God's plan for the reconciliation of the world lost in sin required Jesus to be put to death and raised again (in this way all of the sins of everyone could be placed on him and paid for). However, since the reconciliation was to be through those who trusted (had faith) in Jesus, a mechanism had to be established through which people could come to know and understand what God had done. This mechanism would be a nation called out to serve God, keep his word, and serve as the means by which the people of the world could hear about the salvation that was offered through Jesus (the Messiah).

To build this nation God selected one man, Abraham;

The land that was to be given for the nation that would be Israel was occupied by people who were following a false religion which practice included infanticide. There is a process of accumulating the penalty for evil until it reaches a point of judgment. The people in the land that the nation of Israel would take required an additional 400 years to accumulate enough evil so that as a result of judgment they would be completely exterminated (similar to the penalty of the flood).

It is interesting to note that during the 400 years for the evil of the people of Canaan to come to fullness, the descendants of Abraham would be multiplying in adversity in Egypt. God had Moses lead the people out of Egypt. The Israelites were supposed to exterminate the people of Canaan. Instead, they saw the comforts that could be obtained from keeping some of the inhabitants as slaves.

Satan attempted to keep Moses from being born;

As God did not allow Satan to kill Moses, Satan was then able to get the Israelites to disobey God using his tactic of the appeal of a life of ease facilitated by keeping some of those who were to be exterminated to serve as slaves instead. Through this Satan was able to inject false religion into the nation of Israel attempting to frustrate God's plan of reconciliation.

God sent many prophets to tell the people of Israel that they needed to reject their false religions, but few were interested in the words that came from God. The nation split in two and the northern tribes were plundered by the Assyrians. Some refugees escaped to the southern kingdom (Judah). However, Judah was also not interested in giving up false religion.

The practice of false religion was finally removed from the nation of Judah (which contained the remnant of Israel) when it was taken captive to the city of Babylon for 70 years. A little over 400 years later Jesus was born. Again Satan tried to kill him as he done with Moses.

Even though Israel had been purged of idolatry because of their time in captivity, they still as a nation had no interest in Jesus and the promised kingdom and new covenant. Some of this disinterest could be attributed the influence of Greek philosophy in what is called Hellenization (Greek influence). This influence has come down to us today as secularism which is often called the absence of religion but might rather be called the worship of man in general and self in particular. It is with the guiding of man to worship his own intellect that Satan's false religions perhaps gained the most ground.