Join Steve as he addresses listener inquiries, spanning from practical advice on personal family issues to deep theological discussions on Calvinism and the nuances between different Christian doctrines. The episode takes a critical look at how varying interpretations and translations can reshape our understanding of biblical texts, and explores religious unity through potential church mergers.
SPEAKER 1 :
Thank you.
SPEAKER 02 :
Good afternoon and welcome to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we’re live for an hour each weekday afternoon taking your calls. If you have questions about the Bible or about the Christian faith, you want to call and talk about those here on the air, feel free to call. Likewise, if you have a different opinion from that of the host, you want to talk about that. You’re welcome to call about that as well. The number to call is 844-484-5737. That’s 844-484-5737. A few announcements. We have a lot happening this week. I need to make a few announcements. One of them, tomorrow night, and this just came up over the weekend, tomorrow night at 5 o’clock Pacific time, although my host will be 7 o’clock Central Time. But 5 p.m. Pacific Time, there will be a live stream program interview with me by my friend A.K. Richardson. And it’s going to be about modern Israel and the Bible. So if you’re interested in that, Modern Israel and the Bible, you may be interested in taking in that podcast on YouTube. The way to log in and see it live, streamed tomorrow, is posted at our website. If you go to thenarrowpath.com under announcements, you’ll find under tomorrow’s date, that’s Tuesday night, the 17th, You’ll see the link to sign in to watch that YouTube podcast. Tomorrow night, 5 o’clock Pacific Time, and whatever clock it is in your time zone. Okay, then Saturday morning we’re returning to our monthly men’s Bible study in Temecula. We’ve had to take a break from that for a few months because of my travels. We’re doing it again now, usually the third Saturday of each month. We have this Temecula men’s Bible study, 8 o’clock in the morning. And if you’re interested in that, you’ll find information also about that at the website. And then this Sunday, I’m speaking three times in a church in Corona, California. It’s Living Truth Christian Fellowship in Corona, California. And I’ve been asked to speak two services in the morning, one at 9 o’clock, one at 11 o’clock, on the topic of why I’m still a Christian. You may know from my having announced it a month or two ago that I was asked to teach on that subject elsewhere recently. I’ve been asked to teach there Sunday morning twice, once at 9 and the others at the 11 o’clock service, and then on that same night to have an open Q&A in the evening service, which is at 6.30 this Sunday night. Those three are all this Sunday. two services in the morning, one at night, at Living Truth Christian Fellowship. All the information about these events are posted at our website, thenarrowpath.com, under the tab that says Announcements. All right, enough on those announcements. We’ve got a lot of callers waiting. In fact, our lines are full. So let’s talk first of all to Ron from Minneapolis, Minnesota. Hi, Ron. Welcome. Hi.
SPEAKER 04 :
I was reading an article last night about the dating of the book of Revelation, and in the article they mentioned the Syriac Bible and how that Bible said specifically in there, in a commentary or a note, that Nero was the emperor that exiled John the Patmos, And I don’t know anything about the Syriac Bible, so I was wondering if you could maybe tell me about that and if that’s a legitimate citation or if that’s helpful to the dating of Revelation.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, of course, the manuscripts, the Greek manuscripts that we have of the New Testament, these Greek manuscripts are in the language that the New Testament was written in. The earliest ones we have date from the 4th century. So the 4th century is relatively late, but there were some early translations of the Greek New Testament, obviously made from earlier manuscripts in Greek than the ones we have. We don’t have the earliest ones, but someone did. And the Syriac translation and what they call the early Latin translations were made from Greek manuscripts that are older than the ones we have. And therefore, some people consult the Syriac Bible. The Church of the East uses that. And it’s called the Peshitta. And then, of course, the Old Latin. Now, the Old Latin was translated before the time of Jerome’s Vulgate translation into Latin. That was an updated Latin translation. But these older translations from the older Greek manuscripts than the Greek manuscripts available to us today… may have been dated as early as maybe around the year 200 or so, which makes these translations into Syriac and into Latin earlier than the Greek manuscripts that we have available. And yet the old Latin and the Syriac used Greek manuscripts to translate from, which means they had earlier versions of the Greek New Testament than what we have in Greek. And for this reason, the Syriac and the Old Latin translations can be helpful in knowing something about the Old or Greek. Now, the thing