The Narrow Path 9/24

Music Good afternoon and welcome to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we're live for an hour each week of the afternoon taking your calls if you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith. And you can call in if you have questions like that or you have a different viewpoint from the host. The number to call is 844-484. 5737. Now our lines are full so don't call right now but call in a few minutes. And you may find a line has opened up at this number. Again it's 844-484.

5737. And we will of course go to the lines very quickly because they are full. I just want to make a couple of announcements. One of them is that many of you have been to the website called matthew713.com. We've mentioned it a number of times on the air here. It's actually not a website that I have any control over but some volunteers put it together a couple of years ago. And they've been posting individual calls from this program on different topics under a topical index. And you can go there and look up a topic and it will take you directly to a call. It will hyperlink you to a call from past programs about that subject.

In fact on many subjects there will be a lot of different choices. And I was just told by one of the brothers who does this website that this is the second year anniversary from him beginning to work on this. And that there are now 10,000 calls logged on the index. So it's no small database. If you're interested in any biblical question that would ever have been talked about on this show in the past, the number of calls on there is now up to 10,000. And I would also say that that doesn't even bring it up to date I think. They're still working on more years in our archives.

So it will grow beyond that considerably. But if you're interested, the website is matthew713.com. And the other thing I want to just say is I get letters from prisoners. And one prisoner, Gino Carolla in Seagoville, Texas, actually said that he has quite a few prisoners there listening to this program. And he said he knew of at least 10 others besides himself in the prison there. We, of course, prisoners can't call into the show.

So we sometimes get letters from them. But it's good to know that we have the program reaching people in prisons as well as out in the world at large. And Gino, I just want to greet you and the 10 or so that are there. God bless you. And I know you're, I think you're planning to get out in March. I hope all goes well.

All right. Let's talk to, well, we got a caller from Australia. Or we did. I guess he had to hang up. I noticed before the program went on the air that that caller has hung up now. So I guess we don't have a caller from Australia. Instead, we'll go to a caller from Peachtree City, Georgia.

Okay. And that's going to be Paul. Hi, Paul.

Hi, Steve. I have a quick question about a conversation I've been having with a man who was a former Mormon turned Christian. And now he is turning from Christianity or has turned Christianity toward Judaism. And one of his big objections is about the role of the sacrifice and how that in Ezekiel 18, it talks about how the person will die for their own sin. And he's objecting that that Jesus could suffer in our place.

I wondered if you could address that and maybe talk a little bit about any atonement theory that you think might have the best sense of the scriptures. Okay. Now, by the way, your phone is breaking up terribly. I did hear your question, but several words dropped out, but I think I can get it. So I'm going to go ahead and hang up and I'll answer your question. Okay. Thank you.

All right. Thank you for your call, Paul. So a Mormon friend came out of Mormonism into Christianity, then is moving toward Judaism. And the objection that he has to Christianity is that the Christianity teaches that Jesus died as an atoning sacrifice in our place. And in Ezekiel 18, it says that a man will die for his own sins, not for the sins of his father or for the sins of his son, but for his own sins. And he figures that that somehow cancels out the possibility of an atonement being made for sins.

Now, it's interesting that he's moving toward Judaism because Judaism is a religion, at least in the Bible, it's a religion about atonement. Every year there's the Day of Atonement where animal sacrifices are taken into the Holy of Holies to atone for the sins of the nation. Likewise, the ongoing regular sacrifices week by week and day by day in the Jewish faith were about the very same thing. They were about the same thing. They were about the same thing.

They were about the same thing. Now, of course, Judaism today doesn't practice sacrifices, but that's because they can't. The only place they can do that is in their temple. Their temple in Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 A.D.

It has never been rebuilt. And therefore they don't have a sacrificial system anymore. But that is the central part of the Jewish religion. So in other words, the modern Jewish religion doesn't have what in the Bible is the central part of it, doesn't have a sacrifice of atonement, doesn't have a temple and any of that stuff. Now, that would mean that Judaism today is not biblical. You know, if you can't practice biblical Judaism, you don't just make it up as you go along. The reason that God did away with the temple system is because it was no longer needed because Christ had come. But Jews who don't receive Christ, they might as well just abandon their religion altogether because the main part of it in the Bible is the sacrificial system.

And God has taken them, taken that away from them because he's finished that system and finished it with Christ offering the final sacrifice. So, I mean, going to Judaism is just going to a manmade religion now. The biblical Judaism doesn't exist anymore.

So I don't know why you want to do that. But the interesting thing is why Judaism? I mean, Judaism is where we are first introduced to the idea of sacrificial atoning substitution. And it's a it's a picture and a shadow of Christ and his death doing the same for us.

So it's a strange move to make. I know Judaism doesn't have that anymore, but that's because it's a manmade religion. When Judaism was a God ordained religion, the central issue was atoning sacrifice. And that's, of course, a very important thing in the New Testament, too.

