ADAM--The Tree of Life, the Tree of Knowledge. ::Q6:1:: QUESTION (1907)--1--Did Adam eat of the tree of life before eating of the tree of knowledge? If so, why did he not live forever?
ANSWER.--I answer that the word "tree of life" is in the plural. All the trees of Eden were trees of life. They were all good for food, beautiful to look upon. They were trees, the eating of which would have maintained the life which God had given to Adam. They were not trees to give some kind of a charm to him, which would hinder him from ever dying. That is not the thought. They were trees of life in the sense that their fruit, partaken of, would have permitted our first parents, if they continued to eat, to live, and would have supplied all of the wastes of their systems so that they would never have needed to die. They had been eating of these trees, so far as our understanding of the Scripture goes, for a little over a year before they were led into temptation by the Adversary and ate of the forbidden kind of trees. We understand this tree of the knowledge of good and evil was not one tree, but one kind of trees, and of that particular kind of trees, they were not to eat. And when God, therefore, would have them die, He drove them out of the garden, away from the trees of life, and into the unprepared earth, where they must till the ground and battle with the thorns and thistles, until they were to return to this earth from whence taken. The penalty was death and the intimation is that if the Lord had allowed them to remain in Eden, they would not have come into a dying condition, but would have remained in full vigor and strength of their human nature, notwithstanding their being sinners.
