We always talk about Adam and Eve eating the bad fruit and all the consequences — living outside the garden, in this mortal and difficult life where Lucifer roams, and then we die. I bet they used to eat the good fruit from The Tree of Life which was in the midst of the Garden of Eden; and it must have been quite available to them. They probably ate that fruit all the days they lived in that Edenic state. I just never thought of that.
The Garden was like a Temple, a place where God would visit them in person. There was only one tree they were commanded not to eat — the tree of good and evil, or tree of death, as some sources call it. They could eat freely of every other tree.
Once they partook of the deadly fruit of good and evil, God went to quite an effort to block the way to the Tree of Life. They must have been eating that fruit before. God “placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life”
He did not want them to eat it and live forever in their sins — He banned them from the Garden Temple. And although they were thrown out of the garden, God must have expected them to get back and so He set up this cherubim. God actually wants us to get back to that tree and partake of that fruit. He wants us to learn how to get on the path and know how to get past the cherubim and partake of the Tree of Life and have eternal life.
Genesis talks of the tree and a path (way) to the tree but does not tell us how to get back to God. Lehi’s dream gives more information. John also saw the tree and the way. There is a path. There is a way to partake of the Tree of Life again. The Temple is one place of learning.
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