Offering a rich tapestry of theological insights, this episode addresses the profound question of God’s foreknowledge and human free will. Engage with Steve Gregg as he tackles complex topics such as salvation by grace versus judgment by works, and the true indicators of faith in a believer’s life. This episode also explores a variety of historical and biblical perspectives, providing a thought-provoking discussion on how we can navigate abstract theological concepts while maintaining focus on living out an authentic Christian life.
SPEAKER 1 :
Thank you.
SPEAKER 02 :
Good afternoon and welcome to the Narrow Path Radio Broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we’re live for an hour each weekday afternoon to take your calls. If you have questions about the Bible, about Christianity, you raise those questions, we’ll talk about them here. If you have a different viewpoint from the host, we can talk about that too if you bring it up. The number to call is 844-484-5700. Now, the lines are full at the moment, but take this number down and call in a few minutes, and lines do open up. 844-484-5737. And this Saturday, day after tomorrow, we have a couple of meetings in Southern California that recur on a monthly basis. They don’t happen more frequently than that. We have a men’s Bible study in the morning in Temecula. 8 o’clock in the morning, I teach a men’s Bible study for a small group of men in Temecula. You’re welcome to join us if you’re in the area. And then Saturday evening in Buena Park, we have an open Bible study for anyone who wants to come. We’ll be talking about 2 Peter and Jude. And we’ve been going through the Bible, generally speaking, a book a month. And it’s not a verse by verse, but it’s an overview and thorough introduction to the books. And we’ve been doing this for years, and we’re almost, frankly, almost near the end, obviously. But we’re in 2 Peter and Jude this Saturday night. Feel free to join us. If you don’t know where or when it is, it’s easy to find at our website, thenarrowpath.com, under the tab that says announcements at thenarrowpath.com. All right. Without further ado, we’ll go to the phones and talk to Adam calling from Cortez, Colorado. Hi, Adam. Welcome.
SPEAKER 04 :
Hi. Thanks for taking my call. My question is that given the division in the church, if the church is supposed to be maturing and striving for unity, What is the false teaching that we should guard against, and what is acceptable to tolerate, even if it’s considered unorthodox? In other words, you know, who are the—because the Scriptures really portray the bad guys as the false teachers. So who should we be—what should we be rooting out, and what’s considered dangerous? Yeah.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, first of all, most of the teaching that would be considered dangerous teaching in New Testament times was related in some way either to Judaizing or to Gnosticism. Now, Judaizing, of course, was trying to put the church under the Torah, under the old covenant, instead of the new covenant. And that was heretical because it ignored the new covenant that Jesus had created and kept people kind of in bondage to the old system that never did change. Never did improve anything. It wasn’t an effective system for improving people’s hearts and lives. And so to say we need to go back under that system was a damaging, harmful heresy. And Paul was very intolerant of it. The other one is Gnosticism. And Gnosticism, in some cases, would lead to permissiveness in behavior. what we call antinomianism, the idea that there are no requirements of obedience or holiness or morality in the Christian faith because we’re saved simply by grace. All we have to do is believe the right things. And if we just believe the right things, we will be saved no matter how we live. Those were dangerous heresies because both of them compromised the way that Christians are supposed to live. Antinomianism and Gnosticism compromise the demand for holiness. It says in Hebrews, without holiness, no man will see the Lord. We need holiness. Pursue holiness and peace with all men, without which no man will see the Lord. So obviously it’s a very dangerous thing to not pursue holy life, holy living. And so the Gnosticism compromised that and made it seem like it was unnecessary. Judaism, of course, compromised Christ as the final sacrifice. Christ is the Lord, the fulfillment of the law. If Christ is the fulfillment of the law, then we’re not under the law. And if you put us back under the law, it’s denying that Jesus is the fulfillment. And it also makes Christians behave under bondage to legal things, dietary laws and the festal calendar and those kinds of things, which have nothing to do with following Christ. They’re not related to following Christ. And so they distract Christians from really being disciples of Jesus. So I would say any kind of teaching that compromises the holiness of the church or brings in legalistic requirements that are in conflict with what the Bible teaches about what’s required, anything really that makes Christians… required to do anything more than love their neighbor as their self and to love God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength and obey Jesus is, you know, it’s getting on the fringes. And sometimes people are fully committed to those fringes, so it becomes a damaging heresy. Now, when we think of heresies, some people think the most damaging heresies are, let’s just say, making some kind of mistake about the doctrine of the Trinity or about the deity of Christ or some other what we might call abstract doctrine. I say abstract because it has to do with trying to figure out mysterious things which are never very fully described or explained for us in Scripture. There obviously are abstract truths about God and about Christ, and they have some measure of importance in the sense that if you have the wrong Jesus or the wrong God, You’re not really following the right Jesus or the right God. But on the other hand, there are things about God and things about Jesus that were never really sorted out by the church until centuries after Christ was gone. Because Jesus and the Bible didn’t talk much about them. You’d get a verse here or a verse there that hinted at something or made a statement without