The Narrow Path 11/19

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 taking your calls. If you have questions about the Bible or about Christianity, feel free to give me a call and we'll talk about it here. If you have a difference of opinion from the host, you can always call and talk about that here also. The number to call is 844-484-5737. Right now our lines are full, so if you don't bother calling right now, but if you call in a few minutes, usually a line will be found to be opened up.

The number is 844-484-5737. Our first caller today is David calling from Eugene, Oregon. David, welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Thank you, Steve. I have two questions for you. The first is, do non-believers living today have any more promises than non-believers who lived during the Old Testament times before Jesus died on the cross? Well, promises to unbelievers? I actually don't know of any promises made to unbelievers in the Bible. There are some threats made to unbelievers in some cases, but as far as promises, no. What are you thinking of?

What kind of promises? Oh, thank you. I was just thinking of, of course, when Jesus was saying how God is kind to the faithful and the unfaithful by having, you know, rainfall on the field of a righteous man while also falling on the field of an unrighteous man, and I just didn't know if God views an unbeliever living in 2020 the same way he might have viewed a non-believer living in 568 BC.

Right. Well, I don't, I think he judges all men according to their works, and there are some unbelievers who are much more wicked than others, and I don't think that we could just say that an unbeliever stands in a certain relation with God for being an unbeliever. There's many different ways that people are away from God. Some people are away from God but seeking God.

Other people are away from God because they're running from God or hate God. So there's really, there'd be big differences, but I don't know of any actual promises except that if they will repent and believe that they'll be saved. That's a promise to unbelievers, I guess, but it's, of course, it's a promise that only applies if they become believers. Okay.

Thank you. And then that leads to my second question. I was, I was listening to a pretty prominent pastor who I kind of trust a lot of the stuff that he says, and he made a point about Matthew chapter 25 verse 46 when Jesus said, then, you know, the righteous will go away, the righteous go away to eternal life, but the wicked to eternal punishment. And he said that if we look at hell as not an internal punishment for the wicked, then we can't take that same word used as eternal for eternal life for the, for the righteous. And then so that way then maybe even heaven wouldn't be eternal. And I wanted to get your take on that.

Sure. That's a very common argument that is raised against any view that denies the eternal torment view of hell. You must be aware there are different views of hell. The traditional view is that hell is a place of eternal ceaseless conscious torment. And there are people who believe that the Bible doesn't teach that and that it teaches something else about hell than that.

And there's a lot of scriptures that need to be considered before one could make an intelligent decision about that. But those who do believe in an eternal torment view of hell, eternal conscious torment, they will often raise that particular verse because the word ionious, which is translated there eternal or everlasting and is frequently translated that way in the New Testament in English. It is used of life for the righteous and for the punishment of the wicked. So they say, well, look, we've got the same adjective here for the life of the righteous, which we know to be everlasting on the one hand and for the punishment of the wicked, which we also must then conclude is everlasting because the word ionious is used in both cases to describe both.

The argument is, I think it works well for people who don't think very deeply about things or maybe who don't know, who haven't studied this very well. I, you know, it may be a good argument, especially if the view is correct, but it certainly doesn't make the point because the word ionious, you know, Greek scholars in the evangelical conservative world have given it a variety of different possible meanings. It's true in our Bibles it is very often translated everlasting or eternal. And because of that, people who don't know much about Greek and only read the English version say, well, it says right here it's eternal.

That settles the question. But that's not necessarily the meaning that Greek scholars know it to hold. It can refer to something that's eternal, certainly. But the word is related to the noun for age, ion in the Greek or like eon for us, an age.

And exactly what relationship this adjective has to the noun at its root is very much discussed and disputed. It has something to do with an age, and many scholars believe that it refers to enduring for an age. Something that is described as ionious is something that endures for an age. Now how long is an age? Well, an age is a very long time.

That is very inexact. If something endures for an age, we don't know how long that is. It may last for 100 years if that seems like an age from our perspective, or it might last for 1,000 years or a million years.

It might even last forever. You see, the Greek word ionious is used in the Septuagint, which is the Greek Old Testament translated from the Hebrew Old Testament back before the time of Christ. And the word ion and ionious, these two words, they are used to translate the Hebrew word olam in Hebrew. It's olam. And when you read the word forever or eternal in the Old Testament, you're using, you're reading an English word translated the word olam.

