The Narrow Path 9/14

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, assuming you have questions about the Bible and who doesn't, or about the Christian faith, or if you have a different viewpoint from the host and who doesn't. Feel free to give me a call. We'll be glad to talk to you about that. The number to call is 844-484-5737.

Now there's a lot of fours in there and a couple of eights. It's 844-484-5737. And we're going to talk first of all today to Rich from Everett, Washington.

Rich, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Well, thanks, Steve. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.

I had a question. Well, you know, first off, I read your book actually a while back, Everything You Want to Know About Health, Three Views. And it's a great book.

Thank you so much. And just like all your books, I'm always surprised at the depth of research and the footnotes that are in those books. So it's a lot of work. It's very impressive. Thanks for doing all that. Well, it's my pleasure.

Yeah, it's great. Hey, I had a question, though, as I was reading through the Bible. I thought you might be able to shine a light on perspective on this about those three views. You know, when I read the book, it really impacted me in a way that it really opened my eyes to assumptions I have.

I'm not sure it necessarily changed my view on health, but it made me kind of realize that maybe these three different views aren't necessarily an issue of orthodoxy, like I kind of thought maybe they were. There really is strong points for all of them, it seems like. True.

Yeah. So the question I had from an annihilationist view, Matthew chapter 13, the parable of the terrors explained verses 41 and 42. And Jesus says, The son of man will send forth his angels and they will gather out of his kingdom all stumbling blocks and those who commit lawlessness and will throw them into the furnace of fire. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. From an annihilationist perspective, how can it be that in that place, meaning I think the furnace of fire, that there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, which is a kind of a conscious response to suffering and sadness if those people are annihilated?

How can they respond like that? Well, different annihilationists would say different things. If they happen to be thoroughgoing preterists by any chance, they might even say that this is not even talking about the end of the world or hell. They might think it's talking about the destruction of Jerusalem and what will happen to the enemies of Christ, the Jews who had rejected him and who were persecuting him, and it may not even be referring to hell at all. I think it is referring to hell. I'm not a thoroughgoing preterist.

I'm not a full preterist, in other words. Now, among annihilationists, I know at least one and there may be many who think that annihilation happens, I guess, either at the point of death or else at the time of the judgment when someone is condemned, they're just annihilated. But many annihilationists believe, and if I were to take the view, I would have to take this part, I'd have to take this view in light of passages like that which you gave, that there will be punishment after death for the wicked.

And it won't be eternal, but it will be proportionate. It will be according to justice, just like we don't give all criminals equal prison sentences because not all crimes are equal. So also, not all sinners have rejected as much light as others have. Not all have been totally evil, and some who haven't known Christ have attempted to be good people.

So there's a whole range of degrees of guilt that people will be found to be culpable of when they are judged. And therefore, one view, I know this is the Seventh-day Adventist view, is that they will be punished proportionately according to what they deserve, and then they'll be annihilated. So annihilation doesn't have to speak of immediate annihilation. Now, the Jehovah's Witnesses are annihilationists, but they don't believe even in a resurrection of the wicked. They just believe when you die, you don't exist anymore, and that's annihilation. Of course, they are mistaken in a lot of their theology, obviously, and I think Seventh-day Adventists are too, but if I were an annihilationist specifically, I would probably take the Seventh-day Adventist type approach to it, which many people who are not Seventh-day Adventists also take. And that is that the wicked would be punished as much as they deserve to be punished, and then they'd be put out of their misery.

Okay. Is it possible that when you look at this verse – because it doesn't seem to really apply to me that it would apply to 70 AD because he's talking about the world is the field, the angels coming… I agree. That's my main… Well, the angel part can be figurative, I suppose. I mean, at least preterists could refer to it that way, but you're right. When it says the field is the world, it doesn't look to me like it's talking about Jerusalem.

Jerusalem. Right. So the full preterists, I think, are mistaken about that. Is it possible that the term in that place maybe doesn't apply to the furnace, but in that place means that category? In other words, standing in line for the furnace or in the place of the scoffer? That the place isn't the furnace, but the place is the position of these people in the relationship to God? Well, I guess it could be, but it doesn't seem like the most natural reading to me.

I think the furnace sounds like it's the place that it's talking about. Okay. Great. Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

All right. God bless you. Thank you for your call. Good talking to you. David from Eugene, Oregon. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Thank you, Steve. I have two questions coming out of the book of Isaiah. The first one is from Isaiah chapter 11, verse 11, and it says, In that day, the Lord will reach out his hand a second time to reclaim the surviving remnant of his people from Assyria and with some other places. Now, when Nehemiah and Ezra reestablished Israel back in and built the temple, was that the first time that the Lord reached out his hand to bring back his surviving remnant? No, I believe that was the second time that Isaiah is talking about. God, the first time, the first time is when he brought them out of Egypt. And it actually mentions that in verse 15, the verse before, well, a little, you know, let's see here.

