The Seed of the Serpent
The ruin of
mankind, and of our present universe, began when our first parents, Adam and
Eve disobeyed God.
Before Eve
was taken from the side of Adam the following took place:
And the LORD God commanded the man, saying,
"Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it
you shall surely die [lit: dying you will die]." (Genesis
2:16-17)
In order to
have viable relationships, when two or more parties exist, free choices must be
available to the parties. This means that men must be given the right to reject
God as well as to embrace Him:
Now the serpent [nachash] was more cunning than
any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman,
"Has God indeed said, 'You shall not eat of every tree of the
garden'?" And the woman said
to the serpent, "We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden;
"but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the
garden, God has said, 'You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you
die.'" Then the serpent said to the woman, "You will not surely die.
"For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and
you will be like God, knowing good and evil." So when the woman saw that
the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree
desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her
husband with her, and he ate.
After both
Adam and Eve had fallen, God came to seek them out and to restore their broken
relationship with Him. (Genesis 3:1-6) (To this day, we sons and daughters of
Adam and Eve do not seek God—He must seek us first, Romans 3:11).
Though they
were immediately restored to fellowship with God. But the consequences of their
disobedience were long lasting:
Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew
that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves
coverings.
And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the
garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the
presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. Then the LORD God
called to Adam and said to him, "Where are you?" So he said, "I
heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid
myself." And He said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you
eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat?"
Then the man said, "The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me of
the tree, and I ate."
And the LORD God said to the woman, "What is this you
have done?" The woman said, "The serpent [Hebrew, nachash, "the shining one", i.e.
a fallen angel] deceived me, and I ate." So the LORD God said to the
serpent: "Because you have done this, You are cursed more than all cattle,
And more than every beast of the field; On your belly you shall go, And you
shall eat dust All the days of your life.
15. "And I will put enmity between you and the
woman, And between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, And you
shall bruise His heel."
To the woman He said: "I will greatly multiply your
sorrow and your conception; In pain you shall bring forth children; Your desire
shall be for your husband, And he shall rule over you."
Then to Adam He said, "Because you have heeded the
voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you,
saying, 'You shall not eat of it': "Cursed is the ground for your sake; In
toil you shall eat of it All the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it
shall bring forth for you, And you shall eat the herb of the field. In the
sweat of your face you shall eat bread Till you return to the ground, For out
of it you were taken; For dust you are, And to dust you shall return." And
Adam called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living. Also
for Adam and his wife the LORD God made tunics of skin, and clothed them."
(Genesis 3:7-21)
Verse 15 is
remarkable in many ways. Ordinary the seed, or offspring, comes from the man.
Here there is a reference to the "seed of the woman," not to the seed
of Adam. Likewise, the term "the seed of the serpent is obscure.
Some years
ago, a Canadian scholar, Arthur Custance, suggested the possibility that
"original sin" (which causes the death of the body, and our innate
and total predisposition to sin)—is transmitted to the next generation
through the male sperm, not through the female ovum. (Custance's book, The Seed of the Woman is online, http://custance.org/old/seed/).
Custance
suggests that a child born to an ordinary woman, a descendent of Eve, could be
a sinless child if her ovum were fertilized supernaturally. Thus he is
suggesting a mechanism for the virgin birth of our Lord Jesus.
Most
scholars consider that the phrase the seed of the woman in Genesis 3:15 does refer to the
virgin birth of Jesus as the Redeemer and Savior of our race. In fact verse 15
is often called "the protevangelium," or first announcement of the
gospel.
Likewise the
seed of the serpent
refers to the antichrist—a fully human opponent of the true Messiah who
would appear at the end of the age. (The Greek prefix anti can mean "against" or
"opposed to" but it more often means "instead of.") The
antichrist is a counterfeit, fake messiah. (See for example Chuck Missler, The Man on Horseback, http://khouse.org/articles/1999/174/,
The Worthless Shepherd, http://ldolphin.org/worthless.html,
The Antichrist, http://ldolphin.org/Anti.html).
