The Narrow Path

Steve Gregg: Good afternoon and welcome to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. Greg from Sonoma, are you there?

Greg: Yes, I am. I have a question about Jubilee. Leviticus 25 says that the 50th year is supposed to be the year of Jubilee where property that was sold or leased would return to the owner, excluding the selling of the land for permanent use in Israel, correct?

Steve Gregg: That is correct.

Greg: In 2 Samuel 24, verses 24 and 25, it says that David bought the threshing floor to build an altar in Jerusalem to stop the plague that the Lord had given them, and Gad the prophet told him to build and offer sacrifices. Then in 1 Chronicles 22:1, David said that the temple and the altar were to be built there. According to the 50th year of Jubilee, wouldn't that all have been returned to the original owners?

Steve Gregg: No, because it was dedicated to God. That's a different thing. If something was "corban," that is, if it was offered to God, it could be used for nothing else. It was taken away from all common uses.

David bought the property specifically to be a temple site, to be a place to offer sacrifice and a temple site. The man, of course, surrendered it gladly for that price. This would be an exception to private property because it did not become David's private property even for 50 years until the next Jubilee. It became permanently sacred and therefore would never be returned to the original owner, Araunah or Ornan, as he's sometimes called, in the 50th year. It would be an exception to the general rule. Anything that's specially dedicated to God would not return to common hands again.

Greg: Okay. Blessings in 2026, Steve.

Steve Gregg: Same to you, Greg. Thanks for your call. Bye now. Our next caller is Shannon, calling from Arkansas. Shannon, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Shannon: Thank you, sir. My question is probably elementary to you, but there was a little bit of confusion in a couple of guys I was talking to, or they just disagreed on it. Romans 10:13. For whosoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Could you explain specifically what that means? I know he's quoting from the Old Testament.

Steve Gregg: He's quoting from Joel chapter two. Basically, it's a promise that when God would pour out his Spirit, which was the mark of the New Covenant coming, anybody who called out on God for salvation would be saved.

Saved in what sense? I'm not sure how it was understood in Joel's time because what they had in Joel's time was a locust plague, and the people needed to be saved from that agrarian disaster of the locusts eating everything up. That's mostly what the book of Joel is about, but there are sections of it that are about the Messianic age, just as there are in almost all the prophets of the Old Testament.

Saved here would be through the Messianic salvation. Calling out to the Lord simply means petitioning the Lord, crying out for mercy from God. Those who do so will receive the salvation in the Messiah. It's not really a deep thought. Are you wondering how one does that? What is your principal question about that?

Shannon: Well, what they got in was saying, well, all you got to do is believe. Then the other would say, no, you got to call on the name of the Lord. No, all you got to do is believe.

Steve Gregg: Anyone who says all you have to do is, and they fit in some singular word, is basically summarizing a somewhat more complex teaching. In the Bible, you become a believer and are saved by becoming a disciple of Jesus. That requires believing in him.

That also requires repenting of your sins, according to Peter and Paul and Jesus for that matter. Jesus, Peter, and Paul all called people to repent of their sins. There's more to it than that too, because of course Peter said that baptism was necessary and receiving the Holy Spirit is important.

All those things were part of the experience of being converted. The whole thing could be summarized as calling on the name of the Lord, but calling isn't just a verbal action. It's a presenting of oneself as needing help from God, and that presentation comes through repentance and baptism and receiving the Spirit. This calling on the name of the Lord is not just calling out God's name and suddenly you're saved.

In the Bible, whether it's the Old or the New Testament, it was more than simply a single word that described everything about being saved. Certainly, it says Abraham in Genesis 15:6 believed in the Lord and it was counted to him for righteousness. That's where Paul teaches from that justification by faith.

Justification isn't the only part of salvation. Salvation justifies us in the sight of God so that we can now live our lives in a restored relationship with God. We won't do that until we turn from our old ways. That's repentance. We trust in God daily in a relationship, like you trust another person in a relationship. You have to trust God if you're in a relationship with him.

