2025 Bible Study Group

The story of Cain and Abel is interesting because it teaches spiritual lessons while also reflecting historical realities.

The story might also serve as a metaphor for the early conflict between farming communities (Cain) and nomadic, meat-eating tribes (Abel). This tension probably existed as people moved from a nomadic lifestyle to settled farming.

Abel's offering of an animal might also reflect the cultural preferences of the time, as the Israelites were mostly shepherds. This doesn't take away from the truth of Genesis, but it could also hint at the conflict society faced during that period.
 
I always saw Cain and Abel as a kind of repeat of Adam and Eve in a way.

Yet again we have a pair of people. God tells them things have to be a certain way. Cain rebels against this and receives a hefty punishment which will effect not just him but generations after thim.

Just as the sin of Eve will have consequences for all generations after her, Cain has now cursed generations.

Again, is this a just and fair God at this point in the Bible? Do innocent family members deserve to be punished for a crime they did not commit? It's this question and questions like these which make me uneasy reading the Old Testament.

It sometimes helps me to look at things allegorically and understand that basically we should follows God's rules or there will be dire consequences.

God says:

'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 rule over it.”

This is a more direct advice against sin than was given Adam and Eve as well as a more general one.
 
We see God's mercy in his warnings to Cain in Genesis 4. God tells Cain, perhaps through the words of his brother, that sin is trying to take hold of him, that he must rule over it, and that if he does well he will be accepted.

And we see that malice and murder are consequences of The Fall, and that the evil in Cain spread to his descendents, who would corrupt the line of Seth in later generations.
 
Tippy said:
I always saw Cain and Abel as a kind of repeat of Adam and Eve in a way.

Yet again we have a pair of people. God tells them things have to be a certain way. Cain rebels against this and receives a hefty punishment which will effect not just him but generations after thim.

Just as the sin of Eve will have consequences for all generations after her, Cain has now cursed generations.

Again, is this a just and fair God at this point in the Bible? Do innocent family members deserve to be punished for a crime they did not commit? It's this question and questions like these which make me uneasy reading the Old Testament.

It sometimes helps me to look at things allegorically and understand that basically we should follows God's rules or there will be dire consequences.

God says:

'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 rule over it.”

This is a more direct advice against sin than was given Adam and Eve as well as a more general one.
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There are mysteries which you and I may never fully understand.

With that said, when a man commits a crime his family does indeed face consequences. When he goes to prison, the court is indirectly "punishing" his family as well.

When an irresponsible employee decides to skip work, his coworkers are "punished" by his actions by having more work to make up for his absence.

A broken home can have consequences on families for the following generations which have yet to even be born.

God is righteous and just in both the Old Testament, and the New Testament. I humbly posit that what seems fair or proper by a sinful and foolish mankind is not always so, and also that God Almighty's seemingly lack of mercy is perfect justice even if one does not understand.

I sometimes view us as very young children who think our parents are cruel because they make us eat our meat and vegetables before we can have dessert. Our little minds just can not understand why our parents would force us to do such a thing!
 
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Proverbs 20:9 Who can say, "I have kept my heart pure; I am clean and without sin"?

God never punishes anyone innocent because no one is innocent. If God was only Just and only Fair, we would all be doomed. This is why we thank God for His grace and forgiveness, because that's what saves us. The problem nowadays is that people have sanitized the Gospel so that God is only gracious, and so God's holiness, righteousness, fairness, impossible to meet standards, get tossed out the window and then people lose a proper appreciation of their own sinfulness. God is not only Just or only Gracious, He is both/and, not either/or. He is Just and the Justifier. These seemingly contradictory ideas can only be understood when they are held in their proper Biblical balance.
 
Genesis 5-6

I recognize that interpretations of the end times differ among Christian denominations. One of the joys of participating in a study group like this is engaging with diverse perspectives. Even when we disagree, these discussions sharpen our understanding and encourage us to think deeply about our beliefs. As Proverbs 27:17 reminds us: "As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another."

With that in mind, I find the story of Enoch particularly intriguing, as I believe it foreshadows the rapture.

Genesis 5:24 tells us:

"Enoch walked faithfully with God; then he was no more, because God took him away".

This event, where Enoch was taken up before death, aligns in a with 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17:

"For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever."

For those of us who hold a pre-tribulation rapture view, Enoch's sudden removal resonates as a parallel to the moment when believers will be take up to meet God.

Furthermore, Jesus’ words in Matthew 24:37 strengthen the connection between Genesis and the end times:

"As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man."

This reference ties the events of Genesis 5-6 to the ultimate fulfillment of God’s plan in the last days.
 
GodfatherPartTwo said:
Proverbs 20:9 Who can say, "I have kept my heart pure; I am clean and without sin"?

God never punishes anyone innocent because no one is innocent. If God was only Just and only Fair, we would all be doomed. This is why we thank God for His grace and forgiveness, because that's what saves us. The problem nowadays is that people have sanitized the Gospel so that God is only gracious, and so God's holiness, righteousness, fairness, impossible to meet standards, get tossed out the window and then people lose a proper appreciation of their own sinfulness. God is not only Just or only Gracious, He is both/and, not either/or. He is Just and the Justifier. These seemingly contradictory ideas can only be understood when they are held in their proper Biblical balance.
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Why would we all be doomed if God was just and fair?
 
GodfatherPartTwo said:
Because we're all guilty sinners. The caveat is that God is not only Just and Fair. He is also Gracious and forgiving. And so we have an out.
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I see. Yeah. Well it does seem a bit unfair to curse generations after for the actions of Cain.

I understand how sin can effect future generations one way or another, just seems harsh for God specifically to intervene on this matter and specifically punish those descendants.
 
Tippy said:
I see. Yeah. Well it does seem a bit unfair to curse generations after for the actions of Cain.

