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Good afternoon and welcome to The Narrow Path Radio Broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we are live for an hour. Each weekday afternoon, taking your calls.
If you’d like to call in with questions about the Bible or the Christian faith or maybe to express an alternative viewpoint from that of the host, feel free to give me a call. The number is 844-484-5737.
That’s 844-484-5737.
And I want to remind our listeners in Washington state and in Nashville, Tennessee, and in the Sacramento area, California, and also in Northwest Arkansas, that in the next couple of months, coming up actually next week, beginning, I will be speaking in all of those areas in several locations. And if you’re interested in joining us for any of those gatherings, the specifics can be found at our website, thenarrowpath.com, under the tab that says Announcements. Now for our Southern California listeners, once a month we have a busy Saturday in Southern California, a Saturday morning this Saturday.
There’s a Men’s Bible Study. It happens only once a month, third Saturday of the month. Men’s Bible Study in Temecula, California at 8 in the morning.
And then in the evening in Buena Park, we’re going to have our continuing survey of the whole Bible, and we’ll be giving an introduction and survey of the Book of First Peter in Buena Park Saturday night. All those events can be found at thenarrowpath.com under Announcements. All right, I don’t think I have anything else I need to announce, so we’re going to go to the phones and talk to Gregg calling from Texas.
Gregg, welcome to The Narrow Path.
Hello, Steve, how are you?
Fine, thanks.
Good, glad to hear it. I’ve been very familiar with you for many years, and we’ve talked before, maybe 15 years ago, and I admire your work from a distance, I guess you would say.
Thank you.
I’m familiar with a church that you used to attend, I used to attend also. Lately, I’ve been looking at the events going on in Israel, and would kind of like to use your website to dig a little deeper into dispensationalism. And I’ve kind of really been turned off by churches that are dispensational.
And this may seem like a silly phone call, but I haven’t gone to church for years, and I’m looking for one. And it seems like when I look, I’m either finding Word of faith churches or the Frozen Chosen that neither really appeal to me.
Or dispensational churches.
Yes, correct.
The dispensational ones are really something that’s pretty new to me. I’ve kind of been looking into it, and I didn’t really realize how bad it was. I know there’s a lot of good churches that people love the Lord and aren’t really all familiar with it.
But now it’s kind of become another non-negotiable for me in trying to find a church home, which is hard enough to begin with.
Well, let me say that with me, for a church to be dispensational is not desirable, of course, because I’m not dispensational. But it’s not a non-negotiable, unless it is in session with them. And that is unfortunately the case with many dispensational churches, not all.
There are pastors and congregations that lean dispensational, but it doesn’t come out all that often. They’re not rabid about it. But on the other hand, dispensationalism does tend to get people fascinated in current events, especially in the Middle East.
And with things going on in Israel right now, many dispensational preachers have a hard time resisting the temptation to focus on those things, which are not particularly edifying. They’re not food for the… That’s not feeding the sheep.
When you’re talking about current events, even when you’re talking about end times prophecy, that’s not feeding the sheep. That’s entertaining the sheep with sensationalism. I think there are dispensational churches that you could probably live with.
At least, there are some that I could live with, but they’d have to be very low key about their dispensationalism because it’s something I wouldn’t agree with. I can disagree with churches about many things and still get along. Although sometimes the division comes from their side.
But if you’re looking for a church that is not dispensational, there’s certainly plenty of them out there. Now, I’m not a Calvinist either. I don’t know where you stand on those issues, but it’s often the case that churches that are not dispensational happen to be Calvinist, because it’s all-millennialism, which is opposed to dispensationalism, is a reformed doctrine or characteristic of reformed churches, which are usually Calvinistic.
But there are some denominations that are neither Calvinistic nor dispensational, nor word of faith. Now, the Church of Christ fits that description. And I have to just say, many people’s experience with the Church of Christ may not be optimal, because for a long time, the Church of Christ as a movement was very typically legalistic about a few things, especially baptism, and very exclusionary of people who were not of their group.
But not all Church of Christ’s that I’ve met are like that. In fact, we even have a Church of Christ guy on our board of directors, and he’s not at all like that. I’ve known many Church of Christ people who are very gracious and very well-balanced people.
So it’s not entirely, it’s not impossible that you would find a very good Church of Christ in your area. But with this warning that some Church of Christ congregations and pastors have been known to be a little crusty or just legalistic about their views. But that’s not baked in necessarily.
It doesn’t, they don’t have to be that way, and many of them are not. Another movement that is not dispensationalist and not Calvinist is called the Church of God of Anderson, Indiana. Now, this is a very small denomination.
