The Narrow Path 9/23

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 taking your calls. If you have questions you'd like to raise for conversation about the Bible or the Christian faith or the Christian life, feel free to give me a call. You can also call if you have a different viewpoint from the host.

I'd like to talk about that. The number I will give you, I'll just tell you right now that our lines are full, but take this number down. If you call in a few minutes you may find a line has opened. The number is 844-484-5737. That's 844-484-5737. And our first caller today is Tim from Turner, Oregon. Tim, welcome to the Narrow Path.

Thanks for calling. Hi, I'd like to ask a question about Old Earth versus Young Earth. I've never really thought it was that big of a deal, but in the last six months I've been reading what Old Earth people say, and I don't know if you know who William Lane Craig is, but he's considered, you know, one of the great apologists of our time.

Yes. But he believes Genesis is allegory, and there's not a literal Adam and Eve, and so he says that Jesus got it wrong because, you know, Jesus referred back, you know, concerning marriage to Adam and Eve, and he referred back to Jonah, and he also, I think, referred back to Noah. And he says that, you know, people back in that time had primitive knowledge, you know, they thought the sun rotated around the earth and they just didn't, you know, know what we know today, you know, and he's saying that about Jesus through whom everything was created. And he said he'd rather say that Jesus got it wrong than to deny his deity.

And then I've heard other Old Earth people say that, you know, they believe in millions, billions of years, and that, well, like when it says... So what would be your question for me? What would be your question for me, Tim?

Well, I just want to know if, because I've heard you talk about this on the radio. What is your question? Can you get to your question, please?

I have full lines. Go ahead. Well, you've said that it's not really that big a deal, and my question is, it seems to me like if you're going to reject, you know, try to go with... In other words, if you're going to say Jesus got it wrong, then that's a big thing.

Okay, but let me ask you this. Did William Lane Craig really say Jesus got it wrong? Or are you interpreting his statement that way? Because, I mean, he may have said that, I don't think he would say that. I would expect him to say Jesus was accommodating, perhaps, the Jews idea, not that Jesus was mistaken necessarily, but that he might be accommodating the Jews thinking about it, even though it was understood to be, you know, mythological or something. I wouldn't agree with him if he said that, but I could see someone saying that, because people do say that without saying that Jesus was himself wrong. Did you hear William Lane Craig say that Jesus was wrong? Well, I didn't hear him say it. I saw it in writing. Okay, and he said Jesus got it wrong? Is that what he said, or is that what was said about him?

No, that's what he said. Okay, well then I disagree with him. I disagree with him on that. Well, you see, I personally think that, of course, I'm a young earth person myself, and I believe in Adam and Eve and the flood and all those things being literal. That doesn't mean that I don't recognize there to be allegories and, you know, parables and things like that in the Bible, which aren't necessarily to be taken literally as truth.

It's just that when I read Genesis chapters 1 through 11, just like the rest of the book, it looks to me like it's reporting history, not allegories or whatever. So I would disagree. I know I would disagree with him if he believed that Jesus got things wrong. I would even, I think, disagree with him if he said that Jesus knew the truth, and he was not deceiving anyone, but he was just accommodating their belief.

That to my mind would still be a little deceiving. So I could say this, though, that there could still be an Adam and Eve and still be an old earth. I don't believe in the ancient earth, as some people do, but even if there was an ancient earth, even if the world was 4.5 billion years old, even if God had used billions of years and millions of years of evolution to create life as we know it.

C.S. Lewis, for example, believed that, all that, but he believed that Adam and Eve were literal people, or at least he believed that there was at some point, after the evolutionary development of humanoid types, that God put his image into a certain specie or couple and gave them souls, a human intellect and so forth. Now, I don't believe that, but I don't see that an awful lot depends on that. If someone says there was no Adam or Eve, then we've got a different kind of a problem because the Bible does teach that Adam and Eve not only existed, but had some impact on the rest of us because of their individual choices. And if that isn't true, then much in the Bible seems to be mistaken. But I don't believe there's any reason to believe that that's not true. So you're wondering how big a deal it is. If somebody is going to say that Jesus spoke either knowingly or accidentally, falsely, then, of course, that's a big thing because Jesus said, I am the truth. And if we can't believe what he said to be the truth, then we can't, of course. Well, he's nothing special.

He's just like another fallible teacher. I appreciate your call. Let's talk to Terry from Hearst, Texas. Terry, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Yes, Steve. Could you explain this year of Jubilee in the Old Testament, what it's all about?

And is there any significance to the Christian today? I'll hang up and listen. All right. All right.

