Christian Challenge Ministries

THE GRANDEST EXPERIMENT EVER IMAGINED

© 2018 by Philip A Matthews

When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have ordained; What is Man, that You are mindful of him? and the son of man, that You visit him? For You have made him a little lower than the angels and have crowned him with glory and honor. (Psalm 8:3-5)

Children, gather around and let me tell you a wonderful story. It is the Greatest Story Ever Told about the Grandest Experiment Ever Imagined. And it goes like this:

Eons upon eons ago, in a past eternity a few eternities ago, somewhere in some unfathomable and undefinable dimension, there arose in the Infinite Mind of the Eternal God a fleeting glimmer of a thought, one which was more splendiferous and magnificent than any He had ever imagined before. As the Only Self-Existent Spirit Being, Who Was and Is and Is to come, He was the Creator of all other beings, both transient and eternal.

And create He had done, fashioning billions and billions of all kinds of spirit beings, “angels,” having various “personalities,” character traits, mentalities, and, quite possibly, wills. But all of them were subservient to Him, doing His will and living their existences within the frameworks they were created in.

Eventually, by some means we really don’t know for certain and can only imagine because the written record, which came about eons later, is a little sketchy, it appears that some of those spirit beings became rebellious and joined forces to go against God’s will. It’s really no way to say conclusively what the conflict was all about or how those beings got to choose whose side they were on because: (1) How do we know for sure that they even had a will and a privilege to exercise it, (2) What is the nature of an angel? How can an angel be tempted as a spirit-only being? Humans can be tempted because we have two natures, spirit and flesh, which war against each other, but what within an angel allows it to be tempted? and (3) Most importantly, when did “Evil” itself come into existence as an actual thing apart from God and “Good,” so that spirit beings, even if they were indeed given wills and a chance to choose it, would do so despite the fact that they were created “good” and holy like God in the first place?

Whatever and however it happened, a fairly large portion of the spirit beings rebelled against God and His will, choosing instead to follow their leader, who was named Satan or Lucifer or Apollyon and commonly called the “devil.” These evil beings God banished from His presence, wherever that was and is, perhaps by pushing them out into another dimension or space or wherever rejected spirit beings “reside.” Perhaps around that same time, He created a space or place of banishment where those spirits will eventually reside for eternity. Someway somehow, away from His omnipresence, which is quite remarkable because how does an omnipresent God, who is everywhere, create a place of banishment where He is not? All this is rather mindboggling for us in this realm, so we have given the name “Heaven” for where God “resides” and the name “Hell” for the “place” of evil and evil spirit beings. This helps us “manage” these hard-to-imagine concepts better.

So now we come to the real beginning of our story about the “Grandest Experiment Ever Imagined.” As eternity flowed right along in its never-ending continuum, a fascinating thought flitted through God’s Mind. He thought a little more, and it became a complete Plan. He would do something He had never done before. (But then, on second thought, we can never know whether He had done this before or not. Seeing that Eternity is forever and God is Eternal, it’s no telling for sure exactly what He has been doing and what He has already done during this never-ending eternity. What He’s been up to for so long we’ll never really know.)

Whatever again, this is what He decided to do: He would create a new dimension, outside of His own eternal dimension, which would only last for a certain duration before it would be swallowed back up by eternity. In this new dimension, He would create something called “Space,” which would thus give rise to other concepts like “Time” and “Distance” and the “Physical World” and other things that could be “measured,” which was quite unusual because nothing in eternity could ever be measured. But in this new dimension, literally everything would be measured and limited, especially time.

So, in “The Beginning”—and remember, this is not really the true beginning because God has no beginning and no ending, so this “Beginning” is merely the beginning of TIME—starting with absolutely nothing, God created the heavens and the earth—the Universe, the Physical Dimension, what we know as “Space.” Though it started out very small, indeed only the size of a pinpoint when, by His Word alone, He spoke it all into existence, the Universe has been expanding ever since the Beginning, which even Science acknowledges and calls “The Big Bang.” As it expands, so does the amount of physical space it fills, as well as the distance between its various parts and pieces. So does Time, which is… Hey this is very elusive, to come up with a clear and definite definition of time. But we shall make an attempt and say that “time” is the indefinite continued progress of existence and events, a nonspatial continuum in which these events occur in apparently irreversible succession from the past through the present to the future. We measure time using seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades, centuries, millennia, etc. And we know that, since Time is not Eternity, it will someday stop and pass away, flowing seamlessly back into eternity. That is, the Universe, Time, and Space will not last forever.

