Music Playing Good afternoon and welcome to the Narrow Path Radio Broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we're live for an hour each weekday afternoon taking your calls as you call in. You can ask questions about the Bible or about the Christian faith if you'd like and we'll talk about it. Or you can call because you disagree with the host on something.
That's always a possibility too. And the number to call is 844-484-5737. That's 844-484-5737. Tonight I'm speaking in Buckeye, Arizona, which is, for those of you who don't know anything about Arizona, that's in the Phoenix area. And anyone near enough to care about this announcement already knows that Buckeye is near Phoenix because you might be a Phoenix listener who's might like to join us tonight.
I'm going to be speaking about the Kingdom of God and actually a couple of lectures with a break in the middle that are going to be based on my new book on the Kingdom of God, which by the way is not out yet, but it will be out on October 15th, Lord willing, available. Anyway, I'm in the home of our hosts here. Andy and Shauna Gonzalez and their five children have had us in their home many times. We've even held meetings in their homes. And their wonderful children are sitting around me even now.
Once in a while you may hear Asher or Jada call in on the show. They are among these five children here. When they call, they usually call me Grandpa.
We're not really related, but we're kind of like surrogate grandparents to them. So we're glad to be with them. Just I'd say that so that they get excited about being mentioned on the radio. And now I want to talk to callers.
We're mostly, our lines are mostly full. So we're going to mention some other names on the radio, like that of Jerry in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Jerry, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Hi, Steve.
Hey, I'm 87 years old and I'm slow to put things together, but I have a question or two for you. Matthew 11, 27 to 30. And this is about, can I pray to God or God don't hear me unless I pray through the name of Jesus.
And I'll, I'll, I'll read this. All things have been delivered to be, this is Jesus speaking, by my Father. And no one knows the Son, but the Father. Nor does anyone know the Father, but the Son. So that means we don't know the Father. And he to whom the Son may be pleased to reveal him.
So I don't get knowledge of the Father, except through Jesus. And then he said, Come to me. And he is emphasizing it now. Come to me, all you who are heavy, lain, and burdened. And I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you.
That's Jesus's yoke, which of course is a cross. And learn from me. For I am meek and lowly in heart. And you will find rest to your souls. That's soul rest. Rest for my soul. I don't rest in my soul.
Okay, so what is your question? Jesus says, For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. My question is, Can I pray to God? Yes, that's what Jesus tells us to pray to. You know, when Jesus said you should pray, he said, When you pray, say, Our Father, which art in heaven. So obviously that's, that's God, the Father he's talking about. So that's who we're supposed to pray to. This passage isn't very much about prayer.
I suppose it might have some ramifications to prayer, but it's mainly about relationship. He says, No one knows the Father, except the Son, and those to whom the Son wills to reveal him. And so I think that the Son has to reveal him to me.
Pardon? The Son has to reveal, I don't get to the Father, except the Son reveals him. Jesus has to reveal me the Father. Right. Jesus reveals the Father to those who believe in him.
That's the idea. The idea here is that Jesus is talking to a bunch of Jewish people who all know about God. They've gone to synagogues and to the temple all the time. From the time they're young, they've heard about God, they've heard the scriptures, but they don't know him. He's saying, Nobody knows God except me and anyone I reveal him to. Now he reveals the Father to the disciples. Or we could even say the Father reveals himself to the disciples. You might remember when Peter said to Jesus, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God, at Caesarea Philippi. When Jesus asked, Who do you say I am? And Jesus said to Peter, Blessed are you, Peter, because flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father, which is in heaven. So the idea is that if a person is a follower of Christ and being a disciple of his, then he reveals the Father to us and the Father reveals himself to us. That is, we get a revelation of who he is. Now this differed from most of the Jewish leaders in Jesus' day in that they didn't follow Jesus and they didn't recognize Jesus as the Son of God. So they could talk about God, but they didn't know God. It's possible for someone to know a lot about the Bible or a lot about God and not really have any relationship with him.
And that's what Jesus is talking about when he talks about no one knows the Father except the Son and whoever the Son reveals him. All right, I appreciate your call. Let's talk to Luke in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Luke, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Hey Steve, good to talk to you. Yeah, is this my friend Luke? Yeah, it is. We're looking forward to seeing you tonight. I hope all the Phoenix, Arizona listeners can come out and see you tonight. Good.
Cool. Hey, my question for you is about 1 Corinthians 15. It has to do with the apostles. So in verse 5, talking about Jesus, how he died and he was buried and he rose again according to the scriptures, it says that after that he was seen by Cephas, then by the 12. And then over in verse 7, it says after that he was seen by James and then by all the apostles. He already mentioned the 12, who I'm assuming are the apostles. And then in verse 7, he says by all the apostles.
