[Music]
Nearly 40,000 years ago, the Watchers of
Urantia petitioned for help. Their world
was broken by rebellion, their tribes
still wandering in darkness. The request
was bold that a son and daughter from
the higher realms be sent to uplift
humanity. Permission was granted. The
promise was Adam and Eve.
But long before their arrival, the loyal
Van, survivor of the ancient betrayal,
began preparing a home worthy of them.
83 years before the material son and
daughter descended, Van rose before his
followers and declared a vision.
We will build a garden, a dwelling fit
for those who will guide the nations. He
gathered more than 3,000 volunteers, men
and women drawn from 61 settlements,
Nodites and Amadonites together, peoples
who had once been bitter enemies.
Divided into a 100 work teams, they
swore to labor with simple hands for a
heavenly purpose. No wages, only faith.
For nearly three years, scouts searched
the earth for the right place. They
crossed Mesopotamian rivers, sailed the
Persian Gulf, and climbed fertile
highlands. Finally, they chose a land
almost an island, a long peninsula
reaching into the eastern Mediterranean,
encircled by mountains and kissed by an
inland sea, fertile, protected, watered
by a great river that branched into four
streams. This was Eden.
When the people moved there, they
brought with them herds, seeds, and even
the tree of life, preserved through ages
of turmoil. The peninsula was cleared,
not by conquest, but with consent. Local
tribes moved peacefully, save one
stubborn group that remained behind,
nursing suspicion.
The first task was defense. Across the
27mi neck of land, Van's builders raised
a mighty brick wall fortified with 12
gates. Beyond it, they laid a second
wall enclosing a zoological garden where
wild beasts were penned into 12
divisions, a living moat guarding Eden
from intruders.
Within the walls, no hunting or
bloodshed was allowed. The garden itself
was to be a sanctuary of life. Then
began the work of beauty. Bricks were
shaped from clay and sun, forming more
than 5,000 simple homes, clustered never
more than seven together, always
surrounded by orchards and vines. The
only grand structure was the stone
temple of the father at the garden
center, open to the sky, where the tree
of life stood in its court. From this
hub, 12 broad avenues radiated outward,
joined by 12,000 m of smaller roads and
shaded paths.
Water was harnessed with brilliance. The
river was channeled into thousands of
canals, feeding lakes, ponds, and
streams that sparkled through orchards
and gardens. Each night, a mist rose to
refresh the land, and in the morning
light, Eden gleamed as no other place on
earth.
By the time Adam and Eve arrived, only a
quarter of the garden was finished. But
already, it was the most beautiful spot
on Urantia.
At high noon, in the midst of Eden's
bloom, Adam and Eve materialized in the
eastern shrine. Tall, radiant, faintly
violet of skin, noble, and modest, they
stood as the long promised son and
daughter.
Van and Amadan were the first to greet
them, not with worship, but with
reverence and friendship. For 10 days,
Adam and Eve rematerialized fully into
mortal form. While the people prepared a
great feast. On their third day, tame
giant birds bore Adam and Eve a loft to
view the garden from above. They saw the
miles of orchards, the shining temple,
the flowing rivers, and the walls that
held it safe.
They were pleased.
That evening at the banquet of welcome,
Adam and Eve blessed the people and
praised Van's tireless work. From then
on, Eden thrived. Adam taught men in the
fields, showing them how to till soil
with oxen and wooden plows. Eve walked
among the gardens, teaching women and
children how to nurture life. Together,
they brought order and light. schools in
the west, homes in the south, council
halls in the north, and their own
dwelling in the east. Daily life in Eden
was simple yet noble. Families cooked in
evening fires, children played by the
riverbanks, and worshippers gathered in
the temple to pray, not to Adam and Eve,
but to the universal father. Never
before had Uranteas seen such harmony,
such beauty married to wisdom. The
garden at its peak could house a million
souls, though only a few thousand dwelt
there in those early years.
But the promise of Eden was fragile.
Beyond its walls, the world remained
dark. After more than a century,
impatience set in, and the fateful
choice of Eve led to the default.
Adam and Eve, faithful yet fallen, left
Eden with their loyal followers. They
moved east to begin again in
Mesopotamia.
The first garden of Eden, abandoned,
soon fell into ruin. Lower Nodi tribes
occupied it, fighting among themselves
until at last the land itself gave way.
Slowly the Edenic Peninsula sunk beneath
the waters of the Mediterranean.
Only the sea remained where paradise
once bloomed.
But Eden was not lost in spirit. Its
legacy flowed into myth. The garden of
God, the land of the four rivers, the
paradise of old.
Fragments of its beauty lived on in
later cultures. Echoes of what might
have been. The first garden of Eden was
not legend, but history. A vision raised
by loyal hearts, shaped by simple hands,
and graced for a time by Adam and Eve.
Its story endures not as failure but as
a glimpse of what earth may yet become.
A true garden of God radiant with life
and unity.
