Basic HTML Version
stealing, greed, killing, disrespect
for parents, coveting, adultery, for–
nication and other selfish actions,
the opposite would have existed!
Love and consideration for others
would fill the earth. God with all
his healing and problem-solving
power would have been in the pic–
ture. There would have been con–
tinuous world peace, peace of mind,
with real health and prosperity.
Human greed as we see it today
would have been eliminated, doing
away wi th su eh
things as industrial
pollution of the
earth's air , water
and soil and the
chemical polluting
of foodstuffs, a ma–
jor cause of many of
today's degenerative
diseases.
selves by wrong choices, careless–
ness and bad judgment.
Like Adam and Eve we've all
made mistakes. Worse, like them,
we've all been guilty of breaking
God's law, and of continually
breaking it, maintaining an attitude
of rejecting God. "For all have
sinned, and come short of the glory
of God' ' (Rom. 3:23). We've all
sinned! We've all broken God's law!
"For sin is the transgression of the
law" (1 John 3:4).
ther his ear heavy, that it cannot
hear: but your iniquities have sepa–
rated between you and your God,
and your sins have hid his face
from you, that he will not hear"
(Isa. 59: 1-2) .
Because sin reigns on this earth
and has reigned from the begin–
ning, suffering has been the result
and death the end for everyone.
"The wages of sin is death " (Rom.
6:23). It's like the proverb says:
"There is a way which seemeth
right unto a man ,
but the end thereof
are the ways of
death "
(Prov.
14: 12).
God doesn't want
humanity to suffer.
He never wanted
Adam and Eve to
suffer. God is !ove (1
John 4:16). He is
compassionate, fuJI
of merey, long suf–
fering and kindness .
He cares about you
and me.
Though God has
made available to
man
knowledge
about his way of life
through the pub–
lished pages of the
Bible, humans since
the beginning have
persisted in doing
their own thing, ex–
perimenting and
testing, deciding for
themselves right and
wrong.
Time and Chance
lndeed, Adam and
Eve's choice set the
pattern for all their
offspring- all man-
God is everything
that love portrays
and more- concern,
care,
kindness ,
warmth, help, con–
sideration, gentle–
ness, patience, giv–
ing, unselfishness .
He embodies all that
true !ove is and
means. He has out–
going concern for
others.
The tree of the knowledge of good
and evil represented the way of
disobedience, reasoning apart from
God, acquiring human knowledge
through experimentation and a way
of Iife of outright rejection of God's
revealed knowledge.
Though Adam and
Eve rejected God and
though all mankind
has been guilty of disobeying God,
God has provided hope. God is mer–
ciful, forgiving and compassionate.
He has in these "latter days" given
us a second Adam and through him
an opportunity for mankind to be put
back in contact with God and his
Spirit.
kind- and the rec-
ord lists mistake
upon mistake, war after war.
But none of us has the right to
throw stones at someone else. We
can
't
condemn the other fellow,
because all of us at sorne time or
another have made wrong choices.
We've all had our heartaches, prob–
lems and pains. We've all made
mistakes and still do. None of us
has been perfect.
In addition, ' 'time and chance"
does happen to all of us, as the
Bible reveals in Ecclesiastes 9: 11.
Other people's mistakes can also
affect us depending on time and
circumstance. But the majority of
our difficulties we bring on our-
June/ July 1982
God's Responsibility
You can't blame God for your sins
or for the sins of others. "Let no
man say," says the Bible, "when he
is tempted, I am tempted of God:
for God cannot be tempted with
evil, neither tempteth he any man"
(Jas. 1:13).
Man's plight is not God's fault.
But God is responsible for how it
will be solved. Our wrong choices,
our mistakes, our carelessnesses
and sins have caused the world to
suffer the way it has. "Behold,"
says God, "the Lord's hand is not
shortened, that it cannot save; nei-
The Second Adam
Adam and Eve were given the
opportunity to choose life by taking
of the tree of life. They chose not to
and mankind has followed the path
of wrong choices ever since. But
now, through a second Adam, Jesus
(Continued on page 36)
33