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 to take your calls. Every day is different. A couple of the days this week I had to say the lines are already full, don't call now, call later. I think it was yesterday there were a couple of lines open at the beginning of the show. Right now all of our lines are open. There are no calls waiting, which means you could get right through if you call. If you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith you'd like to bring up for conversation, or you want to bring up an alternative view to something that which the host has expressed, feel free to do that. The number is 844-484-5737. One more time, the number is 844-484-5737.

Sometimes when I'm looking at an open switchboard, I think maybe there's something wrong with my screen, maybe there's something I'm supposed to be looking at. No, calls are coming in now. So it was not me, it was the callers. Great to know that this is a day where you can call right through and get through. We have an announcement to make about tonight. The first Wednesday of every month we have a Zoom meeting and that's a question and answer time between myself and whoever is on the Zoom call. There's a capacity of about 100 for the Zoom call. 100 can be on it. Of course not all 100 will get on to ask a question, but if you want to join us, you can to log on to the Zoom meeting tonight which is at 7:00 PM Pacific Time. Go to our website, thenarrowpath.com, and under announcements it tells all the speaking places and stuff that I'm going to be in. Under today's date, which is Wednesday, May 6th, it will say Zoom meeting and it'll give you the logon information if you'd like to join us tonight at 7:00 PM. That's Pacific Time. All right, we're going to talk to Robert in Duncan, British Columbia first of all. Hi Robert, welcome.

Robert: Welcome, Steve. Good afternoon. I have two questions to ask you. I have salvation and I've been baptized 15 years ago. I'm also a member of an assembly, but now where I live they have no Gospel Hall. I go to what they call a Gospel Chapel and the problem I'm having is that they don't really operate as a Gospel Chapel. I don't think they really know what the gospel is because I think to me the gospel is preaching salvation for non-believers, but I also believe it's important also for believers as encouragement in the Lord.

One of the things that we're having trouble is that women over there, there's about four or five women, they don't believe in headship and I think that being covered is very important. That's what the Lord says and I believe it's a commandment and if you're not going to cover your head, you're actually disobeying a commandment. And the other thing is that a lot of them only come and break bread once a month and I don't know if that's right or not. I break bread with the Lord every Sunday, every Lord's day and I attend every meeting that concerns the Lord. So I'd like to know what your thoughts on that is.

Steve Gregg: So were you when you came to the Lord 15 years ago, was that in a Mennonite church?

Robert: No, no, no. This was a Brethren church. I'm a Brethren and so I only believe really in Gospel Halls because they we preach the gospel every Lord's day. But Gospel Chapels, I thought they would be because they call themselves a Gospel Chapel, but they really don't.

Steve Gregg: Well, not everyone agrees about what's included in the gospel and what's not. Certainly the death and resurrection of Christ, his lordship, the need for men to repent and be baptized to be saved, those things are included in any biblical presentation of the gospel if by that we mean the gospel related to justification, the gospel related to being reborn as a child of God and so forth. Now the gospel of course, the Bible refers to it as the gospel of the kingdom of God. And when it's the good news about the kingdom, the kingdom of God is the movement that Jesus started with himself as king and anyone who becomes part of that movement is a subject of that king and his movement is a kingdom among the kingdoms of the world, except his is not of the world, but it is here. I mean we are here.

So the gospel can include more things than just the salvation message, but some of the things that you think it should include would be things like Paul's teaching on women's covering themselves because of the male headship. And I'm not going to disagree that that's in there. The interpretation of that one passage, which is 1 Corinthians 11, has certainly differed among many persons. And so a person might not say, well I don't want to obey what the Bible says, so we're not going to follow the covering and headship teaching. It might well be that they are understanding the passage differently and they are interested and desirous to obey God, but they just don't understand it that way.

Now I believe in the headship teaching that Paul gave. There are people called evangelical feminists, which should simply be called feminists because there's nothing evangelical about the feminist movement, but they would say no, women and men don't have different roles, they're all the same. Paul didn't teach that. But they sometimes don't like Paul. They sometimes say, well we don't agree with Paul. Now people who decide to go that way are making up their own religion as they go along. But there are people who say, I do believe in male headship as Paul taught it. I do believe in the scriptures. I do believe in the authority of Paul and of 1 Corinthians, but they interpret 1 Corinthians 11 somewhat differently. Now it's a matter of interpretation, in other words.

