Adam and Eve was created by God in a state of sinless perfection so they could glorify God, reflecting His righteousness and Holiness on the earth, and enjoy fellowship and union with Him. They calling was to exercise dominion or control, over God's creation through their own labors and those of their offspring in faithful response to the word of God. As a specific test of this loyalty, God commanded them not to eat of "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil." - Gen. 2:17 - Adam and Eve were to demonstrate their willingness to live "by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord." God warned them clearly that their disobedience would result in death.
Remember how Yahweh your God led you for forty years in the wilderness, to humble you, to test you and know your inmost heart - whether you would keep his commandments or not. He humbled you, he made you feel hungry, he fed you with manna which neither you nor your fathers had known, to make you understand that man does not live on bread alone but that man lives on everything that comes from the mouth of Yahweh. - Deut. 8:2-3 -
'If you are Son of God, tell these stones to turn into loaves.' But he replied, 'Scripture says:
Man does not live on bread alone
but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.' - Matt. 3:3-4 -
The fall from the original state of innocence occurred when Satan approached Eve through the serpent, who tempted her to eat of the forbidden fruit. Satan called into question the truthfulness of what God had spoken about the tree and its significance. He urged Eve to discover, through trail and error, whether it was her best interest to do what God had forbidden. Eve's sin did not consist of being tempted but in believing and acting on Satan's lie. Her rejection of God's command occurred when she ate of the forbidden fruit and persuaded her husband to do the same thing. The term Fall should not be interpreted to suggest that their sin was accidental. The temptation was purposeful, and their submission to it involved their willing consent.
The immediate consequence of the Fall was death, symbolized by their loss of fellowship with God. For the first time, Adam and Eve experienced fear in the presence of the Lord God; and they hid when He approached. - Gen. 3:8-10 - Because of their unbelief and rebellion, they were driven from the garden that God had provided as their home. From that time on, man would experience pain and encounter resistance as he worked at the task of earning his daily bread. Physical death, with the decay of the body, is not a natural process. It entered the human experience as God's curse upon sin.
Adam and Eve did not sin simply as private persons, but as the representatives of all human members of the human race. Their sin is the sin of all; and all persons receive from them a corrupt nature. It is this nature that stands behind all personal violations of the Lord commandments. For this reason, the fall of Adam is the fall of the human race.
Saint Paul thought of Jesus Christ as the second Adam who would rebuild the old, sinful Adam through His plan of redemption and salvation. As in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive.
Just as all men die in Adam, so all men will be brought to life in Christ; but all of them in their proper order: Christ as the first-fruits and then, after the coming of Christ, those who belong to him. After that will come the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, having done away with every sovereignty, authority and power. For he must be king until he has put all his enemies under his feet and the last of the enemies to be destroyed is death, for everything is to be put under his feet. _Though when it is said that everything is subjected, this clearly cannot include the One who subjected everything to him. And when everything is subjected to him, then the Son himself will be subject in his turn to the One who subjected all things to him, so that God may be all in all. - 1Cor. 15:22-28 -
That will explain why I, having once heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus, and the love that you show towards all the saints, have never failed to remember you in my prayers and to thank God for you. May the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, give you a spirit of wisdom and perception of what is revealed, to bring you to full knowledge of him. May he enlighten the eyes of your mind so that you can see what hope his call holds for you, what rich glories he has promised the saints will inherit and how infinitely great is the power that he has exercised for us believers.
This you can tell from the strength of his power at work in Christ, when he used it to raise him from the dead and to make him sit at the right hand, in heaven, far above every Sovereignty, Authority, Power or Domination, or any other name that can be named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. He has put all things under his feet, and made him, as the ruler of everything, the head of the Church; which is his body, the fullness of him who fills the whole creation. - Eph. 1:15-23 -
We want you to be quite certain, brothers, about those who have died, to make sure that you do not grieve about them, like the other people who have no hope. We believe that Jesus died and rose again, and that it will be the same for those who have died in Jesus: God will bring them with him. We can tell you this from the Lord's teaching, that any of us who are left alive until the Lord's coming will not have any advantage over those who have died. At the trumpet of God, the voice of the archangel will call out the command and the Lord himself will come down from heaven; those who have died in Christ will be the first to rise, and then those of us who are still alive will be taken up in the clouds, together with them, to meet the Lord in the air. So we shall stay with the Lord forever. With such thoughts as these you should comfort one another. - 1Thess. 4:13-18 -
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Sunday, May 24, 2009
I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!
I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.
HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -
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