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In this insightful broadcast, Steve Gregg answers listener questions about praying to the Father, drawing on Jesus’s teachings. The episode further unravels the mystery behind punishment with ‘stripes’ and engages with the intriguing topic of genetic beginnings from Adam and Eve. Stay tuned for a deep dive into whether women can be pastors and insightful discussions on potential signs of the end times.
SPEAKER 1 :
Thank you.
SPEAKER 09 :
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. whenever we can be, and that would include today. If you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith, we welcome you to join in to the conversation by calling in this hour and having a question prepared. Unless you want to call because you have a disagreement with the host, in which case feel free to call also. but have your comments prepared also because we don’t like to keep many people waiting behind, so we encourage you to be as succinct as possible. We certainly don’t limit the number of questions. Well, I guess I was going to say we don’t limit the number of questions you can ask on one call. We do, but we don’t care how often you call in. You’re welcome to do so with any questions you have about the Bible or the Christian faith, and we will gladly talk to you and try to give you a A biblical answer, if we can. The number to call is 844-484-5737. That’s 844-484-5737. If you’d like to be on the program today, beginning tomorrow, I’m going to be speaking in the Dallas area, and I’ll be speaking there tomorrow morning. morning and tomorrow evening. And the next Saturday morning and evening also, this is going to be in Coppell or Coppell. I actually don’t know how to pronounce it, but just outside Dallas. And I’m going to be speaking on Isaiah. It looks like I’m going to be doing like two morning lectures in in each block. So two morning lectures each morning, that makes four, and two evening lectures each evening, that makes eight altogether on the book of Isaiah. So this is going to be a fairly in-depth plunge into the book of Isaiah. Unfortunately for some of you who work, our first lectures are going to be in the morning. Tomorrow’s Friday and therefore it’s a weekday. Many of you may not be able to fit that in, but if you can’t, still come in the evening, and you’ll see the times and place of that listed at our website, thenarrowpath.com, under announcements. Now, in addition to these two days in Koppel, I’m going to be in Bulverde in Bernie for a few days, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday night, I think. And then I’m going to be in the Houston area. I believe it’s on Wednesday and Thursday night. And then I’ll be back in the Dallas area on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday again. So I’m going to be in Dallas. I’m going to be in the Hill Country where Bo Verde and Bernie are. Then I’ll be in Houston. Then I’ll be back in Dallas again over the next week. If you live in any of those places and want to join us for any of those gatherings, they are listed. Time and place are given at our website, thenarrowpath.com, under the tab that says Announcements. All right. I’m looking forward to seeing many of our listeners at these events. Our first caller today is Michael from Englewood, California. Michael, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Thank you.
SPEAKER 02 :
Hi, Steve. I just had a question about a viewpoint. I believe it’s Matthew 24, 41. And I think you said something about where two men will be working in a field, one will be taken and one left. And I believe you said like the one left is saved and the one that was taken is dead. But I always took that to mean the one… that was taken was basically raptured up or saved and the one that was left was kind of left to burn on earth. I’ll take your thoughts on that off the air if that’s okay.
SPEAKER 09 :
Okay. Yeah, I appreciate your call. Well, yeah, the way you’ve heard it before is no doubt the way most people have heard it. I know I did most of my life. Jesus said two will be sleeping in one bed, one will be taken in the other left. Two will be grinding at the mill, one will be taken at the other left. Two will be working the field, one will be taken at the other left. And this is popularly taught to mean the rapture will take place and that the one who is taken will be the believer, taken into heaven, presumably. And then the one that’s left behind is… I mean, everyone’s heard of the Left Behind novels. The very term Left Behind is taken from this passage. Although, interestingly, the passage doesn’t use the expression Left Behind. The Left Behind novel series, I think, for its title, is imitating an old song from 1970 by Larry Norman called I Wish We’d All Been Ready, where he says the time is… The sun has come and you’ve been left behind. And with the implication that the rapture comes, takes away the Christians, and then the others are left behind to face the tribulation on earth. So that’s the popular view. And the Left Behind series took the term left behind from that song, I’m sure, because the term left behind is not found in the Bible. And they basically taught the same thing in those novels, that the church is going to be raptured and followed by death. people living in a horrible time of tribulation on the earth. Now, Jesus said this on one or two occasions. We have two passages where Jesus is quoted as talking about this. One of them, as you pointed out, is in chapter 24 of Matthew. And what Jesus said, I’m going to read a longer context so we can get it right here. In the context, he says in verse 36, Now, the people who didn’t know until the flood came and took them all away were the ones who were not in the ark, the ones who were swept away to their doom by the flood. He says, One will be taken and the other left. Watch, therefore, for you do not know at what hour your Lord is coming. So he said, it’s like the days of Noah. What was the days of Noah like? Well, the righteous entered into the ark and then the flood came and took away the wicked. meaning killed them. They were all taken in the judgment of God. And he says that’s how it will be when the Son of Man comes. Two people will be very much in close proximity. One will be taken. Now, in