Join Steve Gregg as he delves into a listener-driven conversation on topics ranging from the faithful remnant of Israel to the age-old debate between young Earth and old Earth theories. In this episode, we explore intriguing questions about religious history and creation, providing answers grounded in scripture and thoughtful reflection.
SPEAKER 1 :
Thank you.
SPEAKER 09 :
Good afternoon and welcome to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we’re live for an hour each weekday afternoon. Take in your calls if you have questions about the Bible, about the Christian faith, anything like that. Feel free to give me a call. I’d be glad to talk to you about them. If you have a difference of opinion from the host, I’d be glad for you to call about that too. We can talk about that. The number to call is 844-484-5737. That’s 844-484-5737. And so it’s coming up on us, this Oregon itinerary. This Thursday I’ll be speaking up in Oregon, and I’ll be continuing to speak there for a little less than two weeks in various locations. I’ll be speaking in Monmouth and Brownsville and Malala. Lebanon, Milwaukee, Albany, Portland, Rockaway Beach, and Salem. Those are the areas I’m going to be speaking in in the next several days, starting Thursday and going on for 11 days or so. Anyway, if you’re interested in attending any of those meetings, feel free to look at our website, thenarrowpath.com. And see what I’m talking about and where I’m speaking and things like that. And it might be I’ll be near you somewhere and you might be able to join us. Be glad to have you do it. You go to thenarrowpath.com. That’s thenarrowpath.com. And you’ll see under the tab that says announcements where all these meetings are being held. You’ll also see that next month in November on the 7th and 8th, I’m scheduled in Dallas, Texas area. Dallas or Fort Worth, there’s two different locations we’re trying to choose between, but I’m going to have a couple of days with three debates between myself and Dr. Michael Brown on the subject of whether the modern state of Israel is a fulfillment of Bible prophecy or not. And that’s going to be interesting. Like I said, three debates, one on Friday night, a couple of them on Saturday, and that’s going to be in the Dallas, Texas area. The reason I don’t know if it’s in Dallas or Fort Worth is we don’t know yet what size of facility we need. There’s a church that has two campuses, and one of the campuses is smaller than the other. And if we feel we need the bigger one, I guess we’ll take the Fort Worth one. And I think the smaller one’s in Dallas, if I’m not mistaken. Anyway, I’m not real clear on that, but our website will have the details, especially as the time approaches and things are more firmly nailed down. Just always keep an eye. out for it at our website, thenarrowpath.com, under announcements. All right, our lines are full, so we’re going to talk to our callers right now. Yossi from Knoxville, Tennessee is our first caller. Yossi, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 10 :
Hey, Steve, thank you. So I have a short series of questions about the faithful remnant of Israel in John 6 and John 10. Is that the same remnant being talked about in Romans 9?
SPEAKER 09 :
Absolutely. Yeah, there’s always any time in Israel’s history, Old Testament or New Testament, or even now, there’s a remnant of the Jewish race that were faithful to God. Of course, today, to be faithful to God requires that you’re faithful to the Messiah, so it means you become a follower of Christ, a Christian. But, yeah, when Paul wrote, He spoke in Romans chapter 11, verse 5. He said, even now there’s a remnant. According to the election of grace, he’s talking about himself and other Jewish Christians. But when Jesus was talking, of course, they didn’t call themselves Christians per se, but they were faithful Jews who were In the process of coming to Christ, the disciples of Jesus were the faithful remnant.
SPEAKER 10 :
So is that process still going? As in the Jews that Jesus was talking about, that will come to the Father, the lost sheep of Israel that Jesus was referring to, have they came to the Father already, or is this an ongoing?
SPEAKER 09 :
No, there’s still a lot of Jewish people who don’t believe in Christ, and some of them are coming to Christ. There’s probably Jews converted to Christ every day somewhere.
SPEAKER 10 :
Okay. Yeah, that was my question. Okay. Okay.
SPEAKER 09 :
Is that the whole question? Thank you so much. Okay.
SPEAKER 10 :
Yeah, I just wasn’t sure if it was an ongoing or something that’s been fulfilled already.
SPEAKER 09 :
Yeah, well, no, as long as people are coming to Christ, some of them are Jewish and some are Gentile. So the Jews who come to Christ are the faithful remnant. Now, I will say this. Maybe part of your question was this. The Jews who came to Christ when he was here, were people who were already faithful to God before Jesus was here. So they were the faithful remnant even prior to coming to Christ. They were faithful to God, and they are the ones that the Father gave to him. So Jesus said about them in John 17, he said, Father, they were yours, and you gave them to me, the ones that you’ve given me. So they were faithful remnant. Pardon? Pardon?
SPEAKER 10 :
Were those only the disciples?
