CHAPTER 8 - THE FALL OF MAN

      Genesis 3:8-l0 -

              And they (Adam and Eve) heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the Garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the Garden.

                          And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?

              And he said, I heard thy voice in the Garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.

      Isaiah l:5-6 -
 
              Why should ye be stricken any more? Ye will revolt more and more; the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint.

              From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it, but wounds, and bruises, and putrefying sores. They have not been closed, neither bound up neither mollified with ointment.

      Revelation 22:2 -

              In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bore twelve kinds of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.
 
 

      Satan at this juncture was an "angel of light". God put the tree and the serpent right there in the Garden. The reason Man fell was because God caused Man to fall. In other words, God knew what would happen if He put the tree and the serpent in the Garden. This seems to be very, very strange, to set Man up for a fall, but to think that now God is setting Man up for his own destruction, it does make a little sense. Why would God set Man up for a fall in the Garden? - perhaps because He wanted people to choose to be with Him in paradise, the tree of life offered in Revelation.

      This leads us to other questions such as, why did God create eternal prison? An analogy is the ant/people analogy. Most people don't mind ants playing in their anthills and etc. But when those ants get into somebody's house, they are exterminated in most cases. So it is with His creatures, if they don't behave He liquidates them. Evolutionists feel that Man evolved from, say, a worm. While this may or may not be true, where did the worm come from? It is traced back to the atom, or the most primitive form of life. But where did this life come from? Then the answer could be from an alien. But where did the alien come from? This could be traced back through the whole universe. But where did the first infinitesimal bit of life come from in the universe? One possibility could be God. Evolution can answer things developing, but they have to develop from something, they cannot develop from nothing.

              "Most presidents seek refuge from late-term doldrums by traveling the world and playing the statesman. What is different is that the Clinton administration, basking in America's unparalleled power, is determined to advance its worldwide agenda - democracy, free trade and the control of weapons of mass destruction. The bully pulpit of the American presidency has gone global, and Clinton is making the most of it: the 'leader of the free world' has morphed into a kind of 'president of the world'" - Newsweek, April 3, 2000.
 
What this article in Newsweek is telling us is that America is trying, in part, to prevent the Fall of Man, i.e., nuclear holocaust.

      The problem of nuclear war has overhung world society for many years. It is a problem that people have assumed has been solved. The Final Epidemic, edited by Ruth Adams and Susan Cullen, sheds some interesting light on the subject:

              "Over all these years the competition in the development of nuclear weaponry has proceeded steadily, relentlessly, without the faintest regard for all the warning voices. We have gone on piling weapon upon weapon, missile upon missile, new levels of destructiveness upon old ones. We have done all this helplessly, almost involuntarily, like the victims of some sort of hypnotism, like men in a dream, like lemmings heading for the sea, like the children of Hamlin marching blithely along behind their Pied Piper." - Ambassador George Kennan, May l98l.

The attitude is, "These are toys that will never be used." The Russian physician E.I. Chazov: "This is a difficult period for mankind. Life on Earth has never been in such danger as it is now. This danger is because of the nuclear arms race and the production of weapons whose devastating power cannot be compared to that of any earlier types of weapons (ibid)." The Russian is concerned.

      Hiroshima was a horrible situation. What was dropped in l945, "Little Boy", was an l5 kiloton weapon. Kiloton means thousands of tons of TNT. The city was leveled. "The Hiroshima experience cannot really represent what would happen to people if our contemporary nuclear weapons were used. Today's weapons have hundreds or thousands of times greater destructive power, and the potential is simply not comparable (ibid)." The biggest H-bomb known to be tested by Russia in l962 exploded with a force of 3000 Hiroshima bombs. Nuclear holocaust will damage the American economy:
 
              The point has been sufficiently made. The modern economic system cannot stand the shock and the associated fear from any kind, limited or unlimited, of nuclear exchange. The transportation network, as noted, that knits the various parts of this system together will be the first casualty; without transportation all parts will succumb. But transportation is a metaphor for the shattering vulnerability of our highly sophisticated, deeply interdependent system...Of particular concern are the communication links for the command and control of our missile-launching complexes as well as the guidance systems for the missiles themselves. Though of less strategic importance, the civilian alarm and confusion which would follow a widespread and extended breakdown of the U.S. power grid, with the cessation of all electric services lacking a separate power supply - communication, lighting, ventilation, pumping (of water as well as gasoline), much transportation...(ibid)
 
Unfortunately, we are not prepared to withstand a major nuclear attack.

