There is revelation in the gospel of Jesus Christ. We dont have it all but in the ages to come God will reveal all things christian gospel tabernacle church and listen to the archives vidio of nick gruet true and false religion .. i think you will find it interesting

thats net not org

The answer is very simple.....
God created us with a free will, so we had to have a choice to make.

He didn't want robots that couldn't choose to love him, so an alternative had to be in place.
God set before us, Life,and death.
He told us our choices,and warned of the consequence.
God knew before creation that we would fail, and sin, but they had already in place, the plan of our salvation.
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish ,but have everlasting life.
Love must be given freely, or it isnt love.
Therefore the choices were in place, and so was the plan of redemption.

Until they ate of that tree man relied totally on the Father for guidance. After they ate from the tree man became self aware and self reliant. Self still gets us in trouble to this day, or as I have heard it said "I trouble". Exhultation of self was the first recorded sin and Lucifer wanted to be worshiped as God. The tree was placed there to (as Gracealone mentioned) give us a choice. We still make those same kinds of choices everyday.
It is simply terrible that Adam and Eve did not pick the Tree of Life (Jesus).

Gracealone said:

The answer is very simple.....
God created us with a free will, so we had to have a choice to make.

He didn't want robots that couldn't choose to love him, so an alternative had to be in place.
God set before us, Life,and death.
He told us our choices,and warned of the consequence.
God knew before creation that we would fail, and sin, but they had already in place, the plan of our salvation.
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish ,but have everlasting life.
Love must be given freely, or it isnt love.
Therefore the choices were in place, and so was the plan of redemption.

Click to expand...

Boanerges said:

Until they ate of that tree man relied totally on the Father for guidance. After they ate from the tree man became self aware and self reliant. Self still gets us in trouble to this day, or as I have heard it said "I trouble". Exhultation of self was the first recorded sin and Lucifer wanted to be worshiped as God. The tree was placed there to (as Gracealone mentioned) give us a choice. We still make those same kinds of choices everyday.
It is simply terrible that Adam and Eve did not pick the Tree of Life (Jesus).

Click to expand...

Thank you! These are very good answers, and better than the one my brother gave me. His answer was, "there are some things we just can not explain" which I thought was a good answer also. But what you said makes a lot of sense to me. And I'll quote it again:

*"God created us with a free will, so we had to have a choice to make.

He didn't want robots that couldn't choose to love him, so an alternative had to be in place.
God set before us, Life,and death.
He told us our choices,and warned of the consequence.
God knew before creation that we would fail, and sin, but they had already in place, the plan of our salvation.
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish ,but have everlasting life.
Love must be given freely, or it isnt love.
Therefore the choices were in place, and so was the plan of redemption."

**************************************************

* "The tree was placed there to (as Gracealone mentioned) give us a choice. We still make those same kinds of choices everyday.
It is simply terrible that Adam and Eve did not pick the Tree of Life (Jesus)."

2 statement & a question

God ate from the tree.

It was Satan that encouraged Eve to try the fruit of that tree by asking if God would REALLY do what He said if she ate of it.
Eve believed Satan instead of God on this. :shock:

How do you have free will without choice?

Jonah2005bt said:

This is a question from a friend, a Brother from my Church.

And I found it to be a very good question.

Could you help me with it?
Here is the question;

"Why did GOD plant the tree of knowledge in The Garden of Eden if he did not want Adam or Eve to eat of it?"

Could it be that HE felt He had to test them out for some reason or another?

Click to expand...

I realize this is a very old thread but I believe this question deserves due attention.

It would appear that the tree of knowledge gives us a picture of how man is to represent the triadic nature of reality. As we move from creation to the garden, there develops an emerging discontinuity between man and his association with forbidden things. When man is unconstrained by revelation, he quite naturally draws conclusions based upon how he relates to the world around him. Man allows what he experiences to influence how he defines what is relevant. Once man learns to link the natural to the eternal, he learns to represent human events in quite a different way. One cannot build a triadic picture of reality based upon experiential logic. Human rationalization, operating on its own, cannot properly context the relationship of man to the natural world. Building a triadic picture of reality is only possible when one learns to represent human experience in the light of revelation. To do this, one must allow revelation to transcend experiential logic.

There is an example of triadic structure that demonstrates how the natural world and the supernatural world relate to one another in the eternal continuum. At the beginning of man’s history in the garden, the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil were mentioned in the context of man’s relationship both to God and to the natural world. The text never seems to indicate that in the beginning there was any prohibition to the tree of life but, that man was only denied access to the tree of knowledge. It was not until after the fall of man that God placed an angel with a flaming sword at the east of the garden to prohibit man’s access to the tree of life.

