“What does ‘seeing is believing’ mean to a blind person?”

Steve Brown:
What does “seeing is believing” mean to a blind person? The answer to that 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. Hey Pete.

Pete Alwinson:
Hey, happy Friday. How you doing, man?

Steve Brown:
I’m doing really good. You’re sitting in the chair. Now, we record these way in advance. So, this isn’t going to mean a lot to a lot of people. But, you’re sitting in the chair where your son sat yesterday.

Pete Alwinson:
Oh man!

Steve Brown:
We do a talk show, for those of you who don’t know, it’s called Steve Brown Etc and it’s on 160, 200 stations, and it’s videoed and done on Facebook, our page, you can find out about it by going to our website keylife.org at any rate, we do that weekly and Pete’s son, John wrote a book called Relentless Sales. And you say, what’s that about? It’s about Jesus. It’s about God. It’s about family and it’s about work and it’s a great book. You need to be proud of your son.

Pete Alwinson:
Oh man, I really am. And thank you for giving him the opportunity on Steve Brown Etc.

Steve Brown:
He was fun to be around. Pete and I were talking before we came into the studio about our kids. And our kids are all, are walking with Christ. And boy, as John said when he wrote his letter, you know, I’m pleased when the kids are walking it.

Pete Alwinson:
Right.

Steve Brown:
And if Key Life went down tomorrow and Forge went down tomorrow, that would be enough.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah, right. That’s right. And thank you for pouring into my family as well. Into me and to my family.

Steve Brown:
Well, you have a great family. Not as good as mine, but okay. As you know, that’s Pete and he comes in on Friday and we answer questions. And we love your questions. You can ask a question anytime you want by calling 1-800-KEY-LIFE. Or sending your question to

Key Life Network

P.O. Box 5000

Maitland, FL 32794

if you’re in Canada, it’s

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

and if you’d like you can e-mail a question to [email protected] and if you can help us financially, that would be very much appreciated and I promise we’ll be as faithful with your gift as you are in giving it. And that means that you’re able to help a whole lot of people who can’t afford to send a gift. Now, if you can’t send a gift or you don’t feel led to, we understand that. Say a prayer for Key Life. Pete, why don’t you lead us in prayer and then we’ll turn to some of these questions.

Pete Alwinson:
You got it. Let’s pray together. Our Great God, what a joy it is on this Friday to come into your presence and to worship you and to stop just for a minute and remember that you are the God who made us, the God who redeemed us, the God who sustains us every day of our life. We honor you and praise you. Thank you God, for being with us. Thank you for the answered prayers. Thank you for going before us all week. Thank you for doing things behind the scenes that we’re not even aware, you are good and gracious. And Lord, we long for you to continue your work in our life and even through our pastors and teachers and priests and ministers of music. Lord, we do pray that you would speak to us this week-end as they prepare with the final touches on the services this week-end. We pray, Holy Spirit, fill them with your grace and use them in a powerful way. Thank you for Steve and our producers and so many who do so much, behind the scenes here at Key Life. We commit this time of Q& A to you. We pray these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Steve Brown:
Amen. Let’s first go to our phone lines.

Caller 1:
What does believing is seeing mean to a blind person?

Steve Brown:
Now that is an unusual question.

Pete Alwinson:
It really is, isn’t it?

Steve Brown:
You know, in the world sense of seeing is believing, that’s not, that’s difficult. Augustine said this, he said.

The world says seeing is believing, and God says believing is seeing.

So, whether you’re blind or not, believing is a precursor to understanding and seeing what the Christian faith is all about. Kind of a reverse on that. And by the way, the believing or seeing thing is not in the Bible. That isn’t a precursor to becoming a Christian. You’ve got to see it in order to believe it. That’s something we say. It’s not something that God says. Although it’s true.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
I guess, you know, there is a sense in which, seeing and that’s the issue of apologetics isn’t it?

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah, it really is trying to get people to see that which is unseen. So, in one sense that is a true expression. Like for instance, if you say, if I said to you, Steve, I can stand on my hands for five minutes. You know, you’ll say, I don’t believe it.

Steve Brown:
Yeah.

Pete Alwinson:
Now, if I do it, seeing is believing.

Steve Brown:
That’s right.

Pete Alwinson:
But you know, if I say to you, look at the order and the design out there, you’ve got to believe that there’s a God.

Steve Brown:
Yeah.

Pete Alwinson:
Seeing is believing. Not necessarily in that sense, but when you, but there is that deal where in the heart, if you see something and you know it to be true, it is true.

Steve Brown:
That’s true.

Pete Alwinson:
There is a sense in which that fulfilling of that.

Steve Brown:
That’s a pretty good discussion.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. And good question. Thank you.

