Join us on this episode as Steve Gregg dives into the intriguing discussions around death and the Christian perspective of eternal life, equating the end of life to a glorious winning lottery. We also explore the different views on the timing of the Rapture, examining both pre-tribulation and post-tribulation theories with thoughtful insights and biblical references.
SPEAKER 1 :
Thank you very much.
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 with an open phone line so that you can call in and be part of the program if you have questions about the Bible, about Christianity, anything where you differ from the host and want to talk about that. Feel free to give me a call. We’re looking at a pretty open switchboard. It’s not empty, but there’s plenty of opportunity for you to get through if you call right now. The number is 844-484-5737. That’s 844-484-5737. If you’d like to be on the show today, this is a very good time to call in. As I say, there’s some lines open. If you’re a regular listener, you know that that is very often not the case. And this is a good chance to get through. 800, excuse me, not 800, 844. 844-484-5737 is the number. And first of all, we’re going to talk to Izzy in Chula Vista, California. Hi, Izzy. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 08 :
Hey, how you doing, Steve?
SPEAKER 02 :
I’m well, thank you.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yesterday you were talking to a caller. I believe his name was Robert. He was talking about fears. I didn’t catch it all, but at the end you said something that for you to die would be like winning the lottery.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yep. Except everyone dies and not everyone wins the lottery, so it’s not really exactly the same. What I meant is I’d feel as privileged as if I had won the lottery. Go ahead.
SPEAKER 08 :
Right. So, you know, in our Bible study, at the end of the Bible study, we always have a prayer list, and there’s every Wednesday evening when we meet, it’s let’s pray for this person, this person has cancer. But could you elaborate a little bit more about what you believe as to winning the lottery when Christians die? Could you share a little bit more about that?
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, winning the lottery is a metaphor for striking it rich, okay?
SPEAKER 08 :
I understand, yes.
SPEAKER 02 :
It’s like inheriting a fortune or something. Well, of course, going to be with Jesus, how could any Christian not see it as the greatest privilege of all? Now, of course, I’m assuming Christians love Jesus. There are people who identify themselves as Christians that really probably don’t love Jesus because they probably don’t know him. There are certain people that if you know them, you’d be crazy not to love them. In fact, it would be almost impossible not to love them. There aren’t many people like that, but there are some. And Jesus is definitely one of those people. And if you happen to know him, then of course you’re going to love him. Unless you hate him. I mean, obviously knowing Jesus is going to either evil love or hate. There’s nobody ever really ran into Jesus and listened to him much who was kind of, you know, just apathetic about him. He’s very challenging. He demands all. On the other hand, he gives all. And… And he’s so amazing and so, you know, fantastic that anyone who’s not threatened by him is going to be drawn to him. Now, Paul, of course, expressed the sentiment I was talking about in Philippians when Paul was in prison and he was apparently on trial for his life and he wasn’t sure if he was going to make it alive out of there. And he was talking about how he wasn’t sure which he would prefer. Now, he said it would be better to die and go be with Christ, but he said there are some other things that may cause God to make him stay around, namely that he could get more done. I mean, there’s a reason we are here. There’s a reason we don’t just kill people when we baptize them so we can send them directly to heaven. We get saved in order to serve God in whatever capacity he has desired for us to serve him. And we look forward to the time when, just like at the end of the working day, you look for the whistle to blow so you can leave your station and go home. and that’s the way a Christian looks at life. We’ve got a task to perform. We’ll be very glad when it’s over. Now, we’re not going to shorten it artificially. We’re not going to commit suicide, obviously. We don’t believe in that, and we don’t know when the whistle is going to blow for us, but we know that when it does, that’s when we get to go home. The way Paul put it when he was in prison and writing to the Philippian church in chapter 1 and verse 20 and following, he says, according to my interest, It’s in my earnest expectation and hope that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but that with all boldness as always. So now also Christ will be magnified in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. But if I live on in the flesh, this will mean fruit from my labor. Yet what I shall choose, I cannot tell. For I’m hard pressed between the two, having a desire to depart. and be with Christ, which is far better. Nevertheless, to remain in the flesh is more needful for you. And being confident of this, I know that I shall remain and continue with you for all your progress, for your progress in joining the faith. What he’s saying is, you know, he says it twice. To die is gain. To depart and be with Christ is far better from my point of view. but maybe not from God’s point of view. I mean, I will die someday, and from then on we’ll have forever to be with God. So whether I die today or die 10 years from now or 50 years from now, in the course of eternity doesn’t make much difference on the other side. But it makes some difference on this side, because whether I can do three or four more days’ work and then die, or three or four more decades of work and then die, Again, it won’t make difference in eternity in terms of my, you know, I’m not deprived of eternity by being stuck here for a few more decades, but more people may find a better eternity through my labors if I stay. That’s what Paul is saying. But, I mean, when you think about it, imagine dying and seeing Jesus. I mean, how is that not like, you know, inheriting a fortune?
