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Join Steve Gregg as he opens the lines to thought-seeking listeners on The Narrow Path. This episode addresses key questions of faith across denominations—from understanding specific denominational responses such as communion in Catholicism and its symbolic versus literal interpretations, to dissecting the Seventh-day Sabbath as both a concept of rest and its numerical place in biblical history. Callers raise inquiries about marital affections, which leads to a discussion on biblical directives for husbands and wives, woven with insights from both Old and New Testament teachings. As the episode progresses, listeners will be captivated by the discussion on how dinosaurs
SPEAKER 1 :
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
SPEAKER 07 :
…some of the best calls from past programs. They cover a variety of topics important to anyone interested in the Bible and Christianity. In addition to the radio program, The Narrow Path has a website. You can go to www.thenarrowpath.com where you can find hundreds of resources that can all be downloaded for free. And now, please enjoy this special collection of calls to Steve Gregg and The Narrow Path.
SPEAKER 09 :
Our first caller today is Greg from Hartford, Connecticut. Greg, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 10 :
Hi, good afternoon. Thank you for taking my call. I have a question. If you can please explain the difference, and then after you explain the difference, if you have time, it’s your denomination. What’s the difference between Church of Christ and Presbyterianism? I’m just interested because I’m studying a lot of R.C. Sproul. And I just don’t know the difference between, I guess, the two, for lack of a better word, nominations.
SPEAKER 09 :
Hello. Welcome to The Narrow Path. I am not hearing anything right now, and I’m not sure why. Yeah, I’m supposed to be hearing this radio, and I maybe somehow have become disconnected. Oh, no, I’m connected. I’m connected. All right, I don’t know what’s going on here. Oh, there we go. I can hear something now. Let’s go ahead and go forward with the show. I think we’re going to do okay. Okay, I’m on the air. We had a problem connecting just like one minute before I went on the air, and I had to shut down my equipment and boot it back up. And then when it booted up, it didn’t seem to be going, and then I wasn’t hearing it. Okay, we should be okay. Hopefully the program will go well for the whole day. It’s live. which is obviously live or else we wouldn’t be broadcasting that little problem. And as usual, we are taking phone calls from listeners. If you’d like to be on the program, you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith, feel free to give me a call. The number is… 844-484-5737. That’s 844-484-5737. And we have a few lines open right now. Go ahead and call. We have some calls waiting, too, but I want to, before taking any calls, make a couple of comments. One is if you’re a long-term listener, you know that we were planning for about a year for there to be a debate between myself and Dr. Michael Brown. If you don’t know Dr. Michael Brown, in some markets his program comes on right after this one. He’s a very well-known Messianic Jewish leader, and I’ve always thought highly of him, and I do now. I still do. But our debate got canceled. It was supposed to be last month. But a few months ago, what I consider to be a fake scandal happened. arose about him, and he had to go under some kind of investigation, which is now completed. In my mind, he was vindicated in it. I’ve read the results of the investigation from an independent entity that investigated, but there’s still a lot of people who are saying that he’s still guilty of the things he was accused of. I just want to say, I just saw today a video. It may have come out today or yesterday. I don’t know. That is an interview with him and a couple of other people. And I would think that if anyone has any questions about Michael Brown’s innocence in this matter or his integrity in the matter, I think you should watch it. Because from the very beginning, when I first heard about this months ago, I said it sounded to me like there were some things he did inappropriately 23 years ago. but that he had repented at the time, and there are no new accusations against him. So it seemed to me old news. I mean, what a man did 23 years ago and repented of hardly reflects in my mind on what his current state is. So I kind of gave him a provisional tentative pass. It hadn’t been investigated much, but from what I’d heard, he sounded to be, you know, clean. And then I read, after the investigation was complete, I read the results of the investigation, and it confirmed what I thought before. So I had no problems with it. However, the debate I was supposed to have was canceled by the church that was supposed to host it because of the scandal. I was sorry to hear that because a lot of people are looking forward to that debate, and we hope it’s going to be rescheduled now. But there were still a lot of people. He’s lost a lot of support, and there’s a lot of people making YouTube videos against him, which I think are entirely out of line given the nature of the outcome. But if you’re still curious about Dr. Brown’s innocence, I think you can satisfy yourself that he is innocent. If you want to look at this video that I watched today, it’s on a YouTube podcast, I guess it is, called Mercy Culture. If you go on to YouTube and just look up Mercy Culture, open their page, you’ll see a recent video that says Dr. Brown tells his story. And I watched that today, and I have my differences with Dr. Brown, which is why we plan to debate. We plan to debate over the whole issue of Israel, and I hope that will happen again. I also have some differences with him over his attitude towards some of the so-called revivals that have taken place over the past couple decades. But I believe he’s a good man. I believe he’s an honest man. And I feel like he was wrong in this whole fake scandal. And I think that anybody who still has questions about him really kind of owes it to themselves and to him and to the body of Christ that you hear it, hear this video. It’s again, if you go on YouTube under Mercy Culture, you’ll find this video. So I just wanted to put that out there. And there’s one other thing I wanted to bring up, and that is that beginning June 9th, We are going to be on another station, and it’s a big one. We’re going to be on in Miami. And so we’ll have more about that soon. Right now, Salem Media has some Spanish language stations, and they’re switching them over on June 9th to English language, and we’re going to be on them. So I’ll give you more information about that, and it’ll be posted at our website soon. All right, that was just decided this week. All right, enough of that. Let’s go to the phones, and we will talk first of all to Cesar in Burbank, California. Hi, Cesar. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 04 :
Good afternoon, Steve. I just had a question. My question is regarding Satan and Does he have to ask permission to hurt us or tempt us?
