The Narrow Path

Steve Gregg: Good afternoon and welcome to the Narrow Path radio broadcast this Friday, May 8th, the last day of our broadcast week. We're on Monday through Friday every day for the past almost 30 years, 29 years, and taking phone calls the entire hour, no commercial breaks. So if you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith, we allow you to call in during the live program and ask those questions and we'll talk about them. You can also call to disagree with the host, always welcome to do that. The number is 844-484-5737.

Now today we're going into the program with our lines full, so don't call right now. But in a few minutes if you call, there will be lines opening up and we can talk to you as well. We'll get you through. The number is 844-484-5737. All right, we're going to talk first of all to George calling from Scottsdale, Arizona. Hi George, welcome.

George: Hello Steve, hope all is well. I'm working my way through your book, pretty much all the way through your book, "Why Hell?". When I opened it, I was more on the annihilation side. Now I'm into the restoration side, which seems persuasive. But yet, I get stuck on Matthew 25:46: "These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life." I understand eternal doesn't always mean forever from your book, but at the same time, it seems to be eternal punishment versus eternal life.

Steve Gregg: That is the argument that Augustine made against the universal view. In Augustine's day, Augustine is of course responsible for the church in the West, the Catholic Church and then the Protestant church that came out of the Catholic Church. Augustine's the one who's responsible for us adopting the idea that hell is a place of eternal conscious torment. Augustine didn't invent the view. It was earlier. It was available in the days of Tertullian who held it, but there were other views too, and it was Augustine who made that one view standardized.

Now the other views have continued to exist, although the Catholic Church condemned them, but they condemned them because Augustine was their hero. Yet when Augustine argued for the eternal conscious torment view, the main view he felt he had to defeat was the universalist view because Origen was the most influential theologian in the world before Augustine. And he held the universal view, that God will eventually restore everyone, even from hell when they repent, and that that's God's determination.

Now Augustine was going against that, and the argument he made against it was that very verse which you mentioned, which is Matthew 25:46, where at the end of the story or the parable of the sheep and the goats, the sheep and the goats go off into opposite destinies. And it says specifically, "These shall go away into everlasting punishment," referring to the goats, "but the righteous into eternal life." Now the word everlasting and eternal, though they're different in English, talk about the same thing. It's *aionios* in the Greek.

Now this represents the two destinies as some go into *aionios* life, those would be the saved, and the wicked will go into *aionios* punishment. Now the word punishment also is the word *kolasis* in the Greek, and it had the original meaning of pruning in the Greek language. Some centuries before the time of Christ, the older Greek had the word *kolasis*. It meant to prune a tree. This eventually evolved into meaning more generically correcting, correcting somebody, pruning off their bad traits or whatever and making them better.

By the time of Christ, it was more common for it to just mean punishment, but punishment can also involve correcting. If you punish a child or you punish a criminal, you may hope that they'll be corrected by it. So even punishment doesn't necessarily have to refer to something that's final or that doesn't lead to improvement. It might or might not. But so a universalist would say, a Christian universalist would say, that those who go into *aionios kolasis* would be those who are going into a prolonged correction period and that would be hell.

Now the *aionios*, of course, doesn't literally mean prolonged. You can't necessarily insist upon it, though it does mean something like that in many contexts. The word *aionios*, frequently translated as eternal or everlasting, is used in many places in the Bible and elsewhere in the Greek to mean things that are not eternal, things that just last a long time. More specifically, a thing the end of which is beyond our sight, over the horizon. We can't see the end from here, and therefore that's what *aionios* means. It's the equivalent of the Old Testament Hebrew word *olam*, which means the same thing.

So many times our English Bibles translate *olam* in the Old Testament and *aionios* in the New Testament as everlasting or eternal. And there are times no doubt when things that are *aionios* are in fact eternal, but the word doesn't convey that meaning in itself. It just means they last a very long time, the end of which cannot be seen from our vantage point. It's over the horizon from where we are. It might go on forever and ever for all we can tell, or not. It might have an end that's beyond our view at this point. *Aionios* does not commit to one or the other.

Now in saying that some go away to *aionios* life and some to *aionios kolasis*, whatever that's referring to, might be correction or punishment, Augustine said, well, you can't have *aionios* mean different things. If the Christian's eternal life is indeed eternal and endless, well the same word is used in juxtaposition when it talks about the punishment. It must be also endless. But that's not necessarily true. Two things may be *aionios* but not equally so. Two things may have very long duration the end of which we can't see from here, we can't even see if there's an end to it from here.

