Читать книгу Satan: The Defeated Foe - Kenneth B. Alexander BSL JD Deacon - Страница 18

Satan makes his scriptural appearance in the matter of Cain and Abel. “Now the man [Adam] had relations with his wife Eve, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain, and she said, “I have gotten a manchild with the help of the Lord.” Again, she gave birth to his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of flocks, but Cain was a tiller of the ground” (Gen 4:1-2). Cain and Abel grew up and it came time for them to bring offerings to the Lord. “Abel, on his part also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and for his offering; but for Cain and for his offering He had no regard. So Cain became very angry and his countenance fell” (Gen 4:4-5). Why did God favor Abel’s offering over Cain’s?

Cain’s offering comes from the earth; he worked the soil (lit., ground, ’ăḏāmâh, Gen. 4:2; cf. 3:17) lining him up with God’s curse of the earth. “Cursed is the ground because of you; In toil [sorrow] you will eat of it All the days of your life” (Gen 3:17). Abel’s offering, however, lines up with man’s original purpose, to have dominion over life (cf. 1:28); he kept flocks. He also lined up with the purpose of Christ in that Christ was the “lamb of God” and thus had more spiritual insight than his brother. Abel went out of his way to please God (which meant he had faith in God, Heb. 11:6), whereas Cain was simply discharging a duty. Abel’s actions were righteous, whereas Cain’s were evil mostly because the love of God was not in his heart. (1 John 3:12). It came to be a matter of the hearts of both men. Cain’s lack of faith shows up in his response to God’s rejection of his offering of fruit (Gen. 4:5). Rather than being concerned about remedying the situation and pleasing God, he was very angry.

In that context, Cain's offering was an act of independence or rebellion. Since God does not look on outward appearance, but judges by the heart, Cain's heart was wrong before the Lord. However, in His mercy, the Lord gently counseled Cain, and gave him a way out, saying that "...if you don't do well, sin is crouching at your door; and its desire is for you but you must master it" (Gen 4:7). God was saying essentially that, since he was now aware of sin (sin means in Hebrew "missing the mark") that he could find a happy countenance by mastering that sin and doing the right thing, the thing that pleased God. But Cain had by this time given himself over to sin; Satan the creator of sin.

Cain did not take the Lord's advice. Cain was jealous of his brother and rose up and killed him. Since Cain was the firstborn son of Adam, he probably felt Abel was going to usurp his place of honor, normally going to the first born of a family. His anger was actually directed against God for not accepting his offering and accepting Abel's. God found out about the murder and asked Cain where his brother was. Cain replied with the now infamous answer "am I my brother's keeper?" (Genesis 4:9). So God banished Cain from the presence of the Lord, cursing the ground even more for him, saying it would not yield its strength to him.

Responding to Cain's plea to God that he would be a wanderer and a vagrant on the earth, and be killed, God put a mark (sign) on Cain essentially saying: “Don't kill Cain”. These events clearly reveal the true state of Cain's heart-violent in nature, rebellious and a liar before God, all the qualities of Satan.

God banished Cain completely from his presence. No true family can be properly constructed with the presence of evil within it. This can be compared with Satan who was thrown out of heaven because his rebellious, evil, accusing presence was a distraction to God’s family and his plan for mankind.

Cain went out from the Lord to the Land of "Nod". The word Nod has been variously associated with: wanderer, vagrant (New American Standard Bible Version), nomad, aimless, unrest, commotion, a terror round about, a dreadful sound round about, and a land of exile (Matthew Henry's Commentary). So the land of Nod was spiritually separated from God and was a terrible land where there was "no rest for the wicked". Compare this with Job 1:7 where Satan tells God he had been "roaming about on the earth and walking around on it", an evil wanderer.

Nod is a sort of "Hell on Earth". The meanings and descriptions of hell in the Old Testament are Sheol, Hinnom, Gehenna (Hebrew); and Hades and Gehenna (Greek). In the Old Testament hell is described as insatiableness (Prov. 30:15, 16), a"grave" thirty-one times (Gen. 37:35; 42:38; 44:29, 31; 1 Sam. 2:6, etc.), a place of the damned, (Hebrew Sheol), and the abode of the wicked (Num. 16:33; Job 24:19; Ps. 9:17; 31:17, etc.). In the New Testament Hades and Gehenna are said to be a place of consciousness (Luke 16:23, 24), a place of torment (Luke 16:23, 24, 28), a place of darkness (Matthew 8:12), eternal separation from God and loved ones (Luke 13:28), no hope of release (Matthew 25:46, Hebrews 6:2) and torment of memory of things done on the earth.(Luke 16:27, 28) (from Eastman's Bible Dictionary and Dictionary of Biblical Languages With Semantic Domains, Greek). Hell encompasses all other expressions of the same place, derived from the Saxon “helan”, to cover; hence the covered or the invisible place.

Cain settled in the land of Nod and built the earth's first city (Gen 4:17). As Adam was banished from Paradise onto the cursed earth, so Cain was banished from God's presence on earth. Whereafter he immediately went east of Eden and settled in the land of Nod, the place of the wanderer, the exiled and the wicked.

However in this land Cain became the builder of the first large city on the earth. He set the stage for the later evil that would eventually cause God to send the flood destroying all humanity. Even after the flood, cities became centers of evil. The land of Canaan. which became Israel, was comprised of various city states. Throughout history cities and countries became breeding grounds for abject evil (Sodom, Gomorrah, Babylon, Ur, Nineveh, the Canaanite states, Greece, Rome and other warring and conquering tribes of evil). This simple act of Cain’s disobedience and others made the warring civilizations possible, civilizations that harassed Israel throughout its history. Also since God had rejected Cain these civilizations did not worship the one true God but became pagan and worshipped other gods.

This one incident then made possible the corruption of the whole earth. “Now it came about, when men began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God [evil angels] saw that the daughters of men were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose”. Although designated “Sons of God” (Enoch calls them “Watchers”) they were fallen, disobedient angelic creatures. Remember when Satan fell he took 1/3 of the wicked angels with him to earth. Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, because he also is flesh; nevertheless his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.” The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown” (Gen 6:1-4). These men of renown are the men of myth which had super human powers (the KJV calls them giants). Nephilim means “fallen ones.” So we have to understand that there is something of the downward pressure in a Nephilim. The Nephilim of the Old Testament were the Sons of Satan created to do his will. In the form of powers and principalities they continue spiritual warfare against the Saints today (Ephesians 6:12).

In Genesis 6:4, we read that the “sons of God” came down and had intercourse with the daughters of men, and the result was giants and men of renown. Almost every nation has some kind of mythology about a Hercules or an Atlas who was able to perform great feats—a being who was sort of half god. For instance The Nordic had legends of supermen. The Indians from India (see the Bhagavad-Gita), East Asia (China), and others all had these same “myths”. The Hawaiian people have legends about one called Maui, who did such things as lassoing the sun and holding it. The Greeks were great for stories about beings who were half god and half human. Rome had its gods who were often half human and half beast. It is likely that these were not myths but distant memories of the “men of renown” who walked the earth before the flood. But you say, “Well, that’s all mythology. We don’t want any part of that.” However, it is surprising that there is a counterpart in the Scriptures. You know that all of it is not true, but something must have happened to give rise to the legends during this period before the flood where Nephilim (giants), super humans, were in the earth.