Key Life Network

Guest (Male): Has the millennium already happened? The answer to that and other questions on Key Life.

Guest (Male): 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. Hey, Pete.

Pete Alwinson: Hey, how are you?

Steve Brown: I'm doing really good. You know, we're going to talk about eschatology today. That question.

Steve Brown: And one of the best series, and you know, you were my pastor for a lot of years, and I loved your preaching. I was taught well. But one of the best series you ever did was the Revelation one.

Pete Alwinson: We had fun with that. It's a great text of scripture, right?

Steve Brown: Oh, they are. You can't go wrong with the books of the Bible.

Steve Brown: I suspect some people were pretty upset with you with some of the things that you said.

Steve Brown: That's Pete Alwinson. And if you want to know more about Pete Alwinson, go to forgedtruth.com.

Steve Brown: That's forgedtruth.com and you'll be glad I told you about it.

Steve Brown: As you know, Pete comes in on Fridays and we answer questions. We love your questions.

Steve Brown: You can send them to Key Life Network, Post Office Box 5000, Maitland, Florida 32794. If you're in Canada, to Key Life Canada, Post Office Box 20860, Waterloo, Ontario, N2L 6J8.

Steve Brown: You can email your questions to steve@keylife.org, or if you just pick up the phone, 24/7 and dial 1-800-KEYLIFE, that's 1-800-539-5433.

Steve Brown: Follow instructions. Sometimes you'll make it on the air when we go to our phone lines.

Steve Brown: Pete, why don't you? Oh, I forgot, and I should not forget. I can be fired for this. Send money, okay?

Steve Brown: We promise we'll be faithful with whatever you give. And if you can't, say a prayer.

Steve Brown: Pete, lead us in prayer and we'll get to these questions.

Pete Alwinson: All right.

Pete Alwinson: Father, we come into your presence today, so grateful that we belong to you, and always will. We thank you that what you started in our life will have no end, that you love us, that you called us, that you've sealed us in Christ.

Pete Alwinson: That you gave us the ability to believe and that you hold on to us and how thankful we are in a world that is changing so rapidly and often feels out of our control. Well, it is.

Pete Alwinson: But Lord, we thank you that you are sovereign, that you're in control, that you have a plan and that your plan is good and perfect and acceptable.

Pete Alwinson: And so we pray right now at the end of this week that even though we don't understand everything that you're doing, that we would trust everything that you're doing.

Pete Alwinson: That we would trust in you, that we would depend upon you, that we would give you our anxieties and our fears and our anger and our lack of forgiveness and just put them at your feet and ask that you would work in our lives to continue to allow grace to do its transforming work in our lives.

Pete Alwinson: So thank you that we're yours. And Lord, we do thank you that we get to be a part of your body, your people. And Lord, lead us to the right church if we don't have one. Help our pastors and leaders to teach your word faithfully, not worrying what others will say.

Pete Alwinson: And Lord, we do pray that this weekend as we gather that you would lead your people forward to advance your kingdom. Thank you for your truth and your grace. And even now, we pray that that would flow through our time as we do Q&A. As we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

Steve Brown: Amen.

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

Guest (Male): Did the thousand-year millennial reign of Jesus already happen and they're covering it up calling it the Dark Ages, the thousand-year period of the Dark Ages? It's a very interesting question and I don't have any other biblical quotes to see if it really happened or not. I'm just wondering if you heard of that or what do you think about that? Thanks, guys.

Steve Brown: We've heard about it.

Pete Alwinson: Mhm.

Steve Brown: Don't think much about it.

Pete Alwinson: Right. Right.

Steve Brown: Go ahead and make a comment because that's kind of where you've been a good deal.

Pete Alwinson: Well, I have been.

Pete Alwinson: But we do have a young man that brought this up in our ministry and so I did some investigation of it. It's a new eschatological idea that has hit the scenes in the last couple of years. And I just I I don't see any biblical warrant for it at all.

Pete Alwinson: I think it's a conspiracy sort of idea, who is they that's covering it up? And you know, you can't cover up the work of God. Not something that big.

Steve Brown: Not something that big.

Pete Alwinson: And so the idea of the millennium, there's two basic schools, I think that are really powerful, the historic premillennial view. And then the amillennial view, which really believes in a millennium that's taking place spiritually in heaven now. So, both of those views are still I think the best, well, the other view would be a dispensational millennial, but I don't believe that that is an accurate view, the dispensational view. But at any rate, two basic views that I think are still there.

Pete Alwinson: I can't find any evidence. I wasn't persuaded at all when I looked at any of the evidence. But they're speaking from Sinai to use your phrase when they talk about it.

Steve Brown: There's no lie so small that there aren't people who will believe it.

Pete Alwinson: Yeah, that's really true.

Steve Brown: You can just, and when you start moving into religious and theological circles, that becomes really, you know, religion can make you weird.

Pete Alwinson: It can. It really can.

Steve Brown: Yeah, I know.

