THE EARTH THE FUTURE DWELLING

“Let it be well remembered and considered, that the only hope connected with the future world, which Abraham had, was bound up in the promise that he was himself personally to inherit the land. When he went out, at the call of God, not knowing whither he went, it was upon the faith of his receiving an inheritance. When he came into Canaan, he was expressly told that this was the country destined to be his inheritance. But he was also informed that while his descendants, four hundred years after, would possess the land, he was to have no inheritance in it on this side of the grave.

‘He was to go to his fathers in peace, and be buried in a good old age’— Genesis 15: 15.

Still he had the outstanding promise that he himself personally was to inherit the land. He believed, and continued to believe, the promise. But he learned to interpret it as a promise to be fulfilled, not in the life that now is, but in the life that is to come. For he knew that though he was to die before he obtained possession of the land, —and so far God might seem to fail in fulfilling the promise, on the faith of which he had called him out of Charran, —still that God was able to raise him from the dead, and to fulfil the promise in the resurrection state, or, in other words, in the world to come. He acquiesced in that arrangement. He was reconciled to it. He reposed in it. He would willingly consent to the postponement of the promise, so that he should have his inheritance in the new heavens and new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness, rather than in this earthly Canaan, as it now subsists, where, at the very best, all is vanity.

“Still, let it be observed, it is the promise of that very earthly Canaan which alone is the foundation of Abraham’s hope for eternity. There is no trace, no hint, in all the patriarch’s history, of any other promise whatever, relating to the world to come. It is scarcely possible to entertain a doubt on this point. What Abraham was taught to expect was the inheritance of the very soil on which he trod, for so many long years of pilgrimage, as a mere stranger and sojourner. It was to be his at last.

“Nor was it to belong to him in any remote and indirect sense merely, —and as he might be held to be represented by a nation that after all never got full and absolute possession of it. For the Israelites, at the best, were but tenants in the land—tenants at will upon their good behaviour, as God expressly testifies, using the very expression:

It was to himself personally that the land was to be given as an inheritance—to himself, as an individual believer, and as it were in his own right. That very land was to be his inheritance. But when? Not in this state of being, in which man is himself mortal, and the ground is cursed for man’s sake. But in that other state of being, in which this mortal has put on immortality, and the face of the earth is renewed. *

* There is confusion of ideas in Dr. Candlish’s mind here. The curse is not removed until a thousand years after Abraham and the righteous have put on immortality. “The state of being,” or the present, is scripturally contrasted with “that other state of being” which obtains in the Millennium, or world to come. —Editor Herald of the Kingdom.

“Yes! It is when death is swallowed up in victory—it is when the dead in Christ are raised—it is when this globe, already baptised with water, has undergone its final baptism of fire—it is then that the patriarch is to possess the land. * And then at last in the possession of it, —being himself raised incorruptible, and receiving his portion in the renovated earth—receiving it, moreover, for an everlasting inheritance, —then is he to reap the reward of all his work of faith, and labour of love, and patience of hope here below, in God’s open acknowledgment of him as a son, and therefore an heir—an heir of God and joint-heir with Christ, —as well as in the full enjoyment of God throughout the ages of eternity.

“Such, as it would seem, was Abraham’s high and heavenly hope—a hope heavenly, in one sense, as having respect to the world to come—the heavenly or resurrection state; but yet, in another sense, having a substantial local habitation in the new earth, in which, as well as in the new heavens, righteousness is to dwell. * *

“And now, does not this hope give a peculiar and precious meaning to Abraham’s determination that Sarah shall not be buried in a strange, or in a hired, or even in a lent or gifted tomb, but in a sepulchre, most strictly and absolutely his own. He is taking infeftment in his inheritance. It belongs not to him living. But it belongs to him, and to his, when dead: While he is alive in this world, he has no interest in the land, but to walk in it as a stranger and pilgrim—to ‘walk before God, and be perfect.’ But death gives to him, and to his, a title to it; and he will vindicate that title for his dead. Living, he can but use it as the strange country of his pilgrimage; but when dead, he claims all proprietor’s right in it, and his kindred dust is entitled to repose in it as a home.”

* This is an error. The globe is not to be baptised with fire at the appearing of Christ, though the goat-nations are—that is, with a baptism of fiery indignation manifested through war, pestilence, desolation, and famine. The “final baptism of fire” is at the epoch of the removal of the curse, and the destruction of the devil, who shall have been previously bound for a thousand years.

* * A new heavens and a new earth is a phrase signifying a new civil, ecclesiastical, and spiritual constitution of Israel and the nations. It continues 1,000 years, and is then succeeded by another which is unchangeable.