Again, the fact the plan of salvation is an eternal reality is evidence that Jesus is eternal in the same way the Father is eternal.

Regarding the two quotes, they are both dealt with by this one:

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God's healing power runs all through nature. If a tree is cut, if a human being is wounded or breaks a bone, nature begins at once to repair the injury. Even before the need exists, the healing agencies are in readiness; and as soon as a part is wounded, every energy is bent to the work of restoration. So it is in the spiritual realm. Before sin created the need, God had provided the remedy. Every soul that yields to temptation is wounded, bruised, by the adversary; but whenever there is sin, there is the Saviour. (ED 113)

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The key point she is making is that the Plan of Redemption was forumalated before sin arose. Just like our bodies have the ability to heal a cut before the cut is incurred. That's the point. She's not contradicting what she herself wrote elsewhere in saying that God took a risk in sending His Son or that heaven itself was imperiled for our redemption.

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It is not difficult for me to envision the Father wrestling with a decision to go through with the plan the moment man sinned. I realize you cannot see it through my eyes. On this point we shall have to disagree.

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The problem is that if God knew everything that was going to happen to the second, then the whole concept of wrestling with it doesn't make any sense. Why would it take Christ pleading THREE times? What could God have been thinking about in the first two times? He knew what He was going to do. Why make Christ go through the formality of asking a third time? What not just "OK" on the first time?

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Just because God foresees our future choices and outcomes does not mean He has robbed us of the freedom to choose our own destiny, or that He has fixed our future beyond our ability to choose otherwise. Again, I suspect we will never agree on this point.

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Unfortunately you seem unable to grasp the point. I'm sorry about that. It's not an issue of God's forseeing the future. Just because God, or we, or a squirrel or whatever knows what will happen doesn't impact free will in any way. The problem isn't with God's foreknowledge but with how many possible futures there are. To your way of thinking, there can only be one. God doesn't see A future; He sees THE future. You perceive the future as a TV rerun. THIS IS THE PROBLEM (pardon the shout, but I'm having trouble getting this point accross).

The future is NOT like a TV rerun. If it were, then there could be no risk in Christ's coming, it would make no sense to speak of God struggling, and our free will would be apparent only, not real.

MM, Christ's saving merits are only given to Adam and his descendants, since only we have need of them: the plan of salvation is eternal beyond Adam's creation, not before it. Lucifer has never been a candidate...and the redeemed rely on the plan beyond earth's history, not before it, too.

The Son of God is all the fulness of the Godhead bodily and manifested, being begotten in the express image of the Father - both in appearance and in character, for the Father is invisible to mortal sight as the fulness of the Godhead bodily. The cross of Christ requires divine sacrifice, so Jesus was fit and able to provide it as the Son of God. The plan needed divine participation of the Son who helped plan it. [Took some thought, but "Godhead" is the divine nature of the Father given to the Son of which also the Spirit is naturally part: it is not the word for the three of them, but the word for the nature they all naturally have.]

Salvation is for eternity to come, because the Godhead's love is from eternity past and is the love to solve the sin problem of the present. Christ effecting the world's salvation confirms his divinity; no question of the Son's eternal divinity arises here, or at all.

When MM refers to the plan of salvation being eternal going backwards, I'm sure it's having the phrase, "The lamb slain from the foundation of the world" in mind. Also the Spirit of Prophecy makes clear that the plan was forumulated before it was needed. However, even if the plan had turned out not to have been needed, it would still be true that God's character was such that He would have left no stone unturned for the good of His creatures, which is what the whole question of the Great Controversy was: Is God self-serving, like Lucifer claimed, or is He self-sacrificing?

That that character trait of the Father he has in common with his Son is due to them both being the Godhead bodily...Had to think how to word that...! "Godhead" isn't their collective noun, but the one nature they share.

The Godhead is primarily glorious, divine character: holiness, justice, with love and mercy, active as grace - effecting Christ's righteousness. 'Righteous' is something straightened that was bent: God is holy by nature, so doesn't need to be righteous; Christ's human character is righeous due to his assumption of our sinful nature, whose bent to sin he straightened. That's how we recognise Jesus as the divine Son, since he is the image of his Father in character and conduct.

Their joint plan - yes, plotted before this world was created - to save this world from sin asks us to understand that character, not pin down how the eternal God begot his only Son before time began, indeed before eternity began.