The Narrow Path 9/15

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 and we take your phone calls. If you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith, we welcome you to call and bring those up for conversation.

If you see things differently than the host and want to talk about that, you can call and bring that up as well. The number to call is 844. 484 5737.

That's 844 484 5737. And we have quite a few calls waiting but there is one line still open if you want to call now. I want to make this announcement before I take any calls and that is that we had a bit of confusion with a call on last Friday. And it bothered me that that was on the weekend and we didn't have time for me to bring it up to correct it. And yesterday because I frankly totally forgot that I remember today and I don't want this to get by.

We had a caller on Friday named Lisa from Hillsboro, Oregon. And she called because her son had found a verse she said in the Bible that said something like, you know, lazy people sleep soundly or something like that. And I didn't, of course I didn't recognize that because it's not in a good translation of the Bible.

It's a paraphrase and it's a bad paraphrase. And I thought, well, that's not in the Bible. And when she said they sleep soundly, the verse I thought she was referring to was in Ecclesiastes where it says the sleep of a laboring man is sweet.

Sleeping soundly, having sweet sleep, those things seem the same to me. And it was after we got off the air, we went looking for the verse she said that was in there and she wasn't looking at it at the time. But we found the verse probably that she was talking about. And that would be Proverbs 19 15, which does not seem to be in the Bible. To say that a lazy man sleeps soundly, but it does say that in the New Living Translation, which of course is not a translation at all. The New Living Translation is a paraphrase.

And that's why it got so far off and I didn't recognize the verse. To say a lazy man sleeps soundly sounds like it's making a very positive statement in the Proverbs 19 15 in the New Living Translation says lazy people sleep soundly, but idleness leaves them hungry. Well, you know, when I look it up in the actual Bible, what it actually says is slothfulness casts one into a deep sleep and an idle person will suffer hunger. It says it casts somebody into a deep sleep. This is not telling us that that person sleeps soundly.

Sleeping soundly is a positive thing. That someone is cast into deep sleep means they're cast into a deep stupor. It's like they're under a spell.

They've lost his sensitivity. He's in a stupor. He's like sound asleep when he should be alert because idleness is bringing poverty upon him. So in other Proverbs, it talks about if a man folds his hands to sleep and sleeps too much, then poverty will come upon him like an armed man.

You know, it's poverty is likened to an attacker. And the man who's asleep is unprepared. So when it says laziness casts a person into a deep sleep. To cast him into sleep is not like him simply having a nice sleep. It's more like casting a spell over him. He's cast into a stupor by his own laziness.

He loses sensitivity to what's going on in the real world. And therefore, poverty comes upon him unawares. So she was right in the sense that she was quoting the verse as her son had found him. And I think that's what happened in the New Living Translation.

I think that the Bible tells us that the Bible has been founded in the New Living Translation. And I kept saying, no, that's not in the Bible. That's not in the Bible because it isn't. But it is in that translation, which I'm not very familiar with. There's a reason I don't read the New Living Translation much because I'd rather read a Bible that actually says what the Hebrew and the Greek say. And so I was familiar with the verse as it stands in the translations I use, but not with that one. So I want to apologize to Lisa. Because I basically said, I think you're not remembering the translation. remembering correctly, but she was.

She was remembering correctly the version that her son was reading. I was just unfamiliar with that paraphrase and it was certainly misleading. So anyway, Lisa, if you're listening, that's the answer that you really deserved to get last Friday, which I'm sorry I didn't give you because I didn't recognize the verse you were alluding to. Let's talk to David from Eugene, Oregon. David, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Thank you, Steve. In the book of Hebrews, Hebrews chapter 10, verse 26, it states that if we deliberately keep on sinning after we receive the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment, raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. Now, when Matt says that after we have received the knowledge of truth, is that talking about people who heard about Jesus, but chose not to believe and keep sinning or those who heard about Jesus accepted him, but then continued a life of sin?

Well, I think he's, I'll tell you what I believe he's talking about. The book of Hebrews is written to Jewish Christians at a time of where they're suffering persecution. And there's a number of references in the book to the persecution they're going through. Now they're being persecuted by their fellow Jews. These are probably Palestinian Christians. That is they're in Palestine, they're in Israel, and therefore they're living in a Jewish society, but they become followers of Christ, which was very controversial. And many of them had been probably disowned by their families and so forth.

So this is very difficult for them. And they, some of them were questioning whether they were really gonna remain Christians or not with this kind of rejection they were suffering from their families and friends and the persecution. And so there were some among them who were abandoning the Christian assemblies. I mean, in the very same chapter, just a couple of verses earlier, verse, actually one verse earlier, verse 25, it tells them not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together as the manner of some is.