Now olam is very much like ionious in that it has something to do with a very long time. In fact, the word olam comes from a root that means hidden, meaning the ending is hidden. If this has an ending, we can't see it from here because it's over the horizon. Many lexicons will indicate that olam means something beyond the horizon of sight. Now if something is beyond the horizon of sight, then it's way off. It's way off and we can't see the end of it. And if that is true, it might last forever or it might not because once it leaves our field of vision over the horizon, we don't know if it goes on eternally or if it ends soon after.

We just don't know. I mean, the word olam does not mean everlasting. And the word ionious does not mean everlasting particularly. But both words, and one is translated by the other when you translate the Hebrew to the Greek Septuagint, both of them refer to something related to a very long time, an age or so. And so something can be age enduring and have no end at all. Or it can be age enduring and have an end at some point way off there. And that's the inexactness of that word. Now there's another set of Greek scholars.

Among them would be F.F. Bruce, who's, in my opinion, one of the greatest evangelical commentators of the 20th century, who have said that the relationship of the word ionious to the word ion, or age, is not talking about duration, but the nature of it. It's pertaining to an age. The word ionious is related to the word for age, but its relationship to that word is not entirely clear. It doesn't mean it's lasting for an age, enduring for an age, or doesn't mean it belongs to that age, or it is appropriate to that age.

And therefore people like F.F. Bruce and many others, who are conservative Christian scholars, have said ionious could reasonably be understood to simply mean pertaining to the messianic age, which would be perhaps like our saying eschatological. It's something that's, if we talk about the eschatological resurrection, we're talking about something that relates to the end, and something that relates to the coming age. And so let's take the test case that you brought up, which was Matthew 25, 46. It says the righteous will go into ionious life, but the wicked to ionious punishment.

Okay? So what does ionious mean? Does it mean very long lasting, perhaps even forever? It could mean that. And it could mean that even if the long lastingness was not equal. For example, if I say tortoises live a very long time, it doesn't mean they all live the exact same length of time, because a very long time is not exact.

In fact, if you met a tortoise that was immortal, you could still say it lasts a very long time. So, you know, to say that something lasts a long time for ages or whatever, or you can't see the end of it from here, it could refer to something like God, for example, that lasts forever. But it could last, it could refer to something that doesn't last forever, like Jerusalem's gates, which are called everlasting doors, or like the mountains, which are called the everlasting hills, or like the length of time that a slave will serve his master once he has given up his right to freedom after seven years, and he has his ear pierced. He will serve forever, it says, same words.

So, you know, the length of time is different, but the same word is used. The man who serves his master for the rest of his lifetime and not beyond that is said to do so, ionius or olam in the Hebrew. The gates of Jerusalem last longer than a man's lifetime, but they're also called olam. You know, the hills last longer than the gates of Jerusalem, but they're also called olam, and God lasts longer than everything because he never ends, and he's called olam. So you can see the word is inexact, and it doesn't really say, it doesn't mean everlasting.

That's not the meaning of the word. I don't think any lexicon will support the idea that the only principal or necessary meaning is everlasting, but it can refer to things that are. Now, let's just say Jesus said the righteous will either go into the life of the Messianic age while the wicked go into the punishment of the Messianic age.

That would be a fair treatment, according to many Greek scholars of that statement. It would not tell us how long either of these last, the life of the age or the punishment of the age, but they're both pertaining to the age. Or, if we make the word mean the length of time, then we say these people go into very long life, and these people go into very long punishment.

It might not be the same length of time, and the fact that the same word is used in both would not even give a hint about it, whether they're the same. Now if someone says, but, if Ionius doesn't necessarily mean eternal, and it's the word that's always used to talk about eternal life, how do we know that the eternal life we're going to have is endless if it doesn't necessarily mean that in the Greek? Well, because that's not the only word that's used to speak of our life. The Bible speaks about our immortality when we're raised immortal. The word immortal only means one thing, you can't die.

So we could conclude on other bases that the life of the age is immortal life, but you would not be able to conclude on the same basis that the punishment of the age is immortal or everlasting. Thank you very much, Steve. Very, very helpful. My pleasure. Thank you for calling.

Absolutely. All right, God bless you. All right, our next caller in line is Paul from Delray Oaks, California. Paul, welcome to The Narrow Path.

Thanks for calling. Yes, my question is in regard to Luke 22 verses 43 through 44. Steve, do you think Dr. Luke is referring to is using hyperbole, or is it physiologically possible under the most extreme emotional pressure to actually sweat blood? I don't think it's hyperbole or anything like that, and I'm no medical expert, but I have definitely heard, at least teachers have told me this, and I can't tell you where to look to find the proof of it, that there is a condition where a person under extreme stress does have capillaries in their forehead and in their face. I don't know if the word is explode or erupt or whatever, but it is possible to bleed through your skin in situations of extreme stress.

