In this engaging podcast episode, host Steve Gregg delves into intriguing topics ranging from the dating of the Book of Revelation to the theological implications of ancient expectations in Judaism at the time of Christ. Starting with a question about John’s exile on Patmos, the conversation spirals into a deeper examination of historical records and theological perspectives. With callers seeking answers on various biblical interpretations, the episode provides a rich tapestry of insights.
SPEAKER 1 :
This is the first time I’ve ever seen a bird in my life. This is the first time I’ve ever seen a bird in my life. This is the first time I’ve ever seen a bird.
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 to take your calls so that you can bring up for conversation questions that you have about the Bible, about the Christian faith. or disagreements you might have with the host that you’d like to talk about, you’re welcome to call this program anytime that we’re on the air and do so. The number is 844-484-5737. Looks like we have two open lines right now. If you’d like to try to take one of those before someone else does. The number is 844-484-5737. As I’ve been saying this weekend, we have two meetings, both tomorrow in the Southern California region on the third Saturday of last month. So there’s a men’s Bible study in Temecula in the morning. At 8 o’clock, men in Temecula area want to come in. That’s at 8 o’clock tomorrow morning. And then in the evening, we have a meeting in Buena Park, which is just a Q&A. And I would just say that this is going to be our last foreseeable meeting in Buena Park. We might have more sometime in the future, but right now, The regular monthly schedule we’ve been on is suspended for the time being. So tomorrow night in Buena Park, Q&A time, anyone can come to that, and a men’s Bible study tomorrow morning in Temecula. If you’d like to attend one of those, you can find the specifics of time and place at our website. The website is thenarrowpath.org. And you’d look under the tab that says Announcements. All right. With no further ado, we’ll go to our phones and talk to these callers. Anthony from Danville, California is first. Welcome, Anthony, to the program.
SPEAKER 07 :
Hi, Steve. Thanks a lot for taking my call. Sure. First off, I want to say I appreciate your show. I enjoy listening to it. In fact, you even helped change one of my positions for the longest time. I held to one point of Calvinism, perseverance of the saints. But through Scripture, you helped aid me finally releasing that. So I appreciate that. All good things must pass. Yeah. But I do have a disagreement with you on your view of partial priorism. And I’m actually calling for questions. regarding Revelation, and you actually talked about it, I think, yesterday, a couple days in a row now. Okay. The way I’m taking it is, so I’m looking at the date of Revelation, and John mentions that he’s on the Isle of Patmos, and my understanding is that that happened during the reign of Domitian, which is 80s, 90s. So if that’s the case, do you have a different date on that, or how would you reconcile that for an earlier date of Revelation?
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, well, for those who don’t know what you’re talking about, the partial preterist view holds that Revelation is predicting the Jewish war, which culminated in 70 A.D., and therefore, if that’s true, it would have to have been written before 70 A.D. The best theory for that is it was written during the reign of Nero, for which there is some internal evidence. The probably more popular today view is it was written in about 96 A.D. in the reign of Domitian. Now, you mentioned that, well, since John was on the island of Patmos as a result of Domitian’s you know, sentencing, it seems clear that since he was on the island of Patmos in Revelation, this means that, you know, he wrote it during the reign of Domitian. The question would be, how do we know that it was during the reign of Domitian that John was in Patmos? Basically, that’s one of the things that, of course, comes up first in a consideration of the date of writing of the book. And it’s not like that’s one of the you know, arcane sort of details that no one thinks of. Obviously, the setting of the book is said to be during John’s exile on Patmos. And the disagreement is, did this happen during the reign of Nero or the reign of Domitian? Now, on what basis do we know or think that it was during the reign of Domitian? Well, that’s a good question. I think that mostly comes from Irenaeus’ statement, but many people find the statement of Irenaeus ambiguous. He doesn’t necessarily mention in this statement that John was on Patmos at that time, but he does appear to mention John writing the book of Revelation or seeing the visions. in the reign of Domitian, which, if true, would definitely set the writing of the book in the reign of Domitian to be right. And that would also then locate the exile on Patmos there. But we don’t have external information about his exile on Patmos being in the reign of Domitian. We know that the exile on Patmos occurred at the time that he was writing the book of Revelations. And so the question is, when was that? Once we know that, we’ll know when the exile in Patmos was. It’s not the other way around. It’s not like we have some certain evidence that John was banished to Patmos by Domitian. There’s no secular evidence of it, no secular record of it. And the view that it was during the reign of Domitian comes from the view that that he wrote Revelation during the reign of Domitian. So we get the timing of his exile in Patmos from the timing of the book itself. So we have to then determine first not when was the exile, but when was the book written, and then we know when the exile was. And as I’ve said a couple times this week, there’s some internal evidence in the book that convinces many people, myself included, that it was written during the reign of Domitian, which means that that, I mean, Nero, which would be then when he was exiled. Those who believe that it was written during the reign of Domitian would conclude that the exile was during the reign of Domitian. So you’ve heard, as we all have probably, that John was exiled during the reign of Domitian. And therefore, that’s clearly when he wrote the book of Revelation. But if we ask, how do we know he was exiled during the reign of Domitian? Then suddenly we realize we’re reasoning backwards. We are using an assumed time of the exile to determine the age of the book. And I believe that the reasoning has to go the other way. What is the age of the book? From that, we can determine when the exile took place.
