In this episode of The Narrow Path, Steve Gregg tackles some intriguing questions about the Bible and Christian beliefs. The discussion begins with an analysis of Deuteronomy 23, addressing what it means for certain groups to be excluded from tabernacle rituals and how these rituals are symbolic rather than literal requirements for salvation. Through calls with listeners, Gregg clarifies the purpose and meaning behind Old Testament laws and their spiritual connotations.
SPEAKER 1 :
Thank you.
SPEAKER 08 :
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. We’re taking your calls. If you have questions about the Bible or about the Christian faith, we’d be glad to have you call in, and we’ll talk to you on the air about those things. If you disagree with the host, you can call in about that, and I’ll be glad to talk to you about that as well. Right now, our lines are full, so wait at least a few minutes before trying to call in. At various times during the hour, there will be lines opening up, including all the lines that are currently full will be opening up individually. At different points, we just call randomly, and there’s a good chance you can get in. The number is 844-484-5737. That’s 844-484-5737. And I don’t think I have any announcements I have to make this week, although I would remind you that next month, I think it’s on the 10th, if I’m not mistaken, I’m going to be speaking in San Juan Capistrano at a church called Ranch Church. And that’s going to be, they asked me to come speak on a Tuesday night, that’s February 10th, San Juan Capistrano. I’ll be speaking about the four views of Revelation. And on, what’s that? Oh, yeah. Well, that’s kind of a long way off. I’m not going to announce everything because I don’t like to give so many minutes to announcements when there’s so many people waiting. Let’s talk to Derwin in Detroit, Michigan, first of all, today. Derwin, welcome. Thanks for calling. How are you doing, Steve?
SPEAKER 12 :
Good. I met you in Hamtramck, Michigan, with my nephew, William. I don’t know if you remember him.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yeah. Well, that’s the time I can hardly pronounce. Yeah.
SPEAKER 12 :
Right. Okay, I have something in Deuteronomy 23, verse 1 and 2. Can I read it to you? Of course. Okay. He that is wounded in the stones or has his private members cut off shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord. And verse 2, a bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord, even to his tenth generation shall he not enter the congregation of the Lord. Verse 1 speaks of like you would say maybe a transvestite cannot enter, or verse 2, a child of God cannot enter the sanctuary or the church ceremony. Speak on that.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yeah, well, the first one is talking about somebody who’s been castrated or otherwise their sexual organs have been destroyed. And the modern New King James says he who is emasculated by crushing or mutilation shall not enter the congregation of the Lord. And then the other one is about a bastard or somebody who’s of illegitimate birth cannot do so. Now, people get upset about this kind of law sometimes simply because they don’t understand what this is about. There’s also laws that say that a dwarf can’t enter in or a person who’s club-footed or a person who’s blind or whatever. Obviously, these people have nothing to say about whether they’re in that condition or not. Why should God blame them? Well, he doesn’t blame them. He doesn’t blame it at all. You don’t have to enter the congregation of the Lord to go to heaven when you die. The whole purpose of the tabernacle worship is not to meet conditions for being on right terms with God, because even a leper could not enter, but a leper can very much be on good terms with God. And so, I mean, this is not whether God likes you, loves you, will save you. We’ll forgive you, seize you as a good person or not. This is simply maintaining the symbolic ritualistic purpose of the tabernacle. The tabernacle was not a place where you go to get saved. It’s a place where the Israelites would act out ritualistic acts. practices which symbolized spiritual truths. And it was very important. God told Moses, when you make the tabernacle, make sure you don’t deviate in any way in the structure and the design of it from the pattern I showed you on the mountain. Now, the writer of Hebrews tells us in Hebrews 8 and 9 that the reason that God was so adamant about that was because the tabernacle was portraying spiritual realities or heavenly realities. And so, like some other things on earth, for example, marriage, marriage was created by God to be an earthly model of a spiritual truth about Christ and his church, which is why Christians have no authority to modify what marriage is, because you’re not allowed to change the things that God instituted to illustrate spiritual truths. They’re lessons for us. Likewise, the tabernacle is a lesson. Now, lots of people in the world never went to the tabernacle. That doesn’t mean none of them were in heaven. This is not related to how do you go to heaven. This is a system that portrayed in symbolic rituals, spiritual realities. Now, you can buy whole books on the tabernacle and what it represented, what its details represent. In fact, I have 10 lectures online about the tabernacle. I gave them very long time ago. I like that in the 80s. And I haven’t heard them since then. I’m not sure if I’d stand by everything I said in them. But everything you read about the tabernacle, book-length treatment and so forth, have a measure of speculation in them. But there are certain spiritual truths. that are quite obvious and that any book or teaching on it would bring out. And this is how we have to see the tabernacle. The tabernacle was not where you go to get saved. Yes, they did offer animal sacrifices there, but you didn’t even offer animal sacrifices to be saved. Everyone was saved by faith in the Old Testament, the Bible says, just like they are now. But people who are saved by faith, because they are saved, they want to live in obedience to what God wants them to do. And during the time of the Mosaic Law, worship at the tabernacle, later the temple, which replaced it, was what people did to be obedient. And, you know, if you weren’t near the tabernacle, if you lived in another country, if you were like