A man had felt himself...
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A man had felt himself to be badly wronged. It was not true, but he refused to look at facts and stubbornly held to a spirit of gross malice. The longer he held the grudge the more it festered, poisoning his thinking. At last he decided to get even. He concocted a plan to bomb the place of business where his imagined adversary worked. It was a large manufacturing plant, rising six stories and covering an entire city block. Eight hundred employees spent each weekday at work in this building. The fact that 800 people could possibly be destroyed by his bomb did not affect the man with the grievance. As long as his "offender" was killed he did not care how many others were killed or maimed. So 800 people were killed or maimed in a horrible explosion. Or were they? A police officer somehow learned that the man was making a large bomb. So he carefully planned a search of the man's premises, found the bomb, and turned it over to a demolition squad. Many could have perished through one man's sinfulness. But all were saved by another man's efforts to prevent the mass tragedy. Adam, the first human to be created, disobeyed God and thus sin entered the human race. His sinful heart, or proclivity to sin, was passed down into succeeding generations. Humankind was doomed to receive God's wrath. But God not only hates sin and must oppose it, he loves all people, and so in his wisdom he devised a plan of salvation. Sin would be punished but its penalty would be paid by God's own sinless Son, who died on the cross in our place. Thus one man, Adam, brought sin into humanity, but another man, Christ, made righteous all who truly believe in him. -- Lentz
