God’s Call and Promise to Abram

KEY VERSE: “Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee: And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing.” —Genesis 12:1,2

SELECTED SCRIPTURE: Genesis 11:27-32; 12:1-9

ABRAM, OF THE city of Ur of the Chaldees, is known as the father of the faithful. This title was given to him by the Apostle Paul in Romans 4:16 where he spoke of the need for faith, saying, “It is of faith—the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all.” The name Abram means, ‘high father’. (Gen. 17:5) God changed his name to Abraham, which means ‘father of a multitude’. This was because God made a promise to him (Gen. 12:2,3), and repeated it, and amplified it several times in later scriptures, which is known as the Abrahamic promise.

Abram lived in Ur, a city we believe to have been located in what is our present-day Iraq, on the Euphrates River, just north of where it empties into the Persian Gulf. God called him to leave this place, saying: “Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee. And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing.”—Key Verse

Earlier in the account (Gen. 11:31) it might seem that Terah, his father, was the one who was leading the way, and that those principals named as accompanying him were Abram, Lot, and Sarai. But there is no mistaking with whom the Lord is dealing, as we see in Genesis 12:1: “Now the Lord had said unto Abram. …” (Gen. 15:7) It was indeed Abram who left Ur, taking Terah along with him. It was Abram who had the faith necessary to leave, to go to an unknown country.

Their journey towards Canaan, the Promised Land, was along the Euphrates River—away from their final destination. This was a wise course, since following a river was the safest way to travel in Abram’s day when there were few roads. They reached Haran, a city of their forebears in Assyria, and remained there until Terah died.

Then God again appeared to Abram and bid him to go on to Canaan. Abram obediently took all who had left Ur with him, as well as some others he had acquired in Haran, and left for the land of Canaan. At Shechem in Mt. Ephraim he built an altar unto the Lord. There God confirmed that this indeed was the land he would give to him. Abram journeyed southward to a mountain east of Bethel, 10-15 miles north of the future site of Jerusalem, where he built another altar.

God’s reward to Abraham for his great faith was not immediate. As Stephen, in recounting the call of Abraham, said: “He [God] gave him none inheritance in it [during his lifetime], no, not so much as to set his foot on: yet he promised that he would give it to him for a possession, and to his seed after him, when as yet he had no child.” (Acts 7:2-8) This wonderful promise remains still to be carried out when the kingdom of God has been established on earth.

Isaac, a miracle child, born to his aged parents Abraham and Sarah because of their faith, is a picture of the Christ class through whom the Abrahamic promise will be fulfilled. (Gal. 3:14-16,28; Gal. 4:28) Abraham’s call, the promises made to him, and his experiences in the land of Canaan, were intended by God to portray his call of the Christ Class and their development for their task, in the future blessings to come to all.

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