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Good afternoon, and welcome to The Narrow Path Radio Broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg, and we’re live for an hour each weekday afternoon. Taking your calls, if you have questions, you’d like to call in and discuss about Christianity, about the Bible.
Maybe you see some things differently from the host, maybe you’re a Christian and have a different outlook as many Christians do. Or maybe you’re not a Christian and you’re just, you know, you don’t have any sympathy for Christianity and the Bible at all. And I’d love to hear why.
I’d be glad to hear from you. The number to call is 844-484-5737.
That number again, 844-484-5737.
This Saturday, I guess that’s tomorrow, isn’t it? This is Friday. We have two meetings in Southern California.
They only happen once a month. It’s a men’s Bible study in Temecula in the morning. That’s at 8 o’clock tomorrow morning.
Men’s Bible study in Temecula. And then in the evening, I’m going to be giving an introduction and overview of the Book of 1 Peter. That’s going to be in Buena Park, which is in Orange County, California.
So that’s in the evening. If you’re in the area and want to join us for those, they’re open to you. You can find out all you need to know about the time and place of those gatherings by going to our website, thenarrowpath.com, and looking under announcements, and you’ll find that information there.
Also, if you happen to live in Washington State next week and the following week, I’ll be speaking in many locations in Washington State. And there’s a long list of towns, probably a dozen towns I’ll be speaking in. And up and down the West Coast pretty much.
We’re not in Spokane this trip. So if you’re interested in attending any meetings in Washington, you can also learn about those by going to thenarrowpath.com and looking again under announcements. All right, let’s go to the phones.
Our lines are full. We’ll talk to Sandy in San Jose, California. It’s been a long time since I’ve heard from Sandy.
Hi, Sandy. Welcome.
Oh, Steve, it’s always a pleasure. I know you were up here about a month and a half ago. We were out of town.
Otherwise, we would have drawn the other Gregg heads and seen you.
So thank you so much.
Thank you.
Thank you so much. And I just started listening to your book. It was called Why Not Preterism?
So why not? Why not? Anyway, so two questions today.
Let me start with one, and we can get on to the other one if we need to. Christians focus the sin of homosexuality versus all the other sins we have in the Bible. I mean, you know them all, gluttony, drunkenness.
You know, the Book of Revelation, right, at the very end, you know, talks about outside of the dogs, the sorcerers, the moral people, murderers, the adulterers, and everyone who practices and loves lying. My question then is, do we spend too much time on the homosexual issue?
That’s my question, Steve.
All right. Well, I think that we certainly spend more time on the homosexual issue than we did 30 years ago or 50 years ago. And of course, there’s an obvious reason for that.
Our society has pushed it in our face so much. They elicit a response from us. We didn’t pick this battle.
Obviously, homosexuality and all forms of sexual immorality have been opposed by Christianity, by God, basically in the Bible, for 2,000 years. And through much of that history, I don’t think that homosexuality was discussed very much. And either in the society or in the church.
Now, by the way, not that there wasn’t a lot of homosexuality. There always has been plenty of homosexuality. But it hasn’t always been something that those who are engaged in that lifestyle have thrust into the faces of the general culture and said, you know, how dare you say we can’t do this?
And so obviously, I don’t think any Christians enjoy talking about homosexuality. I certainly don’t. I’d be happy if it never came up, but we’re not the ones bringing it up.
It’s something that is being taught to our children in schools. It’s every movie has, you know, overt homosexual characters. It’s like, you know, in the population, at least before the recruiting into the lifestyle began, there were less than 3% of the population that were homosexuals, but there’s certainly more than 3% of the characters in every movie that are in that lifestyle.
You know, I mean, it’s just something that’s being shoved down our throats. And, you know, and people might say, well, how does that hurt you? You know, if you’re not a homosexual, how does it hurt you?
I don’t know. I don’t think it does hurt me. I don’t know if anyway it hurts me, but I don’t live my life just protecting myself from things that hurt me.
I’m a Christian. As a Christian, my interest in myself is supposed to be the last concern. I’m concerned about people.
I’m concerned about children. I’m concerned about society. I’m concerned about God, obviously.
And therefore, yeah, I can’t imagine anyway that I’ve ever been harmed by a homosexual. And I, you know, though I can’t say I won’t ever be, but I frankly doubt that I will be. I don’t.
In other words, to label somebody who takes a Christian position as homophobic, which suggests afraid of homosexuals, is to my mind a very strange label, since I don’t know anybody who’s afraid of homosexuals. I do think that many people are concerned, maybe we could even say afraid, of the impact on children, you know, that this agenda is having. And, you know, if we don’t speak up for the children, or if we don’t do what we can to promote truth in the face of lies, then I think we’re going to be in trouble.
Now, I’m not saying that homosexuality is a lie, but I’m saying that it is one of very many kinds of behaviors, which the Bible says is not approved by God. And, you know, for a couple who are not married to be sleeping together, it’s not approved either. Adultery is not approved.
