On The Narrow Path, Steve Gregg takes listener questions about Scripture, Christian doctrine and some of the Bible’s most debated passages.
The program begins with a question about adultery, divorce and Jesus’ use of the Greek word porneia. Steve explains why the term translated “fornication” in the King James Version is broader than premarital sex and includes adultery and other forms of sexual immorality. He also emphasizes repentance, forgiveness and the importance of seeking restoration when a marriage can genuinely be healed.
Another caller asks whether the returning Jewish exiles used Ezekiel’s temple vision as the blueprint for the Second Temple.
SPEAKER 1 :
Thank you.
SPEAKER 08 :
Welcome to the Narrow Path radio broadcast.
SPEAKER 03 :
My name is Steve Gregg, and I just got my volume up high enough so you could hear me. We are live, as we are usually, almost always. We’re live, that’s the idea, so you can call in and we can talk about the things, the subjects you raise. If you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith, or you disagree with the host and want to talk about that, feel free to give me a call. The number is, well, don’t call now. Our lines are full. But keep this number handy, 844-484-5737. And if you call, you know, in a few minutes, lines will be opening up throughout the hour, and you can probably get through. 844-484-5737 is the number. I should have announced this earlier, but better late than never. Tomorrow is the first Wednesday of the month, and that means it’s the day that we have our Zoom meeting, our monthly Zoom meeting. It’s a Bible Q&A time, just like this show is. Only it’s on Zoom where people can see each other when they’re talking to each other, which is kind of nice. So if you want to join us for that, that’s tomorrow night, Wednesday night, and the first Wednesday of every month at 7 o’clock Pacific time. So we get people coming in from all time zones. Obviously, you have to translate that into your time zone. It’s at 7 o’clock Pacific time tomorrow night. We’ll be glad to have you join us there. If you want to, what you need to do is get the login information for Zoom from our website. Go to thenarrowpath.com and click the tab that says Announcements. And you’ll find there under tomorrow’s date, which is Wednesday, September 2nd, the code to break in on us there at the Zoom meeting and join us there. Be glad to have you there. Anyway, keep it in mind if you’re free tomorrow night and would like to join us. Our lines are full right now, so we’ll go directly to the phones and begin to talk to these people, including Joshua from Houston, Texas. Joshua, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes, hello. My question is this. I know a guy, and he’s arguing about his wife cannot leave him because he committed adultery, not fornication. According to the King James, it says that the only permissible divorce is in case of fornication. He says, I did not commit fornication. I committed adultery. Therefore, you cannot leave me.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, it’s a shame that he doesn’t know more than he does about the Bible. Fornication… is a generic term. The word is porneia in the Greek. And of course, he’s talking about Matthew 5.32, where Jesus said that anyone who divorces his wife for any cause other than porneia causes her to commit adultery. And if he marries, he’s committing adultery. So what is porneia? Well, it’s translated fornication in the King James English. But of course, in modern English, we use the word fornication differently. we usually think of fornication as simply premarital sex. Or maybe, I mean, I’m not sure what Christians think of it, but I think in the secular world, fornication, I think, is usually thought to mean premarital sex. In the Greek, which is used in the New Testament, the word porneia is usually translated nowadays in modern English versions as porneia. sexual immorality instead of fornication. They translate it sexual immorality because the word in the Bible actually means any kind of sexual sin, and that includes adultery. It also includes, you know, any other thing sexually that the Bible forbids, whether it’s bestiality, homosexuality, incest, certainly prostitution, premarital sex, adultery, you know, any violations. of the biblical sexual standards, is under the umbrella term porneia. And that’s the term that’s used in Matthew 5.32 in the Greek manuscripts. Now, I will say this. It’s a shame that he’s trying to control his wife that way. Although I could imagine he may be just misinformed. If he has… if he has committed adultery, let’s just say he did it once and repented and it was, you know, at a weak moment and so forth. I think she has grounds for divorce, but I honestly think that a Christian woman would hope to reconcile, would hope to, if her husband had committed adultery, she’d hope to, you know, make sure he had repented and then forgive him and restore the marriage. Certainly, No marriage should be broken up lightly. And someone should say, someone will say, well, committing adultery isn’t a light thing. That is true. That is true. But forgiveness is a good thing. And saving a marriage that is savable is definitely desirable. And there have been numerous men and women who were married and committed adultery and did repent. and they’re totally kicking themselves for having fallen in a weak moment, but they value their marriage and they want to restore it. There are obviously spouses who have fallen away from Jesus briefly and had affairs and then gotten converted back, or I should say repented and came back and wanted to reconcile with their wives or husbands. And, you know, it’s not the case that everyone who has committed adultery is a lost cause, and that every marriage that has suffered from that horrible disaster must end. I’ll just say I’ve