You don’t find their churches everywhere, but they are all, they are around the country. Headquartered in Anderson, Indiana, the Church of God is all millennial and, and not Calvinistic, which is to my mind, positive. Now, there are other groups that are not.
For example, the Christian Missionary Alliance Church is not Calvinistic. At least the movement began not Calvinistic. They’re also not cessationist, which is something the other two movements I mentioned are.
Cessationist would mean people who believe the gifts are not for today. I believe the Church of Christ and the Church of God, Amstrad, Indiana probably are going to be cessationist, unless you find an exceptional congregation. The Christian Missionary Alliance denomination was never cessationist.
AB. Simpson, the founder of that movement, had a healing ministry. AW.
Tozer was a leader in that movement a generation later. He was not by any means what we would call a charismatic, but he believed in the gifts of the spirit. If you happen to be of that ilk, I am, you might find that agreeable.
Christian Missionary Alliance are not Calvinistic, not cessationist, and not necessarily dispensational. They usually are historic pre-millennial, which is much more endurable than dispensationalism for a non-dispensationalist, I would say. So those are some possibilities.
There are also just independent little churches around that would be not dispensational. But you’re right, and you live in Texas. Texas is a hotbed of dispensationalism, especially Dallas.
And so anyway, those are just some suggestions for you. There’s also the option of doing what I did. We have a home church.
For the past almost a decade, we’ve had a home church, which obviously is more agreeable with our theological positions. But my advice is to not be too much of a stickler for any of those theological positions if you find a loving fellowship that receives people who don’t have the same viewpoint, people who love God, who are in other respects faithful disciples of Jesus. But if they happen to be Calvinists, or they happen to be dispensational, or even happen to be cessationists, these are positions I don’t agree with on them, but I certainly can live with them if they can live with me.
So the main thing is that we love the brethren, and we’re looking for churches primarily that do, and that don’t exclude people or demonize people because of differences of opinion amongst some of these peripheral doctrines.
Right. Yeah, it’s kind of a daunting task. I didn’t realize I didn’t think I’d ever be in this position in my life to not be able to find a church, but it’s…
It is hard. It is hard sometimes. It’s getting harder in my opinion.
It is. It really is. And I don’t mean to take on any denomination whatsoever, but as I look around, I say, well, gosh, when is the Baptist by Texas?
Yeah. You know, Baptist churches can be great, you know? I mean, lots of them are dispensational.
There are Baptist churches that are Amaleo. There are also Baptist churches, of course, that are Calvinist, Reformed Baptists, which I would not prefer, but there’s like 40 different kinds of Baptists out there. So, I mean, you might find a good Baptist church that you get along well with.
I just never realized so much the dispensationalist thing would be something that I would consider for now. Who would have thought it? I really appreciated, yeah, I appreciated your insight on that.
All right, Gregg. I’m not sure how long ago you did your lecture, but it was also the newspaper theology, which really…
Yeah, you’re right. I’m sorry, I need to move along, but yeah, a lot of people have the very same complaints you’re making, brother. God bless you.
Thanks for calling. Ray in Toledo, Ohio. Thanks for calling.
Hi, Steve.
I just had a question for you.
I watched a debate last night, and the debate was with a dispensationalist and a post-trib pre-wrath, which he was against dispensationalism. But the question came up about conditional covenants. And when the dispensationalist asked him to prove that there was conditional covenants, he went back to Exodus and talked about the conditional covenant with Moses.
Then he insinuated he knew he would do that because he could not talk about a conditional covenant with Abraham. How would you have responded to that?
That’s all I’m curious about.
Well, the actually the covenant with Abraham was conditional. The first word spoken to Abraham on record in Genesis 12, verse 1 says, now the Lord had said to Abraham, get out of your country from your kindred and from your father’s house to a land that I will show you, and I will make you a great nation and etc. The promises follow.
But he was required to get out of his country from his father’s house. If he had not done that, none of these promises would have come to him. So it was conditional.
Now, after he did that, it might be said, now that after he’s done that, there are no more conditions. Well, there are always conditions, whether they’re state or not.
Jeremiah 18 verses 7 through 10 make it very clear that God never makes any promises or threats to any people without it being conditional. He doesn’t always state the conditions at the time, but there are no unconditional promises. Now, in Genesis 18, when God is about to disclose to Abraham what he’s about to do in destroying Sodom and Gomorrah, there’s this little soliloquy that God speaks and says in verse 17 through 19, this is Genesis 18, 17 through 19, the Lord said, shall I hide from Abraham what I’m doing?
