Have you ever questioned how the Bible was canonized or why there seem to be differences in church doctrines? This episode provides insights into understanding the selection of biblical books and the historical emergence of church institutions. Steve explores the early church’s characteristics, the emergence of lasting traditions such as those in the Coptic Church, and the challenges of maintaining doctrinal purity. Journey with us as we uncover historical narratives that continue to shape Christian thought and practice today.
SPEAKER 1 :
Thank you.
SPEAKER 08 :
Good afternoon and welcome to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we’re live for an hour as we usually are each weekday afternoon. A live program, commercial free for the purpose of devoting as much time as we can to taking your calls. seeking to address the questions that you may raise about the Bible or the Christian faith, objections, challenges, or just curiosity, feel free to give me a call. If you’re not a Christian, we welcome your curiosity as well and your challenges. Feel free to call. anyone who disagrees with the host and wants to get clarification or balanced comment. So the number to call is 844-484-5737. And as I look at the switchboard, it looks to me like the switchboard is full. Not all the names are up yet, but I think all the lines are full. So if you call and get a busy signal, then just call back. The lines will be opening up one at a time. As the program moves through the hour, the number is 844. As I’ve been saying all week, I’m speaking this week in Washington State. There’s just a few days left tonight, tomorrow afternoon, tomorrow night, and Sunday morning and Sunday night. Only five more sessions in the next two days, I guess, or three days. And if you live anywhere near these things and want to join us, we would like you to do so. I’ll be speaking in North Bend, Washington tonight and also Sunday morning and Sunday night. And then in between, which is tomorrow, Saturday, I’ll be speaking in the afternoon in Des Moines, Washington, and in Mercer Island, Washington. So if you’re near any of those things and want to join us, go to our website, thenarrowpath.com. Look at the tab that says Announcements, and you’ll see the time and place of those meetings. And generally speaking, I think it’s listed what I’ll be talking about. All right, so… Enough of that. We got that out of the way. Let’s go to the phones and talk to Peter from Bedford, UK, a frequent caller. Hi, Peter. Welcome.
SPEAKER 01 :
Hi, Steve. I’ve been reading Empire of the Risen Son, and my question is based on the chapter Walking in the Power of the Spirit, and I think I always feel like a new believer every time I’ve been reading it. And I think just to clarify, just my lack of understanding, so when you’re born again, you have the Holy Spirit, but As a believer, the fullness of the Holy Spirit is a separate experience. And I grew up in a church where we were taught, if you speak in tongues, you have the fullness of the Holy Spirit. But however, I think how I’m sort of understanding it is that the gifts of the Spirit aren’t the… Isn’t really the right way to look at the evidence of being full of the Spirit? I guess my question is, does a Christian need to be filled with the Holy Spirit to be a disciple of Jesus? Is it really important?
SPEAKER 08 :
Well, I do. I do think that being filled with the Spirit is very important. I don’t know if it’s a prerequisite, for example, for being converted or being saved. If we think of saved as being in heaven, well, there’s going to be plenty of people in heaven who were never filled with the Holy Spirit, which would include all the Old Testament saints who were not prophets. or not Moses or David. You know, I mean, there were individuals who were filled with the Spirit in the Old Testament, but most of Israel, even the faithful, were not. And yet, we’re not saved by being filled with the Spirit. That is to say, we’re not justified by that. We’re justified by faith. However… As I understand it, and certainly there are different ways that some have understood this, different from my way of understanding it, but as I understand it, every person, when they’re converted, if they are born again, they are born again of the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God comes and regenerates and dwells inside a person who has repented and come genuinely to Christ. And Paul said if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he’s none of his. So a person is not really a Christian if they don’t have the Holy Spirit dwelling in them. But that is, as you mentioned, in my mind, a different matter. than being filled with the Spirit, because even Christians are exhorted in Scripture to be filled with the Spirit, as if it’s not automatic. I mean, for example, in Ephesians 1, writing to the Christians in the church he’s writing to, Paul mentions in chapter 1 that they have received the Spirit when they came to faith, and they’ve been sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise. But he speaks to the same Christians later in Ephesians 5, 18, and tells them to be being filled with the Spirit. So obviously… He takes it for granted that if they’re Christians, they have the Spirit. They’ve been sealed with the Spirit. They’ve been born of the Spirit. And as Paul says in Romans 8, the Holy Spirit bears witness with our spirits that we’re the children of God. So I think that’s true of all true Christians. But then he writes to people who are true Christians and who possess the Holy Spirit and says, be filled with the Spirit. Or as many have suggested, the Greek suggests, be being filled with the Spirit. So the fullness of the Spirit is not an automatic given. just because someone has been saved. Now, I believe in the early church, as soon as someone was converted, they baptized them in water and laid hands on them. And they were, I believe, filled with the Spirit. So, in other words, being filled with the Spirit for them was essentially simultaneous, or almost simultaneous with the conversion. Now, my position is that when you’re born again, the Spirit comes to dwell in you. And then there’s a separate question, are you filled with the Spirit? And I believe in the early church, the norm was that people were converted. Obviously, the Spirit rebirthed them, came into them, and they were baptized in water and hands were laid on them, and they were then filled with the Spirit. So there really wasn’t any lag time between the