Snake Legs and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil

God is not the God of tolerance.  He does not honor men’s opinions.  God’s Word is truth.  John 17:17:

 Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.

God is His Word.  John 1:1:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Truth knows no opinion and has zero tolerance for other positions.  2 + 2 = 4, and 3.9 is not acceptable.  This zero-tolerance concept is, of course, the nature of truth. 

How tolerant does John 14:6 sound?

Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

How tolerant does Mark 16:15-16 sound?

15 And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.

16 He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.

How tolerant does John 3:3 sound?

Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

God is not the God of tolerance, but He is the God of grace.  His mercy and forgiveness are extended to all who will acknowledge and repent of their sins, believing upon God’s salvation for fallen man—Jesus Christ, the Righteous. 

Have you been born again?  Are you ready to chuck your old, jaded opinions for the truth?  We are all born bad—it’s true—and there is only one way of escape from this very real dilemma; that is to be born again, this time of the Spirit of God.  Start brand new.  Be free and clear of all your sin, shame, and bondages.  Click onto “Further With Jesus” for childlike instructions and immediate entry into the Kingdom of God.  NOW FOR TODAY’S SUBJECT.

GOD SAID, Genesis 2:9:

And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

GOD SAID, Genesis 2:16-17:

16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:

17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

GOD SAID, Genesis 3:14-15:

14 And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life:

15 And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

GOD SAID, Genesis 3:1-6:

1 Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?

2 And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:

3 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.

4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:

5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

6 And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.

MAN SAID: No! NO!! NO!!!!  No way!!

Now THE RECORD: Resist and dodge as carnal academics do, they always end up here.  The Bible is the inerrant Word of the Living God and has been gifted unto man to show him the way.  It is your owner’s manual.  It explains how we got here.  It explains the original perfection and the fall, then maps out the way of escape, and even the reinstatement of perfection and immortality. 

No matter how they wrangle, they end up here, and third-party, non-Biblical confirmations abound. 

📌 Example: Genesis 1:1: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

Science confirms there was a beginning.

📌 Example: Genesis: 1:3: And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. 

Light was present on the first day, yet God did not create the sun, moon, and stars until the fourth day.  Science now theorizes there was light before the sun.

📌 Example: Genesis 1:27: So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

Microbiologists now assert that all of the earth’s people hail from the same mother and father.  Science calls them mtDNA Eve and Y-Chromosome Adam.

📌 Example: Genesis speaks of a paradise on earth, and we know it as the Garden of Eden.  Numerous ancient, non-Biblical societal records say yes.

📌 Example: From Genesis to Revelation, numerous references are made to the Tree of Life. A host of non-Biblical societal accounts confirm.

Ancient societal accounts of the past—miracles and all—abound. For example, researchers have listed over 500 of these records, and most of those not influenced by the Bible also record a Noahtic-style destruction of the earth. These accounts were handed down from generation to generation, originating from Adam and Eve, and are, of course, subject to the typical morphology.  However, the accounts in the first five books of the Bible are not hand-me-down accounts, but came directly from the God who did it all. 

Was there actually a Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and was there a snake whose curse was to crawl upon its belly and eat dust? Several foundational excerpts from GodSaidManSaid follow. 

▶ GodSaidManSaid, “Stillborn Dilemma:”

It’s hard for many to fathom, but the answer to all of life’s dilemmas and the solution to all of them are found in God’s Holy Book.  The idea that there was a beginning just over 6,000 years ago, the idea that God created all that you see in six literal days, the idea that He made one immortal man and one immortal woman, the idea that the progenitors of all mankind fell from God’s grace, and that sin and death began to reign because Eve and Adam ate of the forbidden fruit, are all ludicrous to the ignorant.  Never mind that the record of the world’s non-Biblical cultures says yes.  Never mind that ancient historians say yes.  Never mind that molecular biologists say yes.  Never mind that geologists say yes.  Never mind that medical science says yes.  Just NEVER MIND!      

