We have no started Chapter Three, which is all about the Epic of Gilgamesh. I am providing the intro in this post so you can get a little bit of a point of view.
Introduction:
Have you ever felt like you were living in a story? Like people were watching you but you could never catch them peaking behind the bushes? The security cameras are just too well hidden, and every body seems to know their lines so well.
In a very real sense all of us are living in a story, God is telling a grand epic, and all of us have our role.All of the actors, save One, have one thing in common. All of mankind has fallen and is need of a savior. The bible is the story of that fall, of God's preparations of the coming of His Savoir, and finally, coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ. He is the grand hero of this epic. No one can escape God's story. Some of Adam's children come to understand and love this story. They believe in the story of Christ's work of faith and love and know it to be true description of what God has done and is doing in this word. Others, however, refuse to believe this. Because of this they are caught in an odd predicament. They live as characters in a story that they don't believe, and they can't make they story be untrue by not believing in it. So they must make up lies about the story in which they are characters. Still, they continue to lie about the word and pretend that the world works differently from what God declares in the bible. But deep in their hearts their consciences tells them otherwise. They can't get out of the tale, and even when they try to get out, they are just playing their roles. As one of our poets, famous rock band Jethro Tull, has said,"The monkey willing to strike up the tune".
When Christians tell stories, they tell stories that picture to us the world that God created. C.S. Lewis does this very well in his Chronicles of Narnia. Even though Aslan is not Jesus Christ, he still teaches us about Jesus. He is a sort of Christ figure in that he shows us a small picture of what Christ has done for us. Lewis understood that mankind has fallen and that the salvation God offers us in the person of Jesus Christ is our only hope. And so the story that he tells gives us a small picture of man's fallen condition and of God's cure for this fallen condition.
Pagans, who live outside of the covenant with the God of the bible, frequently have Christ figures as well, even though their overall stories are lies. They know that mankind has fallen, but in their unbelief they must invent their own ways to solve man's fallen condition. And so pagans have false christs in their stories, men who attempt to drag men out of their fallen condition without recognizing the saving work of Jesus Christ. History is full of these wicked men.
Hitler thought that he could remake mankind and reverse the curse by changing the genetic makeup of the world. He thought he could save the world if only he could make everyone white.
Acts 12:20-24 tells the story of Herod Agrippa who thought that his ability to supply people of Tyre and Sidon with bread qualified him as a messiah. God struck him down for his presumption, and he was eaten from the inside out by worms.
Literature is also full of these sorts of men. Tolkien's Saruman thought that his machines from Orthanc could remake the world and usher in a new age. Tolkien, a Christian, had him learn a similar lesson to that of Herod Agrippa.
These are always false christs, and Gilgamesh is one of the pagan world's most famous false christs.
- Itroduction to Chapter 3, Omnibus I (17-18)
