Pastor Jeff Durbin in conversation with two Mormon missionaries in Provo, Utah:
Justification And Sanctification
We can make a distinction between the body and the head of a man and he suffers no loss, but if there is a separation, the man will be dead. The head and the body must stay together for life to continue. Similarly, though we can make a distinction between justification and sanctification, we must never separate the two.
JUSTIFICATION
Justification is a legal court room term defined as the act of God when He declares a person just or righteous in His sight. This takes place the moment a sinner places their trust in the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. For the sinner who has faith in Jesus, God pronounces the sentence “I find you not guilty! I reckon (I count, I declare) you righteous in My sight, and you and I are forever at peace with each other. All of your sins were transferred to your sin bearing Substitute, the Lord Jesus Christ, who took the full brunt of My holy wrath for you, and what has been transferred to your account is the righteousness of My Son, who lived not only a sinless life, but a life fully pleasing to Me. This very real righteousness is yours now and forever.”
Romans 5:1 says, “Therefore having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” The Christian is a justified person. God has declared him right in His sight because of Christ.
What is amazing to us (and what is at the heart of the gospel message) is that God does not wait until we are inherently righteous before He declares us righteous. He justifies “the ungodly.” Romans 4:5 says, “And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.”
How can God do this without compromising His holiness and justice? He does this because the very real righteousness of Christ has been given as a gift to the one who believes in Him. Christ’s righteousness is a real righteousness and “God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor. 5:21). Christ is our righteousness (1 Cor. 1:30).
What about sanctification then? Justification happens in an instant – the moment a sinner places faith in the Savior. Sanctification is the process of becoming more and more holy and separated to God in daily life.
SANCTIFICATION
In the Old Testament, vessels used for the house of God (the Tabernacle or the Temple) were “sanctified” and set apart for that purpose, never to be used for more mundane purposes. In one sense, the Christian is already sanctified in that he is set apart to God (1 Cor. 6:11). Yet there is another dimension of sanctification for although set apart to God, there is still much work to do because in all actuality, no Christian on earth is entirely sanctified. The battle between the flesh and spirit is a life long battle. The flesh still wants its independence, and in contrast, the spirit wishes to live in absolute dependence upon God. Sanctification is an ongoing work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Christian.
Having made the distinction between justification and sanctification, let me affirm straight away that these two cannot be separated. That is because the truly justified person will be involved in this process of sanctification. If someone claims to be justified, but there is no desire to be sanctified, the claim to justification is proven to be fraudulent. The justified man possesses the Holy Spirit and He sets about the task of sanctification the moment He comes in to the human heart. He desires holiness, and He stirs up that desire in the heart of the true Christian. The Christian still sins, but there is now a struggle against sin, whereas before there was no struggle at all. The fact that you wish to be free from sin is an indication that the Holy Spirit is at work in the heart. When a person is happy to stay in a lifestyle that knowingly displeases the Master, it raises huge red warning flags to indicate that we need to analyze any claim to true justification.
Martin Luther gave the following analogy: When we are justified, it is as though a doctor has just administered a sure and certain remedy for a fatal disease. Though the patient may still endure a temporary struggle with the residual effects of his illness, the outcome is no longer in doubt. The physician pronounces the patient cured even though a rehabilitation process must still be carried out.
So it is with our justification. In Christ, God pronounces us just by the imputation of the merits of His Son. Along with that declaration, God administers something to us; He gives us the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit begins immediately to work within us to bring us to holy living.
It is both a reality and comfort to know this truth – once He begins the work, He will complete it. Scripture says, “those whom he justified he also glorified” (Rom. 8:30). So certain is Paul that this is the case, he writes of glorification in the past tense. Though glorification has not yet happen for the Christian in this world, its future certainty is assured. It’s as good as done. No one fall through the cracks.
Imagine being a sports fan and your team is in a big final. Due to a pressing commitment, you are not able to watch the game live and so you record it for later viewing.
You are finally ready to sit down to watch the recorded game and a friend calls and, before you can stop him, he congratulates you on your team’s big win. You really didn’t want to know the final score… you wanted to watch the game not knowing the final outcome. You wanted to watch with all of the emotions of a live experience. But you cannot do that anymore. The fact is that because you now know the final result – because you know that your team wins the game – you watch the entire encounter knowing that no matter how bleak things may look, even if your teams falls behind in the score, you know… in fact you know with utter certainty… your team will win! You watch the game with this comfort: victory is inevitable.
