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, commercial-free, taking your calls. If you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith you'd like to discuss on the program, or if you see things perhaps differently than the host and want to bring some balance or correction, feel free to do that. The number for you to call to do so is 844-484-5737. I'm looking at a switchboard with a few lines open, so you could get through right now if you call. The number is 844-484-5737.

A couple of quick announcements. They're not new, well, one of them might be. And that is that Wednesday night, tomorrow night, we would normally have our monthly Zoom meeting. We do that the first Wednesday of every month generally, but I will be, because of my travels, indisposed. I won't be able to do that, and therefore we're cancelling that Zoom meeting for tomorrow night. I apologize. We'll, Lord willing, do it next month. This is Tuesday, isn't it? I think this is Tuesday. My wife and I can't agree what day of the week it is. All right, this is Tuesday, so that's tomorrow night we've cancelled it.

And then there's this weekend. On Friday night, I have this debate we've been announcing in Onalaska, Wisconsin. That's on Friday night. I'm having a debate over the question of pre-millennialism versus amillennialism, basically, with a man named Joel Richardson. Now yes, if you're familiar with Joel Richardson, it's that one. He's pretty well-known. He wasn't really very well-known to me until he contacted me and wanted me to do this debate. When I agreed, I looked him up and I know some things now. He's actually written some books and is pretty well-known in some circles, mainly pre-millennial circles. I'm amillennial, so that's what we're going to be debating about. That's this Friday night in Wisconsin. There will be a live stream. You can go to our website at that time, and there should be a link to the live stream.

Then I should probably start mentioning that in less than two weeks, I'm doing a teaching itinerary up in Northern California. I think the earliest date we have scheduled is in Petaluma on March 15th. That's a Sunday. Then I'm going to be teaching in the Santa Cruz area for most of the week. By the end of the week, I'm teaching one place in Monterey and then a place in the San Jose area, Morgan Hill. Those are some of the areas. Those of you living in that area certainly know all those places. These will all be listed and are, I think, at our webpage, thenarrowpath.com, under the tab that says announcements. So, that's in less than two weeks from now. I'll be in the Central Coast of California. All right, we're going to go to the phones now and we'll talk to our lines, which are mostly full. Dwight in Denver, Colorado, welcome to the Narrow Path. Good to hear from you.

Dwight: Hi, Steve. We know that God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, and yet Moses and the children of Israel, when Pharaoh and his army were drowned, they sang a song and appeared to rejoice that they had been drowned in the sea. So I'm wondering, with Khomeini and all his wicked men in Iran being killed, what should our reaction be to that?

Steve Gregg: Well, there's many things that God sees as necessary which are not pleasant to Him. It says in 2 Peter 3 that God's not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. But God also operates in the real universe and in the real world where unfortunately not everything He would like to have happen does, and many do not repent and therefore many perish. Likewise in Ezekiel, when God said He had no pleasure in the death of the wicked, He followed that by saying, "but rather that the wicked should turn from their evil ways and live."

So God really ultimately doesn't want anyone to die or to be damned or to perish. On the other hand, He wants them all to repent. In the real world, people don't all repent. So the next question is what does God think should be done to them? Well, the wages of sin is death, which means all of us who have sinned are going to die. Some people are great unrepentant sinners. Others have been great sinners but have repented and are in a different status because of that.

But everyone's going to die. Now those who don't repent, they're going to die unprepared to meet God. That's what God doesn't want. God doesn't like to see wicked people perish. He knows everyone's going to perish whether wicked or not, but when the wicked perish, they die unprepared to meet God, and God wishes that all would die, whenever their time comes, on good terms with Him. As far as when the best time for anyone in particular is to die, since all are going to at some point, God has His own analysis of those things.

God knows very well what the consequences will be of somebody dying today or being allowed to live longer and dying at some later time. I believe that God makes the choice about that, especially about believers, but possibly even about non-believers. I mean, Jesus said that not a sparrow falls to the ground apart from the will of your Father. That doesn't mean that God wants sparrows to die particularly, but He's saying they don't die until it's His will for that to happen. They will. All sparrows die.

But they don't die unless God thinks it's their time. Jesus makes that point to say, "And how much more are you worth than sparrows?" That is, people. People are worth a lot more than sparrows. So if God's keeping tabs on and even orchestrating the lifespan and the time of death of even sparrows, it can hardly be thought that He doesn't do the same thing for persons made in His own image who are much more significant than sparrows. That's the point Jesus is making.

