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In this thought-provoking episode, listeners embark on an exploration of apostleship within the early church and the evolution from disciples to saints in the epistles. Steve Gregg offers insights into the cultural and biblical fears surrounding encounters with God, providing historical context to these age-old beliefs. The episode also tackles the contemporary relevance of biblical prophecies like the mark of the beast and challenges listeners to view scripture independently of modern-day news influences.
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, taking your calls. If you have questions, you’d like to call in and discuss with me about the Bible, about Christianity, about your Christian life. I’d be glad to talk to you. Now, let me just say this. Once in a while, I have to say things like this. It’s very tempting once you get on the line, if you’re a certain kind of person, to want to tell me your story, to want to tell me a lot of background for your question. And you need to understand our lines are pretty full with people waiting, and everybody I know has a very long story they could tell, and we just can’t. Not that I’m not interested. If we were sitting down together in a room, and had all afternoon. I’d love to hear your story, but, uh, try to avoid giving a long story. If you have to give a little bit of a story, yeah, try to keep it to 30 seconds or something to get background. If I need more information, I’ll ask for it. But, uh, we, the main thing is we have a lot of people to get on. And most days when we go off the air at the end of the hour, uh, there’s still people waiting that didn’t get on. And I always feel bad about that. And yet during the show, lots of times there’s people who want me to hear their whole story. Um, If you have questions about the Bible, Christian or the Christian faith, or even about what you need to do in a situation, if you can express that situation very briefly, I’d be glad to hear from you about it. And, of course, if you disagree with the host about something, I always am eager to hear from you. The number to call is 844-484-5737. As I said, the lines are at the moment full, but call in a few minutes and almost certainly lines will be opening up. They certainly will be through the whole hour. So don’t give up. If you get a busy signal, call back. The number is 844-484-5737. And our first caller today, oh, by the way, I should mention, You might be tired of hearing it, but I’m in Washington State all week teaching different places every day. Tonight I’ll be speaking in Kenmore, Washington. Tomorrow I’ll be in North Bend, Washington. I’ll be in Des Moines, Washington on Saturday afternoon and Mercer Island Saturday night. And then on Sunday morning and evening I’ll be in North Bend again. So if you’re in any of those areas, or near them and want to join us, go to our website, thenarrowpath.com, and look under announcements, and you’ll see how you can join us if you’d like to. I’ll be in Washington through Sunday. All right, let’s talk to Larry from Dallas, Texas. Larry, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 05 :
yes thank you steve um the bible verse hebrews 4 16 says uh i go boldly into the throne of grace that i may attain mercy and find grace to help in time of need my first question is um the throne of grace is that where jesus is sitting in heaven or is that the god the father on the great white throne i’m thinking jesus but could you answer that first please
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, in Revelation 3.21, Jesus said, To him that overcomes, I will allow to sit with me on my throne, even as I have overcome, and I am seated with my Father on his throne. So Jesus is enthroned at the right hand of God. The term throne of grace might be the writer of Hebrews’ way of alluding to the mercy seat in the Holy of Holies. which was atop the Ark of the Covenant, and God was believed to be between the cherubim on the mercy seat. Throne of grace, seat of mercy, sounds kind of similar. And he does say we come to the throne of grace to obtain mercy. So it may be simply saying, come into the presence of God, come to his throne. Is it Jesus or God? Both. Jesus is there at the right hand of God. I don’t think there’s a focus on one or the other here. I think the focus here is on the grace itself. Which is dispensed, of course, by God through Christ.
SPEAKER 05 :
That makes sense. Yes, I was wondering about that. Then my final question is, as far as like the numbering of the chapters and the verses, it seems like it’s, like I can’t remember because I’m driving my car, but like for instance, it might be Matthew, but like Matthew, oh, Matthew chapter 6, verse 66, it talks about, All the disciples, many of the disciples left Jesus after he gave them some news. Just every time I see something like it’s a number that’s associated maybe with like 13 or 6-6 or, you know, just different numbers, it seems like something negative. Who’s to decide the numbers, the chapters, and the verses? Is it something that’s divinely inspired? It seems like it to me, but just wanting your feedback on that.
