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SPEAKER 1 :
Thank you.
SPEAKER 01 :
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. Excuse me. We’re live so that I can take calls from you during the program if you want to call in with questions about the Bible or the Christian faith. Maybe you have disagreements with the host. I want to talk about that. Feel free to give me a call. We have an hour commercial free for you to do that. The number to call is 844-484-5737. Now, we have a couple lines open if you’re interested in calling right now. Once again, that sometimes is true at the beginning of the program, but is not usually true very much later in the program. So if you want to try to get through, this is the best time. Although you might get through later if you have a chance to try. 844-484-5737 is the number to call. Now, all this week I’m speaking in various places in Washington State. Tonight I’m speaking in Kent. Tomorrow night I’ll be in Arlington. And the rest of the week I’m speaking in a variety of other places, which if you are in Washington, especially western Washington, you may wish to check and see the places where I’m speaking. If you’d like to come, we welcome you to join us. And I’ll be busy all week long through next Sunday night. I think Sunday night. Yeah, so if you’re in Washington State, there’s a lot of opportunities this week. All right, we’re going to go to the phones and talk to who’s first here. We’re going to talk to Hannah calling from Downey, California. Hannah, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 05 :
Hey, Steve. Thank you so much for taking my call. I’ve been studying the book of Job through your verse-by-verse on your website. And in Chapter 9, Verse 33, where Job says that he… um he feels like he needs a mediator between him and god i was just curious if that was like a foreshadowing um to jesus and then i was also curious if um at any point during job’s test if he had sins at all well that’s a good good question um
SPEAKER 01 :
We know he hadn’t really done any sin prior to his testing because God, I mean, any sin that brought it upon him because God said he was a blameless man who eschewed evil and feared God and so forth. And even after the first wave of tests, when the devil approached God again, God said, well, you know, he’s kept his integrity even though you moved me to destroy him without a cause. So we know that there’s no cause in Job’s behavior that caused his trouble, his causelessness. Now, as far as whether he sinned in the course of the conversations that followed, I will say he did seem at times to have the wrong attitude, to be sure. But whether he did or not, God didn’t apparently hold that against him because at the end he said that Job’s friends had not spoken rightly of God as Job did. That’s what it says in chapter 42. So Job is considered to have not even necessarily sinned with his mouth. In fact, In chapter 1 and chapter 2, after the initial testing and then the second round, the first time Job said, the Lord gave, the Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord. It says, in all this, Job did not sin with his mouth. And then the second time, through the second test, he said to his wife, you speak as one of the foolish women. Should we only receive the good things from the Lord, not the evil also? And it also says, in all this, Job did not sin with his mouth. So the summary of Job’s activities in the book at the beginning and then at the end, where it said he spoke rightly of God, would suggest that God did not hold it as a sin before him, that Job complained as he did. Well, we know David complained in the Psalms a lot of times, and we don’t see God necessarily holding that against him either. I think we should probably not be complainers, but God knows how stressed we can get in this life, and he’s apparently very, well, very understanding and sympathetic. Now, as far as Job saying he wished he had an intermediary to go between him and God in chapter 9, you say, could this be a reference to Christ? Well, any preacher who was preaching on it would be very remiss if he didn’t connect that, obviously, because in Christ we do have a mediator. But I don’t know that Job was thinking in terms of, you know, prophetically of Jesus coming. Any man might wish. If it feels like God’s not answering his prayers, I wish I had somebody that had it in with God who could go plead my case for me. If God’s not listening to me, maybe he’ll listen to somebody else. I wish there was someone that he would listen to that would be on my side. And that’s, of course, what Christ is, as Paul says. There’s one God and one mediator between God and man. The man, Christ Jesus, he said to Timothy. But was Job actually thinking in terms of that? I don’t know. Of course, a little later Job famously said, I know that my Redeemer lives and that I will see him in my flesh, standing on the earth or whatever. This is always used of Christ’s resurrection or Christ’s second coming or something like that. And Job probably said, Well, I don’t know. I mean, I’m willing certainly to believe that that’s what Job was prophetically saying. It’s just hard to know where he would have gotten the information unless he was an inspired prophet, which is possible. I mean, there are inspired prophets in the Old Testament and the New. So we’re just not told that Job was inspired. But whoever wrote the book, and it might have been Job, we don’t know, must have been inspired because they knew about what was going on between God and Satan in these conversations behind the veil that Job was not apprised of at the time. That may have been revealed to Job or someone else later on. So all I can say is if Job was an inspired prophet, and we’re never told that he was, but he may well have had a revelation about Jesus. And it may be hinted at in these statements. or not. I mean, the statement certainly can be made sense of, even without him having prophetic insight. Even the business about how I will see God in my flesh, even though my flesh is decayed, he says, we think of that, well, once you’re in the grave and your body’s all decayed into dust and so forth, if you can see God in your flesh, that’s the resurrection. I mean, on the other hand, he might just be referring to his present condition where his flesh was decayed. Because it was, at the time he was speaking, his flesh was in bad shape. And he might be saying, you know, even with my flesh decayed, I know that I’m going to see God. In other words, I’m going to see the vindication of God at some point because God would not just abandon me, a saintly person in this condition. So we don’t know exactly what he was thinking. We know what we can think because we have retrospect. You know, we have New Testament information. We can say, wow, Whether he knew it or not, that’s true in another way, maybe a way he didn’t know about. Or, alternatively, he did know about it, which would require that we believe he was an inspired prophet. And there’s nothing intrinsically unlikely about that. All right?
