Key Life Network

Steve Brown: Did Mary have other children? The answer to that and other questions on Key Life.

Steve Brown: 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 Forge Truth, with answers from the Bible that will make you free.

Steve Brown: Thank you, Matthew. Hi, Pete.

Guest (Male): Hey, I can't wait for you to answer that. You're going to you're going to.

Steve Brown: Across denominations. Why do you why do you think you're here? You're here to answer the questions.

Guest (Male): I'm here. This is your show, man.

Steve Brown: No, you've done it so long, we share the show and the guilt.

Guest (Male): All right, okay.

Steve Brown: By the way, that's Pete. That's Pete Alwinson and I've told you before and you never listen, go to forgetruth.com.

Steve Brown: It might be a life-changing experience. Lots of good stuff there and a dynamite podcast. As you know, Pete comes in on Fridays and we spend the whole broadcast dealing with your questions, which we love, by the way.

Any question, the only dumb one's the one you don't ask. We take you and your questions seriously. You can ask your question by going to 1-800 Key Life. That's 1-800-539-5433.

Steve Brown: Follow instructions, ask your question and perhaps you'll be on the air as we turn to our phone lines. 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 2860, Waterloo, Ontario, or you can send your question to steve@keylife.org.

Steve Brown: And if you can help us financially, please do. This is an expensive ministry and I promise that we'll be as faithful with your gift as you were in giving it. And if you can't, we understand. Do say a prayer for us. That couldn't hurt.

Steve Brown: Pete, why don't you lead us in prayer and we'll turn to some of these questions.

Guest (Male): You got it. Let's pray together.

Guest (Male): Our great God, what a joy, and what a joy at the end of this week to be able right now just to pause for a minute and come into your presence. Our holy God, the God of of all creation. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we honor you. We praise you, the Triune God. We worship you. We lift up your name for you're good. You are kind and merciful. You you know all and you see all about us and and yet you love us anyway. You provided a way for our redemption to be brought close.

Lord, even now, through these questions that we deal with, we pray that you would take us one step closer to you, not only knowing about you, but knowing you and experiencing you and enjoying being your deeply loved children.

Guest (Male): And so now we we we do come and we ask, Lord, be with us this weekend. Be with our pastors and priests and teachers and leaders and worship directors. Father, all those that just take care of our kids as well in the nursery and in our children's ministry. Lord, be with them. Be with our churches. Make your church pure. Bring us to the point where we love you and serve you and stand together. Now we commit this time of Q&A to you as we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.

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

Guest (Male): I was wondering if Mary, she had any more children besides Jesus, because every time they say the prayer ever virgin, well, I know she's a blessed mother, but after Joseph had relation with her, I don't think she became a virgin anymore. But I know she's the blessed mother of our Lord and Savior Jesus. God bless you and I love to listen to Steve Brown even with his little jokey comments.

Steve Brown: Thank you for that. And listen, that's a good question. And you're right, the basic thing to know is exactly what you do know that Jesus died for your sins and you're forgiven. You're going to live forever.

Steve Brown: But there are places of disagreement. For instance, our Roman Catholic friends believe and teach that Mary was a perpetual virgin, and that the brothers and sisters that, especially brothers that are referred to are cousins in scripture. And it's true in a general sense that that word, the Greek word, could refer to cousins, but mostly it doesn't.

Steve Brown: And Pete and I are Presbyterians and we believe that those were actual brothers. And we wouldn't make a big deal out of Mary's perpetual virginity.

Guest (Male): Yeah. It it it would be highly unlikely in that culture at that time for her not to have other children.

Steve Brown: I know.

Guest (Male): And and it's interesting, it does say in the gospels that Joseph kept her a virgin until after, until after the birth of Jesus, which is leaves the implication that they then had relations and had children.

Steve Brown: Yeah.

Steve Brown: And that's a good thing.

Guest (Male): It's a good thing. It's a great thing. It's in marriage, that's where it's supposed to take place, and we need kids.

Steve Brown: So our Roman Catholic friends, you do it your way and we'll do it God's way. I'm sorry, that's a joke. When we get home, we'll know.

Guest (Male): That was one of the jokes that that man referred to.

Steve Brown: And and he's right. You know, if your heart be as my heart, give me your hand. And we have so many Roman Catholic brothers and sisters that as long as that is clear.