Steve Brown:
Yeah, it really is. Do you think there are people who don’t see because they simply have decided not to see and they’ve made a previous volitional decision, I will not see no matter what you show me.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah, I do believe there are people like that

Steve Brown:
who are just closed minded

Pete Alwinson:
they will not talk to you about certain subjects.

Steve Brown:
And I, as in a, just a side comment, Barclay used to say.

That every time there was a disability, God increased other gifts that the person with the disability had.

For instance, if you’re blind, you can hear things that others can’t hear. If you’re crippled, you can move your hands faster than most anybody else, etcetera, etcetera.

Pete Alwinson:
Interesting.

Steve Brown:
So, don’t go around feeling so sorry. Well, you should for somebody who’s blind, but not from being a Christian. Some of the finest Christians in the world have been blind.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
And so, they saw in a sense, and they did believe. This is an e-mail. How can I understand the relationship of God’s sovereignty with a call to evangelize?

Pete Alwinson:
You know, that is a sort of an age old question and yet a very, very important because it seems as though if God is sovereign and He is the one that is the ultimate, you know, as it says in Ephesians 1:11.

God works all things after the counsel of his will.

Then God is the one that does it. But the reality is that God not only ordains who comes to him or what will happen, but how that event is to take place. And he usually uses second causes. He usually uses us in the accomplishment of his will. So how, what he decrees or what he ordains, but how he accomplishes that is usually through people.

Steve Brown:
And that decree is secret. You don’t know. You don’t know.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
So, you may be the secondary cause of the salvation of somebody else at a pre decision by God from the foundation of Earth.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. That’s right. And that’s why this is so freeing a teaching, if you understand that.

Steve Brown:
Yeah.

Pete Alwinson:
Because we just, we are good news tellers. We’re not mind or heart transformers. We get to do the good part, which is answer questions and tell good news. God does the hard work.

Steve Brown:
And it takes away, and we’ll say more about that in a bit, but it takes away the guilt that people will put on you because I remember some kids in a church I served in Boston, I was the pastor. And in those days, I didn’t think about it, but I wince, they created a film that we showed on a Sunday night and it was about, it was an evangelistic film and it was very creative, but the final scene showed a young man walking into the fires of hell and before he gets there, he turns and points to the congregation and says, why didn’t you tell me? And, you know, I winced and I thought there’s something wrong with that, but I don’t know why, but now I know. You know, nobody’s going to miss Heaven because we didn’t tell them about it or going to hell because we didn’t warn them about it.

Pete Alwinson:
And that’s so important. And that’s where some Christians take that passage in Ezekiel, where it says.

If you don’t proclaim the words, the blood of the people is on your head.

Man, I’ve had that one thrown at me too.

Steve Brown:
That’s bad exegesis. Bad exposition of that text.

Pete Alwinson:
But it’s used a lot. And it’s really a confusion of this idea of God’s sovereignty and human’s responsibility.

Steve Brown:
And by the way, when we talk about God’s sovereignty, we don’t preclude man’s responsibility or freedom.

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

Steve Brown:
We don’t understand it. Well, Pete might. I don’t. So, but the Bible teaches human responsibility and freedom and that your decisions make a difference. And that God, as Sproul put it.

Is in charge of every molecule or he’s not in charge of anything.

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

Steve Brown:
So, and I don’t know how you fit that together. I kind of think that it has to do, I believe that God’s act of election was done with tears in his eyes. I really do. And I think any doctrine that takes away from the love of God is not right.

Pete Alwinson:
I totally agree with that, and I think one of the saving graces for all of this, ask the questions now, think them through, but one day when we walk into his presence, we’ll know it’s all true and it’s okay.

Steve Brown:
Yeah, that’s so true.

Pete Alwinson:
You know, we’ll understand it.

Steve Brown:
And we won’t have to do this program every Friday because everybody will get their answers from the source and it’ll be absolutely right.

Pete Alwinson:
Well, yeah, but we could still sit around. Maybe you and I could interview Jesus on Fridays.

Steve Brown:
Now, that would be, I’d love that. This is an e-mail. How are we doing time wise? The clock is back. No, this is a little bit heavy. So, let me give you a quick one. What does it mean to say the spirit of Elijah in terms of the coming of Messiah?

Pete Alwinson:
Well

Steve Brown:
It means John.

Pete Alwinson:
John the Baptist.

Steve Brown:
Jesus said it was.

Pete Alwinson:
Right. Now, was he a Baptist or was he a Presbyterian?

Steve Brown:
No, well, he was a Presbyterian, but he was serving as a missionary to the Baptists.

Pete Alwinson:
Oh, I got it! I’ve never used that before. I’m going to.

Steve Brown:
Guys, we’ve got to go. We appreciate you very much for taking your time to be with us at Key Life. That’s a gift. One other thing. Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.