A post in answer to Clint Ratnam’s question:
Hadam and Hewah, known to us as Adam and Eve, were the first humans created by God’s hand. We can only surmise as to the fabulous beings they were. Since they were made in His image and likeness, they had abilities and skills that we can only guess. Adam named all living creatures, so you can well imagine his intelligence. The glimmer of telephatic ability and clairvoyance we now possess as humans, sometimes, is a mere shade of the full mental capabilities that God bestowed.
Eve was made because God saw that it is not good for a man to be alone, so you can well imagine the quality of the lady and the depth, intensity and quality of the relationship Adam and Eve had.
They were given the perfect existence: constant and total contact with God, a flawless environment to live in. They were incapable of boredom or ennui or ‘what do we do today there’s nothing much to do’. In the cool of the Day God came to spend time with them and speak to them. And teach them. They fellowshipped with him with their miraculous faculties of communication.
They were also incapable of death because they were made in His image and likeness. A God that cannot perish could not possibly create, in His image and likeness, two people who could perish.
But God gave them the most important quality, because God is just: he gave them free will. And with that, he gave them the opportunity to demonstrate their free will in His favour. He turned it into a test. Incidentally there is no reason to believe it was an apple. It must have been a amazing, irresistible fruit, impossible to refuse. That makes the test a test, doesn’t it?
The tree of the knowledge of good and evil was one of two trees. The other one ….. look it up, Clint. 🙂
Well the test was simple: do not eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
Lucifer was the most powerful of the angels God had created. In time he asked himself a single question: "I don’t see much difference between me and God, so why don’t I get the worship He gets? I believe I deserve it." He attempted to seduce all the angels into conducting a military coup in heaven and was repulsed. He turned to God’s treasured couple.
Now Lucifer was not the repulsive snake we have come to believe. Being the prime of the agengels and the leader of this host, he was a magnificent creature: hypnotic, compelling, persuasive. He appeared to Eve and instigated a conversation. We know the simplistic side of the conversation but it went, basically, this way: You can have a far better existence than the one you are having. God knows it, and doesn’t want you to have it because He likes the idea of you trapped in this arrangement. You need to see and taste this possibility. Eat of the fruit, and you will have your eyes opened. Share this fantastic knowledge with your husband.
So Eve ate of it, and took it to Adam. And so, in eating, they failed the test. Because the catastrophe was that the knowledge of good and evil is the knowledge that you can exist without communion with God. God made man fully free so that was most certainly possible.God is not under the control of anything, and his creation HAD to have choice and free will. Where there is obedience, there is disobedience. Where obedience is rewarded, disobedience forfeits the reward.
The tragedy is that with disobedience, you lose communion with God, and that existence is garbage. So Adam and Eve were cast out from Eden. They no longer merited that existence.
Humankind now is capable of death. Because sin kills. And with everything that Adam and Eve lost, they also lost deathlessness, and gained the ability to die. (Even then, Adam lived to be over 900 years old.)
We are today the arena of an intense battle between Satan and Heaven to prove that we are the children of disobedience. And that we do not deserve grace and all its riches. But Jesus has covered us with His righteousness.
Clint, Jesus reclaimed us. That was was the previous post was all bout. And what Jesus won for us is a million zillion times GREATER than what Adam and Eve had.
1 Corinthians 2:9But as it is written:
“Eye has not seen, nor ear heard,
Nor have entered into the heart of man
The things which God has prepared for those who love Him.”
This is a promise of NOW, the Dispensation of Grace. It is NOT about heaven, it is NOW, for believers like you and me.
Jesus did not accomplish what He did on the Cross to take us back to Eden but to take us triumphant in Heaven with Him for eternity.
