Who cares what I believe? I do!  And each of us should care about the status of what we do or do not believe. I would make here a big distinction.  I not only believe IN God, but I BELIEVE God. There is an enormous leap from the one belief to the other. (James 2:19) To believe in God simply means that I trust that He exists. But to believe Him means a life commitment to searching His Word, applying it to personal development, and finding peace and strength through a satisfactory answer for everything going on around me.The ONLY source for that kind of belief is His Word -- and BELIEVING His Word. 

 

What I don't believe is that my beliefs need to be codified into a statement of facts that is somehow approved or formulated by others -- or even joined in by them. That, then, becomes what people call "creeds." They are worse than useless! As the Apostle Paul admonished -- "Let every man be persuaded in his own mind."  (Romans 14:5)  I, too, admonish that.

 

The word "creed" (belief) comes from the first-person-singular form of a Latin verb. "Credo" means "I believe." It is the first word in the official Latin doctrinal statement of the Roman church. It is followed by a list of "mandatory" positions on a number of subjects. Other creeds have similar statements.  But belief has to be PERSONAL, not institutional.  It is NOT that it is personally created!  It isn't.  But it has to be personally found, studied, defined, accepted, and applied. And it MUST come exclusively from the Bible -- not from my preferences nor the dictates of others.

 

For instance, the best known "creed" begins, "I believe in one God, Creator of heaven and earth."  Sounds just fine!  But the statement is unclear. The people who adhere to this "creed" believe in one God who is really three God-persons in one -- "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" -- each being separate (but not separate) and equal.  I DON'T believe that!  It is one of the most misleading errors ever foisted upon Christians.  It is widely and strongly contradicted by a host of Scriptures.  It is supported by virtually no Scripture (when rightly understood).  Its most dangerous component is that it defies that Jesus could DIE for us.  God CANNOT DIE!  And without Jesus' ransom-sacrificial death, mankind would be confined to dying forever.  (More on that later.)  How unfortunate that many turn a deaf ear when they hear an anti-trinitarian belief!  It seems that all reason departs. What a master-stroke of the devil.  If we won't listen and question, how can we learn?

 

 

Single items of belief are not so important as the total picture resulting from a collection of smaller beliefs.  We frequently refer to the total picture as "The Gospel."  But that, too, is ill-defined in so many minds.  The Apostle Paul (Galatians 3:8, 29; Genesis 12:3) defines the Gospel as that which was first preached unto Abraham -- that in Abraham's seed, all the families of the earth would be blessed.  That is a definition of "Gospel" almost never heard!  But its meaning is reflected in that part of the Lord's prayer which asks for God's Kingdom to come so that His will can be done IN EARTH as well as in heaven.  And     yet, how many people really believe in an earthly paradise to come?  Too many of those associated with "Christianity" have been duped into thinking that humans will either go to heaven or eternal torment, and that the earth will be burned up.  What a travesty of understanding!  What has happened to the Gospel?  Where has it gone?

 

 

THE GLORIOUS BELIEF

 

Please let me share the truly "good news." It is what I believe, and what I would love to share and commend to all who hunger for something good, reasonable, and magnificent beyond our imaginations!  I will simply tell it as a story (with no particular effort to support its points. That would turn it into a book-length treatise!  But YOU should insist on Biblical documentation of any of it that appeals to you.)

 

 

IN THE BEGINNING

 

For God, of course, there never was a beginning.  He has always been -- a concept which the human mind cannot really understand!  But the alternative to it would also cause new and different problems of understanding.  There are simply SOME things humans cannot understand!  (Yes, I know!  That really deflates our egos!  But some day we must learn to acknowledge that we humans are at the bottom of the intelligent-being ladder.)

 

So, what I mean by "in the beginning" is that my story begins when there was no physical or life creation anywhere. There was no universe. There was only God and space.  In other words, I'm going to begin with the beginning of His creative activities.  And God did not create because He NEEDED something!  He didn't!  He is all-sufficient in Himself -- another human-reasoning defying concept!  But, apparently, there came a time when His character attributes (Wisdom, Power, Love, and Justice) decided that a creation of visible "things" (a universe) and of living beings (life) was the thing to do.  The non-physical living beings would come first; then would come the physical universe; then would come unintelligent animal life, and, finally, human beings.

