GOD'S PLAN OF REDEMPTION AND THE DEFEAT OF ANTICHRIST IN SEVEN ACTS
by T. M. Smith
Preface
God is not running the world by the seat of his pants, and he certainly has not put us on the "third stone from the sun" and left us alone to fend for ourselves. God is the molder of Man, the shaper of nations, the designer of history. The proof is the fulfillment of Bible prophecy. Understanding the Bible is largely a matter of knowing God and believing that He wrote its every word. Once we get to know both author and word we begin to comprehend that God truly is in control of everything, not least of all, Man's destiny. Nor is He what Satan claims He is – a bungler who has done a miserable job who puts men through needless pain and grief. God’s ultimate goal is to create a habitation for Himself, and that habitation is Man himself. He wants to bring man to eternal life, a creature impervious to sin and its wages, death. To instill trust in us, God invented prophecy, "The Greatest Show on Earth"; with its ongoing miracles and marvels which constantly testify to the omnipotence of God. Once we get familiar with the power and purpose of prophecy we begin to see that prophecy and history are inseparable, prophecy is history waiting to happen and meaningful history is nothing more than prophecy fulfilled. The study and understanding of prophecy answers history's four essential and fundamental questions: (1. Where have we been? (2. Why were we there? (3. Where are we going? And, (4) Why are we going there? Anyone or anything that can answer these four questions should be a friend and comforter for life. Prophecy promises to be such a friend.
Our relationship with Prophecy ought to be viewed as a process of education about reality. If we are attentive to it, treat it with respect and wisdom, a plan for Man's redemption will begin to seep out of the Bible's wealth of real knowledge and become a part of our everyday lives. When we come to God we immediately understand that he, from the moment he molded Adam out of the clay of the earth, had a clear reason for creating Man and a sure plan that would liberate him from all threat of sin and death. Then, as Prophecy is prayerfully studied, an order begins to impose itself on the chaotic fog of history. The list of names and dates thrown at us by teachers in a hurry, will then slowly take on meaning and we will be able to sift through the meaningless to the sublime truth and matters concerning God’s plan for mankind. There are no loose ends, nothing is left to chance, nothing is contingent on the schemes and adventures of Man, nothing can be overthrown by the conspiring forces of evil, the plan has been forecast, things are going just as He planned.
Gradually we begin to see the obvious, that God's plan is linear in nature, finite, detailed, perfect. Providence is the word we use for His plan which has a clear cut beginning and a predetermined end. It takes time and effort, however, before all of the seemingly disjointed pieces of prophecy can be fitted together so the whole plan can be seen in an orderly sequence viewed from the panorama of God's eternity. Once we view it as a plan we become aware that the important things of history are only those things that pertain (directly or indirectly) to God's plan of redemption for Man. Then, finally, history's value, its meaning and reason, surfaces. We are no longer intimidated by the vast expanses of crisscrossing history with its endless clutter of changes, revolutions, skullduggery, oppression, failed utopias, wars, events, dates, and super-duper personalities. Like a scientist looking into a microscope we can zero in on just the pertinent things, unimpressed and unmoved by the irrelevant material outside the realm of our focus. Suddenly, unencumbered by the weight that Man's view of history lays on us, we are free to reap history's lessons, map its course, garner its hope, and enjoy the bolstered faith it gives. All of this and more we owe to God and the power of the prophetic word.
