TEXT GENESIS 2:8-9
INTRODUCTION WHAT WAS MAN’S ORIGINAL SIN? WHAT PART DOES THE TREES IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN PLAY IN IT? WHO WAS THE FIRST MURDERER? WHAT WAS THE SERPENT? DO YOU ALREADY KNOW THE ANSWER TO THESE QUESTIONS? IF YOU DO NOT KNOW, THEN READ THIS ARTICLE PRAYERFULLY FOR THE ANSWER TO THESE QUESTIONS, AND THE MANY OTHERS THAT ARE ANSWERED AS WE DEAL WITH THE SUBJECT OF THE TWO TREES WHICH WERE IN THE MIDST OF THE GARDEN OF EDEN. WE WILL ALSO SPEAK OF THE NATURAL PROCESS OF EVOLUTION, THE NEW BIRTH, THE SONS OF GOD, AND THE DAUGHTERS OF MEN, CHROMOSOMES, THE INHERITED NATURE OF MAN-KIND AND MANY OTHER THINGS THAT WE FEEL WILL BE OF INTEREST AND HELP TO YOU WHO READ THE ARTICLE.
THE TWO TREES
I have never done anything like this before, but I want to dedicate this message to the memory of a precious brother that has passed on from this life, after devoting more than half of his life span to the service of the Lord. This will be in defense of the truth that he stood for while he was among us. I am speaking of God’s seventh church age messenger, William Marrion Branham, who departed from our ranks just a little over 12 years ago, leaving behind a great multitude of people who have accumulated various opinions about different subjects which he made statements about, without clarification, until we have more than a dozen different versions of the message of truth that he stood for. I have been accused by some, of not preaching what the prophet preached, while I have tried to hold to what the Bible teaches; therefore I believe it is time to reverse this thing, and let some of them try to defend what they stand for. I have never tried to defend every statement that Bro. Branham made, just what he taught by revelation from the word of God. Many of the things that he touched on without ever clarifying his statements, have brought undue criticism from denominational scholars who have taken it upon themselves to attack his teaching. Realizing that we .have the one group that would like to destroy every good memory that anyone has of our dear departed brother, and another group that has tried their best to make him something more than God called him to be, I feel that it is time to defend his image and the revelation that he stood for in this church age. The attack against his teaching falls in three basic categories, but the one that is attacked the most is his teaching on the serpent seed; this is the one that I want to deal with in this message. We printed an article several years ago entitled The Two Laws, which, actually, is what the serpent seed teaching is all about, but we are going to title this one, The Two Trees, and naturally, our scripture for this message will begin in the 2nd chapter of Genesis.
REVELATION OR TRADITION
Before we get into the message I want it clearly understood that we do not place any salvational virtue on the understanding of this teaching, but it will serve to help you better understand why salvation was purchased at Cal-vary. We all agree that salvation is in the Lord Jesus Christ, and there is no amount of teaching that can change that, for God himself, took the initiative on our behalf, but the more we know (by revelation), the less room Satan has to trouble our minds. I will say this also, we are not here to fuss and argue about anything, but we feel that every revelation (if it is a true revelation), will have enough evidence to support itself, whether it be written plain, or otherwise. That is the area of some of the attacks by denominational people; they say that certain teachers within the frame-work of this endtime message are saying that these things are by revelation, and then going right ahead to say that every revelation must have a scriptural basis. Is there a contradiction involved: let us see. There is a certain sense in which we could say that every revelation must be in harmony with the scriptures, but remember this; if it is written plain it does not take a revelation, neither is it hidden from the eyes of the wise and the prudent and reveal-ed unto babes such as will learn, as the scriptures declare unto us. Now, while you are thinking on that let me remind you that there are many things written within the pages of the New Testament by Paul, and Peter, that they did not have one single scripture from the Old Testament to base their revelation on. Also, let me ask you this, can any of you show me one scripture in the Old Testament where it was said that there was to be a man baptizing with water: You know you can not. Well then, why did John come baptizing with water? Isaiah said he was to be a voice crying in the wilderness, “Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain.” (ISAIAH 40:34) Then we read in Malachi 3:1 where he was to be a messenger to prepare the way before the Lord, but nothing anywhere about baptizing with water. I suppose a lot of the critics in John’s day probably passed by and said, What is he doing down there in that water: There is nothing in the scripture about anything like that? Are you beginning to catch the point I am making? He was definitely fulfilling Isaiah 40:3-4, and Malachi 3:1, but what he was doing down there in the water was a revelation that God had given to him and no one else. These are the things we must look at as we study the scriptures, for no one has a monopoly on the scriptures when it comes to revelation. it does not matter how many theological seminaries you may have attend-ed, nor how many degrees you may have, nor how many Greek and Hebrew words you may know, a true revelation does not hang on these things. If it did, the Pharisees would have known it all, in the days when Jesus walked on earth among them, for they knew the Hebrew and Greek languages forward and backward. The plain truth of the matter is that education has very little to do with revelation of the word of God. There are times when those who know Greek and Hebrew are able to better translate certain words in the Bible for our Twentieth Century understanding, but I cannot find where the prophets of old were educated men. They were simple, down to earth kind of people. That is not to say they were illiterate, but just to say they were simple enough to receive the word the way Jesus spoke of, as babes. As I said, this article on The Two Trees will not give you salvation, but it will certainly help you understand why you need a saviour.
ORIGINAL SIN
Most of the church world in our day will admit that there was an original sin, but very few of them will admit that it was anything more than Adam and Eve eating literal fruit from a literal tree which God had commanded them to abstain from. Brothers and sisters, that is an old traditional hand me down idea that is just plain foolish when you take time to think about it. Those who attack what Bro. Branham taught on this subject, (and what we teach here), are prone to say, “You cannot get a revelation that contradicts what is already revealed,” but let me ask you this, “When, and where, was there ever anything taught on the subject, that was looked upon as a revelation of what actually hap-pened in the Garden of Eden?” Man has accepted the idea that Eve ate an apple from a for-bidden fruit tree, and got us into the mixed up mess that we are in today, without even bothering to consider how silly such a thing like that really is. That is why we are going to dig deep in this message. We want to show you, and convince you, beyond any shadow of doubt, that the for-bidden fruit could not have been fruit from a literal, plant life, tree. Let me say this to you who seem to be so set against anyone receiving revelation of the scrip-tures, Moses did not write the first five books of our Bible strictly from hand me down, hearsay, information. He wrote the first book (Genesis) by revelation. It is a history of the genes, given to him by revelation, and there is revelation that one may receive from studying this history. Some will say, “I don’t care what happened with Adam and Eve: it doesn’t matter what they did to cause man to fall; all we have to know is how to trust Jesus for our salvation.” I will agree that Jesus is the only way for man to get back to God, but it is some of you who talk like that, that are forever attacking what we teach. I will say to you: if you do not have a better revelation, then you should leave what we teach, alone. Why tell us we are wrong when you do not have anything better to take the place of what we are saying. Then, to those of you who may never have read or heard anything about the subject we are dealing with let me say this, regardless of what you may know already, please do not close your mind to what we are going to say in this message. There has never been a time down through the ages that God did not have a few nuggets that were just for that particular age of the present; nuggets that no other generation had been privi-leged to have. Do not be concern-ed about whether your grand-father, or your great grandfather knew it or not; just be thankful to God, if he lets you understand something that has been a hidden mystery to previous generations. This is God’s way of working out his perfect plan for the ages. He reveals to every generation what it takes to fulfill his plan for that particular age.
MAN’S BEGINNING
Let us open our Bibles to Genesis 2:8, and begin reading. “And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.” The man had already been created, spiritually, but now we see God giving him a body of clay, and placing him in a garden. Everything is clear up to this point, but watch the wording of this next verse; this is where the confusion starts. This is where so many people lose the track and miss the truth. 9. “And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food.” Please notice the word, TREE, here in this verse, for it is going to be the basis for our subject. Up to this point we see that the Lord God has made every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food, to grow up from out of the ground. We will all agree that it does not require a revelation to understand what has been said up to this point. All of the trees that came up out of the ground were beautiful to look upon, and they were fruit trees to furnish man the food that his body required. Man that was taken from out of the ground, requires food from that ground that his body may stay in a renewed, replenished state. We feed from the very substance that we are made up of. This applies, naturally, to the natural (FLESH) man, and it applies, spiritually, to the inner man. The inner man (which is spirit) feeds from what he is made up of. Now, notice the wording of the last part of verse 9; this is where the catch comes in. “The tree of life ALSO in the MIDST of the GARDEN, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.” The argument lays right there in that portion of the verse. When you read the whole verse straight through, it might look like all of the trees are the same, but do not think for one minute that they are, for it will keep you from seeing the real truth of that verse. Some people have been heard to say, “I believe the Bible speaks literally: if it says tree, I believe it means tree,” (plant life tree). Brother: if you are one of those who talks like that, you had better be careful, for when we read the gospel of Luke, where we find John the Baptist fulfilling Isaiah 40:3-4, (which we have read already), your revelation would have John out there in the desert with a chopping axe, a grubbing hoe, a pick and shovel, a keg of dynamite, and survey instruments, building a highway. But where was John? Ile was standing in the Jordan river baptizing repentant sinners. No-tice what else John had to say to some of those who came to him there. Luke 3:7-9, “Then said he to the multitude that came forth to be baptized of him, O generations of VIPERS, who hath warn-ed you to flee from the wrath to come? 8. Bring forth therefore FRUITS worthy of repentance, and begin not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, That God is able of these STONES to raise up children unto Abraham. 9. And now also the AXE is laid unto the root of the TREES: every TREE therefore which bringeth not forth good FRUIT is hewn down, and cast into the FIRE.” Do you see now where it will put your revelation if you try to literalize all of these terms that were used by those old prophets? If you literalize what Isaiah said about John’s ministry, then John should have had a highway built from Jerusalem to the Jordan river that would have allowed six chariots to run side by side, for the terminology used by the prophet spoke of a highway in the desert.
