Gregg also tackles significant issues concerning modern Christianity’s distractions from the core message of Christ. He encourages believers to focus on the teachings and humanity of Christ, emphasizing the importance of fellowship and church involvement despite doctrinal disagreements. This engaging episode offers deep insights for listeners navigating their faith journey in multifaceted sociopolitical and ecclesiastical landscapes.
SPEAKER 01 :
Good afternoon and welcome to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we are live for an hour each weekday, Monday through Friday. We take your calls for an hour and if you have questions about the Bible. or the Christian faith, or if you have a difference of opinion from the host and you’d like to balance comment, feel free to give me a call. We have a couple of lines open if you’d like to take them. The number to call is 844-484-5737. That’s 844- 484-5737, if you’d like to be on the air today. The only announcements I have is I’m still on my itinerary in the Midwest. I’m in Michigan still. I’ve been speaking in Michigan since I think last Friday. Got a couple more places I’ll be speaking before I go down to Indianapolis. I’ll be speaking there on, I’m not sure, I think this Friday is the date. And then on the weekend, I’m moving over to speak over in Illinois. Some towns west of Chicago, Rochelle and… Oh, my goodness. Yeah, that slips my mind. But they’re all listed at our website, thenarrowpath.com, under announcements. All right. So we’ll go to the phones now and talk to Buckman in Dayton, Ohio. Hi, Buckman. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for joining us.
SPEAKER 06 :
Thank you, Steve. I would just like to ask you, sir, and I can take the answer off the air. A brief history of the modern state of Israel, and should Christians support Israel? Why or why not? We’re being told by folks like Mike Huckabee to support Israel. And I would just like your answer on that, sir, and I’ll take your answer off the air, sir.
SPEAKER 01 :
All right. Thank you for your call. I’ll be glad to talk about that. Well, modern state of Israel, are we supposed to support the modern state of Israel? Let me just take the second point first, and then I’ll go back to the first one. The first one could take a very long time, and I’m not sure how much time I can give to that, but I can certainly answer the second one. There are those who believe that we should be supporting the nation of Israel because the Jews are God’s chosen people, they believe. And that those who bless Israel will be blessed, and those who curse Israel will be cursed. These are statements the Old Testament actually makes about Israel. They also believe that Israel today is a fulfillment of end times prophecy. And therefore, because we’re eager for Jesus to come back, we’re glad to be in the end times. And we can be grateful that Israel’s in the land. And we certainly would not like to see anything happen to compromise that situation. So we tend to support Israel. So there are people who support Israel because they believe. God favors Israel and commands us to support them. And there are those who say, I support Israel because what’s happening is going to bring the coming of the Lord nearer. And so I’m in favor of that. Now, I would say this. I will tell you something about the history of how the modern state of Israel got started. I do not agree necessarily that God still has a command out there for people to bless Israel and not to curse them. Now, I don’t curse them. I don’t curse anybody. Jesus said, bless your enemies. Don’t curse people. And I don’t. Although Paul did kind of give a general idea. where he said, whoever does not love our Lord Jesus Christ, let him be accursed in 1 Corinthians 16, 22. And certainly that would include most of the people in Israel as well as most of the people in the world. They don’t love Jesus. And that’s the basis for blessing or cursing. Jesus is the seed of Abraham through whom all the nations of the earth will be blessed. So if people are in Christ, they have God’s blessings. If they don’t love Christ, they are under a curse, according to Paul. So that’s, I guess that would be a question. Should we bless Israel? Well, I will bless anybody who loves Jesus. And if they live in Israel, that’s fine with me. But I don’t know of any nation on the planet, including Israel, that as a nation believes in Christ. I think that every nation has some people who believe in Christ and some who don’t. So I don’t think it’s a national thing. I don’t think we I don’t think we’re called to bless any national entity just because it’s a nation that used to be used of God in a special way. And especially if he doesn’t command it. And I don’t think he does. But the other thing is, should we be good to Israel? Should we support Israel? I think we should decide that the same way we decide if we should be good to the Ukraine or to any other country. You know, if they are in conflict with another nation, and let’s just say Israel happens to be in the right in that conflict and the other nation is not, well, then we should stand up for the good guys. On the other hand, if Israel is the aggressor in a situation and other people are their victims, then we should probably not stand up for them in that area. So, you know, Israel is like any other nation. As Christians, we support good behavior. The Bible says righteousness exalts any nation, but sin is a reproach to any people. That includes Israel. That includes America. That includes everybody. So I guess the same question should we should we Christians support America? Well, there are things America does that we wouldn’t support. And there are things we would. Now, those of you like myself who live in America, there’s something of a default loyalty to the country that we have as our country. but we still would be reasonably critical of things our country does that are ungodly. And the same thing would be true of our allies. Israel, I believe, is one of our allies. And I think we, just politically speaking, we are by default loyal to our allies. But when they do things that are terrible, then we should be able to criticize them, just like we criticize our own country. Now, in my opinion… Israel has done some very sinful things as a nation in treatment of other people, but