DID JESUS TELL LIES?

A children ' s story for adults.

Adapted from facts written in the Word of God

By David Holt

Once upon a time, a very long time ago in a place far, far away, the God of the Universe's chief angel decided that he wanted to take the place of God's Son and so he stirred up some of the other angels in a rebellion. But his rebellion failed and so God ordered him and his supporters out of heaven and named him Satan, which means, “The Adversary” or “The Enemy.”

Then, around about 6000 years ago God decided to make a beautiful place where He could put people just like Himself and His Son to live forever in love and harmony with each other and with Him and His Son. So, together they designed everything that would be needed and, when all the plans were ready, God told His Son to begin work on the project.

And so it was that God's Son, Jesus made the earth. The first thing He did was make some light so that He could see what He was doing. Then He made the land and the seas and the rivers. He made the trees and the grass and the flowers. One of the trees He made was called the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. He made that one because, even though He and His Father wanted only good for the people they planned, they both knew that Satan would waste no time trying to make friends with them, You see, Jesus knew that Satan wouldn't be able to spoil what He had planned unless the people disobeyed Him and ate the fruit of that tree.

(By the way, in the first part of the Bible, called the Old Testament, Jesus is usually called “God” or “The Lord” but it was actually Him that the people of old talked with. We know this now because, much later, when He came to earth as a man, He told the people, “No one has ever seen my Father or heard His voice.”)

Anyway, getting back to our story, the next day Jesus made the sun to light up the day and the moon and zillions of stars to light up the night. Then, on the next day He made lots of fish to swim in the rivers and oceans and birds to fly in the air. And, on the sixth day, He made all the different animals all around the world. He made cats and dogs – little cuddly ones and great big lions and wolves. He made huge elephants and hippopotamuses and tall giraffes. He made beautiful butterflies and insects too. He even made spiders!

When Jesus saw that everything was ready, He took some of the dust from the ground and made it into a very special creature that looked just like Him and His Father and called him Adam, which means “the man.” Then, just like CPR, He breathed air into Adam and he became a living soul. Jesus was VERY pleased with everything He had made and said that it was good.

Adam looked at all the animals that Jesus had made and he gave them all names. He thought how nice it was to have so many companions but they were all different to him and that made him a bit sad. Jesus saw this too and so He decided to fix that straight away. He put Adam into a deep sleep and, while he was sleeping, Jesus opened him up – just like a surgeon at the hospital – and took out one of his ribs. (He had 24 of them and so he wouldn't miss one very much at all!) Out of Adam's rib Jesus made Adam a friend who was just right for him. Then Jesus woke Adam up and introduced his new friend to him. Adam was delighted! He said, “She shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man.” Later on he gave her the name of Eve because she would be the first mother of everyone born on the earth.

Adam and Eve were VERY happy together. They lived in the most beautiful garden imaginable that Jesus had made for them in a place called Eden and were told that they were in charge of everything. There were beautiful luscious fruits on the trees and Jesus said that they could eat whichever ones they liked EXCEPT for the fruit that was on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He told them, if they ate that fruit, they would surely die. Then Jesus left Adam and Eve together to get to know each other.

They strolled through the garden admiring the flowers and tasting the different fruits. They probably stopped to pat animals too. Maybe they stroked a beautiful stripy tiger or a big rhinoceros because, back then, all the animals were friendly and wouldn't hurt anything. All except one that is!

Out of the trees came a snake. Even the snake was friendly though and so Adam and Eve didn't know that in actual fact, the snake was none other than the wicked angel that God had thrown out of heaven, Satan, in disguise. So Eve started to chat with the snake. But the snake was very crafty and started asking Eve some sneaky questions. “Did God really say that that you mustn't eat the fruit from the trees here in the garden?” he asked her.

“Oh! No!” said Eve, “He only said we mustn't eat from the tree at the middle of the garden. He said if we eat from that tree we would die.”

“You won't die!” exclaimed the snake, “Jesus only told you that because He knows that, if you eat the fruit of that tree, you'll be just like Him and know all about good and evil.”

So Eve thought about what the snake had said and she looked at the delicious-looking fruit on the forbidden tree. Oh! It looked so yummy and she was sure it would be. She thought to herself, “Did Jesus lie to us when He said we would die if we ate it?” The snake watched her and, when he saw her hesitating, he encouraged her to disobey Jesus. “You won't die!” he kept telling her. So Eve reached out her hand and picked the plumpest and juiciest fruit she could see. She picked one for Adam too and gave it to him and together they ate them.

