What is man? Where does man come from? What is his origin? What is the destiny of man? These are the burning questions of the past and of the present. To have them answered we need something more than scientific research. Neither biology or psychical research can answer these questions.
Evolution claims to have discovered that the race came from the very lowest of animal life and that the original man was nothing but a great big ape. To study this illustrious ancestry of the human race, a professor had a cage made and placed in the African jungle to watch the monkeys and to study their chatterings. He watched them for years, and we suppose the monkeys watched him as well. He wanted to learn the monkey language and came back with a vocabulary of some unearthly sounds. But evolution is a lie! There is an unbridgeable gulf between the highest type of monkey and the lowest of the human race. The revelation of God answers the question, "What is man?" and answers it in a marvelous way. No such answer is found in any of the "ancient writings" of ancient nations. Only the Bible gives us the answer.
"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. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." (Genesis 1:26-27 KJV)
Man, originally, is God's greatest creature; he stands at the top of God's creatures, except for the angels-- the tenants of the universe. Man was made a little lower than the angels. There is no such thing as the ascent of man or that man worked himself upward and still does so to become a better and nobler creature. There is no such thing.
Man has rather had a descent-- a downward spiral from his original created state. Man sinned against God and fell. God's Word gives us the record of it and apart from it there is no explanation for the origin of evil. And because man sinned he is what he is today. As another has said, "the first man, son of our fallen parents murdered his brother, and from that time the unerring pen of inspiration shows an almost unbroken record of avarice, brutality, corruption, deceit, envy, falsehood, gluttony, hatred, injustice, jealousy, knavery, lust, malice, naughtiness, obduracy, perverseness, quarrelsomeness, rebellion, savagery, treachery, unbelief, vice, and wickedness." Only God could write about man as it is written in His Word.
"Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me." (Psalm 51:5.)
"The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?" (Jeremiah 17:9)
The Son of God tells us, "For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, Thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: All these evil things come from within, and defile the man." (Mark 7:21-23 KJV)
"The LORD looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, and seek God. They are all gone aside, they are all together become filthy: there is none that doeth good, no, not one. Have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge? who eat up my people as they eat bread, and call not upon the LORD." (Psalms 14:2-4 KJV)
"...The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment." (Isaiah 1:5-6 KJV)
MAN...Dead in trespasses and sins, walking according to his own lusts, a slave of sin, a slave of satan, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and the mind, serving the diverse lusts and pleasures, living in malice and hatred, envy, hateful and hating one another, children of wrath-- such is man according to God's estimate and revelation. It is "man's descent." And that descent still continues. It is not arrested by education, reformation, prohibition, sanitation, legislation, or anything else. Man cannot improve or become better by what he does for himself for he is negatively and positively bad.
The present day moral conditions of the race vindicate most clearly the divine predictions of the Word of God concerning man in this age and what man will be when this age terminates. "Evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived." (2Tim. 2:13). How true today! "This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away." (2 Tim 3:1-5.) How true today! And let it be noticed, it is in the religious spheres, these things are especially to be looked for. "Heady, highminded, blasphemers" applies especially to the infidels of colleges and universities, who under the garb of "criticism" deny the Divine revelation of Scripture and the Truth of God. And in the non-religious world, immoralities and ungodliness increase at a frightful rate-- so that the world becomes more and more a sink of vileness showing that the words of our blessed Lord, as to the end of the age, are being fulfilled. "As it was in the days of Noah-- as it was in the days of Lot-- so shall it be when the Son of Man cometh." Such is the descent of man! Such is man!
Is there any hope for man? Yes! The hope for lost man is Jesus Christ! The only ascent of man possible is through redemption. The ascent begins at the Cross of the Second Man-- the Last Adam-- the Lord from Heaven, Who came to redeem man. Through Christ's precious, blessed work on the cross, as the sin-bearer, man can be saved by believing on Him. By redemption through Christ Jesus, man may be lifted from the horrible depths of degradation into the unspeakable heights of eternal glory. But how sad it is that the only possible way of ascent for man is denied in most of the religious world. The religious world follows in the way of Cain-- the way of "good works" religion-- wherein the sacrifice of the Lamb-- the Lord Jesus Christ-- is rejected. The Cross, redemption by blood, regeneration by the Holy Spirit are rejected and because of this, man remains hopeless in his alienated condition. And why do they reject the Cross of Christ as the way for man's ascent? Because they deny man's descent-- that man is a LOST SINNER.
Taken from Our Hope Magazine, Volume 27 and Modified/edited by Cobblestone Road Ministries.