The Two Testaments (Covenants) Are One: The Old, The New. The First, The Second. The Word “Old” Makes The First Testament Sound Of No Value.
The New Testament (Covenant) is the Old Made Better. - Hebrews 8:6
By Guest Contributor, Dr. James Bruggeman • 30 Sept 2025
he Two Are One | Photo by James Bruggeman from one of my Bibles
We assume that most of our readers and those who study our oral lectures on CDs, mp3, or directly on line, are in agreement with the thesis summarized in the title above. We came across this gem in our library a few weeks ago and we now republish it below as something short, easy to understand, and ideal for sharing with your typical church friends and relatives.
Take, for example, when we began our study of the Kingdom of Heaven, aka, the Kingdom of God, we quoted both John the Baptist and Jesus announcing the Kingdom.
Matthew 3:2 And saying, Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. (uttered by John).
Matthew 4:17 From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. (uttered by Jesus).
We pointed out early in the series that there were no questions from the disciples nor from the crowds asking the question, Sir, we don’t understand what you mean by that; what is the “kingdom of heaven?”
In those days, they all knew what it was. But it is obvious that most churchgoers 2,000 years later do not. Therefore, early in our series, we went back to the Old Testament to study what it is, when it began, who is involved, what it entailed, what happened to it—all so that we would have a much greater understanding when we later returned to study the Kingdom in the New Testament.
It turns out to have been a very deep and broad subject as we cut it off at 52 lectures, and admitted that we could have gone on with another 50 lectures on that subject. Those 52 lectures are available from us individually (not recommended), or in convenient albums of four CDs per album (priced at $20/album), or with the cost significantly reduced for buying the entire series at once. Here is the link to the Order Form, which contains a synopsis of each lecture.
We do not know when this article by Ray Monks was originally published in the Auckland News-Magazine. (We assume that is from Auckland, New Zealand.) The essay was reprinted in the May 1990 issue of the Kingdom Digest (which is now defunct). For your edification, here is Mr. Monk’s work on the subject. All boldface emphasis and comments within [brackets] are mine.
QUOTE: The Bible is the most read book in print. It remains the world’s best seller. Therefore, a man’s literary knowledge and wisdom may be gauged by his familiarity with the Book of books. But there are many who insist that they are believers of the Bible, students of the Bible, and preachers of the Bible, and yet ignore, neglect or reject the Old Testament.
Their reasons are varied but they all arrive at the same result, a woeful loss of the knowledge of the blessings which God planned for mankind, and at the same time of proper equipment for the presentation of the New Testament Gospel.
The Bible is one Book, not two: It is the revelation of the whole plan of God from the Divine Counsels in eternity to eternity when Satan, Sin, and Death shall be destroyed and Jesus shall deliver up His finished Kingdom and God shall be All in all.
That revelation is symmetrical, harmonious, progressive, and consistent from Genesis to Revelation. Through it, one increasing Purpose runs. To omit part of it is to break the continuity and frustrate the Divine Plan.
The Whole Bible is the Gift of God’s Wisdom for the Guidance and Blessing of Mankind: What kind of self-sufficiency or egotism is it that would cast aside thirty-nine of the precious God-given books and say, “The New Testament is all we need?”
Would it not be wise for such persons to stop for a moment and consider God’s words: “My thoughts are not your thoughts nor my ways, your ways: for as heaven is high above the earth so are my thoughts higher than your thoughts and my ways higher than your ways.”?
The Old Testament was the Bible Jesus used: It was the only Bible then in existence. He not only quoted it and most marvellously applied it on all occasions, but endorsed, corroborated and enforced it throughout His Ministry. Jesus called the Old Testament “the Scriptures” (Matt. 21:42).
In Luke 4:21, He told the people of Nazareth: “This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears,”
In Matt. 22:29, He told the Pharisees, “Ye do err not knowing the Scriptures or the power of God.”
Again, He told them in John 5:39: “Search the scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life and they are they which testify of me.”
What has happened to the Bible of Jesus that any professed follower of His should seek to discard it?
The Apostles found abundant use for the Old Testament: There are at least six hundred quotations from the Old Testament presented by the writers of the New Testament. They counted it an absolute necessity in order to present the Truths of the New Testament.
In all of their writings the Old Testament is used to validate all that they propose to present concerning the Plan and Grace of God. They made it the commentary and encyclopaedia to define Jesus, authenticate His deity, His mission, His message, His work, His sacrificial death, His burial, His Resurrection, His Ascension, His Exaltation, His mediatorial reign, His Kingdom, and His ultimate victory over all His foes.
