The Original Sin
There were many trees in the Garden of Eden, including the tree of Life and the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The Fall was not caused by eating natural fruit, which was permitted, and nothing is recorded in Genesis 3 about eating an apple; we read only about partaking of fruit of the tree of Knowledge. Therefore, it is important for us to know who and what the tree of Knowledge was.
In Genesis 3:7 we read, "And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked: and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves skirts." Something terrible had happened. Satan's promise was half fulfilled but not quite as expected; they had become conscious of their nakedness and the guilt of their genitalia, which hitherto had been public but which they now considered private and sought to hide from each another, and from the Lord. Notice, they did not blindfold their eyes or cover their mouth, but veiled their guilty reproductive organs that brought death rather than introducing life into the world. Innocence is outweighed by guilt and their intimate relationship with God is replaced by distrustful, selfish, servile fear, as the first common act of sin passes over to a second, and they seek to hide themselves and their sin amongst the trees of the Garden.
Genesis 3 portrays the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life. Every man and woman understands temptation of the senses, so Eve's admission, "the serpent beguiled me, and I did eat" should be understood by every adult person. When a girl or a boy is entrapped and beguiled, we know they did not partake of an ice-cream or an apple.
The apostle Paul certainly knew what happened in the Garden of Eden. Otherwise he could not have admonished the Corinthian church: "I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his craftiness, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ" (II Corinthians 11:3). In view of the Fall the apostle writes further, "And Adam was not deceived, but the woman, being deceived, was in the transgression" (I Timothy 2:14).
Directly after it happened, the Lord God told Eve, "I will greatly multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children . . ." (Genesis 3:16). This statement tells us what really happened. Neither Eve nor yet any other woman has conceived by eating fruit. God knew what took place, and where punishment should be pronounced. So as a memorial of the original sin, and under normal circumstances, women give birth in pain. They don't suffer toothache at mealtimes. Proverbs 30:18-20, "Such is the way of an adulterous woman; she eats, and wipes her orifice, and says I have done no wickedness."
Birth-pains remind women of the original sin, "for the woman being deceived was in the transgression," and lost her co-equality with man (Genesis 3:16; I Timothy 2:8-15). Under the Old Covenant, circumcision in the male organ of generation recognized that because of the Fall corruption is inherently transmitted by sexual conception (Psalm 51:5), and symbolized an Israelite man's severance from nature's defilement to a state of consecrated fellowship with God. Hereby an unmarried Israelite woman came under the Covenant by the token of her father, and a married woman came under the token of her husband (I Corinthians 11:3-16; Ephesians 5:20-23). So "God's holy One, whose flesh should not see corruption" was "born of a virgin" (Psalm 16:10; Isaiah 7:14). When God made a Covenant with Abraham and his natural seed He required circumcision, "This is My covenant, which you shall keep, between Me and you and your seed after you: every male child among you shall be circumcised" (Genesis 17:10-14). Every soul who refused circumcision was "cut off" from His people because he did not have the token of the Covenant.
In Jeremiah 9:24-25 we read, "THUS SAITH THE LORD, the days are coming when I will punish all these circumcised with the uncircumcised; Egypt, Judah, Edom, the children of Ammon, Moab, and the Semitic Arabs who dwell in the desert and cut the edge of their beard: for all these nations are uncircumcised, and all the house of Israel are uncircumcised in the heart." Three classes are distinguished here, the Covenant people, their Serpent seed half brothers, their Semitic Ammonite, Moabite and Arabian cousins, and Gentile Egyptians. All of these nations were uncircumcised in spite of a circumcision in the flesh, (which from Israel's standpoint was an unjustifiable imitation of the sacred sign of the Covenant), while the whole house of Israel, including Judah was uncircumcised in heart and ears and essentially no different from the heathen nations without the token. From this it is evident that the only means of escape from the threatened punishment is a living and truly productive knowledge of the Lord (Jeremiah 9:22-23).
