Key Life Network

Steve Brown: Do angels have souls? The answer to that and other questions on Key Life. If you think laughter isn't spiritual or that faithfulness to God means conformity to Christian stereotypes, then this program probably isn't for you. But if you're looking for honest biblical answers to hard questions, then welcome to Key Life.

Here's our host, author and seminary professor Steve Brown, along with Pete Alwinson from Forge Truth.

Steve Brown: Thank you, Matthew. I beat.

Pete Alwinson: Hey, man. I can't wait to hear how you're going to answer that one.

Steve Brown: No.

Pete Alwinson: You're taking all these.

Steve Brown: I think you're here. No, I'm not.

Pete Alwinson: Yeah, you are.

Steve Brown: I'm going to give it to you.

You know, you know, we get these questions and isn't it funny how so many ideas come into your mind when you read the question and then you think, you know, I don't have an answer to that.

And just so you know, we don't mind saying, we have a great answer for you. We don't have the foggiest. But maybe we'll squeeze something out on that question. That voice was Pete Alwinson. Go to forgetruth.com.

And if you haven't read Like Father Like Son, consider yourself uneducated. That is a great book that changes lives and you can get it at Key Life or you can get it at at Amazon. You can get it at good bookstores. The title by Pete Alwinson is Like Father Like Son. And by the way, go to forgetruth.com if you want some information about what I just said.

Pete comes in and we answer questions every Friday. We've done that for a long time. And we love this time. We love your questions. You can ask a question any time you want. You can call 1-800 Key Life. That's 1-800-539-5433. And follow instructions and ask your question and 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 28060, Waterloo, Ontario N2L 6J8. Or you can you can email your question to Steve@keylife.org.

And if you can help us financially, please do. Most of the people who benefit from this ministry are not able to help us financially. And when you do, you become a champion for them.

So pray about it. If you can help us, please do. And if you can't, do say a prayer for this ministry. I promise that we'll be faithful with your gift. Pete, lead us in prayer and we'll get to these questions.

Pete Alwinson: All right. All right. Our great God, at the end of this week, we bow before you, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

And what a privilege to be able to come into your presence, Lord, and we recognize your supremacy, your kindness, your power, your wisdom. Lord, you are the sovereign Triune King of the universe. You are holy, holy, holy. And we bow before you.

Lord Jesus, we thank you that you have come and done everything necessary to reconnect us to the God who made us, to yourself. And so, Lord, we ask that you continue your work in our life. Lord, we we want to know you more and deeper. We want to trust you more. We want to have less anxiety, less fear. We want to look to you.

And we ask that this weekend as we go to church and as we worship, that the the music, the songs, the teaching would be used to grip our hearts and to take us to that deeper level of trust in you. Be with our leaders. All who will stand before us this weekend. Lord, give them grace. Extend your kingdom. Build your church and build us. We commit this time of Q&A to you right now. Thankful that we can pray in Jesus name. Amen.

Steve Brown: Amen. Let's let's go to our phone lines.

Guest (Male): Do angels get souls? I mean, I know the Lord brought souls into us. I just don't understand a couple of things about stuff.

Steve Brown: We don't either.

Pete Alwinson: Well.

Steve Brown: We've already discussed that. We don't have the fog. No, we do have an idea.

The truth is, angels are a different kind of creation. They were created to serve God faithfully and they do. An angel, another word for that is messenger. And the angels that we read about in scripture are always doing the work of God.

And there's an exception, and God was over this too. Some of the angels made an obscene gesture to God, got kicked out of heaven, and that was Satan and his demons. But do they have souls? Not in the sense that human beings do. We're a different style of creation. And Paul said that the angels like to even look at what's happening with us because it's kind of a new thing to them.

Pete Alwinson: Yeah.

Steve Brown: Now, are angels saved? And if they don't have souls, can they be saved? They're eternal. They don't get old. They don't get young. They don't lose their hair. They don't lose their mind. They're just angels.

And if you want to read a great book, get Billy Graham's book, titled Angels. It's one of the best Bible studies I've ever read on the subject of angels. As as an aside, the staff kidded Mr. Graham, and they don't anymore. He's in heaven.

But they used to kid him that because he did a lot of things he should have had to pay for and never did. He always landed on his feet. And they said his book on angels was the thank you note.

Pete Alwinson: Oh, man.

Steve Brown: Would you would you add something to that?

Pete Alwinson: That's a very good question and I would say, you're right. I mean, if if if they're if they're a righteous angel, they stay righteous. They stay righteous. If they're fallen, they're fallen. God makes no provision for salvation for angels.

Steve Brown: No, there he is.

Pete Alwinson: And and so, so from the we are made in the image of God. The ability to think, feel, and decide like God and relate to God.

