In this episode, Steve Gregg opens the floor to listeners with questions ranging from biblical interpretations to spiritual discernment in contemporary church movements. A critical look into the discussion arises when the question of Satan transforming into an angel of light is examined. Steve dissects 2 Corinthians 11:14 and its implications for understanding Satan’s nature and tactics. He also explores the complexities of covenant theology, with a particular focus on the transition from the Old to the New Testament.
SPEAKER 1 :
Thank you.
Steve Gregg (Host) :
Good afternoon and welcome to the Narrow Path Radio Broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we’re live for an hour each weekday afternoon, including today. And we have lines for you that you can call in on if you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith. Or if you disagree with the host and want to tell me why, I’d be glad to hear about that as well. Looks like I’m looking at a couple of lines open on our switchboard. If you’d like to call, you can get through at this number. 844- That’s 844-484-5737. If you’d like to join us on the air today. I’ll just keep mentioning this starting this Friday night. I’m going to be speaking for a little over a week. in various venues in Texas, quite a few different venues, at least half a dozen or more. And so if you’re interested, if you live in Texas, now, of course, Texas is a big place, but I’m actually speaking over a broad swath of the state. I’m speaking in the Dallas area. I’m speaking in the Houston area. I’m speaking in the area sometimes called the Hill Country, probably with about an hour’s drive or less of San Antonio. If you’re interested, go to our website, thenarrowpath.com, and see where these locations are. And if they’re near you, I’d love to see you at one of them. And there are some of the venues where they want you to call in advance to get the address because some of them are in private homes. Some are in churches. Obviously, the ones that are in churches, we have their location and address listed there. If they’re in private homes, we usually have you call the homeowner rather than list their personal address online. But there is still room in some of these homes. If you’re interested in joining any of these meetings, just check it out. All right. We’re going to go to the phones now and talk to Malachi from San Jose, California. I met Malachi when I was up there earlier this month. Hi, Malachi. Welcome.
Caller (Guest) :
Hi, Steve. Nice to hear from you again. Yeah. I have a question just regarding 2 Corinthians 11, verse 14. I was reading New King James Version says for Satan himself transformed himself into an angel’s light. And I don’t have the view of him being the king of Tyre that we read about in Isaiah. Yeah. But I want to see what this verse means. And today, your thoughts on it. I can take my answer off the air.
Steve Gregg (Host) :
All right. All right. I appreciate your call. We’ll take a look at that.
Caller (Guest) :
Thank you.
Steve Gregg (Host) :
Okay, bye now. Good talking to you. All right, well, when I raise questions about whether Satan was an angel originally who fell or not, by the way, this is a matter I don’t have a strong position about either way, nor much concern about, but I often point out that the popular view that Satan is an angel, a good angel who fell, is not really supported by any specific passage in Scripture. There are a few Scriptures that people sometimes bring up that they would say this points out that he was an angel. And this is one of them, because Paul said in 2 Corinthians 11-14, and no wonder for Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light. So some feel that this is saying that he is an angel or an angel of light. Of course, it doesn’t say that. It says he transforms himself into one, which means he’s not naturally an angel of light. He has to transform himself into an angel of light in order to appear as such. Now, does this mean he does become a literal angel of light? No. What it means, the word transforms himself means that he puts on the disguise. He disguises himself as. Now, how do I know that it means that? Well, because of the previous verse. It says in verse 13, for such, these false prophets that Paul is describing, he says, Now, it’s obvious that these deceitful workers, these false apostles, who transformed themselves into apostles of Christ, Paul is not saying that they are apostles of Christ. He’s saying the opposite is true, but they impersonate apostles of Christ. They give off the impression that they are apostles of Christ, but they aren’t. And so transform oneself means here to disguise oneself or to pretend to be in some sense. And so since the false apostles transform themselves into apostles of Christ, which does not mean that in any sense they are apostles of Christ before or after the transformation, So also to say that Satan transforms himself into an angel of light certainly does not mean that he is an angel of light either before or after that transformation. It just means he is impersonating such. He presents himself as if he is an angel of light. And many people feel that a good example of that in modern times was in the 19th century when Joseph Smith claims that he saw an angel who gave him the Book of Mormon Now, of course, there’s two ways of looking at that. One is that Joseph Smith was simply a charlatan, which is, of course, there’s good evidence of that. His character was terrible, and he had been a charlatan before he claimed to start a religion. He and his father had been involved in the occult, had made a little bit of money finding things by occult means, and then he later claimed to see this angel who gave him the Book of Mormon. So the man was not an honest man by any means, even after that. He started the Mormon church. But there is one possibility, and that is that he did see something that he thought was an angel, but was really Satan or a demonic being presenting itself to be an angel. So I don’t know if Joseph Smith just made the story up out of whole cloth, or if he saw something, if he saw what he thought was an angel that deceived him. Either one could be true. I mean, since he was involved in the occult, contact with demons is very much something that people involved in their cults sometimes experience. There’s a great overlap between those who have direct dealings with demons and those who have messed around in the occult so Joseph Smith is a good example of someone who claims to have seen an angel but who an angel that preached a false gospel and so some think well that was Satan appearing as an angel and it could have been but in terms of this statement having any bearing on the question of whether Satan was created as a real angel of light and later fell I don’t think it really addresses that question. It doesn’t confirm or disconfirm it. It’s simply telling how he deceives people. It’s not telling us anything about his essential nature. That’s at least how I understand that verse. I appreciate your call, brother. Let’s talk to Steve in Phoenix, Arizona next. Steve, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
Caller (Guest) :
Yeah, good evening, brother. Good afternoon, brother. I just had a quick question. I really appreciate your insight and perspective on the Berean denomination. in regards to some of their beliefs, in regards to the Old and New Testament. And I’ll take your information off here.