been married more than once myself. I don’t believe in divorce, but I’ve been divorced by a wife who believed in it, and I had done nothing. I mean, she never claimed I did anything. She never even suspected me of anything. She just had a no-grounds kind of divorce. She divorced on the grounds of, what is it, irreconcilable differences. The difference being I was a Christian and she didn’t want to be one anymore. And she wanted to have affairs. And she had two affairs while we were married with different guys. And I knew it. She told me. And I knew I could divorce her, but I didn’t want to. We had a child. I didn’t want my child to be suffering growing up in a broken marriage. I was willing to forgive and to give it a try with her again. I mean, I believe that’s the Christian attitude. If possible, restore what’s broken. Now, it wasn’t easy because when someone cheats on you, and I know how that feels because it’s happened to me more than once, you know, it’s a very devastating thing. It’s crushing. It’s hard to get over it. It certainly is hard to trust again when someone has betrayed you. But the Christian life desires to see God glorified in all things. And God is generally more glorified in a marriage that was disastrous. becoming a marriage that is, as it should be, a healthy environment for children to be raised in, an environment where a husband and wife love each other. And if they didn’t before, but it’s come back to that, and God has restored it, that’s a wonderful, God-glorifying thing. And that’s what I believe should always be sought. So even though this man who’s committed adultery has technically given his wife grounds for divorce, and if she divorced him, I wouldn’t say that she’s violating the law of the matter. But I would say a person, a Christian shouldn’t be just legalistic and just saying, well, what am I permitted to do to destroy this marriage and make me freer, which I think will make me happier. Being a Christian doesn’t mean that you’re pursuing your own happiness. It means you’re pursuing the glory of God. And if God would be more glorified by the wife forgiving him, and the marriage being restored, and them both living faithfully with each other for the rest of their lives, and rearing children together in an intact home, and I do believe God would be more glorified by that than any divorce, then they should pursue that. Now, he, on the other hand, needs to not make light of it. When he says, oh, well, I didn’t commit fornication, I only committed adultery, that kind of sounds like he’s making light of it, and it kind of makes it sound like he may not be repentant. When a person repents… It’s like, I mean, Jesus told us what repentance looks like in the story of the prodigal son. He says, I’ve sinned against God, and in your sight I’m no longer worthy to be in the position I was in. You know, that’s repentance when you don’t claim, okay, I’ve changed, you have to take me back. No, if a person is really repentant, it means they have come to realize the crushing, disastrous thing that they’ve done and the deep hurt they’ve inflicted. by betraying their spouse. And they can’t imagine why their spouse would want them back. But they want to come back. They want to make it better. They want to do it right next time. And so I don’t know the man. I mean, the way it was reported to me in the question you asked makes it sound like I’m not sure if he really sees that adultery was as devastating as it is. And that would mean he might not yet have really come to repentance. And I think restoration of the marriage can only happen if he does come to true, deep repentance. But I also believe the woman should hold out for that. I think she has grounds for divorce. And him saying, well, I didn’t commit adultery is irrelevant. He doesn’t know enough about the Bible to realize that fornication is an umbrella term that includes adultery and many other sexual sins. So that’s what he needs to know. And the wife, I mean, again, I don’t know if he’s truly broken over his sin. It doesn’t sound like it, but I haven’t talked to him. I only heard the report about it. So I’m not going to pronounce whether she should divorce him, but I think that if it’s at all possible, she should seek for the marriage to be healed and for her to be convinced, if it is so, that he’s repentant and to forgive him.
SPEAKER 07 :
It’s difficult. It’s painful.
SPEAKER 03 :
Life is that way. Life is painful. But actually, I think I know from experience that divorce is very seldom less painful than trying to get the marriage back together right, if it can be done. All right?
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes. Is there… Isn’t there a word, moika, or something like that?
SPEAKER 03 :
Moika. Moika is the Greek word for adultery.
SPEAKER 04 :
And that’s more closer to spiritual apostasy, right?
SPEAKER 03 :
No, it can be used for that in a figurative way, like in the Old Testament, in the Septuagint, when Israel cheated on God by worshipping other gods. that was seen as, it’s called pornea, and it’s also moikia. It’s a violation of the covenant, and that’s what adultery is. Adultery is a species of fornication. That’s the point. Fornication includes that and more. So a person says, well, I just committed moikia, not pornea. doesn’t know how language works and had better not base their decisions that may mark their souls for eternity on that kind of misunderstanding. Thank you for your call. Jay in Seattle, Washington, welcome to The Narrow Path.
SPEAKER 07 :
Hey, you were one blessed man by your examples. Okay, I’m reading.
SPEAKER 03 :
Amen.
SPEAKER 07 :
You’re welcome. I’m reading the last chapters of Ezekiel. In your opinion, did Ezra the priest and Ezra’s building planners use the measurements from the information of Ezekiel to build the second temple? I’ll take the answer on the radio.
