In Whose Image Are You Living?

In Whose Image Are You Living?

Kellen Davison, for Israelinewslive.org

There are two images that mankind can emulate and honor, which one do the majority of people choose today?  The choices both sound promising but one will have people on a wide and broad road that leads to destruction. What are those two images? Well the first one mankind was actually fashioned after.

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 air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.Genesis 1:26

In the image of God we were given dominion over the earth and we were made in His likeness. Mankind had everything we needed because God’s ways that He laid out for us were good and so He rested.

What more could Adam and Eve want? All they had to do was have fellowship with their Father and each other. As we all know instead of relying on God to be their only source of leadership they listened to the serpent who tricked them into believing they needed to do something additional to be like God when they were already made in His image.

For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. Genesis 3:5

This started a downward spiral when mankind decided the likeness God provided for them which was in His image, wasn’t good enough, they began to look at another’s image and to follow their counsel.

Look at all the religions, sects, dominations and cults that have existed throughout history? What do nearly all of them have in common? A man sitting at the top of the pyramid telling people what God said or how to be enlightened and be like God.  It is a literal example of Revelation 12:9 which says the dragon deceives the whole world.

This clearly was not what God had in mind when creating Adam and Eve. If so, can you tell me what was the name of the religion God told Adam and Eve they now belonged to? What were Adam and Eve’s religious titles and duties? Or were they to live the way God said to live, eat what He said to eat and live in His paradise in the Garden of Eden?

So what does this have to do with Israel or current events?

Israel, God’s wife and attempt to reconcile mankind, comprised of the 12 tribes and the great multitude who wanted to love the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, repeated the same cycle that Adam and Eve did, they asked for a king instead of God.

Thankfully God who is ever faithful sent His Salvation again unto mankind and reiterated again that only He is man’s teacher, not another man, and we are all equal as He spoke in Matthew 23.

Unfortunately most people at one time or another get caught in the religious Babylonian system and forget whose image we are made after. What this results in is confusion, corruption and distancing ourselves from God for the sake of following each man’s personalized image of God that we want to make ourselves into.

The result of disobeying God’s ways as taught in His Word reinforced through His Spirit brings sin and death into our lives.

The LORD God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.” Genesis 2:16-17.

Notice this was a command, not a tradition or a suggestion and there were consequences for disobedience. We see the same resonating throughout all Scripture.

For the wages of sin is death – Romans 6:23

Truly the righteous attain life, but whoever pursues evil finds death. Proverbs 11:19

Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death. James 1:15.

Going back to James and another Israelite man John, we can get a clear definition of sin for those that have neither seen it before or have been told by one of the groups in the Babylonian system what it is.

Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin. James 4:17.

Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law. 1 John 3:4

So how would we know what is good so that we wouldn’t sin? God’s design, character and ways didn’t change from the beginning; He would Help show us how to live, not a man, just as His plan was in the beginning. And how would He do this? By His Spirit.

These things I have spoken to you while abiding with you. “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you. John 14:25-26

Our Heavenly Father has never left us from the beginning, He created us, put His Spirit in us, walked with us in the Garden, came back to teach us how to live multiple times and offers to help us every day to walk in His image again.

The Helper is often called the Ruach Ha Kodesh. What is interesting when looking at Genesis 3 when God walks with man in the “cool” of the day, the Hebrew word for cool is Ruach.

And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool (Ruach) of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden.

Perhaps it is the same Ruach that convicts us of sin?

And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment; concerning sin, because they do not believe in Me; John 16:8-9

Believing in God in the beginning would also be equal to us believing the fullness of His Word and commands for us, not just believing in the free offer of salvation. We wouldn’t need salvation if Adam and Eve had believed Him in the first place.

Going back to the beginning, the serpent who told man he really knew the truth of how to be in the image of God, wants man to be devoid of the “Cool” of the day. A key part of getting man to not walk in the original image we were made in is the fact that man must believe that God either is quick to change His perfect way (making it flawed) or that He is a liar. But His people who read His Word and believe it know that is not the case.