they’ve also been victimized by other people who’ve been sinful to them. So, you know, how does the balance come out? Are we mostly in their favor or mostly against them? Well, I’m not against anybody. I’m not against any nation. I’m not against Israel or any other nation because I’m I’m not a player in the international geopolitical realm. But as a Christian, I assess anything Israel does, if I know about it, the same way to assess anything Russia or England or France or Venezuela or America does. Is it good or is it bad? If they do bad things, I’m not for it. If they do good things, I congratulate them. And Israel is capable of doing both of those things and has done both of those things. Now, you wanted a brief history of modern Israel. Modern Israel is the product, of course, of the Zionist movement. It began in the 1890s, a man named Theodor Herzl. A secular Jew thought it was a good idea for the Jews to have a place, a homeland. So eventually he started a movement and got support. And there was a movement within Christianity in England and America called dispensationalism. And they were in favor of Israel becoming a nation because they felt that that is what prophecy required. So they kind of gave their support to the Zionist movement. And through the influence of the Zionist movement, both the Christian and the non-Christian factions, they gained momentum. And because of World War II and the Holocaust and the terrible things that were done to the Jews in Germany and Europe by the Nazis, the world was aghast and felt like, oh, those poor Jewish people. And that’s the right reaction. That is the right reaction. Those poor people, they were badly, badly treated with injustice and horrible things were done. And we should have every bit of pity for them. Now, one of the that pity manifested itself at that particular time in history with the idea that we could make Jews immune from that if they had their own country. And the Zionist movement had already considered, that’s what the Zionist movement was about, that we might think that Zionism is about returning to Zion or Jerusalem. Actually, the original Zionists weren’t thinking in those terms. They were thinking just of finding some place for Israel to be a state where they could rule themselves and not be endangered from the powers that be in their country. And various countries were considered, but eventually it became the land of Palestine that they wanted. Now, you know, anyone who thinks that the restoration of the nation of Israel in Palestine is a fulfillment of prophecy, of course, they’re going to see this as necessarily a good thing. And they might even whitewash some of the things that were done that we would otherwise condemn. For example… Menachem Begin, who was one of the early prime ministers or presidents of Israel or whatever, before 1948, he was the head of a terrorist group, a Jewish terrorist group called Ergen, and they bombed innocent places. I mean, they bombed the King David Hotel before Israel became an Asian. I think it was in 1947 they bombed the King David Hotel, and 90 British soldiers that were living there were killed and some other innocent people. But that was because Israel didn’t like the fact that they were under Britain at that point. And their terrorist activities tend to make Britain not want Israel to be under them. They wanted to get out of there. Israel was ungovernable, just like the Romans found them to be and the Egyptians found them to be and so forth. So Israel’s always been kind of governed by outside powers. So the Balfour Declaration was a British announcement made previous to the war that said by a premillennial Christian political leader in England, Lord Balfour, that he’s got somehow approval to write a declaration that said Britain approves of Israel having their own homeland there. So when Britain found Israel awfully hard to govern, and it was just a pain in the neck, they actually wanted to give up control of it. And so the United Nations got involved in it, and they decided to partition that land, part of it to the Jews, to be the state of Israel, and part of it to belong to the people who had been there for 1,300 years and thought of it as their country until then. what we call the Palestinians, they were just miscellaneous Arab people whose ancestors had lived in the land and thought of it as their home for 13 centuries. Obviously, when the United Nations made a decision for these people, those who lived in the land forever weren’t sure why some group in Europe was able to give away their property to these people Israel. Now, a lot of the land wasn’t really owned by the Palestinian farmers there. They were just dirt farmers, and they were kind of in a land lease kind of situation. The land was owned by rich people in Europe. So, you know, the Europeans began to sell the land to Jews and so forth. So the population shifted, and eventually, just to make things easier for the European powers – A lot of the Palestinian land that they had lived on was given to Israel, and there’s been fights over it ever since. And both sides have done atrocities ever since then. I believe it was just after 1948, I think it was in 1948, that Ergen, you know, Menachem Begin’s organization, ran a raid on a Palestinian village called Deir Yesen and killed a few hundred people. unarmed men they raped the women they killed the women they killed children and this was a great scandal you can look up Deer Yesen online and find out what happened a terrible thing and it was you know the Israelis initiated that against against the Palestinian village then the Palestinians reacted a few weeks later I think it was and blew up a Israeli bus that had a bunch of medical students and nurses and doctors on it so I mean that was a terrible thing too And that just started sort of a Hatfield and McCoy’s kind of back and forth, which has gone on to this day. Now, is Israel righteous in this? Well, there are times like October 7th, as we, you know, the famous event a couple of years ago that kind of re-sparked the recent conflicts. That was awful. I mean, that was the Palestinians doing awful things. And Israel has done awful things, too, and has done some awful things since then. All I can say is I’m not a political advocate for any nation, for the Palestinians or for Israel. But as a