Steve Brown: That's right.

Pete Alwinson: And and angels are different. So.

Steve Brown: Yeah.

Pete Alwinson: I I would say no in that sense. They're spirits.

Steve Brown: Yeah, I agree with you. And we'll get more information when we get home, but by then, you won't care.

Pete Alwinson: Yeah.

Steve Brown: This is an interesting question. I don't think we've ever gotten this before. In Acts 18, I read that Paul was a tent maker. The notes in my Bible say that tent makers worked with leather. I thought that leather workers were considered ritually unclean since they touched dead bodies. How then could Paul, as a Pharisee of Pharisees, work in a trade that regularly made him ritually unclean?

Pete Alwinson: Yeah.

Steve Brown: That's a thoughtful question.

Pete Alwinson: It's a very thoughtful question. And and now, I would I would say that they probably tent makers probably did work with leather some, but that the probably the tents were more made out of fabric overall. So the straps, maybe some of the leather straps. The question is, does working with the leather or the the hides of animals make you ritually unclean?

That to me is the question. And I would say no because but the ritual uncleanness uncleanness came from touching a human body.

Steve Brown: That's true.

Pete Alwinson: Yeah.

Steve Brown: So.

Steve Brown: The priest touched hides all the time.

Pete Alwinson: That's right. That's right.

Steve Brown: And so, and so it's not an issue. Tell you what to do. In the notes of your study Bible where they say that, get a black marker and mark through that. Because they're they're leading you in a direction that's just not true. You know, people saying, can you imagine going camping and having a leather tent and having to carry that into the mountains?

Pete Alwinson: Oh my goodness. Even on an animal, it would break the back of a donkey. You know, a family of five carrying a leather tent. So, it was probably straps and stuff.

Steve Brown: Yeah, okay, that works.

Pete Alwinson: Yeah.

Steve Brown: When we pray for, this is an email, when we pray for people who have cancer, dementia, drug and alcoholic abuse, why can't our prayers be answered the way we can understand? The word teaches us to pray, and those of us who have Jesus Christ in our hearts are also given the Holy Spirit to have the power to heal and deliver. How are negative answers to prayer encouraging for our faith?

Pete Alwinson: That's an interesting way of putting it.

Steve Brown: It is.

Pete Alwinson: You know, I I think that the the study of healing, go back through. My encouragement would be number one, go back through. I believe God heals.

Steve Brown: Oh, yeah.

Pete Alwinson: But look at how Jesus even healed, and look at the apostles in the book of Acts. There's no consistent consistency to the healing.

Steve Brown: Really true.

Pete Alwinson: It's not how much faith they had. Some people didn't even know who he was when he healed them. Sometime they did have faith. And so.

Steve Brown: And sometimes when Jesus healed, he did it with mud in the eyes, and sometimes he didn't.

Pete Alwinson: Two step. You know, spit.

Steve Brown: I know. And you know, you know what we would do? We would form a denomination of spitters.

Pete Alwinson: Oh, man. Oh, that's incredible. Well, getting away from spitting, I would say, I would say that that at one level, it is is true that a lot of people we do pray for are not healed.

Steve Brown: That's true.

Pete Alwinson: And we are not promised, I don't believe, that every one of us is going to be healed in this life. But we will be healed and have perfect bodies for eternity. In a in a restoration of all things. And that, I love it in C.S. Lewis in The Screwtape Letters, he says that what Satan wants us to focus on is the future. What God wants us to focus on is the present and eternity.

Steve Brown: Yeah.

Pete Alwinson: Living now and what's coming in eternity. Not the future that we want, like when we get the big job or when we get healed.

Steve Brown: Yeah.

Pete Alwinson: And and so he wants us focusing on what is coming.

Steve Brown: And recognizing that, you know, it's a cliché, but it's been said by everybody. God has three answers. He listens, and answers all of them. He says no, or yes, or wait.

Pete Alwinson: Uh-huh.

Steve Brown: But in every case, he heard every prayer. And there is a sense when you look at this subject where you can affirm that God is good, that he's sovereign, that there's a purpose. And I believe that's biblical.

Pete Alwinson: Yeah.

Steve Brown: And I think it's it's faith building. And in that sense, unanswered prayer in the sense that somebody wasn't healed is a way to affirm the sovereignty of a good God.

Pete Alwinson: That's right. That's right.

Steve Brown: But it's hard.

Pete Alwinson: It is hard. It is hard, especially those negative things. But we do have to hold each other and look look ahead to what's coming.

Steve Brown: That's true. Sometimes you say, I know. Because God says, I know. I've been there. I've done that. Guys, we got to go. Sure do appreciate your spending this time with us. That's a gift and we see it as a gift from you to us. One other thing, Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.