Eve did not disobey God when she ate, for God had only taught the Law to Adam. Eve was bewitched, seeing only the luster of Lucifer, and failed to perceive the demon spirit within him. So, sin was not accounted to Eve but to Adam alone. She did eat but it was for a reason. Eve ate to demonstrate to Adam that when pleasure is forthcoming, the reward is not death, but pleasure.
All things in the Garden were good; and Adam could freely eat of all things except the fruit of that one tree. He had the best of the best available to him, yet what was forbidden looked even better. It was just fruit, but it was satisfying to Eve (for a short time), so Adam perceived that they were forbidden to eat of it because it was superb fruit that was fit for God alone.
When the “Image” (the “Serpent”) warned that they would be “as God” that led them to believe that the fruits thereon were only for God. It is implied that because they too existed, it should be their fruits as well. (As a sidenote, with original sin the ideology now called “socialism” originated — the idea that all are deserving without regard to ownership. That ideology is much like the natural-born infant.)
The fruit of the Tree of Knowledge was more than fruit; on it were the “shiny objects” that would bedazzle both Adam and Eve. Perhaps the fruit were only mere figs as suggested in scripture but with the blinding Light from Lucifer on them, they were as dazzling as the Divine Impulse that had generated them. The fruit was not what it appeared to be and because of their naivete, even Adam bought into “The Big Lie.”
“The Serpent” — the darkness (Shadow) within Lucifer — the “Bringer of Light” — was the first “psychologist.” Pavlov, with his canine animal, proved the original experiment thousands of years later. Because Eve ate and was rewarded with pleasure, because she did eat, Adam ate as well. Adam was conditioned to eat and rather than death, Adam felt pleasure. (I believe that as one sin is as if breaking all the commandments, by breaking the only commandment of God, Adam was guilty of breaking them all, and perhaps original sin was breaking all the commandments.)
Both Adam and Eve were as little children. The only knowledge they had theretofore was “very good” (Gen 1:31). They were the only two fully human beings not “shapen in iniquity (depravity)” (Psalm 51:5). Sin was not genetic in them and they, like Christ, were entirely innocent, and their generated flesh was incorruptible. With original sin, their flesh and identity as well was corrupted — rather than glorious, they became depraved, and as such “total depravity” would suggest that all their genome was corrupted, not that they could not do good things, but that all their flesh was transformed into idols that pursue mostly pleasure.
The background for the birth of the prophet, Samuel, is much like the original “birth” of Adam. That Adam was like an innocent child in the story of Samuel is significant. Before acquiring the knowledge of evil, Adam had the nature of a child even as an adult human being. Since, Adam, means “man” it is implied that Adam was as a grown man. Since Jesus is “The Last Adam” implies that Adam was perhaps born with the same good knowledge as Jesus was at twelve-years old. So, it seems that the man “Adam” became a “man” at the same age as all religious Jews do — at the age of twelve.
When Jesus was twelve, He was full of knowledge and shared His Knowledge of Good in the synagogue (Luke 2:42). Adam was created with the knowledge of good and since the Word is Jesus, then Jesus was born omniscient and shared it with the world at age twelve.
Jesus told His disciples, “Verily I say unto you, ‘Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven’” (Mat 18:3). Converted therein is persuaded that Jesus is God in the flesh. That was what the crucifixion was all about! Even Pilate was persuaded by seeing perhaps two specific things: (1) That baptism was not in the efficacy of the water of the Jordan but in the Living Water that Jesus gave up (Mark 15:37), and (2) the Words on the flesh of Jesus, to wit: “On his vesture and on his thigh a Name written, “King Of Kings, And Lord Of Lords” (Rev 19:16) — the “New Name of God” (Isa 62:2; Rev 2:17).
Little children are apt to believe that! I believed that Jesus is God since the time I acquired that knowledge. God planted a seed in me as a youth that took root and grew, and by the time I was a teenager, I was persuaded of the veracity of that claim. Now, with the daily study of the Word, I am approaching “fully persuaded” because now I am a man, so, “Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind” (Rom 14:5). Children are easily persuaded but men must grow away from doubt to full persuasion.
