In this crucial hour when not only Americans but all peoples of all nations collectively are faced with the catastrophic effects of the most expansive economic collapse in the annals of human history, it is calming, comforting, and cheering to know that the Sovereign and Almighty God has a plan, has eternally known what the plan is, and that His plan—for individual believers and His true Body alike—is not for harm, calamity, disaster, or destruction, but welfare, good, prosperity, peace, and a hope-filled future.
‘For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope.’ (Jer. 29:11, NASB)
For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. (Ibid; NIV)
For I know the thoughts and plans that I have for you, says the Lord, thoughts and plans for welfare and peace and not for evil, to give you hope in your final outcome. (Ibid; AB)
For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. (Ibid; NLT)
In the present tumultuous times in which talk of crisis, collapse, and calamity fill the air and images vividly portraying same fill our television screens, it is vital for believers to understand one thing—God has a plan. He’s always had a plan. In fact it is not just a plan, rather His plan is THE plan. The various translations of this oft-quoted verse cited above reflect some poignant points concerning the plans that He has for us.
First, it’s thrilling to just know that the Almighty has a plan for our welfare and well-being—that a plan actually exists. How often do people—believers and non-believers alike—languish in life for lack of a plan and because they don’t know what God’s plan is! One of the most pitiful divine laments in the Word of God is: “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” (Hos. 4:6). In other words, those who profess to be God’s people and wear the badge—“Christian”—don’t know that God has always had a specifically and intentionally devised plan for their life, and they have no clue what that plan is.
Many don’t know where they’re going, nor how to get to wherever it is they are going. As someone has said, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.”
Lack of knowledge or ignorance of God’s plans for us is not just a “bummer,” as people say today, but it will cause you to live a defeated and destroyed life. Myriad are the professing Christians living lives of devastation and destruction due to ignorance of God’s plans, pledges, and promises for them.
Secondly, God says He knows the plans He has for us. Just the knowledge that He already knows the plans He has for us should be extremely comforting, calming, and cheering to us in the troubled and tribulation-filled times comprising our current collective life as Americans here in the fall of 2008, as the world reels in the wake of ubiquitous financial devastation for which there are no ready remedies.
Thirdly, the plans God has for us, by His own pronouncement, are NOT for calamity, disaster, devastation, or evil, but on the contrary for our welfare, good, prosperity, peace, and to give us hope and a hopeful future. Again, if there’s ever been a time a plan that will engender all those results is needed, especially hope and a hopeful future, it is now!
Yet, the stark reality at this present hour is that the scenario before us as a nation appears to be completely antithetical to what God declares concerning “the plan” He has for His people. Over the last few days the economy of the world’s greatest super-power has been officially, albeit reluctantly, diagnosed by the economic experts and the politicians charged with overseeing and managing it, as “collapsed”—in unprecedented, historic proportions. Our national economy lies listless on a blood-soaked gurney on life-support in the ICU. The team of highly-skilled ER physicians have signified with the familiar side-to-side swivel of their heads that at this point there’s nothing much they can do for the dying patient but provide comfort. And, since believers, though not of the world, are in the world, they are impacted much the same in the natural as the rest of the world.
The financial “fall” long predicted by a number of prophetic voices over the last two decades finally became an undeniable reality on Rosh HaShana, New Years Day for the year 5769 on the Hebrew calendar, signaled by the most precipitous one-day decline ever recorded on Wall Street with the leading stock market index plummeting precisely 777 points—a mark that surely is a divine signature. “Black Monday 2.0.” “The Super-Fall in the Fall 2008,” it could be dubbed. Humpty-Dumpty has fallen off the wall, and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men it now appears are incapable of putting Humpty-Dumpty back together again.
Virtually all of the longest standing financial institutions heretofore forming the economic foundations of the greatest nation ever to exist in the history of the world have totally collapsed; many literally are no more. The highest, mightiest, and smartest of our republic are totally bankrupt of credible answers and viable solutions. The nation’s most powerful and highly positioned government leaders cannot even begin to account for either the genesis or the denouement of the most immense national debacle in time immemorial. The most brilliant economic and political minds of the free world are totally stymied by the sheer scale of the dilemma and basically unable to offer a stunned and reeling American citizenry any plausible strategy for resolution and recovery. All that the entirety of Washington can offer is some hastily-devised dubious and purely speculative proposals that in effect transfer the retributive burden for the sins of the true offenders onto the collective back of the present generation of Americans, to bear for the whole of their and their children’s children’s lifetimes.
