page l 1 l 2 l
-1-
Appendix D
– God Does Not Give Up
A
Discussion on Plan A/Plan B
The concepts
presented in this chapter should be
important to you because every
student of Bible prophecy is
overwhelmed by the sheer volume of
data in the Bible. It has been
said that a person has to know
everything before he can properly
understand anything! While this
concept is not entirely true, the
more we do know about the Bible, the
better and richer the story of
redemption becomes.
God is never
simple, but there are simple truths
about God that help us understand
Him! I would like to introduce
you to a larger picture of God than
you would normally see if your study
of apocalyptic prophecy is limited to
the books of Daniel and
Revelation. Apocalyptic
prophecy is difficult to understand
at first because there are so many
details that surround and encompass
the plan of redemption.
Therefore, I hope a few general
concepts about the plan of redemption
will prove to be helpful.
The
Living Trust
The Bible
teaches that God created a living
trust to redeem mankind when Adam and
Eve sinned. The term, living
trust, comes from two Latin
words, inter vivos, which
mean “between the
living.” A living trust is
a very practical tool. For
example, it permits a wealthy grantor
to distribute his assets to his
beneficiaries over a long period of
time without being present or having
to micro manage the day-to-day
process himself. Therefore,
when a grantor establishes a living
trust, he appoints a trustee or
someone to stand “between the
living.”
When a person
agrees to serve as a trustee of a
living trust, he enters into a
covenant with the grantor. The
trustee promises to carry out the
will of the grantor at all
costs. This is a solemn
responsibility and trustees are
usually paid very well for their
services. If a trustee fails to
keep his promise to the grantor and
steals the assets instead of
distributing them to the
beneficiaries, two things will soon
happen. (Remember, the grantor
is alive.) First, the grantor
will see that his beneficiaries are
not receiving the assets he wants
them to have and understandably, he
will become angry. Second, the
grantor will confront the trustee,
charging the trustee with dereliction
of duty. The grantor may give
the trustee a second chance to do the
job that he wants done or the grantor
may fire the trustee and choose
someone else. After all, the
object of a living trust is the
distribution of the grantor’s
assets to his beneficiaries
and any trustee who thwarts this
purpose must be disciplined or
eliminated.
Hopefully,
this explanation helps you appreciate
the overriding concept that the
redemption of mankind is built on a
living trust. God is the
grantor and He chooses trustees to
distribute His riches. He has
chosen the whole world to be the
beneficiaries of His riches.[1] God
originally created a living trust
when Adam and Eve sinned because sin
separated mankind from God.
Consequently, sinners can no longer
see God, so He chose to establish a
living trust. God appointed
trustees to be His representatives on
Earth. His plan was that His
trustees would be living examples of
His character and love. Through
their example, God wanted His
beneficiaries (the whole world) to
see Him.[2] In
other words, God’s plan was
designed so His truth and grace would
flow to mankind through His
trustees. His trustees were to
stand between a living God and the
people living on Earth.
God has
faithfully carried out everything
necessary to make our redemption
possible. He has done
everything that He said He would
do. Unfortunately, God’s
trustees have not fulfilled their
responsibilities. Bible history
reveals that every time God chose a
particular group of trustees to
distribute the riches of His grace to
the world, His trustees eventually
failed. They either became
distracted from their mission or they
rebelled against God. When His
trustees become utterly useless, God
has no other option than to start
over. After selecting a new
group of trustees, He moves
forward. This process will end
with the 144,000. They will be
the last group of God’s
trustees.
Plan
A / Plan B
The process
of starting over and over with new
trustees will take a few paragraphs
to explain. For purposes of
discussion, let us assume that Plan A
describes God’s first plan for
mankind and Plan B is a followup plan
that God put into motion when the
trustees responsible for Plan A
failed. God’s living trust
is intact and He will accomplish all
that He intends to do with or without
man’s cooperation.[3] God
will not terminate His living trust
until He redeems all sinners who
choose to follow Him. Consider
the following scenario:
- God
gave Adam and Eve possession
of the Garden of Eden. It was
God’s plan that they
should live there forever and
Adam should serve as
“the father” of
mankind! (Plan A)
However, Adam and Eve sinned
and had to be evicted from
the Garden of Eden.
- Plan
B: God started over. He
made Adam and the patriarchs
who followed him trustees of
His gospel. The
trusteeship of the patriarchs
lasted about 1,600 years
(from the fall of man to the
flood). It failed
miserably because the
patriarchs lost sight of God.[4]
In fact, during the operation
of this plan, the world
became hopelessly evil and
God destroyed all but eight
people in Noah’s day.