Steve Gregg (Host) :
Well, wait, wait, before you go away, I’m not familiar with the Berean denomination. The Bereans in the Bible were people who lived in a town called Berea, and so they were called Bereans. And there is something very positive said about them in the New Testament in Acts chapter 17. These people, when Paul preached them a message they were unfamiliar with, they listened to him and then they searched the scriptures daily to see if these things were so, and then they believed. Now, many churches call themselves Berean churches, especially Berean Baptist churches, or maybe I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s Berean Bible churches and so forth, because they simply want to identify themselves as having the same passion to search the Scriptures as the Bereans in the Scripture had. But I actually don’t know the denomination by that name. So could you clarify, have you been involved with a church that uses the term Berean in its name?
Caller (Guest) :
Well, I got a friend that sent me Berean from the Berean text, blah, blah, blah, website, and it seemed like they’re really just steeped in the Old Testament law. It’s like they have a hard time coming into the transition of the New Testament.
Steve Gregg (Host) :
Okay, well, yeah, I’m not sure what the Berean text would be. There’s not a text of the New Testament that goes by that name. Correct.
Caller (Guest) :
It’s just their interpretation of how they interpret things. the Old Testament, and it seems like they’re adamantly against the New Testament. They’re still strongly steeped in the law still. Oh, okay. So, okay, maybe you might have some insight on that. But like you’re saying, I know there wasn’t an actual denomination, but they were in Acts. You know, there was the only place in the New Testament in Acts that had that one little brief stuff about how they actually look and do diligence. So I appreciate your insight.
Steve Gregg (Host) :
All right. Well, thanks for your call. As far as people being confused about the relationship of the Old Covenant and the New Covenant, or the Old Testament and the New Testament, as we call them, it’s very common for Christians not to really think that through very much, and yet it’s a very simple matter. A covenant is a contract, an agreement. And the best analogy we have in our daily life is that of a marriage. When people get married, they make a covenant with each other or an agreement. They make a contract with each other, and they swear mutually to be faithful to each other, and they make promises to each other, and they take each other at their word, and they walk away from that ceremony with the assumption that both parties are going to keep this covenant. Now, God made a covenant like that at Mount Sinai with Israel. That’s what we today call the Old Covenant. Because since then, there has become a new covenant. And the old covenant was the one that had the law of Moses in it. Not only the Ten Commandments, but all the laws about the tabernacle, about the sacrifices, about the holy days, about the clean and unclean foods, those kinds of things. Lots of stuff. Including also… promises that God made. He didn’t just make stipulations and rules. He made promises, and covenants are that way. Each person makes promises, and they are expected to do something, too. And they expect the other to do something for them. So there’s benefits and obligations with both parties in a covenant. Now, when God made a covenant with Israel… Israel was promised that God would make them his own special nation if they keep his covenant. This was his actual wording in Exodus 19, verses 5 and 6. He says, if you will obey my voice indeed and keep my covenant, then, okay, then there’s these promises. You’ll be a peculiar treasure to me above all the nations. You’ll be a kingdom to me, a priest. You’ll be a holy nation to me. In other words, they would be a special people that would be his people if they kept that covenant. Now, there were no promises made without that condition. That was the condition of the covenant. They had to be faithful to his covenant, keep his laws, and so forth. And he then would keep his promise to them to make them his own special people. And among the benefits they would have would be if they were faithful to God would give them the land of Canaan to be their perpetual possession. He would defend them from the incursion of enemy hostile forces that would come against them. He’d protect them from that. He’d give them good crops and good weather and abundance of children and things like that. So there were promises that were associated with this covenant that God made at Mount Sinai. And yet they broke it. They broke every part of it. Now, God… warned them through the prophets that their breaking of the covenant was going to mean he would disown them and not fulfill his promises. He’d drive them out of the land. He’d destroy them until he’s brought them to nothing, or the language he used in Deuteronomy 28. So these are promises and threats that came with the covenant. And Israel broke the covenant. And God was very patient. He didn’t disown them