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 want to call in with questions you have about the Bible or Christianity, we'll talk about those questions here on the air. If you want to engage in a disagreement with the host about some issue, that's welcome here as well. Feel free to give me a call.

The number to call is 844-484-5737. That's 844-484-5737. This Saturday we have our monthly men's Bible study Saturday morning in Temecula for those who come to that. Just want to let you know it's there if you're in the area and want to join us. There are directions and information about coming to join us there at our website, thenarrowpath.com, under announcements. Our first caller today is James, calling from Emerald Isle, North Carolina. Welcome to The Narrow Path.

James: Thank you, Steve. I'm going to try to frame this question as best as I can, but my question involves the Lamb's Book of Life and our name in the Lamb's Book of Life. It's my opinion, but I don't see anything in the Scripture that bases it on, but I think in my feeling is that it has to be the DNA because God created us and started with the DNA, and everybody's is different. So, I can't see that it's the Christian name given to us by our parents. I guess I just kind of want to get your feelings as to what it is that you might feel is our name in the Book of Life. I understand it changes after we pass on. So, that's kind of my question.

Steve Gregg: Well, I don't think we have any information that would answer that question for us. I think what you refer to with the DNA, you're probably referring to the fact that, of course, each of us is individually identified by the unique DNA that each of us has in every cell of our body. Some people wonder when our bodies are decayed, how could God raise us from the dead and be the same person again? Seemingly, the answer would be that all He has to do is have the same DNA code, and He can create us again from dust.

Now, as far as the name being the DNA, I don't know if that's true or not. I'm not really sure that we're supposed to drill down on that particular question so much. The Bible only mentions the Book of Life a few times, and I think what it's suggesting is not so much the name, but the person. In the Bible, the expression "name" is used somewhat differently than we use it now, although it's used the same way too; it has more meanings. The broader meaning of the use of the term "name" refers to the person's identity, that person's character, that person's position, and things like that.

When the Bible says we pray in the name of Jesus, or we're to do things in the name of Jesus, it doesn't necessarily mean the syllables of His name, because those would be different in different languages. The name of Jesus is pronounced differently in different languages. It's not the sound of the name; it's the identity of the person on whose part we're acting. We act in His name just like an agent acts in the name of the person who commissions the agent.

Just like people who, if you leave your money to some company to invest for you, they act in your name. If you have a lawyer acting on your behalf, they're acting in your name. Now, yeah, your name actually is comprised of letters and syllables, but that's not what it means when it says they're acting in your name. It means they're acting in your place as you, they're acting as your person and as your agent.

So, the word "name" has a broader meaning. So, when it says our names are in the Lamb's Book of Life, I don't know if we're supposed to think in terms of our given names as you brought up, given at birth, or simply our identities, who we are, that we are recognized by God as belonging to Him. Now, again, I don't know that God has literal books. The image of God having a book or a register with names in it no doubt is an anthropomorphic idea. We keep registers in writing partly because we don't have infinite memory. We can't remember a list of millions of names without them being recorded somewhere.

God can. Therefore, I don't know that God has any use for names and books and things like that, lists of people. Those things are more human-type conventions that I think the Bible is using. This is, of course, found in the Book of Revelation, which does anthropomorphize many things. Things like Death and Hades, for example, are represented as a horse rider and a person on foot, where Death and Hades aren't people at all. There's a lot of symbolism and so forth.

So, I'm not going to press for an absolute identification of what is meant by our names being written in the Book of Life. It certainly is saying that we are recognized by God as being citizens. In the Psalms, it talks about how in Zion, there's names registered in Zion of those who were born there. That just means that we're citizens. It's a list of the citizenry. Our citizenship is in heaven, Paul said in Philippians. So, that's I think suggesting if your name is in the book, that you are on the list of citizens of the Kingdom of God. That's all I would understand it to mean.

I'm not going to speculate about what form the names take or even if there is a literal book or whether DNA is somehow connected to this. I do think our DNA probably is related to the resurrection of our bodies because, frankly, every cell in my body and yours is different than the ones that were there a decade ago. We don't have any cells in our body that have been with us for that long, and yet we're the same person. All the cells are dying and replacing themselves continually throughout our lifetime, and yet with all the replacement of every individual cell, which is our whole what we're made up of, we don't change our identity.

