The Narrow Path 11/4

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 where you can call in with your questions about the Bible or the Christian faith or the Christian life. You can call in with a difference of opinion with the host if you'd like.

That's 844-484-5737. And I have one announcement about tonight, and that is I've been telling you this week that I'm going to be involved in a Zoom meeting, which others can participate in if they want to. This is being hosted by a church in Oregon, and I believe they have like an apologetics class. And I've been asked to do about an hour and a half of Q&A with their apologetics group. And that's going to be 7 o'clock tonight Pacific time. 7 o'clock Pacific time tonight. And if you're interested, there's a limit of 100 people can be there.

I don't know how near that limit the regular class is. I think it's considerably smaller, so there's probably room for quite a few of you if you're interested. What you want to do is go to our website, thenarrowpath.com. That's thenarrowpath.com. And then you want to click on the tab that says announcements. And when you've done that, you can scroll down to tonight's date, and there'll be information there about how to get involved in that meeting tonight on Zoom. Again, it's going to be a Q&A with yours truly for about an hour and a half, starting at 7 p.m. Pacific time. And for those of you in Southern California, we have our semi-regular meeting in Temecula this Saturday night in the usual place. You can also find that at our website, thenarrowpath.com. That's this Saturday night, and that's a Q&A also.

You can find out that under announcements at thenarrowpath.com. All right, we're going to go back right to the phones, and we're going to talk first to Peter calling from London, England. Peter, welcome to The Narrow Path. Good to hear from you. Hi, Steve.

I appreciate you taking my call. So I'll try and explain my question briefly. In Acts 14, Paul's planting church is in the region of Galatia, and I believe, although it's not written in the chapter, I believe he doesn't spend much time there because of persecution. And when you read the book of Galatians, he's reprimanding them for drifting so far from the gospel that he preached. But then in Acts 17, when he plants, when he goes to testing the nikah, and I believe he only spends a few weeks, he's able to spend a few weeks with the newly converts there because of such intense persecution. Yet when Timothy reports back to him in 1 Thessalonians, they remain faithful.

He's actually quite impressed at how faithful they've remained. So I guess my question is, I don't know what factors, I guess both churches had Paul for such a short time, yet the Thessalonians remain faithful, but the Galatians drifted. And I don't know what factors you believe may have, yeah, why one church did so well, one church just drifted.

Yeah, well, I think we can probably answer that. It's true, the Galatian churches, although we don't know how long the entire first missionary journey was of Paul and Barnabas, but during that journey, they did plant all the churches in the Galatian region. And yet they probably didn't spend more than a few weeks at the most in each of these churches. And yet, shortly after he got back to Antioch, the church that sent him out, he received news that the churches were drifting in Galatia, and he had to write the letter to them that we have in our Bible, the book of Galatians. And we see what the problem was there, and that was that this was still early enough in the Gentile mission, in fact it was Paul's first missionary journey, that Paul was still being very much opposed by the Judaizers, who felt that he was compromising by allowing Gentiles to become Christians without them being circumcised.

That is, without them becoming converts to Judaism. And so they followed him around, and they came to these churches, and they stirred the people up, and they told them they had to be circumcised and all of that, and so that was the problem with the Galatians. And that's a very big temptation for Gentile believers, especially if they're not well established in the faith, to believe that somehow, since Jesus was Jewish, and since the apostles were Jewish, and since Christianity grew out of Jewish roots, that somehow we're supposed to still be Jewish, even if we're Gentiles, we need to become Jews to become Christians. There's, to this day, despite the clearness of Paul's warnings in Galatians, there are Christians today who still make that mistake.

It's a very easy mistake to make if you don't understand the New Testament. And so I think that's why the Galatians failed, is that these Judaizers came in right after Paul'd leave town, and the converts were barely dry from their baptism, and now they've got these wolves coming in, as Paul referred to them, leading them astray, with a, what sounds like a plausible error, plausible because these people came, the Judaizers came from Jerusalem, and they could argue, well, the apostles in Jerusalem, they keep the law, and of course that was true. They did keep the law, but they were born Jewish. They didn't get circumcised after they became Christians.

They were circumcised from birth. They lived in Jerusalem, and the Jewish church was very culturally Jewish, and therefore still went to the temple and things like that. But Paul did not believe that Gentiles ever had to be circumcised or had to keep any of those laws.

He didn't even think that the Christians in Jerusalem had to, but that was not his problem. His converts were among the Gentiles, so I think that's why these people got led astray. Now, the church of Thessalonica was planted on Paul and Silas' second missionary journey, and it was further away from Jerusalem. It was, of course, across a finger of sea in the Greek peninsula, and therefore, I think the Judaizers by this time had gotten used to the fact that Paul was not going to in all likelihood be defeated by them. Furthermore, after the Galatians was written, there was the Jerusalem Council, where the apostles in Jerusalem sided with Paul. So even if the Judaizers still held their views, they didn't have the apostles on their side. They had an official council of the church had denounced their position.

