The Narrow Path

Steve Gregg: Good afternoon and welcome to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. We are live. Yes, this is Memorial Day and many of you assumed I would not be live, which is why we have no calls waiting. But that’s a great opportunity for you if you’ve tried to call in on other occasions and found the lines were always full. We have lines available to you. If you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith, you can call in and we’ll talk about them in this hour. If you disagree with the host and you call in, we can talk about that in this hour as well. Here’s the number: 844-484-5737.

As I said, we have no calls waiting right now. That’s an open switchboard. You could be the first, second, or third, one of the early ones, if you call now. Once the word gets out that we’re on live today, they may fill up fast. So the number is 844-484-5737.

Early next month, I’m going to be doing an itinerary that takes me on land, not flying, up through Portland and to Seattle area. I’ll be in the Seattle area for about a week teaching in various places. I might even swing over to Idaho. I’ve got it halfway scheduled. There are some people over there I need to see, but also we have a lot of listeners there. If you have a place you’d like me to speak in those areas, we could probably fit in a few more. We’re pretty booked up, but especially in the Idaho area we don’t have anything booked because my only reason for going over there is I have friends I need to see.

So there are some opportunities there. That’s coming up at the beginning of June, which is in a few days from now. So just so you’ll know, if you’re in those areas, I’m going to be coming. If you live in the Seattle area particularly, where there’s quite a few events booked for the week, check it out. Thenarrowpath.com will have the list under the tab that says announcements. Well, as predicted, the lines did fill up, so we’re going to go to our phones and talk first of all to Mike in Greenville, South Carolina. Hi, Mike, welcome.

Mike: Hi, Steve. Can you hear me okay?

Steve Gregg: Yes, go ahead. You’re on the air.

Mike: A lot of attention is given to end times in various times and places, and in particular a lot of attention is given to Jesus's return. That’s mentioned quite a bit in a lot of different places. My question is, as a follower of Jesus, why should I care when he’s going to return or whether he’s going to return or when he’s going to return? Why should I be concerned with that?

Steve Gregg: That’s an excellent question. I was listening to a Christian radio program some years ago and the person on the air said Jesus said we need to be looking for his coming and for the signs of the times. We need to be aware of the signs of the times. In other words, this person thought if Jesus is coming soon, we should be allowed to know of it. In fact, it would be a tragedy for us not to know that he’s coming soon.

But I remember when I heard that, I thought, why? First of all, where did Jesus ever say that? Jesus didn’t say that we should be expecting his coming at a particular time in the future when there’s certain signs. The fact of the matter is, there are no signs of the times listed. And the expression "signs of the times" is a phrase that’s found one time in the Bible, but it’s not about the end times. It’s about the times Jesus was living in. He rebuked the Pharisees because they were not able to recognize the signs of the times, meaning the fulfillment of their Old Testament prophets which was taking place before their eyes in the life of Christ.

Now, there’s no other reference to signs of the times in the Bible, so there’s certainly nothing referring to the signs of the end times. Now, some might say Jesus said we should be looking for his return at all times, not just at particular times. We should be ready for his coming. He says we should be like servants who are eager for their master to come, who will come at some time that we don’t know when he’ll come. He says at such a time as you don’t expect him, your Lord will come. So I don’t have to be expecting him. He’s going to come when I’m not expecting him. That’s fine as long as it says he says blessed is that servant who when his Lord comes he finds him doing the thing that the master told him to do.

For 2,000 years, Christ’s servants have been under orders to do the things that Jesus said to do. Some have done it, some have not. But the truth is, everyone should be at all times doing what the Lord wants us to do. And then if he comes, since he’ll come when we don’t expect him, we’ll be ready. I’m not really sure what good it would do me to know, let’s just say if he was coming in the next week, what good would it do me to know that?

Now, I’ve heard two answers to that. One is it would give people a chance to get serious about God, serious about Jesus if they knew he was coming. Yeah, but interestingly, he doesn’t let us know when he’s coming. He says he’ll come when we don’t expect him. So I think he wants us to be taking him seriously all the time. I would say that somebody who thinks, I’m not going to take God seriously until I really think my neck is on the block and he’s coming back to execute judgment on the wicked, well then I’ll get serious about God. I don’t think you’re going to fool him. Honestly, I really just don’t think God’s that easily fooled. I wouldn’t be fooled if you did that to me. I don’t think God’s fooled either.

