Genesis 1:24-31
Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after their kind”; and it was so. God made the beasts of the earth after their kind, and the cattle after their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground after its kind; and God saw that it was good.
Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” Then God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you; and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to every thing that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food”; and it was so. God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
Day six of creation is the reason behind all of God’s work on the preceding days. It is the culmination of his efforts and as such the second most important day of the seven days of Creation. Let’s take note of the things that happen on this day:
- God creates the cattle
- God creates the creeping things
- God creates the beasts of the earth
- God creates man in God’s own image
- God blesses them to bear fruit and to multiply
- God grants dominion to man over all living things on the Earth
- God gives man the directive to subdue the earth
- God defines what man can eat and what animals shall eat
- God decides it is not just good, but very good
Pulling the Message from the Bottle
At last we come to Day 6. If God did inspire the scriptures in Genesis chapter 1, then we can expect he was aware of our perception during His very act of creation on Day 6. I believe that a loving God concerned with mankind’s belief in His word would have considered our current predicament regarding science and taken steps to craft Genesis 1 in such a way that it would reveal the truth of His scriptures to our present time, apart from any authority science may lay claim to.
However, jumping straight into translating Day 6 would be a mistake. Consider the previous days carefully and the story they tell. On Day 1 we learn about the Dragon and his efforts to destroy mankind. Surely he was witness to the 6 days of creation. Yet even though he saw what Moses would later write down, he clearly was not aware of the meanings hidden in the symbols. For if he had, he would have planned accordingly upon realizing that God’s actions during the creation foretold the dragon’s failure to destroy man in the fall, or the dragon’s own plan to breed out the seed of man who would one day crush his head.
What I learn from this is that God understands those who are adversarial towards him, better than they understand God. In our own way, we too are often adversarial in our thinking towards God. Similarly to the Dragon, we assume we know what God’s plans and intentions are. In so doing, we often miss the bigger picture.
The symbols we have read up to this point paint a very clear picture consistent with themes found throughout the Bible. But if God sent a message to people of our present time, it behooves us to approach that message even more cautiously than on the previous days rather than to assume that, because we have the symbols of the prior days, we need simply plug them in and find out what that message is. Unlike the other five days of Creation, the sixth day speaks regarding our generation as history has and is presently unfolding.
Take, for instance, the passage the “beasts of the earth.” If we were to use our symbol for land we could interpret this to mean beasts of the nation of Israel. But the same earth that the luminaries of Day 4 “give their light to” means more than for just the Jews. While the symbols were relevant to Millennial Day 4 of 1000-1 BC, we cannot ignore the fact that the words of the prophets written in the scriptures now give their spiritual direction to both Jew and Gentile. Thus earth as a symbol representing Israel during Millennial Day 4 must now include all the nations that have been illuminated by the scriptures because of the events described on Day 5.
Herein lies the vast intelligence of God: that a symbol, much like a three-dimensional object, can have different facets when viewed from different angles of history.
On the 6th day, God created the cattle, the creeping things and the beasts of the earth after their own kind. The term cattle is actually the word behemah. In the next section, I will discuss both behemah and the tannin from Day 5 in greater detail as they are both tied together via their connections to the book of Job. For now, I will simply note that it relates to an important event in the year 1525 regarding Christianity.
The next term is the creeping things, or remes, which means creeping things or moving things. We’re going to jump ahead to where the Day describes this “creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” This word creeps is the Hebrew word ramas which means to creep, moving lightly, or move about. We saw God describing sea creatures and flying creatures by their movements on Day 5, so it seems that God is once again describing groups of organisms by their movements. What is interesting about this term ramas is that it describes the movement of an organism that would have been unfamiliar to Moses at the time of writing Genesis, nor would he have had the informational foundation to understand what we know today.
Cracking the Code
This gets to the heart of God’s hidden message for the people of our time. For example, if God wanted to talk about the internet, how could he do that? He would not be able to use the term “internet” with Moses, because his language did not support the meaning of that term. If an adult is going to communicate a desire to go out for ice cream through a child to his mother without raising the boy’s expectations, and the child has not learned to spell but has a keen capacity to mimic, then the parent may tell little Bobby to go ask mom if she wants to go out for “I C E C R E A M.” God appears to have done similar through the descriptive movements of the things he made. God did not seem content to say, “I made everything that crawls on the earth.” He also emphasized how they “crawl”. Whenever effort is made to emphasize something that ought to be obvious, careful consideration needs to be taken regarding the motivations that lie behind the repeated focus.
In the same manner, how would you describe cellular organisms to Moses? He has no idea what a cell is, nor how they move. If you start talking about cellular biology, Moses is going to start asking questions and those answers inevitably lead to more questions. The best thing to do is to spell out the message: “C E L L” through the descriptions of cell movement.
