The Mark of Cain

The Book of Genesis, chapter four, tells us about the firstborn child on the Earth who was named Cain after Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden of Eden. At sometime after Cain was born, Adam and Eve had another son who was named Abel. Cain became a farmer and Abel was a shepherd.

After a period of time had elapsed it became time for the family to offer an offering to Jehovah their God. Cain’s offering consisted of the fruit of the ground that he harvested and Abel’s offering was one of the first of his flock of sheep that he had killed and prepared for Jehovah. Now Jehovah had respect for and accepted Abel’s offering, but rejected the offering that Cain brought.

Because of the rejection of his offering, Cain was very sorrowful and sad that Jehovah had not accepted what he had offered. In response to Cain’s offering Jehovah told Cain that unless he changed and started doing well, that he would enter into sin.

After a time had passed while Cain and his brother Abel were in the field talking, Cain killed his brother Abel. Now why did Cain kill his brother? It may have been out of jealousy since Abel had found favor with Jehovah and Cain did not.

Because of what Cain did to his brother, Jehovah chastised Cain, put a curse on him and sent him out to be a wanderer, never to be in Jehovah’s presence from that time on. Cain was feared that because he had become a fugitive because of his crime, someone would find him and kill him in revenge for taking his brother’s life. The Bible tells us that Jehovah somehow marked Cain so that everyone would leave him alone and not take his life.

Not what was the mark that Jehovah put on Cain? Before we get to that, let’s look at the whole situation from the beginning and attempt to analyze what has taken place.

What could have caused Jehovah to accept Abel’s offering and reject the one from Cain? Why was the offerings presented to Jehovah in the first place? What did Abel know that Cain did not about the kind of offering that Jehovah has wanted?

Up until this time, according to what we see in the scriptures, Jehovah had not given any laws for Adam’s family to adhere to that could have been considered a sin, in order to make these offerings sin offerings. But if they were not sin offerings, what else could they have been for. The scriptures don’t give us any clue to why the offerings were given.

One thing that we could consider is about what happened in the Garden to Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve had sinned against Jehovah by disobeying and not believing His word about what would happen if they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Because God had realized about what they did and considered that to be a sin, He gave them coats of skins to cover them. For Jehovah to have provided them with skins, it meant that one or two animals had to have died for the skins to be available. So, one could surmise that it required the shedding of an innocent animal’s blood to provide for the covering of Adam and Eve’s sin.

Could this have been what Cain missed out on? Was he have supposed to know that this kind of offering was the only acceptable one with Jehovah? It seems like Adam would have taught his son’s about this by then. Certainly these two boys would have witnessed or had been involved with offerings to Jehovah before this happened.

If the killing of, which was murder of his brother that Cain was guilty of, then why wasn’t his life taken in payment for Abel’s life? Why did Jehovah not allow his life to be taken by protecting him with some kind of a mark? Wouldn’t this lack of equal justice, a life for a life, be a signal to others at that time to do the same thing knowing that no punishment existed for murder? It turned out that Cain’s descendent; his great-great-great-grandson also killed a man and thought that he should escape punishment for it too.

In the book of Hebrews, the writer speaks of the faith of Abel as follows:

Heb 11:4 by faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts: and by it he being dead yet spoke.

So according to this Abel had faith and Cain didn’t. I wonder why that was? Abel and Cain were brought up side by side under their parents who supposedly taught them both about their experience with Jehovah in the Garden, including why they were expelled from it and about Jehovah providing them with the covering of skins. Did Cain not believe? If he didn’t believe their story then why did he provide an offering to Jehovah. I think they both believed, so there must be another aspect to one having faith and the other didn’t.

John wrote in First John the following:

1 John 3:10 In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil: whosoever does not righteous things is not of God, neither he that loves not his brother. (11)  For this is the message that you heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. (12)  Not as Cain, who was of that wicked one, and slew his brother. And why did he kill him? Because his own works were evil, and his brother's righteous.

So John says that Abel’s works were righteous and Cain’s were evil because Cain was of the devil. If Cain was a child of God then he would have loved his brother and would not have killed him. The Bible does not go into any detail about the righteous and unrighteous acts of these two brothers, but that does not mean that there were none.

