Steve Gregg offers a dense, educational session on topics ranging from the Apostle Paul’s influence and the Reformation’s core motivations to Pentecostal practices. The episode effectively balances theological discourse with practical faith application, featuring listener interactions that highlight contemporary church challenges. Gregg addresses misconceptions about Paul, shedding light on why his writings continue to impact Christian theology. He also provides historical context to the Reformation, discussing how these pivotal changes shape today’s faith practices.
SPEAKER 1 :
Thank you.
SPEAKER 08 :
Good afternoon and welcome to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we’re live, as usual, for an hour without any commercial breaks for you to call in and ask questions. If you have questions about the Bible, bring up matters that you may disagree with the host about. If you have any such things as that, we’ll talk about that. The number to call is 844- 484-5737. We have several lines open right now, a good time to get in. Once those lines are full, it’s a little hard to get into the program, but not impossible. But this is an easy time to get through if you call right now, 844-484-5737. And I guess I’ll be saying this for the next couple of days. Tomorrow night is the first Wednesday of the month. And being the first Wednesday of the month, it’s the… It’s the day that we always have our Zoom meeting in the evening, tomorrow evening, seven o’clock Pacific time. It’s a question and answer time. And we are joined by people from all over the country and other countries, too. When we do this once a month, you’re welcome to join us. It’s not too hard to get in. I think we can only hold. I think 100 is the max we can have, and I think the most we’ve ever had was 99. But a lot of times we’ve got more availability. I mean, like we may have 80 people or something. So if you want to get in, it’s not impossible. You go to our website, thenarrowpath.com, look under announcements, and tomorrow night’s date, which is July 2nd, You’ll see the login information to get on the Zoom meeting. That’s at 7 o’clock tomorrow night Pacific time. All right. And if you’d like to be with us on the air today, the number again to call is 844-484-5737. Our first caller today is Mike calling from Hawaii. Hi, Mike. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 10 :
Hi, Steve. There’s a social media guy that I follow and I really respect him in a lot of ways, but he just kind of came out of the closet recently is, um, quoting, you know, quote red filling on a certain subject, which seems, uh, I, I heard somebody years ago bring this up to me, but seems to be saying that Paul’s writings should not be included in the new Testament, that, um, he had a lot of disagreements with some of the other apostles, and that there’s question to that, and that once you remove that and start reading it that way, then things start to take a very different appearance in regards to how things work. And I was just wondering if you’re familiar with this, where it came from, what it’s all about, what the major, you know, other than, you know, some of the other ones, what the major flaws are with that concept, what it’s called. Yeah.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yeah, there’s always been critics of Paul, and there’s been a revival of criticism of Paul in modern times simply because of the Internet. You know, the Internet has allowed every kind of nutcase critic to of the Bible to, uh, to get a platform and get a following and so forth. Uh, however, uh, I, I, I, I’d love to debate that person about this, um, because Paul was an apostle of Christ. How do I know this? Because Christ called him and made him an apostle. He’s the only one of the apostles who was called by Christ after Christ ascended into heaven, but Christ appeared to him, blinded him, uh, Then he got converted, and he got filled with the Spirit, and then he had all the apostolic signs, miracles, and so forth that the other apostles did. He had been an enemy of the church before that, and so the original apostles did not trust him initially, but that didn’t last long. They soon did come to trust him, and then they even recommended him. When he went out from the Jerusalem council, they wrote a a letter recommending him and Barnabas, saying that these men have hazarded their lives for the gospel’s sake. You know, these are our partners here. Peter himself, writing in 2 Peter chapter 3, spoke of all of Paul’s writings as if they were scripture. He said that, you know, Paul, he said our beloved brother Paul, in all his letters speaks of these things in which those who are, I think he said, unlearned and unstable men, they corrupt them, they twist them as they do the other scriptures. So Peter says, you know, these people, they misuse the letters of Paul just like they do the rest of the scriptures, which sounds like Peter’s putting Paul kind of on the level of scripture. But whether Peter did or not, Jesus did. Jesus called him to be an apostle. The same reason we have Peter’s letters or John’s letters is because they were apostles. And we have Paul’s letters. He’s an apostle, too. Now, if someone says, well, we shouldn’t have him because he disagreed with the other apostles, well, I don’t think he disagreed with them for very long. They came around. In the initial stages of his ministry, he was more radical than they were. They were Jewish apostles who were ministering in Jerusalem, in the Jewish society. And they were more or less going along with Jewish customs and so forth, because all of their converts were Jewish. And, you know, there was no controversy over doing Jewish things. Now, when Paul was called by Christ to go to the Gentiles… he began to minister to people in Gentiles to be converted who were not circumcised, who were not