The Narrow Path

Steve Gregg: Good afternoon and welcome to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we're live for an hour each weekday afternoon taking your calls in a live program for an uninterrupted hour. You can call in and ask questions about the Bible if you have some we can discuss them. You can call if you have a different viewpoint from the host. That's always interesting. We have a couple of lines open right now. You can access if you call right now the number is 844-484-5737. That's 844-484-5737.

Without further ado, I think we'll just go to the phones and talk to Jimmy in Staten Island, New York. Hi, Jimmy. Thanks for calling.

Jimmy: Hi, Steve. Thanks for taking my call. I understand that you believe babies are born innocent. If babies are born righteous and spiritually alive, not needing the new birth, why do they die physically as an adult does whose physical bodies are under the curse?

Steve Gregg: This is a question that Calvinists often ask. The basis of the argument is that they say that death, physical death, is penal. That is, it's a penalty. It's not natural. This is assuming that human beings were made immortal but because of sin they became penalized with the prospect of dying. Therefore, the fact that people die is not natural. It's not just a natural consequence of being alive. It is a penalty.

Now, here's the thing. Obviously, why would anyone die who has not become guilty and doesn't deserve the penalty? That would include babies. If babies are innocent, why do they die? I first encountered this argument many years ago in D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones's commentary on Romans, if I'm not mistaken. It sounded pretty good at first, but of course back then I held the traditional view that I'd been raised with, namely that people are naturally immortal. So an interruption in their life is strange. You'd expect them to live forever unless they were being punished for something.

Now, I don't read that in the Bible. The Bible does not indicate that humans are naturally immortal. In fact, 1 Timothy 6:16 says that only God, or only Christ—it's not clear which Paul is speaking of in this case—but he says he alone possesses immortality. Now, immortality is of course the inability to die. You're not subject to death. Anything that isn't immortal does die. Now, we're told that no creature possesses immortality. Only God does. God alone possesses immortality.

There's nothing in the Bible that suggests that human beings are naturally immortal. In fact, if anything, even John 3:16 suggests that unless people believe in Christ, they will perish, but if they believe in Christ, they will not perish but have immortality, have eternal life. Now, this is a consistent teaching of Scripture. God told Adam and Eve the day you eat of this fruit you'll die. He didn't say you'll live forever but in a very unhappy situation. He said you'll die if you eat it. Paul said the wages of sin is death. Ezekiel says the soul that sins shall die. Actually, there simply is no statement in the Scripture that says that human beings are immortal by nature and therefore no matter what they do, they'll have to live on in eternal punishment or eternal bliss. That's just not a statement of Scripture anywhere.

But what is a statement of Scripture is that only God is immortal and that we can have or share in His immortality by being in Christ. That's the unique thing about Jesus, is that He includes us in Himself. When we are in Christ, we share in His privileges, which includes His life, which is immortal. Think of it as an illustration of a vine and branches. It seems fairly reasonable to do so.

The vine has life in it. Now, if Christ is the vine, this is eternal life because He possesses immortality. Now, if a vine has branches, these branches are in the vine and therefore the immortal life that is in the vine is also in the branch. By being in Christ, by being in the vine, the branch also shares in the life that is in the vine. But of course there's a verse in Scripture, John 15:6, that says if somebody does not remain in Christ, they are cast forth as a branch. That is, they don't remain in the vine. What happens to them then? It says they wither up and they're gathered and burned. Why would they do that? Because they don't have life in them anymore.

But wasn't it eternal life that they had in the vine? Yes, it was, but they're not in the vine anymore, so they don't have it there anymore. It says in 1 John chapter 5, I think it's 11 and 12, this is the message that God has given to us: eternal life and this life is in His Son. So it's not that we have it in ourselves; it is in Jesus. It says he who has the Son has life; he that does not have the Son of God has not life. That's referring to the eternal life that was mentioned in the previous verse.

So we don't have eternal life if we're not in Christ. If we are in Christ, we share in His because we become identified with Him. We become part of His body, part of His flesh and His bones. We become part of Him and His life is in us just like the life of the vine is in the life of all the attached branches. But become detached and not remain in Christ, there's no immortality that's inherent in us.

So this is what the Bible teaches. I was taught differently growing up and most Christians I think have been taught traditional things, which mainly come from Greek philosophy and certainly not from the Bible, that all people are immortal by nature. I don't believe that. Now, that being so, this is your question. Why do babies die even if they're innocent?

Well, we might ask why do Christians die even though they're forgiven? If being justified in Christ means I'm in the same state before God as if I had never sinned, I'm innocent then, why would I physically die? Probably same reason anyone does, because I'm mortal. We are physically mortal, but we have those who are in Christ the promise of immortality in the next world, in the next life. That's in Christ.

