Here is a piece inspired by last week’s Sabbath School lesson, which I taught at my church.
After failing to bring the appropriate sacrifice and having his offering rejected while his brother Abel’s sacrifice was accepted, Cain killed his brother in a fit of rage. But instead of punishing him or allowing him to be punished, God put a special mark on Cain with a warning that no one should touch him:
The Lord said, “What have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground. 11 Now you are under a curse and driven from the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. 12 When you work the ground, it will no longer yield its crops for you. You will be a restless wanderer on the earth.”
13 Cain said to the Lord, “My punishment is more than I can bear. 14 Today you are driving me from the land, and I will be hidden from your presence; I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.”
15 But the Lord said to him, “Not so; anyone who kills Cain will suffer vengeance seven times over.” Then the Lord put a mark on Cain so that no one who found him would kill him. 16 So Cain went out from the Lord’s presence and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden. Gen. 4:10-16.
So Cain’s only punishment was to be prevented from being a farmer; some of us non-farming types would consider that a reward, not a punishment.
What was the result of God’s light treatment of Cain? Within a few generations, people were actually boasting of their murders:
Lamech married two women, one named Adah and the other Zillah. 20 Adah gave birth to Jabal; he was the father of those who live in tents and raise livestock. 21 His brother’s name was Jubal; he was the father of all who play stringed instruments and pipes. 22 Zillah also had a son, Tubal-Cain, who forged all kinds of tools out of bronze and iron. Tubal-Cain’s sister was Naamah.
23 Lamech said to his wives,
“Adah and Zillah, listen to me;
wives of Lamech, hear my words.
I have killed a man for wounding me,
a young man for injuring me.
24 If Cain is avenged seven times,
then Lamech seventy-seven times.”
Things did not get any better from there. Scripture tells us that the antediluvian race became so corrupt, so intensely sinful, that they thought of nothing but evil all the time. Twice, Scripture says that the earth was “filled with violence,” or “full of violence.” Gen. 6:11,13
Eventually, God decided that the antediluvians’ cup of iniquity was full, and that they would have to be wiped off the face of the earth.:
5 The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. 6 The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. 7 So the Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.” Gen. 6:5-7.
So the entire antediluvian world was destroyed, save Noah and his family.
After the Flood, God put in place the death penalty for murder, saying:
And from each human being, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of another human being. “Whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall their blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made mankind.” Gen. 9:4-6
The question that comes to my mind is: why didn’t God institute the death penalty immediately, executing it on Cain, the first murderer? Why did He wait, and allow the whole antediluvian world to become so evil, violent, and murderous that it had to be wiped out?
The answer seems to be that God wants us—and by “us” I mean not only the human race but also the angels and the inhabitants of the unfallen worlds that God has created—to see what happens when crime goes unpunished. God wants us to see what results when Satan’s kingdom goes unchecked.
Ellen White comments:
In sparing the life of the first murderer, God presented before the whole universe a lesson bearing upon the great controversy. The dark history of Cain and his descendants was an illustration of what would have been the result of permitting the sinner to live on forever, to carry out his rebellion against God. The forbearance of God only rendered the wicked more bold and defiant in their iniquity. Fifteen centuries after the sentence pronounced upon Cain, the universe witnessed the fruition of his influence and example, in the crime and pollution that flooded the earth. It was made manifest that the sentence of death pronounced upon the fallen race for the transgression of God's law was both just and merciful. The longer men lived in sin, the more abandoned they became.
There are those who argue that God should have put an end to sin immediately, as soon as sin was manifested in the life of Lucifer. But God has taken “the long view,” knowing that if He had snuffed out Lucifer immediately, sin would crop up again in the creatures He had created with free will. This would likely happen over and over unless the fruits of Satan’s rebellion were allowed to ripen over centuries and millennia. So God allowed Cain’s life to continue so that all could see where unpunished crime leads.
God does this a lot. It is surprising, given how much Scripture teaches about the need for faith—“without faith it is impossible to please God._ Heb. 11:6—how often God arranges demonstrations for us to see the results of sin vs. the results of righteousness, so that we don’t even need to have faith to see how God’s way leads to peace and Satan’s way leads to disaster.
The whole great controversy has been and continues to be one giant demonstration for an onlooking universe of where sin leads, such that it will never happen again.
Unfortunately, in our state of extreme rebellion, even a real-life, real-world demonstration that you can see with your own eyes is not enough for us. Two examples follow:
The Soros Prosecutors
We know how to reduce murders and serious crime in large cities. You start with the small stuff. This is called the “broken windows” theory of policing. First proposed by academics James Q. Wilson and George Kelling in a 1982 paper, broken windows are a sign or a symbol of disorder in a neighborhood. If you can remove disorder and incivility within a neighborhood by tackling petty crime, the big stuff, like murder, takes care of itself.
The broken windows theory was put into practice in New York City in the 1990s by Mayor Rudolf Giuliani and his police commissioner, William Bratton. Bratton’s cops began arresting turnstile jumpers and subway violators of all types, panhandlers, disorderly conduct, public drinking, street prostitution, unsolicited windshield washing (the “squeegee” men) and other such attempts to extort cash from stopped drivers. As arrests for these types of misdemeanors increased, serious crime decreased. When Bratton resigned in 1996, felonies were down almost 40 percent in New York, and the homicide rate had been cut in half. Giuliani was succeeded in 2001 by Michael Bloomberg, who increased the use of plainclothes anti-crime units and “stop and frisk”, which took weapons out of the hands of would be “gang-bangers.”