is here that the book of Revelation, no matter what language it’s in, does not mention the name of the emperor. The Greek manuscripts do not mention the name of the emperor, and no accurate translation of it would contain the name of the emperor at the time. On the other hand, there are notations in some of these old manuscripts, and you must be referring to some translator’s notation who said that it was Nero that was the tyrant at the time, that John wrote Revelation. Now, of course, most modern scholars believe that Domitian was the emperor at the time Revelation was written, which would put it, you know, written in the 90s A.D., like 96 A.D. However, if Nero was in fact the emperor at the time, then it would be in the 60s A.D., Nero died in 68, so it would have been like, you know, almost 30 years earlier. And that’s interesting, because if Nero was the emperor at the time it was written, then many believe that the number 666 is a reference to Nero, and that he is the one that John was pointing out with that number to be the beast. Now, if Domitian was the emperor at the time, then, of course, his name doesn’t actually work out to 666 like Nero’s does. So it leaves it an entire mystery as to who John was talking about when he gave that number. The value of any notations you might find in the old Syriac or the old Latin manuscripts, would be that this would reflect the belief of those who are handling the scriptures maybe as much as two centuries earlier, or maybe at least a century and a half earlier, than that of later church fathers. Now, the thing is, there is controversy as to who is the emperor. And the reason that many people… believe that Domitian was the emperor at the time that John wrote, is because there is a quotation from Irenaeus that appears to say that. I say it appears to say that because there is some ambiguity in the statement of Irenaeus, which some have taken differently. But there is, in fact, a quotation from Irenaeus that sounds like he is saying the book of Revelation was written in the reign of Domitian. Now, Irenaeus lived and wrote around 170, 180 AD. And, in fact, maybe around the same time that the Syriac translations were made. And this would simply mean that if, indeed, Irenaeus thought that Domitian was the emperor at the time, at least somebody else, the people who were, you know, translating the Syriac version, thought otherwise, which means there would be no consensus among the early church fathers about the date of writing. Now, in my opinion, the evidence from inside the book of Revelation definitely favors Nero as opposed to Domitian. But the testimony of many church fathers of later than Irenaeus seems to favor Domitian. So it remains a controversy. You know, no matter what we’ll find written in the margins of the Syriac or the Latin or the Greek manuscripts by some translator, it does not necessarily tell us what all Christians believed about that subject. So to this day, there are many scholars who believe Revelation was written during the reign of Nero. And there are many, perhaps more these days, who think it was written during the reign of Domitian. Though there were times in church history where the majority thought it was Nero. So, you know, among scholars, there definitely are what we could say vogues of opinion about things like that. Obviously, the Book of Revelation does not tell us what date it was written. But I believe indicators within the book point to a time of writing in the days of Nero. And that would be my opinion. But you couldn’t prove it just from the citation from the Syriac, you know, marginal notes.
SPEAKER 04 :
The other comment he made was he thought that Demetian would be too late because John would have been so old at that time. It would have been hard to exile somebody in their 90s at that point. He may not have been able to write the book of Revelation or… Again, I don’t know if these are good arguments or not.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, John’s age would be an issue. I don’t know if it would render it impossible for him to be exiled and write the book in his 90s. But what’s interesting is there’s a legend about John written in the very early centuries of the church, how that after he was released from Patmos, he actually, there’s a story about him riding a horse and chasing a young outlaw who had been one of his converts and had fallen back into sin and outlawry. I don’t know if that would be a real word, but into a life of crime, and that John pursued him on horseback and led him to repentance again. Now, it’s hard to imagine a man in his late 90s, if he was exiled in the time of Domitian, and then after that, was pursuing this man on horseback, hard to imagine a man in his late 90s actually riding full throttle on a steed chasing down an outlaw. Which, if the story has any basis in truth, which some early Christian thought it did, it would suggest that he probably wouldn’t be that old if that story really happened. So that would suggest an earlier incarceration on Patmos.
SPEAKER 05 :
Okay.
SPEAKER 02 :
All right. Well, thank you so much. All right. My pleasure. Bye now. Okay. Patty in Carmichael, California. Welcome to The Narrow Path.