So I think that God decides when each should die. Now we might say, "Well then, we shouldn't favor war or capital punishment because let God take them out." Well actually, sometimes God takes them out through disease. Sometimes He takes them out through accidental death. Sometimes He takes them out through allowing some criminal violence, as He allowed to happen to both Jesus and Stephen and Paul and the apostles. They were all killed by criminal behavior and persecution.

And then of course some people die in war. In fact, a very large number of people throughout history have died in war, some good, some bad people. The point is the main concern is not in what way people die, but whether they died at the time that God was ready for them to go, knowing that they were going to do no more good than they have already done. If somebody's going to get better, if somebody's going to repent but they haven't yet, I don't think God will let them die.

And if He does let people die, I believe it's because He knows they won't repent. Again, not everyone agrees with my theology on that, but I believe that. Which means that if somebody dies, a good person or a bad person, in the great scheme of things, God is orchestrating the time of deaths. The fact that everyone's going to die is a given, but the time of each person's death is not known to us, but God.

So I believe that God decides when each should die. Now we might say, "Well, then war breaks out." Now every war I've ever heard of has injustices involved in it. People die who were not particularly capital criminals, necessarily. Civilians die and so forth. There are great injustices that take place which result in many deaths, just like Jesus' death, which was obviously ordained by God but was brought about by injustices of the Sanhedrin and of Pontius Pilate and of those who turned on Him. Those are injustices.

So we know that God doesn't approve of injustice, but there's plenty of injustice around. God sometimes steers them in the direction that will result in what He wants to happen in the end. Now, I don't know what you're asking about current events. I don't know what God wants to happen in the end here. I don't know what the Middle Eastern end game is as far as God is concerned.

But I have to say that though people, now I'm not going to blame anybody for the death of these wicked men. It might have been a perfectly just thing to do. I'm not on the inside of these things. You get the official report on the news from the officials who tell you what they want you to know. So I never assume that I have the full picture, whether it's about the Ukrainian-Russian war or Israel and Hamas or now this new war in Iran. I figure that the information I will get is the information that people allow me to get.

I would have to do a great deal of research to be able to say, "Okay, this was definitely not a good idea," or "This was a good idea." I have to assume the people who are making the decisions have done that kind of consideration. They may be making a good or a bad decision, I don't know, and I probably never will know because I just don't have all the intel that they have.

From what I understand, and of course there's going to be people who tell me I'm wrong about this, but from what I understand from the information given to me, Israel felt that they were threatened by the nuclear program in Iran and they acted upon it. We're their allies and we joined with them in it. Now, as far as if that's a good thing or a bad thing, again, I don't know. I think war in general is a bad thing.

But some wars are going to happen. And therefore the question of who comes out winning and who comes out losing has either more or less desirable results. And if we're praying God's will be done on earth as it is in heaven, we have to kind of trust that these things that are out of our control will nonetheless be orchestrated in some way for God's will to be done. And that doesn't mean that things will look better there after it's all over. Things could get worse because we don't know what God's will is. God might be punishing a nation for their wickedness. God certainly might punish the United States for our wickedness.

The fact that things turn out badly from our perspective doesn't mean that they aren't what we deserved or what God intended to come about from this because God does judge among the nations. And likewise, even if a really seemingly good result comes about from any given war, we just have to say God apparently wanted that to happen right now. It doesn't mean He favors us necessarily. I don't try to get behind the curtain where God is and decide what's God doing back there because history, especially geopolitical history, is full of all kinds of surprises.

I will say this. I know dispensationalists, which I'm not one, who believe that Trump is the Antichrist and things like that, and that he's creating a false peace in the Middle East because the dispensationalists always believed that that's what the Antichrist would do. And I don't see the Bible saying that. I don't see the Bible predicting that. So I don't hold that particular view they do.

But what's interesting about that is most dispensationalists think that Iran, or Persia as they see it in the Bible or Elam, believe that that's going to play a major role in the end-time scenario of threatening Israel. And of course, we don't know how the current skirmishes are going to turn out, but at the moment it looks like the way things are likely to turn out would render Iran not really that much of a threat to Israel. They might have to rethink their eschatological maps, depending on how things turn out. We'll just see.

Dwight: So with the issue of Moses and the children of Israel, it appears that they are rejoicing and singing and dancing at the result of the Egyptians' drowning, and yet that seems to contradict where the Lord says He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked.

Steve Gregg: Oh no, the response of the Israelites is not necessarily always going to be the same as that of God. Almost every people I would think of who have been enslaved for hundreds of years and are suddenly liberated, I think would be dancing in the street. In fact, there are people in Iran who are kind of responding that way to the current events. They feel like they've been oppressed for a long time and they're rejoicing.

