0726. The Death of Abel
The Death of Abel
"Cain rose up against his brother, and slew him" (Gen_4:8).
From the day that God said, concerning the Seed of the woman, He "shall bruise thy head and thou shalt bruise His heel" (Gen_3:15), until four thousand years later, when the Seed was actually born, satan centered his strategy against the coming of the Seed.
If satan stood before the woman ready to devour her son as soon as he was born (and there is in Revelation 12, an allusion to the birth of Christ), then none need marvel that satan sought to keep the Son from being born. For four thousand years satan moved under the fear of the coming of the promised Seed. Why should satan wait to face the Son, if he could destroy the woman’s seed through whom the Son was sure to come?
Satan must have marveled as he sought to unravel the mystery of the coming Seed. Who was He? How would He appear? And, when would His advent be? All this gave satan great concern.
Then, Adam knew his wife; and Cain was born. Eve said: "I have begotten a man, the Lord" (Gen_4:1). Satan soliloquized: "Is he the promised Seed?" And when Abel came, thought satan, "Is it he?" Satan was indeed alert to learn. He watched the earth’s first boys. He saw them grow and knew their varied ways. He later saw their sacrifices–the one, the bloodless offering, alien from faith, without a thought of sin; the other the bloody sacrifice, with confession of sin, and a faith that pleased God.
Immediately Abel was a marked and hated man: hated because his offering was sweet incense unto God. Satan doubtless feared that Abel was, himself, the Seed, pronounced to bruise his head, and so it was, that Cain arose and slew his brother; yet, not Cain alone, but Cain, satan-driven. Cain was "of that wicked one." That wicked one was "a murderer from the beginning." This was the beginning of which the Lord did speak. So satan slaughtered Abel, the seed of Eve. And, "the voice of Abel’s blood cried from the ground;" and anon, across the unborn ages echoed back the voice of Another’s blood, the Blood of Christ, Eve’s nobler Seed, and spake of better things than the blood of Abel.
Abel, indeed, was dead; but he was neither the promised Seed, nor of the line through which the Seed must come–so satan slew in vain.
Autor: R.E. NEIGHBOUR