Symbol Dictionary — The Two Classes

Every symbol defined in this handbook, alphabetically (leading articles ignored), with its receipts and owning section.

Abel's offering (the firstlings of his flock) = the appointed lamb brought by faith — righteousness by faith enacted at the world's first altar, the firstling's blood confessing the coming Lamb of God who takes away sin; accepted because it comes God's appointed way, trusting wholly in the promised atonement (Gen. 4:4; Heb. 11:4; John 1:29; Gen. 3:15). — defined in "Cain and Abel — the Two Worships".
Babel / Babylon = the serpent-seed's confederated city-system: congregation for convenience and self-security in defiance of God's command to fill the earth, and self-naming in defiance of calling on the Name of the LORD; founded by Nimrod on the plain of Shinar, named CONFUSION by God's judgment, and carried forward by the Spirit to "Babylon the great" (Gen. 11:4; Gen. 11:8-9; Gen. 10:8-10; Gen. 9:1; Gen. 4:26; Rev. 17:5). — defined in "Babel — Congregating for Convenience".
the better country = the heavenly inheritance every pilgrim witness of the study confessed and sought — God's answer to the man-built city of Cain; those who came out refused to return, "desire a better country, that is, an heavenly," and receive the city God prepared, for "here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come" (Heb. 11:13-16; Heb. 13:14; PP 170.2). — defined in "Come Out, My People — the Pilgrim Call".
Cain's offering (the fruit of the ground) = will-worship: the self-chosen, bloodless way substituted for God's appointed way — the first false worship; partial obedience (an altar, a gift) that omits the essential thing, faith in the promised Redeemer's blood, and comes in the worshiper's own merits, and to which God has not respect (Gen. 4:3; Gen. 4:5; Gen. 4:7; Col. 2:23). — defined in "Cain and Abel — the Two Worships".
calling on the name of the LORD = the dividing act of the faithful seed — open, avowed worship, a public profession of loyalty that marks off the Sethite line from the city; crowned in Enoch, who walked with God in the corrupt age and preached judgment to the city of Cain (Gen. 4:26; Gen. 5:24; Jude 1:14-15; PP 80.2). — defined in "The Two Lineages — the City and the Name".
the city of Cain = the serpent-seed's congregation — fortified convenience built by the fugitive from God's presence; man staying put in the cursed earth, distinguished in arts, industry, and violence-as-culture while God is forgotten; the civilization whose spirit prevails in the eating-drinking-marrying world Christ names as the type of the last age (Gen. 4:16-17; Gen. 4:21-23; Matt. 24:38; PP 81.1). — defined in "The Two Lineages — the City and the Name".
the daughters of men = the Cainite line, the world — the daughters of the multiplying "men" of Gen. 6:1, the class of the man who went out from the presence of the LORD, already practicing polygamy (Gen. 6:1-2; Gen. 4:16; Gen. 4:19). — defined in "The Mingling — How the Peculiar People Lost Their Peculiarity".
the days of the Son of man = the last age, defined by Christ through the matched Noah/Lot pattern — heedless absorption in lawful things (eating, drinking, marrying, buying, selling, planting, building), mingled worship as the covenant line blends with the world, and sudden separation by judgment on "the same day" the righteous go out; the mark of the age is "knew not" (Luke 17:26-30; Matt. 24:37-39; Gen. 6:2, 5; Gen. 13:12-13). — defined in "As in the Days of Noah — the Last Mingling".
the doctrine of Balaam = corrupting by mingling what cannot be cursed — the serpent's standing strategy against the peculiar people; barred from cursing from without, Balaam counsels the daughters, the feasts, and the worship of Moab, so the people curse themselves by their own transgression; Christ names it a permanent doctrine and finds it held in a New Testament church (Num. 31:16; Num. 25:1-3; Num. 23:9; Rev. 2:14). — defined in "Israel Mingles — "Like All the Nations"".
dwelling alone = the appointed posture of the woman's seed among the nations — separation as safety, not isolation as loss; Balaam's own mouth confesses the people "shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among the nations," Moses seals it as "dwell in safety alone," and the demand for a king "like all the nations" is the deliberate reversal of the posture (Num. 23:9; Deut. 33:28; 1 Sam. 8:5, 20). — defined in "Israel Mingles — "Like All the Nations"".
eating and drinking = Christ's mark of the heedless class before the flood: lawful appetite — eating, drinking, marrying — made the whole of life, so that the ordinary swallowed the eternal and men "knew not" until judgment fell; not gross crime but total absorption in the permitted, the sign of a world that has erased the distinction between the holy and the common (Matt. 24:38-39; Luke 17:27). — defined in "The Days of Noah — the Institutions of Eden Under Attack".
