The World and the Word

                                 The Devil's Dilemma

The Bible (KJB) declares the Devil to be very clever but also very stupid. Genesis 3:1; Genesis 3:14. Total evil results in self-destruction. Proverbs 8:36. Total evil clings to certain false systems of ideas that it knows, or should know, cannot be true. It believes that innocence is weak and stupid and deserves to be exploited. It believes that righteousness can only be temporary, that it all can be corrupted, that everyone has his price. Whenever evil people achieve positions of authority, they exempt themselves from having to obey the rules because they consider themselves to be very special people. Titus 1:15.

Even though God throughout human history has consistently defeated the Devil on every one of his false beliefs, total evil persists in adhering to them. Jesus is the Truth. John 14:6. A holy and righteous and innocent God knows everything that is worth knowing, and through the greatest possible expression of Love which became His self-sacrifice and resurrection, He will purge all total evil and sin from His universe and recreate it all to be righteous. John 15:13; I Corinthians 13:8; II Peter 3:9-13.

Jesus took all the sins of all humanity on Himself on the cross because sin weakens humans to the point that the Devil can inject spiritual death, which is total evil, into them. All humans inherited this condition from the fall of Adam and Eve. Psalm 51:5. Evil in humans, in turn, causes humans to sin. Romans 5:12. Jesus did a thorough job and got rid of it all. Humans sin because of their weakness. God knows that humans cannot avoid sin. All through the Bible (KJB), God displayed compassion, or at least tolerance, toward sins of weakness. God to some degree ignored Samson's sins of weakness until he deliberately disobeyed God by getting his hair cut. Humans can also deliberately and willfully sin against God, and that is the practice of evil. Numbers 15:27-31.

The Devil just could not give up his opportunity to attempt to murder God. God knew he would. Human sins of weakness did not nail Jesus to the cross although He bore them all. It was their evil desire to keep their sins and get rid of God that nailed Jesus to the cross. In that evil desire, humans became complicit with the Devil. Acts 4:25-28. And yet, Jesus prayed from the cross that His Father would forgive every evil human that nailed Him there because, being in the evil grip of the Devil, they did not fully realize what they were doing. Luke 23:34.

The World and the Word

                                The Devil's Dilemma

The Devil displayed his absolute contempt and hatred of Jesus when he tempted Him in the desert. Matthew 4:1-11; Luke 4:1-13. Jesus had fasted for forty days and nights, and as a man, had become extremely hungry. The Devil tempted Jesus to turn stone to bread and satisfy His hunger. By this temptation, the Devil revealed his materialist philosophy that the only desires in life that matter happens to be only physical desires. According to this philosophy, spiritual needs do not even exist. Jesus rebuked the Devil by quoting scripture that teaches humans that they need the spiritual life that only God can give even more than they need physical food. Deuteronomy 8:3; Matthew 4:1-4. Millions today demonstrate the influence of evil in their lives because they adhere to the philosophy that only material needs matter and spiritual needs do not exist.

The Devil then took Jesus to a high pinnacle of the temple and tempted Him to attempt suicide. To effect his temptation, the Devil misquoted scripture that states that God would always protect Jesus; that is, until Jesus voluntarily went to the cross. The Devil reasoned that if Jesus threw Himself down, then the Devil would win whether God saved His life or if Jesus killed Himself. In the first place, if God saved Jesus then He would be guilty of the sin of excessive pride. He would be like a person who boasts about his own powers in the face of death, similar to a daredevil. Jesus never used His miraculous powers to put on a show. Jesus always used His powers for the benefit of others. In the second place, if Jesus committed the sin of suicide, then the Devil would succeed in His murder of God. Jesus overcame this temptation when He quoted the scripture that proves that any temptation of God is a terrible evil because it joins with the Devil's attempt to get rid of God. Deuteronomy 6:16; Matthew 4:5-7.

The Devil then took Jesus to a high mountain and showed Him all of the sinful and evil kingdoms of the world that the Devil controlled. Job:1:7. The Devil then told Jesus that he would give Jesus control of all of these realms of excessive pleasures, excessive evil powers, and excessive greed if Jesus would only worship the Devil. In this temptation, total evil revealed its consistent attitude that everything that is pure can be corrupted. This was a direct, evil temptation of God. No doubt, the Devil lied to Jesus because as soon as Jesus had accepted the Devil's temptation, then the Devil would have promptly murdered Jesus on the grounds that Jesus should have known better than to have stepped into the Devil's evil territory. Jesus countered the Devil's temptation by quoting scripture that proves that if one worships and serves God only, then God will provide that person with an eternal physical and spiritual salvation from all of the resultant horrors that come from the practice of sin and evil. When Jesus told the Devil "Get thee hence...," Jesus meant that He would purge all of His creations from the Devil's influence of total evil forever. Deuteronomy 6:13; Deuteronomy 10:20; Matthew 4:8-11; II Peter 3:9-13; Revelation 21:5.