Now the fact that they're rejoicing is a natural thing. People are happy when good things happen to them. And they might, when they look at the smoldering bodies of the people who were killed in their liberation or the floating Egyptians floating in the Dead Sea or on the shores, it's true, their sympathy for their oppressors is probably at a very low ebb and certainly eclipsed by their enjoyment of the freedom that they now have. I mean, that's normal human reaction to things.

And God, He's already said in the very verse you're talking about, which is Ezekiel 33:11, He says, "I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked should turn from their evil ways and live." In other words, I have a preference about this, but one of these two things is going to happen. Either they're going to repent or they're going to die, and I'd rather they repent than die. But that doesn't mean that if they don't repent then He doesn't want them to die.

He knows that one of those two things is going to happen. He says that, and He says, "Turn, turn," He says, "for why will you die?" That's the options He's putting out there to the people. "Turn, turn," He says, "for why will you die?" He doesn't want them to die, He wants them to turn. But if they don't turn, they're going to die. And when people who are committed to evil and will not repent continue to do harm and injustice in the world, there is a certain satisfaction that we would all take in removing the injustice, though He would rather have had it resolved without them dying.

I was thinking about this today. Whenever we watch a movie, in most movies there's, if they're a drama or if they're adventure or whatever, there's some victim and some criminal or bad guy. The movie begins by showing how bad they are, and then some hero usually arises before the movie's over. At the end, the bad guy gets what he deserves. In the meantime, we're rooting for the hero to take out the bad guy the whole time.

At the end when the bad guy gets what he deserves, we feel relieved. We feel like, "Okay, the scales have been balanced here." Not really because the victims don't come back, they don't get rewarded, but it's better than nothing. It's better that this guy doesn't keep doing those things. I mean, everybody feels relief when the guy who's killing and victimizing people is taken out.

Now we might say, "Yeah, but he had a mother. His mother can't be happy." And that could have been my child, or my child might not be any better than that person. I certainly wouldn't rejoice to see my child die. True, you wouldn't. It's a terrible thing that some people choose an evil life and those consequences of that evil life befall them.

The only thing that would be worse is if they chose that evil life and the consequences of an evil life did not befall them and they just simply got away with it and there was no justice. So I think that's how God looks at the whole world scene. There's people who victimize other people. The victims, if they die, if they're innocent, they die on good terms with God because God is on the side of the innocent. But those who choose evil and who harm others, God wants them to repent. If they won't, well then He wants them out of the picture.

That's sort of the way world history has gone. God has His preferences, but the fact that He doesn't want them to die doesn't mean He's not going to have to, in the course of justice, cause them to die. I need to take another call, Dwight. Thanks for your call. James in Hartford, Connecticut, is next. James, welcome.

James: Yes, hi. How are you doing, Steve? I wanted to bless you and thank you for all the good things that you're doing for us, helping us. I just had a question from sort of what you were talking about yesterday. You were talking about some of your experiences and some things like that. I just wanted to ask you if you wanted to share some experiences that gave you some more insight into God's character and stuff like that.

Steve Gregg: Well, the truth is when I give anecdotes from my life, that's not really what I'm here for. I mean, I give them sometimes to illustrate something in a question I'm answering, but if people have curiosity about my life, my walk with God, I've written a fairly long autobiography that's posted at our website. It's like 11 or 12 pages long. It's not short, and that tells about how God has worked in my life. I'd rather allow, since I have my lines full, people to do what the program is for, that is, ask Bible questions so I can help them out there.

James: Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you for all you do. You really help us.

Steve Gregg: All right, James. Hey, if you go to thenarrowpath.com, there's a tab that says host bio there and you'll find my rather extensive life story there. Okay, James. Thanks, God bless you. Rob in Oceanside, California, welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Rob: Hey, good afternoon, Steve. Regarding Genesis 2, somewhere about verse 9, God has created all the living trees in the Garden of Eden, created the Tree of Life, He created the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. He tells Adam a little bit further that he can't eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, but He doesn't say anything about the Tree of Life. I just found that interesting coming across that the other day in a study we were doing with some other guys. I just wanted to get your take on that, that the Tree of Life was there all the time and they could have eaten it before theoretically.

Steve Gregg: Well, let me answer your question there. It is not a case of it not being mentioned. We see in verses 16 and 17, "the Lord God commanded the man, saying, 'Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat.'" So every tree in the garden that they could eat included the Tree of Life. They were allowed to eat all the trees. Only one tree was forbidden.

