Music Good afternoon and welcome to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we're live for an hour each week of the afternoon and we take your calls if you have questions you'd like to raise for discussion about the Bible or the Christian faith or Christian conduct or anything like that. If you have a different viewpoint from the host, you're always welcome to call in to bring that up for discussion as well. The number to reach me here is 844-484-5737.
That number again is 844-484-5737 and this is a good time to call because we actually have a couple of lines open and that's not always the case so it's a good opportunity for you if you call 844-484-5737. Just one announcement and that is that this Saturday, is that tomorrow? No, this is Thursday today. So on Saturday we have a meeting in Temecula, California if you're in Southern California. These meetings happen maybe once a month, maybe once every two months. You know, it's kind of irregular but it's a Q&A and fellowship time for people who may want to join us beginning at 630 Saturday evening in Temecula. If you'd like to join us we'd encourage you to do so. You can go to our website thenarrowpath.com and you'll see a map and directions and that kind of thing. So I can tell you we meet at a little group called the Love of Christ Fellowship which lets us use their facilities but they're not easy to find if you don't have a map or GPS or something like that. I could give you the address but it's right there at the website at thenarrowpath.com under announcements this Saturday night. Alright, let's talk to some of our callers. Al in Mill Valley, California is first. Welcome to the Narrow Path, Al.
Thanks for calling. Just a quick point of contention. I'm not sure if you believe this or you don't and then I have a question. But the point was regarding, I personally believe the thousand year reign of Christ is going to happen on earth and that it's going to take place sometime in the future. And from what I understand you think that it's something that maybe has already happened in pre-times and it's more of a symbolic thing than something that's going to happen in the future. But when I hear the Lord's Prayer, you will be done on earth as it is in heaven, that kind of tells me that Jesus Christ is going to set up His millennial kingdom reign here on earth.
And it's what the Jews believe as well, that their Messiah is going to set up the thousand year millennial reign here on earth. So that was kind of just maybe a quick point of contention. But again, I don't know if you teach that or you don't teach that. But from the things that I've heard in the past, I kind of felt like maybe you didn't believe that. You're right.
Well, let me take this first and then I'll take your next question. You're right. I am a millennial. And that means I'm not pre-millennial. I don't believe Jesus' reign is a thousand years. I believe Jesus' reign is eternal. You know, it says in Isaiah chapter nine and verse six and verse seven, we know verse six very well.
Some don't know verse seven as well. It says, for unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given. The government will be upon his shoulder, which means he'll shoulder the weight of governing. And his name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. And of the increase of his government and peace, there will be no end upon the throne of David and over his kingdom to order it and establish it with judgment and justice from that time forward, even forever. So his reign is not going to really be a thousand years. He's going to reign forever. There will be no end of it, we're told. And that's actually what is also said in Daniel chapter two and Daniel chapter seven and so forth about the Messiah's reign.
It's eternal. So there's no reference in the Old Testament at all to the Messiah having a thousand year reign. Though I agree with you that he's going to reign on earth, I don't believe it's going to be a thousand year reign.
I believe it's going to be eternal reign. And so the thousand years that Revelation mentions in Revelation 20, by the way, that's the only place in the Bible that even mentions a thousand years, anything about a thousand years, anywhere in the Bible. That I believe, I believe about that the way the church believed through most of history, through about at least 1,500 years of the last 2,000 years, the church was almost exclusively amillennial, which is the view I hold. So yeah, I'm not ashamed to hold the view the church historically held throughout most of its history, but that's not why I hold it. I actually came to be an amillennial. I was a premillennialist like yourself, and I became an amillennialist by reading the Bible before I knew that the church history had ever known anyone who held this view. I didn't know it was called amillennial, but I reached my conclusions from the Bible itself and from no other source because I didn't know anyone who wasn't premillennial, hadn't ever read anyone that wasn't. So I came up with this understanding by my own study of scripture. It wasn't until a year or two after I had come to this understanding that someone clued me in, that this was the doctrine of the whole church throughout history, most of history. So I was glad at least that I had come into a view that got a respectable pedigree. So the only difference really with what you believe and what I believe is that Christ's reign is going to be forever versus it just being 1,000 years.
And I'm okay with that. But the Bible says that the devil will be let loose after that again to tempt the descendants. It doesn't even really say us, but it says the descendants of those that have remained here on earth. What it actually says is he will wage a war against the beloved city. It doesn't mention who's in the beloved city, but there's every reason to believe it's talking about the church. The church is the beloved city of God in the New Testament.
So it doesn't really mention their descendants of anybody in particular. And it just says that he will come and there'll be siege and make war against the beloved city. And then fire from heaven will come down and consume the devil and all those with him.