- Plan
C: About four hundred years
after the flood, God started
over. He called Abraham out
of Ur to be “the
father” of the faith-full.
Then, God chose
Abraham’s descendants to
be the trustees of His gospel
and He entered into a
covenant
with them.[5]
This 1,500 year plan (1437
B.C. – A.D. 70) failed
because Israel would not
remain loyal to God long
enough to get the job
done. Therefore, God
destroyed Israel in A.D. 70
because of rebellion.
- Plan
D: During the seventieth
week, God started over.
Because He made some
unconditional promises to
Abraham, God had to raise up
another group of trustees to
keep moving forward.
Many Christians do not
understand why it is
important that believers in
Christ are counted as the
heirs of Abraham. The
heart of this issue involves
a promise. God promised
Abraham that He would someday
give the whole world over to
Abraham’s
descendants.
Thankfully, God considers
Abraham’s descendants to
be those people who love and
trust God as Abraham
did! Carefully study
this passage and notice that
biology does not determine
the descendants of Abraham:
“
‘Abraham is our father,’
they answered. ‘If you were
Abraham’s children,’ said
Jesus, ‘then you would do the
things Abraham did. As it is,
you are determined to kill me, a man
who has told you the truth that I
heard from God. Abraham did not do
such things. You are doing the
things your own father does.’
‘We are not illegitimate
children [we have a
father],’ they
protested. ‘The only Father we
have is God himself.’
Jesus said to them, ‘If God were
your Father, you would love me, for I
came from God and now am here. I have
not come on my own; but he sent
me. Why is my language not
clear to you? Because you are unable
to hear what I say. You belong
to your father, the devil, and you
want to carry out your father’s
desire. He was a murderer from the
beginning, not holding to the truth,
for there is no truth in him. When he
lies, he speaks his native language,
for he is a liar and the father of
lies. Yet because I tell the
truth, you do not believe me!’
”[6]>
When the
nation of Israel passed a point of no
return, God rejected Israel as the
trustees of His covenant.
Consequently, every one who loves and
trusts in Christ for salvation
becomes Israel, the heir of
Abraham. “If
you belong to Christ, then you are
Abraham’s seed, and heirs
according to the promise.”[7] God
raised up a new set of trustees for
His living trust. He created
a new covenant
because He needed a new set
of trustees. However, this
2,000 year plan (A.D. 30 – 1994)
has failed, too. Corporately
speaking, God will abandon
Christianity and eventually it will
be destroyed. (This
matter is addressed in Prophecy
7. See also Appendix B.)
- Plan
E: God will soon start over
again, but for the last
time. He will select
144,000 people as trustees of
His living trust. To
ensure the success of their
mission, He will first remove
their carnal natures.
This wonderful miracle will
ensure their success.
(Incidentally, the fallen
nature of man explains why
all of the previous trustees
failed.) The 144,000
will proclaim the riches of
God’s grace and His
offer of redemption to the
whole world during the Great
Tribulation. The
144,000 will not deviate or
fail to accomplish their
mission. When they
complete their mission,
everyone on Earth will either
have the mark of the beast or
the seal of God.
I have listed
five examples showing that God does
not quit. When one group of
trustees refuses to cooperate with
Him, God moves them out of the way to
keep moving forward. God
chooses new trustees because He
cannot be thwarted! The
repetitive process of starting over
with new trustees has been
synthesized in this book to what I
call Plan A and Plan B. Rather
than identify each successive plan, I
prefer to simplify the concept of
starting over by identifying Plan A
as a previous plan and Plan B as the
plan that follows. I like to do
this so that I can make certain
categorical statements about Plan B.
For example,
Plan B is always better and more
glorious than Plan A. Some
people, upon hearing this comment
say, “You make it sound as
though God’s first plan was
imperfect!” Actually,
God’s earlier plan (Plan A) was
perfect because God’s ways are
always perfect. However, Plan B
is better and more glorious because
God uses the failure in Plan A to
reveal more about Himself than He
previously revealed. Here is an
example: If Adam and Eve and
their offspring had lived in the
Garden of Eden without sinning, Earth
would have been “a perfect
place” to live. God’s
original plan was perfect, but Adam
and Eve sinned and God’s
infinite love for mankind moved Him
to redeem the guilty pair (and their
offspring). Plan B was put in
motion and as a result, we now see a
component of God’s love for
sinners that would not be seen if sin
had not occurred. Plan A was
perfect, but Plan B reveals new
things about God which could not be
seen in Plan A. This makes Plan
B better and more glorious than Plan
A.
