Page 38 - The Mark of the Beast

or silver, but when God instructed Moses to build the first image of Christ upon the cross
as depicted in the serpent upon the pole, He told Moses to use bronze, or copper, for the
metal. This was to indicate the baseness of what was being depicted. This image depicted
the Son of God becoming sin, and there was no reason to fashion such an image in gold, for
it was to appear as something loathsome and detestable.
We are told that God cannot look on sin, for He is holy, and while His own Son hung
on the cross the Father turned away from Him. For this reason Christ called out, “My God,
My God, why have you forsaken Me?” Darkness covered the earth from the sixth hour to the
ninth hour as Christ bore the sins of the world, and became as a detestable thing. The pure
golden Son of God became as something base and worthless. Such depictions of the Son of
God in the form of a serpent do make men recoil and flee away today, but it is a measure of
the vastness of the love of God that He would go to such lengths to redeem man from his
bondage to sin and slavery to corruption.

Romans 8:31-32
What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? He
that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with
him also freely give us all things?

Even as there is great symbolism in Yahweh instructing Moses to fashion the bronze serpent
upon the pole, so there is symbolism in what the Israelites did later in idolizing this image
and offering up incense before it. What the Israelites did was an act of man-made religion.
Yahweh did not instruct the Israelites to worship the serpent on the pole, nor did He tell
them to offer incense before it. He told them only to look to it, and this command was with
the express purpose of healing them from the venom of the serpents.
In a similar incident King Saul lost the kingdom when he made an offering he was not
commanded to give. It was on this occasion that Samuel spoke the words that are often
quoted today:

I Samuel 15:22
So Samuel said, “Has Yahweh as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in
obeying the voice of Yahweh? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed
than the fat of rams.”

A great lesson for the church today can be seen in God instructing Moses to fashion
the bronze serpent on the pole for the healing of the people, and in their subsequent
worship of Nehushtan which was idolatry. Yahweh sent His Son to destroy the works of
Satan, to bring an end to the venomous death that was killing all mankind. Yahshua was
crucified to atone for the sins of man, and He was raised again that all men might become
partakers of His resurrection life and walk in victory over sin, Satan and the world. Christ
came to bring healing to all men.

I Peter 2:24
He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and
live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed.

This is the healing that Yahshua purchased for mankind, namely that we might die to