Since Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him. For I have known him in order that he may command his children and his household after him, that they keep the way of the Lord and do righteousness and justice so that the Lord may bring to Abraham what he has spoken to him. Now notice God says, Abraham needs to teach his offspring to do justice and righteousness so that God can keep his promises to them.
So obviously, the strongest implication is for God to keep his promises to Abraham’s offspring, they’re going to have to do justice and righteousness. God doesn’t have any exceptions to this that we know of. We know of no case in the Bible that deviates from the general rule frequently stated in Scripture, that God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble.
And that, you know, God says, those who honor me, I will honor. Those who despise me will be lightly esteemed. Actually, in the second chapter of 1 Samuel, God says that he’s speaking to Eli, giving a prophecy to Eli, the priest.
Now, God had made a promise to the priests of the Levitical tribe, that forever, for all generations, they would walk before him, before God as priests. And in 1 Samuel chapter 2, I believe it’s verse 30 as I recall, God says to him, I said indeed that you and your father’s house would walk before me forever. But then he says, but now the Lord says, far be it from me.
For those who honor me, I will honor. And those who despise me shall be lightly esteemed. Now, when God made the promise to the Levi’s, that their tribe or Aaron’s tribe, family in that tribe, would be priests forever, he didn’t state any conditions on that.
But now God makes it very clear. No, this is not unconditional. Those who honor me, I’ll honor.
Those who don’t, will not. So God makes it very clear that it’s always conditional, whether he says it at the time or not. And this goes with his threats too.
When Jonah preached to Nineveh, he said 40 days and Nineveh will perish. He gave no conditions, but they repented and God repented of it. But you see, this is exactly God’s regular policy.
And he states it’s his regular policy. In Jeremiah 18, where God said in verse 7, the instant I speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom, to pluck it up, pull it down and destroy it. You know, like he did, he said about Nineveh.
He said, if that nation against whom I have spoken turns from its evil, I will repent of the disaster that I thought I’d bring up on it. So Jonah and Nineveh are a great example of this. God stated no exceptions.
He just announced he’s going to destroy Nineveh. But when they repented, God repented and didn’t destroy them. That’s what God says he will always do in Jeremiah 18, 7 and 8.
But then the next verses say, in verse 9, and the instant I speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it, like he promised Abraham, and like he promised the Israelites, he says, if that nation does evil in my sight, so that it does not obey my voice, then I will repent concerning the good with which I said it would benefit it. So, God is not secretive about his general policies. By general I mean universal policies.
He says, anytime I make a promise to do good, if the people I promise to go bad, I’m done with them. I’m not going to keep that promise. I’ll repent of having said it.
And anytime I say I’m going to wipe someone out, if they do good, they turn around and do good, I’m going to repent of my threat. My threats and my promises are always conditional, is what he’s saying. And we don’t know of any exceptions, including the ones he made to Abraham.
Thanks for your help.
Okay Ray, thanks for your call. God bless. Kerry from Texas, welcome to The Narrow Path.
Thanks for calling.
Hey Steve, if you agree with my premise, I have a suggestion for another book for you to write. It’d be much like what you did with The Kingdom of God, showing that there were various ways to describe The Kingdom of God. I think that you could write a book on things just like walking in the spirit, walking in the light, inducting yourself in a manner worthy of your calling.
Those things, I believe, are speaking of the same things.
Well, I actually think some of those things are covered in those books I wrote about The Kingdom of God. There are a number of chapters that I would say fall into those categories. But I also would say there’s a lot of books I would like to write, but I’ll die before I’ve had a chance to write them all.
Fortunately, and this is not… I wish I could also write on these subjects, I have lecture series on almost every imaginable subject. And in fact my book on The Kingdom of God was developed from my lecture series on The Kingdom of God.
My book on The Three Views of Hell was developed from my lectures on The Three Views of Hell. So it’s true, a book can sometimes go more into detail or be more thorough, but my lectures are pretty thorough. If anyone has a complaint about my lectures, it’s often they’re too thorough.
I’m a little too verbose and go too deep down the rabbit hole. But the truth is that I would love to write books on every subject that I’ve got lecture series on. And I appreciate the suggestion, but I don’t, you know, I can’t, I don’t have the time to do it.
I will say that AI has changed up the game a little bit, and there is a website called opentheo.org. Open theo, T-H-E-O, theo, opentheo.org, and there, a young man has used AI and done a wonderful thing. From my point of view, he’s taken all of my lectures, I think all the ones at the website, there’s about 1,500 of them, including all those lecture series I just alluded to.
