The Narrow Path

Steve Gregg: Good afternoon and welcome to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg, and we're live for an hour each weekday afternoon taking your calls. If you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith, we'd love to talk to you about those things. If you have a different viewpoint from the host, I enjoy talking to you about that as well.

Right now, our lines are full, but let me give you the phone number anyway because within minutes lines will open up and you can get through if you call at the right time. It shouldn't be too hard. The number is 844-484-5737. That's 844-484-5737. I think I'll just go directly to the phones today and talk to Mark from Las Vegas, Nevada. Hi, Mark, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Mark: Hi, Steve. I got a question for you. I'm not sure if you've heard of "the little season."

Steve Gregg: You mean that strange doctrine that says that Jesus literally came back in the year 1000, or in 70 AD? He came back in 70 AD, he reigned for a thousand years, but there's no record of it because there's a conspiracy to cover up and rewrite the history. Is that the view you're talking about?

Mark: Yes, and then they're saying now that we're in the little season where it says in Revelation that Satan is let loose for a little while or a little season to deceive the nations. So, that's the one. My question to you is what are your thoughts on that? Some of the nuances that they put into it like the old world buildings all across the world before power tools, and the Nephilim and the giants are all part of this.

Steve Gregg: I've heard of those silly things. That's all very silly, actually. There are people who will believe any conspiracy theory there is, even if it requires that every person who ever lived in the first thousand years of Christianity and who wrote history, somebody got to their books and rewrote them so that we would have a fake history now. The idea here is it's a theory of false history.

For those who don't know, the idea is that they believe Jesus said he would return in 70 AD, and so he must have done so. Revelation chapter 20 apparently, to some people, they think it says that he's going to reign for a thousand years when he returns. I don't see that in the Bible, but that's a very common view. This one is a tweaked version of that view, and that is that Jesus did come back in 70 AD. He did reign on Earth for a thousand years. It was a golden age, there was no war, there was all righteousness and peace, and it was exactly what people expect the millennium to be. And it was from the year 70 AD to something like maybe 1070 AD for a thousand years.

And then Satan was loosed to deceive the world again for a little season. Apparently, the past thousand years since the ending of that first thousand years is supposedly the little season where Satan is deceiving people. First of all, I would be very disinclined to believe any such theory that would make a thousand years be represented as a literal thousand years in the Bible, and then another period of a thousand years, the same length, is called a little while when, in fact, whenever the number thousand is used in the Bible, if it's not being used literally, it's being used to refer to a very large number.

A thousand years is supposed to be a really long time. So the thousand years is a really long time, but the little season is, by contrast, a very short time. And yet it's already been a thousand years since the end of the first thousand years, so it doesn't make any sense. I disagree with several of the premises. First, I disagree with the idea that Jesus actually returned in 70 AD.

I do believe that something very important happened in 70 AD, namely the destruction of Jerusalem, and that some of the passages which people today have interpreted to be about the second coming of Christ were really not about that. They were really about 70 AD. I'll allow that, but I don't believe that Jesus literally came in 70 AD. There's certainly no evidence of that in history.

I know they point to these amazing buildings from ancient times saying this speaks of a much more advanced age than we would think that ancient people had. These must have been built during that time when Jesus was reigning on Earth. No, they didn't have to have been. Many of these buildings have been well-known for centuries, the pyramids and things like that, of course.

Some have argued that this testifies to a very high advanced civilization that existed before the flood, but we can't determine from architecture how perfect the world was because human beings are almost infinitely ingenious. The Bible itself says so. We're made in God's image. We can do amazing things, and people have done amazing things, especially when they had a lot of slave labor to do them with.

But that doesn't prove this silly theory. To me, it's a brand new theory and just like so many, it's kind of like full preterism. In fact, it's really kind of a branch of full preterism apparently because they believe that Jesus came back in 70 AD. That's the full preterist idea. Full preterism itself didn't arise until the 1970s, which makes it a very infant theology in terms of church history.

But this thing about the little season now and that Jesus really did literally reign for a thousand years on the Earth, to my mind, is just an even more bizarre conspiracy theory. By the way, in just the last few years we've had all kinds of bizarre conspiracy theories come up for which there's no biblical basis, including the flat Earth. Lots of people have turned to a flat Earth view because they think the Bible teaches it. It does not.

A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing. People who have been actually studying the Bible as I have been for 70 years or whatever, 65 or so, are not subject to these kinds of goofball things because the goofball things come from people who don't really know much about studying the Bible in most cases. They know the impressions they get reading certain passages, and then they come up with a wild theory and say, "Oh, this must be what the Bible's teaching because I think that's how I take it."

