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APPOINTEDFEASTS..."
In the beginning God hada plan. That plan is sti/1 being worked out under the active /eadership of
Jesus Christ. Each year, the Church ofGod pictures the divine plan ofsalvation by the observance of
seven annual holy days.
W
riting to the Church of
God at Ephesus, the
postle Paul said: "For he
[God] has made known to us in all
wisdom and insight the mystery of
his will, according to his
purpose
which he set forth in Christ
as a plan
for the fulness of time, to unite all
things in him, things in heaven and
things on earth" (Eph. 1:9-10, RSY).
God has a master plan!
And that plan is being carried out
under the active leadership of Jesus
Christ, who is called "the captain of
[our] salvation" (Heb. 2: JO). He is,
in a sense, the "executive director"
of the plan of salvation. He is ac–
tively carrying out the purpose and
will of God the Father with whom
that plan originated.
The divine plan involves the es–
tablishment of the Kingdom of God
upon this earth and the subjection
of all things to Christ's government.
When this is accomplished Jesus
Christ will turn the completed pack–
age over to H is Father: "Then
comes the end, when he delivers the
kingdom to God the Father after
destroying (from the Greek
kaeargto ,
meaning "to render pow–
erless"] every rule and every author–
ity and power" (1 Cor. 15:24).
The Sabbath In the
Plan of God
But that's the end-the outcome-of
the divine plan. We're getting ahead
of the story. After God initially cre–
ated the material universe and then
later refashioned it, the Creator
placed man in the Garden of Eden
and gave him the Sabbath day
(Gen. 2:1-3; Mark 2:27). The Sab-
28
by
Brian Knowles
and
John
R.
Schroeder
bath was a memorial of the cre–
ation- the first step in the plan of
salvation.
So we have the weekly Sabbath as
a reminder that God is Creator and
that He has a plan which He is
working out here below. The initial
step in that divine scheme is de–
picted each time Christians observe
the Sabbath day. (You might write
for our free booklet
Which Day Is
1fze Chrislian Sabbath?)
The events that immediately fol–
low the creation of the Sabbath are
also significan! in terms of God's
plan. What was the next event re–
corded immediately following cre–
ation? Once God had refurbished
the earth and placed man on it,
what happened?
Sin!
The very next event discussed in
the Genesis account is the occur–
rence of the first human sin. You'll
find it in Genesis 3. Adam and Eve,
at the tempting of the serpent who
was actually the devil, violated the
command not to eat of the tree
which was located in the midst of
Eden. Our first parents then were
faced with the death penalty (Gen.
3:3; Rom. 6:23).
But God is not the God of the
dead but of the living! Dead people
can have no part in the Kingdom of
God, so a solution had to be found
for the problem of sin. Adam and
Eve were the prototypes of all hu–
manity to follow. As they went, so
went the world:
~'Therefore
as sin
carne into the world through one
man and death through sin, and so
death spread to al! men because all
men sinned ..." (Rom. 5: 12). Sin is
absolutely universal in the human
realm: "All have sinned and fall
short of the glory of God" (Rom.
3 :23 ; see also I John 1:8, 10). Some–
how the people of God had to be
saved
from the consequences of sin.
The Passover
God's principal act of salvation for
all mankind was prefigured in the
greatest single event in ancient
Israel's history- the Passover. The
Israelites had been slaves in Egypt
for sorne four centuries. To a large
extent they had absorbed Egypt's
paganism and morally degenerate
way of life. Egypt is used in the
Bible as a type of sin (Rev. 11 :8).
Had it not been for God's merciful
graciousness the children of Israel
would have died in sin (Egypt).
But God devised a means by
which they could achieve
physical
salvation from Egypt. The whole
procedure is explained in Exodus
12: "The Lord said to Moses and
Aaron in the land of Egypt, 'This
month shall be for you the begin–
ning of months; it shall be the first
month of the year for you. Tell aU
the congregation of Israel that on
the tenth day of this month they
shall take every man a lamb accord–
ing to their fathers' houses, a lamb
for a household... . Your lamb
shall be without blemish, a maJe a
year old; you shaU take it from the
sheep or from the goats ; and you
shall keep it until the fourteenth day
of this month, when the whole as–
sembly of the congregation of Israel
shall kili their lambs in the evening
[Hebrew, "between the two eve–
nings"].... They shall eat the flesh
The
PLAIN TRUTH December 1978