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NOTE: This article or series has not been updated recently. As such, it may possibly contain some outdated information, and/or ideas and beliefs which I no longer embrace, or which have changed to some degree.



Following the wonderful Creation of the world and the first man in Genesis chapters one and two, we find the Lord giving a firm warning to Adam. That stern Word of Advice was the following:

"But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die."


What I find interesting about this is that the Lord gave this warning to Adam even before Eve had been created. It seems to me that, as a wise Father, the Lord was giving Adam a fair warning of the dangers to come so that he could be aware of them, and not fall prey to them. As the Apostle Paul tells us in his second letter to the Corinthian brethren:

"Lest Satan should get an advantage of us: for we are not ignorant of his devices."


This is the very same thing we do with our flesh children. In addition to teaching them what is right and what is wrong, what is acceptable behavior and what isn't, we also make them aware of the pitfalls and the dangers they need to watch out for. However, despite all of our warnings, we cannot walk the path of life for them. This is something they must do for themselves. As with our flesh children, the Lord will likewise not decide for us. We must do that for ourselves. As I discuss in other articles such as "Free Will and Personal Choice", we have been given the freedom of personal choice, the ability to manifest our love for our Heavenly Father through our obedience to His Word. In the case of the Garden of Eden, Satan was apparently privy to the Lord's warning to Adam; and thus, he completely circumvented the youthful Adam, and attacked the harmony of the Garden through Eve. If Satan had approached Adam directly, perhaps Adam would have had the sense and the strength to resist; but because Satan attacked through his beautiful wife, Adam's defense against the demonic plan was weakened:

"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?"


As we all know, Eve, and then Adam, in direct disobedience to the Lord's commandment, did eat of the forbidden fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil:

"And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat."


As I've stated in other articles, it seems to me that there is a strong possibility that Adam and Eve had already contemplated committing their sin for some time before they actually disobeyed. We don't know how large the Garden of Eden was, but we must ask ourselves why the First Pair was near the forbidden Tree on that fateful day. Was it just coincidence? Was it curiosity? Or could it be that like a small child who is told "Don't touch!", they wanted to poke out a finger just one time and see if they could get away with it? Although Adam and Eve were made by God's own Hand, although they were as humanly perfect as a human could be, they were not gods. In a sense, they were like foolish children. Perhaps it was for this reason that it was so easy for Satan to get them to yield to their youthful pride and vanity and disobey their Heavenly Father. They knew that what they were doing was wrong. It wasn't a sin of ignorance. Not only had the Lord told Adam directly, but He had also put it in them to know; for as Paul tells us in his Epistle to the Romans:

"Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another;)"


Just prior to their disobedience, the voice of their conscience must have been sounding an alarm in their hearts: "Don't do it! You know this is wrong! You were warned not to!" Yet, despite the Lord's stern warning, they hardened themselves to His Voice. This is why immediately after their act of rebellion, we are told that they hid themselves. Just like that small child, they knew they had done wrong:

"And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden."


As the previous verse from Romans says, not only did Adam and Eve hide themselves, but they also tried to excuse themselves by shifting the blame once their sin had been discovered. Adam blamed his wife for his failure, and Eve proceeded to blame the serpent:

"And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. And the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat."


How much this sounds just like people today who refuse to accept responsibility for their actions, whose thoughts are only towards committing evil. The Prophet Isaiah exposed the sinful condition of the wicked when he said:

"Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood: their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; wasting and destruction are in their paths."


They may be able to skirt human laws, and even Divine Laws, and get away with it for now, but someday soon they are going to have to pay the price for their disobedience and their unbelief! The Lord will simply not swallow the excuse of innocence through ignorance! We will all be held accountable to the Lord!:

"So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God."


"For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad."


The result of the disobedience by Adam and Eve is that their eyes were opened, and the evil satanic knowledge began to pervert their thoughts and judgment:

"And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons."


They had been naked all along, yet it wasn't until they disobeyed and partook of the Tree that they received a distorted view of the Truth. What had once been viewed as something beautiful and natural, was now seen as something shameful in need of covering. In his Epistle to the Corinthians, Paul tells us that Satan is the god of this world:

"In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them."