The idea that God would say, get ready because I’m coming real soon, quick, get serious about me, that’s just not the way God operates. God shows up when you’re not expecting him. That’s what Jesus said. Why? Because then the people who he finds serving him are serving him because they care to serve him, because they care about what he wants, not because they’re just trying to save their sorry skin in a moment of crisis.

It’s like when people think they’re going to die for whatever reason, they’re in a terrible crisis and they say, "Oh God, save me and I’ll serve you all my life." And then they survive it and they don’t serve him. But whenever someone thinks they’re going to be facing God any moment, they tend to get serious about him at least they try to. What’s interesting is they don’t apparently manage it. They don’t apparently, even though they want to get serious about God at that moment, they don’t, and they show that they don’t by the fact that when the crisis is past, they go on doing what they were doing before.

God’s not fooled. We may fool ourselves, but God isn’t fooled. So I don’t really know what business it would be. Now some people might say, "Well, if we knew Jesus was coming, we would be more motivated to do evangelism." Well, maybe we would, but maybe we should be motivated to do it anyway. The whole point is, God gives us no incentives to know when he’s coming and tells us repeatedly, you can’t know that. Jesus said it’s not for you to know the times and the seasons that the Father has put in his own power. He said that to the disciples just before he ascended. He said on the Mount of Olives, "I don’t even know the day. Only the Father knows that."

But it didn’t seem to concern him. It’s not like he had to give us a date. If he had it, he wouldn’t have given it to us. The truth is he just said, occupy until I come. He gave us responsibility. Anyone who’s taking God seriously will be doing that responsibility and will be very delighted when he shows up. And that’s what Jesus said, "Blessed is that servant who when his master comes finds him doing what he was assigned to do." Yeah, it’s a blessing to have Jesus show up when you’re doing it.

Now what if you’re not doing it? Well, he said if a servant says my master delays his coming, in other words he’s not expecting him anytime soon, and he begins to eat and drink with the drunkards and beat his fellow servants, he says the master of that servant will come in a day he’s not expecting him and will cut him in two and give him his part with the hypocrites. Sounds pretty grueling.

So I mean, the truth of the matter is, we don’t know and we won’t know. When Jesus comes, when people want to talk about the end times all the time, they are wasting their time. And how do I know that? One way I know it is that back in 1970 when I went in the ministry, Hal Lindsey’s book "The Late Great Planet Earth" and the teachers at Calvary Chapels and so forth, the teachers were all talking about how Jesus is coming really soon. They actually had some dates they thought were probably indicated that he’d come back at least within a certain timeframe which by the way ended decades ago now.

But they really had us on the edge of our seat saying Jesus is coming soon. And I was glad Jesus was coming soon, but it wouldn’t have changed anything about me. I was eager to go and die for the Lord if necessary and if he raptures me that’s his business but I just wanted to serve God. But there were a bunch of people who came forward at altar calls, got baptized and stuff like that because they were told if they don’t get saved right this minute, you might wake up in the tribulation day after tomorrow. So they missed the rapture.

So that got a whole bunch of shallow people, and some serious people too. I have to say some sincere people, quite a lot of them too. There’s a huge number of people responded. But a lot of them were just in it for the rapture and they wanted to miss the judgment. But you see, these were young people mostly in the Jesus movement when I was there. People who got older realized, well, the Lord has delayed his coming. And some of them have gone back to eating and drinking with the drunkards and beating their fellow servants, but some haven’t. The ones who haven’t are the ones who are the sincere followers of Christ and God knows who they are.

So I mean, by his not letting us know what it is, it tests us to know whether we’ll serve him without the sword of Damocles hanging by a hair over our head. We’ll serve him because he’s worth it. He’s worthy. That’s why we serve him, not because we hope to miss the tribulation or miss hell even. And by the way, if someone says, well, I’m not going to get serious about God until I know that Jesus is coming back soon, I had a friend in high school like that. I was witnessing to him in my senior year and he kind of joked and stuff about all the time. He said, "Well, when I see him coming in the clouds, that’s when I’ll say I believe, I believe."

