Music Good afternoon and welcome to the Narrow Path Radio Broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we're live for an hour each weekday afternoon and taking your calls. If you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith, you can call in and we'll talk about them together. If you don't have a question but you have a difference of opinion from the host and want to talk about that, you may call in and we can talk about that a little bit. I say a little bit because our lines are full. I can't let you have the whole program and sometimes I understand that you might have enough to say that would justify taking a whole program.
That's just not how we do things here but you're certainly welcome to make some cogent points if you would like to do so. The number to call is 844-484-5737. That's 844-484-5737. I just want to announce to any of our Texas listeners that I will be speaking in Texas this week. Let's see here, on Friday, tomorrow night I'll be speaking at Spring Branch, Texas in a discipleship school. I think the class might be open to the public.
You have to check our website about that and see if there's a call for that. Sunday morning I'll be in Spring Branch also. I'll be at the Living Waters Fellowship in, actually it's Bull Verde.
I don't know if I'm saying that correctly but it's, I guess, right by Spring Branch. That's Sunday morning, so Friday and Sunday I'm speaking for the same people but different meetings. Monday I'll be speaking in the Houston area and Thursday in the Chocolate Bayou, which is also the Houston area. And then on, let's see, it looks like it should be next Friday, a week from tomorrow, if I've got this figured right.
I'm going to be speaking in the Dallas area. So, we've got four things happening in Texas in the coming week and so we will, and there's going to be a Zoom on Friday, this Friday, oh tomorrow, okay. It's not going to be open to the public but it will be on Zoom.
Okay, they have to do what? Oh, okay. You can RSVP and go or you can just watch it on Zoom, I think. So, you need to go to our website for the details about that. You can get all the stuff that I don't even know about the meetings there because someone more engaged and competent than myself is the one who keeps up the website. The number here, there's one line still open at 844-484-5737 and our first caller today is John from Westminster, Massachusetts. John, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
Hi Steve, thanks for taking my call. I was trying to explain to my wife last night that, you know, Christ is the elect of God and since we are in Christ, we are elect. So, first off, I wanted to ask you, is that biblical? And then if you do believe in corporate election, could you just talk about that a little bit as opposed to the Calvinist idea of election? And if there are any irrefutable scriptures to corporate election, could you give me those as well? Yeah, well, I have to say that from my study, I don't know of any scriptures that would be an argument against corporate election.
It's just a concept that people don't have, I guess we could say, instinctively very often. When the Bible says that we are elect, meaning we Christians are elect, that means chosen. And I think the way we think about that often is that means that God looked down and he saw a certain number of people individually and chose them as individuals to be saved and he kind of overlooked others that he didn't apparently care to save because he could have gotten them too if he wanted to. So the idea appears to be that if God just chose to save you, you'll be saved.
If he didn't choose to save you, you can't be saved because you're not one of the chosen ones. Now, I think that's how most people understand God choosing or God's election and certainly Calvinists do. Now, the Bible teaches a different kind of election.
It goes back as far as the Old Testament, so it's not just a New Testament concept. God chose Israel. That is, he chose a nation of people to be special for his purposes.
They will fulfill special purposes he had for them. He chose corporately a nation. And the reason I say corporately is because individuals who were in that nation could remain in it or not. And people who were not originally in the nation could become part of it.
That's what the law provided. It was the nation as a corporate entity that was going to be used by God that he had chosen above all other nations. And a Gentile who was not originally part of that could become a Jew and become part of that nation.
He could be circumcised and keep the law and have all the privileges of someone who was a native of the land, the Bible says. On the other hand, a person who was born in that nation might apostatize and leave and say, I'm not going to be part of this anymore, and go out. Now, the nation is chosen, but the individuals were not. The individuals make the choice of whether they're going to be in it or not, because Israel is a corporate entity.
It's not just an individual man. Now, in the New Testament, those who are chosen are the ones who are in Christ. In the Old Testament, if you were in Israel, you were chosen in Israel. That's not the same thing as saying you were chosen to be in Israel. It's Israel was chosen, and if you were in Israel, you were chosen too.
You shared in that corporate status in the entity that was chosen. Now, Jesus is the chosen one in Scripture, and there are people who are in Him and people who are not in Him, just like there were people who were in Israel and not in Israel. Jesus used that illustration of the vine and the branches. He said, I'm the vine. You're the branches. You need to remain in Me. If you remain in Me, then you will bear much fruit.
But if you don't remain in Me, He says, if anyone does not remain in Me, he's cast forth as a branch and withers and dies, and they gather them and burn them. In other words, the vine, just like the nation of Israel, which was compared with the vine in the Old Testament, it consists of many branches. And every one of those branches, if it's a chosen vine, they're part of the chosen vine.
They're chosen too. I mean, let's just make it really simple so any child could understand it. Suppose you had two vines growing in your yard, grapevines. And one of them, you knew the ground could really only sustain and produce good grapes on one, but you have two. So you're going to choose one of those vines to preserve, and the other one you're going to uproot and throw it in the trash.
