Doing God’s Will

First mention of a solution against death 7 Human sacrifice

July 7, 2016Marcus Ampe19 Comments

In the previous articles about the solution for man and offerings, we talked about the way human beings looked for ways to restore their relationship with God and how they wanted to please God with offerings.

The first human beings had the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge, symbolizing potentialities or possibilities that God has made available to Man, who is free to choose and explore as much as he pleases, even to separate himself from God, like the Prodigal Son from his Father.

Man had made his choice and had to leave the Garden of Eden, trying to build up a decent life. Though now he had to work hard for everything and was aware he had disgusted or displeased God. First there was only the Most High Divine Creator of all things Who was above Adam and Eve and above all other living creatures, the plants and animals. There was no hierarchy.

The first story were we saw human beings ‘fighting’ for a place or rang order is the one of Cain and Abel. Slowly hierarchy entered the human system. From simple hunter-gatherer tribes to complex, modern industrial societies we can find a hierarchy which is loved by people. Some scholars argue that gender played a central role in the formation and functioning of stratification systems. They showed that women’s exclusion from social life placed them in an inferior position, resulting in lessened life chances and status. While women’s standing in social and economic life has improved over the past half-century, women are still restricted by gender roles and patriarchy. Rich literatures examine the impact of family structure, occupational segregation, devaluation of women’s work, and sex-based pay gaps.

We also can see that the colour of skin, the place of origin, became important to place people on a step of the ladder. One’s racial and ethnic background or ethnicity, also greatly came to influence one’s life chances. When not belonging to the troop it could well be that people saw the person suitable to be used as an offer to the gods.

Human life was looked at as something very special and was considered by many as the most valuable material for sacrifice. The killing of a human being, or the substitution of an animal in place of a person, has often been part of an attempt to effect communion with a god and participation in his divine life.

We may find two primary types of human sacrifice: the offering of a human being to a god and the entombment or slaughter of servants or slaves intended to accompany the deceased into the afterlife. The latter practice was more common.

The realisation of human sacrifice to the promotion of the earth’s fertility may explain why the phenomenon has been most widely adopted by agricultural rather than by hunting or pastoral peoples.

In a study published in Nature¹, Joseph Watts, a specialist in cultural evolution at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, and his colleagues have analysed 93 traditional cultures in Austronesia (the region that loosely embraces the many small and island states in the Pacific and Indonesia) as they were before they were influenced by colonization and major world religions (generally in the late 19th and early 20th centuries). {On Human Sacrifice (Article Nature)}

By mapping the evolutionary relationships between cultures, the team suggests that human sacrifice and social hierarchy co-evolved. Although societies can become more or less stratified over time, societies that practised sacrifice were less apt to revert to milder degrees of stratification.

Clearly there were different ways to look at the sacrificial bodies. They could be seen as something very special and very worthy but also as something they did not want in their community and found good enough to give to the gods. More than animal sacrifice human sacrifice helped to stabilize hierarchy, and conceivably, therefore, had a common role in the development of highly stratified societies that generally persist even today. Instead of killing the one in power a substitute was taken to receive for some time divine status and then was put to death. Sacral kings (considered to embody gods of vegetation) were sacrificed when their vigour declined, in order to prevent reciprocal effects on soil fertility. In various places in Africa, where human sacrifice was connected with ancestor worship or veneration of the dead, some of the slaves of the deceased were buried with him, or they were killed and laid beneath him in his grave.

There were also places were people thought the elements of nature, like the moon and the sun, needed human nourishment, which led to sacrifices in which thousands of victims perished annually in their rituals, like by the Aztecs. The Incas confined such wholesale sacrifices to the accession of a ruler.There were instances of human sacrifice in Peru and among tribes of North American Indians.

All human societies have been shaped by religion, leading psychologists to wonder how it arose, and whether particular forms of belief have affected other aspects of evolved social structure. According to one recent view, for example, belief in a “big God” — an all-powerful, punitive deity who sits in moral judgement on our actions — has been instrumental in bringing about social and political complexity in human cultures.

The network of small and island states stretching from Madagascar to Easter Island — challenges that theory. In these states, a more general belief in supernatural punishment did tend to precede political complexity, the research finds, but belief in supreme deities emerged after complex cultures have already formed ².