Exactly what is it that the god of this world has to offer? Not much by God's standards. The Apostle John made it clear when he said:

"For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world."


These are the exact same things that Adam and Eve fell victim to when they submitted themselves to Satan instead of to God by choosing the Tree over obedience to the Lord. Their position of humility before the Lord was replaced by sinful pride. What had been viewed as natural was now viewed as sinful through the eyes of lust. Although this was a terrible blow to God's Creation and set things off-balance, it was something which the Lord had foreseen; and thus, He had no choice but to dispel both Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. Exactly why was this necessary? The answer is found towards the end of the third chapter of Genesis in the following verses:

"And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life."


In essence, by choosing the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, Adam and Eve had opted for the corruption of Satan over the purity which comes through obedience to God's Word. Before their fall, they viewed everything as being good, just as the Lord had said it was on each of the six days of Creation. However, upon indulging in evil disobedience, their judgement became corrupted. The Prophet Isaiah warned against this very thing when he said:

"Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!"


Because they did not possess the Wisdom or Spiritual Discernment of God, Adam and Eve could not possibly know how to properly use the new awareness they had acquired; and this is the problem which has existed to this very day as we will see shortly. Man likes to think that he knows what he is doing; he likes to play god with the building blocks of Creation; but the more he tinkers with the Forbidden Knowledge, the worse things become; and we totter ever closer to the brink of destruction. In the case of Adam and Eve, they had already shown their capacity for evil and disobedience through breaking the Lord's very first commandment to Adam; so what would prevent them from committing further acts of disobedience? Having already succumbed to Satan's first lie, what would prevent them from disobeying further by attempting to partake of the Tree of Life?

This is what the Lord had to prevent at all cost. If they had partaken of the Second Tree as well, they would have lived forever! They would have lived forever making mistake after mistake, committing evil after evil as demigods in human flesh! And who knows, just as Satan had done, given enough time, perhaps they too would have eventually become so presumptuous as to oppose the Lord Himself, and would have sought to ascend to the Throne of God through their perverted view of things. It is for this reason that the Lord had no choice but to oust them from the Garden, and place cherubims and a flaming sword at the entrance to protect it from their re-entering it.

But you see, Satan wasn't about to be defeated so easily. While Adam and Eve had failed to achieve immortality through Satan's first attack, that old dragon had something else up his sleeve which he was hoping would work. Only a few chapters later, we find the "sons of God", rebellious angelic beings, coming down to the Earth to mingle with humans and to have sexual intercourse with human women. Keep in mind that people were still living for hundreds and hundreds of years at this time, almost one thousand years in fact:

"And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose. And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years. There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown."


If you would like to read more on this topic, please refer to some of my companion articles such as "Nephilim: The Giants of Genesis" and "The Book of Enoch: Truth Or Heresy?". The basic idea here seems to be that Satan was hoping to create a super race of evil beings, half-human, half-demon, who would rule the Earth, and possibly make an assault on the Throne of God. Had he been successful, perhaps Christ's bloodline would have never survived! So, just as the Lord had foreseen, the evil did not stop with Adam and Eve. In fact, beginning with their own children, Cain and Abel, it continued to get worse and worse, until after the rebellion by the angels, the Lord had to put down His foot and make a grievous decision:

"And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them."


Thus, we arrive at the time of the great Flood in Noah's day which is also covered in other articles. One thing we can be sure of is that the Lord's Word regarding Adam and Eve dying the day that they partook of the Forbidden Tree was indeed fulfilled. In fact, it was fulfilled in more ways than one. In one sense, through their disobedience, Adam and Eve experienced spiritual death that day. Their sin resulted in a vast spiritual gulf being created between man and his Creator. In one of His parables, Jesus made mention of such a gulf:

"And beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence."


In another sense, Adam and Eve also died when they were separated from the Lord's presence through their ouster from the physical Garden of Eden. After all, we are told that the Lord physically walked in the Garden of Eden:

"And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden."


