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Join Steve Gregg as he examines the nature of ritual and ceremonial laws and their symbolic meanings within Christian theology. From understanding autumn festivals to contemplating modern Christian practices, this episode challenges listeners to consider how ancient traditions translate into today’s faith practices. Plus, hear thoughtful conversations on vaccines, universal reconciliation, and more as callers contribute their questions and insights to the enriching discourse.
SPEAKER 01 :
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, feel free to give me a call. So I’d love to talk about those questions with you. Also, I would like to talk to you about anything that you disagree with me about. If you’ve heard me say things and you say, well, I see that differently, I’d love to know what it is that you see differently and why. I’m always eager to learn. To my mind, this is not a debate program. This is not a program that exists to showcase the host’s viewpoints. It is simply a learning experience, and it can be a learning experience for me. You know, if somebody points out something that I don’t know, and it can be a learning experience for you if something is pointed out that you don’t know. So to my mind, open dialogue on subjects that people don’t see quite the same is is a very, I think, relatively neglected phenomenon and something that we need more of. So feel free to call me if you disagree or just have a question. The number to call is 844-484-5737. I’m looking at a few lines are open, so this is a good time to get through. It might be not so easy to get through later in the program. The number 844- The main thing I need to announce at this point is that there is no Theology Thursday in Huntington Beach tonight. There was a month ago. There was going to be. I’ve mentioned this football season starting tonight is interfering the Theology Thursday. It’s not that I want to watch football. I don’t even know who’s playing, nor care, but But the truth is, Theology Thursday is held at a pizza parlor where there’s big TVs. And obviously… It’s important for them to have the game on for customers. So that would be much too loud for us to have what we had last time. So we’re looking at rescheduling to another time. So don’t, I mean, feel free to show up at Two Brothers Pizza in Huntington Beach to watch the game and to have some pizza. I ate there last time. It was quite good. But don’t arrive thinking I’m going to be a teaching bear tonight. I will not. We’ll let you know when that’s going to happen again. The other thing is that a week from tomorrow, I will be in Minneapolis area, actually about an hour north of Minneapolis, in a little town. Well, it might not be little. I don’t know how big the town is, but it’s about an hour north of Minneapolis. And I’ll be teaching for three days, Friday, not tomorrow, but the following Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, on eschatological theology. And you can see what those topics are by going to our website, thenarrowpath.com, thenarrowpath.com, under the tab that says Announcements. If you happen to be in the Minneapolis area, we’d love to have you show up for any of these that you want to. But you’ll find out the locations and time and all that from thenarrowpath.com under Announcements. All right. We’re going to go to the phones now. Our phone lines are full. and talk to John from Austin, Texas. John, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 04 :
Hello, Steve. Thank you for taking my call. I’ve got a couple of questions, but there might not be time, so I’ll just do the first one and see what happens. I know a Christian personally who believes the Lord’s coming back this September, and there’s a lot on YouTube, and there’s a few reasons they give, but the main one, and this is what I want to ask you, It’s to do with the autumn festivals, and they make a big deal of Rosh Hashanah, where the phrase the Jews would say is, no one knows the day or the hour, and they think that the Lord, when he said no one knows the day or hour, was specifically referring to that festival, because that’s what the Jews say, because there’s a three-day gap in that festival, and that’s the idiom they would say. Now, I know in the past you’ve said that one of the solutions, because obviously these Christians believe the Lord has to literally fulfill… these autumn feasts the same way he fulfilled the spring feasts in his first coming and they think to the day and everything just like he did the first time so I know you’ve said you think he’s fulfilled all of the feasts one possible solution is he fulfilled all of them including autumn and spring in his first coming and then I think you mentioned some other solutions could you explain to me how he did that as one solution and any other possible solutions rather than the one that they keep looking to is that he is still yet to fulfill them right
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, I’m very familiar with the idea that the fall feasts are related to the second coming of Christ in their fulfillment, just as the spring feasts in Israel’s festival calendar were related to his first coming. And there’s no question about that point. That is the point that Jesus died at Passover. The Spirit was poured out at Pentecost. He rose from the dead at, you know, first fruits and so forth. These are the actual festivals on the dates the Jews were celebrating them. You know, that’s when he fulfilled them. Now, the Bible doesn’t clearly tell us anything about the fulfillment of the fall festivals. And therefore, it’s kind of, it’s speculative. Now, many, many Christians believe that the fall festivals will be fulfilled when Jesus returns. And some people have, you know, a complete calendar spelled out of what each festival, you know, how it will be fulfilled. in the future. I don’t know that that’s true. Now, I do believe it’s more likely that those fall vessels were fulfilled in the first century. And the only reason for that is that Jesus said that the coming of the Romans, he said in Luke 21, verse 20 through 23, he said the coming of the Romans to destroy Jerusalem, which of course occurred in 70 AD, would be to fulfill all things that were written. Now, that doesn’t mean all things that were written are about 70 A.D., but obviously many things that were written were fulfilled before that time. But it sounds like he’s saying by 70 A.D., all the remaining things will be fulfilled that haven’t already been fulfilled. Now, therefore, you know, if we’re going