So he's saying some people are now, Jewish Christians are now forsaking the Christian assemblies and going back to Judaism. Now in the mindset of a person who is a Jew, but not a Christian, they know there's such a thing as sin and they know they commit sin. The law of Moses made it very clear that they commit sin and they needed to offer animal sacrifices for it. But they figured that as long as they did offer animal sacrifices, then if they sin, it's no big deal. They could sin and then they could go to the temple offer sacrifice. Now this is not the attitude of a Christian, but it would be the attitude of a person who had been Jewish and had become a Christian, but was deciding that it was too costly to remain a Christian and was going back to Judaism. Now, going back to Judaism, they're going back to the temple and to the system where they thought their sins, they could live in sin, but they could cover that with animal sacrifice.

And he's saying that doesn't work. He says, for one thing, if you've come to the knowledge of the truth and he's assuming he's talking to Christians throughout this book, he assumes he's talking to Christian Jews. He refers to them in chapter three, verse one, as holy brethren and partakers of the heavenly calling.

That's his readers. So he's writing to holy brethren Christians, but he says, now you've known the truth. If you reject it, if you go back to a life of sinning, now, by the way, continuing to live in sin is rejecting Christ, because when you become a Christian, you repent of living in sin.

It doesn't mean that a Christian never sins, but a Christian does not live in sin if they are actually a Christian, because they have repented of that. But this is talking about someone going back, as it were, renouncing their repentance, going back to a life of sin, even though they have known the truth, but they're doing so under pressure of persecution. And they figure, well, there's always the temple. There's always the sacrifices of the temple. I can go back and take care of my sin problems there. I don't have to stop sinning.

I can just offer an animal for it. But he said, there remains no sacrifice for sin. Now, what he says there is a repeat of what he said earlier in the same chapter in verse 18. If you just go back eight verses, he says, now where there's remission of these, meaning the remission of sins in the new covenant, there is no longer an offering for sin.

Now, what he's saying is in the new covenant, Christ has atoned for sin once and for all for the believers. And there's no more offering for sin that God has any interest in. Jesus has brought an end to the temple sacrifices.

And although Jews would still observe them, they were of no value. He says, as far as God's concerned, there isn't any offering for sin at the temple when Christ has satisfied the need for that once and for all. So what he's saying, if you leave Christ and go back to the sacrifice of the temple, they're not really even there as far as God is concerned.

They don't exist. They don't have an alternative sacrifice for sin. He's not saying the sacrifice of Christ is somehow nullified. Although if they abandoned Christ, of course, they're not participating in the redemption of Christ because they don't have faith in him. But the point is if you're going back to the temple system, there doesn't remain any system there as far as God is concerned.

No sacrifices for sins exist anymore in that system. So he's not really talking to people like ourselves who are not Jewish and weren't, and even if we backslide, we don't usually backslide into Judaism or we don't go to the temple and offer animal sacrifices at least. So he's talking to Jewish Christians who are backsliding into Judaism and hoping that the temple system and its sacrifices will do just as well because they won't be persecuted by their Jewish families if they go back to that. And they probably were figuring, well, I mean, yeah, I think Jesus is right on, but hey, Moses was a prophet of God too, and this Jewish system is something God ordained.

So why don't I go there instead because I won't be persecuted there? That's what is taking place. But he says what actually remains, not the sacrificial system, but what remains is a fearful expectation of judgment and fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries. Now, this book was written just shortly before Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 AD. There's several references in the book to the nearness of the destruction of the temple. And so he's saying, God's gonna bring judgment on this temple.

He's gonna bring judgment on this city, and it's not all that far off. And if you go back into that system, it's like you're jumping off of a lifeboat onto the sinking ship again because this system is going down. So that's what he's saying. Okay, thank you very much for that context. And you have a great day. Thank you, David. God bless you. Okay, Don from Vancouver, Washington.

Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Hi, Steve.

Hey, a question for you. We were talking about the incarnation of Christ the other day in the study. And is there any scriptural evidence either way to know that Jesus was or was not also fully God when he was here before his resurrection? And did he do anything that a disciple or a prophet couldn't have done? So what I'm asking basically, is there any reason that we had identified him as being fully God at the time before resurrection? And I can take this off the air, that's fine. Okay, thank you very much for your call.

Okay, thanks a lot, Steve. It's very common for Christians to say that Jesus was a fully God and fully man. And sometimes they'll go so far as to say 100% God and 100% man. Well, when you start talking like that, you're starting to talk what sounds kind of like nonsense because there's not such a thing as 200%.

You can't be 100% one thing and 100% another thing that isn't that. But that's just the way that people talk so they can sound Orthodox. They want to make it very clear that they believe Jesus is nothing less than God. And so I don't want to use terms the Bible doesn't use, but what the Bible does say about Jesus is that he was God and that when he became man, he tabernacled with us. He took on a tabernacle of human flesh. He became flesh and dwelt among us. And so, I mean, we could say Jesus, while he was on earth, was fully God, but we'd be saying something the Bible doesn't really say.

