Genesis chapter 2 is presented not as a separate creation account, but as a detailed expansion of the creation of Adam and Eve, framed as an initiatory ordinance that reveals profound truths about identity, purpose, and our relationship with God, mirroring temple experiences.
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we're ready to to really see what the
Lord is teaching in in Genesis chapter
2. Now, there are scholars out there
that see this as two completely
disconnected creation accounts. Uh,
that's one way to read it. Another way
to read it is to see chapter one as more
of a a big picture and then chapter two
drilling down into the most important
portion of that chapter 1 creation
account. And that's the creation of Adam
and Eve. You get more detail here than
what we saw in in Genesis chapter 1. And
to me, it puts things in more of a
temple kind of context to see chapter 2
of Genesis as I'm not saying that this
was Adam and Eve's endowment, but in a
way it's so similar to ours in terms of
some kind of initiatory ordinance that
helps you see yourself in profound and
meaningful ways, including your body and
what it was, what it's meant to
accomplish in creation.
from there to go to an endowment where
you truly see who you are and what your
purpose on in life is supposed to be.
And then the culminating act in the
temple, the ceiling ceremony where two
become one eternally and a family is
formed. Wow. To see chapter 2 of Genesis
as an initiation into an understanding
of our physical reality
into some kind of an endowment of of
power through an understanding of
identity and purpose and then a
culmination in in creating a new eternal
unit of man and wife. All of that
happens in Genesis chapter 2. So let's
dig into it. First this focus on the
body as part of our initiatory
ordinance. Genesis 2:7, "And the Lord
God formed man of the dust of the ground
and breathed into his nostrils the
breath of life." Now there with this
confluence of dust and breath, we see
the formation of a soul which is
described as or defined as body and
spirit. Well, body there's element,
there's the dust, and spirit there's
breath. But most pe other people who see
creation here think, "Oh, well that's
God's breath." And so our existence is
simply the breath of God. That in a way
we don't exist separate from him.
Now the book of Abraham would clarify
this and it does an amazing job. It says
the gods formed man from the dust of the
ground and took his spirit. And how's
this for clarification? That is the
man's spirit and put it into him and
breathe into his nostrils the breath of
life. You see what difference that
makes? Remember the book of Abraham is
our best source on premortality. It
described the council in heaven. It
described the war in heaven. It
described these noble and great ones and
and they will go down to help
participate in the creation of the
earth. Well, how's this verse for
premortality also? That premortal
individual existence that this isn't God
breathing in some kind of kind of vague
uh non-differentiated
uh life. rather taking the person's
spirit and putting it into that person's
body. This is individual premortal existence.
existence.
That is the man's spirit. It's amazing.
I remember having one conversation with
with someone on my mission. We got to be
really close and so we could really kind
of have fun with each other in
disagreeing over doctrines. And he was
really pushing back against premortality
going, "No, there's no such thing. We
were just the breath of God." And and I
was kind of pushing back and going,
"What? No, it it's like it makes it
sound like creation is a process of God
blowing bubbles. Remember that those
that the little container you'd have and
you had the little stick and you'd put
it down into this jar and pull it up and
it had the the soap on it and then you'd
blow and your breath combined with this
this liquid element would form these
bubbles that would then go spread off
through space. Is that creation? Is God
just blowing bubbles? And then I laughed
and I said, "Well, what are wicked
people? Is that bad breath?" No, this is
this is individual existence and God
allowing our spirits to inhabit our
bodies. That's the definition of a soul,
an individual soul. Now, if that helps
us understand breath, and breath in
Hebrew is a great a great word because
it's it's breath and it's wind and it's spirit.
spirit.
Well, what about dust? How does this
factor in? Now, I I had a student years
ago. His name was John. He was
hilarious. Uh we've we've kept in touch
ever since this. This was like 20 years
ago. But he g he gave me a gift. And it
was not meant to be much of a gift. It
was meant to be a joke. Not just to me,
but to the teacher he originally
submitted it to. You see, at the time,
John was in a ceramics class in high
school. I taught him in seminary. And he
realized at the very last second, my
final project is due tomorrow. I am
dead. And it this was the culmination of
all he learned in this ceramics class.
