The Narrow Path

Steve Gregg: Good afternoon and welcome to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we're live. This is a typical thing for us on weekdays. We've been doing it for about 29 years now, each weekday taking your calls for an hour per day live. If you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith, you can call in and we'll talk about those things. If you see things differently than the host and want to present an alternate viewpoint, we love to take your calls about that too.

The number is 844-484-5737. It looks like our lines just filled up, but if you want to call in a few minutes, lines will be opening up and you can reach me here at 844-484-5737. Since our lines are full, we'll go directly to them and talk to Michael from Denver, Colorado. Michael, welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Michael from Denver: Steve, good afternoon. Thank you for taking my call. So great to talk with you again. I wanted to ask you about something that was actually on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and a lot of the papers today.

The Church of England yesterday installed the first woman to lead the Church of England. It marks the first time that a woman is going to be leading the Anglican communion. I was just wondering about your thoughts on the significance of that, the first woman leading the Anglican communion. It serves branches of the Episcopal Church in the US and that has over 100 million members. I was just kind of interested in getting your thoughts on that.

Steve Gregg: Well, there are many denominations that have gone away from Christ, or they've reinterpreted Christ in a way that is untrue to the gospel. Certainly not only the Anglican Church. There are lots of churches, lots of what we call liberal denominations. Liberal denominations doesn't necessarily refer to politically liberal, though many times the liberal denominations have conformed to the liberal political agendas to a great extent.

The Anglican Church, for example, has long ago begun to favor not only female priests but homosexual priests and marriage of homosexuals to each other and so forth. Of course, when they began to do that, they decided that Christ will no longer be the head of their church.

Of course, the Anglican Church was founded by King Henry VIII on the assumption that the King of England is the head of the church in England. He broke away from the Catholic Church, which typically saw the Pope as the head of their church, and Henry wanted to do something the Pope wouldn't permit, namely divorce his wife and marry his mistress. So, he broke away from the Catholic Church and proclaimed that he, the King of England, was the head of the church.

As soon as a man is the head of the church other than Jesus, it's not the church of Jesus. Jesus is the only head of the only church there is. Now, there's lots of organizations called churches. Some of them are denominational; most of them probably are. But the real church is comprised of those who are following Jesus Christ as their head, meaning their Lord and their King.

He's the one, just like the head of your body directs the actions of your body, so Christ directs the actions of the true body of Christ. Now, any group that wants to can start a corporation and run it for centuries if they want to and call themselves a church, but that doesn't make them a church. Just because somebody decides they're going to call their organization a church, that doesn't mean they are.

A true church is basically comprised of the community of people worldwide who follow Jesus Christ. Now, somebody who believes that same-sex marriages can be embraced by the church and conducted by the church is simply departing what Jesus said. Jesus defined marriage for us in Matthew 19, verses one through nine. He made it very clear.

He said marriage is when a man leaves his father and mother and cleaves to his wife and the two become one flesh. There's no other definition of marriage in the Bible and certainly, Christ confirmed the one that was there all the way from Genesis chapter 2, verse 24. As far as women clergy, obviously, a church is free to ordain women clergy if they want to, but they're not going to be following Paul's instructions. Paul gave qualifications for bishops.

Now, by the way, the Archbishop of Canterbury is not the head of the Anglican Church; the crown of England is. But the Archbishop of Canterbury is the highest ecclesiastical official in it, just like the Pope is in the Catholic Church. So, that seat was unoccupied for a while. I don't know why they didn't choose somebody earlier, but the Anglican Church didn't have an Archbishop of Canterbury. Now they do, this woman that they've selected.

She's entirely woke by the terms that that term would be defined. So, the church, or the group that calls itself the Anglican Church, is continuing in the same path it's been going for some decades now. But the church, the real church, is comprised of everyone who's a true follower of Christ. God knows who they are. They are in many churches. There might even be some of them in the Anglican Church; I'm not saying there aren't.

I'm just saying that the organization certainly is not the church of Jesus Christ. Neither is any organization. The church of Jesus Christ is a spiritual fellowship of those who've been spiritually born again and who have Christ's spirit in them and follow faithfully Christ as their head. That's what a body does. That's what a body is. That's what the church is.

So, you say how significant is it that the Anglican Church just appointed a woman to be the Archbishop of Canterbury? Well, it's significant for them, I suppose. It's another step in the direction of rejecting what the Scripture teaches. But for the true church, it's kind of irrelevant since people in the true church do not mistake these organizations for church. So, that would be my nutshell evaluation of what you asked. Thanks for your call, Daniel. All right, let's talk to Daniel in Atlanta, Georgia. Daniel, welcome.