And one of them may in fact, if you could see all the way, you'd find it goes on forever and ever and ever. The other one may be not, but they're both *aionios*. They're both very prolonged. They're both from the Greek word *aion*, which means age. They endure for an age. Well how long is an age? Well I don't know, it depends on which age we're talking about. But the point here is *aionios* doesn't have to mean everlasting and my book brings that out. I actually bring this argument out in the book.

But two things that are both very long don't have to be equally long. They can both be very long and one might actually go endlessly on, the other might not. But if something that is very, very long but not eternal can be called *aionios*, and many things in Scripture are referred to as *aionios* that are not eternal but just very long, well then whatever is eternal in our sense of the word is also very long. So it's also *aionios*. The *aionios* does not commit to the ending or lack of ending of something that's very long.

Some things that are very long have an end, some don't. God doesn't, so God is called the *aionios* or the eternal God. Our life in Jesus is *aionios*. It's eternal. It's very long, so long in fact that it never ends. But some things are very long and do have an end, and they are both termed to say that the *kolasis* or the punishment has to go on as long as the life is reading something in there that is not in any sense implied by the use of that word. It's just a lazy habit of mind, I think.

If we say, well, I'll just make it easy, I know that eternal life goes on forever and ever, so I'm just going to say that's true of the punishment too, just because the same word is there. Yeah, but both of them could be *aionios* and not both go on forever and ever. So in other words, you simply have to say you could take the lazy way and say, yeah, they both mean the exact same length of time. That's like my saying these two couples I know have both been married for a very long time. My parents were married for a very long time and so my sister and her husband have been married for a very long time too, 50-something years I think. And my parents were married for 71 years. Now we could say of both of them they both had very long marriages and yet not the same length. Very long is not specific. And so that's how a universalist would understand it. And I think that Augustine, that was almost his whole argument is the juxtaposition of *aionios* in both of those members of that sentence in Matthew 25:46. So I don't think his logic was good. He didn't know Greek, we know that because he said so. He claimed he did not know Greek. He read the Latin Bible, so he didn't even know what *aionios* meant apparently. But in the Greek Bible or the Latin Bible which was a translation of the Greek, there was a word for eternal that he was following. But the point is this is not a matter of exegesis, it's a matter of logic. If two statements are both the Bible calls them both long, long-lasting, is it logical to assume they must both be equally long-lasting? I think not myself.

George: Okay, thank you very much.

Steve Gregg: All right, and that would be true also not only if universalism is true but also if conditional immortality is true. Conditional immortality also talks about it that way because conditional immortality teaches that punishment may be age-lasting but still have an end at some point.

George: It was just the fact that it was the same word in one sentence that I could see Augustine's point, although I understand what you're saying and what you say makes sense. So thank you very much, I appreciate that.

Steve Gregg: Great George, good talking to you. All right, God bless you. Mark in Eagan, Minnesota, welcome to the Narrow Path.

Mark: Thank you, sir. The Mormon's eighth article of faith says, quote, "We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly," unquote. My question is after almost 2000 years of Mormon theology, shouldn't someone have come up with something in the Old or New Testament that hasn't been translated correctly? And have you ever heard a Mormon provide a good answer for this?

Steve Gregg: Well, I actually as I'm not an expert on Mormons, but I have read Mormon histories and so forth and I just am not an expert, I don't remember everything I've read. But I do believe that Joseph Smith made his own revised but very similar version of the King James. He felt like there were some things in the King James that probably weren't translated fully accurately, so he kind of improved them, I believe. Now I can't swear by that, but I've read that about the history. And I think the Mormons have, they carry a King James Bible, but I think it's been altered in ways, maybe not a whole lot of ways, by Joseph Smith because he felt it hadn't been correctly translated before he came along.

Mark: But you've never heard a Mormon person tell you or have a good reason for that other than Joseph Smith like you just said, but have they pointed anything else to you?

Steve Gregg: No, I haven't heard that, but Joseph Smith, they don't need more than Joseph Smith. He's in their mind a prophet. Everything he says is reliable. So they don't need to have any evidence, they don't need to have any examples or whatever. All they need to know is that their prophet said it, so that makes it true.

Yeah, but I mean the Mormon scholars may have some kind of list of things in the King James that Joseph Smith felt needed to be improved in and improved. But I've always thought that when he said, and you quoted it correctly, that the King James is accurate insofar as it's correctly translated, it seemed to me like Mormons when they say that, that the word translated as they're using it probably means interpreted.

