The Last Days In Eden

by J. Miller | Category: Lessons From The Last Days | Jan 1962

In the series of articles for this year it is proposed to deal with the last days in different epochs of God's dealings with men, and to seek to derive lessons from such days, seeing that we ourselves are living in the last days of this dispensation of God's grace. If the apostle John could write of his day as "the last hour" (1 John 2.18), it must be in our time that the clock of eternity is ticking out the last moments of the last hour.

The human race began its story under fair skies. All had come perfect from the hand of the Creator in the six work-days of God in Genesis 1. Adam in perfect manhood and in the image and likeness of God was the centre and lord of God's earthly creation, all the earth being placed under his dominion. But how does the story of the book of Genesis end? The last words are " a coffin in Egypt." And, if possible, the last of the Old Testament ends in a more solemn note, with the word "curse " - " lest I come and smite the earth with a curse." Death and the curse were man's awful portion.

But whose was the coffin in Egypt? Egypt was the land of many coffins. The Egyptians of old were a clever race and the embalming of bodies was one of the arts practised by them, and of the body which lay in a coffin in Egypt we read, "So Joseph died, being an hundred and ten years old: and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt " (Genesis 50.26). Why did Joseph die? The answer to this question is what Genesis 2 and 3 explains, and there is no other explanation as to why men die than that which is given there.

It is a well-known occurrence that men die. It is as common as birth. Solomon the wise said, there is "a time to be born and a time to die " (Ecclesiastes 3.2). Why should not the Egyptians, so clever in embalming dead bodies, invent a potion to prevent men dying at all? They were a clever and learned people, but not one of them invented an elixer of life to prevent men from dying, so Egypt became famous as the land of graves, as it is at this day. There, there are graves great and wonderful, of famous kings and queens and others, and there, as elsewhere on this earth, is found the proof of the apostle's statement, " It is appointed unto men once to die, and after this cometh judgement"(Hebrews 9.27).

Man has no choice in being born. To be, is not a matter that rests in his own hands, nor is the day of death a matter of his own decision, save in the case of the suicide who murders himself and opens to himself the gate of eternity to what lies after death.

The divine record tells us that God formed man of the dust of the ground, that is, as to his physical body, but the spiritual part of man, as to his spirit and soul, was the result of the in-breathing of the breath of God, for "the LORD God ... breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul" (Genesis 2.7).

Man was placed by God in the garden of Eden which God had planted, to dress it and to keep it; it was a veritable paradise of delight. Nothing was wanting of fruits and flowers, and of every tree of the garden man could freely eat, save of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil which was in the midst of the garden. This was the one command and restriction placed upon man as to his eating, the one test by which he would show his allegiance to his Divine Sovereign and God. The penalty of disobedience was death, for in the day that he should eat thereof he would die. To disobey was to sin, and the wages of sin is death (Romans 6.28).

For many years Adam and his helpmeet Eve lived in the garden in holy felicity, for a hundred years or thereby, and then came the temptation. We know not if there had been any temptation prior to this. The serpent of the field (the field was its habitat, not the garden), was the creature the old serpent, the devil, used in the temptation. The serpent entered the garden, a place to which it did not belong, and thus the fatal course began which led to the fall of man. The serpent did not approach the man to whom the command of the LORD God had been given, but the woman, the weaker vessel, for the devil well knows the weak Spot to attack. The serpent was wiser than all the other beasts of the field which God had created. The devil ever uses the naturally wise, whereas God is pleased to use the foolish things of this world to confound the wise (1 Corinthians 1.27). The Creator being a great Worker can and does use poor tools in order that no flesh should glory before Him.

Eve was thoroughly deceived by the tempter (1 Timothy 2.14), and, grasping at what was beyond her reach, she was deceived and fell. She ate of the forbidden fruit and gave to her husband and he did eat. Their eyes were opened and seeing that they were naked they began to make fig-leaf aprons to cover their nakedness. As thus engaged they heard the voice of the LORD God in the garden in the evening of that sad day and they fled from His presence to hide themselves among the trees of the garden. Such is what a condemned conscience leads man to do to this very day, conscience makes him hide himself. What it will be to endure a condemned conscience throughout eternity no one on earth can really know, and also to endure the measure of punishment that such a condemned conscience will call for. In contrast to this, how blessed is the case of those who, by the offering of the body of Jesus Christ in sacrifice upon the cross, have no more conscience of sins (Hebrews 10.2, 10, 14). Whilst men may by various means, in religion and pleasure, in social and secular matters, seek now to stifle the voice of conscience, they will cease for ever to do this when death knocks at their door, for then the experience will be theirs "after this, judgement."

