For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because this creation will also be set free from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.

For we know that all of creation groans and is in labour until today. Romans 8:20

Introduction

So far, we have looked at the two main competing theories of the Origin of Earth and the Universe in the Western World: the miraculous Biblical Genesis creation and the secular Big Bang hypothesis. We have also looked at the two main theories of the Origin of Life, including the major kinds of organisms on Earth: the miraculous Biblical Genesis creation of all the kinds of life and the secular Neo-Darwinian Evolutionary hypothesis. In both cases, the Biblical accounts fit closely with our observed Earth and universe, while the Big Bang and Evolution both have numerous fatal flaws that would require many miracles for them to work.

But there is one dimension where the Biblical Creation Week model does not fit our world today: God says the world He created was ‘very good’. Though there are many aspects of Earth and our universe that are indeed ‘very good’, there are also many aspects that can only be described as ‘very bad’.

Today we will look at the Biblical account of how this came to be so, and then see if our current world fits with what the Bible says happened. The event is, of course, referred to as The Fall.

We will also look the reverse problem that Evolution has: How can a world built on “survival of the fittest” contain kindness and generosity?

The Temptation and Fall

As we saw in the last session, Earth at the end of Creation Week was a Paradise. It was a world in which there was no death and no disease. All the animals and humans were vegans. There were no thorns or poisonous plants and no invasive weeds. Food grew abundantly and little work was required to grow and harvest it. Adam and Chavvah 1 were in close contact with God and rejoiced at living with Him in the Paradise of Pleasure (-the literal Aramaic translation; it is commonly called the Garden of Eden). But God had warned Adam that he must not touch or eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for if he did, he would die (Genesis 2:17). The warning was not heeded.

Here is the Biblical Account of the Fall:

Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which Jehovah God had made. And the serpent said to the woman, “Truly, has God said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of Paradise’?”

And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat the fruit of the trees of Paradise; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of Paradise, God has said, ‘You will not eat it, nor will you touch it, lest you die.’”

And the serpent said to the woman, “Dying, you will not die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave some to her husband with her, and he ate. Genesis 3:1 to 6

First, we see that the serpent was a willing host for Satan, our adversary. Next, we see that Satan is a clever manipulator. He starts by interacting with the woman, who has perhaps only been given God’s Instructions second-hand via Adam. He then questions what God has said, even while paraphrasing Him. When Chavvah loosely repeats what God has said, the serpent then reiterates God’s warning, but adds a not to it, thereby completely contradicting God’s statement that eating that fruit would result in their death, and thereby claiming that God was lying. This takes both Chavvah and Adam who is with her completely by surprise, for this is the first lie they have ever heard. Satan wastes no time, and while they are still stunned, he makes his pitch that the forbidden fruit is actually a wonderful thing that will make them like God, insinuating that God is keeping something good from them. -It is a pitch that Satan still uses with much success even today. People like to think they are wiser than God, and that they can devise laws that are better than His. But do we understand all things? Can we foresee the end results of our choices? Only God knows these things. We can’t do better, only worse.

Chavvah decides to believe the serpent instead of God, thus failing the only test that God had placed before her. (Figure 1) First Timothy 2:13-14, tells us that Adam was not deceived by the serpent, but he made no attempt to stop her or to refute the serpent’s lies, allowing her to pick and eat a fruit, and then he ate the one she offered to him, choosing to side with his wife instead of Jehovah. Thus he also failed God’s test.

Figure 1: The Serpent (Satan) convincing Chavvah and Adam to try the forbidden fruit. (modified from Rubens)

Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves. And they heard the voice of Jehovah God walking in Paradise in the afternoon breeze of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the face of Jehovah God among the trees of Paradise. Genesis 3:7 & 8

And as they swallowed the fruit, they both realised that they had disobeyed their Creator. Now their innocence was shattered and they felt shame for the first time in their lives. They also knew that they had broken their intimate relationship with God and were no longer covered with His blessings and protection. Now they knew evil as well as good. I am not clear how their sense of shame and lack of spiritual covering came to include their physical nudity, but the scripture makes it certain that it did.2

The Judgement

Then Jehovah God called to Adam and said to him, “Where are you, Adam?”