We're the same person. Of course, part of that has to do with the fact that all the cells, old and new, have the same DNA. So, that's what's uniquely ours. So, I think that what makes will make us uniquely our body as opposed to somebody else's body in the resurrection probably has to do with the distinctive DNA. I do believe that our bodies will be physical and in some sense biological, though they'll be glorified, so they won't be exactly like ours. They'll have different characteristics too. Anyway, those are questions that I don't think the Bible explains in any detail. These are just theoretical musings, and if we never know the answer until that time comes, then I don't think we're any the worse off for it. I'd answer it better if I knew, but I don't think we have enough information to do so. Thank you for your call, James. God bless you. Sarah in North Bend, Washington. Hi, Sarah. Welcome.

Sarah: Hello, thank you for taking my call. I had a question about Orthodoxy and Protestants and Catholics, and I'm just looking to research the differences. I've been raised Protestant and that's where I've stayed, but I've just been interested in looking into it, and I was wondering if you had recommendations because I know there's so much out there that's not true. But I'm looking just for the differences and when we split and all that.

Steve Gregg: Well, my difference with both Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy is the idea that the church is somehow an organization that continues along one stream of succession of leadership from the time of the Apostles on. Whereas I believe the church, the true body of Christ, is an organic body comprised of all who belong to Christ. In other words, not those who belong to this church or that church, not those who participate in this liturgy or that other liturgy. Those things are not what define the church, at least not in the Bible.

I don't think that's the case. Protestant churches can be, frankly, can be as institutionalized as those other groups. The point is that you belong to Christ if you are a disciple of His. Now, I believe there are people who love Jesus and who are Christians in the Orthodox Church, and in the Catholic Church, and in most Protestant churches. I don't think that all churches are equally good in the sense that you will get to know Christ better in all of them. Some of them are better than others. Paul told the Corinthian church that when they get together, they come together for the worse, not for the better. So, in that church, you're better off not even going because it's worse after you go than you were before you went.

But the Eastern Orthodox and the Catholic Church have many things in common, and their history runs parallel through much of their early days, or early centuries. Now, when I say early centuries, I don't mean the first three or four centuries or five centuries of Christianity. I believe in the early days of Christianity, there was nothing that we would call Roman Catholic or that corresponds to the Eastern Orthodox Church, though they would say there was.

I believe that these different traditions begin a few centuries into the church age, and not all at the same time. It was kind of this and that tradition develops at different times. But I think the first three centuries, for example, when the church was under persecution for the most part, the institutions that we refer to by these names didn't really exist as institutions. I think that anyone who is a follower of Christ was a brother, was a sister, was part of the body, was part of the church. Then when things calmed down enough that they began organizing hierarchical and liturgical structures, I think that's when the East and the West pretty much ran parallel to each other for a long distance until about 1054 AD, when there was a schism, a great schism that caused the Eastern Church to go its own way and the Latin Church, the Catholic Church, to go its own way.

They both, both the Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox Church, they both claim that they are the original. The Catholics would say that the Eastern Orthodox broke off from the original church, which was them, and the Eastern Orthodox would just say the opposite, that the Catholic Church broke off of the original church, which is the Eastern Orthodox.

See, in talking that way, I'm afraid they're thinking of the church as these liturgical ecclesiastical movements, whereas I believe the church is a community, a global spiritually defined community of people who have been born of God and follow Jesus. Like Paul said, whoever is led by the Spirit of God, they are the children of God. So, people in both the East and the West could be followers of Christ, and some of them were, but could equally not be. A person could be very observant of the liturgies and the practices of either of these groups, or of any Protestant group for that matter, and not know Christ.

Knowing Christ is something that comes about from encountering Christ. Now, the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church both believe in encountering Christ, but they believe, for example, that baptism of infants is one level of encounter that someone has with Christ. In the case of the Eastern Orthodox Church, they have deification, or whatever, they have other names for it that are more formal, but the idea is that you have sort of a transformation spiritually into having the nature of Christ or whatever.

I admit that I don't study these things that much because there's thousands of denominations and I don't consider that the Catholic or the Eastern Orthodox have any more right to be dominant than any of the Protestant denominations. None of these are really the way the church was set up in my opinion. So, I'm not really one who delves into those things.