SPEAKER 06 :
Thank you so much.
SPEAKER 01 :
All right. Thanks for your call. Good talking to you. All right, we’re going to talk to Ian from southern Utah. Hi, Ian. Welcome.
SPEAKER 02 :
Hey, Steve. Thanks for having me on the program. I love your ministry. I love the work you’re doing for the kingdom. My question revolves around hell. I know that you’ve presented three views on hell that you haven’t quite settled on yet. at least last I heard, and one of the views is the ultimate reconciliation view, and I’m just wondering for yourself, I haven’t read your book, I’ve only listened to your lectures, do you take the view also that this grace could include angels as Origen did, or is that something you don’t think could happen for angels, and then why or why not?
SPEAKER 01 :
It is often reported that Origen taught that even the demons and Satan will be redeemed in hell, and that all people eventually will be too. Now, Origen definitely did say such things about people. Students and scholars of Origen’s work, and he wrote a lot, have gotten mixed messages on that from Origen, and some will say he actually did not. did not say that the angels and Satan would be redeemed in hell, but that is the fallen angels. So different people have seen it differently. However, Augustine was seemingly responding to Origen’s views. When he wrote In the City of God, he wrote several chapters about hell, refuting the universal reconciliation view. which apparently Augustine felt was, in the church, the view to refute because there’s some reason to believe that the majority of the Christians prior to about 400 A.D. were evangelical universalists, we would call them today, or what do we call it, universal reconciliation or restorationism, that kind of stuff. We don’t know if the majority were, but we know that the majority of the schools, the Christian schools at the time, were under Origen’s influence and probably were believing in universal reconciliation. But it’s notable that although there were three views, even in Augustine’s time when he wrote his treatise and made his case for hell, he went for the eternal conscious torment view, which made it the official view of the Roman Catholic Church and the Protestant Reformation groups. The Eastern Church, by the way, never were into Augustine, and they never did necessarily insist on his views of eternal conscious torment. There were people in the Eastern Church who were universalists, some important ones. Gregory of Nyssa, for example, Gregory Nantianzus and some others. And they were important fathers in the East, and they were universal, as apparently many Western Christians were before Augustine’s time. But what I’m saying is that Augustine, one of the arguments he made against Origen’s views is that, well, if God’s going to redeem all fallen humans in hell, he’d have to also, by the same logic, redeem all the fallen angels. And Augustine says, and no one says that’s going to happen. which is interesting because he apparently did not think that Origen had said that, though Augustine was quite familiar with Origenism and was in fact refuting it. So there’s real reason to question whether Origen did teach that Satan and the fallen angels would be redeemed. By the way, I would say this. I don’t think Augustine’s logic holds. I mean, if God did… want to redeem all fallen humans and not redeem all fallen angels. That would not be inconsistent. Jesus died for fallen humans. He didn’t die for fallen angels. I mean, the whole redemption of man, whether in hell or anywhere else, would still be through the redemption of Christ because there’s none saved except through him. The question is whether people can receive him after they’ve died or not. And that’s where origin would have had a difference from most evangelicals today. But anyway, I don’t think the devil will be redeemed and I don’t think the fallen angels will be. Though, I can’t say that the Bible tells us one way or the other. Some would say it does, because in Revelation 20 in verse 11, or verse 10, I guess, it says that the beast and the false prophet and the dragon, which is Satan, were all thrown into the lake of fire, burning with brimstone and fire. And it says, and they are tormented day and night forever and ever. Now, if you ever wanted a verse on eternal conscious torment, that’s the verse. That’s the verse you want. Of course, it only speaks of the beast and the false prophet, which, by the way, are not individual humans as far as I understand Revelation, but institutions. And the dragon is obviously a symbol for Satan. And later, a couple of verses later, death and Hades are thrown into the lake of fire, and they’re not individuals either. So this is symbolic language. So it’s really difficult to know, is he literally saying that the devil and the beast of Paul’s prophet are being literally tormented forever and ever? Or is this your hyperbolic, you know? figurative language like you’d get so much in Revelation. I can’t say for sure. But I would say that would be the one verse which, if taken literally, would say that Satan certainly will not be redeemed. And if not him, then probably not the demons either. I don’t think the Bible discusses it much. The truth is, the Bible doesn’t even discuss the fate of humans that much. The Bible is mainly concerned with how we’re supposed to live in this life. And there’s allusions to the next life, and there’s occasional rather symbolic descriptions of things, but not very detailed. So, honestly, I don’t think the concern of most biblical writers had much to do with the next life, and that’s why we don’t get answers to all the questions that we’re curious about on those subjects.