Joseph Watts, a specialist in cultural evolution at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, who worked on the study, wanted evidence to examine the idea that “big Gods” drive and sustain the evolution of big societies. Psychologist Ara Norenzayan at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, has suggested that belief in moralizing high gods (MHGs) enabled societies to outgrow their limited ability to police moral conduct, by threatening freeloaders with retribution even if no-one else noticed their transgressions^{3, 4}.

Watts says

“Austronesian cultures offer an ideal sample to test theories about the evolution of religions in pre-modern societies, because they were mostly isolated from modern world religions, and their indigenous supernatural beliefs and practices were well documented.”

The believers in moralizing high gods (MHGs) got in their system some people who got control by aligning themselves with those supreme deities and then making lists of things people could and could not do. We can imagine their way of getting more power by making the people afraid with ideas of suffering or torture (in the underground or hell) and by the possibility to become a target of offering. For centuries certain religious organisation or churches made their followers afraid of doomplaces and told them that they could buy themselves free from those torture chambers by giving money to their church. People could buy indulgences.

The granting of indulgences was predicated on two beliefs. First, in the sacrament of penance it did not suffice to have the guilt (culpa) of sin forgiven through absolution alone; one also needed to undergo temporal punishment (poena, from p[o]enitentia, “penance”) because one had offended Almighty God. Second, indulgences rested on belief in purgatory, a place in the next life where one could continue to cancel the accumulated debt of one’s sins, another Western medieval conception not shared by Eastern Orthodoxy or other Eastern Christian churches not recognizing the primacy of the pope. {Indulgence –
Roman Catholicism, encyclopaedia Britannica}

Certain faithgroups or churches wanted their believers to believe that offerings could reduce the the debt of forgiveness of sin. The offers could exist out of many gifts but also by the performance of good works in their life (pilgrimages, charitable acts, and the like) and if their offerings were not yet sufficient they would get a lesser penalty after they died, by temporarily suffering in purgatory instead of eternal suffering in hell. Indulgences could be granted only by popes or, to a lesser extent, archbishops and bishops as ways of helping ordinary people measure and amortize their remaining debt.

In different cultures an other way was less bloody, having the sacrifice taking place by going under water. Whilst in Mexico young maidens were drowned in sacred wells, others found it sufficient to have an immersion. As such we can find Celtic rituals. Whilst the burning of children occurred in Assyrian and Canaanite religions and at various times among the Israelites, it became a custom by the Israelites to be cleared of sins by immersion to enter a new life. John the Baptist as such came to immerse his cousin Jeshua, Jesus Christ, who was the long awaited Messiah. About 40 days after Jesus’ birth, his parents had brought the customary sin offering permitted in the case of the poor,

“a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.” (Luke 2:24; Leviticus 12:6-8)

The offerings and human sacrifice legitimises political authority and social class systems, functioning to stabilize social stratification. It was also an ideal way to get rid of unwanted people or to take care that those who stood in the way could disappear from the scene.

In this way the Nazarene Jeshua an annoying person and possible peril for the security and peace in the Roman empire and in the Jewish community. Though it was not thought him to be an offer, several thought it better to give him away to be killed instead of the vigilant or robber Barabbas. Pilate knew that it was out of jealousy that the chief priests and elders wanted Jesus out of the way, i.e. being killed.

“Give us Barabbas!”, from The Bible and its Story Taught by One Thousand Picture Lessons, 1910

The man being called to be crucified did not have his roots in the right soil because nobody thought anything good could come out of Nazareth. (John 1:46; 7:41, 52) Although he was a perfect man and a descendant of King David, his humble circumstances did not impart to him any “stately form” or “splendour” — at least not in the eyes of those who were expecting the Messiah to come from a more impressive background.
Spurred on by the Jewish religious leaders, many were led to overlook and even despise him. In the end the crowds saw nothing desirable in the perfect Son of God.

