“What language did God speak to Adam?”

Steve Brown:
What language did God speak to Adam? The answer to that and other questions, on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
Key Life exists to communicate that the deepest message of Jesus in the Bible is the radical grace of God to sinners and sufferers. Life’s hard for everyone, so grace is for all of us. But there’s a lot of confusion about how grace applies to real life. So, here’s seminary professor and author Steve Brown and Pete Alwinson from ForgeTruth to answer your questions.

Steve Brown:
Thank you Matthew. Hi, Pete.

Pete Alwinson:
Hey. How are you?

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

Pete Alwinson:
You know you are.

Steve Brown:
And I don’t know why I do everything wrong.

Pete Alwinson:
Well, 98%, not everything.

Steve Brown:
No, not everything.

Pete Alwinson:
Most, yeah,.

Steve Brown:
Most but I should be dead.

Pete Alwinson:
No, you look great and it’s great.

Steve Brown:
And how are you doing?

Pete Alwinson:
I’m doing good too. I’m glad that we get to do this together.

Steve Brown:
Every Friday, we’ve been doing this for a long time.

Pete Alwinson:
I know.

Steve Brown:
Pete, as you know, has a ministry, that God has raised up and is doing incredible things with. They have a dynamite podcast. There’s so much that is being taught, 10 different places it’s taken place and it’s growing every day. Go to ForgeTruth.Com and check it out. You will be amazed. And as I said, Pete comes in and we answer questions. And we love to get your questions. The only dumb one is the one you don’t ask. You can ask a question by picking up the phone and dialing 1-800-KEY-LIFE. Or you can send your question to

Key Life Network
P.O. Box 5000
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in Canada, it’s

Key Life Canada
P.O. Box 28060
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or you can e-mail us at [email protected] and if you can help us financially, please do, for every dollar you give, you get a free sin. And so, some of you should be very generous, because you’re way behind. And don’t take me seriously, ever, unless I’m preaching, okay? And then, only 51%. So, be generous if you can, and I promise we’ll be faithful with the gift, the way you were faithful in giving it. And if you can’t, we understand that too, say a prayer for Key Life. And we would appreciate that. Pete, why don’t you lead us in prayer and we’ll turn to some of these questions.

Pete Alwinson:
All right. Father, we do come to you on this Friday, grateful again to be your children and to be able to just revel in the high status that we have as the beloved daughters and sons of the most high God. We praise you our Lord Jesus for being the one who fulfilled the law perfectly for us and then fulfilled the curse on us perfectly by taking our place on the cross. We worship you, Lord Jesus. We honor you, seated at the right hand of the throne of God on high, and what a privilege it is to follow you, to serve you, in this world. Lord, you know our needs, we know that we belong to you, but we still suffer. And you know those who are in our audience today suffering from a sickness, from a need in their family, relationships that need to be restored, jobs that are needed, bills that need to be paid for. Lord, you know our needs and thank you that we can come to you with all of them and you delight in our prayers. And so, Lord bless our pastors and leaders this week-end as they minister to us. Bless us with your concrete power and grace now, as we live out the rest of this week. We commit this time of Q&A to you. Thank you for Steve and so much of the crew that does so much behind the scenes. We pray in your Holy name, Lord Jesus. Amen.

Steve Brown:
Amen. Pete, let’s go to our phone lines.

Caller 1:
As I was reading the passage where God walked with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, I wondered to myself, what language did he speak?

Steve Brown:
You know, I don’t think, I don’t think I’ve ever had that question.

Pete Alwinson:
Well, they used to kid about it in seminary. What language are they speaking in heaven?

Steve Brown:
You don’t have to worry about that. Well, you’ve got to know first, serious answer to that is that Babel had not taken place yet. So, there weren’t a lot, there weren’t all the different languages. And so, it becomes, I started to say Spanish cause everybody does, but you can’t do that. I think there was a place of communication that was profound and deep because that had not been broken by the fall at the beginning. And so, what we read in our Scriptures are translations of a communication that took place probably in a way different than the way we communicate. So, there weren’t languages, and so that question is not relevant, and so how did they speak?

Pete Alwinson:
You don’t think there were languages?

Steve Brown:
Well, I think that

Pete Alwinson:
There was one original language?

Steve Brown:
Yeah, and of course that would be Hebrew or Aramaic. No, we don’t know. I mean, it’s a question where the Bible simply doesn’t speak.

Pete Alwinson:
You’re right.

Steve Brown:
But it does speak to the language issue, and the variety of languages have to do with our sin. And our thinking that we could be God, or reach where God is, and so we have been confused with different languages, but that wasn’t true in the garden.

Pete Alwinson:
No, that’s true. That’s, we don’t remember that, do we? That the multiplicity of languages and the challenge to communicate is really a result of our arrogance seeking to assume, that we are gods on earth. And God says, no. I’ll show you who’s God. Yeah, I’m going to fix that.