Daniel from Atlanta: Hey Steve, thank you so much for taking my call. Recently, I stumbled across your content on YouTube and you've become an inspiration to me, so I appreciate all that you do. My question today is regarding your teaching on Zechariah 14. That was a very lightbulb moment for me and it all makes so much sense. I agree with pretty much everything that you have taught on that.

I know that you see the fulfillment of Zechariah 14 in AD 70. My question is, do you see any sort of inaugurated fulfillment or anything that we can draw from the text in Matthew 24, precisely Matthew and Mark's renditions of the Olivet Discourse where you see the glory of God departing from the temple in the person of Jesus Christ who then goes and sits on the Mount of Olives? Is that reading too much into the text or is there anything to be drawn from that?

Steve Gregg: Well, of course, the Olivet Discourse doesn't, Jesus doesn't mention anything about the Mount of Olives, although Jesus and his disciples are seated on the Mount of Olives when he gives that discourse. He makes no actual reference to the location, so there's no predictions about the Mount of Olives in the New Testament certainly.

Of course, people, you know very well, people say that when the angels said that Jesus would return in the like manner as they saw him go, which was from the Mount of Olives, some people say that's predicting that he will come back to the Mount of Olives. Well, they can read it if they want to, but that's not what it says. It doesn't say anything about him coming back to the Mount of Olives. It says he will come back in the same way that they saw him go. It doesn't say whether or not it will be in the same place as he left from, and we just simply have no prediction there about that.

The only thing that has led people to believe that Jesus will return to the Mount of Olives is, of course, Zechariah 14 and verse 4. I don't believe there's any reference to Jesus in that. Now, you asked, I think what you're asking is when Jesus left the temple and sat on the Mount of Olives and decreed the doom of the temple, could this be relevant to, you've got the destruction of the temple mentioned in Zechariah 14, or of the city, basically of the city of Jerusalem being destroyed in verses one and two.

And in verse four it says, in that day his, that is God's, feet will stand on the Mount of Olives. Are you inquiring, I'm not sure, are you inquiring whether Jesus actually speaking from the Mount of Olives on that occasion could be related to that prediction? Is that what you're saying?

Daniel from Atlanta: Yes, sorry. I didn't ask that question the most eloquent manner, but seeing that as the inaugurated fulfillment with the consummation of that fulfillment then occurring in AD 70 where we see Jesus acting out what we see in Zechariah.

Steve Gregg: Right, we couldn't be sure of it, but you certainly couldn't rule that out. As you know, I believe that God's feet standing on the Mount of Olives is simply a repeat of what happened in 586 BC, where Ezekiel chapter 11 says that God's feet would stand, or that God himself would stand on the Mount of Olives, which means he's left the temple area and the temple is now going to be destroyed by enemies because God has abandoned it. It's Ichabod; the glory is departed.

And when it says in Zechariah 14 that God will again stand on the Mount of Olives, I believe it's simply saying that God has abandoned the temple and it's now Ichabod and the Romans will now be able to come and destroy it just as the Babylonians did when Ezekiel made the same prediction. Now, but you're saying that the fact that Jesus walked out of the temple for the last time, pronounced its doom, and gave a sermon about the doom of the temple there on the Mount of Olives, and he is of course God in the flesh, so could this be like an emblem of God's abandoning Jerusalem, standing on the Mount of Olives, and so forth, which is more figuratively seen in 70 AD but maybe in some almost literal sense in Jesus in Matthew 24 and Mark 13 speaking from that location? You're asking that it seems to me, and I'd say the answer seems you could see it that way. I wouldn't teach it as a certainty, but there's certainly nothing I know that would rule that out.

Daniel from Atlanta: Okay, thank you very much. I appreciate your time.

Steve Gregg: Okay Daniel, good talking to you. Thanks for calling. Okay, John in Salyersville, Kentucky, welcome to the Narrow Path again.

John from Salyersville: Hi Steve. I was listening to your program earlier this week. You brought up a point about Jesus said be ye perfect for I am perfect. You really helped me. I've never taught that in context like you brought it out, that he meant perfect in love. I really appreciate that. I called last Friday about the subject of Easter and you asked for references. I sent an email Friday evening.

Steve Gregg: I got it.

John from Salyersville: Oh you did? Okay, all righty. But I had another question to see what you think. I believe that God is one person. Hebrews 1:3 says Christ is the image of his person, not his persons. And also 1 John 3:16 says for God laid down his life for us. He laid down his human life for us. So I was wanting to get your opinion on God was in Christ and all that. I was wanting to get your opinion on that subject.

Steve Gregg: Well, I am Trinitarian, and it sounds like maybe you're saying you're not. Are you Oneness Pentecostal?

