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Steve delves into theological debates concerning the interpretation of hell, offering balanced perspectives and examining historical and scriptural contexts. The episode is a treasure trove for any Christian grappling with questions about spirituality and doctrine. It ends on a deeply personal note as a listener reaches out for guidance on beginning their spiritual journey, showcasing the essential community role in faith exploration.
SPEAKER 1 :
Thank you.
SPEAKER 03 :
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 with an open phone line for you to call if you have questions you’d like to ask on the air about the Bible, about the Christian faith. That kind of thing. Frankly, anything that’s interesting to you if you’re a Christian, or even if you’re not a Christian, if it’s something about Christianity that you’re interested or curious about. And especially if you see things differently than the host. Maybe you’re not a Christian and you’d like to discuss your objections to Christianity. I’d love to have that conversation. Or maybe you’re a Christian and you just see things differently. which, frankly, I have to say, I don’t know if I’ve ever met a Christian that doesn’t see something differently than I do. So I’m not going to let you get away with pretending like you agree with me about everything. You need to call. We’ll talk about it. The number is 844-484-5737. Now, our lines are full, so don’t bother calling right this minute. But take this number. If you call in a few minutes, lines will be opening up. You’ll get through, probably, if you hit it right. The number is 844-484-5737. The rest of the week I’m speaking in other places in Washington. I don’t have them all memorized because there’s so many of them, but if you’re in the area and want to attend any of these gatherings, you can go to thenarrowpath.com. There’s a tab there that says announcements, and that will always have the information you need to know where I’m speaking. know what time the events are, what the address is, and so forth. So if you’re interested this week in attending any of the events in Washington, western Washington State, feel free to go to thenarrowpath.com, look under announcements, and you’ll be able to join us. Some of these are in homes, and therefore you need to kind of call in advance, first of all, to get the address. but also to see if they’re overcrowded. Most of these places have, you know, a number of people already have called, and there may be limits to how many they can take. So don’t delay. If you want to come to a meeting, call or look at least to see where it’s going to be and see if it’s something you have to call about. All right, we’re going to go to the phone lines. And as I said, we have a caller from Arlington. It’s Alia. Hello, welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 08 :
Hi, Steve. I had a question about praising God, like worshiping God through song, and I was hoping you could help me to explain it a little bit better to my daughter. She might listen to you better because she admires you a lot. But I worry that I might be a little too legalistic about it because I’ve told her that there’s over 300 verses in Scripture about worshiping through song and over 50 commandments telling us to worship God and praise him through song. But she refuses. It always goes back to she’s embarrassed. She’s worried people are looking at her. I can’t get her to sing even at home if it’s just us. And so I’m worried that’s a little bit of a heart issue, that she’s more concerned about her discomfort in the moment than she is with praising God. And I know we get a lot from praising him, like it’s impossible to have a bad day if you’re praising God. So I was wondering if you could help me out with how to explain that a little bit better or encourage her to do so.
SPEAKER 03 :
Okay. Well, worshiping God is not synonymous with singing songs, of course. Singing to God is, as you say, something that the psalmist especially does. And Paul does also in both Ephesians chapter 4 and in Colossians chapter 3. We’re told to speak to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, making melody in our hearts to the Lord and that kind of thing. James said, if any of you marry or that is happy, let him sing the psalms. So the Old and the New Testament exhort us to sing. Now, obviously, this is not, in a sense, an inflexible moral command. are mute, and they can’t sing. It’s not like they’re missing out on being able to worship God. It’s one of the ways that we’re certainly encouraged to worship God, that worship is primarily a matter of the heart. Obviously, whatever’s really in your heart is going to find expression in your life and in your words. Jesus said, out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. And I dare say, out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth sings, too. And if you are singing to the Lord songs of praise, and it’s not in your heart, I don’t think the music is pleasing in itself. Jesus complained, as did Isaiah. Actually, God complained through Isaiah, and Jesus repeated it. These people draw near to me with their mouth, but their heart is far from me. The most important thing, of course, is that our heart is not far from God. Our heart is seeking God, drawing near to God. giving God his due, honoring him, seeking to please him. That’s the essence, the deepest essence of worship. Now, expressions of worship are variegated. There’s different kinds of them. Singing is certainly one of the most common, and we’re urged to do it. But we’re not urged to do it in a legalistic sense, I don’t think. In other words, I think that we’re encouraged to do it because people sing. are uplifted by singing. I think singing is something that people generally like to do. It would be a strange thing to meet someone who didn’t like music. And I don’t suppose you’re saying that your daughter doesn’t like music. She doesn’t feel comfortable singing in front of people, it sounds like to me. And I have to say, I can understand that. You know, when I was younger, I would have been embarrassed to stand up in front of people and sing. Eventually, I got more shameless, and so I did do that. But But I can understand modesty about that. I think you can praise God without song, but why? I mean, why would you not include singing? Anybody, for example, who listens to music that’s recorded