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In this enriching episode, the Narrow Path radio broadcast welcomes listeners from different walks of life to explore the complexities of hell from various Christian perspectives. Host Steve Gregg addresses questions about the traditional and lesser-known views of hell and their significance in today’s religious discourse. Also discussed are effective evangelism strategies that emphasize honesty and depth, providing insights into spreading the core message of Christianity in a meaningful way. Tune in for a thought-provoking discussion that challenges conventional narratives and invites open-minded exploration.
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 for an hour each weekday afternoon. And we welcome you to call in if you wish, if you have questions about the Bible you’d like to talk about here on the air or about Christianity or anything like that. including questions coming from an unbeliever’s point of view. If you’re not a believer and you’ve read the Bible or you’ve heard things about the Bible and you’ve got problems with it and you’d like to discuss what those problems are, you’re certainly welcome to call me and we’ll talk about it here. The number to call is 844- 844-484-5737. Now, all of our lines just lit up, which means they’re full, and if you call right now, you will get a busy signal. But please keep this number. Dial it in a few minutes. Lines will be opening, and there’s almost everybody who tries, I think, can get on in the course of the hour if they try often enough. The number is 844-484-5737. All right, and a couple things coming up this weekend, Saturday, day after tomorrow. I’ve got two Southern California events. These are events that have been happening for years now. On the third Saturday of each month, when I’m available, we’ve had a men’s Bible study on Saturday morning at 8 o’clock in Temecula. A men’s Bible study at 8 o’clock in the morning in Temecula. this Saturday it only happens once a month so that’s coming up this Saturday at 8 in the morning in Temecula now in the evening and this is being phased out at the end of this year we will have phased out this meeting but we have on the third Saturday of this month which is again this Saturday an evening meeting in Buena Park in Southern California in Orange County and I’m doing an overview of the book of Revelation and And so if you’re interested in that, you’re certainly welcome to join us for that. That begins at 6 o’clock Saturday night in Buena Park at a little church called the Way Fellowship. If you’re interested in either of those gatherings, the men’s Bible study in the morning or the general Bible study for anybody in the evening on the book of Revelation, feel free to go to our website, thenarrowpath.com, and look under the tab that says Announcements. And there you will see the dates, the date coming up, which is, of course, July 19th. And you can see where these meetings are held. And you can join us. That’s this Saturday. All right. Enough announcements for now. And we’re going to talk, first of all, to Christopher calling from Denmark. Hi, Christopher. I don’t know if I’ve heard from Denmark before on the program. Welcome.
SPEAKER 08 :
Well, you did eight years ago when I called the last time.
SPEAKER 02 :
Eight years ago, okay. I’m glad you haven’t needed me much.
SPEAKER 08 :
Well, I have your website.
SPEAKER 02 :
Ah, I see.
SPEAKER 08 :
Thank you for taking my call, and it’s very convenient for me to be first in line as well when I’m calling you from Europe. Well, my question is, sometimes when I speak to people who reject God because of help, They say they can’t believe in a God that would allow eternal punishment. So my question is whether you think it’s a good idea to bring up the three views on hell to non-Christians. My experience and my hope is that it may remove an obstacle for them in getting to know God. I do think a lot of people are appalled by Christianity because of hell, the traditional view at least. But And on the other hand, it’s also my concern not to make hell a nicer place than it is. I really don’t want to sell hell to anyone. So I would like to hear your thoughts on that. And if my question is clear, I will probably take the answer off the air.
SPEAKER 02 :
Okay. Well, Christopher, great to hear from you. And you have a good night.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yeah, you too. Bye. All right.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, is it a good idea when speaking to unbelievers about hell to let them know that there’s more than one view? that is possible to held. Well, I certainly wrote a book with that in mind, not just for unbelievers, but for believers, too. It’s good to know that since the traditional view, which is the view that hell is a place of eternal conscious torment, strikes so many sensitive souls as an unjust thing, that it’s nice to know that it’s not the only view of hell that can be supported from Scripture. In fact, there’s a couple other views of hell that have been widely held on the basis of scripture by Christians from the very beginning of Christian history. It is true the idea that hell is a place of eternal conscious torment has very early credentials, Tertullian being one in the second century who actually was pretty strong on the eternal conscious torment view. And obviously Augustine in the fourth century made it kind of the major view of the Western church. And that’s why we call it the traditional view now is because Augustine had that kind of impact. But before Augustine, while there were some who did hold that view, there was also a very significant number of Christians who did not. And one of those views, held by Irenaeus, for example, and some others, was that hell is not a place of eternal conscious torment. It’s a place where people eventually will be extinct. They’ll feel nothing. They’ll know nothing. They’ll be dead. They’ll be punished, but they will not be punished forever. They will be punished proportionately, and then they will cease to exist. That view still exists. It’s called the view of conditional immortality, and many people hold it today. A lot of people might think in their minds that this is the view of the Seventh-day Adventists or the Jehovah’s Witnesses. And it is true that Seventh-day Adventists hold this view, and Jehovah’s Witnesses have held a view similar to it. But that’s kind of