What is God's Plan? (Part two)

By Pat Robertson
The 700 Club

CBN.com - There are some people who feel that history has no beginning or end. If you believe in the Hindu model, for example, history would be sort of like this: It would be one great series of circles that really wouldn't take you anywhere. It would be a continuous-- they would call it the karma or the wheel--and it would just go on and on and on and on. But the Christian view of history isn't that way.

A Christian View of History

The Christian view of history is much different. The Christian view says that there is a beginning, a middle and an end. History is a progression of things moving as part of a plan. This is not aimless or random, but according to the plan of God. So it's comforting to understand that the Bible tells us God has a plan, and that he knows exactly what's going on and what he has planned for us. If you want to have a fun exercise, go back into Genesis and add up the ages of all of the various patriarchs and you will find something most interesting. You will find, from what I could gather, that Adam was still alive when Noah was born. And so you have those huge spaces of history where people lived as much as 1,000 years. But from the beginning of Creation, you have Adam, the first man, and, of course, Eve. And then people began to grow on the face of the Earth and to seek the Lord. And then, the Bible says all imagination of their heart was on wickedness. So it wasn't long before the world became totally wicked before God. There was utter wickedness in the Earth. And God said, `I repented that I created man, and I'm going to destroy man.' But he found one, whose name was Noah, and the Bible says Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.

Now from what I've added, my math may be wrong, Adam was still alive when Noah was born. So the link between the first man and Noah was very clear. These patriarchs--their lives overlapped one another. And you finally get to Methuselah, who was the oldest of all, who was just short of 1,000 years of age.

Noah: A righteous Man

Now Noah was righteous. And God says, `Look, I'm going to take your family, but I'm going to destroy the rest of the Earth.' And so Noah made an ark and there came a flood. And then Noah had three children. Noah named one Ham, another Shem and the third Japheth. And these were the three sons of Noah who became the fathers, or the progenitors, if you will, of all the races on the face of the Earth.

Shem's lineage

Now from Shem's line, by the way, that's where we get the word `Semitic.' There was an accusation against the king of Saudi Arabia, that he was an anti-Semite. And he said, "Well, I'm not in favor of Israel because I'm an Arab. But you can't call me an anti-Semite because I am a Semite," because we are all descendants of Shem. But the particular descendant of Shem that is of great importance was a gentleman whose name was Abram (pronounced ah-brom) or Abram, and he became known as Abraham (pronounced ahb-rah-hom) or Abraham. And he was the promise--the heir of promise for all the Earth. `In your seed shall all of the nations of the Earth be blessed.'

So God is taking from the seed of Adam, and now from the children of Noah, one particular person, a descendant of Shem whose name is Abraham. And God took him from Euratha Caldese and brought him out into Syria. And then he says, `I'm going to give you the Promised Land.'

The Rightful Heir of "The Land"

And, you know, people are still fighting today over the Promised Land. There's warfare constantly going on between various factions in relation to Syria and Jordan and Lebanon and the Hezbollah, the PLO and Hamas and these various groups. There's been almost continuous fighting over who is the rightful heir of this land. Well, God gave it to Abraham, and then he gave it to his son Isaac and in turn to his son, Jacob. It was given to them.

And the revelation of God--you see, there's the land, number one, and then there's the spiritual promise. And the land was given to Abraham and the spiritual promise was given to Abraham, that, "From your seed, all the nations of the Earth will be blessed." Now this is God's plan. I'll show you more how he's working it out and how he will work it out in our lives as we continue this series on the plan of God.