SPEAKER 03 :
Okay, thank you, Jay, for asking that question. For those who don’t know the background of this, the last nine chapters, or at least eight of those nine chapters, from chapter 40 through 47 in Ezekiel, they give a pattern and a protocol for a temple, a Jewish temple, with animal sacrifices and Levites, you know, priests and so forth. All the stuff that actually existed when the temple system was first created in the days of Moses. Now, when Ezekiel was writing, he and the Jewish people had been carried away into Babylon as captives, and the temple in Jerusalem, where they had formerly lived and worshipped, was gone. The Babylonians burned it down. There was no temple. But some of the prophets, notably Jeremiah and Isaiah, indicated that God was going to bring them back from captivity, and the temple would be restored and so forth. And actually, Ezekiel has a number of chapters saying that, too. It’s in Ezekiel chapter 40 through 47 that this vision is given to Ezekiel of a temple and more or less a blueprint for a temple. And you’re asking when the Jews did go back under Zerubbabel, really, in the book of Ezra, they built the temple, but did they use this blueprint? Did they use this pattern? The answer is no. This temple that Ezekiel describes is much more elaborate than the temple that Ezekiel that they ended up building. In fact, in Ezra, it tells us that when the foundation of the temple was laid, when the Jews returned from Babylon, they began building the temple, they laid the foundation. It was so obviously smaller. And, you know, it was going to be an inferior, smaller temple. It says that the older Jews… who remembered the first temple, wept when they saw it. And even in the book of Haggai, who was a prophet living at that time, he said, you know, don’t weep over these things. If you’re tending to be weeping, it’s going to be a glorious temple someday. And it was someday a glorious temple because Jesus came and preached in it. That’s the thing that gave it its glorious status. But… The temple itself, when built, was architecturally much inferior to the temple that Ezekiel describes. Now, why? Obviously, when God gives Ezekiel a vision of a temple at a time where there is no temple in Jerusalem, but there’s an expectation that the Jews will go back from Babylon and they will build a temple, and here’s a blueprint given, you would assume that this is predicting… that this is the temple that they’ll build. But it turns out they didn’t. And some people think, therefore, that this temple in Ezekiel still remains to be built. Some think it’ll be built in the last days before Jesus comes back, or at least afterward in the millennium. But there’s problems with that. Because if you read these chapters… There’s animal sacrifices. There’s Levitical priests. And, you know, the book of Hebrews tells us that since the death of Jesus, animal sacrifices have no value at all. And even the Old Testament. So David says in a couple of his psalms, Psalm 40 and Psalm 51, he says that God really didn’t care about animal sacrifices. He never had any pleasure in them. So why would he restore them after Jesus comes back since God never liked him in the first place? And furthermore, the Levitical priesthood, it’s not going to come back. The writer of Hebrews makes it very plain that the priesthood has been changed permanently. Jesus Christ is now the high priest. He’s a priest forever, not temporarily, not until he restored the Levitical priesthood. No, he’s a priest forever after he ordered Melchizedek, and he has permanently replaced the Levites. So how could, in other words, this temple that has all these Jewish features, cannot be a temple that God would endorse after Jesus died. Those things are all defunct. There’s no place for them in God’s economy. So what is it then? Why do we have this temple described in Ezekiel? Well, I believe that this God intended that this was the temple that Jews could have when they returned from Babylon if they returned with sufficient repentance for their sins that had been the cause of their going into captivity. And with zeal for God. And what really did happen was when the opportunity for the entire Jewish race to return to Jerusalem arose in the days of Cyrus the Persian, only 50,000 Jews from Babylon went back. A very tiny remnant. The vast majority of Jews just stayed in Babylon and never left. Their descendants today are called the Diaspora. And only 50,000 went back to build the temple, which means they had a very small workforce. a very small population, a very small budget, and they didn’t end up being able to build a temple that was this elaborate. Now, what’s interesting is this does not predict, Ezekiel does not predict with any kind of certainty that the temple that he is seeing will ever really exist. What it does say, if you read Ezekiel 43, verses 10 and 11, God says to Ezekiel, Son of man, describe the temple, meaning the one that’s described in these chapters, to the house of Israel, that they may be ashamed of their iniquities. Let them measure the pattern, and if they are ashamed of all that they have done, make known to them the design of the temple and its arrangement, so forth. In other words, this temple seems to be offered to them on the condition of them being changed. Before they went into captivity, They were worshipers of idols. They worshipped in the temple, too. They worshipped God, but they also worshipped idols. They were lackluster, lukewarm. But now they’ve been 70 years in Babylon, and they should have learned their lesson. They should be ashamed of all they’ve done. They should be deeply repentant. Are they? Well, the majority of them weren’t. That’s why they stayed in Babylon, and only a few did. So the temple, as it is described here, is really the blueprint that God gave them, for the temple that would be rebuilt, if they were on board with it, if their hearts had changed, if they were zealous for God, if they were truly, deeply repentant, they weren’t. And that’s why he said, well, this isn’t the one they get. They’re going to get the one they get, which is made with a smaller budget, smaller workforce. It’s a smaller temple. And that is what I believe we’re to understand from the wording of the passage. Hope that helps. Let’s talk to Myrna in Worcester, Massachusetts. Hi, Myrna. Welcome.
SPEAKER 05 :
Hello. Hi. I just have a quick question. Who are the two witnesses that are described in Revelation? And is that something that has passed already? Is it a system?
