IN THE GARDEN OF LOVE! (From Genesis Chapters 2 & 3!)

         1. Adam sat down under the shade of a mango tree, scratching his head. He had practically exhausted his vocabulary, naming all the different animals that the Lord had brought to him. The last two animals came up to him, and tired as he was, Adam had to crack a smile when he took a good look at them. "They look like the animal I named 'horse' a while ago," he thought, "except they're all white with up-and-down black stripes on them!" He petted their long noses, saying, "Now what shall I call you?"
         2. He couldn't help but notice--as he had noticed with all the other animals--that there were two of them, a male and a female. "You shall be called 'zebra'," he said with a sigh, patting their backs. He then turned and walked alone through the breath-taking beauty of the Garden of Eden. All about him were trees laden with delicious fruit of every possible description and taste!--But Adam didn't feel hungry. It was all so wonderful, so beautiful, but he felt that something was wrong, something was missing.
         3. He glanced back at the different pairs of animals strolling through the Garden together. "Each of them has their mate!--One of their kind that is like them! Is there a mate for me?" he wondered. Somewhat sadly, he walked towards the sparkling waterfall in the midst of the Garden. But even his favourite spot in all of Eden seemed empty and lacking somehow. Alone, and feeling heavy at heart, Adam lay down and fell asleep in the soft, cool grass.
         4. The Lord had enjoyed watching Adam name all the animals. He was also keenly interested in how Adam would react when he discovered that all the animals had mates, but there was not another creature like himself. The Lord knew that Adam would now truly appreciate a mate and companion, and He said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper for him." The Lord then caused Adam to fall into a very deep sleep, and while he slept, He removed one of Adam's ribs and closed up the flesh after it. From the rib, the Lord made His ultimate, most beautiful creation: Woman!
         5. Adam awoke some time later and saw the Lord standing nearby. Adam had seen the Lord before, but he had never before seen the beautiful naked creature who was now standing beside the Lord!
         6. "Adam," the Lord said, "I have created a female from your rib, and she shall be your mate, to be with you and to love you!"
         7. Adam's heart pounded furiously, and his face was radiant with joy as he leapt to his feet! "Oh Lord!" he exclaimed, "she is the most lovely of all creatures You have created! She is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called 'Woman', for she was taken out of Man!"
         8. Then the Lord blessed them and said, "Be fruitful and multiply! Increase in number and fill the earth with your children!"
         9. "How will we have children?" Adam questioned, puzzled.
         10. "You must unite with the woman and become one flesh!" the Lord said with a smile. "I have put the knowledge of these things deep inside your heart!" Then the Lord vanished slowly and Adam was left alone with the ravishingly beautiful, naked woman the Lord had made for him!
         11. "How wonderful it will be to have someone so much like myself to talk and share my joys and happiness with!" Adam thought. But Adam was most fascinated with the fact that the Lord had blessed them and commanded him to unite as 'one flesh' with her! Taking his lovely companion by the hand, he said softly, "Woman, I would like to 'become one' with you as the Lord commanded. Would you like to also?"
         12. "Oh yes!" she answered in beautiful innocence, her eyes sparkling with love. "But what do we do?" Adam took her hand in his and looked deep into her soft blue eyes. "I'm not really sure" he confessed, "only I feel like coming very close to you and touching you!" A new and wonderful sensation was sweeping through Adam's body, and suddenly he took the woman into his arms and began gently kissing her. Soon they sank down together onto the soft and inviting grass, and slowly, beautifully, in the perfect purity and innocence of God's Own Garden of Eden, the very first man and woman ever created joined together in rapturous love! Now the Garden had truly become a Paradise! And because she was to be the mother of all Mankind, Adam called her Eve, meaning "Spring of Life"!
         13. During the following weeks, Adam and Eve explored the Heavenly Garden together, running and playing through its beautiful lush orchards! Such joy and happiness filled their days! Of all the wonderful physical blessings the Lord had given Man and Woman, they most enjoyed the pure pleasures of beautiful, loving sex with one another!
         14. But, sad to say, all was not well in Paradise! The Devil was furious at God's great Plan for the man and woman to make love and create children to fill the Earth, new souls for the Eternal Kingdom of God! "I must stop and destroy this Plan!" he cried. Entering Eden, he possessed the serpent, the most crafty and cunning of all creatures. He then made his way towards a tall, awesome Tree standing in the center of the Garden. Patiently he waited for Eve.