Job, a foreigner who lived elsewhere and didn’t go to the tabernacle, you could still be on good terms with God. He didn’t expect it of you. But what he did expect is that the Israelites would carry out these rituals faithfully so that the things that the rituals represented spiritually might not be misrepresented. Now, we’re not told what all of these rituals are about. A person who’s emasculated presumably refers to or corresponds to somebody who’s spiritually fruitless. Now, you know, an actual castrated person may not be spiritually fruitless. And in fact, you know, Isaiah chapter 56 has a whole section there that talks about, you know, in God’s sight, a eunuch, which is someone who’s been emasculated, a eunuch who keeps God’s laws and is faithful to him, will be counted as a son or daughter of God just like anyone else. So it’s clear that the ones who are not permitted to go to the tabernacle they were not excluded because God didn’t like them or because God thought worse of them, but because their participation would fail to represent the spiritual truth that these physical conditions correspond in symbolism to spiritual conditions. A person with a clubbed foot who can’t walk right, well, you’ve got to walk right before God to be saved. A person who’s a dwarf would be probably somebody who’s who didn’t grow in a normal way, someone whose growth was done. There’s nothing wrong with being a dwarf. God has nothing against them. But in the symbolism of that ritual, you know, spiritual growth would be one of the things that God’s looking for. Spiritual sight and able to hear God and so forth are, you know, could be symbolized by physical growth. sight and hearing and things like that. Somebody who is a bastard, as it says in the King James, I think, somebody who’s an illegitimate child. Well, the book of Hebrews tells us that if a person, a Christian, is not receiving chastening from the Lord, they’re a bastard is what it says in the King James Version in Hebrews chapter 12. And they’re not legitimate sons. Now, a person who’s not a legitimate child of his father is his earthly father, can be a child of God. For example, one of the judges, Jephthah, was the son of his father and a prostitute, an illegitimate son. But God raised him up to lead and rescue and rule Israel as a judge. David, too, some people have suggested may have been a bastard son of Jesse. We don’t know that to be true, but some things David said in Psalm 2710, some things that we read in his story about the way his brothers treated him and even his father, have led some people, and certainly Psalm 51.5, have led some people to think that David may not have been a legitimate son. And yet his name meant beloved of the Lord. And, you know, he was a man after God’s heart. So it’s clear that if David, under the law, was a bastard son, he would not be permitted to go into the tabernacle. Now, David did go into the tabernacle. So some might say, well, that proves he wasn’t a bastard son. But the truth is, David did a lot of things the law didn’t permit him. God gave him some special grace. For example, he ate showbread, which only priests were allowed to eat. You know, he… He had some insights, as the Psalms point out, of what God really wants is not so much these rituals. He said, sacrifice an offering you did not desire, but you opened my ear to you. So, I mean, David knew some stuff about what God really cares about and that these rituals were not the most important thing. And David, apparently with God’s approval, sometimes kind of, fudged on them a bit. So, you know, whether he was a legitimate son of Jesse or not, we don’t know. The proof is, I mean, the truth is that if he is or is not a bastard son, it would make no difference because he was a man after God’s heart. So these laws about who cannot go into the tabernacle are simply, in my opinion, the categories that are listed of people with these kinds of defects or irregularities are that they represent a counterpart in the spiritual realm. And their not being able to go into the tabernacle is not a matter of God rejecting them. They might be as saved as anybody else. They might be closer to God than other people. But they can’t go to the tabernacle because the symbolic ritual of the tabernacle its message would be lost if its conditions were not met. So that’s how I understand these various groups of people that are not allowed to enter the tabernacle. Okay. I appreciate it, Steve.
SPEAKER 12 :
That’s a good answer for me.
SPEAKER 08 :
Okay, Darren.
SPEAKER 12 :
I appreciate you.
SPEAKER 08 :
Good talking to you.
SPEAKER 12 :
Good work.
SPEAKER 08 :
All right. Thank you. God bless. Ryan from Linwood, Washington. Good to hear from you again.
SPEAKER 02 :
Hi, Steve. Hey, I don’t want to take up too much of your time, but I emailed you earlier, and I know how sometimes it can slip through the cracks, but have you, in your researching the different ministries around the world, have you been able to find a reliable anti-human trafficking organization? Because I just feel overwhelmed when I’m looking into those things.
SPEAKER 08 :
Right. I have not. I’ve heard of some, and there have been some that I had initially had some confidence in, but then I heard some rumors against them. But I don’t, I mean, I’m pretty careful about who I give donations to or what ministries I support. But I don’t spend a lot of my time at it. You know, I mean, if I can’t get information really easily, I don’t put them on my list. I would love to support ministries that save people from human trafficking. But I’d also like to save people from a lot of other things and support ministries that do that. I think that everyone who’s going to donate to a ministry probably should, you know, do their own vetting. and I have not done that thoroughly, so I can’t tell you who to trust. I would hate to tell you, oh, this one I trust when I haven’t vetted them and maybe that they end up doing scandalous things. So I’m going to just have to say, no, I don’t have a list of those that I can say, yeah, I can trust these ones. That doesn’t mean there aren’t many. It just means I haven’t done the research.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah. Okay. Well, I’ll just stick with the ones that I give to them because I feel pretty confident about them. Good. Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you. God bless you.
