With reference to the International Sunday-school lesson for July 14,[1] do you wish us to understand by your exposition that it was a real serpent which appeared to Eve and conversed with her in the garden of Eden? I can hardly believe it to have been so.
If you think it was so, will you oblige me by stating what your reasons are for so thinking? I shall be very grateful if you can give me something to convince me, as I have some very grave doubts on the subject, and it has made me feel very miserable.
No wonder, for that is the natural effect of doubt. Nobody can ever feel any other way than miserable, if he cherishes doubt, for doubt is the most unsatisfactory condition in the world. It is also the most foolish and unreasonable thing. A thing is either true, or it is not; if it is true, it is to be believed; if it is not true, it is not to be believed, and that is the end of the matter. But to doubt--neither to believe nor really to disbelieve--is to be nowhere.
Yes; I most certainly wish all who read to understand that it was a veritable serpent that talked with Eve, just as truly as it was a real ass that spoke to Balaam, and reproved him.
"The dumb ass speaking with man's voice forbade the madness of the prophet," (2 Peter 2:16) and the serpent speaking also with man's voice, or, rather, with Satan's voice, beguiled Eve.
Why do I believe that it was a real serpent? Because I believe the Bible, of the truthfulness of which I have ample evidence. How can we help believing it? I believe that it was real, because I believe that there was a real garden at Eden, and a real man and woman in it; that there was a real tree in the midst of the garden, from which they were forbidden to eat; and that the sin committed in the garden was the beginning of all the sin and sorrow that has cursed this earth. I believe that the serpent was real, for the same reason that I believe the curse to be real.
The Apostle Paul wrote: "I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ." (2 Corinthians 2:3)
Was the Apostle, writing by inspiration of the Holy Ghost, frightened at a shadow? for if it were no real serpent that beguiled Eve, then the whole story would be a myth.
Why should one doubt that the serpent was real, and still believe that the tree and the garden were real, and that the woman really ate and gave to her husband, and that they lost their purity and dominion? It is true that there are people who doubt all these things, and there are also people who doubt the entire Bible; but how anybody who professes to believe the Bible as a whole can single out as unreal a particular item, and that a leading one, in a narrative which he otherwise accepts, I cannot understand. The mystery of godliness is great; but the mystery of doubt--the mystery of iniquity--is more incomprehensible.
Why do I believe in the absolute truthfulness of the story of the deception by the serpent? Because, I believe the Gospel. You ask what that has to do with the Gospel. I will tell you in a few words.
The Gospel is the good news of salvation from sin, and the sin from which we are to be saved is the sin that came into the world when the serpent beguiled Eve. Now the same book that tells of the fall, also makes known the way of redemption; but if I cannot implicitly believe one, I have no assurance of the other.
Do you not see that it is not a light matter whether we believe or not? All truth is one; all parts are woven together, each part with every other; break one thread, and the whole fabric is ruined.
But we will not talk of ruin, so far as the truth is concerned; for it endures for ever. We cannot affect it in the least by any doubt or unbelief; but our doubts have an influence on ourselves, in the same proportion that faith does. The ruin is to us, if we allow ourselves to doubt a single word of God; for if we doubt one thing, the whole will have no power in us. I might well ask you: "Why do you doubt the story of the serpent?"
But I will not, for I know it is not good to talk doubt, or to talk over doubts, much less to seek to manufacture a foundation for them. The best thing to do with doubt is to bury it under the everlasting mountains of truth.
"I believed, therefore have I spoken, (Psalm 116:10; 2 Corinthians 4:13) is a motto that we all do well to follow. Thank God, there is enough to believe to keep us employed throughout eternity.--Present Truth, August 15, 1901.
E.J. Waggoner
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