HOW IS IT WHAT BE IV: WOMEN AND WHY THEY HATE SNAKES OR IN THIS GAME WHOM DO YOU BLAME?

 Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. (1 Corinthians 15:45-48)

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned— for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.

But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man's trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many. And the free gift is not like the result of that one man's sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. For if, because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.

Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so

one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man's  disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous. Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 5:12-20)

These passages speak of Adam as the first man. We have seen God create Man from the dust and we have seen God fashion woman from one of Adam’s ribs, so at this point we have a couple of other characters to deal with; The Woman and a Talking Serpent up a tree, if not a snake in the grass and “the other woman”.

But first lets deal with the fact that Adam was the first man. There were no low-browed, hairy cavemen stomping around before him and no overly bright chimpanzees morphing into him. Here are  twelve of the most popular claimed pre-history cavemen for your consideration.  Nine of these either were most likely outright frauds or imaginative speculations based on very skimpy evidence or random bones .

There may have been some unusual people back in those days; there are unusual people today. The remains of unusual people can lead to all kinds of guesses as to what they were. We don’t know what some of the ancient unusual folk looked like. For instance, there were the offspring of the Nephilim, when the falling angels mated with the daughters of men, what did they look like? We also know there were giants in Canaan, such as Goliath? What were their remains like? What if you were a future archeologist and uncovered the skull of someone like the Elephant Man or who had suffered from acromegaly. What would some artists sketch of these be?We have examples of alleged prehistoric human subspecies that became artist’s sketches.

PREHISTORY CLAIMS OF EITHER MEN WHO WERE FAKED, NEVER EXISTED OR REALLY WERE JUST HUMANS.

Boskop Man (Homo capensis, could have been labeled an outer space alien because the sketch looks like how we picture such in film.  Claimed to have giant brains and  IQs of 150; they were named for Boskop, Africa. Dated as 10,000 years ago, “based on completely spurious speculation from a tiny number of severely biased samples”. Totally discredited.

Dmanisi Man Based on one of five skulls found together, each of

which was different.. Claimed to be 1.8 million years old.  Skull 5 was found  at Dmanisi, Georgia (the country, not the state). The five fossils were considered five different species of early man. The lead anthropologist, Dr. Darvid Lordkioandze, later claimed all five specimens were just variations of what was called Homo Erectus.  He also said the five skulls were “no more pronounced than those between five modern humans or five chimpanzees.” In other words, just another group of guys.

Heidelbeg Man. Supposedly lived 800,000 to 200,000 years ago and supposed to be an ancestor of the Neanderthals. Anthologists are more and more believing he never existed.

Deniovans based on four fossils: a pinky finger

nub and three molar teeth. Dated as 550,000 to 765,000 years ago. Lived in Africa, spread to Eurasia and split into Neanderthals in Europe and Denisovans in Asia. All this from four small fossils. Probably just another Neanderthal. 

Java Man. Fossils discovered by a Eugene Dubois in 1893, consisting of two skull caps and a couple of leg bones. The skull caps may have belonged to a large extinct ape and the leg bone to an ordinary human. Drawings of Java Man, shown with scraggly hair and ape like feature and often carrying a club were purely the artist’s imagination. Probably a fraud by one man seeking glory.

Naledi Man was discovered in 2013 by cave explorers in the Rising

Star Cave near Johannesburg. This is the most recent Caveman claim. The bones had been considered very old, but in 2015 it was decided they were much younger than first thought (if claims of 236,000 years can be called young.  Anyway, it was then decided they existed among Homo Sapiens.That’s us.

Penchu Man, came from the find of a jawbone that was larger than human jaws, but researchers have been unable to date this fossil and simply claim it doesn’t resemble any other known human. Actually, this jawbone is quite similar to that of the largest ape ever known. I wasn’t able to find much information on this Penchu Man, but the jaw was probably just that of a big ape, not as big as King Kong, though.

Rudolfenis Woman was based on a cranium, but no jaw. This fossil has been reclassified several times as anthropologists can’t decide where it belongs. Bone fragments were found in Kenya.

 The Hobbit or Flores Man The Hobbits only stood about 3.5 feet tall and were found at Liang Bua on the island of Flores in Indonesia in 2003. Some anthropologists say they are more than 1.7 million years old., yet others say they were from 100,000 years ago. They have the scientists confused. The artist picture is of an alleged woman.

STILL EXISTING AS PART OF THE MODERN HAMAN RACE 

Red Deer Cave Man, that a thigh bone was found and they

determined this person lived into the ice age along with modern humans. It used milk, had weapons and buried its dead.  This was most likely just an early tribe of men living in Tibet or Mongolia. They are probably the ancestors of the  Sherpas that guild mountain climbers in the Himalayas. 

