The Judgment

This morning my family and I considered the final two of the nine points identified by Finis Jennings Dake on the dispensation of innocence in Lesson 9: The Dispensation of Innocence (Genesis 2:15-3:21) of his God’s Plan for Man (Lawrence, Georgia: Dake Publishing, 1949), which we’re studying in our after breakfast Bible reading time. In it Dake considers the curse on the serpent, Satan, the woman, the man, and the earth and God’s provision of redemption.

14 And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life: 15 And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. 16 Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. 17 And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; 18 Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; 19 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. 20 And Adam called his wife's name Eve; because she was the mother of all living. 21 Unto Adam also and to his wife did the LORD God make coats of skins, and clothed them. (Genesis 3:14-21, KJV; all Biblical quotations are from the KJV unless otherwise specified)

VIII. The Judgment on God upon Fallen Man

1. The Curse upon the Serpent (Gen. 3:14-15)
   The serpent was cursed because he was first to yield to Satan to cause the fall of man. He was to go upon his belly and eat dust all of his days (Isa. 65:25). [Dake argues that the serpent was not the devil but merely a creature of the field which the devil used as a tool.]
2. The Curse upon Satan (Gen. 3:15)
   Although the serpent is the one addressed, Satan is also addressed. Thus “thy seed” refers not only to natural snakes but also to ungodly men who are children of the devil. There is a natural enmity both between men and natural serpents and between the godly and the ungodly.
   “Her seed” refers both to all the natural descendants of Eve and to one in particular—Christ. This is the first prophecy of the coming of Christ who would defeat Satan, the invisible person addressed. Christ bruised his head on Calvary and will put him into the Lake of Fire in the future.
3. The Curse upon the Woman (Gen. 3:16)
   Before the Fall the woman was equal with the man and childbirth was to be a pleasure without pain, but now she must be ruled over by man and have multiplied sorrow and conception.
4. The Curse upon the Man (Gen. 3:17-19)
   Before the Fall Adam had worked in a beautiful and fruitful garden, but now he be driven from the garden (Gen. 3:23) and have to till undeveloped land and struggle with thorns and thistles.
5. The Curse upon the Earth (Gen. 3:17-19)
   The ground would produce thorns, thistles, weeds, briars, and be more or less a wilderness. It will remain cursed until the Millenium, when the desert will again blossom like a rose (Isa. 35).

Dake also demonstrates under the heading “Man’s Penalty Discussed” that the penalty was not spiritual or physical death, but eternal death.
(1) God told Adam, “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” The Hebrew word for “day” is yom, meaning a literal day when not qualified by such words as “of vengeance” (Prov. 6:36). The phrase “in the day” appears 84 times and never means 1000 years as some teach. Thus Adam died the very day he ate of the tree. Since he did not die physically that day (he was 930 years old when he died), the death penalty could not have been physical death and so had to be either spiritual or eternal death.
(2) If physical death would have been the only penalty, then the penalty for sin would be paid at physical death and all who died physically would be free from sin and go immediately to Heaven. This would not be a penalty, but a reward. That the penalty goes beyond physical death is clear from the fact that some who die physically go to Heaven and some go to Hell at death.
(3) The penalty could not be spiritual death only because spiritual death is the state into which all sinners go when they become sinful. This would free man from the guilt of sin after he has committed many sins to pay the penalty for committing the one sin. They would then go to Heaven and no one would go to Hell. The penalty must be something beyond physical and spiritual death, for some go to Heaven and some go to Hell after going through these deaths. [I don’t follow Dake’s reasoning here and thus think that the penalty could be spiritual death. However I also think that if a person remains spiritually dead he or she will suffer eternal death.]
(4) The penalty, therefore, must be eternal (or endless) death or separation from God. Some object to eternal death and torment on the grounds that it is too long in proportion to the time spent committing sin in this life. However since God has made a way for all men to escape Hell and it is left up to each individual whether he accepts it or not, there is no room for any accusation against God.
(5) Such statements as Ezek. 18:4; Mt. 7:13-14; Rom. 6:23; Gal. 6:7-8 [Dake quotes the passages] and many others prove that the future death that is to be experienced is eternal death. All men outside of Christ are spiritually dead (Ephesians 2:1-9), yet they are physically alive. All men are now eternally dead should they continue this way. Redemption alone will cancel the death penalty. Should a man die physically without redemption he remains forever separated from God, and this is the future death referred to

IX. God’s Provision of Redemption

Immediately after the fall of man God promised a Redeemer and revealed that He would be born of a woman without natural generation and that He would defeat Satan and restore man’s dominion. This was taught man by the prophecy of Gen. 3:15 and demonstrated in type by the shedding of the blood of animals and the clothing of man with the skins of the animals (Gen. 3:21). From then to the first coming of Christ, man shed blood as a token of his faith in the coming Redeemer, who was to shed His own blood to atone for sin and restore man’s dominion (Rev. 5:8-10; Dake gives several more references).

The Fall

This morning my family and I considered the seventh of the nine points identified by Finis Jennings Dake on the dispensation of innocence in Lesson 9: The Dispensation of Innocence (Genesis 2:15-3:21) of his God’s Plan for Man (Lawrence, Georgia: Dake Publishing, 1949), which we’re studying in our after breakfast Bible reading time. In it Dake expounds on the main facts of the account of the fall of man.