Now, the idea that someone can die for somebody else doesn't cancel out the idea. In Ezekiel 18, that says a man shall not die for his father's sins or for his son's sins, the soul that sin shall die. In that context, Ezekiel is talking about the people of his time who are facing the destruction of their of their country by the Babylonians. And the prophet predicts bloodshed, you know, high body count.

A lot of people dying because of the wickedness of the nation. And there were some who were saying that they were suffering not because of their own sins, but because their fathers. And ancestors had sinned. And God is saying, no, that's not true. You die for your own sins. You're not dying for your father's sins or for your son's sins. You're dying for your own sins. That doesn't mean that that God can't allow a substitute to die in place.

That's a different issue. He's talking about the reason that the Babylonian invasion is coming. And so many people are going to die and pointing out that they can't blame it on the sins of somebody else.

It's their own sins. But that's a different issue entirely than the question of whether a life can be atoned for. Because the entire Old Testament system, in fact, the system that was going to be destroyed by the Babylonians when Ezekiel was writing, presupposed that animals can die in place of humans as atonement. And the New Testament simply tells us that God has sent has come himself in a living form, in a human form, to die in our place.

He's just the finishing up of that whole system. Now, to say that a man can't die for another person's sins is to say that God can't work things out as he wishes to do. Jesus said that he came to give his life a ransom for many. Now, this man was a Mormon at one time, so he believed in Jesus in some form. Then he was a Christian, so he believed in Jesus in some form.

As a Jew, he will not believe in Jesus, but we better make sure that we don't give up on Jesus because of a misunderstanding that we have. Because if he is who he claims to be, then he's all we've got. He's the only mediator between God and man. He's the only salvation available to man.

And so if someone says, well, I don't like this about Christianity, and the thing they don't like is something they misunderstand, it's a very tragic thing for them to give up on their only hope just because they misunderstood something. What the Bible teaches is that God can do what he wants to do. If he wants to take the sins of the world upon himself and die in the place of sinners instead of an animal doing it, which is, I mean, remember, John the Baptist referred to Jesus as the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. In other words, he's taking the place of a lamb in the sacrificial system. Now, what does the sacrificial system do? A person who is a human sinner would lay hands on an animal, suggesting a transferral of guilt to the animal, and then the animal would be killed on the altar.

Now, of course, the animal didn't really take on the guilt of the person. The Bible makes it very clear it's impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins, it says in Hebrews chapter 9. So, obviously, this was not really what was saving them, but it was a type and a shadow that God had ordained. It was a symbolic action to portray the idea of a guilty person's sin being transferred in God's sight to an innocent victim, and that victim being sacrificed instead. All of this was pointing forward to Christ. So the Bible teaches very clearly that Jesus died in our place and died for our sins, and that we can be saved because he did so. If that concept is difficult for your friend, then he probably will never become a Christian. In fact, I doubt that he did ever. If a person was a Mormon and transitioned through Christianity toward Judaism, he's not a Christian.

He probably never was. He's probably a person who's just searching through different religious options, and his sojourn in the realm of the Christian church was probably just as experimental for him as his Mormonism and his next step will be. People are not saved by experimenting with Jesus. People are saved by completely surrendering to Jesus Christ their whole lives and following him with all their lives and trusting him. And obviously, if a person trusts Jesus and he says, I'm giving my life as a ransom for many, then they can't turn around and say, but he can't do that.

No one can give their life as a ransom for someone else. Well, if God says you can, if Jesus says you can, and you say that he can't, well, then I'm going to believe God because who are you? How do you know everything about it?

Where's your expertise come from? You see, I think that part of being a Christian is you believe Jesus and you don't say, well, he can't be right about that. So I think your friend was not a Christian. He was in the Christian camp, but he was not a believer, obviously, and he still is not.

But certainly his objection based on Ezekiel 18 carries no weight at all. OK, another Paul in Sacramento, California. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Hey, Steve. Yours is the one show I really make a point to listen to every day. Thank you.

Appreciate it. I have a question about Isaiah 714. We all know about that verse. But my question is how the verse related at the time it was given. It was a sign for a has that he was going to be victorious over Syria.

Right. And that his I don't know if it was his wife or concubine, whoever would give a would have would give birth to a son named Emmanuel. And that would be the proof that he was going to be victorious. So my question is, whatever happened to that, Emmanuel? It seems like that should have been a pretty significant person in history.

And we don't hear anything about him. Well, for those who aren't familiar with the passage, it's a passage usually quoted around Christmastime. Because as the virgins, she'll conceive and bring forth the son and she'll call his name Emmanuel. And and of course, it's quoted in Matthew Chapter one as being fulfilled in Christ being born of a virgin. But you're right in the context in Isaiah seven. It's not at all a clear reference to Christ, but rather to a child that would be born almost immediately after the prophecy was given. Because he said it was a sign that would be given to a has the king. And it had it had to do with the two kings that were presently threatening him, the king of Syria and the king of Israel.

