The Narrow Path

Announcer: Welcome to The Narrow Path Radio Program, hosted by Steve Gregg. Steve is not in the studio today, so calls from listeners will not be able to be taken. In the place of the usual format, we've put together some of the best calls from past programs. They cover a variety of topics important to anyone interested in the Bible and Christianity. In addition to the radio program, The Narrow Path has a website you can go to, www.thenarrowpath.com, where you can find hundreds of resources that can all be downloaded for free. And now, please enjoy this special collection of calls to Steve Gregg and The Narrow Path.

Steve Gregg: We're going to talk first of all to Angela, who's calling from Brentwood, California. Angela, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Angela: Hi Steve. How are you? I have a quick question for you. I just wanted to get your input on the Virgin Mary and what you think about Catholics praying to her. I'm a Christian, but I was raised Catholic, and so I just want to hear what you have to say about that.

Steve Gregg: Well, the Virgin Mary was a wonderful lady. Originally she was part of the believing remnant of Israel before Jesus was born. She's a Jewish girl, and in all days at all times in the Jewish nation, there were some people who were faithful to God and some who were not faithful to God. Those people who were faithful to God were called the remnant.

Now Mary was one of those people. She was a Jewish girl who was part of the remnant. She was faithful to God, and God chose her to become the mother of the Messiah. He did so in spite of the fact, or maybe because of the fact, that she was a virgin and that he could then bring about a miraculous conception that did not involve a human father. So she conceived as a virgin.

Now the Roman Catholics believe that she remained a virgin for the rest of her life. The Bible doesn't teach that. In fact, the Bible strongly suggests otherwise because the Bible refers to Jesus as her firstborn, and it says that she did not have relations with her husband until after Jesus was born, it says in the last verse of Matthew chapter one. So we know that the suggestion is that after Jesus was born, she had a normal relationship with her husband.

Also, of course, in a number of places, we read about the brothers of Jesus and sisters too. So apparently Mary and Joseph had other children. Jesus apparently was the oldest son in a family of at least seven children because he had four brothers and some number of sisters.

Now praying to Mary doesn't make an awful lot of sense from a biblical point of view since Mary is not God, and in the Bible, we pray to God. Prayer is obviously one of the aspects of worship for the Christian. Our submitting to God or coming to him with our requests, that's an aspect of worship, and so we don't worship other people other than God. So we don't pray to Mary or to the saints.

Now Roman Catholics sometimes say that they don't really pray to the saints or to Mary, but they just come to them with their asking them to pray on their behalf. A Roman Catholic will sometimes say, "Well, you ask your friends to pray for you, why wouldn't you ask Mary or the saints to pray for you? That's not really praying to them. That is just asking them to pray for you." So that's how they make the distinction.

But the problem here is that I can go to my friend and say, "Would you please pray for me?" because I can talk to my friend and my friend will hear me. I have no reason to believe that Mary can hear me or is even aware of me. If there are hundreds of millions of Roman Catholics around the world praying to Mary at the same time, there's no indication in the Bible that she can hear all these people. She would have to be omnipresent and omniscient. Those are traits that only God possesses. She's a godly person, and so were the saints godly people.

Angela: Right, but they also claim that there are apparitions of the virgin, and then they ask to pray the Rosary and things like that. What do you think about that?

Steve Gregg: Well, that to me is a form of, frankly, idolatry, but that's me coming from a Protestant point of view. Like I said, I don't think we have any reason to address Mary at all. Mary is a woman who lived and died and went to heaven, and the Bible forbids us to talk to people who have died. The Bible forbids communication with the dead. Mary has died, so have the saints.

Now Roman Catholics have an answer for that too. They say, "Well, Mary and the saints aren't really dead. They're alive in heaven." Well, though that may be true, they still have died from our point of view. When the Bible forbids communication with the dead, it doesn't mean unless those dead people are in heaven, then you can communicate with them. If you go to a seance and you contact a dead person who happens to be a Christian, you're still sinning. Just the fact that they live on in heaven doesn't mean that it's okay to contact them. If they have died on earth, they are the dead.

That being so, we are forbidden to talk with them or to contact them, not that we even can. The Bible doesn't even assure us that they can hear us at all. To my mind, the idea that the saints or Mary can hear me is a bit of a superstition, and it's also an unnecessary one. Why should I talk to Mary when I can talk to God?

All the time I have available for prayer, and I wish there was more and I wish I was better at using the time well, but if I have so much time available to pray, why don't I just talk to God, and why do I need to talk to one of his daughters?

Angela: Right. Well, thank you so much for your answer. It was very clear and I understand everything. Thank you.

Steve Gregg: Okay, Angela. Thanks for calling. Bye now. Our next caller is Mike from Temecula. Mike, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Mike: Thank you, Steve, for taking my call. I was curious about the Church of Philadelphia. It seems that that was a church that Jesus was very fond of, or God was very fond of, and I just wanted to see if you could elaborate with me about what the Church of Philadelphia was, if it was a time period or actual church, and then if there is any kind of church that is like a descendant of the Church of Philadelphia in today's society. Thank you.

