Join Steve Gregg on The Narrow Path as he thoughtfully addresses a wide range of questions from listeners. This episode opens with an inquiry into frequency healing, prompting Steve to highlight the importance of distinguishing between legitimate medicinal practices and those with questionable spiritual origins. The conversation navigates through complex issues such as the true nature of salvation, emphasizing that it is not merely about justification by faith but involves a transformed life led by obedience and service. In tackling the issue of veneration versus worship, Steve offers a critical analysis of Catholic practices in light of biblical teachings,
SPEAKER 1 :
Thank 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, as we generally are. We have an open line for you so that you can call in if you have questions about the Bible or about the Christian faith, or you have a difference of opinion from the host on anything. Maybe you’re not a Christian. Maybe you’re a Christian who disagrees on something and wants to set the record straight. That’s what we allow you to do here. The number to call is 844- 844-484-5737. Again, that number. We have some lines open, by the way, if you want to call right now. 844-484-5737. And for those of you living in Washington State, starting this Sunday and through the following Sunday, I’m speaking every day somewhere, different places in Washington State, as far north as Arlington, as far south as… uh, you know, below, below Tacoma and, uh, a lot of places in between. So if you live in Washington and want to join us for any of those, you can see where I’m going to be by going to the narrow path.com and clicking on the tab that says announcements. And there you’ll see all the information about all of those events. That’s starting this Sunday and through the following Sunday, a whole week and a little more. Uh, so, uh, hope to see many of you there. I know I will. And, uh, Just want you to be aware of it. It’s at thenarrowpath.com under announcements. We have no reason to delay going to the phones at this point, so let’s talk to Eric in Compton, California next or first today. Hi, Eric. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Thanks, Steve.
SPEAKER 11 :
Steve, I have a good friend who is trying to get me interested in this frequency healing thing. I did a little bit of research. And people are raving about it. I tried to find something negative. I couldn’t. But in my little bit of research that I did, I get the impression that it’s coming from this Eastern religion yoga thing. It’s frequency healing. You listen to some tones and it’s supposed to heal you, make you feel good and all this stuff. Do you know anything about this frequency healing thing?
SPEAKER 06 :
I don’t. I don’t know anything about it. It sounds a little flaky to me, but then again, I haven’t looked into it. There may be something to it, but I wouldn’t be interested in it unless I knew there was some medical basis for it because there’s all kinds of healing things that people try that are actually more religious than they are scientific. And apart from miraculous healing from the hand of God, I wouldn’t necessarily want to get involved in any kind of a, that’s supposed to bring healing that doesn’t have a scientific basis. Maybe it does. I’m not familiar with it. I haven’t looked into it. But if it doesn’t have a scientific basis, or if most doctors would say there’s nothing to it, then I’d be a little concerned about it. Now, frankly, there are alternative ways. therapies, alternative medicines, and natural medicines and herbs and things like that, which people sometimes resort to. And sometimes doctors don’t speak highly of them because these things obviously are in competition with the medical establishment, with the pharmaceutical establishment. So sometimes they’ll say very negative things about procedures and about herbs and things like that and vitamins that really are not bad and may actually work. but, you know, if something’s very strange and it hasn’t been tested scientifically and, you know, if it’s just anecdotal, people say, well, I feel better now because I did this. I just wouldn’t look much into it, only because there’s got to be scores of those kinds of things, and many of them do come out of more of an Eastern worldview or something like that, you know, trying to manipulate the chakras of the body or something, you know. I mean, I honestly don’t know what this procedure is like. I would say if you are ill and in pain and so forth and you’re looking for healing and the medical establishment hasn’t been able to do anything for you along these lines, I would try probably a number, a lot of things before I would try something I’d never heard of like that. But on the other hand, you could do your own research. I certainly haven’t. And if you research it and find out that, well, it is entirely secular, it’s entirely a scientifically valid thing, well, then I wouldn’t say anything against it. It’s hard to know because you hear about so many different techniques and stuff about healing. And I know of one person who’s actually the adult daughter of some good friends of mine who seemingly apparently got demon-possessed. when she was seeking relief from pain through an occult method. She didn’t know it was occult, but she went to it not knowing what it was. And within a few days after she began with it, she manifested demons very severely. And she was demon-possessed for a period of time before she got delivered. It was scary. It was a scary thing. So, You know, I don’t say that everybody who uses occult methods gets demon-possessed, but that’s certainly one way of maybe several ways that people have been known to become demon-possessed. So if there’s like a 1% chance that if you do something that’s kind of in the occultic realm that demons will get a hold of you, then I would look elsewhere for remedies myself. But, yeah, you’ll have to do your own research on that. Since I haven’t done it, I can’t help you with the specifics. Those are some general principles. All right. Let’s talk to Carl in La Mesa, California. Carl, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 05 :
Hello, Steve. Thanks for taking my call. Would it be fair to say that your view of salvation is kind of like we’re saved by our obedience, and especially in passing tests that God provides to us? Something along that line?