SPEAKER 08 :
Okay. God bless you too, Ryan. Thanks for asking. It’s an important question. Okay. Joe in Los Angeles, California. Hey, welcome.
SPEAKER 10 :
Hello there, Steve. Thank you for taking my call. My question, well, first on dispensationalism. you hear folks like Tucker Carlson, a lot of the folks on the internet right now, kind of, I think they don’t understand dispensationalism completely. Candace Owens, I actually heard her say she left Christianity for Catholicism, or she went to be a Catholic because of dispensationalism. So, you know, who knows there, but But my question to you, if you were to be invited onto the Tucker Carlson show, would you be willing to accept and pretty much explain what it’s all about and stuff?
SPEAKER 08 :
Yeah, I don’t know if I’ve ever turned down an invitation to be interviewed or to debate something or whatever. So, of course, if I were invited, I’d be glad to. I doubt that I’ll be invited to, but if someone wants to suggest that they invite me out, I would not say no. I will say this about Candace. She started out as a Protestant, but she’s married to a Catholic. And I remember listening to her years ago. She was still a Protestant, but she was kind of considering Catholicism. And so. To say she left Christianity to become Catholic, I’d say she left Protestantism to join her husband in the Catholic Church, and she’s perhaps a convinced Catholic now. I don’t know that all Catholics have left Christianity, although I realize that not all Catholics and not all Protestants are themselves Christians. You can be part of a church without being a real Christian, but I don’t know that she’s left Christianity. Now, I would not, however, if I want to get information about dispensationalism or eschatology or biblical theology at all, I wouldn’t go to Candace or Tucker or Mike Huckabee, for that matter. Mike Huckabee is a dispensationalist, I think. But, I mean, these are people who their expertise has always been in other areas, and they also happen to have religious views. Now, yeah, if I were really wrestling with, I wonder what dispensationalism teaches. I’m not going to go to some, just to one of the critics of dispensationalism. Now, I’m a critic of dispensationalism, as you know. I don’t believe in it. But I would not go to somebody who’s merely a critic of it and who, frankly, it’s not their specialty. Theological inquiry is not their strong suit. I just hear them, I take them with a grain of salt. I realize that some of the things they say are probably true, some things not true. But when I’m trying to understand a theological concept, I’m going to go to the theologians who teach it to find out what they say and why.
SPEAKER 10 :
Right. Yeah, and I think they’re kind of mistaken in the way they try to explain dispensationalism.
SPEAKER 08 :
They probably are.
SPEAKER 10 :
They’re very much against it.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yeah, if Candace said she left the Protestant churches because of dispensationalism, That was a strange choice to make, since Protestant churches have generally not been dispensationalists until fairly recent times, and most of them probably still are not. I think most American evangelical churches are dispensational or lean that way. But Protestant churches throughout history have not been, and many of them are not now. So it would be a shame to say, well, I’m going to leave the whole movement because some of them have this crazy view. But, I mean, people do things for poorly thought out reasons. She may have been more influenced by, you know, the fact that she wanted to join her husband in his faith, but I don’t know. I don’t know her.
SPEAKER 10 :
Yeah, well, again, thank you for your answer. You know, I actually wanted to see if I can get on one of those, you know, where you can comment on their videos and tell – Tucker to reach out to you. So if you don’t mind, I can do that. I’d be glad to hear from him. Thank you so much, Pete. Thank you for your time.
SPEAKER 08 :
Okay, Joe. Thanks for your call. Bye now. Bye. James from Long Island, New York is next. James, welcome to The Narrow Path.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yes. Hi. Paul went to Antioch and he spoke about the unknown God. And he also said God doesn’t need a place to dwell in. Then why did they build the ark? And why did they sacrifice animals? If he’s spirit, why did he have to sacrifice any animals, which I can’t understand? And that’s my question. If you’re a spirit, do you need this? And the ark, what would that be? The ark?
SPEAKER 08 :
You say the ark? You’re talking about the ark of the covenant?
SPEAKER 11 :
Yes, yes. They built that so specifically, and the details were unbelievable. So if he’s spirit, why did you need a place to dwell in?
