Join us in this illuminating episode where a selection of insightful past calls to The Narrow Path is revisited, bringing to light crucial biblical understandings. Our callers dig deep into topics like the significance of warfare in ancient Israel as discussed in Judges 3 and the interpretation of God’s commandments in today’s society. Hosted by a stand-in for Steve Gray, this episode spans a wealth of religious insights suitable for every keen Bible enthusiast.
SPEAKER 06 :
This is the best of the Narrow Path Radio broadcast. The following is pre-recorded.
SPEAKER 03 :
The following is pre-recorded.
SPEAKER 02 :
Welcome to the Narrow Path Radio Program, hosted by Steve Gray. Steve is not in the studio today, so calls from listeners will not be able to be taken. In the place of the usual format, we’ve put together some of the best calls from past programs. They cover a variety of topics important to anyone interested in the Bible and Christianity. In addition to the radio program, The Narrow Path has a website. You can go to www.thenarrowpath.com, where you can find hundreds of resources that can all be downloaded for free. And now, please enjoy this special collection of calls to Steve Gregg and The Narrow Path.
SPEAKER 05 :
Our first caller today is Nathan from Placerville, California. Nathan, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 13 :
Hey, good afternoon, Steve. So I was just reading through Judges, and I came across this passage in the beginning of Judges chapter 3, and I found it a little mystifying. In the first two verses, God says that you will not drive out Israel’s enemies, that Israel may be tested. But he also says that you won’t do so in order that they might be taught to know war. My question was, what is the purpose of that? Is it really because he wants them to remain strong and ready for military conflict, or is it actually a punishment for the continued disobedience that they might never cease to know war?
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, Israel was being established as a political nation in the Middle East, surrounded by hostile nations that would often attack them. We know they were attacked on different occasions by the Philistines, by the Syrians. by the Edomites who surrounded them, and sometimes by more distant armies that came, like the Assyrians and the Egyptians, and the Babylonians eventually. So we can see that they would have to have military readiness. And I think what it’s saying there in Judges chapter 3 and verse 1, that God didn’t immediately drive out all the Canaanites, but left some conflicts to be settled over, not in the first generation, but in later generations, so that there would be You know, the sense of military aptitude and readiness, because that was going to be something that every nation is going to need unless they have a friendly world around them that will never attack them. So they were going to need to have the skills of war, as every nation needs to. They’re going to have to have armies. They’re going to have to have readiness and strategy and so forth. And so God didn’t just give them a completely peaceable situation where they just sit back on their laurels and… disband their military and not be prepared. Because throughout their entire history as a nation, they would need to have military readiness because they, on so many occasions, were invaded. So I think that’s why he said he left some of the Canaanites in the lands so that later generations would have the awareness of the need for military readiness and be able to know how to fight wars.
SPEAKER 13 :
Yes, yes. Yeah, kind of what I thought as well. It just seems like a little bit of a strange statement. I get the feeling, you know, in the passages leading up to this event or this statement, that God had wanted them to drive out everyone, and they had failed to do so.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, well, he told them to drive them all out, but he didn’t say it would all have to be done in the first generation. You know, I mean, that’s something. We know that after Joshua’s conquests are said to have been complete… there were still cities like Jerusalem that were still totally controlled by Canaanites. They were not really Jewish cities yet. Jerusalem wasn’t conquered until the time of David, like 400 years after this or more, maybe 600 years after this. Canaanite cities remained in the land unconquered for some time. The writer of Judges is simply giving this interpretation. This allowed them to not get flabby. This allowed them to not have generations arise that just took for granted their peace and security, but they had to learn how to make war. Not necessarily how to instigate war, but when somebody attacks you as a nation, your nation makes war to defend itself. I think that’s what it’s referring to.
SPEAKER 13 :
Okay. All right. Thank you.
SPEAKER 05 :
Okay, Nathan. I appreciate your call. It’s exactly what we want people to call about. Thank you for calling. Our next caller is from Rodney from Los Angeles, California. Rodney, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 14 :
Okay, how are you doing? Good, thanks. I have a question because I’m a believer and a Christian, and I believe in the Bible, and I try to go by the Bible. And one of the problems that I see in a lot of ways is Our society as a whole has fell so far away from the ways of the Bible, or the ways of the Most High, and the ways of Christ. And one of the things I want to bring up is the fact that as we’re going on through these generations, our younger generation seems to, because of society, because of history, and society as a whole, we know that we’re living in the last days. And as we’re going through these last days, as a society, we’re falling further and further away from the laws of God. And the thing is, I understand and I’ve been taught that the laws of God have been done away with, but some things in the Scripture don’t seem to go quite with that. Now, we know as far as common sense that if we fall away from the laws of God, then… We’re not at a good point. The whole thing about Christ is to be obedient. Christ says itself, if you love me, keep my commandments. And we fell so far away from God that we need to have something, some guideline to go by. A beautiful guideline to go by, of course, is the Bible. But the thing is, as we know, 2 Corinthians 5 and 10 tells us, that, you know, when we pass away, we will be judged by Christ. But according to what criteria? Now, I know and I’ve read and I believe that following the laws of God won’t necessarily get you to the kingdom because it’s by faith in Jesus Christ, and who he chooses will actually make it to the kingdom. But just like if you had two kids… and you were about to pass away as a father, and you were going to give your business and your heritage, of course you would give some heritage to both, but which son would you want to take over your business and run it? The one that’s obedient or the one that’s disobedient?
