(Ver 1.5)  This is now Part 9 in a series of extremely advanced Bible studies about a subject that you have probably never heard anyone teach on before.  If you have not read these lessons from the beginning, I would suggest that you go back to “Part 1” and start there.   The Spirit of God revealed this information to me more than 10 years ago and I have been diligently studying it in the Bible ever since then to prove it was true.   Over these years I became totally convinced that this was accurate simply because I could see it plainly in the Bible and I knew that it was actually what the Bile said.  This is my introduction to one of the last lessons in this series of one of the most important and complex Bible studies that you may ever try to study or try to understand.  All of these lessons have come directly from my heart today to yours.  I can’t make you see anything in the Bible.  So my prayer today is that you may have an open mind, a receptive heart and may the eyes of your spiritual understanding become enlightened with the spiritual knowledge of knowing Him who was and is and will always be eternally faithful; my God of all Grace and all Peace, my Lord and my Savior Jesus Christ.  Amen.

I was a computer programmer for over 25 years.  I have worked on the development of several complex large computer software systems for some very large corporations.  I will occasionally introduce computer terms in my Bible lessons and I may do that again today.  But, I have found the design of God’s Word system to be so much more advanced and complex than anything that I have ever seen created by man that it is at times overwhelming.  God’s extreme intelligence is clearly displayed in the design of His Word.  However if you have never worked on a large scale computer system before or approached the Bible with this way of study, you will not understand what I am talking about.  This is why not very many people on the earth today actually understand how to study the Bible.  Intelligent design is displayed in every word printed right in front of them, but many do not recognize the patterns being presented.  I have been studying the Bible faithfully for over 20 years using my computer and I am not any closer to learning everything that God says because of the vastness of what is covered in the Bible.  Having said all of that, God has taught me a few things since the beginning and I am closer to knowing the complete truth today than I was 20 years ago.  The things that have taken me over 20 years to discover, you can learn in a matter of a few days if you apply yourself and actually believe what you are reading and then search and see them in the Bible for yourself.  When you do this, Satan will not be able to come and steal them from you.

In the last lesson I reviewed three distinct hidden patterns of the family of 5 divided 3 against 2 using the Micah 7:6 prophecy as the foundation and the stories of Abraham as two of the repeated models or patterns.  Abraham was both the father and the son in the family in these patterns.  In each of these examples, the pattern of family division recurred as an arrangement of 3 against 2.  The patterns were always close enough that you should have been able to recognize that they came from the same Designer.  You could call these little hidden patterns just amazing coincidences or you could call them the work of God like I do.   Today I am going to show you another even more potentially controversial hidden pattern of the family of 5 divided 3 against 2 that is also found within the life of Abraham.  This will be the third witness of God’s hidden pattern found in the life of a single man in the Bible.  I do not believe that the existence of three very similar patterns found within the story of one man in the Bible can be called a chance occurrence, a happenstance or even an accident.  If you could determine the mathematical probability of this occurring I believe it would be way beyond random probability.  If you can find this pattern in the life of anyone else in the Bible please let me know about it, I would really be interested in hearing if you can find it anywhere.  I personally believe God is trying to teach us something that is extraordinarily complex and important for us to know about.  Today we are going to explore the Abrahamic covenant and what God has initiated in a cleverly designed hidden textual format that will probably amaze some of my readers and for others they will probably just walk away being perplexed and skeptical.   I cannot predict which one you will choose to be, but I will hope that you will at least give God a chance before you shut the door on what He has to say in His Word.

I am now going to take you back to Genesis again to some prominently featured Words of God in the Old Testament that are very relevant to the family of 5 being divided 3 against 2.  Of course all of this information has been very widely studied for thousands of years and yet no one could have understood what was being said because I believe that it was only intended for us to know before Jesus returns.  I want to specifically show you these hidden secret concepts found within the Abrahamic Covenant so get ready to learn something new.  We are going to be studying the verses found in Genesis chapter 15.  You may recall while reading in this chapter of Genesis that God comes to Abram and makes some very specific promises to him and to his seed and these verses are all very interesting.  Let’s start by reviewing the general themes found in this chapter.  Here is my list of the important themes found in this chapter.

1. Abram is very concerned because he has no heir.
2. God comes to Abram in a spiritual vision.
3. God makes Abram certain promises.
4. Land is a central theme in this chapter.
5. God makes a covenant with Abram.
6. The seed of Abram is a central topic to this entire chapter.
7. The majority of the statements spoken by God are prophetic.

In reading and studying Genesis 15 these were some of the central themes being related to me.  God appears to be dealing with Abram personally, but also simultaneously speaking prophetically about many subjects.  The central theme concerning an heir and the central theme of the seed are both critical to understanding the purpose and the plan of God being revealed in this chapter.  I believe that we should quickly list the promises of God made to Abram in this chapter also to understand what is being promised as well as the prophecies being revealed.

1. Your heir will come from your own bowels (Gen 15:4).
2. Your seed shall be as the stars of the heaven (Gen 15:5).
3. Abram will inherit the land (Gen 15:7).
4. Thy seed will be a stranger in a land and they shall serve them and be afflicted in bondage 400 years (Gen 15:13).
5. God will judge this nation and the seed will come out with great substance (Gen 15:14).
6. Abram will live a long life and die in peace (Gen 15:15).
7. In the fourth generation they shall come here again (Gen 15:16).
8. God makes a covenant with Abram saying the land from the Nile to the Euphrates is given to you and to your seed (Gen 15:18).

These are the basic prophecies and the promises that were made concerning Abram and his seed from direct statements of God in the spiritual vision.  I believe these are very important to note, because we will learn more about them as we go further into the lesson.  I think we need to do some introductory concept analysis to exactly what a “seed of Abraham” is in order to understand who God is talking to and why.  I have done a much more extensive Bible series on the concept of Understanding Bible Seeds so I will not repeat all of that information here, but I may touch on some of it again in this lesson.  If you want to understand this subject more completely you can stop and read that series first and then come back to here and continue or you can wing it and try to catch up with what I am teaching just today about Abraham’s seed.

