Dive deep into biblical wisdom as host Steve Gregg discusses challenging questions brought forth by listeners. This episode sheds light on critical scriptural topics, including the delicate balance of judgment within the church, the significance of choosing a suitable Bible translation, and understanding the darker practices referenced in Ezekiel 13. Every conversation is wrapped with Steve’s insightful commentary, offering listeners a broader understanding of how these ancient teachings apply to present-day believers.
SPEAKER 01 :
Good afternoon and welcome to the Narrow Path Radio Broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we’re live on the air for an hour so that you can call in during the program and we can talk. If you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith or you see it differently than the host does and you’d like to call and discuss those things, Give me a call in the One more chance to tell you before the event, tomorrow morning we have our monthly men’s Bible study in Temecula, California, if you’re in Southern California and want to join us. It’s a men’s Bible study, 8 o’clock in the morning, only once a month. If you want to come, you go to our website, thenarrowpath.com, look under announcements and you’ll see the time and place information so that you can join us tomorrow. And that’s all I’m going to say about it today. All right, we’re going to go to the phones and Talk to Richard from Nevada. Hi, Richard. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 10 :
Hi. How are you today? Fine, thanks. I’ll give you a question. What is your favorite book of the 66 books in the Bible and why? Okay.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, I’ve been asked that many times, and partly because I teach through the Bible, and I have taught through every book of the Bible, verse by verse, many times. And when people become aware of that, they say, well, what’s your favorite book to teach? And that’s kind of similar to your question, what’s my favorite book of the Bible? And the truth is, and I always say the same thing, so I won’t be very original here, I have five children, which is my favorite. Well, they’re all my favorite. The truth is, whichever one of my children I’m thinking about at any given moment is my favorite, because they all have their own different charms, but they’re all my children, and they all have the same value to me. So, you know, if I think about any of my children at that moment, that’s my favorite child. If I think about another one, that’s my favorite at that moment. The books of the Bible do that way, too. There might be a few books… Not very many, maybe one or two that aren’t quite as enjoyable to teach. I would say Song of Solomon is a difficult book to teach, and it doesn’t seem to my mind to have as much value to be taught. I think it’s more probably a poetic book, but there’s even good things to say about it. It can be made edifying also. So I really don’t have a favorite book. I will say this. When I ran my Bible school, and we taught through the Bible once a year, verse by verse, I taught about half the books every year, and it wasn’t always the same ones. But there were some books. I mean, I taught all the books sometimes, but I had other teachers do some of the teaching in later years. But the books I never really delegated to other teachers would be Genesis. I love teaching Genesis. Isaiah. would be one I think I always did myself. I love teaching Proverbs in the New Testament. I like all the Gospels, probably Matthew the best. John’s a great one, of course. I always taught Romans myself and Hebrews. I also taught Revelation myself, although I’m not saying it was one of my favorites. It just had to be done. And I had done more study on the book of Revelation than anyone I knew. But I like teaching 1 Corinthians a great deal and Galatians. So, I mean, any book. I mean, just name a book of the Bible, and I enjoy teaching it. And while I’m teaching it, and it’s my whole focus, it’s my favorite at that moment.
SPEAKER 10 :
All right? Oh, yeah, Deb, thank you. Thank you for your conversation. Have a good weekend.
SPEAKER 01 :
Okay, Richard. God bless. Okay, Zachary from Florida. Welcome to The Narrow Path.
SPEAKER 08 :
Hi, Steve. How’s it going?
SPEAKER 01 :
Good.
SPEAKER 08 :
I’m calling to see which version of the Bible you would recommend for somebody returning to faith.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, are you much of a reader? Are you quite literate, or are you a poor reader?
SPEAKER 08 :
I’m quite literate.
SPEAKER 09 :
Or are you thinking of someone else?
SPEAKER 08 :
Well, I’m talking about me. I grew up out in Oklahoma, lost faith whenever I turned 21, and I’ve been looking to return to faith and attend you on the radio.
