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 with an open phone line that you can call if you have questions you'd like to ask about the Bible or the Christian faith or if you have a different viewpoint you'd like to balance comment with. You can call me at the number I'm about to give but I'm also going to let you know in advance the lines are full you won't get through if you call right this moment but you probably will if you call somewhat later in the broadcast so have this number ready 844-484-5737 that's 844-484-5737. Alright our first caller today is Rez in Nevada, California.
Welcome to the Narrow Path. Rez, thanks for calling. Hey Steve, how you doing bud? Good, thanks. Good.
I just hope people continue to keep President in prayer because if Biden gets in we're all headed for boxcars. So anyways I just want to say that. The other thing is I just had a comment and then kind of a question and my comment was I think the older that I get I think that I don't necessarily believe in say universalism but I think there's going to be a lot more people that are going to be saved than not saved and I say this because I'm 46 years old and as I've been working through a lot of my problems I realize that a lot of the things that were inflicted on me in the way that I treat other people are because of your parents and the way they act is because of their parents and so it's a lot of people just operating on almost like a default setting and you know and I think what Jesus said, Father forgive them for they know not what they do.
I know in my case I really don't know what I've done until I continue to just evaluate my life. So I wanted to say that and maybe get your thoughts about that and then the other thing I wanted to say was if all men are created in the image of God which I believe the Father and the Son are one that means to me that the spark of Christ is in all men, every man, even Muslims, Buddhists, people of you know even Aborigine tribes but maybe they don't know it and I wondered if by somehow accepting Christ as our Lord and Savior if that spark that Christ created in everybody now becomes activated because again if we're all created in His image and all men are do we even need to tell people about Jesus and if we do is it just to kind of wake them up and remind them that that Christ that's in them from birth is going to be activated and that's kind of the best way to put that. Well some of the things you've mentioned I don't know that I'd be in a position to answer yea or nay because some of it's not really found in the Bible. There is something maybe a little similar to some of that found in John chapter 1 verse 9 where it speaks of Jesus as the true light who gives light to every man who comes into the world. So it's basically saying that Jesus gives light to every man that comes into the world and that He is that light that enlightens every man that comes into the world. So there is some light in all people whether it's because we are made in the image of God as we certainly are or whether it's because God has put a conscience in people or He's simply committed Himself to communicating with people and therefore there's some degree to which He's given a measure of revelation of Himself to people. It may be little more than the awareness that there must be a God out there.
It may be a little more than the awareness that some things are right and wrong and that any thinking person would realize if some things are right or wrong they must have been determined to be right or wrong by someone above us. I mean anyone who thinks clearly would know those things and therefore probably a lot of people who have never heard of the Bible, never heard of any religion possibly, or maybe they've heard of other religions but they haven't heard of Christ, they might have some light that we don't know about because if Jesus is the one who gives light to everyone who comes into the world then we have to assume that everyone who comes to the world has some light and as it says in John 1-9 that light is Christ. So their response to that light would be in a sense a response to Christ even if they didn't know who He was because He is that light and if they shun the light like John 6 says people do, light comes into the world and they hate the light so they hide in darkness, well then that's their reaction to Christ even if they've never heard of Christ and if they love light, if they seek the light and their desire is to be more enlightened, that's a positive response I would think to the light which if God counts that light to be Christ then it's hard to know exactly how that factors into the possibility of their salvation. But you did ask, you know, if everyone has some little bit of light in them do we really need to tell people about Jesus? Well we need to tell people about Jesus because the light of nature is not enough to really tell them everything we know about Jesus. Well they may not even know that Jesus has come to the earth, they may not know that Jesus died for us, that He rose again, that He's enthroned and He's the ruler of the universe and He commands all men everywhere to submit to Him.
Those things are not necessarily things that you would gain by simply having a basic knowledge of conscience or of the, there must be a God or something like that. Those things are important things and those are, that's what the Gospel is and we preach that Gospel to them so that they'll know it and become a part of it. Now when I say a part of it, I'm not necessarily talking about heaven per se. I believe in heaven and I believe that Christians and who knows, maybe some others may end up there, I don't know. The Bible doesn't tell us who all will end up in heaven and who won't but we know that we who follow Jesus will. People who follow the light they haven't ever heard of Jesus, we don't have any specific information given to us about that but I would say that even if we could say, well some people could go to heaven even if they've never heard about Jesus, if we took that approach, it would still be no argument against preaching the Gospel because for people to go to heaven is not what Jesus came for. Jesus came to establish a kingdom over which he reigns and to recruit into his kingdom his followers and so even if a person, let's say goes his whole life, ignorant of Jesus but because they followed the little light they had, God gives them some kind of a break and he doesn't send them to hell. I mean if that's the case, it would still be that they had missed their one opportunity on earth to serve the interests of God in this planet which is where his interests are.