Now, a has, of course, was the king of Judah and Israel and Syria both threatening him. And and so Isaiah comes says, I'm going to God's going to give you a sign. And this sign will guarantee that these kings will not defeat you. In fact, they will be destroyed within a very, very short time. And the prophecy was a child is going to be born. And and before that child reaches an age of being able to know to choose good and refuse the evil. These kings are there to be gone. They'll be done.

God's going to remove them. And so this is a obviously had to do with a child that would be born soon after this. And the very next chapter, Isaiah Chapter eight, Isaiah is instructed to go into this prophetess who apparently was his wife and have a child with her. And when the child was born, the child is actually referred to as Emmanuel. Although that's not his real name. That's not his real name any more than it's Jesus's real name. It says his name shall be called Emmanuel. It doesn't mean that's really what they're going to have on his birth certificate any more than what it says about Jesus. His name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. None of those names are on Jesus's birth certificate.

His name was Jesus and Isaiah's child was named Mahershalel Hashpaz, as you find in the first verse of Chapter eight. Right. But both of them.

Yeah. So both of them, Isaiah's child and Jesus, were both referred to as Emmanuel, as basically saying the word means God with us or some translations say God is with us. It could go either way. The idea is that the birth of Isaiah's child was a signal and a sign to Ahaz that God was with Judah and that before this child would reach an age capable of choosing right from wrong. In other words, in its very young age in Chapter eight, it actually is before the child shall know to say my mother or my father. So when it's a very young infant, these kings will be destroyed.

And they were within three years, all of those those armies that were coming against them, the kings that commanded them were either killed or taken into captivity. So you have a fulfillment of it in Isaiah's own time. And but you say, what happened to that child then?

I don't know. He probably just went on living just like everybody else. It wasn't that he was so important, except in the sense that his birth would signal the countdown of a very few years before these kings were destroyed. So it's not like Isaiah's child was going to play an important role in anything, just that his birth was a sign.

And now, of course, we say, well, how does this then apply to Jesus? And if it is referring to Isaiah's child, how could it say, as it does, the virgin will conceive and bring forth a child? How could it be that Isaiah's son is referred to as being born of a virgin? We know Jesus was born of a virgin because Mary had never known a man. But Isaiah's son is specifically said to have been conceived as a result of Isaiah's union with this with this woman.

Now, I can explain that one of maybe two possible ways. One of them would be that the woman that Isaiah married was a virgin at the time of the prophecy. And then Isaiah married her and she conceived. So he might be saying a virgin.

That is, which can also mean a young girl in Hebrew, although the Greek translation of it in the Septuagint means a literal virgin. But a young woman, a virgin, will get pregnant. Now, she's wasn't perhaps she was perhaps a virgin at the time as predicted.

And you could even point out this virgin right here. She's going to get pregnant and have a baby. The fact that she was a virgin meant she wasn't already pregnant.

But but she could get pregnant like any woman could be. And therefore, Isaiah went into her and she had a child and fulfilled that prophecy. Another way of looking at it, though, is that it was it doesn't say a virgin will conceive. It says the virgin.

It specifically is the virgin shall conceive. And it's very possible to my mind that he's using the term the virgin as a term referring to the nation of Judah or the city of Jerusalem. And the reason I say so is because later on in Isaiah, Isaiah thirty seven in verse twenty two. It says this is the word which the Lord has spoken concerning Sennacherib, king of Assyria. He says the virgin, the daughter of Zion, has despised you, laughed you to scorn.

The daughter of Jerusalem has shaken her head behind her back. Now, the daughter of Jerusalem means the people of Jerusalem. The virgin, the daughter of Zion, is the city of Jerusalem. And he calls her the virgin.

Now, I will have to say this in all full disclosure. The Hebrew word here is different in Isaiah chapter thirty seven verse twenty two. The word virgin is a different Hebrew word than the one in Isaiah seven fourteen.

But that's simply because there are words that are synonyms of each other in Hebrew as in English. But the point is that the nation or the capital city of Judah, Jerusalem, was actually referred to as the virgin. And in the prediction of Isaiah's child being born in Isaiah seven fourteen, it says the virgin will conceive and bear a child.

So he could be talking about a woman who was a virgin but who didn't remain a virgin. And Isaiah married her and had a baby with her. Or it could be referring simply to the fact that the child would be born in Jerusalem. It would be a Jerusalemite child who would be born. And it happened to be Isaiah's child. But it was the virgin, the city of Jerusalem, that is was where he came from. Just like Jesus in Revelation 12 is described as being born from a woman that John sees who is laboring in pain for childbirth.

But it's not Mary. It's referring to the Jews. Israel is referred to as the pregnant woman in Chapter 12 of Revelation. And so, you know, it's figurative.

I mean, it could be figurative. Could be figuratively speaking of Jerusalem having, producing a child. And this would be Isaiah's child. But the child wouldn't do anything.

