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. We take your calls if you have questions about the Bible so that you can raise those for conversation, and perhaps we can answer them if we're lucky and the question is something I know something about. I'll do my best to answer it, but if you think that I don't do a good job answering your questions and you feel that some of the questions that have been answered here have been answered wrongly, feel free to call in and correct it because there's no reason for a bad answer to go out there uncorrected.

You can call to balance comment if you want to or to ask a question. We've been doing this daily for 29 years now. This program's been on, so I've heard most of the questions. There are still some I don't know how to answer, but I've certainly been exposed to the questions most people have on their minds and your question is welcome here. Do not be reluctant to call in on the thought that you feel that you've got a stupid question. I don't think there's a stupid question if it's one that you're really seriously trying to find an answer to. I don't think it's stupid to ask a question, and in fact, it would be rather less intelligent to have a question, have the opportunity to ask it, and not do so. Our number to call if you'd like to be on the program is 844-484-5737.

We've got a couple of calls right at the top, both from Denver, Colorado. This is Michael in Denver. Welcome to the Narrow Path, Michael.

Michael: Hey Steve, thank you so much for taking my call and it's so good to speak with you again. How are you?

Steve Gregg: Fine, thanks.

Michael: I'll get to my question. John 19:39 talks about Nicodemus coming at midnight to visit Jesus by night. At no point in scripture is it really specific as to the reason for the timing. Some have said that the reason that Nicodemus comes at night is because it was harder to be discovered that he was going to be visiting Jesus if he went by night, a fear of association type of thing. Do you have any thoughts on specifically why Nicodemus chose to visit Jesus by night? Is there anything in the Bible that lends itself as a reason for Nicodemus visiting during the night as opposed to the day?

Steve Gregg: It's true that most people when they teach about John 3—I'm not sure what reference it was you gave, but you're talking about John chapter 3—mention that Nicodemus came by night and they suggest the possibility that he wanted to make a private inquiry without his companions knowing he was doing so. He was a member of the High Court of Israel, the Sanhedrin. Since the Sanhedrin were hostile toward Jesus, Nicodemus being an exception to that wanted to do his own inquiries without letting people know, so he came in the dark.

On the other hand, the Bible does not suggest that. It just says it was night. It may be because he'd had a long daytime session in court, which was his daily job, and the sun had gone down, so by the time he had a chance to visit Jesus, it was that night. There's no suggestion of him trying to be secretive about it. On the other hand, we do have him mentioned a couple of other places in John. One is in John chapter 7 where he seems to speak up for Christ favorably, and he gets shot down, but he does so in a rather meek way. The Pharisees are criticizing Jesus and he just speaks up and says, "Does our law condemn a man without hearing him first and seeing what he says?"

They didn't like that. That was at the end of John 7. He speaks up, but they shut him down and he doesn't speak up any further, so he kind of speaks in a kind of sheepish way to counteract their universal criticism of Jesus, but he doesn't stand up robustly and say, "I think this guy's more impressive than you guys think." Then he's mentioned again in chapter 19 where he and Joseph of Arimathea come and collect Jesus' body once Jesus is dead and give him a decent burial. That's all we know about him. We have no other information about him.

You could conclude perhaps that Nicodemus did try to stay keep his visit to Jesus on the down-low, but when he did come to Jesus, his opening words were in John 3: "Master, we know you're a teacher sent from God because no one could do these mighty works that you're doing," referring to miracles, "unless God was with him." The fact that Nicodemus said, "Master, we know," that's a plural. "We know that you're a teacher come from God" suggests that he's not just coming on his own behalf. There are others, perhaps others in the Sanhedrin, maybe like Joseph of Arimathea, who was also a Sanhedrist. At least those two in the Sanhedrin were very curious about Jesus and at the end of his life favorable toward him enough to give him a decent and honorable burial.

There may have been others likeminded with them. It seemed like he was simply doing the kind of investigation that the Sanhedrin might approve of just because they'd be curious to know those things too. I don't really know. We don't have enough information to know if Nicodemus was trying to be secretive by coming at night. The fact that he came at night doesn't tell us the answer to that because other reasons might exist. It's possible that Jesus had so many crowds around him during the daytime that it was hard to get to him. In the evening when the crowds had gone home to eat their dinners, maybe Nicodemus saw that as the opportune time to get to him and talk to him. There are many possible explanations why it was at night. I realize preachers almost always simply assume it's because he wanted to do it under the cloak of darkness, which is one possible explanation. We just have no basis for saying that it is so.

