The Casting Call

 

In our last meeting, we learned that in His creation of the Heavens and the Earth, God was actually constructing and setting up the Stage upon which His One Big Story would soon take place. With Time marking out the beginning and ending points of the Story, and the Heavens and the Earth designating the locations where the Story’s action is to occur, all of the structural elements needed for our Story have now been put into place.  What is missing, though, is the Cast of Characters who will be bringing this Story to life.

However, in trying to identify these principal players, we find ourselves in a somewhat perplexing situation.  The fact that the Story’s action will be taking place in both the earthly and heavenly realms implies that our cast will consist of both earthly and heavenly beings, but who are these beings and where are they to come from?  So far, the only one that we have been introduced to is God, and we still know so little about Him.  Who is He really, and what role will He be playing in this Story?

Even though God remains invisible to our natural eyes, one of the ways that we can learn about Him is through the names He uses to describe Himself.  For instance, if we go back to Genesis 1:1…

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 

…we find that the name used there for God is Elohim—the plural form of El, a word used throughout Scripture as a designation for “god,” and one derived from the Hebrew root meaning “might, strength, and power.” It describes the One God who is the Sovereign Creator of the universe; and yet, because it is the plural subject of the singular form of the verb create, it tells us that this One God is actually made up of more than one Person!  Often referred to as the Trinity or the Godhead, Elohim speaks of the three separate and unique Persons of God the Father, God the Son, Jesus Christ, and God the Holy Spirit who act in unison to accomplish their singular purpose.

 

 

Although no one has ever been able to adequately explain the Trinity, what we will learn about it as we go through this Story is…

• It is God the Father who wills and plans;
• It is God the Son who does the Father’s will and carries out His plans; and,
• It is God the Holy Spirit who provides the power (Gk. Dunamis, or dynamic power) needed to apply the work done by the Son.

We get an indication of the way these three work together in Genesis 1:1-4…

In the beginning God [Elohim] created the heavens and the earth.  The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

Then God [the Father] said, [that is, He spoke the Word] “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness.

We learn later in John 1:1-3, 14, and 17 that…

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.  All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth… grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

From this, we can see that God the Father spoke the Word [Jesus, God the Son], who then carried out the will of the Father in creation, while God the Spirit generated the dynamic power needed to make it all happen.  These, then, are the leading heavenly actors, and the only “un-created” members of our Cast of Characters.

As for the rest of the Cast, it will be made up of two groups. Those in the heavenly group are Angels and include both the Angels who remained loyal to God, and those who followed their highest-ranking member, Lucifer, when he led them in rebellion against God.  In the earthly group are People who, as Collective or Corporate Bodies of human beings, represent the three Covenantal groups that we find in the Bible…

• Israel—the corporate or collective spiritual body that is in covenant relationship with God the Father in the Old Testament;
• The Church—the corporate or collective spiritual body that is in covenant relationship with God the Son in the New Testament; and,
• Mystery Babylon—the corporate or collective spiritual body that is in covenant relationship with Lucifer or Satan; and the one representing every system of false belief or counterfeit religion that man has ever known.

If we expand our Basic Structure of the Bible diagram to include the Cast of Characters, it will look something like this…

 

We will learn more about each of these characters and the roles they play in our next post, What’s the Story!