John from Salyersville: No, I don't claim denomination. I grew up in Oneness Pentecostal, but they have a lot of traditions I don't agree with that aren't biblical.

Steve Gregg: Yeah, well, Oneness Pentecostals believe there's only one person, one God, who was manifest as God in the Old Testament and as Jesus in the New Testament and as the Holy Spirit ever since Pentecost. Am I correct?

John from Salyersville: I think so, yeah. That's how I understand it.

Steve Gregg: Yeah, that's how I understand it. Well, of course, the way that differs from the Trinity doctrine, which most Christians hold, but of course the question is, is it true or not? But the Trinity doctrine is that God does not exist as a changing person. He wears the hat of the Father for 4,000 years, and then he puts on the hat of the Son for 30 years, and then he puts on the hat of the Holy Spirit for 2,000 years.

But rather that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit coexist simultaneously. And the way that the Trinitarian doctrine has traditionally stated it is that there are three persons. Now, whenever I discuss this, I mention the Bible doesn't say they are three persons. The Bible doesn't use the word persons in describing the distinctions between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So, I'm not sure that I would press for that wording even though that's in the traditional creeds.

What I would say though is I think there are distinctions that Jesus himself makes between himself and the Father and between himself and the Holy Spirit that render it difficult to take the modalistic view that the Father just became the Son and so forth. I do believe that the Father was in Christ, to be sure, reconciling the world to himself. I believe that God manifested himself in Christ. But here's how I tend to see it.

Now, I'm not saying I'm right because this is deep waters here, but what I will say is that in the Old Testament, there were numerous times when Yahweh, God, appeared in a human form or in other forms. In the form of a burning bush, in the form of a pillar of cloud, a pillar of fire; these were what we call theophanies, and several times in human form, as in, for example, Genesis chapter 18 when it says Yahweh appeared to Abraham.

And Abraham looked up from his tent and there were three men there, and two of them were said to be angels, the other one is said to be Yahweh. And they ate together, they talked together. So Yahweh actually took on a physical appearance or form so he could eat food and so forth. Now, what do we make about that? Because Yahweh, of course, was still everywhere else in the universe. If somebody was calling on Yahweh from the other side of the world while he was standing there talking to Abraham, certainly Yahweh was there too. He fills the universe. He's not just found in one spot.

So, how I understand it is, God, and this is a theological term, there's the universal presence of God and there's the manifest presence of God. The universal presence of God is he's a spirit and he pervades his whole universe. In him we all live and move and have our being, the Bible says. And David said, "If I ascend into heaven, you're there. If I ascend into Sheol, you're there too. If I take the wings of the morning and fly to the uttermost parts of the sea, well there you are too. Your hand is guiding me there too."

So, God is everywhere and he's still everywhere when he manifests himself in one place. So, I think that when God manifested himself in the Shekinah glory in the Tabernacle, that's where he was manifesting himself to people in that spot. But he was also everywhere else in the universe. That manifestation was, I liken it to him just sticking his finger into our world in a way that can be seen by us.

And I'm not saying that this is a perfect description because I don't know what a perfect description would be, but it seems to me not impossible to say that God was wrestling with Jacob one night, all night long, in a physical form and yet God was everywhere else too. And I think when Jesus came, I think that was God sticking his finger into our world too. I think he was in Christ and that was a physical manifestation of him in a human nature, but that he also existed throughout the universe at the same time.

And I think when Jesus said, "My Father is greater than I," I think he's referring to this larger, unrestrained presence of God. Whereas Jesus, taking on a human form and a human personality, actually seemed to have a different in a sense personhood than before.

John from Salyersville: The way I see it is it says to us there is but one God, the Father. And Christ to me was the body of God, God's flesh, his body that was made of a woman. I believe that the man that ate with Abraham was Christ in his spiritual body, and he returned back to his Father in the glory that he had before he was resurrected.

Steve Gregg: Well, John, I'm not going to say you're wrong about that because you could be right. I think these are mysteries deeper than God has entrusted us with. I mean, there are things here about the nature of the ultimate being of God for which we have no actual earthly analogy. We don't have, people have their analogies, and I've heard all kinds of analogies of the Trinity that people try to give, and each one of them seems to have its own charm and each one of them seems to have its own deficiencies.

So, I don't know if there's really anything on Earth. Didn't the Hebrews when they came through the Red Sea in Exodus 15 say, "Who is like unto you, Oh Lord, among gods? Who is like you?" implying no one is. God is incomparable to anything we know. So, I think there's room for different ways of explaining these things, but still, we have to understand if we're going to follow Scripture that God was in Christ intruding into our lives, into our world, so that he could redeem us and begin his kingdom here.

