THE PROGRESSIVE DEVELOPMENT OF GOD'S PLAN OF SALVATION

We are all familiar with the statement that Satan has deceived "the whole world", i.e. ALL human beings (Revelation 12:9). Many of us tend to think that this Scripture only applies to the world and not to us who are in God’s Church. And we don’t remotely understand the magnitude of deception that also affects all of us in God’s Church. Yes, we may be slightly less deceived by Satan than the rest of humanity, but we are still deceived on many things nonetheless.

In this article I will address a major area of Satan’s deception that has deceived us in God’s Church almost as much as it has the world. Then you can decide for yourself.

It’s a strange thing, but when we human beings are seriously deceived in some way or other, we often don’t take kindly to that deception being exposed. Any expose of that deception is frequently viewed very critically because it threatens the very foundations of what we have always accepted as truth. We need only think of the time when people generally believed that the earth is flat and someone proposed that it is in fact a sphere, or when people still believed that the earth is the center of the universe and someone proposed that the sun is in fact the center of our solar system. Such challenges to strongly held beliefs frequently meet with strong opposition, basically because most people reject that they could be deceived in such major ways. Most people rely on their own perceptions and their own understanding most of the time. (Now where have I read something like that before? Hmmmm.)

I will show that God’s plan for mankind was modified a couple of times in order to achieve God’s desired results. Perhaps a better way to state this is to say that God’s plan was refined a couple of times? This has generally not been understood. But before we get into that let’s briefly consider one aspect concerning the mind of God.

We understand that God is all-powerful and all-knowing and all-wise and that God can read the hearts and minds of human beings. Speaking about God in these absolute terms was popularized by the Catholic Church, to the point where people believe that there are no limitations whatsoever on God’s abilities and powers. While these absolute terms certainly do apply to God, they can lead us to draw some wrong conclusions when people try to apply these terms to inappropriate subjects.

For example:

While God is certainly all-powerful, God simply cannot by fiat create a being that has godly, holy, righteous character. And when God gives a being He has created a completely free will, to the point of total freedom to agree with or to disagree with God’s ways of doing things, then God also initially cannot predict with unerring certainty what decisions such a being will make in every circumstance. The point in these matters is not that God is somehow not "all-powerful" and "all-wise"; the point really is that these are simply wrong and inappropriate situations to which someone wishes to apply the "all-powerful" and "all-wise" attributes.

There is another limitation on God being "all-knowing" which may be less obvious. God is "all-wise" and He is certainly not "foolish"! Thoughts that are foolish simply NEVER enter God’s mind without some outside prompting. Strange as it may seem to some of us, God Himself CANNOT ORIGINATE foolish thoughts. So for God to even CONSIDER (or become aware of) foolish thoughts requires some other being to first originate those foolish thoughts. Unless another non-God being originates some foolish thoughts, they would never even occur to God.

The English word "NAIVE" has a range of meanings. Webster’s Dictionary gives one meaning of "naive" as: MARKED BY UNAFFECTED SIMPLICITY; i.e. marked by UNPREJUDICED simplicity. Webster’s also states that this word "suggests a lack of WORLDLY wisdom often connoting CREDULOUSNESS and UNCHECKED INNOCENCE".

These are the meanings I have in mind in the following statement:

Consider what Paul tells us in Titus 1:15.

God is pure! And God has never at any time originated a perverse or evil thought! That inability to anticipate perverse conduct for which there has never before been a precedent is inextricably linked to the way God’s mind has always worked. It is God Himself who "believes all things and hopes all things" (1 Corinthians 13:7). God ALWAYS hopes for the best, and without some precedent to justify it God NEVER anticipates the worst! Now once a precedent has been set, yes, THEN God is capable of anticipating the worst; but not without a precedent. The key for God’s mind working this way is that God has never, never had a selfish motivation for anything He has done! God’s nature is uncompromisingly an outgoing concern for the well-being of others, which is what the word "love" really means. God IS love (1 John 4:8).

Satan was the first being to ever think a selfish thought! And when Satan did think a selfish thought, IT OPENED HIS MIND TO A WHOLE NEW RANGE OF THOUGHTS, thoughts of selfishness, lusting, coveting, resentment, vanity, greed and envy. Before Satan started to think selfishly, I don’t believe that God’s vocabulary even included words that mean "lusting, coveting, resentment, vanity, envy, greed" etc.

For God such thoughts along these lines were impossible to originate or even to perceive; God could only perceive such thoughts in all their perversity AFTER Satan had first introduced them. That is, God could then perceive the specific attitudes other beings could embrace, together with the clear understanding of what such attitudes do to a mind that embraces them.

But for Satan such thoughts of selfishness, lust, greed, vanity, etc., became intuitive. Such thoughts became the norm for Satan’s mind. Applying Titus 1:15 to Satan (quoted above) shows us that Satan’s mind had become defiled by thinking selfishly, and from then onwards NOTHING he would think or do would ever again be "pure"! Satan’s mind became set in thinking impure thoughts. And that is the main reason why Satan and the demons can never be rehabilitated. Spirit beings cannot "experiment" with thinking selfish thoughts because their minds become set as soon as they engage their minds in such selfish thinking. (More on this later when we come to the creation of man.)

We should also understand that God cannot anticipate the next totally new perverse thoughts or deeds Satan may inspire some human being to vocalize or to act on. Only someone who is even more perverse than Satan could possibly think ahead and anticipate the next totally new and original perversion Satan may come up with.

Concerning Satan, God tells us in Ezekiel 28:17:

All it took for Satan to corrupt his wisdom was to start thinking selfishly, epitomized by thoughts like "I will ascend ... I will exalt ... I will sit ... I will be like ..." (Isaiah 14:13-14). The rest just followed. The same applies in principle to us human beings. Likewise, all it took for Satan to get all the angels under his leadership to follow him in rebellion against God was to get them to start thinking selfishly. Once they started thinking selfishly, then their wisdom was likewise corrupted.

Now let’s look at what Satan said to Eve in the garden in Eden. Satan said:

Satan knew from experience that it required an active act of disobedience to God for Adam and Eve to have their minds DESCEND to Satan’s selfish level of thinking!

When God created the garden in Eden, God’s concern was to establish how the minds of human beings were going to function. Were human beings going to use their minds in the same way God uses His mind? Or were human beings going to use their minds in the same way that Satan uses his mind? In order to find this out, the fruit on the tree of the perception of good and evil represented two different and diametrically opposite ways for human beings to use their minds. Rejecting that fruit would effectively have meant that they would have continued to live their lives with pure minds, guided by pure motivations. Eating that fruit, on the other hand, indicated that they would from then onwards ALWAYS see life from Satan’s selfish perspective of vanity, lust, greed, covetousness, etc. And that perspective would then be spontaneous and natural for them, though this did not automatically preclude them from consciously rejecting that "natural" way of using their minds and accepting God’s way of thinking (i.e. concern for others). But using their minds God’s way would take conscious and deliberate effort, whereas using their minds Satan’s way would be intuitive.

They did eat that fruit. And their minds did descend to a new level on which God Himself has never been capable of thinking. God is pure!

So we today can "naturally" and "spontaneously" accept mental suggestions from Satan regarding actions or conduct that even God Himself has thus far never even thought of. The only perversions, customs, practices, devious conduct, etc. that God can anticipate are those things for which there already exist precedents, things that someone has already done previously at some point. It takes a perverse mind to take some action or conduct that is already perverse, and to then take it one step further, and then another step further, and then another step further, each one "out-perverting" what had been done previously. But God’s mind will never think along those lines.

Yes, in this regard God certainly lacks "WORLDLY wisdom", a part of the definition of "naive". As the Apostle James explained:

Envy and strife are not in any way a part of the wisdom of God. That type of wisdom doesn’t come from God. It really comes from Satan the devil. And God’s mind can’t originate or anticipate such thoughts without knowledge of a precedent.

James also tells us how God’s mind works, calling this "the wisdom that is from above".

This verse tells us how God’s mind works. And there is no place for "devilish thinking" in the mind of God. And that is why God NEVER anticipates evil conduct for which there is no precedent.

Now let’s briefly consider how Satan promulgates his perverse "devilish wisdom".

The main way in which Satan spreads his perverse thinking amongst human beings is as follows:

1) Satan directly inspires someone to say or to do something perverse. This influence is precisely what Paul had in mind when he referred to Satan as "the prince of the power of the air" (Ephesians 2:2).

2) Then Satan sees to it that other people are exposed to the person who is saying or doing something perverse. Negative examples are extremely powerful influences.

So first Satan has to find someone who is weak-willed enough and foolish enough and perverse enough to act on impulses that Satan sends directly to the mind of such a person. But that’s only the start.

[COMMENT: If you can understand this one point, then you should understand why the greatest goal in godly child-rearing is to help our children build resolute restraints against acting on unseen impulses.]

The most important part, from Satan’s perspective, is to then EXPOSE AS MANY PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE, including us in God’s Church, to that perverse speech or action! It doesn’t matter to Satan whether we initially agree with what we hear or see, or whether we vehemently disagree with what we hear or see. The most important thing to Satan is that we are EXPOSED to his thoughts! Once we have been exposed to Satan’s perverse thoughts, THEN those things are a part of our memory and capable of being recalled at a future point. And like some stupid advertising that endlessly bombards us with the same trashy ads, so Satan tries to expose us repeatedly to his perverse views in the hope that sooner or later we’ll "try his product".

The fact that we have been exposed to Satan’s perverse thoughts means that Satan has gained a foothold, however small it may be, in our minds, even if our minds emphatically disagree with Satan’s thoughts. You might not have realized this?

Satan knows that things we reject TODAY may be less objectionable to us 5 years or 10 years or 15 years from now. While a quick return is always welcome to Satan, exposing us to his ways of thinking is really a long-term investment for Satan; he is quite willing to wait for a return years down the road.

In years gone by, before Mr. Armstrong died, we had a small number of ministers who would occasionally try to give "powerful" sermons by graphically describing the evil practices and perversions of some past or present segment of some or other society. These ministers were obviously ranting against the evils they were so vividly describing. But in vividly presenting the frequently perverse or immoral details of practices they were preaching against, they obviously EXPOSED God’s people to such descriptions. And Satan won ... he had been able to expose more of God’s people to his views, even if the people expressed disgust with those views at that time.

EXPOSURE TO PERVERSE CONDUCT IS ALWAYS BAD!

Yes, when we are exposed to evil ways it is good to firmly resist the evil. But it is better still to never be unnecessarily exposed to that evil in the first place. As the Apostle Paul said in Ephesians 5:12:

Speaking about those things simply unnecessarily exposes Church members to mental pictures that are not good for us to have in our memories. In most cases it is more serious to expose a person’s mind to a wrong mental image than it is beneficial for that person to be admonished against the wrong practice depicted by that mental image. It is Satan who seeks to expose us endlessly to wrong mental images as much as possible, because endless exposure to evil dulls a person’s senses (e.g. think of Lot).

That’s why the Apostle Paul told us to think on the things that God Himself thinks on.

This verse tells us the things God’s mind thinks about. And it is an example we should seek to emulate.

So to summarize this point: God Himself will never anticipate wrong conduct for which there is no precedent. It is not a case that God somehow lacks wisdom; it is simply a matter that God "believes all things and hopes all things"; i.e. God always expects the best and not the worst. And God is simply not going to anticipate some evil for which there is no precedent, but which evil you and I with our human minds might quite easily anticipate. Did you know that?

This is where we are different from God. OUR MINDS almost intuitively anticipate the worst. That is why God tells us:

God simply does not think as we do. We so readily think thoughts that are evil, perverse, devious, selfish, resentful, etc. because our minds think the same way that Satan thinks. But none of those kinds of thoughts are God’s thoughts, because God’s mind has never so much as entertained that kind of thinking. For God to ever originate a thought along those lines would mean that the statement "God is love" would no longer be true, because that way of thinking is incompatible with love.

Now notice what God said in Jeremiah 19:5:

In other words, when the people of Israel became so depraved that they sacrificed their own children to Baal, then this is something that God had never anticipated; that’s what "neither came it into my mind" means.

God repeated this point in Jeremiah 32:35, where we read:

The practice of sacrificing their children was extremely perverse and depraved, and God had certainly not anticipated it. Now consider something this statement reveals about the mind of God:

Sacrificing children to idols was not something new at that time. Pagan nations had already performed child sacrifices many centuries earlier. So God certainly WAS aware of this perverse practice amongst the pagans. And yet it still had not occurred to God that HIS OWN PEOPLE ISRAEL would ever get involved in this diabolical practice. That is what Jeremiah 32:35 tells us!

THAT illustrates how the mind of God works! God doesn’t even anticipate evils that to our minds would be almost obvious. We know that whatever evil has been committed anywhere else, it’s only a question of time before that is also committed in our society, right? Yet God doesn’t think that way.

[By the way: repentance and conversion refer to the process where we change our way of thinking (i.e. selfish and debased like Satan) to God’s way of thinking.]

Now it should be quite clear to us that this (i.e. Jeremiah 32:35) was not the first time that human beings did something that God had not anticipated! Ever since God had created Adam and Eve human beings have TIME AND AGAIN done things that God had simply not anticipated!

In fact you and I are "more qualified" (if that’s the way to say it?) than God to anticipate the next totally new perversion that Satan may inspire some or other human being to act out. Script writers for the movie industry have without question on many occasions (in horror movies, perverse sexual movies, scenes of cruelty, movies intended to shock people, etc.) thought up new perverse situations that had never before "come into the mind of God", because that type of thinking is totally foreign to the mind of God.

Let me give you one example of Satan’s tactic to ensure exposure to his perverse thinking, which example involves something that I believe had never even occurred to God Himself. I will avoid creating any mental images with this example.

While I am writing these words, there is a discussion on TV here regarding a proposal by the State of New York to pass a law mandating that all 11-year olds in the state be required to undergo compulsory sex education that would include detailed explanations of all known sexual deviations and perversions. Now such a law would expose the minds of all children to perverse mental images that will stay with them for life! And when the leader of the discussion expressed his vehement opposition to this proposed law, an attractive young woman on the panel smiled sweetly and said: "well, we have 11-year olds getting pregnant and so we’ve got to do something", with which statement she fully endorsed the proposed law for the State of New York.

This shows how Satan works. If he can get all children EXPOSED to perverse mental images, then he can plunge the whole next generation into far more depravity than is already the case with the present generation. I would speculate that it is far more likely that THE THOUGHT of sending, in New Testament Greek terms, a "katastrophe" on New York than it is that God would EVER have anticipated such a proposed law. It is staggering that society in Israel has become so debased as to methodically require 11-year olds to be "educated" in all the sexual perversions that are known, thereby indelibly etching perverse images into the minds of small children.

[COMMENT: Now I don’t at all think God will do anything to New York if that proposed law is passed. But THE THOUGHT to do something powerful in this situation is far more likely for God than THE ANTICIPATORY THOUGHT "let’s see now, the next thing you know they’ll probably mandate the compulsory education in sexual perversions for all 11-year olds". I mention this hypothetical comparison of likely thoughts only to illustrate that God would never anticipate certain perverse conduct by human beings. By no means do I intend to imply some "katastrophe" for the State of New York. See the next section for the meaning of the biblical Greek word "katastrophe".]

Now with this above example Satan had to first find someone weak enough and perverse enough to actually vocalize the intention to make such a perverse law. Once that had been done, then Satan needs other people to take up this idea and run with it, like the young woman on the panel who blithely endorsed this proposal with no more concern or contemplation than if she was ordering a pizza in some restaurant.

So much for that example.

With this general understanding about the mind of God and also Satan’s mind as a background let’s now examine God’s plan of salvation. And one major key for a correct understanding of God’s plan is the expression "the foundation of the world". So let’s briefly examine this.

Last month I wrote a 12-page article entitled "WHAT DOES ‘THE FOUNDATION OF THE WORLD’ REALLY MEAN?", in which I show that this expression refers to the time of Noah’s flood and NOT to the time of Adam’s creation. That article is intended as a starting point for this present article; and it is available on my website for downloading.

Very briefly:

The Greek expression here consists of the two nouns katabole and kosmos. Katabole does not mean "foundation", and kosmos does not mean this planet Earth. Katabole means "a violent throwing down", and kosmos means "human society". This is thoroughly documented in the article.

[COMMENT: Don’t confuse the meaning of these words with modern Greek. In modern Greek the verb "kataballo" means "to lay low, to exhaust, to pay, to put down money", etc, and "katabole" means "payment". These meanings have nothing to do with the meanings these words had 2000 years ago. We are here only concerned with the meanings of biblical Greek words, not modern Greek.]

We might also consider the two biblical Greek verbs "ballo" and "strepho". The verb "ballo" means "to throw" or "to cast away". The verb "strepho" means "to turn" or "to turn around" or "to convert".

Now in the New Testament both of these verbs are joined to the preposition "kata" to form two distinct nouns. From the verb "strepho" we get the Greek noun "KATASTROPHE", and from the verb "ballo" we get the Greek noun "KATABOLE", mentioned above. Here are the meanings of these two nouns:

KATASTROPHE = A FORCEFUL TURNING DOWN

KATABOLE = A FORCEFUL THROWING DOWN

(The forcefulness is implied by the prefix "kata".)

While to us the English word "catastrophe" represents something like an extreme misfortune, we should understand that IN N.T. GREEK "katabole" is in fact a more serious event than an event referred to as "katastrophe". A THROWING down is more serious and more violent and more emphatic than a TURNING down.

Put in simple terms, "katastrophe" is nothing more than the little brother of "katabole"! "Katabole" is far worse than "katastrophe"! So now let’s look at the two places where "katastrophe" is used in the NT.

So Paul told Timothy that foolish arguments "KATASTROPHE" (i.e. subvert) because they lead to "TURNING DOWN" the faith of the believers. And Peter tells us that God’s destruction of Sodom and Gomorrha was "KATASTROPHE". The use of "katastrophe" in 2 Timothy 2:14 makes clear that this is something on a lower scale of intensity than something we would call a "katabole".

Now here is the point:

There have been THREE MAJOR EVENTS that fit these two Greek words. Those events were:

1) THE "KATABOLE" OF THE ANGELS: This was the monumental event when Satan and all his angels, who became demons, were violently CAST DOWN to this earth after having risen in rebellion against God. They were "cast out" of the mountain of God (Ezekiel 28:16). That was the time when Jesus Christ watched Satan being thrown down like a bolt of lightning (Luke 10:18). This expression is not used in the Greek text, though if there were a reason to refer to this event, then the expression "kataboles aggelou" would certainly be very appropriate (i.e. if used with a preposition that requires the genitive case).

2) THE "KATABOLE" OF HUMANITY: This was the violent destruction of all human beings worldwide, except for 8 people, at the time of the flood in the days of Noah. The Greek expression which is repeatedly used for this event is "kataboles kosmou".

3) THE "KATASTROPHE" OF SODOM AND GOMORRHA: This was the violent destruction of all people in one specific geographic area (Sodom & Gomorrah). Because it was only a localized event, Peter used the word "katastrophe" and not the word "katabole". (The Greek LXX text for Genesis 19 also uses the word "katastrophe", probably due to Origen with his familiarity with 2 Peter 2:6 deciding to use the word "katastrophe" in Genesis 19 of his Greek LXX text to ensure compatibility with the NT for his OT Greek LXX text.) The Greek words used in 2 Peter 2:6 are "sodomon kai gomorras ... katastrophe".

So we have three monumental events. In one sense they might all have been described by the Greek word "katabole". But in practice the word "katabole" is used for only one of them, the flood in the days of Noah, because there is another distinction between these two Greek words, which distinction we’ll look at later. The earlier event (the throwing down of Satan and his demons) was accompanied by far more power and far more violence, and that event would thus also certainly qualify for the term "katabole". Now the later event (destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah) might perhaps also have been called a "katabole", but when we later consider one additional point, then it should become clear why the word "katastrophe" is the more appropriate word in this specific context.

However, what we should learn from all this is that God punishes rebellion by "THROWING IT DOWN"! Satan and the demons were thrown down, all of humanity was thrown down at the flood, and all the people of Sodom and Gomorrha were thrown down. In each case God used extremely violent force to accomplish the throwing down. In other words, God deals with rebellion forcefully and decisively. God certainly does not negotiate with rebellion or co-exist with rebellion. God always throws it down!

So much for this matter. The matter we need to understand quite clearly at this point is that the expression "THE FOUNDATION OF THE WORLD" in our copies of the New Testament is ALWAYS a reference to THE TIME OF NOAH’S FLOOD!

This is a very significant part of understanding God’s plan of salvation. To think that this expression "the foundation of the world" refers to the time of Adam or even earlier is a huge deception that Satan, with the help of a convenient mistranslation, has imposed on all people who read the Bible. As long as people believe that the expression "the foundation of the world" refers to the time of Adam (let alone earlier!), they will never correctly understand the truth regarding how God developed His plan of salvation for humanity.

We’ll now examine the development of God’s plan under the following headings amongst others:

1) God’s testing of the angels before the creation of man

2) God’s ORIGINAL intentions for mankind (i.e. BEFORE Adam sinned)

3) The Lamb slain from "the foundation of the world"

4) An examination of Genesis 3:15

5) God’s intentions for mankind RIGHT AFTER Adam had sinned

6) The reason for man’s original long lifespan

7) But how could God have forgiven their sins?

8) How things turned out after Adam sinned

9) What God learned from that experience

10) The MAIN reason for the flood

11) God’s plan for mankind AFTER the flood

12) The second resurrection

13) All the references to "the foundation of the world"

14) The evidence of the annual feasts and Holy Days

15) A Closer Look at all the Holy Days

Before this universe was created and before the angels were created only God the Father and Jesus Christ existed. There was a time when They did not yet have the plan to create the angels and the universe. And there was a time when They did not yet have the plan to create human beings. There was a time when They had never before created another being with a mind to think and to reason. And because They had never before created such a being, They also did not know with unerring certainty how it would turn out if They DID create such beings with free independent minds.