Steve Brown: Then the others, okay, we can disagree.

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

Steve Brown: This is an email Pete. What do you think about the requirement of immersion for church membership?

Guest (Male): You know, that that's interesting and there's no other information there, but what I I think this might be referring to is that some of our Baptist brothers, when you move from one church to another, to actually join that other Baptist church, you have to be immersed again. And my father-in-law, that was the case with him when he moved from one Baptist. He was a deacon, but to join another church, he had to be re-immersed. And so I've heard of that, and I don't think that's necessary.

Steve Brown: And there's also the Anabaptist movement that adds baptism.

Guest (Male): That's right.

Steve Brown: If you've received it. It's an anathema to most reform people to do it twice.

Guest (Male): Right, right.

Steve Brown: But we won't go into all of those particular details.

Steve Brown: But going back to the question, churches have a right to decide who and who isn't a member of their churches.

Guest (Male): Of their local church.

Steve Brown: And they they can decide who to accept if they come from another church or another denomination.

Guest (Male): Like if you were baptized as an infant and that particular local church doesn't accept that, they may require immersion.

Steve Brown: That's right. And I, you know, I'm so strong on believing in covenant baptism that I probably couldn't join a Baptist church. And they are so sure on their views, they probably couldn't join my church either, so.

Guest (Male): Right.

Steve Brown: Listen, where you put your name isn't important. Where you put your heart is. And I'm pro-church membership, but that's not a requirement for salvation.

Guest (Male): Yeah, we would agree that that's not, it's not a requirement, and probably, but at any rate, so think that through and read scripture. I I would say and see what conviction you come to on that issue.

Steve Brown: Good. There and on other areas of baptism, there's an old book that is published by InterVarsity called The Water That Divides.

Guest (Male): Yeah.

Steve Brown: And it deals with some of the controversial issues back and forth with people that hold those issues.

Guest (Male): That's right.

Steve Brown: In the Old Testament, what if any, is the biblical difference between the Jewish race and the Jewish faith?

Guest (Male): Ah. Interesting. Well, how do you want to how do you want to approach it?

Steve Brown: Well, I think there today it is a lot clearer.

Steve Brown: If you're living under a theocracy, it's hard to draw a line because everybody has both, or it's assumed that everybody has both, not only the faith, but also the national clarity of being Jewish. Today, however, that's not true.

Guest (Male): Right.

Steve Brown: You have a lot of Jews who are not theist even.

Guest (Male): That's right.

Steve Brown: And you have a lot of Jews who are that's and that's true of Goyim too. You know, Gentiles are like that too. So there's a difference and the difference is God and your belief and your covenant with that God, not your racial or your sociological or your whatever.

Steve Brown: And and well, I add to that.

Guest (Male): No, that's good. That's good. I think in the Old Testament time, we could say there was a one-to-one correspondence between the Jewish race and the Jewish faith. If you had the the Jewish ethnicity, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and you had that DNA in your system, then you were Jewish by ethnicity, and then, of course, at Mount Sinai, they got the Jewish faith, right? So, they were one and the same. And and clearly that is not the case today.

Guest (Male): Pure Jewish ethnicity is really difficult to determine.

Steve Brown: Today, it really is. It's a hard thing.

Guest (Male): It's a very good.

Steve Brown: It's a good question.

Guest (Male): Very thoughtful. And I think that we would say about our our Jewish friends that there are several several denominations, and with varying shades of belief in the Old Testament. The traditional, the orthodox, the reform, the conservative.

Steve Brown: The Pharisees.

Guest (Male): You know.

Steve Brown: The Sadducees.

Guest (Male): In the New Testament time, they existed then.

Steve Brown: That's true. And and that's true of us too. I mean, there are a bunch of different kinds of us.

Guest (Male): That's right.

Steve Brown: Ethnicity doesn't play or shouldn't play a part in who we are.

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

Steve Brown: All right. This we got 30 seconds. See if you can.

Guest (Male): Okay, you want to sing?

Steve Brown: No, I'm going to give you a very quick question. Answer it quickly.

Steve Brown: What's dispensational?

Guest (Male): It's a view of the Bible that says there are two people of God and God's going to deal with Israel again.

Steve Brown: And they're different dispensations. Very different.

Guest (Male): Seven, there used to be seven. Now they are teaching three, Neo dispensationalism.

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