When Christians disagree about prophecy, Sabbath-keeping, Bible translations or other doctrines, what is important enough to divide the church?
Steve Gregg takes listener questions on curses, the New Covenant, dispensationalism, Christian unity, the return of Christ and the seriousness of marriage vows.
Listen now to The Narrow Path with Steve Gregg.
This edition of The Narrow Path covers a wide range of questions, but one theme keeps resurfacing:
What does Scripture actually require Christians to believe and practice — and what should believers do when they disagree?
Steve Gregg takes live calls about spiritual curses, Bible translations, Old Covenant law, Sabbath observance, dispensationalism, the
SPEAKER 1 :
Thank you.
SPEAKER 05 :
Good afternoon, and welcome to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg, and we’re live, as usual. We weren’t yesterday. That was a foul-up. I was not able to get on the Internet where I was. I’m traveling, but I’ve got a good connection now. We’re going to have a normal show, I think, which is a live program where you can call in and ask questions, if you want, about the Bible or the Christian faith for us to discuss on the air. You can also call to disagree with answers that have been given previously on the program, and you can call to balance comment. Feel free to do either of those things. I’m going to give you the phone number right now, but the lines are full, so don’t call right now. But if you call in a few minutes, lines will be opening up and you will get through, or probably will get through. There’s a very good chance if you call early enough. But don’t call, say, for the next five minutes, and by then we might have some Lines have opened up.
SPEAKER 01 :
We’ll see.
SPEAKER 05 :
I am traveling, as I said. I am in Michigan, and I’m speaking in quite a few places between now and next Thursday night here in Michigan, different places. I’m going to be in the Detroit area. I’m not there yet. I’ll be in the Flint area. I’ll be in the Grand Rapids area now. I’m going to be in the Columbus, Ohio area. I’m actually going to be on the Michigan side in Temperance, Michigan. I’m going to be up in Port Huron. So there’s a lot of different places all over the place that I’ll be speaking. And if you live in Michigan and near any of those places and you want to join any of the gatherings, we would love to have you do so. You can go to our website, thenarrowpath.com. And there, there’s a tab that says announcements. And so just go to thenarrowpath.com, go to announcements, and you’ll see all the days that I’m speaking in Michigan and where I’m going to be and what about and so forth. And join us if you want to. You’re certainly welcome. And that’s all I’ll say about that. We’re going to go to the phones and talk to Steve in Sholo, Arizona.
SPEAKER 02 :
Hi, Steve.
SPEAKER 05 :
Hello, Steve.
SPEAKER 02 :
Hello, Steve. Absolutely love your program, and we thank God for all the blessings he’s bestowed on your program over the last 29 years.
SPEAKER 03 :
Amen.
SPEAKER 02 :
My question is, we heard someone state that God’s the only one who has the authority to put a curse on somebody, but there was no scripture provided for that, so we were curious what you would have to say about that.
SPEAKER 05 :
Right. I don’t think the Bible would support the idea that God is the only person person who could put a curse on somebody because there are, of course, demonic powers too. We don’t know that they put curses on people. Not much is taught about curses, although curses are definitely mentioned in the Bible. We don’t have a theology of them given. But it does say in the book of Proverbs, I admit I don’t remember the reference now, but it says that as a sparrow flitting about, so a curse unwarranted will not alight. That is kind of a paraphrase, but the idea is that an unwarranted curse will not hit its target. So my understanding would be that assuming we are walking with God and walking as we should, we don’t have to fear that any curses from anybody else that they may want to put on us would ever have any impact on us. Now, if a person is not a Christian, I don’t know that they have protection from that kind of thing, from God. I mean, the Bible does promise. various protections to Christians, which it does not mention necessarily that God would protect other people from them, too. I mean, we see in the book of Job how the devil couldn’t do any harm to Job unless he got God’s permission. Should we conclude that the devil can’t do any harm to his own people, that is the devil’s people, without God’s permission? I don’t know that we could extend that idea that far. We’re not told that. We’re not told that the devil does or does not need permission to attack unbelievers. But we do know that Christians have that promise. And I would say the same thing about curses, which is another kind of affliction or attack. I don’t think that Christians can probably be… affected by such curses, unless, of course, there’s some compromise in their lives. Maybe then. I don’t know. But my assumption is if we’re really Christians, we’re not going to be compromising much. We’re going to be trying to live a holy life. And assuming that is true, we wouldn’t have to worry about curses. But as far as the statement you heard, that only God can, you know, inflict a curse, the Bible doesn’t say that. And so whoever said that is, I guess, guessing. Yeah. Okay.
SPEAKER 02 :
I realize your line is full. Do you have time for one more very quick question?
SPEAKER 05 :
Okay.
SPEAKER 02 :
Go ahead. If my wife is wondering which Bible you would recommend for a 12-year-old boy?
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, how precocious is he? Is he a good reader?
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes, he’s a very good reader.
