Sermons on Selected Lessons of the New Testament

^5. The time will come, the end of the world will come, and all Israel shall believe; not they who now are, but their children who shall then be. For these present walking in their own ways, will go to their own place, will pass on to everlasting damnation. But when they shall have been made all one people, that shall come to pass which we sing, “I shall be satisfied when Your glory shall be manifested.” When the promise which is made to us, that we “see face to face,” shall come. “Now we see through a glass darkly,” and “in part;” but when both people, now purified, now raised again, now crowned, now changed into an immortal form, and into everlasting incorruption, shall see God face to face, and Jacob shall be no more, but there shall be Israel only; then shall the Lord see him in the person of this holy Nathanael, and shall say, “Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile.” When you hear, “Behold an Israelite indeed;” let Israel come into your mind; when Israel shall come into your mind, let his dream come into your mind, in which he saw a ladder from earth even to heaven, the Lord standing upon it, the Angels of God ascending and descending. This dream did Jacob see. But after this he was called Israel; that is, some little time after as he came from Mesopotamia, and on his journey. If then Jacob saw the ladder, and he is also called Israel; and this Nathanael is an “Israelite indeed in whom is no guile;” therefore when he wondered because the Lord. said to him, “I saw you under the fig-tree;” did He say to him, “You shall see greater things than these.” And so He announced to him Jacob's dream. To whom did He announce it? To him whom He called “an Israelite, in whom was no guile.” As if He had said, His dream, by whose name I have called you, shall be manifested in you; make no haste to wonder, “you shall see greater things than these. You shall see heaven open, and the Angels of God ascending and descending unto the Son of Man.” See what Jacob saw; see why Jacob anointed the stone with oil; see why Jacob prophetically signified and prefigured the Anointed One. For that action was a prophecy.