Steve Gregg: Well, for those who aren't familiar with the Bible very much, the Church of Philadelphia is not a reference to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, but there was a city in the Roman province of Asia, which is the geographical area that corresponds with modern Turkey. In that region, in the biblical times, there was a city called Philadelphia. Our city of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania was named after it.

So the question is about the church in Philadelphia in the first century, and specifically, it's alluding to the book of Revelation, where there are two chapters in Revelation, chapters two and three, that are occupied with seven letters that Jesus dictated to John to send to seven different churches. One of them, the sixth of them, is the Church of Philadelphia.

These letters contain Jesus' assessment of these churches. In each case, he said to them, "I know your works," and then he either commends them or criticizes them. In three cases, he commends them and then criticizes them. In two cases, he merely criticizes them without any commendation. That's the Church of Sardis and the Church of Laodicea.

But in two cases, he commends them with no criticism. Philadelphia is one of those. The other one is Smyrna. Smyrna and Philadelphia were cities that had churches in them that Jesus didn't see fit to criticize about anything. They were good churches. He's the only two of the seven that Jesus did not call upon to repent because he did not identify anything they were doing wrong that they needed to repent of. He called the other five churches to repent of things that he had criticized them for.

Philadelphia was a good church. Both Smyrna and Philadelphia were churches that were having problems, probably persecuted by the Jewish community in their towns because the church of Smyrna, Jesus says to them in chapter two, verse nine of Revelation, that the people who called themselves Jews but were not genuine Jews, he knew the blasphemy of those people. They were apparently persecuting the Christians in Smyrna.

Likewise, the Church of Philadelphia, chapter three, verse nine of Revelation says they also were troubled by those who called themselves Jews but were not. These towns had large Jewish populations and in those days there was a lot of strife between the Jewish and the Christian religions and in these cases, the churches were suffering, as the church in Jerusalem also was, from persecution from the local unbelieving Jewish community.

Now, Philadelphia had certain characteristics that perhaps are alluded to in the letter that Jesus writes, but your question is, does it represent a time period? Are there any churches today that could be identified with it? My answer to you is this, that there are many interpreters who think that the seven churches that Jesus wrote to there represent seven divisions of the age of the church, that is the past 2,000 years since Jesus was here is the age of the church.

Some people think that as you go from the church of Ephesus to the church of Smyrna, as you go through each of the churches, they represent a successive portion of the church age. So when you get to the Church of Philadelphia, it's near the end of the list. Some people say that the Church of Philadelphia is the church, the faithful church in the last days, and that the last church, Laodicea, is the unfaithful church in the last days.

So that's how some people understand these seven churches. Actually, there's nothing in Revelation that encourages this interpretation. It is something that some commentator came up with and it sounded good and it seems to be something that can be defended from some of the details that are mentioned of each of the churches that correspond in some way with what we know about the church in different times of church history and so forth.

And so some have felt that when you go from Ephesus to Smyrna to Pergamos to Thyatira to Sardis and Philadelphia and Laodicea, that what you're doing is moving forward through church history. This is apparently maybe something you've heard because you're asking, does this church represent some period of time? I don't find any real biblical exegetical reason to say that these churches do represent periods of time.

If they do, it's a mystery that is not mentioned. There's no hint of it. If it's something that somebody has discovered by divine revelation since the book was written, so be it. I can't assess whether that person had divine revelation or not, but the Bible itself does not tell us that these churches represent anything at all but themselves. These were actual churches that existed in John's time in these cities.

The conditions that Jesus describes are conditions that existed in those churches at that time. Now, are there any churches today that are like the Church of Philadelphia? Probably there are. In fact, I would say there probably are churches that are like each of these different churches. Each church had its own strengths and weaknesses. And the portrait of each church can probably be found to resemble the portrait of some church or another today as well.

There probably are churches like the Church of Philadelphia, but that doesn't mean that there's some kind of a strain or genetic hereditary passing down of the qualities of the Church of Philadelphia to other churches. It's just that in every age, each church takes on its own spiritual complexion based on the kind of people that are in it and the quality of their walk with God.

Some churches do resemble more the Church of Laodicea, some do resemble the Church of Philadelphia, some do look like the Church of Pergamos or Thyatira or Ephesus or Smyrna. This is sometimes the case, but there's nothing that the Bible is suggesting, I mean that you could draw from the text from reading it, that would suggest that this is intended to be a model of the church in general at a certain period of time. That's simply the speculation of some commentators and I wouldn't necessarily put my stamp of approval on it.

All right. We got a call from Brian in New York. Brian, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Brian: Oh, hi. Thanks, Steve. So I just had a question on anger and when is it okay to be angry, since the Bible says you can be angry but don't sin and obviously there's a couple of instances where Jesus is angry? I have listened to your talk on refusing to be offended, but one thing it didn't really address was anger at injustice, whether it's injustice against other people or even us included, just the whole idea of people not acting in a just manner.

