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 one hour, commercial-free. This is the way we do it Monday through Friday. We have an open phone line for you if you want to call in with questions you have in your mind about the Bible, about Christianity, stuff like that. Or if you disagree with the host and you want to balance comment and correct something that you think got stated wrongly, feel free to do that. We certainly wouldn't want to let any misstatements on my part go uncorrected. The number to call is 844-484-5737. That's 844-484-5737 if you'd like to be on the program today.

This Saturday, day after tomorrow, we have a men's Bible study in the morning in Temecula. If you're a man and if you're in Southern California and want to come to that, information as to where to join us can be found at our website, thenarrowpath.com, under the tab there that says announcements. All right, we're going to go to the phones and talk to Mike in Clayton, Indiana. Hi Mike, welcome to the Narrow Path.

Mike: Hi Steve. There's a perspective, at least within American evangelical Protestantism, which holds that when an individual becomes a Christian, all of that individual's sins—and that is defined as past, present, and future sins in this context—they're all forgiven at that point in time. In the future, should that individual commit a sin, that sin is immediately and completely forgiven without the action or repentance of anything on their part.

As a necessary corollary to that, it's that should that happen in the future, nothing has changed with regards to that individual's status before the Lord. Is this something you've heard about? And if so, what would be the theological perspective that would support that? Ultimately, is that a correct understanding of the forgiveness of sin and a believer's life?

Steve Gregg: Well, that view is what's usually called hyper-grace teaching. It's also found under the label hyper-dispensationalism. There are some dispensational teachers, not all, who teach it that way. Often what they say is that when Jesus died, all of our sins, yours and mine, were still future because we weren't even born yet. And yet, he died for our sins. So all the sins he died for include future sins. He died for all of our sins, including the ones that are now for us past, the ones that we committed recently, and the ones that we may commit in the future.

Now, of course, Jesus did. He died for all the sins of mankind. That doesn't mean that all mankind is automatically saved, however. Just because Jesus died for the sins of the whole world doesn't mean that there's nothing remaining for anyone in the world to do in order to be on good terms with God, to be justified. Obviously, the Bible is very clear that to become a Christian, a person has to repent. They have to believe. They're commanded to be baptized. These are things that people are supposed to do. There's nothing in the Bible that suggests that someone who neglects these things is already on good terms with God just because Jesus died for all their sins.

As I understand it, and I think most Christians do, though I won't speak for all, it's as if the president would give a general pardon to everybody on death row. He says, "Listen, everybody who will turn from their life of crime, live by the laws of the land, and will swear loyalty to me, I'll let you walk off death row." Now, there might be any number of reasons a person might not accept that. Obviously, most people would say, "Yeah, I'll do better now," because they'd want to be out of prison.

But many would say more honestly, "No, I don't intend to live a crime-free life. This is the way I live, this is what I believe in, and this is what I'll do when I get out." So you don't get out. You have to agree to not do that anymore. Also, there'd be people who say, "Well, I don't like the president, and therefore I don't want any favors from him. I'm not going to let him decide what I'm going to do. I'd rather just stay right here in death row and take my medicine for what I did. I don't want to give him the satisfaction of knowing that he's persuaded me." There are different crazy things that people might do when they're granted such a pardon that would keep them locked up, that would keep them on death row.

There are conditions for receiving the benefits. Now, the pardon is general. The pardon could be universal, but it's conditional. So in other words, if you repent, if you believe in Christ, if you are loyal to him as your King and Lord, well then you'll be saved, the Bible teaches. And that means, of course, when you're saved, you are forgiven for your sins. But you can't be really forgiven for sins that haven't happened yet. You don't need forgiveness for those; they haven't happened yet.

If they are going to happen, you can still be forgiven, as it says in 1 John 1:9, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." Now, I've heard some of these hyper-grace teachers say well, 1 John 1:9 is not to Christians. It's talking to non-Christians, Gnostics maybe, that they have to repent of their sins, they have to confess in order to be saved. Well, John isn't writing to non-Christians. He's continually referring to his readers as "my beloved brethren." He repeatedly refers to them as "children of God" and as people who are in Christ and Christ is in them. Those are his readers.

