The Promises Made to The Fathers (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob), Yet To Be Fulfilled In the Setting Up Of the Kingdom Of God Upon Earth, continued

If any one doubt that this will be in the very land promised to the fathers, and in which they wandered as strangers, let him read the following testimonies from the prophets:--

"The Lord shall inherit Judah his portion in the Holy Land, and shall choose Jerusalem again" (Zech. 2v 12).

"But upon Mount Zion shall be deliverance, and there shall be holiness; and the house of Jacob shall possess their possessions . . . And the captivity of this host of the children of Israel shall possess that of the Canaanites, even unto Zarephath; and the captivity of Jerusalem, which is in Sepharad, shall possess the cities of the south. And saviours shall come up on Mount Zion to judge the Mount of Esau; AND THE KINGDOM SHALL BE THE LORD'S" (Obadiah 17, 20, 21).

"In that day, saith the Lord, will I assemble her that halteth, and I will gather her that is driven out, and her that I have afflicted. And I will make her that halted a remnant, and her that was cast far off a strong nation; and the LORD SHALL REIGN OVER THEM IN MOUNT ZION FROM HENCEFORTH, EVEN FOR EVER. And thou, O tower of the flock, the stronghold of the daughter of Zion, unto thee shall it come, even the first dominion: the kingdom shall come to the daughter of JERUSALEM" (Mic. 4v 6-8).

"Then will I remember My covenant with Jacob, and also My covenant with Isaac, and also My covenant with Abraham will I remember; AND I WILL REMEMBER THE LAND" (Lev. 26v 42).

"Then will the Lord be jealous for His LAND, and pity His people" (Joel 2v 18).

"Fear not, O LAND; be glad and rejoice; for the Lord will do great things" (Joel 2v 21).

"A LAND which the Lord thy God careth for; the eyes of the Lord thy God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year even unto the end of the year" (Deut. 11v 12).

"And the desolate land shall be tilled, whereas it lay desolate in the sight of all that passed by; and they shall say, This land that was desolate is become LIKE THE GARDEN OF EDEN, and the waste and desolate and ruined cities are become fenced, and are inhabited. Then the heathen that are left round about you shall know that I the Lord build the ruined places, and plant that that was desolate; I THE LORD HAVE SPOKEN IT, AND I WILL DO IT" (Ezek. 36v 34-36).

"For the Lord shall comfort ZION; He will comfort all her waste places; and He will make her wilderness LIKE EDEN, and her desert LIKE THE GARDEN OF THE LORD; joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving, and the voice of melody" (Isa. 1i, 3).

"Thou shalt no more be termed Forsaken; neither shall THY LAND any more be termed Desolate, but thou shalt be called Hephzibah, and thy land Beulah; for the Lord delighteth in thee, and thy land shall be married" (Isa. 62v 4).

"Whereas thou hast been forsaken and hated, so that no man went through thee, I will make thee an eternal excellency, a joy of many generations" (Isa. 9v 15).

When the state of things depicted in these testimonies passes out of the domain of prophecy into that of accomplished fact, the "city having foundations" and the "heavenly country," which were the objects of faith with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and the subject of promise to them, will be realised. The Scriptural meaning of these phrases will then be exemplified. Orthodox interpreters of Paul make them apply to "heaven above the skies": they overlook the fact, that the promises related to the land in which the fathers sojourned; and forget the absurdity of calling heaven a "heavenly country." Palestine will be a heavenly country when Christ, having re-established the kingdom of David, rules in it as monarch of the whole earth: and his kingdom will be "a city having foundations," for it will stand upon a rock which no rude assault of rebellion whether of democrats or kings, will be able to shake.

It will be observed that Abraham's "seed" is joined with Abraham himself in the promises. Paul says that this seed is Christ (Gal. 3v 16), and all who are Christ's (verse 29). In view of this, we are bound to give an application to the promises which may be a little startling to those who have hitherto read the Bible with an orthodox bias, but which is the only application that a rational reading and a child-like belief in the promises can admit, and that is, that Christ and the saints are destined, in conjunction with Abraham, who, in fact, will be one of them, to possess and occupy "the land of Israel." From this conclusion, the orthodox mind will doubtless recoil with horror. This is owing to the perverted condition of the orthodox mind, and not to the nature of the conclusion itself. What is there in the conclusion to justify horror? Is it not a beautiful and a fitting conclusion? If it is the purpose of God to rule mankind by Christ and his people, it is meet that they should have a centre of operations and headquarters somewhere on the earth. And where could a more appropriate spot be found than the land promised to. Abraham?

Palestine is situate at the conjunction of the three great continents of the eastern hemisphere, and can be approached from any quarter on the great oceans. It is the natural centre of universal government; both for commerce and law-giving, it stands in the finest situation there is on earth. In addition to this, it is the locality that has witnessed all God's operations in the past, down to the very crucifixion of His Son, and the sending forth of the gospel; and what more fitting than that it should be the place fixed upon for the resumption of His great and mighty acts? The scene of Christ's humiliation; what more befitting than that it should witness his exaltation as monarch of all the earth? But these considerations pale before the strength of the promise. Nothing is needed after the testimony :--

"The law shall go forth of ZION, and the word of the Lord from JERUSALEM" (Mic. 4v 2).