right away, although he said he would if they didn’t repent. And unfortunately, they didn’t. Now, in the meantime, Jeremiah… who lived in Jerusalem under the old covenant, received a revelation from God that God would make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and it wouldn’t be like the old covenant. So to say that we have to keep the old covenant would be to suggest that the new covenant apparently is not regarded as having come yet. And when it does come, he says it won’t be like the old one. Now Jesus met with his disciples in the upper room and said, this cup that we’re drinking here is the new covenant in my blood. So he established the new covenant before his death, just before his death. And it says in Hebrews 8.13 that where there’s a new covenant, the old one is obsolete. Paul in Romans 7 verses 1 through 4 compares our situation to persons who were, as it were, married under one covenant. He says to the law. but that that marriage has ended with the death of the parties. Jesus, well, we’ve died in him, is what Paul says, through him we’ve died, and that marriage is over. And now it says, now we can have a new covenant, a new marriage, to him who is risen from the dead, a clear reference to Jesus. So in Romans 7, 1 through 4, Paul makes it very clear that the law was like a husband and authority, under the old covenant, but that old covenant has come to an end because of the death and resurrection of Christ. And we now are free from that covenant and have come into a new covenant with Christ. So he committed it to a woman who had a husband who died, and then she married a second husband. Now the second husband is still a husband, but he might not have all the same expectations of the woman that her first husband did. Two men are different from each other and men don’t always have the same expectations from their wives or make the same promises that others do. For example, you know, he may promise her that he’ll support her fully and that she won’t have to work outside the home. But the next husband might say, I’m sorry, I can’t fully support you. I don’t have the money, so you have to work outside of home. So promises and expectations in one marriage are somewhat different than those in another marriage. And so the old covenant was what it was. It was a marriage. It came to an end. We don’t have to keep the law of Moses anymore. We never did as Gentiles, but if we had wanted to be part of the chosen people, we would have to be circumcised and become part of that. But… But that’s over now. That covenant is dead. And the new covenant has come just as Jeremiah said it would. And the result is we now get to be married to Christ as we’re in a new covenant. And he has different promises and different expectations of us than the old did. So it shouldn’t be that complex. I mean, now that we’re Christians, what do we have to do with the law? Well, we don’t have to keep the law of Moses. We do have to keep the law of Christ. That is, we have to obey Christ, but we don’t have to obey Moses’ law. And we see that, for example, in Paul’s statement in 1 Corinthians 9, where he talks about himself and his missionary strategies. He said in verse 19, 1 Corinthians 9, 19, and for a few verses, he says, For though I am free from all men, I have made myself a servant to all that I might win the more. To the Jews I became as a Jew. Excuse me. He says, But he says, that I might gain those who are without the law. So Paul says, you know, it’s no problem to me to eat a kosher diet when I’m with people who eat a kosher diet, but I don’t have to do that. I do that to not offend them, and so I can win some of them. But he says, I’m not under the law, but I am under the law of Christ. Why? Because I’m now married to Christ, not the law. So a lot of people don’t understand that relationship between the Old and the New Covenant, but that’s, it’s really… Not really very complicated. All right. Appreciate your call. Kerry from Fort Worth, Texas. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
Steve Gregg (Host) :
Yes, Steve. I’d be interested in your understanding of Genesis 3.16. I’ve heard some teaching on it that is not probably the popular interpretation, and I just want to see where you stand with that.
Steve Gregg (Host) :
Okay, I’d be glad to tell you what I think, but I’m curious what you’ve heard so that I can at least connect with what you’re interested in about the passage. I want to give you my explanation.
Steve Gregg (Host) :
Well, it seems like the most popular thing is talking about when it says that the woman’s desire will be for their husband. Many people say that that is the woman trying to usurp the husband’s authority. But the teaching I heard, it went in a different direction, saying that here she’s told that she’s going to have pain in childbirth and whatnot, but yet her desire is going to be for her husband, indicating yet that, you know, maybe most people would think if I’m going to have pain, that’s the one thing I’m going to avoid. But yet God is saying, no, your desire is going to be for your husband sexually and sexually. in that type of manner.