We don't have to use the word fully. We can just say he is God in the flesh because that's a biblical statement. That's a statement the Bible actually makes. He was manifested in the flesh, it says in 1 Timothy 3.15. And so we have therefore an enigma kind of, because if God is in the flesh, is he still entirely God?

Well, at least partly he's flesh. I mean, he has taken on human nature. I believe that Jesus is what God looks like when he takes on human nature. He existed in the form of God and he did not think his likeness to God, his equality with God to be a thing to grasp. Instead, he surrendered that and took on himself the form of a servant. And he became something that God isn't, namely flesh and blood and human. God is not human. God doesn't have flesh and bones, as Jesus said at a later time. He became mortal. God is not mortal. God can't die, but Jesus became immortal. He became someone who could become exhausted and fall asleep. And yet God, it says of him, he never wearies.

He never slumbers or sleeps. Jesus didn't know everything when he was here. He said, only my father, I don't know that. He said, the angels don't know that, I don't know that.

The father only knows that. So it's clear that when Jesus became man, when God became man in the person of Jesus, he did so, he didn't cease to be God, but it's not like he subtracted Godness, but he added humanness, but in adding humanness, that added, what should we say, limitations that God does not have when he is not in human form. Now, I believe therefore that Jesus is nothing less than God in the flesh. That's a statement that can be backed up with actual scriptural statements. To say he's fully God and fully man is to perhaps introduce more confusion than already exists. I think it's a, when people say he's fully God and fully man, I think all they're trying to do is point out that they are not occultists.

They're not Jehovah's Witnesses, they're not Mormons, they're not something else. They are Orthodox Christians who have always said that kind of thing. But, you know, Orthodoxy is one thing, the Bible is another, and I just as soon stick with statements that the Bible makes, and it does say in 1 Timothy 3 that he was manifested in the flesh. It does say in John chapter 1 verse 14 that the word was made flesh and tabernacled with us.

So that's how I would understand it. Now, because Jesus was God in the flesh, that does not rule out God being elsewhere as well. That is God not in the flesh. And Jesus spoke of God that way, he spoke of his father. He said, my father is greater than I.

What he means is I'm limited here in a human body. I've taken on human form, but I'm not the only thing there is of God. He said, my father is in me and I'm in my father, and if you've seen me, you've seen my father. But the point he's making is, I think, that God, even when he becomes flesh, doesn't cease to exist beyond that. And I would compare it with the times in the Old Testament when God took on a visible form, whether it's in the pillar of cloud or the pillar of fire, whether it's in a burning bush or the man who wrestled with Jacob all night, or other cases that we refer to as theophanies, that God appeared even physically and visibly in a place locally. This was the manifest presence of God. And yet God existed everywhere else in the universe at the same time. It's like God isn't, I mean, God can multitask.

He can walk down the street and chew gum at the same time. He can be manifesting himself on earth in a certain place and still exist in the whole universe. And so when Jesus spoke about his father being greater than himself, I think he's simply talking about God in his, the part of God that's not manifested there at that very moment. But he himself was God manifest in that spot, just like when people came to the tabernacle and the pillar of cloud was there, the shekinah glory was there. Well, that was God there. But there were people on the other side of the world that God was paying attention to, and sparrows that he was feeding and grass that he was clothing.

And there was not a sparrow falling to the ground without his knowledge. I mean, God is everywhere, but he manifested in one place, in one man, when he took on human form. It's a mystery. I mean, if someone wants me to make it less mysterious, I don't know that I can do that. I don't know that it can be done.

But that is at least following the language the Bible uses rather than language that Christians sometimes like to adopt. All right, let's talk next to Cesar from Burbank, California. Hi, Cesar, welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Hi, Steve, thanks. Thanks for taking my call. I just started calling, feeling kind of puzzled within the church, the way we're keeping the social distance inside the gatherings and the mass as we're seeing.

And I just feel kind of puzzled when I can, can I just take your opinion on it and I'll take your answer off the phone. Well, before you go, are you talking about social distancing in the church meetings? Is that what you're referring to? Or something? Yes, yes, in the meetings as we unite as a church and inside the building.

And I mean, yeah, the mask and just kind of puzzling, yeah. Okay. Well, thank you and I'll listen to you on the radio. All right, thanks for your call.

I really appreciate you, thank you. Thank you, Cesar, bye now. Well, I mean, should the church be observing these guidelines for social distancing and the lockdown and things like that? This is a hard thing to answer because on the one hand, if the church is supposed to be meeting one another, embracing one another, being in close contact with each other, because that's the normal thing for Christian fellowship.