Yeah, a few verses down here. In verse 15, it says, The Lord will utterly destroy the tongue of the sea of Egypt with his mighty wind. He will shake his fist over the river and strike it in the seven streams and make men cross over dry shod. And there will be a highway for the remnant of his people who are left from Assyria as it was for Israel in the day that he came up out of the land of Egypt. So the first time was in the day that God brought Israel out of Egypt and brought them into the Promised Land with Moses. The second time will be when he brings them back from Babylon.

Which he did. Thank you. And so then as I jump forward to Isaiah 14 2, you know, then it talks about nations will take them and bring them back to their own place. Would this have any place for 1948 Israel returning?

Well, I don't think it's likely. I don't think it's likely, but I mean, I believe that all of these prophecies about God bringing people back from captivity to to Israel. I think that all happened when, you know, Cyrus made the decree that allowed them to do it and a great number of them did so. The main thing is that it describes these people who are being brought back as far as captives. You know, they will take them captive, whose captives they were and rule over their pressures, it says. I mean, a lot of these passages talk about Israel in captivity being brought to their land. Well, in Egypt they were in captivity and in Babylon they were in captivity.

But ever since 70 AD, they haven't really been in captivity. It's true they're not in their land, but they can go back if they want to. I mean, so I mean, even before the land was given to Israel and by the United Nations in 1948, Jews were going back there if they wished. You know, they didn't always want to. It was, you know, not really as a comfortable environment for many of them who had been raised in Europe and so forth to or America to go back and live in the desert. But many did. And there were lots of Jewish people living in there before 1948.

And 1948 just simply made a state of them officially. So I don't think that I don't think the Jews today or at any time in the last several centuries could be said to be in captivity. Now, they've been persecuted, but that's not the same thing.

And obviously, Jews in Germany who were put into concentration camps and death camps and so forth. They were individually captives. But the nation of Israel has not been in captivity ever since the, well, probably we could say the days of Antiochus Epiphanes. Although I'm not even sure they were in captivity then. They were oppressed.

I don't know that they were ever in captivity after the Babylonian exile. Okay. Steve, thank you very much. Okay. I appreciate your call. Good talking to you, David.

All right. Cameron from Franklin, Tennessee, is our next caller. And we do have a couple of lines open if you're interested. The number to call is 844-484-5737 if you'd like to be on the program. That's 844-484-5737.

All right. We're going to talk to Cameron from Franklin, Tennessee. Welcome, Cameron. Thanks for calling.

Appreciate it, Steve. I've been discussing with a friend of mine the contrasting ideas of tongues as a spiritual gift given from the Holy Spirit, whether or not biblically it is an angelic language or just the ability to speak an unknown human language. And we've been kind of dialoguing about that. And I was wondering if you could give me some commentary on why you believe what it is you believe about that subject. OK. Well, I believe it may well be that tongues can be a language that's not known by any human society. If there are tongues of angels, I don't know.

Of course, in First Corinthians 13, one Paul said, if I speak in the tongues of men or the tongues of angels and don't have love, I'm just making noise. But of course, he's not necessarily insisting that there are tongues of angels so that he could speak in them. It's kind of a hypothetical.

If I could do that, it still wouldn't make me a good person in the sight of God if I'm not a loving person. So when he mentions tongues of angels in contrast with tongues of men, some people take him to be affirming that there are such a thing and others would say it's only hypothetical. One thing we can say, it is hypothetical. Paul is making a statement hypothetically. But the fact that it is hypothetical doesn't mean that he would deny that there are tongues of angels. Who knows?

I don't know if there are not. We know that in chapter 14, Paul says that when a person speaks in tongues, the way he puts it here is that he, in verse two of chapter 14 of First Corinthians, he who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men, but to God, for no one understands him. However, in the Spirit, he speaks mysteries. Suppose, since it says no one understands him and he's not speaking to men, but to God, and he's speaking mysteries in the Spirit, this might play into the doctrine that there are tongues that no man understands. And therefore, they could be these heavenly languages that Pentecostals like to talk about.

Paul never uses the expression of heavenly language. Again, he does mention tongues of angels, which is not necessarily the same thing as affirming that that's what people are speaking. I personally would assume that when people are speaking in tongues, more often than not, they're probably speaking a human language, though it's one that nobody present understands, unless, of course, it's a sign to the unbelievers, and sometimes it is. Paul says that in First Corinthians 14, 22, he says, Therefore tongues are for a sign, not to those who believe, but to unbelievers. So on the day of Pentecost, for example, the people spoke in tongues, and it was a sign to the unbelievers present, because none of these people who were speaking knew these languages or understood them, but the listeners did.

So they were supernaturally speaking the language that their listeners knew, but their listeners also knew that it was unlikely or impossible that these Galileans would know these languages. So that was a sign, and it caused people to say, What's going on? And so Peter was able to preach to them. Like the signs that Jesus did got people interested, and then Jesus would preach to them when their interest was aroused.

