“What are the ‘three days of darkness’?”

Steve Brown:
What are the ‘three days of darkness’? 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 no guru, but he does have honest answers to honest questions about the Bible. God’s grace changes everything, how we love, work, live, lead, marry, parent, evangelize, purchase and worship. So here’s Steve and Pete Alwinson from ForgeBibleStudy.com with street smart Bible teaching for real life.

Steve Brown:
Hey Pete.

Pete Alwinson:
Hey man.

Steve Brown:
How are you doing?

Pete Alwinson:
Alright. I can’t see you cause it’s a little dark in here, but other than that.

Steve Brown:
By the way. He’s right. We are, to give you some background, we come into the studio and we record. And these programs are often aired into the future. Right now we’re looking at what might be a hurricane.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
We’re in central Florida and the clouds are really dark. The wind is really blowing and we expect the rain is going to start tonight. So when Pete says about the darkness, I can’t see ya. We’re kind of there, right now.

Pete Alwinson:
We fondly hate hurricanes. We’ve been through a few of them.

Steve Brown:
That’s true. That’s Pete Alwinson and Forge is the organization and Man in the Mirror and Key Life. I mean Pete’s all over the place .And you ought to check it out by going to ForgeTruth.com and Pete, as you know, has been coming in for years on Friday’s broadcast and we’ve been spending this time together answering questions, and we love to get your questions. You can call 1-800-KEY-LIFE, 24 seven, hit the right button and record your question. And sometimes we put that on the air or you can write 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 email us at [email protected]. And if you can help us financially, please do. If you can’t please pray.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
Pete, why don’t you lead us in prayer and we’ll get to these questions.

Pete Alwinson:
Alright. Let’s pray. Father, thank you for your greatness and your goodness. And as we come to you on the end of this week, we, we lift up your Holy name. We praise you. Well, we reflect upon how you have encouraged us. You’ve motivated us. You’ve wiped our tears dry. You’ve listened to us. You’ve answered prayers. You have taught. You have never let go of us. And that’s all because of who you are. We worship you. We praise you. Lord, we ask that you would enable us as we move into this weekend to worship you well and to enjoy you, and that you would bring growth in our life, as our pastors, teachers, priests, worship directors bring us into the very presence of the living. God, as we worship you. So, be with them, guide them and lead them and be with us as well. And thank you for Key Life. Thank you for Steve’s ministry and the ministry of all those behind the scenes and who write for our blogs and do so much lord. We ask that you would use this ministry to bring the gospel of grace to more and more people. Now we commit this time of Q&A. Ask that you would be here in a powerful way. In your name, Jesus, we pray. Amen.

Steve Brown:
Amen. Pete, let’s talk about darkness and go to our phone lines.

Caller 1:
I was just listening to the broadcast,
and someone mentioned the days of darkness and three days, and the narrator said they weren’t sure what they meant by three days. My question is, I think perhaps it was between the death on the cross and resurrection. Is there an answer to where Christ adventure between that time?

Steve Brown:
Well, that’s a good question. We have, by the way, mostly with this is we, we are extemporaneous in the way we answer questions. I mean, we have our Bibles open and we some, but sometimes we’ll do some checking and our producer, Jeremy and Pete, and I was watching, waiting for what they found. We Googled it to see if we can find out there, and there are a lot of things that that could mean if you ask, and the person you heard say it, a lot of different things that could mean. Pete, what are some of the things you found out?

Pete Alwinson:
Well, and Jeremy found out some too, you know, in Revelation talking about the three days of darkness, and as well as, in some medieval mysticism and later, there were different people that had ecstasies or visions, Anna Maria Taigi, she apparently had something and talked about the three days of darkness as well. It’s hard to know what that from the broadcast, our friend listened to, what they were referring to.

Steve Brown:
Yeah. Right.

Pete Alwinson:
Clearly though, with Jesus, we do know three days, three nights,

Steve Brown:
That’s right.

Pete Alwinson:
and he said to the thief, today you’ll be with me in paradise, but we do have that descent into hell, that speaking of some sort,

Steve Brown:
Yeah. That’s true.

Pete Alwinson:
of something that Jesus did. Yes.

Steve Brown:
And there are varieties of answers to that, but minimum. Yeah. The three days and three nights. And that’s a colloquial expression,

Pete Alwinson:
Right. Right.

Steve Brown:
three days and three nights could be the three days of darkness. It could be the final seal or the sixth seal in Revelation.

Pete Alwinson:
It could be that.

Steve Brown:
It could be some other references in Scripture to it. What do you think was going on between the death of Christ and the resurrection?

Pete Alwinson:
Isn’t that powerful? I mean, that’s such a big, controversial thing. But I do think that if anything, what Jesus was doing was proclaiming victory over the forces of the unseen realm and his enemies,

Steve Brown:
That’s right.