SPEAKER 05 :
Right. Well, Rodney, it sounds like you have more of a… a sermon than a question. Now, let me ask you, are you suggesting that what we need is for people to keep the laws of God, meaning the Old Testament commandments, or do you mean the commandments of Christ?
SPEAKER 14 :
Well, it seems like it’s reading from the New Testament. Just like if we went to Romans 7 and 1, it says that the law has dominion over man as long as he lives.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, but it goes on in verses 3 and 4. To say that we have died to the law through the body of Christ. So he’s basically saying it doesn’t have dominion over us. He says the law has dominion over man as long as he lives. But then he goes on to say we have died through the body of Christ to the law. And now we are married to another woman. which is Christ. So he’s making it very clear that the law itself says that it is of no binding force to those who have died. And then Paul says, we have died. We’ve died in Christ. So his conclusion is the law of the Old Testament is no longer binding, but we do have a new husband, Christ, and we, of course, must obey him. But that’s different than obeying Moses.
SPEAKER 14 :
Right, right. I understand that. But the thing is, it’s just like in Matthew 5 and 17, Christ says he didn’t come to take the laws away.
SPEAKER 05 :
No, no, no, no, no. He didn’t say that. He said he did not come to destroy the law, but he did come to fulfill the law. Now, in either case, the law might be taken away, but one is destructive and one is constructive. To say, I didn’t come to destroy the law… And many people like to quote that part without quoting the rest of the sentence. So I did not come to destroy, but to fulfill. In either case, whether the law is destroyed or fulfilled, its purpose has passed. You see, a prophecy is of value until it is fulfilled. Because until it is fulfilled, it predicts what’s going to happen. Once it has happened, it’s no longer needed to predict what’s going to happen. It has served its purpose. And the same thing with the law. Jesus talked about the law and the prophets. He came to fulfill them. The law anticipated something. All the sacrifices they offered, all the blood that was shed, the Passover and the festivals, they all pointed forward to something just like the prophets did. And Jesus is the thing they pointed forward to. Therefore, he fulfilled them. Now, that would raise questions, certainly, about why they would need to be continuing. Why would we still offer animal sacrifices? Why would we still keep those laws? If they were anticipating Christ and he has come and fulfilled them, we could say they served their purpose. Now, Paul, in Galatians 4 or 5, I think it’s 4, he talks about the law as if it was a schoolmaster when we were children. And he said, you know, but when a child reaches adult life, then he doesn’t need the schoolmaster anymore. And so putting God’s people under the law was something God did until the internal controls brought by the Holy Spirit in the New Covenant came along. You see, a child has to be controlled by his parents until he develops internal controls. Once he can order his own behavior responsibly and honestly and good, he doesn’t need those controls from his parents anymore. And so Paul says it’s like that with the law. The law was an external code placed upon mankind when we had no internal control because we didn’t have the Holy Spirit living inside. We still had a heart of stone instead of a heart of flesh. We did not have the law of God written on our hearts. But Jesus came. And he brought about that change. He gave us his spirit. He wrote his laws on our hearts. He exchanged our hearts. We are now adult sons. We’re not under the schoolmaster anymore. And therefore, we follow Christ. But the law itself has served its purpose because life under the law was like childhood. Life in Christ is like adulthood. And that’s the analogy Paul uses. Now, when you think about it, When a little boy becomes a man and exchanges his childhood for adulthood, has the little boy been destroyed? No. Adulthood doesn’t destroy the little boy, but it ends the little boy because he’s no longer there. He’s now a man. He’s something else. There is no longer a little boy. There’s now a man. So his boyhood has been fulfilled in maturity. When a child is born, the birth of a child anticipates eventually an adult. And when that adult has arrived, then that childhood and what it anticipated has been fulfilled. So this is like the law. The law was given to humanity in humanity’s childhood. Christ came to fulfill that. He wrote it in our hearts. Whether you destroy the law or whether you fulfill it, it still has reached its completion in either case. And it actually says in Hebrews chapter 7 and verse 12 that the law has been changed. Because the priesthood has been changed. We have no longer animal sacrifices or Aaronic priests. We have Christ as our high priest, Paul says, or I should say the writer of Hebrews says. And he says, therefore, the priesthood being changed, there’s necessarily a change in the law. So when Jesus said, I didn’t come to abolish the law, didn’t come to destroy it, but to fulfill it. He’s not saying that the law is going to continue unchanged. He’s saying that he fulfilled it. And that’s not a negative thing to do to it. If he came and destroyed the law, that’s destructive. Fulfilling it is positive. It’s like a child becoming a man. That’s a good thing. It’s like the law has predicted this all along, and now this has come. So the law may be dismissed as a child sitter. And that’s what Paul teaches. That’s what I think the New Testament in general teaches, even Jesus in that passage. But see, I agree with you that we don’t have to, we can’t be lawless. We certainly cannot be lawless. We have to obey Jesus. But that’s a very different thing than being under the law. I appreciate your call, though. Tom from Newburgh, Oregon. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 07 :
Thank you for taking my call. And I’ve heard you mention that you’ve debated atheists. My own simple thinking is that the reason why they are atheists is because they believe in God.
