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Question

 

Dear Gramps,

In John it states that if you have seen Christ you have seen the Father. In Genesis it states that man was made after the image of God. Christ had a bellybutton while on earth, so did Adam and Eve have bellybuttons? Just wondering.

Mike

 

Answer

 

Dear Mike,

The biblical account of the creation of Adam and Eve is sketchy, incomplete and completely allegorical. This account represents the vestiges of the accounts of two separate creations. The first was a spiritual creation and the second a physical creation. We read in Genesis 1:27

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

Then, in Genesis 2:1, we read

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.

Following that scripture that says that all the creation was finished, we read in Genesis 2:6-7

But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.

 

And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

So here is the second account of the creation, this time specifying that Adam was made from the dust of the ground. The second account of the creation of Eve is related in Genesis 2:21-22

And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;

 

And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.

Here is what the prophet Brigham Young, the second president of the Church, had to say on the subject—

“Though we have it in history that our father Adam was made of the dust of this earth, and that he knew nothing about his God previous to being made here, yet it is not so; and when we learn the truth we shall see and understand that he helped to make this world, and was the chief manager in that operation.

“He was the person who brought the animals and the seeds from other planets to this world, and brought a wife with him and stayed here. You may read and believe what you please as to what is found written in the Bible. Adam was made from the dust of an earth, but not from the dust of this earth. He was made as you and I are made, and no person was ever made upon any other principle” (Journal of Discourses, 26 vols., 3:, p.319).

So, if one goes through all the revealed scriptures on this subject, one finds that Adam was born of his own parents on a terrestrial world, participated in the formation of this earth; in that operation he was known as Michael the archangel. He and his wife, Eve, were the first inhabitants of this globe, and all mankind are their descendants. According to Moses 3:7

And I, the Lord God, formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul, the first flesh upon the earth, the first man also; nevertheless, all things were before created; but spiritually were they created and made according to my word.

So if our anthropologists and paleontologists argue that the Bible is not allegorical, but mythical, they are simply wrong. Of all the remains of prehistoric animals that are found on the earth, none predated the advent of Adam. And archaeological and anthropological time lines have no credence whatsoever, but that is another story. Adam and Eve were endowed with bellybuttons.

Gramps

 

 

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