How long Adam and Eve lived this life of bliss in daily communion with God, we do not know? Because so much is written in the first four chapters of the book of Genesis, some of the events may have taken a much longer time than we may presume! We are tempted to think that all happened much quicker than it actually did. Hence, we do not know, when how long Adam lived alone with God, for it is He taught Adam all about the husbandry of his estate, of which he was completely ignorant. Years could have passed before God actually created Eve? It is possible that after her creation that Adam and Eve lived in this blissful, sinless, existence for many years before Satan came in, to spoil it! As to the forbidden fruit that God ordered Adam not to eat. was not what some deranged people think it was, we do not even know that it was an apple! And the sin they committed was nothaving sex! For there is nothing unholy in a man and a woman having a normal sex life. We live in the world in which men like to distort things that are completely normal. Foolish men do it, to the detriment of their understanding of God! The big drama that happened in Eden, was not what God caused, but what Satan did. The power of sin is such that all men born since, are lost sinners!

As long as they were obedient, they were visited and paid them adaily visit, they enjoyed the blessing of a deep peace and the presence of God! This was suddenly broken when they submitted to the temptation and ate the forbidden fruit. Adam and Eve were never filled with the Holy Spirit, but they were covered with the glory of a sinless life! It is important to state, because when a sinner is born again by faith in Christ, he is born of God and by His will, but not reinstated to what Adam was before the fall. This big,deep change that a spiritual birth brings, is not seen outwardly. The appearance of a born-again believer does not change, it has all to do with his soul!

Every man born in the world is in the same spiritual state, dead to God! But the change the new birth brings to a converted sinner is profound, for he is born into a son of God a new creation! Outwardly, as a Christian he keeps the same colour, nationality,and his culture! We all have a body and a soul which from the moment we come into the world, is marred by sin! a lost soul, sinners do all sorts of things to prove the contrary, but nothing will change their position in the sight of God, for it is stated: ‘All have sinned and come short of the glory of God … There is no righteous, not even one.’ It may appear to you as a harsh reality, but history has proved that men by nature get worse and worse! however much we may try not to admit it, eventually unbelievers shall die athe death of a fallen creature, bound for hell! That is how the Bible tells it! The only way out of this is to accept that Jesus died for our sins, and faith in Him, each believer is reconciled with God and his sins, few, or many, are all forgiven for: ‘In Him (Jesus) we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with God’s grace.’ (Ephesians 1:7)

I am stating this because I am dealing with the position a believer in Jesus-Christ. as I have stated, he is a new creation, a son of God, an eternal being. As it is written: ‘If anyone is in Christ, He is a new creation; the old (man) has gone, the new (man) has come.’ (2 Corinthians 5:17) That is the word of God, and He will not go back on it. Nevertheless, the teaching of the Lord and His apostles, tells us, that although becoming a Christian by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, brings a very real change, as I have mentioned it in previous Links, the flesh, which is the carnal, fallen nature, remains potent and it will struggle with the new spirit created in him. This means that without the power of the new life in him, no man is saved from the curse. He greatest fight of faith is not so much with the world, but with the carnal life, which is also called the old man, he is not free to do and live as he wants, for the old life must decrease whilst the new man grows stronger and stronger! but even the new man will not grow in conformity to Jesus Christ, without the help of the Holy Spirit. From all his struggles, a Christian, whilst he still liveswith his inherited flesh, will grow into the new life by faith in the Son of God, he will grow in grace and in the knowledge of God to total perfection, by the power and presence in him of the new spirit.