HUMAN TREES
Let us examine the terms used in our text scripture now. We know John was not filling up gulleys and valleys and tearing off mountain tops to build a literal highway in the desert for the Lord. What was he doing then? He was using that VOICE ( the voice of one crying in the. wilderness), to cut down those self exalted human trees that had been holding the strings on everything religiously. He was also using that voice to give courage and hope to those of low estate, those poor souls that had been looked upon as outcasts of society. They were the valleys that were raised up. Therefore when we go back to Genesis 2:8-9, we ought to be able to see that the tree of life, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil are not trees of plant life like all of the other trees that are mentioned there. If you still have not been able to see the difference, let me give you something else to consider. I have had people ask, “How can you prove by the scriptures that those two trees were not plant life?” I just have to answer them with another question, “How can you prove by the scriptures that they were plant life trees?” It is very obvious that there are no certain scripture verses that spell it out for the natural mind to compre-hend; therefore we have to hang it on spiritual revelation. Those who are spiritual will see it, and those who depend completely upon the five senses will not, as Paul declared to the Corinthians. I will read I Cor. 2:14, before saying any more about the trees, “But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually dis-cerned.” Those are not my words; they were spoken by God’s apostle to the Gentiles, the apostle Paul.
SENSIBLE REASONING
I will now ask you the sixty-four dollar question; but let me say this first, if the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was a plant life tree, then the tree of life had to be a plant life tree also. Is that not a fact? Then where is that tree of life at today? If eternal life was to be obtained by eating from a literal tree in the beginning, then God’s plan of redemption would have been a process of allowing lost mankind to have access to that same plant life tree. That kind of teaching would have Christ dying in vain. There would have been no need for him to shed his life’s blood at Calvary. We read in Genesis 3:23, that God sent the man (Adam) forth from the garden of Eden to till the ground from whence he was taken, then in verse 24, we find that God placed cherubims (angelic beings), and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life. That is why I say, “If the tree of life was a natural tree, all God would have needed to do to redeem man and give him eternal life would have been to remove the angels who guarded the tree, and let man have access to its fruit again. Whatever the tree of life was then: it is still that today. That should be easy enough to understand.
WHY HAVE SEMINARIES?
Now, here is my next question for you to consider. If the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was a. plant life tree as the old tradition has it, whether it be an apple tree, pear tree, or what-ever, why do men spend millions of dollars building institutions (seminaries, laboratories, and such like), to study, and to teach man in? Every tree of plant life that was in the garden of Eden is still in the world today; why not just let man cat from this tree of knowledge? There would never be any need for another school teacher. Brothers and sisters: this may sound strange to some of you, but I talk like this to provoke you to think about these things. It just doesn’t make sense for the children of God to go year after year feeding on the devil’s old hand me down traditions. I have heard Bro. Branham say, many times, “You have to read between the lines of the scriptures.” That is God’s way of concealing the mysteries of his plan from the wise and prudent, and revealing them unto babes, (those who will learn spiritually). The mystery of the age of grace hung right there in the Old Testament. The prophets prophesied about it, but could not understand it. Neither could the old patriarchs, nor the Jewish elders understand it, but when the time came for it to be revealed there was one Jew that got the revelation. It was none other than the apostle Paul. Let us read it in Ephesians 3:2-3, “If ye have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God which is given me to you-ward: How that BY REVELATION he made known unto me the mystery.” That is enough for what I wanted you to see. He received the knowledge of the mystery of the grace age by REVELATION; there was no certain scripture that spelled it out for him. In verse 5, he goes on to say that in other ages this mystery was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by his spirit. This just goes to show that God opens up men’s understanding when it is time for a certain thing to be revealed. In other words, Paul could read, and understand, what the prophets which uttered those things could not understand them-selves. Therefore, I am inviting you who feel that you know enough Greek and Hebrew to prove that what we are saying is wrong, to bring your books and do so. If you have scriptural facts to prove that the tree of life, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil were plant life trees, I will be among the first to want to see your proof.
FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH
For six thousand years man has searched the world over for a fountain of youth. They have looked for some sort of plant life that could make them live a little longer. Fortunes have been spent on such things to no avail, which, all goes to show that it cannot be found in plant life. There is only one fountain of youth, and that is in the presence of the Eternal God. Let me ask my critics this question, “When God drove Adam and Eve, and that animal kingdom out of the garden, what kind of garden did he drive them out of?” God planted a garden eastward in Eden. Geographically, it had four rivers in it. The scripture refers to it as a river with four heads, which to me, it is four rivers. As I stated earlier in a little different way, every plant life tree that is on this earth today was in that garden; therefore I ask you once again, “What kind of a garden did God drive Adam and Eve out of?” How did the trees which we eat of so abundantly get out of the garden? Do you feel that Adam and Eve went about pulling them up and replanting them outside the garden? You may say that we are indulging in things that you do not feel are important. If that be true, then why do you bother to challenge what we teach on the subject? Every tree of plant life that was in that garden is still in the world today, but not one of them can give you eternal life, Neither is there one among them that can give you instant knowledge by partaking of its natural fruit. I believe you are seeing that these two trees are different from the other trees of verse 9. You are seeing that they do, definitely, deal with man’s relationship to God, with his spiritual and reproductive makeup.
FAMILY TREE
It is common knowledge among us, that when a person begins to study his hereditary background, it is called a study of his family tree. Where did such an expression originate? It is very proper terminology, for the tree of life was God’s ordained way for Adam and Eve (Adam being a son of God), to populate the world with sons and daughters which would have been children of God, with eternal life in them. The Bible says that God created Adam in his own image. Now we know that God was not in a human form, that is, he did not have a body of clay, so the man he created in his own image was a spirit being. He later placed that created son in a body of clay, and set his reproductive laws in operation when he had taken a rib from Adam and made him an help meet, (a wife). It is man’s body of clay that identifies him with animal life, but inside that body is a spirit man that is made in the likeness and image of God. Adam received the command to be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it, before he was ever given a body (a human body) that could carry out the command. We do know however that we can trace our family tree, through a certain process, for quite a few generations, but think on this, every child of God in this world today is an offspring of Adam. We will let the message make that statement clear as we go along. It is true that there is a certain sense in which God is referred to as Heavenly Father by all men, for God is the creator of all life. Every living thing received its life from God, but we are going to show you in this message that, not all men could call Adam their father. I want you to think on the a command that God gave Adam, as we study this scripture for God told him to replenish the earth. Replenish is a word that means to fill up, and we know that when RE is placed in front of it, we come up with a word that means to refill. That lets us know that the earth had been filled with something in a prehistoric era of time. Some people reject such a thought, but I want you to know that the reason this old earth was without form and void, with darkness covering it, as it states in Genesis 1:2, was because God had judged its former inhabitants, and wiped the slate clean to start with a new species. That is why we are hearing reports of various things being discovered that seem to be thousands of years old. If you will receive it, what we have just said will help you to reconcile the creation account in Gen. chapters 1 and 2, which only dates back a few thousand years, with all of these reports of things that date back, even to the millions of years. There is no way for us to know how much time elapsed between the first two verses of Genesis. We will not dwell on this prehistoric age now, for our subject is on the two trees that were in the MIDST of the garden where God had placed the man Adam, with his wife Eve, and gave them all of the plant life trees for food. We are looking at the two trees which were in the midst of the garden, These two trees were two laws. One was a law of eternal life, and the other was a law of death and separation from the presence oft God. The tree of knowledge which they partook of was the cause oft them missing the perfect will of God and having the death penalty imputed upon them.
WHAT THE TWO TREES WERE
I want to state something right now while it is on my mind. If there was an original sin, which was an original act by Adam and; Eve that started it, then, from that very moment, sin became ark hereditary thing. You did not become a sinner the moment you were born into this old work) physically; you became a sinner the very moment conception took. place. You were a sinner while still in your mother’s womb. That fallen nature was passed on tit you through your family tree. God does not wait until a baby is born to impute sin to it, for one act, one man, and one woman, cause it to be a hereditary death sentence. Now I ask you, where does the hereditary law work? Does it work through the mouth? Where we eat apples, peaches pears, bananas, figs, and such like, or would you agree that it works through the genetic process of reproduction? I have many things that I want to bring into this message to make it a complete picture for you to look at. There have been articles written, challenging what Bro. Branham taught on this subject. I have already stated that I do not intend to defend every statement that Bro. Branham made, but I do intend to defend the revelation that he brought to us on the subject, as well as others. That is why I want to say right now, first the benefit of every person why may hear this tape, or read this article in print, the tree of life was God’s perfect way for Adam and Eve to reproduce themselves to carry out the commission that God placed in their conciseness while they were yet in hie presence as spirit beings, telling them to be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth. On the other hand, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil we God’s forbidden way for them is bring this process about. Let look at the scripture again and read it very carefully, Gen, 2:9. Once the Lord had placred Adam in the garden, look what else he did. 9, “And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food: (Now notice how the sentence is broken here.) the tree of life ALSO in the MIDST of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.” It goes on to speak of a river and gold and other things bringing us down to the 15th verse, “And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.” Now in actuality, Eve was still inside this body of clay with Adam. Up to this point they had not yet been separated. 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 (or partake) of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” You will not find God telling them anymore after that, what the tree of knowledge would bring upon them if they partake of it, but Adam knew what God had said about it. He did not need to be told again. He knew that this tree was not one of the plant life trees that God had given them for food. Then, just to refresh your memory, if the tree of knowledge was not a plant life tree, the tree of life was not a plant life tree either. What was it then? It was a divine law that God had instilled in Adam and Eve of how life was to be reproduced from them, or through them, which would en-large the family tree, and every child born to them would have eternal life. Therefore to partake of the tree of life was not to eat something with the mouth, but it was to fulfill a divine law that God had caused to work through the woman’s body: whereby, she would know when to come to her husband strictly for the purpose of bringing another offspring into the world, and never for pleasure alone. That law of the tree of life would have been a sex relation-ship between the man and his wife purely for the purpose of giving life to another son or daughter which would have been offspring of God. You may say, “That is just too deep for me.” Is it really? Do you not realize that if Adam and Eve had only partook of the tree of life instead of the tree of knowledge, there never would have been any such thing as an X rated movie on this earth? You see the billboards everywhere, advertising them. Why? Is it because they have a fruit stand there, selling apples, oranges or peaches? We all know better than that. It is because they have collected together a bunch of unregenerate, devil possessed, perverted people who are so evil that they are willing to sell their bodies for an act while others are photographing them in their actions. This they publicize to mankind and other degenerates go to see it for entertainment. This is what the devil has done with the sacred relationship that God had ordained all human, animal, marine, fowl life to come through. All of these creatures reproduce themselves by an act or relationship between the male and the female. Man is the only species among God’s whole creation that has perverted His divine law of reproduction, and used the act for pleasure instead of God’s original purpose. You will never find the horses, nor the cattle, nor the deer, nor any other of God’s creatures using the sex relationship for anything other than reproduction. When that law begins to work in the female, she immediately seeks a male mate to consumate the cycle. The female carries the egg, and the male carries the sperm, when the two mate, it fulfills God’s divine law. Brothers and sisters: I am trying my best to say this without making it sound vulgar to you. May God help us, for the devil has taken these relationships and so perverted them, that it has caused people to look upon this sex relationship as something vulgar. In the beginning, it was not so. God meant for it to be a beautiful relationship without reproach, but Satan has turned it all around to the point where people actually shudder at the very mention of such a thing. Let me remind you that every last one of you came into this world through the very relationship that we are talking about. The only difference is that the act which brought about your conception was for pleasure instead of being just for the purpose of reproduction. That was the only difference between the two trees in the beginning. One was a law of life, and the other was a law of death. The partaking of these two trees was the same act regardless of which tree; the difference lay in the motive, the reason for coming together. If they had waited for God’s law of reproduction to bring them together as the animals do, their union would have produced children with eternal life abiding in them, but when Eve allowed the serpent to seduce her and introduce sex for pleasure only, the law of reproduction still worked, but it brought forth children with a death sentence imputed to them instead of eternal life. Remember, all of the other trees in the garden (the plant life trees), were to be eaten from with the mouth for the purpose of replenishing their physical bodies. but the tree of life (the life giving law of God in their midst), was for the purpose of reproducing themselves to fulfill the commission God gave them to fill the earth.
