The Garden of Eden: Proof of God's Love and Mercy
Genesis 1:27
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. Genesis 2:16-17 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. Genesis 3:1-7 Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons. Genesis 3:22-24 And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life. Here is a summary for any slow heathens who might be reading this (I realize that 'slow' and 'heathen' are redundant -- I cant imagine why a person with a healthy mind would reject Jesus Christ).
They might ask if God knew what would happen when he created that deceitful talking snake and turned it loose? Didn't He think that it might be sort of easy for the snake to convince curious people, who don't know the difference between right and wrong, to try something forbidden? The answer is, of course He knew -- He's God. Then they might ask, why would God place people in a situation where they could not help but sin? The answer is so that He could shew us His love and mercy. God created us to be vile, wretched, foul, evil people that deserve much worse than to be tormented and tortured for all of eternity. He showed His love and mercy by breaking off a piece of himself, turning it into a man, and having that man tortured for a few hours then killed. That one man being tortured for a few hours more than makes up for the required eternal torture that the rest of us deserve. So now, all we have to do to avoid our righteous fate is to accept God's grace and forgiveness and live our lives entirely for God, subjugating our will to His. Then when we die, we get to live our afterlives entirely for God, subjugating our will to His. Praise the Sweet name of Jesus! Pastor Billy-Reuben |
Re: The Garden of Eden: Proof of God's Love and Mercy
Thank you for that Pastor, many visitors, guided by Jesus’s finger on the mouse button, who reach here are ignorant of the truth and love behind Genesis.
An interesting point is that in the time before Eve ate of the Fruit of The Tree of Knowledge, she did not know the difference between good and evil and thus the serpent had an easy job. Thanks to the Bible and the inherited effect of Tree of Knowledge, we today know that it is wrong to disobey God but, of course, Eve did not, in fact, being a woman, she was probably only half aware of Who God was and just how important He is. God also put a Tree of Life in the Garden – a tree that granted eternal life (Gen:3:22 and see also Re22:2 for added foliage effects.) This was the antidote to The Tree of Knowledge, which caused mortality. However, prior to the fall, Adam and Eve were immortal and didn’t need The Tree of Life. (Perhaps the animals did?) So if Adam and Eve had eaten of Fruit of The Tree of Life (which wasn't forbidden) after they had eaten of the Fruit of The Tree of Knowledge, they would have been simultaneously immortal and have the knowledge of good and evil, which God must think is a bad thing. (One wonders what would have happened if the serpent had had a few of the Tree of Life Fruits to hand out!) I suspect that God placed both trees in Eden because He needed them for some reason and had nowhere else to put them. |
Re: The Garden of Eden: Proof of God's Love and Mercy
If God didn't want Adam and Eve to eat the fruit. why didn't he just put the tree somewhere else where they would not have access to it?
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Dorkstick. We had a choice to make, that was the point. |
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I was telling some Unsaved Person this only yesterday, Pastor. How can their eyes be so blind? :(
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If you're going to give someone a choice to make, then you need to give them all the information they need to make that choice. If God was going to give Adam and Eve the choice to obey or disobey without giving them the ability to understand right vs wrong, good vs evil, then he should not have punished them for disobedience, since they didn't know any better. And to punish all of humanity for all time because of the actions of two people who didn't know any better is just cruel. It's one of the reasons I find your concept of the Divine impossible to believe. |
Re: The Garden of Eden: Proof of God's Love and Mercy
Old Iron Crotch, God told them not to eat the Apple, and what it would do :angry: :
Genesis 3:3 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. Stop lying about God, heathen. God did everything He could to save those little traitors, but they made their own decision through Free Will. |
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Pastor Billy-Reuben |
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Being a witch doesn't pay off. :angry: |
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Just as I would question the judgement of a parent who put a priceless objet d'art within in a baby's reach and then punished the baby for touching it, I question the judgement of a so-called omniscient deity who puts a tree whose fruit he doesn't want eaten within reach of people he should know will eat it. I also question the judgement of people who would worship such a deity. |
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Such "mercy" reminds me of the scene in "Gladiator" where Commodus has just informed his sister that he intends to rape her until she becomes pregnant and gives him a son, that her son from her late husband will be held hostage, and that his life will be forfeit if she does not co-operate, and then screams in her face, "AM I NOT MERCIFUL!?" |
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Iron Crotch needs to order a copy of To Train Up a Child, by Michael and Debi Pearl. http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...500_AA240_.jpg When the Pearls wanted to teach their toddlers gun safety, they would just leave a gun laying around in the living room. Every time a kid reached for it, they would shout "NO!" and swat the kid on the hand with a hickory switch. Quote:
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Re: The Garden of Eden: Proof of God's Love and Mercy
I received this question from a seeker:
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Hello Tony. Thank you for your comments. I'm sorry that you were disappointed, but I will try to address your objections. "God cannot create sin, for it is an contradiction of His very nature." Friend, no true statement ever begins with the words "God cannot...". There is nothing that God cannot do. Perhaps if you phrased it as "God would not create sin, ...". However, even then, the statement is still false. God created everything that exists. Man can't create. The Devil can't create. Only God can create. If something exists, it can only be because God created it. Isaiah 45 tells us as much: I am the LORD, and there is none else, there is no God beside me ... I am the LORD, and there is none else. ... I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things. God is not deceitful. God will not lie, for it is a contradiction of His very nature. God is not a man, that He should lie. However, He frequently wants folks to believe things that aren't true. The Bible is full of stories about God sending strong delusion or putting lying spirits into the mouths of prophets. So, God doesn't lie Himself, but He can and does cause others to lie for Him. "We must understand that God created law for Adam and Eve, Their knowledge of this law was recognized by both, so there was no excuse." Amen! There was no excuse. God was 110% justified in cursing all of mankind, womankind, and serpentkind for this transgression. "We must remember that we all at one time or another were sinners and lost. Didn't Jesus also die for these people that are called worthless?" Amen! Not only that, worthless sinners are precisely who He died for. I remember very clearly what a miserable wretch I was before I was saved. I praise the sweet name of Jesus every day. "We must control our urge to separate those from God who we do not agree with, but rather reprove them in love and an understanding that they are not useless, but mistaken in the ways of the Lord." But we are useless to the Lord as long as we remain in opposition to Him. Not one of us is capable of doing any good. Our righteousness is as filthy rags. It is not until we repent of our sins and choose to do His Will, that we can be saved. I hope I have cleared up any misunderstandings, Brother. God Bless. Pastor Billy-Reuben |
Re: The Garden of Eden: Proof of God's Love and Mercy
Pastor, what a wonderful sermon! It's just the sort of thing all those Hellbound atheists need to hear, to understand the Lord's Infinite Mercy! And your response to Tony was as gentle as it was insightful.