Anyway, that's how I see it and I know different people would explain it differently and as far as I'm concerned, I don't see why they wouldn't be entitled to. I appreciate your call, John. All right, Gil from Long Island, New York, welcome to the Narrow Path.

Gil from Long Island: Welcome. Hey, you're a really great comfort to me when I'm eating dinner. I always listen to your show when I'm in the nursing home.

Steve Gregg: Great. We only have a couple minutes for your question. Go ahead.

Gil from Long Island: All right, I have two different questions, one is on one topic and one is on another. There's a prayer that says defend us in battle, and then it says protect against the wicked snares, and then it says rebuke him. That prayer of Saint Michael, when did the church come up with that? Because I find it interesting and unique, the prayer.

Steve Gregg: Yeah, I don't know when the church came up with the prayer of Saint Michael. I'm going to assume it's known within Catholic circles. I'm not a Roman Catholic; I'm not familiar with that prayer. I don't find the Bible presenting that prayer for us as a, for example, as an exemplar of prayer for us to imitate or to use. Not that I'd be against it if its contents are good; there's nothing wrong with praying good prayers even if somebody else formulated them some other time, as long as we really mean them and we're really expressing our own thoughts. But I don't know the history of that prayer at all. What was your other question?

Oh, my wife just looked up; she said it was introduced in 1884 by Pope Leo. Okay, thank you. You got it.

Gil from Long Island: I'm sure you heard of Norman Geisler, I think a book he wrote called Christian Ethics. And he talks about, I forgot it because I haven't read it in years, moderate Calvinism and Calvinism. What's the difference between the two and are they anything that you find in favor of, the moderate Calvinist view?

Steve Gregg: Well, moderate Calvinism is just Arminianism with some borrowing from Calvinism. Norman Geisler also wrote a book debating with James White as I recall. James White is a Calvinist full-on, and Geisler was taking what he called the moderate Calvinist view. You can't be moderately Calvinist if we're defining Calvinism as the five points.

If you accept any of the five points, you cannot disconnect them from any of the other because they are logically connected like links in a chain. And if you take total depravity the way the Calvinist does, you have to take unconditional election. And if you take that, you have to take limited atonement and irresistible grace and perseverance; these would all follow logically as an unbroken chain if you accept the first.

Now, Geisler wanted to accept a few of them. And I have to say, when I was growing up, the Baptist church I went to, we thought we held about three of those. But it really wasn't the case that we held three of those. The truth is that we held three points that sounded kind of similar to the Calvinist points, but they weren't really as the Calvinists saw them.

So, if I had debated a Calvinist back then, I would have said, "Well, I agree with you on total depravity." And then when they would start talking about it, I'd say, "Wait, I don't believe that," because what they're believing is far more than what anyone could justify from Scripture at all. And I think Geisler, I don't know, I think he was just kind of walking the tightrope there trying to not denounce Calvinism entirely and not fall into its errors. I think he would have been wiser not to refer to his view as any kind of Calvinism because it wasn't, and James White made that very clear.

So, yeah, I don't think there's such a thing as moderate Calvinism. I think you're either a Calvinist or you're not. If you hold any of the five points, you'd have to hold all of them. I don't hold any of them, and therefore I'm not a Calvinist. But when someone calls themselves a moderate Calvinist, it's probable that they're trying to stay in the good graces of all evangelicals, the Calvinists and the non-Calvinists.

And to me it's sort of like in the Civil War, the guy who wore a blue coat and gray pants and they shot at him from both sides. I think that if you're a moderate Calvinist, the Calvinists are going to attack you and the Arminians will too. Might as well just be biblical and not try to keep everybody happy. I need to take a break here. I appreciate your call, Gil, and God bless you. You're listening to the Narrow Path. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. We have another half hour so don't go away. thenarrowpath.com is our website. We are listener-supported. You can take anything from the website for free. I'll be back in 30 seconds. Don't go away.

Welcome back to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we are live for another half hour taking your calls. If you have questions about the Bible, there's one line open right now. You can call in at 844-484-5737. That number again is 844-484-5737. Our next caller is David from Mesa, Arizona. Hi David, thanks for calling.

David from Mesa: Thanks Steve. I just had a couple questions, both related. Number one, I was wondering, after the temple was destroyed and the Jews didn't have that for the sacrifices, how did they go about explaining that in their own thinking or theology? How does that work out today for Jews, what they think about that?

Also too, when I went to Jerusalem, they showed us a place, and I know this is a dispensational thing in regard to the rebuilt temple or the rebuilding of a future temple, they showed us a place called the Temple Institute where supposedly they're remaking the instruments for the new temple. So I was just wondering, do Jews today actually believe that one day there will be a new temple where there'll be sacrifices or is that only a Christian idea that is going on there?