Furrowing its way through the Bible like the mother-load of gold running through a fabulously wealthy gold mine, this quintessential history has to be dug out with the pick-axe of study and by the toil and patience of prayer. As the forty-niners of the California gold rush, we must be willing to leave everything behind, every thought and preconception, to dig for prophecy's bonanza of riches. We must be willing to labor, taking out one chunk of pure and valuable truth after another, greedily tucking each and every nugget away in our personal Bank of Knowledge and Wisdom to be tendered smartly against the coming flood of evil coming upon the world at the hand of the Antichrist. The prophetic word can ransom the wise person in the day of the Antichrist. This mining for the gold of God's history can be hard work, but God knows our mental and spiritual limitations and wisely has kept things on an elementary level. Simply put: God's history is quintessential. A term coined by the Greeks, quintessential has a spiritual application as well as a pure and lean connotation to it. The Greeks, though far from being proponents or preachers of God's plan, arrived at the term because they believed the world to be composed of four essences: earth, air, fire and water; but they believed that a fifth essence ruled over all things, and that essence, or force, they dubbed the quint (fifth) essence. So, any true quintessential history must be a streamlined, rudimentary ordering of events, handed down by the Creator from above. Therefore, everything in this book, cover to cover, turns on this maxim:
Meaningful history is nothing more than fulfilled prophecy
and unfulfilled prophecy is simply history waiting to happen.
Since quintessential history and prophecy are one and the same there will be a profound disregard for conventional history and its traditional concerns. Likewise, I have made a conscious attempt to resist all temptations to explain or defend the infallibility of the Scriptures (on which this work confidently rests) but instead have endeavored to follow the lead of the quintessential history of the Scriptures by staying on a spiritually minded and concise course. This writing also presupposes belief on the part of the reader, or certainly an open minded, open hearted willingness to explore the truth as a greedy miner afflicted with gold-fever. I believe time is running out, God's plan is drawing to its conclusion, and I truly believe there is no point in dredging up neat little curiosities or other supposedly important facts, no matter how highly esteemed they may be among the professional historians of Man. This does not mean there are not some highly interesting details in the history of the Antichrist and it Empire that reveal the true spirit behind this grandiose conspiracy which has been fomented and forwarded by Satan since the Tower of Babel and even before the Great flood. I do strongly suggest - and hope as much - that the reader will not simply take my word for prophetic things, but will check them out by studying carefully the Scriptures, by praying earnestly, and by reading and searching whatever and wherever necessary in order to acquire prophecies’ magnificent wealth.
And finally, I must be honest with the reader: any history of the world, regardless how quintessential is an ambitious undertaking. Under the best of circumstances any journey as long as the evolution of the Antichrist Spirit of Empire could become arduous and bumpy and convoluted in distracting details. It could even get bogged down altogether. In searching for a vehicle which could provide the reader with a smooth and fluid ride, one that could quickly negotiate the dusty trails of six thousand years, it occurred to me early that God's history might be best likened to a play. Concerned, however, that the analogy might cheapen the sober importance of understanding God's plan for Man's redemption, or that the analogy could even take on a kind of life of its own and somehow overshadow, or obscure, the simplicity of God's linear plan, I put the idea aside and returned to ordering things from beginning to end as a disciplined historian should, letting the pieces of prophecy fall as they would into their rightful places. It was only at the conclusion of a full and complete draft that I
revisited the idea of the analogy and decided to test it, hoping it would give each part of the unfolding story a kick start where my style might be lacking. At the same time, I hoped the running analogy would encourage those who shrink from the study of history, as dry and boring, to see God's plan of redemption, not as a chain of unrelated dates and times and events, unable to light the way of our future, but instead as a prewritten, tightly produced, closely directed, well-lit drama with a provocative beginning and a decisive climax. Each scene is in continuity with the one that precedes it and the one which follows because God’s plan of redemption is linear and pre-determined. One can rightly view history as that part of the play which has already been acted out. One can therefore rightly view the future as that part of the play which remains to be acted out. Upon reading ‘The Redemption Play’ it will be evident that the play is nearly over.
The book is divided into acts and scenes instead of parts and chapters hoping the reader will be reminded continually that God's plan has been predetermined from the beginning just as the outcome of any play is predetermined before a single actor ever sets foot on stage. While I think the analogy works, I have kept it to a minimum, hoping it will enhance the understanding of God's quintessential history rather than intrude upon it. TO PROLOGUE >