Messiah In The Old Testament Episode 17
The Antediluvian World Part 1 Cain’s Unrighteous Line
Welcome to Messiah In The Old Testament. In our last episode we told you the story of Cain and Abel. In that story we brought forth three Messianic Prophecies.
Adam and Eve had been kicked out of the garden of Eden. They were banished, never to return. A flashing sword appeared at the entrance to the Garden of Eden which flashed back and forth and kept them out. And also, Elohim stationed Guardian Cherubim to keep Adam and Eve from getting back on the path that would take them back to the Tree of Life. Never again would they set foot in the garden. Never again would they eat from the Tree of Life. So, Adam and Eve settled then East of Eden. And they obviously set up some sort of homestead.
And they started growing their crops and raising their animals, their herds and flocks of sheep etc. So, they're living on that homestead and while they are there, the Tanakh says that Eve got pregnant. And she gave birth to the firstborn and his name was Cain. And she said it is by the hand of Elohim that I have gotten this man.
So, Cain was born and Cain had this affinity towards growing things and crops and so Cain became a farmer. Then they had another child and his name was Abel. Abel had an affinity towards the animals. And Abel then became involved in the husbandry and raising and herding the flocks. So, these two boys were growing and learning from their parents. Now we don't know if other you brothers and sisters were born during that time. The Tanakh does not tell us. But we kind of assume that other children were born during that time.
When it came time to present offerings to Elohim. Obviously, Adam had taught that to his boys. And we talked in a previous episode how God sacrificed the first animal in the garden to clothe them, to cover up their sin. And that concept of sacrifice was handed down father to son, father son. So, the boys took that tradition in hand and now they’re bringing their offerings before Elohim. Abel brings the very best of the best. He brings the fatty portions from the first fruit of his flock and he presents that to Elohim. Cain on the other hand brought some fruit from his crops that he had grown and he offered them to Elohim. Now Elohim looked on Abel’s offering with great favor and he looked on Cain's offering without any favor. So, Cain was very angry and upset about this. He blamed his brother. I mean how could the fruit that he brought be any less than the fat portion that his brother bought. So, he was jealous. He was angry. He was sullen. And it was in this angry state that Elohim came to him and confronted him.
And he said, “Cain, why are you so angry? Why is your face so downcast?” He said, “Sin is crouching at your door, ready to devour you.” It was like an animal ready to pounce and devour him. “But if you do what is right there is a path back toward reconciliation. If you do
what is right you will find favor.” So, he had this opportunity. Cain was at a crossroads. He could either choose reconciliation and find his way back to Elohim and be in Elohim's good graces.
Remember we called it ‘Reconciliation Through Obedience.’ Or he could choose to just walk through that door and get devoured by sin. Well, he was in such a state, very jealous and angry, that he decided to walk through that door. So, sin pounced on him and devoured him and drove him to murder. So, he invites his brother out into the field.
He and his brother are out in the field and he kills his brother. And leaves his brother dead on the ground. And we don't know if he buried him or not. And remember we talked about what the sages say in the story about the ravens etc. So, Cain goes back to the homestead. And Elohim confronts him and says, “Cain, where is your brother?” And Cain said, “I don't know. Am I my brother's keeper?” And then the Elohim just totally unloads on him and tells him the truth. And the truth is that your brother blood is crying out from the very ground that you killed him on. So, he then brings judgment against Cain. So, he pronounces three curses on Cain. This is his judgment. And this scene,
very much reminiscent of his daddy standing in the garden with Eve and the serpent and Elohim is handing out the judgments, handing out the curses. So here is his son following his daddy’s footsteps.
And so, Elohim tells Cain: Number one, you're banished from the land. Sounds very familiar, Adam and Eve banished from the Garden. Number two, the ground will not produce for you anymore. Now Adam, his curse was you’re going to have to work the ground. There will be weeds, there will be thistles and it is through the sweat of your brow that you're going to get your food. But now one step further, Cain not going to be able to get any food from the ground. And then third, he was to become a restless wanderer. Now, the full weight of Cain's sin, now crashing down on him. The judgment, the curses and now he is obviously overwhelmed and he says, “This is just too much. I can't bear this. I cannot bear being cast out of your presence.” Because Adam and Eve and their homestead they were still living under Elohim's watchful eye.