SPEAKER 01 :
Okay, great. Well, the reason I ask is there are some people these days who don’t read much, and they find it kind of a struggle to read. In that case, I would recommend one of the easier versions to read, though I don’t generally recommend those easier versions for people who really want to seriously study the Bible. And the reason for that is all Bibles teach the same doctrines. But the ones that are easier to read are made easy to read by paraphrasing, by trying to restate the thoughts that were in the Greek into English vernacular and things like that, which means that you can read it and get the message kind of, which is, I mean, most people say the best Bible translation is whatever one you’ll read. Like if you have one that you won’t read, but there’s another one you will, then get the one you will. But the easy reading ones, they’re good for getting, you know, for someone who’s not much of a thinker or reader, they just want to get real easy, the ideas. But those are not the ones I recommend for people who are serious Bible students. There are Bibles that are or that aim at being word-for-word translations from the Greek and the Hebrew. When I say they aim at it, there’s no Bible that gives it exactly word-for-word from the Greek and Hebrew simply because For example, in the Greek text, sometimes there’s a word that’s absent from a sentence. Generally speaking, it’s not hard to guess what the word was supposed to be, and the translator will supply it. There’s a few times when translators don’t know which word to supply, and so they might make different choices about that. But it will never be about anything that’s very important or very difficult or anything that will change your theology. At least it shouldn’t be. But as far as the options, I read the New King James probably more often than any other at this point. I used to read the King James more. I’ve read through many different translations. I’ve read through the NASB, the NID, the RSB, the Good News Bible years ago, certainly the Living Bible years ago. But of the ones I would recommend, I think the New King James is one of the very best. The ESV, which is the English Standard Version, is a good one. The Holman Christian Standard Bible, which is sometimes just called the Christian Standard Bible or the CSB, that’s a good one. The NASB, New American Standard Bible, that’s a good one, too. I always found the NASB a little bit hard to read, just because it didn’t read smoothly for me, but it’s a pretty accurate one. So those are some choices. But if you just say, well, how do I choose between those, and you want me to make up your mind for you, I’ll just say, well, I think the New King James is a great one. So if you go that way, I don’t think you’ll be sorry.
SPEAKER 08 :
All righty. Thank you, Steve. God bless, and you have a wonderful rest of your day, and you have a great show.
SPEAKER 01 :
Thank you, Zachary. And if you’re just coming back to the Lord, let me just say that I wrote a book, actually two books, called Empire of the Risen Son, books one and two, which you can hear the audiobooks free at my website. I mean, you can buy the books, but I’d recommend you get them free. If you go to thenarrowpath.com, And look under, there’s a tab that says Books. You’ll see I have several books I’ve written, but two of them are Empire of the Risen Son, Book 1 and Book 2. And the audiobooks are, you can just listen to them for free. And I highly recommend it for anyone who’s a new Christian, even an older Christian. But it’s good to get a good start to understand Christianity. what the Bible means by the kingdom of God, which is what Jesus talked about all the time. And that’s what those books explain. So if you go to thenarrowpath.com and look under the tabs of those books and avail yourself of those audio books, they’re free. I think they’d be very helpful.
SPEAKER 08 :
Alrighty, thank you. I’ll give it a listen to it while I’m working with my car here.
SPEAKER 01 :
All right, great. And you can also get the app on your phone, and then you can listen on your phone while you’re working on your car. All right. God bless you, Zach.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yep. You have a great one.
SPEAKER 01 :
Okay. Bye now. Antoinette from Honolulu, Hawaii. Welcome.
SPEAKER 11 :
Aloha from Hawaii, Steve. Are you there?
SPEAKER 01 :
I’m here. Not in Hawaii.
SPEAKER 11 :
I’m in California. Right. Okay. I know that you want your telephone guests to get to their question right away, but mine is predicated on what I have to, you know, the following verse is, I know I don’t have to give you the chapter and verse because I know you know where they are. But, like, okay, so I’ll just start. Now, number one, an angel appeared to Mary and told her that she would be the mother of Jesus. Then an angel appeared to Joseph in a dream telling him that, you know, Mary was, you know, Mary’s pregnancy was from the Holy Spirit. And then Mary’s cousin, Elizabeth, she confirmed, you know, she confirmed that when Mary came to visit. Okay, then Mary even recited the Magnificat, I think it’s called. Now, that when the shepherds came, you know, when Jesus was born, and then Jesus was, when he was presented in the temple, after his birth to Simeon and Anna, they confirmed and, you know, prophesied. Okay, and even then, the prophets, later the wise men came okay then i just have two more um and then of course at the age of 12 they found him in the temple and he his response was you know i must be about my father’s business and lastly at the wedding feast mary said you know whatever he tells you do it so now for my question Now, it says that Mary and his brothers, and I know they were his half-brothers, and somewhere else it even mentions sisters, but I know it said they came to take Jesus because they thought that he had lost his senses. So how, with all of that, how did she not know with all of these things that happened? That’s my question.
SPEAKER 01 :
Sure. Well, you’re right. I mean, we could say, how did John the Baptist not know when he was in prison and he seemed to have his doubts when he had actually seen the dove?
SPEAKER 11 :
That’s right.
SPEAKER 01 :
We could even ask how the Israelites, when they came through the Red Sea, you know, three days later they’re doubting whether God is going to take care of them. You know, I mean, we could even ask why it is that sometimes at certain moments we feel so sure of our faith. You know, I mean, God answers a prayer that we that we’re astonished by or maybe in a worship time where God’s presence is known. We just say, wow, I don’t know how I could ever have doubted that God is real. But then but then there’s times when God doesn’t seem so close and where. He’s not doing what we think he should do, and our prayers don’t appear to be answered and so forth. So, I mean, people are people. Now, Mary certainly knew that Jesus was born of a virgin since she knew her own personal sexual history.
SPEAKER 11 :
She was there.
