In this captivating episode, Steve addresses listener questions on pressing theological issues. The conversation spans from Judas Iscariot’s complex role in the New Testament to the contentious debate surrounding the Gospel of Thomas. Dive into deep explorations of covenant theology—how the new covenant through Christ redefines our relationship with God. Each discussion is richly filled with historical references, personal insights, and thought-provoking arguments that encourage deeper understanding and reflection.
SPEAKER 1 :
Thank you.
SPEAKER 11 :
Good afternoon and welcome to the Narrow Path Radio Broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and as usual we’re live. Hopefully for the whole hour we’ve had a few problems in the last few weeks. Once in a while my equipment has just randomly shut down on me near the end of the program and we had to finish out with playing a recorded program. I have no way of predicting when that will happen but next time we’re on the air, Monday, I will be doing it from home and we’d never have that problem from there. I’m on the road. And so hopefully we’ll have a solid hour, as usual, for your Q&A. If you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith, you can call me. We’ll talk about it. If you have a difference of opinion from the host, I’d love to hear from you about that, too. The lines are full right now, so don’t call right this minute, but take down this number. Call in a few minutes. You may find a line has opened up. That’s what happens regularly. The number is 844- 844-484-5737. That’s 844-484-5737. I have three more nights to speak in Texas. I’ve been here for over a week. And tonight I’m speaking in Haltom City, which is actually, I’ve been saying these three nights are in the Dallas area. When you’re in California, everything near Dallas is Dallas area. It’s really in the Fort Worth area. Halton City is near Fort Worth. And that’s tonight at 7 o’clock. I think there’s some food at 6 going to be served. But from 7 to 9 tonight, there’s a Q&A, basically. And then tomorrow night, we’re going to be in the Arlington area. And that’s from, let’s see, they’re serving dinner from 5 to 6. And then there’s a Q&A after that in the Arlington area. And that’s tomorrow night. And then Sunday morning and night I’m speaking at the Preston Road Church of Christ in Dallas. Now, I want to say that I’m speaking in the morning at the adult Sunday school. I’m on the imprecatory Psalms, and then there’s a Q&A at night. I’m not speaking to the morning service. So that’s what’s happening all in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, Arlington being one of them. That’s Arlington, Samaritan. If you’re interested in those and want to join us for any of them, just go to thenarrowpath.com and look under announcements and look under the dates. Today, tomorrow, and the next day, we have meetings all three days, before I head home again to California. So thenarrowpath.com under announcements is where you want to look for that information. Let’s talk to Timothy from Ontario, California. Hi, Timothy. Good to hear from you.
SPEAKER 09 :
Hey, Steve. Good to hear from you. So my question is kind of twofold, and it’s about dispensationalism. And we know that John Nelson Darby was one of the first to come up with the whole idea theory, but actually from looking online, the origin of this theory can be traced to three Jesuit priests in the name of Francisco Ribera, Cardinal Robert Bellamine, Emmanuel Lacunza, and apparently they came up with this idea to counteract the Protestant Reformers’ interpretation of the Book of Revelation, which according to them exposed the Pope as the Antichrist and the Roman Catholic Church as the Whore of Babylon. My question is, twofold, is Do signs of dispensationalism go back earlier, like the first, second, third century? And is there a book that you can recommend that talks about these three Jesuit priests and also John Nelson Darby and C.I. Schofield?
SPEAKER 11 :
Yeah, well, my lecture series, When Shall These Things Be?, talks about those priests and Schofield, but not in detail. I simply mentioned their role. And they were, of course, you know, Ribeiro was in the 16th century, you know, the same century as the Reformation, but later in it. Okay, Darby is the founder of the dispensational system in the 1830s. But sometimes dispensationalists say, no, it goes way back before Darby. It goes back to even some of the church fathers and some of the Puritans and so forth before Darby’s time. Well, that’s kind of true and kind of not true. Darby put the system together as it stands today. He borrowed from a number of different precursors to his system that had been around before, but they hadn’t been put into the system that he made. And as far as I know, his idea that the Jews still have promises that God made to them that have not been fulfilled in Christ yet, I think that might have been his main innovation. But some things go back to the church fathers, but they weren’t dispensationalists. They called them chileasts, which is pre-millennial. And so, of course, dispensationalists are pre-millennial also. So they would say, hey, the church fathers believed like we do. Well, no, they didn’t. They did agree with modern dispensationalists in saying that there will be a millennium. After Jesus comes back. But the kind of millennium and the reason for it and what would be going on in it was not the same. Dispensationalism believes the millennium is for God to restore the Jewish temple service. And the early church fathers never believed anything like that. They were what we’d call today replacement theology people. So, I mean, sure, there were some premillennialists before Darby, but he had his own slant on the millennium thing. Now, as far as futurism, when you talk about Francisco Rivera and Lacunza and those guys, they are credited with having come up with the futurist view of revelation. Now, I will say this. There were others, I mean, almost everyone in church history, with some exceptions. I’ll just say a lot of people in church history believe that Revelation was in their future, but not that it was all about the future. a much more common view before Darby, and had been around for centuries, was that Revelation is covering the whole church age. It includes the end of the world, but also John’s day and all the times in between. So that’s called the historicist view, and that was the primary view before the futurist view came along. And Francisco Rivera, you’re correct, he did come up with the idea that the Pope is not the Antichrist, because Rivera was… a Jesuit