The Everlasting Covenant

The Coming of Christ and the Resurrection

So we see again that from the most ancient times the hope of God’s people has been solely in the death and resurrection of Christ. Jacob and his family were in Egypt when the words first quoted were uttered; but Jacob knew that the gathering of the people from Egypt and from all the lands of their captivity would come only through the cross of Christ, which brings eternal redemption. The cross of Christ embraces the second coming of Christ; for as often as we eat and drink in real faith the body and blood of Christ, we “show the Lord’s death till He come.” ¹ Jacob was therefore looking forward to the coming of Christ in glory, for the gathering of Israel; even as the Apostle Paul exhorts us “by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto Him.” ² EVCO 504.4

“But how can the promise to gather Israel be taken to mean the gathering of all believers at the second coming of Christ?” The question should rather be, How can it be taken to mean anything else? The promise to Abraham was the same to Isaac and Jacob. The promise to Abraham was, that in him all the families of the earth should be blessed (Genesis 12:3), and this blessing was to be through the death and resurrection of Christ. ³ “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us; for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree; that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.” ⁴ Abraham received the sign of circumcision, “a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had yet being uncircumcised; that he might be the father of all them that believe, though they be not circumcised.” ⁵ Therefore all the people of the world are possible children of Abraham, of the sheep of the house of Israel. “The whole world lieth in wickedness” ¹—lost, and Christ is come to seek and to save the lost. EVCO 505.1