So he's not writing to non-Christians. And even if someone wanted to say, "Well, that one verse is intended for non-Christians," well, look back a couple verses before that. Because in 1 John 1:7 it says, "If we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us," present tense, "cleanses us from all sin." As we walk in the light. This is not getting converted; this is the way you're walking, this is the way you're living. If you're walking in the light, the blood of Jesus Christ is cleansing you from all sin, is what he says.

So the cleansing of sin is applicable individually upon a moment-by-moment basis of relationship. Now, Jesus died for all the sins of the world, which means that anyone can be saved. And any Christian who sins in the future can be forgiven. But it doesn't mean that since he died for all sins past, present, and future, as they like to say—the Bible doesn't ever say it in those terms, but that's how they like to do it in order to make their next point—namely, that your future sins are already forgiven, so there's no need for a Christian to ever say "I'm sorry."

When I was young, there was a movie called Love Story, and the tagline on their posters was "Love means never having to say you're sorry." Well, no, if you love someone, you do say you're sorry when you injure them. It's not a question of "have to." But the point here is that as we do walk in the light, as we do confess our sins, we are affirming our relationship with God and our desire not to be insulting him, not to be offending him, and so forth.

Imagine if you were married and you said, "Well, my wife has promised at the altar that for better or for worse, she's going to stay with me. So I think I'll just give her the worst. I think I'll just run around, I'll drink, I'll hang out with the boys, I won't take care of the children, I won't support the family. Because after all, she promised for better or for worse." Well, one might well argue that the person who thinks that way does not really love their wife at all. And if you don't love God, the Bible indicates you're not really a Christian because God gives you a new heart. And the fruit of being a Christian is love, the Bible says.

I don't mean to talk all around your question. The question is this: Did Jesus die for all sins past, present, and future? Yes, for all people. However, the experience of a benefit from that only comes on the basis of a relationship. If people never enter that relationship, they don't benefit from it even though Jesus died for their sins. They're still sitting on death row with a pardon waiting for them because they don't want to meet the conditions of receiving the pardon.

And even among Christians, if Christians say, "Well, I just want to get my ticket to heaven and my fire insurance, so I'm accepting Jesus, and now I don't care anything about the relationship anymore," well then that's not really a conversion. That's not really someone who has taken God seriously. What a person who takes God seriously does is like one who takes any relationship seriously. If you have someone you don't want to offend because you care for them, and you realize you did something wrong and that it is offensive to them, you apologize. Of course you would. And same thing with God. Do you care about the relationship?

This hyper-grace teaching treats salvation as if it's simply a business transaction. God has put forgiveness in your account. You never have to have any dealings with him anymore; it's all there in your account. You just live on it. No, salvation in the Bible is not that kind of a transaction; it's a relationship. Salvation is a restored relationship with God. Jesus said, "This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent." That's John 17:3.

So that's what eternal life is. Salvation is a restored relationship with God. And that relationship doesn't mean I said a sinner's prayer and that's all, folks. No, a relationship is, if you're talking about with God or with Christ, the relationship like a servant with a master or a subject to a king. And so, of course, if you insult your king, if you insult your master or violate him, well then you're going to certainly repent and apologize if you care anything about that relationship, just as you do toward your wife in your marriage. So I think the people who hold that view greatly undermine the whole concept of salvation as a relationship with God. They see it more as a transaction that you do once and you get the goods, and you've got this ticket to heaven which is in your safe deposit box. It doesn't matter what you do after that; you've got a backstage pass into eternity. That's not what the Bible teaches ever.

Mike: Well, in terms of church history, is this a relatively recent construct?

Steve Gregg: Absolutely. It's a development of dispensationalism. Now, dispensationalism arose in the 19th century. I don't believe Darby himself taught this version of it, but it's like once you're in dispensationalism, sometimes because dispensationalism is a wrong view, if you have any wrong view, if you take it to its logical extremes, you're going to be way off the mark. You know the old illustration that if you're shooting a rocket to space, if the nose of the rocket is like one inch off target from Earth, by the time you get into space, you're a thousand miles off target. You start askew and you follow the trajectory of normal logic from that skewed starting point, and you can get into all kinds of weird stuff. This is a version of dispensationalism and was never taught by Christians. Now, it was taught by Manicheans, it was taught by Gnostics, but those were considered heretics throughout church history. And I will say that some of the things that some dispensationalists have brought in—not all dispensationalists, but some of the ones have brought in ancient heresies like antinomianism, which is kind of what that hyper-grace is.