SPEAKER 05 :
Okay, that is true. I think some of them. Some of them believe there’s God, and they’re very much afraid to acknowledge that he exists, so they want to try to prove otherwise. And you can tell that this is their motive by the fact that they’re not just content to say, oh, there’s idiots out there who believe in God. I’m more enlightened, and I don’t believe in God. I mean, some people are content to say that, and they’re not threatened by God. But obviously people like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens and people like that, they have to destroy religion. Why? Well, because it threatens them, obviously. You know, if they really believed there was no God… For example, they don’t believe there’s a Santa Claus, and neither do I. But I don’t spend any time trying to silence people who believe in Santa Claus. I don’t want to outlaw their view. I don’t think it’s a very healthy view to believe in Santa Claus, but I don’t think anyone’s going to be hurt very much by it. I believe in freedom of thought and freedom of speech. So if somebody wants to believe in Santa Claus or teach their kids that, that’s between them and God and their kids. I don’t get threatened by it, partly because I know there is no Santa Claus. Now, if there was a… You know, a communist leader or a Muslim leader in this country trying to overthrow America, you know, I might be threatened by that. And I might try to, you know, diminish belief in him. But you don’t have to fight hard and viciously against something you don’t believe exists. The fact that you feel like you have to write whole books and have a career of arguing against something does suggest that you protest too much. You know, I think it means that you do probably believe there’s something out there that you’ve got to try to eliminate. Walter from Santa Clarita, California. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 11 :
Thank you, Steve. Thanks for taking my call. Sure. My questions were completely the same as Rodney’s, except from a kind of a different viewpoint. I agree with all you said about that we’re not under the law, that In fact, it says that the law was weak because of flesh and that. But I’m online debating people. I think some of them might be with the Seventh-day Adventists, and they still think that the Sabbath is to be kept as it was. And they give me all these arguments about… Jesus kept it, and the apostles kept it in Acts, and, you know, they kind of… Where do we read that?
SPEAKER 05 :
Where do we read that Jesus kept the Sabbath?
SPEAKER 11 :
Yeah, I know, but they somehow, they… Because of his verses about keep my commandments, they think…
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, no, he said his commandments, his commandments, not Moses’ commandments. Yeah, I mean, whenever Jesus said what I told you, he’s not talking about what God said in the Old Testament. He’s talking about what Jesus told his disciples. I mean, when Jesus is quoting the Old Testament, he says, God said. He’ll say, or he might say Moses said, or the prophet said, but when he says Moses said, for example, he equates that with God said. And that’s because he does not equate what God said in the Old Testament with what he is saying. In fact, he is God, but the disciples didn’t know that, and Jesus was not proclaiming that when he made these statements. He was just saying, I have told you things. I’ve given you commandments. You should keep them. I agree. I think we should. I think we need to keep Christ’s commandments. But to say that Jesus kept the Sabbath… There’s not one line in the Scripture that says that Jesus ever kept the Sabbath. Now, what the Adventists will say is, well, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath. And he preached in the synagogue on the Sabbath. Well, that he did. He also preached on the other six days of the week, too. That’s not keeping Sabbath. The Sabbath law was that you do all your work in six days, and you don’t do your work on the seventh day. Jesus actually did his work on the six days, and he did his work, which is preaching, on the Sabbath as well. So he didn’t observe any Sabbath. Now, going into the synagogue and preaching is not something the Sabbath law requires. You don’t find anything in the Old Testament that says on the seventh day you should go into the synagogue and preach. They didn’t even have synagogues in the Old Testament. And so, you know, it’s like Jesus did, I mean, Jesus preached on the Sabbath, but he preached on other days, every other day, too. On the Sabbath, he went into the synagogue because that’s where he finds his audience. Jesus was in Israel. Israelites were in the synagogue on the Sabbath day, so he went there and preached them. On the other days, he preached to them in the temple square, in the marketplace, on the hillsides, or wherever he found them. He happened to find them in synagogues on the Sabbath, so he went in. But there’s never a statement in the Bible suggesting that Jesus kept the Sabbath. In fact, the Bible says he broke the Sabbath. Now, Seventh-day Adventists don’t agree with this, but it says it in the Bible. It’s in John 5, 18. It says, Therefore the Jews sought all the more to kill him, because he not only broke the Sabbath, but he also said that God was his Father, making himself equal with God. Now, Seventh-day Adventists will say, this doesn’t mean that Jesus really broke the Sabbath. It only means that he broke the Sabbath according to the traditional thinking of the Pharisees. But he didn’t break the real Sabbath. Well, then John doesn’t know how to use the language. Because John said that Jesus broke the Sabbath. It does not say they sought to kill him because they thought he broke the Sabbath. John says they sought to kill him because he did break the Sabbath. And because he called God his Father. Not because they thought he called God his father. He really did call God his father. Not because they thought he broke the Sabbath. It’s because he did break the Sabbath. And he justified it, too. He did his normal work on the Sabbath. That is breaking the Sabbath. But some people were authorized to do that. The priests could do that, too. The priests did their normal work on the Sabbath. They broke the Sabbath, and Jesus even said they did. In Matthew 12, Jesus says, Don’t you know that the priests in the temple, every Sabbath, They profane the Sabbath. He means they treat it like a common day. They don’t keep the Sabbath. And they’re blameless. So there were some people whose work justified them in working on the Sabbath. So he could break it. Because it was not wrong for him to do that. I like to compare it with a policeman… chasing a criminal on the highway, and he’s got his red light flashing, his sirens on, and he’s driving 90 miles an hour. Is he breaking the speed limit? Yes, he is. But he’s authorized to do that. He’s not in the wrong, but he is indeed breaking the speed limit. And breaking the Sabbath is something Jesus was authorized to do. He said he was the Lord of the Sabbath. So you will not find any verse in the Bible that says Jesus kept the Sabbath, I’m not saying he didn’t ever keep it. He may have kept it lots of times. But he certainly didn’t do it all the time. He broke it. He did his normal work on the Sabbath. And they wanted to kill him for doing that. He said the priests do the same thing. They do their normal work on the Sabbath. That’s breaking the Sabbath, he said. So breaking the Sabbath isn’t always wrong, even under the old covenant. But to say that Jesus kept the Sabbath, people are just, I don’t know what Bible they’re using. They’re not using the Bible I have. They must not have a New Testament in their Bible. and to say that Paul kept the Sabbath I don’t know that Paul kept the Sabbath yes he did like Jesus did he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath to preach but again he did the same work every other day in other locations to go into the synagogue because that’s where there’s people to hear you is not the same thing as saying I am observing the Sabbath Paul said that when he was with Jews who were under the law he would keep the law to avoid offending them but he said when he’s with those who are without the law he doesn’t keep the law because he doesn’t have to He said that in 1 Corinthians 9. So, to use Paul as an example is a very counterproductive one for the Seventh-day Adventists. To use Jesus as an example is also counterproductive because neither of them regularly kept the Sabbath, as far as we know, or not consistently. And both of them indicated they were not under those obligations.
