Key Life Network

Steve Brown: Does God send people to hell and laugh about it? The answer to that and other questions on Key Life.

Guest (Male): This is Key Life, dedicated to the message that the only people who get any better are those who know that if they don't get any better, God will still love them anyway. That teaching raises a lot of questions.

So here's author and seminary professor Steve Brown along with Pete Alwinson from Ford's Truth with answers from the Bible that will make you free.

Steve Brown: Thank you, Matthew. Hey, Peter.

Guest (Male): Hey man. How are you doing? Happy Friday.

Steve Brown: You finished your book, haven't you?

Guest (Male): Yeah. Yeah, I'm talking with my editor tomorrow.

Steve Brown: Oh, good.

Guest (Male): Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Steve Brown: What's the title again?

Guest (Male): It's The Five Marks of Manhood.

Steve Brown: Yeah.

Guest (Male): Yeah. So that's that's what we're

Steve Brown: It's listen, I know some of the content in that and it's going to be great. We'll let you know when it's out.

That's Pete Alwinson, if you're just joining us. He comes in every Friday and has been doing it since the Noatic Flood. And we sit down and just answer questions on Friday.

We'd love your questions and we take you seriously. You if you would like, you can ask a question anytime you want by picking up the phone and calling 1-800 Key Life. That's 1-800-539-5433. And follow the instructions. Sometimes we put your voice on the air.

Or you can send your question to Key Life Network, Post Office Box 5000, Maitland, Florida 32794. In Canada, it's Key Life Canada, Post Office Box 2060, Waterloo, Ontario, N2L 6J8.

Or you can email us at steve@keylife.org. And if you can help us financially, I can promise you three free sins. That's inappropriate. I mean, sins are all covered. So that's kind of not a good promise.

But I will rise up and call you blessed if you can help us financially and so will a whole lot of others whose life you touch. So help us if you can. If you can't, say a prayer for us.

And Pete, why don't you say a prayer for us and then we'll get to these questions.

Guest (Male): That's a good idea. Let's pray together. Oh great God, we come to you at the end of this week. And we give you praise. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We honor you, we praise you.

We lift up who you are and also what you've done. And Lord, we know that you receive honor and praise from those who are the angelic beings around you. And that we need to give you more praise and then we do.

And so Father, we we lift up how you have overseen us, how you've cared for us, you have withheld from us what we really deserve, you've shown us your mercy. You've given us your grace.

Most of all, you've made us daughters and sons of the Most High God. And we thank you for that powerful work in our lives. And Holy Spirit, we pray that you would meet us right now as we get to the end of this week. Some of us are tired, financially struggling, we need new jobs, we have problems that need to be solved.

We pray that you would fill us and help us to look to you. And we pray that you would be with our pastors and leaders and teachers and and priests and worship directors as as we come into your presence this weekend. Fill us. Fill them with your grace to minister to us and then may we minister to others.

We thank you for Key Life and commit this time of Q&A to you as we pray all this in the strong name of our risen Savior, Jesus. Amen.

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

Guest (Female): In the theology of Calvinism, does this mean that there are people actually born, okay, here it goes, actually born to go to hell and they will never be visited by the Holy Spirit and given a chance or am I wrong about that? Thanks.

Steve Brown: Good question. I have problems with the way you phrased your question because you're making God into a monster and and he's not.

There and and if you pretend that this conversation about election is simple, you're out of your mind. It's not. Scripture teaches a lot of things that are understood by an infinite God and not understood completely by finite human beings.

Election is one of those. If you don't understand and believe the doctrine that God elects a people and individuals, you simply haven't read the scripture. Scripture's so clear on that, it's on every other page and you got to deal with it.

You got to deal with something else. Scripture also teaches the justice and the loving kindness of God and that he doesn't laugh when people go to hell, he weeps. Because Peter's right. It's not his will that any should perish.

So, I deal with it in one way and it may be my only way. The doctrine of election starts at the moment of creation. We do not have a God who is unaware of every implication of his creation.

And he knew that if he created one way, Pete and I would know Christ. And if he created in another way, Pete and I would be lost. And I think that God created the world in the best possible way where the most possible number of people would come to Christ and that doesn't violate his love.

I think when we get home, we're going to say, and we're going to say, would you straighten out this election thing and this freedom thing? And I think as it were and and I'm using symbols here, but I think God is going to say with tears in his eyes, if I could have done it another way, I would have done it another way.