priest, and the Jesuits are committed to the defense of the Pope. So the main view of Revelation that was current in the 16th century was that the papacy was the Antichrist, was the beast. And so Francisco Rivera did come up with a commentary before the end of the 16th century identifying the fulfillment as a future Antichrist, could not yet risen, and therefore something very much like the modern futurist view of Revelation in general. Now, of course, Darby accepted that too. So, you know, premillennialism of a sort was certainly around before Darby. The futurist view of the Revelation came up before Darby, and Darby adopted both of those. But he didn’t adopt them from those people. I mean, he knew of them, and he kind of made his own versions of them. And then the pre-trib rapture, There were some who believed in a pre-truth rapture. Not many. You’d hear, I mean, very few people before Darby believed in it, and it doesn’t seem to have ever been mainstream in the church. I mean, there’s been all kinds of opinions in the church. But Darby, of course, incorporated it into his system as a new thing. But Darby also was primarily responsible for the view that God has not fulfilled all of his promises to Israel through Christ. which the church throughout history believed he had. Even the previous premillennialists believed that he had in the early days of the church. So Darby, that was his new thing, and that’s really the core of the dispensational system. So Darby invented that, and then he borrowed from other previous things and put them together into the conglomerate that we call dispensationalism. And even the things that he borrowed from others, he didn’t take them exactly the same. But, you know, futurist view of the book of Revelation, a premillennial view, Even, you know, a rapture somewhat before the Judgment Day, there were a few people who held something like that, scattered people in history, but not many. So he collected things. Now, there’s two books. One of them is called Dispensationalism Before Darby. By the way, both books I’m going to recommend are written by dispensationalists, and they’re defending the idea that Darby didn’t invent dispensationalism. And one is called Dispensationalism Before Darby. And I have to say, I forget the names of the authors, but I’ve read them. And the other is called Ancient Dispensational Truths. You can find those books on Amazon. Both of those are defending dispensationalism as an ancient view that predates John Nelson Darby. But all they demonstrate, and they quote a great deal from church fathers, but all they demonstrate is the things I’ve just told you. There were premillennialists before Darby. There were a few people who thought there would be a rapture at a different time. than the coming of Christ before Darby. And even there were a couple of church fathers, Irenaeus being one of them, and I believe Hippolytus was the other, who actually believed that the Jews would be gathered again in the end times in Jerusalem, but they didn’t see it as a fulfillment of unfulfilled prophecy. They saw it as a judgment. They said the Antichrist will gather them and persecute them. They didn’t say God will gather them. Whereas modern dispensationalists say God is going to gather them in fulfillment of his promises. So, you know, you can read these books, Dispensationalism Before Darby and Ancient Dispensational Truths. Both of those books I’ve read, and I’ve written a critique of them. I haven’t published it, but I probably will at some point. Anyway, they demonstrate that there were some of Darby’s ideas in some form or another that floating around in earlier times, but the system, and especially the core of his system of Israel, was Darby’s innovation.
SPEAKER 09 :
Okay, well, thank you very much, Steve. I really appreciate your answer on that, and I will look to see about buying those books.
SPEAKER 11 :
Okay, Timothy. God bless you. Good talking to you. Bye now. Okay, Benjamin from Greenville, Ohio. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 05 :
Good afternoon, brother. So I’ve been pondering on 1 Corinthians 10, 13, and it led me to wonder if when you face a temptation and, for example, maybe a lustful thought, if we refute that immediately and don’t indulge in it, at one point is it – I guess what I’m asking is what point is it sin? Is it when the thought enters our mind or if we – Refute it and don’t indulge in that thought.
SPEAKER 11 :
The sin is in the intention. So, I mean, if you’re walking down the street and you see a billboard or an advertisement or a woman, and suddenly you feel, you know, the kind of attraction that is inappropriate, And that’s temptation, okay? Feeling the feeling is no more inappropriate than, say, when you’re fasting to feel hungry, you know? And you shouldn’t eat, but you’re feeling hungry. You smell some food and you say, wow, that smells good. That becomes a temptation. Now, the Bible says in James 1… that sin is conceived through our lusts, and when lust conceives, it brings forth sin. So, you know, there’s a desire there that isn’t sin, because the desires, frankly, are organic. They’re biological. They’re, you know, glandular. I mean, every human being and most higher animals, have glandular desires for food and for sex and for things like that and for sleep. But as Christians, when those desires arise in us, that’s not really a sin because it’s just glands. But when we recognize that desire is not appropriate, then we have to ignore it and say no to it. We have to deny it. And that’s what keeps it from being a sin. Now, if at first it comes to us unbidden by us, if we then welcome it, well, then that’s sin. Even if we don’t do it, you know, if we agree with it, it’s the intention. When Jesus spoke about looking at a woman to lust, he didn’t say if you look at a woman and lust after her, or as the NIV says, if you look at a woman lustfully. That’s not what Jesus said. Jesus said if you look at a woman to lust after her, that’s intentional, that you’re seeking to arouse yourself to enjoy the fantasy of an illicit sexual encounter. Well, that’s intentional on your part, and you’re guilty of that. You need to repent of that. So, you know, an accidental, you know, if you notice somebody you didn’t want to notice or you didn’t even know they were there until you looked there, and suddenly, you know, there’s an attraction, maybe even a granular kind of attraction, well, then, you know, that’s a temptation. But if you look away and say, I’m not interested, I’m not going to, I don’t agree with that, Well, then you’ve just been tempted and you’ve beaten the temptation.
