tenyearsafter: the argument could be made that Adam did die within a creative day. Another view is he died the moment he sinned, because prior to that he had everlasting life. Once he sinned, he was dying. All very metaphorical!
I've heard all these justifications and excuses offered for sure but ultimately they are simply attempts to get around the plain fact that Adam and Eve did not die on the day they ate from the tree as God had said they would.
Think of it this way. You are a teenager whose mother is suffering from a particularly virulent form of cancer, all treatments have failed and you have been told she has less than a month to live. However, there is hope! A pioneering oncologist promises you, that if your mother agrees to an experimental new treatment she positively “will not die.”
You convince your still young but dying mother that this is her best hope. With nothing to lose she agrees to the treatment and lives on for another forty years! She’s with you at your graduation and on your wedding day. She’s a grandmother to your children and is even with you to enjoy a few years of your retirement. Finally, at a fair age in her mid eighties, your mother passes away. Would it be reasonable of you to label as a liar the oncologist who promised you four decades earlier that your mother would “not die”? After all, your aged mother is indeed now dead.
Preposterous isn’t it
At this point the you may be jumping up and down in protest and claiming that my analogy doesn’t fit. ‘But Adam and Eve were perfect’ you say. ‘They would have lived forever if they’d only been obedient.’ Oh really? Look again at the timeline of Genesis, when is everlasting life ever promised to that innocent couple in the Garden of Eden? It isn’t. There is nothing to indicate that Adam and Eve had any hope or knowledge that they might live forever. In fact, it appears to have been something deliberately denied to and kept hidden from them.
God lied.