Picture This

You are sitting in church, listening to the Pastor give a sermon. As you listen about God having a plan for your life, you suddenly start to drift away. Your mind races and you start to feel regret about not doing enough to know God’s plan. You start to think about your friend of the opposite sex and you start to have adulterous thoughts about them. Then, it clicks: you’ve just sinned!

Suddenly, you get sad. You start to make up excuses. I’m sorry, Lord. I’m only human. Why’d you make me this way if you knew I was going to sin?

That atheist high school punk with all the piercings and tattoos you saw at the mall last night had all those questions. “If God is all loving and all knowing, why does He send good people to hell? Why did God create us if He knew we’d sin!” You couldn’t answer that and you first hated the atheist. Then you hated yourself for hating the atheist. Then you challenged God because that little punk dared to make you question your faith.

Well, how about it? Why do good people go to hell? Why did God create man if He knew we’d sin so grossly? Did God really make that fellow church member’s daughter a lesbian? Did the Lord really make David a murderous, backstabbing, home wrecking pervert?

What did God do about it? Will he ever?

What if I told you that God knew full well what would happen and did something about it? What if I told you that He did it before the Creation?!

The Parable of the Engineer

Picture this: you are a systems engineer. Don’t worry, you don’t need to know anything about it to be able to imagine it.

A customer asks you to create a system based on a known faulty piece of technology. It’s been known to malfunction and you know it’s a piece of flaming hot garbage. But, the customer wants it. You are fully aware that if you do this, the system is going to break.

What do you do?

You decide to have a fail safe. You know that if you don’t have an escape for the client when this system eventually fails, the client is going to lose, big time. We’re talking life-ending consequences.

So, you freely create that escape. You make a way for the customer to be saved if the system fails. This system would take the full brunt of the failure and eliminate the negative effects.

Then, you build the system. You put the fail safe in place so that when the customer needs it, it’s there. After six weeks of hard work, you present it to the customer. He loves it and pays for it.

Two weeks later, the failure occurs. It nearly destroys your customer. But, because of that fail safe you made, his life was saved.

Let me now reveal the parable to you.

In this parable, you, the engineer, are God. The customer’s desired system is man. The faulty tech is sin. God knew what He was about to create had a fundamental flaw. It would have sin in it. God knew the moment we were created that we would fall and destroy ourselves.

But, God had a plan. He made the fail safe in our parable. That fail safe is the Cross.

When the machine eventually failed (man eventually sinned against God), the fail safe became the only option (repentance towards Jesus and His finished work on the cross). Thus, when man fell, man had a way out from the beginning.

Before Calvary, the sacrifices and traditions of the Jews represented a shadow of things to come. After, we have that once and for all atonement for our sin nature.

But, you’re probably asking, how could God establish the Cross as our salvation if man hadn’t even been created yet?

The answer is a lot simpler yet wilder than you may think.

Eternal vs. Temporal

To make this easy to understand we need to lay down the ground rules. These rules aren’t mine but simply how things are. We exist in the temporal. We have a definite beginning, a middle, and unfortunately if the Rapture doesn’t come within our lifetimes, an end. Genesis, chapter 1 lays this down:

“And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.”
-Genesis 1:16 KJV

So God created this universe with a finite establishment of time.

I left the mention of the stars there because, moving back to verse 14, Moses records,

”And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:”
-Genesis 1:14 KJV

It may be a bit confusing that we can interpret what God made in 1:14 as stars but then a few verses later He makes… stars. It stands to reason these could be other celestial bodies such as planets and comets. The scripture makes a distinction between these lights in the firmament and stars.

Whatever the case may be, it’s clear that Genesis 1 sets up the laws of temporal time. 24 hour periods by our interpretation and understanding are established here. This is the rule by which we live and experience our lives in this realm.

Unfortunately, for those who end up being cast into outer darkness where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth, temporal time continues. What’s worse is that the Lake of Fire experiences temporal time as well. This gives us a clue that these elements exist in this reality, in the finite.

”And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.”
-Revelation 20:10 KJV

When Satan is cast into the bottomless pit for a thousand years, he will literally be there for 1000 years of 24 hour days. When he and hell itself are cast into the Lake of Fire, they will experience time in finite manner, outside of eternity, for eternity.

We define “eternity” as a “time without end,” as something that will go on forever. We express it, we think of it, in the temporal sense. We don’t look upon it for what it really is.