SPEAKER 07 :
So you think he could have been exiled under Nero and then been there all the way through Domitian’s reign?
SPEAKER 02 :
No, no, no. I don’t think it would be that long. It would be 25 years. No, just during the reign of Nero, not during the reign of Domitian at all.
SPEAKER 07 :
Well, if Arrhenius mentioned that, I believe he studied under Polycarp, who Polycarp studied under John.
SPEAKER 06 :
That’s correct.
SPEAKER 07 :
So I think Arrhenius has a fairly good idea of what he’s talking about on that.
SPEAKER 02 :
We would hope so. We have to say, though, that the quotation from Irenaeus, if you had my book, Revelation 4 Views, I actually include the quotation from Irenaeus, and I discuss what different people say about it. But there is, many people read the quote from Irenaeus to say that John saw the vision on Patmos. during the reign of Domitian. Others read the statement in Irenaeus to mean that John himself was seen alive during the reign of Domitian without any reference to when he saw the vision. So, Irenaeus would not, in that case, be talking about when John was in Patmos or when he saw the vision, but when he was last seen alive by anybody. And So that would be a very different question. It’s less simplistic than many may try to make it. I do some analysis on Domitian’s statement in the book, my book, Revelation 4 Views. But more than that, we have to say this, that even if Irenaeus did say that John was on Patmos and saw the vision, during the reign of Domitian. And again, I’m not sure that he plainly says that anywhere. That would raise the question, does he know? Does Domitian know when John was there? If we say, well, he studied under Polycarp, who studied under John? Well, maybe so, but did Polycarp know when John went? And if so, did he mention it to Irenaeus? it’s possible to study under man without knowing the timeline of his past thoroughly. You’re usually studying something other than the man himself, and rather something that the man knows and is teaching about. So we have no idea if Irenaeus got that statement at all from Polycarp or from John. He might have, but we do know that Irenaeus is not entirely correct, even about very rather important things. points of history. For example, Polycarp believed that Jesus lived to be about 50 years old before he was crucified. And most scholars would say that was not true. The Bible does not seem to indicate it’s true. He began his ministry at age 30 approximately, and we have record of maybe two or three years of ministry before his crucifixion. So the idea that Jesus lived to be about 50 before his crucifixion does not seem to be well supported, and yet Irenaeus thought it was so. So Irenaeus, frankly, the details of Jesus’ life, would seemingly be more significant than the details of John’s life. And therefore, the chronology may be, Irenaeus may not have been well informed about that. But, I mean, if a person wants to believe that Irenaeus could not make a mistake about that, and that his statement literally means that John saw the vision in the reign of Domitian, then yeah, you’ve got a late date for Revelation. But those are some variables that I’m not sure I’d want to stake my life on, whereas I don’t mind staking my life on things that are said in the Bible itself, because I know those are from God, not just from man. And I believe the information in the book of Revelation points toward a Neronian date, not a Domitianic date.
SPEAKER 07 :
Got it. Okay, well, thank you very much. I appreciate it. I haven’t changed my view on this, but thank you for changing my view on the predestination issue.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, well, I think that’s more important than this one. Yeah, absolutely. I don’t care if anyone agrees with me about Revelation or not. Who cares? All right.
SPEAKER 07 :
Thanks a lot.
SPEAKER 02 :
All right. God bless you, Anthony. Bye now. All right. Our next caller is Eddie in New Haven, Connecticut. Eddie, welcome. Welcome.
SPEAKER 09 :
Thanks for taking my call, and by the way, great debate with Michael Brown last week. That was awesome. I thought it was. Yeah, it was real, real interesting. I loved it. My question, Steve, I asked this in my Bible study, the little one we have, and no one really can give an answer to it, and here it is. I said, if we were Jewish people, and for generations and generations and generations, we’re following Yahweh’s commands, keeping His commandments, we’re doing everything we’re supposed to do. And Now we’re the Jewish people at the time of Christ. Jesus rises from the dead, let’s say a couple of weeks or months go by. We encounter some of his disciples, and they say, oh, by the way, you guys can’t get to the Father no more. And we’re like, what are you talking about, you can’t get to the Father? Oh, yeah, you got to go through the Son. You didn’t hear? If you don’t go through the Son, you don’t even have the Father. So we’d be like, what are these people talking about? I said to the Bible study guys, I said, listen, if someone said that to me, where I’d say, show me in the Torah where I’ve got to go a different way. Where does it say we’ve got to go a new way here? And I said, here’s the analogy I’ll make with this. If I said to all Christians today, worldwide, guys, when you pray to the Father in the name of Jesus, you’ve got to order a large pizza every time you pray. Everyone would say, what’s this guy, nuts? What are you talking about, large pizza? Where does it say that? It doesn’t. But I’d say, well, that’s what you’ve got to do. And it was so foreign to the Jewish people to hear God close the door on them, and now they have to go this door, because if you come a different way, you’re a thief and a liar. They must have been like, what are they talking about? Same respect, you’ve got to have a large pizza.
