THE DIVINE PLAN OF THE AGES
IN BRIEF
GOD
proposed in himself before the foundation of the
world the great Plan re Redemption, because he
foreknew man's fall and the death penalty he
would put upon it. For the first 1656 years up to
the flood God permitted the holy angels to
demonstrate their inability to recover the sinner
to righteousness. On the contrary, the contagion
of sin spread to some of the holy angels. As the
Scriptures declare, "The sons of God saw the
daughters of men, that they were fair, and they
took unto them wives of such as they would. And
there were born unto them children, which were
giants and men of renown. (Gen. 6.) And the earth
was filled with violence and sin--to such an
extent that God declared that the imagination of
the human heart had become only evil and that
continually. Foreknowing this God had already
arranged that one of the aqueous
"rings," still suspended above the
earth, should descend, causing the flood, which
wiped out that order of things, destroying every
human being, except righteous Noah and his
family, of whom it is written, "Now Noah was
perfect in his generation (there was no admixture
of angelic seed).-- Genesis 6:9.
Thus the
angels were tested by contact with sin for
centuries--so that all of those who desired had
opportunity to transgress the Divine Laws. The
disobedient ones are referred to in the New
Testament as those angels who kept not their
first estate or spirit condition, but who
preferred to live on the earthly, animal plane.
These were restrained in chains of darkness until
the great Millennial morning--cut off from
fellowship with God and the holy angels and no
longer permitted to materialize and thus to
commingle with humanity.--2 Peter 2:4.
When
God's due time came he called Abraham to make of
him a type of himself, and to give him a son,
Isaac, to be a type of Christ, and to call for
Isaac a Bride, Rebecca, who would be a type of
the elect Church of this Gospel Age. And as with
Rebecca came maids, so with the elect Church
comes the "great company" class. As
Abraham offered Isaac on the altar in a figure
and he was recovered from death in a figure, so
God really offered his Son in death and recovered
him out of death actually by resurrection from
the dead. As all that Abraham had he gave to
Isaac, so it is that all the blessings that God
has to give to all others of the human family who
will become his people will come through the
antitypical Isaac. And when Rebecca became
Isaac's bride and joint-heir, she became sharer
with him in all the joys and privileges which
were his. Thus was represented the future glory
of the Church with Christ in blessing all the
families of the earth.
Moreover
a double figure is used to represent The Christ,
namely, Jesus the Head and the Church his Body.
In the fulfilling of this figure the Apostle
tells us that all of the consecrated overcomers
are members of the Isaac class, saying, "Ye,
brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of the
promise." The Church as the Bride is
pictured in St. Paul's statement, "If ye be
Christ's, then are ye Abraham's Seed and heirs
according to the promise"-- the promise that
through us the world shall be blessed.-- Gal.
3:29.
ABRAHAM'S WIVES TYPICAL
While the
foregoing is a brief synoptical picture of the
whole, the details of Abraham's life represent
the details of the Divine Plan of the Ages. As
Abraham had the promise that he should be the
Father of many nations, it implies that,
eventually, many peoples of the world will become
God's children--but only through Isaac and
through the promise made respecting Isaac's work.
Furthermore, the Seed of Abraham, it was
foretold, would be as the stars of heaven and as
the sand of the seashore. The stars of heaven
represent the spiritual Seed of Abraham. The sand
of the seashore represent the multitudinous
earthly seed, the human family brought back to
life during the Millennium, the result of the
redemptive plan.
St. Paul
gives us the key to the entire situation in the
suggestion that Abraham's wives were typical of
Covenants and this explains to us the seemingly
harsh treatment of Hagar. Abraham was obeying
Divine instructions, and the Divine instructions
were so shaped as to constitute the matter in
type a picture and lesson for our instruction.
Abraham's first wife was Sarah. St. Paul explains
that Sarah typified a fundamental promise, and
her name, Sarah, signifies princess or chief one.
This princess Covenant, the one upon which all
the others depended for their fulfillment, is the
one which fulfills its mission or purpose in the
development of the spiritual
Seed--Isaac--"We as Isaac was are children
of the promise." This Covenant has nothing
whatever to do with the development of any other
children of God except through the Isaac class,
the Mediator class, the great Prophet, Priest and
King class, through which all of God's blessings
are to descend to humanity.
Because
Sarah was to serve as a type of spiritual things
she was barren for long years, to teach that
God's primary Covenant with Abraham would be
barren (unfruitful) for long centuries. Meantime,
in order to make another type, Sarah's bondmaid,
Hagar, was given to Abraham for a wife, Sarah
seeking to appropriate the child of Hagar as the
Seed of promise--as her own. Hagar represented
the Law Covenant made with Israel at Sinai, as
St. Paul explains. The child or offspring of that
Covenant was the Jewish nation, Israel in the
flesh. The fact that Sarah sought to recognize
Ishmael as her son and held Hagar in her arms at
the time of his birth, implied that the Law
Covenant with Moses as its Mediator would, for a
time, seem to constitute Israel the heir of the
original Covenant--which included the blessing of
all the families of the earth. But this was not
the Divine will.
APOSTOLIC EXPLANATION OF
COVENANT TYPES
And so,
in God's due time, Sarah brought forth Isaac, who
typed the true heir of the Covenant or Promise.
This birth of Isaac was represented primarily by
the begetting of our Lord Jesus Christ by the
holy Spirit to the spirit nature; and, later on,
by his resurrection to the perfection of spirit
nature; and in a larger sense, as St. Paul
explains (Ye, brethren, as Isaac was, are the
children of promise), the birth of Isaac
represented the begetting by the holy Spirit of
the entire Church, which is the Body of Christ.