No sooner had they eaten the fruit and they were ashamed. “We've disobeyed Jesus.” They said. “Look at us! We're naked! We need to cover ourselves up!” So they made clothes for themselves out of leaves. When Jesus came back they hid from Him in the bushes so He called out, “Adam, Where are you?” and Adam came out. “Why were you hiding?” Jesus asked.

“We were ashamed because we were naked.” Adam replied.

Jesus looked very sad. “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten the fruit that I told you not to eat?”

Just like a naughty child who's been caught out doing wrong, Adam straight away tried to blame Jesus. “The woman that YOU made gave it to me and it was good, so I ate it!” he retorted.

So Jesus turned to Eve and asked if that was true. But Eve was just like Adam. Straight away, she blamed the snake. “The serpent tricked me into believing that You had lied to us!” she said, “He said we would not die but we would be like you and know EVERYTHING!”

Jesus was very, very cross but, most of all, He was sad. “Because you disobeyed me you WILL die!” He told them “I can't change that. But before it happens, you must leave this beautiful garden forever. You will go outside where there are weeds and prickles and, from now on, you will have to work very hard to grow your food.” Then He turned again to Eve and said, “ No more will you be equal with your husband. He will rule over you and you will have his babies and, unlike all the other animals, you will suffer terrible pain when you give birth to them.”

And so it was that Adam and Eve were banished from their beautiful home. Eve had babies in pain and they toiled every day clearing the ground to make a living for themselves and their family. And, when they had had sons and daughters, just like Jesus had said, even though they were sorry and loved Him, they died – all because they thought He had told them a lie!

Sometime, a bit later on before they died, Adam and Eve had two sons whose names were Cain and Abel. By this time, people had started giving presents to Jesus to show Him that they loved Him and also to say they were sorry for what Adam and Eve had done when they disobeyed Him. Jesus must have told the people what sort of presents He liked and so Abel, who was a shepherd, took some meat from one of his newborn lambs to Jesus who was very pleased with his gift. Cain, who was a farmer, took some of his crops, even though that was not what Jesus wanted. You see, Cain thought that Jesus had lied to him when He told him he wanted lamb and so he worshiped Jesus the way HE wanted to rather than the way Jesus liked to be worshiped.

So Jesus rejected Cain's gift and that made him very angry indeed. In fact, he was SO jealous of his brother that he went out into the fields and killed him. Yes, the very first person born on the newly made earth was a murderer! Jesus was very angry and, since He had already shut people out of the Garden of Eden, he sent Cain away into the desert where nothing would grow to wander for the rest of his life – all because he thought that Jesus had told him a lie!

About 1300 years and several generations later there were lots of people and, because Adam and Eve had given up their rule over the earth to Satan, everyone was really wicked and violent. No one obeyed Jesus any more and He was really sorry that He had ever made people. So He decided to destroy everything He had made. But because He still loved them even though they made Him very sad all the time, and because He is very merciful, He decided to give them one last chance.

Up ‘til then it had never rained. All the trees and plants were watered by the dew that settled during the night and the rivers and streams all came from springs bubbling up out of the ground.

Now, at that time, there was a descendant of Adam and Eve's named Noah. He was a good and obedient man and so Jesus went to see him.

“I'm going to make it rain.” He told him, “Water will fall out of the sky for forty days and nights and it will flood the whole earth and everyone – all the people and all the animals - will be drowned. But because you are obedient and serve me properly the way I like to be served, I am going to tell you how you and your family and anyone else who wants to be saved can escape what I am going to do. I want you to build a huge boat big enough to carry all the animals I will bring to you. You have 120 years to build it before the rain will start to fall.”

So Noah set to work building a big ship exactly as Jesus had told him to. Just imagine it! There was this old man building a huge boat miles away from the sea and much too big to sail on the river. Back in those days there weren't any big road transporters to put it on – there weren't even any big roads! As the ship, which was called the Ark , started to take shape Noah's neighbours came to look what he was doing.

“Why are you building a huge ship on dry land?” they asked him.

“The Lord has told me to build it because He is going to send a flood that will drown everyone that isn't on this ship when He closes the door. You can come with me if you want to be saved.” They laughed and made fun of Noah but, because he was a man of God and loved his neighbours, he just kept right on working and inviting them to join him.