See, my understanding and the all millennial understanding is that that 1,000 years is symbolic of the present age. And it will in fact end something like that. That the devil will in fact bring massive global persecution against the church, but he'll be destroyed by the coming of Christ. As it says in 2 Thessalonians chapter 2, it says he'll be destroyed by the brightness of Christ's appearing.
So they will fall like the sands of the sea. That's pretty scary when you think about it. They'll say the number will be like the sands of the sea.
I know, that's a pretty big army. But see, I believe that Jesus will reign on earth after he comes back. But I place the second coming of Christ not before the 1,000 years, but at the end of the 1,000 years. But he will come back, and then he'll reign over the new heavens, new earth forever.
And there'll be no end to his reign. Good. All right. Well, you had a second question.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you believe anything about, you know, the, it's called the serpent seed theory, or in other words, that there could have been a line? I reject it. Okay, you reject that, just the heresy. Yeah, I believe it's a heresy, and it certainly doesn't have anything in Scripture to support it. It would seem to me the main support for the idea that the Jews are the seed of the serpent. The sermons of Cain? Yeah, it would be that Jesus said to them that they are of their father, the devil.
And I think Jesus saying that to them has been greatly misunderstood. So the serpent seed people that I've talked to don't even believe that the Jews are descended from Abraham. They believe they are descended from Cain and from the devil. But I think it's totally missing Jesus' point, because when the Bible says that we are children of God, it doesn't mean that God came down and slept with our mother, and we're impregnated to that.
I mean, to be a child of God is a spiritual condition, and being a child of Satan is a spiritual condition. It's not a biological pedigree going back to the devil. And when Jesus said to the Jews in John 8, 44, that you are of your father, the devil, he had just said to them about seven verses earlier, he had said, I know that you are Abraham's descendants. So the ones that he called children of the devil were also Abraham's descendants. They weren't descended from Cain. Abraham came from Shem. He didn't come through Cain's line.
So to say that the Jews are descended from Cain misses the whole point, especially in the very passage, in the very passage that they quote to prove their point, Jesus' seven verses earlier makes it very clear that they're wrong. Okay. Thank you, and I just hope that everybody continues to pray for our president, Donald Trump, because, you know. Yeah, I mean, I haven't heard, you know, the results just in the last hour, probably, but I... Nothing's really changed, but you know, I don't put anything past these people. They're going to try to steal the election.
Well, I know that's a controversial thing to say, but I don't doubt that you're correct. I mean, there's been plenty of evidence that, you know, like I read that in one state there were more votes cast than there were registered. Yeah, but that there were more votes cast than there are voters in the state. You know, I mean, so obviously there's, someone's padding the voting box, and I've also heard all the way through this, even before we knew how any of it was going to come out, that all the authorities said, well, the mail-in ballots are the ones most likely to be Democrat, and Republicans are more like...
I mean, that's just historically the case. You know, the Democrats tend to mail in more of their ballots, and the Republicans tend to go into the polling places. Well, the New York Times actually said that mail-in ballots are the easiest to commit fraud with. So maybe that's why they're so stilted in the mail-in ballots to that one party, because that party has definitely committed a great deal of fraud. A lot of ballots came in from deceased people, and even some of their pets. I know. Well, I don't know about the pets.
I know many came in from deceased people. So we'll just see how it all shakes out. You know, I mean, in the past, if this had been George W. Bush or, you know, John McCain, if they were the ones running, they would have graciously said, okay, I concede the election to President Biden. But Trump is a fighter, and I think he's got every reason to fight. There's been times I thought earlier presidents gave up too early.
So anyway, I don't know what will happen. Next to Jesus Christ, I've never seen too many people be able to endure what he's endured for the last four years. He's endured a great deal. But we'll just see what happens, and thanks for joining us. All right, let's talk to John from Jackson, Wyoming. John, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Hey, Steve.
Hi. I got in the program kind of late yesterday, but you were talking to a guy about the baptism of the Holy Spirit. And I got the impression that you believe that there's a second work of the Holy Spirit or a second step in your salvation. And I was wondering if you would, if that's true, if you would explain your position.
Sure. Yeah, I don't believe there's a second step in salvation at all. I think that you take one step out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God. And that's a, that's a full transition and you're saved at that point. But I believe there's many steps in the Christian life. I believe there's many works of grace.
I would hope to have thousands of them in a lifetime. And so, for example, I believe in being filled with the Spirit as something that's a different thing than being converted, though some people are filled with the Spirit when they are converted. Certainly everyone receives the Spirit when they're converted.