Jewish, who were not accustomed to Jewish ways. And the question came up between Paul and the other apostles as to whether Paul is negligent in not requiring his Gentile converts to become Jewish. Because in Jerusalem, all the converts to Christianity were Jewish. And they all kind of were Jewish in culture. They were all circumcised. They were all temple observant. And these Gentiles in other countries where Paul was evangelizing, they weren’t circumcised. They weren’t Jewish and they weren’t temple observant. So this was a question that rose between Paul and the others. And they had a big conference about it in Jerusalem. Paul and Barnabas on the one side and Peter and James and John and the apostles on the other. And they They hashed it out for a period of time, and then it was finally decided by the apostles in Jerusalem that Paul and Barnabas were right. And the apostles in Jerusalem wrote a letter to the Gentile churches telling them that Paul was right and gave that and recommended Paul to them. So, I mean, I’m not sure why this man, this podcaster, thinks he knows more about Paul and his agreements or disagreements with the apostles than they knew. They certainly were on his side. They recommended him. So I think this guy’s off the wall. Now, there were always people questioning Paul’s apostleship. Much of what he wrote to the Corinthians, especially in 2 Corinthians, is a defense of his own apostleship against people who said he’s not a real apostle. But the people who were saying it weren’t real apostles either. They were Greeks. I mean, they lived… far away from the apostles in Jerusalem. They just didn’t like Paul, and they wanted to live differently than Paul preached. Now, today, and maybe forever, there have been people who have had a hard time seeing that Paul’s teaching in his letters is the same as Jesus’ teaching in the Gospels. And the reason for that is that Paul has been, especially since the Reformation, represented as if he was against good works. This was the big controversy there. In the Reformation, the Reformers thought that the Catholic Church was emphasizing good works too much. And the Reformers were saying, no, we’re saved by grace without works. And that became such a controversy that the two ideas of faith and works got polarized by the two sides. And therefore, Luther and the other guys claimed Paul, especially the Book of Romans and such, as the basis for their beliefs. And the Catholics, you know, they didn’t have any problem with Paul either, but they didn’t see him contradicting Jesus, and I don’t either. I actually have a document which you can find online if you go to Matthew713.com. Matthew713.com. There’s a lot of resources there. One of them, you can find a thing where it says, I think it’s… It may be under articles or it might be under charts. But I have there a chart comparing the teachings of Jesus and Paul in two columns. And I select the 15 primary teachings of Jesus. I mean, everything that’s not in this group is pretty minor. But the major teachings of Christ, 15 major teachings of Christ are in the left column. And the references and the scriptures are there where Jesus taught them. In the right column, we have Paul teaching the very same 15 things. And it has quotes of scripture for that. In other words, you’re not going to find any significant difference between Jesus and Paul. Did you look it up? Where is it? My wife is looking it up so I can give you more. Under charts and tables. Yeah. Jesus and Paul is the file. If you go to Matthew 713 and click on the thing that says charts and tables, that’s where you’ll find it. And you’ll find there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between what Jesus preached and what Paul preached. And what Jesus preached is what the other apostles preached, unless they were apostate, since Jesus told them to teach all things that he had commanded. And that’s what Paul taught also. Now, it’s true that Paul was writing to Gentiles and Jesus had never addressed Gentiles. So there were some issues among the Gentiles that Jesus never addressed because his audience were all Jews. And Paul doesn’t contradict Jesus or doesn’t disagree with Jesus, but he has to apply the principles that Jesus taught to new situations which were faced in the Gentile world. For example, the problem of idolatry. which was huge everywhere except in Israel. And so the Gentiles had to, you know, they were coming out of idolatry. They had to decide whether it’s okay to eat meat that was sold in the marketplace that was a remnant of an animal that had been sacrificed to idols, those kinds of things. Jesus never even addressed them because the Jews, where Jesus preached in Jerusalem, in Israel, they didn’t have that issue. There were no idols there. And so Paul did, and also the fornication issue. Jesus only mentioned fornication one time in his teaching. But he was against it. But Paul mentions fornication in about half a dozen of his letters and really rails on it because fornication was a big thing in the pagan world. It was not a big thing in the Jewish world. That is to say, the Jewish people were living more or less morally. The Gentiles were not. And so… Paul, of course, really emphasizes a lot of things Jesus never really said much about because Paul’s talking to people in a different culture, but he’s not teaching a different set of values or rules. So anyway, this fellow you’re listening to, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Paul and Jesus taught exactly the same thing. The other apostles, though initially when he was first converted, they didn’t know him, and they knew he’d been an enemy. Yeah, they didn’t trust him at first, but then he won them over. And I’ll tell you why. I’ll give you three reasons why they became convinced that he was the real deal. One, as I mentioned, his conversion