SPEAKER 05 :
I would get him a New King James probably, but there’s some other good ones too. I use a New King James… Partly because I like the King James, but the King James is hard for a lot of people to read. By the way, the proverb I gave, my wife is not with me here, but she texted me, and she told me that the, let me see here, it’s Proverbs 26.2 is the proverb I gave. Okay. Proverbs 26.2. I like the new King James, and I like it because it’s one of the versions that uses a, what we call a formal equivalence translation philosophy. It’s not a dynamic equivalence, which means they’re not trying to what? They’re just not trying to paraphrase. A lot of Bibles are trying to paraphrase. And so New King James is good. But honestly, a lot of people like the Legacy Standard Bible. I haven’t used it much yet, but I have a friend who’s switched over to it. That’s one that John MacArthur’s ministry put out, which I’ve looked at it a bit. It looks like a good translation. I don’t know that I’d switch over simply because I’ve been using one translation that I like for a long time. But, yeah, the New American Standard is also good. The ESV is a pretty good one. But you have to pick one. I personally would pick the New King James.
SPEAKER 02 :
Okay. Well, thank you so very much, Stephen. God bless you.
SPEAKER 05 :
All right. Thank you. God bless you, too. Thanks for calling. Not only did my wife send me that proverb reference that I didn’t know, she also told me that I said I’m going to be near Columbus, Ohio. It’s not Columbus. It’s Toledo, Ohio. So if you live in Columbus, I’m sorry. I misspoke. That’s in the Toledo area. Okay. Hopefully I won’t make any more mistakes today. That’s a big ask, isn’t it? Mike in Cool, California, welcome.
SPEAKER 04 :
Good afternoon, Steve. I hope you’re doing well. And I hope, I know, it was sure a pleasure seeing you here when you were in Sacramento.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 04 :
And you told me that your wife and I deal through kind of the same thing, and I just pray that she’s feeling better.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, she’d prefer not to have that talked about on the radio. Go ahead.
SPEAKER 04 :
Okay. Okay. So I was listening to a pastor, and he was saying that the reason the Romans killed the Christians was because they wouldn’t add Jesus to their plethora of gods. Now, is that true? Because I can think of the time when Paul went to, I’m not sure if it was Rome, but he was talking to Caesar or one of those, and he said, I know who the unknown God is, that you have your statue.
SPEAKER 05 :
That was in Athens. That was in Athens, yeah. Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER 04 :
So I don’t remember them saying anything real negative about that.
SPEAKER 05 :
Right. I think the preacher who said that was confused. If he said it as you said it, I mean, it may be that you may have misheard him, but if you did not, no, he was mistaken. The Romans did not persecute the Christians because the Romans refused to add Jesus to their pantheon of gods. The Romans would have added any number of gods. In fact, they conquered a lot of heathen lands, and they let all those people… keep their gods. The Romans may or may not have believed in all those gods, but they weren’t offended by them. The problem that they had with the Christians was the opposite. It was that the Christians didn’t recognize their gods, and especially when that was when Caesar kind of made himself a god and required people to worship him. And Christians and everyone else were kind of required to burn incense to Caesar as an act of worship. The Christians would not do it. And the Romans couldn’t understand why not. I mean, they figured all gods are alike. Why not worship our gods, too? But Christians and Jews were different than all other religions because they were monotheists. They only had one god, and they were pretty jealously loyal to the one god. Now, if you say, why didn’t the Romans persecute the Jews then? If the Jews only worshipped one god and wouldn’t worship Caesar… When the Romans conquered a territory, they had a policy that any religions that were already active in that area could continue. They didn’t seek to abolish historic religions of the areas that they conquered. But they did say that no new religions were allowed to be spawned in regions that Rome had conquered. And therefore, Judaism had been around a lot longer than the Romans, and therefore… The Jews were given sort of a, they were grandfathered in. Once they were conquered by the Romans, they were allowed to worship their god and therefore to not worship other gods. Christians, however, were a religious system or religious group that arose after Rome had conquered the area. Judea was under Roman oppression and conquest at the time Jesus was born. So Christianity was seen as a new religion that had sprung up. And it took the Romans a while to recognize that, because initially, the Romans just felt that anyone who was a monotheist was a Jew, especially if they were Jewish by ethnicity, which Jesus was, and the apostles were, and the flagship church was in Jerusalem, and they believed in the Jewish God, and so forth, and had scriptures. So the Romans really… not knowing much about religions other than their own, they just thought Christians were Jews, and so they tolerated them. It was especially after the city of Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans in war, which had nothing to do with religion but had to do with the rebellion of the Jews against the Roman state, and the temple was destroyed, which ended Judaism. The Christians flourished. They didn’t need the temple. And that’s when it became clear to the Romans that these Christians were not just another sect of Jews. They were something else. And that’s when persecution became official on occasions. There were emperors who didn’t actively persecute Christians, but there were at least 10 emperors over a period of 200 years that did actively persecute Christians. And it was because they saw it as an intrusive religion and an exclusive one. and that they wouldn’t worship the Caesars and so forth. So that’s why the Romans pursued it. It wasn’t that the Romans had a problem adding more gods, and Jesus was just another one they could add. That wouldn’t have been a problem to them. We have no evidence they ever had a problem like that. But their problem was that the Christians didn’t add any gods to theirs. And that’s what sometimes came into real conflict with the demands of the Caesars to be worshipped. I appreciate your call, bro. We’ll talk again. George from Michigan is our next caller. George, welcome.