SPEAKER 08 :
Good afternoon, Steve. Thank you for your time. I have a strange question. Have you ever heard of the Ethiopian Bible? And if so, is it a real Bible? I’ve been trying to get my brother to read the Bible forever, and he ordered this Bible because he said it was written before the King James Version. So I just… Want your opinion on it.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, it certainly is older than the King James Version, since the King James Version wasn’t really produced until the 17th century. Whereas the Ethiopians, the church in Ethiopia goes back to the first century. Now, I don’t know exactly when the Bible was translated into Coptic, but I believe the Ethiopian Bible would be in the Coptic period. Now, probably the version of it that he bought would be an English translation from the Coptic Bible. But the Bible, the Hebrew and the Greek Bible… were translated into the Coptic language, which was a language commonly spoken in North Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, and those regions. And it’s a very old translation of the Bible into that language. Now, I don’t know what differences there would be between, for example, the Coptic version of the Book of Romans and any other version of the Book of Romans. or the Coptic version of Genesis and any other. I have never looked at that Bible. I don’t read that language. But I would say this. The Coptic Bible does, from what I have heard, have some apocryphal books in it that the Protestant Bible and the Catholic Bible do not have. Now, you might be aware that the Catholic Bible, contains seven books in the Old Testament which the Protestant Bibles usually do not possess. And that’s because those seven books were not written by inspired writers. The authors don’t claim to be inspired writers. They were written after the last of the Hebrew prophets, Malachi. and they were written during the intertestamental period, in the latter part of the intertestamental period, so like a couple centuries before Christ, when everybody in the empire after Alexander the Great in the fourth century made Greek the universal language of the empire. So everyone was speaking Greek and not so much speaking Hebrew. And so the Hebrew scriptures were translated into Greek in what we call the Septuagint, And then there were several religious books written by Jews, written in Greek, not written in Hebrew at all. They’re just written in Greek. And these, like I say, seven of those books are included in the Roman Catholic Bible. But Protestants don’t generally understand them to belong in the Bible, simply because they’re not written by inspired writers. And Protestants would prefer to have the books in the Bible that are known to be written by men who were prophets or inspired by God. So there’s a difference there between the Roman Catholic Bible and the Protestant Bible. Now, from what I understand, the Coptic Bible, I’ve been told, has at least one other book in its apocryphal that even the Roman Catholics don’t possess, and that is the Book of Enoch. Now, there may be others besides in the Coptic Bible, but the Book of Enoch, I believe, is part of their Old Testament canon. But it would be rejected by Protestants for the same reason the other apocryphal books are. It was not written by an inspired writer. It was not written by Enoch. And it was written in Greek, and it appeared in the intertestamental period with a lot of other religious books, many of them attributed to famous people of the past, but wrongfully attributed. So the Book of Enoch doesn’t really have credibility as an inspired book, And neither the Catholic nor the Protestant Bibles have it, but I think the Coptic Bible might. Now, whether the Coptic Bible has additional books besides Enoch that I’m not aware of, you know, that neither the Catholics nor Protestants have, I don’t know. I do know this, that I guess one difference between the Ethiopian Bible and Bibles produced in, you know, in the Western Church, or recognized and canonized in the Western Church, would have to do with the inclusion of at least that one book that’s not in our Bibles. I don’t know of any other differences.
SPEAKER 08 :
Well, I just want to know if it was a real Bible, because I’m like, the Ethiopian Bible, I just have always read, I like the old King James Version, that’s the one I read, I grew up on, and I still read it now.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, the King James Version wasn’t even the first English translation, but… I mean, there were English translations prior to the King James, the Tyndale and the Wycliffe and so forth. And so, I mean, the King James is not the oldest English Bible, but the Bible was translated from its original languages into many different languages, at least several, prior to any English translations being made. Remember, the Bible is not written in English. The King James Version was not read by Jesus or the apostles. The Bible is written in Hebrew and Greek. not even modern Hebrew and Greek, but ancient Hebrew and ancient Greek, and 2,000 years ago and older, and was translated into, remember in an earlier call today, I was talking about the old Latin and the old Syriac. Those were translations of our Hebrew and Greek scriptures. into those languages. And those translations were made very early in the first few centuries of the church, long before any English Bibles were translated. And then, of course, the Coptic Bible. I don’t know exactly when it was translated, but it was definitely in the early centuries also.
SPEAKER 08 :
Well, I just wanted to make sure it was a real Bible, that he wasn’t going off on some weirdo thing.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, it’s not a different religion than Christianity. They have our Bibles. But they also have a book or two that we wouldn’t have. Right. All right. Well, thank you for your call. It’s good talking to you, Patty.
SPEAKER 08 :
Bye.
SPEAKER 02 :
God bless. Okay, let’s see. Tina from Surrey, British Columbia. Welcome to The Narrow Path.
SPEAKER 10 :
Hi. I just want to know about Proverbs 12, verse 23, about smart people keeping knowledge to themselves. Why should smart people keep knowledge to themselves? And I’ll take your answer off the air. Thank you. Bye.
