And God said: Let us make man in our image after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the heaven, and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.  And God created the man in His own image, in the image of God created He him, male and female created He them.  And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the heaven, and over every living thing that creepeth upon the  earth.                                                                   Genesis 1.26-28

Should it be the case that we are created by God to possess great intelligence and capacity and freedom, to such an extent that our Creator declares that we are made in the image of Himself, then would it not be very surprising to find that we did lightly forfeit that characterization.  And yet, that is what we have done.

Implicit, of course, in our creation lay the expectation that we should live as gods, honoring the God who blessed us with his majesty.  But in our infancy on this earth the serpent-faced enemy of God contrived a way to penetrate our confidence in our expectations.  From the moment he encountered the woman in the garden he elaborated a subtle suggestion of divine dishonesty, and fielded an inference of human insufficiency.  He portrayed Creator and Creation as flawed.  He pretended that if the man and the woman could just see through the divine deception they would abandon the divine boundary, eat of the forbidden fruit, transcend the confinements [laws] of their natural state, and “become like God”.…[i.e. “beyond law” since obviously he who conceals from them the “hidden powers” of the forbidden fruit must himself be “above the law.”]

They who were created in the image of God and destined to live in communion with God then scorned the boundary and found themselves fallen from communion with God, crippled by the advent of the spirit of rebellion, and cast down in their perception of themselves.

In God’s plan man is meant to understand and to hold in his heart the goals and purposes of Creation.  But Satan brought his own “gospel,” convinced men that they were being deceived: that there was a greater good, a hidden excellence to which they could ascend if only they had the nerve to challenge the sovereignty of God and accept the “forbidden” fruit as icon of the world itself:

All there for the taking, and allegiance due to no one but ourselves.  If there are gods to be had, then we can create them.  Yes, we worship what we choose and recognize no external authority as superior to ourselves, our own will, and our own reason.  Just in reaching for the fruit, this divinity of Self is nearly ours.

The Book of Jasher tells us that in the time of Nimrod each man made his own gods.  Men were the creators of gods.  Were they not then greater than gods?

Perhaps not.  Had they not rejected their patrimony?  Had they not held their creation in the image of God as of no account next to their expected ascent to divinity based on rebellion?  And had they not held their Creator and Father as inferior in the course of their acceptance of Satan’s implication that their Maker was a liar and a deceiver?  Had they not given away everything?

And yet, in accord with their new agenda, such a patrimony could only be a burden, bearing the inclusion of the heavy claim that man owes fealty to his God.  Did they not now feel free of all external claims?  The bliss of a world that conforms to one’s own imaginings.  The bliss of a world where the substance of fruit bears more promise than the faithful love of God?  Can it be? Yes, we can imagine the world to be so, for therein the world is simplified.  All of existence is Here in front of our eyes.  Hedonism and materialism are become righteousness.

In our time Satan has exploited Science to educate the West in the greatest deception, that man is not fashioned in the image of God because he is the product of the impersonal forces of evolution…a fantasy based on the faith of rebellion, since it has never yet been shown that one species can evolve into another species or that any complex organism can develop through purposeful selection of accidental mutations.  But just as Nimrod’s children delighted in the clear fantasy of “creating their own gods”  so today the children of Reason and Science delight in imagining themselves arising, without divine intervention, from the primeval slime.

The rejection of our divine origins pervades our society.  Although numerous scientists are ready to point out the flaws in Darwin’s theory of evolution, it is politically incorrect to challenge it.  The mainstream press treats Creationists like goons from another century.  Now Darwinism has made its way comfortably into the apostate church through the efforts of the Jesuit, Teilhard de Chardin.  And now even the Popes espouse evolution, completely discarding the divine origins of man.  Pope John Paul II spoke in favor of the reception of the theory of evolution into church dogma. [His contribution to undermining belief in the truth of Scripture was justly complimented by his kissing the Quran, not to mention his honor of all the false gods of the world at Assisi.]    Joseph Ratzinger, before coronation as Benedict XVI, wrote a thesis called Fe e Futuro in which he adopted the most extreme arguments in favor of his own origins among the lizards and the chimpanzees:

“Let us look at the critic’s points in broad lines.  The difficulty already begins with the first page of the Bible.  The idea of the world’s origin developed there is in evident contradiction with everything we know today about the origin of the cosmos. [Really?]  Even if we say that those pages are not a manual of natural history and, therefore, should not be understood as a literal description of the cosmos’ origin, a bad feeling remains. … On almost every page of the Bible such questions persist.  

