American Christians are Biblically Illiterate Not Understanding the Difference Between The Old Covenant vs. The New Covenant

by Brian Shilhavy

It is becoming more and more clear to me that today’s American Christians are biblically illiterate, choosing instead to follow their favorite Christian leaders and what they teach about the Bible, rather than reading the Bible for themselves.

Now, I know that the phrase “biblically illiterate” or something similar such as “they don’t know what the Bible says,” is often a charge made by one group of Christians who believe differently from other groups of Christians, such as the divisions between Catholic and Protestant Christians, and actually refers to “doctrine”, or some written form of something that describes what a particular Christian group “believes” that separates them from other Christian groups.

I am not dealing with different doctrinal beliefs at all in this article.

I am talking about what the Bible actually says, which anyone can determine for themselves by picking it up and reading it.

To give a non-religious example, take the Constitution and the Bill of Rights of the United States, the political documents that are supposed to define the legal code of the United States.

There is great debate as to how these documents are applied today in a court of law, but there is no debate about what is actually written in them, because anyone can look them up and see what they say.

So for example, while there is great debate today as to the meaning of “freedom of speech” as is written in the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, nobody is claiming that the First Amendment does not protect free speech at all, or that only the Government can determine which speech is allowed in the public space, and what speech is not.

That would be absurd, and make the First Amendment meaningless.

And yet, after I published the article on the founding of Israel in 1948 last week, stating that this political-military action was not a fulfillment of prophecy, but a massacre and ethnic cleansing, I had several people email me and tell me that massacring whole nations and participating in ethnic cleansing most certainly can be a fulfillment of prophecy, because God has done it several times throughout history.

If they gave any examples in the Bible to support their claim, of course they were ALL examples from the Old Testament, none from the New Testament.

This is clearly an example of being biblically illiterate, and not understanding the clear division in the Bible between the Old Covenant instituted by Moses with the giving of the Law (Torah), and the New Covenant which was instituted by Jesus by his execution on the Roman cross, and his subsequent rising from the dead and ascension to Heaven.

Which covenant with God are we currently living under? The New Covenant, which was fulfilled and has now superseded the Old Covenant.

If anyone makes a claim that God continues to deal with groups of people under this New Covenant period as he did under the Old Covenant, it would be the same as someone standing up in a court of law in the U.S. and claiming that the First Amendment was never actually written, and that there is no freedom of speech.

We can conclusively state that this is NOT true, based solely on the textual evidence.

Now what if the person in a court of law in the U.S. makes the claim to a judge sitting on a bench in a court of law that the Constitution has been changed today, a couple hundred of years after it was allegedly written, and that the First Amendment is a forgery, and that it was not in the original text of the Constitution?

Can we prove in a court of law that this is not true?

Of course we can, because the Constitution of the U.S. and the Bill of Rights were copied and even translated into many languages over the past couple of hundred years, so that if someone ever tried to change the original document, we would still have all the thousands of copies of the original Constitution and Bill of Rights for the past 250 years or so.

The same principle is true of the Bible.

I realize that there are differences of opinion about which books should have been included in the Bible, a debate I am not going to cover in this article, but if we just stick to the ones that ALL of the canons accept (scholars who met to decide which books were inspired and which ones were not to be included in the Bible) which are the ones that most non-Catholic English Bibles today contain (the Catholic Church includes 7 additional books written during the period from the end of the Old Testament to the beginning of the New Testament), then we can definitively read what they actually say, either in the original language if one takes the time to learn it, or in the multitude of English translations.

And while people can criticize some of the differences in the English translations (as I do often!), none of them would state that God deals with mankind the same way today during the New Covenant, as he did during the period of human history under the Old Covenant.

This is about as basic as it gets, and yet I continue to get emails from Christians who desperately want to use the Old Testament writings to justify the actions of the Zionist Jews today towards the Palestinians.

So here are the most basic of facts as written in the Bible, which is clear to anyone who actually reads it for themselves.

The Old Covenant = The Law through Moses

The Old Covenant was the Law given to Moses for the Hebrew slaves that were brought out of Egypt by Moses miraculously.

It was a contract between the Hebrew people, descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who was renamed “Israel”, who were led out of Egypt to occupy the land that became known as “Israel.”

To please God and become his people, one had to follow the Law given to Moses. From the beginning, there were those who believed in God and followed the Law, and those among the Hebrews who did not, but were wicked.

Even under the Old Covenant, one did not become a part of God’s people just by ethnicity – one had to have faith and follow the Law.

