Cain and Able

[JCISGD]

pure speculation, but i cant see any reason God could not made more men or women or taken a women from the side of Cain and others? It only says that Jesus was the only begotten of the Father, and even the name Adam means man, and Gen says also "male and female He created them".

[exrockstar]

First of all I don't understand what in the world your bolded reply has to do with my post. I was speaking to someone else. By just jumping all over my post you are being totally incomprehensible. Don't KNOW what BEE you have in your Bonnet about this topic. I have never spoken to you about it. So why the angry response?

Seems Forum Christians think they can abuse someone and take off. You are accountable to God for not just what you speak but how you speak it. It is not just a matter of having manners but you are mistreating a Sister in Christ. What did Jesus say:- By this shall all men know you are my disciples when you have love one for another. Certianly I have not been shown love here. And what is LOVE?

1CO 13:4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

The loving way and proper way to conduct a conversation is first to ask someone to calrify wha the were saying. Often people don't express themselves well or we don't fully comprehend what they have just said. Then if their view is different to yours then you can in a kind and polite way say so.

This was not how you came across even though you say "I never like feeling like i'm trying to beat a point to someone.". How in the world could you beat anything at me on this topic. I never spoke to you about it before. We have not crossed paths on this topic. Even though you didn't go into a diatribe you still made your point of being condescending and trying to belittle my answer. Again this is not polite nor, kind nor caring and especially showing it did not show me any kind of respect.

I was just interupted by the phone my Vet rang to inform us our Cat Hney Bear has an extreme cancer and it can't be operated. off to deal with this

well, i think youre reading into my post a little too much. i didnt mean to sound like im attacking you.

my response was a straight forward one.

not to aim this at you but it seems obvious and accepted by a majority of theologians that Cain was presenting fruit at a burnt offering. A tithe isnt even an offering and scripture says offering (referring to LadyC).

my bible study says it too and I just read that today. but again, not directly at you, but this forum is a place where no one has a conclusion yet

everyone can shoot down opinions.

so when i say that im not trying to beat the point that just means that I will present something then show different picture about it. if its accepted cool if not than

it's OK. i can make 101 points but if the answer is made up in ones mind then why go the extra breath.

i apologize for any confusion.

[Axxman]

i'm not implying that God tacitly approved of anything. i'm telling you that ACCORDING TO SCRIPTURE, we can not conclude that God created a whole different set of people. it just ain't there. no matter how hard you try to make it so, God doesn't give us any indication that he formed another man from the dirt or another woman from that other man's rib, or in any other way created additional humans.

what we know FROM SCRIPTURE is that God created one man, adam. and that God created one woman, Eve, to be a companion, a helpmeet, and a wife for adam.

Nobody said anything about God creating a whole different set of people. What I said was...God created a man (Adam) and at some point later in time, after further review, decided that it wasn't good for that man to be alone and created another person as a mate (Eve.) This shows that God, in His infinite wisdom, would create a person to promote His plans for the world. While scripture certainly doesn't tell us that God did create mates for Adams first off-spring...the bible also doesn't tell us that God ever approved of incest. What the bible tells us is that God doesn't approve of incest, and he never would have...but that He did create a human in order to solve a problem.

For some reason it is easier for people to assume that God tacitly approved of incest...than to believe that he would have created mates to solve the problem..even though He had already shown that he would do just that for Adam.

we see from the moment abel was murdered that God disapproved, and yet there was no "incest rule" given until hundreds, probably thousands of years later. furthermore, we do not see God saying that incest is a sin against HIM, we see that God says that it brings dishonor to other people. why is that?

by then, the earth was quite populated. there was no need for a man to marry his sister. but society had evolved by that time and girls were given in marriage to men who were not so closely related... but they were pretty much unmarriageable if they weren't virgins at the time. so to have sexual relations with one's brother would have taken the girl out of the marriage market and placed her into deep shame. she would have been dishonored.

if a man were to have sex with his mother, God says it dishonored the father. and of course it would! with all the women out there to choose from and you have to choose the one your father has married? it's like a slap in the face to your daddy. it's totally disrespectful.