SPEAKER 08 :
He doesn’t. He doesn’t need anything from us. He did it for them, not for him. He said that he would have them put the mercy seat on top of the ark so that he might meet with them, that he might commune with them there. That’s more for their benefit than for his. But, yeah, if he’s a spirit, what’s he need a house for? Well, he doesn’t. But people need visual aids. You know, your question is really very closely related to the first one on today’s program that they were asking about tabernacle rituals. And I don’t know if you were listening then, but as I mentioned to the earlier caller, The tabernacle and its rituals, which includes the animal sacrifices, includes the Ark of the Covenant, the Mercy Seat, and all the rituals. It involves the tabernacle and the Holy of Holies, all that. All of those things are symbolic. And God didn’t need symbols, but people often do. People can’t understand spiritual things, and therefore sometimes an object lesson will help. A picture may be worth a thousand words. And you can believe that when you start reading the description of the tabernacle in Exodus. It seems like they take about a thousand words to explain things you could probably get in a single photograph. But, you know, the picture, the image, the object lesson makes things accessible to people who do not understand spiritual things. Even Nicodemus, who is a godly Jew. had trouble understanding spiritual things when Jesus said you have to be born of the Spirit. And Paul said in 1 Corinthians 2 that the natural man cannot receive the things of the Spirit of God, their foolishness to him, because they have to be spiritually discerned. So in the absence of spirituality, which the Jews were not, or the Israelites were not in the Old Testament, characterized as a spiritual people in general, God still wanted to get lessons across to them. And one of the ones, in having the tabernacle at all, was that God wanted to dwell among them. That is, to make himself accessible to them. He’s everywhere. He doesn’t have to be anywhere in particular. He’s everywhere in the universe, so he doesn’t need them to make a house for him. And that’s what Stephen said in Acts 7. The Almighty does not dwell in temples or houses made with hands. And… And Paul said, in him we live and we move and we have our being. He’s everywhere around us and everywhere in the universe. So your question about why were these things needed, they weren’t needed by God. He got along just fine without them for gazillions of years before he created the world and even after he created the world for a very long time. But people needed it. People needed to get a grasp of some spiritual things. Now, one of the spiritual things, and probably the primary one, had to do with what Christ would accomplish through his death, that the shedding of his blood would be seen and function as an atonement for the sins of mankind. Now, before sending Jesus to accomplish that, God gave Israel these object lessons. And frankly, not even only Israel, because almost all religions offered sacrifices. They just had corrupted and perverted the practice because they worshipped the wrong gods. But the understanding was, there is a satisfaction to be made to the gods, or to God, in the case of Israel. And that satisfaction has to do with the sacrifice of a life. Now, in pagan religions, they actually sacrifice human lives. You know, the Mesoamericans say, offered virgins to volcanoes and things like that. And virtually every pagan religion did have human sacrifice. The Bible doesn’t. The Bible never sponsors or approves of, in fact, it strongly condemns all human sacrifice. But the idea of a life being given was represented by a substitute for human life, an animal. And actually it makes a decent substitute because the animal has no guilt whatsoever. And if it’s going to sort of die in the place of the guilty, it at least has none of its own. So there’s a symbolic ritual of laying hands on the animal, which represented transferring the guilt from the guilty person to the animal who had no guilt. And then the animal dies. As I understand it, this is getting across the idea of a substitutionary sacrifice. that the animal takes the place of the sinner, just like Jesus would, which is why one of the first things said about Jesus chronologically in public was when John the Baptist said, there’s the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. suggesting that Jesus also would do what the lambs did when they were sacrificed. He would take the sins of the world upon himself, and he would be sacrificed. So this concept, I mean, you know, every society in history is familiar with the idea of animal sacrifices, and in some cases human sacrifices if you’re in the pagan world. that idea of offering sacrifices didn’t just spring from nothing. It must have sprung from the days of Adam and Eve, or at least the next generation with Cain and Abel, because Abel, who Jesus said was a prophet, actually offered the kind of sacrifice God instructed to give, and set an example for all people who would do what God wants in this matter, and Of course, after the flood, people became spread around the world. They were pagans. They corrupted their religious ideas. They maintained this idea that sacrifices, but they lost the meaning of it. They worshiped demons instead of God. But Israel, in order to maintain the value of the object lesson, but to prevent Israel from worshiping pagan gods or demons, He gave them very strict instructions about how and where they should do this. And for 1,400 years, they did until Jesus came. And then his death… fulfilled it you know the learning period the school period of learning this lesson was over and jesus you know fulfilled it and then the temple was destroyed and god has never authorized animal sacrifices or any kind of blood sacrifices since then because the blood of jesus is adequate so that’s the role i think sacrifices played and the temple and all of that stuff anyway i hope that’s clear it may not be these are some concepts people have problems with You’re listening to The Narrow Path. We’re not done. We’re halfway through. We have another half hour coming. Half hours go very fast on this program, for me at least. We are listener supported. You can write to us at The Narrow Path, P.O. Box 1730, Temecula, California, 92593, or at our website. You can donate or just take stuff free. I’ll be right back. Don’t go away.
SPEAKER 03 :
The Narrow Path is one feature of the teaching ministry of Steve Gregg. Steve’s philosophy of teaching is to educate, not indoctrinate his listeners. He believes that Christians should learn to think for themselves about the Bible and not be dependent on him or any other teacher for their convictions. We hope to teach Christians how to think, not what to think about the Bible.
