Abraham’s spiritual seed is all true believers of all ages. We need not spend much time on this seed since there is basic agreement by nearly everyone that the believers of all ages are Abraham’s true spiritual seed. The NT Scriptures make it almost impossible to miss this truth, especially when one realizes that the following words were spoken to Gentiles who in no sense whatever could be related to Abraham physically:

And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise (Gal. 3:29).

The Scofield Reference Bible gives the following as one of the fulfillments of the Abrahamic Covenant:

(I) …Fulfilled …(b) In a spiritual posterity—“Look now toward heaven…so shall thy seed be” (John viii:39; Rom. iv:16, 17; ix:7, 8; Gal. iii:6, 7, 29), viz. all men of faith, whether Jew or Gentile.^[1]

I do not accept Scofield’s typology of making ‘heavenly = spiritual seed’ (church) and ‘sand = earthly seed’ (Israel), but the above quote is correct in stating that ‘all men of faith,’ whether Jew or Gentile, are the spiritual seed of Abraham.

Abraham’s spiritual seed is triune: the ‘election of grace’ (Rom. 9:23–26; 11:5), the ‘saved’ of all ages (Gal. 3:24–29), the ‘Bride of Christ’ (Rev. 21:1–3; 9–14).

Revelation 21:3 has been the spiritual goal of God from all eternity. This was the heart of God’s promise in his dealings with Abraham and the nation of Israel as well as his dealing with the church. There is no question that the shout from heaven in the following verse is claiming the final fulfillment of God’s eternal purpose of redeeming his one eternal elect people:

And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God (Rev. 21:3).

Covenant Theology sees the importance of this phrase as it is used in the OT Scriptures. There is no question that the promise stated in Revelation 21:3 is the heart of the gospel promise as the gospel is prophesied in the OT Scriptures. However, both Dispensationalism and Covenant Theology misunderstand the implications of this phrase. The Dispensationalist does not see that the church is the true tabernacle, or ‘dwelling place,’ of God that was predicted and prophesied in the OT Scriptures. That system of theology cannot see the church as the true Israel of God that fulfills the covenant promises to Abraham. Their adamant ‘naturalizing’ of specific things that NT Apostles spiritualize make those NT passages impossible to understand.

However, the Covenant Theologian also misses the boat in the opposite direction. He fails to emphasize that the goal of God was never realized in any true spiritual sense by the nation of Israel. That nation never truly became God’s people in any spiritual and eternal sense whatever. They were never a true ‘holy nation,’ nor were they ever the true ‘people of God.’ If God was indeed Israel’s God in the sense that he is the church’s God, then why did he cast Israel off as a nation? Can God ever deal with the Body of Christ in the same manner that he dealt with the nation of Israel? This is the very question that Paul deals with in Romans 9–11.

It is true that God was Israel’s God in a national sense, but that was purely a conditional relationship. God indeed dwelt among them in a way that he did not dwell among any other nation, but in no sense were they the temple of God as the church is today. Israel was his special nation among all the nations in the earth, but that relationship was not a saving spiritual relationship nor was it based on an ‘eternal covenant of grace.’ God dwelling among Israel in the tabernacle and indwelling the individual believer today as the true tabernacle are two entirely different things. The special national relationship between God and the nation of Israel was based on the legal covenant made at Sinai, and that special covenantal relationship was finally nullified by God because of Israel’s continual failure to keep the covenant.

I repeat: God cannot—by his own sovereign purpose—say and do to the Body of Christ what he said and did to the nation of Israel. Could that nation have been purchased by the death of Christ and put under the covenant that was ratified by his blood (1 Cor. 11:24–26), and then be cast off by God? If Israel was under the same covenant as the church, then how can we be sure that God will not cast off the church? Why is the church’s eternal security guaranteed when Israel’s was not if both the church and Israel are redeemed and under the same covenant? The biblical answer to these questions is simple. The Body of Christ can never be disowned by God because she is under a new and better covenant than the Old Covenant that Israel was under.

The New Covenant that established the church as the Body of Christ guarantees that every covenant obligation will be met in the Surety (Heb. 7:22), and the power of the promised Spirit will work obedience in the personal experience of every member of the true New Covenant community (Heb. 8:10, 11; Rom. 8:1–4). The nation of Israel was never promised such guarantees under the Old Covenant simply because it was a legal covenant based on works. The nation of Israel was not the ‘redeemed church under the covenant of grace’ and therefore cannot be the true spiritual seed of Abraham.

