Yes, it would, as long as the flammable substance was in air or oxygen. All that is necessary (ELI5) is that the substance reaches a sufficient temperature. The source of the energy to get to the temperature does not matter.
In fact, most modern detonators for explosives use electricity to heat a wire that sets off the explosive.
Yes. However a flame tends to be hotter then other sources and be a more focused source of heat. So it tends to be easier to ignite things with a flame then other means. However there are daily examples of using other heat sources to ignite things. For example a gas furnace or a cigarette lighter are both using an electric spark as a source of heat to ignite them. A match use friction heating to ignite. A car cigarette lighter is just a heating coil which gets hot enough that it can ignite the end of a cigarette. And in cooking you can heat the pan enough for things to catch fire, either intentionally as part of an impressive cooking technique or unintentionally in the case of grease fires. And speaking of unintentional fires electrical fires are also caused by bad electrical connections generating enough heat to make flammable things around them catch fire.
Thanks everyone for your responses – I was confused mainly because in chemical reactions with flammable reactants (eg oxidation of ethanol), heating with fire is avoided but heating with other sources is fine, which I see is because of how hot fire is compared to most other sources of heat used in the lab.
Latest Answers