THE TEMPTATION
HI DOVES!!
This study is a look at what really happened at the Fall of Man, and how it ties in with what happened at the Creation and what will happen, henceforth, when the Lord God decides to destroy the majority of humanity with the flood. This is juicy, but has little to do with apples!!###########
We have already discussed the Lord’s instructions to Adam, which he was not to eat of the tree of Knowledge of good and evil, because if he did, he would surely die. It is interesting to note here, that Eve’s instructions from the Lord are a bit different; “But of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.” Why did the Lord tell Eve to not “touch” the tree? Let’s find out what the word means in this instance. We find it is H-5060.
Strong’s Concordance; page 1538, H-5060 states: ‘naga’ (naw-gah); a primitive root; properly to touch, i.e. lay the hand upon (for any purpose; euphemistically, to lie with a woman); by implication, to reach (figuratively to arrive, acquire) violently, to strike (punish, defeat, destroy).
Let’s take this temptation from the top and with each verse, we will discover that something more than just eating an apple was involved. Before the serpent tempts Eve, he is a beautiful glistening creature, a dragon that stands upright, and can speak. Let’s refresh our memories by reading the definitions of this subtil serpent beast.
Subtil: H-6191 states: ‘aram’; a primitive root; properly to be (or make) bare; but used only in the derivative sense (through the idea perhaps of smoothness) to be cunning (usually in a bad sense):-- very, beware, take crafty counsel, be prudent, deal subtilly.
Serpent: H-5172 ‘nahas’; a primitive root; properly to hiss, i.e. whisper a (magic) spell; generally to prognosticate:--certainly, divine, enchanter, enchantment, use enchantment, learn by experience, indeed, diligently observe.
Beast: G-2342 states: ‘therion’; diminutive from the same as G-2339; a dangerous animal: -- (venomous, wild) beast.Remember, Satan was a beast of the field, in the spiritual sense. He was in the Garden of Eden at the forming of Adam.Genesis 3:1“Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field that 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?
The very first thing we notice in this verse is the use of the words the LORD God and just the word God. Remember back to our study on these two words when we looked at the Two Creations. Satan here is using the ordinary form of the word God, which means God with the angels. In describing God simply as God (elohim) instead of the Lord God (Jehovah), which is consistent with the rest of Genesis 2 and 3, there is a suggestion of the serpent’s distance from God.
God becomes just a remote, and therefore an impersonal abstraction. When people do not think of God as a personal covenant God, who judges sin and rebellion, they lose all fear of divine retribution; God becomes an absentee landlord.
Genesis 3:2-3“And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.”Next there comes the biggest lie, from the ‘father of lies’.
Genesis 3:4“And the serpent said unto the woman, ye shall not surely die:”This big lie, that Satan told Eve in the garden, is the very same lie being taught in churches, today. Pastors and preachers are telling people that all they have to do is be baptized by water, join the church, give their money to the church, do “good works” and they will be saved. They will be saved and go to heaven and surely they will never die. This lie is the basis of ‘religion’, for it is the same way, even today, that Satan, through his false teachers and preachers, teach that all religions are just different paths to the same God. Also, by this statement, “ye shall not surely die”, the serpent is calling God a liar, and that God’s Word cannot be trusted.
Genesis 3:5“For God doth know that in the day ye shall eat thereof, then your eyes will be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.”
There is only one tree in the garden that would know both good and evil, and that tree is so called because of this fact. Lucifer has fallen to earth, thrown out of heaven, he knows what pure good is, and now, because he rebelled, he knows what evil is, and evil is the opposite of living, evil will definitely lead one to death!
Ssssatan, that old serpent, told Eve that God lied because he does not want her to have the wonderful blessing that attends the eating of the forbidden fruit. Satan tells her that God does not want her to choose for herself, what is good and what is evil, but she will be able to do so if she eats the fruit of the tree that is forbidden. She will then be in control of her fate, independent of this absentee landlord.############SIDE NOTE: God is objective, and Jesus is subjective. Almost everyone you meet, other than born again Christians, say they believe in God, or at least the concept of a God. But, if they do not have a personal relationship with Jesus, this God they believe in is this absentee landlord that Satan is trying to convince Eve of. You can believe in God all you want, but it will still lead to death, because you have not eaten of the “tree of life”, which is Jesus and instead chose the same tree and same fruit that Eve did.############Genesis 6:1 “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.”It is obvious that Eve believed Satan’s lies and reached out and not only touched the tree, but ate the fruit, which contained the seed of rebellion, the seed of the anti-Christ, and the seed of death. She also gave this fruit to Adam to touch and eat. Here is the true revelation of the seed of the anti-Christ, and here is what really happened in the Garden of Eden. God’s Holy Word tells us that Eve was “beguiled” by the serpent. Let us briefly look into this word, and its meaning as used in Gen. 3:13.
