Healing for the Nations [Part 1]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright.

My first thought as I'm looking at this is, how much is this going to cost? And my second thought was, wow, what a view. That's Pastor Alan Wright. Welcome to another message of good news that will help you see your life in a whole new light. I'm Daniel Britt, excited for you to hear the teaching today in the series, The Revelation, as presented at Rinaldo Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program, I want to make sure you know how to get our special resource right now. It's a CD album or a digital download, your choice of the body you've always wanted, audio messages on what heaven is like. It can be yours for your donation this month to Alan Wright Ministries.

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Here is Alan Wright. Okay, beloved, are you ready for some good news? The tree of life that God planted in the middle of the Garden of Eden still stands. And in its leaves, there's healing for the nations. We come today to the end of our study of Revelation. I hope that you've seen Jesus, for it is a revelation of Jesus Christ.

I hope that you've been given some tools to continue your study of this amazing apocalyptic vision. And today we come to, in many ways, not just how it ends the story of humanity with God, but how it began. Because in the beginning, God made this beautiful, beautiful garden, and he put in the center of it two very different trees.

So we're going to start in Genesis chapter 2, and then we're going to be going to Revelation 22. Genesis 2 verse 9, and out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. And the tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers. And the Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and to keep it.

And the Lord God commanded the man saying, you may surely eat surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat for in that day that you eat of it you shall surely surely die. We often say with the psalmist, surely the boundary lines have fallen for us in pleasant places because the Lord has given us a beautiful city in which to live, a beautiful community in which we get to minister, and I think often of how many very difficult difficult places that people all over the world are ministering in the name of Jesus, and here I am in this beautiful place. And our home in recent years has been a particularly beautiful place. Our backyard goes downhill, and there's sort of a field there, and then there's a beautiful lake, a small lake that's there, and a golf course, and on the other side of that the Yadkin River. It is just a beautiful, beautiful view, and I just love it.

I just love it. It's like we amongst the wildlife and nature, and so lovely. There is a big tree in our backyard that was already big when we moved in some years ago, but it's continued to grow as trees do reaching more and more for daylight, and it's begun to take over more of the backyard and block more and more of our view, and I suggested upon moving into the house to my wife, I said, you know, perhaps it would be worth it to consider removing that tree so that our view would be much more panoramic, and she said by no means, and she reminded me that only God can make a tree, and so there was their decision about the tree. I bring it up from time to time that maybe the view would be better if that tree were not there. Standing next to that big tree is another tree that's much larger, a huge red oak tree that is in just over in my neighbor's yard, and it obscures the view to our left even more than our big tree, but of course it's our neighbor's tree.

Nothing to be done about that, and so this was the state of affairs for many years. The view is so, you know, slowly getting encroached upon until about three weeks ago. I was actually, it was in the morning, and I was sitting on the back deck having my breakfast. It was not a stormy morning. It was just a misty, a misty morning, and so I was very surprised when I heard the sound of thunder, and it caused me to look up. I thought, there's no thunderstorm on us, is there, but it was louder than thunder. It was thunderous, and I stood to see what was making the calls, and I've never seen this in all of my life. That huge red oak tree in my neighbor's yard, unannounced of its own accord, came crashing to the ground.

It was ponderous and thunderous, enormous. When it hit the ground, the whole ground shook. It came down with such force that it sheared the entire left side off of the large tree in my yard and split it up at the top, leaving it irreparable and demanding, according to the arborist, that it be cut down as well. I saw this massive red oak tree lying in my yard and this destroyed big tree of some other sort in my yard, and my first thought as I'm looking at this is, how much is this gonna cost?

And my second thought was, wow, what a view. So, somehow the Lord ends up working it out to give you the desires of your heart, and we're down two trees, and we have a much better view. It wasn't until an arborist came out, and I began getting estimates for removing these trees, because that I had any understanding how this huge red oak tree fell with no wind, no storm. It was a tree that had been leaning some, but not such that you had thought it's imminently going to fall.

It wasn't until we went to the root ball, this massive root ball that was twice as tall as I, that he began pointing out to me many dark places. He said, all of this is decay of the root system. He said, that tree was destined to fall, but you couldn't tell from the outside. It was gonna fall, but for the time being, it looked like it was standing strong.

