The Narrow Path 10/12

Welcome to the Narrow Path Radio Program hosted by Steve Gregg.

Steve is not in the studio today, so calls from listeners will not be able to be taken. In the place of the usual format, we've put together some of the best calls from past programs. They cover a variety of topics important to anyone interested in the Bible and Christianity. In addition to the radio program, the Narrow Path has a website you can go to www.narrowpath.org.

Where you can find hundreds of resources that can all be downloaded for free. And now, please enjoy this special collection of calls to Steve Gregg and the Narrow Path. Thank you for joining us today.

We'll see you next time. Well, first of all, there's not a lot of scriptures that can be used about Michael the Archangel because he's not mentioned that much in scripture. There is a mention of Michael the Archangel in Daniel, but not much is said about him and certainly nothing to identify him directly with Jesus. Then we have in Jude a reference to Michael the Archangel disputing with Satan over the body of Moses. And again, there's nothing in that passage that would identify him with Jesus.

And then in the book of Revelation, in chapter 12, you find Michael and his angels making war against the dragon and his angels. So again, that doesn't necessarily identify him with Jesus. Now, there have been Christian commentators over the centuries who have believed that Michael is supposed to be an image or a representation of Christ. The argument that I've heard is that certainly the name Michael means who is like God.

And therefore, it's actually a question. Who is like God is the meaning of the name Michael. And so it suggests that since Jesus is like God, that that would be a code name for Jesus. More than that, if one would object that Jesus can't be an archangel because he's not an angel, that he is instead, of course, the creator of the angels, which I would agree he is that. Yet the word archangel doesn't necessarily have to apply to someone who is an angel. The word archē in the Greek, which is at the beginning of that word, joined with angelos, means chief of the angels. It could mean the chief angel, in which case it is talking about an angel. Or it could be translated chief of the angels.

An archangel could simply be the chief or the ruler of the angels. Now, in the book of Joshua, I think it's at the end of chapter 5, if I recall, Joshua encounters a person that most Christians identify with Christ, an angelic kind of creature with a sword drawn. And Joshua approaches him and says, Are you with us or for our enemies? And he says, No, I'm the commander of the Lord's hosts, is what he calls himself. Most would understand the Lord's host to mean the angels, and therefore the person who appears to Joshua identifies himself as the commander of the angels. Now archangel could certainly refer to the commander of the angels. It's not impossible, though actually we aren't told anywhere whether this person, that Joshua really is Jesus or not.

But most Christians find no difficulty with the suggestion that Joshua encountered Jesus there in a pre-incarnate state, what we call a theophany. And that he identified himself as the commander of the Lord's hosts or of the angels of God. So if other writers would refer to Jesus as the chief of the angels, it doesn't mean he's an angel himself. He could be God and be the chief of the angels, certainly. He is the Lord of lords and the King of kings, and he could be the chief of the angels, I should say. Therefore there's really nothing heretical about the suggestion that the few occasions in which Michael is mentioned in the Bible could possibly be a reference to Christ.

But I don't think there's any evidence that that is so. There seem to be angelic hierarchies, and Michael seems to be an important one. After all, he is mentioned in Daniel chapter 10 when this messenger came to Daniel and said that, I was sent 21 days ago with this message for you, and I was resisted in the sky by this being that he called the Principality of Persia, which is apparently demonic power, and was detained there until Michael, your prince, came.

And he's up there wrestling with the Prince of Persia now, and I'm going to go assist him in a moment when I'm done talking to you. Now, that would suggest that Michael is one of the beings that fights against the demonic powers in the heavenlies, but he needed help. He doesn't seem like he's an omnipotent being.

If it was Jesus Christ, all he has to do to a demonic power is rebuke it, as we saw in Jesus' ministry. So I really seriously doubt that Michael is supposed to be a representation of Christ, though, again, there are Christians, not only Seventh-day Adventists, but other Christian commentators, mainstream evangelicals have held this view. It's not a majority view, though, and most evangelicals, including myself, would not identify Michael with Christ.

I'm sorry, you got on hold, I'm sorry, and I need to hear what you said a moment ago. Oh yeah, he went to the scripture in the New Testament when Jesus comes with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, he used that one. Then he went to Moses on the mountain when he first seen the bush burning, he used that one trying to say that was Michael the archangel, too. Well, there's no suggestion in Exodus that it was Michael the archangel, it's the burning bush, it just calls it the angel of the Lord, which is not the same thing, necessarily, as the archangel. Many Christians, probably most Christians, believe that when you find the appearance of the angel of the Lord in the Old Testament, that it is a theophany, a pre-appearance of Christ. But I don't know of any, there's no place in the Bible I know of that identifies Michael as the angel of the Lord. Furthermore, when Jesus comes with a shout and with the voice of the archangel, well, he's going to be accompanied by armies of angels, the Bible says.

