Troublesome Topic: EDEN IS NOT RETRIEVABLE

God never says he wants to reestablish Eden, but He does wish to reestablish closeness. Eden is not retrievable because sin changed everything.

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil meant the tree that would teach what good brings and what evil brings; it taught consequences. God intended for mankind to never learn about sin firsthand; He wanted us to learn that doing the right thing produced an intimate relationship with our creator and therefore we would not want to experience the opposite – the consequences of sin.

But the option was available, and Adam and Eve took it. We probably would have done the same.

My point here is that, once sin entered human experience, we can never go back. We know what sin is because we know its consequences, and as long as we live we are in the process of more fully realizing what those consequences are. Therefore, Eden will never be restored. We can’t go back to not knowing what we know. Over and over again, Heiser talks about the restoration of Eden; all of those statements are misguided.

God does not want to restore us to a place in time when we did not know what sin’s consequences were, He wants to use what we have learned firsthand about those consequences to choose to worship and serve Him.

Where did Michael Heiser get the idea that Eden will be restored? 1 Enoch 10:15-11:2 describes a renewed period of righteousness and divine blessing, but it does not specifically refer to it as Eden in that context. 1 Enoch refers to visions of divine spaces (ch 32) and the tree of life/wisdom (ch 24-25). Some think these refer to Eden. Although Heiser does not quote I Enoch 32, he does make reference to 1 Enoch 24-25 in the context of his discussion of the Serpent of Eden (whom he calls the “anointed cherub” and the “divine rebel”) (pp 79-80) but without quoting it. So it does appear that Heiser got his idea about restoring Eden from 1 Enoch. The books of Enoch are unreliable, yet Heiser relies on them heavily.

If you feel you need to rely on the books of Enoch to support your case, you don’t have a case, and once you have quoted from the books of Enoch, you still have no case.

The next lesson is ONLY BEGOTTEN.