ON TRANSHUMNANISM - Part 14

 THE TREE OF LIFE      

 There is much discussion about who or what is the “Tree of Life.” Some refer to

The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil” as “The Wisdom Tree.” That is certainly wrong! More so, it is “The Philosophy Tree”!

As far as their fruits are concerned, the latter is not an apple tree but a fig tree, as the two were standing beneath a fig tree when they made aprons to cover themselves. The Books of Adam and Eve confirm that, for thereafter, they could eat of a watermelon-size fig but would not for fear of offending God again.

As for the ”Tree of Life,” it surely was an olive tree, as olives represent peace. However, there is debate on whether those were real trees, or not, but metaphorical “trees” and whether the Garden Paradise was for real or a “Garden of Metaphors.”

Throughout scripture trees represent people, as with Abimelech (Jud 9).

In the beginning, God planted a Garden. The first man, Adam, was planted therein, if you had not noticed: 

⁶ But there went up a mist from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground. ⁷ And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. ⁸ And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. (Gen 1:6-8)

 God seemed to have made a man-plant that He planted into the ground and then God gave the plant-man life. Unknown is the time of the harvest. All that is known is that sometime later, after the immature man was formed, God transplanted the man-plant eastward in the Garden of Eden and there a living soul was grown. Thus, just as Jesus said millennia later, God is the “Husbandman” and Himself the “True Vine” (John 15:1).

“Vine” and “tree” in the Old Testament comes from the same noun — “vine tree” (Num 6:4) which is “gepen yayin gepin” (Strong 1890).  Hence, Jesus is the “True Tree” as He claimed to be. Just what is the “True Tree”? Obviously “The Tree of Life” and that is validated by John’s vison: 

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. (Rev 22:2)

 In heavenly Paradise, the Tree of Life is just as it was when it stood in the Garden Paradise. That “Tree” never changes and is immutable! If Jesus is the “True Tree” that means two things: 1) That He is the Tree of Life, and 2) there is a false tree. The evidence is that the Tree of Knowledge is the “false tree” and even more so because the “Serpent” deceived Eve from that false tree.

In the end, just as the “Jesus Tree” is for the healing of nations, “The Antichrist Tree” will be for the sickening of the nations. With that background, it makes sense that if Jesus is “The Tree of Life,” then the Antichrist will be “The Tree of Death” as it was claimed to be in the beginning by God (Gen 2:17).

Since Adam and Eve ate and remained physically alive, “death” means something else to God!

Two things (at least) happened upon consuming forbidden fruit: 1) The countenance of Adam and Eve changed — their nature — and 2) by consuming the fruit of the “Serpent” at least Eve gained something that she passed along to Cain that Adam could not! What was that “awful thing”? Lucifer’s seed, or in the modern vernacular — mitochondrial DNA! In other words, Eve changed genetically, and as such Cain was of the Wicked One (1 John 3:12) through the carnal knowledge from that “false tree.”

As for the countenance, there were “twelve fruit” from the Tree of Life: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Gal 5:25-26). Added to those nine fruits are an additional three from the Latin Vulgate: charity, joy, peace, patience, benignity, goodness, longanimity, mildness, faith, modesty, continency, and chastity.

Those twelve fruits are called “fruit of the Spirit” (Gal 5:22) and are one countenance that has all those attributes. Those would be the “fruit” of the Tree of Life, and are the fruit offered by trusting in Jesus.

On the other hand, the fruits from the “False Tree” would be plural and numerous: 

¹⁹ Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, ²⁰ idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, ²¹ envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like… (Gal 5:19-21)

 Of course, they are neither “fruits” nor “fruit” but works. Adam and Eve could “freely eat” (Gen 2:16) of the Tree of Life, so there would be no work. God would supply their needs with no effort on their part. The fruit was free, they were not constrained from eating from it, and there were no bad side-effects.

Implied was that the Tree of Knowledge had consequences! “The wages of sin is death” (Rom 6:23). Their “wages” were plural just as in the “works of the flesh” above. All those “works” above were the “fruits” of the Tree of Knowledge, if that is true! But they all seem normal to us today because they are the works of mankind.

Adam and Eve did suffer death but did not physically die… right then,  but began to wither in a 900 years-long process! Before they ate, they would not wither, so the third change was longevity. They would no longer have “longanimity” – patient endurance, but the fear of death in that all shall die, “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Cor 15:22).

