At this moment you may be reading this column because the title caught your attention and you don't know what to make of it!
No, let me assure you, you haven't opened up a French translation of our magazine, but you have opened yourself up to a valuable lesson regarding biblical prophecy. The lesson is this: Not all things are as they appear and, to understand certain vital lessons, you must never be satisfied to simply scratch the surface. Why? So you may gain a full understanding. Truth be told, one day your life could depend on it!
So let's dig a little deeper as I translate the title for you. It is "Beauty and the Beast" of fairy tale fame. Many of us are familiar with this tale of a beautiful young lady's growing respect and admiration for a beastly figure of a man. At the end of the tale, love triumphs and the beastly character is transformed to his original state as a handsome young prince.
But it was only the young lady who saw beyond the hideous exterior and gruff mannerisms of the beast to understand his inner beauty. Everyone else had rejected him except her. The moral of the story is to never judge a book by its cover and to appreciate love's power for renewal and transformation.
Truth can be stranger than fiction
But beyond childhood bedtime reading, did you realize that the Bible has a lot to say about One who is truly beautiful versus another who is a "beast"? Both personalities come into contact with one another in prophetic Scripture.
But this truth is stranger than fiction. Why? In the Bible, the roles are much different from the fairy-tale scenario. It is the hero of the biblical narrative who is thought to be ugly and worthy of repudiation, whereas it is the Beast who is thought to be "the beauty" and gains almost everyone's admiration and allegiance.