Its not a sin by God's standards, its just not a cool thing to do to your daddy... You just totally made the pro-incest argument. God couldn't figure out how to solve the problem so He just turned a blind eye, or didn't make an official policy...until it was convenient for Him. C'mon we both know thats not how God works. If you want to get technical about it God didn't give a specific law against murder until after the great flood...but everyone knew it was wrong. Lot's daughters certainly knew incest was wrong and went to great lengths to deceitfully have incestuous relations with him...this was well before any "official" law came to pass. Their children came to lead tribes that became sworn enemies of Israel. You are acting as though God would have understood if Adam would have began having sexual relations with animals...after all Adam was alone and there was no "official" ruling on it yet. No... God created a solution to the problem.

by that time, can you imagine being a man and marrying someone 200 years younger than you instead of marrying a cousin or 2nd cousin closer to your own age? talk about robbing the cradle LOL. marriage among siblings would have devolved naturally in most cases. new families would have had siblings near the same age, but something "new" is far more appealing to most than something "familiar" that you've been squabbling with your entire life.

I can't imagine that a person lived for 200 years...but I digress. So, now robbing the cradle is worse than incest? Clearly, you are correct that we can't truly know what happened...I just tend to land on the side that thinks God found a solution that pleased Him and didn't bring dishonor and shame to his creation. (Even you have admitted that God says incest is dishonorable.)

as for these other people in the land of nod, i can only conclude from what sketchy details are given in scripture that they were children of adam and eve who had journeyed elsewhere. cain himself may not have married a sister, he may have married a cousin or something... but unless some of his siblings had married amongst themselves, there would have been no cousins to marry.

Cain's only options for marriage would have been a sister or a niece...from your viewpoint. In order for a cousin to be available wouldn't Adam have to have a brother? Adams brother would be Cain's uncle...his uncle's children would have been Cain's cousins. We agree that Adam had no brother.

anyway, i'm not offended by your refusal to agree with me. but your position has no biblical foundation, and so all it can ever be is conjecture. indeed, all EITHER of us can do is speculate, based on what IS provided in scripture. i've laid out my case pretty well for why my speculations make sense to me, and in no way do my speculations imply that "God changed His mind". He implemented what He chose according to what became necessary.

one last thing i'd like to mention. the genealogical accounts of families are of critical importance in scripture... why? because they validate (that's not actually the word i'm looking for but it will do) the legitimacy of Christ. the only two women besides mary that God mentions in Jesus' genealogy are rahab and ruth, both outsiders. you can argue that the genealogical accounts of Christ's lineage only go back so far, but really it goes back all the way to adam because the accounts of each family, all the way to noah, to david, to Christ, are all given.

now, because of the importance of that, it would seem awfully amiss if God had failed to mention some other people who married into adam and eve's family, but who were not descended from adam and eve.

I'm glad you are not offended...nor am I. Of course, I disagree that my opinion is merely conjecture with no biblical foundation...but I would agree that we are BOTH speculating based on our understanding of Scripture and what we believe scripture tells us about God and His character. Of course, I understand your points, as they are the majority view that has been taught to most of us since we were children...I merely have come to a different understanding based upon further review. I also wouldn't characterize your speculations as "God changed His mind"...rather you believe that God allowed something that He considers dishonorable because there was no other option. I believe there were options.

I have no issue with the geneology of Christ issue. I don't see how my view takes away from the geneology of Christ in any way because I am not proposing anything outside of Adams lineage. Creating female companions is something that we KNOW God will do because we have evidence of it. The lineage of Adam is traced through the men, not their female companions. In fact, from Adam to Noah, only two women (besides Eve) are even mentioned as having offspring, Adah and Tzillah, and they are geneological dead-ends.

[MorningGlory]

pure speculation, but i cant see any reason God could not made more men or women or taken a women from the side of Cain and others? It only says that Jesus was the only begotten of the Father, and even the name Adam means man, and Gen says also "male and female He created them".

Wouldn't 'them' refer to Adam and Eve?

[Guest LadyC]

ok axxman, i didn't even read all the smoke you just blew, because i don't appreciate being taken out of context. so hear me clearly now...

i did NOT say it wasn't a sin according to God's standards. anytime God has issued a ruling on anything and it is disobeyed, you are sinning.

what i SAID is that it was not a sin AGAINST God, but against another person. that IS a biblical concept, whether you acknowledge it or not. sins against God, sins against oneself, sins against someone else. drawing from nothing but what is specifically said in scripture, God is not offended by siblings marrying, people are. i'd go into shiloh's expanded explanation here, but i'll let you debate what he said out with him.

so you wasted your time with all the rest that you posted. you lost credibility when you completely twisted what i said within your second paragraph. but bottom line, you're making up stuff to fit your theory when scripture does not support what you are saying. scripture does, however, support the argument i have presented, and most bible scholars and theologians agree.

have a nice nite, axxman. i'll talk with you some other time in a thread where we can actually agree on something. as rare as those occasions are, it's about the only time the two of us can speak civilly, and i, for one, am not going to waste any more time being uncivil. or maybe we usually remain civil in disagreements. i'm not really sure at the moment, i just know my fuse was way too short tonight and i'm not up to being nice about it, so i'll say goodnight and be done with it.