God called the guilty pair into His presence and inquired from the man first as to his state and his nakedness. He asked, "Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?" The man's reply was, "The woman whom Thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat." It was all true what he said. But why blame the woman? He could have refused to eat, but he ate willingly. Here is a trait in man's fallen nature, to put the blame of one's own wrong-doing on another. The woman had quite enough to bear in her own ease without the added burden of the man's sin. One sinner cannot bear the sins of another. Only One Person could do this, even He who had no sins of His own. Yet such is the fact of that day's transaction that Adam involved all his sons and Eve all her daughters in the consequences of their sin.

When the LORD God asked the woman, "What is this thou hast done? " she answered, "The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat." God did not ask the serpent what he had done, for well He knew that the old serpent had accomplished his fell design to ruin the human race at the start. Whether the devil knew what was written in " the writing of truth" (Daniel 10.21), we know not, but on this very earth on which man was created the devil will in due time be dealt with by the blessed Man, the Redeemer of men. Human minds have often wondered why God allowed man to be tempted and why He allowed him to fall from his estate of innocency. We have no answer to such questions. We may be sure that there was no other course in agreement with divine wisdom. The fact that the Lord would become Man to be man's Redeemer, and to suffer as He did to effect the purpose of redemption is sufficient to stop murmuring inquiry into the story of the fall of man. Here on this earth the Son of Man was to bring to nought by His death him that had the power of death, that is, the devil (Hebrews 2.14).

The serpent of the field, the tool of the devil, was first sentenced. He was degraded. "Because thou hast done this, cursed art thou above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life " (Genesis 3.14). It was not that the serpent would eat only dust, but that he would eat dust with his food. The fact is similar to the case of Adam to whom it was said that the ground would yield to him thorns and thistles, thou oh it would yield more than thorns and thistles; but he would have interminable trouble with these weeds.

Genesis 3.15 has a deeper meaning than what is true of the serpent of the field. "And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her Seed: It shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise His heel." The American Standard Version gives, "He shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise His heel." Darby, Young and Newberry, also give "he" in place of "it." It seems to be consistent to give, "He shall bruise thy head," when the following statement is, "and thou shalt bruise His heel." This prophecy by the LORD God has been the cause of great discussion and disagreement. The Roman church hold that it was the woman that was to bruise the serpent's head, and not the Lord Jesus, the Seed of the woman. Most, if not all, Protestant expositors hold that it refers to the Lord, the Seed of the woman. The woman Rome identifies with the virgin Mary, and not Eve. This has led to the evil and destructive teaching of mariolatry, that is, the worship of the virgin Mary, whom they claim, contrary to Scripture, was ever virgin. This idolatry is spread by Romish teaching to all lands to the destruction of the souls of men. Thus it has come to pass that the earliest prophecy and promise of a Divine Redeemer has been beclouded by the old serpent, the devil, blinding men, who are willing to be blinded, to what is true of Him who is the Redeemer, and giving the glory to His human mother rather than to Him who is the Seed of the woman.

The woman (and all of womankind afterwards) was next sentenced. Her life, which would have been one of joy in the reproduction of the human race, was to be one of sorrow. Her conception was to be increased to meet the ravages of death. Her desire was to be to her husband who would rule over her as lord. So the woman like the serpent was to be humbled for her deed.

The man too was humbled. Instead of being in full dignity as lord over the earth and all earthly creatures, he would afterwards live on a cursed earth, and in toil and sweat and sorrow, midst thorns and thistles, eat his bread until he returned to the dust whence he came and of which he was made. This sentence was to pass to his posterity.

When the LORD God had passed sentence on the offenders, He made coats of skins and clothed Adam and Eve. Here are the first deaths of animals slain for man's comfort and preservation, the first of an endless procession of animals, which were, with animate creation, "subjected to vanity... in hope," that the creation would in time be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God (Romans 8.19-22).

Having thus clothed the man and the woman, the LORD God drove them out of the garden of Eden to the ground whence man came, lest he put forth his hand in his now fallen state and eat of the tree of life and live for ever. The sentence of death (spiritually), which had fallen upon the guilty pair when they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, was in time to affect man (physically), for God had said, "Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." Thus upon Adam and his posterity the sentence fell. With their backs to their loving Creator and their faces to the dust and to death, Adam and his wife went forth from the garden, one of the saddest spectacles of which we may have a mental picture. God placed at the east of the garden the Cherubim with the flame of a sword to keep the way of the tree of life.

Thus human history, which began so fair in innocency, quickly became enshrouded in dark and cloudy days, for the last days of that Eden, that paradise, were sad beyond words, and the sorrow which ensued no mind can grasp, nor tongue nor pen describe. Were we wishful to find a proof that mankind fall in Adam's fall, we should find it in the fact that the first offspring of man (Cain) became a murderer, even of his own brother.

J. Miller | Jan 1962
Lessons From The Last Days