Steve Gregg: Yeah, my lecture on refuse to be offended is strictly concerned with offenses done against you personally, your responsibility to handle things that are done to you offensively. But I don't in that lecture go off into the question of being properly offended by injustice in the abstract or in the case of other people who are victims. Certainly when Jesus drove the money changers out of the temple, he appears to have been angry.

But he was not angry for himself. They hadn't come against him at that point. That was his Father's house, and that was the people who were supposed to be able to come there and pray who were being taken advantage of by the money changers and he was angry at this abuse of his Father's house. He was not personally angry at some offense given to him privately or himself.

We also know that in Mark chapter three, when Jesus healed on the Sabbath, there was a time when he looked on the, it says in Mark 3:5, he looked around on the Pharisees with anger, being grieved at the hardness of their hearts. Now he was angry at them because they were misrepresenting God and indicating that God cared more about whether you work on the Sabbath than whether someone gets healed or not because the Pharisees were refusing to let him heal on the Sabbath.

And so they cared more about the Sabbath than about people, and this made him angry too. So there is a place for righteous anger. And as you point out, Ephesians 4 says be angry but do not sin, and that itself is a quote from Psalm 4, if I'm not mistaken. But when is it right to be angry? Well, it's right to be angry when it's frankly when it's right to be angry.

And the way that we would understand that would be if I am disinterestedly angry, that is it's not because I got hurt, it's not because I'm offended, it's not because my rights have been trampled upon because I should be able to forgive that just like Jesus forgave when he was on the cross, said, "Father, forgive them, they don't know what they do," or Stephen said to those who were stoning him, he said, "Father, do not lay this sin to their charge."

Now when it was a sin against himself, he was not angry at them. He was disinterestedly angry at injustice and misrepresentation of God, which hurt people, hurt their relationship with God and hurt them in other ways too. And to be angry on behalf of other people can be a godly thing. And being angry isn't always something that you have absolute control over whether anger arises or not.

It's a little bit like fear. The Bible says don't be afraid, but fear is a very natural instinct and not a sinful one even because animals have it and they're not sinful. Animals are fearful because it's a survival instinct. If a tiger walks into this room right now, my adrenaline's going to go off. I'm going to feel a sensation of fear because it'll surprise me to see a tiger in my house, and also I'll be aware of danger.

On the other hand, what you do with fear or what you do with anger is the thing. I mean, lots of things will cause anger to arise or other things will cause fear to arise. These are both emotions that have their own proper place. They both are intended to motivate people to proper action. Saul, when he was made king, it says, heard about a terrible injustice done to the people up on the western shore of the Jordan, and there was an invasion coming.

The invaders wanted to pluck out the right eyes of all the soldiers in the city if they surrendered. And when Saul heard about this, it says the Spirit of the Lord came on him and he was angry and he mobilized the troops and went and rescued these people. Now he got angry because the Spirit of the Lord came on him. It's like anger in that case was a fruit of the Spirit.

Now he wasn't angry at someone doing something to him. It was just hearing about this. When you hear about human trafficking, for example, or you hear about child abuse, especially heinous abuse of children or whatever, that should make people angry. But we shouldn't walk around just consumed with anger. We should do something about it.

Fear, if a tiger walks in the room, my fear is to motivate me to put something between me and the tiger. I'm supposed to do something about it. Same thing with anger. A righteous anger over someone else's plight is something that should motivate you to constructive action. But when Paul says be angry but do not sin, I think what he's saying is, okay, the anger has come. Evaluate it.

Is this a legitimate anger? If it's not, then put it away. If it is legitimate, then do something about it, but don't just let it linger. Don't let the sun go down on your wrath. You can't just walk around angry all the time. But there is a place for being righteously angry at certain things. And like the emotion of fear, the emotion of anger can motivate you to do a wise or a good thing.

And that's when it's okay. But when you're just angry and it makes you want to retaliate against somebody for something they did to you or just makes you dislike them or hate them or whatever, then that obviously is sinful anger and it's selfish anger.

Our next caller is Daryl from Sacramento, California. Daryl, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Daryl: Hey, thanks Steve. About the Romans book, when it talks about blindness happening to Israel, is that the same as faith and blindness controlled by God to give to whomsoever he will? I mean, with the believer or with the unbelievers.

Steve Gregg: You mean, has God sovereignly just chosen to blind certain people, like Israel, just because he's sovereign? Is that what you mean?

Daryl: Yeah.

Steve Gregg: I don't believe it teaches that. I mean, certainly I believe in the sovereignty of God, but I don't believe the sovereignty of God doctrine teaches that God just unilaterally blinds people for no particular reason. Calvinism teaches that there's no reason that we can know. It's in the hidden counsels of God why he blinds some people and shows mercy on others so that they can be saved and so forth.

I'm not a Calvinist, so I don't see it that way. I understand the Bible to give us the reasons why things happen. God resists the proud and he gives grace to the humble. Says that like twice in the New Testament and once in the Old Testament. It's a big, a major doctrine. God gives grace to those who humble themselves and he resists the proud.

