God's Reasonable and Wise Plan

Rather than assume that the reader is Biblically literate and then jump into a detailed expose’ about God’s Plan of Creation and Salvation, let me err on the side of caution and suppose that many of you have never taken the time to become even an arm chair theologian. The incomparable Billy Graham (who led me to Christ nearly 40 years ago), said, in a recent Newsweek article about his life, that he wishes he had spent more time in studying the Bible and versing himself in theology. So if even Mr. Graham feels lacking in the study and know-ledge of God and His Plan, then don’t feel alone if you are equally uniformed.

When a person “comes to Christ”, he(or she) is usually unaware of the mechanics of their salvation and various biblical doctrines. Tenets of the Christian faith don’t save us, and it usually takes a few years before a person gets a handle on what has happened to them along with the various basic aspects of God’s Plan. Usually, after these fundamental principles of the God’s Grand Purposes are considered and learned, the average believer doesn’t delve any deeper into the mechanics of how and why they received salvation. Consequently, most would be hard pressed to write a one-page paper on God’s Plan of Salvation. They are content knowing that they are “saved and going to heaven” when they die. What follows in this paper, therefore, is probably way beyond the mindset of most who will read it, but it is my hope that each will stretch their attention span long enough to be able to appreciate the depths of understanding I’m taking you into. Be assured, the more you climb into the Mind of God through His Words, the more your belief and love for God will increase and your faith will soon transition into fact. This is what leads to Christian maturity and will aid in your transition from milk to meat. And for those of you who are already full carnivores, I pray this rendering will be a better cut of meat than in the past you’ve been willing to afford.

My motivation in writing this paper comes from a dear fellow believer that happens to be married to a full fledged Jehovah’s Witness. Over the years I have shared my thinking with her and have alluded to a lot that is contained in this paper. She appreciates my insights into God’s Word but because of her husband’s affiliation with such a high profile counterfeit cult, and his elevated position with the Watch Tower organization, she feels a bit outgunned and impotent to encounter him and his associates on their closed minds to anything but “party line” doctrine. So she has lovingly hounded me for years now to put into print my understanding of the discontinuity between the Witnesses’ belief system and true Biblical Christianity. Setting my pen to paper on this subject is many faceted, but by far the hardest aspect of such a rendering is the fact that the Jehovah’s Witnesses have a lot of truth that even mainline Orthodox Christianity is lacking. So it’s no simple task to try and make some sense out of the theological mess we find ourselves in after almost 2,000 years of bogus Catholic doctrine, that for the most part is still dominate in most of Protestantism. Again, we are not saved by a correct understanding of God’s Plan, but once saved, a person’s sanctification walk is either helped or hindered by their grasp of what is true and reasonable about God’s Plan. All of us in the household of faith should constantly thank God for what He has spoken (and has put in print) once and for all. Without Christ and His revealed Word we would not be begotten of God (James 1:18), nor would we be washed and cleansed from the effects of the fall. Personally, my approach to God, now that I’ve been born from above, is through study and contemplation of His Word, the Bible. Because He made Himself known to me, experientially, 40+ years ago, I am completely addicted to entering into His Mind through His Word. I can think of no endeavor of man that comes close to such a vocation. May the following motivate the reader to delve deeper into the mentality of God. So let’s begin.

In Matthew 24:14 we are told that the true Gospel of Christ’s Kingdom, when shared with others, acts as a witness (or indicator) that God has a plan for humanity, and it is being played out on the field of time and history. This being the case, it’s imperative that it is the true and complete Gospel that is being delivered to those who do not intimately know the God of Scripture. However, Scripture says that no one comes to God unless they’re called, so if God isn’t calling, no amount of correct theology will generate regeneration, allowing a person to have ears to hear. A dead person is deaf and dumb and blind, and the only thing that will side step that reality is resurrection life from above. So for those of us who know The Lord and share His Gospel with unbelievers there is no way for us to know who God is, or isn’t, calling during this Gospel age. Nor do we know what portion of His word He will speak through us in order to quicken a person’s spirit. But we do know that at some point Scripture must be shared so people will know of their unrighteousness in order for them to change their minds about their relationship with God (in the Greek this concept is called “metanoia” and means repentance/change of mind). Our role, as Christians, is to be God’s mouthpiece as we repeat His words to others. The rest is up to Him and His Holy Spirit.

In the post crucifixion times of Jesus, there were counterfeit Gospels about God’s Kingdom being put forth, and this is also true today by those who have not been born from above and others that are indeed regenerated, but have let others do their homework for them. These two types of people have bought into and are disseminating false gospels, for all sorts of reasons, and like fraudulent money, these gospels get passed along from person to person who haven’t a clue as to their legitimacy. Many of these people are well intentioned and feel they are doing God a favor as they spend their time and energy promoting what turns out to be a an incorrect Gospel. These folks, for the most part, are sincere – but sincerely wrong. And most of them will go to the grave thinking that God is on their side and is pleased with their efforts to further His Kingdom. Some even go so far as to call their meeting places “Kingdom Halls”.