Spirit dwelling in them and the Spirit filling them, because that was taken for granted in the church. It was a practice practice. laying hands on them after baptism for the second experience was just what they did. So, for the most part, most Christians probably were filled with the Spirit from the day they were converted. But in the centuries since that time, of course, Christian churches have, through human tradition or neglect or lukewarmness, neglected a number of things that they practiced in the early church. For example, even water baptisms. has sadly been neglected in many churches. And certainly laying on of hands for being filled with the Spirit has been neglected. So that means, of course, that there may be many people, I suspect there are, and I believe I was one of them up until a certain point in my life, that I was converted. The Spirit lived in me. I was born again. I was sealed with the Spirit. I had the Spirit living in me. But no one had told me about being filled with the Spirit. No one had laid hands on me. No one had in any way let me know that there was something available for that. And that, I take to be a deficiency in many modern churches, which did not exist in the early church. They didn’t have that deficiency. So I believe we have now what they didn’t have so commonly in the first century, and that is people who are converted but have not been filled with the Spirit. But I do see it as something separate, though I do believe still many people, even without the laying on of hands, have been filled with the Spirit just by the unilateral work of God. When they got converted, I know people who, from the day they were converted, they gave every evidence of being filled with the Spirit and lived a Spirit-filled life. So that was simultaneous, essentially, with their conversion. Others, like myself, I would say, I was born again. I was serving Christ, following Him. But I didn’t have that. I didn’t have that fullness. Remember, Jesus spoke of that as receiving power. when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And I didn’t have that until I, at a later date, received the baptism of the Spirit. So that’s how I understand it. There’s obviously people who see it differently. Now, as far as the evidence that one has been filled with the Spirit, it’s true. In this modern church that has so often neglected the whole issue of being filled with the Spirit, one of the movements in recent history, modern history, has been at the beginning of the 20th century, The Pentecostal movement happened rather spontaneously, as I understand it. People were praying and seeking God, and some of them got filled with the Spirit, and they spoke in tongues. And that became kind of regular in that particular revival. People got filled with the Spirit, and they spoke in tongues. They saw, of course, that speaking in tongues was sometimes associated with the baptism of the Spirit in the Bible, too. And it became kind of a Pentecostal tradition to say, if you are filled with the Spirit, you will always speak in tongues. That’s kind of what people do when God does something unique. They institutionalize it. And so the Pentecostal movement institutionalized speaking in tongues as if it was, as they call it, the initial evidence of the baptism of the Spirit. So anyone who was raised Pentecostal would have heard that. well, in all likelihood, they just equate speaking in tongues with being filled with the Spirit. I’ve met Pentecostal people who… They talk about being filled with the Spirit, and what they’re really referring to is speaking in tongues. So, you know, there are people who equate those two. I don’t. I believe speaking in tongues is a gift of the Holy Spirit. I believe it’s genuine. I believe that, for example, I speak in tongues myself, but no one has ever heard me because it’s a private matter with me. It’s a private prayer experience for me. But even my wife has never heard me do it. But it’s part of my devotional life. But, you know, I was filled with the Spirit before that happened. I didn’t speak in tongues when I got baptized in the Spirit. It happened later. And I don’t have anything in the Bible that would tell me that speaking in tongues… is always synonymous with the baptism of the Spirit, or that everyone who is baptized in the Spirit necessarily do speak in tongues. That’s a Pentecostal tradition that goes far beyond anything the Bible actually teaches on the subject. Now, as far as evidence that you’ve been filled with the Spirit, I mean, if you’re filled with the Spirit and you speak in tongues, that’s a pretty good sign, but the Bible doesn’t present it as the sign. The sign that you’re filled with the Spirit is that you love. In fact, that’s even the sign of being a disciple of Jesus, that you love one another. He said, by this all men will know that you are my disciples, that you love one another. And Paul said that the fruit of the Spirit, among other things, he lists first love. The fruit of the Spirit is love in Galatians 5.22. Also in Romans, I think it’s 5.2, or maybe it’s 5.5. I think it’s Romans 5.5. He says that the love of God is spread abroad in our hearts. by the Holy Spirit. So it seems to me like the Holy Spirit’s main manifestation is he takes somebody who wasn’t previously, who didn’t love people like Christ does, and now they do. And that’s the evidence. Now, remember, Paul said, if I speak in tongues, this is 1 Corinthians 13.1, if I speak in the tongues of men and angels… But I don’t have love. It’s of zero value. I’m just like a gong making a noise. It doesn’t prove anything. And Paul even said that prophecy is better. Better than tongues. But he said, even if I prophesy, if I don’t have love, it’s of no value. Remember, Jesus said, many will say, Lord, we prophesied in your name. He said, I never knew you. You didn’t do what I said. That’s the problem. So, obviously, being obedient to Christ, being a disciple, being filled with the Spirit, all those are norms. I mean, in the early church, that was assumed that every Christian… That would describe every Christian. But the evidence of it was not that they spoke in tongues, even though many of them did, nor that they prophesied. Nor that they worked miracles or signs and wonders, but simply that they loved. That’s the fruit of the Spirit. I like what Juan Carlos, the late Juan Carlos Ortiz, said in his book, Disciple. And I quote this. I quote this in my book, Empire of the Recent Sun. He said, you know, he was a pastor from Argentina