Creation - Man in the Garden of Eden - The Fall. (GENESIS 1-3) Part 4

There are still other points of practical interest to be gathered up. The descent of all mankind from our first parents determines our spiritual relationship to Adam. In Adam all have sinned and fallen. But, on
the other hand, it also determines our spiritual relationship to the Lord Jesus Christ, as the second Adam,
which rests on precisely the same grounds. For "as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also
bear the image of the heavenly," and "as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." "For
as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made
righteous." The descent of all mankind from one common stock has in times past been questioned by
some, although Scripture expressly teaches that "He has made of one blood all nations, for to dwell on
the face of the earth." It is remarkable that this denial, which certainly never was shared by the most
competent men of science, has quite lately been, we may say, almost universally abandoned, and the
original unity of the human race in their common descent is now a generally accepted fact.
Here, moreover, we meet for the first time with that strange resemblance to revealed religion which
makes heathenism so like and yet so unlike the religion of the Old Testament. As in the soul of man we

Creation - Man in the Garden of Eden - The Fall. (GENESIS 1-3) Part 3

Of all His works God only "created man in His own image: in the image of God created He him." This
expression refers not merely to the intelligence with which God endowed, and the immortality with
which He gifted man, but also to the perfect moral and spiritual nature which man at the first possessed.
And all his surroundings were in accordance with his happy state. God "put him into the garden of
Eden* to dress it and to keep it," and gave him a congenial companion in Eve, whom Adam recognized
as bone of his bones, and flesh of his flesh. Thus as God had, by setting apart the Sabbath day, indicated
worship as the proper relationship between man and his Creator, so He also laid in Paradise the
foundation of civil society by the institution of marriage and of the family. (Comp. Mark 10:6, 9)
* Many different views have been broached as to the exact locality of Eden, which it would scarcely be
suitable to discuss in this place. The two opinions deserving most attention are those which place it either
near the northern highlands of Armenia, or else far south in the neighborhood of the Persian Gulf. We
know that two of the streams mentioned as issuing from Paradise were the Tigris and the Euphrates, and

Creation - Man in the Garden of Eden - The Fall. (GENESIS 1-3) Part 2

The first verse in the book of Genesis simply states the
general fact, that "In the beginning" - whenever that may have been - "God created the heaven and the earth." Then, in the second verse, we find earth described as it was at the close of the last great
revolution, preceding the present state of things: "And the earth was without form and void; and
darkness was upon the face of the deep." An almost indefinite space of time, and many changes, may
therefore have intervened between the creation of heaven and earth, as mentioned in ver. 1, and the
chaotic state of our earth, as described in ver. 2. As for the exact date of the first creation, it may be
safely affirmed that we have not yet the knowledge sufficient to arrive at any really trustworthy
conclusion.

Map

1 Bethlehem Jesus was born in Bethlehem, a village

just a few miles south of Jerusalem in Judea (Luke 2:1-38;

Matt 2:1-22).

2 Nazareth Jesus grew up in Nazareth (Matt 2:23;

Luke 2:39-40), a small village in the southern part of

Galilee, 65 miles north of Jerusalem. When he began

his ministry, he preached here but was rejected in his