Adam & Eve: Oversee the Garden and the Earth

And I, God, said: Let them have dominion over the fishes of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. And I, God, created man in mine own image, in the image of mine Only Begotten created I him; male and female created I them. And I, God, blessed them, and said unto them: Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

And I, God, said unto man: Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree in the which shall be the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to everything that creepeth upon the earth, wherein I grant life, there shall be given every clean herb for meat; and it was so, even as I spake. And I, God, saw everything that I had made, and, behold, all things which I had made were very good; and the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

From these several verses above found in the Book of Moses located in the Pearl of Great Price, and also in Genesis 1:26-31, much information bursts from the record, though this article will focus primarily on the portion of it dealing with dominion.

What is dominion? Doing a search in Google, the first definition reveals that dominion is:

• sovereignty; control.
• the territory of a sovereign or government.

For all intents and purposes, it would appear that God made Adam and Eve King and Queen over the Earth. A fitting title to the only two people on the planet, a planet created for them and their posterity.

Adam and Eve were to govern the world in righteousness as stated while in the Garden of Eden. That decree did not die with them but became a heritage or birthright passed down to a righteous heir. It became the model for all following monarchies.

Dominion came with a price tag. Adam and Eve had to maintain the already subdued Eden's Garden, tamed by God! Work was involved--getting to know the Garden and how it grew.

After the theatrical expository description of the creation of the world as told by Moses and retold by countless of the other faithful servants of God, Man was the crowning achievement of God's creations. If the creation was summed into one sentence, Eve, woman, would be the period at the end of the sentence, since God did not declare the work of creation complete and perfect until after she came to being!

God knows all things! He knew what would happen in the Garden with Adam before He formed the bodies of Adam and Eve. "He gave commandments unto men, they having first transgressed the first commandments as to things which were temporal, and becoming as gods, knowing good from evil, placing themselves in a state to act, or being placed in a state to act according to their wills and pleasures." Alma 12:31

Adam and Eve's injunction to oversee the Garden and the Earth was one of the four commandments God gave:

1. Do be industrious, fruitful
2. Do not eat the forbidden fruit

3. Do Oversee the Garden and the Earth

4. Do populate the Earth with people

Ye are blessed of the Lord which made heaven and earth. The heaven, even the heavens, are the Lord’s: but the earth hath he given to the children of men. Psalms 115:115-116

Why was it given unto man? Simple answer, it is in the DNA.

Long explanation:

Adam and Eve were given the Earth because God decreed it, but also, they were created in the image of God, called His children, inheriting the birthright of God. They were Divine. They were perfect. They deserved the Earth!

Adam and Eve, divine perfect people, decided to become imperfect to keep all of the commandments of God! This act of purposely bringing in imperfection in their lives, possible because God's plan for a savior to eventually come and bring back perfection to them, had already been in place from the beginning.

God cannot make imperfect beings, so two perfect beings had to choose to fall from grace and divinity to give humanity a probationary state called mortal life to learn the difference between good and evil, choose the good, and return in perfection to God through Jesus Christ. The Book of Alma Chapter 42 in the Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ contains the best treatise on the fall of Adam and the redemption through the Atonement.

Literally, only two men can claim sonship to God spiritually and physically. One is Adam and the other is Jesus Christ. These two have a special relationship because one was created from the dust or elements of the Earth while the other was the product of creation in the womb as the Spirit overshadow a mortal woman.

Christ, partially divine, imperfect, mortal, and subject to the ails of mortality, Did Not give in to sin and the flesh! He attained full divinity through His complete obedience to God's laws.

Adam introduced sin and Jesus introduced Forgiveness through repentance. In Adam, all die. In Christ, all live! Speaking to the Saints at Corinth, Paul wrote,

For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. [1 Corinthians 15:21–22]

Adam, made to be a king, was the first of his kind on Earth! Eve the queen and only daughter of God as far as the Scriptures in circulation describe, brought forth a race of people saved through the atonement efficacious. Her post-mortal partner, Mary, brought forth the Savior for the race!

Royalty exists in Mary, the mother of Jesus, who would have been queen in Jerusalem had Romans not occupied the land of Israel! Joseph would have been King of Israel as indicated by Jame E. Talmage's turn of the Twentieth-century work, Jesus, The Christ.

Adam and Eve were given dominion over the Earth because it was their birthright. Many may bemoan the fact that God fashioned their mortal bodies from the elements of the Earth, so they have no birth to which humanity's currently familiar. Regardless of how their bodies came to be, these two, Adam and Eve, were created in the image of God who claimed them as His son and daughter.

Heirs to the physical throne of the Earth which is the footstool of God, Adam and Eve give all humanity heirship to the Earth. Jesus Christ gives all men access to heirship in Heaven and beyond. Since Adam lost his heavenly heirship to make humanity possible, Jesus saved Adam from death to make divinity possible again in humankind as it was in the beginning. So the command to "Do" goes to humanity. The command not to "Do" also goes to humanity!