FACING THE TRUTH
The old patriarchs were not ashamed to speak of this sacred relationship that God had ordain-ed for the purpose of reproducing children of their own kind. As you read the Bible you will find ever so many accounts of where So and So knew his wife and she conceived and brought forth a son, which many times was named by the spirit of God. The child was given a name which had a particular meaning of some-thing that was to take place in the plan of God. In other words, the sex relationship between a man and his wife was to be a thing of beauty, in God’s perfect plan for man. It is only because Satan has been allowed to pervert, and use the act for a monetary purpose that it has come to be looked upon as it is today. If the devil had never been allowed to get in the picture, there would be no such thing as a woman having monthly periods where she becomes nervous and frustrated. That was added to her because of dis-obedience when she used the sex relationship for the wrong purpose, or with the wrong motive. Under God’s perfect plan it would have been a great joy for a woman to bear a child, with the absence of all the pain and suffering that goes along with it today. It seems that there are a lot of people in the world today that would rather believe a lie than to face the truth. Such is the case with the critics of this teaching. They would rather believe that Eve was walking through the garden one day, and a big old slick, slimy snake, hanging from an apple tree, began talking to her about eating some of the fruit from the tree in which he was resting, (anyone who believes such a thing as this is up a tree themselves, and don’t know it). They would rather believe a thing like that than to believe the serpent was a two-legged creature, (more in the form of man), that was capable of talking, and even capable of seducing Eve to commit a sex act, strictly on the basis of pleasure. Listen to me, you have no verse of scripture that says the serpent was a snake. If you feel that you can prove he
was a snake: I feel more so that I can prove he was a creature that walked upright. Of course a thing like this is understood by divine revelation, and many of our critics seem to be void of the spirit of revelation, so it just stands to reason that you will never understand this, but we are publishing it for the benefit of honest hearted people who want to know the truth, and do not have any axe to grind in the matter. They are not afraid to face the truth, for it is the truth that sets us free from traditional bondage. Anything that truth destroys is not worth holding onto anyhow. When we are willing to face the truth, we are then in a place where God can reveal himself to us. You must remember what Jesus told Peter that day when he had inquired of his disciples, “Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?” Peter was the one that answered the next question that Jesus asked, “But whom say ye that I am?” Simon Peter answered, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” The next words of Jesus will open our eyes if we will let it. He said, “Blessed art thou Simon Barjona; for flesh and blood (natural man) hath not revealed it (taught it) unto thee, but my Father (the Eternal Spirit) which is in heaven. And I say unto thee, That thou are Peter, and upon this rock (this rock of revelation by the Eternal Spirit) I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not PREVAIL against it.” Even though Jesus phrased this as he did, please do not think (as the Catholic people do) that he was saying that he was going to build his church upon Peter. The church is built upon spiritual revelation that comes to them the same way that the true identity of Jesus came to Peter. A spiritual revelation (which can only come to us when the spirit of God draws back the curtain for us to see beyond our five senses) becomes a part of our spiritual makeup; therefore we cannot lay it aside for something the devil claims is better. That is why Jesus said the gates of hell could not prevail against it; (the church which is built upon spiritual revelation) Satan with all of his demonic hosts, will continue to attack the church, but they cannot prevail against it. We have been talking about that which is recorded in Matthew 16:13-19, and we included this strictly for the purpose of establishing the fact that the true church of the Lord Jesus Christ is built upon and feeds upon spiritual revelation, rather than carnal man’s traditions.
WHAT ABOUT EVOLUTION
We received a letter some time ago from a person who seemed to think my teaching had a little taint of evolution in it; therefore I would like to include my answer to anyone who may feel like that, right in this message which is dealing with the beginning of all of God’s creatures on this earth today. The Bible states that after God had taken Eve from Adam’s side, He brought her to Adam, and Adam said, Gen. 2:23, “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.” Then Gen. 3:20, states that Adam called his wife’s name Eve; because she was the mother of all living. We know from the word of God that Adam was created by God, himself. We also know that Eve was taken from Adam’s side; therefore neither one of them had a father, nor a mother, as pertaining to the flesh, yet Adam prophesied that a man was to leave his father and his mother, and cleave unto his wife: and the two would be one flesh. Now how are they one flesh; and where does evolution fit into the picture? I want every one of my critics to read this article and pay close attention to what I have to say, and I will prove to you that there is a true evolution; not as the atheists teach it, but according to what the Bible history, and physical evidence teach us. Evo- lution is the process of something changing from one stage to another: not that it changes necessarily from one form to another, but certainly there is an evolving process at work in God’s creation that affects size and appearance as well as ability. For an example, and for the purpose of illustration, I will use the cow. The first pair of cows was in the garden of Eden, and they were created. They did not evolve from something else. God created them, and they mated and brought forth a little calf which was in their own image and likeness. But did you know that God did not create a pair of Angus cows, a pair of Herefords, a pair of Jerseys, Guernseys, Holsteins, and so forth? No, there was only one pair of cows, and every other cow on the face of this earth has come forth from that original pair. Some have humps on their back, some are large while others are small. How did they get to be like that? It is very simple; there is a process of evolution working, whereby man and beast, and so forth, is affected by his environment. It seems that God’s creation is capable of adapting to its environment. On top of that, remember, God made man in his own image. Man was made to rule over the animal kingdom, and when man was driven from the garden he still had that animal kingdom with him, along with the knowledge of how to make that animal kingdom serve a purpose. He has devised ever so many ways to use the various animals to do the hard work for him, and in that he has developed certain breeding techniques that actually bring about an evolutionary process. What I am saying is this, God only created one pair of everything, whether it be man or beast, but there is a certain ability present that allows each one to adapt himself to his surroundings. In every area of the world, man and beast alike, have taken on certain characteristics that make them adaptable to the climate, the land, the food, and their means of livlihood. That is how there came to be different species from the one original pair that God created. It was after that natural process of evolution had produced differences, that man got the idea of cross-breeding to produce certain other creatures. I do not have space in the message to say all that there is to say on this subject, but I will put in enough for those of you who are interested to think upon and investigate for yourselves. There was only one pair of horses created, but from that one pair you have every breed of horses that is on this planet today. You have the Belgian, Clydesdale, Arabian, Thoroughbred, Quarter-horse and many others. Some of them will weigh a ton while others are just little ponys. Yes, the pony came from that first pair also, that is evolution. God placed certain laws in the genetic structure of every living physical creature upon this earth that allows this process to work as it does.
GENESIS — THE BEGINNING
It comes in handy for me to say another thing that is on my mind right now after mentioning the genetic laws that control our makeup. Why is the first book of the Bible called the book of Genesis anyhow? It is because the word itself deals with, or pertains to the history of the genes. It is not the history of the apples, nor the mouths that eat them; it is the history of the genes, a genealogical study of the beginnings. Certain people are always saying the fall of man was brought about by something that Adam and Eve ate of, or took in through the mouth. If that was the truth of it, then salvation would have to come by something that we could take in through the mouth and swallow. The way some people are peddling salvation in our day, it causes one to wonder if they have something in a bottle or a can that they are able to dispense at will. Their very attitude seems to overlook the fact that Jesus said no man could come to him unless the Father (the Eternal Spirit) draw him. Jesus also said in Matthew 15:11, that it is “Not that which goeth into the mouth that defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man.” He went on to say that any thing that goes into the mouth will pass on out into the draught, but those things which proceed from the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man. Whatever we eat will pass on out with the body waste (physically speaking) and there is nothing about it that will defile the man, but when a man speaks, he is speaking from the heart, and that is where every evil and blas-phemous word proceeds forth from. Therefore I want you to know that the fall of man was not brought about by something that Adam and Eve ate through the mouth. It was absolutely a right act which was committed the wrong way, or for the wrong reason, that brought about the fall of man.