I don't know the medical term for that, and I wouldn't know where to turn you to find that out. Perhaps some modern commentaries on Luke might contain that information, but I've heard it taught that way from people that I trusted. Of course, I learned some other things from them that I don't believe anymore, but I've heard it enough from different sources that I tend to believe it, and I don't see any reason why it couldn't be true. For that matter, as I read the passage, I don't see any reason why Luke would include that feature by way of hyperbole.

I wouldn't think there would be a need to or that it would serve any purpose. So I think it literally happened. Now, it says he sweat as it were great drops of blood. Some people say, well, he didn't say he was sweating blood. It says what he was sweating was like great drops of blood. I guess maybe they're thinking what it's saying is that his actual sweat, which is no different than ordinary sweat, was coming down in large droplets falling from him like he was bleeding.

On the other hand, I don't know that drops of blood are particularly known to be large, larger than drops of water necessarily, so I don't really know that comparing sweat to blood would be a difference in comparison of size. I think it would have to do more with color, and it's probable that when somebody has this condition, aha, I have a researcher here in the office, my wife, and she has looked this up. She says that the condition is called heratidrosis, H-E-R-A-T-I-D-R-O-S-I-S. Now, I don't know where she found that. She finds things. I wouldn't know where to look for them, but she's ingenious. She's wonderful. Yeah, she is.

So it's called heratidrosis, H-E-R-A-T-I-D-R-O-S-I-S, H-E-M-A-T-I-D-R-O-S-I-S, hematidrosis, and I still think she's a genius for having found that because I wouldn't know where to look for that without knowing the name in the first place. All right, so does that answer your question? Thank you, Steve. God bless you both. Thank you. It's good talking to you, Paul. Bye now. All right, our next caller is Steve from Lakewood, Washington. Hi, Steve. Good to hear from you.

Good afternoon. It's looking more and more like Joe Biden is going to be the next president of the United States, unfortunately, and he's said a couple of hell-raising things since campaigning for presidency. He said that our rights, first of all, are not absolute, so like if someone together is not absolute, like it hasn't been the last eight months, our freedom of speech is not absolute, like it hasn't been, essentially, on Facebook for the last eight months, then fact-checking us and kicking people off just for saying, you know, everyone seems to be going away more and more, and he says going to, and many also said that the quote-unquote hate speech is going to be eliminated, too, even under the guise of Christianity or religion, meaning talking against homosexuality. So if he or Congress actually are able to legislate that people like you on Christian radio programs can no longer speak against homosexuality or fornication or anything else, what are you going to do about it? And they say that there's separation of church and state, but how can there be separation of church and state if they're going to try to enforce something like that?

Because, first of all, we don't care about what the unbeliever does, it's what the Christian does, so how can they be enforcing that and still say they don't want a combination of church and state? Anyway, thank you very much. I'll go off the air.

Thank you. Okay, Steve, thank you for your call, brother. So the question is, if it becomes illegal to say true things that the Bible says, because it's considered to be hate speech, then what will I do if I do it? I'll tell you this, for several years now, I've told the people around me that I expect the time to come where it will be illegal to tell the truth, especially about people's sexual behaviors and things like that, that to actually quote the Bible will be a crime.

Perhaps even to read the Bible will be a crime, but probably it will be an issue of either homosexuality or transgender, those kinds of things that would be the spark that causes the great fight. What shall we say? I've always known that I could face that problem because people have faced similar things in Canada for some years now, and I've been aware of that, and I knew we were going that direction. And so it's been in my mind that the time could come where I could actually not only be taken off the air, but possibly put in jail for saying things that are true. And I saw an interesting meme. I don't quote very many memes. I just saw an interesting meme the other day. It said something like, truth is hate speech to those who hate the truth.

And I think that's pretty much the way it looks. People who don't love the truth, if you tell the truth, they're going to say, you're the hater, when in fact they're the ones who hate the truth. I don't hate anybody. I never have hated anyone.

But that's not going to save me. To say I don't hate anyone, if I say things that some idiots call hate speech because they think it is, the powers that be are not on our side at this point. Although the Supreme Court probably still is, I imagine if that becomes a law, there will be a challenge to it.

And I don't care to be the first challenger of it, but if I was, I'd take it. If I was prosecuted for saying something that's true and un-hateful, I went to jail and I wouldn't mind arguing or taking my case to the Supreme Court. In which case, of course, that law would be overthrown.

