David says,
“What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet:”
Psalms 8:4-6
What I am about to speak about is not the milk of the word. With that in mind, I invite anyone who really wants to know “what mankind is to God” to consider the following.
What is manking never sinned?
Let us assume that God had a plan in mind that did not include Adam and Eve falling. Let us further assume that had Eve decided not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil God’s plan unfolded as intended. The question then becomes this,
“what was God’s original intent and purpose for mankind?
In the beginning God planted a garden east of Eden. It was a perfect place in a perfect world. A cradle, if you will, for God’s last creation. In Eden God created first Adam and then Eve. They were perfect beings who enjoyed complete, unbroken fellowship with their Father God.
Adam lived by revelation. He simply knew things and what he did not know he simply asked his Father about. This is How Adam named all the animals. God intended this to be the pattern of all interaction with Him throughout eternity.
The heavens declare God’s glory
The night sky was not always as it is today. What we see today is the aftermath of the wrath of God upon the antediluvian world. When you see pictures of the Crab Nebula that look so pretty, what you are actually seeing is the effects of God destroying the world and much of the cosmos during the flood.
God says,
“ And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.”
Genesis 6:13
I believe that the wrath of God not only broke up the fountains of the deep but also wreaked havoc among the stars above. What we count as natural beauty these days is, in reality, what is left over from a shattered perfection that used to be.
The universe, as far as we know, is infinite. We also know that there are planets which orbit other star systems. Mankind has always looked to the stars and dreamed of voyages to other suns beyond our own solar system. Perhaps this is a God given propensity that was originally meant to spread mankind throughout the galaxies.
Eve, the mother of all living
A woman, even in her fallen state, has about 300,000 viable eggs at the time of puberty. If we theorize that, before the fall, women ovulated less frequently (God said He would greatly muliply her conception.) then each woman born, being immortal and perfect, could have given birth thousands of times. Maybe this was the original intent of God: populate the entire universe with men and woman who could commune with and love Him forever.
our loving Father says,
“For since the beginning of the world men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, O God, beside thee, what he hath prepared for him that waiteth for him.”
Isaiah 64:4