This episode dives into repentance and recurring sin, a challenge faced by many believers. Understand the difference between stumbling and living in rebellion, as Steve explains the heart of repentance and true salvation. Also, delve into a discussion about John Nelson Darby’s dispensationalist theology and how it influenced modern Christian thought and global politics. Listeners are treated to an engaging discourse on how historical and theological shifts have shaped views on Israel and biblical prophecy. As the discussion unfolds, Steve also untangles complexities surrounding the Trinity, explaining how the concept of one God in three persons is rooted in
SPEAKER 1 :
Thank you.
SPEAKER 03 :
Good afternoon and welcome to the Narrow Path Radio Broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we’re live as we usually are on weekdays at this time. And we have an open phone line as we generally do on weekdays at this time for an hour. Commercial free time for you to call in and ask your questions about the Bible or the You can call in to disagree with the host. We’ll consider that also. The number to call is 844-484-5737. We have a few lines open right now, so this is a very good time to get through. Sometimes later in the program, it will not be a good time to try to get through. You can get through right now if you call 844-484-5737. Now, I’ve been mentioning I’m coming to Texas next weekend, and I’ll be there through the weekend and through the following weekend as well. And if you live in Texas, as many of our listeners do, I’ll probably be coming someplace not far from you because I’ll be in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. I’ll also be in the Houston area. I’ll also be up… in the Bernie-type area, in the hill, what’s it called, the hill country area. And I’m not sure where else, but all the cities I’ll be speaking in are listed at our website, thenarrowpath.com. That’s thenarrowpath.com under the tab that says announcements. All right, now our lines are full, so let’s go to the phones and talk with Carrie from Fort Worth, Texas. Hi, Carrie, welcome.
SPEAKER 09 :
Thanks, Dave. I have a couple things. The other day, I was watching a program about the Statue of Liberty. And they were interviewing various contemporary people trying to get their definition of what liberty was. None of them came up with my definition, but I remembered a scripture. I don’t know exactly where it is. It says where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. And I was wondering what the definition of liberty would be in that instance.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, that scripture is 2 Corinthians 3.17 where the Spirit of the Lord is there’s liberty. Liberty means freedom. But of course that’s a vague term in itself because what is freedom? Freedom from what? We don’t have absolute freedom. We don’t have absolute liberty. For example, we’re not We’re not at liberty to just leave our bodies and go do something for a while and come back into our bodies, although some Eastern cults do that kind of thing or claim to. I mean, there are things we aren’t free from. We can’t free ourselves from our bodies, even if we’d like to be. Some of us have pain or suffering in our bodies. We’d love to be free of that. That liberty from that is not one of the things that Paul is talking about. Of course, the Statue of Liberty… would be referring to liberty from over much government intrusion in your private affairs. Now, of course, that’s always a relative thing, because unless you have no government at all, the government does impinge on the liberty of people for the sake of the common good. And, for example, the government extracts taxes to pave roads. Now, You might say, well, I don’t want to pay any taxes. I just want to keep all my money and use it the way I want to. Well, I don’t know of any society that’s had that freedom in modern times, and yet we all benefit from the roads. So, I mean, there are senses in which we have some of our liberties impinged upon for the sake of benefits that we all appreciate. Fire departments, for example, police departments. the military, for example. These are the kinds of services that the government provides and which everybody benefits from. And so they’ll, you know, without our permission even, they’ll say, well, we’re going to raise taxes for this or that or the other thing related to those things. Now, therefore, we don’t have absolute liberty. No nation does. But probably the most liberated, most free country there ever was, was Israel under the Mosaic Law. They only had to behave. That means they only had to not do bad things. And they had to do some very non-intrusive religious things because they were a society that was under one religion. But for the most part, their daily lives were unimpinged, especially in the period of the judges. And so, you know, liberty, what is liberty? Well, when we talk about political liberty, we’re simply talking about having a minimum of intrusions into our preferences, our free time and our free money and our free choices imposed by the government. We don’t want those. We don’t want very many of those. And that’s why people come here from other countries. They want that kind of freedom, and their governments are too intrusive. Now, when Paul talks about where the Spirit of the Lord is, there’s liberty, I think what he’s saying there, it’s like what James refers to as the law of liberty. James talks about how we have to keep the law of liberty. He also calls it the royal law, which he identifies as you shall love your neighbor as you love yourself. Why is that the law of liberty? Well, because as a Christian, you are given the spirit of Christ within you to generate within you the fruit of the spirit, which is love. And therefore, though the commandment is that I must love my neighbor, it’s also something that is generated through not by my own efforts. It’s generated by the power of the Holy Spirit in me. So, in