“However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural,
and afterward the spiritual.”
(1 Cor 15:46, NKJV)
Cain and Abel carry the prototypical meaning of being twinned in the spirit even though they weren’t biological twins. Their birth positioned the two in a direct (symbolic) relationship with one another. The firstborn was named Cain, which means possession and smith. It then follows that his occupation would be “a tiller of the earth”, someone who would continually manifest the part of the curse which states that man must till his own inner ground. In the new dispensation Cain is the example of the carnal man who attempts to serve God with false sacrifices. Cain obviously signifies the fleshly man.
Born from a carnal religious system (of which Eve here becomes an example), believers are given an identity of vanity. The Hebrew root of the name Abel is Breath (Hebel), thus not Ruach, as that breath which departed when the spiritual man died in the garden of Eden. The breath of man is thus always linked with this underlying exasperated sigh – What is man? David described this attitude to life when he wrote Ps 39:4-5 – “LORD, make me to know my end, and what is the measure of my days, that I may know how frail I am. Indeed, You have made my days as handbreadths, and my age is as nothing before You; certainly every man at his best state is but vapor. Selah.” Or as Ps 103:15-16 states – “As for man, his days are like grass; as a flower of the field, so he flourishes. For the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more.” It’s the same sense of despair that befalls Solomon in the book of Ecclesiastes, and is what happens when the carnal man gains control over the spiritual man – “For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish.” [Even though Solomon had received wisdom and gifts his disobedience still brought on extreme vanity].
An absolute parallel to the relationship between Cain and Abel is the relationship between Jacob and Esau. Here we indeed have a set of twins, but the carnal man Esau is the firstborn, and after his arrival the spiritual man Jacob manifests himself. In this light we can understand that God says that He hates Cain, and that God ordered that the older shall serve the younger (Rom 9:12-13). As 1 Cor 15:46-49 aptly states – “However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural, and afterward the spiritual. The first man was of the earth, made of dust; the second Man is the Lord from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are made of dust; and as is the heavenly Man, so also are those who are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly Man.”
In short – all who are born, are firstly flesh, but the spirit has grabbed a hold of it by the ankle (Gen 25:26)! The hand of the spiritual man brings the covering where it symbolically enfolds the heel, the place where man is bitten by the snake (Gen 3:15).
- Sela: Has the process of the last paragraph taken place in your life?
- Read: Lev 2; Ezra 9; Isa 42
- Memorise: Isa 42:16
- For a deeper understanding: Read Fritz Springmeier’s Bloodlines of the Illuminati to see how inequities are perpetuated through generations.