Being baptized is the way of marking that conversion and receiving the Spirit is the way that God enables you to live that life. The whole Christian life is a holistic thing. Calling on the name of the Lord, you can't just take one verse and say, you just do this one thing and that one thing and nothing else that describes everything about being saved.

Then we're going to have to find different verses. In 1 Peter chapter 3 and verse 20, it says baptism saves us. Peter said that repentance and baptism save. Paul, of course, says that believing is what saves. None of them are contradicting each other. They believed all those things.

They believed that coming to Christ is a holistic change of life, and believing in Christ is what you do from that point on. You turn from your sins. That's repentance. You enter that new life through baptism and through receiving the Spirit. This is taught throughout the scripture.

If somebody says the Bible just says you just have to believe, well, there are some verses that only mention the believing part. There's other verses like this one that mentions calling on the name of the Lord. Paul quotes this verse in connection with Joel in Romans chapter 10 to point out that confession has to be made.

He says if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you'll be saved. You've got believing, you've got confessing, you've got calling. Elsewhere you've got repenting, you've got being baptized.

This is not a long list of works that we do to get saved. This is simply the composite picture of a reality that we step into as a new creation in Christ. It's a relationship of obedience, a relationship of trust, an obedience of faith and love. All these things are part of it.

If someone's just saying, tell me one thing that I do and if I do that one thing I'll be saved, they're asking you to reduce the whole teaching of the whole Bible into a single word. The Bible really can't do that if we mean by the word I choose to fill that blank. Whatever word I choose there has got to exclude all other words that could be put in there.

In fact, what you do to be saved is you are rejoined to God in a relationship through Christ. That's what salvation is. How's that done? By being reconciled, by repenting of your sins, by trusting him, by coming back into the relationship that you abandoned in the first place.

If you're confused because this verse says whoever calls on the name of the Lord should be saved and you'll find another verse saying if you believe on the Lord you'll be saved, like when Paul said to the Philippian jailer, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you'll be saved. That's a different sentence that ends up with you shall be saved.

Being saved doesn't mean you bought a ticket and now you're going to heaven because you have the ticket. I realize that's how the gospel is often preached to get people to come in on the least possible commitment and the least possible sacrifice, but that's not what Jesus did. Jesus never suggested, I'm going to make this so easy that you'd be a fool to turn me down.

He said if you don't hate your father, mother, wife, and children, take up your cross and forsake all that you have, you can't be my disciple. He said all those things in Luke 14. There's more to it than just fill in the blank on this word here. The whole phenomenon of being restored to God and becoming a follower of Christ involves all these changes.

If one wants to ask what part of it is for the forgiveness of sins, I'm going to say the faith is because that's where we're justified by faith. Justification isn't the only thing that salvation is. Salvation is also reconciliation, it's transformation, it's sanctification, eventually it's glorification, it's enablement, it's service. All of those things are part of what being a Christian is. I think maybe somebody has truncated the whole message and they say you just have to believe as if believing doesn't involve all these other things. What the Bible assumes is the believing involves all those other things. Calling on the Lord involves all those things. Being baptized involves those other things. Becoming a disciple and forsaking all that you have so you're his disciple, that's all part of the whole picture and it's not that there's just one part of that picture that we can reduce salvation to without dummying down the thing to a point that's of no value to anybody.

Shannon: Thanks, Steve, for being so thorough. Thank you, brother.

Steve Gregg: All right, Shannon. Great talking to you, man. God bless you. Christopher from New Market, New Hampshire. Hi Christopher, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Christopher: Hello Steve. Happy New Year. I had a question about the mark of the beast and it requires a little bit of context. I'll try to be quick. As a child, I was sold into two CIA programs. One's called Project Monarch, which is a sexual program. One's called MKUltra, which is a violence programming program. To make a long story short, these programs accrued money in my father's accounts, which when he died was given to his children that were involved in these programs. These programs made quite a bit of money and when I was doing my budgeting, I had taken out some money from these accounts. I did my budget and my budget came out to $66.66 a day when I did my budgeting. I was wondering do you think that could be a sign that because I had implants put in me as a child and money was made off of those implants and what those implants could do, do you think that this money could be kind of like a Mark of the Beast situation?

