5:1
¶ This is the book of the generations of
Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him;
2 Male and female created he them; and
blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created.
3 And Adam lived an hundred and thirty
years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his
name Seth: 4 And the days of Adam after
he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years: and he begat sons and daughters:
5 And all the days that Adam lived were
nine hundred and thirty years: and he died.
A
recognizable device is apparent here that is used earlier in Genesis, chapters
1 and 2 when describing creation in a more general sense and then being more
specific that has made some foolish skeptics claim that there are two creation
stories. God goes from higher to lower, general to specific, even back and
forth between the two. Adam is referenced here as the name for both the man and
the woman and then as the name of the first man in specific.
With
this record of Adam’s lineage we have a similar reference to Jesus Christ later
in the New Testament with regard to His legal descent;
Matthew
1:1 The book of the generation of Jesus
Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.
This
book or record begins with God making mankind, male and female, to look like
Him. God’s body, His physical presence, is the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of
God, the Word, capital W, by which all things were created and are held
together. I’ve already pointed out the verses that reveal that in previous
passages.
God
called their name Adam, man and woman. Man gave Eve as his wife’s name. This
will be important in remembering the distinctions Christ erased in the church.
Galatians
3:28 There is neither Jew nor Greek,
there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are
all one in Christ Jesus.
This
is how it was meant to be but sin caused the great rift in our association with
each other and the resulting cultural divides between men and women came about.
God does not create human culture or civilization. He only attempts to modify
it to draw men and women closer to Him. Holding your culture, your society, or
your civilization as Godly or saying that its traditional order; whether that
tradition be Nineteenth Century Victorian or post-World War II American, is
what God ordained is absurd, a blasphemy, and all such falsehood destroys the
faith of the young and new Christians. Cultural forms of living, for instance,
Father going off to work in an office, Mother staying home to dust and clean,
and the basic family unit living alone, separated, and apart from other family
members, servants, friends, or employees is a relatively new way of living and
should not be mistaken for the time-honored, traditional and
God-approved culture of the family.
In
other words, it is not Godly just because we do it and say its right because we
are doing it and slapping the label on it. That was Cain’s sin. Is it yours?
Such thinking is no less humanism than the fantasies of The Enlightenment
thinkers. Try to come to the Bible and leave your personal and cultural baggage
behind while God speaks to you through its pages.
Verse
4 shows that Adam sired probably many sons and daughters during his long life
as the pre-Flood people lived hundreds of years compared to our typical 70-80.
We need to consider the fact that the genetic damage passed on to each
generation would have been minimal in that time and the damage that the
individual takes on with each cell division would have been just as minimal.
Aging would have been a much slower process and a person stayed “younger” and
more vigorous than they would have in any later generation for a longer period
of time. Adam sired children in his own
image, or likeness, as the process of genetic deterioration followed as man
devolved from his first blessed state looking like His creator, Christ.
As
I noted previously, with each cell division and in each generation mankind
passes on more and more deleterious mutations, so much so that some researchers
into genetics have been alarmed at the accumulated damage and amazed that human
beings have not become extinct because of it.[1]
Adam
died, as required by the judgment, a process which began the moment he
disobeyed God. We can presume that Eve died much earlier than he did due to the
wear and tear caused by multiple conceptions over many years or for other
reasons, who is to say. But, the process of dying began the moment they
disobeyed God in the one thing they could do that was denied them. Our first
human parents, our first ancestors, died, whether or not it was in what we now
call Africa, or somewhere in Western Asia, and the pattern had been set for all
of us until the time the church is translated out of this dying world, waiting
to be reborn.
We
shall all physically die and, in fact, are dying now unless we are walking on
the earth when Christ calls out the church. It is only through faith in Christ
as God in the flesh, believing what He said about Himself, and trusting in His
righteousness and not our own, nor any church dogma, creed, confession, or
man-made set of rules that we can be justified before God and live in eternity
with Him.
Romans
5: 6 ¶ For when we were yet without strength, in due
time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For
scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some
would even dare to die. 8 But God
commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died
for us. 9 Much more then, being now
justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. 10 For if, when we were enemies, we were
reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall
be saved by his life. 11 And not only
so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now
received the atonement. 12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the
world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have
sinned: 13 (For until the law sin
was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is no law. 14 Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to
Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s
transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come. 15 But not as the offence, so also is the free
gift. For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of
God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded
unto many. 16 And not as it was by one
that sinned, so is the gift: for the judgment was by one to condemnation, but
the free gift is of many offences unto justification. 17 For if by one man’s offence death reigned by
one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of
righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.) 18 Therefore as by the offence of one judgment
came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free
gift came upon all men unto justification of life. 19 For as by one man’s disobedience many were
made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous. 20 Moreover the law entered, that the offence
might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound: 21 That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so
might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our
Lord.
[1]
Alexey S. Kondrashov, “Contamination of the Genome by Very Slightly Deleterious
Mutations: Why Have We Not Died 100 Times Over?” Journal of Theoretical Biology, (1995) vol. 175, pp. 583-594. James F. Crow, “The High Spontaneous Mutation
Rate: Is it a Health Risk?” Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences, (Aug 1997) vol. 94, pp. 8380-8386.
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