to say, well, the fall festivals are fulfilled in a judgment phenomenon like the second coming of Christ, I’m going to say, well, maybe they were fulfilled earlier. in the fall of Jerusalem. Maybe. I say maybe because the Bible doesn’t tell us that it’s so. It’s just that Jesus said that all things that are written, I take that to mean all things written in the Old Testament, including the law and the prophets, would be fulfilled in that time. Now, there’s another possibility, and I’ve heard people suggest it, that maybe Jesus’ birth was during the time of the fall festivals. In other words, that the fall festivals were fulfilled before the spring ones were. Now, the truth is that the Jews have two calendars. The one that God assigned to them in Exodus begins in the spring festivals with Passover time, the 14th day of Aviv. And that would make, of course, the fall festivals chronologically later in the year. However, the Jews do have their civil calendar set. where Rosh Hashanah is the beginning, and that’s in the fall. And therefore, you know, if that’s how it was being reckoned, and I don’t know if it was or not. I don’t even know how to check on that. I don’t know who would even know. But if the Jews at the time, or if God at the time, was thinking of Rosh Hashanah time as the… you know, the beginning, then Jesus’ birth might have happened around that time. And then when the spring festivals came around, then his death and resurrection and so forth would. I don’t have, and I never have, I’ve never had a clear idea of exactly how those are fulfilled. All I know is there are three different possibilities. One of them is the popular one of the dispensations. They would say, well, those are going to be fulfilled when Jesus comes back. And that’s why whenever someone predicts the actual date of the second coming, they always have it in September because that’s when these festivals are happening. And I would say this, that if indeed those festivals have not previously been fulfilled, then maybe then Jesus coming should be sought at that time. that wouldn’t be a problem to me. Although we still wouldn’t know which year it is. I’m not sure why they would think this September would be it. I mean, there’s, you know, everyone who’s predicted a given year as the year that Jesus would come back has been, well, 100% wrong, not just like 90 or 80% wrong, they’ve been 100% wrong. Every prediction has failed. So I wouldn’t ever trust anybody who thought they got it right this time because lots of people have done the calculus that they thought had to be done to establish the correct year and date And everyone has been wrong. And I have no reason to believe there’s anyone living this year who’s smarter than the people living in those other times that calculated wrongly. I think that anyone who calculates it out is getting it wrong. But then what’s wrong is the very fact they’re trying to calculate it at all. Because Jesus said to his disciples in Acts chapter 1 and verse 7, he said, It’s not for you to know the times and the seasons that the Father has put in his own authority. Now, certainly the second coming of Christ is one of those things that God has put in his own authority. And Jesus said it’s not for us to know those things. So why would I try to know? Why would I try to calculate it? What would I do differently if I did know? I mean, nothing. I mean, what would I do if I knew that Jesus is coming back this month in September on a certain day? What would I do differently? I can’t think of a thing. And the reason is because I try to live every day. as I would wish to be living if I were to die and face God that day or if Jesus were to come and take me away. So I don’t consider I have any leisure days that I can just kind of ignore the fact that I may die that day or Jesus may come that day. I don’t take any liberties in that respect. I don’t believe any Christian who understands Christianity does take such liberties. And I always wonder about those who think they know the dates. And they spend a lot of time calculating these. But what they have not done is spent any time listening to Jesus say, it’s not for you to know the times or the seasons. Now, times and seasons refer to broad seasons as kind of just a general period of time. It’s not speaking of years, months, and days so much. Of course, a lot of people quote what Jesus said in Matthew 24, no one knows the day or the hour. Even the sun doesn’t know. The angels don’t know, he said. Only the Father knows. But that’s different, a day and an hour. Some people say, well, yeah, no one knows the day or the hour, but we can know the year. Or we know the general time or whatever. Yeah, but when you get to Acts 1-7, Jesus said, no one knows the times. It’s not for you to know the times. He’s not just saying no one knows. He said it’s not even right for you to want to know. It’s not yours to know. It’s something God does not want you to know. So isn’t it rebellious against God when Jesus says, God doesn’t want you to know this. But you spend a whole bunch of time trying to calculate the time instead of doing what Jesus said to do? You’re doing what Jesus said not to do? This is bizarre to me. I mean, this is what obsession with the end times does to people. It gets them really off the rails. It makes them do what Jesus said not to do, and in most cases neglect to do what Jesus said to do. So anyway, yeah, I don’t have any sympathy for these time schemes. But you asked, you know, how were they fulfilled? I don’t know the answer to that. But I have as much reason to believe they were fulfilled in, you know, the fall of Jerusalem, which happened in the fall, by the way, of the year. I have as much reason to believe that they were fulfilled then. as that they will be fulfilled at the end of the world. And I’m not even sure that their fulfillment wasn’t earlier in the birth of Jesus. I mean, the Feast of Tabernacles is a fall festival a week long. And, of course, Jesus, we’re told, when he was born, it says in John 1.14, the word was made flesh and tabernacled among us. He was tabernacling. That’s the word that’s used in the Greek. So his lifetime here was him tabernacling among us. And so maybe that was the Feast of Tabernacles. Who knows? I don’t. I don’t know. And, again, one of those things, I don’t know that we can know. I’ve certainly read people and heard people who think they know, and I just have not been convinced that they have sufficient reason for me to be persuaded. Well, thank you, Steve. Do you have time for one more question? We’ll go ahead. We’ll work it in.