SPEAKER 02 :
All right. Thank you for your call. Well, he’s not saying that smart people always keep knowledge to themselves. He’s saying a prudent man, which means a wise man, conceals knowledge. But the heart of fools proclaims foolishness. Now, what he’s saying is, and Proverbs says this in many ways, different places, that fools just ventilate whatever comes to their mind, which includes a lot of foolishness. Because, I mean, the first thing that comes to your mind is not always a smart thing to just blurt out. We have examples in the Bible of Peter in the New Testament blurting out things that probably shouldn’t have been said. In fact, in one thing he said, it says he said that because he didn’t know what to say. And that was at the Mount of Transfiguration. So sometimes people don’t know what to say. And, you know, and therefore, but they’re foolish enough to just blurt out whatever comes to mind. It’s like one of the Proverbs says, a fool, you know, speaks his whole heart. but a wise man holds it in until afterward. This is kind of the same idea. The prudent man conceals knowledge. The heart of fools proclaims foolishness. Now, to say that the wise man, the heart of the wise man, conceals knowledge, it doesn’t mean that he doesn’t ever express intelligent or knowledgeable thoughts. It just means that he knows more than he says. The fool knows less than he says. The fool speaks things he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and he’s spouting out foolishness. So the fool speaks more than he knows. The wise man says less than he knows. In other words, even after the wise man has spoken, and he may have spoken very wisely and very helpfully, yet he hasn’t said everything he knows. There’s still knowledge hidden in there that he has not expressed. It doesn’t mean he wouldn’t express it in another situation, not like he’s really keeping it a secret. It’s just that he doesn’t blab on so much, which means he’s not like me. He doesn’t blab on so much that, you know, everything he knows, he has to say it. So that’s what it’s saying. It’s not saying that a wise man doesn’t ever, that he kind of conceals what he knows. Not as if he’s trying to hide it. It’s rather that he knows a lot more than he says. So even when he speaks, and even when he speaks wise things, there’s more where that came from. He hasn’t spoken everything he knows. Beyond what he’s saying, he’s concealing a lot more information and knowledge than you’re hearing him speak. And again, it’s not speaking of trying to hide something. It’s speaking of simply having too much to reveal in any setting. He tries to say no more than really needs to be said, but he could. say far more if he felt the occasion demanded it. So that’s what it’s saying. I appreciate your call. Cassandra in Phoenix, Arizona. Welcome to the Neuropath. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 09 :
Hi there, Steve. I have a question for you. Actually, you had responded in my email regarding my daughter going to her dad’s.
SPEAKER 02 :
By the way, did you get my response?
SPEAKER 09 :
I did, I did.
SPEAKER 02 :
Okay, gotcha.
SPEAKER 09 :
Now this is more of a question for me and what I go through. So basically, long story short, so everyone’s caught up, there’s a lot of things going on in my ex-husband’s right now regarding some child abuse with his girlfriend he’s with, some child abuse with her daughter. So there’s some CPS cases. My ex is not the best guy himself. And my daughter has been hesitant here and there about going because of these things that are going on. It’s been determined.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, you mentioned that. So what would your question be to me now?
SPEAKER 09 :
So my question is, okay, so you said let your daughter decide, which I agree. She’s old enough too. She’s 15. How do I… keep myself, you know, from going mentally insane with it because every time she goes, you know, I’m worried about her. I don’t know what’s going to happen. Granted, nothing has been done to her as of yet, but… Well, in your email, you said that she had refrained from going to see him for a few months.
SPEAKER 02 :
And then you kind of encouraged her to go. Yeah. Okay, so… But let me ask you this. If you don’t encourage it, would she just stay home and not go see him?
SPEAKER 09 :
Yes.
SPEAKER 02 :
Okay, why don’t you let her just do that? Then you won’t have to worry about it.
SPEAKER 09 :
I guess I fight with my own thing with that because my mother made it to her when I was a girl. My dad didn’t want to come around, and she kept me from seeing my dad a lot of times, too, and I don’t want to do that to my own children. Sure.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, but you don’t want to make your decisions based on mistakes you think your mother made, although it might be good to avoid mistakes your mother made. You need to kind of deal with the situation as it stands for your daughter. She’s 15 years old. She doesn’t feel comfortable going to see her father because his present lady abuses her own daughter. from your email you did not indicate that she abuses your daughter, but obviously if someone abuses their own daughter, there’s nothing to guarantee they won’t abuse somebody else’s daughter. In fact, to my mind, it seems more likely the woman would abuse a stepdaughter than her own daughter. So if she’s abusing her own daughter, I wouldn’t consider my daughter completely safe, although at age 15 she might be big enough to take care of herself. But I would just say, at 15, I think your daughter should, if her instincts are, I don’t feel safe at Dad’s house, then I think you should listen to her and let her stay home until she wants to see him. If she wants to establish a good relationship with her father later on, when she’s maybe 18 or can make all the decisions she wants about the matter, then she can do that. It’s not the end of the world if she doesn’t see him for the next few years because she doesn’t want to. I have to take a break here, but you would save yourself the worries that you talked about if she didn’t go. It doesn’t sound like she wants to go, so I just honor her wishes. You’re listening to The Narrow Path. We’re only halfway through. We have another half hour coming. We are listener-supported. If you’d like to check our website out, it is thenarrowpath.com. Check that out. Everything’s free, or you can donate there if you wish. I’ll be back in 30 seconds.
