As the episode unfolds, complex queries on Revelation’s symbolic 1000 years and the incursion of New Age ideologies in the church are tackled with astute biblical references. Navigating through varied interpretations, Steve raises pivotal considerations about long-standing traditions and their place in contemporary belief systems. The conversation rounds off with practical advice for living out one’s faith amidst modern spiritual challenges, leaving listeners both enlightened and intrigued.
SPEAKER 1 :
you you you you
SPEAKER 06 :
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, taking your calls. If you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith, I’d be glad to get a call from you and talk to you on the air. You can also call if you want to challenge something the host has said, you don’t agree with it, want to balance a comment, whatever. The number to call is, and I should say the time to call, looks like it may be now, we The number is 844-484-5737. Again, the number is 844-484-5737 if you’d like to be on the program. Our first caller comes from Derek in the town of North Pole, Alaska. And I want to say that my stepson rode his Harley Davidson from Southern California up to North Pole, Alaska. I think it was last year with a group of bikers. and I didn’t even know there was a town by that name up there. Hi, Derek. Welcome.
SPEAKER 07 :
Hey there. How’s it going, Steve?
SPEAKER 06 :
Good.
SPEAKER 07 :
Hey, so I just wanted to say, before I ask my question, I just want to say I’m really grateful for your ministry, and I come from more of a dispensational tradition, cessationist tradition, and your ministry has been very challenging to me and has been a great enlightenment and really kind of seeing different perspectives from godly Christians, and it’s been just helpful for me to kind of like think critically about things. And so if nothing else, your ministry has taught me a great deal. I’ve shared with many other people how to think critically and really to look through things with a more understanding eye. But my question for you is, yes, my question for you is, I was listening to one of your messages on the baptism of the Spirit. Now, I come from a Baptist… and that is not really something you hear very often. And my own personal testimonies, I got saved earlier, but then about a couple years ago, I really started to see growth in my life. Now, I didn’t have any laying on of hands or any of that. It was much more seriousness, like you know how you start to read the Word and you start to become more, you understand the deeper meaning of it and you can actually relate to it more instead of just an intellectual understanding. And so I was kind of curious, what are the signs of being saved? uh baptized with the spirit and also uh how do you know if you need it and if you do need it and i’m still studying if you do need it so i’m just curious to know what your understanding is on this uh what kind of signs would you look for or how would you reach out to someone like i mean i my church no one would if i if i brought that over my church to be like what you know um if you can kind of just talk about that a little bit the baptism of the holy spirit and whatnot
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, sure. Like yourself, I grew up Baptist and I had never heard of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. And so I didn’t hear about that until I went somewhere else when I was 16. Now, my experience of being baptized in the Spirit resulted in kind of what you were talking about. My walk with Christ became more vital. He was more real to me than before. Reading the Bible was a much more dynamic experience because it’s as if God spoke to me through the word of God instead of me just reading it to have knowledge of what it said. Uh, it’s, it’s very subjective, of course, uh, because everything that I just described and what you described has to do with a subjective sense that you can’t describe really to other people enough for them to really know exactly what it’s like. But it sounds to me like what you’re describing may well be, uh, the results of being baptized in the Spirit. I believe that, you know, I think the laying on of hands is the commonplace method in the Bible, but it’s not the only way. You find people in the Bible getting baptized in the Spirit without laying on of hands, like, you know, the household of Cornelius, for example. And so I’ve known lots of people that I think are filled with the Spirit, even if they’ve never had a, second experience after conversion or if no one’s laid hands on them, I don’t think there’s any one way that God has to always do it. The main thing is I think where God finds a heart hungry and open to him and desiring the fullness of the Spirit, he may simply pour out the Spirit upon them with or without the laying on of hands. Now, I knew this even before I went and asked somebody to lay hands on me, but I did it only because I knew that I had not received the baptism of the Spirit. I knew this because I felt like I knew God mostly by hearsay. I mean, I didn’t have any doubts about Christ. I’ve never had any doubts or weakness in my faith ever when I was little, when I was an adolescent or since. But I had a lot of faith. But it was just trusting, you know, trusting something that I wasn’t experiencing in any subjective sense. And when I got baptized in the Spirit, then, you know, I did have a sense of God’s presence. Now, I can’t call it an emotional experience. I didn’t exhibit any emotion at all, and I’m not sure that I felt much emotion. But I did sense the reality of what I believed in a new way, in a new way that never left me. So it wasn’t just like a great evening where I felt really inspired by something that I heard or something, but it was a change in my life. And the change was not in the way that, you know, I didn’t speak in tongues. I didn’t, you know, go around healing people or anything like that. But I did, I’d say God was more real to me. And it sounds like that’s what you’re talking about. So I wouldn’t, I mean, if you told me that you believed you were filled with the Spirit, I wouldn’t doubt it for a second. If you’re not sure, well, I guess I’d encourage you that you probably have been. But if you have serious doubts, of course, you can always pray that God would fill you. I think we should, see, I pray for God to fill me virtually every day, you know. And generally speaking, before I go in the air or before I do much of anything, I ask God to fill me with the Spirit. So, you know, it never hurts. I don’t think you can ask that too often because Paul said in Ephesians 5.18 that we need to be being filled with the Spirit. And Jesus said the Father will give his Holy Spirit to those who ask him. Uh, so it never hurts to ask, but I’m at the same time, I would not be, I would not be prepared to say that. I doubt that you’re filled at this moment. Of course, I don’t know you.
