The Lamb of God-The Old, Old Story
The Lamb of God-The Old, Old Story
by Danny C. Wash
Adam opened his eyes while coughing and sputtering to life. His first sight was God, the Father, in a human-like form leaning over him, after having breathed the breath of human life into him. Adam immediately knew who God was, as his Creator, because God had imprinted knowledge in his brain of many things he would need to know since he was created fully grown and mature. Adam, as the first human was the prototype, with extreme brain power and physical attributes. Adam was created with three parts that were essentially separate but intermingled. These parts were his physical body; his soul consisting of his conscious mind, will, and emotions; and his spirit, which was that part of him that contained his conscience, his intuition, and his sub-conscious mind. God had already created the universe, and re-created the old formless void world to contain all its new contents, and animal life. God wanted Adam to now participate with Him in ruling this new world. His first assignment was to name all the animals and birds, which was no small task.
As Adam worked in his new world, he noticed that all the animals had mates. God knew that Adam would notice this, so God appeared to Adam and without explanation caused him to fall into a deep sleep. God took a rib from Adam and formed out of it a mate for Adam, named Eve. Both Adam and Eve were naked and were unaware that this was anything unusual. God told them that they could eat of the fruit of any of the trees of the garden of Eden except the tree in the middle of the garden. They were not even to touch that tree, as it was called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Prior to the re-creation of the ruined earth, there had been a rebellion of some of the angels led by Satan, who were then cast out of Heaven. Satan was able to come to the new earth and did. He came into the garden at Eden in the form of a serpent that could speak. He saw Eve while Adam was busy with one of his tasks in the garden. The serpent approached Eve and tricked her into disbelieving God about not eating of the forbidden tree. He told her it would make her wise, knowing good and evil, like God, if she ate it. She could not resist the idea of being wise like God and the beauty of the fruit and tasted the forbidden fruit. She then convinced Adam to eat it also. Once, they tasted the fruit everything about them began to change in a negative way.
“It wasn’t our fault, we were tricked by that serpent. How were we to know,” said the woman to the man, “that this great calamity would fall on us and the earth. It was the snake’s fault said Eve.” “It was your fault,” said the man. “What if God finds out what we have done. We need to hide.” Adam looked at Eve in her nakedness and felt a new type of feeling for his wife, which he had not felt before he tasted the fruit. He gathered some large leaves, strung them together with vines, and placed them on Eve and himself as a covering.
Adam and Eve found themselves with a new emotion of fear, a feeling of aloneness, as well as shame. Then the voice of God was heard and He appeared in a type of human form calling, “Where are you?” Adam said, “I heard the sound of You in the garden and I was afraid because I am naked, so I hid myself.” And, God said, “Who told you that you are naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” (God knowing the answer but wanting Adam to confess to Him his great sin.) Adam, wanting to shift blame, said, “The woman whom You gave me to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate.” God then said to Eve, “What is this that you have done?” And, Eve said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” So, the finger pointing went wild, as Adam blamed God and Eve, and Eve blamed the serpent. God then placed a curse on the serpent.
God knew already what Adam and Eve had done and had begun a plan before He confronted Adam and Eve about their sin. God called a perfect lamb, without any spot or blemish, and spoke to the little lamb as He does in His way to animals. God told the lamb what had happened and asked the lamb if it would like to be a part of His great plan to remedy the sin calamity created by Adam and Eve. God told the lamb what that would require and the lamb said, “yes” in the way animals say these things. God, with a tear in His eye, gently took the lamb’s life and it’s skin to use to cover Adam and Eve’s nakedness, which because of their sin, had become a sign of their great sin which needed covering. The lamb and it’s skin, used as a covering, was a sign of God’s solution of dealing with and covering the great sin of Adam, Eve, and all people thereafter through another type of lamb. The lamb would be called “the Lamb of God” and would be God Himself through the second person of the Trinity of God in the form of a human, Jesus, born of a woman on the earth in Bethlehem. God the Father, in Jesus, knew that only He could qualify to come and identify with humanity, and be a sinless substitute for us, to die for the sins of the world in payment for them. Jesus, the last Adam, would grow into a man and live a life completely according the the Father’s will and without sin, satisfying God’s will and the law created by the Father.