So we know that sometimes at least, maybe all the time, I don't know, tongues are human languages, but they're not always spoken in a situation where any humans present would know them, and that's why Paul said there's a separate gift of interpretation. Remember, if it's a sign for the unbeliever, that's not going to be happening in the church, because the church is not a gathering of unbelievers. The church is a gathering of believers.

It's the body of Christ. They didn't have large numbers of non-Christians in the church. They didn't encourage it in the biblical times, because the church was not to be a gathering of unbelievers, but of believers.

But they did evangelism out where the unbelievers lived, out in the world, out wherever they'd find them. And so it was that the speaking in tongues was not occurring at a church meeting on the day of Pentecost, but in a rather public place, and it was a sign to the unbelievers. But Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 14 people speaking in tongues and prophesying and exercising other gifts in the church. Now, he said this should be done for the edification of the church, and that's different.

Being assigned to the unbeliever is a very different thing than to edify your brothers and sisters. And he says that tongues is less to be desired than prophecy for this very reason, that prophecy is edifying to the church. Tongues, he said, is not edifying to the church, but only to oneself, unless there's an interpretation. And Paul says there is a gift of interpretation, as well as a gift of speaking in tongues.

These are both supernatural gifts. So we have to understand that if there's a gift of interpretation that is needed, that no one there is likely to understand it without the gift of interpretation, or else they could naturally interpret it. So I would say I don't have any real interest in knowing whether speaking in tongues ever includes a heavenly language or not. The only thing that the Bible tells us is that the language spoken is not known either to the speaker or to the audience. It could be an earthly language from some tribal group somewhere that is not represented in the congregation. Or it might not be. It might be a heavenly language.

This has always been a non-issue for me because I don't know why it would matter. The only way it would matter is if somebody was saying, well, it's always an earthly language, and it's always used in order to communicate with people who know that language. And of course, one only has to read the little bit of information we have on the subject. In 1 Corinthians 14 to know that's not true. Paul says in the church, nobody understands what you're saying in tongues, and therefore you should pray that you can interpret it. He says in verse 13, now he said if a person speaks in tongues, he should pray that he can interpret, which means obviously he doesn't know what it means himself. He needs to pray that God will give him an interpretation because he doesn't know it naturally. So speaking in tongues is supernaturally speaking a language unknown to the speaker. And if it's in the church, generally speaking, it would be unknown to the people present. But whether it's ever a heavenly language, I don't know.

Awesome. Could you maybe give me a little explanation about how praying in an unknown earthly language would be self edifying? Well, the idea of praying in tongues apparently is that you're praying beyond the limitations of your knowledge. If you're going to pray in your natural language, in order to formulate requests in your natural language, you have to know what it is you're asking for. Where Paul seems to indicate that the Holy Spirit can frame prayers according to the will of God that go beyond what you naturally know to pray for. And he can inspire you to pray those things through a language that you don't know. You see, if you don't know the language, then and there's just this language praying through you. You don't know exactly what you're praying for, but but that's OK, because you're doing so about things that you wouldn't have known to pray about.

So it goes beyond your understanding. Paul said, if I can pray in the spirit and I can pray in the understanding. Also, he said that, of course, also in First Corinthians 14, where we have really all the information about tongues that we're going to get about its usage, probably is in First Corinthians 14.

There's a few chapters elsewhere that mentioned tongues, but as far as a teaching on the subject, we only get it in First Corinthians 14. So that's where you're going to get all the information I'm getting. I appreciate it, Steve. Thank you.

OK, Cameron. Good talking to you. Thank you for your call. OK, Joe from Sacramento, California. Welcome to the Narrow Path, Joe. Thanks for calling. Hey, how's it going, Steve? Good.

Thanks. So my question is, who are the 144,000 that Revelations talks about? I'm really confused on that. Well, how much do you know about the Book of Revelation as a whole? I mean, I've read it, but I have I haven't really dug in as deep as I would like. OK, so are you aware that there are different four different views of Revelation that are very different from each other?

Yeah. Well, yeah, I know there's a lot of different a lot of conflicting views. I just I just as far as who the 140 like, I guess I'm just looking for your opinion on who the 144,000 are. Well, the reason I ask those things is because the determination of who the 144,000 are is going to depend on what you think about the book in general. You see, my view is that my view is that Revelation is talking about mostly the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 and the tribulation the Jews went through in that time, three and a half years into the Jewish war and the horrendous calamities during the siege of Jerusalem, which anyone who studies it knows it's it's it's hideously hellish that they went through. And Jesus said that that would be something like no one had ever been through before or after. He said it would happen in his generation. And so did Revelation talk about these things must shortly take place. It says that many times in the Book of Revelation.

So we know he was predicting to his readers who were first century Christians in Turkey that these things were going to happen before long. So I don't believe he was talking about something that was two thousand years off because you'd be very likely to deceive your audience. If you're talking about something two thousand years from now, you tell them, oh, this is very soon. It's about to take place. It's at hand. You know, I mean, if I told people that about the end of the world and I really meant, oh, it's a couple thousand years off, I'd really be deceiving them.