And likewise, whoever believes will be saved and whoever does not believe will be condemned. And so salvation and discipline and judgment from God don't come without a cause. I believe that the blinding of Israel is like the hardening of Pharaoh's heart. It was an act of God, to be sure, but it was a judicial act of God. It was a judgment act of God on people who were rebelling against him.

They were rebellious against him at an important level. When Jesus came to them and they didn't want him, that was a tremendous rebellion, and God blinded them, some of them, not all of them. The ones who received Christ he didn't blind. The ones who actually followed Christ, those Israelites are saved. But so Paul says blindness in part has happened to Israel.

What he means part of the ethnic Israel is blinded, the part that didn't believe in Christ. But the other part that did believe in Christ is not blinded. The blindness is a judgment that came upon them for their rejection of Christ, just like the hardening of Pharaoh's heart was a judgment that came upon him for his wicked leadership and wicked choices he'd make and his rebellion against Yahweh.

So it's not necessary to understand it in a Calvinist way, that God has just decided, "Well, I think I don't have anything good to do today except maybe go out and blind a few people and maybe I'll save a few people too." God has policies. He has created us to be interactive with him in the sense that we are to respond to his grace, to his overtures, to his word, to his self-revelation.

And once we have seen it, we either respond submissively or we respond rebelliously. And if rebellious, then blindness and hardness and things like that are sometimes the results that God imposes on those who have been rebellious as a judgment act.

Daryl: I see. So about faith, is that a gift from God or is that something we have to conjure up ourselves?

Steve Gregg: Well, it's not a matter of conjuring anything. We believe many things, don't we? I mean, do you believe that George Washington was the first president of the United States?

Daryl: Yeah.

Steve Gregg: Yeah, you didn't conjure that up. You just someone told you and you figured they're a reliable source and so you believed. I mean, that's not conjuring something up. That's just responding to something that you judged to be reliable. So now you don't need a special gift from God to believe George Washington was the first president of the United States and, in my opinion, you don't need a special gift from God to believe that Jesus is the son of God.

However, we don't believe in Jesus unless God has done some prior gracious acts. For example, he's allowed us to hear the gospel. He's allowed us to be convicted by his Holy Spirit. He's done many things dealing in our life probably to soften our hearts to bring us to a point where we're more likely to submit. Jesus said, "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him," and this drawing of God can take many forms.

It certainly includes God's dealing in our lives, his allowing us to hear the gospel, his convicting us of our sin by his Holy Spirit, and those kinds of things that God does that are preliminary to us believing. Once he has done those things, we have a choice. He can convict us, he can deal with us, he can have the gospel preached to us, but we can still say no. We can still say, "I don't want that."

But we can also say, "I do. I want to believe that. I want to believe that. I think it's true. I'm persuaded of it and therefore I'm going to be a follower of Christ and a believer." That's a choice we make. But it's not in a vacuum. It's not as if God doesn't do something first. God is always prior. God has done everything prior.

I mean, even if we've done nothing but see the stars in the sky and wonder at how great the God must be who made them, this is one thing that God has done, provided a witness of himself to help prepare us to believe. But our choice to believe is still ours.

Daryl: Okay. Thank you. I like that response. Thank you very much.

Steve Gregg: Okay, Daryl. I appreciate your call.

Daryl: God bless.

Steve Gregg: God bless you too. We're going to take a break here. It's at the bottom of the hour. We've got some of our stations leaving our network and some of our listeners will not be able to hear us on the radio in the second half hour. Most of our stations, however, do carry the whole hour, so most of you will still be here.

Those of you who are not going to be able to hear the second half hour on the radio, you can hear it. You can hear the whole show on our website, thenarrowpath.com, where we stream the program every day, and the archives are there. You can listen to them live or later. Also, there's a telephone app you can get from our website. The Narrow Path is the name of the app and you can hear the program that way, all the whole hour.

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Small is the gate and narrow is the path that leads to life. Welcome to The Narrow Path with Steve Gregg. Steve has nothing to sell you today, but everything to give you. When the radio show is over, go to thenarrowpath.com where you can study, learn and enjoy with free topical audio teachings, blog articles, verse-by-verse teachings and archives of all The Narrow Path radio shows.

We thank you for supporting the listener-supported Narrow Path with Steve Gregg. See you at thenarrowpath.com. Welcome to The Narrow Path radio program, hosted by Steve Gregg. Steve is not in the studio today, so calls from listeners will not be able to be taken. In the place of the usual format, we've put together some of the best calls from past programs.

They cover a variety of topics important to anyone interested in the Bible and Christianity. In addition to the radio program, The Narrow Path has a website you can go to, www.thenarrowpath.com, where you can find hundreds of resources that can all be downloaded for free. And now, please enjoy this special collection of calls to Steve Gregg and The Narrow Path.

Our next caller is Alex calling from Arizona. Alex, welcome to The Narrow Path.