Thanks for your call. Well, in the Jewish calendar in Leviticus, God told them that every seventh year was to be a year of release or of a Sabbath year where debts would have to be canceled and there'd be no work done and the fields would not be sown and harvested. So every one in seven years, there was a special sabbatical year. Now, after seven sabbatical years, now to do the math, you'd recognize that's after forty-nine years, there's one Sabbath year every seven, and then there's seven Sabbath years that make forty-nine years. So after the seventh one, there'd be a year called the Jubilee.

That'd be the fiftieth year. So every fifty years, there was to be a year of Jubilee that was like a Sabbath year. Apparently all slaves were to be released, all debts were to be canceled, and no work was to be done in terms of farming and so forth during that year. Now, what is its significance? It obviously has significance as a re-leveling of the economics of people who'd gone deeply into debt, kind of pressing a restort on there. And likewise, people who'd sold themselves into slavery or who otherwise had unhappily come to be slaves, they were released.

And that would be, you know, that's a wonderful thing. We don't know if the Israelites followed the Jubilee year. We don't really have record of them doing it. They neglected many of the laws that God gave them, and they shouldn't neglect them. But whether they kept them or not, the law was given, and God gave it as a picture of something. Now, most Christian scholars believe that when Jesus spoke in the synagogue in Nazareth in Luke chapter four, that he was basically saying that he was coming to bring the true Jubilee. Because it says when he stood up on the Sabbath in the Nazarene synagogue, it says he was given a scroll that said, it had Isaiah chapter 61 in it, and it said, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor.

That's good news to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives and the recovery of sight to the blind, and to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. Now, in the Hebrew, it reads a little differently. Instead of saying the recovery of sight to the blind, and to set at liberty those who are oppressed, it says, and the opening of prison to those who are bound.

So we have the declaration of emancipation, as it were, of prisoners and slaves. And many people think that Isaiah, when he wrote this in Isaiah 61, was speaking of that as a true Jubilee year, not necessarily the ceremonial Jubilee of Leviticus, but what it was pointing forward to. And Jesus, therefore, could be saying that what he is coming to do in canceling our unfulfilled debt to God, in releasing us from our slavery to our sins, that this is the true Jubilee. And I think that's probably a good interpretation of this.

That's how most scholars take it, I think. And therefore, that Jesus is saying the true Jubilee pointed to the permanent release of captives. And he's not talking about on a social level, but he's talking about spiritual captives.

Although, of course, social issues and relations between people are to be modified also as a result of Christ's coming. But I think right now he's talking about the releasing of the prisoners from Satan's prison house, as it says in 2 Timothy 2, well, the last couple of verses of 2 Timothy 2, where it talks about people being released from captivity of Satan. It also says in Hebrews 2, 15, that people had been kept all their lives in bondage by Satan through the fear of death. So there's a spiritual bondage that people are released from through Christ. And I believe that the release of the captives on the 50th year, the Jubilee year, whether the Jews actually kept it or not, the command for it was to reflect this very thing that Jesus came to accomplish. And Jesus, after he read it, said this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing, which means that he himself was declaring that liberty and he himself was the one that it was about.

So I think the Jubilee year has its fulfillment in Christ and in what we would just recognize as our salvation, our deliverance from the power of sin and from the bondage that we were in. All right, let's talk to Mark from Clifton Park, New York. Mark, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

You're welcome. So I want to know a little bit more about why Jews call themselves Jews. But, you know, they're not they don't follow Judaism. So for example, you can be ethnically Jewish. But to me, to be Jewish is to be as a faith. So the way I understand is that, you know, Paul said, you know, there is neither Jew or Greek, but only those who are in Christ. So what's the deal with people calling themselves Jewish?

But and honestly, it shouldn't matter, should it? It's only those who are in Christ. And, you know, you can have an atheist Jew and so forth.

Right, or a Buddhist Jew. Yeah. Yeah. So explain to me, why is there that and why isn't there that distinction?

Right? You know? Okay, well, because the word Jew doesn't only refer to an adherent to the Jewish religion. It is also a racial term or a national term. You see, the word Jew comes from the Old Testament word Judah. And Judah was actually one of the 12 tribes of Israel, one of the sons of Jacob was Judah. And so when the nation divided into two in the days of Rehoboam, the southern kingdom was called Judah, because it was dominated by the tribe of Judah. It was only the tribe of Judah and the tribe of Benjamin made up the kingdom of Judah and Benjamin was a very small tribe and hardly, hardly provided a significant population there. So they called that nation in the south Judah. Now the northern kingdom had 10 of the tribes and they simply called that nation Israel. But because of the idolatry that was promoted by Jeroboam in Israel in the north, the more devout members of the Israelites, many of them departed from the north and migrated down to the south and became part of the nation of Judah. So the nation of Judah ended up having citizens in it, who were from all the 12 tribes, although the majority of the 10 northern tribes remained a separate nation.