Unless it happens after the left has packed the court. If they pack the court with people who don't believe in free speech, then of course all bets are off. But at the same time, if I were to go to jail for saying the truth, I certainly would not be the first Christian to have done so. And in fact, some Christians have had much worse fates than that for speaking the truth.

We just have not been accustomed to it. Now, of course, the president would have no right to tell us that Christian speech is hate speech and therefore illegal. That's just not something that a president has the right to do. A Congress, if it is fully in the hands of leftists, might make laws like that. But again, they could not stand up to a court challenge if there's ever a Supreme Court that it came before who cared about truth and the Constitution. And of course, the Constitution, which guarantees not only freedom of speech but freedom of religious expression, would condemn any such laws. But whether a court would condemn them or not depends on what kind of a court we have. Right now, I'm pretty sure the court we have would allow free speech because the court we have is a majority of the people seated on it, I believe, are in favor of the Constitution and really think that they should do their job, which is to interpret by the Constitution what is legal and what is not.

I think that I'd be very hopeful if my case or anyone else's on this came to this before the Supreme Court right now that the law would be overthrown. But that's exactly why the left wants to pack the court, as they've made very clear. They want to put on about four or five more justices so that the court can be ruled by people who don't care about the Constitution, like the President himself and like Nancy Pelosi and like Kamala Harris. They don't care about the Constitution. They care about power. And if they put people in the courts who care about power, then who knows?

We may lose all our freedom of speech. The amazing thing is they would have the sympathy of about half the country if they did this kind of thing, which shows how much, I mean, the very fact that the country would elect these people shows that our country has lost sight of the Constitution or at least lost sight of who it is they're voting for. I think a lot of people vote along party lines and don't even pay attention to what the people they're voting for are advocating.

But you're right. I mean, those of us who voted against Biden, we would be, we're the people who pay attention. We're the people who actually are listening to what they're saying and also have some knowledge of the Constitution because we're over 30 years old and we were raised at a time when the Constitution was still considered in this country to be the highest law of the land, which it is. It is whether it's violated or not. If they violate it, then they're just criminals because if you violate the law, even if you hold office, you're a criminal. And so to violate the Constitution, any sitting president or Congressman or woman who violates the Constitution is a criminal because they're violating the law of the land and they are not above it.

They are under it. Furthermore, they're under the people too because they are public servants. They have been elected into an office which serves the public and this is a government that is by the people.

That's what makes it different than all the governments before the United States government was formed. And so, you know, it's obvious that these people get away with talking this way and get elected anyway because we have a huge number, especially of younger people, but some older people do who simply don't pay attention. They either don't think about the truth along biblical lines or even along constitutional lines. They might not even know what the Constitution says. And they apparently don't know what these candidates said, because I can't imagine very many people knowingly wanting to vote into a system that's going to be totalitarianism.

I mean, if people like totalitarianism, I mean, they could move to China or North Korea or Venezuela and live under it if they think that's a good thing. But most of us, I think, still think that's not a good thing. And so I think someone would challenge that law if it is passed. That doesn't mean people won't be arrested before it's challenged. But, you know, the time may come when we couldn't even successfully challenge it because the courts are packed with conspirators, basically, against the country.

Anyway, let me tell you what I really think sometime, when I have more time. You're listening to The Narrow Path. We have another half hour ahead, and we'll take more calls during that half hour.

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Thank you for sharing. Listeners supported The Narrow Path with Steve Gregg. Welcome back to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg, and we're live for another half hour taking your calls. If you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith, I'd be glad to talk to you about those.

If you have a different viewpoint from the host, I'd very much be glad to talk to you about that. The number to call is 844-484-5737. That's 844-484-5737. Our next caller is Dwayne from Virginia.

Dwayne, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Hi, Steve. God bless you. Thank you.

Thank you. I have a question. It seems like, for me, at least in social media, on Facebook, it appears that there's a growing group of up Christians. And maybe this is not new. Certainly you would know you've been a teacher longer than I've been saved. But it just seems like at least there's this growing group of people who say that Jesus is not God. So oneness and Trinitarian understanding is false. And scriptures like God was manifest in the flesh. First Timothy 3.16, they'll say, well, manifesting the flesh is not the same as God in the flesh. And then the justification for John 1.1, the word was made flesh. They'll say, well, that was God was a plan in the mind.