[Guest LadyC]

pure speculation, but i cant see any reason God could not made more men or women or taken a women from the side of Cain and others? It only says that Jesus was the only begotten of the Father, and even the name Adam means man, and Gen says also "male and female He created them".

Wouldn't 'them' refer to Adam and Eve?

yes, it would

[OhLord]

Who did Cain marry? I stand corrected, the Bible does not say if Able got married. Thanks nubula So where did the people of Nod come from?

If you answered something other then sister, where did they come from?

If you said sister, is God the same today, yesterday, and forever? Is incest O.K today?

You will appreciate that Adam and Eve had specific instructions to fill the earth and take dominion of it. How?

No other way than to marry themselves as "the beginning" of the V-structure. God gives laws and commandments to save mankind from distruction. Of course laws were changed over time as the heart of men developed new taste for sins and burnt in unbearable lust. Romans 6:19

God is God, and His wisdom cannot be questioned.

[canuckamuck]

I am surprised this is such a big issue. Clearly the Bible works from the concept that God created humans from a single pair, Adam and Eve.

In order to get from 2 to 6,000,000,000+ people, there needed to be reproduction between close relatives. This was the plan, not an oversight. All believers are saved through Jesus because of this fact. If this were not true, God would have had to find not only a righteous man to do Noah's job, but this man would have also had to have be proven to be purely of the line of Adam, any marriage in to Noah's line from any other source would have caused complications, and Noah's wife as well would have had to been equally pure. And the same would also have to have been true for all of the wives of Noah's sons. This would be a real problem since God could only find one righteous man. What would have been the odds that Noah matched all the other criteria had there have been other lines of mankind intermarrying Adam's children.

Had there have been other lines of men, God could have simply killed of the ones with the sin nature and kept those that were still innocent. It is hard to miss the fact that God stuck with Adam's line to bring Jesus to the world. He must have had a compelling reason

When sin entered the world the perfection of the human species was compromised by the curse. One of the manifestations of the curse is mutations at a genetic level. At a certain point in history, humans had accumulated so many defective traits that he only way to protect humanity from extinction was to forbid marriage between close family members. This was done as a matter of our protection, not because it was against God's nature. It is a moral issue today for at least 4 reasons

1) Because God said it is wrong

2) Because incest is irresponsible and it creates health problems and birth defects for the children of these relationships.

3) Because it is has become a cultural pariah which will bring all manner of abuse and psychological burdens on the family from outside the home.

4) Because it is inherently abusive in the current cultural reality, and because of the sin nature which was originally not present in man.

Ask any animal breeder and they will tell you that animals are prone to genetic defects when breeding pairs are too closely related. In the garden this would not have been true. Nor would it have been true for Adam's kids. It took generations for the mutations to develop.

Edited January 14, 2010 by canuckamuck

[JCISGD]

pure speculation, but i cant see any reason God could not made more men or women or taken a women from the side of Cain and others? It only says that Jesus was the only begotten of the Father, and even the name Adam means man, and Gen says also "male and female He created them".

Wouldn't 'them' refer to Adam and Eve?

Yes quite possibly but not nescessarily. I think its unclear but God couldve created more men after Adam and it would still be true that Adam and Eve were the firsts, nor would it affect the geneology of Christ, or the fact that sin entered the world through Adam.

I do not believe the sin nature was/is passed genetically or has any physical manifestation, but that since Adam lost the Holy spirit we all naturally go astray being away from Gods presence. All are born less than perfect genetically but sin because without God we choose self over God.

[e lansing]

Yes quite possibly but not nescessarily. I think its unclear but God couldve created more men after Adam and it would still be true that Adam and Eve were the firsts, nor would it affect the geneology of Christ, or the fact that sin entered the world through Adam.

Its statements like these that keep me wondering!

I do not believe the sin nature was/is passed genetically or has any physical manifestation, but that since Adam lost the Holy spirit we all naturally go astray being away from Gods presence. All are born less than perfect genetically but sin because without God we choose self over God.

I think that Romans 1-8 does a great job of explaining the problems of sin and how it has effected the human nature. If i had to put a face on the total out come of sin it would be selfishness. Sin has cause humans to be selfish. Have you ever considerd the nature of Christ? He was selfless and everything we learn from Christ flys in the face of our nature. Therefore, putting our faith in Christ is our only hope for this life and the life to come.