The Narrow Path

Guest (Male): Small is the gate and narrow is the path that leads to life. Welcome to The Narrow Path with Steve Gregg. Steve has nothing to sell you today but everything to give you. When the radio show is over, go to thenarrowpath.com where you can study, learn, and enjoy with free topical audio teachings, blog articles, verse-by-verse teachings, and archives of all The Narrow Path radio shows. We thank you for supporting the listener-supported Narrow Path with Steve Gregg. See you at thenarrowpath.com.

Steve Gregg: Good afternoon and welcome to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg. We are live for an hour each weekday afternoon so that we can talk to you in real time, or more properly, you can talk to us in real time. You can call in if you have questions about the Bible or about the Christian faith. Feel free to call and we'll discuss those questions. If you have objections to the Christian faith or to anything the host has said previously, feel free, we can talk about that too. Call on in.

The number to call is 844-484-5737. Now, I'm looking at full lines right now, but don't let that discourage you. Just call in a few minutes. Lines are going to be opening up all through the hour. So, if you can't get through now, that's because the lines are full. In a few minutes, there will be lines opening. The number is 844-484-5737.

If you live in Southern California, once a month, the first Saturday of the month, we have a morning Bible study for men in Temecula. That's at 8:00 in the morning this Saturday. It only happens once a month. So, if you're interested in joining us, go to our website, thenarrowpath.com. Under announcements, you'll find the time and place so that you can join us then this Saturday if you wish. All right, let's talk to our callers, the first of whom is Cameron calling from Columbia, Tennessee. Hi Cameron, welcome to The Narrow Path.

Cameron: Hey Steve. My friend and I are going through your church history topical lectures. In your first few lectures, you were talking about persecution and how a lot of times today in the US, the church is not persecuted because we're worldly and we go with the world, so we don't really stick out like we did in past history. Therefore, we don't really suffer persecution in our modern world. My friend and I were wondering if you had a working definition of what you would define as persecution. Also, if the Bible verse in 2nd Timothy 3:12, which states all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, how we should interpret that verse in light of our modern world since we're not being killed for our faith and things like that?

Steve Gregg: Persecution is a broad subject. If somebody just won't talk to you because of your Christian beliefs, then they're persecuting you. If you are passed over for a promotion at work because of your beliefs, that's persecution. If somebody hates you and slanders you because of your beliefs, that's persecution.

In biblical times and in our own times in many parts of the world, persecution takes a much more violent form. Christians are sometimes lined up and beheaded. In biblical times, they were also sometimes beheaded, sometimes burned at the stake, sometimes fed to lions. This happened a lot. Jesus Himself was crucified and so were some of His disciples eventually. So this is a form of persecution that really stands out; it includes martyrdom.

Even when there's not actual martyrdom, even when a person is not put to death, in some countries, Christians have been put in jail. Paul was put in jail many times before he was martyred. He spent a lot of time in jail and was beaten and so forth. In modern times, at least in my lifetime, people like Richard Wurmbrand and others who lived in communist countries, who were pastors and uncompromising Christians, were jailed. He was put in jail for 14 years and he was tortured most every day. He almost died many times there, and all this was because he simply wouldn't agree.

The communists who put him in prison would call him a prisoner of conscience, a political prisoner, because he was on the side of Christ instead of on the side of the state. Sometimes that is the excuse that people use for persecuting you, that they want you to be loyal to the state where in fact your loyalty to Christ takes priority. In other words, it can be anything all the way to martyrdom or imprisonment or torture on one end, to just people not treating you well or not liking you on the other.

Even in Paul's day, he experienced different types of persecution. He listed some of them for us in 2 Corinthians chapter 11. That included violence against him, people hating him, and so forth. It included him being poor at times because people would not support him. So these are forms of persecution. Persecution simply refers to any form of expression of disapproval or hatred that somebody shows toward you.

In Paul's day and in many days since then, persecution has been official, legal persecution. Governments have persecuted Christianity as a matter of policy. On the other hand, in our country, that generally isn't done, not in a very severe way. We have had people who were pro-life demonstrators thrown into prison under the Biden administration. As I understand it, Trump pardoned them when he came to power, but they were singing and praying and sitting in front of abortion clinics, in some cases not blocking the entrance at all, but they were said to be in violation of some kind of an act, the FACE Act, and so they were put in prison for over a year, many of them, including an older woman in her 80s was among them. That's persecution of Christians. That was in this country.