a clear explanation. And eventually the church figured we have to nail down exactly what those things are talking about. And they had these councils and these creeds and so forth to decide what the majority of bishops thought was the right answer. And then they started excluding people from the church based on whether they agreed to these creeds or not, which is something totally different than what the church and the Bible did. The church and the Bible, of course, had the advantage of the apostles present to clear up unclear things. And we only have their writings and the Holy Spirit to help guide us into an understanding of But people don’t understand difficult, abstract things the same way as each other. So the question then becomes, are we going to exclude people from the unity of the faith, from the unity of the Christian body, because they don’t understand abstractions that are not very clear in Scripture the way that we do? Or are we going to give them some grace and say, okay, these people are on their their journey of learning just like we are. We’ve had to learn things after we were Christians. After we were already following Jesus, there are theological things we had to learn. And in some cases, we had to unlearn and then learn the opposite of what we had been taught. This is a journey that every Christian is on, seeking to grow into all truth as the Holy Spirit leads. And in the meantime, since none of us have reached that goal of knowing all truth, even Paul said we know in part, and we prophesy in part, since we’re all on that journey, we have to give grace to those who are behind us on that road. They haven’t reached the point of understanding that we have. And we have to recognize we will discover some people who see differently than we do who are actually right, and we’re wrong. We’re all growing in that way. What we cannot tolerate in the meantime is people who think it’s all right to disobey Christ, to live an unholy life. and a disobedient life. That’s not tolerable. So in my opinion, we have to have a lot of grace for people who have different doctrines than we do about mysterious things. For example, about the devil and demons. Frankly, about the nature and the description of how the Trinity works out. Eschatology is certainly in that category. That is doctrines of end times. People have different views about that. They’re all trying to understand the scripture properly, but they don’t see it the same. I believe what Calvinists call the doctrines of grace, the five points of Calvinism. I think people can believe those things and be Christians, but I don’t think they’re true. I think Christians have to tolerate each other as they seek to understand mysterious things, which some people find unclear in Scripture. God’s not going to judge us on the basis of how perfectly we understand mysterious things. He said he’s going to judge us on the basis of our works and whether we have love or not. In other words, God’s much more concerned about our submission to his will than our total grasp of difficult, esoteric subjects. And I think the church has had just the opposite priority. The church has allowed people to live, even in the Middle Ages, even priests and popes were able to live immoral lives. Many Protestant ministers live immoral lives. And we kind of turn a blind eye sometimes where we’re just not looking too hard at it. But if they don’t teach the same abstract truths that our denomination holds to, then suddenly we fear that they’re a heretic. And, you know, that’s just getting things backward. The church has gotten things backward ever since it got the whole notion of church backward. You see, Jesus said that the church was a family and everyone’s brothers. And he warned the disciples, the apostles, not to elevate themselves above others. The church was not to be like the rulers of the Gentiles, where the leaders are the bosses. He said, no, among you it should not be that way. He says, whoever will be chief among you must be the slave of everybody else. It’s all upside down from what most people think about the church. But that’s because Jesus had a different kind of kingdom. So Jesus teaches that the church is not run by leaders. It is served by leaders. The leaders are the ones who are serving everybody, not the ones who are bossing everybody. Now, it wasn’t very long after Jesus and the apostles were dead until the carnality of humans, including Christian humans, began to change things around. So the church was just like an alternative kingdom of the Gentiles, where the popes and bishops were the bosses. Everyone had to submit to them. Everybody had to agree with them or be excommunicated. This is the opposite of what Jesus said. So suddenly we’ve got the church turned upside down. Then everything about it is upside down. Instead of excommunicating people who are in the church, as Jesus said to do, we let people get away with stuff in the church, and instead we judge and condemn the outsiders, the non-Christians. Paul said, what do I have to do with judging outsiders? That’s for God to judge. He says, we need to judge those who are inside. So the church just does the opposite of what the Bible says in so many things because the church has become the opposite of what it was. It’s become institutionalized. And Jesus said, no, you’re just all brothers. You know what brothers are? They’re members of a family. Brothers are not, you know, a corporation. Brothers are a family. And so the church was made to be a family. Jesus taught people how to have a relationship with their father in heaven. And with their brothers and sisters. That’s what almost all the teaching of Jesus was about. And most of the teaching of the apostles. So what do we do now? Well, I think the start is to recognize that the church has very early on and very consistently for the past 2,000 years done things the opposite of what Jesus and the apostles said to do them. And that doesn’t mean that the people in the church haven’t lived and died and gone to heaven. Because we don’t go to heaven or not by having the church organized properly. But the problem is we have to find the problems and stop doing them if we’re going to have a unified church. Because one thing the church has done is it has excluded people because of their disagreement