The Narrow Path 9/10

Music Good afternoon, and welcome to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg, and we're live for an hour each week of the afternoon, taking your calls. If you have questions you'd like to call in with and ask about the Bible or the Christian faith, or if you have a different viewpoint from the host, you'd like to discuss an alternative way of seeing things from the way the host sees them, you're welcome to do so. You can join us here. Right now we have some lines open.

That may not be true in a few minutes, but it is true now. If you'd like to call, the number is 844-484-5737. That's 844-484-5737. And we're going to talk to Eli, first of all, from Riverside, California, just down the road from where I'm sitting.

Eli, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Hi, Steve Gregg, thank you.

So I heard this person talking about the devil was created by God, has a perfect angel, and he gave reference Isaiah 14, and I believe it was Ezekiel 28. I just want to hear your comments on it, and I'll take your answer offline. Okay. Well, thank you for your call, Eli. Good talk to you.

Thanks for joining us. Well, the idea that Satan was a perfect angel and he fell, it's a very common Christian view and it goes way, way back to early church fathers who taught the same thing. It doesn't go so far back, however, as the Scriptures themselves. The Scriptures don't ever mention the devil being an angel. In fact, there's no specific reference to Satan ever having been anything other than what he is now. Now, the Scriptures that are usually used by those who teach this are, as you said, Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28.

Those are the main ones. Now, there's a few lines in the New Testament they use, as, for example, when Jesus said in Luke chapter 10, I think it's verse 18, he said, I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Some people think that means that he was an angel who fell, although Jesus doesn't make any reference to Satan ever having been an angel. In Revelation chapter 12, it talks about a dragon, which is the devil, and his angels making war against Michael and his angels, and the dragon is cast out of heaven. Some people make reference to that as the origins of Satan, but again, that passage doesn't mention Satan ever being an angel either from his first appearance in the book of Revelation to the last. He's a serpent or a dragon. That's not an angel.

That's an evil thing. So there is a statement Paul made to Timothy when he's giving the qualifications for elders in 1 Timothy chapter 3. I don't remember what verse it is.

It's in the first four or five verses of 1 Timothy 3. Paul says that he should not be a novice, meaning a new believer, lest he be puffed up and fall into the condemnation of the devil. Now, the condemnation of the devil, to my mind, means the devil's condemning him, but some people think it means the same condemnation as the devil fell into it. That is to say, if an elder is too immature, he may be proud and puffed up and fall like the devil did.

Now, that's not what it says, but that's how some interpret it. In fact, the new King James, to their great discredit, added the word same, and instead of of the devil, they put as the devil. So in other words, the new King James decided to add some words to the text, and frankly, I think a lot of modern translations do, so that instead of saying that the man may fall into the condemnation of the devil, they make it say that he will fall into the same condemnation as the devil, which is making the assumption that the devil fell through pride, and that would be a danger that a novice as an elder might have also, although it's interesting that he only thinks a novice would probably be in danger of that. If the devil was a holy angel, you'd think he'd be in a better position not to fall than an immature Christian, but who knows? These are New Testament passages that don't actually ever mention the devil being an angel, so the main passages, the longest passages that people make reference to are in Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28. Now, neither of these passages mention the devil.

That's interesting, isn't it? In Isaiah 14, 12, in the King James Version and the New King James, and maybe a few other more traditional translations, you do find the word Lucifer there, but Lucifer is not a name. It's more like a nickname. It means light bearer, shining one, morning star, something along those lines, and that's a Latin word. Interestingly enough, the Old Testament that we read was translated from Hebrew into English. However, when you have a King James or a New King James, in that one verse, you have a Latin word, Lucifer, which means light bearer, essentially, bright one.

Now, I'm not really sure how that can be justified. Why would they take a Latin word, Lucifer, and stick it in an English translation of a Hebrew Bible? It's obviously borrowed from the Vulgate, but in most modern translations, we don't have the name Lucifer because it's not a name and because it should have been translated into English like the rest of the Old Testament in Hebrew.

Isaiah was written in Hebrew, and in that particular verse, a translation should say shining one or morning star or something like that, and that's what modern translations do say. They don't use the Latin word Lucifer. Unfortunately, because the King James had so much influence on Christianity in the English-speaking world for so many centuries, many people assume that Lucifer must be a proper name, and it must be the name of the devil. Now, I want to tell you, the word Lucifer is not found anywhere in the whole Bible except there and, of course, only in the older translations, not in the modern ones that are more faithful to the Hebrew. So, really, the Bible doesn't ever have a name Lucifer in it, and in the translations that do use the word Lucifer, they only do so in that one verse. So, in other words, if Lucifer is supposed to be the devil, then you're going to have to find it in that passage because it's not in any other passage. There's no other passage that mentions Lucifer by that name. Now, does the passage mention the devil anywhere?

