CHAPTER 15
SOULED CREATURES #2: ADAM & THE WOMAN (EVE)
We previously discussed the souled creatures known as angels, now we must turn our attention to the second set of souled creatures, the humans. If angels were God’s first choice for creation, why did God create a second category of sentient beings? Why did God make humans so lowly in body compared to angels who were capable of space travel, had superior intellect and enormous physical power, and could not die? How could these lowly humans isolated on one planet and living for relatively short periods of time provide anything of interest to God beyond what the angels already provided? The answer is that humans were created to resolve the conflict between God and fallen angels. We have seen how Satan and his angels impugned God’s character by saying a loving God could never send His creatures to the eternal Lake of Fire, meaning God was unfair, unjust and unloving, and therefore not perfect God. This charge against God’s character could have been ignored by God, but it was not. God is exceptionally gracious, and due to the enormity of the sentence God pronounced against Satan and his angels, God allowed Satan’s legal appeal to be litigated in the court of the universe. The witnesses would be a new creation called man, and the courtroom would be one tiny planet called earth. So man was created to resolve the angelic conflict and show that God is indeed perfect in character, loving beyond measure, and gracious to the extreme. Satan’s charges against God would now be played out in the court of human history, with multiple Ages of time showing different aspects of God’s perfect character. It would start with one man and one woman, living on the former home of Satan and the angels.
We have just seen how in six literal days God renovated the earth, which was originally the home of the angels. Adam was the first human created and placed on the same earth which had been Satan's home for a very long time, and in the exact same Garden of Eden where Satan formerly spent much of his time as the most favored of all God's angels. Then after a while God added a woman. Now things were getting interesting. But putting these lowly humans on his former home made Satan angry, so Satan devised a plan. But we get ahead of ourselves. Hold that thought.
The Bible says that God created two sinless humans and put them into a perfect environment called the Garden of Eden. First Adam was created from the dust of the ground, and after some time the woman (later called Eve) was created from a rib taken out of Adam (ribs have bone marrow, which are rich in stem cells). This is not an allegory, or a myth, or a simile, or a fable, or a representational analogy. They did not evolve from lower creatures. This is literally what happened. God made the first human male body out of the elements from the earth and put a male soul into him, and after a while God made the first human female body out of the man's altered DNA and put a female soul into her. And they were perfect in every way. We have not progressed from them, but rather to a large degree we have retrogressed from what they were because they were created as perfect human specimens. After they sinned they gained a corruption factor which was the sinful nature. But they were created with perfect souls and perfect bodies, so we should recognize that these first two humans were perfect physical and mental specimens. They were created with the ability to talk using a full vocabulary from their first day, having extremely high intelligence, perfect bodies of great beauty, and they were sinless. In fact they were the two most beautiful and brilliant humans in all of human history, from the day they were created until the future end of human history. What else would two perfect people want? As we shall see, they wanted more.
But God did not create a couple of cave man type people, illiterate knuckle draggers barely more intelligent than apes. Rather, Adam and the woman were created as perfect humans in every way, and did not need to learn most things. They were both genius in mentality. When God creates something, He does a perfect job of it. He does not create some lowly creature who needs to evolve over millions of years into something useful. The story of evolution is an impossible myth which takes far more faith to believe than to believe in the Bible as written. 2 Peter 1:19-21 says:
“We also have the prophetic message as something completely reliable, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. 20 Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation of things. 21 For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”
We know from the genealogy provided in Genesis chapter 5 Adam was 130 years old when his first son was born, and we have no reason to try to interpret that as anything other than 130 years from his creation, rather than from the exit from the Garden as some have speculated. This means the first two humans were in the Garden just under 130 years before they sinned and were thrown out, assuming they obeyed God's command after the fall to be fruitful and multiply, meaning get on with it. Also, Satan was motivated to get them into sin, and worked at this issue diligently and full time, so the roughly 130 year time frame in the Garden seems right from that perspective as well. The man and woman were created with bodies which would not wear out or die, and there was no disease in the Garden. But once outside the Garden in a state of sin they were mortal.