SPEAKER 04 :
Fantastic. Thank you. So a lot of Christians think that the purification laws and the ceremonial laws of the Old Testament are just types of spiritual ways we are meant to live, like moral behavior and stuff like this. But I find that quite hard to buy, to take. I’ll give you a few reasons and I’ll ask what you think. So, it seems to me many pagan temple-based religions had purification rules and ceremonial rules and their basis for it was you could come in contact with spiritual beings, you could get contaminated, so they believed you had to be cleansed. So, they had that, there was that background thinking and the Jews were, that’s my first point. The second point is the Jews were already given moral laws and I cannot see why God would not just tell them what they should obey rather than making them waste energy on time something that doesn’t mean anything if it’s just meant to point to something why not just tell them straight away and the third reason if it just seems ad hoc to me a bit like the epistle of Barnabas it seems that Christians are trying to explain in light of Jesus, okay, everything’s spiritual, the flesh doesn’t matter and everything, and then they look back and they think, well, this must be for a spiritual reason. And it seems a bit ad hoc, like when you read the Epistle of Barnabas, he just seems to say, okay, you couldn’t eat this because it means this, and it just seems a bit ad hoc. So I don’t know if it’s this type of prefigure, so I’m just going to ask you that.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, let me ask you this. I do take the view that the ceremonial laws were simply types and shadows of spiritual realities. I don’t say they were types and shadows of moral realities. You’re right. Moral laws already were given for that. We don’t need God to give us additional moral instructions in code. He gave the moral laws without any code at all. He just stated them. But there are spiritual realities, what Paul called a mystery that was not revealed to the sons of men prior to the apostles and prophets receiving them by the Spirit. And those mysteries, I believe, are in many cases encoded in the ritual laws. But these are spiritual truths, not moral obligations. For example, in Colossians 2, In verse 16, Paul says, therefore, let no one judge you in food or in drink. And he means, of course, with reference to clean or unclean food or drink. That’s the only way people judge them. Or regarding a festival or a new moon or Sabbath. Now, those are ritual days. He’s saying ritual foods, ritual foods. Don’t let anyone make that important. He says, these are a shadow of things to come. But the substance is Christ. The body is of Christ, he says. So… He says, don’t let anyone bother you about whether you eat clean or unclean foods, whether you keep festivals. Now, those were the central issues of the ritual law in the Old Testament. So, I’m going to go with Paul on that, of course. But, I mean, are there some ritual laws that you think we’re supposed to continue to keep as rituals?
SPEAKER 04 :
No, I don’t believe that. I understand what you’re saying, and it makes sense. But what you’re saying would make sense in what I’m thinking, in the sense that They were important. You had to keep them to come close to God. But now we use Jesus to come close to God. It’s not so much that they were priesthood, but more that they were fulfilled and that Jesus is the embodiment of them. And that was more like in the past, like you say, on a credit card, like putting it down in a promise towards the Lord. But the way some Christians take it is they think it means it’s a way we’re meant to live. Like, you know, when you read the Epistle of Barnabas, It’s like, oh, don’t eat pork because you don’t want to be like a pig that forgets its master.
SPEAKER 01 :
Oh, yeah. I mean, that’s speculation. The early Christian fathers really are untrustworthy in many of their speculations. I mean, they just, you’re right, they come up with stuff out of thin air sometimes. I mean, the fact that they are church fathers would seem to imbue them with some kind of dignity because they’re ancient leaders of the church. And they do have some measure of dignity. But when you read their interpretations of certain scriptures, especially when they’re trying to give the hidden meanings of them, you can tell they’re just guessing. They don’t know what they’re talking about anymore. I’d rather just let Paul tell me what it means or the Bible. For example, I mean, what about the unclean foods? What do they represent? Well, in my opinion, they represent unclean people. And that’s why when God was trying to tell Peter that he should not demur from going to the house of a Gentile, which Jews normally would not go into. And God’s trying to persuade him to do that and to not have any qualms about it. He shows him a sheet full of unclean animals and tells him, eat these unclean animals. And Peter says, I don’t eat unclean things. And God says, what I have cleansed, don’t you call unclean. Now, what he’s saying is these Gentiles are cleansed, just like you see these animals as unclean. You see these Gentiles as unclean, but I’m cleansing them. Don’t call them unclean. Don’t call them common. So, I mean, obviously the impurity of the animals themselves represented in the mind of Peter and the Jews the impurity of Likewise, in the law, it says do not plow with an ox and an ass together. Well, an ox is a clean animal. An ass is an unclean animal. And Paul says, hey, don’t be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. Under the yoke, you don’t put an ass and an ox together under one yoke. You don’t put a believer and an unbeliever. under one yoke, it’s obvious that the unclean animal there is intended to represent the unclean person. And likewise, I think there’s even more we can go on to that, but we’ve taken a lot of time. I personally think that we are not obligated to keep any of the ritual laws of the Old Testament. And that in many cases, but not every case perhaps, their meanings