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 if you have questions about the Bible, about the Christian faith, anything like that. Or if you have a disagreement with the host you want to talk about that, we welcome your call today in this hour. We have looks like maybe one line is currently open. The number to call is 844-484-5737. That's 844-484-5737.

And probably a couple of announcements I have to make. One of them is that the regular men's Saturday morning Bible study in Temecula that is usually the third Saturday of the month is not happening this weekend, not happening tomorrow because simply because I'm not home. I'm teaching somewhere else, so we're having to cancel it. No Temecula Bible study tomorrow morning.

Now what is happening today and tomorrow for me? I'm going to be speaking tonight in Monterey, California, and that was originally scheduled to take place in a home. That has been moved into a church facility in Monterey. It's the Living Hope Maranatha Church. That's tonight, and that's from 6:00 to 8:30 tonight. I'll be talking on the subject "Eschatology 101," kind of a basic introduction to various aspects of eschatology, which is the study of final things, the end times, and so forth.

So that's tonight at Living Hope Maranatha Church. That's on Jocelyn Canyon Road in Monterey, California. So I'll see some of you there tonight. Then tomorrow I'm going to be in the San Jose area, Morgan Hill actually, and that's going to be from 5:00 to 9:00. I'll be speaking on the kingdom of God, and you're welcome to join us there.

Now if you don't know where these places are and you probably don't, you can find that information at our website, thenarrowpath.com, under the tab that says "Announcements." So go to thenarrowpath.com and look for the tab, which is easy to find, that says "Announcements." Scroll down to tonight's and tomorrow's dates, you'll see the time and place of those events and just show up. Be glad to see you.

All right, we're going to the lines. Now they're full. John from Salyersville, Kentucky, welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Guest (Male): Hi Steve. I had a comment about the Easter holiday coming up. Easter's the name of Ishtar, which is also the queen of heaven in Jeremiah 44. And the used Easter eggs come from child sacrifice. That's how they colored them. And to associate that with the blood of Christ, the sacrifice that he made, is an abomination.

Steve Gregg: Okay, now could I ask you where you got your information?

Guest (Male): It's recorded history all over the world.

Steve Gregg: Okay, but I'd like a source because on the internet you can read just about everything and I haven't found documentation for that. I've heard that all my life by the way. I've been hearing for 50 or more years in ministry that Easter and Christmas have come from pagan holidays, and I kind of thought it was true until I actually tried to research it and I simply can't find any resources that say that.

I think you're right that Easter does come from the name of Ishtar, which was a pagan goddess, the wife of Baal. So the word Easter might be objectionable because of that. But as far as the children being sacrificed to color eggs, I have not really been able to document that. That's why I asked you. I just wondered what your sources are.

Guest (Male): Well, it's the spring solstice, the celebration that the pagans had for thousands of years. They still do today.

Steve Gregg: I understand that narrative. I'm just saying where did you learn this?

Guest (Male): Well, several sources. I'm going along in my car but I'm sure it's in encyclopedias, it's on the internet. I've seen it in multiple sources. I don't have it on a page.

Steve Gregg: Okay, well then we can just advise our listeners if they're curious about that to go to the encyclopedias and find out. That's great. Thanks for sharing.

Guest (Male): Thanks Steve.

Steve Gregg: Okay, talk to you again. All right, so we're going to talk next to Michael in Denver, Colorado. Michael, welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Guest (Male): Hi Steve. It's so nice to be with you again and great to talk to you. How are you?

Steve Gregg: I'm fine, thank you. What's on your mind?

Guest (Male): Yeah, so a question kind of came into my head earlier when I saw the news about the passing of Pastor Steve Gaines, who was an influential Southern Baptist pastor. Honestly, I don't know much about that denomination other than it's a Protestant conservative denomination with high levels of daily religious dedication, and it has really high levels of membership. And so yeah, I was just wanting to kind of get your expert opinion on what Southern Baptist denomination really is all about.

Steve Gregg: Well, there's about 40 different denominations of Baptists. Southern Baptist is one of the denominations that's fairly conservative, as opposed to some of the others like the American Baptists, which have a reputation for being more progressive, more on the liberal side. There's a full range from very conservative to fairly liberal Baptist types.

Southern Baptists are your typical conservative American evangelical. They're called Baptists because they belong to a movement that believes in baptizing. Of course, all Christians believe in baptizing, but Baptists believe as do not, for example, the Catholics or the Episcopalians or the Lutherans or the Presbyterians or some others.

Baptists don't believe in baptizing infants. They believe that baptism should be only for those who have consciously and deliberately converted to Christianity. And so that's where the name Baptist comes from. But yeah, there's all kinds of Baptists, but they all have basically what you'd call evangelical theology.

