Stephen’s Defense
“The high priest said, “Are these things so?”
And he said, “Hear me, brethren and fathers! The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran, and said to him, ‘Leave your country and your relatives, and come into the land that I will show you.’ Then he left the land of the Chaldeans and settled in Haran. From there, after his father died, God had him move to this country in which you are now living. But He gave him no inheritance in it, not even a foot of ground, and yet, even when he had no child, He promised that He would give it to him as a possession, and to his descendants after him. But God spoke to this effect, that his descendants would be aliens in a foreign land, and that they would be enslaved and mistreated for four hundred years. ‘And whatever nation to which they will be in bondage I Myself will judge,’ said God, ‘and after that they will come out and]serve Me in this place.’ And He gave him the covenant of circumcision; and so Abraham became the father of Isaac, and circumcised him on the eighth day; and Isaac became the father of Jacob, and Jacob of the twelve patriarchs,” Acts 7:1-8.

Abraham was told that he would be brought into the Promised Land, a place filled with milk and honey, and yet he was never allowed to enter into it.

He lived as a nomad with his family journeying throughout the wilderness. He looked for a city that had no foundations whose builder was God. And yet as we are told in Hebrews, they looked for a better city, a heavenly one.

There is no place upon this earth that is actually a ‘Promised Land.’ Our promises are given to us through God’s Son, and through Him, we have a heavenly inheritance that assures us of a place set aside for us that will far exceed any such earthly land or place.

And yet, even now, we possess those promises given to us, and while they may not be seen in the natural, they exist in the spiritual. Those promises can and do, set us in heavenly places far above the clamor and confusion of this life and this earth.

The only way for Abraham and his descendants to fully possess the Promised Land, was to be resurrected from the dead.

They must live again on this earth, in a body that can no longer die, as was the hope of the faithful in Old and New Testament times. (Job 19:25-27; Isaiah 26:19; Daniel 12:1-3; 7:13-27; Acts 26:22-23; 1 Corinthians 15)

However, both Caleb the son of Jephunneh and Joshua, the son of Nun, were able to see this land:

“None of the men who came up from Egypt, from twenty years old and upward, shall see the land which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob; for they did not follow Me fully, except Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite and Joshua the son of Nun, for they have followed The LORD fully,” Numbers 32:11-12.

“Now the sons of Israel who came out of the land of Egypt numbered a total of 601,730,” Numbers 26:51.

And all of those were given an inheritance according to the number of their names, (Numbers 26:53). And yet, as well can see, all died in the wilderness except for those two previously mentioned:

“For The LORD had said of them, “They shall surely die in the wilderness.” And not a man was left of them, except Caleb the son of Jephunneh and Joshua the son of Nun,” Numbers 26:65.

It was only when Abraham needed a place to bury his wife, Sarah, that he bought a section of the land for a cemetery (Genesis 23). He had to buy this parcel of land, even though God had promised it to him as a gift.

And for that reason, God has planned for the nation of Israel to live with Jesus as their King upon this earth in the New Kingdom.

There the Promised Land will be fully realized, a place flowing with milk and honey incomparable to anything that this earth could produce.

And there as we should know, He will be our King forever where His light permeates everything around us. There is then no day or night, nor sorrow nor even a remembrance of that time that came before.

“The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem. It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of The LORD shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be lifted up above the hills; and all the nations shall flow to it, and many peoples shall come, and say: “Come, let us go up to the mountain of The LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.
For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of The LORD from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations, and shall decide disputes for many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore,” Isaiah 2:1-4.

 

Selah,
~ Stephen Hanson

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Stephen Hanson of In His Truth Ministries came to The LORD is a special way in 1975 and has prophesied regularly since. In these end-time birthing pangs we are reminded that judgment must first begin with the household of God. Will we be prepared and ready?

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