This episode features a collection of insightful past calls to The Narrow Path with Steve Gregg. Topics include Calvinism vs. Arminianism, the nature of Satan, the question of angelic redemption, reincarnation, the Book of Enoch, Jehovah’s Witness theology, and much more. Whether you’re wrestling with doctrine or curious about church history, these classic Q&A segments will challenge and encourage your thinking.
SPEAKER 07 :
This is the best of the Narrow Path Radio broadcast. The following is pre-recorded.
SPEAKER 05 :
The following is pre-recorded.
SPEAKER 01 :
Welcome to the Narrow Path Radio Program, hosted by Steve Gregg. Steve is not in the studio today, so calls from listeners will not be able to be taken. In the place of the usual format, we’ve put together some of the best calls from past programs. They cover a variety of topics important to anyone interested in the Bible and Christianity. In addition to the radio program, The Narrow Path has a website you can go to, www.thenarrowpath.com, where you can find hundreds of resources that can all be downloaded for free. And now, please enjoy this special collection of calls to Steve Gregg and The Narrow Path.
SPEAKER 08 :
And our first caller today is Alec calling from Salinas, California. Hi, Alec. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 10 :
Hello, Steve. Hello, Steve. I’m calling about Calvinism versus Arminianism. I think that the central issue is God’s nature and God’s character.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yes.
SPEAKER 10 :
I recall you saying that you believe that Satan was created for a purpose, and that purpose was as a tester.
SPEAKER 08 :
Right.
SPEAKER 10 :
Am I correct in that?
SPEAKER 08 :
That is what I understand the Bible to teach, yes.
SPEAKER 10 :
So if Lucifer had decided not to rebel, then would he still have been fulfilling his purpose?
SPEAKER 08 :
Well, I don’t know that there’s a connection between Lucifer and Satan. The Bible doesn’t make any such connection. That’s a traditional connection. Lucifer is only mentioned once in Scripture, and it’s not in a passage that’s describing the devil. It’s in Isaiah 13. and the king of Babylon is referred to as Lucifer there. But Lucifer is not mentioned again in Scripture after that, so the traditional association with Lucifer and Satan is just that, traditional, it’s not biblical. But the question, of course, is, did God create Satan as a good angel who fell, as is the traditional view, Or did he create Satan as a tester to test humanity? And I think that the scriptures probably lean toward the latter. Now, there’s no clear statement of scripture one way or the other about it. The Bible does not ever describe Satan as an angel. It does not ever say that he was good and became bad. In fact, Jesus said the devil was a sinner and a murderer from the beginning. And so we have… Really, two options. Either Satan was an angel who fell, or he was simply created to be a tester, as he is now. Your question is, what if Satan had not fallen? What then? Well, I mean, if God intended for there to be a tester, I believe God would create one. Now, if he created a good angel, knowing that he would fall and become the tester, well, then that works just fine. But if he created angels that would not fall, and he still needed a tester, it seems like he would just go ahead and make one. God can make whatever he needs, whatever he wants for his purposes.
SPEAKER 10 :
So the Arminian view is that God offers redemption and salvation to all. If that’s the case, wouldn’t the fallen angels also have an opportunity for redemption and salvation?
SPEAKER 08 :
Well, we don’t have any information about that. God is not required to provide salvation for anybody. The main thing is that God gives everybody a choice of whether they will follow him or not. And those who choose poorly may never have a chance to be redeemed. I mean, it could be just a snooze you lose or you choose wrong and you go to hell and you never get out again. I mean, God would be entitled to do that, and that would not be contrary to what Arminians believe. Arminians believe not so much that God is giving or is required to give everyone a chance to be saved, but that nobody is going to hell other than by their own choices. So the point is, see, Calvinism teaches that some people, before they’re even born, are predestined to go to hell, and others are predestined to go to heaven. And the parties don’t really have any real say in that matter because that was determined before they were born. They may appear to be making choices in life, but it’s all kind of a sham. I mean, the choices they’re making were all predetermined, so they’re not really free choices at all. And that’s what Calvinism teaches. In that case, what that means is there will be people in hell who, first of all, did not ask to be born and did not have any opportunity to choose whether they’d be in hell or not. It was God’s choice for his glory. He doomed them to hell before they were born. So says the Calvinist. Of course, I don’t believe the Bible teaches anything even remotely like that. The Arminianist says that people who end up in hell end up there because they made a choice to rebel against God. Now, if you add to the picture that God has sent Jesus into the world and offers salvation to mankind, and then they have a choice in that matter as well, Well, that only sweetens the deal in a way. I mean, it means that nobody really has to go to hell even if they have sinned. They can come to Christ. They can repent. They can surrender and be saved. Now, to say that this would also require that the devils be offered salvation as well, it doesn’t necessarily follow. I mean, the Bible makes it very clear in Hebrews that God did not send Jesus to help angels, but to help the seed of Abraham. to help, in other words, people. Jesus didn’t become an angel and die for the sins of the angels. He became a man and died for the sins of the sons of Adam. He became the second Adam. So it would not follow necessarily if we say that God gives people a chance to be saved. It would not follow that he must give angels a chance to be saved if they’ve fallen.
SPEAKER 10 :
But I imagine that he… He loved or loves his angels just as much as us because they’re his creation. They have consciousness. They know right from wrong. So I’d imagine that he loves them just as much as us.
SPEAKER 08 :
Maybe he does. I don’t know. Yeah, it’s very possible.