music, Christian or secular, If they like music, probably at times they find themselves singing along with the songs they like and stuff like that. And, you know, I suppose that somebody who doesn’t feel comfortable singing in front of people might feel more comfortable if they’re alone and singing along with maybe recorded Christian music that their heart resonates with and they like to rejoice in that manner. Some people just aren’t very musical. Somebody very close to me came from a family where nobody in the family could carry a tune. None of them could keep a beat. It’s like they’re just not a musical family. And for them to sing, it might be good if they were alone doing it. It might be more edifying for everybody. On the other hand, I was in some of the Church of Christ churches. They don’t use instruments. And we were visiting a quaint little Church of Christ in southern Missouri a few years ago. And it was tiny. There was like 12 people in it, and none could sing. But they didn’t believe in instruments. So they had a song leader up in front, and he couldn’t sing. And it was hard. It was… You know, we were visiting. Our grandson was with us. He was laughing. He’s not a Christian, but he was not trying to be mocking. It was hard not to laugh because the singing was just so dissonant. Sometimes singing isn’t a pretty thing, and sometimes maybe it’s better not to sing in public. But the point that the Bible makes is that we should be making melody to God in our hearts, and it’s hard to believe that somebody would be singing in their hearts singing. frequently without it ever coming out of their mouths. But, yeah, I would say that if somebody wants to have the full panoply of worship experiences, certainly singing is a very frequently recommended means. I don’t think you should be legalistic about it, and I don’t think the Bible is legalistic about it. You know, if somebody says, I love God, I wish I could sing nicely, but I’m embarrassed, but I want to just please God in my life, then I don’t think God holds that against them. On the other hand, you know, there’s got to be a place for music in everybody’s life. It’s hard to imagine people who don’t at least like listening to music. And like I said, most young people like to, when they have music they like to listen to and they’re alone, they like to sing along with it. That might be something that would be good for her. I just wouldn’t be legalistic and I wouldn’t be judgmental toward her about it. But I would encourage her to find some setting in which she doesn’t feel inhibited about singing, doesn’t have to be in front of people. I will say this. You know, I used to love to sing in the Jesus moment. We’d sing for an hour and a half or more before the Bible studies at Calvary Chapel every night of the week. And everyone had the songs memorized. They were like songs from scripture and simple, you know, camp songs from Christian camps that were simple, easy to learn. Everyone knew them and sang them. We didn’t have like PowerPoint projectors or anything like that in those days. People just memorized them. But they were easy to memorize and they were meaningful songs. And I find myself not enjoying singing as much in many of the churches I visited today because their songs are not easy to learn, not easy to retain, and frankly, not easy to understand what in the world is they’re saying. I have a feeling a lot of modern songs don’t resonate with people because they’re not really saying much. A lot of them are just stringing together a bunch of Christian cliches that you even wonder how much those words meant to the person who wrote the song. Not that I want to judge them. I just have to say I could understand somebody who goes to a modern church that sings a lot of the modern songs and says, yeah, I’m not into singing that. To tell you the truth, that’s me. That’s me visiting some churches, too. I like to sing now, but I don’t sing a song that means nothing to me. To me, that’s just mouthing words. And frankly, I have to say there’s a lot of churches that I visit that not one song they sing has anything in it I resonate with. because they seem like they’re mass-produced music for commercial purposes for the Christian market. On the other hand, I love the hymns, although I find that now a lot of the songs in the modern churches are modifications of the hymns. And I know a lot of churches do it, and maybe the young people don’t know the hymns and they like the songs. I don’t want to be too critical. I don’t want to be just an old get-off-my-lawn kind of curmudgeon, but… I love the song, On Christ the Solid Rock I Stand, but they’ve taken some of the verses of that, changed the tune a little bit, and thrown in a chorus that somebody made up so they could get royalties from it, because you can’t get royalties from hymns that are in the public domain. So if you write a song that’s based on a hymn and just throw in four lines every few verses, that’s your own composition, you get royalties from people singing it. To me, I don’t like that in principle, and I don’t think they improve the hymn. In fact, in my opinion… They make it less, I mean, the lines they throw in sounds like an interruption in a very profound song. Suddenly you’ve got some really lame, simple ditty that someone threw in the middle. Now we’ll get back to the profound verses. I know I’m critical sounding, but that’s how I am. And I can understand someone saying, I love God, I want to worship God, but hey. I don’t want to sing these songs. So it might be just a matter of finding the right songs that really express true worship. And as I said, singing along with recording can be good for someone who doesn’t think they can carry a tune or is embarrassed to sing publicly. Those are just some suggestions. I’m full of opinions. I’m very opinionated, obviously. So those are some of my opinions.
SPEAKER 08 :
Okay. Well, thank you, Steve. I appreciate it. She does have hymns that she likes, like our church hymns. perverse hymns because they’re rich in theology. And, like, Be Thou My Vision and How Great Thou Art, those are some of her favorites. It’s just getting past the hurdle, getting to the very end.
SPEAKER 03 :
I don’t know how any Christian can’t love the hymns. I mean, there’s an occasional hymn that doesn’t really resonate with me, but they’re mostly deep stuff and worth knowing and singing. Anyway, yes, I hope she can get over that difficulty.
