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're taking your calls as usual. If you have questions you'd like to ask on the air about the Bible or Christianity, we'll be glad to talk to you about those things.
If you have a different viewpoint from the host, you're always welcome to call and to balance comment. All right, and we're going to go, well, I should mention tonight I am, well, right now I'm broadcasting from south of Houston, Texas at Chocolate Bayou. And the Chocolate Bayou Worship Center is a little church I spoke in back in December, and I'm back there again tonight. And if you are interested in joining us, I'm going to be speaking on the Kingdom of God. Now, I've been speaking on the Kingdom of God everywhere we go, and that's not usually the case that I always teach on the same thing when we travel.
In fact, I like to mix it up and have different subjects just so I don't bore myself by repeating myself so much. But the truth is that I've been asked in most of these locations to speak on the Kingdom of God, partly because my book on the subject is just coming out. The hard copy is not yet out. It'll be out the 15th of this month, but the Kindle version is already out, and it's going to be a two-book project. Both books are written, and both books are at the publisher, but both are not coming out at the same time. The one that has come out the first is called the Empire of the Sun, excuse me, Empire of the Risen Sun, S-O-N, and it's book one, There is Another King. The second book will be out probably in a couple months, I assume, and it's called Empire of the Risen Sun, book two, All the King's Men, which is a book about discipleship. Actually, the second book, as I was writing it, it seemed to me like it would be a great curriculum for discipleship for those churches who might have discipleship classes. The first book is more of an attempt to make people understand what the Kingdom of God is, what Jesus was talking about, what he said about it, what the Bible as a whole teaches about it. There's a sense in which the first book is kind of a summary of the whole Bible.
It does go through the Old Testament and the teaching of Jesus and the apostles and on to the end, the world basically. So the first book kind of surveys the whole Bible, elucidating the theme of the Kingdom of God, and then the second book is about discipleship or participation as a citizen of the Kingdom of God. Anyway, the first book, of course, is out on Kindle. It will be out in hard copy from Amazon and Barnes & Noble and those places on the 15th of this month.
The other book will be following behind by several weeks. All right, so I'm at the Chocolate Bayou Worship Center tonight at seven, and anyone who's in the area is certainly welcome to join us. Ten o'clock, if you're interested in coming, you can go to our website, thenarrowpath.com, and look under Announcements, and it'll give you the location of this church. Now, tomorrow night I'll be speaking in Dallas area, Richardson, Texas, and that's, so we've got listeners up there too. So tomorrow, you can get information about both of those gatherings at our website thenarrowpath.com under the tab that says Announcements. All right, our first caller today is John in Jackson, Wyoming. John, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Thanks, Steve.
Hey, I got a crazy question right off the bat. Your intro music, the whistling, is that you? No, it's a friend of mine. A friend of mine wrote that song and performed it, yeah.
His name is John Marr. I really enjoy it. Thank you.
I do too. My question is on divine healing, and I like things kind of like an equation. If you do this, this will happen, such as, you know, if I put my faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, I will be saved. It's something that is a certainty. And there seems to be a statement in James about divine healing that is like that, you know, verses 14 and 15, but are we missing the boat here somewhere?
I mean, if it is an equation, it's not working. Yeah, there are many people out there, of course, who believe that God has promised believers, if they have enough faith, that they will always be well, and if they get sick that they'll be supernaturally healed. They believe that sickness is no part of the normal Christian life, and they even believe that Jesus, when He died, not only paid for the forgiveness of our sins, but also for the healing of our diseases. They believe His death on the cross atoned for our sins, and His previous whipping at the whipping post acquired our healing from physical diseases. Now, frankly, none of these verses, none of the verses they use are actually saying these things. Of course, that would be a matter of debate, and I do look at all those verses and discuss them in my lecture series on the Word of Faith teaching, so I'm not going to go into them now. What I will say is that there is really no passage that is an absolute guarantee of healing to someone who simply has enough faith, but the passage that probably sounds most as if it might make such a promise is there in James chapter 5.
Now, let's take a look at it. He says in verse 14, Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise him up.
And if he has committed sins, they will be forgiven him. Now, it says that if you call for the elders of the church when you're sick and they anoint you with oil and they pray with faith over you, that the prayer of faith will save the sick and the Lord will raise him up. Now, the word save is a word that can mean heal.
It can mean a number of things. It can mean deliver, rescue, heal. It has a broad range in the Greek language, and so even though it says the sick will be saved, one possible meaning of the word is the sick will be healed, okay?
That's not the normal reading of the word, but it can encompass that idea. And then the statement says the Lord will raise him up. Now, there are times in the Gospels where we read of sick people who were healed, and it says that Jesus raised them up. That is, they were, you know, in bed and sick, and he raised them up and healed them. So these words, the prayer of faith will save the sick, could mean will heal the sick. And the Lord will raise him up might mean raise him up well from his sick bed.