While some may disagree with me, I believe that this verse means exactly what it says. The Lord, meaning Jesus the Creator Son, actually walked amidst and fellowshipped directly with His creations. What better way to enjoy them? This idea of the Lord talking to them from way off somewhere in space seems a bit silly to me. He was there physically, just as He was in Noah' day. It wasn't until after the Fall, and after the Flood that the Lord began to distance Himself more and more from humankind due to their own disobedient, rebellious, and unbelieving hearts. From then on, He only communed directly with certain individuals throughout the course of Biblical history.

Returning to the fruits of the disobedience of Adam and Eve, in a biological sense, following the Flood in Noah's day, man's life span rapidly began to decline from hundreds and hundreds of years, to its current worldwide average of under one hundred years. This has been attributed to many causes such as genetic deterioration, exposure to ultraviolet rays, lethal diseases for which there is no cure, famine, poverty, war, natural disasters, over-population, etc. However, regardless of the many reasons modern man and his science comes up with, they cannot ignore the inescapable Biblical Truth of this one verse:

"For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."


Death in our current world is the result of sin; and this sin manifests itself in many different forms. As the Apostle John tells us, sin is the transgression, or breaking, of God's Laws:

"Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law."


As I will show shortly, man has broken God's spiritual laws, as well as His physical laws; and thus he is paying for it now in this physical life through death and destruction, and he will pay for it later as well unless he repents.

While this may be hard to understand for some people, God's decision to shorten our life span wasn't just an act of anger, it was also an act of mercy. As we have now seen, from the days of Adam and Eve, when humankind still lived almost a thousand years, it only took about fifteen hundred years for man to become so evil, that the Lord finally had to destroy him, save for Noah and his family. In light of this fact, by cutting back our life span, the Lord has slowed down the spread of and augmentation of evil. If He hadn't done this, perhaps the Lord would have had to destroy us several times over by now! Another possibility is that if the Lord hadn't shortened our life span, perhaps man would have accumulated enough knowledge and technological development to destroy himself much sooner than he has!; and no one can deny that we now possess the means to totally annihilate ourselves! By limiting man's life span, the Lord has only allowed him to accumulate knowledge in small spurts, building on top of the discoveries and inventions of the previous generation. Under the former plan, man might have accomplished this much sooner! In addition, we also know from a verse I will discuss shortly, that the Lord has also purposely kept back some knowledge until this present time of unprecedented scientific development.

One thing which we cannot deny is that, as each generation has become more technologically advanced, it has also become more evil, and more alienated from God. It is this evil knowledge which has caused man's ego to become inflated in his own conceit. As I point out in such articles as the series "Is Science Better Than the Bible?", foolish rebellious man has now become so vain in his imagination that he claims that there is no God, and that we are all a product of both planetary evolution, and human evolution. "There was no First Cause, there was no Creator" they claim. "Everything happened by random chance over millions and billions of years". This is totally contrary to their own laws which state that left alone, things tend towards chaos and confusion. King David experienced this same attitude in the unbelievers thousands of years ago when he proclaimed the following in one of his many Psalms:

". . . The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good."


About one thousand years later, the Apostle Paul echoed this very same sentiment when he wrote the following in his Epistle to the brethren at Rome:

"Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened."


As I said previously, the evil, corruption and destruction we see in the world today could easily have been surpassed had the Lord allowed man to continue living to almost a thousand years in age. If this were to have been the case, the Lord would have been forced to destroy this world at least several more times in the past six thousand years or so! So, as the Prophet Jeremiah lamented:

"It is of the LORD'S mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not."


So again, it is through a shortened life span that the Lord has revealed, not just His anger towards us, but also His mercy. Sadly, despite our limited life spans, man has finally reached the point of no return in his evil ways. As we know, not all knowledge is good; and this is precisely the fourth way in which the Lord's original warning to Adam has been fulfilled. We are indeed dying, killing ourselves, through the Pandora's Box we have opened. A lot of the science taught and practiced today is not godly in the least. It is evil knowledge being used by evil men which is bringing about our own destruction. The Lord knew that Adam and Eve did not have the Wisdom to properly use the knowledge they acquired that day, and we have certainly proven this to be true. Through the use of this knowledge, we have totally upset the balance of nature put in place by the Lord.