SPEAKER 10 :
So if that is the case, I think it would follow that he would offer the fallen angels redemption and salvation as well.
SPEAKER 08 :
Well, maybe he did. I don’t know. We don’t really know what arrangements he may have made with the angels. In fact, we are only even aware that any angels have fallen because of two brief statements in Scripture, one in Jude, verse 6, and one in 2 Peter, chapter 2, verse 4, which both simply mention that there are angels that sin and that they are reserved in chains under darkness waiting for the judgments. That’s about the entirety of the information we are given about fallen angels in the Bible. So what God may or may not have offered them in terms of salvation at one time, we have no information about.
SPEAKER 10 :
In considering God’s nature and character, to me, it doesn’t follow that he wouldn’t give everyone an opportunity to repent
SPEAKER 08 :
Well, I won’t dispute that. You know, I mean, God’s nature is gracious and forgiving and loving. And he’s not willing that any should perish. At least that’s what we’re told about humans. And you may be right. It may be that his love for the angels is equal to that of the humans and that he may not be willing for any of them to perish either. We don’t, again, we don’t have specific information about that.
SPEAKER 10 :
Okay, Steve. Thanks a lot.
SPEAKER 08 :
Okay, Alec, thanks for your call. I appreciate you calling. Our next caller is Chris from Carmichael, California. Chris, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 12 :
Thanks for taking my call, Steve. I have a question in Revelation. Early on in the book, when he’s writing the letters to the churches, we have to Philadelphia that they are… I think if they endure, they’ll be kept from the time of trouble that’s coming on the land.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 12 :
My question to that effect, since I know that you think that this book is written about 70 AD heavily in its content, how would that be about 70 AD for the church in Philadelphia if the destruction on Jerusalem geographically is quite a ways away from them?
SPEAKER 08 :
Yeah, why would they be affected? Why would they be affected by the destruction of Jerusalem? Right. Well, I think that he says that I’m going to keep you from the time of trial that’s coming on the whole world to test those who dwell on the land. Now, there’s a time of tribulation that came on the whole world around that time. The Jewish war, of course, was only in Israel, and that wouldn’t directly affect the churches of Asia to whom the book of Revelation was written. It affected the Jews, but that’s a different group of people. However, during the Jewish War, which lasted from 66 to 70 A.D., there was also a crisis in the Roman world. And that occurred in 68 A.D. when Nero committed suicide. The entire Roman Empire was thrown into chaos because there was no natural successor to Nero, and there were quite a few people who wanted to be the next emperor. And there were civil wars. Three different generals fought against each other in Rome to take that position. And one of them named Galba positioned himself as emperor for a short time. And then another one named Otho did. And then a third one named Vitellus did. And then finally, Vespasian became emperor. Sometimes historians call it the year Vespasian. of the five emperors, including Nero and his death. And it was about, not really a year, I think it was more like 18 months. But the Roman world and the city of Rome itself was thrown into total chaos. And there are historians of the Roman Empire that say it’s a marvel that the Roman Empire didn’t completely fall from the interior empire. Division and fighting and civil war and all of that. The guy’s position as emperor, themselves as emperor, and then being assassinated and replaced, and then that guy being assassinated and replaced. It was about as chaotic in Rome as in the Roman world as it was in Israel. Now, the time of testing that came, came on the whole world. And also, it was a test for Israel. The Jewish war was going on at the same time. So anybody in the Roman Empire, whether they were connected to Israel or not, was facing a time of great disruption and great chaos. And Jesus told the church of Philadelphia that he would preserve the Philadelphian church through that great time of chaos that was coming on the whole world. Now, of course, when it says the whole world, if we think of this in terms of how we think of the whole world, then, of course, it didn’t happen to the whole world because we think of the whole planet usually. But the biblical writers, when they said the whole world, they meant the Roman world. For example, in Luke chapter 2 and verse 1, it says that it came to pass in those days that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. Well, all the worlds obviously means the Roman world. Caesar Augustus had no rule over any other part of the world than the Roman world. So when he made a decree that all the world should be registered, he meant, you know, all the world means the Roman Empire. Similarly, in Colossians chapter 1 and verse 6, Paul says, “…the gospel which has come to you as it has also in all the world, and is bringing forth fruit.” So in Colossians 1, 6, Paul said the gospel has come to all the world and was bringing forth fruit in all the world. And yet, of course, it had not expanded beyond the Roman Empire for the most part that he was aware of. And so all the world means the Roman Empire in the first century New Testament writings. And so when it says this is a trial that’s coming on all the world, it would mean that the whole Roman Empire would be disrupted, and it was. So I think that that’s the peril there. that Jesus said that he would preserve the church through.
SPEAKER 12 :
Okay, I really appreciate that explanation. That’s rather helpful. Where do you get the information about what happened in 68?
SPEAKER 08 :
You can get that from any Roman history. You get Gibbon’s rise and fall of the Roman Empire, or in all likelihood, you can just get it from the Encyclopedia Britannica. I mean, it’s just standard secular history of the Roman Empire.
SPEAKER 12 :
Okay. Well, I appreciate your help, Steve. God bless you. Have a good day.