fact, it’s what I want to do. And when you do what you want to do, that’s the very definition of liberty. As opposed to having rules imposed upon you that you’d rather not do, and it goes against your grain. But you have to do it anyway. Now, that’s where you could wish for more liberty. Now, the Christian faith is the most liberated faith, although we are subject to Christ and his law and so forth. But the thing is, he writes his law in our hearts so that our hearts are inclined toward it. When he tells us to love our neighbor, that’s what we want to do. Unless, of course, we don’t have the Holy Spirit, in which case we’re not really Christians. The fruit of the Spirit is love. Paul said in Romans 5 that the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. So there’s a work that’s done inside of us by the Holy Spirit which inclines us toward those values and toward those actions that God wants us to do, which makes it easier. That’s why Jesus, I think, one reason he said that my yoke is easy, my burden is light. When you’re wearing a yoke, that’s actually an emblem of being in bondage to something. The ox that’s pulling a cart and has a yoke on its neck is trapped. It’s in bondage to its master. And that’s not necessarily an easy yoke for it. But the yoke that Christ puts upon us, it also brings us into subjection to him. But it’s an easy yoke because he changes us in our hearts so that we want to do the things that he requires. And that’s the liberty, I think, that comes from the Spirit of the Lord. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there’s liberty. Now, I also think that this means, in many other respects, we’re free from the law of Moses, which the Jews were not. And in Galatians, Paul tells the The Galatian Christians who are being tempted, and some are trying to persuade them to come under the law of Moses, he says, stand firm in the liberty with which Christ has made you free and do not become entangled again in the yoke of bondage. That’s talking about bondage to the law of Moses. And so we are liberated from that, too. So there’s more ways than one. I also think, too, that the church as a community is a community that is free. That is, we’re not under some heavy authority figures in our society, in our Christian community. Now, a lot of pastors have not agreed with that, and they felt like everyone should obey them. And even they feel like they can kick people out of the body of Christ, or out of their church anyway, which shouldn’t be any different, if someone disagrees with them. So, I mean, that’s a very totalitarian kind of rule that some pastors impose. you can tell the Spirit of God is not there because that is not liberty. People are not given the liberty to follow Christ in their conscience and to be led by the Holy Spirit when there’s some man who imposes his authority upon them and says, you’ve got to do it my way. I realize that pastors in many cases have been taught that that’s the way you’re supposed to be a pastor. But if they were taught that, they weren’t taught it by Christ because Christ said, you know, the rulers of the Gentiles impose their authority on people. But he says, it shall not be so among you that he that would be chief among you must be the slave of everybody else. So a pastor who’s been taught that everybody’s supposed to obey him, he’s not been taught by Christ. He’s been taught by the rulers of the Gentiles who happen to wear Christian labels and call their organizations churches. But the truth is, the true leaders that Christ recognizes and authorizes are the ones who see themselves as the slaves of all, so that the people in the church are not under some tyranny of a leader. They’re at liberty to follow the Holy Spirit. So the liberty of the Christian is multifaceted, I would say.
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, you gave a long answer to a question. I had a little shorter definition. I said, Liberty is the freedom to do what is right in the eyes of God, and you just basically made a longer answer to that, and I think we’re in agreement there.
SPEAKER 03 :
That is my want. That is what I do most of the time. I give long answers to questions that you could answer more short. All right.
SPEAKER 09 :
If you have time for one more.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, I’ve got lines full, and we’ve taken a quarter of the program so far. Why don’t you call again tomorrow?
SPEAKER 09 :
I’ll call you back another day. Thank you.
SPEAKER 03 :
All right. Thank you, Kerry. Bye now. Okay, Andrew in Orange County, California. Welcome.
SPEAKER 05 :
Hey, Steve. I would very much like to hear your opinion on the idea of the seven-day creation week described in Genesis 1 being a prophecy of the overall intended timeframe and themes for humanity. Specifically, each creation day reflects a thousand-year period. It appears to line up fairly well when you look back at history. For example, the division of light and darkness on the first day reflecting the fall of man, life in the sea, created on the fifth day reflecting the gospel spreading across the Gentile world, and so on. There’s a lot to be said on this topic, and I’m sure you’re familiar with it, so I won’t drag on, but I have a ton of stuff for you. First-time caller, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the matter.