on abstract theology rather than on their behavior. And yet Jesus and Paul and John and James, they all said, when we’re judged, we’ll be judged on our behavior. No one ever said that when you stand before God, he’s going to say, here’s the test you have to take to get through, you know, into heaven. Okay, explain the Trinity properly. Explain the hypostatic union of the two natures of Christ properly. Explain, you know, eschatology properly. Explain election and predestination properly. Those are abstract things. You could be a perfect Christian and not have a single opinion about those things, just like the apostles when they followed Jesus. The apostles didn’t have an opinion about Christ’s deity as we understand it today. That was worked out later by councils. The apostles, when they followed Jesus in Galilee, they didn’t have an idea about the Trinity. Never heard of it. I mean, they didn’t have views about predestination or about… I mean, this is something that Jesus simply never made the central core of what he expected his disciples to know. But he did expect them to say that they would love everybody. They’ll love God. And Jesus said, this is how people will know you’re my disciples, if you have love one for another. So when you ask, how are we going to have unity? Well, the only way that’s going to happen is if we start doing what Jesus said again and start… basing our fellowship with other people upon their love and devotion for God and Jesus and the way they live that out as consistently loving their neighbors themselves. Those are the ones that Jesus said are the true Christians. We’ve got a whole bunch of religious people who go to churches and stuff, but if we would judge them by their lives, as God will do, we would have to say, well, I don’t know, maybe they’re saved, but they don’t look like it. you know, if someone sins and you correct them and they don’t repent and then you go through the steps of Matthew 18 and they don’t repent and they don’t repent, then Jesus will treat them like an unbeliever and a tax collector. So there are people we shouldn’t have fellowship with and there are people that we need to receive even weaker. So in answer to your question, I believe that the the things that we have to be united on are, we’re following Jesus together. And that has to do with how we live. It has to do with how we think, too. But not that we have to have a lot of, you know, a lot of perfect understanding of things that are simply not that clear. And which good people who are trying to follow Christ sometimes don’t see the same way. So that’d be my understanding. I think that we do have to I look forward to the church being unified, and it will be unified in following Christ.
SPEAKER 10 :
All right. Thank you, Adam. Thank you.
SPEAKER 02 :
Okay. Thanks for your call. Okay. Jason in Chico, California. Welcome.
SPEAKER 05 :
Oh, hi, Steve.
SPEAKER 02 :
Hi.
SPEAKER 05 :
Hi. This might have to do a little bit with your last call where you’re saying that we’d be judged by our works and that those who have a sin that they don’t repent for are treated like unbelievers. But anyway, I had a friend who is concerned that because of unconfessed sin or because of maybe even sin that he doesn’t even know about, that God is withholding an answer to his prayer. And, you know, especially in light of the fact that we as Christians are under grace and some would say that Christ’s righteousness has been imputed to us and that when God looks at us, he sees Christ. And so his question is, well, why would God withhold sin if I’m in grace, if I’m under Christ? And so I just wanted to get your thoughts on that.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, I grew up in the same stream that said, you know, that God doesn’t see our sins. He just sees Christ when he looks at us. That’s a preacher’s It’s not a biblical comment. Now, I will say there is an element of truth in it. If we are truly followers of Christ, I think God does overlook our weaknesses and our defects, but not our rebellion. But then again, if we’re followers of Christ, we’re not in rebellion. this is the thing. Some people act as if once you’ve said a sinner’s prayer, God only sees Jesus when he looks at you. And it doesn’t matter how much you rebel, how much you sin, how much you simply ignore what Christ wants you to do and just live your life the way you want. No matter how strong you do, God just sees Jesus in you. I don’t think he does. Because first of all, I’m not sure Jesus is in you. In those cases, I mean, a true convert in the Bible, a true disciple is one who continues in Christ’s teachings. Of course, not perfectly. And therefore, you know, God knows who his own are, just like I know who my children are. And I never disowned my children, even though they sometimes disobeyed. Now, it doesn’t mean it was OK for them to disobey. And it doesn’t mean that when I looked at them, I didn’t see that they disobeyed. But I see my children when I see them. And I have grace toward my children. I have a special relationship with my children. And so does God toward those who are truly his believers. And we do sometimes stumble, as the Bible says. But that doesn’t mean that God disowns us or that we can’t be his children in those cases. But if somebody is simply living contrary to what the very definition of being a Christian means, then I’d say they’re not a Christian. Because you know them by their fruits, that is, by their outward behaviors. They can say, many people say, Lord, Lord. And Jesus said, yeah, a lot of people are going to say, Lord, Lord, but I’m going to say I never knew you. So how do we know if we’re Christians? Well, because we do what he said. Now, some people say, well, if we’re going to be judged by our works, like the Bible says, how then are we saved by faith or grace through faith? And those who ask this, again, have been preached badly to. Somebody has preached very badly to you. Not you personally, but anyone listening to me who says, I can’t figure this out. Some people say we’re saved by grace through faith. Other people say we’ll be judged by our works. Well, no, it’s a very simple thing. It’s just your preacher may not have told you this. If you are saved by grace through faith, it’ll show in your works. Because God isn’t just