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Then He anchored a permanent means of communication to Himself, a link to the Source of all life, right in the middle of this extravagantly stunning paradise. He secured it on both sides of the central flow of water and rooted it deep into the new soil. It was the most magnificent tree ever seen anywhere and it towered high above all the other trees of the garden. It could be seen easily from a great distance so it would never be difficult to find from any direction.
Although it was so tall, it also had broad, low branches that spread out farther than any other tree to the point that they seemed to deny gravity itself. And unlike all the other fruit trees of earth, this tree could bear multiple kinds of fruit. And the fruit had inherent properties that far exceeded the life-giving qualities of all other fruit or food of any kind. This tree and its fruit was somehow a direct link to God Himself. This tree had been imported from heaven, not locally produced.
As God stood with His angels admiring the finished Garden and His magnificent gift of the Tree of Life, He was about to leave in preparation for His crowning act of creation when He was interrupted by an all too familiar complaining voice. He recognized not only the voice but also the now too familiar pain in His own Spirit. Yes it was Lucifer again. He could never leave good enough alone. He was always insisting that God's perfect ways were not really complete and were somehow deficient. True to his now fallen nature he again began to question and criticize God's beautiful handiwork. But in particular he bitterly complained about his own restrictions laid down by God for his new realm of reference since he had been evicted from heaven.
Lucifer was about to launch into another whining tirade about God's unfairness when God stopped him and asked him to simply state what his basic request was. Lucifer responded that it was unfair of God to not allow him free access to the minds and domain of the soon-to-be-created humans. They would be unfairly sheltered from Lucifer's new “enlightened” concepts of living because there was no communication channels available to him. He had been strictly forbidden to visit with them or even to show himself to them in any way so as to protect their innocence and beauty. Lucifer railed that this was blatantly unfair and thousands of angels around him picked up the chant - “un-fair, un-fair, un-fair...”
God realized that once again questions were being agitated even in the minds of many of His loyal angels. Lucifer had for a long time now used his superior intellectual prowess to confuse and mystify many of God's created beings and draw their affections away from their Creator. So to prevent even further loss from His government and His heart He now asked what Lucifer might propose that would be mutually “fair” to both sides.
Lucifer – now Satan (the accusing one) – had thought long and hard on this one already. He knew how God thought and related to His created beings better than anyone and he already knew God would not grant him full access to this new planet. But he also was desperate to capture real authority and dominion somewhere in the cosmos so he could again have a place to call home as well as have a base to operate from. His long-term objective now was to capture one world at a time and spread his power through the universe in a grass roots rebellion. It had worked relatively well in the angel realm and he had seduced to himself the allegiance of one-third of the hosts of heaven. Now if he could establish a beachhead among the lower orders of created beings he could expand his authority into greater dimensions and regions of the universe.
So it was very important that he present a careful proposal that would force God's reluctant agreement by exploiting His mercy. Satan had insisted all through the conflict that God's mercy was really a sign of weakness, a flaw in His character. Satan had long since discarded mercy from his own nature and insisted that external performance based on internal reliance was a superior form of government. Self-government, independence, complete confidence in one's self and taking great pride in self-promotion was the real solution for satisfying one's own needs, he claimed.
Now Satan once again was ready with a plan. These new beings, he asserted, need to have a fair chance to choose how they want to live for themselves. Satan knew how much God valued free will in all His beings so there had to be an alternative from God that they could choose. And since God had chosen a tree as the link to Himself in this new world, Satan proposed that he too should be able to have a tree as an opportunity for the new beings to communicate and connect with his new kingdom.
God agreed that this plan was allowable. Satan then quickly insisted that he have an access tree planted on every inhabited planet in the universe in the name of fairness and freedom. God allowed for this request as well though the immense sorrow and pain in His heart was deepening continually. This terrible cancer of rebellion and multiplying false accusations against Him were continuing to spread and were destroying the openness and uninhibited love that God had created all these beings to mutually enjoy with Him and each other.
So God agreed to allow a second tree in the Garden to permit Satan access at that location only to the minds and hearts of this world's humans. God said that His own tree would be called the Tree of Life and Satan's tree would be the opposite – the Tree of Death.
But immediately Satan objected. This would not work for him. Deception was now his number one instrument of choice and a “Tree of Death” would be too hard for him to make attractive and seductive. He put forward several other very misleading names for his tree but God refused them all on the basis of honesty. God said that the name of the tree had to be truthful about its true nature so that humans would not be at a disadvantage. Finally Satan put forward a name that fit his philosophy while subtly masking the truth about the end results that God agreed they could use. Satan had insisted in his demands for a new government that his ways would lead to a better life and did not want anyone to think about the real consequences of cutting themselves off from the only Source of Life. He articulated that creatures could be self-sustaining and self-governing under his leadership.
So this new tree would have a very creative and intriguing name, one that would incite curiosity and maybe create some confusion, he hoped. It would be representative of Satan's new way of thinking and living; that every being could use his own ability to reason and think and create his own reality (a Tree of Knowledge), and that created beings could decide what was best for themselves and what would satisfy them (knowledge of Good) without reference to God, to His principles and ways, and without any help from Him (knowledge of Evil).
Then Satan presented the design of his tree to God and picked its location. This was certainly a moment of embarrassment for him to have to ask God to supply the creative power to bring Satan's tree into existence, but if anyone questioned his lack of ability to create he would simply assert that he would someday be able to do the same for himself when he would capture the throne of the Son of God.
This second tree would look in many respects much like the Tree of Life. It too would have two trunks that he would present as the two aspects of truly balanced knowledge. If given the chance to dialog and reason with these new beings he would insinuate that “simplistic” reliance on God for life was not really as fulfilling as they supposed. That to be truly satisfied, they needed to assert their own ability to explore life outside God's restrictions and discover real balance and excitement in life by fully exploring both what is good in their own thinking and figure out by experimentation what is bad for them so they can decide for themselves if God's ways are really best for them or not.
This Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil would also produce multiple kinds of very attractive fruit as well as sweetly perfumed flowers, and it would rise majestically to the sky. It pretty much was a close lookalike of the Tree of Life but in some ways was also clearly distinguished so that there would be no confusion as to which was which.
Next installment – the amazing mud-pie man meets the knock-out beauty queen and they get married.
