How do we apply this? Although it was very mysterious to Abram, it surely meant that ultimately Christ when he comes, will bear our judgment – the fearful outpouring of wrath upon him as our representative and sin bearer – and that he will make the light available to this world. ‘I am the light of the world’, he says. The light and understanding of the gospel that will open the eyes of millions and millions. Abram knows that there is a great descendant coming, a special seed royal who will crush the serpent's head and through whom all the nations of the world will be blessed; he knows that this seed will accomplish it by suffering and pain, and yet he also knows that from him streams the light of salvation. How it will be done is not disclosed to him, but Abram as a prophet is shown this is what lies ahead: a great line of descendants, who will experience trouble, slavery in Egypt, and then the promised land. But that is not the end of it, because the special seed will do something very dramatic, fulfilling judgment , shedding light. Abram knows, we should remember, that he personally will see that promised land as an individual. The promise, previously made, has been to him as well as to his seed. So Abram can say, ‘I see how God will do it. I must not look for the realisation of this promise at once. I am going to die and go to God and then there will be an unfolding history, and my descendants will become more and more numerous. There will be times of great trouble, captivity, deliverance, entry into the promised land, but God will keep his promise in an even greater way. There will be judgment and there will be light, the great seed will go through a great deal for us, and he will win through and bruise the serpent's head, and the light of salvation will shine. And this land which my descendants will occupy, one day will be the heavenly land. The physical land on earth will be just a foretaste, a beginning, a type, a prophecy of the glorified earth in eternity.