And in other, there's a difference of course. Translation is the words you use to transmit a document from one language into another. That's translation. But once you have a translation, its words without being changed can be interpreted variously. And it seems to me like most cults, but not even most cults, I could say most denominations, we might even say most Christians, would say that the differences they have with each other if they all believe in the Bible is that they interpret certain things differently from each other. They have the same Bible, but they don't have the same interpretation. And it seems to me when the Mormons quote the King James version of the Bible, they're interpreting it a certain way that I don't interpret it.

And I don't think they know much about exegesis or hermeneutics. Frankly, a lot of Christians don't either, but if you don't follow a correct hermeneutic or exegesis, you won't interpret things reasonably or rationally. And I think that is the case with them as well as other groups that disagree with one another. They interpret things differently. So I always thought that maybe he was misusing the word translated. It's the King James is the Word of God insofar as it's correctly interpreted. And we would all say that. We'd all say that because we all recognize the Word of God can be misinterpreted. So you have to correctly interpret it. But in Mormonism, it has to be interpreted by Joseph Smith, the prophet.

Mark: Yeah. Well, that is an article of their faith which is a pretty important, so every word in that article means is pretty important, I would think, to them. So they use the word translated and maybe they shouldn't have.

Steve Gregg: I don't know if they did or not. Joseph Smith wasn't the smartest guy around. He was smart enough to start a movement to fool a lot of people. But he was not literally, in terms of his literary acumen, he was not highly impressive. He might, as many people might, use the word translate when they really mean interpret. He's not always that careful. If you read the Book of Mormon, you can see that it's written by Joseph Smith in a style that mimics the King James version. It's got the "thees" and "thous" and all that stuff, but it's a very poor imitation. I mean, the King James version is frankly magnificent to read. Reading the Book of Mormon, which tries to mimic that, sounds like a child attempting to copy King James English.

Mark: Right. Okay. Thank you, sir.

Steve Gregg: All right, God bless you, Mark. Thanks for your call. Kevin in River Rouge, Michigan, welcome to the Narrow Path.

Kevin: Good to talk to you again, Steve. I got my question and my answer, and I want your opinion on them also. I quickly asked another question you can answer the last one. But the first is Hosea 4:6. I just want to say that people that interpret Genesis 3, I believe it's 6, talking about Eve, "she gave to her husband who was with her in the garden," I interpret or next to her. So I've got a sister that seems to think he was right there next to her.

Steve Gregg: Well, I've heard people say that. I've heard people suggest that. I agree with you that it could mean not necessarily in her immediate presence. It says she gave to her husband with her and he ate it. Well, they were with each other on occasion. They didn't have to be with each other every moment. She ate the fruit, she probably took it with her, and when she was with him in the garden, he was with her in her immediate proximity sometimes too. We don't know if he was there at the tree while she was having the conversation with the serpent. He might have been, I mean the words could mean that, but you're right, some people insist upon it. And I think that's another case where they're being lazy. They don't realize that the phrase can mean right there with her or with her on the planet, he was the only company she had. He was with her in the garden, but might not be within earshot of her at every moment.

Anyway, so Hosea 4:6 says, "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you've rejected knowledge, so also I will reject you from being priest for me because you've forgotten the law of your God, also I will forget your children." Now you had a question about that, right?

Kevin: No, no, that wasn't, that was my comment on your last caller. I thought to myself, well, this guy knows not common sense or logic, but the English language because that's the point.

Steve Gregg: Okay, so your question was about Adam and Eve in the garden then. All right, well I appreciate your call.

Kevin: Here's the second one. When and where did a God who initiated and ordained a relationship with man through the finished work of Christ and his gospel become a religion?

Steve Gregg: I'll give you an answer. How did the movement that began with Jesus' death and resurrection become a world religion instead of what Jesus made it to be? By the human nature of the people who passed it along generation after generation. People are, I would have to say, incurably religious in nature. People are made to worship, people are made to worship God in fact. And yet they don't all worship in spirit and in truth.

Now Jesus said that God is looking for people who will worship in spirit and in truth. This was in response to a question the woman at the well asked, are we supposed to worship God at the temple and according to the traditions of our people in Mount Gerizim in Samaria? Or are we, as you Jews say, supposed to worship God in Jerusalem at the temple there and according to the sacrificial system, the religious system, the Levitical priests and all that, which one is right?

Now there were two options she knew about, two different religions really, religious practices made up of priests and sacrifices and rituals and holy places, temples and such. And she's asking which one is closer to the truth. Now the truth is the Jewish one was closer to the truth, but he didn't say that. There was a religion in Jesus' day. He didn't start a religion. To the day he died, he was a Jew. And we don't find him ever starting a religion. He was part of the Jewish religion.

