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Originally posted by edsinger
I have seen multiple comments from unbelievers about this very subject so I did a little digging and came up with a really good article, its a long read but very informing nonetheless.
Only Jesus/God cursed humans in the first place, which is why he then had to sacrifice himself to "save" them.
God commanded man: "of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shall not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die" (Gen 2:16-17).
Almighty God, without a doubt, could have prevented the fall of the first people, but He did not wish to stifle their freedom, because it is not in His nature to distort His own image in man.
The image and likeness of God is expressed in the free will of man.rof. Nesmeloff explains this matter very well: "Because it is not clear and is even completely inconceivable for many people to understand why a mechanical salvation is impossible, we should examine this impossibility more closely.
To save the first people by preserving the conditions in which they lived before the fall was impossible because their fall was such that they showed themselves to be not only mortal, but also to be criminal.
"The seed of the woman shall crush thy head, and thou shalt strike at his heel" (Cf. Gen 3:15), that is, from woman there will come forth an offspring — the Saviour of the world, Who will be born of a virgin, will conquer the Devil and save man, but for this, He Himself must suffer.
This promise of God concerning the coming of the Saviour was received by men with faith and joy, because it gave them great consolation. In order that men would not forget this promise of God, God taught them to offer sacrifices. For this He commanded them to sacrifice a bull, a lamb or a goat, and to burn them with prayer for the forgiveness of sins and with faith in the future Saviour. Such a sacrifice was a prefiguration of the Saviour, Who had to suffer and pour out His blood for our sins, that is, by His all pure blood to wash our souls from sin and make them clean, holy and once more worthy of Paradise.
Here, in Paradise, the first offering for sin was offered; God made Adam and Eve coats of animal skins and clothed them.
The disruption of human nature by ancestral sin — the disruption of soul and spirit in man, which now has an attraction to the sensual, is clearly expressed in the words of the Apostle Paul,
"For the good that I would do, I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me" (Rom. 7:19-20).
Man constantly suffers from "pangs of conscience" when realizing his sinfulness, his criminality. In other words, it is impossible for man, by his own powers, without the interference or help of God, to restore his damaged and disrupted nature.
Therefore, it was necessary for God Himself to come down and dwell upon the earth.
The incarnation of the Son of God was necessary for the restoration of the fallen and corrupted nature of man, to save man from damnation and eternal death.
Originally posted by Byrd
Jesus died once and for all
Uhm, no. He died and was resurrected, remember? Like a lot of other gods. Nanahuatzin, Osiris (who didn't die yearly... he stayed dead and who has a lot of parallels with Jesus). And there's others that I'm too tired to look up, but they would include Polynesian and Oriental traditions. In non-Middle Eastern based religions, a number of gods were sacrificed (sometimes willingly) by other gods to make the world/humans/etc.
Originally posted by edsinger
Originally posted by Al Davison What?! What other people?! This was supposed to be a full accounting of all the people who had ever been on earth - descended from Adam and Eve!.
It was the lineage of the chosen ones, so that Christ birth line would be preserved.
I guess Gen 6 "and also afterward" comes to mind.