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Gen 4:18-26

The Cainitish, or faith alone branch of the Adamic Church, ended in Lamech. Lamech is represented as saying to his wives: "Hear my voice, ye wives of Lamech; hearken unto my speech; for I have slain a man to my wounding, and a young man to my hurt." Lamech is not the name of an individual. The name stands for a process which we call vastation. Vastation is of two kinds. With the interiorily good, there takes place a vastation, or separation from them of external evils and falsities - things that were not of their inner love or life. And with the evil, there takes place a vastation or separation from them, of all good and truth. This is the judgment into which all come after death; for in the other life one is divested of the moral qualities, be they good or evil, that do not form a part of one's inner life. This same law obtains in the church.

The Cainites having adopted the principle of faith alone - having rejected charity as of no consequence, began to undergo the process of spiritual vastation. This extended through many generations, each generation extinguishing more and more the principle of faith, until the vastation was complete. All faith, among the Cainites, petished; all charity disappeared. This complete vastation was personified under the name Lamech. The end had come. The very semblance of religion disappeared. This sad state was expressed in the words: "I have slain a man to my wounding, and a young man to my hurt."

The very memory of the truth perished among the Cainites and every impulse of charity died. Nothing more is said of this sect. It had its rise, ran its course and died.

But the Lord never leaves Himself without a witness in the world. So we find that there came what may be called a Reformation in the original Adamic Church. We read: "And Adam knew his wife again, and she bare him a son, and called his name Seth; for God hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel." Here arose the Sethite branch of the Most Ancient Church. This branch of the church was gifted with a new principle of faith; and from it there was to be developed a true charity of life.

Seth represents not only the new principle of faith and the charity that was implanted in it, but also the people who embraced the new faith. Abel represented the charity which, in the beginning, was regarded as the chief thing of religion, but which was destroyed by the false teaching and evil living of the Cainites; but now Seth is raised up to take the place of Abel whom Cain slew. A new faith was given, that from it another branch of the original church might come into the life of charity.

We are led to believe that charity was cultivated by the Sethites; for we are told: "Then began men to call upon the name of the Lord." This reformed church did not fully restore the charity that was represented by Abel; for the charity that came with Seth was not of the same quality as that which was destroyed by Cain. Charity, with the Sethites, arose more from an intellectual dictate and was more external than the charity which Abel represented. The channels and fountains of impulsive love were closed, and as a consequence, the religious life was lived from a more external principle.

This reformation, like all reform movements in a declining church, did not continue in its integrity. It arrested the decline for a while, as the Protestant Reformation did in the Christian Church, but as the Protestant Church broke up into almost innumerable churches or sects, each sect inventing new creeds and forms of worship until the end was reached in the final judgment, so the Sethite reformation gave rise to many sects; and among them, continued to decline, until it ended among a people called Lamech. The Lamech, with whom the Sethite branch of the church ended, is not the Lamech with whom the Cainite branch of the church ended. They were distinct and separate races, but bore the same name, because they represented the same thing, namely the vastated state of the church.

At the time treated of in this chapter, there had grown up a great variety of doctrines around which ranged a great many sects that had severed all connection with the original Adamic Church, and which were distinguished from each other by appropriate names, much like what we see today in the Protestant Church. Each sect was personified. Thus Seth represented the new principle of faith out of which was to be formed a new charity of life. He also represented the people to whom it was given. Seeing this, it follows that those, in the genealogy of Seth, represent distinct branches and lines of the reformed church of the Adamic Age. Here we reach an important feature of the antediluvian history - I refer to the extraordinary ages the story assigns to Seth, Enos, Cainan, Mahalaleel, Jared, Enoch, Methuselah and Lamech.

Commentators, both Jewish and Christian, have labored in vain to reconcile the longevity of these so-called antediluvian patriarchs with science and the dictate of reason, but have utterly failed. The discussion of their attempted explanations would not prove of any interest to us, who know that the number of years given as the age of these supposed patriarchs, when they either begat sons or died, stands for the moral quality of the sect they respectively represent. We are not reading of persons but of heresies and sects.

One thing, however, is true. As these heresies were embraced by different races of men, they must have persisted for many hundreds of years; and some of them must have been longer lived than others. There might be an historic basis for the idea that the ages assigned in this story cover the periods in which these heresies prevailed, although that certainly was not the Divine purpose in the use of the numbers employed. Religious systems are often given the names of their founders and are called by their names long after they have passed away. For instance, Israel is the name given to the descendants of Jacob. Viewed in this light, Israel up to the present time may be said to have lived nearly four thousand years. In the Christian Church Unitarians and tripersonalists originated in the fourth century; and if we wished to personify them under the names of Arius and Althanasius, we could say that each is fifteen hundred years old. This idea may be useful to those who are not prepared for the more spiritual interpretation of the story of the longevity told in this chapter of Genesis.

Have you noticed the fact that longevity is not predicated of Cain and his descendants, but only of Seth and his descendants? There is a deep spiritual reason for this. Cain represented faith. It was a true faith, but it degenerated into faith alone. The line of descent from Cain is the story of the decline of faith. Faith is primarily a thing of the understanding. Faith is short-lived when it becomes faith alone. It depends upon the memory for its continued existence, and therefore soon dies. This is why the Cainitish line is short. The line of descent from Seth is long, and immense ages are assigned to the people said to have descended from him. The Sethites, were, in the beginning, characterized by charity. Charity belongs to the will and its affections. Things that affect the intellect and memory only, die much sooner than do the things that affect the will and the life. The things for which Seth stands touched the hearts of men. It was therefore longer in dying.

But divisions came to this branch of the church; and a time came when charity was on the verge of perishing. Then arose another branch of the church. It was called Enoch. He represented a branch of the church that gathered into a teaching the things of faith and charity. Truths that had been perceived in an internal way, were by this branch of the church, collected into a doctrinal form and taught in an outward way. The doing of this is what is meant by Enoch walking with God.

The Divine truths which the Enochites collected were from the Lord. They did not pretend to originate them. This is what is meant by "Enoch was not." God was in what they did. They were out of it. And the Divine truths collected into doctrine by the Enochites were preserved by the Lord for the use of a new church that was to arise. The preservation of these sacred collections is what is meant by God taking Enoch.