The Narrow Path 9/18

Music 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 your phone calls. If you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith or you have a different viewpoint from the host you'd like to discuss, feel free to give me a call. Right now our lines are full but I'm going to give the number out anyway because if you call in a few minutes some lines will open up.

I know that always happens. The number is 844-484-5737. That number again is 844-484-5737. Our first caller today is Ben calling from Los Angeles.

Ben, welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Hey Steve. Thanks for taking my call. Great show.

You're Matthew 713 people. That's perfection. That's great, isn't it? Yeah.

This is such a great resource. These are great volunteers. Yeah.

Thank them for me. By the way, is it possible to talk a little louder? You're not quite as loud as I'd like to hear you. Oh, can you hear me? Can you hear me clearly? Yeah, I guess I can.

Yeah, go ahead. Alright. I had a question about Daniel 12-11.

Okay. Where it says, and from the time that the daily sacrifice is taken away and the abomination of desolation is set up, there shall be 1290 days lest is he who waits and comes to the one thousand and fifty. What does that mean? Well, I don't know.

I don't know what it means. If you listen to my verse by verse lectures on Daniel, you'll find that when I did those lectures, which is some years ago, I admit it, I don't know exactly what the 1290 days are or what the 1335 days are, which are, you know, there's a gap of 45 days there between the two. But I don't think we have any information in Daniel or elsewhere that would identify what those time periods are.

It does say, beginning with the abomination of desolation when it's set up. Okay, that's when the 1290 days begins. But it doesn't say what that time frame reaches to. It just says from the time that the daily sacrifice is taken away and the abomination of desolation is set up, there shall be 1290 days. Well, till what?

We're not given any information about till what? And if someone says, well, obviously to the end of the world, it must be only like 1290 days of the world after that. But no, because he talks in the next verse about the 1335 days, which is 45 days longer than the first number. But he just says, blessed are those who endure till that period of time is over.

So we have absolutely no information given in the passage to help us about this. Now, it's a very common view that the 1290 days begins measuring in the middle of the tribulation period. This is what the dispensational view holds, that in the middle of the tribulation period, Antichrist will set up his image in a temple in Jerusalem. And then from then on, it's 1290 days until, I guess, until Jesus comes back to judge the world. And then the 1335 days, they say, is another 45 days is how long it takes him to actually judge the world, meaning how long it takes him to open the books and to judge everyone according to their works.

Now, I simply cannot accept this. For one thing, there's not a line in scripture to support any part of it. There's certainly nothing in the Bible that says it would take 45 days for God to judge every person. If he's actually going to, as Jesus said, if every idle word they speak, they're going to give account of it in the day of judgment.

Well, then, God's going to have to listen to every word on record that everyone made of billions of people. Either he can do that instantaneously because he's not bound by time, or else he is bound by time, and it would take a lot longer than 45 days. On the other hand, if he's not bound by time, if timelessness is in the picture, then it wouldn't take 45 days.

There's just no reasoning that would make it sensible that it would take God 45 days to judge billions of people every thought and word and deed they committed. So I reject that interpretation. And I also reject it because I don't think that Daniel is talking about the end of the world. I think he's talking about the end of Jerusalem.

But it's difficult to know what these particular days, where they begin or where they end. Because for one thing, the whole series of 1,290 days begins with, he says, the abomination of desolation. But there are two of those in Daniel. In Daniel 9, 27, the first abomination of desolation is after the Messiah comes, but before Jerusalem is destroyed. It's the destruction of Jerusalem.

And so it's going to be in 70 AD or so. Now, on the other hand, the other abomination of desolation found in chapter 11 is held by almost all scholars, including myself, I mean, I agree with them, to be about Antiochus Epiphanes setting up an image to be worshiped in the Jewish temple, which happened 167 or 168 BC, which is before Jesus' time. So there's two different abomination of desolation spoken of in Daniel. One happened 168 years before Christ. The other happened 40 years after Jesus ascended. So which one of those are we beginning with?

Which one of those are we going to start measuring from? I don't know. Go ahead.

Because there's something, because I'm, of course, I'm the same as you. Honestly, that's the first, you know, the revelation. I remember when I was in church, that was pretty much the book I would read, because, you know, it's interesting, the end of the time.

And I always wanted to search it out and try to figure it out. And I found, oh, remember that the Jesus first coming were based around the feet, right? Hello?

Yes, yeah. Oh, you know how we've learned that the Jewish, Jesus first coming were literally fulfilled, you know, Passover, unleavened bread, and Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came, because I think this is the correct version of what Daniel 12-11 is. It would be, I think there is going to be a peace treaty.

