This finishes the story of how Eden became paradise lost. This passage is found in page 2 of my NKJV Bible, page 3 of my NASB Bible, and page 5 of both my VOICE Bible copy and Amplified Bible (Classic Edition) text. I noticed that the VOICE didn’t line up with the Hebrew of how this passage was originally written. I thought it was interesting, but I don’t like how humans forfeited Eden and we’re now stuck in multiple cultures in which work is more valued than relationships are. To hopefully bring people together, though, I talked to a friend of mine about going up to northern Arizona to chill on a boat for a day or two. I also want to invite about eight other people to do this. But neither of us have a boat. Someone in our church might, but if no one has one, my words just show how badly I suck at planning. And I plan to have the ten of us go on an entourage of some parts of northern Arizona next May; indeed, I think it’s a good time to submit my vacation request for that. (It’s early/mid-January at the time I write this 😅) I still work at Fry’s, and I’ve been there for a year, now, so I am able to submit my request for one, now. Thank God for unions that still exist!
On another note, I once heard that Adam and Eve weren’t sent away from Eden as punishment, but to avert a tragedy of living forever and knowing good and evil without God present lest none go to Heaven until the Last Judgment (Revelation 20:11-15), however, I don’t think God was interested in withholding good from anyone. It’s not as though He hands out a prize only to make you crash into a wall or something. But now that I mention it, someone may be saying among the teachers that God did this both to protect and withhold… I don’t think that’s true. If God were to protect someone from life, He’d be anything but good. Why it seems like a good getaway is elusive to everyone, I don’t know, but one thing I know is sure: it shouldn’t be elusive to anybody. Also, I should mention that God intentionally left the sentence in verse 22 unfinished — I think He was unwilling to picture a world in which humans could live forever but sin without stopping. But it does remind me of what Voldemort did in the Harry Potter series to try to avert death for himself — weird how he killed enough people to make an army of Inferi (Dark creatures in the fantasy world). Harry Potter himself did deliver Voldemort over to his own defeat by simply blocking his spells… for the Elder Wand didn’t work for him, seeing that Harry Potter owned it… none of us knew.
It’s pretty cool if we can see the end from the beginning, but since most of the world doesn’t know the end of the Bible story (and anyone of us who does know it can be brutalized into thinking of something else and be fixated on it), anything that tries to help seems like random chance, and it’s also as though we can’t get an answer on time. If God’s timing is planned in a certain way, and if I can see it, it would be fine, but I simply cannot think about sovereignty. There’s a teaching in the Church that speaks multiple theories about it, and it is the reason why the global church community is, for the most part, apostate (with few exceptions, but apostate means “one who turns from a faith or religion”). I don’t want to say too much, but I can mention that sooner or later, Satan strikes back with his own teaching whenever a saying of freedom is (re)discovered. Jesus said that the truth makes free (John 8:32), but Satan is so successful that we feel as though nothing can work… will Jesus ever be glorified again? Well, the good news is, though, I heard about a billion-soul harvest in which a billion people across the world get saved almost simultaneously, but I don’t know when that’s going to happen. I do believe it’s part of Bible prophecy, though. When will the Rapture happen? We don’t know…
See you in chapter four!
Ron And His Stories 