The Narrow Path 8/28

music... Good afternoon, and welcome to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg, and we're live for an hour each weekday afternoon with an open phone line for you to call if you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith. We have an hour together without commercial breaks, and if you'd like to get in line, you're late. The lines are full, but I'm going to give you a phone number. Right now we have our full lines, and we're going to be taking these calls so lines will be opening up, and you'll want to have this number handy if you want to get in when these lines open. The number is 844-484-5737. That's 844-484-5737. Our first caller today is from Abraham in Spokane, Washington. Abraham, welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Thank you very much, Steve. I have two questions, one on inspiration and another on the incarnation. If you would please first talk a little about the plenary versus the verbal forms of the inspiration of Scripture and your views on each, and the second question on the incarnation, on the kenotic versus other theories of the incarnation and your views on each, if you would please. Okay.

I'm glad to talk about that. On the matter of inspiration, do I believe in the verbal or plenary view of inspiration? I don't necessarily have labels like that for my view of inspiration. What I understand is that each book is written by an author to whom God made things known and that author repeated them or gave them to us. They didn't always do it in exactly the same way. For example, the prophets, Daniel, for example, when he had a dream or a vision, he wrote it down. Maybe the next day or later, he wrote it down. Now, the dream or the vision was inspired. It was information revealed by God. We don't know, because he doesn't tell us, whether he was experiencing, at the time he wrote it down, a phenomenon called inspiration at that moment. It wouldn't make a difference to me if he accurately recorded what he received in his dream. That is an inspired message, but I don't know what his psychological condition was in terms of writing it.

Likewise, the gospel writers, the gospel writers, none of them actually mention if they were inspired or not, nor do they seem to make an issue of it. It really doesn't matter to them to bring such a thing up, because what they're telling is true. Now, the information they tell is about Jesus, certainly an inspired revelation from God, if there ever was one. They saw him. They heard him. They recorded what he said and did.

They don't mention anything about plenary or verbal inspiration of their writings. They just say, this is what happened. Now, Luke, interestingly, of the three gospels, tells us this. He says, at the beginning of his gospel, that he was not the first to write down the things that Jesus said and did, that there were others.

He was familiar with them, and he had spoken to the eyewitnesses, and that he said comprehensive knowledge of the subject. Then he goes on to tell the story, and he said, I think that's interesting, because that would be a good place for him to have said, and I'm inspired by the Holy Spirit as I write. If he wants us to understand that he's telling the truth, certainly inspiration would be a good thing to mention, but instead he mentions that he had thorough knowledge of the subject. Paul talks that way, too, in Ephesians chapter 3. He talks about the mystery of Christ, which was revealed to him by the Holy Spirit. He said it was hidden from generations past, but was revealed to the apostles and prophets by the Spirit. But he says, I hope that when I write, you'll understand my knowledge of this subject.

In other words, he's not saying, I am at this very moment. My pen is being moved by some force of the Holy Spirit, but rather I'm writing about a subject that I know about, and I know about it because God revealed it to me. So I think a lot of times, in thinking of the inspiration of scripture, people think that means that when the writers were writing, something almost magical was happening to them like they weren't in their own mind at all. Other people believe that they were in their own mind, but God was superintending every word that they wrote, so that if they, you know, he wouldn't let them even with their own mind write down something that wasn't, you know, his word.

Mr. Greg, can I interject just for a second and ask you really quick in response to that? So when ministers or others talk about, they ask the question, is the Bible the word of God, is that — not to second-guess everybody's understanding of that — but is that kind of the word they're at when they ask that question? They ask, well, do you believe the Bible's the word of God? Well, yeah, I mean, the thing is, there's people who don't believe the Bible and people who do. I'm one of those who believes the Bible. I believe everything it says. I'm not willing to impose on the Bible traditional ideas that are traditions of evangelicals any more than I'm willing to impose on my views of Mary ideas that are traditions of Catholics.

I mean, Mary is a wonderful woman and the Bible is a reliable revelation from God, but I'm not going to make up things about the Bible that it doesn't say about itself, even though my evangelical heritage does that. And so what I'm saying is the Bible is true and God is the one who gave it to us. He revealed himself through Christ and gave us reliable witnesses to tell us about Christ, what he said and did, and we have those in the Gospels. He revealed himself to the apostles. He revealed his gospel to the apostles and they wrote according to the wisdom that he gave them.

They never really claimed that they were writing like prophets write, you know, like oracles. Only once, as far as I can remember, does Paul ever even speak as if he was an oracle. He kind of breaks away from his normal way of writing in 2 Corinthians 6 and he says, you know, basically, therefore be, well, let me turn to it so I can, I can give you his actual words, but he talks like he's a prophet. He says in verse 17 of 2 Corinthians 6, 17, 18, come, therefore come out from among them and be separate, says the Lord.

Do not touch what is unclean and I will receive you and I will be your father, et cetera, et cetera. Sounds like a prophetic oracle, although he is quoting a couple of verses from the Old Testament. He speaks it as if it's an oracle, but he's actually quoting scripture. But some people think he is giving an oracle like a prophet.

