Sunday, June 27, 2021

PARADISE BURNING

  It turns out that the Bible is not a dramatic serial with individual stories, but altogether, “The Greatest Story Ever Told.” With each drama, the “viewer” should remember the previous “episodes” and wonder what “season one” has to do with the events of the day. In this case, what do Abraham and Sarah have in common with Adam and Eve and so on.

  The previous commentary proposed that the land of Canaan is the foundation of the Garden of Eden, and that the Garden had been destroyed, perhaps in the flood. If “overwatered” the Garden would wither and die as gardens will do. Then, by grace, the seed of Canaan, cursed by God, would serve Shem’s seed — Abraham — by “replanting and tending the Garden.”

  If the reader recalls, Adam and his kind were assigned to “dress and keep the Garden.” (Gen 2:15).

   Adami (men) were to do that as their “reasonable service” for the Lord. That is based upon, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service” (Rom 12:1). The sacrifice of all Christians is the corporate “selves.” Adam and his kinds reasonable service was to tend the Garden of Souls that would inhabit it someday. Whatever God asks of His creatures, His will be done; not by coercions, but by their own will.

  Adam and his kind failed that, so after the flood, Canaan was to be the servant. Slavery was the outcome of the curse of Adam; to wit: “Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return” (Gen 3:18-19) Soon, after the regrown Garden withered with the flood, the curse was repeated… “And He said, “Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren” (Gen 9:25).

  So, Canaan crossed the rivers from East of the Garden and began the restoration of the Garden. They would sweat over thistles and thorns just as God had said about Adam’s kind, and by the time of Abraham, the Garden had been regenerated. Canaanites were the servants whose reasonable service was that. Slavery was begun because of Adam and instituted because of Canaan.

  Just what did Canaan do that was so terrible to cause God to be wrathful? He broke what would become the Fifth Commandment in God’s Will for His kind: “Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee” (Exod 20:12); to honor their “Ab” and “Em” in the Hebrew.

  Ham had “cleaved” unto his wife, who was likely of the Wicked One as was Cain, and ridiculed his father who he should have honored. That comes from the concept of Holy Matrimony, “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh” (Gen 2:24). Ham had become one with his ingrate wife and laughed at the nakedness of his father.

  The penalty would fall on the son of Ham because Canaan was the product of the cleavage. Ham had become much like his wife, and he was of her flesh, and then Canaan was of the Wicked One like his mother. With that said, slavery was born. Why would Shem need to dress and keep the Garden when Canaan could do it as a penalty for his laughter? But soon, Sarai would laugh at God! How could God expose His Flesh? By providing a child of His Flesh in her barren womb!

  That should explain why Canaanites were regenerating the Garden of Eden back on its foundation. By the time Abraham saw it, it was much like the original Garden. There was still a problem therein: The seed of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good was elsewhere, perhaps in the hills of Jerusalem — the very place that Abraham went after looking at the plains of Sodom and Gomorrah.

  What had Abraham seen in Sodom? The evil seed planted from the Tree of Knowledge. It turns out that Abraham questioned God, and saved himself and his family. There was no “good” seed planted in the Garden.

  Of course, all he saw there was like the Garden except for the people in it… just as with Adam and Eve when they were driven out of it! [i] “Driven out” of the Garden is from the Hebrew “garas,” which verb can also be “divorced” as God told Abraham to do with his “wife” (adulteress) Hagar. [ii]

  The question remains, Whatever happened to the Garden of Eden? Was it the flood or did God vaporize it when Adam and Eve were driven out? Or was it much later?

   If Sodom and Gomorrah were part of the Garden of Eden, then Abraham, Lot, and their families were not driven out of those cities but saved from them! Perhaps, Adam and Eve were saved from the destruction of the Garden back in their day.

  Look at the deliverance of only two from the Garden:  God, “placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life” (Gen 3:24). The cherubim had flaming swords. Just how were they to keep the Way to the Tree of Life?

  Well, God kept the Way to the Tree of Life by flooding the entire world. He kept it by destroying what He had made. He also destroyed the Garden that was in the world. Did God destroy the Garden by fire when Adam and Eve were cast out? That makes sense, because it was not mentioned again until Lot lifted-up his eyes toward Sodom and Gomorrah and saw the Garden! [iii]

  Canaanites served Shem by rebuilding the Garden of Eden for them, right there off the coast of the Sea of Eden that remains there to this day… and by the River of the Garden (Jordan River) which still gives life to the Garden!

  With the Garden overcome by evil and full of human “tares” that were so inhumane, God drove Abaraham, Lot, and their families out of the outskirts of the Garden before the cherubim torched it with their “flaming swords.” Today, that part of the Garden is the Dead Sea and the desert around it. It is where Satan abode until Judas was born in Iscariot right there in the outskirts of the burned Garden. And without a “tree” it can be added.

  Now read what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah and apply it to God’s Garden in the beginning:

15 And when the morning arose, then the angels hastened Lot, saying, “Arise, take thy wife, and thy two daughters, which are here; lest thou be consumed in the iniquity of the city…” 25 And He overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground. 26 But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt. 27 And Abraham gat up early in the morning to the place where he stood before the Lord: 28 And he looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the plain, and beheld, and, lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace. (Gen 19:15, 25-28)

  God overthrew the cities and all the plain around them. That would be the entire area around the Dead Sea including the birthplace of Judas.

  Canaan had left his seed in the dust there until God would raise the skeleton of some evil creature from and make him a dying creature named “Judas.”

  Did God torch those cities? It stands to reason that God used destroying angels as He always has done before when He perished mankind. Can you not see it? Cherubim with flaming swords torching the Garden as they may have done so long ago!

  “Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven” (Gen 19:24). God “poured down” fire on the plain. Fire represents the Holy Ghost. [iv] Jesus led the charge before He was Flesh. Cherubim would be with Him! The “rain” was the fiery swords of cherubim just as scripture says. They were guarding the Way to the Tree of Life by torching the Way that Abraham was taking to it!

  The road that Abraham took was divided. He took the road less chosen! His road was the Way to the Cross. The way of Lot was to torment. Choose ways wisely. The most beautiful May be the road to perdition. Lot’s wife looked back. She was warned. Now she is just a pillar of salt whereas Abraham is the foundation of the Church that God built per this: “Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God; and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone; in whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord” (Ephes 2:19-21)

(picture credit: "Otago Daily Times; "Fire breaks out on Cook Island")



 

 



[i] Gen 3:24

[ii] Gen 21:10

[iii] Gen 13:10

[iv] Acts 2

No comments:

Post a Comment