There's nothing the child is said to do. It's just his birth is a sign. It just seems strange that in Matthew when it's quoted, we're talking about the most significant person in the universe. But then in Isaiah, it's like kind of a nobody, I guess. Well, I believe that the child of Isaiah is considered to be a type of Christ. And many things in the Old Testament are types of Christ. Some of them, all of them are less significant than Jesus. And some of them are not particularly significant at all.

They're just things that serve as a type and a shadow of Christ. Yeah. Okay. All right. Thanks, Steve. I appreciate it. Okay, Paul. Thanks for your call. God bless you. Okay, our next caller is Ian in Tallahassee, Florida.

Ian, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Hello, Steve. Thank you for taking my call. How are you today? I'm fine. Thank you.

Cool. I had a couple of questions for you, but I think I'll ask the more important one today. I recently saw a famous fundamentalist say in a blog, for Paul, fear of eternal condemnation was the first motivation he offered for coming to Christ, the first pressure he gave to evil men, yet cites not a single biblical passage. I may be missing something, but is this not the opposite of Paul's approach? Seems like in the 200 plus times I've read the letters of Paul, I haven't noticed him to first approach the wrath of God, and eternal condemnation is the first motivation.

I was curious about your thoughts. Yeah, I think that preacher who said that maybe speaking from his own motivations and assuming Paul had the same ones, a lot of times we assume people in the Bible were just like us. And many Christians, no doubt, are serving God primarily out of fear of hell, which is unfortunate because that's not the reason we should be serving God. We should be serving God because we love God and because he's worthy of it.

And if there was no heaven or hell, we should still be eager to serve him because of who he is. But I don't think Paul was highly motivated by that. Of course, in 2 Corinthians 5, he does say, knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men.

Which, in other words, he's afraid for other men. And he does want them to, you know, he wants to persuade them to escape the wrath to come, like John the Baptist tried to do with the Jews. Paul is aware that there's a horrible consequence for being opposed to Christ and knowing that terror of the Lord, he persuades men as best he can to avoid it. But we don't actually see him saying that he used this fear to convert men.

It motivated him to convert them. But we never read any of the sermons of Paul in the book of Acts even mentioning heaven or hell. So when he's preaching to sinners, as far as the record shows, he never mentioned eternal judgment or any other particular judgment. He did say in Acts 17 to the people on Mars Hill that God has appointed a day where he'll judge the world.

But he didn't say what the judgment would be. Certainly there's no reference in any of Paul's writings to eternal torment. And frankly, the word hell, none of the Greek words for hell appear in any of Paul's writings either. So I'm not sure where this preacher is getting it.

I know when I wrote my book on the three views of hell and reading the books by those who hold the traditional view, they often just assumed that this was a major concern for the people in the first century. Because that's the way they themselves preach the gospel. And perhaps that's the way themselves are motivated to serve God. There are some people who say if there's no hell, then why would I even serve God? It's the whole motivation for them, which means they don't love God because no one has to tell me, you know, if why would I be faithful to my wife if I know that being unfaithful won't get me killed? Well, because I'm not I'm not faithful to my wife in order to avoid getting killed.

I'm unfaithful to my wife out of love. Same thing with God. I should love God whether I have any fear of torment or not. And we don't find Paul discussing it. Paul mentioned judgment and tribulation and torment in Romans chapter two. And he also mentioned people suffering eternal destruction, which is not the same thing as torment in Second Thessalonians one.

But Paul never did mention eternal torment anywhere. And he never suggested that I can think of any place where he said that he was personally motivated by fear of judgment, too, in his own Christian life or in his own service of God. He said the love of Christ constrains us, for thus we judge that if one died for all, then all were dead. And he says and that we who live should live for him who died and rose again. So he said he's constrained not by fear, but by the love of God who who died for us. And he felt like the way I see it, if he died for me, I ought to live for him.

So this is how Paul talked about the situation very differently than the man you just quoted. All right. OK, I appreciate your call. I've got a break coming up here. OK, God bless you. Yeah, I should be hearing the music.

I'm not hearing the music, but I know that we have a break here at this point. So I need to take some time out to say the narrow path is a listener supported ministry. And we are we pay for the time on the radio. That's where the money goes. We have no staff, no paid staff. We have no payroll. I'm a volunteer.

Everybody is a volunteer. But we we do have to pay for time on the radio stations. So that's how we stay on the air. If you'd like to help us stay on the air, you can write to the narrow path. P.O. Box 1730 Temecula, California.

Nine two five nine three. Now, even though it sounds like we're signing off, we're not. We have another half hour, so don't go away. You can also go to our Web site.

It's the narrow path dot com. And if you'll stay tuned, I'll be back in 30 seconds to take more of your calls. The Book of Hebrews tells us do not forget to do good and to share with others. So let's all do good and share the narrow path with Steve.

