The Good News

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Before you can understand the Good News, you really need to understand why you need it!

 

Contrary to what you may have heard and what you may possibly believe, mankind did not evolve from the ape, or indeed anything else for that matter. Mankind was created by a loving Creator whom we know as the Almighty God. Mankind was created perfect by God and at that time did not have any restrictions on the length of their lives, as SIN and Death had not yet appeared. God had, however, given mankind free will because God did not want a race of robots who would do anything and everything they were told out of some blind sense of duty, but rather out of love because they wanted to please their loving Creator.

 

However, mankind was deceived into thinking they could be as God and be in control of their own destiny, that, in short, they knew better than the Creator. Once they had stepped over this line, SIN and Death entered the world and mankind had to be separated from the presence of God because, being Holy, Perfect, Righteous and Just, God could not be in the presence of SIN.

 

As a consequence of this fall from the Grace of God, the whole nature and character of creation was changed. Where once there was perfect harmony between all of the creatures that God had made, now there was enmity. The whole balance of God's creation had been thrown off just because mankind wanted things their own way.

 

."For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." (Romans 3:23)

 

Now, after quite a long time, things got so bad on the earth that God decided that He would have to step in and do something about it. God chose a man called Noah and his family who were living in a way which pleased him. God gave Noah a design for a large boat in which He was going to preserve a percentage of His creation. Then God was going to cause a worldwide flood which would wipe out everything which was not in this boat. After the flood, those in this boat would replenish the earth anew.  Unfortunately, even after this drastic lesson from the Creator, mankind did not learn.

 

So God chose Himself a man; this man was called Abram (later to be known as Abraham). God promised Abram that from him there would come a special people whom God would use to show all mankind the way back to the Creator, which had been lost due to mankind's rebellion against Him. Over time, God, through this man Abram and his descendants brought about the twelve tribes of what would become known as Israel.

 

God had to make from these twelve tribes one nation called Israel. After a terrible famine, these twelve tribes ended up in Egypt and were saved by a brother they had sold into slavery because of their jealousy. However, to cut that story short, after 430 years in this state of slavery, God raised up a man called Moses (a Hebrew) to bring them out of slavery and make them a nation

 

.In order for this people to know and understand just how Holy this God was who had delivered them, and what it would take to live lives that were acceptable to Him, God gave them Laws. These Laws were to show the people the standards which the Holy God demanded in order for them to remain His people and if they broke any of these Laws, God told them what the consequences would be.

 

The consequence was death! He also gave them a way to temporarily deal with any breach of these Laws. This temporary covering was the blood of certain sacrificed animals, yes an animal had to die for its blood to be used to cover temporarily the Sin of mankind. In fact the first animal which had to die for this reason had been right at the beginning in the 'Garden of Eden' (Genesis 3:21).