And we were told, of course, not to neglect Christian fellowship, then there should be no law of any land that we would observe that would prevent us from doing so. On the other hand, if we see it as a situation where, you know, any of us might be infected, it might infect other people. And some of those other people might have preexisting conditions or might be older, or might have something that would make it dangerous for them to be infected. And we have to remember that like more than 99 out of a hundred people who are infected don't die and most of them don't even get sick. But you know, the idea that, you know, one person might die because we were careless has led many Christians to feel like, we really should keep our distance.

We really should wear the masks and so forth. Now this is a hard call because on the one hand, if there's reason to believe that it is dangerous to our brothers and sisters to meet together, I could see an argument made that out of love for them, we should not get together or we should at least social distance or wear masks or whatever if we're together. On the other hand, adults usually throughout history have been allowed to take whatever risks they want to. If somebody is afraid of getting COVID or afraid of dying of COVID or has preexisting conditions or is very old and there's things I want to stay away, well, they can always stay away. There's a lot of people who are not at great risk.

People who are young and healthy are not at great risk for COVID. And that would be probably the majority of the people in the church. So I don't really see why people who don't mind taking the risks can't do that. It can't just fellowship in a normal way. And those who don't want to take the risk, they can just stay home or they can, you know, go to church the way people are doing now on Zoom or whatever, or they can social distance.

They go to the church and stay further away from everyone else. But I really don't know why the state feels that they have to be a nanny to us and tell us adults, you know, it's dangerous if you go around people because you or someone else might get sick. Yeah, but isn't that kind of true all the time?

Hasn't that always been true since the world began that if you go around people, crowds, you might catch something? The real question is not whether you are taking a risk. The question is whether it's a risk that's worth taking or not. And in many cases, I feel like I'd be willing to take that risk.

And I'm an old person. I'm in pretty good shape physically, but I'm not afraid to die either. Something's gonna get you. I would rather have a normal life with my Christian brothers and sisters than have that interrupted for a year or more on the chance that maybe I would die. Well, maybe I'll die anyway. Maybe if we're social distancing, I might get hit by a truck. I mean, a lot of people are gonna die of other things besides COVID this year.

And I might be one of them, who cares? I expect to die sometime. And I also am not very much fearful of the disease because I happen to know that the vast majority of people who actually get infected don't even know they got infected. They don't even get sick. And then if those who do get sick, most of them don't die. And so that's kind of like other diseases, isn't it?

There certainly are diseases that are much more infectious and that have a higher death rate, for example, among children. The truth is if adults cannot be permitted to take whatever risks with their own lives that they wanna take, as long as they're not being suicidal, then we better outlaw everything that could have a risk. We better put padded walls in every house because people sometimes fall and hit their head on a corner of a wall and maybe die. They might slip in a bathtub.

We better put abrasive material on the shower floors of every house and make it illegal to shower without it. We better make it illegal to go out into the street in a car because people get killed doing that. Well, since when do adults need someone else to tell us what risks we can take and which ones we can't?

And if they say, well, it's not you, it's the other people. But if the other people are willing to take that risk, why should we live in fear of something that is, as science has proven, is not really as dangerous as they said it was going to be? Do you remember when it first came up, they said 2.5 million people are gonna die of the disease. That hasn't happened. And that was supposed to be in the United States.

It hasn't even come close to that. Well, it's between 100 and 200,000 right now, which is less than 10% or 1% of what they thought it was gonna be. So it's much, much less dangerous than they thought it was gonna be. And if someone says, well, I don't think it's that dangerous, someone's gonna say, oh, you're a science denier. I'm not a science denier.

I believe in science. I don't believe all the political opinions of a scientist because there are scientists on both sides of the political spectrum. And there's also scientists on both sides of the COVID risk thing. You'll find just as good scientists saying that this is not really a big deal for most people and it's not very dangerous. We shouldn't be locked down and we shouldn't be masked and so forth. There's a lot of great scientists of the highest rank that are saying that they're just not in the CDC or they're not the voice of the CDC. And therefore, the people who say it is dangerous are not more qualified scientists than those who say it's not.

So they just have the television coverage because television wants to cover this kind of a story and this kind of opinion. So I personally think, I mean, if churches open up today and no one wore masks and there was no social distancing, I'd still, I'd go. I'm not afraid of any COVID thing. In fact, a few months ago, my wife and I did go to a church where no one had masks on. They were sitting in regular church chairs without any distance between them. I think they meet every Sunday doing that.

And it was a big church, probably had 300 people in it or so. And I don't think, I don't know if any of them have gotten sick from it. So I'm, you know, I guess I'm not very sympathetic with the whole thing. But on the other hand, I don't really wanna go to jail unnecessarily. So I would wear a mask and I'd social distance if I'm in a place where they're gonna be doing that. That's just me.

