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Good afternoon and welcome to the Narrow Path. Today, I wanted to talk a little bit about fortune telling and references to it in the Bible. So, first of all, Deuteronomy 18, 9 through 13. Another verse here, Isaiah 8, 19. So, what is your question? So, my question is actually, is it ever acceptable to seek information from clairvoyance, such as psychics, mediums, or fortune tellers, and what is your opinion on the Biblical view of fortune tellers?

Thank you. Yeah, well, I agree with the Bible. You read the passage in Deuteronomy 18. You have additional statements of the same kind in Leviticus 18 and 19. You read Isaiah 8.

I agree with everything the Bible says. Now, there's no mention of fortune telling in the New Testament, per se, except that there are some occultists, like a demon-possessed girl in Philippi, that had a demon, and when the demon was cast out of her, she couldn't tell fortunes anymore. And there are also magicians, like Simon the sorcerer. And among the works of the flesh, mentioned in Galatians chapter 5, there's also what's called sorcery. And so, both the Old and the New Testament forbid any, I guess we could just put it in a broad category, any contact with spirits, other than with God himself, rather than, I mean, the idea is that God wants us to be in a relationship with him. And there are mysteries not known to us in this world, but belonging to other worlds that we are curious about. But if God doesn't tell us about them, he must not want us to know about them. And so he doesn't want us going off to other sources because they are demonic.

And I believe that one of the main ways that people become demonized or demon-possessed is through involvement in the occult. So obviously I'm totally on the side of the Bible about that, as I'm sure you probably knew I would be. I appreciate your call. Okay, Tim from Turner, Oregon.

Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Hi, I've got a question on 1 Corinthians 1, 24 to 26, where, well, 24 says, but to those whom God has called both using Greeks, Christ, the power of God, and the wisdom of God. I was listening to this guy, he was claiming that this call that he's talking about is people who God chose from eternity past. But I can't quite put my finger on it, but I don't think that has anything to do with God selecting people for salvation, and I was wondering if you could comment on that. Well, Paul does on occasion refer to Christians as the ones who are called.

And Calvinists believe that this means that they are called effectually and drawn irresistibly by God's grace because they are the elect before the foundation of the world. So they would use the word called, as Paul uses it here, to refer to only the Christians, and yet they know that there are passages in the Old Testament and the New that talk about God calling people who don't come. For example, Isaiah 65 says, I called and no one answered. Or Jesus said, many are called, but few are chosen. So there's obviously a larger number of people who are called than there are who come and who are chosen.

Jesus said, of course, to the people of Jerusalem, He said, how many times I would have gathered your children as a hand gathers her chicks under her wing, but you would not. So God calls and people do not come sometimes. So the Calvinists, the man you were listening to was a Calvinist, the Calvinist believes there's two calls that we have to talk about. One is the call that comes to people through the gospel. They hear the gospel, but another one is another kind of call that comes only to the elect. And it's an inward call that the gospel is an external call. And the internal call is that which God activates within those who are elect for salvation. And those who are called in that sense are effectually called. They call that the effectual call, which has to do with irresistible grace.

God irresistibly draws those whom He's elected. Now, I don't believe that doctrine. It's true that Paul does refer to the Christians as the called in some sense. And obviously he talks about, or at least the Bible talks about people being called who don't become Christians. But I think that simply calling Christians the called emphasizes the fact that we are, we have been called by Christ and we have responded.

We are the ones who responded to the call. Now, the fact that he doesn't mention that we are the ones who responded, I think goes without saying, he's writing to Christians who clearly have responded to the gospel. But I think by referring to us as the called, he does this again in Romans 8.28, you know, all things work together for good to those who love God and who are the called according to his purpose. The called would be the ones who he has called and obviously have come to him. So, I mean, I disagree with the assumption that the word call refers to something about predestination necessarily. I think God calls everybody who hears the gospel and those who respond to the call, who acknowledged the call, they acknowledge themselves as called. And so we could refer to ourselves as those that God has called, even though he's called others who didn't come. That's not in the picture when that statement is being made. We're not talking about others. Okay, that helps me understand that. I mean, when you read the scripture, I think a person intuitively knows that God isn't willing that any should perish and he desires all men to be saved. Well, you say we know it intuitively and I agree with you.

