How many times did Satan lie in the Garden of Eden?

Who fought back against him and how?

A true story by Bruce C. E. Fleming retold on The Eden Podcast

One late afternoon, along the Equator in the Congo, we had just studied the woman’s interaction with the serpent in the Garden of Eden. We had learned to be grateful for what Eve did and for God’s response. For God noticed.

That day, and every week, a dozen adult students from all walks of life gathered in the relative coolness of our front porch. They slipped off their shoes by habit and sat in the straight-backed hand-made wooden chairs with their bare feet on the cool cement surface.

At the end of the lesson time everyone bowed their heads and closed their eyes and we started to go around the circle in prayer. Then, I felt, or heard, something that was out of place. I opened my eyes. A serpent had just slithered up onto the porch and was moving toward the bare feet not far from it. I had never before seen a serpent do that on our porch, nor did I ever see anything like that afterwards.

I silently stood up to confront the beast though I had nothing in my hand but a Bible and the class notes. The serpent immediately slipped off the lip of the porch out of my sight.

I stepped to the edge to take a careful look and it was headed along the foundation of our house, and around the far corner. This was where my wife and I lived with our little daughter. This was no place for a serpent of any kind, certainly not this one.

I ran wide around the corner careful not to step on it all of a sudden. It was moving fast, heading toward the middle of the side wall of the house.

I had grown up in the upper Midwest of the United States where we had plenty of snow in the winters. I had made lots of snow balls but I wasn’t particularly good at throwing one at a target I wanted to hit. This day was different. I needed something to throw and I needed precisely to hit that slithering snake!

I kept one eye on its progress as it progressed through patches of grass along the house and with the other eye I spotted a rock close to the size of a snowball. I quickly picked it up. I ran a bit closer and threw. I missed by a mile and it moved faster.

I found another rock. This time I shot an arrow prayer heavenward. I threw! It flew straight to the base of the wall where the serpent should be. I was surprised and hopeful.

Carefully I approached the wall. As I did, around the corner of the house the Bible Class students came alarmed and excited. One of them got to where the rock landed before I did.

“On the head!” he shouted! He gestured for me and the others to look. “Just like the Bible verse. It said, the promised Child of the woman would crush the serpent’s head. And look where the teacher just hit it! Right on the head!” The serpent was plainly dead.

One of them picked it up and brought it back to our porch. Later it would go into the soup for his family that night.

Victory over the enemy! Just like the Bible said. What a living illustration! We can overcome the enemy! They talked about the serpent with the crushed head for a long while!

What had we learned in our Bible Study? I had taught them insights my wife, Joy, the Old Testament professor, had explained to me earlier.

At the Tree, in the Garden of Eden, the tempter attacked the woman and the man using deception in several ways. Have you ever counted the times and the ways Satan lied to them there?

His first lie was to disguise himself. He didn’t appear to them as the powerful angel he actually was. Instead, he presented himself as just one of the creatures God had made and placed in the Garden. That was lie #1.

Lie #2 was filled with cognitive dissonance. He said to them there, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the Garden?’”

He had made an obvious error. In Genesis chapter 1 God made the man and the woman in his own image, both of them. God set them to rule, including over the animals just like this one appeared to be.

The woman corrected the serpent at the Tree as soon as it had spoken its incorrect words. She rightly ruled over it by correcting it and pointing it to God’s instruction.

She set him straight, “We may eat from the trees in the Garden, only not that one or we will die.

Lie #3 was to brush off the fact that she had corrected him pointing to all the trees they could eat from. He said, “Not any of them?” She had pointed him to all the trees around them. She had pointed him to God’s generous words. He bypassed all that and picked up on the punishment for eating from the sole restricted tree.

In Genesis chapter 3 verse 4 is the record is that more lies were poured forth. They came in a rush!

• Lie #4 was to act as if he were smarter and more trustworthy than God. He presumed to present himself as the source of truth in the universe.
• Lie #5 was to boldly contradict God’s will. “You will not certainly die,” he said.
• Lie #6 came right away with dizzying effect. He blamed God with having evil intentions. God was jealously protecting his right to rule over them.
• Lie #7 came by implication. Their attacker implied that God’s rule should be questioned and changed. Someone other than God should have that rule. Perhaps they should rule over themselves and not God? Perhaps another being, maybe Satan-in-the-serpent should rule over them?

Satan’s words were filled with plural pronouns. Not “you” alone but “you both” “you two” “all y’all.” He wanted to kill two humans at that Tree.

