“What in the world is the Book of Truth?”

Steve Brown:
What in the world is the Book of Truth? The answer to that and other questions on 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 ForgeTruth with answers from the Bible that will make you free.

Steve Brown:
Hi Pete.

Pete Alwinson:
Hey.

Steve Brown:
How you doing?

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah, I’m good. It’s Friday, right?

Steve Brown:
Happy Friday to you too.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. Yeah.

Steve Brown:
We’ve said it a thousand times, it’s a lot better on Friday when you’re not a pastor. Everybody else is hooping it up because thank heavens. It’s Friday. Pastors are thinking, good Lord, it’s Friday.

Pete Alwinson:
They’ve been in a crisis all week with somebody in their car, and now they’ve got to preach a great sermon.

Steve Brown:
Now they’ve got to preach on Sunday and write a sermon. So anyway, that’s Pete Alwinson, a former pastor, and I’m Steve, a former pastor. We used to be paid to be good, and now we’re both good for nothing. That is so bad, I can’t believe I said it. Go to ForgeTruth. com check that website out. It’s, Pete’s ministry is Forge and you would not believe the lives that are being changed because of that ministry. Pete comes in, as you know, on Fridays, and we answer questions, and we do, honestly, love your questions. We take them and you seriously. You can ask a question, and that doesn’t mean we’re always right, but we’ll be honest. And if we don’t know, we’ll tell you so. If you’ve got a question, call 1-800-KEY-LIFE and that’s open 24 7. Follow instructions and record your question, and sometimes we put your actual voice on the air. Or you can send your question to

Key Life Network

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or you can e-mail your question to [email protected] and you knew I was going to say this. If you can help us financially, I’ve just given you some contact places where you could do that. And I promise that if you’ll help us, we’ll help others. Nobody’s getting rich on this ministry. We squeeze every dime for the glory of God. And we also know that a lot of you can’t help. And if you can’t, we understand that. Say a prayer for this ministry. We’re in this together, and we’re seeing God change a lot of lives. Pete, why don’t you lead us in prayer, and we’ll get to some of these questions.

Pete Alwinson:
All right. Let’s pray together. Our Father, thank you that even today, at the end of the week, we can pause for just a couple of minutes and pray. And how thankful we are for prayer. Lord, we honor you, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. You hear our prayers. Your word says, you hear the prayers of the righteous and we know that we’re righteous only because of the righteousness of Christ and the changes that you’ve brought into our lives. And so, we thank you that you hear our prayers and that Lord, we do, as we pray, ask that we would pray in accordance with your will. But you know us and Lord, you know the hurts that we have, you know everyone listening, you know the issues that we have financially, relationally, with our marriages, with our kids, in our work, with our churches. Lord, financially, physically, there’s so many areas and we come to you and we tell you that we need you in our life and we need you to work. We ask that Lord, you would work. We give you our burdens. We give you our challenges, our anxieties, and ask that you would bring answers that honor you and that help us into our lives. So Lord today, we also are thankful that we can talk about questions and answers. We have many and we ask that you would build us up, develop us and train us. And do that even more this week-end through our pastors and teachers and priests and leaders. Lord, lead us in your narrow way, and through worship, give us that opportunity to praise you. Now, we commit this time to you. In Jesus’ strong name we pray. Amen.

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

Caller 1:
My question is, what is the Book of Truth, number one? Number two, it makes reference to the Antichrist for three and a half years. Is that the same time that Jesus had his ministry on earth? Just two questions. Thank you.

Steve Brown:
That’s a good question, because we don’t have an answer. You know, we’re honest with you, when you said Book of Truth, we thought you were talking about the Bible.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
Because we’re Protestants and you’re Catholics. But I understand, it’s a two volume set. Pete and Jeremy both looked it up on Google.

Pete Alwinson:
Mm hmm.

Steve Brown:
Hey, be nice to your parents. They got through college without Google.

Pete Alwinson:
Right? Amazing.

Steve Brown:
But we looked it up, and we see now what it is. It’s basic eschatology for Roman Catholics, and it’s two volumes, and it’s supposed to be very good. But back to your question, which asked a specific about where it fit. Eschatology, by the way, is the study of the future. Eschaton is the future. And so, it has to do with prophecy and things in the future. And your question had to do with a specific in that area. Pete, we’re not really big on all those symbols and specifics. Are we, you and I?

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah, I think generally speaking, we would like to see them representative of bigger issues rather than specific details. I think you get into trouble, when you’re trying to do that with apocalyptic literature like that is.

