God's plan to restore and save man by sending the Messiah existed from the moment the Fall occurred. Thus his dispensation to establish the Foundation for the Messiah began with Adam's family.

Since it was Adam who actually committed the Original Sin, and not Cain or Abel, Adam should have been the one responsible to restore the Foundation of Faith by making the Required Offering to God. Whether or not the Foundation of Faith was accomplished would be decided by whether or not Adam made his offering properly.

However, in the Bible there is no record of Adam ever offering a sacrifice. The offerings were made by Cain and Abel. Why is this?

According to "The Principle of the Creation," man was originally created to relate to one lord. Thus, God cannot work a Principle dispensation with a person who has a relationship with two lords. As explained earlier, in the chapter titled "Overview of the Principles of the Dispensation for Restoration," although Adam was created by God, he came to be of Satan's lineage, and thus was in a midway position, relating to both God and Satan.

Since Adam was an embodiment of both good and evil, if God were to try to deal directly with Adam and his offering, Satan would also try to deal with Adam and his offering on the basis of Adam's being of his lineage. If this had happened, Adam would have been in a position to deal with two masters, and thus in a non-Principle position. So God could not work his dispensation through Adam.

God has no alternative but to separate into two beings the two contradictory natures of good and evil that were embodied within Adam. To this end, God had one of Adam's two sons represent good and the other represent evil.¹ Then God placed them in the positions where one dealt with God and the other with Satan. In other words, God had them offer their sacrifices from the positions where each dealt with only one lord.

Both Cain and Abel were sons of Adam. Then which of the two should be the one to represent good, and thus to deal with God, and which should be the one to represent evil, and thus to deal with Satan? Both Cain and Abel were results of Eve's fall, and the question of who would represent which side was decided based on the process of the fall of Eve, who was responsible for the Fall.

Eve was involved in two fallen acts of love (fornication). The first was her relationship with the archangel, causing the spiritual fall. The second was her relationship with Adam, causing the physical fall.

Both of these fallen acts were crimes, but if we think about which of the two was "closer" to The Principle and thus more easily forgivable in the eyes of God, we would have to say that the second fallen act was the more easily forgivable. The first fallen act was motivated by Eve's excessive desire to have that which was not yet her time to enjoy, that is, it was motivated by her desire to have her eyes opened and to be like God(Gen 3:7) -- before she was mature, Also, in the first fallen act, Eve's relationship was with the archangel, who, according to The Principle, was never to have been Eve's spouse. On the other hand, the second fallen act was motivated by Eve's desire to return to God's side after she realized the illicit nature of her first act. Moreover, even though the act was committed prior to the time God had set, it was a relationship with Adam, who, in God's plan, would ultimately have been her spouse.

Because Cain and Abel were the results of Eve's illicit love, God place them in positions representing evil and good based on her two acts of fornication. Cain, as the first result of the Fall, represented Eve's first fallen act, the relationship with the archangel, and thus he was placed the position to deal with Satan. Abel symbolized the second fallen act, that between Eve and Adam, and thus he was placed in the position to deal with God.

Satan gained control of God's Creation before God did, and because Satan is a non-Principle being, he brought about a pseudo-Principle world before God could realize a Principle world. Therefore, God began his dispensation by placing the first son, who symbolized the first fallen act, on Satan's side and the second son, who symbolized the second fallen act, on his side. God said to Cain, "'. . . Why are you angry, and why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is couching at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it'"(Gen 4:6,7). This shows that Cain was in a position to have to deal with Satan.

When the Israelites fled from Egypt, God smote all the first-born of the Egyptians, and also of their cattle(Ex 12:29). Also, the Bible says that God "loved" the second son, Jacob, and "hated" the first son, Esau, even while they were still in their mother's womb (Rom 9:13). And in the case of Jacob's blessing of his grandsons, Ephraim and Manasseh, Jacob blessed them by crossing his hands so that the right hand lay on the head of Ephraim, the second son (Gen 48:14). In each of these cases is an example of how God place the second-born child in the favored position.

Based on this principle, God placed Cain and Abel in positions where each could deal with only one master, and then had each make an offering, God could accept Abel's offering (Gen 4:4) because he was in a position representing God and had made the offering in a acceptable manner (Heb 11:4). Through this acceptable offering, the Foundation of Faith was established in Adam's family by the second son, Abel, acting in place of Adam.