irrelevant to whether it’s true or not, since both of those groups came up in the 19th century, and this view was held much earlier than that, like by Irenaeus in the 2nd century. So, you know, the fact that there are some cultic groups that have gravitated toward that view does not change the fact that it was a view held by traditional Christians in the earliest centuries of the church. Now, that doesn’t make it true. It just means it was an alternative to what we think of as the traditional view. And then, in the time before Augustine, it would seem for a couple of centuries, one of the most prevalent views in the church was that of Origen. Origen, who lived in the third century, is regarded as one of the, well, along with Augustine, the greatest theologian of the early church. Now, I’m not a great fan of Augustine. He introduced a lot of strange things, and I don’t believe everything Origen said. But this is just the generic assessment of these two men by church historians. The greatest theologians in the early church in the first four centuries were Origen and Augustine. And Origen had immense influence over the churches throughout the world. And many people believed that his views were the dominant view until the time of Augustine. In fact, when Augustine wrote The City of God and decided to write several chapters about hell, it was Origen’s view that Augustine concentrated on trying to refute. Apparently, Origen’s view was the main view that it was the thing to be defeated as far as Augustine was concerned. Now, Origen was never called a heretic by Augustine or anyone else in his day. But he believed that hell was a place where people go and God continues to deal with them there and to seek to bring them to repentance and that their repentance there is a possibility. That is a third view. Now, those are all very different views of hell. And obviously, some of them are more palatable than others. And some people think, well, we should choose the least palatable view because, after all, we want to use hell to scare people into becoming Christians. And if we don’t give them the most palatable horrendous picture of hell, they just might not become Christians. Well, they might not, but if they do become Christians only because you gave them the most horrible view of hell, they might not be really becoming Christians either. The early church did not use hell, as far as we can tell from the book of Acts, as a means of converting people. They believed in hell, and of course what they believed about hell is the very thing that’s debated among these three views. There is biblical evidence for all three. But regardless of what they believe about hell, they never really mentioned hell in their evangelism. We have no reference to Paul or Peter in their evangelistic sermons in the book of Acts ever mentioning the afterlife at all, heaven or hell. Not because they didn’t believe in it, but because that’s not what they thought was necessary to get people to be converted. They felt like people were converted when they repent of their sins. Because they’re sorry for offending God. And because their conscience smites them for having rejected the one that God has appointed to be the Lord and the king. And they were stricken in their hearts. You know, on the day of Pentecost, their hearts smoked them. But Peter had not mentioned anything about heaven or hell. He just told them that Christ is the king. God made him king. And that’s the gospel, actually. That’s called the gospel of the kingdom of God. And so in preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, we don’t have any instance in the book of Acts where we have a handful or more of examples of apostolic evangelism. Not one example is given of mentioning heaven or hell. So obviously, though these men believed in heaven and hell, they did not see it as an essential part of getting people saved, which means they must have thought there was some other motivation than scaring people to death to get them to love God. And maybe that’s because there is. It’s hard to love somebody that you’re terrified of, but it’s easy to love somebody who humbled himself and washed your feet and died in your place and, you know, sacrificed everything to save you. And therefore, you know, it’s… A lot of people think, well, we should just make hell as scary as it can be. I think we should just be as honest as we should be. I don’t think that making up stories to get people saved is ever a good idea. The truth of the matter is, while an eternal conscious torment in hell has been the traditional view ever since the time of Augustine in the Western Church. Now, by the way, the Eastern Churches haven’t necessarily been as fond of it because they didn’t follow Augustine. The Western Church did. But while that is true of the Western Church, for the most part, for the past 1,500 years, it is not true of the earliest church, necessarily. It was held by some, and other views were held by some. And all the ones who held these different views are equal in standing as church leaders, church fathers. Irenaeus did not teach the eternal conscious torment view, though Tertullian did. Origen didn’t teach the same view as Tertullian or Irenaeus. But all these guys… We’re solid, orthodox, respectable church fathers. So to tell people, if they say, I can’t believe in a God who would burn people forever in hell, you could certainly say, well, I’m not really sure that God would do that. The Bible doesn’t say that he has eternal wrath. It says his wrath is but for a moment, but his mercy is forever. The Bible says that he will not always strive, neither will he keep his anger forever. There are things in the Bible to make us question whether there’s such a thing as eternal wrath. The Bible doesn’t describe it that way, except in some passages in the Revelation, which are no doubt, like the rest of Revelation, quite symbolic. But the point here is that I wouldn’t simply say that. I would simply say if the reason you don’t like God is because you could not love somebody who did that to his enemies, tortured them forever and ever, I can kind of understand how that would be a problem. in getting you to be fond of him. But it’s not necessary from the Bible to believe that that is what God does. That is a traditional view of the Western Latin Church. perpetrated through the Roman Catholic Church and kept on the list of necessary doctrines by Protestants in the