SPEAKER 07 :
Small is the gate and narrow is the path that leads to life. Welcome to The Narrow Path with Steve Gregg. Steve has nothing to sell you today but everything to give you. When the radio show is over, go to thenarrowpath.com where you can study, learn, and enjoy with free topical audio teachings, blog articles, verse-by-verse teachings, and archives of all The Narrow Path radio shows. We thank you for supporting the listeners supported Narrow Path with Steve Gregg. See you at thenarrowpath.com.
SPEAKER 02 :
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 call with your questions about the Bible or your disagreements with the host, The number to call is 844-484-5737. That’s 844-484-5737. There are plenty of calls waiting, but let me quickly just answer a question that’s been written from a prisoner. We get a lot of letters from prisoners and prisoners. Sometimes we write back, and sometimes it’s easier just to answer them on the air. And he said, he says, my question for your show is, do Calvinists teach a different God, parentheses, Jesus? Do Calvinists teach a different God than the God of the Bible? This is a hard thing to know what we mean by a different God. Because there’s a sense in which there are definitely different gods. For example, Baal and Moloch and Shemosh and the pagan gods, Zeus and so forth, are definitely different gods than the God of the Bible. But there are people who believe the Bible but interpret it differently, and therefore they understand the God of the Bible differently. Now, does their difference of understanding mean that they’ve jumped away from worshiping the true God to worshiping a different God? Or, if in their mind they have in mind the God who is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the God who created heaven and earth, the God to whom all men must answer, if this is the God they believe in, then that would seem to be the same God. Although, theologically, many times they may be very mistaken about some things about him. I think it’s one thing to say you’ve got a different person in mind, on the one hand, and to say you’ve got the same person in mind, you just have different opinions about that person. It’s like if there are different children of one father. and they have different opinions about what kind of person their father is. Let’s say in a scenario where the father, you know, when the children were young, he went away to war, and he’s been kept as a prisoner of war. They’ve had no opportunity to contact him for, say, ten years. They have formed opinions in their own minds of what their father is like, and they don’t all have the same opinions of what their father is like. They might picture him looking a certain way. They might picture him having a certain kind of temperament, a certain kind of sense of humor, a certain set of interests, which are all in their imagination, really, because they have never met him. And because they’ve never met him, they have different descriptions of him. Now, do their different descriptions of their father mean they have different father? No, they all have the same father. And they’re all describing the same God. They’re just, some are describing him more accurately than others. Now, there are definitely people who do not even profess to be describing the God of the Bible. The Greek gods, the Roman gods, the Canaanite gods, these were definitely different gods. Now, when we come to other groups, let’s say the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Mormons, or even the Muslims, they all believe in the Creator God by some description. Now, let’s face it, all of them have theologies that are very far off from what the Bible actually teaches about God. And therefore, do they have different gods, or do they just have wrong views about the one God? Now, this can be debated. Most Christians… when talking about Allah in the Muslim faith, would say, this is a different God than Yahweh. But they say this on the basis, the same basis that most would say the Mormons have a different God than Yahweh, or the Jehovah’s Witnesses have a different God than Yahweh. And what they mean by that is the way they perceive this God is really not very accurate at all. Their theology is wrong. But do they have a wrong theology about the same God? Or do they have a different God altogether? Now, this is a very hard thing for me to know how to judge. I would say this. It’s not okay to have the wrong theology. We should always want to have the correct theology. God wants us to be known and understood, he said. And therefore, if we misunderstand who he is, I’m sure that’s a disappointment to him. But does it mean… that he sees us as worshiping a different God or simply being somewhat blinded in terms of what kind of God the real God is. I can’t answer that. Now, I will say when it comes to Calvinism, they definitely give a different description of God than the Bible does because the God of the Bible loves all people. In fact, not only that, he is love. Okay, so he loves all people. The Bible says he wants no one to perish. He wants all people to come to repentance. He has no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but only that all the wicked would turn from the evil ways and live. That’s the God of the Bible. He’ll judge the wicked, but he does it grudgingly because he’d rather they hadn’t required that. He’d rather they had repented so that he wouldn’t have to do that. Now, the God of Calvinism isn’t that way. The God of Calvinism doesn’t want everyone saved. Because the God, as described by Calvinists, saves everybody that he wants to save. He is sovereign over who gets saved. He makes the decisions. In fact, he made those decisions before anyone was born. So every person in the Calvinist system was born either with a determination, inevitably, upon their head from God that they would die and go to hell and burn forever, or with the opposite, that God determined before they were born that they would become believers and go to be with the Lord on good terms. Now, that would mean, of course, that the vast majority of people on earth whom God could have included in the saved category if he’d wanted, since he saves everyone that he wants to, he could, if he wanted to, have saved everybody by the very same means that he saves anybody. But the only reason he hasn’t saved everyone is because he doesn’t want to. You see, the Bible teaching is he hasn’t saved everyone because they don’t want to. He wants to. Like Jesus said to Jerusalem, how many times I would have gathered your children as a hen gathers her chicks under rings, but you would not. I wanted to save you. You