Matthew 27:11-26 NHEBME (11) Now Yeshua stood before the governor: and the governor asked him, saying, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Yeshua said to him, “So you say.” (12) When he was accused by the chief priests and elders, he answered nothing. (13) Then Pilate said to him, “Do you not hear how many things they testify against you?” (14) He gave him no answer, not even one word, so that the governor marveled greatly. (15) Now at the feast the governor was accustomed to release to the multitude one prisoner, whom they desired. (16) They had then a notable prisoner, called Barabbas. (17) When therefore they were gathered together, Pilate said to them, “Whom do you want me to release to you? Barabbas, or Yeshua, who is called the Messiah?” (18) For he knew that because of envy they had delivered him up. (19) While he was sitting on the judgment seat, his wife sent to him, saying, “Have nothing to do with that righteous man, for I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of him.” (20) Now the chief priests and the elders persuaded the multitudes to ask for Barabbas, and destroy Yeshua. (21) But the governor answered them, “Which of the two do you want me to release to you?” They said, “Barabbas!” (22) Pilate said to them, “What then shall I do to Yeshua, who is called the Messiah?” They all said, “Let him be crucified!” (23) But he said, “Why? What evil has he done?” But they shouted all the louder, saying, “Let him be crucified!” (24) So when Pilate saw that nothing was being gained, but rather that a disturbance was starting, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, “I am innocent of the blood of this man. You see to it.” (25) All the people answered, “May his blood be on us, and on our children!” (26) Then he released to them Barabbas, but Yeshua he flogged and delivered to be crucified.

In the time before Jeshua the ancient temple courtyard was the altar for offering sacrifices. This foreshadowed God’s provision, according to His will, for a perfect human sacrifice to ransom the offspring of Adam. (Heb 10:1-10; 13:10-12; Ps 40:6-8)

This man, born in Bethlehem, at his immersion was proclaimed by God Himself to be the “Only begotten beloved son of God“. Nobody had managed to fully do the will of God neither could have brought a perfect sacrificial body in front of the Most Divine God. This time that man managed to put aside his will and managed to keep all the time to God’s Will. He was the living proof that man, if he wanted, could keep to God’s Commandments. Still to today there are religious groups in Christendom who want others to believe no man would ever be capable to keep God’s commandments, and therefore Jesus would have to be God himself. This idea makes of God a very cruel God Who imposed Laws to man which He knew they would never be able to keep. But God is a God of love and order Who does not asks more of people than they can endure or do. That what God asks of mankind Jesus managed to fulfil and by doing God’s Will all the time, not going against the Will of God, he was not at any time an opposer or adversary of God. Jesus him being a perfect human being made the sacrifice of his life acceptable in the eyes of God to be the best ransom that could be paid for making an end to the curse of death.

God even expanded the gift of Christ to mankind by declaring all those who have faith in Christ’s sacrifice, righteous on the basis of their faith. By believing in Jesus Christ and following his teachings, when they after their immersion try to keep to the commandments of God, they are viewed by God as sinless while in the flesh.

Romans 3:20-26 NHEBME Because by the works of the law, no flesh will be justified in his sight. For through the law comes the knowledge of sin. (21) But now apart from the law, a righteousness of God has been revealed, being testified by the Law and the Prophets; (22) even the righteousness of God through faith in Yeshua the Messiah to all those who believe. For there is no distinction, (23) for all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God; (24) being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Messiah Yeshua; (25) whom God set forth to be an atoning sacrifice, through faith in his blood, for a demonstration of his righteousness through the passing over of prior sins, in God’s forbearance; (26) to demonstrate his righteousness at this present time; that he might himself be just, and the justifier of him who has faith in Yeshua.

Romans 5:1-2 NHEBME Being therefore justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Yeshua the Messiah; (2) through whom we also have our access by faith into this grace in which we stand. We rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

Differently than in other religions where every time a new sacrifice is needed, the blood of Christ is for ever and makes that no other sacrifices have to be made.

Romans 5:9-10 NHEBME Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we will be saved from God’s wrath through him. (10) For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we will be saved by his life.

Romans 8:1-7 NHEBME There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Messiah Yeshua. (2) For the law of the Spirit of life in Messiah Yeshua made you free from the law of sin and of death. (3) For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God did, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh; (4) that the ordinance of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. (5) For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. (6) For the mind of the flesh is death, but the mind of the Spirit is life and peace; (7) because the mind of the flesh is hostile towards God; for it is not subject to God’s law, neither indeed can it be.

References:

Watts, J., Sheehan, O., Atkinson, Q. D., Bulbulia, J. & Gray, R. D. Nature http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature17159 (2016).
Watts, J. et al. Proc. R. Soc. B 282, 20142556 (2015).
Norenzayan, A. Big Gods: How Religion Transformed Cooperation and Conflict (Princeton Univ. Press, 2013).
Norenzayan, A. & Shariff, A. F. Science 322, 58–62 (2008).