They were still under the protection of Elohim. But now because Cain was being banished from the land, he was going to go out from under
this protection and he was very much afraid that if somebody found him that they would kill him. He didn't want to become restless wonderer and somebody just come up and randomly kill him. So, Elohim had compassion on him, so Elohim agreed to put a mark of protection on him. He put a seal of protection on him, so that Cain, anybody, who saw him would recognize the seal, recognize Elohim’s protection and they would leave Cain alone. And Elohim said, “If anybody kills Cain, he will be avenged seven times over.” So, Cain is cast out, banished and he heads over further east to the land of Nod and he starts building a city. That's where we left our story last time. Now we thought that this would be a perfect time to kind of step back, press the pause button and review the prophecies that we have already presented. This is obviously a time right now of transition. We’re transitioning from the creation story, from the Garden of Eden, from the judgments of Adam and Eve. and the whole issue with the First Family. Now we are going to move several generations down the line for our next prophecy. It’s going to actually happen 5-6 generations down from Adam. So, this is a perfect time since we’re in this transition away from the First Family to the later generations, to review what we've learned so far.
So, I put together a screenshot for you. This is from my database. And you remember I have this ginormous database that has all the Messianic Prophecies in it. And I’m going to put the screenshot for you right now. So, if you look over on the left-hand side, you'll see there are Scripture references to a Scripture the Old Testament or Tanakh. Then in the middle there are the actual titles that I've assigned to each of the prophecies. And then over here on the right side there are descriptions of each of those prophecies. So, let's go through them.
The first prophecy was the prophecy of the revelation of Elohim, of Messiah, his son, during creation. Now this obviously is a very controversial area. And remember we started with the mystery of the name Elohim. Elohim is a masculine noun. Elohim is the name for God. There's a singular form El. And that is used in the Scriptures. There is a dual form of every noun and the dual form for El would be Elohayim. And then there is the plural form which is three or more and that is Elohim. The author of Genesis chose Elohim as the noun that he used. So, then this created [the question], why use a plural noun when you could have used a singular noun.
And we know that God is one. The Shema says sema Israel Adonai Elohenu [Adonai] echad. God is one. We know that God is one. There is only one God. But why the plural? We talked about many, many theories as to why that happened and we finally reconciled the whole thing using the concept of a Trinity or more multiple parts to God. Now this is for Christians obviously is very familiar. For Jewish people not so familiar, but not totally out of the pale. Because there is a concept of Elohim and his Spirit ruach Elohim. And then for all of my Muslim brothers this is just totally anathema.
So, let's look at these three concepts of God. In the Christian tradition, the Christian world, there is God the Father. Now God the father is considered by most Christians to be kind of over the whole thing. He is the one that sits on the throne in heaven on the holy mountain with the fiery stones. He is the one that sits in that sapphire throne with the emerald rainbow and the crystal payment before him and the angels surrounding him. That is God the father. Now, the term father, well applied, because Christians consider that God is their father and that the Christians are his children, his sons and his daughters. And there is this relationship of an individual believer and their father God. Then there is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was sent by Elohim into the world. Now we'll talk a little bit more in the Jewish construct. The Holy Spirit is the part of God that acts on the earth and does stuff on the earth. It is God moving on the earth. Christians believe that God sent his Holy Spirit to the earth to benefit the children, the sons and daughters of God. So, the benefit is they are empowered, they are comforted, they are given wisdom and knowledge and ability to understand and interpret the Scriptures. There are many things that the Holy Spirit imparts in the Christian point of view. And finally, the Son figure, the third part of the Trinity. Christians believe that this is the Son of God. They believe Messiah who is already come in the form of Jesus Christ. And Messiah came to live a blameless and pure life on the earth, was then crucified and in so doing then bought salvation for all of the sons and daughters.
Now let's look at the Jewish concept. In the Jewish world there is Elohim, the one God. Elohenu our God is one. Elohenu echad. God is one. However, there are many, many, many references in the Tanakh. In fact, all throughout the Tanakh we find places where the Holy Spirit appears. The Holy Spirit is moving on the earth and the Jewish concept is that the Holy Spirit is God's power applied to the earth. God moves on the earth. God accomplishes things on the earth through his spirit. And then the concept of a son part of the Trinity is just really not there. There's no concept that Messiah when he comes will be the son of God. That Messiah’s even part of the Trinity. That is not traditionally a Jewish point of view.
