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, you can raise those for conversation here on the air. We can talk about those. If you see things differently from the viewpoint of the host, feel free to call about that. We'd be glad to talk to you about that, too. The number to call is 844-484-5737. Got a couple of lines open right now, so if you call right now, it's a good time. 844-484-5737.

Tonight is something that rolls around once a month on the first Wednesday of each month. We have a Zoom meeting which anyone listening to me or not listening to me, if they hear about it, are welcome to join us for. We do this for an hour and a half to two hours on a Wednesday night. Just a Zoom meeting where anyone who wants can ask questions and such.

And if you want to do that, that's at 7:00 PM Pacific time tonight, 7:00 PM Pacific time. And the way to log on is you need to go to our website thenarrowpath.com and go to announcements which will have all the announcements of what's coming up anytime soon, including tonight. And there will be a log on code there for you to join us on Zoom tonight, 7:00 PM Pacific. And look forward to seeing many of you there. All right, let's talk to Eric in Midland, Michigan. Hi Eric, welcome.

Eric: Hi, thanks Steve. My question is canonical and comes to the validity of the book of Esther since it seems to be such a man-centered book and that it's famously the only book of the Bible without God's name in it or the reference to God. And the very end of the book seems to really focus on Mordecai seeking the wealth of his people and speaking peace to all his seed. So if it's supposed to be about the hidden hand of God, but we don't really see the hidden hand of God anywhere else in scripture except where it's explained, what's the real validity of Esther being in the Old Testament?

Steve Gregg: Well, I mean, there perhaps are some who would argue that Esther doesn't belong in the Bible. I believe the Dead Sea Scrolls, which contain virtually the entire Old Testament in Hebrew, as I understand, did not have Esther in it, which may have suggested that the Essene community that put together the Dead Sea Scrolls might not have seen Esther as a canonical book. However, they don't determine necessarily for us the canon, but it makes it very clear that the book could have been questioned as to its canonicity.

Now that doesn't mean it's questioned as to its truthfulness because obviously the purpose of the book is to provide the rationale for the celebration of Purim, which is a Jewish festival which has been celebrated every year by the Jews since the time of Esther. Now when Israel celebrates various holidays, let's just say Hanukkah or Passover or Purim, they are based in some historic events. Of course, the Passover is based in the Exodus, which was a historic event. Hanukkah is based on the Maccabean victory and the rededication of the temple in the second century BC, which was historical.

Purim also goes back to a historical event. Now that would suggest that the book of Esther is presented as real history. And of course, one could say, but maybe they just pretended it was real history, maybe they just made up a story and presented it as if it was historical. If so, then that would be the first time and the only time we know of where the Jews have celebrated every year an event which never really happened, and that doesn't seem very likely.

To my mind, Esther is a true account. Now given the details, it does seem like we see the hidden hand of God in things. I mean, we don't have the name of God, we don't have God mentioned by name in the book of Esther, but we certainly see the providence of God in all the ways that things worked out. And that's true in many of the stories of the Old Testament. For example, you read the books of Samuel and Kings, we could say the way that God preserved David from Saul when he's being pursued, or the way he protected him from Absalom when he rebelled, or the way that God saved Jerusalem in the days of Jehoshaphat from the great armies that came against them.

Those are all we would say are intended to be understood as providential. Now some of those, we're told that God did it, other times we're just told the story, but we can see God involved in it. And Esther could be a book like that. I don't have a concern whether Esther's considered canonical or not. I consider it to be a true story, a true story of God's preservation of Israel, which is pretty much the basic purpose, I would think, of most of the historical Old Testament books. So I don't see it as that much different than the rest.

Now is it inspired? That I don't know. I mean, the Bible doesn't tell us that it is. We don't know who even wrote it or if it was written by an inspired author. But if someone wants to say it was, I wouldn't have any reason to dispute it.

Eric: Okay, thanks Steve, appreciate it.

Steve Gregg: Okay Eric, thanks for your call. All right, Ellen in Brinnon, Washington, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Ellen: Thanks for your ministry. I'm just wondering if you could speak to the intersection of Christianity and politics surrounding the current conflict with Iran, and specifically your opinion of Israel's role in America's foreign conflicts. It seems like true Christians have such strong opposing viewpoints. And also secondly, your opinion of Alison Weir's book, Against Our Better Judgment.