Now he could have said to her, well you Samaritans are doing it wrong, your religion's a false religion, ours is the true religion. And that would have been true, but not the point he wanted to make. He said, "Woman, I tell you that the day is coming and now is when they will not worship in Jerusalem or in this mountain, but those who worship God will worship in spirit and truth." He said, "God is a spirit, and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and truth."

Now he's saying neither religion is relevant. In fact, they're both going to pass away and they did. The Jewish temple and the Samaritan temple were both destroyed by the Romans within a generation of that time. So both religions died. Now they continued without their temples because religions die hard. The Jewish religion continued in an altered form by the rabbis and became Talmudism or Rabbinism, the following of the teachings of the rabbis instead of the temple system and all that that God had set up.

There's a Samaritan religion today also. I don't know much about it and its development, but obviously with the destruction of their holy place, they must have found a way to continue their religion. That's why I say people are incurably religious. Now sometimes it's just the priests and the powerful people that want to keep the religion going because that's their living and also in many cases that's a means of controlling people.

And so that's what happened to the movement of Christ. Jesus started a family. He brought people like prodigal sons back to their father into fellowship with the Father. That was his movement. And he told them, don't be like the Pharisees who like to wear long robes and be called father and rabbi. Don't go there. He says you're all children of God, you're all brothers, you have only one Father, you have only one teacher, Christ.

He said that, and in other words, beware of turning yourselves into a religion and having religious titles and religious offices and religious garb and stuff like that. He warned against that because that's the natural tendency. People, and especially very carnal and selfish people, tend to exploit religion to control simple-minded people and say this is what God requires of you and I'm one of the priests and I'm one of the leaders and I know what God says and you have to do what I say. Almost every religion has that feature, including the so-called Christian religion.

But Jesus didn't start a Christian religion, he started a Christian movement in which people worship God not necessarily religiously. I don't think it's wrong to go to church or to sing songs or say prayers or have places you do things and even rituals. I don't think it's wrong to do them, but that's not what Christianity is and it's not what Jesus established. People can add things like that to real Christian experience and possibly it'll bless them in some way. Or they can not add those things to real. Real Christian experience is when you're born again of the Spirit of God and you worship God in the spirit. He gives you his spirit, you're regenerated.

You're now one of his children, you relate to him. His spirit bears witness with your spirit that you're a child of God, Paul said. And you follow Jesus like a disciple does. He is your master, he's your king, he's your Lord. You can do that without any religious rituals to speak of. The only one that he commanded was baptism. So I mean if you lead someone to Christ, you should baptize them because that's obedience to him. People sometimes think that taking the Lord's Supper is another thing he commanded. I don't remember him commanding that. I remember him saying, "As often as you eat this, remember me." I don't remember him saying you must eat this in a certain number of times or frequency or anything like that. They were eating a Passover meal and he said, "Whenever you eat this, remember me."

So that's not exactly a command to do it, but I mean Christians have done it and that's fine, I don't have anything against that. What I'm saying is Jesus' instructions to disciples had very little to do with any rituals and mostly had to do with how to love your neighbor, how to be humble before God, to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly, to be faithful, to keep your word, to glorify God in everything you do, let your light shine before men so men will see your good works and glorify your Father. Paul said, "Whatever you do, whether you eat or drink, do all to the glory of God." Living for the glory of God is because you've been born again and you're joined with God and with Christ by a spiritual union that happened when you were regenerated and following the leading of the Holy Spirit. As many as are led by the Holy Spirit, they are the sons of God, Paul said. So this is what being a Christian is. Now you can add religion to it if it doesn't hurt you, but for many people I think it does hurt them. I think they begin to substitute the trappings of the religion for actual spiritual experience. And I think that's what happened over the generations, not to everybody but to enough people to make it a religion.

Our website's thenarrowpath.com, we have another half hour coming. Don't go away, I'll be right back.

(Promo for "When Shall These Things Be" series)

Steve Gregg: Welcome back to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we've got another half hour coming. Our lines are full again, so don't call at this moment, but if you want to call a little later in the hour, there may be an opportunity for you to get through when the lines are not as full as they are now. The number is 844-484-5737. And our next caller is John from Standish, Maine. Hi John, welcome.

John: Yes, how you doing? I'm wondering about during the tribulation period if people of the Old Testament will be with us during the 1000-year tribulation or will they be with us in heaven?

Steve Gregg: Well, the question is presupposing something which is different than what I presuppose. Many Christians, apparently yourself also, and many popular teachers say that there's a coming seven-year tribulation. And they believe that before that tribulation comes, there will be a rapture of the church that takes us away to heaven. Then while we're away, this tribulation happens for seven years on earth. At the end of that, Jesus and those who have been with him in heaven then come back. So the second coming occurs at the end of the seven-year tribulation, but the removal of the Christians comes before the seven-year tribulation. That's called dispensationalism, that system.

