[301]It was at Pentecost that for the first time God's great mystery began to be understood by the disciples. The mystery of God has been a stumbling block to both Jews and Christians so-called; but in God's due time he will make known to all the secret of his mystery and then all rightly exercised by this will rejoice with exceeding joy. [302]The mystery is _the Christ_, the great one through whom redemption, deliverance and blessing will ultimately come to all mankind who receive Christ and obey him. God foreshadowed his mystery for ages by the use of various men. Yet all of that time he kept it secret. [303]Death has been and is the great enemy of man. Death is the very opposite of life. The greatest desire of man is and always has been to have life everlasting in happiness. From the time of his expulsion from Eden man has been looking for something upon which to fasten a hope for life and happiness. Satan was the cause of death, and when God pronounced the sentence in Eden he said that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head. This statement was in the nature of a promise, but it could not then be understood. Since Pentecost some have understood the meaning of these words to be an assurance that in God's due time the seed of promise, the seed of the woman, will destroy Satan, who has the power of death. Nearly two thousand years rolled by after this statement before anything further was promised. [304]Then unto Abraham Jehovah called and made him the promise: "In thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed". This was another reference to the mystery; but that promise was not understood in its proper light. Abraham believed God would bless the human race, but he did not understand just the manner in which it would be done. At the time of this promise Abraham had no children. Several years more passed and then Isaac, Abraham's first legitimate son, was born. Abraham believed that his natural seed, his son, would be the ruler through whom the blessing would come to the people; but his son Isaac was merely a type of the mystery, God using him to foreshadow the greater one. This promise was renewed to Isaac and to Jacob, and at the death of Jacob his descendants, who of course were descendants of Abraham, were organized into twelve tribes, forming the nation of Israel, and were thereafter recognized as God's chosen nation. (Genesis 49:28; Deuteronomy 26:5) Then it was that the faithful believed that God's promised blessings would come through this nation, his chosen people. But in time they became slaves to the Egyptians and their hopes were almost blasted. They were sorely oppressed in Egypt when God sent Moses to be their deliverer and to lead the people of Israel out of Egyptian bondage. Moses was also a type foreshadowing the great One. (Acts 3:22) Moses died and the promised blessing had not yet come. The prophetic statement made by Moses that God would raise up unto Israel one like unto himself