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")
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