are given to us in the New Testament or at least demonstrated. They may not be spoken that well. For example, those two examples I gave you, the New Testament doesn’t say these represent that. But we can see in those cases they do. And so, you know, we can understand what was on God’s mind when he gave those kinds of things. Anyway, yeah, you know, I’m kind of of the same opinion as I was that, The ritual laws were for the old covenant, they’re not for the new. And what they foreshadow are spiritual things. But they’re not just another way of, they’re not just adding new moral requirements, you know, that are other than the moral laws had. Now, I think this is a very different kind of thing. There’s moral laws that speak about moral behavior. Then there’s things that talk about spiritual realities. about Christ and people’s spiritual conditions and things like that. And I see uncleanness that way. For example, I see the laws about leprosy in Leviticus 13 and 14. You know, why these elaborate rituals about leprosy? Well, it seems to me that leprosy is a type of sin. That is, the condition of a person in leprosy is like a spiritual analogy to the condition of a person in sin. And the rituals for cleansing represent, I think, the blood of Christ and washing and things like that, a baptism, I actually think. that the rituals picture how somebody is cured, as it were, or saved from the bodies of sin. Remember, even in the Old Testament, Naaman the Syrian came to Elisha, and he was told to baptize himself. That’s what it says in the Greek Old Testament. Baptize yourself three times in the River Jordan. And he did, and he came clean. His skin was like that of a little child, like he was born again. So, I mean, these are the kinds of things that… The Bible gives us strong hints about what they represent, though we don’t have exactly a complete exposition about it. Hey, John, I’ve got a lot of people waiting, and we’ve been talking the whole show.
SPEAKER 04 :
Thank you. I appreciate it.
SPEAKER 01 :
All right. God bless you. Good talking to you. Jim from Sacramento, California. How are you doing, bro? Briefly.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes, Steve. Yes. I want to say 25 years ago today was Labor Day Y2K.
SPEAKER 07 :
Uh-huh.
SPEAKER 03 :
And about this hour… I suffered a fatal widow-maker heart attack. About two and a half minutes later, the cardiologist came in, and I didn’t even know he knew what had happened to me because I was in a closed room.
SPEAKER 01 :
Hey, Jim, you’ve told me these stories before, and I know. I remember that you’ve had like three occasions when you were dead and came back. But I’m going to have to get your question from you right away because we’re coming up to a break.
SPEAKER 03 :
Okay. The call that you made just before me, going back to what those of us who are, like myself, Messianic Jews, called the Tanakh, and regularly called the Old Testament, to me it’s very significant that ten days after Rosh Hashanah, is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. And interestingly, I was born on Yom Kippur in 1951, Wednesday the 3rd of October, and my birthday this year will be Yom Kippur.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, happy birthday and happy Yom Kippur. Now, is that a question?
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, what I wanted to get at is, With the fall festivals, aren’t we pointing in fact to the cross? Because after all, Yom Kippur is the Day of Atonement.
SPEAKER 01 :
Uh-huh. What?
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s a good point. Aren’t the fall festivals that come from my Jewish background, aren’t they… actually pointing to the cross?
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, I think you make a good point there. That, you know, if people say, no, these fall festivals, they’re looking at the second coming of Christ. Well, how is it that the Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, points to the second coming of Christ? I mean, obviously, Christ had doned for us since at his first coming. And there’s certainly nothing in the Bible that indicates that at his second coming, he’ll come to atone for sins. In fact, Hebrews kind of makes the point that he won’t. When he comes back, he’s not coming to atone for sins. Because he says in Hebrews 9, verse 27, And as it is appointed for men once to die, but after this judgment. So Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many. to those who eagerly wait for him, he will appear a second time apart from sin for salvation. Now, apart from sin, many translators render that, you know, apart from dealing with sin. He’s not coming to atone for sin. He did that once. You know, we’ve all quoted that verse, it’s appointed unto man once to die. And we usually do it to talk about All of us, you know, and it is true of most of us, certainly, although there are people who were alive at the time of the rapture will not die, as Paul said. But he’s saying, as it is normal for a person to die only once, so also Christ only had to die once for sins. So we’re eagerly waiting for him to come back, and he won’t come to die for sins then. He’s not coming to atone for our sins at that time. So, yeah, I mean, I think that may support what you’re saying, that the writer of Hebrews is saying atonement is not what Jesus is coming back about. So it would be hard to know why the day of atonement would be related to that. Now, I can think of a possible answer, but I’m out of time for this segment. I appreciate you bringing that up, and happy birthday coming up on Yom Kippur, Jim. And we’ll talk to you again sometime. We need to take a break. You’re listening to The Narrow Path. We are a listener-supported ministry. If you’d like to help us stay on the air, you can write to The Narrow Path, PO Box 1730, Temecula, California, 92593. Or you can go to our website. You can donate there, though everything’s free, at thenarrowpath.com. That’s thenarrowpath.com. I’ll be back in 30 seconds. We have another half hour, so don’t go away.