SPEAKER 08 :
All right. Thank you. And by the way, you could probably look up the name Galba in an encyclopedia or online. Galba is G-A-L-B-A. That was one of the emperors who set himself up briefly. And another one was Otho, O-T-H-O. And another one was Vitellus, which I think is spelled V-I-T-E-L-L-U-S. If you looked up those names… probably in Wikipedia, I would imagine, or any encyclopedia, it would probably tell something about that whole period during which they raised themselves up and were brought down. So you’d get some information there. But any standard work on the Roman Empire and its history would talk about those things and give those details. All right, let’s talk next to Joseph in Prescott, Arizona. Joseph, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 11 :
Thank you, Steve. I appreciate it. I’m calling because in my reading of the Bible, it begins to occur to me that Jesus believed in reincarnation and karma. Am I right on that?
SPEAKER 08 :
I can’t think of any passages that would give me that idea, and he did seem to say things that were contrary to that. But what passages are you going by?
SPEAKER 11 :
What you sow, you will reap. is one of the prime ones that comes to mind to me. It’s going to indicate what you’ve done in a previous life that you’re going to have to take care of in the present.
SPEAKER 08 :
Well, I mean, think about it. If you say, listen, you’re going to get what you deserve. Really, that’s what he means. When he says, what you sow, you’ll reap. Whatever you get, whatever you do, you’re going to get what you deserve for it. Well, there could be any number of scenarios that fit that. I mean, reincarnation would be one of them. It would be that you do something in this life and you get paid back in the next life. Or it could be that you have instead just the normal Judeo-Christian idea that you live one time, and then there’s a judgment. The Bible says it is appointed unto man once to die, and after this, the judgment. In fact, Paul even says in 2 Corinthians, at the judgment, every man will receive the things done in his body. So it does sound like everyone’s going to get what they deserve. Everyone’s going to reap what they sow. But there’s certainly no reason to import Eastern religion into that statement. That’s just a way of saying what goes around comes around or justice will be done or anything like that. There’s a lot of different scenarios that could possibly be intended.
SPEAKER 11 :
But it strikes me that the teachings of Christ, which are so profound, are kind of like that movie Groundhog Day. where he would go to bed, he’d wake up with the new weather reporter, it was Bill Murray, wake up with the weather reporter, go out and do a routine, and then he’d make a mistake and he’d have to start all over again. And the transition of the lifetime, so to speak, that he went to in the sense he’d go to bed and wake up, go to bed and wake up, that he began to evolve and achieve, if you will, almost a sense of crisis, a sense of the purity that he got through his change in life through the lessons that he learned.
SPEAKER 08 :
I will agree with you that Groundhog Day and the plot there does resemble reincarnation in principle, but it doesn’t resemble anything I find in the Bible. That’s the point. I’m not denying that there is a view called reincarnation that does suggest that people improve as they go through various lives. But the problem with the comparison is that Bill Murray in that movie Actually, every day he remembered the previous day, and he remembered not to make that mistake again. And every day he made fewer mistakes because he remembered the previous days until he improved. That usually is how you get better, even when you retake a test or when you graduate from first grade going to second grade on third grade.
SPEAKER 11 :
But you’re assuming that mankind has the ability to do all the tests in one lifetime, and that’s an impossibility.
SPEAKER 08 :
Well, we don’t know that that’s impossible. But the point I’m making, but you’re not getting my point. My point is that in that story, the reason that Bill Murray improved each day is because he learned from the lessons of the previous days. In reincarnation, if that is true… Let’s just say you and I have lived thousands of lives before. I don’t remember them. I don’t remember making mistakes in a previous life, so I’m not consciously able to improve them. I have to make all new mistakes in this life, and I’ve made plenty of them. And presumably, if I would come back and be reincarnated again, I’d come back without any memory of this life, so I wouldn’t be able to improve on that either. It’s like we all start from scratch again. But as far as what Jesus taught, I mean, I’m not here to debate the pros and cons of reincarnation. But as far as what Jesus taught, he never taught reincarnation. What he taught is that people will often suffer injustice in this life, but they will be rewarded for it, not in another life cycle, but in heaven. Jesus said, you know, blessed are you when men speak evil of you. And when they persecute you and they cast out your name as evil, for great is your reward in heaven. So he didn’t say, you know, you’re getting a raw deal in this life, but next time when you come around, you’ll have a better life to go through. No, he said your reward will be greater in heaven. Jesus taught that there’s one life to live followed by a judgment. And that judgment… issues people into their eternal reward. Now, I mean, you may find that not something agreeable to you, but that is what Jesus taught.
SPEAKER 11 :
I think there’s a couple of things that we need to explore that are not necessarily presented. One was that the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. took out the book of Enoch from the Bible, which was specific to reincarnation and karma. I think the other thing that… Well, no, they didn’t do that.
SPEAKER 08 :
The Book of Enoch… No, wait, you’re not telling the truth. You’re not telling the truth. The Book of Enoch was never in the Bible. It was an apocryphal book written about two centuries or less before Christ. The Jews did not have it in their Bible, and the Christians did not have it in their Bible. The Jewish Bible is the Old Testament of the Christians. And the Christians didn’t add or subtract anything from it. So the Council of Nicaea didn’t take Enoch out of the Old Testament because it never was in the Old Testament. And if you thought it was, somebody gave you wrong information.
SPEAKER 11 :
Now, what about the Gnostic Gospels that were discovered in Jordan caves recently? And they were put together in a book by Michael Meyer, which you get on Amazon. And it was the actual statements of Jesus told by Mother Magdalene and Thomas, his disciple. Have you read that?