The way John explains this is though he had reason to believe that Cain was of that wicked one, the devil. Now whether he meant physically or just spiritually one can only surmise. That is unless you believe what some do about Cain being conceived by a union between Eve and the serpent in the Garden. One must have a suspicion about that possibility with a statement that Eve made when Cain was born. Eve made the comment saying: “I have gotten a man from the LORD.” Why would Eve make a statement about Cain in that manner? It would cause one to think that Cain did not resemble Adam enough for Eve to believe that he was Cain’s father. Then again, when Seth was born Eve said: “God has appointed me another seed instead of Abel, whom Cain slew.” From this statement it could be that she recognized the resemblance between Adam, Abel and Seth.

If this is true, that Cain was born as a result of a union between Eve and the serpent, who was the devil incarnate, it would explain the difference between his works and his brother’s. Abel being a descendent of Adam, a son of God and Cain being descendent from the evil one, satan in the serpent. If this is true, then one must surmise that the ancestors of Cain, who became known as the Kenites, were also of that evil one and would explain why Lamech, a descendent of Cain also committed murder.

But still a mystery as to why Jehovah put a mark on Cain to prevent anyone from avenging the death of Abel by killing him and what this “mark” could really mean or what it was. Without any additional evidence it is of my opinion that the mark was nothing more than Jehovah in some was making it known to those living at that time to not avenge Abel by laying hands on Cain, rather than physically putting some kind of identifying mark on his body.

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Honoring Your Parents

Honoring your mother and father must have been of utmost importance for God to have included a commandment to do so in the original Ten Commandments that He gave to Moses. In order of importance, the first four commandments pertained to our relationship with God. The fifth commandment pertained to our relationship with our parents. The final five commandments pertained to our relationship with other people.

Because God stressed the importance of honoring your parents in His original Ten Commandments, the people of those days made a point of reminding everyone how important it was. Several verses in the Old Testament attested to it as follows.

Exodus 20:12 God said: “Honor your father and your mother: that your days may be long upon the land which the LORD your God gives you

Exodus 21:17 “he that curses his father, or his mother, shall surely be put to death.

Leviticus 19:3 God said: “You shall reverence every man his mother, and his father, and keep my Sabbaths: I am the Jehovah your God.

Leviticus 20:9 “every one that curses his father or his mother shall be surely put to death: he has cursed his father or his mother; his blood shall be upon him.

Deuteronomy 5:16 God said: “Honor your father and your mother, as Jehovah your God has commanded you; that your days may be prolonged, and that it may go well with you,

Proverbs 23:22 Says: Listen to your father that begat you, and despise not your mother when she is old.

Jesus Himself quoted God’s Word in order to emphasize its importance and what punishment was set forth by God for those who failed to obey His Commandment.

Jesus said: “God commanded, saying, Honor your father and mother: and, He that curses father or mother, let him die the death. (Matthew 15:4)

Moses said, Honor your father and your mother; and, whoever curses father or mother, let him die the death: (Mark 7:10)

The commandment to honor one's human parents is compared to honoring God. Since there are three partners in the creation of a person (God and two parents), honor showed to parents is the same as honor being shown to God. Because honoring parents is part of honoring God, it does not depend on the worthiness of the parent, even if your father is wicked and a sinner, you must reverence him. When God gave us the commandment to do so, He did not qualify it by saying whether or not the parent was worthy of honor or not.

In Deuteronomy, a procedure is described for parents to bring a persistently disobedient son to the city elders for death by stoning  Deut 21:18-21 “If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them: Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place; And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, until he dies: so shall you put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear.”

Of course this method, which all today believe was very harsh, is not and can not be practiced in our present society. But one can understand how effective it was to maintain discipline back then. After all, God looked at the dishonoring of a person’s parents as being an evil thing and we all know who is responsible for the evil in this World.

It cannot be determined what Jesus thought of this punishment as it relates to this problem in the day He was here, but without a doubt He would not speak against anything what the Father commanded to do, simply because He knew whatever the Father decreed was a just thing to do.  When Jesus stated that “the guilty person should die the death”, one could wonder if He was referring to the death of stoning, or the punishment being the judgment of “the second death”, which will be introduced at the end time.

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The Second Coming

Has the second coming of Christ occurred?

The following scriptural proof will be discussed clearly showing that the First Resurrection of the dead and the Rapture of believers still living at the time it happens has not as yet occurred.