Steve Gregg: Well, the Jews at the Temple Institute believe that they will rebuild the temple and I don't think they are Christians. Dispensationalist Christians are very much in favor of the building of a third temple. The New Testament would not be in favor of it, of course, because the New Testament indicates that that temple is obsolete and that's why God allowed it to be destroyed almost 2,000 years ago and never be rebuilt.

Now, is it going to be rebuilt? I don't know. But the Bible doesn't predict it. If it is, it will not be something that Christians should smile on anymore than if we built a Buddhist temple or a temple to some other religion. Because Judaism, which is the only religion that that temple would serve, rejects Jesus Christ.

In fact, the very building of a temple would be for no other reason than to offer animal sacrifices; that's what the temple was for. And anyone who would begin to offer animal sacrifices is basically saying we reject the Christian idea that Jesus was the final sacrifice. We're going to go back to the bulls and goats and lambs and so forth, and this is our way of rejecting Christ's sacrifice. So the temple itself, the whole raison d'etre for it existing is to reject Christ and his sacrifice and to basically thumb the nose at Christianity.

So, yeah, many Jews would be glad to do that, but not extremely many. Realize that in Israel, there's only really less than 20 percent of the Jewish people in Israel are even Jewish by faith or observant Jews. Most Jews are secular worldwide and in Israel. In fact, perhaps in Israel the percentage of secular Jews is perhaps a little larger than worldwide. Most of the Jews in Israel are neither Jewish by faith nor Christian. And so they couldn't care less obviously about the temple.

The Temple Institute is made up of a different type of Jew who are observant and they do think the temple should be rebuilt and sacrifices reinstated. Once again, Christians should have not the slightest interest in that project and certainly not do anything specifically to support it, although we wouldn't say they can't do it if they want to. It's just if they do, if we would encourage them to do that, we're encouraging them to basically give Jesus the finger, pretty much is what they'd be doing.

Now, as far as what Jews today think about atonement, it's true that God said in the Old Testament that he gave them the blood sacrifices for an atonement of sin, and ever since the temple was destroyed 2,000 years ago, there have been no blood sacrifices for atonement of sin. Now, Christians of course understand that's because they're not needed anymore. Jesus offered his sacrifice; that was the final sacrifice. And so within a generation of his time, the temple went down and there's no alternative sacrifice available.

Which would suggest that God has already made provision for the Jews if they would be atoned for by the atonement that came before the temple was destroyed, that is Christ's. But the majority of Jews in those days as well as now reject Christ. They don't believe Jesus was the Messiah; they don't think he was significant at all except as a false Messiah or a false teacher.

And so, of course, they don't receive Christ, and so what do they care about atonement? Well, there are, of course, observant Jews who do care about atonement, and if you ask them, "What do you do in place of the animal sacrifices that you can't offer now because the temple's not there?" You see, they can't just start offering animal sacrifices in their backyard; they have to have the Levitical priests. They have to have the altar in Jerusalem; they have to have the stuff that's part of the whole ritual of the temple worship to offer those sacrifices, and they don't have any of that, and they might not ever have it again.

If they do, it won't be from God; it'll be from their own doing. But if you ask a Jew, "Okay, now that you don't have animal sacrifices, what do you do for the atonement of your sins?" An observant Jew would probably say, "Well, we have the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, and we fast. We fast on Yom Kippur and that's the best we can do." The best they can do really, there's no reason to believe that's good enough. Nowhere in the Bible does it ever say that fasting atones for sin.

And even on Yom Kippur, when the Jews under the law were required to fast on Yom Kippur, they were also required to offer a whole bunch of bloody sacrifices in the Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur. So they're not doing that. So, in other words, what they have ever since the temple was destroyed, Judaism is a man-made religion. God ordained Judaism in the time of Moses, and Judaism was a religion of animal sacrifices and a Tabernacle or temple and a priesthood and all that. Those things have not existed for the past 2,000 years. Therefore, any Judaism that exists is not really Judaism according to the Old Testament.

It is a man-made religion. It's what we might call Rabbinism, which refers to the rabbis. The rabbis had what they did after the temple was destroyed; rabbis had to get together and decide how in the world do you continue the Jewish religion without the temple, which is its center. And they came up with the Talmudic law, rules. The rabbis came up with essentially the Talmud. Now, the Talmud was the traditions of even more ancient rabbis.

Even before the temple was destroyed, the traditions of the rabbis were verbally in circulation, but after the temple went down, they had to write them down to make so they'd have a religious document they could actually practice. They can't practice the Torah because what is it, about a fifth or a fourth of the Torah is about the animal sacrifices and they can't do that. So they encoded the traditions of the elders that didn't have to do with sacrifice in what's called the Talmud. And so modern Judaism, if it's Orthodox Judaism, is called Talmudism. It can be described as Talmudism or Rabbinism, that is created by the rabbis.