Before I continue let me make a point about something that God does in the book of Genesis as well as other places in the Bible that is potentially very confusing to many Christians.  God will speak about natural things and spiritual things within the context of the same chapter, even calling them by the exact same name and description and not ever tell you which one He is talking about or if He has even changed the subject or has shifted the realm of domain of the subject from what we were just reading about in the previous verse.  Wow, I’m not sure if you really understood what I just said.  Maybe you will as we continue through the lesson.  Also know that one verse may be from a participant like Abram’s viewpoint and the next verse may be given to us from God’s viewpoint of the situation.  Scripture view point is a complex subject analysis, but one that you need to be aware of in order to understand how to rightly divide the Word of truth.  For example, Abram could ask a purely natural question and God could give a spiritual answer and both should be viewed differently.  There is also another level of complexity built into the story of Abraham based upon what we learned from Galatians 4.  The story of Abraham was and still is an allegorical representation of the family of God.  This means God tells a natural story about a natural man and these are parallel references to the spiritual realm.  All of this makes the correct interpretation of Genesis 15 infinitely more complex.

There are many spiritual things mentioned in Genesis 15 as well as many parallel natural things.  For example the concept of “seed” found in Genesis 15.  “Seed” is mentioned directly 4 times in 4 different verses.  Is every verse speaking about the same type of seed?  Is every verse speaking of the same exact seed?  Is this “seed” natural or is it spiritual or is it both simultaneously?  Is the term “seed” used as a singular reference or is it used as plural reference meaning many or is it both again simultaneously?  When I studied the subject of “seed” in the Bible I found where God called at the very least 10 different things by the exact same Hebrew word translated as “seed”.  Which one of these ten is the type of “seed” being spoken of in this chapter?  Or is every reference a different type of seed?  The Bible is so much more complex than you think it is, so let me try to answer some of these questions.  Let’s go to Genesis 15 and start reading in verse 18 first.

Gen 15:18  In the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates:

I am going to start by talking about the covenant that God makes with Abraham first and then I’m going to talk about the seed of Abraham and then finally end back up at the covenant at the end of the lesson.   According to my Bible studies that I have done, a covenant is a spiritual marriage in the eyes of God.  If God makes a covenant, he is proposing spiritual marriage.  If you do not understand this concept then you should go and read my lessons on “Understanding Bible Covenants” first.  God says “Unto your seed I have given this land”.  God is speaking to Abram directly and speaking about his seed.  What or who is this seed that God is speaking of?  God actually does not define that in this verse does He?     People automatically assume it is only the natural children of Israel since they possess a small portion of that land today.   We can read in Romans 11:1 and 2 Corinthians 11:22 that Paul calls himself a seed of Abraham and Paul is very clearly speaking of a natural seed as being a physical descendant of the man Abraham.  You may recall that Abraham begat Isaac, Isaac begat Jacob and Jacob begat the 12 tribes of Israel.  We can also see in Hebrews 11:9 that Isaac and Jacob are described to be heirs of the promise.  So clearly we have some scriptures to lean towards an all-natural interpretation of Genesis 15.  We also know that Paul was born on the earth from the descendants of the tribe of Benjamin.  So there is clear precedence for a purely natural interpretation of the Seed of Abraham as being only a physical people.  This is a popular position that many Christians stand on.   But, is this all that the Bible says on the subject?  I think we are about to find out some new perspectives on this subject.

When reading the Bible it is important not to mix apples and oranges just so that you can call them all fruit.  This would be an example of trying to take the Word of God and make it all natural or to make it all spiritual by lumping both of these into a general basket category that you want to call the Truth and that would work if God wrote the Bible that way.  However God makes us divide the word of truth into categories of either spiritual or natural sections in order to understand it clearly.  What I am getting at is that there are many things that are spoken by God in this one chapter and if you think that God is only talking about one covenant, one people or even one man then you are in a position to be very confused.  You are going to have to read the Bible with a more open mind and then learn to use the Bible to interpret the Bible.  You are also going to have to discern the differences between natural things and spiritual things.  Here in this verse in Genesis it appears that God is speaking only to a natural man named Abram and that He is making a covenant which includes some physical land on the earth.  There is an explicit region described that goes from the Nile in Egypt to the Euphrates river going through Turkey, Syria and Iraq and this land has been directed to the seed of Abram.  I really do not have a problem with that general interpretation of this verse.  It is usually best to always take the Bible literally first and then stick with the literal interpretation when you can.   I said when you can, because there are some other places in the Bible that appear to expand our definition of what God was talking about in Genesis 15.  For example, read this verse in Galatians 3:

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

Here we have a major new conflict brewing with the pure natural interpretation of Genesis 15.  You see in Galatians 3:29 it appears that God is calling all Christians the “seed of Abraham”.  God also calls us the “heirs” of the promise.  Which promise, is God speaking of and what is it that we are supposed to inherit?  This is obviously a very different new type of seed being spoken of than what we originally thought from reading Genesis 15:18.  Galatians 3:29 must be referring to a “spiritual” type of seed and not a “physical” seed since I am not a naturally born Jew and neither is the majority of the modern church today.  Since I’m not in possession of the natural land of Israel, this also means there is a potential spiritual inheritance that is different than the natural inheritance that was given to natural Israel by God in Genesis 15.  All of this new information makes correct Bible interpretation infinitely more complex for us immediately.  We are going to have to learn to rightly divide the Word of Truth if we are ever to correctly understand it.  We are going to have to balance this new spiritual information with the old natural information that we previously thought to be the entire truth.  It is important to note that this scripture implies a plural type of spiritual seed, meaning many spiritual individuals being called the seed of Abraham.  Everyone that belongs to Christ is now called the spiritual seed of Abraham.  This is the same pattern that existed when we read in Genesis 15:18 and there were many implied natural descendants of Abraham called his natural seed.  What I begin to see developing is a natural pattern found in Genesis 15 that has occurred first to help point us to a spiritual pattern that has occurred after Christ was raised from the dead.  I know I added the words “spiritual” and “natural” before the words “seed” in my interpretations but that is the only logical way to differentiate them in my view point.  Let’s back up in this chapter of Galatians and see what else God says about the Seed of Abraham.