Steve Gregg: Well, I read Alison Weir's book, Against Our Better Judgment, which has, of course, a history of the modern state of Israel and of America's involvement in it. And of course, her book's very anti-Zionist. I'm not anti-Zionist, but I'm not a Zionist either. I personally, when I look at the present conflicts in the Middle East, the real choice for Christians is do we see these as special because Israel is involved or do we see them the same way we'd see any other war in the world between two secular powers?

Israel, by the way, is a secular country, it's not a religious country. So it's not like Israel in the Old Testament. Israel in the Old Testament was a religious country. It was established by God making a covenant with them at Mount Sinai. They had the tabernacle and then the temple as the center of their life worshipping Yahweh. I mean, they were a covenant people whose existence was based on the relationship with Yahweh. And then of course, they crucified the Messiah and they were scattered throughout the world for 2,000 years. And now there's a nation there, apparently the descendants of some of the same people who lived 2,000 years ago, Israelites.

And they're in the same piece of property, but they don't have a religious nation. They don't have the covenant with God, they don't have the temple. They don't even have a state religion. So in other words, they're just like us. They're just like America. They're a secular nation. They're pluralistic. You can be a Muslim there, you can be a Buddhist there, you can be an atheist there. Many Jews are. You can be a Christian there or you can be religiously Jewish there. But it's just like America that way. I mean, you can be any religion you want there. And it's not a religious country.

Which means that when we look at Israel and its conflicts with other nations, we're looking at generally speaking, a secular nation like our own in political conflict with other nations. And therefore, when someone says, as Christians, how should we feel about the Middle Eastern war or the Iranian war that we're involved in right now, that would be for people who have more access to information than I do to really decide finally. I haven't really made any decisions about the Ukrainian-Russian conflict.

Trump said once that he had solved a whole bunch of wars I didn't even know existed on the planet. I don't know what the status of those are. But apparently there were quite a few conflicts internationally between different nations and different parts of the world which I hadn't even been informed about. If someone had asked me at the time, "What is your thought about the problems between Pakistan and India?" or something, I don't have any special information about that. And I don't... A lot of Christians are paying very close attention to any war that includes Israel because they, I think mistakenly, feel that Israel is not a secular country like all others. They are. They're secular like all other countries.

And therefore whatever they do, and they're not mentioned in scripture, the modern state of Israel is nowhere mentioned in scripture. So there's really nothing in scripture or as Christians that would give us special insights into that particular war or any war that Israel is engaged in. We would have to evaluate it if we had enough information. And some people do, I don't. But if we had enough information, we could evaluate it on the same basis we'd evaluate any other war. Who's doing the bad things? Who's innocent, if anyone? If both are guilty of things, then who's more guilty? If they're both equally guilty, is there one of them that's an ally of the United States so that we have certain treaties to maintain?

Those are the kinds of political considerations that Christians should have toward any war if they're going to have any opinion at all. And but in order to answer those questions, of course, we have to realize that we have to have some kind of real knowledge of what's actually going on over there, which I don't know where I would get that. I don't know where I'd find that. If I had objective information that's not from either partisan side, and I'm not sure where you'd find any of that either, then I might be able to have an opinion. But thankfully, I don't have to have an opinion. As a Christian, I'm not required to form an opinion about things I don't have sufficient knowledge of. The Bible says he that answers a matter before he hears it, it's a shame and a folly to him.

Okay, well, if I had heard all the data available about both sides, I might be able to give an answer without being a fool and without it being a shame for me. But if I'm answering the matter and I haven't really heard all the sides, and frankly, it's impossible for me to hear all the sides in my position. I don't live over there, I have better things to do than to follow all the details of that war. So for me to have an opinion is not an obligation. Christians don't have to have an opinion about everything. Although when we hear all the data about something and there's a clear moral side to take, then we should take the side of morality.

I don't think any of us are in that position right now. I know that the Zionist Christians, they're pretty sure that Israel's quite innocent in all this matter and that anything we can do to destroy her enemies is going to be something that'll be a good idea. People who are anti-Zionists usually take the exact opposite prejudice. And I'd prefer not to be prejudiced at all. I'd rather say, listen, the Bible doesn't speak to this particular conflict except insofar as the Bible says sin is a reproach to every nation and righteousness exalts a people. So Israel, the Palestinian authorities or whatever, Iran, these nations should be judged by their behavior.

And the thing is, behavior's an ambiguous thing. I mean, if we were to judge America by America's behavior, well, which behavior would we look to? Would we look for the behavior of our conquest of the Indian territories centuries ago? Maybe, maybe that'd be a good place to look, or maybe it's irrelevant to what's going on right now. Is America doing good things? I believe so. I think America is a net force for good in the world. Does America do some underhanded, nasty, immoral things? Absolutely. So I would say the same is true of Israel, the same is true of Iran, same is true probably of almost everybody.