Exactly, with. Right, so it doesn't mean he's the archangel. Yeah, so, does that mean they're heretical on that teaching there? No, no, as I was saying, the belief that the archangel Michael is supposed to be Jesus is not heretical. Many evangelical commentators throughout history have held that view, but I don't think it's correct. So if you say, are they heretical, I would say, I think they're mistaken, but there's a big difference between mistaken and heretical. Okay, okay.

Let me clarify. Oh yeah, Seventh-day Adventists are Trinitarian, unlike, for example, Jehovah's Witnesses. Now, Jehovah's Witnesses don't believe in the Trinity, and they don't believe Jesus is God, and they also identify the archangel Michael with Jesus. But they would say the archangel Michael is not God, and therefore, by identifying the archangel Michael with Jesus, they're saying Jesus is not God.

But the Seventh-day Adventists do believe in the deity of Christ, therefore, even by identifying Michael the archangel with Christ, they're not diminishing the fact that they believe he's God. Okay, okay. Do I have time for just one more little quick one? I suppose you've got your foot in the door.

Go ahead. The king of Tyreide, when they're just giving the description, it sounds like he's talking to Satan, and I heard what you said last time, but what I was wondering, isn't that the same thing as when, like, in the New Testament, where Jesus is talking to, I think, Peter, and he rebukes the devil? So is he speaking to Peter or the devil?

Well, that's a good point. When he speaks to Peter, he says, get behind me, Satan. But he doesn't identify Peter as Satan, of course. He's basically looking past Peter to the work of Satan that's being brought about through Peter. If Ezekiel 28 had addressed the devil, but he was really addressing the king of Tyreide but called him Satan, that'd be similar to perhaps what Jesus did, speaking to Peter, called him Satan. But we don't have any reference to Satan in Ezekiel. Okay, how about all the description they give him, timber pipes and all that stuff?

There's no human being like that, right? Well, like what? I mean, lots of human beings have musical instruments, and lots of them have jewels that they wear. I mean, it talks about all the jewels he has covered. When I read it, I thought it was like embedded in him or something, and maybe the pipes said, I don't know.

No, don't feel bad about that. There's a lot of people who take it that way. I mean, when it says the workmanship of your timbrels and pipes was in you from the day you were created, it says some people have taken that to mean that the timbrels and the pipes, these musical instruments, were somehow appendages to his body.

That is not the least bit required by the wording. In you, in this case, we probably mean in Tyre, in the city of Tyre, they had all these musical instruments. Now, most modern translations don't even translate that as timbrels and pipes. If you look at almost any modern translation, it will say something like sockets and settings, because it's talked about all the gems. He says you were covered with all these gemstones, and then it says in most modern translations, and the sockets and settings were in you, meaning you had these sockets and settings with your gems in them, like a ring would have a socket or a setting that you put the gem in. So it depends on what translation you read. If you read the older translations, it says timbrels and pipes, which means musical instruments. If you read the newer translations, it says sockets and settings, which is talking about jewelry. But the principal thing there is that it's talking about this king was covered with jewelry, with gems, and had an abundance of music to entertain him.

He was a festive, wealthy king. Now, when you say it sounds like it's talking to Satan, it does if we've already been fitted with a particular idea about Satan. And if we have this idea about Satan, that he was a cherub, that he was in the Garden of Eden, that he was covered with gemstones or whatever, and that he was perfect until he fell, if we have that picture of Satan from somewhere, then that passage sounds like it's talking about him. But the interesting thing is we don't have that picture of Satan anywhere, except unless we read it into that passage.

So all those ideas about Satan come from that passage, and they come from somebody identifying that as Satan, but the passage gives no indication that it's talking about Satan. That's the point I'm making. Okay. Thank you so much. All right.

Good talking to you, Dave. Wonderful. Well, thanks for your call. God bless you. Okay. Jeffrey from Los Angeles, California.

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

Thank you for taking my call today. Sure. I had a couple questions. They're related to 1 John.

If you could take the second one, that would be great. But the first one is 1 John 2, verse 27, and it says, Because the anointing which you have received from him abideth you, and you do not need that anyone teach you. But as the same anointing teaches you concerning all things, and is true, and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you will abide in him. And I'm assuming the anointing is the Holy Spirit?

