A LESSON FROM ADAM, THE FIRST MAN ON PLANET EARTH

Another man who looked almost exactly like Abel came and stood beside him.
“I am Adam,” he said. “I was given authority over the earth, but I gave it to the evil one by obeying evil. He now rules in my place and your place. The earth was given to man, but the evil one has taken it. The authority I lost was restored by the cross. Jesus Christ is the last Adam, and He will soon take His authority and rule. He will rule through mankind because He gave the earth to mankind. Those who live in your times will prepare the earth for Him to rule.”
“Please tell me more,” I asked, a little surprised to see Adam, but wanting to hear everything he had to say. “How
do we prepare for Him?”
“Love,” he said. “You must love one another. You must love the earth, and you must love life. My sin released the death that now flows as rivers upon the earth. Your love will release rivers of life. When evil reigns, death is stronger than life, and death prevails over life. When righteousness reigns, life prevails, and life is stronger than death. Soon the life of the Son of God will swallow up the death that was released through my disobedience. It is not just living that you must love, but life. Death is your enemy. You are called to be a messenger of life.
“When the Lord’s people begin to love, He will use them to release His judgments. His judgments are to be desired.
The whole world is groaning and travailing as it waits for His judgments, and when they come, the world will learn righteousness. What He is about to do, He will do through His people, and His people will stand as Elijah in the last days. Their words will shut up the heavens or bring rain; they will prophesy earthquakes and famines, and they will come to pass; they will stop famines and earthquakes.
“When they release armies in the heavens, armies will march on the earth. When they hold back armies, there will
be peace. They will decide where He shows mercy and where He shows His wrath. They will have this authority because they will love, and those who love will be one with Him. What you will see through that door is to help prepare you for what He is about to do through His people.
“I know authority. I also know the responsibility of authority. Because of the great authority that I was given, I am responsible for what has happened to the earth. Even so, the grace of God began to cover me, and God’s great redemption will soon swallow up my mistake. Peace will be taken from the earth, but you are called to help restore it. Peace prevails in heaven, and you are called to bring heaven to earth. Those who abide in His presence will know peace and will spread peace.
“The earth itself will shake and tremble. Times of trouble greater than have ever been known will begin to move across the earth like great waves of the sea. Even so, those who know Him will not be troubled. They will stand before the raging of the seas and say, ‘Peace, be still’ and the seas will be calm. Even the least of His little ones will be like a great fortress of peace that will stand through all that is coming. His glory will be revealed to His people first and then through them. Even the creation will recognize Him in His people and will obey them as it does Him.
“This is the authority that I had, and it will be given to mankind again. I used my authority to turn Paradise into a wilderness. The Lord will use His authority to turn the wilderness into Paradise again. This is the authority that He is giving to His people. I used mine wrongly and death came. When His authority is used in righteousness, it will release life. Be careful how you use authority. With authority comes responsibility. You, too, can use it wrongly, but you will not do this if you love. As all of heaven knows, ‘’Love never fails.”
“What about the earthquakes, famines and even wars that you said we would release on the earth? Won’t this be releasing death?” I asked.
“All the death that is coming upon the world is being allowed to prepare the way for life. Everything that is sown must be reaped, unless those who have sown evil call upon the cross in Spirit and truth. The army of the cross is about to be released, and it will march in the power of the cross, carrying the offer of mercy to all. Those who reject the mercy of God have rejected life.”
“That is a great responsibility,” I said. “How do we know when they have rejected His mercy?” “Disobedience brought death, and obedience will bring life. When I walked with God, He taught me His ways. As I walked with Him, I began to know Him. You must walk with God and learn of His ways. Your authority is His authority, and you must be one with Him in order to use it. The weapons of His army are not carnal—they are spiritual and much more powerful than any earthly weapons. Your most powerful weapons are truth and love. Even the final judgment of destruction is God’s love extended in mercy.
“When truth spoken in love is rejected, death has been chosen over life. You will understand this as you walk with Him. You will come to understand the Spirit that He has given to you to bring life and not death. There is a time to give men over to reap what they have sown, but you must do all things in obedience. Jesus came to give life. He does not desire for any to perish, and this must be your desire also. For this reason, you must even love your enemies if you are to be trusted with the authority that He wants to give to His people.
“The time is at hand for the fulfillment of what has been written. His people have prayed for more time, and He gave it to them. However, few have used it wisely. You have a little more time, but soon the time can no longer be delayed. The time is near when time itself will seem to speed up. As it is written, when He comes, He will come quickly. However, you are not to fear the times. If you fear Him, you do not need to fear anything that is coming upon the earth.
“All that is about to happen is coming so that His wisdom can again prevail on earth just as it does in heaven. All of the evil that was sown in mankind is about to be reaped. Even so, the good that He has sown will also be reaped.
Goodness is stronger than evil. Love is stronger than death. He walked the earth to destroy the works of the devil, and He will finish what He has begun.”

POWER AND LOVE
As Adam talked, I was captured by his grace and dignity. I began to wonder if he had possibly lived his whole life after the fall without sinning again because he seemed to be so pure. Knowing my thoughts, he changed the subject briefly to answer them.
“I lived long on the earth because sin did not have a deep root in me. Even though I had sinned, I was created to walk with God, and my desire was still for Him. I did not know the depths of sin that the following generations knew. As sin grew, life was shortened, but in every generation, those who walk with God touch the life that is in God. Because Moses walked so closely with God, he would have lived on had the Lord not taken him. Enoch walked with Him so closely that the Lord had to take him as well. That is why Jesus said, ‘’I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me shall live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me shall never die.
“What you are seeing in me is not just the lack of sin, but the presence of life that I had on the earth. What we were on earth will remain a part of who we are forever. I can look at all of the others here who are a part of the great cloud of witnesses and know much about their life on earth.” “So you are a part of the great cloud of witnesses.”
“Yes. My story is a part of the eternal gospel. My wife and I were the first to taste sin, and the first to see our children reap the consequences of disobedience. We have beheld the death spread through each generation, but we have also beheld the cross and seen the victory over sin.
“Satan has boasted since the cross that Jesus could redeem men but could not change them. During the times of the greatest darkness and evil that are about to come, His people will stand as a testimony for all time that He not only redeemed His people from sin, but He also removed sin from them. Through them, He will remove sin from the whole earth. He will now display to the whole creation the power of His new creation. He did not come just to forgive sin, but to save mankind from sin, and He is returning for a people who are without stain from the world.
This will come to pass in the most difficult of times. “I was created to love the Lord and to love the earth, as were all people. I have loathed the sight of the world’s rivers becoming sewers. Even more have I loathed the sight of what has happened to the human mind. The philosophies of the human mind now filling the streams of human thought are as loathsome as the sewage filling the rivers. But the rivers of human thought will one day be pure again, just as the rivers of the earth. By this, for all time to come, it will be proven that good is stronger than evil.
“The Lord did not go to the cross just to redeem, but also to restore. He walked the earth as a man to show mankind how to live. He will now reveal Himself through His chosen ones to show them who they were created to be. This demonstration will not just come through power, but through love. He will give you power because He is all powerful, and power is also a revelation of Him. Even so, He uses His power because of love and so must you. Even His judgments come because of love. When you send them forth, it must be because of love. Even His final judgment of the earth will be His final mercy.”

Adam’s disobedience made the way for Abel’s obedience, whose blood still speaks as a harbinger of salvation. (Rick Joyner)