Now the Bible doesn't anywhere mention a seven-year tribulation. If you say, well is there going to be one? I don't know, maybe. There are many things the Bible doesn't mention. For example, the Bible nowhere mentions the election of President Trump or of Zoran Mamdani or any of those people. Lots of things happen that are not mentioned in Scripture. So maybe there will be. But the Bible tells us of none. And therefore there's not any biblical reason to believe in a seven-year tribulation.

Now Jesus did talk about a tribulation, so does the book of Revelation, though neither Jesus nor the book of Revelation ever mention seven years. The tribulation Jesus mentioned in Matthew 24:21, he said is going to take place in his own generation, or at the generation of his own disciples. He said that in Matthew 24:34. So that would not be a future tribulation, that would be one that took place in that generation. Revelation mentions the tribulation one time in Revelation 7:14. It does not mention how long the tribulation is. There's no place in the Bible that gives a length of the tribulation except I will say that in Revelation chapter 2, the church in Smyrna is told that they will suffer tribulation 10 days, which is probably not literal. Most scholars think it's not literal, but the point is it's the only tribulation in the Bible for which a length of time is attached to it. So there is a mention of a 10-day tribulation, but the tribulation, the great tribulation that's mentioned in Revelation 7:14 is not no length of time is given to it.

And as far as when it takes place, the writer of the book of Revelation in the opening chapters says, "These are things which must shortly take place." And blessed are those who read and do these things because he said, "The time is at hand." So the author said that the book of Revelation that he's now writing is about things that would happen shortly. Now this was written back in the first century, so it seems very unlikely that he's talking about something that is 2000 years later that hasn't even happened yet. So the idea that there's a future tribulation to my mind is not mentioned anywhere in Scripture. The only two places in the Bible that mention the tribulation seem to place it shortly after the time of the Bible being written. Jesus said it would happen in that generation, and when Revelation was written the author said it will happen shortly. I believe they're both talking about the same tribulation, and I believe that which happened in that generation was that horrendous tribulation and Holocaust that happened upon the Jews when the Romans came and wiped them out and destroyed their city and burned down their temple and took them into foreign countries where most of them have remained ever since. So that was the horrible tribulation that was coming in that generation. We don't know of any other, at least not biblically. There's no mention in the Bible of another one.

Now so your question is the Old Testament saints. I think that's what your question was about, the Old Testament saints. Will they be raptured and be in heaven during the tribulation, or will they be in the world in the tribulation? Well I'm not a dispensationalist anymore. I once was. But I would have said at that time that they will be raptured when we are. And I believed at that time in a seven-year tribulation at the end of the world and in a pre-tribulational rapture. I did believe that until I studied the Bible. I mean I was taught that and I just repeated it like most people do because their teachers think that's you're supposed to do that just because they said so. Anyway I can't find anything in the Bible about that.

But I do believe that Jesus said in John 5 and verse 28 and 29, "Do not marvel at this, for the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear the voice of the Son of Man and those who hear shall come forth, those who've done good to the resurrection of life and those who've done evil to the resurrection of condemnation." So he says there's an hour coming in the future where everyone who's in the grave, that would be the Old Testament saints, Christian saints, non-Christian saints of all times, everyone in the graves, everyone who's been buried prior to that moment will hear his voice and come forth and they'll be separated into the resurrection of life or the resurrection of condemnation. In John chapter 6, the very next chapter, Jesus said four times that he will raise his people up on the last day.

So that hour when everyone will come out of the grave is what Jesus also referred to as the last day. Now again if Jesus thought there was going to be a rapture and then a tribulation and then a second coming and then a millennium and then the end of the world, then it would be very inappropriate for him to speak so inaccurately to say that this resurrection and rapture is going to happen on the last day, when indeed there's a thousand and seven years more of days after that. That's not the last day by any definition. So I believe the Old Testament saints will be raised and so will the New Testament saints and you and me when Jesus comes back on the last day, and all people would be raised at the time according to John 5:28 and 29.

John: Okie dokie. Thank you very much.

Steve Gregg: Thank you, John. Good talking to you. All right, bye now. Let's talk to Dennis in Paso Robles, California. Hi Dennis, welcome.

Dennis: Hello. Have you heard of Ethan Barr?

Steve Gregg: Who?

Dennis: Ethan Barr.

Steve Gregg: I don't think so.

