The Narrow Path 10/2

Music Good afternoon and welcome to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we're live for an hour each weekday afternoon. We take your phone calls if you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith you'd like to discuss here on the air.

Or if you have a different viewpoint from the host and you want to talk about that, you may do so. Right now our lines are almost full. Looks like we might have one line open. The number to call is 844-484-5737.

That's 844-484-5737. You know, in the last two weeks I've had two very similar experiences, embarrassing in a way to me, where callers have called up and said there's a verse somewhere that says something and the way they phrased it, there was nothing in the Bible that sounded like that to me. And one of them was one of the Proverbs, which was badly mangled in the New Living Translation, which the caller was using and to my mind it totally changed the meaning of the Proverbs. So I said, oh, there's no verse in the Bible that says anything like that. And then I found out that there is in a different translation I'm not familiar with, but it's not a good translation. In this case, yesterday, I think it was yesterday, or yeah, it must have been yesterday, somebody called and said something about, she had a friend who told her that the Bible said something about woe to those who teach others to fly. And she wondered if that was about the rapture. And I said, there's nothing in the Bible that says anything about people teaching others to fly.

There's nothing in there. And I was very adamant about it. And I'm right, except she was using the King James Version, which is the only version that translates it this way. Now, it's interesting. I was raised on the King James Version, but I have to say, when I was young, I wasn't that familiar with Ezekiel, so I didn't read it in the King James Version. I read that in the New King James when I got older and several other translations. And it turns out she was referring to Ezekiel 1320, which in the King James Version, it says this strangely, wherefore thus says the Lord God, behold, I'm against your pillows. Now, by the way, pillows, most translations take to be not like my pillow, but like magical charms. And as we'll see, you can look at almost the translation, it'll say your magic charms. It says, I'm against your pillows, wherewith ye there hunt the souls to make them fly, and I will tear them from your arms and I will let the souls go, even the souls that you hunt to make them fly.

Now, again, this isn't any reference to teaching people to fly, but it obviously is the closest parallel to the wording that the caller was asking about. I'm sure this is the verse that someone was alluding to. And the interesting thing is this verse doesn't have anything in it about people flying. It does in the King James, and this is one of the few places the King James was so far off, because I like the King James.

But once in a while, you just can't account for why they translated it. I'll read it in the New King James, which actually agrees. I looked it up in the Orthodox Jewish Bible, which they ought to know their Hebrew text pretty well. I looked it up in the Young's Literal Translation.

I looked it up in the New American Standard, the NIV, and other versions, and they all agree with the New King James, and none of them read it remotely like the King James Version. What it actually says in a more modern version, it says, Therefore, thus says the Lord God, Behold, I am against your magic charms, by which you hunt souls there like birds. Okay, it's the expression, like birds, or like flying ones, literally. So, you hunt souls like flying ones. So, it's like a bird catcher, like a fowler, it's referring to.

People are hunting people, just like a fowler hunts for birds. He says, I will tear them from your arms, and let the souls go, the souls that you hunt, like birds. Virtually every translation you look this up in, except the King James, reads like that. It's talking, it's not talking about people flying.

It's talking about people hunting other people as a person who hunts birds. So, obviously the concept is totally different than the King James would suggest, and I wasn't familiar with the King James, and therefore I adamantly spoke too seriously. There's no verse in the Bible that says anything about making people fly, but as it turns out, the King James Version did. My wife was the first to correct me for that because she's always, whenever there's a call like that, she's always on the computer looking for things that I can't remember, and she found it first, and then I think another listener wrote to me and pointed out that verse, but by the time I got the email I'd already noticed the difference in the King James. Anyway, so for the caller, if she's still listening, I should have said, what verse are you talking about, and then I could have looked it up and I could have read it to you, but I just had never heard of a verse that talks about people teaching people to fly, and as it turns out, even the King James doesn't say anything about teaching people to fly, but making them fly, meaning apparently in the King James, making them flee, fly like, you know, from danger, but that's not even what it says.

It's just a bad translation. All right, we've got our lines full, so let's talk first of all to Jason in Pennsylvania. Jason, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Hi, Steve. My first question is, since there are a lot of Christians who don't experience any strength when they call upon the Lord, wouldn't that be good evidence that Christianity is not true, since they're not experiencing the Holy Spirit in any way? You know, it might, that's one way you could go with the evidence. The other way you go is maybe they're not true. There's more than one way to look at it. There's an awful lot of true Christians who do find their strength in the Lord when they call on the Lord, and they do find the promises of God to be true, and then there's people who identify themselves as Christians, and they say, well, God doesn't answer my prayers.

I don't get strength when I look to Him. In other words, there are people who do not come into whatever it is that Christians are supposed to come into in their experience. Now, I won't say these people aren't necessarily saved, but there may be some deficiencies in their faith, because even Jesus, speaking to his own disciples, said, oh, you of little faith, and James said in James chapter 1, you have to ask God in faith. He says, if you don't ask in faith, you're like a wave driven by the wind and tossed to the sea. He says, let not that man think he'll receive anything from the Lord. And he's writing to believers. So a person may, A, maybe isn't a believer, or B, might be a believer who doesn't have much faith, and maybe not even a very consistent believer.