This whole subject of the return of Christ for His Church started with a promise that Jesus made that is recorded in the fourteenth chapter of the Gospel of John.

Jesus said: “In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there you may be also.” (John 14:2-3)

This was the promise that Jesus made and will come to pass when He returns at the beginning of the Millennium to receive those who have been baptized into the Body of Christ. Both those who have already died and those who are still alive at His return will be carried away to spend eternity with Him.

The Apostle Paul addressed this in his letter to the Church at Thessalonica as he attempted to explain to them about what would happen when Jesus returns.

Paul said: “But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep (dead) that you sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring forth.) (1 Thess 4:13-14)

Paul explains that even though some believers have already died, the Spirit of God will resurrect them out of the grave.

For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we forever be with the Lord. (1 Thess 4: 15-17)

Then in Paul’s letter to the Church at Corinth, goes into a little more detail about why and how this translation will take place.

Paul said: “Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither does corruption inherit incorruption. Behold, I show you a mystery; we shall not all sleep (die), but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.  For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. (1 Cor 15: 50-53)

Paul makes it clear that our present physical bodies cannot enter into the Kingdom of God, but they must be changed into incorruptible, immortal, spiritual bodies and God will make this happen at the instant of our translation. Just to emphasize, our physical bodies will not be left lying on the Earth or in the grave, but will be completely changed into immortal bodies.

In the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Church at Thessalonica he spoke about a great falling away that is sometimes misunderstood by Bible teachers and I just wanted to touch on this subject of the “falling away” to be sure about what this refers to. Let’s start by reading about what Paul said.

Paul said: “Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him, That you be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand. Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, unless there comes a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; Who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sits in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God. (2 Thess 2: 1-4)

Some preach that this speaks about a falling away from the Christian faith, but that is not what is being said here. When that man of sin is revealed, which is satan who has been deceiving the people for ages, the falling away will be the people leaving the Churches who have been teaching their false doctrines. These people come to the realization that they have been taught in error by their false teachers and will seek places where the truth of God’s Kingdom is being taught.

At the time Christ returns to catch away His Church, another very important thing occurs. The Bible tells us about this in the twentieth chapter of Revelations as follows.

And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years, And cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: (Rev 20:1-3)

So it is written that satan is prevented from continuing to deceive the people for the thousand years after Christ takes His Bride into Heaven. Satan started his deception when he convinced Eve in the Garden of Eden that God’s Word was not true about them dying if they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Since that time, satan has been doing the same thing down through the ages with all of the Churches. But now, after he is bound the deception will end for one thousand years during the period of time know as the Millennium.

The Lord has removed His select Bride from the Earth and the people left on the Earth will learn nothing but the complete truth of God’s Word and the Bible. These people who have been left behind will be aware that many believers have been taken. They will know this, not because they witnessed them being taken up, but because there will be much evidence on the Earth of their disappearance.

Now has the second coming of Christ occurred? Have you witnessed the disappearance of many believers at the same time?  I hope your answer to this is no, or you have been left behind.

Is satan continuing to deceive the people by influencing our Preachers to deviate from the truth of the Bible? If your answer to this question is no, then you have not been taught the truth or you are not aware of having been deceived.

There is only one truth. That truth was the original writings by the Lord’s Prophets and Apostles and is not clearly defined in our Bibles today and is causing false doctrines to be taught in our Churches.

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The Resurrection

Paul speaks of the resurrection and the role of Jesus.

Throughout the New Testament those who wrote these narratives referred to Jesus as Jesus, Jesus Christ and sometimes they called Him just Christ. Jesus was without question the Christ, the Messiah, but to refer to Him as only Christ in some cases is misleading to the reader about the details of the subject matter. In the days that scripture was written, they thought nothing was wrong by calling Jesus only by the name of Christ and it wasn’t wrong. Although in attempting to understand what some of the scriptures are relating to us, it would be clearer to refer to Jesus by His given name and not His title of who He was. In order to understand fully the details and relationship between Jesus and God the Father, comments on these set of scriptures will use His given name of Jesus instead of His title of Christ.

1^st Corinthians chapter fifteen is a powerful chapter as follows that clearly states the position between God the Father and Jesus Christ His Son and which of them is responsible for doing the things described in these scriptures.