After Jesus defeated the Devil and he left, the angels came to minister to Jesus' physical and spiritual needs. Matthew 4:11. This verse proves that God will provide for the eternal physical and spiritual needs of all who will worship and serve Him. God loves all of His creations with an Almighty Love. God created the living souls and spirits that He puts into every human that He creates in His image, which is the image of Christ, and God can never lose anything He has ever created. Genesis 2:7; Genesis 3:20; Luke 20:38; Romans 11:36; Ecclesiastes 3:14. The perfect human life of God and His loving sacrifice while on the earth represents the eternal salvation of every living human endangered by eternal spiritual death. God has an Infinite Intellect that can create plans that will cause all living humans to return to repentance and faith and the worship and service of Him of their own free will: some by His grace while still alive in the flesh and all others confined to the regions of death by a great worship service as recorded in Revelation 5:11-14. John 5:24; John 5:28-29; I Timothy 6:13; Hebrews 2:9; Hebrews 2:14-15; I John 3:8. The fact that God can cause all living humans to return to repentance and faith in Him of their own free will proves that God's Love can never fail because love by free choice can only be true and real. I Corinthians 13:8. Jesus bore the cross, was buried, descended into Hell, and rose immaculate from the dead to provide for the eternal salvation of every living human that He ever created and loves. Revelation 21:5; Hebrews 2:9; I Timothy 4:10; II Peter 3:9. Who can thwart the will of God?

The World and the Word

                                  The Devil's Dilemma

The Devil had read the scripture that prophesied that the Messiah would become a "worm" in His death. Psalm 22:6. The Devil also knew that the word "worm" in the scriptures symbolized sin and evil itself. Exodus 16:20; Isaiah 66:23-24. The Devil then rightly reasoned that Jesus would take all of the sins and evil of all mankind upon Himself on a cross. The Devil then reasoned that if God allowed Jesus to take all of the sins and evil of all humanity on Himself on a cross, then Jesus would not be able to bear up against the tremendous pressure of all the putrid nastiness of total evil. The Devil wagered that Jesus would succumb and sin, Hell would hold Jesus in its grip, and the Devil would succeed in his attempt to murder God. John 8:44.

Total evil hates innocence. Satan ruined the innocence of Adam and Eve because he hated them. The Devil believes innocence is a weakness. The Devil thought that the innocence of Jesus was His weakness. The Devil wagered that the weakness of the innocence in Jesus would break Him, and He would succumb to evil and sin. So the Devil decided to take what might be his only chance to murder God and have Jesus nailed to a cross. But what the Devil did not know was that he would fall right into God's eternal plan to save all of humanity from sin and evil and eternal death. Luke 19:10; John 12:31-32; John 16:33; I Timothy 6:13; I Timothy 4:10; Revelation 5:11-14; Hebrews 2:9. One of the main ways that total evil displays its hatred of innocence happens when the Devil influences adults to sexually abuse children.

The World and the Word

                        The Devil's Dilemma

Satan's plan has always been that if he could cause the eternal death and separation from God of the living soul and spirit of just one human whom God had created in His image, then the Devil could prove that God's Love is not Almighty in that God could not protect that which He loves. Job 1:11; Job 2:5; Job 2:9. For this reason, the Devil injected spiritual death into Adam and Eve and the rest of humanity with the hope that that evil would eventually overpower the spiritual life that God has put into every human and thereby annul something God creates and loves. When God allowed the Devil to do his worst to Job but save his life, that command became symbolic of God's protection of the good lives of the entire human race. Job 1:12; Job 2:6; Job 2:10. Job's good life symbolized the perfect image of God that He has put into every human. Job 1:8. God's allowance of the Devil to do his worst to Job symbolizes the fact that God must allow the Devil to do his worst to humanity in order to prove that total evil can never cause the Love of God to fail. I Corinthians 13:8; Ecclesiastes 3:14; Genesis 3:20; Luke 20:38. But the Devil's real goal is to find a way to weaken God's Almighty Love to the extent that he can find a way to murder God and take His place. Isaiah 14:12-17.