Hard to say. I'm not trying to judge whoever's claiming to have that experience. All I'm saying is I'm also not going to judge God with being a liar. God has always shown His promise is true to me and many, many people I know. So either God is, either I'm imagining things, which I've been imagining then for about 60 years, and 50 of them, I've lived on those imaginary things, literally.

I paid my bills with them. God has provided, just as He said, there's a promise I count on every day, seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be added to you. If that wasn't true, I would have starved a long time ago. And many other Christians too, and I know many Christian biographies, there's no question that people who trust Him wholly find Him wholly true, as one of the hymns says. So if you say, well, but I know a Christian who they were weak at a time of trial and they asked God to give them strength and they didn't seem to get any. Therefore, God must be lying. Well, there's other parties that could be lying or could be at least deficient in their truthfulness or their faith. To suggest that God's the one who's failed is only one suggestion, not at all the first one I'd look up to.

So there's other possibilities. And I would say this too. If someone said God gave me, I prayed for God to give me strength and He didn't, I'd want to say, well, how are you doing right now?

They'd say, well, I'm doing okay right now maybe. Well, then how can you say He didn't give you strength? You made it through, didn't you?

I mean, what were you expecting? To feel like Superman? I mean, if God gets you through it and you're doing better now, didn't He give you at least enough strength to get through it? You wouldn't have survived it if He hadn't. So I think sometimes when people are asking God to give them something, it's like when sometimes when people are asking God to fill them with the Holy Spirit, sometimes they have these pictures in their minds of how dramatic and dynamic that's going to look and feel.

And they just have a mistaken picture. That's not necessarily what God's saying He's going to do. But if you get through it after you've asked God for strength, then I'd have to say it looks to me like He gave you the strength. Either that or you had the strength on your own. But in any case, you didn't lack the strength after you asked for it. So might as well give God the credit.

Right. Well, if I could say my situation is where I was a Christian and around 27 I decided not to be a Christian anymore because for years I would pray to God for strength and I never got any response. What response were you wanting? Please, what response were you expecting?

Some help with my struggles. And did you get through them? No, I didn't. I stopped being a Christian.

I decided it's the Holy Spirit. Well, that's your choice. God didn't do that and neither did your struggles.

You decide to be a Christian or not be a Christian by just deciding you'll be loyal or disloyal. It's like when you're married. Are you married? No. Okay. Well, if you ever get married, your marriage will survive if you and your wife decide to remain loyal to each other.

It will not survive if one or both of you decide not to be loyal to each other. It's just that easy. Likewise with Christ. Being a Christian means you're following Jesus. That's a choice you make and you promise. When you come to Christ, you surrender.

Now, if you say when you're 27 years old, I'm going to not do that anymore. Well, then you're breaking your promise. You're disloyal. I'm not trying to condemn you. I'm just saying it's not God who failed you. God isn't responsible to make you stay saved.

He will help you stay saved as long as your trust is in Him. Pardon? I'm sorry. I said if I could interrupt. I have to make choices based upon what I see and I did not see any evidence of the Holy Spirit. So why would I continue with something in which I don't have any evidence for it?

I would disagree with your premise. You have to decide based on what you see. I've never seen Jesus, but I still choose to believe in Him.

You know why? Because He's real and I have evidence of that, tons of evidence of it, but it's not in the realm of sight. Remember when Jesus said to Thomas, you believe because you've seen, but blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe. You know, anyone who has to decide whether they're going to believe in Christ or not can look at things that are much more objective than whether I feel like He's given me strength or not at any given moment, like the historical fact of His resurrection from the dead.

Now, anyone who objectively, no, it is. It's as much a historical fact as any fact you believe in history. It's more established than most by witnesses. The difference is other things in history don't require supernatural. So what?

Well, wait, wait, wait. You can't say that if something's supernatural, it didn't happen unless you've already decided there's no such thing as the supernatural. Well what I'm saying is that if there's no evidence for the supernatural, you can't logically or objectively say, oh, well, it must have been the supernatural. I didn't say it must have been the supernatural. Even if I would say that, I didn't say that I said it's a historical fact. That simply means it happened.

Okay? Now if you say, well, it's not a historical fact, then you're saying it didn't happen. And I say, how do you know that? You say, because it's supernatural.

So the only way that could make sense rationally is if you're saying there is no such thing as the supernatural because nothing that's claimed to be supernatural could have ever really happened. I disagree. I think you're being a bigot.

I think you're being prejudiced. Okay. Do you believe that supernatural things could happen? I'm just curious, Jason. Do you believe supernatural things could happen?

Okay. So do you think it's possible that Jesus could rise from the dead supernaturally? No, because first you'd have to prove that the supernatural exists.

