Who is Satan? Is he Lucifer?

I do know God is just. He will do whats necessary.

So sin was created when we "accepted the Satans offer. But heres the thing. It doesnt tie up with evolution that way though

I must say that I definitely believe that angels choose to sin, and did in fact rebel against God.

Jude 1:6 mentions angels that did not keep their proper abode. That’s the enochian angels and not Satan and his angels though.

2 Peter 2:4 also mentions angels that sinned are cast down into Tartarus ( still studying through it that’s closer to hell or hades ).

1 John 3:8 also mentions that the devil sinned and has in fact been sinning from the beginning.

Though a weaker argument it’s mentioned that the men of Sodom went after strange flesh and I believe that strange flesh was the flesh of angels , and not a reference to homosexuality. Based on that and the angels in Enoch I believe angels have a battle of flesh and spirit as well. Just merely a different flesh than ours.

As to why the rebellion happened. I believe revelation is clear.

Up until Satan tried to kill Jesus he was still considered an angel of the lord, despite sinning. Just like David was considered a man after Gods heart but also sinned. I imagine Satan went beyond what he was suppose to do and tried to destroy Jesus but failed and that sparked michael to come
After him. They clearly already had problems based off of Jude when it says Michael and Satan argued over the body of Moses. After he lost the war, and was cast down, he knew his time was short and begin to do what he did.

I personally don’t think God made him tempt Jesus. I think all the way back to when Herod tried to kill Jesus was when Satan went into war and was cast out and by the time he was tempting a Jesus in the wilderness Satan was already pursuing his own path.

Hmm interesting the refernces of hades and tartarus. Both known from the greek mythology. Do you think they "borrowed " it? Im skeptical.

Second the bible does refer to “men with men right”

If I was going to go for a non-Biblical theology I might look to the “Fallen” series or the Zoroastrianism-like theology of Susan Cooper’s “Dark is Rising” series, or… even more radical… the theology of the “repairman Jack” series. All of these make more sense to me than this book of Enoch stuff. But anyway… that is all fantasy and science fiction right?

Looking up “Enochian angles” is kind of interesting… part of a magical system by John Dee and Edward Kelly in the 16th century.

I think that the enochian angels were real. The Bible refers to them several times. Jude seems to believe in a book that contained the prophecies of Enoch.

As to the book we have now, I think there is a good chance it’s very similar to whatever the original story was but just like genesis and many other places it’s full of metaphors, ahistorical content, and hyperbolic language and poetry.

I think that in greek hades and Tartarus ( or their english equivalents ) we’re close enough to their concept of Sheol. I don’t think it was stolen as much as compatible.

Offer? Sin began with Adam and Eve blaming everything and everyone but themselves for their own mistake.

I dont know since you consider them real why dont take the offer satan made into consideration as well? If you eateth by this you will become gods

Ah no… that wasn’t an offer. The snake didn’t offer to make them gods if they ate the fruit. He said that by eating the fruit they would become like God knowing good and evil. And it was true – misleading, but true. But God warned them this would be mortally dangerous. And it was. Not the knowledge of good and evil, but prematurely obtaining the position and authority to teach good and evil to others – that was dangerous.

Do I consider Adam and Eve to be real? Yes. First human beings too. Just not the first homo sapiens. So this has nothing to do with the “Origin of the Species.” I do not believe that humanity is just a biological species. We are also the children of God. That is we have two sets of inheritance. One is in our DNA which is a product of evolution and by which we are brethren to all life on the planet. The other is an inheritance of mind from God transmitted by language. Sin is found in the corruption of the latter inheritance and not in the biological one. So this has nothing whatsoever to do with evolution.

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That’s basically how I see it too. Though I believe all the other humans could have understood it but following the same pattern we see I believe God simply choose a remnant and taught them his will.

But ideas in this inheritance of mind can travel very fast, spreading throughout the world in less than a century. In fact, I think we can see some of this in the beginning of Genesis chapter 6 when it says the descendants of Adam and Eve became giants, men of reknown, which I take to be leaders of human civilization. And then in chapter 11 when this spread out to become all the languages and cultures of the world.

But this is why I don’t much like gbob’s idea of Adam and Eve being 5 million years ago. I would think this input from God would be a significant contribution to the development of human civilization. So it makes more sense to me that Adam and Eve was between 6,000 and 12,000 years ago closer to what the Bible suggests.

Yes I believe God’s justice is perfect, because we basically get what we ask for. It is just very much better to trust in God for Him to give us what we need instead of what we think we want.

