God started man off in a paradise of pleasure, or a “garden of Eden.” But a person would never know it today. God’s own report on this, in the first book of the Bible, chapter two, says: “Jehovah God planted a garden in Eden, toward the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. Thus Jehovah God made to grow out of the ground every tree desirable to one’s sight and good for food and also the tree of life.”​—Gen. 2:8, 9.

WHY PARADISE EARTH WIDE HAS NOT YET BEEN REALIZED

13. What can be said about earth’s human population and animal life today, but what question arises about earth’s physical state?

¹³ Today, after six thousand years of human existence, we find that, notwithstanding the outcries about a “population explosion,” the earth is only partially populated and the animal life is being killed off or is dying off. Why did not the original man whom God put in that garden of Eden extend this paradise to the very ends of the earth? That was God’s purpose in creating our earth, to have it eventually in a paradise state everywhere around the globe.

14. When did God disclose his purpose concerning the earth, and to whom did He leave the extending of Paradise everywhere?

¹⁴ He disclosed this divine purpose when he blessed the first man and his wife and said to them: “Be fruitful and become many and fill the earth and subdue it, and have in subjection the fish of the sea and the flying creatures of the heavens and every living creature that is moving upon the earth.” (Gen. 1:27, 28) God did not make the whole earth a paradise before he created the first man and woman. He left the larger part of the earth’s surface in an uncultivated state, and planted only a garden large enough for the first human couple to take care of at the start. He left it for the offspring of this first man and woman, Adam and Eve, to extend paradise to the east and to the west until east and west met and from north to south until north and south met.

15. Did that purpose of God fail or get thwarted, and why was God’s action on the matter not contradictory?

¹⁵ Judging things by the state of man’s natural environment today, we might at first thought be inclined to say that God’s purpose failed or was somehow thwarted. But was it? We do not have to guess, for God’s written record says No! God himself prevented the paradise of pleasure from being spread earth wide. Was that not self-contradictory? Was that not telling Adam and Eve to do one thing, and then He himself doing another? No! Why not? Because God found it necessary to drive Adam and Eve out of that paradise into the uncultivated earth. It was because Adam and Eve had a collision with God. It knocked them out of Paradise.

16. What did God, when creating man, do about the ownership of the earth, and on what score did Adam and Eve collide with God?

¹⁶ Let us set matters straight in our minds. When Jehovah God put man upon the earth in human perfection, he did not make him the owner of the earth, but made man only a dweller and worker upon it. God did not let go of his ownership of Paradise and of every other part of the earth. As earth’s Creator he owned it, and he remains its Creator always. Over two thousand nine hundred years after man’s creation, the psalmist David of Bethlehem wrote and sang: “To Jehovah belong the earth and that which fills it, the productive land and those dwelling in it. For upon the seas he himself has solidly fixed it, and upon the rivers he keeps it firmly established.” (Ps. 24:1, 2) That is something that all nations of today choose to ignore and brush aside. How like their first parents! When Adam and Eve ignored God’s ownership of the paradise of pleasure and expressly ate of fruit that he commanded them not to eat, they failed in their test of subjection and obedience to him. That was sin against God on their part. Instead of continuing to walk with God their Creator, they chose self-sovereignty, and collided with him on the issue of sovereignty.​—Gen. 3:1-14; Rom. 5:12.

17. Why was Adam and Eve’s occupancy of the earth outside Paradise to be only temporary, and why is it so also for us their offspring and for nations?

¹⁷ God was not going to have rebellious sinners spread the garden of Eden to the ends of the earth, or even try to do so. Rightfully, he drove Adam and Eve out of the paradise of pleasure, his personal property, and away from the “tree of life,” out into the uncultivated part of the earth. There they must die, suffering death as the foreannounced penalty for their sinful rebelliousness. (Gen. 2:15-17; 3:16-24) Thus any expansion of the paradise ceased, about six thousand years ago. Outside the Paradise let man rule himself; let him exercise self-sovereignty in whatever way he wanted. But not inside the Paradise with its tree of life. Outside the Paradise man did not become owner of the earth. It was a place for man to die, not exercise permanent occupancy like an eternal owner. (Gen. 5:1-5)

That global inundation resulted not only in ice caps at the north and south poles but also in the disappearance of the unexpanded original paradise from the earth. However, the divine Creator and Owner of the Paradise who took it away by the Deluge can also restore it.