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 have a live program so that you can participate in it in real time. If you have questions about the Bible, about the Christian faith, about your own Christian life, and you don't know who to call, well, there's one place you can call. There's other places too, but you can call here. And you can also call if you have a different viewpoint from the host and would like to discuss that. The number to call is 844-484-5737. That's 844-484-5737. And our first caller today is John from Detroit, Michigan. John, welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
Hey Steve, full disclosure, I got a, this is anonymous, because it's kind of embarrassing. My family and I, we've been going to this church and we were looking for sound doctrine. We were looking for good teaching and we found it, but we, or I should say I, I just get bored with everything else, like the worship especially. It's just slow, emotional, you know, like reckless love type stuff, but the most softest acoustic versions of every song. And I'm trying to just be like tolerant and enjoy it as best I can and just try to focus on worship.
But like, it's been months and months and it's just, nothing's changing, man. Well, I'm probably not the guy to talk to about that because I don't determine what worship is done at your church. Tell me again, what kind of music is it they're doing? Well, like contemporary Christian worship, but it'll be the softest, most acoustic, you know, slowest version. It's so droning.
We almost never have lively worship at all. I know that the style doesn't really dictate the worship, but yeah, it's something I just can't seem to get over. Have you spoken to the pastor or the worship team or anyone like that and made this observation?
Yeah, we've talked about it. And I think it's just, that's just the way things are going to be. You know, it's really strange because most churches that have opted for contemporary Christian music worship, the main complaint people have is that it's really loud and really, you know, rock and roll, you know, and some people would like it to be less so. Usually if music is a church is really slow or quiet music, they're probably doing hymns or something, but it's an unusual thing for them to just do the contemporary things very slow.
I can't really tell you what to say. I go to churches fairly often where I don't care for the worship music. In fact, the last church I went to regularly, I didn't care for the worship music, but I went there regularly anyway for a few years.
So, you know, I guess you just got to go in and bear it. You got to worship God. And, you know, I would say if it's a real stumbling block to your worship, you might not be the only one, although you might be.
It might be that it's just your taste in music differs from most of the people there. But, yeah, I would just say talking to the pastor about that and seeing if he has some reason for opting for that kind of worship. He might feel that it's more reverent, of course, to do things slowly and quietly. I don't know that it always is, but I'm sure a lot of people talk about it in sermons, and I think they're just they keep talking about like relationship with God type. You know, I think it's a perspective. Well, yeah, I'm sorry.
I can't really. A lot of people call have called over the years about the complaints about the worship music at their churches and so forth. And I sympathize because I have to say that I haven't been real pleased with the worship in most of the churches I've been in the last several years. I actually would enjoy church singing the hymns. I actually think the hymns have a lot more life in them than a lot of the modern Christian songs. At least they have at least more truth in them. And so and I think that they were because the hymns were written for people who weren't being paid to write worship songs. I think there's a big difference in the level of anointing too. I think that when I think when worship music became an industry, I'm not saying everybody in it is motivated by money, but certainly there's money to be had.
And therefore there will be people who are coming into it who are motivated by money just as in any other industry. And and a lot of a lot of worship songs I've heard from some of the modern writers. I've had the impression that, you know, I don't think they wrote this because of because they were I don't know, have had this in their heart. I think they I think in a lot of cases they just want to string some words together, even if they didn't mean very much and get another copyright so that they'd start royalties from the church to sing it. But I don't want to judge anybody. It's just you just can tell the quality difference between songs that are written by people who are real worshippers of God and those who are being paid to write verse worship music.
Yeah. And that's one reason I like the hymns so much. But I guess one advice I could give you is to arrive late, arrive after singing. I mean, honestly, I've done that myself. And I, you know, you can you can worship God at home or with a in your car and then come on inside when they're done with the worship that bores you.
But I don't know if there's something wrong with us. Well, I don't know if it is or not, but I would just say that if I mean, the church, first of all, the church is not there to cater to consumers, for one thing. So if they don't have your favorite style of music, that's not necessarily a valid criticism. But on the other hand, if what they are doing in terms of musical worship is not very worshipful or is not conducive to worship, and that is the case in many churches, in my opinion, then to once you've complained about it and they haven't changed it, then they can't complain about you showing up afterwards.
Just come for the sermon and fellowship. All right. I appreciate your answer. All right. Thanks for calling. Thank you by now. Vernon from Sacramento, California. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
Thank you. I've called a few times. I think the last time I called, I asked if Satan was capable of counterfeiting agape love because I really wanted to have an outside perspective. The real reason it has a lot to do with that.
Just a fundamental background for my question. I was seven years old and I went to a Salvation Army summer camp. And I had already been going to their church, which is just a couple blocks from where I grew up.