So you've got two vines. The one that is chosen to be preserved has certain branches on it. All those branches, because they're on the vine that is chosen to be preserved, they are chosen to be preserved.
Not because of their individuality, but because they're part of the corporate vine. Now you might even take a dying vine, or I should say a dying branch or two, off of the vine you're going to pull out. And you can graft it in, if you want to, into the vine you're going to keep.
So the vine is what is chosen. The branches that are either part of it or not part of it are because of being part of it or not part of it, they're chosen or not. Being in Christ is the same way. When we become followers of Christ, the Holy Spirit incorporates us into Him, into His body. This is one of Paul's favorite subjects, and I'm so surprised that so many Christians reading Paul do not see it, because he talks about it all the time. And I'm surprised that so many do not, but I'm surprised it myself too, because when I was raised I didn't see it. I read the Bible, I didn't see it. And so I was fairly old before I understood this concept. But it's right there.
Once you see it, you cannot stop seeing it. And Jesus is chosen, and when I become a believer, which is a decision I do make, and other people make a different decision, I become part of the chosen one. And therefore I am chosen in Him, just like if I was a Gentile and became part of Israel in the Old Testament, I would now be chosen in Israel.
I'd be part of the chosen group. Those who are in Christ are chosen for privilege and glory and to have a relationship with Jesus. But God didn't choose who will be in them and who will not. Paul does say, in Ephesians 1-4, that God chose us in Him. But it doesn't say He chose us to be in Him. Because we are in Him, He has chosen us. Because He chose him.
But He didn't choose who would be in Him. And, you know, I sometimes will illustrate with something we can all relate to, I suppose. Suppose your school has a choral group, a choir. And, you know, the next president who's elected wants some high school choir to come and sing at his inauguration. And they draw names out of a hat, let us say.
Or maybe they have a more sophisticated way of choosing. And let's just say your school choir is the one that's chosen of all school choirs. Your school choir is chosen to come sing at the presidential inauguration.
Well, whether you like the president or not, that's a pretty rare privilege. And so you could go home to your parents and say, hey, we are chosen to be the choir that sings at the president's inauguration. Now, that doesn't mean that you personally were chosen. You might not even be in the choir, but you could join it. Or people who are already in the choir before the inauguration comes might get sick and have to, you know, quit or might, for whatever reasons, not be in the choir next month. So, the point is the choir is chosen. And, you know, let's say the president is the one who chose the choir.
So they've got a very great privilege. But he didn't choose who's going to be in the choir. That's determined by individual choice. It's the choir corporately that's chosen.
And that's the same thing. It's Christ and all who are in him that are chosen. If we remain in him, then we are chosen, you know, we're always part of the chosen. But if we don't remain in him, he's still chosen. And everybody that's in him is still chosen.
You're just not because you're not in the chosen one anymore. So, God's election in the Bible is not... Now, I don't want to say there's no election of individuals. God elects individuals for certain callings, like he chose Jeremiah when he was in his mother's womb to be a prophet. He certainly chose Moses.
He chose Paul. Paul said before he was born, God chose him, you know, to reveal himself in him. This is choosing somebody to become something unusual, something special, an apostle, a prophet or something. God chooses his special servants for special service. But that doesn't mean that he chooses everyone who's going to be saved or not going to be saved. If God knows that somebody is going to make the choice to be in Christ, and he's maybe going to urge them along those lines, especially, that doesn't mean that if they would reject him, that he wouldn't have to choose somebody else. When we talk about choosing, we have to make a distinction between choosing for a vocation or for a calling, for special callings on the one hand, and chosen for glory and eternal life.
That's corporate. Christ is the one who has eternal life. Remember, John said in 1 John 5, this is the message that God has given to us, eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that has the Son has life.
He that does not have the Son does not have life. That's the same thing Jesus said about the vine and the branches. The eternal life is in Christ. If you are in Christ, you have it. If you don't remain in him and you're not in him anymore, you don't have it anymore. It's still eternal life and it's still in him, but you're not in him. So the eternal life that you were enjoying, you're not enjoying it anymore, just like a branch that's broken off the vine. It had the life of the vine in it, but it has separated itself from the vine and no longer has the life of the vine in it. The vine still has eternal life, but the branch that's broken off or has left doesn't. So we need to think in the same terms Paul did, and even Jesus, because the vine and the branches is a corporate picture also.
And Paul favored not so much the vine and branches image, but that of a body with many members, but it's the same concept of an organism having multiple organs. And if the organism is chosen, then all the organs in it are chosen too. You know, if there's a bunch of prisoners on death row, and before he leaves office or before he's reelected or whatever, Mr. Trump decides he's going to choose from a bowl of names of prisoners on death row, one that he's going to pardon. Well, if your name comes up, you're the one who gets to be pardoned. And every part of your body is pardoned. Every part of your body would have died when you died. But when you receive life, every part of your body, every organ and limb and in you is chosen too to survive.
