I have called the written Old Testament a pseudo law, meaning it is temporary. Does that contradict the Old Testament itself in places like Is 40:8 since the Old Testament is the eternal word of God? On the surface you could conclude it does, and many people will. But not when you realize the tabernacle, circumcision, the sacrifices, and the entire Testament itself were always meant to be temporary schoolmasters revealing other, eternal, truths. Once the truth was made manifest, it was needful that the schoolmaster decrease that the truth might increase. That is in no way contrary to the word of God; it’s in accordance with God’s word. But there is a more apparent proof that the written Old Testament is a pseudo law.

Let me lead into the written Old Testament with this: If I build a house according to a blueprint, is the house the blueprint? No, the two are different even though they are related. The blueprint preceded the house, and the house was built according to the blueprint, but they are not the same.

Technically therefore, in He 9:19 what Moses read to the people was not the law, because what he read was according to the law. According to means to make something agree, correspond, conform, or concur with something else. So the written law – called the Old Testament that Moses gave us – is a temporary pseudo law that is a type or picture of some other law that already existed before Moses went up Sinai. You could say this already-existing law that preceded the written Old Testament is the pseudo law of mortality referred to in Ro 5. That would make the pseudo law of the written Old Testament a type of the pseudo law of mortality that, in turn, is a type of the real First Testament Law of sin and death. Or you could say both pseudo laws are types of the First Testament Law of sin and death – take your pick. But the fact is the pseudo law of mortality was supposed to teach us some things, and the pseudo law of the Old Testament was another schoolmaster added because our transgressions continued. Therefore you can apply the law in Ga 3:23-25 to both the temporary pseudo law of mortality and to the temporary pseudo law of the written Old Testament.

Let’s examine some other reasons the pseudo law of the Old Testament is not a real Law in order to better understand why the Old Testament and the First Testament are different. These will help explain why Christians like David could wrongly break the pseudo law by committing adultery and murder, rightly break the pseudo law by eating the shewbread, and then escape the pseudo law by obtaining mercy. (This principle is the same one that allowed Lazarus to escape the clutches of the pseudo law of mortality.)

The first reason the written Old Testament is not a real Testament, and is not a real Law, and is in reality a pseudo testament, a pseudo law, is the fact that Jesus Christ did not dedicate it with His blood. The death of the testator is required in order for a testament to be in effect (He 9:16). Christ did not die for the written Old Testament and it was not dedicated with His blood – because He never intended for it to be Law.

The second reason the written Old Testament is a temporary pseudo law is it was dedicated with the deaths of calves and goats and sprinkled with their impure mortal blood (He 9:19).

The pseudo law of the written Old Testament is a type of the First Testament Law of sin and death. It is filled with laws that, if broken, could (but not necessarily would) lead to execution. Those laws are pseudo curses and are types of the real curse of the Law of sin and death. But remember, the message we were supposed to get from the Old Testament was not the letter of the law, but rather the schoolmaster or spirit of the law hidden between the lines. The true lesson of the Old Testament was grace. Grace requires us to have a merciful overview of the situation that combines a desire to obey the written pseudo laws God gave us with the knowledge that sometimes, like Christ, we’d have to take sin upon us, bear the infirmities of our weaker brethren by picking up sticks for the sick old widow on Saturday, feeding the shewbread to our hungry comrades, and helping our neighbor get his ass out of trouble on Saturday. In other words, our love for God would make us want to help the church because we know He loves it. Therefore in those instances when expediency would be better for the widow than letting her go without wood for warmth and cooking, we feel His love for her and present ourselves a living sacrifice by figuratively taking sin upon us and dying if necessary for the good of His loved ones. Grace involves all of that, and if you don’t first love God you just won’t get it. But, the reason I brought up grace is because grace and expediency are the true message of love in the written pseudo law of the Old Testament.

Because of the hidden message of love and grace in the Old Testament it should not be surprising to find hints in the Bible that the Old Testament is also a type of the New Testament. For example, the water that was mixed with the animal blood in He 9:19 proves those animals are types of the Lamb of God. But are they types of the Lamb whose “watery death” dedicated the First Testament back at the foundation of the world, or are they types of the Lamb on the cross? The first answer is obviously correct because the Old Testament is a curse just like the First Testament is a curse; so let’s focus on the also correct second answer. Until the Lamb became the flesh-and-blood seed of Abraham (He 2:14,16) all He had was water – no red blood. Therefore the animals Moses used, which had water and blood (and hyssop – cp. He 9:19 & Jn 19:29), are types of the two-blooded Christ on the cross dedicating the New Testament. That’s but another example showing that those who focus on the laws of the Old Testament are following in the footsteps of the Pharisees instead of learning the between-the-lines message of David and the Son of David: The Old Testament is a type of the New Testament – not just because the Old is faulty, but because the message of the Old is the same as that of the New.

