Join us on today’s episode of The Narrow Path with Steve Gregg as we delve into the biblical practice of anointing with oil and its implications for modern Christians. With insights from historical traditions and scripture, we discuss the nuances of this ritual and how it applies to the faithful today. Additionally, we explore the phenomenon of apostolic martyrdom, unraveling the truths and myths surrounding the early disciples’ commitment and courage.
SPEAKER 1 :
Thank you.
SPEAKER 08 :
Good afternoon and welcome to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we’re live for an hour, as we usually are on weekdays, taking your calls. If you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith, we’d love to talk to you. You can call me at this number, 844-484-5737. That’s 844-484-5737. And, boy, I don’t think I have anything to announce today, so we can just go directly to our callers. Oh, I should mention, yeah, there is something that should be mentioned. A major part of our ministry is our website. It’s been up for many years, and it has lots and lots of resources. I give the website out every day on the air so you can go and get those resources, or you can even donate from there. But the website’s been down. We don’t understand the technology, but we think somebody does. We have a webmaster in Connecticut who I think he feels everything’s under control. Something is being copied or something is being done. Whenever something goes wrong with the web, I’m totally at a loss. I have no idea how technology works. But I will say this, that there’s a lot of people who kind of are used to going to the website all the time. And it’s been down for several days. We’re not sure exactly when it’ll be back up, hopefully very soon. But in the meantime, although you can’t donate from this site, there is a backup site that has all of our stuff on it, or not all of it, but all the audio, all the lectures, the shows, archives, and so forth. And it’s working well. That’s called Theos, that’s T-H-E-O-S, theos.org slash media. So if you go to theos.org. slash media. You can’t donate from there, but you can certainly access the resources. So if you become kind of addicted to listening to those and they’re not now at the moment available, I don’t even think they’re on our app because I think our app depends on the website. So this is a kind of a crippling thing, but we have backup. There’s another website that has at least the things you can listen to that you want to, the radio shows and the Bible studies and so forth are all at www.theos.org slash media. So you can go there for the time being. Hopefully I will announce when the website’s back up. Okay. Having said that, we’re going to talk to Benjamin from Greenville, Ohio. Benjamin, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 03 :
Good afternoon, brother. Thank you. I have a question on trying to get your insight on Anointing with oil, for instance, our homes or a sick person. And I guess my questions would be the actual procedure of doing it and the frequency that we should be doing something like that. And I can take the answer offline.
SPEAKER 08 :
All right. All right. Thank you for your call, Benjamin. Well, the Bible doesn’t actually advocate the anointing of oil except in the case of a sick person. calling on the elders of the church. In James chapter five, it says, is any of you sick or is any sick among you? Let him call for the elders of the church and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. In the prayer of faith, she’ll save the sick and the Lord shall raise him up. And if he’s committed sins, they’ll be forgiven him. Now, many people think that this is simply what the Roman Catholics call the extreme unction, that when somebody’s dying, they’re sick and dying, that they should call for the the priests or the leaders of the church, and have them, as it were, kind of baptize them, although it says oil, not water. So it’s questionable whether that’s what it means. But that’s, for example, how Catholics understand it. Most evangelicals, especially charismatic people, believe that anointing with oil is simply a procedure to accompany the prayer for healing. Now, because there’s so little said about it, and there’s little or no explanation about it, you know, there’s some questions as to what its effectiveness is. Some people think it’s merely a point of contact for faith. That is that, you know, a person, if you just say, well, just believe, well, that’s kind of, for some people, it’s a little nebulous. Okay, I kind of believe. Do I believe now? Do I believe enough? You know, when am I supposed to believe? When is something supposed to happen? And there are people who say that, excuse me, sorry, that such procedures as laying on of hands for healing or anointing with oil, that these really only function as a point of contact for faith. So that if a person kind of has a vague idea that God’s going to heal them at some point that you, you can, their expectations will be raised that that point will be when hands are laid on them or when oil is put on them. And it becomes sort of a symbolic gesture, uh, Usually the oil is thought to represent the Holy Spirit, but I’m not sure that that’s even an essential part of the whole thing. The point is that we’re not told why anointing of oil is of use. Now, there are some teachers who have simply said anointing with oil is what is done to a wounded person. You know, in the Good Samaritan parable, the man who fell among thieves, when he was found by the Good Samaritan and ministered to, the man poured wine and oil into his wounds, wine probably to disinfect them and oil to promote healing. And use of oil medicinally, topically, was an ancient medical procedure for certain conditions. And so some say, well, James is envisaging a situation where somebody who’s sick has got wounds or festering sores or whatever, and that the elders should come and administer medical procedures with oil. Now, I don’t personally think that’s what it’s saying, but I’ve heard it said. I’m just trying to tell you there’s a lot of different opinions about that. And the reason there’s so many opinions is the Bible says nothing to explain it. It just says do this. And so many people will just do it out of obedience to the scriptures without having any particular or precise understanding of what it’s supposed to accomplish. But apart from that one passage in James 5, we are not really told to anoint anything with oil. Now in the Old Testament, the priests and the kings, when they were installed into office, had oil poured over their heads, and even a prophet might in some cases. But the point there is simply it’s an installation service, probably represented the Holy Spirit coming on them, the oil representing that. But this was not a situational thing where someone’s sick or you’re trying to accomplish something in particular through it. It’s just part of the ceremony of installment. And that’s just an Old Testament thing with kings and priests and others who were installed into divine office. But in the New Testament, we only have that one usage of it mentioned. Now, I’m aware of people anointing their houses, their cars, the windows of their houses. And I think the implication they have in mind is they’re kind of putting protection upon their house or their car against, I’m not sure what, maybe demons coming in or something. This… I mean, I