SPEAKER 05 :
Great. That’s kind of how I was reading it. I was just wanting to make sure that I was your response on that. But I appreciate it.
SPEAKER 11 :
All right, brother. God bless you.
SPEAKER 05 :
I know, brother. I know.
SPEAKER 11 :
Okay, Mary in Mariposa, California. Welcome to The Narrow Path.
SPEAKER 07 :
Hey, Steve. Yeah. Question regarding in your… observation of the recent history in the church. I’m just wondering how the worship ministry got introduced and how you feel about its effect in the church in general.
SPEAKER 11 :
By worship ministry, are you talking about music?
SPEAKER 07 :
Yes.
SPEAKER 11 :
Okay. Yeah, because, I mean, we call, you know, sometimes we call the singing portion the worship portion, but In the Bible, worship is the whole laying down of our hearts before God in admiration and awe and offering ourselves as a living sacrifice and all of that. I mean, there’s a lot involved in worship. Our whole life is, in a sense, worship. Paul said we present our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable, which is your reasonable worship. But in churches, we have come to speak especially of the musical portion of the service. as the worship portion, the musicians guard, sometimes the worship band, and so forth, the worship leaders. So where did that come from? That’s a very good question. You know, there were, back in the medieval times, there were, you know, Gregarian monks who chanted and things like that. I mean, singing songs of worship or offering music up to the Lord vocally, and even with instruments, goes way back. David, of course, did that kind of thing. And David wrote the Psalms to guide Israel in their corporate singing and worship. And he recommended musical instruments and things like that, which he himself also played. So that goes way back. And even earlier, when the Israelites came out of Egypt, Miriam grabbed a tambourine and led the people in a song of worship to God, celebrating their That was like 1,400 years before Christ. So as far as the church is concerned, there have been traditions in some churches against the using of musical instruments. but where they nonetheless would sing, they’d sing a cappella, that’d be musical. I think the worship that we see today in most evangelical churches, especially the big churches, the big non-denominational churches and so forth, with the band and all that up front, that is definitely a fairly recent development in my lifetime. Um, for example, when the Jesus movement began around 1969 or 70, uh, even most of the Christian bands came out of that movement. And, uh, you know, before that time, it was very unusual for guitars or certainly not drums and other things. Electrical instruments were not played in the church. You know, the organ and the piano were about the only one you’d see in most, most evangelical churches. Um, And, you know, and then there were, of course, instrument-free churches that just had a cappella singing. But, you know, if you’re as old as I am, you remember a time when the church, the only musical instruments in a church would be the organ or the piano. Now, back in the 60s, there were some Catholic churches that had what they called folk masses where the priest himself or someone else would play an acoustic guitar and lead songs like, you know, We are one in the Spirit. That was written by a Catholic monk. That kind of stuff. They’ll know we are Christians by our love. That’s stuff from the Catholic folk masses, which I began to hear about in the 60s. But when I went to Calvary Chapel in 1970, having been in a Baptist church all my life, and frankly, the worship singing there was a cappella. All the worship was a cappella. But a band… would get up or a musical individual would get up with a song they had written. And it wasn’t a worship song. It was more like a testimony song or a preaching song. It’s more directed to the unbelievers to tell them about Christ. And that was very popular. And that was new. I thought it was really interesting to see bands. that sounded like contemporary dance, you know, playing stuff.
SPEAKER 07 :
Can I interject something, just my observation, because I’m recently, my husband and I are attempting to rejoin a church into a place we’ve moved to, and this is particularly Calvary Chapel, but I think it goes for all megachurches, little churches everywhere, that the screen goes up, the words are on the screen, and it’s the same everywhere. And it seems to me that it’s making the congregation rather passive.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yes, I think you’re right. I think you’re right. And I think, you know, Calvary Chapel in the Jesus moment did not have instrumental accompaniment to the singing. And they didn’t have overhead projectors or, you know, PowerPoint or anything like that. We memorized the music. There was no written music. You know, there were like camp songs and songs that people made up, and they put scripture in a song. And someone would teach it to the congregation, and then we’d sing it every night. I mean, we had meetings every night of the week with about 90 minutes of singing before the Bible studies. And, you know, we’d go through the whole repertoire every night. And we had it all memorized. And that was wonderful because, I mean, when you’re looking at a screen or even at a printed page, I’m not saying it’s bad. I’m just saying you’re distracted. What you’re paying attention to is the printed page, where if you have songs that are inspirational and worshipful and you sing them by heart from memory – You know, it’s just more released, more released. Now, what eventually happened was they started adding bands and electric instruments and things like that and drums, which, of course, I’m not. I played in a Christian rock band, so I’m not an old scrooge about electrical music. But my complaint is I haven’t been in a church for a long time that had, you know, electrified music. where I could even hear the congregational singing or, frankly, even hear my own voice singing because these bands are so loud. Yeah.
