Hi Wrenage,
I pray this helps.
- Why is there a Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden?
- How is the Tree of Life different from all the other unnamed trees in the garden?--Gen. 2:16
- When God says humans must not eat from the Tree of Life and "live forever" on what biblical basis do you feel you can take this clear imperative and spin it to mean something altogether different?
- If the Tree of Life wasn't intended to supply Life then why did God drive humans out of the garden and guard the way to the Tree of Life with cherubim and a flaming sword?
We're getting into dead horse territory now. I don't have much to add to my point of view. People can judge what I wrote as they wish.
The problem confronted is we are speaking of two completely different systems. To better understand yours, I looked up Ellen White on the subject, and now your position makes more sense. Ellen White had no problem putting death in the Garden of Eden before sin, even though "the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23)" and "by one man sin entered the world and death by sin (Romans 5:12)."
EGW wrote:
The fruit of the tree of life in the Garden of Eden possessed supernatural virtue. To eat of it was to live forever. Its fruit was the antidote of death. Its leaves were for the sustaining of life and immortality. But through man’s disobedience death entered the world. Adam ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the fruit of which he had been forbidden to touch. His transgression opened the floodgates of woe upon our race. After the entrance of sin the heavenly Husbandman transplanted the tree of life to the Paradise above; but its branches hang over the wall to the lower world. Through the redemption purchased by the blood of Christ, we may still eat of its life-giving fruit. Testimonies for the Church 8:288.
I disagree with the notion that Adam and Even already needed an "antidote" for death before Adam's fall into sin. I guess in Ellen White's world, a "very good" creation included death then...but this was before death entered the world...somehow...according to what EGW wrote.
It is hard to piece together what she wrote actually. To paraphrase, the Tree of Life was the antidote for death...but through Adam's sin, death entered the world, so the Tree of Life was the antidote for death before death was there, and then God transplanted the Tree of Life to paradise...while the Cheribum with the flaming sword guarded it in the Garden of Eden...