don’t mean to be critical of people who do it. There’s simply no biblical grounds for it. It strikes me as superstitious. But on the other hand, one might say, well, it’s no more superstitious than anointing a sick person to get well. Well, the one exception to that is that anointing a sick person to get well is a scriptural, you know, a scriptural suggestion where to start anointing all kinds of things for oil for nebulous reasons, you know, seeking undefined results, it just begins to be sort of a, it can be superstitious. Now, I’m not saying God can’t honor it if your faith is in him. And somehow, you know, you’re just thinking, hey, God, this place I’m putting the oil, I want you to please, you know, protect it there. I don’t do that kind of thing. I’ve been with people who did that kind of thing. I even at the time, I thought it was a little superstitious, but I didn’t want to be critical. I mean. It’s just not a biblical practice, okay? And I, generally speaking, do not like to include in my Christian practice anything that the Bible does not command and which I cannot see having any obvious value, you know? And therefore, I don’t practice it. If you’re wondering how often should this be done and so forth, yeah, there’s nothing in the Bible that says it should be done at all. So, you know, I personally don’t do those kinds of things. And, you know, if someone could come up with a biblical rationale for it, I would certainly relook at my thoughts about that. But I don’t know of any. All right. Let’s talk to Ryan from Spartanburg, South Carolina. Hi, Ryan. Welcome.
SPEAKER 06 :
Casey, thank you. I had heard it said that all of the disciples of Christ had died as martyrs because they refused to basically admit, or I’m sorry, they refused to affirm that they did not actually see Jesus risen from the dead, and as such, because of their conviction, they were martyred, except for John, I believe. And it was always used as a very powerful argument rationale for the fact that Jesus actually did resurrect from the dead, because the disciples had nothing to gain by lying in that sense and dying for something that they didn’t actually believe to be true. And I always thought that that was a very powerful argument, and so then I went in to check what kind of external sources we have if someone was to say to me, well, what evidence is there that they were all martyred in the various ways? And as far as I could find, there was only James, the son of Zebedee, James, the son of Joseph, Peter, and Paul, who we have external sources for that they were martyred. I think the rest, as far as I know, is only church history or church tradition that teaches that they were martyred.
SPEAKER 08 :
Is that correct? Well, all of them are church tradition, with the exception of James, the son of Zebedee. We have the record of his death given to us in Acts chapter 12. We don’t actually have the record of the death of any of the other apostles in the Bible, but what we do have is early traditions that And since these early traditions, you know, are, you know, they’re not all alike for each apostle, even John. I mean, the tradition is that John wasn’t killed as a martyr. So we can figure out that, you know, the church didn’t decide to make up martyr stories for all the apostles or else they would have done so for John too. I mean, my impression is the church fathers were interested in preserving accurate memories of what happened to these founders of the church as apostles. I know if I were them, I’d want to. I think some people think the church was led by con artists, and therefore they made up stories promiscuously that they thought would be edifying or convincing to people. But I think these men are themselves, many of them, martyrs. I mean, the sources, Christians were being martyred, and especially the leaders of the churches were hunted down and martyred for the first three centuries. And it’s from men living at that time that we have the stories about the martyrdom of the apostles and of other Christians like Polycarp and such and James, the brother of Jesus. There’s really no reason I can think of why these stories would be fake. Now, uh, you’ve heard this, the martyrdom of the apostles used as a, uh, an apologetic for the truthfulness of their testimony that they’d seen Jesus after he rose from the dead. Um, And I use it that way, too. I mean, I’ll just say I do use it that way. But sometimes the way it’s presented is just simply, well, these people could have not been martyred if they’d simply admitted that Jesus was not risen from the dead. And you might get the impression that every one of them stood with, as it were, a gun to his head saying, confess that Jesus didn’t rise from the dead or I’ll kill you. And each one of them stood with that testimony. that’s not exactly how it happened. Many of them were martyred because simply they were church leaders. Some of them were martyred because they wouldn’t burn incense to the Caesar. Some of them were martyred just for going against paganism. And so it’s not really the case that each one of them was put on a trial where they had a specific question asked to them. And the wrong answer they die for and the right answer they would, you know, be granted freedom for. And that question is, did Jesus really rise from the dead? OK, that’s not how it happened. What is true, though, is that they they went into situations facing deliberate danger and martyrdom. because they believe that Jesus rose from the dead. The point is, if they were not persuaded that Jesus rose from the dead, they wouldn’t be risking their lives. Paul himself said that in 1 Corinthians 15. He says, if Jesus isn’t risen from the dead, why am I facing these wild beasts and risking my life every hour? So it’s not so much that they literally died on the spot for saying Jesus is risen from the dead on an occasion when someone would have said, we’ll spare you if you say he didn’t. But the point is that their whole careers faced death, faced danger, faced hardship, faced imprisonment and beatings. I mean, the apostles had all that. And the only reason they were motivated to do it is because they believed Jesus was risen from the dead. If they hadn’t believed it, they would have gone somewhere else and done something else with their lives and avoided all that danger. So when someone says, well, they all died confessing that Jesus is risen from the dead, And therefore he did. Well, that’s true. I mean, that was their confession. That is what they believed. But it’s not always the case that somebody would have let them off the hook if they had said, OK, he didn’t. I mean, because sometimes people just want to kill their mobs. You know, Nero didn’t like Christians in general and killed Paul and Peter and others. So, you know, if what you heard, and you could easily have heard it because I’ve said things very similar myself, is that, you know, if Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, these guys wouldn’t have risked their lives like this. They all died confessing that Jesus had risen from the dead. And that was, they did. They believed that and they said that right up until the time they died. But it wasn’t always that one statement of theirs that was, you know, what got their heads cut off or got them fed to the lions. Sometimes it was more of a the general embrace of Christianity in a hostile world that got them killed.