“Silly old fool!” they jeered, “Whoever heard of water falling out of the sky? You don't seriously believe that do you?” In effect, what they were telling Noah was that Jesus had lied to him!

One day, when everything was ready, Jesus brought all the animals to the Ark and they filed aboard. There were two sorts of animals. The ones that ate nice fresh leaves and fruits were called “clean” and the ones that cleaned up the earth by eating rubbish were called “unclean.” Jesus brought seven pairs of each of the clean animals and two pairs of each of the unclean ones. Noah and his wife and their three sons and their wives climbed the gangplank and Jesus Himself came and closed the door. Can you imagine the scene? Noah and his family looking down from the top deck with all the people standing around laughing so much that there were tears rolling down their faces.

Then the sky darkened as heavy clouds rolled over. There was a flash of lightning and a loud rumbling. The people looked up and, slowly but surely, just as Noah had told them, water started to fall out of the sky. It mixed with the tears of laughter still on their faces. It got heavier… and heavier… and heavier. Suddenly the people weren't laughing any more. Some of them started to yell out to Noah, “Open the door and let us in.” but the door had been tightly closed by Jesus Himself and couldn't be opened.

After a few hours of non-stop torrential rain the water had formed into huge puddles. And, after a few days, all the low-lying land around had become lakes. People's homes were flooded and they were running in terror trying to find things to make boats. But the water rose too quickly for them to be able to escape. The Ark started to float and soon the flood covered the whole land. And so except for the eight people on the Ark , everyone was drowned because they thought that Jesus had lied to Noah and took no notice of his warnings.

After forty days, just as Jesus had said, it stopped raining and soon the flood waters started to go down. When 150 days had passed the Ark came to rest on a mountain and all the animals and Noah and his family got off and made new homes on the dry land. No doubt Jesus thought that, by drowning all the wicked people and only saving a good man and his family, He had solved the problem. But he hadn't!

Jesus promised Noah that He would never destroy the world by flood again and, as sign to forever remind people of His promise, He made a beautiful rainbow in the sky. Before much time had passed, Noah's sons and their wives had families and the people spread out across the world.

At a place called Babel they started to build a high tower. They wanted it to reach right up to heaven and show the rest of the world how great they were. Maybe they started to get scared that they might be drowned in another flood and wanted somewhere very tall that they could escape to. If that was so, then they obviously thought that Jesus had lied when He made the rainbow!

So Jesus made all the workers on the building site speak different languages and they couldn't understand each other (It was a bit like an Australian building site today!) and, pretty soon they gave up.

It wasn't very long before Noah's descendants were calling Jesus a liar yet again. In fact, it was only about 400 years until Jesus picked out another good man named Abram and told him, even though he was 90 years old and had no children, that he would be the father of many nations. The Bible tells us that Abram believed the Lord and that was credited to him as righteousness. But then, when Abram told his wife Sarai what Jesus told him, she said that, because she was old and had never had any children, that Abram should take her servant girl Hagar to be the mother of the child Jesus had promised to him.

So Abram did as Sarai told him and made her servant girl pregnant because he thought that maybe Jesus had lied to him. But when Hagar became pregnant, Sarai was jealous and mistreated her so she ran away into the desert. But an angel told Hagar to go back to her mistress and that she would have a son named Ishmael, who would, just as Jesus had told Abram, have lots and lots of descendants.

Of course Jesus had not lied to Abram and Sarai and, to prove it, He changed their names to Abraham – which means “father of many” - and Sarah. And then, when she was a very old lady of 90, Sarah had Abraham's baby too. His name was Isaac and, just as Jesus had said, he too became the ancestor of millions of people.

Isaac grew up, got married and had twin sons named Esau and Jacob. Later on, Jesus changed Jacob's name to Israel when they had a wrestling match because Israel means “he struggles with God.” When he grew up, Israel had 12 sons who founded the 12 tribes of the people who became known as “The Children of Israel.”

Sometime later, when Abraham's descendants, the Children of Israel became slaves in a land called Egypt , Jesus was very sad to see how the Egyptian people were bullying them and mistreating them so He set yet another plan in place to rescue them. First, He appeared as a burning bush to a man named Moses and told him that He had chosen him to lead the Israelites out of captivity to a beautiful land flowing with milk and honey. At first Moses tried to get out of that job and asked Jesus to get someone else to do it. That made Jesus angry because, when Moses said he couldn't do it, he was basically telling Jesus that He had lied to him when He told him that he was the best man to lead his people.

