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A World Gone Wrong

For students of Columbine, April 20, 1999, began as a normal school day, but ended with 15 dead, as Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold went on a shooting spree. They were reported by Time magazine (May 3, 1999) as laughing, “Who’s next?” “Who’s ready to die?” Cassie Bernall was in the library when the gunmen asked her if she believed in God. Knowing full well the safe answer, she nevertheless replied: “There is a God, and you need to follow along God’s path.” The shooter looked down at her. “There is no God,” he said, then shot her in the head.
And this is just one horrific example among many such! If God is good and He made the world “very good” (Genesis 1:31), what’s gone wrong with it?

1. What rebellion took place in heaven?

Revelation 12:7-9 “Michael and his angels fought against the dragon. . . . The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray.”

2. In Eden, how did Satan, masquerading as a serpent, misrepresent what God had said to Eve?

Genesis 3:1 “Now the serpent . . . said to the woman, ‘Did God really say, “You must not eat from any tree in the garden”?’”

3. What was it that God actually said to Adam and Eve that shows they had free will?

Genesis 2:16, 17 “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.”

4. What were the two lies the serpent told Eve?

Genesis 3:4, 5 “‘You will not surely die,’ the serpent said to the woman. ‘For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God.’”
Two core New Age teachings are that we are “gods” and that we don’t die, but live on through reincarnation.

5. What were the three temptations presented to Eve?

Genesis 3:6 “When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.”
Jesus passed over the same ground in His temptations (Luke 4:1-13). He suc-ceeded where Adam and Eve failed. That’s why He can save us from the problem of evil—“As in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:22).

6. How did God respond to Adam? How did he react to God?

Genesis 3:9, 10 “The Lord God called to the man [Adam], ‘Where are you?’ He answered, ‘I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.’”
Rather than own up, Adam blamed Eve and she the serpent (Genesis 3:11-13).

7. What was the consequence of this sin?

Romans 5:12 “Sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned.”

the promised Saviour

8. In speaking to the serpent, what promise did God make?

Genesis 3:14, 15 “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel” (v 15).
Jesus is the Lamb “slain from the creation of the world” (Revelation 13:8). Adam and Eve tried to cover the nakedness of their guilt with fig-leaf garments.

9. With what did God cover them instead?

Genesis 3:21 “The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.”

10. What does the covering of skins symbolise?

Romans 13:14 “Clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature.”

11. While the wages of sin is death, what is it we receive through Jesus?

Romans 6:23 “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Jesus satisfies

Genesis chapter 3 tells us that our first parents misused their free will and fell from a relationship with God. Without God, all that the world has to offer can’t satisfy.

Mel Gibson, in a 60 Minutes interview (February 22, 2004) about his film The Passion of The Christ, told Diane Sawyer: “Let’s face it, I’ve been to the pinnacle of what secular utopia has to offer. . . . I’ve got money, fame. . . . It didn’t matter, there wasn’t enough, it wasn’t good enough. . . . It leaves you empty. . . . Jesus,” he says, “was beaten for our iniquities . . . wounded for our transgressions and [that] by His wounds we’re healed. . . . That’s the point. . . . It’s about faith, hope, love and forgiveness. . . . I believe that—I have to—so I can hope; so I can live.”

And wouldn’t you like Jesus to do that for you too?

 

Extract from Signs of the Times, June 2004.

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