Abraham’s Umbrella

Have you ever heard of Abraham’s umbrella? Abraham’s what? Abraham’s umbrella. If you would like to find out what it is, keep on reading. Modern western culture is an individualistic culture; it is all about me, my life, my beliefs, where I go, what I do, what I own, where I live, and what happens to me when I die. The ancient Hebrew culture of the Bible was not like that; it was a corporate culture. The people of Israel formed a corporate collective which God saw in its totality. The people of Israel were in covenant with the God of their fathers; those that kept the terms of that covenant were under the corporate covenant-covering and automatically recipients of covenant-promised blessing. It had nothing to do with any particular individual, their life, their beliefs, or what they did. As long as they kept the terms of the covenant, they were part of the corporate totality of covenant-keeping Israel. That meant that they were heirs of the covenant blessings according to the promise. They had come under and were living beneath the covering of Abraham’s umbrella. This in turn guaranteed that for them, God would automatically keep his covenant promises. It had nothing to do with anyone’s life, or prayers, or beliefs, or creed, or personal religious observances or indeed anything about them individually. David said in Psalm 105:1-15 “O give thanks unto the Lord [Yehovah]; call upon his name: make known his deeds among the people. Sing unto him, sing psalms unto him: talk ye of all his wondrous works. Glory ye in his holy name: let the heart of them rejoice that seek the Lord. Remember his marvellous works that he has done; his wonders, and the judgments of his mouth; O ye seed of Abraham his servant, ye children of Jacob his chosen. He is the Lord our God: his judgments are in all the earth. He has remembered his covenant for ever, the word which he commanded to a thousand generations. Which covenant he made with Abraham, and his oath unto Isaac; And confirmed the same unto Jacob for a law, and to Israel for an everlasting covenant: Saying, unto thee will I give the land of Canaan, the lot of your inheritance: When they were but a few men in number; yea, very few, and strangers in it. When they went from one nation to another, from one kingdom to another people; He suffered no man to do them wrong: yea, he reproved kings for their sakes; Saying, Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm”.  David wrote this psalm about and for the people of Israel, those who were living under the corporate totality of the blessing of the everlasting covenant promise. David is calling the covenant-keeping people to corporately rejoice in the wonderful works of Yehovah God for them. These wonderful works were promised by God to the seed or sons of God’s servant Abraham, confirmed to Issac, and again promised to the sons of Jacob; those that God had chosen. God promised them the land of Canaan as their inheritance and allowed no man to harm them. God said touch not mine anointed and do my prophets no harm. God called Abraham, Isaac and Jacob his prophets and his anointed ones. In Greek, the root of the word anointing is chrio, this is the root of the word Christian in English. The Patriarchs were the original Christians or anointed ones who lived under the covenant-covering or saving anointing of God’s Holy Spirit. This is the blessing or grace of the unmerited and unearned favour that God promised to Abraham. This blessing is the gift of God’s Holy Spirit that fills redeemed hearts and enables people to live in the presence of Holy Spirit power where overcoming victory in every circumstance of life is absolutely guaranteed. This same blessing promised to Abraham was for all the families of the Earth. It was this blessing that was poured out on the Day of Pentecost. Those that fulfil the terms of God’s covenant form a corporate totality who come under the sovereign grace of God’s unmerited and unearned blessing of Abraham, the covering or anointing of God’s Holy Spirit. This is Abraham’s umbrella.

