CHAPTER NINE
Adam's Family in the Dispensation for Restoration
God's plan to restore and save man by sending the Messiah existed from
the moment the Fall occurred. Thus his dispensation to establish the
Foundation for the Messiah began with Adam's family.
I. THE FOUNDATION OF FAITH
Since it was Adam who actually committed the Original Sin, and not
Cain or Abel, Adam should have been the one responsible to restore the
Foundation of Faith by making the Required Offering to God. Whether
or not the Foundation of Faith was accomplished would be decided by
whether or not Adam made his offering properly.
A. Separation for the Offering
However, in the Bible there is no record of Adam ever offering a
sacrifice. The offerings were made by Cain and Abel. Why is this?
According to "The Principle of the Creation," man was originally
created to relate to one lord. Thus, God cannot work a Principle
dispensation with a person who has a relationship with two lords. As
explained earlier, in the chapter titled "Overview of the Principles
of the Dispensation for Restoration," although Adam was created by
God, he came to be of Satan's lineage, and thus was in a midway
position, relating to both God and Satan.
Since Adam was an embodiment of both good and evil, if God were to try
to deal directly with Adam and his offering, Satan would also try to
deal with Adam and his offering on the basis of Adam's being of his
lineage. If this had happened, Adam would have been in a position to
deal with two masters, and thus in a non-Principle position. So God
could not work his dispensation through Adam.
God has no alternative but to separate into two beings the two
contradictory natures of good and evil that were embodied within Adam.
To this end, God had one of Adam's two sons represent good and the
other represent evil.[1] Then God placed them in the positions where
one dealt with God and the other with Satan. In other words, God had
them offer their sacrifices from the positions where each dealt with
only one lord.
B. The Second Son in God's Dispensation
Both Cain and Abel were sons of Adam. Then which of the two should be
the one to represent good, and thus to deal with God, and which should
be the one to represent evil, and thus to deal with Satan? Both Cain
and Abel were results of Eve's fall, and the question of who would
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1 Though Abel and Cain stood on the sides of good and evil,
respectively, their positions are relative, Actually, both had
Original Sin and Fallen Nature as well as Original Nature--and
thus both had natures of evil and of good.
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represent which side was decided based on the process of the fall of
Eve, who was responsible for the Fall.
Eve was involved in two fallen acts of love (fornication). The first
was her relationship with the archangel, causing the spiritual fall.
The second was her relationship with Adam, causing the physical fall.
Both of these fallen acts were crimes, but if we think about which of
the two was "closer" to The Principle and thus more easily forgivable
in the eyes of God, we would have to say that the second fallen act
was the more easily forgivable. The first fallen act was motivated by
Eve's excessive desire to have that which was not yet her time to
enjoy, that is, it was motivated by her desire to have her eyes opened
and to be like God(Gen 3:7) -- before she was mature, Also, in the
first fallen act, Eve's relationship was with the archangel, who,
according to The Principle, was never to have been Eve's spouse. On
the other hand, the second fallen act was motivated by Eve's desire to
return to God's side after she realized the illicit nature of her
first act. Moreover, even though the act was committed prior to the
time God had set, it was a relationship with Adam, who, in God's plan,
would ultimately have been her spouse.
Because Cain and Abel were the results of Eve's illicit love, God
place them in positions representing evil and good based on her two
acts of fornication. Cain, as the first result of the Fall,
represented Eve's first fallen act, the relationship with the
archangel, and thus he was placed the position to deal with Satan.
Abel symbolized the second fallen act, that between Eve and Adam, and
thus he was placed in the position to deal with God.
Satan gained control of God's Creation before God did, and because
Satan is a non-Principle being, he brought about a pseudo-Principle
world before God could realize a Principle world. Therefore, God
began his dispensation by placing the first son, who symbolized the
first fallen act, on Satan's side and the second son, who symbolized
the second fallen act, on his side. God said to Cain, "'. . . Why are
you angry, and why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will
you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is couching at
the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it'"(Gen 4:6,7).
This shows that Cain was in a position to have to deal with Satan.
When the Israelites fled from Egypt, God smote all the first-born of
the Egyptians, and also of their cattle(Ex 12:29). Also, the Bible
says that God "loved" the second son, Jacob, and "hated" the first
son, Esau, even while they were still in their mother's womb (Rom
9:13). And in the case of Jacob's blessing of his grandsons, Ephraim
and Manasseh, Jacob blessed them by crossing his hands so that the
right hand lay on the head of Ephraim, the second son (Gen 48:14). In
each of these cases is an example of how God place the second-born
child in the favored position.
Based on this principle, God placed Cain and Abel in positions where
each could deal with only one master, and then had each make an
offering, God could accept Abel's offering (Gen 4:4) because he was
in a position representing God and had made the offering in a
acceptable manner (Heb 11:4). Through this acceptable offering, the
Foundation of Faith was established in Adam's family by the second
son, Abel, acting in place of Adam.
