There are some things that have worried and perplexed church-going people for centuries. For example. Why does God remain silent? Why are prayers ineffective? Why does He not interfere in men’s affairs? Why does He not prevent evil? Why does He not punish evil doers? How does predestination work? Are people saved by faith or works? I am going to try to answer all these question in this article. I will attempt to explain the reason for our existence as revealed by the Bible. I will also try to reveal the mind and purpose of God from the same source and explain His two plans of salvation. The Bible records that both Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit and they eventually died. The fruit contained drugs which had several effects on them both. Their knowledge was increased because their eyes were opened and they realised that they were naked. They became mortal and they became selfish. So the fruit contained a mind-altering drug, a slow acting poison that made them mortal and it changed their DNA structure to produce the “selfish gene” (a description invented by atheist Richard Dawkins). This selfish gene and the mortality would be passed on to all their offspring right up to the present time. These changes were not a punishment imposed upon the pair by God. They were the natural consequences of eating a drugged substance. God did punish them by imposing pain in childbirth upon Eve and hard unfruitful labour upon Adam. The punishments were designed to show them that their actions had caused pain to God and had made His work unfruitful. God’s purpose in creating mankind was to produce a race of people willingly obedient to His word. He would then give eternal life to this race of people and dwell with them on the earth. This purpose has been delayed because of the sin of the original pair in the Garden of Eden. Sin may be defined as “the failure to love God and neighbour”. The proof that we love God is if we obey His commands and if we obey those commands (which deal with the fair treatment of other people) then we love our neighbour. The two go together. Ignorance of God is also sin because we can’t love or obey what we don’t know. The selfishness which is a part of every one of us is what theologians have called “original sin”. Some seem to think that we all bear the guilt of Adam’s sin. This is rubbish. We are not guilty of Adam’s sin but we do indeed suffer the results of it. The inherent selfishness in our bodies is “sinful human flesh” and it alienates us from God. We are all, then, classified as “sinners” by God and are doomed to die. In fact it is necessary for all of us to die to destroy the selfish gene within us all. This selfish gene is what is known as ‘the devil’ in scriptural terms. So Christ destroyed the devil within himself by his death. After the disobedience of the first human pair God could have destroyed them and started again with a new pair. But he did not destroy them. He allowed them to procreate and bring about the human race as we see it today together with all its imperfections. After the flood God gradually reduced the lifespan of all humans to a maximum of 120 years but He apparently did not want everybody to die solely from old age. So He introduced many and varied ways of bringing about their death. Old age, epidemics and accidents were just a few ways of accomplished this end. There are also earthquakes and volcanic eruption and tidal waves and stillbirths, etc. This great variety of ways to die ensures that no one knows just how or when he will lose his life. In the light of this it is wrong to say that God has given us life. It is more accurate to say that God has lent us life for a relatively short time to see if we can overcome our inherent selfishness and treat our neighbours fairly. God has thrown us in at the deep end to see which ones of us can rise above our nature. Even the most primitive people know the difference between right and wrong because we all have a conscience which will either justify or condemn us on the day of judgement. In the Old Testament the word ‘heaven’ generally means ‘the sky’ but in prophecy it often has a symbolic meaning. It means ‘the place where the seat of government is located’ and the ‘earth’ means ‘the common people’ or subjects of that government. Thus God, being the supreme ruler of the universe, dwells in heaven somewhere, and on earth the various kings and governments also inhabit their local ‘heaven’. In Paul’s day the seat of government was in Rome so when he wrote that the gospel had been ‘preached to every creature which is under heaven’, he did not mean that it had been preached in Japan or on the American continent, he meant that it had only been preached throughout the Roman Empire. Almost one third of the Bible is devoted to prophecy but I am not going to delve into it in this article except to say that Christ has promised to return to this earth and set up a kingdom here with its headquarters in Jerusalem. To help with the government of this kingdom certain men and women have been chosen to rule with Christ. These people are called ‘saints’ and they were predestined to be called to this honour since before the foundation of the earth. This is the extent of predestination in the Bible. After the call was answered, the saints had the free will to remain faithful to their calling or not as they chose. There is no predestination for sinners. We all have freewill. The saints were each given the Holy Spirit which taught them all truth and given at least one supernatural gift. The Holy Spirit was passed on to saints by the laying on of hands by one of the apostles. The call began when Christ started teaching but then ceased with the death of the last apostle because there was no one left to pass on the Holy Spirit. The church quickly became corrupt as the apostles predicted and there has been no true church since. The whole world is now in the darkness of ignorance and will remain so until the return of Christ. The saints who have remained faithful unto death will be resurrected immortal at the return of Christ and be rewarded with positions of authority in the kingdom according to their works. Those saints who have fallen away from the faith have had their names removed from the book of life, the Holy Spirit has been taken away from them and they will not be raised at the return of Christ. It is predicted that the prophet Elijah will return to Israel to preach repentance to the Jews before the return of Christ. There are indications that a new generation of saints will receive the call at that time. Until that happens we sinners have been left to repent of our evil ways and follow the dictates of our conscience to treat our neighbours fairly. If we can do this then we will receive a favourable judgement at the return of Christ and our names entered into the book of life. At the end of the millennium all the sinners will be resurrected and those whose names are not found in the book of life will be thrown into the lake of fire, which is the second death. Now the saints will be saved by faith (which produces works) but sinners who may have no faith will be saved (or otherwise) by works. So there are two different plans for salvation for two different classes of people. No one can become a saint unless they are called by God. It does not depend on man’s desire or effort but on God’s mercy. Now, why does God not answer prayers? It is because God doesn’t listen to sinners. Neither does he communicate with them. I have witnessed a whole congregation pray for the recovery of a sick woman with no response from God. God does not interfere or prevent sin because everybody is going to be judged by Christ at his return. It does not matter whether a person lives a long or short time in this life. God knows the mind of man and will judge fairly. This is a time of probation and opportunity. To get things in perspective, we have to look at things from God’s point of view. We have no rights before God. He chooses who He wants for honour or destruction. Compared with the creation of the universe the nations are as a drop in the bucket. Now the church-going people have remained in ignorance for nearly 2000 years because they have assumed that they, too, are saints and that the New Testament refers to them. They have closed their eyes to the fact that there are no Spirit gifts available today. This alone should have told them something. Those money-grabbing fakes who claim the gift of healing should go and empty the hospitals or shut up. In trying to be brief I have perhaps not explained things very well but I can elaborate if requested. Adam.
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