If he is, it's very uncommon for him because most of the time he just writes as himself telling what God authorized him to say. The prophets also, I believe they were inspired by God and they got their visions and their dreams and their words from God. But I don't know at the moment they wrote things down what was going on in their heads. For example, Jeremiah wrote out a whole long prophecy and showed it to the king and the king tore it up or cut it up with a knife and burned it. And so Jeremiah just wrote it down again and added more words also, he said. You know, I mean, I don't know if we're supposed to understand, certainly Jeremiah doesn't imply that he came under a whole new wave of inspiration to rewrite the prophecies. It's assumed he knew what the prophecies were. He had received them from God earlier and he was able to write them down. That a person can accurately write down what God told him or what God revealed is good enough for me. Now, if we want to add to that, that there was some magic going on.

I shouldn't use the word magic because that's occultic, but I mean something that would seem magical, something that would seem supernatural going on as they put their pen to the parchment. Well, many people believe that. I certainly was raised believing that, but I don't find any writer of the Bible claiming that.

And so I have to wonder how much of that is an evangelical tradition and how much of it is, you know, necessary to believe. Now, I believe the Bible is the word of God for that reason. I believe God has spoken to us through the apostles and prophets who wrote it.

Yes, sir. But I will say this. Somebody asked me on the air many years ago, why do you call the Bible the word of God when the Bible doesn't call itself the word of God? It says that Jesus is the word of God. Well, I was a little interested in that, so I did some research and I looked up every place in the Bible that speaks of the word of God, and they were correct. There's not any place in the Bible where the Bible itself is called the word of God, but the gospel that is preached by the apostles is said to be the word of God.

That doesn't tell us anything about the actual physical writing of it, but the message they had is called the word of God. And of course, Jesus is also called the word of God. But most of the time in the New Testament, if you read the expression word of God, it's actually referring to the preaching of the gospel. They went into this town and they preached the word of God is pretty much a standard way you're going to find that expression. And it's talking about the preaching of the gospel. So what they preached was the word of God. What they wrote, no doubt, was very much in agreement with what they preached. But it doesn't tell us whether there was something supernatural going on while they wrote it down.

And I'm not sure why there would need to be. As long as they're telling me the truth, the things that God revealed, then I have a divine revelation from God represented in the pages of Scripture. And that's good enough for me if I want to know the mind of God.

And if I want to add other layers of theory to what was going on in their minds or their spirits when they wrote, I'll have to do that from external sources. The Bible doesn't tell me. As far as the incarnation of Christ goes, I kind of hold the kenotic theory, which is the idea that Jesus emptied himself. The word kenosis means emptied, and it's taken from Philippians chapter 2 where it says Jesus existed in the form of God, but he emptied himself and took on himself the form of the servant. The idea is that what he did was actually limit himself. He actually emptied himself of his supernatural divine prerogatives as God and lived as a man under handicaps like us. Now it doesn't seem like he was under those handicaps because he raised the dead and healed the sick and walked on water and did miracles and stuff. However, the apostles did many of the same kinds of miracles, and they weren't God. They were humans acting in the power of the Holy Spirit.

And that's what Jesus said he was doing. He said he was acting in the power of the Holy Spirit. It says in Luke chapter 4 that after the temptation of Jesus, he returned in the power of the Holy Spirit to minister in Galilee. Jesus said, if I'm casting out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. In Acts chapter 1, it says that Jesus, with his disciples, it says he had given them instructions through the Holy Spirit. In other words, Jesus operated through the Spirit, and he gave those same gifts to the Spirit that operated through him to his body, the church, and we see them being done by members of his body in the book of Acts as well.

And sometimes since that time. So I believe that Jesus, it's very realistic to say that Jesus did empty himself of his divine abilities and trusted in his Father and walked in the Spirit like he expects us to do. And one reason I say that is because we know that God is omniscient, but Jesus was not. God is omnipotent.

He never runs out of energy, but Jesus got very tired and fell asleep often from weariness. We find that Jesus is under instructions from his Father and enabled by his Father to do things, but he doesn't know everything. He says he doesn't. He tells us that. He says, as for that day, no man knows that day, nor do the angels, nor does the Son.

He means himself. He says only the Father knows that. So Jesus himself declares himself to not be omniscient and not to be omnipotent. He says, I can do nothing except what the Father shows me, the works I do.

That's the Father does the works in me, he said. As far as being omnipotent, he wasn't omnipotent. He could become exhausted, and he wasn't omnipresent. He was one place at a time, and he wasn't every place at the same time. So by becoming a man, he did apparently empty himself of many of the prerogatives he had before he became a man as God, and he had to live under the same handicaps we do.

That's what my view is. Now, I know I read once, I was reading, I guess it was J. I. Packer's book, Knowing God. He was talking about this kinetic theory, and he was thinking it was heresy. But then he'd think I was a heretic because I'm not a Calvinist, too. But I don't hold views because they're traditionally called heresy or orthodoxy. I hold views because I find them taught or not taught in the Bible.