Provisions in the Law allowed non-ethnic Israelites to participate in the Law and be part of the covenant people, either as full converts through circumcision, or as “God fearers” who followed the Law without being circumcised. (See the Roman Soldier Cornelius in Acts 10 as an example of one who was “a devout man who feared God,” but not a Jew.)

The New Covenant = The Gospel

The New Covenant was instituted by Jesus, which is referred to as “the Gospel”, where Gospel means “Good News.”

This “Good News” was that Jesus was the prophesied “Messiah”, the “anointed one,” who became the perfect blood sacrifice to redeem (buy back the souls of men enslaved to Satan to become free and belong to God) mankind.

Different from the Old Covenant, one now enters into the community of the people of God through faith, not by obeying the Law, because by obeying the Law everyone comes up short and is found guilty before God for not keeping the whole law.

Jesus kept and fulfilled the whole law, and therefore died as an innocent man, serving justice before God for the sins (breaking the law) of the entire human race.

The apostle Paul, one of the main writers of the New Testament, further defined the “Gospel” by explaining that under the New Covenant, we are all now “One in Christ” if we are among his followers, and that there is no distinction anymore between Jews and non-Jews (Gentiles).

Jesus made it very clear that Jewish nationalism was now over, and his last command to his followers was:

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:18-19)

“Making disciples” of course was exactly what Jesus had been doing for three and half years before he was executed, so his followers knew exactly what he meant, and he sure did not mean “Go out and commit genocide and kill anyone who does not support Jewish nationalism“!

No, Jesus was the rightful Jewish King, but instead of defeating the Roman occupiers as he could have easily done, he laid down his life to serve God and redeem mankind – The NEW Covenant.

His followers were ready to fight for him when they came to arrest them, but Jesus made it very clear that the age of “living by the sword” was over.

While he was still speaking, Judas came, one of the twelve, and with him a great crowd with swords and clubs, from the chief priests and the elders of the people.

Now the betrayer had given them a sign, saying, “The one I will kiss is the man; seize him.”

And he came up to Jesus at once and said, “Greetings, Rabbi!” And he kissed him.

Jesus said to him, “Friend, do what you came to do.”

Then they came up and laid hands on Jesus and seized him.

And behold, one of those who were with Jesus stretched out his hand and drew his sword and struck the servant of the high priest and cut off his ear.

Then Jesus said to him, “Put your sword back into its place. For all who take the sword will perish by the sword. Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then should the Scriptures be fulfilled, that it must be so?” (Matthew 26:47-54)

If you read the gospel accounts of the life of Jesus in the New Testament, you will read many other things that Jesus said and did that completely contradict the Zionist belief today in Jewish Nationalism, and the belief that the nation of Israel and the Temple in Jerusalem would continue to have relevance during the New Covenant period.

Here are some examples:

Jesus left the temple and was going away, when his disciples came to point out to him the buildings of the temple. But he answered them, “You see all these, do you not? Truly, I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.” (Matthew 24:1-2)

In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there. And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables.

And he told those who sold the pigeons, “Take these things away; do not make my Father’s house a house of trade.”

So the Jews said to him, “What sign do you show us for doing these things?”

Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”

The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?”

But he was speaking about the temple of his body. When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken. (John 2:14-22)

Now among those who went up to worship at the feast were some Greeks. So these came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and asked him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”

Philip went and told Andrew; Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus.

And Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.

Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.

If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him. (John 12:20-26)

The rest of the New Testament portion of the Bible is the record of the actions and writings of the followers of Jesus teaching about the New Covenant, and how both Jews and Gentiles can now know God.

But they met opposition from the Satanic Jews, the same ones who murdered Jesus.

In Acts 6 we have the story of Stephen, who was stoned to death for daring to state that the Temple of Jerusalem was no longer needed under the New Covenant.

The writings of the Apostle Paul also clearly teach that all the fulfillments of the Old Testament prophecies were fulfilled in Jesus Christ, and that there is no longer any divisions between Jews and non-Jews.

The New Testament book of Hebrews was clearly written to ethnic Jews, teaching them how all of the Old Covenant laws and promises were now fulfilled and replaced by the New Covenant, doing away with the Law and Temple worship, and how even the promise of the land of Israel was fulfilled, and that there is a Heavenly Jerusalem (Hebrews chapter 11 and 12).

There is NO Prophecy in the New Testament to Restore the Nation of Israel

Quoting Old Testament Bible passages to try and justify the atrocities of the Satanic Jews today, the Zionists, is to completely ignore the entire New Testament which defines the New Covenant.

