The meek shall inherit the. what?

Big trees out of little acorns grow. Huge ideas can be conveyed by a few words; this truism applies with particular sharpness to the words of Jesus Christ. In His famous Sermon on the Mount Jesus said, among other things,

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth (Matt. 5:5).

What, oh what, did He mean? Christendom, locked into its "heaven or bust" fixation, simply cannot take the statement at what appears to be its face value - that Jesus' disciples can look forward to enjoying "the earth" (more on that in a moment) as a secure and everlasting possession in the kingdom of God. Some Christian commentators deny its futuristic focus by taking it as a current blessing:

[The meek] also possess the earth because they take what God spreads before them and enjoy it, while others fight for more and fail to enjoy even what they have (Boice, The Gospel of Matthew, p. 75).

Others, while acknowledging its future focus, tone down its potential impact. Thus, Leon Morris takes it merely to confirm that, "the meek will have a place in God's kingdom" (The Gospel According to Matthew, p. 98); he makes no comment as to the "earthiness" of that kingdom. In short, orthodox Christianity today seems to have no place in its theology for kingdom life on earth. Some less orthodox Christians actually believe the Bible means what it says (how dare they!) when it speaks of Jesus Christ and His saints ruling on the earth for one thousand years (Rev. 20:4) and see the fulfillment of the "inherit the earth" promise taking place then. Presumably, they believe that Jesus' beatitudes blessing lasts for only a thousand years, after which the saints are heaven-bound. What are we to make of all this?

This whole topic takes on a whole new luster when one recognizes that Jesus was not revealing a new truth in this statement but was confirming an ancient truth of breathtaking magnitude. Note Isaiah 57:13:

But he who puts his trust in Me shall possess the land, and shall inherit My holy mountain.

The New Geneva Study Bible note on this verse says (surprisingly), "The promise is the blessing Jesus proclaimed to the meek". Note carefully the identification of "the land" with "My holy mountain"; the "land" that the faith-filled are to take possession of is limited to the specific territory in

which the holy mountain - the site of the biblical temple - is located. Jesus was confirming that His meek followers would inherit what is commonly called "the holy land". (The Greek word translated "the earth" in most versions of Matthew 5:5 also means "land".)

Most Bible readers know that the holy land was promised as a possession to Abraham's descendants. Fewer realize that it was promised to Abraham himself as "an everlasting possession":

Also I give to you and your descendants after you the land in which you are a stranger, all the land of Canaan, as an everlasting possession.(Gen. 17:8).

Abraham was called to leave one land (Chaldea) and to go to Palestine (Canaan), which he was to receive as an "everlasting possession". Yet he was to live the rest of his life as a stranger in the land of promise - "God gave him no inheritance in it, not even enough to set his foot on" (Acts 7:5). In the "resurrection of the just" Abraham will finally receive his promised inheritance, as will his spiritual seed. When Christ came, he neither reinterpreted nor reworked the promises to Abraham but confirmed them (Rom. 15:8).

We are left scratching our heads with some perplexity if we take God's promise seriously - which we must. Does this mean that the saints are to inherit the tiny holy land as distinct from other patches of real estate on this glorious planet? If so, who gets the rest of the earth? And, in spite of the fuzziness of the Hebrew word translated "everlasting" ('olam), who can believe that a mere one thousand years of possession could possibly be called anything like "everlasting"? And if the meek only "inherit the land" for one thousand years, does that mean that the righteous will likewise only get to "be comforted, be filled, be shown mercy, and see God" for one thousand years? To limit the beatitude blessings and the mighty promises made to the patriarchs to only the first one thousand years of eternity would seem to trivialize both the promises themselves and Jesus' confirmatory mission.

Yet we are also told that the righteous shall enter the New Jerusalem in the New Heaven and New Earth. That's a lot bigger territory than the tiny promised land of Palestine.

Puzzle. Mystery. Might the solution lie in recognizing that eternity is a long time, and we won't get to do everything at once?