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, those were the disciples. They were the ones who were following Christ, right? They were the ones that were given to Jesus to be his disciples. They were already faithful Jews before that, faithful to the old covenant, and then they came to Christ and entered the new covenant. Now, a Jew who comes to Christ today may or may not have been a faithful Jew before that. For example, a lot of Jews are secular now, and yet some get converted to Christ right out of their secular you know, out of atheism or something, you know. So we can’t argue that they were the faithful remnant at the time. Right. But in coming to Christ, they become part of the faithful remnant.
SPEAKER 10 :
Okay. Makes sense. Okay. Yeah, that clarifies it. I ask it because I’m Israeli, but I’m not dispensationalist, but I live in the States, and a lot of people pour out their opinions on Israel to me, but there’s a few things that I’m not – haven’t clicked just yet or – Yeah, that clarifies a lot.
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, I appreciate your calls. I know you call frequently, and you’re always welcome.
SPEAKER 10 :
Yes, thank you so much.
SPEAKER 09 :
All right, brother. God bless. Bye. Bye. Okay, Katie in Nebraska, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 01 :
Thank you. I was listening a couple radio shows ago, and you were talking about your opinion on young Earth versus old Earth, and I agree with you completely. If Genesis is meant to be taken literally, like as a narrative, then obviously it’s young earth. And if not, then we can’t really know. I was waiting for you to bring up something I’ve heard of called apparent age, which God could create an earth that looked old to cause like a stumbling block. And I wondered what your opinions or thoughts were.
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, of course, that’s true. I mean, in my answer, I wasn’t giving arguments for the young earth. But when we talk about, you know, well, how could you believe in a young earth when, you know, you’ve got all these factors that look old? Yeah, I don’t use the term appearance of age, though what I would argue could easily be called that. I just think God made a functional cosmos. So, you know, he made stars. Maybe some of them are five billion light years away. But if he did make them that far away, he made them with their light already reaching here. Because the Bible says he made them to give light to the earth. So I assume that if he made them to give light to the earth, he made them giving light to the earth. And we know he made human beings mature and functional. That is, they were reproductively functional and told to immediately go about, you know, filling the earth with offspring. There were fruit trees bearing fruit. Apparently, the moment they came into existence, they appeared to have had fruit and so forth. I mean, the world had to function. Now, I’m not arguing that it has to be a young earth. I lean that way, but I don’t care. I don’t care if it’s a young earth or an old earth. I’m just saying that holding to a young earth view, one would assume, in fact, would not only assume, it’s actually stated in Genesis 1 that These things were made functional, made mature, made giving light to the earth, made bearing fruit. Adam and Eve were made adults. So, you know, if you looked at Adam and Eve the day they were made, you might think, well, they look like they’re probably 20 years old. Yeah, but they’re just 20 hours old, maybe. So they obviously look older than they are. So you can call that the appearance of age. Or you can just, some people say, well, if God made things with the appearance of age, maybe was he trying to deceive us? well no I don’t see how there’s any deception involved if God tells us that he made it in one day and we decide it looks older than that and so we don’t believe what God said it’s not God who deceived us we’re just not listening to him we’re not believing what he said but on the other hand I don’t think God ever cared for us to have any particular interest in how old everything is my world to me is not any older than I am I mean, I know it’s older. I know there’s people before me. But as far as my duties, my responsibilities, my experience, my world is 72 years old right now. That’s how old I am. And so, you know, I came into a world that had already been put together by earlier generations. But it’s the world as I found it and the world that I have a responsibility for. for living in and for having an impact on and so forth. So it wouldn’t matter when I was born in 1953, it wouldn’t matter if the earth was 4.5 billion years old at that moment or 10,000 years old at that moment. What’s the difference to me? What do I care? God doesn’t care. It has no impact at all on how I’m supposed to live my life and impact the world and carry out my responsibilities in the world as it was handed to me or as I was handed to it. So I don’t have an emotional stake in how old the Earth is. Some people do. I mean, well, evolutionists certainly do because they have to have an old Earth because you can’t have evolution happening in less than billions of years. So you need billions of years to bring everything about by evolution. So one could argue that they have a vested interest that might make them less objective in looking at the evidence. Since they’re committed to naturalistic evolution, their views simply cannot allow a young Earth. Now, if I held to a young Earth, of course, I would have to not believe in evolution, but that’s not a problem. I don’t believe in evolution, even if the Earth is old. The Earth could be very old, as far as I’m concerned, or it could be young. But God… no matter how long ago he did it, he could make everything with his word, which is what the Bible says, not make things from previous things. So, I mean, evolutions definitely have an emotional stake in the age of the earth being old. Some Christians have an emotional stake in it being young because they have a default commitment to taking everything in the Bible, as they would say, literally. And if they do so, and if they take Genesis chapter 1, literally, and the genealogies in Genesis 5 and in chapter 11, literally, you’re kind of pretty much stuck with an earth that’s a few thousand years old. Now, I don’t insist that everything in the Bible has to be taken literally. I think that things that are written to be taken literally should be taken literally. But some things, it’s not clear. It’s not clear if they’re poetic, if they’re parabolic, if they’re, you know, metaphoric. There are some things in the Bible that that clearly are written in different genres and not intended to be taken literally. The question of whether Genesis chapter 1 is in one of those categories or to be taken literally is basically controversial, and not all Christians answer it the same. And I don’t have an interest. I mean, it’s not like I don’t have an interest in the conversation. I just don’t have an interest in the conclusion. I don’t care. whether the earth is old or young. But if it is young, you’re right. It was made with what’s called the appearance of age. Or I would simply say it was created functional because it was made for a function. And God would be kind of, it’d be surprising if God made a universe intending for it to function, but he didn’t make it functional. So anyway, I can go more than one way on that. And I think Christians can be on more than one side of that issue. Thank you, Katie. Bob in Bellevue, Washington. Welcome to The Narrow Path.