They read as follows:

15:1 Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also you have received, and wherein you stand; 2  By which also you are saved, if you keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless you have believed in vain. 3 For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Jesus died for our sins according to the scriptures;

4 And that Jesus was buried and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures:

5  And that he was seen of Cephas (Peter), then of the twelve: 6  After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some have died. 7 After that, Jesus was seen of James; then of all the apostles. 8 And last of all he was seen by me also, as of one born out of due time. 9 For I am the least of the apostles, that am not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 10  But by the grace of God I am what I am: and God’s grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; because I labored more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me. 11 Therefore whether it was me or them, so we preach, and so you believed.

12 Now if Jesus is preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? 13 But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then has Jesus not risen: 14 and if Jesus has not risen, then is our preaching in vain, and your faith is also in vain.

15 Yes, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Jesus: whom God raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not.

16 For if the dead rise not, then has Jesus not been raised up: 17 and if Jesus has not been raised, your faith is in vain; and you are still in your sin. 18 Then they also which have died who believed they were in the body of Christ have perished. 19 If only in this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.

20 But now Jesus has been raised from the dead, and has become the first fruits of them that have died. 21 For since by one man came death, by one man came also the resurrection of the dead. 22 For because of Adam all die, even so in because of Jesus the Christ shall all be made alive.

23 But every man in his own order (will be resurrected): Jesus the first fruits; afterward they that are in the body of Christ at Jesus’ return (the first resurrection). (Jesus was the first to be raised from the dead and when He returns, those who were in the body of Christ when they died will be raised also.)

24 Then will come the end (and the second resurrection), when Jesus shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when Jesus shall have put down all rule and all authority and power. 25 For Jesus must reign, until he has put all enemies under his feet. 26 The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.

27 For God has put all things under Jesus’ feet. But when God says all things are put under Jesus, it is understood that God (the Father) is excepted, which did put all things under him. (Everything except God the Father was put under Jesus’ authority)

28 And when all things shall be subdued unto Jesus, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto God that has put all things under Jesus that God may be all in all.

Ephesians chapter one also gives witness to the fact that God has put all things under the feet of Jesus the Christ.

20  Which God wrought in Jesus the Christ, when God raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, 21  Far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come: 22  And has put all things under Jesus feet, and gave Jesus to be the head over all things to the church

Again Hebrews chapter three adds credence to the relationship between God the Father and Jesus His Son, as follows:

3:1 wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus; 2 who was faithful to God the Father that appointed him, as also Moses was faithful in all his house. 4 For every house is built by some man; but he that built all things is God.

If you might ask me, what is the point of this narrative? It becomes just another example showing the relationship between God the Father and His Son Jesus the Christ, giving scriptural evidence that God and Jesus are not one and the same person.

Paul the Apostle to the gentiles, appointed to be so by Jesus Himself said to Timothy: “For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus;”

By Permission

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The End of the World

Everyone who is a student of the Bible has their own idea about when the end of the World will occur. They take into account the things the scriptures say about what to look for and what things that will take place before it happens. Jesus, while speaking about some things that would occur before the end comes said: “this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.” Can we assume that the gospel has already been preached in the entire World by now? Does this mean that every person in the whole World must hear the gospel before the end comes, or does this mean that it will just be preached in every country in the World? Since this is something which is difficult for us to determine, we should not just use this as a determining factor to know when the time of the end is getting close.

Jesus said: “you shall hear of wars and rumors of wars: see that you be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. He also said: “”For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in many places.” That’s right because these kinds of things have been occurring for thousands of years, so we know that the end cannot be determined by these things happening.

Many men have studied the many prophecies in the Bible to determine at what time the end of the World might come and have each one determined when they believe it should be. Look at how many books have been written and how many movies have been produced about the subject of the end of the World. So many of us have heard about an Antichrist that should come before the end and everyone is anticipating his arrival, knowing that would be a sign of the impending finale.

There is something I would like for you to look at and consider what is written in the twentieth   chapter of Revelations. If you look there you will see that it talks about two separate resurrections of the dead. Verses one through five tells about events that occur up to and including the first resurrection of the dead. It tells us that certain persons were set aside to live and reign with Christ for a thousand years and the second death has no power over them. This means that the final White Throne Judgment that was to take place will not affect these who are mentioned.