I mean he made the planet and he put people in charge of it and his desire is that people would have dominion over it and they failed and therefore Jesus came to rescue that and recreate things as it were, create a new kingdom where he's the head and he wants all men to be part of that. Now if people end up in heaven but were never a part of that then maybe they've dodged a bullet but God hasn't gotten from them what he made them for, he hasn't had them members of Christ's body serving in the world, doing Christ's work in the world which was what the body of Christ is here for. They've lived without knowledge of Christ so they can't really escape their demons or even the sin in their lives. Jesus saves from that. The idea that Jesus might or God might forgive people for something he sees in them that we don't know is there, that's his business but our business is to make sure everyone knows that Jesus is the king and that he is recruiting all people to be part of his kingdom, part of his body and to do his work in the world to rescue the world.
So if we don't preach to these people they'll never be part of that and while even if they manage to get to heaven somehow because of the mercy of God, God will have failed to receive what he wants from them and what he wants from us is holiness and loyalty and obedience and service and that's what he made us to do and it's a shame if God doesn't get what he made us for because he deserves it. I appreciate your call. John in Massachusetts, welcome to The Narrow Path, thanks for calling. Hi Steve, can you hear me okay? Sure.
Okay, I have two questions for you and I'll ask them and then I'll get off the air. So my first question is if communion was so different in the early church when I'm reading about it in First Corinthians it seems like it's kind of more like a potluck thing, how is the way we do it today justified? And then my second question is James mentions that we will be judged by the law of liberty, can you explain what the law of liberty is and why freedom isn't oppressive in Christianity? You know, a lot of philosophers have mentioned that we are condemned to be free and that freedom is actually quite oppressive, the ability to choose, so why is freedom a good thing in Christianity and what is that law of liberty?
All right, yeah, I'd be glad to talk about that. First of all about, yeah, you are right I believe that the way they did communion in the Bible is considerably different than the way it is usually done in churches today. Usually in churches today it is a brief interlude in the general worship service where people take a little tiny sip of wine or grape juice and take a little tiny piece of bread and it's all ritualistic, it's all symbolic, it represents the body and blood of Christ. In the early church as we know from reading 1 Corinthians 11, they were actually having a meal and we know this also from the church fathers and what they said about the Agape feast. The main fellowship of the church in the apostolic times and shortly thereafter for the next century or so was not primarily a lecture service in an auditorium, it was table fellowship at a meal and that's obvious again from reading 1 Corinthians 11 but it's also obvious from reading what the church fathers say.
Even Jude mentions the false teachers who have come in and invaded your Agape feasts. So the Christian gathering was more like a meal than it was like a meeting but there was teaching in their lives of course. As far as we know they were taught every day at least in the early church and of course we can be taught every day too. Now we have a lot of opportunities for that but as far as eating together that's the real specialness about getting together as Christians and the communion therefore was a meal that was the center of their meetings. Their meetings also had some teaching, had I'm sure some prayer and some singing but it was the eating together. Not a symbolic eating necessarily but an actual full meal and that full meal was done also in remembrance of Christ. It may well be and we're not told this specifically but we're not told otherwise either, it may well be that at that meal they interrupt the meal briefly to hold up a cup and hold up a piece of bread and say let's eat this in the memory of Jesus' blood and his body. They might have done that or they might have just simply regarded the whole meal. Every piece of bread they put in their mouth, every sip of wine they took was to be a time of remembering what Christ had done for them on the cross. There's much that we're not told.
That's the problem. The New Testament tells us very, very little about the communion meal and what it does tell us. It's pretty much contrary to the way we practice it in most churches today.
As far as the church fathers go they tell us somewhat more but we don't have very many testimonies in the early church to the protocol of a meeting for example and how things were done and I think in fact some of those things even changed a bit over time. I'm not really sure that they would insist upon a particular protocol. They just obviously did it one way instead of another. You asked if the modern way we do it could be considered legitimate.