The cause, of course, we know with absolute certainty. Basic greed, bare avarice, and brazen aggrandizement are the uncontested and undeniable motivators. That—we all know. No debate needed in that regard. The proverbial chickens have come home to roost, and barring divine intervention the people of “the land of the free” will be suffering the wages that inure to those who foolishly disregard the biblical adage concerning the borrower becoming the slave of the lender. Unless and until Americans return to Biblical principles regarding financial integrity and morality, we will remain incarcerated in a debtors prison, where one of the horrible consequences is forfeiture of common human freedom and the freedoms we as the most prosperous nation on earth have enjoyed for well over two-hundred years.
For decades our national adversaries have well known and implemented strategies based on the understanding that there is no need for them to resort to expending massive amounts of their resources on a military aggression against “the great Satan,” when they can use American resources to bring the nation to its knees through economic and entrepreneurial exploitation of our national Achilles Heel—materialism, and more specifically the ills that unrestrained and pandemic avarice produce. The unfortunate result of decades of moral decline and spiritual apostasy in this country is that our gates are now overrun and our nation is overflowing with mortal enemies filled with venomous enmity.
What is critical for the true Church—the Church Jesus is building, the Remnant Church—to recognize in the face of current events, the presidential race in particular, is that, though the matter of what candidate and political party prevails in the election will certainly affect us all, nevertheless, our destiny does not rise and fall on who is president and vice president of the United States. Bona fide believers, one and all, cast their vote for the ultimate Commander-in-chief the day they accepted the risen Christ as their personal Lord and Savior! The Born Again Child of God can take solace in the fact that Jesus is Lord over all and has been permanently given a Name which is above every other Name—on earth and in heaven.
In a sense, so far as our own life is concerned, each of us are electors of the supreme electoral college that does not convene every four years for a new election, but once and for all. For those of us who by virtue of the New Birth have been become members of the Holy Race, earthly political races are of only minor consequence. We are IN this world, but we are not OF this world. The world’s systems and kingdoms are not the system and kingdom in which we operate. Oh our natural lives are surely affected by the earthly systems and kingdoms, but we are preeminently spirit-beings operating in the system of the Spirit—the kingdom of Christ—which cannot be seen with natural sight. Thus, we must ensure that we not limit ourselves or consign our destiny to the natural systems of this world, but rather seek to effectually function in the Spirit realm on a daily basis.
When compared with Jesus’ explicit description in His didactic discourses unto His contemporary disciples of “the last days,” can the current tribulation-filled times possibly not be the manifestation in earnest of His preternatural predictions (see Mat. 23; et al.)? I think not. Are these the times concerning which Jesus said, when you see these things taking place, LOOK UP, for your redemption draweth nigh? I think so. Are there those among us who seriously believed, say thirty years ago, that theirs would be the generation who would experience these scriptural predictions? I think not many.
Yet are the events that produced the present circumstances part of the Divine Plan of which I speak—meaning, did God orchestrate them? The answer is a resounding “No!”
Succinctly stated, God gave dominion of the earth to man, namely Adam and Eve, but Satan wrested it from man in the Garden of Eden through the aegis of man’s fall into perdition. “The heavens are the Lord’s, but the earth he has given unto the sons of men.” In Jesus, the Second Adam, God sent the Kinsman Redeemer and Prototype to generate Redeemed Mankind, the Holy Race, but it is now up to that Holy Race, the Church, Christ’s Betrothed, to wrest dominion back from Satan’s control. That is the Church’s ultimate mission, and heaven shall retain Christ until that mission is fully accomplished and all things are restored, at which time He will return to claim the Church as His Eternal Bride.
Clear and plain, Mankind—unredeemed humanity—in cooperation and collaboration with Satan, “the ruler of this world,” “the prince of the power of the air,” is responsible for the present circumstances. Man, operating through the aegis of the powers and principles of the kingdoms of this world, which are under the sway of the original rebel, Satan, has produced these circumstances.