in Buenos Aires. And he said, in Buenos Aires, we don’t have very many trees. So at Christmas time, people want Christmas trees. So they go out and buy these cheap trees. constructions made of wire and paper and colored paper and so forth. They put them in their house. They get them for a dollar or two, he said. And then around Christmas time, they hang gifts on them. They could hang diamond rings and gold watches and all kinds of things on them. And everyone’s dazzled by these gifts. But he said after Christmas, when the gifts are all removed, the next morning the trees are out on the curb waiting for the trash man to pick them up. He said, you see, the gifts don’t tell you anything about the value of the tree. Because they’re not produced by the tree. The tree is just something that somebody hung some gifts on. The gifts are valuable, but a tree that has gifts on it isn’t necessarily a valuable tree. And he said, however, if you have an orange tree and it’s producing good oranges, that tells you what kind of tree it is because it’s producing good fruit. So it’s the fruit of the tree, not the gifts on the tree, that tell you something about the tree. You have no idea. I mean, if the tree has a watch hanging on it, it’s not a watch tree. It doesn’t, you know, somebody else hung that on there. And the gifts that we have, God has hung those on us. He’s given each one gifts. And people may see your gifts and say, wow, you are really a great Christian because look how gifted you are. And yet, you may not even be a Christian. Like when Jesus said, many will say, Lord, we prophesied, we did signs and wonders in your name, we cast out demons in your name. He said, I never knew you. So obviously having these gifts doesn’t in any sense even say that you’re a Christian, much less a Spirit-filled one. So what does say you’re a Spirit-filled Christian is if you have the fruit of the Spirit, which is love. And that’s what I would look for.
SPEAKER 01 :
No, thanks, Steve. I think what you’ve said and the book that you’ve mentioned, it does a really good job with reexamining what actually the Bible says rather than what I’ve grown up in church tradition to believe. So, no, I know you have other callers, Steve, so thank you very much for taking the time to answer my question. Okay. I appreciate it.
SPEAKER 08 :
I know it’s late over there in the UK, so sleep well. I will do. Thanks, Steve. God bless you, brother. Bye now. All right, our next caller is Patrick from North Idaho. Hi, Patrick. How far north in Idaho are you? I used to live in Idaho.
SPEAKER 04 :
Coeur d’Alene.
SPEAKER 08 :
Oh, yeah, I wasn’t that far north. Beautiful place. Welcome.
SPEAKER 04 :
Thank you. So I have some questions regarding the church. Now, when I read in Scripture in the book of Acts, I don’t see what they did in the book of Acts happening in the churches today. So where is the church today? Now, I was raised in Roman Catholicism. I got saved some years ago back in the 80s, started reading the Bible. I got discipled and then really got into the Bible. And I found a lot of problems with the Roman Catholic Church, and so I left. And I’ve been bouncing around different churches since then. My question to you is, The visible church, which was invisible in the Old Testament and visible now, is a church today. The Roman Catholics like to say it came through them. I don’t see that, but I don’t know where it came. So I’m wondering if you could enlighten a little bit. Also, maybe they also claim that without them, we wouldn’t have what we call the King James Bible today. There were 70 people that came together to put that together in my studies. How did that come about? And if you could maybe clarify a little bit for me.
SPEAKER 08 :
I’d be glad to. First of all, on the Bible thing, the Catholics do say, you know, you Protestants say you believe in sola scriptura, meaning you only believe what the Bible says and you don’t follow the traditions of the church. But then they say, but the very selection of the books in your Bible was done by the tradition of the church. You know, it’s the Catholic Church who decided which books are in your Bible. So how can you go by only the Bible and not the church? They don’t say that about the King James, per se, but just which books belong in the Bible, regardless of what translation you’re using. And I would correct that first, and I’ll answer your first question. The Roman Catholic Church did not decide what books belong in the Bible. The Roman Catholic Church, as we know it, with the Pope and all that, with all the power that he has, didn’t arise until about at least the 5th or 6th or 7th century. The papacy evolved. and eventually became what we know as the papacy. And it was evolving for a couple hundred years. But the first pope in the modern sense of the word is said to be Gregory the Great, and he was around 600 A.D. And so the Catholic Church, the word Catholic means universal. And so the early church used the word Catholic a lot to distinguish it from the cults or the heretics, like the Gnostics were contrasted from the Catholic Church. But the word Catholic Church meant the universal church. It wasn’t associated with Rome or the Pope or anything like that. It’s the universal global body of Christ is the church. And that Catholic Church, which is simply what we call the church, is the entity that really preserved the New Testament books and decided which ones were authentic. Now, they didn’t decide which ones were authentic. They recognized which ones were authentic. As far as the Old Testament books, those were decided by the Jews long before Christ was born. And Christ seemed to support the canon of the Old Testament just by quoting it all the time as authoritative. But as far as the New Testament books, of course, they weren’t written until Christ had gone back to heaven. And they were written by Apostles. But there were also a lot of books that weren’t written by apostles but claimed to be, and therefore it was the church’s task to distinguish between the real apostolic books and the ones that were fake apostolic books. And they did pretty well because early on, long before there was an official canonization of New Testament books, almost all the books of the New Testament were universally recognized, like within a generation of the time that these books were written. Virtually all churches recognize Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts. and Paul’s epistles, and 1 Peter, as the kind of books that they