SPEAKER 07 :
That’s my point. It eclipses the congregation. It does because… About participating in the worship.
SPEAKER 11 :
And you can look around. If you go to one of these churches that has a loud band and you know that you can’t hear your own voice singing, look around at the congregation during the songs and half of them are not singing, you know. And some of that may be…
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER 11 :
Their voice contributes nothing to the song because they can’t even hear their voices. And even you can’t hear the whole voices of the whole congregation combined because the music’s so loud. And that, I don’t think that’s good. I mean, I’m not going to condemn anyone who does that. I just, I don’t think that’s helpful. Yeah.
SPEAKER 07 :
And the only other one thing I wanted to mention is my husband and I discussed this. Gone are the riches, the rich… Wonderful, 500 or longer year history of Christians writing incredible hymns. We no longer hymn and sing anymore.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yeah, I don’t want to go to a church that doesn’t ever sing the hymns. Because the hymns are actually, you know, they’re tried and true. You know, modern worship music, it has its, every song has its moment, you know, and, you know, for six months, if it’s a really good one, or if a lot of people like it, for six months, they sing it everywhere you go, and then it’s gone, you know, and something new has come. And, you know, where the hymns, I prefer the hymns. I mean, I’m not, again, I’m an old guy, but I’m an old guy from the hippie days. I’m with you.
SPEAKER 07 :
I love the hymns. I knew you when you were young. I knew. It’s Santa Cruz. I’m from Santa Cruz. But I just moved to Mariposa. But my husband and I have been out of fellowship, per se, for a long time. And moving here, we wanted to find a home, church.
SPEAKER 03 :
I hear you. I hear you.
SPEAKER 07 :
It’s not easy. And this is a call you get all the time is people wondering where they can go. And I just kind of wanted to bring it up, is that where are the old, who’s singing the old hymns anymore? And even these younger kids in these congregations wouldn’t even understand half of the words.
SPEAKER 11 :
I know, isn’t that something? And you know something, too? Some of the modern songs… are taken from the old hymns. Like, they’ll sing two verses from the old hymn, then they’ll stick in a little modern chorus they’ve added to it, then they’ll sing two more verses from the old hymn, and stick another one. And I say, I know why they do that, because that makes it really easy to write a song, and the hymns are in the public domain. They’re not copyrighted. You know, you can’t steal somebody else’s song and sing it and call it yours and get royalties for it if somebody else has it copyrighted. But the hymns are in the public domain, so songwriters… They can add a few lines that they sing every couple of verses interjected, and then they can collect a copyright fee. They can make money off of it. And I find it very objectionable, partly because of that whole fact, and the other is because the lines they add do not improve it. In fact, in my mind, they’re vapid. The lines they add are vapid compared to the words of the hymns. Exactly.
SPEAKER 07 :
Exactly. The perfect words. So I just wanted to see where you thought. And I know in your travel, you meet a lot of believers and a lot of all over the place. And I’m just wondering, and I think I know that there’s a lot of us out there that are really missing content in our singing.
SPEAKER 11 :
Amen.
SPEAKER 07 :
Let me say this, Mary.
SPEAKER 11 :
I’ve got to take a break here, but I just want to say we have lots of people who listen to this program who are worship leaders. And, you know, I don’t judge them. Almost all worship leaders are a lot younger than me, and they weren’t around during the revival. They’ve never seen a revival. They don’t know the hymns. And it’s a shame because I just would recommend that they learn the hymns and use them because there’s real meat in the hymns. And most of the modern songs, even if they’re pretty, even if they’re uplifting. There’s not much meat in them, usually. So, I mean, I really would recommend a return to hymns more. I mean, I’m not saying don’t do any of the new stuff, but I think the church is starved for lack of the hymns. Anyway, Mary, I’d love to talk to you more, but as you can tell, we have a break here. But thanks for calling. We’ll talk to you again in the future. You’re listening to The Narrow Path. We have another half hour coming, so don’t go away. We are listener supported. If you’d like to write to us, the address is The Narrow Path, PO Box 1730, Temecula, California, 92593. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. I’ll be back in 30 seconds. Don’t go away.
SPEAKER 01 :
If you’ve been listening to The Narrow Path for very long, you know how much it has enhanced your study and understanding of Scripture and possibly your whole Christian life. Don’t you think all your friends should benefit from the program as you have? You help to partner with us in impacting the body of Christ when you tell all your friends to listen to The Narrow Path. If you have not done so, visit the website thenarrowpath.com and discover all that is available for your learning pleasure.