I'd be lying to them. And so I believe he was telling the truth. I believe he was talking about things that were going to happen shortly. And I believe the 144,000 were the Jewish church that escaped from Jerusalem before the Romans besieged it. We know this happened. There's a historical reference to this in Eusebius, the church historian, that before the war began, which is three and a half years before Jerusalem fell, the church in Jerusalem received a prophecy, an oracle given by somebody in the church telling them to flee from Jerusalem. They did, just like Jesus had told them. When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, flee from Judea.

And they did. And they went across the Jordan to a place called Pella. And there they were safe when Jerusalem fell and the horrible Holocaust occurred there.

And I believe the 144,000 from all the information we're told about them would best be seen as representing that group in the first century. Now, of course, most people seem to think that Revelation is about the end of the world and the end times. It never says that it is. It's interestingly, they don't have any verse in Revelation that says that. In fact, like I said, if you ask the book of Revelation itself when these things will be fulfilled, John always says, shortly, it's about to take place. So, I mean, to suggest that it's 2000 years later and it's in our time or time later than our time, is to more or less go against what the Bible, what the book of Revelation says about itself. And it never says it's about the end times anywhere in it. So that view that it's about the end times makes it necessary to identify the 144,000 with some group living in the end times. And there are two views of this. Some believe that the 144,000 Jews are actual Jewish people who find the Messiah during the tribulation and become what we would call Messianic Jews and that they will be persecuted by the Antichrist and God will preserve them and so forth.

That's one view. Another view is that although it is said there's 12,000 from each of the 12 tribes, some people think this is all very symbolic and they just represent Christians in general. That they're the new Israel. The 144,000 Jews are not literal Jews, but spiritual Jews. Remember, Paul said in Romans 228, he is not a Jew who's one outwardly, but he is a Jew who's one inwardly and who has a circumcised heart. So a Christian would be a Jew in that sense, but some people think that that's what Revelation is talking about, what it calls them. They're the new Israel from the tribes of Israel. But see, while it is true that the Bible says that Christians are the true Israel, it never divides us into 12 tribes specifically. And Revelation says there's 12,000 from this tribe, 12,000 from that tribe.

So it makes me think they are really Jews. And it also tells us in Revelation 14 that they follow the Lamb wherever he goes, so they're followers of Jesus. And it also says in Revelation 14, I think it's verse 4 or 5, it says they are first fruits unto God.

Now first fruits, I mean, they're the beginning of the harvest. So that suggests they're the first Christians, not the last on the earth. And God harvested them at Pentecost and in the years following Pentecost, the Jewish church, they were the first fruits. And James himself, in James chapter 1, who was one of the first fruits there in Jerusalem, he writes to the Jewish Christians of his time. And he says that of his own will, God created us to be a kind of first fruits of his creatures.

That's James 1.18. So he said to his Jewish readers who were Christians, and he was a Jew and a Christian, he said that he and his readers were first fruits. That's the very term that is used in Revelation to speak of the 144,000, they're the first fruits. So the 144,000, in my opinion, are the first fruits, as Revelation tells us. They are Jews, as Revelation tells us, and they are Christians. So that would be the Jews of the first century who, by the way, escaped when the horrible tribulation came upon Jerusalem.

That'd be my take. Now, I have a book I wrote called Revelation 4 Views, where I go into all this stuff in more detail, and you're welcome to get that if you want further. Or I have lectures on Revelation at our website, thenarrowpath.com, just verse by verse through Revelation. I need to take a break at this point. I appreciate your call. You're listening to The Narrow Path Radio Broadcast.

My name is Steve Gregg, and we are live for another half hour coming up, so don't go away taking your calls. We are listener supported. If you'd like to help us pay the radio bills, you can write to us at thenarrowpath.com. I'm sorry, you can go to The Narrow Path. You can do that or you can write to us in the regular mail at The Narrow Path, PO Box 1730, Temecula, California 92593. It's also possible to pay by PayPal now. That wasn't the case for a while.

I'll be right back in 30 seconds. As you know, The Narrow Path Radio Show is Bible radio that has nothing to sell you, but everything to give you. So do the right thing and share what you know with your family and friends. Tell them to tune into The Narrow Path on this radio station or go to thenarrowpath.com, where they will find topical audio teachings, blog articles, verse by verse teachings, and archives of all the radio shows. You know listener supported Narrow Path with Steve Gregg.

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, the Christian faith, the Christian life, any of those things, if you have a different viewpoint from the host and want to talk about that, feel free to call me. The number is 844-484-5737. Right now, actually, most of our lines are open and that may not be true in about five minutes from now. So you might want to give me a call now if you hope to get on.