I would say it could be considered legitimate. I'd much rather do things the way they did it in the New Testament. I don't think there's a legalism about it in the Bible that you have to have it just this way but if you don't have it at a full meal of course you're missing some dynamics that they considered to be important.
So there's not much told. I do have a lecture on it on the Eucharist and communion somewhere on my website and I go into it in detail. Now your other question was about James calling the law of liberty which is the law of love. The law to love your neighbor as you love yourself. What we follow, we follow the law of liberty and he called it that because in keeping God's standards we do so happily because we have love in our hearts that the Holy Spirit puts in there and God's standards simply are all simply the outworking of love. So if you have love in your heart then you want to serve and do good.
That's what your heart tells you to do. When you get to do what your heart tells you to do that's liberty. Now philosophically we might say oh but there's a great burden on those who have liberty because they have responsibility. Well that's true. God apparently felt we could handle that. It's true animals don't have any responsibility before God apparently but we do because we can make choices and we're responsible for the right choices. Is it oppressive?
Well I don't think so. Not if you want to do good. If you don't want to do good I think it's pretty oppressive but if you don't want to do good you're not a Christian anyway so like who cares?
Just do your thing and live with the consequences in the next life or whatever. But I mean if a person wants to do good and anyone who doesn't is not really converted then they then they get to do good. It's not such a it's not not so burdensome. It says in first John chapter 5 this is the love of God that we keep his commandments and they are not burdensome. So yeah I don't see it as such a burden. True there is a burden of responsibility on mankind in general and those who hate God which is perhaps maybe the majority they must find it very burdensome that they have to make choices and suffer consequences for them. But those who want to please God you know they want to make the choices that please God. So and that's what God requires so it's not really such a burden in my opinion.
Certainly I certainly I don't find it to be so but some may I don't think real Christians generally would. Steve in Lakewood Washington welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
Good afternoon. I have two questions I want to ask you and then I'd like to make a major announcement if you'll let me indulge that. My first question is and I suppose I could look it up online and do my own research but I've been getting in the habit of last few Sundays listening to a program similar to yours called the Bible Answers Live hosted by two Seventh-day Adventists namely Doug Batchelor whom you debated about the Sabbath and anyway a few Sundays ago he fielded a question about Preterism and he told the caller that not many people believe in Preterism and basically said it was heretical but he never really distinguished between partial Preterism and full Preterism and so I think he was the only referring to full Preterism when he was saying all this but then he pointed out correctly that most people believe in dispensationalism or futurism but that he and his colleague Gene Ross believed in something called historicism and he said that that model of revelation is what makes the most sense that that is the way to go. My question is stemming from something he said first of all he said first when he was answering that question about Preterism he was only talking about full Preterism so is it possible that he might not even know about partial Preterism but would you say that more people believe in partial Preterism than historicism or not and isn't the partial Preterism paradigm growing rapidly?
Okay well let me address that before you go to your next question. I don't know if Doug Batchelor is familiar with the nuances of different Preterist views. To say that only a few people believe in Preterism I would say that's fairly true of the full Preterism but when it comes to a partial Preterism I think that's a very dominant view. It's not as popular as dispensationalism certainly but I mean it's certainly yes it's a fast growing view but it's also a view that's got respectable leaders through for the past couple centuries who've you know thought that that's the best way to look at the book of Revelation. Now as far as historicists there used to be a lot of historicists. Most Protestants used to be historicists but ever since the late 19th century other views of Revelation have been predominant and now there's not very many historicists. The Seventh-day Adventists are historicists.
There may be other groups that are but I don't know very many. So I would say that historicism and Preterism are both minority views in today's church. However historicism did have a lot of proponents especially from the time of the Reformation until about the early 20th century. So even though not many people are historicists now there have been times where it was the predominant view. Now I don't know if there is ever a time when Preterism was the predominant view so it may be that throughout history there's been more historicists than Preterists. I can't say I don't know nor do I care. I mean if we're concerned about counting noses to determine what's true then we'd have to reject both Preterism and historicism which I'm sure dispensationalists would like for us to do but we don't we don't decide truth on that basis.
What's your second question? My second question is first I'd like to read a scripture then get your response but further for the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine and after but after their own lust shall heap to themselves teachers having itching ears and they shall turn away their ears from the truth and shall be turned away and shall be turned unto fables and that was 2 Timothy 4 3 2 4. Steve you have been fielded many questions about the Sabbath but I just want to officially ask you for the record you have used with your whole heart mind and soul and are willing to do anything that God demands. If you really thought that Sabbath keeping was part of the Christian curriculum you'd do it in a heartbeat wouldn't you? You aren't doing it because you are trying to get out of doing something that the law requires you just know that it is not a requirement of the Christian so you choose not to and legalism is just as bad as lawlessness is it not?