And so it's not that I think that Christians shouldn't be involved in politics, but I think we should avoid forming or propagating political opinions that are not fully informed or, frankly, that we've got no business in because we're not informed. If it comes to American politics and we're American Christians and we're voting, then I think we should become as knowledgeable as possible about that before we vote because our vote is going to have an impact. Our vote's going to affect something, at least potentially. And we don't want to have a negative effect, so we need to make sure we're voting wisely and justly and morally.

But my opinions about what's going on in Iran are not going to affect anything at all. I could say I'm all for it, I'm all against it, and that would be just so much verbs and nouns coming out of my mouth. It wouldn't have any impact on anything in the world. So I think one of the things Christians need to do is to recognize when they don't have sufficient competence to speak to an issue because the information we're getting is all propaganda from both sides. And if you live over there, if you know the people involved on both sides, you might be in a position I'm not in.

But I don't think Christians are obligated to be informed about everything going on in the world. In biblical times, they couldn't be. So I mean, we just live at a time where you can get rumors from all over the world through the internet. But that doesn't mean you have knowledge of everything going on in the world. In biblical times, they didn't know about much of anything except for what was going on in their village that they lived in and maybe rumors of what's going on on the frontiers where battles were going on. But there's no obligation for us to know everything. And if we don't know everything, there will have to be certain things that we can't form a good opinion about or a reliable one. I would say most of the wars in the world are in that category with reference to me. I don't have an opinion about most of them. I wish they'd stop. I'm for world peace, but obviously world peace is only a responsible peace if oppressive, aggressive nations are made to cease from being so. But as far as which nations are the most guilty of this, I don't know how any of us would know, nor why we would need to. If I'm the president, I'd need to know. If I'm setting foreign policy, I would need to know. But that's not the position I'm in, so I'll let people who are competent worry about that. Thank you for your call.

Steve Gregg: Don in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Don: Thank you for taking my call, Steve. My question has to do with more the Christian life. I was a college student in the early 80s and I was greatly and positively affected by the music of Keith Green, Keith and Melody Green. And being in California where you were, did you know Keith and Melody? Did you attend any of his concerts?

Steve Gregg: I knew Keith personally. I didn't know Melody as well, though I met her. I was in their home on occasion and I visited the community in Woodland Hills, California that he was heading up. He actually asked me to stay there and be an elder in their community, but I had other things God was calling me to do, so I turned him down. But he's, yeah, very inspirational. I mean, I loved Keith Green. I love his music still. Fantastic. Did I? I think you asked did I play at any of the concerts? No, my band... I was in a band before Keith Green was saved. Our band broke up.

And then I played solo concerts a little bit before he got saved. By the time he was saved, I was kind of out of music ministry. I was in music ministry from about 1970 to about 1975 or 76 maybe I was still doing Christian music ministry. But Keith got saved I think around 1977 or so. So when I met him, he was all the rage in Christian music. I was not even in that ministry anymore.

Don: I see. Yeah, what an... I don't know anybody like him. I mean, the energy and just lit a fire in me as a young college student. There was a guy discipling me there, and to this day, I listen to his music all the time. I'm not the only music... but I'm a worship pastor. I lead worship every Sunday and from the piano. But my second question too was just in general about Christian concerts and music as an evangelical tool. Do you still believe that's effective as Keith Green and many others have done it?

Steve Gregg: Well, I think it should be. I think it should be effective. It depends on the quality of the music, that is the quality of the message in the music. I will say that back when I was playing in a Christian rock band in 1970 to 72, at that time Christian rock and roll was like novel. I don't think there was a Christian rock band before 1970 or maybe 1969. But almost nobody on college campuses or in public had ever heard rock and roll music preaching about Jesus. And all the Christian rock bands, including our own, were evangelistic. They weren't worship bands. At Calvary Chapel, we would worship and sing an hour and a half every night, but it was acapella.

But the bands played outreach-oriented music and evangelistic music. And that was true of us too. And we played on college campuses, we played in parks, we played on beaches, we played on high school campuses sometimes, we played in coffee houses. And in most cases in those years, most people had never heard the gospel presented in a rock and roll motif. And so it got attention. I mean, on a college campus, people would hear a rock concert going on and then they'd kind of catch the word Jesus or something coming from the platform and they'd say, "What? What's this?" And it got their attention.

