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PATROLOGOS edutainment

With these words «Dust you are, and to dust you shall return» ends the fair decision, which the just God decreed against Adam and his descendants. 

Eve and Adam sinned. Was it ever possible that God would not punish them? It is so much hated and disgusting thing to the eyes of God the sin, that it couldn't happen otherwise, other than Adam to be punished, since he fell into it. 

Know it well, my Christian; the sin will be punished and the sinner is hated in front of God. God doesn't hate and doesn't punish and He doesn't repel nothing else so much like sin. 

And don't you see? From that black day of transgression until today, how this penalty, that God imposed on us, is pressing the chests of the whole human race and how the tears and the sighs and the toils and the sweats and the diseases and the terrible death is a heritage, which each one of us receives from his father, and which each one of us leaves to his child? 

Certainly. God hates and abhors and punishes the sin. 

Don't you see, that also His sole-begotten Son, Jesus Christ, once He became a man and wished to take upon Himself our own weights, our sins, don't you see, how He is also punished and how He also suffers, and how the hardships, that God imposes to Adam for his sin, He endures and He suffers them even Himself His own Son? 

Look at him, my Christian. He is a man of the sorrow and of the anguish. Within a garden Adam once heard, that with many sweats he would eat from then on his bread and with tears and many sorrows he would spend his life. 

Within a garden Jesus as well as our own representative He starts paying our debt and to experience the penalty, that belongs to us. 

In the garden of Gethsemane the sweat runs from Him so abundant and thick, as if it was coagulated blood. And it reaches there His agony and His sadness to the highest, to a point where no one of the mortal humans has not yet experienced. 

It was getting paid, my brother, the ransom for our sin. And the tears and the sighs and the sweats, that he was convicted the man to pour for his sin, Jesus also had to pour them. And He pours them. 

And surrounded Him «the pains of death». The pains, that each woman owes because of Eve's sin to experience, He also had to experience too, He who came to liberate not only the men, but also the women. 

Pains she feels the woman when she gives birth, and many times she is in danger to die during that birth giving. Unbearable pains, harsh, terrible, horrible Jesus experienced as well, Who He does not only die as they die the most of us, but He dies in the terrible pain of torture. 

This way it had to be paid the sin. The decision of God is to be executed. What God said, it must be done. And it was done without God feeling pity not even for His beloved and only begotten Son. And you now expect, you incorrigible sinner, to escape the ruling of the divine judgement and to get arroung from the terrible condemnation of the Heavenly court? 

God educates and punishes Adam and Eve, but He does not renounce them altogether. They are His children. Disobedient and naughty children, which He seeks to bring back to the path of virtue, but which He does not make them outcasts. And for this reason we also see now, that God continues to take care for the protoplasts and as a Father to protect them. 

«Also the Lord God made for Adam and his wife tunics of skin and clothed them». 

No; When God was pronouncing His condemnatory decision against Adam and Eve He didn't ever mean to exterminate and to destroy them. Because if He wanted to exterminate them, why would He care after a while how to dress them with «tunics of skin», in order not to remain naked and be cold from the frost of the winter? 

But you can clearly see, my brother, that the clothes, that we are wearing they as well are a heritage and a dress, that sin gave to us. 

If our forefathers, that is, Adam and Eve, would not have sinned, we wouldn't have the need for clothes, neither we would be burdened from the so many labors, that we are doing now in order to weave, and to cut, and to sew the clothes, that we are wearing. 

We would neither be cold, for the clothes to be necessary, in order to protect us from cold, nor we would have the cunningness, that makes us be embarrassed, when we are naked and therefore to have again the necessity of the clothes in order to cover our nudity. 

So instead of boasting, my brother, for the fine clothes that you are wearing, it is fairer to be ashamed. 

You wear silk clothes. You wear a suit according to the latest fashion. You wear very luxurious clothes and fancy, with vivid and intense colors. And it seem to you, that you are something. It seem to you, that the clothes makes you better that what you are, superior that the other who cannot afford to put them on, but instead he walks dressed poorer. 

