- [Narrator] What is the location of the Garden of Eden?
There are various mysteries in the Bible,
however a popular question that many ask is
what is the location of the Garden of Eden?
To answer this question,
we'll need to do some forensics.
First, let us go to the Bible.
Eden was the name of a region of the earth
when God first created the world.
The Hebrew word translated Eden
is taken to mean pleasure or delight.
In this area, God planted a garden.
In this place, God spent time with the first man
and they had a direct relationship.
The Garden of Eden is notable for several reasons.
First and foremost, it was planned and planted
by none other than God himself.
Second is that it was the first home of mankind.
Thirdly, it was a place with a great deal of variety
with all kinds of trees.
Number four, it was a beautiful place
as it had trees that were pleasing to the eye.
Number five, there was also the fact
that it was a fertile and fruitful place.
The only thing the Bible tells us
concerning the Garden of Eden's location
is found in Genesis 2:10-14,
Amplified Bible.
"Now a river flowed out of Eden to water the garden
and from there it divided and became four branching rivers.
The first river is named Pishon.
It flows around the entire land of Havilah,
where there is gold.
The gold of that land is good,
Bdellium, a fragrant valuable resin,
and onyx stoner found there.
The name of the second river is Gihon,
it flows around the entire land of Cush in Mesopotamia.
The third river is named Hiddekel, Tigris,
it flowed east of Assyria.
And the fourth river is the Euphrates."
According to the Bible,
the area has four rivers
and an abundance of resources
including fine gold and gemstones.
The Garden of Eden was a place where man could meet God.
The creator was walking in the garden in the cool of day.
In Genesis 3:8,
and Adam and Eve could be with him and converse with him.
There is no exact knowledge of the identity
of the Pishon and Gihon rivers,
however, the Tigres and Euphrate rivers are well known.
The key area in the map of the Middle East
is what geographers call the Fertile Crescent
the band of fertile land,
which stretches from the river Nile in Egypt in the west
northeast through the land of Israel,
and then south and southeast
to the plains surrounding the river Tigris and Euphrates,
in what used to be called Mesopotamia,
which means the middle of the rivers.
Meso, middle,
and potamia, rivers.
If the Tigres and Euphrates mentioned
are the same rivers by those names today,
that would put the Garden of Eden somewhere
in the Middle East.
However, even a small local flood
can change the course of a river,
and the flood of Noah's day
was more than a localized flood.
We know modern rivers today such as the Tigres or Euphrates
because Noah in his sons named some rivers
in the post flood world after familiar pre-flood rivers.
The flood radically changed the landscape of the earth.
As a result, the actual location
of the Tigres and Euphrates is unclear.
It may be that the contemporary rivers
called Tigris and Euphrates
are merely named after those connected with Eden.
In a similar way that Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
is named after the town in Judea.
For centuries, people have been trying
to find the Garden of Eden without any success.
Different spots have been claimed
as the original location of Eden
but no one can be sure.
What happened to the Garden of Eden?
The Bible does not explicitly say.
During the flood,
there's a good chance that the garden was utterly destroyed.
So if we cannot locate the former Garden of Eden,
the great question we should ask ourselves
is whether we can never experience another Eden,
a New Eden, you may say.
As a result of our restored relationship with God
through Jesus Christ,
we have access to the eternal garden of God.
Luke 23:39-43, Amplified Bible.
"One of the criminals who had been hanged
on a cross beside him
kept hurling abuse at him saying,
are you not the Christ?
Save yourself and us from death.
But the other one rebuked him saying,
do you not even fear God
since you are under the same sentence of condemnation?
We are suffering justly
because we are guessing what we deserve
for what we have done.
But this man has done nothing wrong
and he was saying, Jesus please
remember me when you come into your kingdom.
And Jesus said to him,
I assure you and most solemnly say to you today,
you will be with me in paradise."
We read "in paradise,"
paradise,
paradeisos,
a Persian term referring to a garden, park.
In the present passage, it presents the state of bliss
which Jesus promised to the criminal
directly after death, pate.
This assurance was so valuable to Jesus
that it cost him something.
It hurts Jesus to even say these words.
Since speech occurs during exhalation,
these short terse utterances
must have been particularly difficult and painful.
Edwards, "The one who laid down his life for us
had defeated the serpents and opened paradise."
Revelation 2:7, Amplified Bible.
"He who has an ear,
let him hear and heed what the Spirit says to the churches.
To him who overcomes the world through believing
that Jesus is the son of God.
I will grant the privilege to eat the fruit
from the tree of life,
which is in the paradise of God."
