The Tree of Life On the middle of the Garden of Eden, there are two trees: the Tree of Knowledge

e of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life. The first tree is the one from which the original human couple has eaten its forbidden fruits against Gods command, and that caused their fall, in consequence. By eating the Knowledge of Good and Evil trees fruit, Adam and Eve found out that everything has its contrary or contradiction even God has it! By understanding that everything had its specific contrary, then also God could have His own contrary, His antithesis, Evil. We all know this primordial story where a new broad and dual understanding, experienced by disobeying to God, is referred as the Original Sinn. The second forbidden tree is the Tree of Life; on Genesis cap.3 it is explained that God has expelled the first human couple from the Garden of Eden to prevent both, Adam and Eve, from eating the Tree of Lifes fruit which in consequence would give them eternal life... There is some mixed up about the fact that in the Genesis two trees are referred, and not a single tree with two designations, as some scholars have concluded. God cursed and expelled Adam and Eve from Paradise because they would become like gods in case they would taste the fruit of the Tree of Life. Instead of it, Adam and Eves descendents were cursed as well and through out the millennia, submitted to their destiny of the original sin carriers, until the coming of the Messiah (Christ), Jesus.

Following the track of the Tree of Lifes meaning, since the beginning of times, it leads us to the coming of the Christ as the other name for liberation from original sin and salvation. For that purpose, Jesus Christ has chosen to dye on the cross, giving His blood as the Lamb of God. For centuries, in the Christian world, Christs cross has been also called the Holly Wood or the Holly Tree, translated into other European languages and using an expression as in, 1 Peter 2:24. (He) who his own self bare our sins in his body upon the tree, that we, having died unto sins, might live unto righteousness; by whose stripes ye were healed . KJV. By Jesus Christ self-sacrifice and resurrection, our life has been rescued from the original sin and death to eternal life. So He came, the Son of God to earth to save us from darkness and condemnation. The cross is charged by complementary meanings like: Christianity, life sacrifice for salvation, the door for salvation, the Messiahs Passion for mankind, and the symbol of how we attain the way to eternal life (besides other esoteric meanings as the four elements). Jesus Christs blood transformed a simple cross of wood into the true Tree of Life, symbol for an immortal, eternal life. ( If we do not dye, have we been born?) In conclusion, the Tree of Life has been there all the time, on the middle of the Garden of Eden waiting for the right moment for mankind to receive eternal life, through its fruits, the teaching-Word of Jesus, the Son of man and Son of God as in John 8:58 I tell you the truth, before Abraham was born, I Am! .

This coming of the Messiah is a second opportunity given by the Father, to redeem and save us; and the Tree of Life came again into our drama as the soaked cross of Christ Jesus blood. I realise all this drama along the centuries, was already in Gods plan. However, it makes me wonder of how it could have been if Adam and Eve had obeyed and had not eaten the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, how then mankinds destiny would have been?!...Maybe, God would have conferred to human race the right to eat from the fruit of the Tree of Life, the right to immortality, without so much difficult learning, without so much suffering, without the Messiahsacrifice. There would have been no drama, no story, no history, we, humans, would have become just like anonymous angels In the book of Genesis, the Tree of Life was already a symbol for salvation, as the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is the symbol of the human Fall; because of that, about 2000 years ago, the Messiah/Christ came as man to give us eternal life, a gift from God that was already there for us, since the primordial time. . Summer 2011 Maria Dacosta