Will anybody be saved in the rapture?

Steve Brown:
Will anybody be saved in the rapture. 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 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:
Thank you Matthew. Hi Pete.

Pete Alwinson:
Hey man. Happy, happy Friday. Are you preaching Sunday?

Steve Brown:
I don’t know?

Pete Alwinson:
I know. Cause we’re so far ahead on the recording.

Steve Brown:
For those of you who, if you’d like to see the backstage of what we do here, we sit down and we record a number of these, the Q & A’s for Fridays on one sitting.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
And we never know what date it is and we never know what we’re going to be doing. How could you ask, that’s abuse of old people.

Pete Alwinson:
No,

Steve Brown:
How could you ask if I’m preaching?

Pete Alwinson:
because you might be preaching this Sunday. And then that would be, that would cover it.

Steve Brown:
There you go. That’s Pete Alwinson and he comes in on Fridays and has for years, and we answer questions and we love to get your questions. Um, you can call 1-800-KEY-LIFE anytime, 24 seven, ask your question, record it. And then we put your voice on the air or you can write to

Key Life Network
P.O. Box 5000
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In Canada it’s

Key Life Canada
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Or you can email us at [email protected]. And you knew I was gonna say it, cause they make me say it, but it’s important. If you can help us, please do financially. I promise we’ll be faithful with your gift. We’ll squeeze every dime for the glory of God. You can charge it on your credit card, include it in your envelope. And we are a not for profit organization and a member of ECFA and 4C Canada. So you can trust us, just trust us and send us your money. Okay. That sounds awful. If you can’t, we understand, uh, do say a prayer for us. Pete, lead us in prayer and we’ll get to these questions.

Pete Alwinson:
Sure. Our great Father. We come into your presence right now, just on this Friday, stopping for a minute, uh, to, to just praise you and honor you and worship. Lord it’s so easy to focus on the circumstances of our life and how we feel about our life. But when we look at you, we, uh, we gain true peace. You are sovereign, you are kind, you are merciful. You’re our Father, because Jesus, you are our savior and we can’t change a lot of circumstances, but you can, and you have changed our whole standing Jesus in front of the father. So we honor you. We praise you. We thank you that you have a future for us, a plan for today, that all things really do work together for good to those who are called according to your good purpose. And we pray that that would be true in all of our lives for the rest of this week. And then Lord, we ask for our leaders and how thankful we are for them, even in these changing times, Lord, how we thank you for our pastors and priests and teachers and leaders and worship directors, how they, how they continue to take the gospel and apply it to our lives and lead us into your presence. So be with them this weekend and with us as we worship. We commit this time to you now, in Jesus’ strong name. Amen.

Steve Brown:
Amen, Pete, this is an email on, and I misread it earlier. I said, will anybody be saved during the rapture? And I had an easy answer for that. I was going to say if you’re quick, uh, but that wasn’t the question. It was different. I just read it, for the unsaved who will not leave with the rapture. Will they be able to then accept Jesus during the tribulation period?

Pete Alwinson:
I’m leaving that for you.

Steve Brown:
Well, I’m going to say it depends. You’re making a lot of presuppositions there that aren’t necessarily true. Pete and I, um, are, have a particular view of theology, which does not include the rapture and the tribulation as is sometimes taught. Now we believe there will be a rapture. We believe there will be tribulation, but we don’t interpret it that way. So we don’t think that you’re, uh, who’s the guy that wrote The Late Great Planet Earth?

Pete Alwinson:
Hal Lindsey.

Steve Brown:
Hal Lindsey, I like him a lot. I interviewed him on my television program years ago and I said, let me get this straight. If I’m driving down the street, uh, and uh, the rapture takes place, does that mean my car won’t have a driver? And he said, that’s exactly what it means. And I turned from him to the camera and said, aim it at a pagan.

Pete Alwinson:
[Laughing]

Steve Brown:
And that broke him up, he could hardly talk. Our particular brand of theology does not believe that people will be raptured out of the tribulation or that, that, uh, but there are a lot of Bible believers who believe that.

Pete Alwinson:
Right. Right.

Steve Brown:
And I suspect that if the gospel as it’s, and there going to be books, they’re still going to be Bibles. They’re still going to be tapes, there’s still going to be CDs. I suppose that the promise that is made in scripture about that, that if we call on the name of the Lord, whoever does, they will be saved. That there will be people, if you accept that particular view, there will be people, who will come to Christ

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
in the tribulation.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. Yeah. Well said. Kindly said. There it is.

Steve Brown:
You’re not going to say anything? Are you?

Pete Alwinson:
No, no. I agree with you. I agree with you a hundred percent. And I think, I think there will be people who will come to Christ during the tribulation.

Steve Brown:
Yeah.

Pete Alwinson:
Because God uses so many different means, to bring us to the end of ourselves.

Steve Brown:
He really does. He calls people to himself that are sometimes weird too.

Pete Alwinson:
[Laughing]

Steve Brown:
Hey, listen, let’s go to our phone lines.

Caller 1:
If Jesus’ stepfather Joseph was of the house of David, how come he wasn’t rich and famous and powerful and not just a carpenter. Thank you.

