What are examples in the Bible where the natural comes before the spiritual?
Scripture shows a consistent pattern of the natural preceding the spiritual. Examples include the first Adam before Christ, Cain before Abel, Esau before Jacob, King Saul before David, and the Antichrist before Christ. Believers too begin natural and then become spiritual.
Les teaches that all through Scripture the process is first the natural and then the spiritual. Verse 46 says that which was not first was spiritual, but that which is natural. The first Adam was made a living soul, while the last Adam, Christ, was made a quickening or life-giving spirit. Les gives examples: first Adam, the natural, then Christ, the spiritual; first Cain, the natural, then Abel, the spiritual; first Esau, the natural, then Jacob, the spiritual; first King Saul, the natural, then David, the spiritual. He says this goes all the way up through Scripture, even to the end time in those final seven years, when first comes the natural, the Antichrist, and then comes the spiritual, the Christ. In our own experience, we come into life as natural with no spiritual life; we begin as natural, and as a believer we become spiritual.