OF MAN
When I look at mankind I see the creativity of God, tampered with man’s desiderative acquiescence so hideous you wonder whether this was what our perfect God, once upon six thousand years ago, did mess His holy hands to bring into existence.
In perfection God Almighty, the Creator, made Adam, even after His own likeness. An ugly, aberrant display of volitive exercise Adam embarked on, on that fateful day, in the most comfortable earthly environment. Christ, in His preincarnate manifestation, had fellowshipped with the sinless pristine couple. He had made a physical connectivity with them, in worship. They knew the LORD their God. He had told them the truth they needed, to be at rest. The Woman was always ready to listen carefully to her husband, to whom she was in total subjection, who in turn showered her with the love of their Creator.
Lucifer saw that if the Woman could be won over, she would switch the object of her headship from her husband to him, a shenanigan calculation, the resultant of which is aimed at making him, Lucifer, the lord of the earth. He knew that his physical angelic appearance in the Garden would raise a giveaway, eyebrow questions. The Devil did not want to run a fruitless campaign of calumny! He conscripted the serpent (in which he hid) in his conspiracy, making Lucifer the author of diabolical masquerades. Lucifer, as an intelligent being, knew how foolhardy it would be if he had gone to the male Adam with his, “Had God said…” knowing fully well that Adam, to whom is committed the oracle of God, would have questioned an interrogative utterance from a base animal (even from a higher angelic being) in a world where he is the dominant lord, with the mandate of Genesis 1:28, “…and God said…subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” It was Adam the male, Lucifer knew, that God expressly mandated in Genesis 2:15, “to dress it and to keep it.” The Hebrew word for ‘dress’ is ‛abad (aw-bad): ‘labour, work’; and that of ‘keep’ is shamar (shaw-mar): ‘to hedge about (as with thorns), that is, guard; generally to protect, attend to.’ Thus Adam is the oracle of God in Eden, God’s house.
Woman, ishshah (ish-shaw), in Hebrew means ‘wife’ (a protector of iysh -husband). Another reason for choosing the woman is to weaken the support he had always enjoyed from his wife. Her support is a witness to the credibility of the oracle and of its testimony. Losing her will strip Adam of the support that enforces, spiritually, his subjugating dominance: for two is the number of witness and of testimony. How I wish Christian wives will stand up to protect the utterances of their own husbands, submitting to them to build strongholds of Christian homes. She was convinced that a better way of life, than what Adam’s leadership provided could be her’s! In Satanic ideology she was tutored, and became its first human graduate. To manoeuvre the woman into lording it over her husband was the stratagem: the accomplishment of which will be achieved immediately the woman made the man to do her evil will. Now a pawn in Lucifer’s hands, she was speaking under the spell of another oracle, as Satan’s priestess, as she approached her husband.
I am trying to intimate you with the division that was caused by this evil incursion. Once the woman withdraws her support, the number of the testimony is impaired. The man, by virtue of headship, is the priest in their home; and the minute the woman entered into the cultic priesthood of religion, she acquired the new status of the priestess of Satan, to speak words, different from that of the One who had walked, every evening, into the Garden to receive their obeisant welcome, to express the oracular afflatus of the Most High. The spirit of diabolism never stops inflicting families with divisive thoughts which steeps a woman in, “Why can’t I be the boss at home?” The slightest shift from God’s word lands you on Satan’s laps, do not doubt it! She could not even wait till the cool of the evening, to show her prized acquisition to the One who strode in majestically: she was under her new master’s magical power.
To the one the oracle of God made a subject of submission she walked, with a mission of subjugation. Adam, should you not have waited to exhibit before Him, who must come, the offending fruit of evil? Adam looked at circumstances minus the oracle he must protect. Why, Adam, must you die with a one who had no regard for what you stood for? She had parted ways with your God so, you are, as a matter of gospel fact, no longer responsible for her. “And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression” [1Timothy 2:14]. The word ‘deceive is apataō (ap-at-ah’-o): ‘cheat, beguile, delude.’ In Genesis 3:13 we have the Woman’s confession of, “The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.” ‘Beguiled’ here in Hebrew is nasha’ (naw-shaw’): ‘to lead astray, that is, (mentally) to delude, or (morally) to seduce.’ The woman was absolutely deceived such that even if God had approached her at the time of plucking the fruit she could have angrily, in total disobedience, believing the devil’s lie that God did not want the right thing for them, gone ahead to help herself to become wiser than her husband! Wrong knowledge from the enemy has robbed mankind of all virtues that God put into the making of His prized creation. Adam no doubt, in my mind, thought, “She is dead, let me die with her.” He was probably thinking of the sweet, sexual relationship he had always enjoyed, not desiring to let go of that coition. Petty things has the Devil used to derail man!
The proclivity that attended Adam’s acquiescence to the offer of his wife has proved its inimicality in the malleability of the men’s folk. Many are the unsuspecting males, slaughtered on the altar of inappropriate show of love, leaving the man disappointed, as the woman steps into victory that leaves horrid taste in her mouth. No joy! The women have, hanging on them, labels of suspicious scrutiny (seen as daughters of Eve), as if both genders spring forth not from Mother Eve! It was no victory for the Woman. It was a loss to Adam and to mankind; hence, we see Satan in a despicable dance of inglorious victory before the LORD. Man had changed, no longer his holy and innocently created old self!