He’s taken all of them and using AI, he’s made transcripts of them. And you can read them, you know, as has completed, they’re not books, but they’re like manuscript, which could be made into books. They’re not edited down like a book would be, but they are pretty much verbatim of the lectures.
And anyone can read those or download them anytime they want to. That’s at opentheo.org. I just want to say this too, while we’re on the subject.
I just noticed this about another website, one of our websites called matthew713.com.
If you go under articles and such, there’s a category there. My two Kingdom of God books are the PDFs, so the whole books are there. And there’s no one has to buy the books.
You can just download the whole book in a PDF from that website. And obviously, the audio books are also free from our website, thenarrowpath.com. So pretty much anything I have to say is available both in audio and in written form.
Though I appreciate you suggesting, you know, if we had an editor who wanted to take the transcripts of my lectures and clean them up into, you know, publishable manuscript, I would have no objection to that. I think that would be great. And I appreciate the suggestion, brother.
Thanks for calling today. Kevin from Mill Creek, Washington. Welcome to The Narrow Path.
Well, thank you so much for your ministry.
We love it.
I’ve got a question on eating meat. And specifically from a Jewish perspective, there’s some who are saying that we need to be eating kosher meat. It needs to be slaughtered and everything according to the Jewish, according to the biblical custom or the instructions.
And I want you to input on not just that but what has been spoken as, quote, building a Jewish home, unquote. So I’d kind of like to know how that fits with the New Testament commands that Jesus talks about.
All right. Yeah, building a Jewish home, I assume, means a kosher home. There’s certainly nothing in the New Testament that indicates that Christians should have the slightest interest in maintaining a kosher diet or kosher standards in our home in general.
That’s part of a different religion. That’s like saying Christians should make pilgrims to Mecca, because that’s what the Muslims do. Well, that’s their religion, that’s not ours.
And likewise, kosher diet, that’s Jews’ religion, that’s not ours. And that is restricted to the Jewish religion, is seen very clearly in that there were no such kosher laws before Mount sinai, when the Jewish nation and religion were founded. And there are no such kosher laws in the New Testament, since a new covenant has replaced the old.
Now, before Mount sinai, well, when God made Adam and Eve, it looks like human beings only ate vegetables for a while. We don’t know exactly. It doesn’t actually say they can’t eat meat, but that seems to be implied.
And so probably most people didn’t. But after the flood, God made this rule to Noah and his family, and it certainly did not include a kosherness of diet. He says that in verse 3 of Genesis 9, after the flood, God said, every moving thing that lives shall be food for you.
I have given you all things, even as the green herbs, but you should not eat the flesh with the blood in it, he told them. Now, every living thing that moves certainly exceeds the limits of a kosher diet. Now, some people didn’t know there was kosher diet even before the flood, because Noah was told to bring seven of every clean animal and two of every unclean animal.
And therefore, they were already clean and unclean animals. Yeah, but the clean animals were the ones that were so-called because they were acceptable to offer as a sacrifice to God. It had nothing to do with human consumption of them.
In fact, it says in Genesis 820 that after the flood, Noah built an altar to the Lord and took of every clean animal and every clean bird and offered burnt offerings to the Lord. So the distinction between clean and unclean before the flood had to do with which animals were considered appropriate or inappropriate to offer as a sacrifice to God. But before the flood, there’s no evidence that people ate any kind of animals.
But after the flood, God said you can eat any kind you want, anything that moves. Now, that continued for probably, you know, the 500 years or more. And then came the law, and God restricted the diet of the Jews to certain kinds of animals and birds and restricted others.
That was new. That was part of the law. That was part of judaism, which was founded at that same time.
And that continued until the time of the New Testament. Now, initially, the Jewish Christians didn’t, hadn’t processed it and didn’t know that it didn’t continue. But God told Peter, what I have cleansed, let no one call common or unclean.
Over in Romans 14, 14, Paul said, I’m persuaded by the Lord Jesus Christ, that there’s nothing unclean of itself. Only for someone who thinks it’s unclean, it’s unclean for him. But he said, he’s talking about food.
There’s no food that’s unclean of itself. In first Timothy four, the first four verses or so, Paul says that in the last days, there will be people who teach doctrines of demons, which forbid you to eat animals of various sorts. He said, for every creature of God is good and nothing to be refused if it’s received at Thanksgiving.
So, you know, the New Testament is very clear. There’s no restrictions on diet, just like there was none before Mount sinai. And I need to take a break right now.
