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| At What Time the Promise of God Was Fulfilled Concerning the Land of Canaan, Which Even Carnal Israel Got in Possession.
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Chapter 2.—At What Time the
Promise of God Was Fulfilled Concerning the Land of Canaan, Which
Even Carnal Israel Got in Possession.
In the preceding book we said, that
in the promise of God to Abraham two things were promised from the
beginning, the one, name
ly, that his seed should
possess the land of Canaan, which was intimated when it was said,
“Go into a land that I will show thee, and I will make of thee a
great nation;”981
but the
other far more excellent, concerning not the carnal but the
spiritual seed, by which he is the father, not of the one nation of
Israel, but of all nations who follow the footsteps of his faith,
which began to be promised in these words, “And in thee shall all
families of the earth be blessed.”982
And thereafter we showed by yet
many other proofs that these two things were promised. Therefore
the seed of Abraham, that is, the people of Israel according to the
flesh, already was in the land of promise; and there, not only by
holding and possessing the cities of the enemies, but also by
having kings, had already begun to reign, the promises of God
concerning that people being already in great part fulfilled: not
only those that were made to those three fathers, Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob, and whatever others were made in their times, but those
also that were made through Moses himself, by whom the same people
was set free from servitude in Egypt, and by whom all bygone things
were revealed in his times, when he led the people through the
wilderness. But neither by the illustrious leader Jesus the son
of Nun, who led that people into the land of promise, and, after
driving out the nations, divided it among the twelve tribes
according to God’s command, and died; nor after him, in the whole
time of the judges, was the promise of God concerning the land of
Canaan fulfilled, that it should extend from some river of Egypt
even to the great river Euphrates; nor yet was it still prophesied
as to come, but its fulfillment was expected. And it was
fulfilled through David, and Solomon his son, whose kingdom was
extended over the whole promised space; for they subdued all those
nations, and made them tributary. And thus, under those kings,
the seed of Abraham was established in the land of promise
according to the flesh, that is, in the land of Canaan, so that
nothing yet remained to the complete fulfillment of that earthly
promise of God, except that, so far as pertains to temporal
prosperity, the Hebrew nation should remain in the same land by the
succession of posterity in an unshaken state even to the end of
this mortal age, if it obeyed the laws of the Lord its God. But
since God knew it would not do this, He used His temporal
punishments also for training His few faithful ones in it, and for
giving needful warning to those who should afterwards be in all
nations, in whom the other promise, revealed in the New Testament,
was about to be fulfilled through the incarnation of
Christ.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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