SPEAKER 01 :
She was the only one who was really there. So she knew that Jesus wasn’t an ordinary boy. In fact, she knew he was the Messiah. And she had seen his wisdom when he was 12 years old. You know, the wise men and the shepherds and so forth had witnessed the supernatural ways that they had known that he was born. So Mary, I think, had no doubt that Jesus was the Messiah. But I don’t think she knew, and I’m not even sure the disciples knew until after Pentecost, that Jesus was divine himself, that he was God in the flesh. That seems to be something that dawned on the disciples after Pentecost sometime because they didn’t quite get it before. And Mary probably didn’t either. I mean, to know that God did something supernatural in bringing a child into life, you know, would make you forever see him as special. And if you knew he was the Messiah, too, because an angel told you that, well, that’d be great. But most Jews didn’t know the Messiah was God. The Jews had lots of different views about Messiah, and most of them just saw him as a great king from David’s line who would liberate his people. And so I’m sure that Mary had no doubt that Jesus was the Messiah, but she did have some doubts about the wisdom of his course of action. And I think similarly with John in prison, I think he felt that Jesus should be getting with the program of getting rid of the Romans since John was rotting away in a Roman prison.
SPEAKER 06 :
Right.
SPEAKER 01 :
And so I think people can be very, very sure and even see things that should make them incapable of doubt. And yet it’s amazing our capacity to doubt. We seem to have almost a supernatural ability to doubt things that we have no reason to doubt, except that they haven’t been confirmed supernaturally just recently. Yes. Yes.
SPEAKER 11 :
Okay. Well, I thank you very much.
SPEAKER 01 :
All right. Well, good to hear from you, Antoinette. Yes. Merry Christmas.
SPEAKER 11 :
Merry Christmas. Mele Kalikimaka.
SPEAKER 01 :
Same to you.
SPEAKER 11 :
Bye. Aloha. Bye now.
SPEAKER 01 :
Aloha. Okay. Skip from Portland, Maine. Welcome, Skip.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yes. This is Skip from Portland, Maine. I’m listening to you on WBCI. And my question is about Ezekiel chapter 13 and the women who sewed pillows on their sleeves and caused righteous people to falter and caused evil people to succeed. And I think it says that they flew around.
SPEAKER 01 :
No, I don’t think they flew around. They were no doubt what we might call witches or at least worshippers of a demonic god. This is one of the things that Ezekiel is pointing out to us. The Jews of his time in the captivity were saying that Jerusalem was going to be destroyed. And the reason it was is because there are so many different types of compromise that the Jews were doing, which God has forbidden them to do, including, in this case, certain women who had certain occultic practices. And the exact nature of the practice, sewing pillows to their sleeves or whatever, commentators have had different ideas about what that really looked like and what it meant. But it’s unambiguous that this is referring to some occultic rites that the women were involved in. Now, if you read Ezekiel chapters 8 through 10, you’ll see that there’s a lot of other kinds of rites. occultic and idolatrous practices that the priests and the elders and the nation itself was involved in. Women, some of them were involved in this occultic practice. So God is showing Ezekiel and speaking to Ezekiel about the abominable things that were being done by the Jewish people in rejecting God and following demons. And that was going to be the reason they’d be destroyed.
SPEAKER 06 :
I remember part of later on in Ezekiel that he took Ezekiel to see what was going on behind the wall, behind the door, and also watching the people bow down to the sun gods and things like that.
SPEAKER 01 :
Exactly. So that was in chapter 8 through 10. And so that’s what that is. Now, I can see someone reading about these women sewing pillows to their sleeves and saying, what in the world is that? And I honestly don’t think any commentator knows for sure what that practice looked like or how it related to the idolatrous practices they were involved in. But it was familiar to Ezekiel and it’s familiar to his readers. And that’s the point. I mean, there’s a lot of cultural things that people do that we, you know, someone reading about it. Centuries later, I say, what? I was just thinking this today as I was walking home from the post office, and a bunch of middle school kids were walking down the sidewalk on their way home from school, and about one out of three of them were wearing flannel plaid pajamas as they were coming home from school. I thought, well, that seems a strange fad, you know, to wear your pajamas to school. And if someone reads about this 100 years from now, they’d probably say, why do these people do this? And the answer is, well, I’m not sure I know even now. But things that are familiar to us now will be less familiar to people reading about them hundreds of years later. And some of the things they were doing to worship these demons are practices which I guess made sense at the time. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but actually we don’t know why they did it or what it meant. But that was the whole purpose of Ezekiel is to point out all these idolatrous practices and to give God’s reasons why he’s destroying Jerusalem by the Babylonians. All right, let’s talk to Justin calling from Fremont, California. Justin, welcome.