A
Much Different World History
According to
the Old Testament, world history
would have been much different over
the past 2,000 years if the nation of
Israel had embraced Jesus as the
Messiah at His first advent. If
this had occurred, Jesus would not
have returned to Heaven.[8] There
would have been no need for a second
advent. There would have been
no need for a New Testament and there
would have been no need for the books
of Daniel and Revelation
because these two prophetic
books contain Plan B!
For the sake
of discussion, let us lump all of the
promises and prophecies ancient
Israel received into Plan A.
Bible history records how Israel
rebelled time and time again.
God could not carry out His
redemptive trust for the whole world
because His trustees refused to do
the very things that He wanted
done. Therefore, God had
no choice but to fire Israel
for dereliction of duty during the
seventieth week.[9]
When it
became clear that Israel would not
receive Him as Messiah, Jesus
selected a new set of trustees.
He implemented a new covenant[10] between
Himself and His new trustees.
Keep in mind that the living trust
(God’s offer for salvation)
remains unchanged.[11] The
only element that changes are the
trustees.
A
Faithful Model
When Jesus
selected Israel to be the trustee of
the gospel, Jesus gave Israel many
laws and regulations. These
statutes were
perfect[12] because
God thoughtfully and deliberately
designed them. One set of laws
pertained to an intricate ceremonial
system
(including animal sacrifices), but
most people today misunderstand the
purpose for this intricate
system. God gave the
ceremonial system to Israel as a
faithful model. This model
reveals the
dimensions of the plan of redemption.[13] Each
process the priests conducted in the
earthly ceremonial system faithfully
parallels a real process that occurs
in Heaven.[14]
When Jesus
died on the cross, He abolished the
ceremonial system along with its
perfect laws because the purpose for
which the ceremonial system had been
created had been fulfilled.[15] This
does not mean that the ceremonial
system is unimportant today. In
fact, the ceremonial system God gave
to Israel is profoundly important
today because it was a faithful
“model” that reveals the
plan of redemption. In other
words, every theological idea
concerning the salvation of mankind
has to be evaluated to see if it is
in compliance with the ceremonial
system God gave to ancient Israel
because it is a perfect explanation
of redemption’s process.
I like to
think of the ceremonial system in
this way. Suppose a group grade
school students act in a skit that
illustrates the separation of the
United States from Great
Britain. The children
thoroughly research the topic and
portray the events of history.
When the skit is over, we could say
two things: First, since this
was a skit, when the fifth graders
“signed” the Declaration of
Independence, they did not sign a
valid document. In terms of
reality, the skit is just a depiction
of the actual events. In terms
of “representing” actual
events that occurred, their actions
were perfect. Second, assuming
the skit was a faithful
representation of what actually
happened, the skit was valuable
because everyone could quickly see
how the facts fit together. The
skit portrayed the truth even though
it was just a shadow of the truth.
The
ceremonial system is like a skit
revealing God’s living
trust. The ceremonial system
shadows events that began in Heaven
when Adam and Eve sinned. These
events will continue to function in
Heaven until the sin problem is
resolved on Earth and the redemption
of sinners is finished. The
ceremonial system God gave to Israel
was not a reality, but Israel had to
faithfully carry out the skit because
it was a faithful representation of
God’s living trust. The
Bible clearly says in Hebrews 10:1-4 that
sinners were not redeemed by the
blood of animals because the ceremony
was not a means to salvation.
The ceremonial system has enormous
value today because it can be used to
test every concept concerning
redemption.
Unconditional
Promises
When Abraham
obeyed the Lord and left his home, he
showed great faith in God. God
was pleased with Abraham and He
promised this childless man that he
would become the father of many
nations.[16]
Abraham believed God with childlike
simplicity and to honor
Abraham’s faith, God made some
unconditional promises to
Abraham. For example, God
promised to give Abraham and his
descendants the land of Canaan as an
everlasting possession.[17]
There has
been a great deal of misunderstanding
about the promises God gave to
Abraham. For example, God took
the descendants of Abraham into
Canaan (the promised land), but
Israel could not remain there because
God had promised that He would expel
Israel from Canaan if they become
hostile and rebellious toward
Him. After God exiled Israel to
Babylon for seventy years, He
returned Israel to Canaan. He
gave Abraham’s descendants one
more chance to faithfully serve as
the trustees of His covenant.
Centuries later (during the
seventieth week), Abraham’s
biological descendants (God’s
trustees) rejected Messiah and God,
in turn, abandoned Israel. God
moved forward with Plan B by making a
new covenant and choosing new
trustees (Christians). The new
covenant did not change the terms and
conditions of the living trust.
In fact, since sin began, the terms
and conditions for salvation have not
changed. Salvation always comes
through faith in God.[18]
page l 1 l 2 l
-1-