SPEAKER 07 :
Sure.
SPEAKER 06 :
So, so have you, uh, have you been listening to my lectures, charisma and character?
SPEAKER 07 :
I have, I have. I’ve been listening to that and, uh, it’s been, it’s been pretty interesting. And, uh, I think the thing that’s been really tough for me is when I tried to find the scriptures that talked about the gifts stopping, and I really didn’t really see a very good scriptural argument for it. And so I kind of felt like, well, maybe I’ve been downplaying the Holy Spirit’s working in my life, and that kind of scared me. I’m like, man, have I been limiting God’s working in my life because of my whatever, you know, whatever I’ve been thinking and whatever? relying on my own strength too much, and kind of a scary thought. And so I’ve really just been kind of exploring this for really the first time.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, well, good for you. You know, the cessationist view holds, as you know, that the gifts of the Spirit ceased from being available at the time that, well, with the end of the apostolic age, when the apostles had died off, or when the New Testament was completely written. But sometimes they say, well, not all the gifts, only the sign gifts. They’ll say, well, the sign gifts like healing and miracles and speaking in tongues and prophecy, those are sign gifts. Those feast, but the other ones didn’t. Which other ones? Well, the gift of teaching, for example, or exhortation or helps or giving. They never say those ended. But all those gifts are in the same list. Paul has a few lists, but you’ll find all these. They’re all called gifts of grace, charismata. Wow. None of them are, I mean, Paul does never suggest that any of them are temporary. So the idea that some of them passed away and the others did not when the apostle died is strictly, it seems to me it comes strictly out of the imagination of the person presenting it. Because there’s not a verse of scripture that says anything remotely like that. So I think also we tend to interpret normative Christianity by whatever our experience is in our churches. And I think where churches do not have any kind of manifest power or presence of the gifts of the Spirit in their assemblies, it’s easier to say, well, we’re not supposed to. Those are not for us today. We’re fine. You know, than to say, you know, maybe we’re deficient in an important way. Maybe we need to look into that. So I’m glad that your reaction to the whole question is at least inquisitive and hungry for God, and you can’t go wrong with that attitude, I think, as long as you’re using Scripture.
SPEAKER 07 :
Amen. Well, thank you very much, Steve. I appreciate you for your talk.
SPEAKER 06 :
All right, Derek. Good talking to you. Thanks for your call.
SPEAKER 07 :
Bye. Bye now.
SPEAKER 06 :
Let’s see. Kay from Sarasota, Florida. Well, I call from Alaska, from North Pole, Alaska, and then Florida. We’re going kind of to opposite extremes in the United States. Hi, Kay.
SPEAKER 05 :
Hi, how are you?
SPEAKER 06 :
Good, thanks.
SPEAKER 05 :
I have a question about the 1,000 years in Revelation 20. Looking up on the strong concordance of the word 1,000, And you probably already know this, so walk me through this. It is – I can’t pronounce it – chileo, C-H-I-L-I-O-I. But the definition is – it’s plural of an uncertain affinity. So it’s not just a thousand years. It could be thousands years. So if you want to make it singular, you want to just – put parameters on that to just 1,000. The word is C-H-I-L-I-A-S, and that’s in other scriptures. But, you know, we always talk about the millennium, excuse me, my voice, as 1,000 years, but really it’s an infinity. It’s an unknown amount of time. So why do we lock that in? Talk me through this. Help me understand.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, well, I have to say that I stopped doing that about, I’d say about 40 years, 45 years ago almost. I believed, because I was taught, that the 1,000 years in Revelation is 1,000 years, essentially literally 1,000 years, during which Christ would reign after his second coming. This view is called premillennialism. Now, about 45 years ago, I was rethinking all of this just in my study of Scripture, and I realized that the number 1,000 is used many times in Scripture, but I didn’t know of any time that it was used of a literal number. If you look in the Old Testament for all the times that the number 1,000 is used, I don’t say 1,000 years because it’s only used, I think, once there, if I’m not mistaken, in Psalm 90, verse 4. where it says a thousand years in your sight are as yesterday when it is past or as a watch in the night. That’s Psalm 90, verse 4. But it seems to me like a thousand years is there simply meaning a long time. It’s not saying a literal thousand because it says a thousand years in your sight is as yesterday or even as a watch in the night. So it’s like saying a thousand years, which is a long time for man, is a really kind of short time for God. And I think that’s what Peter is saying, too. In 2 Peter chapter 3, where he says, a day to the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as a day. I think he’s borrowing that idea from Psalm 90, verse 4, where a thousand years just means a long time to us is like a short time to God. But then, even when the number thousand is attached to things other than years, generally speaking, it’s not literal. God owns the cattle on a thousand hills, Psalm 50 tells us. Well, is that the literal number of hills God wants to get on? A thousand? No more, no less? I think not. When the psalmist says, a day in your presence is better than a thousand. Well, is he thinking literally of a thousand days? But it’s not better than a thousand and ten. No, a thousand just means a really large number. When God told… When Moses told the Israelites in Deuteronomy, I think it’s the first chapter, he says, may God multiply you a thousand times as much as you are now. Again, I don’t think he’s thinking of a literal number thousand, or when the Bible says God keeps covenant for a thousand generations. The number thousand, I don’t know of any time that the number thousand in the Bible is used of a literal number.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, there are times. There are times it’s literal. If it’s used in that Greek word… Kilios. Where do you find that?