Bestiality is not approved. Incest is not approved. There must be 50 ways to leave pure sex, you know, for some alternative, you know.
But the thing is that we talk about it far more than we’d like to. Actually, I don’t even think I ever bring it up. You know, it has come up on the show.
Sometimes when people ask me about it, and how can you not tell the truth? Now, if somebody says, aren’t Christians supposed to love everybody? Well, I do believe I do.
I think I do love everybody. But I also believe that whatever God forbids, he’s not just trying to rain on our parade. I think he’s trying to spare us from dangers.
Now, let’s just say a guy and a girl who are not married start sleeping together. That also is forbidden in Scripture. And if they become in love with each other, they can actually get legally, you know, legitimately married.
But if two people of the same sex fall in love with each other, someone’s going to get heartbroken if either of them starts to follow God and cares for their soul. You know, if anyone wants to stand before God pure, obviously, they’re going to have to give up their fornication. And that doesn’t matter whether they’re gay or straight.
Fornication, the Bible says those who fornicate will not inherit the kingdom of God. Now, I want people to inherit the kingdom of God. I love people.
I don’t want anyone to miss out on that. So, I don’t see how it’s unloving for me to tell people that. It’s like if I want a kid to get the medical degree he wants, I’m going to tell him in high school, you need to do your homework.
You know, you don’t want to do your homework. There’s a lot of things you’d rather do. But I know the goal that you’re going to want.
And you won’t get there if you don’t do your homework now. I know that the time will come where everybody wants to enter the kingdom of God. Every human being is going to want that at some point.
But you won’t, unless you do what God says, or I should say, avoid doing the things that God says will keep you from it.
So, let’s just say the society was pushing lying, and it was in our face every day, lying, lying, lying. You should always lie or you should always get drunk to your heart’s content. Since it would be elevated in society, we would push back on that because we think lying and drinking is wrong.
Is that similar to the way you see the homosexual agenda?
Very much so. Yeah, very much so. Yeah, because no matter what sin a person is engaged in, whether he’s straight, gay, whether he’s a drunkard, you know, drug addict, a thief, it really doesn’t matter what the sin is.
The more somebody yields to it, the more enslaved to it they become. And the day that they want to give it up, is going to be the day they realize how enslaved they have become to it. And so, Christians are against slavery.
We’re against slavery.
Let me jump to another question. You did a great job now. I don’t see if you can answer this one.
Ask Christians, should we be voting for a party platform more than we’re voting for the character of the person running? Because we’re all sinners. We’re all having to say, even Abraham Lincoln, during his reign or his presidency, he got rid of the rip of habeas corpus.
He held people without any telling him why they’re being held. I’m not putting it on Lincoln, but I’m saying…
Sort of like our government does.
Yeah. Yeah.
Should we look at the party platform? Should we versus the individual? Is my question.
Well, I don’t even know if it’s the… Yeah, I would say the party platform. I’m not a partisan.
I don’t actually… I’m not a member of either the Democratic or Republican Party or any other. I’m independent.
But if I vote, I’m going to vote for what I consider to be morality and justice. And so obviously, both parties might have some things on their platforms that I don’t think are very moral or very just.
Right, right, right.
But I’m not given the choice between an ain’t devil, usually. Usually, it’s the lesser demons.
Right, right, right, right.
The thing is, there are party platforms, which I believe, for all their flaws, and for all the flaws that the candidate themselves have, the platform is going to do horrendous damage to a lot of people. And my concern is for people. My concern is not for parties.
I don’t care which, whether it’s a D or an R or L or some other letter by their name. I want to know who’s going to hurt my neighbor. Because love does no harm to a neighbor.
Therefore, loving a neighbor is the fulfillment of the law. So, you know, if someone’s going to kill a few unborn babies because they’re a little stricter on abortion, and the other candidate is going to just celebrate killing as many as possible, which is, of course, what the white party is now doing, you know, which is going to do more harm to more people. I think Christians, our one interest is loving our neighbor as we love ourselves.
Unfortunately, in our society, many people think that loving your neighbor means not criticizing them, not pointing out to them when they’re self-assertive.
You’re not supposed to judge, bro. You can’t judge. You know, they take that out of context, too, obviously.
You answered my question, Steve. Love you. Love you.
I still listen to you a lot.
I only call on when I…
I don’t need as much help as you talk to me so much, but there’s always a time, so…
That’s great to hear from you.
Hopefully, we’ll see you soon, Steve. And take care, my brother.
God bless you, Sandy. Okay, let’s see here. Chuck from Honolulu, Hawaii is next.
Hi, Chuck.
Hello. Hey, Steve, I think I found a contradiction in the Bible. In Deuteronomy, it says that human sacrifice is an abomination.
Right. The Christians always quote a verse in Hebrews 9 that says there’s no salvation without human bloodshed. And this is kind of against each other there.
