The Real Plan of Salvation

LIVE from Salt Lake City, Utah
This is Heart of the Matter – FULL CIRCLE – and I’m your host, Shawn McCraney

Let’s pray.

YAHAVAH –

Help us. Hear us. Be with Mags and Del – our audience – seekers, the lost, the suffering –

In Yeshua’s name, Amen.

July 16th, 2024

YOUTUBE and MORGAN PHILPOT

We are part of the Great News Network which is a resource for people – all people – to consider the Christian faith from a fulfilled perspective.

The Fulfilled Perspective

What is the Fulfilled Perspective?

Well, that is a really good question, and I am going to use tonight’s time to explain it A to Z.

When I was a LDS missionary, we used to teach people something that the LDS church called, The Plan of Salvation.

I’m not going to go into that plan of Salvation here because we’ve explained it before but there are several points that make it distinct from what people see as the Christian plan of Salvation, which is much less detailed and certain and merely summarizes human existence as God wanting relationships with His human creations and how we all are either being elected by Him or we are choosing to believe on Him – and those who don’t are going to hell forevermore.

Essentially, this is the Christian Plan of Salvation. He paid, you accept and believe or go to an eternal punishment in the hereafter.

Biblical Perspective on the Plan of Salvation

Tonight, I want to lay out how we have come to generally see what we might call, the plan of Salvation – all from a Biblical perspective alone – but from a perspective we believe has been fulfilled.

You will understand the difference when I finish.

This will not even be CLOSE to being exhaustive, however you can get more exhaustive coverage at cult.love and/or at Grady Risely.

But let me offer our general understanding of what God has done and what this means to all people yesterday, today and forevermore – believer and not.

Ready?

The Creation and the Fall

Creation of Heaven and Earth

In the beginning God, a plural, made the heavens and the earth.

We maintain that this God’s name is YAHAVAH, that He is one Perfect Plural and that He first created a realm or economy of invisible beings that operate and thrive in the heavens and that they, along with the material cosmos, came into existence by His hand in the beginning and before human beings.

The Role of YAHAVAH

We maintain that YAHAVAH is the author of all things, all knowledge, all laws, all matter and all spirits – angels, demons and gods or elohyms – and all things materially around such. He is the architect of everything and there are no other God’s spirits beings angels, cherubs like Him. And never will be.

The Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge

But being good, YAHAVAH also gave Man the ability to choose and He to underscore this gift He put two main trees in that garden setting – one called, the “Tree of Life,” which did exactly what its name describes – it gave and enhanced life to human beings, while the other was called, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

We ardently maintain that YAHAVAH never ever wanted Man to eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil because, in so doing Man would be given access to information Man is unable to manage or fully understand.

The Consequences of Eating from the Tree

Eating of this fruit would also move Man away from a reliant relationship with YAHAVAH but would instead cause Man to believe that He was His own God, and could rightly function by this KNOWLEDGE rather than by FAITH on God alone.

We believe that while the knowledge obtained by eating of the forbidden tree is powerful, even functional and operative in the right hands, this knowledge in the hands of Man has never been rightly used because even if we are made in God’s image, we are NOT God and therefore do not possess the ability to use and apply that knowledge rightly.

The Nation of Israel and God’s Covenant

The Promise to Abraham and Sarah

YAHAVAH later called another couple to walk in faith – named Abram and Sarai.

As we know, because of their faith, God promised them endless prosperity and a promised land and from them there ultimately came a new family of people called the Children of Israel.

The Marriage Contract with Israel

In reality, He entered into a marriage contract or Ketubah with the Nation at Mount Sinai through Moses giving them His ten words which were (and are) preeminent in our relationship with Him:

I am the Lord thy God have no other God’s before me.

Within 40 days of agreeing to these terms the Nation broke the ketubah by creating a golden calf and worshipping it.

The Day of Wrath

In time, and with very few exceptions, the Nation would collectively turn on Him by running after other gods, refusing to see Him as the One and Only God in their lives, and to look to Him alone in faith.

Long story short, He promised to bring judgment upon them in what the scripture calls, “the day of Wrath.”

Leading up to this final day for that Nation, a number of things would occur, including:

God actually gave the Nation a bill of divorce.
But He also promised to redeem the faithful BEFORE the great and dreadful day of when His prophesied punishments would come.
God also promised to reach out to the Gentiles and to include them in His family of faith.

The Coming of the Messiah

John the Baptist’s Role

Four hundred years passed in relative silence after these prophetic words, known today as “the inter-testamentary period” and the synoptic Gospels open thereafter with the messenger being introduced. His name was John the Baptist, who was a fulfillment of the coming of the prophet Elijah.

When John the Baptist entered into the scene to actually prepare the way for the Nations promised Messiah, we read,

The Ministry of Yeshua

Yeshua then went about calling his specially trained witnesses, doing miracles among His own (as prophesied in the Old Testament) and living in complete obedience to the will of His Father and not to His own as the first Adam did.

