In Spirit And In Truth

Chapter One
Going Past The Veil



“With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last. The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. And when the centurion, who stood there in front of Jesus, heard his cry and saw how he died, he said, "Surely this man was the Son of God!" (Mark 15:37-39)

“Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. And the LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” (Gen. 2:8-9)

    In Genesis 2:8-9, the Bible talks about a special place that God had designed where He would commune with man, a garden, with trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. This points out the fact that all the plants in the garden could be seen and felt, and were as real to Adam as any plant we have today. It also says that the tree of life and the tree of good and evil were there in the middle of the garden.  According to Genesis 3:22 when you ate of the tree of good and evil, your mind was able conceive the difference between good and evil. Also when you ate of the tree of life you would receive eternal life. This constitutes a spiritual condition that happens in a physical realm.
    In Genesis 3:8 it says that Adam and Eve heard God walking in the garden. How can this be unless Adam had the ability to see, hear, and touch the spiritual aspects of God?
Charles Spurgeon when describing the Garden of Eden put it this way,

          “What a glorious state this world was in at the very first, in the age of Paradise, for the Lord was there! Our glorious Creator, having taken the first days of the week to make the world, and fit it up for man, did not bring forward his dear child until the house was built and furnished, and supplied for his use and happiness. He did not put him in the garden to dress it till the roses were blooming, and the fruits were ripe. When the table was furnished he introduced the guest, by saying, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." The Lord put man, not in an unreclaimed plot of soil, where he must hunger till he could produce a harvest; but into an Eden of delights, where he was at home, with creatures of every sort to attend him. He had not to water dry lands, nor need he thirst himself, for four rivers flowed through his royal domain, rippling over sands of gold. I might say much of that fair garden of innocence and bliss, but the best thing I could say would be the Lord was there. "The Lord God walked in the garden in the cool of the day," and communed with man; and man, being innocent, held high converse with his condescending Maker. The topstone of the bliss of Paradise was this all-comprehending privilege—the Lord is there." (C. H. Spurgeon 1891)

     Some would say that Eden was not a real place and that it was just a nice story. If that were true then why would the Bible give a fairly good description of where Eden was?

“A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from there it was separated into four headwaters. The name of the first is the Pishon; it winds through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold.  (The gold of that land is good; aromatic resin and onyx are also there.) The name of the second river is the Gihon; it winds through the entire land of Cush. The name of the third river is the Tigris; it runs along the east side of Asshur. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.” (Gen. 2:10-14)

All this points to an area called the Armenian Highland bordering on the northeast part of Turkey and Armenia.
If this is true then why have we not found this garden yet? Some would say that the flood destroyed Eden, and yet Jesus states in Rev 2:7 “I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.”
    The answer can only be that it is a garden that is physical but also spiritual, in that it cannot be seen by our physical eye. Adam was a man who could see and touch both the physical realm and the spiritual realm of this world, and of God's. Due to the fall of man sin has placed a veil between God and Adam, to the point that after he left Eden he was no longer able to touch or see it. This veil grew to the point that man no longer was able to naturally see God, unless he revealed Himself to man in a physically manifested way.

          “There was no veil in Paradise between man and God. There were three places or regions; the outer earth, Eden, and "the Garden of Eden”, or Paradise; but there was no veil nor fence between, hindering access from the one to the other. There was nothing to prevent man from going in to speak with God, or God from coming out to speak with man. It was not till after man had disobeyed that the veil was let down which separated God from man, which made a distinction between the dwellings of man and the habitation of God.
          Before God had spoken or done aught in the way of separation, man betrayed his consciousness of his new standing, and of the necessity for a covering or screen. He fled from God into the thick trees of the garden, that their foliage might hide him from God and God from him. In so doing he showed that he felt two things,-- 1. That there must be a veil between him and God; 2. That, now, in his altered position, distance from God (if such a thing could be) was his safety.”
          “Even if God had said "draw near," man could not have responded "let us draw near," or felt "it is good for me to draw near to God." For sin had now come between, and until that should be dealt with in the way of pardon and removal, he could not approach God, nor expect God to approach him.”
(Rent Veil / Bonar)

    How this must have broken God’s heart for man was made in His image, and was created to commune with Him. Now there was a veil hiding His physical presence from man. But God had a plan! He would send His only begotten Son, to take the form of man, and tear that veil in two once and for all.
    When John the Baptist came on the scene, for the first time in over four hundred years, a public prophetic voice was heard pronouncing that the Kingdom of Heaven was at hand.  During Jesus' public life, the dead were being brought back to life, the sick were being healed, the blind were seeing and the deaf were hearing. In Luke 11:20 Jesus makes a significant statement and declares that the Kingdom of Heaven has come upon us. “If I drive out demons by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.” What does this mean, and of what significance is it to us anyway?
    Since the fall of man till this time and even now, men have realized that “we got to get ourselves back to the garden”. (Woodstock, 1969, Cosby, Still, Nash and Young) The Garden being not so much a physical place as much as it was a place of communion with our Creator.