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God did not reject Cain's offering because he hated Cain; nor was it
God's intention to condemn him forever. However, because Cain was in
a position to deal only with Satan, God could not work with him unless
he fulfilled an indemnity condition by which he could remove himself
from the position of relating to Satan. The indemnity condition that
had to be fulfilled by Cain is called the 'Indemnity Condition to
Remove the Fallen Nature'.
II. THE FOUNDATION OF SUBSTANCE
In order for Adam's family to establish the Foundation of Substance,
Cain had to meet the Indemnity Condition to Remove the Fallen Nature.
Had he done so, God would have been able to accept his offering
joyfully.
Since Cain was representing the side of Satan, he could not be in the
object position to God, who is the subject of goodness. Through Cain's
meeting the condition required to remove the Fallen Nature, he would
then return to the position where God could deal with him. Then, how
was this Indemnity Condition for Removing the Fallen Nature to be met?
The first man and woman inherited the Fallen Nature through their
relationship with the archangel. The Indemnity Condition for Removing
the Fallen Nature must be established by symbolically reversing the
process of the Fall.
The archangel, who was created in a position more distant from God
that Adam, should have loved Adam as God did, thus taking the same
viewpoint as God. He should have related to God with Adam as his
mediator, and should have perfected himself by following the heavenly
way of humbling himself before Adam and obeying him. But the
archangel did not do this. The Indemnity Condition for Removing the
Fallen Nature is met by reversing this failure.
After Abel made his offering, Cain was placed in the position of the
archangel, and Abel, in that of Adam. From these positions the
Indemnity Condition for Removing the Fallen Nature could have been met
by Cain's loving Abel, obeying Abel, and humbling himself to Abel.
Doing so, he would have come closer to God. But, instead, Cain killed
Abel, repeating the process of the archangel's fall. This was not
simply the crime of an elder brother killing his younger brother; it
meant that the satanic side had struck God's side, God's efforts to
separate good and evil in Adam's family had been frustrated, and the
side of Goodness had been lost.
What Cain was supposed to fulfill was the basic indemnity condition
that is required for anyone in a position distant from God to come
closer to him. Within each person, the mind and the body which tends
toward serving "the law of sin"(Rom 7:25), is in the Cain position.
Only when the body is subjugated by the mind and obeys it will each
individual become good. However, in the actual life of fallen man,
the body repeatedly rebels against the directions of the mind, acting
as Cain did in killing Abel, thus fostering the evil within each
individual.
As fallen people, we are in the Cain position to the Messiah.
Therefore, by our humbling ourselves before him, and serving him,
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obeying him, and loving him, we attain salvation through his mediation
(Jn 14:6, 1 Tim 2:5). As Jeremiah 17:9 tells us, man became "...
deceitful above all things...." Therefore, to come to God, man has had
to go through the things of the Creation, which were in the Abel
position to him. This is the principle behind God's having man use
offerings in the Dispensation.
As explained earlier, the foundation upon which the Messiah can come
is the restored Foundation of Faith and Foundation of Substance. In
Adam's family, a Foundation of Faith was successfully made by Abel's
making an offering which God could accept. Through this, Abel also
qualified himself to be the central person for the Foundation of
Substance. However, because Cain killed Abel, the Indemnity Condition
for Removing the Fallen Nature was not established. Thus, the
Foundation of Substance and, as a result, the Foundation for the
Messiah, were never made, and God's dispensation was not fulfilled in
Adam's family.
III. THE FOUNDATION FOR THE MESSIAH
If Cain had fulfilled the Indemnity Condition for Removing the Fallen
Nature by humbling himself before Abel and obeying him, the Foundation
of Substance would have been established in Adam's family. This,
together with the Foundation of Faith, would have constituted the
Foundation for the Messiah. In other words, by Abel's meeting the
indemnity condition necessary for restoring the vertical relationship
with God, he would have stood on the Foundation of Faith. If Cain had
re-established the proper horizontal order with Abel, the Foundation
of Substance would have been established. These two foundations
together would have constituted the Foundation for the Messiah.
On this foundation, the Messiah would have been able to come. At that
stage of human history, God's dispensation was on the family level, so
if Abel and Cain had established the Foundation for the Messiah, it
would have been on the family level. If Adam's family had made such a
foundation, they would have received the Messiah and been reborn
through him. In this way, they would have been restored and become
the ideal family which God had originally intended, and an entirely
new history would have begun.
Instead, Cain killed Abel, and God's dispensation for Adam's family
was not fulfilled. However, God's will to save mankind is
unchangeable and absolute; so although God may not be able to continue
his work through a person who dies not fulfill his responsibility, he
chooses someone from among that person's descendants to carry on with
his Will.