SPEAKER 02 :
Can I make one comment on that, if you don’t mind? Sure. Sure. Well, although it doesn’t speak of it that much, it seems to me, and I’ve listened to your lectures and I’ve listened to other people on ultimate reconciliationism or annihilationism, that where the Bible does speak on those, it seems to lean heavy towards the conscious side. eternal torment. And it seems as though it says very, very little, like a line or two that could be taken to seem otherwise. And it seems like you have to go through like extreme gymnastics to mental gymnastics to overcome the ones that do speak, although they are few, they seem to be pretty strong. And I don’t see anywhere where it directly says hey, this, you know, there’s going to be, everybody’s going to be redeemed out of hell. I mean, there’s no verse or passage or teaching that says that. And so that’s concerning to me just on a hermeneutic level.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, well, there’s no verse that says it in those words. But, yeah, if you read my book, you’ll find out that all three of the views have some pretty potent scriptural support, including universal reconciliation. And also, I would say especially the view of what we might call annihilation, but which is usually called conditional immortality. Both of those are alternative views. would rule out eternal conscious torment. Now, you said the verses on it are pretty strong. I can find, I’d say, three verses that seem to speak of eternal conscious torment, and they’re all in the book of Revelation. And, you know, we could say, well, the Revelation speaks very strongly that Jesus is a lamb with seven eyes and seven horns. I mean, he’s called that in Revelation 5, 6, and he’s called the lamb 27 more times in Revelation. So it’s clear he’s a lamb, not a human. And yet we realize from things like that that this is symbolism. The Bible uses a lot of symbolism, but mostly in Revelation. I’d say it’s the most symbolic book we have. And since that’s where all the verses that speak of eternal conscious torment are found, it raises questions. I’m not saying it can’t be the correct doctrine. I’m just saying it’s such a counterintuitive doctrine. There’s so many people, if they weren’t told anything about it at all in the Scripture, would certainly not assume. that a just and loving God, having other options available to him, would hate his enemies after they’ve died, though he loved them before they died, that he’d want to save them up to the moment of their last breath. But after they died, he’s done with them. He can’t stand them. He wants to torture them. Death isn’t good enough for them. He’s going to keep them alive forever so they can be infinitely tormented. I mean, that’s quite an attitude change on God’s part, to my mind. I mean, he can do it if he wants to. But does the Bible really give us – to me, that’s very counterintuitive. And therefore, if it were true, I would expect it to be something that the writers of the Bible would affirm frequently, and not only in the most symbolic book in the Bible. You know, you don’t have any reference to it. Now, people who believe in eternal conscious torment, they’ll bring in verses from Matthew 25, verses 41 and 46, where it talks about there’s the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels. But it doesn’t mention people tormented in it. It talks about people going there, but it doesn’t say that they’ll be eternally alive there. The fires may last long, but you throw something into a fire, that thing may not last as long as the fire does. You know, a forest fire just went through L.A. and burned a whole bunch of houses down. Some of them were burned down a lot earlier than the fire ended. You know, things can burn up and the fire can keep burning. So I’m just thinking, you know, just to mention eternal fire doesn’t tell us for sure what’s going on with those who are in it Also, of course, you’ve got— Quick response. Go ahead.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, go ahead. You go ahead. Quick response to the book of Revelation. I agree with you. I come from the idealist school. I’m not preterist, but I’m an idealist. But, I mean, yes, I do agree that the book of Revelation is symbolic, and those symbolisms need to be, like, accounted for for sure. You know, with Jesus being a lamb and things like that, for sure. The question that I would have in response would be like, okay, this is a symbol, but is it, I mean, yeah, it’s a symbol, but is it really a symbol for hell being emptied out? I mean, that would seem to be a little counterintuitive just to read it. Oh, I agree with you. Their smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever. Oh, that’s just a symbolic symbolism of the fact that, oh, hell’s going to eventually be emptied. Is it that that would need to seem that you’re doing this consciously?
SPEAKER 01 :
But I hear you. Yeah, I’m not saying that any of the verses about hell give the slightest impression that people who go there will someday leave there. I don’t there’s no verse about hell that I know that say that. If you held to universal reconciliation, you wouldn’t find it in the verses about hell, partly because there’s hardly any verses in the Bible about hell at all, and the ones that are there are not meant to be encouraging. They’re meant to be threatening. So, I mean, if people go to hell and they’re tormented, whether they’re tormented forever and ever or only for a brief time, there wouldn’t be any necessity of bringing either of those points out. It’s just like, hey, this is really bad. You don’t want to go there. It’s tormenting. And it wouldn’t necessarily make any reference since there’s so few verses on the subject at all. By the way, I will say this. If you look at a concordance of the word hell. You won’t find very many places, unless you’re in the King James Version. If you’re in the King James Version, you’ll find a lot more because they translated shale as hell. The King James translates Hades as hell. I think that’s going to be the majority of English references to hell in the King James. Most modern translations simply don’t render that as hell because they know that what we think of as hell is the final place of punishment for sinners. After the judgment, that’s not what Sheol is. That’s not what Hades is. And so even in the New King James, which is pretty close to the King James, they don’t translate those words. They just have the word Hades or the word Sheol rather than the word hell. But then there’s Gehenna, which Jesus used. The other biblical writers didn’t use the word, but Jesus used the word Gehenna. But that literally means the Valley of Hinnom. Now, whether he’s using it symbolically of hell or talking about the literal Valley of Hinnom is an argument to be made. I have a whole chapter on that in my book. But once you get rid of those two words, you don’t have any more words that are translated hell except Tartarus, which is just one time of the place where the fallen angels are. So it doesn’t even mention humans there. So you really don’t have any words in the Greek that necessarily should be translated