I think people like that really need to become a little more literate in the Bible than most of these people are and not jump at every conspiracy theory that comes along. So I will say this, as an amillennialist myself, I don't believe that Jesus is said to establish a thousand-year reign on Earth after he comes back. I believe the thousand-year reign is symbolic of the whole age of the church.

And I do believe there's a little season predicted in Revelation 20 where Satan will be loosed again at the end of time. Are we in that time now? Maybe. I don't know. I'm not sure how we would know exactly. Satan has been doing a lot of deceiving lately, but he's been doing that throughout history too, so it's hard to quantify it, hard to know if this is the little season or not.

If it is, however, if we're living in the little season, it'll be shorter than the thousand years. That's the very point that's made in Revelation. It's like in Revelation 7 when it talks about the Jews who were saved in the first century. They're called the 144,000. Their number is given. Then immediately after that in Revelation 7, it talks about an innumerable company that no one could number from every nation, kindred, and tongue.

Now there's a very distinct change there from people who were said to be all Jewish from the twelve tribes of Israel, a large group but numerable, 144,000 of them total. And then you move immediately to another group that's not all Jewish. They're from every nation, kindred, and tongue. They're Gentiles. And their number is innumerable.

It seems obvious that referring to the second group as innumerable is part of the contrast intended between that group and the first group that's not innumerable, where there's 12,000 of each tribe. It's only common sense to see, no matter what view of Revelation you take, there's common sense involved in seeing that when one group is described as having a number and another group is mentioned as being innumerable, and the first group is said to be all Jewish and the second group is said to be international Gentiles, that we're talking about different groups.

The contrasts are intentional. Likewise, when you talk about there's a thousand years of this followed by a little while of this, the little while is a lot shorter than the thousand years. That's just a given. Anyone who wants to say it isn't, they can do what they want to do. I'm not going to fight them. I'm just going to say I have no respect for that approach. I think when people actually study the Bible instead of the websites for conspiracies, they'll learn a lot more how to discern those kinds of things.

Melinda from Atlanta, Michigan, welcome.

Melinda: Hi, Steve. Curious, we have a study going on in Matthew with respect to the genealogy, which I used to always just kind of pass by, but we're looking forward.

Steve Gregg: Could I interrupt you just for a minute? There's a big echo on your phone. It may be because you're using the speaker.

Melinda: Oh, let me change that. Is that better?

Steve Gregg: Probably so. Go ahead. I'm sorry. You're having a Bible study on the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew, right?

Melinda: Right. We're looking at the women specifically, Tamar and Rahab. We've gotten that far. Obviously, we're seeing a lot of inclusivity and the forgiveness that these are not Jewish people, Canaanites, etc. Specifically, the question is with respect to the difference between Tamar and Rahab. The law came in between those. Is that correct?

Steve Gregg: Rahab came after the law, yes.

Melinda: Right after the law, and Tamar was before. Tamar's behavior, she was looking after her own interests obviously. She tricks Judah into she prostitutes herself, all of that bad behavior. What was governing before the law? What governed behavior?

Steve Gregg: We know from the story of Tamar, which is in Genesis 38 I believe, that there was already certain customs like what we call the Levirate marriage custom. This later was written into the law of Moses, but it was apparently already a custom in Middle Eastern ancient society that when a brother was married and died childless, if he had another brother, his brother should marry his widow and bring up a child to be named after his brother before any other children were named after the new husband.

We have that, of course, codified in the law of Moses at a later date, but we see this being assumed to be true in the time of Judah long before Moses was born. So what we can see is that there was a sense of ethics, a sense of inheritance rights, and inheritance honor and things like that and duty to family and stuff like that, which was already just kind of baked into ancient Middle Eastern society and culture.

It was also codified into the law of Moses, but where did they get this code? Well, I don't know. Where do people get codes if they don't have the Bible? It may have gotten it from the laws of Hammurabi. They were before the laws of Moses, or it might have been just from some other developed cultural thing that someone thought, "Well, this is a good thing," and it was. It was a good thing, so society adopted it long before the time of Moses. But yes, there wasn't a written code. God had given no laws about that. It was simply a matter of understood to be proper treatment of a deceased brother, honoring your deceased brother and trying to perpetuate his name through a child after he was gone.

Melinda: Okay, now we're looking at the persistent widow in the New Testament, different results. She's looking for her rights and she goes to the judge persistently. Like as the model we go to Jesus and we pray. we look for Him to resolve our whatever is being wronged in our world. Would that reflect the New Covenant?