It's taken out by the freeway since then. Anyway, I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior, and I learned in Sunday school, several lives together burn brightly, and one set aside on the hearth goes out. And I didn't want the flame to go out. I wanted to burn brightly with the true church, the real logs, the real fire.
And for whatever reason, the Salvation Army where it used to be got taken out by Highway 50 through Sacramento. So what is your question for me? My question is, I went since then to every, I talked to the Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, the Truth Book, and Seventh-day Adventists, and trying to find the true church. And I think I get it now, but my question is, I was listening to Bible Answers Live, I forgot his name, anyway, Seventh-day Adventists. And I listened to them last night, and sometimes I get almost convinced that they are making sense, that they are the true church, and maybe I'm out in left field without everything else I've been going through, trying to, every church practically in Sacramento, and trying, I listened to Walter Martin back before he passed away, Bible Answer Man, and I would get fed all kinds of information, and then Hank Hanegraaff took over, I listened to him regularly, and all the people. So what is your question for me?
What is your question for me, brother? My question is, what do you think, why would you exclude the Seventh-day Adventists from being true Christians, or do you? I never have, I've never excluded Seventh-day Adventists from being true Christians. You think that they are true Christians? Well, you're talking about a whole denomination, I don't think any whole denomination consists of true Christians.
And that's their doctrine. Right, well their doctrine is not good doctrine in many points, some of their doctrine is good, but they definitely have doctrine that isn't good. I don't know of anything about them that would make me think that they stand out above other denominations as the true church, but I would say in any denomination, there are true Christians, and there are people who probably are not true Christians, because being a Christian isn't related to what group you join, it's related to whether you're following Jesus Christ. And I've certainly known Seventh-day Adventists who appear to be following Jesus Christ, and I give them no, I'm not critical of them. I don't agree with their doctrine, but that's not how you become a Christian, by agreeing with doctrine.
You become a Christian by surrendering to Christ and living under his Lordship. But I've known Seventh-day Adventists who, as near as I can tell, are following Jesus Christ and are Christians. I've also encountered some, and only in the last few years actually, that didn't have the Spirit of Christ at all.
So that means that they're just about like any other denomination in that respect. Whether you go to a Presbyterian or Baptist or Methodist or Nazarene or Episcopal or Catholic or Pentecostal Church, Calvary Chapel, you name it, any church, you're going to go, then you'll find some people who are following Jesus, and there's going to be some people who aren't. So there's not a true church in the sense of some organization that's the true church. The true church is comprised of all the people around the world who are following Jesus, and there's some of them in every church. And there's a lot of people in many of the churches that personally do not follow Jesus.
They probably don't even know they're supposed to. They're following the doctrines of their group, but following Jesus is something entirely unfamiliar to them. Anyway, yeah, I, no, I wouldn't, if you're asking me to recommend the Seventh-day Adventists, I don't, because they place too much weight in the teachings of one person, which is what cults do. I'm not saying they're a cult, but cults do that. Cults, you know, the Jehovah's Witnesses follow Charles Taze Russell, the Mormons follow Joseph Smith. Cults are usually started by somebody who is believed to be either a prophet or at least somebody who sees things more clearly than anybody else does, and people follow them as if that's true of them. And there certainly are Seventh-day Adventists who look to Ellen G. White that way, and there are, I think, some Seventh-day Adventists who don't. So it's a group that has all the possibilities of having a cult following, but then so does any religious group, even if it's Orthodox Christianity. So, yeah, I think you're looking to, it sounds like you're looking for the true church in a denomination or in a movement, but that's not where you find it. You find it in Christ.
You follow Jesus, the Holy Spirit places you in the body of Christ, and then He will lead you to other people who are in the body of Christ, whether they're in an institutional church or not. I appreciate your call. Scott from Phoenix, Arizona, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Thank you, Steve. You've talked before about, like, the Third Temple, if they did that, and there would be, like, renewed sacrifices, how that would be an insult to Jesus because of what He did. Absolutely.
Okay? And this is another thought I had, too. Wouldn't it be an insult to pray to anybody else but God, since He tore the veil and made it possible for us to approach God personally? Yeah.
Wouldn't it be an insult to pray to anybody else but our Father? Well, I think so. Very simple. And what do you think about Ruth Bader Ginsburg passing? I'll listen on the radio.
Okay. Well, I think it's a very controversial thing, especially at the time that she passed. If she had passed a year earlier, it would be plenty controversial then, too, but this year has been one of tremendous violence and division, and even before she passed, you know, Democratic senators and even candidates like Biden were saying, you know, if Trump wins, there's going to be more riots, there's going to be more sufferings, there's going to be less peace and so forth.