SPEAKER 02 :
Right. Well, I don’t know of anything in the Bible in the New Testament that says God closed the door on Israel. I don’t think the door has been closed on Israel or anyone else. I think anyone is free to come to Christ if they want to. So the Bible nowhere says that God closed the door to Israel. But actually what the Bible does teach is God opened the door to Israel by sending the Messiah to them first and giving them the first option of being faithful to God by following the Messiah. The door was secondarily closed. open to Gentiles, but initially to the Jews. So I don’t know where this idea of closing the door to Israel comes from, but it’s not in anyone’s theology I’ve ever heard. Now, you said if you were a Jew and Torah observance, and Christians said, oh, you have to follow Christ, I would first want to consider, is this Christ that they’re talking about, is he the prophet that Moses spoke about? Because Moses in Deuteronomy chapter 18 says, had said in verse 18, I will raise up for them a prophet like you. God said this to Moses. I will raise up a prophet like you from among their brethren. Now it says, I will raise up for them. In other words, this is for them. This is not against them. Raising up the Messiah is not against Israel. It’s for them. I will raise up for them a prophet like you, Moses. Now this is quoted by Peter in Acts chapter 3 as saying, whoever does not hear the words of that prophet that I sent, he’ll be cut off from the people. Here it says, I’ll require it of him, which is a threat also. But Peter quotes that whoever doesn’t listen to that prophet, he’ll be cut off from the people. So this is not the Christians saying this. This is Moses saying this. This is in the Torah. And since it is, if I were a Jew and Torah observant, the first question I’d ask is that which the Pharisees asked John the Baptist. In John chapter 1, the Pharisees said, are you the Messiah? He said, no. He said, are you Elijah? No. Are you that prophet? He means the prophet that Moses said. And he said no. But what if he had said yes? What if they’d asked Jesus that? What if they asked, are you that prophet? And he had said yes. What then? Now, he certainly said enough things to let them know that he is the promised Messiah. And he is that one that Moses says to come. And that Moses said, whoever doesn’t hear his words will be cut off from the people. You know, I don’t really know that the preaching of the gospel among the Jews was that foreign. It was actually saying, you know those things God promised to you? That he’s going to send you a prophet like Moses? He’s going to send a Messiah, a Savior, a King to rule righteously? That’s what we call good news. That’s why it’s called the gospel, the good news of the kingdom. Because God had good news for Israel. You’ve been waiting for this prophet. You’ve been waiting for this Messiah. He has come, and he has proven himself to be that person by not only his miraculous ministry, which God did through him to confirm his status, but also by him rising from the dead and sending his spirit, as the Bible says he would. The Old Testament said he would. So, you know, it seems to me like a person who is an observant Jew, living in the first century and hearing this message, I don’t think they’d be saying, What? This is way out of left field. I think they’d have a choice to make. We have been expecting the Messiah. We have been expecting the prophet. Is this Jesus guy, is he him or not? And the ones who had no bias against it would accept him and did. Remember, there were thousands of Jews, Torah-observing Jews, who received Christ in a single day on the day of Pentecost when they heard him preached. So, in other words, there was nothing about the Christian message that that was anti-Jewish or diminishing of the Jews. It basically said, hey, guys, here’s the good news. You’ve been looking for this for years. Here it is. God has sent it. That’s good. That’s not bad. So, you know, I honestly don’t think that the situation would be as you described it. Right. Thank you. Okay, Eddie, thanks. Good talking to you, brother. Tony in Greenville, South Carolina. Welcome to The NeuroPath.
SPEAKER 06 :
Hi, Steve. Thanks again. I spoke to you last week, but the argument I made wasn’t too compelling, so I’ve got a different question for you. Ancient cultures during ancient times were full of stories about demigods, heroes like Hercules who were part divine, part human. Given kind of that information, knowing that those stories were told, how do we know whether the story of Jesus is a unique revelation or or part of a larger mythological pattern of the times. How can we tell which parts of the Bible are literal events and which parts might be symbolic, poetic, or even influenced by the storytelling methods of the time? And if ancient writers used exaggeration to make moral points, in this case, where they moralized Jesus, is it possible some biblical narratives were shaped that way?
