Messiah For All

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

Means of creations

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

First mention of a solution against death 7 Human sacrifice

Additional reading

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Further related articles

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

June 17, 2016June 17, 2016Marcus Ampe18 Comments

There was a lovely harmony in the Garden of Eden. Man was free to walk around and live nicely. He also was free to think and to make choices. There it went wrong. The woman let her mind wander and got tempted by her thoughts, willing to know more.
We have seen that the yielding to the tempter or man’s mind doubting God‘s honesty is treated allegorically in the Edenic covenant as the serpent in the flesh. First man was full of life but now death had come to him. Temptation had taken over and evil had entered his mind. This evil is the “devil” or diabolos of the New Testament, which term is defined as “that which has the power of death” (Hebrews 2:14), elsewhere described as “the law of sin and death”, “sin that dwelleth in me”, “sin in the flesh” (Romans 7:20; Romans 8:2-3).

Hebrews 2:14-15 NHEBJE Since then the children have shared in flesh and blood, he also himself in like manner partook of the same, that through death he might bring to nothing him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, (15) and might deliver all of them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.

Eve was taken in by her thoughts which proofed not to be good thoughts. Those ideas opposing God’s Wishes are considered bad thoughts. Going against God His Will is as declaring yourself to be against His ideas and opposing Him or to rival God, taking on the position of an opponent of God or an adversary (satan) of God.

Evil thoughts got so much power in man that it brought death to them but also put its stamp on all the rest of mankind. The act of the first two human beings created an awful situation for us. The curse of death having come over man also brought plants and animals in danger. Because now the mind of man was filled with darkness and their way of thinking became so blurred that often they would take the wrong decisions. At the beginning of the universe man had received the plants as food, meaning they had to be vegetarians or veganists. By the years following their expulsion from the Garden of Eden they were not happy any more by eating only plants and wanted also to eat meat, also becoming more like the animals, a carnivor. By doing so they also became killers of animal. They had taken their power to be master over plants and animals to be able to kill other living beings. Evil or badness in this way creped further in their life and as such evil or satan has become master or chief ruler of this world now. The enmity against God was so strong it became deeply rooted in the next generations. Paul described how that this “warred against the law of my mind” (Romans 7:23), and in doing so gave expression to the enmity described by God in the 15th verse of Genesis 3.

Romans 7:23 NHEBJE 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.

God talking about the seed to come (a seed of a new generation), wanted mankind a solution for what they had caused and for those who had nothing to do with that first fault or wrong choice of Adam and Eve. God had asked not to touch nor to eat from the tree, which was a law for man. They ignored it, but with it they also did not listen to God. Also later the many Laws provided by God to guide man, got ignored. Through the flesh every law would be weak. But the seed or the send one from God was to show the world that he who also was in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh, would be able to follow the Laws of God, not doing his own Will, but continually doing the Will of God. The action or attitude of that seed was going to contradict the thoughts of those taken by that ‘hissing in the mind’, the ‘serpent‘ or ‘evil’, the adversary of God, satan or the devil. Those coming after Adam and Eve also would have the choice to be after the flesh either to mind the things of the flesh or to love the things of the flesh. The loving harmony which subsisted between the Father and the son restored the relationship between God and mankind and could again bring liberation in the condemnation of sin in the flesh.

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;

Though there is constant enmity or animosity between the lusts of the flesh and the requirements of God as set down in His law those who would come into the seed of the woman and would follow his teachings could make themselves stronger and become once again in the spiritual life or after the Spirit (o. pneuma) or the things of the Spirit (o. pneuma) . In order to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually (o. pneuma) minded is life and peace.

Romans 8:5-10 NHEBJE 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. (8) Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. (9) But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if it is so that the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if any man does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not his. (10) If Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the spirit is alive because of righteousness.

That the serpent is used allegorically of sin is shown by the punishment meted out to Israel when the people “spake against God, and against Moses” (Numbers 21:5). Serpents appeared among the people, the sting of which proved fatal (cp. 1 Corinthians 15:56), so that “much people of Israel died”.

1 Corinthians 15:56 NHEBJE (56) The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.

In panic, the rest of the people appealed to Moses for help, and he interceded with God on their behalf. He was told to make a serpent of brass, and to set it on a pole, so that the people might view it. All who did so in faith were saved from the death that threatened them. The serpent on the pole illustrated to the people what they should do to the “serpent” within (the carnal mind that inflamed lust): they must crucify it if they would live.

The serpent or evil could put the seed on the pole, Jesus Christ being put to death, as a symbol of bringing the curse of evil and death to its end, Jesus vanquish evil by giving his unblemished body as a ransom for all who had that sin of the flesh. His decision only to follow God His Will has overcome the fault of those who followed their own will, ignoring God’s Will.

Unlike the active serpents on the ground, there was no venom in the serpent on the pole (not by Moses, not by Jesus Christ); similarly sin must be neutralised in us if we would live. At the time of Moses the serpent on the pole could also representing that seed promised in the Garden of Eden,the Lord Jesus Christ who came in the nature common to all. On several occasions he compared his crucifixion with the “lifting up” of the serpent in the wilderness (John 3:14-16; John 8:28; John 12:32), thus identifying his nature with the allegorical significance of the serpent.

John 3:14-21 NHEBJE As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, (15) that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. (16) For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. (17) For God did not send his Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world should be saved through him. (18) He who believes in him is not judged. He who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God. (19) This is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their works were evil. (20) For everyone who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his works would be exposed. (21) But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his works may be revealed, that they have been done in God.”

All About Evil (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We do live in a time now that people should be able to see who God has send to the earth and has lifted up. Today there are still too many, even people who call themselves Christian, who do not want to believe Jesus is that seed God has promised and send to the earth. They still do not want to believe Jesus is really the son of God and not a god son. They still do not want to accept that Jesus did not his own will (which he would have done when he is God) and and that he did nothing on his own authority, but spoke just as his heavenly Father taught him.

John 8:28-29 NHEBJE Jesus therefore said to them, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he, and I do nothing of myself, but as the Father taught me, I say these things. (29) He who sent me is with me. The Father hasn’t left me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to him.”

John 12:32 NHEBJE And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw everyone to myself.”

In the seed, which always did only those things that pleased Jehovah God, would come power to battle the evil. All those who would come to recognise that seed and would come under it, multiplying in unity trying to put away those fleshly lusts would be able to put their flesh to death at the stake to gain life in the mind of Christ.

Preceding articles

A multifold of elements in creation and a bad choice made

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

Next: First mention of a solution against death 6

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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

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

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

May 21, 2016February 27, 2018Marcus Ampe31 Comments

In the previous postings we have seen that the “serpent” is no ordinary “beast of the field.” Later portions of the Bible seem to imply that its subtle words were supplied by what man came ‘to believe’ or ‘see‘. Their action or attitude against God made them an adversary or satan.

The “quickness of perception” made their “voice of flesh” trouble their mind and made them to become an adversary of God instead of them becoming like God, though they still want to be the same as God and even today many want to play for god. This is what brings the world in a lot of problems.

The tempter for many became a ‘person’ or active figure called “Satan” or the devil. This Satan or adversary is the power of evil, the rebel against God. Hence the serpent has usually been treated by artists symbolically; Raphael pictures it as partly human, possessed of a woman’s head, a woman’s brain without her nobler soul. Certainly the serpent’s cunning words suggest human nature arguing with itself; the baser, beastly parts stirring the mind to ambition and rage and fear.

‎In the garden of Eden, the two mysterious trees, one of life and death, the other of “the knowledge of good and evil” were not for man. Their idea of being “as gods” was very temptive and when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and had taken of the fruit thereof and had also given it to her husband, they effectively came to know “good” and “evil“.

