The Last Enemy, Death, Brought to Nothing - Conclusion of HOW DEATH ENTERED THE HUMAN FAMILY

God has told Adam: "In the day you ear from  [the tree of the knowledge of good and bad] you will certainly die." Adam may well have understood  this "day" to be a 24-hour day.  After violating God's command, he could have expected Jehovah to act before the sun set.  "About  the breezy part of the day," Jehovah approached the couple.  (Genesis 3:8) He held court, as it were, establishing the facts from the responses that Adam and Eve gave. (Genesis 3:9-13)  Then he pronounced sentence  on the wrongdoers.  (Genesis 3:14-19)  Were he to execute them then and there, his purpose regarding Adam and Eve and their offspring would come to nothing.  (Isaiah 55:11) Although he confirmed the death penalty and the effects of sin began immediately, he allowed Adam and Eve to produce children who could benefit from other provisions that He could make.  Thus, from God's standpoint, Adam and Eve died on the day they sinned, and  they actually died within one "day" of 1,000 years. - 2 PETER 3:8.

Would the children of Adam and Eve be affected by what their parents had done? Yes.  Romans 5:12 explains: "Through  one man sin entered into the world and death through sin, and so death spread to all  men because they had sinned." The first to die was faithful Abel. (Genesis 4:8)  Then Adam's other offspring grew old and died.  Did they inherit sin as well as death?  The apostle Paul answers: "Through the disobedience of the one man many were made sinners." (Romans 5:19) Sin and death inherited from Adam thus became implacable enemies of mankind, inescapable for imperfect humans.  We cannot exactly describe all that was involved in passing on their sad inheritance to Adam's immediate and more distant offspring, but passed on it was.

Fittingly, the Bible refers to inherited sin and death as "the shroud that is enveloping all the peoples and the covering that is woven over all the nations." (Isaiah 25:7)  This suffocating covering, or shroud, this intricate web-work of condemnation, entraps all people.  So the fact is that "in Adam all are dying." (1 Corinthians 15:22) The question that naturally  follows is, as all expressed by Paul: "Who will rescue me from the body undergoing this death? - ROMANS 7:24.

Next time:  The Last Enemy, Death, Brought to Nothing - ADAMIC SIN AND DEATH BROUGHT TO NOTHING

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