Thanks Webmaster.
The Old Testament was reliant on the sacrifices of animals but could only roll sins back from view one year.
At the end of the year the sins were remembered again as well as the previous years. So these sins stacked on one another to heights unimaginable.
No one, in my opinion, could be born again during this covenant period. It could only point to an event (Calvary) that would take away sins once and for all and never remember them.
The Old Testament could only promise a new birth.
The New Covenant fulflled the promise in the death of Jesus...for the power of a promise is in its testament, that is, the death of the testator.
The old testament saints had their faith in that which was to come (the Messiah). And demonstrated that belief in the tabernacle which was the building that prefigured Christ (the building of God).
Their participation with the Tabernacle (death, blood and water, confession) would be a practice of faith to have their sins removed to give them freedom.
And after Jesus' death, He went and preached to the spirits in prison and set the captive free.
We can be set free while we yet live. We need only to participate in the death, blood, etc. of the true tabernacle which is Jesus the Christ.
You have to understand the sin of Adam. That when Adam's first son (and us) was born, Adam became the everlasting father of.....sinners.
Therefore, it would require a new birth in man's future to be saved, where another man would become his father. It was prohesied in Is. 9...that a child would be born, a son given. And His name would be ...the Almighty God, and the everlasting father. Jesus (the father in the son) would become our father at the instance of our new birth. He would be the everlasting father of the redeemed...the sons of God...no longer the sons of Adam.
Adam's sin had robbed God of the honor and priviledge of being our father.
Adam's disobedience lost the sonship, which was the relationship with God as father and began his own relationship with his sons (us-the offspring of the father of sin).
Jesus' obedience renewed the sonship.
If you are born again according to the scriptures...you have been cut away from your first father (that gave you your sin) and have taken on a new father who removed Adam's sin and gave you eternal life and not eternal death which was in Adam.
This physical body we now have from Adam must die so our new father, the last Adam, can give us the one He is the father of.
God truly, truly loves us dearly.
DMP