After listening to Jesus' sermons for a while, The Devil learned that Jesus' special sacrifice would probably be by crucifixion, burial, and resurrection. But this knowledge put the Devil into a terrible dilemma. Should he influence humans to let Jesus go and thereby thwart God's prophecy, or should he influence humans to nail Jesus to a cross and possibly kill Him forever? The Devil's dilemma accounts for why the Sanhedrin waited so long to order the arrest of Jesus. In God's plan before He created the world, He had already determined that the Devil would choose to have Christ crucified, but the Devil did not know this as he passed through time. The Devil only knew that he had a choice to make.

The Devil knew that God had prophesied that Christ would suffer and die and be resurrected in some special way, but the Devil did not know that God had planned it all before He ever created humanity. The Devil knew that Lucifer's rebellion had caused doubt about the Almighty Power of God's Love to enter into His creations. The Devil wagered that this doubt had entered into the Being of God Himself. If this were so, then this doubt would cause God to be uncertain as to whether or not the sacrifice of Christ would be successful. The Devil wagered that if God had this doubt, then that doubt would give the Devil the chance to permanently murder God. But if the Devil had known that God had planned Christ's sacrifice and resurrection before He created the world, then the Devil could have guessed that God had complete confidence that Christ would prevail. I Corinthians 2:7-8.

The Devil reasoned that if he influenced humans to let Jesus go, then he would thwart God's prophecy, and at the same time, he would buy more time in mankind's history to completely and forever ruin some living soul and spirit that God loves. But the Devil remembered that his main goal was to murder God forever. If the Devil let Jesus go, then he might lose his only chance of ever being able to murder God. Both Simon Peter's and Pontius Pilate's attitudes toward Jesus reflected the Devil's dilemma.

The World and the Word

                                   The Devil's Dilemma

From the time that God became born as the baby Jesus in Bethlehem, the Devil sought to murder Him. The Devil immediately influenced king Herod to send soldiers to murder all of the children under two years old in Bethlehem in his attempt to murder Jesus. Matthew 2:16-18.

At that time, the Devil had learned from reading scripture that God would send a Messiah to the world to save humanity from sin and evil. But the Devil did not know exactly what this Messiah would do to accomplish His mission. The Devil learned that His mission had something to do with suffering and death, but he did not know exactly what that would entail. Isaiah 53:1-12; Psalm 22:1-31.

God had planned that His Son would suffer and die on a cross and be resurrected to save humanity from sin and evil "from the foundation of the world." Revelation 13:8. But the Devil, being limited to the passage of time as he dwelt on the earth, did not know this truth because it would only be revealed in the New Testament which had not as yet been written. The Devil did not know the future, so he had to decide what he would do about Jesus as time passed. The Devil did hear Jesus prophesy that He would suffer and die and be resurrected, but he did not know that God had planned it that way before He created humanity. Had he known that, he could have surmised that God's plan would defeat him, and therefore, he would have prevented the death of Jesus. I Corinthians 2:7-8. The Devil did know that Christ would do something very special in order to save humanity. The Devil reasoned that if he could cause a quick and easy death of a baby Jesus, then that would not be special, and he would succeed in preventing the fulfillment of the prophecy in Isaiah 53. If the Devil could influence wicked people to throw Jesus off of a cliff, then that also would not be a special death as prophesied. Luke 4:23-30. If the Devil could entice wicked people to stone Jesus to death, then that also would not be special and would not fit the prophecy. John 10:31. The Devil sought to murder Jesus but avoid the fulfillment of prophecy when he did it.

The New Testament reveals that the Devil suffered a great dilemma as he thought about what he would do about Jesus. At times, the Devil reasoned that he would influence humans to spare the life of Jesus entirely and thus prevent the fulfillment of prophecy that Jesus would suffer and die in a special way. The Lord rebuked Peter for being influenced by the Devil when Peter rebuked the Lord for predicting that He would suffer and die and be resurrected. Matthew 16:21-23. The Devil influenced Pontius Pilate to almost let Jesus go because Pilate knew that Jesus was innocent. John 19:4; John 19:12.

