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 taking your calls. If you have questions about the Bible or about the Christian faith or you have a different viewpoint from the host, I want to talk about that, feel free to give me a call. The number is 844-484-5737. That's 844-484-5737. And at about 15 minutes after the hour, we're going to be joined by a friend that I recently met on my trip across country named Sam Frost and he has some background and has done some study of interest and I'm going to be talking to him for the second quarter of the program.
But we have the first quarter before us right now. We're going to talk to Johnny from Dallas, Texas. Johnny, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Hey, how you doing, Steve? Yeah, how you doing? Good. You were around here about a month ago over here in Richardson, right?
Richardson, yeah. Yeah, that was pretty close. But I got a question for you. Me and my friend, I mean, I'm a Christian, I believe, and he thinks we have a debate. He's debating that the man can destroy the world by burning it up. And I say that's impossible because he says, well, God gives you the free will. I go, well, yeah, that gives you the free will to an extent, but you cannot be thinks that the world can be burned by a human being and that you can destroy God's creation. I told him that's impossible, highly impossible.
Well, what do you think? Well, of course, excuse me, man can do a great deal of destruction and millions and millions of acres can be burned off by man. Your friend may be thinking of global warming, and I don't think there's any evidence that there's a danger of that happening. But as far as whether man could burn the whole earth up so as to make it, let's say, lifeless, I don't think that's likely to happen because, as I understand it, when Jesus comes back, there will be people living. Paul talked about those who are alive and remain when Jesus returns and also talks about how he'll destroy those who resist the gospel and so forth.
So there will be both believers and unbelievers in the world, apparently, when Jesus comes back. Yeah, that is true. But that's what I said. I said it's highly unlikely because God will prevent that to happen. I mean, you may destroy some, but you can destroy the whole thing. And he said, no, man is capable of doing that. I go, no, your will can go to an extent, and that's it.
All right. Well, all I can say is, according to the way I understand the Bible, man will not do that. And if man will not do that, if there will be, in fact, living people, and a lot of them, apparently, on the earth when Jesus returns, then it would seem to me that man will not have managed to destroy the earth. Now, could man do that if God didn't have other plans? Well, I don't know.
I don't know. It's a pretty big project to burn up the whole earth. I don't really know that man has the power to do that. But even if man did have the power, let's say, to ruin the environment for all living things except cockroaches through thermonuclear holocaust or something, I mean, I don't know to what degree that is possible with the current nuclear missiles and so forth, but it's just not going to happen, I don't believe. There could be tremendous destruction, but it's a moot point. It's a moot point. If your friend says, well, I think we could, and you say, oh, I don't think we could, well, I guess the real issue is, are we going to?
And I don't believe the Bible indicates that we will. I appreciate your question. Let's talk to Nathan from Eugene, Oregon. Nathan, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Hey there.
Thanks for taking my call, Steve. Something you've pointed out during your recent Q and A in Shed, Oregon sparked my memory about the story of the rich young ruler in Luke 18. You pointed out the distinction between the language of entering versus inheriting. And I'm familiar with some of the free grace emphasis and in their teaching on the rich young ruler in Luke 18, 18, when he asks, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? They point out that the rich young ruler already had entered eternal life through faith alone, and that what he was actually asking about was how he could get rewards in heaven. They base this interpretation on the word inherit, and they say it's clear from Jesus's response about works, that it's a matter of rewards. They'll point out Matthew 19, 29, and about anyone who forsakes their stuff will receive many times more and inherit. Again, as I'm talking about rewards, their basic method is that anytime that the Greek life eianos is used of something inherited in the future, it means a qualitative difference in the life, and that is rewards based on works. But anytime life eianos is used as something entered or acquired in the present, they say the only condition is faith, and it simply means like getting into heaven, as we might say.
And I'm wondering what your response would be. Well, the problem I have with the free grace people that you're talking about is they say that all you have to do is believe, but the question is, what is it you have to believe? I believe that people are saved by faith alone, but that faith has to be in Christ. Now, the word Christ means the anointed one.
It's referring to the anointed king of Israel, and of course, as the Bible makes it very clear, since all authority in heaven and earth has been given to him, and he's enthroned at the right hand of God over all things, then belief in Christ means you believe he's the king, he's the Lord, he's the owner, he's ruling, and that you are subject to him. Now, if a person doesn't believe that, then they don't believe in Christ. Honestly, I mean, you don't believe in Christ simply by believing he was a human being that walked the earth.
Everybody knows that. Non-believers and atheists mostly know that to be true too. Believing in Christ means that you embrace the truth about Christ, obviously, which is that he's the Lord and he's the king. Now, anyone who embraces the truth about Christ as Lord, the very embrace of that truth means that they redefine themselves as servants or slaves of God.