SPEAKER 07 :
Hi, Steve. My question is a little bit odd. I was just looking through Genesis 4, 5, and 6 and thinking about the time frame of Seth’s line from Adam. Some call it a godly line, but And certainly the listing given in Genesis seems to be a godly line, but there were other children born to all the offspring of Seth through time. But once Noah came, and then the flood, and he had the three sons that survived the flood with him, they repopulated the earth. And ten generations from Shem, Abraham is born. And God called Abraham out of Ur of Chaldees.
SPEAKER 09 :
Yes. What is your question? I mean, that’s a good summary of the first few chapters.
SPEAKER 07 :
My question is this. I was just getting to the question. The Bible, certainly the Old Testament, emphasizes that God is one in numerous places. So my question to you is, was Abraham, he was before the law, were there other pagan religions from the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Babylonians? We know they served numerous gods. What was your thought on what Abraham believed?
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, there is a statement in Joshua where Joshua is reminding the people of Israel that Abraham and his ancestors lived in Ur of the Chaldees and served other gods. Now, the statement that is made is not entirely clear whether it’s saying that Terah, his father, served other gods or Abraham served other gods. If Abraham did, probably his father did too because they were not, of course, they were not Jews. There were no Jews. They were They were what we call pagans. However, there are pagans who believe in one God, just maybe not the majority of them. So whether Terah believed in more than one God or not, we don’t know. Whether Abraham did initially, we don’t know. If he did, if he was raised in a polytheistic home, obviously he became a monotheist, and that could have been as a result of God appearing to him. When he did, we’re told God did appear to him and told him to leave his home. father’s house and go to a land he doesn’t know about and God would make a great nation out of him so he did receive special revelation from God now we don’t know if God appeared to him because he was a man who already was monotheistic and already believed in God or if he was a pagan and God I mean a polytheist and and by God appearing to him he became a monotheist we’re not told any of that So we don’t have specific information at all concerning Abram’s religious convictions or his family’s convictions before that. You’re right. He did come from the line of Shem. And, of course, that line came from the line of Seth. But… But you’re also right in saying that though people sometimes say the line of Seth was a righteous line, we’re never told that it was a righteous line. There are some righteous people in it in those ten generations. There’s probably about three of them named that we know to be righteous. We don’t know that the whole family line was. And we’re certainly not told anything like that about the Shem’s line after the flood. You know, Shem’s line included lots of different people groups. Abraham was just one of them. So, you know, I don’t know to what degree the knowledge of the true God was preserved in the line of Shem or in the specific family line that Abraham came through. And that’s probably what you’re wondering. It is. Yeah. Thank you very much. I appreciate your comments. Okay. Yeah. We don’t have specific information.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 09 :
Thank you, Steve. Okay, thanks for your call, brother. Bye now. Steve in Phoenix, Arizona. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yes, not to be confused with Apollo Creed from Rocky, but in the Apostles’ Creed, the last sentence about the Roman Holy Catholic Church, that seems kind of weird that that’s thrown in there. Can you possibly explain that or expand on that a little bit?
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, the Apostles’ Creed doesn’t mention the Roman Catholic Church. It mentions the Catholic Church.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yeah, okay.
SPEAKER 09 :
Okay. Catholic Church in those days, when the Apostles’ Creed was written, did not mean Roman Catholic. Now, the Roman Catholics will tell you that it did, and the Eastern Orthodox will say it referred to them. But actually, the word Catholic, the word, its literal meaning is universal. Catholic means universal. Now, the universal church was comprised of those that were you know, Orthodox and didn’t belong to any heretical groups. So those that preserved the apostolic teaching faithfully, um, you know, generations later were considered the Catholic church. Now they weren’t Roman Catholic until such a time as the Bishop of Rome, uh, evolved into an office that had authority over all the other bishops, uh, Now, that was long after the Apostles’ Creed. So, when the Apostles’ Creed speaks of the Catholic Church, you know, it’s anachronistic.