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, I believe if by saved we mean justified, I believe we’re justified by faith alone. But I don’t believe that justification is the only aspect of salvation that the Bible talks about. I believe that the Bible not only talks about being justified, which is like the entry level into salvation. You know, when we get forgiven of our sins and brought into God’s family, the rest of salvation, the Bible talks about, is when Jesus saves us from our sins. Not the penalty of our sins, the sins themselves. And we get liberated from that when we get freed up from our bondages, when we get filled with the Spirit and begin to live a productive spiritual life that’s a blessing to others and that promotes the kingdom of God. In other words, salvation, as I understand it biblically, is a full restoration to what we fell from. I mean, think of the story Jesus told, which is supposed to be a picture of salvation, the prodigal son. The prodigal son was alienated from his father, and his salvation was when he returned to a proper relationship with his father. Now, his father forgave him the first day. But that son was now in a proper relationship with his father, so his life looked very different than when he was out with the harlots and the drunkards and eating with the pigs. His life was a life of obeying his father. In fact, repentance for him was a return to that state that he had fallen from. Now, the state he had fallen from wasn’t just that he wasn’t eating from a pigsty. He had fallen from a relationship with his father characterized by honor and respect and obedience and and cooperation with the Father’s projects, you know, the homestead that he’s running. And that’s how salvation is for us, too. I mean, forgiveness is the first part. It’s forgiveness, I believe, that most people are looking for because they’re not thinking of salvation as anything more than just, how do I get to heaven? And realizing that my sins may debar me from heaven, they want forgiveness, and they don’t want much more. As long as they figure, I’m going to heaven, I’m good. Well… well, I believe we are justified by faith, but I believe when we’re justified, we are now born again. We’re now part of God’s family. We’re now in a restored relationship, which is characterized by obedience and loyalty and service and, you know, cooperation in the Father’s projects. So, I mean, that salvation is a holistic thing. It’s not just a transactional thing. Now, that’s how I understand it. Now, are we saved by doing good works? I don’t believe so, but I don’t know that a person who has no good works could be said to be saved, not because you have to do good works to get saved, but because that’s what salvation involves. Once you’re in a right relationship with God, obedience to God is what you do. That’s what right relationship looks like. You can’t really be in a right relationship with the king of the universe and If you’re living in rebellion against him and breaking his laws, that’s not a right relationship. So once you’re in that relationship, it looks different than when you’re not. And one of the ways it’s different is, as it says in Ephesians 2.10, that we are to walk in good works, which God has foreordained for us to walk in. That’s what salvation looks like. So I don’t believe you get saved by doing good works. But I don’t think you get saved and then don’t do good works because that’s, of course, if we take salvation to be a full restoration of our relationship with God to what it was supposed to be in the first place, then obedience and good works are, of course, what we rebelled against before. And now we don’t rebel against same works, so we do them. So it’s not exactly the way you framed it. Okay, thank you very much. Okay, well, thank you for your call. Good talking to you, Carl. Bye now. Let’s see, Ina in Sutter, California. Welcome to the Narrow Path, or Ina. Hello.
SPEAKER 09 :
Hi, yes, you got it right. Hi, it’s Ina. I have a question. I’ve been kind of in discussion a lot lately just with other people that I know, and they are Catholic. And a topic of veneration versus idolatry comes up often. And they stated to me that, you know, the veneration for Mary is not idolatry because worship requires sacrifice. And I wasn’t sure exactly how to look into that properly because even the phrases I looked up were, you know… How to show them that worship, and is that correct? Worship requires sacrifice. I’m sorry, my little guy.