SPEAKER 06 :
Where do you find them used literally?
SPEAKER 1 :
5505.
SPEAKER 05 :
Let me see if I can go back on that.
SPEAKER 06 :
I’m not talking about the Greek word Kilios itself, from which, by the way, what we call premillennialism is based on the Latin word millennium, but The early Christians called premillennialism keleism, from that word in the Greek, keleos. But, no, I’m not talking about necessarily the Greek word. I’m talking about the number itself in its usage. I don’t know of a case in the Bible where it speaks of a thousand of anything, and it means it literally.
SPEAKER 05 :
There’s 23 masses coming up where it’s being literal. What? Revelation 21, 16, 12,000 furlongs. Revelation 14.
SPEAKER 06 :
No, that’s not 1,000. That’s not 1,000. That’s 12,000. I’m talking about 1,000.
SPEAKER 05 :
Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah, there’s lots of multiples.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, there’s lots of multiples of 1,000, like whenever it’s given the censuses of the people of Israel. There’s, you know, 780,000 or whatever. You know, there’s lots of numbers that are statistics, but they’re much less round than the number 1,000. And the number 1,000 used by itself of anything, as near as I can tell, is just a round number that means a large number.
SPEAKER 05 :
It’s plural. It’s always used in the plurality. Or I shouldn’t say that, but it seems to be.
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, that’s not necessarily significant because there are a number of words in the Bible that are, like the word heaven in Hebrew is always plural. But, you know, it’s in the Hebrew. But it’s not always speaking of a plurality of heaven. So it’s just kind of a… It’s just the way some languages are formed. But the point I’m making is that 1,000 years in Revelation 20, I believe, probably does not refer to a literal 1,000 years. And the period I think it does refer to is thousands of years. I believe it’s referring to the present age, the church age. So that’s my understanding.
SPEAKER 05 :
Would that make you lean toward all-millennialism?
SPEAKER 06 :
It certainly would.
SPEAKER 05 :
Okay. But yet you’re a preterist.
SPEAKER 06 :
I’m a partial preterist. Yeah, I’m a partial preterist. But being an amillennialist is consistent with being a preterist or any number of other views. If you were a historicist in Revelation or if you were an idealist, you could still be an amillennialist. The millennial categories are different than the categories of the different views of Revelation. There’s four different views of Revelation as a whole. But these are unrelated to the different views of the millennium. The millennium is only mentioned in one place in Revelation. It’s chapter 20. And you can take it as a literal thousand years after Jesus comes back, a literal thousand years before Jesus comes back, or a non-literal. between the first and second coming of Christ. So you can take any of those views and still take any of the other views of Revelation, the futurist, historist, preterist, or idealist. They all can be compatible with amillennialism or premillennialism or postmillennialism, although some of the views fit more neatly and run in the same circles with some millennial views more. Hey, we’ve been talking a long time. I’ve got a lot of calls, but I appreciate your call. Thanks for joining us. I hope that clears some things up for you. Let’s talk to Kevin from River Rouge, Michigan. Kevin, welcome.
SPEAKER 02 :
Nice to talk to you again, Steve. I’ll try and not be around the bush. I have a couple issues. I’ve had a cold for a couple of days, been coughing stuff up, and I’m a retired chiropractor long and short of his life. Three words, doctrine and discernment and psychology. I have your CDs on psychology. I think they’re phenomenal. I talked to my niece regarding me coughing things up. I used to smoke two years ago if I quit.
SPEAKER 06 :
Is this related to your question? I’m sorry.
SPEAKER 02 :
Okay, go ahead. She said something about singing to Jesus with the chakra, and it’s a New Age term.
SPEAKER 06 :
The chakra refers to the seven energy centers or zones in the human body, which is part of Hinduism and I think Buddhism, too. That’s what I’m getting at.
SPEAKER 02 :
And I think that my sister, who’s younger than me, I came from down south. We were all raised Catholic. And, you know, I just picked up on that right away. And I said, you know, I’m going to shock your chakra. That’s why I touch your back foot. The other thing, I see where that’s coming from.
SPEAKER 06 :
What is your question? Because we’re running out of time for this.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, my question is, why is this so predominant, this New Age stuff in the church today in psychology, really? I mean, I see it everywhere.