The number is 844-484-5737. And one announcement I would like to make and that is that at the end of this month and through next month, through October, I'm going to be making an itinerary speaking across some of the southern states and then going far north. Not really very far north, but the northernmost point of the Triple B in Indiana. But I'm going to be teaching in Phoenix and Prescott and I'm going to be in some locations in Texas in the San Antonio area, in the Houston area and the Dallas area. So we've got a lot of listeners in those areas. If you're interested in those meetings, I'm also going to be speaking in Missouri, Arkansas, Illinois and Indiana.

And I think that's it. So if you're interested in any of those meetings, if you live in any of those areas, you can go to our website, thenarrowpath.com and look under announcements. And some of these meetings, we don't have the details in yet because we're still waiting for details from our host.

But some of the meetings, the details are present online already. All right. So let's talk to Sven from Berkeley, California. Hi, Sven. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Hi.

Thank you for taking my call. What I'm really wondering about is in Revelations where it talks about that no man shall be able to buy or sell without the mark of the beast. And to me and some of the pastors that I've been listening to are correlating that with the coronavirus vaccine that will be coming out pretty soon. I'm wondering if you see any connection between those two or is that completely different? Well, I just consider that the inability to buy or sell if you don't have the mark of the beast, I take the mark of the beast to simply mean that you are in compliance with the world system and its rulers. And if you aren't in compliance, there are times certainly throughout history when people have not been able to buy or sell because rulers have officially persecuted believers and made it illegal to do business with them. This kind of happened to Jews in Germany under the Nazis. You know that a lot of the Germans would not shop in the Nazi shops and wouldn't sell to them because that's the Jewish shops, excuse me, and wouldn't sell to them because that was a form of persecution.

Economic boycott has many, many times in history been a form of persecution. That's how I've generally taken it. Now, there may be something along those lines that will come up with the virus vaccine. I don't know. On the one hand, a lot of people are thinking of a chip being inserted in you as being the mark of the beast. However, a chip isn't a mark. It's invisible. A mark is by nature something visible.

That's the very nature of a mark. But having a chip put in you would still be a very intrusive thing, and that's something I would not voluntarily do. I mean, if they want to hold me down and stick it in me, I can't do anything about that.

But I would never voluntarily allow anyone to put something like that in my body, and not because I think it's the mark of the beast, but just because they've got no business doing so. I'm kind of a liberty-loving kind of a person, and I don't like more government intrusion into my life. Even if they offer more security, I'm not looking for security.

I've got that in Jesus. I just want liberty. Give me liberty. Don't give me security. So I don't want, and I wouldn't take it voluntarily, but some people think that they would actually insert this chip along with the vaccination in the same hypodermic needle. I'm not saying this is what is happening or not, but I believe that Bill Gates, who's got a lot to do with this whole program, has suggested that.

And the ID2020. Yeah. And so, again, I would resist that. I wouldn't see it necessarily as the mark of the beast, but certainly if you don't take it, they could become very angry, and they could say, okay, well, you're not going to be able to sell and buy things if you don't have it. Of course, that would mean at regular stores and things like that. You could still, if you're not living in the city, you could still barter goods with other people who are like yourself.

So it's not as if you have no options, but it would certainly make life inconvenient. Now, I don't think that's what Revelation is talking about, but like I said, there have been many times in history when Christians were persecuted by the powers that be, sometimes by the Popes, who put out papal bulls forbidding anyone to do business, to buy or sell with Christians. They wouldn't say Christians. They'd say the Waldenses or some group that was protesting against Catholicism.

But, you know, or the Hussites or someone. They actually would make it illegal for people to do business with them. That's happened in history. And this would be maybe a more modernized form of the same thing. So I don't think the mark of the beast is any one of these things. I think the whole tendency of satanically inspired governments to persecute Christians is what the mark of the beast is. And I think that in our time, it could take that form.

Who knows? It may not. All I can say is we can't stop it, I don't think.

At least I don't know how to stop it. I would certainly vote against it if I had a chance to vote against it. I'm not going to lead a revolution or anything against it. But if they came to my door with a needle or told me to show up someplace to get a shot, it's not something I'm interested in.

I wouldn't. Yeah, I hear you. I might deal with you. Thank you for your insight. I appreciate that. Okay, Sven. Thank you for your call, brother. All right, let's see. Anthony from Danville, California.

Three from California in a row. Hi, Anthony. Welcome. Hi, Steve.

Thanks for taking my call. My question is about three chapters. Daniel 2, Daniel 7, also Revelation 13. Talking about the toes in 2 and the horns in Daniel 7 and Revelation 13. I understand that you take it as all being fulfilled already, and you take the position that Revelation had to have been written before the destruction of Jerusalem.

Right. If that's the case, what do these represent? I mean, I can't find anything in history that would make sense to be those 10 toes in a... You know, in town 10-2, it's a mixture of iron and clay. At 70 A.D., Rome was very strong, so I'm curious what your position is on all that. Yeah, I don't think Daniel 2 or Daniel 7 have anything to do with 70 A.D., and I don't really believe Revelation 13 does either. I don't consider Revelation 13 to be about 70 A.D. If someone wants to hear my verse-by-verse lectures on Revelation, they'll know that chapters 10-13 I see as a parenthesis in the book, which is not about 70 A.D., but I think most of the rest of the book is.