Reformation, which was part of the Catholic Church, too. The Eastern Church and other churches haven’t all been quite so firm about that. But the point is, I would say whatever is true about hell, we may not be able to determine. But one thing we can determine is that God is God. And whatever he is going to do, it would be very foolish for us to say, in a universe that has only one God, the God who made us all, the God who gives us all things, the God who sent his son to die for us, to save us, the God that we will all stand before someday as he judges every work we’ve done, that God. It would be very foolish for us to say, well, I’m not going to serve him because I don’t like his ideas of justice. Well, no. Frankly, I don’t know where you got your views of justice. If God’s views are wrong, I’m not sure where you got any views. I think the whole concept of justice comes from God. But the idea here is that whatever God does, he has not made clear. What he expects of us, he has made clear. He expects full surrender. We are at war with God until we surrender to him. And he’s expecting full surrender. He’s appointed Jesus to be the king of the universe. All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Jesus. And he commands all men everywhere to repent and be followers of Christ. Now, that’s what he expects us to do. What he will do to those who do not do so is really kind of more vague. And it’s okay because we don’t need to know because we don’t have to be among those who will experience whatever it is that people experience when they rebel against God. My message to the unbeliever is not if you rebel against God, you’re going to have this or that particular consequence. My message is you need to stop rebelling against God, and then you won’t have to worry what the consequences are. But one thing I will say, if you say, well, I have repented of my rebellion against God, but I have friends and family who are still in rebellion. What if they go to hell? Well, all I can say is if you know God, then you know that God has never done anything wrong in the whole eternity of his existence. And therefore, if it would be wrong to torment people forever and ever, then that’s not what he will do. But if it’s what he does do, it is what is right, because God has never done anything wrong. And so I would say you don’t have to believe in eternal conscious torment. Many Christians throughout the first four centuries, including Christian leaders of the most influential type, did not believe that God torments people forever and ever in hell. Some believe that, some don’t. We’re not obligated to believe it. You can believe it if you want to. It’s not necessarily what the Bible teaches with clarity, although some people have mistakenly thought it does. So I would just say, yeah, so on the one hand, what you’re seeing as hell may or may not be what really happens. And, you know, if it’s not the right thing, then it won’t happen because God never does anything wrong. If it is the right thing, then it wouldn’t be right for us to complain about that. What we should do is trust God that he knows what is right and he’s committed to what is right more than you and I have ever been. You and I have never had the commitment to doing what’s right that God has. And therefore, I’m going to trust him about that. I’m just saying it’s time to surrender to him. Time to give him your life. It’s owed to him. He made you. It is owed to him. You didn’t make yourself. So I would confront them on the rebellion issue. Because some people use any excuse, anything God did that they don’t like. Well, I won’t serve a God who would do that. Well, then you won’t be saved, whether he would do that or not. You may be wrong about what you think he does, but your problem is not being wrong about that. Your problem is thinking that you stand in a position to judge the God who made the universe and that you’re going to get back at him by not surrendering to him. Yeah, that sounds real smart. and real evil at the same time, because you’re not the one who’s the arbiter of what’s right and wrong. God is. Fortunately, God has shown us what is right in his eyes by sending Jesus. And if you have any complaints about what Jesus did, then you really have serious moral problems, I think. So I’d put it back on their conscience, but I’d also let them know, you know, if it came up, that there are other ways to view hell in the Bible than the way that they may have heard. Hey, Brother Christopher, I appreciate your call. We’re going to talk next to Daniel from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Hi, Daniel.
SPEAKER 07 :
Hello, Steve. Thank you for taking my call. I also want to thank you for your ministry. I’ve learned a tremendous amount about the Word of God by listening to your program for the last year and a half. Great. My question is, out of Exodus, in the 17th chapter… verses 8 through 16, and I can read those if you like, or you can read them.
SPEAKER 02 :
17th chapter?
SPEAKER 07 :
17th chapter, verses 8 through 16.
SPEAKER 02 :
About the battle with Amalek, yeah.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yes.
SPEAKER 02 :
Okay, so what happened there was that when Israel had left Egypt, and they’d begun their wanderings through the wilderness, they were attacked. Now, there’s, of course, millions of Jews walking through the wilderness, and they’re not side by side. So some are in the rear, some are in the front. And the ones that were weakest and most tired were tagging along in the rear. And the Amalekites came up behind and started picking off these weak ones, these slow ones. And so the Israelites turned upon them and made war against the Amalekites. And so Moses went up on the mountain with his brother Aaron and another guy named Hur. and sent Joshua to lead the armies of Israel to fight the Amalekites. And Moses, it says, when his hands were in the air, Israel prevailed in battle. But when his arms got tired and he put his hands down, then the Amalekites began to prevail. So he sat on a rock and Hur and Aaron sat on either side of him or stood and held his arms up. until the battle was over and they defeated the Amalekites. Now, God, at the end of that, pronounced a curse on the Amalekites and said that he’s going to make war with them until they’re wiped out, which occurred pretty much in the time of Saul, much later than this. Anyway, that’s the story. What was your question?