So he said, “I heard Your voice in Paradise, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself.”

And He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat?”

Then the man said, “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate.”

And Jehovah God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” And the woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” Genesis 3:9 to 13

Their pathetic attempts to cover their nakedness and then to hide from their God—who they now fear, who until that time was their greatest friend—reveals the depth of their Fall. Their desire to ‘be like God’ through disobeying Him was a total failure. Their corruption was quickly revealed in their refusal to accept responsibility for what they had done. Adam blamed both God for giving him Chavvah and Chavvah. Chavvah blamed the serpent.

Then God passes His Judgements on each of them:

The Serpent

So Jehovah God said to the serpent: “Because you have done this, you are cursed more than all cattle, and more than every beast of the field; on your belly you will go, and you will eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He will crush your head, and you will crush His heel.” Genesis 3:14 & 15

The serpent was punished for its role in the deception. The punishment was also passed on to all of the serpent’s descendants.

Satan is also called the serpent (Revelation 12:9), and he was also punished. This was perhaps Satan’s first lie, his first open attempt to usurp God’s authority. Indeed, lies were Satan’s only real invention (John 8:44). His punishment may have been an obscure one to Adam and Chavvah at that time, though it would come to apply both between mankind and serpents and between the Son of Man (Jeshua) and the Son of Sin (Satan). Satan would ‘crush’ Jeshua’s (Jesus’s) heel, but Jeshua would ‘crush his head’. The New Covenant reveals that this is fulfilled:

1: When Jeshua was impaled and died, but resurrected three days later (Matthew 12:38 to 40, Acts 3:13 to 15).3

2: When Satan the devil will be cast into the Lake of Fire (Revelation 20:10).

The Woman

To the woman He said: “I will greatly increase your diseases in your pregnancy; you will bring forth children in pain. You will turn to your husband, and he will rule over you.” Genesis 3:16

Jehovah God then punished Chavvah, and her daughters down through time, with difficult pregnancies and painful births. Chavvah had many sons and daughters, as indicated in Genesis 5:3-5.4 And the ‘turn to her husband’ phrase in the Aramaic also implies conflict, thus marking the start of marital discord.

The Man

Then to Adam He said, “Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, ‘You will not eat of it’: “Cursed is the ground for your sake; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. It will bring forth both thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. Genesis 3:17

Next, God punished Adam, and his descendants through time, by cursing the ground. Now it would only be with hard toil that they would get food from the earth. Their diet was altered to include the plants that grow in fields. And not only that, Jehovah changed the nature of the plants. Now many of them would have thorns, and many others would become ‘thistles’, indicating that they would become rampant weeds that Adam would have to struggle against to feed his family. Notice that many of the changes to creation that God makes after the Fall are genetic and thus passed on to all future generations: serpents lose their legs, women are altered to make child-bearing more difficult, some plants now have genes for thorns, others can grow too vigorously and become weeds, some previously beneficial microorganisms become pathogenic, food plants become weaker and more susceptible to disease, etc. God wanted them, and us, to understand that sin is serious, and has serious consequences.

In the sweat of your face you will eat bread until you return to the ground, for you were taken out of it; for dust you are, and to dust you will return.” Genesis 3:19

And so Adam fell from being God’s companion and horticulturalist in the Paradise of Pleasure to an exhausted farmer working desperately to produce enough food to feed his expanding family.

The Beginning of Death

Then Jehovah passed the most severe judgement on Adam and Chavvah. As He had warned them, they would now die. Until this point, there had been no death on Earth.

Though Jehovah had told Adam “in the day that you eat from it, dying you will die” in Genesis 2:17, Adam did not die until he was nine hundred and thirty years old. There are two aspects to this: First, on the very day they sinned, God changed the genetics of Adam and Chavvah so their bodies began to age, and so they began to die. Second, the Bible teaches that with God, sometimes a day can be as a thousand years (see Psalm 90:4 and 2 Peter 3:8). Adam died at 930 years old (Genesis 5:1-5), and so he died before his millennial ‘day’ was completed. None of his descendants have reached one thousand years either. Instead of becoming like God as Satan had promised, they returned to the dust of the earth.

