Are there many paths to God?

Steve Brown:
Are there many paths to God? The answer to that and other questions on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
If you think laughter isn’t spiritual or that faithfulness to God means conformity to Christian stereotypes. Then this program probably isn’t for you, but if you’re looking for honest, Biblical answers to honest questions, welcome to Key Life. Here’s our host, author and seminary professor Steve Brown, along with Pete Alwinson from ForgeBibleStudy.com.

Steve Brown:
Hi Pete.

Pete Alwinson:
Hey man. How you doing?

Steve Brown:
I’m doing really good, man.

Pete Alwinson:
Good. You look good.

Steve Brown:
Better than I deserve.

Pete Alwinson:
You’re still swimming?

Steve Brown:
Yeah, 50 lamps a day.

Pete Alwinson:
Amen.

Steve Brown:
I swam yesterday just before the thunderstorms came in,

Pete Alwinson:
Oh man.

Steve Brown:
I’ll tell you, I could, I could see him coming, but they were way off. I still had another 15 to go. I do 50. And I want you to know, that I could have gone to the Olympics. And the speed with which I swam those last 15 labs, man I moved out. I thought, this is not for way I want to die.

Pete Alwinson:
Good for you.

Steve Brown:
For those of you who aren’t familiar, we’re in Orlando and Florida is the lightning capital of the world. So when God gets angry, man, we’re in trouble here. I don’t do anything bad, when we’re in the middle of under storm.

Pete Alwinson:
Oh man.

Steve Brown:
And swim fast, Pete Alwinson by the way, you ought to check out ForgeTruth.com. You’ll be glad I told you, if you’d like to know if some of Pete’s itinerary. so if he’s going to be someplace where you are and you can be there. That’ll be there at ForgeTruth.com. Though. And as you know, Pete comes in and we answer questions and we’ve done that for a long time and we love your questions. We really do. We like talking about them. We’re honest. We don’t always give you the right answers, but we give you an honest answer. And as far as we can tell a Biblical one, And you can always ask a question by calling 1-800-KEY-LIFE and that’s open 24 seven. There’s a button you push and you record your question and sometimes we put it on the air. Or you going to send your question to

Key Life Network
P.O. Box 5000
Maitland, Florida 32794

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

Or you can email your question to [email protected] and I promise, we’ll be faithful. You can charge it on your credit card, include it in your envelope. And we’ll be so glad that you did and we’ll use it, I promise, faithfully for the glory of God. And if you can’t, we get that. Do say a prayer for this ministry. Pete, why don’t you lead us in prayer and we’ll get to these questions.

Pete Alwinson:
Alright. Let’s pray. Our great God, what a joy today to stop for just a minute and to recognize your greatness, your sovereignty and that we are your children. What a strong firm foundation we have because we’re yours. You loved us first. You saved us. You hold onto us. And one day you will come back, Lord Jesus and clean up the mess of this planet. Reorder everything, fulfill your plan completely. We rest in that. We honor that. We pray for your power now, we need not only to be gracious as you have been gracious to us, but we need your grace power for everyday life. The relationships that we have, the jobs that we need, the people that we know, Lord, give us your grace, help us to be witnesses of grace, help us to model grace as well as talk about your grace. And Lord, thank you for Steve and Key Life and all that goes on here. May people continue to hear about the gospel of grace through Key Life. We commit our time of Q & A to you now, as we pray in Jesus’ strong name. Amen.

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

Caller:
My daughter, who was raised in a Christian home, now works with, she’s in medicine, she works with a lot of people that are not Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, a lot of the Eastern religions. And she asked me why, how could God reject them, when a lot of them are searching for him? And she feels like there’s many paths to him. I think it’s because of the influence of these folks on her. I ordered a copy of Mere Christianity, trying to, you know, lead her in the right direction. But if you can address this, I will listen.

Steve Brown:
First. I like your daughter’s heart and I like yours too. Your daughter is coming from a place of love, when you love people, you just can’t imagine, but you’ve got an issue of truth here, and you can’t play around with truth. We have a cultural shift that says it doesn’t matter what you believe, as long as you believe something. And you’re sincere about it. Now that sounds really good. It sounds like a nice God, doing nice things for nice people. But the problem is, it doesn’t hold water. When you, I don’t want to go to a doctor who believes that about medicine.

Pete Alwinson:
Right.

Steve Brown:
You know, he may give me a spoonful of honey for my cancer and that’s not what I need. And I do not want to fly with a pilot, who believes that about aeronautical engineering. Doesn’t matter what you believe, as long as you believe you’re flying right. And you’re, and we wouldn’t do that in any place. And that’s true here. Truth is truth because it’s true. And the Christian faith is true. Now, God is gentle and he’s kind, and he’s good. And if somebody seeks God, the Scripture says they will find him. And, I think there are truths in all religions, or most of them. There are a couple that I would have some trouble with, but I can find truth in a lot of places. I can read an atheist stupid book and read it and find some truth in it. So, I don’t know, you know, I think you ought to affirm your daughter’s heart. Don’t make an issue out of it. Just tell her honey, I hope you’re right. She knows where you stand, so you don’t have to fight about it. It was wise to give her Mere Christianity, and there’s a lot of material to read.