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, well, I appreciate that. Let me answer you. First of all, many of the church fathers did believe that the creation week, the six days of creation followed by the Sabbath day, was a picture of the whole of human history. Not church history, human history. They thought that from the time of creation to the time of Christ’s second coming would be 6,000 years. And with a thousand years representing a day or a day representing a thousand years, this would mean like the first six days of creation would be corresponding to the period from the creation of Adam to the end of history as we know it when Christ returns. The seventh day, which was the Sabbath in Genesis, was thought to be the thousand year millennium when Jesus comes back. The early church fathers, many of them. were premillennial, which means they believed that Jesus would come back and would establish a millennial kingdom, a thousand-year reign. And they compared that with the day of rest, a thousand years. So they’re seeing all of human history really being 7,000 years from Adam to the end of the millennium. And each thousand years would correspond to a day of creation. Now, the correspondences that you were laying out sounded like you were corresponding it to the Christian age in some way, because you were saying, you know, the second day was like when the gospel was going out to the world. Well, that wouldn’t have happened until the fifth day, if we’re saying every thousand years, every day corresponds to a thousand years, because the first four days would be the first 4,000 years, which is from Adam to Christ. Then Christ’s coming… would correspond in that case to the fifth day because it would be the fifth thousand years. And then the next century, the second half of church history, would be the sixth day. And then the coming of Christ, if he were to come at this point, would begin the seventh day. So I have to say that this was a popular view. I think some of the rabbis held a view like that too, but I know I’ve found it in some of the church fathers. And I also heard it from people that taught me when I was a young Christian. The thing I can’t find is any biblical basis for seeing it this way. First of all, when Peter said in 2 Peter 3 that a day to the Lord is as a thousand years and a thousand years is as a day, I don’t think he’s giving us some kind of a measure to say when the Bible says a day, it means a thousand years. Or when the Bible says a thousand years, it means a day. There are people who kind of want to take it that way, but that’s not what Peter’s up to. Peter’s saying that in the last days there would come people who were scoffing, saying that Jesus has delayed his coming so long, perhaps we shouldn’t expect it at all. And Peter says, well, a date to the Lord is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is like a day. What he’s saying there is that it may seem to us a long time, But what seems a long time to us isn’t really a long time from God’s perspective. And it also, I think, is saying that his promise is true no matter how long it takes for him to get around to finishing it, to fulfilling it. And therefore, when God’s made a promise, it doesn’t matter if it’s been a day or if it’s been a thousand years. It’s no less true because God, you know, God is not on our time frame and he can wait a thousand years or more. It would be like waiting a day. So I don’t think he’s saying anything about the Genesis creation week. There’s no hint of it there. Now, the other place where you find similar language is in Psalm 90, verse 4, where the psalmist said, A thousand years in your sight are as but yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night. Now, Peter, in 2 Peter 3, is no doubt alluding to this statement in the psalms. 1,000 years on your side are like yesterday. Okay, well, that’s kind of like saying 1,000 years is like a day to you. But then he says it’s like a watch in the night. Now, a watch in the night is three hours. So he’s saying 1,000 years to you is like a day or it’s even like three hours. In other words, we’re not talking about some direct correspondence. One day equals a thousand years. One thousand years equals a day. Use that as a calculating tool for figuring out how long history will last and so forth. That’s not at all what’s intended in either passage. It’s just saying like a thousand years to God is like a day. It’s like just like a few hours, actually, which is simply saying it’s not really like a long time to God. So I don’t follow the church fathers in thinking that way. I’m not saying they all thought that way, but several of them said things like that. but they didn’t have any biblical basis for it. The Bible doesn’t say that. And I’m not really sure that I would see a parallel. Let’s say the first day he said, let there be light. Okay, well that corresponds to the first thousand years from Adam halfway up to the time of Abraham. And then from then to Abraham’s time would be like the second day where he made a firmament between the waters above and below. I’m not really sure how that corresponds, but And then the next 1,000 years is from Abraham to David. That would correspond to the dry land appearing. I don’t know really how that would be relevant. Then from David to Christ would be the next one. And that would be like the fourth day where the sun, moon, and stars were made. So I don’t think that 1,000 years from David to Christ was more like that than any other period. So I’m not really seeing the validity of that particular theory. though I certainly heard it, and it’s not an uncommon one. All right. Okay, let’s talk next to Michelle from Derry, New Hampshire. Michelle, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 01 :
Hi, Steve. Thank you for taking my call, and thank you for all that you do. I learned so much from your program. I have a two-part question. My husband and I changed churches a couple of years ago, and we go to a more strict church now, a Baptist church. And I noticed that nobody really says God bless you when people sneeze. I know it seems kind of like a weird question. Is there a reason for that biblically? And also, Easter and Christmas, I know obviously they have bigger meaning than the worldly way that people celebrate. But is there a… something saying that you can’t use the Easter Bunny or Santa for your children.
SPEAKER 03 :
Is that a position that church is taking?
SPEAKER 01 :
I don’t know. I’ve never heard anybody talk about Santa or the Easter Bunny. I mean, I know that they know what the holiday is really about.
