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HINDUISM, SIKHISM AND ISLAM: ARE THESE GOD'S RELIGIONS
CHAPTER 14
Why Were Death and Resurrection of Jesus Necessary
God’s Purpose in Creating Mankind
To understand why the crucifixion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ are crucial to God’s plan for man, we must understand briefly what God’s purpose was in creating mankind. We will appreciate God’s purpose much better if we understand the history of the universe before man’s creation.
HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE BEFORE MAN’S CREATION
[This history is described in my book titled “Satan vs God: From the Beginning to the Flood” Volume 1. The Bible is the basis for this history].
In the very beginning of everything only one Supreme God Being existed. That God Being we know as God the Father. This is one Being who has always existed. All power in the universe literally belongs to Him. And literally everything has come from His body if we can put it that way.
God the Father originally thought through everything and planned all creation. He chose first to create just one Being with incredible powers like His own. That Being was originally known as the Word, but later came to earth as Jesus Christ. Then the honor of creating everything was given to the Word.
How God and the Word Lived
God the Father determined that the only way He could have a loving relationship with other beings would be to create intelligent beings similar to Himself. It was absolutely essential for Him to give them “free will” or ‘free moral agency.’ They could choose to live according to His way of life, or choose to live any other way they wished.
Without ‘free will’ God’s creatures would be mere robots, programmed to behave in a particular way. The kind of deeply satisfying, happy and joyful relationship human beings can have with their own children or other human beings is not possible with any other creatures made of matter, be they trees, birds, fish or any kind of animals such as dogs or cats, no matter how loving or loyal the animal might be. Relationship between animals is an animal plane relationship. It is not a human level relationship, or a God plane relationship.
Humans have animal-like bodies, but a human spirit imparted to them by God which gives them human intellect or intelligence, which is the power to think, the “mind power,” which animals don’t possess. Paul explains that “spirit in man” in 1 Corinthians 2:9-12.
Human intellect, similar to God’s intellect makes a personal relationship possible among human beings as well as between God and man, which is a much higher plane relationship than the animal level relationship. So, God planned to create intelligent beings that would love Him of their own free will and choose to obey Him.
To truly know God, one must know what His character is! The character of both God the Father and Jesus Christ the Son is that of spiritual holiness, righteousness and absolute perfection, which can be summed by one word: LOVE, which is defined as outgoing concern for the welfare of others. It can also be called the way of “giving” instead of “getting”, the way of sharing, helping and serving. God’s nature includes the attributes of PEACE, HARMONY, JUSTICE, MERCY, COMPASSION, HAPPINESS AND JOY towards all those He has created. It is a way devoid of coveting, lust, greed, vanity, selfishness, envy, jealousy, resentment, bitterness, hatred, competition, strife, violence and destruction.
God the Father and the Word lived this way of life of LOVE, with total agreement with one another ever since the Word was created for practically the past eternity. But it is also a principle of God’s way that when two walk together, one has to be the head and in control for there to be harmony and peace in the relationship. One has to be the leader. God the Father was the head.
The results of living this way for eternity were perfect cooperation, peace, harmony, joy, happiness and most important of all, tremendous accomplishment. They made this way of life a LAW, a code of conduct or relationship between God the Father and the Word.
God’s Next Phase of Creation
When God’s small project of creation, that of the Word, proved to be perfect and a total success, He and the Word then proceeded with the next phase of Their creation, which was the creation of 24 elders mentioned in Revelation 4:1-4, 6-11. These verses show that the twenty-four elders wear crowns and sit on thrones. Jesus Christ also is pictured in Revelation 19:12 as wearing many crowns. And God the Father and Jesus Christ sit on thrones.
No angels are pictured as wearing crowns, or sitting on thrones, except for Lucifer who was given a crown and a throne to sit on as ruler over the earth. If the twenty-four elders were created at the same time as the angels, it is difficult to imagine that the twenty-four elders qualified to sit on thrones and wear crowns, but none of the angels (except Lucifer), including the archangels Gabriel and Michael, qualified to wear crowns and sit on thrones. This indicates that the twenty-four elders were likely created before the angels were created.
After the twenty-four elders were created, they were taught God’s way of life and His laws as the Word had been taught by God the Father before that. Of their own free will, they learnt to love, respect and honor their Creators, God the Father and the Word. Living that way of life produced perfect harmony, peace and abundant joy for the Creators and the twenty-four elders. They also learnt about God’s method of government.
Creation of Angels
After the 24 elders proved to God that they had thoroughly learnt His way of life and His laws, were convinced that it was the best way to live a happy, peaceful and joyous life, and would always live the way of love, God the Father and the Word decided to proceed with the next phase of their creation plan. They decided to create many more beings: hundreds of millions, or perhaps billions of angels.
In this phase of creation, God for the first time decided to create variety, for all angels don’t look alike and they are not created equal. Some angels have higher rank than others with differing responsibilities.
The Material Creation
The angels also went through the same learning process as the 24 elders. When God and the Word were convinced that the angels were perfectly trained in God’s way of life of Love, His laws, and His government, they began sharing their future creation plan with the angels. They then implemented the plan, which was the creation of the material universe. That is what is described in Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
When the angels saw the beauty of the earth, they were incredibly thrilled and shouted for joy as stated in Job 38:4.