I hope that’s helpful to you, my brother. We have another half hour coming up. You’re listening to The Narrow Path.
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Welcome back to The Narrow Path Radio Broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg, and we’re live for another half hour taking your calls. The number to call, if you’d like to be on the air.
Yeah, by the way, the lines are all full right now, so I’d suggest you wait a few minutes before you call. You might find an open line in a few minutes. The number to call is 844-484-5737.
Our next caller is AJ calling from Ohio. Hi AJ, welcome to The Narrow Path.
Hey Steve, how are you doing today?
Good, thanks.
So my question would be, Christians and politics, how much should Christians have to do with politics and like vote and so forth? Could you just give me a little overview of what you think of like Christians and politics? Should we not look to God as our like leader, or how do you take that?
Well, yeah, God is our leader. But he’s our leader in our personal lives, and in our community life as Christians, that is in the Christian community. Now, Christians live in nations that are under various kinds of regimes.
Most Christians throughout history lived under monarchs, kings, and such. Today, a lot of Christians live in somewhat more democratic kind of societies. Some still live under kings in a few places.
Some live under dictators. There’s different kinds of governments, and there’s not just one form of government that somehow the Bible endorses for secular societies. The assumption is most people are not followers of Christ and need to be governed anyway, so they have various forms of government that they develop.
This is not necessarily something where God says one form is better than another. But there is a teaching of the Bible that when a Christian has been given opportunity or privilege, that person is a steward. That means that God has made them a manager for him of whatever has been put into their hands.
So if a person has more money than somebody has, someone else has, then that’s a stewardship. That’s a responsibility that God has given them to manage that for his advantage and for the spreading of his kingdom. If a person has more, let’s say, is a better orator or a better singer or a better, just influencer of some kind, that ability is a gift from God, which is to be stewarded for the kingdom of God’s sake.
Now, when it comes to political power, that too is an advantage that some people have. Now, in some countries, the only people who have political power are the royal family and, you know, maybe some appointed people, their ministers and stuff that they’ve appointed to govern under them, in which case the average citizen doesn’t have any political power and therefore no responsibility for it. The responsibility for governing in that case is in the hands of those who have that power.
In a country like ours, that power is invested in the citizens in general. We don’t have kings. We sometimes have elected leaders who think they’re kings and act like kings, but that’s not legitimate.
The way our country is set up, I’m talking to American listeners right here now, the way that this nation is set up is that the people are supposed to be, in a sense, self-governing, and we elect representatives from among our own ranks to administrate things for us, but they operate as public servants, not as kings. In a sense, the kings are the citizens, which means that in a country like this, the citizens have the power, which in other countries is given to a royal family or some other kind of political structure. Now, like I said, whatever we have that is advantageous, is bequeathed to us as a stewardship to manage for the kingdom of God.
So, I believe that in, you know, Christians who live in a rare situation like ours, I mean, historically, this is rare to for this, a country to be governed by its citizens. Citizens with that kind of power, if they’re Christians, I believe have a responsibility to use that in a way that, you know, is pleasing to God. Now, it’s not pleasing to God, I don’t think, for a country to make laws that require unbelievers to be Christians.
For example, we as Christians can’t vote in government policies that would insist that all people should be baptized, or all people should have to go to church, or give a tithe to the church or something, you know, specifically Christian things. This country doesn’t even allow that because our Constitution does not allow the establishment of a religion by the federal government, and so we couldn’t make those kinds of laws anyway. Nor is it something we would desire or that God would desire, because God doesn’t want people to be forced to believe in him.
He could do that if he wanted to. He could force everyone to believe in him, but that’s not how he operates. He wants that to be made by people’s own choices.
And therefore, for us to make laws that would put them under duress, to have to behave like Christians, whether they wanted to or not would be, I think, not in agreement with God’s ways of running things. On the other hand, God has ordained the government, the Bible says in Romans 13, to maintain justice. In 1 Peter 2, verses 13 and 14, it also says the same thing.
God has ordained the government to punish evildoers and to praise those who do well. Now, this is not the same thing as installing a national religion, but it is suggesting that God wants governments to govern justly. You know, that’s not a religious thing, that’s a moral thing.
And so, as a person with a vote, in a country where I bear privilege and responsibility in this area, I would think I’m responsible in my stewardship of this opportunity to vote for such laws and such persons to govern, who would have a sense of justice and a commitment to maintaining justice. And if they’re going to make laws, they would be just laws. And if they’re going to appoint judges to courts, they’re going to be judges who will judge justly.
