Smooth and Seductive Speculation
The serpent is a master at twisting the Scriptures in order to leave man’s righteousness and ascendancy intact while leaving Christ on the cross, though praised to the skies. And Kenneth Ham makes up things and says they are Scripture. This Ham is definitely not kosher.
Jason Lee asked our judgment of this article written by Kenneth Ham: Cain’s Wife: It Really Does Matter!
We replied:
Ham makes the argument that Cain married his sister, a daughter of Adam and Eve, that incest was fine in the beginning, and that there would have been no biological complications. He argues Cain had no other way of receiving a wife. This is the common doctrine of nominal Christendom. However, it has no Scriptural basis. Indeed, the theory is pure speculation and consequently anti-Scriptural, as all speculations and opinions of men are.
Ham isn’t aware that Cain did indeed have someone to marry – someone of a breed that was very intelligent and persuasive, with a track record early in the game to prove it. Cain, who was of the evil one (1 John 3:12), married seed of the serpent, who was a man, though not a son of God, not a “living soul” (Read The Origin and Identity of Satan).
How can a living soul bring death, as the serpent did to Adam and Eve, who were living souls? And how can we expect a living soul in Christ to lie, deceive, and call God a liar?
“Everyone hating his brother is a murderer. And you know that no murderer has everlasting life abiding in him” (1 John 3:15 MKJV).
To be a living soul is to be a child of God. To be a man is not to be a living soul, not without the Spirit of God. Without the Spirit of God, man is a beast (Psalm 73:22; 1 Corinthians 15:32). The serpent, a man without the Spirit of God, couldn’t praise or honor God. Being earthy, he could, by his nature, only oppose the spiritual domain and its King. His mission was to make the son of God lower than he was, a slave to self, sin, and the world, deposing Adam, a ruler of earth over him.
There is the earthly life of all creatures – microorganisms, insects, mammals, reptiles, fishes, birds, and men, contrary to the life from above of a son of God. There is a difference in this world between lesser beasts and subtle beasts, the most subtle being men. And there is a difference between mere men (subtle beasts) and sons of God who are living souls and who name all the creatures, including men, as Adam named them.
Ham isn’t a son of God. He’s religious, as serpents are well known to be. He knows God’s words, His acts, and some of His ways, as serpents do, according to the Scriptures (Genesis 3:1-5). However, the serpent’s smooth and familiar ways are contrary to God, as Jesus said God had determined from the beginning:
“You are of the Devil as father, and the lusts of your father you will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and did not abide in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks of his own, for he is a liar and the father of it” (John 8:44 MKJV).
Kenneth goes on to speak of Jesus Christ and His act of salvation. The spirit of Ham’s words are fruit of the serpent, who counterfeits. His words confirm what we say of him, and of the serpent and his ways, though only those with ears to hear and regenerate hearts to perceive can appreciate the truth we speak. An excerpt from Ham’s article:
“This wonderful solution to the problem of sin and death is beyond anything we finite humans could ever imagine. God made another Adam! He, Himself, in the person of Jesus Christ, the perfect sinless son of God, came to earth to be a man born of a woman—a perfect man—man as God intended man to be. Paul calls Christ the ‘last Adam’ (I Corinthians 15:45). The ‘God–man’ died on the cross of Calvary and ‘became sin for us,’ and then was raised from the dead, so that we might have a living sacrifice—a new representative head. Only as we are united to him do we have the gift of eternal life with our Creator.”
God didn’t make another Adam – He is the Last Adam, the Lord from Heaven. Yes, He came as a man born of woman, but this was no creature taking on human form – it was the Creator Himself.
“Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness: He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory” (1 Timothy 3:16 ESV).
By overcoming death for us, the Lord God made the way, not for Him to be a perpetual living sacrifice, but for us, in our mortal bodies, to become living sacrifices to Him:
“I beseech you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, in order to prove by you what is that good and pleasing and perfect will of God” (Romans 12:1-2 MKJV).
Unless we take up the cross and die, there is no union with Christ, and therefore no salvation. Ham’s false gospel leaves out this crucial necessity, making it Satan’s gospel, a counterfeit of the true that leaves men in their sin and darkness. Satan comes with many true words and an appearance of godliness to deceive those whose hearts aren’t after the Truth.
Ham continues:
“And just think of what Jesus Christ has done for us. He became a man (but is also God) and will remain a man, God and man in two distinct natures, but one person, forever, so we will have a Savior.
What a wonderful message! What a wonderful Savior! What a blessed redeemer! What a God of grace and mercy! Oh, how we should praise Him—and for those of us who do love and trust and serve Him, we will praise Him forever and ever.