In a similar way, in the battle for sanctification there are often struggles along the way. There are even moments when we might even feel a measure of despair at our seeming lack of spiritual progress. Yet the big picture reality is this: God the Holy Spirit having started the work will complete the massive sanctification project bringing every true Christian all the way to future glorification. All the justified are glorified. He who began the good work in you will complete it, until the day of Jesus Christ (Phil. 1:6).
Clouds Without Water Seminar
Jude: 12 These are the men who are hidden reefs in your love feasts when they feast with you without fear, caring for themselves; clouds without water, carried along by winds; autumn trees without fruit, doubly dead, uprooted; 13 wild waves of the sea, casting up their own shame like foam; wandering stars, for whom the black darkness has been reserved forever. (NASB)
Justin Peters:
Session 1 – History of the Pentecostal/Charismatic Movement: An Overview
Before Time?
Ken Ham writes:
What was God doing all that time before creation?
One reason some people have given me for rejecting a young universe is that they think it somehow “limits God.” After all, what was he doing all that time before creation? But this question reflects a basic misunderstanding of God and time.
Because of my stand on a young universe, a man approached me and said, “But it makes no sense to believe in a young universe. After all, what was God doing all that time before he created?”
I answered, “What time do you mean?”
The person answered, “Well, it doesn’t make sense to say that God has always existed, and yet he didn’t create the universe until just 6,000 years ago.” Apparently, he was worried that God once had a lot of time on his hands with nothing to do.
I then went on to explain that because God has always existed, then it is meaningless to ask, “What was God doing all that time before he created?” No matter how far you were to go back in time, you would still have an infinite amount of time before he created! So even if the universe were billions or trillions or quadrillions of years old, you could still ask the same question.
I then answered, “But you are missing the fact that there was no time before God created.”
Time is actually a created entity. The first verse of the Bible reads: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1).
A study of this verse reveals that God created time, space, and matter on the first day of creation week. No one of these can have a meaningful existence without the others. God created the space-mass-time universe. Space and matter must exist in time, and time requires space and matter. Time is only meaningful if physical entities exist and events transpire during time.
“In the beginning . . .” is when time began. There was no time before time was created!
When I’m teaching children, I like to explain it this way. There was no “before” God created. There was not even “nothing”! There was God existing in eternity.
This is something humans, as finite created beings, can never really understand. That’s why the Bible makes it clear there is always a “faith” aspect to our understanding of God. Now, biblical faith is not against reason, but such things go way beyond our finite understanding.
“Without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him” (Hebrews 11:6).
In Psalm 90:2, we read: “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever You had formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God.”
So, what was “before” creation? God existing from everlasting to everlasting—God existing in eternity.
Do you remember what God said to Moses when he asked God who he should say sent him to lead his people out of Egypt’s oppression?
“And God said to Moses, ‘I AM WHO I AM.’ And he said, ‘Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, “I AM has sent me to you”’” (Exodus 3:14).
God is the great “I AM.” He exists in eternity. He was not created.
In Revelation 1:8, we read, “‘I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End,’ says the Lord, ‘who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.’”
Isaiah 43:10 records these words from God: “‘You are My witnesses,’ says the Lord, ‘and My servant whom I have chosen, that you may know and believe Me, and understand that I am He. Before Me there was no God formed, nor shall there be after Me.’”
In other words, it’s a mistake to talk about what God was doing “before creation” because the concept of time (before, during, and after) did not come to be until day one of creation week. God exists—he is—he is the eternal self-existent One. He is outside of time.
The Bible makes it clear that God’s existence is completely separate from the history of this universe, which began in Genesis 1:1. In other words, there is no such thing as “prehistoric.” History began when it was first recorded—the first verse of Genesis.
Now, when we understand this truth and then also understand that the whole of creation, including Genesis 1:1, was accomplished in six days, we can begin to calculate how long ago God created the world.
Exodus 20:11 makes it clear that the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1) and everything else (all that is listed in Genesis 1) were created in six days: “For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.”
