Paradise Lost

In Hebrew the word Eden is a pictograph of an eye, a door and a sprouting seed or darting fish. It means literally to see the door of life or see the judge. The word Eden was related to the word Adon or Lord which meant the first or strong judge. In ancient Hebrew culture, the judges were good. They were seen as the door of life because they protected the weak and helpless and brought overcoming victory over enemies and any form of destructive curse. Adam and Eve originally lived in the Eden, the paradise of God with the eternal life’s breath or Holy Spirit of God’s fatherhood filling their hearts with paradise. In the centre of the garden were two trees that would have a profound influence over their lives. One was the tree of life, and the other was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In Hebrew, the word for good was a pictogram that means literally a house surrounded inside and out, meaning something good through and through. The word for evil was a pictogram that means the man with a devouring eye. The word for life was chay and means a full stomach. Trees produce fruit, fruit gives energy for life. Fruit contains seeds, the seeds are the sons of the father tree, the life of the father dwells within the seed or son to bring forth fruit after the father’s kind. The tree of life represents the Fatherhood of God, the life of God, and God’s life is eternal or everlasting. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil represents a life emptied of God and therefore subject to both good or evil, blessing or curse. In Hebrew, the word for blessing means literally a gift brought on bended knee, and curse something spat on, or worthless garbage. It represents the life of the puffed-up scoffers who in the pride of their fallen hearts decide for themselves what is good or evil, what is right and what is wrong, who bless themselves but curse, spit on or treat others like worthless garbage. Jesus is clear, only God is good, and as we have already seen, Lucifer or the devil is the ultimate source of all evil, evil that is firmly rooted in pride. God has the devil on a leash, the devil cannot violate a person’s free will and therefore needs a legal right to gain access to their minds and hearts. It is only when people believe his lies and wilfully choose to do evil that the problems start. In the Book of 2 Thessalonians, Paul the Apostle talks about the secret power or mystery of lawlessness. This is the wicked influence of the devil and evil spirits upon people’s hearts without them even knowing. They bind themselves to people’s personalities through pride, repetitive sin, wrong thought patterns, brokenness, memories and in the hidden thoughts and they share in a common purpose or position in that hidden place. They remain in the dark but are very involved in the everyday life of a person. They speak through people’s own thoughts and feelings. They inspire sin in order to bring condemnation and people respond by withdrawing from God and seek provision elsewhere, getting into more trouble in an ever-increasing spiral of darkness. That is the knowledge of evil. That is the devil’s curse which often brings with it sickness and ultimately death. The Holy Spirit is God’s influence on people’s humble hearts, and the Holy Spirit influences people’s hearts for good often without them even knowing it is God. This is God’s blessing. These two opposing powers represent the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, of blessing or of curse. It represents being torn between two lovers or rather loves: to embrace God’s blessing and the desire to love and please good, or to embrace the devil’s curse by living to serve the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh and the pride of life. It is this battle, between God’s blessing and the devil’s curse, the battle between the living word of God’s Holy Spirit and the lies of the devil and his evil spirits, that has raged within the hearts of humanity ever since the Fall. So often this heartfelt raging battle goes unseen but the results of whether people choose good or evil, blessing or curse, God or the devil, is plain for all to see.

It is not clear exactly how long Adam and Eve lived as the Sons of God in the Garden of Eden with the eternal life’s breath or Holy Spirit of the paradise of God’s fatherhood filling their hearts. It says in Genesis 5 that Adam was 130 years old when he begat Seth in his own likeness and image. Before that both Cain and Abel were born, so Adam and Eve may possibly have lived in paradise for possibly 100 years. It was probably during this 100-year period that Lucifer fell from heaven like lightening. It says in Genesis 3:1-5 “Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, Yea, has God said, You shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, You shall not eat of it, neither shall you touch it, lest you die. And the serpent said to the woman, you shall not surely die: For God does know that in the day you eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil”. This is a mystery to us now because things are not now what they were then. Originally, Adam and Eve were able to communicate to some extent with the animals within God’s creation. However, the serpent mentioned here is clearly Lucifer or the devil and the father of lies slithering in the Garden of Eden. Jesus said that the Son can only do what he sees the Father doing. What we see here is the devil lying and deceiving Eve into disobeying God and doing something that she didn’t see the Father doing. The devil began by bringing the natural independent reasoning of doubts as to the goodness of God, then flatly denied the word of God and then promised the deification of those that choose to rebel against God. The lying promise was that they would not die but would become as gods or powers within their own psyche or sphere of self-awareness. They would become the great I AM within their own pride-poisoned puffed-up hearts. The devil had deceived himself into grasping equality with God by becoming the marvellous me within his pride poisoned heart; it had worked on himself, so he tried it on Eve.