If you don't see yourself as a slave of Jesus, then you don't see him as the Lord. And Paul said in Romans 10, 9, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you'll be saved. So salvation comes as a result of confessing.
And obviously, it doesn't mean fake confession. God's not impressed with false claims. Remember how God complained in Isaiah and Jesus repeated it in Matthew.
These people draw near to me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. God's not impressed with a false claim. If somebody confesses Jesus as Lord, it means that they've embraced that with their heart.
That's a true confession of their true conviction. Now, if you believe that Jesus is your Lord, then you believe by definition that you're his slave because a Lord is an owner of slaves. So Jesus says, if you call me Lord, Lord, why don't you do the things I say? And the free grace people make it sound like you can believe in Jesus, but not have to obey him.
And the Bible, of course, teaches the opposite. The Bible teaches very plainly, believing that Jesus is Lord carries with it the assumption that you are his slave. And of course, slaves are required to obey their Lords. Now, you're not saved by your obedience any more than a child becomes a family member in his family's household by obedience. But a child who's born into a family is called to be obedient to his parents. And obedience is the role of the child in a family. Obedience is the role of a slave to a master. And while a person doesn't become a slave by obeying or even remain a slave by obeying, that person as a slave, his entire purpose and existence, and he understands this, is to obey.
Same thing with a child of his parents. So if you're a child of God or a slave of Christ, then obedience to him is expected and required. Now, you know, these people are always wondering, but what if I'm not perfectly obedient? Will I go to hell then?
This is not the way you have to be thinking about. You need to be thinking about, am I pleasing my Lord? He's the Lord. I have no task in this world except to please my Lord. And I don't have to worry about whether I'm going to heaven or not. That's less important to me than whether I'm pleasing God. And that's because when you become a real Christian, you deny yourself and take up your cross and follow Jesus.
You're not so much thinking about yourself. If you're still thinking about yourself in this deal, then probably the conversion isn't what the Bible describes as true conversion, because true conversion is where you decide it's no longer about me, my privileges, my rights, my advantages. It's about God and his prerogatives and his rights and his glory. And if a person hasn't made that basic transition, they're not changed. And conversion means change. So when a person is converted, they're converted from seeing themselves as the one who calls the plays in their life. And in their own mind, Christ fills that role now. And although some people say, but that makes salvation of works, that's stupid.
I mean, that's just someone not thinking. Of course it doesn't make salvation a matter of works. It means that salvation becomes the opportunity for works.
It becomes the setting in which works are called for. But you have salvation as soon as you embrace Christ as your Lord. Like the thief on the cross, he said, Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom. He confessed Christ as Lord. He never did any good works, but he was saved. Yet, because he confessed Christ as Lord, we're quite sure that if he had lived, he would have followed Jesus because that's what people do when they recognize that they have a Lord.
Anyway, I hope that's helpful. A lot of people really want to argue over just exactly what point a person gets their ticket to heaven. And that's not really the issue in the Bible. The issue is, are we living for the glory of God? Are we living to please God? If we are, then we've been converted.
If we're not, then we haven't been. All right, let's talk to Sam Frost right now. This brother is a man who I've known of by reputation for some years. At one time, he was a notable leader in the full Preterist camp, which many of you know I don't hold full Preterist views.
I'm a partial Preterist. And yet, he left that camp. And he's done some writing.
He wrote about why he left that camp. And he also wrote another book that I've been reading called The Parousia of the Son of Man. The word parousia is the word that means the coming or the presence of Christ.
And it's usually, well, very often when referring to Christ's parousia, it's usually translated as his coming. And Sam asked if he could share some dialogue with me on these things. And so I said we give him, you know, 15 minutes here at the end of the first half hour. We'll have another half hour for taking more calls still.
Sam, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Hey, thanks, Steve. I appreciate having you on here.
Sure. What was on your mind? Well, I'm excited. I'm reading your book, Empire of the Risen Sun.
And it's a page turner. I'm glad to hear that. The ideas, yeah, the ideas are unfolding. I'm very glad to hear that.
Yeah, I'm really enjoying it. Thank you. And I hope your listeners will sell what a professor used to tell me, sell your bed and your book.
Sell your cloak and buy a sword, yeah. Yeah, right, right. So what do you want to visit about today? Well, I was just, I'm reading through a couple of works also in light of reading your book, William. I'm reading a book on a biography of William Penn by Hans Lantl, which, you know, with Pennsylvania and all of that. Another is religious dissent in the Middle Ages and just the conflicts and this present crisis, I guess. Yeah. Many see themselves in almost an apocalyptic ways because it seems as if you could see where one could easily connect the dots, so to speak, you know, with the Chinese conspiracy and the getting together of a globalization and the overthrowing of an election and all of the heightened sense of end of the world.