Greg, with family and friends. When the show is over today, tell one and all to go to the narrow path dot com where they can study, learn and enjoy with free topical audio teachings, blog articles, verse by verse teachings and archives of all the narrow path radio shows. And be sure to tell them to tune into the show right here on the radio. Share listeners supported the narrow path with Steve. Greg, share and do good. Welcome back to the narrow path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Greg and we're live for another half hour. Taking your calls if you have questions you'd like to call in with and talk about the questions about the Bible or Christianity.

Objections you may have to the Bible or to the Christian faith. If you have disagreement with the host about anything, give me a call. We'll talk about it. The number is 844-484-5737. That number again is 844-484-5737.

All right. Our next caller is Mike from Colorado. Mike, thanks for waiting.

Welcome to the narrow path. Good afternoon, Steve. Thank you so much for taking my call. It's so great to talk to you again. I'm like the millennial.

I'm 24 from Colorado. I had a comment to offer real quick. I'm so happy to hear that this show is reading prisons and it's amazing. So many of the people in the prison system went through a lot of the same troubles that you and me went through growing up, but they didn't have the same support system.

It's interesting because the United States has 5% of the world's population, but has 25% of the world's prison population. I definitely think that we need to do more about this, but the Bible says faith come by hearing and hearing by the word of God. I think that this show really is helping a lot of people in that aspect. So I wanted to personally thank you for the service you do, Steve. Okay.

Thanks for your call. I had a question, but I had a comment actually today on the Witch of Endor, actually. This is in the Hebrew Bible.

A comment and a question. A Witch of Endor is a woman's soul consulted to summon the spirit of Samuel in the 28th chapter of the first book of Samuel in order to receive advice against the Philistines in battle against his prior attempts to consult God through sacred lots and prophets. It's kind of interesting, Steve, when we talk about the Witch of Endor being summoned by Samuel in the Old Testament, and I wanted to get a better understanding of what purpose Samuel summoned. You mean Saul? Right. Saul summoned Samuel using the Witch of Endor's help, because the Bible does specifically warn against that, and would that be considered kind of a sin in the Bible's eyes, summoning Samuel?

Oh, absolutely. In fact, it says in Chronicles, I believe, at the end of 2 Chronicles that, oh no, I'm sorry, it's either in 2 Samuel or else it's in 1 Chronicles, that it mentions specifically that Saul died because of his going to the witch, because he summoned Samuel. It's absolutely forbidden in the Old Testament to go to a seance or to summon the dead in any way. Whether Saul fully understood this, I don't know, because he might not have read the law very much or remembered it very much. But it was, oh, the verse I'm thinking of is 1 Chronicles 10, 13. It talks about how Saul was killed because he went to the Witch of Endor. So it's obviously a judgment that came upon him for that crime of going to a seance.

Why he did so? Well, we have to remember that he was quite far from God at this time. He was tormented by an evil spirit himself, and Samuel, who had been his counselor in the early years of his reign, had been dead for some time now, and he was trying to get some idea of what the future held.

The Philistines were closing in upon Israel, and Saul either wanted to find out how things were going to turn out or, as you say, perhaps to get advice about how to attack the Philistines effectively. But God wasn't speaking to him. The Bible says he didn't hear from God through dreams or through the Urim or through the prophets, which are some of the major ways that God spoke in the Old Testament to give a king guidance, but he did the wrong thing when he decided, if God wasn't speaking to me that way, I'm going to go to a witch. Now, by the way, if God wanted to speak to him, he could have done it through dreams or Urim or prophets, but God was giving him the silent treatment because he had rejected God. God had rejected him, and so God wasn't interested in speaking to him. And because God wasn't doing what he wanted him to do, that is speaking, he's going to go around God's back and go to an occultist to get a hold of the spirit of Samuel. And so I think he was hoping that Samuel might give him some advice like he had before, but Samuel came up and simply rebuked him for departing from God's ways. So yeah, that was one of the reasons given, primary reason I think that's given for him having been killed the next day. And it's interesting because I think Saul knew Samuel in their time on earth, and Saul wanted to contact Samuel to kind of, as you said, kind of learn more about the future and what his prophecy, what his future was.

And, you know, I just think that that's, you know, a very interesting correlation you make about that. And, you know, just getting your point of view means a lot to me on the subject, Steve. So thank you. Okay, Mike. Well, thanks for calling.

God bless you. Okay, let's talk to, looks like this name is off the screen for, it looks like it might be Ron or Tom. I can't tell who that is. I'm sorry, I can't even tell where this is coming from. Oh, it's Ron. Let's talk to Ron from Washington State. Go ahead.

Hi, how you doing there? I got a question I'd love to find out the truth about. They have this thing called the unpardonable sin. And what I want to know is, are there people that go to the extreme where they keep denying the Holy Spirit and then they can never be reached again?

Probably so. That's, that may or may not be what the, what people call the unpardonable sin, but that it is the case in Scripture. The Bible says that he that hardens his heart being often reproved will suddenly be destroyed and that without remedy.

And cut off without remedy. Right. But on the internet that said Billy Graham, he said, Well, it's if you don't take these, you know, the sacrifice at the cross for your sins, and you just die that way. Apparently, then that would be the unpardonable sin. That sounds right to me. But I thought there was some point, you know, where there are people that are walking around where nobody will ever be able to reach them.

