Posted on 11/19/2011 7:23:19 PM PST by pastorbillrandles
Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:(Genesis 3:1-4)
The gospel begins in a God-given garden of delight, with a very simple cast of characters, Adam, Eve, the serpent, and God. The man and woman were given but one negative commandment by God, a prohibition. They were commanded not to eat of one tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and of evil. A vast array of other beautiful, fruit bearing trees were theirs to enjoy at will.
We can only know what went wrong with the world, and with the human race, by Divine revelation. God would have to show us what went wrong with the world, and He has. The man and the woman were undermined by the subtlety of the Serpent, they were seduced into repudiating God and siding with the serpent in his primeval rebellion against God.
I believe that an understanding of Genesis three is essential to a proper perspective on all of the rest of the gospel. It is important to see that the same thing that happened in Genesis three is played out on a larger, worldwide scale in the last days leading up to the final judgment of the world and the consummation of the purposes of God. Genesis three is both history and eschatology.
Now the Serpent was subtil…but can a snake be subtil? Isn’t subtlety a feature of intelligence? Subtlety is an attribute that can only be given to a responsible, moral being, therefore the scripture itself is being subtle, for it is implying that something more than a mere reptile is involved in this story.The serpent is the vehicle for another malevolent personality.
We are told without explanation, that the snake spoke to the woman. We remember that to the man, Adam, had been given the task of naming all of the animals. The act of naming the animals carries with it the idea that the one who names, has dominion over the ones named. This is in accord with the original commission given to the man, to rule over creation.
But something is amiss, for in the fact that the serpent spoke to the woman, there is rebellion against the divine order. It is the man’s wife that the serpent addresses, not the man standing there, the one who named the serpent. Obviously there is something very much out-of-order here.
The method of seduction is enlightening. The serpent probes the understanding of the woman, not by proposition but by loaded question;
,I>Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?
What a masterpiece of insinuation! He is not saying that God did say that, nor is he denying God said that, he is merely asking a question.
Yet the question itself is slanted- it could be paraphrased, ,b>Did God really deny you the freedom to eat of every tree of the garden? The serpent insinuated that God’s sole limit upon the couple was altogether unreasonable, not by stating so, but just by asking the loaded question.
The woman’s response offered the serpent clues to the couple’s inner state, openings to exploit;
And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.
Her answer betrayed a slight hint of dissatisfaction. First, she maximised the prohibition of God, (though not as greatly as the serpent ), by saying that not only were they not to eat of the tree, they weren’t even supposed to touch it! Thus she portrayed her benevolent, Creator in a harsh light, as though he were being unreasonable.
Secondly she minimized the sanction, by saying that God said , lest ye die, when originally God had said, You shall surely die! As if it may or may not be true that those who transgress the word of God are liable to the revealed punishments. Maybe not?
Now the Serpent perceived that the couple, (for Adam had been standing there also ),were ready to hear God’s Word openly denied;
And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die…
God had already said that the day you eat of the tree of knowledge , literally, “In dying you shall die”, but the serpent’s new ‘word’ was a direct contradiction of God’s word.
The subtlety of the Serpent is first to make an indirect appeal, not to the man whom God ordained to name and rule, but to the woman who was to be his helpmeet. It is a distortion of the Divine order. The confusion of the God assigned gender roles is a sign of satanic influence.
Secondly the Serpent seeks to call into question the revealed word of God. He ever hisses, Hath God really said…? In the modern age, the faith of millions has been ravaged through the virulent attacks on the veracity of scripture by groups such as the higher critics, and the so-called Jesus seminar.
Liberal theology has made a corpse of the mainstream protestant churches and is now marshalling its troops for an all out infiltration and attack on the evangelical church.
Through his servants, apostate ministers, the serpent currently suggests that the God of the Bible is harsh, ‘fundamentalist’, demanding and unreasonable. Through the new preachers, the serpent offers a new and improved “god” of love and mercy. In fact more than mercy, the new ‘God’ presented by liberal theology and the ‘emergent’ stream of the church is indulgent, tolerant of every kind of ‘lifestyle’, for he is a ‘God’ of “unconditional love”.
The serpent also is adamant that no one is “surely going to die”, for the new ‘God’ is too tender to damn anyone to hell. A fiery Hell as a place of punishment for the reprobate, is now seen as a ‘barbaric notion’ held on to by fundamentalists, a holdover from the dark ages. Religion has evolved such a sadistic concept of God.