              The local fallout from a surface burst of a one-megaton weapon would result in a patch of about 200 square miles (perhaps six miles wide and up to 45 miles long) on the edge of which the radiation exposure during the 24 hours following the explosion would be lethal to most persons remaining there without protection...Soon after exposure to radiation, a person may begin to show symptoms of acute gastrointestinal and neuromuscular effects. This prodromal syndrome is popularly known as radiation sickness. The gastrointestinal symptoms are anorexia, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, intestinal cramps, salivation, dehydration and loss of weight. The neuromuscular symptoms include easy fatigability, apathy or listlessness, sweating, fever, headache and hypotension followed by hypotensive shock. All these symptoms occur only at high doses... (ibid)

A megaton is a million tons of TNT. The whole thing is incomprehensible. At the dawn of the 20th century, Man had begun embarking on a path that led to wheeled transportation. One hundred years later, Man has the capacity to fulfill Revelation to the letter.

              At present (l985) more than 50,000 nuclear weapons are deployed and ready. Most dwarf in destructive power the bomb used against Hiroshima. Sufficient nuclear bombs exist outside the United States to subject every major American city repeatedly to destruction...

              On the other hand, despite the specificity, these effects - the numbers of killed and injured, the destruction of the physical environment, the damage to the ecosphere - are unfathomable. In short, it is almost impossible fully to grasp the reality they represent the implication they carry. This is not merely because the numbers are so large as to be incomprehensible: close to l0 million people killed or seriously injured, for example in consequence of a single 20-megaton explosion and the resulting firestorm on the New York metropolitan area. The difficulty occurs primarily because we are attempting to describe and understand an event that is without human precedent. (ibid)

People cannot even begin to grasp this.

      Bernard Lown is one of the physicians who writes in the book The Final Epidemic. He makes a valid point as to trying to win a nuclear war:

              Nuclear war is a term of deception. War has been thought of as an extension of politics, having defined objectives, weapons of ascertainable destructiveness, defense measures to limit casualties, and physicians to care for the wounded, winners and losers. But how is this relevant to an aftermath wherein blast, firestorm, and radioactive fallout destroy the very social fabric? What is the meaning of victory in the wake of a holocaust?

People in society escape from these problems through drugs, illicit sex, workaholism, or just attending church three times a week, thinking they're going to be safe.
 
      In Survival of Food Crops and Livestock in the Event of Nuclear War, edited by David Bensen, he makes some remarks in the introduction:

              The transfer coefficient for direct weapon effects represents the fraction of the pre-attack U.S. population surviving the blast and initial thermal and nuclear radiation. For today's civil defense (l97l) a probability would be in the range of 0.5 to 0.8 (50% to 80%) depending on the type and weight of attack...The transfer coefficient for lethal fallout effects represents the fraction of the population surviving the direct effects and also surviving the hazard of lethal fallout-radiation doses. Typical results of hypothetical attacks indicate that lethal fallout would be in the range of 0.4 to 0.8 (40% to 80% of the previous 50% to 80%)...Contrary to much prevalent intuition, rescue and medical care probably is a fraction near l (l00%). The reason for this is not that rescue and medical care are expected to be highly effective, but that the percentage of people that could be rescued in time or could be saved by medical care is very small...Numerous studies show that the physical wherewithal (transportation, fertilizer and petroleum products, essential industry, etc.) to continue to provide food to sustain the survivors of a nuclear attack would also survive. This damaged economy could provide for an adequate diet and for the other items essential to survival without undue strain, and a surplus of labor, capital, and raw materials would be left with which to rebuild the economy. It is not enough, however, to say that the physical capacity to sustain survivors would exist. One has only to recall that there was no physical incapacity of the nation's ability to produce in the late l920's and the early l930's during the worst depression of U.S. history. The machine was in good shape; the problem was that management did not know how to operate it.

We see a number of problems that develop in the event of a nuclear attack. Approximately three quarters of the population survive the blast, then approximately 50% of the population survive the fallout, then the economy is in shambles. And all this is possible in the snap of a finger. It simply does not seem fair. Nancy Anisfield, in The Nightmare Considered, deals with some fiction accounts of nuclear holocaust. She makes some interesting points
before the description of three fiction books.

              A world-wide nuclear freeze movement (in the l980s) has risen from the grassroots level, and in response, on March 6, l990, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reset its famous "Doomsday Clock" back four minutes, to ten minutes from nuclear midnight...President Truman called the atomic bomb "an awful responsibility which has come to us," and told the nation: "We thank God that it has come to us, instead of to our enemies; and we pray that He may guide us to use it in His ways and for His purposes."