They found that knowledge, even at its best, is but a poor substitute for innocent purity. Most startling of the grim facts made clear to them, was that they had disobeyed their Divine Maker and thus lost their sense of joy and security with Him. They could imagine He would not be pleased with their act and therefore hid ashamed for Him. Going against the Will of God they had taken into their hearts selfishness and suspicion and fear. Darkened of mind and sin-stained of body, they were no longer willing to be fully seen, to gaze and be gazed upon. They grew secretive, furtive. They began to clothe their naked bodies with leaves, and they crouched among the trees to hide from God.

‎Before their act of insubmission they were never afraid of each other, of animals or of God. But now, after they failed to comply to God’s Will, they clearly knew they had done something wrong and even felt not sure any more about themselves. Never before had they avoided their Creator who was there Father. But now when He came to them in the garden “in the cool of the day” and when He spoke to them sadly of their fall, Adam answered trembling from his hiding place, and showed how contemptible indeed that fall had been. His personal resources had failed him. Perhaps he did not come to see that if anything is withheld from us, we may be sure that it is not absolutely for our good. He came to understand that his heart and soul (his flesh, heart and spirit or thinking) had failed. His downfall brought with it that he sought excuses. He did not want to to take the lowest place. He sought with crafty, coward words to shift his blame upon the woman, and even upon God, which shows how a state of sin can affect us.

Genesis 3:12 NHEBJE The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate.”

Putting the blame on his wife, to consider her responsible for his misdeed, is something which those who do wrong still try to do today. From that first sin those two first people their offspring got ‘bad examples’ and got the genes of troubled minds. Though

“Genetic predisposition made me do it”

is no excuse and is doing the same as Adam did. Eve also quickly learned from Adam trying to use an excuse to plead her innocence and freedom. The term “deceived” seems to mean “cause to forget”. It may be an onomatopoeia to the serpent’s hissing (i.e. hissi’ani). The New Testament mentions Eve’s actions in 2 Corinthians 11:3 and 1 Timothy 2:14.

2 Corinthians 11:3 NHEBJE (3) But I am afraid that somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve in his craftiness, so your minds might be corrupted from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ.

1 Timothy 2:14 NHEBJE Adam was not deceived, but the woman, being deceived, has fallen into disobedience;

But than we got to hear of some solutions.

1 Timothy 2:15 NHEBJE but she will be saved through her childbearing, if they continue in faith, love, and sanctification with sobriety.

Once again we hear about certain conditions or some commandments of God, namely to continue in faith and love or charity (o. agape) and holiness with sobriety or modesty or with self-control.

Because the 1st Adam had hearkened unto the voice of his wife, not only listening to her and not pointing to her what she was thinking was wrong, but following her, he also was at fault and should have to bear the consequences like any person who does something wrong has to bear the consequences.

Man was taken out of the earth, from dust. Because both had not listened to God they had to see it was serious what God had said about life and death. Now they were going to feel what it meant knowing life and death. Knowing good and bad things of life and losing life.

Genesis 3:17-22 NHEBJE To Adam he said, “Because you have listened to your wife’s voice, and have eaten of the tree, of which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground for your sake. In toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. (18) Thorns also and thistles will it bring forth to you; and you will eat the herb of the field. (19) By the sweat of your face will you eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken. For you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” (20) The man called his wife Eve, because she was the mother of all living. (21) Jehovah God made coats of skins for Adam and for his wife, and clothed them. (22) Jehovah God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil. Now, lest he put forth his hand, and also take of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever…”

Biblia Pauperum illustration of Eve and the Se... — Biblia Pauperum illustration of Eve and the Serpent (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Adam should have been following God’s word, but he followed his wife’s word and broke God’s specific command or mitzvoth. Each created being has received like Adam and Eve a free choice either to follow God His Words or to deny them and to go astray from God. Adam and Eve had heard what could happen (cf. Genesis 2:15-17). Now it was too late to turn back.

The whole creation now had to bear the consequences of the fall of mankind and nature.

Romans 8:18-23 NHEBJE For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which will be revealed toward us. (19) For the creation waits with eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. (20) For the creation was subjected to vanity, not of its own will, but because of him who subjected it, in hope (21) that the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of decay into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. (22) For we know that the whole creation groans and travails in pain together until now. (23) Not only so, but ourselves also, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for adoption, the redemption of our body.

Nature became involved because man now being on his own trying to look for his daily edible food started also hunting the animals, which had to become fearing man and going into their defence. As such animals and plants also became a victim of the fall of man. But God is a God of love and He does not like it when His creatures do have to suffer. God is on the side of His creatures. Therefore He provide a solution for them, but it had to come form man itself. Like the first man or Adam had to make the right choice the new or second Adam, the man for the new beginning had to make the right choice too.

Preceding articles

A multifold of elements in creation and a bad choice made

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

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

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

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:

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

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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A multifold of elements in creation and a bad choice made

May 18, 2016May 18, 2016Marcus Ampe25 Comments

The Divine Creator, Master of heaven and earth, reached forth His hand and blessed the whole, and Adam and Eve began their life at the Garden of Eden in that primeval happiness and intimacy with God, of which their sin was so soon to deprive them and the world.

Though we do have no knowledge about the where about of the Garden of Eden except from the biblical description which places it amid four rivers and names the Euphrates as one of these. Students have usually guessed its location between Ur, Calneh, near the mouth of the Euphrates, a region where the garden might include seashore, river-meadows, and mountains, and the ancient coastline of the Persian gulf.
‎Noah’s landing place, Mt. Ararat, the centre from which his descendants went forth for the second peopling of the earth, is fairly settled upon as being in the great culminating range of Armenia, the tremendous peaks which tower at the Euphrates’ source. The site of Babylon or Babel has been definitely established by modern research, as has also that of Ur, the city whence Abraham set out upon his journeyings.

There were the waters and by time the dry land appeared and became more and more coloured by plants or cultivated, step by step developing to its present outline. Throughout history there came people who wanted to notate these developments and how man evolved in that big system of things. These successive steps, as detailed in the Bible narrative, are told also by the investigations of science, which show that our globe must indeed have progressed through just this development. Though the biggest fault many people make is that they all want to see it happening in their notation of time, forgetting that God has an other view of minutes, hours and days.

2 Peter 3:8 (ESV): ⁸But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

It is with this knowledge that we should look at the creation of the earth and at the evolution of our world which is still continuing to evolve and undergoing many changes, regularly presenting to mankind for him newly discovered animals and plants.

‎It was of the productions of God’s fourth day, the sun and moon, with all their wonder and splendour entered the Bible narrative. Those elements at the sky could be used by man as signs. The lights in the firmament of the heaven were given by the Creator so that man could divide the day from the night and have them for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years. That is to say, man from a very early period measured his days by the sunlight, his weeks and months by the changes of the moon, and his years by the shifting of the sun and stars. By them he knew the coming of spring and fall, and when to plant and when to reap his crops. They served as guides to travellers by land and sea.

In the wording of the writer of the Bereshith or the Beginning of everything we can find some indication of multiplying elements and even abundance.

Genesis 1:20 (ESV): ²⁰And God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.”

Psalm 104:25 (ESV): ²⁵ Here is the sea, great and wide, which teems with creatures innumerable, living things both small and great.

Genesis 8:17 (ESV): ¹⁷Bring out with you every living thing that is with you of all flesh—birds and animals and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth—that they may swarm on the earth, and be fruitful and multiply on the earth.”

Genesis 9:1 (ESV): And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.

‎

As the culmination of the sixth day of effort, God had created man, formed from “the dust of the ground” the first male and as a companion who might be with him and share his joy in God’s teaching and uplifting, from the rib of man the first female was created, who also could reproduce and bring forth new generations. Both were made in God’s image, with intellect, with an eternal soul, even with something of God’s own creative power, able to create new things.

