Page 22 - The Mark of the Beast

Genesis 1:24-28
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."

Twice on this sixth day we read the words that man was created to rule, or exercise
dominion, over the fish, the birds and the cattle. God spoke directly to the man and woman
and said “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.” God’s admonition to man
is to both subdue and rule over these things. This gives us a clue as to what these creatures
represent.
All of these creatures of the fifth and sixth day are animals and they typify the beast
nature that must be conquered and ruled over. All of these creatures were declared good by
God, and they were to be subject to the divine order of God. The governmental order of
ruling and subjection is given in Scripture, and is as follows:

God is the head of Christ, Christ is the head of man, man is the head of woman, and
man and woman rule over the creatures (I Corinthians 11, Genesis 1).

This brings us to perhaps the most critical part of what is revealed in this opening
account from Genesis. In order for man to attain to the image and likeness of God, man
must both accept and enforce God’s governmental order. Man must take his place in the
creation and rule as he was created to do. To fail in this is to fail in attaining to the image
and likeness of God.
Why is this so? The entire creation bears the image of God as long as God’s
governmental order is maintained. God is the originator of all things. He is the source of all
life and the wellspring of all thought. He alone is to be the initiator of all activity among the
creation, and all things must bow to His initiative. Thus we see Christ, the true Man after
the image of God, declaring repeatedly, “I never do anything of my own initiative. I only do
the will of the Father.”
Christ took God the Father as His head. He submitted perfectly to the will of the
Father and only did the things the Father commanded Him to do. He was so perfect in this
that He even declared that the words He spoke all originated in the Father, and He only
spoke those things the Father commanded Him to speak. Because Christ was so fully
submitted to the government of the Father, He became the perfect expression of the Father.
To see Yahshua was to see God.
When the creation is also perfectly submitted to the government of God then the
creation will be a perfect expression of God. We can yet see God in creation, but the image
is marred and distorted due to the fall. Man was to take his place in the creation and to