By David Chilton
While I was in seminary, I attended a class that taught me more about the Bible than all my other courses combined. The class was taught by James Jordan. But Jim was not a teacher at the seminary; he was a student. And the class he taught was held at the adult Sunday School of St. Paul's Presbyterian Church, in Jackson, Mississippi. The understanding of Scripture that I received from Jordan's insights has served as a basis for virtually all my subsequent Bible study and teaching; and I believe it will prove to be just as helpful to other Bible teachers.
In his class, Jim began at the beginning (or almost the beginning) with the Garden of Eden. Essentially, he was teaching biblical theology, the study of God's progressive revelation of salvation. In principle, the whole of redemption is taught in the early chapters of the Bible: the chapters that follow simply build on the foundation laid there. This is why, as we shall see below, the later revelations depend so heavily on the theme of the Garden of Eden. The story of Eden contains the three basic motifs of all biblical revelation: Creation, the Fall, and Redemption in Christ. Unless you teach older students, I am not necessarily suggesting that you simply teach the following outline in the form in which I am giving it. Instead, I suggest that you study it for yourself, looking up the references, adding other ingredients from your own studies, and internalizing the principles so that they can inform the content of your Bible storytelling.
By beginning our study of the Bible where the Bible begins, we can more readily understand the rest of the Bible, and why the prophets said what they said in the way they said it. The basic concepts are easy to teach to any age group; and once they are grasped, the ideas of the Covenant, the Kingdom, the Law, Salvation, and (I give you fair warning!) Postmillennialism naturally flow forth from them. We will begin our study with a basic statement of the nature of biblical salvation and its relationship to the Edenic theme in general; and then we will consider, in more detail, the various characteristics of the Garden and their development throughout Scripture. Even though I will be giving only a bare-bones outline, the study is lengthy, and will be continued in next month's issue.
The Nature Of Salvation
One of the basic themes of Scripture is that salvation restores man to his original purpose. In the beginning God created man in His own image, in order that man would have dominion (Genesis 1:26-28). That task of dominion began in the Garden of Eden, but it was not supposed to end there, for man was ordered to have dominion over the whole earth: Adam and Eve (and their children) were to extend the blessings of the Garden throughout the entire world. But when man rebelled, he lost the ability to have godly dominion, because he lost fellowship with his Creator. While fallen man is still the image of God (Genesis 9:6), he is a naked image (Genesis 3:7), for he has lost his original covering the glory of God (Romans 3:23). The image of God remains, to some extent, in all men but the image has become twisted, marred, disfigured and broken as a result of sin. And the earth, which was planned to become God's Garden-Temple, has instead become a wilderness of thorns, thistles, sweat, scarcity, pollution and death (Genesis 3:17-19; Isaiah 24:1-6; Romans 5:12). Man was banished from the Garden, and forbidden to enter it again.
But that is not the end of the story. On the very day that God pronounced judgment upon man and the earth, He pronounced a greater judgment upon the Tempter, declaring that the Redeemer would come someday to crush the Serpent's head (Genesis 3:15). Accordingly, the Apostle John tells us that "the Son of God appeared for this purpose, that He might destroy the works of the devil" (1 John 3:8). Christ came as the Second Adam, in order to undo the damage brought through the First Adam (1 Corinthians 15:22, 45; Romans 5:15-19). God had breathed into Adam the breath (= Spirit) of Life, but Adam's rebellion brought death into the world. In salvation, Christ again breathes into His people the Spirit of Life (John 20:22) Eternal Life, which sets us free from the curse of sin and death (Romans 8:2), and which will ultimately result in the restoration of the entire creation (Romans 8:19-21). In Christ we are a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17), because we have been re-created in God's image (Ephesians 4:24; Col. 3:10), and clothed again with the glory of God (Romans 8:29-30; 2 Corinthians 3:18; Philippians 3:20-21). And, this time, the security of the restored image of God is guaranteed, because our standing is in the Christ who can never fail. In him we have Eternal Life.
Salvation, therefore, restores man to his original position and purpose, and guarantees that man's original mandate to exercise dominion under God over the whole earth will be fulfilled. Ultimately, biblical salvation turns back the Curse, brings back Edenic conditions, repairs personal and social relationships, and blesses the earth in every area. The whole earth will be saved, and made into the Garden of God. "For the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea" (Isaiah 11:9).
In a very real sense (and progressively as the Gospel conquers the world) God's people have always lived in "the Garden." For example, the land of Egypt is described in Genesis 13:10 as being "like the Garden of the LORD" and when the Covenant people went there to live, they were given the area of Goshen, which was the best in all Egypt (Genesis 45:18; 47:5-6, 11, 27). In this Edenic location they were fruitful, and multiplied (Exodus 1:7) the same expression. as in God's original command to Adam and Eve in the Garden! The Promised Land also, as we would expect, was a land where much of the Curse had been reversed: it was "as the Garden of Eden" (Joel 2:3), and therefore "flowing with milk and honey" (Exodus 3:8).
As we shall see below, the restoration of Eden is an essential aspect of the salvation that Christ provides. When the Old Testament prophets foretold the coming of the Christ and the blessings He would bring, they often spoke in the language of Eden-restoration. Isaiah wrote: "For the LORD shall comfort Zion: He will comfort all her waste places; and He will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the Garden of the LORD; joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving, and the voice of melody" (Isaiah 51:3). And Ezekiel, many years later, prophesied: "Thus saith the Lord GOD; In the day that I shall have cleansed you from all your iniquities I will also cause you to dwell in the cities, and the wastes shall be builded. And the desolate land shall be tilled, whereas it lay desolate in the sight of all that passed by. And they shall say, This land that was desolate is become like the Garden of Eden; and the waste and desolate and ruined cities are become fenced, and are inhabited" (Ezekiel 36:33-35).
But there is much more in these prophecies (and others) regarding the restoration of Eden than we might notice at first glance. Indeed, there are many, many passages of Scripture which speak of the Eden-concept which do not mention Eden by name. The Edenic motif runs throughout the whole Bible, from Genesis to Revelation; but in order to recognize it we must first familiarize ourselves with what God's word says about the original Garden itself. God has gone to the trouble to tell us some very specific information about the Garden, and Scripture refers to this information again and again. Note well: This study is not merely a collection of trivia, of "strange and interesting facts about the Bible" (e.g., the sort of irrelevant data that is often to be found in the "encyclopedia" sections of big family Bibles). It is, I repeat, a major biblical theme. And our reasons for studying it are that we may more fully understand God's word, trust in His promises, obey His law, and inherit His blessings. In the following sections we will examine the various characteristics of the Garden, taking special notice of how each of these becomes a "subtheme" in itself, in terms of the general theme of Eden-restoration in salvation.
