“What about hypnotism?”

Steve Brown:
What about hypnotism? The answer to that and other questions, on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
Welcome to Key Life. Our host and teacher is Steve Brown. He’s nobody’s guru, but he does have honest answers to hard questions about the Bible. God’s grace changes everything, how we love, work, live, lead, marry, parent, evangelize, and worship. Now, here’s Steve and Pete Alwinson from ForgeTruth with street-smart Bible teaching for real life.

Steve Brown:
Thank you Matthew. Hi Pete.

Pete Alwinson:
Hey, how you doing?

Steve Brown:
I’m doing really good and even better now that you’re here.

Pete Alwinson:
Well, it’s good. I’m here to take the heat, baby.

Steve Brown:
I invite Pete because I love him. And we’ve been doing this for years and because he knows a lot, but the truth is, I give him all the critical letters and that’s a gift he gives to me. By the way, go to ForgeTruth.com check it out. You’ll be glad I told you about it. And we love to get your questions. You can call 1-800-KEY-LIFE anytime. You can record your question and sometimes we put that on the air. You can write your question to

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or you can e-mail us your question to [email protected] and those are places where, should the spirit move, you could help us financially. And when you do that, we use your gift to reach out and touch people who can’t afford to give. And if you can’t give or don’t feel called to, we understand that and we would appreciate it if you would say a prayer for Key Life. Pete, speaking of prayer, would you pray for us and we’ll get to these questions.

Pete Alwinson:
Let’s do it. Father, it’s so good to come to you at the end of this week and to praise you and to thank you. Lord, to pause for just a minute and ask that you would be with us in a special way. Lord, you know us, you know our needs, and you’ve been around us all week. Thank you that you live in us through your Spirit, Lord Jesus. And Lord, we just pray, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that you would enable us to have an increasing awareness of who you are and that you would continue to transform our minds and our hearts through your word and yes, Holy Spirit, through your control and leadership. Lead us and guide us in the way we should go. Counsel us with your eye upon us. And Lord, we pray for our leaders this week-end, what a joy to be able to meet live with your people and to worship, to sing praise, to pray, to hear your word taught and expounded and applied to our lives. And we do pray for our pastors as they teach us, may Lord, we hear the words that you have written come to life in our hearts. So, be with our leaders, be with this time now, we commit it to you in Jesus’ Name. Amen.

Steve Brown:
Amen. Pete, on a fairly recent broadcast, we answered a question toward the end on hypnotism. And we didn’t have much time to do it. And I said, let’s look at that again, so we can spend a little bit more time on it. This was the question. What do you think of the practice of hypnotism, for example, in quitting smoking?

Pete Alwinson:
Hmm.

Steve Brown:
That’s a good question. And you said off the air that you don’t hear much about that anymore.

Pete Alwinson:
I have not. And I haven’t Googled it.

Steve Brown:
You know, I think it’s like a lot of things. I think it can be demonic. I think it can be dangerous. I think it can cause serious problems depending on the person who uses it.

Pete Alwinson:
Mm-Hmm.

Steve Brown:
It’s like a car or a gun. It’s like a lot of things that are dependent on the use of the person who uses it. I think hypnotism is fairly benign. Dentists used to use it. I don’t know if they still do? I think they use pills now. But they used to use it in dental work. Physicians have used it a number of times. A lot of people for weight loss or stopping smoking or doing those kinds of things have used it. And I think it’s a way of going deeper and putting convictions that do make a difference in a positive way. But, in the wrong hands it can be dangerous. And they say that a hypnotist can’t cause you to do things you wouldn’t do when you weren’t under hypnosis. And that sounds good, but it’s not true. As a matter of fact, yes they can. And the mind is pretty strong. Did you know, and this is documented, that a hypnotist under hypnotism can take a pencil and say, this is a hot iron, and put it on your arm and raise a welt there, where the burn was.

Pete Alwinson:
A physiological response to an implanted idea.

Steve Brown:
So, when you’re talking about these kinds of things, you’ve got to be kind of careful, but in the hands of a benign person, it can be benign. In the hands of somebody who’s not, you ought to run as fast as you can.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s good. I think that’s good counsel. We’re not clinical experts on this. Research it, get two or three opinions before you do it. I like what you said. You know, in terms of transforming of the mind. That’s what Scripture and what God does. And so, there are things, like for instance, I drink coffee every morning and I have to, or I get a headache, right? So, but I, I don’t.

Steve Brown:
It’s called addiction.

