The Narrow Path 9/16

Music Playing Good afternoon and welcome to the Narrow Path Radio Broadcast.

My name is Steve Gregg and we're live for an hour each weekday afternoon. We take some time to take your calls each afternoon and you can call in with your questions about the Bible or your points of disagreement with the host if you wish. At this number 844-487-8255. That's 844-484-5737. Our first caller today is Abraham from Spokane, Washington. Welcome to the Narrow Path Abraham. Thanks for calling. And the honor is mine.

Thank you so much. My question comes from Leviticus chapter 23 in verse 24 and the book of Numbers chapter 29 and verse 1. And I would like to correlate that with the book of Acts chapter 2 and verse 1.

So here's my question, sir. As you know, the Old Testament references are to the holiday that commonly is known as the Feast of Trumpets. In the Hebrew, it's called the Rosh Hashanah, which is coming up this weekend, a day of the blowing of the shofar or the trumpets. And the book of Acts reference, you also well know, is referencing the day of Pentecost when the day of Pentecost, it says, had fully come. Then it describes the appearance of the Holy Spirit lighting on each of the individuals who were assembled in the upper room there in Jerusalem.

So my question to you is this. It's popular among mainly dispensational futurists to think that our Lord Jesus Christ, when he makes his triumphant return to this world, will do so in accordance with the Hebrew calendar. And they variously choose out either the Feast of Trumpets or the Day of Atonement or the Feast of Tabernacles as the day that the Lord will return. Now, we both know that in our Lord's earthly sojourn, no man knoweth the hour of the day, he said, of his coming, not even the Son of Man himself, but the Father only.

And in another place, he said, the Son of Man comes at a time when you think not. My question to you is, since the Jewish system, since the Jewish law, the ceremonial civil law has been fulfilled in Jesus Christ. What reason does the church have to think that he will return at the Feast of Trumpets or the Feast of the Day of Atonement on Yom Kippur or on the Feast of Tabernacles? Yeah, well, obviously there were three major festivals each year. There was the Passover and Pentecost, and then there was the Tabernacles. And the Feast of Trumpets is in the latter group of Holy Days in the fall. And most dispensationalists, and maybe many others who are not dispensationalists, I don't know, believe that those fall feasts, including the Feast of Trumpets and Tabernacles, are to be fulfilled at the second coming of Christ.

But I'm not sure why they would think so necessarily. I mean, we have, of course, Jesus fulfilling Passover on the day of Passover when he died on the cross. We have the Pentecost being fulfilled with the first fruits of the church being brought in on the day of Pentecost. But when Jesus spoke about the destruction of Jerusalem in the 21st chapter of Luke, around verse 20 and following, I think it's around verse 22 or 23, he actually says these things are going to happen so that all things that are written may be fulfilled. He's talking about the destruction of Jerusalem, and that's going to happen to fulfill all things that are written. One would suggest from that that the festivals don't look beyond that point, that all things that were part of the law will be fulfilled by that time. And it would make sense, too, in a way, because you've got the Passover fulfilled by Christ. You've got the Pentecost fulfilled by the coming of the Spirit. And then the Trumpets, you know, see, I believe Revelation is about the fall of Jerusalem also.

And you find there the Trumpets, Trumpet judgments, you know. And the Feast of Trumpets could refer to those Trumpets that bring judgment upon Jerusalem, though I don't know. I should say right at the outset, I don't know what to think about the fall of the Feast because it is possible that they do apply to the second coming of Christ. But it seems equally possible, if not more so, that it could refer to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. So I would say that in order to say that Jesus must come during the fall festivals is to make an assumption that is not absolutely ironclad. If those feasts do refer to the time of the second coming, then I would expect Jesus' second coming to happen during those feasts, just like the death of Jesus and the coming of the Spirit happened during the feasts that they were fulfilling. But this is something that I'm not quite sure about. I mean, I used to be quite sure that those feasts in the fall were about the end of the world and the second coming of Christ before I realized how much the New Testament says about the fulfillment of all things taking place in A.D. 70.

So I don't know which it is. It's even occurred to me that the Feast of Tabernacles, although this is not necessarily something I would be dogmatic on or even think I'm necessarily right about, the Feast of Tabernacles, which is in the fall feast, could represent the time when Jesus actually was born. We don't know when Jesus was born, but He might have been born in September. And it says in John chapter 1, verse 14, that the Word was made flesh and tabernacled with us. So His tabernacling among us, just like God tabernacled with Israel the 40 years of their wandering in the wilderness in the tabernacle with His glory there. It's interesting because John says in John 1.14, the Word was made flesh and tabernacled with us and we beheld His glory. Just like the Israelites beheld the glory, the Shekinah glory of God over the tabernacle in the wilderness.

So it has struck me as a possibility that the Feast of Tabernacles is not looking at the second coming of Christ, but perhaps the birth of Christ and He might have been born during that season. We have no way of knowing. Thank you very much. I appreciate the answer.