SPEAKER 03 :
Okay. Well, as far as saying God bless you when someone sneezes, that is a custom that arose a long time ago, hundreds of years ago, in an age where where there was a lot of superstition. And from what I understand, people thought that when you sneeze, you’re expelling demons. And that’s a good thing, and they wished you a blessing for it. Everything I’ve heard or read over the years is that that’s the beginning of that custom, that on the superstition that when a person sneezes, they’re expelling demons, that someone wants to, as it were, congratulate them for it. Well, bless your heart. God bless you, you know. And so that’s kind of a superstitious thing to do. Now, I’m not against it. In fact, I probably do it just without thinking because that’s how we’re raised, to say God bless you. But then again, I don’t have any problem wishing a blessing on people at any time. But I think when we do, we don’t have that superstitious notion there. I don’t know anyone who believes that when you sneeze, you’re expelling demons. So its origins are superstitious. But the practice of it doesn’t seem… harmful. No one holds that superstition anymore, so I can’t think of it being objectionable to anybody. As far as the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus and those things that have to do with religious holidays, I frankly have always been able to do without them myself from the time I was a child to this day when I raised my children. We didn’t really get into the Santa Claus thing or the Easter Bunny thing. Some people do, and some people complain that the Easter bunny in particular is sort of a fertility symbol from pagan practices of worshiping fertility gods. And eggs also have that idea, they say. Well, that may be true, but I don’t think it means that to anybody today. And some people have said things like Christmas holidays, things that people do. Oh, they have pagan origins. I think some of them do. I know that some of them don’t. For example, the Christmas tree is often said to have been a pagan origin. But I think everything I could find researching it was that it was from Germany from a Christian queen or maybe an English queen. But I think it was a German queen. It was a Christian custom bringing the tree in. So a lot of. A lot of, what should we call them, urban legends about history of these things are out there. But to my mind, I don’t care where the Christmas tree began or, you know, the Yule log or the wreath or, you know, those kinds of things, lights. And I don’t care where the Easter bunny or the eggs began. I would just say they don’t mean any of those ancient things to me if they meant that to someone a long time ago. Now, by the way, I’m not into those things myself. Most of my life I’ve not really paid attention to Christmas and Easter particularly because the apostles didn’t and the church didn’t for hundreds of years in the beginning. So I don’t see any obligation to it. And I also think that every day, which in my life should be a celebration of the birth and the resurrection of Christ. And some people like to set aside special days for that, and that’s how Christmas and Easter did get set aside. And then some people added some customs like you’ve described, which strike me as meaningless, unless they mean something negative to the people who do them. And in that case, bad. I mean, if it means something bad, if somebody’s worshiping a fertility god, by hiding Easter eggs for their kids to find, well, you shouldn’t worship fertility gods. I don’t know anyone who does. All the Christians I know who celebrate Easter, if they have eggs they hide or whatever, or bunnies and things like that, I don’t think any of them are worshipping fertility gods, so I can’t imagine why that would be a problem. Some people do because some people are legalistic by nature and really do not like the idea of anyone having any liberty of conscience. And so they like to impose those kinds of restrictions on people and say, oh, you can’t do that. That’s pagan. All right. Thank you for your call. We have a break coming up here. I’m going to talk next to Rick from Worcester, Massachusetts, but I’m going to hold you until after the break because… Rick, I don’t want to have to cut you off in the middle. So as we come toward our bottom of the hour break, I want to remind you of many things. One of them is, and I say this too seldom because we have too many calls. I don’t have time to say anything like this. There is a free app, The Narrow Path, that I really want you to get because once you have it, just about everything that’s at our website is available to you on your mobile device. And that’s a lot. That’s like 1,500 of my lectures, MP3 files. It’s got links to our Facebook page. It’s got links to several other things like Matthew713.com and OpenTheo.org, which are amazing websites that have tremendous uses for you. There’s a lot of stuff. On the app. Now, our app, you don’t get it at the App Store. There is an app, an older one, at the App Store, but it’s not as functional as our newest app. So let me tell you how to get the newest app. You go to your browser. Now, most people get their apps, I think, from the App Store or from Google Play, but don’t do that. Go to either Safari on an Apple device or Google or whatever. browser you use on your Android, and go to thenarrowpath.app, thenarrowpath.app. There you’ll find instructions how to download an icon onto your device, and then whenever you click it, it’ll take you to the app. It’s a web-based app. It’s not your ordinary app, but it does all the same things an app does, and it’ll take you to all the stuff that you want from our website. Our website, on the other hand, which has all the same stuff on it, is TheNarrowPath.com. So TheNarrowPath.app on a browser will take you to our app, which is very functional, very useful. If you just want to go on a computer to our website, go to TheNarrowPath.com. Now, The Narrow Path is listener-supported. Everything we offer is free of charge. You can download everything we have for free, and we don’t advertise products. We don’t sell products. But we do depend on listener support to pay radio stations for us to have the radio program, as we have for the past 28 years. If you’d like to write to us, the narrow path address is P.O. Box 1730, Temecula, California, 92593. That’s the narrow path, P.O. Box 1730, Temecula, California, 92593. And I’ll be back in about 30 seconds, so don’t go away. We have another half hour coming up.
SPEAKER 06 :
Thank you. toward a radically Christian counterculture, as well as hundreds of other stimulating lectures, can be downloaded in MP3 format without charge from the Narrow Path website, www.thenarrowpath.com. There is no charge for anything at the Narrow Path website. Visit us and be amazed at all you’ve been missing.
SPEAKER 03 :
Welcome back to the Narrow Path Radio Broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg, and we’re live for another half hour. We’ve got one phone line open if you want to join us. All the others are full. If you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith, or you want to express a difference of opinion from that of the host, we welcome your call. The number is 844-484-5737. That’s 844-484-5737. Our next caller is Rick from Worcester, Massachusetts. Hi, Rick. Welcome.
