Genesis Vol 3.pdf - College Press

THE GENERATIONS OF TERAH 11:27-32
As Arthur Holly Compton, the eminent physicist and
Nobel prize winner, once put it: “A God who can control
a universe like this is mighty beyond imagination.”
All this boils down to the fact which we emphasize
here, that God’s Cosmic Plan which had its beginning in
the Paradise Lost of Genesis will have its fulfilment-by
His own Eternal Purpose and Design-in the Paradise Re-
gained so wondrously portrayed for us in the book of
Revelation. The essence of this Plan is the redemption
of the Faithful-the Overcomers (cf. Rev. 2:7, 17, etc.;
1 Cor. 1J:J8, Matt. 25:21, 23; 2 Tim. 2:2, 4:7)-in
spirit and soul and body (1 Thess. ~:23). We find the
first intimations of it in the opening chapters of Genesis.
Thus we emphasize the fact again that the Bible as a
whole, primarily-it would not be amiss to say, it is
exclusively-the Story of Redemption; and, as we shall
now see, the motif of this entire story is set for us in
the mysterious oracle of Genesis 3 : 1 5 ,
The Seed of the Wmnaiz
Gen. 3:lJ. The matter of supreme importance here
is that of understanding what is implied in the phrase,
the Woman’s Seed. Here we are told that, in the spiritual
conflict of the ages, the Old Serpent’s seed shall bruise
the heel of the Woman’s Seed, signifying a mean, insidious,
vicious, generally unsuccessful warfare (the heel is not a
particularly important part of the anatomy), a kind of
“guerilla warfare,” let us say, whereas the Woman’s Seed
shall ultimately crush the Serpent-seed’s bead (the ruling
part of the person and personality), signifying, as we know
in the light of the New Testament fulfilment, the com-
plete victory of Messiah (Christ) over all evil (Rom. 16:20,
1 Cor. 1j:25-26, Phil. 2:9-11, Matt, 25:31-46, Rom. 2:4-
11, 2 Thess. 1:7-10, 2 Pet. 3:l-13, Jude 6, Rev. 20:7-10,
etc.). (See my Genesis, 11, 150-156).
The story of this age-old conflict is presented in
Scripture in a series of progressive limitations of the mean-
3