In Genesis 17:12-13 and Exodus 12:43-49 we learn that every Israelite and every Gentile of Adam's race must have the token of circumcision in the flesh before he can partake the Passover, which the Serpent's seed are forbidden to eat. The historian Josephus wrote that John Hyrcanus compelled them to "circumcise their genitals, and make use of the laws of the Jews: so desirous were they of living in the country of their forefathers, that they submitted to the use of circumcision, (note 25) and of the rest of the Jewish ways of living; at which time therefore this befell them, that they were hereafter no other than Jews" (Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, XIII, 9:1).
(Note 25: "This account of the Idumeans admitting circumcision, and the entire Jewish law, from this time, or from the days of Hyrcanus, is confirmed by their entire history afterward (Antiquities XIV, 8:1; XV, 7:9; Wars of the Jews, II, 3:1; IV, 4:5). This, in the opinion of Josephus, made them proselytes of justice, or entire Jews, as here and elsewhere (Antiquities, XIV, 8:1). However, Antigonus, the enemy of Herod, though Herod were derived from such a proselyte of justice for several generations, will allow him to be no more than a half Jew (XV, 15:2). But still, take out of Dean Prideaux, at the year 129, the words of Ammonias, a grammarian, which fully confirm this account of the Idumeans in Josephus: "The Jews," says he, are such by nature, and from the beginning, whilst the Idumeans were not Jews from the beginning, but Phoenicians and Syrians; but being afterward subdued by the Jews, and compelled to be circumcised, and to unite into one nation, and be subject to the same laws, they were called Jews." Dio also says, as the Dean there quotes him, from Book XXXVI, p. 37, "That country is called Judea, and the people Jews; and this name is given also to as many others as embrace their religion, though of other nations." But then upon what foundation so good a governor as Hyrcanus took upon him to compel those Idumeans either to become Jews, or to leave the country, deserves great consideration. I suppose it was because they had long ago been driven out of the land of Edom, and had seized on and possessed the tribe of Simeon, and all the southern parts of the tribe of Judah, which was the peculiar inheritance of the worshippers of the true God without idolatry, as the reader may learn from Reland, Palestine, Part I, p. 154, 305; and from Prideaux, at the years 140 and 165).
Before one is fit to celebrate our "Passover," which is to partake the Lord's Supper and foot washing under the New Covenant, he or she must be circumcised�not in the flesh�but in heart and ears, and unlike that of the Israelite, our Token must be on display for it is the Life of Christ imparted by His Spirit in the individual believer. Whereas the Israelite woman was "saved" under the Token of her father or her husband, "the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the Token of his Christian wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified under the Token of her Christian husband" (I Corinthians, 7:11-19).
There is no shame in displaying your Token or evidence of the Life of Christ in you; this should be automatic, for the Token is not the Token unless it is on display. Now the soul that refuses the Message of God's Prophet in this day is "cut off" and "shall be destroyed from among the people" (Malachi 4:6; Acts 3:23; Revelation 22:17-19). This is so because since the Seven Seals are revealed, Christ is no longer a Mediator for ignorance, and without this Message one is "uncircumcised in heart and ears" and cannot have the Token, which is the new birth by the Fullness of the Word, aside from which he cannot be restored to fellowship with our Lord Jesus Christ who is the Word (Matthew 17:11; Acts 3:21-23; I Corinthians 13:10; John 17:20-26).
The Lord God pronounced judgment on the serpent for his wickedness and said, "Because you have done this, you are cursed more than all cattle and every beast of the field; upon your belly you shall go, and eat dust all the days of your life" (Genesis 3:14). Up to that time, the serpent walked upright, else the statement "upon your belly you shall go" would make no sense (Ezekiel 28:13-14).
Most important is the following verse, "And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel." According to the testimony of the Lord God, there would be two different seeds. He spoke of the seed of the serpent, and also of its archenemy, both seeds would come through the woman. In Scripture, seed speaks of offspring, and there were in Eve's womb two different seeds as there are two different seeds in the church.