Then God chose a pioneering party of one-third of all the angels to rule the earth with Lucifer, an angel of the highest rank to be ruler over them to administer God’s government on earth. Lucifer had proved himself thoroughly capable of administering God’s government through his training and testing at God’s universe ruling headquarters.
Here now was an opportunity for the angels to own something and work with it for eternity. In heaven, they lived under God’s government. But now they could plan out their own creation and rule over it, just as God the Father and the Word had done as a pattern for them to follow. With this incredible opportunity the angels could prove themselves and qualify to become creators and rulers in the entire universe on their own.
Archaeologists, geologists and paleontologists have unearthed fossils that give us an idea of what appears to be the plant and animal world created by the angels under Lucifer’s rule. That is the world we know as the dinosaur world.
That world was not created in a few short years. According to the U.S. Geological Survey the earth is approximately 4.54 billion years old. This means that the Dinosaur world could have been the result of billions of years of learning and creating by the angels under Lucifer’s rule.
For perhaps billions of years Lucifer and the angels lived God’s way of life and Lucifer administered God’s government on earth. But at some point in time, Lucifer began to entertain thoughts of doing things his own way; ways that were different from God’s way of LOVE, the way of outgoing concern for the welfare of others equal to one’s own welfare, the way of sharing, caring and cooperation. He felt the way of competition would be better as it would be an incentive to excel for greater accomplishment. He thought it would be better to serve the SELF to maximize one’s own pleasure.
Ezekiel 28:15-17 states: “You [Satan] were perfect in your ways from the day that you were created, till iniquity was found in you.” [This verse makes it clear that rebellion of the angels did not originate with the other angels, but with Lucifer himself.] Continue in verses 17: “Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty, you have corrupted your wisdom by reason of your brightness…”
These verses reveal that Lucifer’s heart was lifted up with pride, and because of his incredible beauty, brightness, talents and wisdom vanity seized him. He began to think he could do things better than God. This led to wrong reasoning which corrupted his wisdom.
Such thoughts were violations of God’s law of LOVE for their Creator and fellow-brings. This iniquity began to manifest itself in what Lucifer and the angels with him began to create; carnivores that would devour other creatures and for their entire creation ‘survival of the fittest’ would be a way of life.
Satan’s Rebellion
God allowed Lucifer and the angels with him to continue their experiments in creation and govern it the way they liked and show God their alternate way of life. With time Lucifer’s thinking became more and more perverted, until ultimately he decided to rebel against God, depose Him, take over His throne and become ruler of the universe himself as stated in Isaiah 14:12-14.
When all the angels under Lucifer were aboard on the decision to rebel against God the Father and the Word, they rose up from the earth and stormed heaven. This is indicated by Jude 6: “And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation…”
However, Lucifer and his angels were unsuccessful in their rebellion. While they fought in heaven, some of them probably went on a rampage throughout the universe in fits of rage and frustration. We see the evidence in craters over the surfaces of all planets and astral bodies we can see around the universe. That is how Lucifer – son of the morning, the light bringer – became Satan the devil, an adversary and enemy of God, and the angels with him became demons.
Then God decided to put an end to this rampage by Satan and the demons. He blasted them back to earth, their assigned habitation, from heaven, or wherever they were in the universe. This is indicated in Luke 10:18: “And he [Jesus Christ] said unto them, I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven.”
The result of Satan’s rebellion on the earth is described in Genesis 1:2: “And the earth was [better translation is ‘became’] without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.”
God’s Plan for the Creation of Man
When God saw the debacle caused by Satan’s rebellion, He realized that the angels could not be relied upon to always obey His laws and live according to His way of life under all circumstances. A super being, created by God, had rebelled against Him, transgressed His laws and sinned, for ‘sin is the transgression of the law’ (I John 3:4.) That left only God the Father Himself, and the Word (who also was God, as a second member of the God family) who would not and cannot sin. Only they could be absolutely relied upon to never sin. So, the only way God could fulfill His purpose for the entire universe was to reproduce Himself. God and the Word had already devised a plan to do exactly that.
What Satan and the demons demonstrated by their rebellion is that they had not learnt the lesson that only God’s way of LOVE works for the welfare of every creature, and it requires godly character to live that way of LOVE. God and the Word saw that Satan and the demons lacked god’s holy righteous character. That is one quality that even God with His creative powers cannot create instantly by fiat because it requires the free choice and decision of the separate entity in whom it is to be created to allow God to create it.
Mr. Armstrong writes in his book Mystery of the Ages: “Prefect, holy and righteous character is the ability in such separate entity to come to discern the true and right way from the false, to make voluntarily a full and unconditional surrender to God and his perfect way – to yield to be conquered by God – to determine even against temptation or self-desire, to live and to do the right. And even then, such holy character is the gift of God. It comes by yielding to God to instill HIS LAW (God’s right way of life) within the entity who so decides and wills.”
Since free choice of the being in whom godly character is to be developed is required, it means that God cannot create His perfect character by fiat or decree. It must be developed over a period of time by God working with the intelligent being, with the free choice and agreement of the intelligent being to let God work with him.