And it has all the markings. But when one goes back and reads, for instance, Jeffrey Burton Russell's work, religious dissent in the Middle Ages, this really isn't anything new, right? It's a step in progression towards what we've seen many, many, many ethical times in the history of the church and particularly in the Middle Ages. I mean, there were some very violent uprisings. And just your thoughts on that, reading that in light of the Empire of the Risen Sun, where you have a little section going into the kingdom and its effects on politics, national politics.
Yeah. You know, having a firm grasp on the Word of God and these kinds of things, and you're meditating in the Scriptures, keeping your mind on the kingdom of God and that God is on the throne, ascended to the throne, ruling at the right hand with a rod of iron, would you think creates less a state of anxiety for the believer that's following hard on the commands of the Lord? Well, it has to because Christ cannot be unseated from His throne.
It's very clear in Daniel chapter 2 that that stone that struck the image in the feet, which is, of course, Christ, grows into a great mountain to fill the earth and becomes a great kingdom that consumes all the other kingdoms. And in the end, I believe the result is that Christ reigns over all the nations of the world. However, sometimes we get a little ahead of ourselves and think that we're closer to it than we maybe are. We never know how near we may be or how far we may be. But as you know, even in the Middle Ages, there were Christians who thought that they were living at the end of the world. And certainly, if we think the end of the world means things are getting so bad that we can't imagine the world as we know it continuing, well, then a lot of times we're right. Sometimes the world as we know it won't continue, but the world very much changed and altered from the way we've known it can continue on and for centuries and millennia more. So we don't really know how near we are to the end. But yeah, I think that we can be nervous in the sense that we know that a good world is better than a bad world. And so far as we have some children and grandchildren and we're older people, we're not going to last that long, but we're leaving behind some generations that are going to have to live with the consequences of whatever world we left them. In the short range, we can be very concerned about the well-being of good people, innocent people who may suffer under oppression of evil governments.
We can be concerned, of course, about the loss of liberty of the gospel to be preached and so forth. But it's not going to be it's not the end of the world unless it is, you know, and I don't know if it is or not. But, you know, my understanding, you know, I'm a millennialist. And as such, I see the so-called millennium as corresponding with the age of the church. But I see at the end of it, Satan being loosed for a short time and causing a lot of trouble. And I don't I don't say that we are living in that time because we may not be anywhere near it. But if we are living at that time, then maybe it is near the end of the world. But still Christ is victor because in that scenario, he comes and destroys all the opposition before the church's life is snuffed.
It looks like persecution in that era may may seem to threaten the continuation of the church, but it will not succeed. I like what you were saying to the I think it was the first caller and I try to develop this in my book, Parasy of the Son of Man, where the the end of one's life being dominated by faith and following the Lord. Yeah, with with the fullness of the Spirit, that becomes the the emphasis, whether the end of my life or whether the end comes at that point really makes no difference because that's what is emphasized. And even in Matthew 24, I think what Jesus begins to emphasize there is, are your wicks trimmed?
Are your lamps filled? That then becomes that moral emphasis that end is at hand. And I kind of look at end as a proximity of relationship that whichever one comes first makes no difference in terms of my following the Lord, which is used in the parable of your wicks trimmed and your lamps are full. And you're always alert. You're awake. You're watching.
It's interesting. The first thing, you know, they ask when is the end of the age? And the first thing out of Jesus's mouth is do not be deceived. And that's a direct individual moral. Yeah, because that means I can be deceived. So I better watch out with what I'm doing and what I'm saying and what I'm believing.
Right. And that's true whether we're near the end or not. As you said, it doesn't really matter whether we're at the eschatological end or at our own personal end. People sometimes have asked me, do you believe we're living in the last generation? I say, well, I'm living in my last generation and so are you, you know, what does it matter? What does it matter? It's the last generation of Earth.
It's mine and yours. And everyone living right now is living in their last generation. So, you know, who cares if it's the end of the world?
I've always wondered about that, too, when I see movies that, you know, like where there's something threatening the whole world, some kind of pandemic or maybe a meteorite or something is coming to destroy the world. And I'm supposed to be alarmed because everyone's going to die at once. I think, well, everyone is going to die one way or the other if we all die at one time or at different times. How's that?
What's that matter? You know, I mean, I mean, I'm not callous about death because I know the grief that causes it. Frankly, if everyone dies at once, then no one will be there to mourn it except those who are unsaved and who've died in that condition. But, you know, I don't really worry whether it's near the end of the world or not.