How much you are mistaken however, my brother! The clothes are nothing else than one more signal of the poverty and of the disease and of the weakness and of the shame and of the dishonesty, that sin gave to us. 

To what extend you and I and all of us we would be happier and calmer, if we didn't have the need to get dressed; if we would remain in the condition, which God created us in the beginning, innocent and imperishable, and with only eternal and continuous and always new dress of ours our naked skin! 

And pay attention. God didn't dress them with silk and gold-embroidered garments, but with tunics of skin. With solid clothes, which lasted, because they were made of skin; and also with thermal and warm clothes, because they had the wool of the animals, of which the skins were taken from. They were clothes made with the sole purpose to cover the body. Not clothes for the vain and foolish exhibition. 

The people today fabricate the clothes more in order to make them appear as more elegant and more good looking, and not in order to cover the nudity of the body and in order to protect it from the cold weather. 

Silk clothes, light clothes, very thin, that can even be seen through what, they are supposed to cover; clothes that let many parts of the body uncovered and nude; 

clothes that are made and are weared without any shame and shyness, these are the clothes, with which the daughters of Eve have replaced the tunics of skin, which God gave to her. 

And of course no one would have the demand for them to walk with the tunics of skin even today the men and the women. Each one of them however could consider as prudent and right and required for every man and every woman to have and to wear some serious garment, solid and modest, as they were also these tunics of skin. 

A garment, that will not be thrown away for the only reason, because it is not of the latest trend of fashion. A garment, that will not expose to the gaze of men, what would be more modest to be covered. 

«And He made leather tunics». Why did God give the leather tunics to the protoplasts? Because they after the sin were ashamed to walk naked. Today however? You see, they have been reversed the conditions. 

The daughters of Eve, as if they reached the state of the sinlessness, in which the protoplasts were before they sinned, whereas they walked naked and were not ashamed, likewise themselves also today little by little they let a larger part of their body uncovered and they don't feel no shame! 

Although the sin, that grows every day and spreads even more its nets, it should rather contribute in women covering themselves even more, they instead get undressed even more. 

But have you ever wondered, you who without shame you go arround on the streets with your neck and your back and your hands and even your legs naked or just covered with very thin silk clothes, have you thought the great harm that you are doing? 

Have you thought how much you harm your own self, from which you remove every kind of constraint and every kind of shame? Have you thought how much you harm the men also, and especially the young ones, for the transgressions of whom you shall have a very heavy responsibility? 

Let us all recover therefore. Let us all contemplate, men and women, that the dress, which out of paternal affection the celestial Father gave to His disobendient children, for which nevertheless He never lost His interest, if we consider that this garment was given in order to cover our nudity and to expel the shame, which sprang from the nudity after the sin. 

If therefore someone has no shame, when he walks around naked on the streets, this means that the sin has now brought the absolute blindness and absurdity. 

That wonderful garden of Eden God had planted in order for it to be the dwelling of Adam, as far as he would remain in the obedience towards his Creator. 

But now, that Adam was shown disobedient towards his Creator, he didn't deserve anymore to stay in that place of repose and comfort. He didn't deserve, because he was guilty and as guilty it was just and necessary for him to be punished. 

He didn't deserve it yet, because the sin has now perverted him and therefore thus perverted, as Adam now was, in that place of pleasure he would be harmed and he would be perverted even more. 

He resembled like that foolish and ungovernable and brainless youth, who the more means and wealth he has in his hands, the more he gets corrupted and he gets destroyed. 

For this reason therefore God decides to expel him from Paradise. He decides it as fair and impartial Judge. But He also decides it as affectionate and wise and prudent Father. 

«Behold», says God, «the man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil and now, lest he put out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever». 

Adam is not now, who he used to be before his disobedience and his transgression. He has other ideas and wishes now. 