Yes. But it says it at the end, it says, and just as it has taught you, you will abide in him, and that's just kind of throwing me off. I looked at a couple of translations, and it seems like they say it. Is it referring to the anointing, or am I… Yeah, the it refers to the anointing, and the anointing is to be identified with the Holy Spirit, but the word it is a pronoun that agrees in gender with the word anointing. So basically he's saying, you have an anointing of the Holy Spirit, and it, that anointing of the Holy Spirit, is what teaches you. It would be sort of like if someone said, you have received the gift of the Holy Spirit, and it enables you to, you know, worship God internally, or whatever. By saying it, it would be referring back to the gift. The Holy Spirit can, in this case, is referred to as an anointing, and other passages could be called the gift of the Spirit. There might be other words that are used that are essentially, you know, modifiers of the Holy Spirit, and they are neuter. And so to speak about the gift of the Holy Spirit, or the anointing of the Holy Spirit, would be to use the pronoun that goes along with the word gift, or the anointing, rather than the pronoun that would be used if you just said the Holy Spirit, because that would be he. Okay, now that makes sense. That was more of a grammatical thing.

Sure. Okay, well the other question is also in 2 John, 1 John 2, about the Antichrist. And in verse 18, it says, where is it, little children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard, that the Antichrist is coming. Now the New King James, it says the Antichrist, but it, I believe it's the the, was not in the other manuscripts, or the newer manuscripts, the older manuscripts.

That's correct, that's correct. The Alexandrian text doesn't have the word the, just as you have heard, that Antichrist is coming. But in the King James and the New King James, it's as you have heard, that the Antichrist is coming. So does that kind of take away a bit from that, I guess the position that the Antichrist would be someone, as opposed to just saying Antichrist? And do you think, go ahead, and do you also think, because I'm reading this and I'm also thinking that, as he goes on to explain that those who deny that Jesus is the Christ or is the Messiah, do you think he was dealing with the, I guess the Docetist or those Gnostics?

It probably wasn't for them primarily, but I mean, it wasn't for them. Most scholars agree, yeah, most scholars agree that he was referring to the Gnostics here, because in chapter 4 he also speaks about the spirit of Antichrist, and he says that whoever denies that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh, the same is the spirit of Antichrist. So denying that Jesus came in the flesh was something that the Docetist, which was one branch of Gnosticism, taught, that Jesus was not really a physical being, he was more of a phantom being. And so almost all scholars agree, I think, that John was writing this letter to counter these Gnostic intrusions into the theology of the Church, and he does refer to them as Antichrist, and they're denying that Jesus is the Christ. But I think maybe your question about this, the Antichrist, in 1 John 2, 18, it says, Little children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming, even now there are many Antichrists by which you know that it is the last hour. Now, he's basically saying you've heard that in the last hour Antichrist is going to come, or either Antichrist or the Antichrist. And the texts don't, the manuscripts don't agree. The oldest texts do not have the word the, which means that in the older manuscripts you have heard that Antichrist is coming.

Not necessarily saying it's an individual, and then he goes on to make sure we know it isn't. He says, now many Antichrists have come, and then he says anyone who denies that Jesus is the Christ is Antichrist, in verse 22. So, clearly John's definition of Antichrist is anyone who denies that Jesus is the Christ, this would include the Gnostics, who have the spirit of Antichrist, and that there are many such Antichrists in the Church. And he says this is how we know that the final hour has come, which means that saying the Antichrist that you've been anticipating, or simply Antichrist that you've been anticipating, is not an individual, but is a lot of individuals.

There's a lot of them, and they're already here, and that's how we know that we're living in the final hour. So, in my understanding, the article the probably wasn't originally in it, because he's not talking about an Antichrist, he's talking about Antichrist generically, as anyone who denies that Jesus is Christ. So, I think the the doesn't really belong as part of the text, but that's of course a textual dispute. No, that's helpful, because I just wanted to know if it's like a singular thing, like a person, or if it's like people, like a plural use of that term.

It does seem more plural than like a person. Well, he speaks of it as if Antichrist is plural, because he says there are many Antichrists, and thereby we know that it is the last hour. So, he's saying whatever Antichrist you were expecting to come in the last hour, that's happened, and here they are. So, he's clearly identifying Antichrists with not one individual, but with a whole theological, heretical movement represented in many false teachers. But those who believe in a singular Antichrist might favor the King James and the New King James, where it says if you're expecting the Antichrist to come, that sounds like there's one particular Antichrist he has in mind. But then in that case, the context wouldn't fit with that, right? Apparently not.

I would think not. It's awkward for him to say, now you've been looking for the Antichrist, singular, and your anticipation, look no further. Essentially what he's saying is look no further. We know we're in the Antichrist because many Antichrists have come. So, he's not looking for one.

He's just saying anyone who denies Jesus Christ is Antichrist, which is a lot of different people. Gotcha, gotcha. Thank you, Steve, for taking my call today. God bless you. All right, Jeffrey, good talking to you. All right, our next caller is Brandon from Martinez, California. Brandon, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Hey, Steve. I also appreciate your ministry, and I want to say that first. But my question today actually comes out of John chapter 2, and in the first verse it says the wedding happened on the third day. And I would like you to explain what that third day might be a reference to, and I'll listen on the radio.