SPEAKER 08 :
Hi, Steve. How are you today? Fine, thanks. Good, good. Steve, I have a question about salvation. You know, in… You know, in the Old Testament, in Psalms 147, you know, God said that he showed his word unto Jacob and his statutes and judgments, you know, unto Israel. And he goes on to say in verse 20 that he hath not dealt so with any nation. And as for his judgments, they hath not known them. Praise ye the Lord, right? Right. Jesus comes and he says that, we’re talking New Testament, and he says that salvation is of the Jews. And I’ve been a Christian now for probably a little bit about 35 years. And over the years, I’ve begun to change, and I’m about to ask my question in a second. So in the Old Testament, even in the New Testament, when Jesus is here, salvation was that you… came to jesus you got baptized and you started keeping the command am i right um sort of yeah i mean i mean that’s one way of looking at it yeah okay and so here’s the other part um now modern day christianity i noticed that when people are offered salvation There’s no mention of God’s commandments. And we’re talking about keeping the Sabbath day. You know, we’re talking about the dietary law, and we’re talking about the feast of the Lord. What is the reason for that? I know it. Just give me one second. But the way of salvation, to me, seems like it has never changed. Who changed it? And is there any biblical support that God changed the way of salvation being of the Jews? Because nowadays, you would think that salvation is of the Gentiles. And I say that not in a sarcastic way. But I’m saying it like we have this way of like a Billy Graham kind of come down the aisle. I hear you.
SPEAKER 05 :
Okay, let me answer your question. Let me answer your question.
SPEAKER 08 :
All right.
SPEAKER 05 :
All right. Yeah. When Jesus said in John 4, salvation is of the Jews, what he meant is it comes through the Jews. It’s not just for the Jews. It is of, meaning from the Jews. God had chosen Israel to know God and to make him known. to the other nations, and therefore the knowledge of God would be mediated through the Jewish people to the world. This has really nothing to do with the so-called commandments and dietary laws and things like that. This has to do with salvation, which existed actually before there were Jews. I mean, in Jesus’ day, he lived after God had made promises that it would be through Abraham’s seed that all the nations would receive the blessings of salvation. So, But before Abraham was there, Abel was saved, and Noah was saved, and Enoch was saved, and people could be saved before the Jews existed. The Jews are not the saviors, but God chose Abraham’s seed to be the one through whom salvation would come. Now, the Jews were regarded as Abraham’s seed, but of course it’s one particular Jew that came through the Jewish line, and that’s Jesus. that salvation comes from. People are saved through their relationship with Jesus, not through their relationship with the Jews or with Judaism. Judaism is the Jewish religion. But today, I mentioned a moment ago that when the temple was destroyed, it brought an end to Judaism. Judaism was established as a religion at Mount Sinai when the Israelites came out of Egypt. It ceased to be the biblical religion that it had been, when the temple was destroyed permanently in 70 AD. Since that time, what is usually called Judaism is simply rabbinism or the teaching of the rabbis and the Talmud. And it doesn’t have sacrifices, doesn’t have a temple, and therefore it’s not really Judaism of the Bible. The Bible’s Judaism required temple sacrifices, and that hasn’t happened for over, well, very close to 2,000 years now. So the Judaism that exists now is simply Talmudism. It’s following the Talmud, not Moses’ law. Moses’ law is in there, too, but not all of it, because there’s probably about a third of it or more that has to do with the temple, and they can’t do that anymore. So Judaism is not a source of salvation to us. Christ is. Christ came through the Jews, and therefore he said salvation is of the Jews. He was contrasting the Jews with the Samaritans when he’s talking to the woman of the well, saying that they were not the ones who God used to mediate salvation to the Gentiles. It was the Jews. Now, you said that, you know, in the days of Christ, salvation meant you believe in Jesus and you keep the law of Moses. Well, the Jewish people, even when they did follow Jesus, did in measure keep the law of Moses. Though even Jesus himself didn’t fully keep the law of Moses because he wasn’t required to. He’s the Lord of the law. He’s the Lord of the Sabbath. And therefore he did things on the Sabbath that the Sabbath law wouldn’t permit. He did his regular work. The Sabbath law was do your regular work six days a week and don’t do it on the seventh day. Jesus did his regular work all seven days a week and didn’t even care what day of the week it was. In fact, often he went out of his way to do things on the Sabbath that were controversial just to to raise the issue that he was the Lord of the Sabbath. He also, we don’t know if he ever ate unclean foods, perhaps not, but it’s not because he was under the law about that. Jesus himself said it’s not what goes into a man’s mouth that defiles him, but what comes out of his mouth, because that comes out of the heart. As far as keeping ritually clean, he did not. He touched lepers. He let a woman with an issue of blood touch him. Both circumstances under the law of Moses would make him unclean for a week. But he didn’t behave. He didn’t follow that. He didn’t remain unclean. He didn’t separate himself. He didn’t see himself as unclean since the people who touched him became clean instead. So Jesus was, in many respects, above the law because he was the Lord of the law. And the Sabbath was the sign of the law. It says in Exodus, I think, chapter 31, if I’m not mistaken, or chapter 30, that the Sabbath was the sign of the covenant. Now, Jesus made it very clear. He’s the Lord over that. And that means he can do things that people, ordinary people, could not do. Because it’s like I compare it to a traffic cop who’s chasing a criminal on the freeway with his lights on and his siren going. He’s going 100 miles an hour. He’s breaking the law. But he’s authorized to do that. It’s against the law to go that fast on the freeway. But he, unlike the other cars in the freeway, is capable of violating that if he’s