But as far as Daniel's concerned, it's kind of self-explanatory. Both of these dreams, Nebuchadnezzar's dream and Daniel's dream, Nebuchadnezzar's dream is in chapter 2, Daniel's in chapter 7, and they each have a dream that represents four empires that will succeed each other, beginning in Daniel's time. In the case of Nebuchadnezzar's dream, they are represented by different kinds of metals forming an image, a human image apparently, and the head was gold, the chest was silver, the belly was bronze, the legs were iron, and the feet were of iron and clay.

Now, in that image, in that dream, a stone not of human origin struck the image in its feet, caused it to collapse, and the stone grew into a great mountain to fill the earth. Now, that's Nebuchadnezzar's dream. Now, most Bible scholars have understood historically that the first kingdom, which is represented by the head of gold, is the Babylonian empire.

Daniel told Nebuchadnezzar, you are the head of gold, and he was the king of Babylon. But he said another kingdom inferior to you will come up later, and that was the Medo-Persian empire, the chest of silver. And then they would be conquered by a third kingdom, which was the Grecian empire, under the leadership of Alexander the Great. And then there's a fourth beast, I mean a fourth kingdom, which would be the legs of iron and going on down through the feet of iron and clay, which would be the Roman empire.

So we've got the Babylonian, the Medo-Persian, the Grecian, and the Roman empire. And in Daniel 2 to 44, Daniel says, in the days of these kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed. Now, that's represented by the stone. The stone that strikes the image of the feet is the kingdom that God would establish, the kingdom of God. And he said this would happen in the days of these kings. Well, the only kings that have been mentioned were these four kingdoms, Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome. And this whole series is a time frame. And in that time frame, obviously before the fourth kingdom had ceased to exist, God would set up a kingdom of his own.

And astronomy suggests it's going to be in the Roman empire, because if it was earlier than the Roman empire, then why even mention the Roman empire here? The beast come up in chapter 7, the medals in the image bring us all the way to the time when God established his kingdom. Of course, when Jesus began preaching, his message was the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. Later on, he said the kingdom of God is in your midst. Later on still, he said that if I'm casting out demons by Beelzebub, then the kingdom, I'm sorry, if I'm casting out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has overtaken you.

So in other words, the kingdom of God had come, and it was during the Roman empire, so it's precisely as Daniel predicted in the time of those kings. Now, there's no mention in Daniel chapter 2 of 10 toes. It does mention toes.

It just says that the feet and the toes were made of iron and clay. It doesn't mention how many toes there were. I guess we can assume there were 10 since it's a human image, although some giants in biblical times had six toes on each foot. But the number of the toes is not anything that an issue is made of. We're not even told how many toes there are. So the vision doesn't really assign any significance to the number of toes. It's just that during the time of the Roman empire, the god of heaven would set up a kingdom.

I'm trying to talk too fast. Chapter 7, then, has the same four kingdoms. They are represented in a dream that Daniel had, a lion, a bear, a leopard, and a beast with 10 horns. Now, there the 10 horns are numbered for us, whereas the toes on the image in Nebuchadnezzar's dream were not numbered for us. But they are the same kingdoms, Babylon, Media, Persia, Greece, and Rome.

And so the fourth beast is like the legs of iron and the feet of iron and clay. It's the Roman empire. And we do read of the kingdom of God being established in that chapter.

When you get to verses 12 and 13, you actually see the kingdom of God being established in that time. But the prophecy of chapter 7 focuses on another kingdom that rises up out of the fourth beast called the little horn. And that must be something that arose out of the Roman empire. And most Christians throughout history, at least most non-Catholic Christians throughout history, have thought that that little horn is the papacy. It rose up out of the Roman empire at the fall of Rome, and it did all the things that the little horn is said to do. So the Reformers, for example, all believed the little horn was the papacy that the Roman popes. And so that would make sense.

I mean, it certainly fits. It happened long after 70 AD. And if you're thinking that all these things have to happen in 70 AD, then that doesn't work. But I don't see that. I don't think they have to all happen by 70 AD.

Certainly not. The fall of Rome didn't happen in 70 AD. And yet the fall of Rome is mentioned in Daniel 7 when it talks about the fourth beast was killed and his body was given to the fire. That's certainly the burning of Rome and by the barbarians.

And then arises this little horn. And it eventually comes to its end also. But the kingdom of God is established during that time. During the same time that Daniel 2 would say, during the Roman empire.

So that's how I look at those things. Spiritually it's done at that time. But then physically when he actually rules, I don't know if you, I guess maybe you don't believe that, but I seem to see it as yes, at that time spiritually he conquered. But physically, it's also referring to physically there will be no longer these nations on earth ruling, it will be Jesus ruling it seems to say.

