“If the King James Version was good enough for Paul, it’s good enough for me.”

Steve Brown:
If the King James Version was good enough for Paul, it’s good enough for me. Let’s talk on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
This is Key Life dedicated to the message that the only people who get any better are those who know that if they don’t get any better, God will still love them, anyway. That teaching raises a lot of questions. So, here’s author and seminary professor Steve Brown, along with Pete Alwinson from ForgeBibleStudy.com with answers to the Bible that’ll make you free.

Steve Brown:
Hi Pete.

Pete Alwinson:
How you doin’ man?

Steve Brown:
I’m doing good. I’ve got my King James Version here and we’re ready. We’re going to talk about that and versions of the Bible.

Pete Alwinson:
And you are going to be, you’re going to get some criticism for that one.

Steve Brown:
There is no way I, one of our staff here at Key Life, Matthew Porter, who is the announcer for this, but also the producer, executive producer of our talk show. And he writes comedy lines and, around Halloween we were doing a talk show, and he said all of those people, whatever they believe about Halloween, you’re right, they’re wrong, they’re crazy. It’s true about this kind of thing too, but at any rate, that’s Pete Alwinson. And I’ve told you before, you’ve got to listen, you’ll rise up and call me blessed. Go to ForgeTruth.com and if you don’t have Pete’s book, is the audio version out yet?

Pete Alwinson:
Almost man, almost ready.

Steve Brown:
You’ll let us know when it’s ready?

Pete Alwinson:
I’ll let you know, yeah.

Steve Brown:
Anyway, the book is Like Father, Like Son, and it’s a life-changing book. Pete comes in and we answer questions and we’ve done it for over 25 years. And we do it because we love each other and no, we agree on almost everything. And, I personally like somebody to share the guilt with when I’m wrong or controversial. And Pete has served that role for a very long time, but we love getting your letters. You can call 1-800-KEY-LIFE, 24 7, record your question, 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

In Canada, it’s

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

Or you can e-mail us at [email protected]. And, I’m required to say, send money. Don’t just send questions, okay? I think that’s kind of crass. I should, there ought to be a more gentle way of putting that.

Pete Alwinson:
You have done it more gently in the past.

Steve Brown:
Well, if you send money, you get three free sins and if you don’t, you get the hives. None of that works. Hey, all kidding aside. If you can help us do, if you can’t, we understand. Say a prayer for us. And I promise if you can help us financially, we’ll squeeze every dime for the glory of God. Pete, why don’t you lead us in prayer and we’ll get to these questions.

Pete Alwinson:
Alright, let’s do it. Our great God, we come to you at the end of this week, so thankful that we can say we know that you’ve been in charge all the time. And we honor you Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And on this Friday, we just pause and we recognize that we need you more than we even know. Father, there are bills to pay, there’s relationships that need to be restored. We need wisdom to make key decisions in our lives. So, we seek you and we ask that you would lead us and guide us, in the way we should go, counsel us with your eye upon us. And Father, we do pray for this week-end that we, you would in a powerful way, be with our pastors and priests and teachers and leaders and worship directors and all those who will stand before us and lead us into your presence. We pray for our worship and just ask that you would be honored and that we would be brought to see how grace transforms our life. So, we commit this time to you. And we pray these things in the strong name of our risen savior Jesus. Amen.

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

Caller 1:
You were talking about different Bible versions, and I didn’t hear you say anything about the New King James Version. So, I was wondering if you had an issue with that version? Have a God blessed day. Thank you.

Steve Brown:
Good question. You have an issue with the New King James Version?

Pete Alwinson:
No, I don’t, but you know, it’s, it’s out of the tradition that I’m normally in, and so I don’t tend to emphasize it. But, hey, I’ve got good friends that that’s their translation.

Steve Brown:
Thomas Nelson, who publishes that, has published a number of my books and I keep that version and I use it often because as you say, it sounds like the Old King James Version and I can find my way around it because it’s the Bible I’ve used before there were any other versions except the 1611 King James Version. There are good versions around. And every version you use, there are going to be some problems because no version is perfect. So, you ought to have probably two or three, check it out and the commentary around if you’re a serious Bible student. If you’re not, in the sense that you want to exegete a text or something like that, then almost all of the modern versions can be very helpful to you.

Pete Alwinson:
Absolutely. Absolutely. I think that for memorizing Scripture, what I’ve done is I started memorizing in the King James and then the New American Standard came out and that became the cadence that I got used to. So, I memorize out of the New American Standard still, not the ESV, not the NIV, good translations.