Down
through history there have been many antichrists (1 John 2:18), but the final
antichrist, Paul's man of sin, will eventually appear on the stage of human histry. He is
described in passages such as 2 Thessalonians 2:3-11, Matthew 24:15-24,
Revelation 19:19-20.
In every
generation some have tried to identify the final antichrist by name, but he can
not appear on the stage history until after the rapture (removal) of the true
church. So this pursuit is futile.
Until now,
no successful genetic experiments (that we know of), have resulted in the birth
of a human child without fertilization of a female ovum by a male sperm.
The
following news story was posted in late April of this year, suggesting that a
virgin-born child might be artificially brought into being in the near future.
Indeed it is possible this has already happened, but kept secret till now:
Envisioning a World Without Men
Scientist Says
Female-Only Reproduction Is Only a Few Years Away
By NICK WATT
LONDON, April 28, 2008
Imagine a
world without men: Lauren Bacall but no Bogie, Hillary Clinton but
no Bill, no
Starsky or Hutch.
Could the
entire male sex vanish from earth?
This isn't
just an unlikely sci-fi scenario. This could be reality, according
to Bryan
Sykes, an eminent professor of genetics at Oxford University and
author of
"Adam's Curse: A Future Without Men."
"The Y
chromosome is deteriorating and will, in my belief, disappear," Sykes
told me. A
world-renowned authority on genetic material, Sykes is called upon
to
investigate DNA evidence from crime scenes. His team of researchers is
currently
compiling a DNA family tree for our species.
Y
Chromosome 'Fatally Flawed'
The Y
chromosome is passed from father to son, it's what makes babies into
boys. Basically
the human template is a female: the Y chromosome kicks in a
few weeks
after conception and makes a boy. "Men are genetically modified
women,"
explained Sykes. But unlike other chromosomes, the Y chromosome can't
repair
itself and will, says Sykes, disappear altogether in about 125,000
years.
"Every
generation one percent of men will have a mutation which reduces their
fertility
by 10 percent," explained Sykes. Unlike most chromosomes, the Y does
not travel
through the generation in pairs, so can never repair itself from a
mirror.
Flaws are never repaired. "So if that goes on for generation after
generation,"
Sykes argued, "eventually there are no functioning Y chromosomes
left."
So no more
men ... sparsely populated sports bars, Ferrari would lose the lion's
share of
its business, and Hooters would probably go out of business.
It's a long
time, 125,000 years. But we men have a far more immediate problem:
sperm
counts have fallen by an incredible 20 percent in the past 50 years.
Stress?
Alcohol? Environmental pollution? Who knows, but it's deeply
concerning
for those of us with a vested interest in the survival of the male.
Sykes has
received hate mail. "To seem to be saying that men will become
extinct,
which is what I am saying," he mused. "I've had all kinds of messages
from male
groups saying, 'how can you betray your gender?'"
But would
the absence of men make the world a better place? There would be far
fewer wars
without men on the planet, and the U.S. prison population would
drop a
colossal 97 percent. Road deaths in the U.S. would fall 70 percent. The
Olympics
would be half as long, which some people might view as a good thing.
Female-Only
Reproduction
But surely,
flawed Y chromosome or not, bad behavior or not, we are needed for
procreation.
Women can't have babies without us ... right? I'm afraid, pretty
soon they
won't need our sperm, our chromosomes, our anything.
Until now,
female-only reproduction has been limited to the plant and animal
kingdom.
So-called parthenogenesis, observed in the Cape Honey Bee, the Kimono
Dragon and
the hammerhead shark. In humans: confined to 1950s B movies. But
Sykes says
the technology for women to procreate without us is just around the
corner.
"Within
the next few years you will get two women having a child who is the
biological
child of both of them," Sykes said. "And entirely normal in every
respect,
but always female."
They've
already done it with mice. Two mothers: the genetic material from one
used to
fertilize the egg of the other.