there stamping hands so you can get through the turnstile. And that’s all, you know, did you get your hands stamped? You’re in. No, God is transforming people. When you surrender to Christ, when you repent to your sin, the Holy Spirit literally comes in and he begins to work and change and convert you. And you change from glory to glory into the image of Christ. And that’s exactly what your works will demonstrate. So that on the day of judgment… Although you are saved by faith, the only way one can know if you have faith is if your life has changed in the ways that faith changes you. Someone can say they have faith, but if they don’t have those changes in their life that faith brings, then they’re fooling themselves, and they’re not going to fool God. So the way I see it, if you’re brought to court and accused of something – Of course, most people brought to court plead innocence. Well, okay, they plead innocence. But what has to happen next is where’s the evidence? Well, you know, where’s exhibit A and exhibit B and exhibit C that your plea is correct? Now, when we stand before God, I can say I have been redeemed by the blood of Jesus. And well and good, I have been. But God says, okay, well, let’s look at the exhibits. Because if you are redeemed, if you are born again, if you do have that faith that saves a person, there will be plenty of evidence. Let’s just bring out the evidence. Is that how you lived? Did you live your life to please God? Or was pleasing God kind of in the periphery of your life or not even something you thought about much? Did you just kind of do the minimal thing and go to church or something and then live for yourself the rest of the time? That’s not going to impress God. It won’t even impress anyone who knows what Christianity is. No, being a Christian means you’re following Jesus. Remember the people in the New Testament who followed Jesus? They forsook everything. And Jesus said, unless you forsake all that you have, you can’t be my disciple. Now, that forsaking all that you have is something that’s done primarily in your heart. You simply surrender all that you have to God. And then he tells you whether to hang on to it and use it for him or to get rid of it or what to do with it. It’s now his. If you come to Christ, you’ve been bought with a price and you’re not your own. And you know you’re not. You’re a servant. You’ve been purchased. And you realize when you wake up in the morning and go about your day, you belong to somebody. You belong to God. And you’re living your life happily with that reality. And it’ll show in the things you do. And so that’s why if you’re really born and saved, born again and saved by grace through faith, it’ll be obvious. And I’m sorry so many preachers have not mentioned that. The Bible mentions it throughout. There’s not one writer of the New Testament that omits that fact. It’s what they assume all the way through. But we live in 21st century America with a long tradition of American evangelicalism that has been reshaped by our culture a great deal. And therefore, a lot of people have been converted without, I don’t know if they’re converted, but they’ve responded to a gospel or to a presentation that made them believe they can be saved by just raising their hand or walking forward and saying a prayer. And we don’t read of anyone getting saved that way in the Bible. And these people are then told that even if their life never changes, they’re still saved. Well, the Bible doesn’t say that anywhere either. You know, there’s so many things in American evangelical preaching that just don’t have any correspondence to Scripture. And in many cases, the Scriptures says exactly the opposite. So, you know, I’m not sure exactly all the aspects of your question, but it sounded like you were curious about this dichotomy of being judged by our works and being saved by faith. Yeah, and there was a piece of it. There’s a what? Go ahead.
SPEAKER 06 :
Oh, there’s a piece of it that he was concerned that God wasn’t going to answer his prayers if he had unconfessed sin or if he was a nominal, by name only, Christian.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, if a person is a Christian in name only, which is what nominal means, then that means they’re not a Christian. They call themselves a Christian. In name only means not in reality, it’s just the way they talk about it. They talk about themselves being a Christian, but they’re not really a Christian. A real Christian is a disciple, follower in Jesus. So, yeah, if he’s not really a follower of Jesus, but he’s trying to approach God in the name of Jesus, he doesn’t have the name of Jesus to bring before the Father’s throne. Now, a true Christian sometimes sins, but then a true Christian, when they know they have sinned, they also repent. And so this idea of unrepentant or unconfessed sin in the life of a Christian, I don’t understand. I think that would only be the case if they don’t know about their sin. There is such a thing as sinning and not realizing you have. But if his prayers are not being answered and he is a follower of Christ, he should just ask God to convict him and show him where his sins are so he can repent of them. But he may not be a Christian. He may sound like he’s not so sure about that. I’m sorry. I don’t have time to go on. I thought the music would be playing by now, but we have to take a break. And we have another half hour coming up. So listen to our lectures online and you’ll learn more about this kind of stuff. You’re listening to The Narrow Path. Thank you. We have another half hour coming up. We are listener support. If you’d like to help us out, you can write to The Narrow Path, PO Box 1730. Temecula, California, 92593. Go to our website, thenarrowpath.com. I’ll be right back. Don’t go away.
SPEAKER 01 :
If you’ve been listening to The Narrow Path for very long, you know how much it has enhanced your study and understanding of Scripture and possibly your whole Christian life. Don’t you think all your friends should benefit from the program as you have? You help to partner with us in impacting the body of Christ when you tell all your friends to listen to The Narrow Path. If you have not done so, visit the website thenarrowpath.com and discover all that is available for your learning pleasure.