Cro-Magnon Man. The remains classified as Cro-Magnon Man have been determined to be just the ancient remains of Europeans. (Shall we go to the Gap?) They still exist within modern mankind today.

Neanderthal Woman. These have been

determined to be a tribe of humans co-existing with modern man, which intermarried and mingled and are still with us today. Tests have shown that around 20% of Neanderthal DNA can be found in us. In other words, these were just more human beings coming from Adam.

FUTURE CAVEMEN GUESSES

So let’s play a little game. It is some future time, well in the future, and archeologists dig up some strange skulls or skeletons  and speculate on the ancient people they came from.  These skulls are interpreted as kinds of primitive people, like from 2010, but in reality came from diseased people.  How would you interpret the following if  you found any of them in your backyard.

What kind of species of man is this? Kind of frightening, not like any body we know.

Or do we?

Actually it is the skull of a person with Acromegaly, a bone distorting disease.

Look at a photo of Rondo Hatton, a movie character actor who had the disease. He was billed as "The Monster Without Makeup."

Add caption

Or could this guy be a Caveman? 

This man, Paul Olaffsen, was a wrestler known as the Swedish Angel. He also had acromegaly.

How about this large cranium skull? Outer space visitor?

It actually resembles the so called Boskop Man, claimed as a pre-Eden species of man.  This skull was even named “The Starbirth Man”, an outer

space alien, or was it simply someone who had suffered from Hydrocephaly, like the unfortunate child pictured here?

  

Is this the skull of an apeman? No, it is the skull of a woman who

had Achondroplasia, a form of Drawfism.

  

Here is the skeleton of the famous Elephant Man, Joseph Merrick, but what kind of man might you say this was from just the skeleton?

  

Was this a missing link or, the skull of a woman who  had the pituitary disease of Giantism.?

Finally, Andre the Giant, another professional wrestler. Could he really be a Caveman?

Now that we have dealt with supposed pre-historic sub-species of

human beings, let us take up next for consideration the Hebrew myth of Lilith, who was portrayed as Adam’s first wife. She is even described as a dangerous sexual demon. Even today, many Feminists look to her as a heroine of womanhood. There is even a regular music celebration of women called “Lilith Fair”

There was no Lilith. There is a brief Rabbah midrash that claims Adam had a first wife before Eve. This idea, and eventually the folktales of Lilith grew from a misinterpretation of the first two books of Genesis, where some claimed they were two separate creation stories. In Genesis 1 verse 27 reads “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”

Reading those who believe in Lilith say ,”See God created man and woman together at the same time. God created Man and he created two sexes, man and woman.” How easy to take a phrase and twist it.

While Genesis 1 is a broad overview, Genesis 2 gets into the nuts and bolts and here we see how God created man and then created a woman from his rib. In both chapters it refers to Eve, not Lilith. Those who wish to believe in Lilith say she is in the Bible in Isaiah 34:14, “There goat-demons shall greet each other, and there the lilit shall find rest.” I don’t know what translation they quoted, because I can’t fine that used the word filet. 

And wild animals shall meet with hyenas; the wild goat shall cry to his fellow; indeed, there the night bird settles and finds for herself a resting place.

In the ESV the word lilit is translated night bird, while in the King James it is Screech Owl. The exact translation is unknown, but these references to birds fit the context, which is describing judgements on the nations in terms of animals. Lilit is usually interpreted as an owl.

Anyway, lets forget Lilith.

Let’s look at the Doctrine of the Serpent Seed instead This bit of

nonsense and superstition claims that Satan had sex with Eve and the result was the birth of Cain.  It kind has its roots with its proponents who claim when the Bible said Eve was beguiled, a word meaning to charm in a deceptive way, it should have been translated as seduced, meaning enticed into sexual activity. (Seduced also means to attract someone to an inadvisable and foolhardy action, but I guess they ignore that definition.) Forget this serpent seed bunk, too, never happened.

Same with the claim Satan had sex with Adam. This seems to have been promoted on a radio show called Shane Lee Ministries, and it is more a guy twisting the  Bible for his own purposes. Ignore the whole sex stuff.

And there is no mention of the Forbidden Fruit being an apple in Scripture, so enjoy your Golden Delicious or McIntosh or Galas.

Now the serpent was more crafty…

There is a problem created in our minds by the way the narrative is written. We get the impression the serpent came to Eve almost immediately after she was created. It is as if Adam and Eve never had any time to enjoy the Garden as it was intended.