That's certainly the way that this verse has been taken by very many who've read it, and it's understandable why they might. But I would note that there is another word for healing that James could have used if he wanted to be that specific. Instead he said the prayer of faith will save the sick, which could refer to healing, but it might refer to something else. It might refer to salvation. It's the normal word for salvation, and if he wanted to specifically say they'll be healed and be unambiguous about it, he could have used the word that actually means healing instead of one that could refer to healing or something else.
And that means that he left it somewhat ambiguous. If the sick is prayed for, will God heal him or will he simply save him? Will he be saved? Likewise the expression the Lord will raise him up, it is used in the Gospels sometimes to refer to a person being healed and raised up from their sick bed. And so, you know, it could mean that here, but it's also the same word that is used to speak of people being resurrected on the last day, where Jesus said, I will raise him up on the last day. Several times in the Gospel of John in chapter 6, he uses the same expression, they'll be raised up. Which means that when James says this, though he could have used words that were unambiguous and could have made it very clear this is a promise of healing, he actually used words that are more ambiguous than necessary, which leaves to my mind an out. He could be saying, listen, if you're sick and the elders will pray for you and you confess your sins to them, which is also in the passage, the next verse, you'll be saved and maybe healed.
And the Lord will raise you up, perhaps even from your sick bed, but if not that, at least if you don't survive, you'll be raised up on the last day. It's like he's leaving it open-ended, because James knows, just like we know if we read the Bible, that God doesn't heal everybody, even not every good person, not even every miracle-working person. Elisha, the prophet had raised the dead and healed the sick and done amazing things, but he died sick. He got sick and he didn't get better, he died.
People, there's no promise that godly people with a lot of faith are going to necessarily always be well. Paul himself both healed many sicknesses from other people, he raised the dead of other people, but he himself was sick. He says in Galatians that he came because of physical infirmity on his part to Galatia. And he of course mentions his thorn in the flesh in 2 Corinthians 12, which he describes as a sickness also. He uses the word in the Greek that's the most common word for sickness.
He speaks of his own thorn in the flesh as a sickness. And so Paul apparently had sickness, even though he healed others and he raised the other dead. Paul had companions who were sick that he was apparently not capable of healing. Timothy, one of his closest companions, had chronic stomach problems. Paul spoke of them as his oft infirmities, his frequent infirmities.
Again, the word infirmities is that word most often used in the New Testament of sickness. Timothy had stomach problems and Paul told him to drink a little wine for it, which is a medicinal treatment for amoebic dysentery. And Timothy apparently was drinking water that was not safe to drink and he had amoebas and so Paul says we'll drink some wine with that because that's one way to control that problem. So instead of healing him, he just told him how to treat it. Likewise, he had a companion in ministry named Trophimus and in 2 Timothy chapter 4 Paul says, I left Trophimus sick in Miletus.
Now this is one of his working companions. The guy was sick, why didn't Paul just heal him? There was another worker with him that he talks about in Philippians that had almost died but got better.
He said God had mercy on him and he recovered but he didn't indicate that he recovered miraculously. In fact, it sounds like Paul was almost fearful that he would lose his friend but God mercilessly healed him. In other words, Paul talks about healing as if it's not a guarantee and he himself, when he prayed for the healing of his sickness, Jesus said, my grace is sufficient for you. My strength is made perfect in your weakness. And so Paul said, okay, then I'll rejoice in my infirmity.
That means sickness. And so obviously the Bible does not teach that every powerful healing apostle or man of faith will be healed himself or can heal others. There's no guarantee of healing. So James certainly knew that.
James was not in a different world than the other apostles. And so he did not make a universal promise of healing. He did make a promise that God would respond and hear confession of sins and prayers of faith and he used words that could suggest, yeah, he might even heal him. He'll save them to be sure.
And saving could include healing but it doesn't necessarily. He'll raise them up for sure on the last day. He might even raise them up sooner from his sick bed. It seems interesting that James used words that were deliberately ambiguous. And yet if we assume that he's promising healing here, that the Lord will heal him and raise him up from his sick bed, then this would be the closest thing in the entire Bible to a promise of universal healing.
All you have to do is call the elders of the church, let them put some oil on you, pray a prayer of faith and then you'll be healed. As I said, I don't believe that James is making that kind of a specific promise. And certainly no other place in the Bible does either. And some people say, well, Jesus healed everyone who was sick who came to him.
Nonsense. He did not do that. Lazarus was sick and Jesus didn't heal him. He let him die.
He later raised him from the dead because that was a better idea than healing him. And God may let us die sick. Many Christians do die sick just like non-Christians do.
It's not a difference between us and them. But we are raised up from the dead and sometimes God knows there's a better idea. We think the best idea is always for us to be healed.
And the reason is because we're self-centered and either we or our loved ones being sick is inconvenient and saddening to us. But God has larger purposes in mind many times and his larger purpose may include a person remaining unhealed, maybe even dying. Similarly Jesus prayed that he might escape death.
