Since the beginning of my remarks, I have asked a few questions and they were mainly centred on man. His beginning, created into the image of God, and the reason why from the perfect being he was he became what he is. I have mentioned the one-sided way he looks at his life and what dominates him to live like he does and do the things he does. I mentioned the power that controls him and drives him to resist God and be his enemy by wicked acts and much cruelty; how sin drives him to his grave and will consume him in an eternal hell. We must now turn our attention to God the creator of man and the world in which he lives, blind to the fact that the life he lives is given by God, who sees and weighs all his acts and scrutinises every detail of the way he lives, because at the end of the day, he will have to stand before His maker to give an account for all he has done. God has created the world and He is its sole master; it belongs to him and all men in it. But sin robs men of all realities that surround them, for Satan is blinding them so that they cannot see what is plain to see. 

God established times and seasons, and men, under His authority, live the span of time the He has allotted to them. The Bible states: “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples, built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. From one man he made every nation of men that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men should seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. For in him we move and have our being.” (Acts 17:24-28.) I add just another passage, for there are many passages that state the same thing, with the divine right God has to do what he wants in the world, with the world and with the people that dwell therein. “You alone are the Lord. You made the heavens, even the highest heavens, and all their starry host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them. You give life to everything, and the multitude of heaven worship you.” (Nehemiah 9:6.) 

Obviously, God has chosen to give men the right to believe in Him or not to believe in Him. But, the stupidity of it is that unbelief will not change anything, for God remains as He is, the sole Master over all His creation, all that unbelief will do is to rob man of the rich blessing of a life lived in God’s plan, which, at the end of day, is still the best life to live for men with a bit of sense! Man is as a passing shadow, but God remains unchanged forever. Like Him, His words, as written in the Bible, are eternal, but unbelief will bring great eternal losses for men that foolishly, are driven by the wicked on, to choose to live in rebellion to God and obey His commandments. 

It is stated: “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and the wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities ~his eternal power and divine nature~ have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse, for although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore, God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts” (Romans 1: 18-24.) 

The statements that God makes in the Holy-Scriptures are direct and plain, they do not leave room for alterations. God weighs his words and once he has spoken his word is immutable and cannot return void, it will accomplish His will to the last detail at the time He set for the fulfilment. When later in history, he gave the Ten Commandments to the People of Israel, through them His will was revealed to the world, especially by the preaching of the Gospel, for Jesus revealed the true purpose of His commandments, which was to reveal sin and how it reacts to them. Generally, man’s way of life proves that he is a sinner. The conscience of man approves that God’s commandment are good, and confirms that God has written them in their hearts from creation.

We appreciate the fact that man is the master in his domain and that he alone decides how to use everything that belongs to him. He does not have to give account to anyone even if he wastes his property, and yet man thinks that God has not got the same right over His property, which includes our earth and men on it.  God created the universe, on earth He placed boundaries; countries with their people and their languages, continents with mighty oceans and seas that separate them, He sets up men to govern them and He takes them down, as the Bible says: “he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live.” (Acts 17:24-26.) Men disregarding it have created one big problem for themselves; migration is creating the biggest danger to peace in the world and fosters hatred among the races, which is now increasing due to this uncontrollable displacement of people. When God’s will is flaunted, man is the loser! 

The Bible states: “So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth ….because there (Mesopotamia – now known as Iraq) the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.” (Genesis 11:8-9.) It is only in the sixteenth century that Columbus discovered the American continent. How did its inhabitants get there? All they knew is to make a canoe, chopping it out of a big tree. Three are three thousand miles of the Atlantic Ocean, six thousand miles of the Pacific? God displaced them physically from there to the Americas, and over the whole earth just as it pleased Him! That is how they got where they were found, placed by the power and the will of God. There are obviously great difficulties, for men, to fathom the unfathomable. Man with all its modern inventions, has not yet been able to get to the bottom of the deepest sea. We have been amazed to see men walk on the moon, but that is as far as man has gone, and since the last Apollo mission no man has gone back or flown any further. I doubt very much if it will ever happen that in his body man will be able to go further than he has done, may be, I’m wrong, but his own planet still holds mysteries that with all his craft man has not been capable to investigate! God will make a new heaven and a knew earth, and to live in the new earth, he is changing men by faith in Christ, and will come the day, that believers that died will be resurrected in a new body, those believers, that will be alive at the coming of Jesus Christ will be changed in a twinkling of an eye, and in this glorified body they will be taken to where Jesus is now. The way to it is by faith; not space ships can take one there!

