Welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the Book of Genesis. This is study #14 of Genesis, chapter 4 and we are looking at Genesis 4:13-15:

And Cain said unto JEHOVAH, My punishment is greater than I can bear. Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth; and from thy face shall I be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth; and it shall come to pass, that every one that findeth me shall slay me. And JEHOVAH said unto him, Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. And JEHOVAH set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him.

We have been discussing this for a few studies. It would be good to keep in mind that the key to understanding this historical record of Cain’s slaying of Abel is verse 3, where it literally says, “And in the end of days it came to pass.” Historically, it took place near the beginning of the history of the world, but, spiritually, it points to events that would take place in our time at the end of the world, so we have a unique vantage point and we can see how wonderfully it all fits together. We see the end of the church age and the separation of the wheat and the tares. We have already gone through it. We have lived during the time of these end time events and we can see how well these events in Genesis, chapter 4 agree with the spiritual circumstances of our present time, which is the time of the end.

In our last study we looked at Genesis 4:14:

Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth; and from thy face shall I be hid…

We saw that the language of being driven out is related to being under the wrath of God, like when Jonah was cast out of God’s sight. Cain was driven out from the face of the earth and He was hid from God’s face. The word “earth” in the first part of verse 14 is Strong’s #127 and it is a word that identifies with the “ground” or the “land.” He was driven out from the land of the kingdom of heaven – it represented the close relationship the churches had with God during the many years of the church age. But, finally, God came to visit and He made known with whom He was pleased (His elect) and those He was not pleased with because they only had a profession of faith and were not true believers. Then they were driven out from the kingdom of heaven and it does not matter what they think about it or whether they believe it happened – none of that matters.

God is not concerned with numbers of people. Just look at the number of people that are Muslims. I think it is growing and it is about 1.5 billion people. They have no relationship with the God of the Bible because they have added to the Word of the Bible. They think there is another book from God, the Koran. God warns in Revelation 22, verses 17 through 19, that if you add to the words of this Book, He will add to you the plagues written herein. And, yet, you have 1.5 billion people that believe they are serving God, to the point that many are willing to “blow themselves up.”

Likewise, we have a corporate church body that numbers as many as 2 billion people. If you were to speak with them or take a poll and ask, “Is God with you?”, by the hundreds of millions they would say, “God is with us. God is blessing us. God is pleased with us and we are the people of God.” None of that is true, as a matter of fact. God is not with them. God is not blessing them and they are no longer the people of God. The only accurate claim they can make is that they were once the people of God. That is the same claim the Jewish people can make because up until the cross in 33AD they were outwardly the people of God for about 2,000 years. But God divorced Israel and they lost all association with God. Yet, the nature of man is that he is convinced of God’s blessing when He is not blessing them and the Jewish religion continues to insist they are the holy people and that Jerusalem is the holy city and God has a special place with them. The Muslims are convinced of it. The Jews are convinced of it and now the Christian corporate churches are convinced if it. The truth is these claims are not accurate in any of those entities, including the Christian corporate church. They stand in the same situation as the Jewish religion. They were once the people of God, but they are no longer. The Muslim religion never was the outward representation of God’s kingdom – they cannot even make that claim. God is no longer using organized religion of any kind. There is no corporate body of believers that stand for or represent His kingdom any longer.

At this time in history God has returned to individual dealings with people. For thousands of years leading up to the time of Abraham, God dealt only with individuals. As a matter of fact, for the majority of the history of the world God dealt with people on an individual basis and there was no corporate representative of His kingdom, like a nation or a corporate body. Now that God has ended the church age, He has destroyed that vineyard and there is no other vineyard.

There is a parable in the Gospel of Matthew where the keepers of the vineyard kill the son of the lord of the vineyard and the judgment against them is that God would take away their vineyard and give it unto others. This parable speaks against (national) Israel because it was the time when the caretaking of the Gospel was to be given to the corporate church.

There is also an historical parable in Isaiah, chapter 5 in which a vineyard was seen to be fruitless and gave forth a stench and God destroyed the vineyard, which pointed to what happened at the end of the church age when God came to visit. There is no other “season” and there is no other program wherein a corporate entity will represent God and that is why the vineyard in Isaiah, chapter 5 was simply destroyed.

Since God has ended the church age, He is dealing with people one-on-one all over the world through His Word, the Bible. Each of these persons has the Bible, prayer and God and that is the only relationship that people in this world may have with God. Of course, all kinds of people are deceived concerning this fact and there are Shinto and Hindu and Buddhists and Muslims that think they have a relationship with God, but it is all deception. In the last few decades since God ended the church age, there is even greater deception because we can add to that an incredible number of almost 2 billion people that are deceived in thinking they have a relationship with God. They think they have a personal relationship with God through their churches, but it is not true. The churches have no more association with God’s kingdom than the Jews, Muslims, Hindu or Buddhists.

This is all in view with Cain being driven out from the face of the earth. Then Cain recognizes that he will be fugitive and a vagabond within the earth and that is the spiritual condition of all the world’s churches.

Then Cain goes on to say in Genesis 4:14:

… and it shall come to pass, that every one that findeth me shall slay me.

We should recognize that it may already be several decades from creation and Cain and Abel were grown men. It would later come to pass that Adam and Eve would give birth to others. It says in Genesis 5:3-4:

And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth: And the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years: and he begat sons and daughters:

Many more sons were coming. Adam and Eve was the first marriage and it was necessary for God to bless them abundantly with children in order that the world would begin to be inhabited, so that is what Cain is referring to when he says, “every one that findeth me shall slay me.” There would be other brothers that would be born to Adam and Eve. Also, as Adam and Eve had sons and daughters, those sons and daughters would marry and have children. God had not yet given any Law concerning incest. It was necessary at that time for brothers to marry sisters because there were no other people, so brothers would have married sisters and children would have come forth from them as well over the course of time.

