11.3 The Curse
© 2016 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
This lesson is not an exposition of the curse God pronounced against the serpent and against Adam and Eve in Genesis 3, although we will certainly draw from those words. Rather, we want to look at the entirety of a shattered creation.
Remember that God defined for us “subdue all” in Genesis 2 – Adam speaking into the animals their very nature. This definition is found again in Romans 8:28, the pro-thesis of God. Adam was the master of the first creation, and the gifts and calling of God are without repentance. What does that mean?
Pond Scum
I want to quote from a brilliant satirist named Fred Reed, a writer very similar to Mark Twain. I love to read such writers because they are honest. – from Fred Reed in Pond Scum. “Nor is there support for the Christian notion of a loving God in the natural world. When a young giraffe is attacked by hyenas, disemboweled and bled until it collapses and the hyenas begin eating it while it is still alive, I for one cannot see much loving kindness in it. Just a giraffe, you say. It probably seems otherwise to giraffes, agreeable creatures who eat leaves. But then, what choice do the hyenas have?” Why is Fred Reed correct? Why is there no (or even little) evidence of a “loving God” in the animal world?
When Did Death Begin?
The implication of the Biblical account of sin and death is that before Adam’s sin there was no death. Before Adam’s sin, hyenas did not eat giraffes. And, in the new creation, according to Isaiah, hyenas will not eat giraffes. The lion will lay down with the lamb.
The power of the gods of evolution, time and chance, has pushed that thought away from most Christians today – Haven’t hyenas been eating giraffes for millions of years? What does that have to do with a Bible story? This is why we must know the difference between facts in the ground and any theory that attempts to arrange those facts. The flood of Noah explains the facts better than ages of time.
Hope
Is the continual violence and the absence of mercy as found in the natural world the direct result of Adam’s action, of Adam defining heaven/earth by death? That’s an extraordinary idea, one we must walk entirely out onto a limb to adopt. Yet it is the only possibility for hope.
The creation in which we live now is filled with beauty and with agony, with awesome wonder and with unmitigated horror, with immense good and with hideous evil. I do not believe in any form of “rapture” ever; God does not zap. Whatever comes from God comes up from life arising through faith step by step.
From Glory to Glory
Consider the new creation and the old inside of us. We were born entirely into Adam’s creation. We have known great joys; we have suffered indescribable pain. Then one day, for me when I was seven, the new creation entered into us as a seed. We were conceived a second time.
But the new creation did not come forth full and complete in that moment; that is, our bodies did not zap into incorruptible resurrection bodies in that instant, nor did we stride across the earth setting creation free. The new is hardly known at first. It grows and develops, step by step, faith to faith, glory to glory. Then one day we understand something we never had known.
As if the New Is All
The new is the only thing real. The old truly has passed away, all things are brand new, all things are of God. Yet we are fully aware that the old remains as our outer appearance.
And we know that God’s purpose is to prove His Word through faith inside of vessels of weakness. That the life of Jesus also might be revealed in our dying flesh (2 Corinthians 4:11).
We walk as if the new is the only thing that exists BEFORE the new will ever swallow up the old. For we who are in this tent groan, being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed, but further clothed, that mortality may be swallowed up by life (2 Corinthians 5:4).
Swallowed Up
Let’s take this same word, now, and apply it to the entirety of Adam’s heaven/earth. For we who are in this present heaven/earth, the appearance of the old creation, being burdened, not because we want the creation to be destroyed, but further clothed, that the old creation may be swallowed up by the life of the new creation.
Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away (Revelation 21:1). Remember that John’s vision is nothing other than the gospel in a third form. Here is the EXACT SAME reality from Paul. If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new (2 Cor. 5:17).
Two Rivers
Christ is always all first before anything not Christ could ever vanish away. The new creation must be completed through us first in fullness before the new, flowing out from us, will swallow up the old.
But we are investigating the curse that remains upon the present visible heaven/earth by appearance only. And we are considering two rivers, the river of death flowing out of Adam’s heart shaping the entirety of what is now known as the old creation. And the river of life, flowing out of our hearts, setting all creation free.
Subdue Remains
Just as Adam was the master of the old; so Christ through us, His body, is the Master of the new. “Subdue” remains God’s command to us. Adam subdued by death; we subdue by life.