I actually have an article I wrote on that very thing. I think it's called Should Women be Veiled or Covered? But it's at our website, thenarrowpath.com, under the tab that says topical articles. And I examine 1 Corinthians 11 and the headship and covering business there in great detail, considering the various views. However, I would say if you feel strongly that you must go to a church that takes Paul literally on that matter and that believes that Paul wants that to be universally practiced among all Christians of all time, and that is one view, others have other views. Then you're going to have to look for another church because you don't want to be going to a church and sitting in criticism of them.

Now I would not make that choice myself, even though I believe a lot of things that some people in the churches around me don't believe. But that doesn't prevent me from fellowshipping with them. It doesn't make me judge them as being people who aren't serious about God or who don't believe the Bible. I happen to realize that there are lots of things in the Bible which some Christians interpret differently than I do. In fact, some things in the Bible I once interpreted differently than I now do. So if I can change my view and recognize that something I once believed was mistaken, well then I have to tolerate others whom I think may be still mistaken. We don't fellowship with people because they agree with us on every point. So we have to decide which points are deal breakers.

Now it sounds like you're saying that taking communion every week and women wearing head coverings is a deal breaker in your book. I'm not sure that it would be in Jesus's book. Jesus never said how frequently the church should take communion. It may well be that the early church did take it every week. I think in the earliest days of the church they took it every day. It seems like it in Acts chapter 2. So if the church at one time did it every day, another time they did it once a week, some churches do it once a month, but there's no instructions in the Bible about how frequently it should be done, then it seems to me like we have to give some liberty there to people who have a different opinion. Now if we want to take it more frequently, we can go looking for a church that does it more frequently, or we can make a suggestion maybe to the leaders, say maybe we could do this more often, maybe we could do it every Sunday.

You're not going to find that every church leader is going to agree with you on every point. I certainly have not found every church leader to agree with me on every point. In fact, I haven't found any church leaders who agree with me on every point. But that doesn't bother me. I still go to their churches, I still fellowship with them, I still minister in their churches sometimes. You have to recognize that some issues are not the issues that God uses to judge people's salvation or to determine whether they are his children or not. God's children can be at varying degrees of education in terms of the word of God and understanding.

And in our like when we have actual children, when we have a family and our children are born, different children as they reach different ages learn things they didn't know before, which means if you have half a dozen children in your house, you're going to have half a dozen levels of knowledge and understanding among them, but they're all your children. You don't despise your youngest children because they haven't learned as much as your older children have. God's not going to judge us on whether we know everything or not, because if he did we're all going to go to hell. But he's going to judge us on the basis of whether our lives are directed toward loyalty to him and desire to obey him. Now how much we understand what obeying him means in every situation will differ from one person to the other. But if a person has a heart to obey him, then there's no reason to doubt that they're a child of God and there's no reason that we can say, well I know better than you about this so I can't fellowship with you. That'd be like the older brothers in a family saying to the toddlers, I can't be in the same family with you because you don't know as much as I do.

That's ridiculous of course. So if we understand church as a community of people who agree about everything, then we'll have a very hard time finding a church that we fit in with. There might be one somewhere, but it's going to be very difficult. If instead of seeing the church as a group of people who agree about everything, but see it as a group of people who love Jesus and who are following Jesus at varying degrees of knowledge and who are sincerely seeking to know everything but realizing that knowledge comes a little bit at a time over a period of long time, then people will accept each other as brothers and sisters and enjoy and benefit each other even with some differences of opinion. So that's what you're going to have to decide. The church you've been in, I guess previously, did things that you agree with. There's a good chance that the reason you agree with them is because that was the church you were in from your infancy as a Christian and therefore you were shaped by them. But not every Christian has been shaped by the same congregations and denominations and so forth. So you're going to have to decide whether you're going to be open to the body of Christ or just be looking for a church where nobody is going to be able to disagree with you. We all face that kind of stuff.

All right, let's talk to Robert in Indianapolis, Indiana. Welcome to The Narrow Path, Robert.

Robert: Welcome, yes sir. Yes, I called in before about my take on Genesis 1:1 and now I want your take on the Trinity. I believe you agree as I do in the Trinity, so can you give me an example scripturally of the Trinity?

Steve Gregg: What do you mean an example of it? The Bible doesn't give examples of the Trinity that I know of. What are you thinking of as an example? See, some people come up with things like, well humans are body, soul, and spirit but they're one person, or an egg is a shell and the white and the yolk but it's one egg, or water can be solid, liquid, or gaseous but still water. I mean if that's what you mean by an example of the Trinity, the Bible doesn't have anything like that.