“Let us create man in our likeness and in our image,” tells me that God had a recovery plan for the foreknown eventual fall of man. “And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman,” Genesis 2:21-22. Rib taking is definitely a bloody business. The innocent blood in Christ’s hands (as He held the rib of Adam) signifies acceptance of the sacrifice. Wow! This is what took care of Adam’s sin. Do you remember that Adam has a priesthood office? He was, before marriage, an immaculate being. Christ, as our celestial priest, made sacrificial contact with a pure soul, whose immaculate blood went into the creation of his own woman, so, is it incorrect when the Bible speaks of, “…slain from the foundation of the world;” Matthew 25:34; Hebrews 4:3 and Revelation 13:8? O the depth of the wisdom of God! What if God had no plan B for man’s survival? I thank God so much for what He had purposed for me.
Pre-incarnate Christ in fellowship with Adam & Woman
There is no doubt in my mind, going by biblical documentation, that the Woman felt cheated and ill-catered for. To her, the Creator was too frugal with the truth, thereby robbing them of a much better status in life: the Creator, therefore, stood guilty as charged, as far as she was concerned. Making herself available as a vessel, Satan dumped his ill-conceived philosophies into her, by which she began to manifest evil traces of: self-centredness (which was responsible for wanting to eat the fruit first, before the husband); stubbornness (this made her tow the line of militancy); faithlessness (or else she would not see the tree as good for food, pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise) leading to disobedience for she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat!
The man, did he display a virtue of tolerance when he agreed to sin? Was he trying to be empathetic with his wife’s plight? There, certainly, is nothing the matter with the feeling and show of empathy but in this Eden scenario every word spoken, thought, intention and action must be to the glory of Him who came every cool of the evening. Adam was there to protect the Garden from any unscriptural occurrence and not to defend a wrong doing or be its accomplice. Did he want to salvage what was left of a dead wife? Adam is not the Saviour neither had he completed his probational period (of, maybe, 1,000 years), hence, he delved into an unauthorized office. I expected him to have summoned the serpent for interrogation then banned it from God’s house and by the usual time of the cool of evening he would have had a most commendable assessment from Him, with Whom we have to do, the One who had encouraged him to continue to dress and keep it. Adam wanted to save the situational predicament her wife had got herself into. Adam, you delved into a matter you knew absolutely nothing about! We do not manage a taboo, we keep a good distant away from what is nothing but a snare. Have many Christians not dabbled into unauthorized ecumenical offices and taught what they have no knowledge about: Satanic entrapment. Adam was punished for his stupid venture. I agree with Rev. Chris Okotie that when Satan makes you do something, it is really not about that thing, but that he is actually taking you somewhere else. Rev. Chris Okotie, you are absolutely correct, because Lucifer made them to eat the fruit not just to defy God but actually to make them lose the privilege of living in God’s house of Eden! Much more importantly was his desire to steal the Adamic blessing of Genesis 1:28 which culminates in his most sought after deification! Adam, you just handed everything to a sadistic devil. Does the child of Adam, even after six millenniums, not continue to serve satanic interests actively? Anytime one throws caution to the wind, like Adam, he is, in the true analysis, circumventing the virtue of patience. When, in Matthew 18:26, the debtor servant pled, “Lord, have patience with me,” he used the same word Paul taught to be one of the fruits (longsuffering) in Galatians 5:22, of the Holy Spirit, which is an attribute of God Himself; “And the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth,” Exodus 34:6.
The two words: ‘patience’ {makrothumeō (mak-roth-oo-meh-o): to be long spirited, that is, (objectively) forbearing or (subjectively) patient} and ‘longsuffering’ {makrothumia (mak-roth-oo-mee’-ah) Thayer Definition: ‘longanimity, that is, (objectively) forbearance or (subjectively) fortitude’} come from makrothumōs (mak-roth-oo-moce’) ‘with long (enduring) temper, that is, leniently.’ ‘Longsuffering,’ of Exodus is, from two words:‘arek (aw-rake’) long (pinions); patient, slow to anger’ and ‘aph (af): ‘the nose or nostril; hence the face, and occasionally a person; also (from the rapid breathing in passion) ire.’ Adam did not exhibit the longsuffering attribute found in the LORD, his God. Adam was rash.
God, Adam and wife after the fall.
When I look at man I shake my head in total disbelief in what has become of the once upon a time sinless creature of Eden. I see not a fornicator, but a vicious rapist. I do not see a teaser, but a pathological liar. I see an unassuaged Shylock, not a businessman. I see a potential murderer; an armed robber, an illicit drug baron, a sadist and a shameless prostitute whose heart is hardened. I see sheep-clothed wolves in the Lord’s vineyard. Do I see well intentioned and guileless people again, are they not hypocrites who exist in their stead? God placed the spirit of second chance in you, have you made good use of it? Animal sacrifices suffice no more. It is by the new and living way of the blood of the One who made contact with the ‘dead’ Adam. The word ‘sleep’ in Genesis 2:21 is tardemah (tar-day-maw) [From radam (raw-dam’) ‘to stun, that is, stupefy (with sleep or death ]: a lethargy or (by implication) trance.’ This tardemah is the type of death the scripture says of Old Testament saints, because they shall rise again. Unregenerated souls are dead. Only Jesus can bring them back to life eternal. In making contact with the dead Adam He set a precedence for my own and your own salvific contact. Praise the Lord! Hallelujah!
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