God was even willing to give responsibility in the hands of man and gave him the right to give the things names. As such in the glow of God’s inspiration Adam named them; and he was given dominion over them, and dwelt among them as their ruler, in peace and joy. At first the beasts had no fear of Adam, nor of one another; for as yet death had not come into the world. Adam did not live, as do we, by meat, by devouring other lives.

The first book of the Bible mentions the need of the first man to have other company than those animals. God could see that it was not so good that man was alone.

Genesis 2:18 (ESV): ¹⁸Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”

God’s first charge to man, or perhaps it were better to say the first wisdom He instilled into him, His first fatherly counsel, was that man should live on the fruit and herbs, that his “meat” should be of these alone.

Genesis 2:20–23 (ESV): ²⁰The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. ²¹So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. ²²And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. ²³Then the man said,

“This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.”

Those first human beings had no shame and found no reason to be clothed. Naked they were part of a universe that was in unison with God’s Wishes. Together they could enjoy early happy days of innocence, ignorant of any evil, because there was not yet such thing. They were at first happy in the presence of God, conversing with Him as with a father, conscious of His ever-presence and at ease and security therein.

‎God, in His love and joy for His beautiful new creatures had made them a garden, a beautiful paradise for their dwelling in which they could dwell freely. Out of the ground made the Elohim God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food, in a marvellous garden surrounded by four great rivers .

God had provided only one or two restrictions. They had to follow His Words and should not eat from a certain tree, which would bring the eater of its fruit, the knowledge of good and bad. The writer of the Torah (or The Law) use symbolically a creeping animal, the serpent. Also later the serpent has usually been treated by artists symbolically to represent that temptation that came over man. The serpent’s cunning words suggest human nature arguing with itself; the baser, beastly parts stirring the mind to ambition and rage and fear.

The more sophisticated ‘animal‘ or ‘possessor of an anima or soul‘ got so much taken by the inner voices that his own thinking got so strong that he dared to go against the Wishes of the Most High. The 1st Adam and the first mannin or first woman could see that their Maker could do everything and had all wisdom. Would it not be nice for them to have such wisdom and power themselves?

The idea that when they would eat of that forbidden tree, they would become like God “… ye shall be as gods” was so much carrying them away from the Will of God that they did not mind trying it.

Genesis 3:5–7 (ESV): ⁵For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” ⁶So 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 also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. ⁷Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.

As the first human beings had chosen to go against the Will of God and as such went wrong or sinned, their offspring became ‘infected’ as it were by that attitude of them.

Genesis 3:16–24 (ESV): ¹⁶To the woman he said,

“I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband,and he shall rule over you.”

¹⁷And to Adam he said,

“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; ¹⁸ thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. ¹⁹ By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

²⁰The man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living. ²¹And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.

²²Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” ²³therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. ²⁴He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.

Preceding articles:

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

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

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

Next: First mention of a solution against death

Additional reading

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Forbidden Fruit in the Midst of the Garden 3

March 16, 2015April 4, 2015Guestspeaker41 Comments

In the Garden of Eden we see that there is been spoken about the seed. In certain creation myths we also get seeds and eggs being part of the creation and do we find serpents creeping in.

Alexander Rivera writes on his blog The Aeon Eye

Orphic Egg — Glycon was considered to also be a snake god in satirical form as mentioned by the satirist Lucian, and was said to be the incarnation of Asklepios in the mysteries of Alexander of Abonutichus, a pagan philosopher of the 2nd century.

In Orphic mythology, the serpent was sometimes linked with the primordial egg from which all things emerged and is shown entwined around the egg. Epiphanius in The Panarion discusses the doctrines of the Epicureans who believed that the universe was formed by chance rather than providence:

Originally the entire universe was like an egg and the spirit was then coiled snakewise round the egg, and bound nature tightly like a wreath or girdle. (3) At one time it wanted to squeeze the entire matter, or nature, of all things more forcibly, and so divided all that existed into the two hemispheres and then, as the result of this, the atoms were separated. (4) For the light, finer parts of all nature—light, aether and the finest parts of the spirit—floated up on top. But the parts which were heaviest and like dregs have sunk downwards. This means earth—that is, anything dry—and the moist substance of the waters. (5) The whole moves of itself and by its own momentum with the revolution of the pole and stars, as though all things were still being driven by the snake like spirit. {Forbidden Fruit in the Midst of the Garden (Part 2)

That the world goes in circles and time repeats itself is also brought forward by the circular symbol of the serpent eating its own tail, known as the Ouroboros, the primal being who said,

I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last (Rev. 22:13).

Rivera reminds us that the serpent is also seen in the Syriac Hymn of the Pearl as it depicts the soul’s descent into the world, forgetting his mission but eventually roused by the call on high to remind him of his original nature and duty, his glorious rising again into the Kingdom of the Father.

The Pearl, the Prince seeks in Egypt, represents the Gnosis, and the terrible Serpent that guards it, is depicted as the passion of egotism. {Forbidden Fruit in the Midst of the Garden (Part 2)

It was that passion of egotism, the deep longing to have everything for oneself that made Eve testing her Creator. She had a craving to become as wise as He is. The yearning came also over the 1° Adam by listening to his wife. The female partner was much stronger than the male and could convince him that it would not heart. Their aching to possess as much wisdom and power as God made them to disobey their Maker.

In several man made stories we do find such evil thoughts of jealousy coming into the picture and destroying a relationship. Often such thoughts creep into our mind as a serpent and as such it is pictured.

Epiphanius of Salamis (church father, ca. 310–20 – 403), fresco at Gracanica monastery, near Lipljan in Kosovo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Typical to Jewish and Christian tradition, another negative portrayal of serpent imagery was used by the Church Father Epiphanius in his closing comments in the Panarion to high-light the “evil nature” of Simon Magus as being like a snake, asp and a viper. {Forbidden Fruit in the Midst of the Garden (Part 2)

We also find acquisitiveness coming into life of many, bringing wrong actions and evil thoughts. The embodiment of greed brings also pictures of extra terrestial figures of angels (fallen angels) or devils. When we look at the Targum Psuedo-Jonathan we do find the Serpent with the fallen angel Samael, the “Blind One” who was a originally a great prince in heaven, descended to earth and rode upon the serpent to deceive Eve and seduce her. The fruit of his seduction, as the same text claims (like the Gospel of Philip) was Cain, being the son of the Devil.

And the woman saw Sammael, the angel of death, and she was afraid, and she knew that the tree was good for food.

Rivera tells about Rabbi Isaac who in The Treatise of the Left Emanation, also compared Samael and Lilith as husband and wife, much like Adam and Eve — an inverted, “Satanic” power, a concept which is featured later in the Zohar and Jewish myth concerning evil. Samael acts as an evil doppelganger of the first man that came into being with the first human transgression:

The first prince and accuser, the commander of Jealousy and Enmity…he is called ‘evil’ not because of his nature but because he desires to unite and intimately mingle with an emanation not of his nature… it is made clear that Samael and Lilith were born as one, similar to the form of Adam and Eve who were also born as one, reflecting what is above. This is the account of Lilith which was received by the Sages in the Secret Knowledge of the Palaces. The Matron Lilith is the mate of Samael. Both of them were born at the same hour in the image of Adam and Eve, intertwined in each other. {Forbidden Fruit in the Midst of the Garden (Part 2)

He continues:

As this passage suggests, Jewish mysticism contains a dialectic notion of “evil”; all things emanate from God, so Samael is one of God’s “severe agents,” yet he grows beyond the attenuated form God intended because he feeds upon the evils of the world. The Zohar builds upon the image of Samael found in Rabbi Isaac’s text as the demon king and consort of Lilith; together they are the evil counterparts of Adam and Eve. Samael is the tempting angel from who “copulates” with Lilith as the male and female principles of the “left side emanation”, united and achieve their full potential by spawning demons. Samael is in effect the evil left-side counterpart of Tiferet in the Sefirotic system of the Tree of Life. In the Apocryphon of John, Samael also happens to be one of the alternative names for Ialdabaoth, the Satanic creator god. {Forbidden Fruit in the Midst of the Garden (Part 2)

Also the mind, the thinking or the being of a person got out of a seed but was also like a serpent.

