Page:Keil and Delitzsch,Biblical commentary the old testament the pentateuch, trad James Martin, volume 1, 1885.djvu/14

 of the personal God upon and in the world assumed, in consequence of the fall, the form of a plan of  salvation, rising above the general providence and government of the world, and filling the order of nature with higher powers of spiritual life, in order that the evil, which had entered through sin into the nature of man and passed from man into the whole world, might be overcome and exterminated, the world be transformed into a kingdom of God in which all creatures should follow His holy will, and humanity glorified into the likeness of God by the complete transfiguration of its nature. These manifestations of divine grace, which made the history of the world “a development of humanity into a kingdom of God under the educational and judicial superintendence of the living God,” culminated in the incarnation of God in Christ to reconcile the world unto Himself. This act of unfathomable love divides the whole course of the world’s history into two periods — the times of preparation, and the times of accomplishment and completion. The former extend from the fall of Adam to the coming of Christ, and have their culminating point in the economy of the first covenant. The latter commence with the appearance of the Son of God on earth in human form and human nature, and will last till His return in glory, when He will change the kingdom of grace into the kingdom of glory through the last judgment and the creation of a new heaven and new earth out of the elements of the old world, “the heavens and the earth which are now.” The course of the universe will then be completed and closed, and time exalted into eternity (1Co. 15:23-28; Rev. 20 and 21). If we examine the revelations of the first covenant, as they have been handed down to us in the sacred scriptures of the Old Testament, we can distinguish three stages of progressive development: preparation for the kingdom of God in its Old Testament form; its establishment through the mediatorial office of Moses; and its development and extension through the prophets. In all these periods God revealed Himself and His salvation to the human race by words and deeds. As the Gospel of the New Covenant is not limited to the truths and moral precepts taught by Christ and His apostles, but the fact of the incarnation of God in Christ Jesus, and the work of redemption