Join host Steve Gregg on The Narrow Path as he navigates a series of intriguing callers’ questions that delve deep into the heart of Christian doctrine and practice. From Eucharistic miracles predominantly within the Catholic Church to the possible miraculous influences of Satan aimed to mislead the faithful, the episode reveals rich theological explorations. A focus on Mormonism leads to a dialogue about the Book of Mormon and its controversial place alongside the Bible, raising divided opinions on scriptural authenticity. The show also touches on the theme of deception versus divine truth, reiterating the importance of adhering to Biblical
SPEAKER 1 :
Thank you.
SPEAKER 04 :
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 you’d like to ask about the Bible or the Christian faith, or you see things differently from the host, maybe you want to challenge something about the Bible or at least the host’s opinion about the Bible, you’re always welcome to join us here. The number to call is 844-484-5737. Now, right now our lines are full, so it will do you no good to call at the moment, but if you call in a few minutes, lines will be opening up. 844-484-5737 is the number to call. And our first caller today is Ryan from Spartanburg, South Carolina. Hi, Ryan. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 10 :
Hey, Steve, thanks for having me. I had a question. I was wondering what your views are on Eucharistic miracles. I know it’s mostly a Catholic phenomenon, and I was not really familiar with it, but they claim that there are these miracles where the wafer or whatever it is transubstantiates, and it’s sent to a lab or something, and then they find that it is always coming from a Middle Eastern man, and it’s always AB positive blood. And I don’t see that it’s necessarily beyond God’s ability to do something like that. But whenever I hear from this, I always wonder, you know, why is it that these things only ever seem to happen, I guess, to Catholics? And I was curious as to your view of, you know, what might be going on here.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, well, if you study the history of the Catholic Church, you’ll know that many, many miracles have been attributed to you know, to support of Roman Catholic special ideas. I mean, there are, if you go back in history, there are reports of images, you know, statues getting down and lighting their own candles, statues whose eyes move back and forth, you know, miraculously. Lots of healings done, apparently, by the Blessed Virgin. So, I mean, to have miracles reported… is not unusual for the Catholic Church. Now, of course, it’s always difficult to know if these things really happened. That’s the first thing to consider. The Roman Catholic Church itself does not assume that every claimed miracle is true, and they do investigate a great deal because they don’t want to claim miracles that aren’t true. Of course, some of the miracles of the medieval times, I don’t know if they had quite as rigorous a means of testing those things, so we can’t really be sure that all the miracles reported are true. And I don’t know what kind of testing is done on these alleged Eucharistic miracles, where the bread is said to have become human flesh. And I heard someone say the flesh was even rotting like human flesh and things like that. To me, I don’t ever reach doctrinal conclusions about anything based on somebody saying a miracle happened. I mean, there’s a number of reasons for that. But one of them is that I fully believe that the devil is capable of doing miracles and is very intent on doing them if it will lead people away from Christ. There’s a statement Paul makes in 2 Thessalonians 2, verse 9, that says, Now, by the way, the Reformers all believed this lawless one was, in fact, the papacy. I’m not saying it has to be taken that way, but that was the universal view of the Protestant church. uh… for hundreds of years that the papacy is the man of sin but paul says the coming of the lawless one is according to the working of satan with all power signs and lying wonders and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish because they did not receive the love of the truth that they might be saved for this reason god will send them strong delusion that they should believe the lie now uh… It talks about the man of sin coming with the working of Satan with power and signs and wonders. And this is something that Moses warned about, too. He wasn’t talking about the man of sin, but he was talking about fake signs and wonders to lead people away from the truth. In Deuteronomy 13, 1 through 4 says, It says, If there arises among you a prophet or a dreamer of dreams, and he gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder comes to pass, of which he spoke to you, saying, Let us go after other gods which you have not known, and let us serve them. You shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams, for the Lord your God is testing you to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. Now, it’s interesting. Moses said that there might come false prophets who would give signs to That would, in fact, come true. And if these are miraculous signs, the fact that these false prophets are leading people away from God is said to be a reason to ignore those prophets. But interestingly, it doesn’t say the devil is doing the signs. It says God is testing you. Now, I believe it is still the devil who does any kind of miraculous sign that leads people away from God or confirms some untrue doctrine. But even if it is Satan, the Bible says God is allowing this so that you will be tested to see if you’re going to be loyal to God or not. In other words, are you going to be loyal to what God said or to what somebody else says because they’ve got some kind of a sign or a wonder? Now, the sign or the wonder might be faked or it might be real. It might, in fact, be a satanic miracle. Now, if someone says, well, why would the devil appear like Mary? Well, for one thing… I believe Mary has become quite a distraction for a great number of people who venerate her. A distraction from Jesus. Not that they have totally forgotten Jesus, but frankly, she takes from them some of the attention that I think Christ alone deserves. I think the devil would like that very much. I think he’d like anything that distracts people from Christ. Now, the Bible does say in 2 Corinthians, Corinthians chapter 11 that Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. And he says, how much more would his ministers not be transformed into ministers of righteousness? So if Satan himself, Paul says, is transformed into an angel of light, it seems to me that he could be transformed into any kind of image that would fool people who aren’t loyal to the