Back to the Garden: End (for now)

When we were driven from the Garden of Eden, it was not as a punishment. It was a preventive measure, as is clear from the following scripture:

And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life. (Genesis 3:22-24 KJV)

This event was tied to what we call “original sin”, but I believe it is also tied to what I would call the “final sin”: the sin which will provoke God into visiting His final wrath upon the earth as described in the Book of Revelation.

There are two trees in the Garden of Eden: the Tree of Life, and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. We chose the second, and just as God warned that choice resulted in our death. We can in fact get back to the garden, but doing so must be through God’s grace and the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. Any other method we attempt to access the Tree of Life will result in our destruction.

We need to start paying attention to people like Ray Kurzweil and Sergey Brin who predict that “the singularity is near.” The artificial intelligence that they and others are trying to create is exactly the thing that will get us into trouble with God, by committing the final sin. By creating intelligent, omnipotent, and perhaps "eternal" life, we will be doing that which what God cannot tolerate from us; namely trying to become fully God-like ourselves. It's going to happen some day (perhaps soon), but like Kabbalah, life extension, and any other unsanctioned attempt to get to the Tree of Life, it can only lead to our ultimate ruin.

Satan may promise you eternal life, but all he can deliver is a one-way ticket to eternal torment.

http://youtu.be/1sH0uR2u7Hs

We are stardust, we are golden,

We are billion year old carbon,

And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.

-Joni Mitchell