Location Of The Garden
Although we commonly use the terms Eden and Garden of Eden synonymously (as the Bible occasionally does also), Genesis 2:8 tells us that the Garden was planted by God on the east side of the area known as Eden a land which originally lay to the north of Palestine (cf. Psalm 48:2; Isaiah 14:13; Ezekiel 28:14; and the discussion of the rivers, below). When man lost fellowship with God and was driven out of the Garden, he evidently went out from the east side, since that was where God stationed the cherubim who guarded the Garden from intruders (Genesis 3:24). Apparently, the godly tended to stay near the eastern entrance of the Garden for some time perhaps bringing their sacrifices to the "gate" for when Cain fled from "the presence of the LORD," he headed for parts farther east (Genesis 4:16), away from God and godly men. It is thus significant that the entrance to the Tabernacle was from the east side (Exodus 27:13-16): to enter God's presence through redemption is a gracious re-admittance to Eden. Ezekiel's vision of the universal triumph of the Gospel shows the healing River of Life flowing out from the doors of the restored Temple (the Church, Ephesians 2:19-22) toward the east (Ezekiel 47:1-12); and, as a precursor of the day when the wealth of all the nations will be brought into the household of God (Isaiah 60:4-16; Haggai 2:6-9; Psalm 72:10-11; Revelation 21:24-26), the birth of the King of kings was honored by wise men bringing gifts from the east (Matthew 2:1-2, 11).
A major key to the location of the original Garden of Eden is the fact that the four great rivers which watered the earth derived from the one river in Eden (Genesis 2:10-14). The Flood drastically altered the geography of the world, and two of these rivers (the Pishon and the Gihon) no longer exist. The other two rivers are the Tigris ("Hiddekel") and the Euphrates, which do not now originate from the same source, as they did then. But the Bible does tell us where these rivers were located: The Pishon flowed through the land of Havilah (Arabia); the Gihon flowed through Cush (Ethiopia); the Tigris flowed through Assyria; and the Euphrates flowed through Syria and Babylon (from whence it now meets up with the Euphrates, about 40 miles above the Persian Gulf). The common source for these four rivers was, of course, north of Palestine, and probably due north, in the area of Armenia and the Black Sea which is also the place where the human race began again after the Flood (Genesis 8:4). Eden, as the source of water for the earth, was the source of blessing for all life, dispensing the basis for existence, health, and prosperity to all God's creatures.
For this reason, water becomes an important symbol in Scripture for the blessings of salvation. In the individual believer, salvation is a well of water springing up into eternal life (John 4:14); but just as the river of Eden was fed by a multitude of springs (Genesis 2:6; rendered a mist in most translations, but the NIV rendering is more likely), the giver of life becomes a river of living water, flowing out of from the Church to all the world (John 7:37-39; Ezekiel 47:1-12; Zecharaiah 14:8), healing and restoring the whole earth, so that even the desert lands become transformed into a Garden (Isaiah 32:13-17; 35:12). As the spirit is poured out, "Israel shall blossom and bud, and fill the face of the world with fruit" (Isaiah 27:6).
Finally, a very important aspect of Eden's location is that it was on a mountain (Eden itself was probably a plateau on the mountaintop). This follows from the fact that the source of water for the world was in Eden (since water flows downhill, not up). Furthermore, when God speaks to Satan (the evil angel who was behind the king of Tyre; cf. Daniel 10:13, 20), He says: "Thou hast been in Eden, the Garden of God .... thou wast upon the holy mountain of God" (Ezekiel 28:13-14). That Eden was the original "holy mountain" explains the significance of God's choice of mountains as sites for His redemptive acts and revelations. The substitutionary atonement in place of Abraham's seed took place on Mount Moriah (Genesis 22:2). It was also on Mount Moriah that David saw the Angel of the LORD ready to destroy Jerusalem, until David built an altar there and made atonement through sacrifice (1 Chronicles 21:15-17). And on Mount Moriah Solomon built the Temple (2 Chronicles 3:1). God's gracious revelation of His presence, His Covenant, and His law was made on Mount Sinai. The people were forbidden to approach the holy mountain, on pain of death (Exodus 19:12; cf. Genesis 3:24). But Moses (the Mediator of the Old Covenant, Gal. 3:19), the priests, and the 70 elders of the people were allowed to meet God on the mountain (after making an atoning sacrifice), and there they ate and drank Communion before the Lord (Exodus 24:1-11).
In His first major sermon, the Mediator of the New Covenant delivered the law again, from a mountain (Matthew 5:1). His official appointment of His apostles was made on a mountain (Mk. 3:13-19). On a mountain He was transfigured before His disciples in a blinding revelation of His glory (Matthew 17:1-2; called "the holy mountain" in 2 Pet. 1:16-18). On a mountain he gave His final announcement of judgment upon the faithless Covenant people (Matthew 24:3). After the Last Supper, the Lord ascended a mountain with His disciples, and proceeded from there to a Garden, where as the Last Adam He prevailed over temptation (Matthew 26:30, 36; cf. Matt, 4:8-11, at the beginning of His ministry). Finally, He commanded His disciples to meet Him on a mountain, where He commissioned them to conquer the nations with the Gospel, and promised to send the Holy Spirit; and from there He ascended into the Cloud (Matthew 28:16-20; Acts 1:1-19; and we'll see more about that Cloud in a future study).
I have by no means exhausted the list that might be given of biblical references to God's redemptive activities on mountains; but enough have been mentioned here to demonstrate the fact that in redemption God is calling us to return to Eden: We have access to the Holy Mountain of the Lord through the shed blood of Christ. We have come to Mount Zion (Hebrews 12:22), and may boldly approach the holy place (Hebrews 10:19), granted by God's grace to partake again of the Tree of Life (Revelation 2:7). Christ has built His Church as a City on a Hill, to give light to the world (Matthew 5:14), and the nations will come to the light (Isaiah 60:3). The prophets are full of this mountain-imagery, testifying that the world will be turned into Eden: "And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the LORD's house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it" (Isaiah 2:2; cf. Isaiah 2:2-4; 11:9; 25:6-9; 56:3-8; 65:25; Micah 4:1-4). And the day will come when God's Kingdom, His Holy Mountain, will fill the whole earth (Daniel 2:34-35, 44-45), as God's original mandate is fulfilled by the Last Adam.