SPEAKER 05 :
It means universal.
SPEAKER 09 :
Yeah, it’s anachronistic for us to think of it as the Roman Catholic Church, because the Roman Catholic Church didn’t exist as such at the time. I mean, there was a Roman bishop, and there was a bishop at Antioch, and a bishop at Jerusalem, a bishop at Alexandria, a bishop at Edessa, bishops all over the place, but… the Roman bishop was not in authority over all the bishops until much, well, considerably, some centuries later. So the Apostles’ Creed is not referring to the Roman Catholics.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, so basically just the Catholic means universal is another word. That’s correct, yeah.
SPEAKER 09 :
All right, thank you very much. All right, brother. Thanks for your call. Bye-bye. Bye now. Bart from Hillsborough, Oregon. Welcome.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, thank you. Two related questions. In John 14, 28, Jesus said, if ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto my Father, for my Father is greater than I. Hebrews 2.9, but we see Jesus who is made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death. So Jesus has some subservient, inferior role. And how does that, what is his role now, now that he is no longer a human? I can understand why he might think he’s inferior because he’s human and physical and has physical limitations of humans on earth. But what about now that he’s ascended, and what about before Mary gave him birth? What form was Jesus before his birth, and in what form is he now, and would he still be considered inferior to the Father?
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, okay, yeah, it’s not that he’s not human anymore. He doesn’t have the limitations of a natural human being anymore. He’s still considered human. Paul told Timothy there’s one God and one mediator between God and man, the man, Christ Jesus or Jesus Christ. So Paul, writing a long time after Christ’s ascension, is still referring to Jesus as a man who is a mediator between man and God. So Jesus took on human nature and he never abandoned it, although it became glorified in his resurrection. And all humans who will be resurrected with him, who are saved, who will be glorified too. So our human nature will be transformed as his was, but it’s still human. He still has a human nature. body of flesh and bones you know that’s what he said to his disciples when he showed himself to them after the resurrection he said it’s don’t be afraid it is I you see that I’m not a ghost he said a spirit doesn’t have flesh and bones as you see me have so what are we to understand about this well it’s it’s clear that Jesus didn’t have flesh and bones until he was born of Mary in Bethlehem, or at least until he was conceived and flesh and bones began to form. The Bible says in Philippians 2 he existed in the form of God, but then he emptied himself and took on himself the form of a servant, and by that he means a human servant. So Jesus took on a human form, though he had existed previously, In the form of God. Now in taking on a human form it says he emptied himself. That’s the term Paul uses in Philippians 2. He was in the form of God then he emptied himself and took on the form of a servant. Now emptying himself is a very mysterious thing. It’s not ever explained to us in the Bible. Many people like myself believe that in order for God to be trimmed down to our size to live among us, He had to trim off some of the attributes of majesty, though he was the same being. He was simply, you know, Jesus was not omnipresent, for example. He didn’t fill the whole universe. His father did. And that’s why Jesus could say the father is greater than I. The father filled the whole universe. Jesus filled only one place at a time, and he had to walk from one place to another to be somewhere else. He gave up for the time being anyway, if not permanently. He gave up his omnipresence. He gave up his omniscience. He didn’t know everything, but his father did. He said, you know, as far as the day of the hour, no man knows that, nor do the angels of God, nor does the sun, meaning himself, but only my father in heaven. So his father was omnipresent, but he wasn’t. His father’s omniscient, but he wasn’t. His father’s omnipotent, all powerful, but Jesus wasn’t. Jesus did run out of energy. You know, he did fall asleep. He got weary. and crashed because it was so exhausted and so forth. The father, it says in Isaiah, he never slumbers or sleeps because, you know, he’s got limitless energy. The father was invisible, but Jesus was not. So there’s things about God that Jesus shed and, you know, put aside or emptied himself of those special things majestic traits and became not so majestic and dwelt among us in a human form with many of the human limitations we have but he wasn’t a different person than before he was the word of God who created the universe who also was now made flesh and dwelt among us now after his resurrection he was still in a body and it was that body that ascended up into heaven and is still there until he returns in bodily form So, you know, what’s his status now? What’s he look like now? Boy, we don’t have much information about that. And what we do have is totally symbolic. You know, when John was caught up into heaven, he saw Jesus up there. He described him as a lamb having seven eyes and seven horns. Obviously, that’s not what Jesus literally looks like. It’s a symbolic vision. What I can say is that Jesus still remains in some ways distinct from his father because Paul said that he’s reigning at the right hand of God and he will reign until he’s made all his enemies his footstool. Then he’s going to turn it over to his father. So there’s still distinction between the father and the son. That distinction, you know, apparently much of that distinction has to do with his incarnation and his becoming man. And therefore, you know, he did that permanently. But he’s still the Word of God made flesh. So, I mean, I don’t know how all that works. I don’t think anyone does. But it’s a good and deep question that we don’t know entirely how to answer. At least I don’t. I need to take a break, though. We have another 30 minutes coming, so don’t go away. Our website is dunnarrowpath.com. I’ll be back in 30 seconds. Stay tuned.
