I haven't been on here for a long time only to discover a 9 page discussion on a question that is so basic to Christianity that if you don't believe it or understand it than you simply aren't Christian.

An animal died in Eden to cover sin. Cain was punished because he was unwilling to offer a living sacrifice. Abraham on Mount Moriah, the passover, and then Jesus Himself. Anyone who argues against "without the shedding of blood there is no remission for sins" is either really unintelligent or is an agent of satan.

The only thing that kept Jesus on that cross was His love for you and I. He could have come down, He could have summoned all the angelic host to come to His aid.

When Peter tried to say that Jesus was not going to die, Jesus abruptly rebuked him "Get behind Me satan!".

He says the same to all who deny His sacrificial death.

"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

Happy Passover everyone

Amen.

Almost a week later and have moving from one place to another, I will also now add my "Amen!" to that post.

As we are well on our way between Christmas and Easter, it is probably a good time to bump this thread and say once again that post #87650 was a very good post.

It seems past posts put a lot of emphases on the sequence of explanations in Genesis chapter two, to try to prove Eve was not present to hear God's commandment to stay away from the tree of knowledge of good and evil and thus she didn't hear the Divine warning that they would die if they ate of it.
This is a distortion of truth built on an assumption that Genesis two contradicts Genesis chapter one.

We need to understand that Genesis chapter two, is not written to give a sequential order of Creation. That was done in chapter One. If we insist that it gives a sequential outline of Creation, then we are in conflict with Genesis chapter one.
Genesis chapter two is simply adding details to fit INTO the frame work revealed in Geneses chapter one, it is NOT introducing a different order of creation in conflict with Genesis One.

We see themes developed in chapter TWO
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In case you didn?t notice, in Genesis chapter one we have Plants created on day three, then on day six there are Animals, and lastly, Humans.
In Genesis chapter two,, it appears first Man was created, then Plants ,then animals, and finally Woman. Two very different orders. But the intention is not to present a new order, but giving us details to help flesh out the original order in chapter one.
It's only when people demand a new sequential order of creation in chapter two that people find issues to challenge the truthfulness of scripture and even challenge the basics of salvation.

That's actually why there is such an attack on the whole Creation story in general, Satan wants to confuse the whole salvation story as well as the reliability of scripture and the reason why we need salvation..


ADAM AND EVE were both fully warned that eating of the forbidden fruit meant SURE death.

As I understand both the Bible and Mrs. White; the death of Jesus was critical for the entire great controversy, not only for the sinful race.

God has a very unassuming nature. God reveals himself to us in the finite world through the Trinity. God as the almighty great power who is the creator, not the creature. God as personal intermate friend, These two revelations are objective, but a thing we have in common with God is that we are both objective and subjective. So we have the third member of the Godhead, where God is revealing Himself and relating to our subjective experience. God does not like to use his authority to tell us what to believe and why, but he wants to work with not only our objective but also our subjective so that truth becomes a part of us.

Creatures started out with a love for God, but they were of course immature. Their love for God can be compared to children saying "My Daddy can beat up your daddy." Love needed to grow. There were three major questions that all creatures need to answer: First is God really God or just a higher form of life who is using the law to keep the rest of creation in submission and enslavement. The next two are connected because God claims to be both just and merciful. Can God really be both or does he need to be one or the other. Related to this is if sinners die, what is the nature of their death?

The first being that reached a point for the Holy Spirit to raise these topics with was Lucifer. Had Lucifer taken the time to look for the answers to these questions he would have loved God more and help others to deal with these questions. The universe would thus mature, and the odds of someone choosing rebellion would have decreases. The tree of the "knowledge" of good and evil technically means the experience of good and evil. Who knows evil the most, God or Satan? The universe needed to understand these issues. Experience is of course the best teacher; but God wanted us to learn in the second best way. But was not surprised when the universe began to learn about evil through experience.