No, you wouldn't. You would learn that the supernatural exists by it happening. You don't have to prove that supernatural... Unless there are other reasons which we've already experienced that we could explain the situation with, such as people stole his body from the grave or the grave is empty because Israel was taken captive by Babylon and the Assyrians and you don't know what happened during that. Well Jesus died after that, so they didn't go to the captivity after Jesus died. Now, you see, there is a requirement when you're trying to figure out if something happened that you look at the evidence realistically and intelligently and you say, well, we know some things are true. We know Jesus died because even secular historians tell about that. We also know that within days after Jesus died, a bunch of people were saying that he had risen from the dead, that his grave was empty and that they had seen him and touched him.

Now they could be all liars, but they didn't give evidence of being liars, especially when they were fed to the lions and crucified upside down and burned at the stake for their testimony of what they'd seen and said they had witnessed. But the question I ask is, how could there be anything more likely or even more established historically than the basic facts that Jesus died historically and that his tomb was empty three days later? I think no one doubts that. I don't think anyone who knows history has ever raised a rational argument against that. Now you've said you're not denying that either. You're saying, well, maybe someone stole it. That would be a way of saying you're right.

The tomb was empty. But the question is, is that a rational way to explain the phenomenon? I would say it is because you're making an argument by what other people are saying.

I mean, the Bible, the earliest copy of the Bible is what, 300 years old? And you're going to use that as what evidence that somebody saw that? Okay. I don't think you, I don't think you have your facts very clear in your mind, but that's okay. Lots of people don't. I won't blame you for that, but I will ask you this. Were your parents married when you were born?

When you were conceived? How do you know that? How do you know? Because they told me. So you're basing on something someone said, somebody you trust, I presume.

Well, I guess I don't know it. You don't, you don't. But you take it by faith because you trust the people, the honest people who told you so, right? Isn't that how we know everything that we didn't experience ourselves? Do you know if there are countries besides the countries you, it's entirely, yes, it is. You're trying to use a, you're trying to use a normal everyday experience and use that for supernatural experiences.

And they're not the same. You have to have a higher level of evidence for supernatural experience. Well, maybe you do, maybe you don't.

You don't necessarily have to. A supernatural thing might happen and there might be few people who knew of it. In this case, the resurrection of Jesus is witnessed by 500 witnesses who saw him after he rose. How many people knew that your parents were married when you were born?

500? How do you know that it was experienced by 500 people? Did those 500 people ever write an eyewitness testimony and sign it and date it? No, they didn't.

No, they didn't. Okay, Jason, let me just tell you something. You are, let me just say that you are not very familiar with the reasons that Christians believe in Christ. And you've heard some skeptical arguments, but you don't know why they fall flat.

And I'd love to tell you why they do, but my lines are full and we can't spend as much time as you'd probably like on the air with this. But I do have a lot of lectures that cover all of these points. I don't know if you're interested in them. You may not be interested. They're probably all at the neuropath.com, right?

They are. And one place you can find them would be under the topical lectures. There's a series called The Authority of Scripture.

I cover a great amount of this kind of stuff there. Also, there's a single lecture. Pardon?

What's it called? Authority of Scripture. It's one of the series under the topical lectures at my website.

The Authority of Scripture. Okay. And then there's, if you look under the individual lectures, which is, this is kind of hard to find. Our website should be better in this respect. But if you go to the topical lectures page, there's a whole bunch of lecture series listed. And one of the lecture series listed is individual topics or individual lectures.

And there you can find, it's either one or two lectures depending on whether they have the newest or the older lectures there. I have a lecture I gave called Why I am Still a Christian. I talk about these very objections you've raised in detail. Okay.

Go ahead. I was just going to say thank you for spending time with me and I'll let you get on to your other callers. It's my pleasure.

I wish I had a whole hour to spend with you, but unfortunately other people have claims on my time too. All right. Have a good one. All right.

God bless you. Thanks, Jason. Bye now.

Okay. We're going to talk to John in San Jose, California. John, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Hi, Steve. Thank you for taking my call. Before I ask my question, I have to compliment you and your wife for looking up that Ezekiel chapter 1320.

Yeah. That was very interesting. That was my wife's doing. I don't know if I would have found it without her.

She's very good. Well, for my question, it's a historical one, so I'm sure you're up for that. One of my pastors was going through John chapter four, Jesus dialoguing with the Samaritan woman at the well. And he made a remark saying that the Samaritans only had access to the Pentateuch. And that was news to me. So I asked him. That's what Josephus says. Yeah.

Go ahead. Oh, it's because of Josephus. Does it relate to the Assyrian invasion?

No, no, it's not. It's not that the Samaritans only had access to the Pentateuch, but they didn't accept the rest of the Old Testament as scripture. They accepted the Torah or the Pentateuch as scripture. Whereas the Jews accepted all of the... Well, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

I have to confess. I'm confused. I was talking about the Sadducees. Were you talking about the Sadducees or are you talking about the Samaritans? Samaritans.