Robert: Well I can think of two and I will give them to you, but you probably wouldn't understand real quick. One is in Genesis chapter 1, verse 2, and the other one that I can think of is in Luke chapter 2, I don't know the verse, but that is the one you might be able to find it where he's talking to the Father, he's holding baby Jesus, and he's full of the Holy Spirit. So that would be my example of the Trinity that I use for somebody who doesn't believe because it contains all three. Would that be a good example?

Steve Gregg: Well, I'm not sure you haven't told me why it's an example. Actually, I think in Luke you're probably thinking of Luke chapter 3 where Jesus is in the water. In Luke 3, Jesus is in the water and the Father speaks and the Holy Spirit comes down as a dove. Sometimes people see that as an exhibition of the Trinity.

Robert: That would be one, but I was actually thinking of Luke chapter 2 when Jesus was a baby. The man is said to be full of the Holy Spirit and he's talking to the Father.

Steve Gregg: Okay, so old Simeon is praying to God, the Spirit has come upon him, and he's holding Jesus. Well, what we see there, just like at the baptism of Jesus, we see the Father speaking, or in this case a man speaking to the Father, the Holy Spirit present, and Jesus present. But to say that those three are present doesn't mean that they are all one God. Now I believe they are. I believe in the Trinity. But there's a lot of verses where the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit happen to be mentioned. But to mention those three does not explain the Trinity. We might say, well once you know the Trinity is true, you can see that that's an allusion to it. Well okay, fair enough. I could see that. However, you have to know that the Trinity is true before you see it in those passages. So those passages do not make it explicit. Now you said Genesis 1:2. What was the Trinity in there? The world was formless and void and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters?

Robert: Yes, the face of the waters. The face being the appearance, that would be Jesus. The Holy Spirit of course being there, and then the waters is everything, that would have been the Father.

Steve Gregg: Okay, well I mean if that's how you see it, if that blesses you, that's fine. I will say that those are not the kinds of examples that I think would persuade somebody who doesn't already believe in the Trinity. In other words, if you meet somebody who says I don't think the Bible teaches the Trinity and you show them darkness was on the face of the deep and the earth was formless and void and the Spirit of God moved on the face of the waters, I'm not sure they're going to see the Trinity there as you do. And also of course in Simeon's holding Jesus and praying to God and the Spirit upon him, I don't know that they're going to see the Trinity doctrine is made up of some specific propositions. It's not just that you can find the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit somewhere in the Bible. You can find other things in the Bible too by the way besides the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But the specific propositions of the Trinity is that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are persons in a singular Godhead. Now what does that mean? Well I'm not sure I know what that means, but whatever it means none of those passages you mentioned say it or teach it. But if I already believe in the Trinity, and I think we do have reason to believe in it, then of course we can say oh I see in this verse or that verse. But yeah, I mean if you're asking me whether those are good arguments for the Trinity, I would say well if arguments for the Trinity means proofs of the Trinity that would be persuasive to somebody who doesn't already believe in it, I think you'd have to do better than those ones. But if that works for you and blesses you, I'm not going to try to take that away from you. Thanks for your call.

Reginald in Little Rock, Arkansas. Welcome to The Narrow Path, Reginald.

Reginald: Hello Steve, can you hear me?

Steve Gregg: Yes sir.

Reginald: Okay, my question is, I'm a former Jehovah's Witness and I believe in as far as scripture goes, I believe in you know you keep them plain things the main thing and I appreciate how you keep things kind of to a scriptural basis if people want to get outside of what if the Bible doesn't explain it you let them know that I can't explain it. So anyway what my question is is the witnesses have this thing about the door-to-door ministry and that's fine and dandy. But my thing is my question is in your opinion if you don't I mean like Matthew 28:18-20 says go therefore and also Mark says ask you go. But anyway is it in your opinion do you think that it is a sin to not go or to just you know lay in the bed and just say well I've been saved this and that or you know.

Steve Gregg: Well it's very difficult perhaps impossible for anyone to say what going and making disciples looks like for another person. In fact remember when Jesus was talking to Peter about how he would die in John chapter 21 and Peter looks back and sees John and says well what about him? Jesus said well if it's my will that he stays around until I come, what is that to you? You go and follow me. In other words each person has their own mission, each person has their own realm of obedience, each one has their own gift. I think we should all be seeing ourselves as a part of a body, a corporate universal worldly that is global body of Jesus. Everybody who submits to Christ has his spirit, a members of his body, of his flesh and his bones. We are part of that body and that body is required to go out and make disciples.

