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Thousands of years ago God
created the Heaven and the Earth. He created the sun, moon, stars,
birds, animals; but the most beautiful of all of God's creation
was man.
God made a man and when He saw that this man was lonely by
himself, He also made a woman to be a companion and comforter to
the man. He called the man Adam. The woman was named Eve by her
husband.
A beautiful garden called Eden was prepared by God as a home for
Adam and Eve. In that garden God placed two very special trees.
One tree was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. the other
tree was the tree of life. To eat from the first tree made one to
know what was good and what was evil. To eat from the second tree
would mean that one would never die.
Many years before God created the world, God had made thousands of
heavenly beings who served and worshipped Him in Heaven. These
heavenly creatures are known to us as angels. There was perfect
order amongst these great hosts. The captains in charge of them
were chief angels, which were called archangels.
Some time during those bygone ages one of the chief angels whose
name was Lucifer became proud and rebellious. He won a large
number of the angles to his side and together they began an
underhand struggle to seize the power of the throne which belonged
to God alone. The outcome of this was that God punished Lucifer
and the angles who had rebelled by casting them out of heaven. God
prepared a place of punishment for them. This place of punishment
is a terrible lake of fire in a place called hell.
As a result of his downfall, Lucifer, who is the devil, hated God
and sought a way to "pay Him back" by attempting to destroy God's
beautiful work of creation. He came into the garden in the form of
a serpent and guile deceived Eve into eating of the fruit of the
tree of knowledge. Eve gave the fruit to Adam who also ate it.
God punished them by commanding them to leave the garden. He did
this because He knew they would be tempted to eat of the fruit of
the tree of life and thus live forever in their sins. And God
would never be able to have fellowship with the man whom he had
created for fellowship with Himself.
The sorrow of Adam and Eve when driven by God out of their
beautiful home, was very great, however, promised them that He
would send a man child who would deliver them from the curse of
sin.
For many thousands of years this promise was told and retold from
father to son. Generation after generation waited for the coming
of the Son who would take their sin away and make them free from
the judgment of sin... Every time when the people became
discouraged by waiting, God sent His messengers, the prophets, to
encourage them to have faith and to hope and wait a little longer.
During the time of the Roman Empire's rule over the world over
twenty hundred years ago, God fulfilled His promise. The promised
man child was called JESUS, which means Saviour. God had said that
this babe who was to be born of Mary, a virgin, was the promised
and waited Saviour of the world. The angel of the Lord visited
Mary and prepared her for the babe's arrival. The angel told her
that it would be a miracle birth for the baby had no earthly
father. Mary was not married at the time of the baby's conception,
nor had she had any sexual relationship with any man. This was no
ordinary child, for He was God's very own Son, who had been with
God from the foundation of the world and had been willing to take
on the form of man, and to be born as a babe.
Jesus lived for 33 years in the land of Israel. He showed the
people the love of God by loving them. He healed the sick. The
blind were made to see, the deaf heard, the lame walked and the
dumb spoke. He cast the evil spirits out of those who were
possessed by them, raised to life some who were dead and did many
other wonderful miracles. People loved him and many believed in
Him and followed Him but the religious rulers were jealous of His
great power over the people and the sought to kill Him.
One day they seized Him in the early hours of the morning, brought
Him before the religious and political rulers, and after an unfair
trial with false witnesses testifying against Him, condemned him
to death by crucifixion, which was the Roman method of execution
for their worst criminals.
They rejoiced at their great victory, but not for long. For, three
days after His death, Jesus Christ the Saviour, arose from the
dead. came out of the grave and showed Himself for forty days to
His friends and disciples who later bore witness of this to
others. After this He was taken up into heaven, where He is today. |