Ellen G. White and Her Critics

The Plan of God for Eden

When God first made the world He placed upon it a wide variety of animals and plants, distributed over hills and valleys, on sunny plain and in shady dell. The picture was one of beauty and harmony in diversity. We can, of course, only conjecture as to details of the Edenic world. The record declares that God commanded that each form of life should bring forth “after his kind.” Genesis 1:24. And the fossil records bear silent testimony that between the major forms of life there appear to be no intermediary forms. There are sharp gaps instead. Whether the Lord designed that His perfect earth should also preserve distinctions between the more closely related forms of life, we can only venture a guess. But if He placed all these more or less closely related forms upon the earth, it would seem a reasonable assumption that He did so as an expression of His divine conception of what a perfect world should be like. EGWC 318.1

We think this is even more than a reasonable assumption in the light of specific counsel later given to Israel, as God sought to set up in this sinful world a government according to the plans of heaven. Through Moses God said to Israel: EGWC 318.2

“Ye shall keep my statutes. Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind: thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled seed: neither shall a garment mingled of linen and woollen come upon thee.” Leviticus 19:19. (See also Deuteronomy 22:9-11.) EGWC 318.3

The last part of this command, which deals with a garment, was doubtless intended to symbolize the idea Of keeping separate those things that should be separate; the command with regard to the cattle and seed is obviously literal. EGWC 318.4