Therefore, how can anyone expect to learn everything about God, his wisdom is deeper that the unfathomable waters that cover three quarters of the earth?! This is why God does not explain exactly how he planned it all and brought infinity into being, it is outside the scope of man’s intelligence, he simply states that all of it is His: “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it; for he founded it upon the seas and established it upon the waters.” (Psalm 24:1-2.) Because you live on this planet, you also are His and responsible for all your actions. He alone has sublime and complete authority over your life. That may revolt you or it may, like it does to me, fill you with wonder, because it is so wonderful to know our origin and that God had a hand in the man I am, even before I ever existed. Don’t you think that faith in Christ is wonderful? It made a big difference to me, and millions like me!

There is this wonderful difference between the unbeliever and the man that knows his God, because he can say: “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful I know it full well...All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”!  (Psalm 139: 13-16). There is no escape from the truth, that’s how it is, and you, me and everybody else live the life we have and our days are written in the book right up to the last one is known; when God calls time is up an no amount of money can buy another minute. Man is so foolish to ignore it, yet to his folly there is no end! 

The Bible asserts from its beginning to its very end that God created the world. It is mainly in the twentieth century that men, learned men, men of science, started to deny strongly the existence of God and his creative power. Evolution is still a theory, and yet most of what is Christendom, is invaded with lies, and many, apparently Christians, take it as Gospel, and do not believe in God, in the divinity of Jesus Christ. We cannot just blame modern science, it is so popular because society, especially in the western part of the world, was ready to accept it, for ungodliness has gripped humanity in its deadly grip, so much so that, in the western world especially, anti-God theories have fallen into the heart of godless men and folly has brought into being the most disturbed generations that ever existed. 

The Bible says: “The fool has said in his heart there is no God.” (Psalm 14: 1) Pride is a terrible thing and opens the slippery path to destruction, the worst is that fools always think that they are right, therefore the Bible is right again when it says: “The way of a fool seems right to him, but a wise man listens to advice.” (Proverbs 12:15.) We cannot find a better advice than the one we find the Bible; God put it there so that man can find the right way to life. What man stands for and believes in seems right to him but God does not say that it is right, but man’s folly makes him think that everybody thinks like him and that the few that do not are fools. Is it not astonishing that much of the world is the prey of fools and that their poison is destroying everything that is righteous and decent in society; it can but end in disaster, because it eats up the future welfare of every soul! Without a solid foundation rooted in the Word of God the world will crumble and this is exactly what the word of God predicts. (Revelation 20: 11-15.) Sin is an awful and dangerous pass-time!

Having recorded some of the things the Bibles says concerning God’s ownership of the whole of his creation, we cannot doubt that God does what He needs to do to limit the destructive power of sin, so that his purposes can be fulfilled until the time that all his elects are saved; elects, meaning the people He chose from the world, for himself before the foundation of the earth. We have explained what men need to know about sin and its destructive power, and having established the reality of it and its destructive character, let us come now to discover what God thinks of sin and what He has done to eventually eradicate it from the earth with all those that are not written in the lamb’s book of life!

God hates sin! I Have already stated it, but we cannot stress it enough. Sin is always a direct attack on His glory. Men refuse to do His will and to acknowledge His sovereignty, His holiness, His authority, and His power by which he made the world and man in it, and he refuses to place Him far above all things created, and to honour Him and obey Him. But sin has convinced men that they are above Him, and prefer to completely ignore Him! So, He did not shrink away from doing the only thing that He could do to destroy the power of sin and save this planet, and those he chose to live with him in a new world, whose creation is planned already, awaiting the time set for it. 

