Does Humanity Really Have Any Meaningful Role in the Conflict Between Good and Evil?
To begin with, we need to know whether God has hard-wired and hard-coded the great controversy, or not. Has God pre-arranged and pre-destined every element of the conflict between good and evil from the beginning? Is, for example, what Joseph Smith said true, that “Adam fell that men might be?”[2 Neph 2:25], and that God created a dualistic universe to fulfill His eternal purposes? [2 Neph 2:17] For if God has pre-arranged the whole drama between good and evil, and humans have no part in the ultimate outcome, then there is little point in having a conflict at all. But before we ask if there can be a delay in the second coming of Jesus, we need to ask why didn’t God just finish this conflict the first day it sprang up? He could simply have erased the memory of every being that He had made and started over. No one would have been any the wiser. But then, that’s the problem, isn’t it. No one would have been any the wiser. You see, if God can, in the end, throw up His hands and tell the un