He wasn't sick exactly but he was facing death and he asked God that the cup might pass from him. But he said, not my will but yours be done. And when we ask for God to relieve us or rescue us or heal us or anything like that, we need to be like Jesus and say, well, if it's your will, your will be done, not mine.
So that's I think the balance on the teaching of healing. There's not an absolute promise of it but there is a promise that if we truly repent, we'll be saved. So there are promises that are commonly and unambiguously made in scripture which we can count on and they do and they are true.
But the ones that we want to say a certain thing but they don't specifically say it, it's rather presumptuous for us to insist that they must be true and that God has to respond to our expectations. I don't know if you're aware but I have a series of lectures on our website called The Word of Faith Movement. It's a response to or an answer to The Word of Faith Movement and one of the lectures is called Is Healing in the Atonement, a very important question with reference to divine healing. And the other lecture on that subject is called Healing on Demand and examines the question of whether God promises healing simply whenever we demand it. So I'd recommend if you're interested in a fuller treatment on this topic to go to thenarrowpath.com, look under topical lectures and then find the lectures The Word of Faith. It's called The Word of Faith.
There's four lectures and they will go into this much more thoroughly than I can right now. John, thank you for your call. Let's talk next to another John in Indianapolis, Indiana. Hi, John.
Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Hi, Steve.
How are you? Good. You know, I'm going to be in Indianapolis speaking in about a week, I think.
Yeah, I know you're coming around and I'm looking forward to attending. Absolutely. Yeah. Hey, I called last week and I called about my concern with a different Jesus and you referred me to Zeitgeist on YouTube. And to my response to Zeitgeist.
I think I recommended you listen to my response to Zeitgeist. Yeah. Yeah. And so along the way, I've heard there is a bazooka gum wrapper that says the truth always has the best argument. You got that from me.
Yeah, I got it from a bazooka gum wrapper when I was about 10. That's right. And I was going to say, you know, praise the Lord, Steve, because there's really it just confirms my my final will to just disconnect my cable. You know, I don't even watch these clowns anymore. You know, they live in fear. So they produce all of this fear and it just feeds on itself. And it just, you know, so did you have a question today? Yeah. Hey, I'm a little nervous about this because I have quite a few notes on this and I'm not sure I don't want to ask five questions.
Good. But it has it has to do with a different Jesus and it has to do with Zachariah and the messianic prophecy in Zachariah. And, okay, so, um, Peter, in second Peter 1 16 says that we did not come at you with cunningly devised fables. Paul in Ephesians 4 14 says we're not to be tossed to and fro by any wind of doctrine. And so there seems to be I came to a stuck point in Acts 23 8 where the Sadducees denied the resurrection. And for some reason, I'm linking that with Zachariah being turned into a cunningly devised fable and that they've put in Messiah, Ben David Messiah, Ben Joseph turned around the priesthood of Joshua somehow I'm just looking.
I mean, let me just say this. I'm familiar with every datum you have referred to. I'm not sure where you're going with it. What is your what is your question with it? Well, it seems that there's been a real confusion created through the website that I've read about the new Zachariah or maybe it was the old guy. I don't know about it. I don't know about new and old Zachariah. But what is it you're asking about? Well, was Zachariah turned into a cunningly devised fables used by the Pharisees and the Sadducees to confuse the people as to the true Messiah in Christ?
Well, I'm not I'm sure I'm not even sure where this has come from. I'm looking at the book of Zachariah, but I don't know what passage in Zachariah you're thinking of, what what prophecy, what vision of Zachariah you're thinking of, because I'm not aware of any taking of the book of Zachariah. You're talking about the Old Testament book of Zachariah, right? Not one of the other. Yes.
Okay. So so you're asking if the Sadducees and the Pharisees had taken something in the book of Zachariah and turned it into a fable. What is it in the book? I mean, we've got Zachariah has like 10 visions in it and on different subjects.
What would they I mean, what have you read? What is it you're confused by? Well, there seems to be, from what I've read, at least, there's the misunderstanding of King David's throne and the future Messiah.
Okay, but I okay, but I don't I'm not seeing that. I mean, you need a specific passage, Zachariah, because most of Zachariah doesn't say anything about David's throne. There is there are a number of places in Zachariah that speak of the Messiah. And even the name David appears a few times.
But but no, I'm just curious. I don't see a connection between what the Pharisees and Sadducees said about apparently the resurrection is what you're wondering about and the book of Zachariah. All I can say, I mean, let me just try to address the question of the Sadducees and Zach and Pharisees. The Old Testament did not speak very unambiguously about the resurrection of the end times. In fact, the Old Testament didn't speak unambiguously about life after death. If you had only the scriptures of the Old Testament and lived at that time, you would not have any scriptural basis for certainty, even that there is a life after death.
So though some people believed in one, certainly David appeared to believe in a life after death, there is no description of what it's like. As far as a resurrection of the body, there are probable resurrection passages which are somewhat ambiguous in some parts of the Old Testament, but there's no clear teaching of resurrection, except some people would find one in Daniel 12 too. But I don't necessarily think that's talking about the resurrection.