the enmity = the God-put antagonism between the two seeds — grace, not curse: fallen man is naturally at peace with the serpent, so "I will put enmity" is a supernatural interposition of implanted grace, creating "conflict where hitherto had been peace"; to lose it by befriending the world is to become "the enemy of God," and the world's hatred of the saints is the same enmity running outward (Gen. 3:15; Jas. 4:4; John 15:19; GC 505.2; GC 506.2). — defined in "The Enmity — Two Seeds from One Fall".
having a form of godliness = the last-days condition inside the church: an outward shape of religion emptied of its power, the professed mingled with the world in appetite and pleasure while keeping the exterior of piety — the Noah/Lot mingling relocated from the world into the sanctuary, Laodicea "rich, and increased with goods" yet "knowest not" (2 Tim. 3:1-5; Rev. 3:17; Matt. 24:39). — defined in "As in the Days of Noah — the Last Mingling".
the institutions of Eden = the three gifts God established before sin: MARRIAGE (one man and one woman made one flesh), the APPOINTED DIET (the seed-bearing bounty given for meat), and the SABBATH (the seventh day blessed and sanctified) — all three predating the fall, all three assaulted by the serpent's seed: polygamy against marriage, indulgence against the diet, self-appointed worship against the appointed, the last war ending at the Sabbath (Gen. 2:24; Gen. 1:29; Gen. 2:1-3; Gen. 4:19; Gen. 6:2). — defined in "The Days of Noah — the Institutions of Eden Under Attack".
the mark of the beast = allegiance to the self-appointed worship-system enforced in place of the Creator's appointed worship — the way of Cain grown to world scale; received in forehead or hand, set opposite "the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus," and enforced by the decree that "no man might buy or sell" (Rev. 13:16-17; Rev. 14:9-11; Rev. 14:12; Rev. 13:3-4; Rev. 14:7). — defined in "The Seal or the Mark — the Distinction Made Visible".
the mingling = the alliance of the two classes by which the peculiar people lose their peculiarity — the standing mechanism of apostasy: choice by sight, union with the world, one-directional descent, ending in "all flesh had corrupted his way"; forbidden as the unequal yoke, named as the friendship of the world (Gen. 6:1-5; Gen. 6:12; 2 Cor. 6:14; 1 Cor. 15:33; Jas. 4:4). — defined in "The Mingling — How the Peculiar People Lost Their Peculiarity".
mountains and plains = the geography of the two classes — the serpent's seed congregating over the plains and valleys for convenience, the faithful withdrawing to the mountains to keep their peculiar character and their worship pure; the geography of separation, not of appointed worship, given its biblical voice in "Escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed" (Gen. 4:16; Gen. 6:1-2; Gen. 19:17; PP 81.2; GC 65.3). — defined in "The Two Lineages — the City and the Name".
the original diet = the Gen. 1:29 grant — fruits, grains, herbs, and after the fall the herb of the field — with flesh not granted until after the flood, so that the vegetable grant stood through the whole antediluvian age and the days-of-Noah appetite ran against, not within, God's appointment (Gen. 1:29; Gen. 3:18; Gen. 9:3). — defined in "The Days of Noah — the Institutions of Eden Under Attack".
peculiar people = God's purchased, set-apart treasure — distinctness is not an accessory to the covenant identity, it IS the covenant identity; Israel is a "peculiar treasure above all people" and "a kingdom of priests" precisely by keeping the covenant that unlikes them from the nations, and the same charter passes unchanged to the church redeemed by Christ's blood; to be conformed is to forfeit the identity (Exo. 19:5-6; Deut. 14:2; Deut. 7:6; Titus 2:14; 1 Pet. 2:9). — defined in "Israel Mingles — "Like All the Nations"".
the plain of Sodom = choice by sight — the well-watered convenience, "as the garden of the LORD," chosen with the eyes and no altar named, ending inside the doomed city by one unbroken drift: toward, in, gate (Gen. 13:10-13; Gen. 14:12; Gen. 19:1). — defined in "Abraham and Lot — the Tent and the Plain".
