34:7.4

I made the world for their sakes. What is now done was decreed when Adam transgressed my statutes. Then the entrances of this world were made narrow, sorrowful, and toilsome. They are but few and evil, full of perils, and involved in great toils. For the entrances of the greater world are wide and safe, and produce fruit of immortality. So if those who live don’t enter these difficult and vain things, they can never receive those that are reserved for them. Now therefore why are you disturbed, seeing you are but a corruptible man? Why are you moved, since you are mortal? Why haven’t you considered in your mind that which is to come, rather than that which is present?”

I answered then, “This is my first and last saying, that it would have been better if the earth had not produced Adam, or else, when it had produced him, to have restrained him from sinning. For what profit is it for all who are in this present time to live in heaviness, and after death to look for punishment? O Adam, what have you done? For though it was you who sinned, the evil hasn’t fallen on you alone, but on all of us who come from you. For what profit is it to us, if an immortal time is promised to us, but we have done deeds that bring death? And that there is promised us an everlasting hope, but we have most miserably failed? And that there are reserved habitations of health and safety, but we have lived wickedly? And that the glory of the Most High will defend those who have led a pure life, but we have walked in the most wicked ways of all? And that a paradise will be revealed, whose fruit endures without decay, in which is abundance and healing, but we won’t enter into it, for we have lived in perverse ways? And that the faces of those who have practiced self-control will shine more than the stars, but our faces will be blacker than darkness? For while we lived and committed iniquity, we didn’t consider what we would have to suffer after death.”

Great travail is created for every man. A heavy yoke is upon the sons of Adam, from the day of their coming forth from their mother’s womb, until the day for their burial in the mother of all things.