SPEAKER 08 :
All right. Well, thank you so much.
SPEAKER 03 :
All right. Thanks for your call. God bless you. All right, we’re going to talk next to another caller from nearby, Leah in Seattle, Washington. I’m in Seattle right now. Hello, Leah. Welcome.
SPEAKER 01 :
Hi, Steve. Thank you. I just had a quick question. I’m trying to get, well, I was recently listening to, well, my brother went through a terrible divorce like three years ago and recently started listening to your recordings and teachings on like divorce and remarriage and stuff. So, man, am I thankful to learn new things. And I just had a question about my brother has been remarried soon. His wife and him, his previous wife and him did not get divorced for any particular issue. She was having an emotional affair with some guy, and, you know, and then she basically left. But… she would have said, like, I never really wanted to get divorced. I just wanted to separate to start working on the relationship. That’s kind of what she said, but really during the whole process, she never really made a way back for my brother to get counseling with her, to talk to her, anything like that. So anyway, yeah. So he then, even while he was still legally married to his ex-wife, had like a quote-unquote secret wedding with this new wife. And they, I want to say pretended to get married. And because basically he assumed that his first wife had broke his covenant by infidelity, which we do not know. And so then, anyway, they had a secret wedding and later on got married in a public wedding. um anyway I had a huge problem with this the whole time I didn’t attend um that secret wedding or anything no one knew about it but um I my question to you now is it’s been three years since he’s been married to this the second wife and obviously now like he’s in adultery I know that his first wife has still maintained a relationship with the guy she left with. And I don’t believe they did anything physical before she left, but they definitely were having an emotional connection. But since then, I know that she has probably committed adultery. I also don’t think that either one of them, if she’s not married, the first wife, but if my brother got divorced the second time, I do not think that first wife would even consider taking him back.
SPEAKER 03 :
Right. Okay, well, let me just, let’s put that into a simple question. What is his obligation?
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, yeah. That’s what I’m wondering. Like, now are they both free to marry somebody because the infidelities happen? And can he just repent? I hear you. Yeah.
SPEAKER 03 :
I hear you.
SPEAKER 01 :
Thank you. Okay.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah. Well, you know, it’s always very difficult to have to speak about things the Bible doesn’t spell out completely, but where it says some things that may be relevant, because the Bible actually doesn’t have a section where it talks about all the scenarios where people are divorced and remarried. Certainly, there’s some generic statements. Whoever divorces his wife without a cause and marries another causes her to commit adultery. How is that so? And whoever marries her that’s divorced commits adultery. You mean one who is divorced without grounds? I mean, it’s like there’s some things that are stated in like a sweeping generality. But even where he says, except for the cause of fornication, that makes it very clear that this generality has some exceptions. But what are those exceptions and so forth? Now, the way I understand it is that the objection God has to divorce is, It’s not that he’s got some kind of legalistic desire to condemn us for stepping out of line if we don’t do everything perfectly. His concern is that we are faithful to the vows we make. He wants people to be people of integrity. Jesus said if you’re faithful in the little things, you’ll be faithful in the greater things. He wants us to be faithful unto death to him. And if we’re not faithful to our marriage vows to the death, then there’s something in us that would suggest we probably wouldn’t be faithful to him until death either. He wants people who are seamlessly faithful, who keep their promises, and who have integrity. This is what he said about Nathanielism. This is an Israelite indeed in whom is no guile. Guile means lack of integrity, dishonesty. God wants people with complete commitment to truth, to honesty, to integrity. To faithfulness. Why? Because we’re supposed to reflect to the world his character, and he has complete integrity, and he’s completely faithful. And if we aren’t, the world will never see that that is true of God either. Or at least they may hear of it, but they won’t see it as we’re supposed to display it. So God wants us to be faithful to our vows, though we live in a fallen world where things happen. And those things sometimes modify our obligation, as Jesus said, except for the cause of fornication. This is so. That means that wherever there is fornication, whatever he’s referring to by that, and different opinions exist among different people, but where there is, then this other thing he’s saying isn’t true. This is an exception. There are things that modify the ideal. The ideal is that people should make vows to one person to be faithful for life and should keep those vows flawlessly, both parties, until one of them is dead. That’s the promise that’s made. That’s what God intends marriage to be. Now, sometimes, through no fault of our own, this doesn’t happen. Because we want the marriage to work, but the person we’re married to isn’t that concerned to make it work. You know, the person you’re married to goes out and has an affair. Or even if it’s an emotional affair and they just say, I just don’t want my husband or my wife anymore. I want this other person. whether they’ve had sex with them or not. They’re making a choice to violate their vows and to be unfaithful. This is what God hates. God hates liars. I mean, he doesn’t hate liars. He hates lying, and he doesn’t want us to be liars. If we make a vow and then make it into a lie by breaking it, this is very offensive to God, and it’s something no Christian should ever allow themselves to do. But on the other hand, when you get married, both people make vows. And if one of them breaks the vows and goes off with someone else, it makes it rather