I was born from above in 1972. Prior to that work by God on my spiritual behalf I read scriptures doing research bu did not grasp the spiritual teaching just the historical data. For lo these many years I have had His Spirit abiding in my come-alive spirit. I have sinned, and I have sought His forgiveness and cleansing. What does He cleanse? Not my flesh, He cleanses my spirit to restore His Grace to my spirit, without ever leaving me or forsaking me.
The issue is spiritual death first, then Adam and Eve died physically, centurioes later. In teaching their children we believe they became saved for the resurrection because they believed God and taught their children the Grace of God. Even Cain believed God, when God told him what his fate would be, he argued that it was more than he could bear, and God responded by putting a mark on Cain. When Seth was born men began again to call upon the Lord, so someone had been teaching them about God and God's plans.
The error in Catholicism and so many other denominations is the failure to perceive the spiritual reality. The Catholics have their mythos regarding mythical purgatory. This myth reveals their lack of spiritual discernment because their purgatory is imagined to be a place of suffering until the flesh is cleansed enough to enter Heaven.
The truth they fail to see is that NO FLESH as we know it will be in God's Presence. He has told us He will transform us int he twinkling of an eye, giving us a new body and soul (behavior mechanism) to fit our eternally alive now spirit due to the Grace of God in Christ activated by our belief in Him and not by any works that we may or may not do.
Sp convinced are Catholics of their myth of purgatory that the hierarchy denies the Rapture! Yet GOD has made that Promise to all He has birthed from above. The birth is a spiritual event not a carnal event. The spirit already exists before the new birth, but it is spiritually dead in trespasses and sins of the flesh.
I believe that is why in Hebrews God says through Paul that the Word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword, seaprating soul and spirit ... to give lief to the dead spirit is to make it incompatible with the flesh, the body and soul of carnal living. When Adam sinned God's Spiritual Presence ON Adam's spirit ceased to be there and Adam died spiritually that very day. If you read the account in Young's literal translation you get a huge clue regarding the two modes of death.
I’ll just leave it up to the other posters to broaden your understanding of what happened, and the parties involved in the Garden of Eden - cause there’s a whole slew of things they can unpack ....how ever I tend to think you don’t have eyes to see - yet.
What were they BEFORE?
Remember they could eat from ANY of the trees but the one?
And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” Genesis 3:22
Looks like A&E were 'mortal' but had the chance, before they sinned, to live forever.