resulted in him having the same power to work miracles that they had. Now, if he had faked his conversion, well, that’d be one thing. But how would he fake these miracles? I mean, he wasn’t a magician. He was a Pharisee. The Jews hated magic, and he would hate it too. He didn’t work any magic, but he did the same kind of miracles Jesus did and the apostles did. That kind of… Paul says to the Corinthians when he’s defending his apostleship to them in 2 Corinthians 12.12, he says, Surely the signs of an apostle were wrought among you in all patience and signs and wonders. That is, through his ministry, he worked signs and wonders, which he said were the signs of apostleship. So that’s the first reason, or one of the three reasons, that the apostles accepted him eventually. Another was that his character was ideal. He lived a holy life. He was not into money. He was not into sex. He was not into fame. By the way, those are the things that lead false teachers and false ministers to go astray. Loving money, loving sex, and loving fame. Paul was not into any of that stuff. And they knew it. And Paul didn’t travel alone most of the time. He usually had a handful of young godly men with him who were keeping him accountable. And he could say to Timothy, who had traveled with him for a couple of years or more, he could say, Timothy, I’ve set an example for you of how to live a pure life. Just do as you’ve seen me do. I mean, Paul didn’t live like a fake Christian at all. And he did these miracles. But also… The third thing was that he risked his life every day because the Pharisees, or not the Pharisees so much as the Sanhedrin, were continually stirring up people to kill him. And then the pagans didn’t like him either because he was speaking things they thought were against Caesar. And so he went to jail. He got beaten. He was stoned to death once or to the edge of death. He either rose from the dead or recovered. It’s not entirely clear, but the point is he spent a lot of time in jail, took a lot of beatings. Eventually, he lived in poverty. He was naked, he said, and hungry most of the time because he was traveling among enemies and so forth and spent a lot of his time in jail. And then, of course, he was beheaded. for his faith. Now, that’s not the kind of life a person lives if they’re trying to get some kind of power, some kind of money, some kind of comfort out of an industry. The man had everything about him, spoke of his genuineness. And then, of course, his teaching was the same as that of Jesus. So anyone who says his letters don’t belong there, well, they’re going to have to take that up with Jesus, who called him to be an apostle. And by the way, Jesus said, In John 13, 20, whoever receives him that I send receives me. Now, the word apostle means one is sent. If you receive one of my apostles, you’re receiving me, Jesus said. So we really can’t reject Paul without rejecting Christ. And then you’ve got Peter recommending him, the Jerusalem council, all the apostles recommending him. Where’s this guy get off in the year 2025 saying, yeah, but all those guys were wrong. Jesus was wrong about Paul. The apostles were wrong. Now we need to get his life out of there. Well, why don’t we just get him, this guy, out of there? Why don’t we just say, who are you, that we should listen to you? You know nothing. But it is a popular cultic thing. It’s a very heretical cultic thing that’s around. You’ll find it throughout the The Internet, people saying Paul was a false apostle. A lot of times it’s the Hebrew roots people or it’s the Jewish roots people. They don’t like Paul because Paul said we’re not under the law and the Jewish roots people want to believe that we are.
SPEAKER 10 :
Yeah, they don’t like Galatians very much.
SPEAKER 08 :
No, they do not.
SPEAKER 10 :
They do not.
SPEAKER 08 :
Anyway, we’ve talked a long time, Mike. I’m going to have to move on to another call, but great talking to you.
SPEAKER 10 :
Okay, I appreciate it. I’m going to share this with them. Thank you.
SPEAKER 08 :
Okay, great. God bless you, man.
SPEAKER 1 :
Bye now.
SPEAKER 08 :
Okay, Wesley in Detroit, Michigan. And by the way, before I speak to Wesley, I’m coming to Michigan. And while I’m in Michigan, I’m going to speak also in Illinois and in Indiana. I’m going to be about 10 days in the Midwest there. And that’s the latter part of August. And I speak in a lot of places. I’m going to speak about 14 times or something. I forget how much. But all over the place. So if you’re in Michigan… I’d love to see it. That’s going to come up in August, the second half of August. Okay. Wesley, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 04 :
Thank you. Yes. The question I have, you may have answered it Friday, but I caught the end of it, so I didn’t catch the whole thing. But anyway, I got a couple questions. One question is, My kingdom is not of this world, as in Jesus Christ saying that. And so the question is, again, what did he actually mean? Because we’re, as Christians and as children of God, God’s children, we are expected to be a part of this world or not be a part of it, but to change it and anything that kind of happens through us. So that’s part of my question. I know you were answering it, I think, Friday. I caught the end of it. My kingdom is not this world. What did he actually mean? And then the second question I have, there was a, and this is a question I’m asking, there was a conversation as in, In Genesis, it would be like the Trinity, as in God saying, let we have the heavens and let them have the earth and give them dominion, meaning us. And so that would also say to me that the things that are happening in this world, whether they’re good, bad, or indifferent, it is up to us as in Christians, as in his children, to change it because he gave us dominion. So that’s my kind of two questions.
