Question:  Dear Greg,

            If God has never started anything that he has not seen to its end, why are we not going to live on the earth and dominate it as in the Garden of Eden?

            Aubrey

Answer:  Dear Aubrey,

            Your question begins with an “if”—the biggest little word in the English language.  If the presupposition you state is true, then we have a biblically based question.  But is it?  Where do we find the presupposition validated in the Bible?  Is it true that God never starts anything that he does not see to its end in the particular way that you propose it to be true?

            First, it would generally be true that God is Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the divine Author of not only the Bible but of history and of time.  God created, for he is uncreated.  He heals, for he is life.  He takes life, for he has that authority.  He is sovereign over all including the finite dimension of space-time that we inhabit and where we are captives of time and space.  God exists, eternally, outside of time and space.

            So it is generally true that God finishes what he starts.  But you propose a specific way that he finishes what he starts.  That is, it would seem that you propose that God brings everything back full circle in order to complete that thing or endeavor.  That is, since humans started life on the earth, in a garden, then surely God will complete that “project” by bringing it full circle.  But that may be circular reasoning.  One can run one mile around a º mile track by completing four laps.  One can also run one mile by starting at a point that is a “straight line” (in reality that straight line is slightly curved given the curvature of the earth) and going one mile in the opposite direction (south to north, etc.).

            So the generality that God does not leave projects undone is essentially true from all we can gather in the Bible.  But to reason from that basic foundational premise to say that man’s ultimate destiny is to occupy the same exact soil upon which God created Adam and Eve is not accurate and very much open to both logical and biblical scrutiny.

            In Christ,

            Greg Albrecht