Today we’re back to digging up what exactly it means to be in blood covenant with someone, especially God, and how understanding this fact can quite literally change your life. I’m digging into the first seven chapters of E W Kenyon’s book ‘The Blood Covenant’, one of those tiny little old books that are so potent and powerful they need to be brought back out of the dust and into the church today.
Just as there are stories and legends in every culture of a big flood and a boat full of animals, also in nearly every culture is some kind of blood covenant ritual. The word covenant actually means ‘to cut’, and missionaries to Africa would watch in puzzlement as tribes cut the covenant with one another, slitting their wrists and allowing blood to mingle, thinking it was some type of occult practice, only to discover that once they embraced the practice, and also cut the covenant with the tribe, it swung the door wide open to talk about the original blood covenant.
See when you go to someone and cut a blood covenant with them, it means everything they own is yours, and should you ever be in need of it, they are obligated to share it with you, and not only that, the rest of the tribe, makes sure they do. Likewise, everything you own is theirs, not for them to use carelessly, but in an honourable situation.
E W Kenyon in his book, ‘The Blood Covenant’ explains how there are three reasons you would cut a covenant with someone. A weaker tribe cutting a covenant with a stronger tribe to ensure they are protected, two business men cutting a covenant to declare that neither will take advantage of the other, and thirdly two men who love each other and are declaring to protect each other. (If you want do look at this in depth, there’s youtube audio clip of his book here)
In Africa, if a man was to break the covenant, even his own wife would turn him over to the offended party to kill. The other thing that would happen when two men or tribes had cut the covenant would be to pronounce blessings on the other for keeping it and also cursing if they broke it, which is interesting because in Deuteronomy 11 & 27, God had blessings and cursing pronounced over Israel depending on whether they kept the covenant He had made with them, first through Abraham and then with every male by circumcision.
When God entered into a covenant with Abram and Sarai, one of the first things he did was to change their names to Abraham and Sarah, meaning Prince and Princess of God, thus making them royalty and part of his family. Wow, what does that say for us in this new covenant? Have we ever stopped to think about what is available to royalty in the natural? How much more in the supernatural? We’ll keep exploring this new covenant truth over the next few days.
The covenant God had with Abraham meant that all Abraham had or ever would have could be laid on the altar if God declared He needed it, but also that God would protect and sustain Abraham. Under this thought, when God told Abraham to bring Him Isaac the very son God had given Him through the covenant, Abraham knew there was no other option.
This covenant though, gave Abraham incredible rights to intercede on behalf of Sodom and Gomorrah and God stopped and listened to him, and the benefits extended beyond Abraham to all his descendants. Incredible battles were fought in this covenant where God had pledged Himself to protect them, God declared ‘I am Jehovah that healeth thee’ and established an unprecedented covenant of divine health even extending to the womb, healing those that were barren. There was great wealth in that tiny nation and then . . . then they broke the covenant and were carried away to Babylon.