SPEAKER 06 :
Right. The place that I read that James, the son of Zebedee, the son of Joseph, Peter, and Paul were martyred, or at least the external evidence was in Clement, I believe, 1 Clement 5. I’m not too familiar, however, with that book. Is that a church father?
SPEAKER 08 :
Clement of Rome was a bishop in Rome in the generation after the apostles, but not long after the apostles. He was like before the end of the first century. I’m not sure. I think the Catholic Church places him as like the third bishop of Rome or something like that. But Paul, in writing to Rome… mentions Clement, and many people think that’s the same Clement that wrote the book Clement of Rome. It’s an epistle to the Corinthians that Clement wrote, or that somebody wrote. So we don’t know if he’s the same Clement that Paul mentioned, but he was certainly a man of the first century church who would be in a prime position to know how Peter and Paul had died and so forth. Now, we don’t have any one church father telling us everything about it, but there is, like in Fox’s Book of Martyrs, I’m pretty sure he’s got most of the apostles named in there, right in the opening chapters of Fox’s Book of Martyrs. Sometimes it’s not very much detail, but… I don’t think there’s very many of the apostles that aren’t mentioned there. And I don’t know what all of his sources were, but, you know, Fox was a historian and would have looked at all the sources available.
SPEAKER 06 :
Thank you so much. You’ve all checked that out. Thank you for your time.
SPEAKER 08 :
Okay, Ryan. Good talking to you, brother. Thanks for your call. Bye now. All right. See, Jacob in Orange County, California. Welcome.
SPEAKER 05 :
Good afternoon, Steve. Thank you for this ministry. My question is, would you be willing to give a brief hypothetical defense of dispensational eschatology? I’m familiar with some of their teaching points, but I’m curious to hear someone with a gift for teaching as yourself describe their position, and I’ll listen to your answer up there. Thank you, Steve.
SPEAKER 08 :
All right, sure. Thank you. Well, dispensational theology basically was introduced by a very intelligent man. John Nelson Darby, he’s sometimes seen as kind of a villain in the minds of anti-dispensationalists. And there were things about him that were not very savory. He could be very divisive in his personality. In fact, he actually excommunicated one of my favorite people, George Mueller. George Mueller and he were acquainted, and both of them were in the Plymouth Brethren movement. And Darby excommunicated Mueller because he didn’t agree with Darby about everything. And so, I mean, the guy was a little divisive. Let’s just say quite divisive. And so I don’t like Darby much, but there’s still… The truth, he’s a very brilliant man, and he made a complete translation of the Bible, the Darby Translation, which is still available, usually online. And he wrote lots of books. I think he wrote like over 50 books of theology. And they’re not lightweight stuff. So, I mean, he was very persuasive in his own generation in certain evangelical circles. He He was Anglican, and he came out of that and became part of the Plymouth Brethren movement. But his theory was that Christians had been inconsistent throughout history in spiritualizing many Old Testament prophecies. The prophecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel and the minor prophets often are spiritualized by all the church fathers, all the medieval church, all the reformers, and in modern times by people like myself, who see many of the prophecies that mention Israel in the Old Testament are in some cases spiritualized, that is interpreted to refer to the spiritual Israel. And that’s called spiritualizing. At least that’s what people who don’t like the practice call it. And so he said, that’s not right. If it says Israel, it should be natural Israel. I mean, why do we take Genesis literally and the Gospels literally, but we don’t take these prophecies literally when they say Israel and Jerusalem? And so he felt… the church was inconsistent and needed to consistently take things literally, including these Old Testament prophets. And in doing so, of course, he came up with an entirely different theology about Israel than the church had ever held before. And of course, he’s living around 1830-ish when this was done. So for the first 1800 years, the church taught a certain theology about Israel and the church And Darby challenged it and said he actually felt he was rediscovering truths that only the apostles had taught. He knew he was going against the whole church for 1,800 years before him. And his view was that there are promises that God made to Israel and Jerusalem that simply have not occurred. That the Messiah was supposed to come and sit on David’s throne in Jerusalem and restore Jerusalem to its former glory and glory. And Jesus didn’t do that, so that still has to happen. He thought when Jesus comes back, that’s got to happen. And so his argument was you find all these prophecies