So, you got you got a problem. You got God's love, his loving kindness. You got the doctrine of election that is clear. You've got numerous passages that assume freedom and responsibility. And you got to put that all together in however you look at it.

My way is best.

Guest (Male): Of course.

Steve Brown: Of course. That's how I work it out in my mind. And I don't know if that's right or wrong, but it's comfortable for me and I'm okay with it until we get home when God straightens me out and our listener who just called, God straightens her out too.

Guest (Male): Yeah. Well, thank you for thinking deeply about it. And Steve, I think your response is is is is powerful. And I think we have to take God for who he is and how he presents himself to us and recognize how limited we are.

Steve Brown: We really are.

Guest (Male): To to what you said is so powerful that scriptures are very clear about the election of God and scriptures are very clear about our need to repent and believe in Jesus.

Steve Brown: It is.

Guest (Male): And so if we would simply do what we're what we're called to do.

Steve Brown: And we can understand that.

Guest (Male): That's easy. It's easy. You want to get philosophical and put everything in in balance, we can't do it. And so our dear sister raises a question in a way that the scripture doesn't exactly put it.

Steve Brown: No, it never does.

Guest (Male): No.

Steve Brown: Not with that kind of harshness.

Guest (Male): That's right. That's right.

Steve Brown: Because it would violate some major teaching in scripture to put it that way.

Guest (Male): That's right. And in the in the end result, one thing we have to understand is that God's attributes as theologians tell us, he's simple in the sense that his justice, his mercy, his love and his grace, all flow together with with perfect consistency.

Steve Brown: They really do.

Guest (Male): But we don't grasp all of that simplicity.

Steve Brown: God.

Guest (Male): At this point.

Steve Brown: That is so good. That's profound. And I agree with you.

All right, this is I'm glad to move to another subject. This is an email. Do you have any suggestions for my witness as a Christian?

Guest (Male): Oh man.

Steve Brown: Yeah, go tell your friends they're going to hell if they don't repent.

Guest (Male): Right.

Steve Brown: And then deal with the fallout.

Guest (Male): And and and live the best you can and then when you mess up, just repent.

Steve Brown: There you go. That's we solved it.

Guest (Male): I mean,

Steve Brown: You know what I think? I think Christians smell like Jesus and can't help it. I really do. Real Christians. I am crucified with Christ, Paul said. Yet not I, yet I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me. That's not a commandment, it's a fact.

Guest (Male): It's a fact.

Steve Brown: Yeah. And so, even if you don't want to, even if you don't like it, even if you would rather not be so, you smell like Jesus. If you're a believer, you can't help it. So show up and do what normal people do in normal situations. And if you do that, you'll create questions.

And when the questions are asked, answer them as honestly as you can.

Guest (Male): I love that. I I I really do think that by loving engagement with people is where we really need to be.

Steve Brown: The world is run by people who show.

Guest (Male): That's right. And then answer questions and and and and just give them Jesus. But make no mistake about it. Jesus came to deal with the sin issue. Christianity isn't about us being good. It isn't even being I mean, it has implications in so many different areas of life.

Steve Brown: Oh it does.

Guest (Male): But Jesus came to pay for our sins that we could be reconciled to God.

Steve Brown: And that's our message. That's why Luther said uh uh he said our our faith is we're great sinners and we have a great savior.

Guest (Male): That's right.

Steve Brown: And that's it.

Guest (Male): Yep, that's right.

Steve Brown: It's another email. I didn't mark through it on our sheet. It's at the top of that page. What do you think of Christian Jewish mysticism?

Guest (Male): Huh. Um, I think, you know, I mean that's a big wide question.

Steve Brown: Yeah, it really is. And it cover you you got to say, you got to be more specific than that.

Guest (Male): Right, right. Jewish mysticism can include sort of a numerology mindset, Christian and Jewish numerology with a and Kabbalah. There's so much to that. Uh, adding adding a an a a different an understanding of scripture uh under the text of scripture.

Steve Brown: I have problems.

Guest (Male): Is a problem.

Steve Brown: Yeah. But I don't you know, there are people and we're out of time, so we got to but there are people that are contemplatives who who are maybe different than you are or I am, we're more doers.

But who have this ability to pray and I affirm that kind of contemplation that God can use it. You're just going to say yes, because we're out of time.

Guest (Male): Probably. Amen.

Steve Brown: Key Life is a listener-supported production of Key Life Network.