So I think that demoralized them a little bit. I don't think they followed Paul around as much. Now, Paul still received Jewish opposition in these Gentile churches, but they were from the local Jews. They weren't from the Jewish church coming around trying to say, well, Christianity is great, but you have to also keep the law. These were Jews who just were jealous of the success of Paul, and they weren't trying to teach anybody to follow Jewish law who were Gentiles. They just saw Paul as a troublemaker. Now, it would appear that Paul had only spent three weeks in Thessalonica, because it says he preached three Sabbaths there.

And then he got arrested, and then he had to leave town. So again, as you point out, the church in Thessalonica had not had the advantage of Paul for very long among them, any more than the Galatian churches did, and yet it was stronger. It had held to the faith. And probably the reason for that would be that when they were converted out of paganism, because these were Gentiles, so they were converted out of paganism, they saw this as a stark contrast. I mean, when they turned to God, they turned from idolatry. And that's what Paul said to them in 1 Thessalonians 1. He says in verse 9, For they themselves declare concerning us what manner of entry we had to you, and how you, meaning the Thessalonians, turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God. Now, it's easy to see the contrast between idolatry and Christianity, because idolatry is steeped in immorality.

In fact, it endorses immorality. I mean, the pagan temples had prostitutes for priestesses. I mean, it was part of the Greek religion to commit immorality.

And that's what these people had done. And they also, of course, had worshipped many gods. Now, when they came to Christ, they did so deliberately, seeing a huge contrast between what they had been and what they were deciding to be.

And I think it was not easy to be deceived into going back to idolatry. But the Judaizers who had come to Galatia seemed to be teaching, you know, pretty much what Christians believe. They believed the Scriptures. They believed in one God.

They believed in the God who is the Father of Jesus Christ. And so, you know, adding Jewish laws to the Christian life had much more of a deceptive appeal to people who had left their paganism. And the Judaizers were not trying to get them to go back to that paganism, but to what they would consider to be a more advanced and more committed form of Christianity. And that has tremendous appeal even to very sincere Christians, whereas in Thessalonica they had come out of idolatry. And I think there's such a huge contrast between what they'd come out of and what they came to that they were inured against paganism. And I don't think the Judaizers were among them trying to turn them to Judaism. That makes sense.

One quick question. So in Acts 14, 23, so Paul then, he then appoints elders amongst these, I think, new believers. And yet when he's advising Timothy and Titus about appointing elders, one of the criteria is they shouldn't be novices. But is he not going against his own advice then by appointing elders amongst these relatively new converts?

Yes, I think he was, but I think it was an emergency situation. I think that when Paul told Timothy and Titus not to appoint novices to eldership, it was because there were some people in the church by the time Paul wrote those letters, you know, the churches in Ephesus and Crete had apparently been there for a very long time. There were churches in every city in Crete. And Paul told Titus, go and appoint elders in every city. So those churches had been established already. They might even have already had elders before that had died or whatever, and they needed a fresh batch.

We don't know. Likewise, Timothy was in Ephesus and the church in Ephesus had probably been there for at least seven years. And Paul had ministered there for three years and so forth. So there would be mature Christians for Timothy to choose from to be elders and probably in Crete also. So he could say, listen, don't don't have a newcomer do it.

You've got plenty of people or there should be plenty of people who are mature enough that you wouldn't have to resort to appointing a novice as an elder. But in his first missionary journey, it probably had only been a few months, if that, as he was making his way back along the same itinerary and appointing elders in every church. These churches only had, you know, been Christian. None of the Christians have been probably saved for even a year at that point.

So they're all novices. And so I imagine that Paul looked for the same things in the people that he appointed as elders in Acts 14 that he was looking for when he wrote to Timothy. And although everyone there would be a novice, there would be a certain number in every church that had been raised Jewish and therefore had not didn't have pagan backgrounds. They had already been worshippers of Yahweh. They may have known the scriptures from their youth and they had just transitioned to becoming Christians. But they could certainly bring with them their knowledge of the scriptures and their, you know, their firm basis of monotheism and so forth. I would imagine, although I don't know that all the elders he picked were from the synagogue who had been converted, but there would at least be some in those churches, even though the churches were very young and all the Christians were new converts, still those who had a Jewish background and became Christians would have a tremendous advantage. And, you know, I'm sure that he would rather have had older Christians to choose from, but he didn't.

So he had to use what he found there. Now, very insightful. Thank you, Steve. God bless you. Really appreciate it. Great to hear from you, Peter. God bless you, too. Bye bye. Bye now. Mike from Albany, Oregon.

Welcome to The Narrow Path. How are you doing, Mike? I'm doing really, really well. Steve, I first just wanted to thank you for coming to Albany. It's been incredible. It was amazing having you there. It was my pleasure.

