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The Truth About Angels
With what intense interest the whole universe watched the conflict
that was to decide the position of Adam and Eve. How attentively
the angels listened to the words of Satan, the originator of sin, as he
placed his own ideas above the commands of God, and sought to make
of none effect the law of God through his deceptive reasoning! How
anxiously they waited to see if the holy pair would be deluded by the
tempter, and yield to his arts....
Satan represented God as a deceiver, as one who would debar His
creatures from the benefit of His highest gift. The angels heard with
sorrow and amazement this statement in regard to the character of God,
as Satan represented Him as possessing his own miserable attributes;
but Eve was not horror-stricken to hear the holy and supreme God thus
falsely accused. If she had ... remembered all the tokens of His love, if
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she had fled to her husband, she might have been saved from the subtle
temptation of the evil one.—
The Signs of the Times, May 12, 1890
.
The tempter plucked the fruit and passed it to Eve. She took it
in her hand. Now, said the tempter, you were prohibited from even
touching it lest you die. He told her that she would realize no more
sense of evil and death in eating than in touching or handling the
fruit. Eve was emboldened because she felt not the immediate signs of
God’s displeasure. She thought the words of the tempter all wise and
correct. She ate, and was delighted with the fruit. It seemed delicious
to her taste, and she imagined that she realized in herself the wonderful
effects of the fruit.—
The Spirit of Prophecy 1:38
.
There was nothing poisonous in the fruit of the tree of knowledge
itself, nothing that would cause death in partaking of it. The tree had
been placed in the garden to test their loyalty to God.—
The Signs of
the Times, February 13, 1896
.
Eve Eats the Fruit and Tempts Adam
Eve ate and imagined that she felt the sensations of a new and
more exalted life.... She felt no ill effects from the fruit, nothing
which could be interpreted to mean death, but, just as the serpent had
said, a pleasurable sensation which she imagined was as the angels
felt.—
Testimonies for the Church 3:72
.
She then plucked for herself of the fruit and ate, and imagined
she felt the quickening power of a new and elevated existence as the
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