`... the LORD stood above it (the heavenly ladder), and said, I am the LORD God of Abraham thy father, and the

God of Isaac: the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed; and thy seed shall be as the dust

of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south: and in

thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed' (Gen. 28:13-14).

It will be seen that the original promise given to Abraham is intact and there are no conditions added. Both the seed

and the land had a twofold element.

The amillennialist who denies the literal fulfilment of these promises makes much of a passage in Galatians 3:16:

`Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one,

And to thy seed, which is Christ'.

It is represented from this that all Jehovah had in view in connection with the promises made to the patriarchs was

the Person of Christ Himself, who descended from the literal seed of Abraham (Matt. 1:1). But those who assert this

do not read far enough, for in the last verse of the chapter Paul writes:

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

Without any argument this must relate to the Galatian churches who are described as the seed of Abraham so there

must be a twofold aspect to this seed which this chapter describes. Moreover, this is confirmed when we turn to the

Old Testament. The Apostle Paul is recalling such a verse as Genesis 21:12, `In Isaac shall thy seed be called'.

Here the Hebrew zera, seed, is a collective noun and is used in a singular sense with a singular verb. But in Genesis

17:7, the same word is used in a plural sense:

`And I will establish My covenant between Me and thee and thy seed (zera) after thee in their generations for an

everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee'.

It is quite obvious that here the seed cannot be singular; it must be plural, therefore to base any doctrine on either

the singular or plural of this word `seed' by itself is to get only half the truth. This can only lead to a distorted

picture in our minds.

The same thing must be said about the gift of the land. It was a twofold gift. According to Genesis 13:14-17

and 17:8 the gift related to Canaan, the modern Palestine. But in Genesis 15:18 a much wider piece of land is

envisaged, namely from the `river of Egypt (the Nile) unto the great river, the river Euphrates'.

By no stretch of imagination can these portions of the globe be identical and one is just as much a gift of God as

the other.

Those who spiritualise and oppose the historical-grammatical system of interpretation, maintain that the gift of

literal land was either fulfilled under Joshua or under Solomon. Let us examine this and see.

In Joshua 21:43-45 we have the following:

`And the LORD gave unto Israel all the land which he sware to give unto their fathers; and they possessed it, and

dwelt therein ... There failed not ought of any good thing which the LORD had spoken unto the house of Israel;

all came to pass'.

At a first glance this looks conclusive; all came to pass that God had promised concerning the land, but in view of

what we have just seen we should ask, which land? Was it Canaan, or the much larger piece of land stretching over

modern Saudi Arabia, and Iraq to the Euphrates? There can be no doubt that it was the former. The rest that Joshua

21:44 refers to resulted from the conquests of Joshua in Canaan, but we have yet to meet anyone who asserts that

Joshua conducted a campaign in the region of the Euphrates. This passage in the book of Joshua relates solely to the

gift of Canaan, leaving the rest to be fulfilled in the future (see Exod. 6:4; 1 Chron. 16:15-18).

As regards Solomon's reign, we are told in 1 Kings 4:21 and 2 Chronicles 9:26 that his dominion extended from

the river (Euphrates) to the land of the Philistines and to the border of Egypt. This is not the same as to the river

Nile as God promised, nor did Israel ever dwell in such a large portion of land. We are specifically told that `Judah

and Israel dwelt safely, every man under his vine and under his fig tree, from Dan even to Beersheba, all the days of

Solomon' (1 Kings 4:25). Dan and Beersheba were the extreme north and south of Canaan which was only a