JOHN BRADSHAW - It Is Written

80 BABYLON RISING
the boat in which our liberated couple was sailing met
a storm and...sank. The hero and his lady friend both
drowned. And that was that.
Owing to its setting and content, reading the book had
been hard work, but I pressed ahead stoically because I
was sure the book would conclude with a happy ending.
But it did not.
The poor, falsely-accused man was shipped halfway
around the planet, suffered every imaginable indignity
at the hands of his brutal captors, finally made a dash for
freedom, and died in the process. What an ending. And
from my point of view as a reader, what a terrible ending!
I’m thankful the Bible has a happy ending. The Bible
starts out wonderfully: “In the beginning God created
the heaven and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). The stars are
hung in the sky, the planet is clothed with beauty, the
animals are brought forth and Adam and Eve are created.
But it doesn’t take long for everything to take a turn for
the worse. Sin entered the world and brought with it the
curse of death. The entire human family rebelled against
God. God graciously promised that Jesus would come
to the world (Genesis 3:15), but precious few people
responded with favor to God’s wonderful pledge.
Only eight people could be found to save on Noah’s
ark, and they were hardly the purest people to have ever
lived. Believers in God were in the minority. When Jesus
came to the world, He only had 12 disciples, and one of
them betrayed Him to be murdered.
The early Christian church was confronted with a
Herculean task. Eleven men commissioned by Jesus to