Minerals In The Garden
The Pishon river, originating in Eden, traversed "the land of Havilah, where there is gold; and the gold of that land is good; there is bdellium and the onyx stone" (Genesis 2:11-12). The intent of these verses is clearly to connect in our minds the Garden of Eden with precious stones and minerals; and this point is made in other biblical passages which speak of Eden. The most obvious reference is in God's statement to Satan (part of which was quoted above): "Thou hast been in Eden the Garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold" (Ezekiel 28:13). The ground seems to have been fairly littered with jewelry of all sorts: "Thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire" that is, stones with a fiery, radiant appearance (Ezekiel 28:14). The abundance of jewelry is regarded here as a blessing: fellowship with God in Eden meant being surrounded with beauty. Moses tells us that the gold of that land was good (i.e. in its native state, unmixed with other minerals). The fact that gold must now be mined from the earth by costly methods is a result of the Curse, particularly in the judgment of the Flood.
The stone that is called onyx in Scripture may be identical to the stone of that name today, but no one knows for sure; and there is even less certainty regarding the nature of bdellium. But some very interesting things about these stones appear as we study the biblical history of salvation. When God redeemed His people from Egypt, He ordered the High Priest to wear special garments (we will more closely examine those garments in a later section). On his shoulders, the High Priest was to wear two onyx stones, with the names of the 12 tribes written upon them; and God declares these stones to be "stones of memorial" (Exodus 25:7; 28:9-12). A memorial of what? The only mention of the onyx prior to the Exodus is in Genesis 2:12, having to do with the Garden of Eden. God wanted His people to look at the High Priest who was in many ways a symbol of man fully restored in God's image and thus to remember the blessings of the Garden, when man was in communion with God. The stones were to serve as reminders to the people that in saving them God was restoring His People to Eden.
An even more striking example of this is in what we are told about God's provision of manna. In itself, manna was a reminder of Eden: for even while God's people were in the wilderness (on their way to the promised land of abundance), food was plentiful, good-tasting, and easy to find as, of course, it had been in the Garden. But just in case they might miss the point, Moses recorded that manna was the color of bdellium (Numbers 11:7) the only occurrence of that word apart from its original mention in Genesis! And this, by the way, tells us the color of bdellium, since we are told elsewhere (Exodus 16:31),that manna was white. In our Lord's messages to the Church in the Book of Revelation, Edenic imagery is used again and again to describe the nature of salvation (see Revelation 2-3), and on one occasion He promises: "To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone ..." (Revelation 2:17).
It is noteworthy that these statements regarding onyx and bdellium were made as Israel was traveling through the land of Havilah! As they journeyed, they could observe the terrible effects of the Curse, which had turned this beautiful and well-watered land into a "waste and howling wilderness" while they, through grace, were able to enjoy the blessings of the Garden of Eden. This theme of Eden-restoration was also evident in the abundant use of gold for the furnishings of the Tabernacle (Exodus 25) and the Temple (1 Kings 6), and for the garments of the High Priest (Exodus 28). The forfeited privileges of the First Adam are restored to us by the Last Adam, as we once again come into God's presence through our High Priest.
In their prophecies of the coming Messiah and His blessings, the Old Testament prophets concentrated on this Edenic imagery of jewelry, describing salvation in terms of God's adorning of His people with stones:
Behold, I will lay thy stones with fair colors, and lay thy foundations with sapphires. And I will make thy windows of agates, and all thy borders of pleasant stones (Isaiah 54:11-12). The abundance of the sea shall be converted unto thee, the wealth of the nations shall come unto thee.... They shall bring gold and incense; and they shall show forth the praises of the LORD.... Surely the isles shall wait for me, and the ships of Tarshish first, to bring thy sons from far, their silver and their gold with them, unto the name of the LORD thy God, and to the Holy One of Israel, because He hath glorified thee.... Therefore thy gates shall be open continually; they shall not be shut day nor night; that men may bring unto thee the wealth of the nations, and that their kings may be brought (Isaiah 60:5-6, 9, 11).
In line with this theme, the Bible describes us (Mal. 3:17) and our work for God's Kingdom (1 Corinthians 3:11-15) in terms of jewelry: the whole City of God is a dazzling, brilliant display of precious stones (Revelation 21:18-21). This, too, is why Scripture always measures money by weight, by hard currency (Leviticus 19:35-37), and condemns all forms of inflation as a debasement of currency (Proverbs 11:1; 20:10, 23; Isaiah 1:22; Amos 8:5-6; Micah 6:10-12). Money originated in the Garden of Eden. God has imputed value to precious metals and stones, and built in us an attraction to them; but He has also made it clear that these things cannot be permanently owned or enjoyed apart from fellowship with Him. The ungodly are allowed to mine for these materials, and to own them for a time, in order that their wealth may be ultimately possessed by the restored people of God: "Though he [the wicked man] heap up silver as the dust, and prepare raiment as the clay; he may prepare it, but the just shall put it on, and the innocent shall divide the silver" (Job 27:16-17). "To the sinner He giveth travail, to gather and to heap up, that he may give to him that is good before God" (Ecc. 2:26). "He that by usury and unjust gain increaseth his substance, he shall gather it for him that will pity the poor" (Proverbs 28:8). Indeed, throughout history "the wealth of the sinner is laid up for the just" (Proverbs 13:22), "for evildoers shall be cut off: but those that wait upon the LORD, they shall inherit the earth" (Psalm 37:9). A God-fearing nation will be blessed with abundance, while apostate nations will eventually lose their resources. Twenty years ago, the USA had two billion ounces of silver; since then we have been losing it at the rate of 100 million ounces per year, as the Curse has been inflicted upon our rebellious land.
Animals In The Garden
In Eden, before the Fall, there was no death (Romans 5:12). Animals were not "wild," and Adam was able to name (i.e. classify) the animals without fear (Genesis 2:19-20). But man's rebellion resulted in terrible changes throughout the world. The nature of animals was altered, so that they became a threat to the peace and safety of man. The dominion over them that Adam had exercised was lost.
