When a person accepts, by faith, that Christ died for their sins, a spiritual union takes place between that person and Jesus Christ. At that moment of faith, the believer is spiritually united with Christ and seated with Christ in the heavenlies (Eph 2:6) as a member of the Church which is the Body of Christ.

God’s earthly program, on the other hand, has always been administered by the nation of Israel, and they have always been required to perform certain earthly rituals in their worship of the Lord. Circumcision was given through Abraham in Gen 17, and the Passover was given through Moses in Exodus 12. As the children of Israel prepared to eat the first Passover and leave the land of Egypt, God instructed them that no uncircumcised male could partake of the Passover.

Three months after leaving Egypt, the nation of Israel came to the foot of Mt. Sinai. There Moses received the Old Covenant Law, and both the practice of circumcision and the Passover became required observances of the law. Ten months after they arrived at Mt. Sinai, they partook of the second Passover feast, and one month later, the nation of Israel left for the promised land.

The Lord led them to the border of the land of Canaan, and there at Kadesh Barnea the nation of Israel refused to enter the land. Their lack of faith brought the judgement of God, and they were sentenced to wander in the wilderness for forty years. After forty years, they came back to the land of Canaan, crossed the Jordan River and, by faith, entered the promised land.

While the children of Israel were in the wilderness, they did not practice circumcision.

Josh 5:5
5 Now all the people that came out were circumcised: but all the people that were born in the wilderness by the way as they came forth out of Egypt, them they had not circumcised (KJV)

Therefore, after forty years in the wilderness, the nation of Israel entered the promised land, and there on the plains of Jericho, the men were circumcised. Only then could they partake of the Passover, which they immediately after being circumcised.

Josh 5:10
10 And the children of Israel encamped in Gilgal, and kept the passover on the fourteenth day of the month at even in the plains of Jericho. (KJV)

Israel’s Old Covenant Kingdom was set aside as she wandered in the wilderness, and the rituals which were designed for kingdom worship were not observed.

From the time of John the Baptist to the end of the book of Acts, the nation of Israel was offered the New Covenant Kingdom. The Jews continued their observance of the Old Covenant customs, while Jews (and Gentiles after Paul) experienced water baptism and miracles, wonders and signs. This time Israel was on the border of an even greater promised land. Again, they refused to enter because of their unbelief.

God set aside the program of the New Covenant Kingdom, and Israel, as a nation, has been wandering in the wilderness from that time until now. All of the earthly rituals and signs associated with the Old and New Covenant Kingdoms have been set aside.

Even as Israel was rejecting the earthly kingdom in the Acts period, the scriptures indicate that God was secretly building the Church to which we belong in the heavens. When Israel's kingdom program was set aside, God began to reveal, through the Apostle Paul, this heavenly Church and its associated program or dispensation. This dispensation included no earthly rituals of worship, and the signs and wonders ceased.

Col 2:10-12
10 and you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power.
11 In Him you were also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the sins of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ,
12 buried with Him in baptism, in which you also were raised with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead. (NKJ)

Write me at: jimjoan77@juno.com

Other church links:
http://www.peacechurch-ok.org/
http://www.eleventhavenuechurch.com/
http://gracebiblechurch-fw.com/

James III’s link:
http://www.jeditime.blogspot.com