Closed and Opened Doors

“When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us.” -- Helen Keller


“(The words of the holy one, the true one, who has the key of David, who opens and no one will shut, who shuts and no one opens)”.

God warned Adam and Eve that they could freely eat from any tree in the Garden, but not from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, God said, “for in the day you eat of it, you shall surely die”.

My question is this, did they really die spiritually or were they cut off from the only true source to become, be made fully alive spiritually? Remember they had a body made from the dust of the earth, then God breathed into that dust (clay) the breath of life making man a ‘living soul’, but their spirit was yet incomplete to my way of thinking because the Tree of Life (also in the Garden) pointed to that which would have made them complete.

Our brother Paul addressed this very issue, “Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

“To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.”

A door had been closed to them so that there was now no way to have access to the Tree of Life. “Therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the east of the Garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.”

What I am about to quote here from my good friend and brother Bill Landon from his latest book, “Life After Death” is so pregnant with thought provoking wonder, I couldn’t help but add it to what I see as being the truth.

“How Satan trapped humanity through the temptation of Adam and Eve in eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was to get our ancestors to take on an ‘understanding’ they were not ready to receive constructively. The lie of the serpent was that Adam and Eve were ready to receive the knowledge of good and evil. In reality, the fall came as a result of humanity taking on a kind of knowledge that they did not have the right kind of life to use properly (a spiritual life and not just a physical/psychological life).”

“There is nothing wrong with this as none of us are omniscient. Unfortunately, many people fall into that trap of feeling that they must come across as being all-knowing so that their position will be believable. In doing this what usually happens is just the opposite. The “all the answers all the time” position weakens the truths contained in people’s positions because any error that may be found in their position gives one the idea that maybe it is really “none of the answers any of the time.’ My view on this is that none of us has the right to expect anyone to have all the answers. All we can do is to assess every position from the conformity of that position to the standard of truth we elect to use. In this way, we can take what shows itself to be true and reject whatever fails the test. At a minimum, we may “put on the shelf” the things that we can’t definitely prove or disprove.”

Rich