SPEAKER 07 :
Hi, Steve. Thanks for taking my call. Uh-huh. So I just had a question. So the Bible talks about how Jesus says, through grace we are saved by faith. Now, what if somebody has, you know, we have daily temptations and we struggle sometimes with the same sins and sin nature. Now, We believe in Jesus Christ as our Savior, but what if we keep falling into the same sins? Does that mean that we are not saved because we haven’t repented for these sins that keep occurring? What is your opinion on that? Thanks.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, that’s a very good question. Well, the question is whether we have actually repented of those sins or not. The Bible says that we need to repent and believe the gospel. That’s what Jesus said in Mark chapter 1 and verse 15, he said, The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, therefore, and believe the gospel. Paul said in Acts that he was going about teaching repentance toward God and faith toward the Lord Jesus Christ. So repentance and faith. The writer of Hebrews chapter 6 says that the foundational things that we need to eventually have established and go beyond like a foundation are repentance, From dead works and faith toward God. And he lists some other things. So repentance and faith are mentioned by many New Testament authors, including Jesus and Paul and so forth. What is repentance? Well, you know, if you see someone who’s committing the same sin over and over again, that may be a strong indication that they haven’t repented of it. But before we jump to that conclusion, we need to ask what does repentance mean? Repentance doesn’t mean you’ve stopped sinning. But it does mean that you want to stop sinning, that you’re determined to stop sinning, that sinning is not okay with you anymore. Repent means to change your mind. Metanoia is the Greek word for repent. It means to change your mind. Now, before you come to Christ, you sin, and you don’t care that you sin. In fact, you kind of are pursuing that. Your whole life is probably a pursuit of sin, self-gratification, and doing your own thing. That’s sin, okay? Now, when you repent, you change your mind and say, wait a minute, this isn’t okay. This is displeasing to God. God is the one that I’m supposed to be living for, pleasing. He owns me. He created me. He bought me by the blood of Christ. I need to stop this life of disobedience and start obeying God. I need to give up these sins. Now, when you’ve made that change of mind, it means that you don’t approve of sin anymore. Now, when you don’t approve of something, if you very strongly don’t approve of it, you’re going to make every effort to avoid doing it. But that doesn’t mean that people never do things they disapprove of. People often do things they disapprove of. And the way the Bible calls it, it calls it stumbling. It’s not what you normally do, but it’s what happens when you stumble. And out of weakness, out of foolishness, Christians who have actually made a decision that they do not want to approve of sin ever again in their life still stumble into sin. Because the Bible says the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh. And these two are contrary to one another. So you don’t do what you want to do. In Galatians chapter 5 and verse 17. So we often do what we don’t really want to do. Now, If I have decided I do not want to commit X, you name it, put in your favorite sin that you used to do, I don’t want to do that anymore because it’s displeasing to God. I want to live a holy life. I want to please God, not me. And that’s my determination. I’m really serious about this. But I still fall once in a while into it. Okay, well, falling isn’t what tells you whether you’ve repented or not. Whether you approve of it or not goes a long way to telling whether you have repented or not. Because if you change your mind and become convinced that it is not okay to do that, then if you do stumble into it, if you do out of weakness fall, you hate it. You hate it and you renounce it. You repent of it. You tell God you’re sorry. You confess it. And you make every determination that you will not do that again. In fact, you might even have to amend some things in your life that you know that when you do these other things, it makes you, by stages, more vulnerable to fall into that sin. So you have to avoid the occasions and so forth. Now, if somebody really, in other words, wants to quit… Their drinking habit, let’s say, or pornography habit or something like that, it’s really got a grip on them. Well, the first thing they do is repent, which means they say, this is not okay. I will never approve of this again. Even if I fall out of weakness, I will not make excuses for it. It’s not okay. It’s wrong. And I will never resign myself to it. And I will fight against it. And if that’s the way you’re living your life, but you still stumble into something again and again and again, you’re going to be more frustrated and you’re going to be finding ways to shore yourself up against it because you don’t like it. You see, obviously when you fall into sin, there’s a part of you that likes it or else you wouldn’t be tempted with it. We have a flesh and we have a spirit. The flesh loves certain things that the spirit hates. Jesus said the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. And so there’s part of you that is on the side of the temptation. It’s your flesh. And you can’t just be rid of your flesh, but you can walk in the Spirit. It says in Galatians 5, 16, walk in the Spirit and you will not fulfill the lust of the flesh. So walking in the Spirit is the habit that needs to be developed. And it means, of course, that you don’t discard the conviction of the spirit. When you begin to feel tempted, you don’t say, when you feel, I know I shouldn’t do that, I shouldn’t do that, but I’m not going to pay attention to this conviction. I’m going to go ahead