I would say the Eastern Orthodox is one of the movements that I know less about than some others. On the other hand, there's plenty of things online you can go to, and I would say that if you study out the Eastern Orthodox Church, you'll be reading their websites and hearing their YouTubes, but also be sure that you listen to those who interact with their views critically. Because I believe there's much human tradition that they would claim goes back to the Apostles, but I don't believe it did.

It's awfully hard for someone sitting here 2,000 years later to say, well, we know the Apostles did this and that, even though there's no record of them doing it. But the assumption is that the traditions that we have in our group correctly represent what the Apostles did. I think that there's a mentality among Christians saying, I need to join the group that has its roots furthest back in time so that I've got the best chance of being in the real church.

The root of every Christian is Christ, and movements, most of these movements, you can't say as a whole movement their roots are in Christ. You can say that the people in them, many of them are Christians, but the movement itself wasn't started in that form by Christ. So, I'm not such an institutional type of guy. I'm not against being part of an institutional church, and if somebody is worshipping Christ, following Christ, attending Eastern Orthodox Church or Catholic or Protestant, well, as long as they're following Christ, who am I to judge?

But I can certainly judge individual thoughts and beliefs that they have, and I do that with any Christian I meet. Judging in the sense that I don't condemn them for disagreeing with what I think, but I do make a judgment of whether I think they're biblical or not. That's what you have to do with everyone. Now, I don't know how far you've gone in your exploration of these movements. There's certainly plenty of information on all of them.

The Roman Catholics have some of the same views as the Orthodox that I would not agree with. The Eucharist, for example, and the doctrines about Mary and so forth. I don't believe those doctrines are scriptural, but both Catholics and Eastern Orthodox believe them. But if you're curious about some kind of a dive into that, on the Catholic channels, Catholic Answers and things like that, I have debated a couple of these guys in very friendly debates on the air twice. That is two different times, five debates in a week, and those debates can be found at my website, thenarrowpath.com. There we debated the Eucharist, and we debated the Mary doctrines, and the nature of the church and things like that.

I guess the best materials I have about that would be perhaps in addition to my series on church history at our website, which is 30 lectures long, these debates with Catholic apologists. Because on most of the things, maybe not all the things that I debated with them, the Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox would be on the same page with each other. So, I don't know, this is a big subject obviously. Did I go the wrong direction with your question, or did I address what you wanted to know?

Sarah: Yeah, that was very helpful. Thank you so much. I also had one more quick question if you have time. I was wondering just looking at the Apostles' Creed, one thing that always confused me was just when it says that Jesus died and was buried and He descended into hell and on the third day He rose again from the dead. And then I was reading in Luke, but it says, when the criminal's dying on the cross with Him and Jesus before He dies, He says today I will see you in paradise. So, did He descend to hell and then is He in paradise and then rises, or is He staying in hell three days? I was kind of confused.

Steve Gregg: Yes, well, unfortunately the statement "He descended into hell" is really taken from the Greek word Hades. Peter on the Day of Pentecost said that Christ's flesh was not left in Hades and did not see corruption because He rose from the dead. So, the suggestion was that when Jesus was dead, He was in Hades. Now, the King James Version and some older versions in English translate the word Hades as Hell.

But that's very confusing because Hell, we usually think of Hell as the place where the bad people go. We usually think of Hell as the place of fire where it's a place of judgment of the wicked after the day of judgment. And yet that's not what the word Hades means, and it's quite unfortunate that many of the older Bibles translate Hades as Hell. The truth is, if you look at any modern translation, even one that follows the King James closely like the New King James, they actually don't use the word Hell in those passages. They simply use the Greek word Hades because they realize that Hades to translate it as Hell is misleading.

Because Hades is where all dead people went. Hades is sometimes properly translated the grave. It's just where people when they die, they go to Hades. Not Hell, necessarily, not what we call Hell, because some people are saved. But in the Jewish mind in the days of Christ, and some things Jesus said seem to confirm it, Hades had two compartments: one is where the righteous would go when they die, and the other is where the wicked would go when they die.

So, in the story of Lazarus and the rich man, for example, the beggar Lazarus is in Abraham's bosom, and the rich man is in the flames of Hades. Both of them, by Jewish thinking, would be in Hades, but one's in one compartment, which would be called Paradise or Abraham's bosom, and the other's in another compartment, which is where the wicked are suffering. Now, when Jesus said today you'll be with me in paradise, the Jewish use of the terminology would probably have led the thief to understand Him to mean we're both going to Hades, we're both going to die today, and we'll be in Hades, but in Hades we will be in paradise instead of in the flames. We'll be in Abraham's bosom, so to speak.