Christian, I’m in favor of the victims of oppression and injustice. So there are over a thousand Israelis were victims of injustice on October 7th. I think that was the date, wasn’t it? And then since then, there’s been, you know, a few gazillion Palestinian innocents who’ve perished, you know, through Israeli responses. Now, you know, the pro-Israeli answer to that is, well, Israelis don’t want to kill noncombatants, but the Hamas leaders, they use them as human shields, you know. And so the only way you can kill the Hamas leaders is to kill the people they’re hiding behind them. And that is in some measure true, but there’s also reports of Israel doing more genocidal type things. I don’t know what they’re doing and not doing because I only get Internet information. And I’m always surprised when somebody says, well, I know that Israel is the victim here, or I know that the Palestinians are the victims here. And I’m hearing this from people who’ve never been there. And there’s all kinds of complexity there. But if someone says, how shall we support Israel? I’d say we should support righteous behavior. The Bible says righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people. So if a nation, I don’t care if it’s France or Germany or Brazil or Nigeria or Israel or the Palestinians, if they’re doing well, we commend them for doing well. Same thing with America. We will commend America if it does well. But when horrible atrocities are done, we condemn those. And that should be done even if America does them. So, in other words, Christians have a loyalty to justice and righteousness and to God, which no nation actually has in the same measures Christians require. So we’re going to be for some nations in some circumstances and against the same nations in other situations. So if someone says, are we supposed to support Israel? They usually mean, is Israel different than all nations in the sense that they deserve our support no matter what happens? I would say no to that. But in certain conflicts, I’ve been in support of Israel because I felt like they were the ones who were badly treated. But then there have been times that they treated people badly. So I’m not, you know, Christians kind of want it all to be very black and white. And it’s unfortunately messy. It’s very nuanced. So I think if Christians say, well, I don’t know what to do then. Well, I’d say this. Don’t speak about something you don’t know what you’re talking about. If you do know what you’re talking about, assess it on the basis of what’s right and wrong. Not what country did it. Well, they’re to right a wrong thing, and we support that which is right, and we don’t support what is wrong. That would be my short answer to, you know, whether we’re supposed to support Israel in these things. I appreciate your call. Let’s see. We’re going to talk to Mike in Hawaii next. Mike, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah. Hi, Steve. My question is sort of similar to the previous caller where – He’s talking about Israel and their right to be there. But before I ask the question, I noticed that you mentioned when the King David Hotel was blown up and that Israel was ungovernable, that you compared it to the Israel that’s in the Bible, the Jews in the Bible, as if they’re the same people. Is that what you believe?
SPEAKER 01 :
First of all, I don’t believe that all the people who are called Jews are actual descendants of the Jews. Or if they have Jewish blood, they’re not pure. And in saying that, I am not saying that there are no pure Jews. I don’t know that. I don’t know all their backgrounds. But I do know that Jews intermarry regularly. with Gentiles, which means their children are half Jewish and half Gentile. Now, if their children are girls, they are Jewish girls. If they get married to a Gentile and have babies, their babies are Jews because they have a Jewish mother. That’s how Israel defines a person being ethnically Jewish, if you have a Jewish mother. So let’s just say a Jewish girl marries a Gentile man. Well, her children are half Jewish, but they’ll be considered to be Jewish, even though they’re half Gentile because they have a Jewish mother. Any of those daughters who marry, even if they marry Gentile men, they’ll also be called Jewish because their mother’s called Jewish, but their children will only be a quarter Jewish. They’ll be three-quarters Gentile, but they’ll still be called Jewish. Take in another generation, and the daughters of that one are also called Jewish because their mother was called Jewish, and therefore if she marries a Gentile man, her children are one-eighth. Jewish. Seven-eighths Gentile, but they’re still Jews. And this has gone on for centuries. So, I mean, there may indeed be Jewish people whose ancestors never married among the Gentiles, but in 2,000 years, that’d be a very great rarity. For example, a third of American Jews, America has more Jews than anywhere else in the world, a third of American Jews marry Gentiles, which means that’s a very large percentage of the world Jewish population. that are given birth to babies that are called Jews, but they are only half Jewish, and it can be less than that. So I don’t know. I mean, you’d have to do a DNA test on everybody, I guess, to find out. I myself did a DNA test years ago, and I found out I’m less than 1% Jewish. I’m not aware of any Jewish ancestors I have, but there’s a little tiny bit of Jewish in there. So people say, well, you know, if you’re ethnically Jewish, you’re one of the people of God. Well, How much is 1% enough? I’ve got some Jewish blood there, I guess, if you go back far enough. Obviously, God doesn’t pay attention to race. The Bible says there’s no Jew or Gentile. Bond or free, male or female in Christ, all are one in Christ. And outside Christ, all unbelievers are in the same boat, Jew or Gentile. Paul, you can read Romans 2 about that. But you said, do I believe those people are the same people? No, they’re different people. The people that you’re talking about died thousands of years ago, and these are different people. But if you mean, are they ethnically connected to those people? Some of them are. Some of them probably are barely or not at all. Now, you might also be alluding to the Khazar. Khazaria was an Eastern European nation back in the 7th or 8th century where the