Steve Gregg’s The Narrow Path radio broadcast offers a comprehensive exploration of various biblical themes, providing clarity on often-misunderstood scriptures. Beginning with an outline of the show’s extensive reach, Steve invites new listeners to partake in a journey through the Bible’s complexities. He announces an engaging seminar in Temecula, California, open to all and focused on the diverse interpretations of Revelation. Caller Christy sparks a rich discussion on salvation, questioning the common evangelical rhetoric about asking Jesus into one’s heart. Steve Gregg thoughtfully dissects this notion, drawing from his lifelong study of the Bible to offer a perspective that
SPEAKER 1 :
Thank you.
SPEAKER 02 :
Good afternoon and welcome to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we’re live as we usually are on weekdays for an hour each weekday afternoon. We’ve been doing this for 28 years daily. We’re new on some stations, even new this week on some. I think that we’re on it. Well, we’re certainly on a new station in Dallas and we’re on a new station, I believe, in Mobile, Alabama, if I’m not mistaken, this week. And so, yeah, we’re on something like 80 stations around the country, and we’ve been doing this from modest beginnings on one station 28 years ago, and then two stations the next year, then three, and so forth. And now, 28 years later, we’re covering most of the United States population. And we’re glad to do it because this gives us a chance to hopefully minister to the curiosity and the needs of people who are Christians or not, but who are confused about something in the Bible or wonder about something in the Bible or feel they have to challenge something in the Bible. If that’s the case with you, feel free to give me a call. I’d love to hear from you today. I have a few lines open right now on the switchboard, so calling right now is not a bad idea. The number is 844-484-5737. That’s 844-484-5737. Now, this week I’ve been announcing a meeting that I’ll be speaking at this Saturday morning in Southern California. If you’re a Southern California listener, it’s in Temecula. Now, not to be confused with our monthly Temecula men’s Bible study. That’s on the third Saturday of every month, and that’s not this week. That’s the following week. But on the second and fourth Saturdays of the month, There’s a friend of mine who holds a meeting at his home. It’s not always a Bible study. Sometimes it’s another kind of fellowship, and it’s usually for men. But he asked me if I’d come and speak this Saturday on the four views of Revelation. And although his meeting is usually for men, he said he wants me to make the announcement that this is open to anybody. So men, women, children, anybody are welcome to join us this Saturday. It’s at 8 in the morning. It’s at his home in Temecula. If you’re interested, go to our website. Look up under thenarrowpath.com. That’s our website. Look up under the tab that says announcements. You’ll find the contact information. You’re welcome to join us. That will be day after tomorrow morning in Temecula. I’ll be teaching on the four views of Revelation, and there will be Q&A also. Okay, so that much having been said, we’ll go back now and look at our phone lines. And our first caller today is Christy from Whidbey Island, Washington. Hi, Christy. Welcome to The Narrow Path.
SPEAKER 07 :
Hi, Steve. Thanks for having me. I’ve been listening to you for a long time now, and I don’t always understand everything that you say, but I try to. I wanted to talk to you about an answer you gave to a caller yesterday. She had been asked by her seven-year-old grandson something about heaven and hell. And do you remember that call?
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes, I’m trying to remember the exact question. It was like, what does a person have to do to go to heaven?
SPEAKER 07 :
Is that what he was asking? It was something like that. Or, you know, who goes to heaven and who goes to hell. Something like that.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, who goes to heaven.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, now I’m not a Bible scholar like you, but there was something that kind of rang in my spirit. You had started out by saying that God has people who ought to go to heaven, go to heaven, and who ought to go to hell, go to hell. And I thought, well, that doesn’t sound right. That sounded kind of Catholic to me. I was raised Catholic. And then she asked about asking, it doesn’t say anywhere in the Bible about Jesus saying to ask Jesus into your heart.
SPEAKER 08 :
Right.
SPEAKER 07 :
And so I got that, but I thought about John 1.12. As many as received him.
SPEAKER 02 :
As many as received him, so then he gave the power to become the sons of God.
SPEAKER 07 :
Right. And so I was thinking, it doesn’t specifically say about, you know, God saying, ask me into your heart and you’ll be saved. but he did say about receiving him. And so I was thinking for this little boy, I’ve never had kids, but for a little boy, you know, would he understand, you know, receiving God into your heart?