This latter group call themselves “Jehovah’s Witnesses”. But because they urge people to accept what turns out to be a false Gospel, a better name for them would be “Jehovah’s False Witnesses”. These people are inadvertently passing on a false gospel in a most sincere and dedicated way. Their gospel tells people that a person can come to God, through knowledge, by membership in a man-made organization and further, by adhering to that organizations rule and reg-ulations regarding how they spend their time and energy. This is a counterfeit gospel disseminated by unwittingly counterfeit Christians. These false witnesses are a “salvation-by-works” oriented people, who are out witnessing a counterfeit gospel to others in an effort to convince them that they have to join, and be baptized into, the Jehovah’s Witnesses organization in order to be saved and receive resurrection life during the thousand year millennial reign of Christ. This resurrection life, they say, can be theirs, come the millennium, if they will, in the here and now become a card-carrying baptized member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses organization and walk the walk and talk the talk ala the dictates of the Watch Tower Society based in Brooklyn, New York - in other words, by their works on this earth until they go to the grave. Whereas, in actuality, resurrection life (what the Bible calls salvation) is already assured for all mankind through Christ’s atoning sacrifice for the sins of the whole world. “As in Adam all die, so in Christ, all shall be made alive”, (1 Cor.15:22). All the unsaved that have lived and died, have already, by the grace of God, been potentially saved from the first death (the grave), and will, therefore, be resurrected into resurrection life in the millennium, whether they like it or not (just as they were born with Adamic sin, like it or not). So resurrection life isn’t something anyone has to work for. It is a gift already given to humanity by the mercy and grace of God through Christ’s ransom and shed blood for Adam and therefore, all mankind who were in Adam’s loins when he sinned (Romans 5:15-18). The entire human race has been saved from the first death (the grave), and once resurrected in the millennium, they will all be given the opportunity, the environment, and the ability to walk in obedience to the ways and things of Christ under His righteous and just rule over all the earth. During this time, all mankind will be accountable to live a life of peace, harmony and righteousness based on their individual knowledge of, their faith in, and their obedience to, Jesus Christ, and His Bride, (Jer. 31:29-30). And it is only this now Bride-to-be that has been called and regenerated during this Gospel age we are still in. The best way to explain this reality, in modern rhetoric, is to say that God has deposited the gift of reconciliation into every man’s spiritual bank account, but He has not yet mailed out the bank statement reflecting this truth to anyone but those who are of the elect Bride-to-be class. Everyone’s on God’s mailing list, but He’s only posted and mailed out the notice to a select few (the New Testament Royal Priesthood called the “Body of Christ”).

So it turns out that the Jehovah’s Witnesses are recruiting folks to be saved, who have already been redeemed out of Adamic death (by Christ’s Atonement for Adam and all mankind who were in him) into future resurrection life in the millennium. However, it is with this theological thought about Adam, and all in him having already been potentially saved, that the Witnesses disagree with. This is due to some clever manipulation of the truth that was done early on in their recent history. And it is with this issue about Adamic redemption that this paper deals with. This will be amplified and become clear a little further on in this sharing.

The counterfeit cult members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses have bought into a false church system (not unlike that of the Catholic counterfeit church) that is peddling salvation by, first, knowledge and membership into an earthly organization, then works, rather then by the finished work of Jesus Christ. They have been sold a “bill of goods” which includes the following unbiblical precepts:

No matter how one looks at these various mindsets of this organization, it is an inescapable fact that theirs is an extra Biblical salvation by works and, therefore, not in keeping with the New Testament Gospel of Grace. And like Paul’s statement in Galatians, to the legalists of his day, “let them be accursed”.

There are many other Biblical errors these people are promoting, the most important of which will be discussed later on in this paper, but the above points are ample to show that this is just another gospel of works, very similar to the Catholic Church, the Seventh Day Adventist and the Mormon Church – just to name a few.

The true Gospel is being shared today only by the true Church, God’s called out people or God’s elect, (Ro. 9:11, Col. 3:12, I Thes. 1:3, II Tim. 2:10, Tit. 1:1, I Pe. 1:2). And I don’t necessarily mean Protestantism, for very few people within the various denominations really know the intricacies of God’s Plan. In any event, Christ’s Bride elect is now being offered, in this dispensation, the high calling of gaining immortality and then ruling and reigning with Christ during the millennium, and this will be over all mankind after they have been resurrected from their state of death. This awakening from the sleep of death is summed up with the phrase, “to be saved.” This event is already a reality for those who are, at present, a part of the elect Bride. These elect folks are told (in God’s Word) that they have been raised out of spiritual death into New Creation Life and are reckoned by God to be seated in the heavenlies with Christ Jesus. In fact, it is The Church, along with her Head, Christ Jesus, that will be physically resurrecting all the masses of humanity from the grave, in order for them to hear the Gospel during the millennium. This is the soon coming 1,000-year rule and reign of Christ over all the earth. The Church, which is now being called out for this high calling (a royal priesthood that will be under their High Priest, Jesus Christ – Phil. 3:14, Heb. 3:1, I Pe. 2:9, Rev. 1:6) is being offered immortality (deathlessness -Rom. 2:7, I Cor. 15:53-54, I Tim. 6:16), by their faith in Christ, now. The Church, those now called out, who believe in Christ sight unseen, that walk in and obey the truth, are, again, in a reckoned (by God) resurrected state, so much so that Paul says, “we are seated with Christ in the heavenlies”.

So it is now, during this Day of Salvation, that the Church first receives Resurrection Life, by faith in Christ and repenting of their deceitful and wicked heart condition. The rest of the world will receive Resurrection Life, but not until the beginning of the millennium. And it is during this thousand-year millennium rule and reign of Christ that they will be commanded to walk in obedience to the statues and decrees of God, while Satan is bound and no longer able to tempt or deceive the world with his lies (Rev. 20:3).

There is a time when the physical bodies of current believers will fail them, but because they have been raised out of death (separation from God), into their “new Creation” life connected with God, these folks will be changed, given their new heavenly bodies and be translated at Christ’s return for His Bride.

