I don’t know about you, but if I visit a doctor when I know something is wrong with me, I ask him to “give it to me straight, Doctor.” After all, it’s my body and I deserve to have the facts. More than that, I want him to keep it simple. I don’t want his explanation given in long medical terms that I don’t understand.

If that’s how we feel about our bodies, how serious we should be to hear the truth about our never-dying souls? That’s why I want to give the basic message of the Bible for you as straight as I can.

HOW IT ALL BEGAN
First, the Bible explains that God made the universe a perfect place and saw that “it was very good.”¹ But in making us, God gave us a will so we would be able to choose. He didn’t want toys or machines; he wanted people who could share a loving relationship with him.

It seemed an ideal situation. There were no wars, funerals, or hospitals; no broken hearts, neglected children or abused wives. There was no shame over wrong words or actions either. The human race was in perfect peace and contentment with the Creator. Who wouldn’t want to live in a world like that?

WHAT WENT WRONG?
But there was a problem. Some time before (we aren’t told when) an angel-servant of God, called Lucifer, wanted to put himself in the place of God.² If fact, he led about one-third of the angels in a rebellion against God. And this trying to replace God with himself is the very sin that the rebel (renamed Satan) taught the human race.

Why should you do God’s will when you can do what you want? Why live to please him when you can live to please yourself? Why not ask as if you are God? But—strange as it seems—this trying to go our own way and find our own pleasure has led the human race in exactly the opposite direction. It has been the reason for all the world’s sadness, trouble and death.

So the sad record reads: “As by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, because all have sinned” (Romans 5:12).

The world, in spite of all its inventions and discoveries, seems to be getting worse. You wonder how long we can carry on like this. And it isn’t just others who have the problem. If we’re honest, we have to admit we don’t do what we should, either. We don’t even come up to our own standards, let alone God’s. We don’t even keep our own New Year’s promises.