impossible for the partner to stay married to him because the person didn’t stay married. And the Bible doesn’t say that any faithful partner has to force their partner to be faithful. Everyone has to be faithful to their own vows. And if a partner isn’t, then the faithful partner has to say, okay, where do I stand in this situation? Now, Paul had something to say about that. Jesus did too. Jesus made it very clear that if your partner is guilty of fornication, well, that changes things. The general rule, the ideal, is simply not going to apply without modification because this person has broken the vows. That’s not supposed to happen. When it does happen, it changes things. Not everything, but some things. For example… If a man cheats on his wife and she stays faithful and she wants the marriage to be resolved for good, or maybe it was the opposite way with your brother that he wanted the marriage to work and his wife cheats and doesn’t want her to, well, what can she do? Whichever one is still staying faithful still has a claim on the promises of the other person. And therefore, if the cheater repents, they should go back and fulfill those promises. Those promises don’t just go away because you broke them. But on the other hand, If one party breaks the vows, the other party can remain faithful, hoping that the other person will change their mind back, which the majority of people do not do. Or they can say, okay, the vows are broken by you. I’m going to go ahead and let you go. I’m going to go my way and start with something else. And I do believe that that is suggested by what Jesus said about fornication. And also Paul said that if a Christian is married to a non-Christian… The Christian should not initiate a divorce, but if the non-Christian does, then the Christian should let him go, and the Christian is not under bondage in such cases. That’s in 1 Corinthians 7, verses 12 through 15. So there’s these two things. Marriages should not break up, but they sometimes do. The main thing is God wants his people to make sure they are not the person who’s guilty of breaking it up. And it sounds like, of course, I don’t know your brother or his ex-wife, but it sounds like he wanted the marriage to work. His ex-wife wanted somebody else more and is now with that other person. Now, I don’t know if she slept with him or not. I don’t think he’s obligated to go get a private detective to find that out. She’s cheated on the vow, just the very fact that she left him for another man, even if she remained celibate with the other man. she’s left her vows and not forsaken all others to stay only with him. So this is a violation of the vows. And I think we have to assume that since she’s not following Christ and she was willing to leave her husband for another man, we cannot assume that they haven’t been intimate sexually. In fact, we almost are justified in assuming that it has come to that, whether we know it or not. The only way you’d really know is if she told you or if you were peeking through her bedroom window. And I don’t think That usually happens. So I’m thinking he’s got reason to believe that she’s, you know, totally violated the marriage vows. But she did when she left him. Now, he shouldn’t have gotten married while he’s still married to her. I think he had grounds for divorce and he could have sought a divorce and then gotten married. But things are as they are now. What I think he needs to do is recognize that her behavior has, I think, given him grounds to be free from the marriage he had with her and subsequently to be married to another. Now, he’s jumped that gun. He’s not divorced. He didn’t divorce his wife first, and he had a secret marriage or something with this other person. All of that was probably badly thought out, and maybe even we could say sinful, but he can repent of that. He can repent of what can’t be changed about the past. The thing is, when you repent of a sin that you can’t change, but there’s things about it that you cause that can be changed, that’s what restitution is for. Like if you rob somebody and you repent of it, okay, you can’t change the fact that you robbed them, but you can change the fact that you’re holding their money. You can give it back to them. That’s theirs. It’s not yours. So, I mean, restitution is you change back things to the way they were as much as is in your power to do. What you can’t do, you just trust God to forgive and let’s go forward. Go and sin no more. So I think that he made… I think, first of all, he had grounds for divorce. I believe he should have gotten a divorce before he hooked up with his second wife and so forth. But that’s all water under the bridge. The question is, is he now obligated to do anything to make restitution? If his first wife had remained pure and loyal and he had just left her and he was now repentant, he should go back to her. But she didn’t. She’s the one who left him. And Paul said the brother or sister in such cases, as Paul put it, is not under bondage. So I believe your brother, I think we’re talking about your brother, right? I think he’s got grounds to be married to his second wife, as far as I know. He just kind of jumped the gun on that. So I think that he and his wife should acknowledge that that was not really done in a godly way. But, you know, just tell God we want to do it right from now on. Again, go and sin no more. You can’t undo, you can’t unscramble an egg, but you can stop breaking eggs. So I would say he doesn’t have to live with condemnation. If his first wife was faithful and wanted him back and so forth and never cheated, then I’d say he’d have to go back. But that’s kind of the opposite of what I’m hearing. So I don’t think he has an obligation other than to go and sin no more. And if he repents for mistakes he’s already made, the sins, then I think he’s clean and can just go on and don’t do that again. Anyway, those are my thoughts. Lots of Christians have different thoughts about this, and that’s okay. They can. This is the way I understand the scriptures. I appreciate your call. I need to take a break, but I’m coming back for another half hour. Don’t go away. You’re listening to The Narrow Path. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. We are a listener supporter. If you want to help us, thenarrowpath.com. I’ll be back in 30 seconds, so don’t go away.