And as Jehovah had placed the Earth under the rulership of Adam, the curse on Adam also affected all that he ruled over. All the creatures began to age as well, as Paul explains in Romans 8:18-22. And to make matters worse, many of the animals were changed into carnivores, many previously benign microbes became disease-causing, and some plants became poisonous.

But why would God bother to set up a test for them, and one with such deadly consequences? It is because Jehovah is setting up a kingdom in which there is perfect harmony and joy, a Paradise where everyone has everlasting life. God does not want anyone in that kingdom who will be disruptive and cause friction and unhappiness forever. And he knows that if we cannot cooperate with Him for even our short lives here, we will not be able to do so for the rest of eternity. And He also knows that none of us can pass His tests here on our own, so He has sent His Son to redeem us and place His Holy Spirit within us to transform us, enabling us to love and obey our Maker. We have been given free will, so we can choose to turn to Him or reject Him. It is the choice of life or death (Deuteronomy 30:6 to 20, Romans 8:1 to 23)

Satan’s Reign

Lastly, God honoured Adam and Chavvah’s choice: He allowed Satan to become the ruler of this world. And Satan has continued as he began: deceiving us, encouraging us to disobey God’s Instructions, harming us and killing us. And the envoys that fell with Satan help him in these tasks, encouraging people to steal, lie, cheat and lash out in anger. And whenever possible, they even move into their victims and try to control their bodies and minds (Mark 9:17 to 29). These terrible situations will last until the start of the Millennium of Peace, when Satan (and his demon spirits) will be locked away for the thousand years (Revelation 20:1-10). And in the Restoration following it, all of these horrible changes will be totally reversed and the Earth will be remade as a Paradise forever (Isaiah 11:1-10, Revelation chapters 21 and 22). There is Good News: God’s Curse is not forever!

God Covers Adam and Chavvah

And Adam called his wife’s name Chavvah, because she was the mother of all who live.

Also for Adam and his wife Jehovah God made tunics of skin, and clothed them. Genesis 3:20 & 21

Verse 20 records the giving of Chavvah’s Hebrew name, which means Life. Her name reflects Adam’s love for her.

But now the full tragedy of the Fall becomes clear: The very first animals to die are sacrificed, and Jehovah uses their skins to provide coverings for Adam and Chavvah. It seems certain that as part of this process, God taught Adam and Chavvah that a death and blood were required to cover their sins,5 and the skins of these animals, who died to provide that blood, was used to provide their clothes. Every time they wore these tunics, they would remember that their sin was the reason the animals had to die. And did they repent of their sin? Would God have provided coverings for them if they did not? These things are explained in detail in Hebrews 9:6 to 10:21.

Cast Out of Paradise

Then Jehovah God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil. And now, lest he put out his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”; therefore Jehovah God sent him out of the Paradise of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken.

So He drove out the man; and He placed cherubim at the east of the Paradise of Eden, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life.6 Genesis 3:22 to 24

In this we see the completion of God’s Judgement on Adam and Chavvah. Once they were permitted to live in God’s Paradise and eat from the Tree of Life. Now they are cast out, and their way to the Tree of Life is not merely prohibited, but made impossible for them to reach (Figure 2). They must live the rest of their lives in toil and pain, surrounded by the consequences of their sin, as they slowly age and die (Figure 3).

Their sin also affected all of their descendants, whose bodies and souls were ultimately derived from their bodies and souls. This is why each of us is born cursed through them. Then we add our own personal sins to this. This is why we all need cleansing and transformation.

Figure 2: Adam and Chavvah banished from the Paradise of Pleasure, wearing the lamb skin clothing God provided for them.

Figure 3: Many plants, including this acacia, had their genetics altered so they now produce vicious thorns, while some became vigorous weeds.

Let us see some of the consequences they must live through:

Murder and Other Sins

Now Adam knew his wife Chavvah, and she conceived and bore Cain,7 and said, “I have gotten a man from Jehovah.”