And if the Bible is right, if human sacrifice is an abomination, then all of the whole Christian religion is based on the same statement and his teachings.
Yeah. Well, you’ve called a lot of times about this one subject, and I thought we had answered it. But I’ll go ahead and do it again, because there are plenty of people who have that question.
Yes, human sacrifice is absolutely forbidden. Now, in Hebrews 9, it doesn’t say that human blood has to be shed. It says without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sins.
And in the context, the writer of Hebrews has talked about the temple or the tabernacle. When Moses built the tabernacle, a whole bunch of animals were sacrificed, and their blood was thrown on the people and on the furniture and so forth. It was inaugurated by the shedding of blood, animal blood.
Now, the writer of Hebrews is making a parallel because we have been cleansed by the blood of Jesus. But there’s nothing in the story of Jesus that authorizes human sacrifice. If we understand human sacrifice means that we want to appease God, so we take a human being and kill him and burn him on an altar or do whatever it is that we do to offer him up to God.
No Christian believes in doing that. No Christian did that in the case of Christ. In fact, nobody offered him at all in that sense.
He was crucified by his enemies, not by Christians, but he was crucified because they counted him to be a capital criminal. Now, of course, he hadn’t committed any crimes, and it was witnesses who lied about him that got him into trouble. But the truth is that nobody ever set out an altar and put Jesus on it.
And if they had, it wouldn’t be the Christians doing it. Now, some people say, well, didn’t God do that? Well, I think the Bible indicates that Jesus did that, that Jesus laid down his life for other people.
Now, he didn’t do it on an altar, though the Bible does recognize that Christ’s death on the cross, the shedding of his blood, has an analog or an analogy in sacrifices where blood is shed. And that in God’s eyes, he receives Christ’s self-sacrifice, you know, in our place. But no one ever offered him as a sacrifice.
He offered himself. He said, no man takes my life from me. I take my, I lay my life down, I take it up myself.
No one can take it from me. So Jesus simply yielded himself to die, not in a ritual of sacrifice, but in a criminal court where he was executed in the normal way that Roman, you know, killed criminals on a cross. So this is not a ritual of human sacrifice, but that it might, of the many things that can be said about it, and there are very many things said about it in the Bible, it’s likened to a number of things.
You know, one of the things it’s kind of like in a way is the sacrifice of an animal shedding blood. But this was not the sacrifice of an animal, it was not even the sacrifice of a man. It was a man dying in our place.
And his act was so pregnant and rich in meaning that it has many things it’s compared to in scripture, including redeeming slaves out of bondage by paying a price, giving a ransom for captives, you know, defeating Satan through the cross. I mean, there’s all kinds of meaning to Christ laying down of his life. And one of the things that is in some ways similar to is the sacrifice of a lamb.
But there was no sense in which anyone offered Christ as a sacrifice. Now, when a person dies for other people, which is what the Bible says Jesus did, that’s not the same thing as offering human sacrifice. The man who falls on the hand grenade voluntarily so that his friends standing around him will not be killed has sacrificed his life for them.
And many people, there have been soldiers who have done that very thing. We don’t consider when we say that he sacrificed his life that somehow a ritual of human sacrifice was somehow performed. We’re just, we’re using the figure.
It’s a figure of speech. He sacrificed himself. But usually a sacrifice is offered on an altar by a priest and things like that.
So I mean, we’re using it metaphorically. But it’s very parallel, I believe. When some man gives his life for other people, he’s sacrificing himself.
But that’s not even, that doesn’t even touch on the issues that are related to pagan sacrifices that were, you know, where they actually did offer human beings on alters with their pagan priests. So I think you’re, what you find is a contradiction. I actually don’t see as a contradiction at all.
But thank you for your call. Jimmy from Missouri, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
Hi Steve, can you hear me?
Sure.
Yes, I’m sitting here having a conversation with my wonderful mother-in-law. We’re talking about Israel and the things going on over there. And my position is that the Israel of God is the church and that Jesus is the true Israel.
She would be more of a dispensational perspective. And she just asked me, what was it? She said, Jesus is coming back to Jerusalem, physical Jerusalem, to the Mount of Olives.
So there has to be some significance for at least the land, the physical geography. Since we’re told he’s coming back to Jerusalem. What do you think about that?
Well, I always thought that too, but when I went looking for verses of the Bible, it’s an exercise of frustration because there’s actually nothing in the Bible says Jesus is going to come back to Jerusalem or even to the Mount of Olives. The idea that Jesus, now, by the way, the Mount of Olives is not in Jerusalem, it’s outside Jerusalem, but many dispensations believe Jesus will return to the Mount of Olives. They have this imagery that the Mount of Olives is going to split into and a great valley from east to west is going to show up and Jesus is going to walk down from there through the east gate of Jerusalem.
My teachers told me all these things, too. The difficulty is finding any of that in scripture. It’s in Zechariah 14, I believe it’s verse 4, that talks about his foot shall stand on the Mount of Olives, but the he who will do that is not said to be Jesus, but God.
