“Were Adam and Eve really real?”

Steve Brown:
Were Adam and Eve really real? The answer to that question on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
Welcome to Key Life. Our host and teacher is Steve Brown. He’s no guru, but he does have honest answers to honest questions about the Bible. God’s grace changes everything, how we love, work, live, lead, marry, parent, evangelize, purchase and worship. So here’s Steve and Pete Alwinson from ForgeBibleStudy.com with street smart Bible teaching for real life.

Steve Brown:
Thank you Matthew. Hi Pete.

Pete Alwinson:
Hey man. Happy Friday. How are you doing?

Steve Brown:
I’m doing really good as a matter of fact, cause it’s Friday.

Pete Alwinson:
You preaching anywhere Sunday?

Steve Brown:
Well, I don’t know which Sunday

Pete Alwinson: I know.

Steve Brown: this is going to be, but I’ve got three coming up and that’s too many.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
It ruins my weekends. But I remember, and you remember too, Saturdays when you’re hitting the Sunday and then you got the Monday after Sunday, which can be a real downer too. Cause people were looking at their watches and shaking them during the sermon.

Pete Alwinson:
Oh man. Well, most churches today are a little darker, so they can’t, the pastor can’t see that at taking place.

Steve Brown:
That’s right. And they can’t see their watch either. Listen there good things about contemporary worship. That’s Pete Alwinson, by the way. Listen, if you’re in central Florida, you need to go to the website ForgeTruth.com and get the location of a bunch of guys that get together with real honesty and authenticity and clear teaching and life changing relationships. Yeah, there are, do you have three up now or just two.

Pete Alwinson:
Two, two only two.

Steve Brown:
There were three and then COVID got killed off a bunch of them. No it didn’t, but they had to close down one of them, but that’ll open again soon. But go to ForgeTruth.com if you live in central Florida and check it out, Pete is,as you know, comes in on Fridays and we spend the time answering questions. And if you have a question, we’ll take you and your question seriously, you can call up anytime you want to 1-800-KEY-LIFE, and that’s open all the time and you can record your question. And sometimes we put that on the air. Or you can write to

Key Life Network
P.O. Box 5000
Maitland, Florida 32794

In Canada, it’s

Key Life Canada
P.O. Box 28060
Waterloo, Ontario N2L 6J8

Or you can email us at [email protected]. And if you can help us financially, please do, most are not able to, and this is an expensive ministry. So when you can, and do, you help a whole lot of other people who can’t. So pray about it. And if you can help us financially be as generous as you can. And those addresses and contact places where you can do that. And as I always say, if you can’t, we understand, so say a prayer for the ministry, Pete, why don’t you pray for us? And then we’ll get to these questions.

Pete Alwinson:
Let’s do it. Our father, we come into your presence today, our Holy God. What a privilege to be your children to know that you love us, way more than we can ever comprehend, that even on our worst day, we are your deeply beloved and redeemed sons and daughters, because of Jesus. So we honor you Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We praise you for your attributes of love and mercy and kindness, but also of strength and wisdom and glory and majesty and sovereignty. And we rest in you and we ask that you would build our faith, trust that we would trust you even more than we can imagine, as we look ahead into the coming week. Lord, fill us this week-end with grace and truth, as your word is taught, we pray you’d be with our leaders and pastors, worship directors and priests and all those that point us to you, give them your grace and give us your mercy and power through the gospel. So we commit this time now of Q & A to you. Thank you for Steve and Key Life and all those doing so much behind the scenes. We commit this ministry to you for your glory and for your blessing and honor. In Jesus name. Amen.

Steve Brown:
Amen. This is an e-mail Pete, and this person writes, I really struggle with this. I want to believe Adam and Eve were real. But the story does have many troubling aspects, like the idea of incest, that we are all descended from a marriage between a brother and a sister. How can I get past this?

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. Big, big issue there. Huh? I mean, that is an issue, because later in the Old Testament, incest is condemned.

Steve Brown:
It really is.

Pete Alwinson:
So how do we go about doing it?

Steve Brown:
Well, I think first, the law had not been given and there weren’t a lot of options, frankly. I mean, if God had created maybe 4,000 Adams and 4,000 Eves and placed them in a city, this would have worked out, but there weren’t very many options, except with their children. And you got to know too that God doesn’t give law simply because he just doesn’t want you to do something that’s wrong. There’s a reason for it. And the reason the laws are so clear about incest, is that there are all kinds of genetic and horrible implications of that, that can go on for generations. I mean, it, there is stuff in our genetics stuff when we’re related that closely, that are just horrible. And so that is one, there are others, but that’s one of the reasons I believe that God made that stricture so real when he gave it to his people, but you got to remember, this is close to the garden and none of that stuff is there. And so there is a sense in which some of the reasons for it weren’t extant at that time, they very quickly became extant, by the fourth or fifth generation. You’ve got bad stuff going on and further than that, it gets worse, the further along you get. So you got that. And then another thing is that God, I mean if you’re only going to be accepting of Biblical examples, that don’t have sin attached to them, you’re going to have trouble finding.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
I mean, you did, this is not a good bunch of people.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. That’s right.