SPEAKER 06 :
I think it’s prominent because the churches have gotten bored with Jesus and bored with the Bible. And that’s, you know, whenever the Bible… ceases to be the center of fascination for the church, it looks for something external to the Bible, something maybe a little different, something a little sexier, something a little more exciting, something a little more speculative to intrigue. But to my mind, if you believe the Bible is the Word of God, There can be nothing more fascinating to an intelligent person than to know if you believe there’s a God and you believe we have his word in the Bible. I can’t think of any person that I would describe as intelligent who doesn’t think that’s exciting. How could there be anything more exciting than God? How could there be anything more exciting than God speaking to us? I’ve never been able to understand anyone who took the Bible lightly and who believed in God. and the Scriptures. Of course, people might believe there’s a God and not believe the Scriptures. That is, they might take the position that the Bible’s not the Word of God. Such people, I think, have never objectively investigated it. There’s simply no evidence that the Bible isn’t the Word of God, and the evidence that it is, is, to my mind, overwhelming. Of course, I’ve had the privilege of looking into that for the past 60 or more years. So I guess not everyone’s informed, but they can be. I mean, I’ve got probably 30 books on my shelf that anyone could read and see what the evidence is. And, you know, so, I mean, and also, you know, someone say, well, they don’t know that the Bible is the word of God. So they can’t be blamed for not following it. Well, if they know that the Bible claims to be the Word of God, and they don’t know that it is, the question is, have they investigated it to see if it’s true? If not, they’re as dull as I was describing them to be. How could someone say, here’s a book that millions of people, more people in this religious system than in any other system in the world, believe that the Bible is the Word of God, and you’re not curious to know, you know, if you’re not curious to know if it is or not. Really? Where’s your passion? Where’s your interest in reality? Where’s your integrity, I wonder? If I knew there was a book that claimed to be the Word of God, and I didn’t even look into the question, I can’t imagine being that dull. I can’t imagine anyone being that dull. So look into it, and people will find it to be true. But the Bible… Whether it’s the Word of God or not doesn’t really interest a lot of people. They’re just not interested in God. They’re interested in themselves. And frankly, psychology and exotic religions that are different than the Bible, those are because they’re, I guess, less familiar. less Western. Western is considered to be a bad thing in many people’s feelings. More Eastern stuff is maybe more profound, they think. So, I mean, if the church would make Christians again, would convert people again, preach the gospel again, and educate them concerning what the evidence is about the Bible, to me, I’m always surprised to meet Christians even who don’t know What the evidence is for the Bible. Isn’t this something you’re committing your life to? Why would you not look into it? Anyway, I’m just ranting here now. But anyway, the reason that New Agey stuff is creeping into churches is because Christians are ignorant. They’re ignorant that the Bible is the Word of God. Or maybe it’s not just ignorance. Maybe it’s just apathy about God. In any case, it’s wrong. It certainly is contrary to truth. That is to believe these new agey stuff. So anyway, if you’re asking why it’s happening so much, it seems to be happening because of those factors, I think.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes. Thank you.
SPEAKER 06 :
Okay, Kevin. Thanks for your call. Good talking to you. All right. We have a few lines open and we have callers waiting too. We’re going to hold off until after the break at the bottom of the hour to take more calls, but We have a couple or three lines open if you’d like to call in and get on in the next half hour. We’re halfway through the show. The number is 844-484-5737. That’s 844-484-5737. So, if you have any questions about the Bible or the Christian faith, you disagree with the host, you want more information about something from a previous answer given or whatever, just feel free to give me a call, 844-484-5737. The program you’re listening to is called The Narrow Path. Why? Well, because Jesus said it’s a narrow path to follow him. He is the narrow path, following him, walking upon him. He said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. So… He’s the way we walk in, and following Jesus, living in Jesus, being obsessed with Jesus, frankly, is the only, to my mind, the only sensible way a modern man or men of any age could live. And if you don’t think so, I’d love to hear from you and find out why you think not. Anyway, The Narrow Path is a listener-supported ministry. 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. Now, yesterday we were so full of calls, I didn’t have time to give that information, so I’ll give it again. The Narrow Path, P.O. Box 1730, Temecula, California, 92593. If you’d like to donate, or you can go to our website, thenarrowpath.com. Now, there you’ll find the option of donating, but you’ll also find all kinds of resources that you can have for free. You don’t have to donate anything. So just go to thenarrowpath.com and check out all the stuff that’s there. Over 1,500 of my lectures, you can download them for free and other stuff at thenarrowpath.com. I’ll be back in 30 seconds. We have another half hour, so don’t go away.
SPEAKER 01 :
If you enjoy the Narrow Path radio program, you’d really like the resources at our website, thenarrowpath.com, where hundreds of biblical lectures and messages by our host, Steve Gregg, can be accessed without charge and listened to at your convenience. If you have not done so, visit the website, thenarrowpath.com, and discover all that is available for your learning pleasure.
