Death before the Fall

[cleminson]

How about...
Rev 4:6 And before the throne there was a sea of glass like unto crystal: and in the midst of the throne, and round about the throne, were four beasts full of eyes before and behind. 7 And the first beast was like a lion, and the second beast like a calf, and the third beast had a face as a man, and the fourth beast was like a flying eagle.

Thanks Assyrian for making it clear.

 

[juvenissun]

Thanks Assyrian for making it clear.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Assyrian

How about...
Rev 4:6 And before the throne there was a sea of glass like unto crystal: and in the midst of the throne, and round about the throne, were four beasts full of eyes before and behind. 7 And the first beast was like a lion, and the second beast like a calf, and the third beast had a face as a man, and the fourth beast was like a flying eagle.

Got you. I did not mean these "4" beasts. They are only 4 individuals. My image was herds or multiples of animals of different kinds.

A side question is that I always wonder what is the purpose of these 4 "beasts"? As I think that animals on earth will not exist in Haven, I also suspect that animals on earth are, in fact, some images (shadows) of non-human creatures that do exist in heaven. May be they are images of angels. So the 4 beasts are actually 4 special angels. Who said ALL angels look similar to human? When I go to Heaven, I might see an angel looks just like a cow.

 

[Assyrian]

One of them anyway, Rev 4:7 the second living creature was like an ox. But not perhaps majestic herds of wildebeest. No I don't think this is the answer, I was just showing Clem's idea had not wandered off into some Buddhist bestiary. I think the garden is part of a metaphor describing man's spiritual relationship with God rather than an actual spiritual location. But I like the way Clem is trying to get to grips with the text to see what it is telling us.

 

[cleminson]

There was a similar thread several months ago to which I responded. I'll give a similar response here.

Did Adam and Eve have an epidermis? If so, what happened if friction from a garden tool caused some of it to flake off? Would more develop? If so, from what? How?

I believe that Adam and Eve were part spiritual beings living in a spiritual Garden. This makes them very real but they could not have had epidermis', as you need to be human for that and they did not become human un til after the fall.

Were Adam and Eve equipped with white blood cells? If not, why do we have them now? If so, for what reason? If they had to be used, what happened to those white blood cells?

I refer to my previous answer.

Are plants alive? Did Adam and Eve consume plants in order to stay alive? What happened to those plants? Were they alive after being plucked from their source? Were they alive after being consumed?

I think that the feeding on fruit that they certainly did was on spiritual fruit, so we should not apply human digestive issues to Adam and Eve.

Basically, in order for there to be animal life, there must be death. If there was not death before sin, then after we sinned God would have had to have completely redone life and the workings of almost every biological function on this planet. Every animal's workings would have to have been completely altered. The very nature of plant life would have had to have been radically changed.

I believe that the Earth was being created from the forth period of creation on and as it was born from the water (mayim) which came from a fallen by-product, death was also the by-product of our creation. So there was and is no death in the garden until Adan fell, then God removed Adam and therefore death from the Garden. Adam then lived as a human, relation to other humans, until he died 930 years after arriving on this physical Earth.

 

[cleminson]

Some Creationists think there were no death before the fall. But this is contradictory to Scripture.

The reason why some people think there were no death before the fall is that God called His creation "very good". Death is assumed to be somehow bad, so they think there was no death in a "very good" creation.

However, Scripture clearly tells us about the world of creation, and that was a world containing death. Otherwise, what about all the bacteria that live in our bodies? What would happen if Adam steps on an ant? What if a squirrel falls from a tree? Is the death of bacteria, insects, squirrels no "real death", and if so where is the boundary?

In a world without death there can't be any animals and nothing else that could cause accidental death, such as rivers, trees, mountains and so on. There you see that the "no death" idea is obviously in contradiction to Scripture that describes Eden as a world just like ours, and Adam not as an immortal superman but as a human like us.

Hear Hear ClearSky. No death in spiritual Eden however death reigned in our Universe from its creation from the water (mayim).