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, which allows you to call in during the program if you have questions about the Bible, about the Christian faith, or something like that that you want to discuss on the air. Go ahead and raise those questions.

If it's not so much that you have a question, but you disagree with the host and want to say why, I welcome you to call for that kind of a call also. Right now we have some lines open, which means this is a very good time to call. You will be able to get onto our switchboard if you call right now and almost certainly be on the air before the show is over. The number to call is 844-484-5737. That's 844-484-5737. And so let's see. I think we have no reason not to go directly to the phones, so we'll do that right now. Carol in Point Blank, Texas, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Carol: Thank you, thank you, thank you. I have two questions. One is based on Ezekiel chapter 3 and 33, where he talks about the watchman. What are we in that? Do we have accountability as watchmen also? And the second question is, I really want to know what you think about all this UFO stuff or UAP, whatever it is. I have two Christian friends that are very sane, very stable, and they've had really recent encounters with lights and all kinds of stuff. So, thank you.

Steve Gregg: All right. Well, as far as the watchman on the wall illustration that we find in Ezekiel 3, God tells the prophet that he's like a watchman in a time where his people are in danger. A watchman would of course be looking out for invading armies in the walled cities. The people would be inside without seeing outside and being oblivious to what's going on outside and could be attacked if there weren't watchmen to let them know there's a danger coming.

And so there was in fact a danger coming to Jerusalem. They were going to be destroyed by the Babylonians. God was revealing that to the prophets. He'd revealed it to Jeremiah. He now was revealing it to Ezekiel also. So these prophets were like watchmen who could see the danger that the ordinary people could not see.

And so God said, when you see the danger, if you warn the people, they should of course prepare themselves. If they do not, and you warned them, then the problem is on them. Their blood is on their own heads. But if you don't warn them, and they don't prepare themselves, then it's on you and their blood is on your head.

So basically he was saying these prophets who know what others do not are in a position to warn or forewarn their country of the danger so that the country could turn around if they will and perhaps be saved. Now the people might not turn around, but it should not be because they weren't warned. If they're not warned and don't turn around, then the responsibility is on the watchman, the prophet. If they are warned and don't turn around, then the responsibility is not on the prophet, it's on them and the prophet has discharged his duty.

Now I was raised in a church which emphasized the need to evangelize people and I remember hearing this illustration of Ezekiel many times. They were saying basically it's like us when we see people who are not saved and we don't speak to them, if we don't preach the gospel to them and they die lost, well their blood is on our head. If we warn them and they reject Christ, well then their blood is not on our head. So it kind of put pressure on everybody pretty much to preach the gospel to everyone they met because if anyone they met goes to hell and the reason they went to hell is because you didn't preach to them, or at least the fact that you didn't preach to them is a factor in it, God may hold you responsible for that. You don't want to go to heaven and find out that God's holding their blood on your account.

So it put a lot of pressure, emotional pressure, psychological pressure on Christians to evangelize. Now we might think it's a good thing to put that pressure on Christians because Christians tend to be apathetic and Christians tend to be lazy about evangelism. And maybe some Christians are guilty of that.

But there's lots of Christians who are not lazy or guilty and they love the Lord and they're serving God, but they don't evangelize everyone they meet. In fact it would be impossible to do that. They meet too many people. There wouldn't be time. You can't even hardly say hello to everybody who walks by you on the street, much less give them the full presentation of the gospel. And yet if you figure everyone who walks by you on the street might go to hell and it's your fault if you didn't evangelize them, that could put a lot of guilt on you and a lot of responsibility on you that we don't necessarily have to assume that God is putting on a person.

This was a particular thing that God said to Ezekiel and I think the prophets in general, although they're not all told that they are watchmen, I think they are alluded to as watchmen in a number of places. For example in Isaiah 62:6, God is speaking to Jerusalem and says, "I have set watchmen on your walls, O Jerusalem, who shall never hold their peace day or night, and you who make mention of the Lord, do not keep silent and give him no rest until he establishes, until he makes Jerusalem a praise in the earth."

Now there God speaks of having put watchmen on the walls of Jerusalem, probably referring to the prophets. He doesn't mention if it's the prophets, but I assume he probably means them. And but here it's not even talking about the watchmen warning the people, it's talking about them praying and calling out on God and giving God no rest until he brings salvation. So now the watchmen have the responsibility to tell people everything they know about the dangers and they also have the responsibility to pray incessantly until the whole world turns around, or at least in that case until Jerusalem repents, which never happened by the way.