SPEAKER 02 :
Do you find that reading the Bible leaves you scratching your head with more new questions than you had before you read it, but don’t know where to go for answers? You may be interested then in Steve Gregg’s many online lectures, downloadable without charge from our website, thenarrowpath.com. There’s no charge for anything at thenarrowpath.com. Visit us there and be amazed at all you have been missing.
SPEAKER 01 :
Welcome back to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg, and we’re live for another half hour taking your calls. At this point, I’m looking at only one open line at our switchboard, but you may be the first to get it if you call right now, 844- 844-484-5737. That’s 844-484-5737. And I want to remind you that coming up, not this weekend, but the following weekend, I’ll be teaching three times on a Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I’ll be teaching in the Minneapolis area. And by that, I mean about an hour from Minneapolis. It’s like I could say if I was living in the Midwest, I live in the L.A. area, but I’m really 90 miles away from there. Actually, about five hours drive, 90 miles in bad traffic. So that’s not really in the L.A. area. But I am in, you know, I’m in like maybe the San Diego area. That’s about an hour away. So I say the Minneapolis area just because I don’t know the Midwest and I don’t, you know, that’s the biggest city I know of that’s anywhere near it. Anyway, that’s not this weekend. The following weekend, information about those meetings can be found at our website, thenarrowpath.com, under the tab that says Announcements. All right, our next caller is Jeff from Little Rock, Arkansas. Hi, Jeff. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Jeff, are you there?
SPEAKER 05 :
Yes.
SPEAKER 01 :
Go ahead.
SPEAKER 05 :
Here we go. AA Steve, thank you for your ministry. I’ve got a couple of questions. One, I started reading your book, Four Views of Revelation, and I just started a few days ago, and I think it was the Church of Sardis. That’s kind of where I’m at. when it says that those that overcome will be wearing garments of white and their name will not be blotted out of the book of life. And I’ve always thought that you have a chance of getting your name blotted out of the book of life. But you talked about two views. One, it’s whoever’s alive at that time or that view. I wonder if you could elaborate on that a little bit more. And then the other one is in Hebrews, King James says, the sin that so easily besets us is the sin, a certain thing that A lot of people deal with a lot of things, and if they’re not on top of it and watch, it will beset you. Or is that talking about kind of the overall thing of giving up, walking away from Christ or whatever?
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, well, on the matter of the Book of Life, I’ve addressed that a number of times. I’m not positive what the Book of Life refers to. One common theory, which could be correct, is that the Book of Life refers to those who are saved, those who will be saved, or maybe those who simply are. Now, I distinguish between that because I believe that people can be saved at one point and can cease to be saved at a later point. And the very statement you quoted from the third chapter of Revelation, it mentions the Church of Sardis, if they overcome, they will not have their names removed. which suggests that their names are currently in the Book of Life and can be removed if they don’t overcome. I mean, you really can’t take that statement seriously without that assumption. Now, the question is, were their names put in the Book of Life before the foundation of the world? Because there is that phrase found in the Book of Revelation. I think it’s in Chapter 13. It talks about those whose names… were not written in the Book of Life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. It could be saying that the Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world, or that the Book of Life, their names were written from the foundation of the world. That’s an ambiguity in the passage. But one possibility is that it’s simply got all the names in it of people who are believers. And if a person ceases to be a believer, they’re not in the book anymore. Their name is removed because they were a believer, but they’re not. Another possibility that people have suggested is that it could refer simply to people who are alive at any moment on the planet and that those whose names are blotted out of the book are people who are taken out in judgment, who die. Of course, the third view, and it’s not really a third, it’s kind of a variation on the first one, is the idea that before time began, God wrote into the book of the saved all the names of everyone who would ever be saved. So it’d be an adjunct to the predestinarian doctrine. I think… I think given the data we have, probably the most likely view is that it simply has the names of people who are believers in it, that their names are written in it, so to speak. Now, I believe it’s a figure of speech. I don’t think God has books. I don’t think he has literal books. Of course, books are mentioned, the books are opened, and judgments from the books whose names are not written in the books are thrown in the lake of fire. This is all part of the imagery. of the book of Revelation, which is full of symbolic imagery, but I don’t think God needs to keep records in books. I actually think he knows everything. I don’t think he forgets things. I don’t think he needs to say, I don’t remember. whether or not you’re in the book. So I’m bringing the book in here that has the letter S in it. So I think the idea of books is basically a symbol taken from the convention of bookkeeping and maybe legal matters. But the idea is that if you’re saved, you’re in the book. If you’re not saved, you’re not in the book. And if your name is removed from the book, well, then you’re not saved anymore. Jesus did say to his disciples when they came back, the 70 came back and had cast demons out of people a lot in chapter 10 of Luke. Jesus said, well, don’t rejoice that the demons are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven. Now, these people were believers, and he said their names were written in heaven. He didn’t say whether or not they’d been written in heaven since the foundation of the world or whether their names were entered into the books at the time they became believers. I don’t feel like I have to know that. I’m not even sure what benefit it would be to know it except that I could answer the question more certainly when people ask me, and they do a lot. You also mentioned that in Hebrews chapter 12, we’re told in verse 1, Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily besets us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us. Now, you’re talking about the sin that easily besets us. The New King James says the sin that easily ensnares us. There are Preachers, I’ve heard