recognize as apostolic. There were a few books, like Revelation in Hebrews, 2 Peter, 1 John, and Jude. These books, there were some churches that immediately recognized them as authentic, and some churches were not certain. So they were called disputed books, up until about 950. I assume about 397, the Council of Carthage kind of solidified the canon of the New Testament with the present 27 books we have. But most of those books had been accepted by the whole church from the day they were written. And so there were only a few books in our New Testament that were even questioned after the apostolic process. And the church’s task was to recognize which ones were authentic and which ones were forgeries. And I think they did a good job. I think they’re very cautious. That’s why it took them so long. They didn’t just kind of flip it. So let’s take it. You know, they they wanted to make sure they were right. They these books were investigated for centuries. before all of them were recognized as, okay, yeah, we can pretty much trust this as apostolic. So, but even that was decided two centuries before the first pope really was, you know, of the modern type was, which means Roman Catholicism, which is the church that was under the Roman popes, the Roman bishops, didn’t really exist until there were popes. And there weren’t any popes, you know, at the Council of Carthage where the final decision about the books of the Bible were made. But even if there had, only about half a dozen of the 27 books had to wait that long to be included. Almost the entire New Testament was recognized by everybody before there was any kind of Catholic church, so to speak. So when the Catholics say, well, you Protestants depend on us for your Bible. No, we depend on the early church. But they weren’t Roman Catholics. They would have never heard the term Roman Catholic if you used it in their presence. They had never heard the term Pope. You know, at the time the canon was made, none of the bishops at the Council of Carthage had ever heard the word Pope or ever believed that the Roman pontiff was somehow over the whole church. That’s a developing doctrine that came up later. So I’m not going to accept their argument. that the Catholic Church gave us the canon of Scripture. Now, you said as a former Catholic, you wonder which church is the right one. And when you ask that question, I believe you’re doing what most of us have conditionally done, I mean by default done, I should say. You’re assuming there’s one visible church that stands out from all the others that are all fakes. And generally speaking, although the church is in fact visible, I don’t think it’s institutional. The Catholic Church is one of the first institutional churches, probably the first institutional church in the West. And the Protestant churches broke off. They were institutional churches, too, like Luther. There’s a denomination started after him. A denomination started after Calvin and so forth and Wesley. These different leaders… different denominations started around their teaching and became institutionalized so that they were just as institutionalized as the Catholic Church was. They were just alternatives to it. Now, I believe that was a mistake. I don’t think the church should have ever been institutionalized in that way. To have institutionalization, you have to have a hierarchy of authority. And Jesus said that’s how the rulers of the Gentiles do things. He told his apostles, the rulers of the Gentiles… they rule over people. They have their authority structure. They exercise authority over them. He said, it should never be that way among you. He said, anyone among you that wants to be the chief should be simply the slave of everybody. You know, everybody’s supposed to be servants. And those who serve best are the ones who set the example for the rest. And they are the ones who are influencing the church in the best way. But they’re not bosses. They’re not authority figures. And, you know, Jesus set up a family, not a corporation. And so, and Jesus said that to the disciples, don’t let anyone call you father or rabbi because you’re all brothers, right? You’re not over each other. You’re just brothers. And so, I mean, the whole idea of an institutional church, you know, had the setting up of a hierarchy and, you know, a succession of leaders with one dying. They have to find another, just like they recently picked a new pope. That’s part of institutionalization. You lose a pope, you’ve got a vacancy, you’ve got to fill in with another, just like it’s the CEO thing. dies of a corporation, they have to elect someone else to be the CEO. That’s a corporation. That’s not family. When my dad died, we didn’t, in our family, we didn’t elect another person to be dad. He served his purpose. He moved on. The family goes on. But we don’t have to, he didn’t leave a vacancy. And that’s how families are. Corporations are otherwise. And churches that have become corporations, I believe, they can serve God. I’m not trying to demonize them all. I just think it’s a mistake that the church went that way because now we have to decide, well, which corporation is the real church? Is the Catholic corporation or is the Lutheran or the Episcopalian or the Methodist or the Presbyterian, the Pentecostal, the Baptist? Which one is the real church? And the answer is none at all. None of these corporations is the church, and the membership of these corporations is not coextensive. with the membership of the church. The church is made up of all Christians who are truly following Jesus. They are the body of Christ globally. Each one a member of the body. And in every church, you’ll probably find some members of the body of Christ, and you’ll find some people there who aren’t in the body of Christ because they’re not converted. So it’s a mistake to consider the church membership to be co-extensive with any organized church. There’s Christians in every denomination, and I would just say if you’re trying to look for a denomination, find one that honors Christ and where people love each other and you’ve got a Christian community that’s trying to approximate the commands of Jesus. And you can’t usually do much better than that in the modern world, I’m sorry to say. I’m out of time for this question. I need to take a break, but we will be back in like 30 seconds. We have another half hour coming. You’re listening to The Narrow Path. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. I’ll be right back. Don’t go away.