We have already looked at the statement where God said "neither came it into My mind", regarding specific evils that human beings have committed. The point here is that God also learns things, and God also grows in understanding.

When Satan inspired the Catholic Church to popularize the "all-knowing" attribute of God, it was with the intention of using that statement to mislead us somewhere. It wasn’t to help us to get a better understanding of God.

Where we have been misled is that the all-knowing attribute was used to get us to assume that since God "knows everything" therefore God must have had His whole plan mapped out in all its details right from the beginning, and that everything is just a matter of predestination.

But that’s not correct.

The results from certain stages have to come in before the precise details for the next stages can be developed. Each successive stage really depends on how things worked out in the previous stage. To use an oversimplified analogy:

God originally had the idea to create a motorcar. And God’s original design was something like the Ford Model T. Now once God had gotten to that stage and God saw how that worked out, THEN God started to think of and to implement refinements ... and in time the design became a totally modern car with all the "bells and whistles" our cars have today. But all those refinements weren’t a part of the original planning. Those refinements were only thought of once it could be seen how the original model functioned and performed.

So much for the analogy.

Later I will show quite clearly that God repeatedly MODIFIED His plan for dealing with us human beings. The reasons for those modifications are that God had learned something more about us human beings, and therefore He modified certain things.

I believe this shows that God also learned things even before the creation of Adam and Eve. And to me that implies that God developed His plan in stages, where God then always applied His new understanding to the next stage of His plan. What I will now present in this particular section is obviously mostly my own speculation, and I am certainly not in a position to conclusively prove it to be correct.

So here goes.

I believe that the whole plan of God started when God the Father and Jesus Christ said something like: let’s create other beings who will have minds and who will be able to think like We do. Since We have never created another being before, and since We have no experience of ever having dealt with another being that also has a totally free mind and will, let’s see if We can produce beings that think and reason in exactly the same way that We do.

At that time the concepts of death and of mortality didn’t exist. At that point (before the creation of the universe) nothing and nobody had ever died. Now keep in mind the things we discussed about the mind of God, how God is always positive and always anticipates the best. So when God the Father and Jesus Christ considered creating other beings with free and independent minds, IT WAS ONLY NATURAL that they were going to create those beings with the intention that those beings would from then onwards ALWAYS EXIST; that they would be immortal. God did not have a suspicious mind which always expects the worst to happen.

I obviously don’t know with any certainty, but I believe that God’s original intention was NOT to create beings that would be like God in every respect; i.e. I don’t believe God’s ORIGINAL plan was to create "the Family of God". To create the Family of God (i.e. God’s plan since He created human beings) is an extremely ambitious plan, and without ever having created any beings with independent minds, I believe God’s initial plan was just to create other beings that would share God’s value system, i.e. God’s way of thinking and using their minds, and who would therefore be willing and joyful servants of God, to carry out God’s wishes and intentions. But God didn’t necessarily create all the angels "in the image and likeness of God", because it seems to me that this concept of "the Family of God" was not yet a part of God’s initial planning.

When God created the angels with totally free minds of their own, then God the Father and Jesus Christ could for the very first time ever see how other beings would use their free minds. The indications are that for a considerable period of time ALL the angels responded to God in exactly the way God had hoped and intended.

This initial success encouraged God to then develop His plan even further, to the point of wanting to create other beings that would be like God in every respect, that together with God the Father and Jesus Christ those beings would form the Family of God. This was an extremely ambitious plan, for God to create other beings that would be like God in every respect of their being (though certainly not equal in status and position within that Family structure, because there would always be a hierarchy structure within that Family). It was essentially a plan for God to reproduce Himself through human beings.

Now when God created all the angels, God unconditionally gave them immortality by telling them that they would never cease to exist. This unconditional gift of immortality was aimed at ensuring a relationship of total trust between God and the angels. At no point would the angels ever be motivated by a fear of losing their existence. But this gift of immortal life was also an expression of God’s positive mindset, referred to above, one of assuming the best and not really anticipating the worst.

So while God was going to test all the angels, God initiated that testing with the full confidence that all the angels would indeed always willingly and joyfully submit to God their Creator. You and I would probably have approached such testing with a somewhat more critical view, reasoning: "let’s not count our chickens before they are hatched; let’s just see how many of those angels REALLY stay faithful", etc. But that’s not how God’s mind works. God anticipates success, calling those things "which be not as though they were" (see Romans 4:17). God’s mind works dramatically differently from the way our minds naturally work.

It seems clear that after some initial testing one third of all the angels were assigned to this planet Earth under the leadership of the one who became Satan. While this is not stated anywhere specifically, it seems equally clear to me that God ALSO continued to test the other two thirds of all the angels under some different circumstances. What specifically the testing of both groups consisted of is not revealed, and it is none of our business. However, implied is that the testing was carried out in pleasant circumstances and over a long period of time.

The purpose of the testing was to establish in absolute terms that God would ALWAYS be able to trust the angels to faithfully carry out His instructions, and that they would of their own free will permanently inculcate into their very beings God’s philosophy of life. God has some way which enables God to establish this in absolute terms.

Now the outcome of this testing of the angels was that the one third of all the angels under the leadership of the one who became Satan rebelled against God, while the other two thirds proved themselves to be faithful, and they are now the holy angels of God.

Now we come to the matter of God dealing with the rebellious angels.

Their immediate penalty was to be thrown down to this Earth. But their long-term penalty would only be imposed later.

God will never break His Word. Therefore "killing" (i.e. annihilating) Satan and the demons is simply not an option. The ceremony with the Azazel goat on the Day of Atonement (see Leviticus 16) shows us that Satan’s destiny is to be driven away into an uninhabited wilderness, for ever wandering aimlessly. Jude 1:13 expands on this by telling us that "the blackness of darkness" is reserved for ever for Satan and the demons.

Thus the end result of God dealing with the angels was that TWO THIRDS proved themselves to be true and faithful to God, while one third "failed the testing". While this was certainly not the ideal, it seems clear that God was prepared to also accept a two thirds success rate with the human beings He was going to create.

But the most important thing to note at this point is this:

This was God’s first experience ever in dealing with independent beings who had totally free wills to agree, submit, and cooperate with God, or to resist and to oppose God. It is clear that God learned things from this experience, lessons which then influenced how God dealt with the human beings He subsequently created. And the fact that God DID achieve a two thirds success rate with created beings who had totally free minds was enough to motivate God to continue with the more ambitious project of producing sons and daughters of God.

So now let’s move on.

God created human beings physical with the intention that after a period of testing He would CHANGE them into spirit beings to become His sons and daughters in the Family of God. One of the reasons why God created human beings physical was to deal with those who would not pass the testing, something God had learned from dealing with the angels, a third of whom had rebelled. So in creating us human beings physical, God made provision for blotting out all those human beings who would fail the testing.

But another extremely important reason for creating human beings physical was this:

If a spirit being ever accepts a selfish way of thinking, then that spirit mind will always be locked into that selfish way of thinking. The mind of a spirit being can never be rehabilitated if it ever indulges in a way of thinking that is contrary to God. Ever engaging in selfish and perverse thinking will set the mind of a spirit being.

We physical human beings can repeatedly change our minds! It is this ability to change our minds that gives us physical human beings the potential to recover from mistakes and transgressions. So by the very fact that God made us physical, God was in effect making provision for us to at least POTENTIALLY recover from using our minds the wrong way, something God had not made provision for when He created the angels.

Now most of us generally overlook God’s ORIGINAL intentions for human life, assuming that God considered it to be inevitable that Adam and Eve would give in to Satan’s temptation.

The idea that it was inevitable that Adam and Eve would eat the forbidden fruit is another of Satan’s deceptions. It is SATAN who wants us to believe that Adam and Eve really didn’t stand a chance. It is another way of accusing God of being unfair, of heavily stacking the odds against Adam. But that is a lie!

The truth is that THE TEST WAS NOT REALLY THAT DIFFICULT!

The fact that you and I would in all likelihood not have done any better than Adam does not mean that the test was particularly difficult. That fact only illustrates how weak and selfish our minds really are, a magnitude of selfishness that God clearly had not fully anticipated. After all, at that time what did God, who had never at any time had a selfish thought, really know about selfishness? Only what God had up to that point in time learned from Satan’s rebellion.

Now see the parallel to what we looked at earlier. EVEN THOUGH child sacrifices had already been practiced by the pagans, IT STILL CAUGHT GOD BY SURPRISE when His own people Israel engaged in that same perverse practice. Likewise, EVEN THOUGH Satan had already displayed his utterly selfish mindset, IT STILL CAUGHT GOD BY SURPRISE when the human beings He had just barely created so quickly accepted Satan’s selfish way of thinking. God doesn’t anticipate people failing His tests; God has high hopes that they will all pass the testing. God has no pleasure in the death of the wicked (see Ezekiel 33:11); God always hopes for the best. God had not really expected Adam and Eve to cave in so easily.

Look, God had spent at least 20 hours (and quite possibly as many as 50 hours?) with Adam. God had explained His intentions for Adam and Eve and their descendants. God had explained that He had created them physical so that they COULD die if necessary; but that if they lived their lives as God instructed them to live, THEN there was no necessity for them to ever die. God explained that on the day on which they would eat the forbidden fruit, ON THAT DAY it would be decided that they and all their offspring would all have to die a physical death. In effect God said:

Now in the course of dealing with Adam for 20 hours or more, God also warned Adam as sternly as possible against eating the forbidden fruit. What sterner warning than telling Adam he would be destined to DIE if he ate of that fruit could God possibly have given Adam (Genesis 2:17)?

Understand this!

As long as God (i.e. Jesus Christ) was present in the garden with Adam and Eve, Satan was simply not permitted to be present anywhere in that garden! God simply did NOT allow Satan to be present while God instructed Adam and Eve.

Satan was only granted permission by God to be present in the garden in Eden while God Himself was away. On a specific day God very likely left the garden for perhaps 6-10 hours to permit Satan access. But there is no way that Satan was present in the garden all the time from the time that God had planted it (Genesis 2:8). Satan was only allowed his first access during God’s first absence!

Now with a simple choice between two options God was obviously prepared for both options (eating or not eating the forbidden fruit). But let’s understand that in God’s mind THERE WAS A VERY REAL POSSIBILITY that Adam and Eve could have resisted Satan until God returned in the evening of that day. Yes, from our human perspective, with our minds which with very little prompting function just like Satan’s mind, that was a very naive expectation. But God had no reason whatsoever to assume that Adam and Eve would cave in so quickly to Satan.

At any rate, God was prepared for implementing ONE OF TWO POSSIBLE WAYS OF DEALING WITH MANKIND! And the choice as to which of those two options God would put into effect depended TOTALLY AND COMPLETELY on whether Adam and Eve would eat or not eat the forbidden fruit. God imposed this initial test on Adam and Eve so that God could learn more about how an independent human mind would function. This test was also designed to increase GOD’S understanding.

Understand one other thing:

A threat of a severe penalty for a transgression is always, always a more effective deterrent for those whose minds are pure, than it is for those whose minds are perverse and selfish. (Comment: Before God a selfish mind IS a perverse mind!) It is the righteous who are deterred by threats of punishment, but not the wicked. Threats only cause the wicked to calculate their odds of getting away with it. It is the wicked who are willing to gamble with the odds.

God is pure. And therefore FROM GOD’S POINT OF VIEW the threat of death for eating the forbidden fruit should have been A VERY POWERFUL DETERRENT for Adam and Eve, certainly sufficiently powerful to get them through the rest of the day while God was away.

Now Satan with HIS mindset understood that the key to get Adam and Eve to disobey God was to get them TO CHANGE THE WAY THEIR MINDS THINK. Satan knew that IF he could get them to think selfishly, the way Satan himself always thinks, THEN it would indeed be "inevitable" that they would disobey God. Selfishness always distorts a person’s judgment. Selfishness says "I don’t care what’s right or wrong; I want what I want, and if in any way possible I want it now". Selfishness is always willing to pay far more for something than the item or experience is actually worth.

Thus Satan’s attack on Eve focused on changing her way of thinking, the way her mind functioned. Notice Satan’s pressure to get Eve to think selfishly.

The next verse shows that as a result of Satan’s pitch Eve did indeed think selfishly.

The expression "when the woman saw" shows that Eve’s mind had accepted Satan’s selfish way of thinking, a new way of "seeing"; and therefore it was then inevitable that she would eat that fruit. For Eve the battle was lost as soon as she accepted Satan’s way of thinking, even before she actually took and ate the forbidden fruit. [The same is true for you and me when we are faced with a temptation: if we allow ourselves to think selfishly in that context, then we’ve already lost the battle against the temptation, even before we literally give in to the temptation. The selfish way of thinking is always the deciding factor.]

Now let’s look at God’s intentions.

1) IF they DID eat the forbidden fruit, THEN God was prepared to give them a lifespan of just under 1,000 years. This is clear from the account in Genesis.

2) It follows that IF they DID NOT eat the forbidden fruit, THEN God was going to let them live EVEN LONGER! In fact, they would never have needed to die. God would in fact have dealt with them in exactly the same way that God had tested the angels! In other words, they and their descendants would all have lived for a long and enjoyable period of testing (as it will be in the millennium), at the end of which those who passed the testing would have been changed into spirit-born sons and daughters of God, while those who failed the testing would die and be blotted out for ever. With this plan human beings would have lived happy and joyful and productive lives for multiple thousands of years before being changed into spirit beings at the end of the allotted period.

3) Further, if they did NOT eat that fruit, then Satan would have been banished THAT EVENING ("in the cool of that day", see Genesis 3:8), just like he will be banished at the start of the millennium. When he tempted Eve, Satan was in fact fighting for a 6,000 year reprieve of his punishment. And had Eve resisted Satan’s initial approach, Satan would no doubt have tried another approach, even as he tried three different approaches with Jesus Christ (see Matthew 4). Since his first attempt was totally successful, therefore there was no need for Satan to try two additional approaches to get Adam and Eve to sin. Eve had been a real push-over, as far as Satan was concerned. I believe that it also surprised God that Adam so meekly followed his wife’s irresponsible leadership in this matter, when Adam really "was NOT deceived" (see 1 Timothy 2:14). I don’t believe that God anticipated how weak and indecisive Adam’s leadership would turn out to be.

4) Also, if they did NOT eat that fruit, then Jesus Christ would have been on earth with man for the entire period of time until the testing period came to an end. When Jesus Christ CAME to this Earth in Genesis 1 there was no intention whatsoever that He would ever leave before the whole testing period for human beings had been completed. Jesus Christ was ALWAYS going to be available for Adam and Eve and all their descendants, to lead and teach and guide and instruct them. As in the millennium, their eyes would always have seen their Teacher (see Isaiah 30:20), who would have been assisted by the holy angels, even as the angels will very competently assist during the millennium.

5) Had they NOT eaten the forbidden fruit, then man would have remained a vegetarian, as would all animals (as the animals will be in the millennium, Isaiah 11:6-7; etc.). And there would never have been any weeds or noxious plants, and neither would there ever have been any sicknesses or diseases. And there would always have been only one pure language. And all the prayers of human beings would have been answered instantly, as explained in Isaiah 65:24.

Now if anyone still claims that Adam and Eve "didn’t really stand a chance" and that it was "a foregone conclusion that they would eat that fruit", then such people are obviously saying that God is "A HARD MAN" (see Matthew 25:24). God will "wink at" the times of ignorance (see Acts 17:30), but it is a serious matter when people, who are in a position to know better, accuse God of being "hard". Just keep in mind how Jesus Christ responded to the servant who called Him "hard" (see Matthew 25:26-30). Please understand that when Jesus Christ stated that this servant was to be "thrown into outer darkness" where there will be "weeping and gnashing of teeth" (Matthew 25:30), then this is a reference to the second death in the lake of fire!

The Apostle Paul tried to explain this same point, that human beings need never have had to die if Adam had not sinned. Notice how Paul stated this to the Romans:

Paul is saying that at the creation it was not yet appointed for man to die! It was only after they had eaten the forbidden fruit that THEN it was decided that all human beings would have to die before facing a judgment by God. Paul continues this discussion in the next five or so verses. Notice also verse 15.

Paul is saying that when Adam ate that fruit, THEN IT WAS DECIDED that all human beings would have to die. Paul made the same point in the next verse.

That’s right! Because of Adam’s sin all humanity was "condemned to die the first death"! Paul repeats this again in the next verse.

Death "reigned" because of what one man had done! Paul is in this section contrasting THE EFFECT OF ADAM’S ACTIONS WITH THE EFFECT OF JESUS CHRIST’S ACTIONS! And the effect of Adam’s action was that it was appointed unto all men "once to die" (Hebrews 9:27). Paul’s point in Romans 5 is that the first death was not man’s inherent destiny, but that death for all human beings was only a consequence of what Adam had done.

Can you read Romans 5 for what it actually says? Or can you only read Romans 5 with the preconceived assumption that "these verses couldn’t possibly mean what they seem to say, that what Paul really (supposedly) meant to say was ..."? Why couldn’t these verses mean what they in fact state so very plainly?

Let’s move on.

Now for a shocker!

There were two God Beings whom we today know as God the Father and Jesus Christ. They had made provision for TWO options for dealing with mankind. Which of those two options would be implemented depended entirely on whether Adam and Eve would eat or not eat the forbidden fruit. So there were TWO possible plans and no others.

Whether Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, or whether they didn’t eat the forbidden

fruit, either way there was no plan for the sacrifice of Jesus Christ! Can you grasp this?

There is only one mistranslated Scripture which wrongly implies that Jesus Christ’s sacrifice was "a foregone conclusion" at Adam’s creation, and that is Revelation 13:8.

Let’s for a moment try to see this from God’s point of view.

When God the Father and Jesus Christ first conceived the plan to produce other beings like Themselves, They certainly did not intend to place any pressures upon Themselves. They did not intentionally devise a plan that would require AN ENORMOUS SACRIFICE from One of Them!

Understand the following:

Nobody, including God, would ever think of making a plan that from the outset would require some major sacrifice! Incorporating a major sacrifice into one’s plans is an indication of A RESPONSE TO UNFORESEEN DEVELOPMENTS!

Has Satan ever deceived humanity!!

Do we really think that God the Father and Jesus Christ said something like:

Does anyone honestly think that risking His own existence would be GOD’S FIRST CHOICE to achieve something that God really wants to achieve? Claiming that the sacrifice of Jesus Christ was an integral part of God’s original plan to create other God beings would almost imply that God has suicidal tendencies. There is no way, absolutely no way, that the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, even the POTENTIAL sacrifice of Jesus Christ, was in any way a part of the FIRST PLAN that God the Father and Jesus Christ devised! The central part which the sacrifice of Jesus Christ NOW plays in God’s plan is the result of unforeseen developments with the original plan. It is evidence of an upgrade of the original plan designed to deal with unforeseen problems, thereby taking things to a higher level.

Now let’s examine Revelation 13:8.

The article referred to earlier explains that this expression "the foundation of the world" is a gross and very misleading mistranslation. The correct translation of this verse should read:

This verse says nothing whatsoever about the sacrifice of Jesus Christ already being decided upon at the time of Adam’s creation, let alone even earlier. This verse only tells us that Jesus Christ’s sacrifice was determined at the time of Noah’s flood, when God very forcefully "threw down" all of human society.

A correct understanding of Revelation 13:8 should make clear that the inclusion of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ in God’s plan of salvation was A RESPONSE TO WHAT HAD HAPPENED! It was NOT a pre-determined event!

Look at the pattern.

When God created the angels, God did not make provision for any angels who rebelled against God to have access to forgiveness of that rebellion via a sacrifice for which God had specifically made a provision for just such a situation. No, God gave all the angels a free will, and two thirds chose to be faithful to God, while one third chose to rebel against God.

While the two thirds success rate with the angels wasn’t ideal, it is clear that God accepted that result. And so God approached the initial testing of human beings in the exact same way as God had done with the angels.

The only difference (in the context of testing) God intended between the angels and human beings was that angels were created as SPIRIT beings, while human beings were created as PHYSICAL beings. But the circumstances for the testing for both groups were basically intended to be the same, namely:

1) Both groups were to be tested over a long period of time; with the angels being immortal and human beings facing the prospect of living thousands of years.

2) The testing environment was to be enjoyable, exciting, beautiful, and desirable.

3) Both environments were intended to be free of all problems (no sicknesses, no unmet needs, no pollution, etc.).

4) Both groups were to have ready access to God and to the Holy Spirit.

5) And because of this ready access to God, therefore neither group would ever have had an excuse for active rebellion against God.

6) Thus NEITHER GROUP would ever have had access to the sacrifice of a Savior, should they ever knowingly transgress against God.

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was NOT really "slain from the foundation of the world’! His sacrifice applies ONLY to people who were born AFTER THE FLOOD! And the idea of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ was only determined by God at the time just before the flood!

Right, we’ve had a brief look at the plan God INTENDED to implement if Adam and Eve had NOT eaten the forbidden fruit. But they DID eat. And so THAT PLAN FOR MANKIND WAS NEVER IMPLEMENTED!

Before we look at the next phase, let’s examine a statement in Genesis that some people have used to imply that Jesus Christ’s sacrifice was indeed a foregone conclusion.

In speaking to Satan after Adam and Eve had eaten the forbidden fruit God said:

"There you are", some people may say, "this verse says quite clearly that Jesus Christ would have to die for human beings." Really? Let’s examine this verse.

1) This interpretation, that this verse is a reference to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, originated with the Catholic Church. While that doesn’t automatically make it wrong, it does at least call for a closer examination before this Catholic explanation is accepted as correct. After all, the Catholic Church is hardly a reliable source for a correct understanding of the teachings of the Bible.

2) The four gospels deal specifically with the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. And in the four gospels alone there are over 250 quotations from or references to the Old Testament, virtually all of them being references to the things Jesus Christ said and did and fulfilled. However, Genesis 3:15 is never quoted in any of the gospels, or anywhere else in the New Testament for that matter. This tells us that none of the writers of the New Testament, all of whom were undoubtedly familiar with the Genesis accounts, associated Genesis 3:15 with the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. That should at least make us think. And this is not a verse that Jesus Christ Himself ever quoted during His ministry.