Steve Gregg (Host) :
You know, if that was the connection between those two points, namely pain in childbirth and desire for a sexual relationship with a husband, I would expect there to be a connecting word that would say something like this. In pain, you shall bring forth children. Nonetheless, your desire shall be for your husband. But your desire will be for your husband, suggesting that even though there will be pain in childbirth, you’ll still have an interest in a sexual relationship with your husband. I don’t think so. It starts like a new idea. It says, in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you. So I don’t know that it’s saying that her desire would be sexually for her husband. And frankly, I don’t really know that, I don’t know if that’s true of all wives, that they desire sex with their husband. But obviously some do. But they do even when they don’t want children, apparently, sometimes. But the point here is that the phrasing is something paralleled in chapter 4, which kind of gives us the idea of what this phrasing means. It says there in chapter 3 and verse 16, Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you. When God is warning Cain about his danger of becoming rebellious against God, it says in chapter 4, verse 7, if you do well, will you not be accepted? He says, and if you do not do well. Sin lies at the door and its desire is for you, but you will rule over it or you must rule over it. So there’s a conflict between sin and Cain. Sin is crouching at the door as if it’s a predatory animal ready to jump upon him and overcome him. Reminder of when the Bible says that Satan goes out like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour in 1 Peter chapter 5. Verse 8, but here it’s sin that is there crouching to overcome you. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it. Now, it sounds like it’s saying sin does desire to defeat you. It desires to consume you. But you must rule over it. That is to say, ruling over sin is going to be more difficult for you now because sin is just waiting to destroy you. And when you take that same phraseology, when it says that the woman’s desire is for her husband, but he must rule over her, you’ve got the very same couplet there. with different subjects. You know, as sin’s desire is for Cain, meaning the desire to conquer him, so the woman’s desire is for her husband, which sounds like the same kind of thing. She desires to conquer him or to maybe rule him. But in both cases, Cain must rule over sin and the husband must rule over his wife. Now, that strikes me. Now, if we didn’t have chapter 4, then certainly that idiom in chapter 3.16 would be almost impossible to resolve, because we don’t use an idiom like that in English, and apparently they did in the ancient Hebrew. But we wouldn’t necessarily know about this ancient Hebrew usage unless we had at least another example of it, and we do in chapter 4. So I’m thinking that the position that you said is more popular… probably is based on comparison of chapter 3, verse 16, with chapter 4, verse 7, because there you do have sort of a, what should we say, an elucidating second example of what that phrase seems to mean.
Steve Gregg (Host) :
Well, you were saying that if the desire for your husband had a collective word, And in the New American Standard, it says, yet your desire. So it does have a connective word.
Steve Gregg (Host) :
Okay. It doesn’t have it in my translation, so I’m not sure if the New American Standard is adding it or not. I don’t have a Hebrew text in front of me.
Steve Gregg (Host) :
It’s not in italics.
Steve Gregg (Host) :
Yeah. Well, that’s interesting because, like I said, the New King James doesn’t have it. And generally speaking, the New King James, you know, is a pretty word-for-word translation. Again, I don’t have time to look it up right now, but you make me curious about it. But even so, you know, I think the comparison with Genesis 4-7 would give us the best decoder of this strange statement.
Steve Gregg (Host) :
Thank you very much, Steve.
Steve Gregg (Host) :
Okay, Kerry. Good talking to you. All right. Let’s talk to Trish from Cottonwood, California. Trish, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Let me interrupt myself here. I just noticed that we’ve got the break coming up. It’s impending. And so rather than interrupt you in the middle of your sentence, why don’t I put you on hold and we’ll come back to you right after the break, which is a very short one.
Caller (Guest) :
Thank you very much. I’ll wait.
Steve Gregg (Host) :
Stay on the line. I’ll get back to you quickly. All right, you’re listening to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. We do, at the bottom of the hour, take a brief moment to let our audience know that we are listener-supported. We pay a lot of money to radio stations so that we can bring this to you for free. And we don’t charge for anything. We don’t have anything for sale. We don’t take any time out for commercials. We’ve got no sponsors. Everything at our website is free. And so we’re just strictly listener supported. If you’d like to help us stay on the air, you can write to us at The Narrow Path, P.O. Box 1730, Temecula, California, 92593. That’s The Narrow Path, P.O. Box 1730, Temecula, California, 92593. if you want to donate or just go to our website and take anything for free there, the website is thenarrowpath.com. And remember, at thenarrowpath.com, we’ve got thousands of resources that are literally free to download. If they say nothing is free, nothing of value is free, I would have to disagree. And so would many of our listeners. The materials on our website are very valuable. They just happen to be free because Jesus said to us, Freely you’ve received, freely give. So check it out at thenarrowpath.com. Now, you can donate there if you want to, but that’s not at all required. Thenarrowpath.com. I’ll be back in about 30 seconds, so don’t go away. We have another half hour coming up, and we have some lines open if you want to call in. I’ll be right back.
Caller (Guest) :
Small is the gate and narrow is the path that leads to life. Welcome to The Narrow Path with Steve Gregg. Steve has nothing to sell you today but everything to give you. When the radio show is over, go to thenarrowpath.com where you can study, learn, and enjoy with free topical audio teachings, blog articles, verse-by-verse teachings, and archives of all The Narrow Path radio shows. We thank you for supporting the listeners supported Narrow Path with Steve Gregg. See you at thenarrowpath.com.
