Questions From Readers

● Did Adam die as a result of being ousted from the garden of Eden and having to eat the imperfect food that grew outside?—L. D., United States.

It was not the eating of food outside the garden that Adam was warned against, but the partaking of certain fruit growing inside the garden, namely, the tree of the knowledge of good and bad: “But as for the tree of the knowledge of good and bad you must not eat from it, for in the day you eat from it you will positively die.” (Gen. 2:17, NW) Not that the fruit of this tree was poisonous; to the contrary, “the woman saw that the tree’s fruit was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes, yes, the tree was desirable to look upon. So she began taking of its fruit and eating it. Afterward she gave some also to her husband when with her and he began eating it.” The harm came in what the eating in disobedience to Jehovah symbolized, namely, that the first human pair thought they could decide for themselves what was good and what was bad. Disobedience resulted in their having guilty consciences: “Then the eyes of both of them became opened and they began to realize that they were naked. Hence they sewed fig leaves together and made loin-coverings for themselves.”—Gen. 3:6, 7, NW.

It was this rebellious disobedience that brought upon them Jehovah’s sentence of death. They were ousted from the garden and in the sweat of their brows had to eke their existence from the soil, but it was not the eating of this food that killed them. It was disobedience that brought death, not food. But food was partly Jehovah’s means of execution, now that man was sentenced to death and imperfect. Food was not the total factor. Jesus when a man on earth was perfect, had the right to life, and could have lived forever on earth as a perfect man. Some challenge this, saying he would have become imperfect and died by reason of eating of our present food supply. But if food would do this, the process must have started during the thirty-three and a half years that he lived, and if this was so then Jesus was no longer perfect at the time he died, and therefore not Adam’s equal and not a qualified ransomer. But we know that Jesus was a perfect man, Adam’s equal, when he died and that he is the qualified ransomer. His perfection was not marred by the food he ate. Food is not the total factor. It is not what you eat or refrain from eating that governs, but whether you obey or disobey Jehovah. So it was also in Adam’s case.