From Adam to Noah to the nation of Israel, the times of Christ's first advent were a mystery, heavily cloaked by the veil of future times. A mystery in which the prophets provided shadows, outlines, and glimpses of this short but critically vital milestone in God's incredible plan for man's perfect redemption and His unfathomable glory.
Due to the way in which the world appeared to them in their respective times, due to the way in which the political realities, the unending struggles against other peoples and difficult situations, and the day-to-day activities shrouding them in a cloud of a kind of self-absorbed haze, due to many factors, the larger comprehensive plan of God, as it had been presented to them, was often all but invisible.
If this were not so, there would have been no need for Adam to be kept from the tree of life. There would have been no concern that he would choose rather to live eternally in his sin-filled flesh than die to it and be perfected into a spiritual body; forever living in perfect communion with God. The men in Noah's days would have seen the ark's construction, understood its portent, and repented immediately from their ways; begging God for a place within its hull. The nation of Israel would clearly have seen the long-awaited savior hanging upon Calvary's cross rather than a trouble-making radical seeking to weaken their perceived grip upon men's souls.
In other words, men would have been singularly and unremittingly focused solely upon the perfecter of their salvation,the Lord God; not having an eye or even a stray thought veer off so destructively into this sinful world.
Likewise for us today, our ability to see the future outworking of God's plan and understand the mystery of Christ's second advent, though He's just as carefully and clearly transcribed it to us through His prophets, is seriously limited by our inability to see beyond our own present problems and reality. The result, of course, is no different now than it has ever been in any time; a myriad of doctrines and theories all professing, with varying levels of credibility, to be speaking by the authority of Scripture.
Careful consideration of the most credible and accepted of these viewpoints makes it apparent that the initial nexus-point of disagreement, in both Old and New Testament times, begins with the seemingly non-sequitur-like blessings given to Abraham in Genesis 12:2-7. Here within these six verses God declares several unconditional promises, or blessings, to Abram, which are summarized in three general categories; personal blessings, national blessings, and universal blessings. The personal blessings, a great name, blessings to those who bless him, and curses to those who curse him, are generally agreed upon by all to have been directed to Abraham specifically and fulfilled by God completely.
What is not agreed upon, however, and what is at the root of a major eschatological controversy, is who precisely the great nation is and how exactly the blessings given to Abraham translate into universal blessings for all the families of the earth.
By God's grace, I will humbly and prayerfully seek to bring some clarity to this issue in a progression of posts, based on a careful examination of what God's Word has said in regards to the root of the debate among His adopted children.
