Thy Kingdom Come. Thy Will Be Done, on Earth

Excerpt From Newsletter

Have you ever considered the fact that what you choose to believe today will in some way or another influence what you choose to do tomorrow? If you haven’t, you really should stop to ponder what that means. After all, Moses tells us Satan motivated Eve to sin against God by telling her the Truth. But Moses also makes it clear, Satan lied to Eve first to make sure she would do what he wanted her to do. Look at how Moses describes those events:

Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, “Indeed, has God said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat from it or touch it, lest you die.’” And the serpent said to the woman, “You surely shall not die! For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make {one} wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings.
(Genesis 3:1–7)

There are a variety of issues that theologians have not yet adequately answered about that passage. But let’s put those aside for now and concentrate on a few things that seem self-evident. For one thing, Satan told Eve she would not die if she ate the forbidden fruit. That was a lie. We know that because, later on, God cursed the ground and told Adam he would return to it because of his sin (Gen. 3:17–19). But notice that after Satan lied to Eve, he told her the Truth. He assured her she would “be like God, knowing good and evil.” A bit later, Moses confirms that what Satan said was, in fact, true:

Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, lest he stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”—therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken.
(Genesis 3:22–23)

“Thy Kingdom Come. Thy Will Be Done, on Earth,” The Voice of Elijah^®, July 1997, pp. 11–12

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