Two Mommies
The picture
that Professor Sykes is painting is of a nuclear family without a
man in
sight. We went in search of what could be the template for the survival
of our
species. Laura and Natalie are a lovely couple who live in South London
with their
13-month-old daughter Sanne. They agreed to let our all-male crew
take a peek
into their lives. Natalie actually gave birth to Sanne. The sperm
came from
an anonymous donor. She's raised by two moms.
"That
the child will be well balanced with just two moms: Well, that's been
proven back
in the 40s," explained Natalie, who is also a child psychologist.
"It's
the care giving and the relationship between the care-giver and the
infant that
is the important part."
Laura, who
right now is the bread winner, thinks any family will work as long
as the
child is, "getting the attention, the affection, the discipline."
Looking at
her very contented daughter, Laura told me, "She's obviously
confident.
She's very stable and secure. So I think so far we're doing okay."
Laura
attended both the dads' and the moms' prenatal classes. I asked Natalie
if having
Laura as the partner was better than having a man? "I had actually a
couple of
mothers saying, 'Well, at least Laura's a woman she will understand
better.'"
Natalie told me. "And I said, 'no.' ... She was exactly the same as
the
dads!"
Could Laura
mount a defense? "I would like to think that I separate from the
dads in
that I'm not hooked on the ball games and things like that," she
explained.
And I must say, she was knee-deep in diaper changing and feeding
time while
we were hanging out.
So judging
by this family, two moms aren't necessarily better, but can be just
as good.
But surely they must need a burly man for some things? I offered to
put up some
shelves, or change some light bulbs. "Actually, Laura is very,
very
handy," Natalie told me, trying not to hurt my feelings.
"My
father's a mechanic, so there's nothing about a car that disturbs me,"
explained
Laura. "I've also ... I renovated a house. So, I'm really not
concerned
about that either."
Maybe our
only hope as men is that women decide to keep us alive for their own
amusement.
For the pop music, perhaps, or maybe the dancing. We can be good at
that.-- http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=4725121&page=1
If a male
child were born of
a virgin by artificial means, and if Arthur Custance is correct in his
hypothesis, then we might see a very human antichrist, a real superman,
appearing on the stage of history in a future day. In principal, biologically
speaking, this man could live forever.
This
virgin-born son of a virgin would not, however be an incarnation of the Son of
God. He could be "the seed of the serpent." Rather than being possessed by the Holy Spirit and committed
to doing the will of God the Father, this son of Satan might well be possessed
by Satan.
This
conjecture would suggest that the "seed of the serpent," as Satan's
final attempt to be the master of our race, would involve a very supernatural
man—but a man wholly committed to serving Satan, the Adversary of man and
God.
Enough
said! Historically speaking, controversy over the "seed of the
serpent" has been heated, wild, even bizarre--often going well beyond
anything Scripture clearly teaches.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serpent_seed, http://www.mountainretreatorg.net/classics/seedwom2.html, http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/1999/9910chap.asp).
I recommend
that none of you get caught up in endless discussions on this subject. Let's
all wait and see. The above recent news item is very interesting for us in our
day. It seems quite clear to a good many Bible scholars that we are rapidly
approaching the time of the end when a final conflict will ensue between the
returning Lord Jesus Christ and the present "god of this world" who
opposes the Son of God. Our enemy will make one, final last-ditch
stand—and utterly fail.
What is
clear in the New Testament is the fact that Satan has already been fully
defeated. This happened at the Cross of Christ when... "it pleased the
Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell, and by Christ to reconcile
all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven,
having made peace through the blood of His cross." (Colossians 1:19-20)
Then the Pharisees and Sadducees came, and
testing Jesus asked that He would show them a sign from heaven. He answered and said to them,
"When it is evening you say, 'It will be fair weather, for the sky is
red'; "and in the morning, 'It will be foul weather today, for the sky is
red and threatening.' Hypocrites! You know how to discern the face of the sky,
but you cannot discern the signs of the times." (Matthew 16:1-3)
Lambert
Dolphin
lambert@ldolphin.org
April 30,
2008.