SPEAKER 06 :
All right. Let me put you on hold here so we don’t get to hear all the noise in your home. And besides, I think your child might need your attention. But, you know, what is the difference between veneration and worship? Now, to the Catholics, they say they don’t worship Mary. They don’t worship the saints. They don’t worship the images in their churches. They just venerate them. Now, my understanding would be the Bible doesn’t tell us to venerate or not to venerate anyone because the word venerate isn’t even in the Bible. But if by venerate we mean something different than worship, what is the difference? Now, you said they say worship means to sacrifice. Well, okay, well, how do we sacrifice to God? How do we worship God? The Bible says we offer up spiritual sacrifices. including praise and prayer and those kinds of things, is offering incense before God, spiritually speaking. Now, if people pray toward the saints and toward Mary and toward the images, that’s the offering of sacrifices of the same sort that we offer to God in Christ. So I don’t really see the difference. Now, I will say this, that when you bow down to somebody, when you, you know, you know, kiss their feet or their statues and so forth. That’s part of what Catholics call veneration. That’s what the heathen would call worshiping their gods. And, you know, so if we simply remove the word worship and replace it with the word veneration, it may seem that we’re not violating any command of God when he said don’t worship or bow down to any other images and so forth. Well, bowing down is what he said not to do. In fact, one of the meanings of the word worship in the Hebrew is to bow down. and to prostrate oneself. So it seems to me if we say, well, we don’t worship them, we just venerate them, I’m going to say, well, can you show me where that is a difference? And what would it look like differently? What would you do differently toward Mary and the saints and the statues if you were worshiping them than what you are doing? Also, I’d wonder, why bother? I mean, if there’s any difference between veneration and worship at all, it must be a very fine line. So why get so close to that line when you could stay entirely away from it? I don’t bow down to any people. I don’t venerate any people. I appreciate certain people. I appreciate good people, as the Bible says we should do. But I don’t venerate them in any sense that looks like what the Catholics do toward saints and toward Mary and toward statues, right? And one reason would be I wouldn’t know the difference between doing that and worshiping them. So since I’m certainly not allowed to worship them, why would I do anything that comes so close that I can’t really tell the difference between that and worship? I mean, what’s the point? And, of course, what they say is, well, the saints and Mary, they’re more righteous than we are, and they probably have more access to Jesus than we do. Well, I don’t know that they do. Who said they do? You know, I don’t really think they do. But even if they had more access to Jesus than we do, our prayers are to be toward the Father. And Jesus said, we can talk to the Father ourselves. And when he said, when you pray, say, our Father. He didn’t say, when you pray, say, our mother, the mother of Jesus. Please speak to Jesus so he can speak to the Father for me. No, we go directly to the Father. Jesus said that. He taught that as well as teaching us to pray that way. He actually said, up till now, you’ve not asked the Father anything. You’ve asked me, but you won’t ask me in those days. You’ll ask the Father in my name. So, you know, we’re supposed to pray to the Father. And, you know, if someone says, yeah, but you can’t necessarily say we’re violating anything if we’re speaking to Mary and asking her to pray for us, well… I’m not really sure if you are or not. The Bible does forbid us to speak with the dead. And as far as I know, Mary died. And if they say, well, yeah, but the saints are alive in heaven. Well, okay, so was Samuel apparently then alive. But when Saul called him back from the dead, it was his death sentence. It was Saul’s death sentence because he wasn’t supposed to do that. You don’t call back people from the dead even if they’re saintly like Samuel was. So, I mean, talking to the dead means talking to people who have died and now they’re somewhere else. They’re not here. And to suggest that they can hear you, for you to think that Saint so-and-so or Mary herself is able to hear you and hear all the other Catholics around the world who are praying to them at the same moment is giving them qualities that God alone has. We don’t know that anybody… has omniscience and omnipresence other than God. Those are seemingly divine traits. And if we say, well, Mary can hear everybody who’s praying to her at the same time, well, then she must be like God in that respect. She’s everywhere at once. She knows everything. And all the saints do, too, apparently, if you can talk to them. Why get into this tangled web of self-deception, I think, when you don’t need to? Well, it’s just not necessary. I don’t know why people would make religion so controversially complex when Jesus made it really quite simple. Just talk to the Father. That’s good enough. He never told us to talk to Mary. And even when Mary was alive, she was in the church in Jerusalem. We have her mentioned in Acts chapter 1. She was in the upper room at Pentecost when the Spirit fell. She apparently lived among the apostles in Jerusalem until the end of her life. And we don’t read of them ever coming to her with any requests or asking her to ask Jesus something for them. In fact, we don’t find them even mentioning her as anything other than just another person in the church. An amazing thing, if she was such a goddess, as the Catholics often seem to make her out to be. Interesting that she would have no more role than she did in the early church in Jerusalem. Now, your friend said worship requires sacrifice. Is that true? In a sense, it does. But in the New Testament, we offer spiritual sacrifices. We don’t worship animal sacrifices anymore or blood sacrifices. It says in 1 Peter 2 and verse 5 that we are living stones built up into a spiritual house to offer spiritual sacrifices. In Hebrews chapter 13 and verses 13 through 15, it says that doing good and sharing with the poor, those are sacrifices we do as part of our worship of God. Philippians chapter 4, I forget the verse number near the end of the chapter, Paul said that he had received a generous gift while he was in prison from the church in Philippi. He said it was a sweet sacrifice before God, acceptable to God. Paul said in Romans 12, well, verse 1, it says, I beseech you therefore by the mercies of God that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. So presenting your body as available to the service of God, presenting your finances to help the poor, doing good. And in Hebrews 13, it also talks about offering the sacrifice of praise to God. which is the fruit of our list. I mean, these are all references to worship, offering sacrifice to God. But they’re not physical sacrifices, of course. And some of these things, it’s hard to tell the difference between that and what the Catholics call veneration. So anyway, I don’t want to make Catholics mad at me because I don’t dislike them. I just think they complicate things and in doing so get dangerously close, if not over the line, in matters that the Bible forbids. And we do know some things that they forbid. that the Bible forbids, that the Catholics allow and even command. So, you know, that’s because Roman Catholics do not share the Protestant ethic of following the Scripture alone in normative practices. They believe the Scriptures and the traditions of the Church are equally normative, and therefore, you know, if the Church comes up with the idea, well, we’re going to speak to Mary, Jesus didn’t tell us to, In fact, he taught us to pray entirely differently than that, but we’re going to just say the church is going to make a tradition. We pray to the saints. We pray to Mary. Well, Jesus said to the Pharisees who had done similar things with their traditions, he said, full well, you reject the word of God so that you might keep your traditions. That’s in Matthew 15 with a parallel in Mark 7. So anyway, those are my thoughts about that. I’m sorry that your child needed your attention. I hope you didn’t miss out on the answer. You can always listen to it on the website, thenarrowpath.com. We have all the archives. of past programs, including this one, as soon as we’re done. All right. Thank you for your call. Kathy in Newport Beach, California. Welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yes. Hi. Can you tell me what is the website that I could post my private question?
