6b. The Plan of Salvation
for Humans
God needed to save all of His created, free-willed beings, as was explained in the previous section. However, in order to save His angels, He needed to create this surrogate universe of humans to play out the sin drama for all the existing angelic beings to observe. We experience the consequences of evil directly while they experience it vicariously. We die so they will not need to. Bummer, for us! What kind of God would create intelligent, free-willed beings who will inherently self-destruct, just to prove His point? Yet, this is the only way the universe of free-willed beings will ever be able to live happily ever after! To show He is a loving God and still accomplish this vital mission, He must introduce, from the beginning of our drama, His Plan for Our Salvation. (more on this in the next section)
He creates Mankind from Adam and Eve, to emulate the angelic beings and to follow thorough on the decision of some one third of them, so they can see where it will lead. He has to do this because all His angelic beings need to fully understand “good” and “evil” in order for sin to never arise again in their world (heaven). This human drama will cover all the ramifications of decisions that appear altruistic but eventually lead to self destruction, so that the angels will thereafter recognize evil choices even in their infant stages. Furthermore it will demonstrate that the wages of decisions to do evil at any level, Sin, is eventual “death”, as summarized in Section 3g, not just sleeping for a while. Hence, every human must actually “cease to exist” as a human, at some point. Once that happens, it’s all over for that person. Only God could then create a follow-on situation where these dead people could still receive everlasting life with Him. His plan is to re-create humans as angelic beings so they can then live with Him and the other angels in the kingdom of heaven. Even though they must die to prove His point, yet He will give them everlasting life.
But if He just gives them everlasting life, when they’ve asked for death, then it would be His will not theirs, which is ultimately executed. That would prove that they never really had a choice after all. Here’s how God overcame this dilemma. God as Michael the Archangel literally gives up everything as that angelic being and becomes Christ, a human like us. God stops thinking of Himself as the angel, Michael so Michael ceases to exist. God starts thinking of Himself as Christ the Human, in the womb to be born of a woman. This human will be the “Son of God”. Christ dies with us and for us, but then God the Creator/Thinker re-creates Christ in a glorified body to live ever after in the kingdom of heaven. Now, all those humans who believe in Him can inherit this kingdom as well after their human death (Jn 3:16). This plan, however, calls for a new decision on their part first. Having seen how God would become a Man and die for them, we humans know that God really loves us (Jn 15:13) and that He wants us to be with Him in the kingdom of heaven. The life of Christ on Earth shows us that the key to everlasting happiness with God in heaven is to want to share your experiences with Him – to have a meaningful relationship with Him. We need to accept His sacrifice because that acceptance is essential if we are to have a meaningful relationship with the Creator God, instead of feeling it necessary to hide from Him or to ignore His interest in our lives.
15 August 2001, Updated 22 Jan 2002 & 4 December 2002
For more on this and a response to any questions, please email any comments to nasamike@nasamike.com