In Christ, however, man's dominion has been restored (Psalm 8:5-8 with Hebrews 2:6-9). Thus, when God saved His people, this effect of the Curse began to be reversed. He led them through a dangerous wilderness, protecting them from the snakes and scorpions (Deuteronomy 8:15), and He promised that their life in the Promised Land would be Eden-like in its freedom from the ravages of wild animals: "And I will give peace in the land, and ye shall lie down, and none shall make you afraid; and I will rid evil beasts out of the land" (Leviticus 26:6). In fact, this is why God did not allow Israel to exterminate the Canaanites all at once: the heathen served as a buffer between the Covenant people and the wild animals (Exodus 23:29-30; Deuteronomy 7:22)!
Accordingly, when the prophets foretold the coming salvation in Christ, they described it in the same terms of Edenic blessing: "And I will make a Covenant of peace with them, and will cause the evil beasts to cease out of the land; and they shall dwell safely in the wilderness, and sleep in the woods" (Ezekiel 34:25). "No lion shall be there, nor any ravenous beast shall go up thereon, it shall not be found there; but the redeemed shall walk there" (Isaiah 35:9). In fact, the Bible goes so far as to say that through the Gospel's permeation of the world the wild nature of the animals will be transformed into its Edenic condition: "The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking , child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice's den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORI), as the waters cover the sea" (Isaiah 11:6-9; cf. 65:25).
On the other hand, God warned, the Curse would reappear if the people turned away from God's law: "I will also send wild beasts among you, which shall rob you of your children, and destroy your cattle, and make you few in number" (Leviticus 26:22; cf. Numbers 21:6; Deuteronomy 28:26; 2 Kings 2:24; 17:25; Ezekiel 5:17; 14:15; 32:4; Revelation 6:8). When a culture departs from God, He surrenders its people to the dominion of wild animals, in order to prevent them from having ungodly dominion over the earth. But in a godly culture this threat against life and property will progressively disappear; and ultimately, when the knowledge of God shall cover the earth, the animals will be tamed, and harnessed again to the service of God's Kingdom.
By David Chilton
Trees In The Garden
It goes without saying of course, that a fundamental aspect of the Garden of Eden is that it was a Garden: every kind of beautiful and fruit bearing tree had been planted there by God (Genesis 2:9). Before the Fall, there was no scarcity: food was abundant and cheap, and man did not have to spend much time in search of sustenance and refreshment. Instead, his time was spent in scientific, productive and aesthetic activity (Genesis 2:15, 19-20). Most of his labor involved investigating and beautifying his environment. But when he rebelled, this was changed, and the Curse was inflicted upon his labor and his natural surroundings: "Cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; in the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return " (Genesis 3:17-19). God imposed the curse of scarcity, and the major part of human labor became a search for food.
But in salvation God restores His people to Eden, and food becomes cheaper and easier to find. In turn, more time can be spent on other activities: the growth of culture is possible only when food is relatively abundant. God gives His people food in order to give them dominion. The biblical history of salvation demonstrates this again and again. In places too numerous to list here completely, godly men are mentioned as living near trees (see Genesis 18:4, 8; 30:37; Jud. 3:13; 4:5; 1 Kings 19:5; John 1:48; and, in a modern translation, see Genesis 12:6; 13:18; 14:13; Jud. 4:11). In none of these references is the mention of the trees absolutely essential to the story itself: in a sense, we might think such a detail could have been left out. But God wants us to get the picture in our minds of His people living in the midst of abundance, surrounded by the blessings of the Garden as they are restored in salvation. When Israel is blessed, we find every man sitting under his own vine and fig tree (1 Kings 4:25), and the same is prophesied of all men who will live under the blessings of the Christ, when all nations shall flow to the Mountain of the Lord (Micah 4:1-4; Zecharaiah 3:10).
For this reason the Edenic imagery of trees, planting and fruit is used throughout Scripture to describe God's work of salvation. In singing about God's deliverance of His people into the new Eden, Moses said: "Thou shalt bring them in, and plant them in the mountain of thine inheritance" (Exodus 15:17). The godly man is "like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper" (Psalm 1:3; cf. Jeremiah 17:7-8). The Covenant people are "as gardens by the river's side, as the trees of lign aloes which the LORD hath planted, and as cedar trees beside the waters" (Numbers 24:6); "Israel shall blossom and bud, and fill the face of the world with fruit" (Isaiah 27:6).
The lampstand in the Tabernacle was a reminder of Eden: it was usually a stylized tree, decked with artificial bulbs and flowers, all made of pure gold (Exodus 37:17-24). The Temple also was richly furnished with Edenic-restoration symbolism: the cedar walls displayed carvings of gourds, flowers, palm trees and cherubim, overlaid with gold (1 Kings 6:15-36; cf. the vision of the restored Temple [the Church] in Ezekiel 41:18-20). The Ark of the Covenant contained not only the Law but also a golden pot of manna and Aaron's rod which was miraculously covered with buds, blossoms, and almonds (Hebrews 9:4).
The High Priest was a living symbol of man fully restored to the Garden. His forehead was covered with a gold plate, on which was engraved HOLINESS TO THE LORD (Exodus 28:38), as a symbol of the removal of the Curse on Adam's brow. His breastplate was covered with gold and precious stones (Exodus 28:15-30), and the hem of his robe was ringed with pomegranates and golden bells (Exodus 28:33-35). As another symbol of freedom from the Curse, the robe itself was made of linen (Exodus 28:6), for while they were ministering, the priests were forbidden to wear any wool at all: "No wool shall come upon them ... . They shall not gird themselves with anything that causeth sweat" (Ezekiel 44:17-18). In Genesis 3:18-19, sweat is an aspect of fallen man's labor under death and the Curse; the priest, as Restored Man, was to wear the light material of linen to show the removal of the Curse in salvation.
This last point, by the way, explains the Old Testament prohibition against wearing a mixture of wool and linen (Leviticus 19:19: Deuteronomy 22:11). It was not a prohibition against mingled materials in general, such as a cotton/nylon shirt; instead, the symbolism referred to the relationship of the material to sweat. The people were forbidden to mix life and death (see, e.g., Deuteronomy 12:23; 14:21; 20:19-20), and the sweat associated with wool was a symbol of death, while linen symbolized the righteous standing of the man who had been freed from the Curse (Revelation 19:8).
