“Are all angels created equal.”

Steve Brown:
Are all angels created equal? 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:
Thank you Matthew. Hi Pete.

Pete Alwinson:
Hey man. How you doing?

Steve Brown:
Have you seen any angels recently?

Pete Alwinson:
Yes. As a matter of fact.

Steve Brown:
Name is Caron?

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. That’s right.

Steve Brown:
And don’t go any further than that. Pete, as you know, comes in on Fridays and we sit down and we love to just sit and talk about questions that you’ve asked. And comments that you’ve made, and it’s easy to ask a question and we take it seriously. 1-800-KEY-LIFE, you can dial that, 24 7, record your question, and sometimes we put your voice on the air. Or you can send your question to

Key Life Network
P.O. Box 5000
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in Canada, it’s

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

or you can e-mail your question to [email protected] and if you can help us financially, please do. And I promise we’ll be faithful with your gift. We’ll squeeze every dime for the glory of God. And we recognize, and by the way, we’ll use your gift to help those who can’t give. And if you can’t or don’t feel called to, we understand that. Just say a prayer for this ministry, as we endeavor to reach people for the glory of God. Pete, why don’t you lead us in prayer, and then we’ll turn to some of these questions.

Pete Alwinson:
All right. Our Great God, what a joy to come to you at the end of this week, just for a minute to remember who you are and what you’ve done. And Lord, we thank you for this week. We thank you in all things, even for those challenging issues that we had to face at work and at home, with our health, with our finances, with the world in which we live. Lord, we come to you. We thank you that you are in charge, that you are holy and righteous and just, that you are kind and merciful. Lord, we thank you that you are taking care of us, that you’re here. And Lord, even though we don’t understand how you can be in all places at the same time in all your fullness, you are. And so, we worship you as our Great God, omnipresent, omnipotent, and we thank you that you care for us. And so, Lord, you know we need you. And we need you everything you have to teach us from your word. So, we pray for our pastors and teachers and worship directors and leaders this coming week-end. Lord, we want to get with your people, we want to worship, we want to hear from your word. And we pray you would meet us in a powerful way. And now in this time of Q&A, we ask that you would answer some questions and keep us digging deeper as we think about the truth of your word, as we pray in Jesus’ Name. Amen.

Steve Brown:
Amen. Hey Pete, let’s go to our phone lines.

Caller 1:
I’ve always grown up thinking that everybody is made equal, both here on earth and in heaven. But what’s the deal with the archangels? It seems like that there’s this upper echelon of angels in heaven, and they even talk about another special angel in the Book of Revelation, Abaddon. So, just curious what your guys thoughts are on that?

Steve Brown:
You know.

Pete Alwinson:
I love that. What’s the deal?

Steve Brown:
First, I’m not sure everybody’s created equal. I don’t have any hair and I’ve got other people who friends who have just hair like you. That’s not fair.

Pete Alwinson:
Well, but you have the perfect head for a hairstyle like you have.

Steve Brown:
That’s right.

Pete Alwinson:
We are not, we’re created equal in worth before the God of the universe.

Steve Brown:
True, that goes without saying.

Pete Alwinson:
But I don’t have your voice.

Steve Brown:
That’s right. I don’t have your looks.

Pete Alwinson:
You don’t want that. But you wouldn’t give me your voice, too. So, that’s that’s partly.

Steve Brown:
I might if you’ve got, I mean, not free, but the point is well made, that we’re not all created equal in that sense.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
And there is a hierarchy of authority among human beings. For instance, Paul is very clear about some responsibilities that we have to our government, even a bad government, because God sees order as more important than chaos. And when you start looking at angels, the observation of our listener is quite accurate.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. No, it was really good. You know, God did create the heavenly realm and the unseen realm has an order to it. And then Satan has created a counterfeit kingdom of his own principalities and powers and rulers and authorities. So, there’s always been this sense of hierarchy from top down. There’s angels and there’s archangels in the Elohim, the Hebrew word Elohim speaks of the gods speaking of probably this unseen realm that are part of God’s government.

Steve Brown:
So, the answer is, yeah, things are not created equal. By the way, if you want to get a really good book, Billy Graham’s book on angels. That’s one of the best Bible studies, and that’s all it is. It’s a Bible study on angels. And you can get, and it’s titled Angels. And it’s a really good book. Some of his staff have said for years that when Mr. Graham wrote that book, and you know I love Mr. Graham, I miss him a lot. But he’s, they said he always, no matter what he did, landed on his feet. And they said that the book he wrote was a thank you note to angels.

