466. The Fact That Two Trees - the Tree of Life, and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil [Genesis 2:9] - Were Placed in the Garden of Eden Means That Free Choice in Spiritual Matters Has Been Granted to Humankind

Many have come to believe that Adam and Eve in the Book of Moses do not mean the first created people. They support their position with evidence that people existed before Adam, which is based on calculations and the chronologies of various peoples. They also point to what Cain, the firstborn of Adam, said to Jehovah:

"I will be a wanderer and an itinerant on the earth - whoever encounters me will kill me. " Therefore Jehovah placed a mark on Cain so that whoever encountered him would not kill him. (Genesis 4:14-15)

And after he left the presence of Jehovah, he lived in the land of Nod and built a city. (Genesis 4:16-17)

Therefore the land was inhabited before Adam.

But Adam and his wife mean the earliest church on this planet. This is demonstrated in a number of ways in Secrets of Heaven, which I published in London. That work also indicates that the Garden of Eden means the wisdom of the people of that church; the tree of life means the Lord is in us and we are in the Lord; the tree of the knowledge of good and evil means we are not in the Lord but in a sense of our own autonomy instead, like people who believe that they do everything, even what is good, on their own; and eating from this tree means incorporating evil into ourselves.

339. We are to believe or have faith in God our Savior Jesus Christ because this is believing in a God who can be seen, in whom is what cannot be seen. Faith in a God who can be seen - who is both human and divine at the same time - goes deep within us. Although faith is earthly in its form, it is spiritual in its essence. Within us faith becomes both spiritual and earthly, in that everything spiritual has to be received in what is earthly to become anything to us. Something purely spiritual does indeed enter us but we do not accept it. It is like the ether that flows in and out of us without having any effect. For something to have an effect, we have to be mentally aware of it and open to it. We have no such awareness or openness unless something affects our earthly self.

On the other hand, faith that is entirely earthly, meaning faith that is deprived of its spiritual essence, is a mere persuasion or knowledge, not faith. A persuasion outwardly imitates faith, but because there is nothing spiritual inside it, there is nothing in it that saves. This is the type of faith possessed by all people who deny that the Lord's human manifestation is divine. This is what the Arian faith was like and what the Socinian faith is like. Both of these faiths rejected the Lord's divinity.

What is a faith that is not directed toward some object? It is like our eyesight directed into deep space, which falls into a void and perishes. It is like a bird flying beyond the atmosphere into space, where it dies for lack of breath as if it were in a vacuum pump.

This type of faith lives in the human mind the way the winds live in the halls of Aeolus, or the way light lives in a shooting star: it rises into view like a comet with a long tail, but it also goes by like a comet and disappears.

[2] To put it briefly, faith in a God who cannot be seen is actually blind faith, because the human mind that has this type of faith does not see its God. Because the light of this faith is not both spiritual and earthly, it is a faint, deceptive light. Its light is like the light of a firefly, the light at night over swamps and marshes that contain sulfur, or the light in rotting wood. Nothing stands out in this light except imaginary things that you think you see, but they do not exist.

Faith in a God who cannot be seen gives no light, especially when people think of God as a spirit, and think of a spirit as being like the ether. People then view God the way they view the ether. They look for him in the universe, and when they do not find him there, they believe that nature is the god of the universe. This is the origin of the materialist philosophy that is prevalent these days.

Yet the Lord said that no one has ever heard the voice of the Father or seen what he looks like (John 5:37). He also said, "No one has ever seen God; the only begotten Son, who is close to the Father's heart, has revealed him" (John 1:18). "No one has seen the Father except the One who is with the Father. He has seen the Father" (John 6:46). Also, no one comes to the Father except through him (John 14:6). And furthermore, if we see and recognize him, we see and recognize the Father (John 14:7 and following).

[3] Faith in the Lord God our Savior is a different kind of faith. Because he is both divine and human, we can turn to him and see him in our thoughts. This is not a faith with no object. It has an object from whom and in whom we have faith. If we have seen an emperor or a monarch, every time we remember that person an image of him or her comes to mind; in the same way, once we accept this faith it remains.

The gaze of this faith can be compared to looking at a shining white cloud with an angel in its midst who is inviting us to enter it and be raised into heaven. This is how the Lord looks to people who have faith in him. The Lord comes closer to us all as we recognize and acknowledge him. This occurs as we come to know and follow his principles, which are to abstain from evil things and do good things. At last he comes into our house and makes a home in us along with the Father who is in him, as the following words in John indicate:

Jesus said, "The people who love me are those who have my commandments and follow them. Those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and manifest myself to them. We will come to them and make a home with them. " (John 14:21, 23)

These sentences were written in the presence of the Lord's twelve apostles. While I was writing them, the Lord sent the apostles to me.