The Plan

     All Christians understand that God has a plan for His creations and that His plan is for us to be with Him, but first, Jehovah's "salvation" needed to be established, and this is what Christ has done at Calvary, "Salvation belongs to Jehovah. Your blessing is on Your people." (Psalm 3:8). Now, salvation can be realized for each soul, this every Christian should understand, it is the theme of God's word and the reason for the Book Christ inspired to the writers, in order for us to follow Him to the Heavenly promise land, by one seeking Jehovah our God.     

     The question that arises and needs an answer is: was Jehovah's plan devised after Satan fooled Eve, causing Adam to introduce sin into mankind by eating from the "Tree of The Knowledge of Good and Evil" or did Jehovah's original plan before His acts of creation include sin for mankind, giving man the responsibility to make a choice to love his Creator, but this can only happen after each man educates himself with God's word, and then his eyes should be open to God's goodness and His justice? It is my understanding from God's word, is that sin was and remains a needed and necessary part of God's plan, even before man was brought into existence. I come to this reasoning by the indication that the Garden of Eden, the first home of Adam and Eve, was only a portion of earth, a special place, and this was revealed to them shortly after Adam sinned, when him and his wife were denied access to the "Tree of Life", which was in the midst of this special garden, "And Jehovah God sent him out of the garden of Eden to till the ground out of which he was taken. And He drove the man out. And He caused to dwell the cherubs at the east of the Garden of Eden, and the flaming sword whirled around, to guard the way of the Tree of Life." (Genesis 3:23,24). They were cast out of the garden, just as Satan was cast out of Heaven, along with a third of God's angels, those having been deceived by Lucifer, just as Eve fell prey to the Devil's serpent's deception. I can not say either way, if God caused Satan or Adam to sin but I'm quite sure God Jehovah expected, even depended on this to happen, when one considers the name of the forbidden tree, "The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil" presenting man with both options, to lead us to a correct and necessary understand of righteousness and unrighteousness. After Adam committed the first sin, it was left up to him to consider either of these two choices. However, was Lucifer expected to introduce sin into existence or did God expect Adam to explore his curiosity for this purpose? God designed both angels and humans, and without question, He gave us the ability and responsibility of making our own decisions. It seems reasonable to consider that Satan and the Heavenly angels also had this responsibility, since a percentage decided to side with Satan. Why did God also give us this ability to reason and the responsibility of choice? God made us as Himself, "And God created the man in His own image; in the image of God He created him. He created them male and female." (Genesis 1:27) and it was Jehovah's choice to create man, because we were designated for a relationship with Jehovah God, knowing that Jehovah is a God of love, not only does He love all His creations, but He also desires to be loved, as He give us this same desire, to be loved. The one necessary ingredient for mature love to exist, is the element of choice, without choice, we only exercise obedience. God gave us the ability to reason, to calculate, to remember and to evaluate for the purpose of man in deciding to do as God has given us in His guidelines, or to do what we might think is better. An education in knowing God Jehovah, through His word, is that His way is for our best interest and happiness, as He designed us, but each of us must learn this for ourselves in order to make this wise choice. Our "desired" obedience shows God that we understand His righteous intentions and that we love Him because we have come to understand and agree with His character and system of government, and that we understand that He first loved us, "If you love Me, keep My commandments." (John 14:15). These are the word of Jesus, which refers to Jehovah's words, "and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love Me and keep My commandments." (Exodus 20:6, Deuteronomy 5:10, 7:9), "And it shall be, if you carefully listen to My commands which I command you today, to love Jehovah your God, and to serve Him with all your heart, and with all your soul," (Deuteronomy 11:13, also 11:22). There are other verses in the Old and the New Testaments that ask this of us, for our own joy and our well being. Jehovah loved us because He chose to create us and our best comprehension of Jehovah's gift of existence is that His life sustaining powers and His multitude of blessings for us is proof that His love for us is real, pure and everlasting.

