Lost and Redeemed

Notes

1. "I also know the thoughts that I entertain respecting you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil to give to you a happy future and hope." Jer. 29:11, Jewish Version.

God's purpose for man may be temporarily delayed, but He will not fail nor be discouraged till judgment is set in the earth, and man fulfils the object of his creation. Isa. 45:18; 42:4; Rev. 21:1-4.

2. The endowment of the power to choose life or death, righteousness or sin, was essential to man's liberty and happiness. To refuse created intelligences the power of choice would have meant bondage, discontent, and unhappiness; therefore, Heaven esteemed liberty of sufficient value to bestow this great gift upon man, although it involved the possibility of the fall. It was when the councils of eternity had decided that man and all other created intelligences should be free that Christ became man's surety, that the purpose of God concerning man should not fail.

3. Purity, the image of God, liberty, dominion, home, and life were all lost by sin.

4. "The Son of God redeemed man's failure and fall, and now, through the work of the atonement, Adam is reinstated in his first dominion. Transported with joy, he beholds the trees that were once his delight,—the very trees whose fruit he himself had gathered in the days of his innocence and joy. He sees the vines that his own hands have trained, the very flowers that he once loved to care for. His mind grasps the reality of the scene; he comprehends that this is indeed Eden restored, more lovely than when he was banished from it."—Great Controversy, page 648.