SPEAKER 02 :
We highly recommend that you listen to Steve Gregg’s 14 lecture series entitled, When Shall These Things Be? This series addresses topics like the Great Tribulation, Armageddon, the rise of the Antichrist, and the 70th week of Daniel. When Shall These Things Be? can be downloaded in MP3 format without charge from our website, thenarrowpath.com.
SPEAKER 03 :
Welcome back to the Narrow Path Radio Broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we’re live for another half hour taking your calls. I’m looking at one open line right now on our switchboard. If you want to call me, the number is 844. Oops, someone got it. Anyway, if you want to call later, lines do open up throughout the program. If you have a question about the Bible or the Christian faith, you want to call. The number is 844-484-5737. And our next question today, or our next caller, I should say, comes from, well, it’s from Carrie in Fort Worth, Texas. Carrie, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 07 :
Hi, Steve. I just want to say what a pleasure it was to meet with you while you were down here in Texas.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yes, I agree.
SPEAKER 07 :
We met in an open home, and I didn’t know anybody there, and it just was a confirmation to me how Christians can get together and fellowship and just have a kindred spirit, and we all did. We had a wonderful time talking about the Christian faith. One of the subjects that you talked about that night, I believe it was concerning the three views of hell, and I may have this wrong, but you mentioned Greek literature about the Titans and how the Titans came about. And it just sounded so familiar as to the interpretation that some people have about the Genesis 6 passage. And I was just wondering, is there any connection there?
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, I don’t really know. You know, I think you’ve probably listened to me enough to know that I don’t necessarily see Genesis 6 as being about angels mating with women, but that’s a very common view among both the Jews and many Christians, that the sons of God who took wives from among the sons of men and had children with them, and then it mentions the Nephilim being in the earth in those days and so forth. Many people think this is talking about angels mating, cohabiting with earthly women and having children, and these children were kind of half-breed human-slash-demon creatures. And there are, of course, in the pagan mythologies of the Greeks and the Romans and so forth, and probably going back to Norse mythology and all that kind of stuff, there’s a lot of stories about gods. like gods from Mount Olympus and so forth, coming down and, you know, frankly raping women usually and having children by them. Some of the gods are considered to be the offspring of marriages like that. And obviously that sounds very similar to what some people think Genesis 6 is describing. Now, I’m not sure if Genesis 6 is to be understood that way. And if so, these pagan myths, which would come along later, of course, because, I mean, the situation that’s described in Genesis 6 is before the flood. And all human beings on the earth today are descended from people who lived through the flood. So we’re all descended from Noah’s son. So every society would have at least some historical memory of things that happened in the time of Noah, although those stories might have been somewhat corrupted and perverted and exaggerated in the pagan myths and so forth. So they’re not quite the same, but you can see sort of a root of it there. So, you know, if angels came down, mated with women, had supernatural children, if that really happened, if that’s what Genesis is saying happened, and again, I’m not convinced that it is, then that could easily be the real life situation that gave rise to all kinds of similar events. mythology in later societies. There’d be a memory, a societal memory of something like that that happened before, but they’ve changed it and interpreted it in light of their cultural gods and things like that. So I think that’s what you’re saying. It sounds like similar to that. Could be. As you probably know, I don’t necessarily think Genesis 6 is saying that angels did that. I think the term sons of God is more ambiguous. It may be used of angels in some cases, like in Job, But it’s also used to people in other cases. We know that. There’s numerous places in the Bible where the term sons of God appears to, well, is referring to people and sometimes appears to be where we’re not sure. So sons of God is an ambiguous term, and I’m not sure Genesis 6 is making any reference to angels at all, but it could be. This is something that we just aren’t – it’s not unambiguous, so we can go one way or another as the evidence seems to commit itself to us. But, yeah, you may be right. It may be that either angels did that kind of thing, or that stories about them doing so originated early on, and then mythologies from other nations that descended from Noah’s offspring would carry with it that kind of a core idea that got, you know, woven into the mythologies. Very possibly. Very possibly. I… I’m not sure. On the other hand, I don’t know that we would have to see that scenario playing out in Genesis 6 in order for that kind of a scenario to come into mythology. The corruption of human minds, I’m sure many corrupt men would say, well, if I were a god… I’d have my way with any woman I wanted because I’d be a god and I could do what I want. And then, you know, that kind of corrupt motivation, man, might easily generate stories, fictional stories about gods that did just that. So, you know, I don’t claim to know, you know, all that ancient history stuff. Mythology, in many cases, probably has its roots in real historic events, which are much embellished in the myths. And in some cases, they’re probably pure fiction that are made up by the imagination of the writers. But, yeah, I know what you mean. When I hear about those kinds of myths, you know, obviously I’m aware it sounds an awful lot like what some people would say happened in Genesis 6. All right, brother.
SPEAKER 07 :
Thank you, Steve.
SPEAKER 03 :
Good talking to you, bro. All right, let’s talk to Carolyn from Seattle, Washington. A lot of Washington callers, coincidentally.