Steve Gregg: I would not say so. First of all, you were young and you didn't make a decision about it, so I don't think God holds anyone responsible for things that were forced upon them when they're children. Secondly, I don't think that this is the kind of thing that the Bible is referring to as the mark of the beast.

I've certainly heard about these programs. I've known people who said they were subject to ritual abuse and things like that in this kind of business in their childhood. Honestly, since I have no inside knowledge of these things, I don't know what to make of the stories. I can say, regardless of what actually happened, that this is not the kind of thing that the mark of the beast is talking about.

That $66.66 or something like that calls to mind the number 666, but I don't believe that the number 666 is intended in the way that people commonly think. I've known people who had just by accident 666 on their license plate and it freaked them out and they were afraid, oh I've got the mark of the beast on my license plate. Or some people who had 666 somewhere in their phone number or their social security number and thought, oh no, that's the mark of the beast.

No, 666 is not a magic satanic number. The only reference to 666 in the Bible is in Revelation chapter 13 and verse 18. We're told that this is the number of a man, and this man is somebody that apparently was living at the time Revelation was written because John, writing to his contemporary readers, indicated that the wise among them would be able to identify the man he's talking about from that number.

Any name in certain languages, that would include Greek and Latin and Hebrew, can be reduced, the letters can be reduced to a numeric equivalent. We don't do that with English letters so it's a strange thing. In the biblical languages, you could take any word and take the letters of that word and find the numeric equivalent and add them up and get a number.

It was sometimes the case that people would present a word in code by giving its numeric equivalent and it would not be obvious what word it was, but if there were a very few options of what word it might be, somebody who could do the code could figure it out.

When John is telling his readers that those who were wise among them could, if they would, decipher the name of the beast, it's his number and it's the number of a man's name, and it's 666. This means we're not talking about some kind of a mystical, magical, satanic number that we have to be afraid of seeing three sixes in sequence.

As a matter of fact, in the Greek, it isn't just three sixes in sequence. It's actually the number 666, which it is just coincidental that in our Arabic numbers that looks like three sixes in a row. But six and six and six, three sixes in a row would not in every language total up 666.

We're talking about the number 666, not just the sequence of sixes. I believe that Nero was the emperor at the time that John wrote this, and I believe that he's alluding to Nero's name by this number because it can be calculated into Caesar Nero by certain what we call Gematria where you take the letters and take the numbers of the name.

I don't think that anyone today has the number of the beast applied to them because this is identifying, I believe it's identifying the Caesar who was persecuting the church at the time the Revelation was written. The number of dollars and cents that you make, if it happens to be 66.66, it's not going to be related to the number 666. After all, the number is that you gave was $66.66. That doesn't come out to $666.

Many people, and I understand this because of the way that Revelation is sometimes taught to people, they see magic in this number somehow, some mysterious magical thing. I don't believe it's mysterious or magical. I think it's simply a coded name that's put down in code so it won't be understood by everybody, but it would be understood by some who read it in those days.

I don't think that the money that you lived on or whatever, even if it came from questionable sources or activities, I don't think that that's any connection to the mark of the beast in the Bible.

Christopher: Amen. Thank you Steve. I hope you have an awesome 2026. God bless you too. Bye-bye.

Steve Gregg: Go in peace. God bless you Christopher. Bye now. We have some lines open now and we have another little over half hour before the program ends. James in Memphis, Tennessee is next. Hi James, welcome.

James: Thank you for taking my call, Steve. Steve, in the book of Genesis, I heard a preacher say that in the beginning when God created Adam, he created him male and female, called he them. I'm not quoting it exactly like it was, I'm blind and I can't recall exactly. But he said that because of that, that God created Adam bisexual. What do you say in regards to that?

Steve Gregg: Did you say a pastor said this?

James: Yes, he's a teacher. Matter of fact, he comes on this radio outlet that you are on.

Steve Gregg: Okay, I don't know what station that is in Memphis and I don't know who it is you're referring to, but that is one of the most irresponsible statements I've ever heard repeated by someone who thinks they represent what the Bible says.