Gal 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.

Here is another verse that complicates our efforts tremendously when interpreting any verse found in Genesis 15 with a reference to the seed subject.  Here in Galatians, God is speaking directly about the promises that were made to Abraham and to his seed and this time God clearly comes out and says that the seed in Genesis 15 is a singular reference to Christ and that it is not a plural reference meaning many.  Do you recognize how this presents more complex problems in interpreting the seed and the promises of God found in Genesis 15 correctly.  At the very least it appears to imply that God has made simultaneous promises to the natural and the spiritual seed of Abraham.  Here in Galatians 3:16, God says this promise was only made to the one seed of Abraham called Christ (Heb 2:16).  So we have a continual increasing conflict developing.  We just read in Hebrews 11:9 that Isaac and Jacob were called heirs of Abraham and God now directs us to Christ as being the only seed that was spoken of.  We have now gone from many to one and this is a totally new perspective.  I believe that we are seeing more parallels being revealed.  Abram had only one natural son that God recognized to be his natural heir.  This heir was Isaac and he represents a natural pattern of the spiritual Christ to come.  Let’s read another verse found in the New Testament from God’s commentary about the seed of Abraham:

Rom 4:13  For the promise, that he should be the heir of the world, was not to Abraham, or to his seed, through the law, but through the righteousness of faith.

These are vastly ignored verses in the Bible.  They clearly say the promise was not made to those natural seeds that were under the law, but that the promise was to the spiritual seed that would inherit the world through the righteousness of faith.  This is obviously a major problem for the exclusive natural seed interpretation of Genesis 15.  Here in this verse it does not name the specific region of the Nile to the Euphrates any more, it rather states it in the general term called the “world”.  The Greek word translated here as world means “an orderly arrangement”.  It denotes a place with structure and organization.   When God spoke to Abram in Genesis 15, the known world was centered between the Nile and the Euphrates.  That was the world back then.  I believe that this is what God is saying to us from these verses using patterns found in design and speech.

What I see developing is two realms of parallel existence.  The natural realm occurred first and Abraham produced a nation of natural seeds.  But, God then reveals that there is another type of seed that has also come from Abraham and this seed must be viewed spiritually from God’s point of view.  These verses in Romans and Galatians clearly inform us of another parallel type of seed that is spoken of by God and too many Christians want to ignore them to focus only on the natural descendants of Abraham.  There is an implied reference that the land between the Nile and the Euphrates was only a symbolic representation for the greater reference of the “world”.   Notice in Romans and Galatians God is speaking of the fulfillment of prophecies and He mentions the promises, the heirs and the seeds in these verses and this proves conclusively that God is speaking directly about what we are studying in Genesis 15.  Practically every major theme of Genesis 15 is explicitly satisfied in these verses.  To ignore God’s definitions, God’s perspective and God’s words of explanation will cause you to wrongly interpret the Bible 100 times out of 100 attempts.  I hope you are learning something today.

2Co 4:18  While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.

I believe that one of the primary goals of the New Testament is to cause Christians to transition away from looking at the temporary things of this world to try to teach us to look at the eternal things of God within the greater spiritual realm of domain.  Both in Galatians and Romans, God is attempting to shift our focus off of the natural things found in this world in an attempt to get us to see the supernatural spiritual things that He has accomplished in the unseen realm.  My mentioning these verses will probably not make me a very popular Bible teacher to a select number of people who believe that natural Israel was given the land eternally.  However, I am not going to ignore these important verses in the Bible that speak of Jesus and the church as the spiritual seed of Abraham in order to satisfy their personal private interpretation of Genesis 15.  Too many people read the fifteenth chapter of Genesis in isolation and think that God is speaking only to the natural people that will forever possess the physical land in the Middle East named Israel.  However, when we read the New Testament more closely we found some additional insight that is too important to ignore.    The New Testament appears to say that the seed of Abraham is not the natural seed, but that it is rather the spiritual seed who will inherit the promise of God.  Do not get me wrong, I’m not abandoning the natural nation of Israel.  I fully support them to get saved and come into the reality of Jesus Christ.   Let’s go through the rest of the verses in Genesis 15 that speak about the seed of Abraham to see how they might fit with what we have just learned from God in the New Testament.

Gen 15:2  And Abram said, Lord GOD, what wilt thou give me, seeing I go childless, and the steward of my house is this Eliezer of Damascus?

Here in verse 2 it is very interesting to note that Abram is speaking to God and telling God what God already knows.  It is not news to God it is only the sound of Abram complaining.  But, one hidden word stands out to me in this verse.  The word translated as “steward” is actually two Hebrew words and the translators omitted one of them.  The Hebrew word left out is “H1121” and it means “a son” and “a builder of the family name”.   Abraham is clearly saying to God I have no son; my only family builder is my servant.  So Abram desires a son.  This hidden son reference is not a coincidence.  This is the exact same Hebrew Word that Jesus used when He said “I am the Son (H1121) of Adam (man)”.

Gen 15:3  And Abram said, Behold, to me thou hast given no seed: and, lo, one born in my house is mine heir.