Yeah. Do you think he's, are there more than 12 apostles other than Paul? No, when he says he was seen by the 12, he's not actually speaking of the 12 as 12 actual individuals there because actually Thomas was not there when on the occasion that Paul's referring to, Thomas didn't see Jesus and Judas wasn't there either.
So Judas and Thomas were absent and there were only 10. But Paul referred to them as the 12 because that was sort of a technical term for the apostolic group, the ones that got Jesus had chosen 12. And I guess having 10 of them there constituted a quorum enough that Paul could say, you know, he appeared to the apostles which are also referred to as the 12. But even if 12 were not there, they're still the 12.
The group is the 12. And so he met with the group of the apostles even though a couple of the members of the group were not present on that occasion. But when he then says, and then to all the apostles, he's saying, you know, he met with them again, but this time all of them were there. So he's kind of implying in a way that when Jesus met with the 12, they weren't all there.
And it is strange that he said the 12, but if he had said the 10, it wouldn't have made much sense. And he could have said the apostles, but he would still, if he wanted to be exact, would have had to say less two, there were two missing. Using the term the 12 and the term the apostles at that point interchangeably would not necessarily require, obviously, that the whole 12 be there in order for the group to be, in a sense, gathered. So it's misleading to us if we're thinking numerically of the 12 rather than them as a title for the group, for the gathering of those Jesus had chosen. Now, of course, later in the book of Acts, there were other apostles, Paul himself also. There was also, of course, Matthias was made an apostle and even some of the other people like Timothy and Titus, certainly Barnabas is referred to as an apostle in Acts chapter 13. So there's a lot of apostles of various kinds, but there was only the 12 who made up the special apostolic band that Paul's referring to. And when he says the 12, see if he had said all the apostles, maybe people would have mistakenly thought that he was there because he was not one of the 12, but he was an apostle. So when he said the 12, he might've said it that way in order to indicate, you know, those apostles, not including me, but the 12 that Jesus had chosen.
But again, he's being loose with the number. He knew very well that Judas wasn't there. Everybody knew about Judas.
And I'm sure that Paul probably knew that Thomas was not there also. And so I think he's just using the term generically. Okay. Yep.
That's super helpful. Thanks Steve. Okay, Luke, we'll see you tonight. All right. Bye. God bless you. Bye now. Okay. Donald in Portland, Oregon. Welcome to The Narrow Path.
Thanks for calling. Oh, hi Steve. I'll take your answer off there. Strictly an opinion question. Um, gentleman pastor on, on the state and said that a Christian could not be a Democrat because of the abortion issue and that if you are Christian, uh, you won't vote Democrat. And I wanted to get your opinion on that, not to cancer up there. And you can also bring in scripture of that. I could read as well.
Do you have enough to cancel off the air? Thank you. Okay.
Thank you for your call. Uh, well, I can't give any scripture about voting Democrat or Republican or any other party cause they didn't really vote in biblical times. So they didn't have any comments about it and they certainly didn't have those parties. But if someone says a Christian can't vote Democrat, I think what they're saying is that when you do vote for a candidate, you are in a sense, uh, ordaining that person to office. You know, the Bible says that those who are leaders of the country are ordained by God, but in some countries like ours, they are ordained through the instrumentality of people who vote for them. Many in, in, in Jesus day and Paul's day, people didn't vote. So they, you know, people became Kings other ways, like killing the previous King or just being the son of the previous King or something like that. We live in a society where you do vote and therefore the voters are in a sense installing the officers just like in the early church, they installed the elders by the laying on of hands.
Uh, so we install officers of the government through our votes. Now, Paul, when he did talk about ordaining leaders in the church and laying on hands, he says, don't be hasty to lay hands on anyone. Neither be a partaker in another man's sins. And what he meant by that is if you ordain somebody, in this case, he's talking about as a leader of the church, then whatever sins they do, they did it with your commissioning. They did it with your approval.
You're the one who put them in that position. And in a society where government officials are put into that by us, the voters, then there's a sense of which the person I vote for, um, I'm putting my approval on them in some measure. Now that doesn't mean I'm putting my approval on them as a Christian. That is that they are Christians. We often don't even have a real Christian running for office, but many times one candidate will stand for something that Christians can approve of or another candidate will stand for something that Christians find abhorrent like, like abortion. Now, for example, if there's the possibility that one candidate will promote abortion or will allow abortion to continue and another candidate perhaps will not, then the candidate that will is one that a Christian should of course not support because then the person who votes that person into office will share the guilt, will have blood on their hands for installing with their own vote a person that they know is going to kill babies. That's just, that's now at this point in time, the Democratic Party is all for that. I don't know if there's any Democrats that are against killing babies right now. So, uh, that I think there used to be when I was younger, there were Democrats that were Christians and held to Christian standards on most things, but the party has changed a lot. It'd be like saying, now, by the way, I need to let you know, I'm not a Republican.
