The Everlasting Covenant

Jacob’s First Lesson

While Jacob believed the promise of God sufficiently to enable him to endeavor to secure its fulfillment by his own efforts, he did not understand its nature well enough to know that God alone could fulfill it through righteousness. So the Lord began to instruct him. Jacob was on his lonely way to Syria, fleeing from the wrath of his offended brother, “and he lighted upon a certain place, and tarried there all night, because the sun was set; and he took one of the stones ¹ of that place, and put it under his head, and lay down in that place to sleep. EVCO 136.2

“And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. And, behold, the Lord stood above it, and said, I am the Lord, the God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac; the land whereon thou liest, to the will I give it, and to thy seed; and thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south; and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed. And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee whithersoever thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of. EVCO 136.3

“And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not. And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this place! This is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” ¹ EVCO 137.1

This was a great lesson for Jacob. Before this his ideas of God had been very crude. He had supposed that God was confined to one place. But now that God had appeared to him, he began to realize that “God is a Spirit; and they that worship Him must worship Him in Spirit and in truth.” ² He began to realize what Jesus told the Samaritan woman long afterwards, that the worship of God does not depend upon any place, but upon the soul’s reaching out and finding Him, wherever it is. EVCO 137.2