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Adam Divided: Cain and Abel
The Foundation of Faith
The Foundation of Substance
Lessons from Adam's Family
Conclusion
The principles of restoration operate in all human affairs, affect-ing every life. Consequently, they have been the inner dynamic of human history, shaping the destiny of individuals, families, tribes and nations. The theory of their operation was explained in the previous chapter The practice will now be examined.The fall of Adam and Eve severely damaged their characters and set them on a path of suffering and misery. As their loving parent, God must have anguished over their plight, even though they were responsible for it. No time could be lost, the work of restoring Adam and Eve had to be started at once. Thus Adam's family is not only where the fall took place but also where the providence of restoration was begun. The operation of the principles of restoration can be seen in the developments that took place in Adam's family after the fall.
After falling, Adam and Eve lost their capacity to respond directly to God because they were torn between the good impulses of their original natures, inclining them to God, and the bad impulses of their fallen natures, inclining them to Satan. Being in the midway position between God and Satan, with no one to guide them on the path back to God, they were unable to separate themselves from the domination of Satan to begin the process of restoration.
That is why God began the restoration process in the second generation of Adam and Eve's family. They had three providential sons: Cain, Abel and Seth, born in that order. The two oldest were chosen to make conditions for restoration. The basis for this choice was as follows. Fallen Adam's nature was divided into two parts: his original nature as Adam the obedient son of God, and his sinful nature (acquired from the servant) as Adam the disobedient servant of God. In effect, the two parts of Adam's divided nature were represented separately by bit two oldest sons, Cain and Abel.
The eldest son was originally the natural heir to inherit God's true life, love and lineage from his parents. Because of the fall and Satan's usurpation of God's position in Adam's family, however, Cain became the child who naturally inherited the satanic life, love and lineage of his parents. Because Adam and Eve submitted to the Servant, Satan could make a claim on Cain as the first fruit of Adam and Eve's fallen union. This meant Satan's influence was more powerful over Cain than over Abel, making it difficult for Cain to respond to God and easier for God to work with Abel.
Further, Cain, as the first-born, represented the fruit of the first love relationship of Eve, with the Servant, while Abel represented her second love relationship, with Adam. From God's point of view, her second relationship was relatively better than her first because in the first Eve submitted to the Servant's domination even though the Servant could never fulfill the role of a spouse, which belonged exclusively to Adam. In the second relationship, her motivation included the desire to return to God through union with Adam, who was to be her husband. It was a premature relationship rather than an intrinsically unprincipled one. Thus, because Cain was the oldest son and represented the more unprincipled of Eve's fallen relationships, he represented the Servant and Abel represented the original Adam.With this externalizing of the divided nature of Adam, God set up the circumstances for Cain and Abel to make conditions to restore the Adam and Servant relationship and through that process to purify themselves. Both sons inherited fallen nature from their parents, but by loving each other as true brothers their original natures would prevail against the inclination of their sinful natures. If, on the other hand, they allowed themselves to be dominated by their fallen natures, Cain, as the Servant, would seek to control a submissive Abel, and the mistakes of the fall would be repeated.
The responsibility of Cain and Abel was to establish indemnity conditions to restore the mistakes of their parents as a foundation for true parents to come. The first step in making this foundation for true parents was to establish faith, to lay a foundation of faith. Cain and Abel were called upon by God to offer as sacrifices their best produce and livestock, respectively. Cain's sacrifice was rejected by God, whereas Abel's was accepted. God's acceptance of Abel's sacrifice signaled Abel's success in laying a foundation of faith (i.e. he had responded faithfully) and confirmed him as the representative of unfallen Adam in the second generation of the first family.
When Cain's sacrifice was rejected he felt intense jealousy towards his successful brother. Cain resented the fact that Abet, the younger brother, had been favored by God. Cain's position was similar to that of the Servant who was created before Adam and Eve and had witnessed God's love for them grow to surpass His love for the Servant. Cain's desire to monopolize God's love and to dominate Abel was similar to the Servant's desire when he sought to dominate Adam and Eve.
To restore the mistakes of the Servant, Cain would have had to reverse the four aspects of fallen nature he had inherited from the Servant; (1) failing to take God's viewpoint (he should have accept-ed Abel as God's representative); (2) standing out of his given position (he should have accepted Abel's more intimate relationship with God); (3) reversing dominion (he should have submitted to Abel's guidance in making his own sacrifice); and (4) multiplying evil (he should have put a stop to the influence of evil in his family by refusing to repeat the sins of his parents and the Servant).