Edenic symbolism was also in the feasts of Israel, as they celebrated the bounty of God's provision and enjoyed the fullness of life and prosperity under the Covenant. This is particularly true of the Feast of Tabernacles (or "Ingathering," in Exodus 23:16). In this feast they were required to leave their homes and live for seven days in "tabernacles," or booths, made entirely of "the boughs of goodly trees, branches of palm trees, and the boughs of thick trees, and willows of the brook" (Leviticus 23:40). Israel usually dwelled in walled cities, as a protection against their enemies; yet, at the very time of prosperity (the end of harvest) when attack would seem most likely God ordered them to leave the security of their homes and journey to Jerusalem, to live in unprotected booths made of leafy boughs! God promised, however, that He would keep the heathen from attacking during the festivals (Exodus 34:23-24), and Israel had to trust in His strength.
The feast was, obviously, a reminder of life in Eden, when walled cities were unnecessary; and it looked forward to the day when the world would be turned into Eden, and the nations would beat their swords into plowshares (Micah 4:3). For this reason they were also commanded to sacrifice 70 bullocks during the feast (Numbers 29:12-38). Why? Because the number of the original nations of the earth was 70 (Genesis 10), and the feast celebrated the ingathering of all nations into God's kingdom; thus atonement was made for all.
It is important to remember that the Jews did not keep this feast in fact, they forgot it was even in the Bible until their return from captivity under Ezra and Nehemiah (Nehemiah 8:13-18). When they finally began to keep it, they began also to recognize its meaning as an acted-out prophecy of the conversion of all the nations (since understanding comes through obedience; Psalm 119:98-100; John 7:17). God enlightened the minds of the prophets to understand the significance of the feast during this time of renewal. On the last day of this feast (Haggai 2:1), God spoke through Haggai: "I will shake all nations, and the desire [wealth] of all nations shall come; and I will fill this House [the Temple] with glory" (Haggai 2:7). About this same time, Zechariah prophesied about the meaning of the feast in terms of the conversion of all nations and the sanctification of every area of life (Zecharaiah 14:16-21). And hundreds of years later, during the celebration of this same feast, Christ Himself declared its meaning: the outpouring of the Spirit upon the restored believer, so that the Church becomes a channel of restoration to the whole world (John 4:37-39; cf. Ezekiel 47:1-12)
Israel was to be the means of bringing the blessings of the Garden of Eden to the whole world: Scripture goes out of its way to portray this Great Commission symbolically when it tells us (twice) of Israel camping at Elim, where there were twelve wells of water [the 12 tribes of Israel] and seventy palm trees [the 70 nations] (Exodus 15:27; Numbers 33:9). God thus organized Israel as a small-scale model of the world, giving it 70 elders (Exodus 24:1); and Jesus followed this pattern (Lk. 10:1). God's people are a nation of priests (Exodus 19:6; 1 Pet. 2:9), chosen to bring the light of the Gospel into a world darkened by sin and the Curse. The time will come when the Feast of Tabernacles becomes a reality when the whole earth becomes the Garden (Isaiah 11:9; Daniel 2:35); when the world will be filled with blessing and security, and there is no longer any need for walled cities (Leviticus 23:3-6; Isaiah 65:17-25; Ezekiel 34:25-29). The Garden of Eden, the Mountain of the Lord, will be restored in history, before the Second Coming, by the power of the Gospel; "and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose" (Isaiah 35:1).
In contrast, the Bible says that God controls the heathen by withholding food and water. To understand the misery of the so-called "Third World," we need to look first at its ungodly religion and culture. The Edenic blessing of abundance will never be theirs until they repent and believe the Gospel. Christian cultures, on the other hand (especially the countries of the Reformation) are blessed with food that is relatively cheap and abundant. No Protestant country has ever suffered famine ... yet. But if our nation continues in its apostasy, famine will come. We cannot possess the blessings of the Garden if we live in rebellion against God. The fruitful field will again become a wilderness: "If thou wilt not hearken unto the voice If the LORD thy God, to observe to do all His commandments ... ; all these curses shall come upon thee, and overtake thee: Cursed shalt thou be in the city, and cursed shalt thou be in the field; cursed shall be thy basket and thy store" (Deuteronomy 28:15-17). "Upon the land of my people shall come up thorns and briers ... Until the Spirit be poured upon us from on high, and the wilderness be a fruitful field" (Isaiah 32:13-15).
Land And The Garden
When God created Adam, He placed him into a land, and gave him dominion over it. Land is basic to dominion; therefore, salvation involves a restoration to land and property. In announcing His Covenant to Abram, the very first sentence God spoke was a promise of land (Genesis 12:1), and He completely fulfilled that promise when He saved his descendants (Joshua 21:43-45). This is why biblical law is filled with references to land, property, inheritance, and economics; and this is why the Reformation laid such stress on this world, as well as the next. Man is not saved by being delivered out of his environment. Salvation does not rescue us from the material world, but from sin, and from the effects of the Curse. The biblical ideal is for every man to own property a place where he can have dominion and rule under God.
The blessings of the Western world have come because of Christianity and the resultant freedom which men have had in the use and development of property. Capitalism the free market is a product of biblical law, in which a high priority is placed upon private property, and which condemns theft of all kinds (including theft by the state). To unbelieving economists, it is a mystery why capitalism cannot be exported. Considering the obvious, proven superiority of the free market in raising the standard of living for all classes of people, why don't pagan nations implement capitalism into their social structure? The reason is this: Capitalism cannot be exported to a nation that has no marketplace for the Gospel. The blessings of the Garden cannot be obtained apart from Jesus Christ. The Golden Rule, the sum of the Law and the Prophets (Matthew 7:12), is the ethical foundation for the free market; and this ethic is impossible apart from the work of the Holy Spirit, who enables us to keep the righteous requirement of God's law (Romans 8:4). All heathen cultures have been statist and tyrannical, for a people who reject God will surrender themselves and their property to a dictator (1 Samuel 8:7-20). Ungodly men want the blessings of the Garden but they attempt to possess them by unlawful means (1 Kings 21:1-16), and the result is destruction (1 Kings 21:17-24). The genuine, free possession of land is the result of salvation: God brought His people into a land, and divided it among them for an inheritance (Numbers 26:52-56); and, as he had done in Eden, He regulated the land (Leviticus 25:4) and the trees (Leviticus 19:23-15; Deuteronomy 20:19-20).