So it does say something about the Tree of Life. And then later on, of course, after man sins, because God told them in verse 17 that if they eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they'll die. Well, as we see, they did eat of that tree and God said in chapter 3, verse 22, then the Lord said, "Behold, the man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil. Now lest he put out his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever," then He goes on and bans him from the Tree of Life.

But notice He says, "We don't want man at this point to reach out to the Tree of Life because and eat it, he would live forever then." So we can see that man was made capable of death. He was made mortal. But he could also be immortal if he ate of the Tree of Life. Man was naturally mortal. Only God is immortal, the Bible says. No one's immortal except God by nature.

But man was made mortal, but not necessarily mortal in the sense that he could live forever if he ate of the Tree of Life. In my understanding, the Tree of Life was to be eaten of regularly, not just once. And the reason I say that is because in the book of Revelation, chapter 22, verses 1 through 3, we see the Tree of Life is there in the New Jerusalem and it says it brings forth its fruit 12 times a year.

In other words, apparently once a month it produces its fruit. Well, that would suggest that people were expected to eat it regularly or repeatedly. Why? If it was just a matter of everyone takes a bite of it one time and then they don't have to, they can dispense with it because they now have eternal life, that'd be one thing. That's kind of like the "once saved always saved" idea. We eat of Jesus. Okay, we accepted Jesus so now we're saved no matter what we do, some people say.

But I believe when Jesus said, "Whoever eats of Me, eats My flesh and drinks My blood, will have everlasting life," it's in the present tense. "Whoever is eating, whoever is drinking of Me." That is, whoever is continually consuming Him, who is the Tree of Life. I think it's a picture. I mean, I think there was a real tree, but I think it was a type of Christ.

And so Adam and Eve, like us, like everybody, was created mortal, but they could have everlasting life if they eat of the Tree of Life. And that's what's mentioned in Genesis. Now in our case, of course, it's if we eat of Christ. Christ is the Tree of Life for us. And as we partake of Him and continue to do so, we will have immortality. In the next life, we will live forever with Him. We participate in His immortality.

And I think Adam and Eve, I think they were supposed to eat of the Tree of Life on a regular basis, and as long as they did, it would prolong their lives, though they were naturally mortal, they would never actually have to die if they continued to eat of that tree. And what happened when God said, "In the day you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you'll die," what happened that day? God cut them off from the Tree of Life. And therefore their natural mortality became their doom, and they would never have everlasting life because they couldn't eat the Tree of Life. That's how I understand those two trees and what was going on there.

Rob: Okay, great. Yeah, I was just wondering if they had eaten the tree first, the Tree of Life first, and then did the Knowledge of Good and Evil tree, that might have been a problem.

Steve Gregg: Well, not necessarily. Of course, that's not the way it worked out. But let's just say they had eaten of the Tree of Life. Well, that would prolong their life until the next time they'd eaten of it, and that to the next time, and that till the next. At some point, whenever they ate of the forbidden tree, they would be cut off from the Tree of Life so that they no longer have the access to keep participating in eternal life.

Rob: Okay, great. Thank you, Steve.

Steve Gregg: Okay, Rob. Thanks for your call, brother. Good talking to you. All right, we have a break coming up here real quick, and then we have another half hour. We're halfway, we're at the bottom of the hour. We have a whole hour program and another half hour to go. You're listening to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg. We've been doing this Monday through Friday for about 29 years now, and it's always pretty much the same. If you listen to our programs that are 25 years old, it's pretty much like the ones now. People call in, there's no commercial breaks, no sponsors, no underwriters, just an hour of taking calls and answering questions. It must be working for people because they've supported it. It's a listener-supported ministry. If you'd like to help us stay on the air for another 29 years, I can't guarantee it because I don't think I'll live that long, but you can write to us at the Narrow Path, P.O. Box 1730, Temecula, California 92593. Or go to our website, thenarrowpath.com. I'll be right back. We've got another half hour, stay tuned.

In a 16-lecture series entitled "The Authority of Scripture," Steve Gregg not only thoroughly presents the case for the Bible's authority, but also explains specifically how this truth is to be applied to a believer's daily walk and outlook. "The Authority of Scriptures," as well as hundreds of other stimulating lectures, can be downloaded in MP3 format without charge from our website, thenarrowpath.com.