So that's a heavy load to put on someone. I believe that every Christian should follow God's leading in his or her own life. I believe that a Christian has the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit urges you to do things and you should do those things that he urges you to do. But not everybody that's urged to go out and evangelize on the street corners has the same calling as everybody else who has the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit might be leading somebody to be a pastor and that pastor doesn't have a lot of time to stand on the street corners. He's got to prepare the sermons and visit the sick and manage the church and make sure he goes after people who are straying sheep and so forth and he may not be an evangelist.

Not everybody is an evangelist. Paul said God gave some evangelists and some pastors and teachers, also of course some apostles and some prophets, and some other things too. There's a whole lot of different gifts. The evangelists are the ones that God puts it on their heart and gives them the gift to evangelize and that's the primary thing they do, just like pastoring is the primary thing a pastor does, prophesying is the primary thing a prophet does.

If we want to make the connection between the obligation to warn people as Ezekiel was told to warn them and the obligation of Christians to evangelize, I would say this obligation falls particularly on evangelists. But even then it would be quite unreasonable to say that a person who's an evangelist has got to evangelize every person he sees and any person he fails to evangelize if they go to hell it's his fault. I think that you could be very nervous and not do anything well if that was how you felt like, I just can't let anyone walk by me without preaching to them.

Now I don't do as much evangelism as some people do. Before I was a Bible teacher I did a lot of evangelism, street evangelism and other kinds of evangelism too. Eventually my responsibilities as a teacher crowded out and took all my time and I didn't have time to go out on the streets and evangelize anymore. Nor does the Bible ever tell us to go out on the streets and evangelize but some people are called to do that.

So I would say that God is giving Ezekiel information about his own personal responsibility and the calling that he has and why God has given it to him. And I would say maybe we could say collectively the church has to do the same kind of thing to the world. But not every individual Christian has the same role in the church. The whole church with every member of the body doing its share would bring about a circumstance where the whole church, the body of Christ, is doing what the body of Christ has to do. But doing your share doesn't mean that you necessarily are going out and evangelizing everybody.

And I'll tell you, people who think that that's what following Christ requires are likely to say, well I can't do that and therefore to assume I can't serve Christ because that's the only thing they've been told is serving Christ is going out and telling people about Christ. Well some people just won't do that. They don't have the temperament, they don't have the opportunities, they're afraid and they just won't. But the thing is, it may be that they don't because that's not really what they're gifted to do. And the thing they are gifted to do never occurs to them because everyone's telling them your gift is to evangelize, that's what you're supposed to do. Never occurs to some people that maybe you're not an evangelist but you do have some gift from God and some responsibility to serve the body of Christ through the gifts you have and by doing so you contribute to the overall evangelization of the world which the church does. But doesn't mean that you're a mouth. Not everybody's a mouth. There are hands and feet and eyes and noses and so forth that Paul talks about. So not everybody's a mouth and the ones who are are the ones who are expected to talk publicly and evangelize and preachers and teachers and so forth would be in those classes.

So the Ezekiel passage doesn't just correspond on a one-to-one basis to every Christian. It didn't even correspond on a one-to-one basis to every Jew in his time. He had a special calling and that calling included a special responsibility. Many others of us in the body of Christ have a special calling very similar in a way, but not everyone has that exact calling. Some have other callings. The main thing is that we do what God has given us the gift to do and the assignment to do and to do it diligently and then he'll say well done good and faithful servant.

Now you were also wondering about UFOs. I don't know anything about UFOs. I've never seen one, never been abducted myself. I hear about them. I've heard stories of abductions probably all my life, I've heard those stories from people. I've heard what many Christians say about UFOs. One of the main things that Christians commonly say is that they appear to be perhaps demonic phenomena. That is possible. I don't know if it's true but it's possible. The Bible doesn't mention demonic phenomena that what we'd call UFOs but the Bible does talk about signs and wonders done in the power of Satan in 2 Thessalonians 2. So maybe, maybe that's what they are.

Or maybe they are creatures from other parts of the universe. The Bible doesn't tell us that there are no such creatures. The Bible doesn't tell us that there are either so you know it's kind of we don't have to believe there are or aren't. My thought is that if there was somehow some day some proof that what we now call UFOs are actual spaceships inhabited by actual alien intelligent creatures then I would have to say oh now I know. Now I know. There's lots of things I don't know even in this world much less in the universe. What we discover is what we know about. The Bible doesn't mention them.

But if we discovered them the fact that the Bible doesn't mention them doesn't cast any aspersions on the Bible itself. The Bible's not there to tell us everything, just what God thinks we need to know. And he apparently does not think we need to know whether there's life on other planets. You might think well if there are and if they're going to come here and it's going to be like Independence Day or the War of the Worlds maybe we should know. Well I'm not sure. I'm not sure what we could do about it if we did. So I think we need to just recognize that many things can be a distraction from Christ. That doesn't mean they're bad things but people get all curious about certain things that God has not seen as important to us to know. If he thought they were he'd tell us. And if we're getting distracted by things like that from Jesus himself then the devil is definitely winning that and we can say whether these are demonic phenomena or not the devil is definitely making his profit from it.