But physically, nobody is immortal. Even Christ wasn't. Christ Himself died and then came back to life, but He came back immortal. If we are in Him, we will come back immortal, too, in Him. So the baby's status—I mean, it's still controversial. People could say, well, I think the baby's born guilty of Adam's sin. This is what Augustine taught. I don't see anything in the Bible that would support that thought, thankfully, because it'd be a monstrous doctrine, that a baby who's done nothing would be treated like a guilty rebel even though they're not a guilty rebel because somebody in their ancestry had done so. That is simply against the general teaching of Scripture. I have no idea how Augustine convinced so many people of it, except that he did so at a time where most Christians didn't have Bibles to read and had to just go along with whatever their teachers taught them.

But it stuck even after the Bible became available to everybody. People still read it through that grid they were told, that babies are guilty of Adam's sin. Nothing in the Bible mentions this and it certainly doesn't make any sense, but it's nonetheless what we were taught. We can read the Bible through that filter.

And that's what I did for many years because I'm human. I was raised reading the Bible and I was taught evangelical doctrines of a certain kind and I read the Bible to confirm them. But when you begin to read the Bible not to confirm your bias, but you read it to find out if your bias maybe needs to be adjusted, then you begin to see a lot of things we were taught are just not there, in fact the opposite of what we were taught is often there.

So a baby dies because it's mortal. Adults die because they're mortal. Even saved adults who are going to live forever with Jesus die because they're mortal, because mortality has come upon us. When Adam and Eve were created, they were mortal, but they were potentially immortal because there was a tree of life in the garden. They apparently didn't eat of it, but they were told, or God says in Genesis 3, if they eat of the tree of life, they will live forever.

So this was an option for them. If they had not sinned, if they had not been banished from access to this tree of life, if they had been able to keep eating of this tree of life, they would have never died. Not because they were immortal, but because the tree of life would confer immortality to them. But they were banished from that tree and therefore their natural mortality took over and people died after that, even good people. And that's why babies die, too. That's why all humans die and animals as well.

And I personally believe that in the case of animals, I think they would have probably died whether Adam had sinned or not because animals are not anymore immortal than humans are. But man's sin alienated him from that which could have conferred immortality to him, that is, access to the tree of life. But unfortunately man chose not to and therefore every human being ever born has been mortal. There've been a couple strange cases like Elijah and Enoch who might not have died, and we don't understand the exceptions there, but certainly they are the exception. In general, Hebrews 9:27 says it's appointed unto men once to die and that would include good men, saved men, righteous men, innocent men, innocent babies, too.

So this argument that babies must not be innocent because they wouldn't die then comes from a presupposition that humans are naturally immortal and death only comes as a penalty. Now, I would say it is a penalty upon us that we were banished from the tree of life, but this didn't give us a new quality called mortality. It simply prevented us from tapping into the immortality that we could have had had we not sinned.

Jimmy: Steve, can I speak?

Steve Gregg: Sure.

Jimmy: Oh, great. First of all, Adam and Eve, they weren't born mortal. They had life. They were alive. They didn't receive mortality until they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Steve Gregg: Wait a minute. Your dog has life but it's mortal. Having life doesn't mean you're immortal. No, it does not.

Jimmy: Death passed upon the whole creation because of Adam's sin. When he disobeyed, he was cast out of the garden. We all need to be reconciled to God through Christ. But Jimmy, tell me how death came on all creation because of man. Well, the whole creation groaneth and travaileth waiting for the regeneration or something like that. Because we're alienated from God, yeah. But death came into the world through Adam. It passed upon all men. When Adam was sent forth from the garden, every human being in his loins was separated from God.

Steve Gregg: Well, let me jump in here because you're saying all the things I would have said because that's what Augustine said and we all thought Augustine was the Bible, apparently at one time. No, the Bible does not say that Adam brought death on all people. It says Adam introduced sin into the world, which is true. There was no sin before Adam sinned, at least no human sin.

And so Paul says in Romans 5:12, therefore just as through one man, that's Adam, sin entered the world. Okay, we have to grant that. Obviously there were no human sinners before Adam. He was the first one to introduce that into the world. And it says and death came through sin. Okay, so Adam introduced sin by sinning and he died. Physical death also, human death, came into the world because of that. Thus, it says, death spread to all men because all sinned.

Okay, death has spread to all men because we're all sinners. So I mean you can read into that an Augustinian view, but no one's obligated to do so.

