Sons of Adam

A certain topic has surfaced around me a number of times recently, and I would like to set the record straight about what the Bible says in regard to it. I’m talking about the doctrine of ‘pre-existence,’ meaning the belief that everyone was “with heavenly Father” as a spirit being before being born into this world. I wasn’t quite aware of just how many of God’s people believe this, so let’s just go straight to some scriptures that will clear this up very quickly. Jesus made it clear as to where the problem of sin is at in man: “For from within, OUT OF THE HEART of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, Thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: All these evil things come from within, and defile the man” (Mk. 7:21-23). There’s the answer to the sin issue right there, and the sin issue is what the truth of this topic comes down to. Sin is in the hearts of men, and that is why the heart that must be purified by the power of the holy Ghost baptism administered by Jesus to those who truly believe on him fully (Acts 10:43-46; Acts 15:8,9; Tit. 3:5; I Pet. 1:22). The heart is the same thing as the spirit of a man, being the inner being, meaning the actual life substance of a person (Jas. 2:26). With that understanding we can go on to the root of the matter on this topic, and see whether the scriptures support ‘pre-existence’ with “heavenly Father” or not. The following verse really tells the story: “For as IN ADAM all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive” (I Cor. 15:22). What this scripture means is exactly what it says; that we were all “in Adam” when he chose to sin, and took on a sinful nature. Because we were in Adam, we all took on that sinful nature because of his sin, as the scripture confirms to us again: “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” (Rom. 5:12). So we all were accounted as sinners because we were all part of Adam’s substance, being literally IN him.

Remembering that Jesus let us know of a certainty that the sinful condition is IN THE SPIRIT, or heart of men; what that tells us is that our spiritual substance was in Adam, along with our physical substance; which means that we WERE NOT “with heavenly Father” before being born in this world. We were rather IN our EARTHLY FATHER, and we all came from Adam. Again, that is why we were all born into this world with sin. Listen to what the apostle Paul said in regard to the same topic: “And as I may so say, Levi also, who receiveth tithes, payed tithes in Abraham. For he was yet in the loins of his father, when Melchisedec met him” (Heb. 7:9,10). He did NOT say that PART of Levi was in the loins of Abraham and that part of Levi was “with heavenly Father.” He said that LEVI WAS IN the loins of Abraham, and therefore he paid tithes to Melchisedec. Yet another aspect of this truth can be shown from I Corinthians 15, where we found that “in Adam all died.” “The first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven” (I Cor. 15:47). The account of the creation says it this way regarding “the first man:” “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul” (Gen. 2:7). Adam was not with God in heaven before being formed from the dust of the earth. We are all derived from the same bodily and spiritual substance that Adam was created with, and that is why the scripture says that we all died in Adam. We died in Adam because we took on sin in Adam, and “the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23). The ONLY way we could have taken on sin while in Adam, is that our spiritual substance was in Adam; because that is where sin is at, all of which things the scriptures have perfectly confirmed here. This is why Jesus had to be born of a virgin, and why he COULD NOT have come through an earthly father; because the spirit of a person comes from their father, as the scriptures have also confirmed to us here. Jesus was conceived and born as the Son of God that he has always been, even before anything else existed [other than the Father] (Mat. 1:20; Lk. 1:35; Prov. 8:22-30; Jn. 1:1-3; Eph. 3:9; Col. 1:15-17).

Being born apart from the spiritual lineage of Adam, Jesus was born as the Son of God without sin, as the lamb of God without spot or blemish. That is the meaning of the scripture quoted in this article, that says, “The first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven.” His body was of Adam, but as the scripture states, he was “conceived… of the Holy [Spirit]” (Mat. 1:20). Jesus began a new spiritual lineage of people, who are “born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever” (I Pet. 1:23). Adam’s seed was and is corruptible, having sin; but when we are born of the seed of our new father, meaning Jesus, we are born anew of this incorruptible seed, which is the word or Spirit of God. If we have been baptized by Jesus with his incorruptible Spirit, Adam is no longer our father because our spirits are washed from his corruption and fused with the holiness of the Son of God (I Cor. 6:11,17). Had our spirits come from heaven into our bodies, then we would have been born without sin like Jesus. No my friend, Jesus truly is one of a kind, and none of us are in that club. As for us, our bodies are still the offspring of Adam, but if we finish our course here without sin we will also receive “the redemption of our body” in the first resurrection at the second coming of Jesus to this world (Rom. 8:23; I Jn. 3:2,3; Rev. 20:6). When God said to Jeremiah, “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee,” he was simply speaking of his foreknowledge. In Romans 8:29,30 the apostle Paul speaks of the elect of God as though they had been justified and even glorified, which is to say immortalized, before the foundation of the world. But he also explains in that passage that he was speaking of the foreknowledge of God, whom Isaiah said “declares the end from the beginning” (Isa. 446:10). God knew us all by his vast foreknowledge of all things that would ever happen, but we were certainly not with him literally in heaven before we were born here. Rather, as the scriptures have clearly confirmed to us here, we were only with “earthly father” Adam. Amen.