Thank you for your call. Another Denver caller, Dwight from Denver, Colorado. Welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Dwight: God himself originally created the nation of Israel, but it appears that in 1948, Israel was made a nation totally by men. Is modern-day Israel illegitimate?

Steve Gregg: Is any nation today illegitimate? I don't know. We have a certain geopolitical map that exists at this present moment. It's different than what we had in the 30s, and that was different than existed at the turn of the century and so forth. Basically, countries shift, they shift their borders, there's conquests, one country is swallowed by another. When I was young, the Soviet Union controlled most of Eastern Europe, but the countries on the map changed since then in my lifetime. Certainly part of the geopolitical map is there's a lot of countries in particular places including one called Israel in the Middle East, roughly where the old nation of Israel used to be.

Are they legitimate or not? I guess we'd have to ask what do we mean by legitimate? Is America legitimate? I think we are. I think America exists and is doing a lot of good. I think it's a good thing for the world that America exists, but frankly, we exist partly because people from Europe came over here and there were indigenous people that we conquered and brought them under our control and set up our own government here. One might argue, especially if they were one of those indigenous people or if they're simply sympathetic to them, that this is their country, not ours, and we're not legitimate here. Likewise, Mexico feels that way about parts of Texas and California.

The present geographical map, political map, exists simply as a result of various treaties and wars and countries taking over other countries. Of course, the story of America is that way. The story of Israel is that way. The story of many countries is that way. Does that mean that if a country had such a beginning as that, it's not a legitimate country? I'm not really sure that it does because frankly, the people that we took this country from, before we got here, they were taking territory from each other. The different indigenous tribes fought wars over territory and how do you take any particular piece of territory that we took from one of the tribes and say it belongs to that tribe now when in fact they took it from another tribe and they had taken it from a previous tribe?

We can't really go back and say who was there first, let's give it back to them. Too many things have changed, history moves forward, and that's just not the way geopolitics is done. Now, we could say all of this is bad, none of these nations are legitimate, or we could say God has allowed history to take its course and in so far as these countries are operating as entities, they have the right to do so until somebody else takes them over. By those terms, I'd have to say the nation of Israel is as legitimate as America or any other country, modern country.

However, if you're saying, does Israel have a divine mandate to exist? That's a different thing. If you ask me, does America have a divine mandate to exist? I wouldn't be able to say that it does, at least the Bible doesn't say that it does. I think America's a legitimate nation and it's a very fortunate nation and one that the world is fortunate to have, but whether we have some kind of divine mandate to own this territory perpetually, I don't know of any such thing that I could affirm about that, nor about Israel. Israel did have a divine mandate back in the days of Joshua when they conquered the land the first time. They were driven out of the land by God no less. It was a judgment of God when they were driven out into Babylon for 70 years.

Then God did reestablish them, fulfilling all the promises he said. Before he fulfilled those, he had predicted he's going to take them into Babylon and he's going to bring them back. He did fulfill that. Then of course they disobeyed him again enough that he allowed them to be destroyed in 70 AD and they have never come back as the nation they were before that. There's people there, a lot of them probably are descended if you go back far enough from some of these people who lost the land in 70 AD, but not all of them are. What makes them have a divine mandate? I don't know of any.

All I can say is I'm not here to say the nation of Israel isn't legitimate, and or even that I'm against them. I would just say I don't see anything in the Christian scriptures that would tell me that any nation, including Israel, has a divine mandate. The main thing that makes it really questionable or makes it obvious that what's going on there now is not what existed in the Bible is that Israel in the Bible was a nation established upon a covenant with God at Mount Sinai. The nation became a nation when God made that covenant with them and he told them that if they keep that covenant, they will be his nation. They will be a kingdom of priests.

But he said if they don't, he'll delight to destroy them as he delighted to build them up. Those are the terms he uses. And he did destroy them when they, especially as a result of what happened to Jesus there, but also because of their other violations of the covenant. Therefore he destroyed them. If he wants to restore them, what would that restoration look like? There was never a day in the life of Israel, the nation, when they did not have at their center the Tabernacle or the Temple, because they were a nation established by God for the worship of God and for no other purpose—also to spread the worship of God to the rest of the Gentiles. But the point here is there's no temple there now. There hasn't been one since it was destroyed in 70 AD.

