Tag: Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil

Can You Fall Away in Eternity?

The content reflects on the significance of our eternal relationship with God, emphasizing the effort needed for salvation through Jesus and the Holy Spirit. It discusses the potential for free will in Heaven and examines the analogy of Adam and Eve’s fall, concluding that while sin might theoretically exist, the divine environment will prevent any deviation from God’s presence.

Our place with God in eternity is our most valuable asset by far. God had to do a lot to get us to that point. Jesus had to keep the Law perfectly. He had to absorb the worst part of the Law’s prescribed punishment for our sin: being forsaken by the Father. The Holy Spirit had to break through our sin hardened mind to give us a connection to Jesus. The Spirit also has to shepherd us through the rest of our lives without us falling away. So much work for God.

But once we are securely in Heaven, we can never fall away again, right? Let’s examine that. There is precious little written about this question, but the question is not uncommon. Let’s start with Adam and Eve. What caused them to fall?

Adam and Eve did not initially have bodies infected by sinful nature. Neither will we in eternity. They did not know what evil was. I think we still will know what it is. They had only one rule, the rest came naturally to them. I think good will come naturally to us in Heaven. I know of no equivalent to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in Heaven or the New Earth. The Tree of Life will be around (see Revelation 22). They had to contend with Satan’s temptations, we will not.

Adam and Eve present the nearest analogy for what we will be in eternity. But it isn’t a one-to-one correspondence. God made humans to have a perfectly free will. Our will hasn’t been free since they sinned. Will we be fully free in eternity? If so, then we must be free to sin against God and fall away. We will know what evil is. At least we will at first. This thought is frightening. Currently, we dare not trust ourselves, because we have had a sinful nature our whole existence so far and it is not trustworthy. Heaven will be different. I don’t feel like I can get my head inside of what it will be like, however.

Angels know what evil is. They are free willed. A third of them fell from God and were cast out. Still two-thirds did not. The fallen third had Satan’s influence. I don’t know if this is comforting or disconcerting. It does show that you can be free-willed, know evil, and not choose it.

Perhaps this whole discussion adds some light to the strange text of Isaiah 65. The passage is about the New Earth. It says so at the beginning. Still it speaks of death and being accursed even though the rest of scripture speaks of eternal life.

No more shall there be in it
    an infant who lives but a few days,
    or an old man who does not fill out his days,
for the young man shall die a hundred years old,
    and the sinner a hundred years old shall be accursed.

Isaiah 65:20 (ESV)

It is clear from the rest of Scripture that Heaven isn’t just a long life. Perhaps God wasn’t ready to roll out the idea of eternal life at the time of Isaiah. The passage above could be read as hypothetical. I think that is what the answer to our initial question actually is.

Hypothetically, a person in Heaven and the New Earth could choose evil and be cast out of God’s presence. We will have nothing internal to drive us to such a decision and nothing externally to tempt us to such a decision. And we will not be so stupid as to think that we can be God and do things any better than Him. Fully satisfied and loved, we will eventually forget that sin is even possible.

“For behold, I create new heavens
    and a new earth,
and the former things shall not be remembered
    or come into mind.

Isaiah 65:17 (ESV)

We have plenty to worry about while still in this world. We don’t have to worry about the next. The ongoing indwelling of the Holy Spirit will keep us in place without robbing us of our will. Falling away will not be rare. It will be non-existent.

Exploring Bioengineering for Immortality: A Biblical Perspective

The author reflects on recent New York Times articles about immortality through bioengineering, questioning whether this pursuit is valid. They highlight biblical accounts of long lifespans and suggest that death stems from sin. Ultimately, they express a desire for a healthy life, emphasizing faith in God’s promises over the pursuit of artificial longevity.

Recent articles in the New York Times about the pursuit of immortality through bioengineering have caught my attention. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/24/magazine/eternal-life-longevity-world-leaders.html The very rich have invested large sums into longevity research to try to beat or at least delay the great equalizer–death. Is this a fool’s errand or could it produce some fruit?

I would first like to point out that the Bible records some incredible lifespans for people who lived before Noah’s flood: Adam 930 years, Seth 912, Enosh 905, Kenan 910, Jared 962, the record holder Methuselah 969. People scoff at this and attribute it as myth. That is only because we rarely break 100 years and then usually in bad health, but something was very different in that era.

God did not create humans to die. Death is the product of sin. Not just as a sentence. It is the by-product of Adam and Eve breaking the only command they had–don’t eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (referred to just as “the tree” from now on). Now this sounds very mythy. I don’t think it is. Jesus acknowledges Genesis as truth, and I feel strongly about Jesus being historically who He claims to be, and that is provable. Consequently, could there have been an actual tree that acted as a biological agent of some kind? The Bible speaks of our “sinful nature”. “Nature” refers to the product of our DNA. It has been verified that our DNA is programmed to eventually fail (like designed obsolescence in a consumer product). It can only replicate a limited number of times. The epigenetics, molecules that attach to our DNA to turn genes on and off, also eventually fail to work or come off.