I agree with you. When you read the Bible, you find that God wants people to repent. He's not happy when they don't.

He gets angry at people who don't respond to him at times. And therefore, it's obvious from scripture that he didn't determine that these people would reject him and others would accept him. But Calvinists believe that he did determine that. And it's funny because I've often mentioned that I think anyone just reading the Bible and never having been exposed to Calvinist teaching would never become a Calvinist. But Calvinists have said, no, that's not true. I've heard Calvinists say, I read the Bible and I became a Calvinist that way. I'm not really sure what part they were reading, but there's no part of the Bible that by itself would lead you to become a Calvinist.

You pretty much need the direction of Calvinist teachers for that. Okay, thank you. All right. Thanks for your call.

Anthony from Providence, Rhode Island. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Steve, happy Friday to you.

Thanks for taking my call. In the Bible, there were a lot of bad kings that the Lord allowed to be king. And my question is, why did he allow that, which I'm supposing is probably free will? Were those kings ordained by him in terms of him knowing that they would be bad kings for judgment or for something like that?

And also, could that happen in the future with future presidents here in the United States? Well, that's a good question, because a lot of people think that the Bible teaches that all the kings that rise up and all the rulers that rise up are specifically ordained by God, as opposed to someone else who could have been risen up. But God actually said to the people of Israel in Hosea 8.4, they set up kings, but not by me. So God indicates that the kings that Israel set up, he didn't set them up. Now, God did set up the kings in Judah because he appointed David and all of his successors to be the rulers in Judah. And so by choosing David and his successors, there was a natural succession to the throne. And so we could say that God set them up, not so much individually, but as a dynasty. In the northern kingdom, there were several different dynasties because God did set up Jeroboam as the first king of the northern kingdom. But then you find other kings rising up in later generations and killing and taking over the throne from kings that they're not related to.

So there's like several different dynasties rise and fall. And so God is not taking responsibility for those kings. Now, when the Bible says there's no authority but of God in Romans 13, I don't believe it's saying that God always raises up who's going to be in authority. But that when somebody is in a position of authority, the authority that comes with that position is God's authority appointed to someone in that role. That is, the person has the authority because God has allowed that position they're in to be an authoritative position. Jesus told Pilate, you would have no authority if it was not given to you from above. But that doesn't necessarily mean that no one else could have been in that office other than Pilate.

Whoever was in that office would have that authority because God has ordained that there be offices of authority. Would he always put the right king in there? He can. God certainly can. It says in Daniel that God raises up kings and takes down kings.

To say that doesn't mean he does it every time, but if he does it sometimes, if he does it when he wants to do it, then that's true. He does raise up kings when he wants to do it, and he brings down kings when he wants to do it. It's not a statement that says that every time a king rises or falls that God must have done it necessarily. Like it says in Proverbs 21, 1, the heart of the king is in the hand of the Lord.

As the rivers of water, he turns it whithersoever he wills. So God turns the hearts of kings. But that doesn't mean every time a king makes a decision that God has turned his heart.

It means that this is something God has the power to do and does when he wants to. He can harden Pharaoh's heart. When he wants to, he can stop hardening Pharaoh's heart. When he wants to, he can put it in Cyrus' heart to let the people go from their captivity. He can put things in kings' hearts, but that doesn't mean that every decision a king makes God put in his heart.

Basically, these statements are saying that God is in power. He can raise up a king. He can bring down a king.

He certainly brought down Herod Agrippa when an angel of the Lord struck him and worms ate him and he died in Acts chapter 12. And so he can also turn their hearts if he wants to, but he doesn't always intervene. God usually lets people make their own decisions. And in the case of a nation that's very rebellious against him, as Israel and Judah were, most of their history with kings, for them to have a bad king is a judgment upon them and God allows it. He might even give them a bad king, but he may not have to. It may be that a bad king is coming up through the pike in the normal processes of natural succession and God just doesn't interfere. He lets them have a bad king because they deserve it. So I don't know that we can say that every person who becomes president or every person who becomes king, God specifically selected that person to be in that role. He might have.