SPEAKER 11 :
And also the Seventh-day Adventists said that Paul kept the Nazarene vow and he said that he was being sacrificed. I mean, they get twisted
SPEAKER 05 :
Paul did take a Nazarite vow. Paul did take a Nazarite vow, and he also paid the fees for four men in Jerusalem had the Nazarite vow. But that’s exactly what he said. That’s exactly what he said in 1 Corinthians 9. When I’m with the Jews, I submit to their laws so that I can win them, not because I have to keep those laws, but because I don’t want to turn them off. So I live under those restrictions when I’m with them.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER 05 :
It’s like if I go to Japan… I’m going to take my shoes off when I go into the house. Not because I feel there’s a moral obligation or that I do that all the time when I’m in America. I don’t. But in a culture where that’s the right thing to do and people will be offended if you don’t, of course I’m going to do that. That’s how Paul was with the Jews and their law.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you very much, Steve.
SPEAKER 05 :
All right. I appreciate your call.
SPEAKER 11 :
Okay. Bye.
SPEAKER 05 :
Okay. Bye now. Okay, our next caller is Art from Los Angeles. Art, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, hi. Good afternoon, Steve. Thank you for taking my call. Sure. I have a question. I heard you in the beginning say about the Bible that’s written during the time of that particular culture and tradition they have, so in other words, that’s very difficult. I think you’re clarifying this because I feel like the Bible is so magnificent, it’s even When I read it, it feels like it was just written yesterday.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, you know, it is applicable today. But if you read the Bible very much, you’ll be finding all kinds of things that don’t sound very much like today. For example, when Abraham wanted his servant to make a vow, he said, put your hand under my thigh and make this swear this vow. I’ve never met anyone who does that. They did that in the ancient Middle East, and I don’t even know what it meant. I don’t even know why they did that. It’s just a cultural thing that we don’t do. offered to put his daughters out to be raped instead of his two guests that he’d taken in the house. That doesn’t sound very modern either, but it’s very commonplace for ancient Middle Eastern culture. For a man, when he takes guests into his house, he assumes the responsibility for their protection at any cost to himself. And so the surrender of his daughters, which I’m sure he did not wish to do, was something that would have been a cultural obligation, that he not only was bound by it, he was conditioned by it. That’s how he would have thought. Lots of times women in Middle Eastern culture are seen to not have quite the same status as men but that doesn’t sound like today here what I’m saying is this when you read the Bible you read about stories of people who didn’t live in America they didn’t live in the 21st century they lived in the Middle East thousands of years ago and therefore their behavior their presuppositions and so forth are often those of their time now that doesn’t in any way raise questions about the relevance of the Bible to us as I read the story of Abraham I’m aware he’s a man who lived 4,000 years ago And he kept sheep. And I don’t keep sheep. You know, he was a shepherd. He lived in tents and moved around from time to time and built altars and killed animals on them. I don’t do that. These are things that are different in their culture. True, the Bible is relevant in what it teaches about godliness to every generation and about God. But when I talk about things that seem strange to us because they’re culturally different, I am referring to those kinds of things that we read in those stories that people did but which we ourselves would not do. I’m going to have to take a break here and say adios to those who are leaving the network. We’ll be coming back for another half hour. You’ve been listening to The Narrow Path. My name is Steve Gregg. And we are listener supported. Go to our website and you’ll see how you can help us stay on the air if you want to. It’s thenarrowpath.com. That’s thenarrowpath.com. And please stay tuned if your station is not leaving the network. We’ll be on for another half hour. Just wait 30 seconds more and we’ll be coming back for more calls.
SPEAKER 01 :
Small is the gate and narrow is the path that leads to life. Welcome to The Narrow Path with Steve Gregg. Steve has nothing to sell you today but everything to give you. When the radio show is over, go to thenarrowpath.com where you can study, learn and enjoy with free topical audio teachings, blog articles, verse-by-verse teachings and archives of all The Narrow Path radio shows. We thank you for supporting the listeners supported Narrow Path with Steve Gregg. See you at thenarrowpath.com.