Sometimes Christians are banned from some social media because of taking positions that Christians take, which are against the main culture. That's persecution too. So persecution can take many forms up to and including jail time, or simply ostracism. All of those things are so. Paul said those who will live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution. He's not necessarily saying if you're not experiencing the kind of persecution he was experiencing, you're not very godly because we live in a land where there's freedom. There's a First Amendment. You're allowed to say things and follow your religious convictions, and it's actually against the law for someone to do the kinds of things to you that were done to Paul. That doesn't mean you won't experience some form of opprobrium or dislike or being held down by people, maybe by corporations, the company you work for, or people who would not shop, buy from you, or do business with you. Maybe some people just don't want you around.

This can take any form. Now, it probably makes us feel a little guilty when we read something like Foxe's Book of Martyrs or the stories of some of these men persecuted in communist prisons or in Nazi prison camps like Corrie ten Boom. We think, what kind of Christian am I? I don't have anything like that going on. Part of that is an accident of birth. They were born in times and places where dictators were prevailing and tried to stamp out people of conscience.

That could happen here. All my life, I've thought it probably would happen here at some point, but I'm old now and it hasn't really happened here quite like that. That is to say, no one's threatened me with jail. But if I were in Canada, some of the positions I've taken might get me in jail. If the next election goes a certain way and if the people who think like Canadians come into power, then maybe people like me will go to jail. I don't know. I've always been aware that that has happened to Christians throughout the ages and that there's not any guarantees that it shouldn't happen to me or us in our time. We've been spared that.

But we haven't been spared all persecution. If you take a vocal stand for righteousness, there's always a majority of people in the world who don't like that and who will respond to you negatively. It may not end up in you going to jail or being killed or anything like that or even being beaten up, but it could. So the persecution doesn't have to be severe in order to be persecution.

Those of us who live in a country where legally we can't supposedly be persecuted for our faith, there's a First Amendment and therefore they shouldn't be able to do that, there's still people who do. There's still people who will spurn you or avoid you because of your Christianity, and there's even people who think themselves Christians who will shun you because they don't like you following your convictions because they differ from their Christian convictions. We've encountered that not very long ago in a church we went to. That happens. However, in a land where there's no overt severe persecution, there are other temptations. Persecution is one way that the devil seeks to dissuade Christians from living by their convictions.

But when that isn't happening, and persecution in a serious form isn't always happening everywhere to Christians, there's always the other test, the other temptation that comes to be unfaithful to Christ, and that is prosperity. Prosperity and ease. Of course, if the church is persecuted, it seldom is being tempted by prosperity and ease. But when there's no persecution, we sometimes, especially in a country like ours, do have lots of ease and prosperity. That too, that's not persecution, but that is a trial to our faith just as much as persecution is. The idea is that the devil will use whatever he has to or can to try to get you to be unfaithful to God. Prosperity has probably in this country, in the history of this country, led more people away from God than persecution has.

The devil uses different ploys in different circumstances. But like I said, even when persecution isn't the main one on the menu in a place or a time, there's still some. There's still family members that will object to you or people in your neighborhood who do. It might seem like a wimpy kind of persecution compared to what lots of people have gone through, and I guess it is, but you don't get to pick whether you're going to be persecuted heavily or lightly. You just live godly and whatever persecution your circumstances bring upon you is what they do.

The main thing is that Peter said in 1 Peter chapter 4, "Don't think it a strange thing when these fiery trials come upon you," he means persecution, "as if some strange thing was happening to you." Sometimes we think that if someone snubs us because of our convictions, our egos might get involved and say, "Why me? Why are you doing that to me?" But we shouldn't think it a strange thing. It is strange when it comes from people who go to church, for example, and call themselves Christians, it seems strange because it shouldn't be happening from that crowd, but it sometimes does. But persecution, as you said, is a normal thing. It's just not always extreme in every case nor should we flagellate ourselves because no one else is flagellating us for our faith.

Cameron: Perfect. Thank you. I think that answers my question.

Steve Gregg: Okay Cameron, thanks for your call. Good talking to you. Tina from Surrey, British Columbia, speaking of Canada, how are you doing, Tina?

Tina: Hi Steve. Thank you for all your time and effort you put into your ministry. I just wanted to know how many years has it been since Jesus rose from the dead? I'll take the answer off the air.