It sounds like it, but I think it's figurative. I don't think you really get a clear resurrection teaching in Judaism until the intertestamental period, that is after the Old Testament was finished and before the New Testament came. There were Jews who adopted ideas of resurrection, and Jesus apparently agreed with them, so they must have been right. But they didn't have very much from the Old Testament to go on. And how this morphed from an Old Testament silence on the subject, more or less, to a full-blown resurrection theology on the part of the Pharisees.
On the other hand, I don't know how that was traced. Some people think it came through Persian. Zoroaster actually believed in a resurrection, and some Jews, lots of Jews, were in Persia in the intertestamental period and therefore would be exposed to that. But whatever the original source in Judaism, we know that Jesus embraced the idea of a resurrection of the last day, so that, you know, whatever anyone else before him said or didn't say is irrelevant when we know that Jesus and the apostles taught a future resurrection.
But I don't think they twisted anything to do so. And Jesus did not twist anything, and the Pharisees who believed in a resurrection essentially were right because Jesus agreed with them, and so did Paul. In fact, when Paul was on trial before the Jewish court, he actually said that he believed in the doctrine of the resurrection, which he said the Jews themselves.
He said that the Jews themselves accept this doctrine. He meant the Pharisees. So, you know, he had essentially a very similar view of the resurrection, and Jesus did too, to that of the Pharisees. Now, the Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection of the dead at all. They didn't believe in spirits or an afterlife at all, and that's partly because they only accepted the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament. They didn't actually accept the Psalms and the Prophets as Scripture. And that's, if you find anything about the resurrection in the Old Testament, you're going to find it in the Psalms and the Prophets. You're not going to find it in the Pentateuch, at least not easily.
That's interestingly enough. Jesus found something in the Pentateuch because the Sadducees came to Jesus and challenged him on the business of the resurrection. They didn't think there was a good argument for it, and he said to them, you are foolish not knowing the Scriptures or the power of God. And he took something from the Pentateuch, the only part of the Old Testament they accepted, and he found a resurrection doctrine in it. And he said, did you not read that when Moses was at the burning bush, which was in Exodus, God said to him, I'm the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, three men who had been dead for centuries. So these are men who had been from Genesis, who had been dead for centuries, and God tells Moses, I'm the God of these guys. And then Jesus says, well, God's not the God of dead people, but of living people, which is a way of saying, these guys apparently are not dead permanently because God is still their God, and God isn't the God of people who are dead, but he's the God of people who are alive. So it's an interesting argument that Jesus made, but he clearly used the portion of the Old Testament that the Sadducees claimed to believe in, and he got some nuances out of it that they had never noticed. So we can see the Sadducees were the ones who were wrong, and Jesus even said they were wrong because they didn't know the Scriptures or the power of God. He probably meant you don't know all the Scriptures, you know the Pentateuch, but you don't know the Psalms, the Prophets, and other parts of the Scripture.
In any case, yeah, I don't know of anyone who specifically twisted Zechariah, which is what you've asked, and I'm not really sure how the question, even after you've shared some more, I'm still not really clear how that question was formulated. Anyway, I'm out of time for this one, and I appreciate your calling. Thanks for joining us.
We have another half hour coming up, but we have a break here just to tell you. The Narrow Path is listener-supported. You can write to us at The Narrow Path, P.O. Box 1730, Temecula, California 92593. You can also donate from the website where everything is free, thenarrowpath.com. That's thenarrowpath.com.
I'll be back in 30 seconds, and we have another half hour ahead. Don't go away. Small is the gate, and narrow is the path that leads to life. Welcome to The Narrow Path with Steve Gregg.
Steve has nothing to sell you, but everything to give you. When today's radio show is over, we invite you to study, learn, and enjoy by visiting thenarrowpath.com, where you'll find free topical audio teachings, blog articles, verse-by-verse teachings, and archives of all the Narrow Path radio shows. We thank you for supporting the listener-supported Narrow Path with Steve Gregg. Remember thenarrowpath.com.
Welcome back to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg, and we're live for another half hour taking your calls. If you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith, you can call me at this number 844-484-5737.
That's 844-484-5737. And if you happen to be in or near Houston tonight, I'm speaking in Chocolate Bayou at the Chocolate Bayou Worship Center on the subject of the Kingdom of God, and that's at seven o'clock tonight. We'd certainly welcome you to join us. And if you don't know where that is, I'm sure you can find it online or you can do it from our website.
Go to thenarrowpath.com and go to the announcements tab. Scroll on down to tonight's date, which is the 6th of October, and you'll see the time and place. And if you're interested, then we'll see you tonight in Chocolate Bayou, Texas. Okay, we're going to go back to the phones. David and Camarilla, now let me just say before I take your call, David, last time we talked, you were disingenuous with me, and I don't want to talk to you if you're going to be disingenuous. You were making some points, and I was saying, and I just said very innocuously, I said, as I recall, you're a seventh-day Adventist. And you said, what does that matter?