SPEAKER 06 :
Welcome back to The Narrow Path. My name is Steve Gregg, and we’re live for another half hour taking your calls. If you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith, I’d love to talk to you. If you see things differently than the host and want to say so, I’ll say why. I’d be glad to talk to you on that, too. The number to call is 844-484-5737. That’s 844-484-5737. Our next caller is John from Phoenix, Arizona. John, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 03 :
Hey, Steve, first-time caller, although I’ve emailed you a few times and you’ve been so gracious to return a reply to my email, so thank you for that. I’ve got a question regarding, and this is kind of an upper-grads question, but most of us will agree that God can’t violate the laws of logic and that he’s not able to make squirter circles, you know, violate the laws of non-contradiction just because they’re They’re untruths. That’s correct. But one of the laws of logic, laws of identity says that, you know, you are who you are and you can’t be someone else. And I wonder if that comes into play as to why Jesus came down. And as in Hebrew says, he can now sympathize with us because he was tested in all ways. So maybe before Christ came down, even God could not really know what it is to be a man and walk in our shoes. And now that Christ has come down, he can, and now he can sympathize with us and act as our high priest. Does that kind of make sense, or am I really going out on a limb there?
SPEAKER 06 :
No, you’re not going out on a limb. I personally think that’s exactly what the writer of Hebrews is saying. I mean, God knows things in the sense that he knows all the facts. He certainly knew. that we suffer temptation before Jesus became a man and suffered temptation himself. He knew that we suffer pain physically when we injure ourselves. He knew that we get tired. He knew that we suffer from ignorance and things like that. He knew all those things were true, but he didn’t know them the way a person who experiences them knows them. We could say there’s propositional knowledge and then there’s experiential knowledge. And to say that God knows everything, it doesn’t mean he knows what it’s like to sin because he never sinned and can’t sin. Jesus knows what it’s like to be tempted. So, I mean, God, for example, has never felt the guilt of any misbehavior on his part. Now, we might say Jesus has felt the guilt of sin only because the guilt of our sin was laid upon him. and he bore it on the cross. That is certainly something that is believed by most Christians, or many Christians. I believe something very much like that is true. I don’t know what the experience was, but I can say that God became a man so that he could experience these things, including death for us. So for him to have known about death, to know about suffering, to know about weakness, to know about ignorance, to know about helplessness, and so forth, which he knew humans experienced. I mean, anyone watching us, aliens from space, if they could watch us, could learn of these things very quickly. Yet, God had never known them as we know them from being within the experience of human beings. And so I think that the writer of Hebrews is saying that very thing, that Jesus is not unsympathetic toward our plight because he himself has been encompassed with weakness as we have. That wasn’t true of God before. And although he knew everything, he hadn’t experienced everything that we have. So, yeah, I’m going to say I don’t think that’s heretical at all. I think that’s true. Thank you for your call. Zach in Louisville, Texas. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yes, thanks for taking my call. I just had a question. My wife and I and my children, we were raised Catholic. We baptized our children in the Catholic Church. We were baptized in the Catholic Church. And we… don’t believe a lot of what the Catholic faith preaches anymore. But we’ve just basically, I don’t know, have started going to some non-denominational churches that are more aligned with our faith and teach us the Bible. And we’re just kind of wondering, do we need to officially renounce, like write to the Catholic church to renounce our faith because they have all of our birth certificates and kind of what your feelings are on that. I had an aunt kind of talking to me, and she’s like, no, you need to write to them and tell them that you’re no longer practicing a member of the faith. And then a second part of the question is, do you need to get re-baptized, I guess kind of born again, because we were baptized when we were infants. And I can take the answer off the air. Thank you so much.
SPEAKER 06 :
Okay. Thank you for your call, brother. Well, as far as renouncing the Catholic faith, since you don’t believe it anymore, I’m not really sure what form that would take. In other words, I don’t think you have to stand up in front of the church that you are now a part of and renounce your former involvement in the Catholic Church, since it’s not as if you had been a Hindu or a Buddhist or a Muslim. Catholicism is not anti-Christian. It’s just Christianity, which has been reimagined in many ways that have been, in my mind, not good. But there are still people who love Jesus within the Catholic faith on good terms. I believe you can be a follower of Christ and be on good terms in the Catholic Church as long as they don’t find out that you don’t agree with them on stuff. But The thing is there are Christians in it. I believe there are Christians in its leadership. I’m not sure why a Christian would be in the leadership of a movement like that, but I believe that they have understood, whether rightly or wrongly, that that is a church where God wants them to serve him. So I couldn’t do it, but then I couldn’t really be the leader of an institutional church, even in the Protestant traditions, even though I agree more. with the Protestants than I do with the Catholics because I just think the institutional churches are something very different than what the church was in the New Testament times. So I’m not really – I think the objectionableness of the institutional Protestant churches and from that of the institutional Catholic church is one of degree but not one of kind. And I think the Protestant churches don’t have as many – or I should say unbiblical traditions, as the Catholic Church has, but they have them too. It’s the institutionalization of the church that has made it, I guess, strange. But I believe that every institutional church has some people in it who are true Christians, and no doubt plenty who are not. A true Christian is somebody who follows Christ, and some people in every church do that, and some people in every church don’t do that. So I don’t know that, for example, I was raised Baptist, I now, uh, I went to another church after I left the Baptist church, which I had more in common with than my, my beliefs are, you know, not as Baptist as they used to be, but I’ve never renounced the Baptist church. And, uh, so I don’t think that just because you move on and your understanding of scripture, uh, is, uh, maybe better or advanced or whatever that you have to renounce whatever church you were a part