All right. I appreciate your question. God bless you, Abraham. Okay, Everett from San Pablo, California. Hi, Everett.

Good to hear from you. Oh, thanks so much, Steve. Peace and blessings. And two questions, Steve. One, and what can be more important about being dead too soon? Could you explain what does it mean to be dead too soon?

And then also the other question, the Book of Numbers 23, which is better than the meditation of God. Excuse me, Everett, I need to interrupt you and say that your phone is like totally garbled and I wasn't able to pick up. I was not able to pick up very much of what you said. Can you get in a slightly better location? Okay, is that better now?

That's better right now, it sounds like. Yes. Okay. Okay. Thanks. Slow down.

Go ahead and go slowly. Yes, sir. Okay.

All right. So what does it mean to be dead too soon out of Romans chapter 6? And also the other question is out of Numbers 23, which says God is not a man. He should lie, not the son of man, that he should repent. So can you explain when he says God and then he mentions the son of man and what would that mean within that context? Yeah. Okay.

I can work on those. Let me just say that when it says God is not a man that he should repent or a son of man that he should repent, what Balaam I think is saying there is that no matter how much money Balak promises to Balaam to curse Israel, which is what was happening there, Balaam was trying to bribe or pay Balaam to curse Israel, no matter how much you bribe, you can't change God's mind. When it says he's not a man that he should repent means you're not going to change his mind. Remember they had tried to change Balaam's mind and Balaam was a man and they could change his mind. They offered him a certain amount of money first. He rejected it.

They came back and offered more and he accepted it. So he's a man and you can manipulate men and change their mind. But God isn't like a man. You can't change his mind.

You can't bribe him and offer him more money and get him to change his position on that. So that's what it means he's not a man that he should repent or change his mind. In the context it's saying that even though a man like Balaam could be induced to change his mind by certain incentives, God cannot be induced to do so in a case like this.

So I think that's all that Balaam is saying there. Now when it says that we are dead to sin in Romans chapter 6, it is in answering the question, what shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? And he says, no, we have died to sin. And he goes on to talk about baptism. How don't you know when you were baptized you were buried? Which is a way of saying you died.

You wouldn't be buried if you hadn't died. So you have, by becoming a Christian, you have entered a new life. You've been born again into a new life, which is emblemized by coming up out of the waters of baptism, like coming up out of the grave, or perhaps coming out of the womb, which is usually accompanied with a burst of waters as well. But the point is that before you were born again, or at the same time you were born again, you ended your former life. And that was a life under the power of sin. And so why would you continue in sin when you have, by your very baptism, advertised that you died to that old life of sin? And that's why you were buried.

You got yourself buried because you were dead, or you had died. Now it's not talking about a subjective interior insensitivity to sin. Some people understand it that way. They say, I don't feel like I'm dead to sin because I still feel very strongly the temptations. Well, Jesus was certainly not a sinner, but he felt temptations too. He was tempted at all points like we are. Temptation is not the same thing as sin. Some people say, well, you know, if you wave around, you know, a Playboy magazine in front of a corpse, he's not going to be aroused because he's dead.

And that's how we should be. We should be dead to sin. Well, that'd be more like dead to temptation. There's no reference in the Bible to anyone being dead to temptation. Dead to sin means, in Paul's analogy, that sin was the master. Sin reigned.

In fact, if you look at just before that in chapter 5, the very last verse of chapter 5, verse 21, he says, so that as sin reigned in death, even so grace might rain through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. So he's saying, before we were Christians, sin reigned. But now we've died to that. So he's basically saying we were the captives of sin. We were slaves of sin. But we're not anymore.

It doesn't own us anymore. We have a new life and a new master. We're slaves of God.

And it goes on to talk about that in chapter in the same chapter of the second half where he says that, Do you not know? Verse 16 says, Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey? You are that one slaves. But he says, God, we thank that though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that which is that form of doctrine to which you were delivered and having been set free from sin. That's another metaphor, dying, being set free. You're not a slave anymore.

You've escaped that bondage in that life. He says you've become slaves of righteousness. So becoming dead to sin in this particular context means the life you had where you were a slave of sin is over. You died when Christ died. You are now in him and his death counts as your death. You now have a new life which is given to you through rebirth. And you are no longer a slave of sin because that's not saying you don't sometimes feel like one.

It's not saying that you don't have as much temptation as you used to. It's saying that because you're not a slave of sin, you're under no obligation to obey it. You actually have the option of living a holy life. In fact, that's what you're required to do because you now are a slave of righteousness and a slave of God. So he's saying before you're a Christian, serving sin was a natural and we can almost say an appropriate thing. It was your master. But now that you've given your life to Christ, serving him is the appropriate thing.

And you don't obey sin anymore. It's not your master. Wow. Wow.

Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it, Steve. God bless. Peace and blessings, sir. Thank you, Everett. God bless you. Good talking to you.

All right. Our next caller is going to be Patrick from Harper Woods, Michigan. Hi, Patrick.

Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Hi. Thanks, Steve. My question is about 1 Corinthians 11, 23 to 26. I'm fascinating trying to understand the source of Paul's knowledge. So, you know, the invite for I received from the Lord that that which I also delivered to you. Then he quotes Jesus, you know, red letter, you know, take heat.

This is my body and so forth. This is the cup of, you know, my new covenant. But what is the source of that was, you know, he was on the road to Damascus. Then he spent about three years or so in the desert. Then he interacted with the apostles, you know, a couple of weeks with Peter and so forth. I'm just he's so he's so clear on the instructions from the Lord.

And that's what I'd like you to comment upon. Well, we do know that Paul had some conversations with Christ that, you know, even though Christ had ascended into heaven, he appeared to Paul at least three times and spoke with him. But we don't we don't read of him speaking about this. We do read in 2 Corinthians 12 that Paul once was caught up into third heaven and heard things, but they were unlawful to repeat.

So they'd probably run out this. And he wouldn't need he wouldn't need any direct communication from Jesus in that form. In order to know this particular information, Luke knew it also. And so did Matthew and Mark and all the apostles knew it because they were there in the upper room when Jesus said these words. So we do know that when Paul had become a believer and after he escaped from Damascus when they were trying to kill him there, he did go to Jerusalem. He spent two weeks there, according to Galatians chapter one, I guess it is tells us he spent two weeks there and he met with James and Peter and and he also visited Jerusalem on other occasions. For example, the Jerusalem Council and and and he no doubt visited with them there. I'm sure he picked their brains about things and especially about the love feast that they had, the agape feast and the remembrance of the Last Supper.

I'm sure that he had plenty of opportunities and no doubt plenty of motivation to find out exactly how that came down. You know, what did Jesus say? What, you know, what are we supposed to remember about this? Because Jesus did say, when you do this, do it in remembrance of me. So, you know, I think it's very likely that Paul got the information from the other apostles whom he had more than more than one occasion to hang out with and talk. I mean, if I was hanging out with them, I'd be talking about Jesus. So would they, you know, I'd want them to tell me everything they could remember. And so Paul, you know, Paul was not one of the twelve, but he was in communication with them and had every, you know, access to the information that they might want to share with them.

And certainly this would be one of them. It's interesting that in all of Paul's letters, he very rarely quotes Jesus at all. And he doesn't give very much detail about the life of Jesus. And no doubt that's partly because he was not an eyewitness of those things, but he knew it. I mean, his friend Luke, who wrote the gospel, Luke certainly knew that stuff. And he hung out with Paul in his later years, you know, incessantly. So I'm sure that Paul had access to all that kind of information, though it's pretty unusual for him to quote Jesus in his letters. He does here.

He does elsewhere, too. In fact, he even quotes Jesus on some things that aren't recorded in the gospels. When Paul, in Acts chapter 20, is talking to the elders of Ephesus, he says, remember, Jesus told us it's more blessed to give than to receive. Well, that's not recorded in the gospels. But Jesus did say it, apparently, and it was remembered by the apostles, even if they didn't write it down. Paul learned it, no doubt, from them. Yeah, that's really interesting because he speaks in chapter 11 so authoritatively, you know, as if he were there.

Well, you know what? Every time I go to church and they take communion, well, I shouldn't say every time, but many, many times, they quote or read this passage. And they say it with the same kind of authority Paul does. You know, I mean, they read it, you know, and yet they weren't there.

I mean, you don't have to have been there to state something that Jesus said and state it with certainty and authority. OK, terrific. As long as the information is available. Yeah. OK. I appreciate that very much. Thanks a lot, Steve. I appreciate your call. God bless.

OK, let's see. Eileen from Downey, California, is next. Eileen, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Oh, hi.

Hi, Steve. Thanks for taking my call. I really appreciate your ministry.

Thank you. I have a couple of questions if you have time. But my first question is in John one where it talks about in the beginning the word and the and the word was with God and the word was God. I understand they're talking about Jesus, but can you explain that more as to why why they're describing Jesus as being the word?

Well, there's a couple of theories about that. One of them is the theory that John was writing to a Greek audience and in Greek philosophy, the logos, which is the Greek word for the word here, logos. The Greek philosophers believed that the ultimate reality was the logos. They didn't have the concept that we have of God the Father or or certainly they didn't have a Trinity doctrine at all.

But they believe there is a mind out there. The word logos means, you know, the the reason and the mind and the logic behind everything. It also means expression of that reasoning. The word actually does our word logic comes from logos, actually. And many fields of study have the word logos in their name, like geology or anthropology or any or anything that's ology at the end has the word logos as its root. So knowledge, logic, reasoning that is expressed is really what the logos meant. And the Greeks had this idea of a a mind or a consciousness or a rationality that's behind everything. And they called it the logos. Now, John is writing to he's writing in Ephesus almost certainly to a Gentile audience who were familiar with Greek philosophy. And so some people think he's speaking of Jesus in terms that will appeal to the Greeks who already had this idea of a logos out there.