But what did the people do in the Garden? Their daily activities included Adam ruling the world. He managed the animals, and gave them all names. Neither human needed to work to survive, since food was there for the picking, shelter was not necessary, and they never wore clothing. But they still had tasks to fulfill since work was part of happiness for them, and it remains so. And God gave them the gift of sex, which they used to a great extent for mutual enjoyment rather than for procreation, since that was not part of the original creation for man or angels. The procreation part only started after the fall. The woman (who was not called Eve until after the fall, then she was renamed “mother of all living” which we call Eve) supported her husband as ruler of the world and had her own activities. She was in a subordinate role to the man, which eventually became an issue for her. She was likely a gardening expert and possibly she named the plants, since the Bible says Adam named the animals (conjecture alert – the Bible does not specify what the woman did, so it is unknown). They communed with God every evening as He watched after their spiritual needs, providing them with interaction, teaching and motivation. Everything was perfect. As we already said, what more could they want? Apparently, they wanted power; the ultimate corrupter, as we shall see.
That is where Satan got into the picture. Since man was created to resolve the charges Satan brought against God that He was unfair, unjust and unloving, Satan was allowed under the rules of the appeal trial to tempt the humans into sinning. And the only possible sin was to eat from the one forbidden tree, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The only reason for that tree was as a test to the two humans, and it had no intrinsic characteristics of evil. God allowed them to eat from any tree except that one, and this tree was the only test to see if they would remain loyal to God or choose to revolt against God and join Satan’s side of the appeal trial. Remember why God allowed this temptation. He was not trying to lure them into sin. But He was allowing a fair appeal trial, giving Satan every opportunity to prove his appeal argument, while also giving the humans every opportunity to avoid falling into sin as a revolt against God. They could have remained sinless forever. But of course, they did not.
Satan observed the man and woman for quite a long time and then he settled on a plan. He noted that God had given Adam authority over all creation and also over the woman. Satan viewed this as his opportunity, and set about to convince the woman that she was undervalued as a person, that she did not have equality with Adam, that God treated her as an inferior creature, that God was withholding information from her regarding “good and evil,” and other lies. Satan tempted her using lies and innuendo to entice her to eat from the forbidden tree. He did so by indwelling the serpent, which before the fall had legs and was a beautiful creature, and apparently was a pet of the woman with no ability to speak the human language, since it was an animal. Satan eventually started talking through the serpent, which might at first have seemed odd to her, but then the woman liked to have someone to talk to while Adam was out doing his daily tasks. We can surmise that Satan, over a long period of time, worked at gaining the confidence of the woman through the pet serpent, and then worked at putting doubt into her mind about the motivations of both Adam and God. Satan’s ploy went something like this: Is it really fair for Adam to tell you what to do? Is it fair for God to withhold that one tree’s fruit from you? Isn’t it called the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil? Why would God not allow you to know certain things? Is that fair? Maybe God is afraid that if you eat of the Tree you will be like God and know everything He knows, much of which He is hiding from you. Note this was like Satan’s original sin, wanting to be equal to God. Genesis 3:1-5 relates what Satan said to the woman through the serpent (which is why Satan is often called a serpent):
“Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” 2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’” 4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
The woman resisted at first, and said she was not allowed to eat from the one tree or touch it otherwise she would die, even though the touching part was not what God had said. She could touch it all she wanted, but was not allowed to eat from it. We can surmise she eventually touched it and saw that nothing happened. She did not get into trouble. God did not tell her she had sinned, and she did not die after touching the tree. Eventually the woman, after a long time stewing over the issues, became obsessed with the tree and the possibilities it offered, and she wanted to know what God was withholding from her, and she wanted power equal to Adam. So she failed to resist the temptation as she lusted for the power the tree might give to her, and took the fruit and ate. And she died spiritually at that moment.
