The Bible in 10 minutes: a quick summary of God's long range plan for mankind

  • God created man to be an eternal companion for his Son, Jesus the Christ.
  • God created a plan whereby man would have free will and thereby the ability to choose whether or not they wanted to be eternal companions for his Son.
  • God’s plan also required that anyone living in his presence as an eternal companion be “perfect” in his eyes. To be perfect meant to be “without sin.”
  • God then developed a means to select a subset of all those who he created who would be worthy of living in his presence. In his perfect fairness, this plan also provided a means of proving the unworthiness of those who are not selected.
  • God’s selection algorithm involved allowing Satan to introduce the temptation to sin into the realm of man. Satan used deceitfulness and lies to make sin look very attractive and tempting to man.
  • God’s perfection criteria meant that men who submitted to temptation would be separated from him and his Son. Unfortunately, once the apparent beauty of sin was introduced to man, every man succumbed to it.
  • Fortunately, God had a redemption plan for man. In God’s eyes man was still very young, had the innocence of youth and was not old enough to be held accountable for his sins. However, man was in the growing process and God had many things he wanted to teach man before he reached the age of accountability. This plan for teaching adolescent Man had several aspects to it, including:
    • ​Teaching man what sin was and how to recognize it.
    • Teaching man that there would be a serious consequence for sinning.
    • Teaching man that he was only man, not God, and that he could not overcome his propensity to sin all by himself; he would have to rely on the grace of God to help him.
    • Previewing his plan for again making man perfect so that he could return to God’s presence. God previewed this plan to man in hundreds of ways. This plan was to send his Son to earth to live among men and do for man what he could not do for himself, namely live the perfect life. Then at the end of the perfect life God’s Son would redeem man by buying a pardon for all of man’s sins.
  • Next God put the plan in place. The implementation included:
    • Choosing a special people to use in implementing the plan.
    • Introducing the seed of the Law to help man understand sin and the fact that he could not overcome sin and live a sinless life by himself.
    • Teaching man that the consequence for sinning always involved death.
    • Revealing his ultimate plan to his chosen children through the prophets, through real life events involving the children, through rituals and ceremonies, through personal contact and in other ways.
  • When man reached the age of accountability God followed through with his plan to send his Son to earth to save man from his hopeless plight. He accomplished this by completely fulfilling all of the over 300 prophecies in the Old Testament concerning the coming Messiah, the Savior of man, as follows:
    • Jesus came to earth as a man born to a virgin.
    • He lived the perfect life for man that man could not live for himself.
    • He clearly taught man the one and only way to heaven.
    • At the end of the perfect life he gave his life as the perfect blood sacrifice to cover all of the sins of all men of all ages; he bought a permanent pardon for man to free him from penalty for his sins.
    • He was crucified on a cross, physically died and was resurrected to eternal life after three days.
    • He spent forty additional days on earth teaching his disciples how to present his gospel to the world. He then miraculously ascended to heaven in front of them on the Mount of Olives.
  • God’s chosen children, the Israelites, were the perfect people for implementation of the early part of God’s plan. They were extremely diligent and did a perfect job of proving that they could not live the perfect life by themselves. Unfortunately, they so enjoyed serving the “monolith” that they had created that they rejected their pardon when it was bought for them. Because of their free will choice to reject their Messiah, the Jewish nation was dissolved and the people were dispersed and scattered all over the world.
  • The Israelites would not be the right people for implementing the next part of God’s plan which required that the saving gospel of Jesus be presented to people all over the world. Thus, God had to adopt a “new people” who would be diligent in this new task. They turned out to be the gentiles of the northern Roman Empire.
  • Jesus taught that he would one day return to earth for his followers and take them to heaven with him. We eagerly await his return. We call this future event the “rapture.”
  • Jesus also taught that he was not finished with his original chosen children and that he would one day restore their nation, re-gather the scattered people and finally return to earth to reward them for the key part that they had played in implementing his plan. We call this future event the “second coming.” The second coming will be at the end of a long period of wrath upon the earth when Jesus returns to save the Jews from certain death and sets up a millennial kingdom upon the earth. At the end of the millennium the final judgment will be held. Satan and his followers will be judged and sent to hell. All believers’ sins have been forgotten. They will be rewarded for their good work while on earth and will spend eternity in heaven with Jesus.

QUICK SUMMARIES OF THE BIBLE

Index