Sometimes he does. I just don't know if the Bible is saying it's always the case. In a nation like ours, where the people decide who's going to be the ruler, we could say that God kind of works behind the scenes to put it in the minds of the voters to vote as they do. Or we could just assume that God lets things take their natural course and the person the people vote for is the person they deserve. And so if we have bad rulers, it may be because we deserve bad rulers because we chose them and we're bad people.

So there is a possibility that in future elections that the Lord could raise up a president that would actually have a judgment on either this country or someplace else. But I'm hearing you that that is a possibility. Yes. Great.

And then one quick other question. Does Matthew 317, I think it's Matthew 317 that has all your stuff? Oh, it's 713. It's Matthew713.com.

Matthew713.com. Yeah. Do they have a way of accepting donations? You know, I don't think they do.

I don't think they do. It's just, oh yeah, if you make a donation there, apparently it goes to our ministry. Okay. Oh, you can't do it there?

Can't do it there? Okay. I don't know much about it. Several people have worked on that website just as volunteers. They've created it. Just like everything else in this ministry, people just kind of volunteered to do things and they have not sought to be reimbursed for it.

So they just do it as a free service. Wonderful. Have a blessed weekend. Thank you. All right. Thank you very much. Good talking to you, Anthony.

Okay. Paul from Buena Vista, Colorado. Welcome to The Narrow Path, Paul. Hi, Steve.

Hi. Hey, my question today kind of ties in with that last one with the sovereignty of God and, of course, the Calvinistic thing that goes on in the body. And there's a certain thought process that kind of hits me when I hear you and other people in the body of Christ talking about the sovereignty of God and then just trying to really get my mind around that. What does it mean to you that God is sovereign? Okay.

Glad to answer that. First of all, the Bible doesn't use the word sovereign. Well, I should say the older translations don't. You'll find some newer translations that might use the word sovereign in some ways, but not usually of God. But God is sovereign. We know that because he's called a king, and a king is a sovereign by definition. He's called the father, and in the household, the father is sovereign. He's called a master, and a master is sovereign over his servants and so forth. So, that God is called king or master or father are terms of authority. And the word sovereignty means authority. Sovereignty means unchallengeable authority, final authority. The king in his kingdom, at least in biblical times, could make any decision he wanted to do. He could order somebody dead to die if he wanted to, even without a trial. He could confiscate their land as we see King Ahab doing. So, kings could just kind of do what they wanted to do. And sovereignty means basically being in supreme authority and basically being able to do things without having to answer to anyone else.

That's what the word means. Now, God is sovereign in that sense because God created all things. He has the right to do whatever he wants. He's got the authority.

If he didn't like what's going on on earth enough, if he disliked it enough, he could just smash it and vaporize it. I mean, he'd be within his rights. He's got the authority to do that.

He owns it. Now, where I don't agree with Calvinist ideas of sovereignty, they add to the term sovereignty something that's not inherent in the word sovereignty. And what they add is meticulous providence. Now, meticulous providence might be an unfamiliar word, but providence means that God is doing things providentially, and meticulous means he's doing it right down to the last detail. So, it would be meticulous providence would be that God is down to the last detail, ordaining everything that happens and making everything happen that happens.

And nothing can happen except that he has ordained it to happen. I would call that micromanagement. And a person who's a sovereign might be a micromanager or not. You know, if I'm, let's just say I own a company, and I'm sovereign over that company, my employees, you know, I own it, and so I can make any decision I want about policies or whatever. My employees have to submit to me if I'm the owner of the company. But the way I manage the company is my decision. I could micromanage it and not let anyone make any decisions of their own, or I could give responsibility to people. I could give management roles to people. I could even let the lower echelon of workers have certain liberty to make certain decisions. That would not challenge my sovereignty because I'm still in charge. It's that I, as the one in charge, am making the decision to let these people have that much flexibility. I don't have to, but I can, and so can God. God is sovereign.

He could do whatever he wants to do. People like, well, I won't name any names, but certain Calvinists that I've talked to and read, they talk as if there's anything that God doesn't ordain to happen, and it happens, and he didn't ordain it, and he's not sovereign. Well, that's not true.

I mean, that's just silly. That's suggesting that being sovereign means you have to ordain every detail of what happens. That's the Calvinist view, of course. It's meticulous providence, but that's not true. If God is sovereign, he can decide what he wants to do. He can give people free will. He can let people determine things for themselves to a point. He can intervene whenever he wants to, but he doesn't have to intervene into everything.