The Ophites connected the eternal principle, Nous, “mind”, with Naas, the Greek word for serpent—stating that the serpent in the Garden of Eden was actually Nous in serpent form. Accordingly, the Demiurge tried to prevent Adam and Eve from acquiring knowledge, and it was the serpent who persuade them to disobey the Demiurge and taste of the fruit. This was the origin of gnosis. Because the serpent frustrated Jehovah’s designs, the serpent was cursed (Gen. 3:14). The Naasenes also agreed with the sentiments expressed in the Gospel of Philip, in that the separation of sexes marked the beginning of death and evil when they claimed that sex was “…man’s fatal effort to become one without recognizing that the only real unity was spiritual.” {Forbidden Fruit in the Midst of the Garden (Part 2)

In Church-history we find peculiar ideas about the relationship with the seed, the serpent, man and Jesus.

According to the Church Fathers, the Ophites had a peculiar ritual meal involving a snake. The Ophites made a distinction between Christ the Savior, and Jesus, the man. Christ equated the serpent with the Son of Man (John 3:14), whereas Jesus equated serpents with scorpions, and spoke of the serpent as the “enemy” (Luke 10:19). For this reason some Ophite sects vilified Jesus. Origen in Contra Celsum records that the Ophites cursed Jesus, and wanted converts to do the same. St. Paul’s reference to those who curse Jesus (1 Cor. 12:3) may point to these snake-worshipers. The Ophites also happened to believe that Adam and Eve were originally beings of light, according to Irenaeus in Against Heresies, I, 30.9:

Adam and Eve previously had light, and clear, and as it were spiritual bodies, such as they were at their creation; but when they came to this world, these changed into bodies more opaque, and gross, and sluggish. {Forbidden Fruit in the Midst of the Garden (Part 2)

No surprise Rivera wants to make the link also to some titles which we can find in Christianity, like “Lord of Hosts” as a reference to יהוה YHWH Jehovah/Yehowah/Yahuwah/Yahweh. which can be found in some translations at 1Samuel 1:3,11; 4:4; 15:2; 17:45; 2 Samuel 6:2,18; 7:8,26-27 and James 5:4 for example.

2Sa 7:26-27 NET so you may gain lasting fame,43 as people say,44 ‘The LORD of hosts is God over Israel!’ The dynasty45 of your servant David will be established before you, (27) for you, O LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, have told46 your servant, ‘I will build you a dynastic house.’47 That is why your servant has had the courage48 to pray this prayer to you.

2Sa 7:26-27 MKJV And let Your name be magnified forever, saying, The Jehovah of Hosts is the God over Israel. And let the house of Your servant David be established before You. (27) For You, O Jehovah of Hosts, God of Israel, have revealed to Your servant, saying, I will build you a house. Therefore Your servant has found in his heart to pray this prayer to You.

Several Christians do want to believe it than relies to Jesus but it is all about יהוה The Elohim Hashem Jehovah to Whom belongs the victory.

Clarke wants us even to believe:

“It having pleased God that, between the time of a Messiah being promised and the time of his coming, there should be delivered by the prophets a variety of marks by which the Messiah was to be known, and distinguished from every other man; it was impossible for any one to prove himself the Messiah, whose character did not answer to these marks; and of course it was necessary that all these criteria, thus Divinely foretold, should be fulfilled in the character of Jesus Christ.

But in those passages of the Lord of Hosts is not spoken about the Messiah but about the bringer of the messiah, Jehovah God.

Clarke agrees that God declares himself the Father of the Son.

God declares himself the Father of the Son here meant; (see also Heb_1:5); and promises that, even amidst the sufferings of this Son, (as they would be for the sins of others, not for his own), his mercy should still attend him: nor should his favor be ever removed from this king, as it had been from Saul. And thus (as it follows) thine house (O David) and thy kingdom shall, in Messiah, be established for ever before Me: (before God): thy throne shall be established for ever. Thus the angel, delivering his message to the virgin mother, Luk_1:32, Luk_1:33, speaks as if he was quoting from this very prophecy: The Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David, and he shall reign over the house of Jacob For Ever: and of his kingdom there shall be no end. In 2Sa_7:16, לפניך lephaneycha, is rendered as לפני lephanai, on the authority of three Hebrew MSS., with the Greek and Syriac versions; and, indeed, nothing could be established for ever in the presence of David, but in the presence of God only.

It shall be the Divine Creator Who makes everything and Who is the Father of everything and Host for all things and beings, who shall provide in His House the seed of peace and the seed for a new paradise, the Kingdom of God with the Garden of God once again here on earth. And for that Garden Jehovah God shall provide a gardener from the seed of Adam bringing the seed of Abraham, continuing the line with bringing seed to King David by which the offspring shall be the seed long awaited which shall bring the offering like the seed which formed the bush and got burning, the world shall have to see a burning light and bright morning star. to that seed Jehovah shall be a Host and He shall take him to sit at his right hand to become a mediator between God and man.

Rev 7:9-12 MKJV After these things I looked, and lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, out of all nations and kindreds and people and tongues, stood before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, with palms in their hands. (10) And they cried with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God sitting on the throne, and to the Lamb. (11) And all the angels stood around the throne, and the elders, and the four living creatures, and they fell before the throne on their faces and worshiped God, (12) saying, Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever. Amen.

Act 7:55-56 MKJV But being full of the Holy Spirit, looking up intently into Heaven, he saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. (56) And he said, Behold, I see Heaven opened and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God.

Heb 10:12-17 MKJV But this Man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down on the right of God, (13) from then on expecting until His enemies are made His footstool. (14) For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are sanctified. (15) The Holy Spirit also is a witness to us; for after He had said before, (16) “This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the Lord; I will put My Laws into their hearts, and in their minds I will write them,” (17) also He adds, “their sins and their iniquities I will remember no more.”

1Ti 2:5-6 MKJV For God is one, and there is one Mediator of God and of men, the Man Christ Jesus, (6) who gave Himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time.

Rivera writes:

Interestingly, the Alexandrian Gnostic teacher, Basilides called the demiurge “the Seven” which could have been a reference to the seventh planet, Saturn, which rules the rest. The Hebrew name of the planet Saturn is Shabbathai, clearly transcribed in the form “Sabbataios” in Gnostic verbal play on the term “Lord of Hosts” as a reference to YHWH. Tacitus in Histories 5,4 associates the Jewish God with Saturn. Saturn is naturally also honored on the same day by the Pagans that the Jews did with Jehovah on Sabbath. Since the Jews worshiped on Saturday, the Graeco-Roman world in which Basilides lived in tended to identify Jehovah with Saturn. Saturn is the Graeco-Roman sky-god so consumed with fear of being overthrown that he devours all his children, missing only Jupiter (Zeus), who does later overthrow him. In Rome the overthrow of the old year by the new, the hunched-up old man by the babe, was celebrated in the Saturnalia. Similarly, for Gnostics, the Christ child replaced the tribal god Jehovah. {Forbidden Fruit in the Midst of the Garden (Part 2)

Today we still find the majority of Christian believers not willing to accept Jesus to be a man of flesh and blood who had really enough reasons to be afraid of death. They still make Jesus into a god, because they think no human being would ever be able to keep to God His commandments. They forget that they make a very cruel Creator of this Most High God, having Him made immature imperfect beings to which He demands the impossible. For those Binarian and Trinitarian Christians the human beings where deficient from the beginning, not able to keep to God’s Wishes.