Based on the way the word “day” is used in Genesis 1 (qualified by number, the words morning and evening, etc.), creation had to be six ordinary (approximately 24-hour) days. Many technical and popular articles on our website show that the context requires this meaning.
Then the Bible lists very specific genealogies of the Messiah’s line in Genesis 5 and Genesis 11. We are told that Adam was 130 years old when he begat Seth. When Seth was 105 years old, he begat Enosh—and so these lists continue. When you add up all the dates and other time references throughout Scripture, then it is clear that “In the beginning . . .” was about 6,000 years ago.
Now some Christian leaders have claimed that the Bible doesn’t give an absolute date for creation, so we can’t know how old the creation really is. But of course the Bible doesn’t give a date for creation. You see, if the Bible recorded that creation was 6,000 years ago, then because the Bible was completed about 2,000 years ago, the creation would be 8,000 years old! And the Bible doesn’t use terms like BC or AD because they are man-made conventions, based around the birth of Jesus.
The Bible, however, does give us something much better than a date—a very specific history that allows us not only to determine the age of the universe but also to know all the essential details about God’s plan of redemption from the beginning of time, including the line of the promised Messiah.
One final point: Nowhere in the Bible do we find any suggestion of millions or billions of years. Belief in millions of years is really part of secular man’s religion, which attempts to explain life without God, instead of believing the true account of origins in Genesis that begins, “In the beginning . . . .”
Our ability to trust God’s promise of salvation relies upon our ability to trust everything he says about history—from beginning to end. If we can’t trust his claims about the past, how can we trust his promises about the future?
Thankfully, we serve a God we can trust in every detail. Though he is beyond space and time, he humbled himself to become a man and die on the cross for our sins. He also has given us a record of this history in his Word so that we can know it’s really true.
Law & Gospel (Quote)
Scripture: Matthew 5:18
From: May 21, 1882, Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Volume 28
C. H. Spurgeon:
“It has been said that he who understands the two covenants is a theologian, and this is, no doubt, true. I may also say that the man who knows the relative positions of the law and of the gospel has the keys of the situation in the matter of doctrine. The relationship of the law to myself, and how it condemns me: the relationship of the gospel to myself, and how if I be a believer it justifies me— these are two points which every Christian man should clearly understand. He should not “see men as trees walking” in this department, or else he may cause himself great sorrow, and fall into errors which will be grievous to his heart and injurious to his life. To form a mingle-mangle of law and gospel is to teach that which is neither law nor gospel, but the opposite of both. May the Spirit of God be our teacher, and the Word of God be our lesson-book, and then we shall not err.
Very great mistakes have been made about the law. Not long ago there were those about us who affirmed that the law is utterly abrogated and abolished, and they openly taught that believers were not bound to make the moral law the rule of their lives. What would have been sin in other men they counted to be no sin in themselves. From such Antinomianism as that may God deliver us. We are not under the law as the method of salvation, but we delight to see the law in the hand of Christ, and desire to obey the Lord in all things. Others have been met with who have taught that Jesus mitigated and softened down the law, and they have in effect said that the perfect law of God was too hard for imperfect beings, and therefore God has given us a milder and easier rule. These tread dangerously upon the verge of terrible error, although we believe that they are little aware of it. Alas, we have met with authors who have gone much farther than this, and have railed at the law. Oh, the hard words that I have sometimes read against the holy law of God! How very unlike to those which the apostle used when he said, “The law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good.” How different from the reverent spirit which made him say,— “I delight in the law of God after the inward man.” You know how David loved the law of God, and sang its praises all through the longest of the Psalms. The heart of every real Christian is most reverent towards the law of the Lord. It is perfect, nay, it is perfection itself. We believe that we shall never have reached perfection till we are perfectly conformed to it. A sanctification which stops short of perfect conformity to the law cannot truthfully be Galled perfect sanctification, for every want of exact conformity to the perfect law is sin. May the Spirit of God help us while, in imitation of our Lord Jesus, we endeavour to magnify the law.”
Article: Delighting in the Trinity
Article by Dr. Michael Reeves – source: https://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/delighting-trinity
“It is not to be expected that we should love God supremely if we have not known him to be more desirable than all other things.” So wrote the great hymn writer Isaac Watts. And of course, he was quite right, for we always love what seems most attractive to us. Whether it be God, money, sex, or fame, we live for and love what captures our hearts.