He doesn't have to ordain everything. That's his business if he wants to or not, and the Bible indicates he does not. Well, could that tie into Hebrews 6.4, where it talks about someone that has been enlightened by the heavenly gifts and so forth, and then falls away? God, being sovereign, would know that this person will eventually come back to him or not, and so, I guess... Well, this passage makes it sound like they won't be coming back, and yet God gave them the heavenly gift, and they were partakers of the Holy Spirit. Yeah, so I mean, it's obvious that if God gave them the Holy Spirit and gave them the heavenly gift and enlightened them, then he wanted them to be saved. He would have done that if he didn't want them to be saved, but the fact that they fall away means they're doing something that God didn't want them to do, and if they don't repent, as it suggests in the passage, then they won't be saved either. So, God wants them saved.

Could that happen more than once? Because I am that man. I am that person, I should say. And so, I could be the guy that received the Lord years ago and took it semi-seriously, but really wasn't old enough, mature enough, what have you, to be able to really understand what it meant to follow through, much the same way in my marriage, and most of the decisions that I made in my life were just very immature and childish, I should say. Uninformed?

You know, bad decisions, yeah. And now that I'm 64 years old, I look at it and I go, wow, His mercy and His grace and His allowing me to now begin to really get back on fire. And in the middle of that whole thing, I had a baptism of the Holy Spirit experience in a Charismatic church back in the 90s, and then kind of didn't really completely fall away, but was just not focused on my walk with the Lord as much as I should have been, and was doing a lot of things wrong, doing a lot of sinning, let's just say, and really got to the point where I started to doubt my salvation until recently, where I started to really dig into the Word.

Back in January, I started a boot camp and started listening to all you guys on the radio and really taking notes, making it like a study course. That's wonderful. Hey, I need to take a break here, but I appreciate that testimony.

It's a wonderful testimony. God bless you. Thank you, Steve. God bless you. Thank you. Thanks for joining us today.

All right, we do have to take a break here. You're listening to The Narrow Path Radio Broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg, and we are listener supported. And quite a few of the stations that we're on, the listeners don't support us. And I've just noticed our finances, like, oh, we paid $28,000 to radio stations last month. That's more than we received. So we pay a lot more money than that. But we received all but $28,000.

But we're that far behind. If you want to go to our website, thenarrowpath.com, you can help us stay on the air if you'd like. There's a donation link.

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Share what you know. Welcome back to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg, and we're live for another half hour taking your calls. If you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith or a different view from the host you'd like to talk about, the number to call is 844-484-5737. That's 844-484-5737. And before I take the first call, I just want to announce again, as I did at the beginning of the last half hour, that we have a meeting in Temecula tomorrow night. If you're anywhere near there and want to join us, you can go to our website, thenarrowpath.com. That's thenarrowpath.com. Click on the tab that says announcements and you'll find the information. By the way, I found out yesterday, and I put it on Facebook, that my new book on the Kingdom of God is already available for pre-order on Amazon.

I just happened to check to see it was there, and lo and behold it is. So the book won't be coming out, I think, probably for about a month, but you can pre-order it on Amazon. The name of the book is what you'd have to search for. If you go to Amazon and put in the search, you can put my name, Steve Gregg, in there, and it'll bring up my other books.

I've gotten different results when I've done that, and I don't know if my new book comes up there. Or you can put in the title of the book. The book is called Empire of the Risen Sun, S-O-N.

Empire of the Risen Sun. If you check Amazon, you'll see the cover of it there and some endorsements of it by some people, and you can also pre-order it if you want to there at this time. It's only volume one, but it's a full book.

I mean, it's 430 pages, and it's complete. You don't need to read both books, but I had written originally one book in two parts, but it got too long, so I made it two books. The second book will be coming out, I think, about a month later. The publisher has both manuscripts, and I think this first one will be coming out, I believe, at the end of this month, probably.

And then the second one will probably be out the next month. So anyway, if you want to pre-order, go to Amazon and put in the search menu, Empire of the Risen Sun. Or you can put my name, Steve Gregg, and it might come up that way. All right, let's look here. Let's see, let's talk to Darrell from Sacramento, California. Darrell, welcome to The Narrow Path.

