This episode opens the floor to engaging conversations on fascinating topics such as why the Ethiopian Bible contains books unfamiliar to most Christians, and how these books are perceived across different denominations. Delve into the intriguing story of Solomon’s numerous marriages and their implications within the biblical narrative. And as always, Steve Gregg provides thoughtful insight into why Jesus commanded many of those he healed to remain silent about their miracles, reflecting on how Jesus’ approach to ministry was shaped.
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. We’ve been doing this show daily for 28 years, something like that. We started in 1997 and so we’ve been answering Bible questions for nearly 30 years on this daily broadcast. And yet we stay on the air and even though we have no sponsors and we don’t raise money, but God provides, and we’ve added more stations than we ever had before. So, you know, God has allowed us to be on the air. We plan that to continue. And I hope in the distant future you’ll be able to call in if you have questions. You can do so certainly today. We have a few lines open on our switchboard. If you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith or you have a difference of opinion from the way the host has expressed things or believes things, Feel free to call. We’ll be glad to talk to you, very gladly. The number to call is 844-484-5737. That’s 844-484-5737. I have a couple of announcements to make happening this week before the weekend. One of them is for everybody in the world who’s listening, and the other is simply for Southern California people, something new that’s happening. This Wednesday is the first Wednesday of the month. That’s not what makes it, you know, you didn’t need me to tell you that, but to remind you that on the first Wednesday of every month, We have a Zoom meeting in the evening, 7 o’clock p.m. Pacific time. So I’m in California on the West Coast, so it’s 7 o’clock my time. I don’t know what time it is your time, but you’re welcome to join us this Wednesday. The login information can be found at our website, thenarrowpath.com. If you go to the announcements tab, you’ll find all the Zoom logins. And you can join us this Wednesday night. And it’s a Q&A. You’re welcome to call in with any questions. And we talk. It’s a little longer than this program because this program is strictly bounded by, you know, the amount of time we can buy, which is only an hour. But. You know, the Zoom meeting typically goes maybe closer to two hours, at least an hour and a half, until we run out of questions pretty much. So that’s this Wednesday. And I know I’ll see a lot of you there, as we always do. Then I’d also like to mention this Thursday. This is the first time. I don’t think it will be the only time, but it’s experimental. I mentioned this, I think, a week or so ago. There’s a pizza parlor in Huntington Beach, California, a beach I used to go to when I was a kid. It’s called Two Brothers Pizza, and they’re not a sponsor. I’m not advertising their pizza. I’ve never had their pizza. I’m going to assume it’s good. I’m not advertising their product. They contact me and ask me. if I’d be willing on occasions to do what they call a theology Thursday at their pizza restaurant. And I agreed to do that, so we’re doing that this Thursday. Now, I think I’m open to the idea of doing it every alternate Thursday, but we might as well just see what happens on the first one. I’m going to be out of town, out of state, two Thursdays from this one, so we couldn’t do it this month anyway. But if you’re interested, you’re in Southern California, you can come have – Have dinner at the restaurant. We’ll have a short lecture by yours truly about the kingdom of God. And then we’ll have an open discussion, Q&A or just your feedback. And we’ll just talk back and forth. maybe an hour or more. So if you’d like to join us, the information about that can also be found at our website, thenarrowpaths.com, under the tab that says Announcements. And that’s this Thursday. So Wednesday night is the Zoom meeting. Thursday is the Theology Thursday in Huntington Beach. All right, we’re going to go to the phones now. Our lines are full, and we’re going to talk to Ryan from Spartanburg, South Carolina. Hi, Ryan. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 07 :
Hey, Steve. Thank you. My wife and I were invited to a local church here, and we ended up attending with some friends. And I didn’t realize beforehand by the name or anything on the sign, but I guess it was a Baptist church. And our friends were very, very excited for us to hopefully make this our home church as we were looking for a church. And they wanted us to speak with the pastor after the service. And so in doing so, afterwards, we went and spoke with the pastor a little bit, and my wife, not really knowing kind of what Baptist belief, was mentioning how she was praying in tongues, and she had just really felt filled with the Spirit and amongst whatever the story that she was telling. But I could see that the pastor’s face kind of, I don’t want to say his jaw tightened or anything, but you could see that this was clearly not something that they believed. And they ended up sending me, you know, a What We Believe email, and it amongst it, it said that speaking in tongues is only and always speaking in a different language. I guess probably referencing the one time that that happened in the New Testament. And my question was, why do they believe this? Why do they believe that there is, I guess, no such thing as speaking in a heavenly language or it can only ever be speaking in a human language that’s not your own, I guess?