SPEAKER 08 :
Welcome back to the Narrow Path Radio Broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg, and we’re live for another half hour taking your calls. It looks like our lines are full again, but if you want to try a little later, the number is 844-484-5737. And… We take your calls. If you either have questions you want to ask about the Bible or Christianity, or if you have a different view of any subject that you’ve heard the host talk about and want to balance a comment. Our next caller is Jacob in Lacey, Washington. Jacob, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 06 :
Hi, Steve. Hi, Steve. My question has to do with the Tanakh and the word Mashiach, which I believe means Messiah. I don’t know in the Hebrew Bible and the Tanakh, the Torah, and the Nevi, and the Prophets, and the Gethsemane, and the Writings, if the term Mashiach is ever even used for telling the coming of Jesus, if Jesus really existed?
SPEAKER 08 :
Not commonly. No, the word Mashiach, which is the Hebrew for Messiah, is not a frequently used word in the Tanakh, or in the Old Testament scriptures. It is not entirely absent in For example, probably the most obvious place, although Jewish people might dispute this, but I believe that’s nonetheless the case, that in Daniel’s chapter 9 and the 70 weeks of Daniel, it talks about from this point in time to such and such a point in time will be when the Messiah comes, Mashiach. Now, there’s some people who want Mashiach to simply mean an anointed one. They would like it to refer to maybe one of the high priests, Onias, or someone like that, because they’re trying to change the meaning of the prophecy. And they’re welcome to try to do that. But I think, in all honesty, we can say this is a reference to the Messiah, the Christ, what came to be called the Messiah. Of course, later… After the Tanakh was complete, based on its writings, and especially those of the prophets and psalms, but even some of the early prophets, which we call the historical books, Jewish rabbis began to speak of a particular figure called the Messiah, whom I believe was recognized to be the one called Mashiach. in Daniel 9, what is it, 24, I think. Now, Mashiach means anointed one, as I’m sure you know, since you’re kind of familiar with these Hebrew things, it sounds like. It means anointed one. And there were more than one kind of person could be anointed. The kings of Israel, like David and Solomon, were anointed with oil at their inauguration. The high priest and his sons were also in the days of Aaron. And so, you know, anointing somebody with oil was used on one or another occasion to install somebody into public office. Now, the term anointed one, when referring to what’s usually called Messiah, sees him especially as a king like David. And therefore, as David was anointed, so the Messiah is anointed because he’s the king like David. Basically, in the use of the term Mashiach, at least in typical Jewish language after Mashiach, you know, the rabbinic period, or the beginning of the rabbinic period, Mashiach typically just referred to the one who is like David, anointed as king. So he’s the Davidic king, is kind of what it means. Now, in Greek, which the New Testament was written in Greek, not Hebrew, the same word, Mashiach, anointed one, in Greek is Christos. And when that is anglicized, we have the word Christ. Now, the word Christ is used, of course, frequently in the New Testament of Jesus. Once in a while, they’ll quote something from the Old Testament, which uses the word Mashiach. And, of course, it will be translated Christ in the New Testament, and they’ll apply it to Jesus. Besides Daniel 9, 24… And I think probably 9.26 or thereabouts. In Daniel 9.24-27, I think there’s a couple times Mashiach is used. I’m not looking at it right now. But also in Psalm 2 and verse 1, it talks about how the nations raged against Yahweh and his Mashiach, his anointed one. In many of our English Bibles, it reads in Psalm 2, 1, Why do the heathen rage against the Lord and his anointed? But the anointed there is the word mishach. And in the New Testament, that verse is quoted by the apostles. When they pray in Acts chapter 4, they quote that verse again. And they rendered, of course, against the Lord and against his Christ, meaning Jesus. So I don’t know how often the word Mashiach in the Old Testament would refer to what we call the Messiah, although Messiah is the anglicized form of the word Mashiach. But the word Mashiach can be used generically for someone who’s anointed in Christ. in some other capacity. I know at least two cases, one in the Psalms and one in Daniel, where the Mashiach is a reference to Christ himself. And I believe that after the Old Testament, the Tanakh was completed, that the rabbinic writings began to speak frequently of the Messiah in the same sense that we speak of the term Messiah. It’s just that they didn’t recognize Jesus as being him when he came, and we do. All right. Thanks for your call. All right. Let’s talk to Jonathan in Atlanta, Georgia. Jonathan, welcome.
SPEAKER 05 :
Steve, thank you for taking my call. I appreciate it. Just one quick question. A couple weeks ago, I spoke to a deacon at a local Catholic church. I’m not a Catholic, but I like to engage with believers. And I spoke to a priest at another Catholic church, and they both told me on the same day, not to preach the gospel to Jews. And they said they’re both under the old covenant. And, again, this was two separate assemblies. And, you know, I refuted that very quickly by Scripture, and they got very upset with me. I’d just like to hear your thoughts on that.
SPEAKER 08 :
Well, I didn’t know this to be the Catholic view.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, me neither. I have Catholic neighbors, and I asked them about that. They said they never heard of that. Yeah.
