Thank you for explaining your position. I don't know why it is, but you and I seem to repeat this routine of objection, followed by clarification, only to find we are generally on the same page. Oh well.
It’s not uncommon to talk past each other in these forums….
The things I give answers to are for the most part, not my own, but the result of being caught up in the spirit into the presence of God and given a task regarding knowledge from Him and the finish of the mystery of God as He declared to His servants the prophets--by His spirit.
With that said-- We are here as a part of God making manifest everything everyone ever believed from before the foundation of the world; then began the creation of all things; and then in the fulness of time, when all is made manifest (leaving no stone upon another), then comes the end and the Judgement.
I am not quite sure of what you mean here….”We are here as a part of God making manifest
everything everyone ever believed from before the foundation of the world”…?
Who is the “everyone” in “everything
everyone ever believed”? And why “from before the foundation of the world”?
In my own studies the term “before the foundation of the world” is completely misunderstood……it doesn’t mean from before the creation of the planet, but “before the foundation of the world of mankind” descended from Adam. It has the meaning of “laying down seed” not creating the planet.
So what God did “from the foundation of the world” was respond to the free willed choices of all his children because in both realms he now had rebellion to deal with. In his wisdom, he chose to use the rebellion as a learning curve for all of his children…..proving that giving them free will was not a mistake, but giving them all the reasons why they needed to learn how to drive it unselfishly. All evil committed is an abuse of free will.
Isn’t this why God originally tried to prevent the humans from partaking of the TKGE? He placed a penalty in front of it that only a fool would ignore! Satan took away the penalty so that it seemed like a good idea to take the forbidden fruit.
God would impart only good things to his children as he always had in heaven, and he would keep evil away from the humans who were mortals. Death would only come through disobedience to one command.
Disobedience = sin…Sin = death.
So what would have happened if the humans had not succumbed to the devil’s temptations? Have you contemplated this?
The original purpose, as all things declared by God--"Before they spring forth I tell you of them”--He told us in the image of Himself in man. In that image, the women came out of the man...as an example of humanity (men and women alike) coming out of Himself. Then came the terms and reasons for doing so. The terms were light and darkness, good and evil, blessing and cursing, making manifest all that was before the foundation of the world--as even in the heavens, just as one of the twelve apostles was a demon (another image), there was one evil among the sons of God.
Yet, this does not explain why there was a TKGE, as well as a “tree of life” there in the garden…..one was life giving…the other was death dealing.
God gave humans the choice, but warned them of the consequences for making the wrong choice…..yet he did not prevent them from making their choices…..neither the humans nor the angels who later decided to side with the devil.
Can we see from the Scriptures why he did that?
The rest is the history of this world...and the reason, He then gave as part of that first image of Himself in man, saying, “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him.” Which is an okay translation for understanding the history of the world--but not so good for understanding the "why" in your question. A very basic translation would be something like "I will make Myself help to be before Me."
The “why” is important too. Making the humans “in his image and likeness” required that they be free willed. Satan could never have taken his path if he did not have the capacity to choose it….nor the humans…they too had the choices before them, and we can see how the devil’s plan was executed. He had plainly observed them very carefully in order to plot his course. He saw Adam’s response to receiving a wife and knew that a mate was what he had been waiting for, since the man had been alone for some time naming all the animals and observing that they all had mates, but he did not….(Gen 2:18-20)
Satan then used the woman to bait the man so that the humans would separate themselves from God, and he could become a god to them. The downside was that now they would die, but he didn’t care…..he would just recruit new ones as he has done down through history. Sinful humans are easy prey.
As for going belly up, it didn't. The plain was to divide the light from the darkness. Meaning to clean up heaven by sweeping Satan's mess aside into a dustpan world, pick out what He considered good and perfect, and destroy the rest--as if it had never existed. Which is to say, nothing that He would call good is actually harmed--because it is all "image"--images conceived in the mind of God, otherwise of no actual substance.
I agree in essence here, but the details again give us a much bigger picture. If we understand what God’s original purpose was for mankind on this planet, we can see from the creation account that he assigned them a task….to “fill the earth” with their children and to “subdue” the earth outside the garden, which he provided as a virtual blueprint of what he wanted the whole planet to look like. He created the model and gave them all the time they needed to complete the task……he designed their bodies well and there was no aging, sickness, disability or death to impeded the process……the “tree of life” was available to guarantee that death would not overtake them as long as they were obedient.
Death was a penalty for disobedience, so if they had not disobeyed they never would have died……and the thousands of years of human life on this planet by now would probably have seen the accomplishment of that first purpose.
This is what God will reinstate….he will restore all of that, once the lessons regarding the value of obedience are settled once and for all time….and in both realms. Enemies of God who have no love for him, and who have no interest in doing his will, cannot expect a place in that arrangement. All enemies will be removed so that God’s will can “be done on earth as it is in heaven”…..the ‘coming’ of God’s Kingdom will accomplish it….so what is God’s Kingdom?
To get back...things just need to run their course. Which means, we all do what we would do according to our origins, whether good or evil, until we have done it all for a testament and witness before the Judgement. This is us being self-evident.
Yes, we will all be caught in the act of being ourselves…..the one God sees…the reader of hearts, not just of minds and of ritualistic actions.
But unfortunately the easiest person on the planet to fool is ourselves and the devil knows it…..he is a manipulator of perceptions and he knows how to tap into our emotions to use them to his own advantage.
At the judgment, “many” are going to wonder how they failed, even though they assumed that what they were practicing was genuine “Christianity”…..Jesus will reject them with a stinging rebuke…..
”I never knew you…get away from me you workers of lawlessness!” (Matt 7:21-23) This is why we need to be students of God’s word, not relying on church “theology” to provide our beliefs…..these are the devil’s most useful tools….just as they were in Jesus‘ day…..his worst enemies were those who claimed to worship the same God.
History repeats because human nature does not change.