SPEAKER 09 :
To do what to us?
SPEAKER 04 :
Like tempt us or hurt us or test us in a way.
SPEAKER 09 :
Yes, Satan does have to get permission to do anything to us. Jesus said to Peter and to the disciples, Satan has asked permission to sift you as wheat, which means to tempt them and see if he can get anyone to defect. We see, of course, in the book of Job. Job was tested, which is the same word in the Greek and the Hebrew for tempted. But he was tested and therefore tempted. at God’s permission, because Satan couldn’t do it without that. So the answer to your question is apparently yes. I mean, as far as we know, Satan needs to get permission for that.
SPEAKER 04 :
Okay, thank you.
SPEAKER 09 :
All right, I’m not hearing you, but all right, thank you very much. Yeah, I think we have maybe a long delay here. I hope you’ll endure it until we can get this fixed. All right, let’s talk to George in Scottsdale, Arizona. George, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 12 :
Sure. Thanks for taking my call, sir. Yesterday you had questions about David, a man after God’s own heart. First of all, I realize that anybody can do bad stuff in their youth and change, whether they repent or not. But I would like your comments on 1 Samuel 25, where David was basically running a protection racket in 1 Samuel 27, where he makes his living through basically armed robbery. Could you comment on that, sir?
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, yeah. 1 Samuel 27, you say?
SPEAKER 12 :
And 1 Samuel 25. In 25, he runs the protection racket where he and his guys – are watching out, you know, unrequested, watching out for Nabal’s, I think it’s Nabal’s blocks, and then he demands, you know, payment for that. Nabal, okay, thank you. That’s the first one. And then 27, where he goes out and he raids, you know, villages and destroys the village and kills all the people, you know, to make his living.
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, yeah, I don’t read that he did that to make his living. What he said was that he had protected Nabal’s stuff from bandits and so forth and had never asked for anything from him. And then when David actually was in need… He went and asked Nabal if he would, you know, give him some help because he’d been doing so much in that way. David doesn’t say that he’d been doing it for a living, although, frankly, he could have. I mean, he didn’t do it, but there’s no evidence that he did that. But I don’t know that that would have been a bad thing to protect somebody and receive pay. Lots of people did. hire bodyguards. So, I mean, I don’t see that being a bodyguard is an unworthy profession. But David wasn’t doing that. David was doing it for free. And then when he had a need, he asked if Nabal would give his people some gift of food. Now, of course, he got angry at Nabal, but not because Nabal couldn’t afford it or wouldn’t do it or anything like that, but because Nabal insulted him. He basically enabled, you know, showed no appreciation at all. In fact, he insulted him and called David a criminal and things like that, a runaway slave. And so David just got angry. You know, here, he’s been doing this guy favors for apparently an extended period of time. And the man just hurls insults at him. So David began to arm his people to go and attack Nabal. Now, that wasn’t the right thing to do. And he repented of it. Of course, Abigail came out and, you know, tried to pour oil on the water, as it were, and to reason with David and he did say well I think blessed are you of the Lord because you prevented me from doing wrong so David realized that he was tempted to do harm to this man but not because he was running a protection racket but because the guy had insulted him in exchange for his or in return for his protection that he’d been giving now as far as the villages he destroyed in chapter 27 these I believe were Canaanite villages or Philistine villages. We’re not really given much information about the nationality of these, but these were the enemies of Israel. And David was, although he had been pursued himself by the armies of Israel that wanted to kill him, he was still, as it were, fighting Israel’s battles with his men. And the wiping out of the Canaanites had never been fully done before, although they were told to do so back in the time of Joshua. And it would appear that David was carrying out those kinds of campaigns. Now, was he doing it for food? Maybe. I mean, he could have been. I don’t know. The Israelites were not told that when they wiped out the Canaanites they could not, you know, that they just had, like, the food rot that was there. You know, people who fight in wars typically have, you know, claimed the spoils of battle, and if that’s food and other stuff. That’s what you do in war. He was at war with these nations. So, you know, this is not what I consider to be a protection racket. Certainly, of course, killing off these villages wasn’t protecting anyone in particular. And what he did for naval was, again, done without charge. So I don’t really, yeah, I’m not really seeing the problem here that you seem to be seeing in this situation.
SPEAKER 12 :
All right. Well, I appreciate your perspective. Thank you.
SPEAKER 09 :
Great. All right. Thank you, George. We have another Arizona caller from Phoenix. Brandon, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 05 :
Hey, Steve. How are you doing?