It says in Genesis 3:6-8 “And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons. And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden”. By thinking the devil’s thoughts Eve began to trade, a presumed benefit at a price. She reasoned that the fruit was good for food which appealed to the lust of the flesh, pleasant to look at which appealed to the lust of the eyes and was desirable to make one wise which appealed to the pride of life. She trusted in the lying words of the serpent that they would not die but instead have eyes that are opened. Eve ate the fruit and gave some to Adam who also ate. Incidentally, some people believe that when Adam was originally created, there was no natural blood in his body but instead the supernatural light of Yehovah God. Why? Because Adam said in Genesis 2:23 that Eve was bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, and in Luke 24:39 that the resurrection body of Jesus had flesh and bone, but no blood. That may be why Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15:50 that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. So, by eating the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, either their blood was corrupted or the supernatural immortal eternal life of the light of God within them was replaced by natural and mortal blood. Either way, they had grasped equality with God the nature of their hearts changed. It was in their hearts that they fell. In Hebrew the word for spirit means literally a fenced in man. God’s Holy Spirit was originally fenced within Adam and Eve. When they sinned, the fence was broken and Adam and Eve gasped out of their hearts the eternal life’s breath or the Holy Spirit of the paradise of God’s fatherhood. The Holy Spirit became foolishness to the pride of their fallen hearts. By rejecting the fatherhood of God, Adam and Eve as sons of rebellion and the seed of the serpent they were now subjects of the father of their rebellion, the devil and father of lies. And because of their now rebellious and judgmental hearts, the lying promises of the devil for pleasure, satisfaction and fulfilment by sinning seemed true. Something fallen was something useless, something worthless, something thrown down or thrown out with the trash. That is why Jesus said in Matthew 20 that out of the heart comes: evil thoughts, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, lies, slander and fits of rage. These things are the things that the secret power or mystery of lawlessness, Satan’s evil spirits, can use to fill the sails of lustful fallen hearts. This is the fruit of prideful fallen hearts and corrupted blood. They became living dust living natural judgmental lives that were subject to sin, sickness and ultimately death. After their Fall, in the marvellous me pride of their fallen hearts, Adam and Eve sewed green leaves together to make marvellous coverings of camouflage nets for themselves that were acceptable in their own eyes and would avoid any chance of shameful humiliation. In the same way, the religion of established church tradition sews together marvellous coverings of theoretical righteousness that condones sin as inevitable and therefore attempts to make the bad fruit of prideful fallen hearts acceptably hidden under the camouflage nets of conceptual arguments of religious reasoning in the sight of God. It doesn’t work. After they had made green leaf coverings for themselves, Adam and Eve hid from the presence of God amongst the trees of the garden. It says in Genesis 3:9-12 “And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where are you? And he said, I heard your voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself. And he said, Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that you should not eat? And the man said, The woman whom thou gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat”. It is clear from what Adam both did and said that the nature of his heart had changed. He had been a Son of God, now he was the seed or son of the serpent, a son of destruction. That is why it says in Jeremiah 17:9 “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can understand it?” As a marvellous me, he was hiding from any chance of humiliation for what he had done. As Adam began to speak, the realisation dawned upon his now deceitful and desperately wicked judgmental heart that ultimately God himself was to blame for the Fall. Why? Adam considered himself so marvellous that he was simply superior and couldn’t possibly be to blame. God created Eve, she gave him the fruit, therefore, God is to blame. As we have seen, in Hebrew, the word bitter is marad. It is a pictogram of water and the head of a man, and means head water, a stagnant lake of bitterness. The word bitter also meant rebellion. The word proud in Hebrew means literally to lift up strength. Adam made a proud bitter root judgement against God that is passed down the generational seed line to all that share in the original sinning nature of Cain, the original son of man. That is why it says in Proverbs 19:3 (YLT) “The foolishness of a man perverts his way, and against Yehovah does his heart rage”. As already mentioned, the camouflage nets of religion do not cover the devastating effects of the Fall. In Genesis 3, God made coverings of animal skins for Adam and Eve, and this would have required the shedding of blood. We will discuss blood and forgiveness at length later in this book.