The World and the Word

                                 God's Plan

God has an infinite knowledge of all that is real. God possesses free will, but free will is not knowledge. Free will is a consciousness of possibilities which have only potential reality. Possibilities cannot become knowledge until God chooses the correct number and quality of ideas from His Infinite Set of Good Ideas and adds them together to form a good system that produces useful and healthy results. In this way, God formed the physical and moral laws of His universe.

God gave free will to humans even though it contained a weakness that could cause humans to choose to sin; that is, invent false systems. After the fall of mankind, humans obtained the knowledge of good and evil. Humans became capable of creating good systems, like God, or inventing false systems, like the Devil. This condition happened because when humans sinned, Satan gained the right to inject evil into their beings which continues to this day. Romans 5:12. Evil is the same as spiritual death. Genesis 2:17. Spiritual death results in separation from fellowship with God. Genesis 3:6-13. The Devil planned to make that separation permanent in order to ruin God's Love and prove that He is not Almighty. But God's plan to sacrifice Himself for man's sake defeated the Devil's plan, and His self-sacrifice will restore all of humanity to a future fellowship with Him. Revelation 21:5; Colossians 1:15-23.

Sin is never created. Sin happens to be always an invention comprised of a misuse of God's good ideas. Psalm 99:8; Romans 1:30. Sins are false systems which may produce excessive pleasures or excitement, but they always result in addiction, pain, and suffering. Evil is a type of sin that is always directly destructive. Sometimes, these two types of false systems are combined. False systems result from putting God's good ideas together in an incorrect way, similar to mistakes in arithmetic except that those mistakes can be harmless. When one mentally subtracts all of the good ideas from a false system, one finds that one is left with only the idea of nothing which is itself a good and useful idea. Since all of the ideas that compose a false system can only be good ones, including the idea of nothing, then the falsity of the system must be less than nothing; that is, an absolute nothingness. For this reason, the Bible (KJB) often refers to sin and evil as being vanity which means both excessive pride and absolute emptiness. Isaiah 40:17; Isaiah 41:29.

After God had recovered all of His good ideas that He had put into Lucifer's system, God exiled his nothingness to earth as a totally vain and empty being called Satan. Being less than nothing, Satan could only possess a negative consciousness capable of inventing only false systems comprised of God's stolen, good ideas. Ezekiel 28:13-19. How a negative consciousness could invent anything remains a mystery to positive consciousness, including God's. II Thessalonians 2:7. Lucifer was influenced to rebel against God by negative consciousnesses called devils that somehow emerged from a place under the earth called the bottomless pit. These devils found a way to cast a "shadow of death" over God's creations. Psalm 23:4. God is completely innocent. He had no idea that free will could be used in any other way than to create good systems until Lucifer's rebellion. He had no idea that the bottomless pit and negative consciousnesses could even exist until Lucifer's rebellion. Actually, being less than nothing, negative consciousnesses and the bottomless pit do not exist, at least in any positive way. God still knows absolutely everything that is positive and good, but He could not know about absolute nothingness because it does not exist to be known.

God can only use His free will to create good systems. Humans can use their free will to create good systems or to use false systems invented by the Devil. But God's self-sacrificial Love gained complete victory over all false systems by purging all falsity from all of His creations, including all living humans. Romans 8:18-23; Revelation 21:5. This fact means that when humans create good systems, God saves them for future good rewards, but when humans use the Devil's false systems, then God immediately begins to correct that condition by using various means to purge the falsity from those sinful and evil systems so that He can recreate them to become good systems. Revelation 22:11-12. In God's final judgment, He will cleanse and recover all of His good systems that He has put into His living humans for Him to recreate, and He will purge all evil, false systems within every dead human for Him to cast them into the eternal lake of fire. Revelation 20:5; Revelation 20:11-15; I Corinthians 3:11-15. The Power of God's Almighty Love to separate and purge all sin and evil from all of His creations, and His reconciliation with all of His recreated, living humans constitutes the predestination in His plan. Revelation 22:11-12; Colossians 1:15-23; Revelation 21:1-5; John 5:28-29; I Timothy 6:13.

The World and the Word

                                   God's Plan

God planned every detail of His history of the human race in His Infinite Mind before He ever created its physical reality. Acts 15:18; Isaiah 48:5; Hebrews 4:3. In His mental plan, God allowed humans to choose of their own free will to sin and commit evil or to do good. God preserved the good for rewards, and He countered every sin and evil in order to turn every false system into a good one. God ultimately won His war against sin and evil, first in His mental plan and then in His created physical reality. Christ took the sins and evil of all mankind upon Himself on a cruel cross, descended into a fiery Hell, and rose victorious over all sins, evil, and spiritual death to gain a higher and a lesser form of salvation for every living human He had ever created. Revelation 21:5; Ecclesiastes 3:14; Genesis 3:20; Luke 20:38; I Corinthians 15:20-28.