SPEAKER 09 :
Good.
SPEAKER 05 :
Hello. Awesome. Awesome. Okay. My question is about the Eucharist, the Communion. I’ve been studying a little bit about it, and I wanted to know about, like, because I don’t believe in that the Catholics, how they partake of a community where it changes into their mouth, like the body and the blood, how it changes. But I wanted you to, if you can break down a little bit to us where the first fathers, how they said that the body is the, you know, the bread is the body, the blood is the juice, is the representative of how it is. Can you kind of break down of what Christ was saying, that this is my body, take, eat, and drink, and
SPEAKER 09 :
Sure, I’d be glad to do that. First of all, I mean, the church fathers did say that the bread and the wine was the body and the blood of Jesus, but that’s just saying the same thing Jesus said. The question is, was Jesus speaking literally? And if not, were they speaking the same way he was? That is, equally not literally. Okay. So, I mean, that Jesus used those terms and the church fathers used the same terms doesn’t tell us how they interpreted those terms or how Jesus meant them. So, you know, regardless of what the church fathers said, we don’t know for sure. At least some of them said it was memorial. And I have actually a whole lecture on this where I quote the church fathers on this. But if you’re interested, you can go to thenarrowpath.com. under topical lectures. There’s one on the Eucharist and the Agape Feast. You might be interested in those lectures, because I do cite the church fathers. But what Jesus actually meant when he was at the table and said, this bread is my body, which is broken for you, and this cup is the new covenant in my blood, was basically saying that… the Passover, which they were engaged in at the moment, was going to, for them, have a different meaning than it had had all their lives. These were Jews who kept the Passover every year, and the Jews had been keeping the Passover for 1,400 years at that time, every year, although they missed it some years. Sometimes they neglected it, but they mostly kept it. And when they did, as they were commanded to do, it was a memorial of God saving his people, Israel, out of slavery in Egypt. Now, this salvation of the people out of Egypt was a type and a shadow. of salvation we have in Christ. And Jesus simply said from now on when you do this, You don’t do it in remembrance of your salvation from Egypt, but you essentially do it in remembrance of your salvation from me, that is, I’m saving you. Now, in the meal, traditionally, when the Jews took Passover, as these disciples and Jesus had done all their lives previously, at a certain point, the host of the meeting would hold up the bread and say, this bread is the bread… of affliction that our fathers ate in Egypt. Now, obviously, that meant not that that bread literally magically turned into 1400 year old bread. or that it was the same pieces of bread that their fathers ate 14 centuries ago. It’s hard to know exactly how bread that had already been eaten, they would be eating it again. It sounds kind of disgusting. But the thing is, he didn’t mean it any more literally in what he said than what they meant when they said that. When they said this bread is the bread of affliction, our fathers ate and ate it, they mean it represents or it reminds us of. It’s a memorial of. We’re commemorating the affliction of our fathers. This bread we eat reminds us of or represents the bread of affliction. Our fathers ate and ate it. Now, when Jesus came to that same point in the ceremony, instead of saying that, he said this bread is my body, which is broken for you. That is my affliction, my suffering, my death. Instead of remembering the exodus, when you take this from now on, whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you’re declaring the Lord’s death until he comes, Paul said. He said that over in 1 Corinthians 11. So, in other words, Jesus wasn’t saying anything that the disciples would have interpreted to mean death. There’s magic going on here or a miracle. This bread that I’m holding suddenly has become literally my body, which is broken for you. By the way, when he said his body had not been broken for them, he hadn’t died yet or even had a wound yet. And then when he said, this cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is shed for the remission of sins. Well, as he was sitting there at the table, his blood had certainly not been shed at all. He hadn’t shed one drop, except, well, no, he hadn’t. As far as we know, he hadn’t shed any blood of any kind. So when he said, this cup is my blood, which is shed for you. This bread is my body, which is broken for you. He’s saying from now on, when you use it, you’ll be remembering my body broken for you. And my blood shed for you. And this is the beginning of the new covenant, he said. So this is what he meant. And that’s exactly what the disciples would have thought he meant. Because they were accustomed all their life. They had taken the Passover and this kind of language had been used. And they never took it literally. It would be ridiculous to take it literally. They weren’t expected to. The Passover meal was not viewed as a meal at which a miracle took place. And the bread they ate suddenly became ancient bread eaten by their fathers. That’s not what it means to say this bread is X. And it didn’t mean that when Jesus said it either. I have to say this. The fact that the disciples didn’t think for a moment that he was speaking literally, because, of course, they were very accustomed to the Passover meal. They knew about this kind of language. It was always used. But the fact that they didn’t take him literally is seen by the fact that Peter didn’t recoil and say, Not so, Lord. I’ve never eaten anything unclean. I’ve never eaten blood. That’s one of the most unclean things in the Jewish dietary restrictions. You don’t eat blood. And another thing you don’t eat is human flesh. And yet, if Jesus said, This cup is full of my blood now. This bread is now my human flesh that you’re going to eat. Peter… who years later recoiled when Jesus asked him to eat unclean animals in Acts chapter 10. And so I’ve never eaten anything unclean, Lord. He certainly would have done it at that point if he thought he was being asked to eat real human blood and human flesh. That would have been the most disgusting thing to a Jew you could imagine. And by the way, By the time Jesus did show him these animals, these unclean animals, and tell him to eat them in Acts chapter 10, Peter said, I have never eaten anything unclean. Now, he had been taking Passover, or he had been taking communion, for years at that time. And yet, if he thought that he was eating blood and eating flesh, he couldn’t say, I’ve never eaten anything unclean, because there’s nothing more unclean than that. Now, Peter and the disciples knew better, and anyone who’s sensible should know better. I just said that, and unfortunately that’s suggesting that people who don’t know better are not sensible. I would just say anyone who’s informed and sensible, okay, because let’s face it, a lot of people do think the bread and the wine turns into his body and blood, and they may be sensible people if they think that that’s what Jesus wanted them to understand it to mean. But people who were informed would know that that’s not what he meant. All you have to do is know what the Passover meal did and did not include and what it was about. So that’d be my short course on that.