Okay. Now the Samaritan Bible, I am not familiar with their canon. I've never looked at the canon of the Samaritans, but I know that the Sadducees only accepted the Pentateuch. And when you said only the Pentateuch, I began to think about them. And that came from Josephus. But I don't know what Josephus or anyone else may have said about the Samaritan canon. They were a different religion than the Jews and accepted some of the Old Testament.

I don't know if they accepted all or not. So your pastor may have more knowledge of that particular point than I do. I've never looked it up. Well, actually I'm asking you because he didn't really know either. He didn't know either? He based it.

Yeah. He just based on what he learned in, I guess, seminary and college. That's what preachers like me and him have to have to be careful about is sometimes we just repeat what we learned. And we don't always go back to the first sources. We hear from another teacher who heard it from another teacher who heard it from another teacher.

There's a lot of stuff we hear like that. Like when people tell you that there was a gate in Jerusalem, they called the Needle's Eye and the camel's. Yeah. They always say the camel's had to get on their bellies, go through it and stuff. There's no evidence in any history that there was such a gate in Jerusalem. I think I heard that from you on one of your previous shows.

Yeah. I probably corrected that error then too. There's quite a few things that preachers like to pass on that I guess they think make good preaching points and they think they're true. They're not lying, but someone came up with it probably generations ago when it got passed down. But this is why if anything is very important, I'm not really sure that it's very important to know if there was that gate in Jerusalem. So not everything is a hill to die on, but anything that's very important, don't just believe what you're told by me or anyone else. Do your own research because anything that's important is important enough to make sure of. Okay. Well, again, I figured you're up on your history. I'm not.

I mean, no one knows everything about history and that's one thing I certainly don't know. I have not looked into the Samaritan canon of scripture. Okay. Blessings to you. Okay. But I imagine you could find out just probably going on Google and say, what was the Samaritan canon of scripture?

And they'd probably tell you what books they accepted and why. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Thanks for your call. God bless you.

Okay. Jim in Monterey. Hi, Jim. Welcome.

Good to talk to you, Steve. You still in a hospital? Go ahead. Still in a hospital?

Unfortunately, yes. I'm trying to get out of here as quick as possible, but I'll very quickly address your first two callers. Okay.

Quickly. On the Samaritan Pentateuch, it discussed at length in the opening parts of Halley's Bible Handbook. Oh, okay. Halley. Yeah, I remember Halley, but that's good.

So that's a source. Goes into great detail about that because it's, I remember the same dates the Garden of Eden at 5850. Yeah. I know there are differences. Jim, I know there are differences in the dates and stuff in the Samaritan Pentateuch.

I've heard that too, but the question is, did they accept other Old Testament books besides the Pentateuch? According to Halley, yes. Okay. Then that may settle that question.

And your other answer was? Jason comments, Simon Greenleaf was the man who created the rules for evidence in our courts of law in the United States of America. Right. He wrote the text for Harvard Law School on rules of evidence and he was a professor there.

Yeah. And he wrote a book called The Testimony of the Evangelist. I've read it. It's very good and short.

It's short and easy to read, but I think everyone should read it. And he makes a statement there that the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ is, his words, the single best attested to, legal fact of history. And I would not disagree with that. Not just because I'm a Christian and tend to, you know, favor Christian evidences, but because I've actually spent some of my years looking into the basis for the belief in the resurrection of Jesus. And so have several very intelligent people, some lawyers and others. I mean, that's pretty much what, who was it? There was a guy who wrote a book called Who Moved the Stone. I think he was a lawyer and an atheist and he researched and was converted by the evidence alone that he was trying to disprove the resurrection and he got converted. And many have done that. Actually, Josh McDowell has that testimony too.

And C.S. Lewis, I don't think he got converted directly by studying the evidence for the resurrection, but he was an atheist who became converted and certainly studied the evidences. But yeah, there's a lot who have done that. Lee Strobel was a cynical atheist journalist and he was doubtful about the, and he studied the evidence over a long period of time. These people didn't just say, pull out a Christian book on apologics and say, oh, I guess they're right.

These guys spent months and years sometimes tracing down the evidence. Yeah, I mean, Jason did mention that you can't really, you know, claim that Jesus rose from the dead because you don't have any evidence for it. That's a statement of someone who hasn't looked into the evidence.

Like you said, Simon Greenleaf wrote the book on evidence for Harvard Law School, two volume work. He's the most expert man of his generation probably on the nature of evidence. And when he actually said there's more evidence for the resurrection of Christ than any other historical event in ancient times, he knew what he's talking about.

He wasn't just some kind of a Christian dogmatist. He was definitely speaking what is true. Jim, I need to take a break. I appreciate your call. Thanks for calling in. You're listening to The Narrow Path.

We have another half hour coming, so don't go away. And we have most of our lines full, but I take a break at the bottom of the hour to let you know that The Narrow Path is listener supported and that if you'd like to help us pay the bills that keep us on the air, you can. You can write to us at The Narrow Path, P.O. Box 1730, Temecula, California, 92593. That is The Narrow Path, P.O.