I maybe lean a little toward libertarianism and republicanism, but I'm really an independent. I'm not a Democrat. And that's like saying I'm not a Marxist because the left has taken over the Democratic Party in such a way that unless a Christian believes Marxism is a good thing, and by the way, Marxism is anti-Christian by definition and atheistic, but if someone thinks that Marxism is a good thing, then voting for it would be a good choice.
But I don't think Christians consider that to be a good thing. Now, I mean, it's obviously more complex than that, but we do have certain freedoms, for example, that are guaranteed to us in the Constitution. And if there is a candidate who we think will uphold the Constitution, then we're dealing with someone who's more honest than a candidate that we know will not. So I don't think we'd want to vote for any candidate that's going to take an oath saying he'll uphold the Constitution, then he'll just ignore it the rest of his term in office, as many have done. Republicans and Democrats have been guilty of that. I'm not here, I'm not a shill for the Republican Party, but I would say there are not very many things that the right stands for officially that are really objectionable to me as a Christian, and there are a lot of things that the left stands for that are objectionable to me. Now, the Bible doesn't say anything about voting, but it does say that we as Christians are supposed to be promoters of justice and righteousness.
We pray for it, and we should be doing what we can to promote it. And therefore, on those occasions where we do have occasion to vote, where we have the opportunity, I think we should vote for those candidates or party or whatever, even if I don't belong to a party. I'll want to vote for people who will stand up for justice and will want to uphold the Constitution. And not that the Constitution is inspired by God or anything, but it is the law of the land. And every candidate who's elected ends up taking an oath, usually with a hand on the Bible or the Quran nowadays, and says they're going to uphold the Constitution. And yet, you know very well there's people who don't believe in the Bible, and they don't believe in God, and if they belong to a certain party which has turned far left, then they're not going to uphold the Constitution either. So my thought is that while I wouldn't say that a Christian can't vote Democrat because of the word Democrat, because there have been a lot of Christian Democrats in the past in history, but the Democratic Party today is not what it was in history.
The Democratic Party today is simply a socialistic, left-wing, frankly, anti-constitutional movement. And I don't think I could vote for that as a Christian. If you can, well, follow your conscience.
But I would have great difficulty doing that. I appreciate your call. Let's talk to David from Moorpark, California.
David, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Hey Steve, how are you? Actually, I'm in Camarillo right now. I was in Moorpark. No, I'm in Camarillo.
When you called, you were in Moorpark, but you've been waiting a long time. Yeah, you're on the road. Okay, go ahead. No, no, I was 15 minutes driving, 15 minutes of driving time. Okay.
We don't need the geography lesson. Let's just go on. Let's move on to your question.
Real quick, and forgive the nature of my question if it's censored in any way, but if I'm not mistaken, you had a wife, a previous wife that was unfortunately tragically killed, if I'm not mistaken, in a car accident. That's correct. That's correct. That's correct.
Okay. My condolences. That was like 30 years ago. 40 years ago. That was 40 years ago. My condolences.
My question is, where is that wife at the moment? Well, let me just ask you this. You are, as I recall, a Seventh-day Adventist, correct? I lean towards the Bible definition of what happens at death. Yes.
No, I didn't ask you that. You are a Seventh-day Adventist, correct? I lean towards the Bible. You shouldn't be ashamed to say so. If that's your belief, you shouldn't be ashamed to say, yes, I am.
I am not ashamed to say that I believe in the Bible. Okay, then you're not going to be honest with me. You could have said no if you're not a Seventh-day Adventist, but you won't say yes.
So if you won't answer me, honestly, you're off the air. Thanks for calling. Okay, let's talk to Frank in North Texas. Frank, welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Frank?
Going once, going twice. Frank, are you there? I may have a bad line there. Frank, if you're on a bad line, I can't hear you. Call back. Maybe you'll be on a different line. My apologies for hanging up. I can't keep you on if I can't talk to you. Joe in Seattle, Washington.
Welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Was that for Joe? Joe, yes.
Oh, well, thanks for taking the call. I've got, I think, a simple question. It's Acts 26, verse 32. And there Paul is in front of Agrippa and Festus, you know, being judged. And Agrippa said to Festus, this man might have been set free if he had not appealed to Caesar.
Yep. And so we know that Paul is trying to get to Rome. That appeal to Caesar is what eventually is going to get him to Rome. So my question is, if he had not appealed to Caesar, he could have gone to Rome as a free man. Right. Correct. So did he make a mistake in judgment?
Well, I don't know. It's awfully hard to tell if Paul made a mistake when things can be accomplished one way or another way. Even in going to Jerusalem before he got arrested there, there were people in churches telling him not to go and telling him that God didn't want him to go. And yet he felt God wanted him to go.
So he went and he got arrested and he got stuck in prison for four years. A lot of people think that was a mistake on his part. And it might have been. Christians do make mistakes, but God does work out all things together for good. Sometimes if we make a mistake, things get a little more, what should we say, complicated. And going to jail and staying in jail for as long as he did complicated things but didn't prevent him from getting to Rome, which is where God wanted him to go.