Steve Gregg (Host) :
Welcome back to the narrow path radio broadcast. And by the way, for the, The benefit of our previous caller, Kerry, from Texas, he was curious about whether the word yet or something like that was found in Genesis 3.16 or not, a connective word that would have had maybe some influence on the interpretation of the verse. I said that I didn’t have it in the New King James in front of me, and I didn’t think it was in Hebrew. During the break, I did look it up. Actually, my wife looked it up, but I also pulled it off the shelf and looked it up to confirm it. That word is not there. So the New American Standard, which Carrie was reading, has inserted that word without italicizing it, as they should. So in any case, the word does not appear in the Hebrew. All right, we’re going to talk next to Trish from Cottonwood, California, who we almost put on before the break, but decided to show more respect and give her an unbroken period to give her Hi, Trish, welcome.
Caller (Guest) :
Thank you very much, Steve. Thank you for taking my call, and I ask the Lord to lead you and bless you. I appreciate your ministry very much.
Steve Gregg (Host) :
Thank you.
Caller (Guest) :
I have a question, please, on how I respond to people who are responding to me when I mention the Bethel group and their leader, Johnson. I’ve heard some strange things. I’ve heard that it’s even a cult, and I was encouraged to listen to his sermons, and I really listened hard to a couple, and I didn’t hear anything that was wrong, but I had a very uncomfortable feeling when I was listening to those sermons. And in my spirit, it just, you know, turned me off. So I’d like to know, please, what you can tell me about that group and how I can respond in a positive way to their questions. I am a follower of Jesus Christ, and I’m just trying to do the right thing.
Steve Gregg (Host) :
Yeah, okay. Trish, I appreciate that. Bill Johnson, the pastor of the Bethel Church in Redding, California, is an internationally known leader in a movement that some people call NAR, the New Apostolic Reformation. There’s kind of a revival of sorts going on there, and it has been for some years. It’s a Pentecostal kind of a revival. Real strong emphasis on signs and wonders and healing and things like that. And You know, in real revivals, there often are signs and wonders and healings and so forth. And I can’t really say whether what’s going on in Bethel is something God is doing or not, only because we do know, A, that, well, A, I have not been there. I’ve not been there to see it with my own eyes or anything like that. So I’m not, I don’t have firsthand information, only what you get from the Internet and from, you know, people who’ve been there who I know. But B… There are apparently signs and wonders taking place there, but we also know that signs and wonders can take place in venues where it’s not a true work of God. Or if it is the true work of God, it’s not being done through true men of God. I’m just saying that’s a possibility because Jesus said, many will say to me in those days or in that day, Lord, we prophesied in your name, we cast out demons in your name, we did mighty works in your name. And he said, I’ll say to them, I never knew you. So, obviously, having mighty works and prophecies and exorcisms, Jesus said, is no indicator that the persons performing them are really even Christians. It must be possible for there to be counterfeits of these things. And, in fact, the Bible talks in 2 Thessalonians 2 about the man of sin, how it says that he does signs and lying wonders in the power of Satan. So, We know that that’s a possibility. I’m not saying that is true of Bethel. I’m just saying that is something the Bible does teach, that there can be phenomena and it not be necessarily the work of God or of a real revival. So, you know, I do believe in the gifts of the Spirit. I do believe that God in real revival times often does do supernatural things. But we have to be careful about assuming that the presence of the supernatural, even if it’s genuinely there, that it actually is God. We have to judge it more by its fruit of other kinds. Now, the third thing I wanted to say about it is that in addition to whatever other miraculous signs and wonders of a biblical type may be going on there, and again, I haven’t seen them with my own eyes, so I don’t know, but if they are going on there, there are also other things going on there, that are superstitious and we might say occultic. Now, when you’ve got a mixture of occultic things on the one hand and supernatural things that mimic biblical miracles on the other, that’s one reason to suspect that there might be demonic counterfeits going on there. Now, again, I’m only speaking generically because I can’t answer for them. I, too, have listened to a sermon or two of Bill Johnson’s, and I didn’t hear him say anything that was more alarming than what any other charismatic or Pentecostal teacher might say. In other words, I didn’t necessarily hear heresy coming from his sermons, which doesn’t mean anything because it’s easy to preach without giving out heresy. The real question is, what is the effect of the movement? They’ve got a lot more going on besides Bill Johnson’s sermons. and under his watch. I do know this, that I have seen examples on YouTube of things going on there and heard reports from people who have been there, whom I trust, that there are things going on there that are, I would say, scary, occultic, very compromising, and that makes me have misgivings about the whole alleged revival going on there. Among those things, of course, famously, is the practice of what’s called grave sucking or grave soaking. It’s been called both ways. And that’s where somebody who really wants to have a powerful ministry finds the grave of some former healing evangelist or something and actually lies down on the grave seeking to soak up the anointing from the dead body of that former evangelist. Now, I