Carol: Great answer. Thank you.

Steve Gregg: Thank you. Alex from Sacramento, California, welcome to The Narrow Path.

Alex: Hello Steve. I listen to you every day. You're awesome. I called you about something else just at the spur of the moment so I didn't write it down like I should have but as far as what you were just talking about in my mind John 3:16, for God so loved the world. If it said this world then I would think there's more world. For God so loved the word "the" pretty much for me it implies the world, one.

But anyway, as far as yesterday goes the Trinity, I think it was yesterday that was saying Genesis 1:26 the words "us" and "our." That's before man was created so wouldn't "us" and "our" imply Jesus and the Holy Spirit?

Steve Gregg: Some people think so. We didn't mention that particular instance yesterday when another man called to give us some examples of what he thought were examples of the Trinity. He didn't use that one and I didn't bring it up, but many people think that the plural pronoun used of God in Genesis, the early chapters, does give us a hint of the Trinity. And very possibly it does. There are other theories, but yesterday was pretty confusing.

Alex: I want to just make this as fast as possible, but the reason I called, hey listen man, I've been listening to you teach about something that's troubling to me and a lot of people. I mean callers call in asking and I've gone to topical lectures and a lot of people ask this question. I just don't understand how—give me a second, I'll ask you in a second.

Steve Gregg: I don't need to know a paragraph without the question in it. Go ahead.

Alex: This isn't a court of law. Yes or no, please. Do you think Adolf Hitler was predestined to hell before he was born?

Steve Gregg: No.

Alex: Me neither. Okay thanks.

Steve Gregg: All right, thank you for your call. All right, no, I don't believe that God predestines people to hell. I think people destine themselves to hell, but I think God knows about it in advance, but he's not the one who assigns that destiny. He assigns free will. And by making the choices that will end somebody up in hell, they have by their own free will determined that that's where they're going to go. Now if someone wonders, did God know that he would go to hell? I believe he did. But knowing that someone's going to do something is a very different thing than destining them to do it. Okay well thanks for your call. Let's talk to Renee in Little Rock, Arkansas. Renee welcome.

Renee: Hi Steve. Thank you so much for doing this show. It really is a blessing, it really is. My question is about the book of Malachi. After doing a Bible study recently, I read it a couple of times and doing homiletics and such and it didn't dawn on me until about the third time through and I wondered if you agree with this or if you have a different interpretation. But it seemed that God used Malachi as his voice to represent in that conversation with God and the Jews that God through Malachi is doing all of the talking. Where we have a response of the Jewish people to say when have you loved us or when have we failed you and they're asking the questions, it's really God playing the part of the Jewish people because he knows them so well and they maybe are sitting there captive without actually speaking. Does that make any sense?

Steve Gregg: Well you know I have a feeling that people were saying those kinds of things but yeah God may be making up the conversation and putting the words in their mouths which represent what their attitude is even if they're not saying those words. So what you're saying is in the especially the early part, well through the whole book of Malachi, God says something or the prophet says something speaking for God and then he represents the people as having a response essentially challenging what he said.

So he says in chapter 1 verse 2, "I have loved you says the Lord, yet you say in what way have you loved us?" Okay and then later on he says in verse 6, "A son honors his father, a servant his master. If then I'm a father where's my honor? If I'm a master where's my reverence? says the Lord. But you priests who despise my name, I say that to you, yet you say in what way have we despised your name?" So this happens again and again. He'll make some kind of a accusation against them and they'll say oh yeah, prove it. They're saying we doubt that, in what way is that true?

Now you're right, the people might not have said those actual words, but they may have had those actual thoughts. In a sense God is writing the whole dialogue, his part and theirs. And he even says so, you say this and I say that and you say that. And so the dialogue is, God's providing the whole dialogue. But when he says, "but you say," this could simply mean this is the kinds of things you say, this is your attitude, this is your response to me in general, not that they've actually that one of them has stood up and said those exact words. But many may have.

Renee: That's what I thought too. Looking at the quotations, it was impressed upon me look in the Bible, who is speaking, who is the audience, who is the speaker throughout. And I looked at the quotation marks and they remain open for so much until you see says the Lord and then it opens up and it's just God talking.