         15. As she passed by, the Devil called out and asked her, "Has God really said, 'You shall not eat of every tree of the Garden'?" Surprised, Eve replied, "We may eat of all the fruit of the trees in the Garden; but of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, God has said, 'You shall not eat of it, neither shall you even touch it, lest you die!"
         16. "Die?!" the Devil laughed. "Why, your life would only begin! You shall not surely die! No, no!--The real reason God has told you not to eat it is because He's keeping something back from you!--Something you should have but that He hasn't given you!--And that is knowledge! Wisdom!
         17. "For God knows that in the day that you eat of this Tree, then your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as the gods (angels), knowing good and evil!
         18. "Besides, it is by far the most delicious fruit in all of Eden! Go ahead! Take some!" he hissed.
         19. Having listened to and pondered the serpent's story, Eve curiously gazed at the succulent, ripe fruit hanging from the dark branches. "It does look good to eat!" she thought, "And it certainly is pleasant to look upon!" But more than anything else, she was spellbound by the desire to be like a goddess!--To obtain this forbidden wisdom and knowledge!
         20. "Look at it, Eve!" the serpent hissed hypnotically, "Take it in your hands! Take it and eat if you desire to be wise! Wisdom!--Knowledge!--Yes, the understanding of the gods is yours for the taking!"
         21. Slowly Eve reached out and plucked a luscious-looking fruit and held it in her hands. Smelling its sweetness, she took a bite of it. She was suddenly startled by Adam who came at that very moment and cried out, "Eve! What are you doing?! You know that fruit is forbidden to us!" But Eve had already disobeyed and now a deep dark change had come over her! Her innocence and her purity were dashed to pieces, and her entire thinking had become distorted and corrupted! She gave some to Adam, and soon had convinced him to eat some also. Immediately after swallowing that first bite, a strange feeling overcame him and he looked around and said, "How different everything looks!"
         22. "Now look!--Look at yourselves!" Satan cackled gleefully.
         23. "What? Look at what?" Eve asked.
         24. "Can't you see?" the serpent answered. "You're both naked! Look at your sexual organs! They're exposed!--You should be ashamed! Quickly, cover yourselves before you look at each other and your evil minds begin to lust after dirty, degraded, perverted, disgusting ... sex!"
         25. Because of their disobedience to God and the distorted outlook they now had as a result of their sin, Adam and Eve believed the Devil's lie and became ashamed of their nakedness! Quickly they sewed themselves aprons out of fig leaves to cover themselves. Scarcely had they finished when they heard the sound of the Lord walking in the Garden in the cool of the day and they were afraid! Guiltily, Adam and Eve raced for cover and hid themselves amongst the trees. But the Lord called out, "Where are you? Why have you hidden from Me?"
         26. Afraid to confess their sin, Adam stammered, "I was afraid and hid myself because ... because ... I was naked!"
         27. The Lord demanded, "Who told you you were 'naked'? Adam! ... Eve! ... Have you eaten of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil which I commanded you that you should not eat?"
         28. Indeed they had! And because of their lust for wisdom, knowledge, and the power to become as God, they had disobeyed Him! Their minds and hearts were now sinful and defiled, and they could no longer be allowed to remain in the Garden, lest they eat of the Tree of Life and live forever in their disobedient, fallen state! Sadly, the Lord drove them out of the Garden of Eden!

FOOD FOR THOUGHT--In the Garden of Love

         29. (1) What was God's first commandment to man?--"Be fruitful and multiply!" (Genesis 1:28)--In other words, God's first commandment to man was to have sex!--Because how can you be fruitful and multiply unless you first have sex?
         So, contrary to the doctrines of some churches, Man's first sin was not sex! In fact, Man's first obedience to God was sex! Therefore sex is not a sin, but was created by God in the very beginning to be enjoyed by Mankind! Adam and Eve enjoyed sex long before they fell into sin, and were created by God with sexual organs to do so in the very beginning! So how could sex be sinful if they were commanded to practice it before they fell?
         If there's something wrong or evil about sex and your body, then why did God make them?--And if He didn't intend for us to enjoy sex, then why did He put all those nerves in our sexual organs that make us feel so good? So sex is not evil after all, but a wonderful gift from God to be fully enjoyed in the right relationships!
         30. (2) Adam and Eve lived in the beautiful Garden of Eden without any coverups or clothing, and were absolutely nude all the time, but thought nothing of it! They only became ashamed of their pure God-created bodies after they fell because of disobedience, and had sin in their hearts--the wrong sinful view of things! Before that, with pure sinless hearts and a Heavenly outlook, they weren't even aware of being naked!--They'd never been anything else!