He who is the Glory of Israel does not lie or change his mind; for he is not a human being, that he should change his mind.” 1 Samuel 15:29

I will not violate my covenant or alter what my lips have uttered. Psalms 89:34

The same being that wanted man to really live in his image of God in order to kill man, steal our dominion and destroy our relationship with God has never changed his scheme to make man believe we can make God in our own image. This serpent even teaches that God is inconsistent and changes His owns character by getting some caught in a Babylonian religious system to believe we have 40,000+ denominations and multitudes of religions to choose our flavor of who we want God to be for us. This is not true, there has always been one God, one people of God – His Bride, and one way to follow Him – the way He commanded and helps us by His Ruach.

When we choose to not submit to God’s Ruach we fall into the trap of idolizing ourselves, things and people, resulting in sin. One of the outcomes of that sin which we see in Israel, and every country on earth is strife and fighting. Why does this happen?

What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? Is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members? You lust and do not have; so you commit murder. You are envious and cannot obtain; so you fight and quarrel. You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures. You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? James 4:1-4

Just look at your daily news and you can see this fruit of not submitting to God. Or better yet, let us each look at our own lives and see examples of the above. It just manifests unfortunately with some people that love the serpent’s image so much they permeate the world with its stench.

The cure for this remedy of one moment wanting to live in the original image God intended man to walk in and then in the next moment wanting to customize the image of God to our liking is this, submission!

Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. James 4:7-8

John also gives a great tip to stay away from the image of God the serpent suggests which leads to sin –

Little children, keep yourselves from idols. Amen. 1 John 5:21

An idol is defined in the Greek as an image, a likeness, a false god, an image of a heathen god.

If Adam and Eve resisted the serpent’s lie and system, and stayed close to the true God, we wouldn’t be double-minded and sinful, needing grace to get back in  the right image. Let us all remember we have all sinned as Scripture says, but that we are all made in His image. So let us walk in that love and solidarity that we are all sinners in need of God’s love.

With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so. James 3:9-10

For those that are worried  about the mark of the beast (A.K.A. the serpent) being a microchip, barcode or a bandana with writing on it, let us remember who the beast is and what he wanted from the beginning – to take our inheritance, earthly dominion and destroy our marriage with God.  Sure the serpent is fine with people following other men as long as it connects to his ultimate system. And yes, at some point the serpent will show itself again like it has done in Nimrod, Pharaoh, kings, popes and rulers in a being that will once again want you to be in its ultimate sinful image or else you will die. However the trick is just like the Garden, if you choose the serpent’s advice you will die either way.

And it was given to him to give breath to the image of the beast, so that the image of the beast would even speak and cause as many as do not worship the image of the beast to be killed. Revelation 13:15

Man needs to remember that the serpent appears like an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14), not in a red suit with a pitchfork on TV. This is consistent with what happened in the Garden in Genesis 3 as the word serpent is sometimes translated as Nachash which means “shining one”.

Let us test the words of people that appear as messengers of light to make sure what they say aligns with God’s Word and Ruach.

So whatever the “mark” is, people do not have to wait to reap the same eternal consequences if they do not submit to the Ruach of the Heavenly Father today.

For he is our God and we are the people of his pasture, the flock under his care. Today, if only you would hear his voice. Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, As in the day of Massah in the wilderness. Psalms 95:7-8

While it is said, Today if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation. Hebrews 3:15

Thankfully the remedy is simple for mankind to show that not only do we submit to God’s perfect way, but that we really love Him and we willingly choose to, it starts with this:

For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ! Romans 5:17

Also, God did not command Moses to lead Israel into an idolatrous practice in the wilderness with the fiery serpent (Hebrew word seraph, like the angelic being seraphim) on a staff. Moses was a picture of the One like him (Deuteronomy 18:15, 18), the Messiah, and the Messiah is the Seed that would have victory over the serpent as the Heavenly Father said in Genesis 3. Moses was not a picture of a leader of a religious system that man was supposed to institute, we are to follow the ways God gave Moses include the first one, having no other God besides Abba (Exodus 20:3).

Let us stay away from idolatry as John suggests.