Okay, thanks for your call. You know, when I was young, I heard a teacher once suggest that this was like a coded message about when Jesus is going to come back. Because it says on the third day there was a wedding. And he said, well, that's talking about the wedding feast of the Lamb when Jesus returns, and the third day, a day to the Lord is like a thousand years. And so, you know, when two days have passed, that's two thousand years passed from Jesus' time, and now it's the third day when two thousand is coming up. It was coming up at the time he said this.

It was still thirty years off. But, you know, he was trying to make some kind of a cryptic prediction about the coming of Christ as if this wedding feast was somehow telling us something about eschatology. And so he gave a very specific meaning to the third day as if it was extremely important to understanding the passage. Actually, there's two ways you could understand the third day. One is that in the Bible, of course, they didn't use the words Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and so forth. But Sunday, what we call Sunday, was called the first day of the week. Of course, Sabbath was the seventh day of the week, that's Saturday. And when they spoke of the days of the week, they simply gave their number. So the third day would be Tuesday, if that's how it was being referred to.

If it's using the typical reference to the days of the week, it would be saying on the third day of the week, Tuesday, that this wedding took place. On the other hand, he may not be using it as the name of the day, because if you look at the previous chapter, John is at pains to mention the chronology of several events. He talks about how in chapter 1 verses 19 through 28, John the Baptist had to give an answer to people who came from Jerusalem about who he was. But verse 29 says, the next day, John saw Jesus coming and said, Behold, the Lamb of God, and so forth, and gives his testimony about Jesus. And then verse 35, he says, again the next day, John stood with his disciples and looked at Jesus, Behold, the Lamb of God, and they followed him there. Then on verse 43, it says, the following day, Jesus wanted to go to Galilee and found Philip and so forth. And then on chapter 2 verse 1, the third day, there was a wedding feast.

So it sounds like he's been counting the days, not necessarily the days of the week, like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday type counting, but rather the days from a starting point. The starting point was when John the Baptist began to testify about Christ. This was after Christ's baptism and after Christ's temptation in the wilderness.

When Christ had come back to the region where John was baptizing, John started to testify about him. And so the gospel is telling us this happened on that day, then the next day this happened, then the next day this happened, then the following day this happened, and then three days on the third day this happened. It's probable that the third day is just another way of counting a chronology here in relation to a starting, you know, the previous day, basically. That's what I'm thinking. But the other alternative is that he's using the term the third day the way that people would use it if they were talking about what day of the week it was. And that would be a reference to Tuesday. We're going to talk next to Danny from Carlsbad, California. And if it takes a little long, we'll have to hold you through the break, but we'll just see how long this takes. Hi, Danny.

It's not going to take long, Steve. I have someone that's very close to me, and she's a Christian, but she's always using the word hate for different things. And particularly people and other family members. And I was listening to Kaybright a few days ago, and I couldn't remember where it was in the Bible. I don't know if it was Jesus or John or who said it, but they talked about hate and compared it with Cain, why Cain killed Abel because he was of the devil. That's 1 John 3 and verse 15. It says, whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. So this friend of yours who's a Christian uses the word hate and apparently says that she hates certain people, members of the family and so forth.

Well, I can say one of two things about that. Either she's using the word hate differently than John is, or if she's not, then she's not really a Christian because John said we know that whoever hates his brother does not have eternal life in him, which means they're not a Christian. So Christians do not hate, not in the sense that John is talking about. Now, when she uses the word hate, she may not be using it that same sense. John is referring to hate as the opposite of love. That would be malice and hostility and things like that.

Whereas we might say, well, I hate cauliflower. That doesn't mean you have malice and hostility. It just means you really don't like it. The word hate sometimes just refers to I really don't like this at all. I dislike it. That's not the same thing as saying I don't love it because there are people I don't like very much, but I love them. I die for them because that's what Christians are supposed to do. But it doesn't mean I would like them. We don't have to like people, but we have to love them. And so I would say if she's using the word hate the way John does, then she's not a Christian.

If she's using it differently, then it may not really reflect negatively. Listen, we need to take a break and we're going to come back. We have another half hour ahead of us. You're listening to The Narrow Path.

Our website is thenarrowpath.com. We are listener supported. Please listen for 30 seconds and we'll be back for another half hour of calls. All right, we are back. Welcome back to The Narrow Path Radio Show. All right, we are back. Welcome back to The Narrow Path Radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg. We have another half hour together. Tony from Iowa is our next caller. Tony, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Hey Steve, how's it going? Good, thanks.

