Winning Life Coached by the Holy Spirit: Original Game Plan

God is the only non-created Being in the universe. The Father existed before time. The Son existed in the beginning as the Word (John 1:1), and the Father loved Him from before the foundation of the world. Also existing in the beginning, the Holy Spirit (Genesis 1:2) was hovering over the waters.

God was all there was.

Angels

Let’s use journalistic questions (who, what, when, where, why, how) for quick study.

Who: Angels are created beings, pure spirits with free will and reason. Angels are inferior to God and superior to man. Only two are named in the Protestant canon— Michael and Gabriel. We do not really know the exact number of angels; according to Scripture, the number is immense.

What: Angels were created to serve God. However, they also have free will. At some point, God gave them all one command; although I’ve already shared the Adamic school of thought about what that command was, in reality we don’t have Scriptural evidence. The obedient became good angels. The disobedient, led by Lucifer, became bad angels (demons, devils). In addition to seeing, loving, and adoring God, the good angels can serve as His messengers, delivering God’s plan to His faithful people; good angels also protect God’s people from harm.

Good angels can influence men to do good. Primarily, the bad angels seek to harm man by temptations that incite humans to sin and break their relationship with God. Bad angels may also taunt a person in the spiritual realm, resulting in oppression. On some circumstances, God may allow an evil spirit to take over a person’s body, resulting in possession. Acts committed by a possessed person, while evil in nature, are not sin because the person is not able to freely consent to the acts.

When: We have no real clear Biblical or Traditional answer for when angels were created. The Devil already existed in Genesis 3, as did the good angels (cherubim sent to guard Eden).

Where: Good angels “live” in heaven, with some assigned to earth as messengers or protectors. Bad angels “live” in earth and Hell; at the end of time, the bad angels will be thrown into the eternal lake of fire as part of the second death.

Why: Only God can create because creation takes infinite power. All things except God have a source for their existence. In addition, God continues to will His creation to exist and preserves it; otherwise, it would turn to nothingness. While God is intrinsically incapable of evil, He permits evil only insofar as it is connected to something good — the punishment of sinners, the testing and proving worthiness of the just, or a means to a far greater good.

How: Infinite power.

The Universe

Genesis 1 reviews the entire creation in six days.

• Day 1: God created the light, and He separated it from the darkness. He called the light day and the darkness night.
• Day 2: God created the sky, and in a way not quite understood, used the sky to separate the waters above from the waters below.
• Day 3: God created dry land seas. He also created seed-bearing plants and fruit trees.
• Day 4: God created the sun to govern the day, the moon to govern the night, and stars to give additional light.
• Day 5: God made creatures in the sea and the birds of the air. He blessed them and commanded them to multiply.
• Day 6: God created livestock, ground animals, and wild animals. Then God created man in His own image and gave him dominion over all living animals on earth; man was also to multiply and fill the earth. Man was given seed-bearing plants and fruit trees as his food.

God saw all that He created was good; He rested on the seventh day.

Man

Although Genesis 1 briefly mentions man at the end, Genesis 2 provides greater detail. Some claim the two chapters are contradictory. In reality Genesis 1 is a summary of creation, and Genesis 2 explores the creation of man in depth.

God took dust from the earth, formed it into a human shape, and breathed His own breath into the man’s nostrils to give life.

Using all the things He’d already created, God created a special garden called Eden. It had a river flowing out of it. It had all the fruit trees already created. In addition, there were two additional trees — the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Part of the reason for creating animals was to find a helper suitable for Adam. God brought all the animals to Adam. Adam named them, but none was right as a helper. God caused Adam to fall into a deep sleep. God took a rib from Adam, closed the hole in Adam’s flesh, and fashioned the rib into a woman. Adam called her Eve and finally found his helper.

Between the creation of Eden and Eve, God gave Adam just one command — Adam could eat from any of the trees in the Garden except the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

So why did God create humanity? God created humanity to show His goodness and to have beings with whom He could share heaven’s happiness. Because God is infinitely and eternally happy, humanity could not increase God’s happiness. However, through creation and especially through humanity, the glory of God was made manifest in a far greater way because creation and humanity depend on God for their existence.

Humanity further manifests God’s glory. We have the intellect to consider God and His will. We also have free will to choose to know, praise, and love God. Only in choosing to serve God in this life does humanity find true happiness and exhibit the greatest imperfect manifestation of God’s glory.