Box 1730, Temecula, California, 92593. Or you can do it from our website, which is thenarrowpath.com. I'll be back in 30 seconds, so don't go away. Good.

Welcome back to The Narrow Path. My name is Steve Gregg, and we are live for another half hour taking your calls. I'd give you the phone number.

I will, but the lines are full. So if you want to take this number down, if you call in a few minutes, a line might open up. The number is 844-484-5737. That's 844-484-5737. Our next caller is Jerry in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Another Pennsylvania caller. Hi, Jerry.

Welcome. Hi, Steve. I'm the old gazer who's so confused that I don't know which way I'm turning left or right.

I'm going to throw some things at you about a great mystery that's hidden before the foundation of the world. It's the steps that I'm supposed to take to follow Jesus. First of all, I'm supposed to pick up my cross and follow Jesus. And then it says, I die, and I am crucified.

It's past tense. I am crucified with Christ. It's no longer I that so Jerry's supposed to be dead. And it's Christ that lives in me. I have died with Christ. I am buried with Christ. And right now I am raised with Christ. And I am seated with Christ at the right hand of the Father.

And I am now an ambassador for Christ to go out and bring other people to where these places are supposed to be. You don't seem that confused to me. Sounds like you understand things pretty well. What would your question be about that?

Those things don't exist. I don't have the mind of Christ. I walk in guilt and shame and condemnation, and I'm supposed to walk in no guilt, no shame, and no condemnation. Why do you suppose that would be? You said it's a great mystery.

I guess it is mysterious. Why would you be walking in guilt and shame when Jesus died to justify you and declare you not guilty? Because I keep getting these laws thrown at me that I'm supposed to do that I don't do. I don't obey the laws. What laws?

You're not wearing your mask in public or what? All the laws that are the Bible laws, the preachers, and they say I should do this and I should do that and I should give money and I shouldn't do this and I shouldn't do that. But I'm doing those things.

Okay, well, let me just say this. Following Jesus means that you're devoted to following Jesus. When you wake up in the morning and you realize that you're awake, you say, okay, it's another day that Jesus owns me and I'm here to bring him pleasure to do his will and to glorify the Father. That's just the mindset of somebody who's genuinely surrendered to Christ. It's like if you lived in the times of slavery and you were a slave and you woke up in the morning and you realize, okay, my master has got something for me to do.

And if I don't know what it is, I better try to find out and do what pleases him. I'm not a free man to do whatever I want to do. I have a master. I'm a follower.

I'm a slave. And that's what we are. That's what the Bible says we're to see ourselves as.

Now, if you really do see yourself that way, then you're probably not going to be disobeyed all the time. You may disobey sometimes out of weakness because nobody's perfect. We're weak.

We're frail. Jesus himself said the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. But it's the spirit being willing. Do you identify yourself as a follower of Christ and a servant of Christ? If you do, then I wouldn't see that you'd probably be living in, you know, certainly not patterns of sin. You might be falling into sin once in a while, but you shouldn't be feeling condemnation about that. The Bible says if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So, I mean, that's supposed to be a cure for condemnation. I'm always confessing sins.

I'm always confessing sins. Okay, what should you do then? Okay. No, I mean, this is not a rhetorical question. This is not a rhetorical question. It's a real question. I'd like an answer.

What should you do? I was a Catholic, okay? Okay. When I learned it, I'm not supposed to look at women with impure thoughts. I'd go to confession and I'd say, Father, bless me, Father, and I'd say, and I looked at women with impure thoughts.

It's been one week and I've looked at women six hundred times, six hundred times, and I walked out of the professional box. We can't take a total list of all the times you've sinned. It might not even be as many times as I've sinned, and my list would be, you know, we'd need many years to go over that list, and that's not profitable. The question, you're not a Catholic now, are you? If you are, then maybe that's the issue because a lot of times Catholics believe that they have to live up to Catholic standards and they don't even know the grace of God, but some Catholics do. I know Catholics who really know Jesus, but some don't.

I'm not sure where you're at now. What I'm saying is if you're a follower of Jesus, it doesn't mean you identify yourself as a Catholic or now as something else, as a Protestant or anything else. It means that Jesus is the one you're devoted to.

He's the one that you recognize as your owner. He purchased you with his blood. You've been redeemed, not with silver and gold from your aimless life, but with the precious blood of Christ, and redeemed means you've been purchased. He owns us, and that's something that Christians embrace happily, and when we embrace happily, the fact that God owns us and that Jesus is our Lord, then of course it's in our heart to want to do what pleases him, although we don't do it perfectly.

We're sorry when we did, and we'd certainly have it as our goal to not fail. I don't know that that's what your mentality is. It sounds to me like, as you said, you're an old geezer like me, and maybe you're getting old enough to be worried about getting right with God, and your Catholic background tells you you'd better confess up your sins, and you do, and it's not giving you any peace. That all might just be because you haven't really met Jesus. I don't know if you have. I'm not judging you.