Now, I can't be certain that that's what Jesus meant, but that's how the language is used in His day. And the Bible would then be correct in saying that they went to paradise, but not to heaven. They went to Hades. And therefore when He rose, the Bible is correct in saying His soul was not left in Hades.

So, the problem is with the creeds; they take the statement that He was not left in Hades and they, in English, render it as Hell. It makes it—I've heard some people say that Jesus actually went down to the flames of Hell and suffered in the flames of Hell for us. That's not what the creed is saying. The creed is simply acknowledging that He was buried. He went to the place where dead people are, but He came back alive again on the third day. It was not speaking of His, what should we say, His subjective experience in that place. It doesn't necessarily speak of Him suffering in Hell, as some people imagine it, because the word Hell has that connotation in our modern usage, and that's why it's much better not to use the word Hell to translate Hades.

I would use the word Hell to translate or to at least allude to what the Bible calls the Lake of Fire. In Revelation, there's the Lake of Fire. I think that's Hell. But Hades is not the same as the Lake of Fire, and in fact in Revelation 20, Hades is cast into the Lake of Fire. Of course, Hades earlier in Revelation is treated as if it's a personified reality, it's like a person being thrown in, but it's Hades and Death cast into the Lake of Fire.

So, when the creed says "He descended into hell," I don't know that that's, first of all, the translation is not fortunate. Of course, the Apostles' Creed wasn't originally written in English, and they could certainly have left that line out and it wouldn't change any of our theology. He died, He was buried, He rose again the third day. To say He descended into Hell, well, that may be true if we're thinking of Hell as Hades, but if people are thinking of Hell as the place of punishment of the wicked in flames, that is not what's being affirmed there in my opinion.

Sarah: Thank you so much. Really appreciate that. That was very clarifying.

Steve Gregg: Okay, Sarah. Thanks for your call. Michala in Sacramento, California. Hi, Michala. Welcome.

Michala: I appreciate how concise and how thorough your answers are. You always help me with that. Thank you very much. Just to be really quick, real quick, I was listening to two debaters go back and forth in regards to God as a person. I was really curious about the answer to that, and maybe you could clarify for me in that regard because I see God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. And the other debater was questioning, is God a person?

Steve Gregg: Okay, let me see if I understand what your question is. Are you saying you wonder whether God is a person or whether three persons? Is that what you're suggesting?

Michala: Yeah, they were even asking that, and thank you for saying that because, yeah, they were saying that. They were like, "Well, according to Christians..." and of course they were, I think they were very incorrect, they were saying, "Oh, so you're saying God is three persons?"

Steve Gregg: Okay, I think maybe you're confused by the word "person," because we think of a person as a human being. And specifically, we think of a person as a physical human being. All the people we know are physical human beings, and so that's how we usually think of the word "person." When the Bible speaks of God as a person, or as three persons in the Trinitarian formula, the word "person" simply means a personal being, not a human person, not a physical being.

Personal meaning not impersonal. For example, electricity is a force, but it's not a personal force. It doesn't have consciousness, it doesn't have intention, it doesn't have emotions, it doesn't have a will. It's just a force. And some people think of God that way, sort of as a big force out there. Buddhism, for example, doesn't think of God as being personal. But Christianity and Judaism, and for that matter Islam, all recognize that the God of Abraham is personal, meaning He does have a mind. He's not like a force like gravity or electricity. He's a personal being.

It doesn't mean He's a physical being, and I think that may be where you're getting tied up here. I've known others to confuse that. No, it just means He's not impersonal. He's not without thoughts and intentions and so forth, like a He's not a human person, but He's personal like we are persons. We're just physical though, and He's not. Hey, I need to take a break. I'll be back in 30 seconds. You've got another half hour coming, so don't go away.

