1)            How normal is it for a man to place another man under probationary arrangement? It is quite apropos. However, when the Omniscient Creator decides to place man’s existence on probation, eyebrows tend to experience upward lifts, giving captious criticism every supposedly right to hang a big question mark on the Almighty’s omniscience. The Creator has the Almighty peculiarity; and it gives credence to the attributional Omniscience, Omnipotence and the mind blowing Omnipresence. With these Divine faculties Jehovah needs probationary search into man not. So, why does the Omniscience put His intelligent objects of beings on probation?

                Entities of creationism, no matter how perfect in creation, are still under the sovereignty of the Divinity. The same sovereignty over creation explains God’s right to beam probationary light on the existence of beings. The LORD God does not put anyone on probation because He wants to know the hidden dwelling evil in the heart. He knows and sees beings, living, nonliving, animate or inanimate – all the centillions – at the same time and the intents of all, long before the existence of each one. Nothing, ergo, comes to the Almighty as a surprise. He has decided to probe us so that we will know that He is the LORD. The eternality of God’s juridical office makes the Eternal Father the Judge of all things. The judge is only known to swing into adjudicatory ukase after an act of legal interest is brought before the assizes. God made man a free moral agent, having the right to choose any course of life; the free moral agency does not becloud the mind not to know that there is an ultimate Judge.

“Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat” (Genesis 2:16)

                The first probationary verse in Scripture was given to Adam in Genesis 2:16-17 16) “And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: 17) But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” Verse 16 is clearly testamentary of Adamic free moral agency. I understand that the auxiliary ‘mayest’ is not in the original Hebrew text; but the Hebraic ‘âkal is used twice in this verse. The words ‘freely’ and ‘eat’ are both the same ‘âkal (aw-kal’): ‘to eat, devour, burn up, feed.’ From this definition ‘freely eat’, that is ‘savour and consume’ gives man absolute moral right to enjoy the Eden farm produce. However, the permanency of Adam’s righteous soul and lordship of the earth was not a conclusion at the time of his creation.

                Verse 17 is categorical: “in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” This is discernibly probationary. Probation has its dwelling in the existence of time. The probation, finding Adam wanting, he got stripped of his righteousness and the lordship of Eden. Genesis 3:11 “And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?” If Adam did begin his life of creationism under probationary period, there would not be any reason for the historical event of Genesis 3:11. Thankfully, the loss of Adam and his wife was not permanent; like a born again Christian, they were clothed in the righteousness of the Lamb of God, and received restoration. Do not ever ascribe luck to what happened to the pristine parents, they were not lucky but were divinely favoured, the grace of Divinity saw that they were ready, according to God’s word, to start all over again. God knew that Adam and Eve would remain saints of the antediluvian age and He trusted them with Seth and his progenies. Having learnt, to live by the Word of God, from the days of probation, one becomes a suitable vessel for Divine engagement.

                Probation determines the qualification and suitability of the entity of engagement. Cain, the first born of human creation, had been tutored in the walking with the LORD God rules. He had seen Adam do the periodic sacrifices and that the propitiatory element must be a living, domestic flesh and blood quadruped. When it was his turn to stand before the forgiving LORD with his object of sacrifice, it was in defiance of Divine specification. Cain was not even remorseful in his failure to please the LORD God. He would not blame himself for his disrespectful act; his deranged mind marked his pietistic brother, Abel, for annihilation: for Abel’s exemplary devotion marks Cain as a rebel. All these events served as days of Cain’s probation. Even after he had carried out his nefarious intent against his blood brother he remained incorrigibly diehard practitioner of Satanism. He had his beastly mind already made up. Not even the kind Fatherly intervention of the Creator could quench his monstrous desideration. Gently, God’s dissuading words were, 6) “And the LORD said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen? 7) If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.” (Genesis 4:6-7).

                God would have forgotten about Cain’s error and would have reinstated him spiritually if he had done the needful.

                Getting born again is a conscious effort on the part of an individual. Get born again. You were born in sin. Say this sinner’s prayer.

“Dear heavenly Father, I come to You now in the name of Jesus Christ. I believe in my heart that Jesus is the Son of God. I believe that Jesus died on the cross for my sin. I believe that You raised Him from the dead. I confess with my mouth that Jesus is Lord and I receive Him now as my Lord and my Saviour. I give God all the glory. Amen!” 

(…to be continued…)

Read part two here

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