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Genesis

Part I

I'd like to take a good look at the words that were first spoken to Eve when approached by the serpent in Gen 3:1, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?"

These words are not innocent as we know, for the words that were said,"You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die." - were spoken by the Lord God (Gen 2:16-17). Eve did not know the difference between God and the Lord God. How could she? This was one of the greatest, if not the greatest deception spoken first by the serpent in the Garden.

But there is a real difference between them. It's like the truth of it has been sneaking up on us through history. The changeover comes in Genesis 2:4b.

If you look carefully, you will note that the Lord God did not speak directly to Eve to warn her about the tree. She was aware of the warning, but this does not mean that it was passed on to her correctly, or that she had it accurate in her mind, for she obviously didn't. We can see that her initial response back to the serpent was exaggerated. "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.' " (Gen 3:2-3) In this acceptance of the serpents' first words, Eve has already received the deception. She accepts and responds according to what she believes. In this response she pronouces a curse upon herself.

Eve accepted that God and the Lord God were one and the same - despite the fact that there were distinct differences in the first two chapters of Genesis. "God" is plural in the first chapter but in chapter 2:4b we see a changeover. The "Lord God" is now male alone.

Even so, did the Lord say that Eve would die if she touched the tree? No. He only said that Adam would die if he ate of it. Eve never received the curse of death from the Lord God. Again, the Lord said nothing at all to Eve up to this point, only to Adam. So who deceived Eve beforehand? Or was there exaggeration in her to begin with, before she ate of the tree of knowledge? Could it be that the deception began in her first thoughts and in her very first response to the serpent, simply for listening to him? But she hadn't yet done what she wasn't supposed to do at this point? The Lord had given no warning at all about listening or communicating with the serpent. The sin wasn't supposed to take place until she actually ate of the tree, right? Wrong. Sin was in the Garden at the entrance of the serpent himself.

Yet the fact that Eve listened to the serpent and accepted his words was actually a good thing, for if she hadn't we wouldn't be here today. She had to take the bait, or progress could not have been made in this world.The Lord would have had to start all over again, with a new Adam and Eve. What happened there is the same thing that happens whenever an egg is fertilized in the womb. If the egg doesn't receive the sperm, it passes from the body. And there is no continuing growth.

Back to the serpent - now that he has Eve where he wants her, (responding to him according to a deception he has planted in her) he has to back it up a bit, to ease her fears and tell her that she will not die. He suggests that 'God' is misleading her in this, and he adds the reason why. "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good from evil," (Gen 3:5). Well in one sense he was right - she would know good and evil - but would this really make her "like God"? Would she really be complete in her understanding of what or who God was? No. For she was already deceived into believing that the Lord God was 'God' in completion.

So now let's look at the last curse.

"So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life." (Gen 3:23-24)

The sword that flashes back and forth is obviously not a physical sword - it's a spiritual sword. And what or who is this 'spiritual sword'? We have to move to another part of the Bible to find the answer.

According to Ephesians 6:17, the "sword of the spirit" is the "word of God." This sword that flashes in front of the tree of life, hiding life from our sight, is the word of God. And how does the word hide her? By the the angel who wields it. This angel has been given control over the 'word' for a short time, and has been wielding it in such a way as to cover life from our sight, as well as to open up the way to her, when we've earned it. But we must look through, or past this sword, in order to see life for what she really is - so to understand that life is the power behind the word - and that the word has power over us in it's ability to hide life from us and open life to us at his choice. The word of God is the gate to life. But it is the hidden power behind him that we have been searching for.

Like the Jews that had 'lost the key' in Jesus' day, most spiritual leaders will concentrate on the word itself, instead of the wisdom/life that lies behind it. And they teach others to do the same. We have been blinded to the true source of power by our concentrating on the word itself.

We must know the truth of this in our hearts, in order to interpret the word properly here. We must look beyond traditional views from the past, in order to overcome it. For the church has not interpreted this correctly. The tree of life, is the heart of God. She is wisdom, and 'the word' takes all credit for her work because the church accredits it to him. We have failed to recognize wisdom as the source of the word, and instead, through deception, have given all credit to the word for wisdom's work. And who is the angel? In Eden, it was the future church that has been our guide throughout history. As long as we allow our church leaders to deceive us like this, we will never set the record straight, nor receive eternal life.

Our spiritual leaders have done a good job as well as an evil one. They have been opening our eyes to life as long as they could control us through keeping life from us. Now that their work is almost done, they cannot admit to the tree of life's real importance, or that they have been exploiting her. To reveal this truth would cause serious damage to their credibility and to their institution. Authority for the church would diminish, and our leaders would not willingly stand for this.