Calling the Old Testament a pseudo law is a “kinder, gentler” term than those the New Testament uses: It says the Old Testament law was a “curse” (Ga 3:13), it was “carnal” (He 7:16), it was “weak and unprofitable” (He 7:18), it made “nothing perfect” (He 7:19), and it was faulty (He 8:7)! In addition, lest we mistakenly regard things that are carnal and faulty as if they were sacred, we are told that even things like the God-ordained “divine service”, which included the sanctuary, the shewbread, the tabernacle, the holy of holies, the ark of the covenant, Aaron’s rod, the tables of the Ten Commandments written by God Himself (Ex 34:1), the mercy seat, etc. (He 9:1-5), were, in fact, not “the way” (He 9:8,9)! That’s why no matter how many times the sabbath was kept or how many times the high priest offered a sacrifice, etc., they never satisfied the law because they still had to be done again and again and again.

The law establishes sin and that leads to death. In other words, law demands death. The Law of the First Testament demands the lake of fire, and the law of mortality demands mortal death. You and I inherited sin from Adam, so our mortal deaths are not acceptable sacrifices because we are not pure. Christ’s virgin birth severed the original sin connection to Adam, while Mary made Him truly human. Thus, His human, mortal, red blood was pure and He was a sinless and acceptable sacrifice Who could and would satisfy the law of mortality’s demand for death. (The virgin birth didn’t just make Christ uniquely sinless, it also made Him uniquely single, a bachelor, because, although He was truly human, He alone was not a bride of Satan. In that respect He is also uniquely male; He is looking for wives to serve Him, while we are looking for a Husband to serve.)

Because the literal Old Testament is a type of the law of mortality it was dedicated by the red “blood” in He 9:19. And because the Old Testament is also a type of both the Law of sin and death and the Law of grace it was dedicated by the “water” in He 9:19.

The Old Testament was flawed and temporary and needed to be replaced by the New Testament because neither the blood nor the water in He 9:19 was pure. How do we know it was flawed and without effect? Because what the sacrifices were supposed to do (Ro 7:1,2), they didn’t do. The sacrifices were supposed to be substitutionary mortal deaths that satisfied the condemning demand for death by the law of mortality. They were supposed to take our sins with them. If the sacrifices had worked, the Old Testament Christians would have been legally reckoned to be dead. That would have legally freed the saints from their consummated marriage to Satan and allowed them (when they died) to, in their spirit bodies, leave Satan’s house, his kingdom, by passing through the boundary of the Deep in order to be with God in the Third Heaven. But not a single one of the sacrifices or the lawful rituals performed in accordance with God’s pseudo laws of the Old Testament did anything! Because of that not a single one of the Old Testament saints was allowed to go be with God when he died; they all went to hell where all Christians who die in bondage to sin and the Devil go. Hell, though, is just a pseudo lake of fire; it is temporary, you can get out. For example, the Old Testament saints in the part of hell called Abraham’s bosom, once Christ paid for their sins on the cross and legally freed them from bondage to the Devil, left hell and went with Christ up to the Third Heaven. And all the wicked in hell today will get out at Judgment – and then be thrown into the lake of fire.

The Old Testament cities of refuge were types of Abraham’s bosom. And because the Old Testament sacrifices did not take away anybody’s sin, the Old Testament saints were all sinners and murderers (Ja 2:10,11) in desperate need of a place of refuge – or they would go to the fiery side of hell when they died. There may have been some discussion in Abe’s bosom over the centuries about how long they’d have to wait to be released. I’m sure some of them quoted Nu 35:25,28 and wondered if that might have something to do with it. When Christ was crucified and descended into Abe’s bosom, He probably included in His preaching/teaching (Ep 4:8,9; 1 Pe 3:19) the fact that He was their High Priest whose death liberated them from their captivity in this place of refuge. I’m sure His saints were again awed and delighted at the way He so wonderfully wrote His Book. By the way, Abraham’s bosom is yet another proof that Old Testament saints were Christian followers of Jesus Christ just as we New Testament saints are: They were priests (Ex 19:6) like we are (1 Pe 2:5,9), and they were waiting to be saved (from their city of refuge, Abe’s bosom) by the death on the cross of their High Priest, Whose death also freed us.

