“YE SHALL SURELY DIE” was what God said to Adam should be the result of disobedience. “Ye shall not surely die” was Satan’s immediate and bold contradiction!
Whose words have proved to be correct, God’s or Satan’s? What has been the history of man ever since that day? Has it ended in death or in life? Such a question is superfluous. But all along, spite of every lesson to the contrary, Satan has placed a negative on all that God has said.
At the first Satan was believed. He told the woman, in substance, that the tree of knowledge of good and evil could not possibly be a tree of death, for how could knowledge mean that which puts an end to all knowledge? Nay, they should become like God, knowing good and evil! Thus, by arguments plausible and specious, Satan disarmed the woman, and prompted her by cruel deception to disobey the plain command of God. Yet she was in the transgression. True, she had as yet no knowledge of sin; she was created in innocence, and any evil by which she could possibly be affected had to come from without. It came from the serpent.
That she should have resisted the temptation is plain. She had a direct command from God, who had placed her in circumstances of perfect creature felicity, giving but one test of obedience—the tree of knowledge of good and evil. From that she was debarred, and therein consisted her measure of responsibility, and small that measure was! She had access to every tree but one. God’s care over man was very large. There was no stint. Obedience to His will was all He demanded, and to refrain from the forbidden fruit was to secure a life of Edenic blessedness.
But the wily serpent prevailed, and man disobeyed and fell. Did Satan’s promises hold good? First, were their eyes opened?
Yes, but opened, alas, to their guilt and nakedness.
Second, had they obtained the knowledge of good and evil?
Yes, but of a good that was out of their reach, and of evil by which their very nature was permeated and themselves enslaved.
Third, did they not surely die?
Ah! false and fatal lure, along with the opened eye, and the coveted knowledge of good and evil, the seeds of death were, there and then, planted ineradicably in their bodies. Live on for years and centuries they might, but the death arrow was securely and inextricably buried within them. “Ye shall surely die” was their infallible doom.
“The woman being deceived was in the transgression” (1 Tim. 2:1414And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression. (1 Timothy 2:14)). She transgressed as did also her husband―he from love for her, and she by the direct deception of the devil.
He practiced deception at first, and carries it on to the end. His chief object of attack is what God has said. He hates the Word of God. He hated the living Word―the Son of God; and he hates and seeks, by learning on the one hand, or ignorance on the other, to overturn and get rid of the written Word.
But thank God, whilst heaven and earth shall pass away, His Word shall never pass away. It is the one thing beneath the sun that bears on its bosom the stamp of eternity. It is imperishable and indestructible.
You may burn the Bible; you may distort and wrest the Scriptures; you may imprison and slay the saints; you may scatter the Church to the four winds of heaven; but “the Word of God cannot be bound.” That Word shall survive the storms of time.
Should it announce judgment, that judgment shall fall! Should it proclaim salvation to lost and guilty man, that salvation shall be received!
Should it predict the doom of Satan in everlasting fire, that awful doom shall come―the doom of Satan and his angels, and also, mark, the doom of the cursed too!
Should it depict the glories of heaven and the joys of the Father’s House as the home of the Lord and His saints, that home shall assuredly be reached and enjoyed.
Should it make known all that God is― Father, Son, and Spirit—in light and love eternal, that blessed knowledge shall remain disclosed forever.
Satan’s lie shall perish, God’s truth shall abide. Reader, whom will you believe?
“I thank Thee, O my gracious God,
For all Thy love to me;
As deep, as high, as long, as broad
As Thine eternity.
All thanks and praise to Thee I give,
Who gav’st Thy Son for me;
I’ll render praises while I live,
And through eternity.”
J. W. S.