God’s feet will stand on the Mount of Olives. Now, this is not literal. The same imagery is used in Ezekiel, chapter 11, when God gave Jerusalem over to the Babylonians to destroy it and burn down the Temple.
Ezekiel had a vision about this in advance, showing God’s glory, leaving the Temple and leaving Jerusalem out the East Gate and up on the Mount of Olives. And so God was standing on the Mount of Olives. And that’s how the vision ended.
But the message was God is no longer in Jerusalem. He’s abandoned it to its enemies. It’s going down.
The Babylonians are going to level it to the ground because God is no longer in the Temple. God is no longer in Jerusalem protecting it. He’s left the city and he’s now standing outside the city, which is meaning he’s not going to protect it.
He’s going to just stand there and watch it go down. He’s on the Mount of Olives. Now Zechariah lived after the time where that had happened.
Of course, God did give Babylon, drew some over the Babylonians. God did leave and stand on the Mount of Olives in Ezekiel 11. The city was destroyed.
But then this was now some hundred years later, when Zechariah had had been in Babylon, and he came back from Babylon to Jerusalem. He helped the Zerubbabel to rebuild the temple, and the city had been rebuilt. And now the prophets predicting it’s going to happen again.
That chapter 14 of Zechariah begins with the destruction of Jerusalem. It talks about it. You know, the city be destroyed, the women will be ravished.
It’s going to be awful. And then it says his feet will stand on the Mount of Olives. Whose?
Well, the only person mentioned earlier was Yahweh, God. God will again stand on the Mount of Olives, which he did, figuratively speaking, when he gave the city over to Babylon. And Zechariah is saying this is going to happen again.
And it did. In AD 70, God gave up Jerusalem. And Jesus walked out of the temple and said, your house is left to you desolate, meaning unoccupied.
It’s, you know, God’s left the house. Elvis has left the building and God has left. And Jesus himself walked out the east gate and stood on the Mount of Olives.
But the point in Zechariah is not that Jesus would literally stand on the Mount of Olives, as he did in 30 AD, but that God would do again what he had done before. Stand on the Mount of Olives, demonstrate that he’s no longer in Jerusalem and therefore Jerusalem is vulnerable to be taken. And Jesus himself said they would be taken and not one stone will be left standing on another.
So Zechariah 14 doesn’t mention the second coming of Christ at all. It talks about God standing on the Mount of Olives. And of course, it’s very symbolic.
Anyone who reads either Ezekiel or Zechariah will recognize that these prophets wrote in deep symbolism, but not symbolism that can’t be deciphered. If anyone’s really curious about that, I would recommend our website thenarrowpath.com. I have lectures through the Bible, verse by verse, on all the books, but I would especially recommend my lectures on Zechariah 14 for those who have been told other things.
There’s certainly nothing in the Bible that says Jesus will come to the Mount of Olives. Yes, he did leave from the Mount of Olives. And some say, well, there you go.
He left from the Mount of Olives and the angel said he’s going to come back in the same way that he left. True, he is, apparently, in the same way. But whether it will be there or somewhere else, I don’t know.
Now, it might be there. We’re just not told. The angels did not say where he will return to, and neither does any other verse in the Bible.
I have no problem with the theory that he might come back to Jerusalem or to Mount of Olives. But there’s nothing in the Bible that nails that down anywhere. So we have all been told, I’m sure, if we’ve gone to church and heard pastors talk at the end times that Jesus is going to return to the Mount of Olives.
But we have failed to ask the pastors who say this, what part of the Bible are you referencing here? Now, I can tell you what they’re referencing. They’re referencing Zechariah 14, which does not mention the second coming of Christ.
And they’re referencing Acts chapter 1, verse 11, where the angels said Jesus will return in the same way as he went away, and he happened to leave from Mount of Olives. Now, if that sounds like a teaching in the Bible that Jesus will return to Mount of Olives, fine. But even that is not the same as coming to Jerusalem.
The Mount of Olives is outside the walls of Jerusalem. So if Jesus is going to come to Jerusalem, why not just go to Jerusalem? But, you know, if someone wants to believe that, they’re certainly welcome to.
I believed it, and I had every right to believe it when I was taught it. But I also had the right to read the Bible for myself and to ask what verses in the Bible am I basing this belief upon? And when I found out, I realized that those verses don’t teach that belief.
So I don’t believe anywhere in the Bible mentions Jesus coming back to Jerusalem or the Mount of Olives. All right, I need to take a break here, but I appreciate your call. And we have another half hour coming up, so don’t go away.
We just take a break at the bottom of the hour to say that The Narrow Path is a listener-supported ministry. We pay for the radio station time. That’s where all the money goes.
It’s donated.
You can write to us at The Narrow Path, PO Box 1730, Temecula, California, 92593, or go to our website, thenarrowpath.com. I’ll be right back. Don’t go away.