The Bible says that very plainly. So I would never deny that that conversion includes the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, but the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is not used interchangeably in the Bible with being filled with the Spirit necessarily, especially in Ephesians where Paul in Ephesians 1 tells the Ephesians that they were sealed with the Holy Spirit when they believed, which is of course true of all believers. But four chapters later he says, but be being filled with the Holy Spirit as he tells them to continually be filled with the Holy Spirit, which is the only reason he would have to tell them to is because they might or might not if they weren't told. If all Christians were automatically filled with the Holy Spirit, there'd be no sense in talking about being filled with the Spirit as something that is an obligation of ours after we're converted. Likewise, in the book of Acts, we find Peter is filled with the Spirit on numerous occasions. First of all, he's filled with the Spirit on the day of Pentecost in Acts chapter 2 and verse 4. But then there's other times when Peter is filled with the Spirit and he speaks up to the Sanhedrin, or when they pray after they've been threatened and the whole church is filled with the Spirit. Now, they were filled with the Spirit before.
There's no sense mentioning that unless they were now filled again. I believe we need to be filled with the Holy Spirit repeatedly and constantly and seek to never not be. But I don't believe every Christian has been filled with the Spirit. I think every Christian has the Holy Spirit.
But being filled is a different phenomenon in my opinion. Well, I'm glad the way you explain that because I was just of the thought that says, oh my gosh, you're thinking about a second step in salvation. Well, nobody believes that. Nobody believes that unless they're like united Pentecostals, which are not even Trinitarians.
I mean, it's a very fringe group. Pentecostals and Charismatics do believe that after you're converted, there is more that you can experience of God's presence and his Spirit and power and so forth. That's not part of getting saved. That's part of just living the Christian life. I'm afraid too many people when they think about Christianity that all they're interested in is getting saved. They're not as interested apparently in many cases as living for the glory of God, living a holy life, being of service to God and his kingdom and to the church. I mean, those are the things that once you're converted, those should be your entire concern. Once you're converted, you don't have to worry about how it gets converted anymore because you've already been converted, but there is a Christian life to be lived and it cannot be lived without the power of the Holy Spirit. I think there are many Christians who have frankly shortchanged themselves in terms of being filled with the Spirit.
They have not when we're told to do so. So I don't disagree frankly with the charismatic position that a person who is saved at one point can experience the fullness of the Spirit at a later point. I mean, the Bible describes cases of that and implies it in Paul's very command to the Christians that they should be filled with the Spirit. But I don't see that as a second step in salvation.
As far as I know, the only group that has ever taught that, well, there's two I know of, the Mormons. The Mormons believe that you must be baptized in the Spirit as part of the fourfold plan of salvation. They believe you need to repent and believe, be baptized in water and be filled with the Spirit. And frankly, I think all those things are necessary things for the Christian life, but they would say that if you haven't been baptized in the Spirit, then you haven't been saved. And I would use the term baptism in the Spirit slightly differently. I believe when you're baptized in water and you have faith, you receive the Holy Spirit. But I don't think that receiving the Holy Spirit is the same thing as being filled with or baptized in the Spirit as the Bible uses that term. And the other group that believes that way is the United Pentecostals and other similar extreme Pentecostal groups that think you have to be baptized in the Spirit and speak with tongues to be saved. So both of these groups are kind of cultic in a way. Neither of them are Trinitarian, for example.
So I don't know any Christian who believes there's two different stages of salvation, but I would hope to find all Christians agreeing there's many stages of Christian living and sanctification and empowerment and things like that. I mean, the Christian life is not a static thing. It's a relationship.
Relationships are dynamic. And your closeness or distance from God and your faith in God, your fullness of the Spirit, those things can wax and wane depending upon the relationship that you're maintaining or not. The Bible makes it very clear we have to maintain that relationship. Jude says, keep yourselves in the love of God.
Obviously, that's an obligation. In 1 John 5, the very last verse says, keep yourselves from idols. Keeping ourselves is part of the obligation as Christians. And I think some people just once they get what they think is a ticket to heaven, they just don't worry about anything else. That is, they don't care about much of anything else about Christianity.
All they want to do is go to heaven. And that's not the main thing in Christianity. Jesus hardly ever spoke of heaven as a place we go to.
And Paul barely ever spoke of it. So it's simply not an emphasis in the Bible. What is an emphasis is living in the kingdom of God as a useful, empowered, obedient follower of Jesus and having an impact on the world because of that life of obedience and impact. So that life of obedience and impact is not the same thing as getting a ticket to heaven. I believe that that's something that follows from it. Once you've actually become a Christian, it should follow immediately from that moment on that you're interested in your Christian life. And many people who are interested in the Christian life have not been told much about being empowered by the Holy Spirit.
And that I think is a terrible shame. Hey, I appreciate your call, John. And thank you for joining us today. Thank you, Steve. All right. God bless you.
Okay. Our next caller is Jason from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Welcome to The Narrow Path, Jason. By the way, studio, I've got two lines activated because John's line did not deactivate. So could we get that one to deactivate? I'm not sure what our problem is here. We've got two lines active.
Oh, there we go. Thank you. Jason, are you there? Yeah, I'm here. Welcome.
