Into Eternity - the Finale

Eternity............................................................

I want you to consider today that you are an eternal being. In my last two posts, I’ve asked some questions about us as humans. Considering our uniqueness and individuality we have some things that connect us that seem not of this world. Even in the vast spanning of the dimension of time, our connectiveness and commonality in certain aspects of our composition, it’s reasonable to agree that we not a cosmic accident, and neither are we here to be born, reproduce, then die. Eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die must be the most depressing cognition of mankind. We are complex, with infinitely incomprehensible composition. We are designed, and we are eternal. You may have read my last post and the one before and not agree with that. And that's fine. But you may as well read the finale now you're here!

Life Questions
I like the little tale of the unborn twins, where one asks the other, “Do you believe in life after birth?” The other answers, “Of course not. There’s nothing outside of this dark, watery world. What could there possibly be?”
"Well what about the great Mother? Surely you believe in Mother, she feeds us, and keeps us alive and we're here because of her?"
"No", replies the other. "There's no such person as Mother and there's nothing after birth....it's all a myth".

We get so caught up in our physical senses, that we fail to see anything beyond them. Life is more than we can hear, see, touch, taste and smell. We live so much in the cares of the world, and miss the bigger picture. Your body may be temporary, but that loving and living part of you that drives you isn’t.

So today I want to get to the point of what these questions and posts have been leading to. It might take 10 mins out of your life to read this. But can you spare it? For the sake of eternity? At best, you might learn something and find something that you never even knew you needed, and at worst you might just have a chuckle.

Are You Sitting Comfortably? Then We'll Begin

So I want to go back to the beginning, and I want to tell you something you may think is a legend, a fairy-tale, a myth even. But I want to perhaps give some additional info that you might not have heard or realised before. So if you can bear with me, you might be surprised. If not, then you’ve lost nothing, other than 10 mins of your life……

You might have guessed, we’re taking a trip back to Eden. We’re going on a whistle stop tour, but we need a little help from the guidebook to help make sense of it.

The bible is obviously our best source for this, but I’m going to paraphrase to keep things brief. So, let’s begin. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and you’ve heard the account of On day 1, On day 2 etc.

Let’s skip to day 6 when man popped on the scene. The most striking part of the text is that man was completely made, yet a lifeless body until God imparted something into him: that imparted thing was the the breath or the spirit of life. This is your power house. Sure our hearts pump blood around our bodies, and our physical bodies need a perfect equilibrium and myriad of systems in order to function correctly, and often when these processes go wrong, the body dies. But not everyone dies from a malfunctioning body. Sometimes people die from “natural causes” or old age. Has that ever made you wonder, what the heck is a 'natural cause'? It's sometimes the result of an illness taking it's toll, but it's sometimes nothing explainable. The autopsy shows nothing wrong with the body, yet it just expired. Many who die of this phenomenon are older people, and we rationale to ourselves that they’re old, their body gave up, perhaps attributing that to "old age". Yet, again, there's many people who live into their 80's and 90's then really long lives into their 100's. What's the deal that old age for some is 80's, yet others 100?? Anyway.....

I don't want to dwell on death, but we all die at some point. And all the memories, love, desires and all the bits that make you, you doesn't.
Your body cannot operate without the powerhouse inside it. That’s the eternal bit, the bit imparted by God, the bit that feels 21, even when the body is aching and creaking and you make that terrible groan when you get up off the sofa…..you know what I mean!!! And if you don’t do that yet, you will soon enough, so don’t snigger at us oldies! Ageing is so cruel, but it happens to us all, and it will get you one day too!

Anyway, let’s get back to better times in Eden. Man is now alive, with that eternal power source in him, and something real interesting happens. God says “Look dude, I need you to manage this planet I’ve created for you. Here’s a funky beautiful place for you and your lady to live, it’s called Eden, but you gotta manage the earth and the animals that I put here for you. Capiche?!” (I did tell you I was paraphrasing for you! You can check out the actual wording in the bible, but you get the drift.)

Now, we’re told that God created everything for His pleasure, because He wanted to. There’s no suggestion that He needs us, but He wanted us, to hang out with, have some cheeky pomegranate cocktails with and have a laugh with. Maybe not the cocktails, but certainly to hang out with. Check out the bible - He visited the garden every evening to hang out with his peeps.