Then she bore again, this time his brother Abel.8 Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a worker of the ground.

And in the process of time it came to pass that Cain brought an offering of the fruit of the ground to Jehovah. Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat.

And Jehovah respected Abel and his offering, but He did not respect Cain and his offering. And Cain was very angry, and his face fell.

So Jehovah said to Cain, “Why are you angry? And why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it.”

Now Cain talked with Abel his brother; and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose against Abel his brother and killed him.

Then Jehovah said to Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?”

And he said, “I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper?”

And He said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the ground. Genesis 4:1 to 10

So Adam and Chavvah experience the joy of becoming parents, and work hard at raising their children. And they make sure their children all know that they should obey God, for they now they truly understand that God is far wiser than them, and how disastrous it is to disobey Him.

But within perhaps twenty or thirty years, Adam and Chavvah’s oldest son murders his closest brother. It seems that the murder is triggered by Cain’s refusal to bring an animal sacrifice to God as Abel did. One can only assume that Jehovah God required this sacrifice, as it is in accord with His later Instructions about sacrifices (Leviticus 3:6-17). Humans had still not been given permission to eat meat, so Abel would not be killing his lamb to eat it. Cain apparently decided that his vegetables were great and would make a better offering, so God should change and do things the way Cain thought was right. It was just a new version of Chavvah and Adam’s sin. When God corrected him, he did not repent, but instead lashed out at his brother and killed him.

There are soon more murders (Genesis 4:23), then bigamy (Genesis 4:19) and other sins leading to unrestrained evil (Genesis 6:5, Figure 4). Even the animals had fallen and corrupted their way (Genesis 6:12). As this corruption rapidly affected all flesh, I have described this event as the Fall of Creation, not just the Fall of Man.

Figure 4: Mass-murder of civilians by the Ustashi in World War 2 (From Vatican’s Holocaust).

But mixed with these evils are acts of kindness and love. Though we are fallen, we have not completely lost the love and compassion that God placed in our spirits, nor is it impossible for God to redeem us.

Evolution and Their Problem of Good

Creationists must explain why God’s Good Creation has evil in it, which we have just done above. But evolutionists have the opposite problem. They believe in a world that is “red in tooth and claw”, where there is a ruthless and unrelenting fight for survival (the “survival of the fittest”—evolution’s process of natural selection: the ‘fit’ survive, the ‘unfit’ die). Every organism is driven by the need to pass on its genes to as many offspring as possible, as shown in Richard Dawkins’ book “The Selfish Gene’.

If this is true, how can they explain kindness and generosity in their savage dog eat dog world?

Their only semi-plausible explanation is that rather than focusing solely on the individual organism’s genome, sometimes the focus is a level higher, so any acts of apparent kindness, such as when an extended family of Australian magpies band together to help raise the next generation of chicks, they are just ensuring that at least genes very similar to their own are being passed on.

Personally, I greatly doubt that the helping magpies have such grudging thoughts or motivations. Nor can I see any way that the directionless, random mutations of each individual’s DNA could work at any level higher than the individual. The truth is that evolutionary theory is so entirely devoid of love or compassion that it cannot accept that someone would help another creature simply because they need help and they are willing and able to help them. I am far happier being a Christian who must explain why there is some evil mixed with the good in the world today rather than being an evolutionist who is totally focused on competition and can therefore only be embarrassed by acts of cooperation, generosity and mercy. Is it any wonder that as belief in evolution permeates our society, people become more self-centered and more grasping, even worse than the savage apes they are told they have come from?

Conclusions

How do the results of the Fall of Creation match what we see in the world today? Do we see disease, thorns, weeds, jealousy, hatred, violence, murders, sexual sins, greed, corruption and death? Do even some animals act with cruelty? And yet, can we also see remnants of natural beauty, immaculately designed plants and animals, and even kindness, honesty and love?

Surely this mixture of good and evil speaks convincingly of a once magnificent world that is now deeply marred by sin.