In their next phase of creation, God and the Word’s plan would include the development of godly character like their own in the intelligent creatures they would create. Godly character would ensure that these intelligent creatures would obey Their laws and live Their way of LOVE for God and love and outgoing concern for their fellow intelligent beings and would never rebel against Their rule. Their new creatures needed to learn some vital lessons, and God and the Word devised a plan to teach them those lessons.
The first lesson God wanted His new creatures to learn was that they would always be totally dependent upon Him. Jesus Christ is the only Being who is self-existent, that is with life-inherent in Himself (John 5:26). And that gift was granted to Him after practically a past eternity of developing total and complete faith and trust in God the Father. The new creatures (or man) needed to learn that God gives them everything that sustains their lives. Lucifer and the angels with him had not learnt that lesson. They did not need any kind of food, spirit energy or anything else for their existence. So they thought they could live independently of God. The way God planned to impart this lesson to humans was to create them as vulnerable physical beings rather than spirit beings. They would be dependent on food, water and air to sustain them.
Human beings in growing up are subject to the same type of vanity that manifested itself in Lucifer. But they eventually learn the lesson through old age that the cause of their vanity, good looks, superior intelligence, success and material possessions or anything else, eventually fades away. In old age they are barely able to exercise much control over their own bodies and then they die. Material possessions are no longer of any value to them after they die. They eventually learn the lesson in humility and realize how vulnerable and totally dependent they really are on God.
The second lesson God wanted His new creature to learn was that rebellion against Him would always be futile, and end in utter and total defeat. That lesson will be brought home to man by extinguishing the lives of the rebellious forever in the lake of fire, if they refuse to repent. That way the living will learn the lesson for eternity that God is Almighty and can always solve the problem of rebellion by extinguishing the lives of the rebellious forever.
Thirdly, God wanted to develop godly, holy and righteous character in man. God saw that all the angels that followed Satan in the rebellion lacked godly character as did Lucifer.
Before Satan’s rebellion, the entire universe was governed according to God’s way of love, cooperation and concern for the welfare of others. In such a perfect environment, there was no opportunity to test the character of the 24 elders or individual angels to resist sin against pressure, threat to life or pain and suffering through torture for an indefinite period of time.
After Satan’s rebellion two-thirds of the angels still serving God in heaven have been tried and tested in a limited way because they have to face Satan’s accusations against them before God as indicated in Revelation 12:7-10, 12.
In addition, God’s angels are assigned specific duties on earth. Angels function as God’s messengers on earth. In these assignments they often have to battle Satan and his powerful demons, who have been appointed as princes over kingdoms of the earth by Satan as described in Daniel 10:12-13, 20-21. These battles are trials for God’s angels and tests of their character. Thus, God’s angels are being tested to prove their love and desire for God’s work on the earth, for this is the battleground.
However, to develop godly, holy and righteous character in human beings, God’s plan included leaving Satan and his demons still rulers of the earth, but severely curtailing their powers, and still fully under His control. God would create man but allow him to be influenced by Satan and his demons. He would also teach humans His way of life. Then human beings could decide for themselves whether they would obey God’s laws and live according to His ways or choose to live in ways of their own devising as influenced by Satan. They would experience the results of Satan’s ways in the first 6,000 years of man’s history, and then experience the fruits of God’s Kingdom in the 1,000 years following. Humanity would then be able to compare and contrast the two ways.
God knew that Satan and his demons would persecute human beings loyal to Him. God knew that Satan will threaten His people to forsake His ways and persecute them by inflicting pain and suffering and even painful death. But that would be a supreme test of character for God’s people to determine if they will always remain faithful to His way despite all that Satan and his demons can throw at them. God promises to help His people as He chooses, but they must have faith in Him and rely on Him completely. They would have to be willing to sacrifice their physical lives, if necessary, to never compromise with God’s laws and His ways. Some will violently lose their physical lives, but they will attain immortal life and a glorious eternal future. The tests, trials and persecutions inflicted on them by Satan and his human agents will develop godly, holy and righteous character in His people. God devised this perfect plan to test man like no other intelligent creature God has created has ever been tested to develop His holy, righteous character in him.
After holy and righteous character is developed in humans, God will then give them spirit bodies with power and abilities multiplied trillions of times, making them perfect and incapable of sinning, like Himself and the Word. That is what human beings are called to as stated in Matthew 5:48: “Be you therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.”
Fourth lesson God wants to impart to man is to learn how to love God and each other. Not all angels had been able to learn that vital lesson. We can visualize the feelings of angels for God by imagining the feelings of children. They are born into the world and are totally dependent on their parents in childhood and youth. As they grow up, they long to be independent of their parents’ control. They cannot fully realize how deeply their parents love them until they have children of their own. They know how precious their children are to them, and how deeply they love them. Then they realize how much their own parents loved them and did everything that was only in their best interests. In the same way the angels perhaps could not perceive how deeply God the Father and the Word loved them, because they had not experienced similar love for ‘children’ of their own or their own creation.