Thank you so much. As you know, I grew up in a religion that taught me a lot of self-control and to avoid vices and to serve people and to love God. But when I was baptized two weeks ago, it's so different now. So it was how I was living before.

It was mostly from outside pressure working in on me. And I still appreciated being raised with those standards and morals. But in my baptism, my heart was changed in a way I'd never experienced. The things I care about, the things that are important to me, that are interesting to me, everything, it's just shifted to Christ. And I'm wondering, so it's not that I'm without sin or temptation, but the grip that temptation has on me, it feels really, really weak. And it's an amazing experience, but as I've been reading the scriptures, I see that Christians can still expect to wrestle a lot with sin and temptation. And so I'm wondering if this experience I'm having and living in right now, if it's something I should expect to continue, or is it something I should expect to be temporary and will come and go? And are there things I can do to make sure I'm walking in the Spirit and have it more often or more regularly?

So that's my question. All right. Well, you probably noticed the picture of your baptism is on my Facebook page.

We've gotten a lot of likes. Well, you know, it is true that sometimes when you first are regenerated or first filled with the Holy Spirit, as I believe you were a couple of weeks ago, that it's like a honeymoon with God. I mean, it's exciting. And that doesn't mean it can't stay that way or can't be that way repeatedly. But there are different phases of Christian living and tests and so forth. I mean, it sometimes is the case that God will shield somebody in the early stages of their walk with Him from some of the worst kind of temptations they may have to face later on. It's like when God led Israel out of Egypt. It says He didn't take them by the way of the Philistines, though it was shorter.

He took them the long way around. He says because He didn't want them to see battle and maybe become discouraged and go back to Egypt. So He kind of shielded them from battle initially. But of course, during their wilderness wandering, they had to fight off the Amalekites.

And when they came into Canaan, they had to fight off a whole nation of hostile powers. But that's after they'd had some time to get to know God a little bit. You know, it's like when they first became aware of God, as it were, He shielded them briefly.

And I think that He does that sometimes. Now, not everyone, some people find the trials come immediately after baptism. And maybe it's not happening to you as much partly because of your religious background. I mean, being in a moral, in church that enforces moral living, you probably avoided forming certain habits that other people have formed before their conversion. And those habits often continue to haunt them and tempt them afterwards. I would imagine that although you had temptations when you were in your previous religion, my knowledge of you would give me the impression that you probably lived a pretty clean life and therefore probably escaped some of those bondages that other new Christians often have to wrestle with.

I mean, I'm assuming you didn't have any bondage to drugs or alcohol or, you know, fornication and things like that, like many people do before they're converted. And those things are very addictive. But you will have your own temptations. There will certainly be temptations to pride because everyone has those.

I don't sense any pride in you, honestly. But I mean, it's the devil will always find any way he can to make you feel proud of yourself or superior to someone else who doesn't see things like you as well as you do or whatever. I mean, those are temptations, just like sensual temptations are. I don't know what the temptations will be in your life.

And frankly, it could be trials of various kinds. I feel like I was raised in a Christian home, and although I've had my share of temptations, I feel like my temptations have been down a fairly narrow range of issues. And I don't have a broad range of temptations, such as a lot of people do, because again, in my upbringing. But I still have to be tempted. And some of those temptations or testings come in the form of serious trials.

And I don't wish those on anybody, but frankly, they are assigned to us in some measure for our growth and to teach our hands to make war against the enemy. And of course, God will give grace for all those things. If you keep your eyes on Christ, if you meditate on Scripture day and night, as the Bible suggests in Psalm chapter 1, I believe that you should be prepared for temptations to kind of come at you that will surprise you.

But just don't be surprised. Just realize that, remember how it says in 1 Peter chapter 5, I think it's verses 8 and 9. It says, Be vigilant, be sober, your adversary, the devil, as a roaring lion, is seeking whom he may devour. It says, whom resist steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same afflictions are coming on your brethren throughout the world.

That is, all Christians are going to face the devil's efforts to consume them. But there's never a reason in the world that he has to succeed if we remain vigilant. Okay, well, I think it's important to understand that it's stuff I need to be preparing for. Yeah, do not think that it's going to be a cruise, you know. You're going to be like swimming upstream against stiff water sometimes, you know. I mean, that hasn't really, that hasn't necessarily been the case with all of us in this culture.

But I think things are changing in this country. And I do think that those of us who have never developed any muscle, spiritually speaking, are going to find ourselves easily exhausted if we do not lean wholly on God and seek his grace to endure and to succeed. But that grace is available. His grace is sufficient.

And that's what you have to remember. The religion that you came from, I don't believe is very strong in the area of grace. But I think that that's the distinctive of being a follower of Christ, is that what makes Christianity different than every religion in the world is grace, you know. That we are not only forgiven by grace, we are enabled by grace as we trust in God.