In other words, they're trying to extort the country into not voting for Trump because they're saying if you do, you're going to have more of this kind of violence you don't like. Well, there's no guarantee of that unless they bring it on because certainly the people who follow Trump won't bring it on. So it's been very volatile, and obviously Trump has to either await or now appoint before the election a new nominee to the bench, and Congress then, or Senate has to decide whether they're going to vote that person in or not, approve that person.
And I don't know how it's going to go. At this point, it sounds like Trump is planning it, but it's going to go. At this point, it sounds like Trump is planning to nominate and that the Senate, some say, will vote on it. And if so, then we may get another, you know, justice on the Supreme Court before the election. Now, it'll be hard to tell whatever violent opposition breaks out over that decision, be hard to tell the difference between that and the violence that was going to come around anyway because of Trump's reelection. But I guess we have to decide whether the president needs to cater to the volatile, irrational crowds, which is anybody who would say, if I don't get my way, I'm going to riot.
That's an irrational person, obviously, because, I mean, one thing is very obvious. Trump does have the constitutional right. That's his job as president to nominate another person to the seat on the Supreme Court. And it's Congress' job to vote on whether to approve or not. So for that to be done, according to the Constitution, is the very thing that some people are saying will bring about riots. Well, whoever would bring about riots because the Constitution is followed is obviously trying to intimidate the government to not follow the Constitution. And I don't think that, I mean, that'd be like saying, well, we're not going to do anything to displease the Chinese because we might offend the Chinese and they might hate us and they might do something to us.
Well, they might, but we can't let people who are hostile and who are irrational decide whether we do the right thing or not. And I will say this, without commending Trump too much, I would say he has been the first president in my lifetime. Well, I don't know, Ronald Reagan might have been like him in this respect, but who didn't seem to care whether people got upset with him or not.
And good for him. I don't do that on my radio show. I don't care who gets upset with me. Why should a person get upset when they're doing the right thing or telling the truth if there's people who resist him or even who threaten them? Well, that's just the way life is. There's bad people, there's good people.
You be one of the good ones. And I think that I don't know what's going to happen, but I'm certainly not a prophet. I'm also not a legal expert or a political expert.
So my thoughts on it are probably the same thoughts you'll hear by a lot of pundits on television and radio, which, I mean, there's only one way of looking at it, really. Constitutionally, Trump should. He is president still. He was elected for four whole years and he was elected by people who were particularly interested in the constituency of the Supreme Court. I mean, lots of people didn't like Trump very much, but they voted for him because they knew he had released a list of the people he would appoint to the Supreme Court if he had the chance.
And so it was really the Supreme Court, probably more than most other things, that got Trump elected. Now he's still elected. He's still a president and he's got a chance to do what the Constitution allows the president to do. So it would be, I think, remiss for him to do nothing about it. He'd be letting down his voters and he'll probably still get re-elected, but he'd be not doing the right thing.
So that's what I think. And as far as Ruth Bader Ginsburg is concerned, she seemed like an exceptional woman, but I don't think she was close to God. And of course, a lot of our politicians and judges are not close to God, but we hope that they will follow the Constitution.
Whoever is appointed will follow the Constitution more than some of the more radical leftist judges care to do. All right, let's talk to John from San Diego. John, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
Mark, thank you for taking my call. My question was, John 12, 20 and 21 says, there were certain Greeks among them that came to worship at the feast. The same that came there for the Philip, which was a pursuit of Galilee and desired him, so we would see Jesus. What is that all about?
Well, it's kind of straightforward. There were some Greeks, probably God-fearers or proselytes, who had come to Jerusalem for the feast and they became aware of Jesus. They maybe heard him preach in the temple or maybe heard rumors about his miracles or something.
And they, they were not, they were more from out of town, but they thought, hey, well, let's see if we can get an audience with this guy. And so they approached a couple of his disciples. It's interesting that they approached Philip and Andrew because those are the only disciples of Jesus that had Greek names. All the other apostles had Jewish names, but, but these two had Greek names and these were Greeks who were looking out, so probably they thought they'd have more of a welcome if they approached these guys as intermediaries between themselves and Christ. Now, we don't know if they ever got a private conversation with him. We're told that when Jesus was alerted to their interest, he began speaking to the crowd, which would include them. So I don't know if he was directing his remarks largely to them or to the crowd and just ignoring the fact that they were there. We don't have any information about them getting a private conversation with them, but on the other hand, we don't read that they didn't, they might have off the record.
But yeah, I, I don't really know that anything unusual is going on there that, that isn't evident right in the text. I appreciate your call. Andy from Buckeye, welcome to that's Arizona.
Welcome to the narrow path. Thanks for calling. Hey Steve, you're, you're about a week away from your big road trip. Well I'm going to be with you in Arizona. Yeah. What a week from tomorrow night.
Right, right. We're looking forward to that. Hopefully anybody listening in Arizona would be able to join us.