In a 16 lecture series entitled The Authority of Scriptures, Steve Gregg not only thoroughly presents the case for the Bible’s authority, but also explains specifically how this truth is to be applied to a believer’s daily walk and outlook. The Authority of Scriptures, as well as hundreds of other stimulating lectures, can be downloaded in MP3 format without charge from our website, thenarrowpath.com.
Welcome back to The Narrow Path Radio Broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg, and we’re live for another half hour, taking your calls. Any questions you have from the Bible, we’ll be glad to talk to you about, or the Christian faith.
That doesn’t mean that I know all the answers. Please don’t misinterpret me. If I say you can ask any question, you can.
You can ask any question, but that doesn’t mean I know the answer. You can find out if I do or not, and I’ll find out if I do. And if I don’t, I won’t pretend that I do.
And if I do give an answer, it doesn’t mean it’s the last answer you should ever seek. You can get other opinions. You can best of all study the passages for yourself and reach your own conclusions, which is pretty much what I did after a while.
I mean, I’ve been taught by many teachers throughout my life and still am. I still listen to teachers a lot. But I came to a point about 50-something years ago where I realized my teachers were teaching something that they had been taught.
And the people who taught it to them had been taught it too. And that they were passing down a traditional view that had been part of their training. And so was I.
I was passing down their views that they taught me. So eventually I just decide, I think I’ll just, I want to find out, I want to find the biblical basis for everything I ever say when I’m teaching the Bible. And so that’s what I did.
Been doing that for 55 years. I was fortunate to be teaching a Bible college in Oregon, where my job was to teach through the Bible verse by verse. And I did so many, many times.
And that compelled me, of course, to find out not just proof texts for the doctrines I taught, but to answer for every verse in the Bible and find a way to harmonize it with all the other verses of the Bible. And that was delightful. It still is.
And if any of you have the time to do that, I certainly recommend that you do. But don’t think that my answers are the final answers, because God has not given anybody the gift of omniscience. So the answers I give are the answers I believe to be true, and I will not pretend that I know more than I do in the matter.
All right, let’s go to the next caller. By the way, there’s one line open. So here’s the number 844-484-5737.
All right, let’s talk to John from Northern California. John, welcome to The Narrow Path.
Hi, Steve, can you hear me?
Yes, sir.
Yeah, listen, you know, I want to expand on something, and it’s something that I kind of struggled with. You know, it was about homosexuality. And you know, something…
And I know that there are people that no longer participate in that lifestyle, and they’re God-fearing, Bible-believing Christians. But I’ve always struggled with the idea that a man having sex with another man. And I’ll put it in context.
You know, I’ve met other people, Steve, that had a promiscuous lifestyle, heterosexual lifestyle. And for some reason, I look at that differently than I look at somebody who had participated in homosexuality. And here’s what I’m saying.
A person who had a heterosexual, promiscuous lifestyle, right? He did something that was designed by God, but in an ungodly way. But a person who participated in a homosexuality, did something that was never designed by God.
And it’s been a real learning curve over the years to try to embrace both people at the same level.
You know what I’m saying? Am I making it?
It’s been a struggle.
I understand. I do understand that to those who do not have any struggles with homosexuality, it just seems absolutely, you know, unnatural. I mean, a person like you or me, I assume this is true of you, it certainly is true of me.
Not only have I never had temptation toward another man sexually, but the idea of it is repugnant. I mean, it kind of turned my stomach. I have sometimes been watching something on television, and then they’ll introduce, you know, a couple of men, you know, making out.
I just, I mean, it literally is something I can’t watch, not because I’m too prudish, but because it’s like, to me, it’s gross. But to, but I’m not one of them, and they are human beings too. The question here is, why do they have that attraction?
There are some people who say that from the time they were born or time they were little, the time that they first became sexually aware, they’ve always been attracted to same sex and never attracted to the opposite sex. Now, to my mind, that’s a great burden to bear. I’m not going to blame somebody for what struggles they’re having.
I’m not going to blame somebody for what temptations they’re fighting. I have desires that I have to say no to, even though I don’t have that one. You know, every human being is born with propensity toward sin of various kinds.
And that means that we have temptations and we have attractions to things that we cannot allow ourselves to indulge in. Now, that’s just as true as every straight person, as it is of a gay person. It’s just that a gay person has desires that straight people apparently don’t have.
And how they happen to have those desires, I don’t know. But I didn’t choose to have sexual desires as a heterosexual. I discovered them when I reached a certain age.
And apparently, there are people, they’re in a very small minority, but as they reach sexual maturity, they have a different set of desires. That doesn’t make them okay. That is, it doesn’t mean those desires are legitimate, but the person may not be responsible for having them.
Now, some people might be, I don’t know. Some people may cultivate that. Some people may be angry.
A woman might be angry at men, and therefore say, I’m gonna gravitate toward other women. Men may have, I suppose, a similar reaction if they get hurt by women a lot. I don’t know.
