PAPER 76
- THE SECOND GARDEN
When Adam elected to leave
the first garden to the Nodites unopposed, he and his
followers could not go west, for the Edenites had no boats
suitable for such a marine adventure. They could not go
north; the northern Nodites were already on the march toward
Eden. They feared to go south; the hills of that region were
infested with hostile tribes. The only way open was to the
east, and so they journeyed eastward toward the then
pleasant regions between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
And many of those who were left behind later journeyed
eastward to join the Adamites in their new valley home.
Cain and Sansa were both
born before the Adamic caravan had reached its destination
between the rivers in Mesopotamia. Laotta, the mother of
Sansa, perished at the birth of her daughter; Eve suffered
much but survived, owing to superior strength. Eve took
Sansa, the child of Laotta, to her bosom, and she was reared
along with Cain. Sansa grew up to be a woman of great
ability. She became the wife of Sargan, the chief of the
northern blue races, and contributed to the advancement of
the blue men of those times.
1. THE EDENITES
ENTER MESOPOTAMIA
It required almost a full
year for the caravan of Adam to reach the Euphrates River.
Finding it in flood tide, they remained camped on the plains
west of the stream almost six weeks before they made their
way across to the land between the rivers which was to
become the second garden.
When word had reached the
dwellers in the land of the second garden that the king and
high priest of the Garden of Eden was marching on them, they
had fled in haste to the eastern mountains. Adam found all
of the desired territory vacated when he arrived. And here
in this new location Adam and his helpers set themselves to
work to build new homes and establish a new center of
culture and religion.
This site was known to
Adam as one of the three original selections of the
committee assigned to choose possible locations for the
Garden proposed by Van and Amadon. The two rivers themselves
were a good natural defense in those days, and a short way
north of the second garden the Euphrates and Tigris came
close together so that a defense wall extending fifty-six
miles could be built for the protection of the territory to
the south and between the rivers.
After getting settled in
the new Eden, it became necessary to adopt crude methods of
living; it seemed entirely true that the ground had been
cursed. Nature was once again taking its course. Now were
the Adamites compelled
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to wrest a living from
unprepared soil and to cope with the realities of life in
the face of the natural hostilities and incompatibilities of
mortal existence. They found the first garden partially
prepared for them, but the second had to be created by the
labor of their own hands and in the "sweat of their faces."
2. CAIN AND ABEL
Less than two years after
Cain's birth, Abel was born, the first child of Adam and Eve
to be born in the second garden. When Abel grew up to the
age of twelve years, he elected to be a herder; Cain had
chosen to follow agriculture.
Now, in those days it was
customary to make offerings to the priesthood of the things
at hand. Herders would bring of their flocks, farmers of the
fruits of the fields; and in accordance with this custom,
Cain and Abel likewise made periodic offerings to the
priests. The two boys had many times argued about the
relative merits of their vocations, and Abel was not slow to
note that preference was shown for his animal sacrifices. In
vain did Cain appeal to the traditions of the first Eden, to
the former preference for the fruits of the fields. But this
Abel would not allow, and he taunted his older brother in
his discomfiture.
In the days of the first
Eden Adam had indeed sought to discourage the offering of
animal sacrifice so that Cain had a justifiable precedent
for his contentions. It was, however, difficult to organize
the religious life of the second Eden. Adam was burdened
with a thousand and one details associated with the work of
building, defense, and agriculture. Being much depressed
spiritually, he intrusted the organization of worship and
education to those of Nodite extraction who had served in
these capacities in the first garden; and in even so short a
time the officiating Nodite priests were reverting to the
standards and rulings of pre-Adamic times.
The two boys never got
along well, and this matter of sacrifices further
contributed to the growing hatred between them. Abel knew he
was the son of both Adam and Eve and never failed to impress
upon Cain that Adam was not his father. Cain was not pure
violet as his father was of the Nodite race later admixed
with the blue and the red man and with the aboriginal
Andonic stock. And all of this, with Cain's natural
bellicose inheritance, caused him to nourish an
ever-increasing hatred for his younger brother.
