(Dave...;17682)
The Bible is very clear that death is not restricted to merely the physical death of the body, but the death of the spirit. When Adam and Eve sinned against God, they died that very day spiritually and lost their personal relationship with God. ...*But Jesus said to him, "Follow Me; and allow the dead to bury their own dead." (Matthew 8:22) -
(How can physically dead people bury anyone?) *"'I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?’ He is not the God of the dead but of the living." (Matthew 22:32) *"But we had to be merry and rejoice, for this brother of yours was dead and has begun to live, and was lost and has been found." (Luke 15:32) -
(The prodigal son was spiritually dead until he repented) *And if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness. (Romans 8:10) *And when you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, (Colossians 2:13) *For the gospel has for this purpose been preached even to those who are dead, that though they are judged in the flesh as men, they may live in the spirit according to the will of God. (1 Peter 4:6) *And the Law came in that the transgression might increase; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more that, as sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 5:20)
http://www.godandscience.org/doctrine/spiritualdeath.htmlDeath is the result of sin. “For the wages of sin is death,” Romans 6:23a. The whole world is subject to death, because all have sinned. “By one man sin entered the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” (Romans 5:12). In Genesis 2:17, the Lord warned Adam that the penalty for disobedience would be death—“thou shalt surely die.” When Adam disobeyed, he experienced immediate spiritual death, which caused him to hide “from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden” (Genesis 3:8). Later, Adam experienced physical death (Genesis 5:5).
http://www.gotquestions.org/death.htmlDave
You know I don't believe that some of the things you mentioned applied to Adam and Eve. Because they did not have the Holy Spirit of God in them; they were offered it, via the tree of life. Had they eaten of the tree of life, then they would truly have life. They would not have taken or even desire to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, because they would now have the Nature of God in them, and that Nature is one that would give them the power to do what is right. I believe that God did not intend for them to get old and die, but to pass from the temporary and limited life, to eternal life, if they had eaten of the tree of life. But since they ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, they would now grow old and die. To me there is something interesting in what God told Adam and Eve...He did not say that they would die that same day, He said that in the day that they eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, they would surely die. That is what happened, they grew old (it took over 900 hundred years) and died.