SPEAKER 07 :
My question is specifically in verse 12 where it says they put a stone under him, referring to Moses. Is that a pre-incarnate shadow or type of Christ?
SPEAKER 02 :
The stone?
SPEAKER 07 :
Yes.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, I’ve never thought so. I’d have to think about that a bit to see if there’s any possible way it would be. Of course, there is in the stories of the Israelites wandering in the wilderness a stone from which they got water. We’re not told that this would be that stone. Paul, in talking about the wandering of the Israelites in 1 Corinthians 10, in the opening six verses, tells about how they crossed the Red Sea and they ate manna and they drank living water from a rock. Now, by saying the rock was Christ, he meant that that rock that he’s referring to was a type of Christ. It represents Christ. But that was a different rock than this one. Now, you know, if there was some lesson to be learned from it, that Paul thought that this rock that Moses sat on was also, you know, represented Christ. then maybe I would see it. I don’t see how that fits. Are you saying that Moses somehow rests upon Christ himself? Is that what you’re suggesting?
SPEAKER 07 :
I was wondering, because the last time I read this passage, what occurred to me was in Psalm 118, it references the stone that the builders refused. It’s been the headstone of the corner. And they use the same word in Hebrew as they use in this particular passage in verse 12?
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, the word in the Hebrew actually means a rock or a stone, and it’s used, I would assume, hundreds of times in Scripture in different contexts. It is true that that both the Psalms and the prophets use the imagery of a stone to represent Christ in certain contexts. Psalm 118, he’s likened to a cornerstone, you know, of a building. In Isaiah chapter 28, 16, I think it is, he’s likened to a cornerstone also and a foundation stone. In Isaiah 8, he’s likened to a stumbling block stone. And so there’s these different ways that a stone serves. Peter, of course, in 1 Peter 2, also speaks of Christ as the cornerstone. And we are living stones built up a spiritual house, he says. This is in 1 Peter 2, verses, I guess, around verse 4 and 5, thereabouts. So we have, you know, times when this rock, this stone imagery, is used as a picture of Christ, just like the term shepherd is used frequently of Christ. So he never was a literal shepherd. He also was not a literal stone. But sometimes the figurative language of Scripture does see Christ. between things and Christ. But I don’t see this one necessarily. I mean, if somebody were teaching through this passage and saying, you know, the Bible doesn’t make this point, but I think it’s interesting that Christ is like a stone, a foundation stone, and here’s Moses resting on the stone, you know, and so he’s resting on Christ. I mean, I could see that as maybe an edifying thing to say, but I don’t know that it would have, you know, validity biblically.
SPEAKER 07 :
Okay. All right. Thank you, Steve. I appreciate it.
SPEAKER 02 :
Okay, Daniel. Thanks for calling. Good talking to you. Okay, Hunter from Hartford, Alabama. Hunter, welcome.
SPEAKER 04 :
Hey, Steve, how are you doing today? Fine, thanks. Good. Hey, my question is, I have a good Mormon friend of mine who, you know, they don’t believe in the Trinity in the way that we do, but one of the problems he said that he has with evangelical Trinitarianism is that where it says in the Scriptures that it says that all power was given unto Jesus, and he says that That if all power had been given to him, that there was a point in time where he did not have that power. So, therefore, the Trinity cannot be as we as evangelicals understand the Trinity.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, you know, people who try to disprove the Trinity often use that kind of thing. Well, Jesus is said to have this subordination to the Father. and therefore he isn’t the Father, and God is the Father, and so Jesus isn’t God, and so forth. I mean, this is simply a failure to think very carefully. And I believe the Trinity doctrine, while there are still people I know, Christians I know, who don’t believe in the Trinity, I think that it was not something that the church came up with lightly without concentrating on the scriptures about this. After all, if they were making it up, they could make it easier. But I believe they were taking all the scriptures into consideration and saying that Jesus is God in the flesh. The Father is God not in the flesh. It’s the same God, manifest in the flesh in the case of Christ, and not manifest in the flesh in the case of the Father. And so, you know, I would direct you to Philippians chapter 2, where it says that Jesus existed in the form of God, but he emptied himself and took on the form of a servant. So when he emptied himself, he put aside God. his privileges as God, to live as a man under the handicaps we live under. And then after he rose from the dead, he was restored to that position that he had laid aside. That’s what I understand. I need to take a break. I wish I didn’t, but I’ll put you on hold. I’ll talk to you after the break. You’re listening to The Narrow Path. Our website’s thenarrowpath.com. I’ll be right back.
SPEAKER 01 :
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SPEAKER 02 :
Welcome back to the Narrow Path Radio Broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and our lines are full so there’s no reason for me to give out the phone number in this case. We only have a half hour left and we’ll spend that half hour trying to take these calls. We were talking on the phone earlier to Hunter in Alabama and he said a Mormon friend of his had Trouble with the Trinity, of course. Of course the Mormons, well, they don’t believe in the Trinity. And actually some Christians have trouble with it, too. I’m not one of them. I actually have no big problem with the Trinity. But you wanted to speak up again, Hunter, so I’m going to put you back on here. We were interrupted rather suddenly by that break.