It could well be well certainly I would do whatever I believe the Bible says to do it I mean that's what I've delivered my whole life to doing. I've never understood quite Doug Batchelor's view on this one he and I debated he kept referring to people who don't keep the Sabbath but who keep the other nine of the Ten Commandments as trying to get a 10 percent discount he said off of keeping the law. Well frankly if I was to give myself a 10 percent discount there's other laws and there I'd give myself the discount on and keep the Sabbath because Sabbath keeping is easy.
You know it means sit around just around read the Bible I do that every day anyway so I don't mind doing that on Saturdays you know. So I mean no there's I'm not trying to avoid keeping Sabbath because somehow it's distasteful or or that it's you know too much work or too little work or whatever I don't I never understood why he thought people would try not to keep the Sabbath simply because because they wanted to avoid keeping the law. I mean there's certainly there's certainly other laws that are more of an imposition or would be on me certainly than than keeping Sabbath would be.
But no I mean you can't really judge somebody's heart about something like that. Of course I would keep the Sabbath if I had any reason to believe the Bible wanted to be required it. But you know Doug Batchelor makes it sound like it's a hard thing to do and that people are giving themselves a cut in the in the cost of being a Christian when they cut out the Sabbath requirement like like that's a hard thing and you know I'm going to take the easy way so I won't keep the Sabbath. How could it be taking the easy way to rest on Saturdays.
Yeah I don't understand that thinking on his part. Okay well I would like to make the announcement on myself this time officially on the air if you don't mind but I'd like to talk about the Matthew713.com website and I want to talk as if I'm talking to your listeners and not you okay. Okay but before you do let me just tell our listeners who know nothing about it. Matthew713.com is a website that this this brother works on and some other people and some other people work on it too and it's it takes like radio radio calls from this program and puts them in a topical index and does a lot of other things too so go ahead and tell us more about it Steve. Yes so a lot of you should know about the about the Matthew 713 website now it's been on the link for on the on the neuropath website for about a year now but we've been working on this for two years and I just want to let you know that there's two major I mean there's two ways you can access the questions. The first way is by the date of the show and just scroll through the questions and find them that way. Then the second way is there's a brand new topic index it has just been working for about the last six months where you can find any subject just about and go to that question I mean go to that topic and find a whole bunch of questions on that topic now what I really want to emphasize though because nobody really knows us even people who have been sharing this on Facebook for a long time in their Facebook group for a long time you can share individual questions so any question that you really really like and you want and people say they have this fear of witnessing or evangelizing you can share an individual question and have people say listen to this and get back to me and tell you what you think about it and be a witness to them that way and the way you do that is by going to the date of the question section and hit go to individual call and just paste that URL address and send it anyway however you contact people and unfortunately you can't do that when you're in the topic mode but eventually it will be changed I've been told by Jimmy White who also created the website but I just want you to know that you can share individual questions and that's pretty important to me a whole bunch of people on Facebook do not even know you could do that I just want to let people know that okay thank you Steve I appreciate it and I think Steve told me before there's like I think I think there's over ten thousand questions indexed there which is a pretty amazing feat he's been working really hard on it my wife also works on that website somewhat and this other man that he mentioned is also there's there's it's a group of people actually three people who live in very different places far from each other who are cooperating on that website that's Matthew 7 13 and by the way people often write to me and ask if they can get the notes for my lectures on something or another well the notes are all posted there at Matthew 7 13 all the notes for my lectures that are available that I could send you are there also I'm going to take a break here but with another half hour coming up you're listening to the narrow path we are a listener supported ministry that means we don't have commercials or sponsors or anything else we don't take any commercial breaks and the whole hour we're on the air but we do have to pay for radio time so if you'd like to help us down the air you can write to us at the narrow path P.O. box 17 30 Temecula California 9 2 5 9 3 our website is the narrow path dot com that other website is Matthew 7 13 dot com ours is the narrow path dot com I'll be back in 30 seconds stay tuned small is the gate and narrow is the path that leads to life we're proud to welcome you to the narrow path with Steve Gregg he has nothing to sell you today but everything to give you when today's radio show is over we invite you to visit the narrow path dot com where you'll find top audio teachings blog articles verse by verse teachings and the archives of all the radio shows study learn and enjoy we thank you for supporting the listener supported 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'd like to be on the program