"The deception of thinking that they have life in
themselves has beenfor ages, and is still, the bane of mankind. This
deception is couched in the conception of the immortality of the soul. Vast multitudes of the human race, and indeed the whole human race,
naturally, as it is, have come under the power of that deception—of
thinking that they have life themselves so certainly that even the Lord
himself cannot deprive them of it. Through the deception in which they
are involved, they have come to believe that a part of themselves is
“immortal,” and, logically enough, that, therefore, it is “a part of
God”—and then the conclusion, “How can God destroy a part of himself?” By that argument they convince themselves that the Lord himself could
not destroy them, if he wished to.
The whole human race is naturally under that
deception. And the way in which they came under this deception is
precisely the way in which they came under the deception of sin.
It is a
part of the original deception:
yea, rather,
it is the very kernel of
the original deception.
Q: For what was it that the deceiver said to the
woman, to get her to depart from God into sin? What was it?—
A: “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 like God.”
You will be like the divine, and not subject to death. ...that was the original deception into which the race went by that
“one man,” by whom came sin and death; and it is not strange that this
deception of men’s thinking that they have life in themselves should be
as widely disseminated as is sin. The two things came in together; and
they belong together forever.
But the Lord spoke otherwise. Before this deceiver
spoke, the Lord had said: “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou
shalt surely die.” Gen. 2:17. And this was the truth. It was the truth
when he spoke it; it was the truth the day they ate of the tree; and it
is the truth forever.
---And the only reason that Adam and Eve did not die
in the very hour that they ate, is that Jesus Christ stepped in between,
and took upon himself the curse of sin, and its penalty of death. And
this he did in order that mankind might be delivered from the death into
which they had been plunged by that “one man.”
Therefore, since the
Lord Jesus stepped in between, and himself received the stroke of death
that must come upon the man the day he sinned; and since the Lord Jesus
did this solely in order that the man might have the opportunity to
receive life instead of death, it became essential, and in the gift of
Christ that day it was given, that the man and all mankind should have
sufficient space in which to breathe to allow them to live long enough
to fix each his choice of life or death." A.T. Jones