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, we have a Facebook page where people post, though it’s not private. You can send me a private message from the Facebook page. If you want to do that, I have my own private Facebook page, too. Steve Gregg, just look me up and you can send a message that way. Or there’s an email address. If you go to the first page of our website, thenarrowpath.com, at the bottom of the page it gives my email address. So, I mean, you can contact me that way.
SPEAKER 07 :
I see. Another question is, I think you just answered it before this lady. To the gentleman, how am I assured of salvation of those around me?
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, you can’t be assured of the salvation of those around you unless they love Christ. I mean, we do have assurance that if a person has become a follower of Christ and they’re loyal to Christ, And they’re living their lives with the mind that he’s their owner. You’ve been bought with a price. He died for you and purchased you. And if that truth is governing your life, then you can be pretty sure that you’re saved. And if those around you are doing the same thing, you can be sure that they are. Apart from that, it’s hard to be sure. You can’t really have assurance of somebody else’s salvation unless they are so conspicuously sincerely following Christ, that they leave no doubt. Too many people, however, who are Christians, or at least in churches, they say they believe Christian things, but if you watch the way they live, they don’t necessarily follow Christ. They don’t seem to make his commands the rule for their choices in life. And, you know, I’m going to have to say, God’s going to have to judge those. We can’t really say Well, I know a lot of people feel like, well, my teenage kid or my early young adult child is going astray, though they used to follow Jesus when they were younger. Can I know that they’re saved? No, I don’t think so. First of all, if they’re not following Christ now, then one of two things has happened, neither of them encouraging. One is the fact that they’re not following him now reveals something. that they weren’t really saved in the first place. They may have said a prayer, raised their hand, gone forward at an altar call when they were children in Sunday school or something. But if they’re not walking with Jesus, either they weren’t really saved at the time, or they were and they’ve walked away from it. And walking away from him is no secure position to be in either. Yeah, the Bible says in 1 John chapter 5, verses 11 and 12, that this is the message that God has given to us eternal life. This life is in his Son. He that has the Son has life, and he that does not have the Son of God does not have life. So if somebody has Christ as their Lord and Savior, then they have eternal life. If they don’t have him, if they’re not following him, I mean, you don’t have him like a like a membership card, like a Costco membership card in your wallet. You don’t have Jesus like that. No one has Jesus like that. He’s not an entry card into some membership thing. Having Jesus is having the king of the universe as your king. He’s not some kind of a mantra. He’s not some kind of a… A shibboleth or something. If you can say the word properly, you can get past the security. I mean, this is not what Jesus is. Jesus is a person. He lived among us. He rose from the dead. He’s exalted at the right hand of God. He’s been given all authority in heaven and earth. And there’s only two ways we can be with Jesus. One is that we recognize his authority and we live under it. We submit to it. We recognize he’s the king and we’re his servants. The other way is to simply be in rebellion against that fact. And people who are in rebellion against that are not what the Bible calls Christians, and I wouldn’t want to be in their position when standing before God, because that’s just not a secure place to be if you’re thinking in terms of being on good terms with God and ready to die and saved and all that. Anyway, that’s what I would say. If your family members are serving Christ, then you can be assured that they’re saved. Otherwise… Maybe God only knows. Hey, I need to take a break here. You’re listening to The Narrow Path. We have another half hour coming up, so don’t go away. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. Everything’s free. You can donate there if you want to. I’ll be back in 30 seconds. Don’t go away.
SPEAKER 02 :
As you know, the Narrow Path radio show is Bible radio that has nothing to sell you but everything to give you. So do the right thing and share what you know with your family and friends. Tell them to tune in to the Narrow Path on this radio station or go to thenarrowpath.com where they will find topical audio teachings, blog articles, verse-by-verse teachings, and archives of all the radio shows. You know listeners supported Narrow Path with Steve Gregg? Share what you know.