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 09 :
Welcome back to the Narrow Path Radio Broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we’re live for another half hour. We’re taking your phone calls if you want to raise questions for discussion. on the air about the Bible, about the Christian faith. Maybe you want to raise a difference of opinion with the host to talk about. You’re welcome to do that. Right now I’m looking at a mostly full switchboard with one line open. If you want to take that line, call me at this number, 844-484-5737. That’s 844-484-5737. All right, let’s talk next to Mark calling from the state of Maine. Hi, Mark. Welcome to The Narrow Path.
SPEAKER 12 :
Hi, Steve. How are you doing today?
SPEAKER 09 :
Well enough. Thank you.
SPEAKER 12 :
Good. Someone asked me a question today, and I kind of know how to answer it, and then I don’t. They’re like, why would God let bad things happen, especially like shootings and stuff? Why would he allow other Christians to be killed? And I’m just thinking of what would be a really good answer I could provide to people for why that happens.
SPEAKER 09 :
Yeah, well, there’s not an answer that would seem good to somebody who’s not already sympathetic with God. Christians, by definition, are people who trust God, people who are on God’s side. And therefore, a true answer, even if it’s not altogether satisfying, is something we can live with. I can give you a true answer, I think. But, of course, if you’re dealing with people who don’t have any affinity for God, people who actually are raising this question because they’re trying to challenge God, trying to see if God can talk his way out of this, see if God has a good enough answer to justify their allegiance to him. Yeah, there’s no answer good enough for them. Because, I mean, you can give a great answer, and it can be an entirely true answer, but you see, they’re not on God’s side. And when people are raising objections to God, it’s very clear they either don’t believe there is a God, or more likely, they suspect there is, but they don’t like him. And they’re trying to find complaints about him. Now, see, if you believe there’s a God and he is the God, anything like the God that created the universe, you know that he’s a lot smarter, a lot wiser, a lot more powerful, a lot. He’s been around a lot longer. And if he’s the God of the Bible, he’s also a lot better than any of us are. And that means that whatever he does, he must have a good reason for it. Now, sometimes we can imagine what the reason is, and sometimes we even see what the reason is. You know, if a guy was about to, you know, kill an innocent child, and, you know, a brick fell off a building and fell on his head and killed the guy before he killed the child, say, well, that’s justice right there, you know, and God, we can see why God did that. But when the guy actually kills the child… and there’s no bricks falling on his head to kill him, we think, why did God let this guy do that? Well, the truth is that God lets a lot of bad things happen. And by bad things, I mean things that are morally wrong and things that are bad in the sense of very undesirable, very unpleasant to us. Sicknesses, premature death, injuries, you know, financial disasters, that kind of stuff. Now, those things aren’t morally wrong in themselves, but they are, we would call those bad things because they’re so undesirable and so unpleasant to us. Now, that’s different than the kind of things like, why did somebody let my wife run off with another man? Why did somebody let this man shoot up this church or even shoot up a synagogue or anything like that? Now, that’s why is God allowing people to do immoral things. Now, sometimes those two categories of bad are the same. The man who does the immoral thing of shooting up a church also causes harm and pain and suffering on those who are his victims, although they are not involved in evils. They suffer harm, but they’ve made no immoral decisions. Now, why does God allow immoral decisions? Because he didn’t make us animals. He made us the kind of beings that can be morally responsible. You can’t have a being that’s morally responsible unless you give it the ability to choose between right and wrong. Animals don’t have a choice between right and wrong, and therefore they’re not morally responsible. But they can’t do anything really good either. They can be useful to man. A horse pulling a plow is useful to a man. A dog guarding your house is useful to you, but they’re not good. They’re not doing a morally good thing. They’re doing something convenient or useful to us. That’s different than the areas of morality. God made, as far as we know, only humans and angels capable of making choices between good and evil. And because he gave us that choice, and that’s in the nature of being human as opposed to being an animal or a rock, people make bad choices as well as good ones. Some people don’t shoot up churches. Some people do. That’s bad. Bad when they do that. It’s good when they don’t. But people do both good and bad things. Now, the real question then would be not why did God allow this man to make this horrible decision, but more like why did God allow the Christians in the church who got shot and killed to suffer from his bad decision? Now, one thing we know from the Bible is that many people may wish evil against us, and God does not let them carry it out. There’s many examples in the Bible. People who wanted to stone Jesus to death or wanted to kill Paul prematurely, but God didn’t let it happen. And then the time came when someone did kill Jesus, because God let it happen. Time came when Paul was imprisoned and executed, because God let it happen. God didn’t have to let it happen. You know, Peter was put, James, the apostle, was captured and beheaded. In Acts chapter 12, Peter was captured by the same authority and put in jail and was going to be beheaded the