This will cause riot in the minds of the brainwashed: God created Adam first in time and first in place.
From the dust of the ground God breathed life into Adam to make him a living soul. It was not good for Adam to be alone. The other creatures (the animals) were not his match — not his mate.
Instead of creating Eve sui generis, like he created Adam, God put Adam to sleep, took a rib and then fashioned a helper for him. God presented this gift to Adam. Then Adam named Eve, just like Adam name all the animals. Eve did not receive a name from God, but from her lord, Adam.
Adam is primary. Eve’s place was to be his helper. They are not equal. This is a foundational story. All the scriptures that follow this story must accept the premised truths of Genesis.
But why stop here? There’s more.
God created a garden — not a city — and put Adam in the garden to work — to cultivate and keep the garden. In that garden God directly told Adam that he was not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
After this, God presented the helper to Adam, whom Adam named Eve. There is no sense in the Bible that Adam spoke directly to Eve until after the Fall.
There was a creature in the Garden — the serpent, who was subtle and wise. Subtilty is the ability to speak so close to something and yet not actually say it — people infer what they will. So when the Serpent told Eve that she would not die, what was going on?
Here is the story: before the Flood mankind could talk to the animals — again, this is from a perfect world that decays, not an upwardly ‘evolving’ world:
“Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, “Indeed, has God said, ‘You shall not eat from [a]any tree of the garden’?” 2 The woman said to the serpent, “From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; 3 but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.’” 4 The serpent said to the woman, “You surely will not die! 5 For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 6 When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.”
Was the serpent taking Eve’s own words and twisting them? Did Adam say “you shall not touch it?” And is that what God told Adam? I don’t see that God told Adam he could not touch it. It was good advice, no doubt, but that’s where shaving the truth comes in. The Serpent seized on Eve’s own words and said “sure you shall not die” if you just touch it. And the serpent told the truth when he said your eyes will be opened. The serpent may have lead Eve to the water, but it was Eve that chose to drink.
The subtilty, the soft lies, the mis-direction, and the self-deception were all present at this moment.
The Serpent had his eye on Eve for a long time. This wasn’t a surprise conversation. The Serpent had been grooming Eve for some time — he had developed a relationship with her. He didn’t pop out of the bush and surprise her. She was groomed and coaxed to open up about things.
In the spy business — the creation of traitors — it’s the same way — you groom a contact, they start to trust you, talk about things of no consequence and then get them to offer something of no apparent consequence. If you have them convinced they have done this of their own volition, so much the better. Eve was groomed, she was flattered, her vanity was fed, and she took the bait.
Eve’s self-deception was profound. First, she assumed she could place herself in an intellectual position from which she could judge what God said was true or not. She had received God’s command from Adam — God never told Eve directly (which is also fundamental on not only the position of Eve, but of mankind in general). She seemed to have developed a relationship with a person (a creature with a personality) that Adam did not seem to have cultured. Eve considered herself quite the independent woman.
The woman was not independent. Her mistake was to claim independence from her husband, to develop a relationship with someone who had a message that tickled her fancy; the Serpent’s message validated Eve as an independent being (like Satan sought to be) and flattered her — she placed herself not only as judge over Adam, but even of God but thought little of it.
A couple of notes here.
First, Eve’s position was as a helper to Adam.
Second, Eve was to accept Adam’s direction.
Third, Eve seemed more susceptible to the Serpent than Adam, which says a lot about who ought to be leading, or have primacy.
When Salvation is preached, the Gospel undoes what Eve did.
First, one intellectually humbles oneself and accepts (by faith) that they are unable to know or approach the truth — a human is simply incapable of comprehending the entire universe and making his own determination of truth and right and wrong.
This is undoing Eve’s intellectual pride — it is intellectually humbling to accept by faith the message of another without independent access to all knowledge.
Who is God to prove anything to man? Any individual is not the first Adam and is not the Second Adam. God did not change the nature of the arrangement to accommodate a rebellion in mankind, he leads us right back to where the mistake happened (Eve’s arrogance) and offers us a chance to undo it.
This is why salvation can only come through the preaching of the Gospel, not some intellectual “proof” (although a culture that successfully frames the Truth — creates a Biblical narrative in society — makes evangelism so much easier).
Second, one accepts the words of the preacher — Adam was the preacher to Eve. When the sinner accepts the preacher’s words, it is like Eve repenting of her independence and accepting the word of the first Adam. It is the Second Adam that the sinner accepts as Lord. When a child of Eve accepts as Lord the Second Adam, he undoes Eve’s rejection of her lord, the first Adam.
All this ties together.
A woman is not primary. The male is. All claims to the independence of a woman and modern “feminism” are allegiances to Eve’s accommodation with the Serpent.
But there’s more.
To whom did God call to account for this sin? Was it the serpent first? For was the Serpent not the Deceiver? Was it Eve first, did she not take and eat the fruit and then give it to Adam?
No. There is one lord on earth and God came to him, to Adam. He called Adam to account first — he was lord of the garden. Second he went to Eve. Finally he went to the Serpent.
Why? Because Adam, the male, even in a fallen state, after he sinned, still held primacy. That did not change with the Fall.
And yet there is more.
All biblical blood lines come down through the male — the fathers. There is no female line of descendency. This is true in Genesis and it is true in the Gospels stories of the life of Jesus Christ. Legitimacy — the bloodline — is through the male only.
Yes, God had mercy of Eve. He covered her with a blood soaked animal skin (a blood sacrifice) to hide her nakedness, and promised that a Redeemer would come through her. But that is for the very reason that that bloodline comes through male, not through the female. The male bloodines from Adam on down are hopelessly corrupted — descendancy is only from the male.
But from the woman God could produce a human Redeemer without the taint of sin coming down because the Father of the Redeemer was God Himself in the form of the Holy Spirit who caused the conception to happen in Eve. Eve did not pass on sin to Jesus. Sin or righteousness is through the male alone.
Jesus Christ is the Son of God — a pure bloodline that bypassed Adam’s corrupted bloodline. Eve did not pass on to Jesus that corruption because descendancy is through the male only.
But there’s more.
Every nation and bloodline in the Bible descends from the male. There is no nation (bloodline) named through females. All the nations of the earth came through three men, Shem, Ham, and Japeth; their wives are not even named.
And when they do come from women (the daughters of Lot) they are evil nations — the Moabites and the Ammonites, whom God hated.
But there’s more.
Jesus Christ, Lord, appointed only males as heads of the Church. The twelve Apostles were male.
All the other Scripture that people point to must be set against this overwhelming backdrop — the intellectual ocean that frames the question of feminism. To pull some verse out of somewhere and claim it stands on it’s own is a subtle deception Satan knows well, since he has practiced it from the Garden with Eve all the way up to the Temptation of Jesus Christ and continues it today.
Jesus never appointed a woman to a position of leadership.
Wake up Church. This world has always been yours to loose and you’ve done really good job losing it. The Church, like Eve, willingly surrendered control of the narrative to the Serpent. Like Eve, the Church is flattered by the Serpent’s attention and elevates herself to a position to judge whether or not what the Word says is True. It is that subtilty — that shaving of of the Truth — that killed Eve, and has killed the Church.
Fritz Berggren, Ph.D.
Colorado
Independence Day, 2019
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