mean, to invite spiritual power to come from dead people is so close to, you know, occultism. I’m not even sure I’d say it’s close. It seems like it is occultic. And it certainly is not biblical. If it’s not occultic, it’s at least so close to being occultic that it’d be scary. And it certainly is not something that works. It’s not something that God wants people to do. I think God would have mentioned something about it if he did. Another thing I saw with my own eyes on YouTube was when Bill Johnson and some others, I assume they were ministers at the church there in Bethel, and some lady, I think she was visiting from Africa, she was dressed in native clothing and so forth, and she had a wizard’s rod, a wizard’s staff, and she even referred to it as that. She likened it to the staff that… that was on Lord of the Rings that Gandalf had, where he struck it on the ground to keep the, I think it was the first movie of Lord of the Rings. He struck it on the ground to keep a dragon or a demonic power from coming any further. He says, you shall not pass or something like that. And she had it and she says, we’re going to strike the ground, the stage here with this, and we’re going to defeat COVID. This was some years ago, obviously. And she says, COVID will go no further. We’re going to put an end to COVID right now, and we’re going to strike this wizard staff on the stage, and we’re going to say, you will not pass. And they did. And Bill Johnson and the elders did it with her, which strikes me as very, very occultic. I mean, especially when you’re referring to your use of this object as a wizard staff and comparing it to what a wizard in a movie did, I mean – I would say that if Bill Johnson didn’t agree with that, he should have afterwards said, hey, we don’t agree with this, that was out of line here. But the fact that someone could even come to the church and do that with the pastor and elders on stage just tells me they do not have much in the way of spiritual discernment. And when you’re inviting supernatural activity in your church and you don’t have any discernment to distinguish between you know, genuine godly supernatural stuff on the one hand and the occult on the other, then I just say this is not a safe place. Not a safe place for those who are seeking spiritual purity and spiritual growth and spiritual knowledge and so forth. So I don’t have anything personally against Bill Johnson, who I’ve never met. It may be that he’s very naive, very undiscerning, but, you know, pure in heart, I do not know. or it may be that he’s not very concerned about the truth and invites all kinds of spiritual weird stuff in. I will say this. It says in 1 John 4, 1, Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. And so, you know, if there’s spiritual stuff going on, supernatural stuff, we need to test those spirits. And I would say right away that as soon as you see that they’re doing something occultic things along with other things that resemble biblical supernatural things I would just say either they are all satanic or else if any of them are not then they’re being performed by someone who doesn’t have enough discernment to know the difference and that’s a concern of mine I have often thought I should go to Bethel I go close to there in my travels from time to time I have not had occasion to get up to Bethel in Reading so If I ever do, I can bring back a first-hand report. But for what I’ve seen online and what I hear from people I trust, I would say if it has any elements of true revival, it’s mixed. It’s mixed with the dangerous stuff.
Caller (Guest) :
I sure appreciate that very much.
Steve Gregg (Host) :
All right, Trish. I appreciate your call. God bless you.
Caller (Guest) :
And I’d like to give you a formal invitation to come up nearer to us and if you can, you know, visit Bethel. But we would certainly, in our area, appreciate you coming close enough for us to go to any of your meetings. And may God continue to bless you and lead you. Thank you.
Steve Gregg (Host) :
Yeah, contact us. Yeah, email us, and we can put you on a list of people to contact if I’m going up that way.
Caller (Guest) :
Wonderful. Thank you so much.
Steve Gregg (Host) :
Okay, Trish, thank you. God bless you. We’re going to talk next to Daniel from Vancouver, B.C., and I’m looking at a number of open lines here, but we only have, what, 15 minutes left. So if you’d like to be on the program, call now, and we’ll probably get to a few more calls before we’re done. The number is 844- 844-484-5737. That’s 844-484-5737. Daniel in Vancouver, B.C. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
Caller (Guest) :
Hi, Steve. Thank you for taking my call. God bless you for your ministry. I have a couple of questions. What is the first law which is mentioned in Revelation in one of the churches? Return to the first law. And my second question is, you know, I’m originally from South Africa, from Eastern Orthodox Church, but I’m a born-again Christian. And, you know, there is the book of Hanak, which is, you know, it’s mentioned in the Bible, but we don’t see, you know, in our Bible, but in Eastern Orthodox Church, there is the book of Hanak. So how can… What’s your say on those things, please?
Steve Gregg (Host) :
Okay. Hey, let me ask you. Is the Book of Enoch in the canon of your scriptures in the Eastern Orthodox Church? Because I’ve heard that it is.
Caller (Guest) :
I’ve heard it is in the… Yeah, there is. Yeah, there is. Because I remember in the Bible, like, you know, it mentions some, like, from the book of Hanak. Yeah. But we don’t have on the Bible, like, you know, the book of Hanak, right? So I was wondering, so where is that came? Is that the Eastern Orthodox Church? Are they right? So what’s your say on that one?
Steve Gregg (Host) :
Okay. Okay. And remind me, I hope you’re not gone yet. Your first question again was? Because I got on to Enoch.
Caller (Guest) :
The first love in Revelation. Return to your first love.