How long did they walk about the Garden free from sin? We can only hazard a guess, but maybe we get a clue from Genesis 5:1-3.

When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created. When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth.

What do we know about the birth of Seth? We know he was not their first child. Before his birth there were two other boys born, Cain and Abel. When Seth comes along, Abel is dead and Eve declares Seth was given by God as Abel’s replacement. Adam is 130 years old when Seth is born. (Seth means appointed.)  A lot of water flowed through the garden in those 130 years, not all of it good.

Sometime in those 130 years Adam and Eve fell from Grace and Cain killed Abel. I am going to go out on a limb to guess that when Cain killed Abel they were young men, perhaps still in their late teens or in their twenties. I am also going to speculate that both these boys were conceived after the Fall and I am going to surmise at least a hundred years had passed when the Fall occurred. 

My speculation is all extra-Biblical and I have no real source, but it just seems to make sense to me.

How about Lucifer, Satan, Devil, Serpent, whatever you prefer to call him? We already decided that God created the Angels at the very beginning of creation, and that would have included Lucifer. Lucifer wasn’t a bad guy right off. He started off good, remember God declared that everything he created was good, and he was in the Garden of Eden as perhaps the leading angel, perfect. Ezekiel 28 tells us about Lucifer in verses 1b-15:

“You were the signet of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in

beauty. 

You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was your covering, sardius, topaz, and diamond, beryl, onyx, and jasper, sapphire, emerald, and carbuncle; and crafted in gold were your settings and your engravings.

On the day that you were created they were prepared. You were an anointed guardian cherub. I placed you; you were on the holy mountain of God; in the midst of the stones of fire you walked. You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created, till unrighteousness was found in you. (Ezekiel 28:13-15)

It is quite possible that Lucifer was on his best behavior the first hundred years after Creation until his pride took him. His tempting of Eve may have been his first salvo in his war against God, by trying to take Man down.

“How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of Dawn!

How you are cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low!  

You said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; above the stars of God.

I will set my throne on high;

I will sit on the mount of assembly in the far reaches of the north;

I will ascend above the heights of the clouds;

I will make myself like the Most High.’ (Isaiah 14:12-14)

We do not know why Lucifer came in the guise of a snake. Did he talk through a snake like a ventriliquist or possess a serpent, we don’t know. Perhaps Lucifer felt Eve would be more trusting of a creature she may have seen often in the garden than she would of the sudden appearance of a shining Angel  (Lucifer means Shining Star). I don’t think the serpent was doing this on his own. I think it was something used by Lucifer, much as the Angel of the Lord (Jesus) would open the mouth of  Balaam’s donkey.(Numbers 22:22-30). Still, the serpent did suffer punishment.

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.

He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” (Genesis 3:1)

Notice how very, very subtly Satan the Serpent has twisted the

words of God. Satan, by the way, is not his name, it is a description. Satan means “trouble-maker” and Devil means “slanderer”.  Satan also means adversary and Lucifer had become by this point an adversary of God. Note also, that he comes directly at Eve, not Adam.

This reminds me of an incident in my

boyhood when I was perhaps 11 or 12. I had an outdoor dog named Topper, part-Collie and part-German Shepard. He was a beautiful and peaceful animal, whose mother once was out to kill me, but that’s another tale. Topper was a dog and sometimes he barked, but he was not an  incessant yapper. A neighbor man from behind us came and claimed he was bothered by Topper’s barking. He threatened my mother about it, saying he would have the dog taken away and destroyed.

My father was a long distant trucker seldom home during the

week. The man did not come and complain when my father was ever home, only when it was just my mother and I. (But when my dad did come home one day and was told how this guy yelled and cursed at us, he went to this guy’s house about his harassing my mom and the man never complained again.)

This is exactly what Satan did. He should have confronted Adam, who was the head of the family, but chose to confront Eve, who he saw as the more vulnerable.

He also gave Eve the feeling that she was wiser than himself by misquoting what God said, asking, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And she fell right into his trap gaining a sense of superiority by correcting him.

But Satan knew perfectly well what God had actually said and he also knew God said it to Adam before Eve came on the scene. Adam had to tell it to Eve second hand and in trying to correct Satan, she got it wrong:

And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” (Genesis 3:2)

What God actually commanded Adam was this:  “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” (Genesis 2:16-17)

It was shall not eat. Nothing was said about touching it, and it wasn’t lest you die, which is somewhat ambiguous because it expresses something that could happen, but may not.. God was a bit more emphatic, “you shall surely die”.