leaders converted to Judaism. And because of the troubles the Jews were having elsewhere, many of them went to Khazaria to live because the nation was favorable toward them. And, of course, the Khazarians weren’t Jewish at all by blood. But they converted to Judaism. This same thing happened in the Bible, in the book of Esther. It says at one point many of the Persians became Jews. They weren’t ethnically Jewish, but they just converted. Now they’re Jews. And so the Jews who lived in Persia or the Jews that lived in Caesarea had no qualms about marrying Gentiles who were also Jews by conversion. So, you know, there was probably almost unlimited intermarriage. between actual Jewish people and people who were just religiously Jewish but Gentile. And, again, that would compromise the bloodline, too. Once again, I don’t care about the bloodline. God doesn’t either. God doesn’t care about bloodlines. He cares about faith. He cares about if you’re a loyal follower of Christ. That’s the only thing that distinguishes you from anyone else in the world to God. But I don’t think that bloodline has remained pure. I seriously doubt that there’s very many people who are. But it doesn’t matter. The other question about is this the same nation? No, it’s not. The nation of Israel in the Bible was a covenant nation. They were in a covenant relationship with Yahweh. That’s how they started. And they ended with the destruction of their temple, which had always been the shrine of Yahweh, which was the center of the nation. The nation was based on God. The nation was based on Israel’s acknowledged relationship to God and their worship of God in their central shrine, first in the tabernacle, later in the temple. That temple was destroyed in 70 AD. There hasn’t been one since. Israel doesn’t have one now. The nation of Israel today has no covenant with God. They are not believers. There’s not as many as 30% of the Jewish people in Israel are believers. Less than that. More like 20% are believers in Judaism and about half of 1% are believers in Christ. That means, of course, the nation of Israel is at least 80% secular. It doesn’t matter what race they are. They don’t believe in God. is that the same nation as we had in the Bible? Not even close. I mean, true, in the Old Testament, people in the nation of Israel were often apostate, worshipped idols and so forth, but that temple was still officially the center. They were officially the people of Yahweh, though very compromised. But today the nation is not even built on the assumption that they’re the people of Yahweh. Possibly as many as 50% of the people in Israel, the Jews, don’t even believe Yahweh exists. And so, no, there’s virtually nothing in common that this nation over there has with the nation that’s called Israel in the Bible, which was a theocracy. The modern Israel is a democracy. And many of its leaders don’t even believe there is a God, much less believe that he’s their ruler, as was the case in the Old Testament. So it’s a very, very different nation today. And possibly ethnically very different, too. All right. Let’s see. Mitchell, wait. Mitchell, I’m going to go to you next after the break. In Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, you’re next in line. Right now, I see a break coming up, and it makes no sense to try to start a call and have to interrupt it. You’re listening to The Narrow Path. We take a break at the bottom of the hour to let you know that we are listener-supported and We pay all donations go to buying airtime. There’s nothing else in our budget. No payroll, no overhead, no offices, no power bills, nothing. We have zero overhead. All the donations go to buying airtime. And so if you want to help us stay on the air, you might want to donate. It’ll have no impact on my income. Believe me, I don’t care. If someone gave a million dollars to the narrow path, I wouldn’t see a penny of it. I don’t take anything from it, and neither does any other person who works in this ministry. So it’s a lean operation, more than much of any other ministry I know about, but there may be others. All I can say is we pay a lot to radio stations. About $140,000 a month we paid at radio stations. And that comes from nothing more than me telling you, On the air. We are a listener-supported ministry. And here’s our address. It’s The Narrow Path, P.O. Box 1730. Temecula, California, 92593. I’ll give the address again. It’s The Narrow Path, PO Box 1730, Temecula, California, 92593. You can donate if you wish at the website, but the website is loaded with resources, and you don’t have to pay a penny for them. They’re all free. The website is thenarrowpath.com. And if you’re one of those few people who listen to the show and haven’t been to the website yet, do. Do check it out. It’s got over 1,500 of my lectures going through the Bible and talking about biblical topics. They’re all free. You can listen to them. Audiobooks of three of my five books are there. You can listen to them for free. There’s other resources there. Just definitely check it out and spend a few minutes exploring what is at our website, thenarrowpath.com. We have another half hour coming up. I’ll be back in 30 seconds, so don’t go away.
SPEAKER 08 :
Thank you very much for your time.
SPEAKER 01 :
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’ve got questions about the Bible or the Christian faith. You might be able to get through. Our lines are full right now, so don’t call right now, but you might be able to get through if you call in a few minutes. The number is 844-484-5737. And we’re going to talk next to Michael in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. Michael, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 02 :
Hey, Steve. It’s Mitchell, actually, but that’s okay. Oh, sorry. No, that’s okay. No problem. Go ahead. Yeah. I just have one comment, and I have a really, I think, a deep question for you. But the comment, I’ve been listening quite a while now because George Humley was the one who took me to you. But listening to the first half hour, I kind of think that a lot of times Israel and all this thing is a distraction to the actual kingdom of the kings. And so I’d just like to say that to everybody out there. Focus on the king, not on what’s going on with all this stuff. So I said that’s all I wanted to say.