and do it. That’s not okay. If you hate the sin, you’re going to act toward it the way you act toward things you hate, even if something draws you to it. In your flesh, you’re going to say, well, I’m going to do all I can to stop, and I’m going to trust God to give me the strength, and I’m going to walk in obedience to the Holy Spirit and trust in him and so forth. And if I still fall, I’m going to repent or confess it again and continue to make every effort to live a holy life. It says in 1 John 1.9, If we confess our sins, he’s faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So it’s not that we’re forgiven because we succeed in conquering it completely. We’re forgiven because we are determined to conquer it, because we have changed our mind about it. A person who’s not converted, who’s not a Christian, is not determined to stop sinning. They are determined to live in sin. Now, there might be certain sins they don’t like. Let’s just say a person is not a Christian, but alcoholism is destroying his family and his life and alienating him. He’s losing his job and so forth. It’s ruined him. He’s in the gutter now. Now, that person might hate his alcoholism, but not because it’s displeasing to God, perhaps, but because it’s wrecking his life and he doesn’t like to have his life wrecked. That’s not the same thing as repenting. If he says, I don’t want to drink anymore like this, it’s ruined my life. Well, okay, maybe he’ll join a 12-step program and get a grip on it. But conversion and repentance is where you say, whether it wrecks my life or whether it makes me rich, whether it gives me pleasure or whether it makes me sick, I don’t want it because God doesn’t want it. I’m on God’s side now. I used to be on my side. But I was the enemy of God, and I’m not going to be on the side of the enemy of God. I’m going to be on God’s side. And because God hates it, I hate it, and I want to please him. Once that is the attitude… That is what the Bible would call repentance. So if a person keeps falling, you say, well, are they not saved yet or what? Well, it depends on what keeps falling means. If they’re wrestling against it, if they’re fighting it, if when they stumble they truly repent and say, I never want to do that again. I want to do my best to seek the power and aid of God to live a holy life every moment of my day. But then you fall again. You know, I mean, that happens sometimes. That happens. But you can tell by your reaction to it whether you’re on its side or God’s side. Because when a Christian who really loves God actually falls into sin, they hate it. In fact, Paul said in Romans 7, if I’m doing the thing I hate… then it’s not really me that’s doing it. Now, he’s not saying that makes it okay. He’s not making excuses. He’s simply saying the fact that I hate this tells me something about where I stand. Because when I was an unbeliever, I didn’t hate it. I actually pursued it actively. But I hate it now when I fall. If I hate it, it’s not really who I am, he’s saying. It’s not me. It’s something in me. Now, again, saying it’s not me is not a way of saying I’m not responsible. He’s just saying my hatred for this thing when it happens is proof that I’ve changed sides. I’m against it now or else I wouldn’t hate it. I’m on God’s side. And so when people say, well, I’m really struggling with this sin or that sin, I think, well, you should be. You should be struggling. If you weren’t following Christ, you’d be sinning and not struggling against it. The fact that you’re struggling against it means you’ve changed sides. You’re on God’s side now, which is a good sign. I would suggest to you, brother, that you might go to my website, thenarrowpath.com, or the app, and find a short series of lectures I have there called How Can I Know That I’m Really Saved? And it goes into these things in more detail. It’s called How Can I Know That I’m Really Saved? It’s at thenarrowpath.com. And you’ll find it if you click the tab that says Topical Lectures. So TheNarrowPath.com under Topical Lectures. The series is called How Can I Know That I’m Really Saved? I recommend that to you, bro. Okay, our next caller is Nick from North Hollywood, California. Nick, welcome.
SPEAKER 08 :
Hey, how you doing, Steve?
SPEAKER 03 :
Good.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yeah, first of all, I want to thank you for your ministry and everybody that volunteers. Your influence on me, teaching me. It’s just been absolutely amazing. I came to Christ at the age of almost 50, and today marks the 15th year, April 10, 2010. I know. And I should really come visit you. I live in the San Fernando Valley. I have no excuse not to come to one of your meetings. I’ve been fighting dispensationalism like you are, but maybe on a smaller scale. level. You know, I come from Palestinian parents. Both of my parents were born in Bethlehem. I wasn’t. But I just find it interesting, especially when I read, when I listened to one of your videos about how Rome became a papacy. And I’ve been like on that path trying to find out. I just, there’s not enough dots to connect with these things. I’ve read so many things about Nelson Darby and one of the articles that his, on his mother’s side, they were connected in
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, let me ask you. Do you have a question for me? Because we don’t have very much time and we’ve got a lot of waiters.
SPEAKER 08 :
I’m sorry about that. I know you always say that. I’m just trying to understand how a Christian sect not only influenced Christianity with so much division, but it influenced the past two empires, the United Kingdom and now the United States, into supporting it, which reminds me of your teaching on the woman that rode the beast in Revelation 17. Do you have anything that I can, like, read or listen to on how John Nelson Darby came to this theology that has just influenced Christianity so much?
