Chapter 58—The Coming of a Deliverer
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
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transgression. Though they must suffer from the power of their ad-
versary 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 stronghold of the daughter of Zion, unto Thee shall it come,
even the first dominion.”
Micah 4:8
. The apostle Paul has referred to it
as “the redemption of the purchased possession.”
Ephesians 1:14
. And
the psalmist had in mind the same final restoration of man’s original
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