Mike: Okay. Well, thanks for the information. I appreciate it.

Steve Gregg: Okay, Mike. Thanks for your call. Wendell, who's also in Indiana, in Evansville. Wendell, welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for joining us.

Wendell: Having read Acts chapter 21 when Paul got to Jerusalem, and then James said that people have been hearing that you're preaching against Moses and the prophets and stuff and you need to accommodate yourself because you're in the hotbed of Judaism. He apparently joined himself with others that were under a temporary Nazirite vow and offered sacrifice—not a sin sacrifice, but to the temple. And then when you compare that with when Peter shows up in Galatians 2...

Steve Gregg: Yeah, Galatians 2 in Antioch.

Wendell: Yeah, in Antioch. So what is your question? I would kind of suspect that instead of him saying people have been hearing you're preaching against Moses, I would have said, "Yeah, I am."

Steve Gregg: Well, no, he actually wasn't. He doesn't teach against Moses. In fact, that's what he says in Romans chapter 3 at the very end of the very last verse of Romans 3. He says, "Do we nullify the law of God? No, we establish it." Now, by establishing it, he doesn't mean we are still under it. He means we are affirming what the law said. When Paul wrote Romans, twice before this verse, he mentions that the gospel he preached had been predicted in the law and the prophets. It says in Romans 1:1 and 2, "Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated to the gospel of God which he," that is the gospel, "which he, God, promised before through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures."

Okay, so he's saying what I'm preaching is the gospel. It's not some new innovation; it was promised through the prophets of the Holy Scriptures. And then in chapter 3 of Romans, he says in verse 21, "But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the law and the prophets." So he's saying I'm preaching a righteousness of God that's not based on keeping the law. However, what I'm preaching is in fact witnessed to by the law and the prophets. In other words, I'm not contrary to the law. Jesus said the same thing about himself in Matthew 5:17. He says, "Don't think I came to destroy the law and the prophets. I came to fulfill it."

Now, of course, why would they say he's coming to destroy it? Why would they make that mistake? Because he was changing things. He was saying that it doesn't make you unclean to eat unclean foods, as he said. He didn't mind that his disciples broke the Sabbath by picking grain and rubbing it in their hands. Pharisees would look and say, "This guy, he's violating the law of God." And Jesus said, "I didn't come to destroy the law as you may think. I'm here to fulfill it." In other words, the law predicted me, and I'm doing what it predicted. It predicted its own temporariness. The Old Testament said there's going to be a new covenant. Deuteronomy said there'd be a new prophet like Moses to take his place. And I'm the one, basically.

And so it's not like I'm here as an enemy of the law. I'm not keeping the law in the way that you think I should. I'm not going to reinforce that my disciples have to keep all those 613 rules either. I'm changing things, to be sure, in many respects, but I'm not violating them. This is what the law anticipated, and that's what Paul says, that God promised this gospel through the prophets in the Holy Scriptures. And now he says this righteousness of God apart from the law, that is apart from keeping the ritual laws of Judaism, is revealed. This righteousness was witnessed by the law and the prophets.

And then, in verse 31, he says, "Do we then make void the law through faith?" In other words, when we say we're justified by faith, are we voiding the law? And he says, "No, certainly not. On the contrary, we establish the law." What's he saying? He's saying if we're preaching that we're justified by faith, we're saying the same thing the law said about this subject. We're establishing the truthfulness of what the law said. Well, wait a minute, where did the law say that? Well, he tells us in the very next verse: "What then shall we say that Abraham our father has found according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he had something to boast about, but not before God. But what does the Scripture say?" he says.

Now, the Scripture he's talking about is Genesis 15:6. That's in what we call the law, the Torah. He said, "When I preach justification by faith, I'm simply establishing what the Torah itself said. Here's an example in the Torah. Genesis 15:6 it says, 'Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.'" So Paul uses the law to prove that he's not against the law. Now, is he against Judaism? Well, like Jesus, Paul did not believe that we have to keep the ritual laws because there's a new covenant and those rituals were part of the old covenant. On the other hand, Paul didn't think it was a sin to eat kosher. It depends on what's in your mind. If you're eating kosher because you think that makes you a better person before God, then you're on the wrong track. But if you want to eat kosher simply because you're more comfortable with it, you're disgusted by pork, or you've been raised Jewish and you've just always had a distaste for the idea of eating crustaceans or something, go ahead and eat kosher. There's no sin in eating kosher food, and there's no sin in not doing so.

