“I live in a blue state. How can I witness there?”

Steve Brown:
I live in a blue state. How can I witness there? The answer to that and other questions on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
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 ForgeTruth.

Steve Brown:
Thank you Matthew. Hi Pete.

Matthew Porter:
Hey Steve. How you doing?

Steve Brown:
I’m doing good. How are you doing?

Pete Alwinson:
I’m doing better than I deserve for sure.

Steve Brown:
And I’m doing better because you’re here and that’s good. Hey listen, I want you to tell us, every church that I know about wants a men’s ministry, but and you have maybe the most successful men’s ministry I’ve ever seen. I mean, you touch, I don’t know what you do? Now, if I ask God for a new ministry, I want a women’s ministry, I don’t want to hang out with a bunch of old guys. But you have this thing. Well, at any rate, churches really want a men’s ministry, and they don’t know how to go about it. And Forge has come up with a really cool thing that maybe our listeners want to check, especially if you’re a pastor. Tell us about it.

Pete Alwinson:
Well, if they get in touch with us at Forge at ForgeTruth.com our producer and I will get back and we’ll help you set it up. It is hard to do men’s discipleship and ministry in the local church because it takes a lot of effort. And there’s a lot of other reasons that pastors struggle with it. And we’d love to support, so if you want support, we can help you do it.

Steve Brown:
Yeah, and even help them with the message too.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. Yeah. We can set up a, if they’re not afraid of using our material or they can use our content. So, there’s many ways that we can support you.

Steve Brown:
Listen, if you’re a guy, especially if you’re a pastor and you’d like to have, you thought, man, I wish we had a men’s ministry. We have a great women’s ministry, but we don’t have anything for men. Listen, go to ForgeTruth.com get some information on this, and you’ll be absolutely amazed with the directions and help that you’ll receive from Forge. At any rate, for any reason, go to ForgeTruth.com for truth reasons, you’ll see some great videos. There’s a podcast that will blow you away and videos and teaching that really make a difference. You are right now teaching the Book of Revelation.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
Are you crazy?

Pete Alwinson:
It’s amazingly relevant right now. Yeah.

Steve Brown:
We’ll talk about that. That is so cool. That’s Pete Alwinson and he comes in on Fridays and we answer questions. Unless we get to talking at the beginning and never get to the questions. We love your questions and we take them seriously. You can ask a question by calling 1-800-KEY-LIFE, that’s 24 7, whenever you have a question, pick up the phone, follow the instructions, and sometimes we put your voice on the air. Or you can send your question to

Key Life Network
P.O. Box 5000
Maitland, Florida 32794

if you live in Canada, it’s

Key Life Canada
P.O. Box 28060
Waterloo, Ontario N2L 6J8

and of course, you can send your question by e-mail to [email protected] and you knew I was going to say this, if you can help us financially, please do. And I promise we’ll be as faithful with your gift as you were in giving it. And if you can’t, we understand that too, do say a prayer about this ministry. Hey Pete, why don’t you lead us in prayer and then we’ll get to some of these questions.

Pete Alwinson:
Let’s do it. Our Great God, what a joy to be able to come to you at the end of this week and come into your presence, Our Great Father. Thank you for your great love for us, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Thank you that you love us even when the world doesn’t. And Lord, we just, we ask at the end of this week that as we get ready for worship, that you would help us to relax and rest in you and enjoy being with your people and enjoy being in the presence of worship and the word. And we pray for those leaders, our worship directors, our pastors, teachers, priests, all those who are responsible for leading us and serving you by serving us. And we pray for great wisdom, Lord, and grace. Lord, you know our needs, and you know we have a lot of questions, and I just thank you for Steve and Key Life, and we just commit this time to you now as we pray these things. In Jesus’ strong Name. Amen.

Steve Brown:
Amen. Hey Pete, first thing, let’s go to our phone lines.

Caller 1:
I noticed that the other caller said about talking to people about the Holy Spirit and they don’t respond. I guess you never lived in the blue state, oh well, I’m in Rhode Island, so I’m just wondering what you think about that? These people hate the Lord at work, everywhere we go, everywhere we are. How can we respond to people that hate the Lord? There’s no way. They’ll try to get you fired, destroy you, kill you. I love what you say, but you don’t know, Steve. What do you think is going on in these places? Have you been here? Have you worked in these places?

Steve Brown:
Yes. As a matter of fact, we have. You know, he doesn’t brag about it or tell people, but Pete’s from California.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
And I’m from Massachusetts. Spent most, well, I’m from North Carolina, but I spent a considerable portion of my life in Massachusetts. And those are not the places where Jesus gets the vote.

Pete Alwinson:
No, and I served my first church in Connecticut.

Steve Brown:
That’s right.

Pete Alwinson:
You know, so there it is.

Steve Brown:
There you go. So, I would suggest that you simply get a group of your friends and say in a kind and loving way, Y’all are going to hell. Now, that’s probably not the best way to do it.