The Old Testament was dedicated with both animal blood and water. None of the animals was the Testator, none of them was an acceptable sacrifice, the blood wasn’t pure, and the water wasn’t really God’s blood. But why did God make Moses dedicate the pseudo law of the Old Testament with two types of blood instead of one? After all, the Lamb slain at the foundation dedicated the First Testament Law of sin and death with only one kind – immortal blood/water. And again, when Adam and Eve sinned and were clothed by God, only one kind – mortal red blood – was used to dedicate the pseudo law of mortality. The Old Testament and the New Testament, however, were both dedicated with two types of blood. Two types of blood were required for them because each testament had two purposes. Let’s work up to the explanation:

● When the immortal Lamb dedicated the First Testament it was for, and applied only to, immortal spirit beings because only spirit beings can live forever in the lake of fire. Since there was but a single purpose, only one type of blood suited that purpose – immortal water. Immortal water/blood is required for Laws and spirit beings.

● When the animals in the garden of Eden were used to dedicate the pseudo law of mortality, the law was for, and applied only to, mortal physical beings because only mortal physical beings have a temporary existence. Since there was only one purpose, a single type of blood suitable for that purpose was used – mortal red blood, which is required for temporary laws and mortal beings.

● When Moses dedicated the pseudo law of the Old Testament we must remember the law was a type of two things, the temporary pseudo law of mortality and the everlasting real Law of grace, which was later dedicated by Christ on the cross. Because the Old Testament was a type of the law of mortality, it required mortal red blood. (Therefore the part of the Old Testament dedicated by mortal red blood was the literal part with all of its laws and ceremonies. And the part of the saints the literal laws applied to was the old man. And if the old man was dead through Christ – like David – the saint was dead to the law.) Would it therefore be correct, because the Old Testament was also a type of the everlasting Law of grace revealed in the New Testament, for us to say immortal water/blood was required to dedicate the Old Testament? No, because the Old Testament was only a type of the New Testament and was only a pseudo law. Things that are not real and permanent cannot be dedicated with God’s immortal water/blood. That’s why God had Moses use plain water for the dedication – it was a type of the real thing. And because grace was hidden between the lines of the Old Testament, and because flesh-and-blood mortals cannot see or enter the spiritual Kingdom of God, this “grace” part of the Old Testament applied to the invisible new man, not to the old-man part of God’s people. The pseudo, faulty shewbread law only applied to David’s pseudo, faulty old man. And the old man is not, despite popular opinion, the temple of the Holy Ghost. The new man and only the new man is the temple of the Holy Ghost, which is why Mt 15:17-20 is true. The shewbread, cigarettes, pork, and greasy fast food do not defile the new man because they are consumed by the old man and are therefore, according to 1 Co 6:18, without (outside of) the (new-man’s) body.

Now we turn to the New Testament where we’ll find it to be, as we’d expect, consistent with everything else God has done. There was always a need for the New Testament because there were a couple of problems that needed to be rectified. (Please note that things that are not permanent and real are not problems. Therefore the pseudo law of the written Old Testament was not a problem and the pseudo law of mortality was not a problem. The two problems addressed by the New Testament were real problems.) These two problems were solved with two kinds of blood.

Mortal red blood: God’s people inherited the original sins of Adam and Eve. These sins made us Satan’s consummated wives. That was the first problem. Thankfully, mortal death, even though it’s not real, can legally be used to reckon us to be dead, thus making us pseudo free of our marriage to the Devil so we can be legally espoused to another Husband. The reason the mortal deaths and blood of the Old Testament animal sacrifices were not acceptable and didn’t work was not because they were animals instead of humans. Because of Ec 3:18,19 it didn’t matter whether a sacrifice was animal or human. There were two important requirements for the sacrifice: First, it had to be mortal. The reason the unsaved were called dogs was because no animal has everlasting life – they are mortal. That’s why Christ became a Lamb, an animal; it emphasized the fact that He was truly a mortal human – a beast (Ec 3:18,19) – who could die as a mortal sacrifice. The second requirement for the sacrifice was that it be without blemish, which ruled out all goats, sheep, animals, and humans. Except for Christ. This is one time history did not repeat itself in accordance with Ec 1:9,10, because up until the birth of Christ no woman had conceived a child without having a man contribute the fallen, sinful seed of Adam. The Bible told us in advance that Christ’s virgin birth would be unique and not a repeat of history: And when you let the word new in Ec 1:10 lead you to Je 31:22 which is a reference to Is 7:14, we discover our truly mortal and truly sinless sacrifice Whose mortal death finally did what the Old Testament could never do – free us from bondage to Satan and espouse us to Christ, thus solving the first problem.