Take out of the New Testament all references to the Old Testament, and the whole message of the Apostles would fall flat. Jesus fulfilled and confirmed all that was written in Moses, the Prophets and in the Psalms concerning Himself, thus establishing His identity as the promised Messiah. Surely a Book that does all that is worthy of our deepest study.
The Christian religion cannot be explained without the Old Testament. The Old Testament has been woven into all the doctrines, sermons, songs, prayers, sacraments and instructions of the Church through the centuries. Following the lead of Jesus and the Apostles, the Early Church made continual use of the Old Testament in proclaiming the Gospel.
In fact, it has been declared that the whole of the Old Testament, except a few verses, could be reconstructed from the writings of the Church fathers.
In the light of all this, we pause to wonder what exalted type of spiritual and intellectual Christians we have developed, who can afford to profess, publicly, that they can do what Jesus, the Apostles, or the Church fathers found impossible; namely, proclaim Christianity without the Old Testament. Throughout the New Testament, Divine Inspiration takes for granted that the reader is well acquainted with the Old Testament.
The New Testament is presented as a sequel, the complement, the fulfilment and the confirmation of the Old Testament. To approach the New Testament without having studied the Old Testament is like going into High School without a primary school education, The Old Testament furnishes the only authentic record of the creation:
- The creation of the heavens and the earth. The more true science learns, the more willing its endorsements of the Divine statements concerning the genesis of the material universe.
- The creation of man. Whatever may be the various hypotheses of the evolutionist, he is always unable to answer the question of the origin of life. In his attempts to produce life spontaneously, he has miserably failed. After all his research, tests and trials, the honest scientist is compelled to join with the Psalmist in the ascription of praise to God: “With thee is the fountain of life. Thou art the life of every living thing.”
The Old Testament furnishes the only authentic history of the races of mankind: The origin, characteristics, achievements for good or evil, and the ultimate destiny of the races — all of this is told in the Old Testament.
New finds of the archaeologist are proving all doubt that the record is correct to the least detail. In fact, the Old Testament furnishes little short of a university course in Anthropology, Sociology, Philology, and all kindred subjects. As a source book for the historian, it is unexcelled.
The Old Testament is the revelation of God’s plan for redemption: It is the only Book with an authentic and reasonable solution of the origin of sin and its effect upon the race. Only through the study of the Old Testament can one become acquainted with man’s primal state in Eden, the Fall, the loss of the Kingdom of God on earth and the gigantic plan of God for the salvation of men and the redemption of the nations.
Only in the Old Testament can we learn of God’s cleansing of the earth with the Flood, his re-establishment of the Kingdom at Sinai, and the prophetic descriptions of its character, its conquest, its victory, and the gracious reign of the Prince of Peace.
The Old Testament alone reveals in detail the covenants established by God with our fallen race: Every one of those covenants is in force today, and under them men must live for weal or woe. Some are conditional, some unconditional, but under them, we are living and they constitute the fundamental of our life, individually, socially, nationally and internationally.
There are fifteen of those Covenants [The number of covenants depends upon who is counting and by what criteria. We have expounded them all in substantial detail in our series The Covenants of the Bible, which has been serialized in our monthly Feed My Sheep teaching for many months to date.] — and what kind of folly is it one would remain in willful ignorance of them?
How meager the information of the man who says “the New Testament is the story of the New Covenant and that is all we need to know.” There could be no new covenant without an old covenant.
And positively no man can understand and appreciate the New Covenant without knowing well the conditions and penalties and the impossibilities of the Old Covenant. The man who discards the Old Testament rejects the divinely ordained schooling that God intends he should have in order to understand Jesus Christ, His mission, His message, His character, His atonement, His intercession and His reign.
All of this instruction is presented by God in a series of most marvellous object lessons, found in the symbols, types and ceremonies of the Old Testament. Therein the True theologian finds his most productive material for the explanation and definition of Jesus Christ and His work.
Little wonder that those who propose to discard the Old Testament have such shallow views of Jesus and present Him to the public in such an attenuated manner. [We have all experienced that shallowness as we have tried to share a deeper understanding of the gospel with our NT-only Christian brethren.]
The Old Testament reveals the Law of God for nations. Jesus abrogated the law contained in ordinances. At His death the veil of the temple was rent from top to bottom. But the laws, statutes and judgements given at Sinai, have never been repealed.
Jesus declared in Luke 16:17: “It is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one hair stroke of the law to fail.
In Matt. 5:18 He said: “For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.”
