Seeing is Believing

Transcript of the segment on Restoration of the Losses of Eden
There’s something moving. Did you notice, this is, this is the very first encounter there is, in the New Testament, with the risen Jesus. Mary Magdalene gets to meet Jesus before …, in his risen state, before Peter and John do, before anybody else does. And she wasn’t important. She wasn't one of the leading lights. We might have expected it, if it was Mary the mother of our Lord. Meeting Jesus after the Resurrection, we might have expected that, although that doesn’t happen, maybe because God in his providence, who overrides history, knew that she was going to be made too much of. No, it’s Mary Magdalene. And Mary Magdalene, if you hadn’t noticed is a woman. And the word and witness of a woman is not admissible as evidence in law, either Jewish law or Roman law, at that time. These were patriarchal societies. Women were oppressed. Women were disregarded. Women were side-lined. Women were put into their place, their little slot. It was a result of the Fall. And yet here is the beginning of Jesus’ purpose, to restore what had been lost in Eden, by man’s disobedience. What had been lost? God says to Eve, “your desire…” literally, “you will turn toward your husband and he will be a despot over you.” And that’s the way it goes on in Genesis, as you find. You go to the next chapter, all women are for is begetting children. The chapter after that, women are taken by a man and made his concubines, and so it goes through the rest of the Bible. Here is the beginning of the retrieval of what women were meant to be before the Fall.