We are all aware that the general idea is that Jordan means death and Canaan heaven. But as soon as we enter Canaan, we get conflict. This is not the heavenly places as a place of rest. What characterizes Canaan is conflict, and we get a figure of it in Ephesians 6 — the wrestling, not with flesh and blood, but with spiritual wickedness in heavenly places, for which we need to have on the whole armor of God. But if we are to have conflict there, we must first be there. Remember Christ is there. Not in the wilderness, but when Israel got into Canaan, the reproach of Egypt was rolled away. They kept the Passover as circumcised, they ate the old corn of the land, and the manna ceased. And this is the way the soul gets into deliverance “from this present evil world” and is introduced into the heavenly places. They were slaves in Egypt, making bricks without straw, but God came down to deliver them, and then He talked only of Canaan and not of the wilderness.
J. N. Darby, adapted