If we think of Israel in biblical terms, we're thinking of a nation that has God at their center and the worship of God at their center and a shrine standing at their center that defines their whole purpose for existence. Today there is no such nation. There's no nation that has God as their center. They have no temple. A very large percentage of the people of Israel, including the Jews in Israel, just don't have any religious interest at all. A lot of them are atheists. The nation is not analogous to the nation in the Bible as far as I can tell. It's just another secular political nation, no more godly than any other and probably not more wicked than others. I'm not trying to bash Israel. I'm not sad that Israel exists necessarily, although I'm sad for some of the things that have happened. I'm sad for what has done to the Palestinians and things like that. But I don't know of any nation that's existed for very long that didn't have some group that they did unfair things to. Sadly, that's what human history is. I'm not going to take Israel to task and say, "Listen, you don't deserve to exist." If Israel does horrible things, let's say they did genocide or something like that, I'd certainly be critical of that, but I'd also be critical of the United States if they did that.

We who are Christians judge nations by their behavior, not by some kind of mystical status that we imagine them to have, which the Bible doesn't make any mention of. That would be how I look at Israel today. Thanks, Dwight. God bless. Joshua from Houston, Texas. Welcome.

Joshua: Yes, my question is how do you witness to Jehovah's Witnesses? I've noticed that if you're too nice, the conversation does not accomplish very much, and other times if you challenge them too much, then they shut down the conversation and refuse to talk to you. Do you have any tips?

Steve Gregg: The question is how do you witness to anybody? There's going to be two kinds of people, maybe more than two, but at least somewhere on the continuum, there's going to be two poles. There's going to be at one end people who really want to know the truth, which means they know that if their views are incorrect, they need to be corrected. Anyone who loves the truth actually wants to be corrected if they are wrong because they don't want to believe falsehood. They love truth. At one end of the spectrum of humans, there's those, and then at the other end, there are those who don't care a bit about truth, they just like the status quo.

Something about the people at that end, they might be motivated by the desire to keep on good terms with their friends and associates and family, and they realize if they change their mind, they'll lose those things. There might be a financial interest, or there might just be a total apathy about the truth and a laziness of mind that says, "Listen, this is what I believe, I'm going to stay here." All people fall somewhere in their attitude between those two poles. Jehovah's Witnesses would be on the continuum somewhere there too. Those who love truth, to the degree that they do, are worth spending the time of trying to share the truth with them. Those who couldn't care less about the truth and they just want to keep things as they are in their world and not change their minds about things, those are the ones I think Jesus said don't waste your time with. Don't cast your pearls before swine, don't give what is holy to dogs. They can't appreciate it, they don't want it, they'll just be hostile to you. They'll see you as a threat because you're disturbing their complacency.

I say the same thing about Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormons or atheists or my neighbor or whatever. If they want to talk about the truth, they want to learn the truth, I'll stay up all night with them. If they don't want the truth, then I don't want to waste any more time with them than I have to, because wasting time, time is at a premium at my age. When I was young, I would have spent a long time working on someone who didn't seem to be very receptive, but I'm an old man now. I don't have many years left, so I'm not going to waste much time with people who are apathetic.

The way I see it is that no one can come to Christ unless the Holy Spirit is convicting them and God is seeking to draw them. There's people all over the world who are in that state, that God is drawing them. They know they have a deficiency, they know they need something, they want to find out who God is, they need meaning in their life and they're willing to change if they can discover what it is. Those are the kind of people that likely God is drawing them and they can be won. There are other people that God is not drawing, at least not in the same degree or the same way. Let me just say this, those that God is not currently drawing might be drawn at another time.

Maybe he drew them earlier and they hardened their hearts and he won't draw them anymore, or maybe sometime in the future, they'll be more winnable, they'll be more God'll be drawing them. When you're talking to someone, you've got to talk to them in the state they're in right now. If God is not drawing them and they just want to argue and they don't care about truth, they just care about winning the argument for whatever reason, I wouldn't take too much time with them. Maybe they'll be hungrier later on. Maybe they have to become more disillusioned with the views they already have.