Jimmy: Well, like I said, it doesn't say that Adam was mortal anywhere that I can see. He said in the day you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, dying you shall die. When he ate, the death was separation. They were sent out and eventually they died physically, but that separation was the death.

Steve Gregg: Well Jimmy, you're saying all the same things I would have said for years until I actually read the Scriptures to see if they say that.

Jimmy: But why does the baby die then? Why does a baby's body die if their soul is not subject to death? Why is their body? Are they righteous? Do they have to be in Christ?

Steve Gregg: No, I told you, I think I told you: all human bodies are subject to death—babies, adults, unsaved, saved—whether they have eternal life in heaven or not, their bodies are mortal. That's because physical mortality is the natural state of all physical living things. Everything that lives will die with, I mean, there are exceptions.

The last generation that is alive when Jesus comes back will be an exception. They, many of us will be alive, remain, will not die, but that's only because our mortal progress is interrupted by Jesus coming and resurrecting. If all the people at the end of the world who live and do not die because they get raptured, those people, if Jesus didn't come back in their lifetime, would die, too. They're as mortal as anybody else. It's just that some people won't die because there's going to be one final generation that is spared that because Jesus will happen to interrupt their lives before they die.

But dying is what happens. As you said, God said the day you eat that fruit, dying you shall die. Yeah, the process of death eventually would end in their dying. And so you and I are dying and we shall die unless of course Jesus comes in our lifetime, which I can't count on. Now, to say that death is that separation from God, Jimmy, you have to understand I said all those things, too, and not for a few years in my youth. I said those things into my 40s. It took that long for me to actually study out the Scripture and say, hey, I can't say that on biblical authority anymore.

That came from Augustine. It didn't come from the Bible. There's not anything in the Bible that says death means separation from God. Now, it is true that sin separates us from God. I'm not denying that. But that's talking about what sin does. Death is never defined as separation from God. It might include that, perhaps, but that's not a biblical definition. And people say that it is so that they can get around the problem that Adam and Eve didn't seem to die that same day physically. So the argument is, well, they died spiritually because they were separated from God.

Okay, I don't have any emotional resistance to that. All I'm saying is I don't have any dog in that fight. What you're saying could be true or not, since the Bible doesn't mention it. What I'm saying is, what the Bible does mention is that God alone possesses immortality. And since I'm not God and babies aren't God and no human being is God, therefore no one possesses immortality.

But you can have it as a gift from God. The gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord, the Bible says. So you have to be in Christ and then you have eternal life. But that doesn't mean you're not mortal. You're physically mortal still, even then. But you are saved. So when you die, you're on good terms with God and you are given, you'll be resurrected, too, in an immortal body just like Jesus was.

That's the answer to your question as I understand it. We can't argue this back and forth because we've been talking 20 minutes and my lines are full. But you asked a question, why do babies die if they're innocent? The answer I gave is because they're mortal and all mortal things do die. Thanks for your call, though. We'll talk again, I know, because we've done it many times.

Ryan in Lynnwood, Washington. Welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Ryan: Hey, brother. So the prophecies about Israel coming back to the land are seen by dispensationalists as yet future, but we can demonstrate that they were like Ezekiel was in the exile, there was some before the exile, but then there's the post-exilic ones.

Steve Gregg: Like Zechariah.

Ryan: Zechariah. Would the answer to that be to the dispensationalists that by the time Malachi was written, those waves of Jews returning had come back?

Steve Gregg: Well, there may have been a trickle of them coming back for hundreds of years after they began, but the big waves, yeah, the big return occurred beginning in 539 BC with the decree of Cyrus. So Zerubbabel and Joshua leading 50,000 Jews from Babylon was the initial fulfillment. Smaller groups came back with Ezra and with Nehemiah. Zechariah is the last prophet to mention Jews coming back from Babylon. Malachi doesn't mention it.

But Zechariah, of course, wrote while this was still happening. There were still Jews coming back and he predicted that they will continue to do so. But my understanding is, based on the New Testament, that the return of the exiles from Babylon is seen as a type and a shadow of salvation in Christ also, just like the Exodus from Egypt. All Christians, including dispensationalists, recognize the Exodus from Egypt is a type of salvation. They say Pharaoh's like a type of the devil, Egypt's a type of sin, the Passover is Christ and delivers us out of the bondage of sin and so forth. I mean, you can't really avoid that if you're going to read the New Testament because Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 5:7, Christ our sacrifice, our Passover, he says, has been sacrificed for us. And in 1 Corinthians 10, he speaks about the Jews coming out of Egypt, being baptized into the sea and into the cloud, and they ate spiritual food and so forth. He says, these are types of us.