SPEAKER 01 :
Before you give your question, I want to comment on that because I agree with you. I think that secretly many Christians find Jesus boring. I can’t imagine how because, frankly, he’s the most exciting thing I’ve ever thought about. But I think some people, their life is boring. And so they look for ways to add some more pizzazz to it. So they’ll get into some kind of thing, a distraction, like you said. They’ll get into Hebrew roots movement or they’ll get into a hyper grace movement or they’ll get into. you know, the Nephilim, or they’ll get into the flat earth, or they’ll get into some other silly thing. And certainly one of the main distractions is eschatology. Now, if someone says, well, isn’t eschatology valid? Well, there is such a thing as eschatology in the Bible, but people’s theories of eschatology often are very far from being exactly what you find in the Bible. And I think people get excited about putting together an end times timeline and thinking they know what’s going on in the future. Of course, that would be an exciting thing to know. I don’t think you can know that. But Israel obviously plays a big role. When Israel is in the news, tons of Christians are distracted. And instead of focusing on Jesus, they’re focusing on Israel. And so that, too, is a distraction. These are mild forms of idolatry, in my opinion, because, I mean, they still love the Lord, but they’re really excited about something other than the Lord, and that’s, in this case, Israel. Go ahead.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes, sir. So I totally agree with what you just said. I’ve made a big decision because after reading Empire of the Risen Son, now on my fifth time reading it, And being with George and stuff, I’m having a hard time with the church. Because I am really going back to the very beginning, the early. I’m talking about when he actually walked and taught. And the first 40 years after he was.
SPEAKER 01 :
In other words, during the apostolic age. Yeah, when the apostles were still running the church. Right.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, because I can’t get my head around it anymore. I was raised Catholic. I’ve tried to go to churches. I get into the dispensationalist, all of that. Five years ago, I met George. Hey, I love George.
SPEAKER 01 :
He’s a great guy. Let me just say, Mitchell, if you and I were sitting in the same room and there was not a clock ticking, I’d love to hear everything about your story. You sound like a person I’d love to get to know. But we’ve got full lines in a very short time. You have a question there, don’t you?
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah. The humanity of Christ, I mean, You said something yesterday. If he wasn’t real, then there’s nothing to believe in. But if he’s real, it’s everything to believe in. Right. That’s what you said yesterday. And it was profound to me because he is real. But I think we have just lost his… Word.
SPEAKER 01 :
I agree with you, but it doesn’t sound like a question. So were you just wanting to mention that?
SPEAKER 02 :
No, I just, more the humanity of it. When he was here, he was here, and he taught us what he wanted to teach us. And now we are now trying to, it seems like we’ve all got, my question is, it seems like we’ve all kind of got lost in what he was really teaching. I guess that’s my question.
SPEAKER 01 :
All right. Well, okay, it’s sort of like you said. People get distracted from Jesus, and they get distracted by Jesus even by religion. There are certain religions that are very liturgical, have a lot of traditional rituals and so forth, and some people just really fall in love with those rituals too, and that too is a distraction from Jesus. Now, you said you’re having trouble with the church. You said that early on, and I got a feeling that that’s kind of what prompted your call. Well, I have to say a lot of people have problems with the church. A lot of people who listen to the show contact me and say, do you know a church in my area? And they live somewhere I’ve never been. Do you know a church in my area that’s a good church? Because I’m not finding anything. And I just have to say it’s a very common, common, common thing around the country that people who are serious about Jesus are beginning to see areas of compromise in the churches that they attend. And they’re not all the same areas of compromise. Some churches compromise one way or another. And we have to, unfortunately, for the time being, live with the fact that the churches have gone the ways they have. And we should probably, we have to fellowship with the saints. Maybe there might be a possibility of having a home church or something like that. But even then, there’s going to be imperfections because there’s going to be people there. And people are imperfect. What you, I guess, want to avoid is institutionalized imperfection. For example, I’m guessing you’re not a dispensationalist. I am not either. I don’t know if you’re a Calvinist or not. Probably not. I’m not either. Now, what if you go to a church and they’re Calvinistic? Or what if you go to a church and they’re dispensationalist? Okay, I can’t go to this church. Well, where are you going to find a church that you agree with everything on? I don’t know of one. I can go to a Calvinist church. I can go to a dispensational church. The problem is, will they have me? In many cases, they won’t. But if they will, I’m okay. I mean, if they love Jesus, remember, Jesus is what we’re all being distracted from by these things. if they are not being distracted from Jesus, if they happen to believe differently about end times than I do, or about the secret counsels of God behind the veil in predestination, I mean, we could have different ideas about that and still follow Jesus. As far as I’m concerned, when I go to a church, I’m not asking, do they agree with me about these things? Because I’m going to assume if I wait long enough, I’ll find something they probably don’t agree with me about. That can’t be the issue for me. The issue I need to know is, do these people love the Lord? Are they obeying Jesus? Are they serious about this? Do they define themselves