They believe in the Trinity, they believe Jesus is God, the second person of the Trinity. They believe in justification by grace through faith, which is of course a Reformation doctrine that became prominent through Luther's teaching. And you know, they're not highly liturgical. If someone was raised Catholic or Episcopalian or even frankly Lutheran or Presbyterian, they're probably accustomed to a bit of a liturgical element in their worship services.

Baptists are generally pretty much not that way. They are a free church movement. By that I mean before there were Baptists in Europe, there were state countries that were Catholic and countries that were Orthodox and countries that were Lutheran. And these were state religions, and you pretty much had to be of that religion. You couldn't really have an alternative denomination.

And people were born into them. If their parents were in these religions, they baptized their infants into those religions. And Baptists typically believe that you're not saved as a baby by having Christian parents, and therefore should not be baptized as a baby. But that every person is born with a need to come to find Christ themselves.

And so they need to decide at some responsible point in life that they will be a follower of Christ, and then and only then should be baptized. Now the Baptists are not alone in thinking this. That's a very common theme in many evangelical denominations. But Baptists, you said what they believe, that's one thing they believe.

Now, Southern Baptists in particular are better than some other denominations at holding the line on some conservative things which are challenged in our political atmosphere on, for example, things like abortion and same-sex marriage. Those kinds of issues that are politicized in modern times and which some churches basically will just go along with whatever the culture is starting to say. Southern Baptists are not as likely to do that as some other groups are. So I'm not really sure what other matters of curiosity you have about them, but that's a summary of Baptists.

Guest (Male): Yeah, no, that was a great summary. And it just popped into my head because I saw that Steve Gaines died of cancer earlier today, I guess. But I had read an article that said Southern Baptists tend to express higher levels of religious commitment than Americans overall. Religion is very important in their daily lives, and at least 81% of those that identify as Southern Baptist say they pray at least on a daily basis. And so that was another interesting kind of comparison to just see the levels of religious dedication within that denomination.

Steve Gregg: Okay, well I don't think there's any denomination, including Southern Baptists, where everybody in the church is highly committed. I think churches attract all kinds of people, including highly committed people. And so the demographic of highly committed believers as opposed to people who are fairly apathetic about religion but show up in church for whatever social reasons or whatever, you're going to find both of those demographics in pretty much every denomination.

Any sense in which Southern Baptists might be more heavily weighted toward those who are highly dedicated would be a mere statistical thing where they might differ slightly or greatly from various other evangelical churches. But they're not really radically different than other evangelical churches. You could go to a Methodist church or a Presbyterian church and find most of the people there highly dedicated and praying and taking religion seriously, or not.

That generally differs from one congregation to the next. And that's because every congregation is made up of local people, each one is led by a different pastor, and his emphasis and his temperament will have a lot to do with coloring those factors in those who come. So yeah, I don't know, I guess I wouldn't be surprised to hear that the Southern Baptists exceed other denominations by some kind of factor over others, but many other denominations would not be far behind them.

That's basically a description of evangelical Christianity, at least of those who take it seriously. Some people go to church to an evangelical church and they don't take it that seriously. Some of those people will be in Southern Baptist churches and some in others, but basically evangelicals if they take it seriously, they're going to fit the description that you were just giving of Southern Baptists.

Linda in Wallingford, Connecticut, welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Guest (Female): Hello. And I have a question that I know you weren't born then, but do we have any idea how long it took for the Exodus to get to where the spies were? And then I know they had to wander around for their disobedience, but do we have any idea how long that journey took up to when the spies were sent?

Steve Gregg: Well, it was made in stages. And thank you for giving me credit for not having been born yet then. I am pretty old but not quite that old. They took about a month or two to get from Egypt to Mount Sinai, and they camped there for a year. At Mount Sinai, God gave them the law, they built the tabernacle, they remained there for about a year.

And then they began to travel. Now I don't know exactly how long it took them to get from Mount Sinai to Kadesh-Barnea where they were looking across the river to the Promised Land and where the spies came back and brought a bad report. However, we are told it would normally take, I think, 11 or 14 days is what the Bible says it would take that long. So that's probably about how long it took them to get there, a couple weeks. Of course they end up wandering for 40 years after that.

Guest (Female): Because I've been following somebody who is going through starting out in Genesis and stuff, so I've been trying this year to keep up. And then there was something, and I don't think the spies have gotten into the picture yet, but they were in their second year.