Here our President Truman is thinking we can use The Bomb for "His purposes". What a mess this "awful responsibility" has turned into...ten minutes away from nuclear midnight.

      The fiction books that have been written paint a gruesome picture.

              In Warday (l984), Whitley Striber and James Kunetka's mock-documentary novel, two friends travel the country, bearing witness to the social and environmental fallout of a small-scale war. The authors meticulously detail a United States in which law exists only in isolated pockets and where the fabric uniting the disparate factions of the country has eroded beyond recognition. The narrators encounter feudalism, anarchy and decline in most sectors, a landscape predicted by a l987 M.I.T. computer simulation in which the loss of fossil fuel following a limited nuclear exchange soon results in worldwide famine and a Middle-Ages level of subsistence. Other controversial but chilling warnings are even more drastic. Studies have recently forecast that in an atomic attack, a nuclear electromagnetic pulse might well render useless all electric-powered technology, and the atmospheric dust of destroyed cities might create a nuclear winter severe enough to eliminate agriculture for centuries to come...

              "O what we ben! And what we come to!", whispers Riddley Walker, the narrator of Russell Hoban's l980 novel of the same name, as he looks at the ruins of an ancient nuclear power plant whose aura of force he can feel, but whose secrets are lost to him. This vision of a present wasteland and a past that seems more powerful and more authentic is one that haunts Hoban's fiction, and nowhere more pervasively than in the post-apocalyptic Riddley Walker. In this, his finest novel to date, Hoban creates a remarkably vivid image of a world plunged back into the dark ages by nuclear destruction...

              As "the enemy" in Mordecai Roshwald's Level 7 ironically points out: "This morning we picked up a radio message from the enemy suggesting that we should conclude a peace treaty. It also informed us that the entire civilian population over there, including the government and its various officials is gone...As a reason for making peace, they pointed out that there was no longer anything to dispute: no territory, no strategic positions, no wealth, no markets, no uncommitted areas - nothing. 'And,' they added, 'peaceful relations may add some fun to life underground, which is not very interesting.'" (ibid)

John F. Kennedy in The Strategy of Peace maintained that "Inevitably the use of small nuclear armaments will lead to larger and larger nuclear armaments on both sides, until the worldwide holocaust has begun."

      The neutron bomb has been on the drawing board since the l950s. Supposedly, this bomb is like a "death-ray" in that it emits radiation that kills people and does not cause collateral damage to buildings. In The Neutron Bomb: Political, Technological and Military Issues by S.T. Cohen the comment is made: "Speaking to the Romanian Party Congress in Bucharest (l96l), Nikita Khrushchev attacked the United States: 'More and more frequently now, we hear talk from statesmen and military leaders, particularly in the United States, that they are working toward the creation of a neutron bomb. The neutron bomb, according to the concept of its creators, should kill everything alive, but preserve material assets. Yes comrades, so these people think. They are acting on the principle of robbers wanting to kill a man in such a way that his suit will not be stained with blood, in order to appropriate the suit.'" Antimatter bombs are science fiction becoming science fact.

              Antimatter is the exact counterpart of matter which has a charge and a spin that is in the opposite of all matter. When combined with any matter in our universe, antimatter reacts and completely converts to energy. This is called a total annihilation reaction, the l00 percent conversion of matter to energy. The bombs the United States detonated over Hiroshima and Nazasaki were called FISSION bombs. The immediate area of destruction of such a bomb was 3 to 4 miles. In this case only one percent of the nuclear material in this bomb actually reacts. Since that time, a man named Dr. Edward Teller, the father of the hydrogen bomb, discovered that FUSION bomb was possible which would create a greater reaction using the same amount of nuclear material. If such a bomb were dropped today on the same target, the immediate area of destruction would be approximately twenty miles. This would be caused by a nuclear fusion reaction, in which again, less than one percent of the nuclear material actually converts to energy or explodes. The other ninety-nine percent of the nuclear matter in this type of bomb is dispersed, but is not involved in the actual nuclear fusion reaction.