When God said they would die when they ate from this one tree, He did not mean physical death. God meant spiritual death. They would lose their human spirit and have only a soul remaining. They would be dead to God. That was the status of the woman when she handed the fruit to Adam, and he had to decide what to do. Each one had to eat the forbidden fruit to die spiritually, so at this point Adam was spiritually alive while his wife was spiritually dead. He looked at the woman he loved as a sinner outside of God's plan, and he thought about his life without her, and he chose to join her. His choice was calculated and fully understanding of the consequences, unlike the choice of the woman which was muddled and under a state of being confused and deceived by Satan's lies. Therefore when God handed down punishment, the man bore the brunt of it because his choice was well informed and calculated. The woman sinned being deceived but Adam sinned fully knowing what he was doing. Regardless, at this point both had died spiritually and attained a sinful nature at the same time, which would subsequently be passed down to their descendants. The two humans were thrown out of the Garden of Eden, the world was cursed and no longer perfect environment, and they each had additional judgments imposed on them regarding hard work and childbearing.
The Garden of Eden still exists on earth, just as it was when Adam and the woman were in it, and just as it was when Satan was in it when the earth was the home of the angels. It is now guarded by elect angels with flaming swords to keep fallen man away from the Tree of Life which is in it. The Garden of Eden cannot be located or entered, but it has an eternal future. We will see in a later chapter how it will be taken into the new eternal universe and put into the New Jerusalem, where the Tree of Life will be available to the spiritual winners of all time.
Genesis 3:23-24:
“So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.”
When Adam sinned and lost his acceptable status with God, he also lost rulership of the earth. The temptation of the woman and the sin of Adam gave that rulership of the earth to Satan. At this point Satan, as the new ruler of the world, believed he had won his appeal trial against God. But Satan always underestimates God. This was merely the opening salvo, and God had a response which Satan had not expected. God announced that He would provide a Messiah to save mankind from their sins. We will discuss the details of this in a future chapter, how God provided a way of salvation through grace. A Messiah would be born to a woman and would be sinless, capable of resolving the sin issue between God and man by sacrificing Himself on behalf of mankind. The first mention of this future salvation was in Genesis 3:15 where God said to Satan: "And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” The Messiah is the offspring or seed of the woman who would crush Satan's head by providing salvation on the cross. The cross was the death-blow to Satan's plan for staying out of the Lake of Fire, even though Satan was able to inflict harm ("strike his heel") during the long-running angelic conflict.
This was how time began for mankind; creation of a man, then a woman, and then testing in the form of a single temptation. They were put on the earth as part of the appeal trial of Satan, and testing was a necessary component, otherwise God would not have done it. God did not test the angels, but they sinned by seeking power. After approximately 130 years the man and woman succumbed to the pressure from Satan and sinned, then both were cast out of the Garden of Eden. They went out into a changed earth which was cursed because of their sin. The earth outside the Garden had also been a perfect environment, but the fall of man changed that. God put a curse on the earth which made it wild, which included both plant and animal life. The curse is described in Genesis 3:17:
“Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. 18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. 19 By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.”
The first part of the curse required hard work to eat and survive. In the Garden man did not work for a living, but outside the Garden on the newly cursed earth man struggled to survive. Plant life was cursed and turned wild as shown by the "thorns and thistles" reference. The animals were thrown out of the garden along with Adam and Eve. They were also cursed and turned wild and some became ferocious and hazardous to man. It was now more difficult to raise domestic animals and feed them, whereas previously they simply fed themselves. It became hard work to provide food, clothing, and shelter. Childbearing was added as a responsibility and became a painful process for the woman. Life became difficult, toilsome, and monotonous. And the curse also included becoming mortal, as this passage says "to dust you will return." Initially humans would live a very long time, but the life span decreased over the first 2000 years. This extended life span early on enabled a more rapid initial expansion of the human race.
After the fall of man a new location was needed. A place was required where fallen humans could be put after their death, and that location required two parts. This leads us to our next chapter on the location called Hades.