Steve Gregg: Yes, well that's because they spent a year at Mount Sinai. It was a couple months from Egypt to Mount Sinai and then they stayed there for a whole year. So it was by the time they left Mount Sinai it was now the second year and that's a couple weeks later they were at Kadesh-Barnea.

Guest (Female): Oh, okay. That was something I missed. Okay, now the other question I had is they brought all these animals with them. Okay, now they were only to sacrifice the most perfect animals, but what happened to the ones that didn't make the cut? Did they eat them or destroy them?

Steve Gregg: Well no, they probably ate them. You know, the idea was, of course this was a very unusual time wandering through the wilderness, but a settled community where you've got cattle and so forth, you're going to have ranchers or farmers who've got their flocks and their herds that they're breeding and so forth, and if they're going to bring a sacrifice they have to pick a flawless specimen from among their livestock.

But the others that are not flawless and that they're not sacrificing, they can eat them or sell them or do what they want with them. And no doubt it was the same.

Guest (Female): Because they were screaming for meat. We want meat, we want meat. And so it's like, but you had all these animals.

Steve Gregg: Right. But the point is that they were moving around. They weren't breeding cattle and so forth. I'm sure that some of the cattle were getting pregnant and stuff, but they were not in a settled existence. And if they simply said we want meat, there's three million people, we don't know how many cattle there were, they could easily have eaten up the cattle they had in a few weeks probably, if not less.

And then they wouldn't have any breeding stock when they got into the land. They had to, I don't know the amount that they had, but I'm guessing they didn't have the kinds of herds and flocks that they could cultivate once they were settled on ranches. They're probably not driving millions and millions of cows and sheep with them as they're wandering through the wilderness. So but there were millions of people.

So again, if they said well, let's just eat the cattle, that'd be a one-and-done thing. They'd be out of cattle, they'd get to the Promised Land, they wouldn't have any livestock. So they probably had relatively limited amount of cattle compared to how much they could produce once they were settled and breeding cattle and so forth.

So I think it was simply not a good economy for them to just slaughter their cattle and eat them when they knew they would need cattle when they settled and farm and need to feed themselves in the new land. So it's not as if they didn't have any cattle to eat, they did, but they had to economize. And with the number of people who were hungry, apparently they didn't think it was a good idea to just have a steak dinner with everyone and then kind of make the rest of the trip without much cattle and get to the Promised Land without much to breed. I'm assuming that's the case. It makes sense to me, I've always kind of thought that was true.

Guest (Female): Well, thank you very much.

Steve Gregg: All right Linda, thanks for your call. Jimmy from Staten Island, New York, welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Guest (Male): Hey Steve. I have two questions, but before that I just want to comment on the last call. I was listening and I was thinking, what did the cattle eat? What did the sheep eat? They were in the desert. Unless God modified them to eat the manna, I don't know. But anyway, that was just a thought.

Steve Gregg: Well, manna actually was a little like grain. I mean, they said it was like flour and they made cakes and stuff from it. And cattle will eat grain, so maybe they would eat manna too. On the other hand, what we call desert isn't always just populated by cacti. It's not always like Arizona and New Mexico desert or the Sahara Desert. Desert just is a region which is uncultivated and doesn't get a lot of water. There's grasses that grow there and stuff like that.

Guest (Male): All right. I have two questions if I may, two verses but one question. I'm trying to get a better handle on the Jews and the land in the Middle East, whatever you want to call it. But I've been listening to you and listening to other people and there's verses I know about Genesis 12 and Galatians where it says the promise was made to Abraham and his seed singular, but there's other verses that seem to imply that it's his offspring.

And Moses such as in Exodus 32:13, Moses was pleading with God and he said, "Remember Abraham, Isaac and Israel thy servants to whom thou swearest by thine own self and saidst to them, I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven and all this land that I have spoken of will I give unto your seed and they shall inherit it forever." Now I know about Deuteronomy 28, but God brought them through to birth the Messiah and in 70 AD the temple was destroyed and they were scattered. But what would prevent somebody now from praying the same prayer now that they're a lot, I know they're not genuine Jews but some of them may be, prevent them from praying this prayer?

Steve Gregg: I'm sorry, which prayer? Like a prayer of repentance you mean, or what?

Guest (Male): Well, this prayer that Moses prayed and he's asking God to remember Abraham, Isaac and Israel that the land was promised to them forever and their seed plural.

Steve Gregg: Okay, well the answer to that is if we say, well didn't God promise Abraham, Isaac and Jacob that their people would inherit the land? Yes, and they did. That's what the Bible says. God gave them the land in Joshua's day. He gave them the land and they held it. They held it for a very long time, but then they lost it because they did the things that Moses told them, God told them through Moses, if you do these things I'll drive you out of the land.

