If anyone is to understand the bible in its driving theme, its very important to understand the Eden/Job issues in the bible. Its the driving theme in the entire bible.
The Eden Issue:
The Eden issue is one of sovereignty. In the garden of Eden, God told Adam and Eve that they can eat from every tree but one tree, the tree of knowledge of good and evil. If they ate from that tree, they will positively die. God says this tree is to be avoided. The serpent told them the opposite, that they will positively NOT die, but the day they eat from it, they will gain from it and become just like God, “knowing” good and evil. In other words, God was deliberately withholding something good from Adam/Eve. Now, notice what happened after Adam and Eve ate from the forbidden fruit, everything the serpent told them came to pass in that their eyes did become opened and they did become just like God in knowing good and evil. Even God acknowledged that a few verses later. What does that mean? Eating from the forbidden fruit of the knowledge of good and evil simply means Adam/Eve has become just like God in that they now self define what is good and evil. This right was something God only reserved for himself only. By exercising moral independence for themselves, Adam/Eve has become a god to themselves.
Since everything the serpent told them happened exactly as he said, where was the lie? The lie is very subtle. It was not a direct lie but an indirect lie. First, Satan suggested that God was holding out something from Adam/Eve that is to be desired, self defining morality with what is good and evil and that they will be better off for it. This was a direct challenge to God’s position as the supreme God. Second, they will positively not die. Notice that just as the serpent told Eve, they did not die after they ate from the forbidden fruit. Rather, it was God barring them from the “tree of life” that caused their death. In other words, the fruit itself did not cause them to die but it was God that punished them with the death penalty that brought death to them, but the serpent or satan knew this would be the result but he left that information out; hence the lie. It was not Eve that wanted moral independence from God but the serpent or satan and he used Eve to forward this agenda. What the serpent suggested to Eve was to challenge God’s sovereignty as the supreme ruler setting the standard for good and evil. Rather, everyone should have that right to be their own gods. This is something the serpent wanted for himself.
The reason God is hands off in human affairs today is to allow the Eden issue to take its course and prove Satan to be a liar. Satan was given the opportunity to show that God’s creatures are better off without God ruling over them but self defining good and evil. Therefore, history is allowed to run its course without the intervention of God. When people ask the question, if there is a God, why would he allow evil to take place in the world, the Eden issue is the explanation. However, the bible explains that this is not something God will allow forever. There will be a time when God brings this issue to a close. Please see the significance of the Jubilee.
The Job Issue:
When satan was prosecuted for his actions in Eden and brought before all the assembly of God and his angels in heaven in the book of Job, Satan’s response was that he was not wrong, but any one of God’s creatures would have done what he done, including God’s best. Hence, to prosecute him is hypocritical and morally wrong. All God’s creatures would have done what he did if they had the courage to tell it as it is. In the book of Job, satan was proved to be wrong by Job who was an archetype for Jesus the messiah. Satan suggested Job who was God’s best did not obey God because he loved God but because of what he can gain from God. In other words, God buys the love of his creatures, not because they agree with his standards of good and evil but because their loyalty to God is bought. If God took everything away from Job, Job would curse God just as satan cursed God in Eden. Satan whose title means “the adversary” was proven to be wrong with Job who lost everything except for his life. Ultimately Jesus the messiah came onto earth to die a sacrificial death for the exact same reason, to prove satan to be a liar as Jesus also gave up everything in heaven and even his very life. Once satan has been proven to be wrong with both the Eden issue and the Job issue, then his death penalty was sealed. There was nothing left to prove and God was fully justified in giving Satan his death penalty and not just using his powers arbitrarily. Hence, in Eden, God told satan that although satan has bruised the seed of the woman in the heels, which is painful but not fatal, the seed of the woman in a messiah will bruise the serpent in the head, which will be fatal. When the messiah performed his sacrificial death, satan’s death penalty was then sealed.
Why are most Christians not aware of the Eden/Job issues?