Imagine for a moment that the devil is the colour yellow, and Adam blue. The devil is the prince of the power of the air, something that the rebellious scoffers naturally breathe without realising it. Through the curse of sin and sinning, the devil’s yellow gradually breathed itself into the breathings of Adam’s personality or heart. The devil’s cowardly yellow mixed with Adam’s cold blue heart to create a new colour: green, green being the rottenness of the pride of the sons of rebellion, the seed of the serpent or the devil. Green comes in many shades, but everyone (except Jesus) including the liars, murderers, child abusers, adulterers, perverts, the hateful, hurtful, vengeful, vindictive, religious hypocrites of the church establishment, and all the tyrants of history were all within the body of Adam when he sinned. Those that follow their conscience and seek to do what is good receive God’s grace and bear only a very mild shade of green. Others have a conscience that is seared as with a hot iron. They wholeheartedly embrace evil and the shade of murderous rotten green that they bear is most intense.

The original keynote of creation was the gift or incredible blessing of the absolute and complete knowledge of the light and love of the paradise of God which would have brought success and happiness for everyone and everything in all things. When Adam was originally created, he was the image of the invisible God. Adam was created like a light bulb and the light and love of God’s fatherhood shone from within his heavenly heart. But when he sinned, his foolish heart was darkened by the marvellous me pride of becoming as god within his own psyche or sphere of life. However, the darkness of this fallen state became a canvas upon which the love, mercy and blessing of God could still shine. Even though Adam’s heart descended into darkness, God did not leave Adam without the witness of a conscience. Imagine a game of football with slightly different rules. God and his angels on one side, the devil and his fallen angels on the other. God’s side of the pitch is the knowledge of good. The devil is the god of this world, and his side of the pitch is the knowledge of evil. Adam is the ball. The object of the game is for each side to retain possession of the ball. It is up to Adam to choose which side to be on. If he follows his conscience and is humble enough to be inspired by the secret power or mystery of the blessing of God’s Holy Spirit to show love, kindness and mercy to those around him, God will continue to bless. God’s angels will surround him and keep him safe. If he chooses to remain proud, and pleasure himself with evil, like the scoffers who wilfully choose to exalt themselves and do wrong by rebelling against God to satisfy their lusts, he will have the secret power or mystery of lawlessness at work within his heart and personality. Choosing the devil’s curse rather than God’s blessing grieves God’s Holy Spirit and God withdraws His blessing from those who prefer Lucifer’s lusts to God’s love. When this happens, they will have to face the natural consequences or curse that breaking the divine commandments of God inevitably brings.