hell. If by hell we mean the final destiny of the sinners. But you have phrases like the lake of fire or the furnace of fire. There’s a furnace of fire. In the parable of the wheat and the tares, there’s a furnace of fire. The fish that are sorted out from the dragnet, both of those are in Matthew 13. That’s probably hell, but it’s not called hell. It’s called a furnace of fire. Likewise, in Revelation, you don’t really find the word hell, any word in the Greek that should be hell, but you find the expression lake of fire. So it’s very unusual. to find statements about hell in the Bible. And so you’re right. I would not choose any of the statements about hell. to try to support a universal reconciliation view. Of course, I don’t hold the universal reconciliation view, but I’m open to it. I’m open to conditional immortality, too. Now, some of the things about hell do refer to conditional immortality, apparently, because the lake of fire In Revelation chapter 21, I think it’s verse 8, it says they’re thrown into the lake of fire, which is the second death. Now, that’s interesting because, you know, if I thought of the lake of fire as a place where people lived forever in torment, I wouldn’t refer to it as a second death. I’d probably refer to it as a second life in torment or something like that. So there’s a lot to juggle there, and that’s why I haven’t made up my own mind. I don’t know what my view is. But I’m certainly more sympathetic toward the non-traditional views than I am toward the traditional view, which is strange because I taught without embarrassment the traditional view for the first 30-something years of my ministry. And I didn’t abandon it because I couldn’t stomach it. I always was able to stomach it. I figured, you know, I don’t like it. But, you know, if God said it’s true, it’s true. And I thought the Bible taught it. Where I lost my confidence in that view is from studying the Bible, studying that view in the Bible and finding so few passages that could even be pressed into its service. And it’s how many verses that could be used to support other views. So I’m just kind of up in the air about it. but not 100% up in the air because I’m not – I definitely, I have to say, I’ve come to a place where I find it very difficult to find a scriptural case for the traditional view of eternal conscious torment. But I can see good, abundant scripture support for the other two views. And if you say, well, there’s not really many that have the other two views, well, like I said, I’d recommend you read my book, but if you’re thinking of the verses – that talk about hell specifically and say, well, there’s certainly not many of those you could press into those views, I’m going to agree with you. I mean, that one about the lake of fires, the second death, I think, is a verse about hell that can be pressed to service of the conditional immortality view. But to my mind, conditional immortality is almost like irrefutable. No matter what hell is, the Bible says that God alone possesses immortality. in 1 Timothy 6, verse 16, and Paul says in Romans 2 that people will live forever if they seek for immortality, if they pursue immortality, which is something apparently they don’t have by default. So only God possesses it by default, and humans can only have it if they seek it, and they’ll only find it in Christ, because it says in 1 John 5, verse 11 and 12, this is the message that God has given to us, eternal life, And this life is in his Son. He that has the Son has life. That is eternal life. And he that does not have the Son of God does not have life. Even John 3.16 says that whosoever believes in him will not perish, which perish is the Greek word for be destroyed, but will have everlasting life. So believing in Jesus is the condition for having everlasting life, and that’s what immortality is. I think so, too.
SPEAKER 02 :
You don’t mind? Sorry. The Bible describes the life and death as not necessarily a position of consciousness or unconsciousness, though.
SPEAKER 01 :
I was taught that, too. I was taught that, too.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, we’re called dead now, and we’re, you know, dead people before they’re saved. Not necessarily Calvinistic view, but, you know, people before they’re saved are considered dead. It doesn’t mean they’re unconscious. I agree. But they’re called dead.
SPEAKER 01 :
I agree, and that is a consideration. But many things we’ve been told about the use of the word death. For example, the idea that death just means separation, which I was taught all my life. I can’t find any lexical support for the idea that death ever meant separation. Maybe in some usages, but certainly not in the lexical meaning of the words. Hey, I’m out of time for your call, but I appreciate you calling. It’s good to talk with you. God bless you. Thank you. Have a good day. We’ve got another half hour coming, so don’t go away. You’re listening to The Narrow Path. We are a listener-supported ministry. We pay for time on the radio stations. And if you’d like to help us stay on, this is our address. The Narrow Path, P.O. Box 1730, Temecula, California, 92593. You can also donate, if you wish, from our website. Everything at the website is free. And there’s thousands, literally thousands of resources there at thenarrowpath.com. I’ll be back in 30 seconds. Don’t go away.
SPEAKER 03 :
toward a radically Christian counterculture, as well as hundreds of other stimulating lectures, can be downloaded in MP3 format without charge from the Narrow Path website, www.thenarrowpath.com. There is no charge for anything at the Narrow Path website. Visit us and be amazed at all you’ve been missing. That web address, www.thenarrowpath.com.
SPEAKER 01 :
Welcome back to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gray and we’re live for another half hour taking your calls. If you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith or you want to express disagreement with the host, like our previous caller, for example, you’re always welcome to do that here. We welcome that. To my mind, that makes for good broadcasting. It also makes for an educational experience. So feel free. Don’t ever feel like I will resent or be upset that you called to try to prove me wrong. If I’m wrong and can be proven wrong, then you do me a favor. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life giving the wrong answers. So if I have the wrong ideas and you correct me, You’ve done me a great favor, and I will not resent it at all. On the other hand, if I’m not wrong and you think I am, our discussion of it may clarify that, too. So there’s simply nothing to be lost by calling with a disagreement. The number to call is 844-484-5737. We have, it looks like two lines open if you want to call right now, 844-484-5737. 5737. Our next caller is Nick from Detroit, Michigan. Nick, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 04 :
Hey, thanks for having me, Steve. So I have a lot of questions, but I know you’re limited time, so I’ve got to pick and choose, right? I’m going to pick because me, I’m a Catholic Christian, right? And I did listen to – I’m sorry?
