The Whole Bible Unlocked in 3 Chapters

The keys to understanding the Bible are found in the first three chapters of Genesis.

If you understand these chapters, you will understand the whole book. If you don’t, you’ll never be able to accurately understand the Bible. There are people today who are atheists because they have not understood the message Genesis holds, so let’s find out why understanding the Bible boils down to Genesis 1, 2, and 3.

The Bible says in Genesis 1:31, “And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.” He created after His kind, and everything He made was very good. “But what about snakes and alligators?” you might ask. God didn’t create the animals as they are today. Animals didn’t eat each other until after Noah put them out of the ark (Genesis 1:30; 9:1-5.)

Things we see on earth today are perversions of nature. They came about when Adam bowed his knee to the outlaw spirit and turned his authority over to Satan. Then Satan became god of the world system and perverted the things God had created.

Some say, “If there was a God, there wouldn’t be all the wars and fighting. There wouldn’t be trouble and turmoil. Little kids wouldn’t be born crippled, and there wouldn’t be all the suffering that is in the world today.” But there is a God—a God who keeps His Word.

God Is Good. The Devil Is Bad.

When Adam turned his authority over to Satan, Satan became the god of the world system. Through his wickedness, he set out to destroy God’s creation. He perverted the nature of things God had created.

When you hear of a tornado destroying a city, invariably newspaper headlines describe it as “an act of God.” Don’t blame God! It was the devil who visited that town! When lightning struck an Arkansas plant, giant headlines read, Act of God Kills 23, Injured Many More. No bigger lie has ever been told. This is a perversion of nature.

Because of deception, many people think these evil things come from God. They read about Job and the things that came upon him, then come up with ideas foreign to the Bible. For example, Job 1:16 says, “The fire of God is fallen from heaven, and hath burned up the sheep, and the servants.” But God didn’t send it; the devil sent it! The “fire” was lightning. The cattle were probably watering in a pond when lightning struck and killed them all. In that day, most people thought everything that happened came from God.

This is why people are still confused in our day about things in the Old Testament. We need to fully understand that God is our heavenly Father. He is not the perpetrator of death, evil, or calamity. The perversion was caused by the satanic forces turned loose on the earth.

Some have the idea that God sent death on man. But God is not the perpetrator of death; death is of the devil. When Adam sinned, death came into the world. First Corinthians 15:21 tells us that death came by man. God told Adam what would happen if he ate the forbidden fruit. God is not the author of death, but of life!

“Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself [Jesus] likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil” (Hebrews 2:14).

Death is of the devil; it’s an enemy of God and of man. Sin caused Adam to die. Sin brought death. For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life (Romans. 6:23).

The Body Was Designed to Recreate Itself

Adam’s body was designed to live forever. Medical science can’t tell why people die. They know some die from sickness and disease, but they don’t know why the body ages. It was designed to recreate itself every seven to eleven years. There isn’t one cell in your body today that was there eleven years ago.

The day Adam ate of the tree which God said would produce death, he became mortal. He chose mortality in the Garden.

“And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it” (Genesis 2:15). Adam had all authority to subdue and have dominion over every creeping thing on earth. God put him in the Garden to keep it, which means “to hedge it about, guard, and protect.” In other words, “to preserve it from all intruders.”

“And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Genesis 2:16-17).

Adam did die. He died spiritually the instant he sinned. He didn’t know how to die physically because his body was designed to live forever. It took Satan over 900 years to teach him how to die.

“But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat” (v. 17). God didn’t want Adam to eat of the tree of knowledge which was really knowing the difference between good and evil. The Hebrew says, “the knowledge of blessing and calamity.”

The fall of man was directly connected to his tongue. Adam gained knowledge of how to produce blessing and calamity by the words of his mouth. The word evil used here means “adversity, affliction, bad, calamity, grief, hurt, harm, and trouble.” Adam ate of that fruit. And that was dumb!

God had told him, “Don’t do it. If you do, you are going to die. You will become a spiritually dead man. Yes, you are going to gain knowledge — the knowledge of calamity!” Because Adam already knew how to speak blessings, he only gained the knowledge of calamity and how to produce it.

“. . . The serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made” (Genesis 3:1). God created the earth and put man on it. Satan came on the scene in the form of a serpent. He had to enter a body so he could be manifested on earth. He had to come through some form of creation to reach Adam, so he used the body of a serpent.

Satan can’t come directly to your spirit; he has to approach your body — and you can shut him off with your will! Your mind was given to you as a door to keep your heart (spirit).

You are the keeper of that door, and you can shut it anytime.

“And the serpent said unto the woman, 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” (Genesis 3:4-5).