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, I’m not sure that most people of any age would understand what it means to receive him into your heart. I guess many people might assume that it means that you love him, I mean, if someone’s in my heart, if I say someone’s in my heart, it might mean I love them, although that’s not the easiest way to make that point, but it could be understood that way. I think many people, not really having any clear idea of what it means, have been told to ask Jesus into their heart, and so they say those words, Jesus, come into my heart. And I think a lot of people… the way they picture that happening is that Jesus is somewhere outside my heart, and then when I ask him, he comes, and this little Jesus comes to live inside of my heart. In fact, I’ve known many cases where Sunday school children are taught sort of a countersign or a response where someone says, where’s Jesus? They’re supposed to point at their heart and say, he’s in my heart. Now, you know, that would certainly be agreeable with the wording of modern evangelical teaching, but what does a child mean by that? Jesus is in my heart. Does that, would he understand that that, I mean, does he think of it? There’s a little Jesus living inside his chest somewhere, or does he understand that in a, in a, in a way that might be more biblical? I mean, Paul does pray to the Ephesians that Christ would dwell in their hearts by faith, though we never read of asking Jesus into your heart. Now you mentioned John 1, 12, and frankly, uh, For in my youth, in much of my early ministry, I would have quoted that verse, too, about you have to accept Jesus because it says as many as received him and doesn’t receive and accept mean kind of the same thing. Well, yeah, both of those words are very similar in meaning, maybe identical in some cases. But what does it mean when John says as many as received him? He’s talking about when Jesus came to earth and the reception he received from his own. He says he came to his own and his own did not receive him. But as many as did receive him, to them he gave the power to become the sons of God. Now, the Jewish people that he came to. He came to them, and this was, of course, historically recorded in the Gospels, and the problem was they didn’t receive him. Now, what was it they didn’t do? Did they fail to say, Lord Jesus, come into my heart? I don’t remember him inviting them to say such a thing, or anyone, even people who followed him didn’t even say that, as far as we know. So is John talking about receiving him into your heart in the sense that you say a prayer and ask Jesus to come into your heart? I think what the words most naturally mean is he came and presented himself as the Messiah to his own people, and they didn’t receive him as the Messiah. But some did. As many as received him as the Messiah, to them he gave the power to become the sons of God. To my understanding, if I do not overlay some kind of American evangelical evangelistic sloganeering meaning to the passage, I would understand, to me, the ones that, you know, the people who rejected him when he presented himself to them as the Messiah, they were lost. But the ones who didn’t reject him in that role but accepted him in that role. And now what does that look like? Does that mean asking him to come into your heart or does it mean, responding to him as king and lord, which is what the word Messiah means. So here comes the king. He presents himself to his people. Most of the people reject the king. But not everyone rejected the king. The ones who received him as king became the sons of God. And I think that’s what John is saying. So I just want you to know I’m very familiar with the problems people might have with the way I answer that question because I – I’ve been an evangelical since my childhood. I asked Jesus into my heart when I was four years old. And I was evangelizing people when I was in junior high school. And I’ve been doing it all. Now I’m 72. I’ve been evangelizing people all my life. But I’ve also been studying the Bible all my life. And that has led me to realize that some of the ways we framed things as evangelicals hoping to win people to Christ were either oversimplifications or else not really making clear what we mean. In fact, I think in many cases we would repeat these slogans and we’re not even sure what we mean by them. All we know is, I mean, when we tell people to accept Jesus, they think that means say a prayer and ask Jesus to come into their heart. Although no one in the whole Bible ever did such a thing. and that’s nowhere said to be the kind of thing you do to be saved. You become saved by embracing Christ himself as your king and your Lord. Paul said, whoever shall confess with his mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in his heart that God raised him from the dead shall be saved. So, yeah, in your heart you believe that he rose from the dead. With your mouth you confess him as your king and your Lord. And, of course, Paul implies sincerely. Of course, doing it insincerely would be of no value. So the idea is that you are sincerely embracing Christ as your Lord and King, and that’s what makes you a follower of Christ, a Christian. Now, I want to say another word about the earlier part when he said who will be in heaven. I think I said those that God thinks should be there. will be there. Now, I didn’t lay out any specifics as to what might cause God to think they belong there. For example, there was a time when I would have said, well, whoever believes in Jesus, which is, okay, well, what does believing in Jesus look like? What’s that mean? Or I might have said, whoever has accepted Jesus into their heart, because that’s the way I was raised to understand things. On the other hand, I believe that all infants that die, even though they haven’t consciously accepted Jesus in their heart, I think they die innocent. I believe they go to be with the Lord. I think they’ll be in heaven. And they don’t fit the paradigm of what we call a Christian. They never have become Christians. I think there may be people who are like infants in terms of their knowledge and understanding of the ways of God. And I don’t know if God’s going to judge them very much differently. I don’t know how he’s going to judge people. So I do know that there’s a lot of people who say a sinner’s prayer and say, Jesus, come into my heart. But they live their lives in such a way that if what Jesus said is true, they won’t be in heaven. Because, I mean, the Bible says we’ll be judged for all of our works and rewarded according to our works. So I believe if a person is a true follower of Christ, that will show in their works. They will be obedient to Christ. And those works will testify in favor of them on the day of judgment. And others are going to have works that even if they themselves said they were Christians, their works will prove they weren’t. I mean, Jesus said that in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 7. He said, not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he that does the will of my Father in heaven. And he said, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, we did these things in your name, certain things that he didn’t specifically command to be done. And he’ll say, depart from me. I never knew you. So there’s more to this than just saying a sinner’s prayer. There’s actually… meaning it. There’s actually an actual transformation of orientation by repentance and regeneration, which results in living a life of obedience and faith in Christ. And so, I’m not going to say this person or that person is going to be in heaven unless I know him to be one who, in every respect, convinces me that he’s a follower of Christ. But I do believe that heaven is for people who are Christ’s disciples. But there are people, like I said, infants who die that I believe will be there. But they weren’t his disciples. There might be others who have never heard the gospel. I don’t know. I’m not making any pronouncements about this. All I know is that God will decide. on the judgment day, God will decide who should be in and who should not be in. Certainly, everyone who’s been loyal to Christ should be there. And other people who, you know, who have been essentially on God’s side, but who knows? I’ll just have to leave that to God. And so what I would tell a child, if he says, well, who’s going to be in heaven? I’d say, I guess we could say God’s friends are going to be in heaven. And if he says, well, who are God’s friends? I’d say, well, those who love him and obey him and follow Jesus. I guess that would be the, I didn’t say it quite so succinctly that time, but, I mean, the first time, but that’s kind of what my answer would be.
