Choices

On the subject of Adam and Eve and the process of committing sin, Jordan says, “When you begin to think about it, and you begin to have to decide—the contest between good and evil, ‘Should I or shouldn’t I?’--you debate. ‘As a man thinks in his heart.’ You can’t get away from the presentation and illumination, but you don’t have to debate the issue. You can have it come and be illuminated and skip the debate and go right to the decision, ‘No.’

“Buddy, when you start debating the thing the battle’s about over with. Because all you’re doing is trying to make provision and excuse and reason to get yourself on over into the next steps. And you just stay there long enough to salve your conscience and to go. That’s where sin starts. ‘When sin is conceived. You’re thinking about ways to justify it.

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“Numbers 30: 6-16 is talking about a man and his wife making a vow. Buddy, that husband is responsible and his responsibility is staggering! That woman’s duty toward God was controlled by a husband, and so if she went and did something she shouldn’t have done--she made a vow and entered into an agreement and came and told her husband, and he disallowed it--that vow that otherwise would be binding would be broken.

“Adam is standing there, folks, when Eve takes the thing and I don’t know from the way that verse 6 in Genesis 3 reads (‘She did eat and gave also unto her husband with her’) it’s as though Adam is standing there watching this thing go on!

“I do know this. He knew by looking at her when he saw her that she’d done it.

“I Timothy 2:13. Eve took the fruit and she was tricked into doing it, but when Adam took his, he wasn’t deceived. Adam didn’t sin because Satan came in and gave him a big line about what it would get him if he did.

“I tend to believe Eve probably picked that piece of fruit and took it home with her and sat it on the table and gave it time to ferment and so on. Adam came in and said, ‘Baby, weren’t not supposed to do that!’ and she reaches out and eats it and when she did, a blushing pink began to flow down through her cheeks and right out to the tip of her little red nose and she turned the most beautiful, flesh-colored pink you ever saw.

“Her blood was contaminated with sin. Some people say she got her blood then. I believe she had the living water of God flowing through her veins. The old-timers used to call it ‘blood poisoning.’ I don’t know all the details about that. Don’t know how to genetically and physiologically explain it.

“By the way, when it says God took Adam’s rib and made Eve, Arthur Custance says what God did is He took the bone out and took one of Adam’s X-chromosomes and made her out of that. I don’t know about that; I don’t understand enough about that.

“I know this, though. Adam saw his wife die and he knew what had happened to her. Now he had a decision to make. Sure as you’re sitting in that chair, Adam had information communicated to him, he knew God, he knew the love of God, he knew the laws of God, he knew the character and the nature of God. He walked with Him in the evening, he talks with God face to face and they commune and fellowship and he goes home and tells his wife about the wonderful love and grace and provisions of God and how wonderful God is in all these things.

“Adam’s sitting there and he could have disannulled what she did and God would have forgiven her. I don’t understand maybe how it would have come about but I know Adam could have walked by faith and gone to God Almighty with the problem but he didn’t. Adam looked at that woman and said, ‘She’s gonna die; I’m gonna lose her. God’s going to cast her out and I can’t live without her!’ And Adam made a choice. He loved Eve so much that he was willing to go and die for her.

“He was willing to go out and rebel against Almighty God, against the love of God, against the truth of God, against the authority of God, and suffer the penalty of the wrath of God and the anger of God…he was willing to walk in unbelief to get his way. His will chose to please himself and to disobey God. Chose to go with his wife than to stay with God without her. Chose to trust his own wisdom rather than the wisdom and love of Almighty God to have worked it out.

“That passage in Numbers fascinates me. There obviously was a way that he could have trusted God and took it to God, walked by faith, and got over the thing. And Adam, the pitiful, wretched man that he became, chose to rebel against Almighty God, and by eating that fruit, he repudiated and rebelled against God’s love, truth and authority and he violated the commandment of God.

“Make no mistake, Adam didn’t die with Eve in faith. I talked to a man just recently who was telling me the old Mormon idea that Adam really died in faith believing God would have to redeem him because he was destined to be the progenitor of the race.

“If Adam would have had faith in God, Adam would have said, ‘Make me another woman!’ or ‘Save that one!’ ”