God created man in His own image, in the Image of God created He him; male and female created He them. (Gen 1:27)
That is not how we are, but how were! We were sons of God, but because of sin, mankind devolved. Now we are like the beasts even since birth:
Like King David who wrote, “I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me” (Psalm 51:5). We are all born short of the glory, or Image, of God. (Rom 3:23). We are not the children of God bur are born beasts inwardly, so who are we more like” The Beast.
This will humble you as it has me! My own narcissistic attitude faded when I learned how decadent, even depraved, that I was before I was born again; albeit it was a very slow and painful rebirth.
Adam died just as God had warned; the male and female of God’s kind devolved. They were not what they once were. In the beginning they were glorious.
First off, this commentary is not about the end of time, but the “Beast” within mankind. However, to get an idea about the identity of the Beast, I turn to the vision of John:
And the Beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority. (Rev 13:2)
Because we are of the Wicked One; that also describes us (mankind).
The “Beast” (Therion in the Greek) is “a savage
animal, in general a small animal”
That does not mean that the Beast would be a hybrid animal at all, but its countenance would be like them.
First off leopards are wild creatures that blend in with their surroundings. They are in camouflage so that they go undetected. However, when least expected those who walk in its territory become prey. The leopard has no mercy for killing for it is instinctual.
So, to avoid the Beast, Christians are to be sober and vigilant because the Beast, like the lion above may devour us, is our adversary, the Devil (1 Pet 5:8).
About the bear’s feet: bears have five toes just like humans. However, they are much larger. The Beast will not have feet like bears, but they symbolize tracks to be followed (according to domatters.com). In other words, Christians are to be wary of whom they follow. Indubitably, Christians are not to follow the world, or to be like the world.
However, who do most follow? The other “beasts” in the world.
The world is a place of danger, and for those in the world, the flesh is a great danger to them.
They that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit. (Rom 8:5)
There are two resources for our power: (1) The dragon — the beastly “Serpent” who is cunning in his ways, or (2) the Power of God which is truth and light.
The flesh is not so much a protection but vulnerability to the things of the world. Our flesh makes us just like any of the other animals, except for one thing: we have a soul that can either be vacant, full of iniquity, or righteous.
John was describing THE BEAST, but human beings are like the BEAST:
You are of your father the devil, and the lusts of (the flesh) your father (genetically) you will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him” (John 8:44)
Biologists have labeled mankind as the third kind of gorilla.
Hanno, the Carthaginian explorer wrote about their findings in the fifth century B.C.:
…we came to the end of the lake, overhung by some very high mountains crowded with savages clad in skins of wild beasts who stoned us and beat us off… (after sailing several more days, the expedition came to another island like the first, full of savages) …By far the greater number were women with shaggy bodies, whom our interpreters called Gorillas… We caught three women, who bit and mangled those who carried them off, being unwilling to follow them. (Hanno ca 425 B.C.)
Hanno discovered gorilla’s and mistook the females for “women.” They were another species who he thought were human beings. They were intelligent “being unwilling to follow them.”
Before that, they had seen much the same thing, men and women who were “savages.” Hanno saw little difference between the beings in skins of wild beasts and the beasts themselves. Left to their own devices, those ancient savages of Morocco were hardly different from the apes!
Gorilla’s look like men with few exceptions. Their DNA is 98.5% like ours.
That was not always true; God created mankind in His Image, and sin mutated us to the point that we are much like beasts: with digestive tracts, pudenda, and now even with limited intelligence.
(Adam and Eve) felt great trouble from the food they had eaten, and to
which they were not used, they went about in the cave saying to each other:-- "What
has happened to us through eating, that this pain should have come upon us? Woe
be to us, we shall die! Better for us to have died than to have eaten; and to
have kept our bodies pure, than to have defiled them with food."
Then Adam said to Eve, "This pain did not come to us in the
garden, neither did we eat such bad food there. Thinkest thou, O Eve, that God
will plague us through the food that is in us, or that our inwards will come
out; or that God means to kill us with this pain before He has fulfilled His
promise to us?"
Then Adam besought the Lord and said, "O Lord, let us not perish
through the food we have eaten. O Lord, smite us not; but deal with us
according to Thy great mercy, and forsake us not until the day of the promise
Thou hast made us."
Then God looked upon them, and at once fitted them for eating food; as unto this day; so that they should not perish. ( 1 Adam & Eve LXV:2-6)
The kinds: Adam-kind was dominant over all the beasts of the Garden. He named all the other kinds that were lower than himself. Then the woman sinned, was beguiled, and the male named her kind “Eve” (ḥaua; Pronunciation khav-vaw').
Eve was a new kind, no longer glorious and because she was the mother of all living, Eve is our kind, not the glorious Adam. She was “beguiled” — She looked the same, but the Wicked One put guile into her.
John wrote about Eve’s offspring: “We should love one another; not as Cain, who was of that Wicked One, and slew his brother. And wherefore slew he him? Because his own works were evil, and his brother's righteous. (1 John 3:11-12).
Cain became like the other beasts that killed each other because they were instinctive. No longer was our kind dominant, but the Beast — the Wicked One — dominates us.
We may look like glorious people from a distance but inwardly, mankind are born like the beasts and die without mercy as if we are beasts unless we are changed within.
Speaking of our animalistic tendencies, James wrote, “Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He shall lift you up” (Jas 4:10). He will change our nature, and in the end, our fleshes.
Jesus explained how: “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3).
What keeps people out of the Kingdom of God? Our beastly natures. In Paradise, we cannot behave how we do here. It will be a place without death or sorrow, so beastly humans would have no place there.
(God) drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the Tree of Life. (Gen 3:24)
To come back into the Garden Paradise must be born
again — engendered from above, by God.
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