about the Messiah reigning over a restored Israel and Jerusalem and all the nations bringing gifts to him and him ruling the world with a rod of iron and so forth. And since Jesus didn’t do that, now Darby’s idea was Jesus would have done that. Jesus actually came intending to do that, but couldn’t because the Jews rejected him as the Messiah. Now, I’m not sure why God would come and make his program so vulnerable to the Jews’ disapproval. I mean, the Jews had rejected all the prophets before. Why would anyone think they’d accept Jesus? You know, I mean, so it’s like Jesus comes and says, the time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is drawn near. And yet it’s not going to come because God knows very well that the Jews are going to respond to him exactly as they responded to the prophets before him. So in other words, it wasn’t near. It was a mistake or it was, you know, I don’t know, conditional or something. But Jesus didn’t say the coming of the kingdom was conditional. He didn’t say it depended on the Jews accepting him. But Darby said, well, because the Jews didn’t accept him, Jesus did not bring the kingdom that he said he was going to bring. It was postponed. Jesus went back to heaven, took with him the kingdom that he had in mind. And he’ll bring it back when he comes back. And he’ll set up the millennial kingdom and set up the temple in Jerusalem. And he’ll reign from Jerusalem, from David’s throne, for a thousand years. That’s the dispensational idea. And Darby also believed that the church and Israel should never be confused with each other. He felt like that was a big problem the church had done for 1800 years is take these prophecies about Israel and apply them to the church. He said, no, no, no, no, no. The church in Israel, different things. He said the church was an institution that was not even anticipated in the Old Testament. It was a mystery that only was revealed to Paul and the apostles, and therefore it didn’t even exist in the Old Testament. It wasn’t even anticipated. The church is, he said, a parenthesis because the Jews who God came to bring the kingdom to had rejected christ and caused the kingdom to be postponed there was now this parenthetical phenomenon of god going to the gentiles and creating the body of christ and you know doing what he’s doing now until he’s done doing that and when he’s done doing that he’ll rapture the church out of the world But then he’ll keep working in the world on the Jews, and the tribulation will be his way of disciplining and bringing the Jews to himself. And then they will come to him, and then Jesus will come and set up the millennium. That’s Darby’s ideas. Now, there are, I guess you wanted me to give an exegetical polemic in favor of dispensationalism. I used to think I could do that, but it really wasn’t exegetical. It was more or less just assumption. It was the assumption that my teachers had told the truth about these things and that interpreting the Bible the way my teachers did is the only honest and faithful way of handling Scripture. And it took me years of my own study of Scripture to realize that that’s not the best way to interpret Scripture. I didn’t know what dispensationalism was. I was dispensational. I never heard the term before. I just thought dispensationalism, or I should say, I thought what they were teaching me was what the Bible teaches. They didn’t tell me. My teachers never told me. This is a view called dispensationalism. I had to discover that the hard way over years after teaching dispensationalism without knowing that it was that. But I found out that the early church actually had been more accurate in the way that they handled scriptures. That the apostles in the New Testament, when they quoted Old Testament scriptures, the very ones that Darby said should be taken literally about the literal Israel and Jerusalem, whenever the apostles quoted those scriptures, they didn’t take them literally. They applied them to the church. And that’s why the whole church understood them that way. They thought the apostles were right. And that Jesus was right because he did the same thing. When they quoted… Old Testament passages, which Darby thinks we should apply to Israel and Jerusalem, and which dispensationalists say we should, the apostles and Jesus didn’t take them that way. They took them in a spiritual sense and thought that Jesus actually came to fulfill the prophets and that he did not fail to do so. At the end of his life, Jesus prayed and he said, Father, I have finished the work you gave me to do. He didn’t say, hey, I tried, but the Jews wouldn’t let it happen, so sorry, God, I couldn’t do it. No, he said, I finished it. And this is what the church has always believed, that Jesus did not fail. He succeeded. And I don’t think there’s a good exegetical case for dispensationalism, but there’s just a grid you can read the Bible through in order to think about it that way. Hey, I’m out of time for this segment. I’ll be back in about 30 seconds or so. Please stay tuned.