Now when the northern kingdom was destroyed in 722 BC by the Assyrians, then there was no more 12 tribes of Israel. There was only the southern kingdom of Judah, but it also had some representatives of the other tribes who had moved and become part of Judah as a nation prior to that. So now we have not only the ethnic Jew from the tribe of Judah, we also have the national Jew because there were people from other tribes that were not Judah who became part of the nation of Judah. So they had a national identity as Jew. Now when that southern kingdom was taken into captivity in Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BC, the people of that kingdom, because it was called Judah, were simply called Jews. Now they weren't all from the tribe of Judah, as I've said, but most of them were. But there were a significant minority that had come from other tribes as well, but they were all called Jews after the nation Judah, which was the nation that the Babylonians conquered. So ever since that time, any one of Israelite heritage is called a Jew. Now in biblical times, of course, there was a religion that God had given to their nation at Mount Sinai, but which most Israelites did not keep.

Certainly the northern kingdom did not, and even the southern kingdom didn't all the time. They often worshiped idols. The first rule of the Jewish religion is you have no other gods before me.

Make no idols. So you can see that at times when both Israel and Judah, the two nations, were worshiping idols, that none of them were practicing a Jewish religion. And therefore, in calling them Jews, we're talking about them ethnically or nationally.

And so the term has stuck. There are people in every part of the world who do not practice the Jewish religion, but they have their ancestors go back to this land of Judah, and therefore they're called Jews. So that's why they're called Jews. Now, of course, a person can be called a Jew because of his religion, even if he's not ethnically Jewish at all.

One very famous case in my parents' generation was Sammy Davis Jr., an African American entertainer who, in order to marry a Jewish girl, he converted to Judaism, and he became a Jew. Anyone can do it, and anyone can become a Jew in terms of the religion. Of course, not everyone can become an ethnic Jew. So you've got two very different ways of using the term Jew. One would be the ethnic Jew, whether they follow Jewish religion or they're atheists or Buddhists or Christian or whatever. An ethnic Jew can become any religion. On the other hand, there are religious Jews that can come from any ethnicity because a Gentile can become a Jew by becoming a proselyte. And so this is why you have the term Jew being used in a way that confuses.

Some of them are Jews, and they would say ethnically, and others would say they're Jews because they've been converted to Judaism, whether they have ethnic Jewish blood or not. All right, let's talk to John from Oregon City, Oregon. John, welcome to The Neuropath. Thanks for calling.

Hi, Steve. Thanks. Yesterday, I think it was yesterday, a brother named Tim from Fort Worth, Texas, mentioned one of my favorite passages.

Matthew 7, 21 through 23. Yeah. Do you remember?

Sure. I think he might have been our last call of the day. I don't recall. Yeah.

I think he was the second caller. Anyway. You're right.

It was earlier. So do you know of a passage in the Bible that would identify those people? Which people? The people that are thinking they're serving God and they're not? Well, I think the passage itself identifies them. In verse 21, Jesus said, Not everyone who says me, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father in heaven. So he's making a distinction between those who will and those who will not enter the kingdom of heaven. He says the ones who do the will of my Father in heaven shall enter the kingdom of heaven. And those who will not enter the kingdom of heaven. He says the ones who do the will of my Father in heaven, they will. So it would make it very clear that those who do not are the ones who do not do the Father's will in heaven. There's apparently only one indicator of who's who, and it's whether or not they do the will of the Father. Yeah.

In verse 23, it says, And then while I profess unto them, I never knew you. Yeah. Depart from me that work in believe the keyword there is new.

The Greek word is kenosis. Anyway, tell me if you think this correlates. I think this identifies with people. It's John 16, two and three, where it says, They shall put you out of the synagogues. Yea, the time cometh that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God's service. And these things will they do unto you because they have not known the Father nor me.

Think that correlates? Well, if those people ever do begin to call Jesus Lord and they don't cease to do evil, then they would be in that group. I don't think that group is limited to the ones he mentioned there. Actually, in that verse you used, it doesn't mention God knowing or not knowing them, but them not knowing God. And you might say, well, it's same thing, but maybe, but it's not verbally the same. So I don't think that's necessarily intended as a verbal parallel. But I, you know, sure. I mean, if people are killing Christians and thinking they're doing God a service, then they definitely are not doing the will of God.

So they would be among those that do not enter the kingdom of heaven, as Jesus said. Well, the Greek word is kenosis, kenosos. And in both, huh? Genosco with a G. Yeah. Yeah. You know, so in both passages, it's the same Greek word. Yeah.

And there's, there's actually, I think several hundred passages that have that word. Yeah. Right.