That would certainly fit that syndrome as a diagnosis. So I don't really know if you've really met the Lord, and if you have not, then I would suggest that you read the New Testament and that you identify who Jesus is and see if you believe what it says about him. If you do, then you speak to him and confess your sins. You don't have to be confessing every temptation. When you talk about looking at a woman with impure thoughts, well, that certainly is a sin if you're looking at a woman to lust after her, as Jesus said, but if you see a woman and you find her attractive and you find yourself tempted and you look away and don't try to think about it anymore, it's just like if you're on a diet and you see, you know, a piece of pie that you shouldn't be eating.

Well, if you're determined to live on that diet, you kind of wish you hadn't seen that piece of pie because it's given you a struggle. It's just a temptation. It's not a sin to see it or even to desire it. It would be a sin. Well, it'd be wrong. It'd be a violation of your diet for you to eat it, but you really don't gain weight by looking at food. I've heard people say they do, but if you see food, you desire food, and you know you're not supposed to have it, so you don't eat it, well, okay, you dodged a bullet there, right?

That's what happens. Now, I think a lot of times guys, you mentioned impurity of thoughts toward women, a lot of guys assume that when they're tempted toward a woman, that they have done what Jesus is talking about, but Jesus never forbade us to be tempted. That's not our choice. We're not the tempters. The devil is the tempter. We're drawn away by our own lusts when we are tempted, but the devil makes suggestions to us. He tempted Jesus. He tempted Jesus to bow down and worship Him. Can you imagine Jesus having the temptation in His mind to bow down and worship Satan?

I've never had that temptation. Jesus, the Bible says, has been tempted in all ways like we are, yet He never sinned. So you may be confusing temptation with sin. Temptation takes the form of evil thoughts, thoughts that are suggestions of evil to your mind, and sometimes there's a mental picture comes with it, but the point is that's where your battle begins. If you're determined to be a follower of Jesus, you make every effort to ignore those things, to think of something else, to certainly not succumb to the suggestion, and if you find that you do succumb in some way, then you repent and endeavor not to. No man finds it easy.

Well, I guess a few men do, but most men don't find it easy to ignore women, and so that's a temptation for you, apparently. You've mentioned it, a constant one, apparently, but temptation is a constant experience for human beings. Christians are people who've decided to say no to the things the temptations are telling us to do. So the devil wants you to feel condemned, and you sound like he's winning on you. It sounds like you're quite feeling condemned all the time, and he doesn't even care if you sin, as long as he can make you feel condemned just for being tempted. Condemnation is his end game.

He just wants you to feel alienated from God and feel like God rejects you and God is angry at you and God doesn't love you because you're a bad person. That's condemnation, and that's the devil's end game. That's why he wants people to sin, not because the devil cares anything about sin. He cares about condemnation. If people sin, they come under condemnation, but if he can get you to feel the same condemnation without getting you to sin, it's easier for him.

He doesn't even have to work as hard on you. He just has to give you temptation, and you have to feel the condemnation. You have to reject it. You see, if you know Christ, and I'm not positive that you do. I'm not trying to be critical, but I'm just trying to help you.

There's a possibility that you've never surrendered to Christ and met him and made it your aim in life in all ways to glorify God and follow him. You say, well, how can anyone do that? That's so labor intensive. It's not labor intensive to love somebody if you've decided to love them.

It's very labor intensive. For example, if you don't love your wife, and she has a big long to-do list for you, honey-do list for you, and you'd rather do something else, it's a pain in the neck to have all these requests from her. But if you love your wife, then you're going to want to do everything that pleases her. That's what loving means. That means you want to bless her. You want her life to be a happier life.

It's more important that she is than that you are. That's what love is. You lay down your life. No greater love than that. And it's the same thing for love for God. And many people say, well, I don't know how we can keep all these rules in the Bible.

Well, you probably can't, unless you love God, unless you love Jesus. But if you love him, and there are people who have decided to do that, then keeping his commandments is not burdensome, it says in 1 John 5. This is the love of God that we keep his commandments, and his commandments are not burdensome. But they're very burdensome if you don't love him. It's like being a slave.

And it is a slavery, but it's a huge difference to be a slave of someone you resent and longing to be free from them all the time, on the one hand, and being a slave of someone that you love and you're awfully glad that you get to be in service because you love them so much. And so it's really an attitude toward God and toward Christ that's at the root of everything. If you find Christ as he intends to be found, you will find him to be a delightful obsession and one that you will want to know more, please more, follow more, be closer to, be more loyal to. And a lot of people say, well, I'm a Christian, but I don't have those thoughts. How do you know you're a Christian then?

I mean, what evidence is there of being a Christian if you don't love God? Well, my desire is not to make people doubt their salvation, but I would like people to doubt their salvation if they have a false assurance and they need to keep seeking. It'd be a very bad thing for me to say, oh, don't worry, you're saved, if indeed you have not yet sought, finally, to find Christ.