The Ten Commandments are an expression of the Divine nature and cannot be annulled. They were given as the law of life for all mankind. Grace saves from the penalty of the broken law, but does not abrogate or annul the law: the law remains the rule of Christian conduct. To make this certain, we find each of the Ten Commandments reiterated in the New Testament.
In the British Commonwealth and the United States the Ten Commandments constitute the common law of the land. As at Sinai, these countries have their form of government in a constitution, law, statutes and judgements, which constitute the only true foundation of national righteousness and will be the law of the Kingdom of God on earth.
The law of God propounded by Moses furnishes the only solution to the economic, social and political problems which now confront the world. Therefore, the layman or minister who discards the Old Testament cannot be a really intelligent citizen, nor can he have any well defined message for the age and country in which he lives.
Even the Sermon on the Mount requires the Law of Moses to define and concrete it as a rule of national life. No man can preach in its fullness the Kingdom of God on earth and the Millennial reign of Christ without the Law of Moses.
The Old Testament furnishes a marvellous description of the Kingdom: There is presented its origin, laws, institutions, spirit, blessings, unfoldment in time and consummation. The highest flights of the prophets describe it, but nowhere is it seen clearer in detail than in the Psalms.
The Psalms not only describe Jesus in His fullness, in language unexcelled, but constitute an anatomy of the human soul and furnish the highest vehicle of prayer, praise and thanksgiving for every experience through which a human being may pass in the journey from the cradle to the grave.
The Psalms are of the songs of the ages. There has not been a decade in human history since they were written, but they have been appropriate. They are the songs of Israel, written for Israel, and as the age expires will be revealed in their glory as the songs of joy and triumph with which to usher in the New Order of the Kingdom.
The Old Testament through prophecy furnishes the prewritten history of the world: The story of Christ and Christianity was told long centuries before His advent. The rise and fall of empires, the evil forces which should be loose in the world, their devastation of men and nations and their final annihilation all foretold.
The march of the kingly line of David down the centuries, the woes that befell God’s chosen Israel (Who is Israel of today?) on account of their sin, the rebuke and cleansing they must receive before they inherit the Kingdom, all foretold for the benefit of those upon whom the ends of the world have come.
We assume that most of our readers and those who study our oral lectures on CDs, mp3, or directly on line, are in agreement with the thesis summarized in the title above. We came across this gem in our library a few weeks ago and we now republish it below as something short, easy to understand, and ideal for sharing with your typical church friends and relatives.
Take, for example, when we began our study of the Kingdom of Heaven, aka, the Kingdom of God, we quoted both John the Baptist and Jesus announcing the Kingdom.
Matthew 3:2 And saying, Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. (uttered by John).
Matthew 4:17 From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. (uttered by Jesus).
We pointed out early in the series that there were no questions from the disciples nor from the crowds asking the question, Sir, we don’t understand what you mean by that; what is the “kingdom of heaven?”
In those days, they all knew what it was. But it is obvious that most churchgoers 2,000 years later do not. Therefore, early in our series, we went back to the Old Testament to study what it is, when it began, who is involved, what it entailed, what happened to it—all so that we would have a much greater understanding when we later returned to study the Kingdom in the New Testament.
We do not know when this article by Ray Monks was originally published in the Auckland News-Magazine. (We assume that is from Auckland, New Zealand.) The essay was reprinted in the May 1990 issue of the Kingdom Digest (which is now defunct). For your edification, here is Mr. Monk’s work on the subject. All boldface emphasis and comments within [brackets] are mine. QUOTE:
The Bible is the most read book in print. It remains the world’s best seller. Therefore, a man’s literary knowledge and wisdom may be gauged by his familiarity with the Book of books. But there are many who insist that they are believers of the Bible, students of the Bible, and preachers of the Bible, and yet ignore, neglect or reject the Old Testament.
Their reasons are varied but they all arrive at the same result, a woeful loss of the knowledge of the blessings which God planned for mankind, and at the same time of proper equipment for the presentation of the New Testament Gospel.
The Bible is one Book, not two: It is the revelation of the whole plan of God from the Divine Counsels in eternity to eternity when Satan, Sin, and Death shall be destroyed and Jesus shall deliver up His finished Kingdom and God shall be All in all.
That revelation is symmetrical, harmonious, progressive, and consistent from Genesis to Revelation. Through it, one increasing Purpose runs. To omit part of it is to break the continuity and frustrate the Divine Plan.
The Whole Bible is the Gift of God’s Wisdom for the Guidance and Blessing of Mankind: What kind of self-sufficiency or egotism is it that would cast aside thirty-nine of the precious God-given books and say, “The New Testament is all we need?”