Indeed all this is what makes the fact that God has an eternal plan that holds the welfare and prosperity of His People, the Remnant Church, in the midst of global tribulation, so indescribably magnificent.
As I said at the beginning, God clearly and unequivocally declares in the verse cited at the beginning that, one, He knows the plans He has for us, and, two, those plans are NOT for calamity, disaster, or evil, but rather for our welfare, good, prosperity, peace, and a hopeful and blessed future.
God knows the plans He has for us, but there are some things we need to know and understand concerning His plans for us, however—things that even His people, His Body, the Church, His betrothed, often, unfortunately and to their detriment, do not understand. As He says in His Word, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” (Hos. 4:6). Now we know and have little problem assimilating that the unbelieving people of the world are destroyed and live decimated for lack of knowledge or spiritual understanding. That is pretty much a given. But, the lament of God through His prophet Hosea in this verse is that God’s people—what today is Born Again Children of God—are destroyed and experience destruction in their lives, needlessly, due to their lack of knowledge concerning God and His Kingdom.
It is what we don’t know that allows destruction to invade and oftentimes prevail in our lives. It is not—as the world, the occult, and the New Agers erroneously proclaim—“the truth” that sets us free. That is a misquote and twisting of Scripture. Jesus never said that. Rather, He said it is the truth of His Word that we KNOW from abiding in His Word that sets us free, and the ones the Truth sets free is not everyone and anyone, but rather only His disciples (John 8:31,32)! The obverse of that adage holds true as well, however: the fact that what we do not know of the Truth precludes our liberation and permits our bondage and slavery to continue.
So there are some things we desperately need to know about the plans that God has for us, which we will look at in the next edition of this article. But, the most important thing of all to understand in the interim is that God has a plan and knows exactly what that plan is, and how He is going to implement it. In fact, everything is right on plan, despite what we see and hear going on in our world today. So there is no need whatsoever for the true believer to despair or become dispirited at all. Yes, the kingdoms of this world are being shaken to their core, but we have a kingdom that cannot be shaken.
Moreover, the True Remnant Church that Jesus is and has been building for two millennia should be rejoicing, and again I say, rejoicing, at the events and circumstances transpiring at this time, because (this much I will share in this edition regarding what the Lord has shown me) where it is all leading is the most monumental transference of wealth and earthly means in human history.
But, hear this, and hear it good, this massive transfer will be only unto the proven righteous, the third part remnant who have been tested as gold is tested in the fiery furnace, refined as silver is refined (Zech. 13:8,9). God will get it TO these, because He knows He can get it THROUGH them to fulfill His purposes and plans the ultimate end of which is the glorification of the Bride:
Haggai 2:5-9
‘As for the promise which I made you when you came out of Egypt, My Spirit is abiding in your midst; do not fear!’
“For thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘Once more in a little while, I am going to shake the heavens and the earth, the sea also and the dry land.
‘I will shake all the nations; and they will come with the wealth of all nations, and I will fill this house with glory,’ says the Lord of hosts.
‘The silver is Mine and the gold is Mine,’ declares the Lord of hosts.
‘The latter glory of this house will be greater than the former,’ says the Lord of hosts, ‘and in this place I will give peace,’ declares the Lord of hosts.”
God has a plan, and He knows what that plan is, but even more exhilarating is that He promises to reveal those plans to us, His Children, through the Spirit:
But, on the contrary, as the Scripture says, What eye has not seen and ear has not heard and has not entered into the heart of man, [all that] God has prepared (made and keeps ready) for those who love Him who hold Him in affectionate reverence, promptly obeying Him and gratefully recognizing the benefits He has bestowed]. Yet to us God has unveiled and revealed them by and through His Spirit, for the [Holy] Spirit searches diligently, exploring and examining everything, even sounding the profound and bottomless things of God [the divine counsels and things hidden and beyond man’s scrutiny]. (1 Corinthians 2:9,10; AB)
The Ephesians Four Network Blog features commentary, teaching, and prophetic words relative to the establishment and advancement of the Kingdom of God on Earth through the Church that Jesus is Building. The contributing editor is Dr. Steven Lambert, whose website address is: www.slm.org, where you can find many more articles and information about his ministry.
