Why the serpent?

[TGGIL]

Temptation by the Devil
In the book of Genesis, the serpent is introduced. This serpent is depicted as being Satan, a Snake, the Devil, the evil one, let loose to roam the earth to cause whatever chaos it wants to. God in all his creation of the heavens and Earth allowed the serpent to roam the earth and tempt Eve to commit sin. God being all knowing would already have planned this event to come to action before or after his creation. God’s defined plan is his alone and who are we to question, but there are many questions unanswered and left for someone like me to seek the answers. I can’t claim my ideas to be true or factual. I just apply my logical knowledge as I see it and as I read it in the Bible. Some things are so simple and some are difficult to understand, but I hold one thing forever until my death, and that’s the belief in God, his Son Jesus Christ who is God in the flesh, and the Holy Spirit guiding me my entire life. I questioned the creation of Adam and Eve and why God allowed them to be tempted, Eve being tempted by the serpent and than Adam giving in to the same temptation. My question, why is the serpent roaming around the Garden of Eden in the first place? Why create the beautiful Earth and place Adam and Eve in their garden and have the nasty serpent roaming around to cause sin against God?
The Serpent is the Devil. The Devil is the evil temptation. The evil temptation is everything not of God’s approval and we can call this sin. Sin is committing this evil temptation against God’s will. What we do and how we act if not of God’s will, than we are sinning, thus being tempted the same way as Adam and Eve had been. The book of Genesis apply to our lives today. Adam and Eve are us today. We are born to the world and we must live for God’s will and obey his commandments. The book of Genesis is our truth of our earthly Heaven created by God and the evil temptation we will confront in our daily lives and the choices we must make. We have to make choices everyday and giving into temptation is our biggest hurdle to try to jump over. Temptation away from God is our challenge and our decision making the choice our own. Of course, God knows our life path and the choices we will make. Having the faith of God with us allows us to make the right choice. Just a little prayer before action and the choice is clear. We stop listening to our heart than we will make the wrong choices. If we do make a wrong choice non-intentionally, God is with us and understands our choice and will correct our path, because our knowledge is weak. The things you don’t know make you as innocent as a child. We grow up with only the knowledge from our teachers and these teachers start at child birth to who you are today. Our teachers are our 5 senses that absorb the knowledge and wisdom we possess. Sight, Sound, Taste, Touch and Smell are our teachers and everyone and everything we had ever come in contact with since childhood has been our education. Good or bad we absorbed it all and here we are today. Is there a Devil with horns, a red-faced monster roaming the earth taking control of us as he pleases? Is Satan around us and allowed to tempt us as he tempted Jesus? Does God allow this to go on in our lives constantly tempted and persuaded by Satan? Obviously Satan came to God in the book of Job wanting to make a mockery of Job’s faith and God allowed Satan to do whatever he wants but he cannot harm Job. Job never departed from his faith under all the extreme torment he was subjected to. God was with him every step and he would not let his faith falter. He prayed to God and wished he was never born, if this was to be his life with God, all this misery Satan placed upon him testing Job’s faith.
I personally don’t expect a physical human character, but not impossible, claiming to be the Devil, Satan the Serpent. Satan according to the Bible is an Angel from Heaven named Lucifer who happens to be the most beautiful Angel. God cast Lucifer to a bottomless pit, but Lucifer has the power to question God’s authority and still cause havoc in the world but only with God’s Will. Now I question this power as strong as God’s but never above God’s will. God has the final word and always will.

[zacchaeus]

I think you will find a lot out about why and how satan tempts if you read Job... satan is our accuser before God, God allows Him to tempt us as a test of true LOVE, He knows and has so much faith in us that God says, satan take so and so, I dare ya, try him... (like how awesome is it to have GOD sponsor us, lol???). One quick thing to remember is we always have the upper hand, for all the temptation satan bestows upon us, God always gives us a way out if not multiple ways.

You said "Temptation away from God is our challenge..." However, without GOD you cannot even overcome temptation. To think we can do anything of ourselves aside from God is the wrong concept. It is the power of the Holy Spirit dwelling inside us that overcomes temptation for us... if we heed and yield!!!

I personally believe God is All knowing in the sense that He knows our choices because He is outside time and has already seen everything, not that He has chosen for us, knew beforehand or predestined us. I guess you can say the future is happening now in Heaven, however, I realize that this even raises questions because if the future is happening now, has the rapture already happen? Thousand year reign? etc. Those would be questions I'd like to know answers to.

[PaulSacramento]

It is our fallen nature ( to think that we do not need God) that allows for us to be tempted by Satan and his demons.
Once we abide in Christ and Christ in Us, Satan has no power for we have given ourselves to Our Lord and THAT is the very thing the Satan tries to keep us from doing.
Satan has no power other than the one we give him and the moment we think " I can do this myself" or " I don't need God" then Satan is at his most powerful.