And he thought, I'm I'm dead because I
haven't I haven't put in the time to
create the masterpiece that my teacher
wants from me. But then he realized this
stroke of of devious inspiration. He
said, you know, my my teacher is kind of
a hippie of sorts and I bet this would
work. And so what John did was he took a
bunch of clay. He didn't even put it on
the pottery wheel to create something
polished and and beautiful. He just took
a bunch of clay and started to mash it
together with his bare hands. And he
turned it into something that sort of
had a human form. Okay. Not like legs
and arms so much, but just kind of smash
it all together with some sort of torso
and and kind of pi pinch in the neck.
And here's the head. And then he took
like a pencil, I think he said, to poke
some holes for the eyes and to draw some
lines across the head as if it were
hair. This thing was hideous. Uh, and
then he just let it hardened and and
called it good. Now, this was the gamble
on his part because he knew that once
his teacher looked at this and thought,
"This took you like two seconds. Uh,
this was this does not show you or does
not show me what you've learned through
this process of ceramics." Well, John's
genius came in what he named it. And as
he turned it in, and his teacher
probably looked at it with horror, John
just presented it with this total poker
face and said, "Oh, this is my
masterpiece. I call it Adam from the dust."
dust."
And knowing the personality of his
teacher as as they looked at it and just
said, "I love it." It's like you can
just picture God fashioning him from the
clay and he's still in this this
rudimentary condition, not yet ready to
breathe life into it. But man, I can
just see the the divine fingerprints all
over this this creation. It's a
masterpiece. And sure enough, John got
an A on this project. Hilarious. And he
there he was in my office as he gives me
this this this this
creation of his. He has been laughing
about it ever since. And to me I keep it
just as a reminder that that is not what
God did with us. This was not God
looking at the clock and going day six
is almost over and we got to call it a
day soon and I still haven't done my
crowning creation but uh what am I going
to And so he just grabs, you know, grabs
together some clay, some dirt and kind
of fashions it into some rudimentary
human and pinches the neck and and pokes
in the eyes and gives some hair and then
last breath before day seven begins.
No, that is not our divine origin. In
fact, Brigham Young himself had a bit
had some fun with this as he described
that that view that Adam was made
literally from dust. And Brigham just
laughed and said, "What? Like an adobe?"
I just picture old Frontier Brigham and
an adobe kind of mud bricks being formed
to to make houses and and dwellings and
so on. And he's like, "No, that is not
how God created Adam. We are not adobes.
We are children of God. Then what's the
point of dust? Well, on the one hand,
it's a great metaphor, a great symbol
for our nothingness. Remember, King
Benjamin teaches that uh Samuel the
Lammonite teaches that that we are
nothing. We are or even last week when
we were proving contraries on humanity,
that we are dust and divinity.
We're both. and to understand our
nothingness from that perspective.
Maybe that's the the combining of the
contraries with dust and breath. That
yes, it's our spirit, but if we see it
as the divine spirit of God, there's our
divinity. There's that side of our dual
nature, but yes, we are made of fallen
earthly element. And that dust side of
us should keep us humble. Or as Samuel
Lemonite said, you are less than the
dust of the earth because the dust
obeys. Now remember what Abraham taught
us that maybe the dust was a little
obstinate early on in creation and God
had to watch it until he was obeyed.
Well, it's taking us a lot longer to
figure it out to to learn to exercise
our agency in the right way and submit
our will to the will of God. That does
make us less than the dust of the earth.
We're less obedient than it is. But when
it comes to both our physical and our
spiritual creation, we have heavenly
parents to thank. One of my favorite
statements along these lines comes from
Parley Pratt in a masterpiece of writing
called Key to the Science of theology.
He put it this way. In after years when
paradise was lost by sin, when man was
driven from the face of his heavenly
father to toil and droop and die, when
heaven was veiled from view, and with
few exceptions, man was no longer
counted worthy to retain the knowledge
of his heavenly origin. Then darkness
veiled the past and future from the
heathen mind. Man neither knew himself
from whence he came, nor whether he was
bound. At length a Moses came who knew
his God and would fame have led mankind
to know him too and see him face to
face. But they could not receive his
heavenly laws or bide his presence. Thus
the holy man was forced again to veil
the past in mystery and in the beginning
of his history assigned to man an
earthly origin. Man molded from the
earth as a brick. A woman manufactured
from a rib. Oh man, when wilt thou cease
to be a child in knowledge?