Now we are not sure exactly how long after God spoke the Universe into existence that the Earth as we know it came about. The Record, called the Torah, says it took place on “Day One.” But because there were no sun and moon, i.e., no solar system, until later in the Creation story, we can’t say for sure that it meant one 24-hour day like we have now when the Earth spins around once on its “axis,” or another type of “day” of uncertain duration. Regardless, the Torah says that God had created plant life, sea life, and land animals by “Day Six.”

Now some people have argued whether that meant six 24-hour days or six prolonged eons of time amounting to around 15 billions years. But at least one famous scientist, Dr. Gerald Lawrence Schroeder, believes that both views are correct! Dr. Schroeder is an Orthodox Jewish physicist, author, and Hebrew professor, having received his doctorate in both nuclear physics and earth and planetary sciences in 1965, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). From “The Age of the Universe” in The Science of God (1997), he writes:

“Today we look at time going backward. We see over 15 billion years (according to the Hubble telescope). Looking forward from when the universe is very small—billions of times smaller—the Torah says six days. In truth, they may both be correct… What’s exciting about the last few years in cosmology is we now have quantified the data to know the relationship of the ‘view of time’ from the beginning, relative to the ‘view of time’ today. It’s not science fiction any longer. Any one of a dozen physics textbooks all bring the same number: The general relationship between time near the beginning and time today is a million millions, i.e., a 1 with 12 zeros after it [1 trillion]. This figure is derived by looking at the development of time based on the expansion factor. Every time the universe doubles in size, the perception of time is cut in half. Now when the universe was very small, it was doubling very rapidly. But as the universe gets bigger, the doubling time gets exponentially longer. This rate of expansion is quoted in The Principles of Physical Cosmology, a physics textbook used literally around the world… So six days at the beginning would be six million million days today. Six million million days is a very interesting number. What would that be in years? Divide by 365 and it comes out to be 16 billion years, essentially the estimated age of the universe!”

Anyway, still on Day Six, when His new world was ready, God got down to the business He had originally imagined in His mind. He created an entirely new kind of being to live in His new physical realm. He decided to wrap a spirit being within a physical, animal shell. “Let Us make ‘MAN’ (or ‘Adam’) in Our image,” is what the Record says God said. He breathed into Adam’s nostrils and “he became a living soul.” This new creation, human beings, were the original “Hybrids.” These Hybrids possessed all the attributes of both dimensions, with the ability to relate to, communicate with, and sense and enjoy both realms. They were made in the “image of God,” having many of His attributes, but most importantly, His “consciousness.” And “freewill.”

Now why would God give them freewill, seeing that so many of the angels had already used theirs to choose to rebel against God? Isn’t that too great a risk to take again? “What if these hybrids don’t choose You, Almighty God?” is the question on every mind throughout the heavenly realm. And this is where we get to the most magnificent point of it all:

GOD IS LOVE!!

And as LOVE, by definition, He actually NEEDS to have someone to pour out His affection on. How can LOVE possibly be shown or made evident without someone to lavish itself on? Without an object for its affection, does Love even exist? Is it even such a thing? How would we know, when it can only be seen in action and in relationship with another being? This is why God has spent eternity creating other beings—they are the necessary objects of His infinite Love.

But, as LOVE, God also DESIRES and therefore NEEDS to receive Love from those created objects of His affection. This Responsive Love brings the greatest joy and pleasure possible to the Divine Lover. But if Man has no choice NOT to love God, then “loving” God is not real Love because it is forced or preprogrammed. True Love is VOLUNTARY ONLY. Coerced love or preprogrammed love is not Love at all. So God had to give Man freewill. It was a risk He had to take to make RESPONSIVE LOVE even possible.