Thank you. My question is, I've got two, but the first one is, is there a book out there that consolidates all of the parchments that have been found so that I could get a good idea of how much of the gospels and maybe some of the other books in the Bible we actually have that are really old? Well, the status of the manuscripts out there is a very complicated thing.
And there are books certainly by scholars who deal with those things. You might look for books by Bruce Metzger. Bruce Metzger was a great textual critic.
F.F. Bruce had a book out called The Books and the Parchments. And there's actually, you know, if you just look up wherever you buy your books online, just look up the subject, textual criticism. And you'll find some works probably written on a popular level for people who are not experts. Those that are written for experts will probably go over your head and mine because there's just so much data there. But that's why it's a lifelong career for many people to actually study these things because there's thousands of manuscripts. Not all of them contain the entirety of the Bible, of course, or the entirety of the New Testament.
But a great number do. And the professional textual critics would know the details more. Even Bart Ehrman is a textual critic. And he would know that information, too. But he always skews it because he's anti-Christian.
So he always skews it. You know, textual critics in general who are in touch with the information are extremely impressed with the integrity of the manuscripts. Where Bart Ehrman, who's a backslider and doesn't want to believe in Christianity, has in his books, he skews everything in a negative way that's not really valid. He gives the impression that the differences between the manuscripts are somehow an important problem.
And no open-minded and honest textual critic would ever give that impression. Okay. How about a website if there isn't a book? I don't know. I'm sure you could find one.
I've never looked it up online. I use books. I don't like websites as much as books. I read books.
Yeah, I like books, too. The other question is, I understand that right now the world is one-third Christian. Supposedly, yeah.
Right. I'm wondering what the history of the world is with regards to the percentage of people who are Christian, whether or not it has grown or decreased in the 2,000 years that we've had Christianity. And also, I guess a comment on that is, it seems like if God is interested in having us around and fellowshipping with us, that he would have done a better job of leaving evidence that the Bible is his actual word. In my opinion, he did a remarkable job of that. Anyone who really studies that data should come away with a very strong conviction that God has given us such an abundance of evidence that no skeptic can be regarded as either honest or well-informed, in my opinion. Well, but if you have two-thirds of the world not accepting the evidence that's been left, it seems like Jesus hasn't done a very good job.
He could have done a better job. Two-thirds of the world has never heard of Christ. They may have heard of him, but they're in Buddhist lands and Muslim lands and things.
They hardly ever have any access to information. In many of those countries, the average person barely has access to even a Bible, much less any of the scholarly works on textual criticism or whatever. I don't think the two-thirds of the world that are not Christian are sitting there in possession of the information and rejecting it. I think the two-thirds are mostly ignorant of what Christianity even claims to be.
Some of them have never heard of it. I don't think God has failed to leave us enough information, but I do think the church has failed to a very large degree in its commission that Jesus told us to go out and make disciples and teach them. The fact that two-thirds of the world hasn't been taught is our fault, not God's. See, God never did take responsibility after the creation of Adam and Eve. God hasn't taken responsibility for making the history go the way it goes. He gave us that responsibility.
Adam and Eve were given that responsibility. The reason the world's going as bad as it is, both Christian and non-Christian sectors of the world, is because people are not doing what God wants them to do. At least Christians have access to the information in their Bible of what God wants us to do. Christians don't do it very well.
Some do and some don't, but let's face it, a third of the world that claims to be Christian is not necessarily a third of the world very well informed about the Bible. I don't think God's the one who's really made a mistake here or dropped the ball. I think He gave the project to someone who has dropped the ball, but the ball hasn't hit the ground yet and we're still able to turn around.
I think He's waiting for us to do that. Listen, I need to take a break and I appreciate your call. You're listening to The Narrow Path radio broadcast.
I'm taking a break, but we have another half hour ahead. Don't go away. The Narrow Path is listener supported. You can write to us at The Narrow Path, P.O. Box 1730, Temecula, California 92593. Or you can go to our website, thenarrowpath.com. That's thenarrowpath.com.
You can donate there, but everything is free if you want to take anything from the website. I'll be back in 30 seconds. Please stay tuned. Good afternoon and welcome back to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we're live for another half hour still taking your calls.
If you have questions about the Bible or about the Christian faith, or if you have a different view from the host, feel free to give me a call. The number is 844-484-5737. That's 844-484-5737. Our next caller is Douglas from Sherwood, Oregon. Hi Douglas.
Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Well, thank you for taking my call today, Steve, and thank you for not only your radio program, but all the great resources online. We are all blessed by that.
Thank you. I wanted to ask about John chapter 5, but real quick, to your previous caller, my roommate and I got a college textbook called Encountering the Manuscripts by Philip Comfort. And we found that just a few words had to be looked up in the dictionary to follow along pretty well.