I know they can find that on the website, but yeah. Are you looking forward to getting a break from California? I would love to get a permanent break from California to tell the truth, but that's not likely to happen unless the whole country you know, falls apart or you know, the nation or the state falls off at the San Andreas fault into the ocean or something. Then I'll get a break from it, but I'm looking forward to seeing you guys and other people across the country. Yeah.
What's up? That's wonderful. Yeah, as well. I had a question to you about a handful of verses that I've found some places in the Bible that warn not to take, not to add to or take away from the word. I'm looking at Revelation 22, or it's giving a hard warning about adding to the word or taken away from it.
And some of those judgments that would come upon it. Of course, this was in reference to adding to this book of the book of this prophecy, as it says there. I'm also finding it a couple of places in Deuteronomy chapter 4 and chapter 12, talking about adding to or taking away from commandments of the Lord. And Proverbs 36. Proverbs, is it, would you say 36? 30 verse 6. That's it. Do not add to his words or he will reprove you or you will be proved a liar.
So could you put a finer point on that for us and maybe would you address what this may have meant to the original audience versus its implications today, as well as any common misconceptions or applications about this issue? And I'll listen while I'm off the air. Looking forward to seeing you. Okay. Looking forward to seeing you too. God bless you, Andy.
Bye now. Well, as you said, Moses was the first person to urge his hearers not to add or subtract anything from the words of the law. He said that in Deuteronomy 4.2 and also again in Deuteronomy 12.32, both places said not to add or subtract from it. And also, as you said, Revelation 22.18 puts a curse on anyone who would add to the words of the book of Revelation itself. And Proverbs seems to be more generic, you know, don't add to his words, to God's words, lest you be found a liar. I think what it's just saying is that you don't want to add human opinions to the Word of God on the level with the Word of God.
It doesn't mean you can't have an opinion about it, but you don't want to misrepresent your opinions as what God has said, if he hasn't. I think there's a very strict code there for the prophets who speak. In Jeremiah, God speaks about the false prophets. He says, they say, he says, but they didn't get anything from me.
I didn't send them. You know, they're speaking from their own spirits, from their own imaginations, their own heart. And he's angry at them for that because they're claiming to speak the words of God, but it's not the Word of God that they're speaking. I think that this happens in churches a lot.
I think Christian individuals do it a lot too. And that is that they read something in the Bible, which is the Word of God, and they extend it out further, further than what God did. I mean, Eve did this herself, you know, because God said that Adam and Eve should not eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And when Eve was asked by the devil whether that was the rule or not, she said, well, we're not allowed to eat it or to touch it.
Well, she was mistaken about that. They were not forbidden to touch it. But ever since Eve, people have been doing the same kind of thing with God's Word. God says don't do a certain thing. And the Pharisees, for example, taking the law, built what they called a hedge around the law. That means that if the law said don't, you know, don't boil a baby goat in its mother's milk, they went so far as to say we're never going to drink milk and eat meat together at the same time at all.
That way we'll never, you know, get close to violation. When the Bible says you should not do any labor on the Sabbath day, the rabbis had all kinds of opinions about what they could or could not do on the Sabbath day that would constitute labor. And a lot of times it had to do with something as simple as wearing a wooden leg would be bearing a burden on the Sabbath as they forbade that. So they add to the Word of God. Churches do that, too. We know that the Roman Catholic Church has added a lot of traditions that aren't in the Bible, and they teach them as if they are. Or they teach them as if they are the Word of God. Protestant groups can do the same thing. I mean, the Bible says don't be drunk with wine, but there are certain Protestant groups that say you should never drink wine. Well, that's far from what the Bible said. But they would say it's God's will that we not drink wine because the Bible says don't be drunk with wine. So, I mean, this is adding to the Word of God. It's putting a hedge around the Word of God. God does tell us what He wants us to do and not to do. And sometimes people think they can be spiritual beyond what is written and interpret God as requiring more than He said. They're adding to His words when they do that.
And that's, I think, probably part of what's forbidden there. You're listening to The Narrow Path. We're going to take a brief break and come back for another half hour.
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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. If you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith or maybe you have a difference of opinion from the host and want to bring that up for conversation, our number is 844-484-5737.
That's 844-484-5737. You know, I got a letter from Cody in Hawaii who happens to be a prisoner in Hawaii and he listens to the show all the time and he wrote this question. He says about Revelation 2 verses 20 through 23, he says, does Christ kill Jezebel's children in the future time? Now what he's referring to is these verses I'll read to you. Jesus is speaking to the church in Thyatira and he says they have some things good about them, but like most of the churches, they have some things that he doesn't like about them. And in verse 20 he says, nevertheless, I have a few things against you because you allow that woman Jezebel who calls herself a prophetess to teach and beguile my servants to commit sexual immorality and to eat things sacrificed to idols.