Once Satan, who had been the serpent in Eden, understood what was happening, he began an assault upon Jesus, first by inspiring Herod to attempt to kill Him shortly after His birth and, then, by trying to deceive the last Adam and entice Him into sin, as he did the first Adam and thereby once again spoiling God’s plan. However, Jesus did not engage with Satan’s tricks and hid Himself in the Word of His Father, thereby defeating Satan’s attempts. Satan was not finished though, and he inspired the Jewish religious authorities to rise up against Jesus and cause His death by the hand of the Romans on the cross outside the walls of Jerusalem on the hill of the skull. Satan, by causing the Jewish authorities and the Romans to kill Jesus, was unwittingly playing into God’s great plan for the restoration of man and the earth to His will.
Satan and his demons (in the form of humans) stood at the foot of the cross and mocked Jesus telling Him to come down if He was the Messiah, the Savior. Jesus, the last Adam, stayed true to His mission by refusing to depart from His Father’s will and do anything that Satan requested, as had the first Adam. And then, Jesus cried out to His Father His last words, “Father, into Thy Hands I commit My spirit.” Jesus was dead and a soldier thrust a spear into His side. Jesus’ precious saving blood spurted out onto the ground below the cross.
Legend has it, that Jesus’ blood soaked the ground at the cross and seeped into a grave below the cross which contained the body of the first Adam. Also, it is possible and logical that the location of the cross, also called a "tree"in scripture, was located at the exact spot where the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden was located. It is believed that the location of the stone upon which Abraham was going to sacrifice his son, Isaac, as required by God, but ultimately stopped by God, was located on Mount Mariah, which is where Solomon's temple was located and the holy of holies would most likely have covered the Abrahamic altar stone. Also, the site of the cross of Christ was also on Mount Mariah a short distance from the Temple. Considering how God worked with using the same locations for His important events, it is also logical that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life were both located on Mount Mariah. This is also part of Jewish legend that those two trees were located on Mount Mariah. Therefore, it is possible that the cross was located on the exact spot of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, where Adam and Eve's sin occurred by eating of the fruit of that tree. If so, then God would have chosen the place of the cross for the crucifixion of Jesus, so that the sins of the world would have been atoned for at the same place where the sins of the world first began. However, the scriptures do not tell us this.
Soldiers pulled Jesus’ body down from the cross and tossed it on the ground. Because the Sabbath approached, Jesus body was placed in a tomb near the cross and a large stone was rolled over the entrance with a seal being placed on it. Demons (in the form of Roman soldiers) were stationed at the tomb to prevent anyone from taking the body from the tomb. Satan did all he could do to secure the tomb. Night fell and Satan and the demons celebrated their apparent victory in killing Jesus. Once again, Satan had thwarted God’s plan for man and the earth, at least that’s what he thought.
Jesus, as God’s ultimate Lamb, by His death gave His body as a covering for all who would believe in Him and accept His covering of their sins and covering them with His righteousness, as their righteousness before God. At sunrise on the third day, a mighty angel from Heaven appeared with the sound of an earthquake and caused the stone to roll away. As resurrection life sent by the Father poured into Jesus’ body, it was changed in a twinkling of the eye into His resurrection body. Thereafter, Jesus made several appearances to the disciples and others. Jesus not only ate food as any other human, he would appear and disappear. The new resurrection body was both physical and spiritual with other different characteristics and abilities. After forty days of appearances, Jesus made a final physical appearance to the disciples. Jesus gave them instructions and then was taken up into Heaven as in a cloud where He sat down at the right hand of His Father awaiting the day of His return to earth. Also, after Jesus was taken up into Heaven and glorified, on the Jewish day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came from Heaven and filled all the disciples causing a great stir and resulting in the disciples becoming bold in their sharing of the testimony of Jesus and His Gospel to the world.
[End Notes. The author has made obvious detail type additions to the Scripture story in order to dramatize some of the events and make them interesting. The reader should read the story of the creation of the earth and Adam and Eve in Genesis chapters 1-3 to see what is in the Bible about the creation and what above is a type of “historical fiction” in order to enhance the story and logically explain some things that may have happened to fill in the blanks. The story of the crucifixion and resurrection are found in the Matthew 27-28, John 18-21, and Luke 23-24 and should be read to likewise see what is added here as a type of historical fiction to enhance the story. The story of the lamb being slain and used by God to cover Adam and Eve is not referenced as a lamb in Genesis 3:21 but is called an animal. The author believes it was a lamb since it is in conformity with God’s use of lambs as sacrifices in the Jewish Temple as well as many other references to the “Lamb of God” in the Bible being slain for our sins (John 1:29, 36; Rev. 5:12; 12:11). The author does not believe anything in the above story is in conflict with the Scriptures and in no manner means to alter Scripture.]