In Jehovah's Witnesses, when they come to your door, they're very—their organization, more than many, really brainwashes them. They're not allowed to read literature about religion that isn't published by their own organization. They're not encouraged to talk to people about religion very long once they find out that those people are not winnable. I've had them come to my house and usually they talk for a couple hours and they find out they're getting nowhere with me, so they leave. I will say this, when two Jehovah's Witnesses come to your door, which is usually the way it is, often one is the older, more established person in the organization, and the other's a neophyte just learning and kind of being mentored.

I have found sometimes in discussing things with them for an hour or two, the younger one, who's not really has his roots deep in the organization yet, is curious and interested in hearing more of what I have to say, while the older one is trying to deflect everything and trying to dissuade the younger one from paying attention. In other words, you may find that one of them is totally unwinnable and the other is perhaps interested. You just have to use your judgment. When you're witnessing to someone, you really need to be led by the Spirit and also use your common sense.

If someone is receptive at any level, keep going with them until they're not. If someone you can tell right away you're not getting through, their resistance is like a brick wall, I'd say politely say you've got some better things to do with your time and wish them well and go on. Don't wish them well in their evangelism, but you can love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so you don't have to be mean to them. But the thing is that you need to be wise. Jesus said you have to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves. You just use wisdom and decide how to get through these people.

If you're asking me to give you some choice lines of argument to use with them, there are no choice lines of argument to win somebody who doesn't want to hear the truth. They'll deflect everything no matter how good it is. I've definitely pointed out some severe problems with their beliefs to their face and point out what the scripture says contrary to it and it just like water off a duck's back with them. On the other hand, if someone's receptive, like I said, don't give up on them until they give up on you, and they probably will. Probably if you don't move the right direction in their estimation, and especially if the younger partner is beginning to be corrupted by you, the older one will probably draw them away and not let them come back.

You do what you can do. When it comes to witnessing to people, I never package a gospel presentation. I'm just not one of those who believes in that. Jesus didn't, Paul didn't, I don't. There are gospel presentation packages you can learn, there's the four spiritual laws, there's the way of the master techniques of Ray Comfort, there's others, there's the evangelism explosion method. If something like that works in some cases, then use it. But the truth is, you want to not package an advertisement for Jesus. You want to relate with people where they're at and hopefully be the voice of God speaking to their present need if you can discern what that is. That's what I would recommend. That's whether you're dealing with Jehovah's Witnesses or anybody else. They're just people. They happen to have pretty deep indoctrination in some cases, which makes them not receptive. That something that could be said of everybody who's an unbeliever at some place.

Anyway, that's all I have to say about that. I need to take a break. We have another half hour coming, so don't go away. You're listening to the Narrow Path. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. Lots of resources there, all free, nothing for sale. We are listener-supported though. You can donate there if you wish. thenarrowpath.com. I'll be back in 30 seconds, so don't go away. We have another half hour on the air.

Welcome back to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we're on the air live. I would normally give the phone number but our lines are full so I won't bother because then you'll just be frustrated getting a busy signal. However, if lines are opening up, I will give the number out and you can reach us today. We've got a lot of people waiting, but Holly in Pine Grove, California is next. You're on the air, Holly. Thanks for calling.

Holly: Hi Steve, thanks for taking my call again. I have a question. In the Old Testament and New, God has many names or attributes like "the healer", that type of stuff. I'm not sure if you've heard, you probably have, people are now saying, or for a couple years now, that in order for you to be heard by God and/or Jesus, you have to call him by Yahshua or Yeshua in order to be heard. I have a girlfriend who is very adamant about this, and just confusing that it used to be an "I" and now it's a "J" and "J" didn't even come into existence for many many years after that whole thing. Just want some clarity on that for my own personal well-being.

Steve Gregg: There is a movement, it's really part of the whole Messianic Jewish or Torah observant movement, that's called the "Sacred Names" movement and they basically think that you need to call God by his name pronounced the way that people pronounced it in Israel who spoke Hebrew. There is no "J" in the Hebrew language. Actually, the Hebrew and the Greek really don't have "J" in them. It's the English language that introduced that sound. Basically the letter "Y" stands where we would put "J". Older translations like the King James took what's called the tetragrammaton, the four consonants that make up the name of God in the Old Testament, and they stretched them out adding vowels to them and pronounced it "Jehovah" with a "J" sound at the beginning.