So I mean, it's all, there's a lot of illustrations we could make, but the concept is very clear. It's very much like being in Israel. Israel was chosen, not the individuals. The nation was chosen.
Individuals chose to be in or out of the nation. Same thing with Christ. Christ is chosen. We decide if we're going to be in Him or not. And no one can find any scripture that refutes that interpretation.
And yet the whole, I mean, anyone who understands Paul correctly, I think will have to come to that view. I hope that's helpful. All right, let's talk to Garrett in Orange County, California. Garrett, welcome to The Narrow Path. Good to hear from you.
Good to hear from you, Steve. I've been discussing with a friend who was born on the coast of infant baptism. And I, my defense has always been that infants don't have the ability to have people like their, their brains are just not good enough. I need to follow him. And he brought up this scripture to me at Psalms 22. If you're familiar, it basically made me trust while on my brother's mother's breast, almost kind of implying that this person, I believe it was David, this person was, he had faith ever since he was born. And I was just wondering if this is something to be taken literally, that's, that's exactly what he's trying to say, or what, what would you respond to that with?
Yeah. Yeah, it is a poem, of course. The Psalms are poetry and, and it uses figures of speech. For example, David similarly says that the wicked go astray from the womb, speaking lies in another Psalm. Well, when, when a baby comes out of the womb, it's not speaking lies and it's not going astray.
It's not going anywhere. It's, you know, he's, he's using what we would call hyperbole. He's saying these people and me, he says, I, from my youth, from the time I was at my mother's breast, I was, as it were, privileged to be brought up to know you. And he's exaggerating a little bit when he says, I was trusting you the moment I was born, just like he exaggerates when he says the wicked have been speaking lies the moment they're born.
He's, he's simply talking about these people that he's criticizing or himself whom he's praising God that he had these privileges, that these privileges have been with them through their whole life. And to say, well, from the moment of birth is an exaggeration. I mean, I've heard people say I was born a Christian, meaning they were born into a Christian family. And they, they may mean that because they don't understand what it means to be a Christian, or they might be simply emphasizing that, you know, from my childhood, I was exposed to Christianity.
I've never rejected it. So I was kind of born a Christian in a way. It's not a literally true statement, but it's hyperbolically something that someone might say. And David was saying that. Certainly he's not saying that when he was born, that he had, you know, faith in anything, in any propositions. Although he may have trusted in his mother's breast, he says, I, you know, you made me trust what from my mother's breast or whatever. He, I mean, he could be talking about trusting his mother to feed him, but I don't even think a baby has a sophisticated grasp of the situation enough even to know, not certainly not instantly, where his food's going to come from or who his mother even is.
They learn pretty quick, but, you know, he's, he's talking in hyperbole when he talks that way. All right. Thanks, Steve. All right. Okay. Good talking to you, brother.
All right. Brian from Leander, Texas. Welcome to The Narrow Path.
Thanks for calling. Hello, brother Steve. I met you and your wife at brother Wilkerson's house last year.
I'm hoping to, I'm hoping to see y'all again this Sunday, Lord willing. I had a, I had a quick question for you and I'll take the answer off the air after I ask your question. No limits on time or commitment. If next year at this time I wanted to have my knowledge of the Bible increased at an exponential rate, then what plan of study would you recommend to me? Thank you very much, brother. Okay.
Thank you for your call. Well, it's good that you want to have your, your knowledge of the Bible increased or doubled or whatever. And many people have asked me to recommend, you know, a form of study that will bring that about.
And I honestly have never known what to recommend because I, I didn't follow just one means of study myself. I learned the Bible by reading it over and over and over again and thinking about it all the time. So you know, the Bible says that, uh, you know, blessed is the man who meditates day and night on the word of God.
He'll be like a tree planted by rivers of water who's bears fruit in his season and his leaf never withers and whatever he does, she'll prosper. Uh, meditating day and night on the word of God is how you learn it. You can study it and learn it, but many times studying the word of God simply fills your head with facts about the Bible because that's what study typically is about is learning facts in your head. And that's a very important thing because you'll misunderstand the Bible if you neglect study. But having studied, you need to be meditating on it day and night, which means that it's always on your thoughts. You're always turning over in your mind maybe the last thing you read in the scripture and seeing how does that apply to me?
How would my life be different? You know, if I understood that and practice that better or maybe not the last thing you read, maybe it's just something God brings to mind. People meditate by nature on what they love. If you fall in love with somebody, you think about them all the time.
You don't have to make yourself do it. You just, they come to mind and you're always picturing them and thinking of them and remember the last thing they said to you and try to understand, you know, what did she mean by that? I wonder if I can kind of get behind what she's thinking when she says these things. When you're in love, you meditate on that person all the time. When you're in love with the Word of God, you think about it all the time.
You have to ask those same kind of questions. That's meditation. And so there are many ways to study the Bible. You can go to a Bible school. I didn't.
Or a seminary. I didn't do that either. You can listen to people on the internet teach, myself and others.
