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Before we can have the good news we must have the bad news.  That is why the Bible begins with Genesis.  We have to read the account of Adam and Eve’s behaviour in the Garden of Eden.  God their Creator had placed them in a beautiful place with a great variety of fruit to live on.  He told them they must not eat the fruit from one tree only, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  So what did they do and what would each one of us have done?  They ate that fruit.  This was not some tiny misdemeanour but wholesale rebellion against God. We all inherited their sin and stood condemned at that moment, but God was not taken aback, He had already made a plan of salvation. Centuries later His Son Jesus was born a human baby at Bethlehem, fully God and fully man. He grew up and taught His followers the way of salvation to be offered to all who would believe. He told Nicodemus
3:14 Just as31 Moses lifted up the serpent32 in the wilderness,33 so must the Son of Man be lifted up,34 3:15 so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”35
3:16 For this is the way36 God loved the world: He gave his one and only37 Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish38 but have eternal life.39 3:17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world,40 but that the world should be saved through him. 3:18 The one who believes in him is not condemned.41 The one who does not believe has been condemned42 already, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only43 Son of God.
Here we see that there is salvation for those who will believe but not for those who won’t. Many of today’s churches are preaching a cosy, fluffy religion where everyone is forgiven regardless of their response to Jesus.  The truth is harder for many to stomach and they call for preachers who will give them what they want to hear and they shun the truth. Truth is precious and we should not compromise our beliefs to please others. It is Jesus whom we must please.

Quote from the Net Bible

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