You know how you heard like in the news about the peace treaties in the Middle East, and it's like national news and such. So you believe, but what would this, where would that fit in these verses here? It would be Daniel 9-27, because I know you were a perfectionist. You studied, you used to teach this, because I like to, you know, see what you say in others also. And I think that's the correct frame, because of Daniel 12-11, this is why, if you start counting to like say, for example, tomorrow, the Feast of Trumpets, and you just count like all the way through 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and so on.

Daniel 12-11, when it says, blessed in those who comes to the day 1,335, it falls literally on the day of Pentecost, like exactly. So... And then, I'm trying to get like, I'll give my references to this puzzle piece. I'm learning from them. So, for example, it's not all the time. Okay, but I'm not seeing how that relates to this. Where's the abomination of desolation in your explanation? Oh, that would be, I'm giving you like, if this was a year, because it's not all the time.

It only falls like, there's a man named Dr. Gavin Finley, if you go on YouTube, you can see, like he... Okay, okay, but, okay, I'm not getting any clarity from you about this. I'm trying to understand what you're saying. So, the abomination of desolation is what? Oh, well, I think it is 2 Thessalonians 2. Like, what I believe is that Jesus was referring to a literal man.

You know how he used to teach it before that there's gonna be the temple, and then some crazy guy is gonna say he's God and everything else. So, that's what I think that's a correct point of view, but I wouldn't just be making this up, because I'm telling you, it fits Daniel 12-11. Okay, well, I don't see the fit, but I appreciate you sharing your thoughts, and certainly everyone's willing to have their own thoughts about this.

Those would not be my thoughts. Okay, let's talk to Walter from Turner, Oregon. Hi, Walter, good to hear from you again. Hi, Steve.

This is, well, you already said, Walt. When I went over to Africa a number of years ago, we had a couple of experiences, more than one, of course, that I consider miraculous, and I'd like to relate very quickly, if I can. All right, now, you were a missionary in Africa for many years, right?

That is correct. And was that in Kenya? Where were you? I forgot where you were.

Well, in Zambia first for three years, and then in Kenya for another eight and a half years. I see. Go ahead.

Well, yes, let's hear your testimony. Among the Maasai, after language training and learning the culture, I started my ministry in a place called Old Gulu-Lui, which is right on the border of Kenya and Tanzania, and I was not welcomed. I was not received.

I felt very discouraged. I left there and went to another location where they welcomed me and said, God has sent you. So we ministered there for a number of months and years on that side of the highway, about 20 kilometers, and then on the other side, a place called Meto also. After a while, we had quite a few people who were believers in Jesus, and I tried to get them to meet together at a central location so they could get acquainted with each other, fellow Christians, and we'd have a fellowship meeting for three days.

Well, it was a drought when that time came, and they really weren't sure they should come, but finally they agreed to. We met in a little church building on the highway in a place called Minato Taek, and for three days, I had a steer sacrificed, and we ate meat together and drank their milk out of their gourds. On the third day, when we packed up to go home, it started pouring down rain there, and in Old Gulu-Lui, where I had started my ministry and they refused, there was no rain at all, and the people there said, wow, their God is very powerful.

That was one condition, that situation that I considered miraculous, a number of years later when we were stationed in another location way up in the mountains. It took seven hours to get to Nairobi, and we had arranged to go in for a little rest in Nairobi, and after our travels, seven hours to Nairobi, one of my headlights went out, burned out, and we were stopped at a police stop before we got to our home where we were going to stay, Catholic rest home, and the police said we had to park in a parking lot right close by, and we drove up in there, and the policeman who was there said, go down or turn around and come back. So I went down to the end, came back, and he looks very startled. He said, turn your switch on, click on your dimmer switch, and obviously both were burning bright, the gyms and the brights, so he said, go on down.

You may go. I went down to the rest home for us, and I checked the headlights, and it was burnt out, and I went to the garage the next day, and the guy, I said, what is it, is it burnt out or what? He said, yeah. I said, what is it possible for that to come back on by some means, touching a wire?

He said, oh, no, no, it's burnt out, it couldn't do that. Well, the Lord helped us. We were tired, and the Lord just stepped in and did that miracle for us. I believe it was God's hand, and of course there were other miracles, but I thought I'd mention those too. Thank you, Walta, I appreciate that. Yes, I have a lot of stories like that too about cars, because I don't know anything about cars. I've seen cars break down in strange places and strange times, and God has really come through for me every time.

That's great. Also, your rain story reminded me of a story of when I was in Santa Cruz, I forget what year it was. I think it was maybe, it might have been 81 or 82, there was a couple of weeks where it didn't stop raining in Santa Cruz, California, when I lived there. The river rose, it took out a bridge, took out a bunch of power. It was really an incessant flooding. I think it was the same year as what they called the Love Creek mudslides.

I think it was then that that happened, but I and another Christian brother and some other musicians were scheduled to go down and play in a prison type facility. It was not a high security one, but it was not maximum security, but it was down in Watsonville. We drove down there in the rain, and we had all our electrical amplifiers and things like that in a pickup truck with a tarp over them. I was sure hoping to unload these close to the building so they don't get soaked and wet because they'll get ruined. We got there, and there was in fact no way to get near the building with the truck.