      God's plan is going exactly as He wants all things to move, forward toward His goal. Once mankind sinned, starting with Adam, everything changed for mankind, his environment, his responsibilities and man's objective was altered. In the Garden of Eden, things were simple and close to perfect, righteousness was in man's heart and God gave man only one testing command, to not eat of one tree, of all the trees bearing fruit. This tree was there to challenge man and was to test their love for their Creator, plus to eventually explain to man the character of love itself. After sin entered humanity, we not only acquired a death sentence, but we were also given the responsibility of learning the character of God's divine way, outlined in the Ten Commandments and to learn and understand the consequences of actions contrary to God's perfect system; to learn and to make the necessary decisions to hate sin and cleanse ourselves of every contamination of sin from the desires and decisions of our heart,  "and you shall keep My statutes and My judgments, which if a man do, he shall live by them. I am Jehovah." (Leviticus 18:5) and, "Here is the patience of the saints; here are the ones keeping the commands of God, and the faith of Jesus." (Revelation 14:12). This is still where we are, after nearly six thousand years, our education of God's perfect way continues, and our learning will include the results of any deviation from the perfect and pure laws of God, which remains valid and will continue to be the standard, even in God's coming kingdom. "But according to His promise, we look for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells." (II Peter 3:13).

     Our experiences and our walk has been as the Israelite's walk to the promise land, recorded in the Old Testament for our education. Their life was filled with decisions, as our secular existence is filled with a multitude of choices. And just like the Israelites, every time we deviate from God's laws, we suffer a consequence, and often someone else suffers from our transgression, however, given the differences in our condition and our development, the results may not look the same as it was in the Old Testament times. It seem that our sins today are compounded and disguised to the point that many fail to recognize each particular sin and its result. Love now seems to be described as a feeling, apart from showing love by doing righteousness, which is doing right according to God's laws. Following the laws of Jehovah is sometimes labeled as "legalism." What a distraction from the truth. What also should be a concern for us are the motives of our actions, even our acts toward righteousness. We should endeavor to learn the beauty and purity of Jehovah's commands, and strive to implement them as acts from our desires and respect, not only for the laws, but also for the people around us, who could be the recipients of our actions, righteous or unrighteous. Understanding that most every sin has a recipient, a victim of an act of a sin, sometimes the victim would be ourselves and we should learn faster with those sins, but most times our sins fall on others and we subconsciously ignore the pain we cause others. God's laws are for our good fortune and for our protection, similar to most of the local laws.

      What is next is of ultimate important. At some point God decides the end for each of us; He will also determine when our collective time for education and our decision period will be over and He will send His Son, once again to gather the ones who have learned the perfection of His way and His government, those who have prepared themselves for an existence within the bounds of God's kingdom, where sin will not exist because those holding onto sin will not be allowed to enter His pure environment. Right now is our time for education and our time to put what we learn into practice. This life is our one chance and opportunity to decide on our individual future. This one decision is made over and over again, as each day brings with it new opportunities and challenges, but it's the same decision, to love Christ and His Father, Jehovah, "He that has My commandments and keeps them, it is that one who loves Me; and the one who loves Me shall be loved by My Father, and I shall love him, and will reveal Myself to him" (John 14:21), and from Jehovah God, "and doing kindness to thousands, to those loving Me, and to those keeping My commandments." (Exodus 20:6 and Deuteronomy 5:10), both of these verses express the last part of the second Commandment of Jehovah.  

     Adam was born into a perfect environment but he was not yet ready for God's perfect world because he lacked the knowledge and the understanding of perfect love, he had not yet made a personal decision to love, nor did he commit to be perfect; missing the understanding needed to love the perfect way of his Creator, which is needed to exist with God Jehovah in His pure environment. And this decision is also needed before God makes permanent our character, so that sin will never again be in God's everlasting kingdom. After his first sin, Adam had the same daily decisions that we are confronted with and he had 930 years to deal with those daily decisions. Surely we can handle just 100 years, being confronted with Satan's temptations. Those who study God's word diligently, with the objective to learn of Jehovah's pure righteousness, will understand His way and put it in their heart, because they will see God's glory and His continued concern for each of us. God Jehovah's planned design of us is to live with Him and the other Heavenly host, for us to embrace and enjoy the experiences of the new world that yet awaits us. Once Christ comes again and Jehovah cast all impurity into the "Lake of Fire", this age of decision will pass and a new age will be set in motion, an age of harmony with Jehovah, Jesus, the Heavenly angels and the other humans that have made the same decisions that you will have made. We will then experience life as it was originally designed by Jehovah to be lived, with all the unimaginable tasks and blessing that God hasn't yet revealed to us, don't miss out on God's many gifts for His most loved creations, humanity.