American Christians who promote Zionism are clearly illiterate when it comes to what the Bible actually says.

I was trained in Zionism by one of the top Zionist schools in America back in the 1980s, as Christian Zionism was beginning to gain great political power through people like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson.

I rejected it then, and I will continue to publish the truth and encourage people to read the Bible for themselves.

There is no prophecy in the New Testament that states Jews will return to Israel. The Zionists like to twist some scriptures in the middle chapters of Romans (chapters 9 through 11), but if you read the first 8 chapters of Romans first, and put those middle chapters in context, you will clearly see what Paul is writing.

And the leaders of the Zionist movement who have the same theological training as I do, know full well that modern day Jews, or any other ethnic group, cannot be saved without faith in Jesus Christ.

Their entire argument hinges on the interpretation of end time prophecies from Daniel and the Book of Revelation, where they believe in those end times when Jesus comes back a second time, that there will be a conversion of ethnic Jews who will believe that Jesus is the Messiah in those last days, and that therefore, they have to continue supporting Jewish Nationalism.

But that is an interpretation, not a fact stated in Scripture, and ANYTHING written about the future cannot be proven true until those future events happen.

The founding of the modern day Israel in 1948 is an event in THE PAST, and did not fulfill any prophecies at all, because a massive conversion of Satanic Jews to Jews who believe in Jesus as the Messiah did NOT happen.

What happened was a MASSACRE and ethnic cleansing.

The TRUE conversion of Satanic Jews into Jews who believed in Jesus as the Messiah happened during the First Century, after the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and just before the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 AD.

Like the previous destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. by the Babylonians, there were a remnant of Jews who stayed behind in the land after the Temple was destroyed in 70 AD.

Those inhabitants who remained in the land of Israel after 70 AD became mostly “Christians” in the fourth Century after the Roman Emperor declared Christianity as the State Religion, and then many of them became “Muslims” during the 7th Century with the rise of Islam.

Today, they are the “Palestinians”, most of whom are Muslims, but many still remaining as Christians. They are the original inhabitants of the land.

The Jews who came and massacred them in 1948 came mainly from Europe, escaping the Holocaust, and are mostly not even true ethnic Jews.

So pick up a copy of the Bible and read it for yourself, or you are going to end up on the wrong side of history if you support Zionism, with eternal consequences.

But it is not as though the word of God has failed.

For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.”

This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring. (Romans 9:6-8)

For Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them.

But the righteousness based on faith says, “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’” (that is, to bring Christ down) “or ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead).

But what does it say?

“The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.

For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.”

For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him.

For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” (Romans 10:5-13)

Related:

To “Save” America will the Foundation of the Corporate American Christian Church Need to be Destroyed?

Exposing Christian Zionism False Teaching: God Saves Individuals, Not Groups of People

Published on July 2, 2024

10 Comments

Bill Moody July 28, 2024 at 9:58 pm - Reply

Another good question I like to ask my “christian” friends is: where is your current spiritual address? of course its clearly stated in Eph 2:6 that we are NOW raised up and seated in Heavenly places IN Christ (who is at the right hand of the Father FAR ABOVE ALL principalities etc. This is present reality….not future.  That means our victory is ours NOW,  Ro 8:2 is clearly present tense, not future tense. THIS is the New Covenant GOOD NEWS.  Faith trusts what God HAS done for us….Hope is believing that He WILL do something. We are saved by FAITH not hope.

Sandra King July 28, 2024 at 8:27 am - Reply

Brian, thank you for this article. I want to read more about what the Bible really says, and will look for more articles on this from you. I have read the Bible through but do not understand much of what I read. I look forward to reading more with more understanding of what I read with the help of your articles. Thank you. I already get your articles in my email daily.

J C July 27, 2024 at 7:19 am - Reply

I read this article weeks ago and re-read it this morning.  This article is timely as I had been pondering on how there is so much deception.  My family decided to read the BIble in a year all the way from Genesis to Revelation – not cherry picking scriptures as most people do.  After finishing the Old Testament, the New Testament took on a whole new meaning and things began to make sense.  And let’s just say going to “church” has been difficult.  I feel as if I need to repent after leaving.