Please find also to read:

Preceding articles:

Gone astray, away from God

Forbidden Fruit in the Midst of the Garden 3

Forbidden Fruit in the Midst of the Garden 4

Creation of the earth and man #3 Of the Sabbath day #1 the Seventh day

Necessity of a revelation of creation 5 Getting understanding by Word of God 3

Creation of the earth and man #6 Of the Sabbath day #4 Mosaic codes, Sabbaths and Sunday

Creation of the earth and man #17 Man in the image and likeness of the Elohim #1 In the image and after the likeness

First mention of a solution against death 1 To divine, serpent, opposition, satan and adversary

First mention of a solution against death 2 Harm or no harm and naked truth

First mention of a solution against death 3 Tempter Satan and man’s problems

First mention of a solution against death 4 A seed for mankind

First mention of a solution against death 5 Evil its law of death

First mention of a solution against death 6 Authority given to the send one from God coming out of the woman

Not trying to make the heathen live like Jews #2

Additional reading

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First mention of a solution against death 4 A seed for mankind

May 23, 2016June 17, 2016Marcus Ampe33 Comments

Vanity and the hope to be as God, knowing everything and being able to do everything, man made the wrong choice, going in against the Will of God, disobeying His mitzvot not to touch or eat of the tree of knowledge of good and bad.

The Divine Creator is a God of order, clarity, Who does not tell lies (= always telling the truth) and does not create chaos or confusion. (1 Corinthians 14:33) Man should have known that God always told the truth. But by letting his thoughts wander about, he was caught by his own bad thoughts that God would keep something hidden from him or did not want to give him what he also should own.

As He had promised they would get to know life and death, He cursed them to the hard labour which they previously never had to do. And having made out of dust, God told them they would return to it, becoming dust again, meaning to die and then to decay. (Genesis 3:19)

(Genesis 3:19 ASV): “in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”

In the previous chapters we discussed that what happened to Adam and Eve still happens to us every day. Temptation today still follows the same pattern with us as it did with Eve in the Garden of Eden. Always there is first the arousing of desire; then the mind, seizing upon that desire, rationalizes it to make it seem reasonable, proper, and profitable. Then the will acts — and often immediately confusion, guilt, blame, and a sense of limitation follows without fail. The process is absolutely relentless.

Adam and Eve thought, like we often do, that we can hide ourselves. We may think that we have hidden things we did from the eyes of man, and oftentimes many of us are deluded into thinking that because no human being knows about our guilt, nothing has happened.

Yet within us, whenever we yield to evil, a darkness falls and death tightens its grip upon our throat. {Ray C. Stedman}

When addressing the evil God shows His understanding and shows His willingness to provide help in their hopeless situation. It is not that man shall be able to escape for what they have done. No, there is the curse for the woman and for the man. and to the evil or the adversary of Him, Jehovah says

Genesis 3:15 NHEBJE I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will bruise your head, and you will bruise his heel.”

The evil or satan shall become subject of a war to the “death”. The thoughts Eve had, would now also come to her children, dwelling in them they shall be troubled by desires, vanity, and other bad things, bringing them into captivity to the law of sin which is in their members

Romans 7:18-23 NHEBJE For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwells no good thing. For desire is present with me, but to do that which is good is not. (19) For the good which I desire, I do not do; but the evil which I do not desire, that I practice. (20) But if what I do not desire, that I do, it is no more I that do it, but sin which dwells in me. (21) I find then the law, that, to me, while I desire to do good, evil is present. (22) For I delight in God’s law after the inward man, (23) but I see a different law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity under the law of sin which is in my members.

For those who have that incapacity to be fully correct or without fault, God did not want that they would not have to face total destruction. Speaking out His judgement over Adam and Eve the Divine Creator spoke about a future saviour. Some one who would be able to break the curse of death. Between the bad thoughts and the way of righteousness shall be a battle. Those who would like to follow their own self-love and what made Eve from this world shall find tribulation and lots of problems in this world, not strong enough to fight them. Though others who not want to be of that world shall be able to be stronger and find their way out, though the world may hate them.

John 15:19 NHEBJE If you were of the world, the world would love its own. But because you are not of the world, since I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.

John 16:33 NHEBJE I have told you these things, that in me you may have peace. In the world you have oppression; but cheer up! I have overcome the world.”

