by John Thomas

“ It is to be to Abraham according to his faith; and this is the rule for everyone else. We shall inherit what we have faith in. If we have an understanding faith in the truth, we shall inherit the truth; but if we believe in what is not true, and therefore visionary, we shall inherit nothing but the whirlwind. Now, if it be asked, What is the truth?-the answer is, the things which Abraham believed, with the acknowledgment that Jesus is the Seed spoken of in the promises made to him. It is, therefore, essential to our salvation that we be familiar with the matters of his faith. ”

“ To pass, or to be introduced, into a man is to sustain a relationship towards him of faith, affection, and allegiance, as prescribed.
No person, or nation, can introduce themselves into a man; their induction, in other words, must be according to prescription, and not according to their own appointment. God, or he to whom, as His "Apostle," or Ambassador, He has committed all authority, is the only person that can prescribe the formula of induction. Mankind are diseased, and cannot cure themselves. "The blessing of Abraham" is for their restoration to health and happiness. ”

“ Neither Egypt of old, nor Britain and America of modern times, can say," We are the people of the Lord." God has never called these nations "My people," for they have never been the subjects of political adoption as Israel were. State religions are established upon the hypothesis that the people are God's people and, therefore, as acceptable worshippers as the Jews under the law; and that they are constitutionally" in God the Father and in the Lord Jesus Christ." Hence, they call the nations of Europe "Christian nations." ”

“ Faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect. And the scripture was fill-filled which saith, Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto his for righteousness: and he was called the friend of God. Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and NOT by faith alone. (James 2:21-24)
I have termed it a twofold justification by way of illustration; but it is, in fact, only one. The two stand related as cause and effect; faith being the motive principle it is a justification which begins with the remission of sins that are past, and is perfected in obedience unto death. ”

“ But when we contemplate the nations now in Satan, and Israel scattered to the four wiuds, and compare their present condition with what is to be when they all serve Christ and are blessed in him and Abraham, we perceive the womb of futurity to be pregnant of a mighty chang; and one, too, which cannot be effected by mild and persuasive measures. The time for persuasives has passed away. The nations turn a deaf ear to everything which is not in harmony with their lusts. ”

“ It was an unbearable yoke of bondage; and a law which no man horn of the will of the flesh had been able to keep without sin. If, then, a man sought to obtain a right to an everlasting possession of the land by obedience to it, he had undertaken an impossibility; for the law, on account of human weakness, could give no one a right to live for ever; and without life eternal a man could not everlastingly possess the land; and this life no one can attain to who is not justified from all his past sins ”

“ These are men in the flesh, Jews and Gentiles, whose lives and fortunes will be at the disposal of the Royal Family of God. The members of this social circle are not known now by the world, which has set its affections upon those who mislead it, teaching it to look for a visionary elysium beyond the skies! But such leaders as these have no light in them, for they do not speak according to the law and the testimony. ”

“ When the time shall come for the kingdom to be possessed, it will be said to the heirs of it, "Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world." From this, it appears that the work of preparing the kingdom takes from the foundation of the world to the resurrection of the dead. All this time the kingdom is preparing; but when the King descends, and rebukes the nations, and wastes the land of Nimrod with the sword, and makes Israel a strong nation, it will then be said that the kingdom is prepared. ”

“ The apostle, therefore, asks if they do not know that they will sit judicially, and dispense justice to the world, according to the divine law; and because this is their destiny he positively forbids believers in the covenants of promise to submit themselves to the judgment of the unjust. It is better, says he, for one to be defrauded than to submit to such a humiliation. Let the heirs of the world arbitrate their own affairs in the present state; for it is a strange thing if men, whose destiny is to judge the world and angels, cannot settle things pertaining to this life. ”

“ By anticipation; for, says the apostle, "God, who makes alive the dead, styles the not being as being" -- that is, God's promise is so certain to be fululled, that He speaks of what is to be as though it were past. He has promised to raise Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who, while dead, have no being; and as He cannot lie, their restoration to being is inevitable. God therefore speaks of them as though they had already been raised from the dead, and "is not ashamed to be called their God." God is not the God of dead men who are not to rise again. ”

“ The Judaizers argued that a right to Canaan when made a heavenly country under Christ, was derived from the law of Moses; the apostle denied this, and maintained that the law could give no title to it. That it could only be obtained "through the righteousness of the faith"; "for the promise that he should be the heir of the world" was not to Abraham, or to his seed, through the law, but through the righteousness of faith. For if they who are of the law be heirs, faith is made void, and the promise is made of none effect: because the law worketh wrath. ”

“ The prolonged absence of Christ for ten more centuries would break the hearts of the saints of God, who have long since cried with a loud voice, saying, "How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them who dwell on the earth? ”

“ Those who are ignorant of the biographies of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob must be ignorant of the gospel; for these patriarchs were the depositories of the promises (Heb 11:17) which constitute the gospel-hope; and of them, Abraham is especially designated as him that hath the promises (Heb. 7:6) . It is for this reason that a man must become of Abraham's seed by adoption through Jesus Christ. Unless a son of Abraham by a like faith and disposition with him, neither Jew nor Gentile can share in Abraham's estate. It is only Abraham's spiritual family that can divide with him the promises he holds. ”