That's how I make my decisions. All right. Hey, we've had a long time together, and I've got a lot of people waiting, but I hope that's helpful to you. Go right ahead. Thank you so much. Okay, Abraham. Thanks for your call. Okay.

Travis from San Diego, California. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. How you doing, Steve? I'm okay. When Jesus come back, and when he come back, he could come back any day. If nobody ever heard the word of God of all these billions of people in the world, would they go to heaven right away?

I'm sorry. If Jesus came back today, what would happen to the people who've never heard the word of God? Is that what you're saying?

Yes. Would they go to heaven? They wouldn't go to heaven because of their ignorance, because no one is saved by ignorance. In fact, the Bible indicates that ignorance is what is the enemy of our salvation.

God said, my people perish for lack of knowledge. Not knowing something isn't going to save you. However, we can believe that those who belong to Christ will be saved even if they don't know everything that they would like to know or would be good for them to know. For example, you and I believe that Jesus died for our sins and rose again and he's returning and things like that.

We do believe that because it is true and we have that knowledge. But there are things we don't know. We don't know all the details of the second coming.

There's lots of controversy about those things and lots of people have different theories. Even as we picture Christ, our picture of Christ may not be exactly the same because we probably have our own mental images of him. It's like there are things we don't know about Jesus and about God and about even the doctrines we believe in.

We don't know everything. Therefore, we have to believe that God will save those who have met the conditions for salvation through Christ despite ignorance of some things. Now there are people who do not know the name of Christ. They've never heard the gospel preached. They know there's a God. They know that God deserves their loyalty and they have sought God. Sometimes they've done through religions that are deceptions.

Other times they may not be associated with any religion. They're just in their own heart seeking God. Like I mean Cornelius was doing that kind of through the Jewish religion.

He was a gentile but Cornelius was doing that but God knew his heart. His prayers were heard by God the Bible says and he was given the opportunity to hear the gospel. Now some people in that condition may not have the opportunity to hear the gospel if there's no Christians in their vicinity, in their lifetime and therefore maybe they'll have a chance to hear it after they die.

I don't know. I don't know what God's going to do but I do know that God wants all people to be saved and if people have it in their heart to serve and please God but they've simply never heard about Christ, that doesn't mean that Christ is impotent to save them. Christ can do whatever he wants to do. He paid the price for all people and if he sees in the heart of somebody one who would be his disciple if they could, if they knew, then he has every right to reveal himself to them before or after death as far as I know. I say he has the right to.

I don't know what he will do. But the answer is no. People who are ignorant will not be saved just by being ignorant. If they've never heard the gospel, it doesn't save them. But people might be saved despite being ignorant as you and I are somewhat ignorant about many things but yet we're saved. God doesn't require people to know everything in order to be saved just to have their heart given to him and of course Jesus died for everyone so Jesus can accept anyone whose heart he recognizes as good as we saw as I say in the case of Cornelius and others. Okay let's talk to Tim from Sun City, Arizona. Tim, welcome to The Narrow Path.

Thanks for calling. Steve, my question is based on John 16, 23, and 26. Is it okay to speak directly to Jesus in prayer or are we disobeying him if we don't speak only to the Father in prayer? Well Jesus said in that day you will ask me nothing but whatever you ask the Father in my name it will be given to you. So he apparently is teaching very plainly to pray to the Father. Of course he had done that earlier when the disciples said teach us to pray.

He said okay when you pray say our Father which art in heaven. So Jesus taught the apostles to pray to the Father and we find that that's what they did. We find one of their prayers recorded in Acts chapter 4 I guess it is where they address the Father. They actually call him Lord but they're speaking to the Father because they say to him your son Jesus you know and therefore that's obviously they're talking to the Father. Paul also in Ephesians 3 says I bow my knee to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. So Paul prayed, the apostles prayed, Jesus told us to pray to the Father. Now one could say well okay he told us to pray to the Father but should we pray to Jesus also?

Again we pray to both. Well Jesus said in that day you will ask me nothing. You will ask the Father. So it sounds to me like he's saying I'm not the one you're going to be asking about things. My Father is the one you're going to be talking to about it. So is it a sin to pray to Jesus? It cannot be a sin to pray to Jesus or to talk to Jesus. He's told us that our requests should be made to the Father. Now I communicate with my wife about many things and most of the things I say to her are not asking her for anything.

I'm not making requests necessarily. We're just communicating. We can communicate with Jesus. He's our Lord. He's our King.

He's our shepherd. He's our friend and that being so there's every reason that we could feel comfortable communicating with him but when it comes to praying and asking for things Jesus said that's the Father's business. Remember Jesus said elsewhere which of you fathers if your child asks him for an egg will give him a scorpion.

If he asks for a fish will he give him a serpent. He says so also if you earthly fathers know how to give good things to your children how much more will your heavenly Father give good things to those who ask him. So Jesus everywhere talked about praying to the Father. That's what Jesus himself did. Jesus prayed to the Father.