as followers of Jesus? Or have they found some other issue to define themselves as and distinguish themselves as? It is possible, though barely so in this modern time, to find churches where probably most of the people are really just want to follow Jesus. They’re harder to find than they are sometimes. But I would say if you find a church that disagrees with what you believe about things, don’t just say, well, I can’t go to church then. I would say go to church if you find people who love the Lord. If you find they have doctrines you don’t agree with, keep that a secret, you know, as much as you can. Now, you see, I’ve got a problem many people have. I can’t keep it a secret. Even if I say nothing at church, they might hear me on the radio or go to my website. And that’s what happened last time I got kicked out of the church. I was on good terms. The pastor loved me. The elders loved me. They knew my beliefs and they didn’t mind. But some other people in the church didn’t love my beliefs. And they pestered the elders until they made it miserable for them. And so I finally volunteered to leave just to spare the elders the headaches. But, you know, I had never mentioned it. And this was a church that followed John MacArthur, so they were Calvinist, cessationist, dispensational, all the things I’m not. But I got along fine with them until some of them got on my website and found out I didn’t hold their views, and then they kicked me out. That’s how it usually goes. I’m a peacemaker. But you don’t have a radio show, I presume, so you can probably – avoid those controversies coming up. And you need to love them anyway, so why not love them while fellowshipping with them instead of from a distance? That’s what I would say. It’s hard to find a good church. It’s impossible to find a perfect one. And if you start a home fellowship, you can kind of shape that according to the convictions you and your fellow meters have, but it’s not going to be perfect either. Every church has its problems. So I would say you meet with Christians because you love Christ and because you love those who love him and not because you have the same opinions about separate matters. Now, it’s true, some churches define themselves in terms of these opinions. And that’s all they talk about. Well, obviously, you’re not going to do well there because you just won’t. You’ll be frustrated all the time. But I’ve known Calvinist pastors who didn’t talk about Calvinism all the time. I’ve known dispensationalist pastors who didn’t talk about dispensationalism all the time. I could easily sit in their church and enjoy fellowship with them. You know, you need to keep looking because the body of Christ, if you love Jesus, you’ve got to love his people. And if you love his people, you’ll be very frustrated if you don’t have any fellowship with any of them. And the best thing you can do is be gracious toward those who don’t see everything your way. You just need to find out, are these people committed to Christ? If so, it’s a breath of fresh air to find them, even if you don’t agree about everything. Mitch, I need to take more calls. My lines are full, but I appreciate you joining us today. Let’s talk next to Wendy from Memphis, Tennessee. Two from Tennessee in a row. Hi, Wendy.
SPEAKER 07 :
Hi, Steve. Can you hear me?
SPEAKER 01 :
Yes, ma’am.
SPEAKER 07 :
Hi, yeah. No, I think you just answered my question without knowing. I was basically just asking for an advice because I’m a Christian, I’m a Baptist, but I’m married with a Catholic person. And he gave his life to Jesus two years ago. But the church that we attended, we had issues in church. And he was always, he is always with the thinking about, you know, churches and the money and all that. So the problem was, anyway, right now we don’t go to any church because he doesn’t believe of congregating or going to church and I’m basically frustrated because I really want to raise my kids.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yes.
SPEAKER 07 :
You know, in the church.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, if you can’t persuade your husband to go to church, that’s very sad. But you can still take your kids to church somewhere. And you know what? Maybe your husband will start going, too, once you and your kids are meeting people that he doesn’t know. And, you know, he might say, maybe I should be in the circle my wife’s in. I don’t know your husband. I don’t know how he is. But there’s certainly no matter what religious group you belong to, if it’s Christian in name, you cannot be against gatherings. because gathering is what Christians are, A, commanded to do, and secondly, they want to do. They want to be with people of like mind. And so I would say, yeah, just tell him that you want to go to church and want to take the kids. He doesn’t have to go along. But if you start going, it often happens that the husband begins going with his wife when she does that. But you shouldn’t have to stay isolated from fellowship just because your husband doesn’t want to go to church. It’s a shame that he doesn’t. But he might change. Especially if you meet some good folks. that he would not think so badly of. Almost everybody who’s been in churches has had a bad experience with the church sometimes.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 01 :
But you can’t say, well, I’m not going to follow Christ anymore. I’m not going to be with his people anymore just because this person wasn’t a very good Christ follower. That’s on them. There’s good people. There’s probably good followers of Christ in almost any church you go to. You just have to find them. But I need to take another call, but Wendy, I hope that helps you.
SPEAKER 07 :
Thank you.
SPEAKER 01 :
God bless you, sister.
SPEAKER 07 :
God bless you.
SPEAKER 01 :
Thanks for joining us. Hunter in Hartford, Alabama. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. How are you, Steve?
SPEAKER 05 :
How are you doing? Good. Good. I see this argument from time to time where the passage in Scripture where it says that Was it Esau that God said he hated?
SPEAKER 01 :
Jacob I’ve loved, Esau I’ve hated, right. Malachi chapter 1, Romans 9.