Here in verse 3 of Genesis 15, the term “seed” appears to be a singular natural and physical reference and it is spoken by Abram from Abram’s perspective of his personal situation.  Try to see how Abram is asking God a natural question and the answer that God gives back to him is precisely not the exact same question that was asked.  As you can see Abram is focused entirely on the singular fact that his wife Sarai has given him no children.  Abram desires to have an heir to inherit all that God has blessed him with.  Abram is seeking God for the very basic human need of a sole physical heir.  It is also interesting to note that Abram is blaming God for not having this heir.  Abram has been married to his wife Sarai for a while now and they have had no children but not for a lack of trying to have children.  Abram has only a servant in his house that is currently his sole heir if anything would happen to him.  There is a possible voiced discouragement in his question to God.   From this information so far we see a singular focus for a solitary son to be the natural physical heir.  To me this relates indirectly to another spiritual heir named Christ we saw in Galatians 3:16.  You see when Isaac was born to Abraham; God called Isaac his only son (Gen 22:2).  Jesus the Son of God is also called God’s “Only begotten” in John 3:16.  Are you seeing the parallel being established here with Abraham being a type of God the father?  Isaac is definitely a type of Jesus the future spiritual Seed of Abraham and the promised heir.  Let’s examine God’s response to Abraham’s natural problem.    Abraham tells God you have given me no seed.   This “seed” that Abraham is talking about is clearly a physical son.   Can we agree so far?

Gen 15:4  And, behold, the word of the LORD came unto him, saying, This shall not be thine heir; but he that shall come forth out of thine own bowels shall be thine heir.

As you can see God is telling Abram that this servant born in his house will not be his heir.  God then tells Abram that his heir will come directly from his own internal bowels.  From this statement we could automatically assume that God is indirectly speaking of a new second type of “seed” called sperm.  You can see this type of seed mentioned in the Bible in verses like Leviticus 12:2, Leviticus 15:16 and Numbers 5:28.   The sperm of a human male is definitely called by the same Hebrew word translated as “seed” in those verses.  Since this type of seed originates internally and then is produced externally we could think that God is speaking of this seed in Genesis 15:4.  If we do that the number of human male sperm cells (seeds) passed to the female can vary.  The number of sperm cells can range from 20 million to 400 million individual cells.  Yet this amount is a very countable number so keep that in mind.  Abraham was asking God about one natural seed called a child and God seems to confirm that this child will come from his own body (bowels) and that he will be produced from one of the millions of seed cells that were in him.  However that is a very human natural viewpoint of another actual spiritual situation and circumstance being spoken of in the New Testament. The word translated as “bowels” is more likely to mean the “womb” as in a female reference to a woman’s natural body part that produces children.  Obviously Abram does not have one of these, or does he?  You can look at this verse two different ways using the Bible.  There are specific verses that say Sarah’s body is Abraham’s body and that they are now one flesh (Gen 2:24).  So what his wife has Abram also technically possesses.  Then there is another aspect that is also highly applicable to our subject of having children.  These are called the spiritual children that will be birthed after the resurrection of Christ.

Gal 4:19  My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you,

Here is a very confusing verse for many people.  A human male named Paul is writing about being in labor with soon to be born children and clearly he is not speaking literally or more specifically physically.  Paul must be writing about a spiritual process that is taking place.  I believe God is speaking spiritually in this verse in Genesis also while people are thinking naturally.  Abraham is called the “father” of the church in Romans 4:16 and James 2:21.  This cannot be speaking naturally and it can only be revealing a spiritual fatherhood that has transpired as a result of Abraham’s faith.  Do you see how complicated these subjects found in Genesis can become?  So far we have two different types of natural seeds being spoken of and one new third spiritual kind being implied in this chapter and it is about to get even more complex in the next verse.  Genesis 15:3 was a natural question and verse 4 was a potential natural answer that I believe can simultaneously apply to the spiritual realm.  These are God’s words of promise to Abram with definite spiritual applications.  We also saw a seed transition occurring; moving from a singular reference to a potential plural reference. Now let’s see what God says next to Abraham.

Gen 15:5  And he brought him forth abroad, and said, Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them: and he said unto him, So shall thy seed be.

Here in verse 5 of Genesis 15 the subject of “seed” seems to shift dramatically beyond the concepts of anything natural or singular.  Reread this verse very carefully and see if you can see how God has shifted the focus and the perspective has changed from a naturalistic human way of thinking to a purely spiritual divine point of view.  Notice how these words seem to be coming from how God see’s things happening up in the spiritual realm.  To me it appears that God is looking down from heaven at a new and different type of seed.  Remember that the last verse spoken by God could be taken either naturally or spiritually, but here in this verse it is practically impossible to take it naturally at all.  God is still speaking directly to Abram and this is still the same answer to his natural question about a singular natural heir (seed).  However, God is now comparing the concept of Abraham’s “seed” to be like the number of the stars in the heavens.  Do you have any idea how many stars there are in the heavens?   Using modern telescopes we have determined that there are so many that we cannot even begin to count them all.  Modern scientists have only been able to estimate the astronomical number of heavenly bodies.  This number is way over the trillions of stars level.  Therefore here in Genesis 15:5 God has escalated from one seed or even millions of seeds all the way to a range of uncountable seeds.   So obviously what God is saying to Abram is something way beyond what a natural human mind could conceive.  The current earth population is around 7 billion and this is still a very countable number.  Even if every human on the earth got saved today, we would not come close to the number of stars in the heavens.  Are you following me so far?  I know you can look at this verse other ways and reason that God was only speaking of people seeing stars with the naked human eye in order to determine the number of seeds to come.  However, since the knowledge of this is going forth in a day when we can see way beyond the naked eye constraints, I believe that God is answering Abram from a prophetical spiritual way of thinking and seeing?  Let’s estimate the count of the stars visible by the naked eye on a clear night to be somewhere in the range of the low thousands maybe even tens of thousands.  Is that all of the seed that Abraham will produce?  Even if you count to a million, there are 7 billion people on the planet.  There are currently over 4 million natural descendants of Abraham living in Israel today.  Neither of these numbers is in the thousands.  There is no logical way that God is talking about a number that low to be all of the seeds of Abraham.  After all God knows how many stars that He created.  I personally believe based upon what we learned in Romans and Galatians God was thinking eternally all along while simultaneously speaking of both natural and spiritual things.  Let’s skip down quickly to verses 13 and 18 to see the last two times the “seed” of Abraham is directly mentioned in this chapter.  One of these verses we already looked at, but it won’t hurt us to see it again:

Gen 15:13  And he said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years;

Gen 15:18  In the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates:

Here in these two verses we have what appears to be the usage or a reference to the fourth type of the Hebrew word translated as “seed” of Abraham found in Genesis 15.  This time God has seemed to shift back to the plural natural perspective of the nation of Israel being the natural seed that are to be captive slaves in Egypt for a period of 400 years and that was not what Abram was asking about in verse 3 or even what God was talking about in verses 4 or 5.  This “seed” in verses 13 and 18 appear to be plural and it is definitely natural on the surface.  Yet we are still talking about the same subject of a singular seed heir of Abraham.  This makes it very complex to interpret all of these scriptures correctly.  When the children of Israel were freed from Egyptian bondage scholars estimate their numbers to be around 1 to 2 million people.  This would involve all the men, women and children that came out of Egypt.  This reference is somewhere beyond the number one, but way below the number of the stars in the heavens.  So this is why I stated that this appears to be a fourth type of seed referenced in this chapter. We have seen multiple seed references and multiple numbers associated with each reference.  Going back to Galatians 3:29, God said “If you are Christ’s then you are Abraham’s seed”.  Based upon what we just read in Genesis 15 of the 4 different types of possible seeds mentioned, which seed type is Romans 4:13, Galatians 3:16 and 3:29 talking about?

1. Seed of Abraham = the son Isaac a solitary seed/heir (Genesis 15:3)
2. Seed of Abraham = the sperm in his bowels in the range of millions of cells (Genesis 15:4)
3. Seed of Abraham = something as the stars of the heavens an uncountable number (Genesis 15:5)
4. Seed of Abraham = the natural nation of Israel in bondage 400 years 1 to 2 million people (Genesis 15:13, 15:18)

Since the majority of the church does not qualify to be seed type 1, 2, or 4, we must be found somewhere in the seed type 3 by default or we are another parallel seed type that is not directly mentioned.  We also saw that Jesus was called the singular seed of Abraham.  Which one of these seed types fit that pattern?  I believe Jesus was a pattern of the seed type 1, Isaac.  That was an introductory analysis of the very complex subject of the “seed of Abraham”.   I just showed you 3 or 4 different things that are called the seed of Abraham concurrently.  Yet God said none of these are the heirs in Galatians or Romans.  How difficult is this?  A physical heir was what Abram sought from God and Galatians 3:16, 3:29 and Romans 4:13, tells that Jesus Christ and the church are these revealed heirs of Abraham.  Yet we (the church) were not held captive 400 years in Egypt.  However, you may be able to see that according to Bible typology, the human race was held in symbolic bondage to Satan for 4000 years until Jesus Christ came and died and provided us freedom from the bondage of sin.  There are many distinct parallels given to us in the Bible about the natural nation of Israel being a pattern of the church for us to learn from.  I will not expand that part of the subject any further today, but I thought I would throw you a couple of new clues to think about.

An heir is one of the major themes of the entire story of Abraham found in Genesis 15?   A physical heir was what Abraham desired and it was a spiritual heir that God desired.  When God was telling Abraham what He would do in this chapter, you need to understand what Jesus said about this chapter in the Gospels.  Moses wrote the book of Genesis and in John 5:46 that Moses wrote about Him.  This was a very key statement to understanding anything in the Book of Genesis.  It is ulitmately about Jesus.  The truth of the Bible is rarely found on the surface text, it will only be clearly understood when we dig deep beneath the surface and find out what else God says about the subjects being discussed.  I am now ready to talk about the Abrahamic Covenant and its hidden meanings.  So far in this lesson I skipped over the primary verses that I wanted to talk about in an attempt to explain how things in Genesis 15 were given more from God’s spiritual point of view rather than they are from Abraham’s natural point of view.  What I am going to say now will further confirm that if you can see it.   We can fairly easily understand that God is doing something much greater than just making a covenant with Abraham in this chapter if we perceive the underlying messages being revealed to us.  Let’s go to verse 7 in Genesis 15 and begin to read there next.

Gen 15:7  And he said unto him, I am the LORD that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it.

Gen 15:8  And he said, Lord GOD, whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it?

Here we have another direct promise given to Abraham to inherit the land.  Notice in Genesis 15:7 God says to Abraham I brought you out of your former land to give you this land to inherit it.  I can see spiritual implications on that statement.  We as Christians have been brought out of our previous natural land to become the spiritual heirs within a new heavenly spiritual domain.  I think we need to look up the definition of the word translated as “inherit” in this verse to learn what it means.  I think we need to analyze this statement.   Did Abram ever possess the Promised Land?  Uh oh?  Abraham certainly sojourned in this land but there is no way that you could say that Abraham inherited it!  I think you will be surprised to find that “to inherit” does not mean what you automatically assumed that it meant.

H3423

A primitive root; to occupy (be driving out previous tenants, and possessing in their place); by implication to seize, to rob, to inherit; also to expel, to impoverish, to ruin: – cast out, consume, destroy, disinherit, dispossess, drive (-ing) out, enjoy, expel, X without fail, (give to, leave for) inherit (-ance, -or), + magistrate, be (make) poor, come to poverty, (give to, make to) possess, get (have) in (take) possession, seize upon, succeed, X utterly.