SPEAKER 03 :
I’m not sure. Well, you know, there’s a lot of opinions about that. And I have an opinion, and I will not fail to let you know what it is. But I also want you to know, before I give my opinion, that mine is only one of many. There are very many opinions about the two witnesses, and some of them I think are more likely than others to be true. And I think the one I believe is probably the correct one, though I could be wrong and somebody else could be right. The whole thing is that when you come to the book of Revelation, not everyone agrees with the popular view. that Revelation is a literal description of the end times in the world. That’s one view of Revelation. And those who hold that view usually think the two witnesses are two actual people that will appear in the middle or at the beginning of the tribulation, one or the other, and they’ll witness for three and a half years, then they’ll be killed, and then they’ll rise from the dead and ascend into heaven, which is what’s described there in Revelation 11. And so they look for some identity for these two guys who will be there in the end times. Most people who take that view believe that Elijah is one of them. And as for the other ones, some think it’s Moses. Some think it’s Enoch. Although there’s nothing in the Bible that predicts that Enoch or Moses will ever come back. And therefore, the identity with these guys has got to be based on some of the content of the story about them. They say, oh, this is like Enoch or this is like Moses. But usually, if people take a futurist approach to Revelation, they do think it’s probably going to be two literal men in the future. Now, there are people who are called preters who believe about this passage, that there were two men in Jerusalem during the siege who were witnessing. or in the last days of Jerusalem in the first century before it fell to the Romans. Some people, one suggestion was that it was Peter and James, the apostles. Others have thought, well, it represents the law and the prophets, or the two witnesses are the law and the prophets, because Jesus did say that the law bears witness of me. One author thought that it was the prophets religious and the civil authority represented as two witnesses in Jerusalem, both of which were destroyed, were wiped out by the Romans. There’s the idealist view, and it’s the one I actually take on this particular one, which sees the two witnesses simply represent the church. The church is really one, not two, although some say maybe it’s the Jewish and Gentile parts of the church, since the church is made up of the Jews and the Gentiles. Others have suggested, well, two witnesses is not literally two. It’s just a way of saying their witness is true, because in the Jewish law, it says the witness of two is true. And therefore, to represent the church’s witness as the witness of two is simply a way of saying it’s true. The witness of the church is true. In any case, that the two witnesses would simply represent the church during the entire age of the church, from the time of Christ first coming to his second, is what we call the idealist view. It is the view that I hold on this particular chapter. And so I told you I’d give you my opinion and others. So that’s mine. All right, Myrna?
SPEAKER 05 :
Thank you.
SPEAKER 03 :
All right, thank you for your call. By the way, for those of you unfamiliar with any view of Revelation than the future’s one, back in 1997, the same year this program went on the air, the narrow path went on the air in 1997, 29 years ago, the same year Thomas Nelson published a book of mine called Revelation Four Views, a parallel commentary. It basically is a commentary of the whole book of Revelation. goes right through, and it has four columns under every passage explaining from a digest of at least a dozen or more commentaries for each of the views how each view is explained by those of these different views. So if you want to compare different views of Revelation, I think it’s the best source for that. It’s not the only book you’ll find that acknowledges there are four views. It says something about the four views, but It’s the only commentary on Revelation that shows the four views side by side in parallel columns. Again, that’s called Revelation Four Views, a parallel commentary, published by Thomas Nelson. You can get it wherever books are sold. You can’t buy it from me, so don’t ask me for it. I don’t sell books. But you may be interested if you’re wanting a deeper dive into Revelation, especially if you’re interested in hearing views that are widely held by evangelicals and have been for centuries ago. which you’ve never heard because your teachers don’t mention them. All right, we’re going to take a break at this point, then we’re going to come back for another half hour, so don’t go away. The Narrow Path is a listener-supported ministry. You can write to us if you want to at thenarrowpath.com. I was giving you the wrong address. P.O. Box 1730, Temecula, California, 92593. You can also go to thenarrowpath.com. You can donate there if you want, but all the resources are free there. I’ll be back in 30 seconds. Don’t go away.
SPEAKER 02 :
The narrow path is one feature of the teaching ministry of Steve Gregg. Steve’s philosophy of teaching is to educate, not indoctrinate his listeners. He believes that Christians should learn to think for themselves about the Bible and not be dependent on him or any other teacher for their convictions. We hope to teach Christians how to think, not what to think about the Bible.
SPEAKER 03 :
Welcome back to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg, and we’re live for another half hour, taking your calls. If you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith, or you disagree with the host and want to say why, I’d be very happy to hear from you in any case. The number to call is 844-484-5737. Now, at the beginning of the show, I said that our lines were full, and they were. Right now we have one line open, so there’s an opportunity for you to get through and be on the program in this second half. The number, again, is 844-484-5737. All right, our next caller is Tyler in Dallas, Texas. Hi, Tyler. Welcome.
SPEAKER 08 :
Hey, Steve. How are you today?
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, thanks.