I think a lot of people do because they're not ready to meet God. But in your recent book, I guess it's fairly recent, I don't remember when you wrote it. You made the interesting point, which I also make in my book and I think many people do not usually hear. And that is that the coming of Christ in the clouds in scripture is a term that comes from Daniel chapter seven, where Daniel says he saw one like the son of man coming in the clouds of heaven. And most Christians assume that that's talking about the second coming of Christ. But what I've taken from your book as far as I've read it so far, I haven't finished it, but I certainly make this point in my book, is that what Daniel sees is Jesus coming in the clouds to heaven, not from heaven to earth. That as the disciples watched Jesus go up, a cloud received him out of their sight. And Daniel on the other side of that cloud, from the heavenly perspective, sees Jesus coming up through the clouds and it says he comes to the ancient of days. He comes to God. He doesn't come from God to earth. He's coming from earth to God and he's given a throne and a kingdom and dominion that all people should worship him.
And that's of course what Paul says, all people should, every knee should bow and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. So that the, the ascension of Christ is that enthronement of Christ and how he is now seated as ruler and every knee should bow and every tongue should confess and all nations should worship him. And that's, and I believe that a lot of people read that the opposite way, like it's his second coming. They think he's going to be enthroned when he comes back, but he's enthroned now.
It is a, it's a game changer and I was delighted to read that also in your book. When seen from that, that perspective in Daniel, where he's given a kingdom and then in first Corinthians 15, Paul says, then he, the opposite word of givenness to give back. And Paul uses that word in Corinthians 15, when he will hand over the kingdom accomplished and death will be destroyed. Do you have this, this ascension being given all power and glory. And at the end of Matthew, he says, all power has been given to me in heaven and on earth.
That's, that's the language of Daniel. I think Matthew is using there, that's also conflated with Psalm 110. And so we, there, there seems to be, as you also correctly note, I, I, I agree with you, that there's this, yeah, Jesus is, is reigning, but not really until, and it's a game changer when you see that, no, he's reigning in full power as we speak right now and seeing through the lens, Psalm 2 has become sort of my eyewear, what I, that I put on my goggles because I think Psalm 2 is the most important, one of the most important Psalms in the New Testament that's used.
Right. And the apostles actually quoted from that Psalm when they prayed, remember when the Pharisees in chapter four of Acts, they were threatened with their lives and they went to prayer and they quoted Psalm 2 and saw it as something that was fulfilled, had already happened. You know, in Acts 4, 25, they are speaking to God and they say, by your mouth or by the mouth of your servant, David, you said, why did the nations rage?
Why did the people plot vain things? The Kings of the earth took their stand. The rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against his Christ. And of course they don't quote this far, but a few verses later in the Psalm, it says, you know, God says, yet I have set my King upon my holy Hill.
He laughs and has them into revision. And when the apostles quote that they say in verse 27 for truly against your holy servant, Jesus, whom you anointed, that is who is the Christ, both Herod and Pontius Pilate with the Gentiles and the people of Israel were gathered together to do what your hand and purpose determined to be done. So it's like, they're saying you predicted this would happen and it has happened. Pilate, Herod, the Jews, these people conspired together, just like Psalm 2 said they would. And yet the Psalm says, yet I have set my King upon my holy Hill of Zion. So all the conspiracies of those that actually crucified Christ did not prevent him from being enthroned after all on the holy Hill at the right hand of God. And I like the way from that event, because it's, it's true of David's day, who penned the Psalm and wrote looking around at the surrounding nations in his own time. And also in the book of revelation, it's also used to you see this kind of an unfolding. So let's say that what Bill Gates and George Soros and China and everybody's got together and they, Oh, okay, let's, it's a conspiracy, but it's in vain and it will not work because the Lord sits enthroned above and it's by his hand that these things are ordained.
And the reason for it is that the church, his followers to refine, to build, to grow, to progress. That's the reason why these things happen. So they have an end to them, and that's why again, meditating on the Psalms, meditating on the scriptures and letting that become the way that I think is the anxiety I've noticed in my life over the last few years, the anxiety is greatly reduced. I don't want to minimize, there's certainly a concern and being alert at the same time I'm not ringing my hands. Yeah. I'm afraid I'm being cut off here for the, for the end of the first half hour. I'm up, but I do appreciate you calling in. That's a timely word and I look forward to communicating with you more in the future, brother. All right. Thank you, brother. Thanks Sam. God bless. You're listening to the narrow path radio broadcast. We have another half hour coming and we're taking calls as usual.
We are listener supported. If you'd like to help us out, you can go to our website, the narrow path.com and click on the donations link. That's the narrow path.com.
I'll be back in 30 seconds, so don't go away. Small is the gate and narrow is the path that leads to life. Welcome to the narrow path with Steve Gregg. Steve has nothing to sell you today, but everything to give you when the radio show is over, go to the narrow path.com where you can study, learn and enjoy with free topical audio teachings, blog articles, verse by verse teachings and archives of all the narrow path radio shows. We thank you for supporting the listeners supported narrow path with Steve Gregg.