1 Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? 2 And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: 3 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. 4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: 5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. 6 And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. 7 And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.
8 And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden. 9 And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? 10 And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself. 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? 12 And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. 13 And the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.
(Genesis 3:1-13, KJV; all Biblical quotations are from the KJV unless specified otherwise)

The above is a simple record of the fall of man, including what made him fall. Without a clear faith in the fall of man, we cannot have a clear faith in the redemption of man. One must believe in the Fall, or he cannot be saved. Jesus Christ did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance (Mt. 9:13). If man never had a fall he could never be redeemed. Likewise, if a man does not believe he is a sinner he cannot be saved. He must repent to be saved (Mk. 1:4).
The whole temptation centred around this tree and its fruit. Why Adam and Eve happened to go near the forbidden fruit is not stated, and so we have to believe that they were curious as to why God would not permit them to eat of this tree. At any rate, they were at this tree together, as is clear from “she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked” (italicized by Dake). It is true that the serpent talked with the woman, but that does not prove that the man was not present. There is no statement that Adam was not present, so we naturally conclude that he was. [On the contrary, I’d conclude that the record’s not stating that Adam was present indicates that he wasn’t present. However he may have been.]

1. DOUBT CONCERNING GOD’S WORD (Gen. 3:1). Satan raised a doubt whether God would permit man to eat of every tree of the Garden. His opposition to God’s word accounts for our having so many false theories of the Bible. Any theory that teaches that God does not mean what He says and that changes what it plainly says is satanic. All theories that teach that the Bible is hard to understand or that one man’s interpretation is as good as another is satanic.
2. ADDITION TO AND MISQUOTING GOD’S WORD (Gen, 3:2-3), The woman answered the doubt raised by the serpent by adding to God’s Word the statement “neither shall ye touch it” (see Genesis 2:16-17).
3. CONTRADICTION OF GOD’S WORD (Gen. 3:4). Next the serpent directly contradicts what God said in Genesis 2:17, “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.” Both statements cannot be true. One must choose to believe one or another. God still says that “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23; Dake also refers to Romans 8:13; 1 Corinthians 3:17; Galatians 5:19-21; Galatians 6:8; and 2 Timothy 2:12). This (and the other passages Dake refers to) was spoken to Christians and thus applies to all men as did Genesis 2:17.
4. MISINTERPRETATION OF GOD’S WORD (Gen. 3:5). Satan’s second statement to to woman is the basis of many false doctrines saying that all we need to do is to look to the God in us and use the divine power of which we are a part. [In talking about 5, Dake observes that the desire to be like God is in itself not sin, but that it should be in the divine way demonstrated by Christ, not in the selfish way demonstrated by Lucifer and by Adam and Eve.]
5. TEMPTATION TO TRANSGRESS GOD’S WORD (Gen. 3:6). When Eve “saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise,” she was tempted to sin. The appeal consists of three main lines of temptation, the only three with which man has to deal, “the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” (1 John 2:16). These are the three lines of temptation Christ went through in the wilderness and overcame, as recorded in Matthew 4:1-11 [Dake explains how they are in Dake, pages 156-57]. If man overcomes these three lines of temptation, he is an overcomer of Satan, the flesh, and the world.
6. TRANSGRESSION OF GOD’S WORD (Gen. 3:6). Adam and Eve went through the same routine of temptation until actual sin was committed as many do today. James says, “Every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death” (James 1:14-15).
7. THE RESULTS OF TRANSGRESSION OF GOD’S WORD (Gen. 3:7-19). In the Fall man lost spiritual, physical, and eternal life and gained instead the opposite—spiritual, physical, and eternal death or separation from God, and was cut off from the purpose for which he was created. [Dake lists 16 things that man lost in the Fall and what he received instead.]

(This article was originally posted on July 25, 2019.)

The Test

The last two mornings my family and I considered the first six of the nine points identified by Finis Jennings Dake on the dispensation of innocence in Lesson 9: The Dispensation of Innocence (Genesis 2:15-3:21) of his God’s Plan for Man (Lawrence, Georgia: Dake Publishing, 1949), which we’re studying in our after breakfast Bible reading time. Dake opens the lesson by listing the nine main points that should be identified in connection with each dispensation in order to gain a general knowledge of the period. Then he discusses each of the points for the dispensation of innocence.

I. Definition of Innocence
The word “innocence” is defined by Merriam-Webster as “freedom from guilt or sin through being unacquainted with evil; blamelessness.” As applied to a dispensation it means that the period “was an age of sinlessness, innocence, harmlessness, and freedom from guilt or sin on the part of the man who was responsible to rule for God in [the] period” (Dake, page 150).

II. The Length of the Dispensation of Innocence
The length of the Dispensation of Innocence is unknown, but it unlikely to be longer than six days. [Dake gives eight reasons for claiming this, the first two being that Satan doesn’t let man alone for very long today and that the records of the creation and fall of man continue without a break between them indicating that they were in close succession.]
The forbidden fruit was not intercourse between the man and his wife, as many teach, because that was necessary if they were going to multiply and replenish the earth as they were commanded to do (Genesis 1:26-28).

III. The Favorable Beginning of Man in Innocence (Gen. 1:26-30; 2:8-24)
“Man and woman fresh from the hand of the Creator had physical, spiritual, and eternal life; communion and fellowship with God and all creatures in the new creation; dominion over that creation; the revealed will of God and His law and the knowledge of penalties and rewards.… These and other favorable conditions made it entirely and easily possible for man to have been true to his trust and rule the Earth for God forever.” (Dake, pages 152-53)

IV. The Test—Man on Probation (Gen. 2:16-17)
Man, being created a free moral agent, needed to be tested to see whether he would remain true to God before being placed in the eternal responsibility that God had in mind for him. The test was that he should not eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. If he had proved true, he could have lived forever physically and spiritually. Even after the Fall man could have lived forever physically if he had eaten of the Tree of Life. The reason God drove him out of the Garden was so that he wouldn’t (Gen. 2:22-24).

(This article was originally posted on July 24, 2019.)