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, that’s a good and intelligent question. A lot of scholars would say that a lot of the stories of Jesus are what they call midrash, which is the way the Jews would retell a story, embellishing or even inventing parts of it to make a point. So the question would be, the four Gospels, are they literal history? Are they midrash? Well, the only Gospel I think… that might be even thought to have any interest in using Midrash would be Matthew. Because Matthew is the only writer who wrote to the Jews. And this was a distinctly rabbinic Jewish way of telling stories. So if Matthew was the only gospel we had, and we thought, well, he’s writing to Jews, so maybe he’s writing in a Midrashic form. then there might be a point there. The problem is most scholars don’t believe that Matthew is the first gospel written. Most think that Mark was. And Mark was not writing to Jews. Mark has to explain Jewish customs to his readers because they are not familiar with them. For example, in Mark 7, Mark, at the opening, the first few verses, Mark has to explain common customs of the Jews, which Matthew, when he tells the same story, doesn’t bother to explain because Matthew’s audience are Jews. They know. Mark’s audience were not Jews. They were probably Romans. or maybe Alexandrian Jews, because Mark spent his later years in Alexandria. But he was in Rome for a while, too. So he was writing to a broad audience, not a Jewish audience. And the stories he tells are almost all the same stories that Matthew tells, and mostly in the same terms. What Matthew has more than Mark are mostly teachings of Jesus. And I don’t believe Jesus is using midrash there, but he is using some forms of teaching that we can recognize there. He doesn’t always teach literally, but he often uses hyperbole and so forth. And parables, certainly. But Mark doesn’t really have much of the teaching of Jesus, mostly the stories. And these are the stories we’re talking about, that you’re asking about. Mark would not write in Midrash. And Luke certainly would not. Luke was writing to a Greek man named Theophilus. And Luke even has to paraphrase some of the Hebraisms and the idioms that Jesus used that Matthew and even Mark sometimes retain, these Hebraisms that Jesus used. Luke, he just doesn’t have any… any confidence at all that his Greek reader would understand, so he paraphrases him. He paraphrases the kingdom of heaven as the kingdom of God. He paraphrases abomination and desolation as Jerusalem surrounded by armies. These are looking at Hebrew expressions that Luke knew his reader would not know, so he had to paraphrase them into something that a pagan would understand. He certainly would not be passing stories in Midrash because a Greek reader would not have any familiarity with that. So anyone who says that the stories of Jesus are Midrashic, I think they’re not paying much attention to reality there. Now, are the stories of Jesus like those of myths, of demigods and Hercules and people like that? No, there’s really no parallels to them. There is something called the Jesus myth theory that suggests that many of the pagan gods who were believed in before the time of Christ, like Mithras, or Osiris, or Horus, or Dionysius, or some of these Greek gods, which predate Christ. The suggestion is these gods in their mythologies had 12 disciples. They were called the Son of God. They were born of a virgin. They were crucified. They rose the third day. There’s a stupid… video that’s very popular called Zeitgeist that goes through and claims all these things about these gods. What it does not expect you to do is to do any research and find out that none of these gods in their classic mythologies, none of them were born of a virgin, none died on a cross, none rose from the dead. Third day or any other time, none had 12 disciples. In other words, everything that is being claimed is simply made up for the sake of fooling people. You can just go to the Encyclopedia Britannica and look up these gods. You’ll find none of these details in their mythologies. More than that, we don’t know anything about these gods from any records that are older than the Gospels. It’s true these religions were around before the Gospels, but we don’t have ancient sources for them older than the Gospels we have. And therefore, if there was any copying at all, then the likelihood is that these others copied from Christianity, especially since the earliest records we have for some of them are in the 3rd or 4th century when Christianity had become dominant. And these pagan religions would be more likely to borrow details from them and their mythologies than the Christians would. And by the way, the Christian writers were Jewish. They don’t believe in those kinds of gods of Olympus and things like that. So, I mean, anyone who suggests that the story of Jesus is somehow in the same class as the mythologies of the pagans, all they have to do is really do a little research. I did two lectures on this, focused on this very thing and the data about this, which you can find if you go online in YouTube. Look up Steve Gregg Zeitgeist. Zeitgeist is spelled Z-E-I-T, the German word for time. And geist, the word for spirit, G-E-I-S-T. So Z-E-I-T-G-E-I-S-T, zeitgeist. That’s a video. The video was done by anti-Christian propagandists who obviously either didn’t know anything about their subject or just hoped their viewers wouldn’t know anything about it. Unfortunately, some people who do know the facts don’t. I have debunked them. I’m one of those. And just look up my name, Steve Gregg, and site guys. You should be able to find a two-part series I did debunking this idea. Hey, I appreciate your call, brother. I need to take a break here. All right, we’ll talk again sometime. At this point, we take a break. We’re not done. We have another half hour coming, so don’t go anywhere. The Narrow Path is a listener-supported ministry. We pay $140,000 a month. to radio stations so that you can listen to the program for free, whether you listen online or on the radio. It’s because we pay that money to the radio stations, and that’s why the program is able to stay on the air. We have no commercials, no sponsors, no underwriters. We just trust God, and he provides through people like you. If you’d like to help us stay on the air, you can write to The Narrow Path, P.O. Box 1730, Temecula, California, 92593. Or go to our website, thenarrowpath.com. You can donate from there. I’ll be back in 30 seconds. Don’t go away. We have another half hour.
SPEAKER 03 :
We highly recommend that you listen to Steve Gregg’s 14-lecture series entitled, When Shall These Things Be? This series addresses topics like the Great Tribulation, Armageddon, the rise of the Antichrist, and the 70th week of Daniel. When Shall These Things Be can be downloaded in MP3 format without charge from our website, thenarrowpath.com.
