"The Bible reveals a number of interesting details about Eden's design and structure, and when these details are compared with the sanctuary's Most Holy Place (MHP), it becomes clear that God intended these two places to represent the same thing
Eden had a gate that faced eastward, and the MHP had one curtain on the east side.
Two trees stood in the middle of Eden, and two cherubim were placed in the center of the MHP.
In Eden the divine law was given in connection with the two trees, just as the Ten Commandments were placed between the two cherubim inside the ark of the covenant.
In Eden, Adam and Eve were visited by angels, and were granted communion with their Maker, with no obscuring veil between. In the MHP, God's presence was revealed above the mercy seat between the two cherubim.
The Garden of Eden and the sanctuary's Most Holy Place both represented humanity's spiritual home, and that home was next to God's throne. Like the Most Holy Place, "Eden...was heaven in
miniature."
When Adam and Eve left Eden, they departed through the gate on the east side of the garden. This, of course, was also the only direction to exit the sanctuary's Most Holy Place, through the curtain leading from God's direct presence into the holy place. Spiritually speaking, then, to head "east" is to leave God's presence.
When Cain refused to repent for the murder of his brother Abel, God sent him east toward the land of Nod. Like his parents, Cain found his sin leading him eastward, farther and farther from the Garden of Eden, earth’s miniature representation of heaven’s Most Holy Place. And humanity’s migration eastward has not stopped. After the flood, rebellious descendants of Noah again travelled east to the land of Shinar and began building the tower of Babel. Like a snowball gathering speed as it rolls downhill, sin has led the human family spiritually eastward with a momentum that cannot be stopped.
we wandered out of Eden, out of the Most Holy Place, until we are lost in the darkness, until we can no longer even see the kingdom of God. As the prophet Isaiah wrote in Isaiah 59:10,
TimRumsey/Fulcrum7“We grope for the wall like the blind, and we grope as if we had no eyes: we stumble at noonday as in the night; we are in desolate places as dead men.”