SPEAKER 11 :
Welcome back to the Narrow Path Radio Broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg, and we’re live for another half hour, taking your calls. If you want to call in with a question about the Bible or maybe a disagreement with the host, the number to call is 844-844-8000. 844-484-5737. That’s 844-484-5737. And again, if you’re in Texas, this is my last chance to mention this before I come home. I’ve got three meetings tonight, tomorrow, and the next night. That is through the weekend, different places. Tonight, it’ll be in the Fort Worth area. and Haltom City, and tomorrow night it’s in Arlington, and then Sunday I’m going to be right in Dallas at the Preston Road Church of Christ. If you want to come to any of those meetings, go to our website, thenarrowpath.com, look under announcements, and you’ll find all the information that will enable you to join us, and we’d love to see you. Okay, our next caller is Michael in Englewood, California. Michael, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for coming.
SPEAKER 02 :
Hi, Steve. Thank you. I have a quick, somewhat silly question. In John 6, 70, I believe Jesus says Judas was a devil. But then in John 13, 27, it says that Satan entered him after they sought the bread. So I guess my question is how or why would Satan need to enter him If he was already a devil.
SPEAKER 11 :
Well, to say that Judas was a devil doesn’t mean he was an actual demon. The word devil in the Greek means adversary. It has the same meaning as Satan in Hebrew. Hebrew, Satanos, is an adversary. And Diabolos in the Greek is also an adversary. So one of you is an adversary is what he’s saying. And, you know, it doesn’t mean that he was demon-possessed at that point or that the devil had entered him exactly. But he had chosen a course of not supporting and not following Christ and being an adversary to him. So Jesus said, have I not chosen you twelve, and yet one of you is an adversary. So I think that that’s what Judas was from early on. I don’t know if he was one at the time Jesus chose him. Remember, he had probably close to three years with Jesus. And I don’t know that Jesus would have chosen him if he was necessarily a wicked man at the time because he did send out Judas with the other 11 on missions to preach the gospel and to heal the sick and even to cast out demons. And the 12, you know, they said, Lord, even the demons are subject to us. So I don’t know that Judas would be able to cast out demons if he himself had demons in him. But at some point, And we don’t know what or why Judas began to feel adversarial toward what Jesus was doing. Most people’s theory is, and some people present it as if it’s a fact, that Judas, like many Jews, wanted Jesus to overthrow the Romans and raise up a militia and liberate Israel from the overlords of the country. And Jesus didn’t do it. And so some people think Judas… really was disappointed with Jesus in that and just turned against him. And there’s some who believe, they start out with a theory much like that, but they think that Judas, when he betrayed Jesus, was trying to force Jesus’ hand to show his power and to overthrow the Romans. Well, if the Romans arrest him, he’ll have to militate against them. But that didn’t happen. Now, we don’t really know much. I mean, people say, I mean, if the latter story is true, some people are trying to vindicate Judas. He’s just trying to get the kingdom going, you know, and get Jesus to start doing the right thing, as Judas understood it. But I think that, I mean, Judas was greedy, you know. He’s represented in the Gospels as saying to the Sanhedrin, what will you pay me if I deliver him to you? I mean, obviously, he was in it for the money. And the Bible also says that he had been stealing from the treasury. He was the treasurer of the group and had been stealing money. So, obviously, he wasn’t pure-hearted at all. And he was an adversary for probably not the slightest justifiable reason. But then later, near the end, it says that Satan entered him, which I think he just became totally possessed at that point. That’s what I would understand the case to be. Okay. Kevin from River Rouge, Michigan. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 08 :
Hey, nice to talk to you again, Steve. I wanted to give you a high five. And Mary, if you’re still listening, I’ve been very much disappointed in a lot of churches that it’s so loud, especially when I was down south. I’ve been playing guitar since I was 13. Before I called, I had been listening to one of your songs, favorite tunes you mentioned to a gal, Cats in the Cradle. Two things real quick. Before I ask these questions, I worked with the guys at Carpenter. I was a painter up here in Ann Arbor for a while, and he said, I worked real hard at being a sinner. I’m going to work twice as hard as being a Christian. Now, my first question along that line is, recently I heard from a friend in Florida that I used to go to for counseling years ago. She said that Calvin and Luther, though they believed, um, sola fide, sola gratia, sola fide, grace alone through faith alone, believe that sanctification in the life of the believer is a Galatianistic, uh, that’s my terminology, or a, um, um, an addition, uh, to that. In other words, uh, God doesn’t do the sanctifying for us. We, um, We have our part in, I don’t know how to say it, but work.
SPEAKER 11 :
Well, what is your question for me? I mean, you don’t have to represent what someone else said, but just let me know what your question is.
SPEAKER 08 :
Well, my question is, have you heard that about those two individuals?
SPEAKER 11 :
About Calvin and Luther?