More commonly, Hebrew scholars would endorse a pronunciation more like "Yahweh", which you hear that much more often now by those who are trying to be authentic. But then there's these other things, "Yahshua" or "Yeshua". Of course Yeshua is the name Joshua in Hebrew, or Jesus. People are saying we need to pronounce it the way they did. I say, "Why?" Why? Are we Hebrew speaking people? They didn't have a "J" in their language, we do. Does that mean we have to speak their language? I don't speak Hebrew in other respects. I can't read the Hebrew scriptures, so what is it that compels me to use the Hebrew pronunciation?

My own name, Stephen, would be pronounced differently in Germany where it would be "Stefan", and in Spain it would be "Esteban". Same name, different nation, different language using it. If I were living in one of those countries and they pronounced my name the way that their language would do it, I can't think of any reason to be offended by it. Of course I'm not a very easily offended fellow, but I can't imagine why anyone would be offended by such a thing. Although apparently your friend thinks that God is offended if people don't know how to pronounce his name right, then he won't listen to them.

People often create God's character in their mind in the image of their own character. In fact, it's the commonest thing in the world. If you're a very generous-hearted person, you're more likely to see God's generosity as his leading feature. If you're more of a law-and-order kind of person, you're more likely to see God's justice feature more in his character. If you're a very critical person and you criticize people who do things the way you don't want them done, then you probably think of God as that kind of a critical person. "Listen, spell my name, say my name right or don't talk to me at all." If I met a human like that, I'd think, "What a jerk."

I don't think God's a jerk. I think God is a God of love. I think God wants all to be saved. I think God is reaching out to everybody and the vast majority of people, even Christians, could not tell you how to pronounce the name of God in Hebrew, nor do they need to. The reason I say nor do they need to is because the Apostles didn't as far as we know. At least when they wrote they didn't because they wrote in Greek. Even the words of Jesus, which were probably spoken in Aramaic, which is very close to Hebrew, and his name was probably pronounced Yeshua by his friends and family, but when the Gospels were written, we would like to think under the influence of the Holy Spirit, the Apostles didn't use the Hebrew names.

They didn't use Hebrew words at all. They wrote the whole thing in Greek. They translated Jesus' words into Greek, they translated his name into Greek, "Iesous" is how they put it in the Greek. If the Apostles felt the liberty to give the names in their Greek forms, and by the way they do that too, like Elijah is in the Greek kind of similar to that, but Elisha is very different, like "Eliseus" or something like that, or "Eliseus". Zechariah, which occurs a lot in the Old Testament because there's about 30 different Zechariahs in the Old Testament, in the New Testament becomes "Zacharias". That's the Greek form of it.

In other words, the writers of scripture, the writers of the New Testament, did not have any particular sensitivity about a need to use the original forms of the Hebrew names, including God's. In fact, even the Jews before the time of Christ who translated the Septuagint—these were 70 Jewish scholars in Alexandria, Egypt about 275 years before Christ—they took the whole Hebrew scriptures, translated into Greek, and where the name of God, where Yahweh was found, or however you should pronounce it, they didn't retain it in Hebrew, in fact they put in the word "Kyrios". They used the word "Kyrios" which means "Lord", and that's how the term "Lord" came to substitute for the divine name even in the New Testament because the New Testament writers read the Septuagint and quoted the Septuagint and spoke like the Septuagint in Greek, at least they wrote like it.

So even the name of God in scripture, in the New Testament, and even in the Old Testament that the Jews had come to use before Christ's time, they hadn't retained it and they didn't feel it was wrong. Now, we could argue the Jews in Alexandria were apostate and had no business rendering the name of God as "Lord" and removing the divine name, but we'd have to implicate the Apostles too of Christ because they did the same thing consistently. Whenever they quoted the Old Testament scriptures where the name Yahweh was found, they simply used the word "Kyrios" in the New Testament, Greek.

In other words, there's no obvious reason why anyone should be anal about everybody pronouncing their name correctly, and certainly there's no reason for God to be so thin-skinned about that. He's looking at people's hearts, not at their articulation. Likewise, since the Apostles themselves did not maintain the use of that divine name in writing the Gospels and writing the Epistles, I have a feeling that those people who are so bent on making everyone use the right pronunciation are in a different mindset than anyone in the Bible and they're certainly of a different mindset than me. I'd say they're making trouble, they're trying to divide the body of Christ over something that God couldn't care less about as near as we can tell. If he could, the Apostles missed it by a mile, but Jesus chose the Apostles because he believed they'd do a good job and I believe they did. Anyway, your friend is in a cultic kind of a fringe movement.

