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.
Accepting God's Provided Way at the end time
63-0115 §26
Now, what if we tried to manufacture some other way than the regular provided way for the tree? What if every August, or September, in the land---especially where I come from, the North---if we would have to go out to the apple orchard, and get some kind of a instrument, and place it into the tree along about August after the apples are ripened, and pull the life out of the tree; and take it into a good warm place and keep it through the winter, the life (sap life) out of the tree; and place it in a good warm conta...
Expressions
62-0313 §5
Now we are taught in the Scripture that there is a tree of life. It was in the garden of Eden. And this tree of life is where Christians hang as a leaf on this tree. And now in the wintertime, when the leaves are pretty, why, they ... or, in the summertime rather, when the leaves are pretty and green, after awhile frost comes and colors them different colors, and they fall from the tree. And the life goes back into the root of the tree. If we just notice, it's a mysterious thing.
The Basis of Fellowship
61-0214 §35
Now, do you see the great thing they're doing now? God never destroyed anything; but man destroys himself by his own wisdom. There were two trees in the Garden of Eden. One of them was the tree of life, the other one was the tree of knowledge. The first time a man taken a bite from the tree of knowledge, he separated his fellowship from God. Every time he takes a bite he destroys himself. He bit off gunpowder; kills his comrades. Next thing he bit off was automobiles; kills more than the gunpowder. He's got himself...
The uncertain sound
62-0714 §58
Now, it was about a thousand years there, there was nothing but a stump. But you cannot, because the life of that tree's predestinated to bring forth a tree... Up come Luther, started it growing. What did it do? Organized. The husbandman pruned the branches. Come up into the Methodist. What did it do? Organized, just like the mother. Prune the branches, come on up into the Pentecostals. It's done the same thing, organized. God's pruned the branches. But that life in the heart of that tree has to live. God said, "I...
An Exposition Of The Seven Church Ages
CAB 3:E-95
Some have an idea that the two trees in the garden were just two more trees like unto the rest of those that God had placed there. But careful students know that this is not so. When John the Baptist cried that the axe was laid to the root of all trees, he was not talking of simply natural trees, but of spiritual principles. Now in I John 5:11 it says, "And this is the RECORD, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son." Jesus said in John 5:40, "And ye will not come to Me, that ye might ha...