(194) – A WATERED GARDEN – II

194 – A WATERED GARDEN – II

 

We have seen in Watered Garden – I, that there was a time when there were four peoples thriving in the Garden of Eden of Jehovah: Israel, in Canaan, the Egyptians of the Pharaohs, the Assyrians and the Babylonians. In this period of history, of approximately a thousand years, the Garden of Eden of Jehovah was established, as Ezekiel 31:1-9 reveals. All that is narrated in chapters two and three of Genesisforms a group of pictures carefully prepared, whose purpose was to prove the divinity of Jehovah (Ps. 78:2).

The first picture of someone very important was the picture of Adam. The apostle Paul reveals that to us.“Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of Adam’s offense, who is a type of Him who was to come” (Rom. 5:14). Adam is not a picture of Christ, because they have nothing to do with each other. They are two Adams, but one of them is animal, and the other is spiritual (1 Cor. 15:46). The first of them sinned; the last one, Jesus, did not sin (1 Pet. 2:22). The first one cast the blame on Eve, his wife (Gen. 3:12); Jesus took upon himself the sins of the church (1 Pet. 2:24). Adam left the death of his descendants as an inheritance(Rom. 5:12, 17). Jesus, the last Adam, left eternal life as an inheritance. Adam cannot be a picture of Jesus Christ at all, but he is a picture of another, as important as Jesus, who should have come, but did not (Rom. 5:14). In reality, he did come, but did not fulfill the mission to which he was called. He changed everything; he spoiled the whole creation. Paul says, “For the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Rom. 8:20-21).

Lets assume that a simple Neanderthal man would not be able to transmit curse, condemnation, and death to all humanity. There had to be some great character to be able to drag creation into chaos.

Adam is the head of the human race, and the devil is, too. “And he led Him up and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And the devil said to Him, ‘I will give You all this domain and its glory; for it has been handed over to me, and I give it to whomever I wish” (Luke 4:5-6).