Thanks for calling. Thank you, Steve. I'm in a book, not sure exactly where it is, but it says – there it is. So then would they have not ceased to be offered, talking about the live in the shadow thing and so forth, because the worshippers, once purged, should have no more conscience of sin. Can you explain no more conscience of sin?

Yeah, no more – yeah, I will. The writer there in Hebrews chapter 10 is saying that the old covenant day of atonement, when the high priest went into the holy of holies, it took care of things for the nation for the year. That is, it kind of covered the national sins for the previous year. And then the next year, on the day of atonement, you'd have to do it again.

And the next year, again, because the nation kept generating sins and guilt. And the day of atonement only covered a year at a time. So what he's saying is, if the day of atonement had covered all sins permanently forever, like the sacrifice of Christ did, then they wouldn't have to be aware of the need for an atonement of their sins year after year after year. They would have ceased to offer this day of atonement sacrifices if it had covered for permanently. So all he's really saying is that, unlike the high priests who could only offer sacrifices that covered things for a year, Jesus offered himself once and for all.

And this is how he contrasted in Hebrews 10, 11, and 12. He says, every priest stands ministering daily and offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But this man, Jesus, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God. So what he's saying is that the high priest, he could do what God ordained for him to do to cover for the sins of the year. But Jesus, he did it once and for all.

He's never going to have to do it again. And that's what the meaning of that statement is, of that doctrine. Thank you very much. All right, thank you for your call. OK, let's see, John from Marietta, California. Welcome to The Narrow Path.

Thanks for calling. Hi, Steve, I've got a question. It's on Genesis 15. This is where God says to Abram that his seeds will be his heirs, children, whatever, like the stars of the sea. And then Abram or Abram at that point says, how will I know this? And he says, how shall I know that I'll inherit it? And he says, take the heifer, the she goat, the ram, the turtle dove, the pigeon.

And he took him and divided him. And then it says, when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram and lo, a horror of great darkness. And then we have the verse, I think, what it is, 17. And it came to pass that when the sun was down and it was dark, behold, a smoking furnace burning lamp passed between the pieces. What do you make of that? Now, I see it and what I see it as basically when God was saying that Abram, he'll enter the promised land. To me, that's salvation. And what I see here is God basically didn't let Abraham walk between them pieces.

He alone went through them. So what do you make of it? Well, that's what my pastors told me, too. And I, as I studied the Bible more, I came to a different opinion. Of course, you know, but a lot of our listeners don't, perhaps, that passing through the pieces of these animals' bodies was a ritual of the Middle Eastern covenant. And what they would do is they'd take animals, a bull or some other kind of animals, they'd cut it in two pieces.

They'd put the pieces on either side of a passageway and they'd walk between them. And generally, both parties that were involved in the covenant would go between them. Now, there's something they said along with this, and we have some inscriptions from ancient Babylonia that talk about what they did say. Basically, they said, if I break this covenant, may I be torn in two pieces like this animal that were walking between them. And so, I mean, it was like wishing a curse upon yourself if you did not fulfill it. But the idea was, of course, you will fulfill it. You're promising to do it.

And it's a firm covenant. Now, in this case, there were not two people walking between them. There was a smoking oven and a burning torch.

Now, they're passing through the parts of the animals. Now, the smoking oven and the burning torch symbolize something. Now, I was always told that the burning oven symbolized God the Father, and the burning torch represented Jesus. And so God the Father and Jesus were covenanting between themselves to fulfill these promises to Abraham. And the fact that Abraham didn't have to go through there usually was interpreted to mean this was unconditional.

He didn't have to do anything. You know, this is God agreeing within himself, within the Godhead about this. And therefore, it's guaranteed, regardless what Abraham would do, he's not involved even in passing between the parts. That's how it's usually taught.

Now, as I studied further on, first of all, I always wondered why they thought that. Because to refer to God as a smoking oven, I mean, there's no place in the Bible that God is compared with an oven, although it does say in Hebrews our God is a consuming fire, but a fire is not specifically an oven. And to refer to Jesus as a burning torch in the Old Testament would certainly not be something that would be intuitive, that Abraham or anyone else would see, oh, this is God the Father and this is God the Son. What he saw was an oven and a torch.