It's common word. Right. So I think it correlates. I think it identifies them.

It's interesting. These people who are doing these things, killing excommunicating people, kicking them out of the synagogues or out of the community and sometimes even killing them, they're doing what I would call top-down leadership rather than bottom-up. Jesus said, the princes of the Gentiles exercise. Right. Well, of course they are.

Of course they are. If they are in power and that's the way they're behaving, that is obviously a top-down leadership kind of situation. And by the way, I don't believe that the church is supposed to function as a top down leadership movement, but of course, Jesus started with the synagogues, not the church. He started with the Jews. He's not talking about Christians. And Jesus did say that Christians should not have that top-down leadership style. Although of course there are groups that do that still don't kill people.

I mean, killing people is not the same thing as top-down leadership, though obviously if someone's going to have the power to do that, they will have to be in that kind of a hierarchical structure. I appreciate your call. Okay. Tanya from Mill City, Washington.

Welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Hi. I have a question about the head coverings, the veils for women that's mentioned in the Bible. Yeah. I've been to several churches that very strictly require that for women, and they reference where the angel sees who's wearing them and who's not. First Corinthians 11 10.

Yeah. Yeah, and many churches have been to the Slavic churches in particular, and some Chinese speaking ones. And I see that in American churches it's not practiced, and I was wondering what your take is on that. Maybe you have from the Greek translation what it actually means.

Oh, yeah. In American churches there are groups where women wear head coverings. Mennonite women do, and Amish women do, and there are others. Certainly Roman Catholics have generally had the women wear head coverings when they come to church. So, and that's in America as well as anywhere else.

But there's a lot of churches in America where it is generally not practiced because it's not believed that First Corinthians 11 is describing Western culture, but Greek culture, which I guess is kind of Western culture, sort of on the border between East and West. But, yeah, you're in luck because I've actually written a lengthy treatment on this subject, which is posted on our website. If you go to thenarrowpath.com and click on the tab that says topical articles. Now, don't mix up with the tab that says topical lectures, but topical articles. I wrote some articles on this passage some years ago, and we've got them posted. Everything's free.

Of course, it won't cost you anything to download them or read them. But there is one called Should Women Be Veiled. It's based upon First Corinthians 11, and it's probably the most comprehensive treatment of that chapter that you'll encounter.

I'm not saying you can't find one more comprehensive, but it's about as comprehensive as I can imagine it being. So it does deal with this whole issue of the women's head coverings in that passage. I would say this, that passage is the only passage in the Bible that discusses it. And it's interesting that if that was really something that God wanted all people to do, you'd find it, you would think, taught by Jesus or by others, I mean, not just in one passage.

One passage is enough, but we have to ask ourselves, if it stands out that God is making it sound in one passage like what you have on your head or don't have on your head is somehow spiritually significant, then it raises questions about the rest of Scripture, which says that, for example, God looks on the heart and man looks on the outward appearance. I believe Paul is talking there about concerns of not offending people in a culture where women aren't expected to wear coverings on their heads. And I give my explanations why in my article. So that's at thenarrowpath.com and go to the tab that says topical articles and find the one that's called women's head coverings or should women be veiled or something like that. And it's easy to find.

It's easy to find. And that'll explain the passage very thoroughly, much more than I can hear right now. I appreciate your call. We take a break at this point. We're not done.

There's another half hour coming up, so don't leave. The Narrow Path is listener supported and we pay for the time on the radio from gifts that people send us unsolicited. And we're not even asking you to give, but some want to, obviously. And when they do, they need to send it to the Narrow Path, P.O. Box 1730, Temecula, California 92593 or our website thenarrowpath.com. All the Narrow Path radio shows and tell them to listen live right here on the radio. Thank you for sharing. Listeners supported the Narrow Path with Steve Gregg. Welcome back to the Narrow Path radio broadcast.

My name is Steve Gregg and we are live Monday through Friday at this same time. And if you can't usually listen to us on the radio because you live somewhere, maybe you caught us on the radio by accident today, but you live somewhere where we don't broadcast, you can get our app. We have a free mobile app which is by the same name thenarrowpath.com. You go to the app store, you go to Google Play and just search for it thenarrowpath.com. You'll see the app, download it for free, then you can listen to this program live every day wherever you are in the world or even in archives because there's archives going back many years with the programs.

And there's also hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of lectures of yours truly. So it doesn't have everything there that we have on the website, but it's got almost everything audio wise. So that's the Narrow Path app. And we're going to go to the phones. We do have one line open at the moment. The number is 844-484-5737. That's 844-484-5737. Our next caller then is Dave calling from Fallbrook, California. Hi Dave, good to hear from you again.