Satan cannot beget nor can he create. He is a sexless, fallen spirit-being. Therefore he had to make use of the beast which was closest to man and could even speak. Only after the curse, did the serpent lose its upright human form and become a reptile.
Genesis three records the conversation between the serpent and Eve. It began with the well-known question, "Has God said?" The Devil always uses the same approach: planting doubts about God's Word. Thus he misconstrued it, and entangled Eve. "You shall not surely die. . . Your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." Uplifted at the prospect of teaching her husband the secret knowledge of procreation�how they might fulfill God's Command to "multiply and fill the earth," Eve fell for Satan's lie. What benefit was this knowledge of good and evil that separated them from God's Presence? Since that time the eyes of each one of us have been opened to know good and evil whereby we are accountable to God (Romans 5:12-14).
Parents pass on traits or characteristics�as eye colour and blood type to their children through their genes that lie in the chromosomes. In this manner Satan vicariously injected his nature through the serpent into the human race in Cain and his lineage. Eve's transgression caused Adam to forfeit our dominion over earth to death. As we are conceived according to Satan's worldly wisdom we are born with a nature of this world, which is the nature of the god of this evil age. Therefore the Redeemer had to come into human flesh "That through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the Devil, and deliver them who, through fear of death, were all their lifetime subject to bondage" (Hebrews 2:14-15). Conquering Satan and death, and rising the third day, Jesus announced victoriously, "I have the keys of death and hell" (Revelation 1:18).
God's commandment was, "Be fruitful, and multiply" (Genesis 1:28) so He instituted marriage and joined the first pair together by His Word. God said, "Of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the Garden, you shall not partake, neither shall you approach to or touch it, lest you die." Eve ruptured this first marriage union when she paid heed to one other than her husband, one she knew to be inspired by Satan. Hereby she usurped authority over her husband, who was the spoken Word of God. Every species was to bring forth after its own kind, but in Eve's womb was a hybrid creature not in the original creation sired by the Devil-incarnate serpent. Whatever does not derive from God's thoughts can never submit to the Words of God, which are His thoughts expressed. Eve then gave herself to Adam.
Adam knew Eve was no more a virgin, and although she should have been burnt as says the law (which is forever written in heaven), he was not deceived, but he loved her and quickly took her to himself. Eve was dying, having crossed the Word from eternity into time but as a son of God Adam knew he could no more be lost than God can be lost. He also knew that Eve was part of him and if he joined her in death, God must somehow redeem him, and in so doing He would 'save' Eve for the two were one flesh: a perfect type of Christ.
Thus the Fall took place: Eve gave herself to the serpent and then had her first relation with Adam. From both unions, which happened in quick succession, children were born: Cain and Abel.
In this day, 'twins' are born of different fathers. The best-known cases happened in Sweden and France. In Stockholm, when Mrs. Bjoerlen gave birth on the same day to a black, and to a blond blue-eyed baby, her husband refused to take financial responsibility for the child which clearly was not his. In the trial Mrs. Bjoerlen admitted to having a black lover. On the same day she had known both men. In France, a Mrs. Duval also gave birth to a white and a black child, and 26 year old Marseilles prostitute, Yvette Landru, gave birth to one white, one Negro, and one Chinese. Medical records are replete with cases of superfetation in humans, where a woman with multiple ova is fertilized by sperm of separate insemination. The offspring are not truly twins but half-brothers or half-sisters. True twins result from simultaneous fertilization of one ovum by two sperm.
Whoever reads Genesis 3:15 carefully, will see the Lord God had spoken of the two seeds or offspring right after the Fall. So from the very beginning, there were these two lineages: the ungodly line of Cain and the godly line found in Seth.
Not once is Cain mentioned in the genealogies of Adam in the Old or the New Testament. Not one time is Adam called the father of Cain. This is why Adam pronounced his wife "the mother of all living": never is it suggested that he is the father of all living (Genesis 3:20). Had Cain been the first-born son of Adam, he would have had the nature of Adam who was the son of God, and a special place in God's record.
