Let us read another verse in Paul's second Epistle to Timothy, chapter 1: 9: "God who

hath saved us and called us with (or to) a holy calling. Not according to our works (not

because of any merit on our part) but according to His own purpose (according to His

own plan)". Your salvation and mine is part of this wondrous plan of God! Rom. 8:

put it in this way: "We know that all things work together for good to them that love

God, to them who are called according to His purpose"--called according to His plan.

II Tim. 1: says we are saved according to the plan; Rom. 8: says we are called

according to this great plan.

The best thing for us to do now is to look at this plan in the large and then to come to

our part as individuals in it. Going back to the beginning, to the first verse of Gen. 1:,

we find God creating heaven and earth, and please note that heaven comes first! Heaven

not only a place but heavenly beings, angels, principalities and powers. We may not

understand fully why He created these heavenly beings. Then He created the earth with

the intention of it being inhabited. In Isa. 45: 18, we read: "For thus saith the Lord

that created the heavens; God Himself that formed the earth and made it. He hath

established it; He created it not in vain, He formed it to be inhabited." So here is the first

light brought before us on the purpose behind creation. God made the earth to be

inhabited by a race of beings, who were fashioned in His image.

Alas that plan was soon to be spoiled because Satan fell from his perfect state and

Adam and Eve had not been very long on the earth before this fallen being came and did

his deadly work in the garden of Eden, and so in fallen Adam and Eve, and all the human

race, you find God's image marred. Sin and death follow, and these are the great

enemies which spoil what God had in mind. The fact that every human being dies, and

there is no exception to this, proves that every one is a sinner. Death is not the result of

something good, but of something evil. "The wages of sin is death." It is useless for men

and women to seek to evade the fact that they are sinners when death stares them in the

face every day of their lives. Heaven has become ruined, and now earth has become

ruined. What a tragedy! How is God going to deal with this? Is He going to let His plan

be frustrated? No--He "works all things after the counsel of His own will", as we have

seen. God's purpose is one of redemption and this is going to be sufficient to put things

right and undo the work of sin and the devil. But how will God bring it to bear upon the

world in its darkness and death? Will He speak to each individual separately? He could

do that; for He is almighty. The very fact that He could speak to an idolater proves this,

a man named Abram, in Ur of the Chaldees. There was no Bible there, no missionary,

no human intermediary at all, but God spoke to him, and Abram heard and responded. If

God has done it once He could do it a thousand or a million times. Is He going to work

that way, or, will He work through a channel and reach the whole world through this

It is the second way which is the way God chooses. And so, when later we come to

chapter 11: in the book of Genesis, we read of the whole of the nations in disorganization

and conflict at Babel; and then in chapter 12:, God brings this man Abram into the land

of promise, the land we now call Palestine, and He makes certain promises to him. This