3) In Genesis 3:15 it is Jesus Christ who, in the presence of Adam and Eve, is speaking directly to Satan. Now IF Jesus Christ was supposedly speaking about Himself in this verse, THEN we could paraphrase this verse more or less as follows:

Now IF this verse was really intended to be a prophecy that would point to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and since Jesus Christ was the One speaking these words, then Jesus Christ was really speaking about Himself in this verse, and then the above paraphrase would represent a fair interpretation of this verse.

BUT DOES THAT REALLY MAKE SENSE? Was Jesus Christ here really speaking about Himself?

4) There are two enmities being referred to in this verse. They are:

- enmity between Satan and the woman

- enmity between Satan’s seed and the woman’s seed.

There are two outcomes to these two enmities mentioned. They are:

- the woman’s seed would bruise Satan’s head

- Satan would bruise the heel of the woman’s seed.

Now for a moment please totally forget Homer’s pagan mythology about the supposed mortal vulnerability of the heel of Achilles. That is just some stupid story without any foundation, but which Satan inspired as a pagan version of how Genesis 3:15 should supposedly be understood. However, the real point is that a wound to the heel is not mortal at all; it is nothing more than a setback, albeit a painful one. Don’t let pagan mythology confuse you.

5) To be quite clear:

The bruising or crushing of a heel does NOT picture death! The bruising or crushing of a head may picture death, but not the bruising of a heel.

In any analogy about the body is there EVER a time when Jesus Christ would be referred to as "THE HEEL"? Would Jesus Christ ever refer to Himself as "THE HEEL"? Is the heel at the top or at the bottom of the body? Does the heel come first or last in the body? And where does Jesus Christ fit into the body: at the top or at the bottom? And ESPECIALLY IN SPEAKING TO SATAN: would Jesus Christ ever refer to Himself as "the heel"?

WHY would Jesus Christ refer to Himself as "the heel"? Isn’t it rather demeaning to associate the enormous sacrifice Jesus Christ brought on our behalf with "the heel"?

6) I realize that all of these questions didn’t bother the Catholic Church in putting forward this explanation. But can YOU see the utter inappropriateness of comparing Jesus Christ to THE HEEL of a body?

7) There are two different "seeds" being spoken about. Before we can establish who is "the seed of the woman" we really ought to establish who is "the seed of Satan"? Let’s look at a few Scriptures to help us in this regard. And keep in mind that in Genesis 3:15 Jesus Christ was speaking to the serpent. So let’s look for references to "the seed of serpents".

Here John the Baptist identified the dominant and most influential religions at that time (i.e. Pharisees and Sadducees) as the seed of serpents.

Here Jesus Christ also identified the scribes and the Pharisees as the seed of serpents.

Here Jesus Christ again identified all those who opposed Him as the seed of the devil.

Here Paul identified a pagan sorcerer as the seed of the devil.

Here John identifies ALL THOSE WHO SIN as the seed of the devil. Notice also that here the focus is on Jesus Christ destroying THE WORKS of the devil.

The Greek word here translated as "destroy" really means: TO INACTIVATE, TO MAKE IDLE! It does not mean "to annihilate", which is what we commonly think of when we hear the word "destroy". So Paul is also saying that THE WORKS of the devil will be destroyed because Jesus Christ will bind Satan and make him inactive.

Now enmity commonly reveals itself in warfare. Those who fight one another are enemies. So notice what will happen at the very end of this age, after God has protected the people from Philadelphia.

Now consider this verse in light of Genesis 3:15. Here we have the following things:

1) The dragon is Satan, and he uses armies who are "his seed"!

2) The remnant of the woman’s seed here are the Laodiceans who are still left.

3) So there is warfare (it is really very one-sided!) between two groups of human beings, and here Satan’s "seed" aims "to bruise" these last remnants of the woman’s seed.

4) Chronologically this is the very last group of human beings that Satan is able "to bruise" before he is locked away for 1000 years. Chronologically this is the tail-end of human history before Jesus Christ assumes total rule over this Earth. I don’t think this event is what Genesis 3:15 was referring to, but it is interesting nonetheless.

This verse shows that the warfare that Satan initiated against God’s Church spans all of history. There has been a constant battle between the world, which is under Satan’s control, i.e. it is his "seed", and the people of God. As Jesus Christ said:

This battle between the world and the people of God has been ongoing since the time of Adam. And the ultimate outcome of that enmity is that Satan and his seed are defeated. As Paul put it:

So now let’s go back to Genesis 3:15. Here is the setting:

1) There are only two human beings on Earth: Adam and Eve.

2) Satan had just successfully tempted them to eat the forbidden fruit.

3) All of human history lay ahead.

4) In this verse Jesus Christ is speaking to Satan, NOT to Adam and Eve!

5) Now IF Christ was going to say anything about a future Savior, then Christ would assuredly make such a prediction of the Savior to Adam and Eve, and NOT TO SATAN! Where would anybody (except for Satan’s churches) get the idea that Jesus Christ would address such a prophetic statement about a future Savior, who would die for humanity, to Satan? Interpreting this verse as a statement about the Savior makes Satan look more important, because the statement is addressed to him.

6) At that point in time the future looked very bleak and daunting and uncertain for Adam and Eve.

In this context WHAT WAS JESUS CHRIST TELLING SATAN, statements that Adam and Eve would obviously also have heard? Here is what Genesis 3:15 really means:

1) And I will put enmity between thee and the woman: There would always be an enmity between Satan and the true religion of God (i.e. the Church of God). That enmity started when Satan seduced Eve to sin, and it will continue until Satan is bound for good.

2) And between thy seed and her seed: There would also always be an enmity on the individual and personal level, between all the people in the world who are on Satan’s wavelength (i.e. his seed) and the people who have submitted their lives unconditionally to God.

3) It shall bruise thy head: Paul tells us that God will "bruise Satan under our feet" (Romans 16:20). This is a "bruise" from which Satan will never recover.

4) And thou shalt bruise his heel: You, Satan, will inflict some damage on the people of God. But that damage is not fatal, because the plan of God to reproduce Himself through human beings WILL succeed!

In speaking to Satan, Jesus Christ was NOT telling Satan about a yet future Savior for mankind. All Jesus Christ was telling Satan in this verse is: "you, Satan will influence a lot of human beings to accept your thinking and your selfish ways; but no matter what you do, My plan to create God beings will succeed. And you will be defeated." That’s all that this verse was intended to convey to Satan! Jesus Christ was NOT giving Satan some cryptic clue for an inside scoop regarding a future Savior.

I could elaborate further, but you should be able to figure out the rest for yourself. And this verse is NOT a prophetic prediction about the future Savior, and that is why it is never quoted in the New Testament.

So now let’s look at the next plan of God, the one God actually implemented right after Adam had sinned, and right after His statement to Satan in Genesis 3:15.

While God’s plan for mankind AFTER Adam had sinned involved some significant changes, most aspects would remain the same as in the plan God would have used if Adam had not eaten the forbidden fruit.

The most important changes that God put into effect in the new plan for mankind were:

1) Man’s long lifespan was going to be limited to just under 1,000 years. And ALL human beings would definitely have to die at some point before reaching age 1,000 years. When Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, AT THAT POINT it was "appointed" that all human beings would die (Hebrews 9:27).

2) Access to the Holy Spirit would still be available. But from then onwards such access would be conditional, where previously God had intended that access to be free and unconditional. The condition which God imposed for access to the Holy Spirit was that a person had to "WALK WITH GOD"! And God did walk on Earth!

The things that remained the same as in the plan God intended to implement before Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit are:

1) Irrespective of whether they obeyed God or whether they committed any number of sins, God STILL intended for human beings to be tested over a LONG period of time. The +/- 900 years that God gave to people at that time is a STAGGERINGLY LONG period of testing, when compared to our typical 60-100 year lifespan today.

2) God (i.e. Jesus Christ) STILL had no intention of leaving this planet Earth! Jesus Christ intended to stay around and be available for any human beings who would choose to voluntarily "walk with Him".

3) As is evident from the records about Abel, Enoch and Noah, all people could have had direct contact with God. And absolutely nobody could have doubted the existence of God! So there were no atheists or agnostics before the flood!

4) While Jesus Christ at that time did "walk" around amongst people, as He later did once again during His ministry, He didn’t interfere in people’s lives, and He made no attempt at all to rule over human beings. It was up to human beings to seek His presence, and He wasn’t difficult to find! Cain and Abel both easily found God, and we even have a record of God talking to Cain; and the implication is that God talked face-to-face with Cain, as God had done earlier with Adam and Eve. Don’t be mislead by the twisted Hollywood version of some voice booming down from heaven; Cain was able to look directly at God. (God appeared in a human form throughout the time before the flood, which was undoubtedly the same form Christ later assumed after the flood as Melchizedek.)

5) Where originally God had intended the production of food to be easy and without undue burden, as it will be in the millennium (Amos 9:13), after Adam had sinned God added all kinds of weeds to the ground, so that food production would become very labor-intensive and difficult (Genesis 3:17-19). But either way it seems that God still intended human beings to be vegetarians. When God told Noah to build the ark, then God also instructed Noah to take "of ALL FOOD that is eaten" for himself and for all the animals (see Genesis 6:21). The insinuation here is that all animals were still herbivores.

They were on the ark for just over a year. And they didn’t take any meat on board, and neither did they take any extra animals to eat while they were on board. The rules for what human beings may eat only changed after they came out of the ark. More on this later.

Now let’s consider the staggeringly long lifespan that God gave human beings at that time.

There is a purpose for everything that God does. God never does anything "just for the fun of it", as we might do. With God there is a reason and a purpose for everything, as Solomon also confirmed in Ecclesiastes 3:1.

So WHY, after Adam had sinned by eating the forbidden fruit, did God still let Adam live for a total of 930 years? WHY did God let people live for over 900 years? What was God trying to achieve with such a staggeringly long lifespan?

It was precisely because God had NOT YET thought of appending the period represented by the Last Great Day to the end of the period of time He had allotted for testing mankind, that all people had their one and only opportunity during this one long lifetime! That is why God provided such a generously long period of time, to give people ample opportunity to make good.

This is also why at that point in time God was firmly against the death penalty for anyone, even for murderers. If the person at the time of death had NOT "walked with God", then that was it! No opportunity to ever live again!

Can you understand this?

Because God had not yet thought of the concept of a second resurrection, therefore God was very desirous of giving all human beings as much time as possible to come right in their relationship with God.

Keep in mind that the second resurrection is not something for which you and I will ever be eligible. The option of coming up in the second resurrection is not available for you and me. The second resurrection is only for those people who in this age are truly deceived, people who truly don’t know any better, people who have been blinded to the truth of God. But that is not the case for you and for me.

People who have had their minds opened to understanding that God exists and that God requires all of us to live by His commandments and by all of God’s other laws, irrespective of whether such people have ever had God’s Spirit or not, for such people the second resurrection is not an option! For such people (i.e. for you and for me) the only options are either the first resurrection or the third resurrection.

As I have at times explained it, the second resurrection is only for people who don’t know that there is such a thing as the second resurrection. But for all those people who clearly understand that there will be a second resurrection for people who were truly deceived, people with that understanding can never be in the second resurrection; they can only be in the first resurrection or in the third resurrection.

Now understand this:

From the time of Adam up to the flood in the days of Noah there was ABSOLUTELY NOBODY ON EARTH who didn’t clearly understand that God exists. God literally walked amongst human beings for all that time. There were no competing religions of any kind before the flood. Pagan religions only started after the flood, after God (i.e. Jesus Christ) had gone back to heaven. NOBODY WAS DECEIVED ABOUT GOD’S IDENTITY! The same will be true in the millennium. And the second resurrection will never be available for people who live while Jesus Christ is on Earth as God.

The requirements for making a person potentially eligible for the second resurrection didn’t exist for anybody before the flood! Nobody was deceived by some or other false religion. The truth is that ALL PEOPLE BEFORE THE FLOOD (except for Abel, Enoch and Noah, and PERHAPS a handful of others) KNOWINGLY REJECTED WHAT GOD WAS OFFERING MANKIND!

There simply wasn’t anybody to whom the requirements for eligibility for the second resurrection could possibly have applied. All people were fully accountable for all their actions, and nobody had the excuse of being blinded. That’s the way God had set it up because God had not yet learned just how easily our human minds become perverted and depraved; and the idea of God bringing a sacrifice for human beings appears to not even have occurred to God, let alone that provision for such a sacrifice had been made in the greater overall plan.

Understand this: the very fact that "it repented God" that He had created human beings (Genesis 6:6) should make clear to us that God had NOT provided for such a development. If the whole plan, including the Last Great Day, was already fully established at that point in time, then it would not have "repented" God. And if the sacrifice of Jesus Christ for all human sins was also already a part of the whole plan, then it likewise would not have "repented" God, because God would in fact have anticipated this development amongst human beings.

Listen!

What do WE do when we "repent"? Do we then make some very minor and insignificant changes? Or does our repentance cause us to make major and drastic changes? So when God in Genesis 6:6 tells us that it "repented Him" that He had followed a certain course of action with mankind, God is really telling us that He is going to make some major changes! The word "repent" means that we MUST follow a different course of action after we have repented, from the course we followed before we repented ... or we haven’t repented at all! When we repent then we want the course of action we followed before repenting to be blotted out! The exact same thing is true for God! When it "repented" God, this means that God wanted the course of action God had followed with mankind up to that point in time to be blotted out, to make room for a totally new and different course of action. That is why God has not given us very many details about that time. More on this in a moment.

To state this very plainly: IF after the flood God was going to follow the identical plan of salvation for mankind that God had followed before the flood, THEN the statement that "it repented God" loses all its meaning. The word "repent" always demands changes!

Okay, so God gave human beings before the flood an extremely long lifespan so that they could have ample time to make good. But it’s pretty clear that all people were going to make SOME mistakes, all people were going to act selfishly in SOME situations. Nobody was going to get through such a long lifetime without ever falling short. So HOW was God going to deal with that if there was no sacrifice by Jesus Christ to appeal to?

It is clear to me that God had in some way made provision for human short-comings. But that provision did NOT involve a sacrifice made by God Himself. I don’t know what that provision was or how it would or should have worked. But it is a system that failed to produce any meaningful results, apart from Abel, Enoch and Noah. I believe that God will NOT reveal to us what that system was, because it is not our business to know the precise details of a program that failed! It is sufficient for us to know that God tried another program first, which failed to produce any meaningful results.

And you know what happens when we repent, don’t you? When we repent the past is blotted out. So when it "repented God" (i.e. when God was sorry that He had tried to follow a certain course in dealing with mankind), then likewise the details of all those prior dealings with mankind are going to be blotted out.

At any rate, the main reason for the very long lifespan before the flood was to give all people ample time to recover from short-comings and to still make good before God.

Now let’s consider how that worked out.

Cain and Abel were the first two children born to Adam and Eve. When these two boys were adults, Cain killed Abel, as we all know. What we generally don’t consider is that Abel may well have been over 100 years old when he was killed by Cain.

The account is very brief, because God clearly did not want to tell us very much about that time. However, Adam and Eve had had many other children by that time. Adam and Eve were quite likely already great-grandparents by the time Cain killed Abel. Here is how to figure this out.

After Cain had killed Abel, Eve specifically looked upon Seth as a replacement for her killed son Abel (see Genesis 4:25). And Genesis 5:3 tells us that Adam and Eve were 130 years old when Seth was born. So it is fairly likely that Cain was around 125 years old when he killed Abel, who may have been about 2 years younger. Keep in mind that Cain was afraid of being killed by someone else for what he (Cain) had done (see Genesis 4:14), and implied is that humanity had at that point already increased substantially in numbers.

So the picture we see is as follows:

After Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden they had numerous children. In time some of those children married one another and then had children of their own. During that time Jesus Christ was available to walk with and to talk to. When about 120 years after Adam’s creation Cain and Abel sought contact with God by means of bringing offerings, God talked face-to-face with both of them, expressing approval for Abel’s offering and expressing disapproval for Cain’s offering.

The point is that during that whole period of time God was on this Earth, showing approval for some forms of conduct, and showing unmistakable disapproval for other actions and conduct. This applied not only to Cain and Abel but also to all the other human beings at that time, most of whom God has chosen to leave nameless.

Things went along with perhaps a few people doing some things that were right, while most people did things in ways that were not right. But although things were not going too well, they were basically under control.

But then, more than 120 years after God had created Adam and Eve, Cain killed his brother Abel. This was the first time ever that one human being was killed by another human being.

Up to that point in time it had not really occurred to God that human beings would resort to killing one another. That is just not something God would ever have anticipated without knowledge of some precedent.

Now notice how God responded to Cain’s action.

This penalty of being "a fugitive and a vagabond" is the exact same penalty, applied on the physical level, that God imposed on Satan and the demons. The ceremony with the Azazel goat on the Day of Atonement represents Satan’s penalty of being "a fugitive and a vagabond". Let’s continue.

When Cain then expressed fear of being killed by someone else, God said:

The most significant point about this statement is that God ABSOLUTELY did not want anyone to kill Cain. God simply did not want the death penalty for any transgression. Up to that point in time it had never occurred to God to impose the immediate death penalty for certain transgressions. And even after Cain had killed Abel it STILL did not occur to God to install a death penalty for murder. The dire threat in Genesis 4:15 was intended to protect Cain’s life!

So God issued an extremely dire threat to deter anyone from killing Cain. Under no circumstances did God want Cain killed.

So think about this:

At that point there were in all likelihood already several thousand people on Earth, and yet God did NOT want the death penalty for murder. Yet on the very day that Noah came out of the ark, when there were exactly 8 human beings on Earth, God IMMEDIATELY imposed the death penalty for murder (see Genesis 9:5-6).

That was a drastic change in policy!

The only reason why God did NOT want the death penalty for Cain is because at that point death was final! There was no second resurrection in the plan. Once Cain would die, there was no possibility of a second resurrection. And even though Cain had committed murder, God still wanted Cain to live for a long time so that he might have the opportunity to change and to establish a right relationship with God. And had Cain made use of that opportunity to at some point start "walking with God’, then God had some unrevealed means to blot out Cain’s guilty past. God had planned to forgive sins in SOME way which did not involve the sacrifice of the life of the Creator Himself. But how that was going to work God has chosen not to reveal, and it is really none of our business to know all the details of a plan that God chose to abort.

At any rate, God did NOT impose a death penalty for any crimes before the flood. And the threat God had issued regarding anyone who might contemplate killing Cain was not much of a deterrent in the long run. While nobody killed Cain, evil conduct and violence just grew by leaps and bounds. Keep in mind that very few people, if any, actually died a natural death during the first approximately 900 years or so after the creation of Adam. Pretty well all deaths during that period would have been due to violence and murder. And these things all happened even as Jesus Christ was walking amongst people.

Enoch died around the year 987 after the creation of Adam, still before the end of the first millennium for human beings. Perhaps Enoch died so young (i.e. he was only 365 years old when "God took him", Genesis 5:24) because he was "the young man" whom Lamech, a descendant of Cain, had killed? See Genesis 4:23. Or perhaps Lamech had killed someone else? It doesn’t really make a difference.

Anyway, Genesis 4:19 shows that Lamech "invented" bigamy, and soon afterwards Lamech became a murderer (verses 23-24). The "young man" who was murdered by Lamech had undoubtedly said some things to Lamech which infuriated Lamech to the point of killing that young man. Did that "young man" in some way confront Lamech about his bigamy and about the things Lamech was doing wrong?

AFTER THAT INCIDENT VIOLENCE AND WICKEDNESS REALLY TOOK OFF!

God had tried to work with human beings for approximately 1500 years. And God had learned a great deal about how the human mind works and how easily it is influenced to accept Satan’s selfish way of thinking. And the end results are summed up from God’s perspective as follows:

This statement represents things God had learned about the human beings He had created with totally free and independent minds.

To make this quite plain:

1) On the day when God created Adam and Eve, God did not even remotely anticipate just how wicked and how evil we human beings would turn out to be! The conduct we human beings engaged in shocked God!

2) And specifically, on the day when God created Adam and Eve, God didn’t really understand at all the perversity and depravity (that’s another way of saying "selfishness") of the human mind. God had no idea that the human mind would always, always gravitate to whatever was contrary to God’s way of life. That’s what the words "EVERY ... ONLY ... CONTINUALLY" in this verse convey! And THAT level of hostility towards anything and everything that represented God’s way of thinking and of living shocked God. God had not been prepared for that.

Paul tells us in Romans 8:7 that the natural human mind is enmity against God and not really subject to the law of God. We now know that. But when God created Adam and Eve, at that point in time GOD DID NOT YET KNOW THIS!

How should God possibly have anticipated something like: these human beings I am about to create are VERY LIKELY to end up having minds that will be extremely hostile towards Me, their Creator? What about anticipating a spirit of gratitude and appreciation for freely having given them life? WHY should God anticipate that His own creation would be hostile towards Him? WHY?

Keep in mind that God’s mind never sinks to the level to which our minds descend. WHY should God have had a skeptical and suspicious attitude towards His creation? As God said in Isaiah 1:3 "the ox knows his owner, and the ass his master’s crib"; so likewise God was surely entitled to anticipate gratitude from us human beings for the gift of life. So it was a shock when His creation expressed animosity and resentment towards God, their Creator.

So let’s now look at what God learned from those approximately one-and-one-half thousand years.

We have already looked at the obvious points that God learned about the human mind, as spelled out in Genesis 6:5. Let’s draw some conclusions from that.

By the way: the points I will now mention are basically derived from looking at the plan God instituted after the flood. By looking at what God did AFTER the flood, we can recognize what changes God introduced, based on God having gained a better understanding of the human mind.

So to state this as plainly as possible:

The results over the first 1500 years proved this conclusively.