Steve Gregg: Well, nobody knows the exact year that Jesus died. It's generally thought that He died around 30 AD or somewhere between 30 or 33, somewhere in that range, probably. The exact date on our calendar has never been established. But obviously, we can get to within a few years. I don't know why we'd need to have the exact number of years, but it's been almost, well, it's been very close to 2000 years now. In about five years from now, it'll be 2000 years since Christ was crucified.

Now, some people think that's important because they think that there's some kind of a program that God has for there to be 4000 years before Christ and then 2000 years since Christ, then you've got the millennium coming. They believe the whole of human history is supposed to extend for 6000 years, and 4000 of those years were before Christ. So some think that the year 2000 or the gap of 2000 years is a very significant one. They feel like the church age should be expected to last only 2000 years.

The Bible doesn't give us that information, but there were church fathers, without any scriptural support, who came up with that idea. It wasn't anymore scriptural than the idea of Mary's virginity is, but there were some people who held it and there are today; there are people who think that the church age should be about 2000 years because that'll make the earth about 6000 years old and then Jesus will come back and the millennium will come, which is the 7000th year.

This is 100% fabricated. It has a very ancient pedigree as I said, some church fathers taught it, but nonetheless there's absolutely nothing in scripture to give us that impression. So apart from that consideration, there doesn't seem to be any reason to be concerned about how long it has been exactly, but it should let us know that Jesus is giving us plenty of time to fulfill the Great Commission, which is no doubt the main reason He hasn't come back yet. Okay, Kelly in Ledyard, Connecticut, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Kelly: Hello. One quick question. I was listening to your topical study on "How to Study the Bible" and you were referring to some notes in that lecture. Is there a way to get a copy of those notes on your website?

Steve Gregg: There is. That lecture would be part of a series called "The Authority of Scripture". I think it's the last lecture in the series. That series and all the other lectures in my series for which there are notes are posted online, not at my website but at another website called matthew713.com, M-A-T-T-H-E-W-7-1-3.com. There's different things you can get from that website, but lecture notes would be where you're going to look for that and you'll go to the series called "The Authority of Scripture" and I think that lecture is the last one in that series.

Kelly: Excellent. Thank you for that. And then one other question. Could you, if you have any information regarding the background or the history on how Easter bunnies and Easter eggs and Easter baskets and chicks got involved with the resurrection of our Lord?

Steve Gregg: I really don't know when or how that happened. I have heard that some pagan religions thought of rabbits as a symbol of fecundity and of life, having a lot of babies and life, and eggs too, chicks and stuff too. But I don't really, honestly, I don't see any connection how those things would be related to the resurrection of Christ.

So I think that pagan religions, some of them, did associate that with—some would say with the worship of Ishtar, and that our English word "Easter" comes from the word "Ishtar," who was the goddess who was the wife of Baal in the Bible, or Astarte was her name also, or Ashra, all those are names for the wife of Baal and Ishtar is a pagan form of that name. So some would say Easter is taken from that name Ishtar, and that's very possible that it was; I do not know.

None of those things are very important to me because I don't celebrate Easter with eggs and bunnies. So how someone ever came to do so, I don't know, but I'm not much one to follow custom if there's no biblical basis for it. So it's never been a part of my life to have eggs and bunnies as part of Easter. So I will say this, that in the 2000 years since the time of Christ, especially in the first quarter of that period of time, Christianity came into contact with the pagan world and converted much of it, and some of the pagan practices for their holidays were apparently adopted by Christianity and renamed and refitted to be associated with Christian holidays. I don't know how many of those are the case and I don't know what year that happened and I don't really care much, but that's—it certainly isn't biblical if that's what you're wondering. If you're wondering if there's any reason for Christians to associate eggs and bunnies with Easter, the answer to that would be no, there's no biblical basis for it.

Kelly: Okay, well thank you very much for your help.

Steve Gregg: All right, thank you for your call. Matthew in Sarasota, Florida, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Matthew: Thank you. A quick statement and a question. I've called in a couple times before and I'm familiar with people calling in and not being there because there's a delay; they're trying to listen to you on the radio and because of that they don't pick up in time and it's wasting your time. So I had a suggestion of what if maybe you tell people next time that that happens, you come across somebody that's not there, you just tell them that you can actually listen to the program live through your cell phone and not have to worry about the delay that happens. That's what I do when I'm calling in, I just listen to you through my phone and maybe if you made that clear to people, you could save time, especially new callers that don't know that.

