The Bible is the only book that says so clearly where we humans came from, where we are going, and what we exist for. There is no other book that would so exhaustively answer the question of what is the meaning of our life, how great is its significance...

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," says the first page of the Bible. And the latter says: "Here I am creating a new heaven and a new earth." And these two revelations are united by the great hope revealed in the Savior of the world, Jesus Christ: "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life" (John 3:16).

The Bible speaks to mankind in simple language, full of supreme reality and deep symbolism. It contains pages of God's immutable law, open to people for their life guidance; there are historical pages full of truthful descriptions of God's providential deeds in the world and of the state of fall to which mankind has reached when it has distanced itself from God.

In the Bible there are moral rules, laws given to mankind, on which alone the common life of people can be built; there are wise counsels, teachings, and consolations in the Bible; and there are prophetic insights and appeals addressed to humanity, to its individual peoples and to each individual human soul... So deep is the word of the Bible.

Looking closely at the religions of mankind, we find in all of them a reflection of the basic truth that is expressed in the Bible. In some peoples this original revelation is obscured, while in others it has been preserved more purely, but all peoples from the depths of time exclaim: "God was before there was nothing: God created all things. God will judge everyone"... These fundamental truths of religion belong to all and constitute the common treasure of the knowledge of God, the world, and man.

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," such is the most ancient belief of the earth, and we find it among peoples separated by continents and oceans. For some it is clear, for others it is covered with a veil of superstition and even worship of evil forces. But the truth of the Bible is heard in the first books of mankind. The Egyptian book of Menu teaches in these words about the beginning of the world: "He (the god), the only one capable of knowing the soul, appeared shining personally and created first by the thought of water." The waters were named Nara because they were created by Nara (spirit). The teaching of the ancient Persians speaks of a good god – the creator Ormuzd and his seven spirits, as well as of the first man "coyomorta, with a shining, upward-turned face...

And even those peoples who have stooped to the crudest fetishism, the worship of things and phenomena of this world, all of them have retained the belief that far and high above all these phenomena, objects, gods and demigods, the One God, Who created everything, reigns. The Eskimos, bowing to coarse idols, believe in a good creator god – Tanarzuk; the natives of Borneo into the deity Totadungam who is above all gods, the Indians into the Great Spirit, and the Kaffirs at the source of the Zambezi into the "great, great" who receives good people after death into his eternal abode. The ancient historian Prokofy writes about the Transcarpathian Slavs: "although they pray to rivers, nymphs and many deities, they still believe in one god of gods"... The Polynesians, New Zealanders, and the inhabitants of the Sandwich Islands, lost in the Great Ocean, although they revere and fear many of the gods of nature, their sages sing an ancient song about the great god Taaroa and his creation: "Taaroa was! He was in the void, there was no earth, no sky, no man! Taaroa calls, but there is no answer. Then he, the only being, created the universe out of himself"...

One could multiply these testimonies to show that the religious consciousness of mankind did not arise from a savage fear of the phenomena of nature, but from man's knowledge of a reality that surpasses human consciousness in our day. This reality enters the world and reveals its real origin.

The world is truly created by God. And it has a goal: to ascend to God through the podvig of the Son of God and the man adopted by God. The world could not have appeared by chance, senselessly, as a result of some blind play of matter; This amazing, harmonious world has its beginning, its meaning and its great purpose. Its goal is not the struggle of people, nations, classes or races among themselves for the sake of material booty, but the harmonization of mankind on the basis of the laws of the spirit...

Those who believe in matter as the source of their origin cannot comprehend these higher laws of the human spirit embedded in the world.

Gateway to Life

Religion explains not only the mystery of life, but also the mystery of death... People have different attitudes to the exodus from this world. There is petrification in the face of death, there is a cynical attitude towards it; there is a desire for death — from despondency or despair, when a person calls for death, feeling the terrible burden of life; In this state, he sometimes lays hands on himself or wants to be killed.

There is a state of indifference, when a person thoughtlessly accepts both life and death. There is a fear of death, an animal fear, which sometimes reaches such intensity that, even being outside of any visible danger to life, a person painfully awaits death, thinks of it as his own destruction; a different attitude is the resignation of death: a full awareness of the importance, responsibility, and even greatness of its moment as a transition to a higher realm of being; and, finally, the last attitude is angelic joy in the face of death. A person who knows the Kingdom of God already from the experience of earthly life awaits with great hope this Kingdom of God, the blessed repose of his spirit in God after the death of the body. He does not strive for the other world against the will of God, he realizes the value of earthly life, but joyfully awaits the moment when the will of God will take him to the higher world.

The Apostle Paul, who experienced this lofty feeling, says: "I have a desire to depart and be with Christ," for "my life is Christ, and my death is gain..."