He said if you do the things the Canaanites did, he says I'm causing the land to vomit out the Canaanites because they're so abominable. But he said to Israel, if you do the things that they do, I'll cause the land to vomit you out too. So in other words, you don't have any more unconditional lease to the land than they did. If you obey God, it's yours. If you don't, it's going to vomit you out too, like it did the Canaanites. And that's what happened.

Guest (Male): So the dispensationalists believe that nobody's going to be, it's going to look like Israel's going to be destroyed and God is going to jump in and he's going to save them at the last minute, which I think it's faulty thinking and it's magical thinking. But I have one more verse that I'm a little foggy on. This is in Genesis 15:18-21, if I may read it. "In the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram saying, unto thy seed have I given this land from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates. the Kenites and the Kenizzites and the Kadmonites and the Hittites and the Perizzites and the Rephaims and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Girgashites and the Jebusites." So is that saying that God gave them the land and the people? I know they went in and conquered them when they went over the Jordan River, but it seems that they owned these people from this promise.

Steve Gregg: No, I think it's saying he gave them the land of all these people, not that he gave them the people themselves. Now he actually told them not to take servants of them. Now Israel did not fully obey that command and they did leave some of them alive and kept them as servants, which wasn't to their advantage. But yeah, he's just saying take the land of these tribes and he names the tribes. So that's what that's talking about.

Guest (Male): Thanks Steve. Have a blessed weekend.

Steve Gregg: All right, same to you Jimmy. Good talking to you. Stephen from San Diego, California, welcome to the Narrow Path.

Guest (Male): Yes, thank you. All right, I understand the only way to the Father is through Jesus and the kingdom of heaven, but Jesus said that no one comes to me unless sent by the Father. Doesn't God want everyone to come to Jesus?

Steve Gregg: I'm sorry, I'm not sure what you're quoting. You said no one comes to me unless they're sent from the Father, you say?

Guest (Male): Jesus, he said no one comes to me unless he is sent by the Father, correct?

Steve Gregg: Actually what he said is, "No one comes to me unless the Father who sent me draws them." So that stands to say that maybe the Father doesn't draw some people to Jesus. Well, I think he does desire to, because in John chapter 12, Jesus said, "If I am lifted up," meaning on the cross, "I will draw all men to myself." There were people who didn't come to him even though God was drawing them.

God can be drawing and they can be resisting. And for example, Jesus wept over Jerusalem in Matthew 23, I think it's verse maybe 37, thereabouts, where he said, "How many times I would have gathered you as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you would not." So he was trying to draw them, but they weren't coming.

So Jesus is saying no one can come to me unless the Father draws him. But of course, even if the Father does draw them, that doesn't guarantee they'll come. It's just God drawing them is a necessary condition but not a sufficient condition. That is, he has to be drawing them for them to come. But his drawing is not the only factor that will determine their coming.

Guest (Male): Understood. Thank you. And could you touch on the man who was given an extra 15 years of life by God but then he disgraced himself and dishonored God? I'll hang up. Thanks Steve.

Steve Gregg: Thank you. The man you're talking about is Hezekiah. He was the king and he was dying and he had no son to take his throne. He was childless, at least sonless. And the prophet Isaiah told him you're going to die from this sickness. And Hezekiah prayed and asked God to kind of change his mind and God gave him 15 more years.

Isaiah came back and said God says he's going to give you 15 years. Now during that 15 years Hezekiah did have a son, Manasseh, sadly, because when Hezekiah died then Manasseh was 12 years old and became king and was the worst king of all. Hezekiah did do something wrong before he died and that was he showed all the wealth of Jerusalem to the visiting Babylonian emissaries.

And Isaiah said, well, because that happened they're going to come and take it away, not in your time but in your offspring's time. So that was Hezekiah. The story can be found in Isaiah chapter 38 and 39. Thank you for your call. I've got to take a break. You're listening to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. We have another half hour coming up.

We're not done. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. We are listener supported but you can take anything you want from the website for free. I'll be back in 30 seconds, stay tuned.

Everyone is welcome to call the Narrow Path and discuss areas of disagreement with the host, but if you do so, please state your disagreement succinctly at the beginning of your call and be prepared to present your scriptural arguments when asked by the host. Don't be disappointed if you don't have the last word or if your call is cut shorter than you prefer. Our desire is to get as many callers on the air during the short program, so please be considerate to others.

Welcome back to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we have another half hour ahead of us live to take your calls. You have questions about the Bible, the Christian faith, difference of opinion with the host you want to balance comment, that's what we're here for. Feel free to give me a call.

