Jesus

The life story

of
humanity’s only hope

Chapter 3

When the Time Was Right

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 Chapter 3

“When the time was ripe, God sent Jesus . . . to pay the penalty for those convicted and
sentenced under the law so that we could be adopted as His children.”30

“When the time was ripe . . .” There is so much expressed in those few short words! What was
about to happen had been predicted clear back in the Garden of Eden.31 Adam and Eve had
expected the fulfillment to occur quickly. They celebrated the birth of their first child hoping
that he was Deliverer. But it was not to be, not for a long, long time. Those who first heard the
promise died without seeing its fulfillment. Over and over again, from the days of Enoch down
through the days of the patriarchs and the prophets the promise was repeated. Hope endured,
but the Savior never came. Daniel the prophet accurately predicted when He would come but
people misinterpreted his predictions. Century after century rolled by until the prophets no
longer spoke. Roman rule was tough on Israel. “It seemed that they had been under foreign
domination forever. To make matters worse, God was silent. No longer did speak to them
through the prophets.”32 They felt totally abandoned.

What they didn’t stop to realize was that just as the stars travel slowly and majestically across
the vastness of the night sky, so God’s plans cannot be rushed or delayed. Centuries before,
God used two illustrations of great darkness and a smoking furnace to show Abraham that Israel
would be slaves in Egypt for four-hundred years. “Only after that happens,” God had said,
“will they leave Egypt. But when they go, they will be going carrying so much stuff it will be
almost unbelievable.”33 That prophecy came true when the time was right and there was
nothing that Pharaoh and the greatest empire on earth at the time could do to stop them. “On
the day God predicted it would happen, it happened. The whole nation of Israel left Egypt.”34
In the same way, the moment when Jesus would come to this earth on his mission had been
decided and predicted. When the eternal clock came to that time, Jesus was born in Bethlehem.

God had worked to shape events on planet earth until the world was ripe for the coming of the
One Who Would Save. All of the then known world in Europe and much of Asia were united
under one ruler. Greek was spoken everywhere in government and literature and by the
common man, so communication across the length and breadth of the empire was possible.
Every year, Jews from all over the whole empire came to Jerusalem for the annual celebrations.
When they returned to their home towns they could spread the good news that the One Who

30
Galatians 4:4,5
31
Genesis 3:15
32
Ezekial 12:22
33
Genesis 5:14
34
Exodus 12:41

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Would Save had arrived.

Conditions in the religious world were also prime. People had grown weary of religion that was
more form than substance and was based on fables and legends.

Even the Jews, the people God had designed would tell the world about his love had drifted into
an exclusive religion of traditions and ceremonies - and it seemed that the light had gone out
and truth had left the scene. As the Jewish people wandered farther and farther from God, faith
grew dim and hope died out and the words of the prophets were no longer understood and
appreciated. For most people, life was drudgery and death a dreaded mystery with the prospect
of nothing but uncertainty and gloom. In a place of shadows and death, humanity existed with
no hope. With longing they wished for the coming of a deliverer who would shatter the
darkness and give them some hope for the future.

It wasn’t just Jews who looked for the coming someone to save us from the Kingdom of
Darkness. Paganism35 was losing its hold on people who looked for a spiritual life that could
fill the empty holes in their hearts. But, there were those who continued to look for the
promised one and who were confused and saddened by world conditions. They kept their eyes
and ears open for evidence of a God who was alive and active in the affairs of humanity and
they searched for some assurance that there was something more to life than the short span of
our existence on this earth. Seers and prophets in other lands also predicted that God would
come to this earth to teach us about the Kingdom of Light. They were sincere, they were
looking for truth, and God gave it to them. One after another, like stars appearing in the night
sky, they had risen. Their prophetic words had kindled hope in the hearts of non-Jews around
the world.

Prophets weren’t the only ones who spoke to the gentile world. The Old Testament Bible had
been translated into Greek for hundreds of years. It was dispersed throughout the empire. In
addition, the majority of the Jewish people had been deported from Israel by successions of
invading armies and scattered across Europe and Asia. Their expectation that one day the One
Who Would Save would come had rubbed off on many of their neighbors. In fact, some who
the Jews considered to be heathens and pagans had a better understanding of the Bible’s
prophecies than they did. When it came to his mission they got it right! They understood that
he was coming to free us from the Kingdom of Darkness. They studied the Jewish religious

