Key Life Network

Narrator: What in the world is anointing? 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 Allynson from Forge Truth.

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

Pete Allynson: Hey, man, how you doing?

Steve Brown: I'm doing really good.

Pete Allynson: Good.

Steve Brown: I notice you've been out, probably debauchery.

Pete Allynson: Well, you don't often bring coffee in here to drink. You must be drifting off or something.

Steve Brown: I get up early and I just need a hit today. A little bit more caffeine.

Pete Allynson: Have you found that getting up earlier is a little harder than it used to be?

Steve Brown: No, I like it.

Pete Allynson: Oh, I do too.

Steve Brown: Yeah.

Pete Allynson: But, yeah.

Steve Brown: I get a day or two in a week when I sleep a little bit later.

Pete Allynson: Okay.

Steve Brown: I didn't used to do that. When you get as old as I am, you'll probably sleep most of the day.

Pete Allynson: You got to do what you got to do, right?

Steve Brown: That's Pete Allynson. Listen, go as I've told you to Forgetruth.com. And if you haven't read Like Father, Like Son, you ought to read it. Amazing book. Life-changing. And you can get it at Amazon, you can get it at Key Life, and you can get it at Forge. And it's well worth the effort.

Steve Brown: As you know, Pete comes in on Fridays and we've been doing this for years. And we just sit down and answer your questions. And we love your questions.

Steve Brown: You can call 1-800-KEYLIFE. That's 1-800-539-5433.

Steve Brown: 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 N2L6J8. And you can also send your question to Steve at keylife.org.

Steve Brown: And we'll take you and your question seriously. Help us if you can financially. Key Life is a member of ECFA in the States and 4 Cs in Canada. And those organizations oversee our books to make sure that we're ethical. They don't need to do that. We were ethical before they were formed. But just so you know, I thought I'd tell you.

Steve Brown: And so if you can help us financially, please do. We'll squeeze every dime for the glory of God.

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

Pete Allynson: You got it.

Pete Allynson: Our Father, we do come into your presence today, so grateful. Just grateful that we belong to you and that we know who we are and where we came from and what we have to do on this planet.

Pete Allynson: We thank you that our ultimate purpose is to glorify you. And so we pray that you would enable us to know you in a deep way. We pray that you would take our issues, Lord, right now, take our suffering, our pain, our hurts, our need for healing, our need for answered prayer. And we give all those things to you and we know you care because of Jesus.

Pete Allynson: And so we give you those issues, Lord, and then we ask that you would by your power open our eyes to see how we can honor you and glorify you every day in everything we do. Thank you for your goodness. And be with us this weekend, be with our leaders. We pray for our pastors, our teachers, our priests, and those that will stand before us, lead us in communion, open and proclaim the word of God.

Pete Allynson: May your Holy Spirit power be upon them and us. And we just commit that weekend to you of worship as well as the Q and A right now as we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

Steve Brown: Amen.

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

Guest (Male): What is the anointing, and do all Christians get it, and where and how do they receive it, and what does it do for the Christians, and what scripture is it that tells this information? Thank you.

Pete Allynson: Wow.

Steve Brown: That's a big question.

Pete Allynson: It's a big question. He wants a systematic theology on anointing.

Steve Brown: On anointing. I don't know if there is one.

Pete Allynson: I know.

Steve Brown: What does anointing mean, in fact?

Pete Allynson: You know, it comes really from the Old Testament when a priest or a king was to be set aside. And, of course, the Messiah, set aside for a particular purpose by God, and they were literally anointed with olive oil.

Steve Brown: So, it starts there, but it has morphed, hasn't it, in the sense. So that we think that if a preacher really was dynamite and hit it out of the park, we might say to him, "That was anointed," or "You were anointed this morning."

Pete Allynson: That's right.

Steve Brown: But when you say that, you may not be speaking. I mean, we know what you're saying, but you may not be speaking biblically necessarily.

Pete Allynson: You know, that's an interesting way to put it. So, what do we mean sort of in practical parlance when we say, "Oh, that was an anointed message?"

Steve Brown: Well, we generally, among the body of Christ, we have words that we understand. And so a young person might say, "Way cool." And somebody your age would say, "That is interesting and wonderful." Or that was anointed. And it works and we understand it. So it means a lot of charisma, it means gifted, it means used.

Steve Brown: I guess all of those things are like.

Pete Allynson: On fire.

Steve Brown: On fire.

Pete Allynson: You know, or you know, you were, you were so on fire today and the Lord really spoke through you. That's what I think of.

Pete Allynson: Now, I was raised Baptist and, you know, we're we're PCA Presbyterian. So we've, you know, we don't really use that terminology much.

