[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]IrishSteel wrote:
[quote]cueball wrote:
Irish, sorry, i’m allowing this thread to become a your right, I’m wrong thread. I’ll stop.
But I will throw this topic in for discussion. Genesis 3 does not explicitly state that Lucifer was the serpent or that he spoke through the serpent. Where then does the widely held assumption come from that it was? Is there scripture elsewhere that explains this?
Is it because of Revelation 12:9 that this view is held?[/quote]
Actually a very fascinating question - I think Push had touched on this one earlier, but let me clarify a few points and then we can get to some of the passages
First, Eve was not surprised by the serpent speaking to her. If it were an unknown or uncommon practice for a creature to speak, she would have run away in fright. Modern scientist are taking great pains to understand the communications and emotions of animals with some remarkable success. So I do not find it a stretch of logic at all to assume that in the perfect environment of the garden man and animal were able to communicate
Secondly, it dmeonstrates that there was a unique relationship between human and animal in the garden, because the serpent in our day is a poisonous threat - we even avoid the non-poisonous ones just to be safe. Again, holding with the doctrine that sin altered man and all relationships within the rest of creation.
OK - back to the passages, yes it is based on the passages from Revelation. In addition, Satan is credited with being in the garden, being the father of lies, possessing people and presumably creatures - thus it is entirely plausible that he possessed the serpent’s mind or that he in some way influenced the serpent to tempt Eve.
This is a good line of inquiry - hopefull Push can add his thoughts as well.
I will try to locate some the exact passages (man my memory sucks - lol) and post additional thoughts later[/quote]
I agree.
Key point that I have tried to drive home over and over and over again - the present is not the key to the past.
Uniformitarianism is a hopelessly flawed concept.
If anyone here, and this includes Pat and Sloth, is going to insist that what see today is what has always been then we have a huge, thick, brick wall between us that will never be breached.
When one sees a modern day snake slithering through the grass he is NOT be seeing the type creature that spoke with Eve in the garden. That is crystal clear from Genesis 3. The Genesis 3 serpent was apparently an upright animal. It did not “snake along” on the ground.
Or maybe Satan did what Satan is known to do and simply possessed the animal and spoke through it, somehow not alarming Eve.
The perfect, pre Fall world looked and acted differently than the one we see today corrupted by thousands of years of sin and the Second Law of Thermodynamics - decay.
Because animals don’t talk to people today does NOT mean that in the PERFECT Garden of Eden - before God’s curse - that they never did. To claim that YOU know what happened or didn’t happen in the distant past and under vastly different circumstances based on what you observe in the present is flat out insane.
Open up your minds and THINK for crying out loud. So many of you, believers and non-believers alike have erected a cage for your intellect in this matter. Quit it!
The only thing that is infallible is God and His Word. Surely stupid little sinful Man is not arbiter of all that is Right and True.
People, get your head out of your asses and quit demanding that God had to have done things the way YOU decide He should have. Man through his sin corrupted this world. “Things” are different now. Maybe Adam could speak with many different types of animals; we don’t know.
[/quote]
You’re engaging in a ton of tortured logic to support your beliefs and in the sanme breath have the audacity to beseech us to get our heads out of our asses. I think it safe to say that I could scour the scripture for such a course rebuke from Jesus and come up empty, but I digress.
The fact that snakes slither and do not talk, is in fact support for the allegorical. Do not confuse that belief with the idea that my mind is closed to a more perfect (or earlier) time when man perhaps enjoyed some communication with animals that we do not possess now. I see evidence of this perhaps latent communication all the time. But if ever there was empty speculation, your post is filled with it.
If you literally believe that the test for mankind was fruit in a tree, with an evil talking serpent as the salesman, what “debate” on religion could possibly occur with you? If the Book is the infallible word of God, and the stories contained therein historically accurate, what debate shall we have? What debate would you entertain? It harkens back to my earlier “drive by” musings where I correctly concluded that this “debate” is pointless.
One might apply your logic to “stupid little sinful Christians” think they have God figured out, while the rest of the world - the majority, is just wrong.
Now, did “Satan” possess said animal? If so, how? Please provide textual evidence. Satan is adversary in Hebrew. Not angel, not demon, no the devil. Wouldn’t the plain meaning of “adversary” be further evidence to you that the story is allegorical? Have you ever cared to examine the esoteric meaning of the snake itself? Do you believe the Bible was written without such esoteric meanings? Or you you take each word literally? Do you not recognize a perhaps higher message in the allegorical other than some cartoonish “raality” of a talking snake and some forbidden fruit?