There was no way for God to salvage the damage that Satan had been able to cause in the lives of the human beings who had been born during that period of time, even as there had been no way for God to salvage the damage that Satan had caused in the lives of the angels who followed Satan in his rebellion against God. But where the failure rate amongst the angels had been around 33%, the failure rate amongst human beings before the flood was VERY CLOSE TO 100%. And that was a staggering failure rate!

We might also keep in mind that the failure rate amongst the angels who had been exposed to Satan’s leadership was in effect 100%! And the failure rate amongst human beings, all of whom had been exposed to Satan’s way of thinking, was basically the same. So exposure to Satan’s way of thinking is a huge problem!

God could see that there was no chance that the plan, as it then stood, would ever lead to the success that God had anticipated! God recognized that the plan He had started would simply have to be abandoned! It would have to be scrapped and replaced by a different plan. And there would have to be a very clear and decisive cut-off point between the old plan and the new plan. God will not change the rules in the middle of the game.

Now the problems had not been with the plan that God had set in motion! There was nothing wrong with that plan. The problem lay entirely with Satan’s perverse influence on human beings, and with the human beings, whose minds so very readily accepted Satan’s way of thinking selfishly and perversely. God had simply not anticipated the enormous character shortcomings of human beings, and how easily and willingly we human beings would accept Satan’s totally selfish ways.

One simple illustration of this perverse way of thinking is as follows

When Jesus Christ said "you shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Matthew 19:19), the human mind immediately reasons: "that means that it is okay for us to love ourselves"! The human mind spontaneously turns God’s commandments around towards a selfish perspective! God had no intention of encouraging us "to love ourselves". Rather, Jesus Christ said: "greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life ..." (John 15:13). Where Jesus Christ was reluctantly conceding that we human beings would unfortunately have a great measure of self-love anyway, and where Christ then tried to motivate us to at least show the same level of concern for other human beings, we human beings turn Christ’s statement around to imply that God actually encourages us to have more self-love. Such a conclusion is very resolutely contradicted by Scriptures like John 15:13. But this illustrates the spontaneously selfish way our minds work.

Some of the things it appears God had learned (based on changes we see in the next plan) include:

1) The extremely long lifespan had not worked in favor of increasing the success rate.

2) Allowing violent transgressors like murderers to continue living amongst people encouraged others to follow their bad ways. That’s the power of bad examples. Strong deterrents towards such violent crimes needed to be implemented.

3) God’s presence on Earth during that time (i.e. ready access to God) had not been taken advantage of by more than 99% of all people.

4) However, God’s presence on Earth throughout that time precluded any possible excuse for human beings based on being ignorant of God’s intentions and God’s existence. God’s presence in fact precluded any possible appeals to not being fully accountable for their conduct. Nobody could plead ignorance.

5) The mechanism that God intended to apply for forgiving the past sins of those who would come to the point of "walking with God", whatever that mechanism may have been, may have been inadequate, in view of the far more evil and perverse than anticipated human minds? Thus a new plan would also call for an even greater commitment by God to make provision for blotting out the guilty past of those human beings who would at some point freely embrace a change of mind, away from Satan’s way of thinking.

6) As long as Satan was going to be around to influence people, very, very, very few human beings would of their own initiative seek contact with God. This fact God had not anticipated, but it became very evident as the centuries passed by, leading up to the flood. So God needed a system where God could INITIATE THE PROCESS IN SOME WAY to trigger the desire in people to seek contact with God, like a nudge in the right direction. After such a "nudge" the response rate to God was going to be much higher than without the nudge. We refer to that "nudge" as "our calling" by God, something that didn’t exist before the flood. Now the majority of people will still not respond to that "nudge" ("many are called but few are chosen", Matthew 22:14), but the response rate was still likely to be vastly greater than without such a nudge. By God assuming full control over who "to nudge" and who "not to nudge" the success rate would be further enhanced.

7) Since the facts had proved that the vast majority of human beings would not really submit unconditionally to God, whether they were "nudged" or not, because in Satan’s presence the vast majority (as 1500 years of experience proved quite conclusively) would always reject God’s way of using their minds in favor of using their minds Satan’s way, THEREFORE there would ideally be a system where that "vast majority" could be tested on their own merits in the total absence of Satan.

8) The mostly hands-off policy that God had followed before the flood (i.e. giving human beings the freedom to make a total mess of their lives on both the individual and the global level) had also taken too much control away from God. A tighter monitoring of human activities would further enhance the success rate of God’s plan for human beings.

That brings us to the time leading up to the flood.

In Genesis 5 we have the genealogy from Adam to Noah. Genesis 6 then backtracks a little to show us the circumstances that led up to the flood. The first sentence of chapter 6 covers two verses. Here are these two verses:

And here is the next sentence in that chapter.

Let’s understand that verse 3 is an expression of GOD’S EXTREME, ALBEIT VERY CONTROLLED, ANGER AND DISAPPOINTMENT WITH MAN! Don’t be misled by the calm way this statement may come across to us. God was disappointed and angry, and the previous statement expresses the underlying cause for God’s anger. Keep in mind that these two statements are based completely on information that God provided to Moses. So God in verse 2 gives us the reason for His reaction in verse 3.

Also keep in mind that Jesus Christ was on Earth throughout this period. And "when men began to multiply", then Jesus Christ made known which men should marry which women. This was for the purpose of creating different racial groups. It was God’s intention that as humanity developed, so different racial groups should form.

Verse 2 shows human defiance of God’s wishes, by men marrying the women THEY chose instead of the women they really should have married. And so instead of the various races emerging, the rebellious intermarriages resulted in blending all people into one single racial group. God’s intention was to produce racial VARIETY, without any intentions of implying racial SUPERIORITY for some racial groups over other racial groups.

God had created a staggering variety throughout the plant and animal kingdoms, without ever implying superiority of one type or color of flower over another type or color of flower. And one type of tree is not superior to another type of tree. Likewise, in the animal kingdom variety NEVER infers superiority. And God intended that there be variety amongst the human beings He had created, without ever inferring superiority for some.

But God does not think that way! And God had no intention of making one race superior to another race! But God DID want the different races to be formed.

The self-willed intermarriages mentioned in verse 2 sabotaged God’s intentions for mankind right at the start. Had God not intervened, then there would never have been more than one race amongst human beings.

Now let’s focus on verse 3. Do you understand what God was really saying with the statement "yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years"? Here is what this statement tells us:

1) God is saying "I am going to terminate the present plan for working with mankind, including all the rules that applied to that plan.

2) However, I want everyone under the present plan to have a lifespan of at least 120 years.

3) So for the last 120 years no more babies were born anywhere on Earth, with one single exception: approximately 20 years after this date Noah and his wife began to have three more sons. This total lack of any more babies being born for a period of 120 years was a very powerful witness to people before the flood. But it also went unheeded. [COMMENT: This parallels the 100-year period for those in the second resurrection, when likewise no babies will be born for that entire 100-year period.]

4) So Noah’s three sons Shem, Ham and Japheth were just short of 100 years old when the flood started (they were NOT triplets). These three men were the youngest people on earth when the flood started. But since they would live through the flood, all of them would live well past age 120 years.

5) For all human beings born after the flood God was going to introduce a totally new plan! God was basically starting again "from scratch".

6) One more thing this statement reveals is God’s intention for human life AFTER the flood. Right here God already revealed that it was His intention to cut the human lifespan three times, so that it would eventually be around 120 years, instead of the just under 1000-year lifespan extant at that time. Methuselah died at age 969 years in the year of the flood. [While this was God’s intention at that time, God later decided to cut the human lifespan one more time for a large part of humanity, to where it is commonly in the 60 years - 90 years bracket in our time.]

Let’s continue with verse 5.

This verse shows that the way the human mind worked was the real problem here! It is "every imagination" that is the problem; it is "the thoughts of the heart" that are the problem. Here God is spelling out the real reason for the flood. God doesn’t focus on the conduct and the actions of human beings as the main problem. No, God goes to the source of the problem. And that source was that the way the human mind worked was perverse! In fact, it was so perverse that God couldn’t work with it!

The self-willed marriages mentioned in verse 2 were simply one specific manifestation of the perverse way the human minds functioned. It was far worse than what God had expected. So the next verse states:

Do you grasp what an enormously monumental statement this is? WHY would the supreme Creator God EVER say that He was sorry that He had done something? What does it take to make the all-powerful God regret something He has done? This is a monumental and extremely powerful statement here in this verse!

Very few people have grasped the significance of this statement.

Look, when you repeatedly do the same thing, then you also repeatedly get the same result. That is the premise for all experiments. If you hold a rock in your hands and then let it go, then it will fall to the ground. And if you repeat that activity 100 times, then the rock will fall to the ground every time, without exception. You know this is true!

God knew perfectly well that IF He destroyed all but eight human beings, and then started all over again, IT WOULD PRODUCE EXACTLY THE SAME RESULTS UNLESS SOMETHING WAS CHANGED FROM THE PREVIOUS SYSTEM!

Without some major changes after the flood, it would have been impossible for God to achieve different results with human beings than had been achieved before the flood. Different results can only be achieved if some changes are made.

God could not possibly have dealt with human beings after the flood in exactly the same way He dealt with them before the flood ... and somehow achieve better results than were achieved before the flood.

Now the fact that it "repented" God means that God had indeed decided that He needed to make some changes in the way He was going to deal with human beings. Note that God "repented" of having done something. Let’s look at that "something" more closely.

God did NOT change His mind about (i.e. "repent") His intention to create a Family of God beings. God still wants to achieve that specific goal. But God was sorry about the plan He had implemented to achieve that goal. The results that had been achieved under that plan "grieved" God, meaning that God was extremely disappointed with those results. And therefore God was going to do things differently after the flood.

So the main reason for the flood was to provide a decisive cut-off point for the plan that had produced such poor results. All people who were born before the flood are judged by the system that God had established after Adam and Eve had sinned.

So all people were killed by the flood (Genesis 7:21-22). THEN God implemented A NEW SYSTEM for all those who would be born after the flood.

This is why all three of Noah’s sons, all of whom were over 90 years old when the flood started, did not yet have any children of their own when the flood started. God withheld conception from their wives (as God did from all other women at that time) so that none of their children would be a part of the pre-flood system.

All 8 of them were still judged under the old system. That is why Noah, who had "walked with God " (Genesis 9:9), lived for another 350 years after the flood, for a total lifespan of 950 years (Genesis 9:28-29). Noah in fact lived longer than Adam! That, still being judged under the pre-flood system, is also why Shem still lived for over 500 years after the flood (Genesis 11:10-11). The ages for none of the other six people that came through the flood are mentioned, but I would assume that they likewise were given such long lives, because they were still being judged by the pre-flood rules, which required a long lifespan.

Now let’s look at the time after the flood.

To achieve different results after the flood, God had to make some changes in His plan of salvation for mankind. Now some things, like the carnal human nature that had led to the conditions that brought on the flood, could NOT be changed. But there were other things that COULD be changed. So let’s now consider some of those things where God did make some changes.

1) The by far most important change that God made after the flood involved the method for forgiving the prior transgressions of all those people who later came to the point of "walking with God"

Note that the Bible reserves this expression "to walk with God" for people who lived BEFORE the flood. This terminology is not used for any of God’s servants after the flood, BECAUSE IT WAS THEN NO LONGER POSSIBLE TO LITERALLY WALK WITH GOD! After the flood God no longer "walked on this Earth" until Jesus Christ started His ministry, except for very brief and rare occasions (e.g. when God met Abraham shortly before the destruction of Sodom). After the flood God no longer walked on the Earth because God had returned to heaven, effectively postponing His coming in power by 6,000 years from when He had first come. Since New Testament times the relationship with God that was previously expressed by the expression "to walk with God" has been expressed by the concept of repentance and conversion.

It is precisely because God had gone back to heaven at the time of the flood, that at the time of the tower of Babel we are told that "the LORD CAME DOWN (i.e. from heaven) to see the city and the tower ..." (Genesis 11:5). At no time before the flood does the Bible ever refer to God "coming down". That is because before the flood God was always here on Earth.

As an aside, I suspect that human beings decided to build a tower "whose top may reach unto heaven" (Genesis 11:4) precisely because God had gone back to heaven. They did not attempt to build a tower like that before the flood because God had always been here on the Earth. And had Jesus Christ still been walking on the Earth after the flood, then human beings would most likely never have attempted to build such a tower. We should understand that people DID seek contact with God, even people who were evil. Recall that Cain even after he had killed Abel still wanted to be able to have contact with God. This is clear from Cain’s complaint that "and from Your face shall I be hid" (Genesis 4:14). Even evil people back then wanted to have contact with God. And I suspect that Jesus Christ’s return to heaven was one of the reasons why they built that tower.

Regarding the expression "to walk with God", in Amos 3:3 we see the principle of "can two walk together, except they be agreed". But the actual statement that a specific servant of God "walked with God" is not made for anyone after the flood (obviously excluding Noah).

Whatever that system of forgiving past transgressions had been prior to the flood, it was only made use of by a very few people like Abel and Enoch and Noah (and Shem?). But that system must have had some factor that made it difficult to apply in certain situations? It may perhaps have been in some way linked to the fact that during that entire period Jesus Christ walked amongst people, that during that time access to God was thus readily available?

At any rate, the point is that FOR ALL PEOPLE BORN AFTER THE FLOOD God provided a better system to forgive past sins. It was in those years leading up to the flood that God decided upon the plan where Jesus Christ Himself would give His own life as payment for all the past sins of those people who would come to that point of changing the way their minds think (which change we call "repentance"). That is precisely what Revelation 13:8 tells us, that Jesus Christ’s sacrifice for our sins was determined at the time of the flood, when human society was thrown down by God.

Consider also the following in regard to Revelation 13:8: God would never allow Satan to determine the time for when Jesus Christ committed Himself to lay down His very existence for us human beings. The timing for such a monumental decision would always be under the total control of God. And God controlled the timing for this decision by GOD throwing down human society at the time of the flood. Revelation 13:8 cannot possibly apply to an event for which the timing was under Satan’s control. God will never allow Satan to force God to do anything.

So for all people born after the flood the sacrifice of Jesus Christ is potentially available to blot out our past sins. But the sacrifice of Jesus Christ was not available for anyone from Adam up to the day the flood started.

Introducing the sacrifice of Jesus Christ into the process of salvation for human beings raised the stakes to a totally new level. Now one member of the God Family was willing to bring a sacrifice for the human beings He had created, demonstrating God’s unconditional commitment to the goal of creating other God beings to be a part of the Family of God. This is where John 3:16 enters the picture.

2) Together with introducing the sacrifice of Jesus Christ into the plan for salvation, God simultaneously introduced the concept of the second resurrection. And to make the second resurrection a possibility for the majority of human beings who would be born after the flood, God also had to change one other factor.

3) Jesus Christ returned to heaven, effectively temporarily aborting the original intention of always making access to God for all human beings available. By returning to heaven Jesus Christ was removing a certain amount of accountability from human beings. This diminished accountability made it possible for people to become eligible for the second resurrection, by being able to claim ignorance. This is the corollary of the principle of "to whom much is given, much shall be required" (see Luke 12:48).

No access to God without a specific calling from God (John 6:44) means that the vast majority of people can receive their first REAL chance in the second resurrection. But because all people before the flood had access to God without any specific calling (they just had to make the effort "to walk with God"), therefore the second resurrection cannot be available to them.

4) With the introduction of the second resurrection into the equation, this meant that the extremely long human lifespan was no longer necessary. If people only had a short lifespan, then there was always the second resurrection to give them a fair chance (assuming that they had not committed the unpardonable sin).

God’s reference to "yet his days shall be 120 years" seems to also imply that THIS was the new maximum age (in general terms) that God at that point in time was aiming to have for humanity. Instead of making this change in the length of human life expectancy "cold turkey" in one single step, God decided to reach this target age by three successive steps of halving the human lifespan.

For all people born after the flood the maximum age was one half of what it had been before the flood. So where before the flood the expectancy was just under 1000 years, right after the flood that was cut to just under 500 years. And so apart from Noah and Shem (and the other six people on the ark) nobody after the flood ever reached 500 years of age.

Then, at the tower of Babel (Genesis 11, approximately 120 years after the flood) God again cut human life expectancy in half. People born after the tower of Babel all lived for around 250 years or less. And then by the time of the exodus from Egypt (less than 800 years after the tower of Babel) God cut that life expectancy one more time, so that from then onwards it was generally under 125 years (e.g. Moses lived for 120 years). This last cut was not absolute, as the previous two cuts were. And so occasionally there may be an individual here or there who exceeds age 125 years.

Now once God had reached this target age for man of less than 125 years, it became apparent that just under 125 years was still not the optimum lifespan for most people who were never in this age going to submit their lives to God. And so after this last cut God then "fine-tuned" the general human life expectancy to around 60 - 90 years, with some people living longer than this, and with many other people living shorter than this. And that’s where we are today.

Now here is an interesting aspect with this progressive halving of human life expectancy. Noah had been born before the flood, and Noah then lived for another 350 years after the flood. Now Abraham was the tenth generation after Noah, and Noah only died two years before Abraham was born. In fact, Abraham’s brothers Haran and Nahor were both alive before Noah died.

Similarly, Shem lived for another 502 years after the flood. Now Isaac was the tenth generation from Shem. And when Shem died, Abraham was already an old man of 150 years old, and Isaac was already 50 years old. This overlap of ten or more generations, which had been common before the flood, was never again achieved after Shem died, though it will undoubtedly be achieved once again in the future, during the millennium.

5) Another very decisive change God introduced after the flood was the death penalty for murder. With the second resurrection now appended to the end of God’s plan of salvation, there was no pressure to keep evil doers alive so that they might still have the chance to change. They could have their chance in the second resurrection.

So where God was emphatically opposed to the death penalty when Cain had killed Abel, on the very day that Noah and his family came out of the ark, on that day God instituted the death penalty for murder.

This stands in sharp contrast to the threat God had made for anyone who would even contemplate killing Cain. We know that God is not fickle! The only reason why God did not want Cain put to death was because the second resurrection had not yet been established by God. And the main reason why God resolutely established the death penalty when there were still only eight human beings on earth was because now God had included the second resurrection in His plan.

In the centuries leading up to the flood God had learned that the human mind was thoroughly evil (Genesis 6:5), and that this had produced a destruction of the Earth and filled the Earth with violence (Genesis 6:11). During that time God had not intervened very much in man’s activities. From that experience with the fruits of man’s conduct being very evident, God saw that penalties needed to be imposed more quickly. As Solomon stated:

And after the flood God very speedily introduced the death penalty for murder.

6) In addition to establishing the death penalty for murder, God ALSO decided to use a much more hands-on approach in dealing with human beings. No longer was God going to hold back until man had made a thorough mess of everything. No longer would God allow man’s actions to proceed to the point where the very achievement of God’s purposes stood in question (as it did for almost all people born before the flood!). Now after the flood God was going to intervene in powerful ways when man did anything that threatened the achievement of God’s purposes. God would exercise interventional control much earlier than He had done before the flood.

Thus, when all people after the flood once again intermarried to thwart God’s intention of having humanity develop into different racial groups; when people said (first part is paraphrased): let’s make sure we stay together and remain as one group "LEST WE BE SCATTERED ABROAD UPON THE FACE OF THE WHOLE EARTH" (Genesis 11:4), then God intervened very powerfully by dividing all human beings at that time into 70 different language groups.

Now Satan is the one who knew that God wanted humanity to diversify into different racial and national groups. And it was Satan who inspired those people to stick together and to intermarry, because Satan tries in every way possible to him to thwart God’s purposes. Satan’s purpose in inspiring people to all want to stay together was to get them to blur all distinctions amongst people by "taking them wives of all which THEY chose", just as they had done before the flood. Satan was still following the same approach he had used on humanity before the flood.

And so God intervened very powerfully, by dividing all people at that time into 70 different language groups. And all those within one specific language group were the ones who should marry one another. The division by languages was God’s way of ensuring that all the races would develop just as God intended. This division into different languages forced each language group to go its own way, just as God had intended. By forcing human beings to divide and scatter around the Earth, God was ensuring that man’s descent into universal evil was retarded to some degree. The division into different languages was a part of damage control.

Similarly, when people just went too far in their perversity, then God intervened by sending fire from heaven to destroy Sodom and Gomorrha. This was localized intervention. And since the flood God has used fire, earthquakes, localized floods and storms to exercise a measure of control. For example, it certainly was no coincidence that in 79 A.D. the city of Pompeii was buried by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius; modern excavations have revealed just how immoral and perverse things were in Pompeii. And if it seems that TODAY we have more natural disasters, then that is quite possibly a sign from God that we have a greater need for damage control regarding the ways our society is going.

So since the flood God has exercised much more control over human affairs than before the flood. And God will not allow society to degenerate to pre-flood levels until just before the return of Jesus Christ (see Matthew 24:38).

7) God also further refined His dealings with mankind by limiting access to God to those people that God has "called". This ensures that very few people who are not called by God will end up in the lake of fire; the overwhelmingly vast majority of people who are not called will end up in the second resurrection.

[COMMENT: Yes, there is a way that people who have never been called and who don’t really understand the truth of God can bypass the second resurrection and end up in the lake of fire. But that is another subject, which I don’t want to get into here.]

Rather than anyone who WANTED to have access to contact with God having that access, as people could do before the flood IF they were willing to put out the effort, God the Father Himself selects those who will be called (John 6:44, 65). This is an expression of God’s mercy for those who are NOT called!

God knows that people haven’t really changed, when compared to people before the flood. The minds of human beings today are just as evil and just as perverse as they were before the flood. The perversity of the human mind is a constant before and after the flood. And so if God were to call ALL PEOPLE ON EARTH TODAY (i.e. the equivalent condition to what it was like before the flood), then THE VAST MAJORITY WOULD REJECT GOD’S WAYS! Many are called and few are chosen (Matthew 22:14) because even for those who are "called" it is still a case of "NARROW IS THE WAY which leads unto life, and FEW there be that find it" (Matthew 7:14).