He's got to be your priority. It's not just that you're getting old, you're a geezer, like you say, and you know you're going to die soon and you're afraid to meet God as you are, so you want to start doing whatever the rules say to do. That's not going to be, that doesn't make a person a Christian, it just makes a person miserable and eventually resentful toward God. You need to find out who Jesus is, who God is, and be disabused of any wrong notions of God that you may have gotten from the Catholic church or any other. And, you know, I say that because a lot of people refer to themselves as recovering Catholics.

They believe that their Catholic upbringing is what ruined them for religion or for God. While other people, by the way, to be in fairness have been raised Catholics and they love God just as much as anyone else does, but it sounds like you're more like a recovering Catholic. And you need to be a follower of Jesus. You need to get to know Jesus. Read the Gospels, read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and then read them again. And get to know who Jesus is, then you need to know, is he somebody you really want to make your obsession in life?

I think that would make a huge difference in your experience. I'm really, really sorry for the frustration you have because you call, you know, frequently and have the same struggle. But, you know, I can't give you a few verses and say, this ends your problem. This is a systemic problem, I think, in your, in your spiritual life. You need to find God genuinely and not just believe he's out there and has demands he's making of you. And I don't know how to find him like that better than to read the Gospels and get to know Jesus. Because that's where you see Jesus depicted and that's where you find out where his heart is.

And, of course, the rest of the Bible depicts it too, but Jesus is much more of a focused revelation of God's heart and mind. I'm sorry to have to move along because I have so many callers and you really, again, you're another caller who I'd like to spend the whole hour with. And we do get a lot of people like yourself that I'd like to spend more time with, but it's just not, the clock won't allow it.

I'm so sorry to say. But I'll talk to you again, I know. I know you'll call again, Jerry, but I hope you'll take my counsel on that. John in Vacaville, California.

Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Hi, Steve. Hi.

I'm struggling with this just a tad. I believe there's a complete revival that needs to be in order. I've loved and revered the Lord my entire life.

God bless you and your family. I'm going to go with a second chronicle, 714. My people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways. Then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

How applicable do you think this is to our present time right now? Well, the promise, of course, is made to the nation of Judah. But the principles in every sentence and every clause are universal Bible principles with the possible exception of the last line and will heal their land. Now, that may apply, but that's not as universal since it's talking about people of a particular land, which happened to be the chosen nation. So God definitely made national promises to Israel that not every nation could claim for themselves because there are no nations today.

No, there's no political nations that are God's nations. But what we do have is individuals and the body of Christ in every nation who can realize these spiritual benefits for themselves. I guess everything he said, you know, humble yourself and pray and seek his face and give up your wicked ways, you know, I mean, that's universally applicable, good behavior and required behavior for all people who really want to meet God on his terms. And I think that many times Christians have become complacent and they do feel far from God, or maybe they feel like they've never even walked with him.

And you know, looking at those very statements, I think would be a good set of instructions for them. If you can genuinely do those things, humble yourself before God, repent, seek his face, I believe that they'll discover him. Now, the part about, and I will heal their land, of course, that's historically specific to the nation of Judah. But on the other hand, that doesn't mean just because he only said that to them, that it wouldn't be something he would do for some other nation, possibly, if they did such a thing. I mean, what happened in Nineveh, the whole city of Nineveh repented and the king repented and God saved them from imminent disaster. They were about six weeks away from disaster and they got another hundred year reprieve because they repented.

And they weren't Jews. So we know that God will do things for even pagan nations if they can be induced to be converted. But our nation may not ever be completely converted. But the presence of people who are and who are following God is always a blessing to any nation. And it's certainly the best promise of healing of any nation would be to have a strong testimony of the kingdom of God in the community life of the believers in that nation, like leaven causing the whole thing to rise. So I don't know if you're specifically wondering about the part about the land. People often ask about that. But if you're wondering if that's generally applicable, at least the other parts are, because those are more, that speaks of individual responses to God. And as individuals, God hasn't really changed what he wants people to do in terms of turning to him and humbling themselves. Right, right, right.

Yeah, I was specifically referring to the land. I will continue to stay in deep prayer and pray for the miracle that we all need. We need one this month, next month. Yeah.

We need one all the time. All right. Well, God bless you, John. Thank you for joining us. Good talking to you.

Janet in California, welcome to The Narrow Path. Yes, I was calling about the guy that had called you, Jason. He was saying, how do I know that Jesus is real, God is real? And when people ask me that, in Acts and in Corinthians, it talks about seeing the external gifts of the Holy Spirit, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit, like some people speak in tongues. And when people ask me that, I just tell them, you can fill God's Spirit because when I went to an altar, first God's Spirit has to draw you to the altar, which you fill as your own experience with God.

Okay, let me jump in here and say, I'm sure that your experience with God and the gifts has done a great deal to confirm your faith. But I think in the case of Jason, that's just the kind of things that he's not going to be convinced by. He's saying that he was a Christian and he tried doing this and that and the other thing. And I dare say he probably never spoke in tongues.