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah. Well, first of all, I don’t know. that it’s ever a heavenly language. It could be. The Bible does not say that it’s always an actual earthly language. So Paul said, if I spoke in the tongues of men or of angels, and I didn’t have love, I’m just a clanging gong. So he might be speaking hypothetically. He might be affirming or not that there are tongues of angels as well as tongues of men. But the point is, whether it’s the tongue of men or tongue of angels, it is a language. It’s a language spoken by somebody, men or angels. I don’t know if any of the languages, you know, I’ve ever heard spoken in tongues are languages of angels. But, you know, Pentecostals and Karameks often talk about, you know, the heavenly language and so forth. To my mind, I’ve never worried about whether if I speak in tongues, whether I’m speaking a human language or an angelic language, because I don’t understand it anyway. That’s the nature of tongues. Speaking in tongues is speaking supernatural language that you don’t know. that it’s a real language that somebody somewhere in the universe would understand. I have no doubt. But I don’t understand it. And if I do, I’m not speaking in tongues. I’m just speaking a language I know. So it’s the nature of tongues to be speaking in a language. In fact, that’s what the word glossolalia means. Tongue means language. So speaking in languages is what it really means. Now, the idea that I think what he’s saying is, because I was once a Baptist and I know how they often think about this subject. I think what he’s probably saying is speaking in tongues is only useful when it is the language, even if maybe you don’t know it, but somebody does, that it’s the language that you’re communicating something in. You know, Baptists don’t all think the same way about these things, but it’s very common for them to believe that speaking in tongues in the early church was for the purpose of preaching the gospel in various languages as the disciples had to go throughout all the world and evangelize. And they often argue we don’t need that anymore. I’m not sure why. I guess now in 2021 where we have these earphones that will translate instantly into most languages, I guess maybe it’s time for tongues to cease. I’m not sure. But they feel that tongues ended at the end of the apostolic age when there was still most of the language of the world un-evangelist. I do not know why. they would think the apostles would need the gift of tongues to do that, and that somehow later generations didn’t do that, didn’t need that. Now, here’s the fact. The Bible doesn’t indicate that tongues was ever used to preach the gospel. It’s not an evangelistic gift. The only time we know of where we are told what someone speaking in tongues was saying is on the day of Pentecost, Acts 20. I mean, Acts 2, excuse me. And in Acts 2, the people were speaking languages they did not know. They were recognized by the people in the crowd. This was a Pentecost, so that a lot of people from other Jews from all over the world had come, and they had dialects that they heard these people speaking in. And when they described what these people were saying as they were puzzling over it, they said, we hear all these people speaking in our own dialect. They’re speaking about the mighty works of God. Okay, so they’re praising God for his mighty works. Are they preaching the gospel? I don’t know. I don’t think they needed to because Peter got up and preached the gospel. And when he did, he didn’t have to speak in tongues. He could just speak Greek. and everyone would understand it. In other words, the gift of tongues was not needed in those days, as it would be perhaps more now if it was needed to preach the gospel to other languages, because everybody that Paul or Peter or the apostles ever encountered probably knew Greek, and they were part of the Roman Empire. Everybody in there knew Greek. And so Peter could speak in a single language to everybody, and they all understood, which means… that all these dialects that were spoken were not needed to communicate the gospel to these people. It was a sign. And Paul says in 1 Corinthians 14, tongues is a sign to the unbelievers. It certainly was on that occasion. Now, that’s not the only thing tongues is. Tongues is also prayer, the Bible says. And Paul talks about praying in the spirit and praying in an unknown tongue in 1 Corinthians 14. But he makes it very clear. He said, he that speaks in tongues does not speak to men, but to God. And in the spirit, he speaks mysteries. Now, in other words, when you’re speaking in tongues, this is presumably when you’re not doing it out to the public like happened in the book of Acts, but this is rather in the church when the gift of tongues is functioning. He says, first of all, no one understands him. He specifically says, the person speaking in tongues, no one understands him. In other words, he’s not speaking a known language. It may be known by someone in another part of the world, but they’re not there. The point is that they’re not communicating in tongues. And he says they’re praying in tongues. They’re speaking to God, not to men. God understands them, even if no one else does. Now, Paul mentions there’s a companion gift to tongues called interpretation of tongues, which is just as supernatural as the gift itself. How do I know that? How do I know that he doesn’t just think, well, when you speak in tongues, somebody in the church might know that language and they can interpret it? Because he says things like in 1 Corinthians 14, I think it’s verse 13, he says, therefore, if anyone speaks in tongues, let him pray that he may interpret. Well, if I know the language, I don’t have to pray that I can interpret. I just do it. I’ve worked with translators many times. And we’re speaking to crowds that don’t know English. I’m speaking English. So the translator knows English and knows the other language. They don’t have to pray that they may interpret. There are no supernatural aid from God needed to interpret it because the person’s fluent in both languages. Clearly, when Paul says if you pray in tongues, which he thinks is a supernatural thing, pray that you can interpret it, too. And he later says in the same chapter, if you’re going to have people speaking in tongues in the church, have two or three do it one at a time. and each time let someone interpret it. But he says if there’s no interpreter there, then let them keep silent in the church and pray to themselves and to God. Now, it’s very clear that Paul considers that people speaking in tongues are speaking to God. He never speaks of it otherwise. A lot of Pentecostals and Charismatics When you hear what’s allegedly the interpretation of the tongue, it sounds like a prophecy. In other words, if you go to a Pentecostal church and someone speaks in tongues and someone else gets up to, as it were, interpret it, it often sounds just like a word from God. In fact, a lot of times it’s as if God is the