See what the narrow path.com welcome back to the narrow path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we are live for another half hour. Taking your calls as we usually do. If you'd like to be on the program, you can call me at this number, 844-484-5737. That's 844-484-5737. That conversation just before the break was with Sam Frost and we were just going to talk about quite a few different things, but the book of his that I'm currently reading is called the Parousia of the Son of Man.
Parousia spelled P-A-R-O-U-S-I-A, Parousia of the Son of Man by Sam Frost, Samuel Frost. All right, we're going to go to the phones and talk to Frank from Rancho Cucamonga, California. Frank, thanks for waiting and welcome.
Hi, Steve. Thank you for taking my call. I'll ask my question and I'll take my answer on the air if that's okay. I'm looking at Acts chapter 14, it's going to be verses 19 and 20 when Paul is stoned and dragged outside the city and left for dead.
Do you see any connection with those verses in Acts with 2 Corinthians 1-6 where he talks about seeing a man or he knew a man 14 years ago who was caught up to the third heaven? If you could give me your opinion on that and I'll just go ahead and hang up and take your answer on the air. Thank you. All right.
Thank you very much. Well, it is something that I was actually taught when I was younger that when Paul came to Lystra and they stoned him to death or seemingly to death and dragged him out of the city and then he stood up as the disciples stood around him praying, he stood up and walked back into the city. We don't know. It doesn't really specify whether he was really dead or not, but you know stoning was a pretty brutal way to kill somebody. They would not have dragged him out of the city thinking he was dead unless he was in pretty bad shape.
I mean throwing rocks at your head and at your chest breaking your bones and covered with blood and you know, it's if he wasn't actually dead, he must have been awfully close to it and yet he gets up and walks back in the city. Now I was always told that this may be what Paul later wrote about in 2 Corinthians 12 where he said he knew a man some years earlier, 14 years earlier, who had been caught up into the third heaven and seen wonderful things that he could not repeat. And so my teachers that I sat at are kind of indicated that probably he's referring to the time when he got stoned that most teachers agree, not all do, but most teachers agree that Paul is talking about himself. I actually think he is talking about himself also.
So I'm not going to dispute that. But I have a little problem with the chronology because when he wrote 2 Corinthians, it had to be in the early 50s and if you kind of work out the chronology of Paul's life, I don't know that he, I don't think there's 14 years between his first missionary journey and his second missionary journey. See 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians were written, it would seem, near the end of the second missionary journey or at the beginning of the third missionary journey, well when he was in Ephesus probably. And that being so, I don't know that there were really 14 years in there to factor in. It seems like it might be more like a decade or less. But I'm not sure because we're not given complete chronological information, but we are given some and I've tried to work it out in the past, you know, mathematically, to try to identify that as the time he's referring back to.
But I have to say, I have a hard time doing so. I have a feeling there may be a different experience he's talking about. And by the way, he doesn't say that this man who was caught up in third heaven necessarily had come close to death. I mean, it could have happened in a dream or a vision for all, you know, he could have been praying somewhere in perfectly good health and been caught up into heaven. Like for example, Ezekiel describes himself being, or being lifted up by his hair and carried to Jerusalem or whatever. He wasn't really dead. This was not an afterlife experience that he had. So while I am very familiar with and even would love to embrace the idea that Paul in 2 Corinthians 12 is referring back to this incident in the 14th chapter of Acts, I'm not sure that I could affirm it.
I'd have to have actually more or different chronological information about his life than I currently have, because I think that the 14 years is a little too long. Which means that I suspect it happened before he came to Jerusalem, like after he was converted on his way to Damascus, and then he had to flee from Damascus and went to Arabia and he was gone there for over a decade. And I think it may have happened during that time, if you kind of chronologically go backward 14 years from the writing of 2 Corinthians. So I wouldn't say for sure that it wasn't that, but I have problems working it out mathematically.
And I suspect it was not referring to that. Stacy from Albany. Is that Albany, Oregon or Albany, New York? Albany, Albany, New York.
New York. Hi. Welcome to the narrow path. Hi Stacy. Hi. How are you Steve? I'm the only one that I could trust to answer this question. Oh, you're in bad shape then. Okay, go ahead. I don't believe that.
Okay. So a person was, let's say a person was born again, they were at 13 years old, baptized, on fire for Christ, living the life. Then they get involved, they make a bad decision, and they get involved with taking drugs.
They become a drug addict. They know their Bible. Are they going to go to heaven? And I just want to refer to Romans 2, chapter 15, after all salvation is not given to those who know what to do unless they do it. So is that person going to go to heaven or are they going to die in their sin? Well generally speaking, if a person lives their final years as a drug addict, it's a good indicator that they're not really a Christian. Now, there's several factors here that I can't really know.
Let's just say you're talking about a real person, an actual person. There certainly are people like this, that they come to some kind of a point of what they consider to be a conversion when they're maybe 12, 13 years old. They get baptized and they feel like they became a Christian.