They're gone. It's like the Holy Spirit pulled up at 10 pegs and split. You know, you cannot get at this person. Is that what you believe? I think there are people like that.

Sure. I mean, Paul talks about that in Romans one, how God gives people over to a reprobate mind, which means something that's incapable of making moral judgments. They become almost like a sociopath. They don't have any conscience. And therefore, if you don't have a conscience, you're not going to be convicted and get and repent.

So they're gone. And see, the discussion was somebody I'm on a bus and they said, Well, no, anybody can be reached. And I asked my brother that's a little bit knowledgeable in the gospel. He kind of embraces anybody can be reached.

And I thought I had heard along the line, just like you said, you get cut off on that without remedy. Nobody but nobody, but nobody will ever get through to that person. They're caught up in whatever they're caught up in the world, and they're not going to ever accept Jesus. Well, if somebody says there are people that if someone says everybody can be reached, probably what they're referring to is the fact that God is not willing that any should perish. But those all should come to repentance and that there's not some elect subgroup in the human race that that God wants saved in the others unsaved, as the Calvinist would suggest, and therefore that they would say not everyone can be reached because everyone's not elect. Now, I believe everyone can be reached at some point in their life, but you can do things in your life that harden you against God.

So you're no longer really responsive. And that's not because God is not interested in your salvation. It's not because you did something so bad that God is just saying, Oh, I hate you now, so I won't save you.

It's because your heart has become so hard. You're not at all inclined to turn to God. That's what I embraced to be. That's what I embraced to be true. And so what I'm going to tell people is I did speak to the narrow path and narrow path states best is the can be figured. There are people walking around on two legs with two eyes and two arms, and there's nobody but nobody. Nobody ever reached this person.

They're totally gone. Well, the narrow path and Steve Gregg are not the final authorities on anything. So to say, well, narrow path said this doesn't doesn't care much weight, but Bible does. But it's of assistance in the discussion that I did reach out to somebody that's very knowledgeable and said that that there seemed to embrace what I embraced it because I had heard that somewhere along the line. And I just always embraced that to be a truth.

Let me just say this, too. Even if we acknowledge that people do sometimes get to the point where they can't come back to Christ, we don't know who's gotten there and has not. Just because somebody is very evil doesn't mean that they've gotten to that point.

Only God would know that. I mean, it's more or less it's more or less a what we say, a theoretical point. It's not a point of practicality to know who that some people can reach that point because we don't know who they are. No, I believe that you can get to somebody that's, you know, mass murder or something. They actually did make a conversion. But there's no way that, you know, on a hard and fast knowledge that they made that conversion.

They just state, you know, all right. So knowing that Jesus. So knowing that there are some people like that does not become an argument for giving up on anyone. Although I suppose God God might reveal to you this person's gone too far.

You don't keep trying with him. As he said to Jeremiah, he said that to Jeremiah about the people of Jerusalem. Don't even pray for these people.

They're not going to turn. I appreciate your call. God bless you. OK, Ronald in Sacramento, California.

Welcome to the narrow path. Thanks for calling. Hi, Steve. Can you hear me OK? Yes.

Thanks for taking my call. I'm just wondering what your thoughts on what day Jesus was crucified. Some say Wednesday due to the verse in Matthew twelve forty. But most mainstream Christianity teach that it was a Friday crucifixion.

So I'm just wondering what your thoughts are. I have no problem with Friday. I mean, some people have problems with it because Jesus said that the son of man must be three days and three nights in the heart of the grave or the heart of the earth. And from Friday to Sunday morning doesn't give you three whole days and nights. And therefore they say he must have been crucified earlier because we have no doubts that he was alive on Sunday when the women came to the tomb. So they try to find three days, three nights prior to that and have him crucified then. And some have it on Wednesday, some have it on Thursday.

And I've read long and persuasive treatments on both of those days. There's people who have argued that because the Sabbath, he was crucified the day before the Sabbath. But that's not the regular Saturday Sabbath. That's the that's a high holy day. You know, it's a special Sabbath in the Passover week. And then they do calculations as to what year it was and what year that Sabbath would be, what day it would be and so forth. But to me, all of this is of no value at all because the expression three days and three nights is not necessarily to be taken literally.

It's a it's a Hebrew ism, which every Jew listening to that expression in his day would have understood. That means there's going to be parts of three days to say three days and three nights doesn't mean literally in the Jewish idiom or complete three days. It means parts of three days.

So whether it was literally three days or three nights or not is not an important point. The interesting thing is that Jesus three times predicted his own death and said that he would rise on the third day. Now, if you think about it, Friday, if he was crucified on Friday, that that's the first day. Saturday be the second day and Sunday be the third day.

So from Friday to Sunday does make Sunday the third day. And there were three times that Jesus said he'd be raised on the third day. There's only one time he mentioned three days and three nights, which, as I said, uses a Jewish idiom. And he was quoting from the Book of Jonah.