Steve Gregg: No, not necessarily. We know that the widow that you're talking about in Luke chapter 18, verses one and following, that she was no doubt a Jewish woman living in she was a fictitious woman. She was a hypothetical case. She's a character in a story that Jesus told as a parable. So he's not referring to an actual person, but just like all the parables, a case that's true to life, a real-life kind of situation, which he can use to illustrate something spiritual.

Now the situation was that she, because she was a widow, like many widows, she was taken advantage of by people whom her husband would have defended her against if she'd not been a widow. Widows were often economically mistreated because they didn't have a husband to look out for them. That's why the judges in the Old Testament are continually and repeatedly told to look out for the interests of the widows and the orphans.

Jesus picks a widow who's in that unfortunate circumstance, and there's somebody who's taking advantage of her economically. Now we're not told what the situation was. There could be any number of kinds of things like that. But the point is she's going to a judge and trying to get justice. That's a normal situation. If somebody is wronging you in society, you're supposed to be able to go to the judge, go to the court, and get things redressed properly.

So she goes to the judge. Now, in this particular parable, the judge is not a kind person, not a particularly just person. He doesn't fear God. He doesn't fear man. He's just kind of a selfish guy who does what's convenient to himself. He's not interested in her case. But she keeps pestering him, and so he finally caves in and says, "Okay, just to get her off my back, I'm going to give her what she wants."

Now this was not an actual case, although I suppose Jesus tells stories that could be actual cases. He's just not insisting that this is an actual case, but this is a story one can relate to and see that this would be consistent with human nature and so forth. So he's just saying that in a case like this, the widow, even if the judge doesn't care about her, can often be persuaded by her persistence to give her what she's asking.

The lesson of the story is of course that in that story, this is about prayer. In fact, the opening verse of that chapter says Jesus told this parable to make the point that men ought always to pray and not to lose heart. So this is a parable about persistence in prayer. Luke tells us. So he's saying, "Listen, of course God is not like this judge, but there are judges like this, and even these judges can sometimes be won over by persistence."

How much more God, who is on your side, who does care about you, how much more can you confidently go to him knowing that he can answer? But why the whole persistence thing if God is eager to answer you? Why that? I think what he's saying is that whatever God's whatever reasons may God may have for not giving you an instant answer, he may seem to you because of the delay. He may seem to you to be like this judge.

He may seem to you that he doesn't care about your situation. But Jesus has made it very clear throughout his teaching that God cares very much about your situation. The hairs of your head are numbered. Not a sparrow falls to the ground dead without your Father's will. How much more you worth than sparrows? Everything about your life is of interest to God.

But he's not saying God is like this judge, but he's certainly saying lots of times when you're praying for something and it doesn't happen, it may seem like God's like this judge. However, even if he were, you could often prevail and get your way through persistence with a judge like that. And it's just saying that you should be even more encouraged to continue prevailing on God because, first of all, he's not like that judge. He does care about you. He does care about justice. It may seem like he doesn't because your prayers are not immediately answered, and God has his various reasons for not answering any given prayer in the way that we would think a timely manner. But Jesus is just trying to encourage that this is the kind of situation that this woman, because of her persistence, got what she wanted. And when we go to God to pray, we're going to a Father who is also a judge, but he's our Father. And we should count on the fact that he does have our interests at heart. And assuming this is a good thing we're praying for, that he will do it. So this is not really he's not teaching some kind of different ethic or something like we shouldn't seek to I'm not sure how you were saying it. It sounded like you were saying, "Well, we don't take care of this ourselves. We trust God to do it or something like that." I'm not sure if that's the main message of that particular parable. But in any case, that's how I understand the parable's meaning.

Melinda: So, in using Tamar, she's looking for her rights and there was a cultural norm as you explained.

Steve Gregg: She's not doing what that woman is doing. No, she's conniving. It's sort of like sort of like when Esau was going to steal the blessing from Jacob. Jacob connived and deceived his father and got the birthright anyway. It wasn't exactly commendable how he did it, but the Bible in recording these things is not really commending people for them.

And you know, I realize that in that story Judah did say, "Oh, she's more righteous than I am." And I'm not sure if you're seeing that as a way of saying what she did is a very godly thing to do. No, he's simply saying, "I'm more guilty than she is." She, to play a harlot, to deceive your father-in-law, to get him to sleep with you and get you pregnant, this is not model behavior for any godly person.