I gave her time to repent of her sexual immorality and she did not repent. Indeed, I will cast her into a sick bed and those who commit adultery with her into great tribulation unless they repent of their deeds and I will kill her children with death and all the churches shall know that I am he who searches the minds and the hearts. So the question is, Cody asked, does Christ kill Jezebel's children in the future time?
So I guess there's a lot of things probably that could be misunderstood about this. First of all, this is not talking about the real Jezebel who lived back in the time of Elijah. She was the queen of Israel, Mary married to King Ahab and she persecuted Elijah and she was killed gruesomely.
She was pushed out of a tower by her own servants and she splattered on the ground below and the dogs ate her. That was the Jezebel in the Old Testament about 700 years before Christ. But Jesus refers to a woman in the church of Thyatira that he calls Jezebel.
Now I don't think the woman's real name is Jezebel. I think he's given that symbolic name. The book of Revelation is full of symbolism. For example, Jerusalem in Revelation 11, 8 is symbolically called Sodom and Egypt. And so you've got symbolic names given to people and places in ancient, you know, even mystery Babylon is symbolic.
It's not the real Babylon. So this is not the real Jezebel, this is a woman whose character and influence is similar to that of Jezebel. Jezebel was an immoral woman and she was an idolatrous woman and she enforced idolatry in the land of Israel and persecuted the prophets like Elijah.
Well, this woman was teaching the church to commit fornication and to worship idols. So obviously she's doing the same thing in the church that Jezebel did in Israel. So he symbolically calls her Jezebel. We don't know her real name, of course, but it's very unlikely that any parents would name their child Jezebel at any time after the real Jezebel's career had ended because it was such a bad, it's like for someone to name their kid Adolf Hitler or Judas Iscariot or something like that. So this is not really a reference to Jezebel.
And in my opinion, it's not a reference to the future. You asked if Jesus is going to kill her children in the future. I believe that the churches that Jesus dictated these letters to were contemporary in John's own day. In fact, none of those churches are there anymore.
So obviously this Jezebel isn't there anymore and the church isn't there anymore, but these are letters that Jesus dictated to be sent to these seven churches that were in Asia Minor, which is Turkey today. And this woman was in that church and it was a problem. And Jesus said, he's going to bring judgment on the church, at least those, that portion that's influenced by her teaching and on her too. Her children would not be a reference to literal children because she's teaching fornication. He says, I'm going to throw her and her worshipers or her followers into a sick bed. Well, of course she's been luring them into a bed of immorality. He says, well, they're going to find themselves in a sick bed. They're going to be bedridden for reasons different than what she's recommending. And of course, children, she, these are almost certainly not her actual children, but because her sins are sexual in nature, those who are her offspring spiritually are likened to her children. And he says, I'm going to punish them too.
They're going to die. Now we don't know the circumstances under which these people came to their end. We only have the threat made. Of course he does call upon them to repent and for all we know they might have, in which case this judgment might not have occurred.
We only have the threat. We don't have any record of its fulfillment, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen. I mean, most of the things in Revelation that were predicted did happen and we can verify a lot of those. It's the ones we can't verify. It's not because they didn't happen, but because we just don't have the detailed information from, you know, secular history about what happened to this woman. Why would anyone have written of it? So anyway, no, this is not about a future judgment and it's not about the Jezebel in the Bible.
This is about another woman who is similar to Jezebel and that she would come under judgment. So Cody, I hope that answers your question. I know you can't call it because of your circumstances. All right, let's talk to Paul from Las Vegas. Paul, welcome to the narrow path. Thanks for calling. Hi Steve.
Good to talk with you. I have a question about when the Israelites wandered through the desert for the 40 years. I know that they started off having flocks and herds with them, but throughout the 40 years, did they continue to make the different types of offerings? And that's my only question. I'll listen on the radio.
Okay, thanks for your call. Well, there's some question about their livestock during the 40 years they wandered because they obviously had livestock, as you say, when they left Egypt. And even later when they got tired of eating manna, they were complaining that they didn't have any meat. And yet they did have livestock because God told Moses, well, tell them I'll give them meat tomorrow and I'll feed them.
They'll have more than enough. And Moses said, what? Will we kill all the livestock to feed them so they can all have meat? So there was livestock that they could kill for meat, but obviously they weren't doing it. They were eating manna and they were reluctant to kill the livestock for meat. It may be that the livestock were being kept for sacrifices because of course the law that they were under did require that they offer bulls and goats and lambs for sacrifices, so they might have been just setting them aside for that. Or they may not have just wanted to slaughter them all and eat them in one big meal because they had a long time to go and they probably wanted to keep them around for breeding stock and so forth.
