Humans rule over the creatures around us. It is what God has given us to do. It is a divine mandate. Angels are a little higher in this regard. They rule with an even greater mandate. The name of the Lord Jesus Christ, his reputation, his faithful loyalty to the Father’s commands, is interwoven into the angelic mandate. This is from millennia even before Jesus came. The preexistence of the Logos, whose fleshly existence we know as Jesus Christ, made this angelic Christianisation possible long before Christianity appeared among humans. This pre-existence inspired prophets such Isaiah and others. This too was happening before Jesus came, and we have evidence of this in the writings of these prophets, as seen especially in the discoveries of Dead Sea Scrolls. Now at last humans too have our mandate strengthened, bolstered, by teachings of Christ Jesus who has now appeared to us in the flesh. We are to be good stewards of this planet and its living things, not destroyers. If we destroy it, the Book of Revelation tells us God will destroy us. But that will be what happens. Even though humans are doomed to wrath, let us try to escape by believing in this Christ and holding to the light of his teachings, and let us pray like Joel foretold, and maybe God will show some mercy when His wrath unfolds.
