A listener once commented:
I don’t understand the thumbnail? (of the video. It was a picture of demons, and a caption where Jesus is saying, “This was never MY plan. I created the Garden for you. You wanted the rule of Satan.”) Didn’t the serpent trick Eve into eating the fruit? And then she gave it to Adam? Do we really believe they understood what the consequences were going to be when they ate? Because if they did, then we can hardly say they were deceived! And besides I don’t really understand how a mistake made by Adam and Eve thousands of years ago can be equated to Me wanting to be ruled by Satan! If I had been there things would have gone down differently! Eve would have been packing her bags and leaving the Garden with that Snake in tow! Lol…
Wow. I wonder how many of us have had similar thoughts: ‘If it had been ME, I would have done better!’
Scripture says Satan “beguiled” her. Paul speaks of this process in 2 Cor 11:3: “But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.” This word “beguiling” in the Hebrew speaks of a process of “leading astray, of mentally deluding”. Notice Paul adds the word “subtlety”.
Satan himself was a powerful enough “beguiler” to fool Eve into disobeying God and eating that fruit, even though SHE KNEW what God had said to Adam. But Satan is subtle and patient and overwhelming to those who will listen – especially if there is any pride in their hearts, as there is so often in this world…
I don’t believe this all happened in one day – it culminated in one day. It was a slow, drip by drip process of him planting thoughts into her mind, and her receiving them, thinking about them and allowing them to change what she KNEW into what he was projecting to her mind. Think about it: Eve saw, talked and walked with God every single day. She had NO reason to doubt Him, to think other than just what He said to them. She had every opportunity to ask God Himself to explain better about that tree. But somehow – all of a sudden – Satan can appear and she agrees with him?
No – this was a process Satan set upon with Eve, until finally he approached her face to face to goad her into “thinking” her way around what she knew to be true. This is how the demons STILL affect us! They plant thoughts in our heads, lie to us, tell us things that aren’t true – but we make the choice to take a step away from what we KNOW is truth in Jesus, and start considering these other ideas. We move away from Jesus, and into our own counsel. Before we know it – we are in sin, wandering away from the God we love in disobedience
Notice in the passage that, as she is replying to Satan SHE added to what God told them: “Or even TOUCH the fruit.” She, in her own mind, had made the fruit itself evil – eating, smelling, touching, experiencing it was what was forbidden in her mind. How did she come to this conclusion? We don’t know – but the passage in Corinthians may indicate that Satan had been planting thoughts in her head and she had been considering them long before this conversation.
Where she really went the wrong way was this: she dismissed the Obedience to God part and focused on the Fruit; missed God’s heart in the whole matter. OBEDIENCE OUT OF LOVE is what He was asking. And this is love: that we walk in obedience to his commands. As you have heard from the beginning, his command is that you walk in love. 2 John 1:6
She lost sight of that – and saw the “wrong” simply in the fruit itself. That’s why she was able to be deceived – Satan knew what she was focusing on. He found the “crack” in her mind and poured into it… Paul warned the Colossians of this very thing, centuries later: If you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world, why, as if you were living in the world, do you submit yourself to decrees, such as, “Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch!” Col. 2:20-21
That’s how he’s managed to deceive millions of Christians today: focus on the do’s and don’ts, never mind looking at the HEART of God! Pat yourself on the back because your checklist is complete – don’t think about the fact that God is not a computer or robot giving out orders, but instead a very real, very feeling, compassionate, loving Being who has taken the chance with His own heart to set us here with free will…fully knowing the pain it would bring Him when many, many, many of His children would turn from Him and follow the lies of Satan down a path to eternal damnation.
Yes. They knew the consequences. God did not have give them that instruction without telling them plainly: but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die. Genesis 2:17 Can we really make the stretch to think that God did not also explain to them what “die” meant? These two first humans, whose intelligence was leagues beyond our own?
And so He did – He told them if they were to eat of the fruit – in that day, they would die. Death is separation from God – in this initial case, spiritual separation. They were spiritually pure and wholly united to Him in spirit before that point, able to walk and talk and see and hear the Lord in the flesh. The consequence of choosing NOT to obey God was that now they were no longer holy, but rather sinful (disobedient)…just like Satan. Now they could no longer dwell in His presence, but had to leave their Home…just like Satan. Now their bodies and all the bodies of their children and future generations would bear the mark of this sin by not only being born spiritually dead and separated from God – but in ultimately having their physical bodies die, too. Satan thought he won the war. He didn’t know that he had only won the first battle. Jesus came to die on the Cross to reverse that original sin, to open to the world salvation and restoration of our spiritual purity and the promise of physical perfection after we leave this body of death.
We probably won’t really understand exactly why they chose to do what they did before we get to Heaven. But looking at the track record of Satan vs. man ever since, I dare say you would never find a soul more able to resist – and still fall – than our First Parents. Adam and Eve were perfect, knowing God face to face – and STILL they fell. Such is the nature of man’s free will. The most precious gift for us – yet the most dangerous gift to God. For it is because of free will that the Father loses so many of His children to the snares and deceits of Satan.
Yes. It is STILL each person’s choice: God? or Satan?
Carol Jennings
“Hell on Earth, Prophetic Word”