The way in which Adam chose to represent these trees would reflect his understanding of his association with both God and the natural world. As the narrative unfolds, it becomes clear that access to the tree of life was predicated upon man’s observance of the divine prohibition of the other. Man was to have absolutely no contact with the tree of knowledge. God had provided every tree of the garden for man’s use and pleasure, but this tree was to be left strictly alone. These two trees stand as symbols of a world beyond man’s sensory existence. The tree of forbidden knowledge represents the holiness, the superiority, and the sovereignty of God. It suggests that God always reserves unto Himself the things that belong exclusively to him. It is not merely the tree that has exclusivity, but what that tree represents. As a whole, man is never content to abide by prohibitions. Here, he desires the one thing he is denied. How characteristic this has proven to be of human nature!

Although man was given the highest place of honor as the crowning creation of God, and given dominion over all creation, this tree was a reminder that even man is not God. Man must stand in the index position of this triad and link the tree of knowledge that he can see to the will of God whom he cannot see. He must also link this tree to revealed consequences that he cannot see and has never before experienced. For man to properly relate to both worlds, he must learn to link the eternal world to his world by bringing God’s warning to bear upon his relationship to this tree. He must learn how to define the nature of his relationship to this tree based on what God had told him about it. Now, this epistemology did not just apply to this tree, it extended to everything in man’s dominion. He must understand his relationship to all of his domain based upon this triadic epistemology. God had already defined man’s function in creation and man must relate to his world according to the words of the Lord.

From the beginning, man was confronted with a decision in his association with this icon of good and evil. This tree was a symbol of an unseen reality. There is a particular type of knowledge that man was not equipped to handle and should not seek to obtain. The accessibility of the tree shows that man was given the ability to obtain this knowledge. The prohibition laid down by God says that this knowledge is destructive to man. This reinforces man’s position as a subordinate creature to what is unseen. God had said, “From this tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shalt not eat of it; for in the day that you eat from it, you shall surely die.” Here is a divine standard given to instruct man on how to think when he considers this tree. Since God has decreed that punishment will follow disobedience, the validity of God’s word is upheld. Divine judgment preserves divine justice because it is through the exercise of justice that God protects his holiness. Observance of this revelation becomes a matter of life and death. The ethics were simple; God said, “Don’t touch it.” This did not require a human analysis of ethics to decide what might be the right thing to do. Contact with the tree was evil both because God said it was evil, and because of what man would suffer as a result.

We know, because of how this tree is interpreted by the physical senses in the text, that man, left on his own, could not arrive at this conclusion. Adam could not see what the tree represented from mere empirical observation. He could only see the physical dynamics of the tree. For the rest, he must rely upon what God had told him about the tree. Man requires instruction from God to protect him from that which he has no point of reference to understand. As the Creator, God understood things about the nature of man and his relationship to his environment that man did not know and was not created to know. Man was not endowed with the capacity to distinguish between good knowledge and evil knowledge. This truth has not changed. The knowledge provided by this tree was not a necessary component for man to fulfill his role within his assigned environment.

The environment of the garden supplied every conceivable human need. He was even given access to the tree of life. The garden was a secure environment where man had no experience with fear, shame, and disgrace. These were yet unknown elements. It was an aesthetic environment where God controlled access to knowledge. There were certain things that man knew by design, but the prohibition of the tree says that there were those things which man should never want to know or seek to know.

In the garden, man enjoyed the presence of God and the full awareness of God. God knew that through disobedience man would be exiled from this controlled and protected environment and from his fellowship with God. By violating God’s prohibition, man challenged the sovereignty of God. Man does not have the authority to mandate a standard of moral conduct. The text of Genesis shows us that this level of knowledge belongs exclusively to God. Because man chose to behave sinfully, he is now confronted with a new reality. Adam is now aware of a particular type of knowledge that will forever change the way mankind represents the relationship he has with the natural world and with his God. It also laid a foundation by which humanity would forever be forced to choose between these two epistemologies. Should we represent reality based on revelation from God or should we rely on those things learned from pragmatic experiences? Which one will we depend upon to tell us the truth about what is relevant?