The word was the thought or plan. And so my question is for you is just, is this understanding, in fact, what John talks about in 1 John as the spirit of Antichrist, or is that going too far? Well, the Bible says in 1 John, whoever denies that Jesus is the Christ, the same as Antichrist. And it also says in chapter 4 that whoever denies that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh and that's the spirit of Antichrist. So there are certain things that people can deny about Christ and that would qualify them as Antichrist. Now, one could argue that, you know, one could say, well, I believe Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ.

I also believe he came in the flesh. I just don't believe he was God. Now, if they said that, they're technically walking the fine line where you couldn't on the basis of those verses say they're Antichrist. And you'd have to decide why are they saying Jesus is not God. Is it because they simply haven't understood the scriptures properly? Or is it that they are opposed to the truth?

Now, we sometimes don't bear this in mind, that when we talk, for example, to a Jehovah's Witness or a Mormon or some cultist who doesn't believe as we do about God, then we assume, oh, they're evil. They hate the truth and they're enemies of God. And some of these people may be the ones who know better within the group could be described that way.

But some of these people, they don't know any better. They don't know their Bible. They've been shown some Bible verses and been told what they mean by somebody.

And it's not really what they really mean, but they don't know any different. And lots of people in these groups are really, I think, people who are seeking God. And this is evident by the fact that some of them come out of those groups and continue to serve God. So people in these groups are not all enemies of God or even of the truth.

They just are mistaken. And we have to make a difference, I think, between a person who's seeking to know God properly but is making a mistake on the one hand and somebody who's really opposed to Christ. Now, there have always been people who have denied that Jesus is God.

In fact, they've existed since before the time of the Nicene Council. Obviously, the Arians denied that Jesus was God and that's what caused the Nicene Council. But I think they were misunderstanding the Scripture. And it's not too hard to misunderstand the Scripture about this because while there are some statements, like the ones you mentioned, which actually do indeed teach that Jesus is God, there are other Scriptures where Jesus distinguishes himself from the Father and so they don't understand how that works out.

So they've tried to find some way of reinterpreting one group of texts in order to make it fit in their minds, the other group. There are Scriptures where Jesus is distinguished from the Father and there's verses where he's identified with the Father. Some of them are in the same chapter with each other, as in John 14, when Jesus said, you know, the Father is in me, I'm in the Father.

If you've seen me, you've seen the Father. And then later in the same chapter, he says the Father is greater than I. Now, anyone who wants to do the hard work of thinking and studying, I believe, can come to a relatively satisfying way to harmonize these passages and that's what Trinitarianism does. That's what I do, quite apart from any, you know, some people say, what if the Nicene Council had gone the other way? Well, they'd be wrong if they'd gone the other way and I would still study my Bible myself and I think I would still reach the same conclusions I have, even if they hadn't reached them, I hope, because I actually have been studying the Bible rather independently of concern about whether it agrees with this teacher or that teacher or this traditional doctrine or that traditional doctrine.

So I think I would probably come to my same opinions if it hadn't really been finally decided. But it is now much more common to find a variety of people denying that Jesus is God because of the internet, because anyone can say anything on the social media. And they don't have to be experts, they can just be people who are strongly opinionated and haven't really studied very well or don't quite understand well what they've studied. The real way to understand who Jesus is is going to require that we have a pretty thorough grasp of the whole Bible, and some people do, but a lot of people don't. All they know is that they ran into a verse or two and they don't know what to do with it and it doesn't seem to go along with the traditional view they've heard and so they just kind of come up with something that works for them.

But in my opinion, if you're familiar with the whole Bible, you can find a harmony of all these things because the Bible does not contradict itself about Jesus. And in my opinion, to say that Jesus is God in the flesh is the most scriptural way to describe him. It agrees with John chapter 1, the word was God and the word was made flesh. Now I realize the word logos, word, it can mean different things. It can mean the thoughts or the logic or the spoken word.

It can mean different things. But one thing we can't make it not mean is what John said. John said the word was God and the word became flesh. So he's already equated the word with God and then he takes that word and makes it flesh in Christ and we beheld his glory. And he uses language that's very much like the Shekinah glory in the tabernacle. It says the word was made flesh and tabernacled with us and we beheld his glory. Well, Israel beheld the glory of Yahweh in the tabernacle in the pillar of cloud, which is a theophany.

It's an appearance of God in a visible form. And that's the comparison that John seems to make with Jesus. Likewise, in 1 Timothy 3, which you mentioned, he was manifest in the flesh. Now the King James says God was manifest in the flesh, which is very helpful to a person who's a Trinitarian. But actually, the older manuscripts don't say God was manifest in the flesh.

It says he was. Nonetheless, whether it says he was or God was, the truth is it's saying that he was manifest. Now, he is somebody who was not originally in the flesh.