They may have eaten some a little bit here and there. Of course, when they had their sacrifices, they ate meat because the way that Leviticus dictates that when you sacrifice an animal, unless it's a whole burnt offering, then certain parts of the meat are fed to the persons who are offering the sacrifice as well as part of it being burned. So it wasn't like they were being non-carnivorous all the time, but they must not have wanted to just slaughter all their animals to feed them all at one time.
They would have no breeding stock and they would also not have animals for sacrifice. Now, there is a minor prophet that raised the question of whether they did offer sacrifices to him in the wilderness in a rhetorical question that makes it sound like they didn't. But it doesn't mean that they didn't offer any sacrifices. There may be some suggestion that the sacrifices they offered were not recognized as being to God by God because of their strained hearts. I mean, they were offering the sacrifices, but he didn't recognize them as being to him. Sort of like 1 Corinthians 11 when Paul is criticizing the motives and the manner in which the Corinthians were taking communion. He said, when you do this, this is not the Lord's Supper that you're taking here. Well, they were calling it that, but Paul says, no, I don't see it as that.
You're not doing it right enough to call it the Lord's Supper. And that might be how the prophet meant it when he said, did you offer sacrifices to me in the wilderness all those years? He might have not been denying that they offered sacrifices, but saying those weren't really to me, not in your heart.
We don't have much information about that to tell you the truth. And we can say they either did offer animal sacrifices in the wilderness those 40 years and their livestock was used for that, or they may have neglected it. And one suggestion that they might've neglected it is because we know they neglected to circumcise. That was a very major requirement upon them. And they had a whole generation born during that 40 years wandering the wilderness. And when they got into the promised land, they all had to be circumcised because they hadn't been, they'd been neglecting it for 40 years.
So if they were neglecting circumcision, they might have been neglecting sacrifices too. But we don't have specific information about that in my opinion. So I'm sorry that I can't, that we don't know more than we do on that question. Let's talk to Juan from West Haven, Connecticut.
Juan, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Hello. How you doing? Yes.
I'm doing fine. Thanks. It's an honor for me to have you in your radio station.
The question is the following. We asked like a Christian. Pardon? Okay. Because I've been listening to the radio. Let me move. Oh, yeah.
You have to have the radio turned off. Are we supposed to serve Saturdays like the law or Sundays? Okay. So are we supposed to worship, are we supposed to worship on Saturdays or Sundays? That's your question? Okay.
I understand. I understand the question because the law said that they should do no work on the seventh day, which is Saturday, and that they should have a holy convocation. So that was called the Sabbath day. And Saturday is the Sabbath day. And in the Bible, no other day of the week was ever called the Sabbath day. Now, in church history, there was, I guess, a pope that declared that Sunday was the Sabbath day. But the popes really don't have that authority to declare what day is the Sabbath or what day isn't.
The Bible in the Old and the New Testament recognized Saturday as the Sabbath. But you ask, are we supposed to worship on Saturday or Sunday? I think we're supposed to worship all the time. I think the whole Christian life is a life of worship. Paul said, whatever you do, whether you eat or drink, do all to the glory of God. He said, pray without ceasing.
Give thanks in everything. You know, this is worship. This is worship to God, that we're supposed to, in all things, be living our lives as a life of worship to Him. Paul said in Romans 12, one, that we should present our bodies as a living sacrifice. Now, sacrifice, offering a sacrifice is worship.
And so our bodies are offered to God in service to Him. So that this is daily. This is not Saturday. This is not Sunday. This is every day. Now, if you're asking, what day should we meet with other Christians to worship corporately?
Well, you can do that every day, too. The early Christians did it daily. If you read Acts Chapter 2, they met daily and went from house to house and in the temple.
And they ate together and they prayed and they fellowshiped and they heard the apostles teaching. So there really wasn't one day out of the week that was different than others, as near as we can tell, in the early church. Except, although we're not told this is true, it is possible that the Jerusalem church did observe Sabbath. Not because they had to, but because that was their culture. They also offered animal sacrifices, which they didn't have to. They also observed the Nazarite vows they didn't have to. The early church was all Jewish initially. And until the temple was destroyed, the Jerusalem church at least still did a lot of the temple things. And they certainly, I would say almost certainly, must have kept the Sabbath.
And they did they did follow circumcision and things like that. So the Jewish church tended to follow the law and the temple ordinances, which of course no one can do now because the temple doesn't exist anymore. There's no sacrifices or priests or anything like that.
So for almost 2000 years, nobody has has worshiped that way. But in the first 40 years of the church, the people who lived around the temple who were Jews had always kept those ceremonies. And I think they tended to do so even after they became Christians. But the Gentiles didn't. Paul went out to the Gentiles.
Now, from your accent, I'm assuming that you're like me, a Gentile and probably not Jewish. And therefore, we, if we were living in Paul's day, would not be observing the Sabbath because we wouldn't be under the law. Of course, the Jewish Christians weren't under the law either, but they like to live that way because they'd always lived under that.