SPEAKER 03 :
I think it’s not. The Old Testament was set in chapter and verse. I forget when. I mean, I’ve read when it was. It was like back maybe in the 16th century or maybe before that. Somebody set the Old Testament into chapter and verse. And then later, at another time, the New Testament was done that way, too. There’s no reason to believe that the people who did so felt that they were inspired in doing so. I think they did it for practical purposes, obviously. when these books of the Bible were written, the authors didn’t divide them into chapters or verses, which means that if you wanted to locate something and you weren’t sure where it was, you’d kind of have to, or tell someone else where it was, they’d kind of have to just read through, you’d have to count the lines, maybe on the 470th line or something. But when you’ve got chapter and verse, you can easily cite a specific bit of information. That seems to be the reason for doing it. I’m glad they did. It’s very helpful. But as far as inspiration of it, I know the verse you’re thinking of. It’s actually John 6, 66, which it says that many of Jesus’ disciples no longer walked with him. which is obviously a bad thing, and 666 sounds bad, so it seems ominous. But that strikes me as maybe the only case that would seem to raise questions about that, and out of several hundred thousand verses of Scripture, one instance I would tend to see as a coincidence rather than a pattern. I also think that sometimes the chapter divisions could have been done better. There are a number of cases, in fact, where the first verse of a chapter really is the last verse. verse in what the previous chapter was saying, and then, you know, the scene changes. So occasionally it seems like maybe some mistakes were made as to the most ideal places to put those, but it’s not a problem because they don’t claim inspiration for the numbers. It’s just somebody’s idea of how to divide it up. And even if they, I mean, for the most part, it’s divided up quite logically. I mean, chapter divisions typically are a turning point in the book, and verse numbers typically also distinguish different thoughts from each other, but even if they were not, you know, even if they were random, even if they were just, you know, divisions made without any rhyme or reason, it would still be useful. We could still locate a thing by chapter and verse, but For the most part, the chapters and verses are, I think, well chosen, well divided, but there’s no evidence that they’re inspired.
SPEAKER 05 :
Okay, well done. Well, God bless you, my brother, in Jesus’ name. Thank you.
SPEAKER 03 :
Thank you, Larry. God bless you. Good talking to you. Carl in La Mesa, California. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Hello, Steve. Thanks for taking my call. What’s your take on Pelagius? Well, Pelagius has been much misunderstood, in my opinion. There’s a book out by a scholar called The Myth of Pelagianism, which I have not read in its entirety. I’ve read kind of a summary of it. And the author has found a large number of things that people usually hear about Pelagius when he believed, which I believe is a female author, as I recall. I don’t remember who the author is, but they have actually found quotations from Pelagius that say, that belied this rumor. It does not seem that he really was guilty of teaching some of the things, heretical things, that some people say he taught. I myself have a commentary on Romans from Pelagius, and one of the things I always heard is Pelagius denied that there’s a sinful nature in man. Well, I looked up the only passage Augustine had on it in the New Testament, which is Romans 5, 12, and looked at it, and Although, of course, these old commentators who wrote hundreds of years ago, it’s not always easy to follow them. But I couldn’t see from Pelagius’ words about it that he was denying a sinful nature in man. So, like I said, it’s a book. I think it’s an expensive book. It’s a scholarly book called The Myth of Pelagianism. And it’s… Eventually, I’ll read the whole thing, but I already kind of had suspected what the author is saying to be true, that Pelagius, he gets a bad rap because, you know, the victors write the history. And a lot of times, we don’t have much of the original writings of some guy who was who was later worsted in a theological debate. In his case, of course, Augustine was his opponent, and there’s no theologian in history that’s had more impact on the traditions of the church than Augustine. And Pelagius just was unfortunate to have Augustine as an opponent because I don’t think Augustine was much more correct than Pelagius on some of the things they differed on. But Augustine won. The church went with him. And then from then on, Pelagius, of course, has always been seen as a heretic. The truth is that. If you’re not a Calvinist, Calvinists are Augustinians. Calvin lived, you know, like over a thousand years after Augustine, but was an Augustinian in his theology. And what we call Calvinism today is, generally speaking, Augustinian teaching, as Calvin himself would have said. And Luther was an Augustinian monk, too. So the Reformation… had a lot of influence from Augustine. And since Augustine was the chief opponent of Pelagius, the Reformed Church has always seen Pelagius as the great nemesis of their hero Augustine. But a lot of Augustine’s material isn’t well established biblically. And a lot of the criticisms made of Pelagius don’t strike me as very serious criticisms, even if true. But as Calvinism has dominated the Reformed movement, Pelagius is like Hitler or something. And even if you’re an Arminian, one of the worst things that Calvinists think they can say about you is you’re semi-Pelagian. But actually being semi-Pelagian isn’t all that bad. As a matter of fact, I think I’d rather be semi-Pelagian than semi-Caldivist. But even if you were totally Pelagian, I’m not really sure that Pelagius was guilty of a lot of the things that he’s accused of. I think his… I think his reputation needs to be revisited, and it may well be that he’s got a bad rap only because we’ve known little of him except what his enemies wrote about him. So I don’t know if some of his writings have been discovered in recent times or what, but there’s a lot more of his stuff. published than there used to be. So that’s the most I can say about him. Do I agree with him? Probably not on a lot of things. But am I alarmed by anything I’ve ever heard or seen him teach? No, I don’t see anything alarming about Pelagius. He differs from Augustine. If that’s a mortal sin, then I guess he’s a bad guy. But I disagree with Augustine too on a lot of things. and so do all, and, and people even who are Calvinists, some of them disagree with Augustine on other things. Some see him as the, as Augustine is the evil inventor of all millennialism. So if you’re a dispensationalist, Augustine’s a bad guy. Uh, so, although he wasn’t the inventor of all millennialism, you know, he popularized it. So, you know, these theologians, they’re not just all good or all bad. They’re people like people living today. Um, Fallible people who did their best to interpret Scripture and made their own mistakes. And we can’t condemn them for honest mistakes if they’re following the Lord and trying to get it right. But to demonize Pelagius, I think, has been the policy. of the Reformation Church and even of the Catholic Church because they followed Augustine too. So I can’t tell you exactly what Pelagius taught about everything, though I had always been taught that he said man has no sinful nature. Grace is not needed for conversion or for salvation. You know, man’s got total free will and impaired. You know, God’s sovereignty is not a factor. I mean, All of those statements, of course, if true, if Pelagius said all those things, then, of course, they’re diametrically opposed to Augustinianism and Calvinism, which is why Pelagius is considered the Hitler, you know, in the sight of theological Hitler in the eyes of Calvinists. But I have a feeling he’s been misrepresented, and that’s all I can say. I would say anyone who wants to use the word Pelagian, to describe some should probably stall on that until they can do some research to find out what Pelagius really believed. Like, I don’t even like to call myself an Arminian. I am what most people would call an Arminian, but I haven’t really read Arminius enough to know how much I agree with him. My views are got from the Bible, not from Arminius or from anywhere else. If my views overlap those of Arminius, so be it. If they overlap some of those of Pelagius, well, so be it, too. I didn’t get any theology from either of those men. You know, frankly, there are people who are Pelagians who would say I’m a little too Calvinistic for their liking. So, you know, I think C.S. Lewis said if the giants think I’m too small and the midgets think I’m too tall, then I must not be remarkable, you know. So if both sides think you’re, you know, too far to the other direction, then maybe you’re just where you should be.
