The Watchtower Society and John and Morton Edgar - A2Z.org

appealed by His Spirit; for the' law is spiritual, as the'Apostle declares (Rom. 2: 14, 15). This spirit could not.always strive with men, but must ultimately become soeffaced as to no longer prevent them from going headlonginto destruction. Clearly, then, the Holy Spirit ofGod, as represented by Eliezer, could not be the heir ofthe promise, the one who would inherit all things andbless all the families of the earth. And thus, just as Godinformed Abraham that Eliezer could not be his heir, butthat he would have a seed of his own who would inheritthe promises, so God, by this allegorical picture informsus that it not by the Holy Spirit, but by His beloved SonJesus Christ whom He Himself wor~ld beget, that all theblessings of restitution shall be accomplished. And thisSon was not to be an earthly Seed, but a heavenly spiritualSeed, like the stars of heaver) for multitude-a multitudinousSeed, composed of Jesus Christ the head, and themembers of the Church His body.The sign which Abraham received in confirmation ofGod's promise that his seed would possess the land, is ahidden prophecy of the timp when the Christ, typified byIsaac, would know ye would possess the world. For ifwe regard the years of .the covenant-witnessing animalsas prophetic, we find that the aggregate ages of these fiveanimals point to the date when the present great worldwarbegan, which is the commencement of the activeoverthrow of the Present Evil World by the invisiblespiritual Kingdom, that the world may thus become thepossession of the Christ. Reckoning the ages of the twobirds as one year each, the aggregate ages of the fiveanimals is eleven years If we regard these elevenyears as prophetic, they represent a period of 11 times360=3,960 years. This period, dated from the year 2045B.C. when the covenant was first made with Abraham,terminates in the year 1914-1915 AD., the datc of the endlof the Times of the Gentiles.,