What all this equates out to is that the 1,000 year reign of Chirst has not yet begun (the Jehovah’s Witnesses say it has begun) and until it does, God is only calling out a Bride for His Son, Jesus. And again, as opposed to this truth, the “false witnesses” teach that the bride class is not now open to anyone (it is for all practical purposes complete) alive today and therefore, the only opening in God’s Kingdom is for those who desire everlasting life in an earth bound existence during the millennium, and beyond into eternity. What’s really tragic is that tens of thousands of Witnesses have bought into a belief system that says they should be content with a future hope of everlasting life here on earth. By their gullibility and dedication to a counterfeit cult, the general members of this group never even consider that they could be candidates for “the prize of the high calling”. The J.W.’s have quite a marketing scheme to enable them to recruit others into a commitment to this kind of false teaching, which says that in order for God to have a people for His Name here on earth during the millennium, these people must be recruited door to door and signed on into their organization. In part, these alone will be those who will receive new life in the millennium. Those who refuse to be a part of the Watch Tower Society, or are caught up in today’s various false religious sects, will perish in the second death. This is their subtle fear tactic needed to recruit thousands each month who get caught up into the Witnesses’ salvation-by-fear, knowledge, works, and membership rhetoric, and, once again, it is not dissimilar to the modus operandi the Catholics have used successfully for the past 1,700 years. Unlike their Catholic cohorts in counterfeiting, that use the fear of eternal torment and torture unless a person signs on with Catholicism, the Jehovah’s Witnesses convince their new prospects that the only way to avoid the troubled times ahead, and the second death (annihilation), is to sign up as a Jehovah’s Witness. As is the case with all counterfeit cults, the Witnesses control people through fear. They also teach that the Church/Bride class (which, again, is now full), will be given immortality and the millennium class (a “great multitude”), will attain only to everlasting life. One is unconditional life, the other conditional life. (There is some truth in this scenario, but it takes a great deal of time and study to sort it all out).

It is not my purpose here to go too deep into the intricacies of the above anti-biblical beliefs, but rather to point out that what I have just said is what motivates the Jehovah’s Witnesses to go door to door and legalistically log in millions of hours a year, in a pursuit to save as many people as possible from end times tribulation, the second death, and save themselves through their works. This is why I said they are sincere (but deceived) folks. They basically lead a clean, moral life – they dress well, speak with kindness and patience and I suspect are extremely law- abiding citizens of whatever country they live in. So in the “flesh” they are definitely a “crack above” the everyday unsaved person alive today. However, this does not make them right, or righteous in the sight of God. If their gospel is not biblically sound, then they are simply just more unsaved people who, through ignorance and fear (all legalists are fearful that they will not “measure up”), are doing the right thing for the wrong reason. The “right thing” is relatively holy living; “for the wrong reasons” is living that way out of fear and pride, (the two go hand in hand for when a person performs out of fear, it is then followed up by pride in what they’ve accomplished ). God wants a people who do the right thing for the right reason and that entails relatively holy living that stems from having been born from above due to God’s choice of His Elect Bride. Then, as a person realizes his or her “high calling” to be the Bride of Christ, out of appreciation (not fear) of this honor, that person daily crucifies the old man and takes on the mind and actions of Jesus. This holy, new creation life stems from an awareness of what God has done in a person’s life, and from an understanding that he or she has been raised out of death (separation from God) into a reckoned resurrection, Holy Spirit filled life. We do what we do, not to be saved, but because we are enlightened to the fact that we have been saved, (saved out of the cursed prison house of death into new creation resurrection life). Once God resurrects a person, that person is saved, for salvation means being saved out of death into life, and all true Christians today have been translated out of death into life. So our works are not imperatives, like the false witnesses teach, but indicatives. By our works (not legalistic imperatives we must do to be saved), we indicate our having been enlightened about God’s Plan for our life and that we have been called and born from above. This is the reason, then, we love and obey God, out of the appreciation of the fact that He has made us a new creature in Jesus Christ. We are, therefore, motivated to do the right things for the right reasons.

To summarize the above, the whole world has already been potentially saved out of the first death by Christ’s atonement for Adam (and therefore, all who were in Adam, ie., all mankind); The Church, God’s Elect, are saved out from the first death now, by the gift of faith in their unseen Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. The rest of the world will be raised and receive resurrection life and this life will be earmarked by obedience to Jesus Christ and His Church during the Millennium. The Church is now being faith tested to qualify for their high calling as they are tried, as if by fire, in order to prove their commitment and consecration to the Will of God. Each person’s position in the Body of Christ will be determined by his, or her, faith-based works during their sanctification walk.

The masses of mankind who are resurrected (saved) in the Millennium will be under the care and scrutiny of Christ and His Church (the completed “seed of Abraham” that is destined to “bless all the families of the earth”), and this by sight, not by faith alone. Then at the end of the Millennium their commitment will be tested when Satan will be loosed for a spell in order for him to try and deceive the nations (Rev. 20:3). At the end of this satanic time of deception, all that follow after the devil, after first seeing and witnessing Truth Himself, Jesus Christ, and hearing the truth of the Gospel, all those that then turn away from Christ and the truth, will, at that time, at the end of the millennium, be cast into the lake of fire, and destroyed along with Satan and all his wicked angels. This is the second death, the final death, from which there will be no resurrection, and is reserved for all the rebellious and ungodly who will be eternally destroyed (not tortured forever and ever).