Still had green leaves, didn't have any signs of deadness, but at the root, it was dying. I want to talk to you today about two trees in the middle of the garden, and the tree of life that John saw in the concluding chapter of Revelation. And I want to point out to you, that in the vision that he has of a new heaven and a new earth, of a new, a new Jerusalem, a picture of like a city that is the temple, that is describing the new creation that God makes, that what he sees there is one tree, the tree of life. And I want to suggest to you today that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, from which humanity has been eating from the time of Adam and Eve and the original sin, that tree that is so poisonous, so toxic, as I'll explain, that though it still stands, the time is coming, it's gonna fall. Its root system has already been decaying ever since the cross of Jesus Christ.

It has been defeated, and it's going to come thunderously crashing down, leaving us to eat only from the tree of life. I imagine in that early garden, there was every kind of imaginable tree. We're told that every kind of tree that was pleasing to look at, and was delicious to taste, was put in the Garden of Eden. And I just imagine that there was a kind of fertility to the soil that allowed all kinds of different plants to grow together that might not normally grow together. Just imagine that, that citrus trees and oranges and pineapples and lemons were growing up next to homegrown tomatoes and peach trees. I just imagine beautiful flowering plants everywhere.

Every kind of imaginable, beautiful plant. And surely there was this tree, had to have been there, the Theobroma cacao tree. If it was paradise, you had to have the cocoa tree.

Of course, chocolate must have been there. And so every kind of tree was there, and in the midst of it, the serpent comes and tempts Eve, and tries to distort the Word of God by leading a discussion, a kind of engagement of dialogue, that has now allured her away from her simple relationship with God, now into an interaction with the devil. And in that temptation, there is the idea that you will be better off if you eat of the one tree that God said you're not to eat of. This is not a story of a God who is restrictive and all about prohibitions and all about limits.

This is a story of a yes God who has a massive garden of paradise and one tree that he said, I do not want you to eat from that tree. And it was not simply because the serpent hated God and therefore wanted the people to disobey God. It was that the serpent understood, the devil understood, that in that tree, there was poison that would be the fuel for all demonic activity. What the devil understood was that there was more than simple disobedience to God, there was an introduction to humanity of a new system of being. And the reason that God prohibited that tree of the knowledge of good and evil was not simply because he wanted to test Adam and Eve. It was because he loved them.

It was because he knows how we're designed and we're designed to feed off the tree of life. That's Alan Wright, and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. If you think heaven is a misty place where you float around on clouds and pluck angelic harps, you're in for the surprise of your life. Our special product this month is all about the hope of heaven.

It's our gift to you when you support this month. Alan's CD album invites you to discover the body you've always wanted, a spiritual resurrected body. Be assured that God isn't going to scrap you or the world. He'll make all things new. Overcome the gnawing anxiety about the end of your life. You can have peace now. Pastor Alan Wright's hope filled messages will lead you into more than a joyous revelation of heaven. According to the scriptures, they'll lead you into a bounding hope. So please help us stay on the radio in your area by making a generous gift today and we'll be happy to send you the body you've always wanted.

The CD album that is. When you make your gift to Alan Wright Ministries today, we'll send you Pastor Alan's messages in an attractive CD album or through digital download as our way of saying thanks for your partnership. Now these are the final days this offer is being made available to you this month. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860 or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. Today's teaching now continues. Here once again is Alan Wright. When we come to Revelation 22, this is a continuation really of Revelation 21. And now you see that tree of life. Starting at verse 1, the angel showed me the river of water of life, bright as crystal. Try to see this in your mind's eye. All these rich symbols and beauty flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city.

How is that possible? But it's like a city. Just the image is like life and people. And in the middle of it is this river of life that's just flowing. And on either side of the river, the tree of life. Again, it's beauty, it's symbolism, how the tree is on both sides.

Maybe it's many trees that represent the one tree, or maybe it's just mysteriously able to be on both sides. With this 12 kinds of fruit, 12 always representing the people of God in their totality, all the fruit, yielding its fruit each month, not just in harvest time. And the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.

No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and the Lamb will be in it and his servants will worship him. Rick Joyner has written an insightful book on this called There are Two Trees in the Garden and my spiritual father, Dudley Hall, who's going to be here for some special meetings with the whole church and with men in September. Dudley Hall, in his classic book, Grace Works, describes these two trees as the do to be tree and the be to do tree. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the do to be. It is to say that there is an introduction here of if you will do this, then you can make yourself more like God. Instead of understanding yourself as a child of God and letting that shape everything, the temptation, the primal temptation, was to think that it's somehow up to you.

Genesis 3, one to five tells the story. The serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, did God actually say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden? And the woman said to the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that's in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die. But the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die, for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be open and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. And so she ate and Adam ate.