SPEAKER 09 :
Nice to meet you. We love you. I’m looking for your opinion on this. I’ve belonged to a Bible study group for 10 years or so, and we used to meet in the leadership’s home. I never did join the church in that I didn’t sign up. I mean, I went regularly. But I didn’t sign on the dotted line. The preacher or pastor taught some things that I disagreed with, like dispensationalism and once saved, always saved, Romans 13, government’s always right, and all that stuff. So when COVID came and they locked the doors and went to Zoom… I went looking for another church. Couldn’t find any with a decent area, space of place that I could afford gas-wise. So when it started up again, Bible study, and they opened the doors of the church after they did all their masks and six feet apart and seating and no touching.
SPEAKER 03 :
Let me just jump in here and say I’ve got full lines. I’ll bet everyone who’s waiting to talk has a story they could tell me. Do you have a question?
SPEAKER 09 :
Yes, when it started up again, it started up in church, and I got this letter from my leader. Groups will be made up of people who call Hope Fellowship their home and don’t have a church elsewhere. So I’m prohibited from finding another church to go to and still attending my Bible study. Do you think that’s okay?
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, certainly there’s no church in the world that has the right to say you can’t come here and go to another church. I mean, the Jehovah’s Witnesses might say that. The Mormons might even say that. I’m not even sure they’re that exclusive. I mean, they would like to be. Cults like to control and own their membership. When you’re talking about something that’s not a cult, a fellowship of Christians, you don’t belong to the leaders there. You don’t belong to the 501c3 corporation that runs that meeting. You belong to Christ, and all Christians belong to Christ. Every time there’s two or three Christians somewhere in his name, you belong there as much as you belong anywhere else. Now, of course, I’m not saying that Christians should just hop around from church to church, because if that happens, often you neglect to form the kinds of meaningful relationships that allow for mutual edification and accountability. Those kinds of things are very valuable to have a principled group of people That you fellowship with often enough that they know you and you know them. And, you know, what we really lack in our modern society that used to be a normal part of human society is a sense of community. I mean, you know, go back three generations in America and probably most people stayed in the same town they were born in until their great-grandchildren were there. and they went to the same church and they worked at the same job their whole life. That was then. This is now. People move all over the place. They don’t stay in one church. They don’t stay in one town or one part of the world. And so what we lose is what was a normal part of human society forever in more ancient times, and that is the community and the accountability and the mutual support of a group of people who know you all your life. And we can somewhat approximate that if we’re in an ideal kind of church situation, although I’ve never known much. I’ve known a few churches that approach that, perhaps not many. But the truth is that the more we can be involved with the same group of people who are of the same mind, the better. And that happens best. If you can be in one church or maybe a couple of churches that you’re able to be regular in. But the problem is that churches, they want more than, they’re not just looking for you to be part of the community. They want to be able to count on your support of the ministry financially and your volunteerism and your filling the seats so they know how many they can count on being there. They can send reports to denominational headquarters, how many attended, how much money came in. This is business. This is church business. And church business, in my opinion, doesn’t have any place in Christian fellowship. I think Christian fellowship can take place in a church that has church business. But the church is not defined by that church business. It may exist there in spite of it. But church… Real church is defined in terms of real Christians involved in each other’s lives, bearing each other’s burdens, watching over each other’s souls. And that’s not at all the same thing as having a corporation where there’s a CEO, pastor, and a board of directors, elders, and things like that. I believe in elders. I believe in leadership. I just don’t believe that the corporate structure of the modern church bears any resemblance to any church that ever existed in the New Testament times. In those days… Every Christian in Corinth was part of the church in Corinth. There weren’t some of them in the church of Paul and some in the church of Apollos and some in the church of Cephas. There were some starting to move that direction, and Paul rebuked them for it. You don’t do that. Christ isn’t divided. You don’t belong to Paul. You don’t belong to Cephas. You belong to Christ. And you don’t belong to this church or that church or that church. If you’re in the body of Christ, you belong to the whole body of Christ. Now, for practical reasons, it may be wise for you to attend one congregation regularly every primarily, as I said, to build community, which is a very valuable thing that’s hard to develop in the modern world. But if you feel that there’s some benefit to you spiritually to attend more than one church, you know, or to go to another church primarily and visit the other church you’re going to now, and they say you can’t do that, well, then that’s a cult. I mean, that’s all there is. It’s a cult. It’s not the body of Christ. The body of Christ welcomes all Christians and doesn’t seek to own them. You know, you are not of that person or that church. You’re not of Apollos or Paul or Cephas. You are of Christ. So, yeah, when churches begin to act that way, you’ve got a political corporation taking the place of the Christian fellowship. And the leaders, remember what Jesus said? He said, you know, the rulers and the Gentiles, they exercise authority over them. But he says it shall not be done that way among you. He’s talking to the apostles. You guys don’t do that. He said among you, whoever wants to be chief has got to be the slave of everybody. He’s not given orders. He’s the slave. He’s not the big boss. That’s how corporations of the Gentiles work. And frankly, that’s how most churches today work because they are corporations. They are 501c3 corporations, which is not a sin. But the problem is to have a corporate status, you’ve got to operate like a worldly corporation to IRS requires it. So what are you going to do? Well, you could not be a corporation, or you can meet the obligations of the corporate status and just not operate like a corporation the rest of the time, act like a family instead, which is what Jesus authorized. But, again, any church that says you’ve got to attend us exclusively or not at all, yeah, I just say, well, you made my decision for me. Thank you.