Good. I got a question about the book of Revelation. Jesus talks about the Nicolaitans and he says that he hates their deeds and I didn't know exactly who they were and what their deeds were. Yeah, the Bible doesn't really give us much information about the Nicolaitans, but fortunately the church fathers did.

Some of the early fathers in the second and third century were very familiar with the Nicolaitans and knew who they were. They said that the term Nicolaitans was derived from the name Nicholas, apparently those who followed Nicholas. Now, who is Nicholas? Well, they said, the church fathers said that this Nicholas is one of the seven, what we would call deacons, that were appointed in Acts chapter 6 when the apostles found that doing all the leadership of the church alone was getting to be too much.

They delegated some of the practical service, the distribution of food and so forth, to seven men who were selected and their names are given there in Acts chapter 6 and the last one is referred to as Nicholas. Now, the church fathers believed that Nicholas was the name that gave name to the Nicolaitans and that it was that Nicholas. Either he backslid or became a heretic or a later generation at least believed he did and followed what heresies they thought he taught. They believed that we don't really have much information, but the argument goes that the Nicolaitans were one of the many sects that broke off of mainstream Christianity and taught some form of Gnosticism. Now, this seems to agree with what it says to the church of Pergamum that they had there those who were teaching the doctrine of the Nicolaitans and also the doctrine of Balaam and Jesus says that they taught people to worship idols or eat meat sacrificed to idols, which was like a form of worshipping idols, and to commit fornication. Now, these were things that certain Gnostic sects were saying.

They were basically saying it doesn't matter what you do. They were what we call antinomian in the view that they don't believe that keeping any rules is a necessary part of being religious. They felt like as long as you believe or know, the Gnostics thought you had to know certain things and if you knew them, you could get away with doing anything you wanted to. Some people think the same way today about accepting Jesus, that if you accept Jesus, somehow you can get away with anything you want to.

It's sort of a modern form of antinomianism. But the Nicolaitans apparently taught that and Jesus did point out to the Ephesian church and to the church of Pergamum that Nicolaitan influence were in those churches and both times he says he hated it. So that's what it apparently was if we're going to trust the church fathers. If we don't trust the church fathers, then we're left only to speculate and so I'd rather trust them than speculate. But some teachers say, well, Nicolaitan comes from the words Nikos and Leos, which means conquest of the people. And so some people have argued, some teachers have argued that the Nicolaitans were teaching that some people could have conquest or authority over other people and they argue that the Nicolaitans were those who first taught a division between clergy and laity in the church. Now, I've heard this from a number of sources, including one of the pastors I sat under when I was a young man, and I assume that was correct. I think J. Vernon McGee also teaches this, but this is something that none of the church fathers support.

And they have, of course, a very different explanation of where the term Nicolaitans comes from. Okay, well, thank you. I appreciate your answer and we love listening to you here at KCRO in Omaha.

Great. I'm sure glad you're listening. God bless you, Tony.

Mike from Whidbey Island, Washington. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Thanks, Steve. Good to hear from you. You know, I'm from Calvary Chapel, you know, been under Chuck Smith for a while and really love David Hocking. And I was raised in the Catholic Church. I was baptized as a baby in the Catholic Church.

I went through all the sacraments and right down through eighth grade taught by nuns and everything, but I never received the Holy Spirit. I never got saved. Like the Catholic Church says, when you're baptized as a baby, you're saved. You're born again. No, that's not true.

So I agree. I wasn't saved as a baby. But fortunately, a Bible Christian from a doctor from New Zealand threw the Bible right in my face and challenged me and said, Jesus is God.

Look at right here. Well, his challenge was a real good thing for me to hear because two years later, I went to a Bible study he led. I heard a verse of scripture, Matthew 24, 35. Jesus says, heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away. Well, that was my conversion. I got converted and born again at 34.

And what is your question? My question is I called up Catholic radio today and I heard a couple of astounding things. First of all, a priest said that Paul thought that he could lose his salvation. There's a verse of scripture he brought up where it says Paul said that he could lose his salvation.

I'd like to know where that is. That's at the end of 1 Corinthians 9 in all likelihood. And I think that Paul did believe that was a theoretical possibility. I don't think he had any fear that that was really going to happen.

There's no need for that to happen. But I think he realized that if he departed from Christ, of course, you depart from Christ. Salvation is in Christ. So if you depart from Christ, you depart from salvation. But the way Paul put it in 1 Corinthians 9, verse 27, he said, But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest when I have preached to others, I myself should become reprobate.

Now, the New King James says disqualified, but the Greek word is the word reprobate. So he's saying I have preached to others, but I don't want to having once preached to others. I don't want to become a reprobate myself.