Steve Gregg: Yeah, well that's for the most part the way you'll find it in the prophets. Now occasionally one of the prophets like Isaiah or Jeremiah will break away from prophesying to narrating a story of the interaction between the prophet and maybe the king or someone else. And then of course the story has other people speaking. Now those are unusual cases in the prophets. Malachi in my opinion probably doesn't have any of those cases, but and most prophets don't. So virtually everything from the first words almost to the end are can be in quotation marks. I mean if the prophet begins by saying thus saith the Lord, or in this case I have loved you says the Lord, well that's the Lord speaking and he goes on and speaks through the rest of the book too. So yeah, God's the one that is providing the whole content of the book through the prophet. That's correct.

Renee: Thank you so much, I appreciate your explanation.

Steve Gregg: All right Renee, thank you for your call. God bless. John in Gainesville, Florida, welcome to The Narrow Path.

John: Hey thanks for taking my call Steve. I'm 77 years old and I just want to let people out there know that back in the 70s and 80s I put myself in a worse prison than I was when I actually went to prison. I was living in a prison of sin and doing fornication, counting other people's stuff. No escape I had was when I finally turned my life over to Jesus. When I went to prison I hung out with people that had the lowest recidivism rate of anybody in prison. Guys that committed crimes of passion, they killed their lovers when they caught them in bed with another lover and they knew they wasn't ever going to mess up again, they did it in that moment of heat and anger and those were the ones I hung out with when I was in prison and I stayed clean, never got in no bit of trouble when I was in prison but when I got in worse trouble—

Steve Gregg: John, that's a great testimony. I'm glad God set you free. Do you have a question for me?

John: No that was just wanting to pass that on. Sometimes a person could put themselves in a worse prison outside than if they actually went to prison.

Steve Gregg: Right, that's exactly right. Being a prisoner of sin is worse than being a prisoner in walls. You know Paul wrote many of his letters from prison and he said, you know I'm in chains, but he said but the word of God is not bound and the kingdom of God is still spreading and the work I've done, there's still people carrying it on and therefore I'm not really inactive. My work is going on even though I'm here. And you're talking about the fact that not only you were in physical prison but more tragically you were a prisoner of sin. And all of us were in one measure or another. I mean whoever commits sin is a slave of sin, Jesus said in John chapter 8. And so being a slave of sin is terrible. You can't get away from that. There's you can't do a jailbreak from that. You have to have somebody come break you out and that's Jesus. He said if the son sets you free then you're free indeed and sounds to me like it's your reflections on that that are causing you to call in and share that testimony. I appreciate you doing so. We have a break coming up and I don't know, I'm going to try to talk to Adrian first in Sacramento, we may have to hold you over. Adrian, go ahead.

Adrian: Hi, I'd say thank you for taking my call. Wondered if you heard anything about the Church of Almighty God established in China in 1991 and if you've heard of them do you consider them heretics or a cult and if you could expound also on Hebrews 13:17 for me.

Steve Gregg: Okay. Well as far as that church you're talking about in China, I have not heard of it. Of course in Asia and frankly everywhere in the world, all kinds of movements have arisen called themselves the Church of whatever and they many times think they're the original church or the true church when in fact they're just one group that think they're following Christ and maybe they are. I'd have to look at their lives, what they teach. I don't know their group but I've heard of many groups like that, many of which we'd have to refer to as cults. They're not really mainstream in their thinking or in their behavior, though I can't say that's true of that one.

Now you asked about Hebrews 13:17, "Obey those who rule over you and be submissive for they watch out for your souls as those who must give an account." So the people who are—the word rule over you, the Greek word is "who lead you." The word rule is a very bad translation. He actually wrote, "Obey those who lead you." Now people who lead you aren't necessarily ruling over you. They're just providing an example for you to follow. They're leading you.

Now who are they? Who are you supposed to obey? Well the same people are mentioned in verse 7, ten verses earlier. Hebrews 13:7 he says, "Remember those who lead you who have spoken the word of God to you, whose faith follow." Okay so imitate their faith, imitate their life. These ones who've spoken the word of God to you, obey that. Why? Because you have to obey the word of God. Now if somebody says the word of God to you, you should obey it. If the same person later says something contrary to the word of God, you shouldn't. So in other words it's not the person, it's the word of God that has the authority and those who have faithfully given you the word of God are the ones you're supposed to obey, but only when they're giving you the word of God, not something else. Hey I need to take a break. You're listening to The Narrow Path. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. We have another half hour coming. I'll be back in 30 seconds, so don't go away.

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Welcome back to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we're live for another half hour now. And once again we're going into this half hour with some of our lines open, which is an opportunity for you if you want to call in with any questions you have about the Bible or the Christian faith or with any disagreement you have with the host you want to discuss here. There are lines open, there may not be later, this is a good time to get through. The number is 844-484-5737. That's 844-484-5737. Our next caller is AK from Batesville, Arkansas. Hi AK, good to hear from you brother.