SPEAKER 02 :
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. We’d be glad to hear from you, or if you disagree with the host, we’d really like to hear from you. Feel free to give me a call. Right now our lines are full, but in a little while, lines do open up throughout the time, and you may reach me at this number, 844-484-5737. All right. We’re going to go to the phones now and talk next to Benjamin from Greenville, Ohio. Hi, Benjamin. Welcome.
SPEAKER 06 :
How’s it going, brother? So I was recently at work. I was talking to some brothers, and someone brought up the – they’re talking about God knowing all of our movements, all of our thoughts. And I suggested just – I suggested that maybe we have more – He knows the end results, but maybe our decisions, maybe he don’t know them as much because for him to be the author of everything, I suggest that why would he get mad at us? I mean, if he’s already wrote this out, why would he be angry at us for certain things?
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, well, I don’t think he has written this out. I mean, it seems like you’re struggling with, you know, maybe some ideas about God’s foreordination of things that I don’t agree with. I mean, Calvinism is the view that teaches that God has foreordained everything that happens, even the sins we commit, even the right things we do, God foreordained them. And the reason we do them, even though we feel like we’re making free choices, we’re really just living out a script, a corrugated dance that God had scripted for us, and we are just making all the choices that he said he predicted, or not just predicted, but foreordained, predestined that we would make. There is no view like that taught in Scripture. And it is the Calvinist doctrine. And one reason I know it’s not taught in Scripture is because I’ve looked at all the Scriptures that the Calvinists use, and they don’t say that. They think they do, but you just have to see them in context to realize that’s not what they say. I do find Scripture saying opposite things than that. And I also would say if the Bible did say that, then the church would have figured that out before the year 400 A.D. Because that’s a major kind of doctrine, if it’s true that God… foreordained everything that would happen? Why is it the first 400 years of Christian scholarship didn’t see that at all? It wasn’t until Augustine, until that came into the church. And so, yeah, that’s not the case. Now, if you’re wondering, how can God even know? See, there’s a difference in God preordaining or predestining something, on the one hand, and just knowing about it in advance, on the other. Now, Virtually all Christians throughout history have believed that God foreknows the future, including the choices we will make. Now, there is a growing school of evangelical theology out there that wonders about that and says, well, when we talk about God knowing everything, what we mean is he knows everything that there is to know. But there are things that don’t exist anywhere for anyone to know about, right? So I don’t know of any three-headed dogs on the earth. And probably God doesn’t either, because I don’t think there are any. Let’s just say there aren’t. Well, if there aren’t, then God doesn’t know about them, because they’re not there. There’s nothing there to know. And some people say, well, the future is not there to know. That is, the things of the future that have not yet been determined by God. They would say God has determined, of course, certain things about nature and maybe even larger political movements and things like that. But they say he hasn’t determined that I will say yes or no to the next temptation I experience. He hasn’t determined that. And they would say that, therefore, the choices I haven’t made yet that I’m free to make one way or another, they don’t exist yet. There’s no reality anywhere for them to be known in. And therefore, God doesn’t know it, not because his knowledge is deficient, but because there’s just nothing there to know until it happens. Now, in contrast to that, there are Christians who think that God lives outside of time and that he sees the future just like we see the present, only better. And therefore, you know, he can see what we’re going to choose, though he’s not determining it. That’s a philosophical point. The Bible doesn’t tell us that God lives outside of time. It’s possible that he does. But the Bible doesn’t discuss that. The Bible does indicate that God predicts accurately what people will do in many cases. And therefore, I have the impression that God knows everything that people will do. But there are some who say that they would explain those passages differently. And it’s called openness theology. They believe that God knows everything that he will do. God knows everything that will happen naturally. God knows everything in the future except the free choices that haven’t been made yet by people who will be making them. And so there is that school. You’ll find many, many evangelicals hold to this openness theology. And, you know, they may be right to my mind. I read the Bible a little differently, but I can see certainly the case for what they’re saying. So, you know, I don’t know. All I can say is that we know that God will not hold us accountable for things that we did not freely choose to do. And the Bible, in my opinion, suggests that God knows what I will do, even though he’s not going to make me do it. I’m going to do it freely, and somehow… He knows. Now, again, the openness theologians would want to say, no, he doesn’t. And as far as I’m concerned, they’re free to read the Bible that way. But the way I see it, I think that God does. But even if he didn’t, it wouldn’t bother me. In other words, this is, remember I was talking earlier about esoteric, abstract doctrines and so forth. This is definitely one of those. You know, how much of what I’m going to do does God know about before I do it? I don’t know. Would it matter? Would it matter for me to know? I’m going to live my life the same way, whether I believe God knew I would do this thing before I did it or whether he learns about it when I do it. How is that going to change? I’m just one of those people who doesn’t get too wrapped up. in abstractions. Now, it’s not like I don’t familiarize myself with the arguments both ways and so forth. I mean, I am interested in theology. I’m interested in theological debates. But once all has been said and done, we have to say, well, if it’s not 100% clear in Scripture, the next question is, how am I disadvantaged if I don’t make up my mind about this? How is this going to hurt me not to know the answer to this question? And if the answer to that question is not at all, it won’t change a thing if I know or don’t know this. Then I say, okay, it’s interesting to toy with these questions, but I don’t want to get too distracted by it because there are things God wants me to be doing. And I think contemplating abstract ideas is not the highest thing on his list of priorities. So I’ll get to those as I need to. Anyway, that would be how I view that.