So I maintain control over my body. That is to say, I'm not going to be letting my body run in rebellion against Christ. You know, the other thing is I talked to another Catholic ministry today, too, and we had a Protestant turned Catholic. And the Catholic guy, and then the Protestant that's turned Catholic is on, he's answering the question. So I bring up Hebrews 10, 10, and I say, Hey, I believe since Jesus died once for all in Hebrews 10, 10, the priesthood, the Gentile priesthood of Catholicism is null and void. It's not even valid. I agree with you. I agree with you, yeah. And he goes on as a Protestant trying to say, Oh, no, no, that's not true.

The Catholic doctrine says this and this and this and justifies it all, and I never even get a word in edgewise. But he's not a Protestant, so he's saying what the Catholic doctrine is. Was that Tim Staples by any chance? I don't know. No, it wasn't Tim Staples.

It was somebody else on at 11 o'clock here in Seattle on EWTN. And it's sad that I never, I don't think this person that was raised a Protestant knows the Scriptures really well. I don't think he's born again.

I think that's the real issue here. Because the bottom line is, it's all about Romans 3.21. It's all about the Gospel. And they don't have an understanding of the Gospel. I feel like the Catholic Church is a cult more than ever now. Well, there's an awful lot of people who would share that opinion. Martin Luther, for example, I think would have shared it, and so do a great number of Protestant people. I think the Roman Catholic Church can be called a cult because it has a cult-like loyalty to leaders other than Scripture.

What I would call a cult would be a group that allows somebody, either a person or an organization, to do your thinking for you. That you actually surrender your responsibility to think and know the truth to somebody else. Let them do that. I'll just let them do the thinking, and I'll just say what they say, and that'll be fine. That way I don't have to think things through myself.

I don't have to be critical. Whereas Paul said it's our responsibility to test all things. He said in 1 Thessalonians 5.21, Test all things and hold fast to that which is good. So we hold fast to what is good after we test things. And now if we're not going to test things, we just say, Well, my priest or the bishop or the pope or the councils or someone before, they tested things. They thought for me. I'm just going to go with what they think is good. That's what Paul told us not to do. We're not supposed to surrender our thinking faculties and responsibility to somebody else to let them do it for us.

I agree with you. All right, let's talk next to Caleb from Seattle, Washington. Hi, Caleb. Welcome to The Narrow Path.

Good afternoon, sir. My question is, I think it's Luke 16 and 8 where Christ said, The people of the light, who are they? I think he's referring to his own disciples or to people who know God. He's saying that the children of the light are not as wise as the children of the world are in their generation. By wise, in the context, he seems to be saying they're not as adept at managing affairs and things like that. It's at the end of a parable about a man who was told he's going to be let go from his work, and he used the few days that he'd left before his termination to manage some debts in a way that would obligate people to help him out when he was out of work.

So he was very clever in looking out for himself. I think Jesus is saying that people who are godly, children of the light, are often not as adept at that as others. And it may well be because children of the light don't place the same priority on it that worldly people do. I know I don't.

For example, when it comes to raising money or promoting a career, my career or whatever, I don't know anything about it, but I don't have any interest in it either. But there are people who that's what they're all about, and so they get really good at it. I think that's what Jesus is suggesting. So when he was comparing them to the people of this planet, he said something like, you know, the people of this planet are more shrewd than the people of the light in dealing with their kind. So the wicked ones and the righteous ones, or his disciples, are the people of the light, right?

Jesus had already told them that in the sermon. He said, you are the light of the world. So very clearly, they are the light. And so they're the children of the light as opposed to the children of the world.

The children of the world, they follow the prince of darkness. Oh, okay. And quick question. Are you familiar with Dr. Charles Stanley out of Atlanta, Georgia, First Baptist Church?

Sure, sure. Do you know anything about him? Do I know anything about him? No, I mean, well, if you know him, what's your opinion?

Because I listen to him a lot. Well, he's a Baptist, and he has Baptist theology. I was raised Baptist myself, so I'm pretty familiar with Baptist theology. And I think a lot of it is pretty good. A lot of Baptist theology is good.

I agree with a lot of it, but I don't agree with all of it. One of the things he believes that would be a difference of opinion that he and I would have is he believes in an unconditional eternal security, which I don't believe the Bible teaches that anywhere, and I think it teaches against it. That would be one difference between him and me, but there would probably be others, too. On the other hand, he's one of the guys I like to listen to once in a while. I mean, I don't listen to radio that much except when I'm in my car, but there are certain people that when they're on, I just turn them off, just like a lot of people turn me off when they hear me on the radio. Yeah, like John Hagee. Yeah, but I don't turn Charles Stanley off unless there's something else I'm looking for.

I listen to him a lot, like on every Sunday, and I don't know, so far I haven't had any problems. All right, thank you, sir. Appreciate it. All right. God bless you.