But later they just drift totally away. Some people would say the fact that they drifted completely away was an evidence that they never really were converted, because especially a Calvinist would say that if they are truly elect they would have persevered, because they have the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints, that if they didn't persevere in the faith and they drifted off into drug addiction, then some would say, well, then their conversion was not genuine at the beginning. Now an Arminian position would say, well, they might have been converted, but you can lose your salvation, so maybe they just drifted away and apostatized. And they were saved at one time, but they're not now. Now, see, both positions are very different on that one point.
But they both have something in common with each other, too. They both believe that the person who professed to be a Christian when they were young, but does not live for God, and goes on and lives in sin, that person is not saved. Whether they have lost their salvation or whether they never had it, the condition they're in is the same. They're not saved. Now, there are people who think that, you know, you can't lose your salvation, but you can fall away, but you won't lose your salvation if you do. That is not a view that the Bible teaches anywhere, and it's not a view that historically has been held by any major, you know, camp in the church until fairly recently, and it was kind of dispensationalism that brought in this idea of an almost antinomian kind of a once saved, always saved. If you just acknowledge Christ, then you're saved no matter what else you do. It doesn't matter how you live. So there's all these different views, but I would say this. While I would never pronounce in a case like that on whether the person is saved or not without at least talking to them and knowing more about what's in their heart.
And even then, I'm not saying I would have the authority to pronounce on it. They are saved. The person is saved.
You mean they've come back from their drug addiction? Well, no, no, but they believe in Christ and they love Christ and they're just torn down the middle by it. It's like two separate people, you know? Okay.
Well, I would say this. There are, I mean, addiction, you know, addiction is an interesting word. You know, we call people sex addicts and gambling addicts and things like that just because they're out of control. And that doesn't necessarily mean that they have the same thing that let's say a heroin addict has or even an alcoholic who's, you know, who cannot stop drinking without dangerous delirium tremors. You know, I mean, there are people whose bodies become physically addicted to bad stuff. And while they would be willing and eager to be free from it, they simply don't find themselves to be able to be free because, you know, of withdrawal or whatever they would do.
And some of these people, you know, they go through programs like 12 step programs and some of them struggle with it and don't really get over it much. But you know, God knows the heart. God knows that there are some things that some people face that are too big for them. Now they're not too big for God, but I have to say there are some people I think who really love the Lord who don't have very much faith. I mean, that is their faith is not strong. Or maybe they maybe they really are trusting God in a big way, but they're not really overcoming sin in their life for whatever reason they may want to. I will say that even Christians who are truly and indisputably Christians sometimes do sin. For example, Paul had to rebuke Peter, who is clearly in the wrong when he was in Antioch, according to Galatians chapter 2, or, you know, there's other cases, James, an apostle said in many things we all stumble. So we know that even true Christians sometimes sin. The problem is when sin is dominating the life and the person is accepting that. Now there may be cases, I suspect there are, in fact, I know of cases where people are truly saved, they truly hate their sin, they're truly trying to serve God, but there is something they just are not getting a victory over.
I've mentioned before some good Christian friends of mine who have served God now for probably 40 years. When they first got saved, I knew them and they were a young couple, 30 years old or so. I don't know, I think they were 40 at the time and they had been smoking all their lives and they got saved and they just couldn't quit smoking. They really, really wanted to, but they just, it kept beating them and they were true followers of Christ.
Now, I'm not a person who says that smoking cigarettes is necessarily a sin, but if it is, I should say, if you think it is, then it is for you. And therefore they were not able to get victory over this for some years. And then eventually they did get victory over it and they've been serving God faithfully for decades now. And I have no doubt that they were truly converted before they got their victory over this habit. It's just sometimes it takes people longer now, you know, heroin or meth or something like that, that kind of addiction, I would imagine would to be much stronger than even cigarettes. So all I can say is I know there must be people that God sees as truly his own, who are hating their sin, struggling to overcome it, seeking to live a holy life.
But really just succumbing because it's bigger than they are. And I would not be prepared to say that someone whose heart is the Lord's and yet who's got maybe even a physical addiction that they're not beating. I'm not saying that God condemned. I don't think God condemns anyone who loves him and wants to follow him. The issue that I think is more problematic in the church is people who have no interest in following him. They just want to be identified as a Christian because they think that's good fire insurance for when they die. But you know, but they don't really care to follow him.
I think what makes a person truly a genuine Christian is that they have embraced Christ as King and Lord. And some who do so, well, everyone who does so still stumbles sometimes. Some have much more heinous problems to overcome. But I would say that they should certainly, if someone's really a Christian and a drug addict, they would certainly take advantage of every resource they see available to overcome the addiction. Obviously, because they realize that you can't glorify God while you're an addict or that is why you're succumbing to, you know, the habits of sin.
