"When Satan affirmed that Adam and Eve were by nature immortal, 
by saying, “Ye shall not surely die,” he added, “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.”
This was as much of a lie as the other, and was a companion to it, and a necessary consequence of it. Our common version does not give the full force of the original. We know not why the translators rendered it, “Ye shall be as gods,” for the Hebrew plainly reads, “Ye shall be like God, knowing good and evil.”
---This lets in new light on the subject.
---Satan recognized the fact that immortality is an attribute of Deity, and that the possessor of it must necessarily be his own judge of right and wrong.
It was by this lie that Satan deceived Eve, and caused her to sin. Notice that
(A) the assertion of immortality and of
(B) the power of judging for themselves of right and wrong, constitutes the one deception; and bear in mind that it was this claim of natural immortality for man which brought death into the world, and all our woe, with loss of Eden.
Therefore we have proved the proposition that the doctrine of the natural immortality of man is the cause of all the wickedness that has ever cursed our earth." E.J. Waggoner