And I do believe that if he saw Jesus coming in the clouds, he probably would indeed say I believe, but he wouldn’t be very sincere. He wouldn’t be a Christian certainly. And the fact is when Jesus comes, Paul said it’s going to be in the moment in the twinkling of an eye. So I’m not really sure you’d have time to even finish the sentence "I believe" at that point, if you even noticed it in advance. But the interesting thing is I don’t know where that man is today, but he could be dead now. We’re old guys, I’m an old guy. He was my age. Many people didn’t live to be my age and are gone now. Now Jesus didn’t come, but they went to see him anyway.

So it really doesn’t matter if I know Jesus is coming back soon or not. I know I could die today. And if not today, certainly within the next few years or decades or whatever. So I agree with you. I’m hearing you. I don’t think that it’s all that important for us to know whether we’re in the end times or not. What would that change? I can’t think of anything I would do differently than I’m doing now if I were to know that Jesus was coming like tomorrow. I appreciate your call. It’s a good question to consider. Lori in Maine, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Lori: Hi. I have a question. It’s about discerning the Holy Spirit’s voice versus other voices that you might have, like your own. I work in a school and I have the summers off, and I’m a little older. I was debating where to go this summer. I could go do an out-of-state evangelist program for the summer, and I don’t know much about it but they’re looking for people. Or I could go help my sister who lives in another state because she has a non-profit ministry. Or I could stay in Maine and take it easy.

All three options sound good. Some of them scare me a little more, like going out of state on some unsure things. I want to do what I want. I want to save souls. I want to go out there. So I’m just wondering, how do I know what truly is being I’m being called by God to do? How can I tell versus my own wants and needs?

Steve Gregg: Right. Now how to use a short period of time when you’ve got options, all of them seeming reasonably good, is probably not the kind of thing that you could answer just from reading the Bible obviously. I think the Bible is inspired by the Holy Spirit and what God has revealed there is the principal means of guiding our lives, but that guidance is for larger trajectories. It’s not where am I going to go to school, am I going to go to this two-week evangelism course?

For that kind of thing, I think you just need to pray and ask God to direct you and he’ll direct you however he wishes. He might put it on your heart. He might make one of the options cease to be available, or one of them just may be something you really think would be something you feel strongly you want to do after you’ve prayed about it, and the other one maybe not so much.

One thing I have to say, when I got baptized in the Spirit in 1970 when I was 16 years old, I was among people who talked a lot about how God told them to do this and God told them to do that. In charismatic circles, people talk that way a lot. And I had the impression that maybe everything you do, you need to get a word from the Lord about that. And I certainly knew people who had that mentality. I was noticing that I didn’t get a word from the Lord about everything. I do feel like God gave me some guidance in certain ways. There were a few times out of the many times people prophesied to me about what the God’s will was for my life, most of them I didn’t believe, but some of them turned out to be right, not very many.

But I mean God can direct you that way. A lot of the impressions I had about what I’d like to do, I sort of thought, well maybe that’s what I’ll do and started moving that direction and the doors closed, so I figured okay that’s not what God wants me to do. Most of the time I just looked for a biblical point of view and also from a practical point of view. Which of these options appears, all other things being considered, to be a promising more fruitful use of my time?

Now that doesn’t mean that that answers the point completely, but you make decisions on those kinds of reasonable bases and then you commit it into God’s hands. The Bible says commit your way unto the Lord and he’ll direct your steps. So you commit the, you say, "Okay, I’m thinking this through, I’m trying to feel also if I have a drawing more to one thing than another." And if I’m not getting anything there, I’ll just I could even flip a coin and say, "Okay, heads I go this way, tails I go that way." And just say, "God, if this you direct this."

Remember even casting lots is sometimes followed in the Bible. In Proverbs chapter 16 it says the lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord. Now this was probably referring back to when Joshua divided up the land among the 12 tribes of Israel by the casting of lots. But even when Judas had to be replaced with another apostle, the apostles cast lots for that. Now we don’t see that going on many times in the Bible, but it’s something the Bible does not disdain. And I think that you know possibly what I would you know God’s going to direct your steps.