This is the statement found in Matthew 1240. He's quoting Jonah where it says that Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the fish. And so Jesus said as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the fish, so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. And so he's kind of taking Jonah as his verbal cue to say three days and three nights. But again, that's a Hebraism.

It's an idiom. It doesn't require that he means literally three days and three nights, especially since if he was in the tomb three days and three nights and then rose, that'd be the fourth day. If he spends three 24-hour days buried and then rises, that's going to be the fourth day when he rises. And three times he said it'll be the third day. More than that, even later, when Paul spoke about Jesus' resurrection, he said he rose on the third day in 1 Corinthians 15. I think it's around verse four or five, probably. He said that Jesus rose on the third day. So to me, if the traditional date of his death is Friday, Sunday would be the third day. And that works for me.

For some people, they want to make it more... they want to make the three days and three nights more literal, which I see as totally unnecessary given the Jewish idiom. I appreciate your question and your call. Let's talk to Jason from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Jason, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for waiting. Hi, Steve.

You're welcome. My question was... Actually, it's been so long that I've been listening. I forgot my question. Oh, okay. Yes. Is there any way to objectively determine whether one person is being reasonable and another person is being unreasonable?

Well, I would think so. And that would be simply by knowing reason, knowing logic. I'm not sure what the context is for this question. I mean, are you talking about reasonable in someone you're talking to about Christ or just someone you're having a relationship with and they seem unreasonable?

What are you referring to? I'm referring to... Well, first, did you say that you think it is possible or it isn't? Of course.

Of course, yeah. Reasonableness is an objective reality based on are you following reason or logic. Unreasonableness is also objectively discerned by someone who's not following reason or logic. I mean, what is the context of your question? Well, the context is I called up to a radio show and I said I really don't...

I'm really not interested in liking a God who sends people to hell forever and punishes them forever or just puts them in a black hole forever because that's not proportional to any sort of pain that they have caused on earth. And this person said, well, somehow we got to the point where I said I don't think the Bible is the word of God. And he gave me a few reasons and I said... I think what I said was somebody shouldn't be sent to hell because they don't believe that the Bible is the word of God because they believe that there isn't enough proof for it. And he said, well, a reasonable person would look at the proof and say the Bible is the inherent word of the one true God.

And I thought of Bart Ehrman and I thought, well, you know, I doubt Bart Ehrman would say that. And I doubt some of these other atheists would say that. And to be quite honest, I'm at the point where I would say that. I'm at the point where I would say a reasonable person would say the Bible is not the inspired word of God. Okay, well, let me just say that if a person is being reasonable, then they're starting with a premise and they're reasoning logically from that premise to a conclusion. To start with a wrong premise will lead even a reasonable person to a wrong conclusion because they're starting with the wrong assumptions and they're reasoning from there off base. If a person has the right premise but reasons poorly, they'll also reach the wrong conclusion. But if a person has a true and valid premise and reasons with a valid logic, they'll never reach a wrong conclusion. Now, Bart Ehrman and many atheists no doubt are in many respects reasonable about many things. But it's unreasonable to bring a prejudice and to allow that prejudice to prevent you from letting reason take you to its objective conclusion.

Many people, including Christians, have a prejudged idea of what the solution should be. And they will manipulate the evidence to make it reasonable for them to take that conclusion. And so I think some people do that, people who seem reasonable. But, for example, I've read Bart Ehrman and heard him speak and so forth. And he says he used to be a Christian and a believer in the Bible. But then when he tells me the things that he found which made him become an unbeliever, I think that doesn't strike me as reasonable because the things he found don't prove the point. And so, I mean, I have a feeling he wasn't very committed to the truth of the matter.

He's more committed to looking at things through a jaundiced eye. Because, frankly, everything that Bart Ehrman brings up in his books and his talks, every evangelical Christian knows those things. I've known most of them since I was about 18 years old. I'm surprised it took him so long to see them. He didn't learn about them until he went to Wheaton College in his graduate work.

But most of the things he brings up are stuff that I knew when I was quite young. And I've never seen any reasonable connection between those things and unbelief. Now, if by saying he doesn't believe the Bible is the word of God, if that means that he doesn't believe the King James Bible is the word of God, or that the English Bible in its present form preserves everything that was in the original documents, then I would agree with him there.

I'd agree. I mean, no one should claim that any English Bible is exactly like the original. Because, as Bart Ehrman points out, there are differences in the manuscripts.

The differences are much less significant than he would suggest. And anyone who's a real textual scholar will know that. And I think he knows that, too.

But he doesn't seem to let on. But the Christian view is not that the English Bible as we have it is in every word inspired. But the Christian view is that God spoke through prophets and through Jesus and through the apostles, and some of what they said was written down, and some of them wrote things, and that they were speaking on the authority that God gave them and by the revelations that God gave them. Now, that would impact, of course, what they wrote down in Hebrew and in Greek. It doesn't necessarily tell us anything about the English versions of these things or how well the manuscripts would be preserved.

