Page:Studies in the Scriptures - Series I - The Plan of the Ages (1909).djvu/83

 STUDY V.

"THE MYSTERY HID FROM AGES AND FROM GENERA-

TIONS, BUT NOW MADE MANIFEST TO

HIS SAINTS." COL. I : 26.

THIC GLIMMERING LIGHT OF THE FKR&T PROMISE. THE PROMISE TO ABRAHAM HOPK DKFERRS.D. TUB MYOTURY BEGINS TO UNRAVEL AT PBNTBCOST. WHAT THE MYSTERY It,. WHV So LONG KEPT A MYSTERY. STILL, A MYSTERY TO THE WORLD. IN l)u TIMK 10 BE MADB MANIFEST TO ALL. WHBN THE MYS- TKUY WILL ua FINISHED.

"T1THILE mankind was under the discipline of evil, and y* unable to understand its necessity, God repeatedly ex- pressed his purpose to restore and bless them through a coming deliverer. But who that deliverer should be was a mystery for four thousand years, and it only began to be clearly revealed after the resurrection of Christ, in the be- ginning of the Christian or Gospel age.

Looking back to the time when life and Edenic happiness were forfeited by our first parents, we see them under the just penalty of sin filled with sorrow, and without a ray of hope, except that drawn from the obscure statement that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head. Though in the light of subsequent developments this is full of significance to us, to them it was but a faint and glimmering light. Nearly two thousand years rolled by with no evidence of a fulfilment.

About two thousand years after, God called Abraham, and promised that his seed should bless all the families of the earth. This looked as though God still held to his previously expressed purpose, and was now about to fulfil }t Time sped on ; the promised land of Canaan was not

�� �