The boys were respectively
eighteen and twenty years of age when the tension between
them was finally resolved, one day, when Abel's taunts so
infuriated his bellicose brother that Cain turned upon him
in wrath and slew him.
The observation of Abel's
conduct establishes the value of environment and education
as factors in character development. Abel had an ideal
inheritance, and heredity lies at the bottom of all
character; but the influence of an inferior environment
virtually neutralized this magnificent inheritance. Abel,
especially during his younger years, was greatly influenced
by his unfavorable surroundings. He would have become an
entirely different person had he lived to be twenty-five or
thirty; his superb inheritance would then have shown itself.
While a good environment cannot contribute much toward
really overcoming the character handicaps of a base
heredity, a bad environment can very effectively spoil an
excellent inheritance, at least during the younger years of
life. Good social environment and proper education are
indispensable soil and atmosphere for getting the most out
of a good inheritance.
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The death of Abel became
known to his parents when his dogs brought the flocks home
without their master. To Adam and Eve, Cain was fast
becoming the grim reminder of their folly, and they
encouraged him in his decision to leave the garden.
Cain's life in Mesopotamia
had not been exactly happy since he was in such a peculiar
way symbolic of the default. It was not that his associates
were unkind to him, but he had not been unaware of their
subconscious resentment of his presence. But Cain knew that,
since he bore no tribal mark, he would be killed by the
first neighboring tribesmen who might chance to meet him.
Fear, and some remorse, led him to repent. Cain had never
been indwelt by an Adjuster, had always been defiant of the
family discipline and disdainful of his father's religion.
But he now went to Eve, his mother, and asked for spiritual
help and guidance, and when he honestly sought divine
assistance, an Adjuster indwelt him. And this Adjuster,
dwelling within and looking out, gave Cain a distinct
advantage of superiority which classed him with the greatly
feared tribe of Adam.
And so Cain departed for
the land of Nod, east of the second Eden. He became a great
leader among one group of his father's people and did, to a
certain degree, fulfill the predictions of Serapatatia, for
he did promote peace between this division of the Nodites
and the Adamites throughout his lifetime. Cain married
Remona, his distant cousin, and their first son, Enoch,
became the head of the Elamite Nodites. And for hundreds of
years the Elamites and the Adamites continued to be at
peace.
3. LIFE IN
MESOPOTAMIA
As time passed in the
second garden, the consequences of default became
increasingly apparent. Adam and Eve greatly missed their
former home of beauty and tranquillity as well as their
children who had been deported to Edentia. It was indeed
pathetic to observe this magnificent couple reduced to the
status of the common flesh of the realm; but they bore their
diminished estate with grace and fortitude.
Adam wisely spent most of
the time training his children and their associates in civil
administration, educational methods, and religious
devotions. Had it not been for this foresight, pandemonium
would have broken loose upon his death. As it was, the death
of Adam made little difference in the conduct of the affairs
of his people. But long before Adam and Eve passed away,
they recognized that their children and followers had
gradually learned to forget the days of their glory in Eden.
And it was better for the majority of their followers that
they did forget the grandeur of Eden; they were not so
likely to experience undue dissatisfaction with their less
fortunate environment.
The civil rulers of the
Adamites were derived hereditarily from the sons of the
first garden. Adam's first son, Adamson (Adam ben Adam),
founded a secondary center of the violet race to the north
of the second Eden. Adam's second son, Eveson, became a
masterly leader and administrator; he was the great helper
of his father. Eveson lived not quite so long as Adam, and
his eldest son, Jansad, became the successor of Adam as the
head of the Adamite tribes.
The religious rulers, or
priesthood, originated with Seth, the eldest surviving son
of Adam and Eve born in the second garden. He was born one
hundred and
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twenty-nine years after
Adam's arrival on Urantia. Seth became absorbed in the work
of improving the spiritual status of his father's people,
becoming the head of the new priesthood of the second
garden. His son, Enos, founded the new order of worship, and
his grandson, Kenan, instituted the foreign missionary
service to the surrounding tribes, near and far.