SPEAKER 05 :
So basically it represents his body and his blood.
SPEAKER 09 :
Yes, absolutely.
SPEAKER 05 :
It’s like a, okay, okay, so, okay, gotcha. And what about where Christ says, you know, unless you partake of my body and my blood, it’s I know he told the disciples that, and then some of them got afraid, and some of them left him.
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, that’s in John 6, and that was a whole year before the Last Supper. So nobody at that point was taking Eucharist or had any idea of what Eucharist would ever be. I mean, the idea of what we call the Lord’s Supper. wouldn’t even be imagined a year before he instituted it, and this was a year before. And what he said was, unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life in you. Okay. But before he was done, he clarified. He said, it’s the spirit that gives life. The flesh provides. Gotcha.
SPEAKER 05 :
Okay, gotcha, yeah. Yes, because I definitely don’t believe in the Catholic ways where it turns into the body and turns into the blood.
SPEAKER 09 :
That doesn’t give you life. It’s the Spirit that gives life. Crucifixion, on the basis that it says in Deuteronomy, cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree. And the Apostle Paul himself quotes that in Galatians 3 as being an example of how Christ took the curse of the law upon himself for us by hanging on a tree. But many Jews are offended… at the idea of the Messiah hanging on a tree because it says cursed is the man who hangs on a tree in Deuteronomy. So a devout Jew, or even one who’s just culturally Jewish, might have heard that objection and might be offended by it. As far as being offended by you having your Bible on the table or the counter near you, that’s just being narrow-minded. I mean, frankly, if I had lunch with a Muslim and he had the Koran on the table, I wouldn’t try to move it out of the way. It’s his business. So anyone who’s so narrow-minded… that they don’t think anyone should be allowed to have a book of a religion differently than their own, would be not a very mature person. Now, if he’s not really that religiously Jewish, it’s possible that his objections are simply the same that Paul said, that the cross is an offense to people because it suggests that people can’t be saved unless someone goes to such an extreme as to die for them. Most people would like to think they’re not that hard to save because they’re not really that bad. But if God had to sacrifice his son to cover our sins, that means our sins apparently were pretty bad, worse than we’ve figured on them being. And that can be humbling or even aggravating to hear. Listen, I need to take a break, but we’re going to come back and take more calls for another half hour. A few stations are leaving us at this point. For the sake of those listeners who won’t be with us for the next half hour, I want you to know The Narrow Path is a listener-supported ministry. We buy the time on radio stations, and if you’d like to help us do that, that’s what will keep us on the air. You can write to The Narrow Path, PO Box 1730, Temecula, California, 92593. You can also go to our website, thenarrowpath.com, and see how to donate there. If you’re able to stay tuned for another 30 seconds, we’ll be coming back for another half hour of taking your calls.
SPEAKER 01 :
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. This is Steve Gregg. See you at thenarrowpath.com.
SPEAKER 02 :
This is the best of the Narrow Path Radio broadcast. The following is pre-recorded.
SPEAKER 07 :
Welcome to the Narrow Path Radio Program hosted by Steve Gregg. Steve is not in the studio today, so calls from listeners will not be able to be taken. In the place of the usual format, we’ve put together some of the best calls from past programs. They cover a variety of topics important to anyone interested in the Bible and Christianity. In addition to the radio program, The Narrow Path has a website you can go to, www.thenarrowpath.com, where you can find hundreds of resources that can all be downloaded for free. And now, please enjoy this special collection of calls to Steve Gregg and The Narrow Path.
SPEAKER 09 :
Okay, let’s talk to Leslie from San Francisco, California. Leslie, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 06 :
Hi, thank you for taking my call, Steve. Sure. I have a question. I’m not sure where is the Bible, but a friend of mine told me that there’s scripture relating to a woman that should have affections for a husband. But it’s in the Old Testament, and I cannot find it.