Now what is your role and my role and someone else's role in that? Well Paul says there's different gifts. Some have a gift of showing mercy, some have a gift of helps, some have a gift of giving, some have a gift of leadership, some have gifts of prophecy or faith or teaching and other things like that. So there's different ways. Paul said in Ephesians 4:11 that Christ gave some apostles and prophets and evangelists and pastors and teachers. Now evangelists is in that list, but there's also apostles, there's also prophets, there's also pastors and teachers. Now I believe all of these are going and making disciples, but what a prophet does is different than what an evangelist does and what a pastor or teacher does is different than what a missionary does.

There's to say we're disobeying if we're not going. Well I don't know what you mean by going, because the body of Christ is commissioned to reach the world and somebody's going to have to travel to do that. Is everyone going to have to travel? What depends on what their role is. If a person's a missionary, yeah in likelihood they're going to have to go somewhere, get a plane ticket or book passage on a ship or something and go some place and be a missionary there. And that's their going. A pastor isn't going to be going overseas, he's going to be shepherding a flock. That's what a pastor is for. He's going to be overseeing those who have already been evangelized and making disciples. See making disciples doesn't just mean converting people. Jesus said it includes teaching them to observe everything that Jesus commanded. So that's what a pastor should be doing. He should be teaching the flock, feeding the flock, teaching them to obey Jesus in every point. That's what pastors are for, that's the teaching.

Other people are going to be giving. They're not it's not so much that they're going to get a plane ticket and go overseas, they're going to hold a job down, perhaps in the city that they were born in, who knows. But their money they're seeing as they're part of this body that's going to all the world too and therefore they're generating finances to help pay for the ones who are getting the plane tickets. You know I mean someone's got to pay for it and they may not be going anywhere geographically but they are part of the going concern, the going body. They're people who have the gift of helps, doing service and so forth. There's lots of different gifts. Not all of them involve literally being a missionary.

Now you say well what if you're just laying around in bed instead of going. Well if somebody just lays around in bed all the time, I would say they're lazy, they're a sluggard, they're not being obedient to God. They've got time a wasting, they're burning daylight, there's stuff to get done. Okay, that's shame on them, bad stewardship of their time. But I don't think it's wrong to be laying in bed some of the time. I think most of us find it necessary to lie down in bed at least for maybe a third of the day, eight hours, or maybe a little less, but the thing is there's no sin in laying around if what you need is sleep. But it's when you get up what are you doing? Are you living for the kingdom or are you just kind of doing your own thing, toodling around, wasting time? That would be the issue. Now when I'm not in bed the question is what am I doing with the hours that I'm I don't need to be in bed? Hopefully I'm using the gifts that God gave me to promote the kingdom of God and hopefully you are too and everyone else.

But the combined effort of people doing different things, doing the very thing that God has gifted them to do like different members of a whole body gets the job done. So when Jesus said go he didn't mean every person has to get a plane ticket. If that happened there wouldn't be a church anywhere, there'd be no body of Christ. As soon as someone got saved they go off and leave. Well where's the church then? Well they don't exist, they've all gone, they've all gone different directions, they've scattered around the world. So every Christian is on his own in a way doing his own missionary adventure and there's no one at home earning money to help support it, there's no one at home feeding the flock, the baby Christians and visiting the sick and stuff. There's lots of things that have to be done that are part of making disciples. And being a missionary is only one of those things. Being a teacher is only one of those things. There's lots of things and so we need to understand what the body of Christ is. The great commission is for the body of Christ. Every Christian is part of the body of Christ, but not every part of a body does the same thing. And that's what Paul talks about in Romans 12 and in 1 Corinthians 12 where he talks about the body and the different gifts and different members of the body.

So I hope that clarifies thing. I know as a Jehovah's Witness which you used to be, you were of course told that you have to go door to door and if you don't do that you're being disobedient. I don't believe the Bible tells every Christian to go door to door. I don't think there's anything wrong with doing it if that's what God calls you to do and some people no doubt are called to do it. But not everyone is. To make a program of it or to institutionalize it as a necessary part of every Christian's week may be taking some away from the things they're really supposed to be doing for the kingdom and making them do something that's not their gifting or their calling. But the whole church does need to evangelize the world. I need to take a break. You're listening to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. We are listener supported. You can write to us at The Narrow Path, well just go to our website thenarrowpath.com. You can see an address to write to us there if you want to. I'll be right back. We have another half hour. Don't go away.