SPEAKER 04 :
Oh, thank you. The way that I’ve always explained it is that Jesus was man and God at the same time. And so I think the expression I’ve often heard is that Jesus was 100% man and 100% God at the same time. 100% man in the sense that he had to endure the same things we did, temptation and stuff like that. But he never sinned, and that was the part of him being God. And they, oh, that’s a logical fallacy that two things can’t be 100%. And it’s not that I’m literally meaning that. I’m trying to make a point. And they get hung up on that analogy rather than addressing the actual meat of what I’m trying to convey there.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, you know, I was raised in a church. I’m Trinitarian. I was always Trinitarian. And I always heard that very line, too. Jesus is 100% God and 100% man. I don’t think that’s a very helpful thing to say. First of all, the Bible doesn’t ever say it that way. And anyone who knows anything about math knows that you can’t be 200% anything because 100% means the whole thing. Now, I think the reason Christians have said that so much is because they want to mention that Jesus did not lack anything of human nature. In other words, he wasn’t some phantom ghost creature, some supernatural being like an alien who wasn’t human. No, he was completely human. He was, you know, descended from Adam and Eve and Abraham and David and so forth. We have the genealogies of Jesus in the Bible. We know he was human. He had human nature. There were things about him that were true of him that were not true of God. For example, God never becomes weary, the Bible says in Isaiah. But Jesus became weary and fell asleep more than once. Obviously, you know, God can’t be tempted with evil. But Jesus was tempted in all points like we are, but without sin, the Bible says. God can’t die, but Jesus did die. So we can see that, you know, becoming a man, there were aspects of him. He shared in the weakness of our nature, including our mortality, which is not true of him before he became a man. As it says in Philippians chapter 2, in verse 6 it says, he, before he came to earth, he being in the form of God, did not consider it a thing to be grasped, to be equal with God. But he himself made himself of no reputation. Actually, in the Greek it says he emptied himself and took on the form of a servant, a human servant. So he was God in heaven, not in human form prior to his incarnation in Bethlehem. But when he became human, of course, he had to empty himself of some things. God is everywhere. You can’t be a human being and be everywhere. Because Jesus was in one place at a time when he was on earth. He wasn’t omniscient. That is, he didn’t know everything. God does. But Jesus emptied himself of that. He had to learn to speak. He had to learn to read just like anyone else. He didn’t know certain things. He himself told us that he didn’t know certain things. He said only his father knew. knew the day and the hour of his return, but he says he didn’t know. The angels didn’t know. He didn’t know. No one knows. So, I mean, Jesus clearly had laid aside certain privileges and, you know, what should we say, magnitude qualities of God to become reduced to our size. Now, I was talking about how some people say, and I was always taught, You know, Jesus was 100% God, 100% man. Well, to me, that’s not helpful. Because it, frankly, just doesn’t make sense. But to say that God, and nothing less than God, took on himself human nature, which was nothing less than human nature, would be a biblical statement. It says in John chapter 1 that the Word was God in verse 1. And then verse 14 says, and the Word became flesh. That means human. and dwelt among us, tabernacled among us. So he was God, and he took on human nature. And some say God can’t do that. Well, who are you to tell God what he can and cannot do? I believe God can do anything he wants to. Now, what does that involve? How does that look? Well, it looks like Jesus, but what it involves, I do not know. I’ve never told God that he has to explain all these things to me in order for him to be believed. The truth is, if God is God, he can do many things which are probably way above my pay grade, even to understand if they were explained. That may be why he hasn’t explained everything. I wouldn’t understand anyway. I’m a person. I’m a human. I’m less than a little child compared to him. He doesn’t have to explain everything to me, just like I can’t explain everything to a two-year-old, even if I know it. So, I mean, this is something that, you know, he is God who became flesh. That’s what the Bible says. In doing so, he emptied himself of his prestige and of his divine traits and lived among us with human handicaps. And then when he died and rose again, He was elevated back to his original glory. Remember in John 17, when he’s praying to his father, he said, Father, give me the glory that I had with you before. He’s referring to the fact that he’s going to die and rise again and go back to heaven. He’s going to have the glory back that he had before. So is this mysterious? Well, I would say we don’t have any analogy of it. In the physical world, people are always trying, of course, to come up with analogies for the Trinity, but every one of them falls short in some way. But the point is we don’t need to have an analogy. There is no analog to God. Who is like unto thee is what they asked when he led them through the Red Sea and they were singing to him in Exodus 15. Who is like you, O Lord? The answer is nobody is like you. There’s no analog to God. So we have to just understand that God is in a class by himself. And if he reveals to us that he has done a certain thing, and I say, I don’t know how that could happen. Well, is that surprising that I don’t know how something can happen that God could do? I don’t know how God could speak the world into existence. I don’t know how that could happen. I don’t know how God could always exist without having a beginning. Yeah, I don’t know how that could happen either. But is that surprising that I wouldn’t? There’s no analogy to it in my realm of experience. Why should I expect to understand it? Unless I’m very flattering of my own omniscience, which I have learned not to be. Anyway, I would say go with Scripture, not with what you think is possible or makes