SPEAKER 09 :
The woman should have affection for her husband. Now, there is a statement in 1 Corinthians 7 that says that the husband and wife should not deprive each other of their due affection. You’re thinking specifically of something in the Old Testament, huh?
SPEAKER 06 :
Yes. I don’t know if it’s Ezekiel. I have to track her down to try to track her down, but I’m going to ask her to deal with that.
SPEAKER 09 :
Yeah, you might want to ask her what she’s thinking of, because I don’t remember a verse specifically saying that. I do know of verses that refer to a man’s affection toward his wife. For example, in Exodus chapter 21, I believe it is, it talks about a man who takes a second wife. It says in verse 10, Exodus 21, 10, it says, if he takes another wife, he shall not diminish the first wife’s food, her clothing, or her marriage rights. And some take the marriage rights, it should be translated as affection. toward her or love toward her but it’s not really although the Bible does indicate that husbands and wives ought to love each other it doesn’t say it as a command I think because frankly affection affection can’t be ordered you know affection is a feeling you can if you don’t feel affection towards somebody you can still love them but you see we have come to think that love is a feeling and love in fact is a sacrifice you make for somebody happily because you value them and think their rights are as important as yours. And that’s why you do to others as you’d have them do to you, which is the same thing as love your neighbor as you love yourself. It’s what you do towards somebody more than how you feel. Now, obviously, if you live with somebody and you’re obligated to love them, it’s awfully nice if you like them, too, and if you feel affection towards them. It makes it a lot easier to love them if you feel feelings of love towards them. But, yeah, I don’t know of anything in the Old Testament that specifically tells a wife to have affection for her husband. Now, you know, there are places where God complains that Israel, his wife, has not had affection for him. And in Ezekiel 16 and Ezekiel 23, there’s a couple of parables about Israel being like a woman that God married and then she didn’t. didn’t give him proper affection and loyalty, and she ended up cheating on him.
SPEAKER 06 :
That’s it. Was that it? Yeah. Thank you. Where is that again, Ezekiel?
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, there’s two chapters in Ezekiel. One’s in chapter 16, and the other is in chapter 23. Both of them refer to Israel as God’s wife. Actually, the second one refers to both Israel and Judah, the two nations, as his wives. But in both of those cases… the imagery is that God had been very kind and very generous and very gracious to this woman, and then when she grew up and took all the benefits he gave her, she made herself beautiful to other men and just became a harlot, but depriving him of his proper affection. So those stories could contain the verse that the woman was thinking about.
SPEAKER 06 :
Oh, okay. Well, thank you. That’s very clear. And I just have a really quick other question about the word begotten, because I know this is a new King James Version, which I really like. The word begotten is not there. And I’m wondering what your feelings are around it not showing up in many of the translations.
SPEAKER 09 :
Okay, you’re thinking of John 3.16?
SPEAKER 06 :
Yes.
SPEAKER 09 :
Okay, John 3.16 in the King James, as you’re familiar with it, says, God so loved the world he gave his only begotten son. Modern translations usually don’t have it that way because the word only begotten, which is a single word, not just the word begotten. You’ll still find the word begotten in the Bible, the term only begotten, which in the Greek is one word, monogenes. Monogenes is the Greek word. When the King James was translated, someone asked me earlier, are there any translation errors in the King James? This would be an example of one. In the King James times, the Greek language was not known as well by English translators as it is now because there’s much more Greek documents and so forth that they could study. And they thought that monogenes was related to the word for begotten, and mono means one. And so they thought it meant only begotten. Now, modern Greek scholarship is fairly unanimous that the word monogenes doesn’t mean only begotten. It means unique or one and only. So it doesn’t have the word begotten in its meaning anymore. Now, Jesus is still, in the Bible, still said to be the firstborn from the dead, for example. But the expression only begotten was a mistranslation of the King James. And all the modern translations have rendered that something like one and only. God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son. Which is not very different, but doesn’t have the word begotten in it.
SPEAKER 06 :
Interesting. Okay, because my final connection to that is that he was the only son that’s a part of him. We’re adopted, so I guess that’s where my head is going, where if he is his only begotten son because he’s part of the Trinity, we are not.
SPEAKER 09 :
Yeah, well, as true as that may be, that doesn’t mean that the word has to be used that way. I mean, that’s… I mean, Jesus is certainly the unique son. And we are sons of God, too. Like you say, we’re adopted, and that is true. But the Bible also says we’ve been begotten. It says in 1 Peter, it says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has begotten us again. It says in 1 Peter, I think it’s 1 Peter 1.3. So, I mean, we’ve been begotten, too. It’s just a shift of metaphors. I mean, the truth is that Jesus is uniquely begotten of God. We’re not begotten of God in the same way he was.
SPEAKER 06 :
Right. Wow. You’ve been most helpful. Thank you very much.
SPEAKER 09 :
Okay. Great talking to you, Leslie. Thanks for calling. All right. Our next caller is Tim from Fort Worth, Texas. Tim, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 13 :
Yes, Steve, I have two very different questions for you this afternoon, one involving dinosaurs and one involving different denominations. As far as the dinosaurs, how do you square the Bible and specifically the chronological events in Genesis with the dinosaurs?
