Thomas Williams

“ When the "way of the kings from the sun's rising shall be prepared" the Sun of righteousness will arise with healing in his beams and shall burst forth upon a benighted world to spread blessings, peace and prosperity, where cursings, war and desolation have for many long ages blighted this beautiful habitable. Again we may go back to the history of Israel in their deliverance from Egypt; their crossing the sea and going through the much tribulation of the wilderness, and their final conquest of the land, and we have the history of a nation that will repeat itself upon a grander scale. ”

“ Why should we not receive with open hearts such grand promises which provide for Christ's rulership universal in all the earth which provide for the blessing of all families of the earth we which provide for the elimination of every vestige of the Adamic curse and for filling "the earth with the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea”? ”

“ Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt-offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of" (Gen. 22: 2) . To the mere natural man it appears cruel; but to one who knows God's power, authority and wisdom it is quite intelligible. Had Abraham reasoned from the standpoint of the mere natural man, to slay his son and heir would be to frustrate the purpose of God and defeat the plan the covenants of promise provided for. But was not Isaac's existence a token of God's power? ”

“ Now it is quite clear that the covenants of promise so far as we have gone, were made for the purpose of effecting human redemption through Christ: that Christ is the very essence of the promises made to Adam, to Noah and to Abraham Isaac and to Jacob From experience and observation we have learned that in dealing with these grand truths it is quite difficult to keep the religious people of the world from soaring into the heavens and imagining that the Bible has more to do with other worlds than with ours. ”

“ Previous to the Lord appearing to Abraham the second time to amplify the covenant, he was subjected to the severe test of offering his son his only heir, as a sacrifice to God. We have only to imagine ourselves in Abraham's place to realize what a trying ordeal it was for him to be the recipient of such momentous promises. Had he not been the right man in the right place, he certainly would have faltered and fallen under the weight of such responsibilities as he must have felt devolving upon him, by reason of being the one upon whom in the hands of God, depended such wonderful eventualities. ”

“ After crossing the waters of the Red Sea and washing away, as it were, Egypt's bondage and sin, they had to pass through "much tribulation" before they could enter under Joshua, their saviour, into the kingdom of God, which was known in the past as the kingdom of Israel. So now it is with Israel by faith, they pass through the waters of baptism and become the children of God. They wash away their sins and become redeemed, but have to pass through much tribulation before they can enter the kingdom of God. ”

“ For to admit that God will yet give the very land He promised, that the very land He did not give-shall yet be given is to admit the future inheritance of faithful Abraham and all of his like precious faith on the earth, not in heaven, in the skies, nor beyond the bounds of time and space and this necessarily' comes into collision with and entirely breaks up the theories upon which is built the whole structure of popular theology. ”

“ Israel has indeed been scattered among these nations, but a mighty deliverance awaits them. As Abraham left his idolatrous kindred and came from the "other side of the flood" and went into the land of promise; as Israel was delivered from Egypt and crossed the sea, passing through the wilderness and finally into the land of promise, so shall the nation of Israel again be brought from Egypt, front the "other side of the flood," pass through the depths of the sea and become a nation born in a day. ”

“ The first command given to Abraham in answer to his inquiry whereby he should know that he should inherit the land, is to offer sacrifice. This takes us back to the sin of our first parents which necessitated sacrifice in order that men might escape the curse which Adam brought upon the race. Had God never interposed in mans behalf, man must have died under the condemnation and gone into the perpetual darkness of the grave. ”

“ COVENANT WITH ADAM
Here, we may safely say is the first covenant of promise to be found in the Bible. While the promise is made in so many words the covenant feature is only implied The implication however is sufficient to assure us that a covenant relationship was opened up between man and his creator. The Scriptures lay down the principle that "without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin" (Heb. 9: 22) . A covenant, therefore, providing for man's redemption must always provide for a sacrifice for the remission of sins. ”

“ The words spoken to Cain, "Sin lieth at the door" (Gen. 4: 7) should be rendered "A sin-offering croucheth at thy door," intimating that an animal proper to be offered for atonement, and which Cain had failed to offer, was within reach. We may safely say that "Jesus Christ and Him crucified" was in the gospel or the faith known to our first parents, and that their offering pointed directly to Him, as all the types and shadows of the Mosaic law did, of which the apostles assure us. Here then in the Garden of Eden, as soon as man fell, we have a covenant of promise. ”