speaker addressing the congregation. Yeah, but Paul said that when you speak in tongues, you’re not speaking to men. You’re speaking to God. So the content of the utterance in tongues is going to go the other direction. It’s not God talking to us. It’s us talking to God. That’s what Paul said. So, you know, I think sometimes this is greatly misunderstood, and it could be. I don’t personally understand tongues to be absolutely essential. I’m not like the Pentecostals who say you’re not filled with the Spirit if you don’t speak in tongues. I myself speak in tongues. It is part of my prayer life. It’s never been part of any other part of my life. I’ve never prayed in public in tongues. I don’t think anyone who’s been near me has ever heard me speak in tongues. This is my private thing I do in my prayer life. And that’s what Paul said you do if there’s no interpreter present. I don’t think I’ve ever had an interpreter present, so I just do it to myself and to God. But in other words, you say, why do they have that view at the Baptist Church? I’ll tell you what, I’m about 99% sure I’m right. I suppose a 1% chance I’m wrong. My opinion is, first of all, they don’t believe in it, so they haven’t studied it. They figure that this was something not relevant to them. and therefore they kind of gloss over. But when people actually believe that the gifts of the Spirit continue until Jesus returns, which is pretty much what the Bible teaches, then they have motivation to say, oh, okay, so maybe this speaking in tongues thing is going to happen somewhere around me. I’d like to know what the Bible says about it. And so when you study 1 Corinthians 14, which is really the only chapter in the Bible that really goes into this, you find that speaking in tongues, you can learn a fair bit about it. Although, of course, what we hear about tongues there is not like a systematic teaching. Like everything else in 1 Corinthians, Paul is writing to correct abuses. And therefore, instead of sitting down and giving a seminary course on tongues, he’s telling them how to stop doing the wrong thing. And so we’ve got patches of information. But there’s enough there that Paul makes it very clear. He believes that there is such a thing of speaking in tongues as a sign to unbelievers. But he’s not assuming there’s any unbelievers in the church. There could be. But he’s not assuming it. He assumes the unbelievers are outside. And, of course, the day of Pentecost was a great example of tongues being assigned to the unbelievers. And in that case, the sign was that these people who had never learned these dialects were speaking fluently in them. So that was speaking to people. But that’s not speaking in tongues that Paul thinks is going on in the church. He says in the church, no one understands him. You need an interpretation. If there’s no interpretation, don’t do it. You know, you’re speaking to God, not to man. There’s a very different thing than tongues outside as assigned to unbelievers. In the church, it’s a different thing. And then, of course, besides tongues in the church with interpretation, and by the way, the fact that it needs interpretation means that it’s not a language that anyone knows. They need to have the gift of interpretation. But in addition to that, there’s private speaking tongues, which Paul says if there’s no interpreter present, just do it privately. And so you’ve got three ways that Paul acknowledges tongues as a private thing in your prayer life, which is the only kind I’ve ever really known in my life. Then as something that is uttered in the church, followed by interpretation. And I have to say, I’ve been in churches that do that. Most of the churches I’ve been in don’t actually do that. But the ones I have, and there’s been several I’ve visited that did, I have very rarely been impressed that the interpretation really corresponded with the tongue. I mean, it may have, but I think with all these things, there’s a lot of fakery, too. I mean, I think this is why people like John MacArthur just kind of broad-brushed all spiritual gifts. Now, that’s just all of the devil. It’s all wrong. It’s all fake. It’s all hokum. Well, sad to say, a lot of the examples he gave are hokum. And there are fakes. There’s a lot of fakes. But the Bible said that. John said in 1 John 4, Beloved, do not believe every spirit. He means every spiritual utterance. He says because many false prophets are gone out into the world. So there’s true prophets and there’s false prophets. I don’t know how many true prophets there are, but there’s many false prophets, John said. So we should expect to see some fakes along with the real thing. But your actual question is, why do the Baptists take that view? It’s because they don’t have speaking tongues in their church. They grow up without it. They don’t have it regularly. If somebody would stand up in their church and speak in tongues, they’d be very, very… They’re uncomfortable with it. They don’t know what to do with it. They’ve adopted a formal doctrine of cessationism, which means they don’t believe the gifts are for today. They haven’t studied it out. It’s a lot easier just to say, yeah, we don’t do that. So those things are hard to understand. So we just don’t do that here. And there’s a lot of churches that take that position. I actually talked to a Baptist minister who said, yeah, we don’t allow speaking in tongues here because speaking in tongues is divisive. I said, really? You know, I mean, I haven’t found it to be so. So, yeah, I said, whenever you get some people in your church speaking in tongues and the others don’t, it turns the church into a group of haves and have nots. And it divides people. I think, well, OK, aren’t there has and have nots? I think there are. I mean, I know that when I first met someone who spoke in tongues, I knew I was a have not. I knew I didn’t do it. But that didn’t insult me. That didn’t offend me. I just thought, wow, I want to find out more about this, see what the Bible says, and if it’s real, I want it. So, I mean, to me, I’m not offended to find somebody has something in their spiritual life I don’t have, if it’s something biblical and something desirable. But, you know, yeah, there are haves and have nots. Some people have a really great prayer life better than mine. Some people have really great spiritual gifts more than mine. You know, some people have a lot of things God’s given them that I don’t have. Yeah, everybody is a have and a have not about many things. And when it comes to spiritual things, James said, you have not because you ask not. Okay, so there are have-nots. James said, yeah, there’s have-nots in the church. But there are some things that you would have if you sought them and prayed for them and wanted them. But I think that many churches, they just don’t want it. They don’t want it. They’re uncomfortable when it’s around. And so, I mean, if it is something real, they still want to be have-nots about it.
SPEAKER 07 :
Thank you, Stephen. I appreciate all the elaboration.