Another part of his attack was to address them both but to aim at her in an attempt to separate what no one should separate. They were separated at that Tree.

The woman continued to think positively. She considered eating that fruit and saw three good reasons for doing so. But she was being led astray. The serpent tempter, whom Jesus later would call “the Father of Lies” was successfully deceiving that innocent human there in the Garden.

The man was not being deceived. He was focused on the fruit in another way. We will see the fruit of that, so to speak, in what happened next.

When we stop and look closely at what happened at the Tree we see that God had warned of the punishment for that one sin. They both ate the fruit from that Tree. They both received the promised punishment. They both died. Look around. Neither one is living today.

In our lesson that late afternoon in Africa we moved on to the next insights we learned about what happened in Eden. Our class in the Congo was made up of men and women who served in their several churches in the town. Each part of the lesson was sinking in.

Some of the facts they had never noticed. Others they had wrongly pictured before. They were untwisting some false beliefs as we went along. Some had pictured the woman as practically as evil as the serpent. They had portrayed the woman as the Temptress of the man. They had prescribed restriction for her as if she were the evil doer. Now they corrected that error in their thinking and considered how to change their actions accordingly.

In addition, they hadn’t noticed that there were two kinds of eaters in Eden. One ate that fruit in full rebellion against God’s words he personally had received from his Maker. We can call him a first-degree eater. He ate on purpose. The other ate that fruit having been deceived into doing so. She was not in purposeful rebellion against God. We can call her a second-degree eater.

Around the world and throughout time the distinction has been made, and is made today, between a first-degree offender and a second-degree offender. For example, first degree murder merits the most severe response. Second degree manslaughter receives a lesser response because the offense wasn’t committed with aforethought, with evil intent in any way. The woman was a second-degree offender. The man was not.

Together in our class we considered whether God would deal with them differently based on this. And if so, how? Have you thought about this? The punishment for eating was clear. Both eaters would die, and they did. And we, their descendants do too.

But how did God deal with the rebel eater and with the lied-to eater? The rest of Genesis chapter 3 makes it clear, although many people miss what God did, or they misinterpret what God did. As it turned out, God didn’t curse Eve, or Adam, or limit woman in any way. We go deeply into this in the episodes of Season 1 of the Eden Podcast – specifically Episodes 6-8.

The man responded to God’s call that evening in Eden. When asked what he had done the man said nothing about his willful rebellion. He said nothing about the words the serpent tempter had said. He said nothing about following the rebel angel’s words instead of the words of warning God had said.

He had not been alone at the tree. He and the woman faced that serpent together. He and she had covered themselves together. He and she had hidden themselves when God approached. But four times in his response to God the man said “I”! He was acting if the whole world was about him alone.

“I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself.”

Then, the man lashed out with surprising venom. Venom? Where had he gotten that? The man accused the woman and then the man accused God. He blamed them! Oh, it was her fault. Oh, it was YOUR fault! You two caused me to eat. And then he fell silent.

The woman responded differently. Her words drew her nearer to God. She didn’t blame the man. She didn’t blame God. She saw what had happened. And she labeled the source of her difficulty. She told God where her deception had come from. She said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” The serpent? In front of God, out loud, she condemned the one who had lied to them to bring about their deaths. I ate? She confessed her sin before God.

The man hid what happened and falsely blamed others, even God.

The woman named her attacker and confessed to her God.

As we learned the lesson on that porch in the Congo, some in the group were stunned when they compared the facts to what they had been believing, wrongly.

God did not speak to the woman or to the man at first, but he would. God would speak gently to the woman, the second-degree eater. God would speak sternly to the man, the first-degree eater.

God took the words of testimony of the woman as fact, which they rightly were. God’s words to the serpent began with “Because you ….” Because what? Because she testified that you have done what I am going to judge you for.

The woman had corrected the serpent in his first words of attack at the tree. Now the woman had testified to God about what he had done through that attack.

God confirmed what had already been occurring. He confirmed that she and the serpent were in conflict. Then God announced she would be the winner in that conflict. And her Offspring would crush the head of the serpent!

All we discussed that day and afterwards I later wrote down in The Book of Eden and the other three books in The Eden Book Series. We have been using those books as our study manuals for our Tru School Workshops that we conduct over Zoom from time to time. We’d love to have you take the next Tru School Workshop with us. There will be no snakes crawling toward our feet. We promise. Simply email Mimi@Tru316.com or go to Tru316.com/workshop.