For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
(Ephesians 2:8-10) NKJV
Some people take the tree of life in Eden to mean that Adam’s first body was intended to die, and that the tree of life would be made available to him at some point as a reward for good behavior.
The idea is that if he had just behaved himself then his death could have been avoided. There’s a thin wisp of logic here but it’s a form of works-based salvation. It puts the responsibility for the fall of creation on Adam. However, Adam wasn’t responsible for the fall of creation, that happened when the lamb was slain from the foundation of the world, Adam was only responsible for the fall of man.
The bigger issue is that the Bible makes it abundantly clear that salvation is a gift of God’s grace in exchange for faith, not works. No one’s good enough to save themselves, so that can’t have been the plan, not ever. We can solve all of these issues because we have rightly divided between the soul and the spirit. The soul is a node of gravity which has existed from before the foundation of the world.
A soul is a gravity node with a frequency unique to each individual, it encompasses the scriptural concepts of mind and heart:
– Soul, definition
– mind: the seat of our consciousness and personality;
– heart: the emotions and passion which drive and motivate us.
Our soul makes us sentient.
The spirit is the breath that animates our body.
The Spirit is a vapor, for example Oxygen, which binds with the hemoglobin molecule in red blood cells to animate a body through metabolic processes. The spirit/body entity serves as the host or tabernacle for a soul.
– Spirit, definition
The body is made from the corrupted matter of the universe. If the soul is eternal then it’s much more logical that Adam wasn’t made to die, but through normal life his body would experience wear and tear and need to be healed. That’s why there was a tree of life: for healing the body, not the soul. This just happens to be expressly stated in scripture:
In the middle of its street, and on either side of the river, was the tree of life, which bore twelve fruits, each tree yielding its fruit every month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.
(Revelation 22:2) NKJV
| Where did you get here from? | |
| 1 | June 26th – Vegetarian Silurian |
| 2 | December 17th – The Lamb’s Book of Life |
Matty (Headwind) 
I agree with you, Matty, at least about the Lord not possessing Balaam’s donkey, but did give it a voice with words with good advice. I remain convinced in my own mind that Satan was “reptilized” (how’s that!) in the serpent, and that his own sin was manifested in the heavenlies sometime after the Creation, before he brought his rebellion to Earth. I try my best to stick with what is written for our learning, and not be too idiosyncratic. Scripture interprets Scripture.
Thanking God for Jesus!
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Satan is a dragon. Dragons are serpents. Serpents are reptiles. I fail to see how this has any bearing on the garden of Eden.
God bless you brother you have been a tremendous encouragement to me, but I hope you have a few minutes to look at today’s post on the “spaghetti syndrome.”
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This may be the simplest way to resolve the issue:
Does Satan have limbs?
The serpent in Eden was cursed to be limbless.
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Hi Matty. You will need to explain the beginning from the end: “So war broke out in Heaven: Michael and his angels fought with the dragon; and the dragon and his angels fought, but they did not prevail, nor was a place found for them any longer. So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world. He was cast to the Earth, and his angels were cast out with him.” (Rev 12:7-9; Dan 12:1-3)
And the end from the beginning: Jesus the Messiah is THE SEED of the woman; the Antichrist is THE SEED of the serpent. The devil was in the serpent in the Garden of Eden, just as the Lord was in Balaam’s donkey speaking to him. Jacob’s Trouble/the great tribulation begins when the dragon/serpent/devil/Satan is cast out of heaven down to Earth leading up to the return of the Lord Jesus Christ and the resurrection of the righteous dead and catching up of the righteous living.
Blessings.
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Hey Howard!
Part 1 above takes place when the woman in Revelation 12 was travailing in birth. The pain of childbirth was part of the curse on women AFTER Adam and Eve disobeyed God in the garden of Eden.
This means that the war in heaven was AFTER the fall of man.
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Part 2, Jesus the Messiah is an incarnation of God at a specific time and place in human history.
God the son is also known as Alpha and Omega. If Hydrogen (H+) is alpha (male) and Oxygen (O2-) is omega (female), then their fusion begets the Son as alpha and omega, Hydroxide (OH-). This is the foundation of the world, and God the Son is still the seed of the woman.
The foundation of the world and let light be nucleosynthesis has to happen in order for the periodic table of elements to form.
Jesus’ birth as a human is a picture of what happened in the heavens.
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It’s not possible for the devil to have been the serpent in the garden of Eden. Satan’s rebellion in heaven was after the fall of man.
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I think you’re trying to make cause and effect fit whatever theological narrative you have been trained in. We can’t do that. Jesus can’t be the seed of the woman in Revelation 12 and THEN create the universe. The universe has to exist in order for the woman to have seed.
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I don’t get the Balaam’s donkey connection. The donkey spoke because he was irritated with Balaam. That doesn’t mean that he was possessed by the Lord, especially since the Donkey was trying to avoid the Lord which was why Balaam whacked him. This seems like hopelessly confused and unnecessary eisegesis. Someone is trying way too hard to force-fit an interpretation onto something that doesn’t actually need it. It’s Midrash, not scripture.
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His tail drew a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was ready to give birth, to devour her Child as soon as it was born. (Revelation 12:4)
In Revelation 12 Satan STOOD before the woman, but the woman was travailing in birth. Cause and effect: labor pain was a punishment for sin which happened in Genesis 3. Therefore Revelation 12 was after Genesis 3, but Satan has limbs.
Satan wasn’t in the garden of Eden.
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