The tree of what knowledge?

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Our judgement of what has been given to us by the One and only creator is the only blasphemy man has ever truly commited. Do you not see how disrespectful it is to your God to mentally debase in your mind what God has given you by putting such relative labels on things such as the label "evil"? God literally said, "Here you go", and you said, "This is bad".

In the garden of eden, we fell. Our downfall was directly associated with our newfound ability to differentiate between good and evil. There was no test. There was no third party punishment. There was us and a newfound ability and the inherent consequence of the ability.

There is one creator. One God. Don't mistake Satan for a God. Satan does not create. Satan only lies. Satan only perverts what exists. The one creator has created and continues to create everything you see here. God is omnipotent. All powerful. Therefore, there are no mistakes, and everything that happens is attributed to God's choice.

Our fall happens everytime we say about God's creation, "This is bad". Who are you to tell the creator of the universe that he didn't do a good job? A creator is only as good as what it can create, so if you believe that earth is crap, you believe that the creator of it is crap. You blaspheme every time.

If you believe your creator is incompetent, then you can't believe that you are a good creation. That would be a contradiction. So you are fallen from grace and glory.

And all of this that you just read is exactly why your redemption is love. This is a very important point.

reply to post by smithjustinb

But God himself sometimes says "this is bad" about the way some aspect of the creation has developed.
As, for example, Genesis ch6 v12; "And God saw the earth and behold it was very corrupt".
When God himself, in judgement, says that something is bad, our responsibility is to agree with him.

reply to post by DISRAELI


Then explain to me how there is hope for us.

reply to post by smithjustinb

That s the whole point of the gospel.
There is hope for us through Christ.

reply to post by On7a7higher7plane


I re-read your thread, I have a nasty habit of skimming through reads quickly as I can.

I thought this thread was about the fruit being sex, I didn't know that was a relatively common idea so I just assumed that's what you were going on about.

Sorry about that, read through the thread again. +1 star for you.

I have been studying the Garden of Eden scenario for a while and from what I can figure out, the actual fruit from the tree was "free will".

I think it's safe to say that Adam and Eve had free will before they ate of the fruit just as Lucifer had free will. I think a better term to describe the phenomenon was they gained the ability to think independently. Before hand they were completely dependent on God and their environment, Adam and Eve were all do or do not before they were beguiled. In other words their egos became independent of God and his perfect creation (creatures and environment) and were thus they were not fit to exist in Eden.

And now to quote you:
"Eating the fruit did not do anything but fill their stomachs. It was the act of disobedience of Adam that brought about both the knowledge of good and evil and Death. While Eve ate being deceived Adam did so with a free will.

There was no mystical power or knowledge in the fruit or the tree. The tree was the object of Adams instruction not to eat of. When he hate his heart understood he disobeyed and that was evil and that the good was to obey. The result of his disobedience was knowledge of right (good) and wrong (evil) through the act of disobedience. From that day forward he would have a free will to choose right or wrong, good and evil. The promise of death was given because he disobeyed and that disobedience was called sin and the result of sin was death and death spread to all men because all have sinned (Rom 5:12).

very simple if you just take the word of God literally and believe what you read without admixture of interpretation. The AV Bible is already interpretated so no need to interpret we just need to Read, study, believe and apply it to our lives.""

Although unorthodox interpretations of what is considered a holy book my be dangerous I keep an open mind and recognize their is much more going on behind the story than the words detail. I may not have faith in my imaginings or even my own understanding as I reserve my faith for God and only God but I maintain a bit of conviction about my inspirations.

I think there is something very tangible and real about the fruit, I think it was literally a fruit and the literal act of eating it and metabolizing it would bring dire consequences on both a physical level (for Adam and Eve) and psychological level. So I disagree that there was no mystical power in the fruit, depending on your definition of mystical. God didn't put it there because there had to be something they could do to disobey or something like that. He created it and it was part of what made his creation perfect, it had properties that would have a profound effect on Adam and Eve if metabolized, this is why he instructed them not to eat of it. I don't think the consequences of them eating of the fruit were as much of God punishing Adam, Eve and the serpent for their disobedience as much as a predetermined cause and effect relationship of what would happen had they eaten of the fruit.

reply to post by Surferess


I would be more skeptical of gnostic works than orthodox, their are adversaries to monotheism and they would be the types of people to blaspheme God and the religion.

I've read a bit and it is interesting though. The most legitimate of gnostic works is the tree of life diagram I presume.

What if the tree was an actual tree with fruit for denizens within the G of E...but, was reserved for beings of higher stature than A & E...and the eating of the fruit altered thier DNA to not be able to have the long life they would have had, because of degenerative processes brought about by the eating of a fruit that was not for them...the knowledge being that, degenerative processes would eventually allow them to die a fully human death. Clearly, after the eating, they were ejected from the garden...perhaps because none of the fruit was then edible for thier sustenance...and thier original purpose within the garden was compromised.

Å99

reply to post by On7a7higher7plane

You do not say who you are responding to in this post.
A casual reader might think you are quoting my words.
In fact I think you are quoting ChesterJohn replying to Surferess.

reply to post by smithjustinb


I like you. Clearly your head is not up your ass. *Pats on back. XD.

Nice to see someone that knows things about things that aren't really things. Quite comforting.

Keep being awesome.

reply to post by Lightworth


What would you expect trying to describe the creation story in just a handful of pages?

It's like a rocket scientist trying to describe what a rocket is to a large self-confident kindergartner who has never seen technology in one hour. The kindergartner might call him stupid and his stupid white outfit stupid as well. And he'll call the rocket scientist stupid for trying to convince him of something so stupid like so many other stupid liars have tried to do before. First people tell him a man comes down everyone chimney to deliver presents then someone else wearing a stupid outfit tells him that if you put a big metal thingy on a flat concrete floor and press a button it will be on the moon in no time flat.

reply to post by DISRAELI


That doesn't explain anything. Explain it to me as if I had never heard of the bible or Jesus. Explain how there is hope. Explain how the process of "accepting Jesus in your heart" and everything that happens because of that gives cause for legitimate hope. How and why?

reply to post by smithjustinb

That is the subject of a completely different thread.
In the meantime, there are thousands of people in the world who can give you the explanation you're looking for. You don't need one from me.
The only on-topic aspect of the work of Jesus is that it restores the relationship between humanity and God which was broken in Eden.

reply to post by DISRAELI


How does believing in Jesus restore what got broke?

reply to post by smithjustinb

This thread was started to talk about the Tree of Knowledge.
It was not started for the purpose of discussing anything and everything.

reply to post by DISRAELI


I believe I'm still on topic. In order to make me see things the way you're presenting them, I'll need my questions to be answered.

reply to post by smithjustinb

Ah, you've changed your post.
The premise is that the believer shares in the relationship which Jesus has with the Father.
Since the relationship between Jesus and the Father was never broken, the effect is that the old relationship is restored.

(And my comment about being off-topic was based on your original post before you edited it, as well you know)

reply to post by DISRAELI


But that doesn't undo what was done. That's only saying we don't have to change the thing about us that originally condemned us, instead, we can take door number two, live the way we always lived, and by a completely unrelated process we can find redemption.

I can't deduct how what you're saying has any relationship with our original predicament.

reply to post by smithjustinb

Then you'll need to wait for the later thread where I explain it all in more detail.
Meanwhile my next thread will be about the story of Cain and Babel.

reply to post by DISRAELI


Well let me know when you make that thread