“And God created 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 birds of the heavens, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth” (Gen. 1.27,28). Have dominion over the earth, says God.
Friends, have you ever thought how immense the earth is? Suppose a master asks a servant to manage two houses. He makes the appointment on the basis of the latter’s ability to take care of them. No one servant is able to handle all the houses located on a given lane, for he cannot do what is beyond his ability. A hard master may demand his servant to do a little more than his duty requires, but never will he demand his servant to undertake anything beyond his ability. Would God, then, ask Adam to do what he was incapable of doing? We can therefore conclude that if Adam was capable of managing the earth, his prowess was most certainly superior to ours today. He had power, ability, and skill. He received all of these abilities freshly from the Creator.
Although we may not rate Adam’s power as being a billion times over ours, we can nonetheless safely reckon it to be a million times over ours. Else he would not have been able to perform the duty commanded him of God. As for us today, though, if we were required to merely sweep a lane three times daily, we would not be able afterwards to straighten our back. How then could we possibly rule the earth? Yet Adam not only ruled the earth but he also had dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the heavens, and every living thing on the earth. To rule is not just to sit by doing nothing. It requires management and work. From a seeing of this we should recognize the superior power which Adam in fact possessed. It far exceeds our present situation.
But do you think that this insight is something new? Actually this is the teaching of the Bible. Before his fall Adam had such strength that he never felt tired after work. It was only after his fall that God told him, “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.”
“And out of the ground Jehovah God formed every beast of the field, and every bird of the heavens; and brought them unto the man to see what he would call them; and whatsoever the man called every living creature, that was the name thereof” (Gen. 2.19). My friends, is this not marvelous? Suppose you were to take a dictionary and to read all the names of the animals; would you not confess that you could neither recognize nor memorize them all? Yet Adam gave names to all the birds and animals. How intelligent he must have been! Those of us who are not so brilliant would no doubt soon give up the study of zoology once we saw our inability to memorize all the details. But Adam was not one who memorized these zoological names; he was the denominator, for he gave names to all. Hereby do we know how rich and perfect was Adam’s rational power.
“And Jehovah God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it” (Gen. 2.15). From looking into how Adam governed the earth let us now dwell somewhat on the things which God charged him to do. God commanded him to dress the garden of Eden. This needed to be done systematically. How big was the garden? Genesis 2.10-14 mentions four rivers; namely, Pishon, Gihon, Hiddekel and Euphrates. They all flowed from Eden and divided into four river regions. Can you imagine now how big the garden was? How strong must Adam be to be charged with dressing a land which was surrounded by four rivers! He was not only to dress it but also to keep it; to keep the garden from being invaded by the enemy. Therefore the power which Adam had in that day must have been tremendous. He must have been a man with astounding ability. All his powers were inherent in his living soul. We may look upon Adam’s power as supernatural and miraculous, but so far as Adam was concerned these abilities were not miraculous but human, not supernatural but natural.
Did Adam use up all his powers on that day? From what can be seen in our study of Genesis, he had not exhausted his power. For after he was newly created by God, but before he could manifest all his abilities, he fell.
What was the bait which the enemy used in enticing Eve? What did the enemy promise her? It was this: “In the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil” (Gen. 3.5). “Be as God” was the enemy’s promise. He told Eve that not withstanding the power which she already possessed there was still a great chasm between her and God, but that if she ate this fruit she would then have God’s authority, wisdom, and power. And on that day Eve was tempted and fell.
We are not, by our probing in this fashion, being inordinately curious; we only desire to know what God actually gave to Adam. “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Gen. 1.26). The words “image” and “likeness” may seem to be alike in meaning and may therefore appear repetitious. But in Hebrew the word “image” does not point to physical likeness, rather it denotes moral or spiritual similarity. Someone has put it as: “change into likeness”; that is, “to be conformed to a likeness”. The purpose in God creating man is for man to be transformed according to His image. God wanted Adam to be like Him. The devil said, “Ye shall be as God.” But God’s original intention was that Adam should be transformed to become like Him.
From this we conclude that before the fall Adam had in him the power to become like God. He possessed a hidden ability which made it possible for him to become like God. He was already like Him in outward appearance, but he was ordained by God to become like Him morally (I use the word “morally” to indicate that which is above the material, not what merely points to man’s good behavior). Thus are we shown how much loss mankind has suffered through the fall. The magnitude of the damage is probably beyond our imagination.
The Fall of Man
Adam is a soul. His spirit and body are joined in his soul. That astonishing power which we have just mentioned is present in Adam’s soul. In other words, the living soul, which is the result of the coming together of the spirit and the body, possesses unthinkable supernatural power. At the fall, though, the power which distinguishes Adam from us is lost. Yet this does not mean there is no longer such power; it only denotes that though this ability is still in man, it is nonetheless “frozen” or immobilized. According to Genesis 6, after the fall man becomes flesh. The flesh envelops the whole being and subjugates him. Man was originally a living soul; now, having fallen, he becomes flesh. His soul had been meant to submit to the spirit’s control; now it is subject to the dominion of the flesh. Hence the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not strive with man for ever, for that he also is flesh” (Gen. 6.3). When God here mentioned man, He called him flesh, for in His eyes that was now what he was. Consequently it is recorded in the Bible that “all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth” (Gen. 6.12); and again, “upon the flesh of man shall it (the holy anointing oil, representing in type the Holy Spirit) not be poured” (Ex. 30.32); and further, “by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified in His sight” (Rom. 3.20).