“ Since the expulsion of Israel by the Romans, Jerusalem and her children are in the situation of Hagar and her son, while wandering in the wilderness of Beer-sheba. She is divorced from the Lord as Hagar was from Abraham, and "being desolate she sits upon the ground," (Gen. 21:16; Isaiah 3:26) and bewails her widowhood. But there is to be "a restitution of all things." Jerusalem is to become a free woman as Sarah was; and to take her stand in the midst of the earth as "the city whose architect and builder is God." ”

“ He left the land, the kingdom, Abraham, and all the prophets, behind him. In after years, the land was reduced to a wilderness, its cities laid waste, and the Hebrew commonwealth dissolved. It became the battle ground of Crusaders, Saracens, and Turks; and until this day has been subjected to the worst of the heathen. Forty centuries have passed away since God confirmed His promise of the land to Christ, who has been waiting nineteen hundred years at His right hand for its fulfilment. Is Jesus never to possess the land from sea to sea, and from the rivers to its extremities? ”

“ ABRAHAM THE HEIR OF THE WORLD
Abraham and Christ are inseparably associated as co-heirs of the covenant of promise. Hence, they are joint-heirs of the country mentioned in the covenant. But out of this arises a question of considerable interest, namely, when they jointly possess the land of Canaan, what will be their relation to the world at large? The answer to this is, that at that time their name will be great in the earth; Abram's descendants will be a great nation; and he and Christ will be a blessing, by all the families of the earth being in them. ”

“ They have gone so far as to deny that the seed of Abraham after the flesh will ever be restored to the land of Canaan, which is in effect to deny the fulfilinent of a vast proportion of "the testimony of God." The seed of the serpent, and the seed of the woman, indicated before the Flood, were afterwards distinguished in the seed of Ishmael, and the seed of Isaac. "The children of the flesh are not the children of God; neither are they all Israel, who are of Israel." ”

“ Now, there is but one way for a believer of the gospel to get at this name, to wit, by being "baptized into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." The answer to the question, then, is this, that a man's faith in the gospel is counted to him for righteousness in the act of being baptized into the name. There is no other way than this, and a believer of the truth will die in his sins unless he submit to it. ”

“ A kingdom is the dominion of a king. An empire is also the dominion of a king, but with this difference: the kingdom proper, or "the first dominion," is restricted to a regally constituted territory; while the empire, or secondary dominion, though belonging to the same king, extends over other peoples, multitudes, nations, and tongues, than those of the royal domain. ”

“ Abram was now eighty-five years old, and he had no child. How, then, could the promise made of God at Haran, and repeated at Sichem and Bethel, be fulfifled, seeing that he was childless? He was even now an old man, and had concluded to make Eliezer of Damascus his heir; how then could the great, the exceeding great, reward be realized by him? Prompted by these considerations, but in no wise distrusting God, Abram said, "Lord God, what wilt thou give me, seeing I go childless, and the steward of my house is this Eliezer of Damascus? Behold, to me thou hast given no seed ”

“ Here, then, is a noble domain, lying between Assyria, Persia, Arabia, the Red Sea, Egypt, and the Mediterranean; capable, when peopled by an industrious, enlightened, and well and strongly governed, nation, of commanding the commerce and sovereignty of Asia, and the wealth of Europe and America. ”

“ The word of God converts their wisdom into folly, declaring in the teeth of their traditions that "he that putteth his trust in God shall possess the land, and shall inherit his holy mountain" (Isaiah 57:13) while Israel in the flesh "shall be all righteous; they shall inherit the land for ever as the branch of the Lord's planting, the work of his hands, that He may be glorified. ”

“ If a man believe and obey the gospel his past sins are forgiven him in Christ; but, if after this, he walk in the course of the world his faith is proved to be dead and he forfeits his title to eternal life.But if, on the other hand, a man become an adopted son of Abraham, and "by a patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory, honour, and incorruptibility, (Rom. 2:7) he will find everlasting life in the Paradise of God. ”

“ The system of the world is an adaptation to man in his fallen state; and out of the things thus arranged, it is that Christ's imperial dominion is being evolved. By the law of procreation has been provided a population which, by the confusion of tongues, has been distributed into nations, whose habitations have been fixed by the controlling power of the Elohim. Thus nations have been formed which are destined to flourish in the blessedness of the Future Age. ”

“ A kingdom may be set up in a few days, and abolished as speedily, as we have witnessed in our own time. But it is not so with the Kingdom of God. The physical is subordinated to the intellectual and moral; and as men, among whom it is being prepared, are so earthly and sensual, the mental progresses much more slowly than the physical; and therefore, a kingdom founded upon moral principles requires longer to prepare, but is more enduring when completed. ”

“ ALL NATIONS SHALL SERVE HIM. His name shall endure for ever; his name shall be continued as long as the sun; and men shall be blessed IN HIM; all nations shall call him blessed." (Psalm 72:6-11, 17)
Accordiug to this testimony, it is proved that the nations, or families, of the earth will become the people of God as well as Israel, who will have the pre-eminence among them as the inheritance of the Lord; and so Israel and the nations will constitute a kingdom and empire, which will then compose "the World," and be blessed in him and Abraham ”

“ The nations accept the law, which saves them from extermination. This is evinced by the effects which follow its promulgation. They all flow to Jerusalem as the centre of the world, and fountain of all blessings ”