Steve Gregg: Well, it is true that a lot of people do listen on their cell phone or their computer. There is also the case that some people are listening on the radio. And what you refer to, some people might say, what's he talking about? When—the radio signal is delayed. I'm doing this live, but you're hearing it over the radio maybe 20 seconds, 30 seconds later. There's a delay. Now, if you're listening to the show on the radio and you're hearing the delayed 20-30 second delayed program, and you're on the phone, you're on the phone with me in real time. So if I say hello to you, you're not going to hear it on your radio until 20 or 30 seconds from now. And if you're listening to your radio instead of your phone, then of course you're not going to know that I called you. And that is sometimes what happens. I think Matthew's saying that you could avoid that by simply listening on the internet or on the phone app. Okay, Matthew, you had a question though, right?

Matthew: Yeah. I was wondering your thoughts on whether or not you know anything about whether the Bible talks about a spiritual gift of craftsmanship? I took a spiritual gift test online and it told me craftsmanship was in my top five. I've just never heard any sermon or series talking about that as a common spiritual gift, and I just wondered if you had any idea about that?

Steve Gregg: Well, in the book of Exodus, the Bible does say that God gave Bezalel and Oholiab every gift and every gifted artisan in whom the Lord has put wisdom and understanding to know how to do all manner of work for the service of the sanctuary. That's Exodus 36:1.

And what it's saying is that when it came time to building the tabernacle and the special furniture, which was very elaborate and very special, designed by God Himself, He didn't leave this to just ordinary gifted, let's just say capable craftsmen, He gave the spirit of craftsmanship to these people. And this is stated a couple of different times elsewhere also. I'm going to look here real quick. I have a real Bible with pages, so I have to turn them. Remember those? Okay, so in Exodus 28:3, God tells Moses, "So you shall speak to all who are gifted artisans, whom I have filled with the spirit of wisdom, that they may make Aaron's garments to sanctify him, that he may minister to me in the priest." So the garments of the priests and the furniture of the tabernacle, they were made by people that God said He'd given them the spirit of wisdom, or obviously the capability to do these things. So I would say there is a spiritual gift in that area.

Matthew: Do you think that carries over to the New Testament?

Steve Gregg: I don't see why not. Same spirit, and there are people that God calls into woodworking and other kinds of craftsmanship. It just doesn't seem like one appreciated by the institutional church all that much. Well, I'll tell you why. In 1 Peter chapter 4, the gifts of the spirit are spoken of as having two different—being two different categories of gifts. It says in 1 Peter 4:10 and 11, "As each one has received the gift," in the Greek this word gift is charisma, which is the word that Paul uses for spiritual gifts. Peter apparently uses it that way too. "As each one has received the gift, minister it," which means serve, "serve it to one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God."

So use the gifts to serve each other and recognize that you are stewarding a gift of grace that God has given to you. It's a talent, it's a grace that you can minister to others through. And then he breaks it down into two categories in verse 11: "If anyone speaks, let him speak as the oracles of God." That means let him speak as if he's speaking prophetically, whether he is or not, let him speak with the weight of a prophet, meaning you would not dare to speak as a prophet if you weren't trusting God to give you the words. So anyone who speaks, whether they're prophesying or not, should speak with the same kind of conscientiousness and trusting God to give them the words as an oracle would.

Then he says apart from that, "If anyone ministers," and again the word means serves, "if anyone serves, let him do it as with the ability which God supplies, that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ." Now he says everyone has a gift, you should use those gifts to serve each other, and thus you will be a good steward of that gift. And he says now if your gift is speaking, do it as an oracle of God. If your gift is serving, then do that as of the ability which God gives, recognizing God is the one giving that ability so that God gets the glory for it.

Now, what he's saying is there are two kinds of gifts: there's speaking gifts, lots of different speaking gifts. There's preaching, there's teaching, there's prophesying, there's tongues, there's interpretation of tongues, there's exhortation, lots of speaking gifts, which generally minister to the spiritual needs of the church. But then there's gifts that are in the other category of serving: helps, giving, leadership, things like that, which help the church with its natural needs. The church is both spiritual and natural and has needs in both areas, and God gives gifts in both categories. And so a craftsman would be serving as opposed to speaking.

I need take a break. You're listening to The Narrow Path. Our website's thenarrowpath.com. We have another half hour coming, so don't go away. I'll be right back.