 

But NO!  Human beings would NOT be the final link in the chain of living creatures!  The next link in the chain would be the creation of beings JUST LIKE GOD HIMSELF -- beings who would have life in themselves, relying on nothing (including God's permission) to sustain eternal existence.  In Scripture, these beings are called a "NEW CREATION."  And, unlike any other living-being creation, this New Creation would be made FROM some human beings!  (More on that later.)

But let's back up a little in time, previous to that "beginning" of creation -- "before the 

foundation of the earth" -- or, for that matter, before the foundation or formation of 

anything (including "spirit beings" which we usually call "angels").

 

 

THE ULTIMATE OBJECTIVE --

FIRST CONCEIVED, BUT LAST REALIZED

 

Before God created anything, He had the entire plan for creation planned to perfection.  He planned the sequence of things and the moral philosophies involved; and He made provisions for all the things that could "seem" to go wrong.  There was no room for, nor any possibility of, any surprises!  God never does have a "Plan B."  Plan A always works.  "The Divine Plan of the Ages" is so magnificent in its details that it could have come from no one except THE God, Himself.  To understand even its basics is to fall in love with the Creator and to trust Him for everything past, present, and future.

 

Apparently God's first priority -- and His ultimate objective in creation -- was to make for Himself an intimate personal family who would communicate with Him on His own level.  They would "sit around His table" so to speak.  They would be like Him in nature -- "immortal" -- meaning that their existence would be impossible to terminate.  ALL other creatures are "mortal."  Mortal does not mean that they will die!  It means that they can live eternally only with God's permission and with sustenance from outside of     their organisms.  (This is why the Bible never mentions an "immortal soul."  We don't have such a thing!)

 

These New Creatures would be like Him in character, also.  Not only would they think like Him, but they would defer to His Will always and in everything for eternity because they would understand WHY His ways are best, and they would -- in total free will -- never have variance with Him.  They would be as close to the likeness of God as it is possible to be without actually being Him!  The whole idea of such a creation is so grand as to make it nearly inconceivable.  And to achieve the reality of such a creation was going to take all of the PRIOR steps of creation to make it work.  Thus this "New Creation" was the FIRST thing God intended when He designed to create, but the LAST thing He would finally realize by the process.

 

So, thus creation began.  God DIRECTLY created only one thing -- one being.  (John 1:3, 10 and Revelation 3:14)  That being was SO MAGNIFICENT that he had incorporated into him all of God's plans and creative powers.  In Scripture he is called "The Logos" -- a Greek word which, while it is translated "The Word," often has a much larger meaning. 

 

"Logos" is a word we incorporate into English in words like bioLOGY, cosmoLOGY, geoLOGY, etc.  "Logos" means the TOTALLY COMPLETE information on a subject.  And the creation of the Logos by God made a creature which, indeed, had such a complete imbibing of God's plans and spirit that the Logos could be assigned the great task and honor of creating EVERYTHING ELSE that has been created -- as the Apostle John makes clear in the first chapter of his Gospel.  But the Logos was mortal.

This "Logos" (as we shall soon see) was later to become "the man Christ Jesus" who would save the very world he created when he had been the Logos.

 

And so it happened. The Logos first made the spirit beings we usually call "angels."   Working with these spirit beings, he made the physical universe -- a part of which was this planet upon which we dwell.

 

It is important here to realize that the earth and its people are the first and only physical intelligent-being arrangement in the universe. It was planned that way because, in the end, God will be able to use the lessons of earth's (man's) history as a teaching tool for any current and every subsequent creation of intelligent beings in His universe.  Earth's horrors with evil will never happen again ANYWHERE.  God planned that earth would be the only deviation from peace EVER, and would serve eternally as an instructive history for any subsequent creations.  Physical beings had to start SOMEWHERE!  And WE are the "somewhere."  God has encapsulated evil to one location (earth) and to one relatively brief period of time -- 7000 years.