SPEAKER 08 :
Well, I can’t speak for them or why they said don’t preach to Jews. I do know this, that ever since Vatican II, the Catholic Church has taken a much more generous approach to non-Catholics. Prior to Vatican II, it was the Catholic official belief that anybody who’s not a Catholic is going to hell. And in Vatican II, they took a gentler, kinder view of Catholics. others who are not among them, referring to Protestants, for example, as separated brethren instead of as heretics or anathema or whatever. We who are Protestants are called separated brethren in their view now. And the view that Vatican II took was that it may well be that a non-Catholic is damned in many cases, but only if they know that they should be a Catholic and refuse. So they would say if a Protestant… And I think they probably say this about a Jew also, maybe. I’m not sure. But if a Protestant or a Jew do not believe that the Catholic Church is the true church and therefore do not become part of it, they are not lost for that reason. They may not be in the church as they should be, but they’re not lost by not being in it, as previous to Vatican II they would have said. On the other hand, if a Jew or a Protestant does believe that the Catholic Church is the true church and is still refusing to become part of it, they would consider that to be damning. So that’s the new gentler attitude the Catholic Church took. And in some ways, it’s actually more generous than that which some evangelicals take, who just believe that if you don’t become an evangelical, you’re lost no matter how ignorant you are about things like that. But it’s no doubt the case that I haven’t heard any proclamations of popes about this or anything like that. But probably the case that the church is very sensitive about the things that Jews have suffered at the hands of Europeans who identified as Christians. And that there’s a very strong feeling among many Jews that Christians are anti-Semitic. Uh, and certainly there are people who called themselves Christians who have been anti-Semitic. There’s no question about that. Uh, unfortunately what many Jews don’t realize is you don’t become a Christian by calling yourself one. You don’t become a Christian by going to church. Uh, becoming a Christian means you’ve become a follower of Jesus and Jesus was not anti-Semitic and therefore no one who really follows Jesus would be or anti anything as far as races go. We don’t, we don’t have any hostility toward any race. Um, because Jesus didn’t. But the Catholic Church, with this awareness that the Christians, including Catholics, have been extremely hard on Jews sometimes in the past, and there’s a great distrust and sometimes resentment between them, maybe they’re saying, well, These Jews don’t know any better. God can save them because they don’t know they’re supposed to be Catholic. So let’s not stir up trouble with them. Perhaps a little bit like some Protestants might be toward, let’s say, transgenders. You know, they say, well, these trans or homosexuals who are married. Well, they don’t know that it’s wrong. So maybe God will just forgive them. And let’s just not muddy the waters by bringing that up. I don’t know if that’s the Catholic attitude toward it. I’m sure that there’s no Roman Catholics that want me to be their spokesman, so I’m not pretending to be. But I will say, even among dispensationalists, there have been people who take what’s called the dual covenant theory, who believe that Gentiles need to be saved through Christ, but that Jews who are not believers in Christ can be saved through keeping the old covenant. This is a false doctrine. It’s a very dangerous one. Certainly Paul never heard of it, or the apostles, or else they wouldn’t have preached to the Jews like they did. I mean, the entire preaching of the church for the first several years before any Gentiles were included in it was to the Jews. I mean, the apostles preached for years in Jerusalem, and their entire audience were the Jews, and the whole church was made up of Jews who became converted Jews. by their preaching. So it certainly would have been news to them to be told, we don’t want to preach the gospel to Jews. If they hadn’t preached to the Jews, there’d be no church at all, because they certainly didn’t preach to Gentiles until many years after Pentecost. So it’s a very strange position for anyone to take, though, like I say, there have been some kind of whacked out Protestants who’ve taught something probably not exactly the same as what the Catholics are thinking about this, but You know, make him kind of the same thing. You don’t have to preach to the Jews. They just have to be faithful to their religion. Yeah, again, Jesus apparently had not heard that. He didn’t get that memo because he preached to the Jews. And those who rejected him, he had rather negative, pessimistic predictions about how it’s going to turn out for them with God because they rejected him. And then the apostles took the same view Jesus did. So the church apparently is not taking the same view that Jesus is if they’re saying we shouldn’t preach to Jews. There’s lots of people who say we shouldn’t only because they don’t think that Jesus is all that important. But I don’t think the Catholics would say they don’t think Jesus is all that important. So I’m not sure how they would justify that. I think perhaps they’re just not thinking very clearly about it. Sounds like that to me.
SPEAKER 05 :
All right. Good answer. Thank you, sir.
SPEAKER 08 :
Okay, Jonathan, thanks for your call. Michael in Effingham, New Hampshire. Hi, Michael. Welcome.
SPEAKER 09 :
Hey, Steve. Love your ministry. I want to thank you and your staff. Since I’ve been listening to you, I’m trying to get a hold of church history from the beginning, and your lectures are awesome.
SPEAKER 08 :
Thank you. Thank you. We have a 30-lecture series on church history at our website, free.
SPEAKER 09 :
Yep. A brief background for my question. I grew up in the faith. I started reading scriptures at an early age, like VBS and young people’s Bible studies. And I went to Christian schools, late 70s, early 80s in the Midwest. And back then, memorization of scripture was required, and I was fairly competent. But I find now as I get older… It’s just so difficult to even recall scriptures that I had memorized. And I try writing them out. I speak them aloud, repeat. And I ask for, you know, I ask the Spirit to bless my meditation and my study. But, you know, aside from taking, what is it? there’s a drug on the market, something Frexil for your memory.