▶ GodSaidManSaid, “Snakes on Legs—They Just Keep on Coming:”  

Science and academia now support the idea of a snake with legs.  Through biological examination, John Crompton, an evolutionist and snake authority who authored the book Snake Lore, discovered that at one time, the snake that crawls upon its belly once had legs.  As a matter of fact, at this present time, the snake has not completely gotten rid of its legs.  Tiny vestigials remain of what were once legs, and are found in the bodies of many snakes. 

Crompton’s record is supported by Klaus Griehl’s book,Snakes.  Griehl points out that “primitive” snakes, such as boas and pythons, still show vestigial pelvic bones and anal spurs that represent the remnants of hind legs. 

Could Genesis be accurate?  The latest discovery concerning the snake and its legs is making the news once again.  The headline in the National Geographic, July 23, 2015, release reads, “Phenomena: Not Exactly Rocket Science.”  A few paragraphs follow:

Snakes can famously disarticulate their jaws, and open their mouths to extreme widths.  David Martill from the University of Portsmouth did his best impression of this trick while walking through the Bürgermeister Müller Museum in Solnhofen, Germany.  He was pointing out the museum’s fossils to a group of students.  “And then my jaw dropped,” he recalls. 

He saw a little specimen with a long, sinuous body, packed with ribs and 15 centimeters from nose to tail.  It looked like a snake.  But it was stuck in an unusual rock, with the distinctive characteristics of the Brazilian Crato Formation, a fossil site that dates to the early Cretaceous period.  Snake fossils had been found in that period but never that location, and in South America, but never that early.  The combination of place and time was unusual.

“And then, if my jaw hadn’t already dropped enough, it dropped right to the floor,” says Martill.  The little creature had a pair of hind legs.  “I thought: bloody hell!  And I looked closer and the little label said: Unknown fossil.  Understatement!”

Fox News headline, July 24, 2015, “Unexpected Step: Snake ancestor had four feet.”  Two paragraphs follow:

The oldest snake fossil on record looks almost like a modern snake, except for one glaring difference: It has four feet, each with five digits, a new study finds. 

“We’ve found the ancestor of all snakes,” Martill told Live Science.  “We have found the missing link between four-legged lizards and snakes.” 

Finally, from Inquisitr.com:

“Looks like a snake to me,” says Jacques Gauthier of the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University.  “The long body and reduced limbs, along with the bony supports in the pelvis for lymph hearts to pump blood back to the heart, are consistent with it being a snake.” 

Susan Evans studies reptile evolution for the University College London, and she is on the fence since “[o]pinions on snake evolution are highly polarized.” 

The odd part about the oldest snake fossil is how it appears in the fossil record next to samples like Eophis, Parviraptor, and Diablophis, which all had two legs, not four.  The two competing mainstream theories claim that snakes came from water-dwelling sea reptiles like the mosasaurs (remember the underwater predator in Jurassic World?), while other scientists say snake legs came from terrestrial burrowing monitor lizards. [End of quotes]

What happened to the snakes’ legs?  Evolutionists are flummoxed, but not God’s children of faith!  The headline on the cover of the January 2018 issue of Scientific American reads, “How Snakes Came to Slither.”  The following excerpts will certify, once again, that the snake once had legs:

● A Chinese riddle invites one to guess the identity of runners without a leg, swimmers without a flipper, gliders without a wing.  The answer, of course, is snakes.  Today more than 3,000 species share a long, limbless body that can negotiate land, water, and even the air between trees.  Their ancient ancestors, however, had limbs of various shapes.  How, scientists have wondered, did snakes lose their legs? 

● Meanwhile studies of developmental biology have elucidated the genetic mechanisms underlying the loss of limbs as well as the gain of vertebrae. 

● Snakes did not lose functional limbs in one fell swoop. 

● Yet, other snakes of this time-period retained legs. 

● Other Late Cretaceous snakes with legs lived in the ocean.  Fossils from marine deposits near what is now Jerusalem reveal sea snakes that swam alongside sharks.  Two such creatures, Pachyrhachis and Haasiophis, display almost complete hind limbs made up of bones from the thigh, shin, and foot.  The function of these legs remains unclear. 