There's a lawn all around it that was, I don't know, it could have been probably about 30 yards to maybe 50 yards. It was pretty far from the building. So I went up to one of the guards who was not at all happy to see us there.

He was very sarcastic and smirking. I said, is there a better place, because the rain was pouring down this whole time. I said, is there a better place for us to bring the truck to unload these amplifiers? He said, nope, you can't get close to the building then.

I said, well, but the rain will destroy our equipment. He said, well, what are you going to do then? I said, well, I guess we'll just have to pray. So he kind of smirked, and I went back to the truck to the others there, and we prayed. And we prayed for the rain to stop. It hadn't stopped for two weeks steadily.

And it did stop. In fact, as soon as we were finished praying, we looked up, the rain had stopped, and we uncovered the equipment. We took it in. The band played. We ministered the gospel there.

We carried the equipment back out to the truck, covered with the tarp, and started driving home, and the rain started again and went on for several days. So that's a really amazing experience. But I mean, that's a very dramatic case, I remember. There have been many, much less so. I mean, people like you and Christians who trust God, we see the intervention of God. And I know you're responding to a caller who was calling yesterday and the day before who said miracles don't happen anymore. But he's just, you know, he must not be in the right place at the right time. But I mean, when you're walking with God, God intervenes. In that Santa Cruz area you're talking about, I know very well.

I was raised in a school in Pacific Grove across the bay. Oh, okay. Well, Walter, I need to give another chance to another caller, but I sure appreciate your calling today. Thank you, Steve. God bless you, brother. Bye. Okay. Dwight from Denver, Colorado.

Welcome to The Narrow Path. Yes, Steve. I hear a man on Christian radio, I think he's associated with the Ed Cole ministry. He always makes the statement that manhood and Christ-likeness are synonymous. And that seems a little bit of a misunderstanding to me of what Christ-likeness is. What do you think? Well, I think it's an overstatement.

I think I know where he's coming from. For one thing, when God created man, he made man in his own image. So there's a sense in which we could say Adam until he sinned was very Christ-like. And he was the first man, the way God designed man to be.

So someone might say that. Likewise, I mean, some people say that kind of thing in order to disabuse people of the stereotype of Christ as a kind of a limp-wristed, wimpy kind of a guy. Whereas, I mean, there's been a lot of preachers in my lifetime who've tried to correct that by pointing out, well, he was a carpenter, he was probably muscular, he walked everywhere, he was probably very athletically built. And after he'd been beaten and hadn't slept all night, he was able to carry his cross most part of the way. I mean, they're trying to find ways of saying he was a manly man. And I'm sure he was a manly man, although our stereotypes of a macho man may not describe him. But I don't know the show you're talking about.

I don't know the person. I don't know the ministry. But my guess is they're trying to get across the point that Jesus was not a wimp and becoming like Jesus is a worthy goal for a man. And any man who, you know, the more like Jesus you get, the more of an ideal man you will be. I think that would be something that would be a valid point to make. But to say manliness and Christ-likeness are synonymous, that's a little too ambiguous, I think.

And I think it overstates the point. Yeah, I do too. Okay, thank you. Okay, Dwight. Thanks for your call. God bless you. All right.

Let's see here. We got next we have Paul from Buena Vista, Colorado. Paul, welcome to the Narrow Path. Good to hear from you again.

Hi, Steve. Yeah, it's great to hear your program. I was listening yesterday with your first follower when you went into that discourse and the Christian life and the Beatitudes and the whole, that whole Matthew section of scripture that I just read that through. And I'm trying to correlate that with Paul's preaching of the gospel and, and come up with a parallel there for how Jesus taught. It just seems like, you know, I know, obviously, it's not legalistic, it's Christ's own teaching. It's what do you expect Christians to do? And I heard your, your response to him yesterday, I thought it was right on, it was like, yeah, he does expect us to, to get this right as best as possible.

It's, you know, but I'm also involved in a recovery group, Celebrate Recovery, and working through the steps and we work through the, the Beatitudes, and we read them every week. And so I guess my question would be, where is that line? Where is there a line between what Christ taught and what Paul taught and the, the other epistles? You know, I mean, even first John, there's some things that would lead you to say, you know, well, obviously the just shall live by faith is the theme of the whole New Testament to my understanding.

I mean, right. Well, the just, the just lives by faith, but what is faith? Paul himself, and he's the one that, Paul is the one who is sometimes accused of teaching something different than what Jesus taught, which is by no means, by no means true.

