In the first chapter, entitled “Vision in God’s Economy,” we read how God’s servants and the Lord’s followers must see a vision. In this chapter we will continue with this burden by speaking about the vision of those who serve the Lord.
According to the revelation of the entire Bible, the Lord began showing men a vision from the time of Adam. When Adam was first created, God showed him a clear yet relatively simple vision before he fell; he was placed in front of two trees in the garden of Eden and was told, “Of every tree of the garden you may eat freely, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, of it you shall not eat; for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Gen. 2:16-17). This is the vision that God gave to Adam.
A vision is a scene that God unfolds to man. When God gave Adam the command in the garden of Eden concerning the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Adam saw a scene. That was the vision that God wanted to show him. That vision indicates something; it shows that God’s intention is for man to eat the tree of life and to reject the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. For man to receive the tree of life means that he is living under this vision. It also means that he is serving God according to this vision. However, the devil, Satan, disguised as the serpent, seduced Eve through his speaking and turned her eyes from the tree of life to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, against which God had warned her. Had Eve’s vision been clear and had her heart closely followed the vision, she would have ignored the serpent when he spoke to her about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and would not have talked about it or gazed upon it. Genesis 3:6 says, “When the woman saw that the tree...” The minute Eve looked, she was distracted from the vision that God had given to man in the beginning.
The vision that God gave to Adam is the first vision in the entire Bible. The last vision is the New Jerusalem in the last two chapters of the book of Revelation. Between these two ends, God gave vision after vision to man.
After the first vision, Adam saw a second vision. After he and Eve fell, they knew that they were naked. As soon as they heard God’s voice, they hid themselves among the trees of the garden to escape God’s face. However, God did not give them up. Rather, He looked for them and gave them a vision. He said to the serpent, “I will put enmity / Between you and the woman, / And between your seed and her seed; / He will bruise you on the head, / But you will bruise him on the heel” (Gen. 3:15). This means that the seed of the woman would bruise the head of the serpent and would inflict upon him a death blow. The serpent, on the other hand, would bruise the heel of the seed of the woman and would frustrate His move. After this, God prepared a sacrifice—possibly a lamb—and made coats of skin to clothe Adam and Eve.
If we put all these acts of God together, we have a clear vision. It shows that man is sinful and that there is an evil one who is trying to hurt him, but the seed of woman will come and will solve the problem of sin for him. He will bruise the head of the evil one. This vision also shows that man needs redemption; he needs the killing of the sacrifice and the shedding of the blood. He needs coats of skin to clothe him. This was the second vision that Adam saw. It is the second vision that God gave to man.
From that time onward, Adam began to live by this vision. He named his wife Eve (v. 20), which means “living.” This indicates that he had heard and received the gospel. The judgment of death had passed over him, and he lived. Eve was also living by this vision, because when she bore a son, she called him Cain, which means “acquired.” This indicates that in her concept, Cain was the acquired seed of the woman that God had promised. She believed in the seed and was waiting for the seed. We have to believe that Adam and Eve not only lived by the vision, but they also told their children about this vision.
According to the Scriptures, the children of Adam were of two kinds. Those who lived under their fathers’ vision were the first kind, and those who did not live under their fathers’ vision were the second; they took another way to serve and worship God. Abel belonged to the first kind; he lived under his father’s vision, and his father’s vision became his vision. Hence, he was serving God according to a vision. Cain belonged to the second kind. He did not take his father’s vision, and he did not live by it. On the contrary, he invented another way of serving and worshipping God. He was absolutely not serving by a vision. By the second generation of mankind, it came to be that, although all men were serving and worshipping the same true God, only Abel’s service was carried out according to a vision. Cain was not worshipping idols; he did not serve other deities. Yet his service was one that was detached from the vision. He did not oppose God. On the contrary, he was also making sacrifices to God and worshipping God. Yet his sacrifice and worship were done apart from the vision; he was serving without a vision. This is the reason Abel was accepted by God, but Cain was rejected by Him.