The fall of man in the Garden of Eden is a story replete with warnings of obedience and disobedience. It reveals sin and its source telling just how and what the ramifications were and are. Hence, the serpent, is labeled as the first cause of degenerate mankind as God is shown to be the first cause in creation of all things. Denial of the Word of God, “Hath God said” shows the process by which “sin lieth at the door”. The process of thinking that led to the first sin was the process that led to the second. They could be labeled “steps in the fall of man”. When man takes it on himself or any other man to listen to man’s “reasoning” instead of the Word of God, man has taken the wrong direction. Knowing the fall of man from the beginning, at the beginning God opened revelation to allow us the picture of redemption.
The “seed of the woman” in Genesis 3:15 is the first prophecy of inspiration. In this prophecy, God showed how He would redeem man who had just fallen from His fellowship. Interestingly, the only man who fell was the man who sinned, not the man who never sinned. It is assumed by just about all that because Adam and Eve sinned all who were alive with them must have also fallen or there were no others alive at this time. IF there were no others alive at this time and sufficient time had passed from the first commandment to multiply and replenish the Earth, Genesis 1:28, be obeyed, man had already sinned and eating of the forbidden fruit was in fact NOT the first sin!! If “multiply and replenish the Earth” was not disobeyed (and it surely was not) then there were others alive with Adam and Eve when the commandment about the forbidden fruit was given.
It has always interested me how anyone could think Adam’s curse for sinning would be any worse than the curse I have brought on myself by sinning. It is also interesting to note IF Adam’s sin affected ALL mankind what will we do with those children who were never born, born dead, born and lived for only a short time, or born and died before accountability. IF man is unaccountable for what he is doing that is wrong, how could God punish him for that wrong? Also, if Adam’s sin affected all mankind, how did it affect those who were already born to Adam and Eve? When Adam and Eve sinned God had a meeting with them, where is the meeting with all the others? Somebody had to have had children for Cain to take one as a wife, someone had to build the cities Cain was run out of, and somebody to believe that God could have the power to take vengeance on them IF they slew Cain! It looks as if Augustine’s theory of inherited sin, propagated by Calvin and his hordes fails the trial of scrutiny!!
Did nakedness occur because of sin or did sin expose to Adam and Eve their nakedness? Was nakedness their sin or were they naked and not guilty of sin? Genesis 3:10 Did the Law of Moses cause sin or did the Law of Moses define sin? “Nay, I had not known sin, but by the Law; for I had not known lust, except the Law had said, “Thou shalt not covet.” Romans 7:7 Are these not parallel arguments? Why nakedness? Why did Adam and Eve have problems all of a sudden with nakedness? Children have no such problems, why Adam and Eve? Does sin open our eyes to commands of God, define them and allow us to know what they are? Does God all the time tell us WHY we are commanded to do certain things? When Jesus first commanded baptism for salvation did He tell WHY baptism would save? Was it not later when the apostles preached that we understood baptism saves because it is in baptism we contact the blood of Christ? Did Adam first pro-create (multiply) as did the other innocents? Genesis 1:22