Once someone understands the Eden/Job issues, the entire bible begins to make sense. Everything from the Old Testament to the New Testament will all tie together very cohesively. Then why are most Christians not familiar with the Eden/Job issues when its the driving theme in the entire bible? The reason is because of the theology of the trinity. Contrary to what many Christians believe, the theology of the trinity is not biblical but rather had a pagan origin from the time of Constantine who wanted to unite the Roman empire. This subject cannot be covered in a short paragraph or even a page but I will provide resources that you can all read up on and research this pretty easily as its all been historically documented and seemingly trinity verses in the bible explained in its original language to clarify this deception. Please see the heading under is the trinity theology biblical?
According to the writing, Adam and Eve were the first humans created by God, who lived approximately 6,000 years ago. According to the science, humans existed a long time before. The two lines of thought can be easily united, thanks to the omnipotence of God, who in the beginning created humans in a reality where there was no concept of “evil”. Metaphorically speaking, Adam and Eve were expelled from this heavenly reality, find himself in another reality, namely in today’s reality that we all know, where there is the concept of evil, as well as that of the well; not necessarily a reality where they were the first humans, but the first who experienced firsthand the life God had reserved for them (so they were the first humans in the “perfect” reality). From here it is clear that the story of Adam and Eve does not upset in the least bit the evolutionary linearity. In practice, they were the first men of God; whereas prehistoric man lived before Adam and Eve was a man, but it could be considered as an animal evolved from apes or created by something else, which had two arms and two legs, and that may have hybridated with the descendants of Adam And Eve after they were “moved away” from the “perfect reality”. God has endowed man about the concept of “infinity” and “eternity”, as well as other questions can not be explained through the use of the scientific method, thus making humans free to believe in God or not, in a reality for us tricky and necessary for the construction and continuation of his project.
After looking a few days on the dilemma of how and when the human race was born, I gave birth to these hypotheses, thanks also to the differences found in Genesis between two stories that seem different, namely the creation of man on the sixth day and then the telling of the story about Adam and Eve. If we read the part of the genesis which explains the creation of man on the sixth day, and then the creation of Adam and Eve, you may notice a detail that differs between the two parts, suggesting that they are two completely different stories. In fact, in Genesis 1:26, we can see that man was created on the sixth day in the image and likeness of God, as in Genesis 5:1 (referring to Adam and Eve after 7 days of creation) the text of the Bible omits “image”, the fact that “image” and “likeness” indicate two similar concepts but different. I think “image” means human nature able to conceive the evil, so the suffering too, instead “likeness” denotes the inherited attributes of God as love, reason and they are both still together. Hypothetically speaking, the man of the sixth day is a creature evolved from animals or some other thing, then, over time has developed the reason as we know it today, while Adam and Eve were created in the Garden of Eden and as the Bible says in Genesis 2:7 (And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground) this means that God took their dust from the young earth and has created them in the Eden where the concept of time did not exists or was limited to the 7 days, this event happened before the creation of trees as written in Genesis 2:4,5,6: (These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground and God formed man of the dust of the ground). In this perfect reality there was no concept of evil, so they were only a “likeness” of God. After that they were created, were expelled from Eden, only to find themselves in this situation where had passed perhaps millions of years (because in the Eden the time for them had not passed), a situation in which the man who was created in the image and likeness did not exists anymore because of a mass extinction caused by some natural catastrophe or by “something else”, or perhaps still he existed, and the descendants of Adam and Eve hybridized this species, confirmed in Genesis 6:1,2,3,4, in which it says that the sons of God married the daughters of men (but may also be refers to the descendants of Cain, who turned away from God). The spirit of God will not dwell forever with the man because he also is flesh, living up to 120 years (mean that men of God who lived up to 900 years later live up to 120 years because of the fact that hybridizing with the daughters of men they are “contaminated” at the genetic level, partially losing genes that enabled him to live a lot longer).