Welcome back to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we're live for another half hour, taking your calls. Right now our lines are full, but if you call in a little while, we might find a line has opened up. The number is 844-484-5737. Our next call is coming from Barbara in Roseville, Michigan. Hi, Barbara, welcome to the Narrow Path.

Barbara: Oh, hi, Steve. You know, I was listening to the question yesterday about Jesus being in the grave for three days and three nights, and the person wanted to give up on God because she knew it didn't add up. But I can add some insight to that to clear up that Jesus said so as Jonah was in the belly of the whale, He would be in the heart of the earth. Jesus defines the heart of the earth. He likens it to Jonah. Jonah wasn't dead for three days and three nights. He was in a place of intense suffering at the hand of God for the wages of sin. So the three days and the three nights start in the Garden of Gethsemane when He's anxious and full of fear, when they whipped Him all night, and all of that. That's how you define the heart of the earth. Jesus defines it. It is not death. The heart of the earth, He said, like Jonah. He didn't say like Lazarus. He said like Jonah. So it's a place of intense suffering for the wages of sin. So the three days and the three nights is accounted for.

Steve Gregg: All right, well thank you. All right, we'll talk next to David in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Hi, David, welcome to the Narrow Path.

David: Hi, Steve. I just wanted to ask you if you've read any books by Jonathan Cahn or if you know much about him and any insight you might have about him. Also too, in regard to end times and like events like the war in Iran right now, I'm sure you get asked questions all the time about what's the significance of this in the Bible. I was just wondering what kind of response do you usually give to that?

Steve Gregg: All right. Well, as far as Jonathan Cahn is concerned, back when his book "Harbinger" came out, somebody sent me a copy. I didn't read it immediately because it didn't look interesting to me, and then I kept hearing people talk about it so I thought, "I will, I'll read it." And I did. And it still wasn't very interesting to me.

When I say interesting, I think he's an interesting writer. I think he makes interesting connections. It's not a boring book, and that's why it's a bestseller. That's why he became rather famous from that book. But it didn't interest me in terms of his conclusions or whatever because he takes the Bible in a different way than I do.

He takes a verse in Isaiah and then he likens it to 9/11 and America and things like that. Now, I do believe that some of the things that happen in the Bible can be, there are lessons we can learn from them for any time, for our time or any time. But he was specifically using Isaiah, which was talking about the northern kingdom of Israel being destroyed by the Assyrians, and saying that that kind of, he made it sound like it predicted 9/11.

Now, I don't believe that anything in modern history has been predicted in the Bible. Now, I realize I said something like that in my debate with Michael Brown and he said, "Wow!" like how dare you say such an outlandish thing. Well, if someone is surprised to hear that I believe that when Isaiah spoke, he spoke of things that happened to the northern kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians and eventually happened to the southern kingdom of Judah by Babylon, and eventually that Jesus came, as Isaiah predicted.

And when you go to Jeremiah, you find that he's talking about the destruction of Jerusalem by Babylon and the return from Babylon in the Persian rule, and he also mentions the Messiah coming the first time. When you go through all the, Ezekiel, same thing. Ezekiel talks about the destruction of Jerusalem and the return of the exiles from Babylon. He also mentions Jesus coming the first time.

And move on through. As you go through the prophets, they're talking about things that happened that happened shortly after or maybe a few centuries after they wrote them. But I don't believe that they write of things that are specific events in world geopolitics that have anything to do with a period of time after the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. Now, I will say, Isaiah and Jeremiah and many of these prophets do speak of the inauguration of the Messianic Kingdom when Jesus came and He established His kingdom. Daniel talks about this.

Lots of prophets talk about this because that's the focus of history as far as God's concerned. Jesus came, died, rose again, He's seated at the right hand of God, He's been given all authority in heaven and earth. There's no more to be given to Him. If He's got all the authority in heaven and earth, there simply isn't any left that He hasn't got right now. And He's been reigning, and that's what the Bible teaches.

And so that's the focal part of history. And of course the destruction of Jerusalem shortly after Jesus ascended is also mentioned in many of the prophets. Jesus said that the fall of Jerusalem would be so that all that was written will be fulfilled. He said in Luke 21 when He's talking about this. So the major focus of the prophets is about the coming of the Messiah and the abandoning of the old order as a result and the inauguration of a new covenant.

Now, that's what I find. Now, I didn't used to see it that way. I used to, I was taught dispensational things when I read the prophets. I was told by my teachers that these things were about modern Middle Eastern developments and Russia and China and the European Common Market, as we called it back then. We call it the European Community or whatever now. Even America was thought to be in there by some people, though most people marveled that it wasn't and assumed that that must mean America will be destroyed in the last days before these things happen.