SPEAKER 02 :
Welcome back to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg, and we’re live for another half hour, taking your calls. If you have questions about the Bible, the Christian faith, Anything like that? You disagree with the host about something? Of course you do. Go ahead and call. We’ll talk about it. I’d be glad to talk to you about any such thing. The number to call is 844-484-5737. That’s 844-484-5737. I’m looking at two open lines on our switchboard, which is good for you if you want to get through. 844-484-5737. 484-5737. Our next caller is Jay in the Bay Area, California. Jay, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 04 :
Hi, Steve. Really appreciate you taking my call.
SPEAKER 02 :
Sure.
SPEAKER 04 :
I just had a quick question for you. Now, maybe a slight disagreement perhaps, but obviously I’m going to continue supporting your ministry no matter what. Tremendous blessing. You are probably one of the most eminent Bible teachers today. and it’s only because of that why I just raised this issue. Wondering if you had, by any chance, seen the expose Mike Winger had done concerning Michael Brown. I did, yeah. Okay. So did you consider, I mean, 1 Timothy 5 talks about, I believe it’s 1 Timothy 5, with two or three witnesses against an elder, for an accusation to be considered valid? I mean, so are you considering those accusations put forth, I think by six people, those witnesses invalid? Or I’m just trying to wonder. I mean, we’re not even supposed to wish those gods be, right?
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, no, those who bring another gospel, those who preach a different gospel, and do not remain in the teachings of Christ. Whether Michael Brown goes beyond the teachings of Christ would be a matter of opinion, I suppose.
SPEAKER 04 :
But 1 Corinthians, if I could interject, 1 Corinthians 5.5, right, we deliver one unto Satan who is unrepentant in the face of valid accusation of sexual morality. I mean, and it goes on to say swindling. I mean, honestly, I would put the charismatic movement almost entirely in that swindler category. I think Brown fits nicely there, honestly, as well. But definitely with the sexual immorality of him groping a 19-year-old when he was 46 and him seemingly unrepentant of that. I know you have daughters. I mean, you wouldn’t allow that. I’m an electrician. I can’t grope someone on the job and remain an electrician.
SPEAKER 02 :
Let me answer. Let me answer. I know the whole story. I’ve heard not only Michael Brown’s side, but I’ve heard his critics’ side, including Michael Winger’s video on it. And here’s the thing. I never heard anything about him groping anyone. There was a young woman, I think 19 years old, that he was very – physically affectionate with. I didn’t hear specific accusations of him doing anything sexual. And even his harshest critics that I’ve listened to have not mentioned him doing anything sexual. That he did things inappropriate is what they’re claiming. And I’m willing to believe he might have. In fact, he has said that. He has said that what he did was foolish, and I think he means inappropriate. But I don’t know of what sin he committed. He did some very foolish things. But if a person does things that are not violating scripture, like to kiss somebody who’s not your wife is definitely very controversial. to give her a slap with the back of your hand as she leaves room on the butt cheek, that is seemingly very inappropriate. But I don’t know that the Bible has any commands identifying that as immorality. Now, he did confess to immorality of the mind. There was a woman. who was married, and Michael was married, and he admits that he had inappropriate thoughts and interaction with her. It was not physical. No physical touching. They had an emotional affair. We’re talking 23 years ago now. So, this is what has been accused. Now, an emotional affair is never mentioned in Scripture, although it does say if a man looks at a woman to lust after her, he’s committed adultery in his heart. So, Michael Brown apparently is guilty of that, as is almost every Christian I know. The question is then, has the person repented of that? I hope that all the Christians I know who’ve done that have repented of that. Michael Brown says he has. And I don’t know that he hasn’t. Now, a lot of his critics are saying, yeah, but he didn’t come out and tell everybody right away. And he kind of shades the truth when he retells the story and so forth and so on. Okay, I don’t know those things. And, you know, when someone says in the mouth of two or three witnesses, well, I have to know not only the witnesses. I have to know more than, you know, just what they’re saying because they’re not really specifically saying anything. anything that he hasn’t said about his own sin. What they are saying, of course, is he’s not being completely honest and forthright in talking about it. Okay, well, then that’s a shame. I mean, we should be honest and forthright when we talk about things. But the real evidence of whether a man has repented of something, if he says he has, is to notice he hasn’t repeated it for 20-something years. In other words, you can’t really determine how thoroughly a man is repentant by how humble or how complete his confession was. You can tell if a man has repented by if he’s stopped doing it and hasn’t done it anymore. And that, I think, is the case with him, and I’m not sure that his accusers are saying otherwise. Now, let’s just say this. Suppose he was guilty of a sin that he has not repented of. I’m not aware of that being true, but let’s just take it for the sake of argument. What if he was? Okay, what am I supposed to do about that? I don’t think any church has subjected him to church discipline. And I don’t just go around subjecting people to church discipline as a free agent. That’s not my place. That’s the church’s role. If the church he goes to, or a church at least that knows him well, has brought him up on charges and has confronted him and done the Matthew 18 thing, and he still is defiant and saying, I will