He is divine. Paul said he existed in the form of God and he didn't count his equality with God a thing to be grasped. So he emptied himself and took on the form of a servant in Philippians 2. But in 1 Timothy 3, he was manifested.

The word manifest is a very important word in understanding Jesus because God, in the Bible, throughout the Bible, is spoken of as existing everywhere. We can refer to that doctrine as the universal presence of God. God is everywhere. He's in outer space. He's in a microscopic world. He says throughout the world, in him, we live and move and have our being. He's everywhere.

Okay? That's the universal presence of God. But then there's another doctrine. The Bible doesn't give it this name, but we could, about the manifest presence of God. God is everywhere, but he manifests himself not everywhere. He manifests himself in a pillar of cloud or a pillar of fire. He manifests himself in a human form when he wrestled with Jacob all night or when he met with Abraham as Melchizedek or any other time. In the burning bush, God was manifested there. And so God who is everywhere and is universally present is manifestly present in some places, not all. And just as God manifested as a man to wrestle with Jacob all night, God manifests himself as a man to walk among us and we beheld his glory.

And, you know, the people who don't understand these concepts, they just don't know what to do with statements of Scripture that some of them seem to point one direction, some another. But frankly, if we understand the whole counsel of God, the whole whole scripture and all the examples of God making himself visible and things like that, it suddenly becomes something that's not so quite so hard to do. But but, you know, you can hear all kinds of strange things on the Internet. You can even hear this program on the Internet.

That's pretty strange. But don't trust everything you hear on the Internet, including me. You just studied out in the scriptures. If you want to hear how I explain the scriptures on this, I do have lectures at my website under the topic knowing God. And there's there's you can see by the names of the lectures, there's there's one about the Trinity, there's one about the deity of Christ and so forth. And I do I do my best to harmonize the scriptures in those lectures.

If you go to the narrow path dot com and then look under topical lectures, topical lectures and find the knowing God series, then you'll find you'll find lectures that are labeled in ways that you can recognize their title or their subject matter. All right. Amen. They say thanks, Steve. Look, what made me so shocked just about the whole thing was that this particular person was a I generally agree a lot with most of the posts preaching on repentance and things like that.

But this person is actually a pastor, though I don't ever see the name of the church, but he's at least a professing pastor. So it was just shocking to see after all this time that this thing just just just kind of came out of nowhere and then and then to see so well, it's around. That's it. Wow. Yeah. It's been around for a long time.

It's just that the Internet has made it more visible and everything else to hey, I appreciate your call, Dwayne. Thanks for joining. Thanks. Thanks, brother. God bless you. I know.

All right. Our next caller is Rod from Hawaii. Rod, welcome to the show. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Hi, Steve. Thank you. I want your comments on when we are born again. We're known as believers, Christians. Are we still considered sinners? And I hear verses used as Romans three twenty three.

And I'll take it off the air. Thank you. OK, well, OK, thank you. Romans three twenty three does say all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. And we could even say that about ourselves. First of all, we have sinned before we were believers, but we've also sinned since we were believers. Now, are we called sinners? You know, I don't know that it's hard to know how the Bible would advise us about speaking that way.

And the Bible is very realistic. We have called. We've we've repented of a life of sin. We've been called to follow Jesus, which is a life of not sinning, but living in holiness and obedience.

And we have taken up that call. So we are now no longer in pursuit of sin. And therefore, but we're in pursuit of Christ and holiness. So to call ourselves sinners would not be it certainly wouldn't be as appropriate as it would have been back when we were identified as back when we are actually following sin instead of Christ. We if we if we recognize that we have turned from sin to serve the living and true God and are seeking to live in holiness and not in sin, then although we can admit, well, we do sometimes sin, we would see it's not appropriate to call ourselves sinners in the sense that an unbeliever is a sinner and who doesn't live to please God. On the other hand, Paul did say, you know, this is a faithful saying that Christ died to save sinners of whom I am chief. Now, Paul did use the he did use the present tense. And so some people would say he still considered himself to be a sinner and the chief of sinners at that, even though he's an apostle and a follower of Christ. Now, that may be argued from that present tense, but I'm not sure that Paul meant it that way. I think Paul would argue that I am the same person, in a sense, who used to persecute the church.

That's me. I'm in that sense, the one who has committed the worst of sins and I'm the worst sinner. But I don't know that he's saying anything about his present living as a sinner.

