Most church people understand that the “first Adam” was the “man” (Heb.-adam) that God formed out of dirt and breathed life into, and that the “second Adam” was the child born of a virgin Who was the Lord’s Messiah and the Savior of mankind. Most people do not realize that the One who made Adam and the One Who was born of a virgin were One in the same. See The God of the Old Testament. The Bible openly speaks of these two men, the second of whom is referred to as the “second man” (1 Cor. 15:47). However, that same Bible has much to say about a third man whose identity will be revealed in the following series of postings.

Throughout the Old Testament God’s people understood that He had placed the first man–called Adam–on the earth to overcome Satan and thereby take control of the earth from him. Adam would then lead his descendants in the ways of the Lord, creating a world population that would worship and obey God. This, of course, did not happen as Adam succumbed to Satan’s wiles and brought sin onto the earth where every man from that time forward would have to deal with it by either overcoming it or being overcome by it. Every man except one has bowed to it, “it” being identified as Satan himself in Genesis 4:7 where God calls sin “it” and “him,” meaning the devil.

In several places in the Old Testament the prophets wrote about a Man who, though born of a woman, would live in such a way that would qualify Him to lead obedient men to the Father with an offer of eternal life. Because a human being had failed to complete this assigned task initially, only another human being could qualify to be such a leader, to be God’s Messiah and mankind’s Savior. To qualify, the “second man” (1 Cor. 15:47) would have to be tested and tried beyond what any other man would ever have to endure. Only a man who could bear up under such testing could qualify to lead true God-seekers to eternal life.

Then came the time when that One–the second man–did indeed come to earth as a man, was tempted and tried unlike any other man, endured it all without sin, then died to accomplish His purpose. Having established the Church of God, He left His apostles in charge of it.

For a hundred years or so those apostles labored to keep God’s church in line with His Will and Way which He made known to Truth seekers through His prophets and apostles (Eph. 2:20). A focused study of both Testaments reveals that much, possibly most of what the prophets and apostles wrote was in the form of warnings to the church not to deviate from God’s expressed Will and Way, which He calls His “gospel.” The New Testament reveals that the apostles were forced to fight continuously to keep the church in line. As it turned out, it was a losing battle, just as Paul said it would be. Most of professing Christendom eventually followed Adam and Eve’s lead by rejecting God and embracing Satan. Except for a minutely few–God’s remnant–who, as future postings will reveal, would be persecuted, millions unto death, by a totally new Satan-empowered, man-led religious organization that would come into being during the “dark ages”–a hundred year span of time during which nothing written about the church has ever been found with the exception of the Book of Revelation. This is not to say that church chroniclers failed to record the history of the church during that time. There have always been those whom God has tasked with recording the church’s history, both good and bad, for future believers. Such writers did not suddenly, in about 70 A.D., stop recording the activities of the church. So what happened to their writings? No one knows for certain. However, both Bible students and secular historians are sure that the religious organization that formed between 70 A.D. and 170 A.D. did not want the world to know about the “church” that was taking shape behind her veil of darkness. It is believed that the leaders of that movement collected and destroyed all written documentation concerning that time period except Revelation, which God would not allow to be destroyed. But why did the new church not want the world to know what was going on during the “dark ages?” Over the coming” days “why” will become abundantly clear as we return to the Promised Land and chronicle the beginnings of the religious entity that, under the power of Satan, would one day rule the world. To be continued. L.J.