Posted by Ben Curran on June 21, 2017 at 10:27:14:
I must now try to describe what is possibly God's vast plan for creation, while struggling to both comprehend it myself, and to believe that He has chosen me to put these pieces of information together. It goes, as far as I can see, something like this.
At the time of the 'Big Bang', which scientists theorize as the moment at which the first physical matter appeared in the Universe (and which I, as a Christian, would see as the moment at which God moved his creation from the purely spiritual into the realm of the physical as well), God had a plan. It seems to me that from that moment He had a plan as to why He chose to create physical matter. This plan had both a spiritual ('in His image') and a physical dimension. God has always existed in the spiritual realm (Genesis 1:1) and He chose to expand into the realm of the physical. He did this by triggering the Big Bang and starting a process of guided evolution. This process resulted in the first simple physical elements (hydrogen and helium) gradually, very gradually, evolving into advanced Primates with consciousness (chimpanzees and gorillas and so on). This process required vast amounts of time, but this was neither here nor there to God, who exists outside of time.
So God engineered animals with consciousness out of the simplest of physical molecules. What use were these animals to Him?
Well, by briefly stepping into the physical world at this stage He could create a creature who had a spiritual body (in His own image) which was housed in a slightly modified version of a physical body which He had already created. To this new creature, Man, He gave free will.
To what end was this spiritual/physical conscious being with free will created?
The answer to that question, it seems to me, lies in the life and work of Jesus. God set these new creations free in a physical world which He had created together with a set of physical and spiritual laws. Individual men's free will, operating within these laws, would result in men learning from the consequences of their actions. At the same time God sent into this 'free-for-all' some prophets, who gave men an idea of what God expected from them.
So those men and women who chose, of their own free will, to listen to the prophets, had two sources of learning which acted simultaneously in their lives. One source of learning was seeing how their choices played out within the laws which God had instituted, and the second source was the information which the prophets gave them. The second source helped them to make sense of the first.
Once the above set-up had been operating for long enough to produce a significant minority of human beings who had proven their desire to live as God wished them to, but were finding it impossible to do so because of the traps laid for them by Satan, God sent Jesus into the world. Jesus came to rescue us (the minority who were the potential Christians) from this impossible situation. He defeated Satan on the cross, and brought us the Holy Spirit who would give us the power to defeat Satan also, provided we continued to use our free will to seek to obey the laws of God.
It seems to me that at least one of God's purposes from the beginning of creation is now coming into view. He has created the world of the spirit. He has created the world of physical matter. He has brought these two worlds together in the form of Man. He has given Man free will and has placed him in a physical envelope until a significant minority of men and women have chosen to follow Jesus to the end. And in doing this He has acquired a physical body (in Jesus) and a family to help Him run the Universe.
And it seems, as Dr Janson has been charged by Him to bring to our attention, that He is now going to stop sustaining the present physical envelope and replace it with something totally new. (See Dr Janson's explanation of why God has no intention of allowing us to modify His creation, and also her comments on the significance of the appearance of the Revelation 12 'Great Sign in the Heavens' on September 23rd of this year). God the Father is about to bring about the general fusion (or merging) of the spiritual and physical worlds (which merging He has already accomplished in Jesus the Son) in the form of the Kingdom of God.
I just hope that I am getting something right in formulating this theoretical idea of what has been going on since the Big Bang. The last thing I want to do is to say anything which runs clearly counter to Scripture. If anybody has evidence that I am contradicting Scripture, will they please present this evidence to me?
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(Part 3 to follow)