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Welcome back to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg, and we're live for another half hour taking your calls. The number to join us here if you'd like to is 844-484-5737. Our next caller is Hector, calling from Orlando, Florida. Hi, Hector. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Hector: Hello, thank you very much for taking my call. The reason I was calling is I had a question regarding a friend of mine, not me, it is a real friend of mine that is involved with pornography. And I as a young man, before I became a Christian, I was bound up in that sin, and so I'm not sure if I should—I want to use Scripture, you know, about the lust of the eyes and the lust of the flesh to talk with him about it. But I also don't know exactly how to breach this topic with someone to try to get him free from this, because mine was a long road to get out of that when I was a young man. So, I really don't know. Nobody talked to me about it. I listened to some radio programs and that kind of helped me on the radio, talk radio, but...

Steve Gregg: So, are you wondering how to bring the subject up or what to say about it?

Hector: Well, I mean what to say to get to the person's heart. He says he's a Christian, but he has this problem, and he sneaks around to do this stuff. And he's kind of just saying, "Well, you just don't know how it is being young and I'm a young man and I'm struggling with this." And I'm just wondering how do you just go to somebody and—I mean, I know some verses, a lot of verses about temptation, I can give him a lot of examples about the lust of the eyes leading to some very destructive things.

Steve Gregg: Okay, well, I would simply—are we talking about a young man who's unmarried and lives on his own?

Hector: Yes.

Steve Gregg: Okay, so he doesn't have much accountability?

Hector: None.

Steve Gregg: Yeah, that's a problem. I'd say that a man who's left to himself and struggles with those things has got to decide how serious is he about following Christ. Now, God is going to judge us, including our secret thoughts, the Bible says. Now, I think all Christians understand that someday we're going to stand before God and answer for our behavior, but it says in 1 Corinthians 4:5, "Therefore judge nothing before the time until the Lord comes, who will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness and reveal the counsels of the hearts, and then each one's praise will come from God."

So, he needs to know that we're all going to be judged by our actions, and that includes our mental actions, the things our minds do as well as the things our bodies do. Now, and that God doesn't want him committing adultery in his heart. Of course, you've mentioned or alluded to what Jesus said, that "whoever looks at a woman to lust after her has committed adultery with her in his heart," that's Matthew 5:28. Well, if you look at a woman to lust after her, that's kind of what pornography is for, isn't it? To look at a woman and lust after her.

That's committing adultery in your heart. So, you'd want to avoid that. You want to stop doing that. Job, who didn't even have the Sermon on the Mount and didn't even have the Law of Moses, but was a godly man, God said he was blameless and he avoided evil. Job 31:1, Job says, "I've made a covenant with my eyes. Why then should I look upon a young woman?" That's a good question. He was a married man, he shouldn't be looking at young women. Though, I mean, I have to say in some societies that was not obvious; it's not obvious that looking at a young woman was sinful. I'm sure the Pharisees themselves needed to be corrected about that when Jesus said that to look with lust is committing adultery in your heart.

Because the Pharisees wished to avoid violating the Law of Moses to whatever degree they could, and so they avoided they probably avoided committing adultery. But He's saying, well, if you're doing it in your heart, you're doing it in your heart, you know, and God knows your heart. God's going to judge the thoughts of your heart too. And I think that's what a person has to a person has to live in the fear of God, honestly. The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, and in Proverbs it says by the fear of God men depart from evil.

You know, we have evil in us, we have evil inclinations. Our flesh desires things that are not appropriate for us to have, and wants to indulge in things that we shouldn't indulge in mentally and physically. And so we have to realize that we have to govern our minds and our hearts and our bodies, of course, in a way that when we stand before God, we won't be ashamed of what He calls to mind from what we did. We're going to have to give account of it.

Jesus said we'll have to give account of every idle word we speak. So, I mean, the judgment considers details. And if our minds are going after pornography or other things that are inappropriate and we're not trying to reign them in and we're not trying to obey God in the matter, well then that's not going to look good on the day of judgment.

And so, you know, I do not live a fear-based life myself, but fear of God is simply being smart. I'm not walking around afraid that God's going to thump me if I step the wrong way or look the wrong way or something, but I'm aware that this life is the time where I'm given the opportunity to be faithful to God, to please God or not. And on the day of judgment, an assessment of the things I do and say and think are going to be determinative of what the rest of my eternity looks like.

So, I'm just going to say he's got to decide how important is it for him to be right in the sight of God. Pornography is one of those things that people obviously can do on their computer or on their phone or various other media, and they can do it alone. When people are alone, it's awfully hard to avoid temptation if you know nobody else is there to keep you accountable. So, I would just suggest what Jesus said, and this will sound extreme to somebody who doesn't care that much about following Jesus, but I would say this: if you don't care that much about following Jesus, maybe you're not a Christian after all, because following Jesus is the obsession of those who are Christians.

