3. And a New Fall There came a day when a serpent passed through the eastern gate of Eden.
This serpent was not a simple snake as we think of serpents now. He had scales on his body, short legs and arms with claws, and leathery wings with pointed ribs. This was the end of the age of dragons and dinosaurs, species of which still roamed the earth but were only diminished versions of the great beasts that had existed in the past. The serpent fit well with the cold-blooded beasts.
Crossing from the direction of the gate, the serpent was not of Garden origin, this much was certain. And if he entered through the gate because the encircling rivers were deadly to him, then it was clear that he could never enjoy life within these heavenly borders.
Since there had been no sound of aggression or discontent in Eden until this point, the hiss of the snake grated on every ear in the Garden like a foul stench in the nostrils or a hideous sight to the eyes. And to a woman who had never seen such a beast or known the negative emotions it carried, the serpent was simply another creature of God, albeit strange.
Virtually every animal took note of a change in the texture of existence in Eden, including Adam and the woman. Even the plants sensed the disturbance, slightly curling their leaves, closing petals, and drawing all resources inward.
Adam, at the river, saw that the woman was closer and already moving toward the disturbance. He resumed the work at hand, choosing to finish this task rather than to investigate. Peace had lulled him into a false sense of security, and while serving, he failed in his commission to protect.
The serpent moved slowly toward the Garden’s center, occasionally allowing his hiss to signal his location. To remain unobserved would have no point! His patience was rewarded when the woman came to him at the forbidden tree.
The greater part of the serpent stood erect, its tail providing balance to aid its short hind legs.
Before the woman could challenge him as an intruder, the snake took the offensive. The hiss now was little more than a lisp as he began his assault with a charge against God.
“Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the Garden’?”
And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat the fruit of the trees of the Garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the Garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.’ ”
Then the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”[1]
As she stood beneath a limb of the tree, I could see that Eve found that the fruit hanging just out of reach did look inviting. The thought of being like God, to be equal to Him, no doubt was tantalizing. And this was desirable not so much for the gain in power, but for being raised to His level, to be as an equal. The relationship would grow stronger as she grew stronger!
There was a moment’s hesitation as she stood on tiptoes and stretched her arm, her hand almost to the fruit.
I could almost hear her thinking, “but why has God withheld this one item, so small and insignificant in its own right, but now enormously enticing?”
She was confronted with a moral dilemma: God had violated her trust in Him by withholding something that would lift her to a higher plane, or there was indeed something inherent in the fruit that was not meant for her, that would do her harm.
She had never been confronted with such a choice, a question with two possible answers.
In only an instant a flood of arguments passed through her mind. And then there were two questions: “Did she know what God had said?” and “Did she believe Him?”
Yes, she knew what He had said, but if she took the fruit, she would be saying “No” to whether she believed what He had said.
But how could it be wrong to be raised to God’s level? This was the question that surfaced from the deluge of memories and arguments flooding her thoughts.
She did not think to question the serpent, or to reason the serpent’s evil intent, while the beautiful creature stood before her in place of truth.
An untruth was a concept as foreign to her as the idea of disobedience. Neither had existed in her experience, just as the serpent was a being unknown to her previously.
As her hand detached the fruit from its stem, the woman felt a sense of loss, and the loss increased her yearning for the fruit. She willed herself to bring it to her mouth lest her courage fail her and she never discover the secret withheld. She took a bite.
Only then did she take her eyes from her prize and again look at the serpent. He was less beautiful than before. The bright colors had all become shades of brown, and the face was now more pointed, the eyes darker. His stature was reduced, somewhat stooped rather than standing erect.
Looking at the fruit in her hand, the bite passing down her throat, the fruit’s allure had faded as much as had that of the serpent.
As she looked about her, the Garden also was less vivid, less alive with color.
And all was silent. The serpent’s hiss that had cut across all sound before now was the only sound as it insinuated itself into the air unchallenged.
She stood still, frozen in the moment as one who is caught in an awkward place and does not know how to escape.
Adam had finished his task and had come to support the woman. He found her at this moment, partially devoured fruit in hand and uncertainty in her mind.
Seeing Adam, she extended the hand with the fruit toward him. She did not speak words, but her action spoke volumes to Adam.