But if you have to get off the dime and figure okay I got to start making plans to do something, then you might just and I don’t recommend specifically casting lots although that’s not necessarily wrong but flipping a coin is essentially the same process. And then see if you get a result from that. Just say, "Okay God, I’m going to consider until you show me otherwise that this is what I should be the direction I should be going."

Now someone says, "Well flipping a coin that’s just a thing of chance." Well so is casting lots, but the Bible says it’s every decision is from the Lord. I think when it comes to this principle of flipping a coin or casting lots, they did it in the Bible when all the choices were okay. To replace Judas, they had to have two candidates that both qualified. There were certain qualifications they’re looking for, they came up with two guys, both of them they felt were qualified. And so they said, "Well we can’t have them both, so God you show us which one." And they cast lots and the lot fell on Matthias.

Now whether God made the lot fall on Matthias because Matthias was the guy that God wanted there, or whether the other guy would have been just as good but as long as they’re in limbo they can’t move forward, by casting lots they get off of square one and start moving forward again. But you see, this doesn’t sound very spiritual to certain charismatic types because the types of people I was with in my early 20s were the people who wanted to get a dream or a vision or a prophecy or a word from the Lord about everything.

And I say, well you know the apostles didn’t get a word from the Lord about everything. They wanted to, I’m sure just as much as you and I would like to they wanted to but sometimes they weren’t sure which way to go. And we don’t find them necessarily holding still until they got a word from the Lord.

I think of Acts 16 where Paul and his team had come to Troas and now they’re not sure which way to go from there. And it says in Acts 16:6, "Now when they had gone through Phrygia and the region of Galatia, they were forbidden by the Holy Spirit to preach the word in Asia. And after they had come to Mysia, they tried to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit did not permit them." So passing through Mysia, they came to Troas and then they had a vision of a man from Macedonia saying come over and help us. So they figured, okay, this is God’s guidance.

But notice, they weren’t sure which way to go. And first they thought, let’s go into Asia, and the Holy Spirit said no I won’t let you. Oh well okay, well let’s go into Bithynia then. He says no the Spirit didn’t permit them. Well, they were making their decisions without a prophetic guidance obviously. How were they accustomed to making their decisions? They apparently didn’t feel they had to wait until they had a clear word from the Lord, although if they started to make a false start, they trusted the Holy Spirit would stop them.

And I think sometimes that’s what we got to do. We’re not going to get prophetic words in our head every time we have to decide how to use the next hour and a half. We use our common sense, we make decisions based on what appears to be needed, what appears to be a fruitful use of our time, and but also quite confident that if they were making a mistake, the Holy Spirit would redirect them, and that’s what we see he did. So kind of that’s those would be my thoughts about this. Lori, fine now. Brad in Vancouver, British Columbia, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Brad: Hi, Steve. Our church has been going through a significant trial with they let a pastor go without cause and nobody seen any merit for it and leadership has kind of been called into question, the elders and stuff. Let me ask you this first before you ask your question. What did they say to the congregation about letting him go? Did they say we can’t disclose there’s some very sensitive reasons we can’t tell you why or did they say we have no reason we just did it? No, they said they can’t tell us why but there was no it was without cause and no doctrinal or any sin of any kind alluded to that it was structural, a staff structural issue.

So it was a business decision. Exactly, and I’ve dated a deep dive into your teaching on "Some Assembly Required." Was extremely helpful in navigating my own processing through this, but we’re I’ve already decided that we’re no longer going to be a part of this church but I’ve had still continued conversations with some people in leadership trying to because we still care about so many people that are in this community. One thing that was brought up on several occasions is like I like to look to Scripture for answers and our executive pastor said yesterday when my brother that was sharing a Bible verse, "We don’t need any more Bible verses." And it’s also been said "You can make Scripture say whatever you want it to say" is what came out of her mouth as well. And I get that to an extent many credible theologians can disagree on things but it was just very alarming to hear that from an executive pastor in a church.