Hello Dave, are you there? Hi Steve, can you hear me? Yeah. Oh, I got a bit of a feedback or something. I'm hearing you're repeating again.

Oh yeah. I've got a question about the kingdom of God. I know you've talked to me before I asked a question this year about our Lord's Prayer. Yeah, can you hear me? Yes, continue please. So I called a while back and asked about a question about the Lord's Prayer. The one I have now is, see I'm hearing myself repeating before.

Okay, well fortunately it's not coming through on our end that way. So go ahead and give your question. Okay, so I've wondered why in uh the preachers in Spokane where I lived and now I live in Fallbrook, I've never heard anybody talk about the kingdom of God.

I've heard about the birth of Jesus at Christmas. Well now I have lost you. Are you there?

Should I ask them? Okay, you cut out for a while there, so I did miss part of what you said. You've heard about preachers talk about Christmas and other things but not about the kingdom of God, right? I'll call you right back. Well I can just answer your question now.

You said you wonder why preachers talk. Okay, Matthew 6. Okay, yeah, are you there? I am here. Please continue.

Okay, cool. Matthew 6. That's my question. Why nobody calls and asks about that? Nobody calls and asks about Matthew 6? Yeah, seek ye first, not later on. Okay, seek ye first the kingdom of God. Why did Jesus say that and not seek ye later if you get a chance? He always says seek ye first the kingdom. Well, he said it because it's the highest priority.

Seek first would mean it's the first priority for you to be seeking. So that's why he would say it that way. Now why people don't talk about it more, I'm not sure I could say. There's a lot of, you know, a lot of neglect of teaching the Word of God, I know, in the body of Christ.

So I can't really, you know, I don't know. I think that pastors preach what's maybe easier to preach. A lot of people have a hard time even defining the kingdom of God.

You may be aware that I just finished a two-volume book on the kingdom of God, altogether about 900 pages in two volumes. And there are other pastors, even some of them I quote, that indicate that they hadn't preached on the kingdom of God because they didn't find it something they understood. I mean, one of the quotes in my book is from C. Peter Wagner, who a decade or so ago or two was very, very prominent in the church growth movement nationwide.

And this is a quote from him that I have in my book. He said, I cannot help wondering out loud why I've heard, why I haven't heard more about the kingdom of God in the 30 years I've been a Christian. I certainly read about it enough in the Bible, but I honestly cannot remember any pastor whose ministry I've been under actually preaching a sermon on the kingdom of God. As I rummage through my own sermon barrel, I now realize that I myself have never preached a sermon on it. Where has the kingdom been?

He says. And this is actually something I actually have a John MacArthur quote from his book Slave, which is essentially about the kingdom of God only and looking at it from the other side from that of being subject, being subject to the kingdom. But he says that he never heard sermons on it either. And so, I mean, these are kind of mainstream Christian leaders and they admit that hearing about the kingdom of God is something that's not very commonplace. And yet if you'd heard Jesus or the apostles, you'd hear about nothing else because they talked about the kingdom in all their sermons and Jesus parables were all about the kingdom and his gospel was the gospel of the kingdom.

So I'd have to say it is true. Many listeners could probably say the same thing you did. They haven't ever heard a preaching about the kingdom. Now, I'm sure that many people have heard sermons about the verse you're talking about, Matthew 633, where Jesus said, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and these things be added to you. But I've heard a lot of sermons preached from that verse, but the pastors who preach them have almost never expounded on what is meant by that. When Jesus said, seek first the kingdom of God, well, what is that? And I think that many pastors have assumed or at least allowed their listeners to assume that the kingdom of God is maybe heaven.

And so that's your priority is to seek to go to heaven. Well, this is not what the kingdom of God is in the teaching of Jesus or in the apostles. In fact, I have no idea why the churches have allowed themselves to imagine that the kingdom of God refers to heaven.

It does not. But a lot of times you'll hear that verse preached. At least I have heard that verse preached, but I haven't really heard much discussion about what it is he's telling us to seek.

What is the kingdom of God? And that's why I wrote a couple of books on it. The first one is going to be out next month.

And the other one I hope will be out about a month later. Anyway, I can't really tell you why any given pastor hasn't preached on, but I have a feeling most of them have never really thought through to even understand what the kingdom of God really means. All right, let's talk to Harry from Claremont, California. Harry, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Hello.

Hi. I'm not certain that I'm saved and I continue to sin. So my question is, A, does God hear my prayers? And B, would he answer my prayers? Well, I think your concern needs to be whether you're on good terms with God more than whether you're going to get answers to your prayers. I believe God will answer the prayers of his children. The real question is, are you one of his children? Now, you say you continue to sin, but I'm not sure what that looks like because everybody sins.