As Eve bore her firstborn, she exclaimed, "I have gotten a man from the Lord" (Genesis 4:1). This must be understood correctly. Eve was NOT declaring Adam was the father of Cain: under Satan's delusion she actually thought Cain was Christ, "the beginning of the creation of God." No other act with Adam is recorded between the births of Cain and Abel. We are simply told, ". . . And she again bore his brother, Abel. And Adam knew his wife again; and she bore a son, and called his name Seth . . ." (Genesis 4:25). Since THREE sons were born from TWO acts by Adam, you know POSITIVELY that ONE of those three was NOT the son of Adam.
The apostle John also knew what happened in the Garden of Eden. He wrote, ". . . not as Cain, who was of that wicked one" (I John 3:12). In this statement Adam could never have been meant. Adam was not the evil one, neither the wicked one, whose son Cain was, according to the written Word of God. The same apostle wrote of the believers, ". . . because you have overcome the wicked one" (I John 2:13, 14). Again Satan is meant in this place as in many other places in the Scripture with this description. In Revelation 20:2, he is called "the dragon, that old serpent, who is the Devil and Satan." In the Gospels Jesus calls the opponent of God "the wicked one." God is altogether good; Satan is just the opposite. In the Lord's Prayer we petition, "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one" (Matthew 6:13). We now know "the evil one" is the vicarious father of Cain and origin of all ungodly things.
Cain, the first killer and murderer, was full of envy and jealousy, like his vicarious father Satan who was a murderer from the beginning�not in heaven, but on earth (John 8:44). Now it behooves us to consider what prompted such envy and jealousy as would cause Cain to murder Abel. It arose from their worship of God. Cain's worship was carnality so he was rejected. Perhaps he thought it was an apple that caused the Fall, and knowing God requires life for life, he picked the choicest of his crop, knowing the 'life' would go out from it. The Bible says that by revelation from God Abel knew animal had caused the Fall and so animal life must be offered.
When the elder son's 'work' was rejected and Abel's sacrifice for which he had not laboured, accepted of God, it seemed so unreasonable. And when God told him he would be accepted if by faith he offered the same sacrifice as His vindicated prophet, he felt humiliated. Concealing his pride, Cain asked Abel to expound the faith. Abel was reluctant to explain and feared for his life, but when Cain prevailed and he expounded the 'original sin.' Recognizing he was not Adam's son, and that he had never possessed the birthright, and that he was not in the genealogy of God, Cain reasoned that if he destroyed Abel, there was the possibility of fabricating primogeniture.
Hence, when God exposed Cain's evil and he saw there was no way he could claim Adam's birthright, which is ultimately the restoration to eternal Life in a restored world, he exclaimed, ". . . from Your face I shall be hid; and I will be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth; and it shall come to pass, that every one that finds me shall slay me." Intermarriage with Cain's line always procreates unredeemable serpent seed to further pollute the human race. To prevent man from taking vengeance on Cain and his kin, God placed a mark upon him. That mark is worldly wisdom: reasoning against the faith. According to anthropologists and Brother Branham, the serpent seed were responsible for all inventions and the discovery of all technological principles.
It is absolutely impossible for Cain to have come forth from Adam who was created in the image of the holy God from whom no evil can come. Satan misused the serpent to enter into the human race in this cunning way, and throw it into destruction and death. Thus it was necessary for God to come in human flesh born of a woman but without human male instrumentality to redeem us back from the power of Satan. When all the redeemed receive their full inheritance, we will be placed back into our original ordained position under God to rule over all the earth.
Enoch was the seventh from Adam: Cain was not counted in the genealogy (Jude 14). Abel was killed with no offspring; therefore the record of the genealogy goes through Seth. In this respect, the Word of God is also perfect and enlightening�Adam, Seth, Enos, Cainan, Mahalaleel, Jared, Enoch�Cain is not Adam's seed and is not mentioned (Genesis 5:6-18; Luke 3:38).