THE SERPENT
We have talked about the serpent that seduced Eve in other messages, but for the sake of those who read this article, and never get a chance to read the others, I want to speak about him for a little while. We have already seen in the scriptures that Adam and Eve had a command from God to be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth. I do not believe there is any room for doubt when we say that the command was to be fulfilled through a sex relationship between the man and his wife. We have already spoke of how that God meant for the man and the woman to come together strictly for the purpose of reproduction rather than for pleasure, with reproduction being the end result
of the pleasure act. Now, what about this serpent that seduced Eve there in the garden: what was he like? I want you to know that even though he was part of the animal kingdom that Adam ruled over, he was more like man in appearance than he was any of the rest of the animals. He stood at the top of the animal kingdom, and was a servant type creature to Adam and Eve. I am not making this statement because of a verse of scripture that says that is what he was; I am making it because of divine revelation that God has placed within my heart. Those of you who wish to use the scripture to try and prove that he was a snake, will have to admit, if you are honest, that I can take the same scripture you use, and come just as close to proving he was a two-legged creature. The serpent did not crawl upon his belly licking the dust of the earth before God cursed him. It was the curse that put him into the reptile family, But, because man has lost his ability to know which one of those snakes out there is the serpent, he refers to all of them as serpents, but only one species of the reptile family is actually the serpent. You have the Python, the King Cobra, the Boa Con-strictor, and all the others that you could name, but not one of them will cross with the other. This ought to tell us something. They are all separate, the one species from the other, because God ordained it to be that way. It is true they all crawl about the same, but they are quite different in their individual makeup. The Bible says that the serpent was more subtile than any beast of the field. To be subtile requires an intellect: the ability to think and make decisions. In our society we always associate this word with being cunning, or crafty, but let me remind you that to be cunning and crafty, you cannot be illiterate. This serpent was no dumb animal. Take the hog for in-stance; he can get through a hole in the fence, but he never knows his way back. You could not call him subtile, could you? No, the word subtile in Gen. 3:1, lets us know that the serpent was a creature that knew how to use his intellect, and the Bible states that he approached Eve. Our critics, in the article they published, stated that the serpent was like a big snake, but they did not say which one. They claim that he lived in the tree, and that the curse God put on him just meant that he could not live in the tree anymore, from that time on he must crawl on the ground. Did you ever hear anything so ridiculous in your life? Imagine Eve, (the daughter of God), being so stupid as to walk under a tree and carry on a conversation with a snake hanging from one of the limbs. It would be hard for a person with his head on straight to visualize such a thing. Brothers and sisters, you can take it from me, he was not a snake in a tree but he was a creature on the ground, a creature that looked much like a man. God had given him an intellect and a voice box, so that he did not have to talk under the conditions of Baalam’s donkey; he was made to talk. He was made to communicate with man, and I want to say once again; the revelation that God has placed within my soul lets me know that he was to be a servant type creature to Adam and Eve. Adam was never told to till the ground, and to earn his bread by the sweat of his face, until after he had disobeyed God’s com-mand. Up until that time the serpent (being the servant) did all of the manual labor for Adam and Eve. When God cursed the serpent, Adam lost his servant. That is when he had to go to work. This was part of the price Adam had to pay for his dis-obedience.
MAN’S FRUITLESS SEARCH
The very actions of mankind in our day proves what I just said is true. If you will notice the trend of degenerate, fallen man, you cannot help but see that he is forever looking for someone to do his hard, dirty, kind of work. The very fact that humans have actually been captured and used as slaves, proves that there is something in man that lets him know that he has lost something. He is forever trying to get it back. Man cannot make the chimpanzee do his work, he will just go up a tree somewhere, neither can he get the gorilla to work for him; therefore his penalty is to do it himself. The scripture will talk to you if you will let it. The reason most people fail to gain revelation from their Bible study, is because they approach the Bible with their mind already made up, just looking for some scripture verse that seems to back up what they want to believe. When you approach the Bible with an attitude like that, you will always find what you are looking for, but it will not help you in any spiritual way. God will not give you revelation truth, if all you are looking for is something to support your denominational teaching. If you will begin to study your Bible with an open mind, you will see that the serpent had to be a man-like animal creature, (able to communicate with Adam and Eve) which the devil used in order to get to the woman. Remember, the devil is that fallen angel, (Lucifer) which was tested in some prehistoric age. He was already a fallen angel when he inspired the serpent to approach Eve, but he, himself, was never referred to as, that old serpent, until after he had used the serpent, and the serpent had become a cursed creature. Even Hollywood has a better revelation of the scriptures than some of you denominational theologians who are always harping about the serpent in the garden being a snake in a tree. That is why they are making X rated movies. They know Eve was not defiled by eating fruit from some natural fruit tree in the garden. She was defiled by the serpent who introduced sex to her on the basis of pleasure, rather than to produce life, as God had instructed Adam and Eve to do. You all know what happens when a young man and a young woman out here in the world get too familiar with each other, the first thing you know they are indulging in a sex relationship, not for the purpose of bringing forth life, but just for pleasure. That is the fruit from the tree of knowledge. The fruit from the tree of knowledge is a sex act; therefore the fruit from the tree of life would have been a sex act also, the knowledge part pertain-ed to the fact of finding out that the act could be used for pleasure, without being concerned about the purpose and plan of God in the matter. Does that not make it a tree of evil? A man and a woman that are together illegally are en-gaged in an evil act. You certainly could not call it a divine act, but even though they are engaged in evil activity, if the woman’s cycle hits during the time of it, that law of reproduction that God has placed within them will bring forth life. It will bring forth a human life with an imputed death sentence already hanging over it. It did not matter if it was a patriarch or whoever it might have been, when they stepped across the borderline of safety and committed themselves to a wrong act, there was always a penalty. God has followed that same principle all the way through the ages. That is why we find the apostle Paul writing in Galatians 6:7-8, “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.” God dealt with Adam and Eve according to the choice they made. If they had obeyed God’s command there never have know been any sex for pleasure. Oh, I know that some of you really get up in the air when you read something like this, but we are printing this for the benefit of those hungry souls who want to know the truth about why mankind happens to be in such a state of filth and corruption as he is found in today. Now listen to me. I know it sounds like they were eating from some natural fruit tree which God had called a tree of knowledge, but I want to say once again, the knowledge obtained from eating (or partaking) from the forbidden tree was the knowledge that the sex relationship could be used for pleasure. Eve found out about it from the serpent, and she was the one who introduced the pleasure relationship to her husband. You will notice that Adam was not deceived in the matter. He was chastised for harkening to the voice of his wife. When God confronted them, (after they had sinned), Eve told him that the serpent beguiled her. This is one place where you might find it helpful to look up that word in the Hebrew section of your cow cordance. You will see that the translaters could have used the word seduced instead of beguiled, and they would have been perfectly in line with the scriptures for both words come from the same Hebrew word. What shall we say then? Simply this, Eve was deceived and seduced sexually. Then, after discovering that the act was pleasurable, she told Adam about it and persuaded him to partake also; therefore God dealt with Adam because he had listened to his wife’s persuasion and gave in to her. But once he gave in to her, they both became guilty, and knowledgable of the fact that they had done wrong. Look what they did next, This is where I want to ask my critics a very serious question. If the serpent had introduced them to the fruit from some plant life tree, which they partook of with their mouth, why did they not cover their mouth with the fig leaves insteadof their sex organs. You know why, if you will just admit it.
DAUGHTERS OF MEN
I am not an educated man; therefore I have nothing to boast about in that field, but let me tell you about a letter that I received some time ago. This person writes, Bro. Jackson, I have read your article dealing with the serpent seed very carefully, and I would like to know how you are going to prove that the serpent was a creature that looked like man. Then he goes on to tell me that the Bible does show that when God made the different: animals, he also set a law in effect that none of them would cross, and he goes further still, to tell me of the chromosome structure, of the male and female, pointing out that the chromosome structure of humans is such that it will not allow a cross between them and the animal kingdom. I already knew that; he did not have to tell me that. But, here is where I come back at those who argue about this point. When we get over to chapter 6 of Genesis, where it says, “When men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.” The daughters of men made themselves attractive in a way that caught the attention of the sons of God. They enticed them in a sexual way. They were not out somewhere setting up fruit stands; they were displaying their bodies in a way that caused the sons of God to want them for their wives. The scripture makes this clear enough, but from this point on, is where we differ in what we believe. I say that the daughters of men were the offspring of Cain’s line, and Cain was an offspring of the serpent. I say also, that the sons of God were the descendants of Seth, who was a son of Adam, who was a son of God. These critics claim that the sons of God were angels which came down and pressed them-selves into physical bodies to commit these acts with the daughters of men, which they claim are the daughters of the whole human family. Brothers and sisters: that is a lot farther from the realm of possibility than what we teach about the serpent. Show me someplace in the Bible where angels were ever referred to in a sexual sense. Tell me now, which is more ridiculous: to have the angels down here on earth having sex relations with the daughters of men, or believing that God could have allowed the genetic makeup of the serpent to cross with that of Eve, in the garden, to produce Cain. Either way you look at it from the standpoint of science, you have a chromosome structure that should not cross with humans, but I believe that before the curse, the serpent was so close to man in his physical makeup, that God allow-ed the devil to use this avenue to present the test for Adam and Eve.