Alex: Thank you, Steve. My question today is, I know when Jesus was being arrested to be crucified, there was a scuffle went on and it says that Peter was involved in it and his clothes were torn off and he slipped out of his clothes to get away. Was he naked when he escaped? Because it says he followed from a distance and was allowed into by John to get in and stand by the fire. But it also says that his clothes were torn off to help get away from the soldiers. And I often wondered how can that, did he have these, was he standing naked and just tore all his clothes or something like a sheet, as they wear like sheets over there, and did he just get tore right out of his clothes? And was it common for to see naked people walking around or was it how did that go about?

Steve Gregg: Okay, I'll be glad to answer that question. First of all, different Gospels tell us slightly different details, none of them contradictory, but nonetheless different about some of the things that happened at the time of Jesus' arrest. And Peter does figure prominently in those stories because, of course, we know he drew a sword and sought to defend Jesus and Jesus rebuked him for that, told him to put the sword away.

And Peter and all the other disciples fled at that time. Now, when you talk about Peter's clothes being torn off, you're thinking about another person. The person that you're thinking of is in Mark chapter 14, and only Mark chapter 14 mentions this particular unnamed person in verses 51 and 52. It says, "Now a certain young man followed him, having linen cloth thrown around his naked body. And the young men laid hold of him, and he left the linen cloth and fled from them naked."

Now this just says it was a certain young man. It does not identify him as Peter. Peter, of course, was one of the many disciples that fled at this time, but this young man apparently was not Peter, but was somebody else. And we read of him not a word in Matthew or Luke or in John. Only Mark mentions him and, in fact, there's many who believe that Mark is the young man that is mentioned in this way.

Many times the writers of the Gospels or of Acts will speak of themselves but not by name. They'll just mention their own involvement in some of the stories, but they don't mention themselves by name sometimes. And that being so, some have thought this was Mark. In any case, it was not Peter. But it still is a strange story. So Peter ran off with all his clothes intact and when he went and warmed himself by the fire at the high priest's mansion, he was clothed every bit as much as when Jesus was arrested.

So it wasn't Peter who lost his clothing. But still, the story about Mark, or whoever it was, losing his clothing and running off naked into the night, it's almost a, I mean it's a sad thing, obviously, that someone would desert Jesus rather than stand courageously by him, but on the other hand, it's kind of humorous. And there is a scenario that has been suggested, and I'll give it to you with this caveat.

We have no idea if this scenario is true. But it's a very realistic possibility. Let me just say that before I give it to you. We know that Mark's mother's house at a point later in time was a regular meeting place for the church in Jerusalem. We know this because in Acts chapter 12, when Peter escaped from prison, he went to Mark's mother's house where the church was gathered having a prayer meeting.

And many people think it was Mark's mother's house also where Jesus had had the Last Supper. We don't know whose house it was, but it was somebody friendly to him who hosted him and his disciples at the Last Supper. And if this was Mark's mother's house, as many people suggest as a real possibility, then Mark himself, who was probably only a teenager, just a young man, was very possibly living there too.

And since Jesus and his disciples were apparently there late into the night, it's possible that Mark had gone to bed and, in those hot climates, may have slept without any clothes on but just with a bedsheet over him. Now Jesus then and his disciples would be having the Last Supper upstairs in the upper room while Mark was maybe gone to bed, but perhaps not asleep, downstairs in his own room.

And when Jesus and the disciples left the house, because everybody knew who Jesus, everybody who knew Jesus knew that there was a price on his head. They knew he was in danger. And when the disciples and Jesus left the house in the middle of the night, it's possible that Mark's curiosity got the best of him and he wanted to follow and see what would happen. However, if he took the time to put on his clothes, he might lose them in the night.

So the argument is he perhaps grabbed his bedsheet and had nothing else to wear on him and he wrapped himself in the bedsheet and followed along to see what was going to go on. And he found himself in, we might say, the wrong place at the wrong time when the arrest took place in the garden. Mark found himself to be in danger of arrest himself and started to flee away and perhaps a soldier or somebody tried to grab him, got a hold of the sheet instead, and he left the sheet behind and fled away without any clothes on, probably back home to get his clothes.

That would be a scenario that nobody knows if it's true, but it is not an unreasonable scenario and certainly Mark must have a reason for mentioning it. That Matthew leaves it out and Luke leaves it out and John leaves it out, but only Mark mentions it, has been thought by many to be Mark's own way of testifying to his own failure and his own cowardice, how that he too had had opportunity to stand and suffer with Christ, but he had run away also.

The fact that he'd be wearing a sheet and nothing else suggests that he had gone there without having taken the time to put on his clothes because, no, people didn't just walk around naked under their sheets in public usually. So the suggestion is he was probably his sleep was interrupted and he probably just got up and, so that he might not lose Jesus and the disciples as they traveled through the streets, he just wrapped himself up and followed.