SPEAKER 05 :
And they use that as proof that God doesn’t say you’re the one. Okay, I’ll address that.
SPEAKER 01 :
Okay, thank you. Okay, thank you. So, in Malachi, at the beginning of Malachi, God said to Israel… Jacob, I have loved. Esau, I have hated. And then they said, well, how have you loved us? And he said, because I wasted Esau’s land and his mountains I made desolate. Now, what he’s talking about there, he’s not talking about the man Esau or the man Jacob. He’s talking about Esau is the Edomites, and Jacob is the Israelites. And this is an extremely common way of talking about them. You know, the Amalekites were sometimes called Amalek. Amalek was like the progenitor of the Amalekites. Well, the whole nation was called Amalek. The whole nation of Israel was called Israel. That was a man’s name. The founder of that nation was a man named Jacob who was also named Israel. So the nation is called Israel. Esau founded a nation called Edom. And the Edomites were called Esau many times in the prophets. In this case, that’s what Malachi is doing. He’s referring to the Edomites and how God had destroyed them, basically. Now, he had destroyed Israel, too. This is in the context of them being taken away to Babylon. But God had restored Israel. but he didn’t restore the Edomites. And so he’s pointing out to Israel that they haven’t appreciated the fact that he’s shown them special favor. When he says, Jacob I have loved, he means my behavior toward the nation of Israel has been that of favoritism. And Esau I have hated means my behavior toward Edom, the Edomites, Esau, has not been favorable. And the dichotomy between love and hate is used that way many times in Scripture. In Genesis, we’re told that Jacob, of course, had two wives, Rachel and Leah. And it says he loved Rachel more than he loved Leah. And the next verse says, when God saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb. Now, when I think of someone hating someone, I think of them having great animosity and malice toward them. But there it just means that Leah was not loved as much as Rachel was. Specifically, it says Jacob loved Rachel more than Leah, and therefore when God saw that Leah was hated, well, that’s kind of the way they used it. In contrast with somebody else, if you favor one and not the other, then a manner of speaking, one was loved and the other was hated. Remember when Jesus in Luke chapter 14 said, if anyone comes after me and does not hate his father and his mother and his wife and his children, Well, that sounds pretty severe. But the parallel to that is in Matthew chapter 10, where Jesus said, Okay, that’s a little more palatable. I have to hate my wife and children. Well, what does that mean? It means I have to love God more than I love them. Hate and love in Scripture, it’s simply an idiomatic characteristic of Middle Eastern writing, I guess, doesn’t mean the same thing. God, when he says, I loved Jacob, I hated Esau simply means I did well to Jacob. I favored them. I didn’t do the same thing to the Edomites. This has nothing to do with God choosing somebody to be saved and somebody to be lost. In fact, there’s no evidence in the Bible that Esau didn’t go to heaven. That’s not what Paul’s talking about. He’s not talking about who goes to heaven and who doesn’t. He’s talking about how God deals with nations. And the reason he’s doing it so, it fits the context of the whole chapter. He’s saying that Jacob and Esau came from one man. They were one family, and yet God favored Jacob over Esau. And then, even in Israel, God favored some over the other. He took one lump of clay, Paul says, which was Israel, and made two different vessels. One vessel for honor, one for dishonor. He’s talking about the fact that the faithful remnant within Israel now are the vessel of honor. apostate Jews are the vessels of dishonor. What he’s saying is, he’s answering the question raised at the beginning of the chapter, implied, why isn’t Israel saved? God said he’s going to save Israel. Why aren’t they saved? And he’s saying they are. You just have to know who Israel is. He says in chapter 9, verse 6, they are not all Israel who are of Israel, meaning the nation of Israel isn’t all comprised of the people that God’s calling Israel. If God says he’s going to save Israel, you can count on it. He is saving them. They are being saved. But that’s the faithful remnant of Israel. The whole nation isn’t Israel. Not all who are of Israel are Israel, Paul says. So he’s saying just as God distinguished among Isaac’s sons, Isaac had the promises of God, but only one of his sons got the promise, not the other. Jacob got them, Esau did not. God favored one over the other. So, even within Israel, God favors one portion of the family more than the other. He favors the ones who are faithful, the ones who love Jesus, the ones who are you know, Christian disciples, Jews who have followed the Messiah. The others, not so much. So that’s what he’s saying. He’s not even talking about predestining any human beings to be saved or lost. In fact, being saved or lost is not even his subject. Because what the statement, Jacob, I’ve loved, Esau, I’ve hated, is talking about national destinies, not individuals. It’s talking about the nation of Israel and the nation of Esau, not the man in question. Furthermore, it’s not talking about their salvation. Because he also quotes in the same place, he quotes two Old Testament passages. One is Malachi 1, Jacob I’ve loved, Esau I’ve hated. And he also quotes Genesis 25-23. He links them together. In Genesis 25-23, Rebekah is pregnant with Jacob and Esau. And God gives her a prophecy. He says, two nations are in your womb. Two peoples are. shall be separated from between your feet. And he says, one will be greater than the other, and the older will serve the younger. Now, the older was Esau, and Jacob was the younger. They were twins, but Esau came up first. But he’s not talking about the man Esau is going to serve the man Jacob. That never happened. But the nation of Esau did serve the