[132]  The Exedenic Times

It is not at all difficult to see that crudely speaking, God's people were Exedenic or not on Jehovah's land (out of Eden) from the date that Adam was thrown out of the garden of Eden until the day that they entered into the promised land. This period is certainly a land inheritance malediction on God's official people, the sons of the ICC and their forefathers under the CRC. Certainly the garden of Eden was a blessed land, having 'every tree desirable to one's sight and good for food'. And the word 'Eden' means pleasure in Hebrew, not pain (Insight Book under 'Eden'). As regards the promised land we read:

13 And to Joseph he said: May his land be continually blessed from Jehovah with the choice things of heaven, with dew, and with the watery deep lying down below (Deuteronomy 33).

3 And he will give to you the blessing of Abraham, to you and to your seed with you, that you may take possession of the land of your alien residences, which God has given to Abraham (Genesis 48).

10 When you have eaten and satisfied yourself you must also bless Jehovah your God for the good land that he has given you (Deuteronomy 8).

15 Do look down from your holy dwelling, the heavens, and bless your people Israel and the soil that you have given us, just as you swore to our forefathers, the land flowing with milk and honey (Deuteronomy 26).

So the ground within it was blessed and the people were blessed in it and it was a good land. It is of course an archetype for the Kingdom of God, which is an antitype for the garden of Eden. As regards the entrance into the promised land we read:

19 And the people came up out of the Jordan on the tenth of the first month and took up camping at Gilgal on the eastern border of Jericho (Joshua 4).

2 At that particular time Jehovah said to Joshua: Make for yourself flint knives and circumcise the sons of Israel again, the second time. 
3 Accordingly Joshua made flint knives for himself and circumcised the sons of Israel at Gibeath-haaraloth.
4 And this was the reason why Joshua did the circumcising: all the people that came out of Egypt, the males, all the men of war, had died in the wilderness on the road when they were coming out of Egypt. 
5 For all the people who came out proved to be circumcised, but all the people born in the wilderness on the road when they were coming out of Egypt they had not circumcised. 
6 For the sons of Israel had walked forty years in the wilderness, until all the nation of the men of war who came out of Egypt that did not listen to the voice of Jehovah had come to its finish, to whom Jehovah swore that he would never let them see the land that Jehovah had sworn to their forefathers to give to us, a land flowing with milk and honey. 
7 And their sons he raised up instead of them. These Joshua circumcised, because they proved to be uncircumcised, for they had not circumcised them on the road. 
8 And it came about that when they had completed circumcising all the nation, they kept sitting in their place in the camp until they revived.
9 Then Jehovah said to Joshua: Today I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from off you. So the name of that place came to be called Gilgal until this day.
10 And the sons of Israel continued to camp at Gilgal, and they proceeded to carry out the Passover on the 14th day of the month, in the evening, on the desert plains of Jericho. 
11 And they began to eat some of the yield of the land the next day [construct] of the Passover, unfermented cakes and roasted grains on this same day. 
12 Then the manna ceased on the next day [absolute] in their eating from food of the land [literal]. And no longer he was to sons of Israel manna, and they ate from produce of land of Canaan in the year the that (Joshua 5 NWT and NIVHEOT Hebrew Interlinear Bible).

So God's people began to eat the produce of the promised land on 1473Nisan15, having celebrated the Passover on 1473Nisan14. This day was the end of the land inheritance malediction, the first day of the festival of cakes. There is wonderful cryptic meaning in the concept that the manna stopped on that day, which is not the day after the eating of the food but rather the day after the Passover, because literally the scripture asks:

12 Then what is it? ceased on the next day, in their eating food from the land (Joshua 5).

For 'manna' means 'what is it', the answer to his cryptic question is that it was the land exile of God's official people that ceased, or the Exedenic times stopped on that day, the first day that they ate food from the promised land. The last time that God's people had eaten food from any blessed land of Jehovah, given to them, prior to that was when Adam ate the fruit!! But now we need to find out when the land malediction started, we need to know when Adam sinned. The Length of the Exedenic Times will give us this date.

Obviously Canaanites and Hivites and Hitites and Jebusites, and Perrizites and Girgashites and Edomites and Moabites and Amorites to mention a few, had been eating food from the promised land in circumstances where they owned that land during the exedenic times. But as Stephen said of Abraham...

4 Then he went out from the land of the Chaldeans and took up residence in Haran. And from there, after his father died, [God] caused him to change his residence to this land in which you now dwell.
5 And yet he did not give him any inheritable possession in it, no, not a footbreadth [due to the Exedenic Times] but he promised to give it to him as a possession, and after him to his seed, while as yet he had no child.
6 Moreover, God spoke to this effect, that his seed would be alien residents in a foreign land and [the people] would enslave them and afflict [them] for 400 years (Acts 7).

So the land inheritance blessing was that God's official people got possession of the promised land in an inheritable way [i.e. not via a short lease]. All of the groups who owned parts of that land prior to the end of the Exedenic Times were not sons of the ICC, even though some were actually sons of Isaac (the Edomites for example).

We shall discover in U133, that the length of the Exedenic Times is predicted in Genesis 4 to be 7 Prophetic Times, which is 2520 years, 7 years of years.