Page 4 - January 2025 - Truth & Tidings

t is remarkable to reflect that, in writ- and Eve had to learn that the time of
ing about Mary, the mother of the deliverance was not yet.
ILord Jesus, we are, in a very tiny way, Centuries would pass before the Seed
fulfilling prophecy. “From henceforth,” of the woman arrived. Over the course of
Mary rejoiced, “all generations shall call those centuries, God would elaborate on
me blessed.” And all generations have, His promise to Eve. Eve had learned the
indeed, marvelled at the blessedness of why of the coming of the woman’s seed;
a woman who was made from the same Daniel would learn the when, Micah the
stuff and in the same way as us, and yet where, and Isaiah the how: “Behold, a
fulfilled so special a role in God’s mighty virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and
and magnificent purpose. shall call his name Immanuel” (Isa 7:14).
God’s purpose, long foretold, moves
Her Prophecy majestically towards its goal. Mary, with

That special place had been long her evident knowledge of Old Testament
foretold. The Bible’s earliest prophecy was Scripture, would have known some
not about Mary, but it included her. Amid of its detail. But now she would learn
the grief and the guilt, the sorrow and the that she had a special role to play in its
shame that followed fast upon the fall, God accomplishment, that she would be the
punctuated His declaration of judgement means by which Messiah would come,
upon the serpent and upon humanity, that she, of all women, would experience
so that the promise of man’s deliverer what Eve had hoped for in vain – to
came before the pronouncement of man’s receive a Man from the Lord.
condemnation. The great protoevangelical Mary’s place in divine purpose was
promise proclaimed that it would be the prophesied from the beginning of time.
Seed of the woman who would bruise the Your place and mine has not been foretold
serpent’s head. That promise must have as hers was, but it is no less foreknown.
rung strangely on the ears of Adam and We wonder at Mary’s submission to the
Eve, though the words with which Eve will of God, knowing so little of the path
welcomed the birth of Cain, “I have gotten that lay ahead. May we, like her, have
a man from the LORD” (Gen 4:1), suggest grace to say, “Behold the [servant] of the
1
that she had understood something of Lord; be it unto me according to thy word”
their import. But Cain would all too (Luk 1:38).
soon prove himself the seed of the man, Her Poverty
a son begotten in Adam’s fallen likeness,
Prophecy had come to focus on an
1 Bible quotations in this article are from the KJV unlikely individual. After all, who – and
unless otherwise noted. what – was Mary? She was just a peasant

4 TRUTH kTidings January 2025