However, like the Servant, Cain could not contain his unprincipled jealousy, which boiled over into a fit of rage against his brother, whom he attacked and killed. In murdering Abel, Cain repeated the errors of the Servant, who spiritually murdered Adam and Eve. Cain succumbed to the influence of his sinful nature instead of gaining dominion over it, and thus repeated the fall instead of reversing it. Cain should have acceded to the divine decision and accepted the choice of Abel as God's representative. If Cain had humbled himself to Abel, he would have received God's love and blessings through Abel.
Thus although Abel was successful in laying a foundation of faith, the possibility of establishing a foundation of substance through cooperation between Cain and Abel was lost when Cain killed Abel. The reversal of the fall and purification of the fallen nature could have been accomplished only if Cain, in the position of the Servant, had been willing to unite with Abel, in the position of Adam. Abel was alto responsible in this, He should have loved his elder brother and assuaged his jealousy, Serving him with sit sincerity and guiding him to make an acceptable offering. Victory in the foundation of substance would have been shared by both brothers. The murder of Abel meant that the opportunity to lay a foun-dation for true parents in Adam's family was lost once and for all.
Cain's action represented Satan's will. But Satan cannot pervert or destroy God's creation beyond a creation limit because God is the sole creator of all beings and He has the ultimate dominion over creation. By the principles of creation, God will not let Satan claim more than any one creation can take from another. Therefore, Satan can never destroy the God-given original nature of another being and cannot ultimately succeed in hit effort to destroy Cod's original plan for an ideal world.
Nevertheless, because Cain had submitted to Satan and Abel had been killed, God had to choose an alternative to Cain and Abel to begin restoration. Seth, the third ton of Adam and Eve, was chosen by God as the man to keep alive the promise of restoration. He became the ancestor of the lineage out of which God selected a family to replace Adam's in the dispensation of restoration.
When Cain killed Abel, the fall of Adam's family was irrevocably sealed, plunging the first human ancestors deep into misery. Out of Adam's lineage came all the adulterers, murderers and criminals who have turned God's world into hell. The problems of Adam's family are the core problems of the world today and have been the fundamental reason for human misery throughout history. Thus the process of the fall in Adam's family, including the transmission of fallen nature from parents to children, contains many lessons of providential importance.
First: The fallen nature was extremely deep-seated in Adam and Eve. Their fall from knowing God was so total that they created a family environment completely devoid of true love. This became all too clear when Cain killed Abel. It is only in the most depraved families that a son could kill his brother.
Second: The fallen nature is passed from one generation to the next. When Adam and Eve disobeyed God and established a relationship of false, ungodly love, their unprincipled behavior was inevitably inherited by their offspring, even though their children were endowed with an original mind. The selfish love of Adam and Eve became the norm for their whole family and its lineage. There was no one to educate the children about God and how they could fulfill their responsibilities to Him once the Servant had abandoned his position as teacher of truth to Adam's family and their parents had submitted to Satan rather than God. They had only the fallen model of their parents as a standard for their own lives. This problem became the problem of all humankind. Generation after generation has grown up without knowing God's will and God's ideal for life.
Third: Hen and women should be brothers and sisters to each other before they are blessed in marriage. After reaching fall matu-rity as brother and sister, Adam and Eve would have qualified to receive the marriage blessing. But the fall degraded their brother-sister love. Their self-centered and impure sibling love was inherit-ed by Cain and Abel, whose relationship was so unloving as to result in fratricide. Cain and Abel represent fallen humanity. All human beings are divided into positions of relative good and evil vis-a-vis other people, and have to establish loving relations with others as children of a common parent. God.
Fourth: Both Cain and Abel have a responsibility to fulfill in restoring the relationship between Adam and the Servant to the original order. Cain has to make an effort to unite with Abel, and Abel has to show true love to Cain so that he can willingly surren-der to God's representative. Only when both Cain and Abel make a sincere effort towards true reconciliation can purification of fall-en nature take place in both of them.
Fifth: God loves both Cain and Abel, and both of them must be restored. Establishing a foundation of faith and substance is the way for both to be restored and embraced by God. Hence, Abet cannot be restored and go to heaven without Cain. Only through establishing a foundation of substance can purification take place in fallen people, and every foundation of substance requires at least two people, representing Cain and Abel. When Cain and Abel establish a relationship of love by overcoming fallen tenden-cies, both of them are purified. Thus, however devout Abel is, however many conditions he establishes for a foundation of faith, he cannot be transformed without extending himself to love Cain. Thus a life of personal devotion to God is never sufficient in itself. For restoration, there must always also be complementary acts of service to others. The positions of Cain and Abel are not fixed at they only serve to facilitate restoration. All people are Cain and Abel at different times, depending on the circumstances.