Would it not be wise for such persons to stop for a moment and consider God’s words: “My thoughts are not your thoughts nor my ways, your ways: for as heaven is high above the earth so are my thoughts higher than your thoughts and my ways higher than your ways.”?
The Old Testament was the Bible Jesus used: It was the only Bible then in existence. He not only quoted it and most marvellously applied it on all occasions, but endorsed, corroborated and enforced it throughout His Ministry. Jesus called the Old Testament “the Scriptures” (Matt. 21:42).
In Luke 4:21, He told the people of Nazareth: “This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears,”
In Matt. 22:29, He told the Pharisees, “Ye do err not knowing the Scriptures or the power of God.”
Again, He told them in John 5:39: “Search the scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life and they are they which testify of me.”
What has happened to the Bible of Jesus that any professed follower of His should seek to discard it?
The Apostles found abundant use for the Old Testament: There are at least six hundred quotations from the Old Testament presented by the writers of the New Testament. They counted it an absolute necessity in order to present the Truths of the New Testament.
In all of their writings the Old Testament is used to validate all that they propose to present concerning the Plan and Grace of God. They made it the commentary and encyclopaedia to define Jesus, authenticate His deity, His mission, His message, His work, His sacrificial death, His burial, His Resurrection, His Ascension, His Exaltation, His mediatorial reign, His Kingdom, and His ultimate victory over all His foes.
Take out of the New Testament all references to the Old Testament, and the whole message of the Apostles would fall flat. Jesus fulfilled and confirmed all that was written in Moses, the Prophets and in the Psalms concerning Himself, thus establishing His identity as the promised Messiah. Surely a Book that does all that is worthy of our deepest study.
The Christian religion cannot be explained without the Old Testament. The Old Testament has been woven into all the doctrines, sermons, songs, prayers, sacraments and instructions of the Church through the centuries. Following the lead of Jesus and the Apostles, the Early Church made continual use of the Old Testament in proclaiming the Gospel.
In fact, it has been declared that the whole of the Old Testament, except a few verses, could be reconstructed from the writings of the Church fathers.
In the light of all this, we pause to wonder what exalted type of spiritual and intellectual Christians we have developed, who can afford to profess, publicly, that they can do what Jesus, the Apostles, or the Church fathers found impossible; namely, proclaim Christianity without the Old Testament. Throughout the New Testament, Divine Inspiration takes for granted that the reader is well acquainted with the Old Testament.
The New Testament is presented as a sequel, the complement, the fulfillment and the confirmation of the Old Testament. To approach the New Testament without having studied the Old Testament is like going into High School without a primary school education, The Old Testament furnishes the only authentic record of the creation:
- The creation of the heavens and the earth. The more true science learns, the more willing its endorsements of the Divine statements concerning the genesis of the material universe.
- The creation of man. Whatever may be the various hypotheses of the evolutionist, he is always unable to answer the question of the origin of life. In his attempts to produce life spontaneously, he has miserably failed. After all his research, tests and trials, the honest scientist is compelled to join with the Psalmist in the ascription of praise to God: “With thee is the fountain of life. Thou art the life of every living thing.”
The Old Testament furnishes the only authentic history of the races of mankind: The origin, characteristics, achievements for good or evil, and the ultimate destiny of the races — all of this is told in the Old Testament.
New finds of the archaeologist are proving all doubt that the record is correct to the least detail. In fact, the Old Testament furnishes little short of a university course in Anthropology, Sociology, Philology, and all kindred subjects. As a source book for the historian, it is unexcelled.
The Old Testament is the revelation of God’s plan for redemption: It is the only Book with an authentic and reasonable solution of the origin of sin and its effect upon the race. Only through the study of the Old Testament can one become acquainted with man’s primal state in Eden, the Fall, the loss of the Kingdom of God on earth and the gigantic plan of God for the salvation of men and the redemption of the nations.
Only in the Old Testament can we learn of God’s cleansing of the earth with the Flood, his re-establishment of the Kingdom at Sinai, and the prophetic descriptions of its character, its conquest, its victory, and the gracious reign of the Prince of Peace.
The Old Testament alone reveals in detail the covenants established by God with our fallen race: Every one of those covenants is in force today, and under them men must live for weal or woe. Some are conditional, some unconditional, but under them, we are living and they constitute the fundamental of our life, individually, socially, nationally and internationally.
There are fifteen of those Covenants [The number of covenants depends upon who is counting and by what criteria. We have expounded them all in substantial detail in our series The Covenants of the Bible, which has been serialized in our monthly Feed My Sheep teaching for many months to date.] — and what kind of folly is it one would remain in willful ignorance of them?