The Sethite priesthood was
a threefold undertaking, embracing religion, health, and
education. The priests of this order were trained to
officiate at religious ceremonies, to serve as physicians
and sanitary inspectors, and to act as teachers in the
schools of the garden.
Adam's caravan had carried
the seeds and bulbs of hundreds of plants and cereals of the
first garden with them to the land between the rivers; they
also had brought along extensive herds and some of all the
domesticated animals. Because of this they possessed great
advantages over the surrounding tribes. They enjoyed many of
the benefits of the previous culture of the original Garden.
Up to the time of leaving
the first garden, Adam and his family had always subsisted
on fruits, cereals, and nuts. On the way to Mesopotamia they
had, for the first time, partaken of herbs and vegetables.
The eating of meat was early introduced into the second
garden, but Adam and Eve never partook of flesh as a part of
their regular diet. Neither did Adamson nor Eveson nor the
other children of the first generation of the first garden
become flesh eaters.
The Adamites greatly
excelled the surrounding peoples in cultural achievement and
intellectual development. They produced the third alphabet
and otherwise laid the foundations for much that was the
forerunner of modern art, science, and literature. Here in
the lands between the Tigris and Euphrates they maintained
the arts of writing, metalworking, pottery making, and
weaving and produced a type of architecture that was not
excelled in thousands of years.
The home life of the
violet peoples was, for their day and age, ideal. Children
were subjected to courses of training in agriculture,
craftsmanship, and animal husbandry or else were educated to
perform the threefold duty of a Sethite: to be priest,
physician, and teacher.
And when thinking of the
Sethite priesthood, do not confuse those high-minded and
noble teachers of health and religion, those true educators,
with the debased and commercial priesthoods of the later
tribes and surrounding nations. Their religious concepts of
Deity and the universe were advanced and more or less
accurate, their health provisions were, for their time,
excellent, and their methods of education have never since
been surpassed.
4. THE VIOLET
RACE
Adam and Eve were the
founders of the violet race of men, the ninth human race to
appear on Urantia. Adam and his offspring had blue eyes, and
the violet peoples were characterized by fair complexions
and light hair color--yellow, red, and brown.
Eve did not suffer pain in
childbirth; neither did the early evolutionary races. Only
the mixed races produced by the union of evolutionary man
with the Nodites and later with the Adamites suffered the
severe pangs of childbirth.
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Adam and Eve, like their
brethren on Jerusem, were energized by dual nutrition,
subsisting on both food and light, supplemented by certain
superphysical energies unrevealed on Urantia. Their Urantia
offspring did not inherit the parental endowment of energy
intake and light circulation. They had a single circulation,
the human type of blood sustenance. They were designedly
mortal though long-lived, albeit longevity gravitated toward
the human norm with each succeeding generation.
Adam and Eve and their
first generation of children did not use the flesh of
animals for food. They subsisted wholly upon "the fruits of
the trees." After the first generation all of the
descendants of Adam began to partake of dairy products, but
many of them continued to follow a nonflesh diet. Many of
the southern tribes with whom they later united were also
nonflesh eaters. Later on, most of these vegetarian tribes
migrated to the east and survived as now admixed in the
peoples of India.
Both the physical and
spiritual visions of Adam and Eve were far superior to those
of the present-day peoples. Their special senses were much
more acute, and they were able to see the midwayers and the
angelic hosts, the Melchizedeks, and the fallen Prince
Caligastia, who several times came to confer with his noble
successor. They retained the ability to see these celestial
beings for over one hundred years after the default. These
special senses were not so acutely present in their children
and tended to diminish with each succeeding generation.
The Adamic children were
usually Adjuster indwelt since they all possessed undoubted
survival capacity. These superior offspring were not so
subject to fear as the children of evolution. So much of
fear persists in the present-day races of Urantia because
your ancestors received so little of Adam's life plasm,
owing to the early miscarriage of the plans for racial
physical uplift.