So no matter how sincere, and no matter how much truth they think they have, Jehovah’s False Witnesses are not in the household of faith because they have not been born from above. They do not view salvation as being in Christ alone, and are therefore continuing to pridefully take part of the glory for themselves for their supposed salvation (and the supposed salvation of others by works), and this rather than giving all the glory to God and to Christ alone. They believe and think that they can save themselves and others through knowledge and their “religion of works”, whereas, again, it is only by the finished work of Christ that the Church is saved, and ultimately the rest of mankind, when they are given resurrection life in the soon coming millennium. If Jehovah’s False Witnesses knew the errors of their ways, they would repent and trust in Jesus alone and His Atonement. But this can only happen by the Will of God first choosing to give them resurrection life and the gift of faith. In short, these folks are just not being called by God during this dispensation of the Church age. If any of them would, in fact, be born from above, they would then be able to truly worship God The Father, and Christ, their Savior, their Deliverer, and their King, and thereby be Jehovah’s True Witnesses giving all honor and glory to God, The Father, and to His Son, Jesus Christ.

At this point, one might ask the 24-karat question as to how the Jehovah’s Witnesses came to believe and teach what they do. The answer to this question is complex and in order to fully appreciate their theological mindset, we have to digress a bit and consider the spiritual climate that gave rise to their organization.

Since the time of Christ’s revelation of Himself and His Gospel, through the Apostle Paul, there have been those who, without the authority that goes with being called and born from above, have either intentionally or inadvertently perverted the true gospel of Jesus. One can only imagine the extraordinary amount of confusion and error that has evolved over the last 2,000 years concerning God’s Plan. Studying the “early Church fathers” writings (those high profile believers who came into the picture and wrote about their theological opinions after the New Testament was written), and then the Catholic Church with its further bastardized “truth”, we see that it was only 500 years ago that a Catholic monk (Martin Luther) shed some light on the spiritual dark ages that had millions in bondage to a huge counterfeit legalistic cult that ruled by terror, manipulation and a papal system that was (and is) so bizarre it almost defies description. But by the grace and sovereignty of God, a small candle of light was shed abroad in the darkness, and the Protestant Reformation was born. But it was only a small beginning and unfortunately it addressed only the most gross errors of a totally corrupt political “church” system that some feel Revelations calls the “whore of Babylon”. Then, almost 400 years passed with the Protestant movement splintering into hundreds of other groups that for the most part believed and agreed on what they call the “essentials” of the Christian faith, but fought tooth and nail about some of the finer points of what they considered to be the truth. As it turns out, these “essentials”, when overlaid with God’s true Plan, are plagued with all sorts of non-Biblical concepts, too numerous to go into at this point. To Martin Luther’s credit, unbeknownst to most, he rejected the concept of a conscious torturous eternal hell for the incorrigibles, and the doctrine of the immortal soul. I guess he didn’t reject them loud enough for they somehow survived and are, unfortunately, to this day alive and well in the various sects of Protestantism.

It was not until the 1800’s that we see certain thoughts about God’s Plan put forth, that in many ways eclipsed those of Martin Luther. Around the middle to late 1800’s we find the birth of Seventh Day Adventism, along with the Christian Science religion. It was at this time we find a group of men (Paton, Barbour, and Russell) studying together and putting their thoughts in print, both individually and collectively in a publication called the “Herald of the Morning”. These men all agreed that orthodox Christian thought had deteriorated from early New Testament theology and they set out to better understand and write about God’s Plan of Creation and Salvation. It’s as if they picked up where Luther had left off and with a firm belief that man is completely mortal and subject to permanent death in the grave (barring a resurrection or redemption based on Christ’s ransom sacrifice), they set their minds and spirits to the task of sorting out the theological mess they saw in Catholicism and Protestantism. In other words, they endeavored to correct and reform some of the erroneous teachings handed down to us by the traditions of the Dark Ages. Unfortunately, few believers today have ever read their works and haven’t the slightest notion as to their findings. It is with one of these students we need to focus on if we are to understand how some of the Jehovah’s Witnesses beliefs came into being.

Of the three men mentioned above, Charles T. Russell was by far the more prolific writer and his works are still available today in a 6-volume paperback series called “Study in the Scriptures”. Eventually the three men went their own separate ways due to irreconcilable opinions about God’s Plan, and towards the late 1800’s we find Mr. Russell’s works in print and distributed around the world. Many resonated with his insights and thousands referred to Russell as their pastor. He was well respected and very much loved by all who used his works to further their understanding of God’s redemptive plan and their own sanctification walk. Russell did not believe in building an organization or so called “church buildings”, but instead focused his energy on writing and making sure his understanding of God’s Plan found its way into the hearts and minds of people worldwide. He traveled and lectured extensively throughout the world until his death in the early 1900’s. He was clearly a man who was held in high regard by those who read and understood him. However, he had many questionable beliefs and his end time prophecies did not stand up to the scrutiny of time. Be that as it may, he definitely had an unusual grasp on the Word of God, and his writings are still worth the time and energy in order to absorb his mindset.