in pursuit of Code 3. But he can’t just do that because he’s a cop anytime he wants to. There are times when he has the authority to break that law. And it’s not law-breaking for him because he’s got the authorization to do it. Jesus had the authorization to do whatever he wanted on the Sabbath. He was the Lord of the Sabbath. He was not under it. He was over it. Now, what you’re saying is, Today, when people are evangelized, evangelists don’t tell them to keep the law. And there’s a good reason for that, because there’s a new covenant. And it always amazes me that people have a Bible that says Old Testament and New Testament and don’t understand. There’s a difference between an old covenant and a new covenant. The testament is a covenant. God made a covenant with Israel in the Old, and then he made a new covenant through Christ. Now, covenants are contracts. Now, if you’ve got a contract with somebody to do something, and you rework the contract, and you have a new contract instead, well then, the revised contract is what you’re obligated to keep. The old one, you don’t have to. And Jeremiah, who lived under the old covenant, prophesied by the Holy Spirit that there would be a new covenant. And Jesus said he did establish the new covenant in the upper room. And it says in Hebrews chapter 8, well, where there’s a new covenant, the old one’s obsolete. So, You know, the old one that had Sabbath and dietary laws and festivals and things like that, those were part of the old covenant. They were never established as part of the new covenant, which has replaced it. Now, we know that the law has changed because in Hebrews chapter 7 and verse 12, it’s pointing out that the priesthood has changed. And because in the old covenant, the Levites were the priests. But he says now, Jesus is a high priest and he’s not a Levite. He’s of a different order. The priesthood is not of the order of Aaron and Levi anymore. It’s of the order of Melchizedek. So it’s a totally different priesthood. And the law only knew of one. The law only authorized one priesthood. And Jesus wouldn’t be authorized. It says that in Hebrews chapter 7. If he was a priest in the temple today, it says he could not be a priest. But he is because God has changed things. And it says in Hebrews 7, 12, there being a change in the priesthood, there is of necessity a change in the law. Well, yeah. Yeah, I mean, if you change the priesthood, you’ve got to change the whole law. And Jesus said not one dot, not one jot or tittle of the law would change or would be altered until, or would pass away, until all had been fulfilled. So if anything in the law has been altered, it’s because the whole thing’s been fulfilled. And certainly the priesthood is a big part of the law, and it’s been altered. And the writer of Hebrews says, Yeah, well, if the law has been changed, I mean, if the priesthood has been changed, then the law has been changed. So you’re asking if God made any changes. He did. But keeping the law never was a basis for salvation. You’re talking about did God make a new way of salvation? Well, not exactly. According to Hebrews 11, people back in the days of Abel and Enoch and Noah and Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Moses and David and the prophets, they were all saved by faith just like we are. But faith… When a person has faith in God, they are then faithful to God. And faithful to God means you keep his instructions. You’re in a covenant relationship, like with a marriage. You’re in a covenant. You keep your promises. You keep the requirements of you. And so when God had a covenant with them saying you need to keep these dietary laws and keep these festivals and keep Sabbath and all this and do these sacrifices, well, they had to do that. If they were faithful, that’s what faithful people would do. They’d obey. Now we still have to obey, but we don’t have the same covenant. And the covenant Jesus made does not require those things. And that’s why Jesus and Paul and others indicated that’s not Christian obligations anymore. Why? Because there’s a new marriage, a new covenant. You can read it in Romans chapter 7, verses 1 through 4. Paul talks about a woman who is married, but her husband dies. She can marry another man. And he points out that when she’s married to one man, she’s under his authority. But if her husband dies and she’s in a new marriage, she’s under the new husband’s authority. And he said that’s like the law. We were married to the law, to the old covenant. But now we’ve died through the body of Christ. We’ve died to the law, and we’re now married to another. That’s Jesus. So what’s that mean? It means back in the Old Testament times, people had to obey the law of Moses. That’s the covenant God had with them. But he said there would be a new one, and that new one has come 2,000 years ago. And now we’ve died to that through Christ. We’ve died with Christ forever. We’ve been crucified with him, Paul says, and therefore that marriage is over. But we now are married to another. We’re married to Christ, and he is the one we have to obey. So instead of obeying the law of Moses, we have to obey Jesus. Now what does Jesus want us to do? Well, he tells us to love your neighbors, you love yourself, and love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And therefore, we have to do that. You know, you can’t commit adultery because that’s not loving. You can’t murder because that’s not loving. You can’t steal or defame somebody because that’s not loving. So in many ways, we have to live as holy in our behavior as people have to under the law. But it’s a different rule because a lot of the laws in the Old Testament had nothing to do with loving your neighbor or even with loving God. They had to do with ritual worship that could be done by someone who loves them or doesn’t love them. Salvation comes now by having a relationship with Jesus Christ. He’s your Lord. He’s your King. He’s also your Savior. And as your Lord and King, He gives instructions, and you’re obliged to keep them. I know some preachers don’t mention it, and they should, but they shouldn’t say, I think you want them to say you should keep the Sabbath, and that’s not what Jesus said at all. I need to take a break. I appreciate your call. You’re listening to The Narrow Path. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. We’re going to take a 30-second break, and we have another half hour to go, so don’t go away.