He did not. But in Galatians chapter five and verse six, Paul said, in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision account for anything, but a faith working through love. Now what counts with God, Paul said, is faith. Paul always says that we live by faith. We're justified by faith. But what is, what is faith? He says, what, what it is, is it's a faith that works through love, which is exactly, for example, what James said, James said, faith without works is dead. Paul obviously would agree with that.

If what God's looking for is a faith that works, well, then if you don't have works, if your faith doesn't produce works, then you don't have a faith that works and you've got faith without works. Jesus himself said, why do you call me Lord, Lord, and you don't do the things that I say. So he's basically saying, you might say I'm Lord, but you apparently don't believe it if you don't obey me, because that's what you would do if you believed I'm the Lord. I believe the Beatitudes, I think all of them, are repeated in one form or another in Paul's writings.

I mean, not in the same words, but the same teachings. Paul doesn't have to quote in order to be teaching the same thing Jesus taught. For example, in the 12th chapter of Romans, Paul said, repay no one evil for evil, okay? Like Jesus turned the other cheek in Romans 12, 17, repay no one evil for evil, have regard for good things in the sight of all men, if it is possible, if at peace, as much as depends on you, with all people, do not avenge yourselves.

He said, do good to your enemies. Those are the things Jesus said too. In Ephesians chapter 4, Paul says in verse 31 and following, let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and evil speaking be put away from you with all malice and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God in Christ forgave you. So I mean, this is the kind of character Paul teaches us to have, which is also what Jesus teaches in the Beatitudes. In Philippians chapter 4, or let's make that chapter 2, Philippians 2, 1 says, therefore if there's any consolation in Christ, any comfort of love, any fellowship of the Spirit, any affection and mercy, fulfill my joy by being like-minded, he says, let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind. That's being poor in spirit, as in the Beatitudes. Let each one esteem others better than himself.

Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others. And when Jesus would ask what the great commandment is, of course he said, well, love God with all your heart and soul, mind and strength, but he said, but also love your neighbor as you love yourself. And Paul teaches that very same thing in Romans chapter 13, verses 9 through 10, and also Galatians 5.

So Paul is always teaching the same ethic Jesus taught. In fact, in 1 Timothy 6, Paul says this in verse 3, 1 Timothy 6, 3, if anyone teaches otherwise and does not consent to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the teaching which is according to godliness, that person is proud knowing nothing, but is obsessed with disputes and so forth. So he says, if anyone teaches contrary to what Jesus taught, that person doesn't know what they're talking about. So Paul obviously didn't teach contrary to what Jesus taught, he'd be condemning himself with that statement if he did. In Paul's understanding, he was simply representing what Jesus taught. He's not quoting him, there's no need to, he's teaching the same truth.

By the way, he might have quoted Jesus when he was preaching publicly, and we don't know if he did or not, he wouldn't have to. The principles of the Beatitudes are the principles of living in the kingdom of God. And Paul taught that we're living in the kingdom of God, in Romans 14, 17 he said the kingdom of God is righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

That's certainly the Christian life, righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. So I don't see any line between Jesus teaching and Paul, certainly Jesus was teaching to different kinds of people, Jesus was talking to Jews in Palestine, and some of his teachings adjusted to that. For example, he says when you bring your gift to the altar, and you remember your brother has something against you in Matthew 5, leave your gift there and go make peace with your brother, then come back and offer your gift. Obviously talking to Jews who go to the temple in Palestine, which his disciples were Jews at that time, and were temple worshipers, but Paul didn't write any letters to the Jews in Palestine, so he writes to Gentiles, and he's writing about different issues. He's writing about the controversy of circumcision. There was no controversy about circumcision in Israel when Jesus taught. So Paul does say different things and talk about different things, but everywhere that his teaching would overlap with a topic that Jesus taught on, Paul and Jesus are on exactly the same page.

So I really don't think there's any difference. I need to take a break, but I hope that helps you Paul, and I thank you for calling. You're listening to the Narrow Path radio broadcast, we do have another half hour ahead so don't go away. At the bottom of the hour I like to remind people that we are listener supported. There's no salaries here, neither I nor anyone else who works with this ministry receives any money for it. It's a volunteer effort, and we've got lots of people who do their own part in volunteering.

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Welcome back to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg, and we're live for another half hour taking your calls. The lines are full, but I'll give you the phone number, and if you call later in the half hour, you might catch one of them open. The number to call is 844-484-5737.

That's 844-484-5737. I want to say for the benefit of that last caller, Paul from Colorado, he was talking about the teaching of Jesus and the teaching of Paul, and a lot of people do seem to think there's some difference between the way Paul preached and Jesus did. The differences are insignificant.