God is not a bad designer. An eternally living body is not only buildable, one is promised to us at our death in Christ and again at our resurrection. The tree knocked people back from eternal to living nearly a millennium. God knocked us back further:

3 Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.”

Genesis 6:3 (ESV)

And that has been our potential ever since. Disease or violence usually shortens it much further. Living to the average of 80 is just 2/3 of the current potential. Did God just make a proclamation that He enforces in the verse above or did He build modifications into the human genome once He knocked the population back to just the family of Noah? It interesting that the 120 limit seems to phase in after Noah. It isn’t 120 immediately but it gets there. Within a few hundred years people were lucky to live to 45.

Two questions jump out of the New York Times articles to me. Can people figure out what was modified and undo it? Do we really want to?

If you have no faith in the original designer or in the promises extended to mankind through Jesus, then bioengineering or the even weirder idea of digitizing your consciousness and placing it either in a robot or a clone are your best bets. Perhaps it can be done or at least partially done. Maybe Jeff Bezos could live to be 900. How many marriages could you get into that period of time? With a population of 8 billion, this obviously will not be a resource for the common man.

I would love to live a healthy and vital life for whole time that God has plans for me here.

10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

Ephesians 2:10 (ESV)

That could be 80 to 90 years. After that the purpose will need to be pretty good. I have no ambition to be 120. If I could be healthy, complete my work, then quickly achieve the goal of having this sinful body break down and die so that I can swap it out for my heavenly body, that would be ideal. https://afterdeathsite.com/2019/03/25/do-you-get-a-body-in-heaven/

It will be more than a change in body, it will be a change in environment. I realize that Bezos, Putin, Xi, Altman, Johnson, Thiel and their like, are probably enjoying this world (called the Great Tribulation in Revelation 7:14) as much as one can and would welcome greater longevity. I already have better digs and a superior body arranged.

The Tree of Life and Abnormally Long Life in the Old Testament

Many people expect to live around 80-90 years, but the current maximum lifespan is 120 years. In the past, people lived longer, with biblical figures reaching nearly 1,000 years. Some seek to extend life through science or technology, but the true promise of eternal life lies in faith and connection with God.

How long do you expect to live in this life? Most would say 80 or 90 years. The average in the United States is 78. That seems young-ish to me. I have no aspirations to live to be 100. Perhaps that is because I visit many people who have significantly cognitively declined by then and I don’t wish to join that group.

The actual current maximum lifespan is 120 years, which sounds like a real burden to me. Life expectancy varies by gender, location and time. People in the not-so-distant past were lucky to make it to 50. Jesus is crucified at age 35 (I believe), a young man to us, but not so much for when He lived.

When you dig back into the Old Testament people were living enormously long lives: Enosh 905, Kenan 910, and the record holder Methuselah at 969. They were cranking out kids in their 100’s. It is clear that they were not elderly until much later. Is this a myth? I don’t think so. These people all lived before Noah’s flood, so some attribute the difference to the environment in some way, but I think it is a genetic change that God brought about.

 Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.”

Genesis 6:3 (ESV)

So we have been capped at 120 for a while. It is interesting that this limit seemed to phase in. The mechanisms that age us and result in our physical death didn’t come into full effect for a couple generations.

There is a branch of science today that seeks to undo the genetic cap on our lives. Others, clearly fearing death, seek immortality through capturing our consciousness as a computer code. The former might produce some lengthening of life for those who seek it. I am pretty skeptical about the later.

God limited human life, but when God created it, we were not built to die at all. Adam and Eve were immortals, physically and spiritually. God warned them to not eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil lest they die. Satan said they wouldn’t die. Immediately. Adam lived for 930 years and then he kicked the bucket, just as God said.

Adam and Eve also had the benefit of the Tree of Life. What wear and tear life produced in the body, eating from the tree could fix. I don’t think there was anything miraculous about it. It was designed to work that way. Similarly, I don’t think the impact of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was miraculous. It was a genetic modifier created, likely by Satan, to poison mankind and the world.

The Tree of Life was forbidden Adam and Eve by God after their encounter with evil. God did not want to leave them physically eternal and evil. Hence, our need to die. Sin is a part of the body not the spirit. Our soul, the interaction of body and spirit, is likewise corrupt.

The Tree of Life makes another appearance by name in the Bible– at the end. In Revelation 22 it says:

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2 through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.

Revelation 22:1-2 (ESV)

As I have discussed in previous blogs, we will have a Heavenly body for Heaven, but we will also have a resurrected physical body for a New Earth. It will be a modified, superior version of what we have now. The Trees of Life described in the verse above have some role in the eternal preservation of that body. What exactly, I do not know.

I do not aspire to unnaturally prolong physical life as I am experiencing now, even though I am very blessed compared to many. I have confidence in the one who is my original Creator. I have confidence in His ability to deliver far superior and eternal life to me. All of it is because of things God has already done. Jesus has already successfully fulfilled God’s Law and paid the price for my evil. Already I am connected to Jesus and benefit from His work through being baptized in His name. It is a great, loving offer that is there for the taking. May God help you to receive it.

Here’s to truly long life.