Unfortunately, you know, we shouldn't, but everyone does. But the difference between a child of God and a child of the devil, as the contrast is made in 1 John 3, it says, By this we know the children of God and the children of the devil. This is 1 John 3, 10.

In this the children of God are manifested and the children of the devil. Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is he who does not love his brother. And so a person who's born of God loves his brethren and does not practice sin, but practices righteousness. Now, to say you don't practice something, it just means that's not what you do. Now, I mean, if someone falls down and, you know, skids, skims their knee and I put a Band-Aid on it, I'm not practicing medicine. I'm not a medical practitioner.

I'm a person who's maybe doing something that needs to be done that's in the medical realm, but I'm not a practicing physician. Likewise, a Christian who's practicing righteousness may sometimes do something that's not that, but he's not practicing sin. If you commit a sin and you're a follower of Christ, you repent of it, but you're not practicing it.

You repent of it and you get right with God as quickly as you can because you want your heart clear and you just keep following Jesus. So the real issue is, whether you're Christian or not, is whether you're following Jesus. Jesus said, my sheep know my voice and they follow me. So if we're one of his sheep, we're following him.

And that's how we know if we're a Christian. Now, how do I follow him? Well, first of all, you're not following him if you've never really intended to.

It's a decision you have to make. You have to repent of having followed your own ways. You have to repent of having made yourself the ruler of your life and put Jesus in his proper place as the ruler.

That's repentance. And once you've done that, then you intend to follow him and you will, but you will sometimes lapse, that is momentarily. You'll sometimes stumble because people do. People are not perfect and therefore people stumble. But when you do stumble, it will not be something that you want to do or like to do or that you won't regret doing.

If you want to follow Jesus, if your determination is to follow Jesus, then you'll be unhappy whenever you find out you have not. It's like if a vegan is determined not to eat any animal products, but then maybe they are served something they don't realize has some kind of, you know, butter in it or something like that. And they later find out they'll be very sorry because they don't intend to eat animal products. It doesn't mean they never will eat it.

In fact, they might even on purpose at some point in a weak moment, eat a piece of meat or cheese or something like that, which is not really what they want to do. And if they are true vegans, they'll be sorry they did it. Now, I'm not a vegan. I don't think anyone needs to be a vegan.

But what I'm saying is a vegan is somebody who is determined not to eat animal products. It doesn't mean they never will under temptation or accidentally, but it means that if they find out they have, if they truly are committed to be vegan, they'll be sorry about that. They'll not want to do that again.

They're going to make efforts not to do that again. And that's how Christians are about sin. We've determined we want to follow Jesus, and that means we're not going to sin. But that doesn't mean that under a weakness or deception that we won't ever stumble into sin.

But it means that if we find out we did, we don't think that's okay because it goes against our determination. And so what if you really believe into this and you say, I believe 65% but I have 35% doubt about what? Well, I'm not 100% believer in that Jesus has risen from the grave. Okay, so then you're not a believer yet. Yeah, a believer is somebody who believes that he did and who believes that he's the Lord. Well, I mean, you do or you don't.

It's not like 100% or a smaller percent. You either believe that, and that's something you're convicted about. That's something that you're persuaded of or else you're not persuaded of it and you don't believe it. You might have a part of you that thinks it could be true, but that's not believing it. There might be a part of you that wishes you could believe it, but that's not believing it. Believing it is when you've become persuaded that it is true and that it's determining the way you live.

Now, I will say this. Anyone who's not persuaded that Jesus rose from the dead, fortunately, there's a remedy for that. You can study the question. You can study the evidence for it.

There, you can understand why modern, rational, intelligent people sometimes do believe that he rose from the dead because there's tremendous evidence for it. Which one of your sermons would help me there? I've read your sermons online. Okay, well, my sermons aren't usually read. They're usually listened to because they're listening.

I'm sorry. Yeah. Well, I would suggest there's, I don't know the names of all my lectures because there's hundreds of them, but there's some on how do we know the Bible's true? There's a series called The Authority of Scripture where we go into evidences of things like that, including the resurrection of Jesus. The what scripture?

It's called The Authority of Scripture. If you go to thenarrowpath.com and you go to the topical lectures and you choose the series called The Authority of Scripture and listen to those lectures. There's also a single lecture where I definitely go into this and you'll find that at the same website, but what you have to do is you go to thenarrowpath.com.

Then under the topical lectures, you find the tab that says individual lectures or topics. Go there and you'll find there's a lecture called Why I am Still a Christian. That's why I am still a Christian. And you can also find that at my YouTube channel.