He taught his disciples to do it and they did. So I believe that it's normative to pray to the Father not to Jesus. But to speak to Jesus is not certainly there's nothing wrong with doing that.

And you know there are a couple of I think there's three cases I used to say there's only two but I thought of another. There's about three cases I know of in the Bible where somebody after Jesus ascension did speak to him. One of them was Stephen when he's being stoned he said Lord Jesus received my spirit. He saw Jesus standing by the right hand of God and so he addressed Jesus. And also John in the book of Revelation the last prayer in the Bible says even so come quickly Lord Jesus. That's a prayer addressed to Jesus. Of course he's looking at Jesus too. Both Stephen and John have visions of Christ and speak to him.

I think I would too. Now there's one other case that I only recently considered in this connection and that's in 2 Corinthians 12 where Paul said that he had this thorn in the flesh he asked the Lord three times to remove it and he said to me my grace is sufficient for you. Now we see that he says he asked the Lord. He doesn't say he's talking about Jesus.

He could be talking to the Father but he could be talking to Jesus because usually the Lord means Jesus in the New Testament. So we could say he's talking to Jesus but notice this Jesus spoke back to him. In other words it sounds to me that this question these questions were given to Jesus perhaps when Paul was in a two way conversation with Jesus which prayer usually is not a two way conversation.

But it was a unique situation I think. It may have been one of the several times that Jesus actually appeared to him. We read in the book of Acts that Jesus appeared to Paul a few times after his conversion. And it may be that in one of those conversations sort of like Stephen and John who were seeing Jesus and spoke to him that could be why Paul spoke to him there. But Paul says in Ephesians 3 that his norm is to bow his knee to the Father of Jesus and ask the Father for things. So what we can say is there are a few occasions where people speak to Jesus on record in the Bible after his ascension and therefore it cannot be wrong. On the other hand if we want to pray as Jesus taught us to pray we'll pray to the Father.

That would be I think the balance in that. Okay that's very interesting. Would there ever be a time when a Christian would pray to the Holy Spirit? I don't know of any specific case of that ever happening in the Bible. We know that Ezekiel in Ezekiel chapter 37 was told to prophesy to the Spirit.

Although the word could be translated breath and it's when the dry bones have assembled into bodies and they don't have any breath in them and he's told to prophesy to the Spirit and the Spirit or the breath came into them. That might be seen as appealing to the Spirit or asking for the Spirit but I don't really know of any case of people praying to the Holy Spirit in the Bible. Again I don't think it'd be wrong because I don't think there's that much difference between frankly the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

It's one God we're talking about but we are specifically told to address the Father with our prayers so that's what I would do. Okay that was very helpful thank you Steve. Alright God bless you, good talking to you. Alright our next caller is Rodney calling from Detroit, Michigan. Rodney welcome to The Narrow Path, thanks for calling.

Hi Steve, thanks for taking my call. My question is from Daniel chapter 7. I thought I'd give you a Daniel question seeing that you said you were going to speak on Daniel I think this weekend.

Yes I am. So I thought I'd give you a quick Daniel question. I know in Revelation chapter 13 it talks about the beast with seven heads and ten horns and I know a lot of people including myself believe that that's talking about the end time antichrist. You don't have to call him an antichrist, end time ruler, whoever.

I know you had said many times that you believe that it was a political system. So like when I read Daniel chapter 7 that talks about the four beasts, the fourth beast which I believe is referring to this beast in Revelation because it says it has ten horns like the one in Revelation, it says in Daniel 7 that this beast is representing of a kingdom but it also says in Daniel 7, 17 that that beast also represents a king. So it does represent a kingdom but it also represents a king.

So my question is why in Revelation 13 wouldn't you see that beast not only representing a kingdom but also a particular king that rules that kingdom? Well I mean every kingdom has a king, that's true. And in Daniel chapter 7 that fourth kingdom is the Roman Empire and the Roman Empire did have a number of individual kings at different times.

In fact every emperor was an individual king. It was one kingdom but it always had one king and that's usually true of any kingdom. So however the beast is not said to be a king in Revelation. The beast is said to be a beast that has ten horns and seven heads and these are kings. The ten horns are ten kings and the heads are seven kings. So and they're all attached to the same entity so the entity itself is not an individual king it would seem. It seems like it's an entity that involves all kings. Daniel 7 references it as a king and Daniel 7, 17 it says that it is a king. Yeah the images in Revelation come from all parts of the Old Testament and they don't use them always the same way as the Old Testament does. For example the two witnesses are said to be the two olive trees but in Zechariah 4 which that image comes from the two olive trees are Zerubbabel and Joshua which no one believes the two witnesses are them.

