The first book of the Bible is called Genesis, and it’s about beginnings. Genesis describes how God created the Heavens, the universe, and the Earth in seven days. He created the animals and mankind. The Bible says Heavens because it includes the atmosphere of Earth, outer space, and God’s dwelling place. The world He created was good; no pain, death, or decay. The world was a beautiful piece of heaven-on-earth. That’s how the world was: marriage without tension, life without stress, and a world without death. It was pure sweetness. God created people so that He could love them, and they could love Him. As the Bible says, “He created man and woman and placed them in a garden and gave them everything they needed. God had an intimate friendship with His first children, Adam and Eve. God wanted them to enjoy the world forever, so He placed them in a garden paradise. God placed a tree in the garden and told Adam and Eve not to eat any of its fruit. It was God’s way of saying, “You can trust Me.” He gave His children freedom to choose, but warned them that the fruit from the tree would cause separation between them and God. This tree was filled with darkness and was called the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. God didn’t want His people to know the temptations and consequences of evil. God said, “Don’t eat that or you’ll hurt yourself and die. Trust Me!” Temptation entered in the form of a serpent who said, “God’s a liar. You can’t trust Him.”  Adam and Eve fell for his story and decided to touch the darkness. They ate the fruit and felt instant hurt. For the first time, there was shame, blame, nakedness, and pain. God saw His hurting children and offered to help. “Did you touch the darkness? Did you decide not to trust Me?” They blamed each other. Their lack of trust had separated them from God. He said, “The same rebelliousness that led you to question My goodness and not heed My warning has unleashed the knowledge of evil into the world.”  Thinking they knew better than God affected relationships, as well as the Earth itself. The beautiful creation was now broken. The darkness was released into creation, causing earthquakes and tornadoes. The animals were affected too, turning from vegetarians into carnivores. Childbirth became a source of great pain. These were just some of the consequences of a world that was now out-of-sync with its loving Creator. God then promised to fix what they had broken by sending a Rescuer in the future. God would send a hero to rescue mankind from their rebellion. Even though times would be tough, they could trust God for the future solution. The Rescuer would conquer death and fix everything… some day. The darkness of rebellion grew worse. Cain, one of Eve’s sons, became consumed with jealousy and wanted to kill his brother Abel. God stepped in and asked Cain to trust Him by rejecting anger and jealousy, but he didn’t. Instead, Cain committed the world’s first murder. For the next several generations, society used the darkness of pride to accomplish its purposes through murder, manipulation, envy, and evil. Things got so bad, so corrupt, and so evil, that God stepped in to stop the devastation. In the middle of this rebellious generation there was one man who did trust God, and his name was Noah. God told Noah that a flood was coming to wash away the corruption. The whole world was a filthy aquarium, and God needed to wash it clean. He also asked Noah to trust Him and build an ark, a giant barge meant to serve as a safe place for anyone who would choose to trust God. This ark was wider than a football field, taller than a three-story building, had a deck the size of 36 tennis courts, and a length of four hundred and fifty feet. God told Noah to take two of each kind of animal into the ark so God could save them too. The safety boat was big enough for thousands of people. Sadly, only Noah and his family got on the ark. Their trust saved them from God’s righteous earth-washing. God was saddened that His people again chose evil over good. He closed the huge door to the ark and poured rain onto His creation for forty days and forty nights, destroying everything on the Earth. Water came down from the sky and out of the great fountains of the deep. For over a year, water sloshed back and forth on the Earth, forming the mountains and canyons that we see today. (Many scientists consider the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and other seafloor rifts as evidence of the great flood. Giant oyster fossils have been found on mountains all over the world, including Mount Everest, lending further support to this account.) When the waters subsided, Noah and his family got off the ark with the animals. They promised to trust God with their lives. God promised to never again destroy the Earth by flood, and sent a rainbow to symbolize His pledge. God instructed Noah’s family to go out, populate the land, and enjoy the newly cleansed world. Unfortunately, they too chose not to trust Him.