Evil Influencing the Good

This quote from Geerhardus Vos is immediately applicable to the current modern youth group model infecting the church today:

"Notwithstanding these isolated instances of the continuity of redemptive grace, the account as a whole tends to bring out the divine purpose above formulated. Even the good kept alive was not enabled to to force back the evil. Nothing is said about any influence proceeding from the Sethites upon the Cainites. While the power of redemption remained stationary, the power of sin waxed strong, and became ready to attack the good that still existed. The character of the period in this respect finds clearest expression in what is said, thirdly, about he commingling of the Cainites and Sethites through intermarriage. The latter allowed themselves to become assimilated to the wickedness of the former. This was permitted by God to go on to the point where the lesson of the inherent destructive potencies of sin had been fully taught, and where it could not go on any further, because Noah and his family only having remained faithful, the continuity of the work of God appeared in danger, and where the time had been reached to teach the finishing lesson of the judgment, without which the entire period would have failed of its purpose."1.

An acquaintance of mine once said that the reason he thought it was good for his son to go to youth group was for missionary reasons - he would be salt. This quote strikes that misconception to the ground because it teaches just the opposite. Yes we are to be salt in a sinful world, but we also must not place ourselves willingly, as if we could handle the pressure, into the hands of what might inevitably lead to our downfall.

See the process of being incorporated into what is sinful and evil. First, the Sethites remained pure, unadulterated from their evil brothers. But the next step was compromise. Here begins a commingling between the Sethites and the Cainites. As G. Vos has said earlier in this same chapter that they (the Cainites) perhaps did not feel the curse but relied on their own inventions - much as we do today. Lastly, we notice that the good has been completely swallowed up by evil save Noah and his family. Even history confirms to us that this same trend continues to the present. Biblical strongholds of the past are now havens for sin; a celebration to evil. But we violate this historical lesson when we put our innocent, impressionable children into the hands of those who have no conscience about heavenly things! It is they who influence our children for ill. God, that we might awake from our idiocy and repent from our blindness!



1. Vos, Gerrhardus; Biblical Theology, Eerdmans, 1977, p.48.

-Joe