you can call this number 844-484-5737 that's 844-484-5737 our next caller is Ian from Tallahassee Florida Ian welcome to the narrow path thanks for calling thank you Steve well um are you uh are you turned down um strangely quietly today because I can barely hear you even on speaker phone to my ear well my volume on my unit is turned all the way up as it is every day so I don't know if things are different at the studio I'm not I'm not at the studio but oh okay um that's clear now um yeah I just had a quick hopefully a quick sort of comment for John who has called in a few times from the Frisco Texas area and then I had a quick question for you from first or second chronicles 2112 I just wanted to say I lived in the Dallas Fort Worth area for about two years and I was originally from the Portland area and I'll say that the political in my opinion the political realm plays a big part much bigger part in Dallas and so sometimes it's tricky to find a church that feels more bible centered without some some of this some stranger seemingly extraneous cultural influences but depending on what kind of service style he's looking for I've had really good experiences with the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod and that's they're actually they're they're just they're densest amount of churches is in that metroplex and then I would definitely listen to sermons before going to a place in one particular case but I do know the the episcopal diocese of Dallas as well as the Anglican Church in that area they they have taken a stand for biblical views on marriage and the bible and and the like so he might look into those but okay okay well I'm sure I'm sure there's yeah I'm sure there's a lot of churches like that around the country and I know he was for those who don't know John from Frisco who has called a few times he has struggles with same-sex attraction and he's looking for right he's looking for fellowship in that area where he I think where he won't feel too judged or suspected or whatever but you know by the way matthew713.com which you mentioned a moment ago it also has kind of a listing people can add to it of fellowship options in different geographical areas and I don't know how many are there at this point it's kind of a new feature but anyone who has a fellowship that they highly recommend and that would be perhaps likable or amenable to the kind of people who listen to this show certainly can can post it out there at matthew713 for the help of others okay so what is your question today sure uh second chronicles 21 talks about uh jehoshaphat sanjoram reigning and it mentions in verse 12 uh elijah sending a letter to king joram and I know that your theologians have dealt with this different ways but I'm curious if it's if you think it might mean elijah since elijah would have been alive at this time but not elijah and since second chronicles also has the typo of eight years for jehoiachin instead of 18 years and so I wasn't sure how you dealt with um I always think that might be a possibility but I'm sure just curious how you deal with elijah there sure well it is it is a big problem I mean uh with with the second chronicles and that it has elijah the prophet writing a letter uh after elijah had left the earth uh because he he was gone at this time so there's been a number of suggestions and the one you made is not an impossible solution that it could be a typographical error made or a scribal error made somewhere along going in and that it was originally elijah that that is very possible other suggestions have been and I'm not saying that all of these are equally plausible or equally respectable but some have thought that elijah might have written a letter to joram prophetically before he went up and that the letter was then delivered to him after elijah's departure to me that doesn't seem very likely uh so I I wouldn't necessarily take that view uh some have thought well maybe there's a different elijah the prophet who lived also that we because there's lots of prophets who are unnamed maybe more than one was named elijah but that doesn't seem likely either because the way he's introduced sounds like it'd be the well-known elijah the prophet one thing is that you know chronicles doesn't mention elijah or elijah elsewhere as the books of kings do although it covers the same period of history elijah and elijah ministered in the northern kingdom and chronicles only covers uh the southern kingdom's history and so chronicles unlike kings though covering the same time period doesn't even talk about the ministries of elijah and elijah but here and that makes that makes it very interesting that there would be such a you know such a statement here and it you know it could easily be one of those things of which we know there are many where a scribal error has changed one word for a very similar word by accident and elijah and elijah could well be the names could have been switched here and that would resolve the problem but again the problem is chronological elijah was taken up in a whirlwind before the time of this king but um and and therefore that this king would receive a letter from his strange now i will say this and i this would not be a mainstream view and i don't hold it but i've heard it suggested that you know when elijah was taken up the bible doesn't say what happened after he was taken up and some of the sons of the prophets thought that he might have landed somewhere because they sent they they sent out a team a search and rescue team after he went up to see if they could find him and they didn't find him but it's interesting that it was a it was not entirely settled in in the minds of the witnesses whether he was taken up permanently into heaven or whether he was just carried away by a whirlwind somewhere and dropped off and there has been at least one suggestion i've heard that elijah was