Now, man has access to the knowledge of good and evil. This presents two problems: First, man does not know the difference between good and evil and secondly, history shows us that when man is left to his own, he will more often than not choose the evil to his own destruction, even when revelation is present. In Genesis 6:5, we see that by the time Noah comes on the scene, “every imagination of the thoughts of the heart is only evil continually,” (RSV). The fact that revelation was available to that generation is evident in the character of Noah. God regarded Noah as “righteous in his generation.” Righteousness is the result of submitting one’s self to revealed constraints. This deterioration of a divinely established ethic shows a complete reversal of a revealed epistemology. This is what happens when the mind of man becomes isolated from the revelation of God. This isolation was willful, deliberate, and fatal. When man is left to himself without a desire for revealed knowledge, he is characteristically self-destructive. If man is to survive spiritually in a cursed environment, it will require a standard that will enable him to represent properly his assigned place within creation.

When Satan approached Eve in the garden, he confronts her about the tree of knowledge. Eve rehearsed the commandment that God had given to them about this tree saying, “from the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat, but of the tree that is in the midst of the garden you may not eat from it or touch it lest you die.” This represents a revealed language structure about certain truths concerning this tree that she could not know any other way. Satan then introduced a new way of thinking about what is true. He portrays this revealed grammar as unreliable and not to be trusted. “You shall not surely 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.” The idea obviously appealed to Eve but the force of the temptation was more than just a desire to be like God. This new way of representing truth offered a means by which control could be shifted from God to man.

She relies upon an unrevealed method for making decisions. Rather than consulting God and relying upon revelation which, by her own admission she understood, she relies instead upon her five senses operating in this natural world to formulate her epistemological base. She “rationalizes” why it would be acceptable to eat that which had been forbidden. This reveals a distorted ethic in the misappropriation of things that belong to God. She contemplated stealing that which belonged to God and then attempted to justify the rightness of it in her own mind.

The serpent's temptation was two-fold based upon the decision matrix of the woman. This would imply that Satan understood something of the psychology of the woman and he capitalizes on her naiveté. Experientially, Eve knows nothing of Satan, temptation, evil, craftiness, the pain of disobedience, or death. The serpent creates doubt in her mind about the motives, character, and purpose of God. He accused God of lying and planted the seed of evil ambition. “God knows that in the day you eat of it you will become like God.” The reality was that she was already like God. Satan creates suspicion in the mind of the woman by implying that God is deliberately withholding something from her that is both desirable and beneficial. It implies that, 1) man is just as good as God is, 2) God is unjust in this prohibition, and 3) man has the right to be God. This is a challenge of God’s sovereignty. At the heart of this, is the question of who has the right to be in control? Who has the right to decide what is best for man? A worldly epistemology says that man has the wisdom to decide what is best for him. A revealed epistemology says that God not only knows what is best, he is also able to supply it.

The serpent then makes an appeal to the empirical and aesthetic observation. Eve saw that the fruit was good for food and was pleasing to the eye. He also appeals to the subjective impulse; it was desirable to make one wise, which the text defines as knowing good from evil. Where then was the sin? The sin was allowing human logic and rationalization to overrule the revelation of God. This is a propensity of humanly derived standards of ethics. The decision was made by appealing to an uninspired epistemology rather than to the words of the Lord. Human logic and rationalization are not valid determinants for deciding what is right or wrong. God said, “Don’t touch it.” This alone determines what is right or wrong.

@Jonah2005bt,

Because God is a Father that tries the hearts of man, I believe the reason God placed the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden was to test Adam and Eve; just like He tested Abraham and tests everyman that has ever lived.

Psalms 26:2
Examine me, O Lord, and prove me; try my mind and my heart.

Jeremiah 17:10
I the Lord search the heart, I try the mind, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings.

God has created every man with a "WILL" that was created in His image and likeness. Man's "will" is tried because from it comes his efforts in thought, in works and full intentions.

Hebrews 4:12
For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

Though God knows a man's heart through his will of thoughts, He allows man to express his fiull intentions for man to learn from. Either a man will desire good or evil; righteousness or unrighteousness.

Boanerges said:

Until they ate of that tree man relied totally on the Father for guidance. After they ate from the tree man became self aware and self reliant. Self still gets us in trouble to this day, or as I have heard it said "I trouble". Exhultation of self was the first recorded sin and Lucifer wanted to be worshiped as God. The tree was placed there to (as Gracealone mentioned) give us a choice. We still make those same kinds of choices everyday.
It is simply terrible that Adam and Eve did not pick the Tree of Life (Jesus).

Click to expand...

Even so. If we had not eaten that fruit, we would not know about evil. We would not know about the war that is raging in the cosmos. We would have continued in God's PRESENCE never even having a clue about it. That is what God created us for...We were His children, innocent, pure and spending time in His PRESENCE. Instead.....