SPEAKER 08 :
Well, I have read some of the Gospel of Thomas. I haven’t read the Gospel of Mary Magdalene or the other Gnostic Gospels. The reason I haven’t is because they’re not authentic. You know, you’re right, we can get them on Amazon today. But they had them back in the second century when they were written, and the church fathers were familiar with them and mentioned them. In the writings of Irenaeus and the other church fathers, they actually mentioned these apocryphal Gospels, and they said they were not authentic. And, of course, scholars know they’re not authentic. Because almost all scholars agree that all the Gnostic Gospels were written in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, which means they weren’t written by Thomas and Mary Magdalene and Philip and Judas and those others whose names are upon them. They were written… by Gnostics. That’s why they’re called the Gnostic Gospels. Gnosticism was a heresy that branched off of Christianity in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, and that’s when those were written. The reason we accept the Gospels we have is because they were written by people in the 1st century and were recognized as authentic by those in the 1st century who retained them. You know, Irenaeus wrote in 170 AD that the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, Those four Gospels, and only those four Gospels, you said, were universally recognized as authentic through the whole Church. But he did mention the other Gospels you’re talking about, and everybody knew there were forgeries. And everyone today knows there are forgeries, too.
SPEAKER 11 :
When you disregard reincarnation and karma, you’re talking about two great religions of the world, Hinduism and Buddhism.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yeah, I’m not a Hindu or a Buddhist.
SPEAKER 11 :
Excuse me?
SPEAKER 08 :
Yeah, I’m not a Hindu or Buddhist, so I am disregarding them.
SPEAKER 11 :
Do you think they hold merit or value with their teachings or understandings? Have you looked at them at all?
SPEAKER 08 :
I have a Buddhist who’s been calling me on this program for 11 years, several times a month. And we’ve had many discussions. As far as Hinduism, I’ve studied some Hinduism. I’m not actually exploring world religions, looking for a new faith. What I have done is I’ve looked at the evidence… that lies behind the Christian faith, the evidence for the authenticity of the Gospels and their historicity, and it’s overwhelming. And the truth claims of the authenticity of the Bible are just the same kind of truth claims you’d have for any historical document that’s got plenty of documentation and verification from other sources. You don’t have documentation to prove that what Buddha came up with, or what the Hindu sages came up with, that those are inspired by God. But Jesus’ life was clearly inspired by God. And so we follow what Jesus said, and that’s what makes us Christians. Now, I mean, clearly, I realize you’re probably not a Christian, since you’re thinking that Buddhism and Hinduism stand on the same plane. But what you probably need to do, is study each of the world’s religions and ask yourself which of these really has some kind of verifiable evidence behind it. I’ve done that, and that’s why I’m a Christian. I’m unashamed of being a Christian because I believe it’s Christianity that has all the evidence on its side.
SPEAKER 11 :
I firstly believe that there were two extraordinary teachers only that came to earth, and that was Jesus and Gautama Buddha. And I feel that their teachings and what they have are very, very similar. And I think the biggest difference between them is the fact that Christianity was in the Western world and became identified and persecuted and was literally, I think, destroyed. and marketed to the extent that the actual integrity of Christianity has lost to the institution of religion and churches and such that fail to really understand the true teachings of Christ.
SPEAKER 08 :
I can appreciate the fact that you think that, because you obviously haven’t done any objective study on church history. I actually have. If you go to my website, there’s 30 lectures on church history, giving a great deal of emphasis on the early Christian history and so forth and how it developed. And I’m pretty familiar with it. I don’t think you are because most of what you’ve said is imaginary about it. If you’re a Buddhist, I don’t expect you to be an expert on church history, of course. And so what I’m simply saying is your characterization of what happened to Christianity has come from apparently anti-Christian propaganda rather than any reliable historical sources. As far as there being two great teachers, Jesus and Buddha, Buddha might have been a great teacher. I don’t know if he was a great teacher or not. I know what he taught. for the most part. I know that Jesus, if he was a great teacher, he was not on the level of Buddha, because Jesus claimed to be the Son of God, and Buddha did not. In fact, Jesus claimed there is a God, and Buddha did not claim that either. So you say they said mainly the same things. Well, if the same things means turn the other cheek and love your enemy, yes, they did say those things, and most great religious teachers of all religions have said those kinds of things. But Jesus taught that there is a God and that we’ll all stand before God and that he’s the son of God come down to redeem us into a proper relationship with God. The Buddha didn’t teach anything remotely like that, and therefore I wouldn’t say that their teachings are very similar in the main. Certainly their ethical teachings have some similarities. I need to take a break, but I’ll keep you on over the break if you want to. I have to take a 30-second break because some of our stations are leaving the air, and we’re going to go on for another half hour. And if you guys want to hear it and your station doesn’t carry the other half hour, you can go to our website, thenarrowpath.com. You can even get the app and hear the whole program that way or stream it from the website. Please stay tuned for 30 seconds, and we’ll be right back with more calls and continuing to talk.
SPEAKER 02 :
You are listening to The Narrow Path with Steve Gregg. The Narrow Path is listener-supported radio. After the show, we invite you to visit thenarrowpath.com to learn more. There are topical audio teachings, blog articles, verse-by-verse teachings, and the radio archives of all our shows. Come on over to thenarrowpath.com. Learn, study, enjoy. We thank you for your support, and we thank you for listening each day to The Narrow Path. We now return you to The Narrow Path with Steve Gregg.
