Where This Garden of Eden, Paradise, Is Said to Be Now.
By Arthur L. Manous
The apostle Paul says: “I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago; . . . such an one caught up to the third heaven. And I knew such a man . . . how that he was caught up into Paradise.” See 2 Cor. 12: 1-4. Esdras writes, saying: “Behold, the time shall come, that these tokens which I have told thee shall come to pass, and the bride [evidently Paradise, 2 Cor. 12: 1-4] shall appear, and she coming forth shall be seen, that now is withdrawn from the earth.” 2 Esdras 7: 26. Mr Kurtz, the historian, says: “The true Paradise is now translated to the invisible world. At least a symbolical copy of it, established in the holy of holies in the tabernacle, was granted to the people of Israel after the pattern which Moses saw in the mount (Ex. 25: 9, 40); and the original itself, as the renewed habitation of redeemed man, will hereafter descend to the earth. Rev. 21: 10.”—Quoted in “Daniel and the Revelation,” p. 351. Another author says: “The pure and lovely Garden of Eden, from which our first parents were driven, remained until God proposed to destroy the earth with a flood. God had planted that garden and especially blessed it, and in His wonderful providence withdrawn it from the earth, and will return it to the earth again, more gloriously adorned than before it was removed from the earth. God proposed to preserve a specimen of His perfect work of creation free from the curse wherewith He had cursed the earth.”—“Principles of True Science,” p. 48. ARTHUR L. MANOUS.
Dalton, Ga.