Donald Lawrence - the blessing of Abraham

The Gospel taught by Jesus and the apostles were not fundamentally different from what was understood by Abraham. God, through the Scriptures, "Preached before the gospel unto Abraham" (Gal. 3:8). So crucial are these promises that Peter started and ended his public proclamation of the Gospel with reference to them (Acts 3: 13,25).If we can understand what was taught to Abraham, we will then have a very basic picture of the Christian Gospel. There are other indications that "the gospel" is not something which just began at the time of Jesus:-

- "We declare unto you glad tidings (the Gospel), how that the promise which was made unto the (Jewish) fathers, God hath fulfilled" (Acts 13: 32,33).

- "The gospel of God, which he had promised afore by his prophets (e.g. Abraham, Gen. 20:7) in the holy scriptures" (Rom. 1:1,2).

- "For this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead" (1 Peter 4:6) - i.e. believers who had lived and died before the first century.

- "For unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto them" (Heb. 4:2)- i.e. Israel in the wilderness.