SPEAKER 02 :
All right, Ryan. Thanks for your call. Alan from Old Saybrook, Connecticut. Welcome to The Narrow Path, Alan.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, my uncle used to say, don’t contradict. But I have something I’m taking an issue with, something I think I’ve heard you say. Okay. As much time as you will allow. Thank you. I’m going to read from two books, five verses. Can I do that?
SPEAKER 02 :
Sure. If you go through our record, I may have to hold you to the break.
SPEAKER 03 :
Go ahead. I’ll stay over for the break as much as you like. Romans chapter 11, verses 28, concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sake. Now, my premise is about Jewish people who are historically the oppressed people group and still are. I want to have a commentary on the ongoing chosenness. I’m not going to read it, but Deuteronomy 14, verses 1 and 2, so. Romans 8, 11, and verse 28 and 29, I’m going to magnify. Concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sake, but concerning the election, they are beloved for the sake of the fathers, for the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable. Now I’m going to turn to backwards, Jeremiah 31, verses 35 through 37. This is the Lord who gives his Son for a light by day, the oneness of the moon, and the stars for a light by night, who disturbs the sea and its waves roar. The Lord opposes his name. If those ordinances depart from before me, says the Lord, then the seed of Israel shall also cease from being a nation before me forever. Thus says the Lord, if heaven above can be measured and the foundations of the earth search out beneath, I will also cast off all the seed of Israel for all they have done, says the Lord. So my question is, this is my premise, I would say, what do they call for? Do they call to be loved? I mean, how many people have a baby that can’t do very much for them, but they love them anyway? I think those that are parents would say that. And they’re always called to be. Now, what I think is something that I want to mention is some people think they’re, I’m joking to myself, they’re the salmon people. They spawn the Messiah. Then who cares what happens to them going forward? Can you comment on that?
SPEAKER 02 :
Oh, yes, I can certainly comment on that. I have 12 lectures on that. As far as the statement in Romans 11, when he says, pertaining to the gospel, they are enemies for your sakes, but concerning the election, they are beloved for the sake of the fathers. Who are the election? Well, Paul has already used that term and contrasted it with the Jews as a whole earlier in the same chapter. He says in verse 7, Romans 11, 7, What then? Israel, meaning the majority of the Jews, has not obtained what it seeks. That is, the ones who have not received Christ. But the election has obtained it. Now, the word election is found only three times in Romans, but this is one of the three. It’s the word ekloge in Greek. And so he says Israel has not obtained it. That means the nation in general. But the ekloge have obtained it. Now, who are they? Well, they’re the ones that Paul refers to two verses earlier as the remnant. See, Paul starts, you read Jeremiah 31 where it says, you know, God will not cast off Israel from being a nation forever. No, he hasn’t. And Paul asks that. I say then, has God cast away his people? Romans 11, 1. Certainly not. Then he says, because I have not been cast off. I’m a Jew. Paul is saying, no, his real people, the ones that he has foreknown, which is the term he uses for them in verse 2, They are the elect. They are the remnant. He says in verse 5, he says he’s reserved a remnant according to the election of grace. So the remnant is the election. And he says in verse 7, what then? Israel has not obtained what it seeks, but the election have obtained it. And then in the verse you brought up, verse 20, concerning the gospel, they, the word they is not in the Greek, but it’s implied the Jews, are enemies for your sake. But concerning the election, which he’s already identified as the remnant, the Christian Jews, they are beloved for the sake of the fathers. So there’s a distinction between the enemies of God and the ones beloved for the sake of the fathers. Paul says the election. who he’s identified as the remnant, which he’s already contrasted from the rest of the Jewish nation. So the nation is enemies, but the election are not. The election are beloved for the Father’s sake. God has preserved a remnant, the election for himself. Paul was part of that election. Every Christian Jew is part of that. So I don’t disagree with this. I think that those who love… God who followed Christ is what the faithful would do if they’re faithful Jews You don’t you can’t be a faithful Jew faithful to God and hate the Messiah so obviously those who love the Messiah and They are specially loved by God, like a bride. And so anyway, I see Paul saying that. Now, some people think that Paul’s saying the same people who are the enemies are also the ones who are specially beloved. I don’t see him saying that. That’s not his argument in Romans 11. His argument in Romans 11 is there’s a remnant who are elect. And most of Israel has been rejected and failed to come into it. But the election have obtained it. And now he says, obviously referring to most of Israel, they are enemies of the gospel. But the election, not so much. The election are actually God’s people. They are the faithful Jews. Now, Jeremiah 31 says that God will never cast off Israel entirely from being a nation. He also says in the same passage that I would not take any of them to be my people or whatever. Yeah, you’re not disagreeing with me. I don’t believe God has cast off Israel. I think he’s taken the remnant of Israel who believe in the Messiah, and he’s made us a holy nation. And that’s what Peter calls the church in 1 Peter 2.9. He says, you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation. Those are the terms God used for Israel at Mount Sinai. But now Peter uses it of the church because the church, including Peter himself, was composed of the faithful remnant of the Jews. the Jewish church. And then, of course, no church could remain Jewish forever, just like Israel didn’t in the Old Testament. Gentiles could be part of it in the Old Testament if they keep the covenant, and so can they now. So there’s Jews and Gentiles keeping the covenant, and that is the Israel that are the election. Anyway, that’s how I understand it. I appreciate your call. If you want more about that, I have whole lectures about Israel at our website, thenarrowpath.com. I need to take a break, and we have another 30 minutes coming up, so don’t go away. Our website’s thenarrowpath.com. I’ll be back in 30 seconds. Stay tuned.
