Then Shall the Sanctuary Be Cleansed - Donald K. Short

plan was thwarted. The saboteurs took over.
The record in the Scriptures is clear. One day
Adam found delight in talking face to face with
God. On the next day following his disobedience
he fled from the face of God. It was the same
Creator God and the same physical Adam. The
change had come in the thinking of Adam. The
basis of this change is found in the sophistry of the
serpent in which Adam trusted. He believed that he
would be as God (Genesis 3:5, margin) and in this
there is revealed the very root of sin.
Obviously there is no way that man could be as
God unless he was able to get rid of God, that is, to
kill Him. The logic of this is clear for it was Christ
who said that the devil "was a murderer from the
beginning" (John 8:44). This simply means that
Satan offered to Adam the prospect of getting rid
of God and man accepted the offer. It is unlikely
that man consciously understood this, indeed he
probably did not understand it. But this does not
alter the end result. In the same way, Lucifer
undoubtedly did not understand the depths of his
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