I didn't do that either. There was no internet when I started learning the Bible. But I did listen to cassette tapes of teachers I respected. There are much fewer available when I started than there are now. You can listen to some wonderful teachers online now.
But we got some, you know, good cassette tapes. Eventually when I was 16, I started going to a church that taught through the Bible verse by verse. I don't agree with the teachings they gave me at this point on many subjects, but it got me reading and studying the Bible. And more than my studying of it, although I've done a lot of that.
I read commentaries. I read books, theological books. But most of what I've really learned by heart is what I've gained by meditation. Study is kind of laying a foundation for really learning. You learn the facts and you learn, you know, maybe memorize some scripture through times of study. But then because you have it memorized or because you know those facts, you can think them through all the time.
Now obviously some people don't have the liberty I had. Some people have jobs where they really have to think hard about their job. Others have jobs that it's more physical labor and they can meditate on scripture. I actually literally chose the kind of job that required no thought so that I could meditate on scripture all the time.
I literally did. Before I was in full-time ministry, I spent years doing janitorial work, window washing, assembly line work, things that didn't require me to do much deep thought about what I was doing for a living. I could devote my thoughts while I was working to what mattered to me.
I realized some people just, you know, they can't do that in their present job. So I just say the more you can devote your thoughts to meditating on scripture without of course neglecting your work or neglecting your relationships or your duties, the more you can do that, the more you'll learn. As far as studies, some people do book studies, some do word studies. I mean, there's all kinds of different things they do.
I've never resorted to any one of them, you know, exclusively. Sometimes I'll study out a word because I'm curious about that word. Or I'll study a book. I'll read commentaries about it. But I don't necessarily let the commentaries tell me what it means. I let them tell me what they think it means. When I read a commentary, that's what I'm thinking.
This is what this person thinks it means. Now it's up to me to decide if they're right or wrong. And of course, much of what they say is right. And I've learned many valuable things along those lines.
But I never automatically agree with the commentator. And most of the views I have strong convictions on or anything like independent conclusions about, none of those things were gained through study so much as through meditation on the Bible. So I'd recommend study, but I'd even more recommend meditation. But the Bible says, in His law, He delights, and He meditates on it day and night.
You'll meditate on what you're delighted in. So cultivate a love for the Bible, a love for God's word, because you love God. We don't become worshipers of the Bible. We are worshipers of God, and we want to know what He has to say to us. We want to have a relationship with God, so we want to read His letters to us. I mean, they weren't written to us, but He speaks to us from them. We want to know His mind.
We want to know Him. And so developing a love for Scripture because you love God is really what you need to have as a foundation for learning. Then you can study any way you want to. Get to study Bible, get commentaries. But as I say, you really need the Holy Spirit to be teaching you. He can do it through commentaries. He can do it through recorded lectures online or whatever. But you can't just follow a teacher, me or anyone else, and hope that they will always be right and that everything they say is going to be reliable.
Hopefully, if they're honest, they think it's reliable, but obviously people have different opinions. So you have to really have a relationship with God and a heart for God and a practice of meditating on what God has said. That will make all the difference. I'm not saying you'll double your knowledge of the Bible by this time next year. You might.
You might even. But that's one thing I'd recommend. As far as study is concerned, the resources on our website are, of course, free. Not all resources are.
And I think our resources are good enough to recommend. So I think if you listen to those lectures that you'll learn a lot too. But you'll still have to judge it. You'll still have to meditate on it. You'll still have to decide whether what I'm saying in my lectures is really biblical or not.
That's your responsibility. But if you love the scripture, you'll love little as much as studying and meditating on it. I hope that helps you, brother. I appreciate your call and your enthusiasm to learn the scriptures. We're going to take a break here and come back with another half hour.
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Welcome back to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we are live for another half hour to take your calls and discuss whatever you bring up for us to talk about the Bible, your questions, your alternative viewpoints. Feel free to give me a call.
The number is 844-484-5737. Now, I made an announcement in the first half hour. I'll do it again because it's upon us. Tomorrow, I'll be speaking at a group in Texas in Spring Branch or I guess technically what's the name of that town?
Anyway, Spring Branch is close enough. And I'll be speaking on Friday night and also in the church on Sunday morning. And you can attend the Friday night, but you'll have to RSVP because they have a limited number that they can have. But you can watch it on what do you call it?
Zoom. All right. And I've been informed that it's an adult meeting.
That doesn't mean the subject matter is adult. It just means that you're not supposed to bring your children if they're little because they don't have children's facilities there for Friday night. Of course, you can bring your children to church on Sunday. And I'm also going to be speaking later in the week, next week in the Houston area and the Dallas area. And if you're living or going to be in any of those places in this coming seven days, feel free to join us. You'll have to go to the website, thenarrowpath.com, thenarrowpath.com and go to the announcements tab and you'll find all the relevant information. Okay. Our next caller is, let's see, it is Ryan from Denver, Colorado.
Ryan, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Hey, Mr. Steve. Great to talk to you.