The content of the teaching is the same for both. Like I said, Jesus addressed different issues among the Pharisees than Paul was addressing among the Gentiles, and therefore, you're going to find different subjects addressed by Paul in some cases. In fact, Paul even says that he does, because in 1 Corinthians 7, when he's talking about divorce, he first quotes what Jesus said about divorce, saying that people of the same faith should not divorce, but then he says, but to the rest, meaning to Christians who are not married to other Christians, but who are married to non-Christians, he says, I will say what the Lord did not say. Jesus never addressed anyone who was married to somebody of a different faith. All the people in his community were Jews, married to Jews, but Paul was among Gentiles where believers were sometimes found to be married to unbelievers, especially if both had been unbelievers before one of them got saved, and so he gives somewhat different instructions in that situation than Jesus did.

He's not against what Jesus said. He's addressing something which he said Jesus didn't address, which a lot of things Paul talked about Jesus didn't address, but they did teach the same doctrines and the same ethics and all of those things. There is a chart I made years ago which is posted online that compares the teaching of Jesus and Paul on every major subject. Every major subject Jesus taught about is listed there, and I show how Paul taught the same thing and where. If you're interested in that, of course everything's free in our ministry, but there's a wonderful website called matthew713.com. It's matthew713.com, and there it has posted a lot of my lecture notes and charts and things like that, and you'll find the chart with Paul and Jesus side by side of their teachings on I think about 14 or 15 different major subjects.

Anyway, that might be a good supplement to what we're able to talk about here on the Air Force for you, Paul, and others. Okay, Anthony from Rio Vista. Where is Rio Vista? Is that California?

Where are we? The delta. Oh, okay. Go ahead.

California is a delta. I actually spoke with you last week about Daniel. After I spoke, I went and listened to some of your lectures on Daniel online, and I felt one difference when I was listening to your lecture on Daniel 9.

I'm curious to get clarification on that. So in Daniel 9, 27, and he shall make a strong covenant with many for one week, and for half of the week he shall cause the sacrifice of offering to cease, causing the abomination of desolation. So you state in your lecture that he would refer to the Messiah, the Anointed One, correct?

Right. Well, when I read 26, it says, after the 62 weeks, an Anointed One, that would be Jesus, shall be cut off and shall have nothing. And the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. And then shall come with the flood, and to the end there shall be a war and desolation to decree. And he, so then there seems to be two people there, Anointed One and the prince who is to come. I would think that the prince who is to come is who he is referring to in the following verse, not the Anointed One.

What are your thoughts? Well, my thoughts are, well, let's just say my thoughts used to be the same as yours because that's what all my teachers taught me until I read the passage. I realized when I read the passage that the one, the prince who is to come is the Roman general, because he says the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary.

Well, that's what happened. The Romans came in 70 D, they destroyed the city, Jerusalem and the sanctuary, the temple. And this happened after the Messiah was killed, exactly as it says in the verse. The Messiah will be cut off.

That means killed. And the Romans will come and destroy the Jerusalem and the temple, which did happen also. Now therefore... Then we get back to the discussion we had last week about it doesn't fit the 10 toes, the 10 horns, you know.

I don't see any 10 toes or 10 horns in this passage. So the people who to come, I mean... It's not the people who are to come. It's the prince of the people who is to come. Now who did destroy Jerusalem? He'd be the leader of the Romans. The Romans destroyed the city and the sanctuary and their prince was Titus.

He was actually a literal prince because his father, Vespasian, was emperor. So what's this covenant that was made for one week? Well, Jesus, it says he will confirm a covenant. It doesn't say he'll make a covenant. It says he will confirm a covenant. Or sometimes they say make strong a covenant. But he's going to strengthen, strengthen, yeah, he's going to strengthen or confirm the covenant. What is the covenant? The covenant is the covenant that God made with Israel. And Jesus came and began to preach to Israel to call them back to faithfulness to the covenant.

And he did so for three and a half years, which is half the week. And then after that period of time, he was cut off and brought an end to the sacrificial system. He was, the sacrifices and offerings ceased to exist as far as God is concerned. In Hebrews it says they don't exist anymore. Did he cause the abomination of desolation?

No he didn't cause that. The Bible doesn't say he did that. It says then he shall confirm a covenant with many for one week, okay? Jesus comes and he's confirming the covenant of the fathers. He came to confirm the promises that God made and to fulfill them. And in the middle of the week, he shall bring an end to sacrifice and offering.

Okay? Well, he did with his death, brought an end to the sacrificial system. And the next thing it says, and on the wing of abominations shall be one who makes desolate. That's not the Messiah.

That's the Romans. They came and they made Jerusalem desolate. You know, Luke refers to this and so does Matthew and Mark, but Luke does so. Luke does in Matthew, or excuse me, in Luke 21 verses 20 and following, it says when he's talking to his disciples, Jesus says, when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation is near, okay? So it says here, there's going to be an abomination that brings about desolation or that desolation of the city is mentioned in verse 26 also. So it doesn't really say the Messiah will bring the abomination of desolation.