And, as it happened before, freewill led to the downfall of God’s creation. But this time, God’s ultimate (and original) Plan was to use His LOVE to save, forgive, redeem, salvage, heal, and restore Man. A holy angel does not need Love to redeem him, but a wretched, hopeless, dying human being definitely needs God’s Love to redeem him or her. The Fall of Man gave God the greatest opportunity to LOVE that Creation has ever seen!

So, while God by His Sovereign Will continues to orchestrate time, history, events, people, and places, His divine Plan marches on. Kingdoms rise, and kingdoms fall. Untold suffering afflicts everyone who has ever lived on the earth. Sin and corruption take their painful toll: Death, disease, war, famine, greed, selfishness, hatred, bitterness, tears, grief, disappointment, hopelessness, rape, sex trafficking, violence, drug addiction, starvation, homelessness, loneliness, rejection, child abuse, divorce, mental illness, fatherlessness, abandonment, injustice, hurting people hurting people, bigotry and racism—this is the common, pitiful, unavoidable human condition. Some of us kill others, and some of us, unable to deal with the emptiness and pain of it all, kill ourselves. But we all die. The ancient patriarch, Job, rightly concludes that “Man who is born of a woman is of a few days that are full of trouble!”

And God just keeps watching, hurting and empathizing and sympathizing and groaning with us, because that little eternal spirit we got from Him, that little piece of Himself He breathed into our nostrils, God lovingly yearns over and longs for, no matter how awful we act. James 4:5—"He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us" (English Standard Version).

Finally, in the “fullness of time,” His Spirit overshadows a young Jewish virgin and brings forth a “God-man,” Jesus Christ, the “Son King.” So, miracle of miracles, God Himself steps into our dimension! Can there be anything better than that?! And He immediately gets to work healing and forgiving us, even dying on the cross and giving His life to atone for us, overlooking our sinfulness and waywardness as merely the expected, natural symptoms of our abandonment! Can there be anything more LOVING than that?!

God comes down to us because He wants ALL His spirit beings to return to live with Him for eternity when this “time world” is ended. “He is not willing that any should perish.” But He has arranged that ONLY the Hybrids who voluntarily love Him and Him alone, in spite of their many temptations to love themselves and this physical world more, will be the ones who live with Him upon their return to eternity.

Let me explain this more: Unfortunately, many Hybrids fall under the spell of this physical realm, addicted to its many fleshly, mental, and emotional offerings, unable to free themselves from the thousands of strings that attach them to the physical and thereby tie down and oppress and enslave and entrap their spirits. Is this you? Because of this, their souls and spirits will never make it “safely” back home to their Creator but will be banished when they get to eternity. But the hybrids who do make it back safely "home” are the ones who love their Maker more than anything this worldly dimension has to offer. They LOVE Him by following only His will, Loving as He Loves, and rejecting all the entanglements of this dimension.

These special hybrids God calls His “jewels,” the most precious creations in all of Creation. When it’s all over and the big gathering of all spiritual beings ever in existence takes place in heaven, it is prophesied that these Hybrids will attract the attention of the whole host of heaven as they come in shouting and strutting in their white robes, waving symbolic palm branches of victory, marching down the “streets of gold.”

“Who are these folks, and where did they come from?” will be the question on every tongue.

And the Son King will answer them, “These are my Hybrids from that other dimension, filled with the trickiest of snares to lead them astray and the most unbelievable sufferings to cause them to give up in discouragement. But they loved Me more than anything else, even more than they loved their own lives, and, having trusted in My blood atonement to make them holy and My grace to bring them through it all, here they are! Safely at home! Through it all, they chose Me! Welcome, home, My Saints, My ‘Called-Out Ones!’ FATHER, HERE. THEY. ARE!” the Son King will shout as He proudly presents them to the Ancient of Days.

And a shout of praise like none ever heard before will rise that echoes for all eternity, marveling forever over the Grandest Experiment Ever Imagined!

I’m gonna be there; I’m not gonna miss it! What about you?