This clearly shows that there will be two distinct resurrections of the dead, separated by a period of one thousand years. The first resurrection takes place at the second coming of Christ when those believers who have died and those who are still alive when it occurs, are carried away to be with Christ for one thousand years before the second resurrection and the Great White Throne Judgment takes place. Notice also that during this period of one thousand years, satan will be restricted from deceiving the nations and will be set free for a time after the thousand years is over.

The second resurrection of the dead takes place after the thousand years is over and after the devil has been eliminated by being cast into the Lake of Fire, which is the second death. Everyone who were not carried away at Christ’s second coming will be judged according to their works and if their name was not found written in the Book of Life, they will be cast into the Lake of Fire also, receiving the punishment that the second death affords.

This twentieth chapter clearly shows us that the end of the World takes place only after the second coming of Christ and the first resurrection occurs and one thousand years has elapsed.

Now is the end of the World at hand? Has Christ returned and carried His Bride away and have we been left on the Earth waiting for the end of the thousand year period? If not, then we should not be looking for the World to end like so many of today’s false prophets are telling us. What we should be really concerned with is to be sure we are accepted by Christ at His second coming and carried off by Him in order to escape the final judgment that will not include those who have been reigning with Him for the Millennium.

We might ask the Father: “Sir, is this the time of the end?” Let us be certain that we are found worthy to be taken when Christ returns and escape the possibility of facing the second death.

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The Tree in the Garden

The Mystery of The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil

What was it?

Many teachers have speculated over the years as to what that first sin really was. Some have said that it was an apple that Eve ate, and others have said it must have been some special type of fruit that is nonexistent today. Then there was also some that taught that the first sin was that the serpent in the garden seduced Eve, and they came together in an adulterous act. Any of these interpretations could be true, but the scriptures do not specifically support them. The scriptures do say that there was a tree in the midst of the garden that God forbade Adam to eat the fruit of, and it was the fruit of this tree that both Adam and Eve did eat of, in violation of God’s commandment.

As we begin our exposition of these first few chapters of the book of Genesis, it is important for us to pay particular attention to the sequence of events as they are described. For it is the chronological order of the happenings during this period of time that helps to clear up what that first sin was or was not.

The order of Creation is most important to look at. First of all, it was the third day of Creation when God made the grass, the herbs, and the trees to grow. Then it was the fifth day of Creation when God made the different fish in the sea and fowl in the air. After that, in the sixth day of Creation, God made the land animals, man, and woman.

The first chapter of Genesis gives us this order of Creation in general terms, even though it specifically says that certain things were created on certain days. But the actual order of the Creation and the events that occurred on the sixth day itself are what we shou­ld concentrate on in this study, and they are described in more detail in the second and third chapters.

According to the scriptures, when God began to create and do work on the sixth day, the fish of the sea, the fowl of the air, the grass, the herbs, and the trees were already in existence. They were created on the third and the fifth day of Creation. But at the end of the fifth day of Creation, there were no land animals or human beings in existence. These were all created on the sixth day.

Gen 1:11 “And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. (1:12) And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good. (1:13) and the evening and the morning were the third day.”

Gen 1:21 “And God created great whales, and every living creature that moves, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. (1:22) And God blessed them, saying, be fruit­ful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. (1:23) And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.”

Beginning in chapter 2, a summation of the creation week is made in verses 1 through 6. Then in verse seven, it begins to describe in detail what occurred during the 6th day of that week. The 6th day of creation week began with the creation of man. God’s first creation on the 6th day was the man called Adam. Not as it stated in chapter 1, verse 27, where it says that both male and female were created. The man and woman were both created on the sixth day, but Adam was created before Eve.

Gen 2:7 “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”

Then in verse 8, it tells about God planting a garden in Eden to put the man in to live. Now it really doesn’t make any difference whether God created man first, or planted the garden first, verse 8 could mean either one. The important thing to understand is that Adam had been created before Eve and before the beasts and other cattle of the earth.

So at this point, God had created the man called Adam and had put him in the Garden of Eden to dress it and keep it. Verse 9 tells us that when God planted the garden, He made every tree to grow in it that was good for food, including the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Note very specifically that the tree of knowledge of good and evil was in the garden at the time Adam was put there, before the woman Eve was ever created.

Gen 2:8 “And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man who he had formed. (2:9) And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. (2:15) And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the Garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.”

