Answer: God is here speaking to Father Adam, Mother Eve and the serpent (representing Satan). The serpent had just gained a victory over our original Parents by luring them into sin and causing them to come under the sentence of death. But in this dark and figurative language, God is both pronouncing a sentence upon the serpent, and prophesying of the time when there would be a reversal of the powers of evil, and of a victory that would come through, and to, Adam’s family.

This seed of the woman is the Christ – Jesus, the Head, and the Church, His Body. In due time, God sent forth His Son, born of the virgin Mary (Galatians 4: 4), but He did not inherit imperfection from Adam because God, not Adam, was His Father; yet He became a member of, and was identified with, the condemned race through His human mother.

It is the Christ, Head and Body, that will bruise the head of the serpent. Bruising the head gives the thought of inflicting fatal injury, meaning that Satan, as well as fallen angels and men who have associated, or who will associate themselves with Satan as opponents to the Lord and His people, will ultimately be destroyed. Christ and His Church will accomplish this during their Millennial Reign and the Little Season following. Evil will be crushed out and God will again have a clean universe.

Bruising the heel gives the thought of injury, but not fatal injury. Looking back at the New Testament and secular history, we see that Satan and his associates did inflict injury upon Jesus and His Church. They endured trials, sufferings and persecutions, even death, at the hands of their enemies, but their experiences only tended to develop and crystallize their characters, preparing them to be merciful and faithful in Their ministry toward mankind’s recovery in God’s coming Kingdom.    

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