However, when Judah found out she was pregnant and didn't realize he was the father, and he said, "Oh, she should be burned to death," which is interesting that he'd say that. Shows how ancient the story is, because if it had been written after the time of Moses, stoning to death would be what would be expected. This proves how ancient this story really is. It was really written before the time of the law. But anyway, the point is that when she had the ring and the staff of the man who had slept with her and it turned out to be Judah's, he copped to it. He said, "Okay, she's more righteous than I am," which is his way of saying, "I'm more guilty than she is. I should have given her my son and I didn't, and so she did what she had to do." What she did is not given as a role model for anybody. It's just telling a story of what happened, and Judah realized that she's not the only one guilty in this matter, he is too. So that's what the story is saying.

Melinda: Well, Steve, thank you very much. I'll let you go, and we just want you to know we appreciate you and listen to you every day.

Steve Gregg: All right, Melinda. Thanks for your call.

Melinda: Thank you. Goodbye.

Steve Gregg: Bye now. Richard from Irving, Texas, welcome to The Narrow Path.

Richard: Hello. Hi, Steve. I just want to say I appreciate your ministry and your perspectives on dispensationalism. I've been gobbling them up. I'm asking about a perspective on 2 Thessalonians 2:6-7. "And you know what holdeth that he might be revealed in his time for the mystery of iniquity doth already work only he who now letteth will let until he be taken out of the way."

Back in the '80s I was looking at this passage in interlinear, and the word for "taken" was actually "caused to be" or "come into being" from the Strong's. And then in the interlinear it had "be gone" and it was in brackets, indicated it wasn't in the original. So "taken" probably is not in there unless you use the Greek word *ek*, which means out, but I think *ek* modifies the word "midst," and "until out of the midst he be he come into being" or whatever. So the word *ginomai* there.

Steve Gregg: I'll tell you what. Before you give me the whole Greek case, tell me what it is you're getting at. What's your bottom line?

Richard: Okay, I just want to see what your perspective is. I have a different way of looking at it, and I just want to see what you thought about the interpretation of this.

Steve Gregg: Right, and so tell me what it is you see it saying. Just that's what I'm curious about.

Richard: Okay, this is how I paraphrase it: "And now you know what takes hold, that he might be revealed in his time, for the mystery of iniquity does already work, only he who now takes hold until out of the midst he comes into being." And that seems like that would make more contact, more sense with the context.

Steve Gregg: But make the point for me. I don't see what that's affirming. Tell me what you're saying.

Richard: Okay, well most people interpret the word "letteth" or "withholdeth" as restraining. And I'm looking at every most places in the New Testament refer to it as taking hold or taking hold or seizing on or possessing.

Steve Gregg: Right, what is the bottom line here? Where do you go with this? I need to know soon because we're on a break.

Richard: Okay, well what I was trying to do is with the context of this verse it seems to make more sense because it's talking about the mystery of lawlessness, the man of sin.

Steve Gregg: Yes, and what are you saying about him?

Richard: Well, it sounds like it's the one coming out of the midst. Instead of be taken, it's the one coming into being in that sense. I just want to see what your perspective was on that.

Steve Gregg: So you're talking about the man of sin coming into being, rather than whatever is restraining being taken out of the way?

Richard: Yeah, because up above it says he sits in the temple of God saying he is God. And so I think in the past I've listened to

Steve Gregg: Okay, I'm sorry that music's playing. I wish I could have gotten a clearer thesis from you so I'd know how to think more about it. Yeah, I don't even know what you're thinking is restraining. I don't know what you're thinking coming up out of the midst is referring to.

What I can say is, of course, almost everybody, and you're probably an exception it looks like, thinks this is talking about something that was restraining the rise of the man of sin at the time Paul was writing. And you're saying maybe it's not talking about that. Well, I don't know, but I will say this: the church fathers who grew up reading Greek all seemed to understand it very similarly, that there's something that was restraining the man of sin from coming up and that would be taken out of the way and he would arrive. I'm not sure if you're saying something different, but that's how it's always been understood and I'm pretty much on that page.

Sorry we couldn't get to the bottom of that more. I've got to take a break. We have another half hour coming. Don't go away. Our website's thenarrowpath.com. I'll be right back.

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

Welcome back to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. I want to apologize to that last caller that I had to cut him off so quickly. We had a hard break. I didn't have any flexibility about it. I wish we could have gotten to the bottom line of what he was saying before I mean I did ask for it several times but we just didn't get there very quickly. I think maybe he didn't know how how tight we were on time.

If you'd like to be on the program, the number to call is 844-484-5737. If you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith, a disagreement with the host, be glad to hear from you. The number is 844-484-5737. And we're going to talk next to Ron in Fort Worth, Texas. Ron, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Ron: Yes, I was calling to ask do you think that the covenant that God gave to protect Israel expired because a lot of people think that the United States is not supposed to be over there and it's not the real Israel.