But what kind of God could outstrip the attractions of all other things? Could any unitary, single-person god do so? Hardly, or at least not for long. Single-person gods must, by definition, have spent eternity in absolute solitude. Before creation, having no other persons with whom they could commune, they must have been entirely alone.
Love for others, then, cannot go very deep in them if they can go for eternity without it. And so, not being essentially loving, such gods are inevitably less than lovely. They may demand our worship, but they cannot win our hearts. They must be served with gritted teeth.
How wonderfully different it is with the triune God. In John 17:24, Jesus speaks of how the Father loved Him even before the creation of the world. That is the triune, living God: a Father, whose very being has eternally been about loving His Son, pouring out the Spirit of love and life on Him. Here is a God who is love, who is so full of life and blessing that for eternity He has been overflowing with it. As the Puritan preacher Richard Sibbes put it: “Such a goodness is in God as is in a fountain, or in the breast that loves to ease itself of milk.” Here in the triune God, in other words, is an infinitely satisfying God, one who is the very fountainhead of all goodness, truth, and beauty.
That means that with the triune God there is great good news. For here is no mean and grasping God, but a Lord of grace and mercy—one, in fact, who offers a salvation sweeter than any non-triune God could ever imagine.
Just imagine for a moment a single-person god. Having been alone for eternity, would it want fellowship with us? It seems most unlikely. Would it even know what fellowship was? Almost certainly not. Such a god might allow us to live under its rule and protection, but little more. Think of the uncertain hope of the Muslim or the Jehovah’s Witness: they may finally attain paradise, but even there they will have no real fellowship with their god. Their god would not want it.
Here and here alone is the God for whom our hearts were made, the God who can win our hearts away from the desires that enslave us, the God who is endlessly, unsurpassably satisfying.
But if God is a Father, whose very life has been about loving and delighting in His precious Son, then you begin to see a God who would have far more intimate and marvelous aims, aims to draw us into His life and joy, to embrace us with the very love He has for His dear Son.
Indeed, this God does not offer some kind of “he loves me, he loves me not” relationship whereby I have to try to keep myself in His favor by behaving impeccably. No, “to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God” (John 1:12)—and so with the security to enjoy His love forever.
The eternally beloved Son comes to us to share with us the very love that the Father has always lavished on Him. He comes to share with us and bring us into the life that is His, that we might be brought before the Most High, not just as forgiven sinners, but as dearly beloved children who share by the Spirit the Son’s own “Abba!” cry.
In other words, the God who is infinitely more beautiful than all the gods of human religion offers an infinitely more beautiful salvation. Here is a God who can win back wandering hearts by the mere opening of eyes to who He is, who can give the deepest hope and comfort to the stumbling saint.
The Trinity, then, is not some awkward add-on to God, the optional extra nobody should want. No, God is beautiful, desirable, and life-giving precisely because He is the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. Only here can be found the God who is love and who shares with us His very own life and joy. Only here can be found the God whom it is eternal life to know.
John Calvin once wrote that if we try to think about God without thinking about the Father, Son, and Spirit, then “only the bare and empty name of God flits about in our brains, to the exclusion of the true God.” Quite so, and that means that if we content ourselves with speaking of God vaguely or abstractly, without the Father, Son, and Spirit, we will never know the life, beauty, and comfort of knowing the true God.
Here and here alone is the God for whom our hearts were made, the God who can win our hearts away from the desires that enslave us, the God who is endlessly, unsurpassably satisfying.
Countering Full (Hyper) Preterism
Phillip Kayser – Dominion Covenant Church, Omaha, Nebraska
Job 19:25-27
https://www.sermonaudio.com/sermoninfo.asp?SID=4112340152451
What Do These Stones Mean?
Ken Ham (in a facebook post) writes:
What do these stones mean?
Millions of people, including those in Christian families, visit the Grand Canyon in America each year. As they stand on the edge of this stunning canyon, children and young people will ask their parents, “How did this happen? What formed all those rock layers and the canyon?”
Now, the signs and the park rangers will tell them that the layers of sedimentary strata (some with lots of fossils) were laid down slowly over millions of years. They will then tell the story that the Colorado River eroded the canyon over millions of years.