If he did, it wouldn't make much difference of making him a Christian or not. But the truth is that seeing the gifts of the Spirit don't always have that impact on a person who's doubting. Because most, even miracles, if they occur before your eyes, they can be explained away by somebody who's determined not to believe in miracles.

C.S. Lewis said he only knew one person who ever claimed to see a ghost. And it was a woman who didn't believe in the immortality of the soul. And he said she didn't believe before she saw the ghost, but she didn't believe after either. He said, it just proves that seeing is not believing.

If you've got a naturalistic worldview, you already exclude miracles as a real possibility in history. And so, you know, if someone does a miracle in front of you, which let's face it, not many of us see real miracles done in front of us, but if one did, they would give it a natural explanation. Remember in John chapter 12, God spoke audibly from heaven to Jesus in a public place. Everyone heard it. And the Bible said, some said it thundered. Others said an angel spoke to him. So some said it thundered means they heard something but they didn't want to give it a supernatural explanation.

It was a natural thing, they said. Others thought it was supernatural. But it depends on your prejudices. And I have to say, from talking to Jason, much as I'm glad to talk to him today and in the future and in the past, I don't know that he isn't prejudiced against the supernatural. And with that prejudice, no amount of evidence is going to change your mind because no one can be made to believe something that they have decided they cannot believe. We sometimes think you can just prove things to people. Lazarus was raised from the dead.

That's a pretty supernatural thing. And many people were there and saw it. And some of them went and reported it in Jerusalem. And lots of people who heard the report and knew it was true decided that they needed to kill Jesus and kill Lazarus too because, I mean, they believed it was true but they didn't like it. They didn't want to submit to the truth.

And so there's a number of factors. It's not just seeing gifts of the Spirit or hearing about them or even experiencing them. Remember, Jesus said people can experience gifts of the Spirit without even being saved. He said, many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, we prophesied in your name and cast out demons in your name and did many mighty wonders in your name.

And I'll say, I never knew you. Now, I believe in the gifts of the Spirit and I have experienced them. Not all of them, certainly, but some of them. I fully believe in them. But I would never actually think that a person who's having trouble believing in the supernatural will necessarily be convinced because they see somebody actually gifts of the Spirit and especially the places that you usually see people doing it.

I would think it would drive many people away. Listen, I don't have much time. I want to try to get one more call in. I appreciate your call, Janet. Paul from New York, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling and waiting.

Yeah. Hi, Steve. Thank you for taking my call. I just recently found out about you and your ministry through the debate you did with Chris Date.

I must honestly say, I have never heard someone articulate so clearly and so plain words and going through the scriptures the way I have studied the scriptures and have come to believe about Israel. And so I just wanted to tell you, I appreciate that. And also, I really appreciate your teaching on The Narrow Path, the diverse and all that. So just thank you for that. Thank you. Okay, I have one quick question if you have time.

And I listen on podcasts, if you don't mind, I'll stay on to listen to your answers. Okay, try to be as quick as you can because I have about two minutes or so. Go ahead. Okay. So it's this question about Acts chapter 1 verses 6 and 7.

The disciples asked Jesus. Will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? Yeah. Yeah.

I'd just like to kind of get your take on that. Sure. Excellent. I appreciate your call. And you wanted to hear it on the air. So I'll go ahead and hang up, but I will answer it.

But we're going to hear the music in about a minute and a half. The last thing Jesus' disciples asked him before he ascended in Acts 1.6 was, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? And he kind of dodged the question and said, it's not for you to know the times or the seasons that the Father has put in his own power, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you.

And you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea and some area into the uttermost parts of the world. Now, in other words, he didn't really answer them. And I think the reason is because he was about to leave and there were things that he couldn't explain to them with their present frame of reference. But he had told them just a few days earlier in the upper room in John 16 verses 12 and 13, he says, I still have many things to say to you, but you're not able to endure them yet. But when the Holy Spirit comes, he will guide you in all truth and he will remind you of the things I've said and so forth.

And he'll teach you all things. So Jesus knew that he was leaving his disciples with incomplete training. And to answer their question would have required a fuller knowledge on their part of the meaning of the word Israel and of the word kingdom. Their question is, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? That was a very legitimate biblical Old Testament hope. God's going to restore the kingdom to Israel. But in the New Testament, after the Spirit came and led them in all truth, they recognized that they are not all Israel who are called Israel and who are of Israel, that it's the remnant of Israel that he restores the kingdom to. And the kingdom is not the political thing they thought it was. It's a spiritual reality and a spiritual community following Jesus Christ without the political structures of an outward kingdom. So those were things, you know, their orientation about even the terminology they used was not adequate and because, you know, he just said he had to wait for the Holy Spirit to teach them that. So he just dodged the question and said, listen, it's not for you to know.

But I wish I could give you more time, but I'm going to be cut off here in about seven seconds. You're listening to The Narrow Path. We are listeners support. As I said earlier, our website is thenarrowpath.com. Check it out. Everything's free there. The narrow path.com. Let's talk again Monday.