But there are some other aspects of our world, and solar system, that have not been explained by what we have covered so far. On earth, how are the massive layers of sedimentary and volcanic rocks explained? How do the Biblical models deal with what looks like billions of years of radioactive element decay? If death only began at the Fall, which Bible Chronology places at about six thousand years ago, how can there be the remains of dead animals in rocks that are supposed to be hundreds of millions of years old? Why are the moon and the surfaces of many planets in our solar system pitted with impact craters? How does all this fit into the history accounts in the Bible?

Our Next Session

The Great Reboot: The Flood of Noah’s Day will look at all of these items above, along with many others, including:

Could a local flood do what the Bible claims the Great Flood has done?

Would Noah’s Ark have been large and strong enough to do its job?

Is the Biblical World-wide Flood account possible: Would there be enough water, where would it come from, and where did it go?

Do modern humans show any signs of descending from three couples in the relatively recent past?

Is there any other evidence which indicates that the Great Flood actually happened?

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Books of Moses: Fact or Fiction Series

Origin of the Universe and Our Earth—How did Earth and our Universe Originate? Both the Biblical and Big Bang Models are presented. Evidence for and against the models is also presented.

Origin of Life—How did Life Originate on Earth? Both the Biblical Special Creation and Evolutionary Neo-Darwinian Models are presented. The Biblical Model covers the creation of plants and aquatic and flying organisms, while the Evolutionary model investigates the Origin of the First Cell. Evidence for and against the models is also presented.

Mankind and Evolution of Life—How did complex life, including humans, originate on Earth? Both the Biblical and Evolutionary Models are presented. The Biblical Model covers the creation of land animals and the first man and woman, while the Evolutionary model investigates what is required for their First Cell to evolve into complex organisms. Evidence for and against the models is presented.

The Fall of Creation—What is the Fall of Creation on Earth, and what was its Impact? The Biblical Account is presented, including sin, death and the banishing of Adam and Chavvah (Eve) from the Garden of Eden. Evidence for and against this account is presented.

The Great Flood, Part 1—Was there a Great Flood during Noah’s life? The Biblical Account explains why there was a Great Flood, Noah’s role in it and the extent of the Flood. This session ends with Noah and the animals leaving the Ark after the Flood.

The Great Flood, Part 2—What events followed the Great Flood during Noah’s life? Where did the Ark land? It also looks at many of the objections to the Great Flood and shows evidence that it was a real event which shaped the world we live in.

Shinar, Nimrod and the Tower of Babel—What did mankind do after the Flood? Where is the Plain of Shinar and where was Nimrod’s first Kingdom, including the location of the Tower of Babel? Why did God intervene and create a myriad of new Languages?

The Exodus from Egypt—Historical and Scientific information relating to the Israelites’ Exodus from Egypt is presented, analysing several proposed pathways to Midian, including crossing the Soph (Red) Sea.

To Mount Sinai and God’s Instructions—After crossing the Soph Sea, where did the Israelites go until their arrival at Mount Sinai, and where is this mountain? This article includes Jehovah God giving them His Instructions there. Historical and Geographical information is presented, some of it new and previously unpublished.

The Holy Bible CHCoG Translation—From the original Hebrew and Aramaic. It is accurate and readable, giving you a clear understanding of God’s message.

Endnotes

1 The first woman’s name in Hebrew and Aramaic is חַוָּה Chavvah (with a silent c), which means Life. Life in Greek is Eva, from which Eve is derived. We will use her Hebrew name throughout.

2 We shed some light on this topic in Sex, God and Families.

3 This topic is dealt with in God’s Calendar and the Sign of Jonah.

4 Some Jewish sources claim she had 33 sons and 23 daughters (eg: Josephus).

5 Sin is the transgression of God’s Instructions, and death is its penalty. Everlasting Life is God’s Gift reveals how God can restore us to immortality.

6 Revelation 22:3 & 22:14. The curse will be removed, and we will again be able to enter in, access the Tree of Life and live forever.

7 From the Hebrew קַיִן Qayin, meaning Possession.

8 From the Hebrew הֶבֶל Hebel, meaning Breath.