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If you are old enough, you might remember when “ant farms” were sold to hobbyists. These consisted of a layer of dirt containing an ant colony set between two panes of glass so that observers could see the insects’ activities. This is a parable I once heard at a Camp Meeting of the Creation Seventh Day Adventist Church concerning an ant farm.
A certain man and his son owned one of these colonies, and they loved and cared for their ants.
As time passed, the man and his son noticed that the ants were beginning to have problems. They were unhappy. They were fighting with each other, even killing one another. The colony was suffering, and the owners knew that if the situation were to continue it would collapse, and all the ants would die out.
There was always the option, of course, to just dump these defective ants out and start over with a new set. This course of action would have been pefectly understandable, but the man and his son loved their ants... in fact, they knew each ant by name, and didn’t want any one of them to be destroyed. So they devised a plan, a very radical plan, in which the son, who was human, would become an ant in order to communicate with the colony members as an equal. He would speak to them on their own level, and teach them how to avoid the upcoming disaster. After much discussion about the details, they enacted their plan; the son became an ant, and the father placed him, as an ant, into the colony in order to remedy the situation.
When the son appeared, he began to call the other ants over, and to teach them how to cooperate with one another, to work and to live as a benefit to the community. Unfortunately, while some listened to him, others became angry that he was disrupting their course of action. They turned on him and attacked him, eventually killing him in a very cruel way.
The father had anticipated this, and he removed his son from the colony, restoring him to life. Despite the fact that the son died, his time within the colony was not wasted on a futile mission. Some of the ants, not many of them, but some of those who had listened to him, came to understand what the son was teaching them. They repented of what they have been doing, and they in turn began to teach others what they needed to do in order to survive the destruction that would result from the chaos and violence.
The relationship between a man and an ant can be used to illustrate the difference between Yahweh and man. This is imperfect in its literal understanding, as most parables are, because as advanced as a man is compared to an ant, a man is not infinite, nor is he all-powerful. The difference is enough to illustrate the relevant principles, however, and here is where the parable gets interesting to me, and unlike anything I had ever heard before.
In the minds of most Christians, they would imagine that after the son was resurrected, he was restored to his former status as a man, in order to resume his relationship with his father as it was before. This is not what happened with regard to the Heavenly Father and His Son.
In reality, although the Son is still the Father’s Only Begotten, and nothing can ever change that, the Son remains forever what he became in order to save the colony of ants... an ant. While They remain as One, the Father and Son are forever changed by what happened. They can commune with one another, but they will never be the same as they were before, or the same as each other.
The Bible says that God so loved the world that He gave us His only begotten Son. (John 3:16) It doesn't say He lent us the Son, but He gave us His son, forever, an eternal gift of infinite value.
The Bible reveals this to us in a few very important verses from the Book of Zechariah:
“And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplications; and they shall look upon Me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for Him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for Him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn.” (Zech 12:10)
“In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the House of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness.” (Zech 13:1)
“And one shall say unto Him, ‘What are these wounds in thine hands?’ Then He shall answer, ‘Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends.’” (Zech 13:6)
It is true that some prophecies are hard to understand... some are a bit unclear, and can have multiple interpretations or dual fulfillments. But once you know about the ministry of Yahshua, once you have seen the Savior, these verses cannot mean anything else than their obvious significance.
Here we see someone pierced, through the hands, for our sins... to set a fountain of salvation flowing for our cleansing. This was accomplished at infinite cost, for in eternity, Yahshua will bear His humble form. Those marks on His hands will serve as an everlasting reminder that because of love, because of the love for His friends, He became and remains a man rather than remaining a pure spirit like the Father. (John 4:24, Luke 24:39) This sacrifice, one that we can scarcely understand in our mortal flesh, stands as an everlasting witness, a monument to God’s love for fallen humanity. This parable is one that I have not heard anywhere else, nor have I heard its meaning expressed anywhere else than in the Bride that loves and honors her husband.
David.