Not that a lot of it wasn't over our heads, a lot of it was, but we still got through it and we're amazingly blessed by how richly God has left all of the manuscripts and pieces of manuscripts to show us that in fact the New Testament is very legitimate and starting in the second century, we've got lots of pieces and lots of manuscripts to draw from. So I hope you don't mind me throwing that out. No, that's great.
That's helpful. And then in a question, I called in before, it's been a while, but I called and talked about where Paul had written, that he showed them how the Messiah had to be crucified and raised from the dead from the Scriptures. And we kind of, I don't know, we had a disagreement where we certainly didn't have any agreement about what Scriptures Paul might be referring to. And I was looking at recently at John chapter 5, where the Messiah said, if you believe Moses, you would believe me.
He wrote about me. And I got to contemplating that as well as just looking at other Scriptures, and I don't have time to go into all of them, but it seems to me that if God puts it upon your heart, for example, Isaiah 53, if God's Spirit reveals to you how very detailed that was about Jesus, that there's no reason for you not to use that to show someone that the Messiah had to die and rise from the dead to redeem us. Oh yeah, many people have been converted by that chapter for that very thing, yeah. What I'm saying is that there's probably not any prophecy or psalm or even a wonderful metaphor like when the Prophet Moses stood between the Spirit of God and the camp of Israel and asked him not to wipe them out. He said, because the Spirit of God said, hey, listen, why don't you get Aaron, your brother, get your wives, your kids, and all your buddies, and move out of the way, because I'm going to wipe them out.
And Moses stood before them, and that's such a beautiful metaphor of the Messiah. And so it seems to me that it's beautiful. But I need to ask you, you said that you and I have a disagreement about this. I don't disagree with anything you've said. What did you think we disagreed about? Well, I wanted to get more specific, and you seem to shy away from that.
But here's what I'm asking you today. I'm asking you, can you find any flaw in a Christian seeing Christ in any of the metaphors in the Old Testament and sharing it with another person? Well, I mean, no, there's nothing wrong with sharing what you know. What I would say is there are things that Christians recognize in hindsight that a non-Christian might not tend to see the way you see it. I mean, think of the times in the Bible when it says that the disciples didn't understand what Jesus did, but afterwards they recognized that he fulfilled the scripture. You know, I mean, it's like once they became, once the Spirit was in them, they were able to see the meaning of passages in the Old Testament that even the rabbis who studied those scriptures couldn't see. So, I mean, you can share those things with people, but I would think that if I ever said you shouldn't, or if you think I said you shouldn't, then you probably misunderstood whatever it was I was saying.
I would probably say some arguments are stronger than others. There's going to be some passages that we Christians recognize as being about Christ, which a non-Christian probably wouldn't, especially a non-Christian Jew, because the Bible says that the veil is over their heart and they can't understand it, but the veil is over the heart of non-Christians who aren't Jews too. So my position is not that you shouldn't share those things. I'm just saying you should be aware that some of the things that are convincing to us because we have a Christian worldview and Christian perspective would not necessarily be persuasive to someone who doesn't already share that worldview, because some of the things are rather concealed, and that's what Paul said. Paul said that there's a veil over some of these things, but the veil is taken away when they turn to the Lord.
So you and I have turned to the Lord, and we don't have that veil hindering our seeing those things, but if you're talking to someone who still has their heart veiled, they might not see it that way. That's not a condemnation of sharing those things if you ever took it that way. Is that what I said before? What did I say before? I don't know when we talked before. No, I think you're restating it more strongly than I intended. I didn't say we had a disagreement, I said that we couldn't come to a consensus. But I think that what I'm saying, I think you're saying it too, you're just saying it with a lot more caution, and I appreciate that. You're in a teaching position, but I think we're saying essentially the same thing, that as we grow in Christ, that we'll see more and more how He always has pointed to this wonderful Messiah who's risen from the dead.
So, you're saying the same thing. One last thing, there is a website that I've been cautioned against called Reknew, and it's R-E-K-N-E-W, and I know the first name of the guy, his name is Greg, I don't remember his last name, and he actually has an article that says the entire Old Testament is about Jesus. Yeah, that's Greg Boyd. That's Greg Boyd's website.
Do you have any caution or concern about him? Well, I like Greg Boyd, he's written some wonderful things, but I do disagree with some of his things. I think he's very poor on the Old Testament when it comes to the judgment passages. You know, the Bible teaches that God wiped out Sodom and Gomorrah, and He wiped out the world of the flood, and there were very strict penalties for certain sins in the law. I'm pretty sure that Greg Boyd wrote a huge two-volume work, which I have to admit I did not read, and I'm cautious about critiquing anyone's work I haven't read, but I do know someone who read it all, and who is quite favorable to Greg Boyd in general, as I am.