No. In fact, if you look at the opening verses of that chapter, Isaiah 14, you'll find that it's a continuation of chapter 13. No surprise there. Isaiah 13 and 14 follow each other, and they are both prophecies against Babylon and against the king of Babylon in particular. In Isaiah chapter 14, either verse 4 or 5, I'm not looking at it right now, but it says, take up this lamentation against the king of Babylon. So, it's addressing the king of Babylon, and it doesn't say anything about the devil. Now, of course, Isaiah, like most prophets, writes in poetry, and he says some poetic things, which if you took them literally, you'd have to say, well, he must be writing to someone who's not a mere human king because, you know, he wanted to make his throne above the stars of God. However, you have to remember, this is a reference to the beginning of Babylon. The beginning of Babylon was the Tower of Babel, and their ambition was to make a tower that reaches into heavens among the stars. And so, he's basically using symbolic language or poetic language, and it's talking about Babylon. If you aren't sure that I'm right about that, you can be quite positive if you just read a little further in the same passage. So, we're in Isaiah chapter 14, and I'm turning there now.

In verse 16, or verse 15, it says, you shall be brought down to Sheol, which is where dead people go, to the lowest steps of the pit. Then it says, those who see you will gaze at you, this is verse 16, Isaiah 14, 16, and consider you saying, is this the man who made the earth tremble? Well, it says it's talking to a man. Why would people look at an angel and say, are you a man?

Are you the man who did this? No, he's talking, it says, in verse 4 of the same chapter, you take up this proverb against the king of Babylon. Now, the king of Babylon was a man, and he had great ambitions. He was very proud, and God brought him down to the lowest pit, and he symbolically says, everyone who sees you down there in Sheol, they're going to say, are you the guy who is such a big shot, who shook the kingdoms, who gave them so much trouble?

Look, you have become like one of us, is exactly what they say. So, that's not really talking about an angel, or let me just say this, some people say, well, it really is. It's true, it does talk about the king of Babylon, but at this point, it's talking about the power behind the throne, which is the devil. Well, I could say that about any passage in the Bible. I suppose if I wanted to, if I don't need any proof, if I don't need any evidence, but there's nothing in the Bible that says it's talking about anything other than the king of Babylon.

It's just a tradition. It's a very old one that says that's talking about the devil. You'll not find a reference to the devil in that passage. The other passage is Ezekiel 28, and beginning at around 12 or so, it begins to talk to the king of Tyre in a certain way, and most people want to say that this is also not talking to the king of Tyre, although it says it is.

They say, no, it's really talking to the power behind the throne, which is Satan. However, I would point out that beginning in chapter 26 of Ezekiel and inclusive of chapter 27 and 28, the whole passage is about Tyre, about the fall of Tyre, and even about the king of Tyre in some of the earlier passages. It says to the king of Tyre, well, it says in verse 12, Ezekiel 28, son of man, take up a lamentation for the king of Tyre and say to him, you were the seal of perfection, full of wisdom, perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God. Every precious stone was your covering, gives a list of gemstones. It says the workmanship of your timbrels and pipes was prepared in you on the day you were created. You were the anointed cherub who covers.

I established you. You were in the holy mountain of God, et cetera, et cetera. Says you were perfect in all your ways from the day you were created till iniquity was found in you. By the abundance of your trading, you became filled with violence within and you sinned. Now, Tyre was a trading city. It was a merchant city.

It was a port city, the most prosperous port city at that end of the Mediterranean Sea. Now, he says they became corrupted by the abundance of their commerce trading. Now, whoever he's talking to was involved in commercial ventures and was corrupted by them. I don't think anyone has ever speculated that the devil was involved as an angel in heaven in commercial ventures and became corrupted by trading.

So I don't see how this would fit that. Now, of course, there are things in the poetry of the passage that can't be taken literally if you're going to make it a human being. But the king of Tyre was a human being. To say you were perfect in beauty, perfect in wisdom, actually, if you read the chapters before that are talking about Tyre, it says that the king of Tyre said these very things about himself. He's, oh, prince of Tyre, he says, you've said I am perfect in beauty.

I'm perfect in wisdom. And so he's simply repeating back what the king of Tyre says about himself. He says, yeah, but you, iniquity has been found in you and you're going down.

That's what he's saying. Now, the part about being in Eden and also being a cherub is, I think, more than anything, the features of the passage that people have taken to me, oh, this must be the devil, because he was in Eden and he was a cherub. A person isn't a cherub. You're right, a person is not a cherub. A cherub is an inhabitant of heaven, a supernatural being, not an angel by any means. If you want to read about cherubs, they are described in Ezekiel earlier on. In both chapter 1 and chapter 10, cherubs are described as having, each of them has four faces, the face of an eagle, the face of a man, the face of a lion, and the face of an ox. And they have four wings.