Mary Shelley wrote the initial story of Dr. Frankenstein at the age of 18 in a contest of who could come up with the best horror story to fill the time on a bleak and rainy afternoon in the summer of 1816. The summer of 1816 was the year of no summer after Mt. Tambora in the east Indies had blown, far, far greater than Krakatoa, covering the entire globe with ash and darkness and bringing starvation to multitudes around the planet.
Dr. Frankenstein’s Monster
The story of Dr. Frankenstein’s monster remains to this day as the best allegory ever penned depicting the relationship between the human lust for knowledge and for what our limited knowledge can create and the horrors that our “scientific” creations then bring back upon us. Most people have no idea of the horrors of Adam’s present creation in our generation.
In his vision, John saw an abyss, a bottomless pit, opening up and darkness arising upon the earth from that pit. John’s vision was fulfilled from January of 1942 when the pit opened, until May of 1948 when the beast, crawling up out of the masses of humanity, set itself upon this earth.
Human DNA
At Christ Revealed Bible Institute, we have used the model of human DNA extensively as an illustration of Christ being formed in us.
I make no predictions regarding the future; New Testament prophecy, including John’s vision, has nothing to do with “predicting” the future. New Testament prophecy is to call forth Christ out from invisible substance and into all present reality. But I do attempt to understand the world as it is and have pursued that interest since age 5.
Human DNA is under attack across the entire globe and from many different sources; it may not survive.
Nuclear Radiation
Every one of the following human “inventions,” by itself, attacks the DNA found in the sperm cells of young men as well as the eggs of girls, all of which they possess from birth. First is man-made nuclear radiation, from the explosions of nuclear bombs as well as the incredible amounts of weaponry exploded across the entire Middle East by American violence and terror and the continued disasters at nuclear power plants. (The Japanese government has confirmed in the last few months that the worst claims of the darkest doomsayers regarding Fukishima, were, in fact, the reality from the start. And Fukishima has not slowed down at all five years later.)
Three More Horrors
Genetically engineered crops also attack human DNA, some are designed purposefully to do so. Young men who eat non-organic corn in any form will be far less likely to father healthy children or even children at all. Cell phone and wireless radiation, especially as young girls keep cell phones close to their bodies and as they spend hours in wi-fi environments in schools around the planet, is constantly damaging the DNA in eggs not yet conceived. The incredible cocktail of deadly man-made poisons we take into our bodies through “food” and “medicine” is beyond belief. That mix of poison alters human DNA. Vaccinations are a horror of human destruction. Not only do they contribute to so much modern affliction in children, but they also mutate human DNA. (I speak from science.)
Four Monsters of Destruction
Four separate monsters created by “brilliant” modern man, starting with the most evil, nuclear bombs, in January of 1942 out from the lust of the American beast to steal, to kill, and to destroy, each one by itself is altering human DNA in the young, maybe irretrievably. And each of these four monsters is defended with all fury by press and government throughout the world. In incredible contrast, the one non-“pollutant” that is actually doing much good by causing a huge explosion in plant growth across the earth, carbon dioxide, is condemned by the same world that insists on forcing those four destroyers upon all mankind.
The River of Death
The river of death begun by Adam and added to enormously by his children today is coming to its full conclusion. Neither humanity nor the earth may survive the insane evil and lust for death that fill the hearts of most humans, including the hearts of too many of our Christian brethren.
In dying you shall die. God does not send the death; man does.
But against this ocean of death coming out of Adam, I want to position another river. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water (John 7:38).
The River of Life
By man death, by man also the resurrection of the dead (1 Corinthians 15:21 – with the non-Paul words removed).
Here is what I am driving towards. I do not see the day after as any different than the day before as far as the history of man on this earth is concerned. I see the new, the river of life flowing out of our bellies, swallowing up the old, step by step, transformation by transformation. Yes, I see all demons cast off of this planet and the transformation of our bodies as momentous experiences. But then I see the new creation swallowing up the old as our ministry for the next 1000 years.
For Their Sakes
All of these things are ideas, important, yes, but let’s make the curse real for each one of us.
I am almost 60; I’ve had most of my run of the short bitter-sweet time in this age that never works out the way one had hoped, though all of it I place into Jesus. I don’t care about myself; I care about my children and about their children. I want a new world. I want life in which they can live in joy and peace with no thought of evil or death. What shall I withhold? – Nothing.
I would see God prove all the Word that He speaks through me and victory flowing out from my belly – for their sakes.