Paul, in 1 Corinthians 9:21 and following, says that he is all things to all men. He said, "When I'm with those who keep the law, I keep it. When I'm with those who don't keep the law, meaning Gentiles, I don't keep it. Because I'm not under it." So he sees liberty there. Now, when he came to Jerusalem in chapter 21 of Acts, and James said, "We have heard here that you are teaching Jews not to circumcise their children," that's what he was accused of teaching, that Jews should not circumcise their children. Paul didn't say anything, but he agreed. "I don't do that. You're right. I will be glad to prove that I don't teach that. I don't teach Jews not to circumcise their children."

Now, he did teach Gentiles not to be circumcised because he felt that if a Gentile is made to be circumcised, then he's being forced to believe that he's simply becoming a Jew. And Paul in Galatians, throughout the book, said that there were people who wanted to force the Gentiles to become Jews. They wanted them to be circumcised before they could become Christians. And Paul said he didn't tolerate that teaching at all, not for an hour, he said, because he said that would corrupt the gospel. That's in Galatians chapter 2, around verses 3 through 5. But he's saying that there were people who wanted to require Gentiles to circumcise their children. He said, "I stood against that firmly." Why? Because they wanted to make circumcision, that is conversion to Judaism, a prerequisite for being a follower of Christ. And Paul says that is not a prerequisite for following Christ.

But what James said, there was a false rumor about Paul that had come to Jerusalem saying that this guy is saying that Jews shouldn't circumcise their children. Now, I don't think Paul cared whether Jews circumcised their children or not. Now, for example, I'm a Gentile, and I was circumcised at birth, as many in my generation were. I'm not in trouble with God because that happened. I'm not better off with God because it happened. It's irrelevant to me. But if somebody had said, "You better circumcise your children because they have to become Jewish before they can be Christians," then that would be something to stand against.

Paul is not against allowing Jews who live in Jerusalem to worship God in the way that they've been accustomed to doing so, assuming that they're putting Christ as the center of it. Because Christ is the center of the law. Christ is the center of the sacrificial system. If Christians were doing it, it's like today, there's sometimes around Easter time Messianic Jews sometimes conduct seders, a Passover seder, in churches. And they like to teach the Christians how this seder has all these elements that kind of point to Jesus. Now, in Jerusalem, if the Messianic Jews there kept the seders and kept the Jewish things, and in their own minds were aware that these are pointing to Jesus and they're really worshipping Christ, not trusting in the law, well then Paul's not going to try to say they can't do that.

So Paul's view was somewhat—we might think it's nuanced, but the whole issue with Paul, as Galatians brings out and as I think Acts brings out too, is that Paul was against the Judaizers who were Jewish Christians who felt that all Gentiles who became Christians should become Jewish Christians too by being circumcised, become proselytes and then Christians. And Paul said that's not what Jesus came to do. Jesus didn't come to make everyone Jewish; he came to make everyone righteous and followers of him.

And so Paul was not going to interfere with the influence of the Jewish leaders of the Christian church in Jerusalem. In fact, in Galatians chapter 2, he himself said that Peter, James, and John had together agreed with him when he came to Jerusalem that he would focus on the mission to the Gentiles, and they would focus on the mission to the circumcised, to the Jews. So Paul recognized there's different domains here. I'm not going to come to their backyard and start tearing up the lawn. If they have felt that their Jewish converts, and that's all there were in Jerusalem, who were Christians, if the Jewish converts want to keep doing stuff at the temple and circumcising their kids, well that's fine. Paul would never tell them they can't do that. But he wouldn't let them tell him that in his realm of ministry, the Gentiles, that he had to make them do it. So this is what was going on. There's some people trying to press Paul to make all of his converts Jewish, and he realized that's not what Jesus came to do.

And that's what was going on there. So Paul was not—it was wrong for them to say that Paul was teaching Jews not to circumcise their children. But it was also true that Paul was not putting the Gentiles under the law. And that wasn't because he hated the law; he just knew it was unnecessary, and he didn't want people to get the wrong impression about it. I appreciate your call. I need to take a break here. we do have another half hour coming up, 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. If you'd like to call in with your questions about the Bible or the Christian faith or with your disagreements with the host on any point, feel free to join us. The number to call is 844-484-5737. Again, that's 844-484-5737. Our next caller is Barbara from Roseville, Michigan. Hi Barbara, welcome to the Narrow Path.