But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”(Genesis 3:4-5)

Notice first of all, that Satan quotes God correctly and Isn’t this the way it always goes? Satan is trying to make God the villain here. “You won’t die (and maybe Eve didn’t even know what to die meant), God is just trying to scare you. He doesn’t want you to eat this fruit because it will make you like him, a god”

Sounds like our friendly little drug dealer, doesn’t it? “Take a little taste. It won’t hurt you to take just a little taste, but you’ll feel really good.” Or it was like those telling you to drop acid, LSD, back in the sixties. “It will expand your mind, bro. It’ll make you write better. Just a short little trip and you’ll see truth. That’s why the government don’t want you to have it, man.” Or maybe the Mystic and those magic mushrooms, that the song “White Rabbit” sang of, one will make you bigger and one will make you smaller, but you may see God; hey, you may even become a God!”

And just like Lucifer, Man wants to be God.

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. (Genesis 3:6)

I have a couple questions. Did Satan make the woman eat the fruit? Not really. He simply played upon her own desires. The tree was a delight to the eye. How many bad choices have we made in

life with that reasoning. How often did I set out  to buy something because it met a need, only to be lured to something more expensive because it was a delight to the eyes or had more bells and whistles? I have to honestly admit I have done so a number of times. If it looks good or it feels good, do it!

Think about this, why was she even there near the tree since it was forbidden? Did she often stroll about this tree? And then look at the next statement where she took and gave some to Adam. I think we often think Adam was somewhere else and Eve toted some of the fruit home and maybe didn’t tell him where she got it. Made him a little Forbidden Fruit Parfait for desert?

But no, what does it say? “She gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.” He was right there with her when this whole transaction went down, so why didn’t he use his authority as the head of house to pull her away from this situation? No trickery here. Adam knew exactly where the fruit came from that she offered and he ate. Satan didn’t hand it to him. Satan never said a word to him. 

Maybe Satan had even split, left the scene by the time Adam took his bite, leaving the poor serpent wrapped about a branch to take the rap.

Now first of all, Man has a responsibility and Adam failed it and many men today also fail it.

 Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. (Genesis 3:6-7)

A lot of new things entered the world that day besides sin. First of all, what is sin? When I was shoplifting those girlie magazines as a boy, was that a sin? It was a crime, but was it a sin? The shopkeeper caught me one day, said some rather unpleasant things to me, and then made me pay for those particular magazines. I paid the price and he let me go, even keep the magazines, after all I paid for them. Did that absolve me from committing a sin? 

No, not at all. Sin is not simply a crime, in fact may not even always be against man’s law. Sin is an transgression against divine law, it offends God. It requires something more than paying a cover price. 

So Adam and Eve offended God. Yes, they committed a sin, but there were also other firsts that resulted from their act. Lust entered the world. After all, they had been walking about naked in front of each other for maybe a hundred years and suddenly they were shamed by this fact. They felt they had to cover themselves. They made the bad choice of weaving some fig leaves together and tying these about their loins, a somewhat tender area, not realizing there is an oil in fig leaves that can cause a rash and sores upon the skin. Of course, they probably had never experienced rashes or sores before in Eden.

This act also brought about fear and guilt for the first time.

And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden

in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?”

And Adam said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.”(Genesis 3:8-10)

There is a number of times people say Adam walked with God in the Garden. As far as I know this is the only place it mentions walking, and it indicates God was walking alone in the evening. So there are people who argue Adam and God never walked together. I think, however, the further context of this passage would indicate that they did. Adam and Eve on this occasion hid themselves from God, which seems to be rare. God asks where they are, and Adam confesses he heard God and was afraid, and being naked hid himself. Just reading that tells you this was an unusual thing. Most likely Adam and Eve had an ongoing relationship with God and probably did both walk and talk with him in the Garden, but that intimate relationship is shattered now.

Adam had walked and talked with the Lord without any fear or shame before, but here he is afraid because he is naked? Why be afraid of his nudity? God crafted his body. Actually, Adam knows they broke the first ever given commandment and is trying to hide that fact. He fails. Fig leaves aren’t going to cover it.

He [God] said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”Genesis 3:11)

Busted! And we begin the first blame game. Whom do you blame?

The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” (Genesis 3:12)

“Don’t look at me”, says Adam. “It is the woman’s fault.” Or maybe Adam is blaming it all on God because God gave him the woman. How many times do we blame God for our actions? “I stole those magazines because I was lusting after the pictures within, but it wasn’t my fault. God made me go though puberty and God gave me those hormones. So, its His fault! God made me this way.”

Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” (Genesis 3:13:

Well, we’re down to the serpent. The serpent must have had legs then, perhaps even wings. The word serpent can also be called dragon. Possibly Satan used the serpent. We know he has the power of possession. At any rate, the serpent suffered for this. It might have tried to scurry off or fly away, but it had become a snake.

The Lord God said to the serpent,

“Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life.

I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”(Genesis 3:14-15)

We have a well known prophesy stated, that Satan will bruise Jesus, the seed of the woman’s heel, but the Lord will crush his Satan’s head. The whole of Gospel is contained within this statement. 

The word “enmity” means hostile or opposed. The spiritual war is on. It is interesting how people generally have an adverse reaction to snakes, especially women. One of the merit badges I earned as a Boy Scout was in Herpetology, which literary means “study of creeping animals”. and this included snakes. Certainly part of the reason some people considered me a bit weird.

My maternal grandmother hated snakes and was afraid of them, but not so intimidated not to take action. She was much like the Biblical queen whose name she bore, Esther. If a snake dared come slithering around, she would get my grandfather’s ax and chop off its head; and after doing in the snake she would endure the shakes of fear. If she had been Adam’s wife things may have been different.

God was not through with Adam and Eve and what He did next changed everything for mankind. (My Bible quotes are taken from the English Standard Version.)

To the woman he said,

“I will surely multiply your pain in child bearing; in pain you shall bring forth children.

Your desire shall be contrary to your husband,, but he shall rule over you.” (ESV)

Have you caught this change?

and thou shalt be under (the) power of thine husband, and he shall be lord of thee.(Genesis 3:16b WYC version)

Your desire shall be for your husband,

And he shall rule over you.”(Genesis 3:16b NKJV)]

Three different translations, but the gist is the Wife is under the control of her husband and he will rule over her. God had originally made Eve to be a helpmate to Adam, a component to complete the two of them and they were different, but equal. Now there is a tension between them, a friction has resulted because of eating the forbidden fruit. Man and woman will forever contend with each other.

She will also now suffer great pain in giving birth, something women would not have known in paradise.

And to Adam he said,

“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you,‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field.

By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”(Genesis 3:17-19)

People talk about climate change? Here was the first such change since God had created climate. Adam and Eve had been blessed with no bad weather, able to amble about naked and not experience hot or cold. Mankind had no worries about what to eat. They could pluck it off a tree when ever hungry.

None of this anymore. Now man must work hard for his food in a ground so cursed that it would not yield its crop so easily. There would be thorns and thistles growing among the plants, probably plants that God had kept hidden or outside the Garden. These would sting and cut, a new experience meaning man was going to need clothing for protection of his skin, but also because the temperature was not so even anymore.

The man called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living. And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them. (Genesis 3:20-21)

Just a few years ago, Stanford University,in all their wisdom, announced that every human in the world descended from one woman. And then  after further research, we all descended from one man.

Duh, I think we were way ahead of them on that one. 

(By the way, genetics show that there is no such thing as race, keep that in mind for later.)

Secondly, because of Climate change when God cursed the earth, God had to provide clothing for the man and woman. This was not such good news for the animals, because the garments were provided by their hides. This clothing of Adam and Eve became the first sacrifice of the innocent to cover the sins of the guilty. And most likely the first actual deaths.

And since blood had been shed and the provision of the ground became more difficult to obtain, the animals turned on each other and the so-called food chain resulted. The world was a much more dangerous place for everything.

Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one

of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the Tree of life. (Genesis 3:22-24)

There existed a very important object, the Tree of Life. Apparently, Adam and Eve could eat of this tree’s fruit and live forever. When they ate of the Tree of Knowledge they became too dangerous to allow an eternal life on earth. God banned them from the Garden and placed Angels about to keep them out. Eventually the Garden and the Tree of Life would disappear from Earth. They weren’t destroyed, they went elsewhere, to Heaven.

And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.

In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. (Revelation 22:1-2)

As it was in the beginning, it shall be in the end. All things shall be made anew. I can hardly wait.

Yet this question may haunt us? Why did God hang that blasted fruit there in the center of the Garden to tempt man by saying he must not eat it.

God created us and God loves us. He loves us no matter what we do. He wants us to love him, but there is no honest love unless it can be refused. Love comes from the freedom of choosing it. It has little value, purpose or existence if it is forced upon us without choice. Robots and puppets can not love. God loves us no matter what, but we were not forced to love him, because you can’t force love. This makes our love for him more true and enduring, for we can disobey and reject him. This is probably why even the Angels had the ability to chose God, so they could truly love Him.