THE COVENANT DISANNULED.
By J. S. Maxson
“I WON’T wait a minute. When I die I am going to be right in heaven.” The above are the words of an earnest, active member of one of the self-styled orthodox churches in the town of P. The doctrine of the natural immortality of the soul, as preached and sung in the churches, has so moulded the belief of the laity, and the masses outside the churches, that the idea of waiting until the resurrection, at the last day, for their reward seems to them an unbearable delay, and they recoil from the thought. And yet in unconscious sleep there is no conscious delay. When the Son of God came to our world “to seek and to save that which was lost,” He said of Himself, “I am the resurrection, and the life; he that believeth in Me, tho he were dead, yet shall he live.” John 11:25. Again, “I will raise him up at the last day.” John 6:40, 44. In Isa. 28:15, 16 the Lord says, “Because ye have said, We have made a covenant with death: . . . Therefore thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner-stone, a sure foundation; he that believeth shall not make haste.” In Isa. 25:9 we read what they who have not made haste will say when their Redeemer raises them up at the last day: “It shall be said in that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for Him, and He will save us; this is the Lord; we have waited for Him, we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation.” Is it not better to trust in God’s covenant in Christ, the covenant of life, the covenant with the Life-giver? From the above scriptures we learn that those who expect to go to heaven at death are making haste, and are represented in the Word of God as having made a covenant with death, which covenant, they are assured in Isa. 28:18, shall be disannulled; while those who put their trust in the sure foundation, Jesus Christ, will not be disappointed, tho they sleep in Him until the resurrection.