God did not reject Cain's offering because he hated Cain; nor was it God's intention to condemn him forever. However, because Cain was in a position to deal only with Satan, God could not work with him unless he fulfilled an indemnity condition by which he could remove himself from the position of relating to Satan. The indemnity condition that had to be fulfilled by Cain is called the 'Indemnity Condition to Remove the Fallen Nature'.

In order for Adam's family to establish the Foundation of Substance, Cain had to meet the Indemnity Condition to Remove the Fallen Nature. Had he done so, God would have been able to accept his offering joyfully.

Since Cain was representing the side of Satan, he could not be in the object position to God, who is the subject of goodness. Through Cain's meeting the condition required to remove the Fallen Nature, he would then return to the position where God could deal with him. Then, how was this Indemnity Condition for Removing the Fallen Nature to be met?

The first man and woman inherited the Fallen Nature through their relationship with the archangel. The Indemnity Condition for Removing the Fallen Nature must be established by symbolically reversing the process of the Fall.

The archangel, who was created in a position more distant from God that Adam, should have loved Adam as God did, thus taking the same viewpoint as God. He should have related to God with Adam as his mediator, and should have perfected himself by following the heavenly way of humbling himself before Adam and obeying him. But the archangel did not do this. The Indemnity Condition for Removing the Fallen Nature is met by reversing this failure.

After Abel made his offering, Cain was placed in the position of the archangel, and Abel, in that of Adam. From these positions the Indemnity Condition for Removing the Fallen Nature could have been met by Cain's loving Abel, obeying Abel, and humbling himself to Abel. Doing so, he would have come closer to God. But, instead, Cain killed Abel, repeating the process of the archangel's fall. This was not simply the crime of an elder brother killing his younger brother; it meant that the satanic side had struck God's side, God's efforts to separate good and evil in Adam's family had been frustrated, and the side of Goodness had been lost.

What Cain was supposed to fulfill was the basic indemnity condition that is required for anyone in a position distant from God to come closer to him. Within each person, the mind and the body which tends toward serving "the law of sin"(Rom 7:25), is in the Cain position. Only when the body is subjugated by the mind and obeys it will each individual become good. However, in the actual life of fallen man, the body repeatedly rebels against the directions of the mind, acting as Cain did in killing Abel, thus fostering the evil within each individual.

As fallen people, we are in the Cain position to the Messiah. Therefore, by our humbling ourselves before him, and serving him, obeying him, and loving him, we attain salvation through his mediation (Jn 14:6, 1 Tim 2:5). As Jeremiah 17:9 tells us, man became "... deceitful above all things...." Therefore, to come to God, man has had to go through the things of the Creation, which were in the Abel position to him. This is the principle behind God's having man use offerings in the Dispensation.

As explained earlier, the foundation upon which the Messiah can come is the restored Foundation of Faith and Foundation of Substance. In Adam's family, a Foundation of Faith was successfully made by Abel's making an offering which God could accept. Through this, Abel also qualified himself to be the central person for the Foundation of Substance. However, because Cain killed Abel, the Indemnity Condition for Removing the Fallen Nature was not established. Thus, the Foundation of Substance and, as a result, the Foundation for the Messiah, were never made, and God's dispensation was not fulfilled in Adam's family.

If Cain had fulfilled the Indemnity Condition for Removing the Fallen Nature by humbling himself before Abel and obeying him, the Foundation of Substance would have been established in Adam's family. This, together with the Foundation of Faith, would have constituted the Foundation for the Messiah. In other words, by Abel's meeting the indemnity condition necessary for restoring the vertical relationship with God, he would have stood on the Foundation of Faith. If Cain had re-established the proper horizontal order with Abel, the Foundation of Substance would have been established. These two foundations together would have constituted the Foundation for the Messiah.

On this foundation, the Messiah would have been able to come. At that stage of human history, God's dispensation was on the family level, so if Abel and Cain had established the Foundation for the Messiah, it would have been on the family level. If Adam's family had made such a foundation, they would have received the Messiah and been reborn through him. In this way, they would have been restored and become the ideal family which God had originally intended, and an entirely new history would have begun.

Instead, Cain killed Abel, and God's dispensation for Adam's family was not fulfilled. However, God's will to save mankind is unchangeable and absolute; so although God may not be able to continue his work through a person who dies not fulfill his responsibility, he chooses someone from among that person's descendants to carry on with his Will.