SPEAKER 01 :
All right, Karen. That was great. Thank you. All right.
SPEAKER 03 :
God bless you. All right. Let’s talk to Monty in Kent. I got so many Washington callers today. Hi, Monty. Welcome.
SPEAKER 06 :
Hey, thanks. Amen, brother, to your last answer to that question. There’s so much of that happening, especially in the prosperity gospels, the health and wealth and all that. And I went to a lectureship in Pepperdine University taught by Oliver Howard at that point in 1985 about marriage, divorce, and remarriage. And I don’t think I’ve ever understood it as well. And it really was simple. And as you know, there’s a famous evangelist that says the main things are the plain things, and the plain things are the main things. Well, anyway, yesterday I was in the car, and somebody was talking to you for like 30 minutes about hell. And I had never heard so much convoluted, screwed up, analysis and thinking it just from him and the whole thing was nonsense to me um so would you clarify that that’s my question is what in the world i couldn’t hear the end but there is a hell and it seems pretty clear in the bible what it means and i think we’re trying to start as usual satan wants us to try to over analyze and over this and over that okay i’ll talk about that
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, well, let me just say, the guy I was talking to, he and I did not agree. But I wouldn’t say that his idea was nonsensical or illogical. He was defending a very widely held view of hell. And a lot of good theologians hold that view. But a lot of good theologians hold other views, too. There’s three different views of hell, as we were discussing yesterday. And each of them has… evangelical leaders with arguably equal biblical expertise on their side who understand the passages that are relevant in different ways. And this is not just a new phenomenon. This is not like the corrupt, modern, liberal church. This was true in the earliest days of the church. In the first four centuries, all three of these views of hell were held by leading church fathers. I don’t know that there’s ever been a time in church history where these three views did not exist and were not held by good evangelical leaders. It’s just that one view became more dominant through the influence of Augustine in the 5th century. And, you know, the rest are less dominant now. But there’s still good reason to argue biblically for them. So when you say, you know, there is a hell in the Bible, it’s pretty clear about it. I’ll agree with you, there’s a hell. I’m not sure if the Bible is as clear as you think. But you mentioned the main things are the plain things, and the plain things are the main things. I would argue that the matter of what hell is like is not as plain as most Christians assume it is. And therefore, if it’s not a plain thing, I don’t think it’s a main thing. It’s interesting that the apostles could preach their sermons through the book of Acts and never mention hell or heaven. The gospel they preached was not about heaven and hell. It was about Jesus. It was about his kingdom. It was about Jesus being king and lord and how we’re supposed to repent and follow him. Christianity is not an obsession with heaven and hell as it so often is in churches. It’s an obsession with Jesus and his lordship and fulfilling the will of God. Heaven and hell exist. There’s no question about it. It just never entered into the evangelistic preaching of the apostles as near as we can tell from the records and acts. And they really didn’t talk about it in their epistles either. I mean, the main information we get about hell comes from a few of Jesus’ parables and from the book of Revelation. The apostle Paul, for example, in his writings never actually mentioned any of the words that are translated as hell. You look at a concordance, you won’t find the word hell in any of Paul’s letters. You won’t find it in any of Paul’s preaching in Acts, nor Peter’s. You’ll find the word hell in Romans. as far as other epistles go, you’ll find James saying that the tongue is a fire. It’s set on fire of hell. Actually, in the Greek, he says Gehenna. But that certainly is not a discussion about the afterlife. It’s a figure of speech. Peter, in 2 Peter 2, 4, uses the word hell, but that’s the word Tartarus in the Greek, which only appears once in the Bible. And he says that’s where angels who fell are in chains waiting for judgment. So that’s not really talking about hell either. Apart from James and Peter… none of the writings of the apostles, none of their epistles mention hell at all. And Peter speaks of it as a place where angels went who fell, and James speaks of it figuratively as a bad tongue is set on flames from hell. So we really don’t have an awful lot in the Bible about it. And the reason we don’t, I think, is because it’s not one of the main things. It is definitely one of the main things in popular evangelical preaching because it gets people to you know, to accept Jesus on fear of, you know, eternal conscious torment. But that’s more, I think that reflects more of the American, you know, marketing kind of mentality. We’re marketing Jesus by making people know they’ll really regret it if they don’t accept him, which is no doubt true. But that’s not what Jesus preached so much or what the apostles preached. Yeah, Jesus did mention hell. He talked about eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels in Matthew 25, 41. But it’s just not a major teaching in the New Testament. It’s not mentioned at all in the Old. You know, I wrote a book called Why Hell? Three Christian Views Critically Examined. I don’t advocate any of them, either in my book or in real life. I don’t advocate any of them. They all have a biblical case to be made. I don’t think the case is equally good for all of them, but that’s for the reader to decide. I give the case for each one in my book. But I also have a chapter there called putting hell in its place. And one of the questions it answers is, what is the place of hell in the Bible? What is the place of hell in the Gospels or in the preaching of the Gospel? And I actually analyzed those questions from Scripture, and it’s a very surprising thing, especially to me as a lifelong evangelical who always has preached the Gospel since I was in junior high school and always assumed that the Bible is very clear about hell. Right up until I was probably in my late 40s or 50s, and I’ve been in the ministry for 54 years. I never had any serious question about whether the Bible is clear or not until I studied it. And then I realized the Bible is not anywhere near as clear as I thought it was. And so I’m going to say the guy I talked to yesterday, he and I are not on the same page about it. But my disagreement with him would not in any sense make me say he’s got an illogical or irrational position. He just has a different position than mine. I appreciate your call, brother. Let’s talk to Nateo in Spokane, Washington, of all places. The other end of Washington. Hi, Nateo. Welcome.