SPEAKER 04 :
Hi, Steve. I appreciate you taking the call. Merry Christmas. Just had a quick question out of 1 Corinthians 7. So, 1 Corinthians 7 and I’m pretty sure you already addressed this very likely before, but 1 Corinthians 7, verse 9, so it talks about, you know, if a man has passions, man or woman has passions, it’s better for them to marry than to burn. And then you go further down into, I think it’s, yeah, verse 27, where it says, are you unmarried? Do not seek a wife. So, I believe somewhere in the chapter it speaks of living as you’re called. So as God has sanctioned or as God has called you to live, right? So it’s kind of a broader question I’m trying to get at, which I’m going to flesh out to have several questions. But part of it is just kind of trying to understand what we can expect from God. as far as, you know, I think I’ve listened to your suffering teachings. And so things like really a spouse for me, a wife, it would be kind of like a tertiary type of request that may or may not get granted. I mean, I think it’s kind of like the idea, um, I was kind of getting from your suffering. I mean, coming out of a prosperity background where you’re hearing God will bless you with all of this and so on and so forth. And really, um, What I’m kind of getting from your teaching and others really in my own reality is the blessing is really just righteousness, peace, the fruit of the Holy Spirit. your, you know, safe from hell, so on and so forth, your righteousness from Christ.
SPEAKER 01 :
Justin, let me just say, now think of our average listener who doesn’t know you and doesn’t know what’s on your mind. Yes, exactly. Could you succinctly put your concerns into a question?
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes. So the question is, As far as for this verse, seemingly contradictory, right? So it’s saying, okay, if you need to marry or you burn.
SPEAKER 01 :
It’s better to do that than burn. Okay.
SPEAKER 04 :
Okay. But then he says, don’t seek a wife.
SPEAKER 01 :
Okay. Well, yeah. Okay. So in this chapter, Paul is kind of all over the place, and he mentions that things are different for different people. I mean, God has one gift for one person. and another gift for another person. Now, he’s referring to gift as being married as a gift or being single as a gift. He talks about such gifts because he says at the very beginning now, concerning the things of which you wrote to me. So he’s answering questions they wrote. It is good for a man not to touch a woman. Okay, and that’s what he also says several other times in the chapter, that it’s good. If you can stay single, I recommend it. He says, nevertheless, because of sexual immorality, let each man have his own wife. Now, it seems just like he’s contradicted himself. But he’s not contradicting himself. He’s saying, for some, they are able to be single. And they can just serve God undistracted. And it’s good if they do that. It’s good for a man not to touch a woman, not to get married. On the other hand, he’s saying a lot of people can’t handle that. And to avoid fornication, he says, let each one have his own wife and let each woman have her own husband. And then if you skip down a little bit, it says in verse 6, but I say this as a concession, not as a commandment. He says, for I wish that all men were even as myself, and he’s single. But each one has his own gift from God, one in this manner and another that. So he’s going to, through the whole chapter, he’s going to discuss issues of the advisability of getting married or not getting married. And he starts out by saying, it’s a great, there’s a great thing if you can stay single. I mean, that’s a great advantage to be, you know, not married. bound by domestic commitments and expenses and things like that. But that’s not a gift that God has given to everyone. And those who don’t have that gift would be better off married. Because I think the major idea is he doesn’t want them to be distracted. And so, in fact, he says that in verse 35, I say this for your own profit that I may not put a leash upon you. but for what is proper that you may be able to serve the Lord without distraction. Now, the whole point here is we want to serve God without distraction. Now, being married can definitely be a distraction. I mean, a missionary who doesn’t have a wife and kids has much less to be concerned about as far as the expense of support. He’s not as vulnerable to pain and suffering if his relationship wife or children get sick or dies on a mission field. Many missionaries have lost them. I mean, there’s a lot of ways that having a wife or children is a distraction from what some people are called to do. On the other hand, there’s enough of a norm that God has built into people to want companionship and to have, you know, to seek sexual connection with a partner and so forth that for some people being single is itself a distraction. So he says a person who can be single can avoid the distraction of being married and serve God without distraction. But a person who doesn’t have that gift is really not going to be able to do well that way because a person who is craving a partner and whose dream is to have a family, well, then, you know, as a single person, that person would be always distracted by options that come up. uh you know available you know women that they might pursue and that can distract them so so if you get married then of course your duty is plain to your spouse and to your children but then you know that that you’re called to serve god as a married person and you cannot be distracted by other lifestyle option in your mind so he’s not saying everyone has the same thing that they need to do he’s saying one thing works in one calling and another thing works in another calling and god has different callings so he’s advocating that you know it’s a good thing to be single if you can handle it but if you can’t handle it it’s better to be married than to be distracted and burning with passion that you can’t fulfill. So that’s the whole trend there in that chapter in 1 Corinthians 7. I need to take a break. You’re listening to The Narrow Path. My name is Steve Gregg. We have another half hour coming up, so don’t go away. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. Stay tuned. I’ll be right back.
SPEAKER 03 :
Thank you for listening to The Narrow Path with Steve Gregg. As loyal listeners know, the Narrow Path Radio Ministry does not have anything to sell you, but does have everything to give you. You can help the radio ministry continue to give and grow by going to thenarrowpath.com and donating your year-end tax-deductible gift. Your giving will help lift the spirits of many more people throughout our nation. Thank you and bless you.