The number is 844-484-5737. Most of our lines are full but we have two open lines now. So the next two people who call will get in right away. I mean, they'll be online to get in before we're done, they'll be waiting. But the number is 844-484-5737. All right, we're going to talk next to Colin from Morgan Hill, California. Hi Colin, welcome.

Guest (Male): Hi Steve. I'm listening to your astrology teaching on the Narrow Path website and I was just wondering how have your views about what you taught back then changed over time, if they've changed at all?

Steve Gregg: Well, just so people know what we're talking about, I don't believe in astrology. But there is a line of thinking which many evangelical teachers have written books about that suggest that the signs of the zodiac, while they do not function the way that astrology suggests, they do have a purpose and that God has put them in the sky for signs.

Now a sign doesn't govern your life, it just conveys information. It says in Genesis chapter 1 verse 14 that God put the stars and the sun and the moon for signs and for seasons and for days and years. So the suggestion is that God is communicating something, as you do with a sign. A sign has information on it.

And so whereas satanic or occultic astrology views the houses of the zodiac as almost having divine powers and they dictate the fate of those who are born in certain relations to them, that's idolatry, that's superstition. But that's simply the way the devil has perverted something that really exists that God did make. And what he made was constellations, which have been fairly recognized by most cultures around the world.

That some people think these constellations represent elements of the gospel. And that Virgo represents the Virgin that Jesus was born from, and that Sagittarius or whatever, the centaur, part man, part beast, kind of pictures how Jesus is part divine and part human. And that some people think the twins, Gemini, represent the two natures of Christ.

Now it's not possible to prove that this is so. And even the people who've written extensive books on the subject, there's some pretty thick books written by Christians on this that go into great detail, they don't claim that they can prove it. But they do put out what they consider to be a plausible case that these signs that God has put in the heavens and which are recognized by people of virtually all societies throughout history, that they are communicating something.

And what in the world would they be communicating? Well, the suggestion is they're communicating the gospel in some way. Now it does say in Psalm 19, the opening verse says "The heavens declare the glory of God," the firmament shows forth his handiwork. It says, "Night unto night they utter speech, day unto day they reveal knowledge."

It says there is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. It says that the stars in the heavens are declaring the glory of God and their voice and the knowledge that they convey are really heard by everybody. That is, it's like a universal message in the sky. Now because it has been corrupted by occultic adoption of their own way of looking at these signs, it seems that the devil may have obscured the message and there's not many modern people who can really decipher them in quite the right way.

And so this is very theoretical. Some think that in earlier times these signs were easily understood by the philosophers and the astronomers and the people just who looked up and studied these things, and that the message was the message of Christ. It's interesting that when God told Abraham to go out and look into the sky and number the stars, God said, "So shall your seed be."

Of course, generally speaking, we understand him to be saying as numerous as the stars your seed should be like that. But some think that there was another kind of shade of meaning: that your seed, the Messiah, will be like that which is portrayed in these signs. And Paul actually quotes in Romans chapter 10, he quotes from Psalm 19.

And he's talking about the people who are unbelievers. He says, "Well, haven't they heard?" He says, "Low, they have heard." And then he quotes from Psalm 19, "Their voice went out to all the earth, there's no language or tongue that their voice is not heard." In other words, he basically quotes the psalmist who's saying that the heavens are declaring the glory of God and Paul saying, "Well, have the heathen heard about Christ, have the heathen heard about God?"

He says, "They have." And he quotes the Psalm that says that. So this is the basic thesis of the things I was saying in my teaching on astrology. I guess what I would say, you say how have my views changed on it. My views have simply been softened on it. There was a time when I read several of these books when I was a young man that they were pretty persuasive and I taught it as if that's definitely the case.

And I would say now, having gotten older and more cautious, I'd say, you know, it could be, it's plausible, but I would not be able to be dogmatic on the subject at this point. That's how I would have changed.

Guest (Male): I assumed that would be your answer. It sounded like it was an older lecture, but thanks so much.

Steve Gregg: All right, God bless you. You going to see me in Morgan Hill tomorrow?

Guest (Male): Yes, sir.

Steve Gregg: Great, I look forward to it. God bless you. Bye-bye. All right, let's talk to Dave in Louisville, Ohio. Hi Dave, welcome.

Guest (Male): Yeah, can you hear me there?

Steve Gregg: Sure.

Guest (Male): Okay, so I've not done this for like 30 years, but I got a hold of your book, *The Four Different Views of Revelation*, a number of years back. And so when I found you on YouTube and started listening to your stuff, I was really, really fascinated. I've recommended your book to other guys to buy.