truth. Now, what’s loyal to the truth look like? Well, it’s saying God said this, and I believe what God said. This person is saying something else that God didn’t say, and all he’s got to show for it is some miracle. Yeah, well, I mean, Pharaoh’s magicians showed miracles, too, to counteract Moses. But they weren’t acting in the power of God, and they certainly weren’t standing on the side of God. So, you know, if someone tells me there’s some kind of a miracle that confirms some kind of an idea that the Bible says, says it’s false, then I’ll believe the Bible with that. It says that Satan brings false revelations, false miracles, and so forth, to those who are not loyal to the truth, to those who have not received the love of the truth. Now, I’m not saying that Roman Catholics haven’t received the love of the truth, but Roman Catholics, like anybody else, can be, I mean, everyone has a choice to make, whether you’re Catholic, Protestant, Eastern Orthodox, or anything else. We have to choose, will I go with the truth first, or will I put some other things ahead of the truth? Like, will I believe what God said? That’s the truth, of course. Jesus said to God in John 17, your word is truth. So, I mean, if I’m going to put the word of God and the truth at the top priority, at the expense of anything else that contradicts it, Or am I going to be dazzled and impressed with shiny things that the devil brings to distract me from the truth? Well, that’s the choice we have to make. And those who put anything ahead of the truth are the ones that Paul said they did not receive the love of the truth, and therefore God will send them strong delusion. Paul is certainly saying that if you don’t put the truth as your highest priority, then you don’t deserve the truth. And what you do deserve is deception, and God will give people over to that, apparently. So, you know, this is not a statement about Catholics, per se. This is a statement about these alleged miracles. Catholics can make whatever decision they want to when they hear about these miracles. But if they make any decision other than to go with the truth, I think they’re making a big mistake and a dangerous one. All right. Thanks for your call. Steve in Long Beach, California. Welcome.
SPEAKER 05 :
Hey, Steve. Thanks for taking my call. I always appreciate you and your ministry, brother. Hey, real quick before I ask you my question. We miss you in Buena Park. I can’t wait for you to come back to the Way Church.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, my wife and I were just talking about that because I’ve been traveling, as you know, and we’ve had to cancel a few of those monthly meetings. I’ll be announcing when we do it again.
SPEAKER 05 :
It’ll be a couple of months.
SPEAKER 04 :
In June, I think, yeah. I think June is the next time I’ll be free because I’m traveling next month, too.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, you’ve been a busy man for the Lord. Hey, my question is about Mormonism, and I just want to say something real quick. It’s a two-part question, one and two. My second question still deals with Mormonism, so let me give you the second question first, and then I want to read their statement of faith that you’re very familiar with. Revelation 22, 18 and 19, and You can read that when you’re ready after when you start answering that question about does that apply to the Mormons, which I personally believe it does. But I’d like to hear your take on it. This park that I go to work out at has been the Mormons or missionaries are evangelizing this park. And I’ve had, you know, Lord’s brought a lot of them my way over the past couple of weeks. And I’ve had many discussions. So I’d like to get your take on this. The Mormon article of faith, we believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly. We also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God. Mormonism doesn’t view the Bible as well as the Book of Mormon equally. The Bible’s status as God’s word is different. relativized by the phrase as far as it is translated correctly. And real quick, my heart’s been broken for the Mormons, these young 18- and 19-year-old young men, and it’s just been crushing me. And the audacity of the Mormon church to believe and propagate these lies from the enemy.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, well, it’s true. They’re quite mistaken about this. I mean, Joseph Smith did make his own corrected version of the King James. They sometimes say they believe in the King James Version, which is the Bible in English that they had back in the 1830s when Joseph Smith started the Mormon Church. There weren’t all these various English translations we have now, and they all used the King James. But Joseph Smith You know, he pretended to agree with the King James, but he had to correct it a little bit. He had to retranslate it somewhat. Now, here’s the problem with that. Joseph Smith didn’t know Greek or Hebrew. The people who translated the King James did know Greek and Hebrew. Now, I don’t know how he translated it, therefore, or how he improved on the translation of men who were exceedingly skilled Greek and Hebrew scholars, but I suppose we might say, well, he did it by the same means that he translated the Golden Plates, which became the Book of Mormon. But I don’t see how that could be, because as I understand it, after he translated the Book of Mormon from the Golden Plates using the Urim and the Thummim, which was a magical way of interpreting it, he didn’t have the knowledge of the languages. He had this kind of this mystical, occult way of translating things. The gold plates from Reformed Egyptian hieroglyphics, by the way, which is a language that no one ever, no Egyptologist is aware of existing ever. But allegedly, these plates were written in Reformed Egyptian hieroglyphics. which, of course, not only is a language that nobody has ever heard of, but Joseph Smith had no training in it. So he had to use these magic interpretive devices called the erm and the thumen, at least he called them that, and he translated the gold plates from Egyptian to King James English. By the way, interestingly enough, King James English is not the form of English that was spoken. in Joseph Smith’s days in the 1800s. It was even a little bit archaic in 1611 when the King James translated. It was like the literary English that was dying out even in the 1600s. But it certainly wasn’t spoken in the 1800s when Joseph Smith did this. So it’s amazing. that a magical process would translate these gold plates into King James English, not into the English of Joseph Smith’s own time. A very peculiar miracle there. But then, allegedly, he put the gold plates and the Urim and the Sumim back in a box, and the angel Moroni took them