You gotta check your own conscience about that, I suppose. We're gonna take a break here and we'll be back in a little bit. You're listening to The Narrow Path. We have another half hour coming up.

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The number is 844-484-5737. And for those in Arizona listening to us, I know we have a lot of listeners in Arizona and in Texas, I just want you to know I'm coming that direction. At the end of this month, on the 29th, I'll be speaking in the Phoenix area, actually in Buckeye, but we have a lot of listeners in Phoenix. If you're interested, you can go to our website, thenarrowpath.com and see where that meeting is going to be.

That's the 29th of this month. And then the next day, the 30th, we will be in Tucson. Now the details of that meeting have not been fully nailed down, so we don't have the details of it posted, but we will. But if you're an Arizona listener and interested in coming out to one of our gatherings where I'll be teaching, feel free to look at our website, thenarrowpath.com, and under the tab that says Announcements, you'll find whatever information is available about those meetings. And those of you in Texas, I'm going to be in several different areas in Texas, very early, the first week of October. I'm going to be in Spring Branch, which is in the general vicinity, I think, of San Antonio. I'm going to speak there a couple of times in Spring Branch, Texas. I'm going to be speaking in Houston and also in Chocolate Bayou, which is in the Houston area. And then there's going to be a meeting in Dallas also. So if you're near San Antonio or Dallas or Houston, we will be coming to you in the first week of October to your area.

And you can find those also at the website when they're posted. I think some of them are already. So that's just for you in Arizona and Texas. So you get a heads up.

We're going to some other states, too, but we'll announce those as the meetings get closer. I want to go to the phone lines right now and talk to Earl from Roseville, California. Hi, Earl.

Welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Yes. Hello.

Hi. There's a story. It's in Numbers 22, 33. It's about Balaam and the donkey and the angel.

Okay. So from what I understand, Balaam is riding his donkey and he runs into the angel of the Lord, which is a manifestation of God. And then apparently, well, it says it right in the scripture that Balaam's donkey saw the angel of the Lord first and then Balaam and his donkey, they have some kind of conflict. And then the donkey starts talking to Balaam and then Balaam is just sitting there, apparently after the donkey lies down on him and he's talking to the donkey like, it looks like it's the most normal thing in the world.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think if I would have been in that situation, I would have jumped off of it and got away from that donkey as fast as I could. But then the donkey explains, you know, you've been abusing me. And then Balaam's eyes are opened up to the angel of the Lord. And then he says, he admits that he has sinned against God. But the angel of the Lord, it says in Numbers 22, 33, the donkey saw me and turned aside from me these three times. If she had not turned aside from me, surely I would also have killed you by now and let her live. Okay, so why would the angel of the Lord have killed Balaam just because Balaam disobeyed God for some instructions that he was supposed to follow?

Well, yeah. Well, Balaam was not right with God. The Bible says in the New Testament that Balaam loved the wages of unrighteousness. And the story about Balaam is that Balak, the king of Moab, wanted him to come and curse the Israelites.

Balaam was not an Israelite. We don't know his ethnicity, but he was a soothsayer. And he had a reputation for being able to curse or bless people and nations.

And apparently, for some reason, people thought that he had powers in that area. So this pagan king asked him to come and curse Israel because the king was afraid of Israel. And Balaam said, well, let me ask God about it. And he prayed and God spoke to him and says, don't curse Israel.

They're my people. You can't curse them. And so Balaam said, I'm sorry, I can't do it.

God won't let me. And so the people left and then the king, who wanted to hire him, sent the messenger back with more money, offering a bigger fee. And Balaam, instead of saying, hey, God already told me, you know, that I'm not supposed to do this, so I don't care how much money you offer me.

I can't do it. And he should have sent them packing. But instead, he said, well, let me ask God again. Now, it's obvious that he wasn't looking to find out what God wanted. He already had that answer from God very clearly given to him previously. He's he's hoping to get a different answer.

He's hoping to he's looking for permission to do what he wants to do because he wants to collect that fee and God realizing the insincerity of the man's heart, I think, told him what he wanted to hear. OK, go ahead. Go ahead.

Go with him, you know. But don't say anything that I don't tell you to say. So Balaam felt like he he was released to go, but he shouldn't have felt that because God had already made it very clear. These people cannot be cursed.

They're my people. So why is he still asking for permission to do it? Because there's more money involved. And so Balaam's heart was wrong. Technically, God had given him permission the second time, but I believe it was not sincerely to think. I think God was being sarcastic with him because he knew already the answer. And so he went in disobedience to what he knew God's will was. And it's interesting because he could say, well, God actually said, go ahead.