That would make sense, and that it would be Mark is fairly likely by two coincidences. One is that Mark's mother's house is known to have been a place where the disciples sometimes met, so the upper room where Jesus had the Last Supper might have been there in Mark's mother's house and Mark could have been sleeping there. And the other thing is that Mark alone mentions it in the Gospel, which may be his way of sort of testifying to his own failure to stand with Jesus.

It's hard to imagine any other reason to mention this particular little detail. I mean, it's not extremely important except perhaps to Mark himself. Anyway, that would be my answer to you. If you thought it was Peter that ran away without clothes on, that was not reading quite carefully enough. It was somebody else unnamed, I think very possibly Mark.

Dwayne: Did you ever walk into a movie in the middle and have trouble making sense of the story because you missed the earlier developments of the plot and the introduction of the main characters? As a Christian, you've encountered Christianity at a rather late point in a story that began 2,000 years ago. Besides the challenge of making sense of the story, you have the responsibility of playing a role in the continuing drama of the church.

Do you have a firm grasp of what happened before you came in or what it all means? Do you know who first came up with the doctrines you now hold or how and why your denomination came into being? In a 30-lecture series titled "Church History," Steve Gregg covers all this and more. This series, as well as hundreds of other stimulating lectures, can be downloaded in MP3 format without charge from our website, www.thenarrowpath.com. There is never any charge for anything at our website. That web address again is www.thenarrowpath.com.

Steve Gregg: Welcome back to The Narrow Path. My name is Steve Gregg. All right, let's talk to Mike from Lincoln, California. Mike, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Mike: Yeah, thanks Steve. My wife and I just got back from a three-week road trip into the Southwest United States where we saw some of the most beautiful results of God's creation in Zion and Bryce, Arches National Park, then we ended up in the Grand Canyon. And I have a creation question for you. I know Genesis says that God created everything in seven days, right?

Steve Gregg: Technically six, yeah.

Mike: Yeah. My question is, I know there's two schools of thought. Is a day in the creation 24 hours or is it a period of time? And I just wanted to get your take on what you think that would be.

Steve Gregg: Okay, did when you went to the Grand Canyon, did you by any chance visit the Creation Museum there?

Mike: No, we did not.

Steve Gregg: Well, that's a shame because they have a lot of information, geological and otherwise.

Mike: Well, there's information I know all around the Grand Canyon and they're saying that it took several million years to gouge it out.

Steve Gregg: Yeah, but the Creation Museum there takes the other view. They take the view that the Grand Canyon was formed somewhat rapidly through events associated with the flood. And it's an interesting museum from what I understand. I've talked to people who've been there. In my own thinking is that the story as it's told in Genesis seems to suggest six literal 24-hour days.

This is not something I'm as adamant about as some people are, but I believe that the evidence would point that direction.

Mike: Well, my other question is, is it something that we won't even know about until we get to heaven someday, I mean, or is it something we don't even have to worry about as far as trying to figure out whether or not it was a period of time or one 24-hour day?

Steve Gregg: Some people think you can know about it before you go to heaven. That is to say, people who are quite confident in their own interpretation of Genesis one, they can say, "Well, we can know by just believing what Genesis one says." The problem is, of course, there's several different ways that some people have looked at Genesis one, and although they can't all be right, they can all think they're right and they can all make arguments for their position.

So I take one position, though I'm not entirely closed to being corrected if evidence, biblical and otherwise, requires it. But on the other question, does it really matter? I don't really know why it would. Some people say it matters, and especially the young earth creationists would say, in some cases, they would say it matters because it has to do with the credibility of the Bible itself.

They would say, if you don't take Genesis one literally, and if you don't believe God created in six 24-hour days, then you don't respect the Bible, you're not taking the Bible seriously, and so forth and so on. But see, some of those same people say same thing about the book of Revelation. If you don't take the book of Revelation literally, then you're not taking the Bible seriously.

That obviously is an extrapolation that doesn't make any sense at all because Revelation is not written as a literal book. Genesis one might be. It looks like it is. It looks like it's written as literal history. But there are some people who say they think it's not and therefore it's not for them a question of whether the Bible's reliable as much as whether the Bible's telling us what it wants us to know in literal terms or in some other terms.

And this is one of those things that is debated and probably a person who gives some degree of respect to the evidence on all sides might take the view that I don't know which one is really true, but I'm not sure what would be changed by knowing. I'm not planning to get in a time machine and go back anywhere further back than 6,000 years. If I was, then it might matter.

I mean, if the earth didn't exist more than 6,000 years and I set the time machine for 10,000 years ago, I might find myself in serious trouble. But I'm not planning to make such a journey and therefore what happened 6,000 years ago, if it had happened six million years ago or four billion years ago instead of 6,000, it hardly has any impact on me on my life. It's still, you see, many people think that we need to hold fast to the young earth creation because, of course, the theory of evolution depends so strongly on the old earth model and atheism and naturalism depends entirely on the theory of evolution.