Adam could see that the woman had chosen the fruit rather than obedience. And eyeing the stooped serpent with its dull brown patterns, he gathered that she had chosen the serpent rather than God.
He must now choose the woman or God. Never had Adam been aware of having faced such a choice. Until now, the path had always been straight toward God, but now the one path had split into two paths.
The woman had been born of him, a literal side, one half of him removed. In addition to one half of his physical body, she had taken some or most of certain characteristics from him to become whole but different. She was not just a separate part of him, flesh of his flesh, but an independent part of him that he still required in order to be whole.
Where else could he find a helpmate, a partner and companion?
He took the fruit from her hand and ate of it.
As I watched, I understood one aspect of hell, one part of the punishment associated with being separated from God. At that moment, unable to change what was occurring before me, I empathized with their loss, felt their loss, their confusion and uncertainty.
Helpless and embarrassed for them, I averted my gaze.
The note that had prevailed before the entry of the snake changed, becoming somewhat darker, perhaps even ominous. Had Adam and the woman been listening, been tuned to God, they would have been alert and cautious.
But they did not sense the darker tone of the note, or the slight overcast dimming the ever present light of their outdoor home. This almost discordant note continued, but with less urgency. I could not discern if they still heard or if they were downcast because of the realization of their fault.
Then the note stopped altogether.
The silence of the Garden was like a presence itself.
Adam broke the now oppressive stillness of the space that no longer was Eden. “We are exposed.”
His immediate reference was to their lack of clothing, a sense of vulnerability in the physical world they now inhabited.
The woman also was aware of the exposure to discomfort.
Their spiritual covering was gone and, indeed, there was nothing between them and the physical elements with which they had been as one only moments previously.
A larger covering also was gone: Eden, the heavenly enclave on the earthly planet, no longer existed for them. There was no sound, no movement. The plants and trees and animals were still there, but there was no communication discernable, no on-going conversation that the man and the woman could hear.
The fruit still in his hand, Adam knew that he did not belong here.
The gravity to which they had voluntarily submitted had been a light binding of what was above the earth to the solid ground. Now it was an unrelenting law.
Their bodies had subsisted on fruit from the trees allowed and on the eternal light from above. The single bite of forbidden fruit had initiated a new feeling: hunger. From now they must eat of the forbidden tree, the fruit of the physical world.
The water of the rivers, and the dew that had saturated the earth, had given a rich humidity that required no drink. Now they experienced a new feeling: thirst. From this moment forward they must bend to the stream that watered the forbidden tree and take handfuls to satisfy their thirst.
And from now came the rhythm of day and night. This alternating current of light and shadow had existed in the outer physical world, but the Garden had been immune to night, infused with the light of the Creator continually.
The dimming of the light that had occurred with the plucking of the fruit continued until the copper sky was a dull metallic gray. There was the overwhelming absence of the eternal light.
From now they would know time, an entity consisting of far more than the relentless rhythm of day and night. Not yet evident, but already at work, time introduced a new rhythm: life and death.
All of this became evident as the shadows of afternoon, hitherto unknown, crept across the Garden.
Compounding their disobedience regarding the forbidden tree, they did violence to the trees and collected leaves to make crude coverings for their nakedness.
At last came the moment of reckoning, the time of accountability.
Then the man and his wife heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the breeze of the day, and they hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.
Then the Lord God called to Adam and said to him, “Where are you?”
So he said, “I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself.”
And He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat?”
Then the man said, “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate.”
And the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”
The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
So the Lord God said to the serpent:
“Because you have done this,
You are cursed more than all cattle,
And more than every beast of the field;
On your belly you shall go,
And you shall eat dust
All the days of your life.
And I will put enmity
Between you and the woman,
And between your seed and her Seed;
He shall bruise your head,
And you shall bruise His heel.”
To the woman He said:
“I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception;
In pain you shall bring forth children;
Your desire shall be for your husband,
And he shall rule over you.”
Then to Adam He said, “Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat of it’:
“Cursed is the ground for your sake;
In toil you shall eat of it
All the days of your life.
Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you,
And you shall eat the herb of the field.
In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread
Till you return to the ground,
For out of it you were taken;
For dust you are,
And to dust you shall return.”
And Adam called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living.