It was not until the year 1665 that cellular organisms, which move about lightly, were even discovered. But these same movements are described in Genesis 1. But perhaps we can explain that away as simply a broad overgeneralization.
God also created the “beasts of the earth”. This phrase was particularly troublesome. I knew, for example, that beasts are often associated with governments and empires as the prophecies in Daniel 7 demonstrates. But those beasts come out of the water, which we understand to be the gentile nations. Revelations 13:11 does describe a beast coming out of the earth, but that beast is singular, and the beasts described in Genesis is plural so that does not help.
I began my investigation in history in an effort to identify what, if anything, distinguished the types of governments in 1000-2000 AD apart from those in the prior Millennial Days. I found nothing of any meaningful relevancy. I got to the point where there was simply no answer and I was ready to put this entire work aside over the issue of just one phrase I could not decipher.
So I told God my problem and explained that unless every detail was unlocked, I would not proceed, even if most of it was clearly relevant to actual Biblical and human history. Thus I put the project aside for two days and, quite on their own, the details emerged, without any prompting from outside sources.
It turns out I was looking at the wrong end of history. I had started with early 1000AD because the creation of these things happens early in Day 6. But if you will notice there is an order to the creation of the cattle(behemah 1525AD), the creeping things(1665AD), and then the beasts of the earth. It is certainly true that nothing relevant occurs at the beginning of our Millennial Day 6 to correspond to these beasts of the earth, but something significant did happen on our end of this millennium.
In 1795 Immanuel Kant proposed the concept of a peaceful community of nations in his essay Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch. In 1889, the Inter-Parliamentary Union was formed by William Randal Cremer and Frédéric Passy to encourage governments to solve international disputes by peaceful means. Then on June 28th, 1919 the Treaty of Versaille was signed at the end of the first World War establishing the League of Nations. Finally, at the end of the Second World War, on October 2, 1945, the United Nations replaced the League of Nations.
As has already been stated, beasts symbolically represent governments or empires in Daniel’s prophecy in chapter 7. The difference between each of those beasts, and the beasts in Genesis, is that each empire stood on its own after rising out of the sea, which we know is the Gentiles. But on November 5, 1949, Israel became a member of the United Nations, which renders a depiction of these beasts rising out of the sea in conflict with their actual symbols. A more accurate symbol becomes the whole Earth itself since no symbol is required to depict a governmental body that has authority over the world. What makes the phrase “beasts of the earth” interesting is the fact that Genesis specifies this empire in the plural sense, just as the United Nations is composed of many individual empires each an untamed wild beast in the eyes of God.
The importance of these three disparate facts, the behemah of 1525 in relation to the church(which I will discuss in a later section), the discovery of cellular organisms in 1665, and the United Nations in 1945 is that they are all important pieces of God’s plan outlined in Genesis.
Cellular organisms are the building blocks of life. Recently, two proteins named sirtuin 1 and 2 were discovered that stifled the diseases associated with aging allowing mice specimen to live longer. These same proteins influence metabolism, gene regulation and the repair of DNA. While it has not happened yet, science is allowing us to come closer to countermanding God’s spoken word of, “If you eat from this tree, you shall surely die.” If human beings achieve longer life spans, or even immortality, it puts the human race on a collision course with the very directive of God regarding the consequences of Adam’s sin. In essence, we aim to become our own gods when we attempt to countermand God’s spoken word.
Finally, we have the United Nations, which is viewed by God as nothing more than a wild beast disobedient to His will. It should come as no surprise that the United Nations is very much in opposition to God’s will as the organization routinely advances its own goals under the premise of man-centered interests, while simultaneously achieving inhumane agendas. For example, while the United Nations claims to advocate for human rights, one of its permanent members is China, a gross offender of human rights. While the United Nations claims to be opposed to sex-trafficking, its own officials have been tied to human trafficking in Bosnia in 2000. Clearly, the agenda of this international organization is only superficially beneficial to human beings, while inwardly comfortable in the exploitation and harm of people. Exploitative behavior like this is typified by the Dragon in the Garden when he misled and took advantage of mankind’s ignorance of evil in tempting man to eat the fruit.
Do You See What I See?
But Day 6 is not finished yet. God continues by saying, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.” Let’s take this apart.
This is God speaking, author of all Creation, aka the Creator. A being of such incomprehensible knowledge and power who spoke “Light be” and light became. A sentient creator that went out of his way to turn darkness into light, to turn nothing into something, the absence of human life into the presence of human life–this is a being worthy of praise and worship and He claims to have made mankind in his own image and likeness.
