CHARACTERS & PLACES

Characters & Places

We tend to associate Adam with the Garden of Eden, and Jesus with Heaven. Each Bible character tends to be connected to a place. Indeed, Adam and Jesus, the Garden and Heaven are very much associated with each other. How so? Paradise is Heaven, and, just as Adam and Jesus are real people, so the Garden and Heaven are actual places. Therefore, Paradise/Heaven has postcode.

Just as the pre-Fall Adam was typical of Jesus, so the Garden of Eden is a type of Heaven, as in the heavenly Paradise. Indeed, the Old Testament is full of typologies that find their anti-types in the New Testament. E.g., Noah and his ark, when God judged the earth with a global flood, pictures Jesus saving His people (and creation) from the coming judgment of God. David slaying Goliath, typifies Jesus defeating the devil.

Adam was tested by the serpent in the Garden. Adam lost. Jesus was tested by the devil in the wilderness. Jesus won. Indeed, Jesus is the replacement Adam. He takes over where Adam left off, i.e., before Adam fell. As the new Adam, Jesus is in the process of subduing all the earth. All authority in heaven and earth has been given to Him. He has dominion over all things.

God dwells in Heaven. The character of God is revealed in His Ten Commandments. Jesus kept the Decalogue perfectly. Thus He is the express image of the Triune God. No one can get into Heaven unless they go through Jesus. Therefore, just as God took Adam and placed him in the Garden, so Jesus has to take you to that heavenly place. However, is your character anything like the character of God as revealed in the Ten Commandments? So how can God let a sinner, i.e., a commandment breaker like you into Heaven?  

God cursed the ground when Adam ate the fruit of a tree. Adam became sin-distorted. Jesus cursed a tree because it bore no fruit for Him to eat. The tree became shrivelled. But what happens when God forgives a sinner? ‘He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not wither, and whatever he does shall prosper’ Psalm 1:3. Thus, just as God took Adam and placed him in the Garden, so God takes you and me (post conversion) and plants us in Paradise. Jesus said to the repentant thief dying on a cross next to him, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise’ Luke 23:43b.

Paradise’s postcode has only two letters: XR, pronounced as Chi Rho, from the Greek word ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ, meaning Christ. Find Christ and you will find Heaven. Where is the place where you find Christ? You will find Him in the sixty-six books of the Bible. You will find Him wherever people gather in His name, where the Bible is honoured and expounded, i.e. in any Bible believing church.

There was a television advert in the 70s for a chocolate bar which had the line, ‘They came in search of paradise and found a bounty.’ If you are searching for Paradise, it's found only in Jesus whose bounty includes Paradise. Jesus says, ‘To him who overcomes I will give to eat from the tree of life, which is in the midst of the Paradise of God’ Revelation 2:7.

Adam died because he ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the midst of the Garden. Therefore, eat from the tee on life and live