"The redeemed of the Lord shall return, and come with singing UNTO. ZION; and everlasting joy shall be upon their head; they shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and mourning shall flee away" (Isa. 51v 11).

"Rejoice ye with Jerusalem, and be glad with her, all ye that love her; rejoice for joy with her, all ye that mourn for her, that ye may suck and be satisfied with the breasts of her consolations; that ye may milk out, and be delighted with the abundance of her glory As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you; and ye shall be comforted IN JERUSALEM" (Isa. 66v 10, 13).

"Thine eyes shall see JERUSALEM a quiet habitation, a tabernacle that shall not be taken down; not one of the stakes thereof shall ever be removed, neither shall any of the cords thereof be broken For the Lord is our judge, the Lord is our king; He will save us" (Isa. 33v 20, 22). "He will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and the vail that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces .... In that day shall this song be sung in the land of Judah" (Isa. 25v 7, 8: 26v 1).

"The Redeemer shall come to ZION, and unto them that turn from transgression in Jacob" (Isa. 59v 20).

"At that time they shall call JERUSALEM the throne of the Lord" (Jer. 3v 17).

"Moreover, when ye shall divide by lot the land for inheritance, ye shall offer an oblation unto the Lord, AN HOLY PORTION OF THE LAND; the length shall be the length of five and twenty thousand reeds, and the breadth shall be ten thousand. (English measurement, 43 miles by 17). This shall be holy in all the borders thereof round about . . . the sanctuary of the Lord shall be in the midst thereof" (Ezek. 45v 1: 48v 10).

"And they (the nations at the end of the thousand years) went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed THE CAMP OF THE SAINTS about, and the BELOVED CITY; and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them" (Rev. 20v 9).

These quotations from the Scriptures illustrate the fulfilment of the promise to Abraham as regards his seed--"Christ and the saints." They show the sense in which the promise is to be understood, and that is the obvious sense, the plain sense, viz., that when the kingdom of God is established, and Abraham inherits the land, his seed, constituting the divine encampment, will be in the land with him, and in a particular part of it, to be allotted for. that purpose. This allotment, which will include the territory of Judah and Jerusalem, will, as we shall see in another lecture, contain an area of about 1,784 square miles, which will be ample enough for the pavilions of the king to be spread on a scale becoming the grandeur and majesty of the kingdom. Abraham's seed--the bride, the Lamb's wife--the totality of those who, being "called, and chosen, and faithful," are "the first fruits unto God and unto the Lamb," and found worthy of reigning with Christ, will be a numerous progeny; but not too numerous for the country allotted. "Many are called; but few are chosen." "Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life and few there be that find it."

True, John describes this few as "a great multitude which no man could number" but this must be taken as expressing the aspect which a large assembly of people would present to the eye, and not as the statement of an arithmetical fact. The expression could never be true in the absolute sense, for numbers can be computed indefinitely; but in the sense of a crowd being so large and dense as that a man could not reckon them, it is quite appropriate. How many people does the reader think could be accommodated with standing room in the section of country to be set apart, according to Ezekiel, for "an holy oblation". Nearly half the population of the globe: that is to say, about five-hundred millions. The calculation is very simple; it is easy to ascertain how many people could stand in a square mile; multiply that number by the number of square miles--l,784--and you have the result stated. We make these apparently unnecessary remarks on account of the objection raised to the Bible teaching concerning the inheritance of the Holy Land by Jesus and the saints, on the score of the impossibility of such a little place holding them all.

The objection arises from two mistakes; first, the place is not so little; and, second, the number who will be with Christ is not so great as popular tradition presumes. At the end of the thousand years, there will be a great harvest to be reaped, as the result of the thousand years dispensation of light and knowledge; but at the beginning, the number to be associated with Christ as the seed. of Abraham, to cooperate with him in the blessing of the nations, will be on the limited scale of "first fruits "; they are styled "the first fruits unto God and to the Lamb" (Rev. 14v 4).

3rd.--That Christ, the seed of Abraham, is to conquer the world.--This is the third feature of the promise made to Abraham. It is expressed in the words "Thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies." To apprehend the significance of this statement, it is necessary to remember that in Oriental countries, in ancient times, the gate of a city was the seat of authority. It was the place where consultations were held, decrees issued and registered, and where the rulers showed themselves to receive the obeisance of the people. For an enemy to possess this place, then, was to give evidence of having conquered and deposed the original holders of power.

"Ye shall see Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets, in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrust out. And they shall come from the east, and from the west, and from the north, and from the south, and shall sit down in the kingdom of God" (Luke 13v 28, 29).