Sunday, January 14, 2024

Heaven: Paradise and Hell and the Soul of Man - Part 2

This is ‘tomorrow,’ and my thoughts are continued from yesterday. It is the day of the Lord.

The subject at hand is heaven — both Hell and Paradise. On the Lord’s Day, I continue with the attributes of Paradise.

Where is Paradise? There are hints in the Bible. Abraham was promised the land from the Nile to the Euphrates along the sea; what is now then fertile crescent. It may be the bow in the sky that Noah saw in the clouds at the time of the Noahic Covenant (Gen 9:12-14). We often think of a rainbow, and perhaps it was, but it could also be the fertile crescent arising from the clouds after the rain. Was Noah seeing Paradise, not on Earth, but aloft in the heavens? That does make sense!

All the Covenants should agree as the Estate of God is always the same. It was never about the land along the sea but the Promise along the Yaral Ha Yarden, the “River of the Jordan” — “even the Garden of the Lord” (Gen 14:10). It seems that as Abraham and Lot came out of Egypt they looked toward the Garden of God. They were indeed, but perhaps it was not the Garden that is now the Dead Sea but the Estate of God along the River of God but aloft in heaven.

Isaiah the prophet saw the same Garden in his vision:

Look unto Abraham your father, and unto Sarah that bare you: for I called him alone, and blessed him, and increased him. For the Lord shall comfort Zion: He will comfort all her waste places; and He will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the Garden of the Lord; joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving, and the voice of melody. (Isa 51:2-3)

Zion is an uncertain place. Zion seems to be the City of God in heaven, not Jerusalem here on Earth.

I submit that Israel was never the Promised ‘land’ but a place in heaven where joy, gladness, thanksgiving, and melody can be found. That place already exists, but in the end, the Garden of the Lord shall indeed come down: 

And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. (Rev 21:1-4)

 John saw unto the heavens, and he saw what Isaiah saw, Isaiah 51:2-3 above.

I am gathering the characteristics of the Garden of God. The Garden of the Lord is a place without death, sorrow, or crying. That suggests that Hell is a place with those things.

Therefore, residents of the ‘new heaven’ cannot see across the great divide. This very moment, they are safely tucked away in the ‘Abraham’s Bosom’ (Luke 16:23). The Book of Jasher reveals that the Kingdom of Abraham was not the land, for he merely sojourned there, but a kingdom in another realm, not as even the Garden of the Lord, but the actual Garden of the Lord.

The gate to the Garden of the Lord is only achieved at death, and indeed, death is the portal to Paradise. Paradise is as near as death and the Cross guards the portal. The ‘living,’ as define by the world, are not welcome there, excepting Elijah and Enoch who went there for the purposes of God.

John saw the Garden of the Lord in God’s revelation to him: “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).

So, just where is the Garden Paradise? It is perhaps above the foundation, ‘Jerusalem’ — the ‘Foundation of Peace.’ It is right there, but in another realm. It is an invisible Garden but for those with keen eyes; those who see the things of God even with their eyes closed. Saul did that because his brute nature changed. And Jesus renamed him Paul. Paul was regenned by God above (born again), the Person Jesus, by then on the throne of God.

While in the Garden, so said Eve after she became degenerate, we had bright eyes and could see into the heavens: “When they were in the Garden, they were filled with the grace of a bright nature, and they had not hearts turned toward earthly things” (1 A&E 2:4).

God said that because of sin, “I deprived you of the bright nature in which you then were” (1 A&E 6:5). That was ‘death;’ when their natures changed. They were once glorious like God but after sin they lost their glory; they came “short of the Glory of God” (Rom 3:23), just as sinners are to this day.

The conversation continued: “But after your transgression your bright nature was withdrawn from you; and it was not left to you to see things far away, but only near at hand; after the ability of the flesh; for it is brutish” (1 A&E 8:2).

Before sin — trespassing on the Estate of God — Beneath His forbidden tree, they were before glorious and afterward brutish, having the behavior of an inhumane animal.

They were cast out of the Garden Paradise but where was it? Was it to Hell or to another place? Obviously, since the Garden of God will someday come down to its foundation, Adam and Eve were cast out of the paradisiacal Garden into the physical world. Things were different here than the heavenly Paradise, as enumerated in Genesis chapter three. Their new habitat was opposite of Paradise in heaven and full of death, sorrow, and crying.

Therefore, where is Paradise? Certainly not here, it must be in heaven and that it is. However, it is just part of heaven; the other part is full of death, sorrow, crying and such. You might think life is hard here, but you are entertained all the while grieving, to keep your spirits up while you are slowly dying. Satan has prepared you for Hell in a very humane way for his brutes.

That Adam and Eve went from glorious to brutish says much. Their natures changed and their inner identities — their genomes — were altered to another kind, a mutation of Adam and Lucifer, whose inner identity was the Beast. I strongly believe that the glorious Genome of God was altered and so called, ‘humanity’ is part inhumane to the extent that we are not as God designed us.