«the man has become like one of Us», says God. Adam is now derailed and he doesn't know his place anymore. He doesn't know that he is a creature and a Creation of God, which means he owes humbly to obey to his Sovereign, Who rules him. 

The sin made him egoist and arrogant. Within a while it will make him lose sight of his God and to worship his own ego as god. As god of the man, when he loses sight and becomes conquered by sin, it becomes his stomach and his ego. 

The man already enters on the way to desertion and it seem to him, that he can create his own kingdom, distinct that the one that God is reigning. 

«the man has become like one of Us». This doesn't mean that Adam indeed and the man in general through the sin he becomes god. Heaven forbid for us to suppose such thing. 

But the sin obscures so much the man, that it makes him forget, that he is dependant to God and it inspires in him an arrogant spirit, an egoist, an idolatric one, because of which spirit he enjoys and he has the pretension that everyone and everything should serve and worship his ego and as if he were the idol of some god everybody to flatter him and bow down to him and that nothing would ever exist, which would resist against his commands and his desires. 

Adam had to leave from paradise. Not only because it was fair for him to go, but also because it was not anymore not even to his benefit to remain there. 

If they really were going these things to be fixed and Adam would be allowed again together with his descendants to that height, from which the transgression threw them, Adam had to leave from Paradise. 

If he remained in there, very easily he would lose his position and very hardly he would receive knowledge of the misfortune, in which the sin had led him. He had to be expelled from Paradise, in order to come to en end also the life of comfort and repose, that he lived in there. 

He had to be expelled from that wonderful garden and to fall within the uncultivated earth in order to understand well what it means the «in the sweat of your face you shall eat your bread». 

He had to be expelled from that place, where every kind of tree existed and every kind of fruit, in order to begin for him a life of deprivation, of poverty, of concerns, of sorrows, which would gave him to understand, how great evil the sin is and of what abyss of misery the door had opened to him and to his generation the transgression. 

Adam had to be expelled from Paradise. The pedagogy, of which Adam now, had the need, demanded this as necessary. 

Because, if Adam would not have been expelled from the Paradise, he would remain unreformed, and instead of being educated and thus realize his error, he would become worse and he would be led from one transgression to another and from one disobedience to another. 

«and now, lest he put out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever». 

This meaning they have these words by God. If Adam would remain in Paradise, he would proceed from one defection to the other. Wealthy as he would be inside the Paradise, easily he would forget the terror, which he experienced, when God judged him and condemned him for his sin. 

And since it was not impossible back then, when he was innocent, to stretch his hand and to eat the fruit of the transgression, it was not at all difficult now, that the sin had corrupted him, to proceed to something else as well and to worsen his position. 

That is to defect completely from God and to say: God condemned me to die. But why should I die? Let me eat from the tree of life in order to live. Let me eat in order to cancel the will and the decree of God. Let me eat so that I will never die. 

Adam ate from the tree of the knowledge of the good and of the evil. He ate the fruit of the transgression. Now he could also eat from the tree of life. 

The life-bearing fruits of this tree, which would give him the immortality, he only had the right Adam to taste, if he remained faithful to being obedient to God. 

And only in that case these fruits, in which God one such marvelous power had given, only in that case they would reserve for Adam that life-giving power of theirs, when he wouldn't have sinned and he wouldn't have stretched his hand to reach the fruit of the transgression. 

Now however? Now Adam should not by any means taste the fruit of the tree of life. First of all he had nothing to gain any more from that fruit. 

Since it was God who was giving to this fruit that power the life giving and since it didn't have it by itself that power this fruit, how would Adam be given life though this fruit, for whom God already had taken His decision for him to return to the earth and die? 

But if merely Adam had nothing to gain by eating the fruit of life, the thing would not be so much important, should he have the chance to taste it. Because now he is even going to be harmed and although he was going to live eternally, as he would imagine from a first point of view, in reality however he would die eternally and he would be destroyed without any hope of salvation. 