It says there will be an abomination that makes desolate. And there was, just like he predicted in verse 26. See what I believe is happening in verses 26 and 27, verse 26 has two parts and so does verse 27 and they are parallel to each other. The first part of verse 26 is parallel to the first part of verse 27. The second part of verse 26 is parallel to the second part of verse 27. So both of them speak of the death of the Messiah from different angles and both of them speak of the destruction of Jerusalem from different angles. So in verse 26, the Messiah is cut off, that's his death, then the Romans come and destroy the city and the sanctuary, okay? Then in verse 27, again about the Messiah, he shall confirm a covenant with many for one week. In the middle of the week, he shall bring an end to sacrifice and suffering.

That's his being cut off. Then the next part is about the destruction of Jerusalem. It seems to me that with Daniel chapter eight, it talks about, sorry, eight or seven or eight talks about, so I think it's eight, Antiochus Epiphanes as the little whore in coming up.

I would think that would be an example of what we're looking for when we're talking about abomination of desolation would be someone who does what he does. That was very different than what occurred in 70 AD. Well no, the Romans entered Jerusalem and they desecrated the temple.

They destroyed it. They didn't go and slaughter a pig on the altar. They didn't set up a... No, there's no prediction that anybody after Antiochus Epiphanes is ever going to slaughter any pigs on any altars. And there's no prediction that anyone else will ever go in and desecrate the temple after AD 70. Because actually after AD 70, there wasn't a temple anymore and isn't, and there's no prediction that it'll be rebuilt. So I guess- Well, I'm going to disagree with you on that.

Well, you're welcome to, certainly. And anybody's welcome to disagree with me, but I mean, I just say that I saw it your way too for many, many years. My teachers taught me that and I looked at it through that lens until I began to see how the New Testament writers and how Jesus himself spoke of the abomination of desolation applied it to 70 AD. It's very clear that they did so, because in Matthew 24, 15, I guess it is, Jesus says, then there'll be an abomination of desolation, and when that happens, you better flee from Judea. Mark 13 has the same prediction and Luke does too, but Luke paraphrases it. Instead of abomination of desolation, Luke says- That's not the end, the end of the era, end of time, what would happen at the end when he returns? No, no, that's not what I was talking about, because Jesus, no, no, because the disciples asked him.

No, no, that's not the end of the time, no. Look at how that begins. It begins both, okay, we've got parallel accounts in Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21. The same conversation, Jesus walks out of the temple in all three of those places, someone points out the stones of the temple in all three passages, and then Jesus predicts that not one stone will be left standing on another in all three passages.

So they're parallel events. And then in all three cases, it says that the disciples asked him on the Mount of Olives about his prediction. What prediction? Well, he predicted the destruction of the temple. And so in Mark and Luke, they ask him two questions. If you read it in Mark 13 and Luke 21, in Mark they say, when will these things be and what sign will there be that these things are about to take place? Now these things, Jesus hasn't mentioned any things except for the destruction of the temple. So he's predicted that not one stone- Well, in 2040, it goes a little different. It says- Track with me, track with me with you.

Stay with me, please. Jesus has not mentioned the end of the world anywhere. Now Matthew 24, three, the disciples say, and what will be the sign of your coming in the end of the age? Now that was not actually, that question is not represented in either Mark or Luke's gospel. But the disciples probably did say that in those very words, but the likelihood is great that they were using the Jewish idioms that were commonplace in the Jewish prophets of God coming in judgment upon Babylon or on Samaria or on Edom. And Jesus had predicted the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple.

So what's the time that you're going to come do this? When are you going to come and do this and bring the end of the age? Now the age, I believe, would be the temple age, the second temple era. So they're asking about the end of the temple because Jesus has predicted nothing else. He has made no reference to the end of the world anywhere. So he's predicted the temple will be destroyed and the disciples ask him, when will that be and what will the sign be that it's about to take place?

His answer has two parts, just like their question has two parts. The first part is, it will happen in this generation. That's the answer to the question, when will these things be? And it happened exactly 40 years later, and so it was in that generation. Then the other thing is, what sign will there be, they say, that this is about to take place? He says, well, when you see the abomination of desolation. Now Luke, when it comes to that point in Luke's parallel, he knows that his reader Theophilus, who's a Greek, he couldn't make any sense out of that Hebraic term, abomination of desolation.

So, he paraphrases it to make his reader understand it. Luke has Jesus saying, when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, know that its desolation is near. So there's an abomination that's going to bring its desolation. Luke says, that abomination is the Roman armies coming.

So I mean, you can just compare those side by side. It's the same sermon in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and you'll see that where Matthew and Mark represent Jesus, using the Hebraism about the abomination of desolation, Luke, writing to a Gentile who would not understand that, paraphrases it. Just go verse by verse through the parallels, and you'll see that he hears... You're making a huge assumption that it's the end of the temple age, that certainly the apostles asking that would have not thought that to be what they're talking about, end of the temple age.