But the assumption was of all my teachers was when you're reading these prophets, you're reading about the end times. And the more I studied the Bible and taught it verse by verse and put it in its context, the more I realized, "Wait, these guys said this was going to happen and it happened." It happened just like they said. The prophets' words are fulfilled. And they never came out and said, "And there'll be another fulfillment in the end times."

In fact, there's to my mind, there's no indicator in the Old Testament prophets that their prophecies are postponed somehow to the end of the world. And so I don't see any modern developments as fulfillments of prophecy with the exception of the establishment of the church 2000 years ago and its continuing growth like a mustard seed or like a little stone growing into a great mountain to fill the whole earth. That's still going on.

But as far as something, some event in history being inaugurated in some future point, I don't think the Old Testament talks about that. Now obviously I'm apparently in the minority about that. Almost all the popular teachers will say that's wrong. But saying I'm wrong and showing that I'm wrong would be two different things. In other words, they say that's nonsense, these passages certainly talk about the end times.

Okay, well, where I want to see the argument made. I don't want to see assertions. I want to see evidence. I want to see arguments made. And I've never heard them made. The teachers get up there and they say this passage in Isaiah or Jeremiah or Ezekiel's talking about the end times, and they never say why I should believe that, when in fact all of them were fulfilled in Babylonian times or in Roman times or some time like that. And those times are long ago.

And when they say, "But it's the end times," well, where in the passage do you find that? I used to teach what they teach until I asked myself the same question. Where do you find any statements here that tell us these guys are talking about the end of the world? And the answer was, and I discovered that by being forced to teach the whole Bible verse by verse every year. And I didn't teach every book every year.

I taught every book many times. I did teach most of the prophets every year, verse by verse. And I had to ask myself, "Okay, where is the passage here? Where's the phrase? Where's the verse that says this is going to happen at the end of time, at the end of an age of the church?" And frankly, as an honest person, not with any agenda at all, I had to say, "Well, there's nothing in there that says that."

And my opinion is that those who insist that these passages are about some future thing about our present time are, they either haven't thought through what they were taught about it, which is probably the case in most instances, or else they don't care to think it through and they just realize that what they're saying draws large crowds who want to make some kind of sense of the craziness of the modern times and they want to think that the Bible gives a clue as to what's going to happen next. It does not, in my opinion.

Nor should it. Jesus said to His disciples, "It's not for you to know the times or the seasons that the Father has put in His own authority, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you and you'll be My witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria to the uttermost parts of the earth." So, in other words, instead of speculating about what might happen in the future, Jesus said, "That's not for you to know. God knows that stuff. You leave it. Just do your business. Just be witnesses to the whole world and get that job done and then leave it up to the Father as to how things are going to shake out at the end."

But in my opinion, because it's not for us to know, I don't think God revealed to the prophets the answers to those questions we have. The prophets are not there for our curiosity. They are there because God tells people things on a need-to-know basis. And none of us need to know. I have a friend who always wants to talk to me about all this stuff shaping up in the Middle East and so forth, and he quotes all kinds of scriptures all over the Bible for it. Scriptures that I'm quite aware of and which I, frankly, I know to be about something else.

But my main question to him is, "Yeah, okay, so let's just say you're right about all this. So what? Why do I need to know this? How is this going to change my life? Don't I have an assignment already from Christ? Shouldn't I be about that? Is there going to somehow be an improvement of my efforts in obedience to Christ if I have some kind of a chart of the end times given to me? Why do I need to know that?"

Jesus said it's not for you to know, and I'm willing for God to be the one who knows. Because frankly, it doesn't change anything if I do. So I've tried to stave off just morbid curiosity, which is what most Christians read the prophets anyway and Revelation to satisfy. They've got morbid curiosity about what's going to happen next over there. You know what? If you just serve Christ day by day, you'll soon find out what's going to happen there because it'll happen. And it won't have made a difference that you didn't know beforehand. Just follow God. That's our whole thing. So no, I don't think there's anything over there in the Middle East right now that has any relevance that I know of to anything in the Bible. All right, let's talk next to Randall in Tacoma, Washington. Randall, welcome.

Randall: Hi, Steve. Thank you so much for taking my call. You mentioned at the top of the hour that you are amillennialist. Can you explain what that is for your listening audience?