But Gentiles did not. Paul didn't mind if Jewish Christians circumcised their children. But he said, you better not circumcise a Gentile Christian because that's that's bringing them into the law under the law. And Paul was way against that. He said that compromises the gospel.
He said those that would do that, I wish they were castrated. I mean, he wished some pretty harsh things on these people because they were trying to corrupt the gospel by bringing the Jewish law into it. And keeping the Sabbath is part of that law. God made the Sabbath command at the same time he gave the other laws at Mount Sinai.
And it was never repeated in the New Testament. So the New Testament doesn't really call us to live under the law that was made at Sinai. It calls us to live under the lordship of Christ. And since Christ never told anyone to keep the Sabbath, we realize that that's part of the Old Covenant. And instead of keeping one day holy, we now are to keep every day holy, every moment holy, every aspect of our life.
Every thought, word and deed is to be holy unto the Lord. And as far as meeting together with other Christians, the Bible and the New Testament doesn't recommend doing it on any particular day. But like I said, the early church did it daily.
And I think that'd be fine to do that now, too, if we had the time. Some of us don't. But you can worship God any day of the week you want to, because people don't worship God based on a place or a date.
Jesus said those who worship God must worship Him in spirit and in truth. And there's really not any day of the week that you're exempt from that. That's essentially what all people are supposed to do.
Okay, Patrick from Bellingham, Washington. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. I got a question on Zechariah. If you walk in my ways and keep my command, then you shall also judge my house and likewise have charge of my courts. And I will give you places to walk among these who stand here. Yeah. And I'm wondering if you can explain that a little more.
Okay. Well, this is a prophecy in chapter three of Zechariah that's made to Joshua, the high priest. Once the temple is rebuilt, they set up the sacrificial system again. This is long before Jesus came, of course, like 500 years before Jesus came. And the man who was the high priest in that temple is named Joshua. And this is a prophecy addressed to him. And basically it's telling him, keep my ways. I mean, here's what God said to him. If you walk in my ways and if you keep my command, then you shall also judge my house, which means rule the house and likewise have charge over my courts.
I will give you places to walk among these who stand here. These who stand here would be the priests. And you have to realize that what he's saying is the priests before the Babylonian exile had deviated from walking in God's ways. They had worshiped idols. I mean, Ezekiel saw visions of the priests actually worshiping the sun and worshiping carved animals engraved on the temple walls. I mean, there's horrible pagan idolatry had been had been brought up by the priests. And even later, priests turned out to be pretty bad, like Caiaphas and Annas, the ones who condemn Jesus.
There's some pretty bad priests in Jewish history. And so this priest is the first high priest after God has restored the nation after the exile. He's warning him, you better walk in my ways. If you do, you'll have privileges. You'll be you'll be able to rule this house for me.
But the implication is, if you don't, it'll go badly for you, just like it did for the priests before who had to go into Babylon in captivity. All right. I appreciate your call. Martin from National City, California. By the way, we do have some lines open right now, which they don't.
That's not always the case. If you'd like to call the number is 844-484-5737. That's 844-484-5737. And I we are going to talk to Martin here from National City, California.
But I guess this is a time I should probably let people know. We are going to be crossing much of the country, speaking in various places starting next week. Andy from Buckeye, Arizona, called and mentioned that I'll be there. That's actually our first stop.
Be it Buckeye, Arizona, speaking there next Tuesday night and then almost every night for the next month and somewhere else. There are some nights we're off and we're traveling, but we're moving from Southern California on this itinerary. We're not moving. We're not relocating, but we're going as far east as Indianapolis area and then coming back. And we're speaking a lot of places on the way. If you happen to live in any of those areas, we have posted on the Web site where I'm going to be speaking.
I'm speaking in not only Phoenix, also in Tucson and in the San Antonio, Texas area. That's actually going to be Spring Branch, Texas. Also in the Houston area a couple of nights in the Dallas area. We'll be also in Arkansas and Missouri. And there's a location in Illinois and a couple of places in Indiana. So those are places that are already listed. And if you're in any of those areas along that trajectory of our travel, then you may want to see if we're speaking in your area. You go to the narrow path dot com and look under announcements and there you'll find the whole itinerary as it is developed thus far.
There may be some things added to it in the future. All right. Martin, thanks for waiting.
Welcome. You know, sometime back, someone showed me the scripture. It's of the word worlds, but it's plural. W-O-R-L-D-S. Two times in Hebrews, it's found in Hebrews one, two, by whom he also made the world. And Hebrews eleven three. In Hebrews eleven three.
Yeah. We understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God. And I had that conversation with the person.
There might be a life on other planets. And I just looked that up from a previous caller asking you about that. And when it talks about the word worlds, it's basically saying it's a, it's a, per putity, perpetual, I guess is the word. Perpetuity. Perpetuity.