next day. And an angel came and God let him out and he escaped. Now, why did James not get to escape and Peter did? I don’t know. We certainly know God was in it because God could have sent the same angel that let Peter out of prison. He could have sent it to help James when he was captured too. God can do whatever he wants to. But he’s not answerable to us for what he does. One thing we do know. not only as Christians, but as human beings, we are all going to die. I mean, obviously, if we’re in the last generation and we’re raptured, some of us will not die. But there’s no reason for anyone to count on that being the case. No previous generation has been there, and we might not be either. One thing we should be able to count on is that we’re going to die. If God surprises us and we get raptured instead, that’s fine with me. But God never has to explain to me or give special reasons why somebody dies. The soul that sins shall die, and everyone has sinned, so everyone’s going to die. The real question is, why did this person die in these circumstances instead of some others? Why does God let some innocent grandmother who’s worshiping God in church die from an assassin’s bullet, and then somebody else dies in a bed of ease at some other time, or from a disease or something some other way? I don’t know. I mean, everybody’s going to die. That’s something I’ve always understood since I was little, and it’s kind of an important and defining philosophical realization, you know, because if you know that you’re going to die, the only question then is when’s the best time for that or the best way. Now, some people die horribly. Some people die very comfortably, to my mind, being shot. with a bullet and dying of a gunshot wound is not one of the worst ways to go. There may be easier ways and worse ways. But, you know, however I die, if I die in an accident, if some Islamist group cuts my head off, if someone breaks into my house and shoots me dead, if I die of old age, it really doesn’t matter to me. I mean, you know, when you realize you’re going to die, The only thing that really matters is, are you ready to die? Because you’re going to someday. The worst thing is not that you die young, although you’re ready to die, but that you live to be very old and never become ready to die and die anyway. To die unready to die, unprepared to see God, is the greatest disaster. To die at any point in childhood or in adult life at any point, when you’re ready to meet God, Well, that’s not a disaster. It’s a bad thing for the people who loved you and are going to miss you. And there may be people who depended on you, too, so they’re going to suffer some things for it. But that’s how God’s going to deal with them. Each of us has our own burdens and trials to bear, and each of us will die however God wishes. It’s not really necessary for God to tell me, why did this person die in an accident? I’ve had friends who died in accidents. I’ve had friends who died in other ways. And some just died of old age. I’m that age now somewhere. People my age can die of old age. But the truth is that if you ask why did God allow Christians in a church to die, well, I’m going to suggest very probably they were ready to die. And therefore, if they hadn’t died that day, they’d die some other day. And I don’t know if there’s ever a good day to lose your loved ones. I don’t think there is. I had a wife when I was 28 years old, and she was 25. And she was hit by a truck and killed. And, you know, some people say, why would God let that happen? Well, I mean, I knew she was going to die. Not that day. I just knew she was a human being like me. I knew we were both going to die. So far I haven’t yet, and she has. But it’s no surprise that someone dies. The question is, is there ever any good day to lose your loved one? I mean, for your wife to die, your husband to die, your children to die? There’s never a good day for that. You know, even if you lived until they were in their 80s or 90s and they died, you know, you’re still going to miss them. It’s still going to be hard for you. So I don’t really ever feel like there needs to be special explanations. Why did God let these people die? Well, he let them die because they’re human and all humans die. And if someone says, but they weren’t even saved, they weren’t even ready to meet God yet. God knows a lot of things I don’t. Maybe he knew they would never get ready to meet God. Who knows? I mean, God knows things. It’s possible that somebody was never going to get ready to meet God, and if they had lived on, some harm would have come to others through them or whatever, or some other harm on them. God knows everything. I’m just really, I’ve never had any problem trusting God in those things. If I was told, now I’m in my 70s, so of course it shouldn’t be a surprise if I got a, you know, a doctor telling me I’m going to die of something soon. But that’d be fine with me, and that’s been fine with me since I was 16 years old. If a doctor told me when I was 16 or 20 or 25, hey, you’re going to die, you know, within six months, I would have thought, well, now I know. I knew I was going to die. Now I know when. And it seems to me that that’s the only rational way for people to live their lives. Because if we live our lives thinking, well, I’m probably not going to die anytime soon, Well, there’s no reason to believe that. Why not live in reality? Why not realize my days are numbered? I’ve got only a limited time to serve God. I better do it the best I know how with the time I have. That’s my whole thought on that whole subject. It might seem strange to people, but that’s how I would answer that question. I appreciate your call. Josh in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota. Welcome. Hang on. I’ve got your back.
SPEAKER 11 :
Hey, what’s going on?
SPEAKER 09 :
What’s going on? Well, I’m doing a radio show. What’s going on with you besides you’re on the phone?