Also for Adam and his wife the Lord God made tunics of skin, and clothed them
Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil. And now, lest he put out his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”— therefore the Lord God sent him out of the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken. So He drove out the man; and He placed cherubim at the east of the garden of Eden, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life[2].
Time is simply a conduit, an artificial construct through which change occurs. Without change, time would be irrelevant.
But it is more than just change that enables time. Even with the changes that occurred as new land had been incorporated into the Garden, time had been irrelevant before now.
Any system that loses energy falls under the dominion of time. Only this loss of energy, this entropy in whatever form of physical energy, including life, creates time.
Outside of the Garden, the earth continued its inexorable journey into age. Now for the first couple, the sands of time began to slide down from the abundance in the top of the hour glass into the emptiness below. The hourglass is relentless. When the bottom of the glass is full and nothing remains at the top, time will cease. Energy is gone, and the entire system ceases to exist.
Until this moment of disobedience to the laws of existence, all Creation beyond Eden’s borders had awaited rescue from the domain of the Fallen Ones. That hope now was shattered.
The hour for the Garden’s end had come, at least from mankind’s perspective. Acknowledging another ruler, a weaker source of power, Adam and Eve fell from heaven to a lower dimension.
As I have found in my other travels, this story is not unusual. Almost every civilization in any time or place has a memory of some such beginning. Yes, the stories change within cultures over time, but the lesson remains the same.
But only of earth do I know of a fall from the higher dimensions to the lowest dimension. I have been given to know that there are other existences continuing in the perfect harmony of love, or falling partially and then accepting restoration to heaven.
I know only of earth experiencing this terrible and seemingly permanent fall. And many on earth forget these beginnings altogether. Perhaps, deny is more appropriate than forget.
The details of this story are important because of what is to follow in my journey. My destination was generations into the future, but that future is so affected by the events of Eden that a thorough understanding is necessary.
Remember God’s curse on the serpent as stated above, for that part of the story also has relevance for many millennia. It is possible when reading God’s curse to understand what we shall see as Eve’s misinterpretation.
The following story, also well-known, is necessary to set the stage.
[1] Genesis 3:1-5 NKJV
[2] Gen. 3:8 Berean Study Bible, Gen. 3:9-24 NKJV
Next chapter
This serpent was not a simple snake as we think of serpents now. He had scales on his body, short legs and arms with claws, and leathery wings with pointed ribs. This was the end of the age of dragons and dinosaurs, species of which still roamed the earth but were only diminished versions of the great beasts that had existed in the past. The serpent fit well with the cold-blooded beasts.
Crossing from the direction of the gate, the serpent was not of Garden origin, this much was certain. And if he entered through the gate because the encircling rivers were deadly to him, then it was clear that he could never enjoy life within these heavenly borders.
Since there had been no sound of aggression or discontent in Eden until this point, the hiss of the snake grated on every ear in the Garden like a foul stench in the nostrils or a hideous sight to the eyes. And to a woman who had never seen such a beast or known the negative emotions it carried, the serpent was simply another creature of God, albeit strange.
Virtually every animal took note of a change in the texture of existence in Eden, including Adam and the woman. Even the plants sensed the disturbance, slightly curling their leaves, closing petals, and drawing all resources inward.
Adam, at the river, saw that the woman was closer and already moving toward the disturbance. He resumed the work at hand, choosing to finish this task rather than to investigate. Peace had lulled him into a false sense of security, and while serving, he failed in his commission to protect.
The serpent moved slowly toward the Garden’s center, occasionally allowing his hiss to signal his location. To remain unobserved would have no point! His patience was rewarded when the woman came to him at the forbidden tree.
The greater part of the serpent stood erect, its tail providing balance to aid its short hind legs.
Before the woman could challenge him as an intruder, the snake took the offensive. The hiss now was little more than a lisp as he began his assault with a charge against God.
“Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the Garden’?”
And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat the fruit of the trees of the Garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the Garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.’ ”
Then the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”[1]
As she stood beneath a limb of the tree, I could see that Eve found that the fruit hanging just out of reach did look inviting. The thought of being like God, to be equal to Him, no doubt was tantalizing. And this was desirable not so much for the gain in power, but for being raised to His level, to be as an equal. The relationship would grow stronger as she grew stronger!
There was a moment’s hesitation as she stood on tiptoes and stretched her arm, her hand almost to the fruit.