many who have said, each of us has a particular sin that we’re most vulnerable to. And we need to get over sin in general, but we need to especially get freed up from that particular sin that so easily besets us, the one we’re continually falling to. That may, in fact, reflect human nature. fairly accurately. I’m not sure if it reflects the exegesis of the passage that well. It might. He could be talking about the sin, which easily besets us, but he could be talking about the phenomenon of sin. It’s, you know, there’s this thing out there, sin, that, that sin. The sin, which so easily ensnares us, might simply speak of sin in general, to which we are all too easily ensnared and too easily stumbled into. So I can’t really argue from the way it’s worded that he’s necessarily saying each of us has a particular troubling sin that’s more than others, that is our nemesis that we have to lay aside. I think we need to lay aside all sin. And I think for many people there are particular sins. That they suffer more than they do from others. It’s the temptation. And more than maybe some other people do. For example, I’ve never had the slightest interest in getting drunk. Never had the slightest. Not a temptation ever. Or to smoke a cigarette. Or to take any drugs. It’s just never crossed my mind. And I grew up in the hippie days. With the hippies. All my friends who got saved in the Jesus Movement had used drugs and all that stuff. I just never had the slightest interest. But I have my own sins. I have other kinds of sins. They’re just not that kind. But there are people who really struggle with those kinds of things because that’s, I don’t know, that’s what got their hooks into them. Or into gambling. You know, it’s like… I’m like C.S. Lewis that way. Lewis said gambling is the one sin he’s never had the slightest temptation to. He said if someone wants him to play bridge, he just says, how much do you hope to win? Take it and go. I’ll pay you to get me not to gamble with you. And I’m kind of that way about gambling and other things, too. But some people, that’s their big thing. And so we can’t deny that there are individuals who have special individual sins they struggle with. But my guess is even people who have struggles with those sins, they probably have some other sins, too, that are perhaps as big a problem to them. So different people have different things they struggle with. So I’m going to just take it. although it could be taken either way. I’m going to take it to mean just sin, the phenomenon of sin, the sin, which easily besets us. But if somebody says, well, I want to take it that other way, I’m not going to get into barroom brawl with them. First of all, I don’t go to barrooms very often. So anyway, yeah, I could go either way on that.
SPEAKER 05 :
Thank you very much, Dave.
SPEAKER 01 :
Okay, Jeff, thanks for your call, bro. Colton from Sacramento, California says, Welcome. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 08 :
Hi. I’m due to have a kid in a few weeks here. Congratulations. Thank you. My wife and I were talking about vaccinations, and we both agreed that we don’t see how, as a Christian, vaccinating our child helps our walk or pushes us closer to God. And then the more we thought about it, the more we realized it actually pushes you away. Would you agree, or do you have any thoughts on that?
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, I don’t trust very many of the vaccines. I mean, when I was a kid, we got polio. We got polio vaccine. We probably got, I don’t know, probably diphtheria, rubella, a few like that. Seems like we got two or three vaccines when we were babies. Now they give, what, 30 of them, 40 of them? I forget, to little babies. And this can’t be good in general. I don’t think it is. I’m not a. I’m not a medical expert, and people who are may just really resent my even giving an opinion about this. But I raised five children through the period of childhood and all that time. We lived kind of. below the radar. We homeschooled. We had home births. My kids were born at home. We just didn’t want that much intervention from the government and its medical practices, so our kids didn’t get many inoculations or whatever vaccines. For example, we heard that there’s a dead virus polio vaccine. We did want our kids to be inoculated against polio, so we got the dead virus because you can’t get the disease from the dead virus. And it, you know, it vaccinates you from it anyway, is what we heard anyway. Whereas some people have actually gotten polio from the live virus vaccine. So we just, we, our kids got very few vaccines. I think my wife and I at the time just discussed each one first, and we decided mostly we didn’t want them to have them. But we gave them a few. There were a few, maybe the same kind that we’d gotten when we were kids, for the most part. It’s every person’s decision. I won’t say that giving your child a vaccine necessarily moves you further from God or brings you closer to God. I would just say that the choice to vaccinate your child is an exercise of your stewardship of the responsibility God’s given you for your child. And I would say before… you give any vaccines, you should probably do some research. And by the way, too, one of the things that happens these days is they’ll give your kid a cocktail of several vaccines within maybe the same day or within a few days of each other. And to me, that just sounds like an overdose of anything when you shoot into a little baby. If you feel that you want to give them any number of vaccines… You might want to spread them out. I think the hospital likes to do it conveniently, just give them the whole cocktail at one time or something, just because, I guess because you can’t change your mind before they give the rest of them or something. But I would do my own research on that if I were you. They have a lot more vaccines they’re giving babies now than even when my kids were young, which was 40 years ago and more. So, I mean, I don’t know what they’re giving these babies. I just heard that Florida has become the first state to have no mandatory vaccines, which if I were raising kids, that might be reason enough for me to move to Florida. And Newsom would be an added reason for moving to Florida. So I don’t know what you want to do, but I can’t give medical advice, obviously. And so I don’t. I would just say research it. You might consider spreading them out more than they would prefer. Or maybe giving none at all. That’s not for me to dictate. But I don’t really see how doing so or not is going to make you further or closer to God. It’s more like the way you manage the responsibility of stewarding your child’s health and life, which God has given you. And if your research tells you, hey, my kid will be safer with these vaccines, or if your research tells you the opposite – then I’d go with whatever your research tells you. And I wouldn’t just listen to the government websites about it.