In plain language, if God were to call all approximately seven billion people on earth today, then in excess of 99.99% would fail the testing, and they would thus be heading for the lake of fire. The success rate for indiscriminately calling people, in percentage terms, would be barely better than before the flood! AND THAT IS WHY GOD DOES NOT CALL ALL PEOPLE TODAY! God does not want a repetition of the situation that developed before the flood.

Let me briefly explain:

We don’t really grasp the utter perversity of the human mind. Just because people are "nice people" who live "decent" lives, and who certainly are not involved in any immorality or perversion, and who are friendly neighbors and acquaintances, that doesn’t mean that their minds are not perverse before God! Look, any mind that is at "enmity against God and which refuses to be subject to the law of God" (Romans 8:7) is before God a perverse mind!

Consider that of all those who are "called" only a few are "chosen" (Matthew 22:14). Consider that of those who come into the Church of God and who sit before God’s servants to hear God’s Word expounded, there are a large number to whom Ezekiel 33:31 applies:

Consider that even during the millennium, when Jesus Christ and those in the first resurrection will be VISIBLE and ruling over mortal human beings, even then there will at one specific point in time be A VAST NUMBER OF PEOPLE, who will cover the land "like a cloud" (see Ezekiel 38:9) in rebellion against Jesus Christ. They will be motivated by greed and covetousness to "go up to the land of unwalled villages" (Ezekiel 38:11) against a people who dwell in safety and without fears.

That occasion is likely to be more than a century after the millennium has started! Now if that is what people do when Jesus Christ is on Earth and ruling with power, can you understand what human beings before the flood did when Jesus Christ was also on Earth, but when He chose NOT to rule with power? THIS REBELLION IN EZEKIEL 38 TAKES PLACE WHILE SATAN IS LOCKED AWAY! This rebellion here cannot be blamed on Satan; this rebellion is the product of the perversity of the human mind.

Consider further that after people have lived for hundreds of years, up to as much as 1000 years, under the rule of Jesus Christ, an incredibly huge number of people from all "four quarters of the Earth" will still follow Satan, literally "at the drop of a hat" ... that’s what Revelation 20:7-9 shows very vividly. When verse 8 tells us that "the number of whom is as the sand of the sea", that number may well be a billion people?!

Regarding Revelation 20:7-9 there is one other point we should consider. When you grasp just how many people are willing to follow Satan literally within weeks, after having lived in the presence of Jesus Christ and all those in the first resurrection for a century or more, can you picture just how many human beings would follow Satan if Satan had been around for the entire 1,000 years of Jesus Christ’s millennial rule? Think this scenario through very carefully, and you might get some idea of why everybody (except for a tiny handful) followed Satan before the flood, in spite of Jesus Christ walking amongst human beings throughout that time.

THAT IS THE PERVERSITY OF THE HUMAN MIND!

Regarding those people at the end of the millennium rebelling, the question goes begging: just how much real character did those people have while they for hundreds of years dutifully complied with all of God’s laws in the presence of Jesus Christ and those in the first resurrection? Ezekiel 33:31 will be true for ALL of the people in this group of rebels; they will have sat dutifully in church services for hundreds of years.

How shallow was all of their obedience, when Satan almost overnight can persuade them to rebel against God? You’d think that people would have to be total morons to rebel against God after having witnessed God’s powers on a daily basis for hundreds of years? And yet, God predicts that a staggering number of people will follow Satan.

That’s what Job came to see when he finally said "BEHOLD, I AM VILE" (Job 40:4) and "I ABHOR MYSELF" (Job 42:6). And that is what Paul meant when he said "O WRETCHED MAN THAT I AM" (Romans 7:24). But we have a hard time seeing it, don’t we?

Anyway, by God the Father Himself taking the responsibility to call all those who will have an opportunity to be in the first resurrection, it ensures that only the most likely people to respond correctly to God (i.e. those willing to repent and to change the way their minds work) will be called. If the callings were decided by a lottery system, the failure rate would rival the failure rate before the flood. If you can really understand this correctly, then you should realize that God specifically calling people in this age, while specifically NOT calling others, is really an expression of God’s mercy for those who are NOT called! It is for their protection that they are not called in this age. It is to avoid them being just as accountable as was every single human being before the flood. And God calling people is certainly also an expression of God’s mercy for those who ARE called, working with us to do everything possible to help us to succeed (Philippians 1:6).

Limiting access to God to those who are specifically called by God is the greatest single factor in increasing the success rate during this phase of God’s plan. And the whole process of calling specific people is the result of what God had learned about the human mind in the time before the flood, when God had not yet developed this concept of calling some people and not calling others.

8) Another change God introduced after the flood is that God expanded the human diet to include meat. The only recorded instructions before the flood regarding what human beings are to eat are found in Genesis 1:29 and in Genesis 2:16.

There is no indication anywhere that before the flood eating the meat of animals had God’s approval, though by the time just before the flood some people may well have started killing animals and eating them? The way God stated things after the flood implies that this is a change from what had been accepted previously. Notice what God told Noah the day Noah came out of the ark.

The expression "even as" in reference to all vegetables and fruits indicates that the first statement (permission to eat animals) is an extension of the original command in Genesis 1:29.

Whether the expression "every living thing" meant that human beings could now eat ALL ANIMALS could perhaps be debated? However, in view of God’s later instructions in Leviticus 11 and in Deuteronomy 14 such a debate would be purely academic. It is quite clear from Leviticus 11 that God expects all those who seek any contact with God to restrict their consumption of meats to clean animals. Whether people in the world eat any and all unclean animals is neither here nor there for us. For us God’s instructions are very clear, irrespective of how we may understand Genesis 9:3-4.

This brings us to one more change after the flood.

9) The indication is that before the flood all animals were tame and all were still herbivores (Genesis 1:30), even as they will be in the millennium (Isaiah 11:6-9, etc.). Notice what God said when everyone came out of the ark:

It seems clear to me that all animals were herbivores when God created them in Genesis 1. They could not possibly have been carnivores when there were only two animals of each "kind" (see Genesis 1:24-25), or a number of animal "kinds" would have become extinct on the very day they were created (by becoming the food for the carnivores). In the millennium God is going to establish the conditions that God had intended to establish when He created Adam and Eve. So the reference to the diets of animals in the millennium (i.e. Isaiah 11:6-9) tells us what things were like originally, before Adam sinned.

As already mentioned earlier, when things did not go as anticipated, then God couldn’t really change the rules in the middle of the game. So God brought on the flood to start afresh with new rules after the flood.

Now this statement right after the flood (i.e. Genesis 9:2) indicates a change. Not only was God allowing human beings to eat meat, but at the same time God was changing the relationship between man and animals, and also the relationship amongst animals themselves, where some animals became the hunters and other animals became the hunted. I believe that by the time that all the animals came out of the ark God had changed some of them into carnivores, while others remained as herbivores. That is the same time when man also became a meat-eater.

It is the threat of being hunted and killed that creates fear. The fear of man was upon animals because man started to hunt those animals.

So we have the following situation:

Before the flood conditions on Earth had become extremely violent (Genesis 6:11). That violence was the product of human minds. Therefore after the flood God was going to openly recognize that violent streak in human beings by making these changes:

1) God would let human beings kill and eat animals.

2) Some animals would begin to kill other animals for food.

3) FEAR would be introduced into this picture. Most animals would fear human beings and generally avoid human beings; and human beings would start to fear certain powerful animals.

This whole new "food chain" perspective was nothing more than an open recognition of the selfishness and the violent streak of the human mind. The change in animal behavior was God’s way of vividly showing how the selfish human mind affects everything and everyone it comes into contact with.

Now let’s take a closer look at the second one of these changes, the introduction of the second resurrection into God’s plan.

The flood started approximately 1656 years after the creation of Adam and Eve. Exactly 120 years before the start of the flood (i.e. approximately 1536 years after Adam’s creation) God had reached a decision regarding man.

The decision to bring on the flood exactly 120 years later was based on needing to complete certain things under the old set of rules. Even though everything was going wrong, God still wanted to give every human being, including babies, a fair chance. So God guaranteed that everybody would have at least 120 years of life (unless murdered by someone before reaching age 120 years). It is interesting that this "minimum age" which God here (in Genesis 6:3) guaranteed is very close to (if not exactly?) the age that Abel lived before he was killed by Cain.

To make this quite plain:

When God said: "YET HIS DAYS SHALL BE 120 YEARS", God was guaranteeing every human being at that time a minimum lifetime of 120 years! This statement has to mean that no more babies would be born during the 120 years before the flood (except for anyone who would be on the ark and thus also live longer than 120 years), or else Genesis 6:3 would not be true.

Now in those 1500+ years God had learned very convincingly that "every imagination of the thoughts of man’s heart was only evil continually" (Genesis 6:5). God recognized that hardly anybody had the strength of character and the convictions and commitment to seek the available contact with God on his own initiative. Abel and Enoch and Noah (and Shem?) were extremely rare individuals.

Now we come to an example of God’s immense mercy and compassion, and God being positive in spite of being repeatedly disappointed by man’s conduct and man’s selfish ways of living. Time and again we human beings have disappointed God and not really come up to God’s expectations; or to state this in God’s own words: "when God looked that it should bring forth grapes, the vineyard brought forth wild grapes" (see Isaiah 5:4). The disappointment God expressed in Isaiah 5 is not confined to disappointment with Israel; all of humanity has disappointed God time and again.

So God reasoned more or less as follows:

God had intended to give mankind the best possible living conditions, the perfect and ideal environment, and God had planned to be there every step of the way for all human beings.

But when God allowed Satan limited access to mankind, it turned out that they (i.e. all of mankind at that time, not just Adam and Eve) accepted Satan’s perverse selfish way of thinking to such a degree that their minds could not be rehabilitated, in spite of them being given an extremely long lifespan, just like Satan’s mind cannot be rehabilitated.

So at the time of the flood God devised a plan to initially expose far fewer individuals to God’s truth and God’s plan and intentions, by means of calling a very few people, while not calling the vast majority. While such "called" individuals could still make the wrong decisions, this system at least greatly increased the odds of people accepting God’s way of thinking, by God only calling those people whose minds God perceived as most likely to respond positively to a "nudge" from God.

The very first individual who was ever "called" by God was Abraham! That is what Genesis 12:1 is telling us:

Yes certainly, God had spoken to various individuals before the flood. But such speaking to individuals was not based on a system of "calling" those individuals as opposed to NOT calling others. Here in Genesis 12:1 we have the record of the very first individual whom God called under the new system after the flood. Now 400 years after the flood Abraham was approximately 50 years old. So when God is dealing with Abraham at age 75 years (Genesis 12:4), this tells us that God waited for over 400 years after the flood before calling the first individual (though God certainly also worked with Noah and with Shem according to the pre-flood system). God was being very selective in who to call as opposed to who not to call.

This careful selection is also evident in God’s statement about Abraham in Genesis 18:19, which reads:

It wasn’t enough for God that Abraham himself would be faithful to God. God was looking for someone whose positive influence would extend to at least his grandson, because God planned on starting a nation through the very first person God was going to call under this new post-flood system. So God was looking for three successive generations to form a good foundation. And Abraham, Isaac and Jacob provided that foundation for God’s nation of Israel. It is interesting that with none of the other servants of God in the Bible is there a record of three successive generations (i.e. a father and his son and his grandson) being fully committed to God, as were Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.

It is no coincidence that the lifetimes of these three fathers show a strict mathematical progression, one that is utterly unique in the history of mankind for three successive generations. And there is a reason why Isaac lived a few years longer than his own father, namely to establish this mathematically perfect progression. Here is the situation:

1) Abraham lived for seven times 5 squared years (7x5x5) = 175 years.

2) Isaac lived for five times 6 squared years (5x6x6) = 180 years.

3) Jacob lived for three times 7 squared years (3x7x7) = 147 years.

Thus Abraham’s age was a factor of 5 squared, Isaac’s age was a factor of 6 squared, and Jacob’s age was a factor of 7 squared. Both sets of numbers (i.e. 5, 6 and 7 squared; and the factors 7, 5 and 3) follow a regular predictable pattern. And while I don’t attach any specific significance to this pattern, I do believe that this was not a coincidence, that it is something which was guided by God to show us that this was a unique occurrence in human history.

Now Abel, Enoch and Noah will be in the kingdom of God. But it is Abraham who is called "the father of us all" (Romans 4:16), in other words "the father of the faithful". Abraham was the very first person called by God, and Abraham responded to God in faith. This response in faith to God by the first person called by God is what establishes Abraham as the father of the faithful; he was the very first one "called" to be faithful to God. So Abraham is the "father of all those who are called by God", in addition to being the father of his physical descendants. That’s Paul’s point in Galatians 3:29 ("if you be Christ’s then are you Abraham’s seed and heirs according to the promise").

To get back to the story, for all those who would NOT be called in this age, God then provided the second resurrection. God’s underlying premise is once again very hopeful and very positive.

In the second resurrection God will blot out the sins that were committed in ignorance (i.e. upon repentance they will be covered by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ) during their first lifetime. At the same time God will provide enormous positive "peer pressure" in the form of 144,00 "former human beings" who will at that point be sons and daughters of God, and who will be living evidence of what God is also going to offer all those people in the second resurrection ... immortal life in the Family of God.

God will also provide additional positive "peer pressure" by having the second resurrection people live together with all the human beings who at the end of the millennium did NOT follow Satan in rebellion against God. The vast number of those people who did NOT follow Satan could likewise be termed to be "as the sand of the sea". And the people in the second resurrection will be integrated into the society of all those who lived during the millennium (i.e. those who did not follow Satan).

To increase the chances of success for the people in the second resurrection still further, they will never during that time be exposed to Satan. Satan is bound for good just before the second resurrection takes place. So they will NEVER again be tempted by any thoughts that originated in the mind of Satan, as was the case during their first lifetime.

And to increase the chances of success for this group still further, God will provide all of the perfect and ideal living conditions that God had planned for mankind before Adam sinned. So all of these people will receive a 100-year lifetime in "utopian conditions".

And to cap it all off, God will answer all their prayers instantly (Isaiah 65:24).

In other words, God is going to do everything possible to make it as easy and as appealing and desirable as possible to encourage the people in the second resurrection to accept God’s way of thinking, to accept God’s philosophy of life. And God is hoping for a very high percentage of positive responses from those people in that resurrection.

Ever since God created Adam and Eve, God has always hoped for a better response from us human beings than we have delivered, whether we are talking about humanity as a whole, or whether we are talking about Israel specifically, or whether we are talking about those that God has called to be in His Church. Now during that period of the second resurrection you and I are destined to have a part in setting positive role models, in helping to lead and guide and encourage and exhort all those people, because we too have gone through a human lifetime when Satan was free to tempt and to deceive mankind, a time when those people also lived but when they never made a move to seek God.

Earlier we looked at the Greek words "katabole" and "katastrophe". Now here is one other significant distinction between these two words. Sooner or later God throws down all opposition. But those that are thrown down by the process of "katabole" will not have the opportunity to be in the second resurrection. "Katabole" conveys a certainty and a finality. On the other hand, those thrown down by the process of "katastrophe" DO have the opportunity to come up in the second resurrection. "Katastrophe" is only temporary in its effect; it is something that may be reversed, whereas "katabole" can never be reversed. We can know this because Jesus Christ said that Sodom would come up in the second resurrection (see Matthew 11:24). And the overthrow of Sodom is described by the word "katastrophe".

In Matthew 11:23-24 Jesus Christ was using the most evil post-flood example that is recorded in the Bible. But the pre-flood world was still more evil than Sodom. Yet Jesus Christ did NOT use them as an example for people who will be in the second resurrection. This omission does not prove anything, but neither should it go unnoticed.

In the article mentioned at the start I briefly discussed all ten references to "the foundation of the world". Let’s now look at all those verses again, but with the understanding of the things we have covered in this article.

The average person is going to approach these verses with totally unjustified assumptions. In the previous article I have shown that "katabole" does not mean "foundation" and that "kosmos" does not refer to this planet Earth. I have shown that the Greek expression "kataboles kosmou" in all of these verses really refers to "the throwing down of human society at the time of the flood". This becomes even clearer when we also consider the following:

In the Greek text of the New Testament we have two different expressions that are of interest to us.

1) We have the expression "apo kataboles kosmou", which we have already considered. While this expression is always mistranslated as "from the foundation of the world", we understand that a correct translation should read "from the throwing down of human society".

2) Then we have the expression "apo de arches ktiseos", which is correctly translated as "from the beginning of the CREATION", as well as the expression "apo ktiseos kosmou", which is correctly translated as "from the CREATION of the world". The Greek noun "ktisis" is formed from the verb "ktizo", which means "to create". So the noun "ktisis" really means "creation".

Now an examination of the use of this Greek word "ktisis" makes quite clear that THIS IS THE WORD THAT IS USED TO REFER TO THE TIME OF ADAM’S CREATION!

Consider the following Scriptures where "ktisis" is used.

The context here makes quite clear that Jesus Christ was referring to the time when Adam and Eve were created.

The context again makes clear that with this expression Jesus Christ was here also referring to the time when Adam and Eve were created.

Note that this Greek expression "apo ktiseos kosmou" is a reference to the time of Adam’s creation.

With this expression the Apostle Peter was likewise referring to the time of Adam’s creation.

So it is quite clear that when a New Testament writer wanted to refer to the time of Adam’s creation, then he used the Greek expression "apo ktiseos kosmou".

And when a New Testament writer wanted to refer to the time of the flood when humanity was thrown down by God, then he used the expression "apo kataboles kosmou".

It should be obvious that the Greek expressions "apo ktiseos kosmou" and "apo kataboles kosmou" cannot be references to the exact same time in history. When Jesus Christ referred to Adam’s time with the word "CREATION" (Greek "ktisis"), then Jesus Christ would NOT refer to the exact same time as "A THROWING DOWN OF HUMANITY" (Greek "kataboles kosmou").

We might also take this opportunity to look at one other point regarding the 2^nd resurrection. And that is in Romans chapter 1. Notice what Paul actually said here:

The next verse shows that Paul is speaking about the time of Adam’s creation and thereafter. So Paul is saying that God showed all of humanity before the flood what His plan was for mankind. They could have known the truth without being specifically "called" by God, because the truth was freely available.

Paul is saying that from the time of Adam onwards human beings could clearly see God’s power because God walked amongst them. And it is Paul who says that therefore "they are without excuse". And people who are "without excuse" cannot come up in the 2^nd resurrection. In the next verse Paul develops this line of reasoning further, and he is speaking specifically about the people who lived before the flood. Notice:

The expression "when they knew God" is a reference to all people from Adam up to the flood. Paul is quite unequivocal that those people "knew God" but refused to submit to God. The expression "became vain in their imaginations" is a reference back to Genesis 6:5 regarding "every imagination of the thoughts of man’s heart". Paul is clearly speaking about people before the flood! And Paul states equally bluntly that they were therefore "without excuse". So they cannot have a part in the 2^nd resurrection. Paul is quite dogmatic in his statements here.

With all the things we have seen thus far in this article as a background, let’s now look at all ten verses with the expression "kataboles kosmou" one more time.

Here Jesus Christ is saying that He would reveal God’s plan for mankind, which plan really goes back to the time of the flood. This plan had been kept secret since then, because people in general think that the plan today is still the same as it was when God created Adam. The changes in God’s plan which were made when God threw down human society had been kept secret until Jesus Christ began to reveal them. The reason why those changes were kept secret was that God did not really want people in general to understand that most human beings born after the flood would get a second opportunity at living a physical life, because clearly understanding this one fact would make such people ineligible for the second resurrection.

NOBODY will ever be in the position to reason:

Can you understand THE REASON WHY the changed aspects of God’s plan (i.e. a second resurrection) were kept secret ever since they were instituted at the time of the flood? Can you understand why the other churches and Bible scholars don’t understand anything about the second resurrection?

Can you understand what Jesus Christ is revealing in this statement? God’s plan BEFORE the flood involved God’s intention to create other God beings. But at that time God had not yet planned out the structure for His Family as the plan stands now. God’s original intentions seem to have been to add all the humans beings who would pass His testing at one specific time. There was no provision for "a harvest of firstfruits" and a later second great harvest. There was no provision for anyone else to rule with Jesus Christ as "kings and priests".

Here in this Scripture Jesus Christ is pointing out that OUR PART IN GOD’S KINGDOM (i.e. "prepared for you") was only decided upon in the years leading up to the flood. The pre-flood plan had no provision for a first resurrection.

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Luke has presented this statement with some incorrect details. When Jesus Christ made the statements which Luke is trying to quote here, including the reference to Abel, Jesus Christ did NOT use the equivalent of "kataboles kosmou". This is clear from Matthew 23:34-35, the report of these same statements from Matthew, an eyewitness.

As already stated in my other article, in the Gospel of Luke there are over 70 statements which show that Luke repeatedly either presents correct statements in the wrong context, or else he has some of the details incorrect. This is simply one more example of this. The other article and also my article entitled "Understanding the Gospel of Luke" discuss this matter at length. For our purposes here we can ignore the wrong detail which Luke has presented in this statement because in Matthew 23:34-35 (the parallel to Luke 11:50) Jesus Christ did NOT refer to "kataboles kosmou". So in these verses Jesus Christ was NOT referring to "kataboles kosmou".

God the Father and Jesus Christ have always had a very close relationship. Here Jesus Christ is simply referring to the fact that God the Father already loved Jesus Christ even BEFORE Jesus Christ in the years leading up to the flood made the commitment to give His own life as a sacrifice for the sins of all human beings who would be born after the flood.

It is the rest of this statement that shows why in this context Jesus Christ chose to use the time of the flood as a reference, rather than saying "for You loved Me before the creation of mankind" (Greek would have been "pro ktiseos kosmou"), a statement that would have been equally true.