SPEAKER 01 :
Glad to have you with us.
SPEAKER 04 :
Oh, thank you. I did listen to all your debates with Tim Staples and Jimmy Akin, and that was good stuff. So I do appreciate your in-depth study of the Bible and trying to at least engage with arguments and doing your study, even within the Catholic faith. I guess one of the questions I have is, after doing studies and debates or whatever, have you changed your tune on any major doctrines? within the past recent years?
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, we were just talking to the last caller about the views of hell. I certainly have moved in the past, what am I going to say, 15 years maybe? I’d say, yeah, probably the last 15 years I’ve moved pretty much away from having any real confidence in the traditional view of I’m not saying it can’t be true. I’m just thinking it has the least scriptural support of the three options. So that is a new thing for me because I never had any questions about it at all for the first 30-some-odd years of my teaching ministry. So that would be – I don’t know if that’s the most recent or not. I don’t change very much or very quickly. Now, over 54 years of teaching, I’ve changed massively. certainly dozens of times on different things, some of them very minor things, and some of them fairly significant things. My eschatology changed, you know, back when I was younger. My view on, let me think. I’d have to do some thinking to think of which of the major changes I’ve made. But I do change. But the changes that I’ve made are slow. I’m basically very conservative by temperament. Some people who listen to me think, boy, he must be a liberal, all those things he believes. I was raised a fundamentalist Baptist, and I am very temperamentally conservative. You cannot change my mind from what I was taught when I was young unless you’ve got some really good arguments. And I’m going to have to take some years to think about them, too, usually, because I’m just not quick to change. So I did make a lot of major changes. One of the things I changed, I used to think I knew about the origins of Satan. And then when I studied that out, I realized I don’t know. what his origins are. But, I mean, again, it’s because I held traditional views and then I studied them and couldn’t find them taught in Scripture. I found the verses, but I couldn’t find the teaching in those verses. So, you know, I do change.
SPEAKER 04 :
I understand the iniquity of Satan and why he chose, knowing he’s making an eternal choice, why he chose to go against God. That’s mysterious, that’s for sure.
SPEAKER 01 :
There’s quite a few things, yeah, quite a few things I’ve changed on. But, yeah, again, I don’t change for the sake of change. In fact, I’d much rather, in some ways, I wish I’d never had to change. I don’t like, I don’t like to have my views change, you know, especially when I’ve taught others.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, for sure, for sure. How about for the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist or communion? Would you say you’ve come to a different understanding or deeper, maybe, consubstantiation or any of that?
SPEAKER 01 :
No, no, no. The reason I have not come to the position of a real presence of Christ’s body and blood in the elements of communion is because I can’t find a reason in the world to believe it, except that a lot of people do believe it. I mean, obviously, there’s some good Christians who believe it. There have been some church fathers who believed it, you know, obviously Christians. The fact that good people believe something isn’t very helpful in deciding things because there’s some good people who are fully Calvinistic, and I’m not at all Calvinistic. There’s some good people who are just sensationalists. I’m not. So Catholics and Eastern Orthodox and even Lutherans believe in the real presence of Christ and those things. I think the Episcopalians do. And a lot of those people are truly good people. I just need something more than that. What I really need is Scripture on it, and that’s what I cannot find.
SPEAKER 04 :
I got you, I got you. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I wouldn’t say follow the person because he’s good because we just follow the Buddhists or whatever, right? Yeah, there’s some good Buddhists. Yeah, of course. But I would say, now you’ve got to admit, evidence has more weight, right? And then just taking in, let’s say, not the good person or just all the Catholics believing it, but even 2,000 years of Christian history, wouldn’t you say, okay, on what the Bible is saying, so it’s not just that these random Christians are believing it, it’s They are interpreting the Bible in this way, and these early church fathers were really strong on it. Even St. Augustine, I heard you quote him earlier. I mean, he is amazing, isn’t he? And he’s a genius.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, he may be a genius. He’s not the most genius I’ve ever encountered. But, yeah, I’ll tell you. Yeah, Augustine was a pretty late father. I mean, he was like the 5th century.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, 1200s, I think.
SPEAKER 01 :
No, no, no, the early 400s. Late 300s. Oh, was he?
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, Augustine.