SPEAKER 08 :
Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that.
SPEAKER 01 :
Okay, Colton. Thanks for your call. And I hope you have a healthy baby. God bless.
SPEAKER 08 :
Thank you. God bless. Bye now.
SPEAKER 01 :
All right. Let’s see. We’re going to talk to Patrick in Seattle, Washington. By the way, we might be able to get more calls in before the hour is over, but then we have waiting, so you can take a chance. Call 844-484-5737. The remaining time we might take for the program, we might have no more time for calls than those who are waiting right now, but we could. So 844-484-5737. Okay, Patrick, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 07 :
Hi, Steve, thanks for taking my call. I’ve recently been introduced to some universal reconciliationists. I think it’s been maybe five months. Okay. And I find the argument very compelling. And at the climax of this, I’ve read, I think, two books now on Aeon and Aeonios and its other derivatives. Yeah. And When I first found you, I was like, wow, here’s a guy who’s open to other views. He’s already done the work. Maybe you can point me in a direction I haven’t. I want to make sure I’m on the right path that God has me on. As you can imagine, it can be kind of alienating. And whether or not I should talk to other people, Christians, about this, because it’s one where the typical reaction is instantly being, you know, yeah.
SPEAKER 01 :
Right. Well, I understand what you mean by compelling arguments because I was very surprised. You know, I wrote a book about the three views of hell. Are you familiar with that?
SPEAKER 07 :
I watched the video and I heard you in the book.
SPEAKER 01 :
Okay, yeah, the book is called, it used to be called something else, but now it’s called Why Hell? Three Christian Views Critically Examined, and Zondervan published it. But I certainly, anyone who’s kind of becoming introduced to other views of hell than just the traditional one, I really recommend reading my book on it because I do go into it. You mentioned Ionius and the derivative words from that, which is in Greek the word that’s usually translated forever or eternal. In Hebrew, the equivalent is olam, which is in the Old Testament often translated eternal or everlasting or forever. These words do not mean in the original languages necessarily what we have taken them to mean when we have them translated into English as eternal. everlasting or forever. Uh, definitely these Greek and Hebrew words are used much more broadly to, to simply mean for a long time. And in many instances, I have a whole chapter pretty much dealing with those words in my book. But, um, yeah, I, I just think, you know, if you move that direction, you’re probably going to alienate a lot of people. Uh, And the reason is that I think they don’t understand the gospel, and I’m not here taking a stand for the universal reconciliation view. For those who don’t know what he’s talking about, in addition to the most famous view about hell, which is that it’s a place of eternal conscious torment, there are two other views of hell that the church fathers advocated. There are three views that were held among the church fathers, and one of them was annihilation, that is, after a period of punishment, or maybe even without a period of punishment, the lost will simply be annihilated in the lake of fire, and that’s the end of them. They won’t exist any longer. The other is the view that Origen held, which was very, very widespread in the early church, and it’s called, well, we call it universal reconciliation. He called it restorationism, or he used the Greek word for what would be translated restorationism. And that’s the view that when people go to hell, God is still dealing with them with a mind of bringing them to repentance. That is, he believed that people could repent if they were in hell and would eventually. But some may be very stubborn and may take a while. They may have to be in hell for some time. But the point is, he believed that hell is not necessarily the eternally closed door that we usually think of it as. And that God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance, the Bible says. And he has no pleasure in the death of the wicked. And so the idea is, well, if God doesn’t have any pleasure in the death of the wicked, and he wants everyone to repent, why would he arbitrarily decide that the wicked are going to end up having to die when he could prolong their opportunities, even in hell, to repent? I mean, he could. No one could stop him. So the question is, did God make hell the way he wants it to be? Or was somebody standing above God telling him, you can’t do that. You want everyone to repent, but you’re not going to be able to. If they die, you lost them. They slip through your fingers. You’re done with them, God. I don’t think anyone’s above God. So this makes a difficult argument against this idea. Also, of course, they argue that since Jesus died for everybody… It must mean he wants everybody. Now, Calvinists don’t believe he died for everyone. Calvinists believe he only died for the elect, and he actually wants the rest of the people to burn and be tormented in hell forever and ever. He wants them to because if he didn’t want to, he would have chosen them out of it. I mean, the fact is God, again, is sovereign, so he can do what he wants to do. And if he wanted everyone to be saved, everyone would be. If he wanted a significant portion of humanity to be tortured in hell forever, well, he’d do that too. And that’s what Calvinists think he actually has done. But those who are not Calvinists believe that people have a choice to make. And if they don’t make the right choice in this life, they end up in hell. Then there’s different views of what happens there. And as you point out, some people believe that in hell, God even continues to try to get them to repent because he wants them to repent. And Jesus died for them. They even argue that if Jesus died to buy them. and he loses them for eternity, then he paid for more than he got. And so he’s the cosmic loser. He’s the guy who got cheated for all eternity because he wanted to buy the souls of these people, but he lost them. Why? Because there’s someone more powerful than him? Who? You know, the devil? I don’t think so. So this is a view that theologically appealed to many, many Christians in the early church. It was Augustine. in the fourth and fifth centuries, who basically made the traditional eternal conscious torment view the standard view. Now, I mean, I’ll just tell you, I taught the eternal conscious torment view for the first probably 25 years or more of my ministry. And that’s because I knew some verses that sounded like they were saying that hell is a place of eternal conscious torment. But then, of course, when I studied out to write my book, I realized that they didn’t necessarily say that. They used this word aionios, and it didn’t mean necessarily in Greek aionios. what they said it meant or what I thought it meant. So I would just recommend those who are interested, and I don’t recommend my books very often, but for people interested in this subject, I wrote what I consider to be a very definitive book on it, and I don’t advocate one view in my book. I just give all the arguments for each view and all the arguments against each view, and I leave it to the reader to make up their own mind. And I don’t actually hold a view myself. I have not concluded which one is correct. But you’re right, I’m open-minded. I’m open-minded to it.