This extraordinarily successful method of policing was soon adopted in large cities throughout the nation, and we have seen a 25-year secular decline in murders and serious crime.
Until recently.
Recently, George Soros, the Hungarian currency-speculation billionaire, has begun funding Leftist district attorneys in large, Democrat-controlled one-party cities. Primaries are low turnout elections, and it was relatively easy and inexpensive for Soros to successfully fund hyper-woke, hyper Leftist district attorneys who would refuse to prosecute crime. The Soros prosecutors—most notably Kim Foxx in Chicago, George Gascon in Los Angeles, Chesa Boudin in San Francisco, Larry Krasner in Philadelphia, and, most recently, Alvin Bragg in New York City (there are just the headliners; there are many others)—are intentionally reversing the “broken windows” theory of policing by refusing to prosecute public incivility, quality of life crimes, and other misdemeanors.
In California, shoplifting under $950.00 has been legalized, along with the whole panoply of public dysfunction related homelessness, vagrancy, public drug abuse, public defecation and urination, etc. In San Francisco, neither police nor victims often bother reporting or investigating vehicle break-ins. In Los Angeles, Sheriff Alex Villanueva has referred over 5,000 cases to George Gascon which the latter has declined to prosecute. Bail “reform”—no longer requiring criminals to post cash bail to stay out of jail until their trial date—results in perps committing one crime, being arrested, being set loose the same day, and committing additional crimes the same day.
The results of this officially fostered public chaos were predictable. In 2020, the nation saw a 30 percent increase in homicides, the largest single-year spike since statistics began to be kept 60 years ago. Serious crime is on the rise in many large cities.
And this is by design. None of the Soros prosecutors is stupid enough to believe that refusing to punish to crime will lead to less of it. They know the opposite is true. Everyone in the business of public policing and prosecution is acutely aware of the astonishing success of Giuliani, Bratton and the “broken windows” theory of policing. They are ignoring it on purpose, in order to increase crime in large cities. The purpose of intentionally increasing murder and serious crime in America’s large cities to destroy the currently existing civilization so as to make way for the Leftist utopia they intend to help usher in.
This may seem like a shocking assertion, but it is obviously correct. It is clarifying that Chesa Boudin, the San Francisco DA, is a Marxist with impeccable radical credentials: his parents were Marxist radicals of the “Weather Underground” who participated in the Nyack Brink’s robbery in which three people were killed. His father is still in prison for that infamous crime, and his mother, Kathy Boudin (from whom Chesa takes his name—because matriarchy, matrilineality, and female headship are fundamental to the Leftist world-destroyers) was paroled in 2003, after serving 22 years. His parents in prison for that infamous crime, Chesa Boudin was raised by Leftist terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dorn, founders of the Weather Underground, who also launched Barack Obama’s political career.
The Korean Experiment
Just at the end of World War II, Joseph Stalin jumped into the war against Japan, even though almost all of the tough, deadly work of defeating the Japanese Empire had been done by the United States and Great Britain. Soviet Russia claimed north Korea, and Korea was duly divided into zones of influence—a Soviet zone in the north, a Western zone in the south. American diplomat Dean Rusk supposedly drew a line on a map at the 38th parallel, which became the dividing line.
Kim il-Sung—first of the “Kims,” the North Korean dictator-gods who have governed communist North Korea since the division—tried to conquer South Korea in 1950, but was thrown back by American and UN forces under General Douglas MacArthur; in turn, MacArthur tried to eliminate North Korea by driving north to the Yalu River, the boundary with China, but was thrown back by Chinese hordes when Mao entered the war on behalf of the communist north. The stalemated war continued for two more years, but the 38th parallel was re-established as the dividing line between the two Koreas. And thus Korea has remained divided between a Marxist north and a free enterprise south throughout the past 70 years.
What a remarkable opportunity for a compelling socio-economic experiment! Here is one people, one language, one culture divided only by a line on a map, and opposite systems of government. What has this experiment, as fair as could be devised and yet still be part of human history, wrought?
The Marxist Korean state is a catastrophe, an impoverished and immiserated slave state; by contrast, the capitalist Korean state is wealthy and advanced. By every measure, the free enterprise south has utterly outstripped and surpassed the communist north.
GDP per capita is 18 times higher in the free south than in the slave north.
The free south has double the population of the slave north, 50 million to 25 million.
Life expectancy in the free south is more than a decade longer than in the slave north.
The infant mortality rate is seven times higher in the slave north than in the free south.
The communist north endured a man-made famine as recently as the mid-1990s in which some three million people died, all while the capitalist south was becoming wealthy and joining the roll of highly developed nations.
Again, we are talking about the same people—the same ethnicity, language, and culture—separated into two systems of government. The results couldn’t be any more dramatic. Free enterprise enriches people; communism destroys people.
Fat lot of good this experiment seems to have done us. American life continues to be dominated at every level, in every significant institution, by the Left. Wokism, which is critical race theory, which is cultural Marxism or race Marxism, is being forced down the throats of Americans by government at every level, including every level of the public education system, and by large corporations in the increasingly woke private sector. (Or should I have stuck with my typo, the “primate” sector?)
There are none so blind is those who will not see.
“For this people’s heart has grown callous; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn, and I would heal them.” Mat. 13:15.