SPEAKER 06 :
Appreciate it.
SPEAKER 02 :
Okay, Benjamin. God bless you. Okay, we’re going to talk next to Davey in Chico, California. A lot of California today. Hello, Davey. Welcome. Welcome.
SPEAKER 07 :
Thank you. The question has to do with numbers five. Okay. About the married woman who has perhaps slept with another man. Or not.
SPEAKER 10 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, or not. The test is, it seems that she’s lying to drink the bitter concoction, which causes her abdomen to swell, thighs to swell, and it seems to me like she’s aborting the seed. Am I wrong?
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, I’ve heard people say that, but I don’t see anything in there about a seed. I don’t see anything in the whole passage about there being a child or a pregnancy.
SPEAKER 07 :
Well, if she slept with a man, the seed could be there right away.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, it could be, but there’s no suggestion it is. Lots of women sleep with men and don’t get pregnant. I mean, there’s no mention of pregnancy in this passage. This is the ordeal of jealousy. Here’s what’s going on here. The law is this in Numbers 5. If a man suspects that his wife has been unfaithful, he can’t prove it, and she can’t prove he’s wrong. In other words, there’s this suspicion in the home. Every time the husband thinks about his wife, he thinks there’s a woman who’s cheating on me, and she may be guilty or not. If she is guilty, he has every right to know it. If she’s not guilty… she has every right to be exonerated so that she doesn’t have to live the rest of her life with a husband who thinks she’s guilty and when she’s not. So this is a way of exonerating an innocent woman or informing a husband of his wife’s actual unchastity. Either one. I mean, for her to be exonerated if she’s innocent or for him to know that she’s guilty if she is, Those are both good results. But, of course, in a situation where a man just wonders, I wonder if my wife’s unfaithful, neither result comes unless you have some way to resolve it. So this is given. The man brings his wife to the tabernacle, to the priest, and says, you know, I suspect my wife has been unfaithful. So the priest interviews her, and she swears that it’s not so. Okay, so what’s he do? He takes a little bit of dust from the tabernacle floor. He puts it in water and has her drink it. Okay, now there’s nothing particularly about dusty water that would bring about any results in this situation. Little children eat dirt all the time out in the yard. It doesn’t make their belly swell or their thigh rot. But this is a way in which God will supernaturally reveal if the woman is guilty or not. There’s no baby involved. There’s no pregnancy has been thought of. This is a man simply wonders if his wife’s been faithful or not. So to import the idea of a pregnancy is simply artificial. This is to help restore the relationship between husband and wife where there’s suspicion, especially if there shouldn’t be. So anyway, if she drinks the water, these two things happen. Her belly swells or thigh rots. Some people think the expression, the thigh rots, they say the thigh is a euphemism for her sexual organs, and that they… They wither or they rot or something like that. And then some translations, for no good reason that I know of, because they’re not following the Hebrew necessarily, they suggest that this is the womb falling out or something like that, or at least vacating. So some people think that, okay, she’s got a baby in there, and she evacuates the baby. She has a miscarriage. And they think that’s what it’s about. but there’s no mention of a baby. There’s no mention of a pregnancy. All that this does, and it’s interesting because the test is slanted in favor of the woman because some people say, well, this is like the old Salem witch trials where they tie a stone around a woman’s neck and if she’s innocent, if she’s a witch, she floats back up. If she’s innocent, she goes to the bottom and dies. In other words, she’s damned if she doesn’t, damned if she doesn’t kind of thing. Now, this is the opposite. An ordinary person who puts some dust in some water and drinks it, they might get sick in some way or another, or they might not. Most people probably would not if they have a good immune system. And even if they do get sick, probably they won’t specifically have their thigh rot and their belly swell. I mean, this is a very strange couple of symptoms. In other words, it won’t naturally happen. God would make it happen to reveal her guilt. But you see, therefore, in any case, if God didn’t intervene at all, she’d go home exonerated. Because have some water or some dirt in it, she drinks it. 99 out of 100, if not more than that, women, they’re going to go home without their belly swelling and their thigh rotting. So her husband can’t accuse her or can’t be suspicious anymore. So this is really tilted in her favor. But if she happens to be guilty, the idea is that God intervenes to make these symptoms occur to show it. In which case, the husband doesn’t have to live with a woman who’s cheating on him. He now knows. That’s what it’s about. I got it.
SPEAKER 07 :
I’ve got to thank you for the clarification.
SPEAKER 02 :
That’s fine, David. Lots of people have had the same curiosity about that strange chapter.
SPEAKER 07 :
Secondly, I could pass them on a caller yesterday who said that the Statue of Liberty was Lucifer. I didn’t get it.