of before. Um, Some would disagree. I will tell you this. At the time of the Reformation, I think if you were a Protestant and had been a Catholic, probably they expected you to renounce your former association with the Catholic Church. But then that was a time of great hostility between those two branches of institutional Christianity. There was much more of a war between those two. than there is now but you know that’s my opinion for what it’s worth and that might not be much uh is that i wouldn’t think you’d have to you know verbally renounce catholicism because there’s many things in catholicism that you still believe you still believe jesus is the son of god you still believe he’s the messiah you still believe he died for your sins you still believe he’s the lord those are all things that christianity says uh and and the catholics say that too The question is not what they say. The question is what do they do. And there are Catholics who do follow Jesus and there’s Catholics who don’t, just like I said. But the exact same criticism can be leveled against Protestants too. So, yeah, I don’t think so. Now, as far as being rebaptized, I might take a different approach about that because I believe that being baptized is something that Christians are supposed to do. And I don’t think anyone was born a Christian because they had Christian parents or they were born into a religious tradition that calls itself Christianity or anything like that. I think becoming a Christian is a personal decision you make when you reach an age of accountability and have to realize, I’m going to have to decide what my primary goals and values are in my life. And anyone who chooses something other than Christ as their primary goal, pursuit in life, I think, is not what we call a Christian. And when a person decides, wow, I was pursuing something other than Christ, but now I’m determined to follow Christ. I want to pursue him as my chief aim in life. That’s what conversion is. That’s what becoming a Christian is. And it doesn’t matter what church you were in before or even what church you end up in after you make this decision. It’s that decision and the living out of that decision that That makes a person a Christian in the sense that the Bible uses that term, which is the sense I think we should use it. The Bible says the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch. And a disciple, Jesus said, is someone who continues in his word. He said, if anyone comes to me and does not take up his cross and follow me, he can’t be my disciple. So obviously a disciple is somebody whose life goal is to follow Jesus. And that’s what Christian means in the Bible, is a disciple. So if you are now a disciple of Jesus and you weren’t before, rather than renouncing the Catholic Church, you might renounce the significance of any baptism that took place before you were a Christian. Because the Bible doesn’t know of any baptism of people who haven’t converted. And it doesn’t know of any people who have converted who weren’t baptized. In other words, baptism and conversion were linked together inseparably. in the Bible. And we don’t know of any case of anyone baptizing infants and no one in the Bible recommended baptizing infants. So, uh, if I was baptized as an infant, I wasn’t, but if I had been, I would have to say, well, I’m not sure that’s really what baptism is. I don’t think I’ve been baptized yet. And a decision to follow Christ then would be followed, uh, for me very quickly with being baptized in the name of Jesus as a believer. So I, I would recommend that, uh, for you. The Catholic Church, of course, would be very offended if they knew that you were re-baptized. That was a very controversial thing in the 16th century. There were a group of people who were called the Anabaptists. We sometimes refer to their movement as the Radical Reformation, where they began to renounce their infant baptism. And these were not Catholics. They were former Catholics, but they had become Protestants. But they were Protestants who still practiced infant baptism. They were followers of Zwingli. And then Luther, of course, and Calvin also practiced infant baptism, which I don’t think is any more correct for them than it is for the Catholic Church. I don’t think infant baptism is a biblical practice. So these people had been baptized as infants in Switzerland, and they became believers as adults and realized that they hadn’t really been baptized. So they simply renounced their infant baptism. They said that wasn’t baptism. And they got rebaptized. That was very controversial. They got put to death. All the first ones who did that got put to death. Even Zwingli, the reformer in Switzerland, approved of 4,000 Anabaptists being put to death because they got baptized again, which was a very subversive act in those days. It was like saying… The state church that baptized me as an infant had no authority to do that. It’s like renouncing the authority of the state church, which is like being a traitor to the state itself. So they got put to death for that. Now we live in a country where it’s not quite that controversial and it’s not illegal, but I think it’s still as appropriate. So those are my opinions. You might want to consider praying and looking into it, but if you ask my opinion, that is how I would understand it. All right, let’s talk to Alan from New Hampshire. Alan, welcome.
SPEAKER 10 :
Steve, how are you? Thanks for taking my call. Yes. My question is, if we wrestle with God, let’s say in prayer, would the enemy know about that? And if so, could he use any of that to make us slip up or sin or plant seeds in our heads?
SPEAKER 06 :
I don’t think the devil gains any advantage in our praying. I think we should never be afraid to pray because of the fear that the devil will be eavesdropping and exploit something that we prayed. There’s actually people who say, well, when you pray in tongues, it’s better because the devil can’t understand what you’re saying in tongues. That’s a Pentecostal tradition, but the Bible doesn’t teach that. I don’t know if the devil can understand what I say if I pray in tongues. But it doesn’t matter. I’m not praying to the devil anyway. If he’s listening in, he’s welcome to hear it. He’s not stronger than God. Jesus said if you ask your father for an egg, he’s not going to give you a scorpion. If you ask him for a fish, he’s not going to give you a serpent. So, I mean, if you’re talking to God… and sincerely talking to your father and making requests known to God, he’s not going to let the devil sneak in there and somehow exploit that situation. I mean, your own flesh can’t. I mean, the devil can tempt you, for example, to say, well, look how spiritual you are. Look how much you’re praying these days. I mean, the devil can use anything you do right and try to make you proud of it or try to make you self-righteous. I mean, the devil’s just a nasty old guy who will take advantage of anything he can. But I don’t think he has any way of taking advantage of prayer any more than he takes advantage of any other thing we do. And I don’t think that if the devil does hear us praying and know we’re praying, that that gives him any advantage over us at all.