SPEAKER 01 :
Tell your family, tell your friends, tell everyone you know about the Bible radio show that has nothing to sell you but everything to give you. And that’s The Narrow Path with Steve Gregg. When today’s radio show is over, go to your social media and send a link to thenarrowpath.com where everyone can find free topical audio teachings, blog articles, verse-by-verse teachings, and archives of all The Narrow Path radio shows. And tell them to listen live right here on the radio. Thank you for sharing listener-supported The Narrow Path with Steve Gregg.
SPEAKER 02 :
Welcome back to the Narrow Path Radio Broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we’re live. For another half hour, taking your calls. If you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith, you want to ask, you can call me, 844-484-5737. Our next caller is Ron from Indianapolis, Indiana. Hi, Ron. Welcome to The Narrow Path.
SPEAKER 09 :
Hi, Steve. Thank you for taking my call, and God bless you for what you do. Steve, who’s going to inherit the new heaven and the new earth?
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, Jesus said the meek will. Remember, Jesus said, Blessed are the meek, they shall inherit the earth. And Paul said in… That was, by the way, Matthew 5, 5, where Jesus said that. But Paul said this about Christians. He said that… Let’s see here. Okay. The Spirit… Verse 16 and 17. Romans 8, 16 and 17. The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God. Who? The ones who are born again. The Christians who have the Spirit of God. He says, and if we’re children… then we’re heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. So we are going to inherit the inheritance that God has for his children. Christ is his child, so he’s going to inherit it. We’re joint heirs with him, which means we’re going to share in the inheritance with Christ. Now, what does Christ inherit? According to Psalm 2, verse 8, The Messiah speaks and says, the Lord has made the decree to me. He says, ask of me. And I will give you the nations for your inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for your possession. So Christ is going to inherit the earth. That will be, of course, the new earth after he returns. And we will be joint heirs with him. And Jesus said the meek, meaning his disciples, will inherit the earth also. So the new Jerusalem in Revelation 21 is seen coming down from heaven to the new earth. And, of course, the earth has always been… What God had in mind for people to inherit. I mean, when he made Adam and Eve, he told them not to eat the bad fruit because they would then have to die. The idea was he didn’t want them to die. If they hadn’t sinned, they wouldn’t die. And they would have eaten of the tree of life and lived forever. And where would they do that? They’d live right on earth in the Garden of Eden. That’s where God put man. God intends the earth to be the ideal habitation for man. And Jesus came to restore it to its original unfallen state and to restore it to his heirs, you know, those who we will inherit it with him. So that’s how I understand your question to be answered.
SPEAKER 09 :
Thank you.
SPEAKER 02 :
Okay, Ron. God bless you. Thanks for talking to me. George from Covina, California. Hi. Good to hear from you, George. Hi Steve.
SPEAKER 04 :
So this morning I spoke with a friend who asked me if I knew anything about the Ethiopian Bible. So going by what he told me, I think he believes that there’s much that has been left out of the Bible as we know it, deliberately left out for nefarious reasons. I mean, how would you respond to that remark?
SPEAKER 02 :
Sure. I don’t think anything’s been left out for nefarious reasons, but there certainly are things that have been left out of our Bible that are in some others. For example, the Catholic Bible has seven books that we call the Apocrypha that we Protestants don’t have. Now, not for nefarious reasons, but because we don’t believe they were written by prophets. They don’t even claim to be written by prophets. Even the Roman Catholics don’t believe they were written by prophets. So, in other words, they differ in from the other books that we have in our Bible in that they’re not inspired. You see, prophets are those who are inspired by the Holy Spirit, and therefore a book written by an inspired author can be taken to be God’s Word. A book written by someone who has no inspiration like that and is not a prophet, well, you know, I guess we can’t assume that what they write is God’s Word, and therefore the Protestant churches have mostly not included prophets. what’s called the apocryphal books. The apocryphal books differ from the other books of the Old Testament. None of them, by the way, none of them are part of the New Testament. But they are written between the Old Testament and the New Testament. They’re what we call intertestamental books. They were written between the end of the Old Testament, when the last of the prophets wrote Malachi, and before John the Baptist, the next prophet, came along. There’s 400 years there. These apocryphal books are written in. Now, the Catholic Bible has seven of those books in their Bible, but some churches have even more books of those types than the Catholics have. The Ethiopian Bible, for one, has the book of Enoch in it. Now, I don’t know of any other church that includes the book of Enoch. In fact, the book of Enoch on my shelf is called Ethiopic Enoch. It seems to have originated perhaps in Ethiopia, or at least it’s associated with Ethiopia, part of the Coptic church there. And so, yeah, the Ethiopian Bible does have at least one, if not more, Old Testament books in it that we don’t have, that the Catholics don’t have, and the Protestants don’t have. But the question is not, Did we leave them out for sinister purposes? No. The whole idea was to have in the Bible the books