Humans have been deceived into believing that God hates His creation and is ready to pounce on humans and blot out their existence at the slightest sin. So, far more important than humans learning to love God and fellow man was to learn how deeply God loves them. The best way for them to learn that lesson would be for them to reproduce and experience love for their own offspring. In addition to parent-child relationships, God also planned to create other relationships for experiencing love. He created the marriage relationship for them to experience the love the Word has for them, as God’s Church is called Christ’s bride in the Bible. As a result of family, humans would also experience brother and sister relationships. Thus, God wanted His new creatures to experience love in many possible ways. Their physical bodies would also enable them to experience love in close bonds through loving physical contact. God also planned to create all humanity from one man, Adam. From Adam He would create the woman Eve. Then through that one man and one woman, all of humanity would spring forth. Hence all of humanity would be related. This way God would knit His entire creation closely together. The angels would also learn by observing and caring for humanity how God the Father and the Word love them.
It is clear from Job 38:7 that the angels had the concept of fathers and sons. They knew that they were sons of God by creation. But the depth of closeness that the father-son bond should have produced in them for God the Father and the Word was not present because they had not experienced the same closeness from the point of view of parents.
Reproduction in the dinosaur world before man’s creation was through laying of eggs and hatching them. But in the mammalian world method of reproduction was changed to producing young from their own bodies and nourishing them from their own bodies. This develops a closer bond between parent and offspring.
God also wanted man to learn to love all living things. Satan and the demons created the dinosaur world. They had no love for those creatures, because they thought absolutely nothing of destroying them in their rebellion. To teach man to love all creatures, God created cattle and other animals on which man would be dependent in many ways. He would be dependent on them for food, clothing and to bear his burdens. The animals would represent wealth for him. Even his practice of sustained agriculture would depend on animals to maintain the fertility of the soil. In short, man’s well-being would depend a great deal on taking care of animals. Indeed, his long-term survival would depend on them. He would have to kill them for food, clothing and other needs, but that does not have to be done with torture, pain and suffering. They could be killed humanely. Man would learn the need to preserve the animals because each plays an important part in the ecological system. This way he would learn to love all of God’s creation.
Fifth, God wanted to demonstrate to His creation how He loves them with the kind of love that surpasses human understanding. At the same time, He wanted to demonstrate to them that He is always just and fair, because Satan and his demons accuse Him of being unfair. God and the Word chose to demonstrate their love by the Word agreeing to empty Himself of all His divinity and power, coming to the earth as a human being, living a sinless life and dying for the sins of humanity. God the Father was also willing to sacrifice His begotten Son in an excruciatingly painful death. With His sacrifice, the Word would redeem His creation from death, by paying the death penalty on its behalf.
God would also prove His fairness by demonstrating that He and the Word are very strict about their law of love. Unfairness violates that law of love. The penalty for violating that law is death. All human beings have earned the death penalty by sinning. That penalty had to be paid. There was no compromise with that. And Jesus Christ paid it on their behalf. God the Father and Jesus Christ never compromise with their law, and never sin themselves. They are very strict about keeping their law. Therefore, there is no question of them being unfair and unjust.
Sixth, God wanted to demonstrate to His new creatures that He always knows and does what is best for them in the long-run. They must, therefore, learn to trust Him completely. He knows every creature that has ever been created and is intimately familiar with all the details of their life experiences and all their thoughts. He has all the power, and He sees things that the creature itself cannot see or perceive. And He has the benefit of knowing the experiences of all creatures that have ever lived. Therefore, He is in the best position to judge what is in the best interest of the creature, even far more than the creature itself knows. And He has all the power to affect the outcomes of all actions. Therefore, He wanted His new creatures to learn to put their complete faith and trust in Him.
The way God would choose to instill that lesson in men would be to require them to praise and worship Him. By praising, worshipping and meditating on Him, they would never lose sight of His awesome power and greatness, the wonders and miracles He has performed for those who love Him, and always keep in mind how weak and totally dependent they are in comparison. That would also prevent rebellion against Him.
Seventh, God wanted to drive pride and vanity out of man forever. One way He would drive vanity out of the angels would be to set man in authority over them. That would also be a warning to man for all eternity. If they ever became vain and arrogant against Him, He could always create new creatures and set them over man. God never wants pride and vanity to be the cause of rebellion against Him, or of oppression of fellow beings as happened in the case of Satan. None of us have any cause for boasting because whatever talents, abilities and strengths we possess, we have received from God (1 Corinthians 4:7 – NKJV – “7 For who makes you differ from another? And what do you have that you did not receive? Now if you did indeed receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?”
Eighth important lesson God wanted His creation to learn is that it is His prerogative to create a being as He chooses. The angels were created with different looks, talents and rank. Satan may have used these created differences to sow discontent, dissatisfaction, a false sense of discrimination and unfairness, resentment, bitterness and hatred among the angels towards God. God must have thought through all these ideas in the minds of the angels but concluded that there was no alternative to creating variety, and creatures with different talents and abilities for the good of society. God thought through the future of man for eternity ahead and concluded that there was no alternative to creating a hierarchical structure. Possible reason is that billions of beings created equal in rank would lead to anarchy. Therefore, some would have higher authority than others.
God decided that He would create differences in His new creature. He created people with different looks and talents. This would be an incentive for humans to cooperate with one another for only those who cooperate with others will get farthest ahead in life and realize greater happiness and joy. God would also demonstrate that He is capable of providing for all so that they all can live happy, abundant, productive and joyful lives.
But also remember that human beings will be rewarded according to how they use their talents and abilities as the parable of the talents in Matthew 25 shows. God is always fair.
