Hebrews 8:10

For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel After those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, And on their heart also will I write them: And I will be to them a God, And they shall be to me a people: And they shall not teach every man his fellow-citizen, And every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: For all shall know me, From the least to the greatest of them. For I will be merciful to their iniquities, and their sins will I remember no more. In that he saith, A new covenant, he hath made the first old. But that which is becoming old and waxeth aged is nigh unto vanishing away.

Here is given the balance of Jeremiah's prophecy of the new covenant, recorded in Jeremiah 31:31-34. Although said to be made "with the house of Israel," this new covenant has a much wider application than the old, the new Israel being in no way limited to the physical descendants of Abraham (Galatians 3:29, etc.); and yet, significantly, Israel is not excluded. The more spiritual nature of the new covenant is stressed, being founded upon the spirit rather than upon the letter; but perhaps the most astounding thing in the prophecy is the statement that there will be no need to teach men, saying, "Know the Lord," since all will already know him. How can such a thing be? Only by the requirement that one must know the Lord BEFORE he can enter his kingdom, can these words be true. This focuses attention upon the vast difference between the old and new covenants with regard to the manner of entering them. Men were physically born into the old covenant, circumcised the eighth day, and thus grew up as members of that religious community; and, as a result, all manner of irreligious and unconverted persons were legally associated with the old Israel. Thus it can never be in the new covenant. Infant membership in the new covenant is impossible, for one must know the Lord before he can enter the kingdom. As the apostle John expressed it,

But as many as received him, to them gave he the right to become children of God, even to them that believe on his name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God (John 1:12,13).

Only in the light of what is required BEFORE a person can become a child of God, and which requirement totally excludes infants and all others not of accountable age, do the words of Jeremiah's remarkable prophecy become clear.

Nigh unto vanishing away affords the strongest possible evidence that Hebrews was written before the destruction of Jerusalem and the cessation of the temple services; for if those events had already happened, it would be absolutely unaccountable how the author could have made such a statement as this. What a remarkable proof of his inspiration came in the sudden, total, and summary removal of all the salient features of the old economy when Jerusalem was destroyed so soon after these words were written. Our author said that it was "nigh unto vanishing away"; and within a span of five years, all that impressive ceremonial was utterly wiped away from the face of the earth, never to appear again!