The Eden Story: A History of Paradise, From its Demise to its New Rise

This book wishes to tell the story of Eden, from the beginning--even before Genesis 2!--until the very end of the new heavens and the new earth. It will be a sad story with a happy ending. It is a drama, but not a tragedy, because tragedies always end in a tragical way. It is not a comedy, either, because en route there will be little reason to laugh, except in this sense:

Heaven-throned God breaks out laughing. At first he's amused at their [i.e., the God-deniers' and Messiah-defiers'] presumption; then he gets good and angry. Furiously, he shuts them up: "Don't you know there's a King in Zion? A coronation banquet is spread for him on the holy summit" (Ps. 2:4-6 MSG).

To be sure, this "banquet" is not literally in the original text--but what a beautiful way of describing the ultimate Eden! "Eat!" said the serpent in the first earthly Eden to Eve, and Eve said it to Adam (Gen. 3:1-6). "Take, eat!" said Jesus the last night of his earthly life (Matt. 26:26). "Come, buy and eat!" the Lord will say in the end, followed by this Edenic promise:

For you shall go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress; instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle; and it shall make a name for the Lord, an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off (Isa. 55:1, 12-13 ESV).

- From the author's Foreword