Suppose for a moment that you exist as an omnipotent being in a timeless spiritual dimension and you decided to create a unique universe. You begin by creating a vast host of androgynous beings we will call angels to do your bidding. However they are inextricably linked to your will and exist only to serve you. You create the earth, the sun, moon and stars and populate the earth with all manner of plants, animals and creeping things. Eventually one of the angels that you have gifted with great beauty and intelligence who you named Lucifer the Shining One, becomes filled with himself and decides that he wants to step out of his assigned role and make himself as great as you are and sit on your throne. He then proceeds to lead a rebellion along with all who are with him against you and the rest of your angels and he and the rebels are overcome and thrown down.
“Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon; and the dragon and his angels fought, but they were defeated and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.” (Revelation 12: 7-9)
Finally you decide to create man in your own image, you want the company of beings that will have free will that you can talk to and have fellowship with and so you put him in a beautiful garden and put him over all things on the earth. However there is evil in the universe, a spirit of disobedient willfulness emanating from the Shining One and his followers and so you decide to give the man and his female a test. You admonish him that although you have given him all things, there is one tree in the garden having fruit that they are forbidden to eat.
Now the Shining One, also referred to as The Serpent, having been defeated and thrown down, is hell bent on corrupting everything you have created and he comes into the garden where he convinces the woman to eat some of the forbidden fruit. He tells her that it is the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and that if she eats it she will become wise like the Lord. Thinking that it looks desirable and that it will make her wise, she begins to eat and gives some to the man who also eats. Suddenly they both realize that they are naked, having never consciously been aware of that before, but by eating the forbidden fruit they have suddenly become self-aware. They hide from you knowing that what they had done was an act of disobedience, their conscience has come alive and their eyes are now opened to understand the difference between good and evil.
Knowing beforehand that this was going to happen you used the evil nature of the fallen Lucifer, also known as Satan the Devil, to tempt the couple knowing that they would fail the test so that they would know both good and evil. Like you and unlike your angelic beings they would henceforth have free will to make decisions on their own accord. This was entirely necessary if they were going to become real human beings whose company you will enjoy in the future, rather than have android-like servant minds much like the angels. This is of course an analogous parallel of the dawn of creation account written in the Books of Genesis Chapter 1 - 3 and Revelation Chapter 12 to enable you the reader to understand more fully the context of what happened at the dawn of time.
O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is thy name in all the earth! Thou whose glory above the heavens is chanted by the mouth of babes and infants,
thou hast founded a bulwark because of thy foes, to still the enemy and the avenger. When I look at thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast established; what is man that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that thou dost care for him? Yet thou hast made him little less than God, and dost crown him with glory and honor. Thou hast given him dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the sea. O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is thy name in all the earth! (Psalm 8: 1-9)
There is a consequence that comes with man’s failure to obey God, it is called sin which is the failure and fall from perfection. When they listened to the voice of the Shining One in the Garden they not only disobeyed God’s warning but they capitulated and abdicated their kingship of the earth handing it all to Satan and they took on part of his nature. The first couple Adam and Eve were put out of the idyllic Garden of Eden to fend for themselves against the adversity of the world. The Lord killed an animal to provide skins as a covering for their nakedness, this was the first shedding of blood as a covenant between man and God requiring the shed blood of an innocent as a covering for man’s sin. Looking ahead in time God saw his only Son bruised, beaten and dying on the cross as the final atonement for the sins of all mankind and to ransom the world from the clutches of Satan.
God requires perfection for all who would approach Him and wish to spend eternity in fellowship with Him. “You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48) And He provided the way to accommodate us. “Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me.” (John 14:6)
If you wish to appropriate God’s forgiveness and the atonement afforded by the great sacrifice of His beloved Son Jesus the Messiah, you must come to Him in sorrow for your own miserable failures and with a contrite heart ask Jesus into your life as Savior and Lord. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16) “if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For man believes with his heart and so is justified, and he confesses with his lips and so is saved.” (Romans 10: 9-10)