Now, I don't know if it would do the same today, simply because the idea of there being Christian rock or Christian contemporary music is commonplace. It's been a commonplace for 50 years now. And it may still have the same impact if the music has that anointing, if the music has that power in it and the gospel is uncompromised in it. Yeah, I think people could be reached with it. I just don't know if we'd see the same results we saw in the 70s back when the music was so novel, everyone was curious to listen to it.

And now of course, most Christian music... I mean, there's Christian music radio stations and stuff like that, which also formed after 1970 with these bands. But I think that now Christian contemporary music is very often very vanilla, very commercial. A lot of times there's not much punch to it. And that's why you like Keith Green. Keith actually came along after the Jesus movement and what we called... we never called it contemporary Christian music, we called it Jesus music. It was evangelistic music. That Jesus music thing had kind of died away before Keith was even converted. And instead contemporary Christian music industry had risen up to take its place.

And it was pretty watered down stuff in many cases. And then when Keith got saved, yeah, he was radical. And so it's kind of like his music was like Jesus music from the older days. And it really stood out. It really stood out from the contemporary music, contemporary Christian music industry. And I mean, he wouldn't charge for concerts, he wouldn't charge for things just like none of us did in the early 70s. We just wouldn't dream of it. But by the time he got saved, most bands had become commercialized and they were charging, selling albums, doing stuff like that.

So it started out as a radical Christian evangelistic movement done by people who know how to play music. And then eventually there were people who wanted to be famous musicians who got converted, and so they started adding some Jesus into their songs and got to make albums and stuff. They were able to be a big fish in a small pond in terms of the Christian talent pool, which was smaller than the secular one. I mean, there's a lot of people who were very good musicians, very good musicians in the Christian music industry, but let's face it, a lot of them just weren't good enough to make it in the world.

And so the Jesus movement kind of attracted eventually, not immediately, but when there was money to be made eventually, it attracted people who were good musicians, creative people. And some really saved. I mean, some of them weren't really saved as it became clear, but they wanted to make records and they weren't good enough to make records and make it in the world, so the Christian music industry became a small pond they could be a big fish in. And that's what I noticed. And I can't evaluate the modern contemporary Christian music industry because I don't listen to it. But the reason I don't is because a long time ago it stopped being that anointed, powerful music such as you're thinking of Keith Green's music was. I don't know anyone making music like that now. There were a lot of us doing that early on.

Don: Right. I mean, I think of Twila Paris. Her stuff was good.

Steve Gregg: Twila Paris, yeah, her stuff was good. Yeah, she was very closely associated with Youth With A Mission.

Don: Okay, so you were associated with also Winky Pratney with Youth With A Mission, or was Keith there as well?

Steve Gregg: Winky was... I knew Winky. But yeah, Winky lived in New Zealand and Texas, he had homes at both places. But he was not a musician, but he was part of that YWAM circle thing. And Youth With A Mission was a big movement, but it wasn't technically exactly part of the Jesus movement in the sense that the Jesus movement usually refers to the conversion of huge numbers of hippies all of a sudden, which happened all over the country but primarily in Southern California and primarily at Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa. And most of the bands, most of the Jesus music bands were at Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa, though there were some exceptions.

There were people like Larry Norman and Randy Stonehill and some bands in Hollywood and some other places. But it seemed to me really honestly that the bands that came out of Calvary Chapel were very uninterested in being famous, uninterested in making records, absolutely uninterested in money. They just wanted to preach the gospel. And that was what I call the Jesus music thing. And Keith Green was like that too.

Don: Yeah, that's great. Well, he has a huge impact. And you were a lead singer and guitarist?

Steve Gregg: Yeah, and piano player, yeah. But not very good. I was never very good, that's why we didn't make albums. Hey brother, I need to take a break here, but I appreciate your call.

Don: Thank you so much.

Steve Gregg: God bless you, thanks for calling. You're listening to The Narrow Path. We're only halfway through, there's another half hour coming. We just like to let you know at this point we are listener-supported and we have a website thenarrowpath.com. Check it out. You can donate if you want, but everything's free there. We'll be right back, don't go away.

Welcome back to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we're live for another half hour taking your calls. If you have questions about the Bible, we'd love to talk to you about those. If you disagree with the host, we'd love to talk to you about that too. Right now our lines are full, but that doesn't mean you can't get through in this half hour at all. Just don't call right now, you could get a busy signal, but in the next minute or two or several minutes, there will be lines opening up. The number is 844-484-5737. That's 844-484-5737.

