What Is the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in Genesis 3?
1) Direct Answer
- The tree of life is Christ—God’s own Life and Word offered to man.
- The tree of the knowledge of good and evil is Satan’s perverted wisdom, offered through the serpent, mixing truth with error and bringing death. It was not an apple tree; it was a channel of union with unbelief that produced a corrupt seed.
2) Scriptural Explanation
- Genesis 2:9 places both trees “in the midst” of the garden, making them central to man’s choice.
- Genesis 2:17 says, “in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” After partaking, death set in (Genesis 3:19; Romans 5:12).
- Genesis 3:1-6 shows the serpent ministering a message contrary to God’s Word, and Eve receiving it. 2 Corinthians 11:3 confirms, “the serpent beguiled Eve.”
- Genesis 3:7 says “they knew that they were naked” and covered their loins, showing moral shame, not a stomach issue from fruit.
- Genesis 3:15 declares enmity between two seeds: the woman’s Seed and the serpent’s seed. That speaks of a real lineage. 1 John 3:12 says, “Cain was of that wicked one,” revealing the serpent’s line through unbelief.
- Genesis 3:14 curses the serpent “upon thy belly,” showing a creature brought down—once upright, now degraded.
- The tree of life points to Christ: “In Him was life” (John 1:4). He said, “I am the life” (John 14:6), “I am the living bread” (John 6:51). Overcomers are promised to eat of the tree of life (Revelation 2:7), and in the New Jerusalem it appears again (Revelation 22:2). God barred the way to it (Genesis 3:24), so fallen man wouldn’t live forever in sin. Access opens again by redemption.
3) Simple Clarifying Logic
- Literal fruit cannot give a conscience of good and evil, nor does it make one ashamed of nakedness. But receiving a wrong word and entering a wrong union brings moral shame and death.
- God speaks of “seed” in Genesis 3:15. Fruit doesn’t beget a lineage; reproduction does. That’s why sorrow in conception and childbirth was multiplied (Genesis 3:16). The issue touched the womb and the life stream.
- If Adam and Eve had then taken the tree of life, they would have lived forever in a fallen state. Therefore the tree of life is eternal life in Christ; the other tree brought death by mixing good and evil—religion without revelation, truth mingled with a lie.
4) Reinforcing Statement
Now notice: to “eat” is to receive and become one with what you take in. Receiving Christ, the Word and Spirit, is partaking of the tree of life today; receiving the serpent’s reasoning is partaking of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Stay with the pure Word, and you live. Mix it, and you die.
Ask a Follow-up Question
What did the Laodicean Church Age (our age) Angel (- messenger) Say about this?
Ranked passages from the local William Branham sermon and Church Age Book database. Relevance is relative, not a statement of doctrinal certainty.
The End Time
54-0307A §41
Now, then Cain came and knelt down, built an altar. I'd imagine they come to the east side of the gate, for there's where the Angel stood with His flaming sword, guarding the tree of life. By the way, He was guarding the people away from the tree of life. Now, He's here trying to drive the people back to the tree of life. Jesus was that tree of life. The woman was the tree of death. We're the fruit of our mother; she was a fruit tree. And when we come here ... by woman come death, and by woman come life, also which...
The Queen of Sheba
61-0219 §5
And now, science can only climb so high. Then they have to leave, go back. The tree of knowledge only produces so much. That was set before us in the Garden of Eden, and a human being is prone to live from that tree of knowledge. But it never was God's plan for us to live by that tree of knowledge. The first time man took a bite from the tree of knowledge, he separated his fellowship from God. Every time he takes a bite off that tree, he destroys himself, continually. He bit off gun powder. Look what that does---ki...
United under One Head
58-0326 §11
Knowledge will never save you: it takes you farther away from God all the time! There's only one way of salvation---that's back to the tree of life. Knowledge isn't even in the picture. It's back to the tree of life. There was two trees: one was knowledge, the other was life. As long as the man eat from this tree, he lived. When he bit from that tree, he died. But you see, it's his nature to try to do something to save himself. There's not one thing that you can do to save yourself. A man said to me one time, he sa...
The Serpent's Seed
58-0928E §46
All right. Let's read now in Genesis. Now, the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD GOD had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, has God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? ... the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree in the midst of the garden, God has said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall you touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth...
Hear ye Him
57-0105 §15
In the garden of Eden, there was a tree of knowledge and a tree of life. And man quit eating from the tree of life and eat from the tree of knowledge, and separated himself from his maker. Every time he takes a bite off of it, he destroys himself. He bit off gunpowder: kills his neighbor. He bit off automobile, science: kills more than all the wars put together. He's bit himself a hydrogen bomb. Now, I wonder what he's going to do with that. He destroys himself by knowledge. And God is not known by knowledge. God's...