Steve Gregg: Well, those are two very different issues to me. Whether we should be involved in the wars in the Middle East or not is a political question, and it would remain a question whatever we thought about God's covenant with Israel. Because whether we should be intervening in foreign wars and which ones, and which ones provide a strong basis for our involvement, are very much political issues.

Now, even if we believe there's lots of people who believe that God has promised to protect Israel throughout all time. Well, okay, so if he's promised it, he'll do it. But what's that got to do with us? God certainly doesn't need the US if he doesn't I mean we would if we on good grounds, the same kind of grounds we'd involve ourselves in any other kind of war, if we would say become involved in a war over there and Israel ended up being protected by it, then I guess God could have used us to do that.

But when God says he's going to do something, it doesn't mean he's going to need our help necessarily, especially if the thing itself isn't justifiable on its own. If there's some question about its morality or something like that. We should as a nation and as individuals be in favor of just actions. Things that are just we should be supportive of. Things that are unjust we should not be supportive of.

And that would be true no matter what we think about the people who are involved in the situation. That is to say what we think about them personally. If I were let's say a judge in court and my nephew was brought before me on charges that he was guilty of, I might care a great deal for him but I should still be just in my judgment. I can't show favoritism to someone because he's a relative of mine.

Whatever we may think about Israel and God and their relationship, that's really kind of unrelated to the arguments for or against becoming involved in any war in the Middle East. So I'm not a politically minded person very much. I don't really I'm not on the inside of the international intelligence community. I don't know what's going on. I don't know what all the reasons are.

We hear on YouTube people saying there's this or that sinister reason that we're involved in the Middle East, and then we hear from the official government people that we have better reasons than that. I don't know who's telling the truth. I don't think I'm I don't think I necessarily have to know. It's not I'm not making the decisions about it, so I guess God will have to judge those who do based on how well they follow justice and morality and things like that.

Is there a covenant with Israel that God has right now that obligates people to support Israel? I think maybe that's what your question is, not so much of whether America should be involved over there, but should we support Israel? I mean, lots of people say, "Well, it was God's revelation that whoever blesses Israel will be blessed by God. Whoever curses Israel be cursed by God."

Well, the blessing we have for Israel is Christ. I mean, that's made very clear in the Bible. I'm not really sure how anyone could miss that if they're a Christian. For example, in Acts chapter 3, Peter's talking in giving a sermon in public to the Jewish audience who had been involved in crucifying Christ. He tells them they had done this and so forth. And then he talks about what God has done for us in the gospel and so forth.

And he says, "To you," that is to the Jews first, "God having raised up his servant Jesus, sent him to bless you." Okay, blessing Israel. How did he want him to bless them? "In turning away every one of you from your iniquities." Okay, so bringing you to repentance, that's the blessing. In bringing people to Christ, in bringing people to salvation, that's the blessing that God has for Israel. That's the blessing we have for Israel. And for the whole world.

The Bible doesn't say how they'll receive it, but the Bible does indicate that we are to do this for all the nations, that would include Israel. So blessing Israel is actually means bringing Christ to them. It doesn't mean bringing weapons to them particularly, or money, or things like that. Now, there might be situations where we should do those kind of things for our allies in the world, and if Israel's one of our allies and if they have a just cause, then then we're certainly justified in helping them out.

So I'm not saying anything against Israel here, but there are people who say God has some kind of special relationship with the nation of Israel for all time and eternity, and this is based on some covenant he made. Well, he did make a covenant with them when he founded them as a nation at Mount Sinai. But it wasn't an unconditional covenant. He told them if they obey his voice and keep his covenant, he'll protect them, he'll prosper them, he'll bless the fruit of their womb, and their livestock, and their crops, and all these things, and the weather. God will look out for them. But it's always "if you keep my covenant, if you obey my voice, I'll do these things for you."

And then there are passages in that Moses also wrote where he said, "But if you don't keep my covenant, I'm going to bring all kinds of curses on you." He actually says in Deuteronomy 28, "these curses will cling to you and to your offspring forever." So there's not some kind of a forever promise of blessing from God in this covenant. It's conditional. God will bless them if they keep the covenant. God will curse them if they don't. Now, that's between him and them. I'm not involved in that covenant, neither are you. This covenant, in fact, doesn't even exist anymore because the Bible says in Hebrews 8 that we have a new covenant now, and that has made the older covenant obsolete.