This is why we send missionaries to the Australian Aborigines, and the New Guinea natives. This is why we are commanded to preach the gospel to ‘every creature.’ This is why we can talk about our brothers and sisters in Christ. And this is why we need to be able to answer questions such as, ‘Where did Cain get his wife?’ without speculating that God created any (non-existent) ‘other people,’ or that there were ‘soul-less humans’ at that time.”
We aren’t saying the serpent didn’t have a soul, though we say he didn’t have the Spirit of God. While Adam was a living soul, having the life of God, the serpent was not a living soul, not having the spiritual life of God. Who can have fellowship with God but someone with His Spirit? Adam had fellowship with God before he succumbed to temptation. Having sinned, he became a dead soul, as God had warned, fallen from His fellowship and now like the serpent that deceived Eve.
In the quote above, notice the words highlighted in the excerpt for this discussion – “every creature.” The translations I have here vary: from “every creature” to “the whole creation,” to “all the creation,” to “all people,” to “to everyone,” to “everyone in the world.”
If those words applied to fallen sons of God only (since Ham says, “Only Adam and Eve’s descendants can be saved.”), why the underlying Hebrew word, “formation”?: “G2937 from G2936; original formation (properly the act; by implication the thing, literally or figuratively): – building, creation, creature, ordinance.” Why not “every man or person”?
I say it’s because those Scriptures speak of a variety of creatures (men), and not just one kind. Cain had no problem marrying a creature from the beast’s (serpent’s) lineage. Why would he have a problem with it? After all, the Bible says he was of the evil one… that is, of the beast/serpent, the man who took over the world from Adam.
Ham trashes the Gospel of Christ’s salvation for all men, some of whom he unwittingly classifies as “soul-less humans.” Ham also promotes the self-righteous and diabolical doctrine of never-ending torment for the “soul-less humans” (who can’t be saved) and for all those who don’t receive Christ in this life. On his site is published an article, the author of which, Tim Challies, is another false teacher posted on The Path of Truth.
And is Christ a man with a distinct nature apart from God?
“So as we now know no one according to flesh, but even if we have known Christ according to flesh, yet now we no longer know Him so. So that if any one is in Christ, that one is a new creature; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. And all things are of God…” (2 Corinthians 5:16-18 MKJV).
“I came forth from the Father, and have come into the world. Again I leave the world and go to the Father” (John 16:28 MKJV).
There is no distinction in nature whatsoever between God and Christ. “He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). But Ham has the Lord Jesus Christ in the perpetual form of a sinner because he worships sinful man, namely and firstly himself.
Now let’s examine the spirit of Ham’s words. His “praise” is typical Reform/Andrew Murray-spirited stuff. It’s empty and pretentious, a common example of artificial piety, of anti-Christ “Christlikeness.”
It is wonderful that God became our Savior, but Ham presents God’s doings as though God, as a man like us, managed to do something stupendously unselfish. Ham makes God in his own image, and knowing his corruption, marvels at what God decides and does, as if He were a man. Man is man, altogether corrupt and incapable of righteousness in the smallest matter, while God is God, for Whom all things are possible.
As Jesus said, “With men these things are impossible, but with God all things are possible.” Ham presents the Lord as a mere man who did the impossible.
Ham knows nothing other than the first Adam, and attributes godliness to the powers of fallen man. Truly, is Kenneth Ham not doing something similar to the serpent’s argument to Eve?
“And the serpent said to the woman, ‘You shall not surely die, for God knows that in the day you eat of it, then your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as God, knowing good and evil’” (Genesis 3:4-5 MKJV).
Ham presumes to insure his way to Heaven by his pretentious piety. “See God? I’m praising You and confessing You before men! See how good I am! You see it, don’t you? People, don’t you see how holy and righteous I am? Surely, I’m among those predestinated for Heaven.” I think Ham is actually fearful, even if unconsciously so. Little does he know that the flesh profits nothing. But flesh doesn’t understand that.
Ham makes assumptions without Scriptural foundation. He dismisses speculation while speculating himself. This is contradiction and hypocrisy. Is it any wonder the Lord was angry with such, and still is? Truly, I’d sooner see someone cold as ice, yet real. The Lord certainly would.
Revelation 3:15-19 MKJV
(15) I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I would that you were cold or hot.
(16) So because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of My mouth.
(17) Because you say, I am rich and increased with goods and have need of nothing, and do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked,
(18) I counsel you to buy from Me gold purified by fire, so that you may be rich; and white clothing, so that you may be clothed, and so that the shame of your nakedness does not appear. And anoint your eyes with eye salve, so that you may see.
(19) As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten; therefore be zealous and repent.
Victor Hafichuk