              So if a bomb was made with the same amount of nuclear material as one of the bombs dropped on Japan, and that nuclear material was antimatter (or the total l00% conversion of matter to energy), when that bomb exploded in, say, Baghdad for instance, the area of total devastation would include parts of Africa, Europe, and Asia, with the exact area of total devastation being very difficult to calculate. This would be caused by what is called a total annihilation reaction, which is the complete conversion of matter to energy - one hundred percent of the nuclear material in this bomb would explode or convert to energy. (www.boblazar.com)

      Gordon Fraser in Antimatter the Ultimate Mirror comments on this:

              In l928, the physicist Paul Dirac predicted the existence of antimatter in a mirror world, where the electrical charges on particles would be the opposite to those of ordinary matter. This mirror world is found, fleetingly, at the quantum level, with positrons the counterpart of electrons, and antiprotons the opposite of protons... Antimatter - a name so familiar, yet at the same time so impenetrable. Adding the simple prefix anti- to an everyday concept immediately confounds understanding and stimulates the imagination...Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry introduced faster-than-light spaceships powered by antimatter...In January l996, a modest press release from CERN the European Laboratory for Particle Physics in Geneva, Switzerland, reported that a small experiment had synthesized the first atoms of antihydrogen, the simplest form of chemical antimatter... In a fusion or fission, bomb, only a few parts in a thousand of mass are converted into energy, but that is enough to devastate the city of Hiroshima from the air or shake Muroroa atoll from below...When matter and antimatter annihilate, all their mass can be transformed into energy. Weight for weight, an antimatter bomb would be thousands of times more powerful than a thermonuclear weapon, a virtually unfathomable source of energy.
 
At the year 2000 the antimatter bomb is still at the dream stage as only very small amounts of antimatter can be produced. But, in l900 the atom bomb was also in the dream stage.

      Chemical and biological warfare has been with us for years. Various sources comment on this. First, nerve gas:

              Nerve agents in general attack the nervous system of the human body. When a nerve receives a stimulus acetylcholine is released in order to carry the impulse to muscles and organs. Once the impulse has passed the enzyme cholinesterase acts to prevent the accumulation of acetylcholine after its release in the nervous system. Nerve agents inhibit the functioning of cholinesterase, as a consequence of which the acetylcholine continues to act so that nervous impulses keep on being transmitted. The first symptoms a victim will experience following exposure to nerve agents are a runny nose, tightness in the chest and constriction of the pupils. The victim will then encounter breathing difficulties, drooling from the mouth and nausea. Because he loses control over his bodily functions, he will involuntary vomit, defecate and urinate. This phase is followed by twitching and jerking. Ultimately the victim will become comatose and suffocate as a consequence of convulsive spasms. Sarin is a highly volatile liquid, so that inhalation as well as absorption through the skin pose a great threat. Even vapour concentrations will immediately penetrate the skin. Death may follow in one minute after direct ingestation of extremely low concentrations (0.0l mg per kg of body weight or higher). People who did not accumulate a lethal dose but did not receive immediate appropriate medical treatment may suffer permanent neurological damage. Sarin, developed in l938, is the most toxic of the three G-agents made by Germany. Its name is derived from the names of the chemists involved in its creation: Schrade, Ambrose, Rudiger and van der Line. NATO adopted it as a standard chemical warfare agent in the early l950s. Iraq used sarin in the l980-88 war with Iran and had large stocks available in the l990-9l Gulf War. The Japanese Aum Shinrikyo religious sect released an impure form of sarin in Matsumoto in l994 and in the Tokyo underground in l995. (www.sipri.se/cbw/cw agents/Sarin)

Second, biological warfare:

              There are four main advantages and three big disadvantages to BW (biological warfare). Probably the biggest advantage is the killing efficiency of most biological weapons. It is estimated that I gram of toxin could kill l0 million people. A purified form of botulinum toxin is approximately three million times more potent than Sarin, a chemical nerve agent. As a comparison a SCUD missile filled with botulinum toxin could affect an area of 3700 sq. km. Another advantage is the cost effectiveness of biological weapons. To "affect" l sq. km it would cost approximately $2000 using conventional weapons, $800 using nuclear weapons, $600 using chemical weapons, and $l.00 using biologics. This fact has caused biological agents to be called a "Poor Man's Atomic Bomb." Perhaps a more accurate term is "Lazy Man's Atomic Bomb" because of the ease of production of most biological weapons. Any nation with a reasonably advanced pharmaceutical and medical industry has the capability of mass producing biological weapons. The last advantage of BW is that it takes advantage of the live nature of these bugs. Anything from a piece of fruit to a ballistic missile could be used to deliver a biological weapon to a target. Along with this is the fact that with certain organisms, only a few particles would be needed to start an infection that could potentially cause an epidemic. The disadvantages of BW are many, but a major consideration is the unpredictability of its use. The weather is an important consideration, if one is worried about their own troops. Gruinard Island is a prime example of how uncontrolled spread can take place and we measly little humans are helpless. Imagine what could happen on a battlefield without borders of water. The lifespan is another major concern. These agents are living creatures that have a chance of becoming a part of the local micro flora. The strategic futility this creates makes offensive use of BW impractical. If you spray an area and kill enemy troops, how long is safe before your troops can follow up. There is really no l00% way to be sure. The last major disadvantage BW has is the stigma associated with its use. Imagine if you will a child, a child bleeding out of every orifice of its body, bleeding not only blood, but its liquefied internal organs saturated with small black particles of infectious Ebola virus. Now imagine a ruler of a country being accused on international television of purposely causing this to happen for military gain. (www.calpoly.edu/~drjones/biowar)

