&quote;Last Days&quote; Are Behind Us: Our Best Days Are Ahead! (eBook)

Table 1. The Mystery of the Kingdom of God Unfolding to Reveal the Numbered Days of Israel

This was man’s cultural mandate from God: Walk with God in obedience; bear a godly seed (offspring) to fill the earth; subdue the resources of the earth to God’s glory and to man’s enjoyment; continue to build, explore, subdue, and work the earth to the glory of God to the end of time.58 This belief motivated Christian explorers and missionaries to bring the Gospel of the Kingdom of God and this mandate to nations across the earth. Mankind, through the watchful Providence and blessing of his faithful God, was to bring God’s kingdom to earth and expand it as he himself spread across the face of the earth. Man was to build and steward the creation and glorify God in works of faith, hope, and love in every realm of life. These realms of life included purifying and setting apart his own life and making God-glorifying contributions to the world through his family, the State, education, business, and other institutions.

Adam was to be affirmed in eternal life through this obedience; however, through sin, through yielding to Satan’s temptation, Adam forfeited his kingdom role of vicegerent and his estate of abundant and eternal life in exchange for that estate of death. This was the result of his eating of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil versus partaking of the Tree of Life as God had commanded him. He instead acted on the Tempter’s lie. It is at this time that one saw an affront, a confrontation, a battle between God’s Kingdom and the purpose of Satan, a real, spiritual, and personal adversary. Satan lives to kill, steal, and destroy God’s creation and to deceive mankind with promises that appeal to man’s lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and pride of life. Through man’s free will, he chose the lies of Satan resulting in his fall from God’s grace and his being cut off from God without hope in the world. Adam was excommunicated from the Garden as part of the consequences he, his wife, and his progeny would bear for his unethical decision to reject loyalty to his faithful God and the blessings of His Kingdom. He forfeited the paradise of Eden. Satan then possessed a realm over which he could exercise a deceptive dominion, namely mankind itself and the creation over which man was to rule. It would seem that Satan had won. However, even though Adam, his wife, and his future children had lost the paradisical Kingdom of God on earth, God Himself would now redeem mankind through a promise of a Second Adam namely the Christ to come. The man would now have to rely on God’s unmerited favor, His grace, to be redeemed and to see the redemption of his wife and his future children. Only through the redeeming work of God, an act referred to as the Protoevangelium, could mankind be restored to his position of being a God-fearing and God-glorifying vicegerent of God Himself and be restored to fulfilling the cultural mandate in righteousness, peace, and joy to work to establish heaven on earth.

The Hope of the Gospel of Christ Was Established by God in the Garden: the Protoevangelium

It was gracious of God, who is rich in mercy, to permit Adam to live after His sin. God would bring both consequences for the sin and a promise of redemption to Adam. After all, the Christ who would be promised to Adam, the Seed of the woman, was preordained as slain, as it is written, from the foundations of the world. Moses wrote in Gen 3:15, that which God said to the serpent, Satan, after he had deceived the man, tempted him, and caused him to stumble, “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.”

This was the Gospel message to Adam that pointed him to Jesus Christ, the Seed who would come from the Virgin Mary. This passage is called the Protoevangelium because it is God’s evangelistic, message of “good news” to Adam of salvation through Christ Jesus 4000 years prior to Christ’s coming to earth. From the moment that message was delivered by God, the true religion of the one true God, Yahweh, would be based upon belief in the Seed to come. In other words, faith in the Seed, who would later be referred to as the Christ, or Messiah, was the only way mankind could gain favor with God and receive His blessings. Belief in the Seed to come enabled Adam, his wife, and his children after him, through his son Seth, to be restored to the capability to fulfill the cultural mandate. Christianity, therefore, began in the Garden by promise, and was always the one, true religion of Yahweh God. This hope of the Christ to come was salvific to the true Jews—those who were indeed circumcised in heart and not just in the flesh.59 The Seed of Adam’s wife, Eve, namely Jesus to come, would crush the head of the seed of the Adversary, the same one who tempted Adam to his sin and brought forth his downfall. From that time forward, all of creation would await the revealing of the sons of God so that all of nature itself also would be free from the bondage of sin. Since the Protoevangelium, mankind and nature would await a second Adam, Jesus, the Christ, and Messiah King to come, born of a Virgin, referred to by the Church as the Second Eve. While waiting, Adam and his children after him would establish a covenant family line from whom would come Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, whose twelve children would become the holy covenantal nation of Israel who would be called to walk in holiness before Yahweh. This nation, which would have a set number of days associated with its existence, would be a type and shadow of Christ’s Kingdom to come. Finally, it should be noted that all of God’s chosen people since Adam believed in a Christ to come, and all of those living during and after Christ believed in the Christ who had come. Therefore, all of God’s chosen people since the beginning can rightly be called Christian.

God Confirmed with Noah the Cultural Mandate to Build

Adam and Eve bore a son named Seth, a new son who “replaces” Abel who was murdered by Cain, who obeyed God and carried on the family lineage and its promise of a Seed that would crush the seed of the serpent. When Adam and Eve’s son, Cain, murdered their righteous son Abel, we witnessed the continuing confrontation between the growing Kingdom of God on earth through covenant families and the persistent rebellion of covenant breakers inspired by Satan, the same serpent of old, whose delight is in the destruction of families who fear and love God and keep His commandments.60 During these days, nearly 4000 years before Christ’s birth, due to the wickedness of men growing evil beyond reparation, God executed judgment upon mankind and flooded the earth destroying all creation except for a descendant of Seth, namely Noah, and his family of eight.61 After the Flood had ended and Noah and his family were saved on dry land, God made a covenant with Noah, gave him specific laws, the promise of seasons, and the assurance via the rainbow that the earth would never be thoroughly flooded again. God affirmed His original Cultural Mandate to Noah and his descendants to be fruitful and multiply, bring forth abundantly upon the earth, and subdue it. God even put the fear of Noah and his sons upon all the creatures. The Kingdom of God and man’s vicegerency thus continued forward, the temptations and gates of hell not stopping them. Man’s faith remained in God’s promise of the Messiah to come, the Seed of the woman. Again, by God’s grace, the Kingdom of God from this covenant family led by a believing head of household, Noah, ensured the continuing growth, knowledge, and influence of the Kingdom of God, which would continue to bring salvation, strength, and the power of the promised Christ to all with whom the covenant people would interface.

God Confirmed with Abraham That His Heritage Would Fill the Earth and Be Blessed

As the Kingdom of God grew, there were those who did not want to go forth and replenish the entire earth and subdue it. They thought of a “better plan” to assemble in one place to avoid being scattered over the earth. They built a tower to their own glory to heaven. God saw their disobedient, cowardly, self-glorifying, and faithless actions and judged them by confusing their languages. The place was called “Babel” for that was where man’s tribal languages were confused and relegated to babbling, non-discernable communications causing confusion and the end of the centralization plot. This was a proof that when the kingdoms of men under the reign of sin and death, inspired by Satan, seek to plot against God and His Christ, God laughs in heaven for the nations even when all conspiring together, are as nothing before the Living God.62

Soon after those days, God reached out to a man named Abram, a righteous descendent of Noah’s son Shem (from where we get the term “Semite”), and Shem’s descendent Eber (where we get the ethnic name, “Hebrew”). God chose Abram (a name meaning “high father”) to follow Him and continue the building of His Kingdom. God made a covenant with Abram giving him the name, “Abraham” meaning “father of many nations.”63 God affirmed that he would be great in all of the earth, thus affirming the Covenant of Grace in the Garden and the...