And then finally the Muslim concept. The Muslim concept is that of there is Allah and there is nothing other than Allah. Allah is allpowerful. Allah rules over the earth. Allah is only one. Now there are mentions of the Holy Spirit in the Quran. And the mention of the Holy Spirit, basically it is considered that the Holy Spirit is a spirit, like an angel or Jinn that was created by Allah for a specific purpose and for a specific reason. And then the Muslims also believe that Jesus Christ came as the Messiah to the Jewish Nation and he was the son of Mary
and that he fulfilled all the prophecies according to the Tanakh. And they believe then instead of Jesus being crucified, that Jesus was taken up into heaven. And now Jesus resides in the fourth heaven, the fourth level of heaven. And he is waiting there until the final judgment. And then at the final judgment he will be revealed. Now obviously we have three have different views of God. We put all this together, understanding that you, my Muslim brothers, would find the concept of Trinity a total anathema. They consider us to be polytheists because we believe in the three parts of God. A lot of my Jewish brothers do not believe that there are two parts to God and then it's kind of a leap for them to believe in the three parts. You know, in the Jewish construct, we have God as the King of the Universe.
In fact, you know at the beginning of every, almost every blessing, it starts out with Baruch atah Adonai Elohenu melech ha olam. That means that Blessed be the LORD our God he is King of the universe or ruler over the universe. And that’s sort of the same thing that the Muslims believe. That Allah is king over the universe. Now I understand all of you who have issues with my reconciliation of Elohim with a Trinity, but I would like to refer to an actual Jewish scholar. Somebody who was raised in very strict Judaism. And he writes in the first century. He studied under Rabbi Gamaliel. He described himself as a Hebrew of the Hebrews. He was a Pharisee of the Pharisees. He knew the law frontward and backward. And he wrote a letter to a group of people who were living in the Roman Province of Galatia, in a city called Colosse. And this is what this Jewish scholar wrote specifically in regard to my concept of the Trinity and Messiah being there at creation.
He writes:
“Messiah is the image of the invisible God. He is the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and things on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities. (Anybody in government). All things were created by him and for him. He is before all things and in him all things hold together.”
So, it’s not a total stretch [of the imagination] going to the concept of the Trinity, of Messiah being there at creation doing those creative acts. So, let's move to our next prophecy.
Our next prophecy is the prophecy of the white ram. Now remember the story of the white ram? The white ram was created on the very twilight on the sixth day just, just, just before Sabbath arrived and the day of rest came to creation. At the very last hour there were several things that happened. One of those things was the creation of the white ram. Now the white ram was placed in the Garden of Eden and the white ram stayed in the Garden of Eden throughout the millennia waiting, waiting,
waiting for his time. And finally, his time came when Abraham was sacrificing Isaac on the altar.
He was ready to plunge the knife into his son and the ram appears in the thicket. This was the white ram according to the story from the midrashim. So, the white ram is symbolic of the lamb that was offered in the place of Isaac. So that's why put it in and I know the story is not from the Tanakh and we’re going over specifically stories found in the Old Testament. It ties in so well with that story of Isaac and the sacrifice that I decided I would add it into our list of prophecies. So, the white ram, symbolic of Messiah who will willingly offer himself in our place to receive the punishment for our sins, to cover up our sins. The next prophecy, now if you take the white ram and the next three prophecies which are kind of clumped together, those are the prophecies related to all the curses, those basically present the whole plan of salvation. I call them together Messiah's Plan of Salvation.
So, the next one comes from the fact that the offspring of Eve would be the one that is going to crush the snake's head. So being an offspring of Eve or literally it says the seed of Eve. So, if Messiah comes from the
seed of Eve, then Messiah has to be part of the human race. So, this prophecy reveals that Messiah is going to come as a human, not as a spiritual being, not as like a Holy Spirit being, but as a physical flesh and bones, born of a woman, born from the seed of Eve. The next prophecy then is a prophecy where the serpent bites the heel of Eve's offspring. And that is talking about Messiah who comes as the sacrificial lamb. The suffering servant part of prophecy.
And remember we have in our logo two parts. We have a lamb symbolic of the suffering servant. The Lamb Messiah will be slain and then the other part is the lion. The rampant lion with the crown on his head and the scepter in his hand. That is symbolic of Messiah as a conquering king. So, we can lump a lot of our prophecies into those two camps. In fact, these three prophecies can all be lumped into that. So, this second of those three, it is part of Messiah as suffering servant. So, Messiah will suffer torture under Satan's regime, will be killed as the Lamb of God. And then the last one of those three is the offspring of Eve will crush the serpent's head, crush Satan's head. So, Messiah will come, defeat his enemies, will be victorious over Satan and his regime and he will then set up his eternal kingdom as the Conquering King.
