MAESTRU PRIMORDIAL - ABRAHAM

Life History
Abraham or Avraham as he was later called, was brought up in the small town of Ur of the Chaldees. There, along with everyone else, he worshipped the many gods who were believed to have control over the different parts of nature.
There Abraham encountered the One God who seemed to have control over not only the whole of nature but history as well. This same God was willing to enter into a special relationship (covenant) with Abraham and his descendants.
No-one is quite sure how, or when, Abraham stopped believing in many gods and came to believe in the one God. The time and place however are not important. What matters is that Abraham's experience marked the beginning of the Jewish nation, and Jews today speak, with great fondness, of 'Our Father Abraham' (Avrham Avinu) Although his experience cannot be dated exactly it seems to have happened sometime between 2000 BC and 1800 BC. Because of this Abraham moved from the town of Ur and travelled 1000 miles to the town of Hebron. It was in Hebron that God revealed to Abraham that his descendants would be protected and would in time become a great nation.
Abraham is often called one of the Jewish Patriarchs (Father Figure). The other two Jewish patriarchal figures are Isaac (Abraham's son) and Jacob (Isaac's son). An important event in Jewish history is the way that God tests Abraham, by asking him to sacrifice his son Isaac.

The One God
He believed that there was only one god. Even though many people believed in the opposite, Abraham was firm in his beliefs and because of them a very important religion was started, the Jewish religion. Abraham stuck with his beliefs forever.
When Abraham was a child he lived with his father, Terach, and his two brothers, Nahor and Haran. Abraham, along with his other family members, grew up in a city called Ur. Every night in Ur the gates of the city were locked in order to keep enemies out. Abraham and his two brothers loved watching people come in and out of the gates.
Abraham always wondered who the creator of the world was. So, one day he went to his father and asked him. Terach worked in a shop that sold idols, and Terach pulled an idol off the shelf and told him that the idol had created the world. Surely, Abraham did not believe his father so he went and asked his uncle. His uncle told him that the moon and the stars created the world.
Abraham was not quite sure if that was true, but he got an idea that there might be an almighty up in the heavens who created the world ... God.
God spoke to Abraham and made two promises. One, that he would curse anyone who cursed Abraham, and bless anyone who blesses Abraham.
Two, he told Abraham to go and settle in the city of Canaan with his family. Abraham travelled long and hard with many followers. Abraham and his followers found a good life in Canaan. The people of Canaan gave him the name of “The Hebrew.” It means “the man from the other side of the river.”
By now Abraham was happily married to a beautiful woman named Sarah. For all of the time that Abraham and Sarah had been married they had lived in Canaan, but one day there was a famine in Canaan, so they had to leave in order to live. They traveled south to Egypt. Before they walked into the gates of Egypt, Abraham requested that Sarah tell the pharaoh that they were sister and brother, because Sarah was so pretty and they would take her and kill Abraham.
So, Sarah did what Abraham had told her to do and they got to stay in Egypt for a very long time. Until one day when the pharaoh found out that Abraham and Sarah were not sister and brother, but husband and wife. He was very mad because while they were staying in Egypt, Sarah and the pharaoh had married! Immediately after he found out, Abraham and Sarah were thrown out Egypt.
Abraham had longed for a child for many years. Abraham and Sarah thought that her womb was closed and they could no longer have a baby, they were both very upset. They both wanted a baby very much. So, Sarah told Abraham to go and lay next to their slave, Hagar, and have a baby. Sure enough, Abraham and Hagar bore a child named Ishmael. Hagar would have to give up the child so Abraham and Sarah could raise Ishmael as their son. Hagar ran away with Ishmael. After only a few days she returned because she knew that she could not keep Ismael as her own. She had promised to give the child to Abraham and Sarah.
Finally, Abraham had gotten his dream, he finally had a child at the age of 86.
At the age of 99, Abraham and Sarah found out that they could, indeed, have a child. God told Abraham that within that year they would have a child. One day a man came to the door of Abraham’s tent and asked for some food, and Abraham, being the kind man that he was, gave the poor man some food.
The man said to Abraham that he was going to come by at the same time next year and he predicted that Abraham and Sarah will have a son. Sarah overheard their conversation from the other room and laughed at the fact of having a child at such an old age. Sure enough, when the man stopped by at the time he had promised, Abraham and Sarah had bore a child. They named him Isaac, which means laughter, because Sarah had laughed when the man mentioned having a child.
As much as Abraham had wanted a child he believed so strongly that there was only one god, and he was willing to do anything to prove his devotion.
So, one day God spoke to Abraham and told him to go up to the mountain-top and sacrifice his son, Isaac. Although reluctant, Abraham did as God had told him. Abraham had all of the wood and he had the altar, all that he needed to sacrifice his child. When Abraham put his son on the altar, and Isaac was laying there not understanding what was going on, Isaac asked Abraham where the sheep was. He did not know that his father wasn’t going to sacrifice a lamb, but his very own son, the poor boy who was laying on the altar about to be killed.
Abraham told Isaac that God was going to provide the lamb, not wanting to tell Isaac that he was going to sacrifice him. As Abraham was just moments away from sacrificing Isaac, God spoke to him, but again, and told him to stop!
Abraham listened and did what God told him to do. God told Abraham that he was not really going to make him kill Isaac. He said that it was only a test, to see how much he trusted God.
Abraham was relieved that he did not have to sacrifice the child that he had been waiting so long for. Luckily, God stopped Abraham just in time, because if God did not tell Abraham to stop at the exact moment that he did, Abraham would have killed his son. Abraham would do that because God told him to, and Abraham believed that everything God said was probably meant to be. Sarah died at a very old age and Abraham and Isaac were in mourning for a very long time, so Abraham decided that it might be easier for Isaac to marry. So, Abraham sent their servant, Eliazer, out in search of a wife for Isaac. When Eliazer got back he had a wife for Isaac, her name was Rebekah. It turns out that Rebekah was Isaac’s cousin, but they still got married.