It's that images from the Old Testament are often taken and reworked in Revelation sometimes with a slightly different twist. I'm out of time for that. We've got a 30 second break coming up I'll be right back for another 30 minutes. You're listening to The Narrow Path. Tell your family, tell your friends, tell everyone you know about the Bible radio show that has nothing to sell you but everything to give you. And that's The Narrow Path with Steve Gregg. When today's radio show is over go to your social media and send a link to thenarrowpath.com where everyone can find free topical audio teachings, blog articles, verse by verse teachings and archives of all The Narrow Path radio shows and tell them to listen live right here on the radio. Thank you for sharing Listeners Supported The Narrow Path with Steve Gregg.

Welcome back to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we are live for another half hour taking your calls. If you would like to be on the program, if you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith or a different view from the host, feel free to call this number. It's 844-484-5737.

Right now it looks like perhaps one line is open, 844-484-5737. And by the way, the last caller, Rodney from Michigan mentioned over the air that I'm going to be speaking on the book of Daniel this weekend. It's true if you live in Southern California, I'm going to be speaking in Buena Park in Orange County.

Tomorrow night, 6 o'clock, we've got, I'm going to give an introduction and an overview of the book of Daniel. And you're welcome to join us there if you'd like to. The information about that venue is to be found on our website thenarrowpath.com. That's thenarrowpath.com under the tab that says announcements.

Find tomorrow's date in the announcements, that'd be August 29th, and you'll see the place and time and all of that stuff. And we'd love to see you if you're available to come join us. All right, we're going to go back to the phones now and we're going to talk next to Steve from Bellevue, Washington. Steve, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Thank you for taking my call. I'm counting on you helping me with my next conversation with a friend of mine who believes in the traditional view of hell. Previously his two objections were, first, he said that Gehenna has translated hell at the Council of Nicaea and we need to accept that.

I'm not sure how he knows that, but that's one objection. And the second was the parable of the sheep and goats and where Jesus said you go to eternal punishment or eternal life and its concern was you can't have a different translation for the same word in the same sentence. Okay, well, as far as Gehenna being translated as hell at the Nicene Council, again, like yourself, I don't know where he got that information.

Maybe it was, but why would that have any authority? I mean, why would it matter how somebody at sometime hundreds of years after Jesus' time, you know, translated his word Gehenna? Jesus, by the way, is the one in the New Testament who uses the word Gehenna. James mentions it briefly, but not to refer to hell. He talks about how the tongue is a fire and it's on flames of Gehenna. I mean, I guess that's supposed to refer to a flaming place called Gehenna, but he doesn't tell us much about the place. Jesus beyond James is the only one who uses the word Gehenna in the Greek New Testament. And the real question is, did he use it the way that the rabbis used it, which there was a certain way the rabbis used the word Gehenna, and they did mean hell by it, or did he use it the way the prophets used it? Isaiah and Jeremiah had made reference to Gehenna.

They didn't use that word. They used it in Hebrew, the valley of Hinnom. The Greek for the valley of Hinnom is Gehenna. So Jesus may have used it the way the prophets did, or he may have used it the way that the rabbis did. Now my reading of Jesus tells me that he was much more influenced by the prophets and by the word of God than he was by the traditions of the rabbis. So I'm going to lean toward him using it the way the prophets used it, which referred to the valley of Hinnom. But it's true, rabbis already in Jesus' day were using the word Gehenna to refer to hell. And so the early church to a large degree followed that.

So that's one, I mean, he's got a point. The point has nothing to do with the Nicene Council. His point has to do with the fact that Gehenna was one of the ways that the rabbis spoke of hell. But it's not the only way that Gehenna is used in Scripture. And the question, of course, of whether Jesus accommodated the rabbis or spoke like the prophets would be the real issue.

I'm on the side of the prophets myself. Now in Matthew 25, 46, where Jesus said about the sheep and the goats that the righteous go off into eternal life, but the wicked into eternal punishment. Your friend is saying, well, the word eternal is the same word in both places.

He's correct. Ionias is the Greek word in both places. Now Ionias' life and Ionias' punishment are set in juxtaposition. So he's saying, well, if our eternal life is forever, then the punishment must be forever because the same word is used for both.

Well, it's a little more nuanced than that. The word Ionias can refer to things that are eternal, but it doesn't always. There's many things in the New Testament and the old, the Greek Old Testament, the Septuagint, where the word Ionias is not referring to things that are forever. They're things that are just, they last a long time. Now if Ionias means, and some people, scholars believe it means enduring for an age or for ages, then it would just mean long time.

It lasts for a long time for ages. And therefore, something that lasts forever would certainly be Ionias because it lasts for ages and endlessly, but also something that lasts for ages but wasn't forever would also be Ionias. The same word could be used for both of them. So if the punishment was not eternal but the life was, the word Ionias could still be used for both of them.

And so that would be my thought about that. Now the word punishment there in the Greek is one that some have felt should be translated correction, because the word, in earlier days than the New Testament days, the word meant correction. It actually, the word in the Greek meant to prune a tree. And it came in the Greek language to mean correction. Now some people say by the time of the New Testament, it didn't mean correction anymore, it just meant punishment. Well even if it meant punishment, that doesn't mean it couldn't mean punishment as correction.