Yes, there will be one coming, by the promise of the Most High, who can call himself the only begotten son of God. Though the mind of the flesh may be hostile to God (Romans 8:6-7) this provider foreseen by God in the Garden of Eden, after the fall of man, long before Abraham, is the one we all have to look for and have to find. In him we shall have to put our faith to come away under the curse of death. He is the only man who succeeded to be without fault. He always managed to do God His Will. Though he was tempted many times (in the desert, in the square of the village and in the town, in the temple, in the garden of Gethsemane) he never gave in to the temptation, always wanting to do God His will instead of his own will.

Luke 22:41-42 NHEBJE He was withdrawn from them about a stone’s throw, and he knelt down and prayed, (42) saying, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.”

The writer of Bereshith notates God’s declaration that there shall be a separating of the serpent (the evil, the temptation) from the woman, and tells about the provision of a solution, which we shall hear about in later books as well. In the third chapter of Genesis we find the basis for the first promise of redemption which must be interpreted allegorically. In that light, the serpent stood for what it proclaimed:

“Ye shall not surely die” (v. 4).

This error was an emanation of the thinking of the flesh called “the carnal mind” by the apostle Paul, which, he declared

“is enmity against God” (Romans 8:7).

Moses lets us understand that there in the Garden of Eden was the base of our problems. There the first man and woman doubting God and His honesty, they becoming adversaries or enemies of God. Eve her thoughts are represented as the creeping animal, a serpent which became “the father of lies“, and all who endorse or proclaim error are considered as its seed, or children.

John 8:44 NHEBJE You are of your father, the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks on his own; for he is a liar, and its father.

Accordingly, in the allegorical signification of this statement, the serpent represents the spirit of error and deceit as it emanates from the carnal mind. It is frequently used for those who oppose the Truth (Psalms 58:4; 140:3; Matthew 23:33; Revelation 12:9), manifesting themselves as adversaries of the righteous. Its error stemmed from its presumption in reasoning upon Divine law from the standpoint of the flesh. This philosophy caused Eve to view the forbidden tree anew, and its attractive appearance aroused in her the latent propensities of the flesh which then became active and demanding.

“The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life”

which John teaches is

“not of the Father, but is of the world” (1 John 2:16)

were inflamed, and became “the word of the serpent” made flesh in her.

Adam and Eve wanted so much to have that knowledge of good and evil. Their aspiration to own that knowledge was fed by their lust for more. Paul calls such ‘wants’ “lusts” and gives them the title of sin in the flesh (Romans 8:3), or “sin that dwelleth in me” (Romans 7:20).

Romans 8:3 NHEBJE For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God did, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh;

The sending of that son is God’s solution for mankind. Though evil shall do everything to try to destroy him, it shall not succeed.

Michelangelo Bounarotti - The Fall and Expulsi... — Michelangelo Bounarotti – The Fall and Expulsion of Adam and Eve – detail (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By the offspring of the woman the world shall come to see a Virgin Birth where “It” (AV), a singular seed, shall “bruise” (AV), or “Shuwph” = to crush (Job 9:17). This enmity which had come into existence, between man and God, is seeking the destruction of the higher interests of man. While it will inflict injury, this enmity is subject to the ultimate conquest of man.

The sorrow of woman consequent upon the Fall brings God now having a woman bringing life to a man, but this time not without pain. Also the seed God provides shall bring lots of pain to his mother and generations shall look up at that miserable pain this son of hers had to endure.

Preceding articles

Creation of the earth and man #22 Man in the image and likeness of the Elohim #6 Spirits, spiritual bodies and illusory perception

Necessity of a revelation of creation 1 Works of God and works of man

Necessity of a revelation of creation 4 Getting understanding by Word of God 2

Genesis – Story of creation 6 Genesis 3:13-24 Enmity and curse

Forbidden Fruit in the Midst of the Garden 1

Forbidden Fruit in the Midst of the Garden 2

Forbidden Fruit in the Midst of the Garden 3

What others think about the tree of knowledge of good and evil

A multifold of elements in creation and a bad choice made

Not trying to make the heathen live like Jews #1

Not trying to make the heathen live like Jews #2

First mention of a solution against death 1 To divine, serpent, opposition, satan and adversary

First mention of a solution against death 2 Harm or no harm and naked truth

First mention of a solution against death 3 Tempter Satan and man’s problems

Necessary to be known all over the earth

Next: First mention of a solution against death 5 Evil its law of death

Additional reading

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First mention of a solution against death 1 To divine, serpent, opposition, satan and adversary

May 19, 2016May 20, 2016Marcus Ampe33 Comments

You would expect a created being be loyal to its creator. Also the Elohim Jehovah God, the Divine Creator, wanted His creatures to be faithful to Him.