SPEAKER 01 :
Welcome back to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we’re live for another half hour taking your calls. If you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith, you can call me and we’ll talk about them here on the air. You want to provide an alternative view to something that this host has advocated, feel free to do so. We’ll be glad to hear from you. By the way, we have some lines open. This is probably the best time you’ll have in the next hour to get through if you hope to be on the program today. So let me give you the number. And if you want to be on, I’d suggest you call right away. The number is 844-484-5737. That number again, 844-484-5737. Our next caller is Jeff calling from Portland, Oregon. Hi, Jeff. Welcome. Hey there, Steve. Hi, Steve.
SPEAKER 05 :
Just wanted to ask you a question about eternal security. I know you’ve talked on that a lot. I know your position. I’ve listened to past debates and your materials, and I’m definitely coming more onto your side of things, but I still am kind of wrestling with it, and so I just wanted to ask you a question about that. So when it talks about in the Gospels about the sifting, that Satan is demanding a sifting of Peter, and his apostles and the other apostles. And, uh, Jesus says that I prayed for you so that your faith would not fail. And he, you know, denied him when Jesus says, if you deny me, I will deny you. Um, but the Jesus says, I’ll pray for you. So it does not fail. And when you turn back, you know, strengthen the brethren. So you already knew that he was going to turn, excuse me, turn back. Um, and so I look at Judas, he was sifted as well, but he did, did not, um, turned back. So was he really saved? Was he really not? And I kind of look at the passage on the soil when it says that some of the seeds fell on rocky ground and they swung up for a little bit and then kind of went away. So I guess I see it as like Peter was a true believer and Judas never was, that he was the soil that fell on rocky ground. and that Peter is wheat and Judas is chaff, and the sifting kind of presented those things, just like we’re all sifted through this life. So I just wanted to get your opinion on the fact that is the soil in that message, could that be someone who could believe for a little while but never actually be regenerated, never have the Holy Spirit, never be born again, and the process of life were sifted, just because the same sifting happened to Peter and Judas, but Peter not only denied him, but was strengthened after that, where Judas fell away. And I don’t know if that makes sense, but I’m kind of trying to piece all this stuff together to ask a simplified question.
SPEAKER 01 :
Let’s talk about that parable. The seed fell on various kinds of ground, and the first type that Jesus describes is ground that had shallow soil on top and rock underneath. So the seed, you know, it sunk into the soil enough to actually spring up. It came to life. It wasn’t dead. It actually came to life, and it began to grow. And nothing prevented it from growing and producing fruit except that once it reached a certain stage, its roots couldn’t go down because there was rock under there that prevented it. And when the sun came up, It burned the seed and it died. And Jesus said these are those who initially received the word of God joyfully. But when persecution and tribulation come because of the word, they quickly fall away. I’ve certainly known people like that. Now, should we say that before they fell away, they were not really saved or they were really saved? Well, I guess we could say the parable doesn’t answer that unambiguously, but it does seem to describe them as coming to life. Actually, as opposed to the seed that fell on the wayside, which was hard ground that didn’t penetrate, the birds ate it, and it didn’t come to life at all. But the other three kinds of soil, that which we just described, as well as the thorny soil and also the good soil, all three of those, the seed came alive. And then some factor… cause the second and third soils to prevent success in the seed’s total fruitfulness. It seems to me that Jesus is describing a seed coming to life. Jesus said, except a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone. But, you know, if it dies, it produces something. And that’s what Jesus did when he died. That’s what the Word of God does. But if it germinates, I think dying in that case refers to germinating. it means that it doesn’t just stay a dead seed. It actually begins to have life in it, and there’s life coming out of it, and it’s growing. I would say that sounds like a picture of somebody who’s been born again. The fact that many depart from the faith for various reasons isn’t altogether surprising. Paul said in 1 Timothy 4 that many shall depart from the faith. In 2 Timothy 4, Before, I guess it is, he said that his friend Demas, who was a companion in the ministry with him for some time, had forsaken him, having loved this present world. That’s like the thorns and thistles were the cares of this life and the deceitfulness of riches choke out the seed. But it’s not a dead seed. It’s a living seed. It’s someone who has come to life, but something prevents full fruitfulness from developing in their life. So my impression is these people are saved. but then they fall away. Now, Judas is a hard case to know about because we’re not given enough information to know if he was a true disciple who went bad or if he was an imposter from day one. We do know that about a year before Jesus was betrayed by Judas, Jesus said, Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil? So he knew Judas to be a devil a full year before the crucifixion. But Judas had been with him for at least a year, maybe two years before that. And we don’t know that he was a devil before that. He obviously, at a certain point, the Bible says the devil entered him. So we don’t really know if there was a time early on when Judas really believed in Jesus and loved Jesus, was loyal to Jesus, and was just like the other disciples. But then he eventually compromised and gave place to the devil, as Ephesians 4 tells us not to do, and eventually just fell away. Different people argue this from their own theological side of the aisle. And the bottom line is, Judas died an unbeliever or died an apostate and was not saved. But whether he was saved before or not is a moot point, really, because it doesn’t help him any to have been saved before. If he was saved before and then fell away, that’s not much better for him than having never been saved in the first place. And whichever paradigm we take about him, he is a true believer who fell away or he never was a true believer. the end