So, why did the Fall happen, why was paradise lost? God commanded Adam and Eve not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and he told them why. He said that in the day that they ate the fruit, in dying they would die. This was not physical death. They died to God within their hearts. They imagined that they were the marvellous me, captivated by how simply superior they imagined that they now were. They came alive to the pride of self-worship, sin and selfishness in all its forms. They had chosen to ignore the living word of God and instead trust the lies of Lucifer, the father of lies. This set a precedent. Adam and Eve were originally created in immortal innocence but gave up their immortality for the sake of the mortal knowledge of good and sadly, evil. They had been created in innocence and did not understand the absolutely dire consequences of what they had done. However, in Genesis 3 there was a promise of redemption. It says in Genesis 3:14-15 “And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because you have done this, you art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon your belly shall you go, and dust shall you eat all the days of your life: And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; it shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” Because it was Lucifer in the person of the serpent that ultimately caused the Fall, God cursed the serpent. He said that the serpent would crawl on its belly like a snake and eat the dust of fallen humanity through the curse of sin and sinning all its days. However, God also promised that Lucifer would face his ultimate doom. The seed or son of the woman would have his heel pierced by the seed or sons of the serpent, but the serpent would have his head crushed. Within the ancient Hebrew culture of the Bible, redemption means something being brought back full circle. Because God had given dominion upon the Earth to Adam, God could not directly redeem Adam back into the paradise of God’s fatherhood with dominion upon the Earth. Only by God himself becoming a man, the man Jesus of Nazareth, the seed of the woman, could God reverse the devastating effects of the Fall and redeem fallen humanity back into paradise. There is a divine law that what is sown must one day be reaped. Jesus had to reap in his own body and personality the dreadful curse of all sin, sadness, sorrow, sickness and death for all people and for all of time and to have his heel pierced by the nails of seed of the serpent, those he came to save. In the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus was completely overwhelmed even to the point of death. It was in Gethsemane and later, on the cursed cross, that Jesus reversed the effects of the Fall by absorbing into his own broken body the sins of the whole world. Jesus was crucified by the scoffers, those he came to save. The cross reveals the amazing lengths that God was willing to go to in the person of Jesus of Nazareth to crush the head of Lucifer, the devil and father of lies, and through the sinless blood of the Lamb of God redeem prideful sinning humanity back into the paradise of God’s fatherhood that was once theirs. However, it is important to understand that an intellectual appreciation of the work of redemption is simply that. Natural man speaks natural words by natural breath. The established religion of hand-me-down church tradition is full of words, natural words, scriptural sounding words even, but these words can only change heads as in the way people think. God speaks supernatural and life-changing words by his supernatural breath, the Holy Spirit. Words have little importance unless they are inbreathed by the supernatural and life-changing Holy Spirit power of divine life. These words, God’s living words change people’s hearts. That is why Jesus said in John 6:63 “It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh profits nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life. But there are some of you that believe not”.

So, what about you? Someone once sang; well I was born an original sinner, I was borne from original sin. It is sad but true of everyone except Jesus, even you, even me. For the scoffers, this is of no importance; their cold blue greedy grasping selfish pride-poisoned murderous hard hearts don’t bother them in the least. For others, they hate the bad things that dwell within their hearts and the wrongs that they do. That is why Jesus said that anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. According to John in 1 John 3:15, eternal life is not life after death. Rather it is the divine life of God within people’s hearts because it is a life that doesn’t hate. Jesus came to turn people from darkness to light, from the power of the evil one to the power of God, to forgive their sins and give them an inheritance in the heartfelt paradise of God that was lost at the Fall. Not everyone turns, not everyone is saved from the power of the devil, not everyone is saved from the pride of original sin, not everyone is forgiven, and not everyone is given an inheritance in paradise. You can be. The choice is yours.

Prayer: Dear Father, I want nothing to do with rebellion, hatred, independence, selfishness and murderous pride. Please look upon Yeshua the Messiah and pardon and forgive me that, because of the Fall, these awful and evil principles were once a very much welcome part of my natural life. I renounce these horrible things and instead would like to receive everything that you want me to receive. In the name of Yeshua the Messiah, please turn me from darkness to light, from the power of the evil one to the power of Yehovah God. Please forgive me and cleanse me by the sinless blood of the Lamb of God from the lies that I believed, the sinning that I received, bitter judgements that I made and instead give me an eternal inheritance within the heartfelt paradise of God’s fatherhood so that I may shine with the light of your love, forever.

[Go to Previous Chapter][Go to Next Chapter]