I understand how sin can effect future generations one way or another, just seems harsh for God specifically to intervene on this matter and specifically punish those descendants.
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The way I see it, a lot of the times we don't sin are due to circumstance. If anyone of us were in the Garden we would've made the same choice as Adam did. God knows that and thus can treat us as individually guilty, not only corporately guilty in Adam. We may not have done the same sin experientially or externally but our inward disposition of the heart is just the same.

The Pharisees used to trash on the ancient Hebrews who killed the prophets, believing themselves to be more righteous. The Lord confronts their delusion in Matthew 23:29: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, 30and say, ‘If we had been living in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partners with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ 31So you bear witness against yourselves, that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. 32Fill up, then, the measure of the guilt of your fathers. 33You serpents, you brood of vipers, how will you escape the sentence of hell?"

I know that there are many times in my life when I attempt to commit sin only to be thwarted by circumstance. Thus I do not succeed in carrying out the sin, but this is no credit to me, because if I had my way I would've carried out sin, but this is only due to the grace of God that in His providence I am not as big of a sinner as I would be if I could have my way. When we tell ourselves that we do not deserve God's judgement, we confirm that God is right to judge us.
 
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Tippy said:
I see. Yeah. Well it does seem a bit unfair to curse generations after for the actions of Cain.

I understand how sin can effect future generations one way or another, just seems harsh for God specifically to intervene on this matter and specifically punish those descendants.
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I think sometimes punishment attributed to God here on Earth is just an inevitable outcome when people sin, or to put it another way break His laws.

If one were to jump off of a cliff, and fall to their death I believe it is a mistake to believe they were punished. It is simply a consequence of breaking one of the laws of the universe, in this case gravity.

One may not understand gravity, believe in gravity, or believe gravity is unfair, but everyone is still subject to gravity.

Falling to your death is not a punishment, but a consequence.

I humbly suggest praying to God for guidance and understanding in this matter.
 
Sorry to be bringing up Genesis 2 because I know I am a little behind, but I noticed something just reading it which I had never noticed. This is from the NIV Bible I am reading.

Genesis 2:8
Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed.

Genesis 2:15
The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.

My understanding reading this is that the Garden of Eden was not made as Adam's home, and may have been made before Adam's creation.

God placed him there to work and take care of it. It became Adam's home; he was the garden's caretaker.

So the premise the tree of knowledge of good and evil was placed in the garden to tempt Adam does not seem correct to me.

The tree certainly had a purpose in the garden, as did Adam as the caretaker.

I have items in my home which my children have been warned not to touch. These items, such as a butcher knife, serve a purpose in my home. They are not to tempt my children who may think they would be fun to play with, and they have been told it is off limits.

I fully expect my warnings to be heeded as the knife is dangerous, and not suitable for children. If I found my child had disobeyed me, and hurt themselves there would be consequences both in the injury sustained from cutting themselves as well as my broken trust and anger from the disobedience.
 
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To the point about about placing the Tree in the Garden, I find it interesting that Adam doesn't eat the fruit until after God had made it a prohibition. It reminds me of Paul in Romans 7:

5 For while we were in the flesh, the sinful passions, which were aroused by the Law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death.

8But sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, worked out in me coveting of every kind. For apart from the Law sin is dead. 9Now I was once alive apart from the Law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died; 10and this commandment, which was to lead to life, was found to lead to death for me. 11For sin, taking an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me.

It's as if God prohibiting the fruit aroused Adam to sin. Not that God tempted him, for He tempts no one, but that our sinful nature desires to sin. Paul will go on to emphasize that it is not God's Law, His legal prohibitions, that are bad, but that they give the sinfulness within us opportunity to manifest and even arouses it. The added irony in Adam is that he had no sin nature and yet still chose to sin.
 
Hey everyone, just a heads-up that I’ll be offline for the next week or so. I’ve been dealing with some bad headaches and sleeping really poorly, so I’m going to massively cut back on screen time until I feel better.

I’ll still keep up with the Bible reading, but I won’t be posting for a bit. Looking forward to catching up on all your Genesis insights when I’m back!
 
Interesting in this part God talks about reducing the length of human life due to his frustrations and then bringing in the flood as a consequence.

It seems at times God is revising his opinions on humans as the Bible progresses. Kind hard to see him as all-seeing and all-knowing when he's developing his creations as he goes along (or at least it looks that way). Did God have foresight of all this? Does he in general see the future? He's quite reactive in the Old Testament.

It comes across to me that God is surprised at the initial sinning (of Adam, Eve and Cain) and then just tired of it and decided to wipe all humans out.
 
The language in Genesis 6 portrays God as being disgusted with what he has made. The KJV says it grieved Him in his heart. I imagine that this was a period in human development where violence and man's inhumanity to man had become more widespread than before. Men lived longer, they were populating the Earth, spreading destruction, and God is amazed that even their thoughts were only evil continually.

"The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence."
 
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I think 2 things stuck out to me in chapter 6. Things must have been REALLY evil back then for God to want to wipe out humanity completely, and things are going to have to get even MORE evil before the Lord returns again. With all of the vile wickedness that we are aware of that is going on nowadays thanks to the advances in technology, it’s mind blowing to think that things could have been worse then than they are now! However, scripture does say there is nothing new under the sun (Ecclesiastes 1:9). Stay alert, stay in prayer brothers.IMG_1201.jpegIMG_1202.jpeg
 
GodfatherPartTwo said:
@Gazza What was your take on Genesis 5? You sounded like you had some ammo. I've been looking forward to hearing it.
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Na, I probably was just a bit excited when I seen a series of different numbers popping up in that chapter mate 65, 365, 777. I sometimes see numbers and they can play games with my mind, that’s all.
 
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