So it's not imaginary or speculative to say that the Exodus from Egypt was a type of salvation in Christ. Well, it's to my mind equally not speculative or imaginary that the return of the Jews from Babylon was a type of salvation in Christ. For one thing, the return of the exiles from Babylon was almost a replay of the same thing as the Exodus. In both cases, and the only two times in history this was the case, the whole Jewish people were away from the promised land in bondage. God brought deliverance and in both cases they returned to the promised land and set up their kingdom from scratch. That happened under Joshua after the Exodus. It happened, of course, with Zerubbabel and Joshua after Cyrus's decree.

Both were like two examples of the same thing. And both of them, therefore, are paradigms of God delivering His people out of bondage and bringing them into their own inheritance. And that's so, just as the Exodus from Egypt is, so is the Babylonian exile that way. We see this very clearly, for example, we see it in lots of places. I've got a whole long list of passages where the New Testament identifies Old Testament return passages from exile with salvation in Christ.

But Isaiah 40 begins, as almost all scholars would agree, with a promise of God rescuing His people from Babylon. Babylon's not mentioned in chapter 40, but later on it is, and Cyrus is mentioned as the instrument and so forth in the later chapters. So Isaiah 40 through 66 is generally seen as describing a return of exiles from Babylon. But the same verses are quoted in the New Testament as the inauguration of salvation in Christ, so that in Isaiah 40, verses 3 through 5, you've got a voice crying in the wilderness, prepare a highway for God in the desert, and this is the highway that the redeemed return on.

But John the Baptist quoted that verse about himself. He was preparing a highway in the wilderness for people to be saved, too. It's like in Isaiah it's the first instance is return from Babylon. Its application in the New Testament is salvation in Christ.

So what I'm saying is this. When you read of the return of exiles from Babylon in the Old Testament, the last reference to which is in Zechariah, I think it's maybe chapter 3 or something like that somewhere in Zechariah, you are talking about the return of the exiles from Babylon, but these passages so often morph in the Old Testament passages. They morph into descriptions of Christ and salvation in Christ because the Holy Spirit sees the ancient event as a type of the spiritual and so that's how I see it. And yes, Malachi lived at a time when the return of exiles probably was pretty much reduced to a tiny trickle rather than a flood and he doesn't make any predictions nor do the New Testament writers of any future return of exiles from Babylon or to Israel from wherever they are.

Ryan: Yeah. And so in Isaiah, it seems pretty clear to me, but Isaiah, I think Isaiah 11, he says, "A second time I'll gather my people." The first time was Egypt.

Steve Gregg: Right. He says even as when I brought them out of the land of Egypt. Right. So that's it. There's an example of how the Exodus from Egypt is a type of gathering people into Christ, which I mentioned, but then you've also got the gathering of people from Babylon as a type of that. The Old Testament is full of types of Christ. He said, well, the words are put in His mouth in Psalm 40 and in Hebrews chapter 10, He says in the volume of the book it is written of me. In other words, the Old Testament, the entire thing is written about Him.

So even the things that are about something else have a secondary typological application to Christ. Peter said, it's interesting that Peter said this and I'm not so sure why dispensationalists don't take this to heart. This is his second sermon in Acts chapter 3. Peter's talking about the fulfillment of all the prophecies and he says in Acts chapter 3, at the end of his second sermon, verse 24, he says, "Yes, and all the prophets from Samuel and those who follow, as many as have spoken, also foretold these days."

Okay, so all the prophets, all the prophets spoke of the church. He's referring to his days. This is right after Pentecost. They were now living in the days that all the prophets spoke of, as many as spoke spoke of these days. So many dispensationalists think, no, most of the prophets didn't speak about the church. They think the church was an unexpected interruption and that the prophets were speaking about something that won't be fulfilled until Jesus returns. So Peter and dispensationalists simply have different religious ideas, I guess.

Ryan: Yeah. Okay, well thank you for speaking on that. God bless you, brother.

Steve Gregg: Okay, Ryan. Thanks for your call. Good talking to you.