But, if you’ve ever had a friend who only wanted to be your pal because you had some cool wheels to drive them home from the pub, or because you had something that they needed from you, you'll know that makes you feel like 18 carat horse poop! If you have friends who make you feel like that, you need to walk away, my friend.

God wanted to make sure that His creation had the choice to walk away if they so desired. Basically, He didn’t want puppets who had no option but to love Him dutifully because He was Almighty and makes the best pomegranate cocktails, because that’s not love. So He gave his people a choice. You know the choice….the trees in the garden. Those assemblies at school are all coming back to you now, I'm sure.

Now, here’s where things get interesting, really interesting. You may have heard of the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the one they were told not to eat of, and then boom, they did. But, do you know much about the other one?? Hmm .....

Let’s zoom out of the picture for a short moment. And picture this : one Earth created by God. You know it well, you’re on it now. It’s pretty big, and when there’s just one dude and his lass on it, it must seem a whole load bigger.
One big Earth. One beautiful garden, which is full of trees, loaded with fruit. And if you remember from school assemblies, God said everything was good on His earth, so there’s not even any worm-ridden apples or squashy plums. Every fruit, every berry is perfectly ripe. So, thousands of trees, perfect for man (who is God’s pinnacle of creation, so the trees are fully formed, ripe and ready for us, and not saplings) and there's plenty of choice.

Now if we zoom in again, in addition to these thousands of trees, there are two trees in the middle of the garden, one “no eating or you die” (= tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil) and one other: The Tree of Life. Two trees in the middle, one not allowed to eat of, and the other…..what of it?

Well, we don’t know a great deal at this point because Adam’s good lady was focussed upon the one she shouldn’t touch. You know the story, she ate the fruit, then blamed the serpent (because it was his fault, duh!), and Adam blamed his wife (don’t all men?!), and he also blamed God (idiot alert!!). The audacity!

But that tree of Life was there for a reason. Just like the other tree was there for a reason. The trees were a choice. One brought life, one brought death. God was pretty clear about the consequences of that choice. But the choice was there. And I love free choice, even though it lead us here. Because I can do exactly what Adam and Eve did. I can choose life or death.
God always puts before us a choice : life or death. Adam and Eve made the wrong choice, and then God said those fateful words “Dude, you ate the fruit of the tree I told you not to eat of?” Ok, not quite verbatim, but He did warn us. The point is, God wanted us to choose life. That tree of Life appears later by the way, God has seemingly replanted it, but that will take us really off the beaten path....

Let’s loop back to us being eternal because this does all link up! I've not taken a wrong turn. We're on track.

So in the day he ate, man didn’t die (and I’m using man as catch all for mankind). We know they didn’t because they produced little Adam and Eves.

So, what’s it all about? God said they'd die in the day they ate of the tree. Remember me saying that God told them to manage the earth, well you need to know that God is a very just and fair God. He is a covenant keeping God. He makes special “legal contracts” called covenants, and He keeps His covenants fastidiously. Like many covenants and legal documents, there’s legal stuff and clauses, so part of the covenant of this 'managing the Earth' meant that by going his own way and doing what he did, man (again, that’s mankind), sub-let his occupation and managing of earth to someone else (the tempter). But something much more drastic happened too....

The eternal part of him (and her), that powerhouse bit, also got disconnected from Source. I should also give you some vital info here too. Death in God's eyes is a little different than our definition of it. We think of death as our body ceasing to work (our heart stops beating and we stop breathing). God doesn't use that same definition. Death in God's dictionary is separation from Him. So when they died in that day, they got separated. It will make sense in a moment.

Remember your Sunday school days where Adam and Eve have salad leaves covering their unmentionables…..(you can tell Eve wasn’t talented in the sewing department can’t you!), well before this botched salad sewing debacle, they didn’t have clothing. Now, that’s a bit saucy right?
Possibly not. You see because their eternal power source (which I’m going to call their spirit from henceforth) was previously connected up to the master Power Source (aka 'the Spirit of God Himself'), they possibly were clothed with a degree of His divine glory – whereby they didn’t look naked. But that’s by the by. Whatever happened, they got disconnected, and suddenly lettuce seemed like a good idea to slather over their bodies. That shows something major happened, as no one wants to cover their bodies with lunch (Lady GaGa is clearly an exception to the rule…..).

