Where Is This World Heading?

OPTIMISM VERSUS REALITY
In September 2000, member states of the United Nations unanimously set a number of goals to be met by 2015. These included the following:

■Reduce by half the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day as well as those who suffer from hunger.
■Ensure that all children complete primary schooling.
■Eliminate gender inequality at all levels of education.
■Reduce by two thirds the mortality rate among children under five years of age.
■Reduce the maternal mortality rate by 75 percent.
■Halt and begin to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS as well as the incidence of other major diseases, such as malaria.
■Reduce by 50 percent the proportion of people who do not have access to safe drinking water.
Can these goals be reached? After reevaluating matters in 2004, a panel of health officials from around the world concluded that optimism has to be tempered with the realization that hoped-for gains do not reflect what is really happening. The foreword to the book State of the World 2005 reports: “Poverty continues to undermine progress in many areas. Diseases such as HIV/AIDS are on the rise, creating public health time bombs in numerous countries. In the last five years, some 20 million children have died of preventable waterborne diseases, and hundreds of millions of people continue to live with the daily misery and squalor associated with the lack of clean drinking water and adequate sanitation.”


A Tragic Starting Point

The Bible tells us that when God created the first man and woman, they were perfect and that he placed them in paradisaic surroundings. Adam and Eve were made to live forever—not just for 70 or 80 years. God said to them: “Be fruitful and become many and fill the earth and subdue it.” God’s purpose was for Adam, Eve, and their descendants to extend Paradise to all parts of the globe.—Genesis 1:28; 2:8, 15, 22.
http://biblize.com/search?q=Genesis+1:28;+2:8,+15,+22&q_scope=

“Sin” can refer to a wrong act or to a condition of being inclined toward badness. We are born in a sinful state, which affects our actions. “There is no man righteous in the earth that keeps doing good and does not sin.”—Ecclesiastes 7:20

http://biblize.com/search?q=Ecclesiastes+7:20++&q_scope=
Adam and Eve rebelled against God. As a result, they lost their Paradise home. More than that, they began a slow but steady process of physical and mental deterioration. Each day, Adam and Eve moved one step closer to the grave. Why? Because by turning against their Creator, they had sinned, and “the wages sin pays is death.”—Romans 6:23.
http://biblize.com/search?q=Romans+6:23&q_scope=
Adam and Eve eventually died but not before having a number of sons and daughters. Would these children be able to carry out God’s original purpose? No, for they inherited their parents’ imperfection. In fact, from one generation to the next, all of Adam’s descendants have inherited sin and death. We have too. “Through one man,” the Bible says, “sin entered into the world and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men because they had all sinned.”—Romans 3:23; 5:12.
http://biblize.com/search?q=Romans+3:23;+5:12&q_scope=
If you were to photocopy a sheet of paper that had a dark spot on it, that spot would appear on all the copies. As Adam’s descendants—copies, so to speak—we have the stain of sin upon us. It is the same mark that appeared on Adam, the “original”