 

 

THE PERMISSION OF EVIL

 

For all of the ages of man's past history, the one philosophical question, which has been probably the most important in our forming an understanding of God, is something like, "If there is a God, why doesn't he do something to stop the pain and suffering of His creatures?  Why does He let it go on and on?  Why did He even let it start?  Is there something wrong with Him?"  Few have ever had an answer to that.  But Scripture does.

 

When God decided to create intelligent beings, He faced an initial decision of great consequence.  He COULD HAVE made "intelligent beings" to be programmed like robots so that there would be no possibility of their doing anything wrong.  But that would simply be a creation of machines.  (We might well question if those would be "intelligent beings!"  They would truly only be drones.)  God respects individuality. God respects choice within reasonable limits.  God "IS LOVE."  And love is, among     other things, an emotion.  A machine -- a robot -- does not and cannot have emotion. It cannot make decisions except those programmed into it.  It cannot have or give love. It is sterile in mind.  It cannot be like its Creator.  In other words, there would, in God's sight, be no point in creating beings who were not free moral agents.  So He didn't.

 

But the decision to make His intelligent creation free and reasoning made it necessary to have a way of teaching them what IS right and the CONSEQUENCES of not doing right.  Since the only ways to learn are observation, instruction, and experience, God was limited in His creative decision to use these three means of instruction.  Observation of wrong, of course, necessitates that wrong happens.  Instruction about wrong is NOT sufficient as a teacher since free beings will always challenge ideas.  That leaves experience as the only valid teacher until, in the future, observation will suffice when future creations review earth's terrible experiences.  But experience necessitates the entry of evil.  God would never CREATE evil; but he CAN instruct and warn against it.  This would allow his free creatures to make their own choices and to learn the results.

 

Liberty is a strange word.  It doesn't mean that we can do anything we want!  If that were the case, one man's liberty would infringe upon another man's liberty, and liberty would be lost. Indeed, this concept is so vital to a successful creation that God dictated that, in the end, any practice of evil -- anything harmful to others -- would be punishable by EXTINCTION (death).  This is not unreasonable!  God is the Creator of liberty.  He must also be its definer.  God's creative efforts had as one of their eternal objectives a universe that runs without flaw in which all beings would be free from harm, sadness, want, or threats.  It is for this reason that God permitted evil -- to be instructive.  But the WAY OUT of our situation is, of course, the pressing question!

 

 

THE WAY OUT

 

It should be noticed that man is the ONLY intelligent being that has been given the powers of PROCREATION.  There is a reason for that.  Man was going to be the visible example that disobedience to Divine Law is punishable by DEATH. The death sentence was never imposed on any other beings FOR A REASON.  Since man has this distinct DISADVANTAGE of a death sentence, his powers of procreation must PREVENT the death sentence from harming all of humanity in perpetuity .         

 

When our first human father disobeyed, he was justly condemned to death.  His action, for all eternity, will demonstrate to all creatures everywhere that disobedience will result in chaos and extinction.  Since all of the remainder of mankind comes from Adam through procreation, Adam could not pass on life to the rest of the race because he forfeited life. Genetically and legally, he and all of humanity can only pass on death. And we need a way out of that problem.  

 

But, because of procreation, "a way out" only needs to be provided for Adam.  ONLY     he is responsible for the dying condition of the race.  The death of all since Adam is NOT attributable to THEIR sins or disobedience.  There was officially ONLY ONE judgment for disobedience.  Therefore, the release of ALL from the dying condition only necessitates the undoing of the ONE ORIGINAL death sentence.  Consequently, God has created a system where billions can experience, observe, learn about, and feel the seriousness of doing evil without having all of those billions actually dying for their own actions!  They ARE dying!  But it is not because of their own will or their own condemnation.  Finding a way out for that ONE individual who disobeyed will solve  the problem for ALL.(I Corinthians 15:21, 22)  Obviously, Adam's progeny all are seriously imperfect, and they will need to be brought ultimately to perfection before God is satisfied.  But that is another little story -- to follow shortly.

