Genesis 3:1-24
The Fall of Man
1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?"
2 The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.' "
4 "You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. 5 "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."
6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the LORD God called to the man, "Where are you?"
10 He answered, "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid."
11 And he said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?"
12 The man said, "The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it."
13 Then the LORD God said to the woman, "What is this you have done?"
The woman said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate."
14 So the LORD God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this,
"Cursed are you above all the livestock
and all the wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust
all the days of your life.
15 And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel."
16 To the woman he said,
"I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing;
with pain you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you."
17 To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,'
"Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat of it
all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return."
20 Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living.
21 The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. 22 And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever." 23 So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.
Genesis 15:1-21
1 After this, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision:
“Do not be afraid, Abram.
I am your shield,
your very great reward.”
2 But Abram said, “Sovereign Lord, what can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus?” 3 And Abram said, “You have given me no children; so a servant in my household will be my heir.”
4 Then the word of the Lord came to him: “This man will not be your heir, but a son who is your own flesh and blood will be your heir.” 5 He took him outside and said, “Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”
6 Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.
7 He also said to him, “I am the Lord, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it.”
8 But Abram said, “Sovereign Lord, how can I know that I will gain possession of it?”
9 So the Lord said to him, “Bring me a heifer, a goat and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon.”
10 Abram brought all these to him, cut them in two and arranged the halves opposite each other; the birds, however, he did not cut in half. 11 Then birds of prey came down on the carcasses, but Abram drove them away.
12 As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him. 13 Then the Lord said to him, “Know for certain that for four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own and that they will be enslaved and mistreated there. 14 But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. 15 You, however, will go to your ancestors in peace and be buried at a good old age. 16 In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.”
17 When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. 18 On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, “To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates— 19 the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, 20 Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, 21 Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites.”
Exodus 3:7-10
God Has Heard His People, the People of Israel in Egypt
7 The Lord said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. 8 So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. 9 And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. 10 So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.”
Exodus 24:1-18
1 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Come up to the Lord, you and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel. You are to worship at a distance, 2 but Moses alone is to approach the Lord; the others must not come near. And the people may not come up with him.”
3 When Moses went and told the people all the Lord’s words and laws, they responded with one voice, “Everything the Lord has said we will do.” 4 Moses then wrote down everything the Lord had said.
He got up early the next morning and built an altar at the foot of the mountain and set up twelve stone pillars representing the twelve tribes of Israel. 5 Then he sent young Israelite men, and they offered burnt offerings and sacrificed young bulls as fellowship offerings to the Lord. 6 Moses took half of the blood and put it in bowls, and the other half he splashed against the altar. 7 Then he took the Book of the Covenant and read it to the people. They responded, “We will do everything the Lord has said; we will obey.”
8 Moses then took the blood, sprinkled it on the people and said, “This is the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.”
9 Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and the seventy elders of Israel went up 10 and saw the God of Israel. Under his feet was something like a pavement made of lapis lazuli, as bright blue as the sky. 11 But God did not raise his hand against these leaders of the Israelites; they saw God, and they ate and drank.
12 The Lord said to Moses, “Come up to me on the mountain and stay here, and I will give you the tablets of stone with the law and commandments I have written for their instruction.”
13 Then Moses set out with Joshua his aide, and Moses went up on the mountain of God. 14 He said to the elders, “Wait here for us until we come back to you. Aaron and Hur are with you, and anyone involved in a dispute can go to them.”
15 When Moses went up on the mountain, the cloud covered it, 16 and the glory of the Lord settled on Mount Sinai. For six days the cloud covered the mountain, and on the seventh day the Lord called to Moses from within the cloud. 17 To the Israelites the glory of the Lord looked like a consuming fire on top of the mountain. 18 Then Moses entered the cloud as he went on up the mountain. And he stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights.
Matthew 5:17-20
17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18 For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. 19 Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.
John 1:1-4
Jesus Was With God in the Beginning
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning.
3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of men.
Matthew 10:28
Fear God
28 Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.
Luke 6:43-45
Good Men Speak Good Things
43 “No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. 44 Each tree is recognized by its own fruit. People do not pick figs from thornbushes, or grapes from briers. 45 A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.
John 14:6
Jesus is Truth
6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
Right and wrong came from somewhere...It did not just fall out of the sky...Right and wrong comes from our consciousness...But where did our consciousness come from?...