In other words, world, while the world began or a world without end. Now your phone's, your phone's going bad on us. You're all garbled up now. You're all garbled up. I can't hear what you're saying.
I don't want to take up too much space. Is there a question? Thank you very much. But is there a question in your call? I guess not.
He's gone. Well, okay. I don't know what he wanted to know about it. The worlds, does that mean there's life on other planets? Well, it wouldn't necessarily mean, I don't know that the worlds would be a reference to the planets, even if it did. I mean, we know there are other planets. And so if those are the other worlds that it's referring to, it still wouldn't tell us any more than we already know about life on those worlds.
I mean, we know there are other planets. They knew that back in biblical times, too. And he may have been referring to the worlds in that sense. Although the word world in the Bible often isn't referring to planetary phenomena, worlds. But he talked about like the Greco-Roman world or the pagan world or frankly, the Jewish world. There's there's a lot of ways to speak about the world. We might talk about the Muslim world today. We're not speaking about planets in that case.
We're talking about societies or cultures and things like that. The word world is used in quite a lot of different ways. But and so I'm not really sure which way the writer of Hebrews means it when it says that God created the worlds. But we can go with your suggestion that he might be referring to the planets because we know that the writer of Hebrews knew about other planets.
So do we. We know about a lot more of them than they knew about. But that doesn't tell us anything about whether they're inhabited. I mean, we we do call Venus and Uranus and other planets. We call them planets, but we don't have any suggestion in calling them that, that they are necessarily inhabited worlds. I personally doubt that they are now, whether there's inhabited worlds out in other galaxies. I don't know. The Bible doesn't care to tell us about that, since it doesn't relate to us very much. OK, let's talk to Mark from Vancouver, B.C.
Mark, welcome to the Narrow Path. I heard you say a couple of times and I've been very surprised to hear you say that that first century Jewish Christians actually still continue to attend the temple. Yep. Yeah, they did. We know when Paul when Paul visited late in his life to Jerusalem, James mentioned to him that there were four men in the church who had some vows they'd made, the Nazareth vows, and they needed to go to the temple to pay the fees related to him because there's some sacrifice to be made at the closing of the vows. And so Paul agreed to go do that, to go pay for them. But I mean, we just see that keeping the temple was going to the temple is a normal thing for them. But that doesn't tell us whether or not they thought it was necessary to do so. It's sort of like I don't believe it's necessary to go to a church building on Sunday morning, but I might do it. I mean, there's fellowship there. You know, there's there are people who might think it's that I'd set a better example by doing so or whatever.
I mean, to avoid offending them. There might be any number of reasons to go to church on Sunday, even if it's not mandatory for us to attend church on Sunday mornings. Likewise, the Jewish believers who lived in Jerusalem lived in a society totally dominated by the temple. I mean, the temple is the center of the city and the center of their life. And so although, you know, they recognize Jesus sacrifice as the final atoning sacrifice, they apparently didn't necessarily think that this meant that it was impossible to do the rituals of the temple as well. And it wouldn't be obvious that they'd have to give it up.
And I don't think they did have to give it up, but they did have to once the temple was destroyed in 70 AD. Hey, we're almost out of time here and I need to see if I get one more call and maybe I don't know. Earl from Roseville, California. Quickly, do you have something to ask? Yeah, I have a question, but I think it's it's not going to be adequate for the time for. Oh, OK. So I can call you back tomorrow then. OK. Sorry. Yeah. Some questions just require more time. How about John from Marietta, California? John, you got a long one or short one?
Yeah, I got a short one. When I look at the New Covenant in Jeremiah 31 at the end, it says, for I will forgive their wickedness and remember their sins no more. How does that then fit in with Second Corinthians five, where it says we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ? Well, when he says how we remember, yeah, when he says I'll remember their sins no more. It doesn't mean that he'll never notice anyone's sins ever again.
It means that the sins that they are being punished for by the Babylonian exile will have been put behind him. He won't be remembering those. He's not really dealing with them according to those.
Remember how in Psalm 103, it says that God has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. It doesn't mean that he doesn't know they're there. It doesn't remember that we did them or anything like that.
It's just a figure of speech. I will remember them no more. I think what he's really saying is I will remember them against you no more. I'm not going to remember them as something that needs to be resolved anymore.
But still, when people live in sin, I mean, he's not saying that there won't be any sins ever committed after that. That'll have to be dealt with. We know there were and are. I'm sorry I'm out of time.
I've got to get off here in 20 seconds, but sorry we couldn't go longer on that one. You've been listening to The Narrow Path radio broadcast where listeners support it. You can write to us at The Narrow Path, P.O. Box 1730, Temecula, California 92593. Our website is thenarrowpath.com, and let's talk again tomorrow. God bless you.
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