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, Darby was an Anglican, but he was a real Bible scholar. And he was raised, of course, with Anglican amillennialism and stuff like that, but He came to a point where he objected, as anyone perhaps might come to this point. He just happened to be the guy who did. He objected to the fact that for centuries the church had spiritualized certain prophecies in the Bible. Now, spiritualizing means giving them a spiritual interpretation. So there’s lots of places in the Old Testament that says God’s going to do something for Jerusalem or for Zion or for Israel or for Judah. And the church has historically spiritualized many of those, the ones that seemed appropriate to, based on New Testament usage. They took, the church has taken Israel or Judah or Jerusalem or Zion to mean the spiritual Israel, the spiritual Zion, the spiritual Jerusalem, which the Bible talks about in the New Testament. And so the church had historically spiritualized a lot of these prophecies and not applied them to natural Israel, not to racial Israel, not to geographical Zion or Jerusalem, but to spiritual counterparts. Now, frankly, I think the church was correct in doing this. But Darby, you know, hit upon an idea that really resonated with a lot of people. especially in the West, who in the West we are not like Middle Eastern people or Asians in general. We do not speak in symbols as much as we speak in terms of literalness as part of the Western culture. So he thought, well, these prophecies should be taken literally. Why are we not taking these literally? And he decided, first of all, that every prophecy should be taken literally. Now, once he decided that, he had to take some of these prophecies about Israel and Jerusalem and Zion as about natural Israel and geographical Jerusalem and so forth. And therefore, he thought, well, wait a minute. These things have never happened. The church had always taught that these prophecies were fulfilled spiritually in Christ, which is, of course, what the New Testament says. So the church had followed the New Testament in saying these things have been fulfilled in Christ in a spiritual way. But Darby said, wait, but we shouldn’t take them in a spiritual way. We should take them in a literal way. Now, where he got that idea, no one knows. But, I mean, one might naturally take that view if they didn’t know better. But there’s certainly nothing in the Bible that tells us to take those things literally. Sometimes dispensations say, well, there were 300 prophecies about Jesus fulfilled in his first coming that were all fulfilled literally. Not so. I have a lecture about that in my series, When Shall These Things Be, about biblical interpretation. I point out that. that most of the prophecies that were fulfilled in Christ in his first coming were not literal. About one out of three of them were fulfilled literally. The other two-thirds of them were fulfilled either metaphorically, spiritually, typologically, some other way than literal. So when dispensation says, well, 300 prophecies of first coming of Christ were fulfilled literally, so we should take them all literally. They’re wrong in their premise. That is not true. Find those prophecies about Christ that were fulfilled in the first coming and look at them. You’ll see that they’re not using literal language, most of them. And that’s because there’s no rule of literal interpretation in the Bible. The rule all millennialists use is that you interpret a prophecy the way the New Testament writers interpreted it. The way Jesus did. The way the apostles did. Because Jesus opened their understanding. that they might understand the scriptures, it says in Luke 24, 45. So the apostles interpreted these things spiritually. Darby said, no, we should do it literally. And that resonated with the Western mind. Let’s take things literally. And so his ideas got very popular. Now, because of this, he had to say, well, some of these prophecies have never happened when Jesus came. They didn’t, you know, the natural Israel and physical Jerusalem didn’t really have these things happen. So they must be going to be happening in the end times. So things that the Bible, let’s just say things that the New Testament tells us happened and were fulfilled in Christ, Darby said they’re not. They’re going to be fulfilled in the end times. And so, you know, all these prophecies that we’re talking about were about Israel. So Darby introduced an emphasis that simply wasn’t there in historic Christianity. That, you know, the end times is going to be dominated by God doing these things for Israel. And that’s how the ideas arose and became dominant. And And as far as why empires like America and England came to be so pro-Israel through this influence, is because England and America were evangelical nations for the most part, to a large extent. And even the rulers who were not evangelicals were prevailed upon by massive pressure from evangelicals who held the dispensational view. I have a lecture about how that happened at our website, thenarrowpath.com. Go to the series. It’s under Topical Lectures. The series is called What Are We to Make of Israel? And I think there’s two lectures in it about the modern state of Israel. Listen to that because I tell how the modern state of Israel came about and how great the dispensationalist influence was upon America and the United Nations to bring this about. So that’s a quick answer. And so I’m going to have to move to another call. I hope that helps you, brother. It’s good to hear from you. Let’s try to get some more in. We’re almost out of time here. Let’s talk to Gary from Corvallis, Oregon.