All right. You, too. Good talking to you. All right, we're talking next to Kim from Vallejo, California.

Kim, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Yeah, hi.

How are you doing today? Good. The reason I was calling is a little while ago you were discussing the matter of Antichrist, and I agree with everything that she had to say on 1 John and so forth, but when you refer to Antichrist in terms of the book of Revelation, specifically in chapters 13, you're dealing with another individual there, and having both of those chapters 13 and 14 in my memory and going over through my memory many times, I think I understand those pretty well. And the particular Antichrist we're talking about there, this particular man is the one who is cruel to – did everyone rich or poor, free or bind? Take a number on them and identify with them.

To have a number to buy anything. Yes, right. But let me ask you a question about that. I think everybody listening is familiar with that view.

I certainly am because I used to teach that too, but I'll tell you why I don't see it that way necessarily anymore, and I'll let you have a chance to speak up too. One is that, first of all, the word Antichrist isn't found anywhere in the book of Revelation. In fact, it's not found anywhere in the Bible except for 1 John and 2 John, and the only place in the Bible that uses the term Antichrist is – well, it's only John in 1 John and 2 John, and he identifies Antichrist as anybody who denies that Jesus is the Christ. So we don't have the word Antichrist in the Bible ever used to speak of an individual. Now, we do have the Beast in Revelation 13 is what you're talking about. Some people call him the Antichrist, although the Bible doesn't use that term for him. Okay, let's call it that, the Beast is Antichrist, but why would we think that the Beast is a person? He's not described as a person. He's described as an animal that has seven heads and ten horns, and the seven heads are seven hills, and also they are seven kings, and the ten horns are ten kings. So we're not talking about an individual here. We're talking about a political system that has a lot of kings attached to it as part of it. So I don't personally think it's very likely that we're talking about a person there so much as a system. And by the way, the Beast in Revelation is a composite of the four beasts in Daniel 7. Right, I agree with that.

And none of those beasts were people. I know we only have so much time here. In order to establish my point here, we would have to really tie this all in with what's currently going on now. I'd have to refer you to the book by Perry Stone, Revelation Generation, where he covers this all specifically point by point. Let me interrupt you here, because there are tons of books by prophecy quote-unquote experts who are trying to connect Revelation with modern times. I read Hal Lindsey's book 50 years ago almost, and he did the same thing. And I've read Tim LaHaye, and I've read other prophecy teachers, plus I sat for years under Chuck Smith, who did this several times a week. He'd talk about the connection between modern developments and the book of Revelation. I haven't read Perry Stone, but I have no reason to believe that he knows the subject better than anyone else on the subject. But the point is, I think they're all kind of taking the wrong approach. You're saying that to understand Revelation correctly, you have to understand in light of what's going on today. Well, how do we know that? Christians have understood Revelation various ways throughout their history, and it's always been the case that they thought that their day was the key to understanding it.

So why would our day necessarily be the key to understanding it? This is what I refer to as newspaper exegesis. That is to say, proper exegesis is when you read the Bible and seek to understand the meaning of it by drawing from the text itself and comparing Scripture with Scripture. That's good exegesis. Newspaper exegesis is when you read the newspaper to figure out what the Bible is talking about.

Well, that's not a very good way to do exegesis, and those who have done so, I'll just share with you. I've read many books by people who did so over the past 60 years that I've been a Christian. And after a few years, their books are out of print in some cases, or they should be because they've been discredited. I read a book about Bible prophecy interpreting Revelation a certain way that was written between World War I and World War II, and the guy who wrote it thought that that was the end times. And then, of course, Hal Lindsey believed that he thought the end had to come before 1988. He thought the Rapture had to come by 1981.

He missed that by a fair bit. We've had people like Harold Camping who've set dates based on what he understood Scripture to be saying, but a lot of this is based on newspaper exegesis, too. In fact, we've had the blood moons phase, which was taken from the whole the moon should be turned to blood prophecy, and it was way off.

It clearly had no validity at all, and yet many books were sold based upon it. You may not remember, but back during the operation Desert Storm, when Saddam Hussein was a threat, a lot of people said, well, he's rebuilding ancient Babylon, and he wants to rule from Babylon. And so a number of Bible teachers wrote books that became big sellers during that very brief period of time talking about how Babylon is going to rise, because Revelation 17 says Babylon is going to rise. And therefore, of course, no one had ever said, no Bible scholar had ever believed that Revelation is talking about literal Babylon in Iraq. But when Saddam Hussein started building Babylon, everyone was saying, oh, the Bible said this was going to happen.

It's amazing how the newspapers changed the meaning of Scripture from year to year. And I'm not really interested in what Perry Stone may think is happening in the world today, because I've seen other people equally convinced. In interpreting Revelation, I'd rather take the same approach as taking to interpret the rest of the Bible.

