Herald of the Kingdom and Age to Come 1855, John Thomas

John Thomas’ article “Our Terrestrial System Before the Fall” (Herald of the Kingdom Age to Come 1855) article is mis-used by those who would misrepresent bro Thomas’ views on the subject by selectively quoting him.

In responding to the Philadelphia and Buffalo ecclesias in America who mis-used this article by bro Roberts to impose a false interpretation on the B.A.S.F., bro John Carter commented;

“While claiming “unswerving loyalty and belief” of the Birmingham Amended Statement of Faith, the circular defines that belief by reference to a selection of extracts from the writings of brethren Thomas (1855) and Roberts (1869). We have withheld Intelligence, but have written these ecclesias giving bro. Roberts’ own explanation in 1877 of the article of 1869, from which it is evident a meaning is being attached to his words quoted in the circular that he did not intend.

With regard to the extract quoted from Dr. Thomas in support of the Buffalo interpretation of the Statement, we have given them several citations from his works written before, at the time, and after the extract, which give the general teaching of Dr. Thomas in harmony with which his words in their quotation must be understood. [See C. C. Walker’s comments in ‘Adam in His Novitiate’ The Christadelphian, May 1923]

We have also added several citations from other writings of Dr. Thomas and bro. Roberts; and have invited the two ecclesias to say if they accept the Clauses of the Statement as meaning the same as the teaching in the extracts quoted to them. The interpretation which is being imposed upon the Birmingham Amended Statement of Faith by the Philadelphia circular is contrary to that understood by others, and contrary to all other statements on the subject in all the writings of Dr. Thomas and bro. Roberts.” (The Christadelphian, September 1947) [Refer to Allan Strickler and Clean Flesg Error]

“Our Terrestrial System Before the Fall”

Below are extracts from “Our Terrestrial System Before the Fall” which is all we could source

“But, the inquirer wants to know, Suppose they had lived in the obedience of faith all the time that might have been appointed for their probation in Paradise, would they not have died? Certainly they would, if there had been no arrangement divinely interposed to prevent death. This arrangement existed in connection with the Tree of Lives.

We learn from the Mosaic account that the eating of that tree would impart immortality or deathlessness; for we are told that they were expelled from Paradise that they might not eat of that tree and live forever. It is certain, therefore, that the animal nature they possessed was essentially a mortal nature, and required to be physically operated upon by the power transmissible through contact with the tree of lives to change it into a nature constitutionally capable of enduring forever; which the animal nature is not.

We have an illustration of what would have happened to Adam and Eve if they had continued in the obedience of faith, in what we are taught is to occur in the case of the obedient believers belonging to the generation contemporary with the appearing of the Lord Jesus in power and great glory. These, designated by Paul as

“we who are alive and remain,” he declares “shall not sleep, but shall be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.”

This was not revealed till he communicated it; for he styles it “a mystery,” or secret, which, says he, “Behold, I show you.” Here, then, are persons found living in the obedience of faith at the Lord’s appearing. Every one admits that they are constitutionally animal and mortal, though, it is revealed, that they shall not die, if they be of the living remnant contemporary with His appearing.

Their not dying is conditional, as in the case of Adam and Eve—if they be found in the obedience of faith, and if contemporaries of the advent; otherwise not. But in not dying into death, as with Enoch and Elijah, the dying process which commences with birth must be interrupted and terminated by the interposition of divine power; even by that power that rebuilds the bodies of the dead upon new physical principles; in other words, by the Spirit of God that would have changed the eaters of the Tree of Lives in Eden; that raised up the mortal body of Jesus; and that will raise up and change the saints by Jesus, when in their case “mortality shall be swallowed up of life.”

There was no miracle wrought in executing the sentence under which Adam and Eve placed themselves. That is to say, there was no new physical principle infused into their nature that was not there before they transgressed.

The introduction of miracle would have been in the instantaneous transformation of their mortal animal nature into the immortal spiritual nature on their eating of the fruit of the Tree of Lives. But there was no scope for the exercise of extraordinary power; for it is only obedience that gains access to that tree, whether in the Paradise of Eden, or in the Kingdom of God.

If they had continued obedient, death, though lurking within them, would not have been allowed to enter into the world; it would have had no victims; but they transgressed—their thinking became perverse, or contrary to the letter of the Word of God, and their practice like it,—they sinned; and the physical tendency of animal nature to dissolution became “the law of sin and death” within them, because its abolition was prevented on account of sin.

From these premises it will be seen, that we dissent from our correspondent’s “notion” that all creation became corrupt (by which we understand him to mean, constitutionally impregnated with corruptibility) at the Fall.

....Adam and Eve were innocent and undefiled but without character. They became immoral; and the practice of vice has made their descendants what we see.”

“‘Death and corruption, then, with reproduction, the characteristic of spring and summer, is the fundamental law of the physical system of the Six Days. Adam and Eve, and all the other animals born of the earth with themselves, would have died and gone to corruption, if there had been no transgression, provided that there had been no further interference with the physical system than Moses records in his history of the Six Day.’,”