Or something like that. And I said, well, you are, aren't you? And you wouldn't say yes, and you wouldn't say no, which means you are. Because if you weren't, you'd say, no, I'm not.
So I wasn't sure why you were ashamed to admit that you are, but let's be honest, right from the beginning of this call, there won't be a conversation. You are a seventh-day Adventist, correct? Well, if you'll let me answer your question. Yes or no, that's a yes or no question, a simple question.
Yes, of course. I answered that question twice. No, you did not. You refused to answer. Yes, I did. Go back and listen to the show. Everybody who was listening knows you did not, and that's why I had to hang up on you.
Everybody who listened knows what I did. I said, I believe in the whole word of God, and yes. That's not the same thing as saying you're a seventh-day Adventist. Yeah. Now, when I said, are you a seventh-day Adventist, she said, I believe in the whole word of God.
That's not the same thing. Yes, I answered your question when you were a seventh-day Adventist. Okay. When I answered yes, I answered you when you were a seventh-day Adventist. Okay, I'm afraid you're not telling the truth, but if you think you are, okay, listen, if you think you're telling the truth, I'll let the call continue. You are not telling the truth, but you apparently think you are. So don't argue further about it.
Anyone can go back to the previous show and listen and see that you did not say yes, okay? Now, next topic. What's your question?
What's your question? My question is, is where is your deceased wife? Oh, where is my deceased wife? She's with the Lord.
Absent from the body and present with the Lord. Well, but it doesn't say that. Yes, it does. So doesn't 1 Corinthians 15 come before 2 Corinthians 5-8?
It sure does. Both are in the Bible. Okay, so doesn't Paul tell us what happens to the dead when Christ comes at the trump of God?
Yes, the dead bodies. So if your wife died in the Lord, won't she be resurrected? Won't she be resurrected? Yes, and so will I if I die before Jesus comes.
Every Christian and every non-Christian will be resurrected. You really don't understand that, right? Okay, I'm going to hang up and I'll answer your question. Just listen and I'll answer your question. I've hung up, but I will answer you. Because you don't have to keep asking and not allowing me to answer.
I'm not sure why this is difficult for you. The Bible teaches the resurrection of the body on the last day. Okay, I never said her body is in heaven. Nobody believes that the bodies of dead Christians are in heaven. What we believe, at least what most Christians believe, I realize you don't, but what most Christians have believed is that at death the spirit departs from the body. And if you are a believer in Christ, as Paul put it in Philippians 1 when he was anticipating his own death as a possibility, he said, I desire to depart and be with the Lord.
Depart means die and be with the Lord. His conviction was that, which he says is far better. He was in prison. He was not healthy.
He was not comfortable. He said it'd be better for me to just die, just depart and be with the Lord. So we know that Paul expected if he died, he'd be with the Lord. And then later on, that was Philippians 1, but in 2 Corinthians, he said that while we are at home in this body, we are absent from the Lord. He says we're eager to be absent from the body and be present with the Lord. So, I mean, some say, well, he didn't technically say that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.
You're right. He didn't use those phrases, but he made it very clear. That's what he believed. He believed that while we're in this body, meaning before we die, we are absent from the Lord, but we're eager to be absent from the body, which means dead and present with the Lord at the same time. Now in the resurrection, we will be with the Lord, but we will not be absent from the body. The body will be raised at the resurrection.
We will be in our bodies. So Paul was not talking about the resurrection in 2 Corinthians 5. In 1 Corinthians 15, he was talking about the resurrection. And, you know, if you think that those are somehow impossible to harmonize, then you haven't been out much. I mean, you haven't really been listening to anyone outside your own denomination much. True, Seventh-day Adventists, because they insist in soul sleep and that no one is in heaven until Jesus comes back and raises the dead, they don't look for ways to harmonize the scripture on this subject. They just look for verses that refute the more traditional view of the subject. But people like you apparently have never thought through, you know, whether these subjects can be harmonized, and they certainly can. Christians for 2,000 years have had no trouble harmonizing them. I've been teaching for 50 years. I've never seen a problem.
I've never even seen why anyone would have a problem with it. We have a body and we have a soul, and we can be present in the body or absent from the body. Now it's very clear, if I can be absent from my body, I'm not my body, just like I'm currently not in California where my home is, so I'm absent from my home because I am not my home.
My house is something and I'm something else. I can be absent from it or present in it. My body, I can be present in my body or absent in the body.
There's no question that Paul said that. And so he said when I'm absent from my body, I'm present with the Lord. And that's not a problem because the part of me that's with the Lord if I die is not my body. The resurrection does impact my body. If I die, my body will be in the ground. It'll decay.
It'll become dust. And then, but my spirit will be with Christ until he returns. When he returns, it says in 1 Thessalonians 4, 15 or 14, he says that if we believe that God, that Jesus died and rose again, even so we believe that those who have died in Christ, he'll bring with him.