We do not believe in such a cruel God, who than after the Fall would have waited so long before to intervene and Who keeps us still waiting so many years before He stops us to let us suffer. For us it is more acceptable that God created a perfect universe in which He gave the human beings a free will. They were perfect and could have stayed faultless.

To stay without fault people had to make the right choices. Eve got tempted by her own greed, her willing to be even more like God. She had the breath of God blown in her nostrils and as such got the ‘soul‘, the ‘being’ ‘life’ in her. Those refusing that life itself was the essence given by God Himself wanted as in the different creation myths see their other gods providing that life, and as such used the figure Jesus as that bringer of life and bringer of love and eros.

As Irenaeus relates in his Against Heresies, Ialdabaoth is the eldest of seven rulers born of Lower Wisdom (See the Secret Book of John for this story). Ialdabaoth is depicted as a grotesque mutant—a lion-headed serpent which fits with Plato’s distinction of the “rational soul” part from the lion and the many headed beast portions of the soul in the Republic along with the Orphic Phanes or Eros. {Forbidden Fruit in the Midst of the Garden (Part 2)

Preceding articles:

Forbidden Fruit in the Midst of the Garden (Part 1)

Please do find the very interesting articles by Rivera:

Forbidden Fruit in the Midst of the Garden (Part 2)

Forbidden Fruit in the Midst of the Garden (Part 3)

Forbidden Fruit in the Midst of the Garden (Part 4)

Additional reading:

+++

11. Babylonian Talmud of the Pharisee & the Zohar (12160.info)
the Pharisees have delivered to the people a great many observances by succession from their fathers, which are not written in the law of Moses; and for that reason it is that the Sadducees reject them and say that we are to esteem those observances to be obligatory which are in the written word, but are not to observe what are derived from the tradition of our forefathers.
Gospel, 3rd Sunday in Lent, Year B (jessicahof.wordpress.com)
Origen comments that our souls are the Temples of Christ, and he has especial solicitude for them, and here is driving from us impure thoughts and things which drag us down. Augustine sees the same symbolism. The Church, the Temple of Christ, has within in those who buy and sell holy things, and they need to be driven out too.

All the Fathers see the reference to Jesus being the Temple and being raised on the third day. It is the Father who raised Him up after He was obedient, unto death, even death upon the Cross. Augustine and St Cyril both comment on his caution in entrusting himself fully to those not yet born again of the Spirit.
The Blame Game Again (supertradmum-etheldredasplace.blogspot.com)
The societal sins are merely those made individually by unique persons choosing the wrong way over and over and over and over. The sins of a culture or civilization are not some types of sins which just happen, but sins done repeatedly by those persons in that culture or civilization.
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There would be no weak men without Adam, and the long line of couch potatoes, sports idolizing , game obsessed men who have given up all responsibility for their families and eschew commitment. Individuals sin and make movements.Just because the men are nameless, does not mean it is not yet another “movement” of weakness changing the culture one decision at a time.

To blame a “movement” is to push blame onto nothing….some amorphous event in history. Of course, men and women decide to choose good or evil, thus creating the course of their own lives, that of their families and even nations.
A Life Bearing Fruit (therealdaniel.com)
The greatest commandment that so many reject is to love God with all our hearts, soul, mind and strength, and the second commandment is to love our neighbor as ourselves. When self becomes god as Satan is all too familiar with then a separation from the Creator of all things good is inevitable.
Cleo and her asp. (barrywax.wordpress.com)
According to Plutarch (quoted by Ussher), Cleopatra tested various deadly poisons on condemned persons and concluded that the bite of the asp (from aspis – Egyptian cobra, not European asp) was the least terrible way to die; the venom brought sleepiness and heaviness without spasms of pain. The asp is perhaps most famous for its alleged role in Cleopatra’s suicide

Forbidden Fruit in the Midst of the Garden 2

March 16, 2015March 16, 2015Guestspeaker28 Comments

People should not doubt that the Supreme Divine Creator is all-powerful. It is wrong to think He needed to test Adam and Eve at all. {Forbidden Fruit in the Midst of the Garden (Part 1)}

God had given an instruction to safeguard them. God knew what could happen but they did not listen out of their own choice. When He fretted that Adam had become “like one of us“, God was not talking to some other gods or other beings but speaking in the Royal We, like any higher person still uses the Pluralis Majestatis today. (Genesis 3:22) The author of the Testimony of Truth wants us also to look negatively at the Maker and says:

But what sort is this God? First he maliciously refused Adam from eating of the tree of knowledge, and, secondly, he said “Adam, where are you?” God does not have foreknowledge? Would he not know from the beginning? And afterwards, he said, “Let us cast him out of this place, lest he eat of the tree of life and live forever.” Surely, he has shown himself to be a malicious grudger! And what kind of God is this? For great is the blindness of those who read, and they did not know him. And he said, “I am the jealous God; I will bring the sins of the fathers upon the children until three (and) four generations.” And he said, “I will make their heart thick, and I will cause their mind to become blind, that they might not know nor comprehend the things that are said.” But these things he has said to those who believe in him and serve him! {Forbidden Fruit in the Midst of the Garden (Part 1)}

It is the same as parents who noticed their children having done something wrong. They know where they are, and when they are hiding they mostly also know exactly the place where they are hiding, though still ask them to say where they are, trying to give them a chance to come out themselves and to show themselves in the condition they are.

Alexander Rivera of The Aeon Eye dedicated to research and ideas regarding scholarship in theology, various ancient texts spanning different cultures of all ages, comparative mythology, philosophical exegesis, apocrypha, patristics, the Nag Hammadi Library and the Bible, believes the author of the Testimony of Truth designating the serpent as a positive figure, telling the story from the view of the serpent.

Concerning the text also distinguishing Christ as the “Son” or messenger he talks about the “unknown Father” which is distinct from the “Lord God” of Genesis or the Lawgiver which was equated by many Gnostic groups such as the Sethians, Naasenes and the Valentinians with the Demiurge or the “Craftsman” who fashioned the cosmos from a chaotic pre-existent “prima materia”.

The Marcionites held a similar position, but lacked the speculative and imaginative cosmologies that were a staple in later Gnostic mythology, but held both the creator god as a lesser god and the Good, Supreme God as distinct, but co-eternal beings in a constant state of antagonism (we see this idea carried into the later doctrines of the Manichaeans and the Cathars). The Demiurge did not derive from the Supreme God by emanation or by a fall of another aeon. {Forbidden Fruit in the Midst of the Garden (Part 1)}

Scripture wants us to believe the Maker of all things, the Maker of the Universe is a God of Order and Clarity, who is a God of Love.