AK: It's good to talk to you Steve. So actually I want to ask you about Romans 11:26. And I think I know your mind on that because we've talked about it, but you said something in the date debate that just made me want to ask this question. So "Israel" there, do you believe that's a reference to the whole church or do you think he's focusing with that particular usage on just the Jews within the church?

Steve Gregg: No, I believe he means the whole church because it's a summary of the previous verses beginning verse 16 about the olive tree. Now in fact the olive tree is an image of Israel in the Bible. In the Old Testament Israel is called the olive tree in Jeremiah 11:16. And now Paul raises that image of Israel, the olive tree, and says that some branches because of their unbelief have been removed. So Jews who were part of Israel and don't believe in Christ are no longer part of the Israel Paul's talking about, the olive tree.

Then he talks about Gentiles who have believed have been added on to the tree. So Paul has just defined for us what Israel is. It's the combination of believing Jews who were like natural branches on the tree who were not cut off because they didn't disbelieve, and believing Gentiles who've been added to the tree. The tree consists of all its branches and in this way all Israel, that is all the branches that belong to the olive tree, the whole tree, is saved. The Gentile part and the Jewish part.

Now this is a natural conclusion for him to reach from the way he started the discussion as you know in chapter 9 the discussion began with him saying that not all are Israel who are of Israel, which clues us into the fact he's not going to use the word Israel the same way in every case. In other words he recognizes at least two different Israels to talk about here. There's those who are of Israel, that's the Jewish nation, and then there's the Israel that the others don't all belong to. There's a smaller Israel within Israel and not all are in that Israel who are part of the nation of Israel.

And of course he's developed that throughout the whole especially chapter 9 and in verse 27 he says Isaiah said though the children of Israel be as the sand of the seashore for multitude only the remnant will be saved. So Paul is saying the remnant of Israel, the believers, they're the only Israel that the promises apply to and that's why it doesn't seem like Israel's been saved if you're mistaking the nation and the ethnicity of Israel for Israel. He says in a sense they are Israel but they're not the Israel that God promised to save. There's another Israel, a smaller Israel within Israel, the remnant.

And Paul of course in chapter 11 says he was part of that remnant and in verse 5 he said there is a remnant today as there was in Elijah's day in Israel though most of the Jews are unbelievers some of them do believe there is still a remnant they're the true Israel of God. And you know it's I'm reminded of what Jesus said to Nathanael at the end of John chapter 1 when he said here comes an Israelite indeed in whom is no guile or no deceit. This is an honest true truthful man, that's a true Israelite. Now an Israelite indeed contrasts from those who are Israelites in name only. Indeed is an emphatic word it means a real one, this is a real Israelite. This man belongs to the true Israel. How do I know? Because he's an honest man, he's a faithful man and of course that man who was a true Israelite became a disciple of Jesus which is what all the true Israelites did in Palestine when Jesus was there.

So the faithful remnant of Israel came to Christ, but Gentiles did too. But you see the olive tree which is Israel is made up of Jewish and Gentile branches but that was true of Israel in the Old Testament too we know because God allowed Gentiles be part of Israel then too. The word Israel did not ever refer to a purely ethnic category. There were Gentiles who could be part of Israel if they wanted to become proselytes. There were Jewish people who could be kicked out of Israel, could be cut off from the people as the law used the expression. So in the Old Testament Israel was comprised of believing or faithful Jews and Gentiles, that's true now too. The olive tree is made up of believing branches whether Jewish branches or Gentile branches that have been grafted in and in this way all Israel, that is all the Israel that Paul's been concerned to talk about and that he believes is the Israel that God made his promises to, they'll all be saved in the way that he's described.

AK: That's what I thought you believed. Just making sure. So ultimately then there would be two references to the church being Israel right? I mean because some people on our side say well Galatians 6:16 is the only reference of the church as Israel but I believe you've got two if you include Romans 11:26.

Steve Gregg: Well sure. I mean and you know even when the word Israel is not being used there are words that are synonymous with Israel like in Romans 9 where he says they are not all Israel who are of Israel, the first Israel is referring to the faithful remnant which he also refers to by different terms as he goes through the same chapter. In verse 8 he refers to them as the children of God where he says, "that is those who are the children of the flesh these are not the children of God," that is Jews who are only ethnic Jews, that's not the category that God recognizes as his children, it's the faithful remnant that is.

He refers to them as the ones that God calls in verse 11 and again in verse 24 and 25. He's talking about the same thing, the faithful remnant are the called ones. Later in chapter 9 after he's going to call them, he's going to refer to them as the vessels of honor as opposed to the vessels prepared for destruction that are wrath, verse 22 and 23 and vessels of mercy.