SPEAKER 08 :
Yeah, that they believed in sanctification through a works and grace type of faith. instead of God doesn’t sanctify it through the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER 11 :
Well, I don’t know that Calvin or Luther, either one of them, denied that the Holy Spirit was involved. I don’t even know if they held the view that that person said, because it seems to me that Calvinists… are the ones who almost say you don’t have to do anything. Even if you had to have faith, they’d say that that works. So they don’t believe that you have to do anything or that you can do anything to cooperate with God in salvation or whatever. But, you know, they wrote a lot of stuff. Calvin wrote lots of stuff, lots of pages. I haven’t read them all. He may have said something along those lines. He wrote commentaries on every book of the Bible except Revelation, and I don’t have all his commentaries. But I’ve read his Institutes, which is like 1,400 pages long. I don’t know all that he wrote. I haven’t heard it all. And I don’t even care what he wrote because I’ve never looked to him for my theology. Biblically speaking, our relation with God is just that, a relationship. Relationships are not unilateral relationships. They are bilateral. That is, you know, if I want to have a relationship with the fire hydrant on the corner, I can talk to it. I can ask it questions. I can ask for favors from it. I can do all kinds of things. But we don’t have a relationship because the fire hydrant doesn’t respond at all. And, you know, we have our surrender to Christ is our duty. Now, I’m not saying that we do it without any prompting from the Holy Spirit, because Jesus said no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. So my opinion is that God’s drawing everybody at one time or another, and we decide to surrender to that drawing and go along with it, or we resist it and heart ourselves. And then God responds to that, and then maybe we respond to other things he does. So I just don’t think this is a unilateral thing where we’re like puppets and God just pulls the strings. I think that he has a real relationship with us. And like I was saying, Judas chose to be adversarial toward Christ. Some people do choose to be adversarial. And I don’t think that’s God making them do that. I think that’s their response.
SPEAKER 08 :
Do I have time for another question?
SPEAKER 11 :
Well, real quickly. Go ahead.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yeah. You know, around the Christian circles, words like dying to self, old man, flesh, They’re kind of used synonymous, the self-life. You hear it in songs, dying to self. What’s your take on the assumption that dying to self, it seems like that statement means that we deny that we have a self that is a personality or a human. I don’t know. I just get confused over the old man flesh type of button.
SPEAKER 11 :
Okay, well, first of all, when Paul talks about the old man and the new man, the old man is not synonymous with the flesh. Now, you’re right, a lot of people just use my old man and my flesh and so forth, and they use them all synonymously. Now, your flesh is, of course, your natural state. The old man is a reference to the corporate body of Adam, of which we were a part until we were converted. Now we’re in the new man, who is Christ. God took the Jews and the Gentiles and made in himself one new man, meaning the body of Christ. So the new man is the corporate Christ. The old man is the corporate Adam. And so we were in Adam, that is in the old man. We put off the old man. We put on the new man. The old and new man are references in Paul’s writings to two humanities, humanity in Adam and humanity in Christ. Now, the flesh is something else. It just refers to our natural state. including its own weaknesses and selfishness and sinfulness. But that’s not the only thing that exists in us, but that’s the main thing that’s emphasized when it talks about our flesh, because the contrast is always made between our flesh and the Spirit of God, or even our own spirit. The flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh. Now, when it comes to dying to self, I use that term, and I like that term, but it’s not a biblical term. The Bible doesn’t ever speak of dying to self. What Jesus said, if anyone comes unto me, let him deny himself. And denying self is a biblical idea. But dying to self, it may be a biblical idea, but it’s not a biblical phrase. But I think what it refers to is dying to self means laying down your own rights, laying down your own, you know, selfish tendencies that are inappropriate and, you know, absorbing injury without offense and, You know, doing the hard thing that you’d rather not do, but you’re sparing somebody else from doing it. I mean, putting yourself last, pretty much. Putting your self-interest behind those or below those of other people and of God. So that’s what I understand dying to self to mean. By the way, there’s a great old saying. kind of a poem. It’s some composition. Someone did. I don’t know who it is. It’s called That is Dying to Self. If you look it up online on the internet, just look up That is Dying to Self. There’s a really great piece that someone wrote. I know when I first visited Keith Green at his home, he had it hanging on the mantle of his home. But I’d seen it before. It’s an old thing. Very instructive. But Again, dying to self is not an actual biblical phrase, but the idea of putting yourself last as if you were dead and not demanding your rights, that’s kind of what is meant by the phrase, and I do believe in that. I mean, I believe in doing that. So it’s not the same as your flesh and old man. Those terms all have their own individual meaning and their context. We don’t have time to get into all of them because I have too many people waiting. Rick from Charleston, Maine. Welcome.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yes, I see. I’ve been listening to your teachings on Israel, and I heard you mention that you are covenantal, and I was curious. Would you say your position aligns more closely with the New Covenant theology or progressive covenantalism? And also, I understand that the covenant God made with Moses followed a suzerain vassal treaty format, which is different from the type of covenant that he made with Abraham. And I was just wondering how you would best explain how to view the New Covenant. It seems that… Yeah, our relationship to God is often described as a marriage, but what kind of covenant, or how would you describe the new covenant?
