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mikekle
Guest
I understand what you are saying here…I can only imagine what knowledge adam and even had…I bet it was amazing!!!From the Baltimore Catechism, chapter 5: 52. What was the chief gift bestowed on Adam and Eve by God?
The chief gift bestowed on Adam and Eve by God was sanctifying grace, which made them children of God and gave them the right to heaven.
I bolded the gift which is particularly germaine to our topic. As a result of the Fall, our appetites or passions buffet us from below. It’s why we struggle with really really wanting something while our minds are telling us NO!!!
- What other gifts were bestowed on Adam and Eve by God?
The other gifts bestowed on Adam and Eve by God were *happiness in the Garden of Paradise, great knowledge, **control of the passions by reason, ***and freedom from suffering and death.
This is mentioned later in the chapter I linked above, but I will explain here as well. The qualities or gifts which God gave Adam and Eve (which would have passed down to us if they hadn’t messed up!) were *above *our nature.
Now imagine this: a man is given millions of dollars by his grandfather. This is not usual, and the man did not work for it, so the money was a free gift, above the man’s “nature” so to speak. This is like God’s giving Adam and Eve the gifts.
Now, imagine the man who received the money was married and had some children, and then he and his wife gambled the money away! So by the time the children are 4 or 5, all the money is *gone. *The family is then back to square one: their “natural” state along with the rest of us.
Now, God told Adam and Eve what would happen if they ate some of that fruit, so it was not unfair for Him to impose those consequences when they ate the fruit, was it? Kind of like a father who tells his son he can no longer drive the family car if he gets a ticket, then takes away the keys when the son gets a ticket. Adam and Eve had everything they could possible want, and only one rule, and they had to go and break that one rule
Well, God did take away something from the angels who rebelled against them: he kicked them out of Heaven, the best place, and sent them to Hell, the utter worst place.
The reason the bad angels did not lose any of their abilities is that those abilities are part of their nature; they are not above their nature like the gifts Adam and Eve had and lost. We still have all our abilities, those parts of us which are part of our nature, just as do the bad angels. We just don’t have the “millions of dollars” God had freely given Adam and Eve.
Hope this helps! I really like the Baltimore Catechisms, and after reading them, I read Radio Replies, which are fabulous!
When you look at what adam and eve did though, it was fairly mild in terms of sin, they ate something God told them not to, its not like they went to God and said, I want all your power, I want to be worshiped, I want to rule over Heaven and earth…NO, they simply ate something they were not supposed to eat…BUT, with Satan, he actually did all the things I just mentioned, so his ‘crime’ or sin against God was FAR FAR worse, plus, not that it could much worse, but Satan managed to convince and ‘steal’ 1/3 of Gods angels away from God to serve him!!! WOW…Is there anything worse Satan COULD have done…I dont think so!!!
Yet, after all of this, Satan, and the demons were still allowed to retain their powers, if it was in their nature or not, they should not have been able to keep anything! Plus, they werent really imprisoned in Hell, ( the way we think of it anyway), Yes, they were kicked out of Heaven, but it seems this is what Satan wanted, if he could not have all of Gods power and authority that is, if they were truly trapped in hell, like human souls, they would not have the ability to come and go for the past 2000 yrs!, and since we are taught Satan and the other demons are the ones tormenting and torturing human souls in hell, that kind of implies that they ‘rule’ over that place, and control what goes on there, so again, this does not really seem like a prison to me, seems more like a base of operations for them, which they can come and go freely.