SPEAKER 02 :
I didn’t either. That person had about six or eight bizarre views that they strung together, not one of them making any sense at all. I didn’t give them any credence.
SPEAKER 07 :
Okay. Thank you.
SPEAKER 02 :
All right. God bless you, Davey. Bye now. Okay. Let’s see. Steve from Lakewood, California. Welcome.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, good afternoon, Steve. Thanks for taking my call. Hey, I’m trying to understand two subjects here and connect them up together. The first one is… the origination of the nation of Israel through the promise of Abraham. I’m trying to wrap my mind around it. Abraham, what a miracle that was. God calls a Gentile, and I’m assuming Sarah was a Gentile as well, gives him the promise of And so he’s justified by his faith in God and believing in God. And, you know, he’s an elderly man. His wife Sarah is beyond childbearing years. And God does a miracle by giving birth to Isaac. So Isaac’s father, Abraham, is a Gentile. So this is the beginning of the Jewish race, right? And then we know that later on when Isaac has one of his sons, Jacob.
SPEAKER 02 :
Okay, let me clarify this. Let me clarify this. It is true that Abraham was a Gentile, but that’s because the word Gentile means every nation except for Israel. There’s two categories in the Bible. Israel is one nation. The Gentiles are all the others. Now, when Abraham and Sarah were born and lived and died, there was no Israel. Israel was the name of Jacob after he wrestled with God, after the death of Abraham, after the death of Isaac. Jacob came along and, of course, God selected Jacob over Esau and eventually renamed him Israel and took his 12 sons to be the 12 tribes of Israel. And they later became a nation when they escaped from Egypt and came to Mount Sinai and entered into a covenant with God there. So in the days of Abraham, there was nothing but Gentiles. There were no Israel yet. Now, Abraham was a chosen man. God chose him as an individual and made promises to him. And he began to fulfill those promises when he gave him Isaac. And then he continued to be fulfilling those promises when Isaac had Jacob. Of course, there were other sons born too, but these were the ones that were going to be in the promise line. And so there was no such thing as Israel until Jacob became Israel. And that’s two generations after Abraham. Everyone before that were what we’d have to call Gentiles. But actually, even Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob certainly were technically Gentiles because there was not a nation of Israel yet. And the word Gentiles simply refers to nations that are not the nation of Israel. Now, on the other hand, if we think of Israel merely as a race, well, that race, you know, it goes all the way back to Adam and Eve, of course. But it began to be differentiated from all the other races through Abraham. Because of the promise that God made to Abram. He’s going to make a great nation out of him. Now, Abram never lived to see his descendants become a nation. Neither did Isaac. Neither did Jacob. It was Moses, hundreds of years after the death of Jacob, that brought them out of Egypt and they became a nation about Sinai. From that time on, once Israel was actually a nation, it was possible to speak of other nations besides Israel, in contrast to them, as Gentiles. So, Yeah, I mean, the word Gentile simply means not Israel. And there’s nothing mysterious about how Israel became a nation. God shepherded that family through the time of Abram, Isaac, Jacob, and through the captivity in Egypt until he delivered them. From Egypt through Moses, and then, of course, he made a covenant with them, at which point they became a nation, a chosen nation, he said. So that’s how that all began.
SPEAKER 03 :
Through Jacob.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 03 :
Okay, then real quick, the connection is the beautiful chapter, John chapter 8. I’m trying to understand the mindset of the Jews. The Jews know this miracle of God that he used Abraham to bring about the nation of Israel. And the Jews didn’t believe in Jesus. As far as that goes, they offend Jesus by calling him a Samaritan and saying that he’s filled with a demon. And then they told Jesus, we are of our father Abraham. So they don’t believe the miracle of Jesus being the Messiah, but they’re of their father Abraham. But that was a miracle of God, the nation of Israel. I’m trying to understand that.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, I’m not sure what part you’re having a hard time understanding. But Jesus, to them, Jesus was just another Jewish guy. Now, we know he was the son of God, but they didn’t know that. There were many Jewish preachers, many Jewish rabbis, many Jewish prophets, and even many Jewish guys who claimed to be the Messiah. There were false messiahs. Now, the Jews knew their own history well enough to know that their history had been littered with false prophets and false messiahs and false rabbis and so forth. And then this stranger named Jesus of Nazareth comes along. And they don’t know if he’s any different than any of the others. Of course, he did miracles and things like that, which means that they… But they explained it differently. They said that was being done by the power of Satan. Now, Jesus pointed out that that didn’t make any sense, because why would Satan cast out demons? And he just said, you know, your answer does not work. But they were still… I mean, they saw the miracles, but they were… They didn’t think he was… fulfilling the prophecies about the Messiah that they wanted to see fulfilled, which had to do with deliverance from the Romans. And Jesus had no interest in doing that for them. And so it seemed to them he wasn’t the Messiah then. So to them, in their own minds, he was just another false prophet, another false Messiah, and a dangerous one at that. And that’s why they had him killed. So, I mean, from their point of view… I mean, it’s not hard to figure how they were reasoning. They were wrong. But anyway, yeah, I’m not really sure how that’s perplexing. Yeah, they knew that their nation had begun through Abraham, through a miracle, but I’m not sure how that would itself translate into them understanding that Jesus was the Messiah. I mean, all Jews knew about Abraham, but Jesus wasn’t Abraham. Jesus was, you know, 2,000 years after Abraham. So and by then there’s millions of Jews and Jesus is merely one of them in their in their consideration. So I’m not really sure how their understanding of their own racial history would translate into them automatically recognizing Jesus in your mind.