In either case, it's man-made; it's not God-made. Now, Orthodox Jews sometimes will say the Talmud is the oral law that God gave to Moses. Moses wrote down some of the law, 613 commandments, which we have in the Torah, and that's the written law, but they say Moses also gave an oral Torah, an oral law, which was passed down through the priesthood and then to the scribes and through Ezra and so forth, and now is taught by the rabbis and that's what's in the Talmud.

So, it's a little bit like what, say, Roman Catholics do. Roman Catholics say, "Well, we have the written scriptures in the Bible, but we also have the traditions of the church that have been passed down," and they would say the traditions are of equal value to the scriptures. Protestants, of course, don't believe that. And the Jews, Orthodox Jews, at least the Talmudists, believe that the Talmud is on the same level with the written scriptures of Moses because they believe they are traditions passed down from the time of Moses.

But there's no reason to believe that. In fact, it'd be very strange if that were true because the Talmud consists of the varying opinions of different rabbis throughout history up until the time the Talmud was written. And Moses certainly wouldn't have passed down those discussions of different rabbis who lived long after he was dead. So, they're just like any religion that rejects Christ; they're trying to come up with some alternative. Anything except Jesus as far as many of them are concerned.

On the other hand, many Jewish people are coming to Jesus, but the largest number of Jews want very little to do with the Jewish religion or Christianity. So, Christians make a big deal about the atonement of Christ, of course, because it's very important. But the Jews, they have to downplay it, downplay blood atonement and say, "Well, the Day of Atonement, we fast and that's going to have to be good enough." I don't think it is, at least biblically it's not. Thank you for your call. Let's talk to Ron in Indianapolis, Indiana. Hi Ron, welcome.

Ron from Indianapolis: Hello Steve. How are you today? Steve, yesterday I believe you made a comment about ICE, their intention was to detain criminals. There have been two people killed in America by ICE. How do you reconcile that as being ICE detaining criminals? Because I don't believe either of those two people were criminals.

Steve Gregg: Well, they were both interfering with law enforcement. And I don't think ICE, I mean, obviously the particular ICE agents that fired the shots that killed those two people, those guys did intend to kill. They both, in both cases, an argument can be made and the claim is made that the ICE agents saw themselves in mortal danger. One was about to be run over by a car. I realize people on the other side who are anti-ICE say, "No, he didn't think that." And yet you see the camera angles and sure, he even got hit by the car.

The woman was told to stop. She was told to get out of the car by law enforcement. She refused. She tried to flee and she hit an ICE agent and he apparently thought he was in a lot more danger maybe than he was. And in those tense situations, it's really hard to make a snap judgment, but he fired on her. That's no doubt what law enforcement are trained to do. If someone's coming at you with a car and they're seeking to evade arrest, which is what she was doing, well, sometimes they get shot. Too bad too, because she wasn't otherwise doing anything that would be a capital crime.

But sometimes when you play stupid games, you end up getting stupid prizes. When you come to interfere with law enforcement, that's exactly what she was there doing. There's no question about that for anyone who knows the story. And the other guy was a little more questionable. He was a violent kind of a nut, kicking cars and things like that. That's not a capital crime. But he was carrying a gun interfering with law enforcement. As I understand it, he was trying to prevent ICE from arresting a particular person they were arresting. They got into a scuffle and they saw his gun and, I wasn't there, but the things I just said I believe were verified.

And he got shot. He probably shouldn't have. Let's just say the ICE agent who shot and killed him probably shouldn't have. Okay, so we've got tens of thousands of ICE agents making encounters with people all over the country and at least one of them seems to be too trigger-happy, kills him. Now, frankly, I think in almost any city that kind of thing happens on occasion with regular police, even if they're not very trigger-happy.

I mean, police sometimes make wrong decisions and some of them accidentally kill people or kill people on purpose. It doesn't really reflect on the whole operation. We're talking about tens of thousands of ICE agents carrying out their duties and one of them seems to have shot a person probably unnecessarily, though it wasn't a guy who brought a gun to a resistance situation. I'm not excusing the killing of that guy. I wasn't there and you weren't either.

But officers on the site, they give an account and I don't know. Let's just say both of those people were killed wrongfully, okay? I'm not going to say it wasn't so, but I'm not sure it was wrong for both of them. But let's say it did. Okay, so out of what tens of thousands of encounters with rough people and a bunch of civilians on the street trying to throw things at ICE and get in their way and so forth, a couple of violent situations break out and law enforcement kills a couple people under questionable circumstances.

