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Originally Posted by Sons to Glory!
Okay. Are they both about eating? And what about the tree of life in Revelation 2 & 22, is it just to look at?
Fruit is for eating, which means it gets in you, right?
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Revelation 22:2 mentions two issues of the TOL: fruit, and leaves. Fruit is assumed to function, but leaves are explicitly listed in function, as healing the nations (i.e. the gentiles, or non-Jews). If you truncate scripture it doesn't strengthen your case. You end up living in a world where only your special verses exist, and the constellations of readings that feed off of them. I was there once.
Of course we all must interpret, and understanding means contextual placement, and placement means subordinating and elevating. But a reading which simplifies to that extent? In which better readings (more scripturally-consistent) are ignored? In which a two-tiered Bible exists, with verses that support your understandings and others which are "low" and "fallen"?
(I don't think StG aligns with all of that, but his overly simplistic reading is too close)
StG, if fruit in Revelation 22 is important, then the leaves and the healing of the nations are moreso, being explicitly spelled out. You can't just hop about, pulling words out of context. That doesn't make a coherent argument. The leaves and the healing of the nations should be 3 to 1 to fruit in context in Rev 22, but the WL context is 1 to 10. It's unbalanced. A worldview must be coherent, executable.
I sympathise with your worldview, having been there once. I just ask you to consider another worldview, in which John 4:24 also exists, in which John 15:10 also exists, in which "leaves" and "nations" also exist besides "fruit". In which obedience means eating, and eating means life, and disobedience means death. That worldview is explicitly spelled out in the pages of the NT text.
If you read Revelation 22:2, the tree of life is not ''just to look at''. But what does the text actually say? All of it, please.