The context of this statement is Jesus Christ’s last prayer before being arrested, tortured and then crucified. This was His last prayer before He faced the ultimate trial for the commitment He had made in the years leading up to the flood, i.e. the commitment He had made "pro kataboles kosmou". Likewise, His reference to "they whom You have given Me" refers to the plan for a first resurrection for individuals who "were given" to Jesus Christ by God the Father with the destiny to rule with Jesus Christ during the millennium. This whole context made it very appropriate for Christ to refer to "before the throwing down of human society at the time of the flood".

The reference to "as He has chosen us" refers to the plan God put into effect at the time of the flood. And that plan had been formulated 120 years before the flood, as Genesis 6:3 indicates. At that time God had formulated the plan which calls for 144,000 individuals to be in the first resurrection. It is this group of 144,000 for which we have been chosen.

We might also note that with the expression "according as He has chosen us in Him" Paul is not referring to specific individuals having already been chosen before the flood. What Paul is referring to is THE WHOLE PLAN that calls for 144,000 people to be in the first resurrection. And as long as we stay faithful and committed to God, so long the "us" in this verse includes you and me. But IF we for any reason let go of the truth and we "neglect so great salvation" (Hebrews 2:3), THEN the "us" in Ephesians 1:4 would cease to include you and me. The "us" in this verse is a generic reference to the whole group, rather than a focus on any specific individual within that group. Even if some individuals within that group allow others to "take their crowns" (see Revelation 3:11), this does not affect the statement "according as He has chosen us".

From the time of the flood onwards the present plan has been in effect. However, you should understand that, where the present plan goes back to the time of the flood, the way that plan will be fulfilled has been modified somewhat since the time of Abraham.

Specifically, God’s initial intention with THIS plan, which calls for 144,000 to be in the first resurrection, was to fill all the available spots (i.e. 144,000 less spots for Abel and Enoch and Noah, etc.) with physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. God’s initial intention for the first resurrection seems to have been that all of them would have been physical Israelites. THAT IS WHAT GOD WAS OFFERING ISRAEL IN THE DAYS OF MOSES; that is what the old covenant was ultimately all about, to fill up all the spots available for the first resurrection with physical Israelites. That is the point Paul tried to explain in Romans 11. When Paul said: "some of the branches were broken off and ... you were grafted in" (Romans 11;17), Paul is saying: you non-Israelites have received the chance to be in the first resurrection ONLY BECAUSE God decided to "break off" the Israelite branches. See the whole second half of Romans 11 for a further discussion of this point.

But Israel rebelled against God time and again. And God lamented that there simply wasn’t "such a heart in them" (Deuteronomy 5:29). And so Israel rejected God as their King (1 Samuel 8:7). And so God "divorced" Israel. And because God wasn’t going to find 144,000 (less a handful for those before the flood) physical Israelites to make the required unconditional commitment to God, therefore God expanded the parameters for those people God would call to include people from all racial and all ethnic backgrounds. That’s the intent underlying Matthew 28:19-20. And that represents a modification of the original intentions at the time of Abraham.

Now before you think that a plan that did not intend any non-Israelites to be in the first resurrection is unfair, keep in mind what I have tried to explain earlier. God’s motivation in devising a plan with a first and a second resurrection was mercy and compassion for weak human beings! NOT CALLING people in this age is an enormous act of mercy! The risk of permanently losing out is far greater for us who are called in this age, than it will be for people who are NOT called in this age. The people who are not called will have the most ideal and perfect conditions in which to reach their commitment to God. Their road into the Family of God will be the easiest road for any group of people that make it into God’s Family. Don’t focus on status and position; rather focus on God’s concern to make things as easy as possible for the greatest number of people. That is the main motivation underlying the plan God devised for only exposing a limited number of people to "being called by God" in this present age. To make this very plain: you need to be extremely thankful to God for NOT CALLING all your unconverted relatives, because if God really were to indiscriminately call all of them, then very many of them would most likely end up in the lake of fire. And that is why God is not calling them now.

So be thankful for those people that God HAS called, and also be thankful for those people God HAS NOT called. It is for their own ultimate good that God has not called them. And this system is something God devised in the time leading up to the flood.

The plan which involves Jesus Christ laying down His life for human sins was put into effect after God had thrown down humanity at the time of the flood. Paul is here also referring to the time of the flood, and NOT to the beginning of the creation (which would be "apo arches ktiseos").

That’s right. The decision that Jesus Christ would give His life as a sacrifice was made about 120 years before the flood, by the time God was sorry that He had implemented the previous plan for working with mankind.

To make this quite clear:

So note!

The fact that Peter used the Greek expression "ap arches ktiseos" in 2 Peter 3:4, while he used the Greek expression "apo kataboles kosmou" in 1 Peter 1:20 makes it obvious that with the expression "apo kataboles kosmou" Peter was referring to a totally different time in history from what Peter meant with the expression "ap arches ktiseos". These two Greek expressions refer to two different times in history.

It should be self-evident that these two Greek expressions cannot refer to the exact same time in history. Nowhere would God or God’s servants ever refer to the creation which God created back in Genesis 1 as "a throwing down"! The expression "kataboles kosmou" would show a total lack of respect for what God had created in Genesis 1, and this expression could not possibly refer to anything God had "created"!

And one other point is this:

In order to justify our wrong understanding of God’s plan, we will frequently resort to splitting hairs! So when something cannot apply to the actual time of Adam’s creation, we reason that it actually only applies to A FEW DAYS LATER, i.e. after Adam and Eve had eaten the forbidden fruit. And we are splitting hairs! Look, when Jesus Christ and the apostles wanted to refer to the time of Adam, they did NOT try to draw a distinction between (totally hypothetical dating!) "4000 years and 2 months and 5 days ago" (being for the purposes of this example AFTER they had eaten the forbidden fruit); and "4000 years and 2 months and 10 days ago" (being the day BEFORE they ate the forbidden fruit). (These dates are obviously fictitious.) In retrospect, for most issues there is no distinction between the day God created Adam, and the day after they had eaten the forbidden fruit, because for most features the same basic plan of God applied to both situations.

The differences between the two plans (i.e. a lifespan of less than 1,000 years versus an immortal physical lifetime, and conditional access to God’s Spirit versus unconditional access to God’s Spirit) do NOT satisfactorily explain the differences between "apo ktiseos kosmou" and "apo katabole kosmou". When Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit NOTHING WAS "THROWN DOWN"! That should be clear from the fact that Abel had ready access to God, and that Enoch likewise had ready access to God, and that Noah likewise had ready access to God. Adam and Eve’s sin most emphatically does not qualify for the expression "katabole kosmou".

Let’s also look at what Peter wrote a little later in this same epistle.

First of all, the word "preached" is a mistranslation. It should read "proclaimed"; i.e. Jesus Christ spelled out Satan’s responsibility for the almost total pre-flood failure of the program to lead human beings towards salvation. Secondly, it is quite apparent that Peter did have his mind on the time "while the ark was a preparing", i.e. "pro katabole kosmou".

We know that Satan will be "imprisoned" for the 1,000 years of the millennium (Revelation 20:3). Based on Peter’s statement in the above verses, I believe that either in the years leading up to the flood, or else for the duration of the flood God also imprisoned Satan and the demons at that time! Had Satan and the demons been free during the flood, they would have been gloating for the entire time, because they had managed to cause God to abort the original plan that God had set in motion at the time of Adam. The above verses refer to a period of time when God was extremely angry with Satan. I strongly suspect that Jesus Christ assigned to Satan the name "murderer from the beginning" at this particular point in history, though it isn’t mentioned till John 8:44.

At any rate, Jesus Christ confronted "the spirits in prison" at that particular time because there was a transition to a new plan for dealing with mankind, a plan that would dramatically lower Satan’s murder rate of human beings (i.e. destroying the potential destiny of human beings).

This is the verse we have already discussed at length, and no further comments are needed at this time.

The book of life is God’s record for all those human beings who have passed God’s testing and who will in the future become the born sons and daughters of God. Before the flood God surely had a system for ensuring that all those people who made the effort to "walk with God" would in due time (i.e. at the end of the whole program) be changed into spirit beings. But I wonder if the book of life is another upgrade God implemented after the flood, replacing whatever record system God had intended before the flood?

With the system of God only calling a very few select people since the time of the flood, it means that God has to have at least three distinct records:

-one record for those who were called and who have passed the testing and who will be resurrected as sons of God;

- one record for those who were called but who failed the testing, and who will thus end up in the lake of fire;

- one record for all those who were never called, and who did not commit the unpardonable sin, and who will thus come up in the second resurrection.

The first of these three records is called the book of life. I expect that the names of the very few individuals before the flood who will also be in the first resurrection are included in the book of life. I suspect that those few people who committed the unpardonable sin, even though they were never called by God, will be added to the second record, for those who will end up in the lake of fire.

The focus in this Scripture highlights that after the flood access to the book of life was limited to those people who were called by God. And once a person responded positively to that call from God, then God added that person’s name to the book of life.

So here is the point:

God adds our names to the book of life while we are yet human beings. Our names are added when we come to repentance. This is an example of God’s always positive expectations, calling "those things which be not as though they were" (Romans 4:17). But there is the potential, if we do not overcome, that our names could still be blotted out (see Revelation 3:5).

This book of life is an integral part of the plan of God which went into effect after the flood.

Right, now let’s look at the annual Feasts and Holy Days.

We understand that for each of the annual Feasts and Holy Days there is a specific reason. Each one is intended to represent something very specific in the overall plan of God. None of these days were chosen by God at random or without a purpose. This principle the Church of God has understood since the time of Mr. Armstrong. And so we have tried to understand the events that are represented by the annual days God has appointed.

In analogy we can compare God’s plan to a large jigsaw puzzle. If we place all the pieces in their correct locations on the board, then we get the correct picture. But in such a puzzle there are often a number of pieces that seem to fit quite well in several different locations. Now if we place one such ambiguous piece in a wrong location, eventually we reach a dead end, and the remaining pieces will simply not fit anywhere into the flawed picture we have developed up to that point.

The only way to then proceed is to identify the key pieces that occupy the wrong locations. This can be quite difficult because it is not just a matter of finding one piece that is misplaced; typically we have already surrounded that one mis-positioned piece with a whole lot of other pieces that appear to support the wrong location for the one misplaced piece. In this situation often the only solution is to retrace all our steps right back to the beginning. But it is painful to take down a part of the picture we have already built up so painstakingly. And thus we are frequently quite reluctant to take such a drastic step of re-examining the whole picture.

Let’s come to the Feasts and Holy Days.

There are two things we need to do to arrive at the correct picture:

1) We need to identify correctly WHAT each piece represents.

2) THEN we need to identify correctly WHERE in the overall picture each specific piece needs to be placed.

Thanks to the things Mr. Armstrong already explained, the first step is fairly easy. Thus:

1) The PASSOVER represents the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

2) The FEAST OF UNLEAVENED BREAD represents putting sins out of our lives.

3) The FEAST OF PENTECOST represents those in the first resurrection.

4) The HOLY DAY OF TRUMPETS represents the coming of Jesus Christ.

5) The HOLY DAY OF ATONEMENT represents the binding of Satan.

6) The FEAST OF TABERNACLES represents the great second "harvest" into the Family of God.

7) The LAST GREAT DAY represents the people in the second resurrection.

So we understand WHAT each piece represents. That’s the easy part. The next part is more difficult.

It is not a question of "what does it represent?" that presents a problem. The real question is: how does it all correctly fit together? There are a number of things we should consider in our efforts of putting everything together correctly.

So consider the following five things:

1) The Bible STARTS with Jesus Christ being here on the Earth! Genesis 1 shows us God (i.e. in the person of Jesus Christ) here on Earth! This must mean that this was the day on which Jesus Christ came to this Earth for the first time!

2) When Genesis 1:5 says "and the evening and the morning were THE FIRST DAY", then that means that THIS WAS THE 1^ST DAY OF THE 1^ST MONTH OF THE 1^ST YEAR! There is no other possibility; it couldn’t possibly have been the 2^nd, 3^rd or 4^th day of the 2^nd, 3^rd or 4^th month of the 2^nd, 3^rd or 4^th year, etc. The only possibility is that Genesis 1:5 was the 1^st day of the 1^st month of the 1^st year! The days, months and years when Satan was here on Earth before the time of Adam are blotted out and ignored in everything that follows Genesis 1:5. Genesis 1:5 represents Day 1 in God’s plan for mankind.

3) Our understanding that the Holy Day of Trumpets represents the second coming of Jesus Christ is only partially correct. The correct understanding is that the Day of Trumpets represents THE COMING OF JESUS CHRIST TO THIS EARTH, but without necessarily being focused on just the 2^nd coming!

4) God’s original intention was to start the year in the autumn! At that point in time God had no intention of ever changing the start of the year to the spring. The idea of starting the year in the spring was simply not a part of God’s thinking at that time.

And so back in Genesis 1:5 we have the first day of the first month in the autumn! God started His creation off by supplying everything that was needed. So God created all the trees filled with fruits, rather than having to wait for a period of growth to then produce fruits. Adam and Eve and all the animals could immediately start to eat the fruits that were on the trees.

5) The years continued to start in the autumn until the time of the exodus from Egypt. It was only in Exodus 12:2, immediately before God instituted the Passover, that God moved the start of the year to the first month in the spring.

A question we should now ask ourselves is:

Now it is quite clear that the significance of the Holy Days reaches well into the future, since both the first resurrection and the second resurrection are clearly still future. But does that mean that every event for all the Holy Days must point to the future? Or could some days actually point to something that lies in the past?

In considering the following things it will be helpful to you if you are able "to think outside of the box".

1) Genesis 1:5 was the very first day in God’s plan for mankind. It was the 1^st Day of the 1^st Month of the 1^st Year, and it was the day on which Jesus Christ came to this Earth for the very first time. And that was the first month in the autumn. That is exactly the same day which since the time of the exodus from Egypt has been known as the 1^st Day of the 7^th Month, the Day of Trumpets.

2) So Jesus Christ came to this Earth on the 1^st Day of the year. What this should tell us is that at that point in time God’s plan for mankind did NOT include anything before the Day of Trumpets. Nothing can precede the first day of the year! You can’t have anything before the start, or else the start of the year simply wouldn’t be the start. So back in Genesis 1 God STARTED His dealings with mankind on the Day of Trumpets.

3) This tells us that originally God STARTED His plan with the Day of Trumpets, meaning that God started His plan for mankind with Jesus Christ’s arrival here on Earth. The plan didn’t start with anything that preceded Jesus Christ’s arrival here in Genesis 1. The very first event in God’s plan for mankind was that Jesus Christ arrived on this planet Earth. And THAT is really what the Day of Trumpets signifies. Now the fact that this day also points to events in the future is in addition to its original significance, not in place of it.

4) So originally God had made provision in His plan for mankind for only three events:

- Trumpets = the coming of God to this Earth

- Atonement = the permanent banishment of Satan

- Tabernacles = one huge harvest of human beings into the Family of God.

The Last Great Day is clearly an afterthought, which was later appended to the Feast of Tabernacles. It was NOT a part of the plan at the time of Genesis 1, because you can’t have the second resurrection without the Passover and the first resurrection being in place.

5) When God in Genesis 1 started the year in the autumn, this means that back in Genesis 1 God had simply not yet developed the plan of salvation as we know it today. God made no provision at all for the events that precede the Day of Trumpets, and for one event that will follow the Day of Trumpets, namely:

- The Passover

- The Feast of Unleavened Bread

- The Feast of Pentecost

- The Last Great Day

6) To make this quite plain: When after 1,500 years things had gone terribly wrong, God recognized that He would not achieve His goal if He continued with the plan that had started with the Day of Trumpets. And so the insertion of "the Passover, Feast of UB, Pentecost, and the Last Great Day" into the plan is evidence of God upgrading the plan to achieve a greater measure of success. And the most significant component of that ""upgrade" was that, in order to achieve His original goal, God Himself needed to make a major sacrifice.

7) When God in Exodus 12:2 changed the start of the year to the spring, God was in effect POSTPONING the Day of Trumpets by six months, meaning that at that point in time God officially announced that the coming of Jesus Christ had been postponed by 6,000 years. No longer would the events signified by the Day of Trumpets be the very first day of the year; instead they were postponed to the first day of the SEVENTH month.

8) The fact that the Day of Trumpets is the only observed day in the year that falls on the FIRST DAY OF A MONTH should tell us that Trumpets really was the starting point for God’s plan for mankind.

God’s present plan starts with Nisan in the spring. Now if this present plan was God’s original plan, WHY does nothing happen on the 1^st Day of NISAN? WHY would God originally have started the year with "13 days of nothing" before coming to the Passover? If the present plan was the original plan, then you can be sure that SOMETHING SIGNIFICANT would have been appointed for Nisan 1.

After a starting date everything that follows expresses a relationship to that starting date. But a starting date is surely on "Day 1". So the fact that nothing significant happens in the first week of Nisan tells us that Nisan cannot be the real start for the original plan. And the fact that Tishri 1 is the only 1^st day of a month in the year that carries any significance tells us that this date must be the real starting point for the original plan of God.

It is the perverse mistranslation of Revelation 13:8 that is the major roadblock to understanding God’s plan correctly. Can you rid your mind of the totally incorrect idea that Jesus Christ was "slain from the foundation of the world"? If you cannot rid your mind of this devious mistranslation, then you also cannot understand the truth about God’s plan.

Now let’s look at all the annual occasions more closely. And let’s do so in an attempt to reconstruct how God may have reached these dates.

This is the day that starts the whole plan of God for mankind. It represents the day when Jesus Christ for the very first time came to this Earth, which was after Satan’s rebellion had been thrown down. So this Holy Day was set for the 1^st Day of the year.

When it later became evident that God’s plan would simply not be achieved under the system God had installed, then God postponed this day to the 1^st Day of the 7^th Month. But in making this postponement, God still ensured that everything else was organized symmetrically around this day. Instead of continuing to be the starting point, in the revised plan this day became the pivotal point in God’s overall plan. Thus:

- It is preceded and also followed by a 1-day observance.

(Preceded by Pentecost & followed by Atonement)

- That is then preceded and also followed by a 7-day observance.

(Preceded by the Feast of UB & followed by FoT)

- That is then preceded and also followed by an attached 1-day observance

(Preceded by the Passover & followed by the Last Great Day)

So instead of being the starting point of God’s plan, the Day of Trumpets became the fulcrum of God’s plan for mankind. All the other observances are symmetrically balanced on both sides of the Day of Trumpets.

Trumpets is the starting date of the annual observances. All the other annual observances are in some way connected back to this starting date. And while this date is based on Jesus Christ’s very first coming to this planet Earth back in Genesis 1, it certainly can also in some ways apply to what we traditionally call "Christ’s first coming" and also "Christ’s second coming" in the future. But we should understand that God selected the first day of the seventh month based primarily on what had happened in Genesis 1, rather than on what will still happen in the future. Christ’s "second coming" (the one still future) is represented by the first day of the seventh month because that was the day on which Jesus Christ first came to this Earth in Genesis 1.

[COMMENT: It is best if we continue to refer to Christ’s coming 2000 years ago as His "first coming" and the coming of Jesus Christ that still lies ahead as His "second coming", lest we have all kinds of confusion. But we should keep in mind that Jesus Christ (though He wasn’t yet known by this name!) in actual fact came for the first time in Genesis 1. But in this instance it is better to be clear than to be technically correct but confusing. People understand that references to the second coming are references to the coming that still lies ahead of us. So we should stay with this terminology.]

It is clear that this day pictures the removal of Satan. The question is: WHY did God place this day into the same month as Trumpets? WHY? And WHY did God place this observance on the 10^th day? Why not the 8^th day or the 3^rd day or the 20^th day? WHY the 10^th day? And WHY does God instruct us to fast on this day?

There are assuredly specific reasons why God selected this specific date for Atonement. Those reasons are not as clear to us as they are for the selection of Trumpets. Thus here I can only offer my own speculations.

The selection of the same month for Atonement as for Trumpets suggests to me that originally God had intended to remove Satan immediately after Adam and Eve had passed their test, as God confidently expected they would. Now with the changed plan we know that Satan will be removed very soon after Jesus Christ returns at the first resurrection (see Revelation 20:1-3). That speedy removal at Christ’s return suggests that initially, had Adam and Eve not eaten the forbidden fruit, Satan would have been removed equally speedily.

So perhaps the selection of the 10^th day is intended to show us that Satan tempted Adam and Eve on the 10^th day of that first month? If that was the case, which I obviously have no way of proving, then God would have spent Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday with Adam and Eve, teaching and instructing them in how to live their lives. During all those days Satan would have been barred from any access to the garden. Then on the second Tuesday, the 10^th day beginning with Genesis 1:5 as the 1^st day, God went away and gave Satan access to the garden. Very possibly God was prepared to give Satan THREE shots on that one day at trying to persuade Adam and Eve to eat the forbidden fruit, even as Satan later had three shots at tempting Jesus Christ in Matthew 4. As it was, Satan only needed one opportunity to get Adam and Eve to eat the forbidden fruit.

So PERHAPS God selected the 10^th day of the 7^th month because it was the very first 10^th day when Satan caused man to sin? And the reason WHY God instructs us not to eat anything on this day is obvious, right? Adam and Eve sinned by eating! So for that reason God tells us not to eat anything at all on the Day of Atonement. And yes certainly, there are also additional reasons why God instructs us not to eat anything on this day.

The fact that God made this a 1-day observance further strengthens the speculation that all God expected from Adam and Eve at that specific point was that they should have been able to resist eating that forbidden fruit FOR THAT ONE DAY when God gave Satan access. God knew that, with the attitude they still had at that point in time, they weren’t going to eat it while God was present with them. So God left them for one day for the explicit purpose of testing them.

That is what is pictured by a ONE DAY fast.

I think that IF they had passed this test, then this tree of the perception of good and evil would have been taken away by God. Yes, they would still have lived very long lives of being tested by God, but always in an extremely positive environment and with total access to help and guidance from God. That tree really pictured SATAN’S PERCEPTION OF GOOD AND EVIL. It represented how SATAN’S MIND works. So when God would have removed Satan, then God would also have removed the tree that represented Satan’s mind.

