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“Is Jesus’ body the only body in heaven?”

“Is Jesus’ body the only body in heaven?”

OCTOBER 2, 2020

/ Programs / Key Life / “Is Jesus’ body the only body in heaven?”

Steve Brown:
Is Jesus’ body the only body in heaven? The answer to that 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 honest questions, welcome to Key Life. Here’s our host, author and seminary professor Steve Brown, along with Pete Alwinson from ForgeBibleStudy.com.

Steve Brown:
Hi Pete.

Pete Alwinson:
Hey man, I wonder how your going to answer that.

Steve Brown:
And I was wondering the same thing about you. You know, Pete and I have been doing this for a very, very long time, not just with Key Life, but we’ve been pastors and we’ve been answering questions forever.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
I’ve never heard that one.

Pete Alwinson:
I know. I know.

Steve Brown:
I tell people, there’s no question you can ask that I haven’t heard a thousand times, and sometimes I just want to tell people don’t even ask it. I know what you’re going to say. Let me tell you what the answer is, but occasionally you get a question,

Pete Alwinson:
I know.

Steve Brown:
that we’ve never heard and that’s one of them. And we’ll answer it, but first Pete, go give me that text

Pete Alwinson:
ForgeTruth.com

Steve Brown:
ForgeTruth.com

Pete Alwinson:
For guys.

Steve Brown:
Or if you’ve been memorizing ForgeBibleStudy.com, it’ll go to the same place. And you ought to go there and trust me you’ll thank me for having told you about it. We do love to hear your questions and we love to sit around and talk about them. So you can ask a question by calling 1-800-KEY-LIFE, 24 seven, and sometimes we put your voice on the air, or you can write

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

Or if you’re in Canada, you can send it to

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

Or if you would like, you can email us at [email protected]. And we’ll take your question and you seriously. And if you can help us financially, sure would appreciate that. We’re a, this is an expensive ministry. And you need to know that nobody’s getting rich and building a mansion off of it and nobody drives a Mercedes. We squeeze every dime for the glory of God and we promise we’ll be faithful with your gift. So if you can help us you help so many others and you become a champion and will rise up and call you blessed. And if you can’t, we understand say a prayer for this ministry. Speaking of which, why don’t you pray. And then we’ll get to these questions.

Pete Alwinson:
It’d be a good idea. Let’s pray it up. Our great God. Thank you for your glory. Thank you for revealing your glory to us at some point where you brought us to the end of ourselves and made us see that we needed a relationship with you. And we pray that you would develop us in our relationship with you. Lord, I mean, you are high and Holy and lifted up. You are spirit. You are triune, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. You, you are unchangeable, you are gracious, merciful and kind. And sometimes we have a hard time grasping and actually experiencing who you are. So we pray through your spirit and through your word that you would enable us to experience you in a powerful way to glorify you and to know your glory more and more and more. We thank you for worship and how that also helps us to come into your presence. And so we pray for our pastors and teachers and leaders as they lead us in times of worship online and in present. And we pray that you would use them this weekend as they prepare to lead us. Thank you for Steve. Thank you for Key Life and all of these great ministries that come out of Key Life. We commit our time to you, our Q & A now, in Jesus’ strong name. Amen.

Steve Brown:
Okay, this question is one that Pete and I have never heard. And Pete, I’m going to have you answer it. And if you have no answer, I will be forgiving and cut you slack because I certainly don’t have any answer. Is Jesus Christ in bodily form, the only human body in heaven?

Pete Alwinson:
Well, it depends.

Steve Brown:
On what?

Pete Alwinson:
Well, theologically, it depends on your view of time. Right? So, as we have discussed, it depends on your view of time. It also depends on your eschatological views. So if you take I Thessalonians four and five and say that you’re not going to receive your body until the literal second coming, physical coming of Jesus. Then he, then yes, he’s the only body in heaven. Nobody else has it. If then you switch to the other major subject of God is outside of time. It’s entirely possible that there are other bodies in heaven. That’s my best.

Steve Brown:
Listen, that works. I go ditto, whatever he said, I agree with. It’s, it’s an, it is an interesting subject, but it doesn’t have to do with the realities of how you live the Christian life.

Pete Alwinson:
Right.

Steve Brown:
It’s fun to talk about and speaking, there’s another one that was kind of put in a, in a funny way. And this is an email too, and I I’ve heard the question a lot, but I haven’t heard it put this way.

Pete Alwinson:
Right.

Steve Brown:
I believe that God is outside of time and space. Does that mean that when my grandmother went to heaven 60 years ago, I was there to greet her?

Pete Alwinson:
I love the thinking.

Steve Brown:
I do too.

Pete Alwinson:
And we would both agree that God is outside of time and space.

Steve Brown:
Yeah.

Pete Alwinson:
And in it, when he wants to be.

Steve Brown:
Yeah. That’s right.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
And in theoretic, I think you have to be weird or you, you, you gotta be careful you don’t go too far with this thing. Because mostly, although we believe the scripture teaches God is the eternal now, Jesus slain from the foundation of the earth before Moses, I am, you know, all of those things give that indication, but a full blown explanation of God outside of time.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
And us being outside of time, is not given in scripture.