Steve Gregg (Host) :
Oh, yes, first love. That’s right. Gotcha. Gotcha. All right, we’ll do it. Okay, yeah.
Caller (Guest) :
Thank you. God bless you.
Steve Gregg (Host) :
God bless you, too. In the book of Revelation, in the seven letters to the seven churches, especially in Revelation 2, the first of the seven churches, which is the church of Ephesus… Christ says that he commends the church because they were very zealous, doing more works than they had ever done before. They’re being very discerning about false apostles and rejecting false apostles. But he said, I have this one thing against you. You’ve left your first love. And so they need to return to their first love or he’ll remove their lampstand from its place. Now, what is their first love? Well, it’s an interesting thing because many times we’re told to abide in Christ’s love and so forth, but we’re not told what doing Christ’s love. Does that mean our love for him? Does it mean the love that he has toward the world and exhibited through us toward other people? What does it mean? And this is sort of the same thing. What was the church’s first love? Does it mean their first love for Christ? Or does it mean their first love for each other? Now, There are a number of verses that are ambiguous that way, and I think it’s on purpose, because you can’t really separate those two things. Your love for Christ will be manifested in your love for other people. The book of Revelation, of course, was written for us by John. And John also wrote the book of 1 John. And he says in verse 20, if someone says, this is 1 John 4, 20, if someone says, I love God and hates his brother, he’s a liar. For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? And this commandment we have from him that he who loves God must love his brother also. In other words, if you love God, you’ll also love your brother. It says also in the next verse, in chapter 5 and verse 1 of 1 John, whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves him who begot, that is everyone who loves the Father, also loves him who has begotten of him, that is his children. If you love somebody, you love what they love, and they certainly love their children, so your love for them also spills over into your love for their children, he says. And so it is, if we’re all God’s children, all Christians are God’s children. We cannot love God, who’s the father of us all, without also loving those who are begotten of him, he says, those who are his children. Now, therefore, their first love must refer, in my opinion, to their love for each other, which is a manifestation of their love for God. To love people without first loving God is of no value. because Jesus said there’s two great commandments. One is love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And the second one is to love your neighbor as you love yourself. So if someone says, well, I love my neighbor as I love myself, well, good, good for you. But what about the first commandment? Do you love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength? Obviously, being a Christian requires that we love God first. That’s the first great commandment. But it’s also followed by one like it, which cannot really be separated from it. That’s love your neighbor as you love yourself. So I think that when it says your first love, I don’t know if we have to choose between does he mean love for God or does he mean love for each other? As far as John’s concerned, being a Christian means you love God. And because you love God, you love everyone else, too. And you love his children anyway. So I think what he’s saying is, in Ephesus there, you’ve done many more works than you used to do. He said the latter more than the first. You’ve done a lot of good things. And you’re showing great zeal for the truth. But you used to love people more. You used to love God more. In other words, the things you were doing before were done because you love God. But you’re doing those things now, but you’re kind of not doing it out of love anymore. And you need to get back to that. So it’s sort of like what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 13 when he said, if I have all faith and can move mountains and I understand all mysteries and all truth, and he said, if I sell all I have and give it to the poor, But if I don’t have love, it profits me nothing. I’m nothing, he said in 1 Corinthians 13, 1 through 3. So he’s saying, you know, all this, anything else I do that might seem to make me look good spiritually, if I don’t have love, it’s nothing. It’s not even, it’s not just degraded in value. It’s not worth anything. So Jesus is saying these Christians were busy about good things, good deeds and so forth that Christians ought to do. But apparently they used to be motivated by love, and now they’re out of habit or maybe something else, but not love. He says you’ve got to get back to the place you used to be, where your love was supremely for God and for his people. That’s what I believe that means. Now, about the Book of Enoch, I’ve heard that the Coptic Church has the Book of Enoch in their Bible, in their canons. I didn’t think that the Eastern Orthodox did. I think you might have even said that you don’t have it in your Bible. You just see it quoted in the New Testament. The Western and Eastern Church, I don’t think, have Enoch in their Bible. And the reason for that is because the Book of Enoch was not written by Enoch, but it claims to be, which means it’s a forgery. And it’s known to be so because the Book of Enoch appeared in the second century before Christ, whereas the real Enoch lived like 2,500 years earlier than that. And so the book was not written by Enoch. It was one of many books written in the intertestamental period that were attributed to famous people but were not written by them. And so that’s why the book is not accepted in most Bibles, although I think the Coptic church might have it in their Bible. Now, it’s true that Jude quotes from it, and Peter seems to allude to it in 2 Peter 2. But that doesn’t mean that they think it’s scripture. Jude also alludes to another book that’s not scripture. It was called The Assumption of Moses, in which Jude speaks of the Archangel Michael disputing with Satan over the body of Moses. This is not in scripture. This was in another unscriptural book. And Paul, in at least two of his epistles, if not more, quotes Greek poets and Greek philosophers in support of his points. And he’s not saying that they’re inspired either. So the fact that biblical writers will sometimes quote other books does not necessarily mean that they thought they were inspired books and should be in the Bible. And I don’t think the book of Enoch belongs in the Bible for that reason. It’s not really written by Enoch, and we don’t know who did write it. But whoever it was claimed to be Enoch, which means they weren’t being completely honest, obviously. All right, let’s talk to Rick from Napa, California. Hi, Rick. Welcome.
