Fear & Dread (The Genesis Series, Part 32)

Every sentence in the Holy Bible is a piece of God. John 1:1:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

The Word was God. 

The Words of God are housed in a Book, but God’s Words are not printer’s ink and paper.  The Book is a medium, a conduit by which the Words are preserved and communicated, just like this digital recording captures words.   Words—good or bad—are spiritual, and they are either alive or dead.  Consider Proverbs 18:21:

Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.

This passage is certainly a literal truth. 

God’s Words are alive.  John 1:14:

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.

Revelation 19:13 speaks of Jesus Christ and reads, “…and His name is called, The Word of God.”  Every sentence is a piece of God. 

We have been warned to handle the Word of God with Godly fear.  Deuteronomy 4:1-2:

1 Now therefore hearken, O Israel, unto the statutes and unto the judgments, which I teach you, for to do them, that ye may live, and go in and possess the land which the LORD God of your fathers giveth you.

2 Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish ought from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you.

Revelation 22:18-19:

18 For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book:

19 And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.

We are made of God’s Words.  Psalm 33:6:

By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth.

God’s Word addresses all things of this life that I need to know.  Change them and you’ll have death and eternal damnation.  Yield to them and you’ll have life and life more abundantly. 

Dear visitor, have you been BORN AGAIN—born a literal second time, this time of the Spirit of God?  God’s Word declares that BORN AGAIN is the only way to see the Kingdom of God.  Jesus speaks to a ruler of the Jews, a man named Nicodemus, in John 3:3:

Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. 

Are you ready to receive the Word of God as written?  In just a few moments, I will invite you to follow me in a simple prompt, and if you follow from your heart, everything changes for you today.  Today, all your sin and shame will be washed away by the saving blood of Jesus Christ.  You will be spotlessly clean.  Today, all of Satan’s shackles in your life will be broken—every single one.  You will be entirely free.  Today, you will be BORN AGAIN.  Here is the prompt I promised: Click onto Further with Jesus for childlike instructions and immediate entry into the Kingdom of God.  NOW FOR TODAY’S SUBJECT.

GOD SAID, Genesis 9:1-2:

1 And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.

2 And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they delivered.

GOD SAID, Genesis 1:26-28:

26 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.

27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

GOD SAID, Proverbs 30:6:

Add thou not unto his words, lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar.

MAN SAID: I’m developing my philosophy of life as I go, and I will admit that it is based on what someone else said but I feel comfortable.  I’m malleable to various inputs, but with the exception of Jesus and the Bible.  That rigid truth just doesn’t fit well with me.  We’ll see how it works out. 

Now THE RECORD: Welcome to GodSaidManSaid feature 1252 that will once again verify the supernatural veracity of God’s beautiful Book, the Holy Bible.  All of these features are archived here in text and streaming audio for the building-up of the faith.  GodSaidManSaid is an excellent digital gospel tract.  Think of someone you would like to win to Christ, or someone whom you’d like to edify.  Think of a subject you think would interest them, or a burning question they’ve struggled to answer.  Type relevant keywords into the GodSaidManSaid search bar (top right), and your device will populate with relevant subjects.  Subjects can be emailed directly to individuals, or posted on your social media pages.  Expect excellent and eternal results!  Every Thursday eve, God willing, these GodSaidManSaid features grow by one.

Thank you for coming.  May the glory of salvation swallow up the contradictions you will encounter. 