sense. Remember, the Bible says, trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. It doesn’t mean don’t try to understand things, but you don’t depend on your understanding. You depend on the word of God. You trust in the Lord with all your heart. If he said something, believe it. And if you don’t understand it, humble yourself. And say, like David did. Yeah, David had a great line, which I think every person should learn when they’re wrestling with things that are above their pay grade that God has said. And it’s in Psalm 131, verse 1. David said, Lord, my heart is not haughty, which means arrogant. That’s a good attitude. To acknowledge that there are things that are great matters that are too profound for me. I’m not surprised. And that doesn’t make me stupid. It just means that if I was the smartest man in the world, there’d still be things too profound for me because I don’t know what God knows. So until someone’s willing to humble themselves, say, God, I’m not going to be arrogant about this. I’m just going to say, you know, God, you know, I don’t. That’s the wise thing to say. You know, when Ezekiel and Ezekiel 37 saw this valley of dry bones and they were all dead and dry and scattered over the desert, God spoke to Ezekiel and said, Ezekiel, can these bones live? Well, obviously, not any way that we could figure out how they could live. And Ezekiel didn’t say yes or no. He said, Lord, you know. And sometimes that’s what we need to do. We just say, God, you know. I don’t have to know. Robert from Quitman, Texas. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 05 :
Hi, thank you, Steve. I’ll read my question and then take your response offline. Okay. Here’s the question. In the book of Ezekiel, Ezekiel seems to prophesy against the Israelites back in Jerusalem, but would his prophecy benefit or lead repentance of any of those in Jerusalem since Ezekiel is far away in Babylonia?
SPEAKER 02 :
Okay, good question. And as you want to take it off there, I’ll go ahead and let you. The prophets often spoke to people and nations that were not proximate to them and who would not hear them. Now, whether they would write these things down and send them in writing to someone in those places, I don’t know. But both Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel, All of them, and Amos also, have a series of messages that they give to other nations than their own. Now, Ezekiel, of course, when he was writing, was in Babylon, and he wrote much of his prophecies actually were written to his own nation back in Jerusalem. But he also had prophecies against Tyre and against Egypt and against certain other pagan nations. And Isaiah had prophecies starting around, I guess, chapter 13 of Isaiah through chapter 22 or so. You know, prophecies against Babylon and the Philistines and Ammon and Moab and Edom and Assyria and so forth. Now, it’s not like, and Jeremiah had some prophecies like that too, written to these nations in the last several chapters of Jeremiah. So all these prophets tended to prophesy to people that weren’t really close by. and who obviously couldn’t hear them if they spoke them out publicly. And there’s a couple ways to look at this. One is they may have actually sent these prophecies in writing physically to those places by some courier who would deliver them. Or it’s even possible that it was never intended that those people would ever hear them. Now, as far as the… prophecies of Ezekiel to those in Jerusalem, I would think he’d want them to hear them. And so he may have sent a courier with those prophecies to them. We know that he received a courier to him telling him when Jerusalem was fallen. And so it’s possible he sent them that way. But it’s also the case that sometimes prophets are speaking for effect. I mean, they’re actually saying what’s true. They’re speaking about the truth, about the judgment truth. That’s coming on Babylon or on Edom or on Egypt or somewhere like that or on Jerusalem and about God’s complaint. You know, he’s he’s angry because they do this, this and this and this. Now, even if those nations never heard these prophecies, Ezekiel’s hearers would and would know that this is what God wants. is going to do and is saying. This is what God is thinking about the sins of these pagan nations. And almost never do we have such prophecies against nations in a prophet that aren’t also followed by similar prophecies against Jerusalem or Israel in the north. Amos chapters 1 and 2 is like that. There’s like seven oracles against horrible nations and how God’s going to destroy them. The first five of them are pagan nations, and then you’ve got Israel and Judah. You know, they’re in the same boat. So sometimes it was more possibly for effect. I mean, it may be that the king of Tyre never heard Ezekiel’s prophecies against the king of Tyre, but his hearers did and knew that this is what God would say to the king of Tyre. And this is what God had against him. And this is what God was determined to do against him. And whether the king of Tyre ever heard that with his own ears or not, this would be instructive to his audience just like it would be instructive to us today. You know, wow, this is how God felt about the king of Tyre and what he did to him. We might even take some lessons ourselves from it and say, well, we’ve got a lot of those problems that he had too. Maybe God, who has not changed, thinks that way about our nation. You never know. So I can’t really say. I do know that for Ezekiel in Babylon to prosecute against the people in Jerusalem, as he did, raises the question, did they ever hear his prophecy until they joined him in Babylon? And maybe they did not, or maybe they did. But we have the same issue to consider when he and the other prophets are addressing nations very far away, which those prophets no doubt never visited. You know, you could go either way. You could say they did this for the ears of the Jewish hearers, where they were, for a fact, or One could argue that they wrote them down and sent them, you know, actually to those places. And I can’t tell you which is which because the Bible doesn’t tell us which. It doesn’t actually tell us how or if they intended for those other nations to hear what was said against them. It’s a good question, though. I appreciate your calling. Deborah from Ellensburg, Washington. Welcome.