SPEAKER 07 :
Everyone is welcome to call the narrow path and discuss areas of disagreement with the host. But if you do so, please state your disagreements succinctly at the beginning of your call and be prepared to present your scriptural arguments when asked by the host. Don’t be disappointed if you don’t have the last word or if your call is cut shorter than you prefer. Our desire is to get as many callers on the air during the short program, so please be considerate to others.
SPEAKER 05 :
Welcome back to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg, and we’re live for another half hour. We’re taking your calls. Again, our lines are full, so don’t call right now. If you call in a few minutes, the lines do open up. Some have, and new callers have filled them. In the last half hour, that will happen this half hour as well. So we’re going to go to the phones and talk. Oh, by the way, the number is 844-484-5737. Our next caller is David from Anaheim, California. David, welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 01 :
Hi, Steve. Can you hear me?
SPEAKER 05 :
Yes, sir.
SPEAKER 01 :
Hello? Oh, thanks for having my call. I love your show. Can you hear me?
SPEAKER 05 :
Yes, sir.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, I just wanted to get your thoughts on something that happened. I used to go to a church in Chino Hills that you had critiqued the pastor on his position on eschatology. You probably know who I’m talking about. I do. He was calling it heretical. Yeah. So anyway, I used to be in leadership, and I was also serving for 12 years at this church, and I started asking people questions, questioning them. dispensational and I had made some comments about some stuff to people and I was eventually removed from ministry and I asked for a meeting and I was told that I couldn’t serve in any capacity in the ministry if I didn’t sign a statement of faith and believe in a preacher of rapture which was very disappointing and So, anyway, yeah, and I asked the pastor, I go, so why, is that insecure about your position, and why can’t we discuss this and love one another? And they just wouldn’t say anything. It was, yeah, very disappointing. So why do I have you on? Go ahead.
SPEAKER 05 :
Go ahead. Did you have a question?
SPEAKER 01 :
I was going to ask you if you had comments on that, and also from here on in, eschatology-wise, what happens, second coming, and so forth. You could answer that. It would be great.
SPEAKER 05 :
Oh, you wonder what’s going to happen before the second coming?
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, if anything’s going to happen.
SPEAKER 05 :
All right, all right, great. Yeah, I’ll be glad to talk about those things. All right, God bless you. Well… Yeah, first of all, you’re serving the church for 12 years and you begin to ask questions about dispensationalism. By the way, dispensationalism and Christianity are not the same thing, though Christians can be dispensational. Christians can be something else, too. They don’t have to be dispensational. Like for the first 1800 years, all Christians, in fact, were not dispensationalists. It’s a new doctrine. But suddenly some churches make it necessary to hold that new doctrine in order to be considered, you know, not dangerous. Now, this is a problem. Now, I understand that if you were teaching in the church and you were teaching something heretical, that they would have to say, well, we have to not allow heresy in our church. But the problem is when they name something as heretical, which never has been officially been declared to be by any council. I mean, there have been councils throughout history that declared certain doctrines heretical. But non-dispensationalism has never been decreed to be heretical, except by individual dispensationalists who don’t like it. They have no authority to do that. Now, the man you’re talking about has a very large church, and it’s very locked down, as you know. I used to be in the same denomination myself when I was young, and although I was never kicked out, I would be if I entered it now. I was in that denomination for probably close to ten years. one way or the other, as a teacher and simply as a student there. But, you know, they didn’t have it locked down as much when I left because I moved out of the area. But then very shortly after that, they got really locked down in their dispensational theology. They were dispensational before, but they just made it absolutely necessary for someone to hold that view. And I had come not to hold it anymore. So, I mean, I would be kicked out too. frankly, even if I wasn’t serving the church, if I just attended the church and they found out who I was, they’d kick me out just because I don’t hold that view. And I’m public about saying so. Now, it is a shame because when they do that, they are dividing the body of Christ. There is a denominational mentality in most churches, even the ones who aren’t dispensational. Let’s just say, let’s talk about, say, Lutheran or Presbyterian or Episcopal or any church, even Wesleyan churches aren’t necessarily going to be dispensational. Some Baptist churches are not dispensational. But if a group thinks you can only have people serving God in your congregation if they believe every single doctrine the way you do, then you’re saying we cannot accept people, even if Jesus does, if they don’t agree with us completely. Now, I’m sure they believe that Jesus agrees with them completely, but unless they’re willing to say that those who don’t agree with them are not saved and are not children of God, well, I mean, how many would say that? I realize your pastor that you mentioned, he has said things kind of like that. He said, you know, I don’t know if you’re going to be saved without believing this, but he’s an unusually