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Temptation and Fall
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to inquire of him why another should thus freely address her. But
she entered into a controversy with the serpent. She answered his
question, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden. But
of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath
said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.” The
serpent answered, “Ye shall not surely die: for God doth know that
in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye
shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.”
Satan would convey the idea that by eating of the forbidden tree
they would receive a new and more noble kind of knowledge than
they had hitherto attained. This has been his special work, with great
success, ever since his fall—to lead men to pry into the secrets of
the Almighty and not to be satisfied with what God has revealed,
and not careful to obey that which He has commanded. He would
lead them to disobey God’s commands, and then make them believe
that they are entering a wonderful field of knowledge. This is purely
supposition, and a miserable deception. They fail to understand what
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God has revealed, and disregard His explicit commandments and
aspire after wisdom, independent of God, and seek to understand
that which He has been pleased to withhold from mortals. They
are elated with their ideas of progression and charmed with their
own vain philosophy, but grope in midnight darkness relative to true
knowledge. They are ever learning and never able to come to the
knowledge of the truth.
It was not the will of God that this sinless pair should have any
knowledge of evil. He had freely given them the good but withheld
the evil. Eve thought the words of the serpent wise, and she received
the broad assertion, “Ye shall not surely die: for God doth know that
in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye
shall be as gods, knowing good and evil”—making God a liar. Satan
boldly insinuated that God had deceived them to keep them from
being exalted in knowledge equal with Himself. God said: If ye eat
ye shall surely die. The serpent said, If ye eat, “ye shall not surely
die.”
The tempter assured Eve that as soon as she ate of the fruit she
would receive a new and superior knowledge that would make her
equal with God. He called her attention to himself. He ate freely
of the tree and found it not only perfectly harmless but delicious