Now Abel kept flocks, and Cain worked the soil.  In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the LORD.  But Abel brought fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The LORD looked with favor on Abel and his offering,  but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast.

Then the LORD said to Cain, “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it.” (Genesis 4:2-7)

From the Scriptures it appears that Cain knew how to bring an acceptable offering to the Lord.  This is one of the clues that leads me to believe the Lord introduced a form of what would become the Levitical System right after the fall.  There had to be a way for His earliest children to set aside their sins until the Redeemer He had promised to send (Gen. 3:15) came to solve the sin problem permanently.  But although he knew what was right, Cain hadn’t done it and the Lord warned him that if he didn’t change there would be serious consequences.  He didn’t and there were.

One of the tools used by theologians to help them understand the Lord’s Word is called “The Principle Of First Mention”.  It holds that the first time an important matter is mentioned in the Bible, the context in which it appears often contains information vital to our understanding of His Word in general, not just to the specific instance.  The issue in Genesis 4 is being accepted by God by doing the right thing.

Cain’s experience shows us that the Lord doesn’t condemn us for failing to do what is right without first teaching us what is right. It bears repeating that Cain knew what was right, but didn’t do it. Therefore he was acting with volition, consciously choosing a different way than the Lord had shown him.

I don’t think this is something that’s unique to Cain.  There are several specific New Testament references  to people who know what is right but don’t do it.  I’m not talking about the sins we all commit, where we purposely do something that we know is displeasing to God.  I’m talking about major disobedience that carries huge consequences.  Jude called this following the Way of Cain. (Jude 1:11) Some of these people are outside the Church and some are inside.  In this study, we’ll take a look at those on the outside, because the consequences of their behavior has affected all of society.

Knowing What’s Right Vs. Doing What’s Right

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. (Romans 1:18-19).

This passage in Romans is not about people who never heard the truth about God and in ignorance came up with some alternate explanation for who we are and how we got here. This is about men who knew the truth and suppressed it. They knew what was right because God made it plain to them. But they not only didn’t do it, they tried to hide it so that others wouldn’t discover it.  They compounded the Way of Cain and ruined our world.

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. (Romans 1:20-23)

God has made His presence known to man, and eliminated all our excuses. These men knew God but rejected Him, and when they did four things began to happen, all of them bad.

First, their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.  This means that they lost the ability to reason where the things of God are concerned.  Remember Psalm 14:1, The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God.”  A foolish person lacks the ability to reason and relies on wishful thinking.  And second, they stopped worshiping the Creator in favor of the Creation.

These men held themselves out as wise, learned men, who had come up with a superior alternative to what they call the fables and fiction of the Bible.  They called themselves scientists, although by definition science requires observation, and they’ve never observed their theory in action.  What they were able to observe is that left alone, all things proceed from order into chaos, or devolve, and yet their theory requires things to go the opposite direction, evolving from chaos into order, without any outside assistance.  Their’s is a natural law that violates natural law.

Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen. (Romans 1:24-25)

Third and fourth, they became sexually immoral and materialistic.  If this had only happened to a few, we could have seen how different from the rest of us they had become.  But since their theory effectively does away with God, it caught on among others who were seeking an alternative to Him,  and after a relatively few years it worked its way into the educational systems of the world in the guise of science.  In order to suppress the truth, scientists and educators made sure it was the only thing taught in our schools, and after a few generations no one even thought to question it.  Even many of the leading theologians went along, seeing their theory as being more sophisticated and more intellectually appealing than God’s Word.  Soon this theory that’s never been observed or proven became as fact.

Seeking to end their troublesome conflict with God’s Word for good, they got Him kicked out of the educational system, perverting our legal system along the way.  As they did, the standard of morality began to decline, and before long the age of materialism was upon us followed by the sexual revolution.  Then pornography went public and became an accepted part of our entertainment. Soon, half of all marriages were ending in divorce.  40 million unborn children were put to death for the sake of convenience. (Anyone can look at an ultrasound and know intuitively that it depicts a human life.  It took experts who know what is right but refuse to do it to convince us otherwise.)  Children who were brought into the world were abandoned to the very schools that had played a major role in causing the problem.

Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion. (Romans 1:26-27)

When these men saw evidence of the cause and effect relationship that Paul had warned them about, they worked to suppress it as well.  They called these judgments from God alternative lifestyles, as proper as any other choice, and began teaching our children to accept and even celebrate them. They passed laws against thinking of them in any other way, in some instances making it a crime for us to remind them of God’s word.

Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them. (Romans 1:28-32)

It’ll All Be Over Soon

As a society we’ve acquired such depraved minds that we don’t even see what’s happening to us.  We should know that we’re on a down hill slide to destruction, but we keep getting worse and worse,  applauding behavior that we would have condemned in disgust only a generation ago.