SPEAKER 11 :
Oh, well, yeah, I was listening to you guys, and I just couldn’t help but that young earth and old earth theory actually got a pretty good answer from my youth group with what’s kind of everybody always wants to separate the two, and actually with modern theories of relativity, actually both seem to be the case. Um, you know, as time space and time, you know, kind of stretch, uh, that’s basically what kind of the aging process is, you know, um, because science has the ability to be rewritten at any time where the Bible never does. It’s been true since day one. And, you know, up until the fifties, modern science had believed that the earth had just all, or the earth and the universe had always existed. Yeah. And now in, you know… At least atheists hope so. Yeah. Yeah. Well, between the cosmic background radiation and the expansion of the universe, we can see… That’s how they had to give up that theory of the steady state universe, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And they had, you know, if you look back, you know, let there be light sounds an awful lot like, you know, the singularity of everything and all energy and matter being in a single point of, you know, God bringing that into existence. But if you think about, you know, expanding, expansion from, you know, the size of a pin, you know, to the, you know, size of a basketball, you know, day one, maybe, and then from a basketball to the size of, you know, a house day two.
SPEAKER 08 :
So, brother, do you have a question for me, or are you just giving us a point of view?
SPEAKER 11 :
Well, I just wanted to give a little input and clarity that actually both could very well be the case because, you know, until day four, there wasn’t a sun and moon with which to measure a single day. And you’ve got to think of God being on the outside of space and time as he’s not subject to it. But those two, you know, old earth and young earth aren’t mutually exclusive and they actually can coexist quite well.
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, I’ll tell you this. Einstein’s theories of relativity have always been above my pay grade. I’ve never understood how they work. I still don’t. I’ve heard the things you’re saying, and they may be true. If they’re true, they’re provable at a level that I will never understand. And there are things that I won’t even care if I understand or not. I mean, some people are very curious about things like that. And so that might be helpful to them. For me, you know, philosophical stuff like that that doesn’t really change anything about the way things are, you know, that’s something that I don’t read very much of. And I have to say, I’ve heard these kinds of things, of course, before, but I don’t understand them. And I’m not trying to seek understanding of them because I think I said earlier, I don’t really care how old the earth is. It’s irrelevant to my life. My world is only 72 years old so far because I wasn’t in any world before that. And so I’m in a world that started 72 years ago. And I’m doing my best to have an impact on it. Can’t have any impact on a world a thousand years ago or a million years ago, but maybe a thousand years from now, possibly, or a million years from now. Anyway, I appreciate your thoughts about that. Thanks for joining us. Okay, Keith from Sholo, Arizona. Okay, welcome to the Narrow Pass. Sholo, Arizona.
SPEAKER 06 :
Can you hear me okay, Steve?
SPEAKER 09 :
You’re a little muffly. Yeah, are you on a speakerphone?
SPEAKER 06 :
What about if I take out speaker? Is that better?
SPEAKER 09 :
Probably it is, yeah.
SPEAKER 06 :
Okay. I just wanted to know your opinion of Christian nationalism, what you thought of that.
SPEAKER 09 :
I don’t know what Christian nationalism is. I know some people, I mean, I know like Doug Wilson is supposedly, I mean, I think he calls himself a Christian nationalist. If Christian nationalism simply means that I’m a Christian and I want the best for my nation and I think Christianity is the best for every nation and therefore I would like to see my nation, you know, enlightened by Christianity… I guess if that’s what it would mean, I would have no objection to it. I don’t really know what it exactly means.
SPEAKER 06 :
I think it’s almost like dispensationalism becoming Christian Zionist, where you have to bless Israel and wish the best for Israel, because if you bless Israel, God will bless you. And I think there… where it becomes a political thing where your country, it should be number one. I mean, you know, you should do best to be a good citizen.
