The command of God to Abraham was that he should leave country, kindred, and father’s house for an unknown land which would be shown unto him. In obedience to this command “Abraham took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother’s son, and all their substance that they had gathered, and the souls that they had gotten in Haran; and they went forth to go into the land of Canaan; and into the land of Canaan they came. . . . And Jehovah appeared unto Abram, and said, Unto thy seed will I give this land.” This was a double promise. It was a promise of seed, “when as yet he had no child,” and it was a promise of the land to that promised seed. We have already seen that this promised Seed was Christ in the flesh, the Saviour of the world. Let us consider now what was involved in the promise of the land. After Abraham and Lot had separated from each other, “Abram dwelt in the land of Canaan,” and the Lord renewed his promise to him in these words: “Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art, northward and southward and eastward and westward: for all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed forever. . . . Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and in the breadth of it; for unto thee will I give it.” In this statement of the promise both Abraham and his seed are mentioned, and the length of time during which they are to hold the land is stated—“forever.” In the next step in the development of the promise it was made clear to Abraham that he would not come into the possession of the land during his natural life. The Lord said to him, “Thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace; thou shalt be buried in a good old age,” but at the same time he made a covenant with Abraham, saying, “Unto thy seed have I given this land.” Again when “Abram was ninety years old and nine,” the Lord spoke to him, saying, “I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land of thy sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession.” Having now the full statement of the promise of the land before us, we are prepared to learn what relation this promise sustains to the coming of the Seed. And first we may observe that all4that was promised to Abraham was involved in the original promise of the Seed. A little study of the matter will make this clear. The promise of the Seed was the promise of the gift of the Son of God to identify himself with humanity, to become ‘the last Adam,’ the head of a new humanity. Through this gift of divinity to humanity provision was made that man should become a partaker of the divine nature, and be restored in the image of God. But the greater includes the less, and the provision for the redemption of man was broad enough to include the redemption of all that was given to man as his original possession. And so the price which redeemed man redeemed the earth. Furthermore, the very nature of the price paid for the redemption of man involved the redemption of the earth. Christ, the promised Seed, God’s gift to man, sustained such a relation to created things that when he was given to man, not simply this world, but all worlds and all things were given to man in Christ and through Christ. ‘For in him were all things created, . . . things visible and things invisible, . . . all things have been created through him, and unto him; and he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.’ When the Son of God became the Son of man, and as the Son of man paid the penalty for sin, conquered death and the grave, and ascended in triumph to the heavenly courts to be accepted by his Father as the representative of the human family, the man, then, was given to man in the person of Christ, the Son of man, all that belonged to the eternal Son of God, and all who are in Christ share in this ownership of all things. Inasmuch, therefore, as all things are included in Christ, the apostle Paul could well ask, ‘He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not also with him freely give us all things?’ And again he could well say, ‘All things are yours, . . . the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours.’ He who accepts Christ will come into possession of all things in Christ. And the possessions thus acquired will not be simply visible things, for ‘things invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers,’ were also created in him. Kingly power for victory over sin and all the powers of darkness belongs to every one who really accepts the gift of Christ. But all this was directly included in the promise of the land to Abraham. That promise of the land was the promise of the world. The Holy Spirit so interprets it when he through the apostle Paul defines it as a promise ‘that he should be heir of the world.’ And as Abraham was to die in a good old age before the fulfilment of this promise, it follows that through this promise he was assured of the resurrection and the new earth. But the resurrection of the righteous occurs at the second coming of Christ: ‘For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven, with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first.’ Therefore the promise of the land will not be fulfilled before, or apart from, the second coming of Christ, and the promise of the land was also a promise of the coming of Christ, the coming of the Seed. And since we are Christ’s, and are therefore ‘Abraham’s seed, heirs according to the promise,’ we are anxiously looking ‘till the Seed should come to whom the promise hath been made.’ And so it again appears that all our hopes depend upon the coming of the Seed.