Expanding Eden To the Ends Of The Earth

In this morning’s sermon (which you can listen to at mindenefree.com/audio) I mentioned that the Garden of Eden into which God places the first man and woman is viewed by the Bible as a kind of temple or temple-garden. As such, when God commissioned Adam and Eve, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (Gen. 1:28), he was calling them to expand this temple (Eden) to the ends of the earth—to fill the earth with worshipers of God with whom God would be manifestly present.

Since this may be a new concept to many, I want to show why I believe this to be true. Though some of the threads of teaching I have noticed on my own study, there is an individual who has helped me to see the details with greater clarity. He is author and Westminster Theological Seminary professor, G. K. Beale. Beale has written for years on the temple theme throughout the Bible. Most recently in a book co-written with Mitchell Kim entitled God Dwells Among Us: Expanding Eden To The Ends Of The Earth (Downers Grove: IVP, 2014), Beale puts his teaching on a popular level (where most Christians can benefit from it). This very helpful book brought into focus for me some of the following biblical teachings.

1. Implicitly the reality that the Lord promises he will walk among the Israelites and be their God (Lev. 26:12), that he commands the Israelites to keep their camp holy because he walks in their camp (Dt. 23:14), and he describes his pre-temple manifest presence in the tabernacle as walking about in a tent (2 Sam. 7:6), seems to make a connection between God’s presence among Israel through the tabernacle/temple later on and his presence among Adam and Eve in the garden. After all, he is described as walking in the garden with Adam and Eve (Gen. 3:8). This points in the direction of Eden as a Garden-temple.

2. Explicitly, Ezekiel calls Eden a temple, referring to it as “the garden of God…the holy mountain of God” containing “sancturaries” (Ezek. 28:13-14, 16, 18). “Mountain” and “sanctuaries” are both references elsewhere to the temple. Ezekiel also speaks of an “Adam-like person in Eden wearing bejeweled clothing like a priest (Ezek. 28:13, alluding to Ex. 28:17-20).” (All taken from Beale, Kim, God With Us, 18).

3. We also see parallels between Adam’s work in the garden and that of priests later on in the tabernacle/temple. God placed Adam in the garden and commanded him “to work it and keep it” (Gen. 2:15). These same verbs are used elsewhere in combination to describe the work of priests in the tabernacle/temple setting, as we see in Numbers 18:5-6.

Given these first three points, it is no surprise that Beale and Kim, commenting on God’s commission of Adam and Even in Gen. 1:28, write:

They were to extend the geographical boundaries of the garden until Eden covered the whole earth…. The [second-to-greatest] goal of the Creator was to make creation a liveable place for humans in order that they would achieve the grand aim of glorifying him…. God’s ultimate goal in creation was to magnify his glory throughout the earth.

4. What is also clear is that in Revelation 21-22 the imagery of the New Heaven and New Earth, along with the New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven, is built upon imagery taken from Genesis 1-2 and then expanded. So, we truly have Eden/paradise lost in Genesis 3 and Eden/paradise regained in Revelation 21-22.

5. In between Genesis 1-3 and Revelation 21-22 we have accounts not only of how there will be and end-times temple (see Ezek. 40-48) that will lead to the eventual covering of the earth with the knowledge of God’s glory (Hab. 2:14), but also the affirmation that Jesus, the Son of God, is the fulfillment of the tabernacle (John 1:14) and the temple (John 2:19 [see Zech. 6:12]); that united to Jesus Christ his followers are the temple of God (1 Cor. 6:19; 2 Cor. 6:16) and this because the Spirit of God has come upon and dwells in his people in a similar fashion as God’s presence came upon the Old Testament tabernacle/temple (Acts 2:1-14); and that all the tabernacle/temple signified in the Old Covenant has been fulfilled in Christ’s coming and the New Covenant he has made with his people (Hebrews 8-10).

Based on this evidence, C. John Collins, Did Adam And Eve Exist? Who They Were And Why You Should Care (Wheaton: Crossway, 2011), writes the following:

The Old Testament views Eden as the first sanctuary, where God is present with his covenant partners (Adam and Eve); the tabernacle and later the temple, reinstate this Edenic blessing. What makes the Promised Land special is that it too is to be like a reconstituted Eden, whose fruitfulness displays for all the world the presence of God.

So, when we put all this together we should not be surprised that Peter uses temple and priestly terminology to describe the New Testament Church and seems to be saying that the New Covenant people of God comprise the end-times temple, ministering the presence and salvation of God to the world until the redeemed from every tribe, language, people, and ethno-linguistic people group are brought in (Revelation 5:9) and the knowledge of the glory of the Lord fills the earth (Hab. 2:14).

This mission should excite us and it should help us understand that for which mankind is longing. Beale and Kim explain:

J. R. R. Tolkien diagnoses the roots of our longing: “We all long for [Eden], and we are constantly glimpsing it: our whole nature at its best and least corrupted, its gentlest and most humane, is still soaked with a sense of ‘exile.’” The longings of our hearts are frustrated from this exile, but these longings are properly satisfied in the dwelling place of God originally found in Eden [and restored in the New Heaven and New Earth].

Amen!