SPEAKER 08 :
Right. No, I hear you. And I thank you. Thank you, Steve.
SPEAKER 02 :
All right, brother. Thanks for your call. Good talking to you.
SPEAKER 08 :
Likewise. Bye-bye. All right.
SPEAKER 02 :
Bye now. Patrick in Spokane, Washington. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, hi. Thanks for taking my call. I was just wondering what your thoughts are on the timing of the rapture in terms of pre-tribulation or post-tribulation?
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, I probably have a different idea even about the tribulation, to say nothing about the rapture. But in terms of when the rapture will occur, the Bible seems to be fairly clear on that. The rapture is not mentioned specifically very many times. And the places it is mentioned, probably the clearest place it’s discussed, is in 1 Thessalonians chapter 4. And so, let me just read the verses that have it. Let’s say verse 15 through 17. 1 Thessalonians 4, 15. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep, meaning those who have died. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first, then… We who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord. Now, he’s saying two things are going to happen around the same time. One is the dead are going to rise and then the living are going to rise. So when is that going to happen? Now, the living, the dead rising is called the resurrection. The living rising to meet him in the air, that’s what we call the rapture. The Bible doesn’t use the word rapture in our English Bible, but it comes from the Latin version of this passage. Now, So the resurrection of the dead and the rapture of the living saints is what Paul describes here. It’s happening essentially at the same time. He says the dead in Christ rise first, and then there’s the rapture of the church. Now, when does that happen? Well, he says at the coming of the Lord, because he speaks about we who are alive and remain will be caught up at that time. But in verse 15, he says, we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord. So we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will at that time be caught up immediately after the dead have risen. Now, then he also says at that same time in verse 16, the Lord will descend from heaven with a shout. So he’s going to come down here. He’s coming back. That’s kind of the hope of the Christians, that Jesus is returning. And he’ll come with a shout, the voice of an archangel, the trumpet of God. This is a noisy affair. Now, we have Paul talking about this business earlier. In the second epistle to the Thessalonians, just one page over, in 2 Thessalonians 1, he’s talking about how the Thessalonians are suffering persecution, but they will be delivered from it. And we assume that the church ultimately will be delivered from suffering when we’re caught up to meet the Lord, and there we leave here. And he says in verse 6, talking about the persecution, 2 Thessalonians 1, 6, since it is a righteous thing with God to repay with tribulation those who trouble you, and to give you who are troubled rest with us. Well, when will that be? Well, when the Lord, he says, Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, taking vengeance on those who don’t know God and those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. So we’ll receive our rest from persecution. At what point? Well, when the Lord Jesus comes in flaming fire, and destroys the wicked. That’s the second coming of Christ. So both 1 and 2 Thessalonians refer to this happening for us when the Lord comes. And there’s numerous passages in the Bible about the Lord coming, but that’s what Jesus elsewhere spoke of as happening on the last day. In John 6, you’ll find Jesus talking about how he’s going to raise his people up on the last day, which is also the day he judges the wicked, according to John 12, 48. So, you know, there’s one day, the last day. The New Testament writers usually call it the day of the Lord or the day of Christ or the day of the Lord Jesus Christ, or Peter refers to it once in 2 Peter 3 as the day of God. But it’s a day, a given day when Jesus comes back. Now, the righteous and the wicked will rise up in the same hour, Jesus said. He said that in John 5, 28 and 29. He said, Do not marvel at this for the hour is coming when all who are in the graves will hear his voice and shall come forth, some who have done good to the resurrection of life, those who have done evil to the resurrection of condemnation. So the righteous and the wicked will come out of their graves. Of course, Paul has already, we’ve already seen in 1 Thessalonians that that’s When Jesus comes back, the dead in Christ will rise first. Well, apparently the dead who are not Christians will also rise at that time. Jesus said the hour is coming. That’s one point in time when all who are in the graves will come out, the righteous and the unrighteous. So the resurrection of all the dead and the rapture of the church occur at that time. That’s what we usually call the second coming of Christ. And that’s what I understand to be the time of the rapture. You there?