Remember Lot's wife = the last-generation warning against a divided separation — out of the city with the body, in it with the heart; she obeyed the call to come out, and one backward look fixed her forever as the standing type of the professor whose separation never reached the affections (Luke 17:32; Gen. 19:26; Gen. 13:12-13). — defined in "As in the Days of Noah — the Last Mingling".
the seal of God = the Creator's sign of ownership and sanctification set in the forehead — the seventh-day Sabbath kept by faith; God's own "sign" that He is the LORD who made heaven and earth and who sanctifies His people, marking the separate class before the judgment falls (Rev. 7:2-3; Rev. 14:1; Exo. 31:13-17; Exo. 20:8-11; Gen. 2:1-3; Eze. 20:12, 20; Eze. 9:4). — defined in "The Seal or the Mark — the Distinction Made Visible".
the seed of the serpent = a spiritual paternity, not a bloodline — those who belong to the devil by doing his works: "of your father the devil" by doing his lusts, "the children of the wicked one" sown as tares, Cain "of that wicked one" though Eve's own son; the test is practice — "he that committeth sin is of the devil," "whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God" (John 8:44; Matt. 13:38-39; 1 John 3:12; 1 John 3:8; 1 John 3:10). — defined in "The Enmity — Two Seeds from One Fall".
the seed of the woman = Christ first, and in Him His people — the singular seed "which is Christ," reckoned to all who are Christ's, sown by the Son of man as the children of the kingdom, sharing the head-bruising victory, and terminating in "the remnant of her seed" who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus (Gen. 3:15; Gal. 3:16; Gal. 3:29; Matt. 13:37-38; Rom. 16:20; Rev. 12:17). — defined in "The Enmity — Two Seeds from One Fall".
the sons of God = the covenant line of Seth, the professed people of God — Scripture's own idiom for Adam's faithful line ("the son of God," Luke 3:38) and the covenant people ("the children of the LORD your God," Deut. 14:1); read literally, not angels, for angels marry not (Gen. 6:2; Luke 3:38; Deut. 14:1-2; Matt. 22:30). — defined in "The Mingling — How the Peculiar People Lost Their Peculiarity".
strangers and pilgrims = the confessed identity of the woman's seed in every age — those who own that earth is not home and declare plainly that they seek a better, heavenly country; Abraham the pattern, the church the heir of the title (Heb. 11:13-16; 1 Pet. 2:11; Gen. 12:1). — defined in "Abraham and Lot — the Tent and the Plain".
the tent and the altar = the pilgrim life — dwelling loose from the world with worship at the center, portable, needing no city or temple; an altar at every pitch, because worship is bound to spirit and truth, not to a place, and the tent confesses that home is the city God builds (Gen. 12:7-8; Gen. 13:4, 18; Heb. 11:9-10; John 4:23-24). — defined in "Abraham and Lot — the Tent and the Plain".
the tower = man-made security against God's judgment and against His command to scatter and fill the earth — brick-and-slime presumption trusted for the safety and the name that belong to the LORD alone, exposed by the LORD's "coming down" and answered by the confusion of tongues and the very scattering it was built to prevent (Gen. 11:3-5; Gen. 11:8). — defined in "Babel — Congregating for Convenience".
the two cities = the two destinations of the two classes: Babylon, the end-form of the city of Cain — "the habitation of devils," thrown down and "found no more at all" — and the New Jerusalem, the prepared city, "coming down from God out of heaven"; the come-out call sets every reader between them (Rev. 18:2; Rev. 18:21; Rev. 21:2; Heb. 11:16). — defined in "Come Out, My People — the Pilgrim Call".
the way of Cain = self-appointed worship that hardens into a lineage and ends in persecuting the true — the false worshiper hating and slaying the true because his own works are evil and his brother's righteous; the pattern that opens the martyr stream from righteous Abel onward (Jude 1:11; 1 John 3:12; Gen. 4:8; Matt. 23:35). — defined in "Cain and Abel — the Two Worships".
the wilderness = the place of preservation-by-separation for the true church during the mingled centuries — a condition, not a geography: God's provided refuge, entered by flight and not conquest, where the woman is fed away from the serpent through the 1260 days/years; needing no cathedral because worship is "in spirit and in truth," and located by Scripture itself "in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth" (Rev. 12:6, 14; Heb. 11:38; John 4:23-24; 2 Cor. 6:17). — defined in "The Church in the Wilderness — the Mountains Keep the Faith".
the woman = the true church, the seed of the woman corporate — the pure bride of Christ, kept distinct by loyalty rather than numbers; God likens the daughter of Zion to a woman, Christ loves the church as a husband his wife "not having spot," and her remnant seed keep the commandments of God and the testimony of Jesus, over against the harlot Babylon who married the world (Jer. 6:2; Rev. 12:1-2, 17; Eph. 5:25, 27; Rev. 17:5). — defined in "The Church in the Wilderness — the Mountains Keep the Faith".