“Is everybody going to heaven?”

Steve Brown:
Is everybody going to heaven? 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. Hi Pete.

Pete Alwinson:
Hey.

Steve Brown:
Doing good?

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
I am, too. At my age, getting out of bed is doing good. Pete comes in, and we’ve been doing this for years. And we spend, because we get so many questions, and we love your questions. Pete comes in on Fridays, when we started this, he was my pastor and I had to be nice to him. And then he now has an exploding men’s ministry that just is amazing. And you ought to check it out. You can check it out by going to ForgeTruth.com and you’re going to be glad I told you about that. As I said, Pete has been coming in for years and we’ve been answering questions. And we love your questions. You can send your questions to

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Pete Alwinson:
Oh man, Steve.

Steve Brown:
Well, let’s try everything. You can’t.

Pete Alwinson:
Repent of that.

Steve Brown:
Okay. I repent, too. And Pete, I’m kidding around, of course. Pete, lead us in prayer, and then we’ll turn to some of these questions.

Pete Alwinson:
All right, let’s pray. Our Great Father, thank you for your goodness to us, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We come into your presence now at the end of this week. And Lord, we just ask that you would continue your work in our lives. Lord, we need you, we love you because you first loved us. We thank you for that time that you stopped us dead in our tracks and made us know that we needed to have a relationship with you. We wouldn’t have wanted it unless you convinced us in our hearts. And so, we praise you, we thank you, Lord Jesus, that you did everything, you’re all sufficient for our salvation. And so, we rest in you and you alone. Lord, thank you for Key Life and for all those who do so much behind the scenes in getting the word out and doing the productions and so much to get the message of grace out to so many. Bless Steve, bless this ministry. And now Lord, we just commit our time to Q & A to you and ask that you would use it in a powerful way. We would be able to honor you, in Jesus’ Name. Amen.

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

Caller 1:
In light of Romans 5:17 and 18, and I Timothy 4:10, it seems to me that there’s two groups of people in eternity with God, those that are the elect and those that are not, those that are ruined and reigning in righteousness and those that are justified. And so, one is a small group, one is the rest of everybody. So, this includes I Corinthians 15 as well, includes some of Paul’s writings about the people of the flood being with God in the Spirit. So, this is a little off topic, maybe, but John Wayne’s in heaven and so is everybody else because in eternity, God can clean up anybody. I don’t care how many ages it is. Paul said in Ephesians.

The ages to come will produce the results that God wants.

No one perishes. God’s not willing that any should perish.

Steve Brown:
That is an interesting comment, and one I wish were true.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
I just do. I think any Christian who was not wanting universalism to be true probably is not walking with Jesus. I mean, we have a concern for the lost. But there are the lost, and there are some clear passages that you can’t get around where there’s no wiggle room. That passage in Matthew 25 where the sheep are separated from the goats, and one fed the hungry and the other didn’t. One went to prison and the other didn’t. And then Jesus makes a very heavy statement at the end about where the goats end up. And it’s, and most of our teaching, believe it or not, on the subject of hell, comes from Jesus himself.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah, that’s right. Jesus talking about hell. Most of our really hard teachings really do come from Jesus.

Steve Brown:
Oh, they really do. C.S. Lewis said.

The doctrine of hell is a monument to human freedom.

I mean, God doesn’t choose, I don’t think. I think we choose. And we choose to go and he greases the tracks.

Pete Alwinson:
Well, you know, we’re born with Adamic sin and Adam’s guilt. And so, we do what comes natural, right?

Steve Brown:
That’s right. And we do it cause we want to.

Pete Alwinson:
We do it and we like it. We like sin. And so, it’s only with the intervention of God that we come to hate it.

Steve Brown:
That’s so true.

Pete Alwinson:
But I appreciate that. I love that you say that we ought to, deeply saddened about the reality of hell and that anybody would go there. And so, that urge, that love of people is that urge that leads people to universalism. But I understand it, but it’s just not taught. It’s not taught. And he’s twisted a couple of those Scriptures. He read them kind of fast and I couldn’t. exegete them as quick as I wanted to, but that’s his desire, and I appreciate that. But when we get to heaven, we will know that God did everything just.

Steve Brown:
And we may, in fact, leaning a little bit in his direction, be quite surprised at who is there, and who isn’t.

Pete Alwinson:
That is true.

Steve Brown:
It might be, and if the Ordo salutis is true, that the faith comes from God, and so we are in fact saved before we have faith, because he has done that for us, might be a lot of people.

