Outline For Building-up And Equipping The Body Of Christ

This Biblical Christianity website encourages people to know and to live, God’s Word; thus enabling us to live now as God intended for us to live, and preparing us for eternal life in God’s kingdom.

Site Navigation:This left-column outline contains links to website pages and sources pertaining to helping the Body of Christ gain the potential for which God designed it. The menu below pages down to the individual sections of this outline from which you can navigate to other web pages. There is a fourth level to some of the third level or decimal elements of this outline that is hidden, to view this level click on the (c) symbol in the outline; to hide the fourth level, double-click upon it (I found out, the last time I checked, that Mozilla's Firefox browser doesn't support this fourth level expansion feature, sorry).

How Far Along Are We In God’s Plan?

God has revealed to us, in His Word, everything that we need to know to enable us to trust Him for our personal salvation and everything else in life. He has made us aware of some of what He has already done and also some of what He plans on doing. For instance we know that He created the heavens and the earth, and that He did it for His own good pleasure (Gen. 1:1, 31). We know that God sent His Son to purchase and redeem a sanctified and consecrated people with whom He can fellowship and reign with (Rom. 8:28-29; Gal. 4:3-6; Titus 2:14; 1 Jn. 1:1-4; 2 Tim. 2:12; Rev. 22:1-5). We know the possibility of Jesus’ immanent return for the people He has redeemed (Jn. 14:1-3; 1 Cor. 15:51-58), and a short time later to rescue the nation of Israel, bind the devil, and personally rule over all the earth for a period of one thousand years (Zech. 1:21; Rev. 20:1-6). After the millennium Satan will be released from confinement and will raise a rebellion against Christ and will be defeated and cast, along with all the rebellious, into the Lake of Fire where they will suffer continual anguish for all eternity (Rev. 20:7-10). Then God will create a new heaven and a new earth, and eternity will begin (Rev. 21-22).

In this article we will try to establish where we are in this plan of God’s, and some of the details of it.

Most evolutionists would have us believe that there is no God, that all of existence is material and started with a big explosion in the endless past, that life evolved from the elements of that explosion over billions of years, and that there is no spirit or soul of man that exists after the death of the body. Many highly intelligent people have spent the majority of their lives trying, without success, to prove this theory as fact – which it is not. One of the tools that they often successfully use to deceive the unwary is a false application of geology, by which they try to verify their billions of years theory.

Dr. Henry Morris the founder of the Institute for Creation Research in California, has earned the title "The Father of Modern Creationism." In his book, The Biblical Basis for Modern Science, on pages 11 and 12 he states:

Men have too rapidly jumped to the conclusion that the Bible is unscientific ) or "prescientific," as some would say). The biblical cosmology has never been disproved; it has simply made men uncomfortable and been rejected. Nevertheless the actual facts of observation and experience can be shown to correlate with the biblical view of the world and history in a highly satisfying way.

The Bible authors claim to have written the very Word of God, and it has been accepted as such by multitudes of intelligent people down through the centuries. This is more true today than ever in the past, and there are now thousands of qualified scientists around the world who quite definitely believe in the full verbal inerrancy of the Holy Scriptures. It is thus absurd for anyone to say that "science" has disproved the Bible.

On page 420 of his book Henry Morris states: "Thus, both radiocarbon dating and tree-ring dating are unreliable. Yet these are the best methods developed so far for estimating dates in prehistoric human chronology. Once we get beyond the beginnings of actual written records, there is simply no way to determine dates with accuracy. There is, thus, no real reason to reject or even question the traditional Ussher chronology of the Bible. It does seem there is an inordinate desire on the part of evolutionists to stretch dates as far into the past as they can, almost as though they were consciously trying to discredit the Bible. . . . The objectivity of scientists is a nice image, but the facts often tarnish it."

The compressed chronology of Archbishop Ussher, who assumes unbroken succession of father-son relationship in the genealogical lists of Gen. 5 and 11, places the creation of man around 4004 BC. The following table is constructed from the years involved to the birth of each successive son named in God’s Word up to the birth of Joseph; added to this is the 430 years in Egypt, and then the two most likely dates for the exodus of Israel from Egypt, which are taken from Unger’s Bible Dictionary, are added to arrive at the B.C. date for creation.

It would seem that the numbers given in Genesis chapter five should be taken at face value, because the age of the father is given at the time of the child’s birth. In this type of a listing it doesn’t seem reasonable to assume that there could be any gaps or individuals left out as there is in the first chapter of Matthew’s listing! Therefore the 2668 years from Adam to the Exodus as calculated below, and the 40 years in the Wilderness are correct according to God’s Word. The only date that is not accurately known is the time of the Exodus, and most scholars are within Unger’s 1441 B.C. date by plus or minus about 200 years; so Creation could not have occurred before 4300 B.C. nor after 3900 B.C. in round numbers. Unger’s second most likely date is 1290 B.C.

If we add the present date to the below calculated years from creation to the coming of Christ (4109 B.C. + 4 + 2008) we come up with 6,121 years of human history. If we were to use the second most likely date of the Exodus of the nation of Israel from Egypt (1290 B.C.) we would come up with (3958 B.C. + 4 + 2008) 5,970 years of human history. This second calculation brings up a very interesting thought; considering the frequent use of the number seven in the Bible, it is quite possible that man’s history, as God has given him to live it, will amount to 6,000 years, then Christ will reign for another 1,000 years, and then life will be changed and eternity will begin. The number of man is six, and the number for completion is seven. If the second calculation is right, then we have about 30 more years before Christ comes to rule and reign – somewhere around 2038, which would mean that the rapture could occur in 2031 because Jesus will come for His Church before the tribulation. Of course these are only calculated assumptions, and there may be many more factors involved that we are unaware of, but it may be as close as one can get using the record that God has given to us.

I have made some changes on the following chart using Unger’s second most likely date for the exodus of the nation of Israel from Egypt, and then assuming that God has indeed allotted 6000 years for human rule before Jesus begins His 1000 year reign, and that all the information from the Bible and my calculations are correct. Of course, this leaves much room for error; this chart is only meant to be used to show the order of events and their probable time element.