So Jesus told Moses to get his brother, Aaron to help him. Together they went to see the Egyptian king to tell him that the Lord had said he must let the people go. But the king, who was called Pharaoh, said he didn't know the Lord and he wouldn't let the people go. Moses and Aaron tried to convince Pharaoh by performing some miracles that Jesus told them but that didn't work so Jesus sent some plagues to make Pharaoh take notice.

To start with, all the water turned to blood, then there were nasty slimy frogs everywhere, gnats and flies and locusts that ate everything, terrible boils all over the people, to name just a few! Every time something awful happened the king told Moses that he would let them go if he got Jesus to take away the plagues but then when Moses did, he changed his mind. Even when the Egyptian's animals were killed and their crops destroyed by giant hailstones, he still refused to let them go.

And then Jesus said to Moses, “On the fourteenth night of this month, I am going to send the angel of death to kill the firstborn of every family in Egypt , both animals and people. The only ones he won't kill are those who prepare a perfect year-old lamb or goat for supper for their whole family and spread the blood on their door frames where he can see it. Where he sees the blood, he will pass over that house and not kill anyone or any animal.” That's why the Israelites have always remembered the Passover. Moses knew that Jesus wasn't lying to him so he instructed all the people to do as he had been told and also to pack up all their belongings ready for a journey because, this time, Pharaoh would let them go.

When everything was ready the angel of death came just as Jesus had said and, except for the people who had the blood on their doorframes, all the eldest sons in Egypt died – even the king's son, the crown prince. Well, THAT did it! That very night, Pharaoh told Moses to take his people and get out of the country. The Egyptians even gave them their gold and jewellery to take with them! There were probably more than two million men, women and children as well as all their animals that set off into the desert!

When the Egyptians realised that the Israelites had all their valuables they went after them but Jesus went with His people to help and protect them. At night He appeared as a pillar of fire to give them light and, during the days, he was a pillar of cloud to shield them from the pursuing Egyptians. When they came to the sea with only water in front of them and the Egyptian army behind them Jesus told Moses to hold out his stick over the water and it parted making a wide way through for the people. But when they had all got to the other side and the Egyptians were only half way across, Jesus let the gap in the water close up and the entire enemy army was drowned.

The Israelites had lots of adventures in the desert. When they ran out of food and water and grumbled to Moses that he had only led them out of Egypt so that they could die in the desert Jesus made a special food called manna fall out of the sky during the night and He made water come out of a rock when Moses hit it with his stick. But, even though Jesus told Moses to tell the people that they could only collect enough of the food for one day, yet again some of them thought that Jesus had lied and stored up some for the next day. When they went to get it though, it was crawling with maggots! Yet, on the sixth day, they were told to store enough for the next day because that was Jesus' rest day - called the Sabbath - and no food came down on that day. The food they stored for the Sabbath day didn't have any maggots!

Even though Jesus fed the people and gave them sparkling fresh water they still complained and so He decided that they needed some basic rules to live by. When the huge crowd came to a special mountain called Sinai, they set up camp and Moses climbed right up the mountain to meet Jesus. There, hidden from all the people by a thick cloud, Jesus wrote ten helpful rules with His finger on two stone slabs, which He gave to Moses. In the Bible those rules were called “The Law” and nowadays we call them “The Ten Commandments.” The first four are all about how we should love God and the last six are about how we should love each other.

Now you'd think that having very wise laws that Jesus Himself had given to them would help the people to live much better lives wouldn't you? After all, with written rules to tell them what to do and what not to do, they couldn't say they didn't know could they? But, believe it or not, they just went right ahead and broke them! In the Bible there is a special word for breaking the commandments. That word is “sin.”

Much later on, Jesus had a very special friend named John who actually wrote, “Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is the transgression of the law.” So there isn't any doubt what it means. Another loyal servant of Jesus named Paul also wrote that the wages of sin is death.

Because Adam gave up his rule of the earth to Satan, that meant that he gave up all his descendants to Satan too so that everyone who has ever been born has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And you remember that Jesus said, if Adam and Eve disobeyed Him, they would die. Now we know that Jesus didn't lie about that because everyone who wasn't born in the last 120 years has died haven't they?

