Father Abraham at 120 years of age and son Isaac, probably 18, on Mount Moriah, the future home of King David’s Jerusalem and Pilate’s Golgotha—no novelist could have dreamed up this scenario. Who else on earth at any time, before or since, would have tested God’s promises to that last degree of human obedience?

Of course, many have been the fathers and mothers who have watched their sons killed and daughters raped by malignant men and women—as they defiantly served Abraham’s God, even in modern times. But never has any parent since that awful day on Mount Moriah been forced to kill their child in the name of Abraham’s God!

What is going on here? What was God trying to teach Abraham, Isaac, and all men and women since? Even more important, what was God trying to teach the rest of the universe, including Satan and his confederation of evil angels? Let’s list some of God’s purposes:

Mount Moriah that day was one more chapter in God’s lesson book of the universe. That raised knife became one more demonstration in God’s laboratory of salvation that genuine faith is stronger than death, that God always has a "ram in the thicket" for those who trust him, that obedience will be rewarded, that God can be trusted no matter how dark the sky.

But was God gambling when he placed all his chips on Abraham, who had failed him more than once? Think of Abraham’s half-lie to Abimelech, his distrust of God when he fathered Ishmael with Hagar—none of which seemed worthy of calling Abraham (as many do) "the father of the faithful." The lesson here is that watching intelligences throughout the universe kept their eyes on the trajectory of Abraham’s life—that God and all others watching are more concerned with a person’s future than his past.

What really was the issue on Mount Moriah? How could God be pleased and Satan dismayed?

• Satan magnified all of Abraham’s previous failures but God counted on Abraham’s growth in faith.
• If anyone in the universe wondered if Satan was right (the whole point of the Great Controversy), God was creating an event that would demonstrate that perfect obedience was possible and that God was right in trusting mature faith.
• Abraham’s great act of faith has been a mighty beacon to all who have faced extreme tests, even death, that doing the will of God regardless of circumstances is one’s highest privilege and duty.
• Abraham had plenty of reasons to doubt the wisdom, never mind common sense, that killing his only son would make sense, especially in view of God’s promise that Abraham would be the father of a great nation.
• Abraham did not stop to listen to all his heart arguments against killing Isaac; he had learned through long years of experience that God had been just and fair and this trust led him to obey to the letter.
• Something must be said for Isaac, in young manhood. Strong, he could have easily resisted his aged father. But he had learned what faith was by watching his parents, day in and day out. He had developed the habits of trusting obedience and that life trajectory was ready for its own monumental test.

What was the bigger picture that this day on Mount Moriah provided us? Besides everything listed above, this awesome day prefigured that day when Abraham’s Lord would be offered up at Calvary, eighteen hundred years or so later. Paul said that God preached "the gospel to Abraham" (Gal. 3:8). The ram offered in place of Isaac prefigured Christ’s sacrifice in man’s stead.

The watching universe was beginning to understand the emotional interaction within the Godhead when the decision was made for Jesus to take man’s place—"the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world" (Rev. 13:8). This truly was an enormous risk for God as he thought about the best way to teach men and women how much sin cost and for the universe to be healed. But for Jesus, no "ram in the thicket!"

When we read the New Testament comments on Abraham in English, the word most used is "believe" or "believed." Unfortunately that is not the best translation of the Greek pistis, which should be translated by the English word faith. Other Greek words would have been used if an emphasis on "knowing" something intellectually were needed.

But faith, for the Greek New Testament, was the word that best blended appreciation, knowledge, trust, and obedience. Too many since have separated "faith" into one of the four aspects—and thus all the divisions within Christianity were born!

To be children of Abraham we must have Abraham’s faith (Gal. 3:7). Not in moderation, not most of the time, but on a trajectory that becomes more focused with the deepening habits of appreciation, belief, trust and obedience.

One of the clearest definitions of faith I have ever read in any theological book is this: "Many hold faith as an opinion. Saving faith is a transaction by which those who receive Christ join themselves in covenant relation with God. Genuine faith is life. A living faith means an increase of vigor, a confiding trust, by which the soul becomes a conquering power" (Ellen White, Desire of Ages, 347).

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