So these are all terms he's using to contrast the faithful remnant with the unfaithful majority of the Jewish people and that faithful remnant he's all the way through he's saying it's only those ones that that these promises apply to and here's interesting because he says he refers in verse 24 to even us whom he called, okay the called he's already used the called ones to refer to the remnant of Israel, then he says not of the Jews only but also of the Gentiles. So he talked about the ones who were called are not only the Jews but also of the Gentiles. And we know of course that in 1 Corinthians Paul talks similarly where he talks about how—well in chapter 1 of 1 Corinthians 22 and 23 he says for the Jews seek a sign, the Greeks seek after wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block, to the Gentiles foolishness, but to those of us who are called both Jews and Greeks Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.

So those who are called he says are not Jew or Gentile but both. There's Jewish people who are called and Gentiles who are called. That's us who are called and he even says that in Romans 9:24, "even us whom he called not of the Jews only but also the Gentiles." So he's not thinking only of the faithful remnant within the ethnic Israel because frankly you'd never find a time in the Old Testament where Israel existed as a ethnically homogeneous group. Every time the Bible talks about Israel, even if it's just talking about the nation in the Old Testament, it's talking about racially mixed group. So why would that be different at any time following the Old Testament? Especially once the gospel's gone out to include Gentiles more directly.

So yeah it's not just the Jewish remnant. It's that we have been grafted into the same tree or as as Paul puts it in Ephesians 2:14 and 15 and so forth how that there were Jews and there were Gentiles remember Paul says I think in verse 12 of Ephesians 2 he says you Gentiles were aliens from the covenants and you were strangers to the promises and you know not not part of the commonwealth of Israel. But then he says but now you are. And he says God has taken the Jew and the Gentile made in himself, that is in Christ, one new man. So Paul Paul doesn't ever have times where he's really thinking of Jewish believers as a separate category from Gentile believers. That would be breaking down what was once built or he'd be building again what what God broke down. God broke down the middle wall of partition and Paul would be building it up again if he's thinking of Jewish believers as a separate category from Gentile believers. No Jews and Gentiles are not separate categories in Christ. In Christ there's no Jew or Gentile or bond or free or male or female so you know these categories don't even exist with any significance once you're a Christian. It's you're all just one new man, one body in Christ, one olive tree. Israel is of course Christ. Christ is the the the vine which Israel was the vine in the Old Testament, Christ is the vine now. In the Old Testament Isaiah the servant of Yahweh was Israel, Jesus is the servant of Yahweh in the New Testament. In the Old Testament the Jews are the seed of Abraham, in the New Testament Christ is the seed of Abraham. In the Old Testament Israel is God's son, his firstborn in it says in Exodus. But in the New Testament Jesus is God's son the first—see Israel is a type and shadow of Christ. All the all the titles and and roles given to Israel in the Old Testament now are fulfilled in Christ himself. And if you are Christ's then you are Abraham's seed because you're in him and you're one in him. So yeah Paul if somebody starts thinking that Paul has in mind to differentiate between Jewish believers and Gentile believers for any consideration at all I think they miss his heart and his point entirely. He's he's adamantly opposed to making such divisions.

AK: Absolutely Steve, thanks for the answer.

Steve Gregg: Okay AK, good talking to you man. Have a good day. Nicole in Sacramento, California, welcome to The Narrow Path.

Nicole: Hi, I'm calling because I'm curious to know as a Christian is it wrong or sinful to listen to secular music and if it is not are there boundaries or is it just wrong in general?

Steve Gregg: Well, secular music simply means music that's not Christian music or religious music. So I mean that would include possibly almost all instrumental music that has no words except if it was written for the glory of God like say Johann Sebastian Bach's music and some of the classics were written for the glory of God to be sure. But lots of instrumental songs have no message at all and and they're not they're not Christian specifically, but they're pleasing to the ear and I don't think there's anything defiling about them and so that's secular.

Now if you mean if they have words and the words are not giving a Christian message specifically, well even those can be fairly harmless honestly. I mean not not all secular music is immoral. An awful lot of it is. But, you know there's a lot of love songs and things like that. You know Larry Norman was a pretty one of the early Christian rock and roll artists who made a lot of albums and some of his later albums he he made songs that weren't specifically preaching the gospel like his earlier albums did, in fact they were love songs and stuff and he started getting criticism for doing that. And I remember him talking at one of his concerts, he says you know I know people think because I have some of these love songs on my albums that I've backslidden because I'm not you know talking about Jesus in them. And he said, in a way I can understand the criticism, after all what does Jesus have to do with love? And it was he was being sarcastic of course but it was made a good point. Jesus has to do with all kinds of things, not just going to heaven. He has to do with the way we love people, the way we treat our wives, our children, our spouses, the way we handle our money, there all kinds of what we might call secular subjects are no longer secular to the Christian who does all things for the glory of God, including the way he handles his money or conducts himself in a love relationship with someone else or or toward his enemies or whatever.