The significance of this act is lost until you understand God’s view on worshipping images. Recall the mistake that King Ahab and Queen Jezebel made on Day 4 in defying God with the first and second commandment? Let us re-examine that second commandment a little closer: Exodus 20:4 “You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth.” The Hebrew word for idol in that verse is pesel, which means idol or image. This same passage underscores the point by referring to “any likeness” just as Genesis 1 Day 6 says God created man in God’s image; in God’s likeness He created man.
What is the significance? Well, the very next verse of Exodus explains we are not to “bow down,” which is the Hebrew word shachah, which means to bow down in a form of worship. Well, whatever would that mean to us? Most people do not bow down to anything anymore, much less their God. By examining the NASB translation, we find a clue to our answer in the definition, “weighs it down.” What we give weight to, importance, esteemed value, reverence, highly prize, that we are willing to bend ourselves over for. That is what shachah is. And performing shachah to an image violates the second commandment of the ten that God gave to Moses.
Should we be surprised then, that God spoke about creating an image in the likeness of one worthy of worship on Day 6 when in Millennial Day 6 we find our culture revering the human image with greater “weight” than ever? We idolize our celebrities on television and in the movies. We have taken to proclivity the amassing of our own images so much that we have even created a name for this behavior: taking selfies. We enshrine our images for all to see so that others may demonstrate their approval of our images through portals called Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Youtube. No other culture has had the resources nor the means to render such weight to the reverence of our own image-an image created in the likeness of one truly worthy of the Like button.
But there is more to this than merely the idolization of our own images. This is Day 6, the day of man. If worship is going to be involved, then an appropriate ideology is required and only human-centric ideology will do for man-focused worship. What this passage is really describing is the rise of a belief system that places the “weight” upon human beings rather than upon God.
The Last Great Ideology
In the late 15th century the term humanitatis first appeared and meant the development of human virtue, in all its forms, to its fullest extent. This eventually gave rise to the philosophy of humanism: a variety of ethical theory and practice with an emphasis on reason, scientific inquiry and human fulfillment in the natural world that often rejects the importance of belief in God. One of America’s Founding Fathers, Thomas Paine, is credited with coining humanism as the “religion of humanity.”
The term “humanism” itself comes in a variety of forms. There is literary humanism, renaissance humanism, western cultural humanism, philosophical humanism, and christian humanism. But it is modern humanism, also known as natural humanism or scientific humanism which, according to its leading proponent, Corliss Lamont, “rejects all supernaturalism and relies primarily upon reason, science, democracy, and human compassion,” that is most significant. The 20th century gave rise to a number of offshoots to naturalistic humanism including the Age of Aquarius, the New Age Movement(1960-1970s), Secular Humanism, The Humanist Manifesto(1933, 1973) all of which replace man’s compliance to God’s standards with a compliance to man-made standards.
With humanism as its foundation we developed our understanding of modern science which has given rise to every medical and technological advancement. It is from science that we learn that the age of natural terrestrial artifacts are older than the Bible would have us believe. It is from science that we understand that the distance of stars is so great that the time it would take to reach our planet is greater than the time Genesis claims we have been in existence. It is through science that we have developed the idea of evolution.
Thus a direct line can be drawn from the challenges science has brought to bear against Genesis all the way back to the rise of humanism in the 20th century.
But if Genesis 1 is not relevant, as proven science would have us believe, how is it then that the Bible alludes to the very nature of humanism on Day 6 on the precise Millennial Day when humanism would rear itself up in full strength and replace God’s weight, with man’s weight? These “coincidences” are becoming a pattern, and if I had a pattern like that on a lotto ticket, I would be a winner; so what are the odds?
Then God creates man and woman and proceeds to bless them with this charge: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.”
What makes this blessing so interesting is that if we look at the population growth for 0-2000 AD we find a spike in growth starting around 1000AD.
The population estimates for the year 1 AD were between 170-400 Million, but then the population rate dropped to roughly 200-300 million people from 1 – 900 AD. It wasn’t until 1000 AD that it got back up to at least 345 million. From there it proceeded as follows:
As is evident, the charge to fill the Earth was fulfilled to the letter on Millennial Day 6. But what made this population spike possible? The Industrial Revolution brought a period of great advances in science and technology which resulted in a reduction in death rates contributed to by several causes: improvements to water and sanitation, increased food production, advancements in medical technology, and improvements in the standard of living. All of these contributors can be traced back to science and its humanist roots, that God alluded to on Day 6.
God then goes on to charge man, whom he has just created in God’s own image and likeness, to “subdue” the earth “and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
The profound impact of this command is why Christians and Christianity still finds itself subject to the governing authorities rather than the other way around. Recall the connection Jesus made for his disciples in calling them to be fishers of men. Thus we know that the fish represent the Gentile world that has heard the gospel but not yet benefited from it through the transformative power of the Holy Spirit. The birds of the sky represent spirit-filled believers. Both these groups find themselves under the authority of humanist-founded governing bodies and will remain so until the end of the 6th Millennial Day.
