Beginning of the End - Ellen G. White

restrictions of the seventh commandment were disregarded, "and
they took wives for themselves of all whom they chose." The
children of Seth went "in the way of Cain" (Jude 11). They fixed
their minds on worldly prosperity and enjoyment and neglected the
commandments of the Lord, so sin spread widely in the earth.
Length of Adam's Life
For nearly a thousand years Adam tried to stop the spread of
evil. He had been commanded to instruct his descendants in the way
of the Lord, and he carefully treasured what God had revealed to
him and repeated it to succeeding generations. For nine generations
he described the holy and happy conditions in Paradise and repeated
the history of his fall. He told them of the sufferings by which God
had taught him the necessity of strict obedience to His law and
explained to them the merciful provisions for their salvation, yet
often he was met with bitter reproach for the sin that had brought
such woe upon his descendants.
When he left Eden, the thought that he must die filled Adam
with horror. Full of sorrow for his own sin and mourning a double
loss in the death of Abel and the rejection of Cain, Adam was bowed
down with anguish. Though the sentence of death had appeared
terrible at first, yet after beholding the results of sin for nearly a
thousand years, he felt that it was merciful for God to bring to an
end a life of suffering and sorrow.
The age before the Flood was not an era of ignorance and
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