Marcion, much like his Gnostic predecessors denied that the God of goodness could have created the cosmos of corruption and entropy. Therefore, in his place, the creator god was assigned as author of the physical universe, while treated as an inferior being, not good, but only just. He is also the author of evil (as Isaiah 45:7 boldly asserts), as he is as much a lover of war (Exodus 15:3), erratic blood-lust in his constant demand for animal and human sacrifice, rejoicing in death (Deuteronomy 28:63), condoning slavery including sexual (Exodus 21:1-11), commanding the Israelites to rape, pillage and destroy at a moment’s whim (1 Chronicles 21, Deuteronomy 3, Joshua 6) all the while contradicting his own commandment of “Thou shalt not kill”. At his express command, the world is turned into a place of pain and “thorns” (Genesis 3:18)

English: A lion-faced deity found on a Gnostic... — A lion-faced deity found on a Gnostic gem in Bernard de Montfaucon’s L’antiquité expliquée et représentée en figures. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The saying by the prophet Isaiah that the Elohim would be a God of evil is indicating that the Most High Maker Who has no peer, no God but Him, allows evil to come over people, even making His People arm them for battle. It is true that the Bible says even though man does not recognize Him, He does this so people will recognize from east to west that there is no God but Him. Already early at the Creation God made it clear that out of the void it was Him Speaking and making it to happen. From the very start of the universe the living creatures had to know that it was Him Who made them. All had to understand that it is Him The One Who forms light and creates darkness. It was Him Who created out of chaos order and brought about peace and created calamity. Waters had to flow, air had to flow, but now that man had interfered with creation and disturbed the peace and tranquillity they themselves brought great misfortune over themselves, not out of God’s Will but out of their will. It where they who wanted to rule the world and have everything to say, so God allowed them to arrange the things like they want to do it. But up until now they still not have given any proof to be capable to order the world decently.

True, God by giving everything in the hands of incompetent human beings made that affliction became master of mankind. Though He allows all those things to happen in the hope that at one point those people will come to recognise that He alone is the Divine Supreme Maker Who deserves all worship and honour. God is patient enough to find enough people who are willing to recognise that the Elohim Hashem Jehovah is the Most High Lord over the Lord of lords, Who accomplishes all these things.

People shall also have to notice that certain things that happen may look at one moment good but at an other may look bad, like the changing skies with clouds sending down showers of deliverance. Also figuratively people shall get to see that the earth shall have to absorb the ‘showers’ from God so salvation may grow, and deliverance may sprout up along with it. This all in the knowledge that it is the Divine Supreme Being Who creates it.

Isa 45:5-8 MKJV I am Jehovah, and there is none else, no God besides Me; I clothed you, though you have not known Me; (6) that they may know from the rising of the sun, and to the sunset, that there is none besides Me. I am Jehovah, and there is none else; (7) forming the light and creating darkness; making peace and creating evil. I Jehovah do all these things. (8) Drop down from above, O heavens, and let the clouds pour down righteousness. Let the earth open, and let salvation bear fruit; and let righteousness spring up together. I Jehovah have created it.

Lots of Christians accuse Muslims to have a cruel God (Allah), because they hear stories of what that God says and do not seem to know that they have the same God saying naturally the same things. But those hard words God speaks in the Old Testament, which many Christians do not know, are part of God reacting on the bad things the people did.

That God allows it all to happen is that otherwise an intervening God would again being able to become the accused as being a dictator, only allowing that to happen what and how He wants it, not giving any liberty to man. That was the charge in the Garden of Eden. God was wrongly accused as wanting all right to govern Himself. Man forgot that they were given freedom to name and manage their own world.

Those who want to believe the world that God only executes the law without mercy or compassion when it is convenient for Him are the one the Bible is calling satan or adversary. The opponents of God, the antagonists and objectors are the ones who are mentioned many-fold in the Bible. The ones who want the world to believe that God would be a person of king-like jealousy and pride, with great appetite for praise and sacrifices are the ones who gave breath to the enemy and what motivated many early Christians to interpret “the Lord God” as either an ignorant but just creator or at worst, a malicious and belligerent demon called “Ialdaboath”. {Forbidden Fruit in the Midst of the Garden (Part 1)}

Many assume wrongly that Jesus is talking about his heavenly Father being the father of evil and the one owning this world, but The Elohim has given the world in the hands of man, God’s adversary. It is not about God when there is said

He was a murder from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. {John 8:44 / Forbidden Fruit in the Midst of the Garden (Part 1)}

Jesus is giving reference to the “father of lies” who is not his heavenly Father, but the master of evil, God’s adversary (the ‘devil‘), who can be any human person who doubts the existence and the right of power of God.

Alexander Rivera points out:

it was Yahweh who said that they would die if they ate from the Tree of Knowledge, whereas the snake said that they wouldn’t—and of course, as we know, they didn’t. All that they Serpent said is that they would become as gods, which Yahweh confirms when he says, “Look, they have become as gods. Now we must remove them from the garden, lest they eat of the tree of life and live forever.” The night preceding his crucifixion, the Johannine Jesus says in John 12:31-33:

Now is the judgment of this world. Now the prince (archon) of this world will be cast out.

The prince or “archon” is a direct reference to the Demiurge, the “god of this aion” as Paul calls him 2 Corinthians 4:4. Before, the creator God said to both Adam and Eve “but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” On the other hand, the Serpent said pointedly: “You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” {Forbidden Fruit in the Midst of the Garden (Part 1)}

The author of Genesis let us know that Adam and Eve where cast out of the Garden of Eden and would have to face death, because God told them so and that all their offspring would have to face the problems and will have to die as well. This penalty form one to the other generation is a thorn in the eye of many Christians as well, but otherwise God would intervene again and could be accused of favouritism, giving partiality to His own people.

The eyes of both of them were opened, making them aware of what they had and what they now had to loose. Eve in her heart had hoped to get more wisdom. She did not want to believe that they would die. How could the one Who made them, losing them again? Reason why we do not follow the Gnostic writings is that they continue to follow the path of Eve and the adversaries of God who want us to believe that it was the Serpent who was right and the creator God Who was the one who had lied.

He said that Adam and Eve would die if he ate the fruit, but neither died. Instead, the Serpent was telling the truth. As a matter of fact, the creator himself ended up agreeing that the Serpent was right! The creator Lord God had proved himself to be a chronic liar as well as plagiarizer. To the Gnostics, the entire stratum of material creation was a failed and botched attempt to imitate an unknowable world of light. Likewise, the “Good Book” or “Word of God”, which being the Bible itself is based principally on pre-Biblical Babylonian and Egyptian texts. {Forbidden Fruit in the Midst of the Garden (Part 1)}

Rivera looks also at the claim of St. Augustine of Hippo in Adversus Haeresis, 46, 147-153, that the Manichaeans had also taught that “Jesus the Splendor” or the “Third Messenger” was the Serpent that illuminated the minds of both Adam and Eve of their predicament and their divine origins.

Before the arrival of the Serpent in the Garden, man was in a state of ignorance and was blinded to his true position—as automatons in blind servitude to their creators. This is confirmed by an unnamed Manichean text in which the 8th century historian, Theodor Bar Konai quotes:

Jesus the Splendour approached sinless Adam and awoke him from the sleep of death, that he might be delivered of innumerable demons… Then Adam examined himself and realized, who he was. {Forbidden Fruit in the Midst of the Garden (Part 1)}

Man has always played with the idea of being master of creation becoming superior to its Creator. In the races of worldly people, human artefacts have become objects of fear for their creators – for example statues and images and everything that is made by human hands as representing a god. In Christendom we still find many Christians who have that urge to bow down in front of graven images, though the Maker has clearly demanded not to do so. Several Christians made them crosses, statues of Jesus, Mary and several saints where they bow for and where they burn candles for or in certain countries even provide food and clothing. Though this is all abomination in the eyes of God.

People made themselves many male and female gods and also in Christendom we can find people who worship a ‘mother of god‘, though the God of gods has no mother and no beginning being an eternal Spirit.

We can agree with Alexander Rivera who writes in his blog The Aeon Eye:

Ultimately, the aim of the creator god is to align mankind as the reflection of the creator rather than something far grander. {Forbidden Fruit in the Midst of the Garden (Part 1)}

Trees, fruit and seeds have always played an important role in many cultures and were often used symbolically as well.