The Bible says: “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all godlessness and wickedness of men.” (Romans 1:18.) Therefore: “It is a dreadful (fearful) thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”!!  (Hebrews 10:38.) The wrath of God has been revealed and continues to be revealed. It is an ongoing thing, and more of his wrath is promised and the last days will reveal it in full. Men are going too far in their uncontrolled passions, and God will have to act, to clean up the deep, set corruption in the heart of, just as he did in the days of the flood and Sodom and Gomorrah. What happened in the Garden of Eden seems trivial to a lot of people, but by his sin Adam piled the whole wrath of God on all his descendants. God had to put them out of the garden but from then on, Satan rules humanity which by his activity is getting worse and worse, nevertheless, he can never overrule the Almighty. When it gets too bad, God must act and intervene, this He will do until His plan is fulfilled. 

Cain, the first son of Adam and Eve, through his jealousy, killed his brother Abel, (Genesis 4.) But God could not overlook his crime. Before He ever gave the Ten Commandments God called his murder a sin! He saw in Cain a bitter spirit and warned him and said: “Cain, why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it.” (Genesis 4: 6-7.) But Cain did not listen to God and killed Abel, simply because he offered his offering as a witness to His faith in the deliverer, which God promised.  God punished him and sent him out from his presence, to wonder for the rest of his life, as an empty and aimless being, he passed into eternity, bearing the weight of his crime, for which he will meet his maker and be judged at the bar of the judge of the whole earth! Anyone reading these statements may suddenly feel guilty for a crime committed, hide it no longer, confess it to God and men if necessary. There is no sin that God cannot forgive, and save those that turn to Christ with a sincere heart and accept Him as their Saviour and Lord. 

The day came when the whole of humanity was so corrupted by its disobedience and rebellion to God, that it filled the earth with violence. So pungent was sin in the days prior to the flood, that it grieved God that he had made man and filled his heart with pain. The Bible says: “The Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth has become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. So the Lord said: I will wipe mankind, whom I have created ~ men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground and birds of the air~ for I am grieved that I have made them.(Genesis 6: 5-6.)

Unbelief corrupts man to the very core of his being. How low had mankind sunk that at the sight of it, God suffered pain in his heart. It is a fact that God suffers at the sight of sin.  It is completely against His nature and He did not create man to become a play thing in the hand of the devil to goad Him and prone Him to destroy mankind. When it came to the pitch, and that humanity was universally depraved, and would not listen to His warnings, God did what He had to and destroyed man and beast by a flood. So, the Lord said: I will wipe mankind, whom I have created ~ men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground and birds of the air~ for I am grieved that I have made them. But Noah found favour in the eyes of the Lord. (Genesis 6: 7-8.) God will never destroy the righteous with the wicked, one righteous man is precious to Him and His love is ever ready to save the least among men.

Nevertheless, God’s wrath is not an uncontrollable passion, men are prone to read the Bible and conclude that God does act as men do when they kill and destroy everything around them, with an uncontrolled brutality. It is only as we seriously compare scripture with scripture that we find that God never destroys sinful man without warning Him, giving ample  him time to repent and forsake his sinful ways. If God were soft with sin it would end up with corrupting all that He has created! God does not want the death of man. This is why he warned Cain before he had to cast him away from him, but Cain was consumed with passion and sin drove him to his own destruction when he killed Abel his brother! 

God did in the days before the flood and during one hundred twenty years He waited patiently for them to repent. The Bible says that during all that time, as Noah was building the ark obediently to God’s instructions, Noah warned continually the people of the impending judgement of God, but they chose to mock him as people do today, like them, men will not listen and believe the Gospel. But the day came when it was too late: “God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was built. In it only few people, eight in all, were saved though water”. (1 Peter3:20.) After all the time God gave them and all the warnings of Noah, who during all these years, preached the word for the saving of their soul, only eight were saved.

These were followed by the punishment of God on the people that decided to build the Tower of Babel. This immense temple dedicated to the worship of idols as an open rebellion to God, was destroyed suddenly by fire from heaven. It was like the explosion of an atomic bomb that burned the very stones. (Genesis 11:1-9.)  What about Sodom and Gomorrah that God destroyed because of their depraved immorality! There are many other instances recorded in the Bible that prove it: “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all godlessness and wickedness of men.” (Romans 1:18.) What about today? Well, God still continues to warn people of the impending disaster that is awaiting this ungodly world. The judgement of all flesh is drawing closer and closer, and whilst the Gospel of redemption, by faith in Jesus-Christ, is been preached by faithful men in the whole world, which they do under great opposition, yet by every means possible, God still keeps warning people of the judgement that awaits those that will not yield to Christ, who died on the CROSS for their sins, yet men still mock and laugh in the face of God, but no one will be able to say that God did not warn them enough, and their end will be a terrible one! 