SPEAKER 08 :
So me and a couple of friends were talking, and one of them asked a question that I didn’t really have an answer to. I have some ideas, but I wanted to see what you thought. And we were wondering, you know, why was Jesus immediately receptive to the Roman centurion’s request? in Matthew 8, but seemed cold towards the Canaanite woman in Matthew 15 and, you know, comparing her to a dog or saying he was only sent to the lost sheep of Israel. And so we were just pondering about that.
SPEAKER 03 :
You’re mentioning two different cases in the Gospels where Jesus ministered to Gentiles. Now, you might say, what’s strange about that? Well, Jesus actually… indicated that at that point in his ministry, he wasn’t yet sent to the Gentiles. The gospel would go out to the Gentiles after his ascension. Paul and others were sent out to the Gentiles. But during his earthly ministry, he confined his ministry to the region of Israel and to Jewish people for the most part. And when the Canaanite woman or the Syrophoenician woman came to him, she was obviously a Gentile woman, and she said her daughter is demon-possessed and asked Jesus to help, and Jesus kind of ignored her, and she kept bugging him. And then he said, it’s not right to take the children’s food and give it to the dogs. And she said, that’s right, Lord, but even, you know, the master has enough food for whatever, you know, the children and the dogs, whatever falls from the table, the dogs should get. And he said, oh, woman, great is your faith. You know, be it to you as you ask. And so her daughter, you know, he responded to her request. Now, he said at that time also, and in fact, before he made the dog comment, he said, I am only sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And so she was not one of those. Now, some people thought Jesus meant that his whole mission for all time is only to reach Israel. I’ve heard people say that. But no, he means at that particular time, he was going first to the Jews, and she was not a Jew. Now, if he had not helped her on that moment, it might have been that after his crucifixion and ascension, some of the disciples who were sent out might have gone to her region and helped her. But he let her prevail upon him because of her great faith and her great humility. I mean, he obviously tried to put her off by saying, you know, I’m not going to give children’s food to dogs. Now, many people were really upset about Jesus saying that. But he’s just making a comment. Basically, all people we could say are dogs. The dog was an unclean animal to the Jews. In the Jewish law, a dog was unclean. Frankly… Paul refers to the unbelieving Jews as dogs. In Philippians chapter 3, he says, beware of the circumcision part, beware of the dogs. So, I mean, Jews and Gentiles, everybody’s, in a sense, kind of a dog because we’re all unclean by nature. And she was not put off by him suggesting that. You know, she said, he said, I’m not supposed to give the children’s food to the dogs. He’s not saying that she’s worse than other people because all people are dogs. He’s just saying in a household, you just don’t do that. You’ve got the kids at the table, the dogs, you know, on the floor. And so, you know, if the kids are hungry, you don’t give it to the dogs. Now, when she said the food that falls from the table that the children aren’t going to eat, the dogs should be able to have. It’s not clear whether she was just saying the master is so, you know, rich, he’s got enough to feed the kids and the dogs. Or she might have been implying, and it would be very perceptive of her, that the kids he was talking about, which was the Jews, weren’t really interested in the food. They’re kind of throwing it under the table for the dogs. And that would have been correct because to a very large extent the Jews were not interested in what he was offering. But she was. And And when she said, yeah, well, even the dogs get the food that falls from the table. He was very impressed by her faith and very possibly by her humility for just not being put off by that, what we would think is an off-putting remark, you know. Anyway, you’re saying, why was he so cold to her? When in contrast to that, on another occasion, a centurion, which is a Roman pagan officer, he came with a request that Jesus come and heal his servant. And Jesus said, I’ll go to your house and do it. And you say, well, why was Jesus so quick to do that for him? I honestly don’t know. But we do know that the man had great faith. And, you know, Jesus may have been giving, as he did with the seer of Phoenician, giving the man an opportunity to show his faith. Because it was very inappropriate for a Jew under Jewish, you know, it’s the Jews who thought of the Gentiles as dogs, too, in the previous story. Jews would not go into the house of a Gentile. And when Jesus said, I’ll go to your house, you know, there’s a sense which the man has a chance to say, good, great. No reason you shouldn’t, you know, even though I’m a Gentile. But it gave the man a right to be deferential toward Jesus as a Jew and say, oh, I’m not worthy to have you come into my house. Just say the word from here. I know you can do it. And that’s how he exhibited his faith. Now, I think both the woman and the centurion were tested somewhat differently. And both with reference to humility, really, because, I mean, she accepted the designation of being a dog. And, you know, the centurion accepted the fact that, yeah, he’s a dirty Gentile, so Jews, you know, they would not think his house is a clean place to go. And he accepted that. And, you know, they both exhibited faith not under exactly the same kind of conversations. But I suspect, I mean, I can’t say I know what was going on exactly in Jesus’ head, but this is what I see happening. And I would just say he handled the two cases very differently from each other. And they are very rare cases where he did something wrong. at the request of the Gentile, but both of them, he marveled at their faith. He marveled that they, about the centurion, of course, he said, I haven’t seen this kind of faith in all Israel. That is to say, the Jews, they didn’t have this kind of faith, and here’s a Gentile who does. So definitely, I’m going to do what you’re asking. It’s interesting that even though Jesus was not sent to the Gentiles at this point in time, if a Gentile had enough faith, they could prevail with him and he would minister to their needs.