SPEAKER 06 :
This is the best of the Narrow Path Radio broadcast. The following is pre-recorded.
SPEAKER 02 :
Welcome to the Narrow Path Radio Program, hosted by Steve Gray. Steve is not in the studio today, so calls from listeners will not be able to be taken. In the place of the usual format, we’ve put together some of the best calls from past programs. They cover a variety of topics important to anyone interested in the Bible and Christianity. In addition to the radio program, The Narrow Path has a website you can go to, www.thenarrowpath.com, where you can find hundreds of resources that can all be downloaded for free. And now, please enjoy this special collection of calls to Steve Gregg and The Narrow Path.
SPEAKER 05 :
All right. Our next caller is Juan from Phoenix, Arizona. Juan, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Hello.
SPEAKER 08 :
Hello. This is the first time I call. I’m actually, I hear you radio all the time, but I want to ask a question that I had. I write stuff concerning the Bible on my Facebook. And I had this lady write, to abstain from blood was not to get blood transfusions. I didn’t agree with what she said. I was thinking more like what I read on the Bible is don’t eat blood. I just wanted to hear what, you know.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, this lady may have been a Jehovah’s Witness.
SPEAKER 08 :
At least she wasn’t, and that’s what was kind of weird. I have a lot of Christian friends of mine. And they were kind of agreeing with what she was saying, but I don’t think they read their Bibles right.
SPEAKER 05 :
Right. Well, the Jehovah’s Witnesses have this as an official doctrine, that they will not get blood transfusions. There may be other people who are not Jehovah’s Witnesses who have been maybe influenced. After all, JWs have been to all of our houses many times, and I’m sure a lot of Christians have heard these things and don’t know how to answer them. So sometimes people who don’t even become Jehovah’s Witnesses just pick up some of the ideas that that the Jehovah’s Witnesses bring out because they don’t know how to refute them. And they say, I guess that’s probably true at that point. And what they’re referring to is the fact that in Acts chapter 15, the Jerusalem council met to decide whether Gentile believers would have to keep the law of Moses or not. The council decided that that would not be necessary, that the Gentile believers did not have to keep the law of Moses, But there were a few things that Gentiles often did that were offensive to Jews. And in order to avoid offending Jews, they wanted to urge the Gentiles to avoid those few things that Jews had sensitivities about but Gentiles often did not. That included eating meat sacrificed to idols. That included eating animals that had been strangled and eating blood. And, of course, fornication, which was very common among Gentiles. And so when it says we’re to abstain from blood, the Jehovah’s Witnesses understand this to mean to abstain from blood transfusions. Of course, the apostles had no concept of blood transfusions. That technology did not exist. They didn’t have intravenous things going on in their medical care like we do now. And therefore, there’s no possibility that the apostles, when they said to abstain from blood, meant abstain from blood transfusions. On the other hand, a Jehovah’s Witness might argue that if it’s wrong to eat blood, which is certainly what is implied in the statement in the Bible, then how could it be right to intravenously eat blood, as it were, to put it into your veins? That this would be wrong, they would say. Now, this is what we’d call extrapolation from the text. the text says it’s wrong to eat blood, or that the Gentiles should abstain from eating blood. But one could extrapolate, well, ingesting blood, whether it’s through your mouth or through your veins or through some other means, you know, it’s all the same, and we should abstain from blood. Now, you know, I can’t really argue except to say, that extrapolation is not necessarily anticipated by the authors of that decree. Eating blood in their day was not necessary. You could drain the blood out of an animal, and the main reason for them not eating blood was to avoid offending Jews. It was not a moral obligation. Because Jesus said it’s not what goes into your mouth that defiles a man anyway. It’s what comes out of his mouth. It comes out of his heart. That’s what defiles a man. So what you eat doesn’t defile you. There’s no immoral foods. But they were asking the Gentiles to avoid eating blood because it offended the Jewish people. Now, I don’t know, but of course eating blood would still probably offend Jewish people. And if you’re around Jewish people, probably you shouldn’t do it if they’re observant Jews. But Blood transfusions is an entirely different question. You only give blood transfusions to save somebody’s life. You never ate blood to save life. You ate blood because you were careless about draining the blood and you weren’t being ritually clean. It’s a different matter altogether if you’re trying to save somebody’s life, that you can donate blood and they can have your blood and then they’ll live and they won’t die. Many Jehovah’s Witnesses have died in hospitals where they could have been saved if they had received blood transfusions, but they wouldn’t. They wouldn’t receive them. And so they died. Now, I guess I can appreciate a person having such strong convictions that they would rather die than violate their convictions. I don’t think that’s all that bad. He that seeks to save his life shall lose it, and he that loses his life for my sake shall find it. However… While I might be willing to die for my convictions, I would not be willing to impose those convictions on others without biblical warrant so that they might die. If I influence them and tell them, you can’t do this, don’t take a blood transfusion, and then they die, and they die because I made them think that way, I would feel pretty bad because the Bible does not say anything about blood transfusions, and therefore to forbid it and to see someone die as a result would seemingly put some guilt on upon me i would certainly it would certainly put the burden of proof upon me to prove that what i the instructions i gave them are agreeable with what the bible intended to say and i don’t think you can do that from that passage yeah i thought i was i mean because my wife always uh she’s sick and she gets uh blood transfusions and uh and she’s just saying that you know it’s wrong and i was like
SPEAKER 08 :
I just thought that it wasn’t what they actually meant in the Bible, and that was it. I just didn’t really want to argue too much on that.