the story of Noah, the ones that were taken are the unbelievers. They were taken out of this. They were killed by the flood. And the other be left, which simply means remain. They will not be taken. They will not be destroyed. They will stay alive. They’ll remain. So the wicked will be destroyed and the righteous will remain. Now, let me say that in Luke, I believe we have an even clearer teaching that this is the meaning of it. And I will point this out because someone wants to probably write to me and tell me as if I don’t know that the word taken, when it says the flood came and took them all away, in the Greek it’s a different verb. then the one should be taken. Both mean taken, and they’re different Greek words, but the concept, in my opinion, is the same. That they’ll be taken out of the land of the living. They’ll be snatched away to their doom. And just like the people were when the flood came and took them away. But if you look at the parallel in Luke 17, we find that Jesus is saying the same prophecy. And it says, beginning at verse 34, Luke 17, 34, Jesus said, I tell you, in that night there will be two men in one bed. The one will be taken and the other will be left. Two women will be grinding together. One will be taken and the other left. Now, Matthew doesn’t give us the follow-up on this. It says in verse 37, The disciples answered and said to Jesus, Where, Lord? Now, that’s an important part of this teaching. One will be taken and the other left. And the disciples said, Where? Where are they going to be taken to? And he said, this was his cryptic answer, he said, Wherever the body is, or the corpse is, there the eagles will be gathered together. Now, what Jesus said is that where there are corpses, there’s birds who want to eat their corpses. Wherever the corpse is, the eagles, some would say the vultures, will be gathered together. Okay, so what’s he saying? People will be taken. Where? Where will they be taken? Not into heaven, certainly. He says, no, you want to find them. It’s not hard to find them. Wherever corpses are, there’s birds. So he’s saying where there’s smoke, there’s fire. You know, you want to find the fire. You know, follow the trail of smoke down to the ground. You want to find dead bodies? Well, the eagles will be gathered there. Birds will be gathered there to eat them. So Jesus, when they said, where will they be taken? Jesus cryptically says, well, there will be birds to guide you there if you want to find them. You want to find corpses? Follow the birds. So, that’s, obviously he’s saying the ones who are taken are, in fact, corpses. They are dead. Now, this is, of course, a little different than what, I mean, very different than what dispensational teachers teach us about it. However, it’s very much the same as what the Old Testament teaches. If you look at Psalm chapter 91, excuse me, Psalm 91 says, Let’s see where I want to begin here. I want to start at verse 6. No, let’s make it verse 7 and 8. Psalm 91, 7 and 8. The psalmist said, A thousand may fall at your side, and ten thousand at your right hand, but it shall not come near you. That is, God’s judgment will not come near you. So he’s clearly saying that, you know, the wicked, even in close proximity to the righteous… will be taken out. And that’s basically what the Old Testament understanding was of such things. The Bible frequently says, for example, in Psalm 37, verse 10, Indeed, You will look carefully for his place, but it shall be no more. The meek shall inherit the earth, which sounds like what Jesus said in the Beatitudes, and shall delight in the abundance of peace. So he basically says the wicked will be taken away. The wicked will be taken out. It says in verse 20, the wicked shall perish. And the enemies of the Lord, like the splendor of the meadows, shall vanish into smoke. They shall vanish away. So this is the basic teaching of the Old Testament about what happens to the wicked and to the righteous. The righteous remain in the land. They inherit the earth. Whereas the wicked, well, they’re judged. They’re taken. Now, Proverbs also says this in Proverbs chapter 2. I mean, if we simply want to multiply instances of the Bible telling us the same thing in Proverbs chapter 2. Excuse me, I’m turning my page. I literally turn pages. I don’t look things up in a computer here. Okay, Proverbs 2 at verse 21 and 22 says, For the upright will dwell in the land, and the blameless will remain in it. But the wicked shall be cut off from the earth, and the unfaithful be uprooted from it. So the wicked will be uprooted. from the earth, and the wicked will be cut off from it, but the righteous will remain in it. And that’s what Jesus said again, blessed are the meek, they shall inherit the earth. And several other places in the Bible teach similar things. So this is what I understand Jesus to say. Even though they’re close to each other, a thousand may fall at your side, and ten thousand at your right hand, Psalms said. But it won’t come near you. So also, even if you’re in the same bed or the same field working with someone who’s wicked, who will suffer God’s judgment at the coming of Christ, they’ll be destroyed. And the righteous will not. It says in 2 Thessalonians 1.8, it says that Jesus will come in flaming fire, taking vengeance on those who don’t know and who don’t obey the gospel. So these are the numerous passages that tell us that kind of thing. So even if we didn’t have these other passages, we could see that in Matthew 24, Jesus compares those who were taken, as opposed to those who were left, with those who were taken in the flood of Noah’s day. And specifically in Luke 17, when the disciples say where, he speaks of them being corpses. Where their corpses are, the eagles will be gathered there. So those are my thoughts on that. I realize many people have different views on that, and they’re welcome to. But I used to, too, until I studied it out. Once you study it out, of course, you have reason to doubt the popular view. Okay, let’s talk to Oscar from Mount Vernon, New York. Hi, Oscar. Good to hear from you.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yes, sir. Thank you. In 1 Corinthians 1, verse 18, I don’t fully understand it. Is this verse saying that those who are not saved cannot respond or understand God?
