of life Enoch “kept walking with the God.” In due time God transferred Enoch. But when he was transferred that he should not see death, Enoch did not get into Paradise, which still existed. Hebrews 11:5 tells us that “he was nowhere to be found.” He was peacefully taken into death by God’s miracle that spared Enoch of any rigors of dying. Because he had pleased God well, he was treasured up in God’s memory. In God’s time Enoch will have a part in the resurrection of the righteous ones. (Acts 24:15; John 5:28, 29) The original garden of Eden is now no more, for it was destroyed in the flood of Noah’s day. When raised from the dead, Enoch will be resurrected into Paradise restored here on earth.

Maintaining Our Spiritual Paradise

1. When will paradise be restored to the earth, and who will be with Jesus in it?

AFTER the battle of Armageddon the victorious kingdom of God will restore paradise to the earth. That was why, on the day that Jesus was dying as a faithful witness to God’s kingdom and the sympathetic evildoer asked Jesus to remember him when he got into his kingdom, Jesus spoke in harmony with the divine arrangement, saying: “You will be with me in Paradise.” By means of his heavenly power Jesus Christ the King will be invisibly present in the restored paradise. Abel, Enoch, and other faithful men of times prior to Pentecost of 33 (A.D.) will be raised from the dead to a “resurrection of life” in that earthly paradise. They will thus be with Jesus in Paradise. Later, when the evildoer, as one who did vile things, answers the King’s call to a “resurrection of judgment,” he will enter into the earthly paradise and will learn that Jesus, with whom he was impaled, is reigning as King over the “new earth.” The evildoer will then remember Jesus’ hope-giving words: “You will be with me in Paradise.” Forever he may stay there with Jesus by being always obedient.—John 5:28, 29.

2, 3. (a) When Jesus spoke to the evildoer, did a paradise exist? (b) Why did not even the spiritual paradise to which Paul was caught away then exist?

² Nineteen hundred years ago, when Jesus spoke those words, no earthly paradise existed. Neither did there then exist the spiritual paradise to which Paul was later caught away to hear unutterable words which it was not lawful for a man to speak then.—2 Cor. 12:4.

³ When Jesus died like a criminal slave on a torture stake and his apostles and other disciples were scattered, nothing earthly or spiritual seemed to have a paradisaic beauty. The world organization of the “great dragon,” “the original serpent, the one called Devil and Satan,” seemed to be flourishing in triumph over the Seed of God’s woman, who was to be bruised in the heel. (Rev. 12:9; Gen. 3:15) It was just as Jesus said to the enemies who arrested