THE HOPE OF ISRAEL - The Preterist Archive

The Hope of Israel: What Is It? 69
will drive them out from before thee, until thou be
And He goes on to
increased, and inherit the land."
say that He would set the bounds of their possession
"from the desert unto the river" (Euphrates), and
would "deliver the inhabitants of the land" into their
hand, and they should "drive them out" before them
(Ex. 23:27-31). This shows that the fulfilment of
God's promise to Abraham, insofar as it was to be
fulfilled to his natural seed, was not to be postponed
to a far-off dispensation, but was to be accomplished
in that era of the old covenant ; and so it was.
Again, when Moses had brought the Israelites to the
river Jordan and was about to leave them, he reminded
them of the word of Jehovah spoken at Horeb ;
where
He commanded them to take their journey "to the
land of the Canaanites, and unto Lebanon, unto the
great river, the river Euphrates"; and said, "Behold,
I have set the land before you; go in and possess the
land which the Lord sware unto your fathers, Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob, to give unto them and to their
seed after them" (Deut. 1 :6-8)
. From this it will be
seen that, so soon as the Israelites had crossed the
river Jordan, they were constructively in possession
of the whole land of promise, from the Red sea to the
Euphrates river. And once again, in this last message,
Moses says: "Every place whereon the soles of your
feet shall tread shall be yours ;
from the wilderness and
Lebanon, from the river, the river Euphrates, even
unto the uttermost sea shall your coast be" (Deut.
11:24).
Furthermore, in God's first word to Joshua after the
death of Moses, He commanded him, saying: "Now
therefore arise, go over this Jordan, thou and all this