Pete Alwinson: And I've come to the conclusion about eschatology that what Jesus did in Matthew 24 is really as far as he really wants us to go. Of course, we've got the Book of Revelation. But Revelation is in such metaphorical language that what I think Jesus wants us to know is basically we're in the church age and he's coming again.

Pete Alwinson: And it's going to get worse and worse and as the gospel, as the kingdom expands, and then he's going to come back and set everything right.

Pete Alwinson: And I think he wants us to keep it simple, and I think what happens is we get distracted by too many various eschatological views that keep us from doing basic discipleship.

Steve Brown: Yeah.

Pete Alwinson: And that's the problem with these kinds of views, they keep us from bringing people to Christ and building them up in the faith.

Pete Alwinson: And it gets Christians torked up and off mission.

Steve Brown: It can become it can become absorbing.

Pete Alwinson: It really can.

Steve Brown: And addictive and I've been there. I know that.

Pete Alwinson: Can be.

Steve Brown: Speaking of eschatology, let's talk about personal eschatology. This is an email, what happens to a Christian at death?

Pete Alwinson: Oh, wow. You know, the quick answer that we have is Paul says it, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.

Steve Brown: Yeah.

Pete Alwinson: So we know that that's what happens. Now, how far do you go on this, right? Do they get the body right away? All that.

Steve Brown: Yeah, when you start reading in Corinthians, you get something that seems to say Jesus was wrong.

Steve Brown: But he wasn't wrong, so we've got to put those things together.

Pete Alwinson: Mhm.

Steve Brown: I think when you die, one thing that happens is that you move into a place where God is, where time is irrelevant.

Pete Alwinson: Mhm.

Steve Brown: And so when you read scripture and it seems to be referencing time, it's trying to say something that they don't have the words for, that we don't have the concepts for.

Pete Alwinson: Mhm.

Steve Brown: But at the sound of the last trumpet, the dead in Christ will rise. Well, wait, I thought we were already there.

Steve Brown: And then we say, well, that's the difference. The body will be combined, the resurrection body will come back and be, and those are all ways to try to explain something that's not even understandable.

Pete Alwinson: It's very difficult.

Pete Alwinson: I think what you said is so powerful, we enter into another realm, the unseen realm that is there.

Steve Brown: Yeah.

Pete Alwinson: That is there and we're in the presence of God. And it's all good because Jesus said it was good.

Steve Brown: Yeah. I'm going to prepare that place.

Pete Alwinson: That's right.

Steve Brown: And you can trust that.

Pete Alwinson: That's right.

Steve Brown: Are there other, this is an email, are there other appearances of Christ within scripture outside his physical incarnation?

Pete Alwinson: Yeah, what's your conviction on that?

Steve Brown: Well, I think so, and you find that there are people that have studied this that point out some areas. We talked about this before, and you brought up one, I brought up another one, Melchizedek, and you were making reference to

Pete Alwinson: The angel of the Lord that shows up in bodily form with Abraham. So it sure seems like it because it calls him the Lord.

Steve Brown: Well, it really does. And we know that there is not just Jesus who lived in the first century.

Pete Alwinson: Right.

Steve Brown: There is Jesus who was the same yesterday and today and forever.

Steve Brown: And so there are places where you would expect that he would show and I suspect the Bible teaches that he has in some of those places.

Pete Alwinson: Yeah, even that passage in Peter that says in the days of Noah that he went and preached. One interpretation is that he went and preached during those days.

Steve Brown: When I was teaching that in First Peter, I said, I have no idea what Peter is talking about. And I started getting letters from all over the country to tell me exactly what he meant.

Pete Alwinson: Absolutely.

Steve Brown: Did Mary use her hair to wipe the ointment from Jesus' feet in Matthew 26? Well, it says she did.

Pete Alwinson: Yeah. Yeah. And that's okay. They had long hair. That's pretty cool though, really.

Steve Brown: That's one of the profound questions of history.

Pete Alwinson: Yeah. Why? The question is why?

Pete Alwinson: Well, I mean, I think it was an act of humility.

Steve Brown: Oh, I do too. I think that's a wonderful and picturesque way in which she knelt before Jesus.

Pete Alwinson: Yeah.

Steve Brown: And if I had any hair, I'd do that. That's not going to work with me.

Pete Alwinson: Not not right now.

Steve Brown: All right. Can a man be good without God?

Pete Alwinson: Boy. Think so?

Steve Brown: I really don't. I think they can be gooder than other people sometimes.

Steve Brown: But I think the heart is deceitful above all things and is desperately corrupt.

Steve Brown: And works that are righteous works come directly from God's work in the life of the believer.

Pete Alwinson: See, I think that's the key. So, are there relatively good people? Yeah, but good with perfect merit to merit going to heaven? No.

Steve Brown: Don't count on that. That's right. That's not going to work out well for you.

Pete Alwinson: We never can have enough. We have to have the merit and the righteousness of Christ.

Steve Brown: Martin Luther said the essence of the Christian faith is that we're great sinners and we have a great Savior. That works for me.

Steve Brown: Got to go. Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.