Well the description in Daniel 2 is of a stone that grows into a great mountain. And it crushes these other nations into dust at the same time. And eventually it reigns the whole world over. That I think is what has been happening for the last 2,000 years. It started out with like 12 guys, 13 guys 2,000 years ago. And now about a third of the earth's population call themselves Christians.

So it certainly has been spreading worldwide. And it is at the expense of the pagan nations because every time Christ's kingdom gets another member, it comes out of the devil's kingdom. And the devil has one house. They're not ruling, reigning with Christ. No, we're not reigning with him, but he's reigning. The kingdom is not about us reigning, it's about him reigning. We are reigned over by him.

We're his subjects. We who follow Christ have been conquered by him and he is our king and our lord. That's the kingdom of God. Now the time will come at the end of the world when Jesus comes back and we will reign with him.

That's our destiny. Yeah, but that's not the beginning of the kingdom. The kingdom began when Jesus ascended and sat at the right hand of God. And he's reigning there now. And Paul said he must reign there until he has put all his enemies under his feet.

And then the end comes. Couldn't you get both meanings out of that? Both the spiritual he conquered at that point and then also a secondary meaning of the physical reigning of Christ as well. You extract both of those meanings from those texts. Well, I don't know that we have to look for two meanings when one works perfectly well. I mean, we can always speculate that there's additional meanings that aren't in the text that we would like to see there.

But the truth is the text makes perfectly good sense without adding that. Jesus said that the kingdom had come when he was here. And Paul, after Jesus left, Paul said that we are in the kingdom.

He said in the Colossians 113 that when we got saved, that God translated us out of the power of darkness into the kingdom. So we are in his kingdom. He is on his throne. He is ruling.

And we could say he's spiritually ruling, but I'm and he does rule over my spirit, but he rules over me. I'm a physical person. He's a physical person, too. He's raised physically from the dead. He's the king. He's a physical king.

And I'm a physical subject of his. And so all who serve him are his physical subjects. And the sum total of those who serve him are his kingdom.

There's many that are not serving him currently today, though. Right. That's true. And that's because the kingdom grows to be a great mountain. I think it's still growing.

But it's been growing for 2000 years. In Daniel 7, it says, And to him was given dominion and glory and kingdom that all peoples, nations and languages should serve him. Right. And that's what Paul said.

Right. And Paul said that exact thing has happened. If you look at Philippians chapter two, he says that therefore God has highly exalted him and given him a name above every name. That at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in those in heaven and on earth and under the earth. And that every niche, every tongue should every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ. I'm trying to talk too fast because I've got my lines full. I'm trying to get all through this. I always get tongue.

I get tongue died when I do it anyway. Yeah. The very thing that it says God would do is what Paul said God did. He exalted Christ and gave him glory and said that all nations, every knee should bow and every tongue should confess. That's that's exactly what it says in Daniel chapter seven also about him. So, yeah, I believe that the New Testament teaches that this is all fulfilled.

Well, thank you. Yeah, it's not finished. It's not finished because he's reigning still. I mean, his reign is forever. And there will come a time when he moves his reign from heaven to earth. But he's already the king.

He's already reign over those who are his people. So when there's still this the human humans are still reigning the kingdoms of the earth. I think that's what what's smashed is shown in Daniel is those kingdoms.

They're no longer reigning, which they are currently. Well, I think I think they're being smashed as as we speak. And many of them have smashed. Many of them have disappeared. Most of them that have been around the past two thousand years have disappeared.

We've got some around now, but they're going to disappear, too. This is a process. The kingdom grows like a little mustard seed into a great tree. You know, it's like a little stone. It grows into a great mountain. This is a process.

And it does. You're nesting in that tree currently. Well, there's nothing wrong with birds being in a tree. Well, depending what the birds represent in the scripture.

Right. And birds don't represent anything except helpless creatures that nest in a tree when it talks about birds in a tree. That's that's an image we have three times in the Old Testament.

And then one time in that parable of Jesus in Matthew 13. Daniel chapter four has birds nesting in the tree, which is Nebuchadnezzar in chapter four. In Ezekiel chapter 31, the Assyrians are a tree and have birds nesting in them. And then in Ezekiel 17, the kingdom of God, of Christ, is a tree with birds nesting in it. And then Christ, of course, makes his own reference to it. There's no no negatives about birds being in a tree.

That's where God made them to be. Now, you're thinking of birds in the parable of the sower. In the parable of the sower, birds ate the seeds and that was bad. And so he said, well, that represents the devil who takes the word of God out of people's minds when they don't understand it and they don't bear any fruit. But that's a very different thing to a farmer.

Birds are a menace to a tree. There's both wheat and tares in his kingdom currently, right? Well, there's wheat and tares in the world. The Bible doesn't say they're in his kingdom. Yeah, because the wheat and tares parable says the field, it says, is the world. And the wheat are the children of the kingdom and the tares are the children of the wicked ones. So in the field, which is the world, there are Christians and non-Christians.