Steve Gregg (Host) :
Hi, Steve. The discussion there about Bethel Church and Reading raises kind of a question. Maybe you could comment on it. And that is, in the Old Testament, God is not very excited about mixing. He doesn’t like the worship of God being mixed with the worship of idols, idolatry. Absolutely.
Steve Gregg (Host) :
Absolutely.
Steve Gregg (Host) :
going on in a church and accepted in a church, that that’s going to put a damper on the work of the Holy Spirit in the church. It’s going to quench the Holy Spirit.
Steve Gregg (Host) :
I would think so. I would think so. It certainly would make it not a very reliable church. You wouldn’t want to trust the leadership with their spiritual discernment. Now, I suppose that the Holy Spirit could really be moving in some ways in a church, and the devil shows up and starts doing some counterfeit things, and the church has too little discernment to recognize the difference. I’ve sometimes quoted a famous line about revivals that the first person who wakes up during a revival is the devil. So when God really does start to move, sometimes the devil comes in to try to foul things up. There’s a book called War on the Saints by Jessie Penn Lewis. She was one of the leaders in the Welsh revival in the early part of the 20th century. And it’s a book about how God was doing wonderful things in the revival, but the devil also did. There were counterfeit things that came along, too. So this also was in the book of Acts. I mean, there were real miracles and real prophets, but there were false miracles and false prophets, too. Simon Magus in Acts chapter 8. was a false one. In chapter 13, Bar-Jesus, as he was called, was a false prophet. And so you do see, just as when Moses faced Pharaoh and had real miracles from God, the magicians showed up, and they did stuff too. They couldn’t do as much as Moses could, but they did some stuff. And so, you know, the devil shows up to try to counteract any genuine work of God too. So I’m not going to say whether or not Bethel was originally just a work of God. I cannot say. But if the Holy Spirit was doing something there, it seems apparent that the devil figured out there was something going on there and decided to insert a lot of his activities. Now, once a church is undiscerning and allows occultic activities… we might wonder whether God would still do genuine miracles in their midst. And I would have to say, I can’t really say. Because Balaam was really a false prophet, but God actually had him go into it transparently and prophesy genuinely on several occasions. almost against his will. And so it’s hard to know whether the Holy Spirit would actually move in a situation where there’s compromise in that area. I would just say I’m interested in seeing the Holy Spirit move, but not enough to go and see it happen in a place where there’s occultism going on, too. You know, I mean, if I’m going to seek the moving of the Holy Spirit, I’m going to seek it in a pure environment, you know, because, frankly, I want to stay far from demonic stuff. Unless I’m called in to cast out demons, which has happened a few times, but I’m not going to go looking for unrestrained demonic activity in any church I’m going to fellowship in. So that would be my take on it. I don’t know to what degree the alleged… Could I ask you one other thing? Okay, go ahead.
Steve Gregg (Host) :
Have you heard of the book God’s Strategy in Human History?
Steve Gregg (Host) :
Yes, I’ve read it.
Steve Gregg (Host) :
By a couple of British guys.
Steve Gregg (Host) :
Read it a long time ago.
Steve Gregg (Host) :
It seems like it’s kind of in your vein. I’ve been enjoying it. Okay, thanks.
Steve Gregg (Host) :
Yeah, I agree with a lot of it. It’s Forster and I forget the other author. I read it back in the 70s. Marston. Marston and Forster. Yeah. I read it back in the 70s. Forster and Marston. Okay, that order. Okay. Good enough. Okay, thank you, brother. Bye now. We don’t have much time, but we might have a couple minutes, if that’s long enough for you, Thomas and Phoenix. Do you have a short one? No, I’m sorry, we don’t have time. My apologies. I wanted to get to your call. But please call back tomorrow, and we can hopefully get to you then. My apologies. Sometimes I think we have a little more time left than we actually do, and that was my miscalculation. You’ve been listening to the Narrow Path Radio Broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg, and we are live Monday through Friday at this same time. And we hope you become a regular listener if you are not. If you benefit from this program, you might be interested in helping us stay on the air. You can. We’re listener-supported. You can write to The Narrow Path, P.O. Box 1730, Temecula, California, 92593. Or go to our website, thenarrowpath.com. Everything’s free at The Narrow Path. You can donate if you wish. But if you don’t want to donate, still go and take whatever you want of value to you. There’s plenty there at thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for joining us. Let’s talk again tomorrow.