SPEAKER 04 :
Hello. I’ve been going through a really hard time in my life right now, and I’m at a point where I just want to give my heart to the Lord. I’ve been feeling really alone and unsafe, and I don’t know where else to turn. I’m asking for prayer and guidance and just finding a way forward.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes, yes. Well, that’s wonderful. Do you have Christians around you that can help support you and so forth in your faith journey, or are you kind of on your own?
SPEAKER 04 :
I’m kind of on my own right now, and I really am just trying to turn to the Lord because I don’t really have anywhere else to turn. And I’ve been faith-based for quite a while, but I really want to garner my faith and true faith and not just saying it.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, let me share with you some things that maybe are a little different than I would have shared with you if you’d called me 30 years ago with this statement. 30 years ago, I would have just told you to say a sinner’s prayer, ask Jesus into your heart to be your Lord and Savior, and then go in peace. You’re going to heaven when you die. And I have to say, it’s not like I don’t believe that. It’s more that I believe that leaves out most of the important things that the Bible has to say about the gospel. The gospel in the Bible is… that God promised long ago through the prophets that he would send a Messiah to be the king of his people and that he’d give him rulership over the whole world and that Jesus said that was him. And Jesus came in fulfillment of those prophetic predictions and was, in fact, and is the king. The word Messiah means the king. And so the message of the kingdom of God is what Jesus preached and what the apostles preached And that is that there’s another king. That is, we have not known until we do know that there is a king in heaven that God has given full authority over heaven and earth and commands all men everywhere to bow the knee and to confess him as Lord. And that means that we simply recognize, we come to the end of ourselves. I think you said something like that. You kind of come to the end of yourself. That’s really where you need to come to. Jesus said, if anyone come unto me, let him deny himself. and take up his cross and follow me. So becoming a follower of Jesus means that he becomes to you the replacement for what you have been to yourself. You have basically followed your own agendas. You’ve been the Lord of your own decisions, of your own life, your dreams, your bucket list, what you want. Making up your own rules, your own goals, all of that You have to deny yourself and say, no, it’s no longer I. This Jesus whom God has made king over all people, I’m one of those people, and he’s king over me. I need to stop being a rebel against him. I need to submit to him. I need to become his follower. Now, becoming his follower doesn’t mean you now are a perfect person and you never stumble. It means that you’ve changed the orientation and direction of your life. You’re going to be seeking the scriptures. You’re going to be reading the gospels to know what Jesus said. And you’re going to say, this is my king talking. This is what he wants me to do. And I want to do it because I love him. The conversion takes place when you decide that it’s going to be Christ and not you that’s going to rule your life from now on. And then you need to get baptized. Because that’s how Jesus said we kind of pass into his society, his kingdom, and he’s leaving behind the old society of sin. And you ask God to fill you with his Holy Spirit. Once you’ve repented, which means you’ve turned around, you’re following Jesus now, you get baptized, you ask God to fill you with his Holy Spirit, and that’s what makes following Jesus different than any religion. religions have a founder who says, oh, people ought to do this and do that, and it will make their life better, make them have better eternity or whatever. That’s not – I mean, Jesus has that. But what makes Jesus different is he comes to live inside of us because he’s the only founder of any world faith system that’s alive today. You know, Buddha’s dead. Muhammad’s dead. Jesus is alive. So I would say – You need to ask Christ to come and fill you with his spirit, forgive your sins, and make it possible for you to follow him and then endeavor to do so. Now, since the music’s playing, we don’t have time. I’d like you to email me. Email me if you would. And I’d like to communicate with you more about this. My email is S, that’s like Steve, S underscore Greg. Then the number is 7225 at yahoo.com. I’d love to talk more with you, but the constraints of our time make me kind of short. So would you please get in touch with me and we can dialogue about this more.
SPEAKER 04 :
Thank you so much for your time today.
SPEAKER 03 :
Thank you for calling. I’m looking forward to talking to you more. God bless you. You’re listening to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. We are listener supported. And if you’d like to help us out, you can go to our website, thenarrowpath.com. See how to do it. But everything’s there free, so you don’t have to donate. Have a good day.
