YouTube Channel - The Lord's Recovery Unchained

[SpeakersCorner]

Okay, now I’ll answer my own question: Why God placed a forbidden tree in the pristine garden … a beautiful, tasty fruit that they were told DO NOT EAT?

Those of you who ascribe to the videomaker’s view that it wasn't a matter of life and death, that the fruit itself was fine and the eating of it didn't directly bring in death but the banned access to the tree of life did, you are forced to take the position that this fruit was a temptation, a test. What else could it be?

I reject that. I believe eating the fruit was toxic. I agree with Witness Lee that the disobedience of eating was not the real issue, it was the ingesting of the fruit itself that brought in death.

So the question you should have for me is, Why would God create a toxic but beautiful and tempting fruit? My answer: The fruit itself isn’t poison but it is toxic to Adam and Eve in their primal, innocent state. It's the same as introducing to a very young child things about human sexual behavior. This can be toxic, ruinous to the child for life. It isn’t that the information isn’t true: it’s that the child cannot process it at this point. I'm guessing many of you would agree that society is doing exactly this same serpentine deception to our children and that it is terrible.

That’s my take and I’m sticking with it … at least until someone comes up with a better one.

[Trapped]

Originally Posted by SpeakersCorner

I agree with Witness Lee that the disobedience of eating was not the real issue, it was the ingesting of the fruit itself that brought in death.

If disobedience isn't a real issue, what comes to your mind as an explanation of why God cursed Adam and banned A&E from the garden?

Romans 5 says death came through sin, not death came through a fruit.

Romans 5 repeatedly speaks of "the trespass", "the sin", "the disobedience", "the transgression", etc. in reference to Adam's actions.

[Cal]

Originally Posted by SpeakersCorner

Okay, now I’ll answer my own question: Why God placed a forbidden tree in the pristine garden … a beautiful, tasty fruit that they were told DO NOT EAT?

Those of you who ascribe to the videomaker’s view that it wasn't a matter of life and death, that the fruit itself was fine and the eating of it didn't directly bring in death but the banned access to the tree of life did, you are forced to take the position that this fruit was a temptation, a test. What else could it be?

I reject that. I believe eating the fruit was toxic. I agree with Witness Lee that the disobedience of eating was not the real issue, it was the ingesting of the fruit itself that brought in death.

So the question you should have for me is, Why would God create a toxic but beautiful and tempting fruit? My answer: The fruit itself isn’t poison but it is toxic to Adam and Eve in their primal, innocent state. It's the same as introducing to a very young child things about human sexual behavior. This can be toxic, ruinous to the child for life. It isn’t that the information isn’t true: it’s that the child cannot process it at this point. I'm guessing many of you would agree that society is doing exactly this same serpentine deception to our children and that it is terrible.

That’s my take and I’m sticking with it … at least until someone comes up with a better one.

There is something to be said for this argument, that the first humans got premature knowledge. But it wasn't the premature knowledge that made them fallen. It was their disobedience that made them fallen. They sinned. Sin brings death the Bible says. The result was people who knew good and evil, but could do little about it in their fallen state. This was crushing.

God himself said, they are like us, knowing good and evil. He didn't say knowing good and evil was itself evil. It's just that we weren't ready for knowing it. It wasn't his intent that we have this knowledge at that time, but now we have it, and God is working with us in this state. We can't go back.

Witness Lee was trying to get us back to the garden state, where somehow we make it back to not knowing good and evil. This is what his whole good and evil vs. life argument adds up to. But it's not possible. It's interesting that the Bible really doesn't address the point of us not knowing good and evil anymore as a part of salvation. So what happens? Using the premature sexual knowledge metaphor, God works us through it until we arrive at a place where we are equipped to handle it. We are supposed to be like God, so surely eventually knowing good and evil was part of the plan.

So I can buy the idea that part of the problem was knowing good and evil in the sense that we weren't ready for it. But is knowing good and evil in itself bad? If that were true the Bible would not tell us to do good and reject evil, it would tell us never to think about either, and as TLRU says, the Bible over and over tells us the opposite.

Rejecting both good and evil is synonymous with thinking that walking around naked will make you innocent again. But you know you are naked. You can't go back.

[Cal]

There are really two issues of the fall. The first is becoming fallen due to sin. The second is premature knowledge of good and evil. It's like the don't eat pork commandment. Disobeying it is one problem. That was a sin. The second problem is getting trichinosis. They are separate things. A crude analogy I know, but I hope you get the point.

[Sons to Glory!]

Good point that ALL the trees were good for food. So how does sin get in the flesh? (as per Romans 7:17-20) We certainly appear to be born with it even before we sin . . .

[Cal]

Originally Posted by Sons to Glory!

Good point that ALL the trees were good for food. So how does sin get in the flesh? (as per Romans 7:17-20) We certainly appear to be born with it even before we sin . . .

Paul says plainly, "Through one man's sin, sin entered the world." Sin corrupts.

[Trapped]

Originally Posted by Sons to Glory!

Good point that ALL the trees were good for food. So how does sin get in the flesh? (as per Romans 7:17-20) We certainly appear to be born with it even before we sin . . .

Originally Posted by Cal

Paul says plainly, "Through one man's sin, sin entered the world." Sin corrupts.

This is my take I'll just throw into the mix but won't argue for:

I think the verse saying "sin entered the world" means "the world" as in the world in general, like, "sin came on the scene" or like "sin showed up among men". As in, before Adam's sin, sin was not present in mankind, and after Adam's sin, it was present in mankind, in Adam. I do not think that this means something like Adam's sin entered into all of humankind's flesh. To be sure, the end of that verse is "because all sinned". So death spread to all men 'because all sinned', not because Adam's sin spread to us all and we somehow have someone else's sin causing us to....sin.