Then just after God put the man Adam in the garden, He gave him a commandment. God commanded the man, not the man and the woman. He told the man that he could eat the fruit of every tree except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that was in the garden. The point needs to be made here that at that time, it was possible for Adam to commit the first sin by disobeying God and eating the fruit of that tree. This temptation existed before the woman was created and before God had created the beasts of the field.

Gen 2:15 “And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the Garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. (2:16) And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat: (2:17) But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat of it: for in the day that you eat there­of you shall surely die.”

I need to emphasize this just one more time. The tree that was not supposed to be eaten of by Adam existed in the garden before the woman or the beasts were created. The temptation already existed for Adam when he was first put in the garden and had nothing at all to do with the woman or the beasts, since they had not yet been created.

Then after the garden had been planted and the man, Adam, had been put there to take care of it, God determined that it was not good for the man to be alone. So He decided to make him a companion, someone to help him. So then God created every kind of beast, cattle, and fowl of the air and brought them to Adam to be his companion. But it turned out that they did not provide the companionship that Adam needed.

Gen 2:18 “And the LORD God said, it is not good that the man sh­ould be alone; I will make a helper for him. (2:19) And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living crea­ture, that was the name thereof. (2:20) And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found a helper for him.”

Since the animals had not provided Adam with the companionship that he needed, God then proceeded to create a woman for Adam, to be his helper and companion.

Gen 2:21 “And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; (2:22) And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.”

This ended the last day of creation. God had planted a garden in Eden for the man and his wife to live in and take care of it. He had provided them with everything they needed to eat and told them to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth (Gen 1:28). So it was God’s purpose for the man and his wife to produce children from the very start. If not so, He would not have created them to be physically prepared to do so and would not have instructed them to “be fruitful and multiply.”

Then satan came, in the form of a serpent, to subvert what God had setup so perfectly. The serpent did not come to Adam to cause him to disobey God, for he knew that God had given the commandment directly to Adam, to not eat of the forbidden tree. He came to Eve, who had probably heard God’s commandment from Adam. Notice also how the Word of God gets changed when it’s passed on from one to another person, like it’s done today from the pulpits of our churches. Eve told the serpent that God had said: “death would come from just touching the forbidden fruit” (Gen 3:3). But nowhere is it recorded that God said that.

The serpent caused Eve to doubt the truth of God’s Word about their dying if they ate the fruit of the forbidden tree, and she did eat of it. Since she did not die, she convinced Adam that it would not cause them to die and Adam also ate the fruit of that tree.

One thing needs to be mentioned here, and that is that the fruit of that tree was good for food; God said so after He had created it. This fruit had been provided for both the man and the woman to sustain them. So Eve ate of the forbidden fruit. Upon seeing that it was good to eat and did her no harm, she gave some to Adam.

Note that this fruit was not something symbolic, to be understood as being something other than the fruit of a tree. It was real fruit that according to God was good to eat.

So what was Adam’s sin? Without a doubt, it was disbelief. Adam saw that Eve ate the fruit of the forbidden tree and did not die, so he disbelieved the truth of what God had said. They did not realize that they had done anything wrong until they were aware of the presence of God in the garden, then they realized they had disobeyed Him and hid themselves. With this understand­ing, they recognized the difference between good and evil, right and wrong, and became aware of the feeling of guilt.

There was nothing special about this particular fruit tree. It did not bear a special kind of fruit to make one know the difference between good and evil; it was the act of disbelieving God and realizing what they had done that caused them to know the difference.

Neither was the fruit of the forbidden tree symbolic in nature, meaning that having a sexual relationship was against the will of God. God had made the man and the woman physically able to do this and had brought them together to purposely be fruitful and fill the earth. Even if this is what happened to Eve and the beast, it was not a sin for Adam to have his wife, for the scripture said that they would become one flesh when they first came together, and that is the reason God brought the woman to the man in the first place.

So it was not Eve’s sin that caused the curse of death to fall upon mankind; it was the sin that Adam committed, disbelieving God’s Word. The same is even true today. If we disbelieve the truth of God’s Word, we will experience spiritual death. That’s why it’s important to take God’s Word just as He gives it to us and not try to understand it by taking it out of context.

Nothing has changed since the beginning. It is still disbelief in God’s Word being the truth that is the sin, which will cause eternal separation from God, and satan is still at work deceiving mankind about the real truth of God’s Word.

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