So I mean everything to a Christian can be sanctified except for sin. Now there's there's a lot of secular music that's just plain sinful. And some of it, the sinfulness of it is really quite subtle in that it's not talking about adultery or drugs or killing cops or anything like that, but it but it is talked about selfishness. It's it's basically assuming the the appropriateness of selfishness, someone wanting their own way, I did it my way, you know kind of a thing. It's it's really the case that the philosophy in some of that music is quite contrary to the philosophy of Christianity even if there's no particular sins being underscored in the lyrics.

Now what about a Christian listening to Christian—to to music that has non-Christian messages in it? Well that that depends I would say. Again, I will say this, before there was Christian rock music, I'm that old, Christian rock music began to be recorded when I was in my late teens. Before that I was a Christian listening to Creedence Clearwater and and the Beatles and Crosby Stills Nash and Young and Bob Dylan and you know their songs obviously weren't written about Jesus. But as a Christian I listened to them kind of through a Christian lens. And there were things in those songs that I could kind of as I listened to them kind of translate them, kind of ignore the parts that don't fit but but you know take the parts that did and kind of get a Christian message from it because I was a Christian. And I thought of everything through Christian lens.

To the pure all things are pure. Now, you know if they're talking about rape and adultery and murder, well that's not pure. But again it even it's a question of what are they saying about those things? What what impressions are they given? You know if you watch a movie which is kind of parallel in a sense to listening to a song in the sense that there's a message and it may not be explicitly Christian. You know a movie that has crime in it, let's say murder or prostitution or whatever. Well those are not Christian things. They are real things we might encounter those just walking down the street or I mean we don't encounter murders very often but but people who are sinners, people who are cursing God, you know we can we can encounter those in any public place. To encounter them on the screen is not really in itself more defiling than encounter them in real life. The question is what's our attitude toward them? And maybe what is the message about them in the movie? Is it is it glorifying sinful things or are the crooks the the bad guys in the movie and and you're just waiting for justice to be done and and their deeds to be punished? You know it really has everything to do not with what's the content but what is the content trying to communicate to you and is it effectively doing so?

You know revenge movies, lot of movies popular movies are about revenge and technically Christians should not seek revenge. On the other hand some of these revenge movies are simply about justice and rescuing some innocent people in the process of killing the bad guys. Now there's a sense in which it's not entirely unchristian to want justice to be done and for innocent people to be rescued. So what I'm saying is this is a very nuanced thing. As soon as you says you can't listen to secular music or you can't watch movies, I'm going to say well I don't know anything in the Bible that says I can't. Not that I would be drawn to movies that are unedifying to me because I want you know to like Paul said whatever things are pure whatsoever things are good report whatever things are you know are edifying think on those things and I want to keep my mind on those things. But it depends on the degree to which you're saturating yourself with it the degree to which its messages if they're not Christian are soaking in and you're kind of finding yourself thinking that way too or the degree to which those messages come up against a very strong Christian filter that allows you to enjoy what's being said because it's not strictly evil and and do so you know kind of running it through a Christian filter so that you approve the things are good and disapprove the things that aren't good. The Bible does not say we have to not let things into our ears or eyes that are not Christian because then we'd have to go out of the world. Paul said that in 1 Corinthians 5 he said we shouldn't associate with fornicators and idolaters and blasphemers and so forth but he said but I don't mean those in the world we can't leave the world we're going to have to associate with those people sometimes but only Christians people who claim to be Christians and do those things we have to you know we have to practice church discipline and not not fellowship with those people because those people are giving the impression that these bad things are consistent with Christianity and you don't want anyone to get the impression of that because it's not true. If an unbeliever goes out and does things that are inconsistent with Christianity, well we figure that's about average, people who aren't Christians do things that aren't Christian. That doesn't convince me that I as a Christian am entitled or should do those things. So it's I would say about listening to secular music or watching movies, the Christian says should I watch this should I listen to this, that Christian needs to ask how, you know how is it affecting me? How defining is my Christianity in in interpreting and accepting and rejecting everything that I hear? Am I safe in a world full of bad behaviors and bad influences? The truth is a good Christian should be able to be in a world with bad behaviors because that's the only world there is to live in and and we should be able to be in that world and just say yeah yeah maybe you but not me I'm not that. I don't care about that. I'm not I'm not into that. I'm a Christian. So you know it really has more to do what's going on in your mind and your spirit than what's going into your ears. That's what I would say. In other words it's nuanced. I haven't given you a yes or no. I'm just it's a nuanced thing.

