What Happened to Adam’s Posterity? - A Reprobate Mind!

What is God Like? – How can we know for Sure? – Part 2

By Richard Allen – August 12, 2024

In the previous Blog, I introduced the question “What is God Like?” – then proceeded to observe that after Adam and Eve rebelled and disobeyed God in the Garden, they immediately became confused and disoriented to what God was like. It was almost like Adam and Eve suffered a severe “short-term” memory loss of epic proportions. Adam, the first man – and one who had not been born of woman, but rather formed by God’s own hand from the dust of the ground –had been there from the beginning of creation, naming all of the animals that God had created. So how did he go from the Federal Head of all creation, to a frightened and fearful child “sewing fig leaves together, hiding among the trees in the Garden from the eyes of an omniscient Creator?” (Genesis 3:7-12). Whatever the Serpent had promised Adam and Eve – turned out to be the exact opposite of what was promised. The devil promised them knowledge and godlike understanding. Their eyes were opened – yet they no longer “knew good, but only evil.” Adam even blamed Eve, his wife, for his own rebellion and sin. The Apostle Paul, writing to the Church in Rome, offers some very interesting and relevant observations on our first parents’ original sin and subsequent slide into ignorance and rebellion. Reading this amazing passage in Romans Chapter 1, the question we need to ask is:  “Who are the ‘they,’ Paul is talking about?”  After an introduction to the Roman Church – Paul launches into a discourse about the Fall of Adam and Eve:

“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.  For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things” (Romans 1:18-23).

Who is Paul talking about when he says: “For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him?” (Romans 1:21). It could be argued that only Adam and Eve, their sons and a select few of their descendants knew God.  But it’s clear that Paul is also alluding to their posterity, that is, their corrupted children, the men and women who were our ancestors from the beginning of the Human Race.  I think it’s clear that Paul is Talking About both Adam and Eve – and their Corrupt Posterity!  As a Race, we have been “Continually Falling Away from God from the beginning.”  If ever there was clear Biblical teaching on Total Human Depravity, this passage in Romans covers all the bases!  I believe that Paul, the Apostle, is weaving a “seamless narrative” showing the devastating results of Adam and Eve’s Sin on their posterity. As I chronicled the Aftermath of Mankind’s Fall in Part 1 of “What is God Like,” posted on July 8, 2024 – the almost immediate slide into crippling ignorance of God and His ways – is the story of the first eleven chapters of Genesis. Only a few of Adam’s descendants had any knowledge of, or relationship with God. Wouldn’t Adam and Eve have been able to pass down anything of the creation story?  Would they not have discussed God’s amazing creative fiat and their subsequent temptation and fall from the paradise in which God had placed them? Wouldn’t there have been any concern for, and warning of “the serpent” and his deceptive wiles? It might surprise you, but I think the answer is a resounding Yes!

The catch is, they did recount their experiences, but only from a “warped and twisted thought process” that Romans Chapter one calls:  “A Reprobate Mind!”  Just like trying to get an accurate account of a murder, or hit and run from a spaced-out stoner or drunk, perceptions of reality were totally off.  This is what Paul is trying to tell us in Romans Chapter One. Paul’s Indictment is 4-Fold:  1.) Adam’s Fallen posterity by their “unrighteousness had suppressed the truth.” Our sin has destroyed our ability to discern the truth, so much so that our minds and consciences can’t  allow the truth to be considered.  What could be known about God – even by Adam and Eve’s children – was completely evident, God Himself having shown it to them.  2.) God’s invisible attributes, that is His eternal power and nature, have been perceived since the beginning of the world. So we are “without excuse.” 3.) For while our first parents – Adam and Eve knew God – they didn’t acknowledge Him as God and were completely unthankful! 4.) Claiming to be wise – they actually became futile in their thinking, and with darkened hearts “exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things” (Romans 1:23). This goes a long way to explain the origins of “Idolatry,” that is worshiping God with ”graven images of mortal men, birds, animals and creeping things.”