SPEAKER 07 :
Steve, you must have me muted. I’ve been trying to talk to you.
SPEAKER 02 :
I know, I did have you muted so I could answer you, but go ahead. You’re not muted now.
SPEAKER 07 :
Oh, yeah, no, what I was going to say is, no, I understood all of that. I was just thinking that woman talking in relation to her her grandson in a way that he would understand, you know, about that. You explained that really well. I did have one other thing I want to run by you because I don’t understand this. A very well-known Christian singer was on the radio, and she said that she was at church with her husband and everybody’s there, and she’s in the congregation. She wasn’t performing, but she said all of a sudden she the Holy Spirit told her to start running laps around the inside of the church. And so she told her husband, the Holy Spirit has told me I need to run laps around the inside of the church. So she started to run laps around all the pews, around the inside of the church. And that sounded ridiculous to me. I mean, I can’t presume what the Holy Spirit is going to tell somebody But if you look at someone running laps around the inside of the church, wouldn’t you think they were nuts?
SPEAKER 02 :
I’ve actually been in churches where people did that kind of thing, and I did think they were nuts. I personally don’t think that that’s the kind of instruction that the Holy Spirit gives. I believe anything the Holy Spirit leads us to do will be something that’s directly intended to glorify Christ. Exactly.
SPEAKER 07 :
Exactly.
SPEAKER 02 :
Now, so, I mean, me running around the church, I can’t see how that would in any way draw attention to Christ. It seems like it would draw attention away from him toward me. I mean, how could people not be distracted? Yeah. Okay. But we do have a problem that many times we are capable of believing that the Holy Spirit is leading us to do something when it really isn’t him. And this is why we really need to be cautious about saying the Holy Spirit told me this or the Holy Spirit told me that. Because I’m sure people who do those things and say those things are probably very sincere. I’m sure they believe the Holy Spirit is leading them.
SPEAKER 07 :
And I took that that she did believe that. And I thought, well, I can’t presume to say, oh, I know the Holy Spirit is not going to say that. But that wouldn’t be edifying for anyone in the church or glorifying God.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, that’s my thought, too. Hey, Christy, I have a lot of calls waiting.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, that was it.
SPEAKER 02 :
All right. God bless you.
SPEAKER 07 :
Hey, thank you for your time. God bless you too, Steve.
SPEAKER 02 :
God bless you.
SPEAKER 07 :
Bye.
SPEAKER 02 :
Bye now. All right. Let’s talk to John in Kent, Washington. John, welcome.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah. Hey, Steve. Good to talk to you again. I was wondering about what your view is on the man of sin or the man of lawlessness in 2 Thessalonians 2. Do you believe that’s a priorist view regarding maybe Nero, or do you take a futurist approach to that man of sin?
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, there’s actually a third approach, and that’s called the historicist approach to that. I don’t have a firm view about it, and the reason I don’t is because Paul was deliberately nebulous. I mean, he hinted at things, and then he said, remember when I was with you, I told you about this. In other words… When he had been in their presence, he had talked about this in detail. And now he was avoiding speaking in very clear detail to them for some reason. Now, the thing that’s particularly vague, he says, you know what it is. We know what it is that’s hindering him at this present time. But when that which is taken out of the way is taken out of the way, then the man of sin will rise and blah, blah, blah. Now, this is all in 2 Thessalonians 2, if our listeners are not familiar with it. The man of sin, therefore, is even a vague term in itself because it’s not used elsewhere in Scripture. It’s the only place in the Bible that talks about the man of sin or, in some translations, the man of lawlessness. The same entity might be referred to in other places in Scripture, but not by that term. For example, I think most Bible teachers believe that the man of sin or the man of lawlessness to whom Paul refers is the same entity as is described in Daniel chapter 7 as the little horn that rises out of the fourth beast. I’m not sure if everyone thinks that way, but most people seem to, even if they’re a futurist or something else. Now, there are preterists who believe that all prophecy was fulfilled in the first century who think that this must be referring to somebody who arose in the first century before Jerusalem was destroyed. and defiled the temple of God, because Paul says in 2 Thessalonians 2 that the man of sin will sit in the temple of God, claiming to be God. So they look for somebody, probably during the siege of Jerusalem, who actually went into the Jewish temple and defiled it. Now, there were some Jews who did that kind of thing. John Gershala is a rebel Jew. That was mentioned by name in Josephus’ work. He’s a man who led a rebel group to go and take shelter in the temple at the time of the invasion. And they defiled it with all kinds of impious behavior there. And so some say, well, that’s probably the man of sin he’s talking about because he was in the temple of God. However, I don’t know that John Geschal ever claimed to be God or did any of the other things that Paul said the man of sin would do. Of course, the more popular view today is the futurist view. which thinks that the man of sin is the future Antichrist who will rise in the middle of the