Why didn’t Adam and Eve have children in the Garden of Eden?
Donna, from Nevada
Dear Donna,
Very little has been revealed about the lives of Adam and Eve between the time that they came to this earth and the account given in the scriptures about the Garden of Eden. We do know that they were the first inhabitants of the earth. (As Brigham Young said, Adam brought seeds and animals from other planets to help ready the earth for the habitation of his posterity.)
“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, Vol.3, p.319).
When Eve was expelled from the Garden because she listened to Satan and violated God’s commandment to her, Adam could have stayed alone in the Garden, but he choose to partake of the same fruit and be expelled with Eve so that they could fulfill the great commandment to multiply and replenish the earth. Evidently, in order to fulfill their mission to be the progenitors of the human family on a telestial world, where our Father’s children could work out their salvation by overcoming the temptings of the Adversary, their posterity began after they were expelled from the Garden.
-Gramps