You have arrived at the GodSaidManSaid “Genesis Series;” this is Part 32.  Each of these features begins with the following information from the first feature:

According to a 2006 issue of Discover magazine concerning the deceased Carl Sagan: “Sagan approaches religion like any phenomenon.  He isn’t on a quest for life’s meaning, for a comforting philosophy, or even a guide to how we should treat the neighbors.  Sagan seeks truth of a demonstrable kind.  As a puckish example, he wonders why the book of Genesis didn’t include God-inspired truths…” [End of quote]

I recently reviewed an advertisement from a magazine called Free Inquiry that also has a problem with the God of Creation and the first book of the Bible, called Genesis.  Under the heading “Is God Big Enough for the Universe,” Free Inquiry writes:

The authors of Genesis proclaim that God made the heavens and earth in less than a week.  This feat must have amazed these Bronze Age authors, even though they thought the heavens extended only so far as the sky above them.  Of course, they did not know what stars, planets, or galaxies were.  We now know that the universe is so much bigger and so much more complex. [End of quote]

The BORN AGAIN scratch their heads in bewilderment.  Did these folks actually read the book of Genesis? I suppose they did, but God’s revelation is only revealed to the humbled hearts of the children of faith.  This GodSaidManSaid series will be called “The Genesis Series.”  It is our intention to travel through the entire book of Genesis and publish one major God-inspired truth after another.  We will be pulling from previous GodSaidManSaid features and adding the latest information as we go.

How does the Holy Bible, authored by God and penned by holy men thousands of years ago, continually scoop the world’s latest science and upend the world’s wisest detractors?  How does this maligned and ridiculed Book stand unscathed, suffering not even a mild abrasion? 

The carnal skeptics demand “God-inspired truths” in the book of Genesis, God’s first book of the Bible, feeling confident that nothing will come forth to shake their unbelief.  GodSaidManSaid has published 31 staggering—and I mean truly staggering—God-inspired truths so far, and we are still in Chapter 9.  By the way, Genesis has fifty chapters. 

Genesis 9:1-2:

1 And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.

2 And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they delivered.

The following excerpts are from the GodSaidManSaid feature, “Fear and Dread:”

As a process of creation, God has created man to have dominion over all living things through the excellent wisdom and problem-solving creativity placed within man and through the fear and dread of man that God has placed upon His creatures.

Biblical antagonists point to dinosaurs. One of their claims has been that man could not have survived alongside these ravenous giants. Man did survive alongside dinosaurs, of course.

The basic fear of man that creatures exhibit is not a matter of the size of man or the creature, but a matter of the creature''s design.

The old farmer''s position was that the reason horses fear men is because, through the horse''s eye, he sees us much bigger and more powerful than we really are. I''m not aware of any supporting documentation for the farmer''s position, but the concept of fear and dread of man being built into the creature''s psyche is certainly accurate.

The concept of animal fear is addressed in an article titled "Thinking the Way Animals Do," by Temple Grandin, Ph.D., of the Department of Animal Science, Colorado State University. The article was published in the November, 1997, issue of Western Horseman. Concerning genetic design, Dr. Grandin had this to say:

In all animals, both genetic factors and experience determine how an individual will behave in a fear-provoking situation. Fearfulness is a stable characteristic of personality and temperament in animals. [End of quote]

Note that fear is a stabilizing genetic factor of the animals’ created design. In other words, fear and dread were built in at God''s command.

An interesting thing about an animal''s fear is that when fear is experienced or placed in an animal, it can never be erased. Again, Dr. Grandin writes:

The fear circuits in an animal''s brain have been mapped by neuroscientists. When an animal forms a fear memory, it is located in the amygdala, which is in the lower, primitive part of the brain. J.E. LeDoux and M. Davis have discovered that fear memories cannot be erased from the brain. [End of quote]

The concept that fear cannot be erased was demonstrated with rats. According to the report cited in the article, when a rat was electrically shocked for the first time during entrance into a new passageway in a maze, it would never enter that passageway again.

The animal''s fear is a product of creation and experience and, of course, God knew it all the time. Now man has begun to understand the reason why. [End of quotes]

God has preprogrammed and placed upon all land and aquatic creatures the fear and dread of man.  This fear and dread is passed along genetically and neurologically.  This programming includes an ability to detect man’s scent, and the ability to recognize that man is made in the image of God, walks upright like God, and that man speaks just like God.  More Genesis-confirming research follows regarding the universal phenomenon of fear and dread along with information addressing psychological imprinting, a natural occurrence that very much resembles preprogramming and may even employ the same procedure.  Did God place the fear and dread of mankind upon all the creatures of this globe?