But because of the number of manuscripts that are there and because of the scholarship that's gone into it, we can become reasonably assured that most of what was written in the original documents, in the original languages by the authors, has also shown up in our modern translations. That would mean that the Bible was God's Word from the beginning. It doesn't mean that anyone who makes a translation of it will be inspired or anyone who makes a copy of it will be inspired. And therefore, I mean, to say that God inspired certain writers doesn't make any predictions at all about how well people will copy it down over the centuries or how well someone will translate it to another language. So there are problems, some in some of the manuscripts that we have and even in some of the translations we have. But that doesn't really impact what the real claim of the Bible is. The real claim of the Bible is that the prophets were inspired by God, that Jesus came from God and spoke from God, that Paul and Peter and those guys wrote what they had learned from Christ and from God. So those things could all be true and we could still have a very flawed English Bible. But the flaws in the English Bible are not very great.

It's not greatly flawed. No major doctrine of the Christian faith depends on any passage in the Greek or Hebrew manuscripts about which there's serious doubt. There are some doubts. Scholars know that there's some passages we don't know because one manuscript reads this way and one manuscript reads another way. But what they read differently about is on something that doesn't matter very much.

All the things that do matter have the support of all the manuscripts. So this is a science. It's called textual criticism.

That's actually what Bart Ehrman does. He's a textual critic. He's just, in my opinion, not a very objective one. And, you know, because I feel that I'm objective because I wouldn't want to be a Christian if it's not true. You know, why would I want to spend my life? I'm not making you know, I don't charge for this. I don't you know, it's not like it's making me rich or anything like that. Why would I want to teach something that I had any doubts about it being true?

I can't think of any reason to do that. So, you know, but he can make a lot of money selling best selling books in a climate where people are looking for books that put down the Bible. You know, this is where the best sellers really come from is from people who are debunking the Bible even if they don't do it very honestly. So I just have to say I actually have a lecture on Bart Ehrman. If you want to go to my website, thenarrowpath.com, it's under the tab that says topical lectures. Then you have to find the tab that says individual lectures and you'll find my lecture on Bart Ehrman. Anyway, I appreciate your call.

OK, thank you. Thanks for joining us. OK, let's talk to Mark from Vancouver, B.C. Mark, welcome to The Narrow Path.

Thanks for calling. Steve, I've got hundreds of questions for you, but I'll just give you a very quick one here considering the time limit. If angels have free will like man has and we know that angels did defect in the past, it's possible that angels could be defecting on a daily basis, correct? Well, I don't think it's likely, but I don't know that it's impossible. Right. Right. OK, thank you, Steve. OK, I might say a little more about it. I thought he was going to say more.

I wanted to give him the time to do it. But the angels, if some angels defected and the Bible indicates that there are angels who have defected, we have some reason to believe this may have all happened at one time. In other words, that there's not just been a trickle of backsliding angels, you know, defecting from God, deserting. But rather that there was an event in the past in which a number of angels defected and have and they're waiting in chains under darkness, awaiting the judgment of the great day, both Jude and Second Peter Chapter two tell us. But we don't read of any angels necessarily continuing to defect. And I would think they wouldn't, because I would think the ones that stayed loyal would have learned from the mistakes of those who did defect. You know, the angels that are loyal to God have been loyal for thousands of years.

And I don't know that. I don't know that there have any inclination to defect from God. Why would they? I'm not even sure why any would have in the first place. But there's no suggestion that there's any likelihood of any other angels defecting. They would probably know that the same thing would happen to them. That happened to the ones that did it before.

Anyway, that's about all I can say about that particular question. We might get a minute here. I don't know if we have a minute or not.

I hope we do. Alan from Hayden, Idaho. Welcome. Yeah. How you doing, Steve?

Good. Concerning the conversation about the three days and three nights, Daniel nine twenty seven says in the middle of the week he will cause sacrifice to cease. And so a lot of people don't know he was crucified in the middle of a forty nine year period. And in the middle of the final seven years of the Daniel 70 weeks prophecy and in the middle of the actual week when God makes a prophecy, it comes through in every possible way. So he was crucified on Wednesday and the U.S.

Naval Observatory has verified that in 31 A.D. the Passover happened on Wednesday. OK, I appreciate that. But I have to say this. We're out of time. Being crucified in the middle of the week doesn't mean the middle of a seven day week. In Daniel nine, the weeks are seven years long each. So the middle of the week would be three and a half years into that. It wouldn't say anything about the middle of the of of the seven day week.

That's not even in the passage. But I appreciate your call. You've been listening to The Narrow Path. My name is Steve Gregg. You can write to us if you want to help us stay on the air at The Narrow Path. P.O. Box 1730 Temecula, California, nine two five nine three. Or go to our Web site, the narrow path dot com. Thanks for joining us. Let's talk again tomorrow.