“What about Eutychus?”

Steve Brown:
“What about Eutychus?” The answer to that and other questions, on this edition of 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 from the Bible that’ll make you free.

Steve Brown:
Thank you Matthew. Hi, Pete.

Pete Alwinson:
Hey man. How you doing?

Steve Brown:
I’m doing really good.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah?

Steve Brown:
And better since you’re here.

Pete Alwinson:
Ha! Share the blame.

Steve Brown:
No, share the joy.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
Good heavens. You’re down. You’re like a wet, black cloth that you just, you had to rain on my parade. I said something really nice about you being here and then,

Pete Alwinson:
And then what do I do?

Steve Brown:
you just ruined it.

Pete Alwinson:
I know. I know. I need to repent. I repent. Sackcloth and ashes.

Steve Brown:
All right. You’re forgiven. I know that because Jesus has said so. That’s Pete Alwinson. Hey, listen, if you haven’t gone to ForgeTruth.com you ought to do that. That’s important. You might be listening around the country at one of the many stations we’re on, and you wish you had a men’s ministry in your town or your city, kind of like FORGE. You can do that. There are a number of groups that are meeting together, using FORGE as a live stream in those meetings. And it’s changing men’s lives. So, go to ForgeTruth.com see if you can get some information. You might want to try that. It would be a dynamite ministry there, the way it’s a dynamite ministry here. Great podcast too, you might want to check it out. As you know, Pete comes in and we answer questions and we love your questions. You can send your questions to

Key Life Network
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if you’re in Canada, it’s

Key Life Canada
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or you can call, 24 7, 1-800-KEY-LIFE, follow instructions, ask your question, and sometimes we put your voice on the air. And you can send your question to [email protected] and we would like you better if you… When you sent your question, you put some money in it. Actually, we wouldn’t like you better, wouldn’t like you more, and wouldn’t like you less if you didn’t. But if you can help us financially, please do. And we’ll be faithful with your gift. If you can’t, we understand. And by the way, we’re a not for profit organization. We’re a part of ECFA in the States and CCCC in Canada. Both organizations ensure financial ethics. So, if you can help us, if you can’t say a prayer for this ministry, Pete, would you lead us in prayer?

Pete Alwinson:
You got it. Let’s pray together. Father, we do come into your presence today, just at the end of this week. What a joy it is to be able to call you Father and Lord Jesus, that you did everything that is necessary for us to know that our sins have been washed away because of your blood shed on our behalf, and that we’ve been adopted into the family of God, all of us adopted children. And what a joy it is to know we’re forgiven, adopted, held, and protected, and Lord, that your gospel means that our life is completely different because of your resurrection, Jesus. That means that everything’s going to be okay. And so, we come to you at the end of this week and things weren’t always perfect, but we trust in you. We look forward to worship, which will be a reminder and a celebration in advance, not only of what you’ve done, but of our homecoming when we see you face to face. Be with our priests and teachers and leaders. May they invest the power and the time to make this a great time for us. We come to you because we need you, we love you, we trust you, all because you loved us first. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

Steve Brown:
Amen. I said you could call 1-800-KEY-LIFE, 24 7, and that sometimes we’ll place your voice on the air. And we’re going to do that now.

Caller 1:
My question is, what about Eutychus?

Steve Brown:
Well, that’s a simple question with a simple answer.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. Yeah.

Steve Brown:
He’s just mentioned that one time, isn’t he?

Pete Alwinson:
In Acts 20, we could go a lot of directions with this.

Steve Brown:
Well, first, who was Eutychus, why did he bring it up?

Pete Alwinson:
Well, he was a young man in Macedonia and Paul was there preaching, and he got there late and he started a sermon and man, that sucker preached till 12 midnight. And the boy was tired, man, and he fell out of the window and picked him up dead and Paul raised him to life.

Steve Brown:
Okay, you said something funny when we were talking about it.

Pete Alwinson:
Well, the main takeaway, theologically, should be, pick your seat in church very carefully.

Steve Brown:
Don’t sit in the windowsill.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right, that’s right. Oh man.

Steve Brown:
You know, there’s some question about whether that was a miracle or simply that he was unconscious.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
You read it and it could go either way.

Pete Alwinson:
I know. I know. It seems like it, to me, I think I take it that he was dead. What do you, how do you see it?

Steve Brown:
No, I do too. In fact, I’ve always taught it that way, but maybe not. Somebody brought that up and said, well, that’s not necessarily so.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. Yeah.

Steve Brown:
But yeah, I think he died.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
And I think that was, and the interesting thing is it was midnight.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
Obviously you’d preached too long. Eutychus is dead and you go back and keep preaching more

Pete Alwinson:
I know.

Steve Brown:
after that.

Pete Alwinson:
Right. Well, so something happened to where he recovered quickly. There was some sort of healing because if you fall out of a two story, aren’t you going to have at least a sore neck, maybe a broken back.

