Why Is the Forbidden Tree Called the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil?

I noticed something recently I had not noticed before in my Bible study.

Why is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil named as it is, "knowledge of good and evil"?  Why not just "tree of evil"?

"And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, 'Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die' " (Genesis 2:16-17).

Mr. Armstrong correctly taught that Adam had the opportunity to take over the throne of the earth, replacing Satan, if he had conquered Satan by resisting Satan's temptation.  Later in history, Jesus Christ would conquer Satan in the temptation in the wilderness (Matthew 4:1-11, Luke 4:1-13), thus qualifying to take over the throne of the earth in the future (Revelation 11:15-19, Revelation 19:11-16, Revelation 20:1-3).

Adam failed to conquer Satan (Genesis 3:1-24).

What happened then?  God's seven thousand year plan for the salvation of mankind went into effect.  This present evil world, with mankind being led and deceived by Satan, began, and it is destined to last about (or exactly) six thousand years.  We are near the end of that period.  During this six thousand years age of man, man lives his own way under the influence of Satan, without God, which is actually Satan's way.  Mankind is getting a taste of the death, destruction, suffering, and injustice Satan's way brings.  He is getting a bellyful of it.  He is learning the hard lesson that Satan's way brings everything bad.  He is not fully learning that lesson - he will learn it completely later when God teaches him why he has been suffering.  But he is writing a lesson in painful experience, and he will remember later.

At the end of this six thousand year period, Christ will return, the saints will be resurrected, Satan will be put away, and the one thousand year millennium will begin (Revelation 20:4-6).  This will be a period when Christ and the saints will rule and teach mankind God's way of life.  It will be a period of happiness and joy.

Those of this present generation who live into the millennium will see the contrast between the suffering of the first six thousand years and the happiness of the millennium.

Those born in the millennium will know the evil of this present age, not from personal experience, but by the history of this time.  And they will be able to compare that with the happiness they are living in.

The vast majority of the human race to this time, those who live and die before the millennium, will come up in the white throne judgment, the second resurrection, and they, like those in the millennium, will experience the joy and happiness and peace of living God's way of life under the rule of Christ and the saints.  They will be able to compare conditions of their first life with their second physical life, and they will be able to see that God's way which leads to peace and happiness is better than Satan's way which leads to war and death (Ezekiel 37:1-14, Revelation 20:11-15).

So mankind will be able to compare and learn that God's way is better than Satan's way, and much of that learning will be by personal experience.  

In other words, mankind will learn a lesson by experiencing both good and evil.  They will know, by experience, what evil is like and what good is like.  They will be instructed in the causes of good and evil results.  They will learn that God's way is best, and they can choose that way if they wish.

Yet, this whole plan was triggered by Adam's decision to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Maybe none of this is new to you.  Maybe many of you have seen and noticed this before.  But this is the first time I have noticed how the name of the forbidden tree, the "tree of the knowledge of good and evil", so exactly matches a description of the seven thousand year plan (or the 7,100 year plan if you want to be precise and include the white throne judgment period assuming it is one hundred years).  This plan could be called, the plan of teaching the human race by the knowledge of good and evil - by experience in other words.

Yet, that plan went into effect with Adam taking of the forbidden tree.  If he had resisted Satan, if he had obeyed God, and if he had taken instead of the tree of life, this past six thousand years of suffering would not have been necessary.

That may be why the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is named as it is.  It is not just a descriptive name for the tree itself.  It is a name and a description of the whole plan of God that went into effect when Adam ate of its fruit.  That triggered the plan of God for the human race to learn that God's way is best by experiencing and knowing both good and evil.

And that tree was named, not by Moses, but by God who knew ahead of time what His plan was.  There is no indication in Moses's writings that Moses knew about six thousand years, or about a millennium, or about the white throne judgment.  The name of the tree was not Moses's invention.  It was God naming it what it represented if Adam ate of it.

Mr. Armstrong taught that the tree represented Adam taking to himself the prerogative of deciding what is good and what is evil - taking to himself the right to decide what is wrong and what is right - deciding for himself what is sin rather than believing what God told him is right and wrong.  And the tree can represent that also.  God may have named the tree for both reasons.  It represented Adam deciding for himself what is good and what is evil, and it also represented the plan of God for teaching man by the experience of good and evil, which plan went into effect when Adam ate of the tree.