Welcome back to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we're live for another half hour taking your calls. Right now I'm looking at some open phone lines. Not all of them are, but some of them are and if you want to call you can get through right away at this number, 844-484-5737. That number again is 844-484-5737. All right. And I want to remind you that tonight is our once a month Zoom meeting for anyone who wishes to join us. It's a Q&A time. It's held tonight at 7:00 PM Pacific Time. And if you want to know how to log into that, just go to our website thenarrowpath.com. Under announcements under today's date, you'll see the code for logging into that Zoom meeting tonight, 7:00 at Pacific Time. All right. We're going to go to the phones now and talk again to let's see it's going to be April in San Bernardino, California. Hi April, welcome.

April: Hi Steve. Thanks for taking my call. I'm hoping you can help me reconcile Jesus' word "why do you call me good? There is no one good but God" and the habit people have these days of saying oh he's a good person, she's a good person. I can't really say yes she's a good person because I automatically remember Jesus' words, unless of course you're talking about absolute goodness versus relative goodness. And if you could just clarify that for me that would be wonderful. And thank you so much. I'll take your answer off the air.

Steve Gregg: All right. All right, thank you very much. When the rich young ruler came running to Jesus and said "good master, what good work must I do to inherit eternal life?" and Jesus said it actually reads a little different his response in different gospels, but for the most part he said "why do you call me good? There's none good but God." So you're saying that makes you conscientious about not calling people good, not saying that person's a good person. Well here's the thing. The Bible calls certain people good people. Barnabas, for example, in what is it, must be Acts chapter 11, is called a good man. Or maybe it's actually let me think here, might be Acts 9 when he goes to get Saul. It actually mentions that Barnabas is a good man. We are told that God actually that's Acts 11:24 actually. The Bible indicates that God himself spoke very highly of Job as a good man, a blameless man and so forth. And the Bible describes John the Baptist's parents that way, that they were blameless and keeping all the law, they were righteous. In other words, the Bible does refer to some people as good people.

Now why did Jesus say "let no one call me... why do you call me good?" Now he didn't say don't call me good, he said why do you call me good? And I think what Jesus is probably doing, there's if Jesus says there's none good but God, then he's either saying I'm not good because I'm not God, or he's saying I am God because as you can see I'm good. Now Jesus is saying that goodness is a quality of God. Now you're right in your suggestion that he wondered does he mean absolute goodness? Of course nobody nobody except God is absolutely good. Some people are better than others. And the Bible does actually use the word better to describe certain people, such and such is better than this or that person. To obey is better than to sacrifice, you know, if I obey God I'm better than someone who just offers sacrifices. You can be better on the scale of absolute goodness. You can be closer to the absolute than some other people are, or further.

But none is absolutely good except God. And I believe Jesus is. After all, Jesus himself said in John chapter 10, "I am the good shepherd." So he used the word good to refer to himself. But I don't think Jesus is trying to be what should we say anal about this matter of goodness. I think he's saying something to address the awareness of the rich young ruler. You call me good, he says. Why do you do that? What is it what is it about me that makes you call me that? Well you should know that goodness is really a divine trait. Only God really is good. And perhaps by implication as you see I am. You yourself call me good. Why do you call me good? Think about that. You know, who's good other than God? Now he's either saying that he isn't absolutely good and therefore you shouldn't call him good, though he himself calls himself good elsewhere. Or he's saying only God is good and you've noticed I'm good. What does that tell you? You know, that I'm God.

Now both of them are would are strange statements to either intended either way. But I think only the second option makes sense. Now to say for you to say that someone else is a good person, that's not wrong. Luke in the book of Acts said that Barnabas was a good person. And there's it's not suggesting he's a sinless person. Job was not actually a completely sinless man because no man is, but he was awfully good on the scale of human goodness. He ranked pretty high. Same thing with John the Baptist parents and a number of other people that would be called good. So if I say that a person is good, I'm not saying that that person is God and I'm not saying that person is perfectly good. And I think anyone who hears me call someone good recognizes that the scale I'm using to measure what's good and what's not good is a relative one. I seriously doubt that anyone would imagine when you call somebody a good man or a good woman that you're affirming that they are have never sinned. Of course you're not saying that. And I think people would understand you according to the conventions of language and so forth, they would know that you're not saying that. So I don't think you have to avoid mentioning that somebody's a good person. Just like you call a child a good boy or good girl because some are compared to others. God is good without comparing anyone to anything. He's good in himself. He's absolutely good. But people are only relatively good. But they are. Some of them are relatively good. Certainly relatively better than others. It's a scale that is not absolute when it comes to calling anything good other than God. But we certainly are in another realm when we're talking about the goodness of God. We're talking about divine goodness as point as opposed to imperfect human goodness. But I wouldn't avoid using that term if that's what you're concerned about.

