Grace Bible Church
Pastor Teacher
Robert R. McLaughlin
Friday
December 19, 2014
The importance of understanding freedom when we go to Heaven and that that freedom means inequality both in time and in eternity.
The ultimate reward or decoration when we are abiding in Heaven after the JSOC will be the order of the morning star.
This decoration is taken from and named after our Lord’s third royal patent or title which is, “the King of kings, Lord of lords, the bright Morning Star; ” (REV 22:16, 2PE 1:19).
The winner believer can eat from the Tree of Life in the Paradise of God, located in the New Jerusalem.
Paradise – paradeisos = defined as a gazebo or a place of relaxation and entertainment.
This gazebo is located in Heaven it will be the epitome or the quintessence of rest and relaxation for the winner believer who will be rewarded by God in a special way.
1. REV 19:5-8.
2. REV 22:12
The Tree of Life is associated with perfect life and environment in the Garden of Eden as well as the perpetuation of a right relationship with God, GEN 2:9; GEN 3:22.
When man sinned and was driven out of the garden and he was cut off from the Tree of Life, GEN 3:24.
The literal Tree of Life is not seen again by man until the eternal state, REV 2:7; REV 22:2, 14.
The interesting thing is that in this life there is only one Tree of Life for mankind and it is related to the word of God or Bible doctrine,
PRO 3:18.
PRO 3:18 She [doctrine] is a Tree of Life to those who take hold of her, and happy are all who hold her fast.
PRO 13:12 Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but desire fulfilled [positive volition] is a Tree of Life.
This is why the Tree of Life will be located forever in the New Jerusalem, REV 22:2.
Eternal happiness is associated with the Tree of Life, in REV 22:14 when it says not blessed but happy are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the Tree of Life, and may enter by the gates into the city.
1. The first category is said to be every tree being desirable to the sight is the first category which is designed for the prosperity of the soul.
If you have capacity from doctrine in the soul, then you can express happiness regardless of your circumstances.
After man sinned, now the soul would be either a place of misery or a place of happiness because both are a state of the soul. – PSA 23:3 He restores my soul;
2. The second category of trees was the category called “good for food”.
The stimulation of the taste buds was a reminder of God’s grace before man sinned, just as eating the bread of communion is a reminder of God’s grace after man sinned.
3. The third category: The Tree of Life = both the capacity for perfect happiness and blessing, and total appreciation of God’s grace in the spiritual realm.
She was unhappy because she thought God was trying to put one over on her: knowing something she didn’t know.
1TI 2:12-13, But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet. for it was Adam who was first created, and then eve.
1TI 2:14 and it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being quite deceived, fell into transgression.
Man was originally designed for happiness, blessing, capacity, and pleasure unless he went negative to God’s plan.
The first sin involved no morality or immorality at all, but simply rejecting perfect happiness provided by God.
The Tree of Life combined immortality with perfect happiness to give man perfect environment plus perfect happiness so he could do a good job ruling the world.
The Tree of Life is useless to man as a sinner because sin destroys happiness.
The Tree of Life was man’s expression of positive volition to God’s provision and therefore when man rejected the Tree of Life through disobedience, he had to be removed from the Tree of Life.
The closest you can come to the Tree of Life is reaching spiritual maturity.
If man, in spiritual death, had eaten from the Tree of Life, his free will would no longer be the means of resolving the angelic conflict.
He would have lived forever in his present state of sinful immortality, in the status of spiritual death, and would eventually be condemned with the entire human race totally to the lake of fire.
The point is that you cannot have God’s perfect happiness and live in spiritual death and sin.
You can’t choose both the plan of God and the cosmic system of Satan.
Man would have no free will after the fall, if he had been permitted to eat of the Tree of Life.
MAT 22:42 “what do you think about the Christ”
JOH 3:36 “He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.”
1PE 2:24 and he himself bore our sins in his body on the tree.
Only winners in the Christian life have the privilege of eating from the Tree of Life in the garden of God in eternity.
REV 2:7 “To the winner, I will give to him the privilege of eating from the Tree of Life which is in the paradise of God.”
1. Every tree being desirable to the sight is the first category which is designed for the prosperity of the soul.
2. The second category of trees was the category called “good for food”.
3. The third category: the Tree of Life.
4. Category four is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
In this life, we can only be happy in the perfect environment of the PPOG.
So after the fall, the purpose for the creation of man could only be perpetuated by cutting man off from the Tree of Life and providing a new Tree of Life: the cross.
God cut man off from the Tree of Life – another manifestation that justice has to come before love.
Judgment had to come because condemnation must precede salvation.
1. Every tree being desirable to the sight,
2. Those good for food,
3. The Tree of Life
Good represented the plan of god, evil represented the plan of Satan.
Learning doctrine in time is as close as we can get to the happiness of the Tree of Life.