After Moses and the people wandered around in the desert for 40 years, the children of the Israelite people who had left Egypt with Moses eventually found the beautiful land that Jesus had promised to them and they settled there. But out of the millions that had actually left Egypt in the beginning only two were allowed to go into the Promised Land because all the others thought that Jesus had lied when He promised it. Even Moses wasn't allowed to go in because he thought Jesus lied when He told him that He would make water come out of the rock. Moses hit the rock with his stick so that the people thought that he had done it rather than knowing that it was Jesus who had done it.

After Jesus had given the Ten Commandments to Moses He also told him how the people who were really sorry when they broke the law could pay their “fines.” You remember that the penalty for breaking the law was death and so, when they broke the law, by rights, the sinners should have been executed but once again, because He loved his people and is so merciful, Jesus even gave them a way to escape the death penalty. What He did was tell them that they could take a perfect lamb to the portable temple He had Moses make and there, the priest could kill the lamb in the sinner's place. This was called a sacrifice.

But even when they had a lovely home to call their own, where they could worship their Creator as He wanted them to, they still sinned and disobeyed the Ten Commandments. Even though the very first one said that they must never have any other God some of them built altars and worshiped other false gods that they made out of gold and wood and other things. Soon the sinful people were ‘paying their fines' with lambs and then going straight back to their sinning again!

There are lots more stories in the Bible about people who didn't believe what Jesus told them and you can read those for yourself. For example, there was a guy called Gideon who told Jesus that he thought His messenger had lied to him three times. But, of course he hadn't and when Gideon eventually believed him, he went on to be a great leader in Israel ! There are also some wonderful stories about great people who DID believe what Jesus said even though they made mistakes occasionally. Generally speaking though, things got worse and worse.

Eventually, Father God decided that the only way to save His disobedient children was to make one last very special sacrifice for everyone who had ever sinned or would sin in the future. There was only one sacrifice that could do that and that was God's very own Son, Jesus.

So God sent His Holy Spirit to a girl named Mary who had never had a husband and He gave her a baby son who was Jesus. And so it was that the Creator of the universe became a baby human being. As a young man he worked as a carpenter with Joseph, the man Mary later married and who became Jesus' stepfather.

Then, when He was about thirty years old, Jesus went to the River Jordan where a man named John was preaching to the people about a Saviour who was to come very soon and baptising people for the repentance of their sins. (When someone is baptised they are old enough to know what is happening because baptism is symbolic of their “old sinful self” being buried in the water when they are submerged and their “new born self” rising from the “watery grave” to a new life of obedience to Jesus' commandments.)

When John saw Jesus coming he expected Jesus to baptise HIM so he was very surprised when Jesus asked to be baptised by him even though, as the Son of God, He had never sinned. At first, John didn't want to baptise Jesus because he knew who He was but Jesus explained to him that it had to be done to fulfil His Father's plan and so John baptised Jesus.

That was when Jesus began his ministry on the earth as a human being. He set aside all His glory and became a man just like all the other men. He faced the same temptations that all the other men faced but, unlike them, He never once gave in. He just spent all His time telling people how much He and His Father loved them and how They wanted them to live.

Some men that Jesus met knew that He was the promised Messiah that the prophet Daniel had spoken about hundreds of years earlier and so, when He asked them to follow Him, they gave up their jobs and went with Him wherever He went. He taught them lots of things – especially how sad he was because the way that the descendants of the people that He had rescued from Egypt so many years ago were behaving.

The leaders of the Israelites at that time were called Pharisees and, whilst they were very careful to keep the Ten Commandments that Jesus has given to Moses, they had completely forgotten WHY He had given them. You see, Jesus had given them in love to help His people to live well, but the Pharisees were using them to enforce their own authority over the Israelites. They had even made up thousands more laws to try to explain how THEY wanted Jesus' laws to be kept whilst they provided all sorts of “loopholes” for people to get around the basic laws!

Jesus even said to them, “Why do you break the Commandments of God for the sake of your traditions?” But, because they thought that He lied to them when He said that He was their promised Messiah, they just wanted to kill Him. (Messiah, by the way, is a Hebrew word that means, “Anointed one” – just the same as “Christ” does in Greek. And in Jesus' case, anointed means specially blessed by God.)

One of the things that Jesus said when He spoke to a big crowd of people one day on a mountainside was this: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and teachers of the Law, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Have you looked out of your window today? Are heaven and earth still there? Well, we both know the answer to that don't we? So what does that tell you about the Ten Commandments? Do you think that Jesus lied when He said that?

