Adam and Eve

74:4.1That night, the night fol­low­ing the sixth day, while Adam and Eve slum­bered, strange things were tran­spir­ing in the vicin­ity of the Fa­ther’s tem­ple in the cen­tral sec­tor of Eden. There, un­der the rays of the mel­low moon, hun­dreds of en­thu­si­as­tic and ex­cited men and women lis­tened for hours to the im­pas­sioned pleas of their lead­ers. They meant well, but they sim­ply could not un­der­stand the sim­plic­ity of the fra­ter­nal and demo­cratic man­ner of their new rulers. And long be­fore day­break the new and tem­po­rary ad­min­is­tra­tors of world af­fairs reached a vir­tu­ally unan­i­mous con­clu­sion that Adam and his mate were al­to­gether too mod­est and unas­sum­ing. They de­cided that Di­vin­ity had de­scended to earth in bod­ily form, that Adam and Eve were in re­al­ity gods or else so near such an es­tate as to be wor­thy of rev­er­ent wor­ship.

74:4.2The amaz­ing events of the first six days of Adam and Eve on earth were en­tirely too much for the un­pre­pared minds of even the world’s best men; their heads were in a whirl; they were swept along with the pro­posal to bring the no­ble pair up to the Fa­ther’s tem­ple at high noon in or­der that ev­ery­one might bow down in re­spect­ful wor­ship and pros­trate them­selves in hum­ble sub­mis­sion. And the Gar­den dwellers were re­ally sin­cere in all of this.

74:4.3Van protested. Amadon was ab­sent, be­ing in charge of the guard of honor which had re­mained be­hind with Adam and Eve overnight. But Van’s protest was swept aside. He was told that he was like­wise too mod­est, too unas­sum­ing; that he was not far from a god him­self, else how had he lived so long on earth, and how had he brought about such a great event as the ad­vent of Adam? And as the ex­cited Eden­ites were about to seize him and carry him up to the mount for ado­ra­tion, Van made his way out through the throng and, be­ing able to com­mu­ni­cate with the mid­way­ers, sent their leader in great haste to Adam.

74:4.4It was near the dawn of their sev­enth day on earth that Adam and Eve heard the startling news of the pro­posal of these well-mean­ing but mis­guided mor­tals; and then, even while the pas­sen­ger birds were swiftly wing­ing to bring them to the tem­ple, the mid­way­ers, be­ing able to do such things, trans­ported Adam and Eve to the Fa­ther’s tem­ple. It was early on the morn­ing of this sev­enth day and from the mount of their so re­cent re­cep­tion that Adam held forth in ex­pla­na­tion of the or­ders of di­vine son­ship and made clear to these earth minds that only the Fa­ther and those whom he des­ig­nates may be wor­shiped. Adam made it plain that he would ac­cept any honor and re­ceive all re­spect, but wor­ship never!

74:4.5It was a mo­men­tous day, and just be­fore noon, about the time of the ar­rival of the se­raphic mes­sen­ger bear­ing the Je­ru­sem ac­knowl­edg­ment of the in­stal­la­tion of the world’s rulers, Adam and Eve, mov­ing apart from the throng, pointed to the Fa­ther’s tem­ple and said: “Go you now to the ma­te­rial em­blem of the Fa­ther’s in­vis­i­ble pres­ence and bow down in wor­ship of him who made us all and who keeps us liv­ing. And let this act be the sin­cere pledge that you never will again be tempted to wor­ship any­one but God.” They all did as Adam di­rected. The Ma­te­rial Son and Daugh­ter stood alone on the mount with bowed heads while the peo­ple pros­trated them­selves about the tem­ple.

74:4.6And this was the ori­gin of the Sab­bath-day tra­di­tion. Al­ways in Eden the sev­enth day was de­voted to the noon­tide as­sem­bly at the tem­ple; long it was the cus­tom to de­vote this day to self-cul­ture. The forenoon was de­voted to phys­i­cal im­prove­ment, the noon­time to spir­i­tual wor­ship, the af­ter­noon to mind cul­ture, while the evening was spent in so­cial re­joic­ing. This was never the law in Eden, but it was the cus­tom as long as the Adamic ad­min­is­tra­tion held sway on earth.