didn’t want to be saved. That’s the God of the Bible. He wants all to be saved. The God of Calvinism does not. If he wanted them all saved, they would be. And therefore… we have to assume that the God of Calvinism has certain character traits that are very, very different than the God described in the Bible. The God described in the Bible is a loving God toward all, and only grudgingly would condemn anyone who cannot be brought around to be saved. But in Calvinism, there’s no such thing as somebody who cannot be brought around to be saved. Nobody could be brought around to be saved unless God… unilaterally chose them and made them get saved. And, you know, and therefore the others are lost, not because God couldn’t bring them around, but because he didn’t really want to. So I’m not going to say they have a different God, but they certainly have a very, what should we say, a very unflattering and unglorifying view of the God that is. If their views about God are as bad as those of the Jehovah’s Witnesses or the Mormons or the Muslims, I will not say. I mean, I’ll let God decide how badly he feels about such insults to his character. But I’m not going to say they worship another God. I mean, maybe God sees it that way, and I’ll let him decide that kind of thing. I’ll just say they are worshiping in their own minds the God who’s the creator of all. The God who is the father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the God who, you know, was the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. OK, so that’s who they believe they’re worshiping. And I’ll let God decide whether their their opinions of him being as far off as they are biblically is. You know, whether he sees that as a different God or not, that’s beyond my capacity to make a judgment. All right, let’s talk to John in Canada. John, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 03 :
Good afternoon, Steve. I hope you can hear me.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes, I can.
SPEAKER 03 :
Okay, I would like to get your thoughts on the following situation in our church. In particular, questions or concerns I should be raising with regards to doctrine beyond what I’ll describe below. And here it goes. So I’m in Calvary Chapel. This group is considering to merge with a Northern Baptist church, I was told there was precedent for this kind of merger as a number of Calvary Chapel groups have merged with, I’m not sure if merged is the right word, maybe I’m using the wrong word, with Southern Baptist churches in the U.S., maybe taken them over. From what I’ve heard so far, our beliefs align. For example, they accept the gifts of the Spirit for today, just not in the service, which would be the notable difference.
SPEAKER 02 :
Now, you’re with the Calvary Chapel, not with the Northern Baptist right now, right?
SPEAKER 03 :
Correct.
SPEAKER 02 :
Okay.
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s correct. Go ahead. And so I was told we would continue to go verse by verse through the entire Bible. And I’ve also asked if this group is Calvinist or is pushing once saved, always saved. I don’t know if I get a clear answer on that, but it didn’t sound like they are. But according to their website, beneath a very generic statement of faith, it says we adhere to the published statements of beliefs of the North American Baptist Association. So I went into, you know, Grok, which is one of the AI tools, and it sounds like while this particular association is not fully Calvinist, it seems to promote the doctrine of once saved, always saved as part of the belief in the eternal security of the believer. So Thoughts, questions, or concerns I should be raising?
SPEAKER 02 :
Okay. Well, first of all, many people don’t realize this, that although Calvary Chapel is non-Calvinist, Chuck Smith did believe in once saved, always saved. He believed that if you fall away after you become a believer, that you never really were saved. I sat under Chuck for five years, and I’ve heard him say it so many times. I don’t know that all Calvary Chapel people think that way, but I think they mostly do. Now, of course, we think of that doctrine as associated with Calvinism, and there’s a sense in which Calvinism does teach eternal security. It’s a slightly different doctrine called perseverance of the saints as they teach it, but Calvary Chapel’s Unless they have changed, and I have not been in Calvary for quite a few years now, but I was in the original under Chuck Smith, and almost all Calvary Chapel pastors were trained by Chuck Smith, as I was. Most Calvary Chapels that I’ve known of have believed that you cannot lose your salvation once you have it. I don’t believe that. I don’t believe that’s taught in Scripture, but it is a Calvary doctrine. But they don’t embrace other aspects of Calvinism. But from what you researched, it looks like the Northern Baptists are that way, too. They don’t go with everything in Calvinism, but they do believe in a once-saved, always-saved doctrine. That seemingly would make them quite compatible with Calvary Chapel. It does sound, especially if the Northern Baptists are not opposed to the gifts of the Holy Spirit, but they just don’t want them… you know, manifesting, you know, disruptively in the church. That’s also, of course, Chuck Smith’s position. So, I mean, before he died and generally speaking at Calvert Chapel position. So it does sound like the Northern Baptist on those issues. no doubt, are very close in their beliefs to Calvary Chapel. I’m assuming the Northern Baptists are dispensational, because if they weren’t, there would be no consideration of such a merger, because Calvary Chapel’s main defining doctrine is dispensationalism. But many, many Baptist denominations are also dispensational, so I’m going to assume that’s the case with the Northern Baptists, though I don’t know it otherwise. So in my opinion, these two denominations may really believe mostly the same things, but just have developed independently from each other and now are saying, hey, there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between us as groups. Why don’t we just work together? Now, in other words, if the Northern Baptists are into it and the Calvary is, I’m always for unity. In fact, I believe churches should be more in unity even when they don’t agree with each other much. I only think there’s a few things Christians have to agree with each other about, and all the other things are negotiables. And I don’t think churches should ever divide into different denominations over those negotiables, but many have. So in general… In principle, I could say it looks like a positive thing for