As we have seen, when God banished Adam and Eve from their land, the world began to become a wilderness (Genesis 3:17-19). From this point the Bible begins to develop a Land-vs-Wilderness theme, in which the people of God are seen inheriting a land that is secure and bountiful, while the disobedient are cursed by being driven out into a wilderness. When Cain was judged by God, he complained: "Behold, thou has driven me out this day from the face of the earth; and from thy face shall I be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth " (Genesis 4:14). And he was correct, as Scripture records: "And Cain went out from the presence of the LORD, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden" (Genesis 4:16). Nod means Wandering: Cain became the first nomad, a wanderer with no home.
Similarly, when the whole world became wicked, God said: "I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth" (Genesis 6:7), and He did so, by the Flood leaving only Noah and his household alive in the ark (which God brought to rest, incidentally, on a mountain). The ungodly were driven out of the land, and the people of the Covenant repopulated it.
Again, the ungodly tried to build their own "Garden," the tower of Babel; they sought to make themselves a name to define themselves in terms of their own rebellious standards and to prevent themselves from being scattered from the land (Genesis 11:4). But man cannot build the Garden on his own terms. God is the Definer, and He is the only One who can give us security. The very attempt of the people of Babel to prevent their destruction actually brought it about. God confused their languages so much for "naming" anything! and scattered them from their land (Genesis 11:9). In marked contrast, the very next chapter records God's Covenant with Abram, in which He promises to bring Abram into a land, and to make his name great (Genesis 12:1-2). As a further guarantee and reminder of His Covenant, God even changed Abram's name to Abraham, in terms of his predestined calling. God is our Definer: He alone gives us our name. He "calleth those things which be not as though they were" (Romans 4:17). Thus, as we are baptized into God's Name (Matthew 28:19), we are redefined as God's living people, free in Christ from our death in Adam (Romans 5:12-6:23). Circumcision performed the same function in the Old Testament, which is why children officially received their name when they were circumcised (Lk. 2:21). In salvation, God brings us back to Eden and gives us a new name (Revelation 2:17; cf. Isaiah 65:13-25).
When God's people became disobedient as they were about to enter the Promised Land, God punished them by making them wander in the Wilderness, until the entire generation of the disobedient was wiped out (Numbers 14:26-35). Then God turned and saved His people out of "the waste howling wilderness" (Deuteronomy 32:10), and brought them into the land flowing with milk and honey (another reminder of Eden, by the way: milk is a more-nourishing form of water, and honey is in bee trees). God's obedient people have never been nomads instead, they are marked by stability, and have dominion. True, the Bible does call us pilgrims (Hebrews 11:13; 1 Pet. 2:11), but that is just the point: we are pilgrims, not hobos. A pilgrim has a home, a destination. In redemption God saves us from our wanderings, and gathers us into a land (Psalm 107:1-9). A scattered, homeless people cannot have dominion. When the Puritans left England, they did not wander over the earth; God brought them into a land and made them rulers, and though the foundation they built has greatly eroded, it is still very much with us after 300 years. (What will people 300 years from now say of the accomplishments of today's shallow, retreatist evangelicalism?)
People become nomads only through disobedience (Deuteronomy 28:65). As the Curse functions in history, as civilization apostatizes, nomadism becomes widespread, and the wilderness increases (example: in the Arab countries the land of nomads the desert is increasing at an alarming rate, and no one knows how to stop it). And, as the Curse spreads, the water dries up. Since the Fall, the ground is no longer primarily watered by springs. God sends us water by rain instead (rain is much easier to turn off and on than springs and rivers are). The withholding of water turning the land into a parched wilderness is very closely-related to the Curse (Deuteronomy 29:22-28). The Curse is also described in terms of the disobedient people being uprooted from the land (Deuteronomy 29:28), in contrast to God's planting His people in the land (Exodus 15:17). God destroys the roots of a land and people by cutting off the water supply; drought is regarded in Scripture as a major (and effective) means of punishment. When God stops the water, He turns the land into the very opposite of Eden.
The history of Sodom and Gomorrah is a sort of capsulized history of the world in this regard. Once described as being like the Garden of Eden in its beauty and abundance (Genesis 13:10), it became through God's judgment a land of "brimstone, and salt, and burning ... . It is not sown, nor beareth, nor any grass groweth therein" (Deuteronomy 29:23). Sodom and Gomorrah were in the area now known as the Dead Sea and it is called Dead for a very good reason: nothing can live in it. Chemical deposits (salt, potash, magnesium and others) make up 25 percent of the water as a result of God's judgment upon the land. Except for where water flows into it (and a few isolated springs in the area), the land is completely arid. It is now the farthest thing imaginable from Eden, and it serves as a picture of the world after the Curse: Eden has become a Wilderness.
But that is not all we are told about this area. In Ezekiel's vision of the restored Temple (also on a mountain, Ezekiel 40:2), he sees the Water of Life flowing eastward from the threshold toward the Dead Sea and healing its waters, resulting in "a great multitude of fish" and luxuriant growth (Ezekiel 47:8-12). We must not look upon the world with eyes that see only the Curse; we must look with the eyes of faith, enlightened by God's word to see the world as the arena of triumph. History does not end with the Wilderness. World history will be, on a massive scale, that of Sodom; First a Garden, lovely and fruitful; then corrupted into a Wilderness of Death through sin; finally, restored by God's grace to its former Edenic abundance. "The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose" (Isaiah 35:1).
When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue faileth for thirst, I the LORD will hear them, I the God of Israel will not forsake them. I will open rivers in high places, and fountains in the midst of the valleys: I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water. I will plant in the wilderness the cedar, the acacia tree, and the myrtle, and the oil tree; I will set in the desert the fir tree, and the pine, and the box tree together; that they may see, and know, and consider, and understand together, that the hand of the LORD hath done this and the Holy One of Israel hath created it (Isaiah 41:17-20).
This, then, is the direction of history, in what may be called "the Real Rapture" God gradually uprooting unbelievers and unbelieving cultures from the land, and bringing His people into a full inheritance of the earth.
