“Is John Wayne in heaven?”

Steve Brown:
Is John Wayne in heaven? The answer to that, sort of, 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 hard questions, then welcome to Key Life. Here’s our host, author, and seminary professor, Steve Brown, along with Pete Alwinson from ForgeTruth.

Steve Brown:
Thank you Matthew. Hey Pete. Don’t even go there. Okay?

Pete Alwinson:
Oh, we’ll have fun with that one.

Steve Brown:
Hey, that’s Pete Alwinson and he comes in, as you know, on Fridays. We’ve been doing this for a lot of years and it’s fun. We may not be right, but we’re never uncertain, and we appreciate that you join us. By the way, check out ForgeTruth.com great podcast there, a lot of good stuff, especially if you’re a guy, and if you’re the other sex, the feminine side, you’ll find out some stuff there that you need to know, too, about the men that you love. So, go to ForgeTruth.com by the way, we, Pete and I answer your questions and we love your questions. You can ask a question anytime you want to, by calling 1-800-KEY-LIFE, following instructions, and we record your question and then sometimes use it 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
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or you can e-mail us at [email protected] and if you can help us financially, please do. I promise we’ll squeeze every gift for the glory of God. And if you can’t, we understand. Do say a prayer for this ministry. It’s expensive, and the bills are paid up to this moment. But I worry about tomorrow, so say a prayer. Pete, why don’t you pray for us, and then we’ll get to these questions.

Pete Alwinson:
You got it. Let’s pray together. Our Great God, we do come into your presence today, and we’re so thankful that we belong to you. And we honor you, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And Lord, we know that we wouldn’t love you if you didn’t love us first and come after us. You are the sovereign King of the universe. And Lord, thank you for making us come alive in Christ, making us understand the truth of the gospel and our need for faith and trust in Jesus and Jesus alone. Lord, you know us and you know our needs and we have many. And Lord, at the end of the week, we’re not going to lie. We need help. We need your relationships restored with people. We need bills to be paid. We, Father, we have trials that we don’t even know how to negotiate or how to work out the problems that we have. And so, we come to you and we look forward to this week-end. And we ask that not only would you work in our life before we worship, but in the time of worship. Lord, we pray that you’d be with our pastors and priests and leaders and teachers and that you would use them in a powerful way to bring to us the gospel of grace and it would change us. And that we would live in a way that honors and glorifies you and sets us freer and freer. Thanks for Steve, thanks for all the people at Key Life. We commit this broadcast to you and the Q&A. In Jesus’ Name we pray. Amen.

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

Caller 1:
I just listened to your program this morning. Now, he made the statement that there were no John Waynes in heaven. John Wayne’s son walked into John Wayne’s bedroom one morning, and his father was on his knees at his bed, having received Christ as his Savior, listening to Billy Graham on television. This was years and years ago. He should know who’s in heaven and who’s not, before he makes statements over the radio. That’s all I have to say.

Steve Brown:
Well, I feel better for your having said it. I mean, I kind of like John Wayne.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah, I mean, I grew up watching John Wayne.

Steve Brown:
It wouldn’t be heaven if he weren’t there.

Pete Alwinson:
I know.

Steve Brown:
I have a lot of questions, but that’s not what I was saying. You’ve got to go with me when I make a statement like that. I was not saying John Wayne was not in heaven. I was saying there are no John Waynes in heaven. And I was making a point, which is a cogent and brilliant point, that individualism won’t get you to heaven. You can’t work on it. You can’t get out your six shooter and shoot the bad guys and go to heaven. You only get to heaven one way, and that is by the blood of Christ. So, there are no John Waynes in heaven, even though, assuming that she has her facts right, that John Wayne is there, and I feel better about that.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. Well said. I mean, you know, it is hard when you are, you’re an off the book kind of guy. And so, you use a lot of great stuff that most of us who’ve been around you for a long time, we get it, but you were a little defensive there, Steve.

Steve Brown:
I know, I know. I get, yeah, I know it could have been worse. And Buddy Greene said to me, the problem with you, Steve, is that people first don’t know you, what you just said, and secondly, they only listen to soundbites. And that’s a good point too.

Pete Alwinson:
Boy, it’s true. I find I have to be so careful of some of the things I say.

Steve Brown:
Oh, me too. No, I don’t.

Pete Alwinson:
I do. You don’t.

Steve Brown:
This is the first time that some of you are watching this. We’re doing a video experiment today. And you get to see how good looking Pete is and how old I am. And I’m an old guy and the good thing about being old is you don’t care. You say anything. Pete, this is an e-mail. I recently listened to your take on Proverbs, but was bummed out that you didn’t tackle Proverbs 31 that much. What is the point of Proverbs 31? That’s the woman whose family rises up and calls her blessed?