SPEAKER 02 :
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SPEAKER 08 :
Welcome back to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg, and we’re live for another half hour, taking your calls. You know, right now our lines are full, so I’m not going to give out the number. If we end up having some lines free, I’ll You know, I’ll give out that number again right now. We may be – the next half hour might be full with calls waiting right now. So I’m going to go to the phones and talk to Sandy from Gig Harbor, Washington, who I happened to cross her path the other night at one of the places I was speaking. Hi, Sandy.
SPEAKER 05 :
Good afternoon, Steve, and I enjoyed your fellowship the other night. And I have a question from – Paul says, we are changed from glory to glory. And the question is, when a person gets old and has been a disciple for several, several years, and in their middle time, getting closer to, you know, changing from glory to glory, can you articulate new understanding of what God’s doing? Yeah, new understanding? Or is it too spiritual?
SPEAKER 08 :
You mean that when someone changes from glory to glory, is that accompanied by an increased understanding of theology? Is that what you’re asking?
SPEAKER 05 :
Yes, pretty much. Okay, I’ll be glad to talk about that, Sandy.
SPEAKER 08 :
Let me go into that. When Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3.18 that we’re changed from glory to glory, that’s in the middle of a sentence, and we should see the whole thing. He said that we all, with unveiled faces, beholding as in a glass or as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are changed from glory to glory into that same image, even as by the Spirit of God. Now, that means that as we’re walking in our Christian life, filled with the Spirit, led by the Spirit, the Spirit of God is doing something, changing us into more like the image of Christ. And by that, it doesn’t mean his, obviously, physical image. You know, we’re not going to grow beards and walk around in sandals more than we did before. He’s talking about his character, his spiritual nature, and so forth. It says in 2 Peter 1.4 that we are partakers of the divine nature. So when you’re born again, you receive the Spirit, the Holy Spirit imparts to you the divine nature. You become a child of God, not just a child of Adam. And you have the divine nature given to you. Paul said to the Galatians in chapter 4 of Galatians and verse 19, he said, My little children, toward whom I travail in labor again until Christ is formed in you. Now, his goal was not just for people to get saved and go to heaven. In fact, he’s not content at all for that. He’s travailing as if he’s giving birth to them again. until Christ is formed in them. Christ is being formed in us. We’re being changed from glory to glory by the Spirit of God’s work in our life, becoming more like Christ. Now, the goal is, of course, to be like Christ. Anyone who’s been following Christ and walking in the Spirit should, if you’re following Jesus, you should get closer. I think you get a little better at walking. You catch up with him a little more. I think the difference between you and Christ should diminish. the longer you follow him, hopefully you’re catching up with him a little bit. You’ll never be exactly like him, I’m sure, in this life, but we will be in the next. And in the meantime, we’re supposed to be making advances toward that. So if a person has been a Christian for a long time, it’s, to my mind, inexcusable. If they’re not any more like Jesus than they were when they started, I mean, what have they been doing? I believe possibly this is the fault of the church more than of individual people. Christians because I think a lot of people when they get saved they’re zealous for God but the church never disciples them and remember what Jesus said no disciple is greater than his master but every disciple who’s fully trained I think this is Luke 6 40 if I’m not mistaken every disciple who’s fully trained shall be like his master so if the church is making disciples as Jesus commanded them to and teaching them to observe all things that Christ committed commanded us to do And I’m not sure how many churches are doing that. I haven’t encountered very many that make that their aim. But if somebody has adopted as their curriculum, we’re going to teach these converts to obey Christ in all things, teach them to observe all things Christ commanded. That is after all the assignment we’ve been given. I’m not sure why so few people are making any effort to do it. But if you sit under that kind of discipleship. you will become like your master. A disciple who’s fully trained shall be like his master, Jesus said. And so, yeah, I think that the whole process of walking with God in the Christian community, filled with the Spirit, obeying him and being discipled, is to result in more likeness of Christ. Now, you asked if that includes greater understanding, like maybe of the Bible or theology. I’m not sure if that’s what you mean, but I would say I would hope so. I would have to say I would expect that to be so. I mean, Peter said in 2 Peter 3.18, grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. We’re supposed to be learning. And he didn’t say until you reach, you know, this particular point. I believe that we never reach the complete likeness of Christ in this life. Probably we probably should get close if we have a long time to work at it. That is to grow. But we should be growing