Rev. Heys is a minister emeritus in the Protestant Reformed Churches.

The enmity which God declared would arise between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent manifested itself in the first family that dwelt upon the face of this earth. It clearly revealed itself as being due to a spiritual difference between two individuals, and as fulfillment of God’s word in the mother promise. 

One seed of the serpent may kill another seed of the serpent. That we see when we find one nation rising up against another nation because of a desire for more land, or for riches that another nation has. It may also be because of cruelty that the other nation made it suffer. 

Nothing like that caused Cain to kill Abel. He was not trying to get hold of Abel’s earthly possessions. It was not because Abel had struck him by a blow, or even called him by a name he did not want attached to him. No, it was because of a spiritual difference that God had realized between them. God had implanted His love in Abel and not in Cain. He had caused Abel to be born again, and He had left Cain in the spiritual death Adam had brought upon the human race through his sin. 

When Jesus was crucified, and they cast lots for His robe, He was not killed because they were after His robe. The completely opposite spiritual nature which was in them made them hate Him and take away His earthly life. Cain’s killing of Abel foreshadowed this cross; and it reveals why the Jews who were the seed of the serpent nailed Christ to His cross. It also foreshadowed the sufferings the church has had since that day of Abel’s death, and the worldwide murder that is coming to the seed of the woman in the days of the antichrist. 

There at the dawn of history, at the beginning of the human race, and in its first family, one who was outside of Christ revealed his hatred against His church. Yea, Cain’s hatred against Abel reveals the present world’s hatred against God, Who made such a tremendously contrasting difference between His church and the world, in the first two sons that were born to Adam and Eve. 

Here is the truth of Jeremiah 6:14: “They have healed also the hurt of the daughter of my people, saying, Peace, peace, when there is no peace.” There is no peace because God gave a new spiritual life to some, and left others in their spiritual death. There just cannot be peace on this earth until Christ returns and removes from it all the seed of the serpent, and until He raises our bodies, so that they have none of the hatred against God that we all have all through this life. 

Thus, the cross of Christ is not the only manifestation of the world’s hatred against God. That hatred against God reveals itself in the way the seed of the serpent treats all those who love God, and who reveal this in their walk of life. Cain will presently appear spiritually in the person of the antichrist. We may be sure that the truth in that mother promise is going to be revealed, not in one family, but across the face of this earth. A universal enmity will be manifested. 

But to return to what we began last time, the shadow of Arminianism and all other false doctrines was clearly cast just outside the garden of Eden. And as pointed out before, the so-called theistic evolutionists—which actually are atheistic evolutionists, for they will not listen to God but to evolutionists, and go along with atheists who are the seed of the serpent—deny that mother promise. For they call Genesis 1-11fiction and not fact. They must deny, then, the fact that a man named Cain killed his brother Abel. This is only fiction. And the awesome thing is that, by calling those first eleven chapters of Genesis fiction, they call the mother promise fiction! God then did not really say that to Adam and Eve and to Satan. No, go and listen to the seed of the serpent, who can tell you better than God can how this world came into being. 

Do these so-called theistic evolutionists listen to the evolutionists when they speak about the birth and death of Christ? Could a woman, who is a virgin and remains a virgin when her child- is born, get a child without an earthly father in less than a billion years? And when a body was in the grave for three days, could it in less than a billion years develop into a new, wonderful, spiritual body? Why call the first eleven chapters of Genesis fiction, and then call the first four books of the New Testament fact? If God could—and He did—bring forth the body of Christ in Mary in nine months; and if He could—and did—raise Christ’s body in three days, why must we have all that nonsense, that insulting philosophy drawn up by the seed of the serpent, to explain the creation of this world? Do we not read in Psalm 33:9: “For He spake, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast”? Is Psalm 33 also fiction? 

If we are going to listen to the unbelieving evolutionists about how the world came into being—denying even that God created it—why do we not listen to them also as far as Christ’s virgin birth and resurrection the third day are concerned? Should it take us three years to decide whether what the seed of the woman, Moses, wrote as guided by the Holy Spirit, is correct; since the seed of the serpent, who rule God out completely, deny this truth? Should it take us three years to decide whether we are going to listen to God or to Satan and his seed? 