Pete Alwinson:
Oh my goodness.

Steve Brown:
Alright, this is an e-mail. If Jesus was not Joseph’s biological child, how can his genealogy be traced through Joseph in Matthew?

Pete Alwinson:
You know, that’s a good question. And they’re theologians, Bible students have always struggled with the two genealogies in Matthew 1 and Luke as well. But you know, as I just opened it up, just Matthew, you know, it starts out.

The record of the genealogy of Jesus, the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

And so, what this genealogy clearly is intending to do is to trace probably Joseph’s line back to David and Abraham. And to show that royal connection.

Steve Brown:
And that’s a legal thing.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
That’s not a biological, they’re not making a biological statement.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
They’re setting up, which is a Jewish proclivity. They’re setting up a genealogy that would be legally accurate and would affirm the Messiahship of Jesus.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. Just like Augustus wasn’t the previous emperor’s son, he was an adopted son. And it was legal and it was, everything was.

Steve Brown:
That’s true.

Pete Alwinson:
So yeah, that’s right.

Steve Brown:
Good answer. What does the Bible mean by a new heaven and a new earth?

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. What’s going to happen when Jesus comes back and remakes the world? Is it going to be a radical remaking? What do you think?

Steve Brown:
I think it’s going to be a renewed earth in heaven. But listen, you can’t get bogged down in those details. What is simply being a said, I had a, we have a friend who used to be on the staff of Key Light, who had a nephew, whose grandfather died. And his mother came into his room. And he said, I saw Papa last night. So, he had a dream about his grandfather. And she stopped and said, Oh really? And he said, Oh yes. And we talked. And then she said to him, Did he look sick? Because he had died over a long period of time, emaciated. And the little boy said no, he was brand new. Well, getting back to this question, it’s going to be brand new. It’s going to be brand new. It’s spanking new. And that’s what it’s talking about, not so much the details of how that’s going to happen.

Pete Alwinson:
I think a lot of Biblical eschatology and teaching on end times is of that nature exactly. It’s going to be new. It’s going to be renewed. Jesus said.

I go to prepare a place for you.

And he’s going to bring it with him when he comes. And so, heaven is going to be here. The new heaven, the new earth. We’ll have new bodies and we’ll live, we’re not going to be disembodied spirits.

Steve Brown:
That’s true. That is so cool.

Pete Alwinson:
It’s going to be great.

Steve Brown:
Okay. Why doesn’t the Bible outright condemn the practice of slavery?

Pete Alwinson:
You know, that’s an accurate statement. It doesn’t outright, it lays the foundation for it.

Steve Brown:
That’s an accurate statement. It’s the basis of the entire movement against slavery. But go ahead.

Pete Alwinson:
No, to answer that straight out, I’m not sure I have a real question, why it does not say slavery is wrong? In the Old Testament, it does provide, again, laws to regulate slavery so that people could pay their debts. And, which shows a high value of paying your debts, and of not getting into debt, but paying it. But it does say that there can’t be abuse with slavery, and much slavery in the world of human history has been just horribly abusive.

Steve Brown:
It really has. But you’ve got to also remember that it’s very easy from our perspective to not understand the cultural context when this was written.

Pete Alwinson:
True.

Steve Brown:
Slavery is extant now in many parts of the world. But at the time when Scripture was written, that was not even an issue. I mean, it just was a factor of society and the Scriptures by talking no male or female. Sometimes in the early church slaves were elders

Pete Alwinson:
I know

Steve Brown:
and were over their slave owners who also were Christians. And so, the Christian faith became the motivation for the abolitionist movement. And if it weren’t for Scripture, where do you think Wilberforce got his views? He got them from Scripture. So, the Scripture doesn’t outright condemn, which is true, doesn’t outright condemn a lot of things, but it knows it’s planting the seed that’s going to change them.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. That’s right. And in fact, Christians were at the front of the abolitionist movement.

Steve Brown:
Okay, this is a question, and is the account of Noah’s Ark really true? Was it even feasible to get that many animals on the boat?

Pete Alwinson:
Have you been up to see the Ark experience?

Steve Brown:
No, but sometime we’ll do.

Pete Alwinson:
It’s humongous.

Steve Brown:
You know, we’ll revisit this question and talk about it, but yeah, it’s true.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
It really is true. It’s accurate. It’s right on. And in a future broadcast, we’ll revisit that question and explain it in detail. But right now we don’t even have time for a closing prayer. Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.