But the point was is that heaven and hell is not a matter of how good you are. You cannot get to heaven by simply being a good person. And frankly, the truth is that we are all sinners, so if bad people go to hell then we all go to hell. I believe the reality is that we are under a law of sin which is much like a law of gravity where everything eventually falls. This is because sin consists of self-destructive habits which erode our free will, integrity, and everything else of value within us. If you want a visible illustration then just look at the life of a drug addict. Talk about whether they are a good person and whether they deserve what happens to them is all nonsense. It is a degenerative disease and by the time it is through with them there is very little left of that good person after very long. Sin is the same.

We need to be rescued. We need a savior – a doctor who knows how this sin infecting us can be cut out. All we can do is lie on the doctor’s table under his knife – all we can do is have faith.

Thats impossible. Our species evolved by thousands at a time. Not one couple first one couple second. They cannor be the first humans since a lot of others evolved at the same time too

Yes homo sapiens species evolved thousands at a time. The idea that the species started with only a couple is absurd. The idea that Adam and Eve are the sole genetic progenitors of human species is not something I will ever agree with. Nor do I think the Bible supports any such thing either.

However, I do not believe in this idea that humanity is just a biological species. Humanity is more than just homo sapiens. You can believe that is all it means to be human, but I do not. You can believe that human beings are nothing more than a genetic sequence, but I do not. Are you also into eugenics hoping to kill off everyone who does not match up to some genetic purity of your genetic idea of what is human? In any case, I explained all this and you ignored it, for what reason I do not know. Can you not read anything longer than one sentence? Do you have to take what a person says out of context or are you intentionally being dishonest in this way? If so, it will be my pleasure to treat you to the same tactics, if you like.

So it IS possible for Adam and Eve to be the first human beings, if being human is more than just a biological species. It is possible for Adam and Eve to be the first human beings if it takes more than just a genetic code to be human. Being human is more than just chemistry, more than just instincts and diet, more than just biological functions. Being human is also about these ideas we have regarding love, justice, goodness, and being a person – things found in the human mind which does not come to us in DNA. Thus we can believe what the Bible says fully, both that Adam and Eve were created by God and that there were others on the earth from whom they could take wives and whom Cain could be afraid of in Gen 4:14. Created not by magic as golems of dust and bone, but still created according to Genesis 2:7, “formed man from the dust from the ground,” i.e. formed our bodies out of the stuff (atoms and molecules) of the earth according to the laws of the earth and nature by evolution. But “god breathed” is the meaning of inspiration and so “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life,” is not about some animating magic but about God’s inspiration giving life to the human mind so that we not only eat and reproduce like animals but also think like people.

You, of course, are free to believe otherwise. You can believe we are just animals like any other and all that is important is that we eat, defecate, and reproduce. But I will not agree with you. Sorry!

So, I quite agree that homo sapiens species evolved thousands at a time and there was never just two members of the homo sapiens species. But I will never agree with you that our humanity is just DNA and a biological species. I quite agree that the idea that Adam and Eve are the sole genetic progenitors of the human race is scientifically unsupportable, but I totally disagree with your idea that human beings are nothing but animals and our humanity is nothing but our biology and chemistry.

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Ohh man speaking about taking things out of context. I never claimed that we are just DNA. The argument was about the historicity of Adam and Eve as the first homo sapiens. And according to your words since we evloved by thousands adam and eve even if they were historical (which they might be) cannot be the first humans since there are thousands of them evolved like them at the same time!!

Yes you did.

And you did it again here.

Evolution is just DNA. No inheritance of acquired characteristics. Right here you are saying that being human is just DNA and nothing more.

I disagree with this logical equivalence you keep making.

I say there is a difference between the biological species “homo sapiens” and human beings.

The biological species “homo sapiens” evolved.

But human beings are more than just “homo sapiens” — more than just animals, DNA, and evolution.

We are children of God because we have another inheritance from God which is not in our DNA.

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Yeah so God randomly picked two out of thousands of his creation. Thats plain false. So the two were the lucky ones? I think not. In my understanding adam means humanity where as eve the meaning is life. So humanity as a whole rejected God. Not a lucky couple of humans beign ignorant amd now we are suffering for their mistakes.

That is how God does thing all through the Bible. God spoke to ONE man, Noah, and told him to build an arc. God spoke to Abram. ONE man in Ur not to everybody in Ur. God spoke to Moses and expected Moses to speak to everyone else. God starts things small because from small beginning things can spread and grow. AND God was incarnated as ONE man and died as ONE man on a cross for all.

Yep that is the way of life. We who come after suffer from our ancestor’s mistakes just as we benefit from the rest of the inheritance we have from them.

Nope. Thats cruel. Its cruel to pay the consequences of others. God would not do that and i refuse to believe it.