From his description of what I understand Greg Boyd's position to be, I believe that Greg has indicated that God would really never do those kinds of things, and so he has other ways of explaining those passages, which I think is a dangerous way to approach the Old Testament. Agreed. Well, thank you for taking the time today. God bless you. All right, God bless you too. Bye now. All right, our next caller is Bruce from Garngrove, California. Welcome to The Narrow Path, Bruce.
Yeah, I have two quick questions. One is in Daniel 12 verse 9, do you agree it implies that he tells Daniel to seal it up because it's for the end times? It almost implies that something, you know, about the end time might be revealed in the end time, or is that going too far out on the limb?
Well, no, I think it does indicate that his book would be more understandable at the time of the end. But we'd have to say the time of the end of what? It doesn't say the end time, it says the time of the end. It's sealed up until the time of the end.
The question then is, what would the end be? The time of what end? Yeah, now see, I believe in the context, going back a few chapters, that he's probably talking about the time of the end of the 70 weeks, because back in chapter nine, he introduced the 70 weeks.
And I don't know that he ever got totally off that subject between chapter nine and chapter 12. So the time of the end, I would think the end of the 70 weeks rather than the end of the world. Now, there are people who think that the end of the 70 weeks is essentially the end of the world, as we know, it's the time when Jesus comes back, and they would say he sets up his millennial kingdom at the end of the 70th week. I think the better way to read Daniel would be that the 70 weeks ended in the time of Christ and the apostles. And that was the time of the end of Jerusalem, which in the 70 week prophecy said Jerusalem would be destroyed, and the temple would be burned down, which it was. So I'm inclined to think that the new revelation into these things is very possibly found in the book of Revelation itself, which was written at the time of the end, I think. So I believe there were many mysteries in the Old Testament which were made clear in the new, and specifically some of the things in Daniel, I believe are brought to light through the book of Revelation. And I think that was the giving of the revelation that was withheld from Daniel's time.
Oh, okay. So it's nothing new to perhaps be revealed. The other question was the possibility in Revelation 6, when the seal is opened, the white horse goes conquering. If you asked someone 20 years ago, they would have thought conquering would have been like the military conflict of nuclear Soviet versus US or China. I'm wondering, is it possible that COVID could be the manifestation of a worldwide conquering horse, conquering the government with this, because all the governments are aligned with this COVID nonsense, at least in my opinion I call it nonsense.
Yeah. Well, I would say for those who believe that Revelation is talking about the end times, then that theory would be as good as most theories that come out of that camp. I don't believe that's talking about the end times. I believe that's talking about things that are within the range of the book of Revelation's concern, which of course the book of Revelation said it's things that would shortly come to pass. So we ought to be looking for the fulfillment of it shortly after the writing of the book. And again, I take that to be related to the destruction of Jerusalem and the Jewish war. Oh, okay.
So you placed it there. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Hey, thanks for your call. It's always great to hear from different theories.
Patrick from Bellingham, Washington. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
We had some questions on Romans 8.28. I'm going through a tough time, challenges, and I don't see how it's going to work for good. I've been there. Okay.
I'll tell you what. I went through a crisis about 20 years ago, and that was after of course being in the ministry for 30 years. So I was well advanced in my ministry career and Christian life, but I went through a family crisis that was so devastating. I remember telling people, I mean, I believe the scripture is true, but I couldn't see any way that this could work together for good. And I mean, I wasn't saying it couldn't.
I was just saying I couldn't see any way it could. I think what you're saying now about your present situation. But I will tell you, we can't always see what God's looking at. And in my case, things have worked out for my good very much, and very largely because of that crisis. So I just encourage you to know that while you're going through a crisis, you can almost never see how it would work out for good. You have to take the longer view of things, which is what God takes. And I do think that there are some things that don't work out for good for everybody, but they do for those who love God and who are called according to his purpose, as it says in Romans 8.28, all things work together for good to those who love God and who are the called according to his purpose. Now, the crisis I went through 20 years ago, there are still people who are horribly and negatively affected from it.
It was a big thing, and it seemed to... But they were not people who love God. If you love God, God brings you through things. There's a different way of experiencing the world when you're walking through with the love of God. If a person doesn't love God and they're trying to wrestle with the things of the world on their own, many things that could have worked for good actually end up being to their destruction because they're not responding to it in faith and in submission to God. So what you really need to do, I don't know what your crisis is, and I'm very sorry to hear about it, but I would say that if you keep your trust in God and you love God, which means you embrace his will for you without resentment, because obviously if you do love God, you'll want his will. If you don't want his will, then there's something... It can't be argued that you love God in the way that the Bible says we should. But if you make God your only hope, you trust in God and you love God and you remain loyal to God, I dare say that you will before... Well, I was gonna say before long.