In a feature titled “A Landscape of Fear of Humans,” American Scientist addresses research by ecologist Justine Smith, professor at the University of California, Davis.  Excerpts follow:

Animals, even apex predators, take great pains to avoid people—a pervasive problem when these changes disrupt what they eat and where they go. 

In recent years, ecologists have come to appreciate how much animals, even apex predators, fear humans, with myriad effects on animal behaviors and, in turn, ecosystems. 

Animals can be quite sensitive to human presence, even seemingly innocuous recreational activities.  Wildlife conservation strategies must account for the stresses humans cause animals.

Wild animals, even the apex predators that we fear, are terrified of us.  Smith didn’t just find that the puma was afraid; she showed that pumas feed far less when they hear human voices compared to frogs.  Ecologists have spent decades focused on the influence of fear on the relationships between predator and prey, and between apex predators and the smaller predators that they sometimes kill. But in recent years, the focus has shifted.  We have begun to look at how animals’ fear of humans influences a variety of phenomena, ranging from predation rates to ecosystem restoration.  In the increasingly human-dominated world, successful wildlife conservation and management must take into account this fear—which has long gone unaccounted for.  

The feature addresses the elimination of large predators, which occurs as civilization expands and as a result of hunting.  Again, Smith writes:

Whether apex predators retain a genetic memory of this extermination or are reacting to current-day persecution, the effect is the same: Apex predators across the world are afraid of humans.  And this fear causes cascading effects. 

Californian pumas, unwilling to spend too much time at one kill for fear of being stumbled upon by a human, kill more deer in urban areas than they would under less stressful conditions.

I’ll [also] point to studies that show that human recreation—things as innocuous as biking, skiing, or even hiking—is still enough to cause fear-induced behavioral changes in wildlife.  Shalene L. George of the University of Wisconsin and Kevin R. Crooks of Colorado State University found that the presence of hikers and bikers in a natural reserve system in California made mule deer one-third less likely to be active during the day.  Jesse S. Lewis of Arizona State University and his colleagues found that bobcats in Colorado were less likely to appear at locations with many hikers.  Even grizzly bears in the Rocky Mountains of Alberta were found to avoid hikers and off-roaders, and females with cubs moved three times more than usual in response to motorized recreational activity.

A 2018 meta-analysis  in Science documented that 62 species ranging from wild boar to tigers increased their nighttime activity by an average factor of 1.36 in response to a variety of human activities, such as hunting and hiking. 

In addition to the ever-handy scarecrow, a 2003 study in Idaho using carcasses as an animal attractant found that motion-activated speakers that played loud sounds, including people yelling, reduced carcass-consumption by wolves, black bears, and red foxes by 68 percent.

By understanding the fear that we instill in wildlife, and by being respectful, considerate planet-mates, we can better coexist with other species. [End of quotes]

The paragraph heading in the May 6, 2019 feature “Ecology of Fear,” published by Current Biology Magazine, reads: “Fear of the human super-predator.”  Several paragraphs follow:

New research on the ecology of fear is focusing on the impacts of animals’ fear of the human ‘super-predator.’  A recent analysis of worldwide data has documented that humans, as predators, have a unique ecology that includes killing prey, and particularly medium and large carnivores, at many times the rate they are killed by non-human predators, meriting humans being called a ‘super-predator.’ Two subsequent meta-analyses correspondingly indicated that the danger from humans has created a global ‘landscape of fear,’ affecting the movement and degree of nocturnal behavior in virtually every species of land mammal.  Experiments testing how fearful wildlife are of the human super-predator have demonstrated that impala, deer, European badgers and mountain lions fear hearing playbacks of humans (simply conversing calmly) far more than hearing the vocalizations of their non-human predators; and even elephants flee at hearing people speak.  The landscape of fear of the human super-predator affecting mammals at multiple trophic levels, indicated by the aforementioned meta-analyses, has recently been experimentally demonstrated in a large-scale manipulation in which the researchers broadcast playbacks of humans, or non-predator (control) vocalizations, across a 1 km² [approximately a quarter of a mile] blocks of forest, for five weeks, in California’s central coast mountains.  Fear of humans suppressed the movement and activity of carnivores, causing avoidance and more cautious nocturnal behavior in bobcats and reduced activity and feeding in skunks and opossums.  A previous manipulative experiment in the same system demonstrated that mountain lions reduce the time they spend feeding on prey they have killed when they hear humans. 