 

Angels, when they disobeyed, WERE NOT CONDEMNED TO DEATH because at least a part of intelligent creation cannot see angels!  The instructive lesson of death for evil would not be observable for everyone.  Their death would be fruitless and would require an unreasonable solution to get them out of it.  Ultimately, however, even angels will be subject to extinction if they don't learn the lessons of disobedience BY OBSERVING its results for mankind.  As the Apostle Paul said, "We are made a spectacle to men and angels."  Man's experience with evil is the teaching standard for all of the intelligent beings in the universe, visible and invisible (flesh and spirit) -- past and future!

 

So, WHAT IS the "way out?" It is called in Scripture "The Ransom."  (I Timothy 2:6; Isaiah 35:10)  What it means is, that if Adam's sentence could be PAID FOR somehow, he (and all of his progeny) could be released from death.  And their experiences would be recorded for all to learn from.

 

Here is where God's attributes of Justice and Love enter the picture. God's character  is inviolable.  He cannot impose a sentence and then reverse it just because it would be nice to do so! No one would ever be able to trust Him if he changed His mind on a whim.  But He CAN arrange for someone to be a substitute for another.  This is even reflected in Jesus' statement that "Greater love hath no man than that he lay down his life for another."

 

God needed someone fit and willing to take Adam's place in death. That one original sin will never be forgiven, and Justice will forever require holding one man in death as the just payment (and the perfect lesson) for willful disobedience. That is THE lesson!

 

But WHO could be a fit substitute for the perfect man Adam who sinned? It would have to be another PERFECT MAN.  However, no perfect man existed.  At this point in God's planning, He decided to arrange a ransom in such a way that Adam's sin could be paid for in a way that would (1) release Adam's responsibility for it, and, (2) AT THE SAME TIME, begin God's original prime desire for His NEW CREATION.

 

The Logos -- second only to God in the universe -- would become man's ransom AND become the FIRST of the NEW CREATION by so doing!  In a one-of-a-kind event, God arranged for the Logos' life-principle to be transferred into being an embryo human to be born of Mary.  That incredibly magnificent being who made all of creation on God's behalf agreed to become a perfect human being.  He would NOT be under the condemnation from Adam because he would not be Adam's son.  He would be the son of God.

 

When he reached maturity, he dedicated himself to a ministry leading to his own death.  When he died, the MAN, Jesus, forever ceased to exist.  He had taken, as a man, Adam's place in death -- thus legally providing for the resurrection of Adam and all of his progeny who had suffered death due to their inheritance from Adam.  But this, in one sense, would be a tragedy!  Jesus had never sinned.  He went into extinction voluntarily in order to pay for the one willful disobedience so that those he had created could be released from extinction. That was Jesus' eternal end.  And it satisfied Justice.  Jesus, the man, could not come back to life without negating the ransom he paid.  So, while Justice was satisfied, LOVE was not!.  How would we all feel (except for great gratitude!) if the being that had made us and who had lived only in righteousness were forever lost -- even if he DID ransom us all? 

 

BUT: What IF his character and memory were to be duplicated in another new being?  Indeed, his character and memory-identity were to be preserved by a miraculous idea which God had previously formulated -- an idea which begins a "New-Creature Jesus" without violating Justice since that being which had originally been the Logos and became the man Jesus would never live again.  The ransom WAS provided.

 

 

THE NEW CREATION

 

The good news for Jesus, for God, and for the development of a New Creation is that God had done something very unique and special when Jesus had presented himself as a sacrifice when John baptized him.  God "begat" or began IN the man Jesus an embryo New Creature -- a  separate and new being which, once developed, would be born NOT as a human being, but as a Divine being -- the VERY FIRSTBORN of God's new and intimate family which He had first planned as He designed creation.  And that new being would have imprinted upon its mind the character and memory which had belonged to Jesus and to the Logos before him.