Justice is not, I mean, justice is certainly a Christian value, but it’s not uniquely Christian. All people should be concerned about justice, because that’s a moral issue. So, what are our responsibilities?
Well, I believe that since we have opportunity, we have responsibility. If we didn’t have opportunity, I don’t think we’d have responsibility. So this opportunity we have living in this country is a stewardship, a management responsibility.
And I think there may be times when two candidates are so terrible that we just wouldn’t vote for either one because, you know, they’re both equally awful. And we have every reason to believe that the society under their governance would be equally terrible. But on the other hand, there are many cases, and probably most cases, where one candidate will botch things up more than the other, or in more horrible ways than the other.
You know, obviously, conservatives, and I would say in many respects, Christians would be conservatives in their politics, maybe not in every respect. But conservatives would always seem to be concerned about abortion. Now, to me, abortion is not a Christian issue.
I mean, Christians should be concerned about it. It’s not a religious issue. It’s a moral issue.
I think Christians should be concerned about all moral issues. And killing an innocent person is definitely a moral issue. It’s an atrocity to kill an innocent person.
And therefore, if there is, let us say, let’s say both candidates are probably, there’s probably going to be some of this unjust murder going on, no matter which of them wins. But one of them celebrates it. That is, one candidate celebrates the killing of innocent people and wants to make laws that make no restrictions on them, doing so.
And the other side may be a little more wishy-washy than they should be, but they at least are not celebrating it, and they’re not promoting it as a value, and they’re going to have some restrictions on it. Yeah, I mean, maybe both candidates would be very imperfect from a Christian point of view. But still, the one who would kill more babies is the one that we should certainly be very concerned about keeping out of office because if someone says, yeah, but babies will be killed under the other candidate, too, that may be true.
But if we’re going to have a million babies killed per year, or maybe 10,000 babies get killed in the year, both are horrible. But one saves a whole lot more babies than the other. Saving one life out of 10 is better than saving none at all.
And so, anyway, I believe that when it comes to politics, if we’re talking about voting or even running for office, the Christian, of course, does not have a mandate to use their political influence to make people become Christians, or even make people behave as Christians. But we do have a mandate to promote justice. This is one of the highest values that the Bible names in God’s sight, justice, in both the Old and the New Testament.
Jesus said that the Pharisees were guilty of neglecting what Jesus said were the weightier matters of the law. And the first on the list was justice in Matthew 23, 23. So I believe that we should be involved politically, and so far, as doing so does not compromise anything, any Christian duty of ours, and that those of us who have the ability to influence government as opposed to living under a dictatorship where the citizens have no such power, those of us who do have that power, they have some responsibility and should take it very seriously because we’re going to answer to God for our stewardship of every advantage he gave us.
That’d be my summary on that.
Thank you very much, Steve.
Okay, AJ, thank you for your call. Let’s talk to Gregg from California. Gregg, welcome.
Thank you, Steve. I have two questions. The first one being the monks, spirits, demons, cast down angels.
And the second question is on, when someone comes down with cancer, there’s cancer, different diseases, is that something that is passed down to their lineage?
For both your questions, your voice kind of trailed off at the end. I didn’t get the last words of either question. So, the first question had to do with demons what?
Yes, are demons or demonic spirits cast out angels?
Are they angels? Yes. Okay, and your second question was about cancer, is it passed down by what?
By your lineage, by your ancestors. If somebody comes down to cancer, you get something to do with your cancer.
All right. Well, we don’t know if demon spirits are fallen angels or not. The Bible does say that some angels have fallen.
The Bible also affirms that there are demons. There’s no passage in the Bible that tells us that the beings that are called demons are the same beings that are called fallen angels. It is often assumed that this is true, and I’m not against it.
It’s very possible that the fallen angels are the same as the demons. Alternatively, some people think that the fallen angels are one kind of beings and the demons are another kind of beings. We simply aren’t given any instruction about that in scripture, and therefore a very common assumption that the demons are the fallen angels.
You know, I mean, that might be a reasonable speculation, but we’re not told for sure about that. Now, is cancer passed down from previous generations? I don’t know if you mean that in terms of a spiritual curse, like, you know, is there a generational curse that manifests in cancer, generation after generation?
If that’s the question, I would have no basis for affirming it, but if it’s an entirely different kind of question, like a medical question, it does seem that sometimes, you know, vulnerability to cancer is generational. I mean, most doctors like to know if their patients have, if there’s cancer in their family, you know, to know what their risks of cancer is. But I’m not a medical person.
I don’t really know much about that. My guess is you are asking it from more of a spiritual standpoint. And I can’t answer that either because the Bible doesn’t ever mention such things.