in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord. And so I would think that as you grow in the knowledge of God, things in the Bible that were opaque or obscure to you before probably will become more understandable. I have to say that’s – I mean, if I was judging from my experience, that would be – But you said, or is it more spiritual? I think that to become more like Christ has less to do with how much head knowledge you have or how much understanding you have of obscure passages of Scripture, though I think that growth should be accompanied by that to some degree. I think it has more to do with your spiritual maturity. A person can know all about the Bible and be a spiritual person, baby. You know, I mean, think of the Pharisees. They probably knew the Bible better than anyone in Israel, and yet they were not very spiritual. So I think that spirituality is measured more in the fruit of the Spirit. You know, as you get older and more like Christ, you’ll be more loving. You’ll be more joyful. You’ll be more peaceful. You’ll be more gentle. You’ll be more self-controlled. You’ll be more patient. You’ll be more good. I mean, these are the fruit of the Spirit. And like all fruit, it ripens over time. When you first are a Christian, these fruits begin to emerge, but they’re green and unripe. And as you grow and mature, these fruits grow and mature. You should be much more like Christ at the end of a long walk with him than you were when you started. And I think that those fruits are spirituality. I think spirituality is not theological knowledge. Although I delight in theological knowledge, and I do believe that following Christ and studying the Word of God and meditating on it day and night does result in increased knowledge. And that’s not a bad thing. Some people say, well, he’s got so much head knowledge, he doesn’t have any in his heart. Yeah, that’s possible, I suppose. But I don’t know why you can’t have both. I don’t know why you can’t be more like Jesus and know more about what God has to say So I’m going to say both. Does it result in greater theological knowledge, or is it more spiritual? I’d say basically it’s more spiritual, but I don’t think it happens unaccompanied by increased knowledge of the things of God. So I’d say kind of both. I appreciate your call. I’m sorry. Thank you. I hit a wrong button. God bless you, Sandy. I think I accidentally hung up on somebody, and I don’t know who it was. I’m sorry. If that was you, call back. I’ll do my very best to get you on. That was my error. I’m not a very good broadcaster. I’m a Bible teacher, and I don’t know very much about technology. So to hit the wrong buttons is not uncommon for me. I apologize for that. We’re going to talk next to Priscilla from Vancouver, B.C. Hi, Priscilla. Welcome.
SPEAKER 03 :
Hi, Steve. Pleased to be with you. Grief AI, also known as grief bot or grief tech, refers to the use of intelligence to stimulate interaction with deceased loved ones offering digital replicas. of the personality and speech patterns. Just one moment.
SPEAKER 08 :
Let me stop you. Priscilla, let me stop you for a minute. I have no idea what you’re talking about. Some of your words are not clear to me, and I don’t know what they mean.
SPEAKER 03 :
So what is your question?
SPEAKER 08 :
What is your question?
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes, sir. I just wanted to make sure that there’s a bit of a background. No go or yes go with the grief AI. I’m really pressed on my chest to bring this up for some reason.
SPEAKER 08 :
That’s why I’ve been harassing you. Did you say grief AI or Greek AI? It’s hard to understand.
SPEAKER 03 :
Grief, sir.
SPEAKER 08 :
Grief. Grief. All I can say is I have no idea what it is, so I can’t say yay or nay.
SPEAKER 03 :
Okay. Okay. use of artificial intelligence to stimulate interactions with deceased loved ones offering aid. You can’t do that.
SPEAKER 08 :
You can’t contact deceased loved ones, and the Bible forbids that. And whether you go to a medium to do it or go to a computer, an AI to do it, it’d be a wrong errand. It’d be against what God commands. So I would just say, if that’s what grief AI is, I’d say no. Thumbs down on that one. Thank you for your call. Let’s talk to Jan from Cottage Grove, Minnesota. Hi, Jan. Welcome.
SPEAKER 06 :
Thank you for taking my call. I had the honor of working with a man who was a Coptic Christian from Egypt, and he said that the apostle, Mark was the one who set up their church in Egypt, and I think that’s older than the Catholic religion.
SPEAKER 08 :
Well, church tradition does teach, and the Coptic church believes, that Mark, who wrote the book of Mark, was the one who went to Egypt and planted the church down there. It’s not certain whether the tradition is true, but I know of no alternative tradition, and since traditions have to arise from somewhere, I don’t have any reason to doubt that’s true. I would say this, though. Mark was not one of the Apostles. He traveled with Peter, the apostle, but he was not one of the twelve, for example. But that doesn’t mean anything, because Philip wasn’t an apostle either, and he was an evangelist, and he planted a church in Samaria. I don’t have any reason to doubt that Mark may have established the original Coptic church.
SPEAKER 06 :
I was… Delighted to go to their service because he told me that their service has not changed since Mark set it up, you know, over 2,000 years ago or whatever, that their services are still exactly the same as the way they were originally set up.