It may be longer or shorter. I have no idea. But the time will come when, in fact, you'll see that you're actually in a better place, and very largely partly because of this problem that you're going through now. Okay. Could you pray with me? Sure. I don't know what your situation is.
What can I pray for you about? Work. Okay. Are you out of work? Yeah, I'm out of work.
Okay. Well, Father, I pray for our brother Patrick and his situation, which apparently is very distressing. And I know that this COVID thing has caused a lot of people to be out of work.
I don't know what his circumstances are exactly, but a lot of people probably are finding themselves out of work without a very promising thing in sight as far as being employed. But Father, I know from my experience that you provide everything that is needed for those who are resigned to you, who are content with your will, who desire your will, and who keep the faith. And I pray, Father, that he will not falter in any of these areas of his life, as especially this is a very bad time to be faltering. We need to be strong at this time or else the world itself, I'm sure, in its circumstances could crush us.
And I know that this is a test for him to see if he will trust you and your promises. You certainly have made many promises, including that promise that if we seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, that all things necessary will be added to us. We will not lack any good thing. The Bible says, he that fears the Lord shall not lack any good thing.
We will lack things, but nothing that you want us to have, God. And I pray for him in Jesus' name and for all others who may be in his circumstances. In Jesus' name, amen. All right, Joseph from Albany, Oregon. Welcome to The Narrow Path.
Thanks for calling. Well, I just have a question about when Jesus said to go into the world and make disciples. And say you're a part of a church and you don't really see that in the church, but your heart is for that. How would you say, like, how would you go about, like, stirring that up in the body of your church or like, how would that look? How would that look to go into the world and make disciples? Well, I mean, it is still going on, of course, but to a very large degree, it has been happening for 2000 years. The apostles and the early church went out to all the nations out of Jerusalem.
And even to this day, there are missionaries going into all the nations and working among them. And so there is that discipling going on. And therefore, the Great Commission, in some degree, is going on.
It's always hard to know exactly how much more could be done. A lot of people who are concerned about this will go to people and say, listen, we need to get out there and make more disciples. And the people they're talking to perhaps are not called to be missionaries or pastors or evangelists or, you know, they're not the ones who are going to go out there and convert people and teach them. But no matter what our gifts are, even if we don't have the ability to speak to people very much or we can't put two sentences together very clearly, we can still support the advancement of discipling the nations by supporting those who are doing it in various ways, maybe in practical service or in financial support or other ways. And of course, discipling the nations isn't only done by those who have a gift of speaking, evangelizing or teaching.
Those are, of course, very important parts of making new converts and also of discipling them, because Jesus said you disciple them by teaching them to observe all things that he's commanded. So to teach people is a role of teachers, but not everyone is called to be a teacher in the same sense. But we should all be, you know, people who are called to be teachers primarily really ought to be teaching pretty much all the time if they can, because that's what they contribute. But someone who's not called to be a teacher will still probably teach once a while. They'll teach hopefully their own children. They'll teach younger converts that they meet at work, you know, help them understand what it means to be a Christian and so forth.
And I mean, those who are not teachers can still teach sometimes, but they won't spend all their time teaching. You know, I think the majority of Christians in the book of Acts, as well as now and at all times, they are called to work at jobs, make a living, support their families and support the work of the kingdom. I believe that that is a ministry, that's a gift. And as they do so, they are playing their part in making disciples of the nations. If you look at that commission and assume that it's saying that everyone, every Christian should be out there preaching the gospel and teaching disciples, well, I don't think that'd work out very well. A lot of Christians I know don't even know how to articulate the gospel. And if they did teach others, they're very poorly equipped to do so.
And frankly, I don't think they're all called to do so. But I think that we should understand that whatever we're called to do should be devoted to the advance of the kingdom of God. Now, if you're trying to stir people up to go be missionaries or to preach and things like that, if their gifting and calling is not to be missionaries or to preach, then I think you'll be frustrated. You can, I don't know what you perceive your gift to be. Are you an evangelist or do you do anything like that?
Or do you have some other thing that God has? Yeah, I have the gift of evangelism, yeah. You know, what I find is that when you have received a gift, what that means is that God has laid it on your heart to do something and made it easy for you to do. And I had to find out the hard way about that because my gifting is in teaching. To me, I love to teach. I want to teach. I see a need for teaching and I find it easy to do.
It's not work. It's just what comes naturally. And because of that, when I was younger, I thought everyone should be able to teach like that.
When I started my school in Oregon, I was 30 years old. I thought all I needed to do is get a few bright guys in here. In nine months, I'll just download everything I know into their heads and then they can go out and do everything I do. But it turned out that although there's some very excellent learners that came through my school, many of them weren't able to do what I do because it wasn't their gift.
And I couldn't understand. It seems to me like everyone should be able to do that. It's so easy.
