Bible Study Week#17: Understanding The Fall, God did not create evil
1) The law of death and decay now operating in the universe shows that the universe must have had a beginning, and the source of the order now present in the universe had to be outside the universe and must have existed prior to the universe.
2) It is clear from both Scripture and physics that time can’t
exist before there is a space for time to work in. That is, time came into existence when God created the heavens (spaces) and the earth in Genesis 1:1. There were no spaces which could have had time until He created them. So there could be no change, processes, or development before the creation. God was and is unchanging. (His thoughts are not time sequential as ours are.)
3) Since the fall of Satan (a created being), was a free will
decision which resulted in a change of condition, his fall could not have happened before God created time along with the heavens (spaces) in Genesis 1:1.
a) Genesis 1:31 show this, “And God saw every thing that He had made, and behold it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.” Everything had to include Satan, since all of creation was then finished.
b) Gen 2:1 “The heavens and the earth were finished and
all the host of them.” The host is the content of the heavens, including living beings the angels. The angles were then finished being created. The fall was after the sixth day!
4) Because evil exists, some assume that evil, death and suffering
have always existed & so are normal. No!
a) Evil is destructive and can’t exist before creation. This
is becuase there can be no evil, death and destruction before there is something to destroy. That is, existence, and by implication creation, must precede any destruction, including death. Creation and destructiom are opposite. But death and destruction can not exist before creation. If evil-destruction were as strong as God-creation and had existed before God-creation, then evil-destruction would not have permitted creation, there would have been no creation and no universe. So evil can not be equal to good and evil can not be eternal, as New Agers, pantheists and secularists believe.
b) Evil, death and suffering are not normal and are not
acceptable. The witness of God inside every one of us tells us that it is not right to kill and that life is precious. We all recognize that life is creative and death is destructive, that building is better than destroying.
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5) Until eating of the tree, Adam and Eve were pure and therefore, could not hear the voices of evil spirits, they only heard the voice of God and His Holy angels. Therefore, in order to speak to Adam and Eve, Satan had to possess an animal of high enough order to permit him to speak.
a) The tree’s fruit gave the “knowledge of good and evil”
Gen 2:9. The word “knowledge” here is the same Hebrew word translated “knew” in “Adam knew Eve his wife and she
conceived”, Gen 4:1.
b) The tree and its fruit were not evil. Since they were God
created they were not themselves evil, but perfect.
c) It was the free will choice of Adam and Eve to not believe God, to call Him a liar. That was their real sin.
d) When they took the fruit of the tree it permitted them to learn of evil and how to know to do evil, which they had already agreed with in unbelief.
e) The ability to see evil is not itself evil. But after
having chosen to disobey, being in sin, the knowledge of evil is deadly.
6) They were not in the garden long.
a) Both the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good
and evil were in the midst (center) of the garden. Therefore, these trees were close together. Since they had not yet eaten of the tree of life, which they could do freely, they could not have been in the garden long.
b) They were made for each other, man and wife, yet Adam did not come together with her until after the fall(Gen 4:1.)
7) During the temptation Adam and Eve were standing near each other Gen 3:6 “…husband with her….”
8) He was responsible for keeping the garden and he did not do his job!
9) Adam had an apparent age of perhaps 30 to 50 years at his creation, lived 930 years, totalling perhaps 960-980 yrs, almost 1000 years. God said in “the day that you eat of the tree you shall surely die. And it was so! This is understandable in terms of II Peter 3:8, “one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.”