Nicole: Okay.

Steve Gregg: All right, thank you. Karen from Abbotsford, British Columbia, welcome to The Narrow Path.

Karen: Hi, sister Gregg, it's nice to talk to you. I I have a question—yesterday you were talking about how Revelation was written for the people at the time and all my life I've believed that Revelation is like right now, like we're going towards an end. So now I'm kind of confused. I don't know I don't know where to look or what I should be studying. But I know you did mention something on your website that I could read.

Steve Gregg: Well, I wrote a book back 30 years ago which is still in print. It's published by Thomas Nelson Publisher called Revelation: Four Views. Now it acknowledges that most people today have been raised to think about Revelation the way you describe. That this is the end of the world kind of a thing. It also points out that there are three other ways to look at Revelation which have been around longer than that way. In other words the way that we've been taught it is relatively new in terms of church history and Christians throughout history had other ways of viewing it than that and I talk about I I talk about all three of those and then after giving a very thorough description of each of those views and the pros and cons of each view, you have a commentary going through the whole book of Revelation with four columns below the passages and each column presents that passage from one of the four views. All four views are represented and I don't advocate any of them.

Now I do have my own views, but the book gives you a very open-minded presentation of all the best arguments for and against all four views so you can make up your own mind. Now I I advise people to do that, make up their own mind. Now someone says I don't have time to do that, just tell me what it means. Well, I'm not sure that I'd be right, but I certainly have contemplated a lot. I've I've taken all the things into consideration. Whether my view is you know totally accurate or not only God knows.

But my views can be heard in my verse-by-verse teachings on Revelation, which is at our website. Now I don't know if you've discovered the lectures at our website, but if you go to thenarrowpath.com, you'll find there's like over 1500 lectures I've given on different subjects, including verse-by-verse lectures through all the books of the Bible, including Revelation. And my lectures are fairly thorough. I mean I really kind of leave no stone unturned and usually I'll present more than one view of something if there is more than one possible view. That's true of my lectures on Revelation, although unlike my book on Revelation, in my lectures on Revelation I I not only familiarize you with all four views, but I actually tell you what my view is and tell and why.

So but I give I would say that that'd be the best place to go. You can go to my lectures at thenarrowpath.com and there there's a a number of tabs. If you hit the tab that says Verse by Verse, you'll see all the books of the Bible choose Revelation and just listen to the lectures through from chapters 1 through 22. And I think you get a pretty thorough understanding and and I hope an accurate one. But if you really want to familiarize yourself thoroughly with all four views, my book Revelation Four Views goes into it you know into the other views quite clearly and even the first 50 pages of my book what's called the Introduction. Many people have said the book just the 50-page Introduction is worth the price of the book because it it really goes into the four views what they are who held them what the strong points are what the proofs are they use and what and what the things against each view are. It's a very thorough and pretty even-handed analysis of the four views just in the first 50 pages before you get to the commentary part. But that's yeah that's called Revelation Four Views. You can get that anywhere books are sold. I don't sell it. Books are not sold by me. But you know Amazon or those can so just look up my name there and you'll see that. But you don't have to pay a penny to listen to my lectures they're free and you can get those at our website. And then you'll be much less confused when you hear the kinds of things I and other people say about the book.

Karen: Thank you.

Steve Gregg: All right Karen, thank you for your call. God bless. Ellie from Oregon, we only have a couple of minutes. Go ahead.

Ellie: Okay. Well I'm coming from a standpoint of a marginalized deep thinker yet studied in the Word and my angst and asking here ties to the sense that the end markers are much more ticked off for the Bible than in prior decades. I want people to be saved. So in asking—

Steve Gregg: Okay let me just say this. I didn't understand much of that but could you get to your question?

Ellie: Okay well but to set the context that I think Revelation yes the markers are ticked off more and so to want people to be saved that's my aim. So in asking—

Steve Gregg: Well thank you for that call I just ran out of time but yes of course God's intention for the whole Bible is to draw people closer to God and to be saved. I appreciate your call I'm sorry I didn't have enough time to hear everything you had to say. Maybe tomorrow you could call in.

You've been listening to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and yeah we've been on the air for 29 years daily doing just this thing and there have been thousands and thousands of questions asked and answered on the program and if you go to a website called matthew713.com you'll find a topical index of over I think 29,000 calls that have come into this program on over 2,000 subjects at matthew713.com. Our main website is thenarrowpath.com. That's where you find the lectures and stuff. Have a good day and let's talk again tomorrow.