It becomes therefore, more important than ever for women to see through this deception, and to start to take a stand on the issue. Men cannot be trusted to reveal the truth, for they will see only what they have to lose, and not the goodness that lies beyond. Their fear of being found out will blind them to the fact that God ultimately has control. They will not trust because they know they are guilty.

Wisdom is all through the passages of the Bible, of course. 'The word' which gives us life, and takes it away simultaneously, is able to do this through the interpretation we've been using - represented by the angel. There has been both good and bad behind this strategy, as I said before. The overall results are an automatic cancelling out of what has been built as we move closer to the end of this past age. And it all began when Adam stood by and watched while Eve was deceived. He did nothing to stop it precisely because he was not deceived. He knew that there would be advantages in it for him, for he could see them, and he received the death sentence for it.

The tree of life then, stands in our hearts - creating our physical world from that source, with our head in the control position, and our words as a rudder (James 3:4-5). It is the result of our spiritual beliefs that our physical bodies have developed the way they have. The physical body is the pattern of the spiritual body - individually and collectively.

So the female is the heart of the body, just as the male is the head. The female gives life and purpose, while the male gives knowledge and direction - both are needed. The female controls from behind while the male leads in front. The two trees in the Garden represented our Godly sources (parents) from the beginning, and eating from only one of those trees has presented us with a world that is unbalanced toward the exploitative side - the male-dominant side. Though it has been necessary to start out this way, there is also a time when we must turn it around in our beliefs. We have been receiving the benefits of the tree of life in many ways of course, but just not recognizing or acknowledging her for it. Eve gave all her credit away to Adam right in the beginning. And the angel that represents the church wields the sword.

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Part II

We must separate our Mother's work from our Father's, by recognizing what women have been contributing throughout history to the family and to society. This is all part of judging the tree by its fruit. We can know what God is simply by looking at the world around us, and at our family relationships. God has made it plain to us.

We must give women just as much credit as the men have always had in order to make things equal between them. We must separate, in our Spiritual beliefs, our heart's work from our mind's work. Only by finding out who is responsible for what in the earthly family, are we able to recognize how things work in the Godly family.

So this world was created by the Lord God starting in Genesis 2:4b, but it was "not good" to start with. To know this we just have to look at all the problems there were. Adam was first created to be 'one' person, with his wife hidden inside of him - for the Lord God made Adam in his own image alone. The Lord God stated himself that this 'was not good for man to be alone' (Gen 2:18). He needed the female to be a separate being from Adam, as a sentient partner for him.

But immediately after Eve is formed and brought to Adam, she is approached by the serpent. Exaggeration begins by both the serpent and Eve, even before she eats of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. It's all part of the deception which the current church does not address.

Where did the serpent get it into his head that he should deceive the woman? There was sin in him obviously, even before he spoke to Eve, or he wouldn't have had the idea. But he detects some vulnerability in her that he hasn't been able to spot in Adam. You might ask at this point - did Adam even know the serpent? Yes of course he did. And how do I know this? Because Adam had been naming all the animals up to that point. They had obviously already met because the serpent had been 'named', and it is already established that he is craftier than any of the wild animals, before he meets with Eve. (Gen 3:1)

We are all aware that faith is dead without action, so the serpent had to have actually deceived Eve in order for him to be guilty of a punishable crime. And he was punished for it later of course. But the point is that sin was in the garden all along. It's like he was the source of it. But what was he hoping to gain out of this, that he would risk so much? Was it only punishment that he would receive? That's certainly what it looks like when the punishment is doled out. But there was also great reward in store for the serpent which he could see, but which Adam and Eve could not. The couple had turned over all their power to the serpent, by not taking responsibility for their part in the deception.

The serpent knew that Eve would be deceived. He told her whatever half-truths he thought he could get away with in order to accomplish his goals. And what were his goals? Well, Eve was now living in the delusion that God is male only, and also thinking she is becoming "wise" through knowledge, she is blinded from real Wisdom as a result. ('wisdom is a tree of life to those who embrace her...' Prov 3:18) Eve lost her right to life because she was now looking to knowledge for the solution to everything, over wisdom.

Eve neglected to look to the tree of life first, and that was her mistake. She didn't trust the God that dwelt in her heart, but went only to her mind for answers - the two trees are represented by the heart and mind of the body. We have been controlled by our heads ever since. And our hearts have had second-place status since the beginning - making life expendable in favour of knowledge, and woman's work of lesser value than man's.