SPEAKER 04 :
All right. Thank you.
SPEAKER 03 :
All right. And by the way, C.S. Lewis didn’t use the word midget. I think he said the dwarf. Anyway, thanks, Carl, for your call. Okay. Bye now. Carrie from Fort Worth, Texas. Good to hear from you again. Welcome.
SPEAKER 07 :
Hey, Steve. I was in a very interesting Bible study this morning, and we chased a couple of words, apostle and disciples, using a concordance. And We found out that the word disciple is not used in any of the epistles. It seems that the word is replaced by saints, and we thought that was very interesting. And then that the word apostle, we cannot find it being used by the Lord Jesus himself in any quotations from him. And we found that I guess he referred to them as the twelve, never as apostles. But we got to talking about apostles, and we just could not come up with a number of apostles that existed. Can you enlighten us and maybe comment on the disciple issue?
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, well, the number of apostles that there were, is a hard call to make because there were two kinds of apostles that Paul acknowledged. There were what he called apostles of Jesus Christ, of which he was one, and so obviously were the twelve, and maybe others would be regarded as such, but the word apostle means one who is sent. Apostolos means a sent one. And so the apostles are ones who are sent, and if someone is an apostle of Jesus Christ, that simply means that they were sent by Jesus. And so the 12 were sent directly by Jesus. Paul was sent directly by Jesus because he saw Jesus in a vision. He commissioned him to be an apostle. But there were other people like Barnabas and Timothy and certain others who are said to be apostles, but they weren’t directly sent by Jesus. And they are what Paul called apostles of the churches. That is, they’re not apostles of Christ because they weren’t sent by Christ himself. But they are apostles of the church, so they’re sent by the churches, like what we call a missionary. Some people say, you know, isn’t an apostle just the same thing as a missionary? Well, the major apostles in the Bible were certainly more than a modern missionary, but there were what we would call missionaries from the churches. And they also held the title apostle, but it was not considered that they were apostles of Christ, as Paul and the Twelve were, but they were apostles themselves. And, for example, in 2 Corinthians 8 and verse 23, Paul says, if anyone inquires about Titus, he’s my partner and our fellow worker, or if our brethren, meaning Paul’s ministry partners, are inquired about, they are apostles of the churches, the glory of Christ. Now, Paul also referred, I think it was in Colossians 2, Epaphroditus, as he said to the church, your apostle, meaning the apostle from the church of Colossae. So Paul recognized there were different kinds of apostles. There’s those who were sent directly by Christ, like himself, and there’s those who were sent by the churches. There would obviously be a difference in religion. in status and authority between someone who’s sent directly by Christ. Jesus said in John, what was it, 18? No, I’m thinking, I used to know. Anyway, I’m forgetting now where, 13. I think it’s John 13, 20 or something like that. Jesus, anyway, said, whoever receives him that I send receives me. Okay? So him that I send would be an apostle that he sends. receiving that apostle is the same as receiving Jesus himself. And so obviously if an apostle gives a command or writes a book or teaches a doctrine, that’s as good as if Jesus was giving that command or teaching it. That’s what he’s saying. But if an apostle of the churches did, Well, they’ve got the authority of the churches. They don’t have the same as the apostles of Christ. So, yeah, as far as how many apostles there are, there’s at least 17 people in the Bible that are called apostles. And when Paul writes to the Thessalonians, he talks about how he and his fellow co-authors, he said, when we were with you, we could have demanded honor from you, As apostles, you know, and he’s talking about Silvanus and Timothy and himself. So, you know, Silvanus and Timothy are included as apostles, too, in some sense. Anyway, yeah, I don’t know if we need a total number of apostles, but we know that there’s the 12. We know that there’s Paul. Apart from those, we might not be inclined to call anyone else an apostle of Christ, though Barnabas might be included. because it was the Holy Spirit speaking in Antioch that said, separate to me Barnabas and Saul to the work that I’ve called them to. And then they were sent out. Later they were called apostles. It’s not made clear whether Barnabas was considered an apostle of Christ, but since the Holy Spirit spoke directly about him and sent him out along with Saul as if equals, maybe Barnabas would be regarded on that level too. I’m not sure.
