THE PROMISE TO ABRAHAM.
By Editor
A READER of the SIGNS asks: "Why was it that two and a half tribes of the children of Israel remained on the east side of Jordan? I understand that Canaan was typical of our heavenly rest; why then did some remain outside of that land?" The questioner's supposition evidently is that the territory to the east of the Jordan was not a part of the promised land, but that this is a mistake is evident from Josh. 1:4: "From the wilderness and this Lebanon even unto the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and unto the great sea toward the going down of the sun, shall be your coast." But aside from this scripture we know that not only the land of Canaan proper, but also the whole earth, was promised to Abraham and to his seed. See Rom. 4:13. And had Abraham's descendants been faithful to God, they would long ere this have subdued all nations and filled the earth. The name Canaan no more limited the promise to the valley of the Jordan—from which the name was derived—than did the necessarily short range of human vision limit the promise to just what Abraham could see, when the Lord said unto him: "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."