Strong’s Concordance, page 1543; H-5377 states:‘nasa’ ; a primitive root; to lead astray, i.e. (mentally) to delude, or (morally) to seduce:--deceive, greatly, utterly.
Eve was led astray spiritually, deluded mentally and seduced physically. Spiritually lead astray by disobeying the LORD God’s direct command. She was deluded mentally by the enchantment used by the serpent (remember the mind is Satan’s favorite place to use delusion). She was also seduced physically, by the serpent’s sexual energy. Satan took advantage of the serpent’s physical characteristics to use him to beguile Eve.
Satan could not have a child directly by Eve, so he entered into the serpent, and then beguiled Eve. Satan cannot beget nor can he create. He is a sexless, fallen spirit being. Therefore he had to make use of the beast which was closest to man, and could even speak. The serpent in the Garden was a glistening dragon that walked upright, and did not become a ‘snake’ until after the Fall.
As the Seed of the woman was literally God reproducing Himself in human flesh, so the seed of the serpent is the literal way that Satan (for he is only a created spirit being) to reproduce himself in the manner which God reproduced Himself, so the Genesis account tells how he produced his seed and introduced or injected himself into the human race. Eve was seduced wholly; spiritually, mentally, and physically.
The Bible tells us that she ate the fruit; she did not just see it, or touch it, she took it into herself, into her body. We know that the Lord God told her not to touch it, because to touch, was to have physical contact which includes sexual relations. Not only that, Adam ate of the fruit, too. Adam’s sin was one of disobedience, eating the fruit of the tree that the Lord told him not to eat of. But remember that Adam and Eve were married, and Eve was “bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh”.
Eve had already eaten the fruit before Adam did, therefore, he did not want to leave his Bride in a fallen state, and not join her. Actually, this all foreshadows what Christ, the Last Adam, will do for his Bride, that small part of His Body that is ‘born again’.The first Adam sacrificed his place in the Garden, for Eve. God will come in the flesh, the Last Adam and sacrifice his life for all mankind, so that all may return to this eternal state in the Garden of God, heaven. Let us look at two verses in the New Testament that make this clear.
1 Corinthians 15: 21-22 “For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.”
The flesh and bones of spiritual man became flesh and blood. No longer would they have the opportunity to eat of the Tree of Life, they had now fallen into a state of being that would require blood to sustain them, and would need physical food, to nourish them, and would experience physical pleasure and physical pain and would eventually die.
When God confronts the three of them, he is extremely angry that the seed line of Adam has now been corrupted. He deals with the Serpent first, and tells him; “And the Lord said unto the serpent. Because thou have done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life.” (Gen. 3:14)
This beautiful, glistening, walking, talking, creature becomes a lowly filthy belly crawling snake. And, to fully show this is all about seed lines, God then tells the Serpent, “And, I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shall bruise his heel.” (Gen. 3:15)############(Important note for future reference: The religion created by Satan’s seed is the religion of the Pharisees that had Christ put to death on the cross, thus bruising Christ’s heel. When Christ dies for all mankind’s sins and then rises from the grave, he overcomes sin and death and thus bruises, or crushes Satan’s head. Sin and death are what Satan is all about, and Christ dealt him a deadly blow. The deadly wound to Satan’s head will be healed, as stated in the Book of Revelation, but only for a short time. God will use Satan for His own plans and give mankind over to Satan’s rule and religion, because that is what mankind wants. In the end times, the mass majority of mankind will want religion more than the Truth.) ############
Adam and Eve
The Serpent’s seed line begins in the Garden of Eden, and can be traced throughout all of history. But, let us backtrack for a moment. Before the temptation of Eve by the Serpent, the Bible tells us in Genesis 2:25 that Adam and Eve were man and wife and they were naked and not ashamed: “And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.” Knowing that Adam and Eve are man and wife before the Fall, makes Eve also guilty of the first act of adultery, not only physically, but spiritually. Her act of disobedience separated her from her Creator. This is what the Lord says to her after her betrayal with the serpent:
“Unto the woman He said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception, in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.” (Gen. 3:16)
If Eve just ate an apple, why does the Lord speak so much about seed lines, and conception, and why are Adam and Eve suddenly naked and ashamed? Next, the lord deals with Adam and curses him for his part in the betrayal:
“And unto Adam he said, because thou has harkened onto the voice of thy wife, and has eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow thy shalt eat of it all the days of thy life.”