SPEAKER 05 :
You’re right. You’re right. They’re not talking about blood transfusions in that passage.
SPEAKER 08 :
Okay. Well, thank you for answering my questions, and God bless you. Thank you.
SPEAKER 05 :
Juan, it’s good to have you as a first-time caller. Call again sometime. Thank you. All right. Bye-bye now. All right, we’re going to talk to Eric from California. Eric, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 12 :
Thank you. How are you doing?
SPEAKER 05 :
Good.
SPEAKER 12 :
All right. Well, hey, so I wanted to ask you a little bit about if you’ve had any experiences with reviewing medical studies for the efficacy of prayer.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, no, I don’t review those things. I’ve seen headlines from time to time showing that people who are prayed for recover from their sickness more readily than those who are not prayed for and things like that. I don’t know the statistics and I don’t know the value of the studies, whether they were well done or not. Have you studied that?
SPEAKER 12 :
Some of them, yeah. And the numbers, most of the time they show a negative result. There’s no statistical difference. It has been shown that prayer can lead to lowering blood pressure. The same kind of effect is if someone’s meditating or something.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, meditation is the same thing, yeah.
SPEAKER 12 :
Right, yeah. But some of them have been pretty serious. One was a study done over 3,000 patients that were getting coronary bypass surgery. and they had a control group or as controlled as you can be because, you know, you can’t account for maybe they have a family member somewhere that says a prayer for them that you don’t know about.
SPEAKER 04 :
Sure.
SPEAKER 05 :
You know, I was raised a Christian, and I don’t know, I’ve just been having some doubts about… Yeah, well, let me just say, first of all, I’d be very curious to know if they’ve done similar studies in third world countries or if they were just done in Western nations. I think that actual miraculous healings are reported far more and far more reliably, in my opinion, in third world countries. I think on the mission field we see far more of the miraculous than we see in the Western world. And there’s reasons that we could explore about why that would be. But I would say this also. I’m not surprised by the results because I believe that if God wants somebody to get well, they’ll get well. If he doesn’t want them to, they won’t. And, of course, God… knows that all of us have got to die sometime, and so some of us are going to die sick, and some are going to die other ways. But I don’t think the Bible promises that if we pray for healing, we’re always going to get a healing. I know of some cases of people who are healed, and they were prayed for. I also know of some people who get better, who weren’t prayed for, and seem to get better. So a certain percentage of people will get better whether they’re prayed for or not. And then a certain percentage of people seem to get healed in association with specific prayer. But we don’t know how many of them would have gotten healed without the prayer. And we don’t know how many of the people who died without prayer might have been healed if they were prayed for. There’s no way to really know this, and nor do I care. Because I don’t see the purpose of prayer as primarily to get healed or to get anything for myself. I believe that faith is in God’s not in his running to our aid for everything we wish to have. And sometimes getting better isn’t what he wants for us. When you think about it, Jesus was approached by the sisters of Lazarus when he was very sick. And they said, your friend Lazarus is very sick. Obviously they were hoping he would come and heal him. Jesus didn’t. He just waited around and waited for Lazarus to die. It was a great disappointment to his sisters. And when Jesus saw them, they said, if you were here, my brother wouldn’t have died. And of course, that’s correct. He probably would have healed him if he had been there. That’s why he didn’t go. He wanted Lazarus to die. Of course, in this case, he had something better in mind. He was going to raise him from the dead, and he did, which was even better than healing him. But that simply shows that healing isn’t the best thing that can happen in every case. There may be other things God would like to do rather than heal. It doesn’t always mean he’s going to raise them from the dead. although all Christians will rise from the dead someday, but it may mean that he has something else he wants to accomplish through their death, and we are going to die. So to me, I don’t think that prayer is a way of manipulating God to get the things you want. I believe prayer is primarily focused on your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And when people try to use prayer for something that’s somewhat more self-interested, I think they’re not using prayer in a biblical way, and I don’t think that God has any obligation to answer those prayers.
SPEAKER 12 :
I agree with most of what you just said. There is for sure a lot of variables when it comes to trying to determine, statistically speaking, whether or not God intervenes.
SPEAKER 05 :
It would be really impossible to conduct a scientific experience with prayer, just like it’s impossible to say by experimentation. whether a given father is going to grant a given request that his son brings to him or not. It depends. What does the father want to do? Does he think it’s good for his son? Does he think something else is good for his son? Maybe his son says, I want a red bicycle, but the father already has in mind to buy him something better than a bicycle.
SPEAKER 12 :
Exactly. We don’t know how often God sure there should not be moving and interacting with the world in certain situations for whatever reason. So, yeah, that’s a really good point.
SPEAKER 05 :
You know, a lot of times it’s by God not answering our prayers that he especially works to try our faith. A major purpose in our existence in this world is to be tested with reference to our faith because he’s trying to weed out those who will be loyal to him from those who won’t. And basically those who are faithful and who don’t lose the faith are the ones who are going to reign with him, the Bible says. So every time we are in a crisis, our faith is being tested. And we think of faith as a means of getting out of a crisis. You know, well, I trust God he’s going to get rid of this crisis. But if he removed the crisis every time we asked him to, then we would never have any tests of faith. It’s like when he didn’t heal Lazarus. That tested his sister’s faith. If he had just healed her, that’s what they expected Jesus to do. But he didn’t. He waited for him to die. And then, of course… When the sisters said, Lord, if you’d been here, our brother would not have died, Jesus said, I told you, if you will believe, you’ll see the glory of God. He didn’t say, if you believe, you’ll see a healing here, but you’ll see the glory of God. I guarantee you that if you trust God, you’ll see the glory of God, whether it’s a healing or something else.
