A number of poets and philosophers have likened this earth to a stage on which each person is a player acting out some cosmic plot. They speculate as to the author of this scenario, but it does seem as if the rise and fall of nations and the play and interplay of human events have been orchestrated by an extraterrestrial intelligence. If so, then the stage must have been set and the script must have been written or recorded before the play began. No playwright would consider staging a drama without first writing the script and then organizing the production. A theater must be located with suitable accommodations, the stage must be provided with proper backdrops and props, and the actors must be chosen for the various parts.
This is exactly what God has done. He chose a small planet in an obscure solar system around a medium-sized yellow star as a stage on which to play out the great drama of the ages, the great controversy between Christ and Satan; He prepared the stage with all the environmental factors necessary for the well-being of a special species of actors called humans; when all was ready, He and His divine assistants proceeded to create man and placed him on the stage of action.
But God had been planning this cosmic drama for a long time, for in His divine foreknowledge He knew that the controversy would inevitably happen. He even wrote the scenario and recorded it in a book which He calls the "Book of the Future" (Daniel 10:21, Living Bible). The angel, Gabriel, informed Daniel that everything that had been revealed to him in his visions about the future was in that book. Similarly, the apostle John had a vision of a heavenly scene in which there was a mysterious book with seven seals (Revelation, Chap 5). He saw a lamb-like creature, later identified as the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, break the seals and open the book. In subsequent chapters of the Revelation, as the seals are broken, the religious and political history of mankind is revealed to the end of time and beyond into the New Earth. There is no doubt in my mind that this is the same book which is referred to in Daniel, the "Book of the Future", which contains God's great scenario plans for this earth.
Yes, "All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players. The have their exits and entrances..."(William Shakespeare, As You Like It). God has set the stage, He has chosen the scene, and He has placed you and me on the stage to play our role in the great drama of life on this planet as recorded in the "Book of the Future."