still on earth that he had been taken up but he'd been carried away to some other place and that he wrote a letter from there so i mean there's there's at least three or four different suggestions to me uh you know not knowing which one is true or if there's a fourth one that i don't know about uh i think the idea of a textual uh corruption through a copyist is probably the best suggestion okay um thank you uh all right yeah so yeah i appreciate it steve thank you so much all righty and thank you for your call good talking to you um marie in sacramental california welcome to the narrow path thanks for calling hello hi thank you yes my question has to do with the crossing of the red sea and the location of mount sinai or mount horrib uh-huh i saw a dvd um film a documentary and there's some new research since 20 uh since 2000 by dr leonard molar and he's a medical research scientist and a marine biologist from stockholm sweden and it has to do with the part of exodus uh chapter 14 when god tells moses to have the people turn back and they take a detour of about 18 miles on this dry riverbed and they go to a place called p ha hirof and the documentary puts this forth as meaning the mouth of the gorges and so there's a location on the bay of akaba where there's a tiny peninsula and a beach that's formed by the runoff from this dry riverbed sand and rock and um that's supposedly where this huge group of people were caught between these um huge mountains and the red sea which is still the red sea the yam soup even though it's the bay uh the gulf of aquaba and they also based some of their findings on deep sea dives and sending a camera uh a remote controlled camera down in the depths and they found a ridge that extended from this beach almost clearly across to the other side and then there was another ridge on that side which made the depth of the water a lot less although it was quite deep and they found artifacts at the floor of this um gulf that resemble chariot wheels and i was um it's very convincing because yeah i've seen treatments of that i don't know if i've seen the same one you've seen but i've seen that presentation more than more than once from different sources yeah and you know it it is fairly convincing there may be a few problems with but not as many it seems to me as there are with traditional ideas you know if you can picture the the geographical region there uh arabia is separated from the main body of egypt by a triangular uh piece of land uh which is a peninsula and uh it's called the sinai peninsula today oh yes yes uh and that's the that's where people traditionally have thought that the israelites just wandered for 40 years and and where the uh they think that the uh the mount uh horab or uh sinai is in that sinai peninsula now uh they would have the israelites then crossing the red sea and in the gulf of suez or somewhere above that of course the red sea really is more properly in hebrew the sea of reeds uh although we have a sea called the red sea but it's uh it's called in hebrew it's the sea of reeds that they crossed uh and it we we don't know where it is but traditionally it's been kind of associated with that branch of this of the red sea that is we call the gulf of suez now the the triangular uh peninsula is flanked on uh on the north by the mediterranean sea and on the uh west by the the gulf of suez and on the east by the gulf of akaba and and uh so this new theory is that they didn't cross the gulf of suez or anywhere over there they crossed the gulf of akaba into arabia now uh i i've seen the claim that there are chariot wheels i've seen the pictures of them i'd have to say uh you kind of in some ways have to use your imagination to see a chair wheel there because they're all covered up with coral and things like that and it's kind of you know the shape is not exact but you could kind of see it but uh yeah i i've heard there's a land bridge there uh so i've heard all the things you've said i think while i can't say uh because i haven't studied it like some of these people who make it their specialty have um it strikes me as a very reasonable argument because paul said in galatians for that mount sinai is in arabia yes i was just going to share that but yeah and arabia is not uh the the sinai peninsula uh arabia is across the gulf of akaba from there and therefore it's in another country outside of egypt and outside of uh sinai peninsula but the reason i would say that it also makes more sense that they would have crossed into arabia across the gulf of akaba is because uh if paul said that's where the mount sinai is and by the way there are some photographs of a mountain over there that looks like it could be mount sinai and there's some other artifacts of former campgrounds and stuff at the foot of the mountain which could be blackened at the top they said yes it's like it'd been burned right and uh so i mean that's a good to my mind that's a good candidate for the real mount sinai and moses of course was in midian which is arabia when he uh was tending the sheep of his father-in-law and while he was tending the sheep he went to mount sinai to graze them and that's where he met god now it's hard to believe he would have uh crossed the gulf of akaba with his sheep to get into the sinai peninsula to get to mount sinai there in the traditional spot uh it's much more likely that if he was a shepherd in midian then then the mountain where he was shepherding sheep is probably in midian too which is modern arabia so you know i think i think that theory has merit i i wouldn't you know i wouldn't die for it um but to my mind it seems to fit a lot of things a little better than the traditional view the main problem with it is that in a very short time the israelites had to cross this whole landmass that we call the sinai peninsula and uh you know i've i've measured before i forget how far it