I don't believe he did live as a sinner. I think that he may be simply referring to the fact that he is the same person that he was, you know, in a very real sense that he there's continuity. Sure, he's a new person, too, but that's not perhaps the part of the truth that he's focusing on. We are new creation in Christ. But still, I have the same DNA.

I have the same history. I have the same crimes in my past that I had before I was a Christian. And therefore, if that person was the chief of sinners, well, that's me. And he may not be referring to anything about his own present activities, and I suspect he's not. So again, the Bible doesn't really encourage Christians to call themselves sinners, but saints. But it also does not encourage us to be arrogant or to pretend that we are without sin. If anyone says he is without sin, he's a liar.

The truth is not in him. So I would just never use the word sinner to describe myself as my identity unless I was talking to another person who says, hey, I'm a sinner, too, you know, I mean, in the sense that I'm somebody who commits sin sometimes. It's like calling someone a thief. Have I ever stolen anything?

Well, actually I have when I was younger. Okay, does that make me a thief? I guess it does, but I don't steal things now. But if somebody is a career thief and that's what they do regularly, then calling them a thief and calling me a thief would be a very different thing. And it would be very strange, in fact, for anyone who knows how I live to call me a thief, you know, because I'm not a thief anymore. But I'm the same person who used to, you know, do bad things and still once in a while do bad things so I don't steal things. But the point is, it's a word that is flexible and we'd have to, if we call ourselves by that word, we'd have to make it very clear in what sense we mean that so that people don't get the wrong impression, think that we're saying the same thing as when we call a rebel against God a sinner.

That's how I would wrestle with that question. Thank you. Ken from Monrovia, California, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Yeah, thanks for taking my call. Mark 6, verse 35, it says, And when the day was far spent, the disciples came to him and said, Thus, this is a deserted place, and already the hour is late. Then you skip down to 38, it says, But he said to them, How many loaves do you have?

Go and see. And when they found out, they said, Five and two fish. Then he commanded them to make all, to sit down and group in green grass. My question is, where was, where did the green grass come from if it was a deserted place?

I'll take my call after you. Okay, well, I don't think a deserted place is necessarily a sandy desert. A deserted place might have plenty of rain and still be deserted. I think what he's referring to, they were not in a city. They were not in a town area. They were not in a civilized area, a place that, of course, it wasn't deserted while they were there. There were 5,000 of them there.

There were people there. But the point is he's describing the location in contrast to many of the locations where Jesus did his miracles. Most of them were in cities and towns, either in Jerusalem or in Capernaum or someplace like that. But this was an area where there wasn't population living there. And that's, I think, what it means by a deserted place as opposed to a populous place. That would be the main difference. But I don't think deserted means a desert like we think of. We think of a desert as a place that has cacti and sand and Gila monsters and stuff like that.

And it's not suggesting that when it says it was deserted. Thank you for your call. Todd from Idaho. Welcome to the narrow path. Hi, who was Cain's father? Cain's father was Adam. It can't be Adam.

Why not? The Bible tells us because he's not listed as a descendant of Adam. Well, all the descendants of Adam are not mentioned in the Bible. He and his wife.

Right after him. Huh? No, well, Adam and Eve. He was the first born and he was eliminated as a descendant.

That wasn't coincidence. That was his father. No, he was not eliminated as a descendant. When we have the line of Adam given in Genesis 5, it follows the line of Abel. But it doesn't ignore, it doesn't say that Adam didn't have other children, too. In fact, it says specifically, and he had sons and daughters.

It specifically says that in verse 4. So Adam had many sons and daughters. And the Bible follows the line of Abel, not the line of Cain or any of the other sons or daughters. Likewise, after chapter 11, it doesn't follow the lines of any of the kids of Noah, except for Abraham.

And after a while, it stops following all the sons of Abraham, just follows Isaac and Jacob and so forth. So the genealogies, they don't name everybody in every generation who was born from someone. But we do know that Cain was born as a son of Adam because it says in Genesis 4, 1, Adam knew his wife, that means he had sex with her, and she conceived and bore Cain. Okay, so it couldn't be any clearer that Adam had sex with his wife and she conceived and Cain was born. He had two children. No, he had lots of children.

No, he had lots of children. Right, but she had two children right there, Cain and Abel. That doesn't say that Cain came from Adam. The descendants that are listed show who came from Adam. No, I think you're not a very good reader of the Bible, but maybe you're just not a very good reader at all.