Then He offered up Himself up, on their ancient observance of Passover, for the sins of the whole world as the true Passover sacrifice.

When He died, paying the wages of sin (which is death) FOR THE WHOLE WORLD, He was placed in the grave, and rose again on the third day, proving that His offering as a human being was acceptable to God, His Father.

The Resurrection and Ascension

At His resurrection, Yeshua the man born of a woman, born under the Law, was deified, and called for the first time, God’s only begotten Son in whom He was well pleased.

His payment was in full and was unconditional but for those in that day and age, those who were given the Law and the Prophets and the Prophecies, His person had to be received for them to both escape the coming wrath of God and to escape the fires of sheol still existing and in the realm of Satan who was, again in that day, going about as a roaring lion, seeking whom to take captive because “he knew his time was short.”

The Apostolic Era and the Fulfillment of Prophecy

The Apostles’ Mission

After spending forty days showing His resurrected self to His Apostles and others, Yeshua ascended into the clouds with an angel promising that He would return to them in the same way He left.

After giving four of the Apostles all the signs that would be a precursor to His return, He plainly and without controversy said that a generation would not pass before ALL of those signs would occur – and for those apostles to watch for them.

The Day of Pentecost

The apostles were told to go to Jerusalem and wait and on the day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit fell and its effects were so powerful it caused some onlookers to wonder if the apostles were drunk.

In response to this, we read the following about Peter, who was given the keys to open the Gospel doors to both the Jews and the Gentiles, saying:

Act 2:14 But Peter, standing up with the eleven, lifted up his voice, and said unto them, Ye men of Judaea, and all ye that dwell at Jerusalem, be this known unto you, and hearken to my words:
15 For these are not drunken, as ye suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day.
16 But this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel;
17 And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams:
18 And on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my Spirit; and they shall prophesy:
19 And I will shew wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath; blood, and fire, and vapour of smoke:
20 The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before that great and notable day of the Lord come:
21 And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

The Fulfillment of Prophecy

All who in faith called on the Name of Yeshua, who had done all that Nation of Israel the Nation failed to do in the past, were saved from the coming wrath and from the hellish place of sheol if they died before His return.

The Apostles

then – witnesses of all of this – then went forth and called any and all who would hear to join the Bride in that day, so, as Paul said:

Ephesians 5:27 That he (Yeshua) might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.

The Aftermath and the Spiritual Kingdom

The Unshakable Kingdom

The Spirit goes where it will those seeking will find it, when found, will be led, will find, will enter into relationship with Him – all without religion.

This idea of no more “shakable” man-made empires governing people is described by the writer of Hebrews, who quotes God saying:

“Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven. And this word, Yet once more, signifies the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made,

And the end of such fulfills the fact that only that which cannot be shaken remains.

The New Covenant

The writer of Hebrews concludes with these words:

28 Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear 29 For our God is a consuming fire.”

Anything and everything material and governed by fleshly souls can be shaken and moved – but His Kingdom, which is entirely of the Spirit, and is in the hands of the Spirit and is governed from a spiritual new Jerusalem above, is unmovable and lasting.

The Eternal Kingdom

Finally, these areas of fulfillment are specifically articulated in Revelation, including:

Revelation 20:10 And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.

and

Revelation 20:14 And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.

and

Revelation 20:15 And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.

The Final Vision

Amazingly, the book of Revelation, near the end, has John describing what the heavenly kingdom looks like in the face of these incomprehensible victories.

The afterlife is no longer a place of heaven and hell with everyone waiting a Great White Throne Judgments or where unbelievers go into flames of hellfire.

John actually writes:

Revelation 21:21 And the twelve gates were twelve pearls; every several gate was of one pearl: and the street of the city was pure gold, as it were transparent glass.
22 And I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it.
23 And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.
24 And the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it: and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honor into it.
25 And the gates of it shall not be shut at all by day: for there shall be no night there.
26 And they shall bring the glory and honour of the nations into it.
27 And there shall in no wise enter into it any thing that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie: but they which are written in the Lamb’s book of life.

The River of Life

Then in the last chapter of Revelation John continues to describe the eternal Kingdom above, saying:

Revelation 22:1 And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.
2 In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.
3 And there shall be no more curse: but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and his servants shall serve him:
4 And they shall see his face; and his name shall be in their foreheads.
5 And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever.

This is the Biblical Plan of Salvation as all the world has been saved from Satan, Hell, sin and death.

It remains a Plan where only those who choose to walk by faith are saved to the Kingdom while the rest abide outside of it – choosing – we might suppose, to either try to get in or to not care about it at all – just like they do here in this life.

Conclusion

Next week we will explore what all of this means for us in this world, and from this place we will begin to understand the differences between genuine Christianity and the religion called, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.