The Everlasting Covenant

The Gospel of Deliverance

We have learned that when God made the promise to Abraham He preached the Gospel to him; it follows, therefore, that when the time comes for the fulfillment of the promise, the seed to whom it is fulfilled must know at least as much of the Gospel as was revealed to Abraham; and we should expect to find the same Gospel preached to them. This was the case. We learn from the Epistle to the Hebrews that the Gospel which is now preached to us is the same that was then preached to them, and in the Scripture last quoted we find it. Note the following items:— EVCO 183.4

1. God said of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, “I have also established My covenant with them, to give them the land of Canaan, the land of their pilgrimage, wherein they were strangers.” EVCO 184.1

2. Then He added, “And I have also heard the groaning of the children of Israel, whom the Egyptians keep in bondage; and I have remembered My covenant.” EVCO 184.2

3. When the Lord says that he remembers a certain thing, He does not imply that that thing has ever passed from His mind, for that is impossible. Nothing can ever escape Him. But, as we find in various instances, He thus indicates that He is about to perform that thing. In the final judgment of Babylon it is said, “God hath remembered her iniquities. ¹ “And great Babylon came in remembrance before God, to give unto her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of His wrath.” ² “God remembered Noah,” ³ and caused the flood to cease, but we know that not for one moment while Noah was in the ark was he forgotten, for not even a sparrow is forgotten. (See also Genesis 19:29; 30:22; and 1 Samuel 1:19, for the use of the word “remember” in the sense of being about to fulfill the thing promised.) EVCO 184.3

4. It is evident, therefore, from the sixth of Exodus, that the Lord was about to fulfill the promise to Abraham and his seed. But as Abraham was dead, that could be done only by the resurrection. The time of the promise which God had sworn to Abraham was very near. But this is evidence that the Gospel was being preached, since only the Gospel of the kingdom prepares for the end. EVCO 184.4

5. God was making Himself known to the people. But it is only in the Gospel that God is made known. The things which reveal the power of God make known His Divinity. EVCO 185.1

6. God said, “I will take you to Me for a people, and I will be to you a God; and ye shall know that I am the Lord your God.” Compare with this the promise of the new covenant, “I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord; for they shall all know Me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord.” ¹ No one questions that this is the proclamation of the Gospel: but it is the very same thing that was proclaimed to the Israelites in Egypt. EVCO 185.2

7. The fact that the deliverance of the children of Israel was such a deliverance as could be effected only through the preaching of the Gospel, is evidence that it was no ordinary deliverance from physical bondage to a temporal inheritance. A most wonderful prospect was opened before the children of Israel, if they had but known the day of their visitation, and had continued faithful. EVCO 185.3