The Two Seekers – Chapter Three, Paradise Lost
The True Tale of the Two Seekers – Chapter Three, Paradise Lost.
“The Son of Man came to seek and save those who are lost… On the other hand, the devil, our great enemy and accuser, is constantly prowling around like a roaring lion, seeking someone, anyone, to devour. This adversary is like a thief whose only purpose is to steal, kill and destroy. But the almighty Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, was revealed to us for this purpose: to destroy the works of the devil, to undo his evil activities, and completely put an end to everything that the Evil One has accomplished.” (quoted from Luke 19:10, 1Peter 5:8, 1 John 3:8, and John 10:10).
The Seeker-Savior in the Garden of Eden. We believe that Jesus was a Co-Creator of the world, and so He certainly was evident in the original creation. Jesus was actively in the thick of creation. “By Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth… All things were created through Him and for Him.” (Colossians 1:16). “All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.” (John 1:3). But after the initial creation, God demonstrated another astounding act of love. He descended into His creation and sought to have fellowship with Adam and Eve. This would be like a master painter, after having finished his work of art, jumping into the painting and interacting with the characters in the painting. Out of love, God created mankind. Then out of love, God became involved with mankind. God extended Himself into a personal relationship with Adam and Eve in the Garden.
“And God saw all that He had made, savoring its beauty, and indeed it was very good. ‘Excellent!’ He pronounced, and he completely approved all the work that He had done… Yahweh God shaped a person (adam) from the dust of the ground (adamah), and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life so that the person became a living being. Yahweh God planted a lush garden in Eden, which is in the east, and there put the person whom He had formed. Out of the soil, God caused to grow every tree that was pleasing in appearance and good for food…Yahweh God took this person and settled him in the Garden of Eden to cultivate it and care for it…And Yahweh God said, ‘It isn’t good that the person should be alone. I will make for him a companion, a helper suitable for coming alongside him… And from Adam’s side, God made a woman…They both heard the voice of Yahweh God as He strolled through the Garden in the cool of the day when there was the soft evening breeze. The man and the woman hid from the presence of Yahweh God among the trees in the garden…” (refer to Genesis, chapters 1-3).
In the beginning, God created one vast, spacious thin place, in which the boundary between heaven and earth seemed non-existent. This heavenly space on earth was created to be a dwelling place for God and mankind, a place for their intimate fellowship. The Godhead of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is a community of love, and God created mankind in His image, so it seemed right and good to create a place to enjoy their communion together. This is the Garden of Eden, Paradise, where there was no veil between God and mankind, between heaven and earth, the world’s first thin place.
Paradise: (Greek, paradeiso; Hebrew, Gan-Eden); the Greek word is taken from an old Persian term meaning park, garden, paradise, a pleasure-ground; the Hebrew understanding of the word came from its root ‘dn,’ which means enjoyment, and was considered to be the ‘Garden of Yahweh’). The early church Fathers believed that Paradise, the Garden of Eden, still exists far removed from the heavens and the earth, and is awaiting its renewal and recovery in the ‘new heaven and new earth.’ Christians believe this will occur at the coming of the Lord Jesus to establish the New Jerusalem. Believers now think of Paradise as a synonym of heaven, the place of rest for those who have departed in Christ, where fellowship will once again take place in perfect unity between God and mankind, just as it did in the original Garden of Eden.
In Genesis 3, God is pictured strolling in the Garden in the cool of the day, the evening breeze making everything comfortable for His regular interactions with His people. Adam and Eve heard the sound of God walking in the Garden, and they hid themselves among the trees. God seemed to miss their expected meeting and looked for them. Adam and Eve finally revealed to God that they heard His voice and fearfully hid from Him. They were naked and ashamed of themselves for the entrance of sin into the universe. So who was Adam and Eve talking with in the Garden? God, in the form of a man? They certainly weren’t walking and talking with a formless spirit, or a pillar of cloud. They weren’t interacting with the fiery flame of a consuming fire. They were instead having personal fellowship in the flesh, with another person, friend to friend. There was an audible sound of God walking, and His presence was found among the trees. They enjoyed human interaction with actual words, a primordial language of some sort. Adam and Eve had a friend in the Garden, and that friend was God in the flesh. This is the first time Jesus made an appearance, a Christophany, in the Hebrew Bible. God in the form of a man, having fellowship with Adam and Eve, in a profoundly thin place if ever there was one.
Paradise Lost. But then tragically the thin veil thickened, the curtain between God and man grew pronounced. The Tree of Life in Eden was planted by God in the middle of the garden. It was put there to fulfill man’s destiny of eternal life, bearing the fruit of immortality. Those who ate of this tree “live forever.” (Gen 3:22). After Adam and Eve fell into a state of sin, God would not allow anyone to eat of the Tree of Life. This would have given sinners a hopeless life of eternal sin, a sinner’s life that would never end. A sinner who ate of this Tree would never achieve God’s eventual plan of immortality for mankind. This would be God’s worst nightmare, a humanity that would be wicked forever, a spiritual catastrophe. God needed to protect the Tree of Life at all costs, so He positioned cherubim at the Tree. Cherubim were and are the angel servants of God who accompany God’s glory around the Throne. Cherubim are those mighty and fearsome winged creatures created by God before the world began. We don’t know how many of these angels were stationed at the Tree of Life, but we do know that each angel wielded an awesome weapon, a revolving sword of fire, a flaming blade forged in heaven. These swords of fire turned in every direction, flashing back and forth to protect the Tree. We can imagine that the fires that forged these heavenly swords came from the celestial consuming fires of the glory of God.
The Seeker-Destroyer Makes an Appearance in Paradise. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the second tree planted by God in the Garden, was also front and center, for a good reason. Adam and Eve were forbidden to eat of its fruit as a test of obedience, an opportunity God gave them to obey or disobey. God gave them the freedom to choose disobedience, to choose to become their own gods, to figure out for themselves what is good and evil, what is truly true. Satan, seeking to destroy them, succeeded in whispering words of insurrection, in convincing Eve and Adam to doubt God’s pure motives. Before Satan, they trusted in God’s goodness, they assumed that God wanted what was best for them. But what happened? Eve was beguiled into doubting God’s intentions when God laid down the law about the tree of knowledge and the fruit of that one particular tree. First, Eve was led to question God’s thinking. She was brought to the point of contradicting God, thinking that maybe God didn’t have their best interests in mind. She started thinking that maybe God doesn’t know what He’s doing. Then Eve elevated herself by going beyond His word of warning, desiring to see for herself why she should be limited by God in this way. Her prideful ambition at this point helped her to make that final step in disobeying God’s Word. She allowed Satan to fool her into thinking she could become independent from God. She chose to desire forbidden knowledge instead of trusting in God’s knowledge. She wanted that knowledge for herself. She fell for the oldest trick in the book… “You can become your own god! Don’t trust God’s motives, just defy His authority and become separate from Him and from all those rules. Don’t worry, you won’t die! God lied to you when He said that!” Hapless Adam, observing this interaction between Eve and the snake, could have intervened with a word of caution, but he didn’t. He simply took the forbidden fruit for himself, duplicating Eve’s sin. Adam and Eve, partners in crime. The first parents left us all something in their spiritual DNA, a genetic death wish, the tendency to repeat their monumental mistake of displacing God at the center. We humans in Adam and Eve’s extended family still have an essence of goodness, since we remain created in God’s image. But we are tainted and destined for separation from God. Adam and Eve broke their trust in God’s character, and they died a horrific spiritual death. And that’s what we have inherited from our first parents.
The Devil Is A Liar – Evan Craft (Lyrics Video)