Holly: Thank you.

Steve Gregg: All right, Holly. Thanks for your call. Let's talk to Chet from Lake Mary, Florida. Hi Chet, welcome to the Narrow Path.

Chet: I have a question on women in leadership. I read recently that the Southern Baptist Convention president is proposing a resolution to ban women in ministry. So, I think they're quoting 1 Timothy chapter 2 and other scriptures. But don't you believe that the Holy Spirit can use anyone even in the five-fold ministry?

Steve Gregg: I don't know what the Baptists are doing. If they're banning women from leadership, my suspicion is what they have in mind is pastoral ministry. As far as I know, women in pastoral ministry is the only thing that's ever been controversial because almost all Christians have recognized that women can be missionaries, for example. Maybe some would insist that they be alongside their husbands, but that has never really been articulated as a value because the Bible doesn't. There are famous missionaries to China and other places that were women, single women, who went and did mighty works for God and I think of Elizabeth Elliot, who although she had been married, her husband was dead, killed by the Indians in Ecuador and she went down there with her daughter as a missionary to evangelize them and won the tribe over.

Everyone congratulates her. I don't know of anyone saying, "Well, she shouldn't be a missionary, she's a woman." If there are people taking that view, first they have no biblical basis, and second, I've never met them. Women in ministry in my mind has never been a controversy. Women in the pastorate, that is women elders and pastors in the local church ministry, that is controversial and has reason to be because first of all, it does seem to be the only ministry we know of in the Bible that women are excluded from. And yet they are.

Paul had associates in ministry who were women. There were women that Jesus felt very highly of, thought very highly of, that traveled around with his team. Paul speaks of Phoebe and others as partners of a sort and servants in the ministry with him. Paul never suggested that women can't be in ministry, but when he was describing the role of the elder, which would be in our mind the pastor, he said that he wanted no women in that role. That wasn't the place for women, and he said that he wanted them to be the husband of one wife, that'd have to be a guy, who rules his house well and thereby demonstrates that he's capable of being a leader in the church.

He felt that a leader in the church had to be vetted by being a husband who had an obedient wife and obedient children. You can't really do that if you're not a man and he specifically said he didn't give that role to women. So anyway, there is of course that in scripture that says that women should not be in the pastoral roles. But as far as evangelism is gone, the first evangelists in the Bible were women. The angels commissioned them to go and evangelize the apostles when Jesus was risen from the dead. So it'd be rather crazy to say women can't be evangelists. No one I know of has ever argued that women can't be prophets because there's prophetesses in the Old Testament, like Huldah, Miriam and others. There's even prophetesses in the New Testament. Philip had four daughters who prophesied, we're told, in the church.

So women have never been excluded from prophetic ministry, from missionary ministry, from evangelistic ministry, I would say probably from counseling ministries. Those things have never really the Bible never rendered those controversial. But in the pastoral role, which is only one of hundreds of possible ways to minister, that's the one he wants that to be the male leader of a home also leading the church with other male leaders of their homes. The church is not entirely egalitarian in that sense. It's like the home, it's like a family, and Paul always wants us to think of the church like a family and Paul thought of the family as one where the husband is the head of the wife and the husband and wife together are over the children and so forth.

I'm not going to argue with Paul. I do believe some people say, "Well, Paul had his prejudices, Paul you can't trust him." I have never been caught into the third heaven and seen God and heard things unlawful for me to repeat because they were so profound. Paul did. I wasn't converted by a personal appearance of Jesus Christ to me blinding me for three days as Paul was. I've never had Jesus come stand by my side visibly and speak to me as Paul did when he was praying in the temple after his conversion. We could say, "Well, Paul may not have been a perfect man," but by the time he wrote the Epistles, especially the Pastoral Epistles, Timothy and Titus, which give these qualifications, he was a very mature Christian man.