Pete Alwinson:
It’s called addiction. And I admit that here, you know. But I’m not going to do hypnosis to get rid of it because I like it. But if I became convinced that I needed to, I would probably not go the hypnosis route. I’d probably go to Jesus. I’d probably begin to lessen it, ask some people to pray for me and try to be in the word of God, because God is in the business of transforming our minds and hearts.

Steve Brown:
Renewal of our minds.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
That’s the living sacrifice.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
And Paul was clear about that. But that doesn’t mean you wouldn’t take an aspirin if you had a headache. So, you’re not being silly about it, but you’re pointing to a truth that we all need to remember. Did Jesus have brothers and sisters?

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah, he did. They were half brothers and sisters, right?

Steve Brown:
Yeah, they were. And Roman Catholic brothers and sisters say that no, they didn’t. That was cousins. And we just disagree. You do it your way, we’ll do it God’s way. We think he really did, they’re called brothers and sisters in Scripture.

Pete Alwinson:
They are. And as you read the gospels, you just see them there and then, and really too, became Biblical writers as far as we know, Jude and James.

Steve Brown:
Yeah, that’s true.

Pete Alwinson:
And so, to be called the brother of Jesus was a humbling thing, but it was a big deal.

Steve Brown:
Okay. This is an e-mail too. What do you think about the tribulation? I don’t like it. Let’s move on to the next question. No, talk to us about the tribulation.

Pete Alwinson:
Well, you know, I think the Bible, Revelation clearly tells us that there will be a great tribulation toward the end of times. I want to commend William Hendricks book, More Than Conquerors, which is a great illustration. It helps you understand Revelation. There’s going to be many times of tribulation down through human history, and a final great one at the end. But it’ll be cut short for our sake, for the sake of believers on the earth.

Steve Brown:
And we, you know, sometimes people have an eschatology, that’s the study of end times, that is a way to get out of pain and suffering. And you’ve got to be careful about that. You know, Corrie Ten Boom, and I met her before, shortly before she died. She wrote The Hiding Place, and she and her sister were in a death camp. And she said to me, and it was interesting, I’d ask her about how, was it that bad as they showed in the movie? She said, Oh Stephen, worse. And she said, right now, I know places in the world where Christians are going to tribulation that is greater than anything that is described in the book of Revelation.

Pete Alwinson:
Wow. Wow. It’s, you know, right now the, the nation of Nigeria, is the worst place. 7,000 Christians were targeted in 2023. So yeah, it’s terrible.

Steve Brown:
Yeah, it is. And I think what Pete said, we’ve got to expect that. There’s a sense in which the Great Tribulation has been the time since Jesus died. There are Christians that have been killed, who have suffered, who have been persecuted, and you’re right. There’s a Great Tribulation at the end when it’s going to get worse. But Jesus is coming back, and he’s ticked, and he loves his people, so be careful. Do we have to tithe to a local church?

Pete Alwinson:
Well, you know, it’s easy to dismiss that, but those who go to Malachi and talk about the storehouse principle say, yes, here’s the principle of giving. You give it all to the priests or the ordained leaders of the church. Let them decide. If you’re managing your own tithe, you really haven’t given it to God.

Steve Brown:
I get that, but I don’t agree with it.

Pete Alwinson:
I get it. I get the logic, but I don’t agree with it. So, but I think it’s a good thing, I think it’s a good thing if we tithe to the local church and then we give generously beyond that.

Steve Brown:
You know, we’re living in a culture that doesn’t like the church. And the most important statement you can make in this culture isn’t political. It’s joining a church, telling people you’re a part of it, supporting it, and standing with it. Because it is the last bulwark against some really evil stuff going on in our time.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s so true. Being a member of a church is political, as you ally with Christ. So yeah.

Steve Brown:
This is, you know, we get this question often, and it always, it’s kind of puzzling when we get it. Since Jesus taught his disciples to pray to the Heavenly Father, do you think it’s wrong to address our prayers directly to Jesus?

Pete Alwinson:
Well, we agree. No, it’s not. But there is sort of that theological framework that we seems to emerge from Scripture. We pray to God the Father, through Jesus, in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Steve Brown:
That’s true.

Pete Alwinson:
But there’s

Steve Brown:
I mean, he didn’t sit here and say God doesn’t say that’s theologically wrong.

Pete Alwinson:
Right, right.

Steve Brown:
You can’t pray to me that way.

Pete Alwinson:
Right, right.

Steve Brown:
And you know, the prayer of the Eastern monks, the Jesus prayer, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner. And God doesn’t get angry at that because there is no jealousy in the Trinity. We agree with that.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah, we agree with that.

Steve Brown:
Hey, we’ve got to go. We don’t even have time to sing a hymn. But we love that you spend this time with us. And before we go, let me say. Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.