SPEAKER 01 :
You might be thinking of Aquinas or somebody.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, that’s right. Thomas Aquinas.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, once a view became part of the Roman Catholic view, It, generally speaking, stayed that way. I mean, certainly some of the Catholic councils changed on some issues. But, you know, once it became established, then in that group, it pretty much stayed there. But that’s why there’s been, you know, reformations and things like that, because some of the views that stayed there didn’t really come in very well or on good grounds initially. You know, you say the church fathers were pretty strong on the transubstantiation thing. Let me tell you what I find, because I have read the church fathers on this, and I’ve collected their sayings on it. And they use the exact same words, the earliest ones, use the exact same words Jesus used. Basically, he said, this is my body, this is my blood. And so they say, yeah, this is his body, this is his blood. They basically repeat him. And, you know, we eat the flesh of Jesus, drink the blood of Jesus. That’s what Jesus said you have to do in John 6. And so they use those terms. But the truth is, both of those passages and Jesus saying those things have strong reasons within them to take them non-literally. Now, the question is, of course, you know, the Catholic Church takes them very literally. And I think a wiser exegesis would be to take them non-literally, not because I object, in essence, to them being literal, but simply because good exegesis would not provide any reasons to take them literally in the passages. And I could give you my reasons. But the point is that if the church fathers want to use the same language, we have to ask, were they using them any more literally than Jesus was? Or are they just using them the same way Jesus used them? That’s what we don’t know. So the best we can do is say, whatever the church fathers may have thought, they thought a lot of things we don’t believe. Like, you’re a Roman Catholic, so you’re an amillennialist. I’m not a Roman Catholic. I’m an amillennialist, too. But all the church fathers we know about for the first three centuries were premillennialists. And you’re not. And I’m not. So, you know, they interpreted the millennial passages differently than you and I do. But they did it fairly consistently among themselves. So we have to say, okay, there are some things in the Bible that’s not clear if they’re literal or not. And even some of the church fathers took things literally that you and I, you as a Catholic and me as a Protestant, we don’t take literally. We don’t believe that 1,000 years is a literal 1,000 years in Revelation 20. So anyway, we simply cannot let the church fathers or count noses of how many people believe this have very much say in determining what we believe. Now, we can say this. If I come to a disagreement with them, then I certainly ought to be very humble about my disagreement with such august figures as themselves. I mean, some of them are no doubt better men than I am, smarter. A lot of them read Greek and Hebrew and so forth. And a lot of them were way ahead of me in a lot of things, probably in intellect and probably in godliness. But they still are mortal men, and so am I. And, you know, I still have responsibility before God to understand God’s word the way that I believe God’s word is intended to be understood. Now, if I’m wrong, fortunately I’m not wrong about anything that salvation is based upon. I can be saved and be wrong about a lot of things. And if I disagree with all the whole church for a thousand years on something, maybe, I mean, then I should hold my view maybe humbly, but that doesn’t mean I have to come over to their side.
SPEAKER 04 :
So would you say that’s what basically Christianity is, to do a deep study in the scriptures until you interpret it and believe it the way you come to the conclusions and then… That’s how you get close to God and be a Christian?
SPEAKER 01 :
No, but that’s how you get correct. You know, I don’t interpret Christianity as doing a deep dive into Scripture because most Christians throughout history didn’t even have Bibles at home to read until the printing press was invented in the late 15th century. Nobody owned a Bible. I mean, Christians throughout Europe all called themselves Christians, but they didn’t have a Bible to read. So obviously being a Christian didn’t mean do a deep study in the Bible. But once you have a Bible… and you have the opportunity to do a deep study, I think there’s a stewardship responsibility that we have that they didn’t. If they simply believed what the priests told them the Bible said, because they couldn’t read it themselves and it wasn’t available to them, they might have been illiterate. I’m sure probably throughout ancient history, most Christians were illiterate. And we know they didn’t have Bibles, and they had to depend entirely on what the priests said from the pulpit, or they’d know nothing about the Bible. So, I mean, obviously to whom little is given, of them little will be required, but we have been given much. And since we have the Bible, I think we have greater responsibility than they did. Now, greater responsibility doesn’t mean if we don’t study the Bible deeply and understand it correctly, we’ll go to hell. But see, I believe Jesus, if you continue in my words, you’ll be my disciples indeed. And you’ll know the truth, and the truth will make you free. I guess the question of deep diving in the Bible or not comes down to how much of the truth do I really want to know and how free do I want to be? I mean, I don’t want to be free from superstitions or to be free from religious bondage or from error. Some people really, they don’t mind. They don’t mind if they’re mistaken as long as they’re going along with the status quo and they’re popular and not excommunicated from their church and things like that. Other people like me, yeah, we’re more sticklers. I’d rather be right. I’d rather have the truth, let’s say, and be free from superstition and error and tradition that aren’t true. And I’d rather be in that position alone than to be in good company with people who don’t care about being superstitious or traditional and don’t care.
SPEAKER 04 :
Right, right. Yeah, I want to follow the truth and I don’t want to believe in a lie. That’s for certain. Sure. Um, but, um, I guess I would say, um, then my final question, cause I know you got other callers, it would be, does it, um, does it, does it bother you in any sense that, um, or should I say, I’ll say it like this. Um, can you admit throughout 2000 years of Christian history that every single, even what we call the heretics throughout the years, um, that they use scripture to support their position, and you can find any debate on YouTube on any topic, even same-sex marriage, and they’re all using scripture to support their position. So at the end of the day, the Bible can become, with some people, a game, and I call it like Bible chess. They just play Bible chess, right, back and forth. Here’s my passages, here’s yours, here’s mine, here’s yours. It’s like a never-ending game. It doesn’t end. Right. So, at least in the Catholic Church, we have an ending to this game, and we have the essential.
SPEAKER 01 :
Right. You let somebody else think for you.
SPEAKER 04 :
Exactly.
SPEAKER 01 :
No, no, no.
SPEAKER 04 :
You can do that. No, no, no.
SPEAKER 01 :
I’m sorry.
SPEAKER 04 :
I have to correct you with that, Steve. No, no, no.
SPEAKER 01 :
I have to correct you with that.