SPEAKER 09 :
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SPEAKER 08 :
Welcome back to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg, and we’re live for another half hour, taking your calls. If you have questions about the Bible or about the Christian faith, feel free to give me a call. The number is 844-825-8000. 484-5737. And you’re always welcome to call if you disagree with me about something too. Again, our website has been down for a few days. Hopefully it’ll be up. I don’t know. It could be up today, tomorrow. I’m not sure. It might be down for a while. If you’re used to, you know, listening to things from our website, we’ve got thousands of things there to listen to on a regular basis. And you’re kind of going through withdrawal because the site’s down. Go to this alternative website, It’s called theos, T-H-E-O-S, theos.org slash media. It at least has all, I think, has the archives of the radio show and it’s got the lectures there. And that’s mostly what people want when they go to our website. Our website has some other things, too, that aren’t there. But essentially, you know, if you’re listening to the lectures or the archives, you can get them there, too. All right, at least last I checked. I haven’t been there for a long time myself, but I hope it’s up and running too. Technology is not always our friend, but it certainly has been convenient sometimes. Okay, let’s talk next to Roberto from Kansas City, Missouri. Hi, Roberto.
SPEAKER 07 :
Hi, Steve, Greg. Thank you for taking my call. I would like to ask you, Well, I watch you on YouTube. That’s mainly where I get your program and everything. How can we pray in a godly manner for our president not to be set up the way he was today? All we can pray is that, you know, God’s will be done. That’s all I’ve been praying for lately is God’s will be done. We learned the hard way over the last, like, you know, to elections. And, um, he was set up today to go to this, uh, church service where the, uh, pastor, if you will, uh, was begging him for mercy on, um, on the homosexual community, gay rights and, uh, migrants. Um, how can we pray, uh, for his spiritual direction and leadership? Because he has apparently surrounded himself with the same crowd like, um, Paula White was a prosperity gospel person.
SPEAKER 08 :
Is she still in the picture there? I didn’t know she was still in the picture. I thought he’d moved on to someone like Jack Hibbs.
SPEAKER 07 :
I thought she was out of the picture, but I pulled up a video that was just done two months ago. by Forbes, which is, you know, a liberal source. But two months ago, she was praying over him with that type of crowd. So I didn’t know that either.
SPEAKER 08 :
Okay, let me jump in. Let me jump in here. I hadn’t heard about what happened today. So I don’t know anything about that. But as far as being set up, I’m not sure how you mean that. I mean, the president is going to be challenged about lots of things throughout his term and should be. Presidents always should be. And I didn’t obviously hear how he responded. So I can’t tell. But all I can say, if your question is how shall we pray for him? I mean, if that’s not just a way of you making some statements, but you’re really wondering how should we pray for him, I think we should pray for him to be wise and for him to be committed to justice. And, of course, we should pray for him and everybody that they be converted to Christ. Now, I don’t know. I’m not going to say he’s not a Christian. He doesn’t. If he’s a Christian, I don’t think he’s a very mature Christian, and I don’t think he’s been discipled very thoroughly, obviously. So we could pray either that he’ll get converted, or if he has been converted, that he’ll be properly discipled, that he’ll have better Christian influences around him, hopefully, than Paula White, and that he’ll be a wise ruler. Yeah. I also pray for his protection since there’s, I don’t think we’ve had a more hated president. Although, I mean, some people obviously almost idolize him, which is bad too. We don’t want to idolize him, but he’s a very polarizing figure. In my opinion, I don’t think he did anything to encourage that polarization, but it’s just the fact. I think he’s following his conscience, if I’m not mistaken. I don’t know him, so he might be worse than I think. I’ve heard him give speeches. I’ve watched how he governed before. He was a president before, after all. and you know i’ve actually seen how he conducted himself in the years he was not president since then so my impression is that he’s he’s got some convictions and he’s he’s trying to put them forward and fortunately they are agreeable with the constitution and you know if he had constant if he had convictions that were unconstitutional i’d be very concerned because he kind of moves moves like a bulldozer uh you know forward with his programs um But it seems to me, as far as I can tell, the main controversial features of his plans are quite in keeping with the Constitution, which is what the president’s supposed to be. Now, some people, but he doesn’t follow the Bible. Well, I don’t know what he does in terms of following the Bible, but the job description of the president is not about following the Bible. I think everybody should follow the Bible, including the president. I don’t know if we have any national leaders around the world who do follow the Bible, and I don’t know that Trump does either. But the special job description of the president is to uphold the Constitution. which is something our previous president had no interest in doing. In fact, he allegedly added an amendment to the Constitution just as he was walking out the door, which, of course, a president can’t do. That’s unconstitutional itself. So, I mean, we’ve had a president for four years who had no interest in the Constitution, just his own agendas. Now, Trump has agendas, too. No question about that. But as near as I can tell, his main agenda is to restore Congress. a constitutional integrity to the government. He might have other agendas too, but as long as he does restore constitutional integrity, that’s a positive. It’ll be a net positive that he became president in that case. But we should pray that he will be able to do what’s good and that he will fail if he has any plans that are evil, and that he’ll be converted, and that he’ll be kept safe from assassins, I would say. You know, I didn’t specifically pray that for many presidents before, but But this one’s had a couple of attempts on his life, and I don’t think his assassins or would-be assassins have gone anywhere. I don’t think they’ve gone away. So those are the ways I would pray for him. And, you know, inherent in the prayer that he would have wisdom is that he would know how to address situations like the one you described today. And, of course, presidents have to face those all the time. They face challenges, and they should be able to. I think he’s up to it. But on the other hand… He doesn’t always know the truth. He’s not omniscient. So we should pray that God will give him wisdom in those situations. Thank you for your call. All right, we’re going to talk next to Oscar in Napa, California. Oscar, welcome.