that God has given us as inspired books. And since there’s a whole lot of books that are not inspired books, many of them were written in the intertestinal period, the church had to make a decision about what to do with those. Now, the Catholic Church included seven of them in their Bible, but they don’t consider them to be on the same level as the other Old Testament books. The Apocrypha, their books are called Deuterocanonical, which means it’s kind of like a second canon. The books written in Hebrew, in the Old Testament, which both the Catholics and the Protestants have in their Bibles, those books we recognize as written by inspired writers. and in the Hebrew language. The intertestamental books were actually written in Greek, most of them, and that was after a time when God wasn’t sending prophets speaking in Hebrew anymore, and Protestants don’t have those books. Now, in addition to the seven books that the Catholic Bible has that we Protestants own, there are quite a few others. For example, The Catholics have 1st and 2nd Maccabees. But there was also 3rd and 4th Maccabees that the Catholics leave out. There were other books that were written at that time that, for whatever reason, the Catholics did not include. But some of them, the Ethiopian church included. And Enoch was one of them. I don’t know what else the Ethiopic Bible has, which is not found in the Catholic Bible or the Protestant Bible, other than the Book of Enoch. But the reason we don’t have the book of Enoch is because it was not written by Enoch. And it’s one of those books written in Greek, written during the intertestamental period, approximately 200 years before Christ. And the real Enoch left the world. like several hundred years before the flood, which was 2,500 years before Christ or something like that. So anyway, obviously a man who left the world 2,500 years before Christ didn’t give us a book in Greek 200 years before Christ. And the fact that it says it’s by Enoch is of no account because many, many, Of the books written by the Jews in the intertestinal period, not inspired, they claimed to be written by people who had been famous. There’s the testimony of the 12 patriarchs, which was not written by the 12 patriarchs. There’s the book of Baruch, which is not written by Baruch. There’s a prayer of Jeremiah that wasn’t written by Jeremiah, as far as we know. So it was very commonplace. in the intertestinal period for certain Jewish writers to write their own ideas into books and to claim authorship of somebody who was important, although they themselves were not. Now, that’s one reason that those pseudepigraphal books are not really found in the Protestant Bible, and not very many of them are found in the Catholic Bible. But Enoch is one of those books. And yeah, the Ethiopian Bible has that. I don’t know, the Ethiopian Bible might have some other books in there too. I’ve never really looked at one. But we have in our Bible all of the Old Testament books that the Jews accepted as written by inspired writers. So, you know, we just accept their canon.
SPEAKER 04 :
Okay. I don’t suppose then if you haven’t Look at the Ethiopian Bible if you know how many books that there are.
SPEAKER 02 :
No, I don’t. I don’t. But I know there are no additional books written by the apostles of Christ in any Bible that aren’t in our Bible, because every known book written by any apostle is in our Bible. And as far as the Old Testament, we only accept the… We only accept the Hebrew Old Testament books. Danny just handed me a note. There’s, what, 81 books in the Ethiopian Bible?
SPEAKER 1 :
81.
SPEAKER 02 :
So we’ve got 66 in ours, and then the Catholic Bible has 73, I guess, and the Ethiopian Bible has maybe another eight or something like that or more.
SPEAKER 04 :
Okay. Interesting. Interesting.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah. Now, probably all the books that are in the Ethiopian Bible and certainly all the ones in the Catholic Bible and certainly the Book of Enoch can be purchased, you know, in collections by themselves. Sometimes people gather these books into a collection called the Lost Books of the Bible, but they were never lost. They just were never part of the Bible. But, you know, put a name on a book like Lost Books of the Bible, and that really sparks an interest. Ooh, you know, they found some new books of the Bible. No, they didn’t. Those books have been around for ages. They just aren’t really part of the Bible. Okay. Okay, George.
SPEAKER 04 :
That’s good. Good talking, brother.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, God bless you.
SPEAKER 04 :
You too. Bye.
SPEAKER 02 :
All right. Our next call comes from Mark in West Hartford, Connecticut. Hi, Mark. Welcome.
SPEAKER 09 :
Hello, Steve. Thank you very much for your show. I appreciate it. And I really do appreciate the website and your verse-by-verse teachings. I do that as I read through my Bible. Very, very, very helpful. Thank you. This isn’t my main question, but that’s for another day because I haven’t finished writing that down. I wrote this one down and had it handy, so I was going to go with this. It’s about Solomon. Okay, he had 700 wives, 300 concubines. Even that is just difficult to fathom in itself, but I did a little bit of math, and if he got married at 16, lived to 70, that’s a wedding pretty much every month, one or two weddings a month. Now, that strikes me as a bit of time consumed of his life with weddings but perhaps you know some of the wives were just given in bunches or uh without ceremonies yeah okay that that seems like a lot okay the question is um let’s see the question is more about is there or was there a prophet in the land that was advising him from god as nathan did with david If so, why wasn’t he told of his sin, of his mixed marriages, and too many, as David was, about his sin with Bathsheba from Nathan?