35
The term “pagan” has meant many different things at different times in history. The word is Latin in
origin (paganus) and means, literally,"country dweller", "rustic" The early Christians adopted it as a blanket term, in
place of the word “Gentile” typically used to refer to followers of polytheistic religions as opposed to the various
streams of monotheism that characterized the descendants (spiritual and cultural) of Abraham such as Judaism,
Christianity and Islam. Today the term is much more narrowly defined to apply to non-judeo/Christian/Islamic God
and/or Goddess Worship in all its many forms includingCeltic, Druid, Egyptian, Greek, Magical Traditions, Eastern,
Native American, Norse Heathen, Roman, Santeria, Wicca, WitchCraft {Craft of the Wise} and other Earth
Centered and Nature Based Religious Faiths. The author of “The Desire of the Ages” uses the term in the classical,
Christian sense and as there is no generic term in current usage to replace it, it is the term which will be used in this
paraphrase.

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system and tried to understand how it related to the prophecies. The Jews didn’t make it easy.
Their bigotry shut many honest seekers away from the information they searched for. Intent on
maintaining their distance from their neighbors, they were unwilling to share the information
they had about the meaning of the ceremonies, services and celebrations which God had given
them.

God had also been speaking for a long time to humanity through nature, through pictures and
models and symbols and description and prophets. But he realized that if he had any hope at all
of really teaching humans about the Kingdom of Light, he had to speak our language; he had to
get down on our level and talk directly with us. If we were going to understand all of the
symbols and models and ceremonies which the Jewish worship pointed to, he had to come in
person to explain their meaning. And, he had to do it in language that was clear and definite
and easy to understand. So Jesus, the source of all truth, came to blow away the stuff of human
invention, to clearly define the principles upon which the Kingdom of Light is founded, and to
explain in simple easy to understand language what the Plan of Saving is all about. What the
Old Testament of the Bible pointed to, he came to teach in person.

Moses, the great Jewish leader had promised that “God will raise a prophet for you, who is one
of you, just like I am. Listen to what he has to say.”36 As they read the writing of the various
Hebrew prophets, they read, over and over how God would set one aside to “proclaim Good
News to those ready to listen,” “to bandage up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the
captives of the Kingdom of Darkness,” and to announce that “the Time had arrived.”37 The
One Who Would Save would “return justice to planet earth,”38 and the Gentiles would come to
be part of his Kingdom of Light and kings would bring whole nations to the brightness of his
appearing.”39

Jacob’s dying words filled them with hope: “There will always be a Jewish nation and a Jewish
King until the one they call ‘Tranquility’ shall come.40

If nothing else, the waning power of Israel testified to the fact that the One Who Would Save
was coming soon. Unfortunately, most people totally misunderstood why he was coming.
They mistook Daniel’s prophecy picturing his glorious reign over an empire that would succeed
all earthly kingdoms and stand forever to mean that he would establish a temporal kingdom and

36
Deuteronomy 18:15
37
Isaiah 61:1,2
38
Isaiah 42:4
39
Isaiah 60:3

40
Genesis 49:10

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that Israel would rule the world.41 So, while there was a widespread expectation of the coming
of a mighty prince who would establish his kingdom in Israel, few comprehended what that
kingdom was all about.

But, now, the time had come. Humanity, becoming more and more degraded through the
centuries, desperately needed someone to save them from Satan’s kingdom. He had worked to
make the gulf between heaven and earth so deep and wide that it was impassable even for God.
He had deviously plotted and schemed to bring humans to the place where they were bold and
brazen in their rebellion against the Kingdom of Light. He was bound and determined to wear
out the patience of God and to extinguish his love for humanity so that he would abandon the
world completely and forever to Satan’s rule. He did everything he could to keep people from
any knowledge whatsoever of God so that he could finally and completely establish his own
Kingdom of Darkness on this planet. To all appearances, he had almost succeeded.

Rebellion against God degrades. Every generation that passed had its people through whom
Jesus worked to turn humanity away from their rebellion against the Kingdom of Light and to
lift them out of that degradation. These faithful ones were hated by the followers of the
Kingdom of Darkness and many suffered a violent death as Satan’s black shadow over the earth
grew darker and darker.

Paganism in all of its forms had been Satan’s primary tool in turning people away from God for
thousands of years; but his greatest triumph came when he was able to pervert the faith of
Israel, God’s chosen human messengers. By focusing on their own ideas and worshiping their
own creations many outside of Israel had lost any knowledge of God and had become more and
more corrupt. The same thing happened with Israel. The underlying principle Satan used to get
them all was the same - that you are saved by the life you live and the things you do or don’t do;
that somehow you can offer God something you’ve done or created that will be sufficient to
save you. Any time you adopt that Satanic idea, you have no more protection against the
delusions that lead to rebellion.