I grew up Amish Mennonite and so we had about half of my teachers in Bible school were premillennial and half were amillennial. So I'm really fascinated by your material there. But I have about six or seven questions, which I know you can't answer all, but I'm curious what you think of Gene Edwards and the house church movement.

Steve Gregg: Well, I read some of Gene Edwards' stuff back in the '70s. His book, *A Tale of Three Kings*, was pretty popular in the circles I was in. And of course, he was pioneering in a house church kind of movement which I think he started in the Santa Barbara area in California, then moved I believe to Jacksonville, Florida. And I don't imagine he's alive today. I haven't kept track. He'd be very old by this point.

Guest (Male): I was at his burial two years ago in Texas. So yeah, he passed.

Steve Gregg: Okay, so I hadn't heard he had died, but it doesn't surprise me. He was a lot older than me. I don't want to speak evil of the dead because he had a lot of good things to say. I just know that some people who had been part of his community in Jacksonville I talked to later and apparently they felt it kind of had sort of a controlling kind of a cult-like thing about it.

I can't say that from my own experience. But I will say when I read his book, *A Tale of Three Kings*, there was a certain tone to it that I thought, I don't know, kind of almost like in cults they kind of the leaders give the impression they're the ones who are really enlightened and virtually everyone else in the church is messed up.

And that's how cults get their following. They say, why go to any other church when they're so in the dark, whereas I've got the light here. He didn't say it like that and I don't want to slander him, but I kind of got that kind of vibe reading him. And then later on when I met people who had been in his church, that's kind of what they said too. So I'm not going to, I've never met the man, so I'm not expert about it. I will say that what he wrote in the books I've seen was not heretical. And a lot of people in the house church movement kind of trace their history to being with him there.

Guest (Male): Yeah, well I went to a bunch of his seminars, meetings, talked to him and he was a very, a very strong opinionated person and one of those situations where, like Paul and Peter sometimes had a tough time getting along or Paul and Silas and everything. Yeah, that's sort of what I thought. But I have appreciated a lot of his books. And so hey, another question, and you can tell me when you're getting done.

Steve Gregg: Let's take one more because my lines are full.

Guest (Male): Love your enemies. What's your thoughts on Christians going to war killing other people, Christians or non-Christians in war?

Steve Gregg: Growing up I never met a Mennonite, but reading the Sermon on the Mount in my early years I became quite Anabaptistic in my understanding of violence. Just the Sermon on the Mount kind of made me a pacifist and I actually wrote a manuscript against Christians fighting in war and things like that back when I was in my early 20s. It's not published. It was just a manuscript I didn't get it published.

I don't think so. I mean, there may be a folder somewhere in my files of it. It was before we had computers, so it isn't digitally preserved or anything. It's on typed paper with a typewriter. But no, I certainly couldn't easily lay my hand on it right now. But I made a good case for pacifism.

But I have to say that as I studied the Sermon on the Mount, studied other parts of the Bible too, including the apostles' writings and so forth, and synthesized that, I came to believe that Jesus' teaching about turning the other cheek and such, and loving your enemy, was primarily in the context of your neighbor who doesn't like you.

A man who wants to insult you by slapping you across the face, just absorb it and be gracious about it and turn the other cheek humbly. Don't let your pride get the best of you, get you into a conflict. I'm not saying that Jesus wouldn't say that we should love our political enemies, I think we should. I think we should love every human being on the planet.

But to take what Jesus said on that subject and say therefore God would never approve of any war, I think goes beyond anything Jesus actually said, or Paul. Because frankly they didn't address war because they both lived at the time of what we call the Pax Romana where the Romans had conquered all the area around and everyone was at peace, there just wasn't any war.

So Jesus didn't have to instruct his disciples about war. He instructed them about their interpersonal relationships with people who were antagonistic toward them. But see, the example of turning the other cheek, obviously if somebody is doing that to you, absorb it. Love your personal foe and don't fight back, just love him even though he doesn't love you.

But when it comes to a different situation where it's not just you, let's just say someone breaks into your house and wants to kill your wife and children. Well, that's not the situation Jesus is talking about. And then it's not just a matter of loving the enemy, you've got to love your wife and kids too. And the question is am I supposed to love the bad guy more than I love the good guys?

Or does God still as he always did in the Old Testament, still stand on the side of the innocent against the unjust? I mean, God is for justice. God always even in the Old Testament said people should love their enemies. In the law of Moses in Exodus it says if the man who hates you, his donkey is fallen under its load, help him up.