But you're right. If he had not appealed to Caesar, according to Agrippa in that passage, he could have been released. He could have caught a ship to Rome and gone there as a free man. Of course, he didn't know that.
He didn't even know Agrippa would ever be in the picture. You see, Felix and Festus both knew he was innocent and both could have released him, but they didn't want to. Festus, Felix we're told, wanted to please the Jews. So he left Paul in prison even though he knew he was innocent. Festus, he was trying to, well, he had Paul on trial and Paul appealed to Caesar there. Now, Paul appealed to Caesar not so he could go to Rome. He appealed to Caesar because he didn't want to be released to the Jews. What Festus had said is, are you willing to go to Jerusalem to be tried by the Jews?
And he knew they'd kill him if he went down there. So he says, no, I'm going to appeal to Caesar, which is ironic that the pagan Caesar who happened to be Nero at the time, a very wicked Caesar, Paul was quite sure he'd get a more fair trial from him than from the Jews. So it kind of tells how much he thought about the Jewish courts and how fair they were. But he appealed to go to Rome not because that's how he intended to get to Rome. He would have liked to have been released instead and go to Rome that way, but he didn't want to go back to Jerusalem and be killed by the Jews. So he appealed to Caesar, which was his right. And yeah, he got to Rome that way instead of another way. Gotcha. So one follow up, if I may. Over in Acts 23, 11, Christ basically says to Paul, you know, that you will deliver the gospel in Rome.
And so isn't that a guarantee or shouldn't that have been a guarantee in Paul's mind that he was eventually going to make it to Rome alive? Right. Right. OK. OK.
Very good. Yeah. And I believe he knew that was going to happen. I don't know that he knew it was going to. At that point, he didn't know it was going to be by him appealing to Caesar.
Right. You know, I think I think appealing to Caesar was kind of an emergency measure because he was about to be released to those who were planning to kill him. So he he was under protective custody of the Romans as he traveled to Rome. And I'm sure that Paul realized at that point, oh, well, Jesus did say I was going to go to Rome. I guess this is how I'm going to Rome in chains. There you go.
As a prisoner. All right. Hey, thank you, Steve. Appreciate it. OK, Joe, thanks for your call. All right. Let's talk to Orlando in Bell Gardens, California.
And if the break interrupts us, we'll carry over to the other side. Orlando. Hello.
Hi. OK. What I want to know is how many heavens are there? I know how many heavens are. Yes.
How many? I'm confused because when we die, do we go to heaven or do we go to paradise? Jesus said on the cross you will go to paradise with me.
So, OK, well, we're not we're not given a lot of detail about that. Paul referred to the third heavens as paradise in Second Corinthians Chapter 12. He said he was caught up into the third heavens, even into paradise. But paradise is a generic term. It even referred to the Garden of Eden. I mean, it's the paradise. It's like like when we say paradise, we can talk about more than one place and say, well, this is really paradise. We mean, the word paradise is a Persian word and it means a beautiful garden. And so Jesus referred to where this man was going, the man on the cross with him as a paradise. And Paul also was caught up in the third heaven. He called that paradise. And that doesn't mean they're the same location. Most people believe. Pardon?
Go ahead. Most people. Most people believe that Paul was caught up into the third heaven, meaning where the throne of God is. And they believe that the the reason it's called the third heaven is because in the Bible, the atmosphere around the earth is called heaven. And then the starry skies are called heaven, too. And so the third heaven would be beyond the atmosphere, beyond the stars, or at least transcendent to them, a spiritual realm where God dwells. And that's why it's called the third heaven. There's only one heaven that people go to when they die.
And we're not going to live there forever. Jesus is in heaven. And if we go to heaven, if we die and go to heaven, we're going to be there only until Jesus comes back. And he'll bring us back with him to live in the new earth, which is what the hope of the Christian is. Now, the guy who's the guy who was on the cross probably didn't go to heaven. He probably went into the grave. But many Christians believe that in Shale or Hades, there were two compartments, one of them called Paradise, and the other one was a place of torment.
So this is much disputed, and there's not anything very clear in the Bible to answer your question about that. So I'm gonna have to leave it unanswered for the most part. I need to take a break, but we have another half hour coming up. You're listening to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. We are listener supported. You can go to our website and you can donate there if you want to there.
Everything's free. The website is TheNarrowPath.com. I'll be back in 30 seconds. Stay tuned. Small is the gate and narrow is the path that leads to life. Welcome to The Narrow Path with Steve Gregg.
Steve has nothing to sell you today but everything to give you. When the radio show is over, go to TheNarrowPath.com where you 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. We thank you for supporting the listener supported Narrow Path with Steve Gregg. See you at TheNarrowPath.com. All right, we're back.
