Read Revelation 13:8, Acts 2:23, and 1 Peter 1:19, 20. How could Christ be considered as “slain from the foundation of the world” (NKJV)?

 “All who dwell on the earth will worship him, whose names have not been written in the Book of Life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Rev. 13:8, NKJV). What’s crucial here for us is the idea of Christ’s being “slain from the foundation of the world.” Obviously, we must understand this in a symbolic sense (the book of Revelation is full of symbols), because Christ wasn’t crucified until thousands of years after the earth’s Creation. What this text is saying is that the plan of salvation had been put in place before the creation of the world. And central to that plan would be the death of Jesus, the Lamb of God, on the cross.

 Read Titus 1:2. What does this verse teach us about how long ago the plan of salvation, which centered on Christ’s death, had been in place?

 “The plan for our redemption was not an afterthought, a plan formulated after the fall of Adam.... It was an unfolding of the principles that from eternal ages have been the foundation of God’s throne.” — Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages, p. 22.

 That plan was revealed first to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden (Gen. 3:15, 21), and it was typified by every blood sacrifice throughout the Old Testament. For instance, while testing Abraham’s faith, God provided a ram to be sacrificed instead of Isaac (Gen. 22:11-13). This replacement typified even more clearly the substitutionary nature of Christ’s atoning sacrifice on the cross.

 Thus, central to the whole plan of salvation is the substitutionary death of Jesus, symbolized for centuries by animal sacrifices, each one a symbol of Jesus’ death on the cross as “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29).