MID-WEEK MANNA FROM PASTOR NAT’S DESK:
October 19
THE FAITH OF EARTH’S FIRST MARTYR (Part 4)
“By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts [sacrifice]: and by it he being dead yet speaketh.” Heb. 11:4, KJV.
Abel, translated from the Hebrew Hebel, meaning “breath,” “transitoriness,” would be appropriate as the shortness of the recorded life of this second son of Adam and Eve (Gen. 4:2, etc.).
The only incident of his brief life recorded by the Word of God is his “offering a more excellent sacrifice” than that of Cain, his older brother and very first son of Adam and Eve, whom they initially thought was the “promised seed.”
How mistaken they were for their first son (after their fall and banishment from their Eden home) turned out to be earth’s first human murderer by killing his younger brother when he should have been “his brother’s keeper!” (Jesus said Satan, the fallen cherub Lucifer, is “the father of lies and murderer from the beginning.” John 8:44).
Abel’s offering, in faithful compliance with God’s specification on how to worship Him, was “acceptable unto God” in that being a sacrificed lamb from the flock, it testified and witnessed to his OBEDIENT FAITH in the promised Mighty Deliverer “to come,” the true “Seed of the woman,” the “Lamb of God” who was “to bruise the serpent’s [Satan’s] head (Gen. 3: 15; John 1:29).
God’s messenger wrote (emphasis mine): “So far as BIRTH and RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION were concerned, these brothers were equal. Both were sinners, and both acknowledged the claims of God to reverence and WORSHIP. To outwards appearance their RELIGION was the same UP TO A CERTAIN POINT; but beyond this the DIFFERENCE between the two was great!
“By faith Abel offered unto God a MORE EXCELLENT sacrifice than Cain.” Abel grasped the great PRiNCIPLES of redemption. He saw himself a SINNER, and he saw SIN, and it’s penalty DEATH, standing between his soul and communion with God. He brought the slain victim, THE SACRIFICED LIFE, thus acknowledging the CLAIMS OF THE LAW that had been transgressed (by his parents first).
Through the shed blood he looked to the FUTURE sacrifice, Christ dying on the cross of Calvary, and trusting in the [sacrificial] ATONEMENT that was there to be made, he “had the witness that he was righteous,’ and his offering accepted.
“Cain had the SAME opportunity of learning and accepting these truths as had Abel. He was not a victim of arbitrary purpose [as in the pernicious, fake doctrine of ‘predestination’]. One brother was not selected to be accepted of God, and the other to be rejected! Abel CHOSE FAITH AND OBEDIENCE; Cain CHOSE UNBELIEF AND REBELLION. Here the whole matter rested.
“Cain and Abel represent two classes of [worshippers] that will exist in the world till the close of time.” -E.G. White, Patriarchs and Prophets, p.72.
To be continued next MWM, God willing. Bless all, NMF