Pete Alwinson:
I think we will be a little bit surprised.

Steve Brown:
I think so too. This is an e-mail question. Why should we witness? Is it really a requirement? Weren’t you just listening to what we just said? That’s why we witness. Is it required?

Pete Alwinson:
It is required. It is required, I mean, that’s the Great Commission, right? Matthew 28:18 through 20. Jesus’ parting words to us.

Steve Brown:
Go into all the world, He said.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. Make disciples.

Steve Brown:
And by the way, it’s not only required you’re doing it, you know, everybody’s got to serve somebody, Bob Dylan, that’s a great statement. Everybody witnesses to somebody too. And so, in our lives and where we go and what we say and what we do, we are a witness.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. You know, and I love that we get to be a part of the family business. I mean, that’s our business. We’re in the family and Jesus is about redeeming people, and we get to carry that out. And it’s a lifestyle, and don’t be afraid of it. Enjoy it.

Steve Brown:
Enjoy it. And just don’t duck when you haven’t. But, you know, one of the things that we have to say, and that’s implied in this question, is it required? No, nothing is required. The law’s been set aside. It has been fully satisfied by Jesus. When Jesus said, it’s finished, it’s finished. He gave you to be clothed in his righteousness, not yours. So, what you do in terms of your eternal destiny is already settled. So, don’t obsess about it, just do it.

Pete Alwinson:
Right, right. We’re not saying that if you do it, it adds to your salvation. That’s ridiculous, but it’s because you are saved, you witness.

Steve Brown:
That’s true, exactly. What does the Bible teach about our worship?

Pete Alwinson:
That you should.

Steve Brown:
Are drums allowed?

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah, drums.

Steve Brown:
Well, I’m sure that’s the essence of the question.

Pete Alwinson:
You’re trying to get us in trouble.

Steve Brown:
No, the war’s already going on. It’s called worship wars.

Pete Alwinson:
I know, man.

Steve Brown:
And there’s nothing that, you know Randy Pope and you and I are both friends with him. He was the pastor at a large mega church in Atlanta. And very early on, Presbyterians don’t do contemporary music very well. We just, you know, we just don’t. We think that God gave us an organ, use it. And so, that’s changing. But Randy, years ago, before, he decided, I’m going to make the music conform to this congregation and what they like. And he did, and man, did he get hit. And he was speaking at our denomination’s general assembly, and he said, if you knew by playing the drums that one person would be in heaven and be saved because you did, would you play the drums? The argument was over.

Pete Alwinson:
You can’t argue with that, I love the old hymns and I was raised in all those old hymns. But when I go to a church and we have a couple in Orlando that just do the organ. I miss the drums, man. I go, man, come on, speed this thing up. I worship better with drums and a little bit guitar support and come on.

Steve Brown:
And that’s a matter of taste.

Pete Alwinson:
It is, and preference.

Steve Brown:
We don’t do anybody a favor when we universalize our taste. We universalize truth.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
But taste is a different thing. And I would recommend, another friend of ours, Reggie Kidd’s book on worship is so helpful in that area. And if your church is having trouble right now with the worship wars, and some people are really angry and have become a serial killer on one side or the other, go get Reggie Kidd’s book.

Pete Alwinson:
It’s called With One Voice, and he talks about the different styles, but it’s one voice of worship. And if you’re in a real contemporary church, I would say, start listening to the words where, and you know, we don’t go to church to sing love songs to Jesus. And there are a lot of songs that are being used in churches today that are not really worshipful.

Steve Brown:
That’s true.

Pete Alwinson:
That really don’t bring honor and glory to the Triune God. And that lead us that are so human focused that we lose the divine, the theological.

Steve Brown:
So, pay attention.

Pete Alwinson:
Pay attention and tell your worship director to have biblically based songs.

Steve Brown:
But as a matter of fact, contemporary Christian music is by and large, pretty solid theologically.

Pete Alwinson:
By and large.

Steve Brown:
Yeah. Now, there are exceptions to that, but there have always been exceptions to that in the church. People have written hymns that just violated everything you knew about, uh, what ought to be doing in church.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
But going back, to your initial answer, which I like. How do we worship and you said, do it. Because we were born to do it, weren’t we?

Pete Alwinson:
We were, and I think it’s a bigger part for men even, a lot of guys don’t think that worship is important, but it really is important.

Steve Brown:
Hey, we’ve got to go. Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.