The Big If

Theologians ignore the big word if in Exodus 19:5 and then build their whole position on the ‘gracious’ statement in Exodus 19:4 and 20:2. Look at what the Word of God actually says:

And God spake all these words, saying, I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. (Ex. 20:1, 2).

Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles’ wings, and brought you unto myself (Ex. 19:4)

Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine. And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation. (Ex. 19:5, 6a).

Why do Covenant Theologians ignore that big if in Exodus. 19:5 and run from the obvious fact that God made a legal and conditional covenant with the nation of Israel at Mt. Sinai? Doesn’t God say what he really means?

Later in this book we will compare this passage with 1 Peter 2:5–11 and show that the true church is the ‘holy nation, the kingdom of priests’ that Israel never became simply because she never kept the legal covenant upon which these blessings were promised. The blessings in Ex. 19:4, 5 are clearly contingent on Israel obeying or ‘keeping the covenant,’ which was the decalogue and all of the attending system of laws and ceremonies. The church inherits these very blessings because our Surety was born and lived under that covenant (Gal. 4:4, 5); he totally fulfilled its every demand and earned the righteousness that it promised (Heb. 7:22); and he then died under its curse (Gal. 3:13).

I repeat, there is no question that it was most gracious of God to physically redeem Israel and ‘bring them to himself’ in a special national relationship, but we must not confuse this with effectual calling and justification. We must remember that most of those ‘redeemed’ people went to hell because they rejected the gospel. America is a classic illustration of this same principle. No nation presently on the earth has enjoyed privileges and blessings from God as we have. However, we are not ‘under a covenant of grace’ nor are we exempt from either God’s judgment or losing every single gospel privilege.

As mentioned earlier, God indeed ‘dwelt among’ the nation of Israel in a special way, but again, it was neither a personal nor spiritual indwelling as it is with every believer today. God did not ‘dwell among’ Israel in the same sense that he now dwells in the individual believer since the personal advent of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. Israel was never the ‘temple of God’ in the sense that the church is specifically designated his temple. The goal of Revelation 21:3 was never realized by Israel and never could be as long as the veil stood in place in the temple.

We must see that every single word like elect, chosen, loved, redeemed, son, etc. that describes Israel’s relationship to God as a nation has a totally different connotation when the identical words are used of the church’s relationship to God. One cannot mix spiritual and natural. One cannot treat the type as the reality.

The failure to see this clear truth is one of the glaring self- contradictions in both Dispensationalism and Covenant Theology. The words ‘God will be their God’ can never be applied in a redemptive sense to any nation or individual that is cast off by God: and Israel, as a nation was cast off in respect to special national status (Matt. 21:33–46),^[2] and many baptized children of godly parents have perished in hell. When the above words are taken in the spiritual sense of the New Testament, they mean absolute eternal security. Israel was indeed called out of Egypt by God’s grace and power, but the word called does not mean the same thing here as it does in Romans 1:7. Every single Israelite was redeemed by blood out of bondage in Egypt, but most of them perished in unbelief. The redemption by blood in Exodus 12 is not the same redemption by blood as that in Ephesians 1:7. One is a type and the other is the reality even as physical Israel is a type and the church is the reality.

Both Covenant Theology and Dispensationalism are constantly forgetting the above truth by mixing apples and oranges. They use typology as if it were the reality of the thing typified. Dispensationalism will build a doctrine of ‘carnal believers’ on the supposed fact that Israel in the wilderness was a redeemed people. Since they applied the blood to the door posts ‘in faith,’ they were truly ‘saved.’ In other words, they had enough faith to be ‘redeemed,’ but not enough faith to enjoy a ‘victorious life.’ Here is the Dispensational view:

Kadesh-barnea is, by the unbelief of Israel there, and the divine comment on that unbelief (Num. 14:22–38; Deut. 1:19–40; I Cor. 10:1–5), invested with immense spiritual significance. The people had faith to sprinkle the blood of atonement (Ex. 12:28) and to come out of Egypt (the world), but they had not faith to enter into their Canaan rest. Therefore, though redeemed, they were a forty-year grief to Jehovah.^[3]

Covenant Theology does exactly the same thing. Teachers of this system will vehemently reject the clear truth that Sinai was a legal covenant simply because it is impossible for God to put a redeemed people under a legal covenant, and Israel was truly redeemed—and by redeemed, the Covenant Theologian means saved. One group is just as bad as the other in their use of typology. The following quotation is from a widely used commentary on the Westminster Shorter Catechism, question 43, that is dealing with the preface to the Ten Commandments.