I'll tell you what he's referring to. There are two accounts of creation at the beginning of Genesis. One of them, of course, is chapter one where we go through six days of creation with a very brief overview of what God did on each of those days. Each of these days is handled very similarly. God said let this happen, it happened, it was good, God saw that it was good, evening and morning were the second, third, fourth, fifth day.

There's a great deal of symmetry in the first account of creation where again it's running through six days in rapid succession just summarizing what's in them. In chapter 2 verses 1 through 3 we have the seventh day, which is the Sabbath.

After that, in Genesis 2:4 and following, we go through the creation or part of it again, just the part about man and woman. In the first account of creation, it says in chapter 1 verse 27, God created man, which means humanity, in his own image. In the image of God he created him, male and female he created them.

Apparently this teacher is very confused and doesn't really know much about reading the Bible. To say male and female he created them, it means he made humans male and female, just like it says earlier he made the animals male and female and told them to reproduce and fill the earth.

If he's saying that Adam as an individual was both male and female and then God kind of got ahead of us on the preferred pronoun things and started calling Adam "them," maybe he's "they/them" or "him/them." It's almost like this woke thing that started 10 years ago, God made it up because he started calling Adam them.

God was not woke and God was not nuts, neither was the writer of Genesis. The simple understanding of that, that no one over five years old would normally have trouble understanding, is that when it says God made man, he made them male and female. Man refers to humanity, and them refers to the people who are humanity. He made males and females.

He only made one male, one female initially. It doesn't go into that in detail here, but it does in the second account which begins in chapter 2 verse 4. It talks about how God made man, the male, the individual male, he made first. Then he made the woman from the male, and he said they would be one flesh.

Not one flesh in the same sense that somebody thinks they're two genders. They are two people. One was male, one was female, but the oneness that they had was something else, a more metaphorical kind of oneness that exists between married couples. Even the New Testament, Jesus said that and so did Paul.

We have the first account, which is just a quick run through the six days, which mentions briefly God made man like he made other animals male and female. But then after that's all been done, once it gets through the seventh day and God's resting, he's done with the creation, it decides to go over that last part again slower in more detail.

The male and female that God made were the most important things he made, the human beings, and so we get a sidebar here. We get an endnote in a book where they want to go into some details that they couldn't go into in the text. He says here's how it really happened. God made the man and then of course eventually he made the woman from the man and that's just unpacking what was said very briefly in chapter 1 verse 27 that God made humans male and female.

It tells us how it happened. He made male first, then the female from him. That isn't a contradiction. It simply is filling in details that were not mentioned earlier. Whoever it was that thought that Adam was made a bisexual had to explain how did he expect Adam to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. There are people today who might identify themselves as bisexuals, but they can't make babies by themselves. It's obvious that God made male and female as separate individuals.

James: I was surprised that he said it like that. Other than that, he seemed to be a solid orthodox teacher as far as the scripture is concerned. I take it like you said like the first chapter was like an overview and then come back into details.

Steve Gregg: He was quite confused about that. I'm not sure why he would say that. Thank you, James, for your call. Good talking to you. Let's talk to Victor in Seattle, Washington. Victor, welcome.

Victor: Hey Steve. Good to talk to you. Happy New Year. I heard it explained one time and I was wondering your opinion on this. I heard 666 was referring to the sixth trumpet, the sixth seal, and the sixth bowl. At the end of those, those are the end of the Antichrist. Then on the seventh trumpet, seventh bowl, seventh seal, that's when Christ comes. Have you ever heard anything like that?

Steve Gregg: No, that seems entirely made up out of thin air. There's lots of sixes in the book of Revelation and sevens. There are seven seals, there are seven trumpets, there are seven bowls of wrath. Of course, because there are seven, there are also six before the seventh. In many cases, the seventh one in the series does seem to be climactic.

I could see someone saying, well, maybe it's these six of this and six of that and six of the other. The thing is 666, only in the Arabic numeration where you do in English would that look like three sixes. In Roman numerals, for example, 666 would look really different.