      Global warming is the next problem. The U.N. and the World Meteorological Organization, through the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, did a study on the effects of global warming:

              The conclusion that global temperature has been rising is strongly supported by the retreat of most mountain glaciers of the world since the end of the nineteenth century and the fact that global sea level has risen over the same period by an average of l to 2mm per year.
 
Another study was done by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration:

              Human activity has been increasing the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. There is no scientific debate on this point. Pre-industrial levels of carbon dioxide (prior to the start of the Industrial Revolution) were about 280 parts per million by volume (ppmv), and current levels are about 370 ppmv...Northern Hemisphere snow cover extent has consistently remained below average since l987...There has been a clear trend to fewer extremely low minimum temperatures in several widely-separated areas in recent decades... For the Northern Hemisphere summer temperature, recent decades appear to be the warmest since at least about l000 A.D., and the warming since the late l9th century is unprecedented over the last l000 years. Older data are insufficient to provide reliable hemispheric temperature estimates. Ice core data suggest that the 20th century has been warm in many parts of the globe, but also that the significance of the warming varies geographically, when viewed in the context of climate variations of the last millennium. Large and rapid climatic changes affecting the atmospheric and oceanic circulation and temperature, and the hydrological cycle, occurred during the last Ice Age and during the transition towards the present Holocene period (which began about l0,000 years ago). Based on the incomplete evidence available, the projected change of 30F to 70F over the next century would be unprecedented in comparison with the best available records from the last several thousand years.
 
This may not seem like much, but it should be remembered that the last Ice Age ended due to a rise in global temperature. Possibly by the year 2020, the effect of global warming will begin to make itself known.

      Jesus Christ said, "For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be." Obviously, He was referring, at least in part, to thermonuclear destruction. Revelation gives us the apostle John's version of this. Revelation 8:7,8,l2 -

              The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth: and third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up.

              And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea: and the third part of the sea became blood;

              And the fourth angel sounded, and third part of the sun was smitten, and the third part of the moon, and the third part of the stars; so as the third part of them was darkened, and the day shone not for a third part of it, and the night likewise.

This is the apostle John's vision, sitting in exile on the isle of Patmos in primitive Rome, of nuclear holocaust. Poor John, watching in his vision a thermonuclear war, or whatever weapons are perfected at the time, probably had his tongue pretty well tied. He simply could not conceive of thermonuclear blast, firestorm, and fallout, or what is yet to come. "The fourth angel sounded" quite possibly refers to the result of massive smoke emissions.

      Here we thought angels were good. Here we thought God was love. Our heavenly Santa Claus has turned into a monster. The next angel in Revelation really has a heart: "And I beheld, and heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice, 'Woe, woe, woe, to the inhabiters of the earth by reason of the other voices of the trumpet of the three angels, which are yet to sound.'" What is God's game? We begin to see a cold-blooded dictator. God is love, but not the way we conceive love as being

      Why would God "trash-out" His creation. God controls all things, and unfortunately He also controls The Bomb. Instead of being nostalgic, looking back to a pre-Bomb world, it would be best to be aware The Bomb has not fallen yet. Instead of living in subconscious fear, it is best to love life. Worrying about the problem will change nothing.
 
 
 

      Revelation 5:l-7 -

              And I saw in the right hand of him that sat on the throne a book written within and on the backside, sealed with seven seals.
 
              And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, Who is worthy to open the book and to loose the seals thereof?
 
              And no man in heaven, nor in earth, neither under the earth, was able to open the book, neither to look thereon.
 
              And I wept much, because no man was found worthy to open and to read the book, neither to look thereon.
 
              And one of the elders saith unto me, Weep not: behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof.
 
              And I beheld, and, lo, in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth.
 
              And he (the Son) came and took the book out of the right hand of him (the Father) that sat upon the throne.