SPEAKER 09 :
Oh, hi there, Steve. How are you?
SPEAKER 02 :
Fine, thanks. Go ahead.
SPEAKER 09 :
Yeah, I was just wondering, what resources would you suggest for people who are interested in evangelism and discipleship?
SPEAKER 02 :
You mean in evangelizing people and discipling people? Yes. Okay, well, there’s lots and lots and lots of resources out there. There are ministries that train people in evangelism. You can find them on the Internet. There are books about evangelism. I’ve got a whole shelf full of them. Are they all good? They might not be all equally good, but I’m sure all of them have some good things to say. I’m going to keep this short and say I think the books I wrote about the kingdom of God would probably fill that bill. in my opinion, book one of the book, it’s a two-part series, Empire of the Risen Son, which is not a story. I mean, it’s a biblical story, but it’s not written as a novel. It’s theology. It’s about the kingdom of God. And the first book is really about what the gospel of the kingdom is. So, I mean, if you’re going to evangelize people, you’re going to want to know what the gospel is. And then book two is about discipleship. And I believe that either of those books, I think the first book could be used, I think everyone who does evangelism should at least read the first book, which is called There is Another King. Both books are called Empire of the Risen Son, S-O-N, and the first book is subtitled There is Another King, and the second book is subtitled All the King’s Men, and it’s about discipleship, and it’s very detailed and very practical. So I guess, although I’m not a book salesman, and I don’t push my books very often, but I would say if you’re asking for resources on that, that would be my recommendation. Thank you for your call. Let’s talk to, let’s see, Craig in Manchester, New Hampshire. Craig, welcome. Craig, are you there? Yeah. Apparently not. Going once, going twice. Do you have your phone on mute by any chance? All right, I’m going to assume you’re not there, although the line was lit up with his name on it. Okay, we’re going to talk next to Nelson in San Diego, California. Nelson, welcome to The Narrow Path. Good to hear from you.
SPEAKER 06 :
Hi, Steve. Yeah, my question, thanks for taking my call. My question is this. The book of Revelation, much of the teaching that’s being taught today is kind of based on the fact that that book was written in the 1890s particularly, and yet your understanding, and I believe it’s so, it was written before 1870. How do we reconcile those two opinions?
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, I don’t think we can reconcile them. I think we have to just say these are two theories. One is correct and the other is incorrect. And they contradict each other. One is the theory that when Jesus gave John these visions, that Nero was the emperor of Rome at the time. The other view is that when Jesus gave John these visions, Domitian was the emperor of Rome. Now, those two can’t be reconciled. They’re simply contrary theories. So you have to look at them and say, okay, which theory has evidence in its favor? That’s what you always do when you’ve got two theories. You look for evidence. In my opinion, the evidence favors the early date. And I can’t go into all that right now, although in my lectures on Revelation, I spend some time on the evidence for the early date and the evidence for the later date. I’m not embarrassed. My view is that it was written before 70 A.D., and whenever I read someone saying it was written in 96 A.D., it doesn’t embarrass me. It just means, oh, they hold that theory. Okay. Okay. They hold that theory. It’s a different theory than the one I hold. The one I hold is held by very many people, too. I mean, it’s quite a controversy. But I’ve made up my own mind based on the evidence in the book. And I guess people who hold the other view must think they have evidence for it. and the evidence for the late date in my book, Revelation 4 Views, a parallel commentary. But to put it briefly, it would appear that the temple in Jerusalem was still standing when Revelation was written. This is what I would get from Revelation 11. verses 1 and 2. John saw the temple standing. He was told to measure it, and he was told that it was going to be given over to the Gentiles to be trodden underfoot. That happened in 70 AD, but it had not yet happened when Revelation was written. So that makes it written before 70 AD. That’s an important thing. The fact that the mark of the beast, 666, is something that John thought his readers would be able to calculate and figure out who he’s talking about is interesting. And the best arguments I know for identification of the 666 is that it refers to Caesar Nero. It certainly doesn’t refer to Domitian. Nobody has ever found any way to make the emperor Domitian’s name fit 666. But Nero’s can. And I won’t go into that in detail now because of the shortage of our time here. But so it would suggest that the emperor at the time was Nero. Also, Revelation 17.10 tells us that there were, he said, there are seven kings. Five are fallen. One, that would be the sixth, now is, and another is yet to come. So at the time he’s writing to his readers, he’s saying there are five kings who have fallen, and as I write to you, the sixth one is the current one. If he’s referring to emperors, as many scholars believe, the sixth emperor is Nero. So he’s saying there are five emperors who have fallen. The current emperor is the sixth. Well, that’s Nero then. So now some think he’s not talking about emperors. I can’t go into that in detail because of our time limitations. But I believe there’s plenty to suggest that it was written in 70 AD and not much to base an alternative view upon. Nelson, I’m going to try to take one more call. We’re almost out of time here. But I’ll see you Saturday, won’t I? Amen. You got it. All right. God bless you, brother. Craig in Manchester, New Hampshire. Welcome to The Narrow Pass.
