Page 42 - The Divine Unfolding of God's Plan of Redemption

life-blood of those animals must be shed in order that Jehovah God might provide
Himself the wherewithal to clothe His children. Jehovah God Himself instituted the
first priestly sacrifice to continue till His Son should be “set forth to be a propitiation

through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that
are past…that He might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus”
(Rom. 3:25-26).

Such were the signs of eventual restoration, forgiveness, and felicity. But man was
now tabernacled in a body of death, possessed of an evil nature. Pending the final
redemption of the body, the defeat of the adversary, the reconstruction of all things,
certain inexorable moral laws must operate. The temporary tenure of His enemy must

be recognized by a legal God. The possessors of bodies of death must be banished
from the presence of God and from any access to the tree of life.

The Apostle John tells us in the Revelation, “I John saw the holy city, new

Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven” (Rev. 21:2). Later in the same
chapter he tells us that “one of the seven angels…carried me away in the spirit to a
great and high mountain, and showed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem,
descending out of heaven from God” (vss. 9-11), and “In the midst of the street of it,

and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life” (Rev. 22:2).

Here we see depicted a gloriously beautiful city with the tree of life in the midst
and a crystal river flowing, and this city is represented as “coming down” from God

out of heaven. Is it not reasonable to suppose that after our first parents were driven
out of the original earthly Eden, so similar in its description to the heavenly Jerusalem,
the whole was made to ascend into heaven, even as the new Jerusalem will one day
come down upon the renewed earth? Certainly such a glory spot as Eden is described

to have been has no place in a sin-cursed, Satan-dominated world, nor is there any
further record of such a place existing.

We look forward to the time when our beloved Christ is completely vindicated and

when all things lost in the fall will be restored to the believer through Him. “To him
that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the
paradise of God” (Rev. 2:7).

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