And God gives his grace to make us victorious in trials. I have, you probably know, a chapter on that in my new book on the kingdom of God. It's called The Reign of Grace. I think the chapter is called The Reign of Grace.

It's the kingdom of grace. Yeah, I just got it and I've been trying to read through it with six kids. It's always hard to sit down and read. I know.

But actually, I really loved it. I want some of my LDS friends to read it. Well, even if you skip to that chapter, it talks a lot about what I'm trying to get across here. All right, brother.

By the way, thank you so much, Steve. I have tremendous confidence in the work of God in your life. I mean, I know I've seen the work of God in the short time I've known you. The change and all that is just tremendous.

I wasn't sure what to expect. I wasn't sure what to expect, but it's just blown me away what it's been like being in the Spirit for the past couple of weeks. Yeah, well, like I said, I believe you got baptized in the Holy Spirit. That's what made such a big difference in my life. I was a Christian convert and baptized in an evangelical church when I was young.

But I wasn't baptized in the Spirit until I was 16. I think you got both at the same time. And it's the latter, I think, that makes that difference you're describing. Yeah, I believe so. Yeah. All right. Well, God bless you. Thank you.

God bless you, Steve. Always a pleasure. Have a good day. Talk to you later. Bye now. All right. Let's talk to Tom from Denver, Colorado. Tom, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Hey, Steve, how you doing? Love your show.

Thank you. Boy, I sure hope the demon rats aren't going to try to steal this one. You never know what they're going to do, but I think we should all just keep praying for Trump. But what I wanted to say is there seems to be a lot of New Age teachings going on in the Christian church. Well, maybe not in the churches, not in all the churches, but in a lot of the churches.

And sometimes it sounds so good, it's hard to tell the difference. I have a friend of mine who's been reading this book called A Course in Miracles. Yeah, that was given by direct dictation from evil spirits claiming to be Jesus. I believe that, you know, because he'll say things that are just so right on the money about forgiveness and loving people. And I really believe he's a very loving person, but then he'll say things like, you were not God, but God is you.

Yeah, it's not hard. It's not hard for someone wanting to imitate Jesus to say things like you need to forgive people, because obviously everyone knows Jesus would say that because he said it, but that he would never say God is you. And that's the subtlety of that deception, I believe. Here's the difference between New Age and Christianity. If a teaching is puffing you up, if it's telling you how to have your best life now, how to have more power, you know, and so forth, and it's all about you, then there's a good chance it's got its roots in the occult because the occult is all about people having power, supernatural power. And although some Christians emphasize that too, that's not the emphasis unless we're talking about the power to live a holy life. Of course, the power to live a holy life and to be a witness for Christ is part of one of the main issues in the gospel. But the truth is that, you know, the occult isn't really about Christ.

It can use his name, it can repeat some of the things he said, and they usually do because, let's face it, everyone respects Jesus. But when it comes down to really something about how you're just improving yourself, making your life better, and those kinds of things, I believe that that's a warning sign, a red flag, because Christianity is about glorifying God. And a lot of Christians don't know that. That's why they fall into occult things because they think, oh, this must be something God will have because it's doing things for me that I think Christianity is supposed to do too. But Christianity, if we want to call it that, I just call it following Jesus, is about being obedient to God and glorifying God and not worrying about what you get out of it.

I realize Christians have a different attitude than that many times, but that's what the true biblical faith is about, and that's the difference. Hey, I need to take a break, but I hope that kind of gives you a gauge to go by. You're listening to The Narrow Path. Our website is thenarrowpath.com, and I'll be back in 30 seconds for another half hour. Stay tuned.

Welcome back to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg, and we are live for another half hour taking your calls. If you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith, feel free to give me a call.

We'll talk about them. The number is 844-484-5737. Now, my father's birthday is today, so I just want to give a shout out to him. Happy birthday, Dad. He's 95 years old today, and he listens to this program every day until about probably five minutes into it when he falls asleep. But my mom is actually here in the room, and I think she was sleeping a moment ago until we mentioned her name.

You know, when you're in your 90s, it's kind of hard to stay awake, and frankly, there's not much reason to do so. But my dad may be listening, or he may be snoring, but happy birthday, Dad, and I know my mom will tell him if he didn't hear it with his own ears. And I think that's all I need to announce, so let's go on to the lines because they are pretty full. We're going to talk next to Alex from Honolulu. Alex, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Hi, Steve.

Good to talk again. My question today is, so a long-time atheist friend of mine challenged me today on the viability of the Bible. He claims that it can't be trusted since it's a translation, a translation, and so on. What would you say is the best way to respond to this criticism?