Notice that Satan said, “You’ll be as gods.” There is the great deception. Was all that Satan said a lie? No. It was a half-truth. Elohim is the Hebrew word used for gods. Adam and Eve were so excited over Satan saying, “You will become as Elohim (gods)” that they didn’t pay attention to the other part — knowing calamity.

Adam Had No Need for Intellectual Knowledge

If all Adam and Eve were to gain was evil, Adam would have turned it down. Until he gave his authority to Satan, Adam was operating in revelation knowledge. Satan offered him an alternative to the tree of life. The tree of calamity would give the ability to produce calamity. The tree of life contained everything Adam needed. He could eat freely of it. It would produce the knowledge of how to get everything good — by the words of his mouth.

“A wholesome tongue is a tree of life: but perverseness therein is a breach in the spirit” (Proverbs 15:4).

“The mouth of a righteous man is a well of life” (Proverbs 10:11).

“The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life” (Proverbs 11:30).

“Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding. For the merchandise of it is better than the merchandise of silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold. She is more precious than rubies: and all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her. Length of days is in her right hand; and in her left-hand riches and honor. Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her” (Proverbs 3:13-18).

“Hope deferred maketh the heart sick: but when the desire cometh, it (desire) is a tree of life” (Proverbs 13:12).

Fruit of the Lips

Adam had access to the tree of life which would give him wisdom, a wholesome tongue, righteous fruit from his lips, and desire. (Desire makes one speak in order to bring forth fruit of the lips.)

How prophetic are the words of Proverbs 13:2-3! “A man shall eat good by the fruit of his mouth: but the soul of the transgressors shall eat violence. He that keepeth his mouth keepeth his life.”

Adam ate of the transgressor’s (forbidden) fruit. He ate of violence (calamity), lost his spiritual life, and eventually lost his physical life. He gained knowledge of how to produce calamity by the words of his mouth. When he bowed his knee to Satan, he lost control of the good. Adam lost the ability to control his tongue.

The third chapter of James tells us the tongue is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison, and is set on fire of hell. Adam’s tongue was set on fire of hell when he ate the fruit. It poisoned his tongue, and he lost the ability to control it.

How was Adam to control and subdue the earth? By the words of his mouth, using his faith — by speaking things into existence.

Adam was created a full-grown man with no need for intellectual knowledge. He was already operating in revelation knowledge. He was subordinate only to God. God’s Spirit was in contact with Adam’s spirit.

“And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat” (Genesis 3:6).

Some of you thought Adam was off somewhere in the back of the Garden picking fruit or naming bugs when Eve got into trouble! But that’s not the way it happened. Adam was standing right there with her. In fact, Adam sinned first.

God told Adam to subdue the earth and have dominion over every living thing (Gen. 1:28). Wasn’t that snake a living creature?

God said, “You have dominion over him; subdue him. Guard the Garden; hedge it about. Protect it from all intruders.” That was a command, not just a suggestion.

Adam was standing right there, listening to every word the serpent said, and he deliberately disobeyed God. He could have said, “Serpent, in the name of Almighty God, I demand that you leave this planet and never return.” In an instant of time, Satan would have been banished from the earth.

But Adam didn’t do that. He deliberately disobeyed God. The Bible states that Eve was deceived, but Adam was not (1 Tim. 2:14). Eve was deceived because Adam didn’t do what God had told him to do. If he had obeyed God and used his authority, Eve would not have been deceived.

Adam stood there with all the authority vested in him from God the Father to protect the Garden and all that it contained, but he didn’t use his authority. He bowed his knee to an outlaw spirit and allowed the curse to come. He invited death and destruction.

Disobedience —  Deception

The first thing that happened was disobedience, then deception. It was Adam’s disobedience that caused Eve to be deceived.

We find in Genesis 3:14-19 that a curse came because of the disobedience. In verse 22 we read, “And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us. And Adam was driven from the Garden” (v. 24).

You can see that Satan had told them a half-truth. God said, “Man has become as one of us to know good and evil.” Adam had gained the knowledge of how to produce both blessing and calamity by the words of his mouth. He was created to operate on the same level of faith with God, then he gained the knowledge of how to set it in motion. But in gaining that knowledge, he disobeyed God and bowed his knee to Satan. He lost control of his tongue and had trouble using it for good.

James said of the tongue that it is set on fire of hell “. . . an unruly evil, full of deadly poison” (James 3:6,8).

God said, “Man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever” (Gen. 3:22). Notice that the sentence stopped there. God quit talking and put Adam out of the Garden.

“Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life” (vv. 23,24).