Since the first judgments haven’t turned mankind back to God, a final, much more serious one is coming.  This one is so bad that the Lord will remove His Church from out of the midst of it to protect  us from it’s effect. (1 Thes. 1:9-10)  Jesus said that it would be so bad that not one living soul would survive it unless he puts an end to it at the appointed time. (Matt. 24:22)

Already we can see signs of it building among us.   But as bad as it is, it’s nothing compared to what it will be.  In Paul’s day the Greek Empire was in the last days of it’s decline, gasping under the weight of the same kind of decay that’s in evidence everywhere in our world today.  And Paul already saw it coming upon the Roman Empire, although the worst of it was still several hundred years away for them.  In each of these world Empires people’s hearts had become so hardened and their minds so depraved that they couldn’t even figure out what was happening to them.  It’s the same today.

And contrary to the wishes of my friends in the Charismatic and Emerging Church movements, the Bible mentions no great revival at the end of the age to right all our wrongs, heal all our diseases, and clean up our mess in time to hand it over the the Messiah, all bright and shiny.  The reason people from those movements don’t want you studying prophecy is that their version of the End Times can not be found there.

Contrary to what they preach, this is what the Lord told us to expect.  He said that in the last days the believing Church would have little strength but would keep His word and not deny His name.  He said He would come for us soon and to hold on until He does. (Rev. 3:8,11)  On the other hand, the apostate church would consider itself wealthy and in need of nothing, not realizing that they’re wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. All the while He stands knocking at their door trying to get in. Unable to do so, He will spew them out of His mouth. (Rev. 3:16,17,20).

None of this had to happen, of course.  It all started when a few men who knew what was right decided not to do it.  And the rest, as they say, is history. It’s hard to believe that all of our society’s sexual immorality, its materialism and greed, the decay of its educational system, its disregard for the value of human life, and its celebration of alternative lifestyles, all stem from its decision to ignore what it knows is right and refuse to do it.  But that’s exactly what’s happened.   For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, worshiping and serving created things rather than our Creator.  It’s the Way of Cain.

Our Lord gave us a pretty thorough overview of the End Times as they relate to Israel. It’s often called the Olivet Discourse because He was speaking to four of His disciples on the Mt. Of Olives.  It was at the end of one of His last days of freedom before being arrested, and they asked Him about the End of the Age. Matthew’s account of His answer is in chapters 24-25.  Mark’s is contained in chapter 13.  Luke’s version is a little different in that it also includes a prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. You’ll find it in his 21st chapter.

Since the Lord was answering questions about Israel’s future and His 2ndComing, the focus was decidedly Jewish, so we don’t learn anything about the Church from studying it.  But understanding how things will progress for Israel gives us a background that makes Paul’s prophecies about the church in the End Times, which came 20 years later, easier to understand.  Paul’s letters to the Thessalonians, written about 51 AD, officially introduced the notion of the Rapture and its timing to the early church, and contain clarifying information about the anti-Christ and the withdrawal of the Holy Spirit as well.  The 2ndComing is referred to in every chapter of these two letters, for an average of once in every 13 verses.

In Luke 17:20-37, the Lord gave us some additional information about the time of His coming that’s often overlooked in our preoccupation with the more popular Olivet Discourse.  But after you’ve gained the Jewish perspective from that passage and the Christian one from Paul’s letters, you can use Luke 17 to double check your understanding of the End times, and see if you’ve gotten it right. The fact that Luke 17 shares  some language with the Olivet Discourse gives us a hint that they’re meant to be related. Let’s take a look.

Luke 17:20-37

Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, “The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke 17:20-21)

Right off the bat, the Lord threw us a curve to make sure we’re paying attention. It came in the form of the word translated “within”.  He was responding to the Pharisees who had posed the question.  The Kingdom of God was not within them because they weren’t believers.  So what was He trying to tell us?  Well, it turns out that the word can also mean “in the midst of”, and the Kingdom was in the midst of them.  He was the personification of the Kingdom and He was standing right in front of them.  Some translations, the NIV for example, offer “among” as an alternate to “within” in verse 21.

To the Pharisees it was only true that the Kingdom was among them.  But once the Holy Spirit was given, the Kingdom would also be within all believers.  At that point, both of these interpretations would become true.  The Kingdom of God is within us, and we are in the midst of the world. This is the spiritual, or invisible phase of the Kingdom.  But as we’ll see it’s not the final phase.

Then he said to his disciples, “The time is coming when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, but you will not see it. Men will tell you, ‘There he is!’ or ‘Here he is!’ Do not go running off after them. For the Son of Man in his day will be like the lightning, which flashes and lights up the sky from one end to the other. But first he must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation.(Luke 17:22-25)

After being rejected and executed by the leaders of His generation, the Lord would go away, and only the invisible phase of the Kingdom would remain.  It’s called the Church.  But then He would return and when He did there would be no mistaking it.  It would light up the entire sky, and the physical phase of the Kingdom would come again.

