Sin

Let’s thank Adam and Eve for disobeying God

On 5/26/85, Jack Hyles, the late pastor of First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana (FBCH), preached on “Thank you, Adam,” actually thanking Adam and Eve for disobeying God and bringing sin into the world. He said such things as, “Thank God for the chains of sin,” and, “If nobody ever got drunk, I wouldn’t enjoy preaching.”

Mormons also thank Adam and Eve for sinning against God. Let me explain to you why. They teach that if Adam and Eve had not partaken of the forbidden fruit they would have had no children: ‘And now, behold, if Adam had not transgressed he would not have fallen, but he would have remained in the Garden of Eden …. And they would have had no children; wherefore they would have remained in a state of innocence, having no joy, for they knew no misery; doing no good, for they knew no sin …. Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy’ (Book of Mormon, II Nephi 2:22-25). In other words, without the fall there would have been no human race. So Adam did not do a wrong thing when he ate the forbidden fruit, but rather he did a wise thing, for he even thanked God after he sinned; here are his words: ‘Blessed be the name of God, for because of my transgression my eyes are opened, and in this life I shall have joy, and again in the flesh I shall see God’. Eve also was very glad after she sinned and declared: ‘Were it not for our transgression we never should have had seed, and never should have known good and evil, and the joy of our redemption, and the eternal life which God giveth unto all the obedient’ (James E. Talmage, A Study of the Articles of Faith, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA, 42nd edition, 1968, page 68). That’s why Mormons prefer not to speak of Adam’s transgression as a sin; Joseph Fielding Smith stated: ‘I never speak of the part Eve took in this fall as a sin, nor do I accuse Adam of a sin. One may say: ‘Well, [,] did they not break a commandment?’ Yes. But let us examine the nature of that commandment and the results which came out of it. In no other commandment the Lord ever gave to man, did he say: ‘But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it, nevertheless, thou mayest choose for thyself’ (Quoted from Moses 3:17. The final clause has been added to the text by Joseph Smith); ‘It is true, the Lord warned Adam and Eve that to partake of the fruit they would transgress a law, and this happened. But it is not always a sin to transgress a law. I will try to illustrate this. The chemist in his laboratory takes different elements and combines them, and the result is that something very different results. He has changed the law …. Well, Adam’s transgression was of a similar nature, that is, his transgression was in accordance with the law’ (Doctrines of Salvation, I, 114). To sum up, the fall of Adam was a means for providing billions of pre-existent spirits with mortal tabernacles, and a necessary stage in man’s ultimate exaltation to godhood (bear in mind that according to Mormonism before men inhabited this earth, they existed as spirits, and they came into this world so that one day – by obeying all the laws and ordinances of the Mormon church - they might become gods). Therefore, ‘we, the children of Adam and Eve, may well be proud of our parentage’ (Widtsoe, Evidences and Reconciliations, page 195), ‘our first parents are entitled to our deepest gratitude for their legacy to posterity – the means of winning title to glory, exaltation, and eternal lives’ (James Talmage, op. cit., page 70).

Confutation

We must be grateful to God for saving us and we must say together with Paul: “Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!” (2 Corinthians 9:15 - NKJV), or ‘God be thanked that though we were slaves of sin, yet we obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which we were delivered, and having been set free from sin, we became slaves of righteousness’ (cf. Romans 6:17-18 – NKJV). But we must not thank Adam and Eve for sinning against God and allowing thus sin to enter into the world with all his evil consequences. We must be grateful toward those who do some good to us; and He who has done and is still doing good to us is God; He is our benefactor, who has turned the evil done by Adam and Eve into good setting us free from sin. Therefore from the bottom of our hearts we thank Him and not our disobedient progenitors.

Someone may say: ‘However, if Adam had not sinned we could not have experienced the salvation which is in Christ Jesus!’, but the fact is that God in His foreknowledge determined that things had to go that way, that is to say, that Adam should sin, because He had decided to send His only begotten Son in this world to save the world before the foundation of the world; that’s why Peter called Jesus Christ a Lamb foreordained before the foundation of the world (cf. 1 Peter 1:19-20), Therefore, the reason why God allowed sin to enter into the world was this. However, God rebuked Adam for sinning, there is no doubt about it, and He punished both Adam and Eve for their disobedience (cf. Genesis 3:14-19). And remember that God punished also the serpent for deceiving Eve.

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