3:11 And he said, who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded you that you should not eat?

3:12 And the man said, the woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.

3:13 And the LORD God said unto the woman, what is this that you have done? And the woman said, the serpent misled me, and I did eat.

3:14 And the LORD God said unto the serpent, because you have done this, you are cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon your belly shall you go, and dust shall you eat all the days of your life:

3:15 And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; it shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.

3:16 Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; in sorrow you shall bring forth children; and your desire shall be to your husband, and he shall rule over you.

3:17 And unto Adam he said, because you have hearkened unto the voice of your wife, and have eaten of the tree, of which I commanded you, saying, you shall not eat of it: cursed is the ground for your sake; in sorrow shall you eat of it all the days of your life; (Genesis 3:11-17 KJV)

          Looking at the first chapters of the book of Genesis, most people only see what is written instead of looking deeper, seeing the deeper meaning, and miss the important point. Yes, the sin was eating from the tree which disobeyed God, but it goes even further than that. Neither Adam nor Eve atoned for the sin. Instead, they pointed a finger at each other.

          Mankind is doomed to die because of what they did. God gave them a chance to admit their sin, ask forgiveness, and say it will not be done again. All they had to do was to ask for another chance.

          The way I see it is God put the tree there, He could have placed it where Adam and Eve could not get to it, and everything would have been okay. He put the temptation there to see if they would do as He asked and, if they did not, to admit to it and ask forgiveness. That is all they had to do.

          Humans were made in the likeness of God, with the same virtues and could have lived forever. Now, forever, we must live only for a little time and die.

          When God told Adam that if he ate from the tree he would die, I imagined Adam thought it would be immediate. When he did not immediately die, I imagine he thought God was wrong about that. He later found out differently.

          God takes His time in doing things (our computation of time and God’s computation is different) and tests us in everything we do. When God say something, take it as fact because God does not lie or cloud the truth like the serpent. There are many serpents among us (these still stand on two legs) and they subvert the truth whereby we pay the price for disobeying God. Because Adam and Eve disobeyed God we forever will pay. Beware the many serpents and don’t attempt to say the serpent made you do it when you knew better.