Get out of My Garden! God told Adam and Eve. Why?

Here’s the meaning of get out in verse 24.

As you can gather, get out is a much more forceful and deliberate act than v. 23. The initial contract and engagement, based on the rules for living TOGETHER in the Garden of Eden, were void. God divorced Adam and Eve, humanity. Here are the first divorce and separation. Physical separation from the Garden. Spiritual separation from God.

This sounds terribly harsh, and indeed it is. To add to the severity, once out, two armed guards are stationed in front of the door. What happened to repentance and forgiveness?! No room for those attributes here. Why?

Let’s do a detective Colombo. Reveal the culprit, the solution, right from the start. Genesis 3:24 is the last verse of Genesis 3. It’s The End, curtains down on the act of the interaction of the Serpent with humankind. The chapter is closed, over, and done.

Genesis 3:24 get out parallels, or rather, is in contrast to Genesis 2:25. There you have God interacting with Adam and Eve, the parents of humankind; that result in naked and not ashamed, clean minds, and not confusion. That’s the FRAME OF MIND you need to reside IN the Garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve were. Very positive, very good.

Now, in chapter 3, the couple has become godlike with a small g. They have set themselves up in place of God, as gods, to handle their own affairs withOUT God’s intervention. The result is a SOILED FRAME OF MIND and confusion. That is the description of anyone who resides OUT of the Garden of Eden. Get out! Very negative, very bad.

It’s one or the other, IN or OUT. Just like the two worship systems. Let’s be clear. There are thousands of religions, all talking about G/god. I write G/g because they think they’re talking about God, but, in fact, they’re really arguing about god.

Most religions don’t even realize it because the Serpent and its servants are disguised as angels of light, “And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. Therefore, it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works” (2 Corinthians 11:14-15). That is a very hard concept to ingest, I understand. But many pastors, priests, men, and women of religion are frauds. That’s not what The Explanation is saying, that’s what God’s Word is telling you.

Please put 2 and 2 together. How many coherent complete pictures can you have with the SAME puzzle pieces? Only ONE. All the other arrangements of the pieces necessitate forcing some into the wrong position. Once one piece is out of place, you have to constrain other pieces or leave them out. Think, if there’s only ONE correct puzzle, then all the thousands of others are wrong.

Did I just say there’s a lot of false religions in the world? That’s what your Bible, God’s Word says, “Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in your name have cast out devils? and in your name done many wonderful works? 23 And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, you that work iniquity” (Matthew 7:22-23). God will say to MANY, GET OUT.

What does this mean? From a Godly point of view, that’s what we want, real theology. There is ONE coherent completeness. All the others are in the same boat: incoherent incompleteness. There are only TWO boats: Genesis 2:25, clean mind, no confusion = IN the Garden. Or, Genesis 3:24, dirty mind, confusion = GET OUT of the Garden.

There are TWO options. God calls them by various names and uses various parables to designate this. HOT or COLD. He spews out compromise and whatever is lukewarm (Rev. 3:16). This is a basic Bible principle. Please do your own study to witness this twosome. One is GOD’S way, the other is the SERPENT’S way. The Serpent’s way groups ALL erroneous teaching, be they 4 thousand, 4 million, or 4 billion. I hope you realize what this means for ecumenism.

Christ gave a parable to illustrate the two outcomes and the impassable chasm between them, Lazarus and the rich man.

Verse 26 states there’s an impasse between the  INSIDE and OUTSIDE of the Garden of Eden. Yes, there is the flaming sword to protect access to the Tree. Yes, Christ’s death reopened that access. Yes, there are gates into New Jerusalem but, you’re either IN or OUT.

The very last words of the Bible, in the book of Revelation, confirm these two and only two ways.

It’s either ALL IN or GET OUT and STAY OUT.

In the above parable of Lazarus and the rich man, Abraham says that the books of Moses and the prophets should be sufficient for the rich man’s brothers to HEAR and learn to respect God. At the time Christ uttered this parable, the New Testament was not yet written, so only the Old existed. That said, of and by themselves, if you HEAR Moses you can come to understand God and His way.

Note that the point of this parable is repent (verse 30) and persuasion (31). This is point 6 in how humans function: self-reproach or repentance. Christ is explaining that the persuasion to come to repentance is accessible via Moses and the prophets. Obviously, via the New Testament writings also.

That is the whole point of The Explanation. Simply to expound the book of Moses to help you see the Biblical Hebrew message. This older message says the same thing as the New Testament and one can reach the same goal. repentance. It’s up to each individual and their free will coupled with God’s calling.

Cherubim placed at the East of the Garden

Cherubim are high ranking creatures serving God’s plan. The Garden of Eden is the centerpiece, stronghold of His plan. I’m using modern talk to picture this scenario, you understand.

The Garden in Eden is hedged referring to a safe place where God’s servants are protected.

The Sanctuary, and specifically certain parts like the Holy of Holies are holy; they are pure and dedicated for holy use ONLY by certain Priests. I can’t get into the details here, but Ezekiel 42:20 reveals a description of God’s Temple with a WALL separating this holy area from the profane, which was all around; this is exactly the scenario and sense of the Biblical Hebrew word gan — garden. It is a protected area reserved for the holy.