Pete Alwinson:
It is a,

Steve Brown:
So, you have to be careful.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. And on that subject of God outside of time, we do have to see that God wants us to live fully in time and not be sort of distracted, because you can end up in the heresy of the hypothetical real quickly,

Steve Brown:
I know

Pete Alwinson:
in going down that line, so thank you for asking the question, but when I leave here, I’m not going to think about it anymore,

Steve Brown:
But theoretically, right.

Pete Alwinson:
Theoretically, it’s a fascinating.

Steve Brown:
Yeah, it is a fascinating way to put it. So, but that’s a great concept about outside of time, and it’s a fun one to think about it,

Pete Alwinson:
It is.

Steve Brown:
but don’t let it, you know, you could say, theoretically, if I told you I’m going to preach for you, cause you’re going to be speaking at, I pray for you, cause you’re going to be speaking at a conference next week and I forget to do it, theoretically, I could pray for you for that conference the week after the conference. And it would be effective.

Pete Alwinson:
Retroactively.

Steve Brown:
But that’s not the way you do it.

Pete Alwinson:
No. Right.

Steve Brown:
Okay.

Pete Alwinson:
But you know what, one thing you said, and then we need to move on. One thing you said is to use our sanctified imagination

Steve Brown:
Yeah.

Pete Alwinson:
and we are going to be learning in heaven. So a question like that, is we’re going to be able to interact on stuff like that.

Steve Brown:
Oh. And we’re going to have, you know, we’re going to have the resource

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
to know, I mean, there’s not going to be any arguments.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
You frequently say, just go to Jesus and let him love you. But I don’t know how to do that. My story is similar to many, a history of abuse, abandonment and shame. And I’m a Christian, but my mind goes to do, do, do. E.G. Read the Bible, pray, ask for forgiveness, praise him, help others, don’t be so full of pride and it goes on and on. How do I be still and know, or be silent. Satan screams is accusations and I’m stuck. Oh.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
I understand that.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. And I, that, that grips my heart. I mean, we

Steve Brown:
Yeah. It really does.

Pete Alwinson:
We’ve all probably been there at some point, but we’ve been stuck on the accusations.

Steve Brown:
Oh, I think, I think this is the place where Satan is the most active.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
I think constantly the accuser and he’s called the accuser in scripture.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
All he does is accuse us, you’re not doing enough, you’re not working hard enough. how could you be a Christian? And he did that with Jesus. Do you think he’s not going to do that with you?

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
And, and so, and so we got to remember that we all struggle with that. And if your issues are ones of abuse and those kinds of issues, it’s doubly difficult.

Pete Alwinson:
It is.

Steve Brown:
I really think that it’s important that you surround yourself with other Christians who understand his unconditional love. And that you be honest with them and they preach the gospel to you. So you won’t get discouraged. I would suggest that you get books that deal with God’s love, unconditional love. And there are a lot of, it used to be, you couldn’t find many, but they’re everywhere.

Pete Alwinson:
Key Life’s and you’ve written a ton of them.

Steve Brown:
There are a lot of them around. I would suggest that you feed your mind with that, that you memorize certain verses of scripture, that speak, I will never leave you.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
The good shepherd passage of John 10, memorize those and fight it. And sometimes you’ll win and sometimes you won’t, but bottom line you’ll know the truth and the truth will make you free.

Pete Alwinson:
Oh, that’s great. And that’s, what I have to do too, all of what you said. I try to do that in the morning. I call it my daily appointment with God, my DAG. And I need that in the morning to remember who I am, because at core, all of those things are identity issues, aren’t they?

Steve Brown:
They really are.

Pete Alwinson:
And the gospel says, you’re God’s deeply beloved redeemed daughter, God’s deeply beloved redeemed son. And that’s your identity. It’s not all the stuff that happened, not all your failures. And so we got to stick together.

Steve Brown:
And I would suggest that people read your book Like Father, Like Son. I think that breaks through so many myths about who God is and it’s so Biblical and so right on. Those are the kinds of things you need to read. But we need to tell each other the gospel.

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

Steve Brown:
We’ll go in the wrong way every time.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. And so I need to say to myself, but I need other people to say it to me. And for those of you who have a particularly tough time, Steve said a great thing there. He said, He said, you know, let them preach it to you, you know, tell them, okay, I’m really worked up right now, preach the gospel to me, you know, get some people that will do that. And they’ll be your lifelong friends.

Steve Brown:
Oh, they will. And that’s what we’re designed for in the body of Christ, because Satan will lie to us. The world will lie to us. They told me I could grow hair. I mean, I’m not going to believe a word they say anymore. It just doesn’t work that way. They told me I could be young again by taking certain pills and it just doesn’t work.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. I’ve never prayed for your hair to grow back, Steve, but you’ve got plenty.

Steve Brown:
Yeah. But it’s in the wrong place.

Pete Alwinson:
Well, it’s on the sides and then you’ve got a beard. It works really good for you. You know? It does.

Steve Brown:
Listen. We’re out of time, almost. But we don’t have time to do another question. So, I could ask you to give a closing prayer or a benediction, or we could just sit here and smile at each other.

Pete Alwinson:
My favorite is just to confess your latest sin.

Steve Brown:
Well, you first.

Pete Alwinson:
Oh, okay. Yeah.

Steve Brown:
Guys, we’re out of here. Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.

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