This is a clue as to why the Church and Israel are mutually exclusive in the world.  The Kingdom of God began with Israel. He had Moses tell them so. “Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine,  you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” (Exodus 19:5-6)

But then because of their disobedience it was taken away from Israel and given to the Church.  In Matt. 21:43 Jesus said. “Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit.

But this wasn’t to be permanent.  After the Church disappears, the Kingdom will be restored to Israel.  The early Church understood this, as evidenced by James’ prophecy in Acts 15:13-18  where he said that the Lord would first take from among the Gentiles a people for Himself, and after that would return to rebuild David’s fallen tabernacle.  Later Paul confirmed this, saying that Israel had been hardened in part until the full number of Gentiles come in, and after that Israel would be saved. (Romans 11:25-27)

“Just as it was in the days of Noah, so also will it be in the days of the Son of Man. People were eating, drinking, marrying and being given in marriage up to the day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all.(Luke 17:26-27)

Like it was in Noah’s time people will be unaware of the judgment that will precede His return, not because they haven’t been warned but because they haven’t believed the warning.  Noah is used as a model of the believing remnant of Israel at the end of the age, preserved through the judgment while the world is destroyed.  Noah and his family remained in the location of the judgment while the unbelievers were swept away in the flood.  At the End of the Age Israel’s believing remnant will remain in the location of the judgment but will be preserved while the Lord completely destroys the nations around them. (Jere. 30:11)  In the symbolic language of Revelation this remnant is represented by a woman, while Satan is called the serpent.

The woman was given the two wings of a great eagle, so that she might fly to the place prepared for her in the desert, where she would be taken care of for a time, times and half a time, out of the serpent’s reach.   Rev. 12:14

“It was the same in the days of Lot. People were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building. But the day Lot left Sodom, fire and sulfur rained down from heaven and destroyed them all.” (Luke 17:28-29)

At first glance this seems like another similar example.  But it’s really very different.  Lot was taken away from the location of the judgment to a place of safety.  In fact the angels who were sent to remove him said they couldn’t bring the judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah until Lot was away and safe. (Genesis 19:21-22)  He was rescued from the out pouring of God’s wrath on Sodom and Gomorrah.

In this sense, Lot becomes a model of the Church.  Paul explained that the Church would be rescued as well.  They tell how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath. (1 Thes.1:9-10)

The Greek word translated “from” in verse 10 means away from the time or place or any relation to coming wrath.  Just like Lot, we have to be away and safe before the End Times judgments can begin.

I’ve often said that Jesus didn’t teach the doctrine of the Rapture and didn’t even tell His disciples about it.  But if you already know it’s coming you can find hints of it in the Gospels.  This is one of them, and by using Lot as a model the Lord confirmed the timing. Before the judgment.

“It will be just like this on the day the Son of Man is revealed. On that day no one who is on the roof of his house, with his goods inside, should go down to get them. Likewise, no one in the field should go back for anything. Remember Lot’s wife! Whoever tries to keep his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it. I tell you, on that night two people will be in one bed; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding grain together; one will be taken and the other left.”

 

“Where, Lord?” they asked.

He replied, “Where there is a dead body, there the vultures will gather.” (Luke 17:30-37)

In the Olivet Discourse Jesus gave this warning not to go back into their houses in conjunction with the revealing of the anti-Christ, and in the Greek neither “on” (NIV) nor “in” (KJV) modify the phrase “that day” so it’s reasonable to assume He means the same thing here, referring to the beginning of the 3 ½ year Day of the Lord.

Likewise, I think the word “night” when some are taken and some left refers to its end. As in the Olivet Discourse (Matt. 24:40-41) the word translated “taken” literally means received, and the word for left means put away, as in a divorce. At the end of the age, after the Lord returns, some tribulation survivors will be received live into the Kingdom. They will have become believes after the Church was raptured and will be welcomed into the Kingdom as their reward. Other will not and will be put away, off the planet, in the place prepared for the devil and his angels (Matt. 25:41) It’s a reference to the Sheep and Goat Judgment.

Some read a lot of symbolism into the comment about dead bodies and a vulture, but I see it as a simple parable.  Vultures don’t gather any place in the sky except over the carcass of a dead body.  The dead body is really the purpose of their gathering. That’s where they belong.  The use of this parable was just the Lord’s way of answering the disciples’ question, “Where, Lord?”  He said each group will wind up right where they belong.

So in these 17 verses of Luke 17the Lord explained the dual nature of the Kingdom, the fact that He was going away and then coming back, that His 2ndComing would be physical just like His first one,  and there would be both a believing remnant preserved through the judgments that precede His  return (Israel), and a group of believers who would be removed to a place of safety before they begin (the Church).  There would also be survivors who don’t belong to either group.  Upon His return, some of these would receive the Kingdom as a reward for believing, while the rest would be sent to the place prepared for the devil and his angels for refusing to believe.

Like I said, Luke 17: 20-37 is not a passage for discovering, but one for confirming.  Reading it will inform you whether you got it right from your other studies of prophecy or not.  I call it Luke’s Proof Text.