Barbara: Hi Steve. I have the strangest question you've probably ever heard. Okay, so during the mark of the beast, when they won't buy and sell to anyone, Christians are going to be hungry all over. So let's just say I'm a grandmother with great-grandchildren or whatever, a baby dies and the family is hungry. Can I cook the child or do I have to bury it in the backyard because no one's going to sell me a plot? So I'm either going to have to let the worms eat it or can we eat it because we're hungry? Or the new funerals is to have a barbecue roast when someone dies because the Christians are hungry. Has God condemned this behavior? I will hang up and listen.

Steve Gregg: Okay, you're right. That is the strangest question I've heard. There was a case very similar to that in the days of Elisha the prophet, when the Syrians had besieged Samaria, the capital of the northern kingdom of Israel. And there was a starvation going on inside the walled city. And two women agreed, each had a baby, they said let's eat your baby today and we'll eat my baby tomorrow. And so they ate one woman's baby, and the next day the woman wouldn't give her baby up for it. And so the woman who felt she'd been cheated in the deal went and told the king. And when the king heard the story, the Bible says he tore his clothes. He was grieved, of course, because it was hideous that people would eat their children.

Eating human beings, I believe, is simply not okay. Now, I don't know that a person would go to hell for doing it. I don't think we go to hell for specific things we do. I think we go to hell because we reject God's mercy and whatever. But when you have accepted God's mercy, you want to please him. And I believe that any shedding of man's innocent blood is a death penalty thing. Now, if you're talking about a baby that's died on its own, well, I'll just tell you this. I can't imagine any real Christian who loves God and has sensitivities like a human being being willing to eat their own baby.

Now, I realize that the Donner Party and people who get stranded in the wilderness and some of their companions die and they're all starving, they sometimes eat their dead companions. I don't think the Bible addresses it directly. I just think that's one of the many things that I think the Holy Spirit would no doubt convict somebody about that. At least my convictions would be I wouldn't eat them. And people say, "Well, what if you were starving?" Yeah, starving's a pretty hard way to die, but it's not the only way to die. People die other ways too. Jesus said if you seek to save your life, and he means by compromising your principles, if you seek to save your life by doing the wrong thing, then you'll lose it. But if you lose your life for his sake, you'll gain it for eternity. So I mean, there is such a thing as saying there are things I would sooner die than do.

I can't give you a Bible verse against eating a human being, but it is certainly regarded as a disgusting thing when it is mentioned in Scripture. And I would find it disgusting. And so, you know, if somebody did it, if there was a dead human being freshly dead and they didn't kill them and they ate them, I don't know how heinous that is in the sight of God, but it's certainly is disgusting. And I would think that a person's conscience would in most cases certainly prevent that. It's an ugly thing. But it's not an impractical question. I've had people call me and say they would take the mark of the beast in a case like that because they wouldn't choose to starve to death.

And I think, well then maybe you're not a Christian, because taking the mark of the beast obviously is compromising with Satan. It's therefore we're supposed to be determined to be faithful to God and not to Satan. So whatever, I would not willingly take any such mark if it were offered to me, and I would not eat a human being. Frankly, dying is a better fate to me than doing that. So I mean, I guess each person going to have to follow their conscience. But in my opinion, and I'll let God have the final word on this, and he hasn't said anything directly on it, but I'd be surprised if he thought differently. But in my opinion, a person with the Spirit of God in them would reject eating human flesh and would instead choose to die or trust God to keep them alive some other way.

We can say this: The eating of human beings would have been absolutely horrendous to any Jew because they wouldn't even eat all the animals that we would eat. But we don't consider human beings to be animals. I know that evolutionists do, but we consider human beings to be something God created separately after he created all the animals. And he made humans in his own image, which means that we are to treat human beings with certainly a much greater sanctity and a much greater reverence than animals. And so, we eat animals because we see them as inferior to ourselves. Eating human beings, to me, honestly, I don't see how a spiritual Christian would ever do it even if their life depended on it. But I'm not God, so I mean a person would have to be led by the Holy Spirit in a case like that. But I think I know what his opinion would be even if he hasn't listed that in any of the lists of rules that he's given.