SPEAKER 08 :
You know, I once met a pastor of a Baptist denomination. Now, I was raised Baptist, but this was a different Baptist denomination. There’s about 40 different Baptist denominations. and I was unfamiliar with this one, but I was talking to him, and he said that his denomination, not other Baptists, but his version of the Baptist denomination was the only church that was the true church, and they were doing things the way they did them in apostolic times. He said they weren’t even Protestants because they never protested. They were the remnant church throughout the whole medieval time when the Catholic church, they felt, was gone astray, and they were somehow the real deal. So his claim was that his denomination… was doing things the way the apostles did, and no matter what else was going on more visibly, their little group was the true group. Of course, both the Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Church would say that about themselves, too. They’re following the traditions of the apostles, they say. So it’s not surprising if the Coptics would say, yeah, we’re following the same. Nothing has changed over the past 2,000 years. I can’t think of anything that hasn’t changed over the past 2,000 years in human societies or human organizations. Certainly Jesus doesn’t change, but people always change and habits change and traditions change and so forth. And since we can’t meet everybody of the past 2,000 years who was in any church group, we can’t document that none of them introduced something that had not been followed before. So, I mean, I appreciate the fact that the Coptics believe that Mark set up everything in their church the way it’s still done. Maybe they’re right. I’m not saying they’re wrong. I don’t know Mark. I don’t know what he would have set up. But I will say that any group that says nothing has changed in the way they do church in the past 2,000 years, I would say, frankly, I think that sounds a little gullible, but I don’t mean to be insulting. I just think that It’s easy for us to say, well, the way we’ve done it for living memory for generations, you know, that goes all the way back to the beginning. But I’m not sure that we have documentation of that. We can just assume our ancestors didn’t change anything from the way their ancestors did. But I will say this, too. If they are right, if Mark set up the church in Egypt and Ethiopia and he and he established a certain way of doing church, that’d be interesting to know. But it wouldn’t necessarily mean it was prescriptive for all churches of all time, because I don’t think that all the churches had exactly the same customs. You see, this was talking earlier about institutionalization. The Church of Corinth, for example, was an apostolic church, and Paul’s instructions to them were to have two or three people per service speak in tongues, one at a time, and only with interpretation, and have two or three prophets speak. Now, I don’t know any church that follows that pattern, nor necessarily that it should. Corinth was supposed to do that. Paul gave them those instructions. We don’t know if he’d give the exact same instructions to every church. I mean, Corinth had their own set of problems, and he was trying to corral them in with these instructions. But whether he would give the same instructions to the church of Ephesus or Colossae, we have no idea. So, I mean, it’s not as if church had to be institutionalized and standardized and rubber stamped, you know, even in the first century. I don’t know. Certainly, I don’t believe that the Jewish church in Jerusalem, I don’t think they conducted services the way that the Antioch church did, even though there’s both apostolic churches and they’re both. simultaneously offering, but the Antioch church, for example, didn’t go to the temple. The Jerusalem Christians did. So, I mean, whatever Mark may or may not have done in Egypt and Ethiopia when he started the church there, it may or may not be something that churches should do today. One thing we can say, there are things that shouldn’t change, and there are things that I think are negotiables. Paul told the Corinthian church that the women shouldn’t pray a prophesy without their heads covered and that the men should not cover their heads when they pray a prophesy. But after saying that, he said in verse 16 of 1 Corinthians 11, verse 16, he says, but if anyone’s contentious about this, we don’t have any such customs ourselves, nor do the churches of Christ. Certainly the Jerusalem church didn’t have that custom because even Paul himself and other Jews would take the Nazarite vow and they would grow their hair long, you know. And Jewish men covered their heads when they prayed, whereas Paul told the Corinthians not to. In other words, there were different customs of different regions. These were not non-negotiable issues. They were the kinds of flexibilities that a church could adopt if that was what worked for them or if that fit the standards of their community. So, yeah, I don’t know if any of the modern churches… you know, resemble very closely the way church was done in the early days. I suspect that if any do, they’d be what we today call house churches, where they might fellowship over a meal. Like, I don’t know of any church today, maybe the Coptic church would be an exception, I’m not that familiar with them. I don’t know of any church today that takes communion over a community meal. But that’s how they did in Corinth. Paul gave instructions about that. We know they were doing that. And we know that from the church fathers that that was pretty much the way the church was. Their fellowship was often over a meal that they called the agape or the agape feast. Maybe the Coptic Church still does. I don’t know. The Roman Church doesn’t and the Protestant churches don’t. I don’t think the Eastern Orthodox do. And I guess I’d be surprised if I heard the Coptics did. And yet that’s what they did in Paul’s apostolic assemblies. So it seems to me there’s some flexibility. And though we don’t know for sure whether the Coptic Church has never changed anything from the way Mark set it up, even if they hadn’t, it might be that they’re preserving something that’s not absolutely necessary to preserve. So that would be my way of looking at that whole question. All right. Well, thank you for your call. God bless you. You’re welcome. Bye now. Sasha from Fayette, Maine. Welcome to the Narrow Point.
SPEAKER 07 :
Hi. Yes.
SPEAKER 08 :
Hi.