Steve Brown:
Well, I can’t, you know, this would be a caution to preachers, you know, limit it to a certain amount of time and end it quickly.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah, Steve, I mean, that is so true. You can tell an experienced communicator because they know how to get into a message and out of a message and there was a few times where we’ve gone on a little bit longer than we should have, but by and large, if you’re a preacher in the church, you’ve got next week, so just come back.

Steve Brown:
Because you’ve got a bunch of Eutychus’ sitting there, you need to remember them and be compassionate and to be kind. I read something one time that said, if you wanted to have fun while you were preaching, use your watch to catch the light coming through the window and see how many bald guys you can hit with that light. Or if that doesn’t keep you awake as a preacher, say finally several times. And people, especially in the north, will pick up their coats and their books and their Sunday school material. And then keep on preaching and they’ll put them back down and say finally again and have them pick it up and count the number of times you can pull that off. And run a contest with the Baptists down the street and see who wins.

Pete Alwinson:
Golly, that is total depravity at its worst, you know.

Steve Brown:
That’s right, you know, we’re kidding about it and it is, I’m sure that when Luke wrote about it, he said, you know, in ages come preachers are going to be kidding about this particular incident.

Pete Alwinson:
But I’m going to put it in here anyway.

Steve Brown:
But I’m going to put it in here anyway.

Pete Alwinson:
But this shows the power of God in the, I think that’s got to be some of the real message is that the people were hungry for the word of God.

Steve Brown:
They really were.

Pete Alwinson:
And something supernatural happened there. And we see that in the Book of Acts a lot.

Steve Brown:
That’s true.

Pete Alwinson:
And so, it confirms the gospel.

Steve Brown:
Yep. It does. This is a simple question with a big answer. What is the evidence for Christ’s resurrection? That’s an e-mail.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. So important, right? You know, the empty tomb. The shock of the disciples.

Steve Brown:
That’s so true.

Pete Alwinson:
The willingness that they had to get into the arena or wherever to talk about Jesus.

Steve Brown:
And you wouldn’t do that for a lie.

Pete Alwinson:
Nope.

Steve Brown:
Not if you knew every time you insisted the lie was true, you drove an ale into your coffin.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
That would be dumb. And then, you know, they couldn’t find a body.

Pete Alwinson:
They couldn’t find it. Yeah.

Steve Brown:
I mean, if you, listen, if you, they, they had vested interest in getting interest in stopping this movement right now. And they could have.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. And if somebody stole the body of Jesus, it would be hard to get rid of it. And the leaders in Jerusalem had so many informants, they had their people everywhere.

Steve Brown:
That’s true.

Pete Alwinson:
They would have found out, okay, who stole the body and where’d they put it? I think they could have produced it.

Steve Brown:
Produce a corpse and say, you guys go back to your fishing.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
Because this thing is a lie, man, and just the existence of the church, I mean, the way that Christian faith, and it didn’t go because people were preaching there was a nice man who had some nice things to say about love and stuff. They said, a dead man got up and walked.

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

Steve Brown:
And we’ve been with him. And that message had such power.

Pete Alwinson:
Ah, it’s so true.

Steve Brown:
And there were 500 witnesses to it.

Pete Alwinson:
At least. And when, because when we hear that the saints, some people were, others were resurrected at that time too. It was such a profound miracle in Jerusalem, the center of Judaism that it radiated out.

Steve Brown:
You know, I think we live by faith, not by sight, and I understand that. But the Bible also says that God knows our frame. And I think that the one thing that he made that was absolute, that proved to an objective person the veracity of the Christian faith was the resurrection of Jesus.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. I totally agree.

Steve Brown:
Everybody who’s looked into it, and they’ve been objective about it have ended up becoming Christians or stopping laughing.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. That’s right. Who moved the stone? Frank Morrison.

Steve Brown:
Yeah. He was going to, you know, he’s going to try to destroy the Christian faith.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
And he ended up falling on his knees.

Pete Alwinson:
And he was a rigor, they said he was a lawyer, but he really was a rigorous journalist. And he wrote a, he said, I’m going to undo this thing and he could never do it.

Steve Brown:
Yeah, that’s true. You know, that’s what happened to me. You know, I was kind of a liberal preacher that didn’t believe much and I remember the Easter Sunday when it hit me, that that Easter I needed to count one more person in the congregation, that the risen Christ would be there. And I remember how I felt.

Pete Alwinson:
Wow.

Steve Brown:
I mean, it literally whacked me upside the head. And that Sunday when I went into the pulpit, I went with a power that was different than what my liberal whacko views had given me.

Pete Alwinson:
You went from being a religious person to a convinced disciple.

Steve Brown:
Oh, it really did. And that’s where the power is today.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. That’s right. And I can’t tell you the number of times in philosophy classes where, and in my life where I’ve gone back to the resurrection, where there’s doubts and difficulties in our walk, the resurrection stands as a foundation.

Steve Brown:
And that’s why a dead man got up and walked. But that’s not the message, the message is, you can too. Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.