And so they're a strange creature. That's not the way angels look when they're seen. In fact, they are distinguished in the book of Revelation. We see the four living creatures, which apparently are cherubs, and then you see a multitude of angels, which are something else. So if we want to say this is literally, the person he's talking to is literally a cherub, well, he wasn't an angel then. He was a cherub, something else than an angel. Now, more than that, if he was literally in the Garden of Eden and he was literally a cherub, then he wasn't the devil. Because the devil in the Garden of Eden was not a cherub.

He was a snake. But there was a cherub in the Garden of Eden, you might recall. When Adam fell, God put a cherub with a flaming sword to guard the weight of the tree of life. So of all the characters that ever lived in the Garden of Eden that we know of, there was God, there was Adam and Eve, there was the serpent, and there was the cherub. Now we know who God is, we know who Adam and Eve are, we know who the serpent is. And by the way, the serpent was Satan.

But who's the cherub? Well, whoever it was, it wasn't Satan, because he's one of the different characters in the story. So if the king of Tyre was literally a cherub in the Garden of Eden, then he wasn't the devil, because the devil was a serpent in the Garden of Eden and the cherub was something else.

But I would point this out. Three chapters later in Ezekiel 31, Ezekiel is talking about the king of Assyria. And he says, as you read the description of him, that the Assyrian was a treat. First of all, in verse 3 it says he was a cedar in Lebanon, which is not literally the case. First of all, he wasn't in Lebanon, but he was not a cedar.

But this is the language of poetry. In verse 8 of Ezekiel 31, it says that the Assyrian was in the Garden of God. That's the Garden of Eden. He says that all the cedars in the Garden of God could not hide it. He says no tree in the Garden of God was like it in beauty. And then he says, I made it beautiful with its multitude of branches so that all the trees of Eden envied it that were in the Garden of God. Now, this is describing the Assyrian nation, or perhaps the Assyrian king.

It's not clear whether it's talking about the nation or the king. But the Assyrian is said to have been a tree envied by the trees in the Garden of Eden. So it must have been a tree that was around at the time when the Garden of Eden was around for the trees in the Garden of Eden, and maybe even in the Garden of Eden.

Now, of course, that's not literally true. Assyria didn't exist in the Garden of Eden. Assyria arose from the nations after the flood of Noah, which was thousands of years later. So Ezekiel is not speaking literally here. If the Assyrian is a tree in the Garden of Eden and the king of Tyre is a cherub in the Garden of Eden, we have every reason to take both of them equally literally or equally not literally. And I think we'd have to say not literally is the only sensible way to go on that, because it's not the case that either the Assyrian nor the king of Tyre were literally in the Garden of Eden.

So what do we have? We have Isaiah 14, which is about the king of Babylon. Then we have the king of Assyria or the Assyrian nation, perhaps, and that's in Ezekiel 28. And we don't have any passage in either book or any other book that mentioned the devil. I mean, of course, the devil is mentioned in a few places in the Old Testament, but not in these places. There's no mention of Satan in these places. So I'm going to have to say, those who say the devil is a fallen angel, I would just have to ask him, where does it say that? Maybe he was. See, whenever I give this explanation, the rumor goes around that I don't believe or that I say the devil wasn't a fallen angel.

I don't say the devil wasn't a fallen angel. I don't know if he was or not. Nothing is said about it in Scripture. Maybe he was. But how would we know?

We can't just know this intuitively. The Bible doesn't tell us. So let's just say if the devil is a fallen angel, God didn't mention it. And Jesus said about the devil in John 8.44, he said the devil was a murderer from the beginning.

It doesn't sound like he thought he had an earlier career as something good. And it says that in 1 John 3.8 also. The devil sinned from the beginning, it says. So there's no mention of the devil ever doing anything but sinning or being anything but a murderer.

It was those things from the beginning, we're told. And there's nothing in the Bible that tells us any alternative view about his origin. So I guess I went a long time on this, but there's a lot of material to cover, especially when you are attempting to deal with something that almost everybody has heard unbiblical ideas about. At least that the Bible is silent about. Let's put it that way.

Extra biblical, let's put it that way. Okay, we're going to talk next to Chris from Venice, Florida. Chris, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Hey, good evening, Steve.

Chris here from Venice, Florida. Good to talk to you again. It's been a little while. Listen, I've really appreciated your ministry the past, I guess, 15 years because you were the first one that really caused me to open my eyes to partial preterism.

