The one thing that we can be guaranteed to face every morning we wake up is the news that someone has died, or someone has been killed. Everywhere you look today there is sin and death. Evil is all around us. How did we get here?

Welcome to our new series. In it, we will address an age-old concern that we all have: the concern for sin, evil, death and what happens after we die. Is there hope after death? When God created us humans, he intended for us to live forever in a loving relationship with him. But this relationship has been broken by sin.

Here, we address the origin of sin, and we look more closely at death and dying. But, instead of looking at death in a negative way, we look at it in the context of hope, the promised hope based on what Jesus did for us when he died and came back to life again.

From the Sabbath School Adult Bible Study Guide 2022 Quarter 4: Sabbath.School

See also Hope Sabbath School and 3ABN Sabbath School

Inviting the Holy Spirit’s Presence

Heavenly Father, the creator of Heaven and Earth. Open our understanding of your word as written in the Bible. In Jesus Name Amen.

12 “How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How you are cut down to the ground, you who weakened the nations! (Isaiah 14:12 NKJV)

MANY THINKERS past and present have tried to explain the origin of evil. Who created it? How did it get it’s start? And once it manifested itself, why was it not immediately eliminated?

Some thinkers venture say that evil has always existed. They see it as part of life itself. Their point is that good cannot be appreciated without the existence of evil.

These thinkers believe we really can’t know good without knowing evil.

On the other hand, there are some who believe that God made everything perfect. But somehow evil just happened.

For example, ancient Greek Mythology proposes that evil started when a young woman named Pandora opened a locked box filled with evil. Most likely you have heard someone say don’t open Pandora’s box or you have opened Pandora’s box. Based on Greek Mythology when Pandora opened the looked box all the evils of the world flew out. Of course, this was a myth a legend or fairytale. Even so, this story doesn’t explain how the evils got into the box.

In contrast to the ancient Greek myth, the Bible tells us a different story about how evil originated. It pictures an all-powerful God who is loving and perfect. Thus, being perfect he created our world perfect.

The idea that God is all-powerful is expressed in I Chronicles 29:10 and 11 when King David blesses the Lord.

10 So David blessed the Lord in the sight of all the assembly; and David said, “Blessed are You, O Lord God of Israel our father, forever and ever.

11 Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, indeed everything that is in the heavens and the earth; Yours is the dominion, O Lord, and You exalt Yourself as head over all. (1 Chronicles 29:10, 11).

Matthew 5:48 lets us know that God is perfect.

48 Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect. (Matthew 5:48)

So, being that God is perfect He made everything perfect. This is what is concluded in Deuteronomy 32:4

4 He is the Rock, His work is perfect; For all His ways are justice, A God of truth and without injustice; Righteous and upright is He. (Deuteronomy 32:4)

How, then, did evil and sin start on in a perfect world, in the presence of a perfect, loving and all-powerful God?

For this we need to go back to Genesis, the first book of the Bible, specifically, Genesis 3.

It tells us that Adam and Eve’s fall brought sin, evil and death into our world.

But then that raises another question. Did sin exist before Adam and Eve sinned?

Yes, this we see in Genesis 3:1-5, based on the actions and description of the serpent, who deceived Evil.

1 Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?”

2 And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden;

3 but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.’ ”

4 Then the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die.

5 For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (Genesis 3:1-5)

The serpent was used as a medium, vehicle to reach Eve. Who then was using the serpent? Lucifer? Lucifer used the

serpent to lie to Eve. Now, Lucifer’s home had once been heaven.

So, if we want to know how evil started, we must look at what happened before Adam and Eve sinned.

We need to therefore, go back, before the Fall of Adam and Eve to discover the true source and origins of the evils that dominates our world today and at times makes our lives miserable.

But first we must get to know the One who created us and the reason He created us. Find out more in Day 2: Creation, an Expression of Love