Inheritance is a wonderful thing. Some people are geniuses because of what they inherited. Inheritance is also an awful thing. Some people must be taken care of like infants for their entire lifetime because of what they inherited. Some babies die before or shortly after they are born because their inherited physical or mental defects make it impossible for their body to survive.
Not only do we inherit physical and mental qualities but we inherit spiritual qualities. This is something that many Christians, including many theologians, seem not to understand. However, Job understood something about this subject and he discusses it in some detail in Job 13 and 14. He said, “Man who is born of woman is of few days and full of trouble. … Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? No one!” Job 14:1, 4
“The law of God is the standard of character; it is the expression of the character of God Himself. It was given to Adam and Eve in Eden. God planted for them this beautiful garden, and supplied their every want. Was it too much to ask them to respond to all His love and care by obedience to His righteous law, which, if kept, would have secured to them happiness, peace, and joy forever?
“God gave our first parents a pure and upright character, in harmony with His law; and had they remained obedient, they would have bequeathed the same character to their posterity. But they listened to Satan’s specious temptations, and transgressed this holy law, and the result was death. And the sons and daughters of Adam, instead of coming into the world, as God first made man, righteous and heirs of eternal life, have been the victims of sin and death and woe. This is the result of the transgression of God’s law in Eden.” The Bible Echo, July 29, 1895 [Emphasis supplied for clarity.]
The common use of the word bequeath is “to give or leave to another by last will and testament. Example: to bequeath an estate.” But this is not the only definition of bequeath. It also has the following dictionary definition and is used in this sense by Ellen White in the above paragraph—“to hand down, to give by inheritance.”
If Adam and Eve had never sinned, all of their posterity would have inherited a perfect body, mind, and character. However, because of their sin in Eden, all of their posterity are born in sin, and they are doomed to die by inheritance. They are also the inheritors of many other woes that are common in mankind today. Mrs. White writes, “Sorrow filled heaven, as it was realized that man was lost and the world that God created was to be filled with mortals doomed to misery, sickness, and death, and that there was no way of escape for the offender! The whole family of Adam must die.” Early Writings, 127