The ninth vital lesson God wanted man to learn is that violation of His laws, which is sin, always produces pain, suffering and anguish in the long run. He wanted to demonstrate to man that His laws are living laws which always exact a penalty when transgressed. Man would be created as a weak creature. As a result, all would sin because of their imperfect knowledge, and due to Satan’s influence. All would, therefore, suffer the consequences in pain and suffering. They would, therefore, learn to avoid sin as a result of these experiences. When they are resurrected as immortal spirit beings with powers multiplied billions or trillions of times, they will become perfect and incapable of sinning. They will become literal sons of God.
The tenth consideration for God in creating man was that He did not want them to suffer forever. He planned to give man temporary physical existence. To those that developed His holy, righteous character such that He could depend on them to be completely faithful to Him and His way of life forever under all circumstances, He would give eternal life. Those who failed to repent and did not develop godly character would have their lives extinguished permanently in a lake of fire. This would forever stop the pain and suffering they were causing themselves and others because of their sins.
The eleventh element of God’s plan for man would be to give eternal life only to those who really want it. When God opens the understanding of an individual to what He has planned for humanity, the individual may be really excited about his potential and work passionately to learn and live according to God’s laws and way of life. He may diligently apply himself to root sin out of his life, and exercise love towards God and fellow man. Such a person will be granted eternal life as God’s literal son and will rule with Jesus Christ in His kingdom.
On the other hand, another individual called into God’s Church may understand the incredible potential God is offering him, but be lazy, lukewarm and not passionate about overcoming sin and growing in knowledge and love of God. Such a person, who does not bear sufficient fruit to perfection, will lose his life in the lake of fire. He will have demonstrated in his physical life that he is not really excited and passionate about living for eternity. This is indicated by the parable of the talents in Matthew 25:14-30, and the parable of the pounds in Luke 19:12-26.
The twelfth element of God’s plan for creation of man was to make him joint heir of all things with Jesus Christ, if he developed holy and righteous character. According to God’s plan, no intelligent being created by God would be tested quite like man, and the firstfruits among men more so. The firstfruits, those called into God’s Church during the first 6,000 years of man’s history, would be required to be willing to die to keep God’s laws and commandments to prove their total commitment to His way of life. As a reward God plans to make them heirs of all things, as indicated in Hebrews 2:8. “All things” means the entire universe. Romans 8:16-17 declares that we shall be joint-heirs with Jesus Christ.
By analyzing man’s attributes and physical environment, one can understand some of God’s other purposes for creating man the way He has. Herbert W. Armstrong in his book “Mystery of the Ages” describes some of his experiences with demons: “I have had a number of personal experiences with demons through a few demon-possessed people. I have cast out demons through the name of Christ and power of the Holy Spirit. Some demons are silly, like spoiled children. Some are crafty, sharp, shrewd, subtile. Some are belligerent, some are sassy, some are sullen and morose. But all are perverted, warped, twisted” (p. 93).
From Mr. Armstrong’s description, it seems some demons are not as passionate about work. To inculcate the habit of work, and to derive joy and satisfaction from a sense of accomplishment through hard work, God made man dependent on food to sustain his life. To procure food, man must work. This would build the habit of work in man. The angels on the other hand are not dependent on food to live.
Lucifer may have had to contend with this attitude among some of the angels under his rule who were merely existing and not working diligently. As a reaction he probably developed the philosophy of ‘success through competition’ rather than through cooperation. He has imparted that same philosophy, attitude and mind-set to humanity.
God also wants man to maintain His creation well, and to finish its beautification. For this purpose, man has to learn to be clean and maintain things in order. Apparently, some of the angels before they rebelled did not have enthusiasm in maintaining the earth in a state of beauty and order. To teach man that lesson, God decided to tie length of man’s life to keeping clean. He created germs that would thrive in unclean environments, and cause disease in humans. If man persisted in keeping his environment dirty, it could literally kill him prematurely with disease.
God also wanted man to learn self-control and temperance. It is one of the fruits of God’s holy spirit (Galatians 5:23). Apparently, some of the angels with Lucifer did not exhibit this character trait. To teach man this lesson, God created human bodies in such a way that if abused through lack of moderation in food, drink and other activities, man would get sick. The more he abused his body, the greater pain he would suffer, and the earlier he would die. Man would also develop a higher and higher level of self-control by having to change his eating and drinking habits as he got older.
Apparently, all angels did not learn to fully cooperate with one another. Man would learn that lesson by being created weak, not possessing all talents and thus never completely self-reliant. Every human depends on services from other human beings for living. He cannot himself produce all he needs. Then in old age he often cannot take care of even his basic needs and needs the services of others. This way man learns the lesson of interdependence, and the need to cooperate with others.
Some of the angels with Lucifer must also have wondered why God created so many hundreds of millions or even billions of them. However, God would create tens billions of human beings to demonstrate to the angels that numbers are no constraint for Him. He has created many more planets and even galaxies in the universe than there will ever be human beings born. He can provide for all His creation with sustenance and fulfilling work and activities for all eternity. In fact, God revealed through Moses that He has already divided the planets to various peoples on earth in Deuteronomy 4:19, “19 And lest you lift up your eyes unto heaven, and when you see the sun, and the moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven, should be driven to worship them, and serve them, which the Lord your God has divided unto all nations under the whole heaven.”