SPEAKER 07 :
I just found it very interesting. So thank you. Thank you, Steve.
SPEAKER 03 :
Okay, Kerry. Good talking to you. Bye now. All right. Jim from Round Rock, Texas. Good to hear from you, brother. Hey, brother. This is my old friend.
SPEAKER 08 :
Listen. Hey, it’s great to talk to you, brother. I’ve been trying to trace down this idea in the Bible of when different people expressed a dread of if they had seen God, as it were, face-to-face or in a more unfiltered way, they said, you know, I’m going to die. I’m thinking especially of Jacob when he said, I’ve seen God face-to-face and my life is preserved. He was kind of astonished that he had lived. And then I started thinking maybe even Hagar… At least in the New American Standard Version, it has her saying, have I even seen him here and lived after he saw me? Now, not every translation gives quite that sense. But my question is, Jacob certainly predates considerably God saying to Moses, You know, no one can see my face and live. So here you have Jacob already with a strong sense that you could die if you saw God unfiltered. So my question is, do you have any idea of where this came from? Was it just part of the prevailing culture? And if so, was it part even of the pagan cultures around, you know, in the Middle East or whatever?
SPEAKER 03 :
Right. You know, I do not know where that sentiment arose from. I mean, before Jacob had that feeling, we read in Genesis 18 that Abraham saw God. Yahweh, of course, Yahweh appeared as a man approaching with two other angels that seemed like they were men. And it doesn’t seem like Abraham was terrified or anything. Although my impression is, as you read through that story, that Abraham didn’t know that was God until later in the conversation. He always refers to him as Adonai, which just means my Lord, which is something that men would say respectfully to each other. And Abram’s just being hospitable. He runs out to greet him and calls him in to sit in the shade and fix a meal for him, which he did maybe he would have done for anyone. Maybe Abram and his family are just that hospitable to travelers. That’s not uncommon among the Middle Eastern cultures. But similar, like Lot did with the angels in Sodom. I don’t think he knew they were angels when he said, hey, come stay in my house. But that’s kind of Middle Eastern hospitality. But then during the conversation, the God person said to Abram, where’s your wife Sarah? And he said, she’s in the tent. And he said to Abram, this time next year I’ll come back again. You’ll have a child. Sarah will have a child. And it says that Sarah was in the tent with an earshot but not visible. And she laughed at the prospect that she, at 90 years old, would get pregnant and have a child. And the visitor said, why did Sarah laugh when I said that? And she said… I didn’t laugh. But when he said, why did Sarah laugh? He said, is anything too hard for Yahweh? See, he hadn’t identified himself as Yahweh previously. And he said, is anything too hard for Yahweh? And suddenly Sarah was not only embarrassed, but I think afraid because she said, whoa, I laughed at God. I think just reverence for God, I think people have the intuitive idea that God was just so much greater than us that we probably can’t safely lay eyes on him. And that might have come from just the reverence that was shown to kings a lot of times. When you appear before your king, you come and bow down with your face to the floor. You wouldn’t look him in the eye. It would be considered disrespectful. So it may be just, again, the Middle Eastern cultural reverence for royalty and authority and deity that you just don’t look at God in the face. I mean, it may well have been that if you look a king in the face, he’d have you killed for the disrespect. So that might have been their instincts. I don’t know.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yeah, I just was wondering, you know, since this predated the statements of God to Moses, obviously, and the Israelites, and the things that they saw, the 70 elders, and then later you have Samson’s parents expressing that same, Manoah expressing that same dread, and Gideon and others, lots of them, But I just wondered where it got started or what was the origin of that fear of seeing God face to face.
SPEAKER 03 :
And obviously, I’m not able to answer that. But my guess would be it’s probably a cultural sense that God is loftier than any king. And you wouldn’t even probably look your king in the face. It’d be considered too familiar and too disrespectful. Hey, Jim, I need to take off. I have a break here.
SPEAKER 08 :
All right, brother.
SPEAKER 03 :
Thanks for your call, brother.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yeah, great to talk to you. Love you, brother.
SPEAKER 03 :
All right, you too. We have another half hour coming up, but at this point we just take a brief break to let you know The Narrow Path is listener supported. If you’d like to contact us and help us out, you can write to The Narrow Path, P.O. Box 1730, Temecula, California, 92593. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. I’ll be back in 30 seconds. Don’t go away.