Guest (Male): Small is the gate and narrow is the path that leads to life. Welcome to The Narrow Path with Steve Gregg. Steve has nothing to sell you today but everything to give you. When the radio show is over, go to thenarrowpath.com where you can study, learn, and enjoy with free topical audio teachings, blog articles, verse-by-verse teachings, and archives of all The Narrow Path radio shows. We thank you for supporting the listener-supported Narrow Path with Steve Gregg. See you at thenarrowpath.com.

Steve Gregg: Yeah, I want to follow up on that announcement that was just made about the website. You know, if some of you probably catch the program daily, maybe you're commuting or driving somewhere this time of day every day and you happen to have your radio on and so you hear whatever portion of the program is on while you're in the car. But it may be that you've never gone to our website. Now, our website has nothing for sale, just like our radio program. You may not have noticed, there are no commercial breaks because we don't sell anything and we don't have any sponsors. Nor do we at our website.

But we do have a lot of stuff for free, including over 1500 lectures that I gave when I ran a Bible school in Oregon, much of them, verse-by-verse through all the whole Bible, as well as hundreds and hundreds of topical teachings. Now if you're interested in in-depth Bible teaching, these are there to be listened to at the website and there's other resources too as the lady said. You can go to—if you're at thenarrowpath.com, which is our website, you can also look under sources and resources and links and there's other kinds of links including our YouTube channels and stuff like that that they can link you to. Again everything's free, they're just resources that we offer to you. If you're just catching the radio show, you may not have any idea how much there is to gain for free at the website thenarrowpath.com. You should probably check it out.

All right, let's talk to Priscilla in Vancouver, British Columbia. Hi Priscilla, welcome.

Priscilla: Hello, hello, hello! Greetings, Steve. Amen. I just want to say quickly, Matthew 28:6, from Surrey, well recommended, even though we know he died but hey, you know what I mean? Next, as for me, amen. As someone who is going through unemployment, hard times, and I'm reading upon Joshua 1, and it's telling me to be strong and of good courage. I'm going to take your answer off the air. Much love Steve and the team and all glory and praise be to Him, amen. Am I to be still of good courage and be strong even though through all our trials we may be going through, including you or anyone else? Should we and remain to be strong and courageous, or maybe silly what I'm saying, but how important is that? And thank you, I'm going to let you go for now. Much love.

Steve Gregg: Okay, thank you for your call. Well, are we supposed to take the exhortation that God gave to Joshua in Joshua chapter 1 where He said be strong and of good courage, are we supposed to take that as if that is for us too? I believe so. And one of the reasons I say that is because that verse is quoted in the book of Hebrews, and it says that we should be content with such things as we have because it says He has said to you, He has said, "I am with you always, even to the end of the age," that's what he quotes. That is a quote from what he said to Joshua in chapter 1, and yet it's interesting that Hebrews, writing thousands of years later, the writer would say, "This is God's word to you." That's in Hebrews 13:5. He says, "Let your conduct be without covetousness and be content with such things as you have, for He Himself has said, 'I will never leave you nor forsake you.' So we may boldly say the Lord is my helper, I will not fear, what can man do to me?"

So he says that this statement, this promise from God, "I will never leave you nor forsake you," is something that we can lean on, although it occurs in Joshua chapter 1, the very passage you're talking about, in application to—as a promise to Joshua himself in Joshua 1:5. So here's a promise made to somebody else, an individual on a particular mission, which was he was about ready to go and conquer the Canaanites, and God says don't worry about it, be strong, be courageous, don't tremble, don't be dismayed, the Lord your God is with you, I will never leave you nor forsake you. And the writer of Hebrews says, well we can be that way, we can be confident then, because God has said that. And the implication is what God said to Joshua is true to us too.

Now you're having financial difficulties. That seems very relatable to what the writer of Hebrews is talking about when he says don't be covetous, be content with what you have. But of course, that means that you may have to reduce your expectations for your standard of living, but it also means that God is with you and God takes care of you. There's certainly an ongoing and permanent feature of God that He provides for His people. Remember Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter 6 that we should not worry about what we will eat or drink because God takes care of the things He's made like sparrows, the birds of the air, and flowers, He clothes the flowers beautifully enough, and He said God doesn't care as much about those things as He cares about you. You're worth more than many sparrows. He cares more about you than He cares about the flowers.

So the idea here is Jesus saying don't worry about that, your Father will take care of these things. Now, of course, the assumption is God will take care of everything you need while you are yielded to Him, while you are doing whatever it is He wants you to do. Now you might say, well I don't know anything He wants me to do I'm not doing. Well fine then, then just ask God to guide you. And if you're doing what He wants you to do already, then you are, and He'll take care of you. But again Paul said in 1 Timothy chapter 6, having food and clothing, we will with these be content.