And real quick, if this doesn't take too long, I do have a follow-up question. Yeah, well, when people say the Bible can't be trusted because it's been translated so many times, that's kind of irrelevant if they really mean translated. I think what they really mean is copied so many times. Because frankly, any time you read a book written by someone in another language, you're reading a translation of it unless you know that language. And the Bible hasn't been translated a lot of times before it became English. The English translation is translated directly from the Greek and the Hebrew.

It's a one-step process. You've got the Greek Bible, the original, and it's been translated directly into English, just like any other book that you read that's been translated from French or German or Spanish or any other language. So, I mean, unless you're going to read books, only books that were written in English originally, you're going to be reading a translation, and doing so doesn't raise any questions about whether it's true or not, because it's not difficult to translate.

If you're proficient in two languages, it's very easy to translate from one to the other. Now, I mean, there might be challenges, but they're not very great for the scholars, and those are the people who translate our Bible. So to say, well, the Bible hasn't been translated so many times, already that person is not making sense.

But I suspect not only are they not making sense, they don't even know the right word for what they're really talking about. There's something else besides translation, and that's the transmission of the Bible. By that, we mean the original Greek and Hebrew manuscripts, or autographs as they were called, don't exist anymore. But what we have is somebody made a copy of it, and then, you know, a generation later, someone else copied the copy. And then later on, the copy of the copy was copied, and so we now have, we don't have any copies, probably, that are even within, you know, five to ten generations of the original. That means even our oldest copies probably are the result of, you know, several generations of copying.

Now, the argument, that's called the transmission. It means that the text from the first century has been transmitted to us by the process of copying, and that has nothing to do with translation. That just has, you know, somebody copying from one page onto another in the same language. That's the real criticism that knowledgeable people have sometimes made about the Bible, that it has, in fact, been copied a great deal.

What needs to be taken into consideration, though, is that that does not predict for errors, necessarily. We will have to say that in the process of transmission through the centuries, some errors have come into the Bible. There's no getting around that because we have 5,000 manuscripts in Greek of the New Testament. Now, we can look at them. They come from different periods, so they, you can kind of trace a history of the transmission as you look and compare these manuscripts. I'm going to have to turn this, I'm going to put you on hold because that's too much noise there.

I don't know what that noise was. But the thing is that they, you know, we can see that the transmission has not done much compromise to the text. And what compromise it has done is of no significance in terms of determining what Jesus really said, what Paul really wrote, you know, what the Bible originally said.

We have, you know, fairly sure knowledge from all these different manuscripts. You can see how much they agree with each other and how much they don't. And the areas where they don't agree with each other are on small matters, very small matters, generally speaking, so that nothing that the Bible teaches is somehow endangered or compromised by the fact that there's been some small errors in copying. There's a whole science that your friend may not know about called textual criticism.

And it's every bit as technical a science as, you know, chemistry or biology or any other kind of geology or paleontology. It's these are people who've, you know, major scholars in the literature of the period who actually look at all the different manuscripts, compare them and, you know, assess what time they come from and so forth and establish where the differences represent a mistake on the part of one of the other copies. Even if we couldn't establish that, we'd still have everything the Bible teaches well established by the parts of the manuscripts that they all agree on. That is to say where there's been no changes. But where there have been changes, what scholars, textual critics have made clear, is they really haven't changed much of consequence. Now, an exception to that would be Bart Ehrman, who is a textual critic. And he says that the things that have been changed are important.

But I guess when we say important, we have to say on what scale are we measuring importance? Obviously, all the differences I've been made aware of in the manuscripts, and there are many of them, are not important ones. And even the ones that Bart Ehrman brings up aren't important ones in my judgment. But he thinks they're important, and the reason is because Bart Ehrman thinks that believers, he's not a believer in the Bible, he thinks that we who believe in the Bible have a view that the Bible has magically come down to us without errors and that the manuscripts from which our English Bibles are translated are flawless. Now, no Christian believes that, who knows anything about the subject. And so Bart Ehrman's mistaken in what he, he's comparing the errors to an absolute flawlessness which he thinks Christians believe. He thinks that Christians think the Bible as we have it is pure and flawless and no mistakes have been made. But I'm not sure how he would think that since he himself studied in Bible college. He should know that Christians are wise to this, that they know very well that there have been flaws in some of the manuscripts.

But they also know that the purpose of the manuscripts is to convey the message to us and that the message has come down to us quite adequately in these 5,000 or more manuscripts. So Bart Ehrman is a defector from Christianity. He used to be a Christian and he's become an agnostic.

