Don't you Protestants think that tradition is important? The answer to that and other questions on this edition of Key Light. I am Mike Kellogg and you are now listening to Key Light, where you can find honest answers to honest questions about God's Word. Now, here is Steve. Thanks, Mike. My pastor, Pete Owl, once in a year, on Fridays as usual. Appreciate you coming by. Good to be here. How you doing, man? I'm doing good, because it's Friday. I don't have to preach on Sunday. We're going to have the answering questions. And for those of you who have just joined us, Pete is my pastor. And he comes in on Fridays for a number of reasons. Has good stuff to say. He's my pastor. He knows dirt on me. He's also a member of our board. But we also want to make a statement about Key Light being church-friendly. We really are a pro-church, and one of the many ways that we demonstrate that is having Pete and having him as a significant part of this ministry. By the way, we love to get your questions, but you do have to write them down. Send them to Key Light, post office box 5,000 Madeleine Florida 327-9-4. Key Life Canada, post office box 32150, Cambridge, Ontario. In 3H5M3, or you can email us, Steve at keylife.org, with your regular mailing address, if you want to respond. And you always do get a response from me or a staff person or on the broadcaster in the magazine, or directly from me or somebody on the staff. So do let us have your questions. The only dumb ones, the one you don't ask. And by the way, don't use the 1-800-keylife number to ask questions. You can, but you won't get any answers. You can become a part of Key Life tapes. Our family, you can get the magazine free, the booklet free. A lot of good stuff, and you make the contribution, but you do have to write your questions down. Peter, why don't you lead us in prayer, and then we'll turn to some of these questions. All right. Father, we bow for a moment in your presence. I'm grateful that we are your children, and as we're in a new year, Lord, grateful to be starting out with you and knowing that even though we don't know what's coming up, we know that it's in your hands and your sovereign, that you're good, and that you can be completely trusted. And so as your children, we put our hand in yours for another year. We asked, Lord, that you would help us as we grow, as we ask questions. We have so much to learn, so much to do, and we pray that our hearts and our minds would be open. Father, use our leaders in our life, and as we get ready to worship this weekend, we pray that you would be with our priests and pastors, teachers, pastors, families, pastors, wives. Lord, use them, protect them, encourage them, give them a message for us, and help us to be hearing clearly the still small voice of your spirit. Lord, deal with us in a way that would honor you, help us to know grace in a deep way. We pray you'd be with key life and Steve and his ministry, and that you'd bless this ministry, Lord, for you're on our and your glory, and now we pray that even in what we do in answering questions would help your people and encourage them for we pray in the strong name of our Savior Jesus. Amen. This is an email, Pete. What does Soluscriptura mean? Isn't tradition valuable as well? In other words, you Protestants don't believe tradition is important. And you know, Protestants have been iconoclasts. We've been sort of anti-traditioned in a lot of ways, and yet we've developed our own traditions. That's true. But the traditions of the church, yeah, very beneficial and very helpful. I think at the time of the Reformation there were two major schools, some wanted to have a thoroughgoing reform and get away from everything, and Martin Luther and others wanted to do less, less of a radical transition. Now we're looking as Protestants see tradition at the same level that a Roman Catholic would do. That's right. That's right. How would we do it? How would we know? We could see tradition as informative, as important, but not as authoritative in the same way that a Roman Catholic would do it. For instance, I'm an old guy, and when I preach, I check commentaries not to find out what to say, because I know what to say. You and I both have been doing this long enough that we know what to say, but I check the commentaries because I don't want to get out of the mainstream of apostolic Christianity with a church's thought, and I find that if I'm outside of that, I sound like I am, but I'm not ever. When I'm outside of that, I'm outside of the tradition in which the Holy Spirit is operated for two thousand years. And so tradition is important, and we have our traditions too. We just don't see it as revelatory or as authoritative in the same way the Roman Catholic would do it. That's right. Even, for instance, the use of the apocrypha can help your faith. It will help us in our piety, but even though it may not be authoritative, but it's tradition that can be helpful. That's a very very true. Oh, I know what I want to do. I just got a straightness out. This is an email, and I'm not going to mention the name. Just a note to relay my disappointment in your November 13 broadcast. As I was listening to the program, I was shocked at your comment. I think God was wrong about that. Well, it's true. We don't understand everything that's in God's will. It's all true of true that God doesn't make mistakes. You said that. Well, yeah, because I say that a lot. We were talking about women's ordination, and I said the reason I knew I wasn't sexist is because I disagreed with God about that. Well, dear one, that was a facetious comment. If I were God, I'd kick the world to pieces. Aren't you glad I'm not God, and that I don't get a vote. The point is that God rules it all. He's right about everything. Of course he is, and he's wise