I don’t know what causes that, but some people truly say they’ve never asked for that. They never thought that. From their earliest time in life, that’s all they’ve ever felt and known.
So I consider it to be a great handicap. I have, for example, I’ve never had the slightest interest, not even a smidgen, to get drunk. I have no interest whatsoever in getting drunk.
And if somebody said, you know, why don’t we go out and get drunk? I’d say, you know, how much can I pay you not to? Because I just have absolutely no interest in it.
And this is not because it’s a sin. It is, but that’s not why I have no interest in it. There are sins I have had interest in, but it’s just not one I’ve ever been tempted by, not even.
But some people struggle with that from, you know, a young age. Now, I don’t think people are born with that struggle, but there are children who are raised in such an environment and given alcohol by their parents and so forth, that they, it’s a demon. It’s a monkey on their back.
And when I hear people like that, I’m truly sorry. I’m so happy I don’t have that problem. I wish I didn’t have the problems I do have.
That’d be nice. But I have mine and you have yours and everyone has theirs. And I always feel sorry for someone who’s in bondage to something or tormented by some desires that I can’t even relate to.
But I also know they can’t relate to mine either. So I just can’t judge them in the sense of, I can’t judge them for what their temptations are. But all human beings can be judged and will be judged, by God, for what their actions are.
So if I was born or even at a young age acquired through the way I was raised, a craving for alcohol and to get drunk, well, I can’t make that craving go away, but I can not drink. If as a straight guy, if I was driven, thankfully I’m not, but some men seem to be just driven by the desire to have sex with as many people as possible. You know, I’d say, wow, okay, that’s your demon.
You know, just don’t do it. Just be celibate. You know, we’ve heard just today of a couple of people who were respected.
I won’t name them. One is a minister, and one is a political figure, who have, it’s come out that they had affairs. And nobody necessarily would have expected that of them.
And their reputations and maybe their marriages are on a heap of trouble. And I sit there, I think, why would a man do that to his marriage? Why would a man do that to his reputation?
But hey, I’ve sinned, you know, I’ve sinned before. And, you know, sin is sin. Now, it’s true.
You mentioned homosexual sin is different than heterosexual sexual sin. It is in that very respect. One is very much natural.
It’s what God made things to be like, and the other is not. But even those who have the heterosexual normative drives, very often, almost always, if they’re not very careful, end up using that in a way that God is forbidden. So to simply live a holy life, it’s going to be a struggle for anybody who’s human.
But it’s a struggle we have to conduct. We have to overcome it. We have to repent of the things we do wrong.
Now, as you said, there are people who were in the gay lifestyle, and they now live a celibate life. I really respect them. I know some of those people.
And I’m sure it’s not easy for them. But some of them make it look easy. I mean, some of them, they’ve just readjusted their thinking.
They’re not going to define themselves in terms of their sex and sexuality. And they don’t have to. They can find something else to be the focus of Christ, preferably.
So, you know, I don’t think worse of them than of me. If I have attraction to a woman and they have attraction to a man, I, frankly, I pity them, because I wouldn’t want to have any attraction to men. But I don’t consider that they’re any different than me unless they indulge sinfully their attraction.
If I were to indulge my sexual attraction to a woman, and if it wasn’t my wife, I’d be the same kind of scoundrel as if I was attracted to a man and had sexual intercourse with him. So, you know, there’s different kinds of sin, but they’re all sin. And the struggle for all people who are Christians is to simply give up, you know, every sinful lifestyle.
Now, there’s, of course, struggles. Every Christian succumbs to temptation in some way or another. James said, in many things, we all stumble.
But that doesn’t mean that because I stumble into a particular sin, that I decide to celebrate it or tell people that they should say, it’s okay. If I’m a Christian, I don’t think any sin is okay. I don’t think my sins are okay.
I don’t think your sins are okay. I don’t think sin is okay. And this is where I would have an issue with, at least with a Christian, who felt like they could justify homosexual behavior, is that, wait, no, a Christian can’t justify any sinful behavior, whether it’s gay or straight or non-sexual.
There’s all kinds of behavior that are not godly. And a Christian doesn’t, a Christian might fall and repent, but a Christian will not celebrate it. That’s the opposite of repenting.
They will not say, well, hey, nobody’s perfect, so it’s okay if I do this. No, it’s not okay. It’s not okay if I do sinful things.
So, yeah, I don’t share your… You sounded like you really kind of have more contempt, perhaps, for someone who falls into gay sex than someone who falls into straight sexual sin, but I wouldn’t. I just think everyone’s got to struggle to overcome.
It’s the choices a person makes that please God or displease God, I believe, not what temptations they’re facing. It’s not our fault what temptations we face. Unless we go looking for temptation, some people do that.
Robert from Peoria, Arizona.
Welcome. Yes, Steve.
Hello, Steve.
Just a moment. I’m sorry. I’m sorry we’ve got a problem here.