But it's not the same. I mean, legalism would say, well, technically the I'm not violating what the Bible says. But if you already know what God wants and you're ignoring it and you're doing it for greedy reasons, your heart's wrong, you know? And so that's why God was about to judge him for that.

But he allowed him mercifully. He allowed the donkey to see and speak, which I think, you know, you say, well, if the donkey spoke to me, I go running. Yeah, probably would. But you might also be fascinated. You know, you might be also think, wow, never seen this kind of thing happen before.

You might want to want to stay close by and see what's going to come come out next. But anyway, God told him, you know, the donkey saw me that you didn't, which is a way of saying, you know, you're dumber than a donkey. You're more blind than a donkey. You know, your donkey is more spiritually sensitive than you are. That's basically, I think, what God was telling him by letting the donkey have played the role that it did in the story.

Okay, just well, then the donkey saved Balaam's life and so. Well, yeah, it would seem so. Okay. Okay, well, thank you. All right.

Good talking to you, Earl. Thanks for calling. Okay. Bye now.

All right. Our next caller is Anthony from Danville, California. Anthony, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Hi, Steve. Thanks for taking my call. I want to get your opinion on the debate between the received text and the majority text. Yeah, well, if you don't need me, I can listen. I'm afraid.

Sure, I'll be glad to. Well, we have something like, what is it? I think 8,000 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, and most of them are, you know, agree with each other in almost every way. I mean, there's little errors in copying and stuff that occurs in some of the manuscripts, but there's a pretty united testimony of the contents of the New Testament in most of these manuscripts. But most of these manuscripts are, you know, some centuries removed from the original writing. The assumption that is usually made is that because the old writings were copied over and over and over and over again, that the longer period of copying and recopying and recopying allows a larger number of mistakes to be made accidentally by people who are copying and just make an error. And these accumulate so that, you know, 600 years or 1,000 years later, you've got some considerable changes sometimes in an ancient document. Now, this actually hasn't happened in the case of the New Testament. We know this because we can compare all these different manuscripts with each other and find out how little has changed.

But there have been some little changes. But generally speaking, when you're trying to get to the original reading of an ancient document that you don't have the original anymore, you're trying to get to the original more, the earliest copies are the ones that you're going to be hoping to find because they're closer to the time of the original writing and because there has been less time, therefore, for multitudes of generations of copies to collect little errors and become off base. Now, there are a couple of manuscripts that are a couple or three centuries earlier than all the others that we have found.

And these would be what we call the Alexandrian text, which would be, you know, the codas Alexandrinus, the codas Vaticanus. There's only a few, very few of these, and they are considerably earlier than the other manuscripts that are known, of the thousands of others. So on the one hand, we have a couple or three manuscripts that are within about three or four hundred years of the time of the New Testament.

And then we've got thousands of them that are, you know, considerably later. Now, scholars usually think, well, the older ones are closer to the original, so they're going to be more reliable. And it is true that these older ones agree with each other in some important ways rather than in the ways where they don't agree with the later manuscripts. So the assumption of many scholars is these early manuscripts are the closest to the original, and in the ways that they differ from the later manuscripts, that's errors that have crept into the later manuscripts, that the later manuscripts are wrong because they don't agree with the earlier ones. Now, I want to say that the total number of differences between the early and the later is a very large number, but they're not of consequence. A lot of times the difference is a matter of the spelling of a word or the phrasing of a word or the sentence, the word order in a sentence. And this is the kind of thing that when people say there's thousands of differences, there are, but they're this kind of thing.

You know, thousands of them are of no consequence at all. But there are a few things where the older manuscripts differ from the later manuscripts, which are a little significant. For example, the end of Mark. The older manuscripts, the Book of Mark ends at verse 8, I believe it is, and the later manuscripts have a variety of endings of Mark, a medium-length ending, a long ending. Our Bibles, that is our King James and New King James, and the Textus Receptus, or the Received Text, as you mentioned, they have the long ending of Mark, so that verses 9 through 20 in Mark 16 belong to the Textus Receptus, but the older manuscripts, the Alexandrian text, only have the first eight verses of that chapter.

So there's some difference there, certainly. There's also the passage, like the one about the woman taken in adultery in John chapter 8, actually the last verse of chapter 7 of John, and the first several verses of chapter 8, I think it's about 12 verses or so, is the story of the woman taken in adultery that Jesus said, Let him who is without sin cast the first stone. This story is not found in the oldest manuscripts, but it is found in the Received Text.

So you find that there are some things. Now, by the way, even if we didn't know which of these texts were correct, it wouldn't change anything about the Christian faith. There wouldn't be any difference in our beliefs based on these things. It would certainly be nice to know if Jesus really did say, He that is without sin let him cast the first stone at her, as the later manuscripts have him saying, but which the early ones don't. It would be nice to know if some of those things in the long ending of Mark were really what Jesus said about casting out demons and drinking things poisonous and things like that.

