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 N our previous
numbers we have set forth this promise and oath as found in the Old
Testament, and shown that the language of the New Testament, both in
its letter and spirit, abundantly sustains the certainty of the
fulfillment of the same: "In thee and in thy seed shall all the
families of the earth be blessed."
It is important that we understand what is included in blessing.
Blessings are divided into two classes, which we call antecedent and
consequent. The first is given to enable the recipient to secure the
other. Man needs and desires an endless life; but of himself he has
it not, nor the means to obtain it. God, in his love of man,
provides the means entirely independent of man, and blesses men with
those means without any effort on their part: they are presented as
a free gift: without this gift, man never could attain to eternal
life. This blessing is antecedent to any thing performed by man. God
proposes to confer on him a life without end, if he will approve
this blessing. This eternal life is a consequent blessing, and
dependent on the improvement he must first be put in possession of
the antecedent blessing; without which he cannot do anything,
because he is destitute of any means with which to do.
To illustrate our meaning. God has not only given man natural life,
but he has given him the earth or soil, the sun to warm it, rain to
moisten it, and to man wisdom to know how to cultivate the soil,
seed suitable to raise fruit for food, etc. All these are antecedent
blessings, a free gift of the CREATOR. Without these blessings man,
though he has life, could not produce food to sustain life.
Notwithstanding these unsought and free gifts of blessings, we all
see that man must improve them, or he will not receive food or
protract life. The produce of improvements is the consequent
blessing; and the man who would argue that because God had given him
the antecedent blessings, therefore he need make no effort to secure
consequent ones, for God is too good to withhold them, seeing He has
done so much entirely gratuitously, -we say, such a man would be
condemned by all thinking persons: blessings consequent are always
dependent on improvement; or, are conditional.
It is the antecedent blessings; or those which are essential to put
man in a condition to obtain eternal life by improvement, that man
needs in his helpless state. These God has provided, richly and
freely, in the Son of his love: but the provision itself would prove
no blessing if never known, and no opportunity ever given to improve
it. God, therefore has pledged himself, by promise and oath, that
"all the families of the earth shall be blessed." In Abraham and his
seed: that is, they shall have those antecedent blessings which are
necessary to enable them to secure eternal life; making that further
blessing dependent upon improvement-or, conditional.
"Faith" is the first and principal condition. "The Scripture,
foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith,
preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all
nations be blessed." - Ga 3:8. Is he a preacher of the gospel
who does not give the same testimony, or who denies that all
nations, not excepting the heathen, are to have the gospel
proclaimed to them, and an opportunity to secure eternal life? "All
nations" includes all the families of the earth; and "all families"
includes every individual of those families; hence, Jesus said,
"Preach the gospel to every creature." That commission, or command,
as we have said, embraces all that the promise and oath of God to
Abraham embraces, and is a pledge of the fulfillment of it; and God
gave Jesus "power over all flesh, that He should give eternal life
to as many as" God had "given him." - Joh 17:2. "All flesh"
-"all the families of the earth" then, are to have an opportunity,
or the means granted them to secure that provision in Jesus, His
only begotten Son, "he that believeth and is baptized shall have
life;" that is "eternal life." "He that believeth not shall be
condemned;" i.e., to death; or, "not to see life."
Our Lord thus fixes the final doom of the sinner on unbelief; which
would be no sin, if the individual had never heard the proclamation
of a provision made for him: hence, in order to a final condemnation
to death, men must have been blessed with a knowledge of God’s
merciful provision for them; a rejection of that provision fixes
their destiny in the dominion of death.
But the idea of a provision made, yet never proclaimed to men, and
death eternal inflicted for a sin of which they never could have
been guilty, is too much like the administration of an ancient
tyrant, who causes his laws to be placed so high as to make it
impossible for the people to read them, and yet punish them for not
conforming to them. Such an administration is not to be attributed
to the God who gave his Son up unto death for us "all, to be
testified in due time." - 1Ti 2:6. God’s time is not so
limited as our finite minds may suppose: and His time will surely
come, if not in this age, it will surely come in "the ages to come,"
- { Eph 2:7}, when "all the families of the earth will be blessed in
Abraham and his seed;" which "seed is Christ;" and "if ye be
Christ’s, then are ye," also Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to
the promise." - Ga 3:29. Hence, Abraham, personally, and all
his seed, by faith, will be concerned in carrying out God’s promise
and oath of blessing all the families of the earth: therefore, if
this present age is soon to end, another age, or ages, is inevitable
to complete the work of the promise and oath.
It seems to us that Christians, generally, do not yet understand for
what the present age was given. It was not given to "convert the
world;" for God well knew it would be a wicked and corrupt age;
"evil man and seducers waxing worse and worse, deceiving and being
deceived;" { 2Ti 3:13}; and that "the time would come when" men
would "not endure sound doctrine; but, after their own lusts," would
"heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; and... turn away
their ears from the truth, and be turned unto fables." - 2Ti
4:3,4. Such is the history of the present age; and God foresaw that
it would be so. Hence, He provided for "ages to come." { Eph 3:7},
"that He might show the exceeding riches of his grace in his
kindness toward us through Christ Jesus."
The nation of Israel having failed to become "a kingdom of priests,"
{ Ex 19:6}, by rejecting their King, God determined to "visit the
Gentiles, to take out of them a people for his name;" { Ac 15:14}; a
people to do the work that ancient Israel was called and set apart
to do, but utterly failed by their unbelief and final rejection of
God’s chosen King and Leader in the work of blessing "all the
families of the earth." From the time, the grand privilege of doing
this work was taken from the nation of Israel, "according to the
flesh," and thereafter a people taken "out of the Gentiles" were to
constitute the "kingdom of priests," at the head of whom, Jesus was
to be placed, as their King and High Priest, to carry out "God’s
promise and oath to Abraham," that, "In thee and in they seed all
the families of the earth shall be blessed."
The present age or dispensation has been, and still is, the age in
which God is gathering that seed of Abraham, of whom Christ was and
is the "first-fruits," and preparing them for their work of blessing
"all nations and "kindred’s of the earth." This dispensation, or
age, in which we now live, was not designed to witness the
fulfillment of the promise and oath of God, but to prepare a people,
freed from carnal and selfish designs, earnestly desiring not only
to see God’s promise and oath to Abraham carried out, but a like one
to Moses, by the same God, viz., "As truly as I live, all the earth
shall be filled with the glory of the LORD." - Nu 14:21.
This age, then, so far from being the final one, is only a
preparatory one, to prepare men and women for the great work of
blessing "all the families of the earth" in "the ages to come," of
which Paul speaks. Let our hearts be enlarged, then, on the subject
of God’s love to "the world."
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