Introduction
     I am Alef and Taw – “the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last” – reads Revelation 22:13. He Who made that declaration promised in the next verse: Blessed [are] they that do His commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates of the city. (The King James Version used throughout, unless otherwise noted.) From the second chapter of Genesis in which the Tree of Life is first introduced, these words from Revelation 22:14 summarize the content of all the Scriptures.
    Such is the goal of walking in this Way; the purpose of our striving and overcoming all that is in the world; the reason back of the Apostle Paul writing in Philippians 3:13-14: Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but [this] one thing [I do], forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of Elohim in Messiah Yahshua.
    Before we close our eyes for the last time, we ought each one of us, be able to declare for ourselves, the testimony of this one who wrote to his protégé Timothy, For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished [my] course, I have kept the faith, 2 Timothy 4:6-7. And this we shall be confidently able to say, if during the life that now is, we delighted ourselves in doing the law of Yahweh, meditating therein, day and night; prospering in all that we had done, having become as that tree planted by the rivers of water that had brought forth its fruit in season; as that tree whose leaf had not withered (Psa. 1:2-3).
    Principal among Yahshua’s final commands to His disciples is recorded in Mark 16:15: “Go ye into all the world, and preach the Evangel to every creature” … as fishers of men (Matt. 4:19), bringing others to the City, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets (Eph. 2:20) and whose Builder and Maker is Yahweh (Heb. 11;10). Obeying this command is also, a prerequisite toward having right to the Tree of Life.

Where, and What is the City?
     And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from Yahweh out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of Yahweh [is] with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people, and Yahweh Himself shall be with them, [and be] their Elohim,” Revelation 21:1-3.
    In the beginning, and before sin befell Eve and Adam, the Tree of Life, placed in the midst of Eden, was purposed to give eternal life (Gen. 2:9, 3:22) to these two, and their posterity, whom Yahweh had created in His own image (Gen. 1:27). Eden, on earth, was the closest thing “to paradise of Elohim” (Rev. 2:7) – (Strong’s G.3857, par-ad’-i-sos, of Oriental origin, a park, i.e., specifically, an Eden (place of future happiness, “paradise” : paradise, [comp. H.6508, par-dace’, of foreign origin, a park : forest, orchard] in which was situated, the Tree of Life, its fruit given them to eat who overcome. In Revelation 22:2, it is further revealed that the Tree of Life will yield twelve manner of fruits every month, its leaves will provide for the healing of the nations – not that in the new Jerusalem, there should be any disease which needs healing, but that the Tree of Life is become that means by which the perpetual health and life and general well-being of the redeemed inhabitants are maintained and sustained.
    Of all the trees in this earthly paradise, Adam and Eve were enjoined to eat, except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil – the good and the evil, providing man opportunity to explore this Yah-given gift of free will and choice between good and evil. Even today, as the Apostle acknowledged, that when he would do good, evil is also present (Rom. 7:21). And so, likewise is it the experience of every man: the flesh (in which dwells no good thing, Rom. 7:18) contends with the Spirit, and the Spirit with the flesh (Gal. 5:17).
    Eve’s (she was first in transgression, 1 Tim. 2:14) then Adam’s disobedience set in place the need for the species’ redemption, hence the coming of Yahshua, the Lamb of Yahweh, as a once-for-all Offering for the sins of mankind (Heb. 9:28).
Without Eve and Adam having revealed the nature of every man, Yahweh’s plan of redemption might have been deferred … or not needed to have been instituted at all, if sin had never found a place (Rom. 5:12).
    Though Adam had received the commandment – and we are confident that he communicated it to the woman (Gen. 3:2-3) – the Law (Torah) was not necessary, but after sin’s commission, Yahweh gave Law to keep man safe from the lure of sin. For who can know what sin is, except there is a law forbidding its commission, or omission? (Rom. 7:7).
    Even before the Law was codified, men showed the work of the Law written in their hearts. Adam and Eve had thought to hide themselves from Yahweh after their trespass. Cain slew his brother, and then countered Yahweh’s query with a lie, replying to the Creator, he didn’t know where his brother was (Gen. 4:9) – the cause for his murdering his brother attributable to his envying Yahweh’s having greater respect to Abel’s offering of a lamb’s sacrifice than to his offering the fruit of the field (Gen. 4:3-4).
    Even before the Law was codified, men showed the work of the Law written in their hearts. For 120 years, Noah who had found favor before Yahweh preached righteousness to them of his generation but afterward, even with the construction of the ark – certainly a phenomenal undertaking in that day – only eight of a great many souls were found worthy to escape the impending waters that would cover the earth. Ten generations from creation, and ten more to Abraham, how was it, that Noah differentiated between clean and unclean animals that were to be brought into the ark for the purpose of repopulating the restored earth? (Gen. 7:2).
Even before the Law was codified, men showed the work of the Law written in their hearts. How is it that Lot knew to say to those who had laid siege at his door, “do not so wickedly” (Gen. 19:7).
    And so, with the introduction of sin so early, the question needing to be answered is this: Would you be able to resist the temptation of the subtle serpent? Would not the lusts of the flesh and of the eyes, and the pride of life (1 John 2:16) be an overwhelming attraction? Would you always yield and submit to the Holy Spirit’s guiding and instructing you in Yahweh’s Righteous Law?
    The Psalmist provides us with the answer to these rhetorical questions: Unless Thy Law [had been] my delights, I should then have perished in mine affliction, Psalm 119:92.