We can understand Cain’s concern. He had killed his brother and God is driving him out and hiding His face from him, so Cain is worried about himself. He is afraid of what may happen to him. That is understandable, but we wonder about God’s reaction in Genesis 4:15:

And JEHOVAH said unto him, Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. And JEHOVAH set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him.

We read this and we wonder why God, seemingly, is protecting Cain. God knows he has killed his brother. The blood of Abel is crying unto Him from the ground and God has just cursed the ground and punished Cain by driving him out and hiding His face from him, so why protect him from others seeking to kill him? Cain is a murderer. As we read this, we think that since he killed his own brother it would almost be a just thing if someone finding him would kill him. To us, that would be justice, but that is not the way of God. God does not leave His justice to man. You see, that is the key. There are really two things going on here. When I saw some other verses, it made sense once we understand Cain as a picture of the corporate church that has come under the judgment of God. Cain’s slaying of Abel relates to the corporate church driving out the true believers. Remember the identification that God made in John 16:2:

They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service.

To be put out of the synagogue (or the corporate church) is equivalent to being killed. Cain literally killed his brother Abel, but down through time in Israel of old and in the corporate church those that go in the way of Cain have driven out the believers with their false doctrines and they have pronounced condemnation against the true believers. We can look back just a few hundred years ago when the Catholic Church was condemning people as heretics and killing them because these people simply wanted to put the Bible into the language of the people. That was their “crime” and that church literally killed their brothers for wanting to put the Bible in the hand of the populace rather than only being able to go to church where a priest would deliver the mass in Latin or a language the people could not understand. That was horrible but it is actually just as horrible when a preacher preaches “another gospel,” like teaching that speaking in tongues is an indicator of having the Holy Spirit. The preacher and the elders work to teach the congregation that speaking in tongues is a good thing and a sign of being a child of God. They are actually killing the congregations because God says that if you add unto the Word of God, he will add to that person the plagues that are written in the Bible. So it is much more awful to die that way (spiritually) than it is to die physically and those church leaders today that are teaching lies and adding to and subtracting from the Bible are killing their congregations. They are teaching another way of salvation than the way of the faith of Christ and they are teaching that you can do a work to get yourself saved and they are slaying their own congregations.

God ended the church age because they spilled much innocent blood. Of course, the elect that were driven out of the churches by these kinds of doctrines were not actually killed. As a matter of fact, since God has saved them they have eternal life, but God counts it as if their blood has been spilled and God came to visit. Remember the cries of those under the altar in Revelation 6:10: “How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?” God is the one that takes vengeance upon those that slay His people physically or spiritually, but it is not for man to avenge themselves against wrong done against the people of God. In 1Samuel, chapter 24 King Saul, a picture of the corporate church, was persecuting David and chasing him through the wilderness. He drove David out of Israel and, therefore, out of the synagogue, spiritually, but he also intended to kill David physically. David had opportunity to kill Saul at this time and it says in 1Samuel 24:4-6:

And the men of David said unto him, Behold the day of which JEHOVAH said unto thee, Behold, I will deliver thine enemy into thine hand, that thou mayest do to him as it shall seem good unto thee. Then David arose, and cut off the skirt of Saul's robe privily. And it came to pass afterward, that David's heart smote him, because he had cut off Saul's skirt. And he said unto his men, JEHOVAH forbid that I should do this thing unto my master, the JEHOVAH'S anointed, to stretch forth mine hand against him, seeing he is the anointed of JEHOVAH.

We read this and we just shake our heads in regard to the high standard of God. God had a people, Israel of old, and they had kings over them and they were God’s anointed. Also, for almost 2,000 years the New Testament churches were God’s anointed. They were God’s messengers and representatives to the people of the earth. Then came the end of the church age. Are we free to harm them because God has brought judgment upon them? Are we free to slay them? Can we speak evil of them? No, we cannot. We have to show respect for the position they once held and we are not to take vengeance upon them. It says in 1Samuel 24:10-12:

Behold, this day thine eyes have seen how that JEHOVAH had delivered thee to day into mine hand in the cave: and some bade me kill thee: but mine eye spared thee; and I said, I will not put forth mine hand against my lord; for he is the JEHOVAH'S anointed. Moreover, my father, see, yea, see the skirt of thy robe in my hand: for in that I cut off the skirt of thy robe, and killed thee not, know thou and see that there is neither evil nor transgression in mine hand, and I have not sinned against thee; yet thou huntest my soul to take it. JEHOVAH judge between me and thee, and JEHOVAH avenge me of thee: but mine hand shall not be upon thee.

There is the key statement. Saul was doing wrong and God would judge Saul; soon Saul and his army would be destroyed by the Philistines. God had departed from Saul and this pictures God departing from the corporate church and giving them up into the hand of Satan, the enemy of the kingdom of God. And, yet, it was not for David to put forth his hand to kill Saul, but he gave place to wrath. He will allow God to take the vengeance, but not him. Of course, that is what God tells us. It is only His right. We are not the Judge. We are not the avenger. We are not the ones that mete out punishment. God says in Romans 12:19:

Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.

Once we understand that principal, then we look at Cain and he has killed his brother and shed innocent blood. Cain is a picture of the corporate body and we can see why God is protecting him with this language: “Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold.” Why? It is because it is not for man to attack that which was God’s anointed. It is not our role, but God Himself will be the One to execute vengeance.