Problems like arrogance and fear are created through excess knowledge - and these cannot be overcome by acquiring ever-more knowledge. Only love and wisdom are the answer to building us up. We must improve our wisdom therefore, if we hope to overcome the problems knowledge brings us. We must first learn how to deal with the knowledge we have already, by overpowering it with wisdom and thereby no longer letting it kill us. For this the woman is the expert. For it to come about, the woman must take control. But for this we have to go the Garden, to start with the right source - back to the tree of life. She is there, waiting for us.

So why didn't Eve just go ahead and eat from the tree of life in the first place? Well, to start with, there didn't seem to be a lot of time before she was approached by the serpent. She couldn't think for herself, because she had no knowledge anyway - she needed 'knowledge' in order to 'know' what to do. She could see no reason to eat from the tree of life because no-one was drawing her attention to it. She was free to eat of it of course, just like all the other trees of the garden, but there didn't seem to be anything interesting or advantageous about it. After all, she thought she already had life because she's already been struck by the fear of death. How could she assume therefore that she didn't have life? The only piece she seemed to be missing was knowledge. Still, it served a greater purpose than this. Eve needed protection. She needed to be deceived in order to get this. So eating from the tree of knowledge served many good purposes also.

What do you think would have happened to her if she had not been deceived by the serpent - if she had not accepted his words? If she hadn't allowed herself to be deceived, she would not have lived long enough to have children. Nothing would have happened in fact, for the furtherance of the world was dependent on her being deceived. Her deception was mostly sexual in nature after all, and without it, no children would have been born.

The serpent played a necessary and important role in the Garden. He sparked the nucleus of the egg to life. Eve was the heart of Adam, and the split made it possible for Eve to be approached by the serpent. She was the part that would accept deception, but if the man wasn't going to get anything out of it, he would never have protected her from the outside world. She needed to be deceived in order to produce life in her body through offspring.

And what about the serpent and his payoff? Let's look at the sequence of events for this. Firstly, we all know that the punishments given to Adam and Eve were not the worst thing that could happen. They had the seeds of something wonderful too, implanted right within their structure. It all depends on how you want to look at it. Through the punishment of being ruled by her husband, Eve received Adam's protection, and covering. Through the toil and sweat of his brow, Adam also received the rewards that work would bring him. It was the same with the serpent. Through the punishment of becoming the lowest of the low, crawling on his belly, he would also receive rulership over the man and the woman - rulership over the whole world.

When the Lord God asks Adam, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree from which I commanded you not to eat?" (Gen 3:11). What was his response?

"The woman you put here with me - she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it." (3: 12) He immediately blames the woman, doesn't he? He's making excuses for himself, and in so doing, he relinquishes control over to her. He's passing the buck over to his wife - thinking that she will receive the greater punishment, and he will at least escape some of it.

What happens next? The woman blames the serpent, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate." (3:13) And so she relinquishes control over to the serpent. The blame ends up on his shoulders - but guess what? He doesn't blame anybody else. There is no one else to blame. He takes his punishment without complaint, and in having the full blame placed upon himself, he also takes his reward. By the man and woman blaming the serpent, they hand over the controls of this world to him, making him 'god of this world.'

So the Lord God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and all the wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel." (3:14-15) His punishment was to become the lowest of all the animals - but Adam and Eve's punishment would make him still higher than mankind.

In being willing to accept the lowest position, the serpent also became the highest. He took on both roles at once, because we gave it to him - he did not earn it for himself, except through deception and default. As long as the woman blamed the serpent, and he did not face responsibility, he would have the highest of controls. Of course the man is partly to blame too, but the woman has just as much or slightly more responsibility. Why? Because in taking it on to our own shoulders, we also take back the controls away from the serpent. And this of course is what we need to do, even now - quit blaming the serpent and be responsible for being deceived.

For if we blame men, or Satan, or anyone else, we lose control. We subsequently are not looking inside of ourselves for the help we need - we are not looking towards wisdom, for we are not yet looking for God's help. We need to be looking to the tree of life to overcome any negatives in our lives. And that is much different than looking to the tree of knowledge. The tree of knowledge does not bring life with it, only death - but the tree of life does bring knowledge with her, but life as well, and first.

The knowledge of good and evil must be used, but not sought after as though it is the whole solution. We must not let it be our 'god,' as we have in past, for that would be deceiving ourselves again. The only way to get rid of the 'deceiver' is for women to open their eyes and take responsibility - for all of it, if need be, in order to overcome the problem. The advantages are enormous for doing so, but it is in fact, the only way to solve the problems of this world. Women need to put it onto their own shoulders, willingly, and lovingly - holding no grudges for the order that things were done. By taking on the responsibility for the deception ofwomen, there is life in our future. Without this, we die.

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