Yeah. I spoke with you twice before actually. And you're off to a great smooth start, obviously, as they used to talk about Obama, but you're on a whole different level with your smooth start here.
And on your, well, you've been my mentor obviously at the highest level for your type of dedication to studies over the last 50 years. And I would say, you know, you're the supreme Bible scholar, you know, people like you. Notice I don't say that.
I don't say that. But, uh, sure. Well, that's because you have the fruit of the spirit of humbleness and to live a quiet life. Okay. Enough about me. Let's talk about you.
What do you think about me? All right. Well, I mean, I just want to profess that because I think you're going to have a huge, I think you're going to have a huge platform if it's God's will sometime in the future, much more than now. I'm getting old.
I'm getting old and it hasn't happened yet. So anyway, I'm not too, I'm not looking for a huge platform, but I'll be very glad if God gives me influence broadly. We'll just see if that happens. Go ahead. Thank you for your call. Well, I actually didn't want to email you because you get probably gobs of emails with questions and I find writing could be tedious with proofreading and detail and covering all the pieces with callers. Yeah.
So you're on the air. I actually didn't want to email you, but I wanted to tell you on the air that if you could think about and read Isaiah 28 and then I was going to ask you a question about that next week. Possibly, possibly next week I'll ask you a question, but I wanted you to just reread it on your own time.
Well, I'll tell you, I've read Isaiah 28. Maybe you could let me know what your question is now. We could talk about it. Well, I don't want to prolong my call any longer and take up a lot of time. Okay. Well, you've been waiting a long time. Okay.
It was great though. And then I was going to ask you sometime in the future, God willing, on a question on how little we know about the brain and how little even the field of psychiatry knows about the human brain. Now, why is it you plan to ask that question later and you're on the air now? You could ask it now if you want to.
Well, because I think it's going to... Time consuming? I think you've established a long drawn out response and I don't want to take up 20 minutes, but yeah, I've been in the world somewhat of psychiatry and they know little about the brain and little about the Bible. Have you ever listened to my lecture series called Biblical Council for a Change? Because I talk about psychology and psychiatry a great deal in that.
About the first half of the series is about psychology and psychiatry. Well, yeah, I just had a specific question. I did. Go ahead. Okay. I don't want to press you. I mean, you don't want to ask a question now.
So, we'll talk to you sometime when you want to call and ask them. Okay? Yeah, there's some details that I don't think were in those lectures.
I didn't listen to the entirety of them, but... Okay. Well, we're taking almost... Okay. God bless you. Yeah, if you don't want to take a lot of time, but you want to say a word, just say, hey, I'll call some other time or maybe just wait and call some other time because I'm ready for you. I'm ready for your questions, but that's fine. I mean, thank you for calling and thank you for the kind words. Maybe that was the main reason you wanted to call and I appreciate it. Thank you.
Maggie from Massachusetts. Welcome to The Narrowed Path. Thanks for calling.
Hi Steve, good afternoon. I wanted to refine my question that I asked you yesterday and then just a quick, one of your quick thoughts. So, real quick, my question is, religious groups like Muslims, like Jehovah's Witness, like the Mormons who in fact believe in Jesus, but they deny the deity, so they deny that Jesus is Lord. So, because, you know, and the Bible speaks of false prophets and that they have another book.
So, what are your thoughts on, what are their consequences? You know, because in fairness, if that's what they truly believe in their heart, how are they any different than those that don't believe that they don't know God at all or Jesus at all? And then quickly, do you think it's wrong of me? So, I met a man from Palestine and he was explaining how, you know, he hates the Israelites. And I understand that because I believe they were the Philistines in the Old Testament, but I understood that the reason why, because they were a pagan nation, they worshiped idols, and God wanted them to take their land. But how do you tell somebody that without seeming inconsiderate?
Like, I want to say, well, the reason is because your nation is pagan, your culture is pagans, and the Lord, you know. Okay, okay. Let's not go, let's not go too long on this. Let me just say.
Okay. The Palestinians are not necessarily any relation to the ancient Philistines. I mean, there may be some bloodline for some of them. The Arab nations in the Middle East, including the Palestinians, are very possibly not purely descended from any one biblical ancient people.
They have probably intermixed. For example, a lot of people think the Arabs come from Ishmael. Well, maybe, I mean, maybe they do. That's not able to be documented, but Arab people often think they do. But other people think some of them might have had Edomite ancestors or, like, you're talking about Philistine ancestors. It's true that the word Palestine comes from the word Philistine. That's why the land was called Palestine in Roman times, because it had been the Philistine land at one time. But just because the land is called Palestine doesn't mean that the people who've moved into it, you know, over the centuries have Philistines for ancestors. And, you know, when he says he hates Israel, yeah, I don't think it would make a lot of points to say, well, that's because you're a wicked pagan from idol-worshipping ancestors. It may be that that would be true of a given person, but it doesn't really explain why they hate Israel. They probably hate Israel because their nations have been at war with each other, just like probably some Japanese people have some problem with Koreans and vice versa, especially Koreans have occasion to be upset with the Japanese because of things that the Japanese did to them during the war. And so there's some hard feelings there.