Welcome back to The Narrow Path. My name is Steve Gregg, and we are live for another half hour taking your calls. We have a line or two open if you'd like to join us. The number is 844-484-5737.
That's 844-484-5737. And I want to remind our Arizona listeners that I am broadcasting from Arizona from Buckeye right now, and I'm speaking in Buckeye tonight and in Tucson tomorrow. So we'll be in Arizona two nights in a row. I'll be speaking. If you're interested in that, you can go to our website, TheNarrowPath.com, and click on the tab that says Announcements.
And you can scroll down to tonight's date, which is September 29th, and tomorrow's the 30th, and see where we're speaking. If you're in Arizona, you can join us. If you're in Texas, we'll be coming down there in less than a week from now, I think. So we'll be glad to see you at some of our meetings there, either in Spring Branch or in Houston or Dallas areas. When I say in Houston, we have a meeting in Houston. We also have a meeting in Chocolate Bayou, which is in Houston area. And our good friend Steve Vaughn is a pastor there, and we're going to be in his church, but we're in some home meetings as well. All those meetings are listed at our website, TheNarrowPath.com.
Under the tab that says Announcements. All right, our next caller today is Martin from National City, California. Martin, welcome to The Narrow Path. Hi there, this is Steve. Thanks for taking my call.
Real quick, a scriptural backup, I believe, if you would concur with it, about being against abortion, would be First Samuel 1533, Samuel speaking to Ahag, King Ahag, as I sort hath made women childless, so shall thy mother be childless among women. Would you concur with that, Steve? Thank you. Bye-bye.
Bye-bye. Well, I don't know that that speaks to the issue of abortion directly, because that king had killed adult sons of women and made those women childless. And so his mother would be childless by him being killed.
There's no specific reference here to unborn children. But there's plenty in the Bible that's against murder, and we know that a child, whether it's inside or outside the womb, is a human being. And when you murder an innocent human being, that's murder. And there's a terrible penalty for murder in the Old Testament, and there's a terrible penalty for murder unless people who have done so repent before they die when they meet God as well. But abortion is definitely the killing of a human being. It stops the human beating heart, which is beating human blood.
A growing organism that has human DNA is a human. And so we know that that's wrong. But I don't know that the verse you use speaks directly to it. So I think that if you were arguing with somebody about abortion from the Bible, they probably could find their way around the wording of that verse if you use that one on them. Okay, let's talk to Richard from Seal Beach, California. Richard, welcome to The Narrow Path.
Thanks for calling. Yes, Steve, I know Christians who say that abortion is okay if the life of the mother is in danger because it's a medical procedure. And when the rapture comes, we will be caught up to be the dead in Christ will rise first. So it seems to me like paradise would be the New Jerusalem.
Can you comment on both of those? Thank you, Steve. Yeah, well, yeah, paradise, the New Jerusalem is called paradise in the book of Revelation. I mentioned that there's several things called paradise. The New Jerusalem is called paradise in Revelation chapter 3, I guess it is, or chapter 2. It's called the paradise of God. When Paul talked about paradise, he referred to the third heaven, which of course is not the New Jerusalem. New Jerusalem is on earth. And there's another use of it.
So yes, I think that supports the idea that paradise has many meanings and different places to be. So what was the other question? I forgot what your other question was. Someone in the room, no? No, that was a previous caller. Oh, was it? Oh, okay.
Okay, I'm sorry, I forgot your second, your first question. I was distracted and that's not, oh, okay, yes, if a woman's life is in danger. You know, in a tubal pregnancy, it does seem to me that taking the baby out of the tube where it cannot survive and where it will kill the mother if it doesn't, if it's not removed, there's a case could be made medically for that.
And that doesn't mean it's not a human. And frankly, I think, you know, a woman should be able to decide if she wants to give her life for the baby, some women might, or if she should have that removed. I believe that a zygote is a human life. But obviously, if a human life is threatening another human life, then one's going to die. And I think since there's no hope for the zygote in the tube to live, even if you remove it, it's not going to live, then to spare the life of the living one, the mother, would make sense. It's actually a moral dilemma for those of us who believe that a fertilized egg is a human. But again, people who are pro-life don't believe that there's no reason at all to ever take a human life.
We believe in capital punishment, for example. Of course, that's a guilty part. A zygote is not guilty. But the point is, it's not going to live in any case, and it'll kill another human being if it's allowed to live.
So it's a hard, a very hard call. I don't know if every Christian who's pro-life would answer the same as I do, but it seems to me that that would be something, a unique case. Now, most pregnancies don't endanger the woman's life.