Yahshua, the Route to the Tree of Life
     The Scriptures declare the truth.
    Yahweh looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, [and] seek Elohim. They are all gone aside, they are [all] together become filthy: [there is] none that doeth good, no, not one, Psalm 14:2-3.
    For [there is] not a just man upon earth, that doeth good, and sinneth not, Ecclesiastes 7:20.
    For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of Yahweh, Romans 3:23.
    It is for these reasons that the Creator positioned “Cherubim and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the tree of life” (Gen. 3:24) and to prevent the man from putting forth his hand, and taking of its fruit, eating and thus, living for ever in a state of rebellion and disobedience – the very cause for Satan’s expulsion from before the face of his Creator (Isa. 14:12-20).
    This is why the Tree of Life is so important to Yahweh, and this corruptible earth is no longer able to provide a sanctuary for it. At some point, Yahweh apparently relieved the Cherubim of their duty, and to conserve the Tree of Life into His own paradise, reserved for those “that overcame him (Satan) by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony” … for those who “loved not their lives unto the death” (Rev. 12:11).
    The irony is that one is made a partaker of the Tree of Life in the paradise of Elohim, by having first come by way of the tree of death – if you will, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
    Testimony is given in the Acts of the Apostles, and in Peter’s first general epistle, concerning this tree upon which Yahshua was impaled. Peter with his apostle peers rebutted the chief priests who had challenged their teaching in This Name above every name, saying, The Elohim of our fathers raised up Yahshua, Whom ye slew and hanged on a tree, Acts 5:30. In the presence of a Roman centurion, Cornelius, and his company, he declared in their audience, And we are witnesses of all things which He did both in the land of the Jews, and in Jerusalem; Whom they slew and hanged on a tree, Acts 10:39.
    The Apostle Paul, in addressing a Sabbath gathering at Antioch in Pisidia, spoke of Yahshua Who had fulfilled all that was written of Him being taken down from the tree, and laid in a sepulcher (Acts 13:29).
    Again, the Apostle Peter, writing to the strangers, nevertheless “elect according to the knowledge of Yahweh the Father” (1 Pet. 1:1-2), declared of Yahshua, Who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by Whose stripes ye were healed, 1 Peter 2:24.
    Without apology, these who had witnessed, and they which had received their testimony, agreed that Yahshua was impaled upon a tree.
    A tree, Strong’s G3586, xoo’lon and rendered, timber (as fuel or material); by implication, a stick, club or tree or other wooden article or substance: staff, stocks, tree, wood – and figuring significantly in Yahshua’s death – and having the same denotation as “the tree” (H.6086) in Deuteronomy 21:22-23 in which speaking perhaps prophetically of Yahshua, we read, And if a man have committed a sin worthy of death, and he be to be put to death, and thou hang him on a tree: His body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but thou shalt in any wise bury him that day; (for he that is hanged [is] accursed of Elohim;) that thy land be not defiled, which the Yahweh thy Elohim giveth thee [for] an inheritance.
    Thus, we can appreciate why it was imperative to the Jews to remove the impaled bodies of Yahshua and the transgressors with whom He was numbered, before the next day (a high Sabbath, John 19:31) should begin at sunset. Moreover, Messiah Who knew no sin, became both sin and curse for us (2 Cor. 5:21; Gal. 3:13).
    We, too, become impaled with Him – as it were, metaphorically, on a tree – dying daily (1 Cor. 15:31) … and reckoning ourselves to be dead to sin (Rom. 6:11), having impaled “the flesh with the affections and lusts” (Gal. 5:24), nevertheless living in the flesh by the Son of Yahweh Who loved us, and gave His life for us (Gal. 2:20).

Conclusion
     Simply put, by confessing with our mouths the Master Yahshua, and believing in our hearts that Yahweh has raised Him from the dead (Rom. 10:9) and that with conviction of sin, we repent and submit to the workmanship Yahweh’s Spirit to renew us in the spirit of our minds and to conform us into the image of Yahweh’s Dear Son, we will gain one step closer to paradise and access to the Tree of Life which Yahweh has reserved for those whom He has appointed to become heirs to His undefiled and incorruptible Kingdom.