That is such an incredible statement
from Parley P. Pratt. When are we going
to grow up in God enough to know that we
that growing up in God is a literal part
of our divine inheritance? It's we are
children of heavenly parents and
children are meant to grow up to become
like those parents. Yes. Jesus is the
only begotten son of God in mortal flesh.
flesh.
But Adam and Eve are begotten son and
daughter of God in immortal glory placed
in the garden of Eden.
If we could understand that
there is no greater initiatory
into seeing ourselves, seeing our body
for the gift of God that it is, that ye
are the temple of God, the spirit of God
is within you. Oh, when will we cease to
be children in knowledge?
The moment we look in the mirror and see
divinity staring back.
The moment we can pray and call God our
father with real feeling
and real understanding of what that
title entails.
This is profound truth which takes us
from the dust of the earth to the
glories of the garden of Eden.
In Genesis 2:8, it speaks of God
planting a garden eastward in Eden,
eastward toward the source of light. We
we are coming from God's presence to
inhabit this earthly sphere. He focuses
his brief description of Eden on two
trees, a tree of life and a tree of
knowledge of good and evil. Those will
be our focus next week and so we'll hold
off to talk about them when we discuss
the fall. It then speaks of a river
flowing through Eden to water it, then
parting into four heads. We don't have
to worry about the specifics of those
four rivers. Names change and are
repeated with time and so on. But to
think of four different directions you
could head as you are leaving the
garden. To me, there's a great symbolism
there. Uh because if you think about the
parable of the sewer, there's four types
of soil. If you think about Lehi's
dream, there are four types of people in
in their relationship to the tree of
life. And so to think about us again,
this is part of our our endowment so to
speak as we're trying to situate
ourselves in Eden. Understand who we are
and where we should go from here and
what path will I follow throughout my
life. Which type of soil, which group in
the dream will I find my way back to the
Garden of Eden where I can ultimately
partake of the tree of life? Even things
like the river flowing out of Eden, that
means Eden must have been at a higher
elevation than its surrounding. And when
it talks about the fall, we'll see next
week when when when they are cast out
east of Eden, there's that great
Steinbeck novel. East of Eden is the
fallen world. So to go back to Eden,
we'd have to go west. To go back to
Eden, we'd have to go climb back up
going upstream through these rivers. And
we don't ultimately have to find our way
past cherubam and the flaming sword,
which we'll meet next week, to get back
to the tree of life. All of that, by the
way, is temple imagery. the temple of
Solomon, uh the temple in Ezekiel's
vision, the tabernacle of Moses in the
wilderness, the salt lake temple, so
many uh latter day latter- day temples
are situated facing east and on a hill
or even built with steps upward or
progressing from room to room in an
upward climb. So that what does entering
the temple do? You go west. You're no
longer east of Eden. You go up back into
the presence of God. You pass cherubam,
these sentinels that stand before you so
that you can return to the presence of
God. Like I said, tabernacle, temple,
you are going west, you are going up.
You are passing cherubam that are carved
into the wood of the doors or
embroidered into the fabric of the veil.
You are coming back to God's presence.
You're enter. You're re-entering Eden
and coming back to the tree of life
again. We'll see more of that next week,
but the imagery here is so drenched in
in temple that that I hope we think of
that at the next time that we attend the
temple ourselves. Now, in verse 15 of
Genesis 2, God places Adam in the Garden
of Eden to dress it and to keep it. Now,
what does it mean to dress the garden?
To keep the garden. If you look at the
Hebrew originals, the word for dress can
also mean to till, to work, to serve, to
worship. Is that what we've covenanted
to do through our own endowment, to
sacrifice, and to consecrate, to give
all we can to God to fully serve him. We
are here to dress the garden and to keep
it. That word can mean to watch, to
preserve, to guard, to care for, as in
to keep the commandments, to guard the
garden, to watch it, to preserve it. In
some ways, they were supposed to be
their own cherubam and flaming sword
before they were replaced.
That's another part of what we covenant,
to obey God, to keep his word, to care
for the covenant that he is bringing us into.
into.
Adam and Eve, this is your role here in
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