After Russell’s death there was a kind of hostile takeover, of the loose organism Russell was a part of, by a man named Rutherford. By 1937 Rutherford had established a rather formidable structured organization known as the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Bible students loyal to Russell, that wanted no part of Judge Rutherford or his organization, separated from him and called themselves by various names such as Dawn Bible Students, Dawnites, Russellites, and Millennial Dawn Bible Students. These various groups stuck to Russell’s teachings in varying degrees and basically had nothing to do with this new Jehovah’s Witnesses organization under Judge Rutherford. They felt, and rightfully so, that Rutherford had appreciably changed many of Russell’s basic Bible insights under the guise of these changes being the result of “greater light” being shone by God on various earlier beliefs of Russell’s. At some point after Rutherford took charge, it was put forth by the Witnesses that as a class of people they were the faithful and wise servant of Matthew 24 and as a class, the Dawnites (or Russellites) were the evil servant class of that same parable. By demonizing Russell and the Dawn Bible Students, the Jehovah’s Witnesses were able to effectively neutralize Russell’s writings in the eyes of the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ members. Eventually, and to this day, few witnesses have ever read any of Russell’s books with many local Jehovah’s Witnesses assemblies telling their members to steer clear of his writings or anybody connected to his teachings.

With regards to so-called “Orthodox Churchianity”, every time Russell is referred to, in writings about recent counterfeit cult history, he is labeled as the founder of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Nothing could be further from the truth, but this misconception about Russell is the one simple reality that effectively keeps Russell’s writings from being considered by Catholic of Protestant theologians worldwide.

So this is a very short overview of Russell and the Jehovah’s Witnesses that few take the time to research and consider. Consequently, the only people that read and appreciate Russell’s works are those various individuals that either call themselves Dawn Bible Students or other pockets of believers that glean from Russell’s works whatever best suits their understanding of God’s Word. In other words, somewhere between Russell and today’s Jehovah’s Witnesses organization lie thousands of folks that have amalgamated Russell’s works with their current beliefs about God’s Plan of Salvation.

As mentioned above, the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ organization has changed a number of key points that Russell felt were “set in stone”, and, again, all in the name of “new light” being shed on God’s Word. One of these extremely important changes surrounds the personage of the first Adam and whether or not he was redeemable. To Russell, Adam’s redeemability was not an issue. It was, as we say today, a “no-brainer”. Of course Adam was redeemable as anyone can deduce from holy writ which tells us that God provided earth’s first blood sacrifice to cover Adam’s sin, ie., something had to die and have it’s blood shed so Adam and Eve would have a covering to conceal their nakedness. However, this obvious reality about Adam is not obvious or real to the Witnesses. To them Adam was, and is, not redeemable because (as they state in print) in his created perfected state, he transgressed God’s command, and by doing so, became a willful murderer to all mankind who were in his loins, (because due to his sin all mankind must someday die). They have reached this conclusion by referring to the biblical fact that under the Mosaic law dispensation, God said through Moses that there was no redemption price that could be paid for a willful murderer. And this is their sole reason for saying Adam was not redeemable.

At this point the reader may or may not be saying to himself that the Witnesses stance seems reasonable but it is not, and let me assure you that this core belief of Russell, verses the Witnesses’ core belief, is a very important aspect of God’s Plan and must be addressed and decided on before a person can properly align his thinking with the Mind of God. Obviously, both positions cannot be true. Either Christ’s ransom sacrifice was or was not applicable to Adam. And whatever position one takes about this issue, it will greatly affect that person’s ability to properly reflect on God’s Perfect and Wise Plan down through the ages. In other words, there are serious consequences that evolve out of each of these diametrically opposed positions.

At this point, I’d like the reader to hold the above thoughts while I introduce another very important element into this discussion.

Within Christianity, in general, there are two wildly different camps (or schools of thought) about the nature of man. One group is encamped around the thought that Adam (and therefore all his descendants) possessed a soul that was inherently immortal, or not subject to permanent death, ie., after death the immortal soul lives on in heaven or in a place of torment called hell. The other camp rallies around the Biblically correct idea that man does not have a soul, but is a soul, or a being, and this soul/being (man) is mortal and subject to death (separation from God culminating in the state the Bible called “the grave”), and were it not for God and His plan to grant resurrection life through Christ’s ransom for Adam (and therefore all), all souls would remain in the sleep of death. In other words, the first death (grave) would be synonymous with the second death (Gehenna).

The immortal soul crowd unknowingly draws their thinking from the mind and writings of Plato, who lived before Christ, and was in no way spiritually connected with the God of Scripture. He was a Greek philosopher and arrived at his mindset from a lot of different sources, including those thoughts about man’s “life after death” held by Egyptology and all the far Eastern religions. These Eastern religions held to the speculation of the transmigration of the soul (the soul being something immortal within man), and believed this immortal soul transmigrated, or passed into another form after death. In other words, the immortal soul migrated out of one form into another at the moment of death. Plato bought into this line of speculation, and amazingly it eventually found its way into the minds of many early “Church fathers” (not the apostles, but those who came afterwards) and eventually into Catholicism where it leapfrogged past Luther (again, he rejected the immortality of the soul doctrine) and settled quite comfortably into Protestantism. However, this immortal soul thinking ran quite contrary to the revealed Word of God in the Old Testament (something that was available to Plato but was rejected by him). The Old Testament Word of God states quite emphatically that man is a soul, not that he has a soul. And additionally, the soul/man has nothing innately immortal about him. God said to Adam, “the day you sin, you’ll die”, not “the day you sin, you’ll die, but your soul will live on in a place of torture or in heaven because it’s immortal and can’t die”.