Remember we have our monthly Zoom meeting tonight, 7:00 PM Pacific time. Anyone's welcome to join us from around the world. Go to our website thenarrowpath.com, look under announcements and you'll see how to log into that Zoom meeting tonight, 7:00 PM Pacific. And look forward to seeing many of you there. All right, we're going to talk next to Kevin in Augusta, Maine. Hi Kevin, welcome.

Kevin: Hi Steve. So my question is primarily on how to hear God, particularly in prayer, but also just on your calling in life. And I know in the Bible, there are instances where God does speak audibly and they speak to him as a friend would a friend face-to-face and all these things. But I'm also aware that's not the norm on a day-to-day. And so how do you hear God practically in prayer and when determining your calling, whether he's calling you to certain things or not?

Steve Gregg: Yeah, I understand the problem. Everyone who's a true Christian wants to know what the will of God is for them because they want to do it. People who aren't Christians maybe they might be curious to know what God would say, but if they're not going to do anything about it, there's no reason for him to speak to them. But a true Christian wants to know the will of God. And this question comes up a lot. "How do I know the will of God? How do I get God to speak to me? How do I know what he's saying?" And it's a very commendable desire.

But I think sometimes it's kind of poorly informed. I know I was when I first was in the ministry and everyone was talking about how God told them this and God told them that. And I wasn't getting a lot of that, but I got some, a little bit. But the impression we had, and in fact, the teachers sometimes taught this, was that hearing God is like tuning in your radio to the right station. That when your radio is off, the air around you is full of all kinds of broadcasts, music, talk shows, sports broadcasts, all kinds of stuff. The room you're sitting in is full of those things, but you can't hear them because your radio's not tuned in.

So the idea was, the analogy was that if you could tune in properly, you'd hear God. He's always speaking, but if you learn how to tune in, you'll hear him. And that idea kind of prevails in a lot of circles, especially charismatic type circles in many cases. That you can get a word from God whenever you figure out how to listen, whenever you figure out how to tune in. And I know of teachers who've taught whole seminars on how to hear God's voice and so forth.

And I have to admit, when I was a teenager and in my early 20s, I kind of thought, well, that makes sense until I read the Bible more. And when I read the Bible more, I realized that God's voice isn't like random radio waves that fill the air and you just have to learn to tune them in. That's basically magic and divination. The occult world assumes that you can control when you get some kind of revelation. You can use a Ouija board, you can go to a seance, you can read tea leaves or whatever. If you want power, you can use magic and potions and things like that.

In other words, the occult has the idea that the powers and the secret information stuff, it's out there and anyone can get it if they just learn the technique. Which in other words, puts you in control. You're the one who controls whether you hear from God or not. Now in the Bible, I never find that. In fact, the Bible forbids all of that. The Bible indicates that God finds people that he wants to speak to and he speaks to them. And generally speaking, they can't miss it. Saul of Tarsus got a tremendous revelation from Jesus on the road to Damascus, but he wasn't listening. He wasn't tuning him in. He was on his way to persecute Christians and God just intercepted him. God knows how to get through to you.

Now if someone says, "Yeah, but I'm trying to hear God and I'm not sure that I'm really hearing. How do I know if this thing in my head is him or the devil or my own imagination?" Well, I'll tell you what, it's not that complicated. If the shepherd doesn't speak clearly enough or loudly enough for the sheep to hear him and they don't follow because of that, that's not their fault. That's his. Sheep don't have to be smart, they don't have to learn techniques of tuning in the shepherd's voice. Jesus said, "My sheep hear my voice." But of course they only know his voice if he speaks to them loudly and unambiguously enough for them to hear. They don't have to have special hearing apparatus so they can catch his voice even when he's whispering a half a mile away.

If the shepherd wants the sheep to hear, he knows their address, he knows their phone number, he knows how to get through to you. And if he doesn't speak unambiguously, well, there's two possibilities. One is you're not really one of his sheep or you're not really listening. A sheep is one who's hearing his voice and following him, so one who wants to obey. Or you're not hearing his voice because he's not really saying anything distinctly to you at that moment. Now here's the thing. I've met people who said that they accepted Christ, but they didn't get baptized. And it had been like when I met them three years since they accepted Christ, but they hadn't been baptized. I said, "Why haven't you been baptized?" They said, "Because I'm waiting for God to tell me to, waiting for God to lead me to."

