Page 28 - The Divine Unfolding of God's Plan of Redemption

IV. THE GREAT BETRAYAL

GENESIS 3

We consider the third chapter of Genesis to be the most epochal chapter in the
whole of Scripture.

There is no one chapter which contains within itself the norm of so many great

spiritual principles. Here the enemy, who occupies such an important part in the great
spiritual warfare in which we are engaged, makes his first appearance in the Adamic
order. (We have seen him before, of course, in the heavenly Eden and after his
ejection therefrom.) We find here set forth his method of approach and the quality of

his appeal. There is the story of the fall and its immediate consequences. There is the
divine seeking of God‟s erring children. There is the curse, the inevitable corollary of
sin, and the declaration of an age-long warfare between the seeds, involving the
suffering of Him Who would be the special seed. There is Adam‟s faith in the promise

of the seed, and as a result the standing he received from the blood-bought garments
of God‟s own preparing. Pending the completion of the work of redemption, the
stricken yet hopeful couple were driven from their Eden paradise, cut off from the tree
of life because they were tabernacled in bodies of death, and for the same reason

segregated from physical fellowship with the Creator. The Creator Himself, still the
Sovereign of all, retired to His heavenly abode, in recognition of the fact that the
cosmos created by Himself and the deed of trust delivered to His children, had been
handed over to His enemy, now the legal ruler.

Such then is the comprehensive nature of the chapter we are now to consider.
Failure to understand what is set forth in this passage or to accept it as exact and
ultimate truth will result in complete blindness concerning the divine plans and

purposes and will lead to endless confusion in all philosophical thinking concerning
matters temporal and eternal.

“Now the dragon was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God

made.” Let us note that in his original form the serpent was the dragon. He only
became the serpent as a result of the curse, and it is in that form that we now know
him. No one can be found who ever saw a dragon, nor is there any record of anyone

who ever saw a dragon. Yet the dragon is frequently referred to in Scripture and is a
familiar symbol in the mythologies of other ancient peoples. May we say at this point
that whereas we recognize ancient myths to be replete with fantastic absurdities and to
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