Pete Alwinson:
It’s the way to for sure be killed.

Steve Brown:
Yeah. And I’ll tell you this caller, and that’s a great question, by the way. You’ve allowed yourself to believe something that’s not true, because of our media, because of the popular culture of our time, Christians have been taught or intimidated into thinking that nobody wants to hear, that everybody hates Jesus, that you’ll be killed if you say you’re a Christian. That’s a lie. It’s from the pit of hell, and it smells like smoke. Now, if you’re going to bring a big Bible out and tell people they’re going to hell, I don’t think I’d like that.

Pete Alwinson:
No.

Steve Brown:
But if you’ll be authentic, if you won’t deny who you belong to and what’s happened to you, you’ll get an audience.

Pete Alwinson:
Yep.

Steve Brown:
And you’ll get an audience of a lot of people who want to know and ask questions, I promise. But you’ve got to risk it.

Pete Alwinson:
Mm hmm.

Steve Brown:
And if you’ll risk it, you’ll come back and one of the few things that’s good about an old guy Is you’ll say to me, you were right.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. And you’ll take it. I think that’s so good. And what you’ve done is basically called out Christians. And to understand that this has always been our call. Think of the church, coming on to the scene in the first century in the Roman Empire. We were embattled everywhere, the Jewish Christians were embattled in Israel. They were embattled in every aspect of the Roman Empire because Christianity was pre-eminently, is always pre-eminently political in its nature because it opposes false gods and false governments. And so, it’s amazing if you would just say, Hey, this is my view and it’s because I’m a Christian and enter into a conversation with a smile on your face.

Steve Brown:
Say it just that way.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. This is my view. You didn’t ask, but this is my view and here’s why, it just makes sense. And just step out there.

Steve Brown:
And you’ll be surprised. You really will be. They lied to you about where you live. As Pete and I both said, we’ve been in blue state places.

Pete Alwinson:
Absolutely.

Steve Brown:
And found that I’ve never had more opportunity to witness than in those places.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
What is it? The shoe salesman who goes to a third world country and when he writes back to headquarters, he said, Bring me home. Nobody wears shoes here. And the second guy said, send bunches of shoes. Nobody has shoes here. It’s a matter of perspective. Don’t believe the lies that people teach you.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. That’s right. And we are Good News tellers, not heart transformers. So, we just tell the Good News. So, do it and enjoy it and enjoy even the negative pushback, because.

Blessed are you who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness.

Steve Brown:
That’s right. Matthew something:11.

Pete Alwinson:
Five

Steve Brown:
5:11. I’ve got a Matthew 5:11 file. Every time I get a critical letter, I put it in that file.

Pete Alwinson:
Wow, good for you.

Steve Brown:
And just say, don’t forget. Hey, this is an e-mail question. What are your feelings on the gift of prophecy?

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. Well, what do you think?

Steve Brown:
Well, it depends on what you mean by prophecy.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s the point.

Steve Brown:
If you mean it Biblically, then I think there’s a lot of that going on around. It means speaking for God, it means a message bearer. If you mean, can you win the lottery by going to some charlatan? No, I don’t believe in that. And I don’t believe that the gift of prophecy as described in reference to the prophets in the Scripture is necessarily still around.

Pete Alwinson:
So, if you take prophecy meaning God is mediating through individuals, brand new revelation, no.

Steve Brown:
Oh good.

Pete Alwinson:
But if you believe in the more general sense that you’re speaking forth the truth of God as we find it in the Scriptures and in words that are consistent with Scriptures, yes.

Steve Brown:
So, there’s a lot of that going on. So, you’ve got to be careful. Every once in a while, people will ordain themselves as a prophet. And it’s just another con, and you have to be careful about that.

Pete Alwinson:
Most of the cults that are still around today were started by a person that said, I am a prophet. I am the latter day prophet, I’m a new prophet of God. You’ve got to be careful.

Steve Brown:
Run as fast as you can in the other direction. Any, this is an e-mail and it’s just real quick. Any significance to the various numbers in Scripture?

Pete Alwinson:
Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. You know, Scripture really does have a lot of metaphorical associations and Revelation in particular in the apocalyptic literature. Seven is the number of completion or fulfillment. Forty’s used a lot in Scripture, isn’t it? Down through all the Old Testament and New Testament, forty days, forty nights.

Steve Brown:
What does that mean?

Pete Alwinson:
Well, it’s a particular period of time. I don’t know if it’s, but it is a unique period of time. And that’s what we see in the Book of Revelation is just those numbers usually are shorter or longer periods of time.

Steve Brown:
So, numbers really are important.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah, they are.

Steve Brown:
And they have symbolic value, but you shouldn’t take them too seriously.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. That’s right.

Steve Brown:
Thanks for joining us. We appreciate you being a part of this Friday broadcast. And one other thing before we go. Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.