SPEAKER 07 :
Okay. Well, thank you for explaining that. And it sounds like it’s after the Tribulation.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, that depends. I’m not sure that the Bible speaks about a Tribulation in the end times. There’s only twice in the Bible that you read of the Great Tribulation. But the word Tribulation is used lots of times. But in the New Testament… The word tribulation is used, I don’t know, half a dozen or more times simply to refer to the fact that Christians suffer in this life. Jesus said, in the world you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer if I overcome the world. In 1 Thessalonians 3, Paul said to the Thessalonians, he said, you heard, I told you we’re going to have tribulation, and you found that we have. So, I mean, tribulation in the Bible usually just refers to trouble generically that Christians have, usually in the form of persecutions. Now, there are two times that seem to speak of a particular tribulation. One is in Matthew 24, 21, where Jesus says, then there should be great tribulation, such as not been since the world began, neither ever shall be. So he’s talking about a particular, uniquely terrible tribulation time. And this is also mentioned one other place, and that’s in Revelation 7, 14, where John sees this great multitude in white robes and so forth in heaven, and he’s asked, who are these? And he said, I don’t know, you tell me. And the elder says, these are those who are coming up out of the great tribulation and have washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb and so forth and made them white. So the great tribulation is mentioned by Jesus in Matthew 24, 21, and the great tribulation, apparently the same one because in Matthew 24, 20, he just says, then there shall be great tribulation. He doesn’t say the great tribulation. But in Revelation, these are the ones who are coming up out of the great tribulation, apparently alluding to the one that Jesus mentioned. You know, he said there will be great tribulation. This is that. This is that great tribulation he spoke of. They’re coming up out of the great tribulation. So twice we have that expression, and neither of them tell us that it’s in the end times. It might be, but it may not be. In Matthew 24… Just a few verses later, Jesus said, this generation will not pass until all these things are fulfilled, which sounds like he’s saying the tribulation he’s talking about was going to come in that generation. In Revelation, the opening verses of Revelation, we are told these are things that must shortly take place. The time is near. So the first century Christians who were the recipients of that book were told that the things in Revelation are going to happen soon. So both Jesus and the book of Revelation, the only two places that mention the Great Tribulation, they both tell us it was going to be fulfilled shortly within that generation. And so that generation is long gone now, and therefore… I’m not sure that we have any basis for believing in a tribulation that’s at the end of the world, particularly. Now, that doesn’t mean there won’t be horrible times. I’m not saying, hey, cheer up, everything’s going to be good. I mean, things could get terrible. Things could get absolutely horrible. But the question is not, how does the future look? We don’t know what the future looks like, but we do know that there’s not much in the Bible to tell us specifically about a tribulation in the future. I mean, that is a common view, as you know. I mean, you probably never have heard anyone doubt it. However, those who don’t doubt it are what we call dispensationalists. Those who are not dispensationalists, which is a particular modern view of eschatology that just came up in the last two centuries, those who are not dispensationalists have no specific biblical grounds to believe there will be a future tribulation.
SPEAKER 07 :
I’ve never heard it explained that way before. Thank you for that. I’m going to have to rethink things. Not that I’ve changed much, but I’m just curious. So thank you for explaining that.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah. There’s a couple of places that we have resources. There’s a website called Matthew713.com, Matthew713.com, and it’s a topical index. It’s got like 25,000 calls that have come into this program over the past year. years and years and years, and they’re arranged in a topical arrangement. You can look it up like an index. You can look up a subject, and it’ll take you directly to a call where someone in the past asked the question, where I went into it in more detail, or sometimes maybe not so much detail, but usually more. I also, at our website, thenarrowpath.com, have full lectures. on eschatological subjects and other subjects, essentially every subject you could imagine, full lectures, including things like the end times and so forth and tribulation and Daniel 9 and Matthew 24 and Revelation. You find all lectures on those things, and I do go into them more than I can on a Q&A format of this program simply because I have to move along to other callers. But there’s plenty more on it. And, yes, rethinking things is always a good idea. Some people have an aversion to rethinking things. And, you know, if you never rethink what you have been taught or thought by default, then you’ll never grow in your understanding. Sometimes if you rethink what you already believe, you’ll find out that what you already believe is right, you know. But it doesn’t hurt to rethink it, because if it isn’t right, you’ll never discover that unless you rethink it. So thinking is a great thing. I think too few Christians have been encouraged to do it. And I think when Christians think, they grow. And especially if they’re thinking by studying the scriptures, you know, examining what they’ve been taught. Sort of like the Bereans. They heard Paul. And they searched the scriptures daily to see if what he told them was true. And that’s what all Christians ought to be doing. Too many Christians really just want to believe what their pastor said or what their friends believe. And you can, but you’re not going to be thinking for yourself then. So I encourage you, and it’s good that you said, you know, I need to rethink this. That’s a very good thing for every Christian to be doing on many things that they’ve been taught. Thank you, brother. Good talking to you.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, I was always, you know, talking to people. Hey, post-trib or pre-trib, you know, post-trib, never anything in between.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, there’s lots of other views.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, I’ll do that. I’ll check that website out. Thank you.
SPEAKER 02 :
All right. God bless you, man. Thanks for calling. Tanya from Mill Creek, Washington. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 01 :
Oh, hello. Thank you for taking my call. I wanted to please get your perspective on… The media team at churches, how they take pictures and videos of people during the church service, and primarily about taking pictures of children in kids’ ministry. I’ve been a bit concerned about that being posted to social media. I wanted to get your take on that. And if I could take that offline, that would be great.
