and yet he loved God and did his very
best to please him, and had faith in him. How could the Jew or any other of mankind be relieved of this imperfection resulting from sin? God through his prophet says: "Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." — Isa. 1:18.
Otherwise stated, God said to the Jews: 'You are sinners; but I have a plan by which in due time I will relieve you of this disability. You must know that I am Almighty God. You must have no other god besides me. If you will go about serving the Devil, you can not have my blessing. But if you serve me, in due time I will bless you. Even though you are sinners and your sin is so great that it is red like crimson, I will wash it away and make you white and clean.' Why did not the Jews reason together from God's Word? Because they were overreached by Satan the enemy, whose wicked influence induced them to turn away from God and to worship idols and serve the Devil. This is why God repeatedly brought punishment upon them. But when they would cry unto him he would hear them and bring them back. They have spent a long dark night of warfare.
Now in the latter days, at the close of the Gentile times, God's favor is returning to Israel, and the light begins to shine as the great antitypical Jubilee opens. Let all now in calmness and sobriety of mind reason together and
see what God, through his Word, teaches concerning the removing of the disability that resulted from Adam's sin, and why he has provided a way to lead mankind to life.
God must be consistent; therefore reason leads to the conclusion that he could not set aside the judgment that he had entered against Adam. He could, however, be consistent and at the same time arrange for that judgment to be satisfied, by permitting another to pay the debt of Adam and thereby to open the way for Adam and his offspring to be released from sin and death and all its evil effects. He could thus provide redemption for the human race. There is nothing more certainly taught in the Holy Scriptures than the doctrine of redemption. Some of the texts of the Old Testament will be here read with interest.
Job was a prophet of God. He stood as a representative of mankind. Evidently Job had been taught by the Lord that it was God's purpose to redeem the race; for he wrote: "For I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God." (Job 19: 25, 26) Job also understood and taught that after the human race had been ransomed or redeemed man would be restored to his original youth and beauty. In poetic phrase he describes the suffering of the people, and then states that when they know the truth and obey it they shall be
saved from going down into death and be restored to health and strength: "If there be a messenger with him, an interpreter, one among a thousand, to shew unto man his uprightness; then he is gracious unto him, and saith, Deliver him from going down to the pit; I have found a ransom. His flesh shall be fresher than a child's: he shall return to the days of his youth." — Job 33:23-25.
Moses frequently prophesied concerning the times of restitution. See Gen. 18:18; 22:18; 28:14.
Samuel the prophet said: "The Lord killeth, and maketh alive: he bringeth down to the grave, and bringeth up." — 1 Sam. 2:6.
David prophesied that God would provide redemption and grant life everlasting to the people. (Ps. 19:14; 21:4) He also wrote: "For when he dieth he shall carry nothing away; his glory shall not descend after him. But God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave; for he shall receive me." (Ps. 49:17,15) Furthermore, the Psalms foretold the time when all the peoples of the earth should come and worship God, and that after the long dark night of sin and suffering a time of endless joy would come (Ps. 22:27; 37:11; 45:5,17; 86:9); that he would return man, whom he had sent into destruction (Ps. 90: 3); and that then the world should be established and not be moved. — Ps. 93:1; 96:10.
Solomon testified that the earth should abide for ever as man's habitation (Eccl. 1:4), which is in harmony with Isaiah's prophecies to this effect, as we have already noted.
Isaiah plainly prophesied as God's witness that God would redeem the race and that he would prepare a happy way for them to return to him, and he called it a way of holiness: "And an highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called The way of holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it; but it shall be for those: the wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein. No lion shall be there, nor any ravenous beast shall go up thereon, it shall not be found there: but the redeemed shall walk there: and the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads: they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away." (Isa. 35:8-10) To the same effect this prophet prophesied concerning redemption, in Isaiah 44: 22; 51:11; 59: 20.
Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel and all the minor prophets likewise foretold a time coming in which the Lord will restore the obedient ones of mankind to perfect conditions. This would be impossible without redemption first.
In fact all the prophets, without a single exception, testified that in due time God will restore mankind to human perfection and that man will then live for ever on the earth. Now reason would conclude that such is impossible
unless God first redeemed the race from the Adamic curse. It follows, in harmony with the other statements above made, that God would redeem mankind. Again, God said through his prophet Isaiah that he had made the earth for man to live on, that he had not made it in vain, that it should be man's habitation, and that the earth would abide for ever. — Isa. 45:12,18; Eccl. 1:4.
It is quite apparent that the first and chief purpose of the law was to foreshadow better things to come, and that by this schoolmaster God would teach the Jews concerning this blessing, that they might be used by him in due time to give blessings to others. God used them to make pictures by which they, and others through them, might learn of his coming blessings. Call to mind the sacrifices of Israel, and what they represented. When Abraham was one hundred years old, and his wife had passed the age of women for child-bearing, God gave him a son. This shows the overruling of divine providences in the birth of Isaac. Next we see Abraham with his only son at the mountain. An altar is built, the son is bound to it, Abraham is lifting his knife to slay his only son, and would do so. What could this picture? Abraham was a friend of God and represented Jehovah God. Isaac, the only son of Abraham, represented God's Son, who in due time would be permitted to die in order that he might become the great ransom sacrifice for man. — Gen. 22:1-18.