GOD COUNSELED WITH HIMSELF
There had to be a basis for the fall, for Paul states in the letter to the Romans that, “The earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope, Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.” Before there was man, or beast, or anything in the garden of Eden, God had already counseled with himself. In other words, he had already thought it all through from beginning to end, and he knew how everything was going to turn out before he ever created anything. If you think the fall of man was brought about by an act of eating an apple from a tree, that is your privilege, but I refuse to accept it as a fact that plant life can affect the whole genetic structure of mankind. Sin became an hereditary thing from that moment on, and you will not find any fruit from a plant life tree that can affect the hereditary law of the reproductive organs. 1 Whatever happened in the garden between Eve and the serpent brought about a condition that has affected the bloodstream of man. I believe the main reason so many people are unable to see the real connection between Eve and the serpent is because they are unable to think of the serpent being anything other than a snake, before the curse. Let me say once again, “He was not a snake when he was with Eve in the garden. Sin and death are hereditary laws that lay in the gene and the egg of reproduction, but they were not present when God first created the man and his help mate; it was imputed through the very organs that were used in sinning against God that first time. Ever since that day death has been present from the very moment that conception took place in the female womb. Saints, I do not talk like this because I think I know a lot, but I am fully persuaded that it is a revelation, and I believe I have a right to defend it. The Bible says that Adam and Eve realized they were naked, and they took fig leaves and tried to cover themselves. What part did they cover and why did they just cover that particular part of their body, if they had only sinned with their mouth? Surely if you will be honest with yourself, you will see something there.
SPIRITUAL CROSS-ROADS
As I see it, there comes a time in every person’s life where they stand at a cross roads revelation-wise. They can either receive the revelation for their particular age of time, and be found in favor with God, or they can reject revelation, hold to tradition, and be found as the scribes and Pharisees in the days of old when Jesus walked among them, fulfilling what they had been preaching about. They held to their traditions, fought against Jesus, and were rejected by God, all because they refused to recognize the message of their day. I said earlier that this particular message is not one that has salvational virtue in it, but it is one that God has led me to preach and print; therefore if you are one of those people that takes a bad attitude about something like this you do not agree with, then, chances are, you are also fighting against revelation truth that DOES contain salvational virtue. You can-not fight against God on the one hand, and be found in favor with Him on the other, all at the same time. Either you are with God, or you are against him. There is no middle ground for you to stand on. I would like to make it perfectly clear also, that I do not preach these messages to stir up trouble, nor to be a know-it-all. My only concern is to try to be of some help to the true people of God in this dark hour just before His return for the bride. Then, I will say to those of you who insist on believing just exactly what your dear old grandmother believed, that you should keep in mind that she lived in the days of reformation when God was restoring back to the church, the truths that the devil had robbed her of during the period commonly call-ed the Dark Ages. Our God is God of today, he does not leave us to feed ourselves from some nugget of truth that he fed some previous generation with, without giving us something fresh to go along with it. If the grace age could last another 1000 years, you can be sure that God would have some-thing fresh to feed every generation all the way out to the end. I say that only to call attention to the fact that God has revealed things in this generation that none of the other ages in between have known. You ask, why? The most important reason is that we are living right at the end of this dispensation, and the bride is to be an enlightened people, restored back to the truth of the apostolic age. The raptured bride will be a people that has followed God in all of the truth that he has restored to her. She will know, and understand, the truth that God has restored to every church age, as well as what took place in the beginning. Some of you may think you can just bury your head in the sand and let everything slide on by, and everything for you will come out alright, but let me remind you that Jesus is coming for a body of people that are to be like him. You certainly will not be like him if you close your eyes and refuse to see light that is shined upon your pathway.
LAW OF LIFE OR DEATH
I cannot understand for the life of me why some people fight so hard against the revelation that the serpent was not a snake when God placed him in the garden of Eden as a help-mate for Adam. It seems to me that people ought to be glad to know that there is not some plant life tree growing out here some place that would cause a person to miss the plan of God if they happened to partake of its fruit. You certainly cannot avoid the fact that if there ever was such a natural tree (growing in the garden) called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, it is still around someplace, for every tree that was in that garden is still present on this earth right today. The plain truth of the matter is as I stated before, THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NOT ONE TREE OF PLANT LIFE THAT HAS CHANGED THE SINFUL MAKE-UP OF MAN’S INHERITED NATURE TO SIN. IF PLANT LIFE WAS TO BLAME FOR THE FALL, THEN REDEMPTION WOULD HAVE TO COME THROUGH PLANT LIFE ALSO EITHER THOSE TWO TREES IN THE MIDST OF THE GARDEN WERE TWO NATURAL TREES OF PLANT LIFE, OR THEY WERE TWO BASIC LAWS WHICH GOD HAD PLACED THERE. NEVERTHELESS, WHATEVER THEY WERE THEN, THEY ARE STILL THAT TODAY. SO YOU TELL ME WHY JESUS MADE IT ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL, IN SPEAKING TO NICODEMUS, FOR A PERSON TO BE BORN AGAIN TO PARTAKE OF THE TREE OF LIFE, OR TO BE A POSSESSOR OF ETERNAL LIFE. DOESN’T THAT PLACE THE LAW OF ETERNAL LIFE, OR DEATH, IN THE KIND OF BIRTH WE HAVE? WHEN DAVID SAID, (IN PSALMS 51:5) “BEHOLD, I WAS SHAPEN IN INQUITY; AND IN SIN DID MY MOTHER CONCEIVE ME.” HE WAS NOT SAYING THAT THE ACT ITSELF WAS SINFUL, IT WAS THE FACT THAT THE SEX ACT HAD BEEN TAKEN FOR PLEASURE, RATHER THAN FOR THE ORIGINAL PUR-POSE OF FILLING THE EARTH WITH SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF GOD. EVERY ONE OF US HAS HAD OUR ENTRANCE INTO THIS WORLD THROUGH THIS ACT FOR PLEASURE, WHICH HAS A DEATH SENTENCE HANGING OVER IT. THAT IS WHY THE INNER MAN IS REQUIRED TO HAVE A NEW BIRTH IN ORDER TO RECEIVE ETERNAL LIFE. IT IS BECAUSE ETERNAL LIFE ONLY COMES THROUGH A PROPER KIND OF BIRTH, OR WE SHOULD SAY, BIRTH WITH THE PROPER MOTIVE.
BIRTH — WHEN?
I am sure most of you who read this message will readily agree that a person must be born again in order to receive eternal life, but I wonder how many of you realize that a person is not born again, just because they join some church, or shake a preach-er’s hand. To think that joining a man-made organization some-where will give you eternal life, is just as ridiculous as believing Adam and Eve ate an apple from a plant life tree to cause the fall of mankind. You will hear certain people, from time to time, stand up and say something like this, “I have been a christian for thirty years, but the Lord just baptized me with the Holy Ghost last Saturday night.” Brothers and sisters, let us face the truth, it took that poor soul 30 years to be born, from the time of conception when the word of God first found lodging. I know a message like this tears down a lot of religious theories, but let me assure you of this one thing, the purpose of this message is not to criticize any-thing you may have been raised up to believe, but to show where mankind is, spiritually, and to help you better understand how it all came about. Hand me down religion is not sufficient. Ye must be born again.
MAN – IN GOD’S IMAGE
I ask you to bear with me as I rehearse some things that I have said already, but I do it to place certain things in the message. I want to refer back to Genesis 2:7-9, for the sake of establishing our next thought. “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” Now let us back up to chapter 1:26-27. “And God said, Let us make MAN in our image, after our likeness: and let them have DOMINION over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So GOD created MAN in HIS own image, in the image of GOD created HE HIM: male and female created HE THEM.” We are going to talk for a few minutes about the terminology used in Genesis, chapter 6:1-2, in connection with the last two verses of chapter 4. Let us read 4:25-26, “And Adam knew his wife again; and she bare a son, and called his name Seth: For God, said she, hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel, whom Cain slew. And to Seth, to him also there was born a son; and he called his name Enos: THEN BEGAN MEN TO CALL UPON THE NAME OF THE LORD.”
FALLEN ANGELS You will notice first of all that GOD MADE MAN IN HIS OWN IMAGE. This lets us know that Adam was MAN, yet according to the geneology of Christ, in the New Testament, we find it running all the way back through Adam who is called a SON OF GOD. Adam was man, created, and his body was formed out of the dust of the earth, yet he was made in the image of God, (SPIRIT) in the likeness of God, (SPIRIT) and with the wisdom and intellect of God; therefore he was the offspring of God. In spirit he was like God, but bodily, he was in the likeness of some of the animals. That doesn’t make him an animal, but his body was made up from the same elements as the different forms of animal life. Adam was to have dominion over everything that God had created. Now we will read verses 8-9 of chapter 2, “And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.” We have the man, Adam, a son of God, created to have dominion over all of God’s creation, yet he must be tested. For that test, Adam is placed in a garden that God had planted, with every plant life tree that he needed for food to sustain him, and two other trees, which we know by now, to have been two basic laws that God had set in their midst. The one law, if obeyed, was to bring a blessing. It was to produce other offspring of God, children with eternal life; but the other law was to bring a curse. It has produced children with an inherited death sentence hanging over them. This gives us a general profile of the garden where man was placed with the command to repopulate the earth. You will notice I said repopulate, for that is what the word replenish means. This lets us know that there was life on this old planet in some other era of time. Scientists call it the prehistoric world, and I find no fault with that term, for we believe the ice age that they speak of, is the missing link between, or maybe I should say broken link between that prehistoric age, and where our garden of Eden scene comes into focus, some 6000 years ago. I am fully persuaded that the ice age was a result of God’s judgment upon some former life that dwelt upon the face of the earth. We are not to think of the former inhabitants as being sons of God though, for there is sufficient evidence to believe that it was a huge animal kingdom, ruled by angelic beings. You say, now Bro. Jackson, where do you get a thing like that? That is another message in itself, and we have a paper dealing with the subject, but for now, let me say this, from the very beginning of our recorded history there have always been fallen angels present. Where did they become fallen angels? That is your clue. In order for them to be fallen angels, they had to have their period of testing. That is what makes them fallen angels; they failed the test when they were ruling over God’s former creation. Somewhere they were faced with a choice, even as Adam was later. They did not cease to be angels when they made the wrong choice, but they became fallen angels, with Lucifer, (known as the devil) being the leader of them all. It was this fallen angel, Lucifer, that inspired the serpent to approach Eve in the garden, to lead her astray from the perfect plan of God. He is the one who was responsible for Adam and Eve partaking of the wrong tree, (the law of sin and death) plunging mankind into separation from God. Actually, when we read that they were driven from the garden, what it really amounts to is, that God withdrew his life sustaining presence from them, and started them on the road to physical death .along with the spiritual death sentence that was passed upon them. As far as the geographical area is concerned, we know from the scriptures that there were four rivers running from the garden, and history proves that the particular area of those four rivers has always been the cradle of civilization. That is why I said earlier, what particular geographical area did God drive them from? It was not that God drove them out of a garden with a nice wrought iron fence around it. No, God just withdrew his presence from them, cursing the serpent to crawl on the ground as a member of the reptile family, never to walk upright again, and cursing the woman’s female organs, adding pain and suffering to her increased cycle of fertility, and cursing the ground for a penalty to the man, who was going to have to till the ground himself, now that he no longer had the serpent to do his manual labor for him. All of this because of one wrong choice. That tree of know-ledge opened up an avenue of death that all mankind has walked in ever since.