SPEAKER 08 :
Okay, yeah, I’ll be glad to address that. First of all, the Genesis passage you’re thinking of is just this one, 26 and 27. It doesn’t read quite the way you were… remembering it, but in Genesis 1.26, God said, let us make man in our image, and let’s give him dominion over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field and so forth. So God made man in order to give him dominion over the rest of creation. And obviously to steward it, faithfully to God. It’s not like God was saying, okay, this is yours, I’m going away now, like some kind of deism would teach. But no, he’s supposed to be co-ruling with God. God wanted to be in long-term control. Partnership with man in ruling the world. And that’s why there was a test in the garden to see if they’d be loyal or not. Because you can’t trust people with a lot of responsibility if you don’t know if they’re trustworthy. So that’s what that was about. Now, you’re right. It does say something similar to what you said in Psalm 115 and verse 16. Psalm 115, verse 16 says, the heaven… Even the heavens are the Lord’s, but the earth he has given to the children of men. So you’re right about that. Heaven is God’s realm primarily, and earth is man’s realm primarily. He’s given it to us. But, of course, he didn’t give it to us. He didn’t abandon us here. We have the right to involve him. We can ask him, you know, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. is our inviting him to, you know, through our activity and through things we can’t do ourselves, to bring about his will on earth. So it’s a partnership more, but not a partnership like in a business where both partners kind of co-own it. God owns it. We’re not partners on his level, but we’ve been brought into his trust to work with him and for him and to manage the thing for him. So, yeah, it is our responsibility to do that. Now, you said, Jesus said, my kingdom is not of this world. Well, that’s correct. It’s not of this world, but you have to realize in the Gospel of John, which is where that is. By the way, that’s in John 18, 36. In John’s gospel, the word world is used a number of ways, as in God so loved the world that he gave his only son. And yet John, in his epistle, says don’t love the world. He doesn’t mean it the same way. In 1 John 2, 15 through 17, he says don’t love the world because all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. So there are things that are of the world, and the word cosmos, the world, In many of those cases, not every case, but you can tell from context when it is the case, it refers to the world system. The dominant culture under the prince of this world, as Satan is called three times in the Gospel of John. Prince of this world doesn’t mean he has authority over the planet, but he has authority over the world’s system, which is comprised of those who are in rebellion against God. Ever since the fall, the world’s system has been against God, which is why he had to disperse the people at the Tower of Babel, which is why he had to send a flood. why he had to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, and why he had to do a number of other things that seemed pretty harsh to us. But the world is against him. He’s at war. They’re at war with him. So in the New Testament, sometimes the world is the opposite of of God’s system, as it were. The world has its own system under the prince of this world, which is Satan. Now, we see that Jesus, therefore, said, for example, in John chapter 15 to his disciples, if the world hates you, this is John 15, 18 and following, if the world hates you, now that’s the world, it hates you. Now, the planet Earth doesn’t hate you. In fact, not every person on the planet Earth hates you. But there is a system called the world which hates you. If it hated you, you know that it hated me before it hated you. So he’s referring to the world as that system that has animosity toward him and because of that, toward us. He goes on and says, if you were of the world, to his disciples, we’re not. We’re not of the world. The world would love its own. Yet because you are not of this world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Now, notice he said, if you were of the world. That’s the same phrase as my kingdom is not of this world. In fact, Jesus on other occasions said, I am not of this world. Now, he’s not saying… Of this world doesn’t mean in this world. Certainly Jesus was, in fact, in this world. So are we. So is his kingdom. To say something or someone is not of the world means it’s not from this world. And certainly it means from the world system. Jesus said to Pilate, my kingdom is not of this world. If it were of this world… then my servants would have thought that I should not be taken by the Jews captive. But he says, but henceforth, my kingdom is not from here. Now, notice he says from here. That’s in John 18, 36. So he said worldly kingdoms operate on worldly principles. And if their king gets captured, they take up arms to rescue him. He said, my kingdom is of a different sort, a different spirit. It’s not of the spirit of this world. My kingdom doesn’t operate like the pagan world empires. Jesus once told his disciples, the rulers of this world, or the rulers of the Gentiles, he said, exercise authority over them, but it shall not be so among you. He says, but whoever would be chief among you must be the slave of all. In other words, his kingdom operates under a different system, a different spirit, really, than the world’s system. And, you know, someone attacks Jesus, he doesn’t marshal an army to come and protect him. He operates on different principles. And so when he says, my kingdom is not of this world, it certainly doesn’t mean my kingdom is not mine. In this world, of course it’s in this world, just like you and I are, though we’re not of this world either. But he means my kingdom is not like worldly kingdoms. It’s not of that spirit. It’s not of that sort. And that’s what I think maybe you’re wondering about. The truth is we are in this world and we have an assignment in this world, and that is to promote the kingdom of God until every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Hey, I need to take a break. I appreciate your call, and we’ll hear from you another time. God bless. We have another half hour coming up, but right now I just need to let you know, The Narrow Path is listener supported. You can find out how to help us out if you go to our website, thenarrowpath.com. That’s thenarrowpath.com. I’ll be back in 30 seconds. Don’t go away. We have another half hour.
SPEAKER 02 :
In a 16-lecture series entitled The Authority of Scriptures, Steve Gregg not only thoroughly presents the case for the Bible’s authority, but also explains specifically how this truth is to be applied to a believer’s daily walk and outlook. The Authority of Scriptures, as well as hundreds of other stimulating lectures, can be downloaded in MP3 format without charge from our website, thenarrowpath.com.