Steve Brown: No, we use it with Jesus.

Pete Allynson: Yeah, Jesus is the Messiah. He's the anointed, the anointed.

Steve Brown: Yeah, it is.

Pete Allynson: I think we could go, we could say to this brother, in in one sense, we're all anointed by the Holy Spirit. 1st Corinthians 12:13. When we receive him, we become baptized into the body of Christ, we receive Christ as savior. So we're baptized and the Spirit comes to us and upon us. And so, all of us in one sense are anointed as believers.

Pete Allynson: And kept by the Holy Spirit.

Steve Brown: That's true. Incorporated.

Pete Allynson: But I do think that, you know, we there are those experiences where there's a sense in which God doesn't always work in the same way. And there are times when you, you and I might be in a conversation with somebody or preaching, and we we look back and we say, "You know, God did something there." And he he did something through me that I didn't really expect. And we could say it was a special working of the Holy Spirit. You might call that an anointing.

Steve Brown: Yeah, and it'd be okay.

Pete Allynson: Yeah.

Steve Brown: I don't think God would be angry.

Pete Allynson: I don't think so. I mean, there's all kinds of, you've told me when you preached and me too. I I preach and it doesn't get past the front row.

Steve Brown: That it wasn't anointed.

Pete Allynson: It wasn't anointed. But then I've I've said, "Hey, how did that message go?" And you said, "Well, you know, I was taking notes on myself."

Steve Brown: In other words, it was anointed.

Pete Allynson: It was anointed. God really seemed to bless in a unique way.

Steve Brown: Good stuff.

Steve Brown: You know, recently, we answered a question at the end of the broadcast, and it was not adequate because we didn't have time. And we kidded around like, in 30 seconds explain dispensationalism.

Pete Allynson: I know, right?

Steve Brown: Yeah. And so we're going to give you some more time. What is a dispensationalist?

Pete Allynson: You know, historically, John Nelson Darby really popularized it back in the 1850s in Ireland and England. But it really came from, interestingly, this whole thing came from a Catholic priest who was born Jewish, and he converted to Catholicism, and he came up with this teaching that really the church has left out Israel. And so he unfolded seven major periods of time as as it got developed, in which God has worked uniquely, and to bring salvation and to connect with us. And that became known as dispensationalism.

Steve Brown: And in the history of American evangelicalism, a major impact.

Pete Allynson: Major.

Steve Brown: The Scofield Bible, for instance, is clearly dispensational. And it's had an amazing impact on a lot of Christians. Dallas Theological Seminary was one of the major graduate schools that taught pastors from a dispensationalist viewpoint.

Pete Allynson: That's right.

Steve Brown: All right, what's the difference between that and being reformed?

Pete Allynson: Well, the dispensationalist would say that dispensation is the organizing principle of scripture. Covenant theologians would say, "No, the word covenant is." And interestingly, the word dispensation is found in the Bible, one or two times. Covenant is found dozens and dozens of times.

Steve Brown: That's true.

Pete Allynson: And really covenant is how God establishes his relationship. So we think in terms of the covenant of works in the Garden of Eden that was violated. And then God almost immediately by Genesis 3 initiating the covenant of grace, looking ahead to the Messiah who would come, the anointed one, who would come and take our place on the cross and reestablish that deep covenant relationship with God.

Steve Brown: You know, there was a time when these were fighting words. Christians really went after each other about it. And there were books that were written that were very angry and in your face.

Steve Brown: That's not so much true. For instance, Dallas that I quoted, we at Reformed Theological Seminary, when I was teaching there, invited a teacher from Dallas to come and give a series of lectures. And so it's a lot more civil today. Yes. Irenic than it was in past time. Listen, I don't want to fight over that.

Pete Allynson: No, we we you know, we both agree that there's one savior and we agree who that savior is, our Lord Jesus Christ. So we're in agreement on that.

Steve Brown: And listen, you need to know that in your ministry Forge, and by the way, that's touching a whole lot of men in a whole lot of places.

Steve Brown: Half of them are dispensationalist.

Pete Allynson: I know, I know, I know.

Steve Brown: I know.

Pete Allynson: And so we have spirited and joyful conversations about that.

Steve Brown: Yeah.

Pete Allynson: Yeah.

Steve Brown: A lot better and softer and more gentle than in past generations.

Pete Allynson: That's right. It brings us deeper to understand who Jesus is and what he's done.

Steve Brown: You know, when you live in a culture where they don't like you, there's very little that divides us, right?

Pete Allynson: That's right. That's right. We do need to work and stick together.

Steve Brown: Hey, listen, we're out of time, but we certainly love for you spending this time with us. Thank you for that.

Steve Brown: One other thing before we go. Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.