All right, let's talk to Michael in Inglewood, California. Michael, welcome.

Michael: Hi Steve. It was funny that you said that was your strangest question, and it kind of made me think of Leviticus 26:29. But I'm calling because my question—I was just reading 1 Timothy 5:17 in the NLT, and it says basically those elders that rule well should be paid well or something like that. But of course, the KJV says "worthy of double honor." Now my question is—my two questions are—first, that seems to mean that like say people like you should actually be paid well for what you do, because the Greek word that they used seems to mean paid or valued. So that was the first question: could it possibly mean that? The second question is like in the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World, PAW, to be a minister or elder or bishop, you basically have to pay. Like you have a licensing fee, you have a yearly annual fee you have to pay to remain a minister or elder. And I want to say that's one reason that I don't really want to do it, but so those are my two questions.

Steve Gregg: Well, I would rather pay to be a minister than charge money to be a minister myself. Now as far as when it says that the elders who rule well should be esteemed worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in the word and doctrine, which is what Paul says there in 1 Timothy 5, double honor does refer in that particular context to financial support. And we know that because Paul also in the same chapter says honor widows who are widows indeed, but if they have sons or grandsons, let them support them so the church doesn't have to be burdened by their support. Honoring them in that particular context means support them.

Now, to support them simply means that they don't starve to death. Paul said to Timothy, having food and clothing, with these we should be content. So there shouldn't be ever a time when a person who really has a call to the ministry would not do so unless they had something more than food and clothing given to them for it. Now, many ministers who serve congregations that can't afford to support them hold other jobs on the side. The first 12 years of my ministry, I was teaching many times a week, but I had small enough audiences that I didn't get much for it, nor did I ask for anything for it. And I held jobs. I just took jobs, usually temporary jobs, to make ends meet.

But when I went into full-time ministry, it's because someone donated a school campus to me and we started a school in Oregon. And I didn't take any money for that, but I did have housing and food there as all the staff did. Everyone had that there. But I just don't really see any need to charge money. When Paul says that the minister should be worthy of double honor, and even if we take the word honor just to mean support, that doesn't mean he should charge for it. That's an exhortation to the people who ought to be supporting him. See, I'm not against people donating to either The Narrow Path, which I take no money from, or to me personally, as many people do. In fact, that's how I survive. But I can't bring myself to require it of people. That's between them and God.

So if I was requiring people to support me, then I've become a paid laborer, and that's not what I am. I'm a slave. I'm owned by God, and therefore I have to, as a servant of God, you have to serve God. You don't charge him, and you don't charge other people. But God may lay it on other people's minds to help with your support. And when I say God may, he does. Almost my entire adult life, I've been supported by people that God put it on their heart to help me out. It's not—I don't have any guaranteed support. I don't have any list of supporters that I count on. I count on God, but God always provides.

In my opinion, if God has called you to do something and you do it, you don't have to ask people to support you. You can ask God for what you need because he's your master. Jesus did say in Matthew 10, "The laborer is worthy of his hire," and he was saying that to the apostles as he was sending them out two by two on a short-term mission, telling them they shouldn't have to provide for themselves because they're laboring and they will receive their hire, their payment of what they need on the trip. But he didn't mean that they'd take it from people or that they'd ask people for it unless they're working for people.

You see, a minister, in my opinion, should be working for God. And the labor is a labor in God's vineyard, and it's God who provides. He might do it through the people you're ministering to, or he might not give you anything. There've been many times I've traveled, gone a week out of state, taught for a week, 15 to 20 hours, and come home with nothing. I didn't get anything from the people I taught, and that's okay because I'm not doing it for pay. I'm doing it for God. However God took care of me, even if it wasn't the people I taught; there were people I wasn't teaching that week that God put it on their heart to help me. So I don't connect any service that I do for the Lord with the idea of any money at all. That's something that I refused to do from the time I left home when I was 17 years old, when I went into the full-time or part-time or full-time ministry eventually. I just thought I'm never going to attach a price tag for any service I provide. That's going to be God's to provide, and he's done very well.

