Introduction

As Jesus died upon the cross, the veil in the temple of Herod, the veil blocking the way into the Holy Presence of God through which only the High Priest could pass once a year with blood, ripped wide open from top to bottom.

The writer of Hebrews says this: Therefore, brethren, having boldness to enter the Holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He consecrated for us, through the veil, that is, His flesh… let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

Yet we find that Christian theology and most teachers of the gospel have banished entering into the Holiest as a way of living in God for believers in Jesus Christ in the present time. Every truth in God found in the New Testament that describes life in the Holiest has been relegated to a far-off place and a far-off time. NOT ON THIS EARTH!

Anyone, then, living in the Holy Presence of God, seated upon the Throne of Grace, here on this earth, in a body of mortal flesh, must be a heretic.

No one uses the word “testament” anymore, except to refer to part of the Bible. It is an early modern English word used in place of “Covenant.” The New Testament IS the New Covenant in His blood. 

What is that Covenant, binding in full upon those who sign it, both God and man? The completion of all that God does upon this earth will be entirely and only through all the fulfillment of that New Covenant in our lives. It is a binding Covenant written in Blood.

This volume, The Covenant, weaves together three mighty strands of truth.

The first strand is the Covenant itself, written in the New Testament as the most important verses in the Bible. God has a people who dare to read the Bible only through the terms of that Covenant and no other way. What are the mighty terms of the Covenant we have signed with God and God with us? How must they be fulfilled in our lives upon this earth?

The second strand is the one time and place God showed Himself as He really is inside of His creation, heaven and earth. There God walked between the pieces of His own heart ripped wide-open in Blood upon the hillside. That second strand is the Path of the Atonement, the steps of Jesus from Gethsemane to the right hand of the Father. That Path is the first and only time any part of creation has ever seen God. He is so different from what man on this earth has ever defined Him to be.

The third strand is the central metaphor of the Old Testament upon which the New Testament is written, the Tabernacle of Moses in the wilderness, corresponding in all ways to the Temple of God built by Solomon. The writers of the New Testament used the furnishings of that tabernacle to speak of believers in Jesus Christ in their walk all the way into the full knowledge and revelation of God.

Jesus said, just before He began to show us the Father as He really is, this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent. God has no other definition of eternal life. Life is to know God; we know God only in the Holy of Holies, and only as we are seated upon the Throne of Mercy. We know God as the One who fills us with all of His fullness; we know God as the One who flows out of our bellies as rivers of living water. This is now; today is the day of salvation.

We first signed this Covenant with God when we let some preacher dunk us under the waters of baptism. But God is kind; He will never bind us to all that the Covenant means until we know what it means, until we ourselves pass through that Veil into the Holy of Holies. It is wide-open. But God never commands us to eat of life. We must boldly enter in. Faith alone, the heart of faith – the heart of God, seizes the full Bond of the Covenant.

The full signing of the Covenant is a transaction hammered out between God and each individual person. To seal that signature, one must engage directly and personally with a holy God upon the fire of the Altar – Gethsemane. When Jesus rose to His feet in Gethsemane, that Covenant was sealed forever in God. And we were inside of Him.

When all creation is set free in the glorious liberty of the sons of God, all will know that this incredible wonder was accomplished entirely and only by the Covenant, by the fulfillment of the New Covenant in His Blood in the lives of those who will live nowhere else but in the Covenant fulfilled.

The Covenant is for you, dear reader, if you will trade life for Life.