Never trust a snake. Sometime after the beginning that began so well, everything began to fall apart. It all started one day when a snake slithered up to Eve.

“Did God actually say . . .”

That’s what that devilish snake whispered to the woman. See, God had put a special tree in the middle of the garden. It was a testing tree, an off-limits tree. It was called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and God told Adam not to eat of it.

The problem wasn’t knowledge itself. God wanted the man and the woman to learn and grow and do good things in the world. The problem was thinking that we get to decide what is right and wrong. That’s what the tree stood for—God’s authority to call the shots.

But that’s what Satan hates about God. And, it turns out, that’s what a lot of people hate about God too. We like to do things our way. We like to be the boss of ourselves. We like to be the boss of other people. We even like to be the boss of God.

So Eve doubted God and believed the serpent. She thought the devil was on her side and God was against her. She thought the snake was sweet and God’s commands were bitter. But when Adam and Eve ate the fruit from the off-limits tree, they quickly learned that it never pays to go against God’s way.

Because of Adam’s one sin, sin and all its messes came into the world for everyone. Life would be hard from then on. The ground would be hard. Work would be hard. Marriage would be hard. Having babies would be hard. And death would be really hard. What a rotten day—the second-worst day in the history of the world.

And yet, before you close this book and crawl under your covers and cry, you need to know that just as all the bad things began to happen, God’s promise was beginning too. He promised that one day there would be a Snake Crusher to flatten that slimy serpent and save his sinful people.

A war was about to begin. But God had already guaranteed that because of a great one to come, the good guys would win.