This evil knowledge, coupled with the inspiration of Satan himself, has resulted in the total pollution of our planet in every possible way. We have polluted our oceans, lakes and rivers which has had a detrimental effect on the life which teams within them. We have polluted the land which is essential for the very growth of the food we eat. We have polluted the atmosphere which is so vital for the existence of life on this planet. We have over-fished, over-farmed, over-hunted, and over-polluted. This has all been done in the name of making a profit with little regard for the negative effects it has had on the world or on our fellow inhabitants around us.

As if this weren't enough, we have carried our sins and destructive nature beyond the Earth and are now polluting outer space with our man-made garbage in the form of satellites, rocket fuel, rocket parts, scientific stations and other human refuse left on other heavenly bodies. In thinking of this, I am reminded of a prophecy made against ancient Edom, what is now a part of modern Jordan:

"Though thou exalt thyself as the eagle, and though thou set thy nest among the stars, thence will I bring thee down, saith the LORD."


It should come as no surprise then that someday soon, the Lord will be forced to stop man from carrying his pollution into the depths of space. If God were not to stop man, he would surely attempt to carry his violent wicked nature to other worlds. Thank the Lord that there probably isn't enough time for that to happen!

Aside from our pollution of Earth and Space, we have also polluted our own bodies with many un natural substances such as medicines which sometimes do more harm than good, mind altering drugs, herbicides, insecticides, lead, radon, asbestos and other industrial pollutants. This does not even take into consideration the harm we have done to the other occupants of this planet which have absolutely no say in what we are doing to them or to their living environments.

As if this weren't enough, we have polluted our minds with the modern lies of such theories as EVILution and the Big Bang which teach us and our children that the Earth, indeed the Universe, is millions, if not billions, of years old. The Apostle Paul refers to these things as science falsely so-called:

"O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called:"


I have discussed this more at length in my article "Adaption, EVILution and the Six Days of Genesis'.

In addition, the modern mass media has polluted our minds with twisted government propaganda which shapes the world around us. Many are led to believe, and willingly accept, anything they are told which will allow them to continue living their extravagant lifestyles without feeling any guilt for those who may not only be less fortunate than themselves, but who may in fact be making their wasteful lifestyles possible through cheap human labor, what amounts to nothing more than modern slavery! History is written by the victor, and the enemy is anyone who opposes the political, economical or philosophical ideologies of the government in power. Past and current wars are clear evidence of this. Through his violent murderous wars, man has broken God's spiritual Golden Laws of love time and time again. Surely this was epitomized during World War II by the total destruction of two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Despite the awesome destruction and death which was witnessed following the dropping of the first bomb, the order was still given to drop another one. How can the Lord possibly dismiss such evil committed in the name of peace!? The government of the United States can try to justify their actions as much as they want before the eyes of the world, but someday soon the Almighty God will judge America for her sins of oppression, violence and economic blackmail against the poor of the world!

Mental pollution has also occurred in a religious sense. The Truth of God has been adulterated with corrupt and distorted religious beliefs espoused by hired preachers who must do as they are told or find themselves without a job. These false shepherds have compromised with the world in order to gain public recognition, prestige and fortune. These enemies of the Truth have totally despiritualized the Bible, and have convinced many that some things are no longer applicable to our day; or that they mean something entirely different from what we have been traditionally taught. They have compromised with modern science and have attempted to diminish the Power and Glory of God by saying that events and miracles of the Bible can be explained by scientific means. The advent of the Computer Age and the government-sponsored public educational system have only served to speed up all of these processes of mental pollution.

And finally, we have polluted our spirits with the evil worldly enticings of Satan himself, the god of this world! As stated earlier, the Apostle John warns us in his epistle:

"Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world."


These are the things which are offered by the god of this world, and they have blinded many to the Truth of God's Word. All of these things have made the lives of many totally unnatural. They have been taken away from their Creator and placed in front of the TV, video, or movie theater screen where they feed their lusts; lusts for violence, lusts for sex, lusts for the things they will never have unless they slave away and sell their souls to Satan! They have had their lives polluted with noise, colors, sights, sounds and comforts which take them away from and make them forget their God. God's still small voice has almost been silenced in our current world; and it may possibly be that the god of this world will completely silence it one of these days.

Please go to part two for the conclusion of this article.

⇒ Go To The Next Part . . .

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