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Lead me in Your truth and teach me - Psalm 25:5

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Articles: Introducing the First Covenant

Central to the purpose of the Bible, the First Covenant's seven touchstone principles constitute the foundation of civilization (as the United States Congress has declared. See the official Resolution below).

Noah, Meet Jacob

First Covenant spirituality and observance

In ancient times the Children of Israel called them "God-fearers." In modern times, after the Holocaust and destruction of the Jews in Europe, Israel called those few heroic souls who tried to save their fellows from the Nazis' genocide "righteous gentiles." The righteous men and women of every nation, according to the Hebrew Revolutionary Tradition, are blessed. Today, those who actively try to keep the seven universal principles which constitute the First Covenant are frequently called Noahides.

[A scholarly conversation, including the articles Man of Faith and Man of Law and Legalism and Spirituality. Ten papers posted before January, 2007. Papers by Alan W. Cecil, Jeremy Lawson, Adam Penrod, Michael Dallen, and Rev. Jack E. Saunders]

Biblical studies/Torah studies

Suppose you come from the vast majority of humankind, the more than 99.75 percent of humanity which isn't Jewish. In Hebrew thinking, you're a gentile, a Noahide, one of the non-Hebrew descendants of Noah. One who studies the First Covenant sincerely, in order to come closer to God, receives infinite blessings. He or she can expect to attain the same spiritual and moral heights as Israel's very High Priest!

From Genesis to 9/11, Islam, Israel,
the World and Amalek

One can learn a lot about God from the ancient Biblical Tradition. Scripture itself teaches - this will strike some readers as almost unbelievable - that He has friends and He also has enemies. He blesses those who bless the People of Israel and curses those who curse them (Genesis 12:3, 27:29). The people of Israel are "chosen," the Bible teaches (Isaiah 41:9), not for privilege but for service. Yet the Jewish people - a tiny fraction of the human race, less than one-fourth of 1% percent of the world's population - are just people, with all the good and bad that goes with that. But collectively, interacting individually with other human beings, they constitute a powerful force for holiness on Earth. Human history would be incredibly dreary minus the people of Israel. Whether individual Jewish people choose to or not, they serve God as an instrument: they challenge humankind, they provoke, inspire and upset the world; collectively, they help make humankind more human.

As for those people who bless the People of Israel, they themselves are blessed. It is a Biblical guarantee.

As for the great enemies of the People of Israel, who seek to destroy them, even to the extent of exterminating Jewish children, that unholy spirit is represented in the Bible by Amalek (Exodus 17:18). Amalek is a remarkable concept. Not every enemy of Israel is Amalek, but Amalek, particularly, hates and envies Israel - and, in fact, anyone who has God's blessing. Amalek lives practically besides itself feeling wronged and jealous. In every generation, those who incarnate this spirit - German Nazis, in the 1930s and '40s; Al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah and their like today - make themselves God's enemies. (See Deuteronomy 25:17-19). They have no pity and stop at nothing. They condemn themselves. They make the world more brutal.

Today, the reborn State of Israel is perpetually in the news. That this tiny nation, smaller than most American states - smaller, even, than some counties - with fewer people than Chicago, should be so obsessively hated by so many hundreds of millions of people, speaks volumes. It shows God's hand in history. Those who hate Israel so intensely make themselves, ultimately, the enemies of God and humankind. This remarkable phenomenon is explored in the articles below.

Every statement in Articles does not necessarily reflect the entire viewpoint of the First Covenant Foundation, its members, directors or trustees.                       

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