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Divine Plan Hidden In Abraham’s Family
"And Isaac brought Rebecca
into his mother Sarah’s tent; and she became his wife and he loved her."—Ge
24:67.
When we sometimes speak of Abraham, Isaac and
others as types we should not be understood to mean that the Bible stories
respecting them are fictions. A person or thing is a type when, in addition to
the actual experiences, the Scriptures indicate that it prefigures and
illustrates on a small scale some person or things yet future. For instance, in
certain respects Adam as the head of the race, was a type of Messiah, the
second Adam.
The first Adam, the father of our race has
failed to give the eternal life desired. In God’s providence Messiah is to be
the second Adam, in the sense that He will regenerate, as His children, all the
posterity of the first Adam. Messiah is thus declared in prophecy to be the
Everlasting Father of mankind—the Father or Life-giver, who will give to our
race everlasting life, instead of a heritage of weakness, imperfection and
death.
Similarly, Moses not only was a real character,
the leader of the nation of Israel, but additionally he was a type of a greater
Mediator—Messiah. As Moses mediated the Law Covenant for Israel, so Messiah,
the Prophet like unto Moses, or antitypical of him (Ac 3:22), is to be the
Mediator of Israel’s New Covenant, under which the Abrahamic blessings will
reach them and through them reach all the families of the earth. (Jer 31:31.)
Similarly, Aaron was a type of the higher priesthood and its better sacrifices
connected with the New Covenant.
So, also, the under-priests and the Levites,
additional to their own experiences, served, in God’s providence, as types of
the higher institutions by which the New Covenant will be inaugurated shortly.
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On this occasion we ask your attention to Abraham, known in the Scriptures as
the Friend of God, as the Father of the Faithful, and to his son Isaac, the son
of promise, born out of the natural order, miraculously, when his mother was
old; also to Isaac’s wife, Rebecca, selected by Abraham to be the companion and
joint-heir with his son Isaac in his inheritance. These personages lived their
lives wholly unconscious of the fact that God was using them and overruling their
affairs so as to make of them prophetic pictures of His own great Plan of the
Ages. These type-pictures are always to be read in full harmony with the
inspired writings of the Bible and never to be understood in contradiction of
the same.
ABRAHAM A TYPE OF GOD
Not everything that Abraham did, however, is to be esteemed typical. In a
general way this grand man of the past looms up before our minds as a monument
of faith, integrity and justice. The blessings promised to go through him to
his Seed, which would constitute him the father of many nations, made of him,
as St. Paul points out, a type of the Almighty, from whom flows every good and
every perfect gift—from whom proceeds the blessing which ultimately is to flow
through Messiah, His Son, and through Israel, His people, unto all the families
of the earth.—Ro 4:16-25; Ga 3:8,16,29.
All Christians, presumably, are aware of St. Paul’s interpretation of Abraham
and his family as types. As Abraham typified God, so his wife typified the
Covenant through which the vitality of the promise ultimately develops the Seed
of Promise—Isaac in a type, and Messiah in the antitype. St. Paul also explains
that Sarah’s servant, Hagar, at Sarah’s wish, became for a time her
representative with Abraham and brought forth Ishmael.
Hagar, St. Paul explains, typified the Law Covenant, vitalized by the gracious
arrangements of the same God and Father; and Hagar’s son, literally Abraham’s
firstborn,
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typified the Jewish nation, the first development under the Covenant.—Ga
4:22-31.
As Abraham loved Ishmael and desired a blessing on him, so God loved Israel and
desired a blessing upon Israel, the offspring of the Law Covenant.
Nevertheless, as Ishmael, the offspring of the bond-woman, was declared not to
be the primary heir of the Abrahamic promise, but a secondary one, so the
children of Israel, the offspring of the Law Covenant, were not designed to be
the Spiritual Messiah through whom the promise declared that the blessing
should first proceed.
In the type, we see that Sarah, Abraham’s wife, who represented the original
Abrahamic Covenant, brought forth a son of her own, Isaac, long years after the
bond-maid, her substitute, had brought forth Ishmael. When Isaac was born,
Sarah repudiated Ishmael and no longer acknowledged him as her son, but,
instead, claimed everything for Isaac. The antitype of this is that from the
time that God began the development of the Spiritual Israel and set forth the
"Covenant by Sacrifice," through which this Spiritual Israel would be
developed—from that time it began to be clearly manifest that the chief portion
of the promise of God to bless the world was not to be fulfilled through the
Ishmael Seed, Natural Israel, but through the Isaac Seed—Spiritual Israel.