So, when I first asked: “What is God Like,” most often fallen men come up with some imagination (i.e. image) of a mere man –  that is someone or something like themselves!  Worshiping a statue of mortal men and women, imagining that to be what God is like, is actually “self-worship.” This is the outcome of a “A Reprobate Mind,” or literally:  “A Mind Void of Judgment!”  While the Devil was wrong in promising our first parents that “in that day you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:5), he would have been more accurate to say: “in that day you will think you are God because you have experienced evil.”  Our minds are so blinded and twisted with the effects of sin, that we cannot comprehend a God who is Spirit – it’s just completely beyond our understanding! After approximately 1,650 miserable years of “man’s rebellion,” God flooded the whole world and destroyed all flesh – except Noah and the seven souls and pairs of animals with him. And as soon as Noah’s sons began to repopulate the earth, the collective “Reprobate Mind” of mankind was still deeply confused and confounded to explain “What is God Like?”  Nimrod, the mighty hunter became the first despotic ruler of Babylon and the “Idolatrous Humanity” that tried in vain to build the Tower of Babel.

This was the crucible into which God called Father Abram!  “A Syrian ready to perish” (Deuteronomy 26:5). And the story of Abram – who later was renamed Abraham – is all the more fascinating in that, his father Terah, according to a 1st Century Jewish commentary (the Midrash), was likely an Idol Maker for Nimrod! I think it’s safe to say that Abram had some awareness of the “spiritual realm,” as the Spirit stirring in him caused him to seek the living God.  By comparing Genesis 10:31-32 and Genesis 12:1-2, we surmise that God had called Abrahm to leave his father’s house and family, and go on pilgrimage to a land that God would show him:

“Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, the wife of his son Abram, and together they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan. But when they came to Haran, they settled there.  Terah lived 205 years, and he died in Haran” (Genesis 10:31-32)

“The Lord had said to Abram, ‘Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.  I will make you into a great nation,  and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.  I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you’ ” (Genesis 12:1-3).

It’s apparent that Abram had not obeyed fully, as he took his father (the Idol Maker) and family with him, at least part way. So Abram settled in Haran, where his father Terah eventually died. Then at the age of 75, he took his wife Sarai and his nephew Lot and went to the land of Canaan.  It was then that God appeared and said to him:

“ ‘To your offspring I will give this land.’ So, he built an altar there to the Lord, who had appeared to him” (Genesis 12:7).

It’s important to remember, as mankind “continued to fall away from God” for several centuries after the Flood and God’s dispersal of the nations by the confusion of their languages, it was God who reached out to Man. Our Reprobate Minds made it spiritually impossible to seek or even understand the God who is! Yet it was this Abram who was the channel through which God purposed to make himself known to poor sinners – whose minds and affections were so twisted that we “worshiped and served the creature more than the creator” (Romans 1:25). How would a Holy God overcome the immense chasm that separated Him from His fallen “Image Bearers,” Men and Women?  Reading the first eleven Chapters of Genesis paints a pretty bleak picture of the first two millennia of Man’s existence since the Fall. Mankind was still running away from God and had shown a tremendous capacity for evil, so much so that God destroyed all flesh in the Flood. But the judgment experienced in the Flood didn’t appear to change anyone’s Reprobate Mind. Soon after the Flood, men sought to “build an idolatrous tower to reach to the heavens” (Genesis 11:4). The nations that came from Noah’s sons – listed in Genesis Chapter 10 – all had some knowledge of God and carried it to every part of the earth they settled. Archeology shows us that each nation “exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things” (Romans 1:21). 

As dire as the situation was, God, at the same, time was purposing to bring about a “so great salvation” (Hebrews 2:3) through “one man” who would descend from Abram, that is, Father Abraham. He Believed God, and that’s why Abraham became the “Father of all them that Believe” (Romans 4:16).  The Good News for us Gentile Nations – God has not left us in darkness, but through the glorious Gospel of His Son, has now “called us out of darkness into His marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9).

Soli Deo Gloria!