Do not be surprised, my reader. The cup of the blessing and of the supper of the Lord, in which it is included the Blood and the Body of Christ, isn't it a cup of life and of immortality? 

And yet, when with impure lips and profane you come close to this cup, instead of deriving life from there, you obtain death and the condemnation. And instead of benefiting, therefore, you are getting greatly harmed. 

A similar desecration Adam would also commit now. Unworthy, as he was, he would approach his profane hands and his impure lips in order to participate in a sacrament of the holy and purest force and grace of the Spirit of God. 

Because admittedly they hid a holy sacrament these fruits of the tree of life, my reader. A sacrament, with which under the pretext of a material fruit from a tree it would be transmitted to Adam, if he wouldn't have sinned, the invisible grace of the Holy Spirit, that would make him immortal in the body as well. 

And this desecration of Adam was now in danger to become such that would not be possible for no other desecration to reach it in it's degree of impiety and intensity. Why? 

Because Adam obviously would extend his hand to the tree of life with the purpose of living eternally. 

Although he had well heard from the mouth of God the «you shall die» while he knew, that death was the sentence, in which God condemned him, by seeing now the tree of life he would enter in a terrible temptation. 

Why don't I eat, he would say, in order to live forever? But God condemmned me to die. And what does it matter? Let me eat from this fruit in order to live. Let it be canceled the will of God. Let it remain unexecuted the sentence with which He condemned me. 

And he would extend his hand, Adam. Of course he could never ever and by no means whatsoever to alter his fate. Nevertheless, he would worsen in the soul. 

He would fall in a new transgression worse that the first one. And if there still existed some place in his heart, which the first disobedience had not yet corrupted, this second transgression now would enter in it as well. 

Adam would become completely corrupted. He would now become a defector. And he would fall in the abyss of the definite and terminal perdition, from which no one anymore could save him. 

God therefore expels Adam from Paradise. And He does it not only due to reasons of justice, but also due to the interest and the love, which God still feels for Adam. 

As affectionate father He wants to discipline His child, who misbehaved and strayed from the right path. And for this He banished him from Paradise and «had him dwell across the paradise of delight». 

He had him dwell in a place, from which he could see the Paradise, his previous and delightful and pleasant residence, in which he could no longer enter again. 

He was seeing Paradise and remembered the pleasant days that he lived in there. He was seeing Paradise at night when he was returning from his work all tired and he remembered the repose, that he had in that wonderful garden. 

He was seeing Paradise and many times he would cry, because he lost it, but he was also taught every day, what a wicked thing it is for someone to disobey God and to separate himself from God. 

He was seeing Paradise like that impoverished lord who ended up in great poverty and who while being hungry and deprived he passes outside the palace, that once was his palace and in which palace in other times he spent days of happiness, and now he does not dare not even outside its door to pass. 

The benevolent God purposively put Adam there to dwell. Purposively in order to educate him, and in order to teach him, with these things, what a wicked thing sin is and how terrible it is for the man to come in conflict with his own Creator. 

How many times, my reader, would Adam have wished to enter again, even for a few hours, inside his old home, that garden of delight! But the poor man couldn't. Because God «placed the Cherubim with the flaming sword, which turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life». 

A garrison, the power of which was invincible, a task force that was not military but angelic, a garrison which was consisted by angels from the battalion of the Cherubim, this garrison had been set there in order to prevent the entrance in the Paradise. 

And at the disposal of this garrison as their serving weapon for the execution of the order, that had been given to it, it was set the flaming sword. Not an iron sword; a sword not by some metal made of; not a material sword and knife but a flaming sword. 

It was the power of God, which acts as fire and blaze; it was the wrath of God which was ready to totally burn each defector, who would dare to violate the entrances of Paradise. 

It's over now Adam; every hope of yours has vanished for you to enter again in Paradise, and to eat from the fruit of life. 