away, and no one has seen them since. So if he translated the Bible from Greek and Hebrew… And he didn’t have the Urm and the Thummim anymore, and he didn’t know Greek and Hebrew. By what means did he translate them? That’s an interesting curiosity. We know, of course, there was another book that Joseph Smith said he translated, and this literally existed. It’s not gold plates that were imaginary, but there was actually a manuscript found in a coffin that Joseph Smith purchased from a some guy who traveled around selling antiques and stuff like that. There was an old coffin, and it had a document in it written in Egyptian, real Egyptian this time. And Joseph Smith allegedly translated it into what’s called the Book of Abraham. And so that’s one of the Mormon holy books, the Book of Abraham, that Joseph Smith translated from an actual shred of manuscript found in a coffin. The problem is once some people who actually knew Egyptian were able to read it, the manuscript, they said it has nothing to do with what Joseph Smith wrote in the book of Abraham. It was an ancient Egyptian funerary document that had nothing to do with Abraham or any of the things that Joseph Smith said he got from it. So Joseph Smith is not the one to be trusted about translation of stuff. You know, he obviously just made up the Book of Abram in English and pretended like he’d translated it from this Egyptian document. And no wonder. I mean, he couldn’t read Egyptian and he didn’t have the Urm and the Thummim. So how would he translate it? Obviously, he pretended to. Now, if he also pretended to update the King James Version and improve it over what the King James translators had done, I’d say that would be as credible as his book of Abraham and his skills translated there. Now, when the Mormons say the Bible is the word of God as far as it is rightly translated, that’s what Joseph Smith himself said. And of course, rightly translated means the way he translated it. The problem is, He was not a translator. He didn’t know how to translate stuff. So it’s just one of the other hoaxes that, I mean, by the way, Joseph Smith is known to have perpetrated many hoaxes, both before and after he started the Mormon religion. His career before he started the Mormon religion was also that of a charlatan and a hoaxster. And then, of course, starting the religion, a fake religion is just another part of his character, which was well known to people in Palmyra, New York, where he lived. before he even started the religion. So, I mean, sad. Sad that they would follow a charlatan like this. Now, you asked if Revelation 22, 18 and 19 was relevant to Mormons because they, of course, written other books that they say are the word of God besides the Bible. And it says in Revelation 22, 18, For I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book, if anyone adds to these things, God will add to him the plagues that are written in this book, and if anyone takes away from the words of this book, of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the tree of life, from the holy city, and from the things which are written in the book. Now, obviously people have taken these verses to say you shouldn’t add to the word of God. Now, actually, John, who wrote Revelation, didn’t say do not add or subtract from the word of God, although other writers did. In Deuteronomy, Moses told the people not to add to or to subtract from the law which he had given them, or to take away from it. In Proverbs, Proverbs 30, verses 5 and 6, it says, Every word of God is pure. He is a shield to those who put their trust in him. Add thou not to his words. lest you be found a liar, lest he rebuke you and you be found a liar, it says. So, you know, in Proverbs, he said, don’t add to God’s word. In Deuteronomy, he said, don’t add to God’s word. Now, obviously, this is not saying don’t write any more books of the Bible, since almost all the books of the Bible were written after Deuteronomy. And the entire New Testament and much of the Old Testament was written after Proverbs. Both of those books said don’t add to God’s word. Obviously, don’t add to his word doesn’t necessarily mean Don’t let any prophets or apostles write any more books. It means basically do not alter God’s words. Do not alter them at all. When he’s given his word, do not change it according to your ideas of improvement. Now, that might condemn Joseph Smith because he took the Bible and changed it in ways that he thought were better. So it’s very possible. I mean, not only possible, I think it’s absolutely so that he violated these commandments. Now, the book of Revelation, however, is saying, you know, whoever reads these things, the prophecy of this book, don’t add anything to these things and don’t take away from them. Well, what is this book? It’s the book of Revelation. Now, because our present canon of Scripture has Revelation positioned at the end of the New Testament, it’s natural for us to think, okay, John was thinking of the New Testament, right? which I don’t add to the words of this book, or maybe even the whole Bible, Old and New Testament. But that’s not necessarily the case. John, first of all, probably had no idea that there was going to be a collection of New Testament books. That never really materialized until almost 400, well, as it is now, the complete canon wasn’t finalized until like 396 A.D. All the books were written in the first century, of course, and I believe they’re all inspired apostolic works, but But on the other hand, the church didn’t have a collection of them for John to make a statement like this. Do not add to this collection of books. He meant the book of Revelation. Don’t add or subtract from the book of Revelation. He’s not talking about the whole Bible there. And I don’t know if Joseph Smith did add or subtract from the book of Revelation. I don’t know how he may have changed it, if at all. But notice it says, if anyone does these things, God will add to him the plagues that are written in this book. Now, this book that has plagues in it is the book of Revelation. Virtually no other books of the Bible have plagues in them except Exodus. So, I mean, obviously he’s talking about the book of Revelation. He had no way of knowing that the Revelation would be added to a collection of books called the New Testament, which later understood to be our Bible. So I don’t know that what it says in Revelation was violated by Joseph Smith, but what it did say in Deuteronomy and in Proverbs, where it said don’t add to the words of this book, insofar as he added things to the Bible and subtract things to the Bible itself, that would seem to be a violation of that command, yes. All right, Steve, thank you for your call. Benjamin in Greenville, Ohio. Welcome to The Narrow Path.