is the same for him. And Calvinism and Arminianism both say that if a person falls away and dies separated from Christ, they’re lost. Although the Calvinists would say they never were saved. And Arminians might say, well, they might have been, but they’re not at the end. So at the very end, of course, is one of the things that might be the only thing we’d be concerned about here. But in terms of theory, suppose we take the view that Judas never was a true Christian. Now, I’m not sure that that would be true. I’m not sure he wasn’t. But we’re not given enough information to know for sure. But let’s, for the sake of argument, let’s take the view that certainly Calvinists would take, that he never really was a true Christian. Well, the one problem I have with that is, did he know that? Was it possible to know that beforehand? You know, Judas went out with the 12 when they went out two by two and raised the dead and healed the sick and cast out demons. And apparently there was no indicator at that time that he wasn’t a true believer. And Jesus gave them authority over demons and so forth. And he apparently did all the same things the other apostles did, as if he was a real believer. But if he wasn’t, then we can say this. There was no way of knowing that he wasn’t. There was so much no way of knowing that even at the Last Supper, when Judas had secretly already made… you know, plots with the Sanhedrin for him to betray Jesus. The other disciples didn’t suspect him at all. When Jesus said in the upper room, one of you is going to betray me, they hadn’t a clue who it was. They said, is it I? Is it I? Is it I? Each one wondered. No one suspected Judas, although they lived together and knew Judas well. And then even when Judas got up to leave, no one even suspected that that was, I mean, obviously you’d think it drew attention to him, but it never even crossed their minds that he was the one who was going to betray Jesus, although Jesus said someone would. And they thought he was going out to pay, you know, to give to the poor or something. What I’m saying is, if he was never a Christian, then he was such a good fake that even the disciples who lived with him and traveled with him, didn’t suspect him at all, which means it would be possible to be a very good fake. And if that’s true, then how can any of us know if we’re Christians? Maybe we’re just really good fakes. Now, that being the question, I would say that the idea that a person cannot fall away, but that if they do fall away, they never were the real deal, takes away all from the believer. I know the Calvinist thinks they’re the ones who provide security. I say, no, if you’re really the elect, you can’t fall away. Yeah, but they’re not thinking clearly. If that’s true, then everyone who has ever fallen away never was one of the elect, even though many of them had served God for years and thought they were. And many of us who have not fallen away can say, well, I’m not really sure that I have more reason to believe I’m saved than they had before they fell away. They look like the real deal just as much as me. And, you know, but they fell away. And if that means they never were saved, then maybe I’m not saved. The only way I’ll ever know is if I don’t fall away before I die, in which case I can’t have assurance of salvation until I’m dead. Now, that’s not a very good doctrine. The Bible indicates that we can know that we have eternal life. It says that. But we can lose it, too. We can defect. We can become disattached from the vine. Jesus said, I’m the vine, you’re the branches. And if anyone doesn’t remain in me, he’s cast forth as a branch, and they wither up and they’re thrown into the fire. So, you know, you can be a branch of the vine, which means you have the life of the vine in you, which means you’re really part of the body of Christ. You really are saved. But Jesus warned in John 15, 6 about a branch that doesn’t stay attached. And they do get burned up. So I, you know, I don’t know if Judas was ever a real Christian or not. I suspect that he might have been sincere at the beginning. But I don’t, I wouldn’t lay any money on that because I don’t think we have enough information to affirm it.
SPEAKER 05 :
Do you think the sifting process that both of them went through, Peter and Judas, that that kind of shows that Jesus was able to pray for Peter because of him being truly weak, so to speak, or maybe Judas was chaff, and so that the prayer wasn’t going to
SPEAKER 01 :
We can say, you know, Jesus specifically told Peter that he had prayed for him because he specifically said, Peter, you’re going to deny me three times. Okay, so on that occasion, that was a very unhappy news to give to Peter. But then Jesus said, however, I’m praying for you. I’m interceding for you that you will return. And when you do, you’ll strengthen your brethren. Now, he also prayed for Judas, it seems to me. He prayed for the disciples that were given to him, and yet Judas did fall away. Now, the whole sifting that you keep referring to is referring, as you know, to putting wheat that’s just been harvested into a sieve of some kind and shaking it so that the chaff falls through the holes and you have only the grain left. That’s one way that they winnowed or threshed wheat. And so Judas is definitely something that fell through the cracks, fell through the holes and didn’t stay. Peter was sweet. The sifting was of the disciples as a group, and the true wheat, which was 11 of them, were preserved. The chaff, which was Judas, fell through. But we know that Judas fell through at the end. We don’t know if he was chaffed from the beginning. And to try to argue one way or the other, I think, is an impossible thing. Frankly, I think it’s a waste of time. I do believe the Bible teaches that many people who are lost, may have thought they were saved before. You’ve got Matthew 7, where Jesus said, Many will say to me, Lord, Lord, I did these things. And Jesus said, I never knew you. So they weren’t ever Christians. Many are in that category. I’m sure of it. I think we’ve got a lot of people in our churches who think they’re Christians and probably are not. And they’ll find out at the Day of Judgment. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t people who are Christians who fall away. The Bible warns that many will, and we’re often warned against doing so in the book of Hebrews, especially in many other places. So I’m just going to say, which category was Judas in? We don’t know. But we know that both the categories exist. There are people who think they’re Christians and are not. There are people who are Christians but don’t remain Christians. Both categories are spoken of in Scripture. Judas was one or the other.
