What Has Religion Done For Mankind?

CHAPTER IV

How the False Kind Began

THE government in mankind's first paradise of pleasure was a theocracy. That is to say, it was a rule by God the Creator, the great Owner of the earth on which man lives. God did not draw his power to govern from the consent of mankind whom He governed. He was not subject to being guided by their wishes. It was not a people's rule or democracy. The great Creator is the Most High. He is the Sovereign over all the universe, of which our earth is but a tiny part. The teeming nations which have descended from the first man and woman are to the Creator as but a drop from a bucket and as the fine dust in the scalepan of a balance. Or, in fact, as nothing. (Isaiah 40:15-17) All human life is dependent on him. He is the only rightful Lawgiver and Universal Sovereign, for he has the absolute power to save and to destroy. Being almighty and perfect in wisdom, justice and love and supreme in position, he is the God worthy of worship. True worship he properly requires of his creatures, including his only-begotten Son, and such worship is rendered by loving service and obedience to God in harmony with his revealed purpose and com-

mandments. This is theocratic worship, and this is what Adam and Eve were required to render their Maker. It was a theocratic world in which they lived. It was their privilege to worship God and to acknowledge his universal sovereignty by unswerving obedience. That was true religion, and it bound the entire universe together, for it was rendered to the one God.

² How, then, was it possible for a false kind to get started? The answer now appears simple, By disobedience. But why would perfect creatures, living amid perfect conditions, want to disobey the living, true God, the supreme Benefactor upon whom all life depends? The Scriptural answer is, Because of selfishness or selfish desire. That means, Because of the creature's loving himself more than God the Creator. Selfishness would express itself in willfulness, that is, in rebellion against the theocratic government in a desire to be independent of it so as to shape one's own course in life. Hence we see that the all-important question of God's universal sovereignty is implicated here. True religion holds creatures to his universal sovereignty. The only thing that false religion can do is turn creatures away from acknowledging and worshiping Jehovah as universal sovereign. False religion springs from selfishness. The inspired account makes this clear.

³ Here cherubs come into the picture. The first spirit creatures whom Adam and Eve saw mani-

fest themselves to human sight were cherubs, or cherubim according to the Hebrew language. They were stationed at the entrance to the paradise of Eden after God drove Adam and Eve out. Concerning God's sovereignty we read: "Jehovah reigneth; let the peoples tremble: he sitteth above the cherubim; let the earth be moved." "Thou that sittest above the cherubim, shine forth." (Psalms 99:1 and 80:1, AS) The prophet Moses was commanded to make images of them upon the sacred chest that held God's written law. Later King Solomon made cherub images for the interior of the temple. They were symbols of how God is surrounded with cherubim. The people in general were not permitted to see these images. They were not to be worshiped. Trouble started in the universe when a cherub in the garden of Eden or paradise of pleasure schemed to gain worship.

⁴ Being spirit and hence invisible to Adam and Eve, this glorious cherub was stationed over the young human pair in Eden. Cherubs, when appearing in a supernatural vision to God's prophets, are pictured with wings. So the one in Eden is spoken of as a "covering cherub". He was then a perfect son of God. Addressing him in symbolic language through a later worshiper of him, the king of Tyre, Ezekiel prophesied: "Thus saith the Lord Jehovah: Thou, who sealest up the measure of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty, thou wast in Eden, the garden of God. . . . Thou wast the anointed covering cherub, and I had set

thee so: thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou didst walk up and down in the midst of stones of fire. Thou wast perfect in thy ways, from the day that thou wast created, till unrighteousness was found in thee."

⁵ But because of what did unrighteousness spring up inside him? The revealed facts show it was self-admiration and the desire for worship by creatures under him. So we read: "By the abundance of thy traffic they have filled the midst of thee with violence, and thou hast sinned; therefore have I cast thee as profane from the mountain of God, and have destroyed thee, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire. Thy heart was lifted up because of thy beauty; thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness: I have cast thee to the ground, I have laid thee before kings, that they may behold thee."  —Ezekiel 28:11-17, Da.

⁶ How, now, did this covering cherub in Eden succeed in turning worship away from the living, true God and start false religion in the earth, yes, in the universe? His method is described for us in chapter three of Genesis. The Christian apostle Paul accepted this account and referred to it, saying to Christians in his day: "I am afraid that somehow, as the serpent seduced Eve by its craftiness, your minds might be corrupted away from the sincerity and the chastity that are due the

Christ. . . . for Satan himself keeps transforming himself into an angel of light." (2 Corinthians 11:3,14, NW) Betraying the unrighteousness that had now developed in his heart and ruined his perfection, the covering cherub in Eden began to work against clean worship and against God's universal sovereignty. In that way be became Satan, for the name Satan means opposer or antagonist. Misusing his spiritual powers, he obsessed or took control of a serpent in Eden. He used it to convey a lie to Eve while her husband Adam was away. He made sure to pose, not as her enemy, but as her benefactor, "an angel of light." In that way he became a deceiver, and a proper name for him would be also Serpent or Snake. Because this now unfaithful "covering cherub" was the first to practice deception and to establish false worship, the Bible calls him "the original serpent" or "that old serpent".

