The Second Garden

76:5.1Not long af­ter the es­tab­lish­ment of the sec­ond Eden, Adam and Eve were duly in­formed that their re­pen­tance was ac­cept­able, and that, while they were 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.

76:5.2Adam 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.

76:5.3Adam 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.”

76:5.4And 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.

76:5.5Adam 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.

76:5.6The super­ma­te­rial gov­ern­ment of Uran­tia, un­der the di­rec­tion of the Mel­chiz­e­deks, con­tin­ued, but di­rect phys­i­cal con­tact with the evo­lu­tion­ary races had 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.

76:5.7Mis­for­tune 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.