This Hebrew word represents a wide range of possible meanings and uses.  It would appear to me that many of the meanings are an aggressive action of force against an enemy.   It also appears that there is a double edged sword of blessings and cursing attached to the very definition.  The occupying people would be blessed and the occupied people would be cursed.  To occupy is a conquering term where one nation overtakes another nation.  It denotes the seizing control of, the casting out of the previous occupants, or to make the previous owners poor, consume them, destroy them, ruin them, to take possession and to seize control away from someone or something.  This is not what we normally think of when we say I inherited a house from my uncle.  Using this definition that would mean you kicked your uncle out of his house by force and you took it over to live in it for yourself.   Did Abraham ever do this?  I do not see how Abraham ever fulfilled this prophecy until after his natural descendants did it hundreds of years later when Joshua led his children into the Promised Land again to possess it.  Did you know that this story of Joshua and Israel taking the Promised Land was a type of Jesus and the church today?  Do you know what Jesus’ Hebrew name was?  The Greek word transliterated as “Jesus” is the exact same Hebrew name transliterated as “Joshua” who led his people into the land to possess it.  Do you think this is a coincidence?  I can see the parallels being given to us again, can you?

Wow, I could spend a lot of time talking about that but, perhaps I better not today.  Just take note that God is speaking here about a pending battle that will take place in the future.  God is denoting future responsibility and action that is required by Abram and his seed to inherit the Promised Land.   Then look at verse 8, where Abram says “Lord how will I know that I will possess (inherit) it”.  What is God’s answer to this question?  I am about to blow you away with God’s proof text answer.  This is the surprise that I have been building to today in this lesson.  Here is God’s reply to Abram’s question.

Gen 15:9  And he said unto him, Take me an heifer of three years old, and a she goat of three years old, and a ram of three years old, and a turtledove, and a young pigeon.

Gen 15:10  And he took unto him all these, and divided them in the midst, and laid each piece one against another: but the birds divided he not.

I can read these two verses now and see how that Abraham is given the task of dividing the Spiritual Family of God very plainly.  Can you see it?  You are going to have to learn to look beyond your natural thinking and begin to look for the spiritual pattern characteristics from what you have learned before.  In these two verses there is no mention of a family, a father, a mother or a mother-in-law, a son, a daughter-in-law or even a daughter, yet they are all right there in front of you in plain sight.  I call this the display of God’s intelligence and His ability to hide the truth in plain sight.  It is like I taught you earlier, when you are sewing together dresses from a single pattern, one dress can be made to look totally different than another dress by the simplest choice of options or the material fabrics selected.  One dress might be made from black silk with white pin stripes and the other dress could be made from a linen or cotton red polka dot pattern.  They can appear totally different on the surface.  However, the expert will always be able to recognize the reuse of the same pattern in both.  The designer can make specific selections to change the entire look and feel of a dress and still be using the exact same pattern.

In object oriented computer programming this is a cool feature called “inheritance” that exists that is related to our subject today.  One computer object inherits the characteristics and patterns of another object and the new object can make little additions or modifications to individualize the new component.  However the original pattern is still available and is clearly recognizable to the expert.  Did you notice this computer technique was called “inheritance”?  Did you notice that inheritance was one of the primary subjects within the Abrahamic Covenant?  You should really learn more about computers if you want to learn more about God’s word.   Sometimes the parallels are amazing.  I am teaching you God’s object oriented technique of inheritance today found in His word using patterns.  God reuses natural patterns to convey hidden spiritual lessons.  When you learn these things it changes how you study the Bible.

Did you notice how many animals that God has instructed Abram to use in this covenant?   It just so happens that there is exactly 5 animals used in this covenant.  Uh oh?  Since we are not directly told that there are five you are going to have to count them for yourself and this is just a small effort on your part to help you to recognize the same familiar pattern found in Micah 7:6.  How many family members did Jesus tell us were in the family in Luke 12:52?  Was it not exactly five?  Do you think that the use of 5 animals is just another strange coincidence?  I certainly do not believe that.  Now let me show you what else is revealed here in the Abrahamic covenant.  Did you notice that 3 of the animals are divided?  Do you think the number three is another coincidence?  Did you also notice that these 3 animals are given specific ages as well as their specific sexual genders?  One is specifically masculine and the other two are specifically feminine.  A “Ram” is always a mature male sheep.  A “Heifer” is a mature female cow.  The “She Goat” is also a mature female goat.  These are three very specific types of unique animals with great detail given to each of them.  It clearly tells me that a ram is not a cow and a goat is not a ram and a cow is not a goat.   We have three very different creatures even though they are all within the global animal kingdom.  But, that makes three animals with specific genders being divided.  Is that an accident?   There is absolutely no way that this occurs by accident.  What we are seeing is the Father, the Mother and the Mother-in-law in the family of God being divided and we will get to this in more depth very soon; one male and two females.

The specific genders of the two birds are not revealed within the text, but we now know from our understanding of Micah 7:6 that one bird is a male and the other bird has to be a female.  But, since they are not divided we learn some very new information about how the family of God is being divided.  It is essential that you notice that 3 of the animals are divided and 2 of the animals are not divided?  Does any of this sound familiar to you?  Isn’t this very similar to the patterned words of Jesus again from Luke 12:52 when He said the house would be divided 3 against 2 and 2 against 3?  Is this not another reoccurrence of the pattern of the house of 5 divided 3 against 2 with a slight new variation?  In every pattern given, God is revealing new details of the family division.  I’m telling you God is so smart that He can write something in the Bible for thousands of years and no one understands it until He reveals it to us and then it is so obvious that I wonder, why I didn’t see it before?   Let me give you a new picture diagram of the Abrahamic Covenant and show you how it fits the pattern of God’s family of 5:

This is the third time in Genesis that God has used something in direct association with Abraham to display a repetitive pattern of the 5 in one family divided 3 against 2.  The first time I showed you this pattern, Abraham was a type of the son.  The next time I showed you this pattern, Abraham was a type of the father.   Now we have the covenant that God is making with Abraham with another new variation of 5 being divided 3 by 2.  Keep in mind that this is God’s answer to prove that Abraham will inherit the world/land.  God is saying to Abraham this is all of the proof that you need, but it was certainly spiritually encrypted or encoded evidence that was not understood by Abraham or anyone else since Abraham until now.  I can clearly see the spiritual implications being revealed to us and I hope that you can also.