God did not want them to eat but He knew they would so He provided the option so we could have the choice, when we understand, to love Him or to remain bound by the influence of the enemy of humanity toward our self-harm.

@this human,
Where in scripture does it say "God knew" Adam would eat of the tree?
God gave Adam and Eve a choice before the fact.

God is either omniscient or he is not. Of course he knew. That was why the tree was there.

@oldherit,
God is all knowledgeable. God declares the end from the beginning. This means that God sets the tone. God presents what is to be and then fulfills it. God's character is a character of faith; that's why believers walk by faith in His likeness. If knowledge does not exist, either God causes it to exist or He walk by faith to see the outcome depending on the situation. But because God knows the heart of every man and his intent, He knows what the condition of a man's heart is and can predict what a man will do in the future from his conditioning. God kows what a man is thinking. It's like playing chess and understanding many moves ahead because you have all the insight.

Gen 6:6 And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.

God is a Father of peace and all knowledge of what He creates. God would not be grieved or regret something He created and knew would happen. This is a few times we see God "not" pleased with His creation since He created man. At this point God is getting ready to destroy what "He knew" would happen. God walks by faith. God calls those things which be not, as though they were (Rom. 4:17).

God knew what the outcome would be before man was ever created. We know this because of Eph 1:4 and 1Pet 1:19. God does not operated on a learning curve. Did you read post [HASH=594]#9?[/HASH]

@oldhermit,
If God would have known Adam would sin, He would not need to call those things which be not as though they were; this is faith (Rom. 4:17). After God created Adam, He said, “it’s not good that man be alone.” Now God said this “after” He created man. Are you telling me God knew it wasn’t good that man be alone before He said, it not good? God understood something in Adam that caused Him to say, it’s not good that man be alone. God said this after He created the animals with mates, and before He created man.

A person that knows does not need faith. The attribute of God’s character is faith (Gal. 5:22, 23). God walks in the fullness of His character.

You said: The ethics were simple; God said, “Don’t touch it.” This did not require a human analysis of ethics to decide what might be the right thing to do. Contact with the tree was evil both because God said it was evil, and because of what man would suffer as a result.

It’s simple in retrospect from where you’re sitting. But I know you’ve been deceived and missed it. It wasn’t simple to you; it had to be complicated in the moment or you would not have been deceived. Eve was deceived not tempted. Jesus could be tempted but could not be deceived. Adam and Eve could not be tempted, but they could be deceived. Satan agitated the mind of Jesus emotionally. Eve’s mind was not agitated because Adam had not sinned; yet, so Satan didn’t have right to their inner heart/mind; with Jesus he did.

You posted: God knew what the outcome would be before man was ever created. We know this because of Eph 1:4 and 1Pet 1:19. God does not operated on a learning curve. Did you read post [HASH=594]#9?[/HASH]

Eph 1:4 According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love:

God was not saying He chose “sinners” before the foundation of the world. God has chosen “man” “before” the foundation of the world in Righteousness. God chose man to be Holy as He is Holy; that’s why He created man in His image and likeness. This was done before the earth was created - when God said to Himself, “let us create man” in thought. This was said “before God formed the world.” Then God did the action of creating man. Man was chosen in thought “before” the foundation of the world. Man was not in creation.

1Pe 1:20 Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you,

Jesus was “foreordained” before the foundation of the world because He was the “WORD” of God and created all things.

Joh 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Col 1:16 For by Jesus were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him:

Jesus came to "re;" to reestablish what was and re (deem) man back to the position he had with God at the beginning. This was done in order that God's word would not come back unto Him void. The creation at the beginning was an "everlasting covenant" God made with man. Jesus came as the second Adam and restored what Adam failed to do.

Clearly, you understood nothing from post 9. Since you believe me to be totally deceived, there is no point in us continuing this.

oldhermit said:

Clearly, you understood nothing from post 9. Since you believe me to be totally deceived, there is no point in us continuing this.

Click to expand...

Old Hermit, don't be surprised that he thinks you are deceived...Those in deception think everybody that does not think as they do are deceived.

@oldhermit,

oldhermit said:

God knew what the outcome would be before man was ever created. We know this because of Eph 1:4 and 1Pet 1:19. God does not operated on a learning curve. Did you read post [HASH=594]#9?[/HASH]

Click to expand...

My point to you is God didn't know the outcome. Show me where you get that? I said God walks by faith and gave you scriptual proof; knowledge. I don't agree with your scriptual refernce and explained why. Could it be you are decieved? You are not explaining you position, you just give scripture without understanding.