So, it is the previously mentioned “man is a soul” camp that turns out to be Biblically accurate. And just as the issue about Adam’s redeemibility is crucial to one’s understanding of God’s Plan, so also is one’s thinking about the controversy surrounding the word soul and its nature. The truth, or error, of the immortal soul doctrine is even more causal than the Adam redemptive issue. I say this because those who view man as having a soul that’s immortal (mainline Christianity), don’t even focus on whether or not Adam was redeemable. To them it’s a non-issue because they don’t see the consequences of whether or not he was, or wasn’t. To the immortal soul crowd, Adam and all in him (up to the time of Pentecost and beyond), they are not asleep in the grave, but exist somewhere after death (in heaven or a Luke 16 torturous hell) depending on their spiritual status at the moment of death. But when a person realizes that the unregenerate soul (person) enters a state of “sleep” when he or she dies, then the Adam redemptive issue becomes paramount. For if as the Witnesses claim, Adam is not redeemable, then each person born of Adam is not automatically included in Christ’s ransom of Adam. And if that’s the case, then God must deal with each person on an individual basis, and the Witnesses are somewhat justified telling people they have to join an earthly organization in order to be saved, just like Catholicism tells individuals that they are saved only through Church membership. The truth is that billions of individuals were in Adam’s loins when he sinned, and God looked at the whole of Adam when he decreed the death penalty for disobedience. In other words, from God’s perspective, when Adam sinned, all in him sinned, just as when Abraham paid tithes to Melchizedek, Levi, who was in Abraham’s loins, paid tithes to Melchizedek. (See Heb.7:9). This is a non-negotiable Biblical principle, as is the fact that when we consider God’s Plan, we have to align our thinking with the Mind of God and view things as He does, rather than from our own limited reasoning.

At first, certain aspects of how God has and is dealing with man may seem to fly in the face of our fallen sense of right and wrong, but as He says in His Word, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways, My ways, saith the Lord”, (See Is. 55:89). This is God’s Plan, not ours. Personally, I have found that when I come to a portion of Scripture that’s a real “head scratcher”, and I accept it in faith, later on God will bless me with understanding as to why He does what He does and says what He says. But if a person leans on his own limited understanding and digs his heels in, with unbelief or no faith in God’s Wisdom, then God cannot and will not bless that person with comprehension (remember the Biblical axiom, “believing is seeing”, rather than the world’s axiom, “seeing is believing”). And this whole issue about the fall of Adam and was it fair for God to sentence the whole human race to death just because the first Adam “missed the mark” – this is a perfect example of man’s sense of justice kicking in, followed by a cry of “foul”. But if it will be received by faith that our all wise God had a reason to hold all mankind accountable for what happened in the garden of Eden, we will then be in a place where God can, later on down the line, show us the greater good that will come about due to His Sovereign purposes and all Wise Plan when He allowed sin to enter into His entire creation, via Adam.

So for now, let’s say that, in faith, we receive the truth that Adam was a soul, and this soul (person) Adam was not in anyway immortal and therefore subject to the sleep of death, remaining in that state until God’s Will calls him forth into resurrection life due to Christ’s atonement. And let’s further believe, in faith, that when Adam sinned, all of us sinned, which is why we also must go to the grave (the sleep of death). And additionally, let’s say the Jehovah’s Witnesses are wrong and Adam is, in fact, redeemable. What then will be the consequences of this mindset that we’re believing by faith?

Well, first and foremost, God chose to reverse the curse by dealing with just Adam. In other words, His plan of redemption can be boiled down to just one man. What He does for Adam, He does for all, (just like what Adam did was done for all). When He deals with Adam’s sin, He is dealing with our sin. If He redeems Adam and therefore guarantees Adam resurrection life out of the cursed sleep of death, then all mankind is redeemed from their state of sleep/death. One Savior fits all, so to speak. One man’s fall into sin impacted all, so in like manner, sin was dealt with, once and for all, via that same one man’s redemption. So we have the second, or last Adam redeeming all mankind by redeeming/ransoming the first Adam, and doing this by His matching or corresponding perfectly to the first Adam. (For this is the thought surrounding the word ransom – a price to correspond). Who else of the human race was perfect so as to correspond to the first perfect Adam? Who else, like Adam before his fall, was perfect and without sin? No one, but the last Adam, Jesus! When God provided animal skins for Adam and Eve’s covering, blood was shed so Adam’s shame, guilt and sin could be cloaked, or covered and therefore become our first look at God’s atoning sacrificial Plan that ran like a river of blood throughout the Old Testament sacrificial system. Obviously this first animal death prefigured things to come. This sacrifice, provided by God, was a shadow, or type, of God providing His only Son to be sacrificed for the first Adam – the second Perfect Man given as a ransom for the first perfect man. This corresponding price (again, the meaning of the word ransom), a perfect man for a perfect man was necessary in order to satisfy God’s “eye for an eye” justice. Now we’re getting somewhere in our understanding that Adam was not only redeemable, but he had to be redeemed or none of mankind (in him) would be redeemable, for we are all declared guilty of Adam’s sin by the same God that declared Levi was paying tithes to Melchizedek, while yet in the loins of Abraham. So if Adam was unredeemable, and therefore mankind also unredeemable, then Christ died in vain. God forbid! And with this iron clad Biblical logic, we can now see how damnable it was for the J.W.’s., early on, to deny the salvation of Adam. Here we have Charles Russell in the late 1800’s putting forth a concept (about Christ’s Ransom Sacrifice) that after 1,900 years of confusion finally reveals God’s All Wise, Loving, and Just Plan for Adam and all his progeny, and almost before the ink dries from Russell’s pen, Satan solicits the mind of Judge Rutherford to all but stamp out the theological bomb shell of what Christ’s atoning ransom was all about. And all I can say about this is the following: If this isn’t 110% true and the real “guts” of the Gospel, then I’m one of the most deceived believers to have ever been born again. Once I fully grasped the significance of what I’ve just laid out, the Love of God, and my love for Him and my fellow man, took on a whole new dimension. And I pray this will also be the experience of the reader.