Rivera writes:

As we can see, the Tree was an important universal symbol for not only the Gnostics, Simonians, Valentinians, etc, but to groups like the Jewish-Kabbalists, alchemists and many occult groups throughout the ages. The Tree is highly associative with the idea of the descent and crucifixion (and eventual ascent and resurrection) of spirit into and from matter as seen in Sophia-Achamoth’s fall from the celestial world and into the prima materia which parallels the Genesis account of the fall of Eve, the “mother of the living”. In Plato’s Timaeus, do we find the account of the Fall of Atlantis, (as strange as it might sound) which could be read as symbolic of the Divine tragedy and catastrophe so predominant in Gnostic cosmology and theology. {Forbidden Fruit in the Midst of the Garden (Part 3)}

We too look at the seed of Adam which brought forth the seed of Abraham, giving us the servant David, giving seed to next generations bringing into the world a new light, a seed without intervention of a man.

Please do find the very interesting articles by Rivera:

Forbidden Fruit in the Midst of the Garden (Part 1)

Forbidden Fruit in the Midst of the Garden (Part 2)

Forbidden Fruit in the Midst of the Garden (Part 3)

Forbidden Fruit in the Midst of the Garden (Part 4)

Preceding posts:

Coming to the creation of human beings in the image of God

Scripture about Creation and Creator Deity

Additional reading:

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Gnostic Salvation And Rebellion Against God’s Law (hammeringshield.wordpress.com)
For Gnostic Christians, the story of salvation is the story of human beings learning of their true position in the world and of their taking the necessary steps to escape the bondage of the evil Creator God. The Gnostic goal was the return of their Spiritual Light, which the Creator God had trapped within their bodies, to the Father Of Light.

Many Gnostics believed that the Savior was sent by the Father Of Light to help us in this quest. Others, like Marcion, believed that the Savior was sent by another deity entirely, an “Alien God” completely uninvolved in the creation of our particular cosmos, but who, knowing of our condition, took pity on us and sent the Savior to deliver us.
What If God Were NOT Good? (hammeringshield.wordpress.com)
The beliefs we today associate with Christianity and the Bible became the orthodox set of beliefs, the form of Christianity in which God is good. But there was another form of Christianity, that of the Gnostics. Unlike the Orthodox Christians, many Gnostic Christians believed God to be a malevolent being. Both types of Christians believed in the Savior, but they had different versions of his mission. And whereas Orthodox Christians believed in salvation via faith in the divinity of the Savior, the Gnostics believed that salvation is to be obtained via knowledge (“gnosis“) of our true condition, hence their name.
Deceptive Practices (culturalatheist.wordpress.com)
The first lies recorded (although we know he was already telling them in heaven) are the the lies about God’s character. He lied to Adam and Eve about God’s love and care for them. The lies were relational.What if Satan’s deceptive practices begin with or are grounded in lies about others? It would be in his best interests if we think the worst about others – their beliefs, their practices, their intentions and character. I also suspect that we reveal our acceptance of the lies and our culpability in spreading them when we say, “All (insert person or group) are (insert belief, practice, intention).”
Can a Gnostic army fix the world? (vaticproject.blogspot.com)
God gave us dominion over the animals to care for them, and that is in Genesis. And Christ reinforced those sentiments, so I don’t know where he got that, unless he has not read the Bible, which is possible. In fact, it was Christ who brought a new coverant stopping the slaughter of animals by the Jews and instead offered himself as the redeeming sacrifice. So, I am not sure where he got that, but be it as it may, just focus on the recommendations which I think are reasonable, actually. How do you protect society from those that murder at will for no earthy good reason, especially little children and babies.
Humble beginnings: a rib and an apple (annabelfrage.wordpress.com)
As a little aside, when God in Genesis 1 creates Adam, the name denominates mankind rather than a specific dude. In Genesis 2, however, God moulds Adam the man from the earth and breathes life into him. It is this Adam who is gifted with Eve, lest he become too lonely playing with himself.
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The tree, however, was always on their minds, a little teaser that now and then had them taking a couple of steps in its direction before remembering it was out of bounds. Eve would pick an apple from another tree and bite into it, eyes stuck on the perfect, Christmas-red apples that hung from the Tree of Knowledge. She bet those apples tasted sweeter, were crunchier and jucier. Adam would pick an apple and eat it while watching Eve, considering just what he would do to her after their meal. men are, at times, rather singleminded…
Great Day (theotherjc.com)
God is…my Father. That’s a revelation that doesn’t come easily to everyone but one we need to get. We can be disappointed by our own Father but without realising it not notice that God has filled our lives with many Fathers. Thanks to Rachael for sharing her journey in this in such an honest way.
Jesus the Phoenician – Karim El Koussa on GW Radio (gnosticwarrior.com)
“Yāwshu (Jesus) is the son of the Canaano-Phoenician Most High God Ēl-Alyon, being the Son of the Virgin Lady Maryām by the Divine Will of the Lord, who blessed this conception of a child that would be named Immanuel. He would live among us as “God Ēl with us,” a Nazarene, sacredly chosen to consecrate himself for keeping the word of God in his heart, mind, and spirit, healing the human race from its many errors and sins. He is the Galilean Meshiha (Messiah) who would anoint the people—who believed in him, his mother, and Father, and who believed in the Great Message he came to deliver, Love and Peace—with sacred water, the purest form of what is considered as the origin of life here on earth. He is the Khristós (Christ) who came and had himself crucified on the altar of life so that we may be clean and have life abundantly. He is the Good Shepherd.”
― Excerpt from Jesus the Phoenician
Fear & Loathing In… God? (cwoznicki.com)
How can God loath his chosen people? How does that even make sense? In one of John Webster’s sermons on this very Psalm he addresses how this can be. Honestly its one of the best explanations of God’s wrath and hatred and anger that I have ever read…
Trust (activeinspiration.wordpress.com)
Trusting in riches instead of our Father means you can’t attain to a relationship with God, you have replaced God with riches, thus you can’t attain, only fall.
Scripture of the Day, 3/13 (sowegalive.com)
1 Timothy 2:5 For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,

Forbidden Fruit in the Midst of the Garden 1

March 16, 2015Guestspeaker32 Comments

The Aeon Eye with Alexander Rivera looks also at the very beginning of the Bible and the Torah where we are presented with the idea of the origins of mankind in the Primordial Garden of Eden that we first see in the Book of Genesis, the Bereshith.

Alexander Rivera remarks:

The traditional Orthodox reading of this story, of course, presents the age-old legend as literal evidence for the claim of mankind’s original sin and subsequent fall from primordial perfection and divine grace, as if God was still holding an eternal grudge against mankind for eating a fruit that he created in the first place, and still cursing mankind and the world for a multitude of generations after the fact. From this disobedience to God, alienation was given rise from the creator and humanity was once again condemned under the Law that God later gave to Moses at Mt. Sinai. In this reading, humanity is specifically condemned because of their inherently wickedness due to their rebellion and disobedience. And so the story goes, God had to send his innocent Son to die a cruel death to shed his blood to atone for the transgressions of a sinful and destitute humanity. Yet, beneath this callous, misanthropic reading lies a deeper layer of spiritual truth.

In the previous Readings from the Scriptures we could see how the female got tempted to get to know more about good and evil and how there was a delight to the eyes, the tree to be desired to make one wise. When she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat she wanted her partner also to be part of her disobedience to the Elohim. She lured him into eating of it as well, though God had prohibited them to touch the tree.

By eating of this tree of the forbidden fruit the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig-leaves together, and made themselves aprons. Suddenly the innocence of nakedness made place for an uncomfortable feeling. Their discomfort being so naked for each other and for the rest around them gave them a bad feeling.

Throughout history the story of the beginning of sin got merciless made in a weapon to unconscionably threaten people with demons, un-heavenly creatures who would damage the human soul and torture the human beings who got tempted by their words and actions. Their living quarters being deep under the ground in the burning alcoves of the underworld.