We immediately have a break coming up, so we'll take more calls after that. We're at the bottom of the hour. We have one half hour left, so don't go away. The Narrow Path is a listener-supported ministry, which means we don't have any commercials or sponsors. Some people may listen without noticing. There are no commercial breaks in this show. Even the bottom of the hour break, we don't sell anything, we don't have sponsors. We just let you know that the way we pay the bills to stay on the radio, which are quite expensive, by the way. We're on a lot of stations and they're not cheap. We pay those bills because people like you, maybe not you personally, but people like you, think it's worth keeping the show on the air and they make contributions. And it's a 501(c)(3) tax-free thing. But that's the only place the finances really come from and that's why we stay on the air. If you'd like to help us out, you can go to thenarrowpath.com and see how to donate there. All the resources are free at thenarrowpath.com, but you can donate there if you wish. 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're live for another half hour taking your calls. If you'd like to be on the program, you have a question about the Bible or you have a difference of opinion, it looks like you're going to have to wait to call because the last open line just filled up as I've been speaking to you just now. However, there will be lines opening up randomly in the next half hour. You can call randomly at 844-484-5737 if you'd like to get through. All right, our next caller today is going to be Greg calling from Chicago, Illinois. Greg, welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Greg: Hi Steve. I have a question about the use of Christ in the passage of Hebrews 11, verses 24 to 26, where the writer is talking about Moses, "by faith when he became of age, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than enjoy the passing pleasures of sin, esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt." And I don't know, that just stood out to me that the writer of Hebrews would put that in, being that, and I saw in the interlinear that it was Christos, I think is the word. But just interesting that he puts that in in relation to Moses. We don't hear, I guess, in Exodus and such a lot about the Messiah and Christ in that, so I wondered if you had any insight into why the writer put that in.

Steve Gregg: Yeah. Well, of course the writer of Hebrews right from the beginning and throughout his book brings out lots of typological things from the Old Testament and applies them to Christ. Especially the priesthood and the Day of Atonement and the sacrifices and things, he applies to Christ, which are all from Moses's day also. But there's a couple ways we could look at this.

One is he could be saying, and this would be true—I don't know if he's saying this or not, but he could be—that the fortunes of Israel were all tied up, or let me put it this way, the fortunes of Christ and the fulfillment of the promise of the Messiah were all tied up in the fortunes of Israel, because God had made it very clear that the Messiah would come through Israel. Now, when Israel escaped from Egypt and became a people, became a nation, this was the beginning of essentially the fulfillment of the coming of Christ in many respects, because it would be this nation through whom He would come. Their fortunes, their trials, the dangers they would face, the things they would suffer, all of these things were suffered in a sense for Christ, because that was the end goal of their whole history was that Christ would come. They would bring Christ, and therefore the writer of Hebrews being totally Christocentric in all his reading of the Old Testament sees for Moses to take sides with Israel and to experience the dangers and the trials that Israel went through at the founding of their nation and leaving Egypt behind where he had a pretty cushy gig, but he went on to live in the hardship of leading these obstinate people in a inhospitable desert. He was taking on the sufferings for the sake of Christ, it could be said, for the sake of the nation whose object and whole purpose for being was to bring Christ.

So this was all Christ-related as far as the writer of Hebrews is concerned. And it could be that that's how he's seen it, that by taking the role of suffering with Israel, well, you can't separate that from the ultimate purpose of Israel, and that is that they'd bring forth Christ, and Christ is the whole focus of the writer of Hebrews and he sees Christ therefore as the focus of Moses's interest, too, that Moses took Israel's, took up Israel's cause for the sake of the Messiah, for the sake of the fulfillment of Israel's purpose, the Messiah coming.

That's one way to see it. Another way to see it is that the writer of Hebrews is trying to encourage his readers to emulate the people of faith that he lists in Hebrews chapter 11. He goes through the whole Old Testament history from Abel to the prophets. And all of these people by faith did this or did that, and just like we're encouraged to do that, or especially his readers who were Jewish Christians who were tempted to go back and give up faith and just go back to Judaism. And many times he tells them that's a fool's errand. Judaism is about to come to an end, which it did in AD 70. And secondly, Judaism is a very inferior prequel to what God has done in Christ.

But the point is he's trying to encourage people to stay faithful to Christ and to be like the ancestors who were in the Old Testament who had faith and didn't give up faith, Moses included. Now, Moses accepting the troubles of the wilderness and giving up the pleasures of Egypt, he probably sees as a role model for his audience who he hopes will take on the troubles of loyalty to Christ and face the persecution they're getting for that. So that he kind of identifies Moses's suffering with the sufferings that the Christians are going through. He suffered for the cause of Israel and by extension the cause of Christ, and you're being called upon to suffer for the cause of Christ, too. So that Moses, he chose to suffer the afflictions of Christ rather than the pleasures of sin for a season.

There's a sense in which he's recasting Moses's decision in a way that kind of links up with the place the readers are at. Now, both things I've said can be true. I don't know, I'm not inside the head of the author of Hebrews, but I can see both of those being behind his word choice there.

Greg: Okay, great. Thank you, Steve.

Steve Gregg: All right, Greg. Thanks for your call. Good talking to you.