SPEAKER 09 :
1 Corinthians 1, 18?
SPEAKER 07 :
That’s correct.
SPEAKER 09 :
Okay, I’m turning there. Hang on. You want to read it to me?
SPEAKER 07 :
It says about those who are… Preaching on the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing. But to the believer, it’s the power of God to salvation. It’s kind of confusing to me because if a person doesn’t understand, is he saying that those who are not saved cannot understand or respond to God?
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, he’s speaking generically. He says a little later or right at that point that the Jews are seeking a sign and the Greeks are seeking wisdom. And, you know, the Jews who are looking for a sign, they’re offended by the weakness of Christ dying on a cross. And the Greeks who are looking for wisdom are offended by the whole idea that one man could die on the cross for some other people, and therefore it’s foolishness to them. Now, he’s not saying that every single Jew and every single Greek finds it foolish. And he does refer to those who believe, who find it to be both powerful and wise. So, you know, if someone’s saying, well, until you believe… The gospel always seems foolish to you. Well, I can’t remember any time in my life that the gospel seemed foolish to me. Even before I was old enough to really believe and be saved, I suspect. I don’t think everybody finds it to be foolish. I think the ones who don’t end up becoming believers. They are the ones who believe. But they didn’t always believe. And to say that everyone who now believes found the gospel to be foolish… Before they believed. I don’t know that, I don’t think that would, we could interview a lot of people about that. I don’t think we’d find that to be the case with all of them. He’s speaking about in general. In general, Greeks, pagan Greeks, are looking for wisdom. And the gospel message does not satisfy their desire for wisdom. It sounds foolish to them. Yeah, well, I mean, as a class, not every last one of them. Lots of Greeks got saved. But the same thing with Jews. Jews, it’s not what they’re looking for in a Messiah either. But many thousands of Jews did get saved. So I realize that Calvinists, and almost all the time whenever you call, you have something that you’ve heard from Calvinists, which is fine. I mean, I don’t mind you asking those questions about Calvinism. But Calvinists would say, well, see, Paul is saying that until you believe, the gospel will be foolish to you. And that would mean, of course, you would never believe it. So this they would use for their view of unconditional election, that God has chosen to give faith to people who would never otherwise have it, that they are elected or chosen to be the recipients of faith and salvation. which I don’t believe the Bible says that. I don’t think the Bible ever says that God regenerates people who are not already believers. The Bible always says that if we believe, we will have eternal life. Well, having eternal life is what happens when you’re regenerated. So believing is the condition for eternal life. So the Calvinist says, no, faith is not the condition for eternal life. It is the the result of eternal life. God gives you eternal life first, and then you can believe. And so they would use a verse like this to make their point. But I think to make their point, they have to make this an absolutist statement, which, by the way, Calvinists commonly do. I mean, they’ll take the things from the Psalms and from Isaiah, which Paul quotes in Romans 3, verses 9 through 18 or so, And they’ll say, see, this is absolutely true. No one seeks after God. There’s no one who does good. We just have to take that in an absolute sense. Except you can’t, because David, who said those things, was one who did seek God. In other words, he was an exception to the general hyperbole. He was speaking in hyperbole. Just like, you know, I might say, there aren’t any churches that you sing the old hymns anymore, you know. Well, that’s more of a complaint than a specifically technically accurate statement. There are some that do. But in frustration, people might say, well, nobody sings the hymns anymore. And David’s saying, no one’s seeking God anymore. No one’s seeking God. He’s complaining about the spiritual state of his society. But he’s certainly not saying that’s literally true, because in the same psalm where he says that, which is Psalm 14, just read a few verses down, he says, God is in the generation of the righteous. Oh, okay, so there’s a generation of the righteous, and God is in them? Well, then I guess some people do seek God. The statement that no one seeks God and that no one does good obviously isn’t absolute because David knows the people who do, in fact, do good and who are the generation of the righteous. David himself being one of them. Now, of course, what a Calvinist would say is, well, yeah, the ones like David and the generation of the righteous, they’re the elect ones that God has put it in them to be righteous. Otherwise, they’d be just like everyone else who doesn’t seek God. Well, I mean, that’s reading something into the text. That’s reading your theology into the text. Actually, you can’t very well do that because people use that very psalm to prove their theology, namely that no one seeks God. And then when you find out the passage says, well, there are people, in fact, who seek God. Oh, well, then we’ll have to make those to be someone that David never identifies them as, namely an elect group that God has unconditionally elected and irresistibly brought to himself. Now, that’s Calvinism. That’s