SPEAKER 06 :
Welcome back to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg, and we’re live for another half hour. Take your calls if you have questions about the Bible or about the Christian faith. I’d be glad to talk to you about those. The number to call is 844- 484-5737. That’s 844-484-5737. Alright, and our next call today is from Jeff in Sacramento, California. Jeff, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 03 :
Thanks. I can’t remember if it was yesterday or the day before when somebody called in and you were talking about curses versus blessings, you know, and In the Bible, people being cursed or being blessed. Yeah. Well, I’ve experienced unusual miracles throughout my whole life. Not unusual as far as what you see in the Bible, but unusual to, you know, you don’t always see it happen today. But I never curse people, but I have prayed for God to humble people and seen pretty dramatic things happen or speak truth. Like I had a roommate one time. that he brought up the septic. He goes, I don’t believe in the God of the Old Testament. He was mean and cruel. He goes, I like Jesus, but anyway, I got mad. I quoted what Jesus said about having a millstone hung around your neck and be drowned in the depths of the sea. Well, he lost his voice for three days after I quoted that scripture. I mean, he lost it right then, but he didn’t get it back fully to the fourth day. And then I had a guy that spoke abusively to me, And he had spoken abusively to elderly people and stuff, too. I’ve heard bad things. Anyway, I was working for him. Anyway, after I got off the phone, after he was very verbally abusive, I asked God to do something to humble him. I said, I don’t pray that he die or get hurt bad or anything. God, I just pray that you do something, though, to really humble him. And I found out later his truck, new truck that he just bought that year, like a $90,000 truck, broke down. And then Ford never was able to find out what was wrong with it. And they had to buy it back. But it took like a year before they had to settle everything with attorneys. I’m like, well.
SPEAKER 04 :
Okay. Well, okay.
SPEAKER 03 :
Have you seen things like that yourself or I know of other people?
SPEAKER 06 :
If I have, I don’t remember them. I’m not sure if I would. But, I mean, you know, that could obviously be coincidental or not. I mean, God is active in this world. He’s active in our lives. If you pray for something and God sees fit to grant it, then he’ll grant it. So, I mean, God could have done those kinds of things. Now, when you’re talking about blessing or cursing, it doesn’t sound like you actually cursed anybody. To pray for someone to be humbled is to pray for their good. It’s good for people to be humbled. God resists the proud. but gives grace to the humble. So to pray that people will be humbled is actually to wish them well. And to pray for them to be humbled is not to curse them at all. It’s to bless them in a sense. So, I mean, any prayers we pray may please God to a grant. And that’s all I can say. It sounds like you may have had some answers to prayer there or not. I mean, I don’t know. I would think you’d be entitled to interpret those circumstances differently. in either way, either, you know, as coincidences or as not coincidences. I’ve had a lot of things happen in response to prayers in my life that I suppose an atheist could just say, well, that’s just a coincidence. Yeah, but they are things that would, like there’s one chance in a million or less chance than that of them happening. And they happen, you know, numerous times in my life in different situations. Now, not every prayer I pray is answered. nor would I have reason to believe it should be. Prayers are not an option that we’re given or a privilege we’re given in order to get what we want from God. It’s to get God’s will done on the earth. That’s why Jesus said, when you pray, say, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. When Jesus prayed about his own life-threatening situation, he said, well, deliver me if it’s your will, but if it’s not your will, let your will be done and not mine. That’s That’s proper praying. The prayer is not that I will get what I want, but that God will get what he wants. And so, you know, obviously there may be times I’m praying for something I’m poorly informed about what’s right and good, and God knows what’s best, so he may deny me my request. But at times, lots of times, it would appear that my prayers have gotten dramatic answers and very timely answers. So those stories you told sound like they could be answered prayers. It doesn’t sound like you were cursing anybody. At least I wouldn’t have interpreted it that way, hearing your story. Thank you for your call. Let’s see. Theodore in Las Vegas, Nevada. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 10 :
Hello?
SPEAKER 06 :
Hello? I was wondering… Your voice has just gone totally faint. Are you on a speakerphone or something? It’s a shame you waited so long and then we don’t get to call. I’m not hearing you. Go ahead. I’m on the cell phone. Can you hear me?
