Author	Thread: Ok, Bible Brainiacs....Why do you think?
Admin	Ok, Bible Brainiacs....Why do you think? Posted : 4 Jan, 2011 04:12 PM Seems like God had a pretty good idea Cain was going to kill Abel....right?.... Cause God warned Cain, sin was crouching at the door and desired to have him. Now if I was God (and I am not) I would be warning Abel that Cain wants to kill him. So what do you think the reason is that we see God warning Cain but don't see God warning Abel? Btw- the meaning of Abel's name suggests he wasn't going to live very long. ALL comments welcome! Post Reply
View Profile History	Ok, Bible Brainiacs....Why do you think? Posted : 4 Jan, 2011 07:59 PM I have two thoughts on this: The Bible doesn't record that God warned Abel ----- but perhaps He did. For some unknown reason (unknown to us) it was God's will that Cain would kill Abel. Hard to believe, I know, but I have known stranger things to happen. And since God works to the good of ALL according to His purpose (my own paraphrase)..... I believe that when God does something like this (or not do, as the case may be) that He is working in the lives of multiple people. I've had people say to me "Why do you think God allowed that to happen in your life?" or "Why would God let that happen?" And more than once I've replied "I don't think it is about me at all. I think God was working in multiple people through this." But then, I'm hardly a Bible brainiac. True dat! Post Reply
View Profile History	Ok, Bible Brainiacs....Why do you think? Posted : 4 Jan, 2011 09:10 PM Thanks Godslamb, I like your answers. I had a weird thought about this : You could kinda say Abel was Gods first sacrifice. Similar to Jesus being Gods greatest sacrifice. Post Reply
DontHitThatMark View Profile History	Ok, Bible Brainiacs....Why do you think? Posted : 4 Jan, 2011 10:03 PM Eh....it was God's will that Cain sin and kill Abel? That sounds funky. I'm not sure God wanted it to happen...planned for it maybe...I don't know....just sounds weird... :peace::peace: Post Reply
View Profile History	Ok, Bible Brainiacs....Why do you think? Posted : 4 Jan, 2011 10:15 PM Mark, I DID say it was a wierd thought!...lol But the whole thing is kinda strange, and I feel like there is a deeper meaning behind this incident. There are parts in Genesis that are tantilalizing yet frustrating because they read like the readers digest version of what happened. Post Reply
View Profile History	Ok, Bible Brainiacs....Why do you think? Posted : 5 Jan, 2011 07:46 AM Ok, looks like I'm going have to pull out the commentaries....lol. But I did have another thought....Mankinds first son was a murderer. Gods first son (Jesus) was murdered. Hmm... Post Reply
marikashome View Profile History	Ok, Bible Brainiacs....Why do you think? Posted : 5 Jan, 2011 08:00 AM Interesting parallels, Two, but I don't think God wanted Cain to kill Able. What could Abel have done if God had warned him? Left the country? Killed Cain first? Talked him out of it when God couldn't even talk him out of it? Lived in fear? Maybe God saw it more like Paul later did: to live is Christ, to die is gain. God's concern in warning Cain was not to protect Abel, but to reach for Cain. Our eternal God views the death of His people much differently than humanity does. It is possible that God wasn't concerned about the possibility that Abel could die, go to heaven and live with Him forever, but that Cain was so jealous and that he could sin in such a way. Also, He offered hope of redemption from sin even as He warned Him, which again tells me that God might have been concerned about Cain's spiritual death, not Abel's impending physical death. JMO Post Reply
View Profile History	Ok, Bible Brainiacs....Why do you think? Posted : 5 Jan, 2011 08:11 AM Now two the answer is riqht there in the book, but it won't come by braining, one only needs to do what JESUS said. Post Reply
View Profile History	Ok, Bible Brainiacs....Why do you think? Posted : 5 Jan, 2011 08:15 AM JMO Good stuff!, you are so right. It seems that we constantly seem to misplace our spiritual glasses. We get all up thinking in terms of eternity and do great. Then subtly we bit by bit get tangled in the world that we are not of and it is not great. What I gleaned from your post is to live the spiritual life in the physical, with eyes towards eternity....and read the Bible that way! Post Reply
View Profile History	Ok, Bible Brainiacs....Why do you think? Posted : 5 Jan, 2011 08:24 PM I think God was grieved greatly when Abel was killed. I think He tried His best (Iwonder, does the Bible really record all that was said?) to prevent it. But when it did happen I believe God used it for His glory. Don't ask me how --- I don't know! But we also have no idea how that true story has blessed/convicted people over the centuries. Only God knows that. Post Reply
enoch1122 View Profile History	Ok, Bible Brainiacs....Why do you think? Posted : 6 Jan, 2011 11:35 AM The Land of Nod What Happened To Cain After He Killed Abel As we know, Genesis Chapter 4 sets forth the story of Cain and Abel, first born sons of Adam and Eve after they had been banned by God from the Garden of Eden. Abel and Cain were to bring offerings to the Lord, the first-fruits of their labors. Abel was a herder of sheep and brought his first born lamb as an offering. Cain was a "tiller of the ground" and brought his offering from what he had harvested. The Lord accepted Abel's offering but rejected Cain's. Why this occurred involves some conjecture. Probably both had been educated by Adam as to what was and was not acceptable to God. Abel�s offering was a thing of great value � his first born, unblemished lamb. Cain�s gift was from the land that God had cursed when He ejected Adam and Eve from the Garden (Genesis 1:17-19). In any event, God must have assumed Cain knew better, otherwise, the God of justice could not have punished Cain as He did for something done from ignorance. Also, Abel�s offering was a first-born lamb without blemish, as Christ was referred to as the Lamb of God. Abel�s revelation may have been deeper than Cain�s and thus presented a sacrifice which was symbolic of the restoration to follow from the cursed ground. 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. 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 or I will get you". These events clearly reveal the true state of Cain's heart-violent in nature, rebellious and a liar before God. 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 and the heavenly beings to purely do the will of God in fulfilling His plan. Cain went out from the Lord to the Land of "Nod". The word Nod has been variously associated with: wanderer, vagrant (New American 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 in 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 Gehenna), 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). Therefore the land of Nod, where Cain settled and built the earth's first city (Gen 4:17), seems to be a literal "hell on earth". As Adam was banished from Paradise onto the 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 (Babylon, Ur, Nineveh, Greece, Rome and other warring and conquering tribes of evil. This simple act of Cain�s disobedience made all this possible. Post Reply

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