GENES — ATTRIBUTES — BLOOD-LINE
For the sake of clearing up much misunderstanding, Adam’s descendants were not biblically pictured as having sinful attributes; it is just that they were born with a sentence of death hanging over them. Adam’s descendants, prior to chapter 6, did not kill, cheat, lie, steal, get drunk and cause trouble. We do not know how old Adam was when Abel was killed, but we find in chapter 5, that he was 130 years old when Seth was born. Then, it was after Seth had begat Enos, that men (Adam’s descendants) began to call upon the name of the Lord. They are referred to in chapter 6, as sons of God. I am making this statement outright, even though I realize this portion of chapter 6, is open to much controversy. There is no doubt in my mind that the sons of God, mentioned in this chapter, as seeing the daughters of men that they were fair to look upon, and began• to marry them, were the descendants of Adam which we find in the genealogy given in chapter 5. From the time that Enos was born to Seth, and men began to call upon the name of the Lord, until after they began to marry these Canaanite women and beget children by them, there were no evil attributes in any of them. That goes all the way back to the day God created Adam; I just said it that way because the scripture pinpoints the time when men began to call upon the name of the Lord as being when Enos was born. All those men were sons of God before these mixed marriages started; therefore
there could not have been any evil attributes in any of them, for there was nothing like that in the genes of Adam’s direct descendants. It is from this chapter 6 that we can really begin to understand the serpent seed revelation, or teaching. Let us look at it from the standpoint of God creating Adam. You must understand that if God had included any of these sinful attributes in the makeup of Adam, then God would have been the father of lies, murder, dis-honesty, etc., instead of the devil. Saints, pay attention, for this will help you. Now, do you agree that every attribute which Adam possessed was placed there by God, his father? Alright, let us proceed. Eve was taken from Adam; therefore she could not have had any sinful attributes either. Please understand, we are speaking of the inherited nature to sin. This has nothing to do with the freedom of choice that God gave to His son and daughter. God created Adam in his own image and likeness. That means he was free to make decisions for him-self, and that he did not possess any kind of an evil makeup. You may say, “But did not God impute those things to them when they disobeyed him?” No, the only thing that God imputed to them was a sentence of death. If God had imputed the attributes to murder, lie, cheat, steal, etc., to them, He would have been the father of those things, and the scriptures plainly teach us that the devil is the father of those things. Just for one quick example let us turn to St. John 8:37-38, 44, where we find a group contending with Jesus. They have become offended because Jesus said, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free,” and they started an argument with Him about the fact that they were Abraham’s seed, and were never in bondage to any man. As the discussion goes on we find Jesus identifying them, by His remarks. 37, “I know that ye are Abraham’s seed; but ye seek to kill me because my word hath no place in you. 38, I speak that which I have seen with MY FATHER: and YE DO THAT which YE HAVE SEEN WITH YOUR FATHER.” They are seeking to kill Jesus, and he is telling them that they are doing the works of their father. Let us read verse 44, and we will see who their father was. “Ye are of your father the DEVIL, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a MURDERER from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, AND THE FATHER OF IT.” That will be enough of that for now; I am sure most of you only need to be reminded that the devil is the father of all sin, all ungodly deeds.
SONS OF GOD —DAUGHTERS OF MEN
Going back to what we were saying about Adam’s descendants, I want you to think about what I am going to say. As long as those men continued to take their wives from among the daughters of God, there was no way for any kind of an ungodly deed to be passed into the genealogical structure of those children that were born to them ; therefore there remained a sons of God line of people until we reach the period of time covered in chapter six. What changed it then: we will see in just a minute. We have all had a tendency to say that the father carries the blood-line, or that the child carries the blood-line of its father. I suppose it is because the child carries the father’s name. But, when it comes to the blood-line, or attributes of the child, you can easily check for yourself, and discover (if you did not know it already) that the father, and the mother, contribute
equally to the inherited nature of the child. If you are paying attention, you should begin to see something pretty soon as we continue to look at chapter 6. We are going to show you how the sons of God line of people became polluted in their inherited nature. (I may not be saying this like some of you would, but I hope you are able to see what I am looking at by the time we get finished.) 6:1-2, “And it came to pass, when men (now do not let the word MEN throw you off the track here, just because the Bible refers to Adam as man. Remember, this terminology is to distinguish be-tween two lines of people; there-fore it is necessary to call Cain’s line of descendants MEN, and Seth’s, sons of God), began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; (in other words they made themselves up to catch the attention of the sons of God. Humanity had been EATING from the tree of knowldedge, SEX FOR PLEASURE, so I imagine these daughters of Cain made themselves look very sexy in order to get the attention of the sons of God), and they took them wives of all which they chose.” Now we will begin to see why the whole human race was corrupt and ungodly by the time God spoke to Noah about building the ark. Remember, these daughters of men were daughters of Cain’s descendants, and Cain was the son of the serpent, which was an animal, led and inspired by the devil. We know Cain was not a son of Adam, for if he had been, he also would have been a son of God, and would not have had the attributes of jealousy, hatred, and murder in him. Besides that, the scriptures declare that he (Cain) was of that wicked one (the devil). Now, we have WOMEN with all of the evil attributes of the devil, marrying the sons of God who have none of these evil attributes. What kind of children will they produce? First I want to show you what can take place as far as the blood type itself goes. I believe it will be appreciated by some of you. When a child’s parents are both type A, the child can either have type A or type 0 blood, because of the genetic possibilities in both parents. Like-wise, if one parent has type A, and the other has type B, the child can have type A, or B, or AB, or O. Then if one parent is type A, and the other is type AB, the child can be either type A, or type B, or AB. We could go on and on, but I believe this will be enough to let. you see that the child can carry the blood type of either parent or even of the grandparents. But the point I really desire to make is that the blood, itself, plays no part in the transmission of hereditary characteristics. Hereditary characteristics are determined by the genealogical structure of the two parents, so that the child can have the nature of either one, or part of each one. The possibility of any attribute that has ever been manifested in any of our ancestors, lies within each of us. That is why we have cases like Jacob and Esau, both born from the same set of parents, yet God loved one, and hated the other, even before they were born, simply because his foreknowledge let him know that Jacob would cherish the birthright, and that Esau would be a man who would think more of his stomach than he would his birthright.
WHAT ABOUT CHROMOSOMES?
Let me try to illustrate what I am referring to. Each new human life begins (it is human life we are dealing with in this message) when there is a union between a sperm from the male, and an egg from the female. (I will not try to go into this process completely, but maybe this little bit will help you see what happened in Genesis, chapter 6.) One sperm contains 24 chromosomes. Chromosomes are of different lengths, and carry different numbers of genes. The average is about 830 genes, so each sperm contains approximately 20,000 genes. One egg also contains 29 chromosomes, and amounts to approximately 20,000 genes from the female side. Now, here is a case where one plus one equals one. Two cells unite, but only one cell comes forth from that union, and that one cell has the same number of chromosomes as do the body cells of each of the parents from which the two cells came. I will not go into the dividing process that takes place, in order to keep the same number of chromosomes in each generation. The important thing for us to see, and understand, is that the male and the female both contribute the same number of chromosomes which make up the nature, and character of the child that is born from that union. Can you now see how that the sons of God could actually father children that would murder, steal, or do anything that the devil himself would do? Every child born from those mixed marriages, and every descendant of any of those children, were just as likely to be a murderer like Cain, as they were to be God fearing people like the Seth line. That is the reason that by the time Noah was 600 years old all mankind was so corrupt and filthy that God had to destroy them with the flood, leaving only Noah and his three sons, and their wives to repopulate the earth again. Noah was given the same commission that Adam was given, namely, BE FRUITFUL, AND MULTIPLY, AND REPLENISH THE EARTH. Therefore, every person who Jives on this earth today is a descendant of Noah. There is not a living person upon the face of this earth that could not trace his family TREE all the way back to Noah if he had the means to do so. Now, what does that tell you about inherited attributes? Noah was a man that feared God, and walked with him, yet we are living in a society that is as filthy and corrupt as they were before the flood, and every one of us proceeded forth from Noah. It just goes to show that the serpent seed attributes were car-ried right through the flood in the genes of the same people that carried the sons of God attributes. In every child that has been born since the flood there laid the potential for it to go either way, either to be a God fearing person, or one who would be evil and filthy. This is the very thing that has puzzled a lot of honest hearted people who knew in their hearts that, what took place in the garden between Eve and the serpent, was more than just an act of eating an apple, yet they just could not see how the serpent seed could get to this side of the flood, because Noah walked with God, and the whole earth’s population was fathered by him. Well, now, I hope this will help you to see how it was accomplish-ed. Really, it is only hid to the eyes of the wise men, who refuse to accept anything that doesn’t come from a seminary.