is they'd have to go but at quite some distance with sheep and and livestock and children so forth they'd have me moving really fast to get across there in the few days that they had to do it but uh not necessarily impossible well the documentary said that it was like a three-week trip and that it was the same trade route that moses had fleed from farrow on yeah and it was above it was on the sinai peninsula above where the mountains are so higher up and there's a mountain path there where they turned down along suez and then came into the center and it also emphasized that they traveled day and night because of the pillars of fire and a cloud that was with them they were able to travel longer and because they could see and uh then also um when jethro his father-in-law comes to help moses because of all the dilemma of dealing with people and tell them to delegate yeah that mountain is where jethro lived there in midian yeah so yeah and uh right so i mean i i hear you so to me it's a very good theory uh i don't know of any uh i don't know of any uh you know mortal flaws or lethal flaws of the theory so i would say i i kind of uh lean toward it all right thank you so much okay marie thanks for your call god bless i know all right uh john in lake county california welcome to the narrow path yeah can you hear me uh steve yes yes very well okay yeah you're breaking in and out i don't know why maybe it's my end listen i have twofold question one in particular and if we have time the second one um uh you know i i tend to lean to be uh there's two views calvinism and armenianism and i tend to lean towards the armenian view and one of the scriptures i point out and i'm paraphrasing because i don't have the bible with me but i had a little time from work and it was that why does the gate and many will go through it and few uh will find it will uh will go through uh and few will find it right now the fact that you will find it implies that there's some kind of effort going on on the individual's part because if god has predestined somebody there's no reason to find it i mean is that a good argument well since i'm not a calvinist it sounds like a good argument to me um i think they would say well the fact that god predestined people doesn't mean that he didn't also predestined the means you know that they'd say god does not only predestined the ends but also the means and that god's will is that some people find it through searching you know and so forth um but i but it does it it does seem to imply that there's some kind of effort going on in the individual what i get concerned about calvinism is is and i think you brought it up right is the fact that there's nothing we could do to change it if you're going to be saved whether you want it you know i'm saying yeah you're going to be saved and that really bothers me i've always been bothered by that yeah well it bothers me a little too now they would say they would say well no one's going to be saved who doesn't want to be because the in the process of saving people god regenerates them god unilaterally changes their heart but that doesn't change the fact that before he did that in their view they were haters of god because all people in their view are haters of god until they're regenerated so that means that they were people who did not want god by definition if they were totally depraved by calvinistic definitions that means they're haters of god and and therefore for him to unilaterally regenerate them and change their mind uh that's taking somebody against their will and changing their mind like you might if you drugged somebody and made them compliant you know i mean they the calvinists hate it when i use this illustration but i have to say as much as i have understood the calvinism by talking to them reading them and debating them uh their view amounts to god taking somebody who hates him and unilaterally making them love him and i you know is that much different than a guy giving a girl uh you know a roofie i mean she doesn't want him she doesn't want him when she's in her own state of mind but if he can do something against her will that forces her to change her mind well then then you know he's got then she's willing i've always right i've always i've always had that problem i've always thought that there's two sides yes god can predestine somebody because of his foreknowledge okay because he's he's the ultimate at the beginning in the end but there's got to be some kind of effort on an individual that that is free will where you where you have your own volition i'll tell you what anything else yeah this this whole subject is of course a very large and long-standing debate and um therefore you know we can't really cover it now in the in the few minutes we have here i would suggest you go to my website the narrow path.com and look under the tab that says topical lectures and there you'll find a lot of lectures of mine that on everything but there's a set of lectures called god's sovereignty and man's salvation and it's all about calvinism and armenianism and it's very thorough it's quite a few lectures and it goes through all the points of calvinism and all the scriptures they use and all all that and i think that um i'm not a calvinist so it's going to come out not on the on the side of calvinism but it it will get to the conclusions uh without neglecting any argument or any scripture that the calvinists make that's at my website the narrow path.com and the lecture series at the topical lectures tab is uh god's sovereignty and man's salvation so i just suggest if that's an interesting topic to you you might want to might want to go there okay let's talk to june in louis california hi june welcome to the narrow path hello thanks for thanks for taking my call um i have never um really researched tithing i've just thought it was ten percent and then there are other places