Okay? So if I die in Christ before Jesus comes back, I'll be with him and he'll bring me with him back here when he comes here. So I don't really understand why this is such a problem to Seventh-day Adventists except that it's a hobby horse.
There are two particular hobby horses. There are more than two, but the big hobby horses for Seventh-day Adventists is to insist that we have to have a Saturday Sabbath, which I'm ambivalent about. You can be, you can worship on the Saturday Sabbath if you want to.
I'm not going to be the legalist that Seventh-day Adventists are about it. And the other one is they just have to hammer on soul sleep, which I can't even imagine why that would anyone get excited about it. I mean, suppose soul sleep is true. Okay, what if it is true?
What's it mean? It means if I die, I'll be totally unconscious until Jesus comes back, which means that in terms of my subjective experience, I close my eyes in death and open them as far as I can tell instantly. Maybe thousands of years have gone by since I died before I resurrected, but it'll seem instant to me, so it's, I mean, there's nothing about it that's unpleasant about the doctrine. I'm not, I don't resist the doctrine because it's unpleasant. It's not.
I resist it because it's not what the Bible teaches, at least not as I understand the Bible. I realize you see it differently, but I mean, I had to hang up on you so that I could speak so that you could get an answer because I hoped you wanted one. I don't think you did. I think you were being rhetorical, but I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt that you're being honest and curious, and so I gave you an answer. Thanks for calling.
Barbara in Sacramento, California. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thank you. Hello? Yes.
Okay, I can hear you. Yes, I have a question, and it's over the word predestined, as is used in Ephesians in chapter 1 and 5 and 11, because for some reason, my concept of predestined means you don't have a choice. And I believe we have free will, so I'm not sure how it is meant. Well, in Ephesians 1.5, it says that God predestined us to adoption as sons.
Now, who's us? Us means the believers in Christ. So if we're believers in Christ, God has a destiny for us. He predestined that those who are believers in Christ will experience adoption into his family as sons.
He didn't have to. In the Old Testament, there were believers in God, and they weren't adopted into his family in the sense that we are. They weren't born.
They weren't regenerated and reborn. So what God has predestined is that believers will have a destiny of being his family. Now, there's a similar statement where the word predestined is used in Romans chapter 8 and verse 29, where it says, whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son. Now, the ones that he foreknew, of course, refers to us, believers. And he says those ones, he has predestined to be conformed into the image of his son.
So again, neither of these passages tells of God predestining anyone to be a believer. However, he addresses believers in Ephesians and says we have been predestined to be adopted. That's the predestination that he has in mind for us. And by the way, when Paul talks about adoption in that passage, he's probably using it the same way he used it in Romans chapter 8, where he talked about how we in this body do groan, looking forward to the adoption, which he said is the redemption of our body. So apparently the adoption that we're predestined to, that Paul says, is going to be the resurrection of our bodies. And so in Romans 8 and 29, he says that he has predestined us to be conformed to the image of his son, which happens when we're resurrected, will be transformed into the image of Christ. So what's going on here is there are some people who take the word predestined and apply it in a way that nowhere in the Bible applies it. In other words, they make it sound that some people were predestined to believe and other people were predestined to not believe. But the Bible never uses the term in any sentence that makes that point. The few times that the word predestined is actually used in the New Testament.
There's only two passages. One is Romans 8 and one is Ephesians 1. But those two times, it's talking about what God has predestined for Christians, not that God has predestined some to become Christians. And you're right, predestined does sound like you don't have any choice. If God predestined you to become a Christian, then that was not your choice. And it was God's choice.
He had nothing to do with it. But he doesn't predestined who's going to be a Christian. What he has predestined is that Christians will have certain destinies, certain privileges.
They'll be adopted as sons. They'll be conformed to the image of Jesus. That's our destiny. And we don't have any choice about that because God has determined that that's what's going to happen with believers. We do, however, have a choice of whether we're going to be believers or not. In other words, we choose whether we become believers. And I believe we even choose whether we remain believers. Believing is something that's an active mental choice.
I believe in Jesus. I choose to believe in Jesus. If the time came where believing in Jesus was too costly or inconvenient for me, I might be foolish enough to say, I guess I'm not going to believe anymore.
I'd be very stupid to do that. But if I did do that, I'm choosing not to believe. So being a believer is something you choose to do.
And it's something that you choose to continue to do. And so you have a choice all through. But the choice none of us have is what the believers are going to end up with. That's what God has predestined for the believers is that we'll be adopted into his family through the resurrection.
We'll be conformed to the image of Jesus. And that's what I think the word means in Ephesians 1.5 as well. Is that understandable? That helps, yes, very much. I just kept misreading it, I guess. And then I'd go to dictionaries and then I'd look up words and got very confused. So that helps a lot. We are taught to see it that way.
Thank you very much. We were often taught to see it that way, the wrong way, I think. Because Reformed theology, which is pretty much the Protestant movement originally, was Calvinistic. And Calvinism teaches that individuals have been predestined to be believers or not to be believers and have nothing really to say about that. I mean, some of them will object to me saying that we have nothing to say about it. But I mean, they can object to all they want to.