That's what the parable is saying. Listen, I've given you a lot of time and you can learn anything I think about these subjects simply by going to my website, thenarrowpath.com. And when you do that, you will find that there are lectures through Daniel, verse by verse. There are lectures through Revelation, verse by verse. And there are also topical lectures on most of these things. So there's about fifteen hundred of my lectures, I think, online somewhere. Most of them are at my website. So feel free to go there.

And if you do, you will find more detailed treatment of these things than I can give you here. Just because, I mean, there's other people waiting and we've been talking quite a long time. Thank you. All right. God bless you. I appreciate your call, brother. Bye now. OK, we'll talk next to Mark in Vancouver, B.C. Mark, welcome to The Narrow Path.

Thanks for calling. As you know, the amillennial truth and the supersessionist truth go together perfectly and correctly. As you know, also, most pre-millennial believers do not accept the truth of supersessionism. My question is, among post-millennial believers, I would think that most of those do accept supersessionism, do they not? They do not. Well, they kind of do.

Let me put it this way. For those who don't know what supersessionism is, it's the view that the New Covenant community supersedes the Old Covenant community as God's people. In the Old Covenant, God made a covenant with Israel at Mount Sinai and they were God's people until Christ made a new covenant in the Upper Room with his believers. And that New Covenant community made up of the remnant of Israel and then any Gentiles who joined them is the new community based on the New Covenant. And that supersedes the Old Covenant. That's why we don't have to offer animal sacrifices.

That's why we're not under the law. The law was part of the Old Covenant. So the New Covenant community, we have come to call the church, but the Old Covenant community was called the church in the Old Testament, in the Septuagint.

The ekklesia is the word that was used there for the gathering of Israel. But it's just that the New Testament community sees itself as the true Israel. And yes, I think that post-millennialists would agree with that supersessionist idea and so do amillennialists. But post-millennialists believe there's going to come a time where all Israel will be saved and that's the same as what the dispensationists believe.

Post-millennialists have always believed that in the end times God will save the Jews and bring them to himself. Whereas amillennialism doesn't necessarily believe that. Steve, very quickly, the term, oh my God, some people say that that's like taking the name of the Lord. To me it's just like a natural expression. What do you say?

Well, it depends. I mean, it's more or less natural if you're accustomed to praying about everything. I mean, when I say, oh my God, or oh Lord, I'm actually talking to God. But I don't say, oh my God, as an expletive.

Some people do. And I, you know, if it's an expletive, then I would suggest that it's, you know, you're not really talking to God at all. You're just letting off steam and mentioning God in doing so. Some people consider that's, you know, a form of irreverence to speak of God that way. And yet, of course, if you're a person who's always talking to God all day long, it's most likely that if you say, oh Lord, or oh my God, or something like that, you're going to be probably crying out to God, as is your habit.

I know it's my habit. So, you know, is it cursing? Is it swearing to say, oh my God? Well, not necessarily, but it could be.

It depends on what's in your heart. And I have a feeling that most people say, oh my God, are not praying, especially unbelievers. And even some Christians, they just say it carelessly, which is I don't think we should. I don't think we should speak of God carelessly. After all, we're supposed to pray every day, hallowed be your name. And I think if, which means holy, may your name be held as holy. That means it's not an ordinary, it's not used as an ordinary word. So I'd be, you know, I actually don't say, oh my God, unless I'm very clearly praying, but some people do.

And I would think that that could be seen reasonably as an irreverence. I appreciate your call. Carolyn from Black Diamond, Washington. Welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Hi. Is it okay or proper to have another or a religion idol in your home if you're not worshipping it? I'm referring to a Buddhist statue is about six inches high that a friend has in her house.

I wouldn't have one. But I mean, you know, Buddha is not I mean, an image of Buddha does seem very much like an idol. However, Buddha never encouraged people to worship him. But that doesn't mean people don't. I mean, Mary would never encourage people to worship her. But some people seem to do that. I would say that having pictures or statues of anything that's treated with some kind of divine reverence would be idolatry.

So, you know, I don't know what's in the heart or mind. Some people just go, you know, they make a trip to Thailand and they they bring back some, you know, souvenirs. And one's a Buddha statue. To them, it's only a souvenir of a trip.

But I wouldn't want it in my house because it represents something I don't believe. I appreciate your call. I'm out of time. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. I don't mean to cut you off, but I'm out of time. I'm I'm going to be cut off myself in 30 seconds. Thank you for your call. You've been listening to the Narrow Path radio broadcast.

My name is Steve Gregg. We are listener supported. You can write to us at the Narrow Path.

P.O. Box 1730 Temecula, California 92593. Or you can go to our Web site. All the all the resources there are free, but you can donate there if you want to. There's a tab that says donate. The Web site is the narrow path dot com. Check it out and let's talk again tomorrow. God bless you.