I am not denying, of course, the biblical doctrine that God's people shall someday meet the Lord in the air, at His return (1 Thessalonians 4:17); but the modern doctrine of the "Rapture" is the doctrine of flight from the world, in which Christians are taught to long for escape from the world and its problems, rather than for what God's word promises us: Dominion. How common it is to hear Christians say, when confronted with a problem: "I sure hope the Rapture happens soon!" rather than: "Let's get to work on the solution to it now!" Even worse is the response that is also too common: "Who cares? We don't have to do anything about it, because the Rapture is coming soon anyway!" And worst of all is the attitude held by some that all work to make this a better world is absolutely wrong, because "improving the situation will only delay the Second Coming!" Rapturism should be recognized for what it really is: a deadly cult that is teaching God's people to expect defeat instead of victory.
The truth is that God doesn't "rapture" Christians out of the world He "raptures" non-Christians! The Lord Jesus prayed, in fact, that we would not be "raptured":
"I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil" (John 17:15). And this is the constant message of Scripture. God's people will inherit all things, and the ungodly will be disinherited and driven out of the land. "For the upright shall dwell in the land, and the perfect shall remain in it. But the wicked shall be cut off from the earth, and the transgressors shall be rooted out of it." (Proverbs 2:21-22). "The righteous shall never be removed; but the wicked shall not inhabit the earth" (Proverbs 10:30). God described the land of Canaan as having been "defiled" by the abominable sins of its inhabitants, saying that "the land itself vomiteth out her inhabitants"; and He warned His people not to imitate those heathen abominations, "that the land spue not you out also" (Leviticus 18:24-28; 20:22). Using the same Edenic language, the Lord warns the church of Laodicea against sin, and threatens: "I will spue you out of my mouth" (Revelation 3:16). In His parable of the wheat (the godly) and the tares (the ungodly) and note the Edenic imagery even in His choice of illustrations Christ declares that He will gather first the tares for destruction; the wheat is "raptured" later (Matthew 13:30).
"The wealth of the sinner is laid up for the just" (Proverbs 13:22). That is the basic pattern of history as God saves His people and gives them dominion. This is what God did with Israel: in saving them, He brought them into already-settled lands, and they inherited cities that had already been built (Psalm 105:43-45). God does "bless" the heathen, in a sense just so they can work out their own destruction, in the meantime building up an inheritance for the godly (see Genesis 15:16; Exodus 4:21; Joshua 11:19-20). Then God smashes them and gives the fruit of their labor to His people. This is why we need not fret over evildoers, for we shall inherit the earth (Psalm 37). The Hebrew word for salvation is yasha, meaning to bring into a large, wide, open space and in salvation God does just that: He gives us the world, and turns in into the Garden of Eden.
The Presence Of God In The Garden
Finally, what was most important about the Garden indeed, that which made it a Garden at all (and this has been implied throughout our study) was God's presence with His people. In order to understand this properly, we will begin with the revelation of God's presence to the Covenant people of Israel, and then work both backward to Eden and forward to the Church. (For those who wish to pursue this subject in much greater detail, I would advise a careful reading of Meredith Kline's seminal work Images of the Spirit.)
God revealed His presence to His people in the Cloud of Glory. The Cloud functioned as a sort of "mobile home" for God His fiery chariot by which He made His presence known to His people. The Cloud served as a guide for Israel, giving light in the darkness and shade from the heat (Exodus 13:21-22; Psalm 105:39), but bringing judgment to the wicked (Exodus 14:19-25). On Sinai, the Cloud was accompanied by thunder, light, fire, smoke and an earthquake (Exodus 19:16-20), and was filled with innumerable angels (Deuteronomy 33:2; Psalm 68:17). The Cloud is nothing less than a revelation of the invisible Heaven, where God is seated on His throne of glory, surrounded by His heavenly court and council (Exodus 24:9-15; Isaiah 6:1-4), and from which He spoke to Moses (Exodus 33:9; Psalm 99:7). When the Tabernacle was completed, the Cloud entered it and filled it with the glory of God (Exodus 40:34-38; cf. 2 Chronicles 5:13-14), and fire issued forth from it to consume the sacrifices (Leviticus 9:23-24). The prophet Ezekiel looked up through the Cloud (Ezekiel 1) and saw fire, lightning, and winged creatures flying below a "firmament" the "pavement" or "sea of glass" that is around the base of God's throne (Exodus 24:10; Revelation 4:6) and around the throne was the Glory in the form of a rainbow. While there are many phenomena associated with the Cloud (most are listed in Psalm 18:6-15), perhaps the most striking characteristic is the peculiar, unmistakable noise or voice: virtually every account mentions it. Depending on the situation, it can sound like wind, thunder, rushing water, a shout, a trumpet, a marching army, the rumbling of chariot wheels, or the fluttering and beating of wings (see the passages already cited; also Ezekiel 3:12-13; 10:1-5; 2 Samuel 5:24; 2 Kings 7:5-7); and Ezekiel tells us that the sound, in fact, has its origin in the beating of the wings of the myriads of angels (Ezekiel 1:24).
It is important to recognize that the Cloud was a theophany, a visible manifestation of the enthroned presence of God with His Covenant people. Indeed, the Old Testament often used the term Spirit as a synonym for the Cloud, ascribing the same functions to both (Nehemiah 9:19-20; Isaiah 4:4-5; Joel 2:28-31; Haggai 2:5). The most revealing instance of this equation of God and the Cloud is where Moses describes God's salvation of Israel in the wilderness in terms of an eagle fluttering over her young (Deuteronomy 32:11). How did God "flutter"? Why does the Psalmist continually seek refuge in the shelter of God's "wings" (e.g., Psalm 36:7; 57:1; 61:4; 91:4)? Certainly, God Himself does not have wings. But His angels do and the special revelation of God's saving and protecting presence was by the Cloud of His Glory, which contains "many thousands of angels" (Psalm 68:17 cf. 2 Kings 6:17): "He shall cover thee with His feathers, and under His wings shalt thou trust.... For He shall give His angels charge over thee" (Psalm 91:4,11).