SPEAKER 02 :
All right. All right. Great. Thanks for your call. I will tell you, I’ve not given much thought to this before. I realize that the concerns about posting the pictures of children or some other people on social media does make their image, you know, open almost to an infinite number of people who might visit that and look at it. Now, in 99.9% of its cases, I wouldn’t see that there’d be any danger at all. But, of course, among those who might look at them might be people who, I don’t know, I don’t think like those people. I’m not sure how they think. But, you know, people who want to abuse children or whatever might find someone in the pictures that they want to hunt down. But, like I said, I would think that 99.99999% of the people who would look at those pictures probably are absolutely harmless people. And maybe 100% of them are harmless. It’s just like there’s that rare thing. But to see a group picture from a church and seeing children and so forth, assuming that someone online and social media doesn’t know how to contact those people, doesn’t know their names, doesn’t know where they live, I would think that even if there were people who had evil intentions, that it would be very difficult for them to do anything. So, I mean, in a sense, just having your children go out in a public place where people can see them is kind of the same. The difference is on social media, a lot more people can see them. And there’s a lot, maybe more possibility of bad people seeing them. Though you never know if you’re walking out with your kids in a market shopping, you know, there might be a bad person there who sees them and wants to do some evil. I don’t know that. I don’t know that the danger is increased so terribly much by posting pictures of children, though I will say that when people do post pictures of their whole families, you know, people have always wanted to show people pictures of their families and stuff and their children and things like that or their wife or, you know, themselves. And, you know, ever since social media, that’s become a very, very standard thing to do. We have to remember before there was the Internet, before there was social media, there was very little outside your own neighborhood or your own village that would expose the image of you or your family to anybody that you don’t know or that’s necessarily going to be dangerous. So I think we just live in a more risky time. I would say any woman, let’s just say an attractive woman who posts her picture on her social media, There could be thousands of people ultimately who see it, although, of course, generally speaking, you wouldn’t expect that many people to look at it, but they might. And then there might be bad people who make bad plans. Now, the same thing could happen without social media. Just walking down the street, there could be bad people who see you. And so it’s really a matter of degree. It’s not as if. In one scenario, it’s perfectly safe, and in the other scenario, it’s perfectly risky. I would just say that living in this world, which is full of bad people, there’s always a risk that someone who’s perverted would have designs on your children. There have always been people who’ve kidnapped children and things like that before there was social media. So I would say I’m not sure how much greater danger that is. In other words, I’m not willing to come out and say that should never be done. Although I can understand the concern, and I could see how parents might wish for the church not to depict their children on general scenes. But again, that might be more often than not kind of a paranoid way of being because parents I don’t know, if you, you know, people on social media see lots and lots and lots of people, most of whom they probably never contact, even if they’ve got evil thoughts. And if you’re keeping your children safe in general, you know, and you don’t let them go in dangerous situations, then even if people see them on social media and have evil intentions, you know, the way you parent, the way you care for your children will keep them safe. So I’m not going to blast it, but I will say we often may post pictures of ourselves or our children without giving it a thought that, you know, it’s conceivable that thousands of people may eventually see these pictures. And you simply can’t vouch for the character of thousands of people you don’t know and what evil intentions they may have. But, again, that’s just one of the dangers of living in the world. It’s… insofar as we might say a certain percentage of people who see you or your kids may have evil intentions against them. I assume, hopefully, it would be a very small percentage of those who do. But as you increase the numbers of people who can see them, obviously that small percentage might involve more individuals. So it’s something that everyone needs to just think for themselves. I don’t think it should be something condemned outright. I mean, with many people, their social media is just like what a photo album used to be, although it used to be that people only saw their friends’ photo albums, their family’s photo albums, not every stranger in the world. So I’m going to just kind of be, I’m going to leave that to the wisdom and the discretion of parents to decide. And if they don’t feel that they want the church’s media teams to broadcast on the Internet their images, then that’s something they should speak up about. But those who allow it, I would say in the overwhelming number of cases, no ill comes from it. But in this world, you never know that no ill will come from virtually anything. You can’t live in paranoia, but you can take chances if you feel uneasy about something. And apparently you do, and that’s a thoughtful position. You’re listening to The Narrow Path. We’re only half done. We have another half hour, so don’t go away. We are listener supported. You can go to our website, thenarrowpath.com. You can take anything for free there, or you can donate at thenarrowpath.com. I’ll be back in 30 seconds. Don’t go away.