tribulation, and that he will put an image of himself in a rebuilt Jewish temple, since there’s no Jewish temple now, that it will have to be rebuilt. and then he’ll put an image of himself and declare himself to be God in that temple. So the Preterist view and the Futurist view both are taking the temple of God to refer to the Jewish temple in Jerusalem. Preterists think it was the old temple that was destroyed in 70 A.D., and then Futurists think it’s a future temple that would be built. Now the Historicist view, and this is that which is held, it was called the Protestant view for several hundred years because it’s, It was promoted by all the reformers. But they weren’t the first. There were others before them that promoted it. But in the Reformation, this became a dominant view. And it was held by all reformed people for two, three centuries after the Reformation. And it was the view that the man of sin represents the papacy. And that the church of God, that is to say the temple of God, in which he sits, is the church. It’s not the Jewish temple. Paul never, ever referred to the Jewish temple as the temple of God. But he did, on two other occasions, refer to the church as the temple of God. So the term temple of God is found only three times in Paul’s writings. Two times he specifically says to the church, do you not know that you are the temple of God? That’s in 1 Corinthians 3.16 and 2 Corinthians 6.16. Both times, the church is said to be the temple of God. Now, in 2 Thessalonians 2, he doesn’t mention who or what is the temple of God, but we know Paul’s general writing identifies the church that way. So if he says the man of sin will sit in the temple of God, the church, and declare himself to be God, Well, that has happened. That has happened throughout much of the Middle Ages when the popes arose and took charge of the Western Church, at least, and made all kinds of blasphemous claims. If you study Catholic history, even the Catholics record some of the blasphemous claims the popes made because the Catholics are willing to say, yes, some of these popes weren’t really good guys at all. They believe that you salute the uniform, not the man. So even a man who was a wicked man and was a pope, and they acknowledge there were many, and there have been many wicked popes, you know, he’s still the vicar of Christ because he holds the office as far as they’re concerned. Now, I don’t agree with that, but they do. The Protestants believe that a wicked man cannot be a head of a church, and not legitimately a And they recognized that there were many wicked claims made by popes as they sat, as it were, in the temple of God, that is, in the church, in leadership. Now, as far as what hinders the man of sin from rising, Paul doesn’t say outright what it is. But the church fathers, and I’m talking about in the first three centuries, they believed Paul was referring to the Roman Empire was hindering the rise of the man of sin. that which hinders, they think, was a reference to the Roman Empire. And we said, now, that which hinders will be taken out of the way, and then the man of sin will rise. The church fathers, and I’m talking about a handful or more of them, talked about this passage. They said that Paul was referring to the emperor or the Roman Empire itself would be removed, and then the man of sin would arise. Now, that fits historically well with the papacy, since it was upon the fall of the pagan Roman Empire. or I should say of the political empire, that the papacy took charge of Western Europe in place of the Caesars. Now, by the way, the reformers agreed with the church fathers on that. They did believe Paul was talking about the Roman Empire had to be removed. And that’s the reason, they think, that Paul didn’t mention it outright. because Paul had been run out of Thessalonica by the government rulers in that town because he was accused of saying things that are against Caesar. And so as he’s writing back to the church where this had happened, he says, well, you know what it is. I talked to you about this when I was there, you know, how that thing, the one that’s holding back is going to have to be removed, then he’ll rise. You see, if he came out and said the Roman Empire, And the letter fell into hostile hands. It would only document that Paul was, in fact, an insurgent, predicting the fall of the Roman Empire, even saying it’s inevitable. So this would explain why Paul would not identify what he’s talking about. And that would agree well with what the church fathers believed and what the reformers believed. And, of course, the church fathers believed. lived and died before the papacy arose so they never identified the man of sin but they did identify the hindering thing with the Roman Empire and they predicted that when the Roman Empire falls that’s when the wicked one will rise. The Protestants of course lived after the time of the rise of the papacy and looking back they made that same identification. Now were they right? Well I don’t know. There’s other theories. Paul is like I said ambiguous and it would seem unwise to be dogmatic about something that the Bible itself is very ambiguous about. But those are the options. And I will say that third option sounds like it’s got probably more in its favor than the other two, although perhaps there’s a fourth one I’m not aware of. All right, we’re going to take a break here. We have another half hour coming, so don’t go away. We’re not done. The Narrow Path is a listener-supported ministry. If you’d like to write to us, the address is The Narrow Path, P.O. Box 1730. Temecula, California, 92593. Or you can go to our website, thenarrowpath.com. Everything there is free to take, but you can donate if you wish at thenarrowpath.com. I’ll be back in 30 seconds. Don’t go away.