So if someone says God has a covenant to bless Israel no matter what, and that's found somewhere in the Bible, it isn't found in my Bible. It's not found in the Old Testament, and it's certainly not found in the New Testament. So what was promised was that they certainly had the opportunity to be his special people. And if they would keep his laws and keep his covenant, they would be exactly that, and he would protect them supernaturally and specially above all nations.

But he also said, "If you don't keep my covenant," which frankly you only have to read the Old Testament to find out if they did or not—they didn't. He said, "Well, then you'll be cursed. You'll be driven out of your land. There'll be curses upon you and your children forever." So those are the words of God. Those are the words of Moses given through Moses by God, the prophet. So no, I don't know of any promise in the Bible that God is on Israel's side at this particular time because, frankly, they're not in on his side.

There are an increasing number of Jews in Israel today that are turning to their old religion, but still most of them don't hold to it. And their old religion won't save them. When God sent the Romans to destroy Jerusalem and Israel, they were holding very fast to their old religion. The Pharisees were dominant and animal sacrifices being offered. The problem was they had crucified Christ. I mean, that's what the Jews of that time did. They had rejected the New Covenant and they hung on to the Old Covenant, and eventually God wiped it out because they were rejecting Christ and rejecting the Messiah that God had sent. Those are just kind of my thoughts. I don't know of any arrangement God has with the modern secular unbelieving state of Israel. There's nothing in the Bible that ever says that God is on the side of an unbelieving nation, and that's what they are.

So I appreciate your call. Let's see what we got next here. Our next call is going to be from Joseph in Knoxville, Tennessee. Joseph, welcome.

Joseph: Hey, thank you, Steve. I had two unrelated questions. One, from my question a few weeks ago about resurrection in the Old Testament. You said in your lecture in Matthew 22, when the Sadducees were talking with Jesus, you said that there's much in the Old Testament Psalms and prophets that would encourage a resurrection. And so I just was wanted to.

Steve Gregg: I don't think I said there's much. There's a few things. There's a few things in the Psalms and the prophets that do. You want to know what those are?

Joseph: Yes, please. Yes, please.

Steve Gregg: Okay, well, Paul and Peter both quoted some of the things in the Old Testament that they said were about that. They quoted, for example, Psalm 2. Actually, Paul quoted that in Acts 13. Psalm 2 verse 7, where he said that and that he raised him from the dead, he said in the second Psalm, "You are my Son, this day I've begotten you." Now, Paul said that in Acts 13:33. So he said that that verse, "You are my Son, this day I've begotten you," Paul said that is God speaking of the resurrection of Christ.

Well, how so? Well, because he says Christ is the firstborn from the dead. Jesus called himself the firstborn from the dead, and Paul referred to him as the first begotten from the dead in Colossians 1:18. And Jesus said it in Revelation 1:5, if I'm not mistaken. So Jesus was the firstborn from the dead, that's his resurrection, and Paul said that's what God meant when he said to Jesus, "You are my Son, this day I've begotten you."

So that's referring to him rising from the dead. Paul also said there was another passage, and Peter quoted this one too. Paul quoted it in Acts 13:35, Peter quoted it over in Acts chapter 2 in his first sermon, and that is Psalm 16:10, where God said, well David said, "You will not allow your Holy One to see corruption," that is to decay. "You won't leave my soul in Sheol, neither will you allow your Holy One to see corruption." Both Peter and Paul said that's a reference to the fact that God raised Jesus from the dead before his body could decay. He didn't just rot in the grave, he came out. He was not left in Sheol is what the Psalm says.

So Psalm 16 and Psalm 2 both are quoted by Paul as being about the resurrection. And there's another Isaiah 55:3. Paul quotes Isaiah 55:3 where it says, "I will give you the sure mercies of David." You might say, "Well, what's that got to do with the resurrection?" Well, Paul said it did in Acts 13:34. He said, "And that he raised him from the dead, no more to return to corruption, he has spoken thus: I will give you the sure mercies of David."

So Paul said that by raising Jesus from the dead and putting him on David's throne, which is what happened according to Paul, that spoke of his resurrection. Now, it doesn't seem to be speaking about a resurrection very directly, but we can't deny that Paul said it, and Paul, you know, was one of those inspired apostles to whom Jesus opened their understanding to understand the scriptures. He did that with all the apostles, of course.

There's another passage that some people think is about that, and I think we talked about this when you called before, but Hosea 6:2, I believe it is. I'm going to turn there. Since I don't use a computerized Bible, I've got one with actual pages in it. I have to turn there. Here we go. Hosea 6 verse 2: "After two days he will revive us, on the third day he will raise us up that we may live in his sight."