SPEAKER 12 :
Very interesting. Can I ask you one more question?
SPEAKER 05 :
Uh-huh.
SPEAKER 12 :
I guess there’s just certain aspects of… Christian theology that I’ve been really questioning lately. You know, like the idea of hell and God punishing people eternally or even like reformed thinking that God would almost maniacally choose for whatever his reason is that this person’s going to go to hell and this one’s not type of thing. I’ve always loved Jesus. I still do. But I’m getting to the point now where, I mean, I would almost prefer… just to live the rest of my life hoping that God will somehow just save everybody kind of thing. Now, does that make me not a Christian anymore that I just, I don’t know.
SPEAKER 05 :
If you really want to love Jesus and this matter of hell is a big stumbling block, let me recommend that you read my book, All You Want to Know About Hell, Three Christian Views, because the whole purpose of the book is not so much to talk about hell, although it talks in great detail about the different views of hell and the biblical case for and against them. The book is about the character of God. I believe the effect of reading that book will be more to love Jesus even more. And I can’t give away how that will happen. It’s a book-length process. But the intention is to reveal the character of God, to be the loving God that he is, despite the fact that there’s a hell. I myself have called into question whether hell is a place of eternal torment. And I’m not alone at that because early Christian fathers didn’t all agree about whether hell was a place of eternal torment. There’s three different views, two of them much more tolerable than that traditional view. If you don’t want to get my book, I’m not a book salesman. I don’t even sell it. You’d have to buy it from someone else, not me. You could go to my website under the topical lectures. There’s two lecture series called Three Views of Hell. And that’ll give you in a nutshell what my book talks about in great detail. And that’s free. You can just download those lectures from thenarrowpath.com. I think that’ll help you a little with the struggle that you’ve got. And as far as Calvinism and predestination and so forth, I don’t know if you’ve listened to me enough to know I’m not a Calvinist. I don’t believe in that kind of predestination.
SPEAKER 12 :
I’ve listened to every debate that you’ve done with Calvinism. I can’t tell you what a breath of fresh air it was to hear you present the other side so well, because that is something that has been a huge… stumbling block for me my whole life. I can’t help but look at that idea and think he’s a monster. And I couldn’t serve a God like that.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, thankfully, neither Jesus nor anyone who wrote in the Bible ever said that Calvinism was true. I’m thankful for that. The things they did teach, I think, prove Calvinism is not true. But in addition to my debates, at the website there are also a lengthy series, I think it’s 12 lectures, called God’s Sovereignty and Man’s Salvation. It’s all about the five points of Calvinism. And I bring up all the scriptures that they use, as well as all the scriptures that refute what they use. I explain all the scriptures in their context. Anyone who’s struggling with this Calvinism issue, I recommend, because these are free. You just go to our website and you can listen for free at thenarrowpath.com. The series is called God’s Sovereignty and Man’s Salvation. And there’s also that series on the three views of hell, which I would strongly recommend that you, Eric, would listen to. I think it will help you a great deal.
SPEAKER 12 :
Thank you so much. I’ll definitely look into that.
SPEAKER 05 :
All right. God bless you, brother.
SPEAKER 12 :
You too, man. Have a good one.
SPEAKER 05 :
Thanks for calling today. Okay, let’s talk to Thomas from Oregon. Thomas, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 10 :
Thank you, Steve. Yeah, first of all, I want to say that last call really made my day. Good, yeah.
SPEAKER 05 :
That was awesome.
SPEAKER 04 :
Very encouraging.
SPEAKER 10 :
Yeah. My question is, I’m teaching a class for new believers at my church, and… I want to make sure I get this straight when I talk to them about temptation and everything. And you said in one of your lectures about the devil that temptation is not sin. Because if we have thoughts, like tempting thoughts or whatever, and it’s a temptation that we haven’t sinned yet, which I agree with. But I’m looking at Matthew 15, 19, where Jesus says, out of the heart come evil thoughts.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yep.
SPEAKER 10 :
And I would like to hear you take on how do we know when a thought is actually coming from our own heart and we’re actually needing to repent or when it’s a temptation. And I would like to hang up and get your call. Okay.