SPEAKER 02 :
Hey, Steve. Enjoy your ministry. I learned a lot from it. A lot of Hebrews. about Melchizedek. I heard some people say, I don’t know if it’s true or not, but some say he wasn’t a human being. Was he a real man? Because they say he had no descendants, no mother or father. And I was just curious. Can you answer that for me?
SPEAKER 08 :
I think I can, but not everyone would agree with me. Melchizedek, appeared very briefly at the end of Genesis 14 and met with Abraham. And there’s a very brief description of the transaction between them. And it’s mysterious because he kind of appears out of nowhere. He’s described as a priest of the Most High God and the King of Salem, which most scholars think refers to Jerusalem at the time. Now, remember, Jerusalem in Abraham’s day, it was not a Jewish city. There were no Jews. Jerusalem was a pagan city, a Canaanite city in those days. So If he was the king of Jerusalem, he was ruling a pagan Canaanite people. Now, Jewish tradition holds that he was Shem, the last surviving son of Noah. And it is true that Shem, if you follow the chronology, Shem would still be alive at that time. So that would explain why Abraham died. would show such deference to Melchizedek if he was Shem, because Abram was descended from Shem. He is a Shemite or a Semite himself, as Jewish people today understand themselves to be also. So, you know, the Jews think he was Shem. Now, the author of Hebrews did not think that was a satisfying answer. He thought there were things about Melchizedek that would not apply to Shem. And I have to agree. I mean, it does say in Hebrews, he had no father, no mother, no beginning of days, nor end of life. Now, this would suggest he wasn’t an ordinary man, that he was a divine being, almost like when an angel comes to earth, although I think it was more a theophany. You remember when Jacob wrestled with a man all night? The man just kind of showed up, wrestled all night, and then went away. The man presumably was God, at least that’s how Jacob understood it, God in a human-type appearance to interact with Jacob. And I kind of think Melchizedek is like that, that he just kind of showed up that he is God. We might even say Christ, the Word, in his pre-incarnate state, coming in a human form to meet with Abraham and to bless him and to allow Abraham to interact with him face-to-face as if he was a human. Now, when God does that, and he does it several times in the Old Testament, although the Bible doesn’t tell us in the Old Testament that Melchizedek is an example of this phenomenon, but there are other examples of that phenomenon in the Old Testament. I think Melchizedek probably is. because that would be the only case in which he’s without father and without mother. and no beginning of days or end of life. Now, those who don’t take this view, who think he’s maybe Shem, or maybe that he’s just some other guy who was a king of Salem at the time, and many commentators don’t believe he’s Christ, or don’t believe he’s God, they would say, well, when it says he had no father or mother, it just means his father and mother were not recorded. And when it says he had no beginning of days or end of life, it means his birth and death were not recorded. Well, that’s hardly worth mentioning. Most of the people in the Bible who are named, their births and deaths are not recorded. In many cases, their parents are not recorded. But if it was Shem, his parentage is known. He’s the son of Noah and Noah’s wife. So we don’t know the exact birthday to celebrate of his birth, but we do have record of his birth. Noah had three sons, it says. That means they were born. Shem, Ham, and Japheth. So If he was actually Shem, as the Jews believe, the writer of Hebrews wasn’t buying it. Because even if he was saying he has no recorded parentage, well, that wouldn’t be true of Shem. I don’t believe he’s saying there’s no recorded parentage. He could have said that if he wanted to. And by the way, if it was Shem, I’m not sure why Moses, when he was writing Genesis, wouldn’t just mention it was Shem. After all, Moses had recorded that Shem had been one of the sons of Noah who came out of the ark and that Shem was an ancestor of Abraham. That’s all recorded in the Genesis. Why would he not refer to him as Shem? Why would he refer to him by a term that means king of righteousness? So I don’t think we can easily get away from the fact that the writer of Hebrews was identifying Melchizedek as Christ himself. And I have a whole discussion about that. If you go to my lectures on Hebrews, Hebrews chapter 7, I go into this in great detail. And normally I could say you’d find that at our website, thenarrowpath.com. But as I said earlier, our website’s kind of down for the moment, but you can go to theos.org. dot org slash medium and find those lectures and i do go in depth both in my lecture on genesis 14 and in my lecture on hebrews 7. i go into that in much more detail i appreciate your call brother all right thanks thanks for joining us all right we’re going to talk next to james from fresno california james welcome
SPEAKER 04 :
Hey, Steve, thanks for taking my call. Just real quick, in regards to the website, I was just on there. I’m on an iPhone. Is it working? It was working, but I had to bypass the warning that Safari gave me saying that somebody was trying to impersonate the website. So I just click on Go Ahead and View Anyway and take the risk. And that way I was able to finish your book today, which was phenomenal, by the way.