The doctrine is that before you were born, God already had determined that you will not be able to believe or that you will inevitably believe. It's inevitable before you're born, according to them. So I mean, if they want to say, yeah, but you still have free choice.
Well, you can use words, whatever words you want to do. If it's inevitable before you're born that you're going to go one way or the other, you really don't choose anything about it. God made those choices. And that's what Calvinism teaches. But that's not what the Bible teaches. That's because Calvinism takes the word predestination. Maybe that's what I had heard. I'm not sure where I got that.
I just know I keep getting stuck on predestined. And what you said really helped. Well, thank you. I appreciate your call. I'm glad to be able to help. Thank you. God bless you, Barbara. Thank you. Goodbye now. All right. Paul from Vancouver, British Columbia.
Welcome to the Narrow Path, Paul. Hi, can you hear me? I can, but there's a big buzz in the background. I don't know if you're in a noisy area or if we just have a buzz on the line.
I'm actually driving. I was hoping I'd be able to speak to you when I talked, but if you can't hear me, I can definitely call back. Go ahead. Yeah. Okay. Listen to your programs quite often. And there was one edition last week where a lady called and was wondering about her Muslim friends.
And I couldn't really pick the answers that you gave very well. But I just wanted to say that my point of view is that many Muslim are actually seeking and searching for a relationship with the Lord. And by my Christian experience, I know many Muslims have a head knowledge. They understand the person of Jesus.
They refer to him as Prophet Iqbal in the Quran. But many of them don't have an experiential relationship with him. And I happen to come from an environment where Islam was the dominant religion. My high school was in a predominantly Muslim environment. And many of my friends 35 years ago when I was in high school were very, very strong Muslim. I mean, these are people who we kill and any blasphemy about Muhammad.
I mean, but many of them are coming to realize the errors of their ways right now. And they are actually confessing faith in Christ and becoming Christians. So I wanted to see to know if what you meant was that Muslims have equal standing with Christians when it comes to their relationship to the law for salvation. Or they still have to receive Jesus as their Lord and Savior, like the Bible says, as many as receive him to then give you the power to become the sons of God.
I'm not just Muslims alone. Even the Seventh-day Adventist and the Mormon. What I understand from the Word of God is you believe in your heart, not just a head knowledge of the person of Jesus. You believe in your heart and you believe the fact that Jesus is the Savior, the Son of God. And then you make an open confession of his lordship over your life.
That's what guarantees salvation. I'm going to run out of time here. We have very little time and I want to jump in and try to clarify, but I appreciate. Please go ahead. Go ahead. I'll listen on the phone.
Okay, sure. Yes, salvation does not occur. Biblical salvation does not occur unless somebody embraces Jesus Christ as the Lord. Okay, but biblical salvation is more than some Christians think. Biblical salvation includes justification, reconciliation, regeneration, sanctification, transformation, service, obedience, and eventually glorification. All of those things are part of salvation because the word salvation refers to a restoration to a proper relationship with God. And no one's in a proper relationship with God without experiencing those things. Those are the things that God does and that we do. I mean, salvation is a relationship.
So obviously we do some things and God does things and he does the things we can't possibly do for ourselves. But I think a lot of people when they think of salvation, they're just thinking of how do I get a ticket to heaven? And the Bible really doesn't talk about tickets to heaven. The Bible really doesn't speak of salvation that way. There is reference to heaven, but not very many. There's not very many references in the Bible to going to heaven, but there are some.
So we know that we go to heaven. But salvation isn't the same thing as just going to heaven. There are people in heaven who were never Christians, who never were regenerate. We know that because Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Moses and David and Joshua and the prophets, they never knew the name of Jesus. They never professed the name of Jesus as Lord.
They never were born again in the sense that the New Testament allows people to be born again. And so, I mean, there are people in heaven who never became Christians, partly because there weren't any Christians on the planet when they were there. And my suggestion is there are people on the planet now where Christianity has never reached them. There are parts of the world where either the gospel has never been preached or, sadly, some places the gospel has been preached very inadequately, very wrongly represented.
And so they might as well have not been preached at all. And there are people who do not understand who Jesus is. Now, I don't say they can be saved through some other religion. I might think that some of them could be saved in spite of being in another religion because Jesus died for everybody. And anyone who will turn to God as sincerely and humbly, like Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and David and Moses did, I think they'll probably receive mercy because of what Jesus did. They can't be saved without Jesus. But they might be saved without knowing much about Jesus. God's looking on the heart. And we often think, well, you know, they can't be saved without confessing Jesus as Lord.
I agree. They can't be saved. But going to heaven is not equivalent to saved. Saved means that you are restored to God in a relationship that is found in the way you live. You walk with God.
That's a relationship with God. When the prodigal son came home, his salvation wasn't about going to heaven when he dies. His salvation was about being restored to the proper relationship of submission and honoring his father and living his life that way. That's salvation. Heaven follows. When I got saved, I became a follower of Jesus.