God's Promises to Abraham
The people of Ur knew nothing of the true God. They worshipped many false gods, chief of which was the moon. The ruins of a temple built to the moon-god have been found there.
A message from God
One day Abraham received a message from Almighty God. "Now the Lord had said unto Abraham, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred. and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee."
He was told to leave his own land, and his own people, and travel to a country that God would show him. I wonder how we should feel if we received such a message?
When He told Abraham to do this, God also told him:
"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: and I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed".
Abraham believed the promises that God had made, and he obeyed Him.
At length he reached the land of Israel with his wife, Sarah, and his nephew Lot.
Lot chose the best of the land and Abraham was left to find pastures for his flocks and herds in the more barren parts of the country. But God was with Abraham, and enlarged upon the promises He had made to him in Ur:
"All the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever. And I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth" .
The land he was promised was the land he saw - the land now call Israel. Besides this, God also promised it to Abraham's seed, or son. God promised him a 'seed', or son, who should share the land with him. He also promised that Abraham's descendants should become a great nation.
Time had gone by and Abraham was getting old. The promised son had not been given. But once more God assured him that he should have a son, and that his descendants should be as great in number as the stars in the sky. "He (Abraham) believed in the Lord; and He counted it to him for righteousness."
Abraham, like us, was not freen from sin; but he trusted in God and, because of this, God was pleased with him.
These things happened nearly 4,000 years ago, and at first they do not seem to matter very much to us.
But Abraham had a son who was greater than Isaac. The Bible speaks of "Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham."

ABRAHAM - Viewpoint of the Old Testament
Abraham may be looked upon as the starting-point or source of Old Testament religion. So that from the days of Abraham men were wont to speak of God as the God of Abraham, whilst we do not find Abraham referring in the same way to anyone before him.
So we have Abraham's servant speaking of "the God of my father Abraham". The religion of Israel does not begin with Moses, l God says to Moses: "I am the God of thy fathers, the God of Abraham" and is common in the Old Testament.
Abraham is thus selected as the first beginning or source of the religion of the children of Israel and the origin of its close connection with Jehovah, because of his faith, trust, and obedience to and in Jehovah and because of Jehovah's promises to him and to his seed.
This trust in God was shown by him when he left Haran and journeyed with his family into the unknown country of Chanaan. It was shown principally when he was willing to sacrifice his only son Isaac, in obedience to a command from God.

ABRAHAM - Viewpoint of the New Testament
The generation of Jesus Christ is traced back to Abraham by St. Matthew, according to St. Luke, he is shown to be descended according to the flesh not only from Abraham but also from Adam.
Moreover, as the New Testament traces the descent of Jesus Christ from Abraham, so it does of all the Jews
John the Baptist says:
"Do not begin to say: We have Abraham for our father, for I say to you God is able of these stones to raise up children to Abraham."
In the Bible the Jews, to whom Jesus was speaking, boast "We are the seed of Abraham", and Jesus replies (39):
"If ye be the children of Abraham, do the works of Abraham".

Shared Beginnings
Abraham, and his son, Isaac, and Isaac’s son, Jacob were the three patriarchs. A patriarch is a founding father or a leader of a certain religion.
Abraham was also the first Jew and the founder of Judaism, the Jewish religion.
The Arabs trace their ancestry to Ishmael, Abraham’s oldest son, so in the effect the tribes of Israel and those of Arabia who have been in eternal conflict are descendants from the cousins Isaac and Ishmael and share their ancestry with Abraham. Islam is one of the fastest growing religions in the world today. Unified by faith in the teachings of the Prophet Mohammed, Muslims throughout the world make a once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage to Mecca.
The Ka'bah at Mecca, the cube-shaped building in the center of Mecca, the holiest shrine of Islam, was built by the prophet Abraham and his son Ishmael.