What does it mean practically to come under Abraham’s umbrella? Coming under Abraham’s umbrella has nothing to do with the pride of individual prayers, or individual beliefs or any kind of individual religious confessions or creed, or religious observances, prayers or liturgies. It is about being brought humbly under the covering of covenant-promised blessing by becoming part of the corporate totality of spiritual Israel. In Hebrew, the word Israel means a prince with God and in John 1:47 Jesus described Nathaniel as a true Israelite in who there was nothing false or deceitful. Those that humbly come under the corporate covering of the promised blessing automatically receive the fulfilment of God’s promises. As we have already seen, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were Yehovah’s anointed, and this saving anointing brought these Patriarchs overcoming victory and success in every circumstance of life. King David was also known as the Yehovah’s anointed. David had come under Abraham’s umbrella; he was anointed with the same blessing or covenant-covering that Abraham received. David had a heart after God’s own heart and apart from a brief period of rebellion, David obeyed God and wholeheartedly served the purposes of God all the days of his life. What did this saving anointing do for David? It brought true salvation of overcoming victory in every circumstance and difficulty of life. David said in Psalm 103:1-5 “Bless the Lord, O my soul: and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits: Who forgive all thine iniquities; who heals all thy diseases; Who redeems thy life from destruction; who crowns thee with lovingkindness and tender mercies;  Who satisfies thy mouth with good things; so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle’s”. This is what the anointing did for David. This is true salvation; it was not conceptual or imaginary. It was practical and real. David had humbly come under the umbrella of Abraham’s blessing. Through the saving anointing of Yehovah God, David was living in the true salvation of the present tense Pentecostal fulfilment of the new covenant promises that God had made to Abraham. God loves individuals but works in corporate totalities. David was part of the corporate totality of the spiritual Israel. The benefits that David was praising God for, the forgiveness of sins, healing of diseases, a life redeemed from destruction, a crowning of love and tender mercies, a mouth satisfied with good things, these are the benefits that anyone and everyone can receive who come under the corporate totality of the covenant-covering of Abraham’s umbrella, including you. This is true salvation. This is living in the undeniable power of resurrection life. Abraham’s umbrella, Abraham’s blessing, Abraham’s anointing was poured out on the Day of Pentecost. It says in Romans 4 that Abraham believed God and God credited Abraham with righteousness. For Abraham, believing had nothing to do with any form of ritual or rite, a religious ceremony or theological or conceptual confession or agreement with an intellectual creed, dogma or rote. The Hebrews saw everything in totality. For Abraham, believing was of the heart. Believing was an all-consuming lifestyle of absolute and implicit obedience to the personal call and living word of promise spoken to him personally by the eternal life’s breath or Holy Spirit of the paradise of Yehovah God’s fatherhood. Those that respond to God’s personal call like Abraham did, those who believe like Abraham did, those who are inspired by God’s blessing to obey like Abraham did, those who receive the same Pentecostal anointing as Abraham did will automatically receive the fulfilment of the covenant promises and benefits of true salvation from pride, sin, sickness, Satan and even death. They will live in the undeniable redeeming power of resurrection life and will receive an eternal inheritance within the dwelling place or City of God, the New Jerusalem. Yehovah in Hebrew means I AM and is the personal name of God. The words Jesus Christ in English are from the Hebrew Yehovah-Yasha Mashiach. These words mean literally I AM YOUR SAVIOR, THE ANOINTED ONE. Yehovah God was born as the Son of Abraham and the Son of David in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, Yehovah’s Mashiach, Messiah or Anointed One. Jesus is the ultimate heir of all of the covenant promises that he as Yehovah God had made to both Abraham and David during their lifetimes. Jesus came under the superabundant saving anointing of Abraham’s umbrella to bind the broken-hearted, give recovery of sight to the blind, release the captives, set the prisoners free and proclaim the day of Yehovah’s favour. John the Baptist came to invite people back under Abraham’s umbrella by them repenting from their sins, being baptised into repentance and being forgiven and then trusting or believing in the One (this is one of the names of God) who was to come (Jesus). Jesus is the Lamb of God who was numbered with the transgressors and died a dreadful cursed death on the cross so that his shed blood could reverse the devastating curse of the Fall when he rose from the dead. Jesus was then glorified by Yehovah God on to the throne of his father David, and received from Yehovah God Abraham’s umbrella, the gift or anointing of the Holy Spirit that was poured out on the Day of Pentecost. This is the fulfilment of the new covenant promise that God made to Abraham.  

Of course, the benefits that David was praising God for, the true salvation of the forgiveness of sins, healing of diseases, a life redeemed from destruction, a crowning of love and tender mercies, a mouth satisfied with good things are the benefits that pretty much everyone would want. And yet, within the established religion of church tradition, nobody gets. Unless of course there is a revival. Why not? As the good news of Jesus spread across the culturally Greek Roman Empire, those that heard the gospel did not understand it. They interpreted everything that they heard about Jesus in the light of their essentially pagan demon-worshipping culture. They were ignorant of the scriptures and how important the Hebrews like Abraham and David were in the fulfilment of the purposes of God. They had no interest in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and the great and precious covenant promises that God made to them, and they did not participate in the divine nature. In fact, they imagined that people like Abraham and David were irrelevant, backward, ignorant and uncultured people that knew nothing of the far more advanced wisdom and superior philosophies of those who were culturally Greek. Knowing almost nothing about the Bible, they made up their own jigsaw Jesus with parts of the Bible they did know but filled in any gaps in their woeful ignorance of the scriptures and the real Jesus with a collage of images and ideas taken from their own essentially pagan Greek worldview. And they made up their own good news of being saved in death gospel. And so, the religion of established church tradition was born. It was absolutely not founded upon the apostles and the prophets with Mashiach Yehoshua or Christ Jesus as the chief cornerstone but established by the Roman Emperor Constantine and his successors and the culturally Greek church councils that they convened. From David’s perspective this is nonsense. David experienced true salvation and lived in the undeniable power of resurrection life. He was saved again and again in life by God anointing David with the Holy Spirit. This enabled him to live in the presence of power where the true salvation of overcoming victory was guaranteed. David lived with his sins forgiven, his diseases healed, his life redeemed from all destruction and was crowned with love and tender mercies; he was the Lord’s anointed. This is what the word Christian meant in the New Testament. This is true salvation, what it means to be truly saved. This has absolutely nothing to do with the good news in death salvation of Constantine’s church establishment. When you understand with your heart what true salvation meant to David, and how the saving anointing enabled him to live in the undeniable power of resurrection life, and you are inspired by God’s Holy Spirit to fulfil the covenant-conditions the way he did, God will do the same for you what he did for David. Guaranteed. This is true salvation. To find out all you need to know about true salvation click , here.