But Jesus said, and this is famous, everyone knows this I think, in Matthew 5:29, "If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you; for it's more profitable for you that one of your members to perish than for your whole body to be cast into Gehenna. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you." So, He said that about the eye and then He said about the hand. He said it's better to have that perish, one part of your body perish, than to keep it and be cast into Gehenna.

Now, I'm not one who believes that we're supposed to pluck our eyes out or cut our hands off. This is an example of Jesus trying to make a point with an exaggeration. It won't help you to pluck your eye out if you've got sin in your heart; even if you're blind, you can still mentally commit adultery. So, plucking your eye out is not really the solution that Jesus is recommending. But what He is saying is there may be occasions to sin in your life that are very, very hard to give up, things you cherish, things that you dread giving up.

Well, even if it was your eye or your hand, which are among the things you'd be the least willing to give up, of course, you're better off giving them up. Now, He's not saying you should give up your eye or your hand; He's saying that it's that way. If it were so, that that was what you had to do to enter into eternal life, then it would be worth it. Another place Jesus said what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul? You don't if you're going to lose your soul over something because it's precious to you, because it's something you really like, you really would be loath to be rid of. Well, think about it: is it worth eternity? Is it worth missing out on eternal life? That's what Jesus is saying.

Now, in his case, very probably the computer is the thing he might have to either get rid of or put some kind of restrictions on that most people would not think important to do. For example, for a grown man, as I take it he is, to make himself unable to use the computer except when he's in a public place or when he's with some friends in the same room or something like that would seem like treating himself like a child. Well, if he can control himself, then he isn't like a child and he doesn't need to be treated like one.

But if he can't control himself, then yeah, you better recognize: for you to fall to pornography when you've actually made a decision that you don't want to is to be helpless like a child. It'd be great if you could be stronger, but there's no value in pretending to be strong and unwilling to admit that you need someone to keep an eye on you if the other option is you're going to fall.

I do not have that particular struggle that some people have, but I've often thought, because I know so many men who do, how hard it might be if I had a tendency to look up pornography on my phone or on my computer, how hard it would be to give up the computer at this point. I depend on it for many things. But if I was determined to be pure and I couldn't be pure without doing so, I would give up my private computer use. I would have to just say I'll only use the computer when I'm at the public library or when I'm in some public place where people can be.

I personally think that with the prevalence of pornography and people's addictions to it, that families should, especially where they have young men, should not have computers in private rooms. I'm not a legalist about this, I'm just giving counsel. I mean, it just depends: how much do you want to not sin? If you keep a computer in the living room, which is a traffic area, you'll probably not end up going to websites that you're not supposed to look at when people are home, and you should probably not use the computer when people are not home.

Now, these are extreme measures, it would seem. How can anyone do this? Well, the only way they can is if they really care more about seeing God than seeing naked bodies. The Bible says we need to pursue holiness without which no one will see the Lord. So, if you don't want to see the Lord on good terms, then I guess I can't think of any reason that you have to control yourself like that. But if people simply say, "Well, I want to see Jesus but I don't really want to take any extreme measures to quit sinning with my mind and my heart and my eyes," then they don't really they're not taking God seriously, and I dare say God will not take them seriously when they claim to be followers of His.

It's just a way of looking at it. You've got to be holy. If you're not going to be holy, then don't expect to see God on good terms. If you do want to be holy, you're going to say, what is it that's keeping me from doing that? How much is it worth to me to be on good terms when I see God and have Him have no complaints about me at the judgment? Those are the issues to my mind. Those would be the things I'd want to communicate.

Hector: Thank you very much.

Steve Gregg: All right, brother. Thanks for your call, Hector. All right, let's talk to Cole from Omaha, Nebraska. Hi, Cole. Welcome.

Cole: Hi, Steve. In John 1:45, Philip says that they found the one whom Moses in the law and the prophets wrote. I couldn't really find any clear references to Moses specifically that I understood to be about Jesus. Could you elaborate on that?