  1. Adam, the head, is the picture of the devil; Eve is the picture of Israel, which has Satan as its head. “You are of your father the devil” (John 8:44).
  2. In the same way as Eve came from Adam and gave herself to the serpent (Satan), Israel came form Jehovah and gave himself to the devil, for Jesus said, “You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth” (John 8:44).
  3. Adam was Eve’s husband, and Jehovah was the husband of Israel. “For your husband is your Maker, whose name is Jehovah of hosts” (Is. 54:5). Israel, though, played the harlot with the devils (Deut. 32:17). Jehovah rejected Israel as a husband rejects the adulterous wife, and Israel became a lover of demons (Ps. 106:37). “Thus says Jehovah, ‘Where is the certificate of divorce, by which I have sent your mother away? (Is. 50:1).
  4. Adam lived with Eve in the Garden of Eden (Gen. 2-3). Israel, wife of Jehovah, was the lover of the devil, and they lived together, the three of them, in the second Garden of Eden, until the divorce, that is, the two great captivities. This was the revenge of Jehovah. “I will also bring upon you a sword which will execute vengeance for the covenant; and when you gather together into your cities, I will send pestilence among you, so that you shall be delivered into enemy hands” (Lev. 26:25).
  5. Adam was the keeper of the Garden of Eden. “Then Jehovah God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it” (Gen. 2:15). Jehovah is the farmer of Israel.“Then all your people will be righteous; they will possess the land forever, the branch of My planting, the work of My hands” (Is. 60:21). “To grant those who mourn in Zion, giving them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a spirit of fainting. So they will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of Jehovah” (Is. 61:3). And, because Adam was also the keeper of the Garden, Job says about Jehovah, “Have I sinned? What have I done to Thee, O watcher of men? Why hast Thou set me as Thy target […]? (Job 7:20). Jehovah was the keeper of the righteous men. “Hate evil, you who love Jehovah, who preserves the souls of His godly ones; He delivers them from the hand of the wicked” (Ps. 97:10). The flaw we find with Jehovah’s justice is that he did not keep Job; and he also did not keep Israel, for the devil, or Satan, a fallen angel, took dominion over creation. Jehovah calls himself the Almighty El Shaddai, and he said, “For Jehovah of hosts has planned, and who can frustrate it? And as for His stretched-out hand, who can turn it back? (Is. 14:27). Just as Jehovah handed Job in to the devil, he also handed Israel in to Satan (Job 2:6, Judg. 6:1; 13:1).
  6. Eve played the harlot with the serpent (Rev. 12:9 shows that the serpent is the devil or Satan). Israel, the wife of Jehovah, played the harlot with the demons and devils (Gen. 3:1-6). “And they shall no longer sacrifice their sacrifices to the goat demons with which they play the harlot” (Lev. 17:7). “They sacrificed to demons who were not God, to gods whom they have not known” (Deut. 32:17).
  7. Adam blamed Eve. “And the man said, ‘The woman whom Thou gavest to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate’” (Gen. 3:12). Jehovah blamed Israel. “Alas, sinful nation, people weighed down with iniquity, offspring of evildoers, sons who act corruptly! They have despised the Holy One of Israel, they have turned away from Him” (Is. 1:4).
  8. Adam did not keep his wife from the craftiness of Satan, the serpent (Gen. 3:1-6). Jehovah did not keep his wife either, that is, his people Israel, from evil. “And the anger of Jehovah burned against Israel, and He gave them into the hands of plunderers who plundered them; and He sold them into the hands of their enemies around them, so that they could no longer stand before their enemies” (Judg. 2:14).
  9. Adam left a curse to his descendants. “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’; Cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life.  Both thorns and thistles it will grow for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field; by the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, because from it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Gen. 3:17-19). Jehovah left also a curse to his people (Deut. 28:15-68). Sixteen hundred years after that, the apostle Paul said, “For as many as are of the works of the Law are under a curse” (Gal. 3:10). The works of the Law are the effort of man to fulfill the Law, obeying it in all its minute details.
  10.  Adam left death as a legacy to all his descendants. “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned” (Rom. 5:12). Jehovah is the creator of the covenant of death. Paul declared, “Our adequacy is from God, who also made us adequate as servants of a new covenant, not of the letter, but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. But if the ministry of death, in letters engraved on stones, came with glory, so that the sons of Israel could not look intently at the face of Moses” (2 Cor. 3:5-7). It is the glory of death, for Jehovah was glorified when he destroyed and killed all the men in Egypt (Ex. 14:4, 17; Ex. 14:27-31).
  11. Adam ate of the tree of the science of good and evil, and became as god (Gen. 3:1-6). Then Jehovah Elohim said: “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil” (Gen. 3:22).

Good and evil come from Jehovah. “Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both good and ill go forth?” (Lam. 3:38). And in Jehovah, evil is stronger than good, for Jehovah repents from the good he promises, to give place to evil. “If it does evil in My sight by not obeying My voice, then I will think better of the good with which I had promised to bless it. So now then, speak to the men of Judah and against the inhabitants of Jerusalem saying, ‘Thus says Jehovah, “Behold, I am fashioning calamity against you and devising a plan against you”’” (Jer. 18:10-11). Jehovah certainly ate of the tree of the science of good and evil, too. Jesus Christ, nevertheless, did and does only what is good (Acts 10:38), and the Father with him (James 1:17). This is the reason why the Father and the Son have nothing to do with the first evil Adam, Jehovah, and the devil. It is interesting to observe that in Gen. 3:1-8 there lived together among the trees Adam, Eve, the serpent, and Jehovah. In the second Garden of Eden the same thing happened again, and wherever Jehovah, Satan, the man and the woman are, Satan is victorious. The work of Christ is to redeem from the devil.

 

By Pastor Olavo Silveira Pereira

 

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