Finally, when the serpent percieves that we are ready to recieve it, he offers an alternative “Word” in the place of the Word of God. These days there are many “words” from God and many “gospels”. We must be very near the final judgment.
The modern evangelical church has been undergoing this seduction for at least the past fifty years. Steadily the Bible colleges and seminaries have made on accommodation after another to the Spirit of the Age, in its constant question, Hath God really said…? Thousands of sons and daughters of Bible believing christians have been sent to study theology only to lose all faith in God as a result of the experience!
We are finally to the point where it is becoming easier and easier for ministers, theologians, christian musicians and television personalities to openly deny the Word of God. Jesus’ teaching on Creation, marriage, divorce, Heaven, Hell, Judgment, homosexuality, morality, love , the exclusivity of the gospel, all are being attacked and in many cases denied.
If judgment begins in the house of God, what shall become of the ungodly and the sinner?
more to come…
There was not lie involved except the result of your desire to find one. The Scriptures define themselves, and the same records that Adam lived 930 years, but that spiritual death occurs as a result of sin, “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:” (Romans 5:12)
You can also understand “day” as a period, which it is sometimes denotes, as well as a simile, “as a thousand years.”
Nor does is matter whether that Adam understood death to be physical, God said not to do it and it was an act of mercy that they did not also die physically.
But if one is determined to find fault with Scriptures in order to justify their unbelief and rejection of an ultimate creator and judge, or authority in general, then no amount of objective analysis will suffice them.
Yes! Nice explaining. That Freeper does not want me to reply to him. So I will point out His own logic to you. I just looked up his Freeper page. He is very vague on it. Do I accuse him of lying because he does not tell the whole story? No. He did not lie. But according to his logic he is a liar which I do not agree. Convoluted. IMHO.
Day/Yom controversy, typically used in an attempt to rationalize greatly expanded timeframes in order to incorporate evolution into Biblical Creation.
Well, I'm going to turn it around on you. A day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years a day, to God. How old was Adam when he died? It's in there. Look it up. Did he die in that yom?
He did. He wouldn't have died at all, had he obeyed.
I think the ¨serpent¨ was an image of God Himself. And with the monstrosity that the human mind is capable of, who needs Satan?
Admittedly I´m not Christian. But I don´t think the US could have been founded without Christianity.
God´s grace to You and Yours....
Well, as applicable today, what happened was the devil, who seems to have a victim entitlement mentality, seeing it as unfair that God has all the “wealth” power and position which the unworthy devil selfishly lusted for, sought to instill that “root of bitterness by which many may be defiled” (Heb. 12:15) in Eve, seeing she was the “oppressed class.”
The message was just that, inferring that she was being treated unfairly by God, the judicial and moral authority who was selfishly controlling the wealth in keeping Eve via an oppressive law from possessing the unique knowledge of good and evil.
And thus, having enlightened Eve to her oppressed status in Paradise, the (democrat) devil, in the original “share the wealth” and food equality act, enticed Eve to take the wealth by an act of revolutionary defiance.
So the mother of all living ate of the fruit, and not wanting to be alone in her guilt, gave Adam to eat, who went along with the rebel, thus incurring the spiritual death penalty and other effect of not striving lawfully.
And rather than this resulting in an “occupy Eden” scenario, the Landowner drove them out with two secret service types, who were not to be messed with, and instead Adam and Eve lost what they had and instead sweated in a “workers paradise,” though the Landowner was yet gracious to them and enabled pardon and reconciliation, and a paradisaical future for them who trusted Him. (You male like the poem here http://peacebyjesus.witnesstoday.org/CREATION2CONSUMATION-POEM.html)
It is obvious how applicable this is to us today, personally and societally. As i know too well myself, the devil works to foster the idea that God is malevolent, intent on our failure, and who does not have our best interest in mind, and you can see his success in the rage of militant atheists, and or he works to make souls see themselves as oppressed victims of those who have things, especially if they did so by hard work and developing their talents etc. The idea is that simply not having what others have makes you a victim, and justifies climbing up some other way (cf. Jn. 10:1) than that which is right, like demanding that those who have what did not achieve by work to divest themselves of what they gained by so doing, or that it be taken from them.
