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Can You Control Your Destiny?The Watchtower—2005 | January 15
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“[God] has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in union with Christ,” wrote the apostle Paul, “just as he chose us in union with him before the founding of the world . . . For he foreordained us to the adoption through Jesus Christ as sons to himself.” (Ephesians 1:3-5) What has God foreordained, and what is the meaning of being selected “before the founding of the world”?
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Can You Control Your Destiny?The Watchtower—2005 | January 15
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What world did the apostle Paul have in mind when he said: “[God] chose us in union with him before the founding of the world”? The world that Paul refers to here is not the world that God started when he created Adam and Eve. That world was “very good”—absolutely free from sin and corruption. (Genesis 1:31) It did not need a “release” from sin.—Ephesians 1:7.
The particular world that Paul meant is the one that came into existence after Adam and Eve rebelled in Eden—a world very different from the one originally purposed by God. It was the world that began with the children of Adam and Eve. That world consisted of people alienated from God and enslaved to sin and corruption. It was a world of people who, unlike the willful sinners Adam and Eve, were redeemable.—Romans 5:12; 8:18-21.
Jehovah God was instantly able to meet the situation resulting from the rebellion in Eden. As soon as the need arose, he foreordained a special agency—the Messianic Kingdom in the hands of Jesus Christ—that he would use in connection with the redemption of mankind from Adamic sin. (Matthew 6:10) God did this “before the founding of the world” of redeemable mankind, that is, before rebellious Adam and Eve brought forth children.
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