So Jesus said God clothes the grass with flowers and He feeds the birds, and if He feeds us and clothes us, and if that's all He does, if we have only food and clothing, we should be content with it. I have had to live by that principle on many occasions. Not that I've—yeah, I mean there are a few cases where I really didn't have much more than food and clothing, and when whenever I did, it wasn't much more than that. And so God is teaching us to be content and to trust Him, to know that He takes care of things as we are doing what He wants us to do. Now we shouldn't assume that what God wants us to do is always intense religious work. Some people think, well God would take care of missionaries of course because they're out there preaching the gospel, God would take care of the pastor because he's leading a church, but why would He take care of me?

Well maybe He hasn't called you to be a pastor, maybe He hasn't called you to be a missionary, but He's called you to be His servant. You just recognize that you're doing or at least charged with doing whatever Jesus said His servants should do. And as you seek to do that, then He takes care of His servants. When Jesus said the laborer is worthy of his hire in the 10th chapter of Matthew, I think it's verse 8, I'm not sure, right around there, Jesus said the laborer is worthy of his hire, He's telling His disciples don't worry about financial things. It's right after He said don't take stuff with you, you'll be taken care of, God will—God is your employer and He knows His employees need support and He knows that the laborer is worthy of his hire, so He'll make sure you have what you need. This is just a general teaching of scripture. If we're doing what God wants us to do, we can trust Him. And when the writer of Hebrews quoting that very passage from Joshua that you brought up says don't be covetous, which means don't be greedy, but be content with what you have because God has said I will never leave you or forsake you.

That has two kind of meanings there. One is that because you have God, that's worth more than anything the world can give. So even if you had only food and clothing, or even if you didn't have food and clothing, even if you were starved to death as frankly sometimes people have, you have God at least. God is a treasure for you in this life and in the next, and so you should always be content with what you have. But the other point is, of course, because God doesn't leave you or forsake you, He obviously knows your needs. Jesus said your Father knows you have need of these things before you ask Him. So if you're focused on God, that is on the reality of His being with you and of His caring for you and of you living your life before Him with no other object than to be pleasing to Him, you don't have to worry about anything. So anyway, yeah, that particular passage that God said to Joshua happens to be one of the few that the New Testament quotes and applies to us and gives us occasion to not worry about our circumstances.

All right, let's talk to David in Portland, Oregon. And before we go to that call, we have some lines open now for the first time in the hour. If you'd like to call now, there is occasion to get through. The number is 844-484-5737. Once more that number: 844-484-5737. If you call now, you could very well be on the program before we're done with this hour. All right, David in Portland, welcome.

David: Thank you. I like to go to this Mediterranean Lebanese restaurant and I was informed that a lot of it is Halal. Well, we usually don't eat the meat over there, we just have hummus and baba ghanoush and falafel, and I'm wondering do you think that there's a problem with going to that Mediterranean restaurant because it's Halal?

Steve Gregg: Well, there's actually nothing that you as a Christian need to avoid eating except perhaps for your health reasons. But if you're concerned that for religious reasons you shouldn't eat certain foods, that is something that I believe is not a Christian way of thinking about things. When Jesus sent His disciples out two by two, He said to eat what's placed before them and says don't worry about anything for conscience' sake. In other words, don't think in your conscience that it's wrong to eat anything that they serve you, where Jews would often be concerned about that kind of thing because it was very important to most Jews that they only eat kosher food and if they're given food by somebody who might not keep a completely kosher house, then they might be concerned. He said no, just eat whatever they give you, don't be concerned about it for conscience' sake.

Jesus said in Matthew 15 that it's not what goes into a man's mouth that defiles him, it's what comes out of his mouth. And he said this in the context of eating food. The Pharisees were criticizing Jesus' disciples because they had not eaten their food quite with—they hadn't washed their hands properly before eating their food and they said the disciples are doing something making them unclean. Jesus said what you eat doesn't make you unclean. It doesn't defile you. It doesn't have anything to do with your spirituality or your morality, there's just no moral ramifications at all to what you eat.

Paul, I think he was alluding to this statement of Jesus in Romans 14:14. He said, "I know and am convinced by the Lord Jesus," now when he says "I'm convinced by the Lord Jesus" I think he means because of what Jesus said, this has convinced him, "that there is nothing unclean of itself, but to him who considers anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean." So if you feel like oh, I don't think I should eat this meat, well then don't until you can get over it in your conscience. But as far as Paul or Jesus were concerned, there's no food that you have to avoid for the sake of principle. That is to say, there's no food that a Christian is not allowed to eat for spiritual reasons.

