And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone.
The land about Eden was rich, with four rivers running by the Garden and the whole region enriched with good gold and silver and rich minerals and precious stones, including bdellium and the onyx stone. It was planted with every tree pleasant to the sight and good for food, with fruits and flowers and beautiful lofty trees flourishing in purity, undefiled and abundantly supplying everything Adam and Eve required. This wonderful provision was an expression of the love of a God who loved them.
Adam was created in the image of God with finite mind and will and moral faculties after the similitude of God's mind and will, and was placed there to dress and keep it in pleasant employment. He was the first man to labor together with God, with nothing to interpose between him and his Maker, and there in sinless manhood he received his first education from God through personal communion with Him. Thus the first Adam began in purity and holiness, connected with God and beloved by God, in every way more favorably situated than Christ was when He began where the first Adam began.
Adam himself described that holy and happy estate in Paradise from firsthand knowledge to his children and children's children to the ninth generation, living among men for nearly a thousand years as a witness to the results of sin. In obedience to the command to instruct his posterity he faithfully sought to stem the tide of evil, carefully treasuring what God had revealed and repeating it with the history of his fall, the sufferings by which God taught him strict adherence to His law, and the merciful provisions for salvation. Yet few gave heed, and he was often met with bitter reproaches for the sin that brought woe upon his posterity. Adam and Eve had been given permission to eat of every tree in the garden but one, but they ate the forbidden fruit and by transgressing God's law were excluded from and lost Eden, the Paradise of God and beautiful Eden home, and their sin opened the floodgates of woe upon the world.
The good gold with silver, rich minerals and precious stones had been given by God to enrich the earth for the good of men and as a means of remembering Him, found in the mountains and valleys amid giant forests, blooming gardens, fountains, streams, lakes and Eden glory. But men did not let these gifts inspire love and gratitude to the Giver, looked on them as exclusively their own as if they themselves had brought them into existence, and made treasures meant to remind them of God the means of forgetting Him in ingratitude and disobedience to His law, bringing the curse and the destruction of the old world by the Flood. The Garden of God cannot be expected to be found in this sin-desecrated earth where something will always mar even the most desirable place. Yet the good and beautiful things of nature though marred by sin still speak of that Eden-home, and favorable land still furnishes the very best gymnasium for young men and teachers through physical exercise to strengthen the muscles and serves as God's great school and farm where nature supplies resources for learning far more from nature and gaining greater knowledge of His wonderful works.
Christ drew illustrations and lessons from this great treasure-house of nature, presenting truth through familiar associations in simple, sympathetic, cheerful instruction identified with human interests and happiness. The garden will be restored in grand beauty and the earth filled with the praise of the Lord, to be cultivated by God's people under His supervision. Those who now use every spiritual advantage to become skillful workers laboring together with God in faith and love and patience, who do not transgress as Adam and Eve did but are obedient to all God's requirements and overcome as Christ overcame by perfect obedience, bending their footsteps heavenward and pointing others to that home, will be brought back to enter that restored Eden.
The land about Eden was rich, with four rivers running by the Garden and the whole region enriched with good gold and silver and rich minerals and precious stones, including bdellium and the onyx stone. It was planted with every tree pleasant to the sight and good for food, with fruits and flowers and beautiful lofty trees flourishing in purity, undefiled and abundantly supplying everything Adam and Eve required. This wonderful provision was an expression of the love of a God who loved them.
Adam was created in the image of God with finite mind and will and moral faculties after the similitude of God's mind and will, and was placed there to dress and keep it in pleasant employment. He was the first man to labor together with God, with nothing to interpose between him and his Maker, and there in sinless manhood he received his first education from God through personal communion with Him. Thus the first Adam began in purity and holiness, connected with God and beloved by God, in every way more favorably situated than Christ was when He began where the first Adam began.
Adam himself described that holy and happy estate in Paradise from firsthand knowledge to his children and children's children to the ninth generation, living among men for nearly a thousand years as a witness to the results of sin. In obedience to the command to instruct his posterity he faithfully sought to stem the tide of evil, carefully treasuring what God had revealed and repeating it with the history of his fall, the sufferings by which God taught him strict adherence to His law, and the merciful provisions for salvation. Yet few gave heed, and he was often met with bitter reproaches for the sin that brought woe upon his posterity. Adam and Eve had been given permission to eat of every tree in the garden but one, but they ate the forbidden fruit and by transgressing God's law were excluded from and lost Eden, the Paradise of God and beautiful Eden home, and their sin opened the floodgates of woe upon the world.
The good gold with silver, rich minerals and precious stones had been given by God to enrich the earth for the good of men and as a means of remembering Him, found in the mountains and valleys amid giant forests, blooming gardens, fountains, streams, lakes and Eden glory. But men did not let these gifts inspire love and gratitude to the Giver, looked on them as exclusively their own as if they themselves had brought them into existence, and made treasures meant to remind them of God the means of forgetting Him in ingratitude and disobedience to His law, bringing the curse and the destruction of the old world by the Flood. The Garden of God cannot be expected to be found in this sin-desecrated earth where something will always mar even the most desirable place. Yet the good and beautiful things of nature though marred by sin still speak of that Eden-home, and favorable land still furnishes the very best gymnasium for young men and teachers through physical exercise to strengthen the muscles and serves as God's great school and farm where nature supplies resources for learning far more from nature and gaining greater knowledge of His wonderful works.
Christ drew illustrations and lessons from this great treasure-house of nature, presenting truth through familiar associations in simple, sympathetic, cheerful instruction identified with human interests and happiness. The garden will be restored in grand beauty and the earth filled with the praise of the Lord, to be cultivated by God's people under His supervision. Those who now use every spiritual advantage to become skillful workers laboring together with God in faith and love and patience, who do not transgress as Adam and Eve did but are obedient to all God's requirements and overcome as Christ overcame by perfect obedience, bending their footsteps heavenward and pointing others to that home, will be brought back to enter that restored Eden.