Jews, and that’s how he starts his oracle. Two nations are in your womb. Okay, yes, actually just two babies, but they are the founders of two nations. And the founder of the older nation, Esau. will serve that of the younger nation, the Israelites. So, in other words, these verses are not even talking about people going to heaven or hell. This is talking about people’s one side of the family is going to serve the other side of the family. That’s earthly destinies. And, of course, what Abraham’s selection was for was not to go to heaven, although I’m not saying that Abraham didn’t go to heaven. I think he did. But when God promised something to Abraham, he didn’t say, you’re going to go to heaven. He said, your seed is going to bring blessing to all the nations. That’s something that happens on this planet. And that was the promise God made to Abraham. And the question in the next generation is, of Isaac’s two sons, which of them were going to be the ones through whom the seed would bless the nations? And then of Jacob’s sons, which would be the one? It turned out to be Judah. Of Judah’s family, which were the family of David. and so forth. What God is saying is the nation is going to be blessed through someone that we call the Messiah, that we call him Jesus. But he’s going to come through whom? It wasn’t going to be through Edomites. It’s going to come through the Jews. So the whole passage is not even discussing people going to heaven or hell. He’s talking about God favoring one group of the family over the other group of the family for an earthly destiny. Now, in this case, of course, those that he favors are also the believing remnant, which means they’re also going to go to heaven. That happens to believers. But he’s justifying the fact that not all the Israelites are saved because they are not all Israel who are of Israel. That’s his point. So the Calvinists have simply not even paid close attention to Paul’s discussion. They know he’s talking about Israel in the opening verses of chapter 9. And then once you get past the potter and the clay part, they know the rest of chapters 9, 10, 11 are about Israel. But they think that Paul decided just to change subjects entirely. At one point, talk about Jacob and Esau and Pharaoh and Moses and the potter and the clay. Yeah, that’s kind of maybe an aside where Paul… Forgot he was talking about Israel. Now he’s talking about predestination and Calvinism. Now, Paul has not changed the subject. If a person is able to follow Paul’s reasoning, you realize that this portion is part of what he’s reasoning before it and after it. I would recommend… If you want to understand Paul’s reasoning in Romans 9-11, go to my website and listen to my verse-by-verse through Romans 9-11. If you want to know about the Calvinist arguments, I have a series of lectures called God’s Sovereignty and Man’s Salvation, which is all about that. And I deal with those passages there, too. All right. I’m going to take another call here, Hunter. Thanks for joining us. Who’s been there the longest? It’s been Bill in Fullerton, California. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 04 :
Hey, Steve. Thanks. I have a quick question for you. I am talking to a friend who is starting to get interested in the Bible, and I have an old King James version back from Chuck Smith days and all that. But I’m hoping to find a version that’s easier to read or clearer for a beginner. What would you recommend?
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, I never found the King James Version as hard to understand as some people claim to, but I can understand there’s decreasing literacy in our nation with each passing generation. Many years ago, though I had been teaching from the King James, my students in my school said they didn’t understand it, so I got a new King James. I’ve been using that ever since, but even that’s not as clear as some. Now, the problem with Bible translations… is the more clear the Greek and the Hebrew are made into English, the more you have to depart from the literal word order and idioms of the original. So there’s two philosophies of translation. One’s called formal equivalence, and one’s called dynamic equivalence. Now, some of the older Bibles, and what I call the better Bibles, I think, follow formal equivalence, where they’ve translated… word for word as much as possible. And they realized not everyone’s going to understand that because you’re taking those unusual Jewish idioms and rendering them in their English equivalents, but without explanations. Just like if we translated, I’ve got a cat in my throat, literally word for word into another culture that doesn’t use that expression. they’d really have some problems understanding what’s being said. And that’s the same thing in Greek and Hebrew idioms. So when you get a word-for-word translation, you often have things like that where the idioms are unfamiliar or where the word order is awkward. Things like that. And so that’s the formal equivalence. And by the way, that’s the kind I prefer. I prefer to have that. I think the other kind is dynamic equivalence. That’s where the translator knows or thinks he knows what those idioms mean. So he just paraphrases them into an idiom that he thinks will be understandable to English speakers. Now, that works fine enough. If he does understand the idioms perfectly, but what if he gets it wrong? Then he loses the original and substitutes it with an English idiom that may or may not be the same thing. I figure if the translator can figure out what the idioms mean, I can too. I’d rather do my own study. I’d love to read Greek and Hebrew. I can’t. So give me an accurate Greek and Hebrew translation. and let me do my homework to find out the idioms. But if someone’s not motivated to do that, get them something like an NIV or a New Living Translation. It’s not going to be word-for-word accurate, but it’s going to be easy to understand in English. I’m out of time. Thanks for joining us. Have a good one. Thank you. Our website’s thenarrowpath.com.