The body cells of the
Material Sons and their progeny are far more resistant to
disease than are those of the evolutionary beings indigenous
to the planet. The body cells of the native races are akin
to the living disease-producing microscopic and
ultramicroscopic organisms of the realm. These facts explain
why the Urantia peoples must do so much by way of scientific
effort to withstand so many physical disorders. You would be
far more disease resistant if your races carried more of the
Adamic life.
After becoming established
in the second garden on the Euphrates, Adam elected to leave
behind as much of his life plasm as possible to benefit the
world after his death. Accordingly, Eve was made the head of
a commission of twelve on race improvement, and before Adam
died this commission had selected 1,682 of the highest type
of women on Urantia, and these women were impregnated with
the Adamic life plasm. Their children all grew up to
maturity except 112, so that the world, in this way, was
benefited by the addition of 1,570 superior men and women.
Though these candidate mothers were selected from all the
surrounding tribes and represented most of the races on
earth, the majority were chosen from the highest strains of
the Nodites, and they constituted the early beginnings of
the mighty Andite race. These children were born and reared
in the tribal surroundings of their respective mothers.
5. DEATH OF ADAM
AND EVE
Not long after the
establishment of the second Eden, Adam and Eve were duly
informed that their repentance was acceptable, and that,
while they were
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doomed to suffer the fate of
the mortals of their world, they should certainly become
eligible for admission to the ranks of the sleeping
survivors of Urantia. They fully believed this gospel of
resurrection and rehabilitation which the Melchizedeks so
touchingly proclaimed to them. Their transgression had been
an error of judgment and not the sin of conscious and
deliberate rebellion.
Adam and Eve did not, as
citizens of Jerusem, have Thought Adjusters, nor were they
Adjuster indwelt when they functioned on Urantia in the
first garden. But shortly after their reduction to mortal
status they became conscious of a new presence within them
and awakened to the realization that human status coupled
with sincere repentance had made it possible for Adjusters
to indwell them. It was this knowledge of being Adjuster
indwelt that greatly heartened Adam and Eve throughout the
remainder of their lives; they knew that they had failed as
Material Sons of Satania, but they also knew that the
Paradise career was still open to them as ascending sons of
the universe.
Adam knew about the
dispensational resurrection which occurred simultaneously
with his arrival on the planet, and he believed that he and
his companion would probably be repersonalized in connection
with the advent of the next order of sonship. He did not
know that Michael, the sovereign of this universe was so
soon to appear on Urantia; he expected that the next Son to
arrive would be of the Avonal order. Even so, it was always
a comfort to Adam and Eve, as well as something difficult
for them to understand, to ponder the only personal message
they ever received from Michael. This message, among other
expressions of friendship and comfort, said: "I have given
consideration to the circumstances of your default, I have
remembered the desire of your hearts ever to be loyal to my
Father's will, and you will be called from the embrace of
mortal slumber when I come to Urantia if the subordinate
Sons of my realm do not send for you before that time."
And this was a great
mystery to Adam and Eve. They could comprehend the veiled
promise of a possible special resurrection in this message,
and such a possibility greatly cheered them, but they could
not grasp the meaning of the intimation that they might rest
until the time of a resurrection associated with Michael's
personal appearance on Urantia. And so the Edenic pair
always proclaimed that a Son of God would sometime come, and
they communicated to their loved ones the belief, at least
the longing hope, that the world of their blunders and
sorrows might possibly be the realm whereon the ruler of
this universe would elect to function as the Paradise
bestowal Son. It seemed too good to be true, but Adam did
entertain the thought that strife-torn Urantia might, after
all, turn out to be the most fortunate world in the system
of Satania, the envied planet of all Nebadon.
Adam lived for 530 years;
he died of what might be termed old age. His physical
mechanism simply wore out; the process of disintegration
gradually gained on the process of repair, and the
inevitable end came. Eve had died nineteen years previously
of a weakened heart. They were both buried in the center of
the temple of divine service which had been built in
accordance with their plans soon after the wall of the
colony had been completed. And this was the origin of the
practice of burying noted and pious men and women under the
floors of the places of worship.
