THE HOPE OF ISRAEL - The Preterist Archive

232 The Hope of Israel: What Is It?
Do these verses declare that the earthly Israel are
hereafter to be restored nationally?
Looking at the context, which is the way to learn
what is the subject of the prophecy, we find that the
verses quoted above follow immediately God's promise
of the "new covenant," which (He says) was to be "not
according to the covenant that I made with their
fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to
bring them out of the land of Egypt, which My covenant
they brake." I
Under that old covenant earthly
blessings were promised to an earthly people, including
national existence and the possession of the land
of Canaan. Those blessings, moreover (and it is important
to observe this) were made to depend upon
express conditions, to be faithfully observed by that
people, and were to be forfeited if those conditions
were not observed. But that covenant, the Lord declares,
"they brake." And now, through Jeremiah, He
proclaims the great fact that He will make, in a time
then future, "a new covenant," which was to be of a
different sort.
The Epistle to the Hebrews explains fully this
prophecy of Jeremiah concerning the new covenant,
the prophecy itself being quoted in full in Heb. 8 :7-13,
and in part in 10:15-17. It is the "everlasting covenant,"
secured by the blood of Jesus Christ (Heb. 13 :
20). It is established with a heavenly people, those
who are "come to Mount Sion, and to the city of the
living God the . . .
heavenly Jerusalem, and to the
church of the first born (ones) who are written (i. e.
enrolled) in heaven" (Ch. 12:22, 23). It is "a better
covenant established upon better promises" (Ch. 8:6).
It is the covenant whereunder every repentant and believing
sinner, whether Jew or Gentile, receives the for-