And I said, "Wait, you don't need God to lead you to do that. He's already commanded it." The Bible, he spoke to the apostles, he spoke through Jesus, he spoke to the prophets. And what he had to say to them is almost always generally true for all people. I mean, there are some personal messages he gave to some people, but for the most part, God has made his will very, very clear through the apostles and prophets. Now of course, in the days of Jesus and the apostles or the Old Testament for that matter, people didn't have Bibles at home. The Jews only knew the law because they heard it read to them at the Feast of Tabernacles once every seven years or whatever. Or they went later on and they'd go to synagogue and they'd hear the law.

Now what are they supposed to do between synagogue visits? They're supposed to meditate on the word that they'd heard, meditate on the law, meditate on what God has said and let that guide them in their decisions. Now what God has said will guide you in your decisions in terms of the major choices that matter the most. Living justly, loving mercy, walking humbly with God. What's right and wrong. Those are pretty clear in there. And you don't have to ask God to give you a special revelation about those kinds of things when he's already given a general revelation in scripture to everybody.

And I'm not saying God will never speak to you personally because God might have a special instance where he wants you to... he's got someone he's interested in you marrying, he's got a place he wants you to go, a school he wants you to choose or a vocation. Well, if he does, that's on him to let you know. You know what you need to do, I believe, is just be yielded to him. Say, "God, I just want your will. I want you to guide me. I'm going to proceed conscientiously according to your word the best I know."

"And in terms of any special right turns or left turns you want me to make on the path, well, I'm going to trust you to guide me in those in one way or the other." Now how could he do that? Well, he could do it any number of ways. He could simply do it by opening a door to you that is what he wants you to do, that is making the providentially opening an opportunity which you can see immediately this is a good thing. This is something I think God wants. I feel good about this. It's agreeable with what he said in scripture. It's agreeable with my conscience. My heart, I have peace about this. We let the peace of God play the umpire, Paul said in Colossians. He's the one who makes the call between choices. Do I have peace about it? Do I not have peace about it?

In other words, it's not all mystical stuff. Now someone say, "But don't some people get words from God like prophetic words?" Some do. Some do. I've had I think probably a few such things in my life, not very many. I would say most of the time whenever I've gotten something really specific about a decision that I felt God spoke to me about, it was usually a scripture he brought to my mind that answered the need, basically directed me in the way I was supposed to do it. But if it was going to be something else, he could do it different ways.

In the Old Testament, God gave the kings of Israel three different ways of knowing his will. And I think those same three wills are pretty much available to all of God's people. One was the law, in other words, the written scriptures. They were supposed to follow that. And that would answer to most of their need, most of their responsibility is you just do what the scripture says. Now for things more specific, they also would use wisdom. The counselors, God gave counselors. There was one of David's counselors, a guy named Ahithophel. It is said he was so wise that to inquire of Ahithophel was like inquiring of the oracles of God or like from a prophet.

I mean, sometimes a person's wisdom was just so helpful that it made it very clear, "Oh, this is the right choice to make." And by the way, that's why there's so much of the Old Testament that's what we call wisdom literature like Proverbs and so forth, which has general principles of wisdom to follow. And that's not the law, that's not following the law per se, that's following wisdom. God gave us that capacity, he didn't give that to the animals. So he wants us to be wise and not foolish. And a lot of times the choices we make are just going to be based on that.

And then of course, there are special revelations like prophetic words. In the Bible, for example, Paul had Agabus the prophet came to him and told him he was going to be bound when he comes to Jerusalem. Agabus also came to the church of Antioch and said there's going to be a famine in Judea and they needed to take an offering for the saints there. When there's something special that wisdom itself wouldn't tell you and God has to give you special information about it, he can do that. He can bring a prophetic word. He can speak it to you yourself or through another person.

But realize that the majority of godly people in the Bible were not guided day by day by prophetic words. The average Jew in the Old Testament who was a godly Jew was just following the law, following divine wisdom, and probably most of them never heard a prophetic word from anyone given to them. But when there is a prophetic word and God can do that, well, then you have to be obedient to it. But the point is, what if you never get that kind of a special word from God? Well, just go by the general will of God that he's already revealed. And trust that if he has something special that you need to know that's not available that way, he can get through to you the way he wants to.

That's how I approach it. And some people would give different answers than that, but that would be my answer to the general concern that you have.

Kevin: Awesome, I really appreciate it. Thank you.