Maybe there are some that do. It seems to me like in a real emergency where actually delivering the baby would be predicted to hurt the woman or kill her, maybe, that a cesarean section or something like that could be done. But I'm no medical expert, so I'm not, I don't know what all the options are. But I think that if taking the baby when it could not otherwise live, and where it will otherwise kill the mother, would be something where I personally would probably draw the line in allowing that to take place. But I don't know that a developing fetus in the womb very often is really a danger to the mother's life, but I can't say it never is, in which case I would hope that they'd try something else. If it's a, you know, if it's not old enough to survive outside the womb, even with medical attention, then obviously taking it by cesarean is not an option. So there may be really hard choices that have been made about that, and I would imagine that just like most women, when they have spontaneous abortions, when they have miscarriages, they usually are very sad to lose the child. And I would think that a case like that would be considered to be a very tragic thing, to have to take the baby out. But if you're going to lose the baby and the mother, or just the mother, or excuse me, or just the baby, then I suppose that's one of those dilemmas that some would have to make the call according to their conscience.
But I would think that saving the mother's life would be a reasonable thing in a case like that. All right, let's see, Jason from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Welcome. Oh, hi, thank you. Actually, I was wondering what your opinion on hell is, if you think it's going to be eternal torment or not. Well, this comes up a lot on the program, and partly because I've written a book on the three views of hell, and partly because I have some lectures online about the three views of hell, so people who are thinking about hell sometimes come across my lectures or my book. I have not made a firm commitment myself.
I will tell you this. In the first 45 years of my life, which is the first 30 years of my ministry, I was firmly in the camp of eternal torment. I had never heard a good biblical case for any other view, and I didn't feel there probably was one. It seemed to me there were some verses that immediately came to my mind that sounded like eternal torment, and that was held by all the Christians I knew, so I just kind of accepted it. But once I did study out, I realized, first of all, eternal torment is not the only view that Christians have held from the early days of the church, and that there are some good scriptural arguments for other views too. When I did some research, a lot of research actually on it, and found all the arguments for all the views, I realized that the eternal torment view actually had the weakest arguments, which means that probably all other things being equal is not correct as far as scriptures.
It doesn't have many scriptures in its favor. But both of the conditional immortality or annihilation view and the universal reconciliation view or the restorationist view, those views have a lot of scriptures on their side. They're not likely to both be true, which means that somebody is, you know, using the scripture the wrong way, but that's just the way it is with some controversial issues, whether you're talking about Calvinism, Arminianism, or whether you're talking about end times controversial views. Everyone has the same Bible, but not everyone understands some of the verses that are relevant in the same way.
So it's a matter of study, and I have studied it, but my studies have left me undecided because as soon as I think that I'm going to support one particular view, I think again of the arguments that exist for one of the other views, and I realize, well, they're pretty good too. It seems to me the Bible is not clear on it, and if it is, it seems to me if it is clear in the minds of some, it would be the eternal torment view would be the weakest, and one of the others would have to be the one that is clearly taught, it seems to me, because there's only like five verses in the Bible that sound like they teach eternal torment, and three of them are in the book of Revelation, which is the most symbolic book in the Bible, and two of them are in the parable of the sheep and the goats, which is also a parable, and therefore these are not straightforward didactic passages of the Scripture where God is teaching us something about hell. These are statements that are found in symbolic passages, and I'm not saying there can't be a literal eternal torment, but I'm just saying that's the only context in which you find any reference to it, and there are lots of places in the Bible where you find reference to death or perishing or even the idea that every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. Ultimately, those and many other passages, like a great number, raise questions about the traditional view.
But so that you don't just think I'm dodging the issue, the truth is I don't feel like I have to know. Although I've studied it out, I think that the conditional immortality view and the restorationist view have a lot more scriptural support than the traditional view, and that is just the exact reversal from what I taught for the first 25 years of my ministry. What do you think about Matthew 5.22 where Jesus talks about fiery hell? Well, he doesn't use the word hell, he uses the word gehenna.
He shall be in danger of hell fire or gehenna, fire of gehenna. The word gehenna in the New Testament is only used by Jesus, except that James uses it once when he talks about how the tongue is set on the fire of gehenna, which is obviously a figure of speech. But Jesus talks about people going to gehenna and there being fire and worms and things like that. And most commentators think that gehenna refers to hell, although the word hell is not related etymologically to gehenna.
Gehenna has an actual meaning in the Greek. It means the valley of Hinnom, and there actually is a valley of Hinnom just outside Jerusalem. So there's a very real possibility that although our Bibles translate it with the English word hell, when in fact the Bible uses the word gehenna there, it might be referring to the valley of Hinnom. And that's where dead corpses were thrown when Jerusalem was invaded first by the Babylonians back in the days of Jeremiah. He spoke about the corpses being thrown into gehenna, into the valley of Hinnom.
And then Jesus was anticipating the Romans doing the same thing. They were going to come and destroy Jerusalem, and Jesus spoke about people being thrown into gehenna. So it could be that that's not even referring to hell.
It could be referring to, well, gehenna, since that's the word Jesus used, which means the valley of Hinnom. But I have a chapter on that in my book. If you're interested in my thoughts about hell, I wrote a 300-page book.