All the fullness of the Godhead was and is still thereto be that of mankind to make them complete. The Divine Creator made us in His image but did not endow us with the attributes of Deity. Though He had given man the possibility to give names to all things and to govern this world. He provided His omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, immutability and infallibility, for our defence. Man had to be satisfied with favour and full of the goodness of the Lord.

The first man (1° Adam) felt lonely and ‘fancied’ some accompaniment. He willingly or readily was quite ready to admit to his Creator that he loved somebody to talk to and to share ideas with. It was ‘of pleasure’ to have somebody of is equality around him. ‘Obliging’ or ‘willing’ he ‘on his own accord’ let his ‘mind wander’ to have a partner which he did not find in those already created creatures. His ‘spirit’ was ‘willing’ to have somebody who could be with him and help him.

Genesis 2:18-25 NHEBJE Jehovah God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.” (19) Out of the ground Jehovah God formed every animal of the field, and every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. Whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. (20) The man gave names to all livestock, and to the birds of the sky, and to every animal of the field; but for man there was not found a helper suitable for him. (21) Jehovah God caused a deep sleep to fall on the man, and he slept; and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place. (22) He made the rib, which Jehovah God had taken from the man, into a woman, and brought her to the man. (23) The man said, “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh. She will be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” (24) Therefore a man will leave his father and his mother, and will join with his wife, and they will be one flesh. (25) They were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

There was no need to be ashamed because their thoughts were still pure and innocent in conscience. The covering of our body is the ensign of our bad thinking and going wrong or our sin. There was no proneness to lust or sin: they were and everything was “very good”.

Genesis 1:31 NHEBJE God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. There was evening and there was morning, a sixth day.

They got habitual to their environment, a planted garden in a place called Eden, which was in the east, in which they also saw the tree God had planted and had asked them not to eat of its fruit.

Genesis 2:8-9 NHEBJE Jehovah God planted a garden eastward, in Eden, and there he put the man whom he had formed. (9) Out of the ground Jehovah God made every tree to grow that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the middle of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Genesis 2:16-17 NHEBJE Jehovah God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; (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 of it you will surely die.”

God ordered man something He knew they would be able to follow. It was not that God demanded more than man may cope. (Because that is not something God does.) God’s commandments are rules given to man in the knowledge that they should be able to keep them. In case God would have created human beings of which He knew they would not be able to keep or to observe His commandments that would have made Him to be a Creator of imperfect beings and also a cruel God or cruel Father, because when He cursed those who are at fault when He knows they cannot keep His rules He would have asked more than they can bear or demand more than they can do.

God had created the human beings with a free will. You may notice above the ‘signs’ of the feelings and the thoughts of man. It was the free mind and the capability of man to think and to reason that may have brought them to question their Maker.

From the man was taken a bone and as such being flesh of the man’s flesh the mannin or wo-man came living next to him and reasoning with him. They had all sorts of things pleasant in their sight and should have had no reason to complain.

File:Blake Adam and Eve.jpg — Adam and Eve by William Blake (1808), Watercolour on paper

With the tree of knowledge of good and evil in their sight, both Adam and Eve were confronted with the idea that they might also get the same insight as God and could come to know the good and evil. Though for them God having said that they should not eat of it, neither to touch it, lest they’ll die, seemed as if God was holding something back from them which they also could deserve.

The inner feelings or thought about that tree became very tempting. It was as a reptile creeping in their head, coming to their heart, making them to believe they could gain a knowledge which they did not have yet. The word ‘serpent‘ which can be found in many English translations stands for the Hebrew word that indicate “quickness of perception” or “to hiss, to divine”, in Greek, “to see” or also as the Hebrew meaning for a “voice of flesh”. It was an act of expressing (a negative view or reaction) disapproval, contempt, or dissatisfaction. They showed discontent with their situation God having the right to touch the tree of knowledge and to eat that fruit whilst they were forbidden to come near it.

The original wording in the books of Moses show there was such a sound uttered as an exclamation of derision, contempt, etc, which made them doubt God and go against His Wishes. Such going against the Will of God is called sin and makes the person an adversary of God, for which the word ‘satan‘ is used. Satan is an act (and not a person as such) of taking on adversary or offering resistance or opposition. Adam and Eve felt an aversion against their Maker the Most High Elohim and this brought them to eat from the fruit of the tree of knowledge.

