From Beverly Campbell’s book ‘Eve and the Choice Made in Eden’, Chapter 9:
God Prepares and Protects:
The bodies of Adam and Eve experienced a great change as mortality took the place of immortality. Adam and Eve were aware of that change in their condition: “The eyes of them were both opened, and they knew that they had been naked” (Moses 4:13). Naked, symbolic in Eden’s realm, may have had added meaning as they entered mortality. Adam and Eve were now totally vulnerable to the vagaries of this sphere. In immortality they were subject to earth’s forces and susceptible to temptation. An ancient apocryphal record called the Apocalypse of Moses depicts how Eve might have felt upon finding herself in this condition: “At that very moment my eyes were opened and I knew that I was naked of the righteousness with which I had been clothed. And I wept saying, ‘Why have you done this to me, that I have been estranged from my glory with which I was clothed?”
The Holy Investiture
With paradisaical robes and attendant glory gone from Adam and Eve, what would be the Lord’s next act? Would He restore their spiritual protection?
One of the most evocative verses in the account after the expulsion from the Garden is Moses 4:27. Just one sentence long, it clearly shows the compassionate nature of God’s love for Adam and Eve and for all His children: “Unto Adam and also unto his wife, did I, the Lord God, make coats of skins, and clothed them.” We can expect that this clothing had religious significance because the Lord Himself put his hand to it.
This clothing was for protection and was specific to the earthly sojourn of Adam and Eve. They were robed in this clothing before they were sent forth from the Garden. God gave to Adam and Eve the covenants that are required in this mortal sphere for enlightenment, protection, and exaltation. They agreed to abide by those covenants. Adam and Eve had, in effect, passed the first worthiness interview in mortality, receiving their endowments, and donned with robes of protection.
It appears that God did not eject them from Eden immediately (Moses 15:15-29). After their bodies became mortal, Adam and Eve received careful and loving instruction attended to personally by Christ and other beings of light. They were tutored in all eternal gospel truths necessary for an informed, protected, and faith-filled journey in mortality. Joseph Fielding McConkie wrote: “After Adam and Eve had partaken of the forbidden fruit, but before they were expelled from the garden, the Father taught them the law of sacrifice. Animals were slain that Adam and Eve might be clothed in ‘coats of skins’ (Moses 4:27) that were to be a protection to them in our fallen world.”2
We learn, too, that Adam and Eve were further instructed by an angel of the Lord that they were to take upon them the name of Christ, that all they did was to be done in His name (Moses 5:8) . Thus as God had clothed them in coats of garments of skin as a token of protection provided to them through Christ . . . so they were to clothe themselves in his name by faith, and in that name they were to do all that they did that pertained to salvation or the things of the Spirit.”3 ~Beverly Campbell, Eve and the Choice Made in the Garden (Deseret Book: Salt Lake City, 2003), 154-58 (continued)