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, dinosaurs are not mentioned separately in Genesis, but they are mentioned, it seems to me, when the Bible says every living thing. that swims in the sea and every living thing that flies in the air and every living creature that crawls on the earth or walks on the earth. In other words, dinosaurs were creatures. They were living things. And therefore, they are in the realm of the animal kingdom. Now, in Genesis chapter 1, it says that on the fifth day, God created all those parts of the animal kingdom that were aquatic and that were arboreal, or that flew, I should say. And so… The flying dinosaurs would certainly be in the category of animals that fly. The swimming or the marine dinosaurs would be in the realm of the aquatic animals. And then, of course, on the sixth day, he created the land animals, and some of the dinosaurs lived on land and were land animals. So it seems to me, you see, we separate the dinosaurs out from the rest of animals because they’re so big and they’re so amazing and they’re so fascinating and they’re almost like the stuff of legends, although they were real. And so we almost think the Bible should separately talk about them. But there’s many, many species of creatures besides dinosaurs that are now extinct and are very fascinating to us. Mammoths, for example, you know, and things that are now extinct. And yet they lived alongside man. There’s no question about it. But even in modern times, there’s a lot of species that have become extinct. It’s just that dinosaurs became extinct apparently a long, long time ago. and they weren’t rediscovered except in the form of their bones until the 19th century. So in modern times, modern man became aware of the dinosaurs in the 19th century and coined the word dinosaur, which means terrible lizard at that time. Now, the word dinosaur didn’t exist when the Bible was first translated into English, so we don’t find it there. But we do have a description, it seems to me, a description of creatures that look to me like dinosaurs. In the book of Job, you know, some people don’t think these are dinosaurs, but if you read the description, I’m really not sure what else they would be. In chapter 40 of Job, beginning at verse 15, there’s an extensive description of a creature that is referred to as Behemoth. Now, Behemoth is not an ancient name for any known animal, but if you read the description in Job chapter 40, verses 15 through 24… if we encountered a creature that fits this description, we would call it a dinosaur. Likewise, chapter 41 talks about a creature called Leviathan. And if you read that description, you would no doubt refer to that as a dragon or a dinosaur if you encountered a creature fitting that description. Now, some people think, well, these aren’t real animals. These are just mythical animals that Job’s referring to. Actually, it’s God speaking to Job who’s talking. And he lists these creatures after he’s listed several other really known animals. Like he talks about mountain goats. He talks about eagles. He talks about the wild ox. He talks about the horse. And then he talks about behemoth. And basically what God is saying to Job is, look at these animals and you can learn something about how great I am. From the fact that I have created these animals, that I feed them, that I maintain them, that I control them. And so he’s mentioned like mountain goats, wild oxen, eagles, horses, behemoth, leviathan. It certainly doesn’t sound like he’s talking about behemoth and leviathan as anything other than an animal that Job could actually observe, like these other animals.
SPEAKER 13 :
So that would mean that they were also in the ark then?
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, probably, unless they died off before the time of the flood. But in all likelihood, since Job was aware of them and he lived after the flood… Probably some of them were on the ark.
SPEAKER 13 :
Great explanation. Switching gears, would you say or agree that it doesn’t really depend on the denomination of a person, whether it’s Catholic or many of the different Presbyterians or Baptists or even Hutterites and Mennonites and Amish? It doesn’t really matter as long as everybody’s starting path is John 3.16, moving forward, and they live a just spiritual life?
SPEAKER 09 :
Yeah, well, I mean, John 3.16 is a good starting point. I mean, you don’t even need to start with that verse particularly because the Bible doesn’t start with it, but where they start with is Jesus. You know, if somebody has… Yeah, well, what constitutes being a Christian, according to Scripture, is being a disciple of Jesus, okay? Because the disciples were first called Christians at Antioch, it says in Acts 11.26. So… The word Christian in the Bible is simply another word for a disciple of Jesus. Now, there’s plenty of teaching about what it means to be a disciple. In Jesus’ own teachings, he talks about disciples and what it takes to be a disciple. Now, according to Jesus, therefore, and according to the New Testament, the only person who’s a real Christian is a person who’s a real disciple. Now, of course, in our day… Being a real Christian is thought to mean believing certain doctrines or belonging to a certain church or having been baptized or whatever. But being a disciple of Jesus is far more life-changing than that. A disciple of Jesus is one who has denied himself and taken up his cross and begun to follow Jesus and so forth. And that being so, I would say any disciple of Jesus is… my brother, and is saved and is going to be with Jesus in the end. And some of those disciples go to Presbyterian churches, some to Lutheran churches, some go to Baptist churches or Pentecostal churches, some go to Calvary Chapel or to Vineyard churches, some go to Mennonite churches, certainly. Some go to, I think some even go to Catholic churches. So, I mean, these people are not Presbyterians and Baptists and Mennonites. They are Christian disciples who go to churches that have those labels on them.