Jacob in Port Charlotte, Florida. Hi Jacob. Welcome.

Jacob: Hey Steve. Hey, I got a question. So I've heard you teach that the language that Jesus used about the sun, moon, stars, and all that, He was referring to the destruction of Jerusalem, because that was like known language that God used when He was going to bring judgment on a city or particular place or whatever. So and that makes sense to me because I've never really thought about it like that. So my question is, all that language, too, about the sun, moon, stars, and all that, is all associated with the Day of the Lord. So do you think that the Day of the Lord is something that already happened or do you think it's a future event?

Steve Gregg: Well, that's the Day of the Lord is a term used in the Old Testament and in the New Testament. It's used in a variety of contexts. In the Old Testament, the Day of the Lord simply means the day that God does what He's going to do, the day where God comes and vindicates His own cause. And this can speak of a near-term Day of the Lord, as when Isaiah 13 describes the destruction of Babylon, which took place in 539 BC, and he describes that as "the Day of the Lord is near, the Day of the Lord is coming on Babylon." Well, in that case the Day of the Lord just means God's day of judgment on Babylon. That's when He settles His score with this rebellious nation.

And but as you read the Old Testament prophets, the Day of the Lord is also mentioned in connection with the fall of Edom or the fall of some other nations, maybe Assyria or Moab or the Philistines. I mean, there's quite a few prophecies in the Old Testament about God's judgment on rebellious pagan nations and you'll find he very freely uses the term "Day of the Lord" to speak of the judgment of these nations, although these nations were all separately judged in different parts, different times in history. Many of them suffered at the time when Nebuchadnezzar came. For example, Edom and Judah went into captivity around the same time along with some of the other Philistines and others when the Babylonians came down there. But the point is that the Day of the Lord in the Old Testament isn't one specific day. It's more like one specific concept: when God judges a nation because He's taken enough guff from them, that's the Day of the Lord for them. That's when He reveals His mighty arm and brings about His redress to their evil doings.

So the Day of the Lord is not referring to any particular day in the Old Testament except in different contexts it refers to different times when God's judging different nations at different points in history. Now, in the New Testament, there are times when the Day of the Lord is referring to the upcoming judgment that was going to come in Jerusalem when Jesus and John the Baptist came and started preaching. It was only four decades away from the total destruction of the Jewish nation by the Romans, which occurred in AD 70. Now, that Jesus described that in some of His teaching as the time of God bringing judgment on them for killing the prophets and for killing Him. Both of these things are laid to their door by Jesus in His own preaching. One needs only to read, for example, Matthew 23, but you could read many other places too where the same thing is happening. Jesus predicts that Jerusalem is going to be judged ultimately and destroyed at God's behest by the Romans and that's very similar to Jerusalem being destroyed by the Babylonians in the Old Testament or any other nation being destroyed in the Old Testament, which was almost always, unless it was Sodom and Gomorrah, it was almost always through the agency of war and conquest and that's how the Day of the Lord came on Jerusalem also.

So many times Jesus is talking about that. However, in addition to the fall of Jerusalem, there's a thread, and this is especially prominent in the post-resurrection, post-ascension passages where when Jesus ascended, the angels who were there told the disciples that He's going to come back again, and Paul and, frankly, Peter and others and certainly statements in the Book of Acts indicate that there's going to be a final day of judgment, which is the second coming of Christ. Now, in other words you're asking, is the Day of the Lord something past or future? I'm going to have to say both, depending on the passages. I don't believe there's any one passage or one occurrence of that phrase that means more than one thing, but there's so many references to that phrase in different contexts that refer to different things in those contexts. But I do believe when you find the term "Day of the Lord" in the New Testament, it's either going to be talking about the day of God's judgment on Jerusalem, which was in AD 70, or it's going to be talking about the ultimate Day of the Lord when He judges not just Jerusalem or Babylon or any one nation, He judges the whole world. And so it is spoken of in many of the Epistles. So it's more nuanced. There's more to it than just saying this happened already or this is going to happen. You've got to look at the context of each passage because the term is used more or less generically of different situations.

Jacob: Okay. So do you think that the death and resurrection of Jesus and that whole process would be considered the Day of the Lord where God did have victory over His enemies?