It's called All You Want to Know About Hell? Three Christian Views. And I have a chapter on gehenna.
I have a chapter on Lazarus and the rich man, which people often bring up. But I also give all the scriptural arguments for each of the three views and most or all of the arguments against them. So it's really just a study in the pros and the cons of the three views. Okay. All right. Thanks a lot for your help, Steve. Have a good day. Okay, Jason. Thanks for your call. All right. We're going to talk next to Sharon from Apache Junction, Arizona.
I have stayed in Apache Junction not too very long ago. Yeah. Hi, Steve. Hi, Sharon.
Hey. Can you hear me okay? Yes, fine. Thank you. Okay, good. I just want to say thank you and thank God for giving you the wisdom of understanding the scripture because I have learned a lot from listening to your station. I try to listen every day.
Thank you. And I have a question about the age of accountability. I can't find anything in God's word about that. And, you know, I wonder about it because Noah, you know, the flood in Noah, God didn't save children. He didn't save women. And Sodom and Gomorrah, there's nothing in there about him saving, you know, children because they weren't to the age of accountability. And I can't find anything about whether that's true or not.
Yeah. Well, I actually do believe in the age of accountability, but I don't believe that that means that children don't die. It really has to do with whether when God judges on the last day, whether he counts them guilty of the sins they've committed or whether he gives them something of a pass because they didn't know any better. There are some things about that, but even if we could fully establish the age of accountability, it wouldn't suggest that children don't die in disasters. And, you know, when Jerusalem was destroyed and when any nation is destroyed, children die as well as adults. But that's not, that really doesn't address the question of whether God's going to send them to hell or condemn them at the judgment.
That's the issue. In Isaiah chapter seven, there's an interesting statement in a prophecy that Isaiah made about a child that shall be born. And he says in verse 16, Isaiah 7 and 16, for before the child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good. Blah, blah, blah.
It goes on. But notice it talks about there's a time when a child knows, and prior to that it does not know, to refuse the evil and choose the good. It's a recognition that children are not born knowing good from evil. They actually have to reach a certain age of that.
Now, it doesn't say what that age is, and I wouldn't, I wouldn't suggest that I know what age that is. But there are, like Jesus said, suffer the little children to come unto me, do not forbid them because of such is the kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of God. So he said that little children belong to the children. Now, do people like little children? Well, there's no one like little children as much as little children.
And of such, he said. Yeah, and you have to be like a little child, too. He says that for adults.
Yeah. So, I mean, he's not really, he doesn't tell us anything about an age of accountability, but he does suggest that little children are, that they belong to him. And if they belong to him, certainly they're not going to be sent to hell. But, I mean, the children reach an age where they become aware that they're choosing the right thing or the wrong thing. And when they reach that age, then when they choose the wrong, that's when they become responsible for their choices. That's very sensible, you know, because some children might understand, you know, God's Word at an earlier age. True.
Yeah. I mean, some children may be, maybe at age three, they're that way. Some may be six.
I don't know. I mean, children develop at different rates in terms of spiritual aptitude and intelligence and other things like that. And, of course, there's children with disabilities, children who are, you know, mentally challenged, who might never outgrow their childish, you know, innocence.
Even though they grow up, their minds don't develop. So God, I mean, we might look for specific times and dates and ages and stuff. We don't have any information about that. But God knows. That'd be hard to do anyway, wouldn't it?
With the difference? That'd be hard to put an age of accountability down anyway because everybody's different. We couldn't, but that doesn't mean God can't. I mean, God, yeah, everyone's different, but God knows each individual.
And so He knows if someone's at that age or not. All right? I understand fully now. Thank you for setting my mind right. Well, not everyone agrees with me, so they might think I set you wrong.
They might have thought you were smarter before you asked. No, no, it's right. Okay, Sharon. I understand. Thank you. Thank you for your call. You have a nice day and thank you for taking my call and God bless you. All right. You have a good day, too.
Thank you. Okay, we're going to talk next to Mark from Vancouver, B.C. And I think Mark called recently and didn't get on because he was right at the end of the show, if I recall. Hi, Mark.
Yeah, Steve. I was going to say that, like, this is actually a question of logic, but it's related to a Bible topic. As you know, timekeeping procedures, seconds, minutes, hours and days has only become precise in very recent times. So if you go back 6,000 years or 4,000 years or even 2,000 years, would you not say that it would be absolutely impossible to suggest that they could keep it accurately? I'll just give this little point before you answer. If a person, if society only lost one second per day, day after day, it would only take about 200 years to lose a full 24 hour period.
Correct? So my question is, would you not say it's absolute nonsense for libertarians to say that the seventh day has to be Saturday or even has to be Sunday when that fact that I just mentioned is undeniable? Well, I would say it might go unnoticed if we lost a minute or a second or 10 minutes out of a day. But I don't know how, you know, people living through time, they know if it's day or night. They know if 24 hours has gone by or not.