And some people think that what Jesus was saying is that when people go to this Ionias condition that it's a condition of correction. This would be what the more universal reconciliation people would be inclined to say. So there's different views on this, and that's why I wrote a book on three different views. I don't take any one of the views, but certainly both of your friends' statements can be answered by people who hold other views.

They're not slam-dunks. Right. Oh, I like that. Okay. And probably the easier answer is they should have used a different word if they meant a different meaning in that verse 46. Right, but it doesn't necessarily— Since they didn't, we have to decide on our own.

Yeah. Well they didn't have to use a different word, because it didn't have a different meaning. If you say, this person is going into ageless life, or ages long life, and this other one is going into ages long correction or punishment, well, that's true, and it's true even if the one who went to eternal life, the ages long life actually never ends. It is certainly ages long. You know, that would be information for another conversation, but it wouldn't be incorrect.

If I say I'm going to live for ages, you know, you don't know if that means I'm going to live forever or just for a long time, but it could mean I'm going to live forever. You'd have to get that from other comments of mine. Right. Okay.

I think that's good. I appreciate it. Okay, Steve. Thanks for your call. God bless you. Okay, our next caller is Dale from Sacramento.

Dale, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Hello, Steve. Nice to talk to you again.

Glad to have you. My question today is about the flood of Noah, and I have heard that there are many people who believe that it was a regional flood and many people believe it was a worldwide flood. Correct. And yesterday I heard a minister here in Sacramento on the air who said that the earth was not there was no mountains like very there was wasn't any high mountains back then. And so consequently, not everything even exists. And I believe it was a regional flood. I don't believe it was a global flood. But I was going to ask you, what do you believe?

Yeah, well, there's arguments on both sides. I do believe in a global flood, but it doesn't alarm me if someone believes something else. Many times people who believe in a regional flood would argue it still killed all the people because after I mean, the human race, they would say, hadn't really spread out over the whole earth yet. And therefore, the region they lived in was the region that was flooded and that there would be no reason to flood the whole world. If God's intention is to punish the wicked people in the world, if that could be done with the regional flood, that'd be fine. The problem I have with a regional flood is just some of the language.

Now it does. There's several places where it talks about how the waters cover the whole earth. But the word earth in the Hebrew, Eretz, can mean land, and that can mean a region. So that you can't really prove much from the fact that says the whole earth. But it does say there were mountains, and it said the flood covered the highest mountains by I believe it was, how many cubits was it?

I think it's 18 feet, if I'm not mistaken. It's been a while since I looked at the mountain. Or it must have covered Ararat because it landed on Ararat afterwards.

Right, right. Now, but what the preacher you heard who said there were no mountains, well, if he's saying there were no mountains at all, he's not correct because the Bible actually talks about mountains that were covered. But what he may be saying is that the mountains that existed were not as tall as now. That's what he said.

Yeah. He said that all the mountains, he said that all the mountains, okay, let me just say, his belief is probably that during the time that the earth was covered with water, there's a lot of seismic activity, a lot of movement of the tectonic plates. It would not disturb the boat on top per se so much because the whole world was covered with water.

There'd be no place for tsunamis to go, for example. But that a lot of mountain ranges from tectonic plates bumping up against each other at that time might have risen at that time and could even explain why you'd find, you know, sea life fossils on the tops of high mountains now. You know, it looks like they were covered with water if there's sea life fossils on them, but hard to imagine the water being above Mount Everest.

But if Mount Everest was below the water, it may have been a smaller mountain at the time. May I interject one thing, Steve? Sure. There is an island south of India called the Sentinels, and on that island, the archaeologists have said that those people have been there for 60,000 years, and they haven't even discovered fire yet. So the flood was not 60,000 years ago. Right. Those people are there today.

Right. And if you trust, if you trust the sociologists and anthropologists' dates, then you're right. That would prove the flood not to be worldwide. I don't, I find that many times the dating that scientists use for things that are very ancient is sometimes based on a certain amount of speculation. Certainly they calculate from other things that they think are reliable, but they, I mean, when they talk about the age of fossils, for example, I think they've been way off, and they believe dinosaurs died out 70 million years ago, and yet you find dinosaur fossils that still have soft tissue in their bones, you know, which wouldn't be the case if they were 70 million years old.

I mean, scientists just, what they do is they have an idea of how old civilizations are and how old, you know, species are and how old parts of the world are and so forth. And they basically read data through that paradigm. Everyone reads through a paradigm of some kind. I mean, some might say, well, Steve, you're just doing that too. You're true. Yeah. I am. And I am, and others do too.

Everyone does. Nobody reads data without a bias. Everybody has some idea of what it's going to point to and how it should be best fit into things. My worldview is different than that of the secular worldview, and therefore I don't think that they are looking at that data necessarily the same way I would. But I'm not a scientist, but then they're not Bible scholars.