And my question for today is the difference between full and partial preterism. I've been looking into both. I've been listening to some of your debates, I think, with Don Preston. Yeah, I was listening to some other debates with Don Preston and Michael Brown. Yeah, I listened to some of your debates with Michael Brown. I've been sharing this message with friends and people in church and been kind of being a little ostracized. But I want you to take my question and I'm going to go offline. But can you, if you were to give me a really good punch of just the nuts and bolts differences between full and partial preterism and what's left for us to be fulfilled, whether it's the millennial and how that the millennial is going to work out over the next, you know, are we in the millennial? I know you're an amillennialist.

I think you're an amillennialist. Okay, I got your question. Okay. Okay, so I'm gonna take it offline. Thanks, Steve. Okay, Chris. Thanks for your call.

Bye. Okay, well, preterism, the word means, it comes from the Latin word for past. Preter is past in Latin and preterism is one of the options for interpreting prophecy. When you look at a prophecy that predicted something, let's say back in the days of Jeremiah or in the days of Zechariah or the days of Amos or the days of Ezekiel or Daniel, when you look at prophecies like that or the book of Revelation, you have some options. You can either say, well, these prophecies have been fulfilled in the centuries that followed them as the prophecies were given at a certain time, and then the predictions came true at a certain time, and we now look back on them as fulfilled prophecies.

That's looking at them in a preteristic way. Or we can say, no, these have not yet come true. These are prophecies that have yet to come true, and that's looking at them in a futuristic way. So preter means past, future means future, and so in most prophecies in the Bible that predict something, everyone has to decide, has this been fulfilled already or is this going to be fulfilled in the future? Now, if you say in the future, that's a futurist view.

If you say in the past, that's a preterist view. Now, actually, all Christians are partially preterist because there's hundreds of Old Testament prophecies that everybody knows have been fulfilled in the past. There's prophecies about the fall of Edom and Moab and Babylon and Assyria, and we know those prophecies were fulfilled in ancient history long before the time of Christ. We know there are prophecies about the fall of Jerusalem that Jesus gave, which, for example, in Luke 19, when he wept over Jerusalem, said, your enemies are going to come and build siege mounds around you, and they're going to lay you to the ground, and not one stone will be left on another, et cetera. That's a prophecy that everyone recognizes was fulfilled in AD 70.

That's not even debatable. So there's lots of prophecies like that. Most Christians think there's hundreds of prophecies about the Messiah that were fulfilled by Jesus, and that's one reason we know he was the Messiah, because he fulfilled so many prophecies. So when you look at the prophecies of the Bible, every Christian believes that hundreds of them have been fulfilled in the past, but also most Christians believe that there are some prophecies that have not been fulfilled yet, and they're going to be fulfilled in the future, and those have to do with the future second coming of Christ, the resurrection of the dead, the rapture of the church, the new heavens and the new earth being created, these things. Now, almost all Christians believe that some of those prophecies are future, but there are some who don't. There are some who believe that all prophecies were fulfilled in the past.

Those are the full preterists. They might call themselves consistent preterists, but what they're saying is if you believe that some of these prophecies were fulfilled in the past, it's only reasonable to assume they all are, which, of course, is a rather not intelligent thing to say, since when Jesus walked the earth, they could say a lot of prophecies were fulfilled in the past, but not all of them. Even the full preterists believe they weren't all fulfilled when Jesus was here. They believe they were all fulfilled in 70 A.D. after Jesus had gone. So the fact that prophecies are not all fulfilled at the same time is a given.

We know that prophecies about the fall of Edom didn't happen at the same time as the prophecies about the fall of Assyria, and the fall of Assyria didn't happen at the same time as the fall of Babylon, and so forth. So prophecies all have different times of fulfillment. Now, the full preterist believes everything that's ever been predicted in the Bible, Old or New Testament, has been fulfilled, and therefore there is no future predicted events. There's no future second coming. There's no future resurrection of the dead. There's no future rapture, no future new heavens and new earth.

They say that all of those happened either literally or figuratively in A.D. 70 or around about that time when Jerusalem fell. That's the full preterist. Now, that's a very new view. It really arose pretty much in the 1970s, I think it was, pretty much. I mean, there were very, very few people who took a view similar to that in the late 1800s, but basically the modern full preterist movement began in the 1970s or so.

So it's a very new idea. Until then, Christians all knew that Jesus is going to come back in the future, and that hasn't happened yet. The resurrection hasn't happened yet. But the full preterists doubt that. Now, I'm a partial preterist like everybody else. I believe some prophecies have been fulfilled in the past, so part of the Bible is preteristically interpreted, but some still remain to be fulfilled in the future. That's what partial preterism says.