That is the the the reasoning behind it all. And he said, yeah, well, that that's actually that that really is such a logos is that there really is a mind like that out there. And he became flesh and dwelt among us. And so some people think that that's why he's doing now.

Another very different idea is has nothing to do with Greek philosophy. But they're just pointing out that in the Hebrew Old Testament, the Jews knew that God created everything by speaking. He said, let there be light. And there was light.

He said, let dry land appear. And it appeared. He said that the earth bring forth fruit bearing trees.

And it did. Whatever he spoke made it happen. And it says in Psalm 33 six, it says, by the word of the Lord, the heavens were made and the host of them by the breath of his mouth. And so they all things were made by the word of the Lord. Now, the Hebrew mind probably would have seen this immediately as a reference back to Genesis, since he goes on in in John Chapter one.

He says all things were made by him and without him was not anything made that was made. And so John is perhaps just connecting with the Old Testament idea that God like like ourselves. He's not very much like ourselves, but in some ways he's like ourselves. We are complex beings and we have our thoughts. We have our words. We have our attitudes.

We have our opinions. We have our knowledge in our heads. We have our own logos, as it were. Well, God has a logos, too. And just like my thoughts are not something different than me, they are with me and they are me.

So the logos of God is God and is and is with God. And so that is a possible way of understanding what John's trying to get at. One thing I will say, John wasn't just a poor writer.

He wasn't. I mean, John actually probably was a poor writer, but the Book of John, he dictated to an amanuensis who who actually wrote very good Greek. We know John wasn't a good writer because he wrote the Book of Revelation. It's in terrible Greek. It's in very bad Greek. It's the most illiterate Greek in any surviving document from the ancient world.

Revelation is. But the same writer was the source of the Gospel of John. But he dictated it and someone else wrote it better than he could write it. But the point is, he could communicate it. And he would know as well as you and I know that when you say the word was with God and the word was God, it sounds like you're making a nonsensical statement.

But he would recognize that. But he made the statement anyway, because the statement was true in the sense that he understood it to be true. And so the attempt to understand for us to understand it as he did is the challenge.

And there's and many scholars have worked on it. But as I say, if your question is, why did he use the word word here? It may be because he's kind of he's trying to reach out to Greeks who already had this concept of a logos that's behind all things. And the source of all things. Or it may be that he's just reaching out to the the well-known Jewish belief from Genesis that God created things by his word. And that word is something that God has used to communicate for, you know, throughout history. It's he does talk about how he came to his own and his own did not receive him.

And we think of that as being Jesus. But actually, it's all it's some verses later that he mentions the word became flesh and dwelt among us. It's before he became flesh that says the word came to his own people, came to the Jews and they didn't receive it. That must be a reference to the words coming through the law and the prophets, God's word to them.

And they didn't receive it. And so finally, the word came in a human form. So I think he may be giving a brief history of God's communication with man. First, he communicates before man's even there, but the creation by commanding it to come into existence. Then he begins to try to communicate with people. And he was in the world, but the world did not know him. He came to his own and his own people didn't receive him. And that would be, of course, the history of the Old Testament, how the Jews received revelation from God that no one else had the benefit of, but they didn't appreciate it and didn't obey it. And so finally he takes on human form.

The word becomes flesh and dwelt among us. So those are my thoughts of what John may be doing there. Sounds like it. OK, well, thank you. That gives me a lot to think about. Do you have time for one quick more question? Well, I don't know. Tell me the question.

I'll tell you if I have time for it. OK. Well, it's just basically wanting your opinion. I mean, with all the coronavirus stuff going on. My question, basically, like in people in Australia are being arrested for Facebook postings. And I'm just wondering, curious what your opinion is, because it almost seems like it's a worldwide some, you know. Yeah. It's not adding up. Yeah. If it sounds if it sounds like it's a conspiracy, there's a good chance your discerning is on target.

I was just curious of your opinion on that. Thank you very much. All right. God bless you.

God bless you. We have to take a break at this point, but we're coming back. We have 30 minutes more after this brief break. And we're going to take more calls. We have several calls waiting. We have some lines open as well. You're listening to the Narrow Path radio broadcast.

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That's 844-484-5737. I want to make one announcement and that is that coming up at the end of this month, I'm going to be speaking and through next month. I'm going to be speaking in a variety of states around the United States.

And you may live in one of those places, may be interested in those meetings. On the 29th of this month, I'll be speaking in Phoenix. The next day, I'll be speaking in Tucson.

So our Arizona listeners may be interested in knowing that. I'll be in Texas for the remainder of that week and maybe a little beyond. I'm going to be speaking in San Antonio area. Not really San Antonio, but in Spring Branch. So if you're in San Antonio or a listener there, you may know of Spring Branch. I suppose not very far away from you. I'll also be speaking in Houston, a couple of places.