And then bottom line, you leave it up to God. It’s above our pay grade. You know, we’re not Christians because of anything we did. It because Jesus hugged us and who knows who Jesus hugs, you know, he hugs who he wants to hug. And so I, you know, I don’t want to make salvation, you know, we have as evangelicals have told people they were going to hell, we don’t know that.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. We don’t know who is and who isn’t.

Steve Brown:
Nobody really knows.

Pete Alwinson:
LIke you said, it’s above our pay grade, but we do need to tell them about Jesus.

Steve Brown:
That’s right. Exactly. And let, the Holy Spirit is among other things, the teacher.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
And the Holy Spirit teaches, and you got to let him do his work. And we as Calvinists are kind of in a funny place there or reformed people, because of the Ordo Salutis us and you, and you don’t need, no, don’t don’t write us and ask us a question about that. But in effect that says, that your salvation is not accomplished by your faith, it’s accomplished by his faith.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
And that comes before you have faith.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
So, if somebody didn’t have faith, but they in the Ordo Salutis, God had reached out to them, you know, and they die before they hear about Jesus, and you know, who knows?

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
That’s fun to talk about.

Pete Alwinson:
It is.

Steve Brown:
But don’t go there.

Pete Alwinson:
Not, not, not necessarily with them, but you know, it’s, it’s, it’s really important for us to understand, for God so loved the world. And what that means is that from the get go in Genesis 12, He was going to save Abraham, make Israel as a nation, but all the nations of the world would be blessed through him. And so John 3:16 affirms that, that the word world not just Jews, all kinds of ethnicities.

Steve Brown:
Yeah.

Pete Alwinson:
And I was in a Bible study and in London and they were all middle Eastern Christians and several of them had had visions of Jesus had been converted to Jesus. So God, God is reaching them as well. And everything you said, God is sovereignly reaching them. And I think everything you said about that is the right way to approach it rather than badgering our kids.

Steve Brown:
And you don’t, you don’t mess with truth.

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

Steve Brown:
You don’t mess with, why don’t you talk for a minute while I see it for find another, alright this is a, this is a hit, this is an email. What does the Bible teach on the head coverings?

Pete Alwinson:
Oh, give me an easy one, right?

Steve Brown:
Well, I’m going to let you do it while I find another question that I can answer.

Pete Alwinson:
Well, I Corinthians 11 deals with that whole subject and, you know, culturally, it was important back then in the first century for a woman to have a sense of covering on her head, as a symbol of her submission to her husband and God. Now, not in every culture, but in the cultures referred to, and so it was a thing. It is not required now. I think it was a more of a cultural environment.

Steve Brown:
And there were implications in that culture of people that didn’t have head coverings.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
They were often

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
women of the streets.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
And so it had, it had a, had a principle behind and the principle is still valid.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
Even though head coverings, although there are people listening right now who believe that head coverings and that admonishment is a part of the creative covenant. And that it hasn’t changed and women should cover their heads.

Pete Alwinson:
Good point. I neglected that. That’s true. And still to this day, a lot of Christians or those that claim to be Christians would use this. Yeah.

Steve Brown:
So that’s a, we believe, and we could be wrong. Well, I can’t, but Pete could be wrong.

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

Steve Brown:
And, but we believe that was a cultural thing and it’s no longer relevant today. Is there really no correlation between God’s discipline and our sin? Doesn’t God discipline me when I commit habitual sin?

Pete Alwinson:
Well, no, I think there is a correlation between discipline and our sin. He disciplines us, but he doesn’t judge us.

Steve Brown:
Yeah.

Pete Alwinson:
Right?

Steve Brown:
And there’s more to be said than that.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
The problem is, people have a, this is from Hebrews.

Pete Alwinson:
Yes. Right.

Steve Brown:
And legalists have a field day with this,

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
you know, they give you the Gospel and then take it away by quoting Hebrews 12:1. And then, which is to say, you got out of line, God’s going to break your legs. And so they, all of a sudden the law is imposed again and we’re under it. And we, we lose our freedom and our grace and our joy.

Pete Alwinson:
Right.

Steve Brown:
So, I don’t teach a lot on that, but what you said is true, of course there’s a correlation.

Pete Alwinson:
But, but it’s not, it’s not a,

Steve Brown:
He’s our father.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. And in the Old Testament, God was very patient with the Jews and he’s very patient with us as well.

Steve Brown:
That’s true. And so there is a correlation, but don’t go overboard on that. I’ve got a friend who stole a quarter from his mother’s pocket book, when he was twelve. He said he had cancer because of it. That’s neurotic.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s neurotic. That’s not Biblical.

Steve Brown:
We got to go. But first Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.