Because God planned the entire physical history of humanity in His Mind before He created it, He was able to give prophesies in His Word about future events in order to show that His Word is true. But as time passes from moment to moment in man's history, God also creates physical reality as He goes. Isaiah 48:5-7. Every human who hears the gospel and decides to become saved by grace actually decided it in God's mental plan before the world began. Hebrews 4:3; John 2:24-25; John 6:64-65; II Timothy 1:9. Because God has a Perfect Mind and an Infinite Intellect, He was able to create a plan whereby He could cause all the rest of humanity not saved by grace to accept His lesser form of salvation of their own free will. Psalm 147:5; Ecclesiastes 3:14; Revelation 21:5. All living humans on the earth and all living humans under the earth confined to the regions of death will accept Christ's lesser form of salvation of their own free will. Revelation 5:11-14; John 5:28-29; I Timothy 6:13; Psalm 107:10-15.

Hebrews 2:14-15 clearly teaches that Jesus died on the cross to defeat the Devil and all the powers of spiritual death, not living humans. Ecclesiastes 3:14 clearly teaches that God can never lose anything He has ever created, and He created all living humans. Revelation 21:5 clearly teaches that God will make all things new, which must include all living humans. Living humans in a lake of fire would not be recreated and would be lost from God forever. I Timothy 4:10 clearly teaches that God is the Savior of all humans, especially those who become saved by grace. Revelation 20:5 clearly teaches that God will raise all living humans from the dead. Revelation 20:11-15 clearly teaches that Christ will cast only the spiritual dead into the lake of fire, not living humans. Many other scriptures teach that God will save all living humans that He created and loves. Genesis 3:20, Luke 20:38, Revelation 5:11-14, I Corinthians 15:20-28, Colossians 1:15-23. I John 3:8, John 5:28-29, Isaiah 45:20-25 indicate just a few of these scriptures.

The World and the Word

                                           God's Plan

God's ability to turn all false systems to good ones, and His ability to cleanse and save all fallen humans derives from His greatest expression of Love which is His self-sacrifice, burial, descent into Hell, and His immaculate resurrection from the dead. John 15:13; I Corinthians 15:1-4; I Corinthians 3:11-15. Jesus shed His blood and water on the cross to cleanse and save from sin and evil all who would repent and believe in Him while still alive in the flesh. John 5:24; Matthew 26:28; John 13:2-15. All of the sin offerings of the Old Testament symbolizes God's salvation by His grace.

The Spirit of Christ descended into Hell to leave behind there all of the sins and evil of the rest of humanity that He bore on the cross. His victory over all sin and evil has been proven by the fact that He rose immaculate from the dead. Psalm 16:10; Acts 2:27. Christ descended into Hell, which includes all of the regions of death, to preach the gospel to all lost sinners confined there, and He also preached the gospel to all of the Old Testament saints saved by grace who were confined at that time to Paradise located next to Hell. All of them believed in Him, and He translated all the Old Testament saints and Paradise itself to Heaven. I Peter 3:18-21; Ephesians 4:8-10; Luke 19:10.

But just as salvation by grace cannot be completed until the Rapture of the Church, Christ will complete His lesser form of salvation of all living humans confined to the regions of death when He appears to them in a great worship service as recorded in Revelation 5:11-14. At that time, they will all completely repent and believe in the Lamb of their own free will. The fact that they worship Christ as the Lamb can only mean that they recognize that He has the power to save them. God's Infinite Intellect happens to be fully capable of devising a plan that will cause all lost, but living humans to repent and believe in His power to save of their own free will. God does nothing halfway. Since Christ came "to seek and to save that which was lost," then He will save all lost, living humans that He creates and loves. Luke 19:10.

When all within the regions of death repent and believe, then Christ will use His fiery wrath against evil to dissolve their systems and separate their cleansed living souls and spirits for Him to recreate with new bodies to inhabit His recreated earth from their dead and evil natures that He will cast into the eternal lake of fire. I Corinthians 3:11-15; Psalm 75:3; II Peter 3:10-13. All of the Old Testament burnt offerings, starting with that of Noah's, symbolizes God's lesser form of salvation for all lost but living humans confined to the regions of death. Genesis 8:20-21; Leviticus 5:10.