So because somebody was beeping in, I didn't hear that again. Let me ask you, are we talking about somebody who's still using or someone who's and someone who's using marijuana and, you know, feels as though it's wrong but just can't get a handle on it but loves the Lord but just succumbs to it. It's been a part of the life for so long. It's become an ingrained habit and this person loves the Lord. What I think is if that same person had lived in the time of the early church and was part of the early church, they would have a community of believers, you know, surrounding them, upholding them, keeping them accountable, preventing them from destroying themselves, praying for them. And we don't always have that kind of support. That's what Christ gives us when we're converted.
He gives us a family and a community of believers to help us walk as we ought to walk. And what we have now is Christians so often are much more isolated from other Christians. I mean, not that they don't go to church once in a while, even frequently, but their life is lived most days, most hours of most days, pretty much on their own. And they fall to temptation because they're not strong. And again, in a normal, like New Testament situation, they would be getting support from a community of believers.
And I think they'd overcome this a lot faster. And I think they need to be seeking that support. If the church is not providing it naturally, if they don't, you know, if you go to a church and they don't, you know, it's, let's say a big church, the pastor doesn't even know your name and no one, you're not really making meaningful relationships with anyone there. Then you are not, you're lacking in Christian community. But, but I think these people, you know them, and they need to be surrounded by, by Christians who will take them under their wing and say, listen, I'm going to help you through this. I'm going to pray with you. When you're, when you're feeling weak, I'm going to, I'm going to say, no, you can't do that.
You know, just call on me. And yeah. So, but, but you think the thing is the mark of a true Christian is that they hate their sin. And therefore if they have a recurring sin like that, they're going to be availing themselves desperately of anything that God gives them as an aid to, to resistance. And the body of Christ is supposed to be the main gift that God has given to help them in that.
Of course. Another thing would be meditating day and night on the word of God. I would say that, you know, I'm not going to pronounce whether these people are saved or not, but they may very well be people who love the Lord, as you say, but they just, they don't know where to turn to get, and they've tried to beat it and they haven't been able to beat it. You know, it says in Psalm chapter one, that the man of God who, who you know, meditates day and night on the law of the Lord, he'll be like a tree planted by rivers of water. He'll be fruitful. He won't wither, you know, and whatever he does will, will succeed.
So I think that, you know, when people are struggling regularly and not really thriving in their Christian life, one thing I'd want to ask them is, are you meditating day and night on the scriptures? And the answer is always no. They are. They are.
They're just tall. I think the sin is so strong. Sin is such a strong, I think they might even be addicted to the sin, having their own way more than the actual drug itself. It is the sin, of course. I mean, but, but God is stronger than sin.
Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world. And and if you walk in the Spirit, you will not fulfill the lust of the flesh, Paul said in Galatians 5 16. So these people need to be filled with the Holy Spirit and walk in the Spirit day by day. And as you walk in the Spirit, they will not succumb. They might stumble once in a while, but they will do so less and less as they begin to walk in the Spirit. I don't I can't say much more about that right now, except I will say that of the books on the two book series on the kingdom that I've just finished.
The second book is coming out soon within a month. And I have several chapters about walking in the Spirit there, which I think could be helpful to somebody like that. But I will not make the judgment call about whether they're saved or not. But I would say if I was living in an you know, in unrelenting sin, I would feel like I don't have much reason to believe that I'm a sinner because the sinners, the converted sinner is Jesus saves us from our sins. But he doesn't just do it unilaterally all the time.
It's through the process of walking in the Spirit, meditating on his word, embracing the support of the body of Christ and other things that God has provided for us through those things he saves us from our sinful habits. I'd like to go longer on this, but I have more calls waiting and I can't really take more time on this. Thank you. Thank you for taking the call, Steve.
Bless you. God bless you, Stacey. Thank you for your call. Luke from Scottsdale, Arizona.
Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Hey, Steve. How are you doing? Good. Thanks.
Good. Hey, my question to you today is from the Sermon on the Mount when Jesus says to bless those who curse you. I'm just wondering if you could maybe give kind of like a biblical understanding of what it means to bless somebody. I mean, when I hear that, I think of just saying God bless you to somebody, but I'm sure it's a little bit more in depth than that, so just a few thoughts on that. Well, blessing is an interesting concept in the Old Testament because, you know, a man who's dying would pronounce blessings on his sons, for example, and the priest Aaron, high priest Aaron, would pronounce a blessing on Israel regularly, the Aaronic blessing. Pronouncing a blessing is basically invoking or seeking to invoke some good, some benefit on people as opposed to cursing, which is to invoke evil upon them.