I'm not going to justify it. I'm going to say that's a pretty low body count for the amount of violence that the protesters were bringing in these cities. So, I think they were doing law enforcement. I believe they were trying to detain lawbreakers. And interestingly, the two people who got killed were not the ones that ICE was trying to capture. They were people trying to interfere with it and they both had weapons. One had a car, which is a very deadly weapon, and the other had a gun.

So we got a couple of civilians interfering with law enforcement and they get in a scuffle and get killed. That's sad, very sad. I mean, it shouldn't happen, shouldn't have to happen. If they had stayed home and let police do their business, no one would have been killed. But the thing is, ICE is out there to detain the lawbreakers. These people made themselves lawbreakers, but they weren't the original targets. They just made themselves targets and unfortunately, sadly, they got themselves killed. I think it's very sad, honestly. All right, let's talk to David in Chico, California. David, welcome.

David from Chico: Two questions. My first is from Deuteronomy 28, verse 7 and 25. Both end as seven. It doesn't seem to fit. Can you clarify that point for me?

Steve Gregg: 28:7 which says, "The Lord will cause your enemies to rise against you to be defeated before your face. They shall come out against you one way and flee before you seven ways." That's verse 7, right? Verse 25 says, "The Lord will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You shall go out one way against them and flee seven ways before them." Yeah, that's the other one. You got a problem with those two?

David from Chico: No, I'm reading the New Living Translation and it says it differently. It says they will scatter you from seven both verses.

Steve Gregg: Scatter you from seven?

David from Chico: Yes, that's why it's not clear what it means.

Steve Gregg: Seven ways. Oh, they'll come from one way and scatter you from seven, that is from seven ways.

David from Chico: It just says seven. It doesn't say seven ways.

Steve Gregg: Well, but what does the, I don't have the NIV, I don't use that Bible, but what does the earlier part say?

David from Chico: You mean about the blessings?

Steve Gregg: No, no, read verse 7 for me in your NIV.

David from Chico: "The Lord will conquer your enemies when they attack you. They will attack you from one direction, but they will scatter from you in seven."

Steve Gregg: Okay, seven directions. They'll come from one direction and scatter in seven, that is in seven directions. That's what it's saying.

David from Chico: Okay, I guess that sort of makes sense. It just wasn't clear. Another question is later is mentioned several times the Book of Instruction. What is the Book of Instruction?

Steve Gregg: The Book of Instruction, you say?

David from Chico: Yes.

Steve Gregg: Where are you finding it? I don't use the NIV; I probably have a different term in the Bible I use. Where are you finding that?

David from Chico: It's in Deuteronomy and Joshua. I didn't write that part down but it's mentioned several times. I can't read the Bible.

Steve Gregg: Well, no, it'd be the Torah probably. I mean, the word Torah means direction or we could say instruction. It also is more commonly translated the word law. But Moses gave them the Torah and that would be the book of God's directions to them, God's instructions to them. So, he urges them to keep it or they'll be in trouble.

David from Chico: Well, okay. It seems like they didn't have the Torah at this point in Deuteronomy, did they? I mean they didn't have all of it.

Steve Gregg: Well, it is, Deuteronomy is the last book of it, yeah. So, Moses gave them the Torah at Mount Sinai 40 years earlier, so they had the law. He gave them the law in Exodus, especially chapters 20 through 23. There were other rules for the priests and so forth in Leviticus and certain penalties prescribed for the magistrates to dish out in Deuteronomy and some other places. But the truth is that the law was no doubt the commandments found in the Ten Commandments and in what they call the Book of the Covenant. Exodus chapter 20 through 23 would be the core of it and they got that 40 years before the book of Deuteronomy and they were supposed to be following it all that time.

David from Chico: Okay, thanks for the help.

Steve Gregg: Okay David, thanks for your call. Let's see, Eddie from New Haven, Connecticut. Welcome to the Narrow Path.

Eddie from New Haven: Steve, great show as always. My question is, Steve, we were studying the other night the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. And we were reading it and it just hit me like a ton of bricks where the rich man said, "I'm tormented in this flame, let me go back and warn my brothers." And I guess Abraham said to him, "Oh, they got Moses and the prophets, they'll be fine. Even if someone came back from the dead, they wouldn't believe anyone anyways." And I was like, "Wait a minute, that's the whole crux of Christianity." So you're saying even if someone comes back from the dead, they're still not going to believe? And I looked at that and I said to the guys, "Wow, now it's almost like downplaying," and Jesus is telling the story. "It's almost like downplaying the resurrection. Yeah, even if someone comes back from the dead, it's going to mean nothing. It won't do anything." It's like, "What?"