Why not? He had described the destruction of the temple. Wouldn't that seem like the end of the temple age? Well, I think it's a huge leap to read that into it. Well, I don't think it's a very big leap at all, but I will say it's a huge leap to read the end of the world into it, when Jesus had said nothing about the end of the world.

He had only predicted the end of the temple. But hey, we've talked a long time. We've got a lot of people waiting. I appreciate your call. Thanks for joining us.

You can call again sometime, but we need to give a chance to other people too. Okay, let's talk to Brian from San Francisco, California. Hi, Brian. Welcome to The Narrow Path.

Hey, Steve. Happy Friday, my friend. Thank you.

Same to you. So, I have a broader question for you, and I know you're going to give me a great answer. I am a father of young kids, six and under, and I passionately want them to understand the Bible, to comprehend the lessons that are in it. I also have a heart for evangelizing, hoping that non-believers will follow Christ. But it can be challenging, especially trying to teach scripture to a six-year-old and a four-year-old. My question is for you, why has God made the Bible so complex in that it's open to so much different interpretation that it, in fact, necessitates a show like yours where people need to call in and ask questions?

I'm a father, like I said, and when I want to give my kids instructions that I want them to follow, I make it as simple and as clear as possible. It just seems like to fully understand scripture, you have to go to seminary school. So that's just my question, is why is the Bible so complex? I haven't been to seminary. I've not even been to Bible school.

No, you don't. You just have to study it. But the thing is, not all the parts are equally simple. That's true. But you have to realize, first of all, none of the parts of the Bible were written to us in the 21st century. They were written to other people, and it is for our benefit that they've been preserved because we have the advantage of seeing what God said to them and applying that as it should probably be properly applied to ourselves, too. None of the books of the Bible were written to children, which means that it's written to grown-ups. Now, by the way, these grown-ups knew Greek and Hebrew as their, in the Old Testament Hebrew and the New Testament Greek, as their first or second language, and they knew these languages well. So that's one area where the Bible is quite opaque to us who only speak English unless we can get some books that tell us what the Greek words mean and the Hebrew words mean.

But the simple peasant, the uneducated beggar, knew Greek and Hebrew. In other words, what would require scholarship on our part to penetrate, because we're not natural Greek and Hebrew speakers, required nothing of the sort for them. And the passages in the Bible that we find difficult are often related to the culture that they knew well and took for granted. But we don't know it until we study it in a more scholarly way, just like studying history.

If you study an ancient civilization, that's a scholarly pursuit. And you can read the Bible and get some benefit from it without that study, but you're going to understand it a lot better if you understand what the readers knew, even the uneducated readers knew. And obviously, the writers are writing to people who, in terms they expect them to understand. This is why Revelation is so confusing to us. It's an apocalyptic book. Daniel's an apocalyptic book, too, and we don't have any apocalyptic books in our English canon of literature. That's just not part of the culture of English writing, to write apocalyptic.

But it's a very common thing in the New Testament times. There were a dozen or more apocalyptic books that we know of that were written in the intertestamental period, and we know they were very popular. So Revelation and Daniel, or at least Revelation.

Daniel might have been innovating this method, but Revelation is very difficult for us unless we become acquainted with how apocalyptic literature would be understood by people who were very familiar with it in those days. So I mean, what was easy for them to understand, and they are the ones he's trying to communicate with, is not easy for someone who's immensely removed culturally, linguistically, and historically from them. If we want to read and understand anything that was written, let's just say you want to read letters written by Josephus, for example, back in the time of Christ, it's very hard for us to read. First of all, someone had to translate them from Greek for us, and then just the way he speaks is very difficult for us, probably not so much for his readers at the time. So we have to understand it, and then we have to, if we're going to teach it to our children, we have to bring it down to their level.

That is, we have to explain the same concepts. Remember, I was saying to the previous caller that Jesus spoke about the abomination of desolation. Well, Luke knew very well that his Greek reader didn't know anything about that kind of language, so he paraphrased.

He said, Jesus is saying, when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, know that its desolation is near. Even the biblical writers would kind of dumb things down if they had to for an audience that didn't know things. In Mark, which was not written to Jews, but to Gentiles, it tells about how the Jews washed things. The same story is told by Matthew, who wrote to Jews. And Matthew doesn't mention the fact that the Jews washed everything, because his Jewish readers knew that. Mark's readers were Romans and didn't know that, so he had to say, well, you know, when the Jews come in from being outside, they wash their hands, they wash their plates, they wash their cups, they wash their chairs.