Steve Gregg: Oh, sure. Yeah, the rabbis saw the Messiah throughout the entire Old Testament, including the Law of Moses. Very specifically, for example, in Deuteronomy 18, verses 15 through the end of the chapter, God said He would send another prophet like Moses, and He'd be the one that the people would have to listen to. And the New Testament writers said that was Jesus. Peter quoted that verse in Acts chapter 3, Stephen quoted that verse in Acts chapter 7, as if that's talking about Jesus. And it is.

So, that's one thing. I mean, Moses wrote that. But other places too, because the Torah was written by Moses, and it's got many references to the Messiah in different ways, sometimes in types and shadows. That is to say, there are stories that point forward to Christ, just like there was, as Jesus pointed out, Jonah being three days and three nights in the heart of a whale. Now, that's not in the Torah, but that's in the Prophets.

And then there's many prophets who predicted that Jesus would come. Jesus is seen in the Old Testament in these two ways: one would be direct prophetic statements saying, He will come and He'll be like this. There's lots of those in the Old Testament. But then there's other things that are not naming the Messiah per se, but which are foreshadowing the Messiah. And therefore the sacrificial system, the Passover celebration, and things like that, those are all seen by the New Testament writers as being fulfilled in Christ. That is, a law that they had to keep was a picture of Christ.

And so Christ is pictured in the Old Testament, including the Torah and the Prophets a great deal. And even more than either of those in the Psalms. Do you know the New Testament writers quoted the Psalms more often than they quoted the law or the prophets with reference to fulfillments of prophecies about Jesus? So, it says in Luke chapter 24 that when Jesus was walking on the road to Emmaus with two men, He talked to them. He opened the scriptures; it says He went He began first with Moses, and then through the prophets, and expounded all the things that referred to Him. Now, we don't know what all was in that list, but there were apparently a lot of things, and it started with Moses and went through the prophets. So, it's not wrong to say that the law and the prophets spoke of Him.

Now, the interesting thing is that Philip said that at a time before there were Christians, at a time before the New Testament was written. So, he's referring to the rabbinic understanding of the law and the prophets, which even then, the rabbis saw references to the Messiah in the law, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, just like Christians do. The rabbis didn't see them all the same ones we did, probably, because after Christ came, the Apostles recognized references to Christ in a lot of Old Testament passages which might not have been clear enough to have caused them to anticipate that in those terms. But when you look back and say, oh well, that's obviously a picture of Christ here.

But yeah, I mean if you just want specifics, there's types of Christ in the Passover, which Moses wrote about, in the sacrificial system, in the prediction that there'd be another prophet like Moses that the people would have to listen to in Deuteronomy, and frankly quite a lot of other things. Some of the stories depict Christ, like this offering of Isaac by Abraham is generally seen as a picture of the Father sacrificing Christ. But more than that, when Isaac said to his father, "Where's the sacrifice? Here's the wood, here's the fire. Where's the sacrifice, the lamb, to offer?" Abraham said, "The Lord will provide Himself a lamb for burnt offering."

And of course, that was fulfilled in God providing a ram in the thicket to offer right then, but there's more. Because afterward, Moses, who wrote the book of Genesis, says, "Therefore it is said: in the mountain of the Lord it will be provided." Now, now Moses is writing this many, many centuries after Abraham's time. And Moses is saying, we have a saying now based on what Abraham said, that God will provide a sacrifice in this mountain. And of course, Moses didn't know who would be the fulfillment of that, but the fact that Abraham's prediction that God would provide a ram or a lamb for Himself in that mountain, it says in Genesis that, yeah, there's a saying about that now because ever since Abraham said that.

Therefore it is said: in the mountain of the Lord it will be seen or provided, depending on the translation. So, that's a reference to Christ too. So, there's kind of straightforward predictions of the Messiah and there's also more cryptic references in explanations of some of the stories and laws in the Old Testament. It says in Psalm 40, and this is quoted in Hebrews chapter 10 as being the words of Christ, Christ speaking, says, "In the volume of the book it is written of me." And in the volume of the book, we assume means the Torah and the scriptures in general. So, in the whole of the scriptures, it is written of Him. And like I said, He told the men on the road to Emmaus that that included the law and the prophets and all of that. So, Philip was quite in line with Jewish thinking about that, that the Messiah was predicted throughout the Old Testament.

Cole: Thank you, much appreciated.

Steve Gregg: Yeah, thanks for your call, Cole. Steve in Bryan, Ohio. Welcome.