I need to address a subject here for the sake of argument.  You might can look at my diagram of the family of 5 and can see how Satan has taken it to possess it for a symbol of himself.  You see, I believe that Satan figured this truth out a long time ago and this is why there are so many satanic symbols today that are viewed as an upside down five pointed star with the head of a dead ram on it.  Do you think this is also a coincidence?  I believe there is absolutely no way that this is a coincidence.  I believe Satan purposely selected this symbol to discredit the truth and to present himself as God.  I do not believe that Satan is stupid.  Satan is very intelligent and very tricky.  However, I believe that God is smarter and He is definitely going to win this battle.  What battle?  You will have to read Revelation 12 to see the coming battle in heaven.  Satan will take on God in heaven with all of his might and he will be thrown down to the earth.  Let’s get back to the Abrahamic covenant.

The animals selected by God are not specifically revealing on the surface except for the Ram.  The ram is a symbolic representation for God the Father and He is always the father of the Lamb.  A lamb is of course a type of the Son of God, Jesus Christ.  When Abraham took Isaac to be sacrificed, Isaac asked his father “where is the animal to be sacrificed”.  Abraham’s answer was “God will provide himself as the sacrifice” (Gen 22:8).  Now we see that a ram and not a lamb is caught by his horns nearby where Abraham was and Abraham goes and gets this animal and he becomes the sacrifice instead of Isaac.  Therefore God as a Ram in my diagram is a very easy association for me to make.  I personally believe that God chose these five animals to teach us some new truths while also using them to hide the pattern in more depth of surface complexity.  I do not ever recall Jesus being called a bird, but a dove did descend from heaven upon him when He was baptized by John.  So I can see an association of Jesus to a bird using this reference alone.  I personally believe that God did not tell Abraham to use a lamb because this would have given it away and made it way too obvious for everyone to focus on the Lamb of God.

I do not believe at this level of the discussion that the identities of the female animals, the heifer or the she goat are important for today’s lesson.  I could have flipped them and the result would still be the same for what I want to say about them.  The same is technically true of the given two birds; one is described to be a turtledove and the other a young pigeon.  However there is an interesting part of the Hebrew definition of the “young pigeon” that I will mention briefly.  This Hebrew word means “nestling” and it is referring to a very young bird without feathers.  In other words a newly hatched baby bird that just came into the world!   I do not see how this type of bird fits with a type of the Son of God, but the newborn/reborn church I can make that fit very logically.   What I want to teach you about briefly is what God uses in the Old Testament as a type of Jesus and the church.  This may be too much information in this lesson, but I’m going to try to show it to you anyway so that you can see the usage by God of these two birds as a type for Jesus and the church more clearly.  We are going to the book of Leviticus and we will read in the fourteenth chapter:

Lev 14:2  This shall be the law of the leper in the day of his cleansing: He shall be brought unto the priest:

Lev 14:3  And the priest shall go forth out of the camp; and the priest shall look, and, behold, if the plague of leprosy be healed in the leper;

Lev 14:4  Then shall the priest command to take for him that is to be cleansed two birds alive and clean, and cedar wood, and scarlet, and hyssop:

Lev 14:5  And the priest shall command that one of the birds be killed in an earthen vessel over running water:

Lev 14:6  As for the living bird, he shall take it, and the cedar wood, and the scarlet, and the hyssop, and shall dip them and the living bird in the blood of the bird that was killed over the running water:

Lev 14:7  And he shall sprinkle upon him that is to be cleansed from the leprosy seven times, and shall pronounce him clean, and shall let the living bird loose into the open field.

I read these verses and come near to tears when I thought of them.  If you do not see what they are saying then perhaps you should get saved.  God uses the law of the leper cleansing to reflect the redemptive works of Jesus Christ on the cross.  Practically everything mentioned in these verses are symbolic representations of something much greater in power and spiritual authority.   Two birds are used and that is not a coincidence, especially knowing who the two birds are in the Abrahamic Covenant?  One bird sheds his blood in order to free the other bird after the living bird is dipped into the blood and the water of the dead bird.  There is a direct mention of an earthen vessel, cedar wood, scarlet thread and hyssop and each of these are very significant to the story of Jesus.  Jesus came to the earth in an earthen vessel to shed His blood for us.   Jesus was hung on a cross of wood.  The Roman soldiers gave Jesus a drink of vinegar and hyssop on the cross.  When Jesus’ side was pierced by the soldier’s spear, water and blood poured out onto the ground.  The scarlet thread represented the blood line of the savior from Abraham to David to Jesus.

I personally believe that leprosy is a hidden type of sin in the Bible.  Leprosy is a physical state of uncleanness that reveals to us a greater truth about a spiritual state of uncleanness.  Did you notice what the priest was instructed to do with the two birds?  One bird is killed and his blood is collected in a pot with running water.  The living bird is dipped into the pot and then is set free to fly away after being symbolically cleansed.   I of course can see Jesus as being the type of the bird that has shed His blood to cleanse the church that is represented by the living bird.  In other words we in the church, do not have to shed our blood to be made clean from our sins.  It was only Jesus’ blood that causes our spiritual cleansing from our sins (1 Jo 1:9).  Two birds are definitely a hidden pattern for Christ and the church so these 5 animals are beginning to fall into place very nicely.