In other words, we're not talking about three sixes, whether it was six seals, six trumpets, or six bowls. We're talking about a total number of 666. People come up with all kinds of strange ways of misunderstanding that. But again, we're told exactly what it is. That explanation is sure different than what it says. It says it's the number of a man's name.

Victor: I think he tied it in somehow that that's how you'll notice that that's the Antichrist is by that number. The sixth seal, the sixth trumpet, and the sixth bowl would be the indication that that's Satan at play and we're waiting for the seventh or something.

Steve Gregg: I'd say there's no validity in that. You had another question though.

Victor: Yes, sir. It's a little bit of a personal question. I just wanted your opinion on something. I've been a Christian my whole life and I've struggled with drug use my whole life in and out of different things. The one thing that I've managed to not be able to completely get rid of is smoking marijuana. I really do think it separates me from God and I think it's a big separator in my life. I was just wondering your opinion if you do go your whole life and you weren't able to surrender to that, you weren't able to overcome that, would that be the kind of thing that where I wouldn't inherit the kingdom of God over it?

Steve Gregg: I can't say anything specific about marijuana because the Bible doesn't mention it. But it does mention abuse of substances in general. The word "pharmakeia" is used a couple of times in Galatians 5 and 1 Corinthians 6. Both places it says those who do these things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.

Drunkenness is mentioned and while anyone who smokes weed knows that it doesn't have the same exact effect as alcohol does, in principle, the idea of people who drink to get drunk is that they want to use a substance that God does not intend for that purpose to alter their mind.

That's what marijuana is for. I believe marijuana was probably created as a painkiller. I believe it has medicinal values just like opium does. You can abuse opium too. There are medicinal herbs and plants that God made, but when somebody is simply using them to alter their consciousness or their mind state, this is the kind of thing that is, I believe, what's forbidden.

Victor: Yes, it is an idol. You're putting it before God.

Steve Gregg: Yes it is. Anything that you can't stop even though you believe God wants you to is an idol. I have to ask you, you say you can't get over it. Where do you get weed? Do you grow it?

Victor: No, I've always bought it from people and now you can buy it in the store.

Steve Gregg: Yeah, but you can also not buy it at the store. I go to stores almost every day and I've never bought weed. You can do that. You have to be determined to.

Victor: It's really something I want to get over and through. It seems so adolescent to keep going and going and doing it. I've been a tradesman my whole life and maybe I do use it a little bit for pain, but I think it's something I need to get out of my life and I just wanted your take on it.

Steve Gregg: You might use it because the people around you use it too. Is that the case?

Victor: No, sadly I've got nobody to blame but myself. It's me.

Steve Gregg: Okay, you don't have anyone around you. A lot of people hang out with people who that's just what they do recreationally, they smoke weed. That would be another thing to alter if you're having trouble getting over it. But yeah, if you're just doing it on your own.

Victor: It's not even social for me. I'm an older guy. I just think maybe it is just something I've just done for so long, it just became a habit and I'm just having a hard time getting rid of it. So stupid. I quit cigarettes just not that.

Steve Gregg: I've never smoked weed myself or used any drugs of any kind, but I certainly have had to struggle with certain sins in my life when I was younger especially and some now I suppose.

Victor: I always thought of this one like the besetting sins. It feels like it's one of those besetting sins that just for some reason it's my thing that I can't seem to get rid of. But I will beat it. I will get rid of it. God will help me to get rid of it, I'm sure. I just wanted to hear your opinion. Are you in a church?

Victor: Yeah, I do, but I do feel like I hide that. I'm not running around with a shirt on that says legalize it or nothing like that. I kind of hide it in my life. I'm not proud of it by any means.

Steve Gregg: Although Christians sometimes come off pretty judgmental, most Christians I know, including ministers, they would want to be able to pray with you. They'd want to be able to help you. If you keep it a secret from them, they won't. You might be afraid they'll kick me out of the church. I don't think they'll kick you out of the church if you're trying to beat it and you're embarrassed about it.