I could almost hear her thinking, “but why has God withheld this one item, so small and insignificant in its own right, but now enormously enticing?”
She was confronted with a moral dilemma: God had violated her trust in Him by withholding something that would lift her to a higher plane, or there was indeed something inherent in the fruit that was not meant for her, that would do her harm.
She had never been confronted with such a choice, a question with two possible answers.
In only an instant a flood of arguments passed through her mind. And then there were two questions: “Did she know what God had said?” and “Did she believe Him?”
Yes, she knew what He had said, but if she took the fruit, she would be saying “No” to whether she believed what He had said.
But how could it be wrong to be raised to God’s level? This was the question that surfaced from the deluge of memories and arguments flooding her thoughts.
She did not think to question the serpent, or to reason the serpent’s evil intent, while the beautiful creature stood before her in place of truth.
An untruth was a concept as foreign to her as the idea of disobedience. Neither had existed in her experience, just as the serpent was a being unknown to her previously.
As her hand detached the fruit from its stem, the woman felt a sense of loss, and the loss increased her yearning for the fruit. She willed herself to bring it to her mouth lest her courage fail her and she never discover the secret withheld. She took a bite.
Only then did she take her eyes from her prize and again look at the serpent. He was less beautiful than before. The bright colors had all become shades of brown, and the face was now more pointed, the eyes darker. His stature was reduced, somewhat stooped rather than standing erect.
Looking at the fruit in her hand, the bite passing down her throat, the fruit’s allure had faded as much as had that of the serpent.
As she looked about her, the Garden also was less vivid, less alive with color.
And all was silent. The serpent’s hiss that had cut across all sound before now was the only sound as it insinuated itself into the air unchallenged.
She stood still, frozen in the moment as one who is caught in an awkward place and does not know how to escape.
Adam had finished his task and had come to support the woman. He found her at this moment, partially devoured fruit in hand and uncertainty in her mind.
Seeing Adam, she extended the hand with the fruit toward him. She did not speak words, but her action spoke volumes to Adam.
Adam could see that the woman had chosen the fruit rather than obedience. And eyeing the stooped serpent with its dull brown patterns, he gathered that she had chosen the serpent rather than God.
He must now choose the woman or God. Never had Adam been aware of having faced such a choice. Until now, the path had always been straight toward God, but now the one path had split into two paths.
The woman had been born of him, a literal side, one half of him removed. In addition to one half of his physical body, she had taken some or most of certain characteristics from him to become whole but different. She was not just a separate part of him, flesh of his flesh, but an independent part of him that he still required in order to be whole.
Where else could he find a helpmate, a partner and companion?
He took the fruit from her hand and ate of it.
As I watched, I understood one aspect of hell, one part of the punishment associated with being separated from God. At that moment, unable to change what was occurring before me, I empathized with their loss, felt their loss, their confusion and uncertainty.
Helpless and embarrassed for them, I averted my gaze.
The note that had prevailed before the entry of the snake changed, becoming somewhat darker, perhaps even ominous. Had Adam and the woman been listening, been tuned to God, they would have been alert and cautious.
But they did not sense the darker tone of the note, or the slight overcast dimming the ever present light of their outdoor home. This almost discordant note continued, but with less urgency. I could not discern if they still heard or if they were downcast because of the realization of their fault.
Then the note stopped altogether.
The silence of the Garden was like a presence itself.
Adam broke the now oppressive stillness of the space that no longer was Eden. “We are exposed.”
His immediate reference was to their lack of clothing, a sense of vulnerability in the physical world they now inhabited.
The woman also was aware of the exposure to discomfort.
Their spiritual covering was gone and, indeed, there was nothing between them and the physical elements with which they had been as one only moments previously.
A larger covering also was gone: Eden, the heavenly enclave on the earthly planet, no longer existed for them. There was no sound, no movement. The plants and trees and animals were still there, but there was no communication discernable, no on-going conversation that the man and the woman could hear.
The fruit still in his hand, Adam knew that he did not belong here.
The gravity to which they had voluntarily submitted had been a light binding of what was above the earth to the solid ground. Now it was an unrelenting law.
Their bodies had subsisted on fruit from the trees allowed and on the eternal light from above. The single bite of forbidden fruit had initiated a new feeling: hunger. From now they must eat of the forbidden tree, the fruit of the physical world.