Interestingly, the Bible doesn’t mention cancer by that name. And so we don’t look to the Bible for insights about the details of medical conditions. We could probably go to the medical experts about that.
Thanks for your call, though.
Would you say…
What’s that?
I was going to say, would you say that cancer is a cause of sin?
Is cancer a cause of sin?
Yes, that’s…
No, I don’t think cancer causes sin, but if you mean, is cancer caused by sin…
Yes, is cancer caused by sin?
Well, I don’t know of any direct connection between sin and cancer. Obviously, cancer can be a lifestyle-induced thing. If you imbibe a lot of carcinogenic substances in your food, or if you smoke a lot, or those kinds of things, that can, I think, in many cases cause cancer in somebody who’s otherwise prone to it.
But I mean, I don’t think that… If a person smokes and gets lung cancer, like my grandfather did, and he died of lung cancer, and he didn’t stop smoking after he lost his first lung, he kept smoking until he lost his second one too for years. I think like 20 years.
Anyway, you know, if somebody smokes and gets cancer, and we could say, yeah, the cancer was caused by smoking, I would say it’s a physiological, not a spiritual connection. I don’t know that smoking is specifically a sin. It might, if it is, it’s certainly not as great as some other sins that people do.
And if God, if you’re wondering, does God give people cancer as a punishment for smoking or for eating food that’s got carcinogenic substances in it, I hardly think so. I mean, I’m not sure why people who do those things would be specially targeted for that kind of disease. It seems more likely that there’s a physiological connection between the behavior and the disease.
But I don’t claim to be an expert. Esther from Bellingham, Washington. Welcome to The Narrow Path.
Thanks for calling.
Esther, are you there? If not, we’ll go somewhere else. I hear there is a phone line.
Esther, are you there?
Yes, I am. Thank you.
Okay, I was about to hang up on you. Yeah, go ahead.
I tuned in when you had the person talking about finding a church and I’ve been searching for churches for a while, and I wondered what dispensationalism is.
Okay. Well, dispensationalism is a view, a fairly modern view that arose in the 19th century in Protestant evangelical circles. It actually arose in the Plymouth Brethren Movement, but it spread to many conservative and fundamentalist groups in the early 1900s, and is now the dominant view in a lot of large denominations.
And it’s sort of a template placed over all of scripture, through which scripture is categorized and interpreted. The dispensational views called that because John Nelson Garvey, the inventor of the view back in the 1830s, he said that all of history breaks down into seven dispensations. And a dispensation, in his usage of that term, is a period of time with a distinct beginning and end.
And that dispensation is a period of time when God is doing something differently with man than he did in the other dispensations, or distinctive ways in which God has dealt with man, thinks he’s expected of people at different times and not at other times. And so he identified seven different dispensations, and that’s why it’s called dispensationalism. Now, Darby, who invented it, didn’t call it dispensationalism.
It was almost, it was close to 100 years later that that term was attached to it by a man named Philip Morrow, who had been a dispensationalist, but left that view. And he gave it that label and it stuck. Now, this view has a particular distinctive way of looking at the nation of Israel or the race of the Jews, on the one hand, and it has a distinctive end times scenario that is not taught elsewhere.
And so, about the Jews, dispensationalism holds the view that the Jews, even the Jews who reject Christ, are still God’s chosen people, that God has two chosen peoples. The way Darby talked about it was that the Jews were God’s earthly chosen people, eternally, and the Christians are God’s heavenly chosen people, eternally. Now, the Bible doesn’t teach that, and no Christians really believed that until Darby’s time, but now a great number of Jews, dispensationalists, take that view of the Jews.
And an upshot of that is they believe that God is going to deal with Israel in a distinctive way in the end times. The fact that the Jews have, half of the Jews in the world have come back to Israel right now, and the nation of Israel became a nation in 1948. This is all considered to be confirmatory, current events confirming the dispensationalist ideas.
And so if you’re in a church that makes a lot of Israel today, the nation of Israel, the future of Israel, that church is dispensationalist, because that’s an emphasis that didn’t exist in the church until dispensationalism, and is not found in the New Testament at all. Now, dispensationalists also hold the view that there’s going to be a millennium after Jesus comes back during which the temple is rebuilt, the Jewish temple. And the Jewish priests from the line of Levi are going to be officiating at the temple like they did in the Old Testament.
And they’re going to offer animal sacrifices again. This is a dispensational position too, that the millennium when Jesus comes back will be centered in Jerusalem and the temple and animal sacrifices. And that all of these are going to be approved of God.