divisive man. Not everyone in that denomination is that divisive. people of that denomination would say, you know, you should be dispensational. But most of them would say those who are not aren’t necessarily lost, but they just want to keep their group dispensational. I think keeping my group dispensational or keeping my group non-dispensational would be a very bad standard to have if I’m leading a congregation of people because God accepts dispensationalists if they love him, And he accepts non-dispensationalists if they love him. And for the pastor to say, if you don’t believe in this one view, you can’t be part of the body of Christ, well, then they’re making a declaration God is not willing to make. We’re supposed to receive everyone that God receives. And unless he wants to say you’re not saved, he has no business kicking you out of the church. Now, if he doesn’t want to let you serve because he doesn’t trust you for whatever reason, I don’t think pastors have to, you know, let everybody serve in the church who would like to. Some people are not mature or might be dangerous. You just have to choose. You have to vet people for that. But you shouldn’t vet them on the question of do they hold all the same particular doctrines of eschatology. I mean, the church has had many views about that throughout history, and it would be crazy for a church to say, well, we’ve got the right one, everyone else is wrong, and therefore anyone who doesn’t agree with us is not saved. And yet if they say you are saved, on what basis do they put you out of the church? I mean, how can someone put you out of the church if you’re a child of God? Isn’t the church the family of God? I mean, these people, it’s a very divisive attitude. And it’s sad because when that church started, that is when the denomination started, which was just about, what, 75 years, 55 years ago, excuse me, 56 years ago, that denomination started. Their motto was, we are not denominational. And we don’t object to denominations per se. We only object to the overemphasis on some peripheral doctrines that makes divisions in the church. That’s what the founder of that denomination said. And every church of that denomination I’ve been in, on the back of their bulletin, has that statement on it. And yet they have become literally the most divisive denomination I know of, even more than the Catholics. I don’t know. Catholics might divide more. I mean, they think they’re the only ones, but this is a Protestant denomination we’re talking about, and I don’t know if I’ve met others that are quite so divisive as that. And being divisive is to put yourself against Christ in many respects, because he’s not in favor of dividing the body of Christ. So you want to my opinion about that? That’s that. Now, what’s going to happen before Jesus comes back? I don’t know. We aren’t given any signs to look for. We are told that God has been working on something, and I can maybe deduce that he won’t come back until he’s done with the project One thing he’s been working on is making disciples of all the nations. He told us to evangelize all the nations and to make disciples of them and teach them to observe everything he’s commanded. The church has been doing that for hundreds of years, but it’s not done. Another thing that he’s looking for is maturity in the church. And interestingly enough, ironically, in Ephesians 4, it says that the maturity he’s looking for is unity among Christians. And if this church you’re talking about is any example, We’re very far from that point. And Jesus may not be able to come until they repented that. Because, frankly, Paul said that that’s what God’s waiting for. The world has to be evangelized, the world has to be discipled, and the world has to be united in Christ. At least the church has to be united. And therefore, I would say, he may not come right away. He may. I certainly would not put any restrictions on when he could come. And we’re not told when he will come. But I know that Jesus did say, and the Bible does say, that these are the things he’s looking for. And I know he’s been working on it for 2,000 years, and there is some progress that’s been made in that area, both areas. And so I would think there’s no reason for him to come before he’s done. I mean, if he’s waited 2,000 years, why would he just kind of abort the whole project? At this point, I mean, why can’t he wait? I mean, he’s patient. We’re the ones who are not patient. So, you know, I would say Jesus could come today, but I don’t think there’s much improvement in my life thinking that way because I could die today. I think we should all be aware that we might have to go face God any moment. And that’s true whether Jesus comes today or we die. So, I mean… I don’t have to have an opinion about when Jesus is going to come. I’m supposed to be living the way he wants me to live, even if he doesn’t come for 100 years. I’ll still be judged by the way I live when I stand before him. So what’s it matter if he comes and catches me before I die or he comes after I die? We’re all going to stand before the judgment seat of Christ. All right, let’s talk next to Joshua in Phoenix, Arizona. Joshua, welcome.
SPEAKER 03 :
Hey, I just wanted to make a comment on that last call, because that was a very interesting call. So I do think that in Catholicism we’re all about ex-humanism, which is unity. But I would just say that my disagreement with you is that we have to be united in truth. And I would think because you’ve been married, you would understand that you can’t just compromise. You have to come to some agreement. for a marriage to work. So I would say, likewise, the church is like a marriage, right? And so we would have to have some form of, like, a free man can’t just be, you know, united and disagree. And that’s all.