And in a sense, all Christians are partial preterists. I believe that the book of Revelation is largely fulfilled in the past and all of it discourse, and this is where I would disagree with some people who are futurists about those things. What do I think is yet to be fulfilled in the future? Well, the second coming of Christ, the resurrection of the dead, the rapture of the church, and the new heavens and new earth. Those are the things I think are yet to come. Everything else appears to have been fulfilled, and so that's my position on the question you asked.

I hope that clarifies some things for you. You're listening to the narrow path. We're not done. It sounds like we're done, but we're not.

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Remember thenarrowpath.com. 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, the Christian faith, the Christian life, the Christian apologetics, Christian history, we can talk about those things.

If you have a different viewpoint from the host, you want a balanced comment, we can talk about that too. We'll be glad to have you. The number to call is 844-484-5737. And our lines are not entirely full, so if you call now, there's a possibility you'll get through.

The number is 844-484-5737. Our next caller today is Michael from Dallas-Fort Worth area. Hi, Michael.

Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Hey, good afternoon, Steve. Can you hear me okay?

Yes, sir. Hey, listen, I've got a question. I've been reading parts of a book called The Benedict Option. I haven't read it.

I've heard of it, yeah. Yeah, so there's an issue in there that he touches on in the relationship that Christians have with the modern corporations, and particularly large corporations. And I'm becoming increasingly uncomfortable with this relationship myself, and, you know, both as a consumer and as an employee. And I'm just wondering if maybe you could get some insight into biblical principles that might apply to that, the Benedict Option.

I need you to help me out here. What is the relationship between the church and big corporations? So Christians interact with these big corporations, and increasingly I see them acting antagonistically towards Christian principles. I see. And in the Benedict Option, the author talks about a kind of separation that we need to begin.

And, you know, Benedict referring to the monastic movement and how they kind of separated themselves from the larger world systems. And so I'm just wondering if you have any any insights into that. I mean, I like corporations in that they provide, you know, modern conveniences.

I really like cars and computers and air conditioning and modern health care, things like that. But I see some things that are happening where, you know, the corporations are aligning with certain leftist principles that I think are antithetical to Christianity. And also in the employer environment, I see a lot of kind of intimidation and coercion going on there too that I'm uncomfortable with. Well, that is happening more and more. And I'm awfully glad that I'm not an employee of one of these big corporations because they are moving so much more toward, you know, their deceptions of critical race theory and social justice issues that are certainly anti-Christian in tone. But I will say this. I don't know that we have an obligation to do business only with other Christians. There is I mean, it is an option.

I mean, from time to time, I'll hear that. In fact, even even now, there's certain places I will not shop, certain restaurants I won't eat at because I've heard of some position they took on something. I think, well, I don't want to put money into their pockets.

On the other other. On the other hand, it's very, very difficult to to get some kinds of services. I mean, Amazon, for example. So convenient, but it's it's very anti-Christian, very pro-leftist. Same thing with YouTube and things like that.

Now, we've got a lot of our videos on YouTube. It's I would if I had the choice, I would use only Christian sources for some of these things. But I'm not aware of a Christian alternative to YouTube, for example. So, you know, so I think that it would depend on the conscience of the person, you know, because of China's using prisoner labor and stuff like that. Some prisoners of conscience, Christian pastors and stuff who are in prison who are being used as slave labor to build, you know, to make products that we buy at Wal-Mart.

And almost almost everything at Wal-Mart was made in China. I mean, lots of Christians will boycott Wal-Mart. And I'm not against them.

I think it's I think it's a principled thing to do. Although I don't know in the Bible if if that's something that we're commanded to do. But I but I believe in boycotting groups that, you know, that you absolutely do not want to put any money in their pockets. On the other hand, you know, what corporations do on a large scale against Christianity, sometimes small shops and their owners will do who are not Christians. You know, they'll they'll take the money and they'll use it for their sinful lifestyles or whatever. And they'll support charities that that promote whatever abortion or whatever.

So I don't know if there's anything you can do to keep all of your money from trickling down into evil uses. I think that I think that's simply a matter of conscience. And I certainly respect people who do that. But, you know, when I buy gas for my car, when I buy groceries at the supermarket, you know, when I go to Lowe's to get something, I have to admit, I don't do a lot of research to find out where they're, you know, where they're donating money. I'm sure probably most of them are giving something to Planned Parenthood or something. I think that those corporations are using that ignorance to exploit, you know, their power and position. I'm sure they do.

I'm sure they do. So I mean, on the other hand, we could well, I was saying that we could reduce our consumption as a primary principle just to begin with. Well, I think all Christians probably need to reduce their consumption. Well, not all Christians, but all American Christians probably are more consumeristic than than Christians in poor countries are. And yeah, and a lot of our consumption leads to the wasting of money that we didn't need to spend on things we didn't need to get. And which some people who really do have needs like to feed their children, they could use that money. And that's why I really believe Christians should give an increasing percentage as much as they can to those missions that help the poor and that spread the gospel rather than rather than increasing our standards of living. But on the other hand, I don't I'm not going to be guilted by the fact that I live in America and my income and my expenses are greater than those of someone in Argentina who makes twelve dollars a day, you know, or something like that.