SPEAKER 07 :
This is the best of the Narrow Path Radio broadcast. The following is pre-recorded.
SPEAKER 01 :
Welcome to the Narrow Path Radio Program, hosted by Steve Gregg. Steve is not in the studio today, so calls from listeners will not be able to be taken. In the place of the usual format, we’ve put together some of the best calls from past programs. They cover a variety of topics important to anyone interested in the Bible and Christianity. In addition to the radio program, The Narrow Path has a website you can go to, www.thenarrowpath.com, where you can find hundreds of resources that can all be downloaded for free. And now, please enjoy this special collection of calls from Steve Gray and The Narrow Path.
SPEAKER 08 :
Our next caller is Diane from California. Diane, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 13 :
Hi, Steve. Thank you so much for being there and helping us with these questions. My question kind of comes off of that discussion you just had with the gentleman prior about other religions. I have run across a couple of Jehovah’s Witnesses, and my understanding is that they do not believe in the Holy Spirit and the Trinity, but they say they do believe in the Holy Spirit and the Trinity. And I’m just wondering what your understanding is and also what do you think about their Awake publication, if you have anything to add.
SPEAKER 08 :
Well, the Awake publication, along with the Watchtower magazine, these two publications are magazines they’ve been printing for, I suppose, well, certainly over 100 years. Right. and they are propaganda magazines for their organization, although many of the articles in them do not feature the special beliefs of the Jehovah’s Witnesses and would be recognized as agreeable with most conservative Christians. Now, Jehovah’s Witnesses differ from conservative Christians on some important points, but of course not on every point. They have some of the same ethical views and some of the same beliefs, social views and so forth that Christians have. And so Awake magazine and the Watchtower magazine, they always have some articles in them that a Christian wouldn’t find any real disagreement with. The problem is they mix them in with the articles that do promote their own particular doctrines. And therefore, I don’t consider their magazines to be really worth reading. I mean, like I said, even though some of the articles we might agree with We can find good articles on the same subjects from magazines that aren’t laced with heresy. Now, you say that they tell you they believe in the Holy Spirit and the Trinity. I’m not sure that a real Jehovah’s Witness would say they believe in the Trinity unless they’re practicing what they call theocratic tact. Theocratic tact is a Jehovah’s Witness word for lying. They believe that it’s sometimes okay for them to lie about what they believe if they feel that telling the truth… will shut down a discussion that they hope otherwise will go their way. In other words, when I was about 10 years old, some Jehovah’s Witnesses came to my door, and I didn’t know who they were because I was 10 years old, but I knew the name Jehovah’s Witnesses. And I said, are you Jehovah’s Witnesses? And they said no, because they could tell that was a word I had heard that was negative to me. And they gave me their magazines. Well, when my parents got home, they said, well, these are the Jehovah’s Witness magazines, which, of course, I’ve become very familiar with since then. But I was surprised that they had lied to me. And then I later learned, and it’s written in their magazines, that they consider it a tactical move to, if they feel that telling the truth will turn somebody away from them, they may use their better judgment and lie. And so maybe if they told you they believe in the Trinity, they must have been using theocratic tact in that case. Now, they don’t believe in the Holy Spirit if you mean by the Holy Spirit, God. We believe the Holy Spirit is God, one of the three persons in the Trinity. They don’t believe that. They believe there’s a Holy Spirit, but they believe the Holy Spirit is just God’s active force or power. that he’s no more God than electricity or nuclear power are God. It’s just an impersonal power, impersonal force is the Holy Spirit, in their opinion. They don’t believe in the Trinity, and of course they don’t believe that Jesus is God in any sense, except maybe in the same sense that Moses was a God to Pharaoh, and Satan is the God of this world. They’ll sometimes use those kind of parallels to say, yeah, Jesus was a God too, However, of course, they don’t mean he’s Yahweh or Jehovah God. So they may be using a little bit of double talk with you, but certainly Jehovah’s Witnesses are not allowed to believe in the Trinity. They may be allowed to lie to you about it, but they’re not allowed to believe in the Trinity. If there’s a Jehovah’s Witness that believes in the Trinity, they’d be kicked out. And the Jehovah’s Witnesses are very, very exacting about requiring their members to be very standardized in all their beliefs. And if you disagree with their standard beliefs, you will definitely be kicked out of their organization. That’s how one of their boasts is. They say, you know, Jesus prayed that his disciples would be unified, would be one. And they say, look at all the Protestant churches, how many there are. They’re not one. Look at our organization. All of us agree about everything. And lo and behold, they really do. They really do agree about everything, or else they keep their mouth shut about it if they don’t, because they’ll be kicked out if they don’t agree. And it’s not too hard to maintain an organization where everyone believes the same thing if you simply don’t allow them to be in it if they don’t agree the same thing with you. So that’s a very artificially maintained unity. But I’m telling you, the JWs you’ve met, they would not believe in the Trinity, nor would they believe the Holy Spirit is a person of the Godhead, but they would believe the Holy Spirit is God’s active force. That’s what they would say.
SPEAKER 13 :
Do they believe in hell?
SPEAKER 08 :
They don’t believe in hell. No, they believe that in the resurrection, only the righteous will resurrect, and that the dead know nothing. They don’t believe that we have an eternal soul. And so they believe that when we all die, saved or unsaved, we all go into a state of oblivion. We don’t know anything. We’re nowhere. But on the last day, God will raise the righteous dead. But they don’t believe he’ll raise the wicked dead. If you’re not saved, once you die, there’s nothing more.