SPEAKER 01 :
We highly recommend that you listen to Steve Gregg’s 14-lecture series entitled, When Shall These Things Be? This series addresses topics like the Great Tribulation, Armageddon, the rise of the Antichrist, and the 70th week of Daniel. When shall these things be?
SPEAKER 02 :
Welcome back to the Narrow Path Radio Broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg, and we’re live for another half hour, taking your calls. If you have questions about the Bible, the Christian faith, maybe you disagree with the host about something, want to tell us why, feel free to give me a call. We have one line open at the moment. The number to call is 844-484-5737. That number again is 844-484-5737. And our next caller is Clea calling from Little Rock, Arkansas. Hi. Welcome. Yes. How are you doing today, Steve? Good. Thanks.
SPEAKER 04 :
Good. Well, I wanted to ask you, Steve, about the Scripture in 1 Corinthians 11 and 2 through 16 about women’s head covering. Uh-huh. And so, you know, I grew up in the church, Pentecostal church, to be frank about it, and And so the head covering is something that I noticed is not being mentioned as essential for women to cover their heads, you know, when they are praying or just wear the head covering all together. And I noticed that Paul, in this particular passage, scripture on 1 Corinthians 11 and 2 through 16 speaks very factly about women, the necessity for women to wear a hair covering during prayer and maybe as a rule. as a form of submission and humility. And of course, a lot of people have always tried to excuse that and made it seem as though it was not really important. even though the scripture, the Bible says all scripture is given by the inspiration of God. So this is a scripture that is inspired writing by all from God. So it’s important. You can’t just, you know.
SPEAKER 02 :
I hear you. I think I know your question. So let me go ahead and address it if I can.
SPEAKER 04 :
Okay.
SPEAKER 02 :
I appreciate the question, by the way. Okay. So the verses you’re referring to in 1 Corinthians 11, verses 2 through 16, talk about, the need for a woman, if she’s praying or prophesying, to have her head covered. And as you said, it’s possible that Paul’s assumption was that a woman should have her head covered generally, and that it’s particularly offensive if she’s not doing so while she’s praying and prophesying. But he raises the question, shouldn’t a woman, or is it appropriate for a woman to pray or prophesy with her head uncovered? As if perhaps that was something that some of the women were beginning to do and Paul needed to correct them. he said that the woman’s head is her husband, and the head of every man is Christ, he said in verse 3. And therefore, he said that a woman, if she covers her head, is honoring her husband, but if she doesn’t, she’s dishonoring him. And then Paul says, contrarywise, if a man covers his head when he prays and prophesies, he’s dishonoring his head, which would be Christ in that context. Further on down, Paul begins to make it very clear that this applies to hair length also, as far as he’s concerned. He said that a woman shouldn’t cut her hair. If she does, she might as well shave it, which was considered to be inappropriate. Many people say that the prostitutes shaved their heads in order to be easily recognizable to the sailors coming in to port there in Corinth. But so he’s saying, if you’re not going to cover your head or not going to have your hair long, you might as well just shave it off, which is kind of a sarcastic remark, they’d say. But he’s clearly making an appeal for women to have their hair long and to wear a covering on their head. And then he also says it does not nature itself. In verse 14, tell you that for a man to have long hair, it’s a shame to him. But for a woman to have long hair is a glory to her. And he goes on and talks about how there’s different kind of relations between men and women to each other, modeled by how God made man. God made the man and he made the woman to be his helper and so forth. And therefore, you know, women ought to display that, that subservient or that subordinate role. Now, at the end of all this, he says in verse 16, However, if anyone wishes to be or seems to be contentious, we have no such custom, nor do the churches of God. Now, this last verse seems to, you know, color everything he said so far because he says we have no such custom. Now, what custom? Is he talking about the custom of women covering their heads and men not covering their heads? And he’s saying we don’t have that custom. Or is he saying we don’t have the custom of being contentious? If anyone seems to be contentious, well, we don’t have that custom of being contentious. And therefore, he’d be affirming that this is inflexible. You know, this is an inflexible rule. Now, when we read the New Testament, you may say, well, this is scripture, so it’s the word of God. Well, it is God’s word to the Corinthians, and the question of how much it applies to us depends on what Paul means in verse 16. And I say that because not everything in Scripture applies to us. For example, there’s lots of commands to circumcise and to offer animal sacrifices and things like that in Scripture. Those don’t apply to us. And there’s also lots of commands from Paul, greet one another with a holy kiss and that kind of thing. He even tells Timothy, when you come visit me, bring the parchments and the cloak I left with you when you come. Well, that’s not instructions to me. I don’t have Paul’s cloak and I don’t have his parchments. So it’s clear that when we read the New Testament, especially the epistles, we are reading somebody else’s mail. We are reading what the word of the Lord is to those people delivered through Paul. But the question is, is our circumstance the same as theirs? Would the instructions of God be the same to us as to them? Now, many people just say yes. That makes it easy. Just say, yeah, we’ll just take everything literally and apply it. And that’s fine. I do know people who insist that we should be washing each other’s feet regularly, like Jesus said to the disciples to do. And I do know people who