SPEAKER 07 :
Oh, I’ve heard of it. I’ve seen it advertised, I think. Yeah, I don’t know what it is. Yeah. I don’t know if that would help. Yeah.
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, do you have any suggestions of what works for you as far as, you know, staying?
SPEAKER 08 :
I’ll tell you what worked for me is being young. Being young helps a lot. I’m old now. I’m 72. I will say, you know, as you get older like me, you tend to lose short-term memory more than long-term memory, which is good because I spent my entire young decades immersed in the Bibles. And I didn’t spend much time memorizing the Bible. I memorized a little bit. But I read it so much that there literally has been, you know, the major seasons in the middle of my life. You know, if you started quoting a verse, I could finish the quote from memory almost. I mean, maybe not if it’s in the middle of 1 Chronicles 3 or something. But, you know, essentially… Almost everything in the Bible I was quite familiar with and could, without having memorized it, I could finish the sentence only because I’ve heard it so many times. I differentiate between remembering on the one hand and memorizing. Memorizing is deliberately setting something to memory, disciplining yourself to do that. Whereas remembering it is just, you know, it’s something you’re not forgetting. You remember it because you’ve heard it so many times. And that was it. I just read the Bible so many times. I heard it so many times. I never stopped. I was fortunate to be in a vocation where I taught through the Bible every year, verse by verse, in a school. for 16 years. So, I mean, I got reinforced in it all the time. But I think I was telling, I think I mentioned this on the radio last week sometime, that early in my miscarriage, about 19, I memorized a few short books about it. These I memorized. I actually disciplined myself to memorize them verbatim. They were the shorter books near the end of the New Testament. And having memorized them, I found that it wasn’t hard to memorize them, but it was sure easy to forget them. And so I actually had to quote them out loud to myself every single day in order not to forget them. And I would go on a walk every day and quote them out loud to myself, which was very edifying, frankly, to actually go through these books. It was 1 John, 2 John, 3 John, 1 Peter, James, basically. And going through those books every single day was a A great edifying experience. I’m talking about meditating day and night on the Word of God. If you memorize it, and if you’re like me, you’ll probably have to review it a lot. But that’s not a problem. Reviewing it is very edifying. My problem was it takes 15 minutes to recite 1 John or 1 Peter or James. They’re all about the same length. And then I had a couple of shorter books like 2 and 3 John. You know, I had about an hour of recitation I had to do every day, and that was just for those books. You know, it was like if I was doing nothing else, studying nothing else. It just got to the point where I realized I couldn’t keep memorizing more books of the Bible and to have time to recite them every day. So I got lazier about it, got lazier about it. But, you know, I would say this, that my – whenever I – if a scripture comes to my mind and I share it on the air or in a Bible study – Usually it’s not from one of those books. And even if it is, even if it is from one of those books, I’m still kind of paraphrasing it nowadays because I don’t trust myself to quote it exactly. But I’m not anal about that. I’m not really anal about being exact quoting. I believe that I not only know the verses, I know their context. I know the flow of thought. I know what they’re saying. And in most cases, I trust myself to quote the words I remember verbatim and fill in the other parts from what I know the verse will be talking about. So, I mean, people should, you know, if I quote a scripture, people should look it up and make sure I’m not getting it wrong. But, you know, I’m pretty accurate. But, yeah. I’m not perfect. But, you know, to memorize Scripture, or I should say to remember Scripture, I don’t know you at all, but I know lots of people who say, well, I sure can’t remember Scripture very well. But they can remember all kinds of amazing things that I could never memorize. You know, sports statistics, you know, the kind of engine that certain cars had in certain years. You know, details about all kinds of stuff that I couldn’t remember those to save my life, frankly, because I’ve never paid attention to them. And that’s just the thing. People’s minds have an amazing capacity to remember the things that they immerse them in, you know. And I just thank God because – If I were starting to learn the Bible now with my diminished capacity, I’d have all the same problems anyone else has, I suppose. But I started learning when I was young. A lot of people are not in a calling like mine where you get to teach the Bible every day and read it every day. So I can see how people who learn Scripture as a young person, they don’t get to reinforce it every day. you know, of their life, and I can see how it could be harder for them. But I do believe in what Psalm 1 says. It says that, you know, the man who is blessed is the one who his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law he meditates day and night. You know, it’s like, and those two things are related. If you delight in it, you’ll think about it all the time. Anything you’re delighted in. If you’re delighted in sports, you’ll be thinking about them all the time. If you’re delighted in cars, you’ll think about them all the time. If you’re delighted in the law of the Lord, you’ll think about it all the time. And if you’re thinking about it all the time, you can’t get very far from its contents, you know.
SPEAKER 09 :
Right. Well, I also appreciate your verse-by-verse because you explain. I put you up there. I used to listen to Dr. Sproul because he could explain the tougher things. the tougher learning of Scripture. And I believe he’s a Calvinist. He died a little while ago.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yeah, he was quite a Calvinist, yeah.
SPEAKER 09 :
Yeah, I think he’s awesome. I read my first book was The Holiness of God. That really was a wake-up, even though I knew…
SPEAKER 08 :
That one kind of put him on the map. That kind of made him famous back in the 80s. Hey, I need to move along. We don’t have much time and got a lot of callers, but I appreciate your call, brother.