So, you know, we just have to decide who we're going to trust. We're going to trust the Bible or trust people who don't believe the Bible or what? You know, I'm not saying that people who believe in an old earth or who believe in a local flood, I'm not saying they're not believers. There are certainly people who do believe the Bible. I've heard that the theologians are correct, though, that when the scientists get to the top of the mountain that the theologians will have already been there. Somebody said that. Some scientists actually said that, I think. Yeah. I don't know.

Yeah. I don't have a dog in this fight. I don't care about the age of the earth. I don't care about the age of the earth. I don't care how widespread the flood was.

But I will say, as one who reads my Bible and does my best to understand its comments in the way that I believe they were intended to be taken, I personally go with a young earth and a worldwide flood. But if it turned out otherwise, it wouldn't rattle me even a little bit. It would just mean that I was interpreting it. All right. All right, brother. I'll let you go. Thank you. Bye now. Okay, let's talk to Mike from Sacramento, California.

Mike, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Yes, hello. Good.

How are you? Thanks for taking my call. So I have a couple of questions about marriage, actually an adulterous marriage. So my wife and I were both previously married. And in my marriage, my wife left me. And then I tried to reconcile it with her with actually a pastor and she refused. So with that released me from the marriage to get married, married again. Let me ask you, why did she divorce you? Well, I had gotten in a wreck and got a lot of money and she wanted to use all that money to start a business. And after she used most of it, I said no more.

And then she decided that she no longer beat it. She obviously didn't have biblical grounds then. So I would say that she's an unbeliever. Now she may claim to be a believer, but it's one thing to claim to be a believer. It's another one to prove it by your actions.

If you are not following Jesus, you're not a believer. Okay. So Paul said if an unbeliever is made to a believer and the unbeliever departs, the believer he said is not under bondage in that case. So you are free according to what the Bible says on that subject. Now what about the other part of you?

Okay. So my wife has been previously married and she claims that her husband just stopped talking to her, like he was in some sort of mental psych or something, and she divorced him. And she talked to a pastor and he said that was the same as leaving her.

That's going to be a matter, that's going to be a call that different people make differently. I actually had a wife who stopped talking to me too, who just was silent for long periods of time. And it's frustrating, but I didn't see it as grounds for divorce.

But then I don't see much as grounds for it. To tell you the truth, you couldn't get me to divorce. You couldn't get me to file for divorce. Even I had an adulterous wife once who had several affairs and I wouldn't divorce her either because I don't believe in divorce. But when I say I don't believe in divorce, I don't believe in divorcing. But I do believe that some people are legitimately free from marriages because they're partners' actions. Now, it depends on what actions we consider. Paul did say that if the unbeliever departs, that the believer is not under bondage.

This is where people make different calls. When a husband stops talking to his wife, has he departed? It kind of seems like it. Was he a professing Christian? Yes. Did any pastors try to counsel him about this? No.

Not to my knowledge. How long did this go on? How long did he not talk to her? She said for almost a year, like nine months.

And she has no idea why? He was just in a mental space? Yeah, I guess.

I'm not really sure. I'll say this. I would love to be able to say, hey, that's a clear cut case. She was free to remarry you. And maybe she was.

God knows. In my case, I'm a little stricter than a lot of people would be. It may be that a number of behaviors on the part of a man or a woman toward their spouse might be regarded as abandonment, even if they don't leave the house. Many people understand abuse that way. And of course, to not talk to your wife or your husband would be similarly abusive. Let me ask you this. What has her mute husband done since, and has he remarried?

No. Was he just living as a solitary guy or doesn't talk to anybody? He's living alone, and he's a truck driver, and... Yeah. Well, her situation is marginal, in my opinion. I do believe that it is possible for someone to abandon a marriage without leaving the house.

Many people find it convenient to stay with the person they married because it's less expensive than getting another house, or there's food served and things like that. But that doesn't mean that they're willing to be a spouse. And therefore, it's hard to know whether that should be called abandonment. It sounds like a good case could be made for it, that she was abandoned by him. But I honestly don't know what was in his head before I would be able to be sure I'd have to probably converse with him about it, find out what were you thinking. And I'm not the final arbiter on these things, obviously.

God is. So I would say it's a borderline situation with her. In your case, I don't believe there's any problem with you remarrying.

There's one more little angle to it. So she got remarried, but was taking Chantix to quit smoking and said she wasn't in her right mind and that she was under the influence of drugs. And then he divorced her. Your ex-wife. Yes.

No, my current wife. Oh, wait. Oh, I see.

Okay, so anyway. Now, he wasn't talking to her, and she was taking... This is a new husband. Oh, she got a second husband after that. Right. So she was trying to quit smoking and was on Chantix, which they said affects you mentally. And under that time, she remarried to this gentleman, and then they got divorced.

Yes. I have to say, this is a complicated and not a clear-cut case, and one that I can't really settle in the format of a brief talk on a telephone, on a radio show. So in case you are in a marriage that was non-Biblically put together, what options does someone have? Well, if a person has married and it's clearly an adulterous marriage, you know, one person left their spouse to marry somebody else and they didn't have grounds to do it, then the marriage is fraudulent. The marriage is adulterous. It's the marriage is not a marriage in God's sight. It may be a legal marriage in the state's sight, but the state doesn't determine those things.

