WHAT IS MAN?

Man (Adam): 

God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion” (over every earthly creature). (Gen 1:26) 

Note than man did not have dominion over creatures not of this “earth,” the latter used in a material sense more so than a place. 

David pondered these thoughts: 

What is man, that You are mindful of him? and the son of man, that you visit him? For You have made him a little lower than the angels, and have crowned him with glory and honour. You made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands; You hast put all things under his feet. (Psalm 8:4-6) 

… and Paul concurred in Hebrews chapter two. He quoted that soliloquy twice.

“What is truth?” is the most sought answer to a question. “What is man?” may be the next most sought-after answer!

Well, what is man?

Man is a lower form of creature than the angels in whose Image his soul was made — a phantom — “selem” in the Hebrew. That is the “our image” in Genesis 1:26. Note that angels can appear as either in spirit or the image of about anything.

The “our likeness” in that passage is demut’ in the Hebrew, meaning in appearance. In those two words — selem and demut’ The “phantom” had appearance. Mankind was made in the image of a man, but in phantom. That is implied when Paul wrote, “For the Law having a Shadow of good things to come, and not the very Image of the things” (Hen 10:1).

Just as the Law was the Shadow of Jesus, the soul of man was the shadowy image of the first man since the “Law” was the Word of God; it was that Image whose substance was phantom-like. “Shadow” is the literal meaning of the Hebrew Word, Selem.

Glorious man — man before the original sin — was glorious like God. Adam was the “son of God” in Psalm 8 above. He was not the biological, carnal “son” but of the genetics of God. Implied in that is that when Adam was overlaid with clay (adam), his substance was different. He was like the earth but with living tissue.

Scripture, therefore, describes the original man, Adam, and his kind. God meant for mankind to be glorious like Adam, and Christians, in the end, will be glorified and made a new creature (aka Adam.).

So, what is glorification? It is indeed “splendor,” but when Jesus was glorified, He could walk through the walls of the ground from His tomb and through walls of locked rooms. He had been glorified and could overcome the world (John 16:33). Therefore “glorification” is the world having no effect, nor affect, on Christians, to wit: 

In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. (1 Cor 15:52) 

“Glorification” is therefore incorruptibility; there will be no more deterioration of the carbon in us (our DNA will exist forever as a new creature.)

Scientifically, it seems that the carbon-14 that was in our fleshes at the end of time, will all be changed to some other substance that cannot decay.

That means that the first Adam, like the last Adam, Jesus, (1 Cor 15:45) will be a lively spirit forever. Jesus is the “Last Adam” and the pattern for the new creature — those in Christ.

Jesus was the last of Adam’s kind. Temptation would not spoil Him, and it gave those in Christ the opportunity to never be spoiled again by the old creature that was the phantom image of the first phase of the creation; namely the creation of the heavens before the earthen things were founded.

Now for the boring but insightful part, of this commentary; man was created an adam. That was his kind and because there was only one of his kind in the beginning, God called him “Adam” because his visible image that covered his invisible image was from the “ground;” ground is also adam in the Hebrew. The original woman was the symbiosis of Adam — like him but of opposite “spin,” or gender.

Man’s kind existed through the flood of Noah’s day when the “kind” (or genetic family) became Noahic by the Noahic Covenant when Adam’s progeny was restored and the other kind dispensed of in the receding waters of the flood.

Covenants in the Bible are much more than agreements but each a re-genesis. Noah was the “second Adam,” meaning that his genetics had been improved. Noah, according to the Book of Jasher, was born a different creature, perhaps glorified in the womb of his mother.

In like manner, when Noah’s kind failed, even the Semites, Abram in the fiery furnace of the tower, became incorruptible and his kind became the last re-genesis until Moses was transfigured on Mount Horeb.

The Covenant of Grace by the blood of Jesus was the last time the genes of Adam would be restored to us creeping creatures. Indeed, Jesus was the “Last Adam” and He was gloried by His death and Resurrection (John 7:39).

“Adam” throughout history was any creature that was glorified of which the blood of Jesus would correct.

“Born again” (John 3:7) is literally engendered from above, ostensibly from Jesus on His throne in the realm of heaven.

When the daughters of man were overcome by the “sons of God” (angelic Grigori and corrupted sons of Seth), degeneration evolved.

The Hebrew word, adam, in addition to “earth,” means the human species — anthropoidal upright beings with a soul and without a tail to balance them. Coupled with that is man was homo sapien — “wise man.”

Now look at the Hebrew word “Adam” and the pictographs from the word in which that name was written: 

אָדָם

Ignoring this diacritical marks below that were added for pronunciation, that leaves three symbols: aleph which is not pronounced, dalet, and mem.

Aleph represents the invisible power of man. Unlike Darwinian theory that boasts the most numerous are the fittest, God made man the fittest in the almighty image of Himself. It is mankind that was made the dominant species over all the others.

We have not evolved from stooped, stupid apes, but apes may have mutated from glorious, upright Adam. Hence, the Bible is not a book of evolution but devolution!

Aleph would be the “shadow” (selem) within Adam’s body.

The pictograph for the dalet is a door. A door represents movement (dynamics), and entrance (opportunity), and a transition from one realm to another, just as Jesus is the “door” to another realm (heaven; Rev 3:20).

Sacred literature reveals that Adam was privy to both the realms of heaven and earth and could move freely between them because He was like God.

Mem, the last of the three letters whose pictograph is a wave; represents water, change, and blood. Genetics is in the blood… in every nuclear cell of both flesh and blood. Quantum theorists say that genetics is like the motion of  waters that when stopped, appear as either a gene, or a genetic wave.  Adam was both man and the genetics of all mankind.

Adam was changed in Genesis chapter one from a “phantom” being to a material being in chapter two. God made the change, so Adam, the visible man, was a living Image of God; or at least he was until sin entered in. 

Simply stated is that the phantom existence of the first of the kind was changed into another genetic kind. Adam, the phantom, had the genes of God (his “son”) and his flesh the genetics that would make him a visible creature.

Adam, in typical quantum fashion when it was finished, became both the person and his kind.

(Next the topic will be about the second kind of man from the womb of Eve.)