SPEAKER 08 :
Okay. You know, that’s about what I was thinking. It seemed like it was somewhat of a test. I think both of them were.
SPEAKER 03 :
Both of them were given a chance to show their unusual faith. Okay. Thank you, Steve. I mean, think about it. When Jesus said, I’ll come and I’ll heal the servant, Think of this. It was going to, I mean, Jesus is on foot. Jesus is going to have to walk someplace and go into a house that his own people would think he shouldn’t go into and so forth. And the man just thought, no, I’m not going to ask you to do that, you know. But I trust that you can do that without going into my house. And that’s just showing, you know, he had better faith than most of the Jews had at that time.
SPEAKER 08 :
I guess the biggest thing was the dismissal at first for the Canaanite woman saying, you know, I only came for Israel. But with the centurion, he was like, oh, yes, right away.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, I mean, you’re right. He did show apparent reluctance with the woman more than with the centurion. And there may be reasons that I’m not perceiving in his doing so. But I personally think that when he said, I’m only sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, he was not saying that. in his own mind, so this woman doesn’t have a chance because she’s not an Israelite. I think he’s going to test her determination. You know, I think a lot of times we don’t see answers to our prayers because we don’t have the faith, and that lack of faith is seen by the fact that we’re not determined. When it seems like God’s saying no, we just give up. Say, okay, I guess that’s not going to happen. And that woman was put in that position, but she wouldn’t give up.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, true.
SPEAKER 03 :
He actually gave her an opportunity that not everyone has to show how remarkable her faith was, which becomes kind of a flattery to her, actually, because, again, he commended her for her great faith. Anyway, I don’t know that I have any more insight on that question. I can understand why the question would arise, because he did immediately. He didn’t say to the centurion, I’m not sent to you Gentiles, like he did to the woman. But in both cases… the way things transpired, and Jesus may have planned for them to transpire the very way they did, it gave a chance to demonstrate the faith of these two people.
SPEAKER 08 :
And Jesus is obviously picking up on things that we can’t see just through text.
SPEAKER 03 :
Definitely. All right, brother. Thanks for your call.
SPEAKER 08 :
Thank you.
SPEAKER 03 :
Bye now. David in Fresno, California. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 06 :
Hello, Steve. Hi. Great to have you in our neighborhood over the weekend.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, I had a good time, definitely. Met great people.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, for sure. See, I was reading Daniel chapter 12 here, and last four verses, 10 to 13, and, you know, talking about, of course, it’s about, you know, Christ, you know, deliverance of the church here. And so with the wicked and, you know, people being purified, many purified, and then there’s the, and then moving on through the verses here, of course, the sacrifice being taken from the temple, and we know that’s through Christ. And then there’s this time period here. Right.
SPEAKER 03 :
So is your question about the time period? I’m interested in knowing what your question is.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because a little bit of curiosity there on that, what that relates to.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, me too.
SPEAKER 06 :
I think I might know, but I’d like to hear what you say about it.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, me too. Well, I mean, I will say this. If you happen to listen to my lectures verse by verse through Daniel, which I gave a few years ago, but I kind of say the same things now. I have no part of Daniel that I have any problem teaching. I mean, frankly, Daniel’s not that hard to understand in the context of his writing, except the last verses, you know, the last two verses. It says, from the time that the daily sacrifice is taken away and the abomination of desolation is set up, there shall be 1,290 days, 1,290 days. It says, Blessed is he who waits and comes to the 1,335 days. Now, the two numbers are different from each other by a number of 45 days. But there’s not a hint given to what that difference is. It says there will be 1,290 days after the sacrifices are taken away. And then it just says, without any information about what he’s talking about, it says, blessed is he who waits and comes to the 1,335 days. So, you know, there’s a 45-day gap there. And it’s, you know, it’s hard to know exactly. I mean, he doesn’t tell us what it’s about. Now, not too long ago, somebody sent me an e-mail. giving me some information I thought was interesting and perhaps correct, so I’ll pass it along to you. I have not verified this from my own independent study, but it’s the first time anybody seemed to give a credible… answer to me about this, and I’ve been asking about it for years and years and years. So, I mean, there’s things I don’t understand here, too. But this person said that from the end of the sacrifices to the end of the siege was a month and a half. We’re talking about Jerusalem. It talks about the end of the sacrifices. Well, the Romans came and they