The seed of the serpent was just as real as the seed of the woman. If the serpent did not have a seed, then Christ too was a myth. The seed of the serpent was Cain; the promised seed of the woman was Christ. Paul referred to the promised seed, ". . . and to your seed, which is Christ" (Galatians 3:16-19). He is the seed for whom the promise was given. In the Old Testament, we read, "When you shall make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed" (Isaiah 53:10). God's law states that every seed must reproduce after its own kind (Genesis 1:11). So we should recognize not only did the serpent seed produce a physical race of people not on the Book of Life, but it also produces spiritual death in Adam's race, causing names to be removed from the Book of Life.
God hates hybridizing�His Word is Spirit, and it is Life, but when mixed with human reasoning it is no longer His Word and becomes death (John 6:63; Revelation 22:18-19). In Luke 8:11 we read, "The seed is the Word of God." Before Eve could receive the physical seed of the serpent, she first had to receive the perverted word or suggestion of Satan into her mind�spiritual serpent seed�and reason against the clear instruction of God's seed Word.
In Matthew 13:36-43 the Lord spoke clearly about these diverse spiritual seeds, "He that sows the good seed is the Son of man; the field is the world; the good seed are the children of the kingdom, but the tares are the children of the wicked one." Our lives manifest our faith or understanding. A life lived by the Word is the Word expressed�Christ in you, the hope of glory. A life lived by God's Word hybrid into creeds is reasoning against the faith; it is the mark of Cain and of the beast, and is death. Those influenced by the wicked one hardened their hearts, to which Jesus said, "You are of your father the Devil, and the lusts of your father you will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there no truth in him." He did not dispute their claim to be Abraham's seed, nor did he concede that they were also the seed of Isaac and Jacob and therefore Israelites. As we have noted, the majority of Judeans (or Jews) in His day were Edomites. Esau, their progenitor was Abraham's seed but he married into Cain's race and marred his inheritance. Knowing this the Pharisees protested, "We were not born of fornication; we have one father, even God." Jesus said, "If you were Abraham's children you would do the works of Abraham . . . and if God were your father, you would love Me." Since they were deceived on the Word and abode not in the Truth, even those who were in Adam's line physically, were serpent seed SPIRITUALLY, and blotted from the record of life (John 8:37-47; Psalm 69:21-28; Jeremiah 9:24-25).
We must remember that God put "enmity" between the two seeds, "And I will put enmity between . . . your seed and her seed" (Genesis 3:15). With the aid of the serpent, Satan came into the human race to destroy God's order. And the enmity is still there.
Satan perverted God's holy instruction "multiply and fill the earth" when incarnate in the Serpent he seduced Eve and vicariously fathered her illegitimate first-born, Cain, whose offspring are absent the Book of Life. "Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression" (I Timothy 2:14). "Man that's born of woman is of few days and full of trouble" (Job 14:1). God required a perfect substitute, so Jesus was born of the virgin by faith in the spoken Word Seed of God to pay sin's penalty. Hence our second birth is neither sensual nor sexual or by woman but by the Man Christ Jesus through by a clear revelation of the spoken seed Word of God for our day (II Peter 1:12; I John 1:7).
After Pentecost Satan began to pervert the spoken Word of God's New Covenant, hybridizing it into creeds and traditions to divide and "deceive the very elect if it were possible." So long as the seven-sealed Book was closed, Christ received "the present Truth" revealed to His Church in each Age and interceded for the ignorance of God's elect on the fullness of the Word sealed to the time of the end (Daniel 12:4, 9; Revelation 10:4, 7). Once the last saint predestinated to the Laodicean Church Age was baptized into the Body, Christ answered the call of the elders and fulfilled Revelation 4, 5, 6, and 10:1-7.
Advancing from the sacrifice altar as the bleeding bloody Lamb He claimed the Book of Life, which is the title deed to all He has redeemed and became Lion, Judge, and King of kings. Revelation 10:1-6 signifies Christ descending to earth in WORD Form with the once sealed Book open in His left hand to reveal Himself through the ministry of the "seventh angel" to His end-time Bride before the seventh Trumpet Angel sounds the end of the Gentile Dispensation (I Thessalonians 4:16; I Corinthians 15:52).