reading Scripture through a theological lens, and especially strange to do when that very passage says, is the one you’re trying to do to prove your lens is correct. It’s one of the proof texts for Calvinism. So Calvinists do that. They’ll take statements of hyperbole, and there’s lots of hyperbole in the Bible, and they’ll take poetic statements, they’ll take metaphorical statements, and they’ll just make them literal and absolute, which is, you know, people are free to do that. But they’re not free to do that and have my respect as exegetes. You can’t just take everything literal, even things that are poetic and metaphoric and hyperbole, and have my respect if you want me to see you as an exegete of Scripture. But Calvinists, in my opinion, are not, generally speaking, exegetes. I remember James White. wrote an article, before I knew who he was, someone sent me an article he wrote about Calvinism, just before I debated Douglas Wilson in Idaho about the subject. And I was so surprised reading this article about James Hunt, because he said, Calvinism is an exegetical viewpoint, which means it’s drawn from an exegesis of Scripture. And I had been reading Calvinism so long, I knew that wasn’t true. I know how they take Bible verses. They just take them, they wrench them completely out of context, miss all the figures of speech that the author intended. They fail to compare them with other scriptures on the same subject, which contradict their view. And they’ll just cite them as proof. That’s called proof texting, when you can find a verse that sounds like it says what you want it to say, and you pull it out and say, there it is, my view is true. That’s a very shallow way to study scripture, and it certainly is not exegesis.
SPEAKER 07 :
Oh, okay. I was speaking to a pastor, and I told him about we have a choice in salvation, but he disagreed with me. So I told him why. And then he told me, well, if we have a choice, then God will not be in complete control. That’s the Calvinist talking point. When he told me that, I was kind of puzzled. I didn’t say anything to him, but I didn’t fully understand.
SPEAKER 09 :
Right. It’s a Calvinist talking point that if we have free choice, then God doesn’t make all the decisions. Yep. That’s right. That’s exactly right. You see, Calvinism teaches that we don’t have free choice and that God does make all the decisions, which means even the decisions about us sinning, even the fall of Adam and Eve, God ordained it to happen. They didn’t have free choice, according to Calvinism. God ordained it before they were created that they would fall and that we’d all suffer because of it and that… The majority of the human race would go to hell and burn forever, even though they never had a choice about the matter, because every choice someone makes, even the choice to be saved or to reject salvation, God foreordained that they would make that choice and they could do nothing more or different. So somehow Calvinists think that by having God be the one who makes all the choices, this somehow exalts him more. To me, it blames him. It blames him for every evil thing people do because they couldn’t do. Otherwise, God ordained that they would necessarily do those things. They had no choice in the matter. Now, Calvinists often say that God is not the author of sin. But they also say that God ordained that sin would take place every time it does. I’m not sure how they worked that out. It seems like if God’s the one who makes it happen, he’s the one who decided it would happen before even the sinner ever was born. I don’t know how that is him not being the author of sin. But the thing is they just don’t like the expression that God is the author of sin. And so they say he’s not. But, you see, they also say that God wrote the whole book of our lives and that we don’t have any choices we make at all. Well, the Bible doesn’t tell us that God wrote the book of our lives, okay, first of all. But if he did and he’s not the author of sin, as they also say, well, then the book of my life must have a co-author, you know. If God didn’t offer sin, and yet he offered my life, well, who wrote the sin parts? Who decided that I would sin when I sinned? Well, I believe it’s me. I believe I made the choice to sin. But they say, no, God did. So, you know, they really have a difficult, they kind of talk at cross purposes with themselves, with their own theology. Because they’ll say God’s not the author of sin, but he did foreordain everything that happened. Well, doesn’t that mean he authored what would happen? Well, no, we won’t use the word author because that sounds bad to say that God’s the author of sin. Okay, but no matter how the word sounds, aren’t we talking about the same thing? I have to say there’s a reason why no Christian believed in Calvinism until about 400 A.D., The early church fathers knew about these doctrines, but they were part of Manichaeanism, which they called heresy. They refuted these ideas. It wasn’t until Augustine, around 400 A.D., that such ideas as the Calvinists now hold were introduced into the church. And that is a fact. Even many Calvinists admit this. But, you know, whether they did or not, anyone can study church history and see this is true. Hey, I’ve got to take a break, but I appreciate your call, Oscar. Thanks for joining us. You’re listening to The Narrow Path. We are listener-supported. If you’d like to go to our website, you can see how to support us if you want to, or you can just take what’s free there, which is everything. We have a break coming up in another half hour, so don’t go away.