Steve Gregg: Sure. Amillennialism is, unbeknownst to many, the view that was held by most of the Christians throughout history. The church held this view practically unanimously from about the third century, or at least the fourth century at the latest, until the 19th century. So, at least 15 centuries, it was the primary view of the church. But since pre-millennialism, especially dispensational pre-millennialism, has become more popular since the 1800s, many Western Christians have never even heard anything other than what we call pre-millennialism.

Now what are the differences? Pre-millennialism, the word millennial of course is from the word millennium, which means a thousand years. Where's the pre come in? Well, pre-millennial means that Jesus will come back before the millennium. A pre-millennial return of Christ is what they believe in. So on that view, Jesus will come back, and when He does it won't be the end of the world. It won't even be new heavens and new earth at all, although the church always believed it would be until the 1800s, almost always.

Instead He's going to set up a thousand-year temporary reign on earth. Every verse in the Old Testament that speaks of the Messiah's reign and its duration says it's forever and ever and has no end. But they believe it'll be a thousand years long and then at the end of that, something else will happen, the earth will be destroyed and there'll be new heavens and new earth and that will last forever.

Now the amillennial view holds that the only place in the Bible which mentions a thousand years, which is one chapter, Revelation 20. Revelation 20 is the only chapter in the Bible that mentions a thousand years. So the whole millennium question and what it is is going to depend on how we interpret that one chapter. Now for most of history, Christians understood Revelation 20 in a very symbolic way. And why? Well, I think they noticed that Revelation's got a lot of symbolism in it.

They weren't as averse to symbolism as some modern dispensationalists are. Dispensationalism, as one of its main talking points is, "We need to take the Bible literally, and if you don't take it literally you're compromising." Well, no, no, we need to take the Bible the way it was intended to be understood. Some of the Bible's written in poetry with lots of metaphors and hyperbole and that kind of thing.

Some of the Bible's written in parables. Jesus told a lot of parables. There's some parables in the prophets too. A lot of the Bible's written in apocalyptics, not a lot of it, but Daniel and Zechariah and Revelation are written apocalyptic style. Some of it's letters and some of it's straight historical narrative. There's lots of different kinds of literature in the Bible and you don't apply the same exact hermeneutic or method of interpretation to every part.

And back in the days when people were less simplistic and understood the Bible more nuanced, they recognized that books like Revelation and some others were written as apocalyptic literature, which is written in symbols. That's why Jesus is called a Lamb there, which He was not literally a lamb, but He's called that couple dozen times in the book of Revelation. In fact, He's described in Revelation 5:6 as a Lamb that has seven eyes and seven horns. I don't know anyone who believes Jesus really looks like that. It's a symbol.

The Beast is an animal, which is a composite of several wild animals, a bear, a lion, a leopard and some other beast, and has seven heads and ten horns, and we know that's symbolic because we're told the seven heads represent seven mountains and seven kings and the ten horns represent ten kings. This is not the Beast is not a real animal. And yet it's described throughout the book of Revelation as an animal.

And so likewise the whole book is known to be written in symbols. The symbols mean something, but they're not literal. And so the church has generally understood, and I understand in Revelation 20, the only place in the Bible that mentions a thousand years, that the thousand years is symbolic. It symbolizes a very long time, a very common way that the word thousand is used in the Bible, though usually not of years, but you know, cattle on a thousand hills or covenant to a thousand generations or many other thousands mentioned in the Bible, they're never really literal, they just mean a big number.

And the binding of Satan at the beginning of the Revelation 20, which begins the thousand years, is identified as what Jesus accomplished at the cross, which the New Testament tells us He bound the strong man, which is Satan. Tells us He disarmed the principalities and powers and made a triumph over them in the cross in Colossians 2:15. It says in Hebrews 2:14 that Jesus through death destroyed him who has the power of death, that is the devil. Now these are largely metaphors, not literal.

But so is the binding of a dragon, Satan's not literally a dragon, with a chain, probably not a real chain, in a bottomless pit with a lid. This is impressionistic just like much of the other passages that talk about how Jesus conquered Satan. It's a picture of what Jesus accomplished at His first coming. And at the end of the thousand years, in verse 9, when Satan is leading a final rebellion again against God and His people, it says fire from heaven comes down, Revelation 20, verse 9, and destroys them.

Well, Paul said that's what happens at the second coming of Christ in 2 Thessalonians 1:8. It says Jesus will come in flaming fire and all His holy angels in flaming fire taking vengeance on those who don't know God and who don't obey the gospel. 2 Thessalonians 2 says He'll destroy the man of sin with the brightness of His appearing. This is depicted, I think, in Revelation 20:9 as fire from heaven.