SPEAKER 13 :
Well, that’s very refreshing. Growing up Catholic, I’ve heard my great-grandmother, my grandmother, they say the only way to heaven is being a Catholic, and I’ve since joined a Lutheran church, but it just seems like a lot of back-in-the-day finger-pointing on which is the way, which is the correct way, and I’m a believer that technically you don’t even have to belong to a church as long as you believe in Jesus as your Lord and Savior. So that’s what I’m hung up on.
SPEAKER 09 :
Yeah, if you are a true follower of Christ… You belong to his church, which is a body, an international body, joined together by having one spirit, the spirit of Christ, and one head, Jesus Christ. And if you have Christ as your head and his spirit within you, then you’re part of that global body made up of members that all have that shared life of Christ in them. Now, do they all go to the same church? Of course not. Do they all even go to church? In some cases, probably not, especially in places like, Saudi Arabia, where they probably never meet another Christian. They don’t know where to find another Christian to go to church with. It’s not going to church that makes you a Christian, though, of course, if a person’s a real follower of Jesus, they really crave the fellowship of others who are real followers. Yeah, that makes sense. They’ll look for fellowship. They may not go to a regular, what we call a church, but they’ll go somewhere looking for Christian fellowship, certainly.
SPEAKER 13 :
Great explanation, and thanks for the dinosaur info. My children are of the age now that are asking questions. That’s a great way to start it. So I do appreciate your information, sir.
SPEAKER 09 :
Thank you, Tim. God bless you. Good talking to you. Let’s talk to Clark from San Diego. Clark, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 08 :
Steve, I have a question on… communion in the New Testament church, and my question is, it’s kind of three parts, who serves, how often, and was it wine or grape juice? And I’m going to hang up and take your answer.
SPEAKER 09 :
First, I’ll answer the easiest part of the question and work toward the harder ones. Was it wine or grape juice? In the New Testament, it was certainly wine. We know that because Paul said in 1 Corinthians chapter 11 that When each person at the table was looking out for himself and not for others, some were taking more than their share of what was for all to share. And Paul said some are going away hungry and others are going away drunk. So obviously if somebody’s taking more than their share at communion and some are going away drunk because of that, it’s very clear it was not grape juice but wine. Because I don’t know if you could drink enough grape juice to get drunk since there’s no alcohol in it. But clearly we’re using wine. Now, how often? This is much more difficult to answer because the early Christians seem at some points to have taken communion every day. As Roman Catholics have the option of doing, they can take a mass every morning if they want to. And the early Christians in chapter 2 of Acts were daily continuing in the apostles’ teaching and prayers and fellowship and breaking of bread. And breaking of bread could just mean having meals together. Some people think so, but many have said breaking of bread is a technical term in the New Testament for taking communion. So some of the Christians in the early days, or all the Christians in the early days, may have, when it was convenient and possible, been taking communion every day. Later on, when they weren’t living in community so much, perhaps, and didn’t see each other every day, it seems that they moved it to once a week. And there’s some evidence in Acts that there was perhaps a first day of the week gathering, although we’re not sure if that was always the case in the city of, I think it was entire, we read of Paul preaching on a first day of the week meeting when they gathered to break bread. At least in the early church, the first day of the week after the apostles’ time came to be a pretty common time to gather together and break bread. But As far as the obligation, the Bible doesn’t anywhere say how often Christians should do this. In fact, it doesn’t even say specifically that we must do it with any regularity. Jesus, when he instituted the Lord’s Supper, he said, as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you show forth the Lord’s death until he comes. So he did suggest that it would be a repeated phenomenon, but he didn’t say how often. He just said as often as you do it. And Of course, he said that at a Passover meal, and the Passover meal was an annual celebration for the Jews. And so one could get the impression that when Jesus said, as often as you eat this bread, meaning the Passover meal, and this cup, the Passover meal, that’d be once a year. As often as you do that, you show forth the Lord’s death till he comes. So there’s a lot of different possible answers, but there’s no direct answer in Scripture as to how often. And I don’t believe that taking communion… is what saves you or keeps you saved. I mean, the Roman Catholic Church and some other churches have some very strong opinions about this, that you need to take that Mass, you need to take communion on a regular basis, or somehow your soul is in danger. I’ve found nothing in the Bible that ever suggested that a person’s soul is in danger if they don’t take the Lord’s Supper frequently enough. And if it was, then it would be very negligent on the Apostle’s part to never say how often enough is. So I have a feeling that there’s some liberty in that. I think when Christians get together, they can commemorate the Lord’s Supper, but it doesn’t say they have to do it every time. It doesn’t say they have to get together on any particular prescribed frequency. So the answer to your question, how often, is simply not given in Scripture, and I don’t think it’s mandated. Now, as far as who can serve it, I think everybody can serve each other. In the early church, they all sat at a table with food in it, and it was a meal. They had what they called a love feast. And I don’t think there was a bishop or something walking around to every table handing out the food to everyone on their plate and pouring the wine into their cups. I think that they just did that as part of their meal. And it evolved in later centuries into a much more ritualistic kind of a thing that was done at a church service instead of at a meal. But that wasn’t the way it was done in the early church. So in answer to your question, it was wine. It was not grape juice. Its frequency was never mandated. And as far as serving goes… Probably the person who had the bread handed to him had it handed to him by the person sitting next to him at the table as they passed it around, I would think. Again, there’s no mandate that somebody in particular has to serve it. The Roman Catholics have the idea that the priest can perform a ritual that transforms the bread and the wine into the body and blood of Jesus, and obviously not everyone could do that. That would take special magic, you know. I hate to use the word magic because it’s not respectful. I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but I can’t think of another word for it. I don’t know what it would be, if not magic, if you turn a piece of bread into a human flesh. And I know that not everybody in the room could do that. As a matter of fact, I don’t think anyone in the room could do that, including the priest. But the point is, if that is something that’s supposed to be happening, it’s obvious you’d have to have a special practitioner, a special person who can do that. But I don’t believe that happens. I don’t believe the Bible says that anywhere. And for that reason, I don’t see any need for any special person to be serving or officiating. It’s simply a family meal in memory of Christ, I think, in the early church it was. And I think it is now when it’s as it should be. I only have a few minutes left. I want to take another call. This is going to be Bill from Boise, Idaho. Bill, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 11 :
Thank you, Steve. Yeah, let me start out by saying I saw your debate with Doug Batchelor, oh, a month or so ago, and I don’t remember everything that you talked about, but if I had to judge a winner, I would say you were the winner.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, thank you.
