Death before the 'Fall'?

There are three states for Adam in Genesis.State #1 - Adam is created neutral between two trees.State #2 - Adam after having eaten the tree of life.State #3 - Adam after having eaten the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.I submit that State #1 certainly can be compounded with either State #2 or State # 3. But it cannot be compounded with both #2 and #3 at the same time. That was forbidden by God.Let me abbreviate these states #1 CRE, #2 TOL, #3 TOKGEWhat we are told is that Adam in state CRE takes in as food TOKGE. He combines CRE state with TOKGE state. God's reaction is that Adam is then forbidden to move into TOL state. He is driven from the garden and he is to die.We are not told whether not he previously had moved into TOL state. But it is certain that God forbids Adam to move from TOKGE to TOL because the effect of TOL will be to preserve Adam alive forever.I submit that this proves that under any circumstances God forbade that TOL state and TOKGE state be compounded together. I think that CRE must move from his neutral position to EITHER TOKGE or TOL. He cannot have both.CRE state and TOL state are positive. There is no problem with those two states. But TOKGE state is definitely against the will of God. Once Adam has taken TOKGE he is at odds against God and God will not permit him to be in that state forever. So though CRE and TOKGE have been compounded God will not allow Adam to also move into the state of TOL.Now there is another important piece of information to me. Adam is warned that moving into TOKGE will cause him to die. He is not told that failure to eat TOL will cause him to die. He is not warned that any other matter will cause him to die.My opinion is that Adam had a life which God would have maintained to live on everlastingly which was quite apart from TOL.If that is true then TOL must represent something else besides simple human immortality. It may include human immortality. But it has to represent something more than mere human immortality.With the aid of the rest of the Bible, especially the New Testament I think that the TOL represents the life of God Himself. God wanted to compound Adam's life with His own life. This is the compounding of the created human life with the uncreated divine life of God.Where do we see the created human life compounded with the uncreated divine life of God? We see it in the man Jesus Christ. In the New Testament Jesus Chirst is the compounding of the life of God with the life of humanity into one entity - a God - Man.There is no difficulty at all in seeing that God's eternal purpose was to have sons of God with His life and His nature.I covered many of these matters in the thread the Tree of Life as the Life of God. But it seemed OK to place these thoughts here too.The bottom line in this for me is that God's intention is not merely that man live an everlasting life. God's intention is that man live a life united, compounded, mingled, and mutually interwoven with God's life so that man is a God-Man.This message has been edited by jaywill, 01-02-2006 09:01 AMThis message has been edited by jaywill, 01-02-2006 09:02 AMThis message has been edited by jaywill, 01-02-2006 09:32 AM

Ramoss, Could you please quote the post I wrote and point out exactly what sentence/s gave rise to this question of yours?ThanksThis message has been edited by jaywill, 01-02-2006 06:42 PM

lfen, Hey, could have been a sudden change (relatively).What happened to "punctuated equilibrium?" I thought that was a relatively abrupt change in the evolutionary scheme.It could have been a sudden change.This message has been edited by jaywill, 01-03-2006 07:05 AM

lfen, I'm suppose to stay on the subject matter.But you have to know that advances in these fields have had contributions from theists also.You have to know that Newton and Pasteur (spelling?) weren't stopped by belief in God. I'm pretty sure G.W. Carver who showed how many things could be done with a peanut was a theist.I don't think God is out to fool anyone. I don't think He is out to stop you from researching. In fact I think at times God actually puts His blessing on science research. If one takes into account what God's revelation has said in the course of study then there is absolutely no reason to think God is out to fool a person.If you start with the attitude that the revelation is not to be taken seriously, then you may incorrectly charge the believer that God is out to fool all the scientists. But if something was said in the revelation telling us what happened then there is no deception. I'm supppose to stay on subject.But you don't discard all medicene because of what some qwacks
have done selling miracle snake oil. So is it fair for you to use a few fake faith healers as grounds to discard all biblical revelation? Luke was a physician. And he wrote the Gospel of Luke and accompanied Paul also writing the book of Acts in the New Testament.If God thought that we did not need physicians then it is curious to me why He chose one to write so much of the New Testament. I think we need both. There is nothing wrong with the hard working farmer who is also a man or woman of prayer.Some of the prophets were farmers. David herded sheep. Peter and John were fishermen. Paul made tents to support himself and his coworkers.Wait a minute here. Are you being a little too knee jerk in your bias? Sometimes scientist come up with absurd nonsense. It is difficult to discard the Bible for me, mainly because the impact of the personality of Jesus Christ on human history is as powerful as it is.But the subject here is death before the first man in the Bible Adam, so I will leave off additional responses to your post before I have to be reminded again.This message has been edited by jaywill, 01-03-2006 07:27 AMThis message has been edited by jaywill, 01-03-2006 07:28 AMThis message has been edited by jaywill, 01-03-2006 07:31 AM

Concerning the initial question, I agree that there was death on the earth before the creation and death of Adam.So I have no passages to demonstrate what the originator requests. I agree with the poster on that point.However, I believe that Adam was the first man, the first human being. And that Adam opened the door of the world commited to him, to sin and death.Obviously something evil was lurking just outside the door trying to corrupt the world put under Adam's deputy authority.I am not sure that it is necessary to believe that ADAM saw death in order to be warned about it. I think that Adam may have witnessed God bring some animals to being from the dust and he could understand that returning to the dust was death and not desireable.Perhaps, the poster does have a point. I'm pondering the matter. But the most intelligent human ever created may have understood something about death without having witnessed it.I'm not sure yet. Perhaps I will not be sure either way for a long time:"The things that are hidden belong to Jehovah our God; but the things that are revealed, to us and our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law" (Deuteronomy 29:29)

lfen, Why don't you open up a thread and explain why it takes more faith to believe that lions ate veggies then to believe an ape one day gave birth to a human?Why don't you open up a thread and defend those incredibly ignorant statements suggesting that readers of the Bible think dentists are not necessary, farmers should farm without ever praying, scientists should not do science, and God is out to deceive everyone?You could also demonstrate how you can lump all Bible belief along with every form of superstition as you implied.This message has been edited by jaywill, 01-03-2006 01:48 PMThis message has been edited by jaywill, 01-03-2006 01:49 PM