When I die, I'll go to heaven. But it's becoming a follower of Jesus that is the restoration to a right relationship with God. That's why I am saved now. It's not like I'm going to be saved after I die.
I'm saved now. So if someone says, are Muslims saved or are Mormons saved or are people of other religions saved? Well, no, they're not saved in a biblical sense. They aren't following Jesus. That's salvation.
They're not in a right relationship. But if you ask me, will some of them be in heaven? Well, that's not for me to say. But there may be a possibility that some will be in heaven who never experienced what we call or what the Bible calls salvation in the sense of knowing Jesus. Because there were people before Jesus came who I believe are in heaven today, the Old Testament saints. There may be some people who in their lifetime were Muslims or Mormons or something else.
And I'm not saying this is so. There's nothing in the Bible that says it isn't. There may be people who never understood the gospel, never heard it. And although their religion could not save them, their heart for God might be counted like Abraham's faith in God as righteousness then because of Jesus, not without Jesus. You see, no one will be saved without Jesus.
The question is really whether anyone will be saved by Jesus who didn't hear about Jesus or didn't understand fully who he was when they were around. If they don't, they can't be saved in the biblical sense of the word. But they might end up in heaven nonetheless because salvation and going to heaven are not the same thing. And this is what makes it so hard to communicate to people because evangelicals have often just assumed saved means I'm going to heaven. And so if you say, well, this person isn't saved, then that means they're not going to heaven. Well, they might not be.
They might not be. But there might be people who will be in heaven. In fact, there are Old Testament saints who were never saved in the full sense of this New Testament salvation of being brought into the body of Christ, being filled with the Holy Spirit, you know, being regenerated, living with the indwelling spirit. This is all part of biblical salvation.
It's a very comprehensive, holistic thing that is involved when you are in relationship with God. And so I believe that people of other religions do not have that relationship with God, and therefore they're not experiencing salvation. But when they die and it comes time for God to judge whether they should, you know, be condemned or not, it may be that some, despite their wrong religions or despite their total lack of religion, if their heart was seeking God, as you say, I think you said that some Muslims are seeking God, but they just they don't know Jesus. Therefore, they're not saved. But will they be in heaven? That's God to judge. I don't know the hearts of any persons. And so I got actually that comment, that call last week that you're commenting on.
I think it was last week. I've got some emails about that from people who were confused. They thought I was saying that Mormons and Muslims, I guess because of their religion, are saved. I don't believe any religion saves. I don't even think the Christian religion saves. I don't think being a Catholic or Lutheran or a very religious Baptist or Pentecostal, that's not going to save anyone. Jesus saves, not religions. So having a right religion or wrong religion, that's not what salvation is about. It's whether you're a lover of God, humbly submitted to him and seeking his face and especially being saved in the biblical sense is if you know Jesus and he's your Lord and you're following him.
So that probably is confusing to people. I know I'm trying to put myself in my listeners place because for many years in my youth, I was a typical American evangelical who didn't know anything about salvation except you go to heaven when you die. And therefore, I know I'm saying some things that are kind of foreign to people, but there's what the Bible teaches. Just because I was an American evangelical doesn't mean I knew what the Bible teaches any more than being a Catholic in the Middle Ages means that they knew what the Bible teaches.
I mean, traditions of various periods of church history in different places may be widely and universally accepted, but that doesn't mean that's what the Bible teaches. I suggest people listen to what the Bible says and they'll find out that salvation is not equivalent to justification. Justification is part of it, so is sanctification, so is glorification, so is regeneration. So is a lot, I mean, the holistic walk with God as a subject and child of God is what salvation is. And of course, it includes heaven when you die and reigning with Christ in the new earth when he comes back.
So it's a very holistic package. But when most people say, will so-and-so be saved, which is something I can't answer for anyone, they usually mean will they go to hell or will they escape hell? That's usually what saving is. Are they saved from hell?
And frankly, the Bible says almost nothing on that subject. Surprised? Look for it. Keep your concordance out. See how much the Bible says about people going to hell and how much it says about people going to heaven.
You will be surprised. It's hardly, hardly brought up. It's in there. I can think of a handful of passages, but it's not the message of the New Testament. It's not even the message of salvation. In the Bible, the salvation is in the kingdom of God. That kingdom is something you enter now by becoming subject to the king.
When you die or when Jesus comes back, you're still in the kingdom of God forever and you'll reign with him there. But that's new enough to enough people that probably is really making some head spin. I don't mean to do that, but I'm looking at the clock. I'm done here in 15 seconds.
I apologize. I can't go further. Got a lot of calls waiting. You've been listening to The Narrow Path. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. We are listener supported if you want to help us stay on the air. The website thenarrowpath.com. Let's talk again soon. How about tomorrow? God bless you.
Whisper: medium.en / 2024-02-23 01:47:25 / 2024-02-23 02:09:23 / 22