SPEAKER 04 :
I’m not so sure that I’m having a hard time believing that Jesus is co-equal with God. In Matthew 24, 36, it talks about Jesus Christ said, these are all Jesus Christ’s words. It says, but no man knoweth the day the hour of Jesus Christ returned, but the Father only. John 14, 28 says, my Father is greater than I. John 5, 30 says, of my own self I can do nothing. John 14, 12 says that the works that I do shall ye do also, and greater works than me shall ye do, because I go unto my Father. Matthew 19, 17 says there is no one good but God. The main verse, though, that I have my issues with is 1 Timothy 2, verses 4 and 5. God says, “…who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and man.” the man Christ Jesus? That’s my question. Okay.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, Jesus is a man. That’s certainly… You’ve made good points about that. And no Trinitarian has ever denied that. In fact, the only people I know who’ve ever denied that Jesus was an actual man were the Gnostics, especially the Docetic Gnostics, who believed that Jesus was only a phantom and wasn’t physical at all. Now, Christianity, including… Trinitarian Christianity, which is the main kind of Christianity throughout history, has always said Jesus is a man. And that last verse in particular, there’s one God or one meteor between God and man, the man, Christ Jesus, is as clear as can be. Jesus always referred to himself as the son of man also, which means he was a man. So there’s no question about that. So that doesn’t challenge the Trinity doctrine because every Trinitarian Christian And every Christian before the Trinity doctrine became established, having knowledge that he’s a man. But what kind of a man? How did Jesus come into earth as a man? The Bible teaches that he was God. He was the Word, and the Word was with God. The Word was God. And that Word, whom John in John 1-1 has told us is God, becomes flesh and dwells among us. And that is, of course, referring to God taking on a human form. Now, you can’t fit all of God into a human form. God fills the whole universe. So God had to, you know, one aspect of himself, his word, took on human form and lived among us. It didn’t make him less God, but it meant he added to his deity a human nature, which had never happened before, and lived among us as a man who was what we’d have to call God in the flesh. At least that’s what the Bible calls him. So that’s the position I take. Now, when Jesus said the Father is greater than I, it’s because the Father wasn’t in flesh. Now, if you’re thinking of God as only one person, I understand the difficulty there. The Trinitarian doctrine, I should say, is that God is, in a sense, three, and in another sense, one. And that might sound like nonsense, except we all accept the idea that husbands and wives are, in one sense, two, and in a different sense, they are one. The two shall become one flesh. We don’t have any problem with that, I hope. And we shouldn’t have any problem with the three shall be one God. What are the three? Well, generally the Trinity doctrine has said three persons in one substance. Now, I don’t know what that means. I don’t know what any of that means. The Bible doesn’t use those terms, so we don’t have to use them if we don’t want to. But we can say that the Bible certainly indicates that there’s only one God. but that the Father is that one God, the Son is that one God, and the Holy Spirit is that one God. All three are called God, and there’s only one God. So the Trinity Doctrine has concluded that God is, in a sense, one, and in some different sense, three, just like my wife and I are in one sense, one, and in a different sense, we’re two. Now, that means that I can talk about my wife as somebody separate from myself. without compromising the fact that we are one. And that Jesus can talk about the Father or the Holy Spirit as someone separate from himself, without compromising the fact that the three are one. And if you say, but I just can’t picture that. Well, that’s most people’s problems. I have that problem too. I can’t picture it either. Who said we’re supposed to picture it? You know, God in Deuteronomy made it very clear to Israel, you saw no image of God when he appeared on the mountain, so don’t try to make any images of God. I say don’t even try to make mental images of God because we’ve never seen what he looks like. And if you’re trying to picture what three in one looks like, we might have to wait until we actually are there and when we can see him. I’m not really sure what, I mean, I have the experience of being married, so I know what two people being one flesh looks like. It looks like a marriage. But I don’t know what three somethings being one something means in the case of God. But to say, well, Jesus talked like God the Father was someone different from himself, yeah, really. That’s exactly what Trinitarians believe. The Father is different than the Son, and the Holy Spirit is different than them. So, you know, if you think that hearing Jesus talk about his Father as a separate person, as it were, somehow disproves the Trinity… No, that’s exactly what the Trinity Doctrine teaches. But if we don’t have a Trinity Doctrine, then we’re going to have to explain how Jesus can be God in the flesh, as the Bible says he is. And what, be a different God? There’s not a different God. There’s only one God. So God, one God, is in three somethings. Again, the Trinity Doctrine usually says persons. I accept that terminology. But if someone finds that difficult, if person sounds too much like physical bodies or people, then maybe some other word would work better. But I don’t know one that does. The thing is, we can’t just say, well, I can’t picture how Jesus could talk about the Father as a different person from himself. If he is God, well, but he did, and he is. So if you say, well, I can’t see how that works, well, join the club, you know. I don’t know how particle physics works, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t people who do, or that my not knowing how it works somehow makes it not real. There’s a lot of things I don’t know and can’t understand. But when the Bible tells me that something is true about God, I’m going to just take that as true, unless somebody can prove that the Bible is not true. And so far, though many thousands have tried to do that, no one has succeeded in that yet. Hey, I’m out of time, but I hope that helps you. You’re listening to The Narrow Path. My name is Steve Gregg. The Narrow Path is a listener-supported ministry as it has been on the air for 28 years now daily. If you’d like to help us stay on the air for another 28 years, Lord willing, you may write to The Narrow Path, P.O. Box 1730, Temecula, California, 92593, or go to the website thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for joining us. Let’s talk again tomorrow.