You can't live very well on twelve dollars a day unless you get government help here. So we're in a dilemma, and I think that people just have to really I think Christians cannot judge each other, but they really need to judge themselves as to what they are supporting and so forth. And each one should follow their conscience.

I think God will convict people if they're doing something that he's displeased by them doing, if they're if they're looking to be convicted, if they're looking to be sensitive to what the Holy Spirit is telling them to do. Like I like I said, I know people who won't buy at Wal-Mart because everything there is made in China. Well, I don't go to Wal-Mart very often. I don't like going to Wal-Mart much, but I'm not boycotting them completely. And some of the products I buy there are food products and things like that, which are not made in China. But it's it's really hard to know how to avoid everything in a secular pagan world, which we live in, that to buy from only from people who will use the money for the kingdom of God.

I'd love to do that. I don't know if that's an option open to us. Now, there are some things probably that you can't get from Christians and we might be able to just not get them at all. I mean, you know, perhaps you don't need to have a television service. Perhaps you don't need to have a cell phone. But I think most people feel like they do.

Although there are some new options. There are some options on cell providers now, I think that are that are not leftists and so forth. So I think that I think you bring something up that we can't be we can't impose legalism on other people, because the Bible doesn't anywhere say that Christians can only buy things from other Christians. That would certainly be the ideal, because we the Bible says in Galatians 6, 10, as you have opportunity, do good to all people, but especially those of the household of faith. And certainly if there are businesses that the owners need to feed their families and pay their bills and some of those owners are Christians and others are not. Well, we shouldn't be callous toward non Christian need, but we do have a priority to help those who are Christian. So if we can get services or goods from Christians, then I think we should choose to do so. If there are goods and services that we just can't buy from a Christian company because they you know, they're not manufactured by Christians. I mean, you might buy from a store that's owned by a Christian, but he's getting the stuff from some, you know, something made in China or something.

You know, he's got to get it somewhere, too. So I just think it's you'd go crazy. I would think if you had a real legalistic say things, you know, I'm not going to spend any money anywhere where any of my money will get in the hands of Planned Parenthood or the Chinese or anyone else whose policies I object to. I think God knows that we can't trace all that money.

I mean, we'd have to spend our whole life researching everything. So I had a friend that was in the oil business before he became a pastor and I was talking to him about this issue several years ago. And he said, well, hey, look, every time you buy a tank of gas, a portion of that money goes to some despot somewhere. You know, in a oil-producing company, you can't escape it, really. But I think that it's a danger to have an all-or-nothing type of mentality about it. It's like, oh, well, it's just impossible.

Forget it. Or this kind of attitude about, oh, well, you can't impose that on me. That's legalism.

Because, I mean, that happens all the time in evangelical circles. And you've got this libertine free-for-all now where, oh, well, I can do whatever I want to because, you know, hey, I'm under grace and you can't tell me what to do. I agree with you.

Let me just say this. I'm going to have to move on. I just want to say, I think that this is a matter of personal stewardship.

And you're right. Personal stewardship isn't always black and white. I mean, it's always possible that you could miss one more meal and give five more dollars to Haiti. You know, I mean, you can always cut back a little more and give a little more.

And yet I don't know that any stewardship is a personal responsibility. And we will answer to God for it. We're going to stand before God. And he's going to get we're going to give account for every nickel that he ever put in our hands and say, well, how did you what did you do with that?

Did you did you support the kingdom of God or did you just, you know, feather your own nest and make yourself comfortable? That's I mean, we're going to answer to God, but we don't answer to each other for it. So it's it's kind of it's kind of nuanced because like one guy gives 20 percent of his income to the poor. Another person gives 30 percent. They might have the same income.

And it might be possible for the person who gives 20 percent to adjust his standard of living so that he could give 30 percent like the guy the other guy does. But it's it's none of my business. I mean, unless he's sinning with his money. And I don't and I don't think buying something from a non-Christian is sinning unless you're buying something sinful to buy.

So it's it's something I think legalism is something very much to be avoided here. On the other hand, I think Christians need to have probably more than they do generally a tender conscience about where their money's going and how much they're spending on themselves and whether they could get by with less by. You know, by only buying such things as they can buy with a clear conscience, knowing, you know, where the money's going and so forth. That's something for everyone to make their own mind. Some people are very religious and some people are very libertine, as you say.