SPEAKER 03 :
toward a radically Christian counterculture, as well as hundreds of other stimulating lectures, can be downloaded in MP3 format without charge from the Narrow Path website, www.thenarrowpath.com. There is no charge for anything at the Narrow Path website. Visit us and be amazed at all you’ve been missing. That web address, www.thenarrowpath.com.
SPEAKER 02 :
Welcome back to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg, and we are live for another half hour, taking your calls. If you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith, We have a few lines open, a couple or more, maybe three. If you’d like to call right now, this is a good time to get through. The number is 844-484-5737. That’s 844-484-5737. I’m going to have to start announcing this, not necessarily every day, but I’m going to be doing a debate in Wisconsin. Now, I don’t even know… If we’re on in stations in Wisconsin, I’d have to check. But I’ve been challenged to a debate by Joel Richardson. Some of you would know his name. He’s written books. He’s got a lot of, I guess, talks online. I’m not familiar with him. I mean, I know something about what he believes and so forth. I’ve never really followed his ministry, don’t know much about him. But he asked to debate me in a live venue, a rather large church, in a town called Onalaska, Wisconsin. And that’s going to be on March 6th live. That is, it’s not online. It’s not on Zoom. It’s going to be in the church. And if you’re interested in that, we’re going to be debating about really what it comes down to is amillennial versus premillennial theology, the actual process. topic as it’s named for the debate is, will Jesus reestablish a Davidic kingdom when he returns? And by Davidic, it means the kingdom of David. Will Jesus sit on David’s throne as the prophets said the Messiah will do? And will he do that when he returns? Now, Joel Richardson, I believe, will be arguing that that is what the Bible predicts. I’m going to be arguing that Indeed, the Bible did predict it, but that’s been fulfilled. Jesus is currently reigning from the right hand of the Father, which is equivalent to David’s throne in the prophets. So it’s going to be kind of between what you call amillennial and premillennialism, with me taking the amillennial position and Joel Richardson the other. If you’re interested in that, you can find out where and when that debate is by going to our website, thenarrowpath.com. and looking under the tab that says announcements, and it’s on the date March 6th. All the information you need is going to be there. Fred from Alameda, California. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yes. I have a friend, and he’s very knowledgeable about the Bible, but he said something that I just wonder about. He told me that… When David committed that sin with Bathsheba and Uriah, after the fact, my friend said that God told him, if you had wanted more concubines, I would have given them to you, but I told you to have no sexual relations with Bathsheba. Do we really have knowledge of that in the Bible?
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes, yes, that is found in the 12th chapter of 2 Samuel. Okay. I’m looking for it. I’m just scanning it right now. But I remember what God said to David was that I gave you everything that Saul had, including his concubines and all that stuff. And he said, and if you’d wanted more, I would have given it to you as well. Do you have a reference there?
SPEAKER 05 :
I don’t have it myself.
SPEAKER 02 :
Okay. Yeah, my wife looked it up while I’ve been talking to you. She said it’s in 12.8, 2 Samuel 12.8. God said, I gave you your master’s house and your master’s wives into your keeping and gave you the house of Israel and Judah. And if that had been too little, I also would have given you much more. Now, of course, he’s not necessarily saying I would have given you more wives than Saul. He’s saying I gave you Saul’s position. I gave you, you took over his harem that he had had. And now you’re in his position. I gave you the rule over Israel and Judah. And I would have given you more than that. But although it’s not necessarily saying I would have given you more women than that, he’s just saying if all those things I gave you didn’t satisfy you, I had not exhausted my possible generosity to you, why did you have to take another man’s wife? That’s what he’s saying.
SPEAKER 05 :
And I have a second question. How was David able to avoid getting stoned to death? Because wasn’t that the penalty for adultery back then?