not repent, well then, yeah, that’s the case that the Bible gives for church discipline. I don’t think that’s happened. First of all, I don’t even know if any church has brought him up on Matthew 18 charges. Secondly, it doesn’t seem to me like he’s denied that he did these things or that he’s failed to repent of them. The argument against him that people still hold. is that he’s not talking about it with complete thoroughness. He’s not describing everything that they’d like to know, which seems to me like maybe in some measure their fault. Not that he isn’t at fault. I’m not saying he isn’t at fault. I’m just saying, why would I want somebody to describe to me in detail sexually inappropriate things that he did 23 years ago? Isn’t that kind of voyeuristic on my part? Why do I care about those things? If he and God have gotten it straight, he and his wife are straight on it. he’s repented to the people involved, I believe, then who am I to just, as a free person, to say, okay, I’ll have nothing more to do with him. Well, why not? I can fellowship with or just even debate with. Debating isn’t the same thing as fellowship, but I would say, Dr. Michael Brennan, I did have something like fellowship in some measure, but You know, I’m not a witness to the things he did. And the things he did that there are witnesses to, he has other witnesses who say that it’s otherwise. So, you know, whom I do trust. I think if somebody, you know, if you’ve got a Jimmy Swaggart who’s out, you know, sleeping with prostitutes, And he won’t repent, or he kind of does repent, but then he just shows that he’s not willing to come clean. I would probably not want to fellowship with him, but I never really cared about Jimmy Smart as someone I’d like to fellowship with anyway. He was not a man whose Christianity attracted me. And I don’t know about Dr. Brown’s, but I think Dr. Brown does have much in his life that seems genuine. To me, you know, I could be fooled. People can be fooled. But he seems genuine in many points to me. Now, if someone says, well, that’s because he’s a great con artist, maybe he is. But I’m not firsthand witness to any sins that he’s committed in the past 20 years. And I don’t think I’ve heard anyone raise any. There might be some, but I’ve never heard of any. And it does seem like those who want to destroy his ministry would bring them up If they were there. So, you know, I’m not going to be the judge and jury here. It seems like there’s other people close to the situation who should be. In the meantime, I’ve got no problem debating him or anyone else. I have some friends in my own home church who thought I shouldn’t debate him because they thought, you know, he’s too, what should we say, tainted. I think, wait, I don’t care. If a person’s tainted or not tainted, if I’m debating them, we’re not talking about them. We’re talking about their position. We’re debating a position against another position. And if, you know, if Richard Dawkins wanted to debate me on evolution or atheism, I would not turn him down. I think he’s a pretty undesirable character. But… It’s his position I’d be debating. I wouldn’t be affirming him. And some people say, well, by debating him, you’re giving him credibility. I don’t think so. I’ve debated a lot of people who I’ve given no credibility to. On the other hand, I think Dr. Brown is a lot more famous than I am. And therefore, if anything, he was giving me credibility. But I’m not really sure that either of us credibility to each other, we’re there to discuss differences of opinion in light of Scripture. If he has some secret sins in his life that I don’t know about, besides those I’ve heard about, which he says he repents of, then, well, then he does. He doesn’t know whether I have secret sins in my life or not. He never investigated me about that. If I did, I don’t know if he declined from debating me. I don’t think when you debate people, you’re making a comment about their virtues or their vices. You’re talking about their position. And I think many Christians, perhaps not a very intellectual type Christians, I have to say, are not familiar with what a debate is. Debates have been around a long time. And it’s usually been people who disagree with each other debating each other. In some cases, people who don’t respect each other at all debate each other. And some people, they despise each other and debate each other. Debate is not extending a special, you know, honor to another person. And perhaps if more people today actually, you know, knew about debates, they would realize this without being told. But debates are not as popular as they used to be. We don’t have a very intellectual church anymore or intellectual society. You know, people used to fill up auditoriums at universities to hear debates. Now they fill up, you know, auditoriums to watch basketball, and the debate is held in a side room with 20 people. That’s because we have an anti-intellectual culture. And because of that, people are unfamiliar with debate. Debate is not debate. affirmation of the other person. He might affirm me, but him choosing to debate me was not an affirmation of me. It was a willingness to defend his position against mine. And same thing on my point. Now, whatever I may think of him personally, and I don’t condemn him. I don’t claim to know enough about his personal life. But as far as what has come to light about a mental affair 23 years ago that he repented of to his wife and to the husband of the woman, and he never touched the woman. I’m not really sure that’s the greatest scandal I’ve ever heard about in the life of a minister. It’s not a good thing. And he doesn’t say it’s a good thing. He says it’s a bad thing. He repented. And as far as the way he interacted with this young woman who was a friend, he said like a daughter to him. I will say this. I’ve never acted that way toward anyone who’s like a daughter to me or even toward my own daughters, I don’t think. But cultures are different. Some people kiss on the lips. Greeks and Russians and Jews sometimes do that kind of thing. That’s cultural. Now, if