SPEAKER 05 :
I appreciate your thoughts. I agree that we have to be united in the truth, but I would define the truth as Jesus. not certain opinions that people have about certain theological subjects. Because on almost every theological subject, I mean, eschatology we were talking about. We could talk about demonology. We could talk about, you know, angeology. We could talk about a lot of different aspects of theology. There are Christians who are on different sides of the issue. But I’ll tell you, I’ve been in a church where, where we all love Jesus, we all follow Jesus, and some of the people in that church were Calvinists, I’m not. Some were Arminian, some were Pentecostal, some were not. Some were dispensational, and some were not. I mean, there were all these different opinions, but no one thought for a moment of dividing over those things. I mean, those are simply opinions. You’re not going to be saved or lost for your opinions. You’ll be saved or lost for your commitment to Christ. If you’re committed to Christ and you’re loyal to him and he’s your Lord and he’s your king and you’re living as if that’s really true, then I don’t think you have to have all the right opinions. Now, I will say this. Some opinions are more harmful than others. And some opinions, if they’re wrong opinions, may be to the detriment of the way you follow Christ. In which case, you know, those are pretty important to agree about. But there are also opinions that don’t have any impact on the way you follow Christ. That is to say, people on both sides of the aisle follow Christ with equal zeal and love and obedience. So, to say we have to agree in the truth and be unified in the truth, yeah, Jesus is the truth. If we agree that Jesus is Lord, and that really means I’m his follower in real life. I mean, not just say so, not just my identity, it’s what I do. I’m a follower of Jesus. Then, you know, my opinions on one or another doctrine of, I mean, for example, whether we believe in Augustinianism, as most Christians do in some area or another, or not. Well, before Augustine, being a Christian had nothing to do with agreeing with Augustine. And it doesn’t anymore. It doesn’t now either. And yet, if you disagree with Augustine, you’re going to be on the other side of the aisle from a lot of Christians. But so what? You see, Paul indicated that in the Church of Rome, There were Christians on different sides of the aisle on some issues. In that case, in Romans 14, some of the Christians thought they should keep a holy day, and some didn’t think it was necessary to keep one day holy, but they should keep every day alike, he said. That’s verse 5. Earlier they said some of them think they should abstain from meat. Others don’t. So they had difference of opinion. These are people in the same church. They had different opinions, but they’re committed to Christ. And Paul doesn’t tell them whose opinion is right and whose opinion is wrong, though I’m sure he had an opinion himself about it, that he could have done that. But what he said is, let everyone be fully persuaded in his own mind, and don’t judge each other for the differences you have in those areas. And that’s maturity, when you can say, okay, you really see some things differently than I do, but it looks like you’re following Jesus through your whole heart, and you’re obeying Christ, and you’re serving the Lord, and you’re loving your brethren. Sounds like all the things that are important to Jesus, you’re checking those boxes. So that’s all I care about. Now, in the context of fellowship, we can discuss things we differ about and try to persuade each other. That’s the thing. A lot of times we say, well, if you don’t agree with my opinion, get out of my church. Well, what that means is we’re not going to ever change our opinions because we won’t talk about it anymore. There will be no iron sharpening iron. There will simply be two different groups that agree within themselves against each other. And then some of them will split into groups that disagree about something else. And eventually you’re going to have all these hermetically sealed groups that don’t have any contact with each other. And no one’s going to change. They’ll just perpetrate their group ideas. Now, the Bible doesn’t allow that. You can’t excommunicate a brother because he has a different opinion. You try to persuade him. And maybe he’ll try to persuade you because he might be right about some things too. But if neither of you are persuaded by the other, you can still love each other and fellowship with each other and serve each other and lay down your life for each other. That’s what Christianity is. That’s maturity. Dispensational, well, I’m not going to blame this on dispensationalism. Just the whole idea of denominations is, Paul said it’s infantile. When he said to the Corinthians, I couldn’t treat you like you’re spiritual people. I had to treat you as babes in Christ. I couldn’t treat you as if you’re mature. You’re carnal, he said. Because as long as you’re saying, I’m of Paul or I’m of Cephas or I’m of Apollos, he said, you’re just babes. You’re just carnal. And that’s true. He’d say that to the modern church because that’s what they’re saying. I’m of the dispensational view. I’m not of the dispensational view. Well, but, okay, what’s that got to do with anything? Is dispensationalism part of being saved? I don’t think so. If so, for 1,800 years, there were no saved people because there was no dispensationalism. And I think, you know, people, they get all divided about and offended if people don’t agree with them. That’s just infantile, Paul said. That’s just carnality. So that’s what I think. I think we need to learn to love people who don’t agree with us and not required people to be totally walking in lockstep with each other. I appreciate your call, brother. Talk to Sarah in the Bay Area, San Francisco Bay Area, California. Hi, Sarah.
SPEAKER 06 :
Hi, Steve. Thanks for taking my call. I have a question from Exodus chapter 21, verse 10. And it says, if he takes for himself another woman, he may not reduce her food, her clothing, or her conjugal rights. And I know some translations say marital rights. So I recently heard this verse used as a grounds for divorce for emotional distress or emotional abuse because the marital rights would include emotional issues. And then it was said that in the rabbinic writings, they did allow divorce for things like that. including a lack of food and a lack of clothing. I wanted to get your opinion on that.
