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 59)
The Plan Behind the Second Coming
Chapter 4 – The Predetermined Plan
The Plan’s Four Vantage Points
There are four distinct vantage points (views, perspectives, points of view – take your pick) in the Bible from which God’s plan of all plans can be seen and understood. His plan was executed in stages, and was also revealed in stages. The execution of the stages was in chronological order, but the order of revelation was slightly different.
It would be reasonable for us to assume that there were only two vantage points from which to view God’s plan: the Old Testament view and the New Testament view. That is, we could view God’s plan from the Old Testament perspective and then from the New Testament perspective…and, in this case, the order of revelation would be following the order of execution. For all the history of the Old Testament took place before the history of the New Testament. However, while the Old Testament gives us one perspective, the New Testament gives us three. This requires us to put on our thinking caps.
Like the Old Testament, the New Testament gives us its historical perspective. That is, it gives us genealogies that connect it to the Old Testament and then it reports history from the beginning of the 1st century up to just before the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. This is a continuation of the history reported in the Old Testament, which began with creation week and ended with Israel’s return to the land after a 70-year captivity in Babylon. Of course, there was the 400-year period between this return and the births of John the Baptist and Jesus, too – what is called “the intertestamental period.”
The first additional perspective that the New Testament gives us is that of “pre-creation” – that is, what happened before the events of the Old Testament. This “pre-creation” vantage point is what I was alluding to above when I wrote that the order of revealing the stages was different from the order of their execution. Obviously, anything pre-creation happened before what happened in the Old Testament, but that there was pre-creation activity was not revealed until Jesus came. Pre-creation activity was limited, and the New Testament reporting on it was limited as well. But what happened in that period was extremely important and provides an essential additional perspective on the execution of God’s plan.
The second additional perspective that the New Testament gives us is the Second Coming perspective. Granted, the Old Testament did provide some important data about the Second Coming perspective – but the fullness of that perspective only came with the New Testament’s contribution.
To summarize:
The Plan’s Four Vantage Points
Order of Execution:
- Pre-Creation
- Old Testament
- New Testament
- Second Coming
Order of Revelation:
- Old Testament
- New Testament and Pre-Creation and Second Coming
The OT and NT perspectives are commonly recognized, but the other two are often overlooked – the Second Coming perspective because so few people think it’s accomplished fact, and the Pre-Creation perspective because church dogma blinds them to its importance. For this reason, we’ll briefly review the OT and NT perspectives, and then spend much more time breaking down the pre-creation and Second Coming perspectives.
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