The water of the rivers, and the dew that had saturated the earth, had given a rich humidity that required no drink. Now they experienced a new feeling: thirst. From this moment forward they must bend to the stream that watered the forbidden tree and take handfuls to satisfy their thirst.
And from now came the rhythm of day and night. This alternating current of light and shadow had existed in the outer physical world, but the Garden had been immune to night, infused with the light of the Creator continually.
The dimming of the light that had occurred with the plucking of the fruit continued until the copper sky was a dull metallic gray. There was the overwhelming absence of the eternal light.
From now they would know time, an entity consisting of far more than the relentless rhythm of day and night. Not yet evident, but already at work, time introduced a new rhythm: life and death.
All of this became evident as the shadows of afternoon, hitherto unknown, crept across the Garden.
Compounding their disobedience regarding the forbidden tree, they did violence to the trees and collected leaves to make crude coverings for their nakedness.
At last came the moment of reckoning, the time of accountability.
Then the man and his wife heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the breeze of the day, and they hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.
Then the Lord God called to Adam and said to him, “Where are you?”
So he said, “I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself.”
And He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat?”
Then the man said, “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate.”
And the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”
The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
So the Lord God said to the serpent:
“Because you have done this,
You are cursed more than all cattle,
And more than every beast of the field;
On your belly you shall go,
And you shall eat dust
All the days of your life.
And I will put enmity
Between you and the woman,
And between your seed and her Seed;
He shall bruise your head,
And you shall bruise His heel.”
To the woman He said:
“I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception;
In pain you shall bring forth children;
Your desire shall be for your husband,
And he shall rule over you.”
Then to Adam He said, “Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat of it’:
“Cursed is the ground for your sake;
In toil you shall eat of it
All the days of your life.
Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you,
And you shall eat the herb of the field.
In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread
Till you return to the ground,
For out of it you were taken;
For dust you are,
And to dust you shall return.”
And Adam called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living.
Also for Adam and his wife the Lord God made tunics of skin, and clothed them
Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil. And now, lest he put out his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”— therefore the Lord God sent him out of the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken. So He drove out the man; and He placed cherubim at the east of the garden of Eden, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life[2].
Time is simply a conduit, an artificial construct through which change occurs. Without change, time would be irrelevant.
But it is more than just change that enables time. Even with the changes that occurred as new land had been incorporated into the Garden, time had been irrelevant before now.
Any system that loses energy falls under the dominion of time. Only this loss of energy, this entropy in whatever form of physical energy, including life, creates time.
Outside of the Garden, the earth continued its inexorable journey into age. Now for the first couple, the sands of time began to slide down from the abundance in the top of the hour glass into the emptiness below. The hourglass is relentless. When the bottom of the glass is full and nothing remains at the top, time will cease. Energy is gone, and the entire system ceases to exist.
Until this moment of disobedience to the laws of existence, all Creation beyond Eden’s borders had awaited rescue from the domain of the Fallen Ones. That hope now was shattered.
The hour for the Garden’s end had come, at least from mankind’s perspective. Acknowledging another ruler, a weaker source of power, Adam and Eve fell from heaven to a lower dimension.
As I have found in my other travels, this story is not unusual. Almost every civilization in any time or place has a memory of some such beginning. Yes, the stories change within cultures over time, but the lesson remains the same.
But only of earth do I know of a fall from the higher dimensions to the lowest dimension. I have been given to know that there are other existences continuing in the perfect harmony of love, or falling partially and then accepting restoration to heaven.
I know only of earth experiencing this terrible and seemingly permanent fall. And many on earth forget these beginnings altogether. Perhaps, deny is more appropriate than forget.
The details of this story are important because of what is to follow in my journey. My destination was generations into the future, but that future is so affected by the events of Eden that a thorough understanding is necessary.
Remember God’s curse on the serpent as stated above, for that part of the story also has relevance for many millennia. It is possible when reading God’s curse to understand what we shall see as Eve’s misinterpretation.
The following story, also well-known, is necessary to set the stage.
[1] Genesis 3:1-5 NKJV
[2] Gen. 3:8 Berean Study Bible, Gen. 3:9-24 NKJV
Next chapter
