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Transcript 227A — Was There Salvation Before the Cross?
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: Yes. I would like to know if you could give me some information about what happened to people prior to Jesus Christ. I know that in the Old Testament they were under the Law, and I know that the Jews also sacrificed. But I was just wondering, did Adam and Eve, when they died, go to hell? You know what I'm talking about?
HC: Your question really is, what kind of salvation did God have for the people before Christ went to the cross? Isn't that really your question?
CALLER: A lot of people say that there were certain dispensations, or whatever you want to call them. I don't really know.
HC: A lot of people say a lot of things, but that doesn't necessarily mean that what they're saying is Biblical. Let me read of Noah. Now Noah lived 3,000 years before Abraham, and he lived about 7,000 years ago. So he's a fairly ancient individual, isn't he?
And in Genesis 6:8 we read, "But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord." Now what's that word grace? We're saved by grace, aren't we? Noah was saved exactly as we are saved.
Now let me read from Romans 4, which is going to speak about Abraham. Now Abraham lived over 4,000 years ago, and he lived at least 2,000 years before the cross. And so he's a pretty good example of someone in the Old Testament. And in Romans 4, we read in verse 3, "Abraham believed, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness."
And it goes on: "He received circumcision as a sign (this is verse 11) or seal of the righteousness which he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. The purpose was to make him the father of all who believe without being circumcised and who thus have righteousness reckoned to them, and likewise the father of the circumcised, who are not merely circumcised but also follow the example of the faith which our father Abraham had before he was circumcised."
So Abraham is not only spoken of as the father of all believers, but he is also spoken of as being saved by faith, exactly as you and I are saved. God has only one plan of salvation. There's only one plan of salvation that has been true throughout the ages. God does not have two or three or four plans of salvation. There's only one plan of salvation.
And that plan of salvation is all tied up with the cross, with Christ as the Mediator. Now the Old Testament believers who placed their trust in God anticipated the shed blood of Christ and were saved by the work of Christ on the cross, whereas we look back on the finished work of Christ on the cross and trust in God and are saved.
We look back on the finished work of Christ on the cross, and trust in God, and are saved. So they were saved exactly as we are saved. And the nation of Israel, which really was predominantly the church of the Old Testament, although it was augmented by certain proselytes, like Rahab the Harlot and Ruth the Moabitess, and so on, really had in it only a small percentage who were actually born again believers, exactly as the church is today.
The church today is predominantly composed of people of the Gentile nations, although it's augmented by blood descendants of Abraham, Jews. God does not have one way to the Father for a Jew and another for the Gentile.
CALLER: All those people went to hell?
HC: Everyone who was not saved went to hell, the same as everyone who is not saved today is going to go to hell.
CALLER: So Adam and Eve probably went to hell.
HC: The likelihood is that they were saved. While there are a couple of suggestions in the Bible, we can only speculate. We know that Abel, their son, certainly was saved. The evidence is very certain about that. We know that Cain was not.
But we know in the days of the Flood, for example, in Noah's day, the world could have been populated by a million people, perhaps. I don't think it was larger than that, guessing from what I can read in the Bible. But there were only eight who were saved at that time.
Just as when Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed. There were only three or four who were saved – not more than three, actually. For example, when Israel was in the wilderness, the Bible says in Hebrews 3 that Israel perished in the wilderness because of unbelief. And so there were only a handful of believers in that situation, too. The number of those who were saved was just pitifully small.
But there is only one salvation. You see, Jesus said, "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No man cometh unto the Father but by Me." And so whether they lived in the Old Testament or the New Testament, there was only one salvation.
When Abraham died, who was a saved man, he left his body and went to be with the Lord in Heaven just exactly as you or I will leave our body and go to be with the Lord when we die.
CALLER: They were showing their faith in God by sacrificing these animals, because that was the way that He told them?
HC: The question is, how did the sacrifice of animals really fit into this? Yes, in the sacrifice of the animals God was giving them a word picture of the nature of the sacrifice that would be required by the coming Messiah. Now if they sacrificed the animals thinking that they merited something by this, which was fairly characteristic with the nation of Israel, then it left them without a Savior, because we cannot ever be saved by our works or by personal merit.
But if they sacrificed the animals, like Abel did, because through this they were anticipating the salvation that was to be provided by the Messiah, and they were sacrificing only in obedience to God because they loved God, then of course it was the activity of a born again believer.