Jehovah God rested his work of creation, ceased to prosecute it, because in his wisdom he foresaw that his designs could best be executed by another means. God saw best to permit his creature Adam to exercise his free will and fall under temptation into sin and its legitimate penalty, death–including a long period, 6,000 years of dying and battling, as a convict, with evil environment. God saw best to permit him thus as a convict to do a part of the subduing of the earth; that to bring it as a whole toward its foretold Paradisaic condition would be profitable to man under the circumstances; that it would be expedient that man realize the principles underlying divine righteousness and the exceeding sinfulness of sin, and be thus prepared for the grace to be brought to the world in due time.
However, one of the chief reasons for Jehovah's cessation of the creative work undoubtedly was that it might be accomplished by another–by his Only Begotten–in a manner that would not only glorify the Son, but glorify the Father also, by displaying the perfections of the Divine attributes as no other course could do. This was by the giving of his Son to be man's redeemer–an exhibition not only of Divine Justice, which could by no means violate the decree that "the wages of sin is death," but which simultaneously illustrated Divine Love–compassion for his fallen creatures to the extent of the death of his Son on man's behalf. Divine Wisdom and Power will also ultimately be exhibited in every feature of the arrangement when completed.
It may be suggested that for the Father to desist from the perfecting of the creative plan in order that the Son might do this work during the Millennium, by processes of restitution, would be no different from the previous creative operations, all of which were of the Father and by the Son– without whom was not anything made that was made. But we answer, No. The relationship of the Son to the work of restitution with which this Seventh Epoch-Day will close and bring terrestrial perfection, will be wholly different from any of his previous works. In all the previous creations the Son simply acted for Jehovah, using powers and energies not in any sense his own; but in this grand work to come he will be using a power and authority that are his own–which cost him 34 years of humiliation, culminating in his crucifixion. By that transaction, which the Father's wisdom and love planned for him, he "bought" the world, bought Father Adam and all his progeny, and his estate– the earth–with all his title to it as its monarch "in the likeness of God." The Father delighted to honor the "First Begotten," and therefore planned it thus, and rested, or ceased from creative processes, that the Son might thus honor him and be honored by him.
God rested, not in the sense of recuperating from weariness, but in the sense of ceasing to create. He beheld the ruin and fall of his noblest earthly creation through sin, yet put forth no power to stay the course of the death sentence and started no restitutional procedures. Indeed, by the law which he imposed, he precluded any opportunity for his exercise of mercy and clemency toward Adam and his race, except through a ransomer. The penalty being death, and that without limit–everlasting death, "everlasting destruction" –and it being impossible for God to lie, impossible for the Supreme Judge of the universe to reverse his own righteous decree, it was thus rendered impossible for the Creator to become directly the restorer of the race, or in any sense or degree to continue his creative work in the condemned man or in his estate, the earth.
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