SPEAKER 02 :
Small is the gate and narrow is the path that leads to life. Welcome to The Narrow Path with Steve Gregg. Steve has nothing to sell you today but everything to give you. When the radio show is over, go to thenarrowpath.com where you can study, learn, and enjoy with free topical audio teachings, blog articles, verse-by-verse teachings, and archives of all The Narrow Path radio shows. We thank you for supporting the listeners supported Narrow Path with Steve Gregg. See you at 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 if you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith. Give me a call. We have one line open at the moment. It may not be open for long, but the number is 844-484-5737. 844-484-5737. Our next caller is Roxanne from Vancouver, British Columbia. Hi, Roxanne. Welcome.
SPEAKER 01 :
Thank you for taking my call. I know the gist of the right and wrong way, but Is there a right way to pray and a wrong way to pray?
SPEAKER 03 :
I’m sure.
SPEAKER 01 :
I know there’s, like, selfish praise and, like, you just pray that you get the job. But, okay, so then how do you pray on so it doesn’t sound like you’re being selfish? But, okay, so what is the right way or wrong way of praying?
SPEAKER 03 :
All right. Well, yeah, there’s lots of wrong ways of praying. Like James said in James chapter 4, he said, you have not because you ask not. But he said, but you ask and do not receive because you ask amiss, which most modern translations say with the wrong motives. The King James says you ask amiss that you may consume it upon your lusts. So obviously he says you can pray and God will pay no attention to your prayers because you’re not praying the right way. You don’t have the right motives. Obviously, Jesus said that we should pray in his name, which means that we have to be his people and be authorized to use his name. which is the access code into the presence of God. And with his name, we can, in fact, enter, but we can’t really use his name unless we are his disciples. And it says in 1 John 5.14 that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. So, obviously, prayer is not simply, you know, a general… welcome for people to say anything they want to to God, although the Bible does say that we can make our petitions known to God if we come to him on right terms, and that’s what we’re supposed to do. Jesus taught us to pray and gave us that sample prayer where we address the Father, so I believe proper prayer is addressed to the Father. which art in heaven, hallowed be your name. Obviously, you’re coming with reverence. Your concerns are primarily for his kingdom to come and his will to be done, not your own. You do have concerns of your own, though, so asking, give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our sins. You know, I mean, those are to our advantage to be forgiven and to be fed. So it’s not selfish to desire things that God himself wants you to have. food and forgiveness and so forth, but we are to ask for them. And we may have not because we ask not. But the point here is that As Jesus taught us to pray, the right way to pray is to address the father as a child addresses their father. And to come with requests that are at least assumed to be in line with what God’s will is and good for his kingdom’s purposes. Now, you mentioned asking that you’ll get a job that you’ve applied for. Well, that can easily be agreeable with God’s purposes for you. It can easily be, it can actually be, you know, helpful in the pursuit of the kingdom of God, depending on the job and depending on whether God has a position he wants you to fill there for him as his agent. The point is that everything we, our prayers should be of a peace nature. with our whole lives. It’s not like, you know, we live our own secular lives and once in a while we throw up a few prayers because we feel religious or we feel like we have need for God’s assistance. But we live our whole lives in his name. We pray in his name. But Paul said in Colossians 3.17, whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of Jesus. So our prayers… are in the name of Jesus, just like our whole life and everything we do is in the name of Jesus. Now, some Christians may say, well, I’m not really sure that my whole life is done in the name of Jesus. Well, that’s why the Bible gives instructions, so you recognize what you’re not doing right. Doing something in the name of Jesus means you’re acting as his agent. You’re acting in his place, in his interests. Just like if you commit some sum of money to a money manager and ask them to invest it wisely for you, they are doing those investments in your name. They’re authorized by you. They’re doing it for your interests, for your profit. That’s how we are before God. We stand as Christ’s agents. We not only are acting and praying in what we consider to be his interests, but we’re doing so with his authorization. And so we should pray in his name in that sense. What would be a wrong way to pray? Well, to not do it that way, to pray for your own interests that you don’t have any reason to believe would be consistent with God’s. However, to say that we pray according to what we believe to be God’s interest does not mean that we have to pray for things that we have no interest in, because a father has great interest in his children’s well-being and happiness and so forth. So, you know, when a child asks a father for something, Jesus, of course, there are bad fathers who this wouldn’t be true of, but Jesus said, which father of you, if his son asks him for an egg, are you going to give him a scorpion? If he asks for fish, are you going to give him a serpent? He said, if you earthly fathers, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly father give good gifts to those who ask him? So, clearly, if a child asks for