SPEAKER 05 :
And how do we know… which one we are until we’re sifted, I guess, to the point where we’re either chaff or wheat. Do we really ever know how much of a sifting could bring about us to really go one way or the other?
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, we don’t know what the future holds, but we can say this. I’m determined to follow Jesus, no turning back. I’ve decided. Now, if I do not give up that determination, God will help me. It says in Jude that God is able to keep you from falling. God is able to preserve you to the day of Christ Jesus. But that depends on our faith. It says in 1 Peter 1, verse 5, that we’re kept by the power of God through faith. So the power of God can keep us. We can be sure that we won’t fall away because God will keep us. But it’s through faith. So in other words, as long as we have faith. As long as we’re trusting God, we will never lack what it takes to persevere, even in great sifting times. How do I know if I’m a Christian now? Well, it’s easy, really. Am I committed to Christ or not? I mean, am I living my life for Christ? If the answer is yes, then I’m a Christian. If the answer is no, then I’m not. Now, if I’m living for Christ now, it doesn’t guarantee that I’ll be living for Christ the next 10, 20 years if I live that long. But that’s kind of up to me, I think, I mean, to trust God. If I trust God, he will give me the strength to persevere. If I stop trusting God, if I give up the faith, if I depart from the faith, as Paul says, well, then I’m on my own, and I almost certainly will not persevere. But that’s a moment-by-moment thing. It’s like if you ask, will I be faithful to my wife until one of us is dead? Well, absolutely, that’s my determination, and I have no doubt that that will be the case. But just because a man is faithful to his wife at a given time, it doesn’t necessarily predict that he has to be faithful the rest of his life, but he will be if he’s decided to be. He will be faithful if he’s determined, and he’s just closed the door to any possibility in his own mind of ever cheating or ever leaving his wife. And I think that’s the thing with us. I’ve closed the door, and I did that decades ago. I’ve closed the door of my mind to ever departing from Christ. That’s what every Christian has done if they’re really born again. And… Some people, I mean, I shouldn’t say if they’re really born again. Some people have more instability than others. That’s true. But then you need to lean on God more. Surviving in the Christian life is going to be by leaning on God. The more a person can desperately lean on God and trust in him, the more they can be confident that God’s power of God is going to be keeping them as they continue to do so. Thank you very much, Steve. All right. God bless. Steve from Phoenix, Arizona. Welcome to The Narrow Path.
SPEAKER 07 :
Good question. We’re getting a lot of air time for the program on the weekends called Tomorrow’s World. It’s backed by the Church of the Living Church of God. It seems like they’re big on the Seventh-day Sabbath and they’re big on the holidays. Do you have any other ideas about this particular organization?
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, that organization was started back when I was a child, I think, by Herbert W. Armstrong. And it was a cult that borrowed heavily from two different groups that Armstrong had had some familiarity with. One was the Seventh-day Adventists, and the other was the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and especially the observance of Sabbath and Holy Days and diet and things like that. I think were strongly influenced by his Seventh-day Adventist connections. And then, of course, he held a Jehovah’s Witness doctrine about Trinitarianism. He didn’t believe in the Trinity. He was what we call an Arian. He believed that Jesus was a created being and the Holy Spirit was just an active impersonal force like electricity or something. And so he kind of took the worst from a couple of different aberrant groups and combined them into his own aberrant group. And it was recognized as a cult by all mainstream Christians most of my life. However, in the 90s, a younger generation of leaders in that movement broke away from some of those doctrines. And they retained some of them, I think, but they basically modified their theology to be more mainstream and more evangelical. And now there’s different branches of them. The Worldwide Church of God had a branch, I think, that was continued to be led by Garner Ted Armstrong, the son of the founder. And then there’s others who have gone another way. Now, Tomorrow’s World, I don’t know, do they have Herbert W. Armstrong recordings of him on there? I’m not familiar with the program now. It was on when I was a kid, but Herbert W. Armstrong would not be around still.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, they have a Stephen Elliott who has been leading it for the last 40 years, it says, Stephen Elliott.
SPEAKER 01 :
Okay, I’m not familiar with him, so I’m not sure which branch of the movement he went with. So I’ll just say that the movement at one time was recognized universally as a cult, but it has split into more than one group, and one of the groups is more evangelical, now more Christian than the other. Okay, brother. Your insight’s been very helpful. Thank you very much. Okay, Steve. God bless. Thanks for your call. Okay, our next caller is Mike from Worcester, Massachusetts. Hi, Mike. Welcome.