There shouldn't be. And if people are Christians, they should do what they can to overcome that and to be reconciled. And same thing with Palestinians and Israelites or anything else. If people have been at war with each other and there's been atrocities done, maybe on both sides, but, you know, the side you're on feels the atrocities done by the others more severely, well, then, you know, you're going to have some issues that you're going to have to work through. And Arabs, modern Arabs, which would include Palestinians, and modern Israelites, or Israelis we'd call them today, they have issues in some cases to work out. And often those get worked out very well when the parties become Christians. I would say the reason he has trouble forgiving or loving Israelites is because he's not a Christian and love for your enemy is a Christian virtue.
It's a fruit of the Holy Spirit. And if he's following Jesus, if he were a Christian follower of Jesus, then he would, the Holy Spirit would help him to learn to love his Israeli brothers. But he's got other things that define him and animate him. So it's not because, you know, his ancestors were Philistines and they worshiped Dagon, the fish god. It's because he's not a Christian. And what's true of him is really probably true of most people who aren't Christians.
If people have, if some other nation has done atrocities to your people and you feel that, you know, you owe them some retribution or something, then you're going to, unless you're a Christian with the fruit of the Spirit in your life, you're probably going to not like them. Now, as far as the other point you made, I gave a brief answer yesterday because we didn't have much time, but what's God going to do about Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses and people of groups that we, that we Christians would call cults, which have Jesus in their theology, but not like our theology about Jesus. The Mormons definitely do not see Jesus as Yahweh or as a part of a Trinity and certainly the Jehovah's Witnesses. And by the way, Muslims, Muslims also have Jesus in their theology, but they have different teaching about Jesus. They actually think very highly of him, but they don't believe that he's God's son because they don't believe Allah has a son. They don't understand that they think that if God has a son, then God must have a consort, a wife, to produce offspring. And they don't understand even what Christians are saying when they say that Jesus is God's son because we don't, we're not claiming that Allah had a wife or that God had a wife. That's not even the kind of concept that the sonship of Christ is. But the point is these people do have, all of them have very high views of Jesus, but not high enough. That is, they're not high enough to be Orthodox. They're not really agreeable with what the Bible teaches, but they clearly are not people who are trying to diminish Jesus.
They just don't, like you said, they don't know any better. I don't think the Jehovah's Witness that comes to my door and denies that Jesus is God, I don't think he's a man who in his heart hates Jesus and he's therefore coming to me as a person who worships Jesus and saying, I want to diminish your worship of Jesus because I hate Jesus. I just think he's studied his Bible.
He's gotten different conclusions than I have. I think he's mistaken, but in many cases they love Jesus. So do Mormons and so do, frankly, some Muslims do because Mohammed said that Jesus was the greatest prophet that Allah ever sent. And the only reason they follow Mohammed instead of Jesus is because Mohammed came later and they believe they're supposed to follow the latest prophet that God sent, but they believe Jesus was a greater prophet than Mohammed.
Now they're wrong. I mean, Jesus, of course he's great, but they have a diminished view of Jesus vis-a-vis the Christian correct biblical view. All these groups do. But a diminished understanding or diminished opinion about Jesus doesn't mean that they are enemies of Christ. They are confused in many cases. Now I'm not saying there aren't enemies of Christ among these people.
There can be. No religious group is homogenous. If you go to a Baptist church or a Pentecostal church or a Presbyterian church or a Methodist church or a Catholic church or a Lutheran church, you're going to find some people there who really love God and some people are there who don't care about God at all. They're in there just by habit or they like the music or they want the reputation for being respectable.
I mean, there's various reasons. People go to church and certainly not all of them are because they want to follow Jesus Christ as their Lord and King. So same thing with any other group. I can't judge somebody by the group they're in.
God never will. I mean, he's going to judge them by whether they're in Christ or not. But there are Baptists who are in Christ and there are Pentecostals in Christ. And they won't go to the same church because they don't agree with each other.
And that's a bad thing, by the way. But they're still both of them are in Christ. And certainly Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses and Muslims disagree about Jesus. They disagree with us about Jesus even more than a Baptist or Pentecostal disagree with each other. But I don't know how much a person could be mistaken about Jesus. And Jesus still recognized them as someone who loves him. I know that the disciples of Jesus, when he first called them, didn't know he was God. They didn't have a Trinity doctrine.
They were Jews. Jews don't have a Trinity doctrine. They don't believe in the Trinity.
And by the way, I mentioned Muslims. Muslims and Jews have very much similar views about God. Both of them are against the Trinity. The only difference is that Muslims think Jesus was a great prophet and Jews believe that Jesus was a great heretic. So, I mean, in a sense, the Muslims have a much higher view of Jesus than the Jews do. The point I'm making, though, is people have different opinions about Jesus. That doesn't make them all okay. I'm not suggesting that every opinion of Jesus is okay.