Christ’s red blood was mortal blood, pseudo blood. Therefore it applied only to our mortal old-man pseudo body, and it applied only to the literal, written pseudo laws of the Bible. That’s why we are only pseudo free of the Devil. And it’s why we are only reckoned to be dead. Christ’s sinless mortal death allowed Him to fulfill the requirements of both the law of mortality and the law of the written Old Testament, and allowed Him to say on the cross, “It is finished.” That legally allowed His faithful saints to leave Abraham’s bosom and go up to the Third Heaven. If we are faithful we, too, shall go to the Third Heaven when we die. Thus Christ’s mortal death temporarily solved the problem of our bondage to Satan and allowed us to become His espoused brides.

At first, turning water into wine at Cana struck me as backwards. It would have seemed more fitting had Christ typified the resurrection by turning wine (bad blood that gives life to the flesh) into water. But when viewed from the perspective of a wedding, water into wine/mortal blood makes sense: We could not have wed Christ unless He became a red-blooded mortal Who could die in order to legally separate us from Satan so we could marry Another. The immortal Lamb with water in His veins had to become a mortal Lamb with red blood so He could die and free us from our first husband.

And that’s also why Moses (type of Christ) turned the river water into blood. The Nile, which is called the lifeblood of Egypt (type of the world), is given added significance because it flows north (making it also a type of the pure river of water of life). In order to free us from Pharaoh (Satan), the god of this world, Moses (Christ) had to change the immortal lifeblood/water into red deathblood. Only then could Moses lead God’s people out of the world, across the Red Sea, and into the Promised Land (type of Christ leading Old Testament saints out of their captivity in Abraham’s bosom/hell, through the Deep, and into the Third Heaven).

Immortal water/blood: From the perspective of a saint (and the angels in heaven) the mere existence of the First Testament Law of sin and death is stressful because there is always the possibility that we might someday fall from grace. That is the second problem. Why is it possible for us to fall from grace? Because we faithful saints are not now and have never been under the Law of grace. In fact, no faithful saint in history has ever been under either of the two true Laws. Bad saints like Lucifer and Judas are now under the First Testament Law, and once under a Law there is no remedy. The good angels were originally under the temporary state of grace. When the Law of sin and death was created they moved under the stressful and conditional scepter of grace. And that’s where we are today. We have never been under a Law. In order to make the First Testament an everlasting Law, the Lamb/Testator had to die and shed His water. The New Testament was dedicated by the mortal death and red blood of the Lamb/Testator and became a pseudo law because mortal anything is temporary. On the other hand, the Second Testament, which is revealed by the New Testament, in order to be an everlasting Law, had to be dedicated with the everlasting-torment-outside-the-lake-of-fire kind of death only God can suffer, and had to be dedicated with God’s immortal water/blood. When Christ, in agony on the cross, cried out with Mt 27:46, it was the everlasting torment of a combination of 2 Sa 18:33 and 2 Ch 32:31b. His watery death dedicated and made official, for the first time in history, the Second Testament, which is also called the Law of grace. Even though He shed His water/blood on the cross (and/or in the garden of Gethsemane), as of now absolutely nobody is under the Law of grace; we are all still under the stressful pseudo law of the scepter of grace.

Why are we not yet under the Law of grace? Or, to put it another way, why are we not yet under “eternal security”? Because we’re still Satan’s consummated wives! Consummation is permanent. Christ’s mortal death only legally allows us to reckon ourselves to be dead and free of our bonds to Satan; in reality we’re still alive. The good news is, if Christ wins the war, Satan goes to the lake of fire and dies. In the lake of fire he’ll not just be reckoned to be dead, and he’ll not just be pseudo dead (as in mortal death); he’ll be really, permanently, and irrevocably dead under the Law of sin and death. That doesn’t just make us legally free; it makes us happy widows who are truly free. When Satan and the Law of sin and death are sealed forever in the lake of fire we will no longer be under the scepter of grace and will, for a short time, be in the blissful-but-temporary state of grace. The state of grace will end when we attend the marriage supper of the Lamb and our union with Christ is consummated – something that could not happen until our first husband, Satan, died and made us widows. That marriage supper consummation is irrevocable, and that is when we finally come under the Second Testament Law of grace. No stress, no conditionality, no longer merely espoused, but finally consummated under an irrevocable Law for the first time, the Law of grace, the Second Testament of the Lamb that was dedicated with His death. That is eternal security.