Now, the fascinating thing about Moses' statement in Deuteronomy 32:11 God's "fluttering" over His people by means of the Cloud is that Moses uses the word only one other time in the entire Pentateuch, when he tells us that "the earth was without form, and void; . . . and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters" (Genesis 1:2). Nor is that the only parallel between these two passages; for in Deuteronomy 32:10 Moses describes the wilderness through which the people were traveling as a waste the same word translated without form in Genesis 1:2 (and, again, these are the only two uses of the word in the Pentateuch). What Moses is saying, then and this fact was surely understood by his Hebrew readers is that God's saving of His people through the Exodus was a re-enactment of the history of the Creation: In saving Israel God was constituting them as a New Creation. As in the beginning, the Spirit-Cloud hovered over the creation, bringing light in the darkness (Genesis 1:3; Exodus 14:21; John 1:3-5), and leading on to the Sabbath-rest in the Promised Land, the New Eden (Genesis 2:2-3; cf. Deuteronomy 12:9-10; Psalm 95:11, where the land is called a rest). Thus, God's re-creation of His people in order to bring them into fellowship with Him in the Holy Mountain was witnessed by the same manifestation of His creative presence that was there at the original Creation, when the Spirit gloriously arched His canopy over the earth. The bright radiance of the Cloud-canopy was also the basis for the sign of the rainbow that Noah saw on Mount Ararat, assuring him of the faithfulness of God's Covenant (Genesis 9:13-17). The glory of God's Cloud-canopy, arched over a mountain, is a repeated sign in Scripture that God is with His people, creating them anew and restoring His handiwork to its original Edenic state.
A basic promise of salvation is given in Isaiah 4:4-5 (NASV): "When the LORD has washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion, and purged the bloodshed of Jerusalem from her midst by the Spirit of judgment and the Spirit of burning, then the LORD will create over the whole area of Mount Zion and over her assemblies (the official gatherings for worship) a Cloud by day, even smoke, and the brightness of a flaming fire by night; for over all the glory will be a canopy." This Cloud-canopy of God's presence, full of angels' wings, is called a pavilion, a covering (2 Samuel 22:12, ; Psalm 18:11; Lamentations 3:44; Psalm 91:4); and the same word is used to describe the position of Satan before the Fall, who as a perfect member of the heavenly host was "a covering cherub", a part of the Cloud-canopy that covered the Garden of Eden (Ezekiel 28:14, 16). And that is why this word covering is used to describe the position of the carved cherubim that were placed hovering over the Ark of the Covenant (Exodus 25:20). It is therefore significant that this Hebrew word is the term translated booths and tabernacles when God commands His people to erect booths of leafy boughs to dwell in during the Feast of Tabernacles (Leviticus 23:34, 42-43); as we have seen, this feast was a reminder of Eden, a symbolic representation of the fact that salvation restores us to Edenic blessings. The Garden of Eden served thus as a Tabernacle-Temple, a small replica of God's larger Temple (Palace) in which the "heavens" are His throne and the "earth" is His footstool (Genesis 1:1; Isaiah 66:1) the invisible heavens together with the visible universe making up His great cosmic Temple. Close attention to the architecture of the Tabernacle and the Temple will reveal that they were modeled as copies, not only of the Garden of Eden, but of the original heavenly Temple: the Cloud-canopy (cf. Hebrews 8:5; 9:11, 23-24).
This Edenic imagery is taken up and expanded in the New Testament, which records the fulfillment of the promises of the New Creation in Christ. An obvious passage, of course, is John's Prologue (John 1:1-18), which begins where Genesis does: "In the beginning." We see the same concepts the Word, creation, life, the light shining in darkness and overcoming it; and John says of Christ that He "dwelt (literally, tabernacled) among us, and we beheld His glory" (cf. Exodus 40:34). John's point here is to demonstrate that Jesus Christ is the full revelation of God's presence with His people (cf. Matthew 1:23).
But John says much more. His following section (John 1:19-2:11) is a subtle seven-day structure that is meant to remind us of the original seven days of creation (as well as other Old Testament parallels). On the first day, John the Baptist appears as "the voice of one crying in the wilderness" (John 1:23). The next day, as Jesus is baptized (baptism is a recapitulation of two Old Testament re-creation events: the Flood and the Red Sea crossing) the Spirit descends, hovering over the waters of the New Creation and He comes as a dove, the winged messenger that announced to Noah that re-creation of the world. The passage continues with other creation-images, and ends on the seventh day with Jesus attending a wedding, and turning the water (cf. Genesis 1:2 ff.) into wine the best wine. The blessing is superabundant, more than is necessary, as a forerunner of the promised blessings of the Garden which would come through Him (Genesis 49:10-12; Isaiah 25:6; Amos 9:13-14; Jeremiah 33:10-11). Just before He does this, He mentions the Hour of His death for it is His shed blood, the wine of Communion, that provides the blessings; Eden is inaccessible apart from the Atonement. And thus, by this miracle on the seventh day, Jesus "manifested His glory" (John 2:11) just as God had done by His enthronement in the Cloud on the first Sabbath. But when God is seated at rest upon His throne, He sits as Judge, examining His Creation-Temple; and when He found wickedness therein, He cleansed it, banishing the offenders (Genesis 3:24). Similarly, the next event in John's Gospel shows the Lord assessing the Temple and coming in Judgment against those who defiled it (John 2:12-22). On the Sabbath we appear before God's throne of judgment to be examined; and if we are approved, we enter into His Rest (see Hebrews 3-4). The people at the Temple on this Sabbath were guilty, and He banished them in an awesome and noisy manifestation of judgment; an image of the first and final Days of the Lord. He then declared His body Himself personally and His body the Church to be the true Temple (John 2:18-22), for the physical resurrection of Christ's body is the foundation for His people's being constituted as the Temple (Ephesians 1:20; 2:5-6, 19-22; 1 Corinthians 3:10-11, 16-17). The biblical emphasis regarding the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is not that the individual believer is indwelt, but that the Church is indwelt; for it is the Church not the individual which is the Temple.
As God's Temple, the Church is re-admitted to Eden and filled with the Spirit and the glory of God (see Exodus 40:34; Numbers 9:15; Joel 2:28-31; Acts 2:1-4, 16-21). The church is God's new Garden-Temple, restored to God's original mandate for man: to have dominion over the earth, expanding the Garden until it covers the whole world. In remaking us in His image, God has given us His presence. He has taken up residence in His Temple, and has promised to be with us as we fulfill His mandate to the ends of the earth (Matthew 28:18-20).
"There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the City of God, the Holy Place of the tabernacles of the Most High. God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved; God shall help her, and that right early" (Psalm 46:4-5). "And it shall come to pass, that every living creature which moveth, whithersoever the rivers shall come, shall live: for they shall be healed; and everything shall live whither the river cometh" (Ezekiel 47:9).