How Have You Fallen, O Humans?

By Harry Grant

This work began about fourteen years ago, when I became troubled about the fall of man in Genesis 3, so I began talking to God about this incident, because I didn't understand how all the evils that befell mankind had occurred from such a short conversation between the serpent and Eve. As time passed and after years of debates and arguments with God about this, not only did He give me an understanding of the fall and all its ills, He also gave me insight into His unique solution to these problems in a very detailed way. Enter the second Adam (Jesus), who came in the flesh to solve three tasks that would correct all these problems. God has provided me with information concerning all this in fully disclosed details that are completely biblical, not complicated, and certainly not being taught in today's churches. Many things in these pages will doubtless take you by surprise, but at the end of this short read, you will be left with a refreshingly new perspective and a renewed sense of knowledge and understanding about how deeply the God of creation really loves us. Give a big thank-you to Him after you have read and enjoyed this work.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 13, 2020
• ISBN: 9781098020217

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How Have You Fallen, O Humans?

Harry G. Grant

Copyright © 2019 by Harry G. Grant

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Curtains Open

The Stage Is Set

God the Father’s Solution, the Second Adam (Jesus)

The First Task

The Second Task

The Third Task

The Crucifixion

His Death and Burial

The Resurrection

Curtains Open

Before I begin, I should first point out that I believe in God as supreme over all His creation. There is no power greater than He. He is the absolute sovereign Lord, and He will ultimately bring about the new heaven and new earth; the former things will pass into oblivion. He will wipe away every tear. There will be no more hunger, no more pain, no more death, and believers in Him will live with Him forever.

What I need to explain is that I have been studying the Bible in a serious way for about forty years, and up until about fourteen years ago, I began to question and reexamine the fall of man incident in the third chapter of the book of Genesis. This incident was critical to me because all the cumulative ills that plagued mankind started there. This is where sin and death entered into the human world. Furthermore, there was something about the fall that just didn’t sit right with me; God, for one thing, did not seem to behave in the way I thought He should have behaved.

Of course, I had begun looking at this whole thing from a purely human perspective. If a human father with two children were faced with what Adam and Eve came face-to-face with in the Garden of Eden, and that father allowed a person who intended detrimental harm to his children to gain access to them and deceive them into doing something destructive, then in my view that father didn’t do a very good job of protecting his children.

If this incident was that critical, I thought, if it was that much at stake (so critical that Jesus Christ had to come and correct all that resulted from this incident), then why would God create the tree of the knowledge of good and evil to begin with? I mean, why create a tree that bears fruit and then tell Adam not to eat its fruit because he will die if he does? Since God prohibited him from eating this fruit, why not, I thought, provide Adam with an adequate explanation of what death would mean to him if he did eat it? And why not give him a heads-up about the serpent and his game before the serpent ever arrived to deceive him? In fact, I wondered why God allowed the serpent to gain access to Eve in the first place.

To answer these questions, I thought about the Bible being a source that could provide answers to these kinds of questions, but I noticed that the Bible was essentially silent about all this (or so I thought). If the Bible was silent, the church would be also; in fact, I can’t remember any church ever addressing these kinds of issues. Preachers wouldn’t touch these questions and attempt to answer them with a hundred-foot pole!

This book will provide answers!

So without further ado, let’s first take a look at Genesis 2:15–17, because this is where God gave the command to the man (all scriptural references is from the English Standard Version, ESV),

15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and keep it. 16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.

Stop right here. Man was free to eat from all the trees in the garden, except for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It was about twelve years ago or so that I first asked myself, Where did the tree of the knowledge of good and evil come from?

To answer that, we need to back up a little to Genesis 2:8–9,

8 And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. 9 And out of the ground the LORD God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Verse 9 answers our question. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil was created by the Lord God, who created all the trees—He created everything. Adam could freely eat from every tree in the garden, including the tree of life, so why would God create a tree that would cause Adam to die if he ate its fruit? What would be the purpose of such a tree?

To answer those two questions is not going to be easy because the Scriptures simply don’t provide any direct answers. I began to try and think of any other scriptures that might shed some light on those questions. To do this, I first decided to go to the scriptures that began the fall narrative to see if I could glean anything that would help. I read Genesis 3:1:

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made.

Stop right here. It says that the Lord God made the crafty serpent, and the serpent immediately reminded me of a group of scriptures that the apostle John was inspired to write in Revelation 12:7–9,

7 Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon. And the dragon and his angels fought, 8 but they were defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. 9 And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.

Here the apostle John refers to that ancient serpent as the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world. God created the serpent, and this serpent is also called the devil and Satan, so it was Satan (either in the form of a serpent or just being himself, his nature is like a serpent’s), who was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. And it was Satan (also like a dragon) who brought his war to heaven in a vain attempt to seize control, but he was defeated and thrown to the earth.

As most of you are already aware, the Bible reveals that Satan is actually an angelic being who opposes God. One such scripture is found in Job 1:6,

Now there was a day when the sons of God (scholars agree that the sons of God in this scripture is referring to angels) came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them.

Another is in Ephesians 6:10–12,

10 Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. 11 Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. 12 For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

Another can be found in Revelation 20:1–3,

1 Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain. 2 And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, 3 and threw him into the pit, and shut it and sealed it over him, so that he might not deceive the nations any longer, until the thousand years were ended. After that he must be released for a little while.

The following scriptures are actually about the hubris of a Babylonian king called Nebuchadnezzar, at least that is, on the surface, but it is the deeper source of this king’s attitude that draws attention to the unseen Satan, who is behind the king’s elevated pride and arrogance. It is Satan, the real culprit, who attempts what these scriptures depict. The king is simply a man who exalted himself in his mind.

In Isaiah 14:12–14, we find this,

12 How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of the Dawn! How you are cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low! 13 You said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to the heavens; above the stars of God, I will set my throne on high; I will sit on the mount of assembly in the far reaches of the north; 14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.’

Remember those scriptures in Revelation 12:7–9, where he ascended to heaven with his angels and attempted to take over? Well, here in Isaiah, we learn that Satan has a throne, he is called O day star, son of the dawn—in symbolic language, stars are angels—and most frightening of all, we learn that his real motivation is his desire to be like the Most