“ No one who has any regard for the Scriptures would force a claim that necessitates the admission that the Bible contradicts itself. There is no disputing the words of Stephen, and if the words of Nehemiah say the very opposite a contradiction necessarily must be admitted. Numerous testimonies show clearly that the promise has not been fulfilled to Abraham and to his seed; for it centered in Christ, and cannot be fulfilled until Christ takes possession of the promised inheritance. ”

“ We must, therefore eradicate from our minds the superstitious spiritualism of Paganism and come to realize that the Bible is a book that deals with things here on earth, here now and hereafter, but here all the time. ”

“ And hath raised up an horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David; as he spake by the mouth of his holy prophets, which have been since the world began; that we should he saved from our enemies, and from the hand of all that hate us; to perform the mercy promised to our fathers, and to remember his holy covenant, the oath which he sware to our father Ahraham, that he would grant onto us, that we, being delivered out of the hand of our enemies, might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all the days of our life. ”

“ Coming down to the time of Noah when the wickedness of man became great and God's justice and vengeance required the destruction of almost everything that existed, provision being made for the safety of Noah and his family and sufficient of the animal kingdom to give the world a fresh start, another covenant of promise was made. ”

“ While he had thus brought evil into the world, dethroned himself and become the subject of sin, resulting in the deplorable history of human affairs which followed, he placed himself in a predicament to become the subject of Divine mercy. This gave scope for the manifestation of the love of God, to show that His tender mercies are always manifest towards those who will believe His word and obey His commandments He does not leave man to die under the sentence and go down into dust without hope, but He comes to his rescue opening up a new relationship. ”

“ These pagans had filled the heavens with dead men's ghosts, and multiplied spiritual worlds without number, to which it was supposed that all liberated spirits departed at the hour of death, Thus the world had been alienated from the realities, of the truth of the Bible, and their minds carried away into the realms of fancy and fiction. ”

“ All through the trying ordeal Abraham is in anxious and intelligent inquirer doubting not the power and veracity of God but seeking "the substance of things hoped for and evidence of things not seen which is always well pleasing to God who even condescends to say to the intelligent creatures of his creation, "Come let us reason together". ”

“ The land to the extent described has never been possessed by Abraham's seed: the land promised lo Abraham has never been inherited not a foot of it by Abraham himself God has made oath that His promise shall be fulfilled Therefore the land to the fullest extent described in the boundary lines given must yet be inherited by- Abraham and his seed This is a simple matter, one that can be decided and has been decided geographically and mathematically In proof of this we here quote from an able writer. ”

“ Hence when Mary contemplated the birth of her royal son, Christ, she saw through this the fulfillment of the Abrahamic promises and exclaimed, "My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. ”

“ Here, no doubt, we have first a promise of the great nation which should come forth from Abraham according to the flesh, but from other testimonies we may be safe in concluding that there is a higher meaning still, and that the promises involved a multitude of Abraham's seed according to the spirit, as we shall presently see from other testimonies. ”

“ He is assured and strengthened by the words, “This (Ishmael) shall not be thine heir; but he that shall come forth out of thine own bowels shall be thine heir” (verse 4 ) . When Abraham was ninety years old and nine the Lord appeared unto him to renew the covenant and said. As for Sarai thy wife thou shalt not call her name Sarai but Sarah shall her name be. And l will bless her, and give these a son also of her: yea I will bless her and she shall be a mother of nations: kings of people shall be of her. ”

“ The rapid strides which Christianity made in the first century of the Christian era caused it to become popular to a large extent. Pagan worshippers saw that it was destined to sweep everything before it, and unless some compromises were made Paganism would utterly cease and go into ruin before the powerful advent of Christianity. ”

“ An offering which acknowledged the justice of God in inflicting death for sin and His goodness in granting remission of sin and release from its evil effects was esteemed very important, sufficiently so to cause God to have respect to Abel's obedience and to bring frowns upon the disobedience of Cain. ”

“ When these truths are presented to the advocates of popular religious theories they readily see that they undermine the whole superstructure upon which the creeds are built. They endeavor to escape the force of these testimonies by the process of spiritualizing Canaan and making it mean heaven. ”

“ The longitude of the river Nile is 30 deg. 2 min.; that of the Euphrates, as it flows through the Persian Gulf, 48 deg. 26 min.; or a difference of nearly 18 deg. and a half, or more than 1,100 miles. On the northern extremity of the land the range of Amanus mountains from the river Euphrates, to the uttermost sea, or extremity of the Mediterranean, scarcely exceeds 100 miles. ”