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Creation

There is one true God and He created the earth as a perfect place. He created man and woman to be in relationship with Him. The earth was to be His paradise Kingdom, forever—a place of joy, beauty, peace, and happiness. Because He created us, He also owns us. We should be obedient to Him. He gave us rules to follow and we are supposed to follow those rules perfectly. The world today is a lot different than what God originally intended. What happened?

The downfall of man

God gave man and woman one rule to obey, or suffer death as a penalty. They did not obey. They chose knowledge over obedience. Now their desire to disobey God is passed on to us, since we are born of a man and woman. This is why no one is perfect. It is impossible to perfectly obey God. We all do things that rebel against God and His perfect standards. This rebellion is called sin. Because God cannot accept sin, our relationship with Him is broken and we are separated from Him.

Is there any hope for us? Yes!!

The rescue of man

God loves us and wants to restore our relationship with Him. The problem is that He is perfect and cannot accept us in our sinful condition. Even if we try to do good things, we continue to do bad also. The good deeds do not erase the bad, and the bad things remain with us. Since God is fair and demands justice, a penalty must be paid for the wrongs done. That penalty is death. We deserve to die because of our rebellion against God. But God, because of His love for us, sent His son Jesus to take the penalty of death that we deserve. Jesus died for us and beat death by rising from the grave to live forever.

Because Jesus was born of a virgin, the repeated cycle of disobedience we inherited from the first man and woman was broken. We can now live forever, because of Jesus.

What does our future hold? What is this world coming to?

A restoration

One day Jesus will return to earth to re-establish his perfect Kingdom, and then we will all live forever—but where? In the end, there are only two places, Heaven or Hell. Heaven will be a place of perfect joy, peace, and love. Hell will be a place of constant torment and pain. We can know now whether we will be in paradise with God, or suffer in Hell. How can we know?

The solution

We must realize and admit that our good deeds cannot satisfy God, who is perfect and all-powerful. We must believe that Jesus took our place and punishment and died for the wrongs we have done. We can receive God’s gift of living in paradise forever because of what Jesus did. No one else can give us this guarantee, and nothing we do can earn a place in Heaven. Believing in what Jesus did for us causes a change in us. Our thoughts, ideas, behavior, attitudes, and priorities are different when we commit and submit to Jesus and put Him in control of our lives. We become new people and have a change in our hearts, if we truly obey and believe in Jesus.

Read Psalm 51:1-17 and Isaiah 53:1-11.

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