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Imagine you’re in the Garden of Eden on the day Adam and Eve are welcomed by Van and Amadon. That morning Van welcomed them and they are about to tour their new home, the most beautiful place on Earth. Van knows he and Amadon will be leaving soon and he has selected two humans to be personal aides to the Garden pair, a couple named Lyla and Lam.
This is from the novel, The Gardens of Eden – Life and Times of Adam and Eve:
Chapter 3 – First Afternoon and Evening
With the formal ceremony over, the pair spent the rest of the daylight hours touring the Garden grounds. Passing by, they greeted and thanked many Garden workers and their supervisors. And to the great delight of Garden guests and their children, Adam and Eve stopped to converse casually. Everyone was instantly enamored with them. The women and men they met were immediately charmed by the couples’ every word and gesture.
Van and Amadon had interviewed hundreds of couples and finally selected Lyla and Lam to become personal aides to the celestial visitors. Finally, the time came for Van to introduce them. The tour halted as Van asked the couple to step forward. Lyla and Lam felt extremely honored, and humbled, now about to receive a personal greeting from what they felt were visiting gods.
Van introduced them, saying, “Lyla and Lam were chosen from over six hundred couples, Garden residents who volunteered to serve at your home, and by your side, for as long as they shall live. And when their time comes to depart the Earth, their children will have been taught and trained as replacements. Lyla and Lam have pledged to carry out your wishes, plans, and orders. They and their children will serve you and your children for as long as you desire such service.
“Also, Lyla has been informed that you will likely want to maintain an enduring record of the Adamic family’s doings and its effect on world culture and history. She and Lam have been trained in the skills required to keep such a record. Without your objection, they will keep it in both oral and written forms. This human record will complement the celestial record and serve to inform the inhabitants of the Earth of their history for generations to come.”
Immediately Adam and Eve took their new attendants in light embrace. Both were struck speechless with joy. For years before their arrival, Van had been teaching Lyla, Lam, and other Garden citizens about Adam, Eve, about their life before coming to Earth. He accurately estimated their needs and made certain the pair would have the things, and the assistance, that would be required on, and after, their arrival.
Reading and writing were obligatory courses in all Garden schools, for children and adults. Van attempted to create a reasonably literate group among the Garden’s workers before Adam’s coming. The language Van taught originated with the first humans. He and Amadon took that simple tongue and expanded it, creating an alphabet having twenty-four characters.
Accordingly, in the years before Adam and Eve came, the schools introduced thousands of new words, innovative ideas, and advanced concepts so that Adam and Eve’s work would be easier. In matters of education the Garden was already far above any outside cultures.
By the time the pair arrived there existed this vastly improved written language within the Garden. Before their arrival, angels who had visited Earth carried this improved tongue back to Jerusem where they taught it to Adam and Eve. That, by itself, created an enormous advantage in making a positive first impression.
The Garden was originally staffed and maintained by volunteer families who once resided in villages on the mainland. All were screened for physical and mental fitness, and then brought in for a probationary period under a sponsorship program. These first volunteers and their descendants had labored for four generations to make the peninsula habitable and productive.
Van reported that almost every nearby village had at least one family of volunteers working and residing in the Garden. In the beginning, most volunteers were couples without children. It was decided that young parents-to-be, adaptable laborers and potential administrators, would be selected so that the Adamic culture might be more quickly established in their lives, and most especially in the lives of their Garden-born children.
Almost everyone in the region wished to live and work inside Eden. And there was no shortage of volunteers willing to serve in the home of Eve and Adam, or their children, or anywhere on the Adamic estate. All envied Lyla and Lam’s role as personal aides. When Eve and Adam arrived, only one couple was required for that cherished assignment. Eventually, as both families grew, more aides were needed. The original Lyla and Lam, and their descendants, always provided them.
When old enough, Lyla and Lam’s children were carefully trained as replacements. This was done by simply observing and assisting their parents and grandparents. This system provided a permanent, trained, and always expanding staff of personal aides for the ever-increasing Adamic family. It also provided abundant assistants to help with the documentation and preservation of their momentous story.
It took many decades and several generations of volunteer planners, Garden workers, and skilled artisans to prepare for this day of reception. There had been hurdles and problems along the way. Early on, some workers left the Garden when Van announced, in complete honesty, that older workers would probably not live long enough to witness the arrival of the promised visitors. “But your children and their children will,” he declared. About twenty years before Adam and Eve arrived the first Lyla and Lam were born.
The announced delay caused a wave of desertions. But Lyla’s and Lam’s parents and grandparents chose to stay. They never lost faith because they believed and trusted Van. Never did Lyla, Lam, or any of their family members ever seriously doubt Van’s prediction of a superhuman planetary administration.
The eight decades of preparation for the arrival of Adam and Eve were trying times of valiant struggle and endless toil. Even so, less than a quarter of the Garden was complete when they incarnated. All remaining development would be their task and the many yet-to-be born generations of violet-skinned horticulturists and engineers.