 

Because New Creatures will be immortal, it was IMPERATIVE that they be tested for fidelity BEFORE they are born -- tested under the most adverse of circumstances. And earth was, indeed, the epitome of "adverse circumstances."  The permission of evil had made it a disastrous place!  This is why God decided to make His New Creation out of human beings which already existed under such circumstances.  That beginning of Jesus' "New Creature" happened for him three and a half years before his death during which he endured "such contradiction of sinners" -- even unto death on the cross.  He passed the test and was born of the spirit as the "firstborn" of the New Creation.  He now resides at God's right hand in a glory far exceeding that which he had held when he, as the Logos, had created the heavens and the earth.  He became the second immortal being to exist.  The man Jesus, however, remains dead.  But his identity flourishes!

 

What is even grander is that God there began the work of making this New Creation which Revelation 14:1 tells us will include 144,000 additional beings who, like Jesus, will be recipients of the Divine nature.  The concept is staggering!  And it has been in the process of development for the last 2000 years -- mostly in secret.  

 

Those who are called to "run in the race" for the "high calling of God In Christ" have been tested for faithfulness to the full extent.  They HAVE been a part of "Christianity" -- even though most in Christianity have been counterfeits of this "little flock" of true believers.  Jesus, in Matthew 13, called these counterfeits "tares."  The true and faithful disciples he called "wheat."  We are now nearly at the end of the search for the last members of this New Creation.  Once they are all chosen and glorified, we will enter     the restoration of all that has been lost for humanity (Acts 3:19-21).

 

THE KINGDOM AND ITS MEDIATOR

 

Because mankind will yet all be imperfect when the Kingdom for which billions have prayed begins, they will not be able to deal with God directly.  They will need "The Christ" (the anointed New Creation) to serve as a Mediator between them and God to restore humans to the point of perfection. That mediation will be the main objective of the 1000 years of Christ's reign -- "The Millennial Age." 

 

This PROCESS of bringing man back to perfection is called the "resurrection." The Greek word means re-standing, and it takes the human race to the point where it  reaches perfection and can actually address God without a mediator -- to the point of having a new "standing" with Him.  

 

Resurrection takes time.  It is not (although it will include) literal awakening from the death state.  It is the PROCESS OF PERFECTING each individual.  And it is promised that it is not only for those who have attempted to be righteous, but also for those who have been clearly at odds with God.  As it is written, "There shall be a resurrection [re-standing] of the dead, both of the just and of the unjust."  (Acts 24:15)  

 

Because this Mediator -- Christ and his chosen New Creatures -- will all have had the experience of being human, they will form a very sympathetic priesthood in helping humanity reach perfection -- "the restitution of all things spoken by the mouths of ALL of God's holy prophets since the world began!"  (Acts 3:19-21)  By the close of the Mediation, Christ will turn over the perfected human race to God, and the entire permission-of-evil period will be over.  (I Corinthians 15:24-28)  All everywhere will     live forever in perfection and joy.  Could there be a better Gospel?

 

- - - - -

 

 

 

"Thy Kingdom come; Thy will be done in earth."   (Matthew 6:10)

 

"The whole earth is at rest and is quiet.  They break forth into singing!"  (Isaiah 14:7)

 

"Good tidings of great joy which shall be unto all people."  (Luke 2:10)

 

"They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks...

and they shall learn war no more."  (Isaiah 2:4)

 

"Nothing shall hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain."  (Isaiah 11:9)

 

"And the ransomed of the Lord shall return with everlasting joy upon their heads."  (Isaiah 35:10)

 

"Sorrow and sighing shall flee away."  (Isaiah 35:10)

    "There shall be no more death, neither mourning nor crying nor pain."          (Revelation 21:4)

 

"The earth shall yield its increase."  (Psalm 67:6)

 

"The government shall rest on His shoulders...and of the increase of His government and peace there shall be no end."  (Isaiah 9:6, 7)

 

 - - - - - - -

 

 

Amen!