Most non-believers believe consciousness just evolved randomly out of nothing...Consciousness is not matter, so they cannot explain it scientifically with tests and experiments...And thus a problem for science, who cannot explain things like love, morality, right, wrong, and Truth -because these things are not material (in nature) and cannot be proved or disproved with an experiment...But we have these immaterial and intangible things all around us, and they help make out lives...But these things did have to come from somewhere...
For the non-believer, morality from consciousness has evolved over time and over billions of years...Time and man is the non-believer's answer...So, for the non-believer, these cells and molecules of consciousness, one day gradually came into our minds and into our existence over these billions of years after the Big Bang...Or they were with us from the beginning, but so minute that they have evolved into where they are today...And if one believes this, then consciousness will continue to evolve and grow...The non-believer can see that there is a right and a wrong...And they can see that certain men have reached for this right and wrong attainment, and have greatly struggled with it...And they can also read from the Bible a historical account of how God, THE GOD, took a people and made them a nation and tried to teach them the rights and wrongs about life...And He started this process, with a man named Abraham, whom He made a covenant with...And the covenant was about a Promised Land, a nation that would be descendants of Abraham...God tells Abraham, that His people and Abraham's descendants would be strangers in another country not their own and would be enslaved and mistreated...And later in the fourth generation, Abraham's descendants would come back to the Promised Land, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure...And then they could inherit the land He was giving to them...This would be after Abraham, his son Isaac, and his grandson Jacob...Jacob's children and descendants would form the Twelve Tribes of Israel, and be the ones to inherent the Promised Land...
And although the Bible does not speak much about consciousness, it teaches us both right and wrong -so that believers believe morality is from God...So, although not getting the detail of the explanation on right and wrong and consciousness we believe that right and wrong comes from God, and is written about in the oldest document on earth, the Bible...God is a moral God and believes in our conducting ourselves right...
For believers we have a Creator, and God created Adam and Eve...And they fell from His grace...C. S. Lewis says this is what God did for us after our fall from Eden..."First of all He left us conscience, the sense of right and wrong: and all through history there have been people trying (some of them very hard) to obey it...None of them ever quite succeeded...Secondly, He sent the human race what I call good dreams: I mean those queer stories scattered all through the heathen religions about a god who dies and comes to life again and, by his death, has somehow given new life to men...Thirdly, He selected one particular people and spent several centuries hammering into their heads the sort of God He was -- that there was only one of Him and that He cared about right conduct...Those people were the Jews, and the Old Testament gives an account of the hammering process...Then comes the real shock...Among these Jews there suddenly turns up a Man who goes about talking as if He was God...He claims to forgive sins...He says He has always existed. He says He is coming to judge the world at the end of time...Now let us get this clear...Among Pantheists, like the Indians, anyone might say that he was a part of God, or one with God: there would be nothing very odd about it...But this Man, since He was a Jew, could not mean that kind of God...God, in their language, meant the Being outside the world Who had made it and was infinitely different from anything else...And when you have grasped that, you will see that what this Man said was, quite simply, the most shocking thing that has ever been uttered by human lips."...
If one believes Lewis, then we can conclude that God cares about the right conduct...Adam and Eve knew right from wrong, because they knew that they were not supposed to eat the forbidden fruit...That God is a moral God...He morally hammered in right and wrong in the wandering people in the desert and in the Promised Land of Israel over centuries...We can conclude that we have free will, because we try to obey the right and wrong of our Creator, (some people try very hard)...None of them have ever quite succeeded...And because we try sometimes very hard and never quite succeed, we can see that we have a sinful nature...We can conclude we have a purpose and a meaning while we are here on earth, or at least we will find meaning in Him one day...We can also believe that one day we will meet Him...We can also believe that we have a Soul and a Spirit that will allow this to happen one day...And we learn that this shocking Man said He fulfilled the Old Testament prophecies...
There is this Divine Providence for believers...A Someone who is over all things...This Man also says He is Truth...The Man was with God from the beginning...If Truth and righteousness have evolved from the beginning, They were around to nurture and water it, so it would grow...So believers believe that Truth is a Person, and now a Spirit that lives with His Father in heaven...Good men and righteous men do and act our on what they speak...Goodness produces more goodness...A Good Man brings forth much goodness...In righteousness is Truth and Truth is in righteousness...This shocking Man is full of Truth and full of goodness and righteous...He is evidence of God's goodness, and our consciousness...