What are we going to do with the New Testament passages that also speak of Cain and Abel? In Hebrews 11:4 we read: “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; and by it he being dead yet speaketh.” How can a fictitious man die? He never lived. How then could the author of Hebrews, being inspired by God, say that a man who never existed died, and still speaks today by his deeds? Why are we not here informed by God that this is only a story, a parable and not an actual fact? 

Still more, in I John 3:12 we read: “Not as Cain, who was of that wicked one, and slew his brother. And wherefore slew he him? Because his own works were evil, and his brothers righteous.” John does not give even the slightest suggestion that Cain and Abel were fictitious persons. He presents them as real persons; and God is the one Who moved John to write that way about them. 

Let us hold fast to the truth of that mother promise that the seed of the serpent is going to do all it can to destroy the seed of the woman. They are going to try to destroy our faith in God, for Satan is behind them, and they are his seed. It is not simply the physical death of the seed of the woman that Satan is constantly seeking. Far more serious is the fact that he is seeking to kill them spiritually by bringing the lie into the church. And the sad fact is that the teaching of evolutionists, the seed of the serpent, has so much power in the church world today. And, pretty soon, those who continue to refuse to listen to the world, in the day of the antichrist, are going to be killed, even as Abel was. 

Another interesting and important passage is Matthew 23:34-35 where Jesus speaks of Abel as a real person. Never mind what the so-called Theistic Evolutionists say. Listen to Christ! He said: “Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye shall kill and crucify: and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city. That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar.” Did Christ mix up a fictitious person with a very real person? Or did He not know that the first eleven chapters of Genesis were fiction?

Then again in Luke 11:49-51 we read these words of Jesus: “Therefore also said the wisdom of God, I will send them prophets and apostles, and some of them shall slay and persecute: That the blood of the prophets, which was shed from the foundation of the world, may be required of this generation. From the blood of Abel unto the blood of Zacharias, which perished between the altar and the temple.” Jesus, Who was no Theistic Evolutionist, said that Abel was slain from the foundation of the world. There is not the slightest suggestion here that this was fiction and not fact! Why begin with the blood of a fictitious person and put him in the same class, in fact as the head of the class, in which Zacharias was? Why may we call Zacharias a real person, if we insist that Abel was not?

How mightily Satan is working in the church world today, trying with false doctrines to get the seed of the woman to join the seed of the serpent, rather than reveal the sharp, distinct spiritual difference between them. Here is Satan’s lie and deceitful approach to Adam and Eve repeated and continued. He did not want man to listen to God, when He said that man should not eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Now he has gotten men in the church world to tell us not to listen to what God said in those first eleven chapters of Genesis. The Bible begins with a myth, not a true story. And even God’s own Son in our flesh was not aware of the fact that this is only myth. He thought Abel was a real person, as real as Zacharias! Will it take you three seconds to decide whether you are going to listen to Christ or to Satan and those whom he has gotten hold of and caused to believe what he has caused the seed of the serpent to say about creation, and thus about God, Who presents that creation quite differently in Psalm 33:9, as already pointed out? But then look at verse 6 as well: “By the word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth.” Was God speaking for billions of years in order to make the created world? 

When then today we see the idolatries which deny that Jehovah is God and God alone, but also find churches, that call themselves Christian churches, teaching a salvation by works instead of by grace, we see how much Satan has through his seed influenced that church world. Likewise the denial of total depravity, the denial that Adam died spiritually, and did not simply become weak before God caused him to be born again, reveals this enmity between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman. It reveals that the seed of the serpent is seeking to kill us spiritually; and that what Satan tried, and succeeded in doing there in Adam and Eve, he is still doing, and with craft and guile is attacking the church of Christ. He did not quit tempting man after he fell. Because God caused His elect to be born again, Satan is furious and is executing wide-spread, subtle attacks. 

hat we should hold before our eyes! His attack through false doctrines should warn us and spur us on to more defence of the truth. We ought to be far more concerned with our children’s spiritual well-being than their physical good. 

Today while many are attempting to bring together into one body all who call themselves Christians, by compromising with the lie, making more general creeds and confessions, watering down doctrines to get unity, we should insist on what God declares in His word, and live in the consciousness of the fact that there are two contrasting spiritual differences in what calls itself church, as well as between true believers and the seed of the serpent. 

To be safe we have to know who the enemy is. And we have to listen to God and not to men. If evolution gets into the church, Satan is there, and more false doctrines are going to follow and rule the churches into which he has already brought the seed of the serpent as their leaders and teachers.