I mean the YouTube channel, just look up Steve Greg or Bible Gates is the YouTube channel. And you'll find a video of me giving those lectures on why I'm still a Christian. I go into the resurrection of Jesus and the evidence quite a bit. Well, it sounds like you're saying at this time, since I don't have a hundred percent belief that God will not hear my prayer and answer the prayer at this time.

Well, right. Well, he'll answer your prayers of repentance. But I mean, if you're making requests that God will intervene to do this or whatever for you, there's no promises of God that he'll do that for people who are not his children. I thought I've read a scripture that says I don't hear you if you sin or something to that nature. David said, if I regard sin in my heart, the Lord will not hear me. And that simply means he will not, uh, he will not answer me. It doesn't mean he can't hear me, but, uh, everybody. Sins and everybody has to be heard by God in order to be saved.

You have to cry out to God and confess your sin. So, and I raised these questions because I did read your list of your sermon about how do I know that I'm saved? About two or three hours. I listened to two or three hours. I listened to it and, uh, there's four main criteria and, uh, I don't believe I pass. I just don't believe I pass.

I said, you know, this is a tough school to get into. Well, you know, it's all or nothing. That's all it is. You know, anyone can do it, but they have to be all in.

That's the thing. It's not like marriage. Anyone can get married, but they have to be all in. If you're not all in, you're not married.

Uh, so I mean, it's like if you're applying for several jobs and they say, well, we'll hire you and we've got these great benefits and so forth and you'll like the job, but you can't work or we don't want your moonlight in anywhere else. You have to be all, all in with us. You have to be loyal.

And that's what it is. Becoming a follower of Christ means you recognize he's the King and you either are going to be in rebellion against the King and still look for other things to make yourself happy alongside your awareness that you, there's a King out there, or you submit to the King or you're either a rebel or, or submitted to the King. Once you know, once you know there's a King and you either have to submit to him like is appropriate, or you have to become a deserter.

And there's of course consequences for that down the road. But yeah, I think that if you listen to my lectures, why I'm still a Christian, that that will cover a lot of this for you. And I, and certainly feel free to call back again after you've done. So if you still have lingering questions or doubts, I'd be glad to talk to you more about it. Thank you.

Okay. Harry, thank you for calling. Good talking to you. Uh, John from Indianapolis, Indiana, welcome to the narrow path. Hi John. Hi Steve.

Good afternoon. Yeah. Same to you. Uh, yeah. Uh, kudos actually kudos to that man for his honesty. And, uh, I think the Lord's working on his heart and, uh, you know, it was not until I could get or receive the honesty in my heart that I had a breakthrough, um, in my belief, you know, I had to get honest first about where I was at, you know, um, and, uh, it's really important, um, for at least it was for me. Hey, um, I wanted to ask a question up first. I have a comment and then, uh, a question on Zachariah. Uh, my comment is a line, a song line that I heard that asks the question, where is Krishna when you need him? And Steve, that's stuck with me, you know, and where are all these little gods when we need these little gods and the answer is in Elijah is that they're sleeping. They're there, you know, so that one stuck with me. I just wanted to leave that with you.

You know, where is Krishna when we need him? There seems to be in my mind, a lot of confusion on the names of God, the place of David, uh, in history and, um, how, how the chosen people are confusing, um, their Messiah with the real Messiah, with Jesus, how it's being confused and twisted. And let me just stop in here. Let me jump in here. Cause, uh, you've just raised three different subjects and you said you had a question about Zachariah. Uh, I'm not sure which direction we're going here today. Okay.

Okay. Well, um, unfortunately I went from my notes and I can't find the right page for something anyway, but I I'm seeing, uh, and reading that, uh, there, there were many Jesus's many resurrections claimed before, uh, Jesus came into the world. And I didn't know that.

No reason you didn't notice. It's not true. There is a, there is a, what's called the Jesus myth theory, which is out there on the internet. And, uh, and a lot of people have heard it and don't know any better than to believe it. The argument is that even before the story of Jesus came along, there were similar stories about deities from other, uh, religions like Horus and Osiris from Egypt, or like, uh, Dionysus from, uh, I guess that'd probably be in Greek, Greece, uh, or Bacchus, the Romans called him, uh, or Mithras, you know, Mithra, um, and so forth. And, and they are, and Krishna too, Krishna is in there in India. Uh, the suggestion is that all of these deities, which are, you know, those religions are older than Christianity.

They all have a, uh, a leader who was born of a Virgin who had 12 disciples, who walked on water, who turned water into wine, uh, who is crucified and who rose again on the third day. Now, this is a claim that's made for example, by a silly movie, uh, called site Geist on online, very popular movie, but it makes all these claims for these deities. And therefore the suggestion is therefore, uh, Jesus, you know, these things being reported Jesus, they're not very original and it's just a myth. It's just another myth, like the myths about Mithra or Osiris or Horus or whoever.