Now, blessing may well, in the Old Testament, usually refer to pronouncing a blessing verbally, but we bless people in many ways. I think it was understood that if you pronounce a blessing on them, there is some sense in which real good will come to them, but whether it's through you saying bless you or whether it's you actually blessing them in your behavior, in either case, Jesus is saying when people who are trying to ruin your life and bring evil and disaster into your life, you need to have the opposite response to them and seek to help them have a better life, if possible. That is, you wish good upon them rather than evil upon them, and that your actions, like in the law of Moses in Exodus, it says, you know, if you see the ox of the man who hates you falling under its load, or actually wandering free, he says, you catch it and take it back to him. Or if you see his donkey falling under its load, the man who hates you, help it up.
Even if you don't feel like doing it, just do it. In other words, you're blessing them. You're doing something kind for them. In that case, it's not so much a verbal blessing, though I have to say, I don't understand much about verbal blessings, although I've thought about it a great deal. I don't know exactly what all goes with that, to make it, you know, what really happens when you verbally bless them.
The Bible takes that very seriously, and so, you know, to verbally bless them would certainly mean that you don't curse back at them as they're cursing you, but I think even more than that, to bless them means to do them good and to seek their advantage. I couldn't say much more about that right now. I'm afraid I'm going to be off the air here in just a few minutes, but I do want to talk to Robert from Fullerton, California. Robert, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
Hey, this is Robert. Hopefully, just a real quick question on Matthew 18, verse 17, mentions the word church. What does that actually mean there, church? Well, the word church only occurs two times in the four gospels, and both of them are in Matthew.
One of them is in Matthew chapter 16, where Jesus said, upon this rock I'll build my church, and then the other is in Matthew 18, verse 17, where Jesus said, if they won't hear, you know, when two people correct them, then take it before the church, and if they don't hear the church, then let them be as a tax collector or whatever, a sinner, a heathen. So Jesus twice in Matthew refers to the church by that term, and the word is ekklesia in the Greek. Now, ekklesia is a word that's used in the Old Testament, in the Greek Old Testament, the Septuagint, to speak of the congregation of Israel. The word congregation, as it sometimes is found in our English Old Testament, in the Greek Old Testament is ekklesia. And then this word, which referred to Israel in the Old Testament, is picked up by the followers of Christ in the New Testament. They are the, they're the congregation, they're the ekklesia. And so it's one of those many times when the early church took upon itself one of the names that historically had belonged to Israel.
Lots of those are found in the New Testament. The people of God, the holy nation, you know, the royal priesthood, lots of things the church is called in the New Testament were things that Israel was called in the Old Testament. But when Jesus said, upon this rock, I will build my church in chapter 16, he's referring to the fact that he's, he's building his own Israel.
He's building his own holy nation to and congregation. But in chapter 18, when he says if they don't hear them, then tell it to the church, or to the ekklesia. It suggests that the church is functioning as a, an assembled entity, where those who are followers of Christ desire to be and are part of it. And you know, and the church as a family takes responsibility for disciplining its children. And when there's a person in this context, you're talking about Matthew 18, 15 through 17, when someone is sinning and won't repent, and you keep approaching them more than once and give them opportunity to repent, but they refuse, then it has to be brought before the whole family. And when it's brought before the whole family, they should be under pressure because they want to remain in the family, presumably. And yet, if they don't respond to the united rebuke of the family, the ekklesia, the congregation, well then they're not included in the family anymore.
They're kicked out. And that's why Paul, in 1 Corinthians 5, said that this man who was not responding to lesser discipline in the church, the man who's living with his father's wife, the man in 1 Corinthians 5, that he, they need to gather together, he says, when the whole church is gathered together, and my spirit with him, he says, deliver this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh so his spirit might be saved in the day of Christ Jesus. The idea being this man is being eliminated from the church fellowship, and thus he's thrust out of the fellowship of the church into the devil's world, and he's delivered over the devil to do what the devil may want to do to him, and hopefully he'll come running back repentant to the church and his spirit will be saved in the day of Christ. So the church is the family of God. Of course, Paul used many metaphors for it. He called the church, you know, the temple of the Holy Spirit, the bride of Christ, the body of Christ, the family of God. All of these are references to the ekklesia, the people of God, and it's very important for us to emphasize this, that when you're born again, you're not just born again as a baby out in the middle of the desert, you're born as a baby into a family, and your connection with that family has got to be maintained on good terms to live a normal Christian life.
Now there are subnormal situations, but in normal situations that God has in mind, every Christian should be connected to the family, to the body of Christ, and should be interactive with the family and subject to the discipline of the family if you're sinning. Hey, I'm out of time. I wish I could go longer on this. You're listening to The Narrow Path. We are listener-supported. If you'd like to help us out, please go to our website, thenarrowpath.com, and click on the tab that says Donate. But everything is free at thenarrowpath.com. Let's talk again tomorrow. God bless.
Whisper: medium.en / 2024-01-29 02:10:41 / 2024-01-29 02:32:12 / 22