The Tree of Life Jun 1987

I want you to remember, while I read this, that this is being spoken by someone who had lived in eternity, that these words were not simply some beautiful poetic words, that he meant every word of it. He had been in a realm where this was true. And that the realm that he was in when he spoke this, that is the physical realm, was filled with pictures and types and shadows of this reality.

When the Lord Jesus said, I am the vine, he literally meant that. It’s just that you had to go somewhere else besides our world to see this reality. I am the vine and my father is the gardener. I am the vine, and you are the branches; If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit. Apart from me, you can do nothing. And the Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground, trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

A river watering the garden flowed from Eden, and from there it divided, and it had four head streams. The name of the first is Pison. I don’t know how to pronounce these words; I don’t speak Hebrew. It winds through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. The gold of that land is good. Aromatic resin and onyx are also there.

And that’s Genesis 2. Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. And on each side of the river was the tree of life bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.

Now, you have in your mind the concept of a tree about the size of a large tree; you are mistaken. The tree that is in Genesis and the tree of life that is in Revelation are the same tree. And the tree in Revelation gives us a hint as to the vastness of the tree as it was in the Garden of Eden. That tree reached in Revelation from one end of the city to the other and down the street. If we believe the measurements of that city, then that tree must be immeasurably high, for its length and its width and its breadth are approximately 1500 miles.

And that is why, as I stand here before you and try to explain to you what the Garden of Eden looked like, I am a mere man. And I cannot tell you what that garden looked like. And no man can unless he was there. I’ve not been there, but I have imagined that thing over and over and over and over again. My imagination has mounted up to its height and its length and its depth. It’s winged its way to the uttermost, and I still cannot tell you what that garden looked like, but I’ll try tonight to make a small stab at it.

Before we can tell the story of the Garden of Eden and the Tree of Life, the place where you are supposed to live. And we found out last week that man’s natural habitat is not heaven, nor is it earth. Man’s natural habitat before the fall, his habitat was not intended to be this planet, nor was it to be heaven; it was to be a place where heaven and earth overlapped – the garden. That’s where you’re supposed to be living right now. Well, one day you will, Annie, I promise you, you will. Now, before I can tell the story of that place where you’re supposed to be living, I have to tell you what happened just previous to that, or maybe it happened long before it, or maybe it happened during the time that Adam and Eve were taking their tour of that garden. I don’t know when it happened. You don’t know when it happened. But we have to hear this story in order for the rest to be understood.

There in splendor and in glory, somewhere near the throne of God, there came into the heart of one of the angels a creature that had fallen from the finger of God. There came from him the desire to lift himself above that throne, the throne you and I heard about. Now, that can mean one of two things: it can mean he tried to put himself above God and take the place of God, or it means that he had that moment when he did not wish to align himself with that throne. I don’t know. But I can tell you this: there was probably a war in the heavens.

There had never been anything like this before; there never was again. We’re going to imagine that Gabriel leads one third of the angels and Michael leads one third of the angels; these we will later find out were angels chosen by God before they were created. Predestined. You Presbyterians will revel at that word, declared to be chosen to be elect. Well, Gene, that’s unfair of God to that other one-third. I don’t understand that; maybe he didn’t make the decision himself. I only know that you have a God who can remember the past, but you also have a God who can remember the future. And in passing, did you know that there has never been any logical explanation given as to why we cannot do that? We’ll talk about that sometimes. According to the theory of relativity, you and I should be able to remember the future. You didn’t know that, did you? Scientifically, by all scientific knowledge, we should be able to remember the future and do not, and that is one of the mysteries of science. I know why: it’s because we’re hindered by a veil of flesh, but one day we’re going to be delivered from it, and we will see no more. We will remember the future. I hope so, that may be a nuisance.

He raised his sword. He raised himself above the throne of God. There was a horrible confrontation and a conflagration. I’m going to tell you a little story that never happened, but it’ll help you. The sun of the morning has been cast out of the heavens, and the angels have returned to their abode. Many of them have fallen on their knees. They are all weary and spent. The hand of Michael, the great warring angel, is welded to his sword. He cannot turn it loose. One of the angels asks the question, Shall he ever return? And Michael overhears the question being asked and says, he has access to this realm, but he cannot live here. He can return, but he cannot stay. He has been cast out of the heavenlies into the physical realm. And another angel asks, “What will he do there?” And Michael says, “I fear the worst.”

For he was guardian over one-third of creation. He was the guardian of the physical creation, and now he has entered it, and I fear that he will encircle the favored planet and there make war on man. And an angel asks, if that war comes, who will win? And Michael says, the prognosis is not good, for Lucifer is a higher form of life than Adam, and if they meet on the plains of battle, surely Lucifer will win. Now that didn’t take place, but I’ve told the story to make a point: that this archangel of light comes down and encircles this planet, and he’s invisible and cannot be seen.