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God created Adam out of the dust of the earth and Eve from one of Adam’s ribs. He commanded them to multiply, fill the earth and take dominion over it. They were to establish a world-order with God as the central authority. God’s word was to be the rule of law for the entire world. He placed into their very beings an innate desire to accomplish these instructions. These God-embedded drives for territory and procreation are the foremost of all human motivations.
God then set up a test environment which would determine whether His creatures would obey Him or instead follow the example of Satan, their predecessor. We are painfully aware of their failure in this regard. They followed Satan’s advice and decided they could do very well without God’s seemingly onerous Law. They chose, in effect to be their own gods and to decide for themselves what is good and what is evil (what is right and what is wrong). They foolishly thought they could legislate their own laws and govern themselves as they wished without any help from their Creator.
This of course changed everything. They were evicted from the garden (which would have meant eternal life) and were left to their own devices. Adam had to work for his food and Eve had pain in childbirth. But God also displayed mercy at this time; He told them something about the future that their offspring would experience. There was to be a struggle between the seed of the Woman and the seed of the Serpent in which the Woman’s seed would triumph. God insured that this strife would be perpetuated by placing enmity between the two seeds. This was the origin of the antithesis, the protracted struggle that has permeated all of history.
We learn later on in Scripture that Christ and all those that believe in Him constitute the promised seed of the Woman (Gal. 3:16, 19, 29) while all those that do not believe are the seed of the Devil (John 8:42-45). These two seeds have existed and struggled against each other throughout all of history. The very first son born to Adam and Eve murdered the second son and so it has gone for all the generations that followed. Good and evil, God’s way and man’s (Satan’s) way are always and everywhere in opposition and have, at their root, this basic, fundamental difference in worldviews. Both are still imbued with the drive to take dominion, one attempts to do so under God and in obedience to him, the other in rebellion against God and his law. There is no conciliation or compromise that can be effected, no bridge that can be built to join these two disparate forces together. God created this antithesis when He put the enmity in place; it is rooted in the very fiber of our beings and cannot be eradicated. These two mutually exclusive worldviews will always continue to struggle for dominance. Eventually one or the other will prevail; the world will one day either be all Christian or entirely devoid of Christianity.
The key question of course is, who will win? Will the world end up dominated by good or by evil? Christianity has had the upper hand and made great progress throughout the West for much of last two millennia but it has been lagging for the last century or so. False teachers, primarily located within the church, have led the Woman’s seed (true Christians) astray. She has been deceived into believing that she cannot win, that the forces of Satan are too strong and cannot be overcome without direct intervention by God Himself. She has also been taught that God’s word predicts that, in history, Satan will be victorious and will defeat the church. As a consequence, Christians have withdrawn from the struggle, retreated into their church-oriented, citadel-like environments and allowed the enemy to assume control of virtually every aspect of society at large. None of this is true; the recent ascendance of the forces of evil is not the outworking of an irresistible, predetermined fate that cannot be altered. It is simply the consequence of a self-fulfilling prophecy; when an army is convinced it cannot win, it will not win.
Does that mean it’s all over, that Christians have lost and might at well just quit and go home? I don’t think so and neither does God. He knows the end from the beginning and has told us over and over again that evil cannot last; the meek will inherit the earth and that ultimately righteousness will reign supreme (Is. 65). God’s laws govern the universe and to resist them is utter foolishness. This is true in the social world as well as the physical. Rebellion against God constitutes a flight from what is real. God’s word defines reality and the further one moves away from that word, the further he moves away from reality. We cannot have an enduring civilization that is governed by laws that violate those given by God.
If you’re a Christian and have been brought up (as I was) in some of these pessimistic eschatology’s, I strongly suggest that you take the time to look into the viewpoint outlined above. A good source of material can be found at: http://www.chalcedon.edu/.
God then set up a test environment which would determine whether His creatures would obey Him or instead follow the example of Satan, their predecessor. We are painfully aware of their failure in this regard. They followed Satan’s advice and decided they could do very well without God’s seemingly onerous Law. They chose, in effect to be their own gods and to decide for themselves what is good and what is evil (what is right and what is wrong). They foolishly thought they could legislate their own laws and govern themselves as they wished without any help from their Creator.
This of course changed everything. They were evicted from the garden (which would have meant eternal life) and were left to their own devices. Adam had to work for his food and Eve had pain in childbirth. But God also displayed mercy at this time; He told them something about the future that their offspring would experience. There was to be a struggle between the seed of the Woman and the seed of the Serpent in which the Woman’s seed would triumph. God insured that this strife would be perpetuated by placing enmity between the two seeds. This was the origin of the antithesis, the protracted struggle that has permeated all of history.
We learn later on in Scripture that Christ and all those that believe in Him constitute the promised seed of the Woman (Gal. 3:16, 19, 29) while all those that do not believe are the seed of the Devil (John 8:42-45). These two seeds have existed and struggled against each other throughout all of history. The very first son born to Adam and Eve murdered the second son and so it has gone for all the generations that followed. Good and evil, God’s way and man’s (Satan’s) way are always and everywhere in opposition and have, at their root, this basic, fundamental difference in worldviews. Both are still imbued with the drive to take dominion, one attempts to do so under God and in obedience to him, the other in rebellion against God and his law. There is no conciliation or compromise that can be effected, no bridge that can be built to join these two disparate forces together. God created this antithesis when He put the enmity in place; it is rooted in the very fiber of our beings and cannot be eradicated. These two mutually exclusive worldviews will always continue to struggle for dominance. Eventually one or the other will prevail; the world will one day either be all Christian or entirely devoid of Christianity.
The key question of course is, who will win? Will the world end up dominated by good or by evil? Christianity has had the upper hand and made great progress throughout the West for much of last two millennia but it has been lagging for the last century or so. False teachers, primarily located within the church, have led the Woman’s seed (true Christians) astray. She has been deceived into believing that she cannot win, that the forces of Satan are too strong and cannot be overcome without direct intervention by God Himself. She has also been taught that God’s word predicts that, in history, Satan will be victorious and will defeat the church. As a consequence, Christians have withdrawn from the struggle, retreated into their church-oriented, citadel-like environments and allowed the enemy to assume control of virtually every aspect of society at large. None of this is true; the recent ascendance of the forces of evil is not the outworking of an irresistible, predetermined fate that cannot be altered. It is simply the consequence of a self-fulfilling prophecy; when an army is convinced it cannot win, it will not win.
Does that mean it’s all over, that Christians have lost and might at well just quit and go home? I don’t think so and neither does God. He knows the end from the beginning and has told us over and over again that evil cannot last; the meek will inherit the earth and that ultimately righteousness will reign supreme (Is. 65). God’s laws govern the universe and to resist them is utter foolishness. This is true in the social world as well as the physical. Rebellion against God constitutes a flight from what is real. God’s word defines reality and the further one moves away from that word, the further he moves away from reality. We cannot have an enduring civilization that is governed by laws that violate those given by God.
If you’re a Christian and have been brought up (as I was) in some of these pessimistic eschatology’s, I strongly suggest that you take the time to look into the viewpoint outlined above. A good source of material can be found at: http://www.chalcedon.edu/.