SPEAKER 10 :
I hear you now. Go ahead. Okay. I’ve heard different versions about David, the one David and Goliath, David and Saul, David with the seven brothers, Saul’s his father, then he’s his son,
SPEAKER 06 :
I don’t know where you heard that one. Yeah, well, I’ve read the story of David many, many times and taught through the story of David dozens of times, verse by verse, and I haven’t found anything that are hard to harmonize. You say you’ve heard different versions of David, David and Goliath and David and Saul. Well, frankly, David and Goliath is not in conflict with anything the Bible says about David and Saul. You said you’ve heard that David was the son of Saul. No, although Saul might have sometimes called him my son, which is what older men often called younger men. It’s a very common thing for somebody who’s friendly with somebody else for the older man to refer to the younger one as my son. It’s an affectionate term. And for a younger person to say my father to an older person, that’s It’s not like they always did that, but it was not unusual to find it in Scripture. I do believe there’s a time when Saul realized that David had spared his life when Saul was at his mercy, and he did address David, my son, you know, kind of thing. It’s kind of an affectionate term to speak to a younger person. But there’s no suggestion anywhere in Scripture that Saul was David’s father. Actually, Jonathan was Saul’s son, and Jonathan and David were good friends, but they weren’t brothers or even half-brothers. David, everywhere is said to be the son of Jesse, and that’s what the story tells us. There’s no other information contrary to that in Scripture. David is always the son of Jesse. He’s the same David who killed Goliath. He’s the same David who fought in Saul’s armies and later was persecuted and had to flee from Saul. The story is all of the same David, and to my knowledge, there’s no conflict in the things you mentioned. Now, there are some of the stories of David, especially about him numbering the people, that we have two different accounts of that story, and some of the details are different in the two accounts, the one in 2 Samuel and the one in 1 Chronicles. The same story is told, but some details differ. And that could be… simply because of the passing down of errors in the copying of the manuscripts. That happens from time to time in ancient literature. I don’t know, I don’t actually have an answer for all of that, but that’s, I mean, there’s several possible explanations. But the things you mentioned do not strike me as anything that are in conflict with each other, just different episodes in the life of the same man. Hope that helps. Bert in San Jose, California. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 12 :
Hi, Steve. I had a question, a couple of them on Matthew 19, verse 28, where it says, Jesus said to them, Truly I say to you in a new world, when the Son of Man will sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. So my question is, is it a metaphor that the Son of Man is sitting on an actual throne? Or is that a metaphor, or do you believe that’s literal?
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, I’m not really sure we could answer that, because there’s a lot of symbolic language about God’s throne. For example, in the book of Revelation, the book of Revelation has more references to the throne of God than the rest of the Bible combined. practically, and it’s all symbolic. So, I mean, what I mean is, when I say it’s all symbolic, I mean that a throne represents a position of authority and dominion and rulership. And like even the 24 elders are seen sitting on thrones, and the martyrs, in chapter 20 of Revelation, are seated on thrones and so forth. But whether there’s millions of thrones, literal thrones, that these millions of martyrs are sitting on, or whether this is simply saying that they’re elevated to a position of co-ruling with Christ and the way of depicting that pictorially would be to seat them on thrones with crowns, I don’t know. I don’t really worry about that kind of thing because, frankly, if I’m going to try to guess about what things look like in a world I’ve never been in, namely heaven, there’s a very good chance that I’ll be wrong in my guesses. And the truth is I’m not really very curious about those kinds of things because, frankly, no matter what it’s like, I want to be there. Will I be sitting on a throne? Will I wear a real crown when I’m reigning with Christ? I don’t know. I don’t even care. If I knew, it wouldn’t change my interest in being there. So, I mean, I’ve always been willing to wait and find out. You know, the thing is that a lot of times there are things that we have no real perfect analogy for, things in the spiritual world, things like God, for example. I mean, think of even the idea of the Trinity, which many Christians I meet nowadays, they have a problem believing the Trinity. I’ve never had any problems believing it, but I certainly have a problem comparing it to anything in the natural world. Sometimes people want to compare it with water. And it’s liquid, solid, and vapor state, three states of the same water. Well, but they’re not all three at the same time. So it’s not really a perfect analogy. There’s all kinds of natural things in the natural world that people say, well, here’s an analogy of the Trinity. And none of them are perfect analogies, nor do I need one. I have a feeling that whatever God’s intrinsic nature is as Trinity is not very comparable to to anything in the natural world that we have to make comparison with. And likewise, the state we will be in when we are like Christ and when we’re out of this life, living in a more perfect creation and a more spiritual state, could be very different from what we know now. And so we’re not really given much information. It’s very possible that if we were, we’d get the wrong impression. For example, There might be things that God could tell us about the next life that, in our present state, we might think, well, that doesn’t sound like much fun. Not that fun is the issue, but we might not be very much attracted to it. Whereas when we’re in the state we will be in then, we’ll recognize that’s the most gratifying thing in the world. I generally, I’ve often made this comparison. that when I was a child, I’m thinking I was probably eight, maybe, a boy who was a couple years older than me tried to describe sex and what grown-ups do, you know, to have babies and stuff like that. Now, I hadn’t really understood this, and I don’t think he did either. He didn’t make it really very accurate. But the point is that when I heard it, it simply was totally unattractive to me. It seemed gross to me. It seemed like something that, well… If that’s what it is, I’m never going to have any kids because I don’t want to do that. And that’s because an eight-year-old doesn’t have any frame of reference for knowing what he will enjoy once he’s past adolescence or past puberty. He’s a different person in many ways. Same person, but in a very different state. And his desires are very different. And I see that as similar to where we are. The state we’re in is very different than the state we’ll be in then, and we can’t really say anything. whether earthly comparisons that God used simply to try to convey concepts to us will be the same to us as they sound to us now or not. So I’ve just never really devoted much of my time to thinking about the afterlife. It’s not really my main concern that I think the Bible instructs me to make my main concern to be a disciple of Jesus and then leave with him what the results will be in the next life. All right. Frederick from Dunmore, West Virginia. Or Frederick, excuse me, not Frederick. It’s Frederick. Hi, Frederick. Welcome. Yes.