Yes. And I think that I think stewardship is is not not legalistic or libertine. We have obligation and will answer to God for our stewardship, but we don't answer. And like you say, I think, you know, in my mind and the forefront of my mind these days, I'm thinking about our brothers and sisters in developing countries.

They have, you know, they don't even have clean water to drink. And I'm going out here blowing my money on, you know, stuff that's going to fill up my garage full of garbage, you know. And yeah. And it's it's just meaningless. So anyway, that's I appreciate your your your answer. It's very helpful. Thanks. Well, I appreciate you bringing it up.

It's a difficult question. And that's just the kind of thing that needs to be discussed and people need to be thinking more about. Thanks for calling, Michael. OK, thank you, Steve. God bless you. OK, our next caller is Farrell from Long Beach, California.

Farrell, welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Hey, Steve, thanks for taking my call. I have two questions. My first will be Amos 8, 11, I think. And my question to you is when do you think that that God brought the famine of his word about?

And then my second question would be, you've talked before about in the garden. Adam, I don't know, the work of Adam's hands was cursed or something. And of course, the snake was cursed. But Eve was not. Yes, Eve was not cursed.

And is that because of the Messiah? Those are my two questions and I can hear them off there. Thank you, Steve. OK, thanks for your call.

Good talking to you. Let me take the second question first while it's on my mind. The curse, as we call it, that was uttered against Adam, Eve and the serpent in Genesis three after after they sinned. It's not so much that man was cursed, but the ground was cursed for a second. It made it became sort of a trickled down to be a curse on him because he's going to have to deal with thorns and thistles and in the sweat of his face.

He's going to eat his food, but it doesn't necessarily make it a curse on the man. It just made his life more difficult because the ground was cursed. The woman was not cursed, but man and woman both had undesirable consequences. I think I think that's what many people speak of as the curse, the curse that came on man and woman. The Bible doesn't refer to it specifically as a curse on them, but it's very clear that Eve was going to have more difficulty or sorrow, as it says, in childbearing. And Adam was going to have more difficulty in doing what he did.

Of course, this reflects both of their major roles. The woman, the man was made to tend the ground and to produce food in the first place. And Eve was made to help him be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth by having children. And together they were to cultivate the world and fill it with people. Now, man's job of cultivating the earth was going to be more difficult for him.

And woman's job of having babies and being fruitful and filling the earth was going to be more difficult for her. The snake, of course, he certainly everything about what was said to him was strictly a curse. But I don't I don't know that the man is said to be cursed so much as the ground.

So man and woman, both of them, they were they were subjected to more difficult circumstances. But I'm looking for it right now here in Genesis three. What he says to Adam is cursed is the ground for your sake in toil.

You should eat of it all the days, your life, et cetera, et cetera. And to the woman, he says, I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception and in pain, you should bring forth your children. So those are not stated to be curses. But the serpent is cursed in verse 14 because you have done this. You are cursed more than all the cattle, et cetera, and all the beasts of the field. So as far as the word curse being used, the devil got a curse on him. But Adam and Eve weren't personally cursed, but they're there.

Their sin was going to make their tasks that they already were responsible to do more difficult. Now, you asked about Amos Chapter eight, verses 11 and 12, especially verse 11. Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord that I will send a famine on the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord. This probably speaks of a time when God would not be sending prophets, hearing the word of the Lord. In those days, they didn't have, you know, printed Bibles. It usually meant that the Holy Spirit was speaking through the prophets, the word of the Lord to the people.

And there would be a famine in the sense that it wouldn't be available. God wouldn't be speaking in verse 12. He goes on, says they shall wander from sea to sea, from north to east. They shall run to and fro seeking the word of the Lord, but they shall not find it. So it's essentially saying when people want to get a word from the Lord, they won't be able to, because there's, as it were, a famine for that. You remember how Saul wanted to get a word from God when he was facing battle with the Philistines.

And it says God didn't speak to them by dreams or by Urim and Thummim or by ordinary ways like that, visions. And so he went to a witch. He was so eager to get something from the Lord.

He went to a witch, called up Samuel, who had died in a seance, and tried to get a word that way. But of course, this is Amos is considerably later than Saul's time, generations later. So he looks forward to a time when people in general will not be able to find the word of God, and he won't be speaking. I personally think this must refer to what we call the intertestamental period, because there was 400 years after Amos' time and before Jesus came, when God didn't send any prophets at all. The last prophet we know of that God sent to Israel before Jesus came was Malachi, and that was 400 years before Christ. So Malachi, 400 years before Christ, and then 400 years later, John the Baptist and Jesus profiting between that was 400 years where God didn't send any prophets.

