[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.