The next prophecy then was the whole sacrificial system thing. And you remember we went over [in] great detail about sacrificial systems and what it all means. It is where Elohim kills animals in the Garden of Eden, takes their skins, covers up Adam and Eve's nakedness which came about as a result of their sin. So, he literally covers up their sin with the blood of these animals. with their skins. Snd this is symbolic of how Messiah is going to be our sacrifice, our sacrificial lamb. And how blood was spilled in the Garden. It was looking forward to the sacrificial system where blood would be spilled from the animals. from the lambs, from the Rams, the Bulls and all that the sacrificial animals. And then that whole system was pointing forward to Messiah. Who is going to make one final sacrifice, once for all, for all the sins of all the people of the world and provide a means for their salvation. The next prophecy then is back to the last story, the three from the last story.
The first is the fiery sword of judgment. The judgment that kicked Adam and Eve out of the Garden, banished them from the path to the Tree of Life. And we said that Messiah was going to pick up that sword. And Messiah was going to come as a conquering king in judgment over the nations, over Satan, over Satan's regime. And he was going to use that
sword of judgment to defeat his enemies and then he would open up the way to the Tree of Life and we would be able to get back on that path. And when he sets up his eternal kingdom we will have access to the Tree of Life, the River of Life and we will have access to all of those things once again. Like going back in to the Garden in Messiah’s eternal kingdom.
And then the next prophecy was the prophecy regarding the Mark of Cain where Cain is given a mark of protection or seal of protection. So that anyone who found him, would not kill him because he was under the protection, the presence of God. And we believe that Messiah is going to do the same thing. He is to mark his believers, those who follow him and they will have that mark of protection and they will be under the protection and in the presence of Elohim. And then finally, we said that Messiah was an extension of God's grace. And we saw this over and over, Elohim was extending grace after grace after grace to Adam, to Eve, to Cain. And he's just being so gracious and extending his grace and we know that Messiah is going to be an extension of that grace, the final grace where we will receive salvation and be restored in fellowship with Elohim. Now let’s pick up our story. We’ve got Cain sitting in the land of Nod, east of Eden, east of where Adam and Eve have their homestead. He is building a city. He meets a woman. He has children with her and we assume Adam and Eve are still back at the Homestead doing their thing, probably having more and more children. And we know eventually Seth is born. We are going to hold off on Seth’s story until we talk about the line of Cain.
So, I made a chart for you. And I going to put it up right now. The chart is called the Line of Cain. And you'll see on this chart we’ve got Cain at the very top. And if you look just to the right, it says Cain murdered his brother Abel in a rage of jealousy. That is his legacy. That is Cain’s, what he is remembered for. He's the guy who flew into a rage and had opportunity to return to Elohim. But went through the door, sin pounced on him and he murdered his brother. So, his legacy is rage, murder and jealousy. Now he had a son and his son's name was Enoch. And then Enoch had a son, his name was Irad. He had a son, his name was Mehujael. He had a son and his name was Methusael. And then he had a son and his name was Lamech. Lamech then had three sons Jabal, Jubal and Tubal-Cain. Jabal was the father of those that lived in tents, the herdsmen. Jubal was the father of those who played musical instruments, the musicians. And then Tubal-Cain was the father of those who forged bronze and iron. As you look to the right of Lamech, and here is Lamech's legacy. Lamech bragged to his wife that he murdered a young man for merely injuring him. And he said if Cain is avenged seven times, then Lamech is avenged 77 times. Now this reminds me a lot of like a mafioso, one the godfathers. He said, “Eh, you mess with me, I kill you. In fact, if Cain is avenged seven times, Lamech is avenged 77 times. Don't mess with me.” And that obviously was just an extension of his great-great-great-great-great granddaddy Cain who said, “Eh you mess with me, I leave your cold, dead body lying on the ground.” So, this was the line of Cain. Not a line that I'd be proud to be part of. It's a line of murder of violence. In fact, you will see now over on left-hand side, I wrote the word ‘violence’ and put an arrow down. As everything progressed, the world just became more and more and more
progressively violent. So, let's count down from Cain. So, we’ve got Enoch one, Irad two, Mehujael three, Methusael four, Lamech five. So, we are now five generations down from Cain. He was six down from Adam. And now we’re in this world of evil, of chaos, of decadence, of violence, mayhem and murder. And this was the legacy of Cain and his decision to murder his brother. Now let's go over to Seth’s line.