“Eternity” is not “time without end.”

It’s the absence of time. It’s outside of the temporal. God had to make rules in order to define it.

“But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.”
-2 Peter 3:8 KJV

Simon Peter tried to articulate it when he wrote this epistle. This is his picture of the realm outside of the temporal. This is eternity. It’s not a system of measurement. It’s not saying, “a day in heaven is a thousand years on earth.” That’s adding temporal logic and reasoning to an eternal statement.

”Time has no meaning there.”
-Dr. Soran, STAR TREK: GENERATIONS

This is about as close as you’re going to get to making it sound correct. In eternity, time doesn’t apply. There are no rules for night and day. The temporal is nonexistent. Whether it’s one day or a thousand years, it’s all the same to God. You cannot apply linear time to eternity.

“It is not linear.”
-Alien as “Jennifer Sisko”, STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE, ”Emissary”

If eternity doesn’t obey the laws of linear time then how does that apply to salvation and God’s plan? How do we know the answers to, “Why does God let good things happen to bad people and bad things to good people?” And, “If God is all powerful and all knowing, why did he create man knowing we’d fall, and why doesn’t he simply stop it? Why would a loving God send people to hell?” Are we really able to answer this by knowing the difference between linear, temporal time and eternity?

Yes! We Are!

We aren’t just close? We’re there.

Remember the parable of the engineer and the faulty tech from the beginning? God was the engineer. He knew we would break from the very beginning. So, He filled a virgin teenager with His Holy Spirit and she gave birth to the Savior, our Emmanuel. When Jesus was crucified and rose again after His death, He ascended into eternity and back to the right hand of the Father. Then, He spoke the words, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

Yes. If you were to read the Bible in complete chronological order, it would go…

1. Matthew
2. John
3. Acts 1:1 through 1:9
4. Genesis 1 and 3
5. Job
6. Genesis 4-onward

So God made man who He knew would fall. Thus, He sent his Son to the Cross. The implication of this: it was settled before the foundation of the world!

Literally.

“And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.”
–Revelation 13:8 KJV

While this is talking about those who fall under the influence of the beast, take a look at the back end of this. “The Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” clearly indicates Jesus.

“The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.”
–John 1:29 KJV

The language isn’t just talking about God’s plan for Christ, thinking that God was going to execute the Cross all along. The idea is that God already executed the Cross. Just because it took place in or around 30AD on Earth, in eternity, that was the foundation of the world! And that scared one angel to his core!

Satanic Implications

Milton writes of Satan’s rebellion and fall in Paradise Lost. It depicts Satan as a jealous being, not necessarily jealous of God, but of man. God loves and favors humanity so much that He gave mankind an entire universe of His creation! Satan had two plans, both of them failed.

1. He would attempt to replace God with himself
2. He would attempt to destroy creation from its very foundation

The turning point is the Temptation of Christ. When Jesus went into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil (Matthew 4:1 KJV). Satan knows the timeline and its consequences. If Jesus goes to the Cross, it’s game on for creation! If he could, somehow, some way, tap into Jesus’ human side and tempt him off the path, even if Jesus somehow could be given everything, the entirety of creation will be destroyed! Jesus would undo himself. There would be no mankind for those words would never have been spoken by the Son, and therefore, all can be right again in heaven!

Satan saw a man, at his lowest point. This is why he didn’t tempt Jesus until the man was at an extremely weakened state – a state Jesus knew the human side would be the most vulnerable!

“And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred.”
-Matthew 4:2 KJV

First, it was with food and doubt! If Satan could get Jesus to eat something, that would negate everything right then and there. Satan started small – a personal attack on the body.

“…If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.

“But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”

-Matthew 4:3, 4 KJV

Then, it was a temptation of absolute power. This time, Jesus needed to remind Satan who he was dealing with.

“…If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.

“Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.”
-Matthew 4:6, 7 KJV

Finally, Satan attempted to tempt Jesus with vanity. The primal and power temptations didn’t work. Satan went for broke…

“Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them;

“And saith unto him, All these things I will give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.”
–Matthew 4:8, 9 KJV

It didn’t go over so well.

“Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship thy Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.”
-Matthew 4:10 KJV

Three times Satan tried to end this universe. None of them succeeded. If Satan had, we wouldn’t be here now and you wouldn’t be reading this.