It is more than a spiritual change, but with much depravity; Calvinists would call it ‘total depravity,’ but since it can be reversed by regeneration, there may be some glory remaining in our decrepit kind. That should humble you and is God’s first step to recovery.

The change in the nature of Adam’s kind from glorious to physical as well, was revealed by God to them when they lived in a cave where the Light of God was hidden from them:

 

But as they felt great trouble from the food they had eaten, and to which they were not used, they went about in the cave saying to each other: "What has happened to us through eating, that this pain should have come upon us? Woe be to us, we shall die! Better for us to have died than to have eaten; and to have kept our bodies pure, than to have defiled them with food." Then Adam said to Eve, "This pain did not come to us in the Garden, neither did we eat such bad food there. Thinkest thou, O Eve, that God will plague us through the food that is in us, or that our inwards will come out; or that God means to kill us with this pain before He has fulfilled His promise to us?" 5 Then Adam besought the Lord and said, "O Lord, let us not perish through the food we have eaten. O Lord, smite us not; but deal with us according to Thy great mercy, and forsake us not until the day of the promise Thou hast made us." Then God looked upon them, and at once fitted them for eating food; as unto this day; so that they should not perish. Then Adam and Eve came back into the cave sorrowful and weeping because of the alteration in their nature. And they both knew from that hour that they were altered beings, that their hope of returning to the garden was now cut off; and that they could not enter it. (1 A&E 45:2-7)

Therein, Eve said, “Better for us to have died than to have eaten; and to have kept our bodies pure, than to have defiled them with food."

Food defiles the body. How so? It causes excretion and excretion is the decay of organic material. There could be no decay in the Garden Paradise because decay is death. “But,” you ask, “Did they not eat organic herbs while in Paradise?”

No, they apparently did not even though English scripture says, To everything, “wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so” (Gen 1:30). It is true that He did not give herbs to eat. He gave something else for this was in heaven, as I believe, because chapter one of Genesis seems to be the creation of Paradise in heaven.

God did not give them anything green but a “vacuity of color” (Strong 2006)… not any color at all, but translucent or even transparent. What was that colorless food? Whatever it was it glistened (ibid). Of course, that could be a type of photosynthesis which is the method that plants feed themselves ultimately provide the required oxygen for life, or it could have been a heavenly produce.

What food glistens? There are many known today but one peculiar substance was good for food when the Hebrews were in the wilderness — manna from heaven. “When the dew that lay was gone up, behold, upon the face of the wilderness there lay a small round thing, as small as the hoar frost on the ground” (Exod 16:14), describing the manna that would sustain them. Hoar frost glistens; and so, did the heavenly food of the Garden.

Just what substance was the manna? Job answered that with a question; “Has the rain a father? or who hath begotten the drops of dew? Out of whose womb came the ice? and the hoary frost of heaven, who hath gendered it?” (Job 38:28-29).

There is much ‘meat’ in that thought! The manna was heavenly rain that poured from the Father. It was Living Water provided by God, just as Jesus said, “He that believes in Me, as the scripture has said, out of His belly shall flow rivers of Living Water” (John 7:38), ostensibly to sustain them.

God provided to the Hebrews Living Water and He did so with Adam and Eve in the Garden Paradise. In fact, according to the Books of Adam and Eve, the waters of the Garden sustained life. It is written, “To the north of the Garden (of Eden) there is a sea of water, clear and pure to the taste, unlike anything else…” (1 A&E 1:2). Somehow, that water flowed from the belly of God just as life flowed from the belly of God by which life went into him.

Manna was surely crystalized water from heaven and was grace given by God. What was in it is just a guess, but according to Job, God had “gendered it”! It was water from God, and in scripture, water in the Hebrew is mayim, a euphemism for ‘semen.’ No, it was not biological semen with sperm within each cell, but the genes of God within.

Not only did that Living Water provide life, but sustained it as well, and so it does for those who ‘drink’ of it, according to Jesus.

Now back to the ‘Bread of Life’ — manna from heaven: if left uneaten it would decay and stink, so each person was to eat just the right amount to sustain him or her (Exod 16:8-9). “They gathered it every morning, every man according to his eating: and when the sun waxed hot, it melted” (Exod 16:21). This ‘bread’ did not require digesting but would just evaporate. In Paradise, nourishment seems to have been by a type of osmosis, in contrast, although similar, that the food for plants is light.

With that said, Adam and Eve ate no solid food and if they did, it was when they sinned. Soon, Eve had a bellyache so massive that it tormented her, “"What has happened to us through eating, that this pain should have come upon us?”

 Then Adam said to Eve, "This pain did not come to us in the Garden, neither did we eat such bad food there” (1 A&E 45:3-4). 

Then God looked upon them, and at once fitted them for eating food; as unto this day; so that they should not perish. Then Adam and Eve came back into the cave sorrowful and weeping because of the alteration in their nature. And they both knew from that hour that they were altered beings, that their hope of returning to the Garden was now cut off; and that they could not enter it. For that now their bodies had strange functions; and all flesh that requires food and drink for its existence, cannot be in the Garden. (1 A&E 45:6-8)

 

Who knows who wrote that and when? However, that they were altered beings agrees with Genesis 4:1. Eve created Cain who was of the Wicked One. She was the ‘mother of all living,’ not Adam the father of all!