“The figure formed of clay that in God’s hand becomes man is largely incomprehensible to us, as well as what happens right afterward with the woman, taken from his side while he sleeps and recognized by him as the flesh of his own flesh, that is, as a response to the question of his solitude.

“Perhaps today we have to re-learn how to understand these images as profound symbolic expressions regarding man. ,,,In the next chapter [the history of the fall] new questions rise.  How can we reconcile them with the concept that man, as demonstrated by natural science, did not begin from above, but from below?  He did not fall, but little by little ascended, increasingly becoming a man from an animal….[If man is essentially a conduit for the mutations of protozoan life, then “human sin” is meaningless since there is really only “protozoan sin” and the deeds of the most depraved human being are yet an advancement beyond the blundering efforts of the protozoan.  Can protozoans be meaningfully accused of adultery?  Can chimpanzees be berated for failing to keep the Sabbath?]

“Can we still believe in the God who calls Moses in the burning bush?  The God who kills the firstborn sons of Egypt and leads His people to war against the inhabitants of Canaan?  Who makes Oza fall dead because he touched the sacred ark?  Or were all these things nothing but an expression of the old East, interesting, yes; perhaps even significant as a level of the human conscience; but not the expression of the divine word?” [And now to what first premise would we reach to define the word “human?”]

In my opinion, the Catholic church and its theology are nothing more than a pirate ship bent on theft from the treasures of God.  But the words of this Pope are the words of a man barely satiated by the evil of his church, a man bent on mutiny, a traitor determined to hijack the ship and sell it and all its helpless passengers to Satan himself.

In discarding the divine origins of man the truth of the Scriptural narrative must also be discarded.  With the rejection of the divinity of man must come the rejection of the sacrificial death of Christ upon the cross, for divine suffering for the sake of the “redemption” of lizards and monkeys is nothing but a farcical case of overacting.  Without the divine origin of man, history is the upward clawing of the ignorant toward a heaven filled with emptiness.  Without the divine origin of man, religion is presumption and the Scriptures are fantasies built on a foundation of lies.  Without the divine origin of man the cross is melodrama and Christ coming to earth for his people is gross posturing.  The Pope should be removed from office for parading the cross in ceremonies before all the world.

Are we baffled when we read such words, the speech of the “Vicar of Christ,” chosen to wear the triple crown of Catholicism, presumably because he is the most righteous, the most interesting, the most beloved of God’s children in all the Catholic kingdom?  Yes, I am baffled and we must truly pity the Catholic kingdom if this obscene traitor and mutineer is the best that their kingdom has to offer.  Analogously, we must pity the apostate kingdom that has not the force of opinion to step into the open and denounce this traitor openly.  I fear to rejoice in the fact that something caused him to “retire” and yield his seat of power to Pope Francis, the wickedest man alive, who now brings us the logical consequence of the Catholic rape of man and mockery of the cross: Now, by the Papal decree of Francis, all things are permitted; there is no sin which can stand between man and Paradise.

What distinguishes the true person of faith?  That he knows the power of the cross.  Knowing our own sin, knowing the majesty and holiness of God, knowing the profundity of God’s expectations for his creation, we are painfully aware that our lives are rescued only at the cross where our Messiah gave his life to salvage us from death and win for us eternity.  We know that as Christ won victory over death at the cross, so also through the cross Satan and his angels were thrown down from heaven, as his accusations of the sin and unworthiness of man lost all meaning in the glory of the sacrifice of our king for his people.

We live knowing that we are of the material of gods because our God has made us to know him, to belong to him, to live for him, to die for him, and to spend eternity with him.  We will speak of him without compromise and our words will be measured in the council of heaven against the lies of popes and scientific hucksters and charlatans.

O Yahveh, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!  You have set your glory above the heavens.  From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise, because of your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger. 

When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?  You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.  You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet… O Yahveh, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!                                                                        Psalm 8, selection

 

Lawrence S. Jones

jerusalemgraffiti.com

lawrencestewartjones@gmail.com