In essence, the question asked was, “What do these stones mean?” Sadly, most hear a story based on the belief in (religion of) evolutionary geology.
But how many fathers answer the question by saying, “This canyon is a relic of a past catastrophic event—the event of the Noah’s flood. The layers were laid down during the flood, and then at the end of the flood, God raised up the land surface forming mountains (Psalm 104), and in this area a dam formed that held back leftover waters from the flood. Then the dam was broken, and the water gouged out the canyon to allow the river (called the Colorado River today) to flow through it. The sediment was washed downstream into massive deposits called surge deposits.
“It’s all a reminder of the judgment God brought on the earth because of the wickedness of man. It should remind us that God’s Word is true, God judges wickedness because of our sin, and we all need to receive the free gift of salvation as all humans are sinners.”
Over and over again children have not been given the correct answers by their fathers, even Christian fathers, when they have asked questions about the origin of the universe and life, as so many of all ages have been indoctrinated by the world’s pagan evolutionary views.
One of my favorite passages in the Bible is in Joshua chapter 4, where we read the account of the Israelites miraculously crossing the Jordan River. God told Joshua to get the people to have 12 men gather 12 stones from the river and build a memorial so that:
“When your children ask their fathers in times to come, ‘What do these stones mean?’ then you shall let your children know, ‘Israel passed over this Jordan on dry ground.” For the Lord your God dried up the waters of the Jordan for you until you passed over, as the Lord your God did to the Red Sea, which he dried up for us until we passed over, so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the Lord is mighty, that you may fear the Lord your God forever” (Joshua 4:21–24).
What a reminder! Make sure you tell this younger generation about the Lord and his Word so they will know who the true God is. And let this also be a witness to the world concerning the only one true God.
When we opened the Ark Encounter attraction in 2016, the board members laid 12 stones next to the massive ship. I explained to the 8,000 in attendance that this life-size Ark is our modern version of the 12 stones—to remind coming generations that God’s Word is true and that the saving gospel in that Word is true. We built the Ark and the Creation Museum as our 12 stones, so to speak, to help parents pass on the truth of God’s Word and the saving gospel to the coming generations.
We read one of the saddest passages in the Bible in Judges about when Joshua died, and then all that generation with Joshua died:
“And there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel. And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals” (Judges 2:10–11).
The children who were to ask about the meaning of these 12 stones rebelled and they worshipped false gods! What happened? When we read Scripture, we find the fathers did not pass on the spiritual legacy to the next generation
This should be a warning to us today.
Psalm 78 instructs fathers to train their children to know the true God:
“He commanded our fathers
to teach to their children,
that the next generation might know them,
the children yet unborn,
and arise and tell them to their children,
so that they should set their hope in God
and not forget the works of God,
but keep his commandments” (Psalms 78:5–7).
And then we read
“And that they should not be like their fathers,
a stubborn and rebellious generation,
a generation whose heart was not steadfast,
whose spirit was not faithful to God” (Psalms 78:8).
It’s obvious these fathers of old did not obey the Lord and did not train up their children to fear the Lord as they should have. As a result, they lost the next generation after Joshua.
In essence, this is happening in the church today. Statistics back in the early 2000s made it clear that 2/3 of young people in the United States were leaving the church by college age (with very few returning).
Pew Research in 2010 clearly showed churched attendance for millennials was down to 18%, and by 2021, Generation Z church attendance was down to less than 9%!
Research we have done at Answers in Genesis over the years shows clearly that parents and the church have failed to raise generations who know what they believe, why they believe what they do, and how to defend the Christian faith.
Sadly, we have not raised up generations to hold a truly Christian worldview. In many ways, fathers have abdicated their God-given responsibility to be the spiritual head of their house and to make sure the correct spiritual legacy is passed on to coming generations. Personally, I believe many fathers need to repent of not investing the time to train their children. They’ve largely handed them over to the world (e.g., public schools, worldly media), and the church (which by and large has not taught apologetics but has compromised God’s Word in Genesis) as the primary sources for education.
Thus, when children ask the questions about the evolutionary views they have been indoctrinated in at school and are not given the correct answers by their parents or church leaders, to point them to the literal truth of the Genesis history, many walk away from the church. If they can’t trust the history in the Bible at the beginning, how can they trust any of it?
