With Whom Did God Make the New Covenant?

   A study of the words “covenant” and “testament” will reveal both as translated from the Greek word “diatheke” (Strong’s Concordance #1242, i.e., “covenant, contract, testament”). Jesus therefore, when instituting “the new testament in My blood” (Luke 22:20), was fulfilling the prophecy in Jeremiah 31:31: “I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah.”

   In Hebrews, an epistle written to the above mentioned Israelites, Jeremiah’s prophecy is repeated verbatim (see 8:8) and explained by the writer as fulfilled by Jesus. Chapters 7-10 in particular, describe the promised New Covenant (i.e., Christianity) as in effect with Judah and Israel 2000 years ago.  

   When Paul quoted Jesus regarding “the new testament in My blood” (1 Corinthians 11:25), he was writing to Israelites. This is revealed in 10:1-4 where the words, “all our fathers” identifies -- all in the Corinthian church as sharing Paul’s Israelitish ancestry. Christians in Paul’s epistles are called Gentiles, but “ethnos,” from which “Gentiles” is translated (see Strong’s #1484), merely means nations, tribes, or people. “Ethnos” is so broad in meaning, that in Luke 7:5 and John 11:48 it’s applied even to Jews! In 1 Corinthians 5:1 “Gentiles” is applied, not to the Corinthian Christians, but in contradistinction to them. While ethnos/Gentiles does mean non-Jew in most cases, contextual evidence proves, it is often describing Israelites, non-Jew Israelites of the Dispersion.

   About twenty five years before the Jews were dispersed by the Romans in AD 70, an epistle was addressed “to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad” (James 1:1). These were the Israelites who remained outside of Palestine after the 7th and 6th century BC Assyrian and Babylonian invasions and deportations. They were greater in number than the Jews, and unlike those who “received Him not” (John 1:11), were accepting the New Covenant. First Peter is similar. Written before AD 70, and to non-Jew Diaspora Israelites, it describes them as a people with whom the New Covenant (i.e., Christianity) was in effect. 

   Not agreeing with Scripture regarding Israel and the New Covenant are teachers who ignore Israel’s Christian majority and focus on those who “received Him not” as all of Israel. To support there “Israel-rejected-Jesus” teaching they say: “The covenant remains to be realized for Israel” and, “Israel . . . with whom the New Covenant will yet be ratified” (The Scofield Study Bible, 2002 edition). In The McArthur Study Bible, an interpretational note on the New Covenant says: “It will . . . be realized by the people of Israel in the last days.” Such comments are a twisting of Scripture, from present to future tense. Dispensationalists (aka Futurists) do this because Hebrews, in context, does not agree with their teaching that those who rejected the New Covenant were and are all of Israel.

   Who, then, are today’s descendants of the Christian Israel majority James located as “scattered abroad?” Scripture tells us it would have to be the Anglo-Saxon, Celtic, Germanic, Scandinavian, and related Europeans, the world’s only, historically Christian, ethnic group. We are Israelites. We, the creators of Western Christian culture are the Covenant People.

   The next time you partake in a ceremony (i.e., the Lord’s Supper) acknowledging the New Covenant, remember those to whom it was promised. They were your ancestors.