So, after Satan’s rebellion, God planned out another creation, that of man! And He planned to develop His godly, holy and righteous character in man, found so utterly lacking in Satan and his demons. In effect, God planned to reproduce Himself. Man would learn all these vital lessons so that there would never ever be rebellion against His authority and government. Mankind would learn these crucial lessons through trial and error, sin, and the resulting pain and suffering, and these experiences would be recorded as history to be kept in remembrance for all eternity. God’s Word, the Holy Bible is that history book.
Not only did God plan to reproduce Himself through man, He also planned to restore His government on earth, which was taken away by Satan’s rebellion. Presently, Satan and his demons rule the earth, and that is why we experience so much pain and suffering. Though Satan can do only what God allows, God gives him enough freedom to rule the earth so that it is not the way government would function in God’s kingdom. That kingdom will soon be set up on earth when Jesus Christ returns as King of kings with the immortal saints as kings and deposes Satan and his demons. Then humans will be able to compare and contrast the two ways of life and choose the way they will live.
After Satan’s rebellion, God and the Word therefore planned to create intelligent creatures in such a way that they would learn what love for God and fellow-man is, feel it, experience it and would have a deep desire to live that way for eternity. God’s holy and righteous character inculcated in them would ensure that they would never depart from that way of life. Most importantly they would learn that God loves them as His own dear children just as they learn to learn their own children.
That is the reason why God created mankind the way He did, flesh and blood creatures subject to death, male and female with the institution of marriage and family to experience close deep love in many possible ways, the ability to reproduce to teach them the vital lesson that He loves them with godly love that surpasses human understanding, and to learn how to love Him and fellow man.
God is reproducing Himself through humanity. Human beings and all other physical creatures can reproduce themselves as flesh and blood creatures. But we cannot reproduce spirit born creatures with godly character, because godly character cannot be created by fiat. Only God can perform that reproductive process in us.
Despite scriptures reassuring us, we still cannot comprehend that we shall become gods like Jesus Christ, literal immortal children of God the Father. Our argument against this belief is that Jesus Christ was a God Being before He became flesh, but we were created mere flesh and blood. If God wanted to create us as His literal sons and daughters, He could have simply created us like Jesus Christ. Because we are created as flesh and blood beings like animals, we cannot therefore ever become equal to Jesus Christ as God’s literal sons and daughters.
But we forget that God did in fact create sons composed of spirit before humans. Those spirit beings are the 24 elders and the angelic world. A part of those sons created with spirit bodies rebelled against God. God could not create His holy righteous character in them by fiat because they were created with free will and it requires their exercise of that free will in acquiescing to allow God to create His holy righteous character in them. God has created humans so that they can first allow Him to develop His holy righteous character in themselves before God will give them eternal life.
In believing that by virtue of being created flesh and blood like animals we will always be an inferior creation as compared to the spirit world, we seem to have forgotten that Jesus Christ was also created a flesh and blood human being. To prove to humans that He will convert them to spirit beings God the Father resurrected Jesus Christ from the dead. He will resurrect us in exactly the same way as spirit beings, to become His immortal sons and daughters.
The reality of the resurrection energized Jesus disciples so that they were willing to die for their belief. They knew that their potential was to become God’s literal sons and daughters like Jesus Christ. That’s why John the apostle wrote about it.
We may still think that we cannot be equal to God because God had no direct hand in creating us. We were born as a result of our parents’ actions, and not directly created like Jesus Christ was created by God the Father. So, we cannot be equal with Jesus Christ. But we are forgetting that we would not have fully experienced the love of a parent for a child if God had a direct hand in our creation and not through the human reproductive process. We also do not realize that the chance of a human sperm fertilizing a human egg by mere chance is almost negligible. This means that God has a direct hand in the conception of every human being, making the near impossible possible. But when a human child is born, its parents know that the child has come entirely from their own bodies. So, they deeply love that child. If God had a direct hand in creating flesh and blood human children without human reproduction, we would not have experienced the same level of love for our children. God has allowed us to reproduce without His direct hand in it so that we can feel and experience love for our own children and thus learn how deeply God loves us.
By being equal to Jesus Christ does not mean equal in power, strength and abilities as all human beings are not equal in power, strength and abilities. But they are equal in the sense that they are all human beings.
The Bible leaves no doubt about what the potential of human beings is. It is to become God’s literal sons and daughters with spirit bodies just like that of Jesus Christ. But we had to be created flesh and blood like animals to learn other godly righteous character building lessons. We should not limit God’s creative powers in our thinking. If He could create the Word directly, and then raise Him through a resurrection, He certainly can convert flesh and blood human beings into spirit beings with the same spirit composition as Jesus Christ.
Now try to imagine what God’s adversary would do? His aim would be to thwart God’s purposes as best he can. Satan as God’s adversary tries to do precisely that. And what exactly would he try to do?
Look at God’s plan of salvation for humanity again. God’s purpose in creating humans is to have them eventually become part of His family as His immortal, divine sons and daughters. And the only way they can become His literal sons and daughters is to first develop His holy, righteous, godly character in them. Human beings do that by learning to completely surrender to God and obeying His Law. Obeying God’s law means to not sin, because John describes sin in 1 John 3:4. He writes: “4 Whosoever commits sin transgresses also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law.” The NKJV translates this verse as: “4 Whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness.”