Now, it sounds here that he's talking about raising Israel up on the third day, but Paul sees Israel as a type of Christ many times in the Bible, and there's several different places we find that in Paul's writings, and so did the gospel writers. So if Hosea's saying to Israel, "on the third day he'll raise us up," maybe he means in Christ, the representative, the true seed of Abraham. He raised them up on the third day.

This is a very obscure verse, I mean, not obscure in the sense that people don't know it's there. Lots of people quote it, but its context is, let's just say, vague. It's not entirely clear how it is meant, but it does mention being raised on the third day, and that might be what Paul is thinking of when he says Jesus rose on the third day according to the scriptures. Also, of course, Jesus in Matthew 12:40 spoke of "as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." So that's three days and three nights, he's talking about his own resurrection there. And that's in the prophets. Jonah's a prophet. So I've given you like two passages in the Psalms and two in the prophets, all of which are quoted either by Jesus or the apostles as being about his resurrection.

Joseph: Good, I appreciate it, Steve. My second question was just very briefly, when you weren't in full-time ministry and you had a family, what type of jobs did you have?

Steve Gregg: You know, I went into almost full-time ministry right out of high school, and I've been in ministry ever since, and that's been 56 years now. But in the first 12 years of my ministry, I wasn't in the kind of ministry that supported me full-time. So I had to hold jobs also. Now, I traveled a lot and preached internationally even in those 12 years, so it wasn't like easy to hold one job the whole time, and I didn't.

I would preach as much as I could and teach and travel as much as I could, and then when I was home and didn't have as much to do, I'd get myself a part-time job or a full-time job, usually minimum wage type jobs. I never cared to make much money, just enough to pay the bills. And when I wasn't working for someone else, I worked as a window cleaner on my own. I worked for many years off and on as a window cleaner. That was just a kind of thing I could go door-to-door and get jobs and do it so I could pay my bills.

But some of the other jobs: I worked at an amplifier factory for a while, putting together the screens in front of the speakers. I worked at a frozen yogurt place once. I worked in janitorial work. I love janitorial work best because I could just meditate on the scripture all the time while I was doing it.

Joseph: Did you have kids during any of this time?

Steve Gregg: I had one child during those years. By the time my other children came along, I was now in full-time ministry running a school.

Joseph: Well, I appreciate it, Steve. Thank you.

Steve Gregg: All right, thanks for your call. Let's talk to George in McMinnville, Oregon. Hi, George, welcome to The Narrow Path.

George: Hey, Steve. Good to hear from you. Question about Psalm 51:5, talking about David being brought forth in iniquity and the sin my mother conceived me. Now, if this is talking about the sin of his mother that committed iniquity, and I'm looking for some other scriptures other than the Psalm 27 that talks about his mother and father forsaking him. How else could that be substantiated in scripture?

Steve Gregg: Well, it can't actually be substantiated, but there may be some evidence for the idea that David's mother bore him out of wedlock. The way his father and brothers treated him is, to my mind, particularly interesting because when Samuel the prophet came to Jesse's house, David's father, said, "Bring your sons in here, one of them's going to be anointed king," he brought in all of them except David.

And then when he got to the last one, and Samuel said, "The one I'm looking for isn't here, do you have another one?" he said, "Oh, yeah, well, there's this one out on the kid who's out watching the sheep." But it's like his father didn't even think to bring him in initially. Now, when David visited his brothers at the battle, they treated him with contempt. They said, "Why don't you go back and take care of those sheep? What are you doing here?" And here he is bringing them provisions and stuff from his dad, but they just it seems clear they thought poorly of him.

Now, this sounds a lot like how Jephthah was treated by his brothers in the book of Joshua I mean Judges. Judges Jephthah was the son of a harlot. His father had fathered him through a harlot, and it says his brothers hated him and drove him out of town and so forth. So I mean, it's like having a sibling who was not really part of the family because he's born in a shameful way, apparently led to brothers taking that approach. David's brothers may have taken that approach to him because of that. We don't know. The Bible does not say in unambiguous terms that David was an illegitimate son of Jesse.

But Jesse was not too proud of him apparently and his brothers didn't like him, and he does say, as you pointed out, in Psalm 27:10, "When my father and my mother forsake me, the Lord will take me up." And then of course in Psalm 51:5, which you're referring to, he talked about how in sin my mother conceived me. Now, you know as well as I do that most people think "in sin my mother conceived me" is some kind of a statement of Augustinian original sin and that he's saying I was bound up in sin myself from my very conception.

But that's not the first impression one would get from a statement like "in sin my mother conceived me." If you haven't been given the Augustinian slant on it, it's going to sound like he's saying I was conceived in sin.