Sixth: Resolution of the Cain-Abel relationship. and then the Adam-Eve relationship. is the key to world peace. Conflicts between individuals, families, tribes, nations and blocs of nations are all manifestations of the conflicts within Adam's family. The path of restoration for all conflicts begins with the reconciliation of Cain and Abel, centered on God's wilt. Thus the process of establishing a foundation of substance, in which Abel shows true love to Cain and Cain willingly surrenders to the love of Abel, it the model course for peace-making between all enemies. Once a foundation of substance is completed, a foundation for true par-ents exists and the Adam-Eve relationship can be restored. Once true man-woman love is established, a new lineage is created and individuals, families, tribes, nations and the world can be restored, creating a world free of Cain-Abel conflicts altogether In this way a world of true peace wilt be realized.
Seventh: The path for Cain to return to God is through Abel. The only way the servant can win the heart of his master is by helping the master fulfill his purpose, especially raising up a worthy belt The secret of the servant's glory is in serving the son. Cain represents the Servant, Abel the son, Adam. Abel qualifies for the son's position by demonstrating faith in God and being obedient to His laws, and by wittingly sacrificing himself for others. Fallen men and women need to find Abel figures to assist and thereby attract to themselves the love and gratitude of God. The ultimate Abet in the fallen world is restored Adam, the true father who, with the true mother, establishes a true family. Thus fallen people can complete their return to God only through sinless true parents. God gives His blessing to Cain through Abel because in restoration He works primarily through the relatively purer side. Because Cain represents the fruit of Adam and Eve's disobedient behavior, if God were to bless Cain directly, it would be as if he blessed the fall, giving fallen relations eternal value. God blesses Abel as a representative of good, and, when Cain unites with Abel, blesses Cain through Abet.
Eighth: Since Adam's family is the archetypal fallen family, wherever there is evil in the world it reflects an aspect of the fallen natures of Adam's family. Therefore, one can see in all human temptations a resemblance to the temptations experienced by Adam, Eve and the Servant. All the struggles people face in pursing a good life are struggles to remove the fallen tendencies inher-ited from the first ancestors. By knowing what happened in Adam's family, repetition of the mistakes that led it into hell can be avoided. Every fallen man is tempted, as the Servant and Adam were, to leave his position in order to engage in illicit love; and every fallen woman is tempted, as Eve was, to leave her position in order to engage in illicit love. To understand the origin of temptation and sin is to gain the weapon with which one can overcome temptation.
Ninth: Satan's greatest strength lies in his invisibility. Ills hard for sensible, earth-bound men and women to believe that Satan is real. No doubt Cain was such a sensible person, and did not recog-nize Satan in his own anger against Abel. Fallen human nature makes a base for invisible Satan to work, inciting resentment and hatred, lust, anger and violence. Satan has a hold on fallen human-ity through the fallen lineage of Adam's family. Only by understanding the presence of this base inside themselves can fallen individuals act to counter the influence of Satan in their lives.
Tenth: Since God's wilt for humanity is absolute, there is always an alternative way forward when a particular individual or group fails its restoration mission. Thus when Cain killed Abel, God chose the third son, Seth, to carry on His providence of restoration. God must prevail in the end.
The alienation of Adam's family from God was completed when Cain killed Abet. The murder of Abel repeated the fatal mistakes of the Servant, reinforcing fallen nature instead of reversing it. As a result, Cain and Abel could not lay a foundation of substance and the providence of restoration was postponed.
The more people understand the mistakes made in Adam's family the more they can recognize the root causes of evil in the world. The sins of the first human ancestors are repeated again and again in the fallen world, with individuals, families, communities and nations acting out the unprincipled patterns of behavior they have inherited from the first family. Only by knowing the root cause of evil can people work effectively to eliminate it from their lives.
The pattern of inheriting fatten nature was established in Adam's family when Cain and Abel were born with the behavioral characteristics of their parents and consequently repeated their parents' mistakes. Purification of Adam and Eve's lineage was not achieved by their children, but their descendants paid indemnity so that God could choose a new family to represent Him on earth. That family was Noah's. It came from the lineage of Seth and it had to restore the failures of two generations of Adam's family. The providential story of Noah's family is the subject of the next chapter