13 The Sabbatical
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“Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished. 2 And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. 3 Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.” Gen 2:1-3
“Eve, are we still in Eden?” I asked. “It’s so quiet.”
“Yes, we are; this is the Sabbath day of rest. God is resting. Poor Jesus after all He went through, He is resting.”
“Eve, will we actually live forever when we eat from the tree of life?” Eve’s eyes were bright and beautiful as she looked at me with wonderment and then replied, “Yes, of course silly. Why do you think we came here? We don’t want to die. We came back to Eden so God could restore my life and yours and the others who are with us on this journey.”
Funny how just now I started to think about the logistics of living forever. “Um, Eve,” I asked, “Won’t it be weird to never die when everyone else does? How will we work when we are four hundred years old? There is such a thing as age discrimination in the workplace you know.”I suppose I wanted to go back to Eden to see paradise and instead I found Jesus Christ suffering on the Cross. This has been a most unexpected outcome.
I added, “If we are in Eden with Jesus, then I hate to tell you this, but He DIED yesterday.”
“My turn,” said Eve with a knowing grin.
Bracing myself for her question, I replied, “Okay, shoot.”
“Does God lie?”
“Of course not! He despises lying. Liars are among the first to go to hell in the judgment.
“When God told me that on the day I would eat the poisonous fruit I would die. Did I? Remember, Adam and I had children after that. So did God lie to me?”
I answered, “Most people read that to mean that you would die eventually and that death came to the whole world, even to animals.”
“Oh don’t be silly. God said nothing about animals dying if I ate the fruit! He said I would die. Let me tell you my friend, I did die on that day. The minute we noticed that we were naked and ashamed it was apparent that we were dead because we were self conscious. We separated ourselves from God and then He let us drift farther from His will. When my son Cain was jealous because God did not accept His gift of fruit Cain’s focus was on himself and it has gone on that way through the millennia. Dead humans think about themselves, their nakedness, and their passions. Illness, both physical and mental is a type of death because the person can’t help but focus on themselves. That’s why with His dominion over nature, Jesus Christ started His mission by healing left and right; He immediately started restoring life to mankind.”
“Yes,” I exclaimed, “and He died!!”
“But only for a second!” Eve shot back. "Did you hear Him yesterday when He said, ‘My God my God, why have You forsaken Me?’ That was the moment He separated from God. He focused on Himself in order to go to Hades where all the dead people go so He could unlock the door to give them life too.”
“Eve, if you hadn’t eaten the poison fruit would your body have stayed alive forever?”
Without hesitation Eve replied, “Maybe but why would I want that? Bodies wear out naturally because God made them that way for the same reason that He made the seasons.
When we ate the poison fruit we immediately died the death of being out of God’s will and self conscious and THEN we lost power over nature so we had no control over illness and aging, not even our own. Shedding the body and becoming a free spirit without the burden of the body has been kind of nice too! But it shouldn’t always be called death.
I must say, it was so wonderful to see Jesus with His dominion over nature again, healing and bringing people back from the dead! Ah my heart sang to see that.
We should stop talking now; it is the day of rest. Tomorrow will be a big day in Eden and in Jerusalem!”
The difference between biological death and spiritual death was confusing so I said, “Eve one last question, when we eat from the tree of life will we regain our power over nature so we too can heal people, walk on water, and multiply food?”