truths and
infamous falsehoods, Eve had been beguiled, was none other than Satan,
or Lucifer, that rebellious and fallen "son of the morning", whose
proposal involving the destruction of man's liberty had been rejected in
the council of the heavens, and who had been "cast out into the earth",
he and all his angels as unbodied spirits, never to be tabernacled in
bodies of their own.[39] As an act of diabolic reprisal following his
rejection in the council, his defeat by Michael and the heavenly hosts,
and his ignominious expulsion from heaven, Satan planned to destroy the
bodies in which the faithful spirits--those who had kept their first
estate--would be born; and his beguilement of Eve was but an early stage
of that infernal scheme.

Death has come to be the universal heritage; it may claim its victim in
infancy or youth, in the period of life's prime, or its summons may be
deferred until the snows of age have gathered upon the hoary head; it
may befall as the result of accident or disease, by violence, or as we
say, through natural causes; but come it must, as Satan well knows; and
in this knowledge is his present though but temporary triumph. But the
purposes of God, as they ever have been and ever shall be, are
infinitely superior to the deepest designs of men or devils; and the
Satanic machinations to make death inevitable, perpetual and supreme
were provided against even before the first man had been created in the
flesh. The atonement to be wrought by Jesus the Christ was ordained to
overcome death and to provide a means of ransom from the power of Satan.

As the penalty incident to the fall came upon the race through an
individual act, it would be manifestly unjust, and therefore impossible
as part of the divine purpose, to make all men suffer the results
thereof without provision for deliverance.[40] Moreover, since by the
transgression of one man sin came into the world and death was entailed
upon all, it is consistent with reason that the atonement thus made
necessary should be wrought by one.[41] "Wherefore, as by one man sin
entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all
men, for that all have sinned ... Therefore as by the offence of one
judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness
of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life."[42]
So taught the apostle Paul; and, further: "For since by man came death,
by man came also the resurrect