Apostolic Friends Forum

Chapter One

Seeds

And the vine said unto them, should I leave my wine, which cheereth God and man, and go to be promoted over the trees?

Eternity, by definition, must extend in every direction. The scriptures tell of a forever and ever both before the earth, and after the earth. Like an island in the sea, our earth is immersed in eternity. Were a thinking man to juxtapose our brief 7,000 years of time on earth to the endless ocean of eternity around us, then we become invisible. Not even a blip on the radar, so here and gone. Let the same man also juxtapose biological life on earth to the vast and lifeless cosmos which swaddles us, and again, we disappear for smallness. We are brief and tiny beyond any calculation.
How profound it is then, that into such unseemly insignificance the son of the eternal God is born. By that birth alone this remote marvel called "life"...this rare jewel afloat in the frozen darkness of space...becomes valuable beyond measure. How valuable? So much so that the eternal God:
gave his only begotten son.
That he chose here of all the places in an endless universe is marvel enough. That he would then sacrifice his only begotten son to redeem humanity from the horrible infection of sin and death, reveals just how valuable human life is to God.

Since the beginning of time the invisible, spiritual world has been here with us. It existed long before the earth, and will be here long after the earth is gone. We can clearly see this invisible universe in the scriptures; but when we try to approach it, we are as the curious bird who crashes into the window. We cannot apprehend it.

My first book was about true biblical salvation in a very confused world. True salvation, as prophesied and preached by the apostles, has been under constant assault for nearly 2,000 years. As the law of gravity wore upon the raised arms of Moses at Jehovah-Nissi, so has the law of sin stretched and broadened the narrow way, leaving us with the cotton candy Christianity so rampant today. Salvation and life go hand in hand. To understand one is to understand the other. They are, after all, the two births, and both are marvelous to behold.

While we have already contrasted earths tininess to God's largeness, our journey has only just begun. Life, as it turns out, begins on a microscopic level, hidden from the naked eye. Not only so, but life is a pro-creative process. You came from the union of your father's seed and your mother's egg. Ad infinitum back to Adam and Eve where it all began.

Just as Levi was paying tithes in the loins of Abraham generations before he was actually born, so were we all in the loins of our father Adam in Eden. And what befell Adam in the Garden, befell the entire human race resident in his loins.
And as I may so say, Levi also, who receiveth tithes, paid tithes in Abraham. For he was yet in the loins of his father, when Melchisedec met him.

My Lord knows every leaf, branch, root and tendril that was present in the loins of Adam. This may be why names...even names from today...could be written in a book of life before the foundation of the world. In the loins of Adam, the chemical genius of the male seed began its long journey to present day.

That miracle seed comes from the contributions of at least seven different glands in the male reproductive system that God designed. These are:
* The Cowper gland
* The Littre gland
* The prostate gland
* The ampulla
* The epididymus
* The seminal vesicles
* The ductus deferens
These glands each contribute variously to the chemical structure of the happy ending. For example the epididymus lends l-carnitine and neutral glucosidase. The prostate gland mixes in some acid phosphatase, citric acid, inositol, calcium, zinc, and magnesium. From the seminal vesicles comes fructose, ascorbic acid, and prostaglandins. We've not even begun to trace these many base chemicals back to their origins inside our bodies, before the complexity of human life becomes quite apparent.

Given then, our incredible discoveries in the laboratory, and our scriptural placement way back in the loins of Adam, perhaps a closer look at Eden...where living souls on earth began...is in order.

Eden is the unfound pearl of great price in creation. So lightly and simply narrated, yet its impact upon all human life is astounding. Eden holds the key to understanding life, death, and the Revelation. In the vicinity of Eden pro-creation begins, and continues to this day. It is here that the Cain and Abel residing in each of us is first revealed, and where humanity's sin and death begins. Here is the last place on earth where the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is seen, and the tree of life...in the midst of the Garden...is here found. After Eden the tree of life disappears, and is not seen again until the end of the book of Revelation.

The trees of Eden are certainly a curious lot. The bible student will find them different from those trees made on the third day, before there was sun or moon. The Garden trees have a glaring discrepancy. Third Day trees are thrice given a very important clarifier:
Whose seed is in itself.
This is not so with Eden's trees. Of equal interest is that what is true of Third Day trees is also true of humanity, whose seed is in themselves.

The trees in the Garden of Eden were pleasant to man's sight, and good for food. And of the many varieties God made that day, only two are mentioned by name:
* The tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
* The tree of life.
It's not until later in scripture that we learn the Garden of God also grew cedar, fir, and chestnut trees, among others.

As Eve stands looking at the tree of knowledge, we are introduced to the trifecta of temptation that will plague mankind for the rest of his time on earth: the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. One has to wonder what that magnificent tree looked like, that the scripture would say of Eve:
And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise...
Many are the trees on earth whose fruit looks good for food. In the spring bloom, there are countless trees that are pleasant to the eyes. But who ever heard of looking at a tree, and feeling a desire well up within them, that this tree could make me wise? Dates and apples are fruit, and are good for food. But life is not a fruit growing on a tree. Neither is knowledge a fruit. And my Lord knows that this aberration sticks out like a sore thumb to those who study his word. What does life and knowledge look like when dangling from tree branches? In the short biography of Adam, trees that grow abstract spiritual ideas rather than edible fruit, may be an early indication of a spiritual world woven into our tangible world.

Further: that these two abstracts are to be ingested or abstained from, brings our wonderfully complex physical bodies into the equation. We cannot know what was subtracted and what was added in the Garden fall. In this short life we shall not find out what chemicals, protein chains, molecules, atoms, or sub-atomic particle mixtures were hidden within the fruit from the tree of life. Whatever they were, these elements were abruptly subtracted from Adam's complex system. Likewise unknowable is the content of the pulp from the fruit borne by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. These mysterious elements were suddenly introduced into Adam's complex biology.

Then, just beyond the amazing biology and chemistry, is that the knowledge of good...when set against the tree of life...is far more lethal than the knowledge of evil. Here is perhaps an early peek at the enemy of our souls, the angel of light.

The trees in the Garden of Eden...and by extension Eden itself...take on new dimension in the mouths of the prophets. Though many prophets contributed, perhaps Isaiah and Ezekiel yielded the most latitude to the Spirit of God, in giving humanity a very privilaged glimpse inside of Eden. Consider first that as Adam and Eve beheld the brilliance of the tree of life and the dazzling beauty of the tree of knowledge, that neither was the most commanding tree gracing the skyline. One tree in that Garden towered above them all:
The cedars in the Garden of God could not hide him: the fir trees were not like his boughs, and the chestnut trees were not like his branches; nor any tree in the Garden of God was like unto him in his beauty.

I have made him fair by the multitude of his branches; so that all the trees of Eden, that were in the Garden of God, envied him.

To whom art thou thus like in glory and in greatness among the trees of Eden?

First we allowed the anomaly of two intangibles...life and knowledge...to take the form of fruit dangling from trees. Now, the prophets credit this great tree with nouns and attributes which clearly exceed those normally associated with trees. Moreover, this greatest of Eden's trees is cursed...not to lie on the forest floor and decompose...but to lie in the midst of the uncircumcised, in the nether parts of the earth. In the mouth of Jotham: the olive tree prefers his fatness, the fig tree his sweetness, and the vine his cheerful wine, rather than a promotion to rule over the trees. In summary, any student of the scriptures...any thinking soul...must ask himself: are we really talking about just trees here?