ALL NATIONS — ONE BLOOD
As Paul stood on Mars hill, speaking to the Athenians, we find him speaking along the same lines as we are, in this message. He was declaring to them, who the UNKNOWN GOD, they had erected an altar to, really is. In Acts 17:22-31, (you can read it for yourself) we find Paul telling them about the God that created and made all things, and that he does not dwell in temples made with men’s hands, and that he is not worshipped with men’s hands, seeing, he does not need anything. He goes on to say that, “He hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him though he be not far from every one of us.” This is a good time to answer a question that one brother asked me along this line. He said something like this, “Bro. Jackson, I am not contending with anyone about the serpent seed teaching, but there is something that I do not understand. If there was a serpent seed blood line, and a sons of God blood line, then why did the apostle Paul say, (in Acts 17:26) that God hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth?” I am glad the brother asked that question, for, perhaps some of you have wondered about that scripture also. The key to the answer is in the last part of that verse. Most people have their attention caught by the first part of the verse, and they fail to notice the part that pinpoints it. The key lies in the words that, “GOD HATH DETERMINED THE TIMES BEFORE APPOINT-ED and THE BOUNDS OF THEIR HABITATION.” You could not take that scripture beyond the flood, for we do not have any record of God ever appointing the bounds of their habitation until after the flood; therefore we must conclude that Paul was referring to the, then existing, human race, that had their beginning in Noah. Also, we have already proved that the nature of men is not determined by the blood, but by the genes that have passed down from our ancestors. Paul goes on to say, “We are the offspring of God,” and that throws some people, but it ought not, for God is the Father of all of his creation. He created the serpent, along with all of the animal kingdom. He created Adam in his own image and called him his son, and even though they both disobeyed God and missed His perfect way, causing all mankind to suffer the penalty of their disobedience, by the time Paul said that, every person that heard him say it, had the potential to be a true son of God because of what his ancestors had passed on to him through the genes. God knew, before he ever created Adam, just who would believe, and who would not, but we do not have that knowledge, so we have to look at all men as potential sons of God by the new birth, and as offspring of God, because of creation. Let me say once again though, “If the Seth line of men had not intermarried with the Cain line of women, there never would have been any evil attributes in the sons of God line of people.” Then, before going on, I want to say, “Shame on you, if you still want to believe that the sons of God in chapter 6 of Genesis are angelic beings. If you cannot accept the fact that God allowed the chromosomes of the serpent, who was right next to man in his physical make-up, to mate with those of the woman, then please tell me why you would think the chromosomes of angelic beings, which are spirit beings, could be compatible with her.
SUPERFETATION
Let us consider these two sons of Eve for just a moment. We have printed other articles where we discusses SUPERFETATION, a medical term applied to cases where certain women have had sex relations with two different men in a short period of time, and conceived by both of them, bearing children that appeared to be twins, but proved to have different fathers. This is what happened with Cain and Abel; Eve conceived from her sex relations with the serpent, then she went right to her husband with the knowledge of this newly discovered pleasure act, and she conceived from him also. That is why you read in Genesis 4:1-2, that Adam knew Eve his wife, ( that is a term that was used for the intimate relationship) and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the Lord. And she again bare his brother Abel, (it does not say that Adam knew Eve again, and she conceived, and bare his brother Abel. It only points out that Adam knew Eve his wife; once, and she bare two boys) and Abel was a keeper of sheep, (like his daddy) but Cain was a tiller of the ground, like his daddy, the serpent. Some of you will say, “Bro. Jackson: you are just throwing that in.” Alright, you throw it out then, and we will see where it gets you as we continue on here. I am sure most of you know that a man’s first born son stood in the place of inheriting the birthright, and we know that Cain was born first. IF .. . Cain was the son of Adam; put a big question mark there, for one thing is sure; we know Abel was Adam’s son. IF . . . Cain was the son of Adam, why was he not included in Adam’s genealogy? Check it in Genesis 5, and especially, in Luke 3, and you will see that Cain was not included; Moses (who wrote the book of Genesis) knew better; so did Luke. Naturally, the woman (who was guilty of adultery) would say. “I have gotten a man from the Lord.” There is a sense in which that is true; since God is the author of all life, but that still did not make him a son of Adam, who was a son of God. I realize how easy it is to read that verse 1, and take Cain to be a son of Adam, but I ask you to read it again (with an open mind), and watch the wording of verse 2, AND SHE AGAIN BARE HIS BROTHER ABEL.” They were born as twins, but they had different daddies. You will notice that each of those boys followed the pattern of their father. Abel became a keeper of sheep like his father, Adam, who had dominion over all the animal kingdom, and Cain became a farmer, a tiller of the ground, like his father, the serpent, which was Adam’s servant. “Then, in process of time it came to pass,. (verse 3) that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord.” I have been asked the question, (because of this verse) “Did Cain have a soul?”‘ To answer that let me refer you back to what we were just talking about: the inherited nature of the offspring. Since he was a son of Eve, and since we know that Eve contributed half of the chromosomes that make up his nature, we would have to say that Cain had a soulish nature. Because of what he inherited from his mother, there was something in him that made him know that God was to be worshipped, but he did not have the revelational quality about him. That is why he did not know what to bring for an offering. He just used natural reasoning, like the church world in general, in our day. He probably thought God ought to be very glad to get his beautiful basket of fruit and vegetables that he had grown with his very own hands, but he was wrong: God was not pleased. God rejected his offering, and accepted Abel’s bloody lamb. What made the difference there: Why was God pleased with Abel’s messy sacrifice, and had no respect for Cain’s beautiful offering? It is very simple; Abel, by revelation, knew that God did not need anything from him, and he knew that an innocent animal that had never done anything wrong, had to give its life to clothe the nakedness of his father and mother, after they had tried unsuccessfully to cover themselves with leaves of plant life. God did not need the lamb any more than he did Cain’s fruit, but that lamb symbolized the Lamb that was offered up to God on Mt. Calvary many centuries later. Every acceptable sacrifice that was offered up to God, was pointing toward the time when Jesus, the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world, (in the mind of God) would have his innocent blood spilled for the sins of all lost mankind. Hebrews 11:4, states that “By FAITH Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts; and by it he being dead yet speaketh.” The fact that Abel exercised revelational faith, and brought a slain lamb to God, ought to speak to some of you who criticize me for saying that we must read between the lines to get a revelation of the word of God. Where did Abel have anything spelled out in black and white to tell him what would please God? Furthermore, if they had been instructed by Adam, as to how, and what to offer, why did not Cain follow instructions? It was because, without revelation, his selfwilled reasoning told him that God would be more pleased with the beauty of his big pumpkins, big squash, big melons, and who knows what all he might have brought to God that day. That is the same kind of reasoning that causes men in our day to build big tall buildings with stained glass windows, and a steeple that towers into the sky. They feel that God is obligated to manifest his presence in such places after they have sacrificed so much to build such a nice place for him. Let me tell you: that is not the kind of building that God is concerned with; you are the building that God desires to place his presence in. He leaves it up to you as to what kind of weather protection you desire to build for a place of worship. The main thing is to have a proper attitude toward God, and toward God’s people. If your attitude is not right, God will not meet you in any of those places. Jesus said, in Matthew 5:6, “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.” Filled with what? They will be filled with the Holy Ghost, then they will be the temple of God themselves; they will not have to go looking for a large, beautiful building that has the presence of God in it. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?” Then some will say, “How can we know that God is in us?” You know it the same way that Abel knew what sacrifice to offer to God. You know it by faith. F-A-I-T-H. Acts 2:38 tells us how to know that we have God in us. “REPENT, and BE BAPTIZED every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the REMISSION OF SINS, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.” When you meet the condition, God will fulfill his promise. Your faith rests upon that.
CAIN, MANIFESTING HIS NATURE
Along with what we were saying about Cain, some will say, “I still believe Cain was a son of Adam, and that a spirit of unbelief kept him from doing right.” If that be true, then why did Cain not produce one single descendant that ever called upon God? You can search the Bible through, and you will not find where any of Cain’s descendants ever communicated with God. God even told Cain if he would do well he would be accepted, but did that mean anything to Cain? Of course not: he just waited for an opportunity to get Abel out of the way. He became jealous of Abel when God accepted Abel’s offering, and rejected his. God asked him, “Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen? If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door.” In other words, God was saying, “If you don’t do right, I will still hold you guilty.” God already knew Cain would do what he did, but he still gave him the choice of exercising his own will. Notice the attributes that old Cain manifested: first he became mad, then jealous, then he committed murder, and when God questioned him, he lied, saying, I know not where my brother is, Am I his keeper? Brothers and sisters: It is a known fact that, when a person commits a crime, or a sin of some kind, they will always have to commit another one, to cover up the first one. Let us continue to follow this Cain line for a few moments and see what the scripture will reveal. We are reading some of the verses in chapter 4. God said to Cain, “The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground. And now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother’s blood from thy hand; When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth.” God cursed him for the murder he had committed, “And Cain said unto the Lord, My punishment is greater than I can bear.” I will not read the rest of that, but it goes on to say that Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden, They were already out of the garden, but now he has completely left the presence of the Lord, to dwell in the land of Nod. Geographically, I believe the land of Nod was somewhere in the area that we know as India. Verse 17, “And Cain KNEW his wife; and she conceived, and bare Enoch: and he builded a city, and called the name of the city, after the name of his son, Enoch.” You will notice some things taking place in the family of Cain that should be sufficient evidence that Cain was not a son of Adam, which would have made him a son of God, One of the first things we see him doing along those lines is the building of a city: for what purpose? We do not find Adam’s descendants building cities, or fortresses. Such things, were not necessary for carrying out the commission of God to be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth. Then as we read verses 18, 19, I want you to notice something else, 18, “And unto Enoch was born Irad: and Irad begat Mehujael: and Mehujael begat Methusael: and Methusael begat Lamech. 19, And Lamech took unto him TWO WIVES.” Tell me, where did he get such a revelation from? When God separated Eve from the body of Adam, we find Adam prophesying about future conditions in the matter. Turn back to Genesis 2:21-24, “And the Lord 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, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his WIFE, not WIVES, but WIFE: and they shall be one flesh.” Adam prophesied that, when God presented his wife to him, and Jesus confirmed that the prophesy was of God in Matthew 19:4-5 when he referred to it, as God saying it. 4, “And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, 5, And said, For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they TWAIN, or TWO, shall be one flesh? 6, Wherefore they are no more TWAIN, (TWO) but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.” In the beginning, God gave man one wife, and he gave them a commission to repopulate the earth. I believe it was the plan of God for his sons to have only one wife, or he would have given Adam two right at the start. You may be thinking, “Bro. Jackson, what has that got to do with anything? It just goes to show us that all of the moral breakdown in humanity, started with Cain and his seed. The sons of God stayed clean, until they began to inter-marry with the daughters of Cain, while Cain’s descendants followed his pattern of evil right on through.
