Thoughts for the Quiet Hour - October 30
He placed . . . cherubims, and a flaming sword . . . to keep the way of the tree of life. —Genesis 3:24
Blessed are they that do His commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life. —Revelation 22:14
How remarkable and how beautiful it is that the last page of the Revelation should come bending round to touch the first page of Genesis. The history of man began with angels with frowning faces and flaming swords barring the way to the Tree of Life. It ends with the guard of cherubim withdrawn; or rather, perhaps, sheathing their swords and becoming guides to the no longer forbidden fruit, instead of being its guards. That is the Bible’s grand symbolical way of saying that all between—the sin, the misery, the death—is a parenthesis. God’s purpose is not going to be thwarted. The end of His majestic march through history is to be men’s access to the Tree of Life, from which, for the dreary ages—that are but as a moment in the great eternities—they were barred out by their sin. —Alexander McLaren