a Calvary Chapel to join with the Northern Baptists because it seems like maybe them being separate groups is an artificial distinction. Now, I will say this, too, that Calvary Chapels are often the larger churches. Not every Calvary Chapel is a big, huge church, but many of them are very large. In my own town, there are many Calvary Chapels, and most of them are pretty large. And one of them, a few years ago, merged with a little independent church, and I was in that little independent church, and because it merged with the Calvary Chapel, I was persona non grata there because although I’m of Calvary roots, my eschatology is not dispensational. So I’m not really welcome in Calvary chapels, generally speaking. But so it didn’t go well in our case because those of us that were in this small non-denominational group kind of liked it the way it was. My wife and I chose that church because it was small. We liked small. And then this big Calvary Chapel came and they merged together. And obviously the pastor of the Calvary Chapel became the main pastor because he brought in, you know, a thousand people. The other church had maybe 60. So, in other words, a merger like that can become a takeover because the little church was not, let’s just say, not exclusive anymore. on the issues that Calvary Chapel is exclusive about. So that can be bad. I mean, if the Northern Baptist Church you’re thinking of is a little church and the Calvary is a big church, they better make sure that they want to have not only the Calvary doctrines but the Calvary attitude, which means if people don’t agree with their eschatology, those people will not be welcome there for long. That would be my only concern. It may not be an issue here, but it’d be my concern, the only one I can think of. Thank you for your call. Okay, let’s talk to Troy from Chandler, Arizona. Hi, Troy. Welcome.
SPEAKER 01 :
Hi, Steve. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it. I was reading in John 20 and read it many times, but this time it kind of struck me as really interesting that the first disciple… to get to the empty tomb wasn’t mentioned by name, and then Peter ran in right behind him. And I know it’s not one of those questions we’re going to really know the answer to, but I thought with your spiritual insight and Bible knowledge, you might have an opinion on why they didn’t mention that disciple. The only thing that I could think of was maybe he just wasn’t one of the 12, or… Anyway, I’m just curious if you have a hunch on that.
SPEAKER 02 :
It’s not that they didn’t mention the name of that disciple. It’s that he did not mention his own name. The writer of the fourth gospel that we call the Gospel of John is frequently referred to in the book as the disciple whom Jesus loved. And it says at the end in John 21 that, let’s see, Verse 20, I’ll get back to your question, but in John 21, 20, it says, Then Peter, turning around, saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following. Okay, so there’s this disciple whom Jesus loved. And then it says in verse 23, Then this saying went out among the brethren that this disciple, meaning the disciple that Jesus loved, would not die. And he says, but that’s not what Jesus said. And then it says in verse 24, this is the disciple who testifies of these things and who wrote these things. In other words, this book is the testimony and the writing of that disciple whom Jesus loved. Now, if John is the author of the gospel, and I believe he is, then John is that disciple whom Jesus loved. Now, in chapter 20, which you’re talking about, It says in verse 2, Then she, Mary Magdalene, ran and came to Simon Peter and the other disciple whom Jesus loved. Okay, so we’re talking about that disciple, John, again. And said to them, They have taken away the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where he is. So the two of them ran together, and the other disciple outran Peter. So when you’re reading in the Gospel of John about the disciple whom Jesus loved, you’re reading about the author of the book. And he did not name himself anywhere in the book, but he typically refers to himself that way. Now, why he did so is another question that could be explored. It would take longer than we have, but your question about him, his identity, is that he is the same as the author of the book. Now, traditionally, the book was written by John, the son of Zebedee, the brother of James, one of the four fishermen that Jesus called early on to be disciples. John and his brother James had also been disciples of John the Baptist before they met Jesus. And that’s described, you know, in some of the early chapters of the gospel. So we have, therefore, this reference to the author. I believe it was John. The early church believed it was John. There have been other theories that have been suggested, one that is kind of popular in some circles. Some feel that it’s maybe a reference to Lazarus, but there’s really no excellent reason to say it’s Lazarus. That would certainly not seem to fit because the disciple whom Jesus loved, that is the author of the book, in chapter 11, you know, in chapters 13 through 16 of John, is in the upper room leaning on Jesus’ breast. You know, he’s there in the meeting. And that was a meeting in the upper room with only Jesus and the Twelve. So since this disciple whom Jesus loved was in that meeting, He does not appear to have been Lazarus, but one of the twelve. Now, the interesting thing is that this author does not ever mention himself by name, but he names, what, seven or eight of the other apostles by name, which means he’s not one of them. He’s one of the twelve, but he’s not one of those seven or eight that he names, which means there’s only really possibly four disciples that could be, and John being one of them. who’s unnamed in the book. But this disciple in Jesus’ love clearly is closely associated with Peter. And we know from the other Gospels that James and John and Peter were close to each other and were even a special group that Jesus did things with when the other disciples were not there. Likewise, in the book of Acts, in the first four or five chapters, we find Peter and John are doing things together a lot. Quite a few of the stories say in the early chapters of Acts, have to do with Peter and John doing stuff. So his association with Peter in these stories are not only in being the first to get to the tomb, but also in the conversation in the chapter 21 of John about, you know, what shall this man do and all that, Peter asking about John. We see a lot of reasons to say the disciple whom Jesus loved is probably John. And that is my opinion.