Steve Brown:
Yeah. They really are. And, I personally use the ESV, and the interesting thing is I do it for, well it’s accurate, most modern versions are, but it also was based on the old RSV before the liberals got ahold of it, which was based on the old 1611 King James Version. And I’m comfortable with it.

Pete Alwinson:
Because the ESV has the flow that you’re used to.

Steve Brown:
It really does.

Pete Alwinson:
Kind of a cadence.

Steve Brown:
So, but there are some people who are, for whom that’s a hill on which they will die. I mean, there’s some absolute people. I love the King James Version, but it has some significant problems because the language has changed. And because a lot of, we for instance, discovered the Dead Sea Scrolls, it predated every manuscript we had by over a thousand years. So, the Old King James did not have the advantage we have of some very ancient manuscripts. And so, there’s some problems, but as I said, the problems, if you’re into the Old King James, and that’s your only version, you go, that’s fine.

Pete Alwinson:
Absolutely.

Steve Brown:
Alright. This is an e-mail, Pete. And just checking on the clock to make sure we’re doing fine. We are. Is God’s love, conditioned on people being believers? I believe the good news is that God’s love is unconditional.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. That’s the gospel, right?

Steve Brown:
Well, there’s a yes and no to that question, you know, there was a pastor was criticized a long time ago cause he said that God never listened to any of the prayers of unbelievers. And I know what he was saying. I mean, I got that, but you shouldn’t have said that because you violate some really important Scripture.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. Well, and yet does, on the other hand, if you maintain unrighteousness in your heart, Scripture says he’s not going to listen to you either. So, there is that balance there. There’s a couple of those verses at play. I know who you’re talking about.

Steve Brown:
Yeah.

Pete Alwinson:
We won’t mention his name.

Steve Brown:
No, we won’t mention his name because I’ve said things that are dumber than that. And more often than he has. But you have to be careful. You have to remember the John 3:16 is true and there is a sense in which God’s love is universal. It’s not his will that any should perish. And so, when people do perish there are tears in his eyes, but the Bible is very clear about election too, and about his sovereignty. And so, you’ve got to, you know, I used to say, if you’re a believer, God will never be angry at you. If you’re not a believer, he’s really ticked. And then I thought, I was trying to be correct theologically, but I was saying more than I meant to say because Ben Hayden used to say, if I can’t tell a man that God loves him then I’m outta here. And we do tell people that God loves them.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. And the first part, is God’s love conditioned on people being believers? In other words, does he love me only when I become a believer? No, he loved you

Steve Brown:
Not at all. He does.

Pete Alwinson:
before. That’s what grace is, in the ancient world, grace was given to unbeliever, who took to friends, but for us, God gave grace to enemies.

Steve Brown:
That’s true. Another email. Was Paul single or married?

Pete Alwinson:
As far as we know, he was not married.

Steve Brown:
No. He said that. He said I have the right to take a wife around the way the others do, but don’t.

Pete Alwinson:
Right. Now, what I meant to say was, as far as we know, he was never married. Some think that he couldn’t have been the leader he was in Israel, without being married.

Steve Brown:
Oh yeah. That is a good argument.

Pete Alwinson:
But as far as we know, he was never married, but there it is.

Steve Brown:
There’s no indication that he was. I get people that, you know, I one time was asked to a college to lecture on Pauline theology. And one of the questioners, one the ladies in the class raised her hand and said, she thought that Jesus loved the women and Paul didn’t, he was an old bachelor, he’s crusty. And he just didn’t like women. I said, that’s not true. In fact it may be the opposite, the truth, given that Jesus had no female disciples and Paul did. Maybe it’s the other way around. And she said, Hm, I never thought of that. But, I think Paul was probably single.

Pete Alwinson:
Probably single. Yeah, I think, and that, and I Corinthians 7 is how he wished that other people could be freed up, so that they could be as gospel focused and ramble about like he did.

Steve Brown:
That’s right. He said that, you know, and there’s something to be said for that. I had an Old Testament professor in seminary, who advocated that men remain single because once you were married, you didn’t have time to minister the way God had called you. Now, he was wrong. He was wrong about the Old Testament and the Graf-Welhausen Documentary Hypothesis too, but it was something to think about.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right, for about 30 seconds for most young men.

Steve Brown:
This may be. No, we don’t. I thought I would have time, I don’t have a short question and I’ve got one, that’s going to take at least three hours to answer. And we only have 25 seconds.

Pete Alwinson:
And there’s not going to be any singing on my part or your part.

Steve Brown:
No, we tried that. And then we lost our entire audience. Listen, you going to show up next week?

Pete Alwinson:
I’ll be here, if you are.

Steve Brown:
I knew you would. And we have one other thing before we leave. And by the way, thank you so much for being a part of this. And Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.