But wait, couldn’t uncertainty someday return? Since the Lamb died back at the foundation of the world to dedicate the First Testament Law, and later died again on the cross to dedicate the Second Testament Law of grace, what if He creates a Third Testament Law of some kind by dying again in the future? First, even if He did it wouldn’t affect us because once we’re under a true, irrevocable Law, we can never leave it. (That’s why the Second Testament Law of grace cannot ever do Satan or Judas any good; they are already under the Law of sin and death.) And second, Christ will never die again (Re 1:18). Therefore no more Testaments. We have His word on it. And the bottom line is, by faith we accept, believe, obey, and live by His glorious word.

But what about the angels? If they were in the blissful state of grace back in the beginning and are now under the stressful scepter of grace, what will their position be in the future? Re 22:9 indicates that the angels and we are all brethren serving God. We also know from Job 1 that we’re all sons of God. And it seems that we’re all also His brides. For example, Lucifer fell from grace and was cast out, which is only possible for the cause of fornication, which explains the mysterious “from the beginning” in Mt 19:8. Another clue that the angels are espoused brides who are going through a trial period under the scepter of grace like we are is their fear that God might withdraw His extended scepter, which is implicit in the word durst in Jude 9. And another clue is 1 Co 11:10 which is related to Es 1:16-22. Since women are types of the church, if they have long hair it is a symbol, testimony, or witness to the angels that our women are obediently under authority. Men on the other hand, as types of Christ, are not to be symbols of servants with power over them. It looks like the angels are also living under the scepter of grace and trying to endure unto the consummation like we are.

Now that we have all that under our belts, let’s get back to our question of the first paragraph: What law governed us New Testament saints before we became Christians? It was the law of Ge 2:17 that Adam violated. Adam’s original sin made us carnal. The wages of eating the forbidden fruit is death. The forbidden fruit was carnality – knowing things on our own. Because of what carnality does (Ro 8:7), God removed us from His presence by making us mortal (1 Co 15:50). So, the actual law we broke was, Don’t be carnal/independent. The physical manifestation or reminder of our inherited carnality is our mortality (Ro 5:14), and the solution to being carnal is to die to self daily (1 Co 15:31; 2 Co 4:10,11; Ro 12:1,2).

If we’re now under the scepter of grace, by what law, if any, should we live? We should live as members of God’s family, which requires us to live in accordance with four verses in the Bible: Mk 12:30,31 and 1 Co 10:23,24. In order to do that we should live, sleep, eat, and breathe the Bible. It is our daily bread and it is how we get to know what God wants and how He thinks. The Old Testament is a necessary foundation because most of what God reveals about Himself is found there. The New Testament is the key to the Old Testament. It enables us to put it all together. The two complement each other perfectly.

Knowing and understanding the Bible enables us to walk circumspectly under the scepter of grace in accordance with the doctrine of expediency. Expediency means you do all you can to please God by obeying His Bible, literally. If you do that you’ll be a good example for other Christians. You might even go through your whole life without having to exercise the “emergency authority” granted to you by expediency. Remember, whatever you do should please God and benefit His church.

Expediency requires you to know the Bible. Only in that way will you be able to avoid the ignorant mistakes of the slothful, and the tunnel-visioned mistakes of the Pharisees. Expediency requires daily Bible study. And it requires your head to be doing something while it sits up there on your shoulders. You need to look around and analyze everything in accordance with the Bible. Doing that is how you learn to rule your body, your family (if you are, contrary to the recommendations of the New Testament, married), the church, and ultimately, the world under Christ. If you don’t practice the above you will never understand the authority and princely prerogatives of a leader as demonstrated by David when he fed the shewbread to the church, and by Esther, who broke the law by boldly approaching the throne, hoping to find mercy, grace, and help when the church was in need. That’s love, brother! And that’s the only law we’re under. All the other laws are pseudo laws. They are to be kept because right now they’re the only way we have to demonstrate our love for and obedience to God. And the concepts and principles behind those pseudo laws teach love for God and His people. That love, if real, will give you the understanding and strength Esther and David had.

This chapter has been written primarily around the various laws revealed in the Bible, and it shows how everything has been done in accordance with those laws. But I could just as easily have written this chapter around sex, marriage, fornication, espousal, divorce, and consummation. In fact, my understanding of them helped me later understand the laws in the Bible, which is why I put the marriage-related chapters earlier in this book.

The Bible is fascinating. And the more we understand it the more we love it. To know Him is to love Him.