SPEAKER 07 :
At one point I heard you lean more towards annihilationism, at least in the video I saw. Was there anything that tipped you over to lean more towards it?
SPEAKER 01 :
To say I lean towards something, that’s a little ambiguous. I would say when it comes to the number of verses… that you have to get over in order to believe one of the other views, it seems like annihilationism has a good case. Conditional immortality has a very good case. A lot of scriptures that you have to explain differently if you don’t take the annihilation view. So, I mean, exegetically, I’d say the annihilation view has a very strong case. But when I look at it from the standpoint of the character of God… and the heart of God as he expresses it. Then, of course, the other view sounds a little more like it. And there’s scriptures for it, too. It’s not just, I mean, some people think, oh, that idea that everyone will be saved in hell, that’s just an emotionalism idea. Well, there is emotionism. I mean, God does have emotions, the Bible indicates. And they are like our best. They’re like our highest emotions, not our worst ones. He’s love. He’s love. And he’s not willing that it should perish. That’s his emotions. But more than that, it’s not just emotions. There are lots of verses in the Bible that I never would have dreamed until I did my research on the different views. So I think there’s a very good case for the second or the third view. And I think the original view that I used to teach for most of my adult life, doesn’t have very many scriptures in his favor, honestly. Just a handful, maybe, and they are ambiguous. So, anyway, that’s where I stand. I need to take another call if I can before I’m out of time. Thank you so much. Okay, Patrick. God bless you. Thanks for your call. Bye now. Matthew from Alabama. You’ve been waiting a half hour. I want to get you in. Welcome.
SPEAKER 06 :
Hi. Yeah. Ironically, I think I was the last caller yesterday when I called in. But, yeah, I asked a question about if you had seen the Promise Land show. Right. And you told me that you hadn’t. And I was just – I didn’t get a chance to sneak it in yesterday. I just wanted to say I actually got a chance to be an extra on the production of that show. So that’s kind of why I was interested in it and promoting it. I actually did meet the director of the show. I went to a thing here in Orlando. I’m actually from Florida, but I’m on a road trip right now. But basically, they had a thing called ChosenCon, which is kind of like Comic-Con, but for Chosen fans, fans of the show The Chosen. I’m sure you’ve heard that. I’ve asked you about it before. But anyway, I’m also a fan of that show. But the guy that is the director on The Promised Land, his name is Mitch Hudson. He’s the second assistant director on The Chosen, who basically directs the background extras of the people in the show. In The Chosen, which I haven’t gotten to participate as an extra in that yet. But anyway, he’s the writer and director of The Promised Land. So he’s got a heart for the scripture and for the Bible. So your comments yesterday about thinking it was maybe written by some Jewish people is actually not correct. I just wanted to… squeeze that in there.
SPEAKER 01 :
So he’s a Christian?
SPEAKER 06 :
He’s a Christian himself? As far as I know, yes, I believe so. He acts like a Christian, and he’s pretty… He has a YouTube channel called The Brozen that he shows up regularly. It’s like the brothers in The Chosen. It’s like The Brozen, an abomination of the two, but it’s like the guys that are in the production of the show talking about the Their experiences on set, like him and I think a couple other guys on The Chosen are in it. So he talks about that. So I listen to that pretty regularly. He comes out with updates weekly. So I just wanted to squeeze that in. Sorry I didn’t have a question. I just wanted to clarify.
SPEAKER 01 :
Okay. Thanks. We’re out of time. You’ve been listening to the Narrow Path Radio Broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg, and we’re live Monday through Friday at this same time. We are listener-supported. You may have noticed we don’t have any advertisements. That was not an advertisement for that show, just because he called two days in a row and recommended the show. It’s not a paid ad, and we don’t generally promote products or things like that. But if you’d like to help us stay on the air, you can write to The Narrow Path, P.O. Box 1730, Temecula, California, 92593, or go to our website, thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for joining us.