SPEAKER 09 :
All right. Thank you so much for your ministry and take care and God bless.
SPEAKER 08 :
Thank you, Michael. Good talking to you. All right. Let’s talk to Karen in Auburn, Washington. Karen, welcome.
SPEAKER 01 :
Hi, Steve. I have a question on Psalm 51, 17. If you could define exactly what a broken and contrite heart is.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yeah, the word contrite, the Hebrew word contrite means crushed, like you crush something with a mortar and pestle, you know, into powder. So the sacrifices of God are a broken and contrite spirit. God doesn’t despise that. What it means, of course, is that you just feel… Powerless. You’ve come to the end of yourself completely. It’s as if you’ve been evaporated. You’ve been crushed to the powder. Your heart. Now, that would be in terms of, you know, not that you’re a true basket case or that you’re either morally or intellectually, you know, incompetent, what it means is that your self-confidence is destroyed, which is good. You know, we live ever since probably the 60s or 70s, the church has been encouraged to bolster people’s self-image, self-esteem, self-confidence, you know, self-love. And those are simply not biblical values. To love yourself is what you naturally do. We’re not ever told to love yourself. We’re told to love your neighbor the way you love yourself. Job, you know, after he had gone through his trials, he was crushed. He said to God, he says, I’ve heard of you at the hearing of the ear. This is in Job 42. I’ve heard of you with the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you, and he says, I deplore myself. He said, I abhor myself. I repent in dust and ashes. Now, when you come to a place where you say, there’s nothing good in me. I’m a total loser. I’ve got nothing to be self-confident about. That doesn’t mean you can’t be confident. You can be confident in God. Once you’ve learned not to be confident in yourself, You now have a broken spirit. You now are poor in spirit, as Jesus referred to it. You know, that’s a species of being humble. You know, you’re humble about yourself, but you’re confident, you’re trusting in God. And you know you have to trust in God because you’ve got nothing. Nothing you can contribute to his kingdom except what he does through you. When you come to that point, and that’s where David was. He had a crushed spirit. In that psalm, of course, he came to terms with the fact that he had broken God’s law. He’d committed adultery with his neighbor’s wife. He had had his neighbor killed unjustly. I mean, he was a murderer, an adulterer, and he’d always thought himself as a good guy. I mean, he’s the same David who, as a shepherd boy, had meditated on God’s law day and night and had was a man after God’s heart, but every man can fall, and he did. But, you know, when a man is, generally speaking, a good guy, and then he falls so terribly, it’s a wake-up call. He says, you’re not a good guy. I mean, God may use you to do good things, and you may be, you know, aiming at being good, but you can’t be good without help, you know. Yeah. And to come to that total loss of self-confidence and that total sense of dependency on God and that I’m crushed, I’ve been devastated. Broken spirit, contrite heart. I guess the word contrite and broken in those cases would maybe have the idea that we would use the word devastated to experience. And it’s when you come to the end of yourself that God really kind of has you where he wants you.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yep, that’s good stuff, Steve. Thanks.
SPEAKER 08 :
Okay, Karen. Thanks for your call. Good talking to you. Edwin from Killeen, Texas. We don’t have very much time, I’m afraid, but go ahead.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes. Hi, Steve. So my question is about Matthew 7, 21 through 23. I’m kind of new to this. I gave my life to the Lord less than a year ago. But there was a – yes, amen – But the verse that I’m confused about is people saying that they prophesied and did all these things, casting out demons and whatnot. And the Lord responded with, depart from me for I never knew you. At first glance, it kind of looked like it was referring to people that walked away from Christ and then came back. But why would he say, depart from me for I never knew you, instead of depart from me for I don’t know you any longer?
SPEAKER 08 :
Right, right. He’s not talking about people who have backslidden or fallen away. He’s talking about people who never had the right evidence of being real Christians anyway, and were making a mistake about their own status. He says in verse 21 of Matthew 7, Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father in heaven. Now, he doesn’t describe people who once did but now aren’t. He’s not talking about people who fell away. He’s talking about people who are saying, Lord, Lord. That is, they think of themselves as his people, as Christians. But they’re not doing his will. That’s not what they do. Now, what does it mean to do the will of the Father? It doesn’t refer to just this or that thing that God wants you to do it. It means that you are now God. on a different path than before. You were following your own desires and maybe including God in there once in a while or not at all. But now you’re following his path. You’re now completely doing his will is the definition of what you live for. And he says there are people who do other things short of that, prophesying, casting out demons. He mentions impressive things, working mighty works in his name. He says some of them aren’t in that place yet. where they’ll enter the kingdom of heaven, because their life is not characterized by doing God’s will. They’re doing all these things, but that doesn’t mean they’re doing God’s will. Doing God’s will means you’re submitted to him, you’ve denied yourself, taken up your cross, you’re following him. Jesus said that elsewhere, and that’s what I think he’s referring to. I wish I could go longer. I can’t. You’re listening to The Narrow Path. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for joining us.
