If we will take the time to pause in our busy schedule long enough to hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches we will discover that the Spirit is speaking of war and of victory in the spiritual, and eventually in the physical, realms. It is time for the saints to enter the land of promise. The Scriptures are unfolding. The goal of redemption is being defined by the Lord through the Holy Spirit.

Precisely what "land" has the Lord given to us? If our goal, our inheritance, is not Heaven, then what is it? If salvation and eternal life have little to do with going to Heaven, what then is salvation and what is eternal life?

Because two thousand years have passed while the Lord has been building His Body, His Bride, from those persons whom He has called out from the nations of the earth, the tradition has come into being that portrays the Wilderness of Sinai as typical of life on the earth and Canaan as being life in Heaven, in Paradise in the spirit realm.

As a result, Christians understand salvation to be the removal of the believers from earth to Heaven. We accept Jesus as our Savior so we may go to Heaven when we die. This is a widely believed, venerable tradition. But it is detrimental to the maturing of the believer and the establishing of the Kingdom of God on the earth.

We have come to the time in the development of the Kingdom of God when the Lord Jesus is ready to show Himself as the Lord of Hosts, the Lord strong and mighty in battle. Therefore our land of promise, the goal of the Divine redemption, is being defined by the Spirit of God.

Egypt is a type of our spiritual bondage in the kingdom of Satan, in the world. The journey through the Wilderness of Sinai is a type of our struggle to learn the ways of the Lord and to overcome our love of the world and our love of sin and self-will.

Canaan is a type of life lived in the center of God's will in the fullness of eternal life. It is a type of our rest in God's will, in the Kingdom purposes of God. Our immortal state will include our transformation from a living soul to a life-giving spirit, the redemption of our physical body from the image of the first Adam to the image of the Lord from Heaven, our being filled with the fullness of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, participation in the numerous aspects of the Kingdom of God, and rulership over all the works of God's hands.

This is "the land that I do give to them." Our land of promise is the acquiring of the fullness of incorruptible resurrection life and participation in all the Kingdom purposes of God. God's Kingdom purposes include our becoming the Temple of God, the Wife of the Lamb, the Body of Christ, the new Jerusalem that will rule over the nations of saved peoples of the earth, the Lord's priests who will bring His Presence and ways to the nations, the removers of the curse from the earth, the judges of men and angels, and the rebuilders and restorers of all that has been destroyed by sinners.

To be continued.