So when you say someone like me should be supported, I am. God supports me. There's no predictable amount, and the amount I get any given month is certainly not going to be the same as any other month because it's random stuff. But God has supported me in the ministry without my charging ever for anything for 55 years now or something like that. So I appreciate your concern. And it is true, if you are going to a church and the pastor is not salaried, he's volunteering, then the church who's receiving benefit from him should definitely keep their hand on the pulse of what his needs are and his family's needs and make sure that his needs are met. And that's what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 9. He said, "If I've ministered to you in spiritual things, it should be no great thing that I receive from you material things." But he wasn't asking for it. He was just saying that would be normal.

Now as far as paying for preaching licenses, I have no idea what that's for. I mean, who would you pay? Now see, if you're paying someone to license you to preach, which was your other question, then the person you're paying must be the one who allows you to preach, because that's what a license is. If they're licensing you to preach, they're the ones who say you can do it. But if they're the ones saying you can do it, why would you do it if God's not saying it? I mean, if God hasn't called you to preach, then what good is it if men tell you you can preach? You don't study to be a preacher, you don't pay to be a preacher; you is or you ain't a preacher. And if God made you a preacher, who can withhold permission? It's like when the apostles were before the Sanhedrin, and the Sanhedrin says, "Don't preach anymore in the name of Jesus; we're not licensing you for that." Peter said, "Well, we have to obey God rather than man, so deal with it." Anyone who's really called to preach by God is not subject to someone else telling them they can do it or can't do it.

So any denomination that makes preachers pay for permission to preach, I can't see it. Now, I will say this, if preaching means being superintendent of an organization that owns a building that they're letting you use, well, maybe there'd be something to be said for paying for the use of the building. Or if they have a congregation that they want you to preach for, I don't know. But to me, all of this is just carnality. It's just carnality. There's nothing biblical that would support the idea of licensing preachers in that way and making them pay to renew the license every year. That is not so. I'm so far removed from Bible I never even heard of doing that. It's crazy to me. But thanks for your call. Rick from Covina, California, welcome to the Narrow Path.

Rick: I'm calling because I've heard you on a couple occasions not explain where Satan comes from or something along the lines of you not believing that he was in heaven. My question was when Jesus said something along the lines of that he saw Lucifer fall from heaven...

Steve Gregg: Yeah, he didn't say that. He didn't say he saw Lucifer fall from heaven; he said he saw Satan fall from heaven. Lucifer and Satan are never equated with each other in the Bible. The verse where Jesus said that is, of course, Luke chapter 10 and verse 18. He said to them, "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven." Now, in saying this, Jesus was not identifying Satan with Lucifer, who—the word Lucifer only appears once in the Bible, and that's usually only in the King James and other Bibles that follow the King James closely. Lucifer is a Latin word; it's not an English word, so it doesn't belong on our English Bibles. It's taken from the Latin Vulgate, where it translated a Hebrew word. Isaiah 14:12 is the only verse that mentions this word. It's translated from a Hebrew word that means light-bearer. And Lucifer is the Latin term that translates the Hebrew term light-bearer. So before there were English Bibles, the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek and into Latin eventually. And the Latin version used the word Lucifer in Isaiah 14:12 and used it to speak of this king of Babylon that is being addressed in Isaiah 14.

Rick: Right, I know you've said that that's completely different; it's not talking about Satan per se. So with that thought in mind though, when we talk about Satan, I haven't heard you actually address where he might come from or how he came to be. I think I've heard you say that you kind of lean towards him being a created thing for something else. I don't know if I'm misquoting you there, not my intention.

Steve Gregg: Well, no, I appreciate the fact that you're wrestling with that. If you listen to me often enough when I talk about this, I say I don't know anymore than what the Bible tells us about the origin of Satan. In other words, if the word of God doesn't tell us about the origin of Satan, I certainly am not at liberty to make up mythologies of my own. I have to remain ignorant about something like that, because how would I get any information about it if not from the Bible? Now, the Bible doesn't tell us where Satan came from. What I usually say is that people sometimes think the Bible does in certain passages like Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28, and sometimes even the verse we just mentioned, Luke 10:18, sometimes they'll even use Revelation 12:9 and so forth where the dragon is cast out of heaven. And they'll say, "See, he was an angel and he was cast out of heaven, and that's how he became the devil."