So what does an oven and a torch represent? Well, as you said, God had just made promises to Abraham about the Egyptian captivity. He had said, you know, your children are going to be in a land that is not their own for 400 years, and then I'll bring them back, I'll restore them from their captivity, and I'm going to give them this land. And Abraham said, well, how do I know that?

And so God made this covenant. And the oven, in my opinion, represents the Egyptian captivity. And the torch, in my opinion, represents God saving them from it.

Now, I'll tell you why. There are four times, excuse me, three times in the Old Testament, where the captivity in Egypt is referred to as an oven. Moses referred to it that way in Deuteronomy 4.20, and Jeremiah referred to it that way in Jeremiah 11.4. And in 1 Kings 8, verse 51, you find it again that the captivity in Egypt was called the iron oven or furnace, and that they were delivered from. Now, a smoking torch or a smoking lamp, see, the King James renders this differently than some translations do, but if you look at Isaiah chapter 62 and verse 1, it says, For Zion's sake I will not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest until her righteousness goes forth as brightness, and her salvation as a burning lamp. The King James uses burning lamp as the image in Genesis, the passage we're looking at. But her salvation is like a burning lamp. The captivity is like an iron furnace or an iron oven. And so God is promising Abraham that his children and offspring will be in Egypt in captivity, a captivity that's later several times referred to as a burning oven or an iron oven, iron furnace, and that he'll deliver them. And salvation is like a burning lamp or a burning torch. And so I think these represent the two elements of God's promise, that they are joined inseparably.

If God's going to send them into captivity, that will not happen without the other thing, the salvation and the rescue as well. Now, no one has to agree with my interpretation, and most people, I think, don't. In fact, when I came up with this interpretation, it was on my own from reading the Old Testament as much as I did. But I did find there was someone else. I don't remember if it was Adam Clark's commentary. Later on I found out somebody else, to my surprise, took it the same way I did. I'm not sure who it was now. It's been a long time. So I'm not seeing this necessarily as the oven represents God the Father and the torch represents Christ, partly because I don't know of anything else in Scripture that would point us that direction.

It seems very arbitrary to suggest it. Okay, I see what you're saying. So the oven, he's saying, I promise you they're going for 400 years. That's that smoking furnace, and then the burning lamp is their deliverance out of there, basically.

Right, I'll bring them back to this land, yeah. Okay, well, that's interesting. It's a different view. You know, it's funny.

It's funny, I never heard that smoking furnace got the Father. I was just reading and I, well, that's interesting, too. All right, thanks for your time. All right. Okay, God bless you, John. Good talking to you. Okay, Michael from Dallas, Texas. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Hey, good afternoon, Steve. I've got a question about the verses that have inspired the name of your program, and I've been meditating on those verses and I've become a little bit concerned about the genuineness of my faith and also the faith of other Christian friends of mine after thinking about those verses. So I'm wondering if maybe you could comment on what you think are the most essential hallmarks of a person who is on The Narrow Path, and if they're not, what kind of things maybe they could do to get on The Narrow Path.

Okay, I appreciate the question. You're talking about Matthew 7, 13, and 14, which says, Enter by the narrow gate, for wide is the gate and broad is the way, or the path, that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it, because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way, or the path, which leads to life, and there are few who find it. Jesus is obviously making it clear that it's not the easiest thing in the world to have eternal life, although preachers, in order to get numbers of people to respond, often try to make it sound a very sweet deal.

All you have to do is say a prayer and you're in, you know? Well, Jesus made it sound like it's a difficult way, and the easy way is the religious path that most people aren't, because Jesus was talking to religious people living in a religious society. Israel was a religious society, and yet he told his disciples, most people are not on the path that leads to life, even though they're religious. There's many people who are not finding the way to life. They're on the broad path, but he said there are few that are finding it, and I think the few that were finding it were simply a reference to his disciples, relative few. Now, by the way, he didn't suggest that only a few will ever find it. He's simply describing the situation in Israel at that time, that most people were certainly on the wrong path, and I think at all times in history, most people have been on the wrong path, but there's no prediction here that there would never be a change in that. After all, it does say in Revelation 7 and verse 14 that there's an innumerable company that no one could number, who are from every nation, kindred and tongue and people, who are saved and seen there, waving their palm branches and all that, worshipping God.

