Quote:
Originally Posted by Trapped
Hi Gubei,
Can you explain a little bit more?
Trapped
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Trapped,
Okay. I will do my best. Please forgive me if my explanation is not sufficient. It is difficult to clarify my position in English.(I'm Korean living in Seoul.)
Compared to the NT stories surrounding Jesus, the Eden story is unclear on whether it was physical or just figurative. When I read the names of rivers like Pishon, Gihon, Tigris, and Euphrates from Gen2:10, obviously Eden sounds to be physically located in the land of the Middle East, but, reading the God’s punishment of Gen3:21 where cherubim and a flaming sword to guard the way to the tree of life are mentioned gives me a different angle because currently no one can find the physical location of Eden under the guard of cherubim and the sword. As an natural extension, is the city of New Jerusalem physical or just figurative? The Tree of life in Rev 22:19 is also physical or figurative? (in this conjecture, “physical with figurative meanings” should be regarded as physical anyway) I guess, most of us stick to the literal interpretation of the Bible(me too), as dispensationalists do, and Witness Lee was one of them, then consciously or unconsciously, we tend to interpret Eden or New Jerusalem are physical. This is the point where problems arise. I have wrestled with any possible way to interpret Gen 2, 3 almost scores of years, but I confess I still cannot fully understand the story. Your earlier post mentioning “You shall surely die” may not mean natural consequence seemed to echo once again to my long-held conundrum. If death of Gen 2,3 could mean judicial punishment rather than natural death of dictionary meaning, then the whole story of Eden can also be a figurative one?
I believe only after we define the Eden story either physical or figurative then we can discuss further, otherwise all the debates will be useless. The first video of the youtube channel says not only the three of life but the tree of knowledge of good and evil was in the middle of the garden. Witness Lee said in his writings that only the tree of life is center. If we define middle and center are identical in their meaning, Witness Lee seems to have omitted the tree of knowledge of good and evil, but if he had used the word “center” as meaning “most important” (as often seen in Chinese language usage. Center = 中心 zhongxin) rather than physically middle, it also gives us a different angle. As far as I noticed, most of the cases, Witness Lee seemed to think in Chinese.
If all the words in Gen 2, 3 like life, death, good, evil, knowledge, even Adam and Eve etc could be just figurative/symbolic then there will be myriads of way to interpret the story.
I hope this clarified my earlier post.
ps. To avoid any doubt, I left the LC about 15 years ago.