Quote:
Originally Posted by zeek
In the Christian iconography over many centuries of church history the garden of Eden was depicted to be on a mountain with the tree of life at the summit which is the center and the tree of knowledge further down the mountain. If the tree of life is taken to represent Christ who said, “I am the way and the truth and the life” that picture makes perfect sense.
|
I guess I don't understand where the concept of the tree of life being Christ comes from. For example, in Revelation 22:1-2, there is the throne of God and of the Lamb, upon which God and the Lamb are sitting (the Lamb is the actual non-metaphorical Christ), and then out of the throne flows a river, and then a tree of life on either side of the river. Why would Christ be on the throne, and then a tree that "represents Christ" be a little ways from Him?
Revelation 22:1-2
Then the angel showed me a river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the main street of the city. On either side of the river stood a tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit and yielding a fresh crop for each month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.
Christ is the reason we have right to the tree of life again (Genesis shows the right to the TOL was taken away due to sin, and it's reinstated at the end because Christ's sacrifice for us was accepted and so our outstanding sins which prevent us from the right to the TOL are no longer "on the record"), but I don't see where He actually IS the tree of life itself. He claims to be the bread of life, but never the TOL.
When Jesus says "He who eats me" in John 6, it's linked to a bread of life, not to a tree.
Anyway, this was one thing of Lee's teachings (or I guess, general Christian teaching if more than just Lee taught it) I never understood.
Lee liked to make everything everything else. He equated everything with everything until nothing made sense. The Son IS the Father. The Body IS Christ. We all need to be blended so no one is different from anyone else. There is no distinction left in his worldview. So maybe I'm overcorrecting and being overly distinctive, but even so I don't see anything concrete in the Bible that would directly link Christ to being the TOL. I dunno.
Trapped