So there will be many saved, but at any given time, it seems that it's relatively few of the living population. Now, how does one know if you're on that path? Well, I think the path is Christ. Remember, Jesus said, I am the way, which means the path. If you're following Christ, you're on his path. But what does it mean to follow Christ?

What's it look like to follow Christ? Well, mainly, it means that you have made a firm commitment in your heart that you're going to follow him, that he's the king, he's your Lord, and he's the one you're going to be obedient to. You're not going to be perfect, although you'll want to be, but you won't be, because nobody's as perfect as they want to be. Anyone who's made New Year's resolutions knows that.

I mean, you intend it, but you don't carry it out perfectly. Now, God knows that. Jesus said, the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. He knows we stumble. James said, you know, we all stumble in many ways. But the fact that we stumble, or that our flesh is weak, does not have to cancel out the fact that the spirit is willing.

That's the important thing. Is my spirit willing to follow Jesus 100 percent? Am I willing to forsake everything to be his disciple?

Am I willing to suffer the loss, the scorn of my friends? Am I willing to stand up and maybe lose my life for taking a stand for Christ? If I'm willing to do that, then I've made the very transition that becoming a Christian involves. Jesus said, if anyone will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. That's, of course, Matthew 16, 24. So, how do you know if you've made that? Well, you should know it. You should know it because if you wake up in the morning and what's on your mind is, how do I please God today?

How do I follow Jesus today? Then if that's your concern, then you've got that. You've made that decision. If you haven't, you probably wake up in the morning and don't give God much any thought about his will or whatever. Or if you do, you don't care to do his will. Now, the Christian is one who wants to do the will of God and wants to follow Jesus. As I say, we don't do it perfectly, but we want to because he is our king genuinely. And so that is how you know if you're a follower of Christ. Now, Jesus said the real evidence that you're his disciples, that you love one another. He said this, a new commandment I give to you that you love one another as I have loved you. In this, all men will know that you are my disciples if you have loved one for another. So the real mark of being a follower of Christ is that you love as Christ loves.

I would suggest to you a short series of mine on the website. And of course, they're free to hear. It's called How Can I Know That I'm Really Saved? And it uses 1 John. 1 John is a book about assurance of salvation. And there are four tests, four tests that John gives of knowing whether you're saved or not. And I expound on them for four, I think it's four or five lectures, I don't remember. But it's called How Can I Know That I'm Really Saved? And it's one of the topical lectures on our lecture series on our website. Do you think that in today's environment that most Christians are maybe a little bit too cavalier about the genuineness of their faith with respect to these verses? I do.

I do. And I say most. I'd be willing to commit to the word most.

I would not be able to commit to a percentage. You know, there's times when it seems to me like less than 10% of people in the churches really give much thought to being disciples of Christ. But then at other times I think, well, I don't know what's in their hearts. There may be many more than I know who, although they are weak, their flesh is weak, their spirit is willing. So God has to judge the heart.

And we have to judge our own hearts. Paul said, examine yourself and see if you're in the faith. But yes, I would say the churches have preached the gospel in such a way as to make people feel that they have become Christians when they haven't done what Jesus said you have to do to be Christian. The churches, therefore, have let people down. I believe that the majority of the people in the church have said a sinner's prayer, they've gone forward at an altar call or they raised their hand after an invitation, and they've been hurriedly assured that they are now Christians and they haven't really had any radical transition in their life.

They have not ceased to live for themselves. It's still all about them and not about Christ. And therefore you can see they haven't really made the transition to become a follower of Christ, but they weren't told they have to.

They were just told that if you accept Jesus into your heart and say a prayer, you've got your ticket to heaven. That's the gospel that most people have been evangelized by, and it's not the gospel. It's not the gospel in the Bible. There's no gospel like that in the Bible. And there's nothing in the Bible accepting Jesus into your heart. There's nothing in the Bible about—well, I don't want to go off on this, but actually I talk about this a lot in my books I just wrote on the Kingdom of God. But anyway, I have a series on the Kingdom of God at the website, which would be very helpful to you, and How Can I Know I'm Really Saved?