The Garden was in full bloom at the time of their arrival. No place on Earth was more beautiful or had more potential than this long, elevated peninsula with a wide, flat, central valley. Mountains, providing both a secure interior and plentiful rain, surrounded the valley. The rain on these coastal mountains assured that the rivers would always be a reliable source for drinking and irrigation. It did not rain often in the valley, but the heavy morning mists daily fed the Garden’s innumerable plants, shrubs, and trees.
Adam taught that the Garden site was selected from three suitable locations. The selection committee, led by the assigned planetary inspector, had visited the Earth a hundred years previously. Of the three favored sites, this peninsula was deemed the most ideal for the garden-estate of Adam and Eve. After hearing the report, Van and Amadon journeyed from their cold mountain home in eastern Asia, where they had upheld the light of civilization and truth for over 160,000 years, and moved onto this perfectly suited peninsula.
The Garden site was a sheltered and safe place from which Eve and Adam’s potent progeny could go forth to add the violet race’s heritage to that of the planet’s indigenous peoples, thereby accomplishing in a relatively brief period what would otherwise require ages of evolution.
But biological conditions have to be ripe before uplifters can be dispatched for the age long work of establishing and maintaining divine order on an evolutionary planet. Finally, that day had arrived. The visible representatives of God once again appeared before the eyes and ears of humans.
Before Adam and Eve’s arrival, Van taught, “When they are assigned, it is their solemn duty to create a better world of gardeners. In fact, such bestowal worlds are destined to become global Edens, bearing up not only better foods, but also souls prepared for the greater glories of eternal life, beginning after death and resurrection on the mansion worlds. And the culture they eventually create, over many thousands of years, approaches a true utopian age of Light and Life.”
Van once said to Lyla, “The Earth and innumerable planets like it are soul incubators, spirit nurseries. But they are destined to become celestial showcases of the limitless potentials and actual manifestations of divine and human creativity combined. God is a senior partner to man and woman in creation. God, women, and men, need each other.
“The dispersion of the violet culture on a world causes the native inhabitants to develop a keen interest in play, humor, and art. The dominant concern of pre-Adamic mortals is trying to appease imaginary spirits who are believed to be the cause of all their troubles, even a human’s final ordeal, death.
“During and after the graft of Adamic culture onto an evolved human culture, that world begins the journey to a higher destiny. Ignorant superstition and ghost fear of the past give way to intelligent prayer and meaningful worship. The Earth is now on a long trek into a glorious future where people do not make war or even die. Rather do they translate directly to the mansion worlds when their mortal lives are fulfilled. Despite the tragic retrogressions brought about by mutiny and isolation, planetary progress is inevitable. Earth’s culture will grow and flower majestically in the ages to come. The ministry of the descending sons and daughters of God insure that.”
The more advanced Garden citizens had been told that Earth was socially, culturally, and spiritually retarded by the rebellion against the government of God (which began during the previous planetary administration, and from which Van and Amadon emerged as loyal heroes).
But physically, Earth’s inhabitants were not behind schedule. The Earth was ready for an up-step in biologic endowment, even though progress in invention, leisure, the arts, and commerce all lagged far behind biological development.
One day, before Adam and Eve arrived, Van said this to Lyla in response to her question about the origin and history of the Earth: “About five-hundred million years ago the Life Carriers initiated life on the Earth. They planted a unique life formula in three places, all shallow tidal pools located on seashores. From those life seeds grew a vast diversity of plant and creature forms. Over many millions of years, the Life Carrier implants evolved ever-more-complex living things, and eventually there came into existence human bodies with human minds that could support human will. That was the original intent of the Life Carrier’s formula.
“About one million years ago, evolution and the Life Carrier patterns finally produced their intended fruit: the first humans. They emerged, as intended, from the higher primates. The original humans, a pair of twins, male and female, were capable of something their purely animal relatives lacked. They were able to use wisdom and foresight as no animal can. And they were inclined to worship, a new impulse that was also a part of the Life Carriers’ plan to lift and enlighten humanity.
“A half-billion years of evolution, including some mysterious and ‘sudden’ mutations along the way, produced a very special brother and sister. As the twins grew, they increasingly rejected their less intelligent parents and family; they finally ran away. These two, Andon and Fonta, were the first creatures on Earth to possess a capacity for spirit recognition, and an awareness of self-consciousness of being. Their exceptional minds were the first to employ wisdom and, among other advances such as primitive language, used it in the creation and maintenance of fire. And they were the first humans to worship the creator of fire and Earth. Wisdom and worship set humans apart from the animals.
“Upon their birth the Earth was placed on the universe records as producing personal beings capable of conscious awareness and freewill—humans who could worship and who possessed wisdom. Andon and Fonta are a true mother and father to all human beings.
“Half a million years after evolution had produced the first humans, ones who were physically, mentally, and spiritually ready, the Earth was ripe for elementary revealed truth. That is when the Planetary Prince arrived, bringing myself, and ninety-nine other volunteer ascenders. We all took origin on different worlds within our system.”
Another time, Van told his students, “When a world has progressed, after human consciousness and the power to know and choose God appears, the first in a series of divine visitations occurs. An administrator and his staff are sent to enlighten and rule humanity until Adam and Eve come with their unique contribution of biological uplift.