SPEAKER 13 :
No heaven, no hell.
SPEAKER 08 :
Right. Well, there’s certainly no heaven for them. In fact, most Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t expect to go to heaven either. They believe that only 144,000 of them will go to heaven and the rest of them will simply be on the new earth, a paradise. But those who are lost, there’s no hell for them, no.
SPEAKER 13 :
But I don’t understand because they seem to believe in this millennium that God will set up his kingdom and that we will live on the earth.
SPEAKER 08 :
They do believe in the millennium, yeah. They’re premillennial.
SPEAKER 13 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 08 :
As many Christians are premillennial, too, yeah.
SPEAKER 13 :
I can’t understand, then, when Jesus made so many remarks about hell, how they can dispute that if they’re using, you know, a Bible that’s real. Yeah.
SPEAKER 08 :
Well, they use their own Bible. They’re the only cult I know of that made their own translation of the Bible, because the existing translations, and there have been over a hundred English translations of the New Testament made in history, and many of them are still in print and available, but the Jehovah’s Witnesses couldn’t find any of them that supported their doctrines, so they had to make their own. And they changed things quite freely when they needed to, to eliminate any reference to anything that they didn’t believe in.
SPEAKER 13 :
That’s just incredible. It’s hard for me to understand that at all.
SPEAKER 08 :
Well, that’s what they did. It’s called the New World Translation of the Bible. Yeah. All right. Well, I would suggest that, you know, don’t let them fool you. You know, I mean… if you stand firm on Christian beliefs and if you know why you believe them and you know the scriptures and so forth, they will have some arguments back for you because they’re very much schooled in how to argue against the Trinity and things like that using their Bible. And if Christians are not very well not very articulate or not very literate in the Bible. JWs can sometimes tie you in knots. If you know your Bible really well, they can’t do a thing to you. And if they find that to be so, they won’t come back to your house anymore because if they can’t fool you, they’re not going to waste time with you.
SPEAKER 13 :
Yeah. Well, this has been extremely insightful and helpful, Steve. I appreciate you being there to answer these questions because I really… I needed help with this.
SPEAKER 08 :
Okay. Well, thank you for calling, Diane.
SPEAKER 13 :
Thank you so much.
SPEAKER 08 :
Good talking to you. You too. Thank you. All right. Our next caller is Alan from Arlington, Washington. Alan, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah. I just had a question in regards to the Calvinistic doctrine of election. They seem to get a lot of their stuff out of Romans, in particular Romans 9, like 16 through 30.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yeah, that’s one of their two favorite passages, yeah. The other is John 6.
SPEAKER 06 :
Okay. Well, maybe you could touch up on John 6 as well. I would just like to hear your ideas on those passages and where they go wrong with them.
SPEAKER 08 :
Okay.
SPEAKER 06 :
I’ll be glad to. And I’ll be taking this call off air.
SPEAKER 08 :
Okay. Okay, thanks for calling. Good talking to you, Alan. You’re talking about Romans 9, beginning at verse 10. Okay. and going through probably about verse 22 or 23, which is a longish passage. But it is a favorite, a favorite Calvinist passage, although it can only really make them happy if they misunderstand what Paul is talking about. In Romans 9, 10, and 11, Paul is discussing the promises God has made to Israel and why it is that it does not appear that those promises have come true. He begins his chapter by talking about how sad he is that Israel has not come to Christ, and he would have expected that Israel would come to Christ, since there are promises in the Old Testament that God would save Israel. And here Christ has come to save the world, and there are many people saved, but for the most part, Israel is not among them. The Jews, for the most part, did not receive Christ, and therefore are not saved, and therefore it appears that the promises have not been fulfilled. And that’s what Paul’s wrestling with in Romans 9, 10, and 11. And what he comes up with right at the beginning in verse 6 is he says, it’s not that the word of God has taken no effect. That statement means it’s not that these promises have failed to come true, but rather he says they are not all Israel who are of Israel. What that means is that not everybody who is of the nation of Israel, of the race of Israel, not all of them are Israel, at least not the Israel that the promises pertain to. He goes on to argue for three chapters that there’s only a remnant within Israel who the promises really are made to. The promises God made were for the faithful remnant of Israel, not for the apostate. And he goes on to argue, and God has fulfilled the promise. He has saved the remnant of Israel. He gives himself as an example. He’s part of the remnant of Israel. He’s a Christian. And he says even today there is a remnant of those who are justified by grace. And this is his argument. In the midst of it, though, in chapter 9, in the beginning stages, he wants to point out that God is not obligated to apply the promises beyond the range that he intends. That is to say, if Jews think, well, God, you should have included all Jews in this promise, Paul is saying God doesn’t have to do that. God intended only these promises to be fulfilled to the faithful remnant. And being a Jew by race does not necessarily make you part of the remnant, and that God has every right to select within the family of Israel only those that please him, only those that believe in him, and save them and reject the others. That’s his argument. And so he begins it actually… As far back as verse 7, he says, Nor are they all children, because they are the seed of Abraham. But in Isaac your seed shall be called. Now, he’s just said that being a child of Abraham doesn’t count for anything in itself. Only Isaac, of all of Abraham’s eight children, only Isaac was called. So that means seven of Abraham’s children who were physically descendants of Abraham, as much as any Jew is. seven of them were nothing, and one of them was the chosen one, Isaac. And then he talks about how Isaac had two sons, Jacob and Esau, and they were both equally sons of Abraham and Isaac, but only one of