The Hope of the Ages

[Daily Devotional]

The Hope of the Ages 

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. Rom. 5:5, 6. 

Through the long centuries of "trouble and darkness" and "dimness of
anguish" (Isa. 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" (Gen. 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 Cor. 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, pp. 681-683). 

>From Lift Him Up - Page 19