SPEAKER 02 :
Hey, brother. Hi. When I was at work today on the lunch, I was with a group of some brothers, and the conversation came up. They started kind of blaming secular people for any potential judgment that, you know, the U.S. or these people might be under. And I suggested that maybe we should look at the church first before we, you know what I mean, start worrying about what other people are doing. And it looked to me like I had crabs rolling on my ears, but… I mean, because as soon as I read the Bible, God wasn’t passing judgment when the people were being obedient. You see what I’m getting at here?
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, when you talk about judgment, are you talking about judgments coming on the world, judgments coming on the United States? I mean, what are we talking about here?
SPEAKER 02 :
They were talking to the United States in particular, because that’s what their conversation was.
SPEAKER 04 :
Okay. Well, I mean, in the Bible, God does judge nations. That are wicked. But on the other hand, the church has a responsibility too. I mean, we’re supposed to be the salt of the earth. We’re supposed to be leaven in the lump of dough that causes the lump to rise. We’re supposed to be light to the world. I mean, all these things are our responsibility. And if we fulfill this responsibility well… And without, you know, reproach, then we can’t be held responsible for what a nation does that rejects us. But I think the church has not necessarily been light unmixed with darkness. I don’t think the church has been the salt that has not lost its savor. You know, so I think the church has failed. the secular world in many respects. But when I say the church, of course, we realize that the church, there are members of the church who have done incredibly wonderful things who have fulfilled this. I mean, there are missionaries. There are people who’ve changed societies for the good, bringing light. where there was darkness and so forth, the church has, in some aspects, some members of the church have done very well. But there’s always, of course, these institutional churches that, you know, some of them are better than others, but many of them are almost worth less than nothing. I mean, Paul said to the Corinthian church, when you come together, it’s for the worse and not the better. which is an interesting statement because he’s saying that you people would be better off if you didn’t get together at all because you’re worse off as a result of it rather than better off. Now, going to church should certainly make you better off, spiritually speaking, but Paul said it’s possible for it not to. Now, this was not an argument that they should stop meeting, but that they should stop doing the things that causes him to say that about them. They should, in fact, repent. The church in America… that’s a mixed bag. There are churches that are worse than worthless, I think. And there are churches that are doing great things. And there are individuals in the body of Christ who’ve done sensational things. So, I mean, it’s hard to know. I mean, God does have to look at things and decide how he’ll judge. But I believe that he, yeah, I don’t know that the nation of America, its fall, is due to due to the church entirely, and I mean certainly there are members of the church who have preached righteousness and preached the gospel so that the world is rejecting them and is at fault for rejecting them. So I’m not sure. I’m not sure to what degree any judgment our nation comes under is blamed on the church as opposed to the unbelievers, but I do think insofar as the church has failed, it bears responsibility for its failure, and some Many Christians are certainly part of that portion of the church that has failed, that have done very little. They’ve done very little to follow Christ, to represent Christ well, to do the works of God. They just kind of warm pews in the church and think that that’s somehow doing God a favor and that he should really appreciate that. I don’t think he does. I don’t think he appreciates people just warming pews. I think he appreciates people doing what he said. So… Yeah, there’s a lot of Christians that would fall under that judgment, I think. But not all. The whole church is not just homogenous. There’s good and there’s bad and ugly in it. But I appreciate your thoughts. It’s thought-provoking. God bless you. We have a break coming up, but we also have another half hour after that. So don’t go away. The Narrow Path is a listener-supported ministry. If you’d like to write to us, the address is TheNarrowPath, P.O. Box 1730. Temecula, California, 92593. Or you can go to our website, thenarrowpath.com. Everything’s free, but you can donate if you wish. I’ll be back in 30 seconds. Don’t go away.