Steve Gregg: Well, not that it's nothing; it's just that they who are already rejecting what God has said, and these were Jewish men, I mean Jesus is telling a story that's taking place in the Jewish context. These five brothers that were disobedient, like the rich man himself had been, they were Jewish and they're supposed to follow the law and the prophets. But they weren't.

And Abraham said, "Well, they don't need someone to come back. They have the law and the prophets. God's already spoken to them." And he's saying, "Well, they don't listen to the law and the prophets." Oh, so they don't listen to God? Well, people who don't want to listen to God when he speaks to them, they've got something wrong with their heart. And someone whose heart is hard, you can't make them believe. You can put a miracle in front of them.

I've asked atheists what would it take for you to believe in God? They'd say, "Well, if he just write it across the sky, 'I am Yahweh, believe in me,' I'd believe then." No, they wouldn't. They would see it's a hallucination, it's a trick, it's a hologram; they'd make any excuse they wanted to because they don't want to believe. If people don't want to believe, you can't make them believe.

Even when Jesus raised his friend Lazarus from the dead, the Bible says there were some who saw it there and they went and reported it to the Pharisees. Okay, so these people saw a man rise from the dead. The Pharisees heard from their co-conspirators that it had happened, and the Bible says they didn't believe; they decided they'd better kill Lazarus too because through him many were believing in Christ.

So you have to understand, and Jesus certainly did, that there are people who just don't want the truth, and they prove it by not following the truth they already have. And if they don't follow the truth they already have, it's because they don't want the truth. And therefore they're not going to believe the truth no matter what you put in front of them. That's what Jesus is actually saying there and what the story of Lazarus and the rich man is getting across. Okay, Tom from Denton, Texas. Welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Tom from Denton: Hello Steve, we enjoyed seeing you in Dallas here a few months ago with Dr. Brown. I hope you'll come back soon. I had a good talk with you; enjoyed it very much. I've got a question about who does the drawing. I got in a conversation with one of my Calvinist buddies and of course we know that the Father draws and later we see that Christ draws. But does the Holy Spirit actually do the drawing? And if so, where in the Bible is it stated that way?

Steve Gregg: Yeah, Jesus said, "If I am lifted up, I will draw all men to myself." Then, of course, Jesus also said in John 6, "No one comes to me unless the Father who sent me draws him." So, we've got these references to Jesus and the Father drawing. And I don't think these are different from each other. I think it's just God drawing, Christ and his Father are drawing people.

And they do it through the Holy Spirit. Now, the Bible, I don't think talks about the Holy Spirit drawing, I don't think it uses that term, but it speaks similarly where of course Jesus said when the Holy Spirit comes, I think this is chapter 16 of John, he said in verse 8, "When he comes, he will convict the world of sin and of righteousness and judgment."

So the Holy Spirit convicts the world, and that's what it takes, I think, for somebody to get saved. They have to be convicted by the Holy Spirit. And the Bible talks elsewhere, in Hosea it says that when God brought Israel out of Egypt, used the same word draw, helko in the Greek, he says, "I drew them with gentle cords of kindness," although they did rebel, so they didn't follow him.

But God is drawing us in many ways, and I think the Holy Spirit is the one who's doing it. But to say the Holy Spirit is doing it is not saying something different than that God is doing it. Because what the Holy Spirit does, the Bible, Jesus in the same discourse, the upper room discourse, indicated that the Father and he are doing what the Holy Spirit is doing. For example, he says in verse 23 of John 14, this is in the upper room also, John 14:23, Jesus answered and said to him, "If anyone loves me, he will keep my word. My Father will love him and we, that is my Father and I, will come to him and make our home with him."

Now, who's he talking about there? He's talking about the Holy Spirit coming. He's just been talking about that earlier. He said, "I'm going to send you the Holy Spirit. I will not leave you orphans. I will come to you," meaning through the Holy Spirit. And so the coming of the Spirit, it's the Spirit of Christ, it's the Spirit of God. It's God and Christ appealing, coming, dwelling by in the person of the Spirit.

And I think that the drawing of God is the Holy Spirit's work in drawing us. So again, the word draw is used somewhat sparingly in Scripture. So we don't have any particular passage where the word draw is used in connection with the Spirit, but the drawing of Christ and the drawing of God of people to himself, in my opinion, is done through the Holy Spirit convicting the world of sin and righteousness and judgment. That's how I have always understood it and I think that's probably correct.

Anyway, I'm sorry to be out of time, Tom, but it's great talking to you. You've been listening to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. We are listener-supported. We don't interrupt the program with any commercials because we have no sponsors and we have nothing to sell. We just do this every day and the Lord provides. If you want to be one of the people through whom he provides, you can go to our website thenarrowpath.com and see how to donate. thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for joining us.