Paul actually made it clear that it's actually getting the gospel wrong if you think that the gospel requires you to avoid certain foods. He says in 1 Timothy 4:1-5, "Now the spirit expressly says that in the latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron, forbidding to marry and commanding to abstain from foods." So it's one of the doctrines of demons, he says, is that people have to abstain from foods. He says, "which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be refused if it's received with thanksgiving, for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer."

So Paul said there's really no creature that God has made that is unclean. Now if you're concerned that eating meat sacrificed to idols is a concern, Paul talked about that in 1 Corinthians chapters 8 through 10 and made it clear that God doesn't care whether you eat meat sacrificed to idols, but some people do. And if you're around somebody who's offended by you doing it, then don't do it. It's better to refrain to avoid stumbling somebody than then to indulge yourself, but he said as long as your conscience lets you, it's not a problem. So Paul and Jesus make it clear that eating food, any kind of food, that might to some other people seem like it's evil or defiling to eat, it isn't, and don't worry about it. I appreciate your question. George in Stratford, Connecticut, welcome to The Narrow Path.

George: Hi Steve. I listen to your show daily and enjoy your teaching. I have two quick questions and I'll listen to the answer off the air. The first is, is there a scripture that Christ went to heaven more than one time after His resurrection? And the second question is one that I've heard you teach on before and it's to do with Hebrews 9:27 and the fact—does the scripture ever contradict itself because it says it's appointed unto man once to die and after this the judgment, but apparently people such as Lazarus and Jairus' daughter died and were subsequently die again. So is that scripture being contradictory at all?

Steve Gregg: Okay, very good. As far as Hebrews 9:27, "it's appointed unto man once to die and after this the judgment," no there's nothing in the Bible that contradicts that, unless you're taking it as an absolute statement, which it doesn't say it's absolute. It's talking about what's normal. Normally people die and then there's the judgment, that's the general appointment of mankind. Now that God can make an exception, that He could take Enoch up into heaven without him dying, or He could take Elijah up into heaven without him dying, so he missed that appointment, but there's no reason God can't make an exception to the general rule. Likewise, if a man dies and then is brought back to life as some people were in the Old Testament through the ministry of Elijah and Elisha, and as of course people were sometimes brought back to life in the ministry of Jesus and the apostles, those are very exceptional cases. Now to say they're exceptions doesn't mean they're contradicting anything, unless the statement in Hebrews 9:27 is taken to be an absolute statement.

Obviously it's not. And no reader of the original book would have thought that it is, because the readers knew very well that Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, that Jesus raised Jairus' daughter from the dead, that that person died more than once, once before Jesus raised them and no doubt once afterwards, later on. Also the Old Testament had reference to the same thing happening. So the writer of Hebrews is not laying out a statement that cannot have exceptions, and an exception to a general statement doesn't contradict it, they are just exceptions to it. That's a different thing. Like when I see a roadside on the freeway that says the speed limit is 65 miles an hour, that's the rule. But if I see a police car with lights on and siren blazing going 90 miles an hour down the middle lane where I'm not allowed to drive, well, is he contradicting the law? No, he's an exception. He's got a special—he's a special exception. He's not me. The speed limit is still 65 miles an hour no matter what the policeman does. He's an exception to the rule. And so there are lots of exceptions. Paul said the time will come when all living Christians who are alive at the time of the coming of Christ will be caught up to meet the Lord in the air and will not die. So that would be an exception to the rule also that it's appointed unto man once to die. So Hebrews is not trying to tell us this is an absolute rule. You have to read the book of Hebrews or any other book of the Bible in light of what it's trying to say and not what we could take it to say if we're ignoring what it's trying to say or we're ignoring what the readers would have been expected to understand it to say.

That was the question that you had about that. Now, what was your other question? Jesus' ascent. Okay, yeah. Jesus, as far as we know, ascended to heaven only once. Now there are some people who would say he did twice, but they're doing it because they're misunderstanding a particular verse, and that verse is John chapter 20 and verse 17 where after Jesus rose from the dead and met Mary Magdalene, He said to her, "don't cling to me, for I have yet to ascend to my Father."

