BVOV Magazine 2013 - present

B V O V : 2 1 the true power of it. If they did, then they'd know why the New Testament tells us quite plainly that "the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God" (1 Corinthians 1:18). Notice that verse doesn't tell us the Cross was the power of God in the past, in days gone by. It says the Cross is the power of God that brings us salvation (which means deliverance from all temporal and eternal evil) now, today, in the present—and every single day of our lives! Everything good comes from the Cross. It changed the entire future of humanity and all of heaven forever. The Cross aŒ ected everything. The problem is, most of us don't even begin to understand the fullness of what happened there. We simply think of it as the place where Jesus paid the penalty for sin so that we could go to heaven and escape hell. That kind of thinking is right, as far as it goes. But it doesn't go far enough. There's much more to it. Looking Back to the Good Old Days To see just how much more actually happened at the Cross, we have to go back to the beginning, to the creation of man, to see how this all began. We have to go back and fi nd out how bitterness got into the life stream of humanity in the fi rst place. God certainly didn't put it there. The book of Genesis tells us that everything God created on the Earth was good. He created the land and the water and "it was good" (Genesis 1:10). He created all vegetation and "it was good" (verse 12). He created the sun, moon and stars, the animals and every other living thing, and saw that they were good (verse 25). Once all that was done, God made the body of man from the dust of the Earth and breathed His own life into him after saying, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion" (Genesis 1:26). At that moment, man became a living soul. He was clothed with God's own glory. God Himself empowered Adam (and later Adam's wife, Eve) to bring BLESSING and prosperity to the whole Earth. And when it was all fi nished, the Bible says that "God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good" (verse 31). Those truly were the good old days. The Touch of Death In those days, Adam and Eve were free to enjoy God's good creation and reign in Eden as His representatives in the Earth. They were free to enjoy nothing but sweetness and light forever—on one condition: They were to keep God's commands. Everything depended on that. If they obeyed God's commands, life would be glorious and wonderful. If they disobeyed, they would die. Sadly, they made the wrong choice. They disobeyed…and the light of God's glory that once radiated from them was snuŒ ed out by the spiritual darkness of sin. The devil, whom they had obeyed, became their overlord. His deadly nature invaded their spirits, and everything beautiful God had breathed into Adam and Eve was instantly twisted and marred. The fruit of God's Spirit that once fi lled their souls—qualities like love, joy, peace and faith— were suddenly corrupted. Love became hate. Joy became sorrow. Peace became turmoil. Faith became fear. The Anointing of God that had once empowered them to BLESS the Earth was transformed into a touch of death that cursed the entire planet. The very ground itself was cursed because of what happened to them. Every molecule was infected by it. The Earth, and everything in it, was cursed. That, in itself, would have been bad enough. But the horror didn't stop there. Because God had ordained that every seed produce after its own kind, Adam and Eve were destined to reproduce children infected by the curse of sin.

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