SPEAKER 11 :
Okay, well, I don’t usually describe myself as covenantal in the sense of covenant theology, which is usually put in contrast to dispensational theology. Now, if given dispensational theology as one option and covenant theology as the other, I’d be closer to covenant theology. But covenant theology is really part of Reformed theology, and I don’t share all the views of the Reformed people. So you mentioned new covenant theology. Now, that’s a term I never heard until a few years ago. And someone asked if I held to new covenant theology. I wasn’t sure exactly what it meant, and I asked what it meant. And the way they described it to me, yeah, I guess I do. Now, you talk about progressive covenantal. Now, I’m not really familiar with that, but that could be. I don’t really give a label to my views. I mean, some of them I do. Some of them have labels that I’m familiar with and that are commonly used by everybody. Then there’s other things I believe. I don’t even know if there’s a label for it, and I’m not looking to give it a label. My belief is that God made a covenant with Israel at Mount Sinai, which was his giving them the first opportunity to, as it were, cash in on the promises he made to Abraham. They were, for the most part, Abraham’s physical offspring. And so he took them out of Egypt, brought them to Sinai, made a covenant with them. They agreed to it. And he said, if you keep this covenant, then all the promises will be secure to you. But if you don’t, they’ll all be revoked to you. I mean, that’s what basically Deuteronomy 28 says. If you keep the covenant… all the things I promised Abraham and more you’ll have and you will be as it were the seed of Abraham that I promised would receive these things but he said if you break the covenant if you violate the covenant and defect and betray me well then you won’t receive those things I’ll go for someone else he said in chapter 30 of Deuteronomy if you make me jealous by going after other gods I’ll make you jealous Israel By my going after another people, a different people, you know. And Jesus said in Matthew chapter 21 to the Jews, he said, the kingdom of God is taken from you and given to a nation that will bring forth the fruits of it. So I believe that what happened is that God saved the remnant of Israel, which is what the prophets said he would do. In Christ, when Jesus came, the faithful remnant of the old covenant people came to him. And in the upper room, he made the new covenant with them. And the new covenant cancels out the old. And that’s a direct statement of Scripture. In Hebrews 8.13, where there’s a new covenant, it says, the old one is obsolete. And in Romans 7.1-4, Paul compares it to two marriages, because marriage is a covenant. And he said there’s this marriage to the law, but that one’s done. And now there’s a new covenant, which he compares to being married to Jesus. And so I believe Christians are under the new covenant. That is, we’re in a marriage covenant with Jesus, not with Moses, not with the law. And that the old covenant and its requirements, its stipulations, its promises, Those are gone. Those don’t exist anymore. Just like if you were married to somebody, if a woman was married to a man and there were things he promised and things that he forbade and things he required, but then he died. Well, she doesn’t have to do any of that anymore. She’s not married to him anymore. But if she’s remarried to a new man, she has to do what he is pleased to have done in the home. So that’s how it is with us. We have a new covenant. We’re married to Christ. Everything Christ said is our obligation. It is our assignment. But the things that Moses said, they’re not. They’re not our assignment. So that’s how I… That’s how I deal with that covenant thing. I’m not sure what label that has. But that’s my view. Okay, let’s talk to, let’s see, JC in Chandler, Arizona. JC, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 04 :
Good afternoon, Steve. And it’s God bless you. God bless you and your ministry. I don’t have a question, but I just have two quick comments. Mary says, Mary Dead Red on that. I was raised Catholic. My dad was one of the first Navy SEALs, so I was full immersion baptized on Guantanamo Bay by a Navy Lieutenant Commander surrounded by Navy SEALs. But later, I was baptized in a church in Scottsdale on Christmas Eve 2020, and I left that church because of the music. That was the one thing that… So I’m now searching for a church. But in the midst of that, I’ve started a ministry. I work with people searching for God. But my other comment is… I say this every time I call, but I enjoy seeing you in person so much. And I wanted to just tell the people in Texas… And if you’re wondering whether you should go see Steve, do everything you can and go see him. And God bless you, Steve. And God bless your ministry. And thanks for taking my call, brother.
SPEAKER 11 :
Okay, JC. Yeah, I was in Arizona last month. I appreciate your call, brother. Okay, we’re going to talk to Rick in Riverside, California. Welcome to the Narrow Path, Rick.
SPEAKER 03 :
Hello?
SPEAKER 11 :
Hello?
SPEAKER 10 :
I’m in Redwood City. No, sorry.
SPEAKER 11 :
You better turn your speakerphone off because I’ve got nothing but echo coming from you.
SPEAKER 10 :
Oh, that’s all right. Yeah. Are you talking to Rich in Redwood City or to Riverside?
SPEAKER 11 :
No, Rick in Riverside is what we got. Are you in Redwood City?
SPEAKER 10 :
Yeah, I’m in Redwood City.
SPEAKER 11 :
Okay, the call screener misheard you and wrote down the wrong city. Go ahead. I’m sorry. Go ahead.
SPEAKER 10 :
Yeah, I was going to say that I spoke with you a little while back, and you insisted that the Thomas Gospel is not authentic. Yeah. And I disagree with you. Why? Well, there’s a pastor by the name of Keith Giles. I don’t know if you’ve heard of him.
