Another look at Scriptures

Another Look at Ascensions into heaven:

The Old Testament records the ascent to the heavens of several mortal beings. The first was Enoch, a pre-Diluvial patriarch whom God befriended and who "walked with the Lord." He was the seventh from Adam and the great grandfather of Noah, hero of the Deluge. The fifth chapter of Genesis lists the genealogies of all these men and the ages at which they died (except for Enoch, who was gone, for the Lord had taken him.). By implication and tradition, it was heavenward, to escape mortality on Earth, that God took Enoch. The other mortal was the prophet Elijah, who was lifted off Earth and taken heavenward in a "whirlwind."

A little-known reference to a third mortal who visited the Divine Abode and was endowed there with great wisdom is provided in the Old Testament, and it concerns the ruler of Tyre (a Phoenician center on the eastern Mediterranean coast). We read in Chapter 28 of Ezekiel that the Lord commanded the prophet to remind the king how, perfect and wise, he was enabled by the Deity to visit with the gods:

"Thou art molded by a plan, full of wisdom, perfect in beauty.
Thou hast been in Eden, the garden of God; every precious
stone was thy thicket... Thou art an anointed Cherub, protected;
and I have placed thee in the sacred mountain; as a god werest
thou, moving within the Fiery Stones."

Predicting that the ruler of Tyre should die a death "of the uncircumcised" by the hand of strangers even if he called out to them "I am a Deity," the Lord then told Ezekiel the reason: After the king was taken to the Divine Abode and given access to all wisdom and riches, his heart "grew haughty," he misused his wisdom, and he defiled the temples.

"Because thine heart is haughty, saying "A god am I;
in the Abode of the Deity I sat, in the midst of the Waters";
Though thou art a Man, not a god, thou set thy heart as that of a Deity."

The Sumerian texts also speak of several other men who were privileged to ascend into the heavens. One was Adapa, the "model man" created by Ea/Enki. To him Ea "had given wisdom; eternal life he had not given him." As the years went by, Ea decided to avert Adapa's mortal end by providing him with and ascension into heaven.

What this suggests to us is that mankind has always been in search for immortality and his ascent into heaven. The Mesopotamian hero, Gilgamesh searched for the one that escaped the flood in order to obtain from him the secret of the "Tree of Life." This was the reason for his quest and journey in the "Epic of Gilgamesh." I hope many of you will read the book. It is the futile search by mortal Man for the "Tree of Life" and is the subject of one of the longest, most powerful epic texts bequeathed to human culture by the Sumerian civilization. Named by modern scholars "The Epic of Gilgamesh," the moving motif concerns the ruler of Uruk who was born to a mortal father and a divine mother. As a result, Gilgamesh was considered to be "two-thirds of him god, one-third of him human," a circumstance that prompted him to seek escape from the death that was the fate of mortals.

The search for eternal life ends when one comes to Jesus Christ, Son of God. In Him is life. And to as many as received Him, to them gave He the power to become the sons of God. This is the answer to immortality