Their backbone was not strong enough. Their willpower was not so strong they could resist their inner thoughts of trying out what it would give if they ate from that tree. By absence of consensus ad idem Adam gave in to the will of the woman and with her, tried to eat from what they thought would give them more power and would bring them on the same line as God.

It is this act of wanting to become like God and disobeying His commandment what brought to mankind the first sin or mortal sin and the fall of man.
Selfseeking in the hope to gain something he thought God kept secret for him man out of selfishness, self-willed went his own way , headstrong or high-handed his self-complacency and conceitedness brought him to take the fruit. With his own hands man took the fruit like the woman had done in the hope to receive self-satisfaction, knowledge and more power.

The first human beings their mind had become adverse to or at enmity with God.

Genesis 3:1-8 NHEBJE Now the serpent was more subtle than any animal of the field which Jehovah God had made. He said to the woman, “Has God really said, ‘You shall not eat of any tree of the garden?'” (2) The woman said to the serpent, “Of the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat, (3) but of the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat of it, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.'” (4) The serpent said to the woman, “You won’t surely die, (5) for God knows that in the day you eat it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (6) When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit, and ate; and she gave some to her husband with her, and he ate. (7) The eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked. They sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons. (8) They heard the voice of Jehovah God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of Jehovah God among the trees of the garden.

Psalms 12:4 NHEBJE who have said, “With our tongue we will prevail. Our lips are our own. Who is lord over us?”

Now they had found a liar in themselves. (Proverebs 30:6) Their idea of becoming like God made that they gained knowledge of good and evil, like God had warned them. Every thing that is desirable to be known could have been that knowledge. But with it came also what they thought God would not bring over them. This means that they thought God was not telling the truth or that God was a liar. But God always tells the absolute truth and does not tell lies. This means that those who love God believe that God is always clear in His speaking and does not hide something but always says how it is.

Eve doubted of the certainty of what God had said whilst her partner the 1° Adam plainly and cleanly impugned it. God’s veracity was attacked first, than the truth of God’s Word was doubted and God‘s benevolence and goodness toward humankind was also further attacked (Genesis 3:5).

In a way it is ironical that mankind tried to grasp from God what was already his and was not willing to be patient enough to see everything evolve. The rabbis say that the eyes and ears are windows of the soul and what we let in, grows in our heart until the fateful act is committed. Eve is the first example given to us and should also be a warning to be alert and to not let us be carried away by our bad inner thoughts.

Preceding posts:

The very very beginning 2 The Word and words

A multifold of elements in creation and a bad choice made

Creation of the earth and man #17 Man in the image and likeness of the Elohim #1 In the image and after the likeness

Creation of the earth and man #18 Man in the image and likeness of the Elohim #2 Assimilation of character

Creation of the earth and man #19 Man in the image and likeness of the Elohim #3 Beholding image and likeness of the invisible God

Forbidden Fruit in the Midst of the Garden 1

Forbidden Fruit in the Midst of the Garden 2

Forbidden Fruit in the Midst of the Garden 3

Genesis – Story of creation 5 Genesis 3:1-12 Eating of the fruit-tree of knowledge

Genesis – Story of creation 6 Genesis 3:13-24 Enmity and curse

Man in the image and likeness of the Elohim #8 The Formation of woman #1

Man in the image and likeness of the Elohim #9 The Formation of woman #2

Gone astray, away from God

Continues with: First mention of a solution against death 2 Harm or no harm and naked truth

Additional reading

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Creation of the earth and man #23 Man in the image and likeness of the Elohim #7 Corporeal and spiritual change

February 2, 2016February 2, 2016Christadelphians5 Comments

In the previous chapters we have looked at the corporeal change of those, who have first been morally renewed unto knowledge after the image of Him that had created them from “sinful flesh” into spirit, which is an absolute necessity, before they can inherit the Kingdom of God. After people get to know God’s Word and come to understand Who created the earth and Who had sent His son for the good of man they shall have to come to see that even when we still have to face death in this system of things we may live by the hope of something better to come.