Steve Gregg: All right, God bless you. By the way, my book, Empire of the Risen Son, Book Two, has a whole chapter about being led by the Holy Spirit. So that would be something that might interest you. And by the way, I don't sell my books. You can buy them from Amazon, but I don't sell them. But I do give it away in audiobook at our website. The audiobook is free at thenarrowpath.com under books. I'm referring to my book, there's a two-part book, Empire of the Risen Son, Book One and Two. In Book Two, there's a chapter called "Being Led by the Holy Spirit." So that's why I'm talking about it, and it's free at our website or you can buy the book from Amazon or somewhere else. Let's talk to Ade in the United Kingdom. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Ade: Hi Steve, thank you so much for everything that you do.

Steve Gregg: My pleasure.

Ade: All right. So I have a question about time in the Bible. Now how does God experience time, or what's your perspective on the eternalist perspective about time in terms of does the past still exist and the future already exists? Or is it that the past does not exist anymore and we're just living through the consequences of the past or the future hasn't happened yet and does not exist? So I don't know what your view on time is.

Steve Gregg: Right. Well, this is a philosophical question. C.S. Lewis deals with it a little bit in his book, Mere Christianity. He says this is not something that the Bible discusses, it doesn't make it clear, it's a philosophical question. It might be helpful to know, it might be unnecessary to know. But I would agree with him, the Bible doesn't tell us much about what time is. Now you mentioned two possibilities. One is the eternalist idea that God is outside of time. The idea that he's outside of time means he's transcendent to all created things.

Many people believe that when the earth and space was created, time was created at the same time, if "at the same time" makes sense to say in that context. They would say that before there was the universe, although God existed, time did not yet exist. And God therefore has an existence independent of time or transcendent to time. And they would say therefore what we experience moment by moment as the passing of time, event by event in our lives as they pass before us in sequence, God doesn't see it that way. He just looks at the whole thing and sees the whole thing all at once. That's what they say.

And that's a very popular view. I think Greek philosophers had a view similar to that. Of course, we don't get our theology from the Greeks, I hope. But the idea is the Bible doesn't contradict that either. The Bible doesn't really say if that's true or not. But many theologians have accepted that idea. God's just... he doesn't experience time as we do. He's above it all. He sees the beginning from the end. My former pastor used to say if you're watching a parade go down the street and you're standing on the sidewalk, you see one marching band and one float and one thing go by at a time. But if you get up on a top building or go up in a helicopter, you could look down, you could see the whole parade beginning to end all at once.

And that was supposed to be an analogy of how God views past, present, and future all at once whereas we don't because we're down at the street level. It's an intriguing thought. But again, it's an illustration that's trying to illustrate something that may or may not be true. We're not told in scripture that God is outside of time. Now there are people who say, well, the Bible indicates that God does experience time like we do. And you even made the suggestion, is it possible that the future hasn't even happened yet and doesn't exist anywhere to be seen? It's not as if we're saying that God doesn't have full knowledge of everything that exists, but the future doesn't exist yet. That'll exist when it happens.

And that God doesn't know with certainty the future except insofar as he has plans to do certain things in the future, which will not be foiled. And therefore he knows those things. But as far as the unpredictable choices that people will make, they would say God doesn't know that until it happens. Now this is called openness theology. And they point out that many times in the Bible, God seems to be going through time and learning things. They say that when he saw before the flood that man had become so evil, he regretted that he'd made man, as if it was kind of a surprise to him and a disappointment when it happened.

When Abraham offered Isaac and was ready to kill Isaac, God said, "Don't do it because now I know that you love me, that you honor me." Did God not know that before? Now it is the commonplace is to say when we read in scripture of God speaking as if he's learning something or doesn't know something, this is what we call anthropomorphic language. Some would say God is simply speaking and being presented to the person he's speaking to as if he were a man at the man's level and therefore professing ignorance. A little bit like when he came into the garden after Adam and Eve had sinned and they're hiding in the bushes and God says, "Where are you?"

And Adam said, "I'm here in the bushes, I was naked." "Oh, how'd you know you were naked? You didn't eat that fruit, did you?" Now God's acting like he doesn't know, but of course he did know. How could he not know? So in other words, some would say the ignorance of God or the speaking as if he were ignorant is simply God deigning to speak to us in anthropomorphic terms as if he's one of us in that conversation. But the answer to your question is I don't know. We've got different people who think different things about that.

The fact that God can predict things and that those things inevitably happen after he predicts them, and yet they are things he doesn't determine because they're determined by free choice, may suggest the idea that God is transcendent of time and he sees the future without causing it. For example, when he predicted that Peter would deny him three times before the cock crows. Well, how did he know that would happen? I mean, Peter had free choice, didn't he? Or did Jesus determine that? If he determined it, was Jesus making Peter sin?