SPEAKER 09 :
In a 16-lecture series entitled The Authority of Scriptures, Steve Gregg not only thoroughly presents the case for the Bible’s authority, but also explains specifically how this truth is to be applied to a believer’s daily walk and outlook. The Authority of Scriptures, as well as hundreds of other stimulating lectures, can be downloaded in MP3 format without charge from our website, thenarrowpath.com.
SPEAKER 04 :
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’d like to be on the program today, give me a call right now at this number, 844-484-5737. That’s 844-484-5737. 484-5737. Our next call comes from Michael in Englewood, California. Michael, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 08 :
Hi, Steve. First, I appreciate the knowledge you just passed down about Mormonism. I never really knew those things. And your first caller about the Eucharist, I see there you go bashing Mary again. No, I’m just kidding. I heard yesterday the caller. I was like, wow. Yeah. But speaking of sarcasm, my question is, and I’ll take it offline, John 1116 was… Hello? I think you got cut off.
SPEAKER 04 :
I wish I knew what your question was because you’re not there. I don’t know what to say. Maybe you can call back. Going once, going twice. Okay, I need to take another call. Yes, Steve, can you hear me? Oh, there you are. Yeah, what happened there?
SPEAKER 08 :
Okay. I don’t know. Sorry about that.
SPEAKER 04 :
Okay, you mentioned John 11, 16, right?
SPEAKER 08 :
Yes. Was Thomas being sarcastic when he said, let us go die with Lazarus? And I’ll take it off the air if that’s okay.
SPEAKER 04 :
Okay, sure. Yeah, a lot of people think so. I mean, Thomas sounds very heroic in this statement. Jesus has said, let’s go down to Bethany down in Judea. I’m going to raise Lazarus from the dead. I mean, he didn’t say it in plain terms like that, but that’s what he was talking about. And the disciples said, Lord, last time you were down there in Judea, the Pharisees wanted to kill you. And Jesus said, listen, there’s 12 hours in the day. We’ve got to work while there’s daylight because the night comes when no one can work. In other words, I’ve got limited time to do everything I need to do. I can’t be worried about whether someone’s trying to kill me or not. And so when they saw that Jesus was resolved to go down there, Thomas, who is called Didymus, said to his fellow disciples, let us also go that we may die with him. Now, this is the same Thomas who was doubting Thomas later on, and I think Thomas gets a bad rap by being called Doubting Thomas. All he said is he wouldn’t believe until he saw, but all the disciples didn’t believe until they saw. I mean, the women came from the tomb and said to the twelve, or whichever ones were present at least, you know, an angel told us Jesus rose from the dead, and they said they didn’t believe it. And then when Jesus appeared to them in the upper room on Sunday night of the resurrection, then they believed. So, I mean, Thomas, who wasn’t there, didn’t see, and he didn’t believe until the next time Jesus appeared. So his doubts were no worse than theirs. They all had the same issue. They didn’t believe until they saw. So I don’t think Thomas is the worst of the disciples for that, but I don’t know that he’s the most heroic either. Let us go down and die with him. Sounds heroic, and maybe he was. I really don’t know. I really don’t know his tone. But many people think that he was more or less sarcastic, saying, well, you know, if Jesus is, you know, I don’t think he would say it this way, but if Jesus is unwise enough to go down there and put himself at risk, I guess we’re with him, right? I mean, let’s go down there and die, which would be suggesting it’s not a really good decision. On his part, he’s going to lead us to our deaths. But let’s go down anyway. So, you know, there are many, many who believe that Thomas was a little bit sarcastic. But at the very least, he was willing to go. I mean, it’s not like he didn’t think there was a deadly risk. He knew there was. And he did it anyway. So even if he was being a little snarky, as some people think about that, He at least was saying, well, we’ll probably die down there, but let’s go. We’re going to go with him, which is a different decision than any of them could have made. You go down there, Jesus. We’ll wait here where it’s safe. So, you know, I think this reflects well on Thomas, even if there’s a little bit of irony or something in his voice when he’s spoken. Okay, Kevin in River Rouge, Michigan. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 01 :
How are you again, Steve? I’m fine. Based on a couple days ago, I mentioned my niece and that chakra thing with the new age. I want to make a statement and then ask my question. I listened to three and four, number three and four on your psychology CDs that John Schaeffer had given me, and pragmatism mainly and the fact that you had letters from Christians saying, criticizing you regarding psychiatry and the drugs that I call pharmaceutical babysitting. My nephew, Kevin, is in a group home in South Carolina. My oldest sister and her husband.
SPEAKER 04 :
Hey, Kevin, I’m not sure we have enough time to hear about your family that much. What is your question for us?
SPEAKER 01 :
I’ve got a lot of people waiting.
SPEAKER 04 :
Go ahead.