Jesus became sin for us (2 Cor 5:21), and that includes Adam. He took on the nature of man. Since Adam was made in the nature of God and with the fruit of the Spirit, then Adam was made a “Tree of Life” like Jesus. With that said, Jesus took on the “Tree of Knowledge” for us so that neither us nor Adam would die! Hence, Adam had become the “False Tree” and mankind is not of Adam but “tares and children of the Wicked One” (Mat 13:38).

It may not be obvious but “The Tree of Life” is the “Godhead” — “For in Him (Jesus) dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily” (Col 2:9). Jesus is God manifested in the flesh to Israel (John 1:31)— one of the three branches of the Tree of Life (Gen 40:10), the other two being the Gentile nations of Japheth and Ham.

Now we’re getting close! God regenned Abraham by providing the impotent man His own Genes to plant in the barren womb of Sarah. Isaac was the “bud” from God that was sown to make Jacob, called “Israel.” The Tree of Life was “pruned” of “dead branches” and Israelites, for a spell, were the only chosen and peculiar people (Deut 14:12) until the old dead “branches” of Japheth and Ham were healed and all three peoples were regenned by the crucifixion of Jesus who paid the price for everyone (John 3:16).

Therefore, the Godhead is “The Tree of Life” and the “Godhead” is the Divine Nature (Strong 1890), or better said, “supra-nature” of God. The “twelve fruit of the Spirit” is the characteristic of that Divine Nature, and it is genetic as well as spiritual.

In the beginning, Adam was made supra-naturally like the Godhead. He would be the fruit of the “Tree” that God planted in the Garden. He would be of the same substance with the same nature. Well, that “tree” failed! The question is Did Adam as the Tree of Life change natures, and does the False Tree represent Adam metaphorically, not withstanding that they may have been real trees?

Why was the genealogy of Abraham given for Jesus? Because He was the “Vine” from that one branch that produced Mary. It was Abraham’s genetic branch of that Tree.

Why was the genealogy of Jesus given, ending with Him as “the Son of God”? (Luke 3). Because genealogy, after the birth of Jesus was of no consequence (Tit 3:9) because we all are ‘sons of God” in that we all have the gens of Him that were tainted by sin.

The only conclusion that can be made is that the Godhead is the Tree of Life, and that “Tree” is the very Genome of God that was passed down through all mankind. Likewise, the “Tree of Death” is from sinful “man” (Adam) but was not of the male “Adam” but the female “Adam” — Eve. Like Joseph who was the "supposed father” of Jesus, Adam was the “supposed father” of Cain (Gen 4:1), as I understand it. In other words, mankind is trans-kind or in modern terms, transhumans already.

So, what do we have to gain or lose with transhumanism? Perhaps the “gain” would be great knowledge or even longevity; perhaps even healing the nations, playing God. And what is to lose? What little “Good” — the Genome of God, exemplified by His “twelve-fruit” nature, that remains residually in us.

I believe that the “reprobate” — those with reprobate minds — are those who fail to trust God for their very existence… in gender, in species, and even in domains! (The latter refers to the biotechnology realm.) What can we do as Christians? 

Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates? (2 Cor 13:5)

 Examine your own selves????? Just who are you? You are your genome — the conglomerate of all your genes where in all the knowledge about you is encoded.

You are your DNA, it is all written in your flesh, and within you are also all of Joseph’s progenitors. You are good and you are evil, and any evil within is objectionable to God.

To counteract the evil within you requires a regenning. The “seed “ is molded and formed as with Adam and it must be planted on fertile soil and endure to the end until the Tree of Life grows to maturity. Then, Jesus harvests the ’crop” when the dead in Christ arise with incorruptible flesh with the Genome of God engendered from above (“born again;” John 3:7).

Hence, scripture, from beginning to ending is about two “trees,” so to speak, with two different genetic trees. It is up to each branch to determine whether God prunes them from the “False Tree” and grafts them into the Tree of Life, just as He did Eve in the beginning! Yes. Eve may have been “cut” from the Tree of Life (the image of God — Adam) and grafted onto the Tree of Knowledge, at least symbolically, meaning that she and her germline must be regrafted (regenerated) back onto the Tree of Life.

Time is of the essence as the “Husbandman” is finishing up planting His new Garden in another domain!