Another thing that Jesus told the people was that He would go away to be with His Father for a time but that He would come back collect His faithful and obedient followers one day. When He does that is when, as He said it, “everything will be accomplished.” But it seems that lots of people today think that Jesus told lies because they say that we no longer have to keep the Commandments and they also say that dead people have already gone to heaven even though Jesus told Daniel that, until He returns, “multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake; some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt.”

Some people even say that they have seen dead people like Jesus' mother Mary! Of course, what they have really seen is Satan playing his usual tricks on people who don't know their Bibles and only listen to what preachers who DO tell lies have said. Jesus told another man whose name was Hosea, “My people are destroyed through lack of knowledge.” So, if you think about that, I'm sure you will agree with me that it would be a very good idea to study your Bible every single day and be like some people that lived in a town called Berea and check out everything that teachers and pastors say.

One of the commandments that Jesus gave to Moses says that people must “Remember the Sabbath Day” that he set in place as a rest day when He had made everything in the beginning. It instructs people not to do any work at all from sunset at the end of the sixth day of the week – which we now call Friday - until sunset on the seventh day – which we now call Saturday. However, most people who say that they are Christians today don't obey that Law. Instead, they work on every day of the week and go to churches on the FIRST day. I guess they must think that Jesus lied when He said that the Law wouldn't change as long as the heaven and earth were still here.

Actually, do you know what? It is those people who are lying because Jesus said, “If you love me, keep my Commandments.” And even though they SAY they love Him, they don't keep the one about the Sabbath do they?

John, who was one of Jesus twelve special friends called “disciples,” wrote, “We know that we have come to know Him if we obey His Commands. The man who says, ‘I know Him,' but does not do what He commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him.” and, “This is love for God; to obey His commands.”

When Jesus said that He would come back to take His followers to His kingdom to live with Him forever, He said, “If you will enter life, keep the Commandments.” Do you want to live with Him forever? He also promised that, in His kingdom, there won't be any more tears or pain. Everyone will love each other and there will be no more sickness or fighting. Even the lions and the lambs will be friends and all the wild animals will be like pets. Sounds pretty good doesn't it?

So what about all those people who don't keep ALL the Commandments? Well, Jesus' brother James said that even if someone keeps almost all of them and only slips up on one tiny bit of one of them, that person is still guilty of breaking the law, and Jesus said, “In vain they worship me, teaching for doctrine the commandments of men.” He also said, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but ONLY THOSE WHO DO THE WILL OF MY FATHER IN HEAVEN. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?' Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!'” How terrible it would be to think that you had been doing God's will all your life and then hear those words!

Remember how we saw that the word “sin” means to break the Law? Well, there are two ways we can break the Law. The first one is because we didn't know the Law and, as the apostle Paul wrote, “I would not have known what sin was except through the Law.” so that is why Jesus said, “My people are destroyed through lack of knowledge.” We MUST know and understand what our Bible says because, as you have already seen, you can't trust people to tell you the truth.

The second way that we can sin is because we decide to. Even though we know that to do something would be to break God's law, we make the decision to do it anyway. Maybe it is to steal something that doesn't belong to us or to tell a lie about someone that might get them into trouble. Maybe it is deciding that Jesus did lie when He said that the Law would never change before heaven and earth disappeared and, instead of keeping the Sabbath day holy, we keep some other day instead – or maybe, even no day at all. Well, this is what the Bible says about that: “If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgement and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God.”

Did you know that, if you decide that you aren't going to take any notice of the Commandments even your prayers are detestable to God? That means that all those people who go to church on Sunday are wasting their time even praying! Mind you, if they are having doubts in their minds about what they are doing and are sincerely searching the Scriptures for the truth and pray to God asking Him to help them find it, He will.

When Jesus had given all His messages and had trained His disciples to continue the work He started of telling the good news (that's called “the gospel” in the Bible) to the world the time came for His Father's “Master Plan” to be put into action. Because Jesus forgave people's sins, the Pharisees accused Him of blasphemy saying, quite rightly, that only God can forgive sins. What they still didn't believe, even after seeing Jesus perform dozens of miracles, was that He was, indeed, the Son of God. Yes, they thought He lied to them!