I think that's probably the famine he's talking about. Israel will want to know what God has to say, but he's just not talking. And, you know, if we say, well, why wasn't he talking? I suspect it may have been because he had already spoken and they weren't listening. He had already given them the law and the prophets for several centuries previous, and they just didn't respect them. They didn't follow them.

And, you know, why would I keep talking to you if you got your hands over your ears? So I think God just kind of said, okay, you don't like hearing from me, so I'm not going to talk to you for a while. However, he did still have a promise to keep, and that was the promise of the Messiah coming. So that period of silence had to end eventually with the coming of the Messiah. That's when I personally think the famine does refer to that season, that 400 years before Jesus came. A lot of people think of it, of course, futuristically, like there's a time coming when we won't be able to hear the word of the Lord. And I would not say that that isn't possible, but I don't think that there's any reason in the passage to look that far ahead when there was a striking period of 400 years when this was fulfilled.

I don't think there's any suggestion here that we have to look beyond that to the end times or anything like that for the fulfillment of it. All right, we're going to talk next to Eddie from Macomb, Michigan. Eddie, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Hey, Steve, let me start off by saying I've been the biggest jerk to my wife. I haven't been treated her good at all since 15 years of marriage. I know. And now she wants a divorce, and I'm dying, Steve.

I can't go on, I can't move on. I'm dying on the inside, and I've repented, and I know how much she is worth outside of the Lord. Is she a believer? Yes, she is. Have you cheated on her?

No. Well, then as a believer, she probably shouldn't divorce you. Has she received any counsel from Christians about this? Just recently, I've been seeking Christian counsel. I have a marriage counselor as well now.

Well, that's good. It sounds like you need one, and it sounds like she needs one, too, because the Bible doesn't really give a woman grounds for divorce just because her husband is a jerk. You know, if you were cheating on her or abandoned her, then I'd say she has a biblical case for a divorce. If you've been abusing her, then she probably has a case not for divorce but for moving out until you learn how to stop abusing her.

If you've just been cold toward her or neglected her, well, that's a very bad thing, a very terrible thing, but that's not grounds for divorce. It's something where you, of course, need to be getting some kind of godly counsel, and I hope it is Christian counseling you're going to, not just secular counseling. No, it's Christian, but she wants nothing to do with the Lord now. She's not thinking about the Lord.

She's operating with her feelings. All right, well, see, she's in a position that the Bible describes as somebody who the seed is sown, and it takes off, but it doesn't have any roots in it because it's on shallow ground with rock underneath, and then it says when the sun comes up, it withers the plant, and it dies. Jesus said that's those who, when they hear the gospel, they believe for a while, but when difficulties, when tribulations and persecutions come because of the word, they fall away. Now, if she doesn't want anything to do with the Lord now, she's in that position. She was a professing Christian. Apparently, she was willing to be a Christian. Up to a certain point, she's willing to suffer a certain amount for her faithfulness to God, but she had a limit, and apparently she feels like she's left it. See, her roots were not very deep, and she's been in tribulation, in a marriage with a very difficult man, and therefore she's bailed on God because if she doesn't care what Jesus thinks, then she's not a Christian. A Christian is somebody who's a follower of Jesus, and if you don't care what Jesus thinks, then you're not a follower of Jesus. So anyway, I feel that she does need some counseling, not so much even marriage counseling as just being a Christian enduring hardship because a lot of our hardships come in marriages. But hardship is not an excuse for denying God or for betraying God or for breaking vows that you made to God. Christians are supposed to be more committed to God than that. I can't change your wife's mind, and I can't do anything for you if she's leaving.

I'm not going to be in a position to do anything to change that for you, but I think it's very good. I think that you should continue getting counsel and learn to be a better husband, and even if she divorces you, keep learning because she may change her mind if she sees change in you. She might not. There's no promise there, but if you start treating her well, if you start being a different kind of a man, she may decide that, you know, whatever it was she loved about you when she started out in the marriage, that that's still something there that she will value. But you never really know.

There's no promise about that. Would you please pray for me, Steve, please? And whoever's listening, I really need it.

I really need it. Your name is Eddie? All right. Yeah. All right.

Yeah. Let me pray for you right now. Father, I pray for Eddie and his wife. Both of them are going through struggles in their Christian walk. Both of them have defects in their Christian walk, but he's trying to repent and get better. It may be too little, too late.

We don't know. But perhaps, Father, you can soften her heart and his give him patience to pursue the right way. And even if she doesn't come back for a long time or ever, I pray that he'll be a better man through it, that he'll have learned his lesson. And I pray, if it's your will, that you'll save their marriage. I ask it in Jesus' name. All right, Eddie. God bless you.

We're out of time. You've been listening to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg, and we are live Monday through Friday at the same time, at the same station. You can also hear us online at our website or on the mobile app. You don't have the mobile app?

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