Adam could have eaten of the tree of life and established immortality, but instead he ate of the forbidden tree and became mortal. So God said, “Get him out of the Garden because if he gets hold of that tree of life, he will live forever in that sinful state.”

You can see the wisdom and mercy of God in that. What would have happened if Adam had partaken of the tree of life after he had sinned? The curse was already there; so when sickness, disease, and the other horrible afflictions began to control man’s life, he would have lived throughout eternity with no hope of ever being delivered from the curse. There would have been no hope of deliverance from all the horrible pains caused by the diabolic and devilish diseases Satan had brought about through the curse.

Because Adam bowed his knee to Satan, he set in motion the curses: sickness, disease, calamity, and disaster. If man had eaten of the tree of life after he had sinned, he would have lived forever in that sinful state. Every evil person, every criminal who ever lived on earth, would still be alive today! It would have produced hell on earth!

God created man with a will. Man was free to choose. He had the choice of immortality or mortality, and he chose to become mortal. It was Adam’s choice. The wages of sin is death (Rom. 6:23). Without sin, there would be no death.

God Drove Out Adam for Man’s Own Good

God put Adam out of the Garden after he had sinned to keep him from tapping the tree of life. Otherwise, he would have lived forever in that sinful state. Ezekiel 18:4 says, “The soul that sinneth, it shall die.”

Someone said that Adam couldn’t have lived forever after he sinned, because if he had, God would have lied. No, there are two deaths. Adam died spiritually the instant he ate of the tree of knowledge. But if he had eaten of the tree of life after sinning, he would never have died physically. He would have been a spiritually dead man throughout eternity with no way to rid himself of the sickness and disease that came by the curse. Man would have been in hell on earth!

Satan Was After the Tree of Life

There was a reason for God driving Adam and Eve out of the Garden. He wanted to get them away from the Tree of Life. Satan had his eye on that tree and wanted to get his hands on it. He had no authority on earth until he tapped into man’s power and authority. Adam had given his own God-given authority over to Satan.

Someone might ask, “Why didn’t Satan just go over and pick the fruit and eat it?”

He couldn’t do that. Satan is a spirit being, and spirits have no authority in earth without a body. If they did, evil spirits would tear the earth to pieces, destroying it in a moment of time. But they can’t do that. They must enter into a body to have authority. Man’s body gives the devil authority on earth.

In the Garden, Satan tapped into man’s authority by using the body of the serpent. He tempted Eve through the serpent and caused Adam to commit high treason. The only way Satan could get to the Tree of Life was to get Adam to sin and become subordinate to him, for Adam was the god of this world.

After Adam became subordinate to Satan, Satan became his lord. Whatever Adam could tap into naturally, Satan could have. Satan was trying to get Adam to tap into the Tree of Life. If he had done so, Satan would have partaken of it also!

But God is a whole lot smarter than that! He put Adam out of the Garden to stop that from coming to pass!

Curse Upon the Serpent

“And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life” (Genesis 3:14).

Evidently, the serpent didn’t crawl on his belly until the curse. But because he allowed himself to be used by that evil spirit, Satan, the serpent was cursed.

A Prophecy Fulfilled by Jesus

“And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed . . .” (v. 15).

Notice He didn’t say, “the seed of the man,” but, “the seed of the woman.” Jesus became the seed of woman. He was born of a woman; He had no earthly father.

God says here, “ . . . it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel” (v. 15). In other words, Satan will only be able to affect the feet, but Jesus will crush Satan’s head.

Woman’s Part of the Curse

“Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee” (v. 16).

Some people think that part of the curse was that women would have to bear children, but God had already told Adam and Eve to multiply and replenish the earth. The curse was that there would be sorrow in conception.

Adam’s Part

“And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field” (vv. 17-18).

Thorns and thistles are part of the curse. Those that crucified Jesus made a crown of thorns and put it on His head. The thorns are symbols of the full curse Jesus had to bear for us.

“And Adam called his wife’s name Eve; because she was the mother of all living” (v. 20). Here is something you possibly had not seen: God did not name Eve. Adam named his wife “Eve.”

We read in Genesis 5:2, “Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created.” God called them both “Adam” when He created them.

Satan tried to tap into the tree of life and failed. God put Adam out of that Garden after he handed his authority over to Satan. Satan could not get at the tree of life. God had other plans.

The story is told of a little boy in Sunday school who heard the teacher tell them to draw a picture of something they had learned in class that day. The boy drew a picture of a red Cadillac convertible with an old gray-haired man in the front seat and a young couple in the back seat.

The teacher looked at the picture and said, “Jimmy, we didn’t study anything like that today.”

“Yes, we did,” said Jimmy. “Don’t you remember? That’s God, driving Adam and Eve out of the Garden!”