THE CONDITIONS OF ADAM AND EVE BEFORE AND AFTER THE FALL OF MAN
PART 2
Gerald L. Foster
The events of the creation occur in Genesis 1:1 through 2:22 and are included here only for quick reference and are generally as follows:
DAY 1 - God created heaven and earth, and in verses 1:3-5, He spoke light into being, and called the light day and called the darkness night. But since the sun and moon were made by God on the 4th day (verses 1:14-16), it has been suggested that this light might be described as terrestrial chemical action, the earth being intensely heated and self-illuminated. But this is not important to our purpose here.
DAY 2 - God said, "Let there be firmament," and He made the firmament and called it heaven, meaning the sky and space above.
DAY 3 - He spoke dry land into being and called it earth, and the water He called sea. And in Genesis 1:11 He commanded the earth to ...bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in it, upon the earth." There is no suggestion of evolution here.
DAY 4 - God spoke light into being, the greater light to give light upon the earth by day and the lesser light to rule the night. He either made the stars after He had made the sun and moon, or Moses simply told of the making of the stars after he told of the making of the sun and moon (Genesis 1:16). Considering that the earth is such a small mass clothed by such an infinitely vast universe, the earth seems to have very special purpose for God.
DAY 5 - God created great whales and every living creature which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind and every winged fowl after his kind, and He told them to be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let the fowl multiply in the earth.
DAY 6 - God made all the living cretures, cattle and beasts of the earth and creeping things after his kind. There is no suggestion of evolution here either. Then God said, ...let us make man in our image [a spiritual image], after our likeness:— So God created man, both male and female, in His own image without a need to evolve, because God does not change or evolve. It is important to note here that God saw that everything that He had made was very good (Genesis 1:31).
DAY 7 - Moses said, "Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work, which he had made; and he rested... from all his work which God had created and made" (Genesis 2:2-3).
The use of the expression above and all the host of them" indicates that all things were finished long ago (with no evolution following).
Although the making of Adam's natural body in Genesis 2:7, and the making of Eve from Adam's rib in Genesis 2:21-22, are related by Moses in chapter 2, after God rested, it is generally accepted that these events actually occurred in chapter 1 of Genesis, probably in verse 26. It seems that Adam's and Eve's beginnings are only being elaborated on in chapter 2, because God told Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply in 1:28, and spiritual man does not multiply of himself, so the natural formation of man must have occurred here also.
Then God "...put him [Adam] into the garden of Eden (a symbol of God's paradise) to dress and keep it." And in the garden there was the tree of life (a symbol of salvation), which the fruit thereof, if eaten, would give eternal life; yet God did not forbid Adam and Eve to eat of it, because they were created good and worthy to inhabit His eternity, and were not yet under the penalty of death. They could still utilize their will and eat freely of the tree of life if they so chose, because their spiritual characteristics were created with eternal life and their natural characteristics were made to live through all time. God did, however, give Adam one commandment, that he could not eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. God told him that: "In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die" (Genesis 2:15-17).
God, knowing all things, knew that Adam and Eve would violate the only law that He gave them, yet He made them good and He gave them the ability to keep His law. R. V. Sarrels wrote in his Systematic Theology, p. 201, that "There was a way man could have lived, and which he was commanded to live, which would have been consistent with his infinite but real dignity and excellence, and consistent with the law of the Holy God," yet man chose to sin.
To be continued . . .