In the King James Version it reads, "do not touch me, for I have not yet ascended to my Father." The word hapto, the Greek word that is there, it can be translated touch but almost virtually every translator recognizes it means don't cling to. That's another common meaning of the word hapto, don't cling to me. And so He's saying don't cling to me because I'm going to ascend to my Father. Now later the same day, probably only moments later, Jesus met some other women and they held onto His feet. He didn't ask them not to hold onto His feet. They did. Now some people say, well see, He didn't let Mary touch Him but He let them, so He must have ascended to the Father in between.

And so there's this whole theological idea that some people have invented that when Jesus rose from the dead, before anyone could touch Him He had to go up into heaven and present His blood on the altar up there, and then He could come back and people could touch Him. And they feel like when Jesus said to Mary "don't touch me, I've not yet ascended my Father," He was saying I've got to go do that first. And then when later the same day the women touched Him, He didn't say not to, they say, well see, He must have gone up there. He must have, as He told Mary Magdalene, He must have gone to the Father but then come back down again. But then of course He ascended from Mount of Olives 40 days later, so they would say He went twice to the Father. But that's entirely based on a misunderstanding of this Greek word hapto.

Every modern translation would agree with what I'm going to say, and that is He said to Mary, "don't cling to me, because I'm still—I still have yet to go to my Father." What He's saying is "I'm going to leave again," and He did, 40 days later from the Mount of Olives. "Therefore don't cling to me. Don't think you can keep me from leaving. Don't try to hold onto me here. I've got somewhere else I'm going to be going eventually here." So he's not—there's nothing there to suggest that no one could physically touch Him until He had somehow made a brief trip to the Father and then come back again the same day. That's not at all implied in His words. Though it's only the King James Version that reads it "don't touch me," touch me not. The other versions make it clear that hapto is not referring to a mere touch, but to a grasping and holding on to. He's saying don't hold on to me. In other words, don't become emotionally attached to me physically being here because I'm not going to be. I will be for a while, but I'm leaving again. So that's what He's telling her. I appreciate your question.

Our next caller, it says it's Yugoslavia from Miami, Florida. Now, I never knew—is that your name, Yugoslavia?

Yugoslavia: Yes, that's my name, yes.

Steve Gregg: Wow, okay. Never met anyone by that name. Go ahead.

Yugoslavia: Well, thank you for taking my call. The other day a caller had asked a question in regards to the Jewish people, and you had mentioned that—well first of all, I truly appreciate your ministry, I wanted to tell you that the beginning. You had mentioned that during the seven-year tribulation, the Lord will give the Jewish people an opportunity to receive His Holy Spirit. And I was sharing this information with one of my sisters in Christ, but I couldn't give her the verse and the scriptures because I was driving and I didn't hear the verse.

Steve Gregg: Okay, well I'll tell you—it wasn't me that said that. I mean you probably listen to more than one program on the radio while you're driving, so you may have heard my program and then heard another one and got confused. No, I don't believe that the Bible teaches that there will be a seven-year tribulation in the future. There's no mention of it in scripture. Will God give the Jews another chance to repent? Possibly, they have one now. I mean He doesn't have to give them another one for the past 2000 years. Every Jew has had the opportunity to repent just like every Gentile has. I don't think there's a particular period of time that the Bible predicts where the Jews have a greater opportunity than they have now to repent.

Now the person that said that was a dispensationalist, and there's lots of dispensationalists on the radio, so it was probably somebody else on the radio. But they believe that the church will be raptured before a future seven-year tribulation, and then during that tribulation, that God will win the Jews over to Christ, that the believing remnant will come to Christ. And they believe that that is predicted in places like Matthew 23:39, Romans 11:25 and 26. They see these verses as predicting that the Jews will turn to Christ. Though I will say this, neither those verses nor any others refer to a seven-year tribulation or to Jews coming to Christ during a seven-year tribulation or to a rapture before that period of time. The Bible doesn't mention those things. So that wasn't me, that was somebody else. But I think I've just explained what they were referring to. I appreciate your call.

You've been listening to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg. We are on Monday through Friday at this same time. We have no commercial breaks because we don't have any sponsors and we don't sell anything. But we do have to pay the radio stations to carry the program. We're listener-supported. If you'd like to help us stay on the air, you can. We welcome you to do that. You can write to us at The Narrow Path, P.O. Box 1730, Temecula, California, 92593. Or you can go to our website thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for joining us. I hope you'll tune in again tomorrow and we'll continue our discussion at that time. God bless.