Well, those passages don't say anything like that. For example, in Revelation chapter 12, it doesn't talk about an angel; it talks about a dragon who's at war with the angels. And what falls out of heaven is not an angel but a dragon; the dragon is defeated in this battle and is cast down to Earth. It doesn't say he was an angel at any point. Likewise, the passage we just read: "Jesus said I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven." Well, okay, I can see that, but that doesn't say he was an angel who fell from heaven. Likewise, Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28, they don't mention Satan in those passages at all; he's not even mentioned there. So all I say is that when people tell us that Satan is a fallen angel, they're saying something that the Bible does not confirm.

But I don't know that he wasn't. He could have been; the Bible doesn't disconfirm it either. The Bible is silent on the matter, so we have no information in the Bible about the origin of Satan. Now, what I often do point out is Satan does play a role that God has in mind for him or else he wouldn't let him exist. And this is true whether he's a fallen angel or whether he's simply directly created to fill that role as he is now. I don't know; I don't have a strong opinion because the Bible's silent. But I would say this: that if God had no use for Satan at this present time, he'd throw him in the lake of fire, which he will someday do, the Bible says. The fact that he's not done so yet, though he could anytime he wanted to, suggests that Satan's still playing a role. And we see in the Old Testament Satan plays a role as a tester. He's called the tempter. And he tested Job, for example. And he tested Jesus in the wilderness, and he tests us.

So this is something apparently God wants. We know God allowed it in Job. We know that the Bible says the Holy Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. Okay, so that's the Holy Spirit sending Jesus to that mission to be tempted. So obviously being tempted, being tested is something that God wants the righteous to go through, and that's why he allows there to be a tempter. Now, it's possible that that tempter was once a good angel, and after he fell and became the devil, that God remastered his function and made him a tester. That's possible. Or since God does have use for him, there's no reason God couldn't simply just create him as he is now for that function. All I know is that he's got a function. Whether God made him in that form or whether he made him in a better form and he became bad afterwards is not stated clearly in Scripture. That's all I'm saying.

Rick: I think you've made a great point in pointing that out. I for one, speaking personally, I went back and read those passages, the Isaiah and all of those, and I see your point. I kind of see why a lot of people have taken to filling in the blanks for lack of a better term. And I think that's where the confusion lies. My thing was just that comment that Jesus made, and then when you attach it to the sons of God in the book of Job when he shows up there or when he's with the priest Joshua, Zechariah 3, right. So that's where all the people filling in the blanks where they shouldn't. So thank you for your ministry.

Steve Gregg: Good talking to you. There is a lecture at my website about the origin of Satan where I go into these passages in detail verse by verse. You can find it at thenarrowpath.com, our website. You go to the tab that says topical lectures, and there's a series called Spiritual Warfare, and it's either the first or second lecture in that series that's called "The Origin of Satan," and so I definitely parse every detail of the verses that are relevant to that in the Bible. Hector in Homestead, Florida. Welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling. Hector, are you there? Is your phone on mute?

Hector: Yeah, yeah, I'm here. Thank you. I don't know why I jumped into that station. This is the first time I got opportunity to catch that program and that station, period. And then I got opportunity to hear the lady was calling and asking about the mark of the beast where you can buy and sell. And yeah, the Bible does not even talk about you cannot eat, you won't survive, because Matthew chapter 6 explains exactly you don't have to worry about tomorrow, about your food, about clothing and stuff like that. Right, right. This chapter's supposed to be a support chapter for that question where we have to lean on God because he is the provider. So we don't have to worry about how we're going to be eating or taking care of family.

Steve Gregg: I completely agree with you on that. Yeah. The Bible doesn't tell us about the mark of the beast so that we'll worry about how we'll survive if we're following Jesus. Jesus tells us not to worry about what we'll eat or drink because the Father knows what we have need of. Jesus' specific point in Matthew 6 that you mentioned is that God feeds the birds of the air, and yet we're worth a lot more to him than birds are. So why wouldn't he feed you, O you of little faith, Jesus says. So obviously for us to say, "Uh-oh, am I going to have to compromise in order to survive when they cut off the food supplies?" The answer is no, you don't have to compromise, you of little faith. Just be faithful unto death. Maybe you'll starve to death, maybe you won't, but God will provide for you if he wants you to live. And if he wants you to die, then you're about average because we're all going to die eventually; it may not always be starvation, but that's another issue. Hey, I need to take off. Thanks for joining us. Our website's thenarrowpath.com.