“After the Earth received the Prince and his entourage, progress was slow but sure for nearly 300,000 years. Gradual and important advances were being made. But then, with little warning, a rebellion broke out in the local system’s ranks. A high administrator, Lucifer by name, denied the existence of God the Father and led many of his subordinates to believe this lie. As a consequence, the administrative staff of thirty-seven inhabited worlds, including Earth and many of its attending angels, went astray.
“Earth’s Prince went over to the rebel cause and our administration fractured into loyalists and rebels. But Amadon and I, and some of our colleagues did not join the rebellion. As soon as it broke out the disloyal ones began making mischief. They roved the planet creating endless trouble and causing serious confusion.
“After seven years with no resolution, nor any admission of error, Amadon and I abandoned the rebels and the world’s fallen Prince. While they were creating chaos and discord, we carved out the core of the Tree of Life and made our way to the highlands of Asia.
“We remained in those far mountains until the planetary inspectors arrived and settled on the three possible sites for the new Garden. Before their visit, Amadon and I were kept informed by loyal angels about the ‘war in heaven.’ It went on for seven years. But the consequences are still working themselves out a hundred and sixty thousand years later, on the Earth and the other thirty-six fallen worlds. During that time Amadon and I waited for humanity to reach its physical peak so that an Adam and Eve could be dispatched and begin repairing the damage done by the Prince’s betrayal.
“The violet race brings not only increased physical vigor and spiritual capacity to their assigned world, it also fosters the appreciation and creation of music, humor, and artistic expression. And with this vastly increased creativity, with this greater physical and intellectual power, there begins a great age of scientific and technological achievement, followed by even greater ages of spiritual advancement.”
As the day’s festivities reached their inevitable end, as the glorious red, purple, and orange sunset waned, Van beseeched those still lingering to depart for the night, so as to give the newly arrived pair “time to acclimate, to adapt, to breathe in the Garden’s fine aromas.”
Adam and Eve were very gracious in bidding their admirers a fond goodnight. Eve said to all in her charming manner, “Go to your rest faithful friends, for there is much to do tomorrow, and many tomorrows thereafter, during which we shall come to know each other as one great and affectionate family.”
Adam added, “We thank one and all for preparing this beautiful Garden and for this loving reception. Your good labors will never be forgotten, and they shall ever be counted as righteousness. Rest you well!” With that, most of the group dispersed and went to their shelters.
The dozen or so who remained refused to be dismissed. They sought simply to be near Adam and Eve. Van was about to ask them to depart when Eve stepped forward, approaching a little boy holding his father’s hand. He looked up at her, wide-eyed and smiling. She came down on one knee, then slowly and gently took the boy into her arms and stood. Somehow everyone there felt as if they had been embraced and lifted.
“Back in our heavenly home, Adam and I have many children and grandchildren, not unlike this little one,” Eve said to the father. The boy looked as if he had been hugged by God! The father smiled but was too awed to speak. After that tender moment, Eve set the boy down, saying, “May the silent stars and this beautiful sky attend your dreams. We bid you all good night and good rest.”
All then began drifting their way home thinking only of tomorrow when they might be near this magical pair again. But only the children slept after that dramatic day. The adults who had met and talked with Adam or Eve marveled at their good fortune, up until the sun rose. All night they discussed the phenomenal events of that unforgettable day, pledging to remember its details and promising to tell their children.
And what a day it had been! The Garden volunteers and guests had witnessed an epochal occurrence. Many of them, at some point, had an opportunity to come near, even greet and be touched by these two god-like beings.
It wasn’t long before everyone realized Eve and Adam were especially fond of, and attuned to, the physical and intellectual needs of children. People were genuinely touched by the graciousness and warmth shown to all children by Eve and Adam. And everyone was moved by the couple’s unmistakable and kindly demeanor so lovingly and repeatedly extended to people of every age.
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The novel, The Gardens of Eden – Life and Times of Adam and Eve, is now available in print and ebook, in English, Spanish, French, German, and Audible: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1707553653/
Other Urantia-based novels by Richard E Warren:
Resurrection Hall – A Mansion World Odyssey, a story about our next life is available in print, and ebook formats, also in Spanish, French, and German.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B071G238STThe Melchizedek Mission – Salvaging Truth, unveils the mystery of the second most important person in Urantia’s history, Machiventa Melchizedek. Also available in Spanish and French.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08MY7Y68P/The First Humans – Andon and Fonta, reveals the facts about our first parents and their enduring legacy. It is available in an ebook version, and the audio version is free to Audible, Spotify, and Itune members.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08JBDW7PS/Battlefield Guardians – Angels in Vietnam, is a story of a soldier who receives revelations from the angels during the night season.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07HNLF165/Soon to be published: The Planetary Prince & Van the Steadfast – https://www.facebook.com/groups/635119267130954
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All novels and translations can be found on one page in print, ebook, and audio versions: https://www.amazon.com/Richard-E-Warren/e/B07SF8DC3C
Print books are also available at CosmicCreations: https://cosmiccreations.biz/collections/educational
The Urantia Book is a free download, in 24 languages: http://www.urantia.org
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Richard E Warren
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