I, John, I’m on another call now, so I’m afraid you’ll have to hang up now because I’ve got something mixed up on my switchboard. Thanks for calling though. Okay.
I’m sorry. Go ahead, Robert. Your voice was kind of garbly.
He’s gone. Okay. I got a feeling that was my fault.
I actually hit a wrong button at the wrong time. Robert, please call back. I’d like to talk to you.
And if I see you up there, I’ll put you ahead of the others. Okay. Let’s talk to Dan from Glencoe, Minnesota.
Hi, Dan.
Hello, Steve.
Hi.
Great show, as always. Really fun. It’s wonderful to hear you.
I did listen to one of your, many, some of your lessons and love them on your website. I encourage everybody to go there. And the one that I was interested on was healing or healing.
And part of the atonement. And honestly, to be perfectly frank with you, I was a little discouraged. And so I thought I would dig into a little bit more, you know, and you do encourage us to do that, which is very noble.
And I did find out that there were two words that are used in Isaiah 53-4, forgive me, I’m not in front of my notes, but on sickness and disease, as Matthew referred to it in Matthew 8-17. And you may correct me if I’m wrong. One word for sickness is coli, C-H-O-L-I, and one for pain is macabre, M-A-C-K-O-B.
And 14 times in the Old Testament, coli is translated as sickness. One time as sickness is, one time as sick, three is illness, two is disease, and one as grief, and one is grief.
Okay, let me just say, I have no problem with that. We’re, the show is, the clock is going, we don’t have much time left.
What is your question for me? I’ll get real quick. Can I say one thing real quick?
I’m sorry. So in Hebrews 10-10, Jesus died for sins once and for all. That’s why everybody in the Old Testament, and all those that he forgave in the Gospels, were forgiven because the atonement was for all time, just as sickness and disease was too.
Well, actually, Jesus didn’t die for sickness and disease. You’re referring to Isaiah 53-4, which says, you know, he took our sicknesses and bore our pains. But that’s not referring to him dying for them because you pointed out, you know, Matthew 8-17 quotes that verse and says it was fulfilled in the healing ministry of Jesus while he was healing in Galilee.
This was not his death. You know, when it talks about healing all kinds of sicknesses as he went around in Galilee, it says that it might be fulfilled. He took our sorrows and carried our pains.
So that was the fulfillment of his healing ministry was the fulfillment of that prediction. There’s nothing in his death referred to there. So I guess I have to disagree.
Now, I did cover that. I did cover that in the lecture. You said you had listened to my lecture on his healing in the atonement.
I would, I’m curious to know why you felt discouraged by it. I mean, if it, let’s just say we, let’s say we affirm that healing is in his atonement, but still we have no more results than we have currently. That is lots of people die sick.
A lot of Christians believe they’re healed and they’re not, and they die that way. I’ve known many people that way. Many of them are saying, I’m healed.
I’m healed by his stripes. I’m healed. And that was among the last things they said before they died of their cancer or whatever.
So in reality, people aren’t healed by saying they are. People are not healed by believing they are. And people are not sick because they believe they’re sick.
I’ve known people who got well, myself included on occasions. When I was saying I was sick, I wasn’t confessing I was healed. I was confessing I was sick because I was, had symptoms and then I got better.
So you don’t have what you say. That’s what the Word of Faith teaches. You get what you say.
Not so. That really is not true. And I have known very few cases where people got better of some kind of incurable disease because they said they were going to get better.
I knew someone who was healed of incurable cancer while she said she was going to die, but she got better anyway and is a miracle. So, you know, you say if my teaching teaches that healing is not guaranteed in the atonement, but healing is something that God does when he wants to, which is what the Bible teaches, then how is that discouraging if I mean, it basically fits reality. And so if I had said something different, if I said, well, anyone who has enough faith and confesses positively enough will be healed, they won’t die sick, but it never really happens that way.
I’m not sure how that’s more encouraging. I think it’d be much more encouraging to live in reality and to realize that the Bible doesn’t teach something that isn’t reality. You see, I think I believe people who have mistakenly thought that the Bible teaches everyone to get healed if they have enough faith, and then they die.
I think that’s given a lot of people recently the Bible is not true because they thought it taught that and it obviously wasn’t true. I’d rather agree that the Bible is true, and that’s why I gave that lecture. I explained what the Bible says, and especially in Isaiah 53 verses 4 and 5.
Those are very important verses for it, but as you say, what Jesus atoned for is once and for all. As it says in Hebrews, he died once and for all for sins, not for sickness, certainly. But therefore, we can believe that his sacrifice for our sins is effectual to anyone who avails himself of it.
But if we taught people and if we believed, and frankly, the Bible doesn’t teach this, but if we believed that the Bible guaranteed healing, just like it guarantees forgiveness of sin, because Jesus died for those things, then when we find we don’t get healed, we might wonder if we got forgiven either. We’d have good reason to question it. Because if the Bible isn’t true about one thing, then why should we think it’s true about another?