The first way, that has opened for you the love of God in order to become immortal and happy next to your Creator, has closed for ever. You cannot anymore enter again in Paradise and remaining in there to be educated through obedience to your Creator after His likeness. 

Another path opens for you now. A narrow path, bitter, venomous, but also a path in which the benevolence of God will not let you walk alone. 

It is the path of the temptations, of the sorrows, of the toils and of the sighs, of the diseases and of the death, in which, you wretched Adam have been condemned together with your generation by God. 

Walk this path with patience and with hope and very soon you shall see again, that God cares for the man as a Father and He wants to lift him again to the point from which he fell and to lead him even higher. 

We were exiled together with Adam from Paradise, my reader. We slipped into this sea of unhappiness, and we lost that place of delight and of repose. We are exiles. Behold our history and behold our origin. 

We are not illogical animals. We are noble creatures of God. We are not moulded for the earthly and the material world. Nor is it our purpose to eat and to sleep and to enjoy in this present life the pleasures and joys. 

We are noble descendants of a deposed and exiled king, our forefather Adam, whom God created as king of His terrestrial creation. We are exiles from the bright palace of the Paradise, from which the sin cast us out. 

And which is the dream of the exile? To return one day to his place. And which is the unquenchable desire of a deposed king? To rise up again to his throne. 

Eh, well, behold the dream, with which you must wake up, my dear Christian. Behold the longing, which must never let you sleep. To return to the kingdom, from which you have fallen. To recuperate again the life of happiness and of joy, that has escaped from the hands of our forefathers. 

Because, my brother, although indeed that Paradise of pleasure has now closed for ever and it is not possible anymore to find again the Paradise, while we are residents of the earth and we walk in this globe, it has not been lost however for us the Paradise of heaven. 

Because there exist a Paradise in Heaven also, my brother. In fact, that Paradise is the only true Paradise, the spiritual and indestructible and eternal Paradise, of which only an image and only a shadow it was the Paradise of Eden. 

A Paradise of true blessedness, in which there exist no tree with forbidden fruits, nor there exist any temptation that could make us fall to the evil and to the sin. 

A Paradise of eternal joy, in which Adam also would have been transferred from the garden of Eden, if he had not sinned, but had remained faithful in the obedience of the Lord. 

It is true, that of this celestial Paradise the gates have closed for us, when Adam ate the forbidden fruit. 

But glory to God! Glory to His love and to His mercy! 

Exactly for this reason He delivered to death on the Cross His own Son, in order to open for us again the gates of Heaven and in order to be used Jesus Christ as way and bridge, through which we can safely transport from this valley of the sighs and of the tears to the place of the eternal joy and blissfulness. 

Behold the way, my Christian. Jesus Christ. He is ready to fight for you. He is waiting for you, my brother. He is waiting to take you by the hand and to lead you Himself to a place of eternal and blissful life. It's only enough for you to extend your hand towards Him asking for His help. 

What are you waiting for, my Christian? Remember the tears of our forefather Adam, when he was staying out of the Paradise and could not enter in it. He was crying, although God had promised him, that one day it would be cured the evil that had happened to him and that it would be crushed the head of the cunning serpent that made him fall to the sin. 

Ah! Poor us; how many our tears will be if we lose the heaven? To lose that Paradise! What hope will then remain to us? None. It will be over; for the eternity we will be condemned. 

We have lost forever our throne, our joy, our life, our wealth, our bliss. For ever, without having any hope ever, for the evil to be amended, that has fallen upon us. 

Christians, why are we dormant? In this inhospitable earth we are passengers. We are strangers and exiles. The Heaven, behold our homeland and our fatherly home, which is waiting for us now still open, but completely closed and inaccessible tomorrow. 

Shall we therefore allow to escape from our hands this great heritage, which God has reserved for us? And shall we prefer the life of eternal unhappiness and of the unceased crying and the gnashing of teeth? God save us from such a great and unbearable evil. 

End of chapter 6