George: Okay, I was hoping there'd be more and I just combed through it and I got those, but I couldn't find anything else. That's the reason I called you.

Steve Gregg: Yeah, if there was much more we wouldn't have to hedge on it so much. All I can say is it's possible. Now, if there was much more than we have, I think we've got some decent grounds for thinking of it as a possible theory, a viable theory, but if we had much more than that we wouldn't even have to think of it as a theory, it'd be almost a given.

George: What was the judge's one again that we could compare it to?

Steve Gregg: Jephthah's family, 11:1 and 7. Yeah.

George: Okay, well, I'll use that as a comparison then. Steve, that was great, I really appreciate it.

Steve Gregg: Great to hear from you, George. God bless you too. Bye now. Let's see, going to talk to John in Norwich, Massachusetts. Hi, John, welcome.

John: Hi, good afternoon. Thank you for taking my call. I had a question regarding the Ten Commandments. In the Ten Commandments, God mentioned "thou shalt not" for much of the Ten Commandments, but for the Sabbath, he says that you should remember the Sabbath. My question to you is: Do you think that we are in the wrong for those of us who go to church on Sunday, not on Saturday?

Steve Gregg: Well, even the Ten Commandments don't say anything about going to church on Saturday. I agree with you that the Sabbath, the Jewish Sabbath, is Saturday and always was, but there's nothing in the Ten Commandments that talks about going to church. It just says don't do any work on it. So if you're going to keep a Sabbath, that means you're not going to do any work on that day.

As far as going to church is concerned, I don't think there's anything in the Bible that forbids you go to church any day you want to. I mean, couldn't you go every day? I know during revival times in the '70s, I went every night of the week to church. So no, I don't think the Bible ever tells you when you have to go to church. But and especially the Jews, of course, had to have these holy convocations, which were gatherings, religious gatherings, lots of times. They had to have them every Saturday, they had to have them monthly on the new moons, they had to have them annually on three different festivals and so forth.

Under the law, there's a lot of days that were considered special that they were commanded to have holy convocations on. We don't keep any of them because they're all fulfilled now and we're not under the law there. So no, I don't think God will punish you for going to church on Sunday. I think that where I would be concerned about displeasing God is if I acted any day of the week in a way that wasn't glorifying to God, because the Bible says whatever you do, whether you eat or drink, do all to the glory of God.

So every day and every moment, my duty is to live for the glory of God. Now, I don't think he cares if I'm in a meeting or not doing that, though of course as a Christian I want to be in meetings with other Christians, but I don't know that I glorify him more when I'm in a church service than when I'm not. If I do, then I better shape up because I should be glorifying him every day whether I'm in church or not. So no, I don't think God has a calendar anymore. I think those things were a type and a shadow of spiritual things which have certainly taken the place of holy days and holy places and holy priesthoods and things like that. Those are all part of the Old Covenant.

Susan in Conway, Arkansas, we only have about a minute or two. Got something for me?

Susan: Yes. A few weeks ago, a friend of mine brought up a question for me. She was teaching the Beatitudes to children's church. She was using the New Living translation in the curriculum and it says, "God blesses those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they shall be satisfied," and she asked me what I thought. And I had a little bit of trouble with that because I feel that righteousness includes justice, but justice doesn't necessarily have to include righteousness.

But anyway, so then a few weeks later we were at visiting a church and the pastor used this text, John 8:12, "I'm the light of the world." He said, "If you follow me, you won't have to walk in darkness," as opposed to "you won't walk in darkness" or "you shall not walk in darkness." I just and I know this is a translation, not a paraphrase, and I just wondered what you thought about the New Living translation.

Steve Gregg: I don't use the New Living translation. I have it on my shelf and I've read from it before, but yeah, it's a paraphrase. And the thing about a paraphrase is sometimes in the original Greek there will be a word or a thought that can go one of two ways. So or it might even have implications that aren't stated. And a person who's paraphrasing it may sometimes restate it the way they want to read it.

For example, to say you won't have to walk in darkness if you follow me. Jesus said if you follow me, you won't walk in darkness. So but the pastor may have been paraphrasing it saying, "You know, well, you shouldn't want to walk in darkness and if you follow Jesus you won't have to," kind of thing. But no, the verse itself says you won't walk in darkness if you follow Jesus. And justice and righteousness are not exactly the same thing, but they are very, very much overlapping connected concepts in the Bible, so I'm not going to judge the NLT for that too bad.

I'm sorry I'm out of time. You've been listening to The Narrow Path. Our website's thenarrowpath.com.