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah, but you know Proverbs 31 also has the first several verses 1 through 9 about the man, the Proverbs 31 man. It’s the king and what his mom says to him, and it’s profound.

Steve Brown:
Oh, it’s wonderful.

Pete Alwinson:
So, Proverbs 31 is about, is like any other chapter in Proverbs. It’s giving wisdom, skill for living, right? This is how you live a successful life, following Christ, following God. And so, it’s got a man’s section and a woman’s section.

Steve Brown:
That’s a great chapter. By the way, I’m sorry I didn’t spend much time there. I have a number of women who’ve told me don’t go there, that just makes me feel guilty. And I have another friend who’s a Bible teacher, who says that Proverbs 31 is not talking about one woman, but a bunch of them, one woman can’t do all that.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. I think it’s kind of setting a model, the King is setting a model for Biblical manhood and the woman is setting a model for Biblical femininity and I love it.

Steve Brown:
Yeah, I do too.

Pete Alwinson:
And by the way, your wife and my wife fit the Proverbs 31.

Steve Brown:
Proverbs says that.

Her family rises up and calls her blessed.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
Do you know what we did? And we recorded this program recently with Kimberly Iverson.

Pete Alwinson:
Ah, yes.

Steve Brown:
And what a sweet, as you know, they’re just, they have a wonderful ministry in Atlanta. And they have nine children. And they have two twins on the way. That’ll make eleven. I told her she could get to heaven without grace. They won’t even ask about Jesus. But you kind of rise up and call women like that blessed. And it was a great program on our talk show. Mark 5, why did Jesus send the demons into the pigs?

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. Good question. What’s your take on that?

Steve Brown:
Well, they were there and you know, you can make something more out of it than you can, but you can also go down that road and recognize the uncleanness of pigs in the eyes of every Jew and every Muslim too, by the way. So, maybe there’s a statement that one, a pedagogical statement that one can make about why he sent them into the pigs. Dirt going to dirt, evil going to evil. But I, generally when I’ve taught that, I’ve just said they were there. Peter, Jesus was looking around and he said, Man, I’ve got to do something with these demons and they’re going to do whatever I tell them to do. And you remember that the pigs then ran off the cliff and died.

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

Steve Brown:
So, that may be a statement about evil too.

Pete Alwinson:
A statement of evil and a statement of Jesus’ power just by his word. You know, in revelation, it talks about him coming back and with the sword that comes out of his mouth. Why? Because he doesn’t need a literal sword. He just speaks it, man.

Steve Brown:
I know. I know. Do you think sometimes we obsess on the subject of demons?

Pete Alwinson:
I do.

Steve Brown:
And we worry, I get that question a lot from people.

Pete Alwinson:
I do. And I think that, I do. And I think that the demonic world, and there’s a lot of new movies out, Russell Crowe is out in one, you know, now, he’s actually out on a couple, but the demonic world wants us afraid of them. And what Revelation consistently helps us see is that even during this age, Satan is bound. He does damage, but he’s bound, he’s under God’s control.

Steve Brown:
That’s right.

Pete Alwinson:
And there’s only one King of Heaven and Earth. And we need not be afraid.

Steve Brown:
And I John 4:4 says.

Greater is he who is in you,

that would be the Spirit of God

than he who is in the world.

And that would be, so don’t let him, don’t let him do that to you.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. Hey, that was pretty good. You quoted the exact text. You are a Navigator.

Steve Brown:
Yeah. Well, sometimes I know. If the clay can’t talk to the potter, isn’t all creation in vain?

Pete Alwinson:
Whoa.

Steve Brown:
Who said that?

Pete Alwinson:
I don’t know. I’m not sure.

Steve Brown:
Well, if you use a metaphor, which is used about the clay and the potter and it’s a Biblical metaphor, it’s a good one, but you don’t take a metaphor to the wall and say that means that you can’t talk. So, don’t go further with it than it goes, as a matter of fact.

Pete Alwinson:
And the metaphor really is that the potter has every right to do with the clay, what he wants,

Steve Brown:
exactly what he wants to do

Pete Alwinson:
that’s the point, right?

Steve Brown:
And he does it right. And he does it quite well. But if you go to the reality, to which the metaphor points, of course, we get to say, of course we get to speak to the potter, of course the greatest gift that we’ve been given is that we get to talk to the King.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
The God of the universe, which blows me away. Every morning I think, Jesus, I don’t believe I’m here. That’s a great and high and holy compliment. Guys, we’ve got to go, but first let me say Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.