destroyed the temple. But when the city was under siege, the sacrifices were discontinued prior to the Romans breaking through the wall and destroying the temple. And I don’t know if they got this information from Josephus or wherever. They didn’t really say. Maybe they did. I forget. But the end of the sacrifices within the besieged city in Jerusalem in 70 A.D., they stopped offering the sacrifices a month and a half. That would be 45 days. before the Romans broke through. Now, Titus granted clemency to the survivors. There were so many people wiped out of such a torturous siege of Jerusalem that they’d endured. Titus was more merciful than he might have been. And those who survived to the time of siege, he showed some clemency to. So, in other words, if you were in the city before the Romans broke in, It was hell. It was hell on earth. But if you lasted until the Romans broke through, you’d receive some clemency from Titus. Now, that makes sense to me. I don’t know if that’s 100% true. I mean, it could be. I’m not denying it or doubting it. I just have not verified that. And I hate to pass along information that I have no verification for. But I have no reason to doubt it either. So it might be saying, That, you know, the city would last for, you know, during the siege for that period of time. But then 45 days later, the Romans would break through. I’m not sure if that’s a good answer. I’m not sure if that’s a true answer. But it’s the only answer I can get. Now, there are people who give another answer, and I’ll tell you what it is, but I don’t think it, I just can’t see any merit in it. And that is they say, this is during the tribulation in the future. And there will be the abomination of desolation set up in the middle of the tribulation period. And from there until Jesus comes back, they say, is 1290 days. Well, I’m not sure why they would say that since when they talk about Revelation, they say that period is 1260 days. So we’ve got another 30 days here into 1290. But they say, okay, it’s from the abomination of desolation in the middle of the tribulation until Jesus comes back is 1290 days. And then there’s another 1,335 days. And blessed are those… I mean, there’s another 45 days, but there’s another number total. And they say that’s the length of time it takes Jesus to judge. He’s going to judge the whole world, everyone who’s ever lived, when he comes back. And therefore, that’s the 45 days difference is he’s judging people. Now, my concern here is why would we think it would take 45 days for God to judge? He can either do it in an instant… you know, unrelated to time, or it’ll take a very much longer time because every idle deed billions of people have done are going to be passed under scrutiny in the judgment. That’s either going to take millions of years or it’s going to be done in an instant. Now, if God is independent from what we consider every time, he might be able to do all that in what we would call, you know, the blink of an eye. But if he’s going to have to take them one by one in the same time frame that we live in, it’s not going to take 45 days. I mean, we’ve got billions of people to go through here. Their whole lifetime has to be examined, word by word, act by act. So I don’t see a reason in the world to believe that 45 days in any sense represents the period of the judgment. But that’s the only alternative I’ve heard. So it remains very mysterious to me. And I’ve never demurred from telling my students when I teach this verse, this is the one part of Daniel I really don’t know what to say about. And it kind of remains that way, with the exception of the points I just made as possibilities.
SPEAKER 06 :
All right, David? I would agree with you on your estimation on that first part that you related there. You know, and then, you know, God himself being kind. That’s pretty far-fetched.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, it shouldn’t take me 45 days. Yeah. All right, brother. Thanks for your call. Thank you, sir. Yeah. Bye now. All right. Our next caller is Gil in Long Island, New York. Hi, Gil. Good to hear from you again.
SPEAKER 01 :
Thank you for your sweetness and your kindness and your patience with me. Before I ask my question about a couple of verses that you might be able to help me with, I did call up Matt Slick yesterday. I had a nice conversation with him. He put a smile on me. He told me that he would like you to e-mail him so that you guys can – he seemed very happy about having another debate. So he said – You know what?
SPEAKER 03 :
I’ve debated dozens of people many times. I have never instigated. I’ve never initiated. I’m not going looking for a fight. I hear you. Usually a third party has to set it up. So I might email him, but I’m not going to ask him to debate me. But I’ll be glad to debate him if he wants to. But I’ve already done it.
SPEAKER 01 :
He said he would. Yeah, he told me. All right. So we don’t have much time here.
SPEAKER 03 :
We’ve got a lot of people waiting behind you and we don’t know what your question is. Go ahead.
SPEAKER 01 :
Here we go. I was wondering if you could expound on these two verses. Psalm 118, verse 24 says, This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad. And in Hebrews 10, 25, in light of fellowship, it says, Let us not give up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another and all the more as you see the day approaching.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes, so what’s the problem?