You see the Church Age saints cannot be made perfect without us. As the Holy Spirit was waved before God in the first ripe Sheaf of the Lord Jesus Christ, and accepted in that God resurrected Him for the justification of the whole harvest (Romans 4:25), that same Spirit in the Fullness of the Word is to be waved again in the end-time Bride whose acceptance will signal the resurrection of the sleeping saints and build faith for translation grace. The "church" will know nothing of this and God having called out the righteous wise and foolish virgins, its end will be the lake of Fire (Leviticus 23:16-21; Matthew 3:12; I Thessalonians 5:1-10; Revelation 19:20; 20:10).
Speaking through His prophets, God promised He would "RESTORE the faith once delivered to the apostolic saints" (Joel 2:25; Malachi 4:5-6; Matthew 17:11). This was the ministry of the seventh Church Age Messenger, the prophet of Malachi 4:5-6, whose Message is the "shout" of I Thessalonians 4:16, which is the "midnight cry" heard and heeded by the wise and virgin of Matthew 25:6 and confirmed by the heavenly Voice of Revelation 18:4. His Message is Christ the fullness of the Word "spoken by the mouth of all God's holy prophets since the world began" �"that which is perfect" or complete (Acts 3:21; I Corinthians 13:10; Revelation 10:7). It separates Christ's tiny Flock from the hordes of the great whore of Rome and her apostate (once) Protestant daughter churches, bringing us into the unity of the faith for the manifestation of the Sons of God and the translation (Genesis 49:10; Amos 3:3; Matthew 13:41; Ephesians 1:10; Romans 8:19; II Thessalonians 2:1).
The "enmity" God placed between the seed of the righteous first and last Adams, and the unrighteous physical seed of Cain and the bastard-born spiritual children of the second Eve, whom Jesus calls "the mother of harlots and abominations on the earth," is extant. Christ's little Flock is marching toward heaven in the rapture, while Satan's mighty world-wide church is marching to Armageddon (Revelation 16:13-16; 17:14).
Revelation 1 � 3 prophesied the battle between Christ in His people and antichrist in his people that commenced on the Day of Pentecost. The two trees that stood in the midst of the Garden have grown together, like Judas and Jesus, as brothers within the framework of the Christian church, so close as would almost deceive the very elect if it were possible. However this is the harvest time, each congregation is bearing the life of the seed that was planted and cannot hide its fruit. Satan's apostate big church is uniting with the apostate smaller churches in order to convert or kill Christ's little Flock. But after a brief and powerful demonstration of the Spirit�NOT a public display as it was in Pentecost�our little hunted and persecuted group will go to be with Jesus.
As Satan incarnate the beast in the Garden of Eden and led the first Eve to death, when he is cast out of the heavenlies he will evict his demons and incarnate the man of sin, thereafter called the beast, who will lead his followers to perdition. Christ's purpose is to be fulfilled in His Bride. He is that Corn of Wheat that fell to the ground at Calvary in order to reproduce Himself in the many-membered spoken Word seed Bride.
When Jesus was on earth, Satan showed Him all the kingdoms and their glory in this end-time and said, "I will give You all these things if You will fall down and worship me" (Matthew 4:9). Our Redeemer knew that once He overcame, and shed His blood for the redemption of those ordained for eternal Life, the inheritance forfeited by the first Adam would be His. Already the psalmist had said, "Arise, O God, judge the earth; for You shall inherit all nations" (Psalm 82:8; Revelation 11:15).
Of Christ's elect or Spiritual Seed, the apostle Paul wrote, "And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ�if so be that we suffer with Him, we may be also glorified together" Romans 8:17). This will be fulfilled sooner than most (so-called) Christians dare imagine. We are privileged to live in the time when all the mysteries contained in the Holy Scriptures have been revealed, including the original sin in the Garden of Eden. bb930112.htm