SPEAKER 11 :
You’re welcome. I’m a non-denominational Christian and have been for about 39 years. And up until a year and a half ago, I went to any church I wanted to, and I was a Sunday worshiper. I’ve been attending a Seventh-day Adventist church, and I’m enjoying it. My question for you is, though, and the reason I’m giving you the question is because I haven’t been able to get any scholar or any Bible teacher or any pastor or preacher answer this for me, and so here it is. In Genesis 2, 2, when God said, and on the seventh day, God ended his work, which he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it he rested from all his work which God had created and made. Now, keeping that scripture on the back burner or on the side for a second, if you go to Exodus 20, verse 8, where it talks about remembering the Sabbath, The language states this. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. My question is this. Is the word Sabbath a numerical denomination or a concept of an idea of resting?
SPEAKER 09 :
The word Sabbath, Shabbat in the Hebrew, means cessation or ceasing. So when you’ve been doing some activity and you cease from it or you’re resting from that activity, that’s what the Hebrew word Shabbat would refer to. So when the Bible refers to the seventh day as the Sabbath, in Hebrew it is the cessation, it’s the rest. Okay.
SPEAKER 11 :
I’m letting this down as you’re talking.
SPEAKER 09 :
Sure. Because God rested or he ceased from his acts of creation on the seventh day. that made it a different kind of day because every day so far until then had been a day of work for God. Agreed. And this was the first day in the series of days ever in history that God didn’t do any creative work. And so it was a day, a different kind of day. Now, the word sanctify, he sanctified it, means he set it apart. If something is sanctified, it means it’s set apart. It’s in a different category than something else. Now, this day, the seventh day, was in a different category than others because he didn’t do any creative work on it. Well, what’s the significance of that? He didn’t do any more work because there’s no more to be done. His creation had reached its cumulative goal, and his resting was his way of saying, this is the first day ever that I don’t have to do any creative work because I’ve finished it in the last six days. And therefore, it was a separate kind of a day, a day of rest. Now, God didn’t at that time tell anybody else to rest on the seventh day. He rested on the seventh day, but there’s no record of anybody else resting on the seventh day or being told to do so until the time of Moses. And the first time anyone was told to rest as God had rested is in Exodus 16 when they were gathering manna. Moses told the children of Israel that the seventh day was going to be a Sabbath to the Lord. and that they shouldn’t go out and gather manna then. And then in chapter 20, when the Ten Commandments are given, he said, now remember to keep the Sabbath holy, and don’t do any work. He had to explain what that means. Don’t do any work, he said. It’s interesting, he didn’t just say keep the Sabbath, which would be enough. If everyone had been doing, keeping Sabbath, if everyone knew what keeping the Sabbath meant, he wouldn’t have to explain it. But he said, I want you to keep the Sabbath, and here’s what it means. You work six days, and on the seventh day you don’t work anymore. So the fact that he had to explain that one, suggest that it was an unfamiliar concept and needed to be defined. So that is the first time in the Bible that we read of a command to keep the Sabbath. That is in Exodus 16 and then when it was incorporated in the Ten Commandments in chapter 20. Brother, I’d love to talk to you more, but as you can hear, the music’s playing and I’m out of time. But feel free to call back any other time and we can continue this discussion if you’d like. You’re listening to The Narrow Path. My name is Steve Gray. The Narrow Path… is a listener-supported ministry. You notice we don’t have any commercial breaks? Not a single commercial break. No sponsors. If you pay, we stay. That’s pretty much how it goes. You want to write to us? Write to The Narrow Path, PO Box 1730, Temecula, California, 92593. Or go to the website, thenarrowpath.com. You can take everything free there, but you can also donate at thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for joining us.