For these overcomers,
Eden is a promise of restoration and eternal life.
This was meant first in the eternal sense
of making it to heaven,
which was no small promise to a church
threatened with the removal of Jesus' presence.
It is also meant to see the effects of the curse
rolled back in our lives
through walking in Jesus's redeeming love.
A river with the water of life,
clear as crystal,
flowing from the throne of Garden of the Lamb
is described as being in the new Jerusalem.
"This river flows from the throne of God and of the lamb.
Then the angel showed me a river of the water of life,
clear as crystal,
flowing from the throne of Garden of the Lamb, Christ
in the middle of its streets.
On either either side of the river was the tree of life
bearing 12 kinds of fruit,
yielding its fruit every month
and the leaves of the tree
were for the healing of the nations.
There will no longer exist anything that is cursed
because sin and illness and death are gone
and the throne of God and of the lamb will be in it
and his bond servants will serve and worship him
with great awe and joy and loving devotion."
Revelations 22:1-3.
The Bible starts with a tree of life
which man was not authorized to devour
after the sin at the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
Now we see the tree of life again.
It's a little hard to visualize this divine landscaping.
John may be depicting a large streets
with a river flowing down the middle
and a large tree or sequence of trees
that grows with roots on either side of the river.
The visual picture presented
is that the river of life flows down
through the middle of the city
and the tree is large enough to span the river
so that the river is in the midst of the street
and the tree is on both sides of the river.
Seeing the tree of life again
suggests a restoration of all things.
Now at last,
almost at the end of the great drama of the Bible,
man may return and legitimately enjoy the blessing
which he was banished for illegitimately desiring.
The Garden of Eden was a place of testing.
Genesis 2:9, Amplified Bible,
"And in their garden the Lord God
caused to grow from the ground
every tree that is desirable and pleasing to the sight,
and good, suitable, pleasant for food.
The tree of life was also in the midst of the garden,
and the tree of experiential knowledge
recognition of the difference between good and evil."
The biblical Garden of Eden
was described as a place of total provision.
God had seen every detail in designing a home for humanity
created in his own image.
There was nothing that Adam and Eve needed
and they were free to eat from any tree in the garden
except for one.
Adam failed to test.
Unfortunately, the serpent in the garden
used by Satan
tempted Eve with a false promise of blessing
and the woman ate of the forbidden fruit.
She then gave some of the fruit to her husband
who ate it himself.
Both of them disobeyed the word of God.
As a result, the repercussions of their disobedience
were highly detrimental to themselves
and to all of their descendants.
Their innocence, their home,
and their fellowship with God were lost.
The Garden of Eden is a place to which we long to return.
God needed to expel Adam and Eve from the garden
and once they were gone,
he posted formidable cherubim
to guard against unauthorized reentry.
Genesis 3:23-24.
"Therefore, the Lord God sent Adam away
from the Garden of Eden
to till and cultivate the ground from which he was taken."
So God drove man out
and at the east of the Garden of Eden,
he permanently stationed the cherubim
and the sword with the flashing blade
which turned round and round in every direction
to protect and guard the way,
entrance, access to the tree of life.
Adam and Eve learned by the hard way of experience
to discern between good and evil.
In mercy, guard protected Adam and Eve
from the horrible fate of having to live forever as sinners
by preventing them from eating from the tree of life.
He drove out the man
and he placed cherubim in the east of the Garden of Eden.
Cherubim are always associated
with the presence and glory of God.
Ezekiel 10:1.
"Then I looked and behold in the expanse firmament
that was over the heads of the cherubim,
there appeared something glorious and brilliant above them
looking like a huge sapphire stone
formed to resemble a throne."
It's important to remember
that when cherubims are portrayed on earth,
such as in the tabernacle,
they signify a place of meeting with God.
Though Adam and Eve and their descendants
were prevented from eating the fruit of the tree of life
by God's mercy,
they could still come there to meet God.
This was their holy of holies.
They suffered the loss of connection with God,
the loss of their home,
and the loss of their childhood innocence.
We all have a deep seated desire
to one day make our way back to the Garden of Eden.
Ecclesiastes 3:11.
"He has made everything beautiful
and appropriate in its time.
He has also planted eternity,
a sense of divine purpose in the human heart,
a mysterious longing which nothing under the sun
can satisfy except God.
Yet man cannot find out,
comprehend,
grasp what God has done,
His overall plan from the beginning to the end."
Due to our sin, we lost the Garden of Eden,
that place of pleasure and delight.
God in His mercy and grace
will restore it to us through Christ.