SPEAKER 11 :
Keith Giles?
SPEAKER 10 :
I heard him.
SPEAKER 11 :
I know him. I spoke at his home a few times, yeah.
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, he says he’s come around and agrees that it is authentic. He has the same opinion as you do, and at first he rejected it, and now he says it makes good sense. So he agrees with me, I guess, it turns out.
SPEAKER 11 :
So what is your question for me?
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, I mean, what made him change his mind, I mean? You insist it’s not authentic.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yeah. Well, you’re asking me what made him change his mind. I didn’t know he did. You know, Keith Giles, you know, we’re friendly with each other, and he had me speak in his home when he had a home church in Orange, California. But he’s moved in some directions theologically that I don’t follow. So, I mean, I didn’t know he had decided that the Gospel of Thomas is authentic. I was very surprised. because the Gospel of Thomas was not written by Thomas, and that’s the biggest problem. Thomas was not alive when it was written. It was written in the second or third century, and it’s a Gnostic gospel. About a third of the material in the Gospel of Thomas… is Gnostic, which is all the church fathers called heresy, and the apostles would have seen as heresy also. You know, it has Jesus making all kinds of weird mystical statements that don’t even make any sense. It has him saying even, you know, a woman, you know, if she wants to be in the kingdom of God, she has to become a man, you know, and then she can become part of the kingdom. It wouldn’t go well in our modern society. feminist society. I mean, not that Jesus would go well in it, but it just doesn’t go with what Paul or anyone else teaches either. I think that, I’m not sure why you believe that the Gospel of Thomas is authentic. I’ll give you a chance to tell me, but I don’t see any reason to believe it’s authentic.
SPEAKER 10 :
He says that it makes perfect sense to him now. What does? That’s what he says. What is written in there, Keith Giles, he says that it makes good sense to him. He now realizes that. It all makes sense.
SPEAKER 11 :
Well, a lot of people think it makes perfectly good sense to abort babies if they’re inconvenient. I don’t care what makes sense to somebody. I want to know what’s true. Everything I believe makes sense based on the evidence I’ve seen. And certainly the evidence I’ve seen is that Thomas did not write the Gospel of Thomas. Now, are there some things in the Gospel of Thomas that are true? Of course. About one-third of it are sayings of Jesus that are borrowed from other Gospels. So those parts are true. But when somebody puts together a book under a false name, claims that it’s a book of the sayings of Jesus, steals about a third of them from other Gospels that are authentic, and then makes up two-thirds of them, a third of which are heretical, I’m not sure why that would make sense to accept that. I do know this, though. I know that Keith has moved away from being strictly, I think, what we call an evangelical, as near as I can tell. I’m not trying to, if I’m wrong… I’m not trying to badmouth him. I’m just saying he definitely has moved away from a conservative commitment to the authority of Scripture. And I suppose once you’ve done that, you can go all kinds of directions, including accepting Gnostic Gospels if you want to. But, I mean, I’m not sure what you’re trying to do here if you’re trying to say, Well, Steve, you should believe the Gospel of Thomas True because this guy thinks it makes sense to him. Well, so what? So what? There’s people who think that life arose from non-life spontaneously by natural forces. That doesn’t make sense to me. If it makes sense to them, the worse for them. It doesn’t make sense at all. It’s contrary to everything we know in science. But when someone wants to believe something… and they’re predisposed toward it, then many times it makes sense to them when it wouldn’t otherwise. So, I mean, you haven’t really told me what evidence led him to believe it or led you to believe it. Do you have some particular evidence for it?
SPEAKER 10 :
I just think that the research community has authenticated it, apparently.
SPEAKER 11 :
Like who? Who in the research community has done that?
SPEAKER 10 :
And those who work in that community have come to that conclusion. Oh, those who work in that community. I believe there’s one of them. He would probably think that.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yeah, I think Bart Ehrman is naive also. I mean, he’s a trained scholar, but so are a lot of people I disagree with. I mean, you know, you can find a trained scholar who believes just about any doctrine you want to name. Virtually every cult, virtually every denomination. have institutions of higher learning, and so you find scholars in them who believe them. And, of course, the atheists, lots of universities are atheists, and so a lot of them are scholars too. But, you know, I’m not sure what you use as a means of deciding what you’re going to believe or not believe. To me, I don’t go by what scholars say simply because I want to use logic and reason and look at the evidence. And I want to be objective. But if we’re going to go by what scholars say, we’re going to have to just flip a coin or roll a dice because there’s going to be a whole bunch of scholars saying opposite things. And I don’t know of any reputable scholars who believe that the Gospel of Thomas was written by Thomas. It’s written much too late to be his. Anyway, you and I differ. That’s fine. I’m going to have to sign off here. So thanks for joining us. It’s good to have you. You’re listening to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg. And we are listener-supported. If you’d like to write to us, it’s The Narrow Path, P.O. Box 1730, Temecula, California, 92593. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. If you go there and look under announcements, you can see where I’m speaking tonight, tomorrow, and the next night in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Have a good weekend. We’ll talk again Monday. God bless.
