Part 2: The Coming of the Champion

“I will place enmity between you and the woman,

And between your seed and her seed.

He will crush your head,

And you will bite his heel.”

This was the first prophecy ever spoken into the world, and it came at the end of a curse. It was spoken by the One, the creator of the world, to the Great Enemy, and it foretold his downfall at the hands of a coming champion, called here “the seed of woman.”

To recap, the world was made perfect, but it had hardly begun when it was overrun by evil. But even as the heroes bewailed their failure and the world hurtled into darkness, the sequel was already in the works. “The seed of woman” was coming to crush the head of the great enemy and destroy his power – at a cost. For the wise of the world agreed that to “bite his heel” meant that, in the destruction of the enemy, the champion would be mortally wounded.

So the prophecy went, and the world waited. For thousands upon thousands of years, it waited. More prophecies arose of this coming champion, confusing prophecies. It was said he would be from Bethlehem, from Egypt, and from Judah. It was said he would be a son of Abraham and David, in the royal line of Israel – but born of a virgin, the seed of woman, not man.

It was said he would be despised and rejected, but also that he would be triumphant and praised. It was said he would be led like a lamb to slaughter, without protest, but also that he would be a prince and a king. It was said he would be betrayed by his friends but mourned by his enemies, that he would be killed an outcast but buried with the wealthy.

Only a very few things were clear. The promised one would come from Israel, who so closely guarded their history and lineage, who nearly alone maintained worship of the One instead of worship of all the dark spirits who had overrun the world. He would come in a way that was anything but straightforward. And he would come to change history and mankind forever.

All these prophecies were spoken, and then there was a long, long silence. The people of God rejected him and were rejected in turn, and no more prophets came. For four hundred years, there was nothing. And then, one day, the prophecy was fulfilled. A virgin descended from David conceived and gave birth to a son in Bethlehem. His name, decreed by heaven, was He-Will-Save.

For all the fake stories of divinely-announced births, his was real. Glorious spirits of terrible beauty appeared in the heavens announcing his coming reign. The stars aligned, as was foretold six hundred years prior by one of the greatest of the prophets. He had lived in another land, in Persia, and from Persia came the wise who still remembered how to read the stars. The champion’s coming was not a secret. And yet it was, for those whose hearts were closed.

You see, after so many years of silence, the religious and political elites in Israel had invented their own ideas of what God and religion ought to be like. They were educated modern leaders balancing economic, political, and social concerns; they didn’t waste energy musing over musty prophecies and long-forgotten promises. They had no time for fairy-tales; they had practical things to worry about. Elites and commoners alike heard the reports and ignored him; he was barely a blip on the radar. “Sure, he’s the champion. Come back when he’s weaned.”

Thus, hardly noticed, the king of all the world came to his own.

Perhaps we shouldn’t blame his detractors; this plot twist was hardly to be expected. The face that Moses was not allowed to look upon, lest he die, was pale with cold. The mouth whose words could create a universe suckled from Mary’s breast. A power infinitely greater than the entire universe combined was wrapped in cloth and sheltered from the night wind. Already, the whole pattern of the world had changed. Through pride man’s strength had turned to fatal weakness; now weakness would become a source of strength.

But the stranger plot twist, the twist upon which all history would turn, was yet to come.

“Madonna Nativity by George Hinke” by Waiting For The Word is licensed under CC BY 2.0 CC BY 2.0