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, you know, there were prophets around in the time of Solomon, and one of them in particular prophesied that the kingdom was retaken from Solomon in his son’s day, and Solomon wasn’t very receptive to it. In fact, he tried to kill that prophet. prophet, which may be why maybe more prophets didn’t really speak to him about his errors. There weren’t prophets in equal numbers throughout the entire period of the kings. David had you know Samuel to consult with early on and then later Nathan and then apparently Gad was also a prophet in David’s lifetime but I don’t know if these kind of succeeded each other more or less as the primary counselor to David or you know if they were all three around kind of overlapping each other but Solomon I don’t know of very many prophets that were in Solomon’s they have to say but You know, the kings didn’t always, you know, they didn’t always get rebuked by prophets for what they did. They were supposed to know what they were doing. Now, Solomon, by marrying foreign women, was not necessarily breaking a law. There was a law in Deuteronomy that said that the kings should not multiply wives to themselves. Now, what does it mean to multiply wives? You know, Abraham had two wives and… You know, if you count concubines, three. Jacob had four. Was that considered being multiplied or is that just adding? You know, he just added one every once in a while. But like you say, if Solomon had a thousand women, he must have got them in batches sometimes, you know. I don’t know. You know, it may be that kings that were conquered by him, you know, sent a lot of their princesses to be his, you know, ceremonial, you know, wives in his harem you know in those days for a king to have a big harem was just an ego trip it was just a kind of a status symbol and Solomon was a little excessive about almost everything and he shouldn’t have had that many women but the fact that he married non-Jewish women is not the problem because I mean frankly the Jews were not forbidden to marry Gentile women they were forbidden to marry Canaanites but they could marry Gentiles But the problem with Solomon is not that he married the Gentile wives, but that he let their religious convictions govern him. And he accommodated, for example, you know, one of his favorite wives is apparently the princess of the daughter of Pharaoh. But there were lots of others. And they had their own religions from their own countries. And he built shrines there. in Jerusalem for their gods. So he was kind of, that was his compromise. It’s obviously very compromising for him to have that many wives. The polygamy per se, it was never in the Old Testament forbidden or even necessarily said to be morally compromised or anything like that. Certainly polygamy is never described favorably in the Bible. There’s quite a few polygamous men, but it always was an unhappy family. There’s never any glamorizing of it, but it was done. And God in the Old Testament didn’t say they couldn’t do it, but he did say the king shouldn’t multiply wives. And I’d say that no matter how you define multiply and having a thousand of them is you’ve got to do some multiplying, not just adding there. So, I mean, Solomon’s an enigmatic character. He was, you know, in some ways a man whose heart was toward God, but the Bible says his wife’s turned his heart from God. And he rebelled. And I don’t know if he did most of his marrying after that. You know, it may be that as soon as he had a few pagan wives, his heart turned from God. And then he just kind of kept adding more wives. In which case, maybe God wasn’t speaking to him anymore because he’s in rebellion. We’re given only, of course, skeletal histories of most of these kings, and Solomon included. We have several chapters on him, but he reigned for 40 years, so an awful lot is not said. Okay. There might have been prophets who told him not to do that. I don’t know.
SPEAKER 09 :
That was my curiosity. You know, David had his prophets advising him and chastising him, and I was wondering why… Solomon got away with so much.
SPEAKER 02 :
Solomon got busted for turning from God because it says, I think it’s in the 11th chapter of 1 Kings, if I’m not mistaken, this prophet told him that because of his idolatry, God was going to take five of the tribes away from him and give them to another tribe. Man, which happened to be Jeroboam, one of his overseers on his building projects. Anyway, yeah. Very good.
SPEAKER 09 :
That was good. Thank you.
SPEAKER 02 :
Okay. It looks like I’m looking right now at 1 Kings 11. Yeah, 1131, Ahijah, the prophet Ahijah in 1 Kings 11, 30 and 31 is the one who prophesied against Solomon that way.
SPEAKER 09 :
All right. Thank you very much, Steve.
SPEAKER 02 :
All right, Mark. Thanks for your call. Okay, let’s talk to Alistair from Vancouver, British Columbia. Hi, Alistair.
SPEAKER 06 :
Hi, Steve. God bless you, and God bless your program. Thank you. Thank you. So I wanted to expound a little bit on this speaking in tongues thing in churches, and I had an experience in a Pentecostal church.
SPEAKER 02 :
Let me interrupt you first. There’s a million people out there with experiences that I’d share. Do you have a question? Because we’ve only got ten minutes and a lot of people are waiting to ask questions. Do you have a question for me about it?
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, sure. I was wondering if it might be considered paganistic in nature.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, when it’s not the Holy Spirit, yes. There are pagan religions where people speak in tongues, definitely. voodoo and a lot of pagan religions there is such a thing as tongue speaking But then again, in pagan religions, there’s also prophecy. But, you know, the Bible indicates that prophecy, when it’s from the Holy Spirit, is a genuine gift. Same thing with tongues. I think that a lot of times Satan counterfeits real gifts of the Spirit in the false religions. And, you know, I think that maybe even when you’re in Christian churches, you were about to tell me a story about in a Pentecostal church, I think, I have definitely been in some Pentecostal churches where I was quite sure that everything that was going on out of the normal there was demonic. I mean, you could just feel it. You could just sense the creepiness of it. Now, not all Pentecostal churches are like that, and certainly not all charismatic churches are like that. But there are some fringy things. I mean, let’s face it, snake handling kind of churches. I’ve never been in one of those, but those are Pentecostal, too. I mean, a lot of strange activities go under the label of Pentecostal or charismatic churches. which is a shame because a lot of those things are probably demonic and they’re counterfeit, whereas the real works of the Holy Spirit, they’re not going to give you the creeps like that. They’re going to be edified. They’re going to glorify Jesus. But there’s certain groups that, I mean, there’s cultures. I mean, there’s Catholic culture. There’s Lutheran culture. There’s Baptist culture. There’s Quaker culture. And there’s Pentecostal culture. And Pentecostal culture sometimes just becomes fascinated with the, abnormal behavior and tends to it can tend to attribute everything to the Holy Spirit that’s just anything that normal people don’t do and even if the demons come in and start doing abnormal things a lot of times charismatic and Pentecostal Christians do not have a discernment about what spirit it is that’s operating there and so we know that in pagan religions most of these gifts have their counterparts And there’s nothing to prevent those pagan counterparts from manifesting within the walls of a church if the church is gullible and undiscerning. And that’s why John said that they have to test the spirits to see if they’re of God, because he’s indicating a lot of them are not. All right, let’s talk to Mark in Clifton Park, New York. Welcome, Mark. Steve, do you hear me? Yeah, I do now. Hey, Steve, how’s it going? Good. Go ahead.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yes, yes. Okay, why did Jesus command those who he healed to not say anything?