I'm glad you feel convicted about it. That means he's still speaking to you. Well, God bless you, Victor. Bye now. Hope you become the victor. Let's talk to Jennifer from Arizona. Hi Jennifer, welcome.

Jennifer: Hello. Thank you. I was just driving down the road and I'm on a road trip with my dad and I pulled in, this station popped up on my radio. This whole road trip has been turning into a profound spiritual awakening, I guess you'd say. I'm a Christian, I'm a believer but don't go to church. My faith was, I was losing faith. Recently I started to try to find answers about, I've noticed some things in the sky and that should be on the news and nobody's seeing it. These signs that God's given me like right now on this trip, all these signs like they're obvious but then I tell people about them and they think I'm crazy. But it all ties together though with the numbers. And the numbers, since you're talking about that earlier, my phone call like, I keep repeating over and over these numbers just keep all the time they're different numbers but like say your number for instance, 884477. I see it everywhere I look.

Steve Gregg: Jennifer, let me just jump in here. I don't know if what you're having are spiritual experiences or not. I also don't know if you use any drugs or anything like that. I'm not going to suggest that you do, but if you do that might explain some of this. Your friends think you're crazy. I won't say that. I don't believe you're crazy.

But I don't think that I have any insights for you about signs you're seeing or numbers, series of numbers you're seeing. I don't know how real they are. They may be completely real and if they are real I have no interpretation of them for you. If they're not real they may be something that's happening in your head.

I'm not trying to discount you. I'm just looking at a full switchboard and only a few minutes left of the program. I want to take a lot of these calls and you don't seem to really have a question from the Bible, which is the main thing I could help you with if you did.

You can go to my website thenarrowpath.com and you can listen to this program every day and you can call in if you have a very specific question for me. But I'm looking at a full switchboard here and only like 10 minutes left. I'm sorry I can't help you with those signs and those numbers. I just don't have any expertise on that kind of thing. Let's talk to Catherine in Vancouver, British Columbia. Welcome, Catherine.

Catherine: Hi. I've always wondered this question. I've been a Christian a long time, but I've always wondered why does it say in the Bible that you have to hate your mother and father, but then again it says we're to honor our mother and father.

Steve Gregg: Well, it says we're supposed to also hate our wife and children and our own selves also in the same verse you're talking about. Obviously that doesn't mean what it first sounds like it means because it's the opposite of Jesus's instructions in general. We need to love not only our mother or father and wife and children and everybody, we need to even love our enemies. Obviously Jesus is not saying what it sounds like he's saying.

It's not really a problem to those who become familiar with the idioms of the Hebrew language that Jesus used where the word "hate" in certain contexts, probably in most contexts, doesn't mean what we mean by hate. We mean when we hate someone we have malice toward them or hostile toward them, we despise them, we can't stand them. That's what we mean when we say we hate somebody.

In the Bible, and don't ask me why, it's just a Hebrew custom, we see it a lot in the Bible and we just have to deal with it because that's how the Bible communicates with the idioms of the people of the time. To hate somebody means you don't place them at the same level of affection and importance as someone else.

That is, if it's them versus someone else and you love that someone else and you hate them, it's not that you hate them in the sense we use those terms. It just means you prefer them less. Jacob had two wives, Rachel and Leah. It says he loved Rachel more than Leah, but then it says in the next verse Leah was hated. She wasn't hated in the sense that we think of. He didn't have any real animosity toward her, he just loved Rachel more.

It's very common in the New Testament and the Old to have love and hate contrasted this way when God said Jacob I have loved, Esau I have hated. He's not saying he really hated Esau the way that we mean that. He's saying that he preferred Jacob over Esau from the time they were born. He gave preferential treatment to one over the other. That's what love and hate means.

In the case you're talking about where Jesus said in Luke 14 if anyone comes to me and does not hate his father, mother, wife, children, and his own life also he can't be my disciple, this has a parallel in Matthew chapter 10 where Jesus said whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, whoever loves wife or child more than me is not worthy of me. That's saying the same thing in terms that we can understand a little easier because we don't have the same idiom that the Hebrews used. It's a little confusing if you don't if you're not acquainted with the Hebrew idiom when you're reading the Bible, but usually it's explained somewhere else and in this case Matthew's parallel says it in terms that are quite easy for us to understand. Thanks for calling. Let's talk to Danielle from Irvine, California. Danielle, welcome.