SPEAKER 08 :
Hi, Steve. How are you? Good. Good. So I’ve got a question. I’m wondering, I’d like to know, what are the three most compelling examples of prophecy in the Bible that couldn’t be explained by some other way?
SPEAKER 06 :
All right. Well, there’s quite a few. One of the most compelling seems to me to be the prophecy of the 70 weeks in Daniel, which speaks about the length of time between a Persian decree that would be made shortly after Daniel’s time, and the coming of the Messiah, which was said to be 149 years, or 70 times 7. And there were three such decrees. Depending on which one you measure from, you can place the 490 years as being fulfilled either at the baptism of Jesus or at his crucifixion, and different scholars have taken different views, but the point is, since the Messiah might have come at any time, as far as Daniel knew, for him to say it’d be 490 years from this point to his coming, and for it to be more than one way seen as fulfilled is pretty amazing. Because, again, when you’re looking into the future, say, well, Messiah’s going to come. It’s sort of like when we say, when’s Jesus going to come back? Well, the Bible doesn’t tell us that. And until Daniel wrote that, the Bible didn’t tell the Jews when the Messiah would come the first time. It could have been any time. It could have been thousands of years off for all they knew. But Daniel nailed it, pretty much. And that’s one of the amazing prophecies he gave. By the way, a lot of prophecies in Daniel are that way. So much so that skeptics have tried to argue that Daniel wrote them after the fact. But that simply won’t work. It doesn’t work. Daniel wrote before the time of Christ. There’s no question about that. Jesus could quote from Daniel, and everybody was familiar with it as a prophetic word. So, you know, that’s an amazing one to me. There’s a lot of kind of amazing ones. In Ezekiel, there’s prophecies about the fall of Tyre, which was in Phoenicia, north of Israel. And it was a city that had a… an island fortress. And whenever large armies like the Babylonians or the Assyrians would attack them, they would retreat to this island. And there was simply no naval power in the ancient world that could defeat this island. So Tyre resisted total defeat. When other mainland cities were conquered by Assyrians and Babylonians and so forth, the Babylonians besieged Tyre for 12 years. and failed to conquer them. So Nebuchadnezzar just took his troops on down to Egypt and conquered there instead. However, Ezekiel said that Tyre would be defeated, and that all the dust and rubble of the city would be thrown into the water, and that the city would be scraped clean like a rock. Now, that’s a very strange thing to prophesy, because I can’t think of any other historic city that when it was conquered by invaders, all of its rubble was thrown into water, and the thing was scraped clean. Why bother? Once you’ve conquered the city, why would you do that? I mean, it’s a very strange thing to predict. But when Alexander the Great came, and this was 300 years after Ezekiel made the prophecy, Alexander was not content to leave the island city unconquered, though he didn’t have a naval power any better than Babylon’s. But he did have his soldiers take all the debris from the city on the mainland and toss them into the water. It was about a half mile offshore, this island. And he built from the water, from the seabed up, he built a walkway, a causeway, for his soldiers to march across on dry land to conquer the island. This required that everything on the mainland was thrown into the sea, something that Ezekiel said would happen, but no one could have guessed why or how it would have happened. But it did happen, just as he said, 300 years after he prophesied it. So those are pretty important ones. There’s obviously prophecies about the ministry of Jesus or his life, which… taken collectively would be very hard to imagine how they could be fulfilled. I mean, any one of them might be that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem in Micah 5 too. Well, very few people were born in Bethlehem. It was a little tiny town. It was so small that when Herod had all the babies under two years old slaughtered at one time, many scholars say that could have been 20 babies. You know, it’s just that small a town. Not many people born there. David was a thousand years earlier than Christ. And Christ was. And the Messiah was predicted to be born there. And Jesus was. So he’s one of the few that was. But then more than that, he was born at the same time that the prophets said he would be born. For example, in Daniel, the 70 weeks and so forth. And not only that, he was born of the right family line. He was supposed to come through David’s line. He did. You know, he was betrayed for 30 pieces of silver. Zechariah had prefigured that. There’s just a whole lot of things that are details of Jesus’ life, which he would not have had any power to bring about. Now, I will admit, some of the things that Jesus, some of the prophecies Jesus fulfilled, he could have done on purpose. For example, Zechariah said the Messiah would come riding into Jerusalem on a donkey in Zechariah 9.9. And Jesus did. But any man could have done that. So, I mean, that’s not a miracle. But the fact that so many of the prophecies were done that he couldn’t have engineered is remarkable. Some people think that Jesus fulfilled 300 prophecies of the Old Testament. Now, I don’t think it’s quite that many myself. But let’s just say if it was only 20 prophecies or 25 prophecies, the nature of their specificity and the likelihood