Thus to become members of God’s family, human beings must eventually become sinless as God the Father and Jesus Christ are sinless. We can never become sinless as physical human beings because our mental and physical capacities are severely limited. Only Jesus Christ remained sinless as a human being because God gave Him His holy spirit without measure (John 3:34). In contrast God has given us only a type of down payment (earnest) of His holy spirit at present (2 Corinthians 1:22, 5:5). But when we have demonstrated by our attitudes and actions that we want to develop holy and righteous character in ourselves, we will have qualified to become God’s spirit born immortal sons. Then at the resurrection God will change our composition to spirit beings with a full measure of His holy spirit. Then we will have the mental capacity as well as other powers multiplied trillions of times to enable us to remain sinless.
Why Sinlessness?
But you may ask why God has such an emphasis on sinlessness? The answer is quite simple. Any transgression of God’s law, or any form of lawlessness always brings pain and suffering without fail. We cannot have perfect love, peace, joy and happiness when there is any form of sin present in us.
As long as there is even an iota of sin present in any of God’s sons, God’s family cannot live the kind of life God prophesied in Revelation 21:3-4: “3 "Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God. 4 And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away."
That is the kind of family God is purposing and is working to create. He wants a family that does not experience tears, pain, suffering and sorrow which the rebellion of Satan and the demons brought into the universe. And becoming part of God’s family involves our free choice. Each and every human being has to choose to become a part of God’s family when God sends that human being His invitation by calling him. Those who choose not to by rebelling against God and His law will not become a part of His family.
Why Does Not God Simply Forgive Sin?
Many Muslim scholars have questioned the need for the sacrifice of Jesus Christ to forgive our sins. They have said that God can simply forgive sin if He chooses to. Jesus Christ’s sacrifice is not needed for that purpose.
Can you imagine God simply forgiving a murderer, or a thief for his murder and theft? He can commit another murder or theft and God can simply forgive him again. Can you imagine such a sinner being granted eternal life as God’s son and free to continue in his behavior with God continually forgiving his sin every time? How about the victims? Would their tears, pain, suffering and sorrow ever cease? I hope Muslim scholars realize how foolish this argument is.
A law is designed to deter unlawful behavior. Until there is a penalty for violation of the law, the law cannot act as a deterrent to sinful behavior. God cannot have a perfectly sinless family as long as sin remains. That is why He has prescribed the death penalty for any violation of His Law. Either human beings choose to become sinless with God’s help, or the death penalty will be applied to their violations of the Law. Their lives will be permanently extinguished in the Lake of Fire.
The death penalty has to be paid for all our sins. Otherwise what good is a law if penalty for its violation is not enforced? Each and every human being has sinned. As a result, each and every human being has incurred the death penalty. And that penalty could be paid for all only by their Creator whose life was of more value than all His creation put together.
If God simply forgives the sins of each and every human being, He will not have the perfect family He has planned. Without the death penalty for sin, humans will not have the need for avoiding sin indelibly impressed on their minds. Therefore, to make His purposes stand, He and His son planned the sacrifice of His son Jesus Christ.
How would Satan Try to Thwart God’s Purposes?
Now let’s come back to the question we asked earlier: How would Satan the adversary of God try to thwart God’s purpose of creating His family that is free of tears, pain, suffering and sorrow?
Satan’s first tactic would be to try to convince humanity that God does not have any such purpose as reproducing Himself and have many more sons and daughters added to His family. To do so, he first denies that God is a family.
Islam is the only religion that in the Quran addresses the writings of the Jews and Christians in the Bible as well as some of their beliefs. The fact that the Quran directly contradicts what is written in the Bible means that if the writings of the Quran are inspired by the true God, then the writings of the Bible are not inspired by God but inspired by Satan. On the other hand, if the Bible is inspired and backed up by the power of Almighty God, then the Quran is inspired by Satan directly.
But we have earlier proved that the Bible is inspired and backed up by the power of Almighty God. This then means that the Quran is inspired by Satan because it specifically attacks the Bible. It directly attacks the Bible by saying such things as the Bible was altered, when there is no such evidence. What is in dispute in what has been transmitted down to our time constitutes only about half a page in nearly 1,500 pages and does not alter the meaning or interpretation of any doctrine at all.
Satan inspired the Quran to contradict the Bible to try to deceive humanity into believing that God has no such purpose as reproducing Himself through humanity to become His sons and daughters and joint heirs of the universe with His Son Jesus Christ. Satan knows that God created humanity to replace him and the demons as rulers over the earth first and then the universe after that, as Deuteronomy 4:19 quoted earlier states. By claiming that the Bible has been corrupted he is trying to deceive humanity into throwing away God’s instruction manual so that man would not learn God’s purpose for him.
How else would Satan try to convince humanity that God’s purpose is not to add human beings as members of His family? He tries to deny that God is a family. He has done this by saying in the Quran that God is one God, and it is beneath Him to have sons. That is why He denies that Jesus Christ is God’s son. That is why he tries to deny that Jesus Christ is also God. Because if Jesus Christ is not God, then He is not a member of the God family!