But the self-sacrifice of Christ could only have been effective because He rose immaculate from the dead having obtained complete and absolute victory over all sin, evil and spiritual death. He had to come back alive to make His self-sacrifice work. Revelation 1:18; John 16:33. Jesus' victory over the world and all evil had to be absolute and complete because He does nothing halfway. A Living Christ has all power to cause every living soul and spirit that He ever created to repent and believe of their own free will. Revelation 21:5. No verse in the Bible (KJB) states that physical death can thwart the Will of God. John 11:25; II Peter 3:9. Since Christ has "abolished death" and will "quicken all things;" that is, cast the first death into the second death, then this fact can only mean that He will save all living humans forever. II Timothy 1:10; I Timothy 6:13; Genesis 3:20; Luke 20:38; Revelation 21:5; Ecclesiastes 3:14.

The World and the Word

                                        God's Plan

The Devil has no ability to create anything. Only God can create. Satan invents sinful and evil systems by misusing God's good ideas. Psalm 99:8; Proverbs 8:12; Ecclesiastes 7:29; Romans 1:30. The Devil has been quite clever and witty in that he has invented false systems that provide excessive pride, excessive pleasure and excitement, but they all result in addiction, suffering, and destruction. The Devil believes that his sinful inventions can eventually annul a part of God's creation which is the living nature of humans. The Devil thinks that he can prove that God's Love is not Almighty which will give him the opportunity to eventually murder God and take His place. Isaiah 14:12-17.

One of the great themes of the Bible (KJB) centers on God's constant ability to take control of false systems, eliminate all of the sin and evil in them, and recreate them to be wholly good systems. Judah's sin with Tamar that produced an ancestor of Jesus, and David's sin with Bathsheba that also produced an ancestor of Jesus are two good examples. The story of Joseph and his brothers is another good example. God's complete confidence in the Almighty Power of His Love constitutes the essence of predestination.

It matters not in the long run whether humans choose to sin or to do good. God is still in control. God can always reward, and God can always correct. God uses various means to eliminate sin and evil from false systems and recreate them to be good systems. God will punish believers to correct them. Hebrews 12:5-14. God also directly fights against evil. God has sometimes eliminated whole groups of evil people in order to shorten His work on the earth. Romans 9:28. God used the world wide flood, the fiery destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the warriors of the Israeli army to eliminate large groups of evil people from His world. If God had allowed huge amounts of evil to persist in His world, then the history of God's salvation of humanity would have taken much longer to accomplish. God decided to shorten the history of mankind in order to eliminate all of the additional suffering that a long history would have caused. But God's destruction of large groups of evil people does not mean that He has given up on saving His living image of Himself that He has put into every one of them.

Christ will visit them all confined to the regions of death, preach the gospel to them, and cause all of their living souls and spirits to repent and believe of their own free will. In the end of the world, Christ will cause all unbelievers on the earth, under the earth, and in the sea to repent and believe simply by the appearance of His tremendous Majesty and the Love He has for them. Revelation 5:11-14. Christ will then use His fiery wrath against evil to dissolve their systems, cleanse them of all sin and evil, resurrect them and recreate them to live on His recreated earth. I Corinthians 3:11-15; I Peter 3:18-21; Psalm 75:3; II Peter 3:9-13; Isaiah 45:20-25; Revelation 20:5; Revelation 21:1-5; Revelation 22:11-12.

The World and the Word

                                 God's Plan

God has a plan to save the entire human race from spiritual death caused by sin and evil. Genesis 3:20; Luke 20:38; I Corinthians 15:20-28; John 5:28-29; Revelation 5:11-14; Isaiah 45:20-25; Revelation 20:5; I Timothy 6:13; II Timothy 4:1; I Timothy 4:10. The Devil planned to destroy God's plan. Job 2:9. Job represents the entire human race that the Devil seeks to completely destroy. The Devil tempted Job's living spirit that God created to curse God and become completely ruined and lost in spiritual death forever. But God commanded Satan twice that he could do his worst to Job, but Satan could not take his life. Job 1:12; Job 2:6. These verses symbolize the fact that God will allow the Devil to do his worst to humans in order to prove that His Love cannot fail, but God will never allow the Devil to permanently destroy any living human. God can never lose anything He has ever created including His image of Himself that He has ever and will ever put into every human. Ecclesiastes 3:14; Psalm 111:7-8; Luke 20:38; Romans 11:36; Psalm 36:6. The Devil plans to so completely ruin the righteous image of God in humans that he will be able to annul it and cause its spiritual death to last forever in a burning lake of fire. In this way, the Devil could prove that God's Love for His creations could fail. But God's Love never fails. I Corinthians 13:8. The book of Job reveals Satan's plan for the human race. Job 1:11; Job 2:4-5. But Job also reveals God's plan for the entire human race. Job 1:12; Job 2:6.