That is, understand what the words mean in the Greek, how they parallel with other things the Bible says on similar subjects, and so forth. And I've reached somewhat different conclusions than yourself. However, I grant every man the right to believe whatever he wants to about the book of Revelation. It's fine with me. But I'm not going to follow a book connecting things to modern times. Why should I do that?

I've lived too long to trust that kind of a method. Let's talk to Michael from Phoenix, Arizona. Michael, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Thank you, Steve.

I appreciate your ministry very much. Quick question, actually, two, but I'll try to make it as quick as possible. One is the duration of time, if you were to go back through the genealogy, doesn't it pretty much say that Earth has been around, or at least from an Adam and Eve and all the way back to Jesus? Was it roughly about a 5,000 year period of time?

Is that about a true statement? If you total up the genealogies and go back from the time of Christ to Adam, usually you'll come up with a date like 4,004 B.C. And then my real question comes down to how do I kind of put that into perspective when the scientists are saying that they have discovered fossil remains of humans that date as far back as 190 some odd thousand years old? I take that with as much of a grain of salt as the scientists who say that the dinosaur bones are 65 to 70 million years old, and yet they find them with soft bone marrow, soft tissue in them, even blood vessels and things like that that are stretchy.

In other words, they're not fossilized. They're not millions and millions of years old, or at least they aren't acting like stuff that's that old. I would say when we say scientists say this or that, we have to realize that scientists are people, and not all scientists have the same opinion about things. There are many scientists who believe the Earth is billions of years old, and there are many scientists that are certainly in the minority at the moment.

They used to be in the majority, but now they're a minority of scientists. There's still a lot of them out there who believe the Earth is thousands of years old. I don't care how old the Earth is, to tell you the truth, but it's impossible to say science has proven this or that because it's really what scientists say. Scientists are not the same thing as science.

Science means knowledge. Scientists are people who have subjective opinions, and there is no such thing as proof that the Earth is a certain age. What there is is evidence that can be pressed into the service of one theory or another. There are some scientists whose world view compel them to see all the evidence necessarily in terms of a naturalistic way of looking at the universe, which requires that evolution had to happen over billions of years, and therefore everything, all the evidence they see, they're going to have to press it into the mold of a world that's billions of years old. Now, whether the evidence actually supports that or not is something for a specialist smarter than me to really decide.

But one thing is clear. The scientists are not. The evidence doesn't prove something. The evidence supports one theory or another, and there are guys on both sides and women who are expert scientists who believe that they have evidence for their position. And so, you know, if someone says, well, how can you believe the Bible is true when science says such and such? Well, who are you calling science? What human being is called science? You mean there are scientists who say that? Yeah, there are scientists who are Hindus, and there are scientists who are Jews, and there are scientists who are Muslims, and there are scientists who are Christians, there are scientists who are atheists, and a lot of them are going to say different things about stuff because their world views are different from each other.

We happen to be living at a time where Western civilization is dominated by what's called the naturalistic materialistic world view, and so all the data is very popularly interpreted through that world view. But we don't have to worry about that because the world view is not supported scientifically. That is to say, you don't derive a world view through science. You interpret science through a world view. Now, they have an atheistic, materialistic world view. I don't think there's any support for that at all.

I don't think reality supports a materialistic world view. I think there's a lot more reality that fits better with a supernaturalist world view, and most scientists don't even consider that. But the real question has got to be, has God told us anything about it? If so, where might we find His words about that? And Christians believe that the Bible is that place where God has revealed Himself to Moses and to the prophets and through Christ and the apostles. And the biblical authors, writing by revelation from God, definitely came up with some different ideas than those which are popular among atheists. But even if the only difference between them was one was atheist and one believed in God, I'd have to go with those who believe in God as being more reliable. Now, if those who are atheists also have to press every bit of evidence in nature into the service of their atheistic theory, well, I'm not going to respect that approach, frankly. But if I have a word from God, and I think that that probably is more authoritative than any man, then I think that's a respectable position. It's only if there's no God, or there is a God who hasn't revealed Himself, that we would be in the position to have to ask the scientists to tell us everything.

If God has told us important things, I personally don't have any problem believing what He had to say. I appreciate your call, too. We're out of time. You've been listening to The Narrow Path radio broadcast.

My name is Steve Gregg. As I mentioned earlier, we're listener supported. We pay for the time on radio stations. We're on quite a few stations, and it costs a lot of money. If you'd like to write to us, you can write to The Narrow Path, P.O. Box 1730, Temecula, California 92593. You can also donate from the website, but everything at the website is free. It's thenarrowpath.com, and I hope you'll join us again. We'll talk some more. God bless you.