SPEAKER 10 :
All right. Very good. Thank you.
SPEAKER 06 :
Okay, Alan. Thanks for your call. All right. Let’s see. We’re going to talk to Danny from Maine. Hi, Danny. Welcome.
SPEAKER 12 :
Hi. How are you? Good. Thanks. Thanks for taking my call. I’ve got a quick question. I’m a little confused. Is it okay if I ask my family to pray for me?
SPEAKER 06 :
Your question is, is it all right if you ask your family to pray for you? Now, you said something just before that I wasn’t able to pick up. Was that significant to your question?
SPEAKER 12 :
No, just basically I would like to know if it’s okay if I’m having a problem or something that I think I need prayer for, if it’s okay for my family to pray for me to God through Jesus to help me with those problems.
SPEAKER 06 :
I wonder why you’re questioning that. Are they not Christians?
SPEAKER 12 :
No, they’re Christians.
SPEAKER 06 :
Okay, so why would that be a question in your mind?
SPEAKER 12 :
I mean, you think… I’m just asking, is that for a yes or no answer?
SPEAKER 06 :
Sure, it’s okay.
SPEAKER 12 :
Is it okay? Yeah, of course, it’s okay. Then my follow-up is, if that’s okay, then why is it a problem for me to ask the Mother of God to pray for me?
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, the reason is because if you ask your family to pray for you, they actually can, and they know you’re asking them. And they know you, the mother of God, as you call her. There’s no reason to believe she knows who you are. I don’t think she knows who I am. I don’t think she knows who the Pope is. I don’t think she’s really paying any attention to anything down here. And if she does know anything about what’s going on here, she certainly isn’t omnipresent, unless she’s God. I mean, it’s strange that Roman Catholics often think, that if they pray to Mary, she knows that they’re doing it, and she’s going to sympathize with them and so forth. But since there’s like a gazillion Roman Catholics praying to her at any given one time, how is she supposed to hear and know all that, unless she’s God? But you see, that’s just the thing. Protestants sometimes criticize the Catholic view of Mary, suggesting that they do elevate her to kind of a goddess stature. And it seems to me that if a Catholic says, Well, Mary can hear all the prayers at once and treat them. She’s everywhere at once and knows everything. So she’s omnipresent, omniscient. So how is that not a God? I mean, how is there anyone who’s omniscient and omnipresent and not God? So, I mean, the comparison you’re making, there’s nothing really close in comparison. If you ask your parents to pray for you, well, they hear you. They know you. They can do that. Mary, does she know you? Can I have a rebuttal? Sure.
SPEAKER 12 :
Okay. So the rebuttal would be, how do you know anything about it? You don’t know what’s going on in heaven. You don’t know what God has allowed anything to go on in heaven. The fact that I do pray to Mary, and I’m not praying to Mary as if she’s a god. I’m praying to her to say a prayer for me. Why do you think she hears you? That’s fine if she can’t hear you. How do you know she can’t?
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, why would I think she could? She’s a human being.
SPEAKER 11 :
No, why do you think she can’t? Because she’s not omniscient. No, I didn’t say she was omniscient. Well, how could she know you? How do you know she doesn’t? So you don’t know. So why do you say that you don’t know?
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, I’ll put it this way.
SPEAKER 11 :
The Bible does say… Wait, wait.
SPEAKER 06 :
No, no, don’t tell me to wait. No, don’t tell me to wait. I’m looking at a clock here, and you’re not my last caller today. But, you know, you asked me a question, and so don’t tell me to wait before I answer it. My answer is, everything I know about heaven, I know from reading the Bible. Everything I know about prayer, I know from reading the Bible. Now, John was caught up into heaven in the book of Revelation. He didn’t see Mary there. He didn’t see anyone praising Mary or talking to Mary. He saw people praising him that sits on the throne and the Lamb, that’s the Father and Jesus. Mary didn’t even show up in the vision. and when the elders offered up incense to God, which was the prayers of the saints, they were offered up to God, not to Mary, and it wasn’t Mary doing it. So, I mean, how do I know what’s going on in heaven? I know very little. I think you know even less, but the little I know, I get from the Bible. So, now you say, well, you don’t know that she can’t hear my prayers. True, but I know that God can. And so if I’m going to spend time praying, and by the way, most Christians feel that they don’t have time to pray as much as they should. Maybe you’re praying all day. Maybe you can pray to God and Mary and maybe who else? I don’t know. But most people don’t pray as much as they should, and they would tell you that. I would tell you that, too. I probably don’t pray as much as I should. But what little time I do have to pray, I don’t want to be wasting it praying to somebody that I have no reason to believe she even knows I’m here. And especially since I don’t need to go through someone like her. Jesus said, when you pray, say, Our Father, which art in heaven. So I’m, you know, I’m really interested in my prayers being answered. And that means I want to make sure I pray the way that Jesus said to pray. Because if I pray some way that Jesus didn’t say to pray, then… why waste the time? Can you tell me why you would pray to Mary instead of to God?