Spiders and grasshoppers in a terrarium may seem a far cry from wolves and elk in North America’s Rocky Mountains, or lions and elephants on the African savanna, but is this apparent difference a biological one?  There are compelling reasons to expect that the ecology of fear may manifest itself differently across different taxa, but that the net effect of fear on populations may be largely the same. 

Humans have recently been referred to as a ‘super-predator’ and many animals are most terrified of humans with possible repercussions on prey demography and trophic cascades. [End of quotes]

God said animals would fear and dread humans. 

March 5, 2019, Cedar Run Wildlife Refuge published a feature titled, “The Dangers of Imprinting,” informing citizens about the process of “imprinting” in baby birds:

For birds, though, this time period when they are young is called “imprinting,” in which they establish what they belong with by what’s taking care of them.  Regardless if a bird imprints appropriately on conspecifics (animals of the same species) or on humans, the process is irreversible because it actually promotes a physical change in their brain structure, and therefore cannot be undone no matter what method is attempted. 

Imprinting is a process still studied by scientists, and is quite an illusive topic.  What we do know, however, is that different bird species have different imprinting windows, times at which baby birds are susceptible to the process of imprinting.  Although in general, we know that once the process is completed, it is permanent.  [End of quotes]

A final paragraph comes from WildlifeCenter.org’s article “Human-Imprinting in Birds and the Importance of Surrogacy:”

If young birds imprint on humans, they will identify with humans for life.  Reversing the imprinting process is impossible—these birds will identify with humans rather than with their own species for the rest of their lives. 

Human-imprinted birds are not necessarily “friendly” toward humans, nor does it mean that they always enjoy being near humans. Human-imprinted birds have no fear of people, and this lack of fear can sometimes lead to aggression and other complicated behavioral issues. It’s not unusual for an imprinted bird to exhibit territorial behaviors toward humans just as it would with members of its own species.  [End of quote]

The skeptics smugly challenge the Holy Scriptures demanding God-inspired truths in the book of Genesis—and there they certainly are: bold, beautiful, abundant, and inerrant.  Nearly 4,000 years ago, God said animals would fear and dread humans, and today’s science confirms it—animals fear and dread humans, even a global and all-inclusive issue.  God’s Word is true and righteous altogether, a place to build a life that will last forever.  

GOD SAID, Genesis 9:1-2:

1 And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.

2 And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they delivered.

GOD SAID, Genesis 1:26-28:

26 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.

27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

GOD SAID, Proverbs 30:6:

Add thou not unto his words, lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar.

MAN SAID: I’m developing my philosophy of life as I go, and I will admit that it is based on what someone else said but I feel comfortable.  I’m malleable to various inputs, but with the exception of Jesus and the Bible.  That rigid truth just doesn’t fit well with me.  We’ll see how it works out. 

 

Now you have THE RECORD.

 

 

References:

Authorized King James Version

Blumner, R., Free Inquiry

“Human-Imprinting in Birds and the Importance of Surrogacy,” WildlifeCenter.org

“The Dangers of Imprinting,” Cedar Run Wildlife Refuge, March 5, 2019

GodSaidManSaid, “Fear and Dread”

Murphy, Asia, “A Landscape of Fear of Humans,” American Scientist, January 2022

Zanette, L., and Clinchy, M., “Ecology of Fear,” Current Biology Magazine, May 6, 2019

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