Chocolate Bayou being one of them. And I'll be speaking in Dallas. So we've got listeners in all those places. If you're interested, you go to our website, thenarrowpath.com and look under announcements and you can see where I'm going to be. There's more places, but I'm not going to list them all now. They are, as these appointments are solidified, we do put them on the website. So if you're curious about whether I'm speaking in your area, feel free to go to thenarrowpath.com. Look under announcements and under the dates and so forth. You'll find that. One other announcement I forgot to mention in the first half.

I wish I had made it. But in a couple of hours, about two and a half hours from now, at five o'clock Pacific time and, you know, adjust for your own time zone. There's going to be a live debate between myself and Chris Date. Chris Date's a very good debater, a very good guy.

He's a friend of mine. But this has been set up by Trinity Theological Seminary in Evansville, Indiana. And we're going to be debating on the question of whether Israel is the church in the New Testament or not.

So the question is, in the New Testament context, is Israel the church? That's the debate question. And I'll be taking the affirmative and Chris will be taking the negative. And so that's what we're going to do. And that's going to be in about two hours, about two and a half hours from now. And that's going to be at the Trinity Theological Seminary radio. Trinity radio, I guess, is online.

But if you go to our Web site, you should find information about how you could log on to that if you want to hear it. It starts an hour after this program ends. I said it's three and a half, two and a half hours. It's actually one and a half hours from now. It's no wait, it's a five. I keep I've been thinking all week that it was at four and then I just found out today that it's at five. So it's about five o'clock. You can go to the Facebook page to Steve Gregg, the Narrow Path Facebook page and find out how to log on to that debate if you're interested. All right. That's going to be at five o'clock Pacific time.

And so be there or be square. You know, I guess that's a little old to say that. Let's talk about Nick from Atlanta or at least talk to Nick from Atlanta. Hi, Nick.

Welcome. Yeah, I have a question about why does the Bible have so many things in it that's not true to life? You know, like giants, people living to be nine hundred, you know, whales, swallowing people, you know, dead people coming alive. You know, a man having strength in his hair, in his hair. You know, this stuff just don't seem like real life.

I was just wondering. Well, there's there's two two aspects to that. One is that there's such a thing as miracles, but another is that things have been different in the past than they are now. In some respects, we know that because we can find fossils of creatures, for example, that don't live anymore.

So we know that things that were true thousands of years ago or a long time ago might not be true now. So we might not see giants anymore. And the Bible doesn't talk as if giants are always around. It talks about it says there were giants in the earth in those days.

So it obviously is talking about something that's not necessarily, you know, a very common thing throughout history. On the other hand, what they call giants might not be what we would think of as giants. I mean, Goliath is said to have been almost 10 feet tall. There's very few people that size today, but there have been some few. There have been some people with glandular irregular irregularities. They've got pretty tall like that. And there's also just people. There's people who are strangely tall.

It's just in their genetics, I guess. I'm six foot four. And I have a friend who towers over me.

He's like at least a foot taller than me. Now, people living to be 900 years. Same thing. We don't have people living that long now. But there are theories about what might have contributed to that longevity in ancient times, especially before the flood.

We don't know if those theories are true, but we can say this. The Bible doesn't indicate that people in modern times live 900 years. It's interesting if the Bible is trying to write fairy tales and pretending that people naturally live about 900 years long.

Well, then that'd be one thing. But it's interesting that before the flood, we find people living 900 years. And after the flood, immediately afterwards, the lifespan is cut in half and it trails down till we get to Abraham, who is old at 100 years old. He lives to be 175, which is still older than we live. But after Noah's flood, the lifespan of the average person has gone way down. And by the time of Solomon, Psalm 90, I think it is, or I think Psalm 90, it says that the lifespan of man is normally three score years and 10, which is 70 years. So the Bible recognizes... 900 years. That's a long time, 900 years. Yes, it is.

Yes, it is. You know, we have people today who live to be 110, not very many, but we have some. And that would seem extremely long compared to a few centuries ago when the average person died at 45. I mean, let's face it, we are accustomed to a certain set of circumstances, but we can't assume that the circumstances that are normal for us have always been normal. So what I'm saying is some of those things you mentioned may simply be the result of different conditions at different times. And there's no reason to believe that they can't be true. And since we're told they are, by a reliable witness, I do believe they are true.

But, you know, whales swallowing people and vomiting them out, people rising from the dead, things like that, you're right, donkeys talking. Those things don't really happen unless there's a miracle. But the Bible teaches that there are miracles. Miracles are not what you see every day. In fact, they didn't see them every day, even in biblical times.

Miracles were pretty rare. You know, the Old Testament covers 4,000 years of history. And there's just, like all the miracles in the Old Testament, or at least almost all of them, probably 99% of them, are clustered in a few short periods of time. Like in the time of Moses and Joshua.

That's the time of the Exodus. There were some miracles, quite a few, in the days of Elijah. How come we don't see miracles today? Well, you know, we haven't seen them in, you know, there's no recorded history. There's no recorded history of any kind of miracle. Oh, sure.