It is the Son of God, Jesus Christ who said: “As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of man.” (Matthew 24: 36-41.) God sees a long way ahead, it is a sobering thought that mankind never learned the lesson, and still today, after all the warnings, it refuses to fear God and shun away from evil. The Bible begins with the creation of the world, man and all things in it, it ends with the total destruction of everything. Why not believe it and repent?  

The world is being duped by Satan and worthless preachers that are destroying the Christian faith. Priests and leaders of many Christian confessions by their attitude to the Word of God do much to help men not to believe in it. It is the God of the Old Testament that introduced in the Messianic New Testament, as revealed Himself as the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, His beloved Son. But the modern god of the people is weak and so loving that what is taught by Jesus and His disciples, will never happen. Everybody is going to heaven, there is no Satan, there is no hell, no judgement, it is all a myth. Whatever men believe, whatever their confession they all worship the same god, by different means; such a god is a god of their own making, an illusion Their god is so loving that he will always forgive and let men carry on in their sinful wicked ways, overlooking the worst of sins. Their god is not the God of the Bible, it is a made up idol. 

The love of God is truly expressed to the world by his son Jesus-Christ and to all those that belong to Him by faith. The love of God is heralded by the Gospel calling on men to taste of the love of God revealed in the gift of his Son Jesus-Christ, who came to deal with sin and destroy it by His death on the CROSS; His death is the ultimate proof of what God’s love is. Christ taught and His disciples taught, that God only loves those that in Christ will believe and accept Him as their Saviour; He alone can change their lives by forgiving their sins. Jesus died for the sin of the whole world. There is therefore neither love, nor redemption, for those who reject His Son and do not repent from their sins. For those who continue in their sin after they have heard the Gospel, the Bible says that awaits them: “A fearful expectation of the judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God.”(Hebrews 10:27.) Therefore, the teaching of the Bible proves that God is not soft, for when it comes to the preservation of holiness and righteousness, God will not shrink to do what He must. Violent sinners are as dangerous in God’s eyes, as are false teachers of Holy-Scriptures, all are very dangerous criminals.

So, in conclusion to this section, I would like to end with the following “But there were false prophets among the people (The Hebrew nation ~ Israel.) just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them ~ bringing swift destruction on themselves. Many will follow their shameful ways and will bring the way of truth into disrepute. In their greed, these teachers will exploit you with stories they have made up. Their condemnation has long been hanging over them, and their destruction has not been sleeping.

For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell, putting them into gloomy dungeons to be held for judgement; if he did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others, if he condemned Sodom and Gomorrah by burning them to ashes, and made them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly, and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the filthy lives of lawless men-- for that righteous man living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard -- if this is so, then the Lord knows how to rescue godly men from trials and to hold the unrighteous for the day of judgement, while continuing their punishment. 

This is especially true of those who follow the corrupt desire of the sinful nature and despise authority. Bold and arrogant, these men are not afraid to slander celestial beings, yet even angels, although they are stronger and more powerful, do not bring slanderous accusations against such beings in the presence of the Lord. But these men (these false teachers) blaspheme in matters they do not understand. They are like brute beasts; creatures of instinct, born only to be caught and destroyed, and likes beasts they too will perish. (2 Peter 2: 1-12.) 

This important passage of scripture is an eye opener to all men, warning them to stay away, from all those, who today make a mockery of God, celestial beings, and divine truths in general. Who make light of the deep corruption that sins bring on humanity, for which there is no hope, unless they repent? Nevertheless, multitudes have reached the point of no return they are set aside for destruction unable to repent. It is written in the Bible that Noah found grace before God, and that He spared him and all his family. He also spared Lot and his two daughters, from the putrid corruption of Sodom and Gomorrah. The character of these men, although they be few, speaks loudly to all men that there is a way of escape even today for those who will believe in Christ. Read on and find the answers, in our next chapter.