SPEAKER 08 :
Which one is that, The Empire of the Rising Sun?
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, I just finished both books, and I’ve got to say, I’ve been waiting to read that for years. I just didn’t know it was out there. I came across it recently, and man, I’m so impressed. I feel so blessed that I was able to read that. You explain things in a way that, like I said, I’ve just been waiting to hear for a long time. You did it in a way that you just take out all all the biased theology, all the denominationalism, and I really appreciate your honesty and your integrity in writing that. Thank you. In fact, I just finished it a couple hours ago, like I said, and I really just wanted to call and thank you. But I did have one question that’s been bugging me for a long time, and I was hoping you could elaborate a little more. In the book, you said that the disciples prayed to the Father, and that we as disciples… should pray to the Father also. And I was just wondering if you could maybe get a little more in-depth on what’s the difference in our prayer life when we pray to the Father, pray to Jesus, and how we include the Holy Spirit in that. And one more thing I just want to know, do you have any kind of curriculum about discipleship that I can share with my church, and maybe I might be able to lead, I might be able to borrow from you?
SPEAKER 08 :
I haven’t prepared any curriculum, but the second book of the Empire of the Risen Sun, you know, book two?
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes.
SPEAKER 08 :
I intended that to be, you know, at least functional as a curriculum for discipleship. It definitely is. It’s all about discipleship, and I think it’s quite practical and goes into the weeds, even about, you know, application and so forth. So I I don’t have it laid out as sort of a curriculum with lead questions and workbooks or anything like that. But I could see, and I’d certainly welcome anybody taking that material and developing it into a curriculum. You know, I would think that, you know, if someone wanted to, or I mean, they could, like I said, they could make a curriculum out of it. But if they didn’t want to go to that trouble, they could just have a study group where they’d each read it. You know, they’d read a chapter of it each week and get together and discuss it and look up the scriptures in it and talk about it. You know, there’s 40 chapters in those two books. So it’d make almost close to a year’s curriculum. But I don’t have anything prepared in the form of a curriculum. No, I’m sorry to say.
SPEAKER 04 :
Okay. Well, I’m so thankful that you have the book, at least. And I’ll definitely use that.
SPEAKER 08 :
All right, brother.
SPEAKER 04 :
All right. Thank you, brother.
SPEAKER 08 :
Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes.
SPEAKER 08 :
I’ll talk about the prayer. Thank you. Yeah. Jesus said that we should pray to the Father in his name. That is in Jesus’ name. Now, the Bible also talks about us praying in the Holy Spirit. And praying in the Holy Spirit, I believe, means directed by the Holy Spirit and, you know, through empowered by the Holy Spirit. So, I mean, the Holy Spirit is living inside of us, so he’s active in our prayers, at least he should be. We need to count on that to be so, that the Holy Spirit will be guiding us and directing us in our prayers, energizing our prayers, convicting us about what we need to pray about, and so forth. But our prayers, of course, are the actual utterances, the actual petitions we present. to God, external to us. The Holy Spirit is in us, but we’re addressing God who’s out there, just like Jesus did. Obviously the Father was in Christ, but Jesus spoke to the Father as someone external also. So praying to the Father is simply what Jesus taught us to do. He said, when you pray, say, Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be your name. Or Paul said, I bow my knee to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. in, I guess it’s Ephesians chapter 3, you know, the apostles, when they prayed in Acts… chapter 4, when they addressed their prayer, they said, Lord, which could be Jesus or could be the Father, but as you read on what they said, they go on and speak to the Lord and say, for truly against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed. So they refer to Jesus as the holy servant of the one they’re speaking to, which of course would be the Father. So we find, you know, prayers to the Father just as Jesus instructed us to pray to the Father. Now, prayer in Jesus’ name, many people don’t understand what that means, but that simply means praying to the Father with the authorization and access that Christ’s name grants us. You know, it’s like if there’s a, you know, a card slot to enter into the throne room, and you’ve got Christ’s access card, you know, you’re authorized, as long as you got it legitimately. You know, you’ve got authorization to come in. And that’s what the name of Jesus is. Jesus is our authorization to come before the Father as if we were him. And, of course, with that authorization comes the obligation to pray in his interest for In other words, Jesus doesn’t just give us an Aladdin’s lamp and says, listen, say Jesus, and that’s like rubbing the lamp, and then whatever comes out, your wish is our command, God’s command. No, when you act in someone else’s name, you’re acting on their behalf. You’re acting as their agent. You’re doing what they would do. And with their authorization to do it. So praying is that way, too. When you pray in Jesus’ name, you’re going to the Father, authorized by Christ, to go as if you were him. And to pray such prayers as he would be inclined to pray, according to his will. And that’s what prayer in Jesus’ name means. But it’s the Father we’re praying to. Now, some people say, well, is it okay if I pray to Jesus or pray to the Holy Spirit? Well, I’ll just tell you. Prayer, technically, is presenting petitions to God. And