SPEAKER 08 :
Welcome back to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we’re live for another half hour. As was the case at the beginning of the last half hour, we have several lines open, which is a great opportunity for those of you who want to call in and maybe on other occasions have found all the lines were full, which is often the case. Right now, if you call in, you can get through The number to call is 844-484-5737. So if you have any questions about the Bible or the Christian faith, we’ll be glad to talk to you about them. The number 844-484-5737. Okay, we’re going to talk next to Joseph from Fitchburg, Massachusetts. Excuse me. Hi, Joseph. Welcome.
SPEAKER 09 :
Hi, thank you for taking my call. You might have previously answered my question in another call, but my question is, what was the main reason for the Reformation? Did the Reformers want to convince people that we are saved by grace alone, faith alone, Christ alone, rather than what the Roman Catholics taught? So what was the main reason, something you might be able to add to your previous answer? And I’ll take my answer off the air and I’ll hang up.
SPEAKER 08 :
Okay, Joseph.
SPEAKER 09 :
Thank you.
SPEAKER 08 :
Thanks for your call. Bye now. Well, the Reformation is thought to have begun in 1517 when Martin Luther nailed a document to the church door and challenged Roman Catholic teachings about indulgences. Now, indulgences was a practice, and I think it still is in the Catholic Church, where people could they were promised that if they give some money to the church, that they will buy some time for themselves or someone else out of purgatory. The Catholic doctrine is that most people who die are not good enough to go to heaven and not bad enough to go to hell. But if they spend some time in purgatory, they’ll get better. That’s what purgatory means. Purgatory means purging. It’s a place to purge them. So most people who die are not saints, according to the, I mean, even believers. They’re not saints, according to the Catholic Church. They are about average people, not bad enough to go to hell, but really need to be cleaned up, need to be purged. Purgatory is the place where that happens. Now, it’s not a pleasant place, and so people would, you know, most people expected in the Catholic world to go to purgatory. Now, the Catholic world meant Western Europe. And even Eastern Europe, for the most part, was Catholic. Although Eastern Europe is more Eastern Orthodox, but they’re very similar to Catholic in many of their doctrines. Luther was himself a Catholic monk. And so he was teaching in a university called On Romans, and as he studied Romans, he was gripped by Paul saying that the just shall live by faith. And this really resonated with Luther because he had been a very frustrated, agonizingly frustrated Catholic. He wanted to be perfect. He was always feeling condemned about his sinfulness. He felt like he just couldn’t be good enough for God. It tormented him. He had a very tormented young life because of it. And this kind of just set him free. He just felt like, wow, I’m not going to have eternal life because of my works. I’m going to have eternal life because of my faith. And this really, he began to read the New Testament through new eyes and see that this message was pretty much everywhere there. Now, Luther is considered to be the one who started the Reformation. He didn’t plan to change or to start another church for hundreds of years. The Roman Catholic Church was the only church in Western Europe, which Luther belonged to. And he didn’t want to start another church, but he felt like the church needed some reforming. Now, he wasn’t the first. Because a century before him, John Hus had had many of the same insights that Luther did. And around that period of time, long before Luther, people like Wycliffe and Tyndale and other pre-Reformation guys who were strictly speaking living and dying under the Catholic Church, they saw some of the same things that Luther would later see. But these guys were persecuted and some of them were killed. Tyndale was killed and so was John Huss. And so their movement didn’t really have the impact it might have had. Luther, however, had the advantage of having lived after the printing press was invented. So he made use of it and he published his writings and filled Europe with his writings. which made it impossible for the Catholic Church to stop him. Now, Luther’s intention was to just bring the Roman Catholic Church around to seeing what the Bible says on this as he saw it. And that was really what Tyndale and Huss and others had wanted to do also. But the Catholic Church was resistant to that, and so they kicked him out. And then, of course, when they kicked him out, because he had the advantage of having the printing press, which, as I say, Huss and Wycliffe and Tyndale before didn’t have a printing press. So that made it possible for him to get the Bible out. Luther translated the Bible into German and published it and distributed it. He wrote tracts a lot. And eventually the Catholic Church realized they couldn’t really stop him. His influence was too great. So he did a lot of his early work in hiding so that the Catholic Church couldn’t kill him because they had a contract out on him. But once he was too popular, they kind of gave up on that. So that’s why the Reformation happened. Luther, he wasn’t trying to start a different kind of church. He was trying to He was a loyal son of the Roman Catholic Church. He just wanted to see the Roman Catholic Church recognize that the gospel in the New Testament did not follow in all points with the gospel that was taught by the Catholic Church. And I think every movement should be prepared to be reformed if they need to be. I mean, no denomination is without fault. No one’s perfect. And so we need to be always willing to see where we might be wrong and maybe even change. And that’s what Luther hoped the church would do. But because they wouldn’t, he was thrown out and the Lutheran movement changed. Germany began, and at a similar time, a reform movement began in Switzerland under Zwingli, and then there were other reformers after that, but it became an international phenomenon where a lot of people in the church were accepting doctrines such as Luther taught. Not because he taught them necessarily, but because they believed they were in the scripture. So that’s why the Reformation happened. And the Catholic Church, of course, for the most part, rejected Luther’s ideas. And that’s why there’s still Catholics. And that’s why there’s Protestants. Protestants, generally speaking, are those who hold to the Reformation doctrines, at least some of them. All right, we’re going to talk to James in Villarica, Georgia. And we have a line open for you if you want to call right now, 844-484-5737. James, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, James, one line I heard from a famous teacher in Atlanta, too.