By the way: one of the puzzle pieces that has frequently been placed in the wrong position in this regard is the reasoning that "God taught Adam and Eve on the Sabbath, and then on SUNDAY MORNING Satan came along and tempted Eve, and that is why Sunday is Satan’s day of worship". That line of reasoning is obviously flawed and leads to a dead-end. The day on which Satan was given access to Adam and Eve was under GOD’S control and not under Satan’s control. The only reason why Satan was able to tempt Eve at all was because God specifically gave Satan access to them on a day of God’s choosing, when God decided to "go away" for a short period of time.

You might also keep in mind that this false line of reasoning prevented us for several decades from understanding the correct day of the week for Pentecost. It was reasoned that God would assuredly avoid Satan’s day of the week for one of God’s annual Feasts, and that line of reasoning went along with the "Monday Pentecost" we kept until the early 1970's. The real reason why Satan has selected Sundays and Fridays as days of worship to compete with God’s Sabbath is because Satan tries to stay as close as possible to "the real thing" in deceiving mankind. It is the proximity to the Sabbath that makes Sundays and Fridays the most likely choices for Satan’s religions, rather than those days carrying any specific symbolism.

As far as symbolism is concerned, let me give you an alternate solution. Since God spent FOUR days with Adam and Eve before they were tempted and sinned (i.e. Friday + Saturday + Sunday + Monday), therefore Jesus Christ then came 4,000 years after the creation of Adam and Eve. Now I don’t want to make anything out of this and I don’t know that this line of reasoning is even correct. Here I am simply trying to illustrate how very easy it is to find symbolism if you are really looking for some symbolism. This "four days, 4,000 years" analogy is just an illustration, the actual validity of which is very questionable. And I myself don’t attach any significance to it.

Anyway, these possible reasons for God’s selection of the 10^th day of the 7^th month for Atonement are my speculations, which you can evaluate for yourself. So let’s continue.

The original intention for this Feast most likely was to represent the time period during which all human beings would be tested by God. There was going to be only "one harvest". It seems likely that God used the same approach with the angels, establishing the "holy" status for all the angels that proved themselves to be faithful at one specific point in time. This Feast would have pictured the completion of God’s plan, as envisaged by God before Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit. And even after they sinned, this Feast would still have pictured the completion of God’s plan.

When God then revised the plan at the time of the flood, then God at the same time appended another event to the end of the Feast of Tabernacles, so that Tabernacles no longer represented the completion of the plan.

Some questions we might ask are: WHY did God place this Feast on the 15^th day? I don’t think that selecting the day of the full moon was the deciding consideration in the selection for this date. So WHY the 15^th? And WHY did God make this Feast 7 days long?

I believe that the choice of the 15^th day is in some way linked to the 1^st day of the month. The Feast of Tabernacles starts exactly 2 weeks after the Day of Trumpets. Why? And why isn’t the Feast of Tabernacles only one day long? Why is it one full week long?

At present I don’t really know why God chose the 15^th day for the start of this Feast.

Now the reason why God decided to make this Feast 7 days long may have been to indicate that the whole plan was originally, before it was modified, intended to run for 7,000 years. After the plan was modified at the time of the flood, that period of time was extended to 7,100 years, to accommodate the second resurrection.

So note!

Specifying 7 days for Tabernacles really represents the original plan for 7,000 years; it does not really represent 7,100 years! So just like Trumpets and Atonement, Tabernacles also reflects the original intentions, rather than the changed circumstances of the current plan.

And that may very possibly have been God’s original plan when He created Adam and Eve, consisting of three easy-to-understand steps, all scheduled for the 1^st month. STEP 1 = God comes to this Earth; STEP 2 = after some brief but specific testing of the human beings, Satan is bound and banished; STEP 3 = then the human beings are tested over a long period of time in perfect circumstances, after which they are changed into God beings.

WHY would God possibly have had to start out with a very involved and complicated plan? Why should God have anticipated problems and disappointments along every step of the way? Why should a pure mind anticipate perversity and depravity and hypocrisy?

Thus, while I certainly cannot prove this to be the case, I personally believe that God’s original plan only made provision for these three steps: 1) Jesus Christ comes to this Earth, 2) Satan is bound shortly thereafter, 3) Then after a time of testing the human beings are changed into God beings. And that is the complete original plan.

When in the time leading up to the flood it became clear that this "simple plan" would not produce the desired results, then God made some changes. Trumpets, Atonement and Tabernacles, which had all been intended either to be fulfilled in the 1^st month or at least to be started in the 1^st month, were postponed by six months (i.e. by 6,000 years) to the 7^th month. This postponement made it possible to insert the new features of the revised plan into the months preceding the 7^th month.

Now let’s look at the rest of the annual observances, which reflect all the changes that God introduced into His plan at the time of the flood. All of those events must in some way relate to the three original parts of the plan.

There is one very clear connection between the events which were postponed from the 1^st month to the 7^th month, and the new events that God added to the plan. That connection is between the Feast of Tabernacles and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Here is how this works.

When God postponed the events originally intended for the 1^st month to the 7^th month, then God placed the Feast of Unleavened Bread into the exact location within the yearly cycle where the Feast of Tabernacles had originally been. That is, Unleavened Bread was placed in a different location to Tabernacles from a seasonal perspective, but it was placed in the exact same location in the context of how years are to be reckoned.

So note!

1) When viewed from heaven (i.e. from an outer space perspective), THEN Trumpets, Atonement and Tabernacles were still in the exact same locations as previously in the Earth’s annual cycle around the sun, namely in the autumn of the Northern Hemisphere.

2) But when viewed from here on Earth, THEN the changed annual cycle after Exodus 12:2 creates the impression that Trumpets, Atonement and Tabernacles had been postponed from the first month to the seventh month.

Thus instead of the 15^th - 21^st days of the 1^st month representing that "great harvest", because things had gone totally wrong therefore NOW that same time period in the yearly cycle represents the need for all human beings to FIRST PUT SINS OUT OF OUR LIVES! Having proved ourselves to be "continually evil" (Genesis 6:5), therefore there is an enormous need for us to clean up especially our minds and the imaginations of our thoughts (same verse). And as with Tabernacles, so likewise the "seven days" for this Feast of Unleavened Bread represents doing something completely or perfectly; in this case putting sins out completely.

So from the 15^th - 21^st of the 7^th month the link takes us back to the 15^th - 21^st of the 1^st month. This connection is easy to see. From this jump to exactly 6 months earlier we then get to all the other days that were added.

Putting sins out of our lives and changing the way our minds work represents the fruits of repentance. So where this period in the first month originally represented entering the Family of God, with the changes introduced into the plan NOW this same period in the first month represents the need for us human beings to first clean up our lives and our way of thinking. This Feast makes the point that we human beings need to first repent before we can become potentially eligible for joining the Family of God.

However, repentance by itself cannot remove any guilt incurred before we come to repentance. To take care of this problem (i.e. to make the removal of our past guilt possible) God was prepared to make one enormous sacrifice for us human beings. And that brings us to the next annual day that needed to be added to the plan.

Jesus Christ, the second member of the God Family and the One who had done the creating back in Genesis 1 at the behest of God the Father, committed Himself to lay down His own life, so that the guilty past of all human beings born after the original plan was modified (i.e. after the flood) could be blotted out.

Instead of Jesus Christ’s sacrifice applying automatically to all human beings, it would have to be individually requested by every single person. And it would have to be requested by people repenting (i.e. changing the way they use their minds, changing their way of thinking).

In plain language: BECAUSE God had come to see that every imagination of the thoughts of man’s heart was "only evil continually", THEREFORE God requires a changed way of thinking to solve this specific problem. God realized that without a changed way of thinking the problem of Genesis 6:5 would never be solved!

Did you always think that repentance means changes in actions and behavior? Well, that’s not really what God is primarily looking for. Genesis 6:5 is one of the most powerful Scriptures in the whole Bible, because it very decisively shows us God’s assessment of the real problem with human beings. The real problem is, and always has been, THE MIND! It was the way human beings used their minds that grieved God at His heart (see Genesis 6:6). All actions are only consequences of thoughts that originated in the minds.

And therefore God has made a voluntary changing of the mind, away from Satan’s selfish way of thinking to God’s way of thinking, a requirement for access to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

Now once an adult human being reaches this point of recognizing the need for having his guilty past blotted out (i.e. the need for the Passover), then he must immediately proceed with starting to change his way of thinking (i.e. the Feast of Unleavened Bread). And it is the changed way of thinking, the new way of using his mind, that becomes the motivator and the driving force for also changing all the conduct, actions and behavior that are not compatible with the laws and ways of God.

It is this last part (changed behavior) that we happen to be able to observe in other people. But the changed behavior by itself is of no value before God. The changed behavior must really be motivated by a mind that has consciously rejected the Genesis 6:5 way of thinking. It was Genesis 6:5 that moved God to bring on the flood; it was Genesis 6:5 that motivated God to reject the old plan in favor of the new plan that has been in effect since the flood; it was Genesis 6:5 that motivated God to make repentance a requirement for access to forgiveness of past guilt.

So the Passover is attached to the Feast of Unleavened Bread because when we claim the sacrifice of Jesus Christ for the remission of our past sins, then we must immediately start to change the way we use our minds. That is why a person should not be baptized until that person is ready to start using his mind God’s way, until he is ready to start thinking like God, until he is ready to see every situation in life from the perspective of God’s laws and instructions, until he brings forth fruits worthy of repentance (see Luke 3:8).

Now the only way we can get to that position of being able to start thinking like God is for us to diligently study the Bible! It is not just that we need to be familiar with the stories in the Bible; it is really that we need to UNDERSTAND what God has done at various times and why God has done it, that we UNDERSTAND the intentions of God’s laws and the underlying reasons for those laws. Before we can DO the things that are pleasing in God’s sight, we first need to understand WHAT is actually pleasing in God’s sight (see 1 John 3:22). And that requires serious Bible study (2 Timothy 2:15; etc.). Most people in this world who do read the Bible are simply not capable of "rightly dividing the word of truth". But such "rightly dividing" is essential in order to do the things that are pleasing to God.

So the Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread are joined to one another because our acceptance of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ must immediately be followed by the process of us changing the way our minds think, work and reason.

Right, with all these things (i.e. Trumpets, Atonement, Tabernacles, Unleavened Bread and the Passover) in place, NOW the fruits of the new plan can be reaped. NOW everything is in position for the results of the total plan to be split up into two distinct "harvests". And those two "harvests" are determined by whether a person is called by God to an opportunity to be in the 1^st resurrection, or whether the person is not called to this opportunity by God.

So now Pentecost and the Last Great Day can be added to the framework that has been established.

This is not the place to lay out all the details regarding how the date for Pentecost is established. There are two articles on my website under the key word "Pentecost" which discuss at length how to determine the correct date for Pentecost.

Here we should note that God established a flexible date, one that requires counting anew every year. It is a FIXED DAY OF THE WEEK, but a FLEXIBLE DAY OF THE MONTH! Perhaps this is to indicate to us that there is a certain amount of "flexibility" as to exactly when that "firstfruit harvest" of Pentecost is ready for reaping?

Consider the following things:

1) Ignoring the unjustified Jewish postponement rules, it means that Pentecost could be as early as the 5^th Day of the 3^rd Month, and Pentecost could be as late as the 11^th Day of the 3^rd Month. Did God perhaps deliberately build this kind of "wiggle room" into His plan? Could this mean that God up front made provision for this firstfruit harvest to be flexible enough to take place a little earlier or a little later, depending on how things developed?

2) God has clearly established how many people will be in the first resurrection (i.e. 144,000). But every single one of the people who will be in the first resurrection also has A FREE WILL. And not all those whom God calls to be a part of the first resurrection respond positively, or else it would be impossible for any "crowns" to be taken away (see Revelation 3:11). This means that God cannot really predict how and how quickly everyone who is called will respond to the tests that await us all.

3) When we are talking about individuals who have a truly free will, including the ability to potentially disagree with God and to respond negatively to God’s calling, then God could do one of two things:

A) God could set a fixed, inflexible date for the first resurrection, irrespective of how many people have responded correctly by that date. This could result in a smaller or greater number of people responding positively to God than God may have anticipated (though experience would strongly suggest that a smaller number rather than a greater number would be ready).

B) God could set a fixed, inflexible number of individuals who will be in the first resurrection, irrespective of how long that may take (i.e. within a general framework).

Only one of these two things can be fixed with certainty, but the other thing must then be flexible. If both things (i.e. the date and the number) were fixed without any flexibility, then the individuals involved could not possibly have truly free and independent wills.

While God didn’t make any "predictions" before the flood, it is quite clear that God "ANTICIPATED" a far better response before the flood than what things turned out to be! That is quite clear from God’s extreme disappointment with that entire period of time. So God set a fixed number of people for the first resurrection (we know this from the Book of Revelation), but God then realistically built a small amount of flexibility into the timeframe regarding when that number of individuals will be ready.

Time is never a problem for God. God has all the time in the world (to use a figure of speech) to achieve His goals. And I believe that a fixed number of individuals for the first resurrection, to fill a fixed number of positions (John 14:2), is of far greater importance to God than doing everything according to "somebody’s chart of end-time events". So yes, I personally believe that God right from the start (i.e. when God first established the annual feasts and Holy Days after the flood) deliberately built some flexibility into the timing for the harvest of firstfruits, as depicted by this small amount of flexibility for the actual date for Pentecost. The reason God built this small amount of flexibility into the timing for the first harvest was because God wants to ensure that the correct number of individuals will be in that resurrection.

The main "fixed" point about Pentecost is that it is always exactly seven weeks after the day when the sacrifice of Jesus Christ is "accepted for us" by God the Father, as pictured by the wavesheaf offering being accepted for us during the Seven Days of Unleavened Bread (see Leviticus 23:11).

Let’s consider the three steps by which God the Father builds the Family of God, as explained by the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians.

Let’s start with verse 20.

The resurrection Paul is speaking about here is to spirit life. We all need to understand very clearly that at no point in this chapter does the Apostle Paul address any resurrection to physical life. Paul only speaks about resurrections to immortality. In this chapter Paul addresses neither the second resurrection nor the third resurrection. It is only resurrections to spirit life that are discussed in this chapter. In other words, this chapter does not discuss "all" the resurrections!

In the above verse Paul speaks about Jesus Christ’s resurrection to spirit life. Let’s look at the next verse.

The Greek expression "di anthropou" is used twice in this verse, and it is translated as "by man". The Greek preposition "dia" when used with the genitive case (as it is here) means "through", and it refers to: the cause by means of which an action passes to its accomplishment.

In the Greek text of this verse Paul is saying that man is the cause for why there is death! Paul is here stating quite categorically that death (in the human sphere) is due entirely to Adam’s actions! The Apostle Paul understood this correctly almost 2,000 years ago. Death was only appointed for man after man had eaten the forbidden fruit. Can you read this verse without the prejudiced view that it couldn’t possibly mean what it plainly says, that "THROUGH MAN CAME DEATH"? It wasn’t God’s fault that we human beings all have to die the first death.

In the second part of this verse Paul is speaking about a resurrection to spirit life. He is saying that prior to Jesus Christ’s resurrection there had never been a resurrection to spirit life (resurrections to physical mortal life don’t feature in Paul’s thinking here). Paul is saying that Jesus Christ is the cause for why we have the potential to be resurrected to spirit life.

In other words: in exactly the same way that death on the human level is due entirely to Adam having eaten the forbidden fruit, so also the possibility of the resurrection to spirit life is due entirely to what Jesus Christ did for mankind and the pioneering resurrection Jesus Christ Himself experienced.

To make this quite clear, Paul re-states this point again in the next verse.

In verse 21 Paul stated the facts, and here in verse 22 Paul presents the proof for these facts. The proof is that all human beings do sooner or later die just like Adam died.

In the second statement in this verse (i.e. "so in Christ shall ALL be made alive") Paul is not referring to "all human beings"! Paul is talking only about a resurrection for those "in Christ"! Neither the second resurrection nor the third resurrection will be "in Christ"! It is only a resurrection to spirit life that qualifies for the expression "in Christ", because this expression implies a meeting of the requirements (i.e. repentance) for access to Christ’s sacrifice. The fact that Paul is only speaking about resurrections to spirit life is also made clear in the next two verses. In those verses Paul shows that the Family of God will be built in three distinctive steps. Notice:

By "every man" Paul does not mean all human beings! As already stated a few words earlier, Paul really only means "every man IN CHRIST in his own order", every man who at some point avails himself of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. But Paul’s comments here do not apply to people who never avail themselves of Christ’s sacrifice. In other words, these things do not apply to people who never repent or who fall away from the commitment to God that they had made at one time.

Paul clearly lists three steps in these two verses. They are:

STEP 1 = Jesus Christ, the first of the firstfruits;

STEP 2 = approx. 2,000 years later those in the 1^st resurrection at His coming;

The people in "step 3" are the "end ones" because that will be the time when Jesus Christ hands the whole Kingdom over to God the Father, the time of the new heaven and the new earth (Revelation 21:3).

Notice that in this chapter Paul has said nothing about the second or the third resurrection, because these resurrections didn’t feature in his thinking.

Now there are three annual Feasts, and there are three occasions when someone becomes a part of the Family of God. Thus:

FEAST OF UNLEAVENED BREAD = the time when the resurrected Jesus Christ as "the wavesheaf" was accepted by God the Father as the firstborn Son of God.

FEAST OF PENTECOST = the time when the firstfruit harvest of those in the first resurrection will be added to the Family of God;

FEAST OF TABERNACLES = the time when "the end ones", including those in the second resurrection, will be added to the Family of God.

Note while the Last Great Day is a Holy Day in its own right, it is clearly joined to the Feast of Tabernacles. This is clear from the way God Himself speaks about this Holy Day. It is taken for granted as being an addition to FoT. For example, Leviticus 23:36 is clearly speaking about FoT and without any kind of introduction the Last Great Day is simply included in the discussion. Notice what God Himself said:

The Last Great Day is included in the same sentence as the Feast of Tabernacles, because it is to be considered on the same level. Here it is clearly treated as a part of the Feast of Tabernacles, because the word "eighth" is obviously connected to and identified with the previous seven! Something can never be the "eighth" in isolation. Any separation between the Feast of Tabernacles and the Last Great Day is very artificial.

Yes, the Last Great Day is a Holy Day in its own right, and it has a very specific meaning. But from God’s point of view it is completely linked to the Feast of Tabernacles; that is what the word "eighth" tells us. And as far as the timing for when they will become a part of the Family of God is concerned, there is no distinction whatsoever between the people from the millennium and the people from the second resurrection. Together they will form the immensely large group of "end ones" in the Family of God, which group is in Revelation 7:9 identified as "a great multitude which no man could number".

Consider this:

There are three Feasts. And every one of those three Feasts is a period of time that is bounded by Holy Days at both ends. Thus for the Feast of Unleavened Bread the first and last days are Holy Days. Since the Feast of Pentecost is only one day long, it is a Feast and a Holy Day at the same time. So this Feast of Pentecost is a Holy Day from start to finish. Now IF we view the Last Great Day as NOT belonging to the Feast of Tabernacles, THEN THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES WOULD BE OPEN-ENDED, AND THAT CANNOT BE!

The Feast of Tabernacles starts with a Holy Day, but without the Last Great Day also being a Holy Day there would be nothing to contain the Feast of Tabernacles, and it would just fizzle out at its end. Every Feast of God must very decisively start and end with a Holy Day, to give a clear focus to the precise time for that Feast. So by God making the Last Great Day a Holy Day ((Leviticus 23:36), God is in effect telling us that the Last Great Day really concludes the Feast of Tabernacles.

Everything God tells us about this "eighth day" in both the Old Testament (i.e. Leviticus 23:36, 39) and the New Testament (i.e. John 7:37) indicates that God Himself treats this Last Great Day as a concluding day for the Feast of Tabernacles. In Leviticus 23 the discussion of the Feast of Unleavened Bread (Leviticus 23:6-8) starts and ends with a Holy Day. And the discussion of the Feast of Tabernacles (Leviticus 23:34-36) likewise starts and ends with a Holy Day, though that happens to be the Last Great Day.

So God wants us to know that the Feast of Tabernacles is seven days long (that was God’s original intention in the days of Adam). And without the Last Great Day God would have made the 7^th Day of Tabernacles a Holy Day, to indicate the conclusion of Tabernacles. But when God after the flood attached an extra day to the end of Tabernacles, God gave this extra day the Holy Day status that would otherwise have gone to the 7^th Day of FoT, to indicate that God views this Last Great Day as the concluding event for the Feast of Tabernacles period.

Now that we have considered 1 Corinthians 15, let’s go on to a look at the last of the annual events in God’s calendar.

While this Holy Day is certainly on a fixed day of the year, it is interesting to note that the actual date (i.e. 22^nd Day of the 7^th Month) is never mentioned in the Bible. It is only identified as "the EIGHTH day", in reference to the Feast of Tabernacles. The dates for Trumpets and for Atonement are clearly stated, but the date for the Last Great Day is never stated; and without knowing the dates for the Feast of Tabernacles it would be impossible to know the correct date for the Last Great Day. God clearly joins the Last Great Day to the Feast of Tabernacles.

The addition of this day to God’s plan is the main influence in converting the almost 100% failure rate before the flood into a very high success rate for the post-flood plan of God. While the human mind in this age since the flood is just as evil as the pre-flood human mind of Genesis 6:5, the addition of this day into God’s plan is predicated on God not calling the vast majority of human beings born since the flood and up to the time of Christ’s second coming. By not being called by God during their first lifetime, it makes it possible for this large group to be given an opportunity at another physical lifetime, when they will have access to God’s truth without having to be called by God. That will represent their first real chance for establishing a right relationship with God, their first real chance for salvation.