The ages of the three animals that are divided are specifically given and they are said to each be 3 years old.  That of course makes life more difficult for me to try to explain.  God the Father is an eternal ageless spiritual being and has no age.   The Heavenly Jerusalem was the elder woman first created in covenant with God as the type of Sarah.  So the Heavenly Jerusalem has a birth or a start creation date, even though I do not know when this occurred.  The Earthly Jerusalem was a much younger woman and she was a type of Hagar.   We do technically know when this approximately occurred from reading in the Bible and calculating the dates.  The covenant of Abraham was made approximately 2000 years after Adam and 2000 years before Christ.  So we generally know the age of one woman in human terms she is technically near 4000 years old earth time.  However here in this verse God calls them all three years old.  I personally believe this is symbolic and certainly not literal ages.  It also emphasizes the number 3 to us to help us to see that this is an important number to recognize in this verse.  I do however believe that this number teaches us that all three animals were called mature and not newborns.  A three year old cow, ram or goat is old enough to have children and that is in stark contrast to the young pigeon that is not yet old enough or mature enough to have children.   I believe personally that the number 3 signifies a triune characteristic of each.  God was God the Father, God the Word and God the Holy Spirit at this time in the covenant.  The nation of Israel was mankind made in the image and likeness of God and they were spirit, soul and body.  Ok, here is where I get to speculate a bit.  I believe the angels in heaven were also triune beings made in the image of God.   The number 3 given to each animal could be representative of other things as well, but I do not have time to explore them today.

So why are there three animals split down the middle in this covenant while two were not divided at all?  The birds could have very easily been divided with great ease compared to a much larger cow, ram or goat.   I told you that this lesson today was going to get very controversial so here I go again.  I’m going to start with the easier one first.  If the woman Heavenly Jerusalem consists of every angelic being including Satan and his angels, I can logically see how this female in Heaven can be divided to eliminate all of the evil while preserving all of the good angles.  Therefore I have concluded that to divide the she goat is God removing sin and evil while keeping the good.  Now we get to the younger woman called the Earthly Jerusalem and things get a little more complicated because of the vast numbers of religious beliefs that are not based upon a complete spiritual view of the Bible.  I believe the same division of good vs. evil is occurring in this woman also.  You see the controversy come in when you find scriptures in the Bible that people take to say that God will come to the rescue of the entire natural nation of Israel to save them all.  I know that this is not what the Bible actually teaches us.  The Earthly Jerusalem is only the natural people of the descendants of Jacob that are under the law.  She was a type of Hagar and I showed you in the last lesson that Hagar was cast out of the family of God by allegorical interpretation.  Therefore none of natural Israel will be saved ever.  But, that does not mean they cannot become spiritually born again in order to be saved.  It does make the salvation of natural Israel conditional.  According to what God says in the book of Romans we have to balance every scripture about Israel giving each equal priority.  Here is God quoting from Isaiah:

Rom 9:27  Esaias also crieth concerning Israel, Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, a remnant shall be saved

A remnant is not many based upon the sands of the sea concept that it is being compared to.  We must realize at this time that God is saying the natural house of Israel on the earth will be divided and a remnant will be saved and others will just miss out.  We of course know very clearly how they can be saved.  God says everyone that believes God raised Jesus from the dead and confesses Jesus as Lord they will be saved (Rom 10:9).  Those that do not believe or do not confess Jesus as Lord will be damned.  This is still not good news for a lot of people.  That really saddens me tremendously but this is the way that God has established salvation to work.  I guess I should change the subject off of natural Israel and get back to the rest of the family of God again before I make some new enemies.

We are getting progressively more complex as we continue up to the top of the spiritual food chain.  The Ram being divided is clearly a type of God.  This is going to make life and your understanding of the Bible infinitely more complex to try to comprehend.  How can you divide God?   Are you beginning to see my problem?  I guess I should say God’s problem, and not mine.  In every other family member I believe there was a division of the good from the evil and how do you make that fit with our understanding of a good God?  Technically you cannot divide God.  We know that the triune God is described to be “One” (Eph 4:6)!  Yet even in mathematics you can divide the number one and get fractions.  According to the Abrahamic Covenant God says He is divided here by association to a ram.  I think I mentioned this in other lessons, but it needs to be readdressed for this discussion.  If God the Father does not die on the cross and experience death for all mankind, we (the whole earth) are in serious trouble.  This would mean God the Father is still in covenant with all of the angels.  This means God is still in covenant with natural Israel.  This would also mean God’s son does not have anything to inherit.  You need to understand that God is not evil.  However, the Bible informs us that God was in covenant with evil and this represents a major problem for God.  The only legal way to end the covenant with evil is through experiencing death to separate Himself from His old wives.  The N.T. talks a lot about us being the heirs of an inheritance. An inheritance only occurs after someone dies to leave their possessions to another.  When Jesus was raised from the dead He makes this statement that is almost universally ignored:

Mat 28:18  And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.

Why does God the Father have to transfer ALL power in both heaven and the earth to His risen Son Jesus?  I think that is an excellent question.  I also think since no one could answer it they ignored it.  It is very clear to me from this statement that God has transferred all spiritual authority to the Son Jesus Christ who was raised from the dead.  Why didn’t God do this before He died on the cross?  The term “power” in this verse means “authority”.  We know that God by definition is almighty and all powerful so it is impossible to transfer His power, but to transfer His authority to another member of the Godhead is a different concept entirely.  Authority is the rule or the government of a nation.  This transfer of authority tells us that whoever was running the Kingdom of Heaven is not the same one who now is running the Kingdom of Heaven in the eyes of God.  I told you this was deep and controversial.  But yet it is written in the Bible so do not ignore it.  I could give you many other Bible verses that reveal the death of God but I really do not have the time today.  I think I will end this Bible lesson here and perhaps continue it on another day in the future.  If you have understood anything that I have taught tell me.  If you have doubts and questions tell me.  I do not know what needs more explanation and what does not until someone raises the issue.  I know this was a long Bible lesson and I really could not cover everything that I wanted.  I tried to shift your focus from natural things to spiritual things and this will help you if you can do it.  I thought this was going to my last lesson, but I will probably need to do another to show you the other patterns found in the life of Abraham and his son Isaac.  So until next time, may God continue to bless you and keep you in your study of His Word.