If you're sensible, you'll know this sentence means something very specific. Adam knew his wife, Eve, and she conceived and bore Cain. And she said, I have gained a man from the Lord. Now, perhaps you're a serpent seed advocate who believes that Eve had sex with the serpent and that Cain was the son of the serpent. I can't imagine that you're making this point if you're not in that heresy. That is a heresy and it's very clear. Why would the woman say, I have gained a man from the Lord, if in fact it had come from the devil? If she had had sex with the snake and had the child, she'd say, I got this from the Lord. Now, there's not one line in the Bible that would support the idea of the serpent seed doctrine.

And I know you're from Northern Idaho and I know there's some strange cults up there that believe that. I'm sorry, it's a heresy. But thank you for your call. Okay, let's talk to Bernie from Massachusetts.

Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Yes, thank you for taking my call, Steve.

I'd like to revisit a question from a caller a couple of days ago. He asked about saying that in heaven there's no evil, yet evil was found in the heart of Satan. And he gave, I believe, Isaiah 14, 12 as a reference. And you said that this scripture was, there's no mention of Lucifer in there.

I would call it Jesus. Actually, the scripture you gave was from Ezekiel 28. That's where it says you were perfect in all your ways until iniquity was found in you. That's the scripture he was using. But I did say that Lucifer's not mentioned in Ezekiel 28. But I also said, we did talk about Isaiah 14, 12, where the King James version mentions Lucifer. No modern translation would use the word Lucifer there because the Greek doesn't, or the Hebrew. The Hebrew doesn't use the word Lucifer. So would you say then Isaiah 14, 12 is a closer description to what happened to Satan falling out of heaven? I don't believe that Isaiah 14 or Ezekiel 28. I don't think either of them talk about Satan. There's no reference to Satan in either of them. Okay. So then having said that, what would be the best that you can, how would you describe what happened to Satan to the point of even a third of the angels, he got to fall out of heaven?

How can you best describe that? The Bible never mentions a third of the angels falling out of heaven. The idea that a third of the angels fell comes from a single verse in Revelation 12, 4, which does not say anything about angels falling. It says of the serpent, who is the devil, the dragon, his tail drew a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth and the dragon stood before the woman who is ready to give birth to the child.

Now his tail drew the stars of heaven and threw to the earth. Now it doesn't say the stars of heaven are angels. In fact, the idea of the stars being thrown to the earth comes from Daniel.

Revelation has a lot of imagery taken from Daniel, of course. And in Daniel chapter 8 and verse 10, there's a passage that is indisputably about Antiochus Epiphanes, a character who persecuted the Jews in about 168 BC. And it says in Daniel 8, 10, it says, it, meaning the little horn, which represents Antiochus, grew up to the host of heaven. It cast down some of the host and some of the stars to the ground and trampled them. Now this is referring to what Antiochus Epiphanes did as compared to casting stars to the ground. But actually what Antiochus did, he didn't do anything to stars or to angels.

He did crush the righteous Jews who opposed him. And later in Daniel chapter 12 and verse 3, it says, then shall the righteous shine as the stars or as the firmament. And those who turn many righteous to righteous will shine as the stars forever. So in Daniel, stars are representative of righteous people.

And Antiochus Epiphanes cast down righteous people, and that is, he trampled on them. And in Revelation, it picks up that same image. The devil also cast a third of the stars to the ground. Now one could say this refers to angels, but there's nothing in the passage that would suggest it. And if we don't have that, then there's nothing in the Bible that says that a third of the angels fell. There are references to angels falling in 2 Timothy chapter 2, and I think it's verse 6, I think it mentions the angels that fell. And also in Jude, and Jude verse, I think that's maybe, I may have the verse wrong, but it's in Jude only has one chapter, so it should be easy to find. So Jude and 2 Peter 2 both refer to angels that fell, but doesn't say any proportion of them that fell. So a lot of what we've heard about Satan having this rebellion in heaven and drawing a third of the angels with him and being cast out, and he became the devil and they became the demons, that could have happened, but the Bible doesn't say it happened anywhere.

And therefore, it's strictly a tradition. It may be true. I'm not going to say it didn't happen.

I just, if it did, we're not told. Okay, thank you so much. All right, I appreciate your call. God bless you.

You're listening to The Narrow Path Radio Broadcast. Check me out. Don't just believe me. Some things you hear here, you can say, wait a minute, that's not what I've heard. I think he's wrong. Well, I could be wrong, but you should check it out and see. I generally don't affirm anything unless I'm pretty sure.

You're not going to find differently in the Bible, but go ahead and do your own research because I don't want anyone to simply believe me. I have nothing to gain by you believing me. You're listening to The Narrow Path Radio Broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg, and we've been doing this for, you know what, 23 years now? And we're listener supported.

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