If you see the ox of your enemy wandering free, take it back to him. In Proverbs it says if your enemy is hungry give him food, if he's thirsty give him drink. In other words, the Old Testament itself said that you should be kind and loving to your enemy, but that didn't cancel out the fact that when they were invaded by people who wanted to slaughter their women and children, they took up arms to defend them.

And this is something that is distasteful for me because I don't hate anyone enough to want to kill them. But it would be a question of if I'm in the position to save the life of some innocent people who are being attacked by somebody who in God's sight what they're doing is worthy of death, the Bible says.

Then I mean, I don't want to be the executioner, but if it's up to me or nobody, I think I could justify defending the innocent. I'm still a very non-violent person and I've only been struck once by someone hostile to me. I did literally turn the other cheek and I'd like to do that every time that happened.

But I've never been in a situation where people who were under my care were in mortal danger from some other source where the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. I'd hopefully lay down my life for them. But if laying down my life just means that the attacker now has me out of the way and he's going to get them next, maybe it's more loving to stop him first.

So this is a hard call. What I would say is I do believe Christians have one obligation and that is to love their neighbor as themselves. But when it comes to war, different Christians interpret that differently. Some Christians say I love my enemy so I can't go to war and fight against him, I can't kill him because I'm supposed to love him.

Others say well, I love my neighbor and that's why I will defend him from monsters who are violently trying to kill them. And if you won't save somebody from a violent death when you can, how can it be said that you love them? So the question is who am I supposed to love most? Obviously I should love everybody, all other things being equal.

But what if all things are not equal and there's a bad guy trying to hurt innocent people? And I can love him by just keeping my hands in my pockets and letting him do what he's going to do to those people, or I can love them by stopping him. And I have to say thinking through the whole holistically of the whole testimony of scripture, it seems like stopping him is the more loving thing to do.

But of course the Bible doesn't address it because there wasn't war at the time of the New Testament and therefore none of the people that were addressed by Jesus or the apostles were in the position to make a decision of going to war or not. So it wasn't addressed. So what we are told is to love our neighbor and I can appreciate someone who says I can't hurt my neighbor because I'm supposed to love him.

And I can also appreciate the person says because I love my neighbor, I will defend my neighbor from people who are evil and nasty monsters who want to just kill them for no good reason. I think just you need to always love your neighbor and then act as love would dictate at the time, I would say. And I'm not going to predict exactly what that would be in every situation because there definitely are various ones. I appreciate you joining us.

Guest (Male): Yes, sir. You have a good day. God bless.

Steve Gregg: God bless you Dave. All right, let's talk to Eddie from Dearborn, Michigan. Eddie, welcome.

Guest (Male): Hi Steve. I'm glad you're still around and on the air. God bless you for your ministry. I've learned everything I had to learn about Satan pretty much from you and your ministry. My only combative statement is the statement that is often presented to me by others, which is if God made evil in order to test us, isn't he the author of evil? And isn't he the one who made Satan, not an angel who fell but Satan himself as a being who tests us, isn't he then the author of evil? I will hang up and take your answer off the air. Thank you so much, Steve, for your ministry.

Steve Gregg: Okay, sure, thanks. Now for those who don't know this mystery well, what Eddie's referring to is the fact that I do not claim to know details about the origin of Satan. The most common view that almost all Christians have been taught and teach themselves is that Satan was a good angel, a supreme angel, and he got proud, he waged war against God, the holy angels made war against him, and he got cast out of heaven and became the devil.

So their view is that the devil is a former angel. Now my position is the Bible doesn't ever tell us that. I know Isaiah 14, I know Ezekiel 28, I know Luke 10:19, I know Revelation 12:9-11, I know these passages. They do not tell us, none of them speak of Satan ever being an angel.

That being so, I cannot affirm with certainty that he was. But what's the alternative? Well, an alternative might be, and I can't affirm this either, maybe he was made as he is now in order to perform the function that God has him functioning. You say God's using him for something? Of course, why would he let him exist?

God doesn't have to permit Satan to exist one second. There will come a time when God will throw Satan into the lake of fire and that'll be the end of it. Why doesn't he do that today? Why didn't he do that 6,000 years ago? I don't know, but God always does things for a good reason. My assumption is that whether he created Satan that way or whether Satan was created good and became that way before humans came along, Satan was the way he is now.

So whatever happened before that, there's no record of it, we don't know. But the question is when man was created, why did God allow Satan to exist? Why did God allow him in the garden? Well, the answer was that he wanted him to test Adam and Eve. And he tested Jesus, the Holy Spirit led Jesus in the wilderness to be tested by the devil too.

