Joseph’s Alabaster Box

Genesis 3:4 and 5 record Satan’s good news. “And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.”

Notice the four points in Satan’s gospel: 1.) no death; 2.) eyes opened; 3). be as gods; 4.) know good and evil. “Gospel” means “good news,” and some men love to hear that God is dead. To some people, it is good news to hear that scientists have proven evolution as a fact, because that negates the Bible and its demands on men.

It is inconceivable that Eve could have heard Satan call God a liar, and not been offended by it. It is likewise true, of course, that we cannot imagine how Adam and Eve might have thought about anything. They had never seen or heard of death. They had never seen or heard of another human. They were innocent, and perhaps with that, a little bit naive. And Satan came as “… an angel of light.” (I Corinthians 11:14), and Eve did not know that there was such a thing as evil. Satan used the body of another creature, just as he uses the body of others today. Eve had doubtless heard serpents and other animals speak, and was not surprised by that. Dr. John R. Rice believed that animals were created with the power to speak.1

I am certain that “. . .the beasts of the field. . .” which God created as domesticated animals, could talk. I can’t think of a single place in the Scriptures where we are told that Satan ever scared anybody, but every time an angel appeared to somebody, he had to say fear not. Satan’s good news to Eve was that they had no fear of dying, as God had said they would if they ate of the tree of knowledge. Eve, will you believe your Creator, or will you believe this serpent? Reader, will you believe God, or will you believe the false prophet? What an insult to the Lord God! What an offense! God sits upon His throne, and listens to people call Him a liar, call him a monster, call Him an impostor. Does the Lord God suffer pain? Can the Holy Spirit be grieved? Can Jesus Christ weep? Will there be a day of retribution? Will God allow these enemies to go without giving an account?

This tender, soft, liberal, sympathetic devil attacked God with violence we cannot imagine when he spoke these words. Every human will decide in his lifetime whether he will side with God or side with His arch enemy, the devil. Do you think that a conflict can rage for 6,000 years for the souls of men, and you can ignore it, or claim that you will not take part? Who do you think you are? God and Satan are enemies. There will be no reconciliation. Every human will be in one camp or the other, and be there as a volunteer. To claim you will be neutral is the most foolish thing you can do in your whole life, because that is self-deception. Your drugs, your music, your entertainment, are all designed to keep you from the horror of thinking of death and eternity, but one day it will be thrust upon you, and you will think about it for eternity.

You will die. Every human will die. That is a self-evident fact. Death is as real as life. Satan still denies death. “Live forever without God!” How foolish the thought. Living forever without God is living death.

Satan promised, “… your eyes shall be opened, … ,” but he did not point out that it does little good to have your eyes open in the absence of light. Satan’s good news is always a lie, you can depend on it. When their eyes were opened, they knew they were naked, and they were afraid. Fear immediately follows sin. The girl who commits fornication is filled with fear that she might be with child. A man who steals fears that he left incriminating evidence. Fear follows sin as surely as night follows day, and day follows night.

Satan did not reveal to what their eyes would be opened. Eve did not dream that her eyes would be opened to the sight of her second-born son lying in a pool of his own blood on the ground, bludgeoned to death by his older brother. That’s only one of the things it would be better if we never saw. Opened eyes are not always a blessing. A man who marries a woman who has a bad past, would be better off never knowing it. Sometimes, a congregation is better off never knowing the details of their pastor’s youth. A child is better off never knowing that his daddy was an adulterer in his youth.

The third element of Satan’s dishonest gospel is “. . .ye shall be as gods,. . .”. This is the underlying great hope of evolution. If man is evolving upward to a more complex state, what is the summit of that complex state? Only a supreme, divine being can be immune from further evolution. When man is completely evolved, then he must be a god.

Satan certainly did not have any wish that Adam and Eve would be gods, for he himself lusted for that position, and he wanted no competition from two mortals. Satan knew that his possession of knowledge of good and evil had not made him a god. He had just been cast out of Heaven, a good illustration of the truth that he would never be as god.

The history of humanity and its lust for godhood is so sad it tends to reduce you to tears. When man attempts to be god, then he becomes a mixer of everything. He throws out nothing until he has concocted such a mess of pottage that the truth is lost. There are no lines of demarcation with the liberal. There are no beautiful blacks and whites. Everything becomes gray. Liberal Christian colleges are examples of man trying to be god. Listen to Donald E. Chittick: “Denial of the historical accuracy of the early chapters of Genesis is the beginning of a slippery slope indeed. It causes problems for institutions as well as individuals. Cases can be cited of institutions which have begun this course only to end up totally secular. Many of our well-known private colleges and ^{universities began as Christian schools.”2 God has commanded} “Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing, and I will receive you.” When man stays in his place, and gives God His place, then he will be offended by falsehood and deception just like He is.

 The fourth element of Satan’s false gospel is that man should know good and evil. I would that I had never known evil. If I had lived out my life in total ignorance of evil, how much happier I would be. But if I had not known evil, I could not have known good, and that would have been a great loss. The worldly philosophers say that man shouldn’t live a life without a little sin. A little sin, the story goes, is what adds spice to life. To deny oneself a little pleasure of sin is to miss the good in life. When liquor is mentioned, the apologizer for the alcohol business always says, “A little drink won’t hurt nobody.” You might accurately call that a satanic truth. That is a truth stitched together to conceal a lie. A little drink may not hurt “nobody,” but the liquor business certainly will. In a year or two, we will be seeing liquor ads on tv as common as automobile ads.

 Santa Rosa County, Florida defeated a liquor referendum. Shortly thereafter, came a hurricane and bypassed Santa Rosa County, and blew an adjoining county with its liquor warehouse right off the map. Dr. Mac Johnson, pastor of Faith Baptist Church in Milton, led the fight against the referendum. He announced on his radio program that folks needed to take heed because a monster was prowling their neighborhoods. He also declared that if the restaurant owner who was the leading proponent of the referendum, would serve decent food, he wouldn’t have to get folks drunk to get therm to eat there. The owner sued and lost.

 Man did not know good or evil when he was created, because you can’t know good without knowing evil. Man was created innocent. One evolution philosopher criticized the Lord for withholding knowledge from man. God did not withhold knowledge from man, and did not create him without a means of learning and remembering. It was the knowledge of good and evil that man did not have, and he was much better off without that knowledge. Some people criticize folks who put their children in Christian schools, because they say the child will develop without a knowledge of the world. It’s called the greenhouse effect. Are we to understand that a child cannot develop fully unless he knows about the wickedness of the world? Satan’s lying gospel still destroys people today.

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1. John R. Rice In the Beginning. . .(Murfreesboro,

Tennessee: The Sword of the Lord, 1975), p. 119.

2. Donald E. Chittick The Controversy (Portland, Oregon: Multnomah Press, 1978), p. 110.

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