Steve Brown:
I mean, they really aren’t, and so you gotta deal with that. I mean, you got, do you have trouble with the Psalms because of David? I mean, what are you going to do? Or can you read Jeremiah, because he was a wuss. And what about the fighting that went on in the early church, maybe ought to tear up the book of Acts. And I’m kidding. I understand, this is a serious issue for this person.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. But the reality is, like you said, the alternative is, is really well, then you don’t accept this account. And then what do you accept? You throw out the creation account. And then you’re left with a random, spontaneous, mechanistic evolution, which rules got out of the picture and then human beings have no purpose. And they’re a fluke. They’re are cosmic mistake, there’s just all kinds of other, the alternative is,

Steve Brown:
Oh, it’s horrible.

Pete Alwinson:
It’s horrible.

Steve Brown:
And the Scripture makes it clear with the infrastructure of the Christian faith, that there was literally an Adam and an Eve.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. That’s right.

Steve Brown:
That’s the first Adam or the second Adam doesn’t make sense.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. You have to have a literal Adam and Eve for the Bible to have any coherence and for sin and salvation to be applied to us all.

Steve Brown:
That’s right. Francis Shaffer used to say that it was permissible, and I don’t go there, to see creation in a millennial sense, that the days are symbolic of a long age. And, he said, but the one place where Christians can’t compromise at all, is right here.

Pete Alwinson:
Right.

Steve Brown:
There was a literal Adam, time and space Adam, and time and space Eve.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. And I think you summarized it well, that it was temporary, that this was permitted, and it was quickly, it was quickly not permitted.

Steve Brown:
Yeah. For good reason.

Pete Alwinson:
For a good reason.

Steve Brown:
And probably for a lot of reasons that I don’t even know than those. This is an email and I think we both can answer this quickly. Can I pray to the dead?

Pete Alwinson:
No.

Steve Brown:
Alright. Let’s move on to the next question. Well, what about, what about in the Bible, when Paul says in I Corinthians four, 15 or 17 or 16, I’m not a Navigator, doing the best I can. But Paul says, why then do people pray to the dead?

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. There’s about six possible definitions for that, but, well, be baptized for the dead is I think,

Steve Brown:
Oh. That’s right. It was baptized.

Pete Alwinson:
but it does have a similar connotation.

Steve Brown:
Yeah. Right.

Pete Alwinson:
So, but, but clearly though, those who are dead now, first of all, do you mean those who are dead in Christ? Then you’re sort of barking up a tree of seeing those who are dead in Christ, having merit or power

Steve Brown:
Yeah.

Pete Alwinson:
on a godlike level to be able to give to you. No, we pray to God, the father through the merit and work and power of Jesus, by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Steve Brown:
Yeah.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s ideally how we pray.

Steve Brown:
And, I think those who have a theological position that includes sainthood that you talk to. I think God, probably for Christians says that’s not what I meant, but you go ahead and I’ll straighten that out when you get home, but you need to know that the prayers you prayed in that situation, didn’t go to them, they went to me.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
And, I’m a good father and I know my kids get it wrong sometimes. So maybe you got it wrong.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
So, at any rate. No, the simple answer and we’re preachers, you know it’s not going to be a simple answer of yes or no. This is, let’s see how much time we got. I got this big screen. I better get a short question. Like, like, what do you believe is a Presbyterian? How’s that for a short question?

Pete Alwinson:
That’s a short question, everything in 33 chapters of the Westminster Confession of Faith.

Steve Brown:
That’s right. Can you sum that up in a sentence or two?

Pete Alwinson:
God wins. God is sovereign. Grace is real and it all ends up, wonderful.

Steve Brown:
What are the Solas?

Pete Alwinson:
Sola scriptura. Sola.

Steve Brown:
Wait, wait.

Pete Alwinson:
Okay. We believe that scripture alone is the foundational authority for our lives, right?

Steve Brown:
Right.

Pete Alwinson:
Sola fide, salvation by grace through faith. Sola gratia and Sola fide by grace through faith alone. Solus Christus, by faith in Christ alone.

Steve Brown:
And Presbyterians believe that.

Pete Alwinson:
We believe that. Soli Deo gloria, to the glory of God alone. So, all of those.

Steve Brown:
That’ll work.

Pete Alwinson:
Thank you for bringing the Solas up. That’s fantastic.

Steve Brown:
You want to tell me what Westminster says? God wins.

Pete Alwinson:
God wins. That’s right.

Steve Brown:
You know. We kid when we do this kind of thing, but Presbyterianism is a theological or reformed theology is a theological way of looking at Scripture, which at it’s very center, says God really is God.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
And you’re not.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
That’s the truth. And that’s enough. He is. We’ve got to go. Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.