Dennis: He's written a book, just got it, called "Hell: Uncover the True Meaning of Hell by Studying it in its Original Context." Okay. A friend of mine recommended it and it sounds like you guys need to talk to each other.

Steve Gregg: Why? Who is he? What does he teach?

Dennis: Well, he teaches some of these alternative views of hell that you say were common in the first couple centuries. Yeah. You know, he's a completed Jew, so he knows the Hebrew and everything.

Steve Gregg: So where does he come down on it? What does he believe to hell is?

Dennis: I haven't read the book yet, I just got it. Okay. But it's got a good description on the back of it, I just thought for sure you might have heard of him.

Steve Gregg: Well, you said that we should talk to each other. I don't know that I need to talk to him. I've read several dozen books on hell from every position. I don't know if he has a fourth view. I certainly know all the arguments for all the three views that are out there.

Dennis: Well, I think he probably agrees with you and you'd probably agree with him and him with you.

Steve Gregg: Well, I don't know, because I don't know what my view of hell is. I don't take a view. I'm aware that there are...

Dennis: That upset me pretty much when after I read your book, you come out of as agnostic when we're looking for direction.

Steve Gregg: Well, we better not look beyond the Bible for direction. That's the problem. You know, we're talking about something that no man knows because it happens to people on the last day that hasn't come yet. All we know is what the Bible says. And since the Bible says, frankly, very little, we can't get as much, what shall we say, detailed information about it from the Bible as our curiosity could require. And therefore we either have to make up stuff or listen to people who have their own made-up stuff and add that to what's in the Bible, or we have to just kind of tell our curiosity to calm down.

Dennis: Well, it seems to me that this is a pretty critical that we know exactly what God's... why?

Steve Gregg: Yeah, why would it matter what hell is like? In other words, of the three views of hell, none of them would, if I chose to believe any one of them and exclude the other two, nothing about that doing so would change my life. I mean, how is it important for you to know what hell is? I don't plan to go there.

Dennis: Well, if what the Christian church accepts primarily, the eternal conscious suffering...

Steve Gregg: They do now. They didn't in the early church. Yeah.

Dennis: I don't believe that anybody really believes that. Otherwise, we wouldn't be doing anything except confronting people about their possible future.

Steve Gregg: Exactly. I mentioned that in my book. Yeah, I mentioned that in my book that if people who say they believe in eternal conscious torment really did, they'd have to be shaking everyone they meet and say, "Get saved, get saved, you're going to be burning forever and ever and ever." And the fact that people don't do that means they don't really believe it.

I shouldn't say that. I need to correct myself there. It doesn't mean they don't believe it. It means either that they don't believe it, or that they do believe it but don't feel they can do that much about it because they've learned realistically that they can't shake people up and make them go to heaven. Or they don't care. In other words, they've come to... and that's what kind of that view kind of makes you do. You either have to not believe it, or you have to come place where you don't care as much as you should about it. Because if you don't adopt a measure of apathy, you'll go crazy.

I mean, if every person you know who's not a Christian, you looked at them and said, "You know, a million years from now if they don't change, they'll be burning in hell and it's going to be millions and millions and millions of years and it'll never end and they'll be screaming out in pain and so forth and they'll just never get... if you really looked at everyone and believed that about them, you're either going to be going insane or adopt a measure of apathy and say, "Well, okay, *que sera sera*, you know, that's what's going to happen to them."

Yeah, I mean that's true. I mean, and that's why kind of that that view kind of forces us to adopt a measure of apathy. Not total apathy, but enough to say, "Well, okay, if I don't lead him to Christ, it's no skin off my nose, you know, I mean they're going to be burning hell forever and ever and ever." But I believe that God does care about everybody and I think it's a major concern of his, which is why he had Jesus come and die for everybody. He's majorly concerned about people's souls. And I don't think we're very much like him if we adopt a quasi-apathy about the subject just so we can emotionally survive.

And that's why I believe one of the other views, I mean that's not the only reason but that is a reason that supports biblical reasons for accepting one or both of the other views. Both of the other views you can live with because, I mean first of all both of them have more scripture on their side than the traditional view does. And secondly, because if somebody's going to be suffering temporarily until they've been punished adequately and then they're going to be snuffed and they don't suffer anymore, that's not happy but it's not crazy making.

You know, I mean it's like if your dog gets rabies and you can't fix it, you gotta put it down. That's sad, it's really sad if you love your dog. But it's not crazy making. It doesn't make you go crazy the rest of your life to think my dog is being tormented forever and ever and ever. You realize the dog's gone, it's lived its life, its time is gone on and the dog's not suffering now. I mean that's what the annihilation view would do and that's healthier and frankly more biblical than the traditional view.