What I’m saying here is the mind-bending truth that right now, like it or not, all mankind will be ransomed out of the prison house of death, due to the atoning sacrifice of the last Adam. Just as in like manner, like it or not all those that have ever lived and all those who are yet unborn are destined to die due to Adamic sin, but with the fact of their having already been potentially ransomed out of their future sleep of death. When Christ died, He died for all (inclusive, not exclusive), for He died for the first Adam. He redeemed Adam and thereby redeemed all mankind. (At this point it must be emphatically stated that I’m not suggesting final eternal universal salvation, but simply acknowledging that Christ’s atoning sacrifice and resurrection guaranteed for all that they would be raised out of the grave and given their first chance at eternal life.)

We must understand that redemption, atonement, reconciliation, recapitulation, and ransom all mean the same thing. God has done for mankind what no one could do for themselves. He has saved all out of the state of death (even those yet to be born in Adamic sin) so all will receive resurrection life, and He did this by Christ being the corresponding price for the first, perfect man, Adam. Christ, in essence, became a counter balance for the perfect pre-fallen Adam and did for him (and all in him), what he (and all in him) failed to do. He was perfectly obedient to the Almighty. So when Christ cried out from the Cross, “It is finished”, it was finished. He reversed the curse – for all!! If that’s not enough to make a believer shout, then I’d seriously question that person’s standing before God. This is what I call the “really good news” and as a corollary we see that into this wonderful truth there is the fact that God purposes to save the Church first, and through them, as a royal priesthood, to save and minister to the world afterward. In other words, it will be Christ and His Bride that will resurrect mankind out of the prison house of death during the Millennium.

This truth far outweighs the narrow Catholic “hand-me-down” thinking of Church-ianity that has God saving all who can be induced, coerced or entertained into accepting Christ before His second coming, with the rest of mankind eternally lost in a fiery place of torture. In contrast to Churchianity, at least the Witnesses know and understand what I’ve shared about the soul being the whole person and that there was, and is, nothing innately immortal in anyone. Once again, Churchianity is still stuck in the tradition of the dark ages of the Catholic Church and like them believes that Christ only died and will give resurrection life to those that are lucky enough to have heard about Jesus and then, maybe, accept Him as Savior. And further, they believe as Plato did, that everyone has a soul and this inner soul is not subject to death, but is immortal. And that being the case, it logically follows (in their darkened thinking), that at death this immortal soul leaves the body and travels to heaven or a Luke 16 place of torment. They don’t believe that Luke 16 is simply a parable that teaches something quite different then immortal souls suffering (after death), or “kicking back in Abraham’s bosom”. The Catholic Church (and just about all Protestant denominations) conveniently believes the Luke 16 hell is describing a literal place. It’s no coincidence that their teaching on this fits nicely into their attempt to scare the spit out of people to get them to join their ranks and files out of fear. Churchianity, as a whole, has made an art form out of fear-based religion. Can you imagine if the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Catholic/Protestant Churches taught that the last Adam redeemed the first Adam, and therefore, all were included in the Atonement of Christ, and that some day (in the future) this same “all” will be raised into resurrection life and be given their first chance to really hear and act on the truth about Jesus…? These fear-based counterfeit cults would loose their legalistic hold over people, and you’d see a mass exodus of folks who signed on due to fear, rather than having been born from above.

So now, in order to come full circle, let’s return to what I said on page 8, ie., “At this point, I’d like the reader to hold the above thought while I introduce another very important element into this discussion”.

I was talking about the “serious consequences” that are attached to the question of Adam’s being redeemable. Hopefully, the reader is now armed with the necessary background insight to be able to appreciate the importance of this issue.

Let’s first look at the Jehovah’s Witnesses scenario that says Adam is not redeemable due to his having murdered the whole human race in him, and because God’s Mosaic law says that the willful murderer is not redeemable, thus making Adam unredeemable. First off, with the Witnesses stance about Adam, they cannot explain the “why” behind God providing a blood sacrifice for Adam and Eve and the subsequent animal skin covering of their nakedness. Secondly, Adam was not under the Mosaic law, so to use a portion of that law to condemn Adam and Eve to eternal death is absurd, particularly when the Mosaic law addressed the issue of death for an offending party from the standpoint of the first, and not the second death. The willful murderer, under the Mosaic economy, could not be redeemed from having to go to the first death, a place the offender was heading anyway, in due time. He just got there sooner by going against God’s law. And this legalism was designed, in part, by God to keep His people as free as possible from the spirit of rebellion. God had to arrange matters within the life of His chosen people so that they would stay in tact as a people, and this in order for prophesy to be fulfilled and God’s Messiah to enter this world through a cohesive group of people that He purposed to use to bring about His Plan.