It amazes me that brilliant and godly men cannot see the implications of their theological system.

When God delivered His people out of slavery in Egypt, it was not because they had kept the ten commandments. No, He first delivered them, and then gave them the ten commandments. So they were not expected to try to keep the law in order to be saved. Rather they were expected to do this because they already had been saved. And this is exactly the way it is in the life of a Christian.^[4]

I doubt that any Covenant Theologian would say, “I believe that every individual Israelite that left Egypt in the Exodus was a justified believer in Christ.” However, their system of theology is forced to treat the nation of Israel as if that were the case. Williamson’s statement is arguing a key theological point and he is treating typology as absolute fact. He totally equates Israel’s physical salvation with the spiritual salvation of the church in his argument. Williamson would never say, “The Exodus experience was equal to true justification by faith for every individual Israelite that was involved.” However, he must actually treat them that way in his theological system. This is the only ground upon which he can reject the Mosaic Covenant as a legal covenant of works.

As mentioned earlier, we will say more on this point when we discuss who is the true fulfillment of the ‘great nation.’ For the present, I am only trying to show that Covenant Theology and Dispensationalism both treat the nation of Israel and her position before God as if she were a nation of justified believers instead of merely a type. The result of using typology in this manner is confusion and contradiction.

The goal of God ‘dwelling among his people’ as expressed in Revelation 21:3 was never realized in all of God’s dealings with the nation of Israel. The first expressions of God’s immediate presence were experienced by individual true believers under the Old Covenant. More of its reality is being experienced by believers under the New Covenant because of the personal advent of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost when he came to indwell us individually. The total fulfillment of this goal will not be realized until the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

There is a progressive revelation of the glory of God in Scripture that culminates in Revelation 21 with the glory of the Lord fully revealed in the city that has no need of the sun or the moon. The phrase ‘the glory of God’ denotes the immediate felt presence of God himself.

1. The first glimpse of the glory of God given to Israel was from a distance:

…they looked toward the wilderness, and, behold, the glory of the LORD appeared in a cloud (Ex. 16:10).

2. The glory of the Lord appeared on the mountain when the law covenant was given, but it made Israel tremble in fear:

And the glory of the LORD abode upon Mount Sinai,…And the sight of the glory of the LORD was like a devouring fire… (Ex. 24:16, 17).

3. God came closer to the nation of Israel in the tabernacle and “his glory dwelt there.” However, it was behind the veil in the most Holy Place, and only one man, once a year, could enter God’s presence and experience that glory:

Then a cloud covered the tent of the congregation, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle (Ex. 40:34).

4. The glory of the Lord left the temple because of Israel’s abominations (Ezek. 8:6; 9:3; etc).

5. God came a lot closer in the incarnation and tabernacled among us in the person of his Son and we beheld his glory, but again his glory was veiled by flesh. The Mount of Transfiguration is an example of the glory of Christ’s deity bursting through the veil of flesh. Wesley caught the wonder of this truth in his great Christmas hymn in the words “veiled in flesh, the Godhead see…” The Apostle John gives the classic statement of this truth:

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth (John 1:14)

6. God has now taken up his personal abode in every believer in the person of the Holy Spirit and we experience the glory of God in a way that supersedes the experience of those who actually saw Christ in the flesh. However, we still only “see through a glass darkly.” Paul develops the implications of the indwelling Spirit:

But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord… (2 Cor. 3:18 NKJV).

7. When God’s goal of full redemption is reached in our final adoption, we shall see him face to face in all his glory, and wonder of wonders, we “shall be like him for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2 NIV). The Book of Revelation shows our real hope:

The city had no need of the sun or the moon to shine in it, for the glory of the Lord illuminated it. The Lamb is its light. (Rev. 21:23 NKJV).

Any view of the blessings promised to Abraham and his seed that does not begin in Revelation 13:8 with Christ as the Lamb slain eternally in God’s purpose, and wind up in Revelation 21:3 uniting the redeemed of all ages before the Lamb’s throne fully beholding his glory, has not really grasped the biblical history and goal of God’s redemptive purpose and work. Likewise, any view that tries to push the realization of this goal back into the Old Testament as a means of preserving the so called unity of the one covenant of grace has totally destroyed the true unity of Scripture as that unity is built around Jesus Christ, the true Seed of Abraham.

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