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History really is just “His Story”—that is—God’s Story. And we are about to see His reason for everything He’s done in this earth—including creating America. The most important part of God’s whole plan is about to be revealed.
The unveiling of this centerpiece of “His Story” begins in an obscure village in Palestine called Nazareth. An unknown young maiden is startled one day by a visit from an angel who identifies himself as being no less than Gabriel himself. He tells Mary (for that was her name) that she will have a child and that this child will be called “the Son of the Most High” (Luke 1:32). It was further revealed to her perplexed fiancé, Joseph, that, “She shall bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, because He will save His people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21). Mary is shocked! She? Bear the long-awaited “Anointed One”? She was to give birth to the One Who would pay man’s debt to God? She was to bring into this world the One Who would fix what we had messed up in the Garden of Eden? This seemed incredible! Yet, the credibility of this mighty angel standing before her is hardly debatable.
And then the realization hits her. She is a virgin! How can she possibly bear a child? She looks at the angel with Continue reading
Besides the Tree of Life, there was another Tree in that Paradise: The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. This tree represented the opposite way of life. This way of living would be motivated by what happened outside of man. Instead of being inspired by the moving of the Life of God deep within him, if he chose to eat of this tree man would be rejecting God’s offer to come inside him and be his life. He would be choosing a way in which he would make his own decisions, instead of allowing the flowing will of God to come through him.
This was the reason for the two trees. As the Scripture declares,
The clause “It is finished”, in the Greek language in which Jesus spoke it, means to reach a goal. It also means to pay a debt in full, so that the books balance. Jesus had reached His goal of paying our debt. But to understand the “debt” Jesus was paying, we must revisit the scene in the Garden of Eden: When God begins to work with a pile of dust. He carefully shapes it into the form of a man. Once this human body is finished to perfection, God “blows” His own breath into the nostrils of this pile of clay. All of a sudden, the form moves! Light comes to its eyes! It gets up and stands erect like God. I can see Father God turning to the rest of His creation and saying, 
“If My people, which are called by My name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”
In 1857-58 God came in revival in this nation in a remarkable way. A businessman named Jeremiah Lanphier started a noonday prayer meeting in New York City. Within a month, hundreds were praying at noon and it began to spread across the region. Some prayer meetings at noon sprang up without knowing of the New York prayer meetings. God began to move across the nation bringing hope to many who had become hopeless. The church had become so weak it couldn’t even decide if slavery was right or wrong. And whenever the Church leaves the Scripture as its standard society always goes downhill. We can always tell the strength of the Church by how much its influence controls the institutions of education, business, and civil government. Jesus said,
