“I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel” (Gen. 3: 15)

Ever since Satan obtained control of this world and God said, “I will put enmity between you and the woman,” God has been calling people from the ranks of Satan unto Himself into His dominion. And many have been coming all the time.

But Satan had been making the charge that that was not fair, arguing: “These are my rightful conquest, and You are leading them off to You. What have You done, that by right You can do, when I gained it here? Thus he was always accusing those before God day and night whom God called out of this world unto Himself. Satan declared: “These are my property , my rightful subjects; they are laden with sin and altogether wicked. Yet You call them out and justify them and propose to hold them before the universe as though they had been good all the time. That is not fair. They are sinners; they are wicked; they are just like all the rest of us over here.”

This accuser comes as a prosecuting attorney into a court. He would all these, his subjects, as slave-holders used to do under the Fugitive Slave law in the United States, and demand that they should be given up once more to his authority. And there was room for him to present that argument with a apparent shadow of right, because the contest had not yet been carried on. The battle had not yet been fought and the victory won so completely that his argument as a prosecuting attorney should be annihilated.

Now Jesus came into the world to demonstrate that He had the right to do all this and that it was fair. At the point of weakness He entered upon the contest with Satan to recover, by right, the headship of this lost dominion. The promise and the victory had to be tested in an open conflict in the flesh.

Jones, General Conference Bulletin, 1895, pp. 447,448