Jesus said, present your petitions to the Father. That doesn’t mean you can’t speak to Jesus or even to the Holy Spirit. But I think we’ve tended to use the word prayer to be kind of an umbrella term for every time we say anything to God, that’s part of our prayer life. Well, prayer is part of our relationship with God. But there are other parts of our relationship with God, too. are thanksgiving, worship, praise. Those aren’t exactly the same thing as prayer, but they are presented to God just as petitions are. So prayer and praise and thanksgiving are all parts of our relationship with God. Now, Jesus made it very clear when we present our petitions, we should present them to the Father. And that’s what the apostles did when they prayed. They put presented petitions to the Father. That doesn’t mean you can’t praise Jesus or that you can’t even just, as far as I’m concerned, converse with him. I find it very natural to converse both with Jesus and with God and, you know, in my life. So there’s nothing wrong, I think, at least the Bible doesn’t say there’s anything wrong with speaking to Jesus or even to the Holy Spirit, though I don’t know of any case of that being done. The thing is, It’s not wrong. I mean, we have a relationship with God. We have with the Father and with the Son and with the Holy Spirit. It’s just that the Father is the one that Jesus tells us to bring our requests to. Because it’s the Father who will grant them. And he’ll grant them because we’re praying as agents of Christ, authorized by Christ, presenting the prayers that Christ himself would approve of being prayed and that he himself would pray. So that’s what it means to pray to the Father in Jesus’ name. I appreciate you asking. Let’s talk to Tim from Marietta, Georgia. Tim, welcome.
SPEAKER 01 :
Hi. Good afternoon, Steve Gregg. I hope you’re doing well. So I had a quick question. I have a grandfather who’s about in his late 80s and his son or my uncle who is in his late 50s. you could say converted maybe a decade ago to Islam, even though my grandfather raised all of his kids in a Christian upbringing, but maybe he was not faithfully secure. But recently, my uncle, when he visits my grandfather, he would bring his mat and demand to pray, or choose to pray in my grandfather’s house, and in one of the rooms, not like within the presence of my grandfather, but in a room within his house. And I was just wondering if, you know, what steps, whether that’s, whether my grandfather has the ability to communicate to him that he’s not able to pray in the house, or what steps he should take as a Christian man. Because I know in Deuteronomy 7, they talk about not worshiping or not encouraging the worship of idols, but I’m wondering if that’s a plus to that situation.
SPEAKER 08 :
Right. Well, first of all, your grandfather has every right to forbid any activity in his house that he doesn’t want happening there. It is his domain. It’s just like he could forbid someone from bringing their girlfriend over and sleeping with them when they’re a guest in his house. It’s his home. He can maintain it and its sanctity however he sees fit. Different people have had different opinions. Different Christians have had different opinions exactly about the identity of Allah. I personally would not feel comfortable having anyone praying to Allah in my house because I don’t believe that that’s necessarily acceptable to God. Some people have seen things a bit differently than that. But I think that if your grandfather has objection to it as a Christian, He should just tell, is it your cousin I think you’re talking about? You should tell him that he, you know, he can’t do that there. I mean, if he wants to pray outside on the lawn, you know, or out in the car or whatever, he could do that. But he doesn’t want that happening under his roof. Now, some might feel it’s unkind or unfair, but once again, A person has to go by their own convictions. You know, I mean, some people would not allow statues in their home, even if they’re not in any sense being worshipped. But they might say, well, this is this, you know, we got this from, you know, some African tribe or something. We don’t know. They might have worshipped it. So I don’t want it in my home. I mean, a person would have every right to do that. Although, I mean, I also think that’d be up to them because I’m not so sure that a statue, you know, is itself an idol unless someone’s worshipping it. So anyway, that’d be simply a matter of conviction. I think your grandfather’s convictions about that should be honored by anyone who comes into his home. I’m not saying what his conviction should necessarily be about it, simply because I’m aware of more than one Christian way to look at this whole issue of Allah. You know, the Athenians were worshipping a god they didn’t know. They had an altar to the unknown god. And when Paul saw it, he said, I saw a lot of false gods, a lot of idols in your city, but there was also an idol to one you call the unknown God. And I’m here to tell you about him, this one that you worship ignorantly. I’m here to tell you who he is. In other words, he considered that the Athenians may well have been worshiping the true God, but didn’t know him and needed to know him. And so it’s possible that some Muslims are worshiping the true God, but they don’t know him properly. They don’t have accurate knowledge of him. So, I mean, that’s one way that some have understood it. I’m not pushing one way or the other of seeing this. But, yeah, I’d just say your grandfather should make his own decision according to his conscience about that. Oh, I’m sorry, we’re out of time. I’d like to tell you, you can donate at the website, but I’m not sure you can get there. So if you wish to donate to help us stay on the air, you can write to The Narrow Path, P.O. Box 1730, Temecula, California, 92593. And our website is thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for joining us. Let’s talk tomorrow.