Steve Brown:
I’ve never heard that question before, that’s a good question.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. Yeah.

Steve Brown:
House of David was the King’s house. Uh, the prominent families, I guess a big deal. How come he, how come he was building chairs instead of owning a bank.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah, I have thought about that, the question, but not, not maybe as, as scholarly approach, but that occurred to me to one, one time. Um, but if you look at biblical history, you, you, you see that, that so much happened since, since the, the captivity and the return from captivity. So, you know, and the fi in the five, what five eighties or something, when they came back from captivity 580 BC, you know, Israel was really shattered. It had been torn apart and the true leadership was, was scattered defunct.

Steve Brown:
It wasn’t that big of a deal.

Pete Alwinson:
It really was not.

Steve Brown:
It’d be kind of like in the Jewish community today, you’ve got a Levi, uh, and, and, uh, they are no longer connected to that family, in that way,

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
because of the Diaspora.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. That’s right. That’s right. So by the time of Christ, you’ve had, you’ve had five, you’ve had almost 600 years really, uh, or five fifty 550 years of real, um, scattering of, of shattering of Israel.

Steve Brown:
Yeah.

Pete Alwinson:
So, and then.

Steve Brown:
That’s a good answer. And besides, you know, being a carpenter or working with wood was a pretty good profession.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
It didn’t, Jesus, wasn’t poor. He didn’t grow up in a poor family, unless Joseph died. And the assumption is that he did, cause he isn’t mentioned later on.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
So you’ve got a single mother struggling with some really hard stuff when he was growing up. But when it, when Joseph was alive, that was a pretty good profession.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. And they dealt with stone too. So wood and stone and all that. And what did people, that’s what they built their houses out of. There it is.

Steve Brown:
This is a question I get a lot. Sometimes, in a different fashion, but it’s the same question, I’m always hearing about how it doesn’t require work to be saved, but no one ever touches on why we should do work, is knowing that I love Jesus in my heart, the way I do enough? Why should we work for the Lord?

Pete Alwinson:
That’s great. That’s great. It is a good question.

Steve Brown:
It’s a well put.

Pete Alwinson:
And I think you ought to, I have answers, but I think you ought to address it first.

Steve Brown:
Well, you know, you’re asking kind of different questions. You know, you’re asking a question in a way that I’m going to answer in a way you didn’t expect. Is loving Jesus enough? Yeah, it is. You don’t need to do anything more.

Pete Alwinson:
Right.

Steve Brown:
There’s nothing left to do. It’s all been done. I’ve been studying Martin Luther’s commentary in Galatians with a series that we’re doing at Key Life. And I read his preface to the book of Galatians and he was so clear about that, about passive righteousness.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
He didn’t choose it.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
We didn’t do anything for it. But he also, Luther said on another occasion that the works that you do, are not necessary for God, but they are necessary for your neighbor. Isn’t that a great way to put it?

Pete Alwinson:
It is.

Steve Brown:
And there is something that takes place that is promised in scripture and the formal word for it is sanctification.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
And you can’t stop it. I often say to people, you’re going to get better, quit worrying about it. You don’t have to worry about it. You may mean, you may not even know it, but I promise you, you’re going to get better.

Pete Alwinson:
I love it.

Steve Brown:
So, cut it out.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. Yeah.

Steve Brown:
And I believe that’s true.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
And I’m not a lot better. I’m certainly not where I thought I’d be. There’s so much stuff that I, that needs fixing, but I’m better.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. And when we understand the nature of sin, that it goes down to the very way we think, feel and act, it’s not just acting. It’s the way we think, that so much takes place over time. It’s absolutely stunning. And so it is necessary. It is necessary that we do good works, uh, because of our neighbors out of need. Secondarily, you know, he, he uses second causes to accomplish his will. God does.

Steve Brown:
Yeah.

Pete Alwinson:
And so, so we’re oftentimes the second causes of bringing somebody to Christ or helping them understand something else. So it’s, it’s the way God has ordained life to work. And it’s really a privilege for us to be a part of help. You, you know, when, when people have been in a conversation with us and, and they had an aha moment

Steve Brown:
Yeah.

Pete Alwinson:
that we helped them with, it was like, man, that was cool, Lord, thank you that we got to be a part of that.

Steve Brown:
That’s called, uh, in, in reformed circles, the third use of a law,

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
which, and I think sometimes some guys take that too far and they just become a bunch of legalists. And that’s not what it’s meant for. There is a, you know, it’s better to love people.

Pete Alwinson:
Absolutely.

Steve Brown:
It’s better to be compassionate and kind, it’s better not to be greedy, it’s better not to commit adultery, it’s better not to steal, better not to kill. And those things are good guides for us, as Christians, as we try to make our way. But those things, if you do all of them, are not enough.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. That’s right. And, and what, what the gospel does is it, is it, it makes us right with God, but it puts us on the path to become what he intended for us to be. And so, so that whole process is there. And grace always energizes good works. It just does.

Steve Brown:
Yeah. And, so deal with it.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
Guys, we gotta go. But first Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.