Conversion is by Divine Impulse as a gift of God to those who seek Him. Fully persuaded are for those who not only see God in Jesus but trust Him entirely without reservation. (It has taken me nearly seventy years in the process of time to move from converted to fully persuaded, and Satan still on occasions puts a doubt in my mind that I must deal with.)
Conversion has two meanings: (1) a change of mind, and (2) a change in nature due to new thoughts. With the change of mind, a change in nature must follow, or the mind is absorbed with doubts.
Children do not have a change in their minds. Their minds are “empty vessels” that must be filled with some knowledge. Children are instinctual much like puppies that would fight for the mother’s milk. There is no harm meant, but puppies fight to survive, and the mother’s milk is for the survival of those who are strongest and the most. Indeed, the “fittest” of the animal kingdom are said to be the most numerous!
Little children only fight to survive and will even hurt the teats of the mother to obtain nourishment. After leaving the breasts, no longer need they apply force for nourishment, but children will even lie and deceive to get what they demand. That fight for nourishment is not willful sin but the inborn nature of everyone, just as the puppies have the survival instinct.
Children are easily persuaded to do certain things. Care must be taken for them not being exposed to iniquity, or iniquity they will do. Young minds are malleable minds and they tend to believe what their “nourishers” feed to them.
Mothers and fathers ought to nourish children with good thoughts, but nowadays they depend on public teachers to remold them from what they once were to something new. As such, teachers remold them from the images of their parents into the images of their teachers. What we have today, is a generation of “vipers” that are images of the teachers who taught them, and unfortunately many of those “teachers” are their classmates, entertainers, the government, and even the media.
The government desires to obtain the young ones to remold them as soon as possible to make the task easier. Hence, now there are day-care centers that remold your children, then K-12 to pre-condition them for college. By the time children graduate from college they have been remolded into new persons who oftentimes the family hardly recognizes. They are no longer in the images of their parents but in the images of the world. (We have all seen innocent and loveable young children turn into teenager “alien monsters.” Their “teachers” (all those who influence them) made them “alien beings.”
That is the same with Christians. Three-year-old children do not turn into “monsters” overnight, but it is a process in time. The same goes for turning those who are alien from God into those domesticated by the Word. The conditioning starts in a child so that when they are mature, that is the Way they will go. A wisdom saying is, “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it” (Prov 22:6). Jesus was probably validating that wisdom when He said to “become as little children,” conversion should do that! The nature of men and women should revert to the simplicity of the mind of the child before they were conditioned by the world to follow the world.
God provides the Divine Impulse to change the nature of man to children (regenned), then before the world remolds them back, the Word must mold them into mature Christians, not milk imbibing babes in Christ forever, but that is a good place to start the long process (1 Cor 3:1)!
Paul wrote to the Romans, “Be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God” (Rom 12:2). Renewing of the mind is a task that takes time. Conversion is persuasion wherein the mind is opened to truth whereas it was once closed. The Truth makes Christians free from lies, and no longer will the mind of the Christian be an aggregate of falsehoods impressed into their tender minds from the moment they are born; when the process began as the parents remold them into their bad images — pleasureful, selfishness, prideful, and such.
For a child to inherit eternal life, he or she must be a child of God. Because of sin, those innocent babies are genetically depraved, their genomes seek pleasure, and their flesh must be appeased. They cannot change their natures themselves; only a Divine Spark can start the change, but the Word conditions them to become new creatures in Christ: “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Cor 5:17).
Creatures start somewhere. Adam started with the Divine Spark from the Light of God, and so do new creatures in Christ. That makes an infant a new creature but for all things to pass away is time dependent.
Lot’s wife looked back and sinned even after her life was preserved by God. Sin had conditioned her flesh to have the desire to go free but still she remained bound by sin. She had been persuaded to leave destruction but seemed to desire sin more than safety from the destruction of the cities that was already in process. Her spirit was willing to leave but sin had remolded her to the point that her image became a pillar of salt, and to the dust it would return to be consumed by fire and brimstone.
All that background to set the stage for the miraculous birth of Samuel. (To be continued.)
(picture credit: Babylon Bee; "Lot's Wife Fleeing")
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