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thecrossThe supernatural power to touch a bitter life and make it sweet.

That’s the secret people have been searching for almost since time began. Every human heart cries it out. Every person ever born longs for the power to turn sickness into health, loneliness into love, bondage into freedom and failure into victory. All mankind yearns to taste the full sweetness of abundant life…and to bring that sweetness to others whose lives have become little more than one bitter pill to swallow.

But does such power really exist? Is there truly a secret that can make any life an abundant life?

Absolutely. And, if you’ve made Jesus Christ the Lord of your life, you’ve already discovered that secret.

It’s the secret of the Cross.

“What do you mean, Brother Copeland?” you might ask. “The Cross is no secret. Lots of people know about the Cross.”

Well, they may know some basic facts about the Cross, but they don’t understand 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 Cor. 1:18).

Notice that verse doesn’t tell us that 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 affected 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 find out how bitterness got into the life stream of humanity in the first place. God certainly didn’t put it there.

The book of Genesis tells us again and again that everything God created on the earth was good. He created the land and the water and “it was good” (Gen. 1:10). He created all vegetation and “it was good” (verse 12). He created the sun, moon and stars; He created 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…” (Gen. 1:26). At that moment, man became a living soul. He was clothed with God’s own glory. God Himself empowered Adam (and later, his wife, Eve) to bring blessing and prosperity to the whole earth.

And when it was all finished, 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 command.

Everything depended on that. If they obeyed God’s command, life would be glorious and wonderful. If they disobeyed His command, they would die.

Sadly, they made the wrong choice. They disobeyed…and the light of God’s glory that once radiated from them was snuffed out by the spiritual darkness of sin. Satan, 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 filled 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. So the more they multiplied, the more the effects of the curse increased!

Under the curse of sin, life on earth which had once been so sweet became indescribably bitter. In fact, “bitterness” is the definition of the Hebrew root of the word curse.

I doubt if Adam realized the full extent of what had happened right away, but as time passed the magnitude of it must have dawned on him. He must have thought, Dear Lord, the seed of everything in the earth is bitter! My own seed is bitter! How will anything on earth ever be pure again? God, how can I ever be Your friend again?

Adam didn’t have a clue. He didn’t know what God’s plan was. It was a mystery hidden in God before the world began (1 Cor. 2:7). Yet from the very first moment the curse hit the earth, God began to talk about redemption. Right there in the Garden of Eden after Adam sinned, God spoke to the devil and said, There is One coming, the son of a woman, and He will crush your head…. (See Gen.3:15.)


Eagle Mountain International Church, Inc.
aka: Kenneth Copeland Ministries

Author Biography

Kenneth Copeland
Web site: Kenneth Copeland Ministries
 
For the last 50 years Kenneth and Gloria Copeland have been passionately teaching Christians all over the world how to apply the principles of faith found in God’s WORD to their lives.
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