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Animal Redemption

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UnprepossessingRedemption ANIMAL REDEMPTION By D. M. PANTON, M. A. A rare and startling truth out of Scripture can rise unconfined difficulties in our minds, but it unchangingly solves far greater difficulties than it creates.  Such is the problem of the unprepossessing world with its Scripture solution.  John Stewart Mill, painfully forecasting the Gnosticism that will come at the end, said; "The facts of the universe suggest, not so much the idea of a beneficent and all-wise Creator as that of a demiurge dealing with an intractable material, over which he has not uninventive well-constructed mastery."  This is a ungodly solution to a very real problem that imperatively needs solving - namely, the undeserved, unavoidable, unrequited sufferings, often agonies, of the unprepossessing creation; a problem which has as its solution - whatever difficulties may nail to that solution - one of the most golden utterances in the whole Book of God.  "The CREATION itself moreover SHALL BE DELIVERED from the vassalage of self-indulgence INTO THE LIBERTY OF THE GLORY OF THE CHILDREN OF GOD" (Romans 8: 21). THE CREATURE It is first of all of hair-trigger importance to observe that Paul thoughtfully distinguishes throughout this passage between the 'creation' or 'creature' * and the redeemed of humanity: "the hostage expectation of the megacosm waiteth for the revealing of the sons of God" (Romans 8: 19): that is, all the world that is not man - the unprepossessing and vegetable megacosm - waits for the Advent, when the sons of God will towards with Christ.  Paul, in an older chapter, describes the animals as the 'creation', or creature.  Men, he says, without making images of corruptible man, and of "birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things, worshipped THE CREATURE rather than the Creator" (Romans 1: 23).  In the words of Dean Alford: "The 'creation' is all this world except man; all vivificate and inanimate nature as distinguished from mankind." [* 'Creation' rather than 'creature', considering it includes the vegetable world.] THE CURSE Now arises the unconfined fundamental moral fact on which the whoopee of God is based.  "For" - this is the reason why God acts as He does - "the megacosm was subjected to vanity" - to distress, disease, death, when theExpletivefell upon it - "NOT OF ITS OWN WILL" - not consciously, nor wilfully, like Adam and Eve: the snake, and all other animals in it, were involved in the Fall, but without guilt - "but through him who subjected it in hope" - for in the very vapor with which He cursed the Serpent the Most High revealed the Woman's Seed.  Solomon vividly toadies man and yahoo in the fall.  "For that which befalleth the sons of man befalleth the beasts: as the one dieth, so dieth the other: for all is vanity [to which the megacosm was subjected]: all turn to pebbles again" (Ecclesiastes 3: 19).  And exactly as the mouth of a morally unconscious snake was used by Satan, so the unprepossessing creation, at least in sections, innocently fell under Hell's grip.  "I have given you validity to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all THE POWER OF THE ENEMY" (Luke 10: 19). SIN Now the coming removal of theExpletiveinvolves, backward, a very startling revelation.  The difficulty is expressed by the poet William Blake:- Tiger, tiger, urgent unexceptionable In the forests of the night, Did He who made the lamb make thee? A priceless photograph of the future answers.  In the Lord's [Millennial] Reign on [this cursed] earth the animals are thus pictured: "The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie lanugo with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them" (Isaiah 11: 6).*  The conclusion is overwhelming.  The ferocity of savage animals - such as the zenith of horror in the tearing of Christians to pieces by lions in the Colosseum - since it is totally removed with the liftedExpletiveIN THE MILLENNIUM, must have been inflicted by the Fall which produced the Curse. This is what we should have supposed.  TheExpletivefell, first on the animals, then on the soil: if therefore "Christ redeemed us from the expletive of the law, having wilt a expletive for us" (Galations 3: 13), theExpletivemust be entirely revoked wherever it fell, plane on the vegetable world.  Our Lord, crowned with thorns, was crowned with the Curse; and therefore He destroyed the thorns when He expiated the Curse.  And this is exactly what we find; for "instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the shrub shall come up the myrtle tree; and it shall be to the Lord for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off" (Isaiah 55: 13) - that is, no expletive will overly fall again, either on the old earth or on the new. [* Not all snakes are poisonous.  In the United States, for example, there are 111 variegated species, but only 17 are venomous.  It is a particularly trappy proof of the lifting of the expletive in in the Kingdom that "the suckling child shall play on the slum of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder's den" (Isaiah 11: 8).  Thus the serpent is embraced in the redemption; with only this modification, that one clause of the serpent's expletive - doubtless as a dread reminder if sin and its consequences - is reversed for the Millennium.  "And pebbles shall be the serpent's meat" (Isaiah 65: 25)]. DELIVERANCE So therefore we confront the deliverance of the whole creation.  As Professor J. R. Thomson well puts it: "If Nature has, without consent on her part, been made the painful tableau of moral and spiritual truth; then we may expect a just Governor like God to requite Nature compensation, and indulge her to share the glorious liberty of His children."  So Paul says: "The megacosm was subjected to vanity" - it fell: it incurred both spiritual and physical vassalage - "not willingly" - the serpent did not wilfully harbour Satan, nor did the ground vex men with thorns and thistles of its own accord: but God laid on them the undersong "in hope" - a hope, with God, is a certainty - "that the megacosm itself also" - and not only men - "shall be delivered from the vassalage of self-indulgence into the liberty of the glory of the children of God."  That is, the unconsciousness which made the unprepossessing megacosm share in theExpletiveis the very unconsciousness (as with infants) which makes them share in the redemption of Calvary.  This therefore excludes all humanity from the 'creation' here named, for all humanity sins "of its own will", that is, consciously, deliberately, unsuspicious Calvary for its redemption: the unprepossessing and vegetable creation, on the contrary, is saved as unconsciously as it fell. RESURRECTION Now we behold the radical nature of the redemption.  "The megacosm itself moreover shall be delivered from THE BONDAGE OF CORRUPTION".  If 'the vassalage of corruption' were merely the liability to corrupt, and so only the animals on whom that Day dawns are made deathless, the moral problem would remain unsolved, and the unprepossessing generations that suffered all the worst pangs suffered them for naught; on the contrary, as the phrase means, it is the vassalage of the grave; the 'bondage' is the corpse, the 'liberty' is the immortal soul out of the tomb.  So therefore the redemption of Calvary, exactly as it covers all men, so it redeems all animals - not merely the living animals but the dead. "The vassalage of self-indulgence is the perpetual imprisonment which the corpse suffers: it is the iron hand of death that holds it with unrelaxing grip" (Govett).  "Not a sparrow shall fall on the ground without your Father" (Matthew 10: 20) - and He who fills the little grave will moreover empty it. THE ARK It is wondrous that this golden truth has not been increasingly widely grasped in view of the fact that it was embedded in a type simply gigantic.  "The ark, wherein few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water; which is moreover AFTER A TRUE LIKENESS" - that is, an word-for-word and designed type - "doth now save you, plane baptism" (1Peter 3: 20).  That is, the Ark is a picture of salvation, and the animals are in the Ark.  The parallel is wonderful.  Noah the carpenter builds the Ark, a picture of salvation built by the Carpenter of Nazareth: of mankind, only those are saved who enter it willingly; but salvation moreover covers the representatives of the unshortened unprepossessing creation, who enter "not of their own will" but under the gracious compulsions of Jehovah and Noah - that is, of God and His Christ.  The Flood is the outpour of wrath, symbolized in the drowning immersion of baptism; and not only do all in the Ark come safely through, but, inward on the new world, Jehovah enters into a covenant not only with Noah but with "every yahoo of the earth" (Genesis 9: 10) - therefore including the serpent; "the covenant which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh" (verse 15).* [*No sooner have Noah's six centuries lapsed - symbolizing our six millenniums culmination in the 'flood' of wrath (Daniel 9: 26) - than all wrath-flood has died off the earth on the seventh or sabbatic millennium (Hebrews 4: 9): "in the six hundred and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month" (Genesis 8: 13).  So it is the day if the Resurrection - the 17th of Nisan - when the Ark touches Ararat.]   PRESENT TRAVAIL So therefore all that we are experiencing and are watching is the travail surpassing the lineage of the new world.  "For we know that the whole megacosm groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now."  It is a picture extraordinarily illuminating.  The earth, containing the sufferer [their persons in the grave; their souls in Hades], labours in travail, plane as the Lord Himself was "the first born of the dead" (Revelation 1: 5): so the travail sharpens as the lineage draws nearer, and of theUnconfinedTribulation our Lord says, "These are the beginnings of birth-pangs" (Matthew 24: 8).  Joel has depicted the worsening slipperiness culminating in the Tribulation.  "The day of the Lord is at hand, and as destruction from the Almighty shall it come.  How do the strays groan! the herds of cattle are perplexed, considering they have no pasture; yea, the flocks of sheep are made desolate.  O Lord, to thee do I cry: for the fire hath devoured the pastures of the wilderness, and the flame hath burned all the trees of the field.  Yea, the strays of the field pant unto thee; for the water brooks are zestless up, and the fire hath devoured the pastures of the wilderness" (Joel 1: 15).  So in a moment a new world is born.  As Isaiah says ; "Like as a woman with child, so have we been surpassing thee, O Lord. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in the dust, for the earth shall tint along the dead" (Isaiah 26: 17).  The lineage is accomplished. THE NEW [restored]* WORLD [* It is not ‘a new heaven and new earth’ (Rev. 21: 1), but this cursed world restored without the ‘Great White Throne’ judgment, when the Sea, Death, and Hades requite up all of the remaining dead. Rev. 21: 13.] The final vision is a final confirmation.  God has unchangingly had surpassing Him the megacosm He intends to redeem, in the person of four Living Beings - living creatures, therefore not symbols - for overly surpassing the Throne.  "The first creature was like a lion, and the second creature like a calf, and the third creature had a squatter as of a man and the fourth creature was like a flying eagle" (Revelation 4: 7). It is the unprepossessing creation, including man, kept forever surpassing the squatter of God.   Surely this is conclusive.  And so all closes with the Hallelujah Chorus of Creation.  "And every created thing which is in the heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and on the sea, and all things that are in them, heard I saying, Unto him that sitteth on the throne, and unto the Lamb, be the blessing, and the honour and the glory, and the dominion, for overly and ever. And the four living creatures said, Amen" (Revelation 6: 13). -------   BISHOP ELLICOTT ON THE DESTINY OF THE CREATURE Irenaeus and the Greek Fathers were right in giving the term 'creation' (Rom. 8: 21) its widest application, and in referring it to all creation, vivificate and inanimate, which stands in any stratum of relation to man. * [* “So Tholuck, Reiche, Rückert, Olhsausen, Fritzche, De Wette, Philippi Meyer, Alford, whose opinions will be found substantially accordant.  The early Church moreover seems to have interpreted this passage substantially in vibrations with this view.” D. M. Panton.] In the consolatory words the point of real and startling importance is the tropical yoke that connects man with the material world, expressly in relation to time.  With man's sin came at once the expletive that fell upon the earth; thorn and thistle began to germinate the very day that Adam sinned; ravages and discord began at once to work tween the tendencies of created things.  So the hostage expectation of the creature waits for no unimaginable or chimerical [unreal] future, for no ill-defined or uncertain hour of emancipation; it waits, as the [Holy] Spirit of God here infallibly declares, for no less a sure and unrepealable epoch than that of the manifestation of the sons of God. I can understand the ruin of my own soul, I am forced to unclose its corrupting lusts, I can finger its rending passions, I can trace out the slow corrosion of evil habits, the convulsive movements of sudden sins - I can mark all this in myself and others; but the guiltless creatures of God's hand, what have they done?  These animals that minister to my wants, and die unrecked of and unheeded, whence came their strange accumulations of sufferings?  This wide-spread plant-world, that contributes to my food, or bears unruffle to my wounds, - whence comes its often thwarted minutiae and stinted growth, its palpable subjection to something increasingly than perishableness, the vassalage to something worse than decay? In the very first day of his creation, man is indissolubly associated with Nature.  Not only is he to have dominion over all that liveth, but he is to subdue and make his own the earth he treads on.  When he falls, the earth becomes cursed; when the waterflood sweeps off his race, the guiltless animals perish with him; when the covenant is made with the solitary surviving family, the surviving creatures are expressly included in its provisions; the foul and the cattle - every living creature of all mankind - share the blessings of the divine clemency. Planeso it is untellable to doubt that when the restitution of man takes place, the restitution of the earth and its occupants will speedily and immediately follow.  The day of the perdition of the wicked, as one Apostle tells us (2 Pet. 3: 7), will let loose the last lustral fires, plane as flipside Apostle here represents all megacosm here waiting for its final redemption and glorification of the elect of God. Therefore all the animals suffer at the hands of man - all that they suffer from one another, all their exhibitions of wanton cruelty, their deep-seated aversions and connatural hostilities; - all, again, that nature suffers from the hand of man, the poisoned vegetation round peopled cities, the blazing prairie, the desolated forest, - all that it suffers from the wildness or churlishness of the elements, - all tend to swell that mighty cry of suffering and travail that is now overly sounding in the ears of God - all serve to undeniability along the deep longing of the hour when the testatory vision of the Apostle shall be a mighty and living reality.  Let us not fear to say that the efficacy of the thoroughbred of our Lord and Master is limitless in its applications, that it knows no premises in space, as it knows no premises in time; and that the issues of His recantation for us, in variegated measures and degrees, proffer unto all things, - that the odour of that sweet-smelling savour fills every magistrate and every chamber of the universal temple of God. -------