So, I made another chart and I’m going to put it up for you. This chart shows the Chronology of Adams line. It does have each successive generation. But it also has dates on it. And if you look the zero, the starting place was the point at which Adam started counting his age. And we don't know if that's in the Garden of Eden or if it was after his was kicked out and started aging. But we call that zero. And we know Adam lived 930 years and then Adam was 130 we he had Seth, etc., etc. So now we can actually calculate every one of those dates. And so, we can look at where these people were on the chronology, on the timeline to see who overlaps whom. Adam gave birth to Seth. Seth gave birth to Enosh. Enosh gave birth to Kenan. Kenan gave birth to Mahalalel. Mahalalel gave birth to Jared. Jared gave birth to Enoch. Enoch to Methuselah. Methuselah to Lamech. And then finally Lamech to Noah. Now let’s count down five, just like we did on Cain's line, and see who we get to. So, we’ve got Seth, that's the beginning. So, then Enosh is one. Kenan is two. Mahalalel is three. Jared is four and Enoch is five. And we’re going to compare the fifth generation, Enoch versus the fifth generation, Lamech. Lamech who bragged about killing a man for injuring him. Enoch who we are going to find out is a very righteous and blameless person. So, in our next episode we’re going to go through Seth's line. We’re going to go through in detail what their names mean.
And we’re going to talk a lot about Enoch and Lamech and Noah. And we’re going to bring out a bunch of Messianic Prophecies in that process. But the prophecy that you’re going to take home today is that there are two lines in Genesis. The line of Cain and the line of Seth. One an unrighteous line and one a righteous line. And we’re going to learn about that in our next episode. So, we know that Messiah does not come through this unrighteous line that ends when the world is destroyed. But instead goes through Noah, through the flood on the ark. So, we know that the line is coming through Seth. Now I like to think of it as a thread of righteousness or the thread of messianic genealogy. However, you want to describe that thread, it starts [with] Adam, goes through Seth, comes down through Enoch and then down through Adam or, down through Noah and then on down the line. So that is the prophecy, that Seth is the line of messianic ancestors. And we’re going to go through each of the ancestors as we go. Many more are to be revealed. And it is kind of fun as we go through all these prophecies as the next generation is revealed and the next ancestor is revealed. And on down through the generations. So, we decided to split this episode into two parts. And it was just so much material we were covering. We wanted to do this review. So, in the next episode were going to pick up with the line of Seth. So, join us then.
Thank you for watching our show today. We hope that you enjoyed watching it as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you. Now, after watching this episode you might be saying to yourself, “Who is this Messiah that Dr. Smith is talking about?
Is he talking about the Christian Messiah? Is he talking about Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who was born of the Virgin Mary. And then lived a blameless and holy life on the earth, And then was tortured and crucified. And after he died, he then was resurrected from the dead after three days. Then after people witnessed this, he was then taken up bodily by Elohim into heaven from the Mount of Olives.
Or is Dr. Smith talking about the Muslim prophet Isa. Isa Ibn Maryam, the messenger, who was sent by Allah to bring a message to the people. The Quran says he that lived a holy and blameless life, was born of the virgin Mary. He fulfilled all the Jewish prophecies in exact accordance. But one difference, instead of being crucified, he then was taken up by Allah into heaven before the Romans laid hands on him. And he awaits there now in the fourth heaven where at the end of days at the day of judgment he will be revealed to all.
Or is Dr. Smith talking about the Jewish Messiah? The Messiah who has not yet been revealed, that the entire Jewish world is waiting for his revelation. Now, the beautiful thing is that you can hold to any of these beliefs. And we can all still learn together about Messiah. We can learn about our Christian Messiah. We can learn about our Jewish Messiah. We can learn about our Muslim prophet Isa who will be revealed. It doesn’t matter what you believe. You can even be an atheist or agnostic and still learn from this program about Messiah. Now, I have to admit I am a Christian so I approach things, obviously, from a Christian point of view. And I promise you, as we reveal these prophecies, which I believe have all been fulfilled through Jesus Christ. Or will be fulfilled when he comes back, returning in the clouds in the same way he was taken up. I believe that all of this is true, but I promise you I will do my very best to present these prophecies from a neutral point of view. And try to keep my Christian bias to a minimum. Obviously, it will pop up from time to time but I will try to stay only in the Tanakh and try not to get into the New Testament very often. Now, if you want more information about Messiah, we have resources for you.
We have a website which is findingmessiah.org. Now, on that website you are going to find several resources. You will find links to all the videos, all the episodes that we have created so far. You will find links to download the transcripts of any of these episodes. And then you will find a section where you can get more information about Messiah through frequently asked questions. And then there is a section for donation. If you want to come alongside our ministry at Finding Messiah.
Now, there’s going to come a time in this series where you are going to be confronted with the question: What are you going to do with Messiah? Who do you believe Messiah is? Which of these Messiahs do you believe Dr. Smith is talking about? And Messiah will become real to you if you look at all the information presented and come to your conclusions. So, join us as we continue our journey through the Old Testament Scriptures looking for all the Messianic Prophecies. And join us next time as we reveal those to you.