Let's talk to Pat in Ansonia, Connecticut. Hi Pat, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Pat: Hi Steve. I wish to comment on a phone call I believe it was someone called in yesterday they were asking about the scripture that refers to Jesus and how he didn't know when he was going to return. And at one time that was a question that was large in my heart and I prayed about it and about a month later I heard something that gave me peace about it. It was the fact that Jesus fulfills many things according to the traditions of the Jews. And in the marriage situation, when a man would get betrothed to a woman, he would go and he'd prepare a home for her and he could not return to claim her as his bride until the Father gave approval on that home. And Jesus, our our betrothed husband, you know, we're his betrothed, he went to prepare a place for us and he doesn't know when he's coming back because the Father has to give approval.

Steve Gregg: Okay, well I've heard that I've heard that illustration a number of times. So I mean I'm not going to I'm not going to dispute that. What you're saying is what I said. Jesus in fact did doesn't know or at least when he spoke he didn't know when he would return and that's the point. The caller was questioning that, was saying but what if but what if Jesus did know, but he doesn't he's not saying that he doesn't know, but the word know is being used in a sense of something like revealing or disclosing or making known. I can't I can't make that known. Nobody can make that known. The angels can't, even I can't make that known. Only the Father can make that known. That's what the person was wondering if that was the meaning of the statement. I agree with you, I think he was saying he didn't know. And so once we've once we've learned that he didn't know, we we can illustrate that like you said. The bridegroom didn't necessarily know when the Father would send him to go pick up the the bride. Okay, that's that's a corollary to our saying that he didn't know. The caller was not asking for corollaries, he was asking whether whether Jesus was really claiming not to know or not. And I think that you and I apparently both agree that he he was saying that he didn't know and that's the best way to understand his words. Thank you so much for your call.

And we're going to talk next to Tom in Pangburn, Arkansas. I'm looking at some open lines now. We have about less than 20 minutes left. If you're thinking about calling, this is a great time to call. If you pick up one of these open lines we could very possibly get to your call in the next few minutes. If you don't do it now we'll run out of time. The number is 844-484-5737. That's 844-484-5737. Tom in Arkansas, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Tom: Hey, thanks Steve. My question's actually from someone else and I hope I interpret the question correctly and can pass it on with to you with some kind of understanding myself. But the question has to do with when Jesus was on the Mount of Olives giving his lesson, I think it was in Matthew 24, don't quote me on that, but he talked about fleeing to the mountains and in various things that was coming on the end days and things like that. Could that have possibly been referring to AD 70? And how how would that possibly have related to John's Revelation where he was talking about the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70? I'll take my answer off the air. I hope I posed the question correctly.

Steve Gregg: Sure. Thank you Tom. Good to hear from you. Yes, I believe in Matthew 24 Jesus was talking about AD 70. And I'll tell you why. Because Matthew 24 begins with Jesus predicting something that occurred in AD 70, which was the destruction of the temple. And Jesus said when his disciples had pointed to the great stones of the temple in in verse 2 of that chapter he says, "do you not see all these things? I assuredly say to you, not one stone shall be left here upon another that shall not be thrown down." So obviously he he's talking about the destruction of the temple. That did happen in AD 70.

Verse 3 says, "now when he sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately saying, when will these things be?" And what will be the sign. Now they said the sign of your coming and of the end of the age, which sounds like the end of the world. However, in Mark and Luke, their question is this: "when shall these things be and what will be the sign that these things are about to take place?" So his question, what is the sign of your coming and the end of of the age, is using the the Jewish idioms for judgment, God's judgment, not not speaking in this case about the second coming of Christ actually, though it sounds like it. But according to Mark and Luke, the question they asked there were two questions. When will the temple be destroyed, and what sign will be given that will indicate that the temple is soon going to be destroyed? That's the two questions.

And he gives a lot of answers, most of which people like to apply to the end times, though Jesus never applied it to the end times. He applied it to the end of the temple, which was in AD 70. And I think the part you're talking about is in verse 15. "Therefore when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet standing in the holy place, whoever reads let him understand, then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let him who's on the house top not come down or to take anything out of his house. Let him who is in the field not go back to get his clothes." So he says you you need to flee from Jerusalem to the mountains. When? Well he says when you see the abomination of desolation.