SPEAKER 02 :
And for murder, right. Yeah, well, because he avoided it by repenting. And, you know, David himself, remember how this came off. Nathan the prophet came to David. David had not been admitting this sin. He had committed this sin, but it was kind of just, it just had blown over and nothing had been done about it. Now Bathsheba was pregnant with David’s baby. And Nathan the prophet comes to David and says, listen, something happened in your kingdom. I need your opinion on this. There’s a man that had one little sheep that was like a family pet, and he had a neighbor across the street who had a whole bunch of sheep, a wealthy man, and the wealthy man had a visitor come at night, and he wanted to feed him lamb, but instead of taking one of his own lambs, he went and stole the single sheep that this poor man across the street had, and he took that lamb, who was like a cherished family pet from then, and killed him, killed the lamb and gave it to his guests. Now, this is the kind of thing that kings in Israel, like Solomon and so forth, had to face. People would come with their cases. You know, this was an injustice. How do you rule on it? You know, so the king is acting as a judge. And David just, you know, blurted out, the man should die. Now, remember, David had been a shepherd himself and protecting sheep from being stolen by animals or people was a shepherd would give his life trying to prevent that. This is a very great infraction, sort of like in the Old West, he used to hang horse thieves. It’s not a small matter to be a horse thief. It’s not a small matter to a shepherd for someone to steal a sheep. And David, he overreacted because of his emotional involvement in the story. He didn’t know it was about him. He thought it was about just a case that happened. And he just thought, this is outrageous. The guy should die. Well, that’s not really true that the law of Moses said the guy should restore four sheep for the one. But when David said, the man shall die, Nathan said, you’re the man. I’m talking about you here. And David repented. But he had announced his own death sentence. And Nathan said, yeah, that’s you. You did that to your neighbor Uriah. You had plenty of wives of your own, and yet you took his wife. And so, you know, the judgment is true. You should die. But when David repented, God told Nathan, okay, David doesn’t have to die, but he’s going to suffer consequences for this for the rest of his life. The sword will not depart from his house all the days of his life. His children are going to be at each other’s throats. It’s going to be a disaster. And the baby that she was going to have is going to die at birth or shortly after. So, You know, this was a judgment that came on David short of him dying. Now, David, I mean, he admitted he should die. I mean, Nathan admitted he should die. God knew he should die. Under the law, David should have been put to death. On the other hand, since David repented, God, in his case, made this exception, partly because the sin had been so out of character for David, I think. I’m just assuming this had something to do with David had been a man after God’s own heart, and he had a bad year, you know. And, you know, it was kind of out of character for him. But more than that, he repented. He genuinely repented of it. And more than that, to execute the king of Israel, which could have been done legally under the law of Moses, would have been very destabilizing for the whole country. And so to allow David to continue to reign, but with a diminished power, power and under, you know, under harder circumstances, was the only judgment that was put upon him. Now, David, by the way, had lots of insights that went beyond those of the law. And when he wrote his repentance over this issue, which was in Psalm 51, he wrote this psalm of repentance over this matter. And he said to God, you did not desire sacrifices and offerings or else I would give them. He said, The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit and a contrite heart you will not despise, O Lord. Now, what’s interesting is that David, who lived under the law of Moses, which required a lot of animal sacrifices, said, you don’t desire sacrifices. Now, part of that was informed by the fact that the law didn’t have any sacrifices for murder and for adultery. Those were capital crimes. You couldn’t offer a sacrifice instead. So the kinds of crimes David had committed, there were no sacrifices for it. They were too heinous. But David also understood that when it comes to the whole what God wants from people, it’s not animal sacrifices anyway. It’s a broken heart. It’s a broken spirit. It’s repentance. It’s a resolve to, you know, love and follow God. And David had that. And God just made an executive decision here. Okay, the law says he should be put to death. David’s own decree said the man shall die. And he was the man. But then God just made an executive decision. Yeah, I’m not going to make you die because you’ve repented. You’ll just never have occasion to forget that this happened because your family is going to be a disaster.
SPEAKER 05 :
Do you believe that story is probably one of the top five most tragic occurrences for a Christian man in the history of the Bible?
SPEAKER 02 :
For a godly man? Well, there’s a lot of great tragedies in the lives of godly men. Job would certainly have a tragic story. Joseph’s story was very tragic, although they turned out for the good. God put Joseph through great injustice, but then elevated him to great power and privilege. Moses had tragedies in his early life. There’s… The prophets had great tragedies. Jeremiah was put in prison and persecuted. But maybe, maybe the top five. I mean, let’s face it. The Bible, well, let’s put it this way. History is full of tragic things, and many of them happen to God’s people. And the Bible is recording a sampling of history. And so it has its share of tragedy, too. I’ve heard people say, in fact, one person who wrote to me who hated the Bibles, He said, the Bible’s an atrocious book. It talks about all these horrible things that happen, rapes and stuff like that. And I wrote back to him. I said, yeah, you know, any accurate ancient history is going to be full of atrocities because history is full of atrocities. And any true history is going to, unless it’s very, you know, sanitized, it’s going to mention those things. And the Bible is true history. And that’s why you hear those things. One of the things that has impressed many historians about the Bible, that it is true history, besides the way that archaeology and many other things have confirmed the stories there, is that the heroes, the greatest heroes in the story, are presented warts and all. They’re not canonized in the scripture, whether it’s Abraham or Moses or David or you name it. The heroes, they all have their feet of clay. And in a history that’s a religious history, where the things they do is considered to be unthinkable, but they did it anyway, you would think they might leave that kind of stuff out. But they leave it in, even though it makes them look bad. I’ve said in one of my books, I said that the Old Testament is the most unflattering example national history that any nation ever produced about itself. And it was the Jewish prophets who wrote how bad Israel was. And yet what they wrote became the official history of that nation. Very unflattering. And one of the reasons to think it’s true. Because why would you write unflattering things about yourself if they weren’t true? Anyway, I appreciate your call, Fred. I’ve got lots of callers waiting and not very much time left, but it’s good to talk to you. We’ll talk next to Dave from Hookset, New Hampshire. Hi, Dave. Welcome.