For a totally unexplainable (I want to say reason, but reason does NOT fit here) as the Holy Spirit was bringing up these issues to Lucifer, Lucifer did not look for the answers. Instead of living with and wrestling with these issues and searching for answers; Lucifer began to congratulate himself to be smart enough to come up with these amazing questions. He turned these three questions into three lies about God. The first was that God really was not God but a higher evolved life form using the power he currently has to place a law over us that prevents us from evolving to his equal. This is a direct attack on God the Father. As for justice and mercy; :Lucifer said that God can't be both. He had to be either one or the other. Since he is a cruel arbitrary tyrant he will be just and kill all who break his law. Well, maybe, just maybe if you do a good job, now a super good job in appeasing God he might change from his wrath towards you.This is a direct attack on God the Son, God as imamate friend. The third was not as focused on until after the passion of Jesus. When Satan saw what God did in the cross the third deception came to the forefront. This says that since God ended up "choosing mercy" instead of justice, that the laws been done away with. God will either save everyone, or Lucifer modifies it to "He will save you if you say the proper words about Jesus and be able to explain how Jesus died in your place. Live as you please, for heaven is your home. Say the right words about Jesus, or the right church ritual and no matter what else you are in. But if you don't do that, your out. This is a direct attack on God the Holy Spirit who leads us into the truth of the love of God becoming central to our subjective existential being.

Revelation 12 - 13 has a counterfeit trinity. The beast is a counterfeit God the Father, it is any organization that ends up controlling us, through the 7 periods of history from God's people being ruled by a son of David, until we are again ruled by THE SON OF DAVID. These periods are Babylon, Medio-Persia, Greece, Rome, The union of church-state over the middle ages (the feet of iron and clay), then comes the 6th head, the deadly wound. The toes of iron and clay: a period starting with the American and French Revolution where instead of one great world empire ruling in place of the son of David, it is several independent countries; some based more on the American Revolution's views of freedom, and others more oppressive as having grown from the views of the French Revolution. This is the head that has the 10 horns and the crowns on the horns rather than the head which is dead But then the deadly would will be healed, the toes will attempt to join together, but it will end up in utter chaos. The Dragon is a counterfeit Holy Spirit; Spiritualism. Where instead of the beast telling us what to do, our subjective existential experience becomes the final authority. You have your truth and I have mine. Existentialism. The beast does not respect our existential experience, the dragon makes our existential experience the final law. The 2 horned beast is the counterfeit Christ. What Jesus does for us is what brings us to the Father and is how the Holy Spirit works with our subjective existential experience. The two horned beast tells people that it would be to their existential advantage to simply comply with the beast. Thus we have the mark of the beast in the forehead of those who don't mind submitting to the system, and in the right hand of those who disagree with the system but decide to go along for our own existential advantage in the long run.

In the Roman world where we see these coming, at different times of the year, such as the emperor's birthday, everyone intown would come and bow down to the image of the emperor. Jews were exempt and could pray to YAHWEH for the emperor in the temple and synagogue service, but if your neighbor did not see you coming and kneeling with everyone else, they might wonder about you and this may not help your business relationship. So there were Jews who would walk by the emperor's image and as others were bowing to the emperor, the Jew would notice that his sandal needed to be adjusted. This action is the type of which the mark of the beast will be the anti-type.

The death of Jesus, and how Jesus died is how to fully answer these 3 important questions about God, which Satan turned into three deceptions about God.

There are things we know, but are not all knowing. Things that are true but which we do not fully understand and as we discuss and think and study we grow,

This next paragraph I'm not dogmatic about and may upset many of you. When I first learned that in the 1800s there were some Review articles that entertained this thought they ruffled my feathers. But as I learned more (and even when I first came across this I still had much of this background). There is a time period where the angels and beings on other worlds had to deal with these issues. We know that the earth plays a role in all of this. Some terms in the Bible such as what is translated as "without form and void" and a time that the earth needed man for a helpmate but did not have in the ancient world indicated something going on here, maybe even for a long long time, but where God was refusing to show proof, refusing to have people compelled to follow him, even if it was just indisputable proof, but where the angels and unfallen world was the center of the great controversy. They only worked on evidence and maybe experiments to build evidence, but they had to make choices of faith based on evidence. Could some of the things that indicate an old world actually date back to that time? Anyway, what we learn is that a day came where the two sides of the Great Controversy were formed, and where whatever what here had become total chaos. It was only when this happened that God stepped in with proof, and he hovered over the chaos and said "Let there be light" and this was not only the visible light, but that the great cosmic events of historoy entered into a time of special light about God. This started a very special six literal days .and the Sabbath. God showed to the beings that he was indeed the creator.

This is getting long, but this is a lot to think about and discuss. I will give a little bit more, but in one way or another the death of Jesus is what answered these questions and lead us to a mature love of God for who he is.