God does. And so if it was a clear-cut case of an adulterous marriage, then I would say it would be one that has to be broken up and reconciliation sought with the spouse that was abandoned wrongfully. I don't know if either of her spouses were abandoned wrongfully.

Her second spouse divorced her. That wasn't her doing, I guess, and her first spouse is in that gray area as far as I'm concerned. But her situation is questionable, but I would not say it's a clear-cut case of adultery. If it was, I'd have to say, I'm afraid it's not a marriage, you know, and you'd have to probably break up, but it's not clear-cut, and I certainly would never break up a second marriage without having clarity that it's wrong to stay in it.

So I can't really settle this for you with the little nonsense. So do those things keep you out of heaven if you stayed married? Well, if you willingly continued in an adulterous relationship knowingly, the Bible says no adulter will inherit eternal life or no adulter will inherit the kingdom of God. But if a person is married to somebody and they don't think it's adultery and they've done their best to try to sort it out biblically and it's unclear and they make the wrong call and when they go to heaven, God says, listen, that was the adulterous marriage. I think that the fact that they didn't think it was adultery or didn't have good enough, strong enough reason to know that it was, would not count against them.

I think that if, you know, if it really is adultery, I think God would convict you about it and make you feel, you know, you wouldn't be able to live with it. I understand. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you so very much and have a blessed day.

Thank you very much. And while I am sympathetic with you, I hate those kind of calls because divorces always are so complicated and there's so many factors and I don't believe in divorce, but I do believe that when people get divorced, sometimes they have grounds and I can't, I can't, can't condemn them. It's just that interpreting the grounds is a little bit ambiguous at times. And I, you know, this is something that you can't just in a radio show call, get all the facts and give all the information. All right. Let's talk to Michael from the bay area. Michael, welcome to the narrow path. Thanks for calling. I assume that's the San Francisco area.

Thank you. Uh, my question is about Matthew 27 where Judas hangs himself and it seems like it can be read two different ways because it says Judas the betrayer saw that he was condemned and repented and brought back the 30 pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders saying, I've sinned in betraying innocent blood. Anyway, my question is, does Judas, um, see that he is condemned or does he see that Jesus is condemned? Uh, uh, I, I believe it's talking about when he saw that Jesus was condemned initially when he had delivered Jesus over and when he saw that Jesus was condemned. See, some people think that Judas in betraying Jesus didn't think Jesus would die, that he knew he was the son of God and the Messiah and that he felt, and he felt that Jesus wasn't moving in the right direction fast enough. He thought that if he got him arrested, that would force Jesus hand to overthrow the Romans to save himself and to set up the kingdom. And therefore when Jesus was actually condemned to die and Jesus didn't do anything to stop it, that, uh, that Judas was surprised and, uh, we, we don't know for sure that that's Judas's motive.

That's a very common opinion. And so when he, when Judas saw that Jesus was condemned, I think is when he realized he'd done the wrong thing. I could see the point of view because it comes right after, um, you know, Jesus is turned over. But the other point of view is that if Jesus, if Judas really did repent, then he wouldn't kill himself. He would beg for forgiveness.

I agree. I mean, it does say he repented, but the word repent means to be sorry. And it could be sorry that he was condemned by, you know, the priests and scribes and he thought he was going to be celebrated.

Well, yeah, it's hard to say. We don't know exactly where his sorrow lay. Paul says in second Corinthians seven, there's a sorrow that's a worldly sorrow that leads to death and there's a godly sorrow that leads to repentance. Uh, his, his, uh, sorrow did not lead to him repenting before God. He repented, you know, in the sense that he was grieved. But when you repent before God, you don't go out and kill yourself. Well I mean that that's true. Plus if he was still under the influence of the devil, then he wouldn't want him to repent to God. Right, right. So I don't, I don't believe Judas was truly a repentant believer at the end of it all. Right. I mean, that's why I was trying to read it is there's two different ways because by what follows he was, when he says he was condemned, he might've thought, well, I'm going to be celebrated. Like betrayers sometimes think I'm going to be celebrated Benedict Arnold, but you know, the English would make them a hero.

Um, and then, you know, you repented that he did it because he wasn't celebrated. Yeah. Well that could be, that could be a, one of the things going on. I appreciate your call. We're out of time. Uh, you've been listening to the narrow path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we are live Monday through Friday. We buy the time on radio stations and you may have noticed if you've been listening for the hour, we don't have any commercial breaks. We don't sell anything. We don't have sponsors. We are just listener supported. If you'd like to help us pay the radio stations to keep us on the air, that's a, that can be done. You can also do the narrow path P O box 1730 Temecula, California, nine two five nine three. You can also do that from our website, the narrow path.com also at the narrow path.com under announcements. You can see where I'm speaking in Buena park, California on Daniel tomorrow night. Hope to see some of you there. Have a good weekend. Thank you.