WILDLIFE

                                                                        Wildlife

I visited a wildlife sanctuary in Tasmania just before closing time. I poured some feed into my cold hand and leaned over the fence to feed an approaching animal. The beast took a painful chomp of my thumb! I grimaced with pain and then saw a sign, ‘Warning: Do Not Feed Tasmanian Devil.’ There’s wildlife and there’s animal domestication. Lions and tigers belong to the former, cattle and sheep illustrate the latter. God showed Adam the animals, ‘So Adam gave names to all cattle, to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field’ (Gen. 2:20). Adam’s commission, i.e., the Cultural Mandate (Gen. 1:26-28), was to cultivate God’s creation to the glory of God.

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Now, obviously something has gone wrong with God’s ‘very good’ creation when lions, tigers, and Tasmanian Devils want to eat us! Adam was mandated to look after and protect the place where God had taken him, i.e., His garden ‘eastward in Eden’ (Gen. 2:8). However, Adam sided with Satan against God, the same devil that had used a serpent in the garden as his mouthpiece (Gen. 3:1).

Often overlooked, evil already must have come into existence in creation prior to Adam’s sin. For this this treason against God, Adam and his wife were driven from the garden into the wilderness where wildlife dwells. Consider the second Adam, Jesus. ‘Immediately the Spirit drove Him into the wilderness. And He was there in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan, and was with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered to Him’ (Mark 1:12-13). Those ‘wild beasts’ are dangerous animals. The good news is that, unlike our previous federal representative, the replacement Adam did not side with Satan but remained faithful to God.

Some believe there was absolutely no death in creation till after God passed judgment on mankind when Adam ate the forbidden fruit. We then wrestle with what anteaters ate instead of ants etc. Others think that wildlife simply just got a whole lot crueller and more dangerous in the wilderness.

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Old map legends used to depict dragons to portray wilderness both land and sea. ‘Here be dragons’ referred to dangerous and unexplored areas. Here’s an example from Scripture, ‘And I hated Esau, and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness’ (Mal. 1:3 KJV).

Dragons may make you think of fire-breathing flying-serpents, perhaps like those mentioned in the following verse, ‘a land of trouble and anguish, from which came the lioness and lion, the viper and fiery flying serpent’ (Isa. 30:6). However, the Bible uses the word for various forms of wildlife, e.g., jackals, whales, serpents and sea serpents. There’s no mistaking what dragon means here, ‘So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him’ (Rev. 12:9; cf. 14:29, 20:2). Did Satan use a talking serpent to try to tempt Jesus in the wilderness? Christ went on to crush the serpent’s head, bringing peace – even for wildlife.

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 ‘The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them. The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. The infant will play near the cobra’s den, and the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest, they will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea’ (Isaiah 11:6-9).