SPEAKER 03 :
All right. When John chapter eight, they did call him a Samaritan.
SPEAKER 02 :
They knew he wasn’t a Samaritan. It was an insult.
SPEAKER 03 :
OK. Yeah. Thank you, Steve.
SPEAKER 02 :
All right, Steve. Thanks for your call. Okay, let’s see. Jemima in Vancouver, B.C. Welcome.
SPEAKER 09 :
Oh, hello, Steve. Thank you. My question is quickly from, I believe, 1 Kings 22, verses 7.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yes, yes.
SPEAKER 09 :
Yes, so apparently the king of Israel had consulted 400 prophets, and yet Jehoshaphat said, is there no prophet of the Lord? I’m curious, does it mean that the other 400 prophets were Baal prophets or Ashraf and so on and so forth? I just need a bit of clarification.
SPEAKER 02 :
Sure. Well, Ahab the king was married to Jezebel, and she had required the whole northern kingdom of Israel to worship Baal. And she had actually persecuted the prophets of Yahweh, God’s prophets.
SPEAKER 1 :
Right.
SPEAKER 02 :
And she had chased them off or killed them and stuff. There were some of them hiding in a cave being maintained by a guy named Nehemiah who brought them bread and water every day. But essentially they were, you know, the prophets of Yahweh were out of circulation except for Elijah and Elisha at the time. But there were still plenty of prophets. They just weren’t prophets of Yahweh. They were prophets of Baal. Now, when Jehoshaphat asked you know, let’s check with the Lord about whether we should go on this campaign, this battle or not. And let’s consult with the prophets. And Ahab consulted with the prophets, obviously of Baal. And they said, yeah, go and prosper. And Jehoshaphat said, aren’t there any prophets of Yahweh around here that we could consult? And it turned out there was one. For somehow he, I guess the persecution had diminished and he was surviving safely. And they brought him, Micaiah, and he spoke in the name of Yahweh. So that’s, I mean, that’s how that happened. And he spoke contrary to the prophets of Baal, obviously. But Ahab didn’t like what he said, so he didn’t follow him.
SPEAKER 09 :
Thank you. Thank you.
SPEAKER 02 :
Okay, Jemima, thanks. God bless. Ephraim from Maybane, North Carolina.
SPEAKER 10 :
Yes. Hi, Ephraim. Hi. How are you doing? I’m good. I have a question about, so if we are going to heaven for the time being and all that, and if we happen to be alive, we’re going to be caught up on the air with them. What happens with the ones that are not serving God? Where would they be right now?
SPEAKER 02 :
People who died, you mean? Yeah. Okay. Well, where are the dead who are not saved today? I’m not sure that we can say with certainty. The Bible really doesn’t talk about them as a category. The Bible talks mainly about Christians. And he says that when we die, when we’re absent from our body, we actually depart to be with Christ, Paul said in Philippians chapter 1. And he also said in 2 Corinthians chapter 5 that he’s looking forward to being absent from the body and present with the Lord. So he’s talking about death there, going to be with the Lord. Now, as far as unbelievers go, there’s only one place I know of in the New Testament that actually talks about where the unsaved dead go. And it’s only in a parable, or at least it’s in a story that many people believe is a parable. It’s the story of Lazarus and the rich man. In that story, Lazarus was a faithful beggar, and the rich man was an unfaithful Jew, and they both died. And the story is about where they went when they died. The beggar went to, as it’s called in the story, Abraham’s bosom, or to paradise, which in the Jewish mind was one of the compartments of Hades. But the other compartment was where the rich man went, and he was not safe. And he was in flames, tormented in flames. So we have two people dying in this story. Both go to Hades, but they go to different compartments. And the unbeliever goes to a place in Hades where there’s fire and so forth. So if that story is literal, and if it’s really telling us what happens to people after they die, if that’s its purpose, then we’d have to say unbelievers are in fire while they wait for the day of judgment, whereas believers are in the comfort of God’s presence. Um, but many people think that that story is a parable and that it’s not intended to really teach us much about the afterlife that has a different lesson. It’s teaching. I don’t have time to get into that now, but if that’s the case, then we don’t have anything in the Bible about where the unbelievers go. And many people think they just go into a blackout. They just go into non consciousness and then they come back to face judgment in the resurrection. When Jesus returns, you’ve been listening to the narrow path radio broadcast. And, uh, You want to help us out, we’re listener supported, you can go to our website, thenarrowpath.com. Or you can just take what’s there for free, thenarrowpath.com.
