by nicolaou 42 Replies latest watchtower bible
The problem here is quantifying the word "day". The problem exists because time to an immortal being is irrelevant. It doesn't matter to "God" because he is unaffected by it. The only way that Adam could even understand death would be to examine the deaths of the animals around him. That being said, how then would he understand "in that day you will die" if he had no concept of the passage of time?
CHL
Now did Jehovah lie? He didn't spell out from the start when they would eventually die.
Yes he did;
17 But as for the tree of the knowledge of good and bad you must not eat from it, for in the day you eat from [the tree] you will positively die.” (Genesis 2:15-17)
I knew this would all boil down to semantics.
DF'd: The day they ate of that fruit the dying process began.
Uhhhh..... Excuse me,..... but God(s) purposely killed Adam and Eve.
Gen 3:22 "And the Lord God said, “Now that the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil, ......(if you put your ear up to the Bible at this scripture you can here Satan saying "I TOLD YOU SO!!" )......he must not be allowed to stretch out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” 23 So the Lord God expelled him from the orchard in Eden"
Wow, God starved his own Babies! -Nice
I will post my view on the scripture...
1. Sin is death, Adam and Eve sinned against God by doing something against what he commanded, thus opening the doorway to sin in our world. If they did not go against God then there would be no sin, no death.
Now we have our Savior Jesus Christ who saves us from this Sin-Death, before Christ God required of his people to make sacrifices to satisfy his judgment so they can be saved.
2. This story in Genesis should not exactly be taken literally, the Garden is a symbol of paradise, Gods perfect creation before sin (death) entered the world "do not eat of this tree" symbolically shows that God made one law that he wanted Adam and Eve to obey... it may not be literally a Apple Tree.... The snake represents Satan and his temptation, Adam and Eve fall into temptation "their eyes were opened" - They discovered evil, Sin awakens...(death) "you will not die" Satan convinces them that Sin does not lead to death, which sin does lead to death as God said.
Adam and Eve get the boot from the garden... Sin leads to a world of pain, so the paradise they once had was gone and now is in a world corrupted by sin, that’s another symbolic view. "Angel with sword"-A sinful being cannot enter paradise.
Just a thought....
Evanescence
Jeffro, I agree that the stories are quite different and irreconcilable . My comment was simply an interesting aside. The reordering of John is an interesting subject that has been hashed about here a couple times.
So when God told Adam he would die on that day,possibly he meant within a thousand years and not within that 24 hour period.
Jehovah explained that to Adam, somewhere, right?
So when God told Adam he would die on that day,possibly he meant within a thousand years and not within that 24 hour period.Jehovah explained that to Adam, somewhere, right?
Not sure. Maybe it was in the fine print... and Adam couldn't read.
According to Red Dwarf (an eminently reliable source of facts), archeologists found a missing page to the Bible that says: "To my darling Candy. All characters portrayed within this book are ficticious and any resemblence to any people, living or dead, is purely coincidental."
There are a couple of flaws with this view.
1. Sin is death, Adam and Eve sinned against God by doing something against what he commanded, thus opening the doorway to sin in our world. If they did not go against God then there would be no sin, no death. Now we have our Savior Jesus Christ who saves us from this Sin-Death, before Christ God required of his people to make sacrifices to satisfy his judgment so they can be saved.
If believing in Jesus saves us from sin and death, why do people need to actually die to benefit from this salvation once they believe in him?
2. This story in Genesis should not exactly be taken literally, the Garden is a symbol of paradise, Gods perfect creation before sin (death) entered the world "do not eat of this tree" symbolically shows that God made one law that he wanted Adam and Eve to obey... it may not be literally a Apple Tree.... The snake represents Satan and his temptation, Adam and Eve fall into temptation "their eyes were opened" - They discovered evil, Sin awakens...(death) "you will not die" Satan convinces them that Sin does not lead to death, which sin does lead to death as God said.Adam and Eve get the boot from the garden... Sin leads to a world of pain, so the paradise they once had was gone and now is in a world corrupted by sin, that’s another symbolic view. "Angel with sword"-A sinful being cannot enter paradise.
If we assume that the event happened at all, symbolic or not, then if the tree was symbolic, why was there any risk of Adam and Eve partaking of the other tree and living forever? (Of course, there is no reason to believe that either tree had apples.) In any case, an omniscient God would know that someone would eat from the tree, which would make God either cruel or grossly negligent.
If Adam and Eve were supposed to start a dying process, then why the birth defects?
There is a contradiction between Gen 1:29 and Gen 2:16. Gen 1 says God gave them all the trees to eat on the whole earth, Gen 2 says different.
Genesis 3 also has some mistruths. It states that snakes used to have legs, and now only eat dust. There is no ulterior meaning of this, because he also says the famous 'dust you are, dust you will return'. Also, God said the that ground would now produce thorns and thistles. Well, an apple tree is neither.
He says that Man now knows the difference between good and evil. So, if he didn't before, how could he have known that the snake was Evil and God was good? Also, it appears that to live forever, we need to eat of the tree of life. Also, what's so wrong with people living forever, knowing Good and Evil, as apposed to living forever, NOT knowing Good and Evil. What was God scared of?
steve
Genesis 1: 26 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, [ b ] and over all the creatures that move along the ground."
27 So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
28 God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground."
29 Then God said, "I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. 30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food." And it was so.
31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.
Genesis 2
1 Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array.
2 By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested [
a ] from all his work. 3 And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done...
15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. 16 And the LORD God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."
Genesis 31 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'?"
Genesis 3:
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 surely die," the serpent said to the woman. 5 "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."
6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the LORD God called to the man, "Where are you?"
10 He answered, "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid."
11 And he said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?"
12 The man said, "The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it."
13 Then the LORD God said to the woman, "What is this you have done?"
The woman said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate."
14 So the LORD God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this,
"Cursed are you above all the livestock
and all the wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust
all the days of your life.
15 And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring [
16 To the woman he said,
"I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing;
with pain you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you."
17 To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,'
"Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat of 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."
20 Adam [
c ] named his wife Eve, [ d ] because she would become the mother of all the living.21 The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. 22 And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever." 23 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 [
e ] of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.