It is hard to have a conversation with people who have listened to the lies for so long and now can’t grasp the fact that Jesus died for people not a piece of real estate.  Peter said “Truly I see that Elohim shows no partiality, but in every nation, he who fears Him and works righteousness is accepted by Him” (Acts 10:34,35).  “And I saw a renewed heaven and a renewed earth, for the former heaven and the former earth had passed away and the sea is no more” (Rev 21:10).  The Old Covenant has been renewed with the coming of Jesus and it’s about people not land.

Jay December 12, 2024 at 10:03 am - Reply

I started questioning this about 20 years ago a d at the time it seemed hardly anyone else did. Over the years it has made it so hard to attend church and like you i feel like i need to repent from sitting under false teachings in regards to this topic and how the modern church leaders believe it a d continue to teach it. I would love to find a church that has their eyes opened to the deception. But it seems there aren’t any around us. I have often thought i will have to move to Montana eventually to attend one that does.

Rodolfo July 5, 2024 at 5:10 am - Reply

Good article. What is most significant is for every false doctrine that a Christian believes, there is an equal portion of the spirit of God that they don’t have access to.  The parable of the 10 virgins comes to mind. The five wise ones filled their lamps (their souls) with oil (biblical truths) and the five foolish ones only did partially and lost out.

Dee July 4, 2024 at 8:39 am - Reply

What a clear and excellent article. Thank you.

Dean White July 4, 2024 at 5:31 am - Reply

For anyone who still thinks that the modern day “Israel” is the regathering by the Lord please read Isaiah chapter 11 very slow and intent. Notice in verse 11 of chapter 11 that this regathering is “the SECOND time to recover the remnant of His people” (KJV). Then go back up to verses 6-9 and ask yourself if ANY of those things are taking place ANYWHERE on the earth today. The first regathering was after the destruction of the temple and the entire nation and a captivity of 70 years. The nation was regathered (in part not whole) and what was later known as Herod’s temple was built. The temple and nation were again destroyed in 70 AD. Now, if the SECOND regathering of the remnant has taken place as of 1948 then those things as outlined plainly in verses 6-9 must also be taking place. Again, read those verses and the entire chapter slow and intently. There is only one conclusion that can be made, the nation posing as Israel today is a fake. It is clear from this chapter that the second regathering will take place at the return of Christ to the earth to rule and reign with a peace only to come upon his glorious arrival. 
DO NOT BE DECEIVED BY THIS FALSE ISRAEL AND THE FALSE PROPHECY THE FALSE PROPHETS BUILD AROUND IT.

Peter Vukomanovic July 3, 2024 at 6:34 pm - Reply

Brian you are biblically correct in that 1948 was NOT a fulfillment of Bible prophecy but IS instead a massacre of the people by the satanic forces of evil.
Their deception does NOT even live up to the test of the OLD Testament where God told his people that the promised land would NOT be like the land of Egypt that was watered by irrigation but God would water it from above with rain so that they would rely on God, and NOT on  Egypt. 
Israel today is just like Eygpt being irrigated and NOT believing God.
Israel today does NOT trust or believe in God and does instead what God told the OLD Testament people NOT to do … trust in the powerful army of Egypt  …. today’s equivalent of USA, for military might.

Jesus warned us “do not be deceived” because the false “christs” would precede the real Jesus and the ultimate false “Christ”  would be the antichrist who will delightedly enhance this deception to deceive even “believers”. I am afraid many who zealously promote Zionism  will be/are now utterly deceived.
The real promise is AT the revealing of Jesus at His second advent AFTER all the destruction revealed in the book of Revelation.
Yes we are under the NEW covenant. Present day “Israel” does NOT even meet God’s OLD covenant, less come anywhere close to the NEW.
The NEW is faith in the Lord Jesus Christ … the same God of the old covenant which was to lead them to Jesus. Sadly the vast majority totally reject the truth.

I admire your boldness in Christ
Peter

james conklin July 3, 2024 at 5:25 am - Reply

WOW, what a first read in the morning. Your previous post almost lost me because it’s a complex topic. In the US the support or lack of in this conflict is difficult to grasp because the issue requires some deep thinking and a foundation, yours being the actual bible. now i don’t know what to think, my first opinion is to not trust the government in any situation. Then there’s the whole 9-11 event that exposes the evil on top of all that covid. Sometimes I’m happy with my basic knowledge, Jesus is the way to the father, it has served me well for 62 years.

Brian-Admin July 3, 2024 at 6:18 am - Reply

“my first opinion is to not trust the government in any situation.”

That is wise. The government in the U.S. serves the Jeffrey Epstein banking system, built on child sex trafficking. It is thoroughly evil, and it doesn’t matter which party holds office.