How meager the information of the man who says “the New Testament is the story of the New Covenant and that is all we need to know.” There could be no new covenant without an old covenant.
And positively no man can understand and appreciate the New Covenant without knowing well the conditions and penalties and the impossibilities of the Old Covenant. The man who discards the Old Testament rejects the divinely ordained schooling that God intends he should have in order to understand Jesus Christ, His mission, His message, His character, His atonement, His intercession and His reign.
All of this instruction is presented by God in a series of most marvellous object lessons, found in the symbols, types and ceremonies of the Old Testament. Therein the True theologian finds his most productive material for the explanation and definition of Jesus Christ and His work.
Little wonder that those who propose to discard the Old Testament have such shallow views of Jesus and present Him to the public in such an attenuated manner. [We have all experienced that shallowness as we have tried to share a deeper understanding of the gospel with our NT-only Christian brethren.]
The Old Testament reveals the Law of God for nations. Jesus abrogated the law contained in ordinances. At His death the veil of the temple was rent from top to bottom. But the laws, statutes and judgements given at Sinai, have never been repealed.
Jesus declared in Luke 16:17: “It is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one hair stroke of the law to fail.
In Matt. 5:18 He said: “For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.”
The Ten Commandments are an expression of the Divine nature and cannot be annulled. They were given as the law of life for all mankind. Grace saves from the penalty of the broken law, but does not abrogate or annul the law: the law remains the rule of Christian conduct. To make this certain, we find each of the Ten Commandments reiterated in the New Testament.
In the British Commonwealth and the United States the Ten Commandments constitute the common law of the land. As at Sinai, these countries have their form of government in a constitution, law, statutes and judgements, which constitute the only true foundation of national righteousness and will be the law of the Kingdom of God on earth.
The law of God propounded by Moses furnishes the only solution to the economic, social and political problems which now confront the world. Therefore, the layman or minister who discards the Old Testament cannot be a really intelligent citizen, nor can he have any well defined message for the age and country in which he lives.
Even the Sermon on the Mount requires the Law of Moses to define and concrete it as a rule of national life. No man can preach in its fullness the Kingdom of God on earth and the Millennial reign of Christ without the Law of Moses.
The Old Testament furnishes a marvellous description of the Kingdom: There is presented its origin, laws, institutions, spirit, blessings, unfoldment in time and consummation. The highest flights of the prophets describe it, but nowhere is it seen clearer in detail than in the Psalms.
The Psalms not only describe Jesus in His fullness, in language unexcelled, but constitute an anatomy of the human soul and furnish the highest vehicle of prayer, praise and thanksgiving for every experience through which a human being may pass in the journey from the cradle to the grave.
The Psalms are of the songs of the ages. There has not been a decade in human history since they were written, but they have been appropriate. They are the songs of Israel, written for Israel, and as the age expires will be revealed in their glory as the songs of joy and triumph with which to usher in the New Order of the Kingdom.
The Old Testament through prophecy furnishes the pre-written history of the world: The story of Christ and Christianity was told long centuries before His advent. The rise and fall of empires, the evil forces which should be loose in the world, their devastation of men and nations and their final annihilation all foretold.
The march of the kingly line of David down the centuries, the woes that befell God’s chosen Israel (Who is Biblical Israel today?) on account of their sin, the rebuke and cleansing they must receive before they inherit the Kingdom, all foretold for the benefit of those upon whom the ends of the world have come.
God not only deemed it wise, but made full provision through the prophets to inform us of this very day in which we live, with all that is transpiring in the world. Mid all the stress and strain, the frenzy and perplexities of these days, God intended that His children should know and understand what is taking place.
The early Church appreciated this loving mercy of God and studied prophecy. The source of their information was the Old Testament prophets. That made them children of the light and of the day. I wonder what kind of letter Matthew would write to those, in the pulpit and out of it, who scoff at prophecy and discard the only source of light, while they drowse in the midst of a world on fire.
Or what would Peter write to a people who, because of prejudice or indolence, ignore his admonition: “We have also a more sure word of prophecy, whereunto ye do well to take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn and the day star arise in your hearts. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.”
The day is not far hence when the Lord Christ Himself will speak, for He says: “Behold I shake not only the earth but the heavens also, that that which cannot be shaken may be established.”
There will be a terrible time in the shaking up and rattling down of the ecclesiastical systems as well as the political systems and a host who are now scoffing and deriding will come inquiring the way into the Kingdom. Let us reverently thank God for the Old Testament, for the knowledge of the Kingdom, the Law and the Prophets. END QUOTE
~END~