The Lord, by going to the cross, defeated the plans of the devil. In so doing, Jesus rose in glory, defeating sin and death, ascended to the right hand of the Father, and created the universe!

The Lord in Genesis

Why do we look like we do? Why aren’t we a horde of octopus men? Why aren’t we some sort of other hideous creatures, like Klingons or Ferengi from Star Trek?

Because we are made in the image of God!

What exactly does that mean?

Some might think that God has an image of who we are supposed to be in His mind. He lovingly and thoughtfully made us in a way that was perfectly imagined in the headspace of God, and boom, here we are.

That’s not at all what was meant.

The image of God, in the likeness thereof, was as a man as we are now! If God made us in that image, in the image of his Son, in the likeness of Him, that would mean that the resurrected, glorified Jesus made us like him!

“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”
–Genesis 1:26 KJV

We know the speaker of “Let there be light” and of course this declaration to create man, was Jesus Christ.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
“The same was in the beginning with God.
“All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made.”
-John 1:1 to 3 KJV

The Apostle John declares that the God of Genesis was in fact Jesus Christ. We also know that this is the resurrected Christ who is in Glory.

Flash forward to Exodus, we find:

“And they saw the God of Israel: and there was under his feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone, and as it were the body of heaven in his clearness.”
-Exodus 24:10 KJV

Then we have John’s description of the Glorified Jesus.

“And in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle.
“His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire;
“And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace, and his voice as the soud of many waters.”
-Revelation 1:13-15 KJV

Jesus, before this description by John, declares…

“…I am the Alpha and the omega, the first and the last…”
-Revelation 1:11, in part. KJV

We tend to think of Adam as having come first.

“And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.”
-1 Corinthians 15:45 KJV

This seems to suggest that this so. In a temporal sense, yes, it’s totally true. Adam was the first man made. Of course, Jesus is not a created being. He was always there at God’s right hand side in eternity. Because He was!

However, Adam was made in His image and in His likeness! How could this be if Adam was literally made first even in eternity?

Because he wasn’t. The Cross was first!

God’s Ultimate Plan

When we examine the total picture, we can come to the following conclusion.

God didn’t create a world that would fall and then figure out redemption. He created from redemption – the Cross was the foundation upon which Creation was built. God made man, knowing we would fall. Why did he do it? To display His glory in the redemption. This was Plan A all along!

God didn’t wantonly make man and was suddenly shocked and appalled when Adam listened to Eve and disobeyed God. God wasn’t at all surprised when His creation sinned so badly and filled the earth with so much evil that He had to flood it out. The Lord wasn’t at all shook when He had to rain fire from hell and brimstone upon Sodom and Gomorrah for their perversions. God knew man bred evil. None are good nor righteous, as Paul wrote to the Romans. God didn’t make man then say, “Oops. I made a mistake.”

No. God set up the fail safe – the Cross! God sent His Son to die on that cross. When He did and He ascended in Glory, Jesus the King of Kings took His rightful place on His Father’s throne, sat right down at God’s right hand side, and proclaimed, “Let there be light!” Sure, God knew man was going to fall. But, He made that safety net that…

“For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
-Romans 10:13 KJV

Eternity and the temporal realms are two totally different things. Eternity is eternity. It knows no limits of time. It has no linear temporal rules. It exists outside of those set rules.

So what does this mean for you?

It means your salvation was settled before you were born. Before Adam sinned. Before the stars were flung into space. The Cross was finished from the foundation of the world – and that means if you call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, you are saved by a work that was completed in eternity before time began.

But here’s the urgency: we live in the temporal. The clock is ticking. We are racing toward the fulfillment of prophecy – wars and rumors of wars, nation rising against nation, false Christs appearing, the love of many growing cold. The signs are all around us.

You have a choice to make in THIS moment, in THIS timeline.

Will you call upon the name of the Lord? Will you trust in the finished work of the Cross that was accomplished before Genesis 1:1? Or will you reject it and face eternity without the fail safe God provided?

The atheist at the mall was wrong. God didn’t create us to watch us burn. He created us from redemption – the Cross was always the plan. He loved us so much that He executed our salvation before He spoke the first word of creation.

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
-John 3:16 KJV

The question isn’t “Why did God create us knowing we’d fall?”

The question is “Will you accept the salvation He finished before you fell?”

The Cross is waiting. It’s been waiting since before time began.

What will you do with it?