In addition to this, we also find the charge to subdue everything that moves on the earth, including cellular biology. I believe medical advances will soon reach a state where the human lifespans are extended and when that happens, we will find ourselves in a situation similar to that prior to the great flood where God says in Genesis 6:3 “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, because he also is flesh; nevertheless his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.” When we threaten to contend with God forever, the final part of Day 6 will manifest.
God’s Message
Then God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you; and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to every thing that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food”
Every good story has a climax, that point of decision that determines the end. While God would undoubtedly point to the resurrection of his son 2000 years ago as the climax, human perception would see it quite differently. Since Genesis is a message to mankind, that climax is revealed here in his final words at the end of his weeklong creation during the closing hours of day six.
At first, God’s directive sounds something like a lunch menu, until you realize that when God cursed the dragon to eat the dust all the days of his life–the same dust God shaped Adam from–that God was also handing a form of authority over Adam to the dragon. The essence of this passage is a simple concept: your authority is implied over what you take as food for yourself. Thus God’s directive is anything but a simple cafeteria lunch menu for the world.
Presently, we enjoy the benefits of taking living beings as food for ourselves. But something happens at the end of Millennial Day 6 that changes that, not just for the human race, but for all the birds of the sky, all the beasts of the earth and everything that moves on the earth, with one exception. If you pay careful note to Day 6, you notice a sort of repetition. There is importance in every detail, but the detail of importance is not in what God says, but in what God does not say.
God speaks about the cattle 3 times, beasts 3 times, birds 3 times, but the fish of the sea only receives 2 mentions. The number 3 in the Bible is a picture of completeness. So on Day 6 the cattle, beasts and birds find completion by the end of Day 6, but the fish of the sea do not.
Now we know that the sea represents the Gentiles, and that the fish are a symbol of those people Jesus sent his disciples to catch from the sea. The fact that the fish of the sea, representing the Gentiles, is only repeated twice, implies that they will not find their completion like the birds of the air, the beasts of the earth, or the cattle: or as their symbols describe, spirit-filled believers, the governments of this world, or the behemah, which I will explain in the next section.
But you do not have to take my word for it. Perhaps you do not see any significance in the meanings of numbers in the Bible. God apparently understood, so pay close attention now. God did repeat himself three times for the beasts, three times for the birds, three times for the cattle, but only twice for the fish of the sea, which begs the question: where in Day 6 did the fish of the sea get left out?
The answer to that is at the end when God describes the dietary restrictions at the end of Day 6. This seems a rather peculiar thing to leave out, unless you understand a simple basic truth, one that ought to concern every Gentile creature enjoying his god-free life in the dark waters of the deep: you need not feed what you no longer take responsibility for.
Recognize that when Peter caught the fish under Jesus’ command, he pulled them in with nets from out of the water. When John the Baptist preceded Jesus, he put men under the water as a symbol of their being dead under the darkness of the deep, described in Genesis 1:2, or their sins, and then pulled them up out of the waters, much as God drew the land out of the seas on Day 3. Since the fall of Adam, God has been engaged in a rescue operation to save as many human beings as are willing, because an hour approaches when God will end his efforts entirely.
When that moment comes, the division between the land and the sea will become permanent. There will be no more baptisms, because nothing else will be drawn up out of the waters. There will be no more redemption, because nothing else shall be transformed from out of the waters of the deep. The only concern God had for the waters of the abyss was for the human life that had fallen into it through Adam’s sin; beyond that, God holds no intention of maintaining the living conditions of those things dwelling under the darkness of the deep forever.
What that means is this: when God excluded the fish of the sea on Day 6 from his list of what each creature shall eat, his exclusion served as notice to evict. The simple truth of the matter is that God is not obligated to feed what God no longer takes responsibility for. But the decision is not God’s regarding who or who will not make the choice to transition from sea to land. Evolutionists like to speak about how our ancestors were fish that crawled out of the seas onto land. If they find themselves standing before the throne of God, what will their excuse be when their own science called to them to leave behind the spiritual darkness over the surface of the deep to stand on the dry ground of his promised redemption?
Many people expect to make a decision about God when he finally makes an appearance. How exactly does one go about ignoring a 3,400 year old encoded message that alludes to our era through the supporting Biblical meaning and human history as it has unfolded? But by the time God has established who can eat what, those creatures still living under the darkness of the deep outside God’s purview won’t get the chance to change their minds and evolve at the last minute. For God closes his creation account by assessing his work and determining that all he made was very good, just before Day 6 comes to an end.