SPEAKER 02 :
Hi, Mike. Hi, Steve. How are you? Good. Merry Christmas. Thanks for all the work you’re doing. I have a quick question. And the premise of it is from 1 Corinthians 5 when Paul was trying to address this immorality in the church. Because we find these days that we find people saying, do not judge me or do not rebuke me or something like that. Can you speak on that? Because Paul talks about the believer has the right to judge in the church, and God has the right to judge outside the church. So can you… Can you talk a little bit about that? Because we’re having that around now. We can’t rebuke anyone anymore. We can’t talk. Don’t judge me because Jesus said we shouldn’t judge.
SPEAKER 01 :
I know. I know. So you are right that Paul does tell us that we are obligated to judge the moral behavior of those who are in the church. But he says those who don’t call themselves Christians and they’re not in the church, it’s not our place to go judging their lifestyles for the simple reason that they’ve got bigger fish to fry than their individual sinful lifestyles. Their big problem is that they don’t love Christ and that they’re not saved. But when people have become Christians and then they begin to compromise or continue to compromise in moral errors, that’s not okay. The church is supposed to represent Christ. It’s made up of people who are said to be followers of Christ. In biblical times, no one was in the church unless they were baptized. And when they were baptized, it was because they’d made a decision to own Christ and for him to own them for the rest of their lives and to be his followers. When people have made that commitment, again, it’s like marriage. If you’re not married, no one can complain how many people you date. But once you get married, you can’t date other people anymore, just your spouse. Because you’ve agreed to it. You’ve made a covenant. You’ve made a promise. And that’s the same thing when you become an actual Christian. When you get baptized, you’re making a promise. I’m going to follow Christ now. When I’m not baptized, I can do other things. because I’m not following Christ. But if I’m going to be a follower of Christ, I have to follow Christ. So the church is the community of people who have made that commitment, and we are obligated to keep each other accountable to do what we promise to do, and that is follow Christ. So when someone in the church is living immorally, Paul says you can’t tolerate that in the church. The church has to address that. And make them either repent or leave. And, of course, this is based on what Jesus said himself in Matthew 18, verses 15 through 17. He said, if your brother sins against you, go to him privately and try to get him to repent. But if he doesn’t, take two more witnesses with you. still a relatively private confrontation. And if he repents there, nothing more needs to be said. But if he won’t listen to them, then take it before the whole church. And when the church calls him to repent, if he won’t do it, he says, let him be to you like a publican or a tax collector or a pagan. In other words, let him be like somebody who doesn’t belong to the church. Let him be to you like somebody who you don’t fellowship with as a Christian, even if they call themselves Christians. Now, Paul said here in 1 Corinthians 5, which you brought up, He says, I told you not to fellowship with fornicators or covetous people or extortioners or idolaters. He says, I didn’t mean worldly people who are that way. You can’t leave the world, he said in verse 10. You’ve got to live in the world and be full of those kind of people. But verse 11, he says, but now I’ve written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother, which means a Christian. Anyone who calls himself a Christian who is a fornicator or covetous or an idolater or reviler or a drunkard or an extortioner, don’t even eat with such a person. And he says, what do I have to do with judging those who are outside the church? But do you not judge those who are inside? Those who are outside God judges. But he says, we should be judging those who are inside. Now, when you say, someone says, don’t judge me, well, okay, if the person in question is not a Christian and not in the church, well then, don’t judge them. Just tell them, you know, what you need is Jesus. You need to become a follower of Jesus like everyone else. But as far as trying to pick on them for their individual sins, I mean, it might be a helpful thing to do if they’re trying to get help. You know, somebody’s in trouble with alcohol or pornography or something like that, and they’re not a Christian, but but they’re asking you for counsel, and you can say, okay, those things are wrong, you’ve got to stop. But it’s not our place to adjudicate the lives of non-Christians, but it is our place, Paul said, to judge the morality of the lives of people who call themselves Christians. Anyone who’s in the church is asking us to fellowship with them as if they are trustworthy followers of Christ like we are. There needs to be a place where people who actually want to follow Christ can be together, and that’s what the church is supposed to be. Unfortunately, if the church becomes a big tent where everyone who’s got a vague religious interest is welcome to be there, including unbelievers who live in fornication and drunkenness, well, then the church has ceased to be what it is. It’s no longer a community of believers. It’s just a big religious club. But Paul says, no, it’s not going to be a big religious club. If people are that way, if they’re claiming to be Christians… And they’re living like the devil’s people. Kick them out. That’s what he says in the last verse there. He says, put away from yourselves that wicked person. So yeah, we are supposed to judge those who are following Christ. And we should welcome them judging us too. That is criticizing us and pointing out where we need to be improved. Because it is assumed we really want to improve. We really want to be like Jesus. And we do each other a favor if we point out to each other, where one needs to change to be more like him. Hey, I’m out of time for the day, but thanks for joining us. You’ve been listening to The Narrow Path. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. If you’d like to help donate, you can write to The Narrow Path, PO Box 1730, Temecula, California, 92593. Thanks for joining us.