Well, we may never know. We may never know unless we find a much earlier manuscript that could be considered more reliable. But without knowing those things, we don't have any problem knowing the doctrines of the Christian faith, because none of the disputed passages between these two sets of manuscripts, the older and the later, none of the things that are in there that are disputed have any real impact on any major doctrine of the Christian faith. It may be one of our favorite verses or passages, maybe a disputed one. For example, 1 John 5, what is it, 5, 7 or 5, 8, where it says there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one. That's a very favorite Trinity passage, but it's not found in the older manuscripts.

It's only found in the later ones. And so there's many scholars, probably most, assume that that verse is not really an original part of 1 John. But with or without that verse, I have no trouble discovering the Trinity in the rest of the Bible. So what I'm saying is it's a shame. I mean, it's a shame we don't have the very originals and that we don't have the very originals and that we only have copies of copies of copies, but the differences in the copies are not the kinds of differences that would deprive us of certainty about any major Christian doctrine.

So I don't worry about it much. The truth is you can study out these passages and their merits and demerits separately. For example, the long ending of Mark. What's interesting is that some of the church fathers in the third century, which is before the time of our oldest found manuscripts, okay, before those manuscripts were written, or at least before the time that we have them from, there were church fathers like Irenaeus who actually quoted from the long ending of Mark, which means that even though it isn't in our oldest manuscript copies of the New Testament, it was in earlier copies of the New Testament which Irenaeus used. So you can actually kind of take these passages case by case. The story of the woman taken in adultery, for example. In the oldest manuscripts, it's not found in John chapter 8, but in some manuscripts, it's found in other parts of the Bible, other parts of the New Testament. In at least one or more manuscripts, the same story word for word is found in Luke. And so the question is then, okay, did John write this story? Did Luke write the story?

Who wrote the story? Or was it added later on and it got kind of put into different parts of the Bible? There are some disputes about these things, but each case can be studied separately and you can reach certain conclusions, maybe not with certainty about them. But once again, even if we never reach certainty about some of these things, they don't impact any particular doctrine of the Christian faith. You get the same Jesus, the same God, the same salvation, the same kingdom of God.

In all of these manuscripts have the same Christian doctrines. It's just that on some things that aren't, you know, the Christian doctrines are not necessarily based on some passages, it's less clear than we'd like it to be as to whether they were in the original or not. I wish it wasn't so, but that's what we have. That's the way it is.

Mike from Hillsboro, Oregon. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Oh, just a scripture here. Because thou has kept the word of my patience, I will also keep thee from the hour of temptation, which will come upon all the world to try them that dwell upon the earth. Revelation 3 10.

One of my favorite verses to prove the pre-trib rapture when I believed it. Yeah, well, you know what? It's still there and it still glares out and it still says, you know, to me, to me, to me, because I've been wrestling with this betterism thing ever since I came on it, you know, and I just, it's very difficult for me to say that the Apostle John was written just when he wrote from the Isle of Patmos, which I believe he did, you know, from 96 AD, like the early church fathers said.

Some of them. That's it. To me, Steve, that is dangerous to put your whole premise upon having had it being written in 60 AD or 96 AD, because there's such a world of difference in the whole scope of the book of revelations when you do that.

I can't do that. Okay, well, let me just say this. Let me say this. You just told me that you believe it was written in 96 because church fathers said so. No, no, no, I'm not telling you I know when it was written.

Okay, well, but you said it's dangerous. You said it's dangerous for me to believe it was written before 70 AD, but there were some early church authorities that thought it was written before 70 AD, but I don't base it on what they say. I base it on the contents of the book itself, but because I want to get my information from the scriptures, not from church fathers as much as possible. Well, that's what we're doing right now is getting in the scriptures. I mean, we're not getting in 96 AD, Dave.

We're not getting in 96, wait, wait, let's try something. You're not getting, you're not getting the view, the view that was written in 96 AD. You're not getting that from the scripture.

You're getting that from church fathers, right? Yeah, right. Okay. And you're saying it's dangerous not to follow you in doing so. No, no, I'm not, you know, I'm not telling, I shouldn't have used the word dangerous.

I apologize for that. Well, let me answer the verse you were talking about. Let me talk about the verse you were talking about.

There's a couple of important things to say about it. Are you, by the way, just out of curiosity. I'm reading King James.

Okay, sure. Jews say that this supports the pre-tribulation rapture. Well, no, what I'm saying is, I'm not talking about the pre-tribulation rapture. You're talking about the whole world. Yeah, the whole world. God said the whole world. Now, unless there's a big mistake here when he said the whole world, he meant the whole world, not, not just Jerusalem or not just Israel. How about the Roman empire?

