Living through the knowledge of good and evil isn't a good thing
The leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.
Revelation 22:2
First of all, I have to say there's no sin in highlighting verses, and parts of verses, from the book of Revelation, the way I have above.
Some people have fits when there are pieces of Revelation seemingly in isolation, because the prophecy of Revelation says not to remove anything from the prophecy. But I know that that means not to remove something from the text in an effort to suppress the prophecy, or in an effort to mislead people. That does not mean to avoid talking about a scripture from the prophecy, keeping everything in a right context with the prophecy.
In the case of Revelation 22:2, above, the prophecy is about the "leaves" or pages of the Bible. The scripture says the Tree of Life has leaves that are for the healing of nations: those leaves are the Bible's New Testament.
I know, because we have life and eternal life in Christ through the New Testament; and the Bible's book of Genesis tells us that eating from Tree of Life that Heaven provides is to live forever.
But we also know, from Genesis, that there's a type of tree that isn't good to eat from. Genesis calls that type of tree the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
That does not mean that Christians are not supposed to know about good and evil. We're just not supposed to live off of knowing evil, the way Satan does.
To make that more plain: I now know that we cannot eat the fruit that grows from the flower of potato plants. That fruit is bad, or a little poisonous to us as humans.
That fruit looks and smells exactly like a tiny tomato. But a tomato is good and healthy for us, and that potato fruit is not.
In order to know how to eat from a garden, I need to know that some fruits are bad or not edible, and that others are good to eat. There's nothing wrong with having that knowledge.
But I cannot use that knowledge to do harm. Spiritually speaking, THAT would be to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. When you know Heaven's instructions and willingly eat in wrongdoing, you do harm even to yourself.
Not eating from the knowledge of good and evil simply means not to try to live doing ANYTHING you know Heaven doesn't intend.
Heaven gives us plenty of plain good to eat from.
Some people have fits when there are pieces of Revelation seemingly in isolation, because the prophecy of Revelation says not to remove anything from the prophecy. But I know that that means not to remove something from the text in an effort to suppress the prophecy, or in an effort to mislead people. That does not mean to avoid talking about a scripture from the prophecy, keeping everything in a right context with the prophecy.
In the case of Revelation 22:2, above, the prophecy is about the "leaves" or pages of the Bible. The scripture says the Tree of Life has leaves that are for the healing of nations: those leaves are the Bible's New Testament.
I know, because we have life and eternal life in Christ through the New Testament; and the Bible's book of Genesis tells us that eating from Tree of Life that Heaven provides is to live forever.
But we also know, from Genesis, that there's a type of tree that isn't good to eat from. Genesis calls that type of tree the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
That does not mean that Christians are not supposed to know about good and evil. We're just not supposed to live off of knowing evil, the way Satan does.
To make that more plain: I now know that we cannot eat the fruit that grows from the flower of potato plants. That fruit is bad, or a little poisonous to us as humans.
That fruit looks and smells exactly like a tiny tomato. But a tomato is good and healthy for us, and that potato fruit is not.
In order to know how to eat from a garden, I need to know that some fruits are bad or not edible, and that others are good to eat. There's nothing wrong with having that knowledge.
But I cannot use that knowledge to do harm. Spiritually speaking, THAT would be to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. When you know Heaven's instructions and willingly eat in wrongdoing, you do harm even to yourself.
Not eating from the knowledge of good and evil simply means not to try to live doing ANYTHING you know Heaven doesn't intend.
Heaven gives us plenty of plain good to eat from.
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