SPEAKER 03 :
We’re going to try it again, Steve. Are you there?
SPEAKER 02 :
It’s working now. Go ahead. We only have a few minutes.
SPEAKER 03 :
Hey, good deal. Okay. Listen, thanks a lot for your program. It was funny. It’s been a while since I talked to you, but I had a question about evangelism, and I heard a pastor from – so it’s funny that you’re talking to that gal about what are the best books to take a look at – I evangelize regularly. Our church goes out. I go out about three times a week. Anyway, I evangelize a lot, and I take them through Romans Road. I like to be very – because we have a lot of Catholics around here, so for the people that will listen, I’m very deliberate about it. I really take my trade seriously, so to speak, because it’s a great commission. But a question I had was we had a pastor that’s – you might know him. He preaches out of Leominster Baptist Church. And he’s an old-timer, and he was going on about shallow evangelism. That was a term that he was using. And the point that he was making, he says, is he believes there’s tens of thousands, if not tens of millions, of people that think they’re saved when they really aren’t. You know, because somebody like me talked to him about, you know, being a sinner, having a consequence for sin, you know, recognizing that Christ came to wash away our sins. and then accepting them in your heart. He said because, you know, that just kind of like touches their head with it as opposed to going really to their heart with it. And so if they really don’t repent and, you know, change their lives, you know, that’s just so many words. And I kind of thought that he, as much as I hated to admit it, I kind of thought he had a point. We’re going to run out of time.
SPEAKER 02 :
Go ahead. We’re going to run out of time, so let me address that, okay? Okay. I appreciate your call, and I wish I had more time to talk about it. Let me try to address that very question. I do think that we, when we evangelize, we need to be careful about being too shallow in just running through a programmatic gospel presentation and leaving out something that may be important. It’s very important to my mind that we actually communicate with people where they’re at and see what they know and what they need to be corrected about if they’re wrong about something. But this pastor, I think, is right about much evangelism. I’m not going to say that’s true when you evangelize. It may or may not be. But if you think it is, you may be right and might want to rethink it. But, of course, Jesus did say in Matthew chapter 7, verse 22 and 23, that there will be many who think they are saved. And no doubt they have been evangelized and responded to whatever gospel they heard. But he’ll say to them, I never knew you. Depart from me. So we need to make sure that when we’re getting people to surrender to Christ, if that’s what’s happening, that we’re doing it on the terms that Christ himself recognizes. So he doesn’t say to them, I never knew you. Now, what is the problem with this? I think that many people present the gospel as if the whole issue is, where are you going when you die? And, you know, we’re going to hell unless we come to Christ. So if we come to Christ, we’ll go to heaven. And that’s kind of the appeal we make to people. Let’s get you out of hell. Let’s keep you from going to hell and get you to go to heaven. But actually, the apostles didn’t preach that way, and Jesus didn’t either. I mean, I’m not saying they never mentioned heaven or hell. I’m just saying this is not how they evangelized people. They evangelize people by calling them to repent because of the kingdom of God. Jesus said, repent, the kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of God is at hand. Now, what is the kingdom of God? Well, it’s made clear in Scripture that God appointed Jesus to be the Messiah, the Christ, which means the anointed king. And God has established him at his right hand as the Messiah and given him all authority in heaven and earth. And he commands all men everywhere to submit to him and to repent. Now, this means that we’re not just calling people to say a little prayer so they’ll go to heaven someday. This means that we’re calling people to surrender to Jesus Christ as king. And until somebody has done that, they haven’t done that. Before they’ve done that, they are still their own lord as far as they’re concerned. They’re still choosing their own way. They’re still making their own standards and plans and so forth. The point comes when, as Jesus said, if anyone will come after me is to deny himself. and take up his cross and follow me. That’s what Jesus taught. And that’s what I think we need to tell people, is you’ve been following your own way, your own agenda, all your life. God is calling you now to surrender that and follow his agenda and his plan and submit to his son, who he’s made the king over all people in heaven and earth, including you. So we need to start living like Jesus is our king, as opposed to ignoring that fact and just hoping to get a ticket to heaven. This is the difference between the way the gospel is often preached today and and the way it was preached by Christ and the apostles. I didn’t mean to cut you off. Of course, you can hear the music playing. I’m out of time. I’ll be cut off here in less than 30 seconds. But I hope that’s helpful to you. Again, my book, Empire of the Risen Sun, both books together, are very, I think, important books, the most important books I’ve read. I’d recommend them if you want to. They are about this subject. You’ve been listening to The Narrow Path Radio Broadcast. We are listener supported. You can write to us at The Narrow Path, P.O. Box 1730, Temecula, California, 92593, or go to our website, thenarrowpath.com.