These are the lies Satan propagates through the Quran to try to thwart God’s purpose in adding more sons and daughters to His family. If human beings don’t understand God’s purpose in creating them, then they will not choose to give their cooperation and surrender to Him in letting Him create His perfect, holy righteous character in them.
To fulfill God’s purpose, humanity has to ultimately become perfect and sinless as God the Father and Jesus Christ are perfect and sinless. But to accomplish that human beings must first have their sins forgiven, and also have it indelibly imprinted on their minds that any sin will incur the death penalty. To have their sins forgiven, the penalty for sin had to be paid. Only a Being greater than all of humanity could pay the death penalty on behalf of all humans. And that Being, Jesus Christ, the God of the Old Testament, Creator of the spirit world, the entire material universe and humanity, paid the death penalty on behalf of His creation. That is why the crucifixion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ are crucial to Christianity.
Perhaps now you can understand why God’s adversary would concoct lies to try to convince humanity that Jesus Christ did not die on the cross or was resurrected.
We only have the Quran’s words without any proof that Jesus Christ did not die on the cross but was called to heaven by God. However, we have amply proved that the words of the Quran are not backed by the power of Almighty God. Now we can understand what Satan’s motive was to cunningly craft such lies in the Quran. He is trying to convince humanity that Jesus Christ did not die on the cross. There is no such thing as the penalty for humanity’s sins being paid on its behalf. This means that God can simply forgive humanity’s sins, since the Quran in many places calls Allah the merciful, forgiving and beneficent.
If God simply forgives sins, then human beings will continue sinning and expecting their sins will be forgiven. Without the death penalty it was impossible to impress on human beings the deep need to stop committing sin. Without impressing on human beings that the penalty for any violation of God’s laws is death, human beings would not fully understand how abhorrent sin is to God and should be to us and that we must end sin in our lives with God’s help. Those who end it will become sons of God. Those who do not deeply understand the need to end it and continue in sin will have the death penalty ultimately applied to them.
We hope Muslims can now understand why there was a need for the death of Jesus Christ, and why the adversary of God tries to convince humanity otherwise in his cunningly crafted lies in the Quran.
But after death, why was the resurrection of Jesus Christ necessary?
Why Jesus Christ’s resurrection was Necessary
The foremost reason for Jesus Christ’s resurrection is the faith and trust for God it develops in us. If God the Father had not resurrected Jesus Christ how could we trust a God who let His Son die without giving Him life again? Jesus Christ’s resurrection assures us that God the Father cares for us and has Almighty power to kill and make alive (Deuteronomy 32:39), and resurrect weak human beings, as Jesus Christ was when He came to earth as a human being, into powerful beings as Jesus Christ is now, as His literal immortal sons. So, the foremost reason for the resurrection is that we can totally and completely trust in God to fulfill His promises and have faith that He has the power to perform them.
The second reason for Jesus Christ’s resurrection is that He can now live His life in us through his power, the holy spirit. Jesus Christ has experienced life as a human being. So He knows our frame and our frailties and temptations. He knows what it will take for each of us to overcome sin. He literally lives His life through us with the power of His holy spirit to enable us to put on His mind, overcome sin and become more like Him to eventually become the sons of God.
The third reason for the resurrection is that Jesus Christ functions as our faithful High Priest and advocate for us with the Father. He intercedes for us with the Father to forgive us our sins so that we can continue living and overcoming sin and developing godly character. He knows how weak our frame is. When He pleads with God the Father to give us another chance to overcome a particular sin, God the Father listens and grants Jesus’ wish because He has experienced similar temptations in His life as a human being. That’s why He can be a faithful advocate with the Father for us.
John states in 1John 2:1: “1 My little children, these things write I unto you, that you sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous:”
Hebrews 2:17-18 (NIV) states: “17 For this reason he had to be made like his brothers in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. 18 Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.”
Fourth reason why Jesus’s resurrection was necessary is that because Jesus Christ lived life as a human being and is also God, God the Father has committed all judgment about our qualification to receive eternal life into the hands of Jesus Christ. And it is Jesus Christ who will grant us eternal life as well. God the Father has given this honor also to Jesus Christ. This is stated in John 5:21-22 (NKJV): “21 For as the Father raises the dead and gives life to them, even so the Son gives life to whom He will. 22 For the Father judges no one, but has committed all judgment to the Son.”
Finally, one of the most important reasons for the resurrection of Jesus Christ and its timing is that God’s offer of salvation to human beings through a resurrection to eternal life has become real to them. It energized Jesus’ disciples. Islam says that salvation means going to paradise. But there is no proof that any such paradise exists. Hindus says salvation is to stop the cycle of birth and death to finally merge with the great soul it calls God. But there is no proof that any of the dead has achieved this salvation. However, the resurrection of Jesus Christ provides us proof of the salvation that God offers to human beings. It is proof that God will turn physical human beings into His own immortal sons as spirit beings through a resurrection and has the power to do so. We can therefore trust Him to deliver on the salvation He offers to us.
Thus, we see that both the death and then the resurrection of Jesus Christ are crucial to God’s plan of salvation for mankind. That’s why God’s adversary works diligently to deny the death and resurrection with outright lies.
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