SPEAKER 01 :
I just have a question. If you could expound a little bit on that.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, Hebrews is written shortly before the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD. It’s written to Jewish believers. And some of the Jewish believers, because of persecution they received from their Jewish countrymen, were leaving the Christian faith. They were under pressure to defect, and some were doing it. In that context, it says, you should not forsake the assembling of yourselves together as the manner of some is. Some people were leaving the church. And he says, no, you need to encourage each other, especially as you see the day approaching. Now, the day that was approaching was the end of the Jewish system. Any Christian who left Christianity and went back to Judaism was going to get trapped in that system that was going to be destroyed bloodily and violently by the Romans. And, you know, there’s many references in Hebrews to the need to not be in that system because it was going down soon. That’s what I believe is one of the main reasons. in the book of Hebrews. Now, in Psalm 118, this is the day, verse 24, that the Lord has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it. Technically, every Christian on every given day could say, this is the day the Lord has made. I’m going to rejoice in it. That might be what I call a bad day. There might be circumstances that I wish were not happening. But if I believe in the sovereignty of God, I believe that this is the day that has come to me. that God has brought into my experience and he expects me to grow or be tested by or whatever. I’m going to receive it. I’ll rejoice in it because it’s God’s. The devil didn’t make this day. God did. And so I’m going to see the day that I’m living in as the day that God has allotted to me. He’s made it. But the interesting thing is this psalm and the others before it and after it, especially the ones before it, I guess it was just the ones before it, six psalms. were sung by the Jews at Passover service. And in Mark, we’re told that Jesus, after he took the Passover with the disciples, they sang a hymn, which was going to be these psalms. There are six psalms they sang at the Passover. And this was actually the last of the six that they sang. So we know that Jesus actually sang this song. as he went out to be arrested in Gethsemane. And imagine what some of these words meant to him at the time when he was singing this psalm, knowing that within a few hours he’d be arrested and crucified. This is the day the Lord has made. I will rejoice and be glad in it. That’s a pretty resigned attitude to have when you know you’re going to be crucified that very day or the day that was coming up. It was already that day because it was after sundown for them. And there’s other things in it, too. He even says, there’s one of the lines in here. I don’t see it right off. It says, bind the sacrifice to the altar. It says. And were Jesus to be singing that when he’s going to be the sacrifice bound to the cross? It’s poignant to read these psalms knowing that Jesus himself sang them just before he was arrested and crucified. But that particular verse, this is the day the Lord has made. will rejoice and be glad in it. When you think of Jesus thinking of that day, the very day he was singing it, he knew he’d be crucified. And yet he’s going through it. And even after he sang it, he prayed, Father, if it’s possible, let this cup pass for me, but not my will, but yours be done. So his resignation to the will of God and his willingness to rejoice in God’s will, even when it was going to be horrible for him, is, well, let’s put it, it’s a model for all believers, I would say. Thank you for your call. We don’t have much time. I’m afraid we’ll only get one more call in here. Let’s talk to Miles from Valrico, Florida. Miles, welcome.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yes, this is Maureen. Hi.
SPEAKER 03 :
Oh, okay. Go ahead.
SPEAKER 05 :
But I wasn’t listening to all of it because I had to just forget my phone.
SPEAKER 03 :
Hey, I need to tell you, your voice is muffled. I can hardly hear you. Are you not talking through your phone? I mean, are you talking on a speakerphone or something?
SPEAKER 05 :
Yes, speaker is on because his phone is messed up.
SPEAKER 03 :
If you could turn it off, we could maybe hear you better. We only have a few minutes, and I want to hear what you have to say.
SPEAKER 05 :
Can I hear? Is that better?
SPEAKER 03 :
Probably. Go ahead, quickly, with your question.
SPEAKER 05 :
Then I can’t hear you. See, I’m a 70 Adventist, Sabbath-keeping. I grew up there. I just lost my mom. She was 90-something, and I’m 70-something. And I told you guys a while back, I’m two years of a devil. My husband was killed by a drunk driver.
SPEAKER 03 :
Now, you’re mumbling, but I heard you’re a 70 Adventist. Could you tell me what your question is? Because I’m looking at a clock that’s just going to end here.
SPEAKER 05 :
The question is, it’s kind of biblical, and it’s kind of not. Now, I’m on the Humana plan, and I got into it with a young lady today because they’re trying to say you have to be sick to get a little bit of help. So, you know, I was thinking of going into politics. But because it’s all joy, I just read this here talking on the Bible.
SPEAKER 03 :
And, Madam, what is your question?
SPEAKER 05 :
The question is the Sabbath. What do you believe about the Sabbath?
SPEAKER 03 :
Okay, we could have gotten there quicker, I think, but… My view of the Sabbath is that God ordained the Sabbath for Israel to keep in the Ten Commandments after they came out of Egypt when he made the covenant with them, which formed them into a nation. And he told them in Exodus that the keeping of the Sabbath was going to be the mark of the covenant that he made with them there at Mount Sinai. And they were to keep it. And it was very serious. If they didn’t keep it, they’d be put to death. It wasn’t just a small thing. Because to not keep the Sabbath was for them a renunciation of the covenant. Just like, say, if a woman would commit adultery and break her marriage covenant. And so it was a very big thing. Now, we don’t live under the old covenant. We live under the new covenant. And so we don’t live under the law of Moses. We live under the law of Christ. And there’s many places in the scripture that say that. If I had maybe another 60 seconds, I’d go into some of those points. But the music’s playing. I don’t have time. But I don’t believe we are required to keep Sabbath. Jesus never commanded it. Now, some people think the Sabbath is Sunday. I don’t believe that. The Bible never calls Sunday the Sabbath. But it does indicate that we are at liberty to keep special days if we want to or not. It says in Romans 14, 5, because we’re not required to do so. So that’s my view in a nutshell. You’ve been listening to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. We are listener-supported. Go to our website, thenarrowpath.com. Everything there is free, but you can donate if you want to. It would help. thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for joining us.
