1950 This Means Everlasting Life - A2Z.org

280 "THIS MEANS EVERLASTING LIFE"
wiped it out; but neither Abel nor Enoch nor
Noah, whom Hebrews 11 :4-7 names as godly men
of faith, were permitted to enter it . They were
descendants of Adam and were conceived by Eve
and her daughters in sin . And so they were born
sinners and imperfect and hence undeserving to
enter the Paradise and partake of the tree of life
in its midst and live forever . But they offered animal
sacrifices to God and looked forward to the
coming of the Seed of God's "woman", to be
bruised at the heel in the conflict with the Serpent
and to triumph and bruise the Serpent's head and
reopen the way to everlasting life for man . God's
curse on the earth outside Eden lasted till the
flood, but all of men's efforts since then at cultivating
the soil have failed to convert the now
widely populated earth into a paradise . Men cannot
restore paradise without God's kingdom . In
the day of faithful Abraham the land of Canaan
was like paradise : "the country about the Jordan,
which was watered throughout, before the Lord
destroyed Sodom and Gomorrha, as the paradise
of the Lord." But that was because Jehovah God
had promised to give it to Abraham, and his eyes
were over this promised land to reserve it as a
land of milk and honey' for Abraham's descendants,
the Israelites . Genesis 8 :21 ; 13 :10, Douay;
Deuteronomy 11 :8-15 But because of rebellious
unfaithfulness of the Israelites the paradiselike
condition of the Promised Land was lost .
s Four thousand years after Adam's loss of
Paradise for his descendants the Seed of God's
"woman" was being bruised at the heel by the
6 . a What did Jesus preach during his three-and-ahalf-year
ministry, and to whom? b On the stake what
hope did he offer? To whom?