SPEAKER 01 :
Thank you very much.
SPEAKER 09 :
Welcome back to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg, and we’re live for another half hour, taking your calls. You have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith, or you disagree with the host and want to balance, comment, please give me a call. We have a couple lines open. The number is 844-484-5737. That’s 844-484-5737. All right. We’re going to talk next to Alice from Turner, Maine. Hi, Alice. Welcome. Hi.
SPEAKER 04 :
I just have a simple question, and then I will take my answer off air to open a line for someone. Noah built the ark, and his family got on the ark, and then the Lord put the flood that took everybody out. Does that mean that when Noah and his family found land again, that it was Noah’s family that brought sin back into the world? I’m a bit confused on that one.
SPEAKER 09 :
No, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, obviously they were the only humans. And we read about Noah sinning after the flood in chapter 9 of Genesis. And we also read of his son Ham sinning. I don’t say it’s right after the flood, but probably within less than a year these stories took place. And then, of course, we read of many people sinning after that. Yeah, human beings just have a tendency to sin. And so God kind of swept the world clean of sinners who had become so corrupt that he couldn’t bear them anymore. Remember before the flood, God said, my spirit shall not always strive with men. I’m going to give them another 120 years, which is how long it was apparently until the flood came to wipe out the wicked. And it says in Genesis 6, at that time, God saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and the world was filled with violence, and the thoughts and intents of every man’s heart was only evil continually. So we’re talking about a very great degree of depravity. basically, you know, dominating the whole world. And so God took one righteous family, more or less, and put them in an ark and wiped out the rest and started over with this other family. But this other family, they weren’t divine beings. They were human beings. So they also sinned, all sin, unfortunately. And as Noah’s sons had children and grandchildren, great-grandchildren, you know, They multiply more sinners in the world. And, of course, Jesus indicated that that probably wasn’t the last time things were going to be wiped out. All right? Okay, thank you for your call. Let’s talk to Luella in Sun City, California. Hi, Luella. Welcome.
SPEAKER 06 :
Hi, Steve. Just a quick question. I must be your neighbor. I think I missed up the road from you.
SPEAKER 09 :
Could be. I’m in Temecula.
SPEAKER 06 :
Temecula? Oh, well, I’m still close. This is a short question, probably very simple. God has never been seen. We have no idea what Jesus looks like. And is the Spirit visible? Now, who are we praying to?
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, Jesus said, when you pray, say, Our Father, which art in heaven. So I guess we’re praying to the Father. Jesus more than once told us to pray to the Father. He always said, you know, you earthly fathers know how to give good gifts to your children, even though you are evil people. How much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask him? And so Jesus, on many occasions, actually spoke about praying to the Father. The Father is God.
SPEAKER 06 :
He did.
SPEAKER 09 :
Pardon?
SPEAKER 06 :
Our Father is God.
SPEAKER 09 :
Right.
SPEAKER 06 :
Right. Okay. It just seems like we have so many different names for him that I wonder whether there’s any particular. So our Father is the best name.
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, that’s who I call him because Jesus said, when you pray, say, Our Father. So when I pray, I say, Our Father. Okay. I mean, I’m not legalistic about it, but I will say that if I have instructions from Jesus, I don’t innovate. I mean, I just assumed what he said rather than, you know, imagine whether he would tolerate some other kind of approach, which he will probably do. I don’t believe God’s legalistic, but, I mean, if I can do it the way Jesus said or do it some other way, why would I insist on doing it another way? I’m a follower of Jesus.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yes. Fine. Thank you for your answer.
SPEAKER 09 :
All right, sister. Thank you for your call. Good talking to you.
SPEAKER 06 :
All right.
SPEAKER 09 :
We’re going to talk next to John from Vancouver, British Columbia. Hi, John. Welcome.
SPEAKER 08 :
Hi. I got a speakerphone. Is that okay? Okay.
SPEAKER 09 :
So far it sounds good. Sometimes speaker phones make it sound echoey, but I don’t think that’s happening right now. Go ahead.
SPEAKER 08 :
I think it’s okay, yeah. I called before and I didn’t really understand the answer that you gave, so I have to ask you again. I’m sorry about that. It’s a parable or whatever it is, but Jesus said something about being punished with, well, it says stripes, yeah, and I still don’t understand that. There’s Really mysterious to me. Well, I mean… I can turn it off and let you answer.
SPEAKER 09 :
What part is hard? The word many or the word few? Or, I mean, what is it that’s hard here?
SPEAKER 08 :
Being punished with stripes. I mean, is that after heaven or before heaven? What’s the context?
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, it’s not in heaven. No, it’s not in heaven. It’s obviously talking about judgment.
SPEAKER 08 :
Oh, okay.