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Re: The Garden of Eden: Proof of God's Love and Mercy
I received a follow-up question from the same seeker.
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Hello Tony, Before I address your comments, let me ask you a question. Do you believe that God knew ahead of time, whether or not Adam and Eve would eat from the forbidden tree? The first time I heard ever this story as a child, when we got to the end of the second chapter, I knew that they were going to eat from the tree. God is a whole lot smarter than I am, so I have to expect that He knew as well. "The biggest thing that I have a problem with is that you do not offer Biblical passages to support your interpretation. Give me Bible for this statement. “God created us to be vile, wretched, foul, evil people..” I am trying to understand why you say the things you do." First I'll give you the logical proof, then I'll back it up with the Biblical proof. If you agree that that God had any control over His process of creation, and if you agree that God knew ahead of time that Adam and Eve would eat the forbidden fruit, then it necessarily implies that He intended for them to eat from the tree. Again, my intelligence is not even a measurable fraction of God's intelligence. So, if I can think of ways in which creation could have been different enough so that Adam and Eve would have been able to resist the temptation without affecting their free will, then certainly God could. He could have created the world differently, but He didn't. He knew that if He created the world in the way He did, that Adam and Eve would succumb to the temptation. You may take this as if I'm judging God, but let me assure you that I am not. God saw everything that He had made, and, behold it was very good. With the utmost humility, I have to say that I agree. The point of my sermon was this. Imagine that God had created Adam and Eve with a better ability to resist the temptation of the forbidden fruit, or had made the serpent less subtil, or hadn't made the fruit so attractive, or hadn't made Eve so gullible, etc, and sin never entered the world. If sin had never entered the world, then how would we know or understand God's Amazing Grace? It is the process of going through rebellion and depravity, followed redemption and salvation through Jesus Christ, that allows us to know and understand God's Amazing Grace. Praise God, the Lord is so Good! Now for the Biblical proof. Gen 8:21 the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth -- we are born sinners Isa 64:6 we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags -- we are not capable of doing anything good (without God's help, that is) Jer 17:9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? Mark 7:21-23 For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, Thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: All these evil things come from within, and defile the man. -- Sin comes from within, as part of our nature. "God cannot lie, this also according to scripture." When the Bible says that God cannot lie, it doesn't mean He is incapable of lying or that there is some sort of limitation on what God can or cannot do. God can do anything. But as John 1:1 tells us, God is his Word. God's Word makes up the very fabric of reality. So if God says something, it is automatically true. That's why God "cannot" lie. "It is Satan that tempts. When God allows Satan to tempt, this is to prove weather a man is true to his belief and faith in God." Of course. I believe that must be why God created Satan in the first place. "What about Job?" Rom 3:10-11 As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. The first chapter of Job refers to Job as righteous, and compared to other men, he was righteous. We learn later in the book how pitiful man's righteousness is compared to God's standards. God explains to Job exactly what that means. Finally, Job understands, sees himself as God sees him, and says: Job 42:6 Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes. Everything that Job experienced at the hands of Satan are nothing compared to what he, you, I, and everyone else all deserve, which is an eternity of torment in Hell. I praise Jesus every day for taking my sin away from me, so that I can be fit to be in the presence of God when I am called home. We deserve eternity in Hell for the commission of a single sin, and I know I've sinned more than once. "These words will create enemies of the Cross and not bring them into a state of mind that they are willing to listen to the truth. Jesus taught us not to intreat men as enemies but as brothers." Friend, I do not treat folks as enemies, I do love sinners, I do forgive those who mistreat me, and I do not preach in anger. Sometimes I might use strong language, as Jesus did when he addressed the Pharisees, to wake up a sleeping sinner, who doesn't even know about the danger he's in -- but that is in love. Mat 5:37 is about what to do when asked to swear an oath. God bless you, Tony. Pastor Billy-Reuben |
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This sermon was referred to in the newsletter and I've read the comments with interest. Having reread Genesis before posting, with the relevant verses appended, I can't find where God forbade the woman from eating of the tree specified. At the time of His prohibition, no female humans existed; even after her transgression, Eve was not named immediately but it must have been her. Here are the verses I read earlier: Genesis 2:8, 15-17 And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed ... And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou [singular] mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.How should I answer this criticism? |
Re: The Garden of Eden: Proof of God's Love and Mercy
God's garden is holy and he planned for man to be in paradise and will be.
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