If you want to put that in and say that it was a Roman empire, that's fine. You can make that assumption, I suppose. But I'm saying that the book of revelations was written for the whole world for all the time that we're living in, the people that were not yet even born or the, or I think it is for our day and age.

It's been for all day and ages. Okay. And you're basing a lot of that. I'm saying as a warning book to us. I understand. And that there is going to be, and I don't think it's happened yet because I haven't seen the great earthquake yet in either of you, I don't think. Okay, well, let me just jump in here and make some points.

Okay, go ahead. Yeah. You're basing this idea that it's about the, about our times on the idea that the whole world, you say, means the whole world as we know it. But let me just suggest that that's not the way the word world is used in the Bible. For example, in Luke chapter one, excuse me, Luke chapter two, verse one, it says it came to pass in those days that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. Now, Caesar Augustus didn't intend to register the Mayan Indians or the Aborigines in Australia. It means the Roman world. The Roman empire is the whole world as far as they're concerned. And likewise, in Acts chapter two and verse five, when it's talking about the day of Pentecost and how the Jews had come to worship in Jerusalem, it says, now there were dwelling in Jerusalem, Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. Well, they weren't here from the Navajo nation.

You know, they weren't from the Incas nation. They were from all the nation, all the nations in the Roman empire, which is, you know, as far as this, the concern is of the book. In Colossians chapter one and verse six, Paul, Paul tells his readers that the gospel has come to you as it has also in all the world.

And just bring it forward. I'm not, I'm not arguing about that. I'm totally not. What you are arguing though, it sounds to me, is that you're saying when revelation says there's a great time of testing, that's going to come on the whole world, that that can't be something in the first century.

That has to be something larger, more expansive. I'm saying that in the New Testament, it's very common to speak of the Roman world as the whole world. That's just the way they spoke. And of course, revelation was written to people living in the Roman world, specifically in Turkey at the time. So this is, this is something that we're just going to have to agree to disagree about. But I, my reasons for believing what I do about revelation are based on a holistic set of considerations, both of, not, not specifically about what the church fathers said, although I don't have any problem with what they said.

I have, there are church fathers in my camp too, but I don't really care what they thought about it. I want to look at what the passages say themselves. And I want to do so and understand them in the way that they were intended to be understood by their original readers, who, by the way, were very familiar with the apocalyptic style of writing that, that the book uses. Anyway, you know, I do very much appreciate your call, but I need to take some more calls. We're almost out of time. But let me, let me put you on just for one moment here and ask you this one question. Do you think there is something dangerous about, about not being right about the book of Revelation? You know, I don't consider myself in danger whether I understand it perfectly or not. Right.

I, I truly don't. I'm just looking at the things that the, the, the abilities that we have to, you know, set fire to the whole world, thermonuclearly and all that business. But we know about that, we would know about that, we'd know about that even if we didn't have the book of Revelation, right? I mean, we know about the nuclear war. In fact, we do know.

Right. So I'm just wondering, I'm just wondering, is there something about a correct or a more correct understanding of Revelation that would be important to our wellbeing, spiritually? For me, it's warning my children, warning my grandchildren, warning anybody that I can talk to that we should be aware of what's going on around us. And the book of Revelations is a very good warning. But I, I guess I'm going to say not unlike you, I would warn them and say, you need to read this and take into consideration what's going on in the world at all times, in the world that we live in right now, you know, as a warning to them, as a warning.

Well, you know, yeah, my response would be that knowing as much as I have learned about church history is that there have been dozens of times, if not hundreds of times in church history, when the people living at that time were quite sure the book of Revelation was addressing their own age. Yeah, well, I agree with that. And there's nothing wrong with people warning people like that, as far as I'm concerned. Okay. It's still an all, it's still an all-encompassing warning. Okay.

I don't think you would disagree with me on that. Well, I believe people need to be warned. Whether it was written in 60 AD or 96 AD or whatever, it's still an all-encompassing warning. And I'm saying that it's a warning for now, as it always has been, or God wouldn't have said to, you know, the people that read this book are blessed.

Well, the blessing is to keep from getting your head chopped off. Okay. Hey, I gotta go. I'm off the air here in about 45 seconds.

But yeah, obviously we see things differently about that and maybe some other things, but I appreciate you calling to express your ideas there. We're out of time. You've been listening to The Narrow Path radio broadcast.

My name is Steve Gregg. We are listener supported. If you'd like to help us pay the radio bills, you can write to The Narrow Path. P.O. Box 1730 Temecula, California 92593. Or you can donate from our website where everything is free. The website is thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for joining us. Let's talk again tomorrow. God bless you.