SPEAKER 09 :
Hi. Thank you so much for taking my call. Bless you and your ministry, and I hope it continues as long as it can. Thank you. Yeah, I have an odd question. It’s always confused me about… These creatures known as the Nephilim, and I think there’s another name for them. Yeah, it’s like, what were their abilities? You know, did they build things? Did they, you know, what did they actually do while they were here? Because you hear about these archaeological finds and things like that, things they say are impossible for us to build and like. And one of the things that occurred to me was, you know, maybe they were built during their time or something. I don’t know.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, that would be completely speculative because we aren’t given any specific information about them. You know what we have? The Nephilim are mentioned twice in the Bible, in Genesis 6 and in Numbers 13. Now, in Genesis 6, it just says there were Nephilim in the earth in those days. Okay? That’s what we get. There were Nephilim in the earth in those days. We’re not told what Nephilim are. We’re not told anything about their characteristics or their activities. Now, some people think that they were the children of unusual marriages between angels and humans. The Bible doesn’t say that, but it’s a very popular view, which largely derives from the book of Enoch, and which many Christians believe to be true. I don’t see any biblical basis for that. All we have is there were Nephilim in the world in those days. The next time you hear of them is after the children of Israel have escaped from Egypt and Moses sends 12 spies into the land of Canaan to bring back a report to encourage the Israelites to go in. And the spies come back, and they bring a pretty good report, except they say there’s Nephilim and the sons of Anak there, and we can’t defeat them because we were like grasshoppers in their sight and in ours, they said. Now, this is the only other reference to Nephilim in the Bible. It does mention them with the sons of Anak. Now, the Anakites, we know the Anakim, they were giant people. There’s other references to the Anakim, and they were giant people. The Nephilim might have been giant people, too. Whatever the Nephilim were, you know, as I said, we seem like grasshoppers compared to them, which seems to be a statement of size comparison. You know, we were like insects. We were like bugs. They’re big, really big people. Now, you know, Anakin and other giants of the time, we don’t have much of an exact description of any of them in the Bible, although one of the giants we do have a description of is Goliath. And there was also Og. Og had like six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot. And Goliath was something like nine feet tall, and he’s called a giant. He’s not called Nephilim, but he’s called a giant. So, I mean, there were big people, and Nephilim probably were just very big people. Now, did they build pyramids? Did they build Stonehenge? Probably not. But we would be entirely speculating to say that they did anything in particular because nothing of their activities or their accomplishments are mentioned. We’re just told they existed. Now, there are whole novels and lots of teachers talk about the Nephilim. The Book of Enoch talks about the Nephilim. None of these are inspired. These are imaginary stories of them. But and I try to avoid teaching anything that is strictly imaginary. I’d rather just say, okay, here’s what the Bible says. It says nothing more, so we can’t really say with certainty anything more about them. I appreciate your call, brother. Brian in Colorado Springs, Colorado, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 06 :
Hi, Steve. I’m just wondering if you can talk about the drop of the word disciple explicitly talking about disciples after the Gospels and Acts it seems so prevalent in the Gospels and Acts and the great commissions to go make disciples but then Paul doesn’t use the word and I just wonder what your thoughts are on that if the idea holds but he just doesn’t use the term or I’d just like to hear you talk about that well it is a remarkable thing okay thank you it is a remarkable thing that the word disciple is used a great deal in the Gospels
SPEAKER 02 :
Jesus had disciples, not just the apostles, not just the 12. There were lots of disciples. One time he sent out 70 of his disciples on a mission, two by two. There’s one passage in the New Testament that speaks about the whole multitude of the disciples. So lots of people were followers of Jesus, and the term is still used in the book of Acts. So the 120 in the upper room were disciples, and no doubt the 3,000 who were converted that day were all called disciples too. But eventually in Acts chapter 11 and verse 26, it says in the city of Antioch, which was a major Syrian city where there were a lot of disciples, it says the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch. So another term for them was introduced, popularly used. We don’t know that they called themselves Christians initially. but someone called them Christians, and they were the same people who were called the disciples in the Gospels and earlier in Acts. It’s not the last time we hear of disciples, but we’re told that from that time in some places, at least the disciples went by a different moniker, which was Christians. Now, even the word Christians isn’t used much in the epistles. Frankly, it’s used only once in the epistles, and that’s in 1 Peter 4. where it says, if any one of you suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God on his behalf. Actually, the word Christian appears only three times in the Bible. It appears in Acts 11, 26, where it says the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch. It appears in 1 Peter 4, where it says, if any of you suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed. And there’s one other time in the book of Acts when Paul is before King Agrippa, And Agrippa says, Paul, you almost persuade me to become a Christian. So this is a term used not by a Christian, but