Then came the persecution, the mocking of Isaac
by Ishmael and the subsequent casting out from
Divine favor of the Hagar or Law Covenant and her
child, the Jewish people. They have been outcast
for centuries and were about to die--about to
lose their national identity, about to be
absorbed by other nations, just as Hagar and
Ishmael, after being cast out, wandered through
the desert until they had eaten their loaf and
had drank the water they had with them and
Ishmael was ready to die. Then the angel of the
Lord drew their attention to a spring of water in
the desert and, after their refreshment,
counseled their return and submission to the
Divine arrangement--their recognition of the
Sarah Covenant and spiritual Israel. We have come
close to this very point of time now. The poor
Jews, losing hope, were about ready to die, to
give up all faith in the promises. But, behold,
at the opportune time, a well-spring of hope
revives them and the message to them is that
there is a spiritual Israel and also a natural
Israel and that their blessings are along natural
lines and must come to them through the
recognition of the glorified Mediator of a New
(Law) Covenant.
The
Apostolic explanation of this wonderful system of
types stops here. And we would be inclined to
stop here also, were it not that other Scriptures
clearly point out that later on, after the death
of the Hagar Covenant and after the principal
Covenant shall have accomplished its purposes in
the bringing forth of spiritual Israel, the
antitypical Isaac, a New Covenant is due to be
introduced "after those days"--after
the interim of this Gospel Age specially set
apart for the development of the antitypical
Isaac. That New Covenant is referred to by St.
Paul. When discussing this very subject he says
respecting natural Israel's restoration to Divine
favor, "This is my Covenant with them when I
shall take away their sins; as concerning the
Gospel they are enemies for your sakes; but as
touching the election, they are beloved for the
fathers' sakes,...for as ye in times past have
not believed God, but have now obtained mercy
through their unbelief; even so have these also
now not believed, that through your mercy they
also may obtain mercy. For God hath concluded
them all in unbelief, that he might have mercy
upon all."--Rom. 11:26-32.
The same
great Covenant, future for Israel, is referred to
by the Prophet Jeremiah. (31:31.) Israel is there
told that after certain days God will make a New
Covenant with them, not the Sinaitic
Covenant--not the Hagar Covenant--and just as
surely not the Sarah Covenant, which gives birth
only to a spiritual Israel. The prophecies
respecting that New Covenant are earthly,
restitutionary. Under it, "after those
days," God will take away the stony heart
out of their flesh and give them a heart of
flesh--he will make them tender-hearted human
beings, loving, kind, etc. But he will not make
of them spirit beings or New Creatures.
The
Mediator of that New Covenant, Israel understood,
will be a greater Mediator than Moses, though
like unto him in the sense that Moses was the
type or small fore-finger of him. Even so the Mt.
Sinai Covenant, with Israel as the Ishmael class
gendered thereunder, were typical of the greater
blessings and upliftings to be accomplished by
the New (Law) Covenant. For these reasons the
Lord did not confuse the types by reinstating
Hagar as Abraham's wife after the death of Sarah,
as representing a renewal of Divine favor toward
Israel and the use of natural Israel as the
earthly channel of Divine favor and blessing to
all the families of the earth. Instead, God
permitted Hagar to cease as a type after showing
her subserviency to Sarah and the recovery of her
child, the Jew, from perishing. When Abraham,
after the death of Sarah, took another wife,
Keturah, we have every reason to believe that
she, also, was a type and represented a third
Covenant. And her many children represented
typically the many people, kindreds and tongues
of the world which will ultimately become, under
the New Covenant arrangement, children of the
Highest.
THE SUPERIORITY OF THE
SARAH COVENANT
Nevertheless
it should be continually borne in mind that in
this series of types the Lord everywhere showed
the superiority of the Sarah Covenant. In one
sense of the word Sarah was Abraham's only wife,
because Hagar and Keturah are mentioned merely as
concubines. Thus the Divine Plan all centered in
the promise, "In thy Seed shall all the
families of the earth be blessed."
Nevertheless the Jew and his Law Covenant have
been used of the Lord as a supplementary means of
blessing and instruction to the Church and to the
world. Likewise in the future the blessings that
will go to Israel and through Israel to the world
under the New Covenant will all depend upon the
first Covenant, the Sarah Covenant, the spiritual
one and its spiritual Seed--The Christ, Head and
Body. The New Covenant can go into effect as a
better Covenant than the Mosaic one only by
reason of having a better Mediator than Moses,
"The Mediator of the New Covenant"--The
Christ. And he will become the Mediator of that
Covenant and put it into effect for the blessing
of all through or by means of his "better
sacrifices." First, the sacrifice of Jesus,
the foundation of all reconciliation with the
Father--"and we through him." Secondly,
the Father's acceptance of the Church as members
of the Body of Christ, upon the condition
mentioned by St. Paul, "I beseech you,
brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present
your bodies living sacrifices, holy, acceptable
unto God." These are the better sacrifices
which the great Mediator presents to Justice, all
founded upon the merit of the Lamb of God which
taketh away the sin of the world. His merit will
be shared in, through God's arrangement, by the
"little flock," the Royal Priesthood,
who not only by faith accept the Redeemer's
merit, but who, by grace, also lay down their
lives. They become dead with him, that they may
also live with him and share his glory, honor,
immortality, Kingship, Priesthood, Mediatorship,
etc.
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