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WHAT IF GOD HAD NOT CURSED THE GROUND IN GENESIS? Taking the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil led to disastrous consequences for Adam and Eve and all of humanity. The penalty of death followed hundreds of years later, and it has been imposed on humanity ever since. Eve’s childbirth pain was to be multiplied, and the ground was to be cursed as well. Essentially, life was to become a burdensome, grueling experience, until the establishment of God’s Millennial Kingdom on Earth. God had promised Adam ad Eve that they would die, and He kept His promise. But He went a step further and punished Adam and Eve beyond simply dying of old age. The ground was cursed and their long life was to be filled with toil and sorrow until the end. But what if God had not punished Adam and Eve as grievously as He did? What if He had only permitted the death penalty but had not cursed the ground and, by extension, human life? Adam, we are told, lived to over 900 years. His descendents lived very long lives as well. Since death did not ensue immediately, if God had not added the extra life-long punishment, it would have been easy for humans to conclude that there would have been no consequences to sins, no matter how serious they might have been. Thus, God addressed this need by adding daily anguish to accompany the lives of humans. God, in His wisdom, saw fit to make human life arduous and painful, by cursing the ground. He clearly wanted mankind to be reminded, generation after generation, that sin invites curses and misery and anguish. Humans had to experience daily that independence from God leads to a struggle for existence and to an anxious life, and that following Satan results invariably in great stresses and sorrows. Every nation and every generation since then has tasted of the curse. Humans know that the basics of life are rooted in the soil and its production. The soil’s production is unpredictable, even where the land is plenteous, and even abundant crops are related to exhausting labor. The nations that veer away from agriculture experience the “essence” of the curse by tasting exploitation and abuse in factories and offices where bosses are often demanding and unfair, where hours are long and exhausting and where remuneration is often incommensurate with the effort. The curse was to last until Christ’s return when the times of refreshing will come. In those days “the desert shall rejoice and blossom as a rose” (Isaiah 35:1). During those awe-inspiring times “the parched ground shall become a pool and the thirsty land springs of water” (V. 7), and “sorrow and sighing shall flee away (V. 9). They will be days when “the plowman shall overtake the reaper and the treader of grapes him who sows seed; the mountains shall drip with sweet wines and all the hills shall flow with it” (Amos 9:13). Since Adam and Eve partook of the Tree of Knowledge, the overall human experience has been and continues to be very painful. Humans taste daily the consequences of rebelling to God’s will and the curses that accompany sin. But, thankfully, God’s plan will soon proceed to the next stage when curses will be finally lifted, and blessings will abound throughout the earth. |