SPEAKER 04 :
We have much freedom.
SPEAKER 01 :
Magisterium.
SPEAKER 04 :
Wait, wait, wait. We have much freedom in the Catholic Church to interpret the Bible how we want. It’s simply the essentials and the dogmas on how to be saved and who is Christ and who… And how does he want us to follow him? Those are what we can’t, so we don’t veer too far to the left or to the right and become heretics. Those is what keep us inbound. We can interpret the rest of the Bible however we want. So it’s not, I don’t give my brain out at the door when I go to church, right? It’s constantly thinking about it. Constantly meditating, constantly questioning, and so far seven years straight of questioning, and I’ve gotten the solid, consistent answers, you know, from the church. Thanks for letting me talk.
SPEAKER 01 :
Oh, I appreciate your call very much. Yeah, let me say about all those points. Yeah, I’ve spent like 50 some odd years questioning myself, and I’ve questioned the Catholic Church. I’ve questioned the Baptist group, the Calvary Chapel I used to be part of. I’ve questioned Calvinists who I’ve I’ve questioned, you know, whatever, dispensationalists. I’ve asked a lot of questions. And the fact that most people can give answers to many questions, agreeable to their system, simply tells why their system exists. Their system exists because they can give answers to questions, whether they’re the right answers or not. is what has to be judged. And, you know, the Catholic Church isn’t the only church that has traditions. The Eastern Church has traditions, too. The Eastern Church thinks it’s wrong to have images, but they think it’s right to have icons. The Catholic Church is against the icons and for the images. Now, both churches claim to have been around since the apostles, in my opinion. I think the testimony of the church fathers is they didn’t believe in icons or images until, you know, late, maybe the 6th, 7th century. The earlier church fathers spoke very strongly against them. But both are now traditional. The Eastern Orthodox, the Catholic in the West, they’ve got strong traditions about these things. They just don’t go back to the Bible. And, in fact, they don’t even go back to the earliest church fathers. They’re quite contrary to the earliest church fathers. And like I said, even on the whole question of the millennium, that’s kind of a major issue of sorts. It’s not a salvation issue in my mind. But you and I both, though you’re a Catholic and I’m not, we both are amillennial Christians. But the early church fathers did not appear to be on the label for three centuries or so. So let’s face it. Yeah, everybody should be using the Bible. To me, it’s encouraging when I hear debates on theology and both sides are using the Bible because we should. If I was debating somebody, I’m using the Bible, and they’re not using the Bible, I think, why are we even debating? We don’t even have the same authority we’re looking at. You’re quoting somebody that’s not even inspired. I win, you know. That should end the question right there. But if both sides are using the Bible, then we’ve got something interesting going on. We’re going to find out, okay, one of us is actually doing something right in using the Bible, and the other is doing something wrong in their study of the Bible. And that’s kind of the most common thing in the world, is for people to do something wrong in studying the Bible. As you said about the Catholic Church, I wouldn’t even agree with this point, but you said that when it comes to who Jesus is, how do we save, and how are we supposed to live to please God, all those things are, you know, the Catholic Church is safe on those. Well, I would say on who Jesus is, probably, I’d say the Protestants and Catholics would have the same views on that. How to be saved? I’m probably not that far from you as some Protestants are. I believe that it’s not just holding certain doctrines, but being obedient to Christ is very important. At least Jesus said it was, and the Apostle Paul did too, so I might as well go with them. And the Catholic Church says that, and so do some Protestants. But some Protestants are weird on that. They don’t think it’s important to obey. So I’m going to be closer to Catholics on that than some Protestants are. But like on how to live to please God, I think some Catholics have that right, some don’t. If someone thinks it pleases God for me to talk to his mother, then I’m going to disagree about that. I don’t see anything in the Bible that would give any evidence of that whatsoever. If somebody thinks it pleases God for me to eat a wafer and drink a little, take the Eucharist every day or whatever, I actually don’t see that taught in the Bible either. I mean, there’s certain things that people think this pleases God. When someone’s dying, bring a priest so he can give me the last rites and give me communion. Why? I mean, you’re going to be judged by your works, not by whether you took a cracker in your mouth before you died or whether you had some priest say something over you. You’re going to be saved or lost based on who you are and what you’ve done, not what’s done to you by somebody else at the end of your life. So I’d have to say Catholics don’t all have what I would agree with as the way to please God. Now, the Catholics who believe that we should help the poor and we should love our enemies and we should pursue justice and so forth, I agree with that. But there’s a lot of things they include that I wouldn’t. So anyway, it’s different. It’s very different. But I’m going to feel safer standing before God if he says, why did you do this? And I say, because I spent my entire life examining your word with no agenda except to do whatever you said, and to the best of the intellectual abilities that you gave me, this is what I heard you say in your word, and that’s what I did. Now, I’d rather do that than if he says, why did you do that? Say, because my priest told me to, or because the magisterium said I should, or because the pope said I should, or, you know, well, okay, I don’t know that that’s going to carry much weight with God. Because that pope and that priest, they’re sinful men who are, you know, imperfect men too. At their very best, they’re doing the same thing I’m doing, studying the Bible. They have a problem I don’t have. I’d say they have a disadvantage. They’re encumbered by a commitment to certain traditions that won’t let them get far from those traditions, even in their study of the Bible. I’m fortunate not to be as encumbered. I have my own traditions, but I’m trying to see around them. The Catholic Church isn’t trying to stay around them. They want to stay loyal to their tradition. So that’s a big difference. I want to see the truth. I want to see what Jesus said. I want to see what the apostles taught. And I want to be faithful to that. If I don’t see it correctly, it won’t be for lack of trying. And it certainly won’t be because I said, well, God, I couldn’t understand it very well, so I just let this guy do it. He told me what it means, so I just went like that. I wouldn’t do that with a Catholic priest. I wouldn’t do that with a Protestant Bible scholar. I mean, sure, I can learn from them, but I’m not going to just stake my flag there because they said so. I’m going to be like the Bereans. They heard Paul preach. And they didn’t say, well, if he says so, that’s okay with us. They said, no, let’s search the scriptures and see if these things are so. And the Bible says they were more noble than others because they took that approach. That’s the approach I’ve always wanted to take. Obviously, Catholics want to take a different approach than that, but that’s their prerogative. And both of us will stand before God and answer for the approach we chose. I appreciate your call very much. Thank you for joining us today. We’re going to talk to Joy in Downey, California. Joy, welcome.