Man fell, but I see no evidence that "Adam's nature changed", that somehow Adam started out with a different "nature" than we do. I think we all, Jesus included, were born with a free will human nature, with desires to and free ability to do good/right things or bad/wrong things. I mean, Jesus freely WANTED to do something opposite of what God wanted, but aligned Himself with His Father's will. For us to be born with some kind of sin-bent would mean God is judging us for a serious predisposition out of our control, AND would mean we are born with a fundamentally different nature than Jesus who was supposed to be "made like us in every way" (yet without sin, which I hold to be not a nature, but, as in "yet He did not commit a sin"). Or maybe I'm wrong, but then God just takes the sin-predisposition takes it into account when judging?). However, I think as I've argued elsewhere on the forum, then God's repeated exhortation to His people in the Old Testament to obey Him, and His punishment when they don't, makes no sense if they have some kind of built-in or inherited sin nature by which doing the right thing is inherently out of their control.

I would agree, though, that sin corrupts. So my take would be that as each of us sinned, and as we then chose to sin again, sin corrupts us each individually. Sin has a corrupting effect in us leading to more sin. But that's the effect of our own choice to sin, not that someone else's sin corrupted us. Just my 0.02.

Trapped

[Sons to Glory!]

Originally Posted by Trapped

I would agree, though, that sin corrupts. So my take would be that as each of us sinned, and as we then chose to sin again, sin corrupts us each individually. Sin has a corrupting effect in us leading to more sin. But that's the effect of our own choice to sin, not that someone else's sin corrupted us. Just my 0.02.

Trapped

If sin is in the flesh when we're born, then we're predisposed to sin. Children don't have to be taught to lie, it's just something in them.

If we're not born with sin in the flesh, then if a person never sined, would they still die?

[Trapped]

Originally Posted by Sons to Glory!

If sin is in the flesh when we're born, then we're predisposed to sin. Children don't have to be taught to lie, it's just something in them.

I've heard that comment a lot "children don't have to be taught to lie", but I think it's an unintentional misdirect.

Children's brains don't have the capacity for things. Like impulse control, emotional regulation, etc. They are not developed, but are developing. It's my personal view that God doesn't condemn a 2-year old for getting tantrum-level angry or throwing a toy when that child doesn't have the brain with the capability of regulating the anger in the first place. That's not sin. God is not petty like that.

I would also argue that children don't have to be taught to do good things either. (I don't mean in general; I just mean it is in a child to do both). I have a personal example in my own life of one of my friend's children, the kid is 4 or 5 I think, who found out that someone his dad knew had a favorite toy stolen decades ago when he (the child's dad's friend) was a kid. Much to the dad's complete shock, his kid heard it and said, "I want to give him [the dad's friend] one of my toys [the kind that was stolen] to him so he doesn't feel so bad about his getting stolen." The dad was speechless and had no idea where that selfless compassion came from as it wasn't something they had taught him in particular.

Children have the capability for lying and for compassion, for hitting and for love. The "I love you mommy"s with a deep satisfied sigh are not behaviors that the other parent sat down and walked the kid through. Kids have the capacity and the desire for both good and bad things, just like us.

I am of the school of thought that there is an age of accountability. Not a blanket one, but one unique to each individual. That's why God is the judge. He knows at which point we each could have chosen not to sin but first chose to.

Originally Posted by Sons to Glory!

If we're not born with sin in the flesh, then if a person never sinned, would they still die?

The Bible says all have sinned, and because of that, death spread to all men.

On one hand, I would say "no, they would not still die", but then the next logical question is "so what about babies or young children who die of cancer or in a car accident?" And my answer is, I don't know. This is a point I said I wouldn't argue on because I'm not sure of it.

A possible answer is that all are appointed to die in the flesh, regardless of sin, and the "death" WE are referring to that is a result of sin is really the second death, the death of the soul. So in other words, 100 year olds who sinned their whole lives and a 2 month old who never sinned once are both going to die bodily regardless, since Hebrews 9:27 says we are quite literally "appointed to die" but then face judgment, which means it's just our bodies and not our souls that are appointed to die, then the young child who never sinned would have nothing on his/her record to be judged by and would pass through into eternal life.

That's conjecture of course. This is a debated question "how can God condemn babies who die" and I haven't solved every last nuance of it

But given the choice of a God who condemns us for sins we committed because of an inherited sin-tendency someone ELSE gave us (that's too unrighteous of a God for me, and not one I see in the Bible) versus a God who condemns us for sins we knowingly chose to commit and yet I don't know exactly what happens with the outlier situations but trust that righteous God to handle it righteously....I'll take the latter one where I don't know everything, but where God is righteous in all directions.

Trapped

[Zezima]

Originally Posted by SpeakersCorner

I believe eating the fruit was toxic. I agree with Witness Lee that the disobedience of eating was not the real issue, it was the ingesting of the fruit itself that brought in death..

Here’s my take:

God commanded man not to eat of The TOKGE. I don’t think there was anything special about this tree, apart from it being the one God commanded man not to eat.

The serpent then convinces Eve that if she eats it, she will be like God. The thing is, man was made in the image of God. They are already like God. In fact god commanded them to exercise authority over all the beasts of the field, which includes the very serpent speaking to her. Side note in the Hebrew, the serpent doesn’t even refer to God as Yahweh, which should have caused Eve’s authority to kick in.

By obeying the serpent, they betray all God had commanded and gave them (image and dominion). This event isn’t just some act of disobedience, it’s an act of treachery.

Man committed treason, they betrayed God. I personally don’t think it was the content of the fruit they ate, but the content of their heart that drove their actions.