SPEAKER 08 :
I’m sorry, you know, I can’t hear because you’ve got your radio on there. Your radio is on? Turn that off, if you would. Make it a little easier.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, he said, like, the salutation of Paul, as in all the other apostles, was… Grace and peace speak to you all. There’s a difference between a salutation and a signature. Being in business, I know that. A salutation comes at the top of a letter and a signature at the end.
SPEAKER 08 :
Well, that’s in our letters. Paul was not an American writing in American styles. He was writing in the Greek world.
SPEAKER 07 :
Paul’s letter…
SPEAKER 08 :
All of Paul’s letters pretty much followed the normal way that people wrote letters in the Roman world where Paul was.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah. Sometimes he would pray some peace at the top of his… He would say both. Sometimes at the bottom. Yeah, well, almost always…
SPEAKER 08 :
Almost always he said grace and peace unto you at the beginning of his epistles. But he also ended almost all of them with the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. So, I mean, yeah, he’s full of grace. He’s wishing grace at the beginning along with peace. At the end he says the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. So he’s, it’s just, that’s really how letters were written. Grace was, many people greeted one another with that word. And that’s how letters began and ended in those days. Many other letters that aren’t in the Bible but written by secular people in those days have been found. And we can see that they follow the same pattern that Paul’s do. He wrote in the typical fashion of his time. We don’t do it that way in our modern letters. But we can’t blame Paul for not knowing that. He didn’t know how people would do things in the 21st century. No, I don’t know. Yeah. Thank you for your call. Let’s see. We’re going to talk to Brian from Rancho Cucamonga, California. Hi, Brian. Welcome.
SPEAKER 03 :
Hey, Brother Steve. So I’m curious if you know anything about the Canaanite pantheon and specifically, was Yahweh one of the sons of El and that He’s part of this Canaanite pantheon that’s been attributed to the ancient Hebrews. Do you know anything about this?
SPEAKER 08 :
I’m not sure about the Canaanite pantheon. A pantheon, of course, is a group of gods, a collection of gods. And the Canaanites worshipped various gods. They worshipped Baal. They worshipped Moloch. They worshipped others. And I don’t believe that Yahweh was ever in that pantheon. Now, as far as the Jewish understanding of Yahweh, Yahweh identified himself by that name very early in Genesis to people before Abraham’s time. In fact, which is, of course, even before Canaan’s time, before there was Canaan. Canaan was a grandson, a great-grandson of Noah. And the Canaanites came from him. But even before Noah’s time, God was identified as Yahweh. So I don’t think whoever’s trying to say that Yahweh is just one of the gods in the pantheon of the pagans, I think they’re making it up. Now, I have to say, I’m not sure what they’re using for documentation. Before I could criticize the value of the documentation, I have to see what it is. But I’m pretty sure… because I’ve kind of studied these things, you know, full time, that I would have seen something about that if there was proof of that. And I don’t think that’s correct.
SPEAKER 03 :
Okay. Yeah, I couldn’t find anything either. So I just figured you were my local expert. You would know if anybody. Okay. All right. Appreciate you taking my call.
SPEAKER 08 :
Okay, Brian. God bless. Good talking to you. Bye. Okay. Lorraine in Fairfield, California. Welcome to The Narrow Path.
SPEAKER 01 :
Hi, I wanted to ask you if you ever heard of a ministry called A New Heaven and A New Earth?
SPEAKER 08 :
I’m not sure. I don’t think so. Do you know any of the names associated with it?
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, the leader for my Zoom group is called Instructor Joshua, and they focus a lot on Revelation, but they did start out with John 1 and who Jesus was, so. I haven’t really found any big holes in there, Doctor, but it’s all a little bit in person in San Francisco and everybody else’s different places in the country on Zoom. We do it twice a week.
SPEAKER 08 :
I just have to say I don’t know the movement. But anyone who calls himself Instructor Somebody, I mean, Instructor is pretty much equivalent to Rabbi Somebody. And Jesus said don’t let anyone call you Rabbi and don’t be called Teacher. You know, so I always wonder when you find, and he said, don’t call any man father. So I always wonder when these religious movements, they refer to their leaders as father so-and-so or rabbi so-and-so.
