Key Life Network

Voiceover: Where did dinosaurs fit in creation? The answer to that and other questions on Key Life.

Key Life exists to communicate that the deepest message of Jesus and the Bible is the radical grace of God to sinners and sufferers. Life's hard for everyone, so grace is for all of us. But there's a lot of confusion about how grace applies to real life. So here's seminary professor and author Steve Brown and Pete Alwinson from Forge Truth to answer your questions.

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

Pete Alwinson: Hey, happy Friday!

Steve Brown: Happy Friday to you too.

Pete Alwinson: Yeah.

Steve Brown: I can hardly wait to get to this question because you and I don't know anything about it.

Pete Alwinson: (laughs)

Steve Brown: But we have a producer who has been teaching us just before we started this broadcast.

Pete Alwinson: We had a good discussion and we'll bring that in.

Steve Brown: Yeah, we will.

Pete Alwinson: Yeah, we will.

Steve Brown: We'll bring and then if we're wrong, we can say it wasn't us, it was Jeremy.

Pete Alwinson: Amen. Amen.

Steve Brown: Our producer, that's right.

Pete Alwinson: Somebody else to throw under the bus.

Steve Brown: That's Pete Alwinson. Jeremy is is in the little glass booth and the producer of this program. And Pete comes in and joins us every Friday, and we answer questions and we love your questions. You can ask a question 24/7 by calling 1-800-KEY LIFE. That's 1-800-539-5433.

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 20860, Waterloo, Ontario, N2L 6J8. Or you can email your question to steve@keylife.org.

And if you can help us financially, please do. This is an expensive ministry, and I promise we'll be honest and faithful with your gift. If you can't, we understand, so say a prayer for Key Life.

Pete, why don't you lead us in prayer and then we'll get to these questions.

Pete Alwinson: Sounds good. Sounds good. Our great God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we come to you at the end of this week, and we we give you praise. We honor you.

You are high and holy and lifted up. You are God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, and we need you in our lives. And there are things we don't understand about you, but we know that you make plans and they're all good. That you are a God who is gracious and merciful. That because you're loving, you you you give generously to us and yet you are also just.

And you you bring justice to your people. And so we honor you, Lord, and you have brought salvation to us, pouring out your just wrath on us, on Christ. And we are absolutely stunned that you would have done that for us. So we love you, we thank you for who you are, Lord Jesus, for being our Savior, our Redeemer.

And Holy Spirit, the one to take the work of Christ and put it into our lives. And so we glorify you, and we pray that you would be honored and lifted up. Lord, this weekend, we we need to rest, and we pray that you would give us time off work to rest and be with family, to be with friends, to worship and be with our leaders in worship. Our pastors, priests, teachers, leaders, worship directors. Lord, be with all of them as they prepare and put the final touches on what this weekend can be like. We need you, and we need to experience your grace and power.

And we commit this time of Q&A to you now as we pray these things. In Jesus' holy name. Amen.

Steve Brown: Amen. This first question is an email question. Where do the dinosaurs fit in creation? You don't have any problem for that if you're an evolutionist or Darwinian. I mean, they just disappeared and changed and and that's that.

But for those of us who are not into the kind of change that evolutionists believe, now, we believe there's change and radical change, but we don't we don't see the evolutionary change of species. We see that God created dogs and all dogs are still dogs and they never become monkeys. And monkeys never become human beings because you don't get that kind of change. Then you got a problem with dinosaurs.

And so our producer, Jeremy Birdsall, said that if you have now you got to help me with this, Pete. He said that

Pete Alwinson: Back to reptiles, man.

Steve Brown: Yeah, if you if they're around a long time and they were at the beginning.

Pete Alwinson: And the conditions to feed them are perfect like that, they keep growing. Reptiles keep growing.

Steve Brown: And they get bigger and bigger and that's where dinosaurs fit.

Pete Alwinson: That's right. I've seen some huge turtles or other you know, there are and we have huge alligators here.

Steve Brown: Yeah, and there is

Pete Alwinson: In Florida.

Steve Brown: There is external evidence. There are archaeologists have found a human footprint in the same sediment that a dinosaur footprint is. And that shouldn't be if you're into evolution.

Pete Alwinson: Right. Wouldn't and supposedly that all passed away before before humankind got here.

Steve Brown: So, so we don't know and and you know, it's interesting, I was talking to a missionary who was telling me about an older missionary in Papua New Guinea who went to the people, the people there and showed them pictures of dinosaurs and they they they nodded their head that they had seen or known of of huge animals like that. And then when they finally got the communication done, they said, well, take us to it and and show us. They go, no, we killed them all. Because these big these big animals were coming in and taking away their animals.

Pete Alwinson: Yeah.

Steve Brown: And so, so you know, I think there it's a bigger issue.

Pete Alwinson: Yeah, it is.

Steve Brown: And out in Utah, there are conglomerations of bones in one place that we took our family to see one year. Why were they all deposited there at one one time, one place? It was hard to figure out and there's they've given no explanation except of some sort of a flood. Well, the Bible talks about a flood.

And so, you know, there there is a lot we don't know on this subject, but it doesn't in any way cancel out the Old Testament narrative.

Pete Alwinson: At all.

Steve Brown: Or or the New Testament Gospel. No.

Pete Alwinson: It.

Steve Brown: Okay. In no way does the dinosaur issue destroy Christianity or the Bible.

