Early on in my Holy Spirit journey, God began interpreting the Book of Revelation to me. One of the first verses the Holy Spirit started re-teaching me was from the last chapter, about the Tree of Life.
“Then the angel showed me a river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the main street of the city. On either side of the river stood a tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit and yielding a fresh crop for each month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.”
Revelation 22:1-2 BSB
If you didn’t know, the Tree of Life is also mentioned in the first book of the Jewish Bible.
“And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, where He placed the man He had formed. Out of the ground the LORD God gave growth to every tree that is pleasing to the eye and good for food. And in the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now a river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it branched into four headwaters.”
Genesis 2:8-10 BSB
Trees and rivers… pretty similar imagery, huh? Well, it’s not for nothing that Jesus and all of his early followers were Jewish. (By the way, they called him Yeshua (yeh-SHOO-ah).) They also recognized this imagery because his male followers had heard the first five books of the Torah over and over for the first fifteen years of their lives. But I digress…
Illuminating the Scripture
In 2014, when God began re-teaching Revelation 22:2 to me, the Holy Spirit led me to click into the root words of the scripture, “and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations”.

Here’s what I discovered:
- G5444/phullon “leaf” from the same G5443/phule “people, lineage, generation” from G5453/phuo “to grow”
- G3586/xulon “tree” actually means “anything made of wood” and includes “the cross” of Yeshua
- G2322/therapeia “healing” comes from G2323/therapeuo “cure” meaning “reversal of physical illness” from G2324/therapon “healer/minister/servant”
- G1484/ethnos “nations” from ethos “people joined by similar customs” implying non-Jewish cultures
- Thus, the phrase “the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations” could also be translated as “the people of the cross are for the healing service of peoples joined by common customs”.
Interpretation
That begs the question, “Who are the people of the cross”? WE ARE THE PEOPLE OF THE CROSS! Anyone who follows Yeshua is meant to heal the world by our service to the world! God loved the whole world so much that he sent his only Son into it (John 3:16) and Jesus loved the whole world so much that he sent his Holy Spirit to pour out upon it (Acts 2). We who are empowered by that Holy Spirit are sent to reverse the curse of sin and death (including all forms of physical, psychological, and spiritual sickness), and to bring the order of God into his creation again.
“We are the people of the cross!”
TenayBenes.com
Nine Years Later
Tonight, as my husband and I were praying about business ideas we have been developing with God, I saw a thick branch burst forth in growth from the trunk of the tree of life. Through this vision, God was saying to us, “these ideas are part of my plans to heal the world”.
Did you hear that? Business ideas can heal the world if they align with the Kingdom of God’s purposes to heal the world. In fact, any business can heal the world by how lovingly and wisely they run their business. And some businesses can heal the world by directing resources that no other organization can gather into a specific community to fulfill the perfect will of God for those people.
That’s pretty exciting!
Yes! We who follow Yeshua are called to heal, first ourselves, and then the world.
2 responses to “The Tree of Life”
Amen amen and amen!! 🙌🏽🥰🙌🏽
🤩
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