So they captured Him and took Him to the Roman governor who's name was Pontius Pilate and demanded that He be executed for breaking the ninth Commandment which says, “You must not tell lies.” At first, Pilate couldn't find anything wrong with Jesus but the Pharisees stirred all the people up in a riot and they just kept yelling for Jesus to be killed until, just to shut them up, Pilate sentenced Jesus to die by crucifixion – being nailed to a wooden cross and left to hang there until he was dead.

This happened on the very anniversary of the day that the Israelites had smeared the blood of the Passover lamb on their doorposts in Egypt so that the angel of death would spare their eldest children and animals. That is why Jesus is sometimes called “The Passover Lamb” or “The Lamb of God” because, when He died on that cross, he took the place of every single person who has ever lived or will live on the earth and died OUR death penalty in our place so that we can live with Him and His Father in heaven for ever.

At first it looked as though Satan had won. Nearly all of Jesus' friends thought that when He died that day, He had failed to defeat the enemy. You see, even though He had told them several times that He would rise up from the grave, even they all thought that He had lied to them.

But then something amazing happened! Three days after Jesus was crucified His Father God raised Him up from the tomb where two of His supporters had laid Him so that, when some ladies who loved Him went there to bathe his dead body with special oils, He was gone!

At first they thought that someone had taken Jesus' body away and they cried. One of the ladies, Mary Magdalene was walking away through the cemetery crying when she met a man who asked her what was wrong. She could hardly see him through her tears and so she told him that someone had taken her Lord's body from His tomb and asked if he knew who had done it. But when the man said her name, she recognised His voice and knew that it was Jesus.

She was overjoyed! She wanted to hug Jesus but He told her not to because He hadn't yet ascended up to heaven to see His Father. So Mary ran back to where Jesus' disciples were and told them the wonderful news that Jesus wasn't dead any more. The Bible doesn't tell us that Mary said it but I can just imagine her, in great excitement, saying to the disciples, “He DIDN'T lie! He DIDN'T lie when He said He would rise from the dead, He told us the truth and He is ALIVE!!

Later on, Jesus Himself went to see the disciples and told them that he had defeated Satan's ultimate weapon, death, and because of that, everyone on earth is saved by God's grace (which means “unmerited favour” or a gift that we have been given even though we don't deserve it because we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God). So does that mean that we don't have to do anything to be saved any more?

Well, remember that Jesus did say that to be saved, a person would have to believe in Him and that He was who He said He was – The Son of God. He also said that there is a wide gate and a broad road that leads to destruction and the way to everlasting life is narrow and the gate small and that only a few people will find it. Sadly, there are lots of people who still believe that Jesus lied when He said, “I am the way, the truth and the life and no one can come to my Father except through Me.”

In fact, there are lots of people who don't even believe that there is a loving Creator who made everything. Amazingly, they think everything just happened all by itself and that things like fish turned into people over a long time.

So they won't be finding the small gate will they? Then there are another group of people which is about three fifths of the people in the world who believe in different “gods.” That is a very big group and it includes many people who do believe in Jesus' Father – although some of them give Him a different name - but they don't believe that Jesus was His Son. They say that He lied about that.

That still leaves two fifths of people who SAY that they believe in Jesus and two fifths of the people in the world is NOT “a few” is it? So did Jesus lie when He said that only a few would find the narrow way to salvation? Or could it be that it is a lot of those people who are lying when they say they love Him? Well, there's a way we can find that out isn't there? Remember that Jesus said, “If you love me, keep my Commandments.” And one of His best friends, John said, “The man who says, ‘I know Him,' but does not do what He commands is a liar,” One of the commands that Jesus gave to Moses said to remember the Sabbath day and so it is quite easy to see anyone who doesn't.

Right at the very end of the Bible is the part called “Revelation.” That is the story of a whole lot of visions that Jesus showed to His friend John of what will happen just before He comes back. In that book it says that only a few people will actually be saved. Everyone who believed in Him and kept His Commandments will be given a beautiful home forever and ever with Him and His Father. But the ones who thought He lied when He said that heaven and earth would disappear before the commandments will all be thrown into a lake of burning sulphur where they will die and forever miss out on His promise.

So what do you think? Did Jesus tell lies or do you think it's a good idea to keep ALL His commandments?

When He walked the earth as a man, Jesus said that, after He ascended into heaven, people would no longer ask Him anything but that His Father would give them whatever they asked in His name and so, in Jesus' name, I pray that God will give you great wisdom as you consider these things and that we will meet in His beautiful kingdom one day.