Cain was so altered that God marked him, hopefully by the mark of God, not Satan, or perhaps it was! (Gen 4:15). Cain was the first being to come short of the glory of God, and something outwardly changed that would be obvious to keep him from being killed. To this day, the so-called ‘Adam’s kind’ resembles Cain. Perhaps Cain was the first alien man (‘Is in the Hebrew, not an Adam.) He was a sort of man, literally another existence (Strong 2006). He took not after Adam, but his mother, ‘Issa’ (the female ‘Is).

Scripture continues to back that hypothesis: Jesus explained to his tricksters, “Do you not therefore err, because you know not the scriptures, neither the power of God? For when they shall rise from the dead, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage; but are as the angels which are in heaven” (Mat 12:24-25).

In heaven, angels do not sexually couple and therefore, if the Garden was in heaven, and I believe it was, Adam and Eve never coupled, but outside the Garden, Adam saw Eve couple with some thing (Gen 4:1). She had sexual intercourse for the first time, and it was not with Adam! With that said, in heaven, without the need to procreate themselves, they would need no genitalia — they would need no ‘guns’ that would fire the fiery darts of the Wicked One, if you get the gist of it all.

Angels did not couple in heaven, but with the ability to shape-shift, they could couple when on Earth, and they did before the flood. (Gen 6:4). (Marriage is coupling.)

In heaven, angels are angelic, but in the world, they appear as humans (Gen 19:1-5), and guess what? Those angels ate while they were on Earth. They had the digestive tracts to consume food, although in heaven they would have eaten manna — food from God.

So let me draw a mental picture of the human soul: (1) It would look angelic and would absorb light. Think, now, of chromosomes in every cell of the body that too are like hoar frost on the ground and are the vessels for the ‘seed’ of God, what we now know as DNA.

(2) They would have no digestive tracts and no reproductive organs. Neither would they have urinary tracts nor even a heart. Why would a pump be needed when God was right there, providing Virtue in His very Dynamics. No lungs would be required because life was not from oxygen but breathing the Breath of God to maintain life, and furthermore with that, no heart would be required.

(3) There would be no structure required to support ‘Protoman’ because there would be no gravity in heaven.

(4) Since man is animated (living) they would have motion. It seems that I am describing a ghost and as such, our soul is much like a ghost. In fact, the Spirit of Jesus in His vessel (The ‘Cup’) is the Holy Ghost of the dead man Jesus. When Jesus was glorified at death (John 7:39), His Person was revealed as the Holy Ghost manifested. He revealed to over 500 that the Holy Ghost is as much Him as the Body of Jesus is the Christ.

(5) Adam and Eve would be transparent — naked. “They were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed” (Gen 2:25). They were “smooth” and “bare” (ibid) and without pudenda. No wonder they were ashamed and covered their genitals. Genitalia is for them doing the multiplication as Eve implied when she said, “I have gotten a man (extant being) (Gen 4:1).

(6) Like Jesus, each would look like himself or herself. When Jesus was baptized, the Holy Ghost came on Him in “bodily shape” (Luke 3:22). That Glorious Being was finally recognized as Jesus in Emmaus.

(7) Just as the ghost of Jesus had the motion of a dove, Adam and Eve would have no wings, but could overcome the gravity of their world if it even had any. They could move about without impedance.

(8) Their love would not be erotic in any manner but only goodwill toward each other and God, as Jesus suggested with the Greatest Commandment.

As you might predict, I am also describing those who are born again by the blood and water of Christ; those whose ‘flesh’ will be incorruptible.

Think back on Eve. What ailed her? She had a blood issue. Her identity had changed to be almost like the brutes.

 What she consumed made her more like the old creature, the Beast, than the creature that God had made so glorious like Himself.

Our flesh is a curse. Now imagine yourself without flesh. How would Satan ever tempt you? He would do it with thoughts, albeit there would be much less to tempt with!

(9) Imagine now a ghost with a mind. Its mind would be with the Thoughts of God because our curse is that our “thoughts are not His Thoughts” (Isa 55:8). How much work need we do in heaven? Nothing, because God takes care of all things. How much work do we need to do to get there? Nada, because here, for Christians, God will take care of you! Our flesh will never be a burden in heaven for not only will our shame — the penis — be circumcised, but all our flesh if it is given as an offering to God.

(10) What do you now see without all the encumbrances?  You see Christ in us Christians. And with us so transparent, our thoughts will be as well; and our language as in the beginning, which were not in words, but thoughts. There will finally be silence in heaven, excepting praises to God. With that said, there will be no sinners in heaven because they do not cherish glorification enough to give up their fleshes.

 Next  up: Hell.

Thank you for reading and considering my thoughts. Thank you, Bill Wilson, for testing me.



 (By the way, if the ghost is wearing clothes, then it is an impersonator because clothes are not persons.)

 

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