food… That is in the child’s interest to have food, but it’s also in the father’s interest for them to have it. In fact, Jesus said, you know, any good gift, anything that’s good for the child would be in the father’s interest. The Bible says several times, or in different ways, you know, no good thing will he withhold from those who walk uprightly. If you’re a child of God, he will withhold no good thing. But he might withhold things that you wished you would have. But he’ll only withhold it if it’s, in his sight, not a good thing. And if it’s not a good thing in his sight, I’d rather not have it, frankly, because he knows more about the situation than I do. If I think I’m asking for an egg, but the thing I’m asking for is really a scorpion, well, I hope he doesn’t answer that prayer if I mistook an egg for a scorpion. And sometimes we mistake certain outcomes that we would like for being the best thing. And sometimes they are. And if they are, God’s on our side about that. We can pray confidently that he’ll meet that need. If for some reason he sees that that’s not the best thing, we should, in every case, hope that he denies us our request. Because prayer is not a genie in a lamp where God shows up and says, your wish is my command. Just ask whatever you want. No, prayer is a means of cooperating with God to bring about his will in my life and in the world in general. So as long as my heart is the Lord’s, my priorities are his priorities, my needs and my requests are things that he agrees that those are good things, then if I pray for them, I’m praying properly. But if I don’t care whether it’s God’s will or not, say, God, I just want this, whether you want it for me or not, well, that would certainly be praying wrong. And the problem is he might answer it. You know, the Bible says about the Hebrews when they insisted on having meat in the wilderness, it says he gave them their request, and with it leanness of soul. So, I mean, if God’s really angry at you, he might give you what you asked for. You know, we should always pray with the idea that I hope this is a good thing, in your sight, God, but of course, I hope you will exercise veto power if you see it differently. Prayer is always for the fulfillment of God’s will in the earth. That’s why one of the first petitions in the prayer Jesus taught is, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. That’s really what prayer is for. Even when Jesus prayed, His desperate prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, and he was facing death and terrifying, horrifying torture. You know, he was sweating, as it were, great drops of blood, the Bible says. He was so stressed over it. And he said, if it’s possible, let this cup pass from me, which is what no doubt almost anyone would ask if they saw a horrible thing coming upon them. But at the end of his prayer, Jesus said, yep, not my will, but yours be done. So that’s the right way to pray. You pray for what you think is good, but then there’s always the caveat, and there should be whether you speak it or just have it as a subtext of your prayers. God, feel free to veto this if it’s not your will. Because when you become a Christian, your whole orientation toward life changes from Not my will, but God’s will. It’s no longer I, but Christ that I’m interested in. So, obviously, our prayers will have that subtext, even if it’s not always stated. It must always be the way we think about it. All right. I appreciate that call. All right. So let’s talk to – it looks like it’s John in Phoenix, Arizona next. John, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Hey, Steve.
SPEAKER 04 :
Hi. I’ve been listening to you now for a while, and you’ve kind of got me leaning in the direction of amillennialism, which I wanted to ask you a question on. But just a quick sidebar, I’ve read Pelagius’ commentary to the Romans, and he’s as evangelical as anybody else. He was just attacked because he – stressed holiness as did most of the earlier church fathers. And by the time Augustine arrived, they were already getting away from that message and the faith. And Pelagius even relies on James in his discussion with the righteous sheltered by faith in Romans. And, of course, Luther didn’t like that.
SPEAKER 03 :
As I said, I haven’t read the entirety of Pelagius’ commentary on Romans, but I have it on my shelf, and I specifically looked up some passages, including chapter 5. which is where you’d find his discussion of sinful nature if he was saying something different than Augustine. And I didn’t feel it was – if he didn’t believe in the sinful nature, he wasn’t very clear about it, I thought. Yeah, I mean, I’ve heard many church historians say that although Augustine’s theology became dominant in the Western church, Pelagius’ teaching was much closer to the teaching of the church fathers before him. And we know that Augustine introduced all kinds of innovations that the church fathers before him didn’t agree with. So, you know, just because Augustine was very influential doesn’t mean that he’s the standard we go by.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, I agree with you. Hey, I’ve got a question for you. You got me really thinking about millennialism. And I just have one question. Right now, you know, China and several countries are dealing away with currency. Let’s say we get to a point in our lifetime where, We end up in a situation where the government wants to give us some sort of mark by which we cannot buy, trade, or sell with. At that time, would that be time to rethink our theology, or would we just – would you just say, no, that can’t be the mark of the beast because that already took place in the times of Nero? Or, you know, I’m just kind of curious about that because I’ve always wondered about that. Well, everything’s out there ready to happen.