They're not. Everyone should have the right opinion of Jesus. In fact, you and I should strive to have as accurate an opinion about Jesus as we can. But our relationship with him isn't based entirely on opinions about him. Just like my relationship with my father and mother is not based on my opinions about them. I happen to have a high view of them.
I think the view is correct. But what if I didn't? What if I didn't think my parents were as smart as they actually are?
Or I didn't think they were as good as they actually are? Or let's just say I'd never met my father because my parents were separated, let's say. And I didn't really have a very clear picture of who my father was. But I still, in my heart, wished I did. I still wanted to know him. I'm still his son. I just am confused about him. I might have an image of him that's different.
Here's the problem we have in discussing this very issue you've raised. And that is that we sometimes say that people have another Jesus because they have another opinion about Jesus than we have. But having an opinion about Jesus in the Bible is not the same thing. What opinion did the disciples have about Jesus when they followed him? They didn't think of him as God. They later learned more about him. Once the Holy Spirit came, God revealed things to them they didn't know. And they, of course, came to understand him more properly. But when they left their nets, when they left the receipt of custom to follow Jesus and were initially his disciples, which makes them Christians, and saved, they didn't know about the Trinity. They didn't know about, you know, Jesus being God. But they knew he was the one they were going to be loyal to. He was the one they were going to love. He was the one they were going to follow. And so how much did Jesus, how much was he offended by the fact that his disciples, for the three years or so that they followed him, didn't even know he was God? Did he feel insulted?
No. They knew as much as they could know at that point. And there's certain people who know as much as they could know, which isn't maybe enough to make them correct. But that doesn't mean they're not following the same Jesus.
They might be or might not be. God has to judge that. There are people in evangelical churches probably who aren't following the same Jesus that the Bible describes. That is, they don't have the same opinions about Jesus.
And so it sounds like I'm beating around the bush, but I'm actually trying to develop a case here. The question you're asking is one I can't answer and you can't answer. Only God can answer that. There were people in the Old Testament who are saved. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, Moses, you know, the prophets, they were saved, but they didn't know the name of Jesus. And they probably didn't really even know in most cases anything about the Trinity. Some of them might have had some insights into that, but most of them, we don't have any record that God ever told them about the Trinity. And so certainly I'm sure some of them didn't know that Jesus was going to be, that the Messiah was going to be God. Isaiah had some scriptures about that that indicated that he got a revelation, but I'm not sure even how much he processed it.
We don't know. The main thing we have to realize is that having a relation with a person and being absolutely correct in all the data that you think and have opinions about that person are not the same thing. When you marry your wife or your husband, you know that person somewhat, but you learn a lot more about them after you marry them and live with them. And therefore you could say when you got married there's a lot of things you didn't know. And you might have had a wrong opinion. You have some surprises in a relationship when you live with somebody. And those surprises mean you were wrong before you learn more about them.
But that doesn't mean you didn't have a relationship with them. Being a Christian isn't having all the right theology or having all the right opinions. Being a Christian means you have the right heart toward God and you love God and you love Jesus and you're learning. You're in a relationship with Him that inspires learning. Jesus said, take My yoke upon you and learn from Me.
And that's what we do. When we become a Christian, we take His yoke upon Him. We become bonded with Him like two animals under a yoke pulling a plow together. We're bound to Him and we're walking with Him, but we're learning from Him. And, you know, until you learn, you don't know. And there's lots of things you don't know when you first begin to walk with Jesus. So how much ignorance about Jesus can a person have and still love Him and still follow Him?
I don't know. Where do you draw the line? Now, a lot of evangelicals draw the line at the Trinity or at believing that Jesus is God. I believe Jesus is God and I believe in the Trinity.
Therefore, I think everyone should. But the Bible doesn't say that believing those specific things or knowing those things is what makes you a Christian. What makes you a Christian is you're a follower of Jesus. And if you do follow Jesus, I think you'll learn those things if you don't know them already. So you're asking me to broad brush whole groups of people who say they love Jesus, but we know they have wrong opinions about Jesus.
Some of them maybe are true followers of Jesus that they're only barely learning about, just like the disciples who left their nets. They didn't know who He was. They didn't know He was the Messiah until later on. When Peter finally said, You're the Messiah, Jesus was relieved that they knew.
He said, I'm glad you know that. The Father revealed that to you, not flesh and blood. When you start to follow Jesus, it's a matter of your heart and your mind, but it doesn't usually involve full knowledge of all the theology that you're going to know someday. And it's a growing proposition to walk with Jesus. Peter said in 2 Peter 3.18, but grow in grace and in the knowledge of our God, Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. So we're always growing in our knowledge of Jesus. And you know, that means we're a lot more ignorant before than we are now, but we were still following Him when we're ignorant, more ignorant. And someone wants me to tell them where the level of ignorance, where's that line, where's that boundary where if you're just that ignorant, you can't really be saved. But if you have a little more knowledge, where's that line drawn?