SPEAKER 02 :
I think the reason may be, I mean, we’re never told why he didn’t, but we know that Jesus was doing everything he could to not self-promote. It was very much his desire. that his ministry, if it’s promoted at all, be promoted by his Father. And, you know, if you’ve got a miracles ministry, it’s easy to build a big crowd. just let the news out that you’re working miracles. And, you know, there’s a lot of curiosity seekers going around. But they won’t all be interested in the kingdom of God. They won’t even all be interested in God. They’re just a lot of them interested in seeing something sensational. And I think Jesus was looking for the faithful remnant in Israel. He was helping them. He was working the works of God, healing them and things like that. But he knew that, you know, if the word just gets out, then every kind of person – Jesus wasn’t looking for every kind of person. He was looking for a few good men and women. He was looking for the real remnant. And, you know, his miracles were done to demonstrate to anyone who was paying attention that he was, in fact, sent from God. I mean, that’s a good way to show it when you raise the dead or open the eyes of the blind or cast demons out of people. But his miracles he did not do to promote himself. or to garner crowds of people coming. I’m pretty sure he never took up any collections at his meetings. You know, if you take up collections, you want a big crowd because obviously you’re going to get a lot more money. I don’t think Jesus ever took up collections. I think he was just there to give, to help, to minister. And even doing that, you’re going to attract a lot of people who are there for the wrong reasons. So I think he just didn’t want to do anything to promote himself, even though he didn’t. Even though he told people, don’t tell anyone about this, they did anyway. So a lot of times it says they told everyone, and then big crowds came, and the crowds were so great he couldn’t even move freely in the streets, just clogging the traffic. And he wasn’t looking for big crowds. They were looking for him. And so I think it had a lot to do with crowd control, but I think it also had a lot to do with, wanting to make sure that he was not marketing and promoting his own ministry. He knew that he could do the will of God without any of that kind of promotion. His mentality was very different than many modern ministers. Lots of people think, you know, I need to get a big congregation, a bunch of people coming to this Coliseum to hear me speak, this conference or whatever, because, you know, the kingdom of God depends on me, you know, what I do. Well, certainly the kingdom of God did depend on Jesus, but Jesus knew that the Father knows how to promote his own ministry. And I agree with that. I frankly do my best to follow that principle, too. I’m not the least bit interested in marketing or branding or anything like that. I just want to do what I do and let the Lord build it if he wants to. If the Lord doesn’t build the house, they labor in vain to build it. And so I think that Jesus was just letting the Father promote him and trying to prevent getting involved in promoting his own ministry. One more call. Linda from Irvine, California. Welcome. Welcome.
SPEAKER 05 :
Hi, thank you for taking my call. Yes. Well, I have a question about the I’m sorry, I can’t understand.
SPEAKER 02 :
Do you have your phone on speaker or something? Because you’re not very clear. It’s kind of muffled.
SPEAKER 05 :
Okay, let me see.
SPEAKER 02 :
That sounds a little better. What is your question about? We only have like two minutes and we’re going to be out of time here.
SPEAKER 05 :
Okay. It’s about the Lord’s Supper when he took the bread and Jesus took the bread and broke it and said, take this, my body, and then my body is broken for you. And then he took the cup.
SPEAKER 02 :
Same with the cup. Uh-huh. So your question is?
SPEAKER 05 :
Uh-huh.
SPEAKER 02 :
Your question is what?
SPEAKER 05 :
Later, they went to Gethsemane. and Jesus was praying, and Jesus encouraged the disciples also to keep praying. So, Jesus prayed that three times, asked the Lord to take the cup from him.
SPEAKER 02 :
Right, I understand. Now, we’ve got 45 seconds, so we’ll be off the air. Can you give me a question?
SPEAKER 05 :
Yes. Once, Jesus, he knew that this Okay, so he knew he had to die. Why did he ask to have the cup taken from him?
SPEAKER 02 :
I think it was, frankly, a weak moment. I think he was dreading the pain and the awfulness as much as anyone would. He was a human being. And he said, Father, if it’s possible, let this cut past, but not my will, but yours. I think he’s hoping, is there any last-minute alternatives to this, or do we have to go through with it? But, of course, in a sense, he knew he was going to have to go through it, and he did. I’m out of time. Our website’s thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for joining us.