And then of course the universal reconciliation view, it has its scriptures too, far more than most people think. And it also is, it won't make you crazy to believe it because you'll believe that the people who you try but cannot force to become Christians, they will go to hell and they will suffer, but it won't be forever and ever and ever. You know, in all likelihood a million years from now you won't have to realize that they're down there suffering still in all likelihood if you hold that view, they would have repented sooner.

Dennis: So the question would be then why evangelize?

Steve Gregg: Oh that's not a question to me. You evangelize because God has the right to get what he paid for. What he paid for was a people. The Bible says in Titus chapter 2 that he died to redeem for himself a people of his own who were zealous for good works. You know, if we think that the only purpose of salvation is to go to heaven, then we've only read about four or five verses in the Bible and missed the rest.

The Bible is about a people of God whom God saves to live for him, to glorify him, to carry out his work, to promote justice and righteousness as Israel was told to do and didn't. And Jesus said, well God's taken that project away from Israel and given it to a nation that will bring forth the fruit of righteousness and justice. So God has some plan for this world. Eventually the Bible says the knowledge of the glory of the Lord will fill the earth like the waters cover the sea. That's a pretty major plan for this world. And Jesus is going to inherit this earth. So are we, Jesus said. The meek shall inherit the earth, Jesus will inherit the nations.

So you know if we think oh, Christianity is about getting people to heaven, well that's kind of a side point of Christianity. It's mentioned maybe half a dozen times, going to heaven. Maybe not as many as a half a dozen, it could be a dozen, I don't know, but it's relatively few times the Bible makes any reference to going to heaven when you die. There's no mention of it in the Old Testament, which is three-quarters of the Bible. And the New Testament hardly has anything about it either.

There's stuff in there, we know there's a heaven, but heaven is not our eternal destiny. Heaven is where we go when we die until Jesus comes back and brings us with him and raises our bodies to live with him on the new earth. So again, heaven is there, it's a place where Christians go when they die, but we don't live just to die, we live to do the will of God.

Dennis: So that would be Sheol then, heaven would be Sheol?

Steve Gregg: No, Sheol is used in the Old Testament to refer to the place where all the dead go, good and bad. And then in Jesus' day, the Greek word Hades, which was used in place of the Hebrew word Sheol, had picked up the Greek ideas of two compartments, one for the righteous, one for the wicked. But Christians believe generally speaking, I can't say all Christians believe the same thing, but most Christians believe that when Jesus rose from the dead, those who had gone to Sheol and were righteous by faith, like Abraham, that they were raised with him and not physically but they were, their souls were taken with him up into heaven and that's where they are now and that's where we go when we die if we're followers of Christ. But it's not an eternal home, it's not even Christ's eternal home. We're going to be with Jesus forever and when he leaves heaven and comes here, we're going to leave heaven and come here too.

Dennis: That would be paradise.

Steve Gregg: Yeah, Paul refers to it as paradise in 2nd Corinthians 12. Jesus said to the thief on the cross, "I'll see you in paradise." Anyway, I've got a lot of people waiting but God bless you Dennis, appreciate you calling. Bye now. All right, let's see here, Leif in Fargo, North Dakota, welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Leif: Hey Steve, thanks for taking my call. Back to the coming of the Son of Man, I just had a question about Matthew chapter 10 verse 23. I know you've given lectures on I think it's more of the Olivet Discourse, but as it relates to that verse specifically, I think you kind of take the position that the coming of the Son of Man refers to kind of a judgment at 70 AD that will occur.

Steve Gregg: That is one of two views.

Leif: Okay, well my question was I thought you referenced some Old Testament scriptures where the coming of God referred to a judgment on a nation or a people, and I could not for the life of me find those references and apologize for not digging deeper but I thought I would call and ask.

Steve Gregg: Yeah, well Isaiah 19:1 is one of them and it's talking about the Assyrians conquering Egypt which happened in the 7th century BC and the wording of the passage says the Lord comes on a swift cloud. It says the Lord rides on a swift cloud and will come into Egypt. Now it's really referring to Assyrian armies coming into Egypt at God's behest. God is sending the Assyrians to destroy and conquer Egypt, but it's spoken very typically in Scripture, very commonplace, to say that's God coming because the idea is that God is the one who is bringing this judgment, it's as if he's coming himself but he's sending agents who are in that case the Assyrian armies.