greet one another with a holy kiss. This is fine. I don’t have any objection to it. But I think… that they may be, in a sense, missing the point at times. Because a lot of times, the culturally expressed principles that Paul is urging on people, and Jesus too, are more about the principles than the custom. For example, washing feet. Jesus told his disciples to wash each other’s feet. Well, they needed to be washed and washed. And it was a lowly task to wash another person’s feet. And Jesus did that for his disciples, showing that he was willing to serve them in the most humble and lowly way, and they should have the same attitude and do the same thing. But does that mean they literally have to wash each other’s feet? And if it does, does it mean we have to? My feet don’t get that dirty when I go out. I have socks and shoes on. They didn’t. And I walk on pavement most of the time. They didn’t. So, I mean, in other words, my feet don’t really need to be washed. Theirs needed to be. So when Jesus says you need to wash each other’s feet, is he saying, well, we should just do it exactly like he said? Or is he saying, why don’t we do some things that are actually practically good for other people, things that need to be done, things they need? I mean, they needed their feet washed in that day. I don’t, but I might need something else done for me. The idea is to be humble and servant-minded. And likewise, when it comes to this matter of head coverings, the question is, Is he saying that God has got a dress code that has to do with headgear that people wear? Or is it saying that women should acknowledge their submission to their husbands in which other way that is communicated in their culture? In the Corinthian culture, which is Greek, the submission of a woman was communicated by her wearing a head covering. And also by having long hair. And a man having long hair in that culture was a way of kind of cross-dressing, kind of being sort of rejecting sexual norms because men didn’t have long hair in that culture. Now, in Paul’s culture, sometimes men did have long hair. Paul himself took a Nazirite vow. We’re told that in Acts 18.18. And if you read about the Nazarite vow in Numbers chapter 6, a man with a Nazarite robe didn’t cut his hair for as long as he had that vow. Which means his hair would get longer than it normally would. But it wasn’t a shame. It was actually kind of an honor. It was a vow of being dedicated to God in a special way. Samson and Samuel and John the Baptist dedicated. All had that vow. And so, in other words, you know, what does it mean? Does not nature itself tell you that for a man to have long hair, it’s a shame to him? Whatever it is, it’s similar to the commands about women wearing head coverings or having long hair. I believe that Paul is saying, you Corinthians live in a place where, you know, people will interpret things. you’re covering your head or not covering your head, or your hair length, as some kind of a statement. Because often it is a statement. And it will be interpreted as a statement. And a woman in Corinth who didn’t cover her head at the appropriate times, culturally appropriate times, would be communicating something that Christian women should not be trying to communicate, namely that they are not subject to their husbands. And they should be. And that men… who violate the customs are communicating something about themselves that Christian men should not want to communicate. But he says, but the same customs don’t exist everywhere. And we know they didn’t exist in Paul’s culture, the Jewish culture. In fact, in the temple, which was still standing and operating during the time Paul was writing, God… through Moses, commanded the priests to have their heads covered. They were men, and they covered their heads when they went in. They had miters they wore on their heads, or turbans. And so, although in Corinth, for a man to cover his head while praying was to dishonor God, in Jerusalem, for a priest to have a cover on his head when he went in to worship God was actually commanded by God. So, I think we can understand that this is not a universal thing. because we have other passages of Scripture that would seem to say the opposite to different people. But to the Corinthians, what he is saying, I believe, is that they should follow the customs of their time insofar as they communicate a message that we as Christians want to be communicating by our behavior and by our dress and so forth. So that’s how I see it. Now, obviously, a lot of people don’t. The Roman Catholic Church, their women cover their heads. Lots of Protestant churches do. The church you go to, you said, doesn’t do that. The church I go to, they don’t do that. And I’m not against them doing that. But I think that there’s a tendency at times to take some things in the Bible which are an application of a universal principle to us. a cultural or local expression of that principle, which it wouldn’t mean the same thing here. For example, when Deuteronomy says it’s an abomination for a man to wear what pertains to a woman or for a woman to wear what pertains to a man, he certainly would be condemning transvestites and, of course, a man trying to look like a woman. But as far as what clothing is appropriate for men and what appropriate is for women, that wouldn’t be the same in every culture. For example, there are Christians who believe that women should never wear pants because originally pants were a male style and women didn’t wear them. However, for generations now, women in America have worn pants, and it’s not a man’s style particularly. So it’s a different kind of a thing. Likewise, I mean, dresses, wearing dresses still is a female style here, and a man who would wear a dress… is obviously trying to dress like a woman because that’s a woman’s clothing. But if the time came when we were like Scotland and the men wore kilts, that looks an awful lot like a skirt. But it’s a man’s style in Scotland, you know, in Ireland. So, you know, styles change, but the principle doesn’t change. The principle is that men and women ought not to reject the gender that God has made them, and they should dress in