If he had ever had any wrong views about this and he ever got right before he died, this is when he would have been right. I don't know if he ever had different views on this point, but we have to say we have the mature Paul, one who was specially chosen by Christ to be the authoritative Gentile Apostle, Apostle to the Gentiles, who had appearances of Christ to him and he was caught up in third heaven. If Paul has an opinion about these things and let's just say I have a different opinion, I think I'm going to defer to that guy. What kind of arrogance would any man living today, or woman, have to have to say, "Yeah, I don't think Paul had it right"? Well, where are you getting your ideas?

Where'd you get your ideas? You got them from the culture. Paul said that everything he taught he got it by revelation from Jesus Christ. He said that in Galatians chapter 1, he didn't get this from man, he got it from Christ. But if somebody today says, "No, Paul's wrong, women should be pastors," that person is essentially saying, "I am right, Paul is wrong." But they have to tell us where they got their views because it's probable they got them from the culture and it's probable or from their denomination which arose maybe in England, maybe the Salvation Army or some of these movements that did put women in leadership roles.

And the Pentecostal movement has done that too from the beginning because some of the Pentecostal denominations like the Foursquare were established by a woman, Aimee Semple McPherson. So let's face it, being in certain denominations, you simply don't have the liberty to question whether women can be in ministry because if they aren't, your group is illegitimate. But see, I don't like to get into the controversy, I just like to do what Paul said and because I believe that's what God says. And anyone I meet who says, "I know more than Paul does about it," I say Paul said if anyone thinks he knows anything he knows nothing as he ought to know, and especially if somebody says, "I'm smarter than Paul."

Sometimes Paul says, "Well, Paul was just speaking from the prejudices of his own culture." Well, he wasn't because the pagan culture around him allowed women—the Oracle of Delphi, one of the leading spiritual leaders of the ancient world, was a woman and there were priestesses in the pagan temples and Paul's the one who said there's no difference between men and women in general in God's sight, but God has restricted some behaviors to be only men, like being a husband. Being a woman, he's restricted motherhood to women. There are things that people who are equal may not be interchangeable about, just like parts of your car may be of equal value to replace as far as the expense and the necessity of having them, but they're not interchangeable parts. To say women are equal is certainly a biblical statement, to say they're interchangeable with men would be a very strange thing to say even if you didn't have the Bible telling you you're wrong.

So anyway, yeah, I don't believe in women pastors, not that I have anything against women. I like women. But I certainly if I were a—I had a—I was teaching in Youth With A Mission in Seoul, Korea once and one of the female staff members at YWAM came to me and said about this very subject, she said, "If you were a woman, do you think you'd feel the same way about this?" I thought, "I can't imagine why I wouldn't. I'd have the same Bible, wouldn't I? I mean, are you saying that if I were a woman, I would be less faithful to scripture because I was a woman? Is there something about being a woman that makes you less faithful to scripture?" If so, then it's a good thing not to make women pastors because the very being a woman, according to the suggestion, would make you less faithful to scripture. I have the same Bible if I'm a man or my wife has the same Bible I do. We read the same one. She's a woman. So I don't really see how being a woman would have anything to do with my opinion about this. If I was choosing my doctrines for my convenience or for my own advancement, I certainly would not be a servant of Christ and I'd have to say I'm not sure I'd even be Christian. I think that's opportunist religionists do that. All right, that's my humble opinion, of course, I won't tell you as strongly as I'd like to what I think, so ask me about that privately sometime. Anyway, let's talk to Scott in Denver, Colorado. Scott, welcome.

Scott: Hi Steve. I had a subject once: "Once Saved Always Saved" versus "in and out of your salvation" kind of thing. In the "in and out of salvation" thing, I guess the question is: What did Jesus accomplish that makes those two doctrines oppose each other? Where if all sin is forgiven, then there's no sin that can cause you to lose your salvation versus—and that's why I was calling, to see what that other teaching might be.

Steve Gregg: Well, I think you're mistaking the view, for example the view that I hold, which says that it is possible to abandon Christ, to be an apostate, to no longer be saved. I hold that view, but I think people who take the "Once Saved Always Saved" view always misunderstand it. They think I'm saying if you commit a certain amount of sin, you're out. You could commit maybe a dozen sins per month, but after that you're lost. This has nothing to do with the number of sins one commits or that there's a particular sin that isn't under the blood of Christ. None of our sins are under the blood of Christ until we come to him, until we—it's only in him that we have salvation.