Now, getting back to the “willful murder” issue. There is nowhere in that law where it spoke a word to the eternal, or second death. So the Witnesses’ reasoning is doubly flawed with regards to Adam and the Mosaic law. Additionally, as we see from Ro. 4:15, where there is no law, there is no transgression. In other words, there could be no breaking of a law by Adam that was not enacted until more than 2,000 years later. Unless, of course, some religious organization puts forth a theological tenant (for ulterior motives, not unlike the Catholic Church), stating Adam transgressed a law that did not yet exist. Also, the Witnesses do not take into account that it was most likely out of love for Eve that Adam joined her in her transgression and that is was not just blatant sin, with him deciding just for the heck of it, to be rebellious and thereby be history’s number one mass murderer by killing billions of innocent people still in his loins. And he sure didn’t know that 6,000 years later a group of false Witnesses would condemn him as a murderer of the whole human race and be, therefore, unredeemable. Adam was never told by God that he would be a murderer of all mankind if he sinned, so the Witnesses stance on this particular issue is totally without foundation. That being the case, it follows that Judge Rutherford had to have an ulterior motive in changing Russell’s Biblical teaching about Adam. And if we look at the Jehovah’s Witnesses recruiting rhetoric, we will quickly find why they say Adam was, and is not redeemable.

When Witnesses come to your door (if someone is foolish enough to allow them a foothold into your mind), they will eventually announce to you that the only way people today can be saved from the upcoming “Jacob’s Trouble” and be assured of an after life on earth in the millennium, is to join their group and be a baptized, card-carrying Jehovah’s Witnesses member. And this is a flat out lie based on the fact that the last Adam redeemed the first Adam and therefore, all who were in him at the time of the fall. In other words, all are already in line for resurrection life in the upcoming Millennium. The Witnesses couldn’t scare folks into membership if it was known by unsuspecting homeowners that their salvation from the grave (into resurrection life) had already been bought and paid for by Jesus. So with their stance about Adam not being redeemable and therefore, resurrection life out of death isn’t a done deal for all, they can tell folks that to be saved out of the grave one must make a choice to be part of the Jehovah’s Witnesses organization, and this because each of them inherited death from Adam and therefore, each must individually cancel this inheritance by choosing to be a part of the Watch Tower group. In other words, they must save themselves from Adam having murdered them by sentencing them to death, rather than receive the free gift of salvation that is already theirs by virtue of a perfect second Adam (Jesus) atoning for a perfect first Adam. What the Witnesses peddle door to door is belief in their “spin” on God’s Plan. They’ll encourage faith about Christ, but never faith in Christ. Christ is to be our object of faith, not doctrine about Him being our object of faith. The object of one’s faith needs to be in the One Who is able to bring life out of death. For the true Christian, life out of death is not only a doctrine, it is more importantly an experience. The Witnesses cannot market the experience of resurrection life door to door. They can sell booklets and market faith in an organization, or faith in creeds, but they can’t induce someone to be born from above. This is God’s department and only those who are called by God and are a part of the elect Bride-to-be will have this experience. And once a person has undergone this transforming salvation event, joining any kind of group to be saved is laughable.

If the Witnesses understood the fact that God’s Justice has already been satisfied by the death of Christ for Adam, then they would stop buying into Rutherford’s error about Adam and realize that if it were true that Adam wasn’t redeemable, then neither would anyone else, in him, be redeemable due to each of us being personally accountable for our Edenic transgression, while in Adam’s loins. In other words, whatever is true of Adam is also true of all humanity that was in him at the time of the fall. If Adam was viewed as a willful murderer, then so are all who were once in Him. And as I said earlier on with Churchianity, and about those who don’t even consider the Adamic redemption controversy, they just believe if someone doesn’t hear about and receive Christ before the grave, that person (with their immortal soul), will go directly to a Luke 16 torture hell awaiting the final resurrection where they will be told the obvious (having just been raised out of torture), that they’re lost and now must spend eternity being tortured some more, somewhere else. Here we have a God of law and order that on the one hand says the crime must fit the punishment (an eye for an eye), and then consigns a person, say, who has never ever heard of Jesus – into the “lake of fire” to be tortured for ever and ever. Where, we might rightly ask, do we find God’s Justice in that? And what caliber of Christian would believe such nonsense?

Instead, look at the beauty and truth of God’s Plan that calls for all to be redeemed (including Adam) out of the prison house of death (because of Christ’s ransom sacrifice for all), into resurrection life in the Millennium where this same “all” will be given an opportunity to receive and act on what Christ has already done for them. And to make sure this “all” will have every chance to be eternally saved, God says in Revelations that He is going to bind Satan for the thousand years so he will not be free to rob, steal, deceive, and destroy. In other words, these “all” will be raised, enlightened, and then given 1,000 years before they are tested at the end of these 1,000 years to see if they will remain faithful to the ministry of Christ and His Bride. And the Bride, by the way, will be made up of all those who have lived and acted on their faith in the God of Scripture during this Gospel Age of enlightenment for the elect of God. These are the “household of faith”, and a kind of “first fruits” unto God, the Bride of Christ. The full harvest of mankind will have their resurrection life during the Millennium, whereas Christ’s Bride are all those who have finished their earthly course remaining faithful to Christ and their at-one-ment with The Father. Once raised and united as a group with Christ, there will be a marriage in the heavenly realm and the “seed of Abraham” will be complete. At this point, this completed seed of Abraham (Christ and His Bride), will return to earth at the time when the battle of Armagedon is fought and thereafter, in order to begin a general resurrection (out of the sleep of death) of all mankind, and then rule and reign for 1,000 years over those resurrected souls experiencing their first chance to hear and act on the Good News.

God’s Plan is just, wise, loving, and powerful, and most of all reasonable. If any spin on His overall plan lacks any of these attributes, then it is probably a counterfeit plan put in place by a counterfeit cult, in order to manipulate and control those who have been, during this gospel age, called by God into the household of faith and are the espoused Bride of Christ.

May this sharing become a blessing to all those consecrated saints in “the household of faith”, and to “all that in every place call upon The Lord”.