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.
The Queen of Sheba
58-0208 §72
I want to ask you something and I believe I mentioned it last night. How do you know what type of tree you're looking at? "By the fruit it bears," Jesus said. Is that right? If it's a apple tree, it has apples. It might have sycamore bark on it. But, if it's bearing apples, the life on the inside of it is a apple tree life. Is that right? And if I told you tonight that the spirit of John Dillinger was in me, well, you'd expect me to raise back my coat and big guns and... I'd be a murderer. It'd be dangerous to be a...
The Expectations
58-0508 §20
And in this lifetime, if we have a chance to choose right and wrong, it's back to the same thing like it was in Eden: a man and a woman given a choice to do right or do wrong. They had two trees before them, we are taught in the Scripture. One of them was the tree of life, the other was a tree of knowledge. Man chose to eat off the tree of knowledge. And the first time he ate from that tree, he severed his friendship with God, and he was made a mortal being. Since then, man has desired to live from that tree of kno...
God keeps His Word, part 2
57-0307 §63
Then, I have spoke to you. I've told you from the Word. And the Word said that He set five offices in the church: apostles (or missionaries), prophets, teachers, evangelists, and pastors---I mean, true God-called teachers, evangelists, prophets, and pastors. That's right. And if we are the vine ... or, we are the branches, and He's the vine, He energizes the vine with His life. And if it's a apple tree life, it'll bring forth apples; is that right? And if we're the branches, and we are energized with Jesus Christ,...
Turn on the Light
64-0125 §12
No life can come outside of light. Life produces... Light produces life. There can be no life outside of light, natural or spiritual. There must be... And only light can come by the Word of God. God's Word is the life when it's manifested. It's just a seed laying here, as God planted all the seeds. Our bodies was on the earth before the world ... well, before there was any light here, any life here or anything. The calcium, potash, petroleum, cosmic light, whatever, it was here---was here when God created the earth...
Earnestly contending for the faith once delivered
53-0614A §34
Now, here's the tree of death. I have my idea of what it was, you can have yours. But anyhow, that whenever they taken this tree, they were going to die. But if they ever taken this Tree, they were going to live. So, when they'd taken the tree of death, that separated them from God, and He put an Angel around that Tree to keep them from taking it. Because the very time that they'd taken of that Tree, they would live forever, even knowing good from evil. Is that right? All right. Then notice. That tree was the woman...