Both my digital and my hard copy include this scenario:
And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. (Genesis 2:15-17 KJV)
One commandment: do not eat of the one tree, the one of knowledge of good and evil. Such a simple command, isn’t it. Adam has the remainder of the world to dress and keep. One fruit is off limits.
We know what happens next. It’s one of the favorite plots of books, plays, movies, television, and children left home alone. Temptation. We’ve all been asked a similar question – “You mean your parents won’t let you (fill in the blank of anything someone else is doing that you aren’t supposed to, just because your parents said “No”.)
Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? (Genesis 3:1 KJV)
Eve had God’s commandment, but she added to it just a tiny bit:
And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. (Genesis 3:2-3 KJV)
God did not say – Do not touch the tree. God did not say – lest ye die. But neither one of those small additions were really bad, were they? If you didn’t touch it, you couldn’t eat of it. The fear of death still existed, but there’s a difference between “thou shalt surely die” and “lest ye die”, isn’t there. If you don’t touch it, neither happens – but in one statement death was inevitable, in the other it was probable.
We know what happened. The same thing is happening today.
“We all worship the same God.” No, we don’t. Ask any Muslim, Allah begats not, neither is he begotten. God, on the other hand:
. . . so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:16 KJV)
Allah is not God, simply because the different holy books define different supreme beings. Buddhism has a variety of answers as to whether a supreme being exists, but nothing similar to Judaism, Islam, nor Christianity. Thus, humans do not all worship the same God. Nor do we believe in the same life after earthly death. There is a wide variety there, too.
Therefore, we need to accurately quote the source of our doctrine and not accept another’s definition of what our God is, other than what His word defines. Quote the source of our doctrine, not the traditions of man, who would tell us that all religions are the same. They are not.
According to the words of Jesus, recorded by His disciples, He was the fulfilment of the Law given to Moses by JHWH, and promised to Israel by prophets:
And he began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears. (Luke 4:21 KJV)
That’s my favorite fulfillment verse, but the gospels mention “fulfilled” in relation to prophecy another 38 times, plus another ten in the book of Acts. There is no Christianity without Judaism. There is no Messiah without Judaic prophecy. There is no resurrection without the death of the Messiah, yet more than 2000 years have passed and no one has been able to disprove the resurrection of Jesus and His appearance to hundreds of people under varied circumstances and places.
I am always moved by Paul’s conversion. A leader among the Pharisees, with a passion to defend his Judaism against heresy and blasphemy – except for a few moments on the road to Damascus.
We won’t have that, but we have Paul’s words – some written in his own hand, some written by others as his physical limitations grew. All dedicated to that one moment when he discovered that Jesus was real.
Most of us will never have that moment – but through God’s inspired words we have exactly the same accurately quoted story, and the strong desire that Paul included in his witnessing to Jesus’ life – even after Agrippa told Paul he had almost persuaded him to become a Christian:
And Paul said, I would to God, that not only thou, but also all that hear me this day, were both almost, and altogether such as I am, except these bonds. (Acts 26:29 KJV)
Are we willing to speak to anyone – even one of great secular authority – that we would pray to God that they, and all who heard, would become as we are – Christians based on the accurately quoted authority of the Bible, as God’s word?