Though we have the sleep in death and shall perhaps have to face very difficult times, even facing persecution we should be convinced not to sorrow as the others. We should not react like the unbelievers, who may react heavily because they do not have such a hope the followers of Jeshua have.
For if we have given ourselves to become disciples of the sent one from God believe that this son of God, Jesus, died and rose again, we do have our hope in him because knowing that God can not die, but the son of man Jesus really died, we have hope in this example God has given the world. This man of flesh and blood is really take out of the dead and taken up in the skies to sit next to God, not on God’s throne, but at His right hand.

These who take Jesus to be their god and think no man is capable to be sinless and doing God’s Will, make from God a cruel God Who created beings who were not capable to follow His commandments. They deny the resurrection of the dead and are refuting God’s Power to have man following His commandments. Those gainsayers are as such believing that man can only do his own will and not believing that man is capable to transform and to become changed into spirit, or immortalized, by the Son of Man, doing God’s Will.

The believers in Jeshua, him being the son of God and not making him into a god son, may comfort one another with the words which are given to us in the Bible.

It will be seen from this, that survivors of the dead were not consoled in the first age of Christianity for the loss of their friends as they are now by those who “improve the death” of the influential among them. In “funeral sermons”, the “immortal souls” of the deceased are transported “on angels’ wings to heaven”, and the living are consoled with the assurance that they are singing the praises of God around the throne; feasting with Abraham, and the prophets, with the saints and martyrs, and with Jesus and his apostles in the Kingdom of God; and they are themselves persuaded, that the souls of their relations, now become angels, are watching over them, and praying for them; and that when they die their own souls will be re-united with them in the realms of bliss.

Need I say to the man enlightened in the word, that there is no such comfort, or consolation, as this in the law and the testimony of God?

Such traditions are purely mythological; and come of the Nicolaitan dogma of saved “ghosts, and goblins damn’d” which has cancerously extirpated “the truth as it is in Jesus”.
No, the apostles did not point men to the day of their death, and its immediate consequents, for comfort; nor did they administer the consolations of the gospel to any who had not obeyed it. They offered comfort only to the disciples; for they only are the heirs with Jesus of the Kingdom of God. They taught these to look to the coming of Christ, and to the resurrection, as the time of a re-union with their brethren in the faith. At death, they should

“rest from their labours, and their works should follow them”;

and

“to them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation”. {a Heb. 9:28.}

Such were the practical and intelligible “words” with which the apostles comforted their brethren; but words which have become sealed and cabalistic, both to the unlearned and “the wise”.

The Unisphere, attributed to “uribe”/Uri Baruchin

In conclusion, then, as far as power is concerned, God could have created all things upon a spiritual or incorruptible basis at once. The globe could have been filled with men and women, equal to the angels in nature, power, and intellect, on the sixth day; but the world would have been without a history, and its population characterless. This, however, would not have been according to the plan. The animal must precede the spiritual as the acorn goes before the oak. This will explain many difficulties which are created by systems; and which will for ever remain inexplicable upon the hypotheses they invent. The Bible has to do with things, not imaginations; with bodies, not phantasmata; with “living souls” of every species; with corporeal beings of other worlds; and with incorruptible and undying men; but it is as mute as death, and silent as the grave, having nothing at all to say about such “souls” as men pretend to “cure”; except to repudiate them as a part of that “philosophy and vain deceit”, {b. Col. 2:8} “which some professing have erred concerning the faith.” {c 1 Tim. 6:21}

– Thomas, D. J.; Elpis Israel: an exposition of the Kingdom of God (electronic ed., pp. 45–46). Birmingham, UK: The Christadelphian.

Notes & quotes

a Hebrews 9:28 (ESV): ²⁸so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.

b Colossians 2:8 (ESV): ⁸See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.

c 1 Timothy 6:21 (ESV): ²¹for by professing it some have swerved from the faith.
Grace be with you.

Preceding article:

Creation of the earth and man #22 Man in the image and likeness of the Elohim #6 Spirits, spiritual bodies and illusory perception

Necessity of a revelation of creation 11 Believing and obeying the gospel of the Kingdom of God

Bible, God speaking words profitable for doctrine, for reproof and for correction

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What happened when Jesus rose from the dead? (tithebarn.wordpress.com)
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Messiah For All

Presenting Jesus Christ our Saviour

First mention of a solution against death 4 A seed for mankind

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First mention of a solution against death 1 To divine, serpent, opposition, satan and adversary

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Creation of the earth and man #23 Man in the image and likeness of the Elohim #7 Corporeal and spiritual change

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