In our present age, when people believe that Christ died for their sins, they enter into a spiritual union with Christ. Instantaneously, the believer is spiritually united with Christ and seated with Christ in the heavenlies (Ephesians 2:6) as a member 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 Israel has always been required to perform certain earthly rituals in their worship. Circumcision was given through Abraham in Genesis 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 where they received the Old Covenant Law. Circumcision and the Passover were both 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 judgment 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 entered the promised land.

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

Joshua 5:5
5 For all the people who came out had been circumcised, but all the people born in the wilderness, on the way as they came out of Egypt, had not been circumcised. (NKJ)

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 did immediately after being circumcised.

Joshua 5:10
10 So the children of Israel camped in Gilgal, and kept the Passover on the fourteenth day of the month at twilight on the plains of Jericho. (NKJ)

Obviously, the rituals of the kingdom were set aside during the forty year postponement of the kingdom.

John the Baptist, the Lord Jesus and the disciples went to Israel preaching that the kingdom of heaven was at hand. After the Lord’s death, burial and resurrection, Paul revealed that this kingdom was to be none other than the New Covenant Kingdom promised by the prophets.

As God offered the New Covenant Kingdom, the believing Jews practiced all of the Old Covenant rituals as well as the New Covenant ritual of water baptism. God did many miracles to confirm the fact that they were on the border of the promised land once again. This time the promised land was planet earth, but as their forefathers had done so many years before, Israel refused to enter the kingdom because of their unbelief.

When Israel’s kingdom program was set aside as the end of the Acts period, God used the Apostle Paul to fully reveal the heavenly Church to which we belong today. The Church of our present age has no association with any earthly kingdom and, therefore, has no earthly rituals of worship.
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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/