Now the thousand years falls between the binding of Satan at the first coming of Christ and the destruction of Satan at His second coming. So the thousand years represents the whole time between the first and second coming of Christ. Then there's a judgment and a resurrection, those kinds of things, which the rest of the scripture always places at the second coming of Christ. So the church, reasonably enough I think, always believed the thousand years was symbolic, not of a literal thousand years that Jesus would reign on earth when He comes back, which is not mentioned anywhere else in the Bible as ever happening.

But it was taking the elements of the symbolism that are explained in other parts of the Bible that aren't quite so symbolic. So that's the amillennial view and that's again what we'll be debating in Wisconsin. All right? Thank you for your call. Okay, let's see how much we can get in here. Daryl from Waco, Texas. Thanks for waiting.

Daryl: Hello, Steve. My question is, according to the scholars that believe in the later date of Revelation, why are they so convinced when Domitian is not even talked about in Revelation? I know you've probably talked about it, but I've kind of been curious.

Steve Gregg: You mean why are they so convinced of the later date of writing? Correct, when Domitian is not even talked about. Okay. Yeah, for many of our listeners don't know that there's a controversy over the date of writing of Revelation. And in many cases, it doesn't really matter much when a book of the Bible was written, in a lot of cases it doesn't change anything, the information's the same regardless when it was penned.

But in Revelation, there are many people who believe as I do that Revelation, much of it, some people think all of it, I would say much of it, is predicting the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, which would of course insist that it was written before that date. You don't predict something that already happened before. So on this view, it is sometimes argued that Revelation is written during the reign of Nero. Nero committed suicide in 68 AD, which of course if the book's written during the reign of Nero, it was then prior to 70.

Because Nero died in 68. And then it leaves open the possibility, it doesn't prove, but it leaves open the possibility that what Revelation's writing about is the destruction of Jerusalem that took place in 70 AD. Now the other view, and this is the one you're wondering why people are so strong about, is that Revelation was written in around 96 AD. Most of you if you have study Bibles and you look at the introduction to Revelation, they'll probably say it was written in 96 AD, which is near the end of the reign of Domitian.

So it's a question of was it written during Nero's reign or Domitian's reign? Now the really only argument I can find for it being written in Domitian's reign is that Irenaeus appears to have said that it was. Irenaeus was a disciple of Polycarp and Polycarp was a disciple of John and John wrote Revelation. So the assumption is Irenaeus, only two generations removed from the author of the book, ought to be trusted on what he says about it.

And there is a passage in Irenaeus that sounds like it says that John saw the visions on Patmos near the end of Domitian's reign, which would be around 96. Now other scholars, this is debated, think that Irenaeus is merely saying that John was seen, not that the vision was seen by John. The line is actually "that was seen, not so very long ago, almost in our own time, in the latter part of the reign of Domitian." That's what Irenaeus says.

But when he says "that was seen," he has referred to John and he's referred to the vision that John saw, and it's not clear whether he's saying the vision was seen by John that late in time or that John, regardless when he saw the vision, he himself lingered and was seen among them that late. It's open to question, it's open to debate.

But you know, it seems interesting because the futurist view, though the dispensationalists hold, if it's true, it could still be true no matter when it was written. I mean, if dispensationalism has the right view of Revelation, it would be the right view whether it was written in 67 AD or whether it was written in 97 AD because again, if it's future, it still hasn't happened, doesn't matter how long ago it was written.

But if the other view, the preterist view, is correct that thinks it's talking about the upcoming destruction of Jerusalem, then the later date has to be ruled out, or I should say that the later date rules it out. If John wrote in 96, he certainly was not predicting events that happened a quarter of a century earlier. You don't predict things that are in the past.

So if you can prove that 96 AD is the actual time it was written, then you can prove that it's not predicting the fall of Jerusalem. That's why they're so interested. It's very important to the futurists to refute the preterist view, which is the view that was fulfilled in 70 AD. And the best way to do that, frankly, is to prove a date of writing that's later than 70 AD.

If indeed the book was written in 96 AD, then there's no possibility of the preterist view being correct. But if it was written either early or late, the futurist view still could be correct. And so that's why futurists who wish to of course defeat preterism would insist on that date because they can't otherwise defeat it. The arguments from the book itself and from comparing scripture to scripture would seemingly defeat the futurist view.

But I've got chapters on that, I wrote a book "Revelation: Four Views," the introduction goes through all the reasons for one date or another. I'm out of time, sorry to say. You've been listening to the Narrow Path, our website thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for joining us.