SPEAKER 09 :
Okay, so, I mean, what Jesus said is that those who have known their master’s will and did not do it, when they are judged, they will be beaten with many stripes. And those who did not know their master’s will but still did things wrong, not knowing it, as they were ignorant of it, more or less, more innocent of the matter, they won’t be beaten with as many stripes. Even if they deserve stripes, they’ll receive fewer. And then he says, for to whom much is given of them, much will be required. So the idea is that if you know God’s will, you’re more responsible than someone who doesn’t. Now, in both cases, we’re talking about disobedient people. Some people are knowingly disobedient. Some are not so knowingly disobedient. And so the measure of their punishment differs depending on the you know, the measure of their culpability in that respect. Now, I don’t know if this is talking about at the second coming, but I believe it is. I mean, that strikes me as the context of the passage, which, by the way, for those who don’t know, this is found in Luke chapter 12 and verses 47 through 48. And And it’s right after the place where it seems like Jesus is talking about coming back at his second coming. So I’m assuming this is the judgment on the wicked, that they will not all receive exactly the same judgment because not all are equally culpable. Some have a greater measure of innocence because they didn’t know much. So that’s what he’s talking about. I mean, as far as stripes are concerned, this is simply referring to servants being whipped, by a master, and it’s a parable, so I don’t think God’s going to actually pull out a whip and whip anybody on their back, but he’s describing a master and his servants. He said the master who gives his servants things to manage for him and goes away, he expects them to be faithful about his business, and he wants to find them going about that business when he returns. And if he doesn’t, there will be punishment for them. Now, this is from using the framework of a household with servants and so forth. The idea is the servants are supposed to be busy with their master’s business. That’s what being a servant is. And if the master comes home and finds they haven’t done what he told them to do, well, then there will be discipline, there will be punishment. And that was a fairly common image. Children were also disciplined in similar ways. So, you know, disobedient children, disobedient servants in ancient times were, generally speaking, whipped. Now, I don’t know how severe the whipping was. But they had to suffer some painful consequences of their disobedience, and that’s what Jesus is describing. Now, when it comes to the actual judgment that Jesus will mete out to those who are disobedient when he comes, I seriously doubt that it will have anything to do with whips or stripes or anything like that. The parable is about a man and his household servants, and so he describes it in terms of that. But I would imagine that the punishment, you know, on the final day would take a very different form than that. That would be my assumption.
SPEAKER 08 :
So it’s not for believers? It’s unbelievers?
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, yeah. All right. Thanks for your call. Karen in Atlanta, Georgia. Welcome to the Neuropath. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 05 :
Hi, thank you so much. I have two quick questions for you, which you could probably talk on for a long time. And I, so I don’t expect really super long answers, but, but if you could just touch on them, the first one is when we, when, when we die, if we are sinners and we do go to hell, is there, is there a chance that maybe you would meet those people? Hopefully it’s not me. When I say we, that scares me to death. If we die, as sinners might just die and not burn forever and ever. And the second one from my mother is she’s confused about how Adam and Eve could have, how everyone could have come from Adam and Eve without there being genetic abnormalities. So I’m just wondering if you could kind of briefly talk about each of those things, though they’re very separate.
SPEAKER 09 :
Okay. Yeah, that’s fine. Let’s take the second one first, and we’ll get to the hell one in a second.
SPEAKER 10 :
Okay.
SPEAKER 09 :
All right. All right, then. Where do we go first? Let’s say Adam and Eve are the parents of all the races of people and of all the generations that followed. We’re told that. It says in chapter 3 of Genesis that Adam named his wife Eve because she’s the mother of all living. So all living persons, I think, is what is implied there, not all living animals. And therefore, you know, all people have come from Adam and Eve. And that’s what Christians, you know, who believe what the Bible says have believed about that. Now, how would they not have abnormalities? Now, I think what your mother’s concerned about is that today, and even a long time ago, in the days of Moses, people were forbidden to marry their sisters and their aunts and their mothers and things like that. And it was called incest. But it wasn’t forbidden before the time of Moses. And so why is it forbidden now? Well, we don’t know exactly why God gave the command in the time of Moses, but we do know that in communities where people practice, when people marry close relatives, the community gets genetically definitely ingrown, and there’s a high number of genetic, you know, I guess we’d say mutations of sorts. There’d be genetic problems. and maybe more children who are born disabled in some ways, mentally or some other way. That is known to be true, and that has to do with not having a sufficient gene pool from which the whole community is drawing. So that could be why God also forbade the Jews from marrying close relatives, maybe because they were a smaller segment and an isolated segment of the human population. But why would that not be a problem in Adam and Eve’s children’s case? I mean, they obviously would have to marry siblings and close relatives. Why wouldn’t it be a problem then? Well, I’d have to… Just guess that because I don’t know. I would say, I mean, one