[zacchaeus]

As far as satan being on earth... I believe is true and he works within the realm of powers and principalities, which is what we wrestle with and against, not flesh and blood!!!

Paul as made some very powerful and correct assessments: "Once we abide in Christ and Christ in Us, Satan has no power for we have given ourselves to Our Lord and THAT is the very thing the Satan tries to keep us from doing."

This is true and after coming unto the LORD satans position somewhat changes because now he goes into accusing mode (district attorney/prosecutor), However, we have the best court/JUDGE appointed LAWYER to have ever lived... Jesus Christ (mediator/defender)... best thing is He is free.

---satans job as prosecutor is to cause a reasonable doubt in ourselves that we don't belong to the LORD, we know we do
---he causes doubts and confusion, GOD is not the author of confusion
---we can still be punished but not by our salvation, but we can gain and/or lose our rewards in Heaven

One thing we cannot forget... satan knows the book better than any of us, he is a master of his craft... if he is to be honest with scripture (which he won't), he knows that he is fighting a loosing battle, he knows what happens in the end and that even death is destroyed; he knows he looses and God wins... remember he is the deceiver... so while he knows he will lose he isn't going to tell us or those that he convinces to follow him and not Christ- he knows he will lose but most will think they have a chance at winning, and he wants to bring as many people down as he can with him to hell forever. Fighting a losing battle doesn't mean he can't take as many as he can with him, and for the Christian after salvation, his job then becomes to just make ours as miserable or "a living Hell" while that we are alive.

[TGGIL]

I like all your answers, good points, well said. We fight our battles daily with the Armor of God and cannot be struck down knowing our battle is already won before it even begun. Keep the faith my Christian Soldiers.

[PaulSacramento]

As to why a "serpent"?
Genesis is NOT clear as to why Satan chose the shape of the serpent, only that he did.
Sometimes it is best to NOT try to read more into something that we can't know about for sure.
Perhaps it was simply the imagery that the writer of Genesis wanted to convey or perhaps there was a deeper motive behind it, we really don't know but we do know that through the ages the symbol of the snake and the forked tongue have been equated with "double talk", lies and manipulation.

[zacchaeus]

As to why a "serpent"?

This is a good question, but may be of little importance and/or of great importance... maybe its as simple as it was the first animal satan came across??? I don't know. I'm not sure there is bible for that.

Note: Interesting enough though the curse placed upon the snake was to crawl on its belly forever and eat dust/dirt... so sometimes I wonder if the snake slithered on it belly before and had a possibility of "choice" not having to before the curse, and/or actually walked and then was cursed to its belly? Now if we find this answer then its possible some sort of symbolism is here that relates to us? But Satan was only using the FORM of a snake for his purposes. Why curse an entire species of animal for something Satan did? This seems a more logical question. Also note the snake is slippery, attractive, quiet, but dangerous and venomous sound like satan right?

As far as why an "animal" was use at all would also be a more appropriate question? Man was to have dominion and rule over the animal kingdom and yet it was through an animal that he was led astray!

Check this out from answers in genesis...

"The snake imagery is picked up in Genesis 3:15 when the snake is told: “he [the woman’s seed] will crush your head and you will strike his heel.” The snake was cursed to crawl on the ground and therefore susceptible to man’s heel crushing its head (this vulnerability is a direct result of Satan’s sin). This is a foreshadowing of what will really happen to Satan someday. The seed (Jesus Christ) of the woman will crush the head of Satan and His heel will be struck (the crucifixion) in the process.

In addition, the curse upon the physical snake was reflective of the actual curse upon Satan himself: crawling low on the belly was a mark of deep degradation (Lev 11:42) and eating dust was also a sign of despair (Micah 7:17). All these factors combine to form very vivid symbolism of what awaits Satan in the end. "

[RickD]

Check this out from answers in genesis...

"The snake imagery is picked up in Genesis 3:15 when the snake is told: “he [the woman’s seed] will crush your head and you will strike his heel.” The snake was cursed to crawl on the ground and therefore susceptible to man’s heel crushing its head (this vulnerability is a direct result of Satan’s sin). This is a foreshadowing of what will really happen to Satan someday. The seed (Jesus Christ) of the woman will crush the head of Satan and His heel will be struck (the crucifixion) in the process.

In addition, the curse upon the physical snake was reflective of the actual curse upon Satan himself: crawling low on the belly was a mark of deep degradation (Lev 11:42) and eating dust was also a sign of despair (Micah 7:17). All these factors combine to form very vivid symbolism of what awaits Satan in the end. "

See how rational Answers in Genesis would be, if they stopped talking about the age of the earth?