SPEAKER 01 :
I was wondering what I can do as a retired chiropractor to influenced my sister and brother-in-law who go to Calvary to kind of remit and get my nephew out of that group home who’s on medication for bipolar. What I can do as a Christian, I’m not even in practice anymore.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, well, you know, when people ask me what can I do to persuade somebody to do such and such, I honestly don’t know what you can do to persuade somebody. If I had the magic key to persuading people, everyone would believe like me, and that simply isn’t the case. I don’t know that we have the power to persuade everybody of things that they don’t believe or don’t want to believe. So I’m not sure how you can do it. I can say this, that many times people are resistant to the kinds of things that I said in those lectures, which is that Our life problems, generally speaking, are spiritual problems, not medical problems. I mean, we have medical problems. I mean, like diabetes is a medical problem. Hypoglycemia is a medical problem. Thyroid disorder is a medical problem. There’s lots of medical problems, but the behavior problems in our lives are generally not medical problems. They are behavioral problems that are based on something that is not quite right in our management of our spiritual lives, whether it’s simply that we’re not living according to the spirit, as the Bible teaches us to do. In some cases, some people have demons, and that could be an issue. Certainly, I’m not saying that everybody who’s diagnosed as mentally ill is demon-possessed. That’s not my belief, but certainly we can say, that demon-possessed, if they behave the way the Bible describes demon-possessed, would be today diagnosed as having mental illness and would be managed with medications and so forth instead of delivered. So my understanding is that most of the things that people go to counselors for and psychiatrists, and that’s a different thing because counselors simply advise and give teaching about what you should do, but a psychiatrist gives you a drug. But whether it’s a drug or whether it’s simply counsel, I believe that many times we have the wrong starting point, thinking that people have a mental illness who, in fact, have a spiritual issue they need to resolve and rectify. But many people don’t like that idea, especially people who either are diagnosed with mental illness or who are the parents of people who, Kids and so forth who they are managing with with those kinds of drugs and things like that many people have found that drugs are an easier way to manage a difficult child and Certainly school teachers have done that. A kid’s too wiggly and doesn’t sit still. To say they have HDD and give them a drug for that, that’s easier than working with the child individually and finding out why he’s having trouble. And even if If he’s not even normal, he might be very normal as a child and doing those things. But it’s easy to simply put people into a labeled group and give them a medication and consider we’ve done all we can for them. I don’t believe that’s the case, but a lot of people would like to believe that is. So, you know, you can’t convince somebody against their will. There are people in mental institutions who would not like to be told that they can get out and be normal. And, you know, if they act differently and think differently and manage their spiritual lives differently. But… I mean, they kind of like their identity. They kind of like labels. It makes them a good victim in some cases. So if you have a sickness, you’re a victim. If you’re just mismanaging your life, you’re not a victim. You’re kind of responsible for that. Lots of people would rather not have responsibility. So I don’t know how to change people’s minds. I mean, give them the truth. And then when they have the truth, then they’ll make their own decisions. They may be convinced or not. So I suppose the lectures you’re listening to are lectures that you could advise them to listen to if they would. Because I believe that in my lectures, which are the lectures Biblical Counsel for a Change, which is the name of the series, Biblical Counsel for a Change, those lectures are pretty well documented as far as scientific and biblical truth on the matter. And so, I mean, you know, I don’t have a magic formula that will convince them, but Obviously, if they are interested in the truth rather than in something else, and lots of people are interested in something else more than truth, then those lectures may be helpful to them. I guess I just suggest that maybe you get them to listen to them. It might help. All right. Let’s talk to Jim in Lewiston, Maine. Hi, Jim.