Just like in the days after Joshua, we are now seeing the consequences of this lack of training as the secularization of generations has increased and an anti-Christian sentiment has grown in the culture. Yes, when we contemplate this reality, every day should be a sad Father’s Day.
As fathers contemplate Father’s Day each year, I challenge them to commit to doing what God has commanded us to do in the spiritual training of our children. After all, each child is a human being who will live forever and ever, in heaven or hell, which should convict each one of us concerning the time and resources we invest into each child.
Fathers need to be teaching their children to defend the Christian faith and giving them answers to the evolutionary attacks of our day! They need to be teaching Genesis chapters 1–11 as literal history, as it is the foundation of the rest of the Bible, of all doctrine, of the Christian worldview, and of everything. They need to be teaching against compromising God’s Word in Genesis as is happening in much of the church.
“The father makes known to the children your faithfulness” (Isaiah 38:19).
“Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4).
On Father’s Day (regardless of when it is celebrated in different countries), as well as every day of the year, let’s remember what God commands concerning our responsibilities to our children. (Father’s Day in the USA is this coming Sunday.)
The Supremacy of Scripture
Quotes by Tim Chester from his upcoming published book “Scripture is Supreme”:
- “When Christians say that Scripture is supreme, we are saying that the Bible is the authoritative guide to God.”
- “Scripture is supreme because it is wholly trustworthy, and it is wholly trustworthy because God himself inspired its creation, acting through human authors to ensure Scripture’s complete accuracy.”
- “We accept Scripture as our supreme authority because we recognise God as our authority. By submitting to Scripture, we are submitting to God.”
- “We accept the supremacy of Scripture because we accept the supremacy of its author.”
- “The true Christ is the Christ we find in Scripture. And therefore, the supremacy of Christ becomes the supremacy of Scripture.”
- “Through the Holy Spirit, God himself speaks through the Bible as it is read and preached. That’s why Scripture is our supreme authority—because it is the voice of God.”
- “The supremacy which God-through-Scripture claims over us is the loving, liberating, life-giving rule of a loving, liberating, life-giving God. If ever we have reason to doubt this, then we can look to the cross, for at the cross we see the love of God in all its height, depth, and breadth (Rom. 5:8).”
- “Whenever we have to choose between what the Bible says and what anything else says, we choose the Bible every time.”
- “The supremacy of Scripture is not a dictate imposed on us by a faceless despot. The words of Scripture are the words of Jesus, the Good Shepherd who laid down his life for his people.”
- “God becomes supreme in our hearts not by battering us into submission but by gently changing our desires and fuelling our love. This is why we read the Bible every day: to hear God speak to us in love and so be energised to serve him.”
What About Cavemen?
Ken Ham writes (n a facebook post):
Do I believe in cavemen? Of course I do.
Cavemen are people who lived in caves. Actually, there are people today who live in caves in certain parts of the world. For instance, in central Australia where opals are mined, it is so hot that people live in caves. Some of the American Indians used to live in caves in areas around the Grand Canyon. So there were ancient cavemen, and there are modern-day cavemen!
But despite popular opinion to the contrary, ancient “cavemen” were completely human and in need of a Savior, Jesus Christ, just like every other human being.
When many people hear the term cavemen, they usually think of primitive-looking, hairy (even ape-like), cave-dwelling brutes. That is how they have often been depicted in secular museum dioramas illustrating man’s supposed ancestors or ancient relatives. Neanderthal man was often depicted this way.
Because of this evolutionary type of propaganda, many people are confused about cavemen. However, as I stated above, there is a very simple definition for this term: “Cavemen” are people who live (or lived) in caves!
After Noah’s flood, eight people came off the Ark, and from Noah’s three sons and their wives came all the people who live or have lived on this earth. The genealogies in Genesis make it very clear that these eight people descended from the first couple, Adam and Eve. This means that every person who has ever lived is a relative of everyone else. We are all members of the one human race—Adam’s race—which means we are all sinners in need of salvation.
Now consider what happened at the time of the flood. A massive amount of technology was lost. Except for what Noah took on the ark, the pre-flood world’s technology, architecture, and other expertise were completely destroyed.