⁷ Glorifying the snake or serpent as a symbol of enlightenment, Satan the adversary spoke to the woman. "And it said to the woman, Is it even so, that God has said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, God has said, Ye shall not eat of it, and ye shall not touch it, lest ye die." Satan the Serpent now slandered God whose words the woman had just quoted. For he proceeded to contradict the truth of God's words. He made out that God was frightening the woman and prevent-

ing her and her husband from gaining wisdom and intelligence and becoming gods, independent of Jehovah God and not subject to his standards of right and wrong but able to determine for themselves what is good and what is evil. Was not the forbidden tree called the "tree of the knowledge of good and evil"? So by this the covering cherub made himself a devil, for the name Devil means a slanderer or defamer. "And the serpent said to the woman, Ye will not certainly die; but God knows that in the day ye eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and ye will be as God [or, as gods], knowing good and evil." —Genesis 3:1-5, Da, margin.

⁸ This was the first pronouncement of false religion. It put light for darkness and darkness for light. It misrepresented Jehovah God as a false god against mankind's interests and not able to maintain his universal sovereignty. It presented the serpent, or the unfaithful covering cherub whom it symbolized, as the prophet of enlightenment. It made the woman, to whom this supposed enlightenment was first offered, the medium for passing on the enlightenment. She was to be the first one to take the fruit of the forbidden tree in defiance of Jehovah God and to gain the wisdom and intelligence and then lead her husband to it, so leading him to liberation. It denied that disobedience to Jehovah God would result in death but held out that life as independent gods would result to them. The woman was not to consult

her husband first on the matter of eating, although God had made him first and had used him to instruct the woman concerning the forbidden tree. No, but she was to exercise woman's rights and show him she had better judgment. Then she was to tempt him and lead him into disobedience to God. All this was the big lie. By putting it over on the mother of mankind Satan hoped to put it over on all mankind and get them all into false religion. Jesus Christ later said respecting the Devil: "That one was a manslayer when he began, and he did not stand fast in the truth, because truth is not in him. When he speaks the lie, he speaks according to his own disposition, because he is a liar and the father of the lie." —John 8:44, NW.

⁹ Listening to that first pronouncement of false religion induced selfish desire in the woman. Hence she was tempted into rebelling against God's sovereignty over her and the rest of the universe. "And the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a pleasure for the eyes, and the tree was to be desired to give intelligence; and she took of its fruit, and ate, and gave also to her husband with her, and he ate." (Genesis 3:6, Da) Did Adam eat because he was deceived by the teaching of false religion? The answer is not our own. Again showing that he accepted what the Bible says on this as the absolute truth, the apostle Paul said: "Adam was formed first, then Eve. Also Adam was not de-

ceived, but the woman was thoroughly deceived and came to be in transgression." (1 Timothy 2:13,14, NW) Unlike Eve, Adam got his information, not from a snake, but from Jehovah God. If Adam was not deceived, why, then, did he accept forbidden fruit at her hand, knowing that to eat it meant death according to God's decree? Evidently because Adam feared to lose her in death. So now, in the choice between having this visible beauty Eve and having the invisible God, he preferred having his wife and sharing the same end as she did.

¹⁰ So Adam chose to join up with the new religion. It was just as in many lands today where the religious clergy dominate politics and commerce. The men who see the double-talk and double-dealing of the clergy have no use for these religious hypocrites. But because their womenfolk hold to the religious system, the men make no disturbance about it just in order to keep their women and get along with them. And the religious clergy know the wily power of the women over their men, and so they craftily use the women.

¹¹ Some try to make the "tree of the knowledge of good and evil" to be just a symbol and argue that the sin which Adam and Eve here committed was their first act of sexual union. Such an argument is unreasonable. Sexual intercourse between man and wife is a natural thing. Only by this act could God's command to Adam and Eve be car-

ried out, when he blessed them and said: "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it." (Genesis 1:28, Da) The purpose of their marriage was to bring children into the earth, children as perfect as themselves. With these they were to fill the entire earth, for that was the purpose of God's creating it: "He is the God —who formed the earth and made it —he established it  —he did not create it a chaos, he formed it for a dwellingplace." (Isaiah 45:18, AT) In order to make all the earth a suitable place for perfect mankind to inhabit, it was necessary for them to obey God's command and subdue the earth outside of the paradise of pleasure and make the whole surface of the earth a garden of Eden. Then obedient mankind would dwell here forever.

¹² Do not take the word of some religious clergyman for it, but search the inspired written Record for yourself. See that God made no promise to Adam and Eve that if they continued obedient during all the period of their test God would end their existence on this earth and would take them to heaven. "The first man is out of the earth and made of dust." Man's natural and everlasting place of habitation is the earth, subdued into a paradise of pleasure. "The heavens are the heavens of Jehovah; but the earth hath he given to the children of men." (1 Corinthians 15:47, NW; Psalm 115:16, AS) Sexual intercourse between Adam and Eve would have been in obedience. Their sin

consisted in eating fruit of a literal tree in rebellion against God's universal sovereignty.

¹³ Before Eve was created and hence before sexual intercourse was possible for the man, God had said to Adam: "In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." (Genesis 2:17) Adam was made a living soul. If he disobediently ate the forbidden fruit before or after Eve's creation, Adam would die as a human soul. God's law, stated thousands of years after this, is harmonious with this Edenic decree, for it declares: "Behold all souls are mine: as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth, the same shall die." (Ezechiel 18:4, Dy) It follows that if the perfect Adam, "the son of God," never ate the fruit as long as it was forbidden and if he never sinned in rebellion against the Universal Sovereign, he would never die. So his life everlasting in Eden with perfect fruits to eat was conditioned on his everlasting obedience to his God. Clean religion in that original righteous world promised endless life for him as a human soul in the earthly paradise. False religion, as now introduced by Satan the original Serpent, promised new intelligence and a self-determining life as gods if they disobeyed Jehovah God. What did the adoption of the new religion do for mankind? This the following chapters will unfold.