And especially if both of them are said to be things accomplished by Jesus’ death. If we say, okay, the Bible says when Jesus died, he exempted me from sin and from sickness. Well, okay, but then I die sick.
Well, maybe I died unforgiven too then. I mean, if his death is supposed to not let me die sick, and I do, well, then I would say it raises very legitimate questions. Maybe I’m not forgiven either.
But thankfully, the Bible doesn’t say that. The Bible, the word atonement means reconciliation. And forgiveness of sins is a part of being reconciled with someone that’s been offended, in this case, God.
Being well or sick has nothing to do with reconciliation. I can have a person who is an enemy of mine, and they’re on their deathbed, or I’m on my deathbed, and they come and they apologize and we’re reconciled. But that has nothing to do with being well.
Reconciliation is about a relationship, not about your physical health. So the word of faith simply, well, I mean, I go into that lecture, I’m surprised that I’m surprised you still have that same problem, after listening to my explanation. But thank you for your call.
Robert, who called earlier and I cut him off accidentally, is back from Arizona. So thanks, Robert. Welcome.
Sorry about that.
Hi, Steve. Hi.
Hi, Steve. I got a question about the Fitz Hill, of the people that were slain, the souls that were slain, they were under the altar. They were given white robes.
And then I went to Revelation 7, and then they appeared, the great multitude, and no one could count. Are they the same? They had white robes.
Are they the same people?
Well, Revelation isn’t always in chronological order, but the seven seals, which includes the breaking of the fifth seal, where the martyr is seen under the altar, is near the end of one sequence of visions, and then it starts over with another set of things. But I do believe that the martyrs that are seen in heaven under the altar, in Chapter 6, they are the ones who are beheaded for Christ or simply martyred, I would say. They’re wondering when God is going to, you know, avenge their blood on those who dwell in the earth.
I personally think that the ones in Chapter 6 refer to the martyrs that were martyred by Jerusalem, because Jesus said all the righteous blood that was shed from Abel until, you know, Zechariah will come upon this generation. He said, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you’re the one who kills the prophets, those who sent to her. So he says, it’s all going to come on you in this generation.
And it did. In 70 AD, the judgment on that city, Jesus said, was the judgment for all the blood of the martyrs they had slain. I believe that the seven seals are related to the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 AD, and those martyrs that are seen under the altar when the fifth seal is broken.
They that’s simply giving you a view of one reason, maybe the main reason why this judgment is coming on Jerusalem, because here’s all these martyrs saying, hey, when are you going to avenge us? And the answer is, well, not long, a little while longer. And it would be, they were avenged when the Romans came and destroyed them.
Now the multitude in the second half of Revelation 7 is not them, at least I don’t believe it’s them. The 144,000 are the first group of people seen in Revelation 7, and they are, I believe, the faithful Jews of the first century who escaped that Holocaust, that is the Jewish Christians. And then he sees this innumerable company of Gentiles from every nation and so forth.
And these are, they’re not seen to be martyrs particularly. Some of them are probably martyrs, which just says these are all those who are coming up out of the Great Tribulation. They’re in heaven, so presumably they’ve died.
They may or may not have died as martyrs. We’re specifically told about the group in Chapter 6 that they are martyrs. They were beheaded for Christ.
Where these are simply people who’ve died and gone to heaven, and they are immense multitudes of Gentiles. And I believe that they represent the total number of Gentiles who will be saved throughout the whole age of the church. And that John sees that they also are going to be in heaven with the saved Jews and so forth, with 144,000.
So that’s how I understand it. They’re not necessarily the same people. And you can’t always assume that the visions in Revelation are going to be recording events that happen in the chronological order that the visions actually occur.
Because sometimes visions go back and give earlier treatments of earlier stuff. I’m just about out of time here. In fact, I usually I try to put on another caller and say, can you use a minute?
Because that’s about what we have left. And then it ends up, you know, it takes more than a minute for them to ask the question. So I’m not going to do that right now.
Instead, I’m going to just say again, if you happen to be in Southern California, tomorrow morning, we have a men’s Bible study in Temecula. And tomorrow evening, a Bible study for anyone who wants to join us in Buena Park in the Book of 1st Peter. And this happens on the third Saturday of each month, which means this is the only Saturday of this month that’s going to happen.
And if you want to join us, you can go to thenarrowpath.com and look under the tab that says Announcements. They will give you the time and location of these gatherings. The Narrow Path is a listener-supported ministry.
It costs well over a million dollars a year to buy the airtime, and yet we have no sponsors. And if you go to our website, you will find we have nothing for sale. Everything we have available is available for free.
And we have no commercial breaks. We have no underwriters. We live by faith.
We’ve been doing this show that way for 27 years, and we’re now on stations all over the country. If you’d like to help us stay on those stations, you can write to us at The Narrow Path, PO. Box 1730, Temecula, California, 92593.
Or you can donate from the website where everything is free, thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for joining us. Have a good weekend.