That series would be very good to you also. Yeah, so it just seems like in the churches I've been in, I really haven't witnessed a lot of Christians loving each other, and part of the problem too is just the definition of the word love, you know, because what does it really mean to love one another? And it seems like to me that if we were really loving one another, there'd be a whole lot more sacrifice evidence. I agree. I agree.

Yeah, I share your perception. Well, hey, thanks for your answer. That's very helpful. Okay, Michael, thank you for calling. God bless you. Bye now. Okay, Hunter from Alabama.

Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Oops, I'm sorry.

Hit the wrong button. Go ahead. Hi, Hunter. Hey, how you doing, Steve?

Good. Hey, I've got a question. What do you think the Christian position should be on the death penalty? I've had some Christian friends of mine, and I am pro-death penalty, and some of my Christian friends are not saying that that's not biblical. So what do they think should be done? What do they think should be done to murderers? They say that shouldn't be up to – that that is the same thing as murder.

It's just from a different way of doing it. No, no, I said what do they think should be done to murderers? Be put in jail for us a lot. Okay, and who pays for that? Taxpayers. Okay, so the taxpayers are victimized first by having a criminal about who kills people, and then they're victimized for the rest of that person's life, supporting him not to work in an expensive environment in a prison for the rest of their life. So in other words, he gets to victimize the populace in his crime and in his punishment.

Interesting. I don't really see how that's a just punishment. The Bible doesn't know of any punishment for murder other than capital punishment. Now, capital punishment is not murder. It's justice.

It's punishment. You see, murder is when you kill somebody who's innocent, like when you abort a baby, for example. You're killing an innocent person, or maybe a living person who's innocent.

You kill him. That's murder. God said this numerous times. Whoever sheds man's blood, by man his blood shall be shed. He said that in Genesis 9 and throughout the law. They quote the verse where it says, where God said that vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord. Right, and they should also read chapter 13 of Romans where it says that God has appointed the state as his instrument of vengeance. At the end of chapter 12 of Romans, Paul quotes Deuteronomy where God says vengeance is mine. I will repay, and Paul tells the Christians not to avenge themselves because God's going to avenge. And then the very next verses in Romans 13 say the state is ordained by God to be the avenger of those who do wrong. So in other words, God avenges evil through the state. He doesn't let us Christians avenge ourselves because he wants us to leave that, keep our hands clean from that.

But he'll take care of it, and the way he takes care of it is, he said, he's ordained the state to do that. So, I mean, Christians, no, I don't believe that Christians should kill murderers. I don't think that, if somebody kills my wife or my children, I don't think I should go hunt them down and kill them.

I don't think that Bible authorizes me to do that. But the state should because the state is authorized by God to do that. I'm not going to avenge myself, but God is going to avenge. And there's nothing wrong with our crime being avenged.

It's just that God doesn't want me to do it with my own hands. He'll do it, and he does it through the state, through a criminal justice system. I mean, actually, if they don't believe in capital punishment because we should leave vengeance to God, well, we shouldn't put them in jail either because that's not leaving vengeance to God, is it? So we shouldn't do anything to criminals. We should just let criminals walk and wait for God to do something, like strike them with lightning.

Is that what they have in mind? No, if you put a person in jail, you are punishing them. If you give them the electric chair, you're also punishing them. If you charge them a fine, you're also punishing them. In no case are you leaving vengeance strictly to God, but the state is ordained by God to exercise just punishments on crimes.

And the Bible is very clear. The just punishment for murder is capital punishment. The just punishment for theft is to repay with a penalty and make restitution. There's different punishments that are due to different crimes, but God has ordained the government to execute those punishments. And there's nothing in the New Testament or the Old that suggests for a moment that there's a better punishment for murder than capital punishment. And people say, well, we should turn the other cheek. Well, the Bible never told the courts and the police to turn the other cheek toward criminals. They're supposed to be protecting people who are turning the other cheek. And by the way, putting someone in jail is not turning the other cheek either. So, I mean, they're just not consistent. They're people who don't think they feel.

And many Christians in that position, they make their decisions based on their feelings, not on their rational thinking or on what the Bible says. I'm sorry I'm out of time. You've been listening to The Narrow Path. My name is Steve Gregg. We're meeting in Temecula tomorrow night. We are listeners supported. You can go to our website, thenarrowpath.com, to see how you might support us, and we'll talk to you again on Monday. God bless.