Ecclesiastes 3:18
I said in mine heart concerning the estate of the sons of men, that God might manifest them, and that they might see that they themselves are beasts. I said in mine heart concerning the estate of the sons of men, that God might manifest them, and that they might see that they themselves are beasts.
God brings the sons of men to see themselves as they are, and Solomon expresses the desire that they might see that in their mortal, creaturely condition they themselves are beasts. That manifestation concerns one respect in which man is no higher than the animals, namely that both are subject to death.
In death man has no preeminence above a beast, for all is vanity. Both by nature have but one life, one breath or spirit, and one death, both die alike and go to one place, both are of dust and turn to dust again. Both alike depend on God for the breath of life, and neither man nor beast possesses an immortal life-principle that continues independently of God. Human honor or wealth cannot prevent death, for in mortal life the same mortality falls on man and animal.
The human spirit is not exempt from death, nor does a conscious human spirit continue upward after death while the beast's spirit goes downward to the earth. The spirit is human, not divine, and shares the fate of the whole person. Likeness to beasts is therefore in respect to death and mortal condition only, not equality in every respect. Man remains superior in organization and in higher intellectual, reasoning powers, and infinitely superior in future prospects if righteous, being offered immortality as an encouragement to seek God.
Fallen unbelieving man of himself has no preeminence above a beast as regards future life. Having broken connection with God and become alienated from the life of God, he stands on the same plane as animals. He is kept alive only by God's goodness and mercy with a perverted, temporary life through perverted channels of vegetable and animal food, water, air and sunshine, not possessing God's eternal life, so as the one dies so dies the other, for all have one breath or spirit. This natural sameness in mortality does not extend to salvation, which was devised only for man. Beasts remain irrevocably attached to the sin-cursed world to be destroyed with it, while only men who believe and obey the gospel will benefit from grace unto everlasting life, and those who choose to be as brute beasts and deny the Lord that bought them will take the consequence of destruction.
Being like the beasts that perish describes this shared mortality in mortal life, not the absence of a resurrection. Without a resurrection the dead remain dead.