I heard he was making out with a girl, that would be a very different situation, but that’s not what I heard. Or that he was fondling, as you said. I didn’t hear about any fondling going on. Maybe you’ve heard something I haven’t, but I did watch the video you’re talking about. So, you know, I guess too many Christians are quick to judge on rumors. And if those rumors are only known to us through the Internet, no matter how credible they may seem, The Internet, you can find anything on the Internet. You know, when I was with Dr. Brown on the weekend, I didn’t see a man who seemed devious. He actually brought up this whole scandal thing without my asking. He brought it up and was talking about it with me. So, I mean, you know, I didn’t ask. So, anyway… I’m not so sure that his critics are entirely right in holding this against him still. I know it seems to me like what I hear now is apart from the things he did wrong 20 years ago, they say he still isn’t coming clean. About what? He’s told the whole story. Well, he didn’t come out with it until he was caught. Okay, then he came out with it. So what’s the guy do next? You know, what more is expected of a man in that situation? I don’t know. So anyway, yeah, you might disagree with me on that, and you’re probably not the only person who does, but I’m just not seeing it that way. I’m an older Christian myself. I’ve been through a lot. I’ve seen a lot of ministers fall. I have not been sinless myself. You know, I don’t know anyone who is sinless, but I do know that people who do sin, if they’re Christians, do repent. As far as I know, Dr. Brown has done so, so I’m not, I mean, I could be wrong, but that’s not for me to judge. I’m not even in his life. I’m not in his circle. That’s for the people around him to decide, because I don’t know him. Hopefully they do, and if they do, then they have to decide what to think about him. All right. I appreciate your call, but that’s how I would handle that whole issue. I did handle it. Thank you. Let’s see. Our next caller is Sarah from Starks, Maine. Hi, Sarah. Welcome.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, thank you. I appreciate a show called Bible Answers Live, and I have a Bible question. I want to know, during Jesus’ time, I get a little confused with the number of Marys that he knew, because I know his mother was Mary, and I know Mary and Martha, and I know Mary was at the cross with his mother, and I get a little confused with all the Marys.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, that’s true. In fact, the abundance of Mary’s in the New Testament is one of the subtle evidences of its historical accuracy. You know, they have discovered, archaeologists have discovered, the names of over 2,000 people who are not in the Bible but who lived in Palestine before. At the time of Christ, in other words, there’s lots of documents, legal documents and things like that. There are as many as 2,000 people not mentioned in Scripture who are known by scholars to have existed and their names are known. What’s interesting is the frequency of certain names. They find that outside the Bible… Mary, which is a form of Miriam, was the most common female name at that time in that culture, which is certainly what the Bible indicates, too. Interestingly enough, Simon was the most common male name at that time. And lo and behold, there’s a handful of Simons in the New Testament. Actually, if you look at the, like I think it’s the nine most popular names known from secular research about what people were named in those days, they all appear in roughly the same order of frequency in the Bible, simply coincidentally. Which means that the Bible, that’s sort of a very subtle confirmation that the writers of the Scripture We’re writing at that time and no doubt writing history. Now, what’s interesting, you go a century later and look at the names and they’re not the same. You’re not going to find Mary to be the most common name a century later or Simon and so forth. The names, they differ from different generations, just like they do in our case. You know, when I. When my son was born, I named him Benjamin. I didn’t know anyone else who had named their son Benjamin in 1984. But then suddenly everyone his age we met was named Benjamin, it seemed like. Same thing with my daughter Hannah. In 1986, I named my daughter Hannah. I didn’t know anybody who had named their daughters Hannah. That was kind of an old-fashioned name. But then we kept meeting people with daughters that age named Hannah all the time. Why? Certain names become very popular for a generation or so. And then other ones become popular. And that being so, the proliferation of Marys in the culture actually parallels the abundance of Marys in the Bible. In other words, that’s not a problem. That’s a benefit. It is true. There are lots of Marys. There’s Mary Magdalene. There’s Mary the mother of There’s Mary, the sister of Martha, and there’s some other Marys, too, I believe, besides that. But it’s definitely the most common female name in the Bible and also in Israel at that time.
SPEAKER 01 :
Okay. Well, I was just curious. I didn’t know. Like, I love the show The Chosen, and they show a Mary. Is that Mary Magdalene? I just get a little mixed up.
SPEAKER 02 :
I think so. I haven’t watched The Chosen, but the most notable Mary in the adult life of Jesus was Mary Magdalene. All right. Let’s talk to John from Gainesville, Florida. John, welcome.
SPEAKER 08 :
Hey, Steve. Thanks for taking my call. I’ve got a question that’s been perplexing me and bugging me since I was a little kid. What happens to people… that existed thousands of years before the time of Jesus, before the Bible was even written. They never accepted Jesus as their Savior because Jesus was their own man then. And they lived the type of life that God, the Father, always orders them to live anyhow. So what happens to them? They lived a good, righteous life the way they were supposed to live, the way Jesus taught. Do they have no afterlife? Do they go to hell or what? What happens to these people?