Now unfortunately some people have never studied what the abomination of desolation is and they've only been told something about it which they've accepted because it's a strange term and they just as soon trust some authority like their pastor who said this is what that means. Mark's parallel to this in Mark 13 also says when you see the abomination of desolation you need to flee to the mountains. But Luke's parallel paraphrases it because Luke was writing to a Gentile, a man named Theophilus, who would not understand that Hebrew expression abomination of desolation. So Luke simply clarified it by saying what it's about. In Luke 21:20, Luke said, "when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then you who are in Judea flee to the mountains." That's the same you can follow Luke 21 on through it's the same point and the same discourse, the same warning. It's just that instead of using the term abomination of desolation, Luke uses the term Jerusalem surrounded by armies, which is of course what he understood to be the abomination of desolation. He says when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies know that its desolation is near. Okay, so this abomination of the Romans coming against Jerusalem is going to cause its desolation. Therefore it's an abomination causing desolation or abomination of desolation. That's simply a paraphrase clarifying what that word means.

So yes, I mean Jerusalem was surrounded by armies in 70 AD. Actually the Romans started coming in force earlier in 66 in Galilee and started moving toward Jerusalem. And the we have a church historian from the early 300s, Eusebius, who said that before the war began in 66, the Christians who were in Jerusalem, the very ones that Jesus is referring to here, he said they had received a warning from Christ and they fled. They they fled from Jerusalem and they went across the Jordan to a hilly area called Pella and that's how they escaped the Holocaust that occurred in 70 AD. So yes, I mean you're wondering does that apply to 70 AD? Oh yes, it does. So when the disciples asked when will the temple be destroyed, what sign will there be that it's about to take place? Well the sign that it's about to take place is you'll see Jerusalem surrounded by armies. As far as when, he answers that too because he says in verse 34, "assuredly I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away until all these things are fulfilled." Remember they asked when shall these things, the destruction of the temple, the only thing that had been mentioned by Jesus was the destruction of the temple. That's the things they asked about. When shall these things be, what sign shall it be that these things are going to happen? Well this generation will not pass before these things happen. So he's answering their question very directly. When will it be? In this generation. What sign will there be? Well the Romans will be coming, that's the sign. Get out of town.

So yes, I mean I don't know if you'd heard it taught that way before or if you came up with that by your own your own study, but I agree if you see that as AD 70 so do I. Now you said how's that relate to Revelation? Revelation was not written to people in Jerusalem, it was written to seven churches in Turkey or what was called Asia Minor at the time. And I believe that Revelation was talking about the same subject. Now of course there's a lot of different views about what Revelation's about, so my view might be regarded as a minority view, but it's a it's a well-represented view and well well biblically supported view. There's other views too. But I believe that Revelation is talking about the same thing as the Olivet Discourse. And by the way, Revelation John tells his readers these things are going to shortly take place, very similar to Jesus saying this generation will not pass before this happens. Revelation has these things will shortly take place, the time is at hand. So it's very similar time frame and contents. And so I believe that while Jesus gave this information to the Christians in Jerusalem that they could escape before the Holocaust of 70 AD occurred probably shortly before it actually happened, the churches in Asia were also told about it.

Now why would he tell them? Well they were the churches that John was related with. John's home church was Ephesus, that was the main church in the region. And the letters were sent to Ephesus and Smyrna and Pergamum and Thyatira and Sardis and Philadelphia and Laodicea. Those churches were all near each other. John was probably technically the overseer of all of them, though he was banished to Patmos at the time, he still was related to those churches. So God gave him a revelation to tell them. Well why didn't he send it to Jerusalem? I'm thinking it may be that the church had already fled from Jerusalem. There might not be a receiving address there for them. They're already gone. If they left in 66 AD, it's very possible there was no church in Jerusalem to warn and they didn't need to be warned. Jesus had done that.

This is simply letting the you know the people in Turkey know. Now some of the people in Turkey were Jews. So maybe it was for them to know. Or maybe it was just for the Christians to recognize that while they had been persecuted for the previous 40 years by the synagogues and by the Sanhedrin and by the Jews in their towns, and we read about that for example in Revelation chapter 2 and verse 10 and also Revelation 3 and verse 10 that both the church of Smyrna and the church of Philadelphia were persecuted by the Jews of their town, by the synagogue of their town. So you know the idea is God is going to vindicate you. You know the Jewish order that persecutes you is going down not long from now. That's encouraging and so that would be I suppose a reason for Revelation conveying pretty much the same message to a new group of people. Jesus had given it to the Jews, that is his disciples in Jerusalem, and now Revelation gives it to Gentiles who might have an interest in it too. I know I'm a Gentile, I'm interested in it, so I don't have any reason to believe that they wouldn't be. In fact, I believe they would be. They kept the book and and published it, so they must have liked it.