         All was beautiful until Satan lied to them, undermining their faith in God's Word regarding the Tree of Knowledge. It wasn't until after they disobeyed the Lord that they ever thought that there was anything wrong with their sexual parts! The Lord asked them, "Who told you that you were naked?" (Genesis 3:11) Obviously, it was the Devil who told them they were naked! He polluted and corrupted their pure minds with the lie that nudity was evil and that there was something wrong with their sexual parts!
         Devil knew that if he could get them to believe that nudity was evil, then of course they'd believe that sex must be very evil! Remember, God's first commandment was for them to "be fruitful and multiply", to have sex and children! But by persuading them that nudity and sex were evil, the Devil was attacking the very root of the Creation of God!--Because without nudity you hinder sex, and without sex you can't have children! So one of the Devil's first commandments was for man not to have sex, to get them to disobey God and thereby destroy God's loving Plan for Man!
         So, contrary to what many religious people teach, the Devil hates and fights sex!-Because it is God's Own beautiful Creation, His idea, His gift to us, and the Devil is its arch-enemy! Of course, he tries to take the credit for it, and then trickily turns around and condemns you for enjoying it, telling you that it is a sin!
         31. (4) The Devil hates sex, but since he can't wipe it out, he tries to control it and get the credit for it! So he has craftily deceived the World into thinking that he loves it, and that in order to enjoy it, people have got to break the laws of God and the Bible and be the Devil's sinners! He has totally perverted the whole World's attitude towards sex, persuading them that it's evil, that it's wrong, and that they have got to be following him in order to enjoy it!
         But you may say, "I can't believe that all sex is good!--What about all of those sex magazines and movies that glorify per versions, violence, etc.?"
         Well, the answer is simple: Because the Devil wants the credit for sex and the worship for it, he takes God's marvelous and beautiful gift of sex and tries to pervert it into something ugly, horrible and wicked! So he often pretends to promote it, when what he's really doing is absolutely degrading it, demeaning it, besmirching it, trying to drag God's wonderful creation down to the gutter! God meant for it to be beautiful--and it is beautiful! It's the Devil who tries to pervert and make it ugly and crude and almost sickening, like those porno movies where sex organs are the principal characters!
         Artistic nudity and loving, clean, romantic sex are beautiful, the way that God intended! But any kind of violent or hurtful or perverted sex is sickening! The Bible says, "God is Love!" (1John 4:8) So if it's unloving, it's ungodly and of the Devil!
         Our bodies are beautiful creations of God, and every part of them is perfectly normal, natural and God-made for perfectly good purposes, if used at the right times with the right people! Our sexual parts are just as good as the rest of our bodies, and sexual activities, feelings and pleasures are as natural and normal as eating, drinking, exercising or enjoying any other God-created physical functions and pleasures!
         God is not against pleasure! He even created us and the entire Universe for His Own enjoyment! The Bible says, "O Lord, Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they are and were created!" (Revelation 4:11) In like manner, God expects us to enjoy the many wonderful pleasures of life that He has made for us! (See Ecc.5:18-20)
         32. (5) The only way that you will ever really be able to fully and freely enjoy the sexual pleasures that God has created, is if you have His love in your heart, so you can have real love for others. You'll never really fully enjoy sex without real love! Because without real love, mere physical sex just won't satisfy, and you'll feel something is missing. God created sex to be the most beautiful physical experience on Earth, but before we can fully enjoy it, we must first experience and know real Love, for "Love is of God, and God is Love!" (1John 4:7,8)
         33. (6) The only way that you can possibly regain the liberty that Adam and Eve had in the Garden before they fell--total freedom from any guilt complexes about sex--is to know God's Love and His forgiveness of sin through Jesus. The Bible says, "To the pure, all things are pure. But to those who are corrupted and do not believe, nothing is pure; but even their minds and conscience are corrupted!" (Titus 1:15) If you have Jesus in your heart, and you know His love and forgiveness, then you can get back to the original freedom of the Garden, "For the Truth shall make you free!" (John 8:32)
         The way back to the freedom of the Garden of Eden is to get back to fellowship and a relationship with the Lord, and belief in His Word, faith in Him and in His Creation.--To know that He made it all, and that He wants you to enjoy every pleasure that is clean and right and good and loving, that He wants you to live in the pleasures of love that He created between man and woman!--So let's get back to the Garden by getting back to God and His Word and His Love!--And enjoy God's gift of loving sex to the full!