When using gluSphere and gluCylinder, the objects flicker when approaching (translating toward the object at a relativly quick speed) at long or medium distances. At close range they render fine. The flicker happens with or without texture mapping on, but turning off normals does make it stop. They flicker between the color it would be with lighting, and the color it would be without lighting. It is very random when they flicker, and sometimes only half of a sphere will flicker. Is this a common problem? Is there anything I can do to make this stop?

It could be depth buffer problems. If the back of the object is being drawn over the front it would explain what you are seeing. you could try both
glEnable(GL_CULL_FACE); for a quick fix
or bumping out the near plane to improve your depth buffer resolution

Sounds like z fighting. Make sure zfar / znear is < 1500 or so, or use a 24-bit z.

Zoings, It was at 10000 (1000/0.1)! Turning on culling for spheres and changing znear to 1 took care of the problem, thank you both so much.