Cain and Abel

Once upon a time long, long ago in a land far, far away two fellows were found splitting a planet between them. One was named Cain and the other was named Abel.

Now Cain offered up his religion to God and was promptly rejected. This was bad enough, but then to make matters worse, God accepted Abel. Cain saw that this had happened, for it was pretty hard to miss. That's when the trouble started. Cain had a problem. If Cain was going to pretend that being rejected by God was actually part of some marvelous divine plan, then Cain was going to have to get rid of Abel, because what with God accepting Abel, it made it all to obvious that rejecting Cain was not part of some glorious plan for Cain's life. Rather it was quite clear that God was just rejecting Cain and therefore all of Cain's doctrines were just a delusion. Cain would find living in such a miserable state to be an unbearable burden.

We must remember the unimpeachable sovereignty of God's Majestic Glory, for the true plan of God has never been that we should all become like Cain and find ourselves locked in a dark closet while being forced to do the coin toss of the nickel of salvation, but rather God's authentic plan, quite in keeping with the awe inspiring might and power of God, was the Living Resurrection of the Living in the Land of the Living, for our God is the God of the living and not the god of the dead. Alas, for poor Cain, his god was destined to become the god of the dead, the god of his rejected religion, for God had rejected Cain in the land of the living. If Cain was to practice deceit it would then be required that Cain pretend that he had not been rejected but rather that he had been accepted by the god of the dead. It would be impossible to prove that this was true but then it would also be impossible to prove that it was false, for as the saying goes, you cannot prove a negative, and so in this way, through his cruel religion and the florid spirituality he invented to go along with what was just some cruel and very stupid idea, Cain was able to dodge a bullet for thousands and thousands of years.

And so it was that Cain went away from the presence of the LORD, and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden, where his descendants founded cities and kingdoms over the course of thousands of years.

Well the time finally came to get rid of Cain's phony religion, which implies that the time had also come to get rid of Cain at the same time. This leads one to wonder whether Cain will become an agreeable and cooperative fellow, by astonishing us all by agreeing to die with grace and dignity. That seems very unlikely, and so therefore we must come to the conclusion that there will once again be another crucifixion taking place on this planet. There will be oppression, great oppression, and yes there will be charges of heresy, yes, the charge of the most damnable of heresies. Cain will behave like a vicious bully. He will lock God's children into the most miserable of dark dungeons and do everything possible to see to it that they never see the light. If the light comes on, Cain will attempt to smash the light bulb. Cain will slam the door to the Kingdom of God and attempt to lock it tight. Cain will not enter into the Kingdom of God and he will do everything in his power to stop anyone else who might be trying to get in.

Now it is possible that history will be allowed to repeat itself ad nauseam, and that Cain will constantly crucify Abel and cook up more phony religion, over and over and over again. Someone is going to wind up getting crucified whenever Cain and Abel are forced to split a suite. It is also possible that someone is going to wind up getting crucified on this planet, but that, in a twist of the usual plot line, that somebody will not be Abel, but rather this time it will be Cain who will be getting crucified. Cain can wither like a dead leaf, slowly, gradually, withering away like a dead leaf until finally, he falls off the tree. Perhaps Cain will agree to be rejected by God and removed from the planet and so will slowly just wither and fade away while dying with grace and dignity. That seems unlikely. It seems far more likely that Cain, should he take the slow train out of this place, will spend his last remaining years of existence barking and yowling about religion and all the most damnable heresies against his precious doctrine, while attempting to lead others to the salvation of heaven as that noble creature, Cain, gives us yet one more display of his pious spirituality out of love for his precious god of the dead.

It is also possible that Cain will be found taking the bullet train down the high speed rail because God will kill Cain before Cain can kill Abel. Yes it is possible that God will bring out the sieve of destruction and beginning to sift and sieve the nations so as to destroy all the sinners like that Cain who might be dwelling there. Someone is going to be sifted through a sieve of destruction, that much is clear. It will either be Cain once again sieving out Abel, or it will be God sieving out Cain, or perhaps a little of both. A third possibility is that Cain will once again kill Abel, and then God will Cain, and the whole repeating cycle of murder followed by the florid religion of the exile in darkness will finally be brought to an end.

Beware of the yeast of the Scribes and the Pharisees.

The Parable of the King and his Son

Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenants and went to another country for a long time. When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce. But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. Again he sent other slaves, more than the first; and they treated them in the same way. Finally he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance." So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?" They said to him, "He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time." Jesus said to them, "Have you never read in the scriptures: ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes’? Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom. The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls." When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them. They wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowds, because they regarded him as a prophet. Once more Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying: "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet, but they would not come. Again he sent other slaves, saying, ‘Tell those who have been invited: Look, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.’ But they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business, while the rest seized his slaves, mistreated them, and killed them. The king was enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city. (Matthew 21:33)