Pete Alwinson: Good stuff. It really is.

Steve Brown: And we just told you, not everything that Jeremy knows, but Pete and I just told you everything we know.

Pete Alwinson: (laughs)

Steve Brown: What is the what does the Bible teach about tithing? We've answered that a number of times.

Pete Alwinson: Well, that you once you get your check, you are to tithe to me.

Steve Brown: No, Key Life, not you.

Pete Alwinson: Oh, oh.

Steve Brown: Well, half would go to Forge and half the Bible says. Half to Forge and half to Key Life.

Pete Alwinson: Okay, so so 10% to me, 20%.

Steve Brown: No.

Pete Alwinson: No, oh, oh, you got.

Steve Brown: Listen guys, we're kidding and don't send us letters.

Pete Alwinson: No, we're just having fun with us. We've heard it before. Tithing's an Old Testament issue.

Steve Brown: Yeah, and it's not a bad one.

Pete Alwinson: No.

Steve Brown: You know, I've got a friend that says thank heavens for tithing or my wife would give the house away. So it becomes a limit as well as a a higher thing to give.

Pete Alwinson: Yeah.

Steve Brown: So, Bible teaches it and you don't get much of it in the New Testament.

Pete Alwinson: No, it's interesting. You know, there's a principle of biblical interpretation that says if something is deliberately discontinued by the new, then it stops. Like we know the sacrificial system is stopped. Jesus was the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world. But if if it's not discontinued, if it deliberately, then it continues. There's a continuity between Old and New Testament. What the New Testament does add is this principle of hilarious generosity.

Steve Brown: Yeah.

Pete Alwinson: Uh, you know.

Steve Brown: It really does.

Pete Alwinson: You know, 10% is a great way to begin, but we can live we could live below our means too. I mean, I there are was it LG LeTourneau who made those big earth moving machines? And he said God shovels the money in the back door, I shovel it out the front, and God has the bigger shovel.

Steve Brown: Yeah.

Pete Alwinson: Yeah. He God enabled him to make a pile of money, and he only lived on 10% of his money.

Steve Brown: Yeah.

Pete Alwinson: But that was more than you and I have. That's exactly right. But he started Bible colleges and schools and.

Steve Brown: He did. Made a difference.

Pete Alwinson: It made a difference. So, yeah, give to God's work. It's a it's an you you cannot outgive God. Take him at his word and and and do it and teach your kids to do it.

Steve Brown: And you said start at 10%. I one time said in a sermon, start at 1%. And then when you got enough faith, start at 2%.

Pete Alwinson: Start working toward it.

Steve Brown: We had a guy in our church who said, that's crazy if people are committing adultery, you tell them to cut back a little at a time.

Pete Alwinson: (laughs) Oh, okay.

Steve Brown: Yeah, well. It is the giving thing isn't something you pound over people's head.

Pete Alwinson: Right.

Steve Brown: But it becomes you and I both have discovered that.

Pete Alwinson: Yeah.

Steve Brown: That it's a delight to stand with God's work and so many people. And both of us are giving more than 10%.

Pete Alwinson: Oh, it is. Absolutely. And that's a joy to give.

Steve Brown: Okay, another one. What does the Bible teach on drinking alcohol? Let me say, just so everybody will know, because people think I drink and I don't. I'm a teetotaler for a number of reasons. One is a supernatural one. Every male in my family was an alcoholic, and God took that away from me. And I'm thankful for that. Another is, I've been a pastor and I've seen the damage. I've seen the broken families, and every pastor I know has seen that.

But I'm not going to preach against it.

Pete Alwinson: Right.

Steve Brown: And I'm not going to beat people over the head with.

Pete Alwinson: You preach against alcoholism.

Steve Brown: Yeah.

Pete Alwinson: Right, abuse of.

Steve Brown: Just as the Bible. What does the Bible say?

Pete Alwinson: Yeah, it says, "Do not get drunk with wine for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit."

Steve Brown: There you go.

Pete Alwinson: So.

Steve Brown: And when you say don't get drunk with wine, you're not saying don't drink wine, so I'm not going to go there.

Pete Alwinson: That's right.

Steve Brown: I'm not going to beat people over the head with it, but you got to be careful that you teach what the Bible teaches and you don't go beyond it.

Pete Alwinson: Now, having said that, you are going to, if you say like Paul said to Timothy, "drink a little wine for the sake of your stomach," you know. Um, if if you say moderation is is okay biblically, and it is, Jesus drank wine.

Steve Brown: Yeah.

Pete Alwinson: Um, then then then you're going to have somebody who's who comes from a background where they were they had seen the the abuse of alcohol, were impacted by it, and they will say you are absolutely wrong and a bad person for tolerating any kind of drinking.

Steve Brown: Yeah, that's true.

Pete Alwinson: So expect that.

Steve Brown: I do. I get it all all the time, but I And as I said, people think I drink because I say what you just said. And I don't.

Pete Alwinson: No, no, you don't look like a drinker.

Steve Brown: Well, I got a red nose sometimes. It may be booze.

Pete Alwinson: Well.

Steve Brown: No.

Pete Alwinson: No, it's not. I've seen those noses and you don't have one.

Steve Brown: Guys, we've got to go. We appreciate you spending your Fridays with us and we appreciate that and you and your questions. There's just one other thing to say before we leave. Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.