SPEAKER 09 :
I see that idea. Let me just say that when I think of nationalism, I just see it as the opposite of globalism. that I believe nations have individual identities. The Bible says in, well, I guess it’s Paul’s sermon on Mars Hill in Acts 17, he says that God separated the nations and determined their boundaries and so forth so that people would be able to seek and find God. I believe that there’s good reason not to have a globalist world. If the whole globe is ruled by one authority, some entity, some human entity, then it doesn’t leave much freedom for people to disagree with that entity. Whereas if nations have separate identities, they can pursue separate courses. And if one becomes totalitarian or, you know, let’s just say doesn’t allow Christians to meet, you know, publicly or whatever, there’s other places that will. There’s other places that will. There’s other nations that have different laws and different authorities. I think having individual nations is good. And so a nationalist, I think, is somebody who wants to recognize the distinct identity of their nation. Now, they might also be a very patriotic nationalist. They might be somebody who believes that their nation is the best one in the whole world and that everyone ought to be like them. And, you know, there may be some grounds for thinking that way about some of the nations. But I just, being nationalist to my mind doesn’t, I’m a nationalist instead of a globalist. I’m not a globalist. Now, as far as Christian, I’m Christian also. Now, when you talk about being politically involved, you know, I’m not very politically involved, but I have to say that politics simply refers to governing, right? And, you know, God ordained governments, the Bible says, in order to enforce justice, to punish evildoers and praise those who do well, to protect innocent citizens from thugs and criminals and stuff, and maybe invading nations. It seems to me like the national defense and criminal justice system are exactly what God created the nations for, what politics is for. The problem is, of course… Almost all governments want to extend their range of expertise and control into areas that God did not ordain for them to do. God did not ordain governments to tell somebody how to educate their children or how to maintain their own health, what drugs they have to take for their own health. God didn’t ordain the government for that. There’s no criminality in those areas. And governments always want to overreach. Now, you know, in overreaching, modern governments have sometimes taken over the moral side you know, standard setting. Like people talk, if I say something against abortion or against, let’s just say, same-sex marriage or something like that, people say, hey, that’s political. You should just be talking about the Bible. Well, it’s actually biblical. It’s not political. A political party may make it a political issue for them. It simply means they’re overreaching. The government doesn’t have the right to tell you what’s moral and what’s not moral. That’s God’s realm. If somebody says they’re a Christian nationalist, and what they mean by that is they’re trying to keep the government from interfering with Christianity. And, frankly, they’re trying to influence the government to be just and good to everybody. Well, I can’t really see anything bad about that. But I don’t know if that’s what the word means because I’ve never described myself by those terms. And I’m not sure I’d feel comfortable doing so just because I don’t know what people mean by it. But I’m not against Christians being politically involved if what that means is – I have a choice here. There’s two candidates, and one of them wants to institute just policies, and the other one wants to institute unjust policies. Well, I’m for justice, because God is a just God, and he’s for justice, too. He hates injustice, the Bible says. So my vote is going to go with the one that seems to me to promote justice. If there’s one political party that does that more than the other, then I’ll probably vote in line with that political party more often, though my identity is not with that party. I personally, myself, I’m not registered as either a Democrat or a Republican. I’m just independent because I don’t believe Christians have a party loyalty to any political system. But we do have a passion and loyalty to justice. And so it may be that often when we vote, we are voting along the lines of one party more than the other, not because of loyalty to the party, but because of loyalty to the whole idea of justice. Let’s see here. Mark from Burlington, Vermont. Welcome to The Narrow Path.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes, thank you, Steve, for sharing your knowledge with us. I had a question about heaven and what the Bible says about what our experience is going to be now when we pass on. And is that experience going to be different after Jesus comes back?
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, I understand heaven to be the place where our spirits go to be with the Lord when we die. And Paul says we are, at the point of death, Christians are absent from the body and present with the Lord. He talked about how he was eager to depart and to be with the Lord. But departing from the body means that your body is not going with you. It’s just your spirit going there. The resurrection, when Jesus comes back, will bring our bodies out of the grave in glorified form, and we will live in the new earth, which is fitted for bodies, and our bodies will be fitted for it. Adam and Eve were given bodies that were fitted for living on the physical planet Earth. The fall kind of interrupted things a bit, but Christ came to redeem things, and he’s come to redeem the world. And so the world will be redeemed, and our bodies will be redeemed also. Paul actually refers to our resurrection as the redemption of the body. In Romans chapter 8, I forget, maybe verse 26, 27, somewhere around there. Anyway, when Jesus comes back, we’ll live in resurrected, glorified bodies. Immortals. not subject to pain or sickness or whatever, and will live with Christ on a perfected earth where there’s no more curse. It says in Revelation 22 there is no more curse. In Revelation 21 it says there’s no more crying or sorrow or death or sickness or pain. In other words, I think it’s pretty much the way God intended for the earth to be before the fall because God intended for people to live on earth. God didn’t make people to be living in the sky. Angels are for that. You know, people live on earth. And therefore, God made the earth for people and people for earth. And, of course, people blew it through sin. And Jesus came back to unblow it, to repair the damage and to restore it and to redeem it. And what that means is he’s redeeming the earth to something more like what it was supposed to be in the first place. Again, no pain or sorrow or sickness or crying or death. Sin brought all those things, and the effects of sin will be eradicated when the curse is gone. We will also live in bodies that are perfectly suited for eternal life in that environment. So that’s at least how I understand the difference between heaven and when Jesus comes back. Heaven is where our spirits go when our bodies are still left behind. But when Jesus comes back, he brings us with him, raises the bodies, glorifies the bodies, changes the earth, and we are living in those bodies again forever with Jesus. Like he is. He’s in a body, too. Anyway, that’s as I understand it. I appreciate your call. We’re out of time. You’ve been listening to The Narrow Path. My name is Steve Gregg, and we are listener-supported. You can write to us at TheNarrowPath, P.O. Box 1733. Temecula, California, 92593. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for joining us.