So they feel that if you allow for an old earth creation, that you've given away too much ground to the atheists who then can postulate evolution taking place in that period of time. Well, modern studies in the complexity of proteins and the cell and things like that make it very clear that even if the old earth view is true, that is even if the earth is 4.5 billion years old, that's not long enough. That's not long enough for evolution.

In fact, it's not even long enough for one protein to evolve from amino acids. So the old earth doesn't really help the atheist at all. They've still got to deal with the issues of design and information and things like that that cannot be accounted for no matter how much time you give them. So in my opinion, whether God created things four billion years ago or 6,000 years ago, and I lean toward the latter view, it's still got to be God.

It's still got to be God doing it, and the time he took to do it is not something that matters a great deal to me as it does to some people. But it's, you know, clearly there are some things we can be wrong about and our lives are not negatively impacted. I would think being wrong about the age of the earth would be among them.

Mike: The other thing I was going to mention, before God created this world that we live in, God's eternal, right? And there is no time with God. And so at that point there was no 24-hour day because the earth hadn't been created at that point, right?

Steve Gregg: Well right, there were no days before there were days. Yeah, the first day, the first day was after the creation of the world, obviously. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and then when he said let there be light and there was light and darkness, that was the first day. So there were no days before that, but there were days after that.

Mike: All right, Steve. Well, I just wanted to get your take on that and I know it's a debatable subject and we spend hours and hours debating things like that, but I just wanted to get your take on it.

Steve Gregg: Yeah, if you happen to go back to the Grand Canyon, which you might not soon since you just went there, you should look up the Creation Museum there.

Mike: Yeah, for some reason we missed that. I'm not sure why, but we did. But yeah, we'll check that out next time.

Steve Gregg: All right, Mike. Thanks for your call.

Mike: Thanks so much, Steve. Bye-bye.

Steve Gregg: All right, bye now. Our next caller is Ron from Los Angeles, California. Ron, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Ron: Thank you, Steve. I have a couple of questions. I'm a devoted Christian, born-again Christian, and on my job, I deal with a lot of different people of different faith. Two individuals have asked me some very important questions and I wanted to bring it forward to you because I didn't know how to handle the question. One of them, since you're talking about Book of Genesis, this was a atheist that asked me why did God created us? And I looked it up and I think chapter three in Genesis, God created Adam to tend the garden. That's the only thing I found in that particular...

Steve Gregg: Well, that can't actually be the whole answer because the next question is why did God create a garden? You know, it almost makes it sound like creating the garden was inevitable and then he had to create a man sort of as an afterthought to take care of it, as if creating the garden was somehow more significant than creating the man. Now the Bible indicates that he created the garden so that there'd be a great perfect place for the man to live.

The man was the main idea, man and woman, mankind. We read in Genesis 1 verses 26 and 27 that God said, "Let us make man in our own image." Now this is after he created all the animals. So he had all the animals but he said, "Now let's make a man in our own image and let us give him dominion over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and so forth, all the things that are made."

So the purpose of making man was to give him dominion, that there'd be somebody who had some of the same characteristics God has, as opposed to the animals who didn't share those characteristics. So we might ask ourselves, well, what characteristics does God have and man share with God but which the animals don't have? And I think we'd have to include in the list would be rationality, creativity, moral consciousness and things like that, which animals don't seem to have, God certainly does and humans have.

And so there are traits that the human specie has that no other specie has been given, and these traits are those that put us into a shared relationship with God at a level beyond that which any animal can know. Now why did God want to do that? Well, I guess we'd ask why does anyone create anything? Why does a songwriter write songs? Why does a painter paint paintings? Why does a novelist write novels?

We could say, "Well, just to make money." I hardly think that's it because people who want to make money should choose some other field than those if they want to guarantee making money. Just going and working in a cubicle will guarantee them more money than being an artist or a musician or author in most cases, except for very rare cases. They don't do it for the money. They do it because of a passion that they have and a creative impulse that they have, which no doubt is something of that image of God.

God had that impulse very clearly. He's a lot like us in that respect. He likes to create things. Why do inventors invent things? Obviously, creativity is part of our nature, it must be part of God's too. So he wanted to create things. He created the world, he created the plants, he created the animals. And then what he really wanted was something better than all of that, and that is like kids.

He wanted children, people like himself. And his situation was analogous, I think, to a person who's a rancher and he's got all kinds of livestock and he cares for his livestock and they're of value to him, but he's not happy just having animals. He wants to have kids. He wants to have offspring to whom he can leave the ranch. He wants them to grow up and take over the ranch. And he wants not just animals but humans because, frankly, only humans, being rational and free agents, can take over the family business.

But more than that, only rational human beings can really relate to a father and mother in the way that parents really want someone to relate to. Lots of people don't want kids, they want cats and dogs and goldfish and hamsters, but they don't want kids. Those people are in the minority historically. Historically most people have had an impulse not only to have pets but to have children, something like themselves, something they can relate to face-to-face in rational conversation and that bear some responsibility in a relationship and to whom they can assign responsibilities.