Steve Brown:
You’re not going to be able to understand your wife and you couldn’t before anyway.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s great. That’s good to contemplate.

Steve Brown:
Yeah, it really is. I’ve never had that question before, but you talked about it in seminary.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. We, you know, the heavenly languages is probably Hebrew and we’re going to drink coffee cause that’s the heavenly beverage, you know.

Steve Brown:
Of course. This is an e-mail Pete. What is purgatory?

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah, it’s a ski resort in Utah. It used to be anyway.

Steve Brown:
It’s a purging.

Pete Alwinson:
Okay. So, how do you look at it?

Steve Brown:
Doctrinally, Roman Catholics and some others, but mainly Roman Catholics see it as an intermediate state, where you will be purged and made fit for heaven. And even there is built around that a belief that you can pray for those who are there. And those prayers will be effective. We as Protestants don’t go in that direction. C.S. Lewis made a really interesting comment one time when he said, yeah, you know, it is hard to think of us imperfect and finite and sinful and rebellious walking in, in fact, to the fire of a holy and righteous and perfect God. And the Scripture speaks of God’s fire purging. And so, Lewis refers to a passage that Paul gave us in Corinthians, said to the Corinthians that that fire is going to purge you. And the basis, they’ll never be burned up, which is Jesus Christ and his death on the cross for us. But all the wood and hay and stubble, Paul said, that’s going to be burned up and purged. And Lewis said that’s a Protestant purgatory.

Pete Alwinson:
You know, and in that sense, I think you could agree with Lewis. I think, that flows with I John 3:2.

When we see him, we will be like him.

Steve Brown:
That’s right. Which means a lot of stuff that’s not like him won’t be there.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah, that’s right. It’ll just get burned away. And those works that really were superficial or not godly at all will be taken away. Things that we might think are actually benefits that we have accrued to God, we’ve done for God, will just vanish. But Jesus won’t vanish in us, and our reward is secure in Him.

Steve Brown:
So true. And one other thing needs to be said, and we have to be kind of careful here. Is that when you read about fire, don’t necessarily mean that literally, that’s a metaphor and it means, and Pete said it, and he said it right, that all of that will be cast away and it will be. But at the bottom, the anchor, the reality that moves it all will never be changed or ever purged. This is a question we get often. Why would God ever lead us into temptation? Referring to the Lord’s Prayer.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah, you know, I don’t know if we’ve answered this recently, but

Steve Brown:
It seems like we did.

Pete Alwinson:
Did we? It seems like, you know, this is a Hebraic expression. This is a Hebrew or Jewish way of saying, God keep me from temptation. Of course, God would never lead us in temptation.

Steve Brown:
No, and it’s a statement. And I think if we did answer it, I’m sure I said this, but it’s a statement about our weakness.

Pete Alwinson:
Right.

Steve Brown:
It’s simply a statement of saying, the ocean is so big and my boat is so little and the storm is so great, have mercy on me. And that’s a way of saying, and it’s, as you said, Hebraic statement that just talks about exactly that.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. And please pass, this is a really good question. Please pass on the answer to that because I’ll bet you, because a lot of churches say the Lord’s prayer every week, people think that God does lead them into temptation. Good teaching is necessary on that point.

Steve Brown:
Yeah, it’s a statement of your weakness and it’s a legitimate statement. Don’t let me go there because you know I’ll mess it up. What does the term evangelical mean?

Pete Alwinson:
Evangelical comes from the word that means the gospel. So, at root, Evangelicals are those that believe you’ve got to be born again by the grace gospel of Jesus Christ.

Steve Brown:
And that’s good news.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s good news.

Steve Brown:
So, we’re people that believe good news.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
And if you meet somebody that doesn’t believe it’s good news, they’re probably not an Evangelical. Do you have a problem telling people you’re an evangelical today?

Pete Alwinson:
You know, it has to be clarified today, doesn’t it?

Steve Brown:
It really does. Before it was fundamentalism that had to be clarified.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
That was once a great word that referred to the fundamentals of the Christian faith, had its historical place in some booklets that were written. And so, we changed it to evangelical. And Billy Graham and Harold Ockenga and some others coined that word and said, that’s what we want. Now, that’s changed. And so, evangelical in some quarters is seen as a bad word. And it’s really not.

Pete Alwinson:
It’s not. It’s a great term, but we do need to be sensitive to what, we need to be Biblical Christians.

Steve Brown:
That’s true. But sometimes I say it just to irritate people. You know the great thing about being old is you don’t care. So, I just say to people who hate evangelicals, I am one. And I’m a mean one. And that’s the reason I don’t mind the valley of the shadow of death. I’m the meanest person there. We’ve got to go. Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.