that any one man would have all these things happen, born in the right time, born in the right place, born of the right lineage, all not within his power, and then to be betrayed, to be crucified, as some people were, but not very many. I mean, for all these things to happen to one person, and frankly, and then even for him to rise from the dead, as some of the prophets implied, those are pretty impressive. There’s a ton of them. I mean, there’s a lot of prophecy in the Bible, and I would suggest that people should acquaint themselves with the prophets in the Old Testament so they would, in fact, if they studied them and see how they were fulfilled hundreds of years after their time, they would be very impressed. One of the really impressive prophecies was Isaiah 44 and 45. The last couple of verses of Isaiah 44 and the opening verses of 45 talk about how Israel in captivity in Babylon would be set free by a man named Cyrus. Well, it turns out a man named Cyrus did conquer Babylon and did issue a decree to allow the Israelites to go back to rebuild Jerusalem after it had been destroyed 70 years earlier. So, I mean, Isaiah lived 150 years before Cyrus was born. Actually, 200 years before Cyrus was born, and 150 years before this happened, I believe. Anyway, a couple centuries anyway, he named Cyrus as the person who would do it. This is so remarkable because That, again, the only way that an unbeliever can deal with it is to pretend that Isaiah must have written it after the event, because how could he know? Well, you know, Isaiah tells us the way you know, the way that the prophet knows, is because God alone knows the future and can reveal that to his prophets. And he said that’s the difference between God and the false gods. They can’t reveal the future, and God does. But to name a man and say what his principal thing that he will do is, to do so 150 years before he’s born, is pretty amazing. And that’s what Isaiah did, Isaiah 44 and 45. There’s lots more of those, but those are pretty amazing ones.
SPEAKER 08 :
Thank you. That helps. Can you recommend a good Bible atlas that includes the Old Testament?
SPEAKER 06 :
A Bible atlas. There are several. I think I have two or three on my shelf, but I don’t think any of them are really different than any others. I mean, they’re laid out differently, but I can’t say which one to be better. I doubt that there’s a bad one out there, so just go online and look up a Bible atlas and see what’s available there. You can probably look inside on Amazon, look inside and see a few pages and see if you like them or not. All right? Thank you. Okay. Thanks, Frederick. Good talking to you. Let’s see here. Jordan from Indianapolis, Indiana. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 01 :
Hey, thanks, Steve. First of all, I listen to your show a lot. I love it. You’re great. Praise God. The question I had is I just wanted to kind of know your thoughts on any of the non-canonical apocryphal books like Enoch, Jubilees, Jasher. Do you feel like there’s any historical accuracy to those, and do you feel like any of them were inspired by God or the Holy Spirit?
SPEAKER 06 :
No, I don’t believe Enoch was, because Enoch was not written by Enoch, and it claimed to be, so I don’t think the Holy Spirit would lie like that. The author claims to be Enoch, the seventh from Adam, and yet Enoch, the seventh from Adam, had not been on the planet for about 2,300 years at the time that this book was written. So he clearly didn’t write it. There were a lot of books like that that the Jews wrote. They wrote anonymously, but they attributed them to very famous people of the past. And the books, several books of Enoch, they all are of that nature. It’s not inspired. And in my opinion, it’s got a lot of speculation about things like the flood and that kind of stuff that I wouldn’t necessarily put much credit in. It was a popular work. The Jews liked it. They liked to read it, and so did the early Christians. But that doesn’t mean they recognized it as an inspired book. There’s lots of popular books among Christians today that we don’t refer to as inspired scripture. And Enoch would be probably in that category. The book of Jasher is mentioned a couple times in the Old Testament, although it’s not mentioned to be inspired by anyone. We don’t even know who Jasher was. But also, I don’t think we have the book of Jasher. Yeah, you can buy it. You can buy a book that’s titled the Book of Jasher, but that this would be the same Book of Jasher that the Bible mentions seems, to my mind, very unlikely. I think the Book of Jasher disappeared for hundreds of years, if not thousands, and then reappeared in print in modern times. And I don’t think it was discovered. I think it was something someone just published, wrote and published. So… You know, I’d stick with the inspired books of Scripture if you’re looking for authority and something that can be trusted. Now, there’s nothing wrong with reading other books. Read, you know, the Illid and the Odyssey. They’re not Scripture, but they’re interesting and adventurous and entertaining. And some of these other books you mentioned are too, but I wouldn’t confuse them with Scripture at all. I appreciate your call. I’m out of time. You’ve been listening to the Narrow Path Radio Broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg. We are listener supported. If you’d like to help us pay the radio bills, you can write to The Narrow Path, P.O. Box 1730, Temecula, California, 92593. That address again is The Narrow Path, P.O. Box 1730, Temecula, California, 92593. Or go to our website, thenarrowpath.com.