Pete Alwinson:
and proclaiming once and for all, the resurrection through his, that was to come.

Steve Brown:
You know, there’s a passage in I Peter, in fact two, where he says that Jesus preached to the dead and then you hit that. And then he says it again in the next chapter, something similar. And I was teaching through I Peter, when, have I told you this, I was teaching through I Peter, when I was a pastor and I got to that passage and I just stopped, and I said, I know. I have no idea what that means. I just have no idea. It’s really confusing. The Bible says that it’s appointed, the man wants to die. And after that, the judgment. So I know what happens to us, but with Jesus that’s different. And it seems to say, and then I said, but it can’t be that, because you only get one chance at this.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
You know, we were doing cassette tapes in those days, they were going out all over the country. Pete, you would not believe the number of letters I got from all over the country from people that were trying to fix me. And I came up with the principle of that. If you have a Biblical or theological position, And something isn’t sticking out of the suitcase. It’s probably not true.

Pete Alwinson:
Oh, that’s good. Because, there’s no way that we could figure out everything.

Steve Brown:
Oh no, there are things we just don’t know.

Pete Alwinson:
God is way bigger than us. And we do understand that the first century audience probably got it right away.

Steve Brown:
That’s probably true. Why is that?

Pete Alwinson:
Well, because, the Scriptures are written in space and time in history, and that’s what Exegesis is, is trying to read out from Scripture. What was going on? How was the language being used? What did, what was the authorial intent? There’s a lot of things we were trying to, that we just don’t know. We’re a little bit, we’re 2000 years down the road. So we don’t know all of the factors or what they all knew or what all the common everyday references were, that they were thinking when Peter said that.

Steve Brown:
That’s true. Good. That’s a good statement. That’s a new thought to me. I haven’t thought that before. And that makes real sense in terms of understanding some of those very difficult things that we don’t understand, this is kind of sad, but you’d be surprised how often we get this kind of question. I have an adult daughter who was saved and baptized 20 years ago, lived a great Christian life. But now says that there’s no God and believes the Bible is a book of fables. If she dies believing this, will she go to heaven? Will her name still be in the Lamb’s book of life?

Pete Alwinson:
Well, you know, she’s people go through troughs and valleys and struggles and times of where faith is not as real to them. That could be one of those troughs for her, one of those that, but there’s still time and who knows what, what is at work, what could be potentially at work here and what she’s going through, how the Holy Spirit works.

Steve Brown:
She’s a covenant child.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
And that means that God really cares. And, we believe that once you are elect and you’re saved. That you got to deal with it,

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
I mean, you can’t get out of it. It’s kind of like Hell’s Angels, the motorcycle gang, you know, the only way you get out of that is by dying, you never get out of the Christian faith. If you belong to him, you belong to him and you will forever. So, there is some comfort,

Pete Alwinson:
Absolutely.

Steve Brown:
in saying it’s a trough, as you said. And I think that’s, I think that’s a good way to, this happens a lot. Doesn’t it?

Pete Alwinson:
You know, suffering has a tendency to do that to us, chronic suffering has a tendency to do that. to people. Draws us down, keeps us down, depresses us and makes God feel like, makes us feel that God is not here and he’s not in it. He’s not near us. And therefore he doesn’t exist. We make that leap. And it’s not always an accurate leap, of course.

Steve Brown:
And there’s, they’re traumatic things that happen to people. I don’t know what happened to your daughter, but maybe she was betrayed. Maybe she was demeaned. Maybe she was abused by somebody.

Pete Alwinson:
Right.

Steve Brown:
And, and I, because I have such a high view of God’s grace, and his kindness and his mercy. I think, if I can understand that, I think he can too. I don’t think you put all your eggs in that basket, because there are troubling things there, and there are things that you ought to worry about. But you haven’t heard the rest of the story yet.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. And my wife and I are praying right now for two young men that grew up in our church. I mean, born and raised in our church, who are not following Jesusl, very much like this lady, we pray for them every day, just about.

Steve Brown:
That’s good.

Pete Alwinson:
So pray for your,for your daughter, as I know you do.

Steve Brown:
And when Monica, who was Augustine’s mother,

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
and Augustine was a lot worse than this.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
She went to her confessor and she asked the same question that you asked and her confessor said, which was the wise statement,

the child of so many mother’s prayers cannot be lost.

And that turned out to be quite true.

Pete Alwinson:
Absolutely. Powerful.

Steve Brown:
I’m trying to look for a yes or no question that we could just, can we pray to the dead? We already did that.

Pete Alwinson:
No. Can I sing? No.

Steve Brown:
You got one more, and we’ll land this plane.

Pete Alwinson:
Can I tell the future? No.

Steve Brown:
Okay guys, we’re out of here. We’re so glad when you join us, it’s good to have you as a part of this ministry. And the ministry is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.