Watch the video above and talk about it with a friend or mentor.

God's great salvation story unfolds in six major movements. The first three are God's creation, the great catastrophe called the Fall, and the covenants God arranged to bring us back to him.

We were created for relationship with God, but rejected his love and rebelled against his plans. Yet God continued to extend love to us through a series of covenants designed to lead us back into relationship with him.

God’s Purpose in Creation

After God created human beings, he intended that we would walk and talk with him in an intimate, ongoing relationship. We would learn directly from him his thoughts, feelings and priorities. We were designed to be tutored and loved on – so that we would go out and represent God to his creation. We were made in God’s image, not to make us great, but so that we could love as he loves. We were created to find pleasure and joy in relationships – to learn from God’s great love and to extend that love to others.

[Related: Creation, Temptation, and the Fall]

The Catastrophe that Ruined It

But then a catastrophe happened. The first humans rejected God’s love and rebelled against God’s plans. As a result, we still hide from God and are alienated from him and others. The good world God gave us to care for became broken and marred. Everyone can see that this world is not the way it should be. It is not the way God created it.

[Related: Eve’s Sin – What Really Happened?]

God’s Response in His Covenants

Yet God did not give up on humanity. He continued to extend self-giving love toward us. God continues to woo and pursue us. This was expressed through a series of five major covenants. For God, these covenants are unbreakable bonds of never-ending friendship. He intends his covenants as a way of tutoring us and leading us back into relationship with him. Unfortunately, as Latter-day Saints we thought of covenants as something to judge us. And because we have failed to live up to our end of these covenants, humanity proved over 2,000 years that we need a Savior. Thankfully, these covenants lead up to and find their fulfillment for us in the final covenant of reconciliation established in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

[Related: What Is the Story of the Old Testament?]

[Related: Covenants in the Bible]

[Related: God’s Great Story – Bible vs. LDS]

[Related: God’s Great Story – Christ, Community, Consummation]

Read more
Read less

Key Points:

  • God’s Purpose in Creation.
  • The Catastrophe that Ruined It
  • God’s Response in His Covenants.

See Also: Tags

Talk About It
  1. How does Dr. Wakefield describe the purpose of humanity in God’s original creation?
  2. How is this alike or similar to what you understood as the purpose of human life in Mormonism?
  3. Why was the Fall of humanity such a catastrophe? Describe some ways the world is not what it should be.
  4. How would you define a covenant? How do covenants fit into God’s great story?
  5. What did all the covenants prove about humanity?

This is part of the 2018 Faith After Mormonism Conference series.