Let’s see what we have so far:
- Some super-powerful being named God made the universe and everything in it.
- Every human being has a choice to believe this or not, but whichever way you choose, make sure you understand why you made the choice.
- If you believe it, you should not have any trouble believing what’s in the rest of the Bible.
- God put human beings in charge of the earth for the purpose of making it orderly and productive, and every one of us still has that same purpose.
- God intended to train our ancestors Himself so that they could handle the responsibility of knowing the difference between good and evil and use that knowledge properly.
- Our ancestors chose to cut God’s training plan short and grab knowledge for themselves by eating from the tree that made them super smart, knowing good and evil.
- Since our ancestors disobeyed God, all of us humans after them have followed their example by choosing to set up our own standards of right and wrong rather than follow God’s standards.
If you were God and the beings you had made decided to set themselves up as their own little gods, what would you do? Think about what parents do when their children rebel. Loving parents would give the rebellious children a severe punishment, intending it not only as a payment for the rebellion, but also as a corrective function to teach the rebels not to rebel any more. That is exactly what God did. Sadly, instead of paying attention and learning from God, people just got worse and worse until, as the Bible says:
Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. So the Lord said, “I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, creeping thing and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.” (Genesis 6:5-7 NKJV)
That sounds quite harsh until we consider two things. First, how productive can people be if each of them wants to get his or her own way? If Cain and Abel, the first brothers in history, ended up in a fight to the death, imagine how bad it was after several centuries.
Second, if God said He was going to destroy all people because of their rebellion (or wickedness), why are we still here? Did something happen to change God’s mind? Or did God somehow find a way to let people live, and maybe even get back into His good graces?
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