way we could say it is that God would simply prevent that from happening. Not every time that, you know, close relatives have children together is there this kind of problem. There is sometimes and there is not sometimes. It’s always a possible danger. So, I mean, God could have simply made sure that the cases that had to happen for the first few generations until there were some people sufficiently remotely related to each other to not tinker with this, God may have simply prevented it from happening. But I think it’s also possible, and I don’t know much about genetics, but I think that the genetic condition of Adam and Eve must have been absolutely perfect. And I would think that it would take a generation or two for imperfections in the genetic pool to develop. I don’t know that this is true, but I’m willing to believe that that could be true. And that might be the answer. I don’t know. After, of course, after there were three generations or so, it probably wouldn’t matter who you married. You could certainly find a lot of people who were remotely related to you, but sufficiently remote to not be a problem with this. I mean, even in the time of Abraham, which was 2,000 years after Adam and Eve, Abraham married his half-sister. Now, later, this would be forbidden in the law to marry a half-sister. But Abraham married a woman, Sarah, who had the same father he had, just a different mother. Now, that would suggest that even at that point, far removed from Adam and Eve, it was apparently safe and it was not forbidden for people to marry someone that closely related to them. So, I mean, I don’t know exactly how it all worked out genetically, but that’s what I’ve suggested would be my best guess. As far as health…
SPEAKER 05 :
She was just thinking maybe there were people that were created in the world that we didn’t learn about in the Bible or in the story, and so there are people other places or something like that.
SPEAKER 09 :
There are people who have suggested that, but I don’t see how then Eve would be called the mother of all living. Okay, okay. Yeah. So, anyway, there’s also the hell question, and you may not know. I’m going to give you a brush off on this because I can recommend that you go to my website, thenarrowpath.com, and under topical lectures, find my lectures called Three Views of Hell.
SPEAKER 10 :
Okay. Okay.
SPEAKER 09 :
And I talk about that at some length. There’s three different views of hell, and they’re quite different from each other. I also wrote a book on it, but I’m not trying to sell books, but I wrote a book called Why Hell? Three Christian Views. You can get the longer version of my treatment of it from the book, or for free you can get the lecture at our website, Three Views of Hell.
SPEAKER 05 :
Are there either of those three that you lean more towards yourself?
SPEAKER 09 :
As I explain in my lectures and my book, I believe that more than one of the views has a respectable claim to being biblical. All three views quote lots of scripture in their favor. Obviously, they can’t all be true because they’re all pretty much mutually exclusive from each other. So they can’t all be true. But obviously, some of them are using the scripture wrongfully, as is often the case. Lots of times wrong doctrines use the scripture wrongfully. But it’s not that easy to tell which of these views is using the scripture wrongfully. Some of them must be. But I basically just lay out the scriptural case for all three and let the listener decide.
SPEAKER 06 :
Okay. I don’t have a preference.
SPEAKER 09 :
All right, Karen, thank you for your call. Good talking to you. Let’s see, Mary from Indianapolis, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yes, I want to know, does a married woman supposed to be a pastor of a church?
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, the Bible doesn’t really know of church government like ours where we have a pastor. There’s no case of any church in the Bible that we know of that had a pastor. The word pastor is an English word that means a shepherd. And the word is in Greek poimen. And there are in the Bible people who pastored or shepherded the flock that they were called elders. Each church had elders. The Bible says that Paul and Barnabas appointed elders in every church. Many times the Bible speaks about the elders of the church, but never an individual elder or an individual pastor. The elders was a group of men in the church who were assigned to oversee it and to shepherd it or to pastor it, as it were. So we don’t have any church in the Bible with a pastor as we think of that term, but apparently most churches had elders, and these elders were the pastoral team members. that shepherd of the church. Now, can a woman be in that role? Paul did not think so. Some people disagree with Paul. Some people think that Paul had a prejudice against women, though that doesn’t seem to show up in his general attitude toward women. He had women he highly commended, women in ministry of various sorts, missionary women and so forth. Paul didn’t have any problem with women that I can see, but he did say that a woman should not be in the role of an elder. for a couple of reasons. One, he suggests in 1 Timothy 2, verses 12-15, that it had something to do with the way God made things. He said God made man first, and then he made the woman. Now, it might not be obvious from that statement why that would translate into a woman shouldn’t be an elder. But Paul apparently thought it did. He didn’t want a woman doing those things because he said God made man first. And I think probably he expects us to remember something about Genesis when God made man first. he made the woman to be a helper to him. And of course, Paul everywhere in his teaching says that the husband is the head of the wife, just as Christ is the head of the church. And therefore, he sees the man made to be the leader. And, you know, there are many ministries that Paul was quite pleased to have women involved in, other than pastoral ministry. But He did not allow a woman to be that, an elder, because, he said, of the way God created things. A second reason