WELL-SPRING OF HOPE FOR THE JEWS
From the first there was manifested a competition for the Abrahamic blessing.
And as Ishmael mocked at the infant Isaac, so the Jew, in his considerable
development and strength, mocked at the Antitypical Isaac—Jesus and His
comparatively ignorant and unlearned followers—and persecuted them. In order to
continue the type, that Abraham might typify God, he was commanded to send
forth Hagar and her son into the wilderness. That sending forth typified the
Divine disfavor which came upon the Jews eighteen centuries ago and which has
made them
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outcasts from God’s favor, as Hagar and Ishmael were cut off from Abraham’s
presence and family and care.
The bread and water which Hagar took with her, by which she and Ishmael were
nourished in the wilderness for a time, types the promises of God through the
Law and the Prophets which still belong to the Jew and upon which for eighteen
centuries he has been nourished, and without which the hope of the nation would
have perished.
Now we come to the dire moment pictured in Ge 21:15-19.
The water provided by Abraham had been consumed.
No more was to be had. Ishmael was dying.
Hagar, his mother, separated herself from him. At the opportune moment the
angel of the Lord appeared to her and pointed her to a spring of water, where
she refreshed herself and Ishmael with new life.
The antitype of this is now to be seen before us. The Jewish people, separated
more and more from the Law and the Prophets, are becoming weak and faint as
respects hope. They are about to die! But no! The Lord graciously points out a
well-spring of the Water of Life at this critical moment. As Ishmael was
rescued from death by this water, so the nation of Israel, whom he typified, is
now about to find in the providence of God that their portion of the Abrahamic
Covenant is the earthly one, not the Heavenly one, not the spiritual. They are
about to be refreshed and to enter upon a new career.
That career, however, will not mark them as Ishmaelites, nor will their New
Covenant relationship be symbolized by Hagar, the Old Law Covenant. Thenceforth
they are represented under a new type.
ISAAC WAS HEIR OF ALL
If at first our Jewish friends might be inclined to feel disappointed that they
were represented in Ishmael and not in Isaac, by the Hagar Covenant, the
covenant of bondage to the Law, instead of being formed free from the Law,
there is a consolation. Their consolation is that
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Isaac typified the Messiah and that Israel is pictured as the nation on whose
behalf Messiah will mediate the New Law Covenant. The Messiah must be
spiritual, in order to be able to confer the great blessings indicated in the
Covenant made with Abraham. The nation of Israel never expected to be spiritual
and had no such promise in the Bible. To the Jews will come exactly what they
have always been expecting—greatness as an earthly people, honor as the elect
nation through whom the New Covenant blessings will be opened up to all
mankind.
As already pointed out, Isaac, the son of Abraham, typified the Messiah of
glory, the Son of God and Heir of all the promises—the One through whom alone
eternal life may be obtained and restitution to that perfection which will
enable Israel and the world to keep the Divine Law perfectly and to merit the
gift of God, eternal life, according to their New Law Covenant, by and through
its great Mediator—Messiah.
ELEAZAR TYPE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT
In due time, Abraham sent his trusted servant Eleazar (typical of the Holy
Spirit) to select a Bride for his son Isaac. Eleazar might not go everywhere.
He was directed to go only to those of Abraham’s family, thus implying that
none would be called to be the Bride of Messiah except such as were already in
relationship to God through faith, obedience and justification. When the
servant had found Rebecca he put upon her certain jewels, explained to her and
her relatives the nature of his mission, and asked her if she were willing to
come and be Isaac’s Bride.
He said, "My master, Abraham, is very rich; and all that he hath he hath
given unto Isaac."
Thus the great riches of God are again illustrated in Abraham, and the fact
that Messiah is His Son and the Heir of all the promises of God, the One
through whom Israel and all mankind shall be blessed. Rebecca promptly
responded, and thus betrothed herself to the unseen bridegroom and hasted with
the servant to Isaac. As
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her kinsfolk bade her goodbye they wished her a blessing in these words,
"Be thou the mother of thousands of millions." —Ge 24:60.
We read that "Rebecca arose and her damsels [maids, servants], and they
rode upon the camels and followed the man Eleazar."
Here we find, in harmony with other Scriptures, a picture of the Gospel Age,
and its work of bringing to Messiah a special Bride class of saintly ones.