Uh, this is simply not true. All, all one has to do to figure out if this is true is go to any, go to the encyclopedia Britannica, go to any encyclopedia and look at Mithra or look up Krishna or look up Horus because these are of course, uh, gods that were worshiped by other cultures and see if you find any of them because the encyclopedias will tell you all the story about them and see if there's any of them that were born of a Virgin. There are none, any that had 12 apostles, none, any that walked on water, nope, any that were crucified, not a single one of them, any that rose on the third day.

No, there's none of those in there either. I've looked them up. I actually have on YouTube, a two part series I gave exposing the lies and I actually, I give the actual information about those religions and about those characters and show that the, you know, the standard works and the original source on those things indicate there's not any, any clear resemblance to anything about Jesus at all. Now there's another thing about them too, and that is for most of these religions, although they are older, they are Christianity.

We don't have any records of them older than the Christian records. And so like, like Mithraism, it is sometimes argued that there's some things in Mithraism that kind of similar to what's in Christianity. Like they had a ritual that's kind of resembles baptism, though it's not really, it's more like standing in a pit under a bull while it's slaughtered and having blood drip over you. That's not very much like baptism, but they try to find anything they can that they say, maybe this is the source of the Christian teaching. But the fact is these sources are later than Christianity.

We don't know what Mithraism taught or did before the time of Christ, because the oldest sources we have it are from like the third or fourth century AD, which means Christianity was pretty dominant in that part of the world before these sources came into being and there's more likelihood they copied Christianity than the other way around. But the real difference between- Absolutely perfect, Steve. Can I interject? Yeah. Yeah. This is exactly what I read. And I was confused about where does Paul talk, Paul talks about preaching a different Jesus. And I've been confused about that for such a long time. What you said is exactly what I read. Okay. Right.

Exactly. Another thing to consider too, another thing to consider about it is that all of the is that all of these were myths. That is all of these other religions were myths. They don't claim to be historical.

There's no date or place or anything like that. Nothing historical is assigned to them. They kind of are myths that occur allegedly in some timeless realm and they do not interact. None of these gods interact with any real historical characters because it's a mythology. On the other hand, Jesus, he was set at a particular time and place and he interacted with known historical people.

We're told it was in the 15th year of Tiberius Caesar when he started that Pontius Pilate had him crucified and his disciples had confrontations with Herod Agrippa and so forth. There's all kinds of historical characters known from history that interact with Jesus. This is totally different than any of the mythological gods. There's never any claims that they existed in any particular historical setting, interacted with real historical people at all. Everything about Jesus is different about that. In fact, the disciples who wrote his story had walked with him.

This is nothing that any of the other gods can say. So there's really no resemblance whatsoever. It is just one of many, many, many ways in which unbelievers try to debunk Jesus. But it's interesting and encouraging to me that if the best they can do to debunk Jesus is to make up stuff out of thin air, then they don't have a very good case, do they?

It must be awfully hard to debunk the Jesus story if you have to make such goofy stuff up without the slightest historical evidence behind it. But I would suggest you go online and just do this. Look up the word Zeitgeist. It's spelled Z-E-I-T-G-E-I-S-T. It's German. It means time ghost or the spirit of the times. Zeitgeist. Zeitgeist. And put my name in there, Steve Gregg.

Gregg has two Gs at the end. And if you do it on YouTube or just on Google, probably you'll find my videos where I go point by point through that video and debunk every one of these things. I think that would help you out. I appreciate your call. And by the way, John, I'm going to be in Indianapolis. I'm going to be in Indianapolis speaking in a few weeks. So if you're interested in joining us, you can go to our website, thenarrowpath.com. Look under announcements and just see when I'm going to be there. I forget what dates I'm there, but it's early next month. Oh, that's a treat.

What a gift. That'll be great. Yeah. All right.

Tell your friends. All right. I'll call back about Zachariah.

I'll get my notes. I'll call back. All right. Thanks, John. God bless. Thanks for your call. God bless you. All right. Let's try to get another call in here.

We've got Jane from Texas. Welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Hi. Hi. I have a question for you.

I just wanted to let you know I'm a believer. Okay. I'm sorry. The music started. I wish we could have gotten to it earlier.

I didn't realize the music was going to start quite this quick. I can't take your question. I'm sorry to say I'd love to. Please call back earlier tomorrow and I will try to get to you.

I know you waited a long time. All right. I'd love to talk to you. Okay. Call me back, Jane. God bless you.

You've been listening to the Narrow Path Radio Broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we are live Monday through Friday at this same time. And you can write to us. We are a listener supporter. If you want to help support, you can.

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