them, Jacob, was chosen. He doesn’t go further, but he could point out that in every generation, only the believing… were the ones chosen. It never was the case that everyone born of Abraham or born of Abraham-Isaac or born of Abraham-Isaac and Jacob, never was it the case that everybody in the family was the Israel of God, the faithful remnant. That’s why John the Baptist said to the Jews, do not say within yourselves we have Abraham as our father. God is able of these stones to raise up children to Abraham. In other words, being a child of Abraham doesn’t count for anything in itself unless you’re a believer. unless you’re part of the faithful remnant. Now, in making that point, he talks about Jacob and Esau when they were still in the womb, in their mother’s womb, Rebekah’s. In verse 10, he says, Not only this, but when Rebekah also had conceived by one man, even our father Isaac, then there’s a long parenthesis where he says, For the children not yet being born, nor having done good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand not of works, but of him who calls. Close parenthesis. It was said to her, the older shall serve the younger. As it is written, Jacob I have loved, Esau I have hated. Now Calvinists use this because they believe that God has chosen some individuals to be saved and go to heaven forever, and other individuals he chose to go to hell. And he made this choice before anyone was born. that when we are born, we’re already born under either the sentence of damnation or under the destiny of being sons of God, because God made all those predeterminations, all this predestination was made before the foundation of the world. So everyone who’s ever been born has been born either to be inevitably damned or inevitably saved, because that’s election, that’s predestination in their view. And so they say, well, look at here. Jacob and Esau. Jacob was chosen. Esau was not chosen. And this was before they were born, before they did good or bad. So it clearly wasn’t based on anything they did. It was just based on God making a choice. Well, that’s true. It was. But the question here is, what was being chosen and for what purpose? Paul is not here discussing who’s going to heaven and who’s going to hell. He’s talking about… In Abraham’s family, there was one person of Abraham’s children who was chosen to be the one through whom the promises would be fulfilled. And when that one, Isaac… had two sons, one of them was chosen to be the one through whom the promises would be fulfilled. In other words, he’s not saying who’s going to heaven, who’s going to hell. For example, Ishmael was not chosen to be the one. But we have no reason to believe he went to hell. The Bible doesn’t say he was an unbeliever or that he went to hell or anything like that. Paul is not describing people going to heaven or hell. He’s describing how God would select within the family of Abraham, in every generation, one party… to carry on the family destiny of bringing the Messiah into the world. The Jews, as the chosen people, should not be thought that they’re chosen to be saved. They were chosen to bring the Messiah into the world so that the whole world could be saved. The Jews were not chosen above Gentiles to go to heaven. Any Gentile could go to heaven who had faith, and any Jew who didn’t have faith would go to hell, too. God never made a racial choice of people to go to heaven or hell. But he did make a racial choice of which race and which individuals in that race would in fact be used to fulfill the promise he made to Abraham. And what was the promise he made to Abraham? That through your seed, all the families of the earth would be blessed. The New Testament identifies that seed of Abraham as Christ. Through Christ, all the nations of the world will be blessed. And it was through, not Ishmael, but Isaac, that Christ was going to come. And not Esau, but Jacob. Through him, Christ was going to come, and so forth. What Paul is arguing is not about personal salvation. He’s talking about God choosing one branch of the family and rejecting the other branches of the family for the purpose, the earthly purpose, of bringing the Messiah into the world. He’s not talking about their heavenly destinies or their hellish destinies. He’s talking about fulfilling a promise God made to Abraham which is fulfilled on earth. The coming of the seed of Abraham, Christ. Now, so Paul is not even discussing the issues that Calvinists want to discuss. They want this to be about personal salvation and personal damnation. Paul hasn’t even raised those subjects in this discussion. And furthermore… The choice of Jacob, again here, over Esau, is not really the choice of one man over another man, but one nation over another. It was going to be the nation of Jacob that would bring forth the Messiah, not the nation of Esau. Now, how do we know that? Well, because of the verses that Paul quotes here. He said it was said to Rebekah of the two sons before either of them was born, he said, the older shall serve the younger. It’s a quotation from Genesis 25-23. And if you read it in the original context, the twins were striving in her womb. And she was curious. She inquired of the Lord. And the Lord said, there are two nations in your womb. Two peoples or people groups will be separated from between your feet. One will be greater than the other. And the older shall serve the younger. Now, the older was Esau and the younger Jacob. But Esau never served Jacob. There never was a time when the man Esau served Jacob. So if this is about individuals, it was a false prophecy. And Paul has no business quoting it as if it’s authoritative, because Esau never in any setting served Jacob. But the Edomites, the nation of Esau, did serve Israel, the nation of Jacob. And that’s what the prophecy meant. In fact, the prophecy began with the words, two nations are in your womb. It’s clearly talking about God choosing the nation of Jacob, over the nation of Esau now the other verse that Paul quotes is from Malachi chapter 1 verse 2 where he says Jacob I have loved Esau I have hated now this prophecy was made at the end of the Old Testament it wasn’t even a prophecy it was just God’s pointing out that both Israel and Esau the two nations of Jacob and Esau both of them went into captivity in Babylon around 586 actually Israel in 586 Edom in 583 B.C. uh But Israel was restored out of Babylon. Esau’s nation was not. And therefore God had shown special love, special preference to Jacob’s people, Israel, which he had not shown to Esau’s people. This