SPEAKER 01 :
So I hope that – My brain – that was NIV I was reading. I’m going to reread it again today. All right. It just – I don’t know why I didn’t think of that, but it was like the magnitude of that is like, you know, like not mentioning Neil Armstrong as being the first to walk on the moon.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, the author doesn’t like to mention himself by name is the main thing. All right. Let’s talk to Danny in New Rochelle, New York. Danny, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for coming. Thanks for coming.
SPEAKER 06 :
Hey, Steve. Hey, Steve. How are you? mm-hmm good yeah steve uh yeah uh actually uh uh uh yeah i want to ask you uh you see i i have uh several cousins and uh yeah but uh um but one of them actually and none of them are good to me you know none of them are like or like you know respectful to me and you know and make it nice to me but one of them uh it’s a female cousin she uh she tends to talk bad to me or like or like you know like uh you use like bad language or like She said she’s not very nice to me. And usually when I react, you know, a lot of times I react to her. You know, when she used bad language to me, you know, I reacted the same way. But I want to ask you, as a Christian, as a Christian, how should I react to her? And, like, how does God want me to react to someone like that?
SPEAKER 02 :
Okay, that’s a good question. Jesus actually told us to love our enemies. to do good to those who persecute us, and to bless those who curse us. Now, to bless those who curse us specifically would apply to people who speak nastily to us and about us, but we should respond with blessing them rather than responding in the same way that they deal with us. Here’s what Peter said in 1 Peter 2. about people who are behaving themselves well, but others are treating them badly. In verse 21, 1 Peter 2, 21 says, To this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example that we should follow his steps, who committed no sin, nor was dishonesty found in his mouth, who when he was reviled, now that means when they spoke nastily to him, he did not revile in return. When he suffered, he did not threaten, but he committed himself to him who judges righteously. That is, instead of responding in the same spirit that they were exhibiting toward him, Jesus simply committed himself into God’s hands. He realized these people were not going to treat him well. And frankly, there was not much he could do to change that. And therefore, he could either whine about it and be angry and try to retaliate. Or he could say, you know, God, I’m going to just leave my case in your hands. I’ll just do what pleases you. And if people don’t like that, well, I guess that’s their problem. Because I’m happy to be pleasing you, even if they aren’t happy with me doing so. You know, Paul said in Galatians 1.10, he said, if I were still trying to please men, I could not be the servant of Christ. So you can’t serve Christ and please all men. There’s going to be people who don’t like you. Now, I don’t know you. I don’t know you at all. So I don’t know to what degree. you know, you’ve done things to them that offend them or they find you unlikable with some of your habits. I really don’t know. But if you are Christ-like in your dealings with them and they still treat you as the world treated Christ, which is not good, then you can respond to them as Christ did. That’s what Peter says there in 1 Peter 2. You know, in Romans 12, Paul is mainly kind of repeating what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount. And he says in Romans 12, 14, Bless those who persecute you. Bless them and do not curse them. And then in this few verses later, verse 17, Romans 12, 17, he says, Repay no one evil for evil, but have regard for good things in the sight of all men. If it is possible… As much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men. So try to be at peace with them all. And if they won’t, then that’s not your fault. That’s why Paul says, if it’s possible, as much as lies in you, that is, as much as your behavior can contribute to the situation, be a peaceful person. If they’re not, well, shame on them. They’ll just have to answer to God for that. But you should always treat them well and love them. Love your enemies, Jesus said. And that’s what is distinctive of actually following Christ. I’m out of time, sorry to say. You’ve been listening to The Narrow Path. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. We are listener supported. There’s also a lot of resources there, all free. You can see where I’m speaking by going to the announcements tab at thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for joining us.