SPEAKER 03 :
Right. Concerning the mark of the beast, obviously dispensationism has fitted our expectations with an idea of someone literally giving a mark or a chip or a tattoo or something on your right hand or on your forehead to replace – cash transactions, and since technology has definitely moved that way, it’s very encouraging to those who see that as the meaning of Revelation 13, 18. But see, one thing I did years ago is I decided I’m not going to follow what can be called newspaper exegesis. In other words, just because the newspapers say something, it doesn’t mean that I have to interpret the Bible in light of the newspapers. People have done that for centuries, and those who have done that have always been mistaken. So the newspapers are not a true guide of biblical exegesis. I want to execute Scripture from Scripture, and no matter what the newspapers do, like I don’t see anything in the Bible that says the Jews will rebuild the temple and have a third temple. But lots of Jews are hoping to do that. And a lot of dispensational prophecies say, look, How can you say there won’t be a third temple? It’s already, there’s the temple institute trying to work it out. Well, I don’t care what they’re doing. I’m just interested in what the Bible says. The Bible doesn’t say there won’t be a third temple, but it doesn’t say there will. So if there is going to be one, it’s something it doesn’t mention. And it’s irrelevant to the interpretation of Scripture, because I interpret the Scripture by its context and by its actual words and what it says and so forth, and especially interpret the Old Testament in light of the New. That’s the kind of hermeneutics that I think are responsible. you don’t say, wow, I could see this verse this way, and there’s someone over here, you know, in the news, sounds like they may be pushing that direction. Well, maybe they are, maybe they’re not. I’m still going to reach my interpretation of Scripture by exegetical means, not by deciding, okay, this time the story in the news is really the fulfillment. I realize that when I was, like 50 years ago, when I was, began my ministry, there’s a whole different set of circumstances that were said to be the fulfillment of that. But those circumstances have passed. There’s new ones, but there’s still people pushing. Which date on the newspaper is going to be the inspired date that requires me to interpret the Scriptures by it? I don’t even consult those. Now, partly because I don’t believe the Bible has any interest in telling us what the end of the world is, when it’s going to be, or what’s going to happen. And if the dispensations are in fact correct, that there will be, you know, this tribulation period coming up, and the Antichrist will rise, and he’ll be giving people a mark. Well, you know, I’ll know not to cooperate, not because Revelation said anything about it, but because the Bible teaches me how to live. And obviously I can’t swear my allegiance to anyone but Jesus. If taking the mark means swearing your allegiance to the devil’s kingdom… then, of course, I can’t do it. Now, if taking the mark only means nowadays instead of using debit cards, we’re going to use a credit number on our hand or forehead, I still wouldn’t feel comfortable with that because I don’t want anyone putting anything in my body or on my body. That’s none of their business. I’ve Already sacrificed too much privacy. I’m not going to go along with that. But the thing is, I remember when they first came out with debit cards and when they first came out with ATMs. For a long time, I refused because I was more of a dispensationalist back then. And I refused to even use them. I thought, this is it. They’re replacing cash with a number. It’s now on a card. Eventually, they’ll put it on my hand. I just didn’t want to participate. But looking back, I think I’ve been using ATMs for many decades now, and I don’t see any compromise in my life. I don’t see how it’s in any sense made me fulfill the will of the devil or neglect the will of God. I think that taking the mark of the beast in the Bible is symbolic for becoming his servant. Because in Roman times, when Revelation was written, this is what they did to servants. Masters would tattoo their brand or their name on the forehead or the hand of servants that had run away and been recaptured. So this way they couldn’t conceal whose servant they were because you very seldom cover your forehead or hands with clothing. So the idea was these servants bear the conspicuous mark of who their master is. Now, when it comes to servants of Satan or servants of God, it’s not a literal visible mark. But there is visible evidence by your behavior, by your thoughts, whether you’re a servant of Satan or a servant of God. And I believe that the whole idea of the mark in Revelation 13 is simply symbolic for being a servant of Satan or whatever, not buying your groceries a certain way. Those who have the mark of the beast in Revelation, they’re going to the lake of fire, you know. They’ll be tormented day and night. So is God going to make the basis of salvation the way you paid for your groceries? No, I insist you use U.S. currency. You don’t want to have a credit number. That’s giving it all away. That’s buying the farm. That’s giving up your salvation. There’s nothing in the character of God that makes any sense of that. But if you are, by your exhibited behavior and thoughts, represented by your hand and your forehead, your hand is your works and your forehead is your thoughts, after all, in the Old Testament, God told Israel to bind the law to their hand and to their forehead, between their eyes, and he didn’t mean that literally. He meant he wanted their works and their thoughts to be governed by the word of God. Now, if your works and your thoughts are exhibiting that you are a slave of Satan rather than of God, yeah, well, you’re on the wrong side of that, and you’re going to hell. Now, so if someone says, okay, we’re getting rid of cash, we’re even going to get rid of debit cards, we’re going to use the same number that was on your debit card, we’re going to put it on your skin. I think, well, that sounds awful to me. I’ll probably get involved in an alternative economy then. I’ll start bartering or something, maybe trading gold and silver or something. Who knows? But I’m not going to be into that. On the other hand, if all it really means is that you’re buying your groceries that way, then I have no way of understanding why God would object to it. Why would he care? what the transaction looks like when you buy your groceries. It’s talking about something much more fundamental to who you are and how you’re living your life. Therefore, lots of things happen that some people thought were going to happen. The dispensations were predicting that Israel would become a nation again long before 1948. In fact, they played a large role in making it happen. And lo and behold, it did. And they said, look, we were right about prophecy. Well, maybe you’re right about prophecy or maybe not. Maybe events followed your predictions because you were so influential upon the United Nations and President Truman and so forth. But if you know the history of that, you realize that there’s no miracle involved necessarily in the formation of the nation of Israel in modern times. It was very much a political thing pushed by dispensationalists among others and Zionists. So, you know, sure, they predicted it, but it may be a self-fulfilling prophecy. It may be that 666 will be adopted by governments as sort of some kind of special code because they know that Christians have always looked at that in that way. I don’t know. But I’m not going to let things that happen in the newspapers or in current events have any bearing on my interpretation of Scripture simply because Scripture is Everyone who’s done that so far, and they’ve done it for about 2,000 years these days, they’ve already been wrong. Why would I not be wrong if I did that? But if you compare Scripture to Scripture and interpret Scripture by responsible hermeneutics, then I would say you’ll be fine. So I will say if they show up at my door and say, listen, we’re going to stamp this on your hand, okay, I’m going to say, no, I’m going to opt out of that. But if I hear that someone else did it and that they’re buying their groceries that way and it makes no other difference in their life, I’m going to think, well, you know, I still don’t want to do it because I value my privacy more than most people do. I don’t even like to have my cell phone turned on when I’m in a conversation. I do, but I feel nervous about it. People are listening in. I like privacy. That’s me. It’s personal. It’s not a Christian conviction. So, no. No, I’m not going to go along with it. But on the other hand, I wouldn’t reinterpret the Bible based on that circumstance.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, it sheds a lot of light on that for me. I really appreciate this because, honestly, that’s something I’ve been grappling with in my mind. And, you know, you’ve really given me a lot to think about, so I appreciate that. Thank you very much. God bless you, John.