God chose to communicate the Plan of Saving to humanity through people. He had set the
Jewish people aside as his messengers. But they chose to try to monopolize the truth about God
and his plan to save us. They hoarded what had been designed to be given away and it
corrupted them. True spirituality hoarded and barricaded quickly decays and becomes offensive
to God and man. By keeping the Plan to themselves, by becoming exclusive and isolating
themselves, they robbed God of the credit due him and offered the world a counterfeit of the
Good News that it is God who saves us, not ourselves. By cutting themselves off from the
world and refusing to infuse themselves and the truth they were to carry into the world so that
the Plan of Saving would be available to everyone, they became agents of Satan and
participated in its destruction.

41
Daniel 2:44

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The people who God had called to be his ambassadors on earth had become Satan’s
representatives instead. They did the work he wanted them to do in the way he designed,
misrepresenting God and his character so well that the world came to the place where they
viewed God as a tyrant. The spiritual leaders, conducting worship services and managing the
affairs of the church lost sight of the meaning of all they were doing. Symbols became more
important than what they signified. Rather than working to change lives through their ministry,
they became like actors in a play. The object lessons which God himself designed to explain
the Plan of Saving became the means of blinding people’s minds and hardening their hearts.
They whole system of Jewish worship eventually became useless for God’s purposes and had to
be abandoned.

Rebellion’s deception had reached it’s zenith. Every means Satan could use to deprave human
beings had been set in motion. Jesus couldn’t stand it any longer. Looking at humanity’s
misery and suffering at the Dark Lord’s cruel hands; his heart moved as they were corrupted,
murdered, and lost; watching as bewildered and deceived they moved in gloomy procession
toward eternal ruin - to a death from which there is no hope of life, Jesus knew he had to act.
Earth’s inhabitants had chosen a ruler who had chained them as captives and driven them into a
night where there was no hope of morning. Human bodies, designed to be a home for God’s
presence, became the house of demons. The senses, the nervous system, the emotions, the very
organs of our bodies were worked by supernatural agencies until our attitudes and our actions
became focused on indulging ourselves and our passions. You could see it in people’s eyes and
read it on their faces.

Rebellion had became a science and immorality was central to the religion of many of the
gentiles. Humans became increasingly hostile to the Kingdom of Light as rebellion’s roots
drove deeper and deeper into the human heart. It became to the whole observing universe that
was no way that we could pull ourselves up by our spiritual bootstraps. Our only hope in
something new and powerful being injected into the affairs and hearts of men by the One who
had originally created us.

The unfallen inhabitants of the rest of the universe had expected God to instantly wipe us out
when we rebelled and had watched and waited to see it happen. Satan counted on it, and was
ready to use God’s action to spread his rebellion further into God’s Kingdom of Light. He
believed that he had God coming and going. He had consistently contended that the principles
upon which God’s kingdom were built made forgiveness of rebellion and rebels impossible. As
soon as God destroyed earth’s human rebels, he was prepared to say it was living proof that he
was correct in his claims and that God is a tyrant. He was totally unprepared when, instead of a
nuclear blast incinerating the earth and everything on it, God sent his Son as a helpless baby to
save us. In the face of all of the rebellion and corruption which were the hallmark of the
Kingdom of Darkness, God graciously chose to provide a way of escape. At the moment of
Satan’s apparent triumph, Jesus came as an ambassador of God’s love and good will towards
humanity. The evidence of God’s love had always been there, even though it had often been
eclipsed by our closed minds and our focus on rebellion. Now, when the time was ripe, God
poured out a flood of his healing grace that could never be obstructed or withdrawn until the

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Plan of Saving could be completed.

At the very time when Satan believed he had finally succeeded in corrupting us to the place
where the reflection of God was forever erased from humanity, Jesus came in person to restore
that reflection of God and to save us. The very one who had originally created us42 was the one
chosen to recreate and rescue us. He came to drive out the demons which controlled our
decision making powers and to lift us up out of the filth of this world and to reshape our
characters to be what God originally intended.

The beauty of the original creation was to be restored by God to anyone who would allow him
to do it. Jesus, God with us, our only hope, had arrived at last!

42
John 1:3; Colossians 1:16; Hebrews 1:2

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