Danielle: Hi Steve. Thanks for taking my call. I listened to many of your lecture series on the Early Church and absolutely loved it, but I'm still having a pebble in my shoe about the claims of the Catholic and Orthodox church that they're the only true church. It's really stumbling me. I believe there is a spiritual remnant, just as it was in the Old Testament, but since you've done a good thorough study on the Early Church, do you find any claims to the Orthodox church as being the true church?

Steve Gregg: No, the true church is the disciples of Jesus Christ collectively throughout the world, the body of Christ. Everybody who's been born again has received the Spirit and shares that same Spirit and that same rebirth with all other people around the world who have. Some of these people go to Catholic churches, some go to Eastern Orthodox churches, some go to Coptic, some go to Protestant churches of various kinds, some are in home churches.

It's a spiritual qualification, it's not a membership in some kind of a club like most churches understand it apparently. It's that God joins us to Christ spiritually and we become part of his body and his body is the church. It's a spiritual community of people who are followers of Christ. You'll find some of those in every church and you'll find people in every church who aren't those. You'll find Catholics and Orthodox and Protestants who go to church but they're not followers of Christ. In their lives they're not following Jesus, he's not their Lord.

The true church is made up of people who are truly following Christ and they are in all these churches. Where the Catholic and the Orthodox churches and a few Protestant churches I've known have made similar claims to them that they are the only church, what they are seeing the church as an institution that has a lineage of leadership.

The Catholics believe that their bishops are in the lineage of leadership from the apostles. The Orthodox church believes that their leaders are in the lineage of the apostles. I don't think anybody is in the lineage of the apostles by being in an organization. If you're in the lineage of the apostles, it means that you're following Jesus the way they taught and the way they did. You're not an apostle of course, they were. The bishops are not apostles just because they went to some kind of training and got ordained by an organization. Only Jesus selects that kind of apostle.

I think that you need to understand, you said you believe there's a true remnant of believers. That's what the church is of course. The true church is made up of the people who follow Jesus. They make up a relatively smaller portion of those that we could describe as members of church organizations and that would be true no matter what church organization we choose. We could say Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Pentecostal, Episcopalian, Catholic, Orthodox, you name it, not everybody in those churches is a true follower of Jesus. But the ones who are are part of the true body of Christ along with all the people in other churches who are also true followers of Jesus.

When somebody says our church is the true goes back to the true church, I'm thinking, well how do you think the church is transmitted from generation to generation by some organization where people are ordained by human beings to carry on the organization or by simply the apostolic teaching being embraced generation after generation by people who have come to know Christ and love him and know him and follow him.

I don't believe there's any organized church, any institutional church that can honestly say they are the true heirs of the apostolic identity. I realize they say they can. In fact, that's the only way probably that they could persuade people to join them because most of these churches are ritualistic kinds of churches. Some people are attracted to that. I'm not saying it can't be okay to be a ritualistic person, but an awful lot of people put up with the rituals because they feel like they have to be there because they're told this is the true church. That's bondage, man. That's just bondage.

Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there's liberty. Yeah, if you love Jesus, you can go to Eastern Orthodox church and love Jesus there. You can do it in a Catholic church or a Protestant church. But no one of these groups is the true church. These are simply institutions that have hierarchical structure that perpetuates itself generation after generation ritually. That's not what Jesus set up. Jesus didn't set up a religious organization, he set up a family made up of the children of God. You become a child of God by being born into that family spiritually when you become a follower of Christ and you receive his Holy Spirit.

That's what the true church is. It's the combined number of believers who have the Spirit of God because the church is the temple of the Holy Spirit. He dwells in every part of that temple and everyone who has the Spirit living in them is a Christian whether they're in an organized church or not. Although they should be in church somewhere, should be in fellowship somewhere. You've been listening to The Narrow Path. Happy New Year. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for joining us.