Oh, no, no, no. No, ancient history has a lot of recorded things that were supernatural. Some of them may have been mythological, but some, well, I mean, the Bible records a lot of them.

You mentioned some of them yourself. That's history. And there's other histories. I mean, outside of the Bible.

Outside of the Bible. Okay, well, most cultures have in their histories, even Thucydides and Herodotus, who are respected Greek historians who wrote 400 years B.C., they have things happen in them that we could call the miracles. I mean, there are many things that happen very much out of the ordinary, but they're not all miracles, certainly. I'm not going to claim everything that happens out of the ordinary is a miracle. But when a miracle happens, it is out of the ordinary.

And that answers your question why we don't see them very often. They're not ordinary. They're not ordinary events. They are special events.

I was just telling you. Could they be myths? Well, there are such things as myths. But when our historical document tells us that they're true and the story is reliable, then I don't take those myths. I take them as history. And why not?

Why shouldn't I if they were there? I mean, for example, the resurrection of Christ. That's a miracle. And that was witnessed by over 500 people. And four of them wrote, you know, histories about it. And then, of course, even secular historians who don't believe in the resurrection sometimes mention like like Josephus. He was not a Christian. He didn't believe in the resurrection, but he mentions that.

And he lived at the same time as the apostles that the resurrection of Jesus was reported. He didn't believe it was true, but he but he wasn't around when it happened. But I mean, we what is what reason would we have for doubting a miracle? Because we don't see that we don't see that in our lives, but I didn't hear.

Yeah, that's right. We only see natural things unless something supernatural happens. As I said, that's very extraordinary. So, I mean, I don't expect necessarily to see a miracle. Even if the Bible is 100 percent true about every miracle it records, that it doesn't tell me I'll be seeing miracles. I was telling you a moment ago, but you interrupted me before I finished that there were three periods of time in the Old Testament over a period of 4000 years. One generation saw a lot of miracles when God delivered Israel from out of Egypt.

The generation that knew of Elijah and Elisha the Prophet, they saw a lot of miracles from them. And then that's just hearsay. Well, no, it's in the history. It's in the writings, the historical writings. And then there's the miracles Jesus did and the apostles.

So there's three different times. So, by the way, there are lots of people who do report miracles today. We live in a day when miracles are considered like yourself. People like yourself just figured miracles don't happen. And therefore, you know, respectable historians often don't want to, they don't see a reason to record reports of miracles because they don't believe them.

They've already decided that such things don't happen. But there's people in every country who report miracles. And so we can either say, well, the reports are all exaggerated. They're all lies. Or we could say maybe there are miracles happening around, but we don't hear about them because the people who report things don't believe in them. But it's nothing ever been recorded, you know, like in a book. What do you mean?

A history book. OK, let me tell you this. Like a miracle. OK. No, there are. Like on the news, like why we don't see it on the news, you know, like a miracle.

OK, first of all, I don't know if you're listening very carefully. I told you they don't happen very often, even in the Bible. And therefore, there's no reason for me to expect them to happen very often now.

Why should I expect to see one? Most of the people who lived in biblical times never lived at a time when a miracle was done. And most never saw a miracle because it's rare. It's unusual. There are special occasions.

And so, you know, there's not any reason why I should particularly expect it. But I do know of modern cases of people who have been healed supernaturally. I know of people who have had demons cast out of them supernaturally. I read reports about these all the time. Sometimes they're in the news. Sometimes they're just in books by people's biographies who witnessed them or experienced them.

Now, see, a person who's decided already, like maybe yourself, that miracles just aren't realistic. They don't happen. Well, then you're just going to say, well, all those reports are just undocumented.

No, they're not. They're documented by the people you're reading. They're not documented by everybody. But what there's very few events in history that are recorded by everybody. I mean, I guess everybody knows about the assassination of John F. Kennedy. And I'm pretty sure everyone knows about the election of President Trump. I mean, some things get a lot of coverage. But the personal things in my life that I, you know, prayers that are answered and things like that, they don't get covered by anyone else. I'm the only person who knows about them unless I tell someone. And a person who doesn't believe that prayers can be answered isn't going to believe me if I tell them anyway.

So this is the answer to your question. You're not going to find people reporting miracles who don't believe in them. But that doesn't mean that the people who do believe in them and who report them are less honest than the people who don't believe in them and refuse to report them. As a matter of fact, people who believe in miracles tend to be fairly religious people. And people who don't believe there's miracles often are very secular people, which means religious people have a moral compass. Secular people might or might not. The point I'm making is there's nothing intrinsically more credible about the person who denies that miracles occur than the person who believes they've seen a miracle or who believes miracles occur. That's simply a matter of worldview. If you have a worldview that says miracles don't occur, well, then you're never going to recognize one even if one does.

C.S. Lewis was a Christian writer who made an interesting observation. He said, he said, I've only met one woman. I've only met one person, he said, who said they had ever seen a ghost. And he says the interesting thing was this woman who said she'd seen a ghost didn't believe in the immortality of the soul either before or after she saw it. In other words, she didn't believe in ghosts before she saw it. And after she saw it, she didn't believe in them either. And he says that only ghosts show one thing. Seeing is not believing. And what he's saying is if you believe because your philosophy that you've adopted tells you there are no supernatural things, then even if you see one, you're not going to believe it was supernatural.