Steve: Yes, hello. The scripture reference is Revelation chapter 21, verse 24. There's been a new heaven and a new earth, and New Jerusalem has come down from heaven. And it says here in verse 24, "And the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it, and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honor into it." Now, my question is, this comes to the end of the study of the Bible and entering into eternity: what determines who is going to live in New Jerusalem in that golden city, and who is going to live on the earth in those nations? What determines that?

Steve Gregg: I think whether a person has been a disciple of Jesus faithfully or not. You know, Jesus did distinguish between the rewards that different followers of His would have, and some of them He said they've been entrusted with some responsibility and done well, that they'll be made rulers of five cities, and some will be rulers of ten cities and so forth. Now, if there's cities, and a believer is ruling over them or governing them under God, there must be people in those cities who aren't governing.

So, the Bible doesn't indicate that everyone who's saved will be ruling. Those who are faithful unto death will receive the crown of life. The Bible says if we endure, we'll reign with Him and so forth. So, I think those who live in the city, the New Jerusalem, are the ones who have, you know, that status that they're reigning with Christ, and those outside are the rest of the world who are being reigned over.

Now, what distinguishes between them? Well, let's face it: there are Christians who believe in Christ but who don't take Him anywhere near as seriously as others do. And so, the degree of faithfulness that one shows in their service to Christ in this life and their dedication to Him, I think has ramifications in eternity. And I believe that there will be people who reign with Christ over persons who they don't reign with Christ because they've never endured much hardship, they've never been very faithful with their stewardship and so forth. That's what I think.

Steve: These people would be in glorified bodies also, wouldn't they? Because Christ has brought an end to sorrow and death and crying and all that has ended. So, these people are also in glorified bodies, and they will never die, right?

Steve Gregg: Well, that would be my impression, yes.

Steve: But there is a distinction there: some will live in the holy city and some will live on the earth. And I've always wondered what is going to be the distinction to determine that because everyone is in glorified bodies, no one will ever die again or be sick or cry because Christ has brought an end to all that.

Steve Gregg: Right. I think maybe where you're having a problem is you're thinking that living eternally somewhere outside of Hell in glorified bodies and not dying, not being sick, and so forth, that that's all there is. I mean, that's all there is to hope for is to just have eternal life in a perfect environment. And I believe you're no doubt right that even those who don't live in the city no doubt have eternal life. They're not lost, they're saved.

But not everyone who's saved receives the same reward. The Bible makes that pretty clear. Just like not everyone who's lost receives the same degree of punishment. Jesus made that clear too. So, I would say that the ones who have faithfully stewarded what God has given them are the ones that will be entrusted with greater responsibility in governing. There will be society, there will be human society in the new earth, and there will be people that God can trust with responsibility to rule. I think that's the reference to who's living in the city, but those who have not been as faithful will not be entrusted with that. I suppose those are those living outside.

Now, again, having said all that, this is my assumption. I may not be right. There may be a different and better answer than that, but this is, as I always say, I'm the world's best authority on my own opinion, and this is just my opinion. But if you find a better one, you're certainly welcome to embrace it because I'm not infallible. All right, Joshua in Irvine, California. We don't have much time. You want to go for it?

Joshua: Yeah, I just want to know if it's ever been known that during the creation of the heaven and earth, while the angels and the archangels and the creation of Adam and Eve in the garden, what type of a dialogue would they be speaking with each other? If it is known.

Steve Gregg: Yeah, we have no idea what language it was. Now, the names Adam and Eve are derived from Hebrew words, but we don't know that—I mean, in the Bible, when we have anyone's name, we have it in the Hebrew form, or in the New Testament, the Greek form. If they spoke a different language, that same name might have been pronounced differently and been a different form. We don't know what the original language was. Some people think Hebrew was the original language, but there's nothing in the Bible to tell us that. We know that all the languages were changed after the flood at the Tower of Babel, and therefore whatever was spoken before that time as the original language becomes, I guess, irrelevant. But as a matter of curiosity, I can't answer that. If we had to guess, we'd say Hebrew, but that's not necessarily told to us, so we're just guessing. I appreciate your call. You've been listening to The Narrow Path. My name is Steve Gregg. We are a listener-supported ministry. You can go to our website, thenarrowpath.com. All our resources are free. You can donate there if you'd like to help us stay on the air. That's thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for joining us.