July 18, 2024 | Silver Spring, Maryland, United States | Ted N.C. Wilson, President, General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists
Hello, friends. In the beginning, when God made this world, everything was perfect. The garden in which He placed our first parents was lush and beautiful. The animals were friendly, the fruit delicious, and the flowers never faded. Adam and Eve loved each other and together they enjoyed not only the amazing place God had given to them, but face to face fellowship with angels and with the Creator Himself.
While there were many wonderful things to eat in this garden home, one tree stood out above all the others—the Tree of Life, which stood in the middle of the garden. By eating the fruit from this tree, Adam and Eve would live forever.
But there was another tree “in the midst of the garden” (Gen. 2:9) that would bring death—“the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” God warned them not to eat from this tree, saying “for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Gen. 2:17, NKJV).
Why was there a tree like that in the Garden of Eden, you might wonder. It is because God is a God of freedom, and He gives people the opportunity to choose to follow Him or not. He invites His creatures to choose Him out of love, rather than being forced to obey Him.
As we have seen earlier in our study, there was an angel in heaven who allowed pride and envy to grow and fester in his heart. He rebelled against his Creator, claiming God was an unfair tyrant. That wicked angel, now known as Satan, was cast out of heaven, along with the angels who followed him.
When God created Adam and Eve, Satan was determined to ruin them and their descendants, and claim the world as his own.
We read in The Great Controversy that Adam and Eve “had been perfectly happy in obedience to the law of God, and this fact was a constant testimony against the claim which Satan had urged in heaven, that God’s law was oppressive and opposed to the good of His creatures” (The Great Controversy, p. 531).
The thought that God’s law was oppressive never entered the minds of Adam and Eve, but Satan made plans to entrap them. The only place he was allowed in the garden was the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil—the one place in which our first parents were to stay away, having been warned about their Satanic enemy.
But one day, Eve found herself alone at the tree, staring at its magnificent looking fruit. Employing a shimmering serpent as his medium, Satan addressed Eve in a pleasant, mesmerizing voice:
“Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” (Gen. 3:1, NIV). She answered, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’” (vs. 2).
Here, Eve is misquoting God, adding something He had not said, a mistake that Satan took advantage of. It is always dangerous to add or take away from what God has said.
Through the serpent, Satan then proclaimed the first lie ever stated on Earth. Directly contradicting God, he said, “You will not certainly die . . . For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Gen. 3:4, NIV).
It is always dangerous to argue with the devil. We read in The Great Controversy, “Had Eve refrained from entering into argument with the tempter, she would have been safe; but she ventured to parley with him and fell a victim to his wiles.” The author continues, “It is thus that many are still overcome. They doubt and argue concerning the requirements of God; and instead of obeying the divine commands, they accept human theories, which but disguise the devices of Satan (The Great Controversy, pp. 531, 532).
To make his lies more attractive, Satan always mixes in a little truth. In this case, the truth was that their eyes would indeed be opened, and they would know evil as well as good—something God never intended for them to experience.
As we know, “Eve yielded to temptation; and through her influence, Adam was led into sin. They accepted the words of the serpent, that God did not mean what He said; they distrusted their Creator and imagined that He was restricting their liberty and that they might obtain great wisdom and exaltation by transgressing His law” (The Great Controversy, p. 532).
Satan’s lie told in Eden, “You will not surely die” lives on today, in direct contradiction to God’s warning in the Garden of Eden, and what He tells us in His Word today.
“For dust you are, and to dust you shall return,” proclaimed Christ to Adam after the fall (Gen. 3:19, NKJV). “Romans 5:12 tells us “. . . through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned.” And in Ezekiel 18:20 we are assured, “The soul who sins shall die” (NKJV).
And yet, contrary to God’s Word, many believe the soul never dies, living eternally either in heaven or hell. This doctrine of the devil has done untold damage to the hearts and minds of generations, mispresenting God in the worse possible way.
In our next video, we will look more closely at what the Bible says regarding death, and what it tells us about the character of God. In the meantime, we can rest assured that God’s Word is true, believing that “the living know that they will die; But the dead know nothing, And they have no more reward, For the memory of them is forgotten” (Eccl. 9:5, NKJV).
As we consider this very important topic, I invite you to pray with me just now.
Father in Heaven, thank you for the clear instruction in the Bible given to us regarding the state of the dead. We understand from Scripture that the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing. Lord, help us to stay away from false understandings. False doctrines that have been inspired by the devil himself that the soul lives on after death. For the Bible does not say that. Lord, guide us as we understand for ourselves this precious truth about death and about life. And Lord, we place ourselves completely on your side, on the Bible side, in understanding the fullest truth about the state of the dead. Thank you for hearing us now and bless each of us until we meet again and again. Look at this important subject. In Jesus name, we ask it. Amen.