This rebellion then is against the very laws and principles that are necessary and just, not only that of requiring one to show himself responsible and worthy of power and privilege, but which restrains lust. And which even allows just principled dissent and charity and lawful opportunity toward the legitimately oppressed. What the western “liberal” mind wants is a Garden of Eden without God and the laws which are necessary because of the Fall, and instead basically hopes for a deified government which will supply them all they want with no moral demands, or restraints to pleasure, including clothes. And the OWS protest is much about the failure to achieve that 60’s dream (which results in what was seen in Haight Ashbury), with only drugs coming close to experiencing it, and which “hope and change” promised, and their anger is against the very capitalistic, earn-your-bread by diligence work and patience system which rewards such, and which is what actually materially supplies what they have.
And the “seminaries’ for this movement are the universities its evangelism is via the MSM.
This is not to say there is no place for dissent, but the rebellion of the devil was not based on God being selfish or malevolent, as He needs nothing, (Acts 17:25) and is always giving, and requires worship because it is right and to our benefit to worship what is supremely holy and can never fail, versus that of the finite creation which will fail and can deceive. In contrast, what the devil wanted was a selfish sharing of the wealth which he was not worthy of and which would be misused.
The tactics then that the devil used in the Garden is what is behind the present rebellion as well as that of Communism, and while they are often based upon some legitimate oppression, the real rebellion is against any moral and judicial authority that upholds just laws and accountability, reflective of God’s principles which the devil sought to controvert, and what they replace it with is typically far worse than what they had rebelled against, either in anarchy or the kind of oppression which often results from it.
The dissent of the Founders in America was not based on such a basic animus against authority, but against long standing abuses of power and an overreach which was no long necessary, which they replaced with more just and tempered accountable authority, but which depends upon its people being sufficiently governed from within by God and conscience , so they need not be governed from without by the gun of government. Thanks be to God though we see that being rejected and its results today, and thus need to pray. And preach.
Eve didn’t heed the word of God but listened to another who came to kill/rob/destroy (the word) who said ‘did God really say?’. Eve thought there was more (than His word) and it was the word that was there for her protection. That same deception is used today. Nothing new under the sun.
Beautiful! I love it. It is delicious take on today. Daniel! Thanks!
Ping.
Seems that when Satan attacks, the first thing he goes for is the veracity of the word of God.
We still see him getting the same mileage out of this technique today as there are millions falling for it hook, line, and sinker, as they add extra Biblical teachings to the Word of God.
Are you for real? They most certainly did die. The spiritual death was immediate.
The physical death takes longer but honestly, the body is not all there is of mankind. People need to get over their obsession with the physical body as being all there is in Christianity.
Let’s approach the events there in Eden from another angle,
What would have been the case had Adam and Eve NOT sinned? Had Eve said, Nope, no way, Serpent! then what would have happened to both Adam and Eve?
Gen 2:24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.
For the past five hundred years or so people have done the same thing Eve did when she ignored the fact that she was to be one flesh with Adam. They ignore the fact that they're to be one flesh with the Church and then, like Eve, just interpret everything to suit their own understanding and inclination. So, you're right, nothing new under the sun and those who see them self as equal to God always begin by claiming to be totally independent actors and not one with with the authority God binds them to.
I Don’t really know.
So when the Nephilim came to Earth’s women and violence was “greatly multiplied upon the Earth” via their offspring, was Satan trying to deploy a Clove-Pliven strategy against the efforts of God?
(tee hee...tongue in cheek mode here!)
I think the human race would have progressed in ways beyond which we could have never imagined spiritually, without the tragedies and sorrows we see today.
It’s not an idle question as I think something can be learned from it seeing that Isaiah 55:11 says God accomplishes what He wills or says.
Do think Adam and Eve would have grown old and died at some point?
“God is not a man, that He should lie, nor a son of man, that He should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?” Numbers 23:19
“Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;” Proverbs 3:5
Biologists have studied the question and I’ve read that the human body is keyed to literally last forever, only that something seems to have been added to our genetics so that with each successive generations of cells defects occur and vitality decreases. They speak of things call telomeres and other genetic structures that appear to shorten life spans of cells with each regenerative cycle; ongoing disease and immune assaults continue the damage. We could biologically live forever, but a clock seems to have been built in that keeps us from doing so. Human genetics have degraded since the fall. Modern medicine can preserve life some extent, better diets may help, but nothing stops what goes on in our genetics.
The Bible also says that “Thru man came death, thru man came also the Resurrection of the dead.” It suggests that our fore-parents’ actions, sin, and loss of direct contact with God created within themselves the destruction wrought by our telomeric”clocks” and the effects of these clocks got worse with ever shortening lifespans until we got down to the “ 3 score and 10 years or 4 score by strength” that was common in King David’s time and still hasn’t changed much....depending on diet, exercise and living conditions.
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