First amongst these saints were some of the Jewish nation, according to the
Divine Rule; as the Scriptures set forth—"to the Jew first." This
Bride class has been selected from every nation, people, kindred and tongue yet
in all will be but a little flock—"Fear not, little flock; it is your
Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom"—the spiritual, unseen
Kingdom of Messiah—joint-heirship with Him in His Throne—not the earthly
Kingdom which has been promised definitely to Israel.—Eph 2:12-17.
BRIDE CLASS AND GREAT COMPANY
Other Scriptures have shown us that amongst these saints there are two classes.
A few, peculiarly devoted, will constitute the Bride class. A larger number,
not so courageous for the truth and righteousness, will constitute her
companions, her servants, as Rebecca travelled accompanied by her maidens.
These two classes are particularly specified in the Scriptures (Psalm 45),
where we read of the Messiah-Bride and Queen. In her resurrection glory she is
pictured as the Queen robed in gold of Ophir with fine needlework—the glory
representing the Divine nature which will be granted her, and the fine
needlework representing her glorious righteousness, embellished with the fruits
of the Holy Spirit. The Psalmist tells that she shall be brought into the
presence of the great King Jehovah, and then adds that the virgins, or
companions, that follow her shall also be brought into the presence of the King,
thus showing that there will always be a difference of rank on the spiritual
plane.
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These two classes are pictured in the Law as Priests and Levites, the Bride
class being represented by the Priests, owing to their willing sacrifices of
the earthly portion in favor of the Heavenly.
We are not to identify the Bride class with the nominal Christian Churches of
today any more than we would identify the Apostles with the Jewish Church of
their day. The Apostles were a select few; and similarly all the members of the
Church throughout the Age have been a select few out of a nominal many.
"The Lord knoweth them that are His." The true Church has been
selected, not only from all of the twelve tribes of Israel, but from every
other nation, people and tongue, even so many as the Lord our God has
called.—2Ti 2:19.
Rebecca’s leaving her father’s house typified the personal consecration of each
one who, led of the Spirit, accepts the Divine invitation to joint-heirship
with Christ. The first jewelry given to Rebecca, when first she heeded the
invitation and invited the servant to her home, represents the earliest
blessing received by believers.
The jewelry she received after she had decided to go to Isaac and become his
wife represents the blessings of the Holy Spirit which come upon the fully
consecrated, those who determine to walk in the footsteps of Jesus in the
narrow way into the Kingdom, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
Arrived at the end of her journey, she found herself in the presence of Isaac,
and immediately alighted from her camel and covered herself with a veil. Thus
pictorially is represented the fact that the Church, when having experienced
the change of the First Resurrection and having entered the presence of the
Heavenly Bridegroom, will no longer need the guidance of the Holy Spirit,
through the Scriptures. This part of the picture, of course, is yet future. The
Scriptures, however, indicate, and outward conditions corroborate the fact,
that the time of this glorious change is nigh at hand.
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MOTHER OF THOUSANDS OF MILLIONS
Isaac immediately received Rebecca, and took her into his mother’s tent. Sarah
had died, and Rebecca became her successor. Thus is beautifully pictured the
fact that when the Bride of Messiah shall be complete on the plane of glory,
the Sarah Covenant will be at an end, and its place, as a channel of blessing,
will be taken by the glorified Church. Then will be fulfilled the prophetic
blessing of her relatives, "Be thou the mother of thousands of
millions."
Those thousands of millions represent the world of mankind, which will be
regenerated, or granted new life, by the great Messiah during the thousand
years of His reign as the Mediator of the New Covenant.
Messiah will be the Regenerator and His Bride will be the nourisher,
instructor, helper, of all mankind under the New Covenant; for it will be this
antitypical Isaac and his Bride that will mediate for Israel, and through Israel
for the world, the New Covenant of Restitution blessings.
(Ac 3:19-21.) "In thee and in thy Seed shall all the families of the earth
be blessed," applies primarily, as St. Paul shows, to Messiah and His
Church in glory—the sacrifices being past, the spiritual nature being attained
as a reward for the sacrifices.—Ga 3:16,29.
Whoever will first receive Messiah and come into harmony with the righteous
laws of His invisible Kingdom will be the first to be blessed. There will be no
partiality in this matter; for "God is no respecter of persons."
However, because of their past experiences and earthly hopes and trust in the
Law and the Prophets, the Jews will be the first amongst the nations to accept
the new order of things and to ally themselves with it. Therefore, to them will
the blessings go first and through them the blessings will extend to all
mankind.—Ac 10:34.
While thanking God for the glorious
prospects of that glorious time which is nearing, let us, dear friends, seek to
make our calling and election sure to membership in the Body of the Bride of
Christ.
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