m2t on Dec 21, 2015

Cain went out from the presence of God a marked man, a rebel, unbowed and unrepentant. So, God had rejected his altar and his religion! Well, he would live without God. For a while he was "a fugitive and a vagabond . . . in the earth" (Gen. 4:12), but in time he decided to make his own way in the world. And so he did. He founded a great but godless civilization, one that was bent his way. The Holy Spirit calls it "the way of Cain." Cain organized human life and society into a way of living that left God out. The Spirit of God records a number of things about the godless way of Cain.

It was materialistic. Job calls it "the old way." He tells how people told God to leave them alone while at the same time demanding that He prove Himself to them by showing what He would do for them. Their houses were filled with good things, and they congratulated themselves on their successes and ignored the fact that even their material prosperity really came from God (Job 22:15-18).

It was humanistic. If Cain could not have his own religion, he would have no religion at all. He would become captain of his own soul and master of his own destiny. Of the twelve people mentioned by name in the line of Cain and his descendants, only two retained any semblance of the knowledge of God—Mehujael and Methusael (Gen. 4:16-24).

It was prolific. There was a population explosion, "Men began to multiply" (Gen. 6:1). This ever-increasing world population created an ever-expanding market for goods and services, especially as the antediluvian society became increasingly sophisticated.

It was urbanistic. The growing population abandoned the countryside for the city. The population became increasingly urban. God put people in a garden; Cain put them in a city, and the city became an artificial paradise catering to the wants and needs of mankind.

It was hedonistic; that is to say, it was a pleasure-driven society. The entertainment business was born, introduced by Jubal, who invented music and gave people a beat to enliven their days.

It was pragmatic. Tubal-cain brought the world through an industrial revolution and gave it a growing industry based on science, engineering, and technology.

It was agnostic. An agnostic is a person who says you can't know—specifically, that you can't know God. This was a marked feature of Cainite civilization. It was Godless. The Cainites ignored the testimony of Enoch (Jude 14) and the preaching of Noah. Their minds were blinded by the god of this world. They "know not" was the Lord's verdict on them all. (Matt. 24:39).

It was demonic. The human soul abhors a vacuum, so those who ignore God often fall prey to evil and deceiving spirits. So it was with the Cainites who delved into the deep things of Satan and produced a "New Age" movement that, in turn, introduced strange and deadly occult phenomena. A hybrid race appeared, mirrored in later times by the fallen gods of Olympus of Greek mythology (Gen. 6:4).

It was pornographic. "Every imagination of the thoughts of [people's] heart [s] was only evil continually," the Holy Spirit says (Gen. 6:5). Along with that, there was a breakdown of the primeval law of marriage. Moreover, women became prominent in Cainite society, and polygamy was accepted as a lifestyle.

It was anarchistic. Society failed to exert restraint upon crime. Consequently, "the earth was filled with violence" (Gen. 6:11). The popular lifestyle was openly permissive, and everyone "did his own thing" with the nod and approval of society.

It was antagonistic. The seventh from Adam in Cain's line was Lamech, an openly polygamous man and a boastful murderer (Gen. 4:19, 23-24). This wicked man even shook his fist in the face of God and told Him to stay out of his affairs.

It was fatalistic. The idea that God might have some say about all this was ignored. Cainite society ran right through the center of a fault line where God stored up His wrath. The building of Noah's ark struck the Cainites as ludicrous. What was going to happen would happen, and there was nothing any one could do about it. As for building an ark, that was a typical crackpot idea of the Sethites. An ark indeed!

Such was the way of Cain. In the end God destroyed that wicked society and its people. The flood came and took them all away, as God said it would.