SPEAKER 06 :
Hey, Steve. Good. Thank you, Steve, for taking my call. I had a question about 1 Corinthians 7. I believe it’s verse 14 when it talks about a wife or a husband who is saved and the other partner isn’t. How if they stay together, that person is not saved, is sanctified. And I wasn’t sure what that meant. I think I know the definition of salvation, but I didn’t know if that meant that because the wife was saved and the husband wasn’t, they stayed together, that other person was covered by the wife’s salvation or grace.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, it’d be nice if that were true. And, you know, if God sees it that way, that’s great. Though I don’t know that this verse would clearly say that that’s how God sees it. Sanctified and holy are terms that simply mean set apart. Set apart from others. And the unbeliever who is in a marriage with a believer, Paul says, is set apart from other, that is, from other unbelievers. Other unbelievers perhaps can ignore the gospel, can ignore the testimony of Christians, can just go their way without being disturbed by it. But an unbeliever who lives with a Christian, if that person’s a true Christian living for Christ, that person’s in a different category than other unbelievers because they are being confronted daily with the testimony of the Christian spouse. And I don’t mean the spoken testimony, because our testimony, if it’s spoken, is not very impressive if it’s not lived. And I think that a man who lives with a godly woman, though he’s not a believer, or a woman who lives with a godly man, is definitely in a different position than an unbeliever who is not forced to be exposed to that on a daily basis. So I think they’re in a different category. They’re sanctified or set apart from God. Now, Paul’s giving that argument in order to argue against the believer leaving the marriage. He’s saying, you know, don’t leave them because if you stay in the home, they are, in the sense that he refers to, sanctified. Now, if you leave them, they’ll be just like any unbeliever who gets to ignore Christians and the gospel as much as he wishes or she wishes. But by a Christian staying in the home, there’s a continual witness of that Christian’s life and their words and all that. You know, it says in 1 Peter chapter 3 that the woman who is living as a godly, submissive wife to her unbelieving husband may win him that way. Now, Peter doesn’t say she will. If simply being a Christian in the home with a non-Christian automatically guaranteed the salvation of the non-Christian, that would be nice. But that’s not what Peter says. Peter said in 1 Peter 3, verse 1 and following, Likewise, you wives, be submissive to your own husbands, that even if some do not obey the word, I mean some husbands are not obedient to God, they’re not Christians, they without a word may be won by the conduct of their wives. When they observe your chaste conduct accompanied by reverence, do not let your beauty be the outward adorning of origin hair, wearing of gold, etc., but let it be the hidden person of the heart with the incorruptible ornament of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious inside of God. So he’s telling the women how to conduct themselves, what their demeanor is to be, what their relationship to their husband should be. He says they might win. The husband may be one. That’s the term he uses, that they may be one. Well, maybe they will, maybe they won’t. But I think that he’s saying that this unsaved spouse who’s kind of bound to a Christian is in a position very different than any other unbelievers are. And so are the children. And that’s what he means, I think, when he says the spouse and the children are sanctified or holy, which, again, means set apart from others who are not in that situation. So that would be my understanding of what Paul is getting at.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, thank you for clearing that up, Steve.
SPEAKER 04 :
Okay, Jim. God bless you. Thanks for your call. Jack in Everett, Washington, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 07 :
Hey, Steve, thank you for your show. I love it. My eighth-grade son had a question for me about the Bible, and I don’t know that I answered it as well as you can. He knows that Jesus was the incarnation, God in the flesh, So if that’s the case, then why did Jesus pray? Wasn’t he, in effect, praying to himself? And I’ll take my answer off the air.
SPEAKER 04 :
All right. Yeah, thanks for your call. No, Jesus was not praying to himself. He was praying to the Father. Every time he prayed, he spoke to his Father. Now, when you speak to your Father, you’re not speaking to yourself. You’re speaking to somebody else. You’re the Son, and you’re speaking to your Father. And… So this is what the Bible teaches, that when the Word of God, who was God, remember John 1.1 says that, in the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, the Word was God. Well, it says in verse 14, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten Son of a Father, it says in the Greek. So Jesus, when the Word became flesh… He took on a human nature, and that human nature had the status of being the son of the Father. Now, you know, was he the Father before? No, I don’t think he was the Father. I think he was the Word. The Bible says he was the Word of God, the Word of the Father. and through whom the Father made all things, the scripture says. So, when Jesus became a man, he took on a human identity. Now, God the Father is not a human, and neither was Jesus before he became a man. But when he became a man, he took on a separate nature, a separate identity, I think, from what he had been like before. In Philippians chapter 2, It tells about Jesus, I think it’s around verse 6, it says, who, though he existed in the form of God, he did not count it his equality with God a thing to be grasped, but he emptied himself and took upon himself the form of a servant. It talks about how he submitted even to dying on the cross. But it says there in Philippians 2.6 that Jesus had previously been in the form of God. But he emptied himself, apparently of his privileges, and took on the form of a servant as he became a man. Now, what does it mean for God to take on the form of a man without becoming entirely a man? Because God the Father was not a man. It was the Word that became flesh and became a man. I don’t know if we have any analogy for this. It’s a unique event in history. So I don’t know if we can say, well, it’s like this or it’s like that. Well, like what? It’s like nothing. It’s like nothing we’ve ever heard of. Nothing paralleled. So we can’t really claim to know some of the things that we might have questions about. But I would say this. There are some kind of similar things in the Old Testament when God appeared in a human form briefly. Now, he didn’t come through a woman. He didn’t come through the human family line. He didn’t descend from Adam in these cases, as Jesus did. But he just took on a human shape. And he met with Abraham in this form, in Genesis chapter 18, verse 1, for example. And he wrestled with Jacob in this form, it would appear. In