by a non-Christian who knew the term. So, you know, that’s not many uses of that term, although that’s become a very common term for us. Why in the epistles, which were written roughly during the same period as the latter chapters of the book of Acts, do you not read the word disciple much? Well, it is right about the middle. of the book of Acts, a little before the middle, where we are introduced to the idea that the disciples came to be popularly referred to by a different term. Maybe not everywhere, but in Antioch, which is where Paul came from. I mean, Paul, he didn’t come from there, but that was his home church. It’s the church he was sent out on his missionary journeys from. So Paul and his team went out from a church where disciples were now called Christians. And although he doesn’t use the word Christian very much in his letters, he also doesn’t use the word disciple. He used the word saints more frequently, which he preferred, apparently. Because the word saints is used fairly often. Now, why some terms were more popular at different times by different writers, I don’t know. It is remarkable to not find the word disciple in the epistles at all. But… On the other hand, we know they were written at a time where it was not the only term that was used, and apparently not the most popular term, just because there were other synonyms that were used for it. And Paul, like I said, used the word saints more often. And, you know, they all meant the same thing. You know, Christian was another term for disciples. We don’t find the word disciples or Christian very often in the epistles. But we know, of course, that in the time of Paul, we’re told in Acts that they were called Christians. And yet we don’t find that term in any of his epistles. So… We can say this, that probably they were also called disciples from time to time, but he didn’t use that term either. We know there were terms that were used that for some reason Paul didn’t use. But again, I think it’s probably because he had a preferred term. He usually used the word saints instead. Why he would choose that term instead of others would be something possibly to explore. Roberto in Bentonville, Arkansas. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 04 :
Hi, Steve. I’m watching your videos on YouTube about spiritual warfare and many other of your videos. The question I have is, do you think that we could be, as a country, as a whole, Under some kind of divine judgment based on everything we have going on with the lawlessness going on and the false prophets from the NAR and the Word of Faith and stuff like that, could that be bringing some kind of… of judgment on us. And I guess the second question would be, is it wise for church leaders to have some kind of security based on all the attacks we see going on in, like, Seattle or North Carolina, Florida, you know, by Satanists and things like that? And I’ll take your answers off the air. I hope I kept it quick and simple.
SPEAKER 02 :
Thank you. Well… You know, it’s certainly possible that America is under judgment. No one could argue that we don’t deserve it. I mean, it says in the law that whoever sheds man’s blood, by man his blood shall be shed. And in the laws in Deuteronomy it says, I think it’s in Deuteronomy, it mentions that, you know, if a dead body is found, out in the field, and no one knows who did it. They had to measure the distance from the body to the nearest town, and the nearest town had to kind of take care of it and be responsible for it. But it says, innocent blood, meaning the shedding of innocent blood, defiles the land. And it says, nothing can atone for innocent blood except the blood of him who shed it. Now that’s That goes before the law, but that stayed in the law. And God basically says if a land is killing innocent people, if there’s innocent people who killed it, that land is defiled by it. Now, in our country, I don’t know what the numbers are now, but not too long ago, a million innocent babies in the womb were killed every year. Now, someone could say, well, our land is definitely defiled. If we come under judgment, no one can say we don’t deserve it. You know, we’ve legalized the murder of innocent blood of babies. You know, at least Israel, which sometimes did kill innocent people, in their laws, they didn’t permit it. Those who did it were breaking the laws. In our country, we permit it in our laws. It’s like, okay, no penalties for that. So, yeah, our nation definitely deserves judgment. I don’t know if we’re under judgment or not. Could be, I guess. If I were a prophet, I might be able to speak for God about that, but I can’t. But I wouldn’t rule it out. As far as ministers having security, like bodyguards and stuff like that, more and more churches are having security, armed security on the premises. This is very different than what the early church did, though I’m not sure what I think about it. You know, here’s the thing. There are women and children who sometimes get killed and innocent people who get killed in churches by madmen who come in. Now, these madmen are murderers, and that murderers should be put to death is an unambiguous teaching of Scripture. So I would say that if an armed policeman, let’s say, in any situation, saw a murder about to take place and took down the murderer before he could do the crime, I don’t think anyone could complain about the morality of that. I don’t think any Christian should complain about that. Now, you know, if there are security teams in churches, they… may be said to be playing a role like a policeman. Although some should say, well, Christians should be just trusting God for their security. And, of course, that’s what the early church had to do. So, I mean, I’d say either way a moral case could be made for it. If you just say, I’m going to trust God, not the police or not guns. But on the other hand, no one should complain if law enforcement says, stops lawbreakers. And so Christians might have that going on in their churches too. I’m out of time, unfortunately. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for joining us.