He tested Job and he tests all of us, I believe. And I think God wants us to be tested. Now someone says, well then is God the author of evil? Well, if we mean human evil, certainly not. And certainly evil doesn't, no one is required to do what Satan says. So simply if we could say Satan exists whether he's a fallen angel or not, he exists today because he provides an alternative to obedience to God.

And it therefore tests us: do we want to obey God or do we want to take the alternative? With no alternative, there'd be no test. And so it's possible that the existence of a tester is not in itself evil, but it results in evil if people take that way. If Satan's there saying oh, don't obey God, do this, eat the forbidden fruit or whatever, well then people are doing evil.

But they created it, not the devil. The devil didn't make them do it and God didn't make them do it. It says in James chapter 1, let no one say when he is tempted, I'm tempted by God. He says for God does not tempt people with evil, neither does he tempt any man. He says everyone is tempted when he is drawn away by his own lusts and enticed.

Now he's not denying the devil's involved, but he doesn't think that's the significant thing. There is a devil there, but you don't sin because the devil is there, you sin because you're drawn away by your own lusts and enticed. If Satan offers an alternative to obedience to God, that's a choice you have to make and you do not have to make the wrong one.

Face it, we all do make wrong ones too, but that wasn't absolutely necessary. We can't say that by putting a test there, God determined that everyone would fail any more than if your college professor says, okay, here's the final exam, I taught you all the stuff you need to know, here's the test. Now if you fail that test, that's not the college professor's fault. You should have learned the stuff. He taught you the stuff.

Before Adam and Eve fell, God told them the right answer to the test. They were going to be tested on whether they should eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God said no, the answer is no, don't do that. It's like a college professor telling his class on the first day, your grade, your pass-fail is going to be based on your answer to one question on the final exam at the end of the semester, and I'm giving you the answer to it right now.

I think everyone is being set up for success. If anyone fails under those conditions, don't blame the professor because he had a test. And the same thing is true. God said you're tested in this area, here's the answer. Adam and Eve didn't believe the answer and they went the wrong way. So God's not the author of evil.

To say God's the author of a test doesn't tell you whether he wants people to pass or fail the test. But since he's God and he's not willing that any should perish, his desire was everyone would pass the test and he gave them every advantage to do so. There's no excuse for not doing so.

So I don't see God as the author of evil, whether or not Satan is a fallen angel. I don't take a position on it. But many people object partly because they've never heard it before and partly because there are maybe philosophical questions they have about the idea that God could have made Satan as a tester rather than as an angel who became one.

I'm saying the Bible is silent on that. So one view or another may be right. If we say but there's problems with the idea of God making a tester, yeah, there's problems with him making an angel that fell too. How could an angel that saw the face of God be so stupid as to think he could overthrow God? I can't imagine that.

How could an angel who sees God face to face be such an idiot as to think, oh I can rebel, I can take this guy, that big guy is going down. The devil, how could he be called wise if he had such a stupid miscalculation? That's a problem with the traditional view. Also there's other issues too. And we just don't have the answer given to us in black and white.

I appreciate your call. Maybe I can fit another question in here barely. It's going to be Heather in Westbrook, Maine. Hi Heather, welcome.

Guest (Female): Yes, hi. How are you?

Steve Gregg: Good. What's your question? If you can't hear me I'm going to have to move on.

Guest (Female): Can you hear me? Yes, I heard a scripture about what am I praying for because my prayers aren't being answered and it was just about the fact that you should just pray anyway. I don't know what it was, but it was a really good one and I don't know if it was Romans or Corinthians. Does that ring a bell?

Steve Gregg: Well, I'm not sure what you were reading. I don't know of a scripture that says that outright. I think it's true that if your prayer isn't immediately answered, you keep praying anyway. The only place I know of where it actually says that God decided not to answer a prayer was when Paul in 2 Corinthians chapter 12 said that he had this thorn in his flesh that was tormenting him, and three times he asked the Lord to take it away from him.

And the Lord said, "I have a better idea. My grace is sufficient for you." And I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to take away your thorn because your weakness is a good thing spiritually. My strength is made perfect in your weakness. Paul himself in that passage said this thorn was given to him so he wouldn't be exalted above measure.

So it's keeping him humble. It was keeping him weak enough that God could have his way, showing his power through him. And that's the only case I know of, there might be others I don't know of offhand. But I don't think there's one that says even if God's not answering prayer, just keep praying.

Though that is a good thing to do, just keeping it up. Because God doesn't always answer the first time you ask. I'm out of time. You've been listening to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. We're listener supported. You could help us if you want from the website, thenarrowpath.com. Let's talk again Monday. Have a good weekend.