● Dinilysia was not among the first lineages to split off from lizards.  Instead it is closely related to the ancestor of today’s snakes—more advanced than Najash, with its functional hind limbs, but more ancestral than modern species.  The revelation that Dinilysia was a burrower strengthens the hypothesis that the lineages leading to modern snakes lost their limbs while adapting to life underground. 

● The ZRS variants found in snakes are consistent with the morphological diversity of their limb development.  Primitive modern snakes, including the python and boa, retain a ZRS limb-enhancer sequence, albeit one that is shorter than that in other limbed vertebrates.  Correspondingly, both species possess rudimentary, spur-like hind limbs. 

● New clues to the origins of snakes continue to surface.  In 2015, researchers led by David M. Martill of the University of Portsmouth in England announced their discovery of a 120-million-year-old four-legged snake from Brazil. 

● The Biblical account of snakes holds that God cursed the serpent to crawl on its belly for leading Adam and Eve to eat the apple in the Garden of Eden.  In Chinese legend, the heavenly Jade Emperor punished the snake for hurting humans by ordering its legs to be cut off and given to the frog.  [End of quotes]

The curse of God that fell upon the serpent is recorded in Genesis 3:14-15:

14 And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life:

15 And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

Scientists continue to scratch their heads, but to the students of the Book, the answer is obvious. 

Many ancient societal records speak of the deadly Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil—you’d be surprised where it turns up!  The December 22, 2017, issue of The Week attempts to establish the societal root of the Christmas tree in an article titled, “O Christmas Tree” reads:

Around the same time, medieval Germans were incorporating evergreens into their own Christmastime rituals, via the “Paradise Tree:” an apple-adorned fir that represented the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden. [End of quote]

As an aside: The pagan [devil] roots of the Christmas tree hail back to Nimrod of ancient Babel.  Around 500 years before Christ, the prophet Jeremiah writes in Jeremiah 10:2-4:

2 Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them.

3 For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the ax.

4 They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not.

In the publication Search for the Truth, Bruce Malone says an ancient Chinese archaeological finding supports the Biblical account of the infamous tree:

But is there any evidence that this momentous event—when mankind reached up into a tree to grab a forbidden fruit while being tempted by Satan in the form of a snake—is real?  We find exactly that in an ancient bronze statue of a tree found buried in the ruins near Guanghan, China.  This twelve-foot tall tree has sloping branches, but significantly, on the branches bearing fruit, the leaves are shaped like dangerous knives (indicating that the fruit of this tree is dangerous or forbidden).  Coming from the very center of the tree is a long snakelike body, but this snake still has legs near its head and the snake is glaring down near a human hand with its large evil eyes and bared teeth.  Lastly, the bronze statue has a human hand reaching toward the tree near the serpent’s head. 

This huge bronze statue was cast at the very beginning of the Chinese culture—over 3,000 years ago.  It is obvious that, long before missionaries ever arrived in China, these original Chinese people (who were direct descendants of Noah) wanted their children to remember the factual event which brought death into all of creation.  So, they created a twelve-foot-tall bronze tree memorializing one of the most significant events of all human history.  [End of quote]

God’s Word is the inerrant truth—miracles and all.  It’s extremely important to establish its inerrancy for everything—absolutely everything depends upon it. 

GOD SAID, Genesis 2:9:

And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

GOD SAID, Genesis 2:16-17:

16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:

17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

GOD SAID, Genesis 3:14-15:

14 And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life:

15 And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

GOD SAID, Genesis 3:1-6:

1 Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?

2 And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:

3 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.

4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:

5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

6 And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.

MAN SAID: No! NO!! NO!!!!  No way!!   

Now you have THE RECORD.

 

 

 

 

References:

Authorized King James Version

“O Christmas Tree,” The Week, December 22, 2017

GodSaidManSaid, “Snakes on Legs—They Just Keep on Coming”

GodSaidManSaid, “Stillborn Dilemma”

Malone, B., “The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil,” Search for the Truth

Yi, H., “How Snakes Came to Slither,” Scientific American, January 2018

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