is not a statement about God loving the man Jacob and hating the man Esau. It’s talking about the nations in it. God has favored one nation over the other again. Both before they were born in the womb, he said that the nation of Esau would serve the nation of Jacob. And sure enough, hundreds of years later, he points out, about 1,500 years later, that his dealings with them has shown this to be true. That God has shown special love toward Jacob’s people, Israel, by restoring them from Babylon. He did not show any similar love toward Esau’s people. And the word hate in a context like this just means to love less. The Bible uses this dichotomy many times, to love and to hate less. When these two terms are contrasted with each other, the one that is hated is simply one who’s loved less than the other one. Not necessarily hated in the sense we would use the term as a Hebraism. But the point here is this is not talking about that. Now, he goes on and talks about some more things. I don’t have time because my lines are full to go through all of it. That’s their favorite verse. They also like the potter and the clay down further on. But let me just recommend that you go to my website, thenarrowpath.com. Go to the verse-by-verselectures.com. And because I have verse-by-verse teaching there, MP3 files through the entire Bible, verse-by-verse, go to Romans 9 and listen to what I have to say about it because I go through, of course, every verse and talk about it in great detail. But I have more time in my lectures to do it than I have here when I’ve got a full switchboard waiting to talk to me and only a few minutes left. I hope that’s somewhat helpful. But as I said, go to veneropath.com. Click on verse-by-verse teachings. and go to Romans, and go to Romans 9, and listen to that lecture. I think there’s probably a couple lectures because it’s so lengthy. But you’ll get a full treatment of every verse in that section and in the whole Bible, of course, if you listen to enough of those lectures. Let’s talk to Joy from Sacramento, California. Joy, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 04 :
Hello. Thank you for taking my call. Is the book of Enoch of today the same book of Enoch that’s mentioned in the Bible today?
SPEAKER 08 :
Probably. It has the same passage. Jude quotes from the book of Enoch, and the passage he quotes is found in the book of Enoch that we can get today.
SPEAKER 03 :
So is it safe to listen to it or read it and not be misread by some kind of doctrine?
SPEAKER 08 :
Early Christians read Enoch quite a bit. They didn’t believe it was scripture, but they did read it for enjoyment. It’s kind of a sensational book, a little like the book of Revelation. And the early Christians kind of liked books like that. There’s nothing wrong with reading the book of Enoch. In fact, like I said, Jude quoted from it. He didn’t quote it as scripture, but he quoted from it because he and his readers all knew the book and liked it.
SPEAKER 04 :
So you think that the stuff in the book of Enoch is true?
SPEAKER 08 :
Not necessarily. No, not necessarily. I mean, just like if you read the book Pilgrim’s Progress. Is that a true story? Well, no. No, it’s not a true story. But it’s got some truths in it, some valuable truths in it. The book of Enoch would have some things that Christians would not necessarily have to hold to. But to my knowledge, it has no dangerous doctrines in it.
SPEAKER 03 :
Okay, thank you very much. You have a blessed day.
SPEAKER 08 :
All right, we’ll talk next to Steve from Cannon Beach, Oregon. Steve, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 09 :
Oh, hi, Steve. I have a quick question on what I call narrator omniscience. I’ve been reading the Bible many times, and it’s recently struck me that there’s lots of situations where something is said about somebody saying something And there was no witnesses to record that. And a very quick example is when, in the book of Judges, Ehud kills Eglon. And he puts a knife in his belly, and then he runs off. And then the guards who were guarding Eglon have this conversation about, well, I wonder what’s keeping him. Maybe he’s going to the bathroom or something like that.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 09 :
the guards aren’t going to be sitting there writing that in the Bible. They’re not going to know the world. But that’s just one quick example. Another example is when the Egyptians are chasing the Israelites. They’re in the middle of the Red Sea, and then a conversation in the middle of the Red Sea. I mean, the Israelites aren’t around listening to that, but there’s a verbatim quote.
SPEAKER 08 :
So I’m just wondering what your… Before we run out of time here, there’s two ways we can go on that. One is a person could take a very high view of inspiration and say, well, God revealed to the writers who were prophets. I mean, Moses and Joshua and the writers of Judges presumably had prophetic revelations from God, and that’s why they’re considered to have written inspired books. Therefore, it’s very possible that God revealed those things. Another possibility is that… they speculated about the conversations that would have been spoken there. I mean, that would be the natural thing for someone to say. If somebody didn’t have as high a view of inspiration, they might just say, well, this is what the writers assumed these people would say, and probably did. The truth is that conversations like that, never contain any important theological information. So, in other words, even if the conversation hadn’t taken place or was taking place differently, it wouldn’t change anything of importance. You know, one could argue that God inspired every single word and therefore revealed to the writer that these conversations took place. Or, as I said, if someone had a lower view of inspiration, they might just say, well, they’re speculating about these things, but they’re not very important details, and it might just have been a literary way of writing such a story. Apart from that, I can’t tell, but it’s a good observation. You’ve been listening to the Narrow Path Radio Broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg, and we are a listener-supported ministry. If you’d like to write to us, the address to write to is The Narrow Path, PO Box 1730, Temecula, California, 92593. Also, our website is thenarrowpath.com. You can donate from there if you want, or everything there is free if you want to just take it at thenarrowpath.com. Join us again tomorrow, and we’ll continue our discussion.