The Bible says God doesn't tempt men with sin. So I mean, there's questions like that which are hard to answer. In fact, there's a lot of questions related to it that are hard to answer. But the real answer is the Bible doesn't tell us. The Bible doesn't seem to be that concerned to let us in on that philosophical question of how God experiences time, which allows for Christians to reach various conclusions.

Ade: Okay. Thank you. The reason I was asking, if you don't mind just a little thing, was because it might affect when God says, for example, our sins have passed away, the old man's passed away, you're a new creation, or even the understanding of Israel, the old covenant, new covenant, you know, one's become obsolete, the other's now superseded. So if the past still does exist, then wouldn't that affect the understanding of those concepts in the scriptures?

Steve Gregg: Right. Well, I don't think that the past exists anywhere. I don't think the future exists anywhere either. But if God transcends time, there may be some access he has to knowledge about things future and past that we don't have. But no, if the Bible says something is past and obsolete, then it is. The Bible doesn't ever say that the past remains with us. Sometimes the consequences of things we did in the past will remain, but the past is the past. So regardless how God experiences it, we experience it the way we do and we don't have any other way of experiencing it. So when God says this is past, the old things are passed away, then we have to just accept, okay, that's true from our point of view. And that's the only point of view we have access to. Those things are gone now, the past is gone. All right, thanks for your call. Let's see what we can do here with another caller or two before out of time. Linda from Auburn, Washington, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Linda: Hi. If I could just say real quick for some other topics that K-LOVE radio, I like the music on that so people might know about it so they could tune into it or see if they like those songs too, just in music. But what I was calling about was when you were talking about the war... I don't want to say war. He's calling it a special operation in Iran. So that's one thing that's helpful to point out to people, it's a special operation because we want our president to be lawful unless God... maybe he is the lawless one in Thessalonians because...

Steve Gregg: Okay, yeah, I don't... this doesn't sound like a question, it sounds like a political statement.

Linda: Well, but my question is, how you could help is creating a prayer that we could all agree on who are listening. And like one suggestion could be that Jesus, we see you as the commander in chief. Please, get the message through to our president and those around him and the military, what you want to have happen.

Steve Gregg: Okay, well, yeah, the Bible does say we should pray for those who are in authority, so you could pray it that way if you want to. Or you could pray the way Jesus said to pray: "Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." I pray that way and I also pray for those in authority that God will give them direction and wisdom and so forth. I appreciate your suggestions. Let's talk to Fred in Alameda, California. Fred, welcome.

Fred: Hi, yes. J. Vernon McGee said when he was alive that he used to say, "Right here in Southern California, we have a satanic church or churches." My question is, can you explain the difference, if there is a difference, between number one: Satanism, number two: witchcraft, and what the Bible says: divination? Those three things, are they all the same? Satanism, witchcraft, and divination.

Steve Gregg: Okay, they're all bad. Yeah, they're all bad. Certainly Satanism is a horrible evil. It's the worship of Satan. Witchcraft and magic are not necessarily the worship of Satan, or at least not the conscious worship of Satan. I think that people who are involved in witchcraft, and I mean we're talking about real witchcraft, I think they're in touch with demons. I think they're involved in the demonic realm, which is satanic obviously. So from the Christian point of view, Satanism and witchcraft would not be very far removed from each other, though they're not the same thing. Many witches don't even believe in Satan.

Whereas Satanism... well, a lot of Satanists don't believe in Satan either. They believe that Satan is something else just in man, but they worship it, sinfulness. But these are just bad things. I mean, divination in the Bible is strictly forbidden. And that's where you use something like a... like I mentioned earlier, Ouija board, reading goat's gizzards, tea leaves, astrology, where you're doing something like that to divine or to get supernatural information from the other side.

And of course, the Bible forbids all attempts to do that, with the probable cause being that you really are probably going to contact demons rather than a reality you really want to get in touch with. The Bible doesn't say that all these things actually contact demons, but it is the general Christian belief that the reason it's forbidden is because you are going into the devil's realm. So I mean, you want to know differences, there's perhaps a number of differences between witchcraft, divination, and Satanism. They're all forms of evil. They're all forbidden in scripture. They're all forms of idolatry, I would say.

And I would say they're all occult. So these are all things that the Bible forbids. And just because the Bible forbids many things doesn't mean they're all the same thing, but obviously they all have something in common, and that is that they are rebelling against God and seeking either revelation or power or sinful liberty independently of God. And so those are all bad things. Hey, I'm out of time, sorry to say. A lot of people waiting still. I wish I could have gotten to more of you.

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