From the time Cain left God’s way of redemption and went his own way of death, to the time of Methuselah, two striking things occurred among the human race. The first was the producing of a culture without God by the man who went the way of death, and the second was the judgment of the deluge, which came from God.
Because Cain refused to take God’s way of redemption and chose to go the way of death, he lost God and all the blessings that come from God. Consequently, he must have been filled with a sense of insecurity. He became a fugitive and a vagabond on the earth, a person who had no goal, no satisfaction, no rest, and no protection. Hence, among the human race, he was the first one to build a city for self-preservation (Gen. 4:17). He named the city Enoch, after the name of his son. The fact that he did not name the city after the name of God was a declaration that man had become independent of God. His descendants invented cattle-raising for making a living, music for amusing themselves, and weapons for self-defense (Gen. 4:20-22). This was a godless culture that was for self-preservation, self-support, self-amusement, and self-defense. It was invented apart from God by the man who lost God and all God’s blessings.
Hence, human culture was produced because man had lost God. Originally, God was everything to man. God was man’s protection, maintenance, supply, joy, amusement, and defense. However, when man lost God and all that God was to him, he had to invent something for his own protection so that he might exist on the earth. This is the reason that human culture was formed. In such a godless culture man indulged in lusts and took many wives. Moreover, man became lawless, godless, murderous, and violent (Gen. 4:23-24). Among Cain’s descendants, there was one named Lamech, who married two wives (Gen. 4:19), thus practicing polygamy. In order to fulfill the lusts of his flesh, Lamech was the first to break the principle of marriage ordained by God for human propagation, that is, the principle of one wife for one husband (Gen. 2:24). He also boasted that he had slain a man and had killed a young man. Thus, he was truly lawless and arrogant. How dreadful and evil was such a godless culture! Consequently, such a culture caused the whole human race to be corrupted. Because every imagination of the thoughts of man’s heart was only evil continually, and because the earth was filled with man’s violence, God repented that He had made man and was grieved in His heart. Thus, He had to destroy the human race completely (Gen. 6:5-7, 11-13), preserving only Noah’s family of eight.
Apparently, such a culture without God was invented by the man who refused to go God’s way and thereby lost God. Actually, its intrinsic factor was the instigation and incitement of Satan, God’s enemy, within the man who departed from God. At the time of man’s fall, Satan, the evil one, injected himself into man and embodied himself in sin to dwell in man’s flesh. This was like an evil seed that was sown into man. This seed developed first into jealousy, then into anger, hatred, murder, and lies (Gen. 4:5-9), and then into lusts and violence (Gen. 4:19, 23). Eventually, it destroyed the entire human race.
This can be proved by Genesis 6:2, where we are told that the fallen angels assumed human bodies to marry the daughters of men. This verse shows us that man, who had left God and had thereby lost God, followed Satan and cooperated with Satan, even to the extent of being united with the angels of Satan. These angels of Satan used the human body to bring confusion into the human race through marriage, making the human race a mixture of human nature and the fallen spirits, thus inviting God’s judgment in order to clear up the human race.