While the earth remains
Matthew 24:35. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.
While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease,” Genesis 8:22.
Sunday, 21 Jun 2026 at 10:24 AM, is the official time that marks the winter solstice in the Southern atmosphere and the summer solstice in the Northern hemisphere. Seasons are primarily regulated by the tilt of the earth's axis as it orbits the sun at approximately 23.5 degrees. As the earth spins on its axis, producing night and day, it also moves about the sun in an elliptical, elongated circle, that requires about 365 ¼ days to complete. Earth orbits around the sun at a speed of 67,100 miles per hour or 30 kilometres per second. That's the equivalent of traveling from Rio de Janeiro to Cape Town, or alternatively from London to New York in about 3 minutes.
The enormity of the precision and the consistency of the galaxies is beyond human comprehension, yet the Creator of all this, made a covenant with Noah after the flood and said that as long as earth remains these cycles will continue.
The Noahic covenant initiated God’s redemption plan after the Flood. This covenant is recorded in Genesis 8:22. God said to Noah that He will never destroy the earth again with a flood. This was approximately 4 370 years ago. From the line of Noah, 10 generations later, Abraham became the man who God called out of Ur of the Chaldeans. God made a covenant with him, which states, “Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonours you, I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed,’” Genesis 12:1-3.
Fast forward to the Exodus of Israel from Egypt in 1446 BC, God made a covenant with the people of Israel. The Mosaic Covenant is a significant covenant in both the redemptive history of mankind and the history of the nation of Israel through whom God sovereignly chose to bless the world. Exodus 19:5 describes this bilateral covenant. “Now therefore, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, you shall be My treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine”.
Generations later, God made His covenant with David. "I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for My name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever", 2 Samuel 7:16. That the first part of the covenant was fulfilled in David’s son, Solomon, is recorded 1 Kings 6. The text records that Solomon built a house for the Lord in his 4th year on the throne, 480 years after Israel came out of Egypt, fulfilling the first part of the covenant.
This covenant was not annulled when Israel and Judah sinned, although they were exiled, the covenant remained. Approximately 582 years after the exile of Judah to Babylon, Jesus is born in Bethlehem, Judea. This fulfilled the second part of the covenant, “I will establish the throne forever.”
Judea was under the rule of the Roman Empire when Pontius Pilate was the governor and Herod was the tetrarch of Galilee. In this hostile environment Jesus, Who began His ministry in the 15th year of Tiberius, 27 AD, preached the message of the Kingdom: The kingdom that would be established forever. Jesus was crucified 3 ½ years later, but on the evening of Passover, Jesus introduced a New Covenant. “And likewise, the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood”, Luke 22:20.
Ezekiel prophesied about this covenant approximately 580 years before the crucifixion. “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: ‘I will put My law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be My people’”, Jeremiah 31:31-33.
The word for covenant in Hebrew is בְּרִית biryth. This noun is derived from the verb ברה barah, Strong's #1262, which means "to select the best." The word is spelled beyt-resh-hey. The letters beyt and resh, spells the word bar, which is the Aramaic equivalent of the Hebrew word for son. The letter hey speaks of revelation. Read together, barah means the Son revealed. It is clear that from the very first covenant that God made with Noah, the redemption plan would be fulfilled in Jesus as the very word covenant means the Son revealed. God so loved the world that He gave His only Son.
As sure as there has not been a flood that destroyed the earth since the days of Noah, and as sure as God made the name of Abraham great as he is the father of the three major religions, Judaism, Islam and Christianity, and as sure as Jesus fulfilled the prophesy of Jeremiah with His first coming, so certain it is that God will establish the throne of David forever as He promised in 2 Samuel 7:16.
The very words of Genesis 8:22, which speaks of the consistency of the seasons, also applies to the Word of God. Psalm 119:89 states that God’s Word is forever settled in heaven. Jesus is the Word and He promised His disciples He was going to prepare a place for them and that He will return to receive them unto Himself, John 14. At the end of age, when Jesus returns, He will reign eternally and of the His government there will be no end.
Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away, Matthew 24:35.