Steve Gregg: Well, I mean we could certainly use that phrase. I don't know that I know of any particular passage in the Bible—and there might not be one—that the term "Day of the Lord" is referring to that particular victory. I certainly believe that that victory is spoken of, but then God's victory over His enemies and so forth are spoken of throughout the Bible in passages that don't always use the term "Day of the Lord." I mean there's other ways to speak of it besides using that idiom. The Bible is very clear that Jesus had a decisive victory over Satan and the demons and so forth in His cross and resurrection. Colossians 2:15 says that Jesus triumphed over them openly in the cross, having disarmed principalities and powers and so forth. In Hebrews chapter 2, verse 14, it says that Jesus through death destroyed him that had the power of death, that is, the devil. So I do believe that the victory of Christ over Satan at the cross and the resurrection are examples of God judging the powers of darkness. In fact, Jesus anticipated it in John 12:31 where He said, "Now is the judgment of this world. Now shall the prince of this world be cast out." In other words, the prince of the world, Satan's going to be judged. So God judging His enemies could be analogous to other situations where He'd judged His enemies and some of those are referred to as the Day of the Lord. If you're asking whether any of the actual references in the Bible to the Day of the Lord are referring to this victory over Satan at the cross, I'm not aware of any of the occurrences of that term that in their context are talking about that. But certainly the Bible is very strong affirming that Jesus did have such a victory and a judgment on the wicked powers at His cross and resurrection.

Jacob: All right. Thanks, Steve.

Steve Gregg: Okay, Jacob. Thanks for your call.

Let's see. We're going to talk to Edwin in Killeen, Texas. Hi, Edwin. Welcome.

Edwin: Hi, Steve. We spoke a little bit yesterday. I called at the end about Matthew 7:21 to 23. You mentioned that it was people that—not people that fell, but rather people that are just not doing the will of the Father. My follow-up question to that would be, how is it possible that they're not doing the will of the Father and yet they're still able to cast out demons? Why would He use somebody who potentially has demons themselves to cast out demons? And wouldn't that lead to more pride in their heart?

Steve Gregg: Well, I don't think there's any evidence that these people had demons themselves, but I think there's evidence that they weren't real Christians either. I mean, there are real Christians, there are also demon-possessed non-Christians, and then there's the majority of human beings who are in neither category. They're kind of in the in-between zone. They're not Christians, but they're not demon-possessed either. So I mean, he's not describing every person that faces Him on the day of judgment. All he's saying is there's going to be many people on the day of judgment who certainly saw themselves as Christians based on the wrong criterion. They were judging their own situation by a false measure and to their chagrin they found out that God had a different measure for judging that and He says, "Depart from me, you workers of iniquity."

Now, what he's saying is before he gives those examples in the passage, he says, "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father in heaven." You're right, we ran out of time yesterday when we were talking about this and I was commenting on this, I didn't get to go into it as much as I would have liked to. Those who do the will of the Father in heaven are the ones that enter the kingdom of heaven. They're also the ones that are the children of God. In another place Jesus said, "Who are my mother and who are my brothers? But those who do the will of my Father, they are my mother and my brothers and so forth." So they're His family. They're His Christians. The Christians are those who do the will of the Father and they are the ones who will enter the kingdom of heaven.

Now, he's saying there are people who have not done the will of the Father. And by doing the will of the Father doesn't mean that they can name six things they did in the past month that were within the will of God. No, he's talking about there's two different ways to be. You can be a person who lives for obedience to God and whose life is described as doing the will of the Father, as Jesus describes Himself. He said, "I didn't come to do my will but the will of my Father." Okay, so that's not just describing an occasional good deed he did or an occasional obedient thing. His whole life was defined by doing the will of the Father, which is true of all true Christians. They have denied themselves, they've taken up their cross, they're following Jesus. That's not just something you do on Sundays. That's what you do at the beginning of your Christian walk and you do the rest of your life.

So doing the will of the Father is rather the description of Christians. In fact, Peter in his sermon using slightly different words but certainly saying the same thing in Acts chapter 5, he's talking about the resurrection of Jesus as he's on trial before the Sanhedrin and he says, "We are witnesses of these things and so also is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey Him." Now, people who have the Holy Spirit are clearly the Christians and he describes Christians as those who obey God. In other words, they look different than other people because they are the ones who obey God. Their lives are changed, they've been converted, they're not following themselves anymore, they're following God's will.

Now, apart from that, there are those who do not have that, can't fit that description. Their life is not defined by obeying God. They might be afraid to greatly disobey and therefore they don't wander too far astray from what they think God wants people to do, but they're not committed to obeying Him every moment, the definition of their existence to them is not "Yeah, I'm a person who's going to do the will of God today, every day, every moment I can, that's what I'm here for, that's who I am."