about everything, and every decision he makes is proper. But that doesn't mean I like it all. I mean, I'd like to be honest and say it is my delight all the time. Everything that God says. But it's not. But I'm wrong, and he's right, and we need to remember that. But it's an exhibition of grace that you can say that, tongue in cheek, and know that the Father's okay with that. That's right. I tell God, you know, I don't agree with this. I wish you wouldn't do it this way. And God says, child, I'm God, and you're not, but I love you. And that's okay. That's the kind of freedom. It's not altogether different. And man, I've quoted this so often from St. Teresa. Lord, you'd have more friends if you treated the ones you had a little bit better. Well, St. Teresa was saying, I disagree with the way you're treating all these Christians. But she didn't say it as an arrogant, twit, shaking or fistic, God, she said it as a child of God who loved God and who trusted him and everything. And I trust that that's true. And you're not a heretic. I mean, you and I are in such an uptight denomination doctrineally and theologically that you'd have been burned by now. Oh man, I'd already kicked me out. A lot of looking to do that. They just haven't been able to find the material because I'm Orthodox. Okay. It sends me the way Christians from Ohio, the way Christians throughout the world have acted for centuries, the Crusades, slavery, the genocide of Native Americans, etc. As a new Christian, it is one who avoided Christianity for so long due to this very issue. How can I deal with this now? Does the sins of the Father apply to this? You know, a couple of quick thoughts from me and that is one is that the early church was pacifistic to the point where they would say that if you're going to be a Christian, you can't join the Emperor's army. You couldn't be in the Roman army. And partly that was due to the fact that you would have to worship the Emperor to be in it. But Christians have done things down through centuries that they aren't proud of and that we don't need to baptize and say it was okay, it was wrong. On the other hand, some aspects of the Crusades were for good reasons to regain the Holy Land, to fight the infidel. You meant to get it wrong? Even if they did it wrong and so our best of motives and our best of actions are mixed with incredible sinfulness and good values as well. Sure. And I honestly believe that our witness to the world isn't that we do it right but that we've done it wrong and Jesus loves us anyway. And if we start trying to defend the indefensible and there's no defense for slavery, there's no defense for the kind of programs that have been done in the name of Christ or even the Crusades and the slaughter that place, even though there is more to be said about the Crusades than what we read today to be politically correct. However, all of us, we've done a lot of bad stuff because we're simple people and simple people sin. That's why Jesus died for us and our witness is a witness of redemption and forgiveness and we're getting better because God's not finished with us yet. Not one of purity and we've done it all right so don't try to defend something that isn't defensible. You don't have anything to defend. That's exactly right and as I look back in my family, we've got in our extended family, we've got our fair share of divorces and alcoholism and all kinds of bad things but on the other hand, you know, got some missionaries and some pastors and we've got the good and the bad. Sure. And so I think the great thing about it is that we can honestly say yeah that was wrong but Jesus is right. Yeah, don't look at us. Look at Jesus. That's the point. We're not here. But we've got to do our best now to make sure that as we do our actions as we look ahead that we are as biblically consistent and as faithful to Jesus as we can be. Oh, I agree. But I'm not an excuse to say well we're bad so let's do something else bad, obviously. But I think we're going to find that the mix within the body of Christ because we're mixed people in terms of good and bad. Yeah, exactly. This is from this an email when we died did we go to heaven right away? What do you think? Well, you've heard my thing my speech about time, you know, says if the sound of the last trumpet the dead in Christ will rise. And then Jesus said today you're going to be with me in paradise and Paul said to be absent from the bodies to be present with the Lord and they seem to contradict each other. And I think the Bible is trying to give a reference to something that is unexplainable and that's not linear and that's outside of time. But that's my own surmise. I don't know. So you're saying when we die will be there at the last trumpet, but we'll also be there immediately. Yeah. See, I think we think of things always having a past and present future. God's called eternal now. The Lamb of God was slain from the foundation of the Arab. I think the Bible is making reference to something that our finite minds don't understand. That is when you die you move into a realm that isn't linear time anymore. You're there at the last trumpet, you're there at the moment of your death, etc. And I think you're right, probably, but I don't know how to do that. So when you die you go to be with Jesus and then when it comes again you get your body. Yeah. That's how I treat you. Traditionally, that's the way that's been said. I can't do it. Well, that's good. Because I can't. I can't think of the absolute. Well, so. So he knows the truth. We gotta get out of here. Hey guys, whenever you're right or go, do give us the call letters of this great station. We'll love to hear from you whenever you're right and we gotta go. But first, I must say that key life is a listener supported production of key life network.