It's part of their rituals. So, you know, a writer of the New Testament was writing to an audience in language that he thought they knew. And if he felt like they might not understand, he might give more explanation. But they weren't writing to us, so they don't write like we write. The way that we can become conversant in their way of writing is simply to immerse ourselves in it, just like you learned English originally. You were a baby who didn't know a word of English when you were first born, but you were immersed in an English-speaking culture. The people around you were speaking English. The words became familiar to you before their meanings did. And then eventually you were able to attach meanings to the words, because they were used repeatedly and so forth. And in that immersion, you learned to become fluent in English in, what, probably less than three or four years, or five years at the most. And you speak it like a pro. Of course, you get better at it as you get older, but the point is, a baby that doesn't know a word of English can become fluent in English in three or four years.

And that's just because of immersion. You learn to understand the Bible best by immersing yourself in it. Remember, the Bible says, Blessed is the man whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law he meditates day and night. Study helps, and study is a very valuable thing. But I think that meditating and immersing your mind, submerging it all the time in Scripture, is the best way to become fluent in the way of communication that the people to whom it was written were being communicated with. So it is hard.

It is hard because it's culturally and historically and linguistically very far removed from us. But we can get there from here. It's just got to be a priority, because we are not naturally immersed in the Bible. We are naturally immersed in a world full of philosophies and ideas that the Bible doesn't even agree with. And we pick those up by osmosis in our culture. But to be immersed in the Scriptures has got to be done by choice.

A baby didn't have to choose to be immersed in English culture, English speaking culture and learning the language, but we do have to choose to immerse ourselves in Scripture or else it's not going to happen. And so that would be my answer. I think that lots of things are unintelligible to us until we learn them, until we study them, until we become immersed in them.

It's just second nature for us. Yeah, that's good. I mean, I totally appreciate what you're saying. But as far as trying to teach a six year old or a new believer that I really want to follow Christ and they're struggling with understanding Scripture, my response according to you would just be, well, you just need to study Greek and Hebrew and Jewish culture and then you'll really understand the Bible. That's hard to tell a new believer and a child. I'm actually not suggesting that because I have not learned Greek and Hebrew. I have not gone to Bible school or Bible college.

I've never learned. I can't read Greek and Hebrew. I have reference books galore in Greek and Hebrew that I access. So I've gained anecdotal knowledge of it. But now I became familiar with the Bible largely through reading the English Bible in my language, because unless you have a really bad translation and there are some. But if you have a decent translation, you can learn 99 percent of what you need to know from that.

I remember when I first was teaching in Youth of the Mission, I met a guy who ran their schools of biblical studies and we had lunch together. He says, do you read Greek? And I said, no, I haven't had a chance to study it. I live out in a remote area in coastal Oregon and there's no colleges near me.

This was before there was the Internet. And so I thought, well, I don't really have any opportunity to learn it. I'd like to.

I have books on it, but I can't learn it from the books very well. He said, well, I really urge you to go and study Greek. And so I said, well, I'd like to if I get a chance, I will. And then that night I was teaching at the YWAM base and he was in the audience and he came up to me afterwards and and he said, you know what I said about learning Greek?

Never mind. He said, he said, your command of the English Bible is such that I don't think you're getting it wrong. You know, but I don't I mean, I do like I do like to know what the Greek says.

I'm not I would not disparage it. And that's why I have many lexicons and Greek reference books that I do access. But no, I'm not saying that a person has to learn Greek.

I'm saying it'll help. But but you can learn ninety nine percent of what you need to know from an English Bible. It's just that certain things that are really obscure can be cleared up sometimes from the Greek or the Hebrew.

And so those who know it would be better, better equipped to know it. But I would just say, you know, I grew up reading the Bible as a child. And sure, I have to say there's stuff I didn't understand. But but I picked it up.

I picked it up. And my parents taught me the biblical truths and sometimes using the Bible itself, sometimes just telling me in general what the Bible said about something. And you know, I was pretty conversant in the Bible by the time I was 11 or 12 years old, I would say. When I was 13, my the the guy who led our youth group, he said, I knew the Bible better than him.

And he was a seminary student. Anyway, I'm I I just want to make it very clear. It's not necessary to know all those things, but it helps. And the reason it is hard to understand is because of that distance we are culturally from it.

But many things are clear, no matter what culture it's in, no matter what language is translated into. Love your neighbor as you love yourself looks just the same in Greek and Hebrew as it does in English. You know, so knowing what we're supposed to do as Christians doesn't require scholarship.

It's just for people like me who are desirous to know the Bible as best as I can know it, that it helps do some research. Hey, I need to go. I'm sorry to say God bless you, but I that's most I have time for.

We are out of time for the program. We are making a trip teaching across the country between my home in Southern California and Indianapolis, Indiana, and teaching in a number of places like Arizona and Texas and Missouri on route. And there's information about that at our website, the narrow path dot com. Under the announcements link, the narrow path is a listener supported ministry. And you can write to us at the narrow path P.O. box 1730 Temecula, California 92593.

The website is the narrow path dot com. Thanks for joining us. Let's talk again Monday. Have a good weekend.