Kraig Josiah Rice
| I believe God's plan of the ages is an important foundation stone that we need to spiritually embrace. God really wants us to understand this spiritual concept. |
Instead of starting with a lot of boring facts and figures here in Genesis, let us get right to
the heart of the matter- to the action, so to speak. Why are you in this world?
What is life? What is the purpose and meaning of your life? Who is God? What does He
want from you? Why do you have to suffer? Those are all questions I had when I was
a young man. All of those questions are answered in the pages of God's Holy Bible.
I want to help you find them. That is one reason why I wrote this bible commentary.
What is your existence all about? Where did this mystery of life begin? How do I fit
in? In order to begin to understand the answer to all of those question, let us go
back to the very beginning. I call it...
The beginning of the beginning:
The entire mystery of the universe started a long time ago in a place far away.
God is eternal- meaning that He does not have a beginning and an ending.
God exists as an invisible spirit in three Persons- God the Father, God the Son, and
God the Holy Spirit. In theology we refer to Him, in that respect, as the Holy Trinity.
God has a spiritual home called Heaven. One awesome thing about God is that He cannot
die and He lives on and on into eternity without a beginning and an ending. But God
was lonely so He created Seraphs, angels, and other celestial
beings with free will to have fellowship with and to help Him run things according
to His will. All of these beings were not created equally as some looked differently
and others had special abilities. God likes variety. God was in Heaven with His
created universe. God was very kind and loving towards them all.
God had at least three very important and super powerful archangels who were close
to Him named Michael, Gabriel, and Lucifer. But, one day, Lucifer
made a choice to become evil and he
turned against God. His large amount of pride was one factor in his rebellious choice.
Lucifer recruited a large number of God's angels to help him in the civil war he was
planning. Because Lucifer was one of three, that makes one third and
we see that fraction symbolically in the bible book of Revelation,
"...and his tail drew the third part of the stars (angels) of Heaven, and did cast
them to the earth"
(Revelation 12:4).
Lucifer's plan was to pull down God off of His throne and take over Heaven.
Then, one day, Lucifer's war machine attacked God's war machine. Lucifer and his
rebellious followers lost that war and became prisoners of war. They were given
a "courtroom" trial with God as Judge (Psalm 82:1), condemned, shown the lake of
fire (hell) where they will eventually spend eternity, and was cast from Heaven to the earth.
We must trust His mighty hand |
The planet earth was already in existence at that time but now God made it
habitable for human occupation. Lucifer was given a temporary visitor's pass
to come and go from Heaven as he wished to falsely accuse the righteous ones on earth
but he was not allowed to live there. Lucifer's fallen angels were not allowed to
live there, either, and Lucifer commanded them to join him on planet
earth for a long-time war against God. However, some of the powerful fallen angels will
remain in Hades until they are loosed for a short time in the future
God may have had another goal in mind as well- God wanted to eventually replace the number of angels (one third in symbolism) that he lost to Satan (in the war in Heaven) with human beings who loved God for who He was. This entire plan was organized and agreed to in Heaven before modern mankind was created.
Satan and his imps were on planet earth when Adam and Eve were created. Satan studied them very carefully. They literally visited with God every day so Satan had to be very crafty on how to get them to be disobedient to God. So, Satan (as recorded in Genesis) deceived Eve to sin with the use of a lie. It worked. Adam and Eve's disobedience to God really hurt God. This resulted in a great victory for Satan. He claimed ownership of Adam and Eve and bragged it all over Heaven that he turned 100% of all mankind against God. God, he said, failed at His own test! All of that caused a lot of problems for God. It appeared that God lost face and it looked like God's plan was a failure. This failure of mankind is known in theology as the Fall of Mankind.
This warfare on planet earth, involving human beings, was going to be a life and death struggle. It would be vicious involving a lot of death, pain, and suffering. Every human being born on this earth would be embroiled somehow in this spiritual warfare one way or another.
So, how can that be relevant to you and I? Satan claims ownership of you and I and he does not want God to own us.
He can legally claim that based upon the fall of mankind when mankind transferred
its authority to Satan. That means that Satan has justification to claim that every
person on earth belongs to him by default (Matthew 4:8-9).
But God created us with free will- meaning
that the choice of who owns us is up to us. You and I can choose to serve God and
break Satan's ownership of us. Jesus Christ came to give us the power to do so.
I made the decision many years ago to let Jesus Christ own me. I encourage you to do
the same thing now. That is why evangelism is so important. We must tell the unsaved peoples of
this world they are slaves to sin, owned by Satan, and in a lost spiritual condition.
We must tell them about Jesus Christ and how His blood cleanses from all sin. How
accepting Him transfers their ownership from Satan to Christ with a new inner nature
that is Christ-like. And how Christ will give them power to live a Christian life
and to withstand the persecution that Satan will instigate.
(Revelation chapter 9). Another scripture states,
"...for if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to Hades, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment..."
(2 Peter 2:4).
God proposed this war plan to Satan. Satan stuck out his chest and bragged that it would be no contest at all. Why? Because Satan believed that he could have taken the allegiance of all of God's angels in Heaven, given enough time, and now, he believed he could take the allegiance of all human beings on planet earth for himself. Satan would get all of them and God would get none of them. God once again disagreed with Satan and told him- not so, Satan, I will have a few people on planet earth who will choose to love Me for who I Am. Remember, that God always deals with a remnant or just a few. Satan would only agree to this test of mankind with one stipulation- that he would be allowed by God to come before Him in Heaven as a visitor to slander any individual on earth who dared to love God for Himself. God agreed. But God also had one stipulation- that He would come to earth as a human being in His own timing. Satan agreed. So, Satan went out and was able to test the majority of mankind NOT to love
God or to serve Him. But, God, was right also. He had a remnant of people who did love Him for who He was. Now, you know why there are always more spiritually unsaved folks than saved folks on this earth.
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As of January 7, 2016