And people who do that often, they often do their best to undermine the faith that they have left. And in order to do so, Bart Ehrman has to make mountains out of molehills. You know, there are hundreds of textual critics who see the very same things that he sees and they say, so what's the problem here? And I'm not obviously a professional scholar or textual critic but I've seen, I mean they've been pointing out to me, even in Bart Ehrman's books he points them out and I've seen them and I say, so what's the problem here? And so Bart Ehrman only can really, and your friend probably has read Bart Ehrman because he's a bestselling author. Bart Ehrman has only made an impact on people who are already extremely ignorant of what the claims are that we make about the Bible because what we believe about the Bible has not been disproven by anything he's brought to our attention. So anyway, frankly I think that Bart Ehrman's shooting at the wrong target because he doesn't know what the target is. And those who are, you know, real honest students of the Bible who are not trying to find problems that don't exist, not trying to put it down or destroy faith in the Bible, we don't really have any problems with the material he puts out except that we do see him as not quite very objective or at least if he's objective he's not very in touch with what it is he's trying to undermine. Anyway, that's, did you say there was another question?

Yeah, yeah, thank you for that answer by the way, that's exactly, that was just great. My second question would be, so apparently there was a prophecy today made that Trump will be declared the winner. To me it doesn't really make a difference, if true or not, because it doesn't change anything I plan to do, but I was wondering if you think it's important to test these prophecies like this.

Oh absolutely, absolutely. Well, I'll tell you this, if Trump is not declared the winner, then that prophecy, that person who gave that prophecy will never have to be tested again. He's proven to be a false prophet and no one should ever believe ever again. And I've known lots of people who give prophecies like that and I don't have to test their prophecies anymore because they've been proven wrong a long time ago and there's no sense listening to them anymore because the Bible says that if a person gives a prophecy that doesn't come true, they're a false prophet. Now I'm not really sure why God would prophetically tell us whether Trump's going to win or not.

I mean we're all going to know that in maybe 24 hours or maybe 24 days, but sometime shortly from now. Unless that's going to affect the way you invest your money in the stock market or something, I'm not really sure why Christians need to know in advance who's going to win. Before this guy prophesied, we didn't know how it's going to turn out, and now that he's done so, we still don't know, but if we did, it wouldn't change anything. I believe prophecies, when God gives prophecies, he does so in order. First of all, he does it through credible people who have some kind of reason to be trusted. And then secondly, he gives prophecies about things that are important for people to know. Now I'm not saying that whether Trump or Biden win the election is not an important thing.

I think it has a huge amount of importance to the future of this country. But I don't know that knowing it in advance is important for me to know. Of course, we're all curious.

We're all on the edge of our seat. And so anyone who gives what they call a prophecy is going to get a ready audience, but they may just be exploiting our curiosity, something I don't think God does. How would you, besides waiting to see if it's fulfilled or not, is there another way to access this prophecy?

Because in the case of where it might change something you were going to do, you know, something in your behavior, an action to take, how would you go about testing that? Well, it's not always easy to tell how to judge a prophecy before it fails to come true. I guess I don't want to know who is this person who made the prophecy. What is his track record? You know, what is how credible is he? How many times has he been right? And has he ever been wrong?

If he has been wrong, then I wouldn't trust him ever again. OK, I might post a video to the Facebook page. But yeah. All right. Well, thank you very much, Steve. OK, great. Thank you, Alex.

You have a good one. OK, God bless you. Thank you.

Billy from Tennessee. Welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Hello. First, I just want to honor the what you're doing. It's I think it's pretty amazing and it's very encouraging.

I've been hearing a lot of encouraging messages tonight. Even I have a question about what you would say to kind of in line with what you're already talking about. But what would you say to somebody who's in ministry that's struggling with their faith? Well, struggling to what degree? I mean, like there's they're doubting their faith.

Yeah, like almost a few. OK, well, I'd say to someone in ministry, you should step out of ministry until you get your faith straightened out. But I would also say why? Why are you struggling with your faith?

What is it? What is it you've learned, you know, in the last six months or year or whatever, however long you've been struggling with your faith? What is it you've what is it that's come to light that would make you think that your faith should be questioned? I've been I've been in the faith since I was a child, which means for probably probably over 60 years. And for 50 of those years, I've been in the ministry and I've been very mindful of all the evidence that comes up. Let's see here.

I don't know what the noise is there and I don't seem to be able to put you on hold, so I can't get the noise to go away. Anyway, I just. You know, I have to say there's never been any evidence that's come out in the years that I've been alive that has raised any new questions about whether God exists or whether the Bible is true. Now, there's always been questions. There's always been challenges, but none are new. I mean, there aren't any new ones that have come out that somehow make. Wow. You know, it used to be credible to believe in God in the Bible.

Now, in view of this. No, that's a game changer. No, there are no game changers.

Either people have trouble believing in God, usually because of personal issues in themselves, not because of evidence. I mean, you know, I want to know what is it about the truth or the evidence for the truth that has changed? Or is it you that's changed? Have you just grown cold?

Have you? Were you maybe never really a believer, but you were pretending to be and now pretense you can't hold it up anymore? Have you just been through some kind of trials that challenge, you know, what you expected God would do if he was out there? You know, Christians, our faith is challenged, but not very often by evidence because there has been no evidence. I mean, there really has never been any evidence that would raise questions about, let's say, the resurrection of Jesus.