Why did God curse the ground, in both the Serpent’s case, and Adam’s? Because what they did, their sin, cursed them to the earth, they were now both earth bound and would live within the realm of time and would never partake of eternal life. The Lord addresses this issue when he kicks Adam and Eve out of the Garden, saying;
“And the Lord God said, Behold, the man has become as one of us, to know good and evil; and now, least he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat and live forever: therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.” (Gen. 3:22-23).(Note: When the Lord says “like one of us” he is most likely speaking of the Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. If you notice the use of the words the LORD God, this is not God with the angels, as in Genesis 1, but the LORD God alone, with the other aspects of Himself, which is Jesus and the Holy Spirit.)CONCLUSION/ SUMMARY
God, with the angels, created natural man; men and women of flesh and blood, which needed the nourishment of physical food to stay alive. These men and women were told to populate the earth, be fruitful and multiply, and they did this by having sexual relations, just like the other wild animals on the earth and in the sea. This is the 6th day creation. Let me be clear on this, 6th day mankind was wiped out in the flood. We who populate this earth now, are not of this first creation, we are from Adam, but from Adam after the Fall, when flesh and bone became flesh and blood.
Satan became flesh and blood when he possessed the body of a wild animal, the serpent/beast, and mated with Eve. Now, the mating of spiritual man with natural man produced fallen man. Adam becomes a ‘flesh and blood’ being, instead of a ‘flesh and bone’ being. Due to this, we all are flesh and blood beings with souls, not ‘living souls’, like Adam and Eve had before the Fall.
To become ‘living souls’ again, and return to the Paradise that God has created for us, we must be ‘born again’, and in doing so, we are assured that our ‘flesh and blood’ being will become an ‘eternal’, ‘flesh and bone’ being, in heaven. Our names are written in the Book of Life, we ate of the Tree of Life, and will go to inherit all this when we die, or at Rapture.
At least a thousand years later, the LORD God, possibly all three aspects of Himself, formed a very special man in a very special place. God then formed the domestic plants and animals for this man, which would be his companions, not necessarily for food. The Lord then formed a woman from the man, and this woman was formed from a small part of Adam’s body and was from a bone, a rib bone, close to his heart. She was formed to be his companion, to be bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh.We know that Eve represents the Bride of Christ, the part of Christ’s body that will go in the Rapture. A very small part of the church (body) of Christ will be taken out of this world before the Great Tribulation, and this small body of believers will rule with Christ in heaven. WOW!
One must be ‘born again from above’ to become part of this body, this rib of Christ, his Bride. Eve represents this special body, this special group of believers that have a personal living relationship with Christ. We died while alive, so that we will never die. There are six other examples throughout the Bible of this Bride of Christ, Eve was the first. There are some wonderful studies on this subject….this love story written in blood is all about Christ coming for his Bride.
All the rest of the Christians that are not ‘born again’, will get a second chance during the Tribulation to give up their lives for Christ, but this time they will have to suffer and die physically to do so. They will be the guests at the Wedding Feast of Christ and his Bride, and they will rule with Christ on earth during His 1000 year reign.The most incredible thing is that the Lord tells us, all this, in the very beginning of the Bible!! So much can be gleaned just by understanding what He is conveying in just the first few pages of His Holy Word.
############The reason I am posting this study is to remind us of the beginning as we are now experiencing where this has all lead. We will get to see how all this plays out, as we come to the end of this Age. We will see the end from the beginning, and I thought it interesting to see the beginning from the end!! As the Bride of Christ, we will soon be returning to the Garden, to be with our Lord forever!!!
God bless you all…we are going home really SOON!!!
Patti C.