SPEAKER 05 :
That was definitely true in the Jewish religion. If people did not, if a couple, one of them refused to have sex with the other person, for example, that was grounds for divorce. And I don’t know, maybe it should be. Christ didn’t mention it as a grounds for divorce himself, so I’m not sure I would give that permission. But It certainly makes it very clear that it is wrong. It was a divorcing issue in biblical times, and even if it’s not a divorcing issue now, it’s not any less wrong for one spouse to deprive the other. I mean, Paul, in 1 Corinthians 7, told the husband and wife not to deprive each other in that very area. He said, because you don’t have the right over your own body. Your spouse does. You know, he said that both to the husband and the wife. You know, the husband has no power over his own body. His wife does. The wife has no power over her home body. Her husband does. When you get married, you belong to each other. And that’s, you know, if one of them wants to have a sexual relationship and the other doesn’t, well, basically getting married means you’ve agreed to have one. You know, so… Now, if somebody can’t, if one partner doesn’t want to because there’s some kind of physical or emotional trauma involved in it, then the person who wishes it was otherwise may have to bite the bullet sometimes, may have to just show compassion to the person who can’t easily do that. But if there’s something that makes it impossible, every remedy for that problem should be sought. I mean, I do believe, of course, there are some people in physical and probably emotional conditions that they just would not fare well. They just can’t do it. But I don’t know what those things would be. That would have to be taken on case by case. Now, when it comes to emotional neglect or what some people call emotional abuse, I don’t know that we could put that on a list of things that are necessarily grounds for divorce. And the reason I say that is, is because although there are some kinds of abuse that probably would be grounds for divorce, the word is so undefined. It’s so subjective. I mean, a man may be as kind as he knows how to be to his wife, and he’s not abusive in his mind at all. He’s not unkind. He’s not physically violent. But she’s not getting what she wants, and so she considers him to be emotionally abusive to her. and vice versa. That’s it. Anyone can say they feel emotionally abused, but you can’t just make up a subjective thing and say this is grounds for divorce. I would say if somebody feels like they’re being emotionally abused, there definitely needs to be intervention from the church, for example, and they need to find out what’s going on, who’s sinning against whom, and so forth. But in our modern world, You know, I don’t think anyone ever suggested that emotional abuse is a grounds for divorce until we already had what’s called no-fault divorce, which, what did that come up from? The 1960s, I think. Before that, you pretty much had, someone had to be at fault to break the contract. And the fault had to pretty much be adultery in those days. But in 1960s, America adopted a new policy of no-fault divorce. People could just divorce because they didn’t want to be married anymore. And they had no grounds. And, of course, Christians didn’t go for that. But Christians kind of got influenced by that. So many women were getting out of marriages where they were unhappy. I think it made the Christian women kind of jealous if they weren’t happy in their marriages. So the churches began to move. Ever since the 60s, the churches have moved in the direction of whatever the congregation wants them to do, especially the women in the congregation. This has pretty much been the trend. instead of what the Bible says to do. And so, I mean, we do have a lot of people, books and so forth, written by Christians saying emotional abuse is grounds for divorce. As many of you know, I was married to a woman who committed physical adultery numerous times and did not repent, and I wouldn’t divorce her. Now, I felt like there was grounds to. But when you feel like you have grounds for divorce, when you feel like your marriage is a miserable thing, the question you have to ask is, what would God prefer? What would glorify God more? Would it glorify him for me to be faithful and keep my promises just because I have a spouse that’s not doing right? Now, by the way, that particular wife left me in an adulterous relationship, too. She went off with another guy. So I’m not talking about my wife now, obviously. But, you know, I wouldn’t divorce her. And, you know, I had… I was in kind of an abusive relationship. I wasn’t doing the abusive. My wife was, and I wouldn’t divorce over it. So I think Christians need to have a little more backbone and more determination to stay loyal to their word. And there may be some forms of emotional abuse or physical abuse that are tantamount to walking out on the marriage, even though they have not involved a physical walking out. In those cases, I could see Paul’s instructions in Romans 7, verses 12 through 15, possibly applying, and perhaps a divorce could be had. I don’t know. I’m very reluctant to say anything more than what the Bible says on that, but I could see that when Paul says if the unbelieving partner departs, the brother or sister is not under bondage in such cases. Well, I mean… It’s hard to tell if somebody has emotionally departed in most cases. But if somebody clearly has, if the husband won’t speak to his wife or she won’t speak to him anymore or they won’t have any contact and there’s no cooperation of any kind, I mean, it’s clear they’ve left the marriage. They just haven’t moved out of the house. So, I mean, maybe that would be a situation. But I’m afraid we’ve got such thin-skinned generations getting married these days that they’re offended so easily by anything that someone does that displeases them. And they start to use the term emotional abuse as a justification for them simply wanting to break their vows instead of doing what God wants them to do, which is to humble themselves, serve, and do what they said they would do when they made their vows. God doesn’t like people breaking vows. The Bible makes that very clear. So we should be very, very reluctant to get out of a marriage. I think even when we clearly have grounds, we shouldn’t rush to get out of the marriage. I think we should hope for reconciliation.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yes, I agree. And then if you have time, how would you counsel someone who… Whose response to all that you said was, well, I believe God cares more about me than my marriage. And if I’m unhappy, then the marriage shouldn’t be more important than me.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, marriage is more important than your happiness. Because marriage is a covenant. You don’t get married without swearing in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in a church. that you’re going to be faithful to that person for life, no matter how bad it gets, for better, for worse, for richer, for poor sickness and health. You made an oath. God doesn’t think it’s better for you to become a liar. It’s more important for you to be honest than to be happy. Now, try to be happy being honest, and that’s the best thing to do. But if it’s a choice between being honest or being happy, go with honest. You’ll have eternity to be happy. I’m out of time. You’re listening to The Narrow Path. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for joining us.