You probably make the claim. It is only that you attempt to soften the implication by saying that it happened over millions of years. Somehow the thought of slow gradualism will soften the premise. And the premise is that something non-human gave birth to a human. Long time is used to make it seem more plausible that a man descended from an ape.All together now "YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND EVOLUTION!"Okay,Okay, in all the pictures that scientists have artists draw for them, the ancestral creature LOOKS like an ape. So there.When you take away all the padding of millions of years and imagined intermediate stages of Homo this and homo that and homo the other, what do you have basically? A non-human had to one day give birth to a human. You can do what you want Yaro.I plan to open up a thread on the biblical teaching about what the effects of unbelief and rejection of God are on the normal function of the mind. Maybe we can kick some of it around there.I plan to call it something like "The Effects of Unbelief in God on the Mind" from the standpoint of the Bible's own statements about the matter.

Some of them are.And they often work together to illustrate texts books and give picturial ideas of their theories. When they do I assume that the scientists are directing the artists what to draw and what ideas they want conveyed. Sooner or latter an offspring had to come out that was of a different species.Creature N had to produce creature N+1 of a different species.A human being had to come out of the womb of a nun-human being at some point. And that was on some day. And I know the corn I eat which is so delicious was once wild and scrawny. The Indians figured out how to gradually raise it to be the plump ear of corn grains that we eat.So a Chihuahua descended from a wolf. Sounds like a step backwards to me. Sounds like some form of degeneration.A few years back in Boston the Boston Globe ran an article defending Darwinian Evolution. All I remember was that they reserved an entire page to a huge picture of a distinguished beared Darwin. I don't recall anything except that huge picture. It was like "How DARE they question the Old Sage."I guess it was designed to make people fall on their knees and recite five "Hail Darwins". Thoroughly religious."Hail Darwin, Full of Grades"Maybe the fossil primates you have discovered are degenerated humans rather than missing links between apes and humans.Yaro, you want to believe that non-humans gave descent to humans, you go ahead and believe that.This message has been edited by jaywill, 01-03-2006 05:17 PM

I agree. And possibly he kept them for reasons of worship since he did offer one.

All we have about the killing of animals is the implication of Genesis 3:21:"And Jehovah God made for Adam and for his wife coats of skins and clothed them"My opinion is that God killed the animals to obtain the coats.I also believe that this killing was the basis upon which Abel killed animals to offer to God. He did not see God do it because he was not born. He learned it from his parents. This offering of the slain animal must have been a God revealed procedure for thier worship.It foreshadowed the Son of God who would die and cloth the sinner with Himself as the sinner's righteousness before God.Out of the hundreds and hundreds of events which could have been significant and recorded in Genesis, the Spirit of God inspired the writer to include these selected events because of the plenary revelation of the entire Bible.This message has been edited by jaywill, 01-05-2006 12:14 AM

jar,The phrase "the Fall" is nowhere in the Bible. But the fact is there. Solomon informs that what man has become is not how God originally created him:"See, this alone have I found, that God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes." (Ecc. 7:29)Aside from the facts as we see in Genesis of man "falling away" from God we have this verse. It shows that God made man in one way. But in spite of the way he was created man through his seeking has become something else. This can be considered a falling away from the manner in which man was created by God.I would argue that at least four "falls" are seen in Genesis. Some readers suggest that the falling away of man from God is continuous. I think the idea has merit.This message has been edited by jaywill, 02-04-2006 12:41 PMThis message has been edited by jaywill, 02-04-2006 12:42 PM

If God made man upright why didn't man stay upright?Remember, your statement was that a Fall cannot be seen anywhere in the Bible. It is not a matter of whether you believe the Bible or not. The issue is, is there or is there not a matter of the created man falling away from God?If you can lift yourself temporarily above your skepticism concerning belief, I ask you:According to the Bible, if man was made upright by God, then why did man not remain upright? Do you have any biblical ideas on that?This message has been edited by jaywill, 02-04-2006 01:25 PM

If you want to launch a kind of philosophical arguement that man was flawed even before he disobeyed God, that is one matter. But if you come from the biblical viewpoint that it is God and not you or I who pronounces man's innocence or guilt, then you have to recognize that man fell.There should be no problem with the reader who is objective, to see that after man partook of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil his relationship with God was drastically changed, according to God's standard of a normal relationship.You can say that, according to your standard of a normal relationship with God, you see indications of a flawed man before he disobeyed. But if you look rather at it from God's perspective, there certainly was a fall according to His standard of normality for man.Therefore, I would say that in the Bible there is a fall of man. I believe that there was death prior to Adam's death. So I have nothing much to add to that. In the pre-Adamic world, I believe that the creatures of that age died, whatever they were.This message has been edited by jaywill, 02-04-2006 02:18 PMThis message has been edited by jaywill, 02-04-2006 02:19 PM

jar,Be honest.Is your reading and interpretation of the Bible driven by a desire to see in how many ways you can contradict mainline traditional interpretations of it by evangelical Christians?This message has been edited by jaywill, 02-04-2006 02:23 PM

I'm a little skeptical of you. I think you start with a familiarity of what evangelical Christians believe and look for rationals in the Bible to present the opposite. That's the impression I get from your posts.I find your interpretations reactionary and provocative on general principle.