such a way that reflects that they don’t reject that. But the way the culture would express those ideas would be different from one place to another, including the hair length and the head covering thing, as Paul says. I mean, certainly Paul would never say to the church in Jerusalem, it’s a shame for you men to have long hair, because any men who did would be men with a Nazarite vow, which is the opposite of being ashamed. So I think we have to be a little more maybe careful in how we apply certain things in Scripture. I will say this, that I have an entire analysis of this chapter or this portion of the chapter in 1 Corinthians 11 posted at the website in writing. I wrote some articles for a magazine years ago about this. And I go through all the verses of it and exegete them. If you’re interested in hearing more about this from me, then I can give you right here this brief treatment. You can go to thenarrowpath.com. That’s thenarrowpath.com. There’s a tab that says Topical Articles, and you’ll very quickly see the one I wrote about this subject there. And it goes into much more detail than I can now. Brother, I appreciate your call. I need to take another one now, but thank you for joining us. We’re going to talk next to Steve in Long Beach, California. Steve, welcome to The Narrow Path.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, thank you, Steve, for taking my call. I really appreciate you. Okay, let me see if I can get this out the way I’m thinking about it. My question is about Ezekiel 28, 11 through 16. I could have went through your verse by verse. I think I’ll end up doing that. But my question is, could you help me understand this better? So when I’m talking to a Christian who believes, I think, even the way you used to believe back in the early 70s with Chuck Smith and Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa – Ezekiel was given a message from the king of Tyre. But the king of Tyre, he was not in Eden, in the garden of God. And he was also not an anointed cherub who covers. And he was not on the holy mountain of God, unless Ezekiel is referring to Israel. And he was not perfect in his way in the day that he was created until iniquity was found in him. I just want to be able to understand this so I can communicate this to Christians who say, yeah, this is Satan, or this is typology, a type of Satan.
SPEAKER 02 :
Right. Most people, and not only Calvary Chapel people, but frankly most Christians throughout history, have believed that this passage is talking about Satan, that Satan was an angel, that he was a good angel, that he rebelled and became the devil, and that this passage is one of the key passages that tells us this. Now, of course, you and I both know that the devil isn’t, clearly mentioned here. There’s no mention of the word devil or Satan or even the serpent or anything like that. Just it’s addressed to the king of Tyre. Verse 12 is where this begins. His son of man take up a lamentation for the king of Tyre and say to him, Thus says the Lord, But in verse 16 it says, which means, you know, sales, merchandise. You became filled with violence within and sinned. Therefore, I cast you as a profane thing out of the mountain of God, and I destroyed you, O cherub, O covering cherub, from the midst of the fiery stones. Now, this is addressed, as we’re told, to the king of Tyre. As you mentioned, there are some things in it which have raised questions in people’s minds about, of how could this possibly be referring to the actual human king of Tyre? Because it says he was in Eden, the garden of God. It says he was on the holy mountain of God. And it says he was the anointed cherub. It also talks about being perfect in beauty and perfect in wisdom and things like that. So some people find it easier to say, well, this isn’t really talking to the king of Tyre, although it says it is. It’s actually talking to the devil who is being addressed as kind of the power behind that corrupt king. And though it’s not really talking to the man, but to the devil who is, although unmentioned in the passage, is the power behind the king. Now, this, I think, is an unnecessary way of escaping the plain statements of the scripture. We are told, first of all, not only in this chapter, but the previous one, And the previous one to that, chapters 26, 27, and 28 are all about the judgment coming on the city of Tyre. So this is part of that, and it’s a lamentation on the king of Tyre. Now, for example, when it says you were perfect in beauty and perfect in wisdom, well, if you look back just to the previous chapter, chapter 27, verse 3, He says, the king of Tyre says, or the prince of Tyre says, well, he says, O Tyre, you have said, I am perfect in beauty. This is what the city says about itself, what the king says about it. So they did think that they were perfect in beauty. That’s their very words. And it says also in verse 11 of chapter 27, they hung shields on your walls all around. They made your beauty perfect. So this is talking about the city and its king. Now, why would the king be said to have been in Eden, the garden of God, and on the mountain of God? Let me start with the mountain of God. The term mountain of God in the Hebrew is the mountain of Elohim, which can be translated mountain of God, or it can equally be translated mountain of the gods. And in Tyre, they worshipped many gods. And he, you know, the king of Tyre worshipped on this, you know, in the shrine of the many gods on the mountain in Tyre. And so he was on the mountain of the gods. And it’s interesting because it says in verse 18, you defiled your sanctuaries by the multitude of your iniquities. Their sanctuaries would be their temples on the mountain of the gods, probably referring to the pagan gods here. But when he says you were in Eden… Well, okay, later on, three chapters later, he talks about another king who is not the king of Tyre and also not the devil and says that he was in Eden also. In fact, he was a tree in Eden because he speaks to the Assyrian king and says that he was a great tree. And he says in verse 9 of chapter 31, I made it beautiful, this tree, which is Assyria, with a multitude of