At their creation, Adam and Eve were holy, placed in a holy environment. You know the rest of the story and how they were ousted because they lost their holiness. They exited via the EAST gate where the Cherubim stand guard (Gen. 3:24). The whole plan of God consists of bringing humankind BACK INTO the Garden of Eden, this protected holy place, via the East gate.

Ezekiel chapters 40-45 are an introductory description of the future Garden of Eden. There’s plenty more to add. Do you see the comparison? First, After Christ’s Return, He prepares His people (like Adam) in the presence of the Temple described in Ezekiel. Later, when God’s plan for humans is complete, comes  New Jerusalem, (like planting the Garden). If there’s not full righteousness, there’s no Garden, that’s why there’s no Garden today. Rev.12:12 relates the walls of New Jerusalem that will protect the saved who walk in the light. The ungodly cannot enter this holy city, just like the two cherubim protected entry to the Garden of Eden.

As an aside, you can study the dimensions of the Holy of Holies, in the portable desert Tabernacle, Solomon’s and Ezekiel’s Temple, and New Jerusalem. They’re all cubes of different dimensions, but all cubes with their entrance on the East. They all represent New Jerusalem, the ultimate Garden of Eden, which is God’s Dwelling as witnessed by the presence of the Mercy Seat in the Holy of Holies. That is the only place God “met WITH His people.”

God places His strongest and most trusted servants as permanent guards. See Further Study below for the meaning of placed. The location, the East, where the Cherubim stand guard is significant. East, in biblical terms, is the FRONT gate, the main entrance.

Note how religion has MISappropriated the East. Religious practices take a directly opposite approach.

East is the direction toward which the Earth rotates about its axis, and therefore the general direction from which the Sun appears to rise. The practice of praying towards the East is older than Christianity, but has been adopted by this religion as the Orient was thought of as containing mankind’s original home. Hence, some Christian churches have been traditionally oriented towards the east.

Christ comes from the East and enters the Temple on the East side, “For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be” (Matthew 24:27). The entries to most religious buildings are on the WEST and they face and pray to the East, to the sunrise, that’s tilling the soil.

Flaming Swords

I realize what I’m about to say and show you is ridiculously understated. The flaming swords remind me of laser swords that we’ve invented. Sophisticated lasers are used for protecting entry to valuable locations. Below is an example, in this case, the antagonist makes it through, NO one can get into the Garden without the go-ahead from God. Get out and stay out.

The Tree of Life cannot be uprooted and removed from the Garden of Eden, the two are inseparable. Under those circumstances, the only solution was to expulse Adam and Eve from the Garden and place two of the highest-ranking spirit beings, equipped with serious deterring devices, to keep out any would-be intruders.

As much as God still takes care of the basics of man’s existence He clearly sealed off admission to be with Him. Adam and Eve were thrust out and were now in Eden, still a pleasurable place mind you, even if it wasn’t the Garden.

What’s this all about? Does it mean mankind, you and I can never be with God again? If we are not with God then who are we really with? Who were Adam and Eve now with? And since Eve is the mother of us all, who is humanity with? Nothing more is said of the activity of the serpent, has he left the scene? We know it’s still there. The Explanation has answered all these questions.

None of the three protagonists in Genesis showed any real self-reproach for their misbehavior. Neither the Serpent nor the man and woman. Hence they are still in this period of judgment. It is a time of learning the lesson. And this period of learning includes agonizing. I agree, that’s unfortunate, but it is the result of either obeying the wrong ethics (human solutions) OR disobeying the right ethics (coats of skin).

God has no intention of allowing bickering people (wrong relationships) who aspire to be leaders (wrong rulership) into the Garden of Eden. That’s part of the reason Adam and Eve were ousted. The expulsion is SO HUMANITY CAN LEARN LESSONS, an important step on the way to rehabilitation. The Bible confirms this timeframe as we’ve seen. Genesis 3:15 refers to it with the “bruising of your head” The term “enmity between you (the Serpent) and the woman, and between your seed and her seed” refers to Eve’s descendants over a period of time, you and me, 6000 years later.

Their stay in the Garden of Eden was cut short, they had to bundle up their coats of skins and get out to a new abode in Eden, and later, their son and the rest of humanity would be ejected from there into this world.

There’s only ONE way back into the Garden through those two Cherubim and that’s for next week. The ultimate antidote to “this world.”

This blog post is an excerpt from chapter 5.6 of the book Agony of Humankind.

Further Study

Placed – H7931 (placed = permanent residence (Shikun in Israel as complementary to a Kibbutz, a settlement where you can buy your home not where everything belongs to the community))

שָׁכַן shâkan shaw-kan’; a primitive root (apparently akin (by transmission) to H7901 (שָׁכַב) through the idea of lodging; compare H5531 (סִכְלוּת), H7925 (שָׁכַם)); to reside or permanently stay (literally or figuratively):

KJV – abide, continue, (cause to, make to) dwell(-er), have habitation, inhabit, lay, place, (cause to) remain, rest, set (up).