The Discovery of Genesis (40 page)

How bold for the devil to openly refute God’s Word when he told Eve, “You will not die!” Did this mean that the devil was promising the woman immortality, whereas God said man would become mortal if he disobeyed ? Lucifer was determined to prove God a liar, for God had said that if the forbidden fruit were eaten, death would result. It surely must have seemed at first that the devil’s claim of immortality for mankind was true when Adam and Eve did not immediately die after eating the forbidden fruit. It was actually a number of years later that Abel, one of Adam’s sons, was killed by his brother. At last many centuries later, Adam himself also died. Man was indeed subject to death! To escape from this predicament, the devil must perpetrate another theory, that actually there is a part of man that never dies, called “the soul.” In the Chinese character for
soul
, the source of the idea of the immortality of the soul is depicted, for the character reads, the devil
says
.

It was the devil who said, “You will not die.” Lucifer, with the help of this fallen angels, is able to cleverly impersonate the voice, mannerisms, and appearance of the dead by ghostly apparitions. For this reason, God has completely condemned witchcraft and spiritualistic mediums who communicate with the “departed spirits.”

The warning is given in the New Testament, “Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these: … Idolatry,
witchcraft
, hatred … of which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God” (Galatians 5:19–21 KJV). These “departed spirits” are actually the fallen angels (Revelation 12:9) who are attempting to demonstrate that the soul is that portion of man which never dies.

Lucifer carefully laid his
snare
of four attractive statements, all with the intent to deceive, which beguiled Eve into disobedience:

1. “You will not die.
   
2. “God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened.
   
3. “You will be like God.
   
4. [You will] “know good and evil” (Genesis 3:4,5).
   

There are additional symbols,
and
, for
net, snare.
Interestingly, the numeral
four
has similarities to each form of
snare
, for it can be compressed within a character-to
, and anciently it was written
or as
. Eve’s downfall was to be caught in Lucifer’s
snare
of
four
deceptive statements.