Steve Brown:
That’s so true. And I remember when you were a pastor and I was a member of the church, you spent a lot of time, a series that went for weeks on the Book of Revelation. And I learned so much from that and in a different way of thinking about Revelation, that Revelation is not so much future, although there’s some of that there.

Pete Alwinson:
Yes.

Steve Brown:
But it’s mostly about present and history.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. There’s a lot of, what Revelation does is help unpack for us a lot of things going on in the church age right now. We both have to admit, we have never, we just heard of the Book of Truth. We have not read it. We can’t say, but I would say that what this man was referring to was not really something, per se, contemporary with the time of Jesus, but was looking ahead. It was in the future, but when exactly, we won’t know. We don’t know that.

Steve Brown:
But we will.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
You know, the interesting thing about prophecy in terms of the future is that Peter said the prophets spoke their message, not for themselves, but for those who lived in the time that was prophesied.

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

Steve Brown:
So, that’s a principle. You know, when you get there, you’ll know, and everybody will say, Oh, that’s what he meant. And then we’ll get all this resolved and settled. And frankly, I’ll be glad.

Pete Alwinson:
It’ll make sense. I would recommend a thin volume by William Hendrickson called a More Than Conquerors because that gives you, what I think, I think we both agree on this part. It’s just a tremendous unpacking of how Revelation is meant to be understood.

Steve Brown:
What was the name of it again?

Pete Alwinson:
More Than Conquerors by William Hendrickson.

Steve Brown:
Okay. This is an interesting question. How does God’s displeasure differ from his anger? If God is ever displeased with my behavior, even when my sin, not in the sense that you’re asking it. No, he’s not. Cause you, in order for God to be angry and displeased, and we’ll talk about theologically why he’s not, because the blood of Christ is sufficient and finished, but in order for God to be displeased and angry he’s got to be surprised. You know, he’s got to be saying, you know, there’s such high hopes for you and you messed it up, leave my leave me alone. I don’t want to talk to you anymore. Now, that’s displeasure, but you have never done anything that surprised God. He’s known how you’re going to live your life, the failures, the sin, He’s known that before you were ever born, and He still created you, and He still loved you, and He still sent His Son to die for you. So theologically, you’ve got to be kind of careful about that kind of question, but there is a sense in which that’s true. I mean, there are things that God would prefer, ways that we live, that are more helpful, that are more godly, that touches other people, that make a difference. And in the sense that we don’t do that in our own free will, that kind of displeasure is understandable.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah, that’s true. And we have to think in this in terms of how, the reality is God does not have human emotions.

Steve Brown:
That’s true.

Pete Alwinson:
That is, he doesn’t have fallen emotions like we do, so that if somebody, if I’m displeased with what somebody does toward me, it may be that they actually did something right on and not immoral at all, but it displeased me. And so, like you said, God is not surprised. And that’s a very helpful concept.

Steve Brown:
Important to remember.

Pete Alwinson:
It really is. But it’s also that God doesn’t have human emotions like that.

Steve Brown:
That’s right. He doesn’t just get ticked and take this lightning bolt and throw it at you because you got it. That’s not the wrath of God.

Pete Alwinson:
No. That’s the gods of Mount Olympus.

Steve Brown:
Exactly.

Pete Alwinson:
Roman and Greek gods.

Steve Brown:
Not the Christian God.

Pete Alwinson:
No. Not at all. So, I think what we have to understand is that the New Testament says.

Do not grieve the Spirit of God. Do not quench the Spirit of God.

It’s more like when we do things that we shouldn’t do that quote, unquote displease him, that we’re going against his leading and and he’s sorry that we’re doing things that are hurting ourselves.

Steve Brown:
That’s right. That’s so true. So, His wrath is in a sense, sometimes His sorrow. And maybe the cross is the reflection of that. The great sorrow of the God of the universe.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. So, you know, grieve not the Spirit, not so that you don’t tick God off, throw a lightning bolt at you. But remember, he’s for us, a hundred percent.

Steve Brown:
And you know, as an aside from all of that, there’s a cult that teaches the Holy Spirit is not a person. You ever tried to grieve something that wasn’t a person?

Pete Alwinson:
An it.

Steve Brown:
Yeah, an it. So, even you’re teaching on grieving and the Holy Spirit. It’s a confirmation, even if you didn’t plan it, of the doctrine of the Trinity. You’re amazing, Pete. Guys, we’ve got to go. We appreciate your spending this time with us. Remember, as we leave and land this plane. Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.