And I know a lot of friends, I have a lot of friends who are evangelists and it just comes so natural and they see the need for it. Again, that's part of recognizing your gift is that you see a need for it. You want to do it and you have the ability to do it. And when you have all that going on, then you think, well, everyone should do this.
This is so easy. When people have a gift in healing, for example, they think, well, everyone should be able to heal. It's just a temptation we have to see our gift, which comes so naturally to us as something that it should come naturally to everybody, but it's not necessarily so because there's so many different functions in the making of disciples that have to be done by people with different gifts, the gifts of service, the gifts of showing mercy and the gift of leadership and the gift of encouragement, the gift of giving and all those things. None of those are really preaching gifts, but they're all necessary to the building up of the kingdom of God and making disciples of the new converts. Yeah, that's awesome.
I have one more other question. So say you're a new believer, you're two years into your walk, you're pursuing your relationship with Jesus and you're like all in for him and then you get cancer. And then God allows you to walk through two years of fighting cancer and say a year has passed after your cancer has gone to remission. Why do you think God allows us to go through hard times like that, like just a couple of things? Why do you think he allows us to go through the trials and tribulations of things like that? Because that's what we're here for. What we're here for is to be tested and to qualify for what God has in mind for us and what he has in mind for all of us.
What he has in mind for all of us is to reign with Christ. But you know, that's what he had in mind for Adam and Eve too. But they were tested and they failed the test. The reason there was a serpent and a tree of knowledge of good and evil and Adam and Eve in the garden there exposed that is because he wanted them to be tested.
Why? Because he had big plans for them, but he had to vet them first. You don't put someone in a position of responsibility and power unless you vet them for their character. And what God's looking for, he wants all his people to reign with him. But when he comes back, we're going to reign with him if we endure, the Bible says. But he has to make sure that he's not putting people in charge who simply don't have the loyalty and the faith to be trusted. And so he puts us through these things to test our loyalty and our faith. And if we come through it faithful and we're trusting him like Job saying, well, God gives and God takes away. Shall we not receive the hard things from the Lord as well as the good things? You know, he passed the test. And if we pass the test, we will reign with him too. So, I mean, I've been through some very grueling, very grueling trials myself, not cancer. And I, I got the profound impression that you're not speaking of a hypothetical situation here. Uh, I figured. And so, uh, congratulations by the way on, on, I guess you're cancer free now, but yeah, it's been a year in remission. Praise God.
Yes. And of course there's lots of good Christians in the ministry who get cancer and they don't come through it. I mean, that's how God takes them.
That's how God takes them. So, so you've got a tremendous testimony and uh, I'm assuming you were trusting God through it. And so you've passed that test.
That doesn't mean there won't be other tests cause you know, the whole life is an opportunity to prove ourselves able to persevere and remain loyal. But that's what we're here for. That's what we're here for. That's awesome. Well thank you Steve. I appreciate your time. All right brother. Thanks for your call. God bless you.
I don't have much time left, but Joe from Michigan, if you can do it in 60 minutes. Oh hi. Yes. My question. I love you. I love your program.
It's just great. Great. My question is when you die, if you're saved, do you go straight to heaven or to paradise? And if you're not safe, do you go straight to hell and start burning?
Okay. Well the, uh, the Bible is reasonably clear on the first question. Paul indicated that he, when he died would be departing from this body and going to be with the Lord.
Uh, he, he made comments to that effect at least twice, if not three times. One was in Philippians one, one was in second Corinthians five. And I wouldn't be surprised if Paul was talking about that in second Timothy when he said that, you know, henceforth is later I've run the good race.
Henceforth was laid up for the crown of life. But he, although that could be related to the resurrection, but the other two passages talk about where he would be while he's absent from the body and therefore not, not after the resurrection, after the resurrection, we will not be absent from body will be in the body. So the only time a Christian is absent from the body is after they die and before the resurrection, which is what we call of course the intermediary state or the intermediate state. And so I believe that when we die as believers, we do go be with the Lord. Our spirits do until the resurrection.
Now the unbeliever, we don't have as much information on the story of Lazarus and the rich man addresses the subject, but I'm not sure if it addresses it in a way that's literal. And so I'm not sure what I can say about that. Uh, without much, we don't have any other places in the Bible that talk about where an unbeliever is immediately after death. And the one place we do have, uh, has apparently symbolic elements. So I'm not really sure if we could be very dogmatic about that.
We do know that after the resurrection, the unbeliever is thrown into the lake of fire. And so it's not as if there, there isn't certainty about that. I'm sorry, I'm out of time. You've been listening to the narrow path radio broadcast.
My name is Steve Gregg. We are listener supported. If you go to our website, the narrow path.com under announcements, you can see, uh, how to donate, uh, or under announcements. You see where I'm going to be speaking. You can also find a donation link there. Let's talk again soon. God bless you.
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