That's a line that God knows. And that's all He's the only one who has to. All the rest of us should be learning about Christ as much as we can. And that's all we can do. Follow Him, learn of Him, grow in our knowledge of Him and in our obedience to Him. And let God be the judge of who He thinks has the right heart and the right attitude toward Him.
Attitude probably more than a opinion is perhaps a major factor. All right, let's talk to Dennis from Lake Elsinore. Welcome to The Narrow Path, Dennis. Yes. Hello. Hello. Yes. Hello. Can you hear me? Go ahead.
Okay, great. Yes. I have a question. There's a, my niece keeps, she's, you know, of a different denomination, but she keeps it, cursed are those who teach my people to fly. And she would say this is in reference to the rapture or, or, and I, I heard Pastor Chuck say that it was craft he was talking about.
What, what, which are they? Well, I'll tell you what, I'll tell you what, if some, if somebody said cursed are those who teach my people to fly, they may have been talking about the rapture, but they, they didn't write in the Bible. The Bible doesn't have any statement like that in it.
Not even close. Okay. What, do you know what scripture that is? I just said, it's not in there. It's not in the Bible.
Nothing close to that is in the Bible. Oh, it's not in there. Okay. Nothing, nothing remotely close to it. Yeah.
So, uh, ask her to find the passage for you and maybe she'll learn something, namely that she's quoting verses that don't exist. Okay. Okay. Dennis. Okay. That's good. Thanks for your call, brother. Rob from Vancouver, BC.
Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Good afternoon, Mr. Craig. Wanted to ask you two questions, so I don't think you'll have time, so I'll just stick with the one.
I was hoping you could talk, yeah, if you wouldn't mind. Um, I was hoping you could talk about good works and just explain exactly what they are. Is there a difference between good works and a good deed? And if you could just a little bit elaborate on those people and or religions that basically think you could earn your way into heaven by performing good works. Uh, no one can earn your way to heaven by performing good works. Um, and the only way that you'd ever be in heaven without performing good works is if you repented at the end of your life like the thief on the cross.
He didn't perform any good works, but he's he's with the with Christ today in heaven. But you don't want to wait till the end, not just because you're taking the chance that you'll die before you make the right choice, but because you're cheating God. The purpose of being a Christian is not to get your fire insurance from hell, although that comes along. That's a that's a benefit of being a Christian. The purpose for being a Christian is because you recognize that God owns you.
God made you. He purchased you and he has appointed Jesus to be your king and your Lord. And you're sick of denying God what he has coming.
You know, as you've been robbing God until the point that you turn and serve him because you owe him and you've been, you know, neglecting to pay the debt that you would owe to someone who owns you. Uh, and therefore when you come to believe in Christ correctly, you believe that he's your Lord and that he's your king. And of course that's going to have an impact on the way you live. Now, that means that you will live differently. You will live more righteously. You live more obediently to God. And that means you'll have good works, but you're not doing those good works in order to become a Christian and become saved. You're doing those good works because you are a Christian and you are saved.
When you, when you actually have come to genuinely believe that Jesus is the king and the Lord and you stop resisting that fact, well then that's when you become a Christian. You repent of having denied him what he deserves from your life. If you were made for a purpose by God in order to serve him and, and please him and know him, which is by the way, the highest privilege as a human being could have once they understand that, uh, then the neglect of doing so is, is a crime. And so you become, you repent of your rebellion, you repent of your desertion and you come back to God and you then are reconciled to God in a proper relationship. That's what reconciliation implies. And in a relationship with the king, that means if you have a good relation with the king, that means you're obedient to him.
He's your king or a Lord. And a lot of people don't want Jesus to be their king or their Lord. They just want to say, he's my savior. And somebody told them, all you have to do is say a prayer and ask Jesus to come into your heart and then you'll have salvation.
And so people do that and they believe that. But that's not in the Bible. The Bible doesn't ever talk about saying a sinner's prayer.
It doesn't ever talk about asking Jesus into your heart. There's nothing like that in the Bible. No one got saved that way in the Bible. People became saved when they decided this is the guy. This is the guy that God sent.
This is the guy that God has promised to come in and be the Lord and the king, the Messiah. Uh, and when they decide that and say, therefore I'm in, you know, count me in, I'm, he's my king. And of course then your life's going to look like something different. Your life's going to be different. Hey, I'm glad you called, but I'm also out of time. I'm not glad of that because there's other calls waiting and my apologies to them. But there is, I guess tomorrow if the Lord tarries, we are on Monday through Friday at the same time. And we hope that if you didn't get on today, you can call earlier tomorrow and I'd love to talk to you about whatever your, uh, your call was to be about. You've been listening to the Narrow Path Radio Broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we are live Monday through Friday. We're listener supported. You can find out how to support the mystery by going to our website, thenarrowpath.com. You can click on the tab that says donations and that'll help you out to help us out. Have a good day. Let's talk again tomorrow. God bless you.
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