METHUSELAH — A PROPHETIC NAME
We find Lamech, (the one who married two women) coming home one day, and saying to his wives, “Hear my voice; ye wives of Lamech, hearken unto my speech: for I have slain a man to my wounding, and a young man to my hurt.” In other words, he had been hurt; he had slain the man in self defense. He said, “If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy and seven-fold.” There were quite a few generations between Cain and Lamech, but you do not read where any of that line ever did call upon God. Instead of getting better they continued to get worse. On the other hand, when Adam knew Eve again, and she conceived and bare Seth, we find that the next generation of that line began to call upon the name of the Lord and draw nigh unto God. Then, by the time Enoch (which was the seventh from Adam) was sixty five years old, we find that he begat a son that was to be a sign to his generation. This son was named Methuselah, which was a prophetic name. That name, it-self, meant, When he is gone, then it shall come. What did that all mean? We have already talked about what took place in chapter 6, where the sons of God took the daughters of men to be their wives, but I want to point out to you that the events recorded in chapter 6, are really just explain-ing conditions that were already existing in chapter 5. As we read chapter 5, we find that it is dealing with Adam’s descendants, giving the genealogy all the way from Adam, down through Noah’s three sons, which he begat before the flood. The interesting thing though, is the name given to this son of Enoch, M-E-T-H-U-S-E-L-A-H. As I said, that name had a prophetic meaning: WHEN HE IS GONE, THEN IT SHALL COME. Brothers and sisters, it only stands to reason, that for such a prophecy to have been given through the naming of that child, things surely must have been getting progressively worse. The sons of God had already been marrying the daughters of men, and the earth was already full of corruption, by the time Enoch begat Methuselah. That was the reason the child was given such a name. In order for Moses to record it so it would make any sense at all, he just went right on through the genealogy, then in chapter six he begins to explain what had happened to get things in the shape they were in. He begins chapter 6, “And it came to pass, when men (a collective term in verse 1), began to multiply on the face of the earth, (Cain’s line multiplied, and so did Seth’s) and daughters were born unto them, (that is as far as we can go, applying the term, man, to both lines, for verse 2 begins to make a distinction between the two lines, and we have already talked about that; therefore we will drop our thought back to Enoch, and Methuselah. The spirit of God named that child, and Enoch, knowing what that name meant, walked with God, and became so one, with God, that God just took him on to be with him, and Methuselah lived more than 600 years after Enoch was taken, but the prophetic name held true to its meaning. Just look how perfectly it all worked out. Methuselah begat a son which he named Lamech, and Lamech begat a son which he named Noah, (Noah being the one that walked with God and was spared in the flood). And Noah was 595 years old when his father, Lamech died. Methuselah was still living at this point, but not for long. God had already spoke to Noah, more than a hundred years prior to that, instructing him to build an ark, and telling him exactly how to build it. Noah had been working on that old ark all those years, and Methuselah was still living, but 5 years after Lamech died, when his son, Noah, was 600 years old, Methuselah died. That is the year the flood came. WHEN HE IS GONE, THEN IT SHALL COME. Do you see how perfectly it all worked out: right to the very year. Enoch set a type of the bride who knows the prophecies that are to be fulfilled, and who is watching and walking with God, waiting for it to happen. As Enoch followed that course the Lord took him on, and even though we do not know exactly when it is going to happen, we do know that those who walk with God, with that same expectancy in their hearts as Enoch had, will, one day, be caught up to be with the Lord just like he was. We are talking about something that is just ahead, for the true children of God, but one thing is sure; those who only have a hand me down, hear-say, type of religion will not be taken up. You have to have something in you that is able to communicate with God, for that is what God will be drawing to himself, when that time comes.
THE AREA OF OUR TEMPTATION
Every man on the face of this earth, who is trying to live for God, is constantly badgered by the devil, who is always busy trying to get men to turn from their convictions, and com-promise. Every man is tempted in the area of his calling, just like the two Adams were. The first Adam was placed upon the earth with a calling upon his life to repopulate the earth. His temptation was to misuse his reproductive organs. A plot of Satan to down breed the sons of God line was put into effect when the sons of God (Seth’s line) were tempted by the beauty and seductiveness of the daughters of the Cain line. It was all designed by the devil in an effort to drag mankind down to a level where he could have complete control over them. It is his business to exert every effort to divert God fearing people from the thing that God has called them to do. When Jesus (the second Adam) was upon earth walking among men, his calling was to be a redeemer for all lost mankind. In order for him to fulfill that calling, it was neces-sary for him to offer himself, a spotless, undefiled sacrifice, upon the altar of God. Naturally, his temptation was in the area of bypassing the cross, and taking a short cut to that which he stood to inherit through his obedience. He was to be the Prince of Peace, The King of the Jews, Ruler of all nations, etc. When the devil tempted him, it was an effort put forth with the idea of getting Jesus to exercise his power and authority for personal gain, rather than for the glory of God. He wanted him to turn stones into bread when he was hungry, but Jesus refused to use his power for personal gain, and the angels came and ministered to him. Then the devil wanted him to tempt God by casting himself down from a high place, all because it was written that the angels would bear him up, lest he dash his foot against a stone. Then, in a final effort to get him to by-pass his true purpose, the devil offered him all the kingdoms of the world if he would only bow down and worship him. Jesus did not even consider such a thing, for his constant confession was, that, he came to do the will of his Father. The temptation came right at the very time when Jesus was ready to begin his ministry on earth, just as the first Adam was tempted when it was time for him to partake of the tree of life. We will just say it like this, they were both sons of God. They were both tempted by the same spirit, the devil. The first Adam gave in to the temptation, and brought a death sentence upon the whole human race, but the second Adam gained the victory over the tempter, and broke the yoke of bondage, and death, setting man free, and giving him access to the tree of life. It is a fact that not very many have, or will, accept the pardon that was purchased for them, but it is there for those who will.
ONE EXTRA CHROMOSOME
While I was in Canada, I saw a scientific medical document, which stated that they had run certain tests, taking so many men, known to be hardened criminals, and analyzed their genetic structure. What they found should speak to us loud and clear, and help us to understand some of what we see going on round about us a little better. They found that in these men who were known to be hardened criminals, was one extra chromosome. This lets us know that if a person entertains certain spirits long enough, sooner or later it can affect his reproductive make-up, and pass that right on to his children as inherited nature. That is exactly what was happening in the Cain line of people, and the devil used it to take another slap at God, when he got the sons of God to notice the daughters of men. Somewhere between Enoch and Noah, perversion and ungodliness built to such a peak that God found it necessary to destroy the whole mess with the exception of Noah and his family, but the flood could not destroy that inherited nature that lay in Noah and his three sons, along with their wives; therefore we have the same condition again in our day, and we know the judgment of God must fall upon this generation. When those two lines began to cross, God spoke out against it by allowing these giants to be born unto them. Out of those unions came some huge physical beings, and some of them were smarter than the devil himself. That is why they became men of renown, they were masters of everything. I just must say this, there are not very many smart minds that ever have much of a spiritual mind to serve God. Their intelligence will not allow them to humble them-selves to give God first place in their lives. There are a few exceptions, but only God knows who they are.
SHEM — HAM — JAPHETH
Abraham was a Shemite, a Mesopotamian, referred to at times as a Syrian, dwelling in the land of Ur, of the Chaldees, when God spoke to him, telling him to leave his home, and his kinfolks, and go to a land that he would show him. That land turned out to be land that was inhabited by the descendants of Ham. The people were called Canaanites, and they were divided up into tribes like the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and etc. It was these ungodly people that God drove out of the land, when it came time for the children of Israel to inherit it. But, Noah had another son whose name was Japheth. It was from this son, that all of the Anglo-Saxon people sprung. Some of them have red hair, some have blonde hair, and others have black hair, but they all descended from Japheth. Every scientific invention of our day has come through the descendants of Japheth. The Baby-lonians were the first one to study the stars, but the Japhethites were the first ones to land on the moon. I am just saying these things to emphasize the fact that we all came through Noah, a man who was perfect in his generation, but, a man who had the genetic make-up to produce a great variety of people. I know we have already said much about the serpent, but there is one more thing I would like to squeeze in here before we run out of space. This serpent creature that seduced Eve, was a replica of what the scientific world refers to as the cave man, or the prehistoric man. The prehistoric man was not a son of God; he was just part of that animal kingdom that was destroyed when the ice age judgment came. Most of you will remember, a few years ago, Walt Disney made a film which he called, the Fight of the Dinosaurs. Do you know where he got the dinosaurs? He went to South America where he could get these two certain species of lizards which were known to fight each other. Then when they magnified it, and blew it up to the size they wanted, they had their dinosaurs, but they were just little lizards, little lizards which were replicas, in miniature, of something that was on this earth in a prehistoric age. We have explained this prehistoric age, and why we believe the earth was without form and void, in Genesis 1:2, in an article titled, The Testing and Fall of Satan; therefore we will not go into it now, for the lack of space, but we trust that the things we have said in this article will be of help to you who have had trouble understanding the Serpent Seed teaching. If there is still some-thing you do not understand, please read the article again, and ask God to open your understand-ing. May He guide each of you into all truth. Amen.