branches, so that all the trees of Eden envied it, that were in the garden of God. Okay, so this guy, the king of Assyria, was a tree in the garden of God. And the king of Tyre was a cherub in the garden of God. Is that literal? I don’t think so. I don’t think either of those kings were in the garden of God in Eden. This is just a way of saying you were in paradise, man. You had it made in the shade. You really had it going. And this is a poetic way of saying so. You were in the Garden of Eden. Good heavens. Look how far you’ve fallen. But these kings were not literally there. And if we do take Ezekiel 28 literally, then we’d have to say whoever it is is not the devil, because the devil was not a cherub in the Garden of God. The devil was in the Garden of God, but he was a serpent there, not a cherub. The cherub in the garden of God was the servant of God that God placed with a flaming sword to guard the way to the tree of life after man fell so that man wouldn’t eat that tree and live forever. So the cherub in the garden of God is not a bad guy. He’s a good guy. And so was the king of Tyre. He was a good guy, too, but he went bad. Now, if he was writing to the devil… and saying you were in the garden of God, he should have said you were a serpent in the garden of God. And it only makes it more confusing if he’s referring to Satan as the cherub, when in fact there was a serpent and a cherub in the garden of God. And the cherub was not the serpent. The cherub was not the devil. So I think that what people have done with Ezekiel 28 is they’ve read it with a certain mindset of what it must be about, And most of these people have never read the whole book of Ezekiel. And I don’t blame them. It’s a hard book to read. It’s the hardest Old Testament book there is to read through, I think. It was probably the last one I actually succeeded in reading all the way through in my life. But I’ve done it many times since. I’ve taught verse by verse through Ezekiel numerous times now. So, I mean, I’m familiar, and as many Christians, any Christian can become familiar, but most have not, with the strange imagery and the strange language of Ezekiel. But this is very typical of it. For him to call the king of Tyre a cherub in the garden of God is not particularly strange for Ezekiel to do any more than for him to call the Assyrian king a tree in the garden of God. This is simply the way Ezekiel talks. And since there’s no mention of the devil anywhere in the passage, it would seem to be what we call eisegesis to make this about the devil. Certainly it’s not exegesis. Because nothing in the passage requires it to be the devil. Much in the passage suggests it’s not. Because the devil is a serpent in the garden of God. This king is said to have been a cherub in the garden of God. And more than that, this king was corrupted according to verse 16, or by verse 18. He was corrupted by the abundance of his trading. The city of Tyre was a merchant city. It became wealthy, proud, and corrupt. And it was in the abundance of trading with other nations in their port. that they became corrupted. But it’s hard to imagine an angel in heaven somewhere, unfallen, who’s conducting business, maybe running a chain of stores or something in heaven, and the abundance of his trading made him go bad and become the devil. There’s no mention to anyone becoming a devil in this passage. And there’s certainly nothing that points directly to Satan. But everything points, I think, to Tyre itself. I hope that’s good enough. But as you said, my verse-by-verse at our website, I go through this, of course, and go into more detail than I could here. I have time for probably just one more call today, and that’s going to have to be Debbie from Chehalis, Washington. Hi, Debbie. Welcome.
SPEAKER 06 :
Hello?
SPEAKER 02 :
Hi. We don’t have much time. Go ahead.
SPEAKER 06 :
Okay. Good. Hey. In my quest to find a solid church, I ran across some people, some pastors that I spent quite a bit of time with. Since last October, I am no longer there. But he told me that one of the pastors told me in conversation that he didn’t think that he said Jesus was with me, but he wasn’t in me. And so therefore, that made me question whether baptism is what I’m supposed to be doing, to have Jesus in me, the Spirit of Jesus in me. And I just, I have been stuck on that thought for a good amount of time, wondering whether is baptism required for me to have this relationship that I’ve been working on for the last seven years with the Lord.
SPEAKER 02 :
Okay. So why did the pastor think that Jesus is not in you?
SPEAKER 06 :
I have no idea. Okay. He’s a non-denominational church.
SPEAKER 02 :
Does he deny that Jesus is in anyone, or is he simply making a statement about you?
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, I don’t think it was necessarily everyone. I was the only one.
SPEAKER 02 :
Okay, so he’s making a criticism of you. And so did he suggest that it’s because you’re not baptized?
SPEAKER 06 :
He did not. And then after a period of time… Okay, I don’t have much time.
SPEAKER 02 :
I can’t hear the story. I need to, because I have to answer you in a lot of time.
SPEAKER 06 :
No, he did not suggest it. He did not suggest it.
SPEAKER 02 :
Okay, let me just say this. Why haven’t you been baptized?
SPEAKER 06 :
I have not found the church I want to be affiliated with. I have not found the solid church that I want to… Okay. Yeah.
SPEAKER 02 :
Okay, well, being baptized doesn’t necessarily mean you’re affiliated with a particular church. Even the church that baptizes you. But you should be baptized. That’s commanded. I won’t say that Christ isn’t in you because you’re not baptized. But I would say that as a follower of Christ, we need to be obedient to him. And baptism is commanded. So it’s not optional. But assuming that you have asked God to fill you with his spirit and you’re a disciple of Jesus, I would say Jesus is in you the same as he’s in anyone else. But, of course… you will want to obey him by being baptized. I’m out of time. I’m sorry to say, you’ve been listening to The Narrow Path. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for joining us.