Robert in Pinole, California. The third Robert today. Hello Robert, welcome.

Robert: Hey Steve. I have two questions, hopefully we have time, I know we're running out. The first one is, were the disciples saved right up until the Last Supper? Because I've talked to pastors and they said they were, I don't believe they were. And the second one is when my wife and I started going to a new church and when we do communion, they say if you're not saved, let the bread and the cup pass from you. And I don't think that's right, my wife says it is right. So I'd like to know your thoughts on those two questions if you have time, please.

Steve Gregg: Sure, but let me ask you about the first one. When you say were the disciples saved up to the Last Supper, you mean you believe they were not saved prior to the Last Supper?

Robert: I don't believe they were saved because Peter denied Christ three times. When Jesus got was arrested they all scattered. The only one at the cross was John. And then in the book of Acts when they see the risen Christ, they get the Holy Spirit, it all changes for them. They're under persecution but there's no denial. That's the way I see it.

Steve Gregg: Okay, well if you interpret the word saved to mean that you don't sin anymore and that you have the Holy Spirit, then I guess we'd have to say they weren't saved in that sense until Jesus rose from the dead. But they still sinned even after that, so I guess that definition doesn't work. But as far as possessing the Spirit, we know they didn't possess the Spirit in the sense that Christians do today until Jesus breathed on them and said "receive the Holy Spirit" in John chapter 20 after the resurrection. But that doesn't mean they weren't saved. If being saved means they're on good terms with God and that if they died at that time they would die on good terms with God, then yes they were saved as soon as they left everything to follow Jesus. In fact, people before that were saved too. Abraham was saved by his faith. David was saved by his faith. I mean those two are simply mentioned as examples of people who were. But I think we can assume they were only two among thousands if not more of people who were saved. You're saved by your faith in Christ or or in God. Before Christ came they didn't know about Christ so their faith in God. Abraham believed in the Lord and it was accounted to him for righteousness. So did David, so did all the Old Testament saints. If you read Hebrews 11 it starts with Abel and goes through all the heroes of the Old Testament including the prophets and stuff and it says they all did what they did by faith. And faith is what saves. So I'd say they were saved. Jesus told his disciples in Luke chapter 10, don't rejoice that the demons are subject to you but rejoice that your names are written in heaven. So you know if they died they would die as citizens of heaven apparently and this was before he died.

So you know if we think of salvation only in the New Testament sense, yeah well the New Testament didn't really come into effect until Jesus died and rose again and that was a new phase of salvation. But people in the Old Testament also had been saved. Now when you say who's right your wife or you that only believers should take communion? Well she is right about that. Communion is something that Jesus did only with his disciples and the early church did it only with the church members who were converted people. They weren't like today where you just go out and bring all the unbelievers into church just so that when you pass the bag there'll be more money in it. No, the church was in the early days just a gathering of the Christians. And that's where they took communion. They didn't go out into the streets and offer communion to people who didn't love Christ. Communion is a celebration of our of our salvation in Christ. And so anyone who's not saved it would have no it would have no meaning to them and there's no reason for them to take.

I don't I don't think that if an unbeliever happens to be in church and they're taking communion and he happens to eat the bread and drink the wine I don't think a lightning bolt is going to hit him or that he's going to go to hell for doing that. But it's not really for unbelievers, it's for believers. And for a church to mention that, I think that's as helpful as sometimes churches before they take an offering they say if you're not a believer, if you're not part of the church, we don't want you to put anything in the bag. You know this is an act of worship and gratitude on the part of those who are serving Christ and who are wanting to support his kingdom. So you know if you're not one of those don't feel any urge to put money in there. In other words, the church sometimes will explain to people that things we do at church are for Christians because the church is for Christians, it's not for non-Christians. A non-Christian may show up and if he does something that is for Christians, it's not going to be the you know the end of the world but it doesn't do no harm to let them know. Hey you can worship God in giving, you can worship God in the Lord's Supper, but that's really that's really for Christians to do. It's not really relevant or something that we expect of non-Christians.

Hey I'm out of time. I appreciate your call. You've been listening to The Narrow Path. We are listener supported. You can find out how to help us if you want or just take our stuff for free from our website thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for joining us.