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The Hope of the Ages, January 13
And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in
our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us. For when we were yet
without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.
Romans 5:5, 6
.
Through the long centuries of “trouble and darkness” and “dimness of anguish”
(
Isaiah 8:22
) marking the history of mankind from the day our first parents lost their
Eden home, to the time the Son of God appeared as the Saviour of sinners, the hope
of the fallen race was centered in the coming of a Deliverer to free men and women
from the bondage of sin and the grave.
The first intimation of such a hope was given to Adam and Eve in the sentence
pronounced upon the serpent in Eden when the Lord declared to Satan in their
hearing, “I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and
her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel” (
Genesis 3:15
).
As the guilty pair listened to these words, they were inspired with hope; for in
the prophecy concerning the breaking of Satan’s power they discerned a promise
of deliverance from the ruin wrought through transgression. Though they must
suffer from the power of their adversary because they had fallen under his seductive
influence and had chosen to disobey the plain command of Jehovah, yet they need
not yield to utter despair. The Son of God was offering to atone with His own
lifeblood for their transgression. To them was to be granted a period of probation,
during which, through faith in the power of Christ to save, they might become once
more the children of God.
Satan, by means of his success in turning man aside from the path of obedience,
became “the god of this world” (
2 Corinthians 4:4
). The dominion that once was
Adam’s passed to the usurper. But the Son of God proposed to come to this earth
to pay the penalty of sin, and thus not only redeem man, but recover the dominion
forfeited. It is of this restoration that Micah prophesied when he said, “O Tower of
the flock, the strong hold of the daughter of Zion, unto thee shall it come, even the
first dominion” (
Micah 4:8
)....
This hope of redemption through the advent of the Son of God as Saviour and
King has never become extinct in the hearts of men. From the beginning there have
been some whose faith has reached out beyond the shadows of the present to the
realities of the future. Adam, Seth, Enoch, Methuselah, Noah, Shem, Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob—through these and other worthies the Lord has preserved the
precious revealings of His will. And it was thus that to the children of Israel ... God
imparted a knowledge of the requirements of His law, and of the salvation to be
accomplished through the atoning sacrifice of His beloved Son (
Prophets and Kings,
681-683
).
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