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The Last Enemy, Death, Brought to NothingThe Watchtower—2014 | September 15
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8, 9. How were Adam’s offspring affected by his sin? (See opening image.)
8 Would the children of Adam and Eve be affected by what their parents had done? Yes. Romans 5:12 explains: “Through one man sin entered into the world and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because they had all sinned.” The first to die was faithful Abel. (Gen. 4:8) Then Adam’s other offspring grew old and died. Did they inherit sin as well as death? The apostle Paul answers: “Through the disobedience of the one man many were made sinners.” (Rom. 5:19) Sin and death inherited from Adam thus became implacable enemies of mankind, inescapable for imperfect humans. We cannot exactly describe all that was involved in passing on their sad inheritance to Adam’s immediate and more distant offspring, but passed on it was.
9 Fittingly, the Bible refers to inherited sin and death as “the shroud that is enveloping all the peoples and the covering that is woven over all the nations.” (Isa. 25:7) This suffocating covering, or shroud, this intricate webwork of condemnation, entraps all people. So the fact is that “in Adam all are dying.” (1 Cor. 15:22) The question that naturally follows is, as expressed by Paul: “Who will rescue me from the body undergoing this death?” Could anyone?a—Rom. 7:24.
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The Last Enemy, Death, Brought to NothingThe Watchtower—2014 | September 15
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a Speaking of the efforts of scientists to explain the cause of aging and death, Insight on the Scriptures comments: “They overlook the fact that the Creator himself decreed the death sentence for the first human pair, implementing that sentence in a way that man does not fully understand.”—Vol. 2, p. 247.
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