SPEAKER 01 :
And they have helpers called evangelists.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yeah, I do not know about this group. But I tell you, and I don’t want to say they’re a cult because I don’t know enough about them. Maybe they’re not. Maybe they’re not. But in my opinion, Now, 55 years of traveling in ministry, I’ve met all kinds of groups that were definitely cults that had names that you wouldn’t recognize. But on the other hand, I mean, there’s a certain way that cults generally are. And I’m not going to say this group’s a cult. But just when you say that the leader of your group is called instructor so-and-so, That just, that rubs me the wrong way, but I can’t really say about him or the movement. What do they teach? You say they started on the book of Revelation, did they?
SPEAKER 01 :
No, they actually started with John 1, and they have passages all over the Old and New Testament, but every lesson… The Secrets of Heaven is the title that starts it, and then there’s a dash, and figurative something, like the figurative of the seed.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yeah, I guess I’m not going to have time to really acquaint myself with this while we’re in this conversation, so I can’t really finish.
SPEAKER 01 :
I think they’re kind of new.
SPEAKER 08 :
Kind of new?
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah. And one thing I like about them, they don’t say they’re the only way. They’re just teaching the Bible.
SPEAKER 08 :
Okay. Well, while you were talking, my wife did what she does. She looked them up online, and she looked at their statement of faith, and she handed me notes that she doesn’t see anything alarming in their statement of faith. But, of course, you can have a decent statement of faith and still have things alarming about the way you set up or the way you control people or things like that. But all I can say is it doesn’t look like they’re famous for any heresy. Right. I can’t give them my stamp of approval or disapproval. I don’t know them.
SPEAKER 01 :
Thank you so much, Steve. Good talking to you again.
SPEAKER 08 :
Okay, Lorraine. Thanks. God bless you. Bye-bye. Eric in Little Rock, Arkansas. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 05 :
Hi, Steve. Thank you so much for taking the call. And I have a question. I’m going to First Assembly of our church, me and my family, for almost two years now. And… I know that it’s a Pentecostal and they totally believe and they totally have a doctrine of speaking in tongues. And they believe that if you don’t have the speaking of tongues, you are not baptized with the Holy Spirit. But when I read 1 Corinthians and I read the Paul letter, I see that there are different gifts God has given the Holy Spirit, the teaching gifts, the healing and everything, the speaking of the tongues. And Paul is saying, everyone speaks in the tongues. Not everyone is a healer. Not everyone is a teacher. But I am in a struggling phase that how can I encounter this thing with my church members? So should I leave the church or should I tell the pastor that I am not believing that? So please, I need your advice. Thank you.
SPEAKER 08 :
Well, let me ask you, have you spoken in tongues then?
SPEAKER 07 :
No.
SPEAKER 08 :
Okay, so they would say that you’re not baptized in the Holy Spirit yourself, correct?
SPEAKER 07 :
Yes.
SPEAKER 08 :
I see. Well, of course that doctrine is mistaken because it doesn’t have the Bible on its side. And it does have a tendency to make second-class Christians, you know, of those who don’t speak in tongues. And that’s an unhealthy thing. I would say that I don’t have any problem with people speaking in tongues. And I don’t have any problem with the idea that sometimes, or maybe frequently, when people are baptized in the Spirit, they do, in fact, speak with tongues. I myself do. But I do have a problem with people saying that everybody has to speak with tongues, or else they aren’t baptized in the Spirit. Now, what denomination of Pentecostal are you in? Are you in an assembly? I’m in the Assembly of God. Okay, so they’re not as extreme as some. You know, some Pentecostal groups say you’re not even saved if you don’t speak in tongues. But the Assemblies of God are a little milder on that. They would just say, well, you may be saved. You just, you know, the baptism of the Spirit, they would say, is always accompanied by speaking in tongues. Well, they’re mistaken. And, you know, I don’t know how much that inhibits your service in the church. Maybe they won’t let you do anything if you’re not a tongues speaker. I don’t know. But they… I wouldn’t feel I had to leave a church if they believed that because I don’t have to believe it. I don’t have to believe it, and I don’t think speaking in tongues is that big a deal, but I think it’s a big mistake. I think there are churches that make bigger mistakes than that. And so, I mean, if I was going to find a church that doesn’t make any mistakes, I’d be pretty lonely. But I do think there are worse mistakes that a church can make, and I don’t know that I would feel the need to leave a church if that’s their doctrine. And especially if I have a lot of relationships in the church. You see, the most important thing about church is the family, community, the relationships. And, you know, there are churches that’s got a number of things that I think they’re mistakes they’re making, either in their doctrine or their policy or. you know, whatever. But they’ve got really, they love each other, you know. And Jesus said, this is how everyone will know you’re my disciples if you have loved one for another. So if you’ve got loving, healthy, close community, family relationships in a congregation, I’d say that’s, generally speaking, a pretty healthy congregation as long as they don’t have anything really out of whack. Now, some people, of course, there’s a lot of Christians who don’t believe that speaking in tongues or the other gifts that they call sign gifts, they don’t think they’re for today at all. They think that after the apostles died that these gifts simply went away. Now, I mean, there are lots of churches like that. They’re called cessationist churches. They believe in the cessationism. And with that view, of course, they would probably have to assume that every Pentecostal church or every charismatic church that has the gifts of the Spirit is in total delusion or maybe even following demonic counterfeits. And there are people who think that way. I don’t. I’m not a Pentecostal because I don’t hold that doctrine about the initial evidence of the baptism of the Spirit is speaking in tongues. But I am a charismatic in that I do believe in the gifts of the Spirit, speaking in tongues, and the rest of them. It is a shame that your leaders… are not open to the idea that there are other gifts of the Spirit perhaps more valuable than speaking in tongues, and that some of the people who don’t speak in tongues might have those other gifts. And it would be a shame for any church to sideline those people who have some gift through which God wants to minister to the church, but sideline and say, sorry, we don’t think you’re full of the Spirit because you’re not speaking in tongues. That’s a very big mistake for a church to make. Now, have you talked to the leaders about your understanding of the gifts?
