The Garden of Eden

73:7.1Af­ter the first gar­den was va­cated by Adam, it was oc­cu­pied var­i­ously by the Nod­ites, Cu­tites, and the Sun­tites. It later be­came the dwell­ing place of the north­ern Nod­ites who op­posed co-op­er­a­tion with the Adamites. The penin­sula had been over­run by these lower-grade Nod­ites for al­most four thou­sand years af­ter Adam left the Gar­den when, in con­nec­tion with the vi­o­lent ac­tiv­ity of the sur­round­ing vol­ca­noes and the sub­mer­gence of the Si­cil­ian land bridge to Africa, the east­ern floor of the Med­i­ter­ra­nean Sea sank, car­ry­ing down be­neath the wa­ters the whole of the Edenic penin­sula. Con­comi­tant with this vast sub­mer­gence the coast line of the east­ern Med­i­ter­ra­nean was greatly el­e­vated. And this was the end of the most beau­ti­ful nat­u­ral cre­ation that Uran­tia has ever har­bored. The sink­ing was not sud­den, sev­eral hun­dred years be­ing re­quired com­pletely to sub­merge the en­tire penin­sula.

73:7.2We can­not re­gard this dis­ap­pear­ance of the Gar­den as be­ing in any way a re­sult of the mis­car­riage of the di­vine plans or as a re­sult of the mis­takes of Adam and Eve. We do not re­gard the sub­mer­gence of Eden as any­thing but a nat­u­ral oc­cur­rence, but it does seem to us that the sink­ing of the Gar­den was timed to oc­cur at just about the date of the ac­cu­mu­la­tion of the re­serves of the vi­o­let race for un­der­tak­ing the work of re­ha­bil­i­tat­ing the world peo­ples.

73:7.3The Mel­chiz­e­deks coun­seled Adam not to ini­ti­ate the pro­gram of racial up­lift and blend­ing un­til his own fam­ily had num­bered one-half mil­lion. It was never in­tended that the Gar­den should be the per­ma­nent home of the Adamites. They were to be­come emis­saries of a new life to all the world; they were to mo­bi­lize for un­selfish be­stowal upon the needy races of earth.

73:7.4The in­struc­tions given Adam by the Mel­chiz­e­deks im­plied that he was to es­tab­lish racial, con­ti­nen­tal, and di­vi­sional head­quar­ters to be in charge of his im­me­di­ate sons and daugh­ters, while he and Eve were to di­vide their time be­tween these var­i­ous world cap­i­tals as ad­vis­ers and co-or­di­na­tors of the world-wide min­istry of bi­o­logic up­lift, in­tel­lec­tual ad­vance­ment, and moral re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion.

73:7.5[Pre­sented by Solo­nia, the se­raphic “voice in the Gar­den.”]