There's always been people who doubted that he has and people can doubt it till the cows come home if they want to. There's always been people who said, well, the the evidence or the proof of Jesus resurrection, it's not adequate. Well, it's pretty good, frankly.

It's very good. It's better than the evidence we have for almost any other ancient historical historical fact. But but but OK, suppose it's not enough for you. But is there any evidence that it didn't happen?

Is the real question. I mean, if you've been counting on the fact that Jesus is real and that he rose from the dead and all of that, which is what a Christian does count on, you know, what is it that's changed your mind? There's been no new evidence has come out that that raises questions about whether Jesus rose from the dead. It's only the mood of our age. The mood of our age is no longer favorable toward Christians. And often it's because of our it's not always this, but these days, I think what it is for people, it's because the Christian stand is so politically incorrect. Now, it didn't used to be politically incorrect because it didn't use to be a political issue. Whether Jesus was true or not was a historical question. Whether Christianity was to be believed or not was a religious question.

It was never a political question in this country. But it has become political because Christianity still stands for what it always stood for. But our society has moved from many positions. I mean, Christianity still teaches what marriage is. Our society has changed its mind just as recently as the last decade. The Bible still still always says, you know, what immorality looks like and what's moral, what's not moral. Our culture has changed its mind on such things, but God hasn't. So, I mean, I guess I'm just thinking that the reason that some people lose their faith isn't because there's ever been any reason to lose their faith.

It's just that they they don't feel comfortable living in tension with the culture, especially with their own generation. I have to admit, it was easy for me to be a dedicated Christian in my teens because there was a revival. And there were thousands of people my age who were zealous for Christ.

I admit that was easy at the time, but it isn't so anymore. I mean, there still are thousands of Christians, but, you know, my faith doesn't align with the majority by any means. But I'm a rational person. You know, if I say, well, I don't have as many people affirming my faith as I used to. In fact, I have people who think my faith is old fashioned and evil and, you know, nasty and hateful. Of course, I know better than that.

I know it's not any of those things. You know, you don't feel good having the world condemn you for being a Christian. But, you know, if it's going to be about your feelings, then why even talk about truth?

Your feelings are not a gauge of truth. So, I mean, a rational person, and I believe this is one of the areas where we have to realize that Christianity calls us to be rational. Christianity is a spiritual phenomenon, but it does not eliminate the rational. I think some people who feel like, oh, we don't want to use head knowledge, we don't want to use human reasoning, that's carnal.

I think what they're using is human emotions. I mean, it's not anti-spiritual to have emotions and it's not anti-spiritual to reason. But it is reasoning, more than anything else, that will call you back to the faith when you are having your doubts. And you have to reason, okay, why did I ever believe it was true?

Has anything changed in that respect? To me, the answer is I had very excellent reasons for believing, I still do, and nothing has changed in any way. So, if I just start finding it difficult to be a Christian or unpopular, or I start looking like I'm out of step with 90% of the people my age and my culture, well, then, of course, who doesn't want to be loved? Who doesn't want to be liked? And who doesn't want to be respected? If I'm losing the respect of the majority of the people because I'm a Christian, well, maybe I don't feel like being a Christian then. But who cares what I feel like?

My life is not based on feelings that change, it's based on things that are true and never change. So, I'd want to know, what is it about this guy? He's a minister and he's losing his faith moving toward atheism. Why? What in the world is making him do so? I would say this, I'm talking to you, not to him because I don't think he's listening, but do have him listen and do have him call me because I would like very much to talk to him about this. What? Can you hear me?

I can, yes. What about the basis of just death and him reaching out to God and not hearing what he thought he was going to hear? Not being able to get a grip on eternity and things like that? Okay, where in the Bible does it tell us that you're supposed to hear something from God whenever you want to hear something? I don't know of anything that makes that a norm in Christianity.

It might be a norm in certain Pentecostal or charismatic groups because they teach such things, but the Bible doesn't teach it. The Bible doesn't teach that you're going to be hearing God's voice every time you want to. The prophets in the Old Testament heard God tremendously, but not every time they wanted to. You know, King Saul heard from God, especially through the prophet Samuel, but then a time came when God wasn't speaking to him anymore through those means. So, I mean, God decides when he's going to talk. We don't decide when he's going to talk. And if I call out to God and I don't hear his voice back, well, then again, I'm about average, probably.

Most people don't hear his voice back. We're called to live by faith, not by sight, not by, you know, phenomena. So, I mean, I don't understand what the prophets are.

What would you say to encourage someone like that that has dedicated a portion of their life to the ministry but is struggling? I would say you're under test. I'd say you're being tested. Your faithfulness and your loyalty to God is being tested and you're starting to fail that test.