Because God knows that He can always defeat the Devil at his own game, He therefore has planned every detail of the history of the human race. Acts 15:18; Isaiah 42:9. At the same time, God, in every moment of time creates new ways to defeat every challenge of the Devil to His Omnipotent Power. Isaiah 48:5-7.

The Devil injected evil, which is spiritual death, into every human because of sin. Romans 5:12; Romans 7:15-23. A weakness in free will causes sin which causes eternal death which, in turn, causes more sin. God created free will which causes the Devil to believe that he can use the weakness in free will to eventually completely destroy God. John 8:44. Every time a human sins that strengthens the evil inside of him, and the strengthened evil causes humans to commit more sins. The Devil counts on evil becoming so strong in humans that it overpowers the living part of humans to the extent that it causes the eternal deaths of at least some living humans. But Jesus came to the world to save all living humans from eternal death. Romans 7:24-25; Hebrews 2:9; John 12:47-48; John 6:33; I Timothy 4:10. Jesus came to the world to destroy the Devil and all of his evil works, not living humans whom He creates and loves. Hebrew 2:14-15; John 6:33; I John 3:8; I Corinthians 15:26; John 1:29; John 11:25. Christ will destroy the first death by casting it into the second death which is the lake of fire. Revelation 20:11-15; Revelation 21:1. Christ will destroy the first death in order to save all living humans. Luke 20:38; Genesis 3:20. Christ will resurrect and recreate all living humans confined to the regions of death upon their repentance and faith in Him as the Lamb of God. Revelation 5:11-14; Revelation 20:5; John 5:28-29; I Timothy 6:13; Revelation 21:5.

God causes every human to do good works because of His righteousness that He puts into them when He creates them, and He also allows every human to sin, and even commit evil acts, because of the influence of evil that the Devil injects into them. This condition is free will. Genesis 2:16-17. But regardless of whether individual humans choose to do good or choose to sin, God still holds complete control of the entire history of the human race, and He knows that He can recover from the fall and recreate all that He created in the first place. This condition is predestination. Revelation 21:1-5; Romans 11:36; Romans 8:18-23; Colossians 1:15-23.

The World and the Word

                                          God's Plan

One of the greatest controversies that has divided the Christian Churches into various denominations happens to be the question of free will versus predestination. According to Ephesians 1:4-5, Acts 15:18, and John 10:27-28, Christ knew who all of His sheep saved by grace would be before He created the world. Foreknowledge has to be the same as predestination. For these reasons, some denominations have adopted the doctrine that God has chosen some humans to be saved by grace, and He has condemned all others to be lost from His salvation forever. According to this doctrine, free will does not exist.

Yet, in Genesis 2:16-17, God definitely gave free will to humans when He created them so that they could choose to eat or not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If God had predestined Adam and Eve to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, then God, not Satan, would be responsible for the sin and evil within the human race, and that cannot be. God is absolutely Holy. I Peter 1:16; Isaiah 57:15. Satan would also not be responsible because he too would have been predestined to tempt Eve. According to John 5:24 and John 6:40, Jesus taught that all humans who hear His gospel must believe of their own free will in order to be saved by grace. In Hebrews 4:3, the word "if" clearly indicates that a human must freely choose to become saved by grace even though that same verse states that God has finished all of His works "from the foundation of the world."

But this seeming contradiction actually denotes a paradox that can be explained. If Adam and Eve had chosen not to eat of the forbidden fruit, then God had a complete plan for the entire human race that would have been far different from its present history. God waited for Adam and Eve to choose. When they did choose to eat the forbidden fruit, then God had another complete plan for how to save the entire human race, some by His grace and all others with a lesser form of salvation. Acts 15:18; Romans 11:36. God remains Omniscient because He knew every detail of both plans.