The supermaterial
government of Urantia, under the direction of the
Melchizedeks, continued, but direct physical contact with
the evolutionary races had
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been severed. From the
distant days of the arrival of the corporeal staff of the
Planetary Prince, down through the times of Van and Amadon
to the arrival of Adam and Eve, physical representatives of
the universe government had been stationed on the planet.
But with the Adamic default this regime, extending over a
period of more than four hundred and fifty thousand years,
came to an end. In the spiritual spheres, angelic helpers
continued to struggle in conjunction with the Thought
Adjusters, both working heroically for the salvage of the
individual; but no comprehensive plan for far-reaching world
welfare was promulgated to the mortals of earth until the
arrival of Machiventa Melchizedek, in the times of Abraham,
who, with the power, patience, and authority of a Son of
God, did lay the foundations for the further uplift and
spiritual rehabilitation of unfortunate Urantia.
Misfortune has not,
however, been the sole lot of Urantia; this planet has also
been the most fortunate in the local universe of Nebadon.
Urantians should count it all gain if the blunders of their
ancestors and the mistakes of their early world rulers so
plunged the planet into such a hopeless state of confusion,
all the more confounded by evil and sin, that this very
background of darkness should so appeal to Michael of
Nebadon that he selected this world as the arena wherein to
reveal the loving personality of the Father in heaven. It is
not that Urantia needed a Creator Son to set its tangled
affairs in order; it is rather that the evil and sin on
Urantia afforded the Creator Son a more striking background
against which to reveal the matchless love, mercy, and
patience of the Paradise Father.
6. SURVIVAL OF
ADAM AND EVE
Adam and Eve went to their
mortal rest with strong faith in the promises made to them
by the Melchizedeks that they would sometime awake from the
sleep of death to resume life on the mansion worlds, worlds
all so familiar to them in the days preceding their mission
in the material flesh of the violet race on Urantia.
They did not long rest in
the oblivion of the unconscious sleep of the mortals of the
realm. On the third day after Adam's death, the second
following his reverent burial, the orders of Lanaforge,
sustained by the acting Most High of Edentia and concurred
in by the Union of Days on Salvington, acting for Michael,
were placed in Gabriel's hands, directing the special roll
call of the distinguished survivors of the Adamic default on
Urantia. And in accordance with this mandate of special
resurrection, number twenty-six of the Urantia series, Adam
and Eve were repersonalized and reassembled in the
resurrection halls of the mansion worlds of Satania together
with 1,316 of their associates in the experience of the
first garden. Many other loyal souls had already been
translated at the time of Adam's arrival, which was attended
by a dispensational adjudication of both the sleeping
survivors and of the living qualified ascenders.
Adam and Eve quickly
passed through the worlds of progressive ascension until
they attained citizenship on Jerusem, once again to be
residents of the planet of their origin but this time as
members of a different order of universe personalities. They
left Jerusem as permanent citizens--Sons of God; they
returned as ascendant citizens--sons of man. They were
immediately attached to the Urantia service on the system
capital, later being assigned membership
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among the four and twenty
counselors who constitute the present advisory-control body
of Urantia.
And thus ends the story of
the Planetary Adam and Eve of Urantia, a story of trial,
tragedy, and triumph, at least personal triumph for your
well-meaning but deluded Material Son and Daughter and
undoubtedly, in the end, a story of ultimate triumph for
their world and its rebellion-tossed and evil-harassed
inhabitants. When all is summed up, Adam and Eve made a
mighty contribution to the speedy civilization and
accelerated biologic progress of the human race. They left a
great culture on earth, but it was not possible for such an
advanced civilization to survive in the face of the early
dilution and the eventual submergence of the Adamic
inheritance. It is the people who make a civilization;
civilization does not make the people.
[Presented by Solonia, the
seraphic "voice in the Garden."] |