Finding Jesus in the Bible…So We Can Follow Him in Life
Bible Reading Plans
- Plan One: New Testament Only
- Plan Two: New Testament + Psalms
- Plan Three: New Testament + History
- Plan Four: The Entire Bible – Year 1 of 3, Year 2 of 3, Year 3 of 3
Don’t know which plan? Go to A Christ-Centered Bible Reading Plan: Quick Start.
Extras
Verse of the Day, Audio Capsule, and Video Minute
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(Today’s Reading)
The Implications of the Second Coming as Accomplished Fact
(Book Installment 57)
The Plan Behind the Second Coming
Chapter 4 – The Predetermined Plan
The Plan’s Three R’s: 2) Restoration
The second major element of God’s great plan was restoration. The plan’s primary focus was revealing the nature of God, but, given how sin had blighted God’s glorious creation, there was a lot that needed restoring. This restoring was of relationship, residence, and rationale. Think of them as the three little r’s.
Restoration of relationship: God had been clear in warning Adam that disobedience to the one rule would be catastrophic.
Genesis 2:16 The LORD God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely;
Genesis 2:17 but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.”
In Genesis 5:5, we’re told that Adam died at the age of 930. What gives? Obviously, God was speaking primarily of spiritual death in Genesis 2:17, for that was the only kind of death that could have taken place in the day that the sin occurred. Man’s relationship with God was broken that day. It was finally and fully restored in the Second Coming.
Restoration of residence: God has the same sort of authority over creation as a potter has over his pot.
Jeremiah 18:1 The word which came to Jeremiah from the LORD saying,
Jeremiah 18:2 “Arise and go down to the potter’s house, and there I will announce My words to you.”
Jeremiah 18:3 Then I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was, making something on the wheel.
Jeremiah 18:4 But the vessel that he was making of clay was spoiled in the hand of the potter; so he remade it into another vessel, as it pleased the potter to make.
Jeremiah 18:5 Then the word of the LORD came to me saying,
Jeremiah 18:6 “Can I not, O house of Israel, deal with you as this potter does?” declares the LORD. “Behold, like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in My hand, O house of Israel.
If a pot is ruined in the making, the potter has a right to make it into something else. That’s what God did in transforming the three-tiered, two-dimensional universe into the two-tiered, two-dimensional universe at the Second Coming. A restored relationship deserves a restored residence to house it.
Restoration of rationale:
Genesis 1:27 God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
Genesis 1:28 God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Given a restored relationship and a restored residence, there needed to be a new rationale for existence – one that included more than the original creation mandate.
There will be much more to say about these three little r’s when we get to details of the three major implications.
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