It looked like the right thing and it was totally the wrong thing. What could be so wrong about knowledge of good and evil? The problem is that from the poison of this tree, we ingest a new system of living that you could call legalism or dead religion.

You could call it by any name, but what it means it is a substitute of our performance and our works rather than relationship with God. Instead of yielding to God and relating to God, now it is all turned upon here's what you need to do in order to make yourself like God. Here's what you need to do if you're going to be fully blessed and that is toxic and that tree of the knowledge of good and evil is the problem behind all of humanity. In fact, I think what you see in the book of Revelation as we've been looking at all of these bizarre images over the past weeks is that you'll see the fruit of the tree of life and the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in abject contrast to one another.

If you were to grow the fruit up into its fullest expression, you see, we see these images and we see the contrast. So we saw in chapter 13 a beast that rose up out of the land that looked like a lamb, looked innocent enough, but had the words and the speech of a dragon. And we saw that that creature that looked appealing and even did signs and wonders that people were amazed by was full of lies and inwardly putridly evil. And there was a number that was a symbol of those that worship that beast 666, which I suggested is a symbol that reminds us of how it's not seven. And seven is the number of completion. Seven is the number of God's rest on the Sabbath day. And so to say 666 is to say never seven, never seven, never seven. To say 666 as the mark of the beast is not to imply a literal tattoo, I don't think. I think it is to imply instead something that has invaded the soul, the mind, the following of the beast is that everything is all about six, which means that's the day that man was made and it never gets to Sabbath. 666 is to say man, man, man, human, human, human, humanism, humanism, humanism, never Sabbath, never Sabbath, never Sabbath, all up to you, all up to you, all up to you, all about you, all about you, me, me, me.

And that's hell. That's what the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is all about. Because once you eat of it and you think I'll know good and evil then what you really find out is that the human heart fallen into sin is so prone to judgmentalism and pride and really is an effort to be good so that I'm better than you and that therefore I don't feel so bad about myself anymore. There's out of this that every piece of hatred in the world has been born. It's a hellish thing to have to be self absorbed because when you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you're either thinking about yourself by saying am I better than other people? Have I done enough good things?

Or you've accepted the fact that you could never live up to any legal standard and so you don't care anymore and so now it's just all about whether I'm getting what I want and whether I'm getting enough pleasure and whether I have enough. So either way it's about me, me, me. It's the me of religious pride or it is the me of licentious living but either way it all comes from the same tree. That's why the devil wanted them to eat of it.

It took them out of relationship with God you see. But the tree of life is altogether different. The tree of life is a picture of God's own life in you where you don't have to think about yourself because you're in relationship and thinking about God and that's a wonderful thing. Alan Wright in our good news message titled healing for the nations will place a bookmark here and pick up the conclusion of this next time in our series the revelation I encourage you to stay with us pastor Alan is back here in the studio sharing his parting good news thought for the day in just a moment. If you think heaven is a misty place where you float around on clouds and pluck angelic harps you're in for the surprise of your life. Our special product this month is all about the hope of heaven.

It's our gift to you when you support this month. Alan's CD album invites you to discover the body you've always wanted. A spiritual resurrected body. Be assured that God isn't going to scrap you or the world. He'll make all things new. Overcome the gnawing anxiety about the end of your life.

You can have peace now. Pastor Alan Wright's hope filled messages will lead you into more than a joyous revelation of heaven according to the scriptures. They'll lead you into a bounding hope. So please help us stay on the radio in your area by making a generous gift today and we'll be happy to send you the body you've always wanted.

The CD album that is. When you make your gift to Alan Wright Ministries today we'll send you Pastor Alan's messages in an attractive CD album or through digital download as our way of saying thanks for your partnership. Now these are the final days this offer is being made available to you this month. Call us at 877-544-4860. That's 877-544-4860 or come to our website PastorAlan.org. Pastor Alan the longer the Lord carries the more our world seems to yearn for such a healing.

There's good news here. The tree of life that was in the Garden of Eden still stands and the invitation is open to Christians and to all of us in Christ to eat freely of the abundant grace of God and in the new heavens and a new earth here's the vivid image is that tree stands bearing fruit and in its leaves healing to the nations. Oh don't we need to eat from the tree of life and as an invitation open to all in Christ. Thanks for listening today. Visit us online at PastorAlan.org or call 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. If you only caught part of today's teaching not only can you listen again online but also get a daily email devotional that matches today's teaching delivered right to your email inbox free. Find out more about these and other resources at PastorAlan.org. That's PastorAlan.org. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Alan Wright Ministries.