The Israelites were suffering great oppression in Egypt under Pharaoh. Egypt was a type of the entire world of sin, while Pharaoh pictured Satan the Devil, the invisible ruler of the world. The Israelites undergoing suffering pictured the entire human race and the suffering through which the race has passed. Repeated attempts were made to have the Israelites removed from Egypt, but without avail. Then God brought the death plague upon Egypt, and all the first-born died. Why did not all the first-born of the Jews die? The answer is that God commanded that for each house of the Israelites a lamb without blemish should be taken and killed and roasted whole, without even breaking a bone; that the blood of this lamb should be sprinkled over the doorway; and that the family should go into the house, close the door and remain there until the death angel had passed. For all who obeyed this command the first-born of that family was spared. The sacrifice of the lamb foreshadowed that some day its antitype would be sacrificed, and that the antitype would take away the sin of man.
The price required for the saving of the firstborn of Israel was the placing of themselves under the protection of the blood of the paschal lamb. The Jews were commanded to observe this Passover each year. This clearly proves that its yearly observance was typical and that the blood of the antitype would provide redemption for man.
God commanded Moses to build a tabernacle to be used in connection with the atonement sacrifice to be observed once a year. On the atonement day the high priest was required to kill a bullock, burn its fat upon the altar in the court, and carry its blood into the Most Holy. This was to be a sin-offering. Then he was required to kill the Lord's goat and to do with it the same as he did with the blood of the bullock. (See Leviticus 16:1-23.) The fact that this ceremony must be repeated once each year, and that it was for the purpose of a sin-offering, shows it was a type foreshadowing that animals merely represent the one whose blood, at God's due time, would be offered in the Most Holy, even heaven itself, as the great atonement for the sins of the people. This of course meant the death of the one who should thus provide the sin-offering. As a type must continue until the antitype comes, had the Jews remained true and faithful to God and observed all the law to the best of their ability until God's due time to act, he would have shown them how their disability could be removed.
The fact that God plainly says that he is about to make a new covenant, and that this new covenant will provide the way to life, and that restoration to human perfection will be the blessing to the people, necessarily proves that the great sin-offering must be completed and the disability removed before the new covenant
can be made by which the Jews will receive the blessing.
In view of the fact that we are approaching the time when the new covenant is to be made, it behooves every Jew to look well to the teaching of God's Word that he may see what provision God has made for releasing the Jews from the disability resulting from the Adamic sin.
Could the yearly sacrifice of bulls and goats relieve the Jews from their sins and enable them to keep the law covenant? No. The fact that the ceremony must be repeated every year shows that it merely pictured the fact that some day God would cause the antitype to be performed. David testifies that this sacrifice of animals was not adequate to take away the sin; but that what God desired was to teach the people the way of obedience, that he might show them his effectual way of removing sin. — Ps. 40:5-8.
Thus far we have reasoned upon these things taught in the Scriptures for the purpose of showing that God intended to redeem mankind, Now let us look at a positive promise made: "I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death: O death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be thy destruction." — Hos. 13:14.
Fortunately for the Jews the Devil was never able to induce them to believe in the doctrine of conscious torment in hell-fire and brimstone. He left that "sweet" morsel for the Catholic
and Protestant preachers to roll under their tongues. The Devil has used such preachers to screech out hell-fire and damnation to frighten the people, to arouse their passions; and he has induced them, while in this distressed condition of mind, in the name of Christianity to vent their spleen and venom upon the Jews. The persecution of the Jews by so-called Christians is one of the blackest things upon the world's escutcheon. Of those who have indulged in the wicked persecution of the Israelites, undoubtedly God will require at their hands some recompense.
All the prophets of God taught that sheol, the grave, and hell are one and the same condition, referring to the condition of death. The Jews knew that the Scriptures taught that all in their graves are dead, unconscious, and know nothing. — Eccl. 9: 5,10; Ps. 115:17.
Now the positive promise through the Prophet Hosea is that God will redeem man from death and the grave, and destroy death. To redeem or ransom man from the grave means that God will provide a means of satisfaction of the judgment against Adam, and that then the dead will be awakened out of death and be brought forth from that state or condition back to life.
David expressed his confidence in the redemption and resurrection of the dead when he wrote: "Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth: my flesh also shall rest in hope. For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither
wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption. Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore." —Ps. 16: 9-11.
Ransom means an exact corresponding price. It follows then that if man is to be ransomed or redeemed within the meaning of the words of the Prophet Hosea, the price to be paid must be exactly that which the law required that the sinner should pay. God's will or judgment is that Adam, the sinner, should forfeit his life and go into death. God by his law then plainly states what would be required for the ransom, namely, 'a life for a life.' — Deut. 19: 21.
Adam was a perfect man when he sinned, and the ransom requires that the life of a perfect man must be given to produce the price that will enable God to justly release Adam and his offspring from death and its effects. Was there a perfect man on earth that could meet these divine requirements? God's prophet answers: "None of them can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him." — Ps. 49:7.
The race must be blessed with an opportunity for life, because God by his word and by his oath promised Abraham that they should be. The race could not be blessed until redeemed. Man must be redeemed because God gave his solemn word and promise that he would ransom him. God must, and will, keep his word inviolate. The irresistible conclusion, therefore, is
that Jehovah God must make some provision for the redemption of man, and that to this end he must prepare a perfect man exactly corresponding to the perfect man Adam when he was in Eden and before he sinned; and that this perfect man must go into death to provide the ransom or redemptive price. These irresistible conclusions are reached by reasoning upon the scriptures of the Old Testament, which all Jews claim to believe.
Since Moses declared that the Messiah would be greater than Moses, and since the Redeemer must be a perfect man, it would seem reasonable to conclude that the Redeemer must be the Messiah. Now let the Scriptures which God gave to the Jews be used and carefully considered to determine who is the Redeemer and who is the Messiah.