He's not a store handing out salvation for a certain price or even for free so that we can just take it and "Okay, I've got my salvation, I'm good." No, you have to be in Christ, you have to abide in Christ, he has to be everything to you. There never was a Christianity in the Bible that involved less than dying to yourself, denying yourself, taking up your cross, following Jesus, being faithful unto death. That's what Christianity is. I realize we preach a watered-down version of this that draws a lot of people in who don't even have the first interest in laying down their lives for Christ. Bearing a cross is simply not something they're interested in. I've heard pastors say that if there's not a pre-trib rapture and they're going to have to go through the tribulation, they don't even want to be a Christian. I've heard pastors say that.

Well, that means they're not willing to bear a cross, they haven't come to Christ yet. They've come to religion, they've gotten a job apparently as a pastor in the religious realm, but Jesus said if anyone come let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. People who do that don't say, "Well, if I have to go through trouble, I don't want to follow Jesus." That's something you better work out before you decide if you're be a Christian. You've got to count the cost first, Jesus said. That's what people did in the first century because no other Christianity was preached to them.

Now, we have a bunch of people today who aren't committed to Christ. They hope they have salvation and they put it in a safe-deposit box so that when they have to stand before God, it'll still be present there no matter what they did. But they don't know what Christianity is. Christianity is a restored relationship with God which we have only when we are in Christ. It's a relationship, not a transaction. It's a relationship. And a relationship, if you've ever had one with anyone, you know both parties are involved in it, both parties want to have to be in it. In this particular case, it's not a relationship like your BFF. God's not your BFF, he's your king, he's your Lord. Jesus is the King. And the only relationship that a person can have with a king other than a rebellion against him is submission to him and obedience to him.

So when a person is coming to Christ, this is what they have to deal with: "Am I going to be a rebel against the King Jesus or am I going to be his willing and happy subject and obey him?" Those who made that choice in the Bible times, I don't think they fell away very easily. In fact, those who make that commitment today don't fall away very easily. Those who just kind of say say a prayer and your sins are forgiven for now and for ever, those people fall away frequently and sometimes they go in and out of their commitment of Christ, but I don't think they've become Christians, not in the biblical sense of the word.

You say, "What sin could make you lose your salvation if Jesus died for all sins?" It's no sin. No sin can except maybe we call the sin of apostasy. But it's not because that has the label "sin" on it, it's because of what it is. Apostasy is when you leave Jesus. There's no salvation in any other, Peter said. Jesus alone has salvation. So if you are in him, you have it. If you aren't in him, you don't. That's why the Bible says we need to take pains to remain in him. If you remain in Christ, all your sins he'll cover for you. If you're not in Christ, he won't cover any of them.

So it's kind of all or nothing. But when you have come to Christ, it doesn't mean that you have no choice but to remain. That's on you, that's your obligation. Now, Christ will help you. Anyone who wants to endure to the end faithfully even through tribulations can do so if they rely on God, because God is able to preserve you and keep you, let you stand and so forth. God will certainly give all the grace necessary to those who are trusting him. But if a person says, "Yeah, I don't think I want to trust him in this because that's going to cost me more than I want to pay," well, let them go. They're probably not Christians in the first place and if they are, they're deciding not to be anymore.

I believe there are people who follow Christ genuinely and are saved and who do fall away because the Bible describes those people and warns us not to be them. The book of Hebrews repeatedly warns the Christians not to fall away. Paul predicts in 1 Timothy 4 that in the last times, many will depart from the faith. Paul said that he himself beats his body and keeps it under submission to Christ, that is he afflicts his body to keep him from falling away, he says, "Lest after I've preached to others, I myself should be a reprobate," is the word he uses. There's nothing in the Bible that suggests that once you get once you accept Jesus in some vague way, you're saved forever. You have to be a follower of Christ to be a Christian. That's what a Christian is. You can't be a Christian without being a Christian. Obviously some people are Christians when they're younger and aren't when they're older. Well, then when they were younger, they were saved because salvation is in Christ. When they became not followers of him, they're not saved anymore because salvation is in Christ and that's not where they are anymore. Anyway, that's what the Bible teaches. I appreciate your call, I'm out of time. You've been listening to the Narrow Path. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. We have a mailing address there if you want to send support, although you can donate online or just don't donate, just go to the website and take whatever you want, it's all free. thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for joining us.