In Micah chapter 1, we have for example a prediction that the Assyrians are going to come against Israel, and it says in verse 3, "For behold the Lord is coming out of his place, he will come down and tread the high places of the land, the mountains will melt under him and the valleys will split like wax before the fire, like waters poured out down a steep place. All this is for the transgression of Jacob and for the sins of the house of Israel." Now he's saying that Israel and Jacob, they're going to be judged, and this happened, the Assyrians came and did this, but he calls it God coming out of his place, God is treading down the land and so forth.

This is poetic language and virtually all the prophets wrote in poetic language, in fact I'm not sure if I know of an exception. Some of them wrote almost entirely in poetry and some only used it sparingly, but for the most part prophecy is poetry and poetry is known for using metaphors, hyperboles, similes, and you know other forms of speech for the sake of impression. You know, it's impressionistic, it's not literal. And any real responsible Hebrew Old Testament scholar knows that. I mean they've read the prophets, you know they're almost entirely in poetry.

So yeah, it is true that the coming of an army at the behest of God is commonly referred to as God coming. And so when Jesus talks about when the Son of Man comes, there are times when he's referring to the judgment of Jerusalem by the Romans. I believe that that is the case in Matthew 24:30 and 31. Now as far as Matthew 10:23, Jesus was sending out the disciples two by two to preach in various villages, and he said don't waste time, if they reject you in one city just don't stay there, just dump the dust off your feet and go on to the next city. He says, "Because assuredly I say to you, you will not have gone through all the cities of Israel before the Son of Man comes."

Now the Son of Man coming, what does that mean? To my mind it could mean one of two things. It doesn't mean the end of the world coming, though there will be such a coming, that's not referring to that here because they would have plenty of time to go to all the villages of Israel before that. In fact in their lifetimes they could have visited all the villages of Israel if they were determined to do it. But the time would come within their lifetimes that the Romans would destroy the whole area. Those villages of Israel would be depopulated and ruined. You won't have any opportunity to reach them then. So don't dilly-dally, go to as many as you can because you won't have reached all of them before your opportunity ends, namely the destruction of those villages when the Romans come, and he's referring to that as the Son of Man coming, namely in judgment.

Now that's one possibility. It's also possible it's much less difficult than that. It's possible he means, "Okay, this is a short-term outreach, guys. We have a rendezvous to meet up on such and such a date." Now we don't read how long this outreach went, but they certainly must have before leaving had a plan to get together again at some point. There must have been a date and a time when they would finish up this particular outreach, get back together, and go back to the normal business that they were doing before. So this was a short-term outreach. Anything that's short-term, you send these people out. Now they don't have cell phones so they can't contact each other anywhere, they have to have a plan before they leave. We're going to re-meet up at such and such a date at such and such a place. Now that information is not given to us, but it would certainly have been communicated to them. And when he says, "Till the Son of Man comes," he could be saying, "To the rendezvous that we have. You're going to come there, I'm going to come there, we're all going to come together and meet up again." And therefore get as much done as you can because we have limited time before we're going to meet up again and that'll be the end of this outreach. When the Son of Man comes, although we want to make it something much more dramatic, the words can simply mean, "Till I come to the point where we're going to be meeting again. I'm going to meet you and want you to meet me there."

Now I don't think that's what he's saying here. I mean if a person wished to say that's what he was saying, no one could prove them wrong. There's nothing in the statement that would be impossible to be its meaning, but I myself lean toward the 70 AD interpretation of that particular statement.

Leif: Well especially because it's verse 16 that he kind of shifts into this almost eschatological saying of persecution for the disciples, and it kind of shifts gears talking about that local mission that he's going to put them on and then shifts gears a little bit. Yeah, I would agree, that language kind of shifts the topic a little bit to kind of an overall prophecy towards the end of that.

Steve Gregg: Yeah, I don't see him talking about the end of the world anywhere in the passage, but he definitely does talk about things that will happen after Pentecost. After Pentecost when they go out to the Gentiles and so forth, he's talking to them on the occasion of sending them out on a short-term ministry outreach which may have lasted a few weeks or a few months, we don't know, but it wasn't, it didn't last years. And yet while he's giving them instructions, he also points out that they're going to go to the Gentiles and all the nations and so forth. Clearly these are referring to their mission in those verses after Pentecost. So it's ambiguous, I mean I could take it either way. I don't have any stake in it. I appreciate your call. I apologize to those several people waiting to go on that we didn't have time for. We'll be on again Monday Lord willing and you can call then and I'd love to talk to you. You've been listening to the Narrow Path. We are listener supported. If you want to help us out you can go to our website thenarrowpath.com and you'll see how you can donate, or just take everything you want for free. Have a good weekend.