But apart from that, there are those who are like everyone else: they obey themselves. they do what they want to do. Now, how can people who are doing what they want to do prophesy in Jesus' name, cast out demons in Jesus' name, do mighty works in Jesus' name, which some of these people apparently did, but he said, "No, you're not mine." Well, I have to assume—frankly, I don't even have to assume, I've been in Christian circles for 70 years now—there's plenty of people who do showy things. There's television evangelists, there's healing evangelists, they do fancy things, they do things that look impressive, some of them are probably fake, some of them may be demon-possessed, I don't know, and have powers to do things like Pharaoh's magicians did who could duplicate in some respects and some measure Moses's miracles. There's always been fakes who can do things that look like the things that Christians do.

But what a fake doesn't do is live his life for the will of God. He can do anecdotal things to prophesy. I've been in charismatic churches where people prophesied ostensibly in the name of Jesus, but there's no reason to believe they were really saved. Some of them are not. I mean, Paul said, "If I prophesied and understand all mysteries and don't have love, I'm nothing." I'm not spiritual, there's nothing it doesn't say anything good about me at all if I can prophesy. False prophets prophesy. King Saul prophesied when he was trying to kill David and even Caiaphas while he was plotting to kill Jesus, it said in John 11, it says he prophesied. So prophesying isn't the unique function of true Christians, though it's a wonderful thing in the body of Christ to have true prophecy. But you can do that without being a Christian.

Now, as far as how could they cast out demons? I think your question is, why would the demons obey them or be impressed with them if they don't know Jesus? I don't know the answer to that. Like I said, in some cases it may be faked. In other cases, someone who doesn't really know Jesus might be wielding a name that the demons nonetheless are terrified by and they may respond. You know, there's a time when James and John came to Jesus and said, "Hey, we saw these people casting out demons in your name and they're not in our group, so we told them not to." Now, they clearly were not disciples of Jesus, probably not saved, but they were casting out demons in Jesus' name. How'd they do that? I don't know. They may have just experimented with it just like the sons of Sceva did in Acts chapter 19. They said, "We cast you out in the name of Jesus whom Paul preaches." That didn't work out well for them and we don't know how it was with these anonymous people that we only hear allusions to in Luke that the apostles said, "Hey, we saw these people casting out demons." But they weren't part of the disciple group.

Now, Jesus said, "Don't forbid them," but He didn't say they are Christians. He just said, "Listen, people casting out demons in my name, that's kind of not opposing my agenda here, so let them go ahead." You know, I can't answer what Jesus doesn't answer. We don't know how it is that people who are not living for Christ sometimes can do seemingly miracles, healings, prophecies, even what appears to be casting out demons. God knows. But what Jesus is certainly saying is those are not the kinds of things that you can look to as true evidence of conversion or of saintliness. The Bible indicates that gifts of the Spirit can be mimicked by demonic forces, but fruit of the Spirit, which is love, is that which is the genuine mark of discipleship.

So that'd be the best way I know how to answer that. There's maybe better answers, but we're not given them.

All right. We don't really have much time left. Dave, if you can do anything with two minutes, go for it, in New Hampshire.

Guest (Male): Hi Steve. Quick question. I'm not going to bore you with the details, you know all the verses on either side of this, and that was the question that was posed to our pastor by a child, and that was: did Judas go to heaven or to hell?

Steve Gregg: Well, I'm going to have to cut you off so I can try to answer that because we'll be cut off here in less than two minutes anyway. Was Judas saved or not? Well, we don't know because we don't know the state of his heart. Well, he was not saved when he died. The question whether he went to heaven or hell, I think we'd have to say he went to hell. He's described as the son of perdition.

But the question people usually argue is: was he ever a Christian? Was he a true Christian at the beginning who went bad and lost his salvation or was he never a true Christian and just an impostor like the ones that we just talked about in Matthew 7: they cast out demons in Jesus' name and did things in His name but He never knew them? There are many people who think Judas was of that type, that he never really was a true disciple but he was a good, convincing fake.

Others believe he was a true disciple and sincere but that at some point he just gave up his commitment to Christ and went the wrong way. I don't know the answer. We don't have enough information about where his heart was at. We are told a full year before Jesus' death, in John chapter 6, that Jesus said to the twelve, "Have did I not choose you twelve and one of you is a devil?" So Jesus knew a full year before the end of His ministry that Judas was a devil. But was Judas a devil the day that he began to follow Jesus or did he give place to the devil? The Bible warns us in Ephesians 4 not to give place to the devil ourselves as Christians. And we do read at one point when Jesus rebuked him over the matter of the perfume poured over Jesus' head, it says Judas at that point the devil entered Judas. Now, I don't know much more about that, but we do see that he may have been a backslider or he may have never been a real Christian. We'll find that out I guess when we go to heaven.

You're listening to the Narrow Path. Our website's thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for joining us. Let's talk again tomorrow.