he seemed to give in 1 Timothy 3, in the first several verses, he says that an elder should be the husband of one wife with his children well-behaved and in order, his household in order. He says because if he can’t manage his own household, how can he take care of the church? In other words, how can a person fulfill a leadership role in the church if his leadership in his home is a disaster? So, Paul sees the leadership of the home, which Paul assumes is the man’s role, not the woman’s, is the proving ground for vetting people who one hopes will be good at leading the church. So, again, Paul says it should be a husband of one wife. No woman has ever been the husband of one wife. So, It seems to me that Paul, especially we’re talking about 1 Timothy 2, verse 12 through chapter 3, I’m going to say verse 6 or 7. I’m not looking there right now, but that’s where it’s going to be. Paul just gives a couple of reasons, I think, why women are not selected to be in eldership. But women who, as far as evangelists, angels themselves appointed women as evangelists at the tomb of Jesus. That can’t be offensive. Women can teach women and children. Paul said in Titus chapter 2 that the older women should teach the younger women, and presumably children too. Timothy’s mother and grandmother taught him the scriptures, and Paul thought that was a good thing. Even a married woman, along with her husband, can instruct a man, as Priscilla and Aquila did with Apollos in Acts chapter 18, but we don’t read that they were elders, and there’s no reason to assume they were. So there’s lots of things that women can do. In fact, I can’t think of very many things that women are not allowed to do, but Paul said he did not put a woman in an authoritative teaching position. So if I were in the position to choose elders, I would have to My conscience would be bound to do it the way Paul said. Oh, okay. Okay, thank you very much. I need to try to get a few in here. We don’t have much time left. Almost out of time. Larry from Minneapolis, Minnesota. Welcome.
SPEAKER 03 :
Hey, yeah, thank you very much for taking my call. Just a quick, as I’ve been using your resources, which are phenomenal, I’m glad you referenced your website on When Shall These Things Be and the special stuff on Mark 13. So what I’m getting is more and more of these signs are not about the end of the world or Jesus’ return, but actually about the destruction of Jerusalem. So my question is, are there actual signs of the return of Jesus ultimately at the end times? Because he keeps saying it’s a mystery, nobody knows.
SPEAKER 09 :
Right. Jesus indicated that there will be no signs that would tip us off, that his coming is imminent. He said, for example, in Matthew 24, verse 44, Therefore, you must also be ready for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect. Okay, so in other words, you won’t have any reason to expect him when he comes. And he said it would be like the days of Noah. People were just eating and drinking and getting married and buying stuff. I mean, the ordinary stuff that people do right up until the day that the flood came and took them away. That’s how it will be in the day of the Son of Man. So Jesus seemed to describe life going on normally. without any interruption of normal things right up until the time that Jesus shows up. And so I don’t believe there’s any signs. Now, I will say this. There are a couple of things that God apparently is seeking to accomplish before that time. So I’m going to think that probably those things will be accomplished before Jesus comes back. One of them is the evangelization of the world. And another of them is the maturity of the church. There are a number of things in the Bible that speak of these, especially the evangelization of the world is mentioned, of course, in Matthew 24 and verse 14, this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all nations, and then the end shall come. And then as far as the maturing of the church, Ephesians 4, chapter 11, verse 13, says that God gave apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers for the equipping of the saints and for the work of the ministry and the edifying of the body of Christ until we all come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God unto a mature man to measure the fullness of the stature of Christ. So we are, as a collective of Christ, we are to become a mature man. Paul said that maturity is going to be seen in maturity. particularly unity. And so the unity of the church is something that Jesus prayed for. In John 17, he said, Father, I pray that they may be one as I and you are one, because he says, so that the world may know that you sent me. Well, the world doesn’t know that yet, and it must be because the church has been disobedient to Christ in that very thing he prayed for. But he can wait. God has no reason to be in a hurry. We’re the ones who want him to be in a hurry. But all Christians throughout time have wanted God to be in a hurry. But he wasn’t. And just because we want him to be doesn’t obligate him to be. So, in my opinion, you know, he can wait. He’s got something he’s interested in. And no one can make him give up on that. And nor is there any reason he should. Even if it takes another 200 years, 300 years. I don’t know that it will. I hope it will not. But that’s kind of up to us. In 2 Peter chapter 3, Peter said that we should be hastening the coming of the day of God. So, in other words, we may be delaying it or hastening it by our behavior. And I think that Christians are just, you know, they’re pretty negligent these days in many cases. And they may be delaying it. But we don’t have to. And we’re not supposed to. Anyway, those are the kind of things I think that we should be looking for, although we don’t, they’ll never know exactly when those two things have reached the point that God wants them to happen. So we should always be looking for Jesus. And we might die anytime, so it’ll be all the same anyway. I’m out of time. You’ve been listening to The Narrow Path. Our website’s thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for joining us.