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, well, First of all, I don’t know how many people did what you said, lived the kind of life God wanted them to live, but some did. We know that Abraham was that way, Job was that way. There were certain Jews who were faithful Jews who lived that way, and there were some Gentiles. I mean, Job was not a Jew. He was probably Edomite. We know that later times, people like Socrates were pretty good guys. They didn’t know Jesus or Yahweh, but They believed in God, a God that was supreme and so forth. What do we do about them? Well, I believe that the means of salvation has always been the same. Now, the means of salvation is that someone humbles himself before God and receives grace and trusting in him. That has happened before Jesus came. It has happened since Jesus came. Now, Jesus came to provide the basis for that forgiveness. But it’s not as if God was unaware that Jesus would come and do that in the Old Testament times. God knew very well that Jesus was going to come and do that. So he didn’t have to worry about justifying his forgiving of sinners. He forgave sinners if they repented and if they’re humble. So, you know, I believe they had the same access to being saved as we do. They didn’t have the same features of salvation that Jesus brought. Jesus brought new features to being saved. If we’re talking about just being forgiven of sins, Yeah, there were Jews and Gentiles in the Old Testament who were forgiven of sins because of the choices they made. But none of them, for example, were like the Christian who is born again by the Spirit of God and has become a temple of the Holy Spirit. and has been given gifts of the Holy Spirit, been incorporated into the organic body of Jesus, and given stewardship over matters to promote his kingdom, and will be rewarded or punished for the way they exercise that stewardship. There’s a great deal to being a Christian besides getting forgiven. The forgiveness of sins, in my opinion, comes to anyone who repents humbly before God. It says in the Old Testament, in Proverbs, God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. And the New Testament quotes that twice. It’s quoted in James chapter 4, I think it is, in verse 6. It’s quoted in 1 Peter 5, 5. God resists the proud, gives grace to the humble. So I think that people got grace then as they do now, just because the Old Testament and the New Testament both say so. You humble yourself before God, and he’ll lift you up. He’ll give you grace. You’ll be proud and stubborn. God will resist you. Now, you know, no one is saved apart from Christ, but there have been people who were saved without knowing Christ. Abraham didn’t know the name of Jesus, probably didn’t know about the cross or the resurrection of Christ. Moses probably didn’t either. Most faithful Jews did not, but they were saved by Christ nonetheless if they were faithful. And so, I mean, that’s I believe we’re saved by our relationship with God, which is determined by the state of our heart toward God. And, of course, our actions that come from that state of our heart were judged either for good or for ill. But that doesn’t mean that somebody, let’s say like Job, who clearly was a saved man, clearly his sins were forgiven. I believe he’s in heaven today. But he didn’t experience Christian salvation with all that the New Covenant has, where he writes his law in our hearts and we know God. from the greatest to the least of us all. You know, I mean, there’s just all kinds of aspects of New Covenant salvation that no one in the Old Covenant experienced, though many in the Old Testament experienced forgiveness of sins. Abraham and David being notable cases where we’re specifically told that. In Genesis 15, 6, we’re told Abraham was justified. He was declared just by God. because of his faith. David was declared just apart from works of the law, according to Psalm 32, 1 and 2. So, I mean, in the Old Testament, people could be saved by being humble and repentant and believing. Now, Jesus had not yet come, but he came later. And he paid the tab for them. So, I mean, God justified himself in forgiving them in advance of Jesus doing that, by sending Jesus to do that. That’s how I understand that matter. It’s a good question, though. Lots of people have it. Let’s see. One more person. This is going to be Derek from Vancouver Island, Canada. Derek, welcome.
SPEAKER 05 :
Hi, Steve. Thanks for taking my call here at the end of the day. I’m trying to get my head around the Abrahamic covenant, and I’m trying to see, is it like a stepwise staged covenant, or is it like four mini covenants that he had to pass the test before going on to the next, or how do you think that works?
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, God did repeat the covenant and sometimes added promises to it several times in Abraham’s life and Isaac and Jacob’s too. I believe the covenant was one covenant, but I do believe the revelation of it. was, like you said, stepwise or progressive, just like the whole revelation of God in the Bible is progressive. He didn’t tell Abraham everything that he told Moses. He didn’t tell Moses everything he told the apostles, for example. Yeah. But I think that also the covenant is always conditional, and so God sometimes will lay out a new condition. In this case, Abraham, offer your son on a mountain that I will show you. If Abram had not done that, I suspect that would have compromised his position in the covenant. But he did obey God, and then God reaffirmed the covenant to him on that occasion. Anyway, yeah, that’s a very, that’s a profound question and one that I don’t know if I can fully answer. But, and certainly since I’m going to be cut off here in 30 seconds, I can’t do so now. But I appreciate your call. I think the answer lies along the lines I suggest. Thank you for joining us. And everyone else who’s called. You’ve been listening to the Narrow Path Radio Broadcast. We’ll be on again Monday through Friday next week. And we are, you know, listener supported. If you’d like to help us out, you can go to our website, Everything at the website is free, but you can donate if you want to at thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for joining us.