And I think that impulse was the same as God had. God had animals, he had plants, he wanted someone to watch over the thing for him, to take care of it, to have dominion over it. And he wanted those people, he wanted those creatures to be beings that had the capacity to do that as well as the capacity to be in a relationship with him. Now all that I just said the Bible doesn't spell all that out.

But I think the Bible implies that everywhere, that God created the earth to be inhabited by people, and we know he made people in order that they would have dominion over the earth. And we know that he couldn't have given dominion over the earth to the giraffes, they couldn't rule the earth, or even the dolphins or even the apes couldn't rule the earth. They just don't have the capacity to rule anything.

They don't have the rational and responsible powers that humans have. So God made creatures more like himself in that respect and gave them this responsibility. So that'd be in a nutshell why I think he made people.

Ron: Great. Thank you. I really appreciate that. My next question, he's a Muslim and his question to me was was Satan thrown from heaven before Adam and Eve was into the garden? Or because he's saying that they were tempted by Satan. So was Satan already thrown from heaven before Adam and Eve was created? I didn't have that answer.

Steve Gregg: Yeah, there's only two places in the Bible that mention Satan being thrown from heaven. One is in Luke chapter 10, where Jesus said, "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven." And the other is in Revelation chapter 12 and verse nine, which says the dragon was cast out of heaven. And there are some other passages that may allude to this.

These passages do not seem to refer to something that happened back in primeval history but rather something that happened to Satan as a result of Christ's ministry and his death and resurrection. Jesus said, for example, in John 12:31, he said, "Now is the judgment of this world. Now shall the prince of this world," he means Satan, "now shall the prince of this world be cast out."

Now Satan in the garden was certainly a wicked tempter. If he had been better before, as many people believe he was, then he must have degenerated before Adam and Eve met him. But at least at the point where Adam and Eve were created and met him, he was certainly evil. That's not really something that's questionable.

Ron: Yeah. And the last question is about prayer. Now what is prayer? I mean, like when I try to talk to people about praying to God, I explain to them that it's a communication to God. That's the best way I can explain it to pray. I mean, Paul tells us to pray constantly.

Steve Gregg: There's no better way to explain it than that. It's talking to God, especially presenting your requests to God. Prayer, the word prayer usually refers to petitions, asking for things. Now communication with God includes more than just asking for things, but the part that is asking is the prayer. There is such thing as praising God.

There's such a thing as even hearing from God. But prayer refers to offering petitions. And so what is prayer? It's talking to your Father. It's a child talking to his or her Father and asking for the things they believe that the Father would like to supply. And so what is prayer? It's talking to your Father.

Some people think of prayer as more like a discipline. Some people think it just kind of changes your outlook on things, it kind of just makes you more resigned to your troubles or whatever and that's a good thing. Some people see it as almost magical. People say, "I believe in prayer." Well, I don't know if I believe in prayer, I believe in God.

Prayer is simply talking to God, and I pray to him because I believe in him. I don't know that prayer will always get me what I want. In fact, I know that it sometimes does not. But I trust that it'll always get God what he wants. And it is my way of asking him to get what he wants. That's why Jesus said when you pray say, "Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven."

It's our way of inviting God to come into the territory that he's given to us. Remember you asked, why did God make us? He made us to rule the world. Well, that means he lets us do it unless we ask him to come and help. And that's what prayer is. Prayer is inviting God to intervene into the world that he's given us responsibility for. But we can use and exercise that responsibility by asking him to intervene, and that's what prayer I believe does.

I'm afraid we're out of time for today's program, but there's more this week. I appreciate your calls today. You've been listening to The Narrow Path. This ministry is listener-supported. We buy the time on the radio stations. That's what the money is used for. It's not used for much of anything else. We don't have any payroll or any office or overhead, no secretaries, nothing.

We just pay out the money to the radio stations so that we can do these shows day after day. If you'd like to help us stay on the air you can write to The Narrow Path, P.O. Box 1730, Temecula, California, 92593. Or go to our website, thenarrowpath.com, where all the resources are free, although you can donate there if you wish at thenarrowpath.com.

Small is the gate and narrow is the path that leads to life. Welcome to The Narrow Path with Steve Gregg. Steve has nothing to sell you today, but everything to give you. When the radio show is over, go to thenarrowpath.com where you can study, learn and enjoy with free topical audio teachings, blog articles, verse-by-verse teachings and archives of all The Narrow Path radio shows.

We thank you for supporting the listener-supported Narrow Path with Steve Gregg. See you at thenarrowpath.com. Welcome to The Narrow Path radio program, hosted by Steve Gregg. Steve is not in the studio today, so calls from listeners will not be able to be taken. In the place of the usual format, we've put together some of the best calls from past programs.

They cover a variety of topics important to anyone interested in the Bible and Christianity. In addition to the radio program, The Narrow Path has a website you can go to, www.thenarrowpath.com, where you can find hundreds of resources that can all be downloaded for free. And now, please enjoy this special collection of calls to Steve Gregg and The Narrow Path.