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Category:God's Word to Women
833. But if we banish from our belief and from our teaching, that God has laid a blighting hand upon the entire sex to which Eve belonged, because of Eve’s sin, then what will become of the teaching that the promise that the seed of the woman shall bruise the Serpent’s head, belongs to all women? The difference is here: The sad prophecy of Genesis 3:16 has been abundantly fulfilled in the physically inherited sorrow and suffering of women. The glorious prophecy of Genesis 3:15 will be abundantly fulfilled also, not by a physical inheritance at all, but by a voluntary choice.
834. Prophecy is not fate. No woman is fated for the glorious destiny of fulfilling this prophecy, that the seed of the woman will bruise the serpent’s head. This will not come to me, in spite of myself,¾so so that I can glory in what is coming, whatever I do. We are merely told that some women will grasp this prize of a high calling in Christ Jesus; and if I do not take my place with such, my humiliation, and my eventual punishment will be the greater, because the prize was set before me, and I despised it.
835. As we have said before, in all the Bible no sin is held up to human contempt more than Esau’s. He had a birthright in prospect, and a father’s prophetical blessing to follow that birthright. But these were things for the future, and might be long delayed in coming, while there was on him the urgent necessity of physical appetite. He might have stood in the line of ancestry through which Christ came into the world: but Christ was not coming for a long time,¾did did not, in fact, come for about seventeen hundred years. He sold his birthright for a mess of pottage.
836. The New Testament pronounces him “a profane person . . . who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright,” and adds, “Ye know how that afterwards, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected.” (Hebrews 12:16, 17). His father’s blessing on him as inheritor of the birthright, would have added much to his temporal advantage; but having sold that birthright, he could not inherit that blessing. The deed had been done long before. There was no place left for a change. He got a mess of pottage but he lost a double portion of his father’s estate, and the place of honor in the family. Isaac would not transfer the birthright-blessing he had uttered on Jacob back to Esau. He had perceived, as we think, that it was only the temporal advantages that Esau was after.
838. And what will the women of our day do? Will they say: “The prospect is too remote to be attractive to me. If I could see that by much effort, and by practicing a great deal of self-denial, anything could be accomplished worthwhile, in my day, the case would be different. But the little that I can do to hasten the evangelization of the world, and the coming of Christ will make no difference. I do not care to teach, or preach, or pray in public. I do not wish to be among those who are all the time proclaiming that Christ is coming again, and He never comes. They are a laughing-stock. I cannot join them.” Such do not “esteem the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt.”
839. To which body will we belong? That is the question for each woman of us to answer to herself. This is not a matter concerning which indecision is of any avail. A great promise and prophecy¾the prophecy the very greatest in all the Bible¾lies Bible lies before us women. We cannot escape; we must either choose the best that could be, from the highest standpoint, or by failing to choose prove ourselves Esaus. God has given the challenge to our faith. Shall we despise our birthright? God forbid!
==See Also==
[[Index of Scripture Texts]] |
[[Dictionary]]
[[Category:God's Word to Women|Lesson 100]]