SPEAKER 07 :
Hi. Okay. So my question is about David in 2 Samuel when it says that the Lord told him to take a census. on his people and so he did and then it talks about in first chronicles i think it’s 21 it says that satan rose up against israel because david took a census on his people and that satan’s the one that told him to take the census now is that kind of just speaking about david thinking at first it was the lord and then realizing it wasn’t or like what what what does that mean
SPEAKER 08 :
Well, the way you represented it from the Samuel account, you mentioned that God told David to take a census. That’s not exactly how it’s worded. It says the wrath of God was moved against Israel, and he moved David. It says he moved him to take a census. Now, when David did it, this was not pleasing to God. So obviously God didn’t command him to. So God moving David to do that, was not through him giving him instructions to it, but rather operating somehow behind the scenes to get David to do that, although it was not right. See, the reason God did that is because it says he was angry at Israel. He wasn’t angry at David initially. I mean, it wasn’t David that was being punished. Israel was being punished. But, you know, when God was mad at Egypt, he punished Egypt by moving Pharaoh, To harden his heart and not let the people go. So the whole nation came under the judgments of God because of their evil king. And the whole nation of Egypt was judged for their idolatry. We could see this sort of as what was going on in Israel. Israel also tended to compromise with idols. We don’t know exactly because we’re not told in the passage. We’re not told exactly what the… the relevant offense was at that particular time. It’s not hard to imagine because Israel was continually doing things offensive to God. They weren’t very faithful in obeying him. But whatever it was, and we’re not told, was something that made God angry at Israel for their disobedience. And his anger against Israel was going to be visited upon them through a judgment that And that judgment was coming about by David making a decision that was going to be a disastrous decision, just like Egypt suffered because God hardened Pharaoh’s heart to make a disastrous decision and ruined his country. Now, again, the fact that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart is not the same thing as saying God commanded Pharaoh to not let the people go. God was involved in his not doing it, but he didn’t command it. He commanded the opposite. He said, let my people go. But he also hardened his heart so he wouldn’t. And this was not just strictly because God was mad at Pharaoh, though Pharaoh was a bad guy, a very bad guy. But God was mad at the whole, all of Egypt and their gods. And God said in the 12th chapter of Exodus, he’s going to, through these plagues, bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. So the nation of Egypt and their religion and their stuff was all under God’s judgment. And the Pharaoh was simply the instrument who was moved to make bad decisions, which brought disaster, which disaster the nation actually deserved. In this case, David was the one who made a bad decision. And it says that God moved him to do it, but it doesn’t say exactly how. Now, when you go to parallel in 1 Chronicles, as you pointed out, it says that it was Satan that moved David to number the people. Now, numbering the people was the thing that was wrong. We’re never told why it was wrong, and it’s not obvious to us why it would be. I mean, God told Moses to number the people at two different times, but once in Exodus and once in Numbers or Deuteronomy. But the thing is, you know, for some reason this was the wrong thing. There’s a lot of subtext to this story that, you know, I guess we’re either assumed to already know or it’s assumed we don’t need to know. But there was more to this story than meets the eye. It’s kind of a very skeletal account. Something Israel did that we’re not told made God angry. So, as a judgment, God brought judgment on them through a bad decision that David made. Why numbering the people was a bad decision, we’re also not even told that. Although Joab, when he heard the command to go out and number the people, he protested to David. He said, why would you do this thing? You know, this is not right. And David ignored him. So, I can’t even tell you why it was wrong to do it, but Joab even knew it was. There’s more than meets the eye here, and we don’t have to know what it is, apparently, or else God would have told us. But because of the act of King David, a judgment came on the nation. But that judgment was the object. At the very beginning, God was angry at Israel, and so he moved David to make a decision that brought disaster on the nation. And a lot of times having rulers that do bad things is, in fact, God’s judgment on a nation. God often gives nations that deserve judgment the kinds of kings who will do the things that will bring judgment on them. And sometimes the very giving of certain rulers. I would have to say that some of the presidents we’ve had in my lifetime were given to us, no doubt, because we deserve the judgment of God. And they were, you know, very worthy judgments against us. Thankfully, God’s merciful. And sometimes he lets us have another chance. But the point is, that’s what was going on there. God was going to judge Israel because of their sin that had already happened. aroused his wrath. And so as a means of bringing judgment, God used Satan, as it were. So how could God use Satan? Well, that’s not an uncommon idea in the Bible. We have the book of Job. God tested Job by allowing Satan to do the kind of harm to Job that Satan already wanted to do. And so just releasing the devil to do what he wanted to Job was something God did deliberately and could have prevented it. He could have said no, but he let it happen. So in a sense, Job’s trials, which we know were brought on him directly by the devil. The Bible says the devil went out and did this. Yet when Job had these trials, he said, well, the Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. So, you know, he didn’t know about the devil’s activity. He knew that this wouldn’t happen if God did. didn’t intend to take these things from him. And it says when Job said that in this, he did not sin with his mouth. He did not curse God or sin with his mouth. When the next batch of problems came on him, which were also from the devil, And his wife said, why don’t you just curse God and die? Job said, you speak like a foolish woman. Should we accept only the good things from the Lord and not the evil things also, implying from the Lord? He recognized that nothing could happen to him if the Lord didn’t at least allow it. And Job apparently didn’t know anything about the devil’s involvement. But the point is, both times it says he didn’t sin with his mouth. By saying, we’re receiving these hardships from the Lord. The Lord gives and the Lord takes away it. Blessed be the name of the Lord. So even when the devil is given access to test or to harm a believer, this can only happen if God allows it. And so if God allowed Satan to tempt David to do the wrong thing, it could easily be said that God moved David to it. Not directly, but through Satan’s being given permission to do it. So that’s how I understand that very strange… And difficult story. Difficult to understand. But that’s about all we have on it and all the time we have to give to it. I appreciate your call. I hope that helps a bit. You’re listening to The Narrow Path. We’re listener supported. If you’d like to help donate to us, you can write to The Narrow Path, P.O. Box 1730, Temecula, California, 92593, or our website, thenarrowpath.com.