SPEAKER 12 :
Okay, yeah, I could tell you. Here’s what I’m going to tell you. Okay, so since you don’t know that much about heaven, and I don’t know that much about heaven, and when I pray to Mary, I’m asking Mary to pray for me, and what the confusion is with the Catholic Church and the Protestants have this confusion because so many people are ignorant, like you mention all the time, is that they now think that They now think that we’re praying to Mary as if she’s like God as an intercessor for my sins. We’re not. We’re just praying to Mary like you would have me pray to my family because we believe that we can have somebody pray for us. And since you don’t know any more than I know about heaven because John didn’t explain all of heaven to you, then that’s it. All right.
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, you’re right. I don’t know much more about heaven than you do. But apparently I know more about prayer than you do only because I’m instructed by Jesus and you’re instructed by who knows who. Certainly Jesus never suggested that his mother would pray to God for his disciples. In fact, he indicated that they didn’t even need him to pray for them. He said, listen, you pray to the Father in my name. And I don’t say that I will pray for you. The Father himself loves you. He’s trying to tell them, you don’t need somebody to go between you and God. You’ve got God himself. That’s what Jesus said in John 16, verse 26. And that day you will ask in my name. And I do not say to you that I will pray to the Father for you, for the Father himself loves you. So, hey, what a privilege. I can talk to the Father. He loves me. Even Jesus doesn’t have to go between me and him. I come in Jesus’ name, which is a very different thing than Jesus going instead of me. It means I’m authorized by Christ to come with his authority before the Father, and the Father receives me. To me, I can’t imagine anything that trumps that, and to say, well, instead I’ll talk to somebody else, Mary maybe, maybe a saint. Well, I don’t have anything against asking people to pray along with me, You know, because more people praying probably is better. But again, I have not the slightest encouragement from Jesus Christ to think that Mary or the saints in heaven will pray with me. So that’s why I might ask some friends to pray with me because that’s biblical. But asking people who’ve died to pray for me, I don’t have the slightest encouragement from God personally. or Jesus, to say that that would do any good at all. So, once again, I’m just not going to waste my time. I did ask you why you would pray to Mary instead of to God, and I don’t think you answered me. Do you have an answer for that?
SPEAKER 12 :
Yeah, like I said, if I ask you to pray for me, No, that’s not asking.
SPEAKER 06 :
No, why don’t you just pray to God? I’m asking you that. That’s what I’m asking you.
SPEAKER 12 :
I do. No, I do actually just pray to God. I don’t even ask anybody else to pray for me. I’m just wondering why you’re bashing the Catholics for doing something you don’t know anything about.
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, I’m not bashing anybody. I’m just talking about the way that Jesus said to pray. You know, I will say that someone who prays in a way differently than Jesus said to pray is probably losing a good opportunity to pray the way that he did say to pray. Because not every prayer is answered. But I think they’ve got a lot better chance of being answered if we follow Jesus’ instructions about how to do it. So, I mean… I’m not sure why I would do it any other way. I appreciate your call, but I’m sorry I’m running out of time here. A dolphin from Grinnell, Iowa. We only have a couple minutes. I don’t know if that’s enough time for you. Go ahead.
SPEAKER 09 :
Yeah, how you doing? I just wanted, you know, the Bible tells us that we should not do like the heathens do and that we shouldn’t celebrate pagan holidays. And so religion leaders, I was wondering why do they celebrate and bring the paganism into the churches. You know, like Christmas trees and Easter bunnies and Easter eggs.
SPEAKER 06 :
Do you believe that Christmas trees came from paganism?
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, I don’t know where in the Bible.
SPEAKER 06 :
No, they’re not in the Bible. They’re not in the Bible. Neither are stained glass windows. But, I mean, I don’t know anything in the Bible that forbids stained glass windows, but or Christmas trees but the Christmas tree didn’t originate in paganism it seems to have originated in Germany where a Christian queen liked the idea of having a tree which I don’t know if there’s I don’t know if that’s any more objectionable than having house plants but I mean if somebody worships a tree that certainly would be pagan in ancient times pagans worshipped trees and rocks and things like that that would certainly be wrong if you bring a tree into church and everyone prays to the tree or worships it yeah I’d be all against that But, yeah, I don’t think that Christmas trees have a pagan origin. I was taught that all my life that they did. And then I actually did some research and couldn’t find any evidence of it. Anyway, that’s me. Do your own research, and I appreciate your concern to be pure in worship. I’m out of time. You’ve been listening to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. We are listener-supported. You might want to go to our website. Everything there is free, though you can donate if you wish to help us stay on the air, thenarrowpath.com. Let’s talk again tomorrow. God bless.