SPEAKER 03 :
Good to hear from you.
SPEAKER 04 :
Take care. God bless.
SPEAKER 03 :
Bye now. All right. Wes from Charleston, South Carolina. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 06 :
Hello. Hello, Steve. I appreciate your show. I’m listening on YouTube. Yes, I vacillate between annihilationism and more of an eternal punishment, punishing. I vacillate. I mean, like I heard you say the other day, you lean towards one position one day. Sometimes it seems like another day is a different. I just wanted to hear maybe your commentary on Jude 13, verse 13. where it talks about that the sinners, the false teachers, that they are reserved for the darkest, the blackest darkness forever. Yeah, I would like to hear your comment on that verse right there, just where you think that fits. Is it more poetic or is it?
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, it no doubt does have poetic elements because the word forever and the word everlasting and eternal are the words aeon and aeonis in the Greek, which… Its basic meaning is age enduring, enduring for an age, because the word aeon is the Greek word for age, and aeonius is an adjective based on the word age. So scholars would say the most literal translation of such words, and frankly the word forever is one of those words, is for a long time, for ages or for an age. or even pertaining to the age, but it’s ambiguous. That doesn’t mean that that verse can’t be used as a proof text for some view if people want to see its meaning that way, but it does mean that somebody who has other grounds foreseeing a different view, could easily say, well, forever doesn’t mean necessarily forever all the time. Sometimes in English it does, except we use it in English hyperbole-like. I haven’t seen you forever. I haven’t heard from you forever. We talk that way. That’s hyperbole. We don’t mean literally forever, though in English forever literally means endlessly forever. We don’t always use it literally, and the same thing is true in the Bible. Sometimes the word is used hyperbole, and sometimes many scholars believe it doesn’t even mean that literally. When it is literal, it just means for a very long time. So as far as what’s reserved for these people is the blackness of darkness. Well, that could certainly mean eternal conscious torment, or it could mean annihilation, it seems to me. And somebody who held a view of reconciliation could probably just say, well, it’s talking about temporal punishment. It’s not talking about really eternal state after death. They’re just going to be blacked out of the earth. So there’s people who are familiar with the language of Scripture, the hyperbole, the apocalyptic, the poetic. There’s all different genres of Scripture, and Jude certainly employs several of them in his book. you know, would be able to take almost any of the views of hell and accommodate that verse. They would explain it differently. That is, one who believes in annihilation would explain that verse differently than one who believes in eternal conscious torment. And someone who believed in reconciliation ultimately would actually take it a third way. And this is the problem. When people ask, you know, have you made up your mind yet on which view of hell is correct? The more I learn about the three views, the more I’m pretty sure I’ll never be able to make up my mind because all of the relevant verses that are used to prove any of the positions are accommodated fairly easily by the other positions. That is, you read all the verses used for eternal conscious torment. Well, the Annihilations and the Restorations, they can use those verses too. They recognize the ambiguity of a Greek word or… you know, a certain context that mitigates what the other person is seeing there. And then you take all the verses for annihilation. Generally speaking, the same is true. You take the verses that prove annihilation, and people who hold eternal conscious torment, they’ve got their way of explaining those very verses, and so do the restorationists. And then, of course, the other way, too. You take the third view and find all the verses that support it, and, you know, those who hold eternal conscious torment and those who believe annihilation… Typically, they have their understanding of those verses, too. A lot of these verses are subject to more than one possible interpretation. In most cases, there’s not enough there to just say, it’s got to be this interpretation. It could be another one. And what that means is God has not, in any place, made a clear, unambiguous statement about the nature of health. And I have to think that since the main things are the plain things, that God doesn’t think that we need to know what hell is like. He’s calling us not to go there, so it would be irrelevant for us to know. And I guess it’s ours to find out, or especially for those who reject Christ, it’s theirs to find out. But, yeah, I haven’t made up my mind. That’s a verse that would tend probably more toward annihilation, it would seem to me. Hey, I’m out of time. I wish I wasn’t. You’ve been listening to The Narrow Path. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. thanks for joining us God bless you