In the Bereshith, the Tanakh, the Holy Jewish and Christian Bible the adversary of God, could be any tempter, but people wanted to see not themselves in it but preferred to see an extra-terrestrial being in it, giving the noun satan (adversary) the surnames Satan and Lucifer. We do not know if it is like Alexander Rivera thinks that this interpretation would have come into the picture much later with the Book of Wisdom (2:23-24) revealing in this version:

For God created man to be immortal, and made him to be an image of his own eternity. Nevertheless through envy of the devil came death into the world: and they that do hold of his side do find it.

Irenaeus, the Bishop of Lyons, writes in Against Heresies 5.23, which started the ball rolling for the Orthodox exegetic interpretation:

But that God was true, and the serpent a liar, was proved by the result, death having passed upon them who had eaten. For along with the fruit they did also fall under the power of death, because they did eat in disobedience; and disobedience to God entails death. Wherefore, as they became forfeit to death, from that [moment] they were handed over to it.

Originally the serpent was the metaphor for the creeping evil, the danger that could come up to man, and by moments could have been very beautiful and attractive, very cunning. In life we can encounter slyness and man has found ways to use subtlety and tricks to bring deceit, not always playing clever or subtle games.

In the Revelation of John 12:9, the serpent is equated with a dragon, a devil or satan, which many people take to be a specific figure with the name Satan or Lucifer:

The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.

In the Book Wisdom is told that God created man unto His own likeness without corruption. Nevertheless through envies of the devil, the inner-thought of man going against the given purity of the Master Creator, came death into the world. Everybody in the creation of the Most High has elements of Him in him or her and by this gift of God has the possibility to feel the essence of the Creator in themselves. It are the wicked thoughts which separate from God and do come into the mind of those who think themselves wise or want to test God. Eve clearly wanted to test the Elohim. Therefore the Power of Jehovah had to come to her to condemn her. It was His Spirit Which filled the world but has all the right to give and take and man doubted His rights.

Wis 1:1-7 WEBA Love righteousness, all you who are judges of the earth. Think of the Lord with a good mind. Seek him in singleness of heart, (2) because he is found by those who don’t tempt him, and is manifested to those who trust him. (3) For crooked thoughts separate from God. His Power convicts when it is tested, and exposes the foolish. (4) Because wisdom will not enter into a soul that devises evil, nor dwell in a body that is enslaved by sin. (5) For a holy spirit of discipline will flee deceit, and will depart from thoughts that are without understanding, and will be ashamed when unrighteousness has come in. (6) For wisdom is a spirit who loves man, and she will not hold a blasphemer guiltless for his lips; because God bears witness of his reins, and is a true overseer of his heart, and a hearer of his tongue: (7) Because the spirit of the Lord has filled the world, and that which holds all things together knows what is said.

Wis 2:21-24 WEBA Thus they reasoned, and they were led astray; for their wickedness blinded them, (22) and they didn’t know the mysteries of God, neither did they hope for wages of holiness, nor did they discern that there is a prize for blameless souls. (23) Because God created man for incorruption, and made him an image of his own everlastingness; (24) but death entered into the world by the envy of the devil, and those who belong to him experience it.

For to the light of day succeeds night, but against wisdom evil does not prevail (Wisdom 7:30) Adam and Eve having had evil thoughts of God by giving heed to their wish to know as much as God knows. They were not not ashamed concerning their soul and now it was to late to hide for God. Sirach 7:1 tells us not to do evil so will no evil overtake you. Now the relationship between God and man got disturbed and they knew very well that they had done wrong.

That satan and lucifer are not wicked beings, can also been seen in other places in Scriptures where the evangelist John equates Jesus Christ with Lucifer, the Latin word for “light-bearer” which stems from the “Latin Vulgate” Bible, produced by Jerome, commissioned by Pope Damascus in 382 A.D. In Revelation 22:16, “Jesus” proclaims that:

“I, Jesus, have sent my angel to give you this testimony for the churches. I am the Root and the Offspring of David, and the bright Morning Star.”

In the verses about the penalty coming over the man and female, the 1° Adam and Eve, the Creator offers a solution and talks about the evil being crushed by the foot of the send one, the darkness eliminated by the light. The ‘Light” spoken off in the Bible refers then to the promised one, who got born in Bethlehem out of the tribe of God’s servant King David.

Of course, the Latin “Lucifer” (“Lux Ferre”) was associated with the planet Venus, which is called “Phosphoros”, the “morning star” or “dawn-bringer”, who was both a minor god in Greece and Rome, who according to the Greek Historian Diodorus Siculus, was a:

…son of Atlas, who was fond of astronomy, and once, after having ascended Mount Atlas to observe the stars, he disappeared. He was worshipped with divine honours, and regarded as the fairest star in the heavens. (Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology.) {Forbidden Fruit in the Midst of the Garden (Part 1)}

We have goodness in us but there is also badness which “lies in wait to turn things that are good into evil” (Sirach 11:31). When Jehovah’s Word came into the world everything got created and out of chaos came order, but that does not mean that disorder would have gone for ever. In the Plan of God everything should stay in good order, but man got the right to order things themselves as well. Jehovah God is a God of order. Normally man had to be the seal of full measure, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty. Man was placed in the beautiful Garden of Eden, the Garden of God.

To dwell in the awesome presence of a perfect and holy God, many would agree that those being there in the Garden of God had to be perfect. What went wrong is seen in the reaction of the woman ignoring God’s commandment. there was light that made an end to darkness, which was set up on the holy mountain of God. This light is also called “Lucifer” in Scripture who also fitted the name, ‘Son of the Morning’ being perfect in its ways from the day that it was created, until unrighteousness was found in it. (Ezekiel 28:2-19)

A "Son of Light" bad and good. Lucifer the evil one. — A “Son of Light” bad and good. Lucifer the evil one.

Man got its insides filled with badness, a violence against the Will of God, and this the Bible calls sin. We come to hear in the Scriptures that splendour and beauty did not last forever. It is told that Lucifer while ministering, began to consider his own position of prominence and became prideful, believing that he deserved more than what he already had. He wanted to become like the Most High. This is the main problem of what went wrong in the Garden of Eden. This is also still the problem of today. There were those who wanted to be like God in a bad sense of having the same power as God, wanting to be God. This became the reason to cast them out as ‘wrongoers’, ‘wrongdoers’ or sinners as profane ‘out of God’s mountain’.

Lucifer was also known by the Greeks as the Titan Prometheus, the son of Iapetus. (As a side-note compare this description of Phosphoros with Isaiah 14: 13-14: “For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most high”). {Forbidden Fruit in the Midst of the Garden (Part 1)}

Man was stripped of his beauty, his position, and his rights to heaven. The lucifer got his light dimmed. Lucifer’s name, ‘son of the morning,’ was given to a far more deserving individual, the Son of God. He is the seed of the New Generation, the beginning of the New World. Jesus Christ is called the ‘Bright and Morning Star’ (Revelation 22:16).

Today, the one promised in the Garden of Eden, who was in the dark for a long time, has become the light of the world again and is now back close to God, seated at the right hand of the Most High Divine Creator. The 2° Adam is now dwelling in the presence of the Almighty. Christ’s words hold true, even ‘in the account of Satan’:

“Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Matthew 23:12).

In what has happened in the Garden of Eden we have an example which we should seriously take at heart. We shall have to look deep in our heart and question ourselves which position we do want to take in. We should see and understand what the 1° Adam and Eve did wrong and how we can avoid falling in the same trap as they did. We should come to understand that recalcitrance and aversion to God will make us weaker and defenceless. The rebellious attitude will bring us only in the dark, like it did with Adam and Eve being brought in a grim world.

We should know that still today the adversary of God is willing to control the world, therefore it is also said that ‘Satan’s attempt’ to control this world system is nothing to take lightly.

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