The mission of Abraham: Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!

    

Rudolf Steiner:  "Other manifestations, too, symbolize this whole mission of Abraham in a wondrous way as reflecting all the mysteries of the world. Let us first reflect: It is the ancient twilight clairvoyance that is to be sacrificed here. Everything established over millennia in humanity was to be sacrificed. The innermost ethos of this entire mission was that everything was to be received as a bequest, as a gift from the external world. Whatever was to arise was to take its course through physical succession; it was in this form that the mission was to make its entrance into world history. Abraham himself had to receive his task as a gift from God. He was initially challenged to sacrifice his son, Isaac, but was then prevented from carrying it out. What did he actually receive from the hand of God? He was given his task. Had he actually sacrificed Isaac, he would have been sacrificing his entire mission. In having Isaac returned to him, all his people are also returned to him. What he was intended to bequeath to the world he then receives as a gift from a divine world order in the form of his son, Isaac. Hence everything that ensued — and was dependent on Abraham — is itself a gift from God. The last remnants of clairvoyance — and you will soon see what the individual gifts of clairvoyance express, each of which can be connected with one of the Zodiac constellations — the last remains of this clairvoyance, voluntarily sacrificed, are associated with the constellation of Aries the ram. This why we encounter a ram at the sacrifice of Isaac, a symbol expressing the renunciation of the last gifts of seership in exchange for the new gifts of being able to appraise world phenomena in terms of number and measure. This task was assigned to Abraham."

Source: November 14, 1909. GA 117

Deeper Secrets of Human Evolution, pp. 95-96