SPEAKER 05 :
Not yet. Not yet.
SPEAKER 08 :
You’ve been in the church for a couple of years?
SPEAKER 05 :
Yes, I am. And just recently I was studying the Bible and I came to know this and I was just thinking. But the rest of the thing, everything is good for the church. Like they are friendly, loving. They have all the Christian doctrines. So this was the only concern I was having there. So that’s why.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yeah, I would not… If a church in other ways, in most other ways, was what I was looking for in a fellowship, but they had that doctrine, and they had that doctrine which I didn’t agree with, that would not be enough to make me leave the church. But I will say this. It would depend on how they treat you because you don’t speak in tongues. I mean, if I did not speak in tongues, I could still happily fellowship with people who do. And I could even fellowship with people who say, well, Steve, you’re not filled with the Spirit because you don’t speak in tongues. Right. If that was their private opinion. But if they treated me lesser than other Christians and so forth, I probably would go find a church where my gift could be used. Do you have any idea what your gift is? It’s that you change. Teaching? That’s the thing. That’s much more valuable than speaking in tongues. Do they recognize that you have the gift of teaching? No.
SPEAKER 05 :
No, not yet.
SPEAKER 08 :
Okay, well, they’ve never heard you teach.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yes, they never heard me.
SPEAKER 08 :
Okay, I would say if they are going to hold you at arm’s length from them to keep you from teaching or from ministering in the church in any way, it may be a church that doesn’t have much promise for you in your serving of God, because, of course, you’re going to serve God in the gift that you have. If you’re in a fellowship that doesn’t let you do that or doesn’t recognize that, you’d be far better off going to one that does.
SPEAKER 05 :
Right, right. Thank you so much, Steve, for your answer.
SPEAKER 08 :
Thank you. All right. Well, I’m sorry to hear about this, but it’s not the worst of all scenarios.
SPEAKER 05 :
Right, right. Thank you very much.
SPEAKER 08 :
God bless you, man. Well, we only have a few minutes here, but let’s see. Now, what’s that? This? That? Oh, okay. Hey, for our previous caller who was asking about the New Heavens, New Earth group, my wife did some more research on this just while we’ve been sitting here, and she said they may be connected to a controversial Korean cult-like group called Shincheonji or something like that. Anyway, there’s quite a few criticisms of them online. So if that caller is still listening, you know, I mentioned I don’t know the group. I can’t say they’re good or bad. But you may want to check that out because it could very well be that they are connected to a A cult-like group. So, I’m glad we got that out. But I don’t know. So, I don’t want to blacklist them wrongfully. We have, somebody wrote me, Shelley wrote me this question. And since we only have a couple minutes, I’m going to go ahead and take this. She said, Steve, what do people mean when they say we need Christ without religion? Isn’t religion something the Bible speaks positively about? says Shelley. Yes, the word religion appears a few times, not very often, but it appears a few times in the New Testament. And when it does, it usually is a positive. It usually speaks positively of religion, but of course it’s usually referring to Christianity. Now, Christianity in those days, I don’t think was what we would call a religion in the same degree that we think of it now. A religion… I mean, there’s lots of religions, obviously, and lots of false religions. James, in his book, in James chapter 1 and verse 26 and 27, said, If anyone among you thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, that one’s religion is useless. Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this, to visit the orphans and widows in their trouble and to keep oneself unspotted from the world. So, you know, a lot of people, most religions have to do with you have to sign on to a list of doctrines and you have to be involved in a certain number of rituals on a regular basis. If it’s a Christian group, it’d be probably on Sundays. And you’re required to do things that are not specifically related to love for your neighbor. And if someone says we need Christ without religion, they probably mean we need to follow Christ regularly. in what he commanded us to do, which is to love our neighbor. And James says that means helping widows and orphans and staying unspotted from the world, none of which has anything to do with what we call religious practices. And so I think when people say we need Christ without religion, I think they mean without practices that are distinctly religious, but rather that are holy and righteous and loving. I’m out of time. You’ve been listening to The Narrow Path. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. Let’s talk again tomorrow.