You better get back on the horse and ride because life is full of tests. That's what the devil is there for. The devil is there for the purpose of testing us. And we're being tested to see who will be loyal unto death. Jesus said to the church, be faithful unto death and I'll give you the crown of life. The Bible says if we endure, we'll reign with him. God is looking for people who are faithful to him so he can share his reign with them for eternity. But he's not going to put unvetted people on the throne.

He's not that stupid. He's testing us. And if we pass these tests, the Bible says we'll reign with him. Now, he's being tested. Any time you begin to have doubts about God and you can't think of any rational reason to have those doubts, and certainly there isn't any rational reason to, well, then you're just being tested by your emotions.

If your feelings are not providing something that you hope they would provide, well, then maybe you have to ask yourself, did I have any real reason to believe they should provide what I thought or did I have unrealistic expectations? I'm going to give you this verse for him and, you know, I can't say it'll make him respond properly, but it'll give him the opportunity. Isaiah 50, verse 10. God says, who among you fears the Lord and obeys the voice of his servant? Who walks in darkness and has no light?

Let him trust in the name of the Lord and rely upon his God. Now, this is saying that people who trust in God and fear God will go through periods of time where they have no light. They feel like they're going through a tunnel. It's gotten dark and cold, spiritually speaking. They're not hearing God's voice. They're not seeing any revelation from him. So they're in the dark.

And what does it say? You who walk in darkness have no light, but you fear the Lord. Let that person trust in the name of the Lord and rely on his God.

You stay faithful. That's what God's allowing you to be tested by. That's what the devil's trying to accomplish is to cause you to not be faithful.

I will tell you this. I think some people who leave the faith over these kind of things are in their own way trying to punish God for not coming through for them like they thought he should, in which case they fail the test because they think that God is there for them rather than that they were made for him. We've been made for God and for his glory.

He wasn't made for our gratification on any level. And therefore, the question is, am I putting myself at the center of the universe and thinking that God should jump when I snap my fingers? Or am I putting God at the center of the universe and saying, though he slay me, yet I will trust him?

That's really the question here. He's being tested to see if he's a Christian or not, if he's living for God or if he's living for himself and he's angry at God because God didn't respond. And so there's kind of a punishing of God. But guess what? God's not the one being punished.

You walk away from God to your own doom. It's like cutting off your nose to spite your face. I mean, it's ridiculous. And yet people are that ridiculous.

Many people are. And it may be that that's what's going wrong with him, too. Have him call me. I'd love to have him call me. I appreciate your call. Let's talk if we have enough time to James from Detroit, Michigan.

James, welcome to the Narrow Path. Hey Steve. Hi. I appreciate you taking my call.

I'm going to be quick and brief because my curiosity has been bugging me. I've been listening and you're a blessing to my days when I do get a chance to listen to your show, number one. Thank you.

I just want to know something. Your theme song, is that you playing the guitar, the acoustic guitar, and is that also you whistling? It is not.

It is not. I could play that piece on the guitar, but I don't whistle very well. But a friend of mine wrote and performed the song, and he's a much better artist than I am. He's recorded CDs and stuff. He writes a lot of music. But the reason I chose that song, he was a student of mine in Oregon back in the 90s.

And when I was looking for a theme song for this, that particular song that he had had a long introduction without singing. There's words also. And you can look it up. If you go on YouTube, just look up the song. It's called Like the Arrows Do. Like the Arrows Do, okay. Actually, if you go to my website, thenarrowpath.com, and under the resources link, I think that whole song is found there. And you can watch it on YouTube.

Like the Arrows Do. Yep. And you can link to it from my own website, thenarrowpath.com, under the resources link. I will do that. Okay.

If you're bugging me, I said I'm going to call and just ask that one little question. It's been haunting you. It's been a blessing to my dad.

Thank you, brother. Yeah, it's a haunting song. It's a beautiful song. And it's a moving song, if you listen to the words. My friend John Marr, who lives in Oregon, wrote it. And again, he was a student of mine back in the 90s. And actually, this song was written, he tells me, based on one of my messages, a message about children, called Vision for Children.

And there it goes right now. And it's talking about Psalm 127, that children are like arrows in the hands of a mighty man. Anyway, it's a great song.

You should check it out. Go to thenarrowpath.com. Under resources, you'll find the song. The Narrow Path is a listener-supported ministry. And we pay for the time on the radio.

So if it's a blessing to you, you might consider whether you'd like to help us stay on the radio station you listen to. Or even on the internet. You can write to us at The Narrow Path, P.O. Box 1730, Temecula, California 92593.

That's The Narrow Path, P.O. Box 1730, Temecula, California 92593. Or you can go to our website. Everything's free at the website.

But you can donate there at thenarrowpath.com. I'm Steve Gregg. Thanks for joining us. Let's talk again tomorrow. God bless you.