It took time for humans to restore knowledge and rebuild technology after the flood. For instance, the Bible tells us that Noah initially lived in a tent (Genesis 9:21).
As time progressed and the population increased on the earth, perhaps some people built homes out of stone. Some may even have taken pieces of the ark to build wooden structures to live in. Others may have found or dug caves to live in. If I had been one of those people, I would have found a cave to live in as I don’t have a talent to build things!
Throughout history, people have lived in different types of structures, depending on the available natural resources, the talents of individuals, and the amount of accumulated knowledge for technological advances.
Now, because of the indoctrination in evolutionary beliefs, many people believe that man evolved from slime, and as he did, he first learned to grunt and then eventually speak. Then he developed stone tools that gradually became more sophisticated as he supposedly evolved.
From a biblical perspective, however, man was highly intelligent right from the start. Adam’s immediate descendants were soon inventing musical instruments and working with brass. No doubt Noah and his family began reinventing some of the technology lost at the flood. As time went on, their descendants developed new technologies as knowledge about the elements and laws of nature increased.
Some people (such as the group we call Neanderthals) probably became isolated from other humans. They lived in caves, invented musical instruments, made jewelry, and buried their dead. Yes, they were “cavemen,” but they were our relatives—descendants of Noah.
They certainly had some external features that made them look a little different from people today, but they were still members of the human race. They may have looked slightly different on the outside, just as Australian Aboriginal people look different from northern Canada’s Inuit, but their genetics clearly show they are all members of the human race.
This brings us to the most important scientific point. In 2000, the Human Genome Project announced to the world that all humans biologically belong to one race. Although the people heading this project did not acknowledge it, they confirmed the Bible’s account of the creation of man—that all people are descendants of Adam and Eve and all belong to one biological race.
Now, because of the immense variability God placed into the genome of each kind of creature, including humans, there is enormous potential for differences on the “outside”—e.g., physical traits. Sadly, many people see these outside differences as major and important—whereas in reality, these differences only reflect the genetic differences that God placed in the genes of each type of creature and humans.
Humans, however, have a difference inside that is vitally important. There are actually two “races” of people! There is only one race biologically, but there are two races spiritually. You are either for Christ or against him (Matthew 12:30); you either walk in light or in darkness (1 John 1:5).
The Bible makes it clear that the two spiritual “races” can be distinguished ultimately only by what is on the inside—the state of one’s heart.
In 1 Samuel, we read the account of Samuel going to anoint a king. He did not know God had chosen David. From the text, we are given the impression that Samuel saw one of David’s brothers and was convinced that he would be the king because of his physical characteristics. However, that was not to be.
In 1 Samuel 16:7, we read, “But the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Do not look at his appearance or at his physical stature, because I have refused him. For the Lord does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.’”
This reminds us all that it is not the outside that matters, but the state of your heart.
It is easy for us as humans to focus on the outside as we look at people—their physical characteristics, their clothing, their lifestyle—but God reminds us that the inside makes all the difference.
As we think about all this regarding the Great Commission, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15), we need to remember that the saving power of the gospel is for all our relatives—every human being.
So whether they live in apartments in New York City or in caves in Coober Pedy (real cave-people who even have TV sets) in Australia, or in caves in France, or in ice houses in the Arctic—all humans are descendants of Adam and are thus sinners in need of salvation.
The next time we hear the term “cavemen,”it will make a difference if we consider the fact that all humans are our relatives. What a reminder that, regardless of where people live or what they look like, they are all our relatives!
And everyone has a heart problem (sin) that needs attention. From what we know about most past cultures (including many cavemen), it would seem that many did not deal with their heart problem, and so they died as a member of the wrong spiritual race.
Let that remind us as Christians that we need to do our best to obey the Great Commission so that the good news of the gospel will reach the hearts of every human being. We need to lovingly challenge others to deal with their heart problem and become members of the spiritual race of the Lord Jesus.
Objection: Amazing how all the people in the Americas were killed by the Flood and yet their Indian cultures ancient mythology still mention the Flood.
Response: Actually there was no “Americas” before the Flood – mosts likely one continent that was totally destroyed by the Flood. Flood legends are changed versions of the original account that is preserved in God’s Word.