SPEAKER 06 :
Hi, Steve. I’m very appreciative of your show. It’s been a huge blessing in my life. Today I was looking for some advice, some Christian biblical, from a Christian biblical perspective. Okay, we don’t have a lot of time, so should we get to it?
SPEAKER 01 :
Yes.
SPEAKER 06 :
Okay. And so I have a backslidden daughter due to drugs and alcohol, and she’s pretty much written me out of her life. and doesn’t allow me to see my grandkids. But anyway, I have two questions for that. One is, I’m about to sit down to do like a living trust, and would it be unbiblical or unchristian to leave her out of it? And also, do you have any advice besides, of course, praying for the situation?
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, if I knew the solution to rebellious children who rebel against Christ, although they were raised in Christian families, I would do it and all of my children would be living according to the way they were raised. And that isn’t the case. Everyone has free will, unfortunately, and there’s nothing we can do to guarantee that they will do the right thing. We can certainly do things that would encourage them to do the right thing. We can exhibit Christ’s faithfully in our life before them. And frankly, in many cases, that’s the very thing they don’t like. They don’t like you being consistently like Christ. But many times Christians have driven their children away by not being like Christ, just by being, you know, legal, so forth. I’m not going to assume that was your case, because I know it’s not always the case. All I’m saying is the more you can be like Christ, the more they are going to be confronted with Christ genuinely, and their decisions will be genuine responses to Christ, whether favorable or negative. Some people don’t want Christ, some do. praying for them, I believe, can have an impact. Very much so. I would strongly encourage you to pray for them. You know, as far as writing them out of your will or that kind of thing, it’s interesting how many people ask me that. In fact, I’m facing that kind of thing, too. I mean, I have some children that, you know, I don’t want to support their lifestyles if they don’t change them. And I just answered a guy by email yesterday who wrote to me the very same question. He’s got a He’s got children. One of them has kind of disowned the parents. He’s living in a sinful lifestyle. He doesn’t want to hear about God. And they’re wondering, well, they were saying, we have enough money. We’d like to pay off his medical school bills for him because he’s just graduating from medical school. And we’d like to do these things for him, but we’re not sure we want to do that. This couple actually have been influenced by my radical teachings about money, and they’re trying to divest money. of a lot of things and trying to figure out how God wants them to distribute their money for the kingdom of God’s sake. And they’re thinking, well, this son of ours, it seems like a waste. Should we do it? It’s hard to know what to do because, obviously, there should be some consequence for a son betraying his parents. It should not be thought that it’s a small matter. In our day, it is a small matter. Almost everyone has, not almost everyone, but probably the majority of people have a child who’s at least spent some time in rebellion against them if they have adult children. And yet in biblical times, that was a very unusual thing and very scandalous. I mean, children were raised to respect their parents far more than they are in our society. But it should be understood they were raised to do that because that’s important. And just because our society doesn’t think it’s important, it doesn’t make it less important. It’s a major sin for children to disrespect their parents. And, of course, it’s a major sin for them to reject Christ, too. And yet many Christian families support their kids, leave them an inheritance, even though they’ve done those things. And, you know, I think that maybe what they’re communicating is it’s not that big a deal. I mean, they know their parents are disappointed with them, but it’s apparently not that big a deal because they still expect to get an inheritance from their parents and so forth. I think of the prodigal son, you know, when the prodigal son went away from his father, he fell into poverty and so forth. His father still had plenty of money. But he didn’t send him support checks. When his son repented and came home, his son participated in the family wealth again. And, you know, I don’t know what you should do specifically, because everybody’s in somewhat different circumstances with what they have to leave to their children, what they’re doing with it. I would just say this. It should not be thought that your daughter… or your granddaughter, I should say, or somebody, I guess your daughter you’re talking about, that she can betray you, disrespect you, and expect to just have all the benefits of being a daughter. then she shouldn’t expect the privileges of a daughter. If she wants to be a daughter, that means respect your mother and your father. And so I’m sorry I’m out of time. I’m rushed here. I’ve got like 15 seconds to be out there. But you’re going to make your own decision, but I’d say I’d encourage you to not assume that you should leave her in. There may be other considerations that would cause you to do so. I’m out of time. Our website’s thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for joining us.