Why do I dwell at some length on this? In Revelation 18 things are mentioned which shall come to pass in the last days. I indicated at the very beginning how man’s soul will become a commodity in Babylon—that which can be sold and bought. But why is man’s soul treated as a commodity? Because Satan and his puppet the Antichrist wish to use the human soul as an instrument for their activities at the end of this age. When Adam fell in the garden of Eden his power was immobilized. He had not lost this power altogether, only it was now buried within him. He had become flesh, and his flesh now enclosed tightly this marvelous power within it. Generation has succeeded generation with the result that this primordial ability of Adam has become a “latent” force in his descendants. It has turned to become a kind of “hidden” power. It is not lost to man, it is simply bound up by the flesh.
Today in each and every person who lives on earth lies this Adamic power, though it is confined in him and is not able to freely express itself. Yet such power is in every man’s soul just as it was in Adam’s soul at the beginning. Since today’s soul is under siege by the flesh, this power is likewise confined by the flesh. The work of the devil nowadays is to stir up man’s soul and to release this latent power within it as a deception for spiritual power. The reason for my mentioning these things is to warn ourselves of the special relationship between man’s soul and Satan in the last days.
We have already seen how Adam possessed special supernatural ability, though in actuality what he had was not at all special or supernatural, however much it may appear that way to us today. Before his fall Adam could quite naturally exercise this ability with ease, since it was embodied in his soul. But after his fall, this power of his was interned by his body. Formerly the body was a help to Adam’s powerful soul; now the soul had fallen, and his power was circumscribed by the shell of the flesh. Satan, however, attempts to break open this fleshly shell and to release the power dormant in man’s soul in order to gain control over man. Many do not understand this strategy, being deceived into accepting it as of God.
Yet this does not happen in Christianity alone. The Babylonians, the Arabs, the Buddhists, the Taoists, and the Hindus all try in their respective way to release the power which Adam has left to our soul. In any religion, using whatever means or ways of instruction, there stands a common principle behind all their apparent differences. This common principle is to aim at overcoming the outward flesh so as to deliver the soul power from all kinds of bondage for freer expression. Some lessons of instruction given in these religions are directed at destroying the obstruction of the body, some at uniting the body and the soul, while some are aimed at strengthening the soul through training and thus enabling it to overcome the body. Whatever the ways may be, the principle behind them all is the same. It is important to know this or else we will be deceived.
I do not know how people are informed of the marvelous energy dormant in man’s soul, the release of which, presently bound by the flesh, will result in the display of miraculous power even to the attaining of the status of a “fairy” or “buddha”. Probably they are all informed by the devil, the evil spirit. Their elucidations may vary, nevertheless the underlying principle is the same, which is, the use of special means to release the power of the soul. They may not employ, as used by us, this terminology of soul power; yet the fact is unmistakable. For example, in Buddhism and Taoism, and even in some sects of Christianity, special supernatural power is available to all of them to perform miracles in the healing of diseases and in predicting the future.
Take as an instance the ascetic practices and breathings of Taoism or even the simplest form of abstract meditation: these are all done according to the one principle of subjugating the body under the soul with the purpose of releasing the latter’s power. No wonder many miraculous things do happen which we cannot simply dismiss as superstition. Buddhism was originally atheistic. Gautama Siddharta was an atheist. This is the consensus of many scholars and critics on the teaching of Buddhism. He believed in the soul’s transmigration as well as in nirvana.* Now I have no intention here of lecturing on Buddhism; I only wish to explain why and how many a wonder has been performed in this religion. In Buddhism there is the teaching on escaping the world. Those who take the Buddhist vow must abstain from marriage and meat. They must not kill any living thing. Through ascetic practices they may eventually attain to the elimination of all food. Some monks of high degree can even pierce the unknown past and predict the future. They perform many wonders by Buddhist magic. When what they call their “heart blood” flushes, they are able to foretell the things to come. The engaging in all these different kinds of abstinences and ascetic practices flows from one single governing principle: the Buddhist is attempting to break all physical and material bonds so as to get his soul power released. I know some people, my seniors in age, who joined the Unity Club. They and their fellow-Club members practice abstract meditation and so forth. They tell me that each degree they enter into has its own magnitude of light. The light they perceive follows the truth they penetrate. I believe in what they say, for they are able to be liberated from the suppression of the body and so release the power which Adam possessed before his fall. There is really nothing extraordinary about it. The modern-day Church of Christ, Scientist was founded by Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy. She denied the existence of sickness, pain, sin, and death (though Mrs. Eddy has already died). Since according to her teaching there is no such thing as sickness, whenever one is sick he only needs to exercise his mind against any recognition of pain and he will be healed. This means, then, that if one believes in no sickness he will not be sick. So too, if he does not believe in sin he will not sin. By training man’s will, mind, and emotion to the point of absolutely denying the existence of these things—viewing them as false and deceptive—he will find them nonexistent indeed.
When this teaching was first promulgated, it was opposed by many people. Physicians especially opposed it, for if this were true, then there would be no need for physicians. Yet following their examination of those people healed by the Christian Scientist, these doctors were unable to repudiate it as false. Consequently, more and more people believe; even many famous scientists and physicians embrace this teaching. This is not at all surprising, though, since there is a reservoir of tremendous power in the soul just waiting to be released from the confines of the flesh.
* That state, according to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, “of absolute blessedness, characterized by release from the cycle of reincarnations and attained through the extinction of self.”—Translator