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Now imagine yourself moving higher. All Jerusalem comes in view again, then the surrounding area, just as it did last time as you moved away. Continue upwards till Jerusalem fades in the mists of time and you can again see the whole hemisphere containing Judea and the neighboring countries. Then come in again.
Everything blurs once more as time recedes ahead of you. Then you notice the smell of fresh mountain air as your vision clears. The first things that catch your eyes are the abundance of wildlife on and around the mountain. You realize that this is a very early stage in the history of the Temple site. There are no structures on Mt. Moriah, not even a threshing floor. The highest points of the mountain, the points that will later become the foundation for the altar and the Holy of Holies, are bare rock and are plainly visible.
As you come in closer, you can see a man and a boy approaching the top of the mountain. The boy has a bundle of wood on his shoulders. As they ascend, he asks the man: "Father, we have the fire and the wood, but where is the victim for the holocaust?" The father, very much concerned and sorrowful, says: "God will provide himself a victim for the holocaust, my son" (Gen. 22:8).
The time is two thousand years before Christ's birth; the man is Abraham; the boy, his son Isaac. They are on their way to the spot where Abraham will make the sacrifice God asked. Abraham solemnly stops at the bare rock and sorrowfully spreads wood for the holocaust. His sorrow will soon turn to joy because God will not require that he make the sacrifice:
And behold an angel of the Lord from heaven called to him, saying: Abraham, Abraham. And he answered: Here I am. And he said: Lay not thy hand upon the boy, neither do thou anything to him: now I know that thou fearest God, and hast not spared thy only begotten son for my sake. Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw behind his back a ram amongst the briers sticking by his horns, which he took and offered for a holocaust instead of his son. And he called the name of that place, "The Lord seeth" Whereupon even to this day it is said: In the mountain the Lord will see. (Gen. 22:11-14)
You are watching the first event Scripture records as taking place on Moriah. It is a sign of the sacrifice God made by granting humans genuine freedom. Isaac was the child that God promised Abraham, the child with whom God would establish the covenant. From his seed would spring "kings of peoples." He was in fact the child who was to become the direct ancestor of Jesus, the incarnation of God's own Son, the Son whose sacrifice God really will accept.
God's own Son was promised to the first woman after she and her husband sinned. He will be her seed and will crush the pride of the one who tempted her. He will make remedy for her sin and her husband's sin and for the sins of all her offspring. Abraham did not know all these things that would happen in the future, of course. He did know that God promised him a child in his old age. For some reason unknown to Abraham, God had asked that the child be offered as a holocaust, a victim to make remedy for sin. And Abraham was willing to accept God's command.
Abraham was rewarded for his faith. God promised that Abraham's offspring will multiply and be as numerous as stars in the sky or sand on the beach, not only from his son Isaac but also from his first son Ismael:
And as for Ismael I have also heard thee. Behold, I will bless him, and increase, and multiply him exceedingly: he shall beget twelve chiefs, and I will make him a great nation. But my covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bring forth to thee at this time next year. (Gen. 17:20-21)
I will bless thee, and I will multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven, and as the sand that is by the sea shore: thy seed shall possess the gates of their enemies. (Gen. 22:17)
God also told Abraham: "(I will) be a God to thee and to thy seed after thee" (Gen. 17:7).
Now back away; and, as you back away, watch in your imagination the descendants of Abraham as they increase and multiply. First there were Ismael and his branches of Abraham's seed passing down through Ismael's twelve sons. Then there were Isaac and his two sons Esau and Jacob who passed down Abraham's seed through Jacob's twelve sons and Esau's fourteen grandsons. Then there were more branches through Abraham's six additional sons by his wife Cetura whom he married after Sarah's death.
Watch as his progeny multiplies. They become whole tribes and whole nations, not only the twelve tribes of Israel, but tribes and nations of Arab and other Semitic peoples as well. Imagine them as numerous as sand on the beach or as stars in the sky, and wonder how can God be God to so many peoples with so many conflicting ideas.
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