SPEAKER 05 :
Thank you, Thomas. Good talking to you. I’ll try to address that. You’re right. We do originate evil thoughts if we are evil. if we have an evil heart. Remember, Jesus said that men are like trees. A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, and a bad tree can’t produce good fruit. He assumes that all people either are governed by, well, if we want to put it maybe in its bluntest form, submission to God or rebellion against God. If I’m submitted to God, that doesn’t mean I never have temptations to sin. It doesn’t mean a bad thought never enters my mind. But it’s not really coming from me because I’m submitted to God and my heart is the Lord’s. Paul said, you know, if I do the thing that I hate, then it’s not me that does it. It’s sin that dwells in me. Now, it’s interesting. He said that twice, actually, in Romans 7. And so we do sin, but we don’t want to sin. If we really want to sin and we just want to get away with it, and maybe we’re embracing a religious belief so that we can somehow feel that we’re going to get away with our sins because God will somehow be impressed by our religion. We’re fooling ourselves, of course, because being a follower of Christ is having a changed heart, a heart that is now directed toward God. And everyone who’s been truly converted knows what I’m talking about because they now want to live a holy life. They don’t do so perfectly because we are flawed. The flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh. And these two are contrary to one another, so we don’t always do what we want to. It says in Galatians 5.17. But we want to do what’s right. And Paul talks about that in Romans 7. With my mind, I love the law of God. I want to keep the law of God. But there’s this other thing that brings me into bondage. So the real issue is, where is my heart? If my heart is on God’s side… That means my heart wants to live a holy life. And when evil thoughts come to my mind, those are not consistent with where my heart is. Those are being introduced as temptations, either from sin in my members or from the devil himself, or what I would suggest is a combination of both. I believe the temptation comes from three sources, our flesh, the world, and the devil. I believe the devil is like the tempter. He’s like the fisherman. The world is the bait, and our flesh is the part of us that he appeals to. We have certain desires. Not necessarily bad in themselves, but bad when they go out of bounds. For example, to have a hunger for food is not a bad desire. It’s a God-given desire. We need to have hunger for food, or else we’d never eat. We’d starve to death. On the other hand, if you’re committed to fasting, that hunger for food becomes a problem. Because you really are intending to fast, but you still have the glands in your body that are saying, I’m hungry. And at that point, hunger for food, which is not evil in itself, becomes an opponent to your convictions. A drive for sex is not evil. God made the drive for sex so that people would marry and have children. He wanted families to exist, and so he gives us a sex drive. And he wants sex to be expressed within a proper family. But the problem is some of us, you know, aren’t in families. Some people don’t have families. They don’t have wives or husbands. And they still have a sex drive. So then it becomes a temptation. Not because the sex drive is evil, but because a certain expression of that drive, for example, outside of marriage, is itself evil. And therefore there’s a temptation to do wrong. James said, every man is tempted… When he is drawn away by his own lusts and enticed, then lust, when it conceives, brings forth sin. And sin, when it is finished, brings forth death. Now, a man is tempted when he is drawn away by his lusts. But even being drawn by his lusts is not sin until it conceives. When lust conceives, it brings forth sin. What I think that means is this. You’re going to lust after things that you can’t approve of. And your deepest conviction is, I don’t want to do that. I have a desire to fast, but I’m hungry. Okay, part of me wants to fast. Part of me wants to eat. These are desires in conflict. Now, the part of me that defines who I am as a Christian is, I want to do the right thing. The part of me that wants to eat when it’s not appropriate to do so is the part of me that’s not redeemed yet, my body, my flesh, that which has to be shed at the resurrection. And so there’s going to be this conflict. But if my heart is the Lord’s, then the evil thoughts that come to me are being introduced as temptation. If my heart is not the Lord’s, then my heart is evil, and an evil tree produces bad fruit. So out of an evil heart come evil thoughts and adulteries and so forth, like Jesus said. Jesus was not saying that Christians’ hearts are evil, and therefore all these things spew out of them. I know a lot of Christians think in order to be humble, we have to admit that we are hopelessly sinners no matter how devoted to Christ we are. But actually, the Bible says we’re a new creation in Christ. Old things are passed away. All things become new. That is, in God’s sight, we are in a different standing. He’s given us a new heart. We are not like we were before. in all respects, but we are in some few respects, one of which is that we have a flesh, and that flesh still desires things, and that’s what creates temptation for us. But temptation comes from the enemy and needs to be fought. It feels like sin sometimes because the temptation will be in the form of thoughts about doing evil things. If I don’t mind those thoughts, then in all likelihood my heart isn’t the Lord’s. If my heart is the Lord’s, I’m going to not like those thoughts. I’m going to want to fight them. I may not successfully beat them. There may be times when I succumb and stumble, but it’s not going to be something I’ll be glad about. You can always tell if your heart is the Lord’s by how you feel about sin. Not so much at the time that you’re tempted, because at times that you’re tempted, your feelings about sin are ambiguous. There’s a party that says, I don’t want to do this, and a party that says, I kind of really do. The way you feel about sin, let’s say, when the temptation hasn’t come yet and you’re thinking about sinning, or after you’ve sinned, how do you think about it? After you’ve sinned, if your heart is the Lord’s, you’re going to hate it. You’re going to hate the sin. You’re going to wish you hadn’t done it. You’re going to wish you could just turn the clock back and go through that stretch of your life again and avoid it this time. If you’re not the Lord’s, if your heart isn’t the Lord’s, then you’re not going to care. You’re going to sin and start making plans for your next sin. So you can tell where your heart’s at by your attitude towards sin. And if your attitude towards sin is, I hate sin, although my flesh seems to still be tempted a great deal, well, if I hate it, then Paul says, it’s not I. It’s sin that dwells in me. I am somebody else. I love God, and that’s why I hate sin. But that doesn’t mean I never sin. It means that I never want to sin, or I want to never sin. Let’s put it that way. I hope that may be helpful to you. You’ve been listening to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg, and we are a listener-supported radio broadcast. We pay for the time on the radio, and the money we pay, the radio stations, comes from people who like the program and want to keep it on the air. If that’s a description of you, you might want to write to us at thenarrowpath, PO Box 1730, Temecula, California, 92593. Or you can donate from the Narrow Path website, which is thenarrowpath.com. Don’t forget there’s Narrow Path apps you can have for free at the website thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for joining us. Let’s talk again tomorrow.