We’re nearly there….stay with me a few more minutes.

I honestly think if the fruit were taken from the Tree of Life, then the other tree would have disappeared, or withered or something. Because the choice was there for a reason. But we have a problem now. Because the eternal bit of them is still eternal. It is just now not connected to it’s main power Source. And herein lies the problem. Because it can’t just simply be hooked back in.

In the process of being disconnected, our end got changed to one of those annoying Continental plugs!!! Can’t fit a 2 pin plug into a 3 pin hole can you?! We need an adaptor. Or a really good electrician to change it back. Otherwise, we’re eternally doomed with our continental plug, and the only thing in the universe it fits is the shaving plug in the master bathroom. Pointless!!!!

And if you don't get the quirky metaphor, I mean that actually the disconnection changed our very nature into a sin nature, and now it's the same nature as our enemy - that tempter we met at the wrong tree. And a connection to him means a Direct Current to a place you don’t wanna go. I’m going to use a controversial word now. Are you ready? Your continental plug is taking you to……….
France! 😱😱😱 No, come on, I jest. Let’s whisper it together….hell. Now now, don’t hop off the tour, we’re at the penultimate stop! You’ve got this far, you can do it.

No one likes that word, it’s unfashionable, it’s hellish (see what I did there?), and it’s a place people made up to scare us into doing good, surely?

Nope. You can take your chances on it not being, but if you really are an eternal being and I am right (and the Bible is true), and you aren’t connected to the Source Who created you (I’m going to cut some of the metaphors a while and be real), if you aren’t connected or reconciled back to God, you absolutely cannot be with Him when that spirit of yours leaves your body.

Is this fair?
You didn’t eat the wrong fruit did you?! Not fair!

Actually, it was – remember me talking about that covenant? Covenants are there for both parties. So that covenant has to run its course. However, do you know immediately after the fruit eating fest, and the salad sewing session, God fulfilled the terms of the covenant (i.e. the consequences you see in the earth all around you), and then He promised a way to make it all right again. He started setting out a new covenant.

It just requires another choice. Life or death, again. You may be still under the effects of that first one right now. But you can do something to opt out of the current covenant you’re under, and opt into a new one.

Now, like a legal document, they’re tricky to get out of. The easiest way out of a legally binding contract is death. Seriously. Owe money and signed your life away to the bank? Once you’re dead, you don’t owe that anymore. Marriage is a contract too. Once one spouse dies, the legal contract ends. I shouldn't need to interject this, but I feel I must....Please don’t go doing away with spouses, or yourself…..jeepers, wait! There’s another way!

Right, we’re on the last stretch of the tour – the gift shop and tea room are in sight. One final push….

Someone else has jumped in your place, legally became your substitute and died for you. His name is Jesus, or Yeshuah if you prefer His name how He would have pronounced it.

He literally jumped in your place, fulfilled that old covenant for you, and is armed with billions of proper plugs, no more continental pins! Yay!!!

But like all covenants, you have a part to play. You have to say, “I will” to Jesus. Because the question He’s asking you is, “Will you let Me be your substitute, and will you let Me continue on from where we left off in Eden? I created you to be with Me, and live together. Will you let us do that, let Me put the plug back on, connect you back up to Me, and start over?”

If you say “I will” to Jesus, He will totally transform your life. Will it be easy all the time? No – you’re still living here on earth until the eternal part of you leaves your body. You’re still going to have salad leaves moments where you mess up, and life does its own messing up around you. But you will be connected to the Power Source, so you’ll never be alone, and you'll be connected back to your Creator. Your eternal part of you will start to receive power again, and from the inside out, you'll grow into what you were created to be.

Warning though: If you still have your unconnected plug at the end of this life, you cannot go back and change it. You have to make this decision in this body, which is where it was made originally. I would urge you to consider the fact that you are an eternal being, and without accepting the sacrifice that Jesus made for you, by dying for you, you will be evermore separated from God. God calls that death. Eternal death. But He wants to give you eternal LIFE. You just need to get real with God, and say "I will" to Jesus, and pick up where Adam and Eve left off in the garden and get to know your amazing Creator.

So, go get your tea (or that pomegranate cocktail you can't stop thinking about) and think about that eternal part of you that needs connecting back up.