You make up some excuse. You know, there is a time, the Bible says in John Chapter 12, when God spoke audibly from heaven and spoke to Jesus. But the people around him heard it. And some of them said it thundered. Others said an angel has spoken to him. Now, see, there's two different ways of looking at it.

They all heard it. But some people want to give it a natural interpretation. Others gave it a supernatural interpretation. Now, the Bible tells us it was actually a supernatural event. But even when people witness a supernatural event, they often will give it a natural explanation. So even if a miracle occurred before their eyes, they wouldn't recognize it because they've already decided that that's a category that doesn't exist. So, I mean, that explains, I think, for you why you don't hear more about miracles.

If you're in the circles where people actually are open to miracles, you're more likely to hear about some of the ones that have occurred. Mm-hmm. Well, I disagree with you. I know. I know.

But no one says you have to agree with me. You haven't provided any evidence just as hearsay. Well, wait, wait. Let me ask you this. Can you give me a shred of evidence that miracles don't occur?

We haven't seen any. Okay, it's a guy named- Wait, wait, wait, wait. Wait, wait, wait, wait. He's offering a million dollars to anybody who can show him something supernatural.

Have you ever heard of him? No, but you know what the problem is? Here's the problem. We can't make miracles occur. It's in the nature of a miracle. It's not subject to the laws of nature. If I want to prove that water boils at 212 degrees Fahrenheit at sea level, and I can prove that. I can prove it to myself. If you doubt it, I can show it to you too.

You know why? Because there's natural laws, and I'm telling you how the natural laws function. A miracle by definition is when the natural laws are violated by a supernatural power. Now, you can't make that happen unless you're a supernatural being.

God could make that, but I can't. If God healed me of cystic fibrosis when I was two years old, I can't prove that to you. And I can't make him do it again.

That's the point. To prove it to someone else means you've got to, on command, do it again. But you can't do it again. You don't do these things.

God does these things. So, you know, I think that you don't really understand the categories that you're dealing with. But you have not given me any evidence that miracles do not occur. You've only given me hearsay. You're flipping the script on me. I'm asking you for evidence. I know. And you're asking me to prove that it doesn't.

Right. But let's flip the script because we both are making some assertions, right? I'm asserting that I believe miracles occur. You're saying they don't occur. So I'm telling you, I at least know of historical records of them. Do you have anything even comparable to that to prove that they don't occur? But the historical reference you have may not be true. Well, all historical references about everything are hearsay. The question is the credibility of the one speaking. Let's get off that for a moment.

Let's get to your Sado story. What historical references do you have for proving that miracles don't occur? Because none has been recorded. Okay, let's say they've been keeping records.

Stop saying none have been recorded because I told you a lot of them have been recorded. But see, let me put it this way. No, I'm talking about like a recent memory. No, wait.

Hey, Nick. Wait, wait, wait. Many modern miracles have been recorded. Okay. You just wouldn't accept them. But let me ask you this.

Like what? Well, I mean, Pastor Blumhardt in Germany in the late 1800s had a dramatic case of casting several demons out of a girl that became internationally well-known because it went over a long period of time and many people witnessed it over a period of time. He also healed many people by prayer. Now, people from all over Europe came to him. He didn't present himself as a healer.

He was just a pastor of a small church in Germany and people asked him to pray and he did and they got healed. Now, do we have record of it? Yeah, we do. In his memoirs. But you'd say, oh, that's just hearsay. True.

But so what? Almost all history is hearsay. How many historians have written what they saw with their own eyes and nothing more?

But the point I'm making to you is this. You can either say everybody who's ever recorded seeing a miracle is a liar, which you don't know to be true, or you can say, well, there may be people who do see miracles that I haven't seen. Isn't that possible? No, I don't think miracles are possible because it goes against the natural laws, you know. Like you can't walk on water. You can't walk on water because of gravity. I can't.

I can't. But Jesus did. So, I mean, but there's a God. See, you don't believe there's a God, correct?

No, I didn't say that. Well, then why wouldn't you, why would you believe that miracles cannot happen if there's a God? Why did he stop doing miracles? Did he get tired of doing miracles? Okay, you're getting all over the place.

Let's try to have a sensible conversation. I said, I don't think he has stopped doing miracles. There are miracles, but you don't recognize it. I'm not trying to prove it to you. I'm trying to get you to examine the basis for your belief. You believe that miracles do not occur. Now, you want to prove an absolute negative.

Let me tell you something. For many centuries, Europeans believed that swans only were white, that there were only white swans because there weren't any in Europe that weren't. After they discovered Australia, they found out there were black swans. Now, frankly, all the natural history and science books in England said that swans were always white because no one had ever seen a black one.