Now there have been different theories in how this worked. There is an early view that I'll close with as I think that while it may not be the ultimate answer, might set us in the right direction. A second early view was called the bate theory of the atonement. That we are Satan's prey, and legally belong to him. But God was willing to trade us for his Son. Satan saw Christ as a better trophy than us, so he agreed to it, not seeing the resurrection and so he lost both us and Christ. Around the 1200s many saw the craziness of this view, so two other views were developed: The Forensic view, where we owe the death to God the Father, and my guilt got transferred to God the Son. And the Moral Influence Theory, which says that the cross does not save us, it is only showing how much God loves us and what he is willing to put up with. This awakens love inside of us so that we start doing what is right. This does not allow Jesus' death to be a substitutionary sacrifice. Probably the best picture of the moral influence theory is found in the song "When I survey the wonderous cross on which the prince of Glory died, My richest gain I count but loss,
And pour contempt on all my pride.

The earlier view I'd like to close with actually came from a book of nature by Pliny the Elder. Now he made a comment that no other naturalist has recorded and we are not sure what he saw to give him this idea, but he wrote that in times of famine mother pelicans would peck a hole in her stomach, so that her chicks who had no access to food would eat her food and it would nourish them instead of her. Early Christians picked up on this and in our earliest churches would have alters with a mother pelican poking her stomach for her chicks to eat and saw this as a picture of our atonement in Christ.

Later I'll come back with how I understand the Bible and Mrs. White to teach about hell fire. I would like it if you would take a moment to read in one setting (or at least closely together) five passages from Mrs. White. The first being "Why was sin permitted. from Patriarchs and Prophets Second "The origin of Evil" from Great Controversy. Third the article "God made manifest in Christ" from Signs of the Times January 20, 1890, fourth, "Gethsemane" from Desire of Ages, and fifth, the crowning words from the ministry of Mrs. White "It is Finished" from Desire of Ages. I hope that we can share and discuss. I've given most of what I understand here, with the exception of how I understand hell fire. But we are living at the time of study and evidence as the rest of the universe did prior to creation week. This way we can all grow.

Why did Jesus die? Yes, there are many areas that benefit from God's great display of grace and love, uniting justice and mercy. There was more at stake than just the human race. There is always more to learn. After all, this subject will be a theme of study through eternity! We definitely don't know everything now!

But there is one very basic reason why Jesus came to live and die for us.
If He had not died and risen again, all people who have died (the death everyone faces in this world) that would have been the end. Period.

Because, when mankind sinned, the law said they die.
Sin separated him from the source of life, and justice demanded death.


Genesis 2:17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt SURELY DIE.

Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death

Romans 5:12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.

When Jesus died, He wasn't paying Satan anything. He wasn't paying nor appeasing God anything.
He took the sentence the law demanded of us, because, if we were to be saved, without the Creator taking our penalty, it would be abrogating the authority of the law. The law would be just a "take it or leave it" thing.

Satan's claim was that sinning humans deserved the same penalty as he was getting: 'I and my angels, were thrown out of heaven and have the death sentence hanging over our heads because we won't yield to Christ's commands and law, if God simply forgives them sinners and takes them to heaven, He'd better forgive us too, and give us our place back in heaven, or He Is being totally arbitrary and unfair.'

A main point in Lucifer (Satan's) big thing in his rebellion was against God's law, that it couldn't be kept, and that it was too restrictive.

But Christ showed two essential things:
1. the law can be kept by a human connected to God's power,
2. He showed the law could not be changed to accommodate sin.

1 Peter 2:24 Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed
Rev. 5:9 thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood

If God would have only shown GRACE -- that is, if Adam had simply confessed and been forgiven after deliberately sinning. God would have lowed the standard and authority of the law. But by taking Adam's (and everyone's) sin and dying the death the sinner deserved, Christ showed the law to be immutable, it stands forever.



Christ lived a perfect life, thus He rose again!
1 Cor. 15:17 And if Christ be not raised, your faith [is] vain; ye are yet in your sins.
15:18 Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished.

You see, if Christ had not died AND risen again, everyone, even those who accepted Christ, would have perished. -- That is, they would stay in their graves, and never exist again.

BUT CHRIST died and rose again!!!!
Justice has been dealt and now comes mercy!

1 Cor. 15:20 But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept.
15:21 For since by man came death, by man [came] also the resurrection of the dead.
15:22 For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.
John 5:28 Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice,
5:29 And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.

Those who believe and follow Christ, cooperating with His Holy Spirit to live righteously, with be raised unto the resurrection of life.


And that's one very essential reason why Christ died -- to redeem us!