And that completes all the annual observances. All of them are in some way connected to God’s plan of salvation for mankind. Specifically, these days reveal the changed details in God’s plan after the flood.

Now let’s consider one more point.

Traditionally we have viewed God’s plan as starting with the Passover. From that perspective it seems logical to view the Day of Trumpets as representing the yet future second coming of Jesus Christ. At the same time we also view the Day of Pentecost as representing the people in the first resurrection.

That has always presented us with something of an anomaly.

The "harvest" of those in the first resurrection (i.e. Pentecost) takes place on the exact same day as the second coming of Jesus Christ (i.e. Trumpets). But in our present calendar configuration Pentecost is a fluctuating date which precedes the Day of Trumpets, which is a fixed date, by more than three months. So the question is:

WHY would God choose to represent one specific day on which two distinct events take place (the 2^nd coming of Jesus Christ and the 1^st resurrection) by two different days in the annual calendar, which two days are over a quarter of a year apart?

Furthermore, while the 2^nd coming and the 1^st resurrection will take place on the same day, technically speaking the return of Jesus Christ PRECEDES the second resurrection, even if only by a few nanoseconds. As Paul explained:

The dead in Christ do not begin "to rise" until after Jesus Christ has "descended from heaven". It is not the first resurrection that triggers the return of Jesus Christ; no, it is the return of Jesus Christ that triggers the first resurrection.

So therefore WHY would God place a date in the annual calendar to represent the first resurrection BEFORE a date that represents the second coming of Jesus Christ? Our traditional understanding here almost implies that the first resurrection should precede the second coming of Jesus Christ, since the Day of Pentecost very obviously precedes the Day of Trumpets.

Do you see the problem?

Furthermore, WHY would God represent one and the same day once by a fixed date (i.e. Trumpets) and once by a constantly fluctuating date (i.e. Pentecost)?

I believe a correct understanding of how the whole plan was developed can answer some of these questions. So let’s look at this from the perspective of seeing the Day of Trumpets as the starting point for the whole plan, rather than viewing the 14^th Day of the 1^st Month (i.e. Passover) as the starting point for God’s plan (which view is partly based on the mistranslation of Revelation 13:8).

Thus:

The dates for Trumpets, Atonement and Tabernacles are based on the original plan God had at the time of Adam, and which plan was in force until the time of the flood. But these three dates were all postponed by six months when the plan was revised.

The dates for Unleavened Bread, Passover, Pentecost and the Last Great Day (in that order) represent the additions in the revised plan which God implemented after the flood, and which plan is in force today. The original three dates were all postponed in order to accommodate these additions in the revised plan.

Here is what this thus looks like:

1) THE DAY OF TRUMPETS: This day represents not the specific day when Jesus Christ WILL return in the future, but the specific day when Jesus Christ DID come to this Earth for the very first time, back in Genesis 1. Yes, in general terms this day can also represent Christ’s first coming about 2,000 years ago and also Christ’s second coming at some point still future. But I do not believe that we are entitled to assume that all three of those occasions must take place on the exact same day of the same month, just so that our prophetic charts can look pretty. And it is a fact that Genesis 1:5 really was the day in the seasonal cycle which is today known as "the Day of Trumpets".

Now perhaps Jesus Christ was born on the day of Trumpets, and perhaps He started His ministry on the Day of Trumpets. But one thing is quite clear: God did not deem it necessary to tell us the specific dates for Christ’s birth and for the start of His ministry. All we can do here is guess, and then the answer depends largely on our own personal bias. But we don’t have to guess for Genesis 1:5.

The fact that God didn’t bother to tell us the precise days for Christ’s birth and the start of His ministry means that God places less importance on those dates than we would be inclined to do. And I believe that Jesus Christ may quite possibly return on a day other than the Day of Trumpets. I have a hard time reconciling a predictable return of Jesus Christ on a Day of Trumpets with the statement that "OF THAT DAY AND HOUR KNOWS NO MAN" (Matthew 24:36). It is hard to imagine Jesus Christ having made this statement when He Himself supposedly all along intended the Day of Trumpets to signify the exact literal day of His second coming.

So the Day of Trumpets represents WHAT will happen (7 Trumpets will be blown BEFORE Jesus Christ returns at the blowing of the 7^th one), without necessarily also representing WHEN Jesus Christ will return at a yet future date. Maybe Jesus Christ will return on a Day of Trumpets? And maybe He will return on a day that is NOT the Day of Trumpets? But IF the Day of Trumpets is to represent the date in the year for Christ’s return, THEN that must also in some way be reconcilable to the Day of Pentecost, which we will look at shortly.

So let’s view the precise date for the Day of Trumpets as representing THE STARTING POINT of God’s plan, rather than this day representing the date when Jesus Christ will at some future time return to this Earth.

2) THE DAY OF ATONEMENT: This day represents the binding or sending away of Satan. I believe that it is illogical on the one hand to claim that Trumpets represents the EXACT day on which Jesus Christ will return; but on the other hand to accept that Atonement doesn’t represent the EXACT day on which Satan will be bound. Either both these days represent the exact dates of fulfillment, or neither of these days represents the exact dates of fulfillment. You can’t have one without the other.

The Book of Revelation makes clear that the seven last plagues will be poured out after Jesus Christ has returned. Now it should be clear that the pouring out of those plagues will take a month or more! When the three demons go out to gather an army from "the kings of the earth and of the whole world" (Revelation 16:14), then that will take some considerable time. How long does it take any superpower today to move a tiny army of a mere million people? I say "a mere million people" because that army at "the battle of that great day of God Almighty" is going to be vastly greater than "a mere million people". Furthermore, the first five plagues aren’t going to be 24-hour jobs either! They too will take considerable time.

Now the point is that Satan will not be bound until after the 7^th plague has been completed! And so IF Jesus Christ supposedly comes back on a literal Day of Trumpets, then there is absolutely no way that the actual binding of Satan could possibly take place anywhere near the Day of Atonement!

So likewise, let’s view the precise date in the calendar for the Day of Atonement as representing THE DATE WHEN GOD ORIGINALLY INTENDED TO BANISH SATAN, rather than representing the date when God will bind Satan at some point in the future.

3) THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES: This Feast represents the rule of Jesus Christ over human beings. For human beings it is surely "a feast" to be ruled over by the great Creator God. All the descriptions in the Bible regarding the time when God will rule over human beings can most aptly be called "feast-like", with God providing in great abundance everything that human beings could possibly need.

This Feast represents any time when God is actually ruling over human beings. God provided a "feast-like" idyllic environment for mankind in the garden in Eden. Had Adam and Eve resisted Satan, then, after God would have bound and banished Satan, their feast-like lifestyle would have continued. The Feast of Tabernacles would have started right then (i.e. if they had NOT eaten the forbidden fruit), because God would have been ruling.

When Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, then the Feast of Tabernacles was ALSO postponed by six months (i.e. by 6,000 years), from originally being in the 1^st month to now being in the 7^th month (i.e. in the 7^th 1000-year period).

Now let’s look at WHY this Feast is seven days long. Once we have the perspective that this Feast looks back to God’s ORIGINAL intentions, then the most likely reason for "seven days" is because God intended these ‘feast-like" conditions for physical human life under the rule of God to continue for the whole 7,000 years God had allotted to this plan. When this Feast was postponed by 6,000 years, then at the same time it was also shortened to be just 1,000 years long.

Now we are in a position to consider the "naive" plan of a God who is love and who is always positive, and who always expects the best, a God who anticipates no evil without some precedent to justify anticipating evil, a God who seeks to meet all the needs of His creatures even before His creatures perceive their own needs (Isaiah 65:24), a God whose mind simply doesn’t work like our perverse human minds work (Isaiah 55:8).

Here is the original plan for mankind:

1) Jesus Christ comes to this Earth and creates man.

2) After some very specific but brief tests for mankind, Satan is permanently bound and banished.

3) Then God rules over human beings in feast-like conditions for 7,000 years, which will be the general testing period for all of mankind.

And that completes the plan. Simple, wasn’t it? God had planned a beautiful, peaceful and extremely exciting and enjoyable existence for the human beings He was going to test with the intention of granting them an immortal existence in His Family. At God’s right hand (i.e. in God’s presence) there are pleasures for evermore (Psalm 16:11), and that is true whenever God is ruling. The joyful existence God had intended for man, had man not eaten the forbidden fruit, is beyond our comprehension. But man did eat, and so now we come to the revised features of God’s plan.

Now in order to put into place the new measures, while retaining the general timeframe of the original plan, these three events were postponed by 6,000 years. In addition, the originally intended 7,000 years for the Feast of Tabernacles were shortened to 1,000 years. This shortening made provision for just over 4,000 years for the new measures to achieve their purposes (i.e. 6,000 - 1656 = 4,000+ years for the plan from after the flood up to the time of Christ’s second coming.). And God gave these annual observances to Israel.

4) THE FEAST OF UNLEAVENED BREAD: This Feast literally took the place of the Feast of Tabernacles in the calendar. The only difference was that now man was required to do something. Now man had to put sins out of his life, pictured by putting leaven out of his life for seven days, and man had to make the commitment to avoid introducing new sins into his life, pictured by not ingesting any leaven for seven days.

But here is the point:

If Israel had been willing to make this commitment to put sins out of their lives, then life would still have been feast-like for Israel. That’s the whole point back in Exodus and in Leviticus.

When God presented the details of this revised plan to Israel in the days of Moses, it was still God’s intention to make Israel (the only people who were being offered this opportunity to de-leaven their lives) "a peculiar treasure unto God ... above all people" (see Exodus 19:5). Even in the Book of Deuteronomy Moses still explained that "you are the children of the LORD your God", and "you are a holy people unto the LORD your God", etc. (see Deuteronomy 14:1-2)

With the expressions "a peculiar treasure unto God" and "above all people" God was saying that He was just going to deal with Israel only, and that all of the people for the first resurrection would be drawn only from Israel. And all these statements regarding God’s view of Israel show that God intended to provide "feast-like" conditions for Israel, provided that Israel would "de-leaven".

Note!

God made the old covenant with Israel, because God thought that by working with one specific group of people, the descendants of an extremely faithful man (i.e. Abraham), God could achieve the relationship which God at the time of Adam had hoped to achieve with man. More attention, more direct intervention in their affairs, being their King, etc. are the things that gave God the hope that Israel might de-leaven their lives.

And when the Israelites worshiped the golden calf, God seriously considered consuming all of them and instead trying the same approach by working with the descendants of Moses. See Exodus 32:10. We know that Moses reasoned with God, and God relented from this intention. And so God continued to try again to work with all of Israel.

But by the 40^th year from the exodus God indicated His recognition of the fact that Israel wasn’t really going to do better than mankind in general. And so God said at that time "o that there were such a heart in them that they would fear Me and keep My commandments always" (Deuteronomy 5:29). God continued to work with Israel for many more centuries before God eventually "divorced" Israel (see Isaiah 50:1; Jeremiah 3:8; etc.).

The key to understanding the placement of the Feast of Unleavened Bread within the annual calendar is to realize that God placed it into the exact location (i.e. 1^st Month, 15^th - 21^st Days) which had originally been intended for the Feast of Tabernacles. But to indicate their willingness to make a commitment to God, God required Israel to de-leaven their homes and to refrain from eating any leaven for the entire period of this Feast.

Now God had come to see that very, very few people would of their own incentive be prepared to de-leaven their lives. That was just as true for Israel as it was for all of mankind before the flood. So God devised the plan to call a few selected people, while at the same time making available the sacrifice of Jesus Christ to blot out the sins of those who were called and then chosen.

5) THE PASSOVER: There are two things to note regarding the Passover. Firstly, the Passover itself is on a fixed, inflexible day of the month (i.e. 14th ). Secondly, the acceptance of this Passover sacrifice by God the Father is on a fluctuating day (i.e. 15^th - 21^st days of the 1^st month). The wavesheaf offering could be brought on any of the 7 Days of the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

It is this fluctuating date for the acceptance of the Passover sacrifice by God the Father that directly links the Passover to the Feast of Pentecost, because this acceptance by God the Father and the date for Pentecost always fluctuate in tandem. No matter what the date of that acceptance is (i.e. the day of the wavesheaf), Pentecost is always exactly 7 weeks later. [As an aside: People who keep Pentecost in any way that breaks this 7-weeks link with God’s acceptance of the Passover during the Seven Days of Unleavened Bread are keeping Pentecost on the wrong day.]

Now the fact that the date of God’s acceptance of the Passover (as represented by the wavesheaf) always fluctuates from one year to the next should once again confirm that God has indeed built some "wiggle room" into His plan. And this "wiggle room" is once again linked specifically to those who make up the Pentecost-harvest.

So here is the point. Technically God the Father could choose to accept the sacrifice as soon as Jesus Christ had died! After Christ had died there wasn’t anything else Christ still had to do. God certainly did not have to wait for Jesus Christ’s resurrection to grant full recognition for the sacrifice Christ had brought for mankind. (Parallel this to when God’s servants die, and God already accepts them as having passed their tests.) On the other hand, God the Father could equally well choose to only formally accept Christ’s sacrifice a few days after Jesus Christ had been resurrected.

With the wavesheaf offering God has shown us that God the Father accepts the sacrifice of Jesus Christ as early as the 1^st Day of Unleavened Bread (as was the case with the very first time the wavesheaf was ever brought, see Leviticus 23:10 - 11 with Joshua 5:11). And Leviticus 23:11 makes clear that it could also be as late as the 7^th Day of Unleavened Bread.. So there isn’t really any connection between the day on which Jesus Christ was resurrected, and the day on which God the Father accepts the sacrifice of Jesus Christ; sometimes it is accepted before Jesus Christ was resurrected, and sometimes it is accepted several days after Jesus Christ was resurrected. The acceptance of that sacrifice is a symbolical act, included to convey some specific information.

And that symbolical act is linked directly to Pentecost.

6) PENTECOST: This Feast represents the 144,000 who make up the first resurrection. Now since that will take place on the exact same day as Jesus Christ’s 2^nd coming, therefore theoretically God could choose to give us some hints regarding Christ’s second coming EITHER with the date of Trumpets OR with the date of Pentecost.

But when we view these annual observances in the sequence I have laid out here, then it should be easy to see that God has used the date for Trumpets to highlight when Jesus Christ FIRST came to this planet Earth, the day with which God’s whole plan for mankind really starts. And then God has used the fluctuating date for Pentecost to tell us that the 2^nd coming is so totally and completely under the control of God the Father that absolutely "no man" can know the day of Jesus Christ’s return, until God is ready to "reveal His secret unto His servants the prophets" (Amos 3:7). And the more I think about this, the less likely I believe it is that Jesus Christ will return either on a literal Day of Pentecost or on a literal Day of Trumpets (sorry if that messes up your charts?). After all, Satan can’t be bound on a literal Day of Atonement either. It just doesn’t fit!

So to make this quite clear: I believe that the fluctuating dates for God’s official acceptance of Christ’s sacrifice and the correspondingly fluctuating dates for Pentecost are meant to tell us that the date for the 1^st resurrection, and therefore also for the 2^nd coming of Christ, is flexible with God. I believe it is foolish for us to believe that we already know that Jesus Christ will return on the Day of Trumpets, whatever year that may be. I believe that all those "servants" who expect Jesus Christ to return on a literal Day of Trumpets (or a literal Day of Pentecost) run the risk of being caught "slumbering" (see Matthew 25:5).

Now let’s look at the last annual day.

7) THE LAST GREAT DAY: As already stated, this day represents the 2^nd resurrection. The fact that this day is simply attached to the Feast of Tabernacles without any particular fanfare, indicates that it is an afterthought, something that was added later to deal with certain problems that had developed. It was added to God’s plan after the flood because of the way things had gone before the flood. And it was added as an expression of God’s enormous mercy for us weak and undependable human beings.

And that is about all that needs to be said here about this particular day.

Now the main point I personally get from the dating of all these annual observances is this:

I believe that it is Satan who wants us to devote our time to trying to figure out the date for Jesus Christ’s return. And any dates that I myself have ever contemplated (because they might look good on some chart?) are just as surely wrong as are any dates that any other people have ever put forward for the 2^nd coming. Without specific divine revelation nobody will ever correctly anticipate the date for Jesus Christ’s return.

But even though we are highly unlikely to ever correctly guess the date for Jesus Christ’s return, there are nevertheless many things about God’s plan of salvation that we can know, because the things that are revealed belong unto us and to our children (Deuteronomy 29:29).

And that concludes the things I wanted to discuss. So now there is just one more point I ask you to consider.

If you are the average reader, then you are quite likely to disagree with many of the points I have mentioned in this article. You very likely disagree with my statements that the sacrifice of Jesus Christ does not apply to people before the flood, right? You very likely also disagree with my explanation that it was NOT God’s original intention that human beings would ever have had to die, right? You perhaps also disagree with my position that it is very unlikely that Jesus Christ will return on a Day of Trumpets? And very possibly you disagree with a number of the other points I have raised in this article?

So here is the point.

YOU very likely believe that I need to show you more proof for why the sacrifice of Jesus Christ should not apply to people before the flood. And that is in spite of you not having a single Scripture, not even one, that would support your position! YOU HAVE NOTHING! All you had was satanic mistranslations of Revelation 13:8 and of 1 Peter 1:20. All you really have is your own bias on this subject.

I, on the other hand, have presented clear proof that God leads the sacrifice of Jesus Christ back to the time of the flood when human society was thrown down by God (Revelation 13:8 and 1 Peter 1:20). So I have presented scriptural proof for my explanation and you don’t have a shred of biblical proof for your position. Yet you believe that I need to present more proof for my position, right? Doesn’t that strike you as odd and illogical?

The only logical way you could possibly disprove my explanation is as follows:

Simply because I have no answer for how God would have dealt with the sins of people before the flood, that does not entitle you to assume that Jesus Christ’s sacrifice must somehow apply to people before the flood, when a clear biblical statement (Revelation 13:8) contradicts such an assumption. My lack of knowing certain answers does not justify your assumptions.

Similarly, you may disagree with my claim that if Adam and Eve had not eaten the forbidden fruit then they would never have needed to die. Yet all you have to support your position is one misapplied Scripture, Hebrews 9:27. While this verse tells us that "it is appointed unto men once to die", this verse in no way tells us WHEN THAT "APPOINTMENT" WAS MADE! The truth is that it was appointed only after Adam and Eve had eaten the forbidden fruit, but death was not their inevitable destiny before they sinned! To support my position I have God’s own statement "in the day that you eat thereof you shall surely die" (Genesis 2:17). I also have Paul’s statement that "by man came death" (I Corinthians 15:21), as well as Paul’s statement that "by one man’s offense death reigned by one" (Romans 5:17). And you have nothing to support your position that it was inevitable that Adam and Eve had to die. So how logical are you being in holding fast to your position?

Similarly, you may still feel that Jesus Christ really must return on a Day of Trumpets. Yet you have no scriptural support of any kind for your position! Without the explanation for the sequence of the annual Feasts and Holy Days that I have provided, it makes no sense at all to have a day that represents the people in the 1^st resurrection (Pentecost) precede the day that supposedly represents the 2^nd coming of Jesus Christ (Trumpets). I can prove that it is impossible to fit the seven last plagues into less than two weeks. Now either both, Trumpets and Atonement, represent the literal dates in the calendar when Christ will return and when Satan will be bound, or neither of these two days represents the literal dates when these things will be fulfilled. Either both are the literal dates or neither one is the literal date. You can’t have one without the other. Yet you would like to see more proof from me before you abandon your position for which you yourself have no scriptural proof of any kind. So how logical is your position?

The above comments are not addressed to anyone who can understand the explanations I have presented in this article. They are directed at the people who disagree, but without having any scriptural support for their own positions.

The above points in fact illustrate how our human minds, about which we have talked so much in this article, tend to work. When we don’t like a particular position, then objective factual evidence is seldom the deciding factor regarding what we will believe. When it comes right down to it, in most cases most people will believe what they want to believe, even when the facts contradict their position. I know, because on some occasions I have also been there.

I also want to make clear that I have not deliberately ignored any Scriptures that might contradict the explanations I have put forward. I have tried to think of the objections people might raise. And I have addressed those Scriptures that I think some people might put forward.

It should also be quite clear that I do not have all the answers. There are things for which I don’t at present have an answer. That’s because at present not everything is totally clear to me either. And no doubt there are some things in this article that I may have to change or modify as I come to a clearer understanding. But none of us should ever be afraid to examine our own foundations. I have no agenda and I have no position to defend other than what I understand to be the truth.

Never be afraid to examine evidence that appears to contradict anything we accept as truth. It is only the truth that can make us truly free (John 8:32). And I don’t fear to face up to any Scripture that someone may throw at me in response to some of the points in this article. And if it turns out that I am wrong, which is always a possibility, then it is my intention to correct whatever I may have presented incorrectly.

However, please understand that I am just as familiar with every Scripture in the Book as you are. So while you may bring a Scripture to my attention that I had not thought of in this particular context, it will never be the case that you can somehow present a Scripture that I had never seen before. If past experience is anything to go by, then I expect a flurry of attempts to refute the things I have presented in this article, because these things do indeed challenge some of the very foundations of what we have always accepted as truth. And most of such attempts to refute the things in this article are likely to be based on emotional responses to this material. Emotional responses are usually shallow and their weaknesses are easy to expose.

So if you have scriptural evidence that I have overlooked, which evidence contradicts some of the information in this article, then let’s have it. But I will obviously scrutinize anything that is presented very, very thoroughly. And on key issues it is quite common to find mistranslations that have been presented to us via the Greek LXX text and/or the Latin Vulgate text, Satan’s most commonly used tools to deceive the whole world as far as the teachings of the Bible are concerned. So consider checking any scriptural evidence you may come up with to contradict these things against these sources before you present it.

And maybe it will turn out that you are right and that on some or other points in this article I was wrong? Ultimately you yourself are the judge for what you will believe. But never be afraid to examine evidence that appears to contradict the things you believe to be true.

Frank W Nelte