that you want to donate and um i i'm blessed to have some money um that i can do both with now and and i had kind of made my mind which how i wanted to go and a friend said they are very definitely different things tithing as opposed to and or donations and so that's caused me to rethink and so i'm i'm wondering your take on it okay well my take is this a tithing is in fact different than donating but tithing is not a new testament practice it's an old testament practice uh and it tithe means tenths and god told israel that they needed to support the levites who worked in the tabernacle and in the temple by bringing a tenth of their produce each year uh in the harvest time and bringing it to the temple and that would become the food for the levites now that uh that practice was never recommended in the new testament that is not recommended for christians it's true that jesus mentioned that the pharisees who were not christians and jew they were jews that they had paid their tithes and they had done well to do so some people think we'll see therefore jesus tells us that we should do it no he told the pharisees that they should do it because they were jews they weren't his followers they weren't christians jesus never told his followers to ever give ten percent instead he told us to be generous uh to help the poor and and to a few people he said sell all that you have and give to the poor but the idea in christianity is we don't own ninety percent and god gets ten god owns a hundred percent and we steward it or we manage it for him and uh so the way that all of our money is used is to be done to the glory of god now obviously supporting your family supporting the church you attend and things like that those would be consistent with glorifying god but so is the helping of poor people if you send money to some industry that does good to you know starving children in haiti that's as much a gift to god as it is if you give it to the church there's no nothing in the bible that ever mentions the local church by the way the what we call local churches don't are not found in the bible in the in the bible the local church was all the christians in a town nowadays a local church or what we call local church is one uh 501 c3 on one corner of a town that operates totally without respect to the interests of another 501 c3 uh two to two blocks down and likewise throughout the whole town those kinds of 501 c3 churches don't didn't exist in the bible the church is simply the fellowship of all those who are truly christ's followers and all the followers of christ in one town are a single church and all the all the followers of christ in the whole world are a single church so if you're if you're giving to christians around the world to meet the needs of missionaries let us say or or ministries that operate around the world or or any or even in the nation anywhere if it's a worthy ministry you're giving to god if you help the poor if they're worthy of it that is to say if they're not you know scam artists or something claiming to be poor well that's giving to god so there's nothing in the bible that says you should take ten percent and give it to your local church since the bible knows nothing about local churches as we know them today nor does it say anything about christians tithing the fact that almost every pastor teaches that you should pay a tithe to your local church when the bible doesn't have a word about it ought to raise some suspicions of what motivates that teaching but i'm not against pastors i'm just against them not teaching the truth and that is something that is not the truth uh you know your your money all belongs to god and someday we'll all stand before god and say so let's bring out the ledger and see how you used my money oh you use it for you i thought you were supposed to use my money for me uh and and that's how the christian needs to look at at the whole tithing and giving issue uh so i don't i don't believe that tithing is is taught anywhere in the new testament jesus didn't teach it to the disciples the apostles didn't teach it and the idea that you have to give to your local church is entirely extra biblical since the what we call a local church has no parallels in the bible i appreciate your call june i need to try to take another call just i'm almost out of time here um uh raylene from honolulu hawaii hello hi hi hello can you hear me yes but you're gonna speak quickly because we're almost out of time okay um i i don't know i've got so much to tell you but anyways you know i've been through so much in my life and i could see when i was very young because i got baked by the dog ever since then um growing up i could see and i could feel i like different from everybody like i was wish that people could tell me what was different at the darkest uh hurting time like a suicide happened you know and they blame me and stuff um i had a cross with jesus behind me and i was like a month sitting down and no one could talk to me and i couldn't i didn't talk to anybody but i felt so empty but one day i said i'm all alone and his voice came from like above was so deep and you're not alone i hold like what was that so i jumped up and started crying because you're right i was sitting in front of the cross all right well i'm gonna have to leave it there because we're out of time for the program but sounds like a dynamic uh experience thank you for sharing it with us you've been listening to the narrow path radio broadcast my name is steve greg we are listener supported if you'd like to write to us you can write to the narrow path p.o box 1730 Temecula California 92593 or you can go to the narrow path dot com our website everything is free there but you can donate there at the narrow path dot com let's talk again tomorrow god bless you thanks for joining us
Whisper: medium.en / 2024-01-25 12:42:30 / 2024-01-25 13:02:21 / 20