In fact, that’s going to be what God expects people to do at that time. This is quite contrary to the entire book of Hebrews, of course, and the New Testament ideas in general about Christ being the final sacrifice. They also introduced the pre-tribulation rapture.
This is the idea that before Jesus comes back, there’s going to be a seven-year tribulation. And during that seven-year tribulation, the Antichrist will rise, but the church will be raptured before the seven-year tribulation. This idea was also a dispensational innovation.
So a lot of these things I’ve just described, you probably would recognize as being taught either in the church you’re in or in churches you’ve been to or on Christian radio programs, things like that. That’s what dispensationalism is. It’s this view of the scriptures in general, especially placing Israel in the center of attention in the end times, and then a scenario of a pre-trib rapture and so forth.
Almost all popular eschatology takes that form. Even novels like the Left Behind series, they assume that to be true. And a lot of conservative churches have held this view, although they don’t realize that when the view is introduced in the 1800s, conservative Christians called it liberalism.
They said it was liberal because it was not what the Bible had taught. It was a new idea and no one had ever taught it before. Now, almost 200 years later, it has become considered to be conservative among groups that are evangelical, not all groups that are evangelical, but many.
So that’s what dispensationalism is. And you may find a lot of it in certainly in American evangelical churches more than virtually anywhere else. Gary from Michigan.
Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
Hey, Gary.
Yes. Am I on now?
You are. And you could have been a few seconds earlier.
Well, I appreciate your ministry. My question is about 1 Thessalonians 4th chapter, starting about verse 15. Can I read it?
Or you probably have it on your studies.
Yeah, I can quote it.
But it was said to you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain into the coming of the Lord, shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall ascend from heaven, with a shout, with a voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air.
So in reading these past scriptures here, there’s different churches teach us different, because in verse 13 it says, sound that even those which have no hope, for if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so also them which sleep in Jesus, will get God bring with him. So those things, they’re opposites.
How do you teach that?
What are the opposites you’re seeing there? I’m not seeing an opposite there.
Okay.
There’s churches that teach when people die, they go straight to heaven. Right. And when Stephen died, I mean, Lazarus died, he was dead for four days.
Do you believe he went to heaven before he resurrected?
I don’t know. We’re not told about that, but that was before Christ resurrected. I believe when Christ resurrected and ascended, it says in Hebrews 10 that he made a new and living way into heaven.
You teach that when people die, they are saved, they go straight to heaven?
Yes.
I’m not hearing you. Can I hear you on the radio? My phone’s not working.
I’m hearing the radio.
Okay. I’ll still talk over the air for you. Yes.
I believe, and I believe Paul taught, that when we die, we are then absent from the body. That is, we’re not in our bodies anymore. But he says, but we are present with the Lord, and where the Lord is in heaven.
So we leave our bodies behind. We’re not in them anymore, but instead we’re with the Lord. Now, obviously, if our body is left behind, that which has abandoned the body is not physical.
It’s our soul, our spirit. Okay, so it says in James, Chapter 2, as a body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead. So a body that is dead, if it doesn’t have its spirit in it.
But when we die, our spirit, us, we depart from our bodies, and we’re present with the Lord. Paul said that in 2 Corinthians, Chapter 5. In Philippians 1, he said that he was eager himself to die and to depart and be with the Lord.
His own death is he would leave, obviously leave his body here, and go off and be with the Lord. So that’s what I believe happens. Now you mentioned, first this one is 414, that says when Jesus comes, God will bring those who have died with him.
Okay. So those who have died and gone to be the Lord will be brought back with him. That is our souls that go to be with the Lord.
But in the meantime, when he comes back, we’ll come back. He also tells us in the same passage, the bodies will rise. The dead in Christ, that means the dead bodies in the graves, they’re going to rise.
Okay. Why? Because the spirit of those bodies are going to go back in them.
He’s going to bring us with him to rejoin us with our bodies. That’s called the resurrection of the dead. So the Bible teaches, as I understand it, that we live in our bodies at this present time while we’re alive, when we die, each of us individually, when we die, our spirits depart and go be with the Lord.
When Jesus comes back, he’ll bring back with him all those spirits that have gone to be with him. He’ll raise their bodies from the grave and reunite spirit and body. This is also, of course, what the Jews taught before the time of Christ.
It was first the Jewish doctrine, but Jesus confirmed it, so did Paul. So that’s my understanding. And I don’t see where the contradiction is.
Thank you for joining us. We’re out of time. You’ve been listening to The Narrow Path Radio Broadcast.
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God bless you.