Then they went somewhere where people had seen black ones and they had to change it because they were making a universal negative on their own limited experience. Now, you might say, I've never seen a miracle. My friends don't see miracles. Most people don't see miracles, so there are none.

Well, wait a minute. History books don't report any. You're wrong about that. The Bible is a history book. It's full of history. I don't mean about outside of the Bible. Like when you go to school, they don't teach you about miracles. Well, no, they don't teach the Bible at school.

But listen, you're not thinking right. You're talking about the Bible as if it's not a history book. How many history books have to record something before you can say maybe it happened? Well, you know, a lot of people think the Bible is not true. Well, that's their problem. They haven't studied it.

I have for 50 years. Because it's thousands of religions, so why is that one true? It's thousands of different religions.

Listen, if you get a thousand kids in a class who haven't learned any mathematics and you ask them the square root of nine, they don't even know what the question means, you're going to get a thousand different answers. That doesn't mean there's no right answer. There's a right answer, and if there's such a thing as truth, then there's a million falsehoods. Anything that's not the truth is something else. Now, if there is a God, and if He is a certain way, and if He has manifested Himself, and if He's told us things, and if that is true, then there's going to be a thousand different opinions that are untrue about God. Now, however many religions there are, that's not the question. The question is, do we have the truth about God?

And I say we do. And I say that because... But which one is true? Jesus is true.

Jesus is true. But Moses thinks that theirs is true. Well, I don't care what they think about it. I've studied their religion. I've studied mine. I've studied other religions. They don't have any basis for it like we do.

We have a historical basis. Listen, you're really raising a lot of red herrings here that don't really make your point. You must be thinking that there's not a God who can interrupt the laws of nature. And if you have that as your starting point, then you won't believe in miracles. And I won't be able to prove you right or wrong, because every miracle I could name, you'd say, well, that's you saying that, or that's just them saying that. No religion has ever been proven true. If it was, everybody would have the same religion.

Not true. So there's doubts about every religion. People doubt Christianity.

People doubt mother. All religions have doubters. How would you like to have a religion prove itself? Christianity is the story about God coming to earth as a man, dying and rising from the dead, and ascending to heaven to rule over his kingdom.

That's what Christianity is. Now, that Jesus came to earth, that's fairly well provable, because even the secular historians all believe that, that he did miracles. Frankly, almost all secular historians doubt. They didn't always, but now secular historians have looked at the records and say, yeah, he was probably a healer. They don't necessarily believe he was God. But most of the things that the Bible says about Jesus can be demonstrated in the same way other historical stories are. The resurrection of Jesus is very well witnessed.

Many people witnessed it. So, I mean, I'm not going to go in circles with you, because, I mean, anything I say, you can just say, well, that's you saying it. And you're right.

It is. It's just me saying it until you research it yourself. If you research it yourself, then you'll be the one saying it. I did research.

I don't think you have. And that's my position. I've got a lot of people waiting to talk to me, though. I do appreciate your call. And I wouldn't mind talking to you again, but I don't want to talk in circles when I've got so many people waiting. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for joining us. All right. We've got a lot of people waiting and only a few minutes left, unfortunately.

We're not going to get to them all. This is Jane from Anaheim, California. Jane, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Hi.

Can you hear me? Yes. Go ahead. Excellent. Excellent. Okay. Thank you for taking my call. Okay. A few calls back, you spoke with a gentleman who had questions on the Festival of Trumpets. And in the course of your response, you mentioned, I used to believe it, but then went on to say that Revelation is referring to the fall of Jerusalem, the destruction of Jerusalem. Ah.

Can you elaborate on that? When did you change? Well, I changed gradually, but I wrote a 600-page book called Revelation for Christian Views, which you can get anywhere that they sell books. Yeah, but what year? What year? When? About? What year? What?

Did I change my mind? Yeah. My mind underwent change on this matter for several years.

I would say it was probably, you know, by the time I was convinced that Revelation was about 788, it was probably about 1982, I'm thinking, or no, no, probably 83. Why? Why do you want to know that? It's very important. Okay.

Why is that important? Well, because, well, anyway, first of all, I want to go, you, when did you believe that Revelation, so you say that in 1983 is whenever you were convinced that the book of Revelation. Yeah, you've wasted a lot of our time. I'm sorry.

We can't really get any further because we're out of time. I wish you had gotten to your question more directly. Why don't you call me tomorrow and we can talk about this. You're listening to The Narrow Path Radio Broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg, and we are live Monday through Friday at this same time. You can call in every single day that we're on.

We've been doing it for 23 years. We are listener supported. That's how we pay for the time on the radio. We don't have any advertisements. We don't sell anything. We don't have any sponsors. We just let you know. We pay the bills out of donations if you'd like to help us stay on the air. You can write to us at The Narrow Path, P.O. Box 1730, Temecula, California 92593, or go to our website, thenarrowpath.com. By the way, there's an announcement there at the website about a debate I'm doing in one hour from now online, if you're interested, thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for joining us.