Genesis, I think it’s 32, thereabouts. And there’s other times when he appeared. He appeared to Moses in a burning bush. He appeared to the Israelites in a pillar of cloud or a pillar of fire. Now, we call these things theophanies. And the word theophany means an appearance of God. Sometimes he appeared as a human-like person. Other times he appeared like a cloud or a fire. But in any case, God is said to have been there, manifested in those ways. Now, that’s the manifest presence of God. But it’s not the universal presence of God. The Bible teaches that God is universally present in the whole universe, and God did not cease to be universally present in the universe when he also manifested himself as a cloud above the tabernacle, or as a man meeting with Abraham or wrestling with Jacob. God manifested him in those physical, visible forms, but he existed throughout the universe in his non-physical form. In other words, the God who exists non-materially throughout the universe has the power to stick his finger into our fish tank and reveal himself to us in our world if he wants to. And so, you know, that is something we see repeatedly in the Old Testament. And I believe that when Jesus became a man, it was not the same thing because Jesus actually took on human nature. Whereas in these earlier cases, God didn’t take on the actual nature of fire or clouds or even the nature of a son of Adam, but the appearance. He revealed himself in that appearance of that. And yet when Jesus came, he actually came as a human being. He actually was descended from Abraham and David and Adam. So, And so it’s not exactly the same as these theophanies, but it’s kind of similar. And those may have been given to be instructive to us so that we’d have a way of kind of dealing with these questions your son is asking. When God came in the form of a man to wrestle with Jacob, God was everywhere else in the universe at the same time. He was manifested there, but his universal presence was still everywhere. Same thing when he met as a man with Abraham. or maybe in the fiery furnace with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, if that was God. Some people think it was a theophany, and it could have been. Some people think Melchizedek was a theophany. I’m among those who do. So, saying that, it means that if Abraham was meeting with God, or Jacob was wrestling with God, or Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were walking in the flames of God in physical form, Yet, that didn’t cancel out his existence throughout the universe. And likewise, when he came to earth in a physical form as a baby and as a man to walk among us, that didn’t cancel out his universal presence throughout the universe, which I think is what Jesus was referring to when he talked about his Father, his Father God who fills all things. And Jesus was a manifestation of God in that sense. But he didn’t exhaust the presence of God in that sense. Now, is that helpful? Maybe not. I don’t know if it is or not. It is to me, but I don’t really need analogies. I look for them because people often want them. All I can say is there are things about God that are above my pay grade. Frankly, there’s things about me that are above my pay grade and other people that are above my pay grade. In fact, I would say there’s things about rocks. and dirt that are above my pay grade. I don’t understand atoms and quarks and things like that. Let’s face it, there’s an awful lot of things that we don’t even understand that are very common and simple, or seemingly simple. But God is not that simple. And it’s not too surprising that there’d be things about God that are either impossible or at least very difficult for us to understand, for which we have no real analogies. That being so, I’ve always been willing to say, well, I don’t know if I fully understand that. I don’t see why I would need to. Can’t I obey Jesus and follow him without understanding all that stuff? Seems like it. The disciples, by the way, when they followed Jesus around when he was here, they didn’t understand all this stuff. They didn’t have formulated any Trinity doctrine or a doctrine of the incarnation. They didn’t know that stuff. Jesus didn’t talk to them about that, as far as we know. And the Jewish faith didn’t believe in that kind of stuff. And they were Jews. They were raised Jews. It wasn’t until the Holy Spirit came that they began to be led into somewhat deeper truths. But they were following Jesus just fine before that. And after that, you see, knowing these things or not knowing them doesn’t have to have any impact on the way we follow Jesus. And the way we follow Jesus is the only thing that God really is going to judge us for, at least if we believe what the Bible says about that. And I do. So I hope that’s helpful. It may not be, but that’s the best I can do. Thank you for calling. Gary from Nutley, New Jersey. Welcome.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yes, hi, Steve. Thank you for taking my call. Quickly, as far as salvation goes, the last few callers kind of touched briefly on it. As far as like praying for somebody to be saved, I know my mom and my fellow Christians were praying for me, and eventually I became saved. It seems like with some people, you could pray and pray and pray, and it never seems like it gets through to them. So now, do they play a role in that, or is it just all up to God? Like if I pray enough, For this certain person, like a family member or friend, do they have to respond or can the Lord somehow open up their spiritual eyes or work in their heart?
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, God can do a lot of things. In fact, God can probably do almost anything, though he can’t make a square circle because that’s contrary to truth. And God can do nothing contrary to truth because he is the truth. He can’t lie, for example, or be a lie, or do something that’s a lie. And to say something is a square and it’s a circle at the same time would be a lie because it defies definitions. To say 2 plus 2 equals 5 would be a lie, too. So God can’t make 2 plus 2 equal 5. But as far as human salvation, God cannot give people free choice. and also coerce that choice to the point where they have no choice. So I believe that God has given us free choice, and God can do things. He can put pressure on us, maybe in response to somebody else’s prayers. He can reveal things to us in response to other people’s prayers. He can bring a convincing and attractive Christian witness to us through response to people’s prayers. But he can’t make the final decision for us unless he’s going to violate… our role as persons and agents who have the final decision to make. Now, some people think he does violate that. Those would be people we’d call Calvinists. But actually, I don’t believe the Bible says he does. So we can pray, and God will exert more pressure on people than if we hadn’t prayed. But still, the people are going to have to make their own decision. We’re responsible for our own choices. Sorry I’m out of time. You’ve been listening to The Narrow Path. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for joining us. God bless.