And I don't think they've ever lost track of that. I mean, it'd be interesting for someone to be living at a certain time and not know that 24 hours passed since the previous day because day and night measure a 24 hour period. Yeah, I don't know that they, I don't know how exact their timekeeping methods were, but I do believe that, for example, if the Jews kept the Sabbath, and I realize you're making a point that I agree with, and that is that Sabbath keeping is not mandatory today. But if the Jews have kept the Sabbath ever since, you know, they were made a nation at Mount Sinai, that'd be every week. They'd have to miss a whole week or several days to get that wrong for a whole nation to realize that, you know, eight days had gone by or nine days since the last time they kept Sabbath would be very unintelligent of them. And I think that since the Sabbath keeping was so important to them, I don't think they ever lost track of the seventh day. So I think that the week, I don't think you could lose a week or even a day from a week without it being noticed. Okay, I was thinking with this, Steve, I'll just cut it short, just leave for your consideration. But actually, just consider after the program sometime, if you just lose one second a day, over a period of 200 years, you've lost a full 24 hours.
I heard that, I heard that. But what I said is, I think people would notice if they lost 24 hours. In other words, whether you're losing a second a day or not, you just know you wouldn't notice that the 24 hours you're living through is a second shorter. But you'd certainly know if a night had come and gone or not, you'd certainly know if a whole day had passed or not. And even if the days got shorter, and there's no reason to believe they ever did lose a second per day.
But if they did, that means the days would be shorter, but there should be the same number of days between one Sabbath and the next because they'd know there were seven days and seven nights. And you can't miss that. It's hard to miss when the night has come. Okay, let's talk to John from Dallas, Texas. John, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Hi Steve, how are you? I'm good, thanks.
I was actually your last caller yesterday, and I asked you a question about how does someone trying to turn from homosexual sin and has addiction due to child-based trauma. Right, and I did ask you to call back. I'm glad you did because we didn't have much time. I did suggest that, and by the way, we only have less than five minutes now too.
I know, I know. I can call you tomorrow if you want. I did suggest that you listen to my lectures on Cultivating Christian Character, didn't I? Yes. I thought so, okay. Did you have a chance to listen to any of those?
I didn't. Is it on YouTube? I don't know if it's on YouTube. It's on our website, thenarrowpath.com under topical lectures. But I mean, that doesn't mean I don't want to talk to you.
I'd be glad to talk to you on the air as well. It's just that... Go ahead. There's not a 30-second answer. I mean, I could just say, hey, trust God and walk in the Spirit, but that won't mean anything unless we flesh that out a little bit. And I mean, I don't want to give Bible verses out like this for a big problem.
Let me give you another quick question real quick. So I have a friend that I was talking to, and I don't think that they're a believer. And they kind of skip around the question of Satan being their master and not believing in Jesus, but they skip around it. They gave me a verse in the Bible, Isaiah 27-7, and I read it, and it didn't make sense to me.
It didn't make sense from what they're saying? Maybe they got the reference wrong. 27-7 says, Has he struck Israel as he struck those who struck him?
Or has he been slain according to the slaughter of those who were slain by him? Now, there's no reference to Satan there, certainly. So I think they maybe gave you the wrong reference. They probably gave you the wrong reference for what they were thinking. They probably found a verse. I'm so sorry.
It was actually Isaiah 21-7. Oh, okay. I was looking at it. Okay.
I thought you said 22-7 or whatever it was. Okay. Okay. So do you have that in front of you?
I don't have it in front of me. Okay. But we're just about out of time. I'm afraid the music's going to start playing. But 21-7 says, And he saw a chariot with a pair of horsemen, a chariot of donkeys and a chariot of camels, and he listened earnestly with great care.
Yeah, I don't really see anything about Satan there. So, again, I think he gave you the wrong reference. But, hey, call early tomorrow.
Call early tomorrow, if you will, and we'll have a chance to talk. I will. Thank you. And, you know, another thing is trying to turn away from this life as well. It's not fun.
It's very hard. And I know I appreciate. I appreciate, you know, getting to listen to you pretty much every day that I can. And I just I'm thankful that you're there. God bless you. I appreciate that, brother.
I thank you. I'm going to cut off here in 20 seconds. But I do appreciate your call. If you call back tomorrow, I'd love to talk to you some more. And I apologize for the short shrift here.
But thank you for your comments. And we can talk tomorrow if you call early. You've been listening to The Narrow Path. We are listener supported. You can go to our website, thenarrowpath.com, if you're interested in helping us stay on the air. Have a great evening, and we'll see some of you in the Phoenix area tonight. Let's talk again tomorrow.
Whisper: medium.en / 2024-02-25 19:44:00 / 2024-02-25 20:04:50 / 21