Steve Gregg: Yeah, well I’ll tell you this, if they say we don’t care what the Scripture says, we’ve made up our minds, then that’s a good church to run away from. Now if they say "We don’t need any more Scripture verses" as if to say, "Yeah, we’ve looked at all the Scriptures on this, so we made our decision and hearing more verses of Scripture isn’t really going to add anything to what we’ve already looked into," I could see that as a little less cocky on their part.

But there are definitely churches that could say, and maybe legitimately, "Whatever Bible verses you use, we have considered them and we’re actually seeing them different than you are. We’re sorry that we don’t see that alike, but we’ve prayerfully sought the Lord about this through these Scriptures and this is the decision we felt like we had to make."

But yeah, it sounds to me like someone didn’t like him. Someone in leadership didn’t like him, they didn’t like the direction he was going or something. If they told you there was no sin or theological error on his part that caused it, well there’s certainly nothing they’d have to just decide we just decided on our own that he’s not the guy we want there anymore. And then you have to wonder, why not if he hasn’t done anything wrong? If he seemed like a good pastor to you, then they certainly definitely owe you an explanation. I don’t have any more time to give you on this. I’ve got to take a break here, but it always grieves me to hear some of the things these churches do. You might be looking for another church, might be a good idea. God bless you.

Alright, we’re listening to The Narrow Path. We are listener-supported ministry. If you’d like to help us out, our website is thenarrowpath.com. I’m Steve Gregg. We have another half hour coming up doing the same thing we’ve been doing the last half hour. Stay tuned. I’ll be back in 30 seconds.

Welcome back to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we’re live for another half hour taking your calls. I’m looking at a couple of open phone lines. If you’re interested in joining us, if you have questions about the Bible you’d like to raise for conversation on the air or some other issues you maybe you don’t agree with the host want to talk about that, you’re welcome to do that. The number to call is 844-484-5737. Our next caller is Brian calling from Atlanta, Georgia. Brian, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Brian: Hey Steve, thank you so much for taking my call. My question pertains to Genesis chapter 1 verse 3 and the question is, is this light a reference to something other than the sun? I’ve been studying it for a while and I’m trying to look at the Hebrew and sort of correlate it to maybe John chapter 1 verses 4 and 5. And I want to get your thoughts on that to see if you’re tracking that way or if you think differently about it.

Steve Gregg: All right, yeah. Well, you’re right that John chapter 1 does strongly allude to Genesis 1, so you’re on the right track there. For those who don’t know, the verse you’re asking about is the third verse in the Bible. When God created the heavens and the earth, it says, "Then God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light." Now your first question was, is this referring to the sun or to something else?

In my opinion, it’s not referring to the sun, though there are many Christians who say it is. Now what’s obvious is on the fourth day, it says God made two great lights. This would be in verse 16. God made two great lights, the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night. He made the stars also. So the greater light to rule the day clearly would be the sun and the lesser light to rule the night would be the moon. And it sounds like he made them on the fourth day. That is the fourth day it’s talking about.

Yet, when God said let there be light, it was even prior to the demarcation of the first day. In fact, the days kind of began when God said let there be light and then he divided the light from the darkness and called the light day and the darkness night. So it sounds to me like there was light that God created before the sun and the moon.

Now I will tell you, obviously virtually all science tells us, or I would say mainstream science certainly tells us, that the sun and the moon, well the sun at least and the stars are much more ancient than the earth. And I mean by the billions of years older than the earth. And so they would say, well this is saying the earth came before the sun. And in order to accommodate this objection, many Christians have said, "Well, he made the sun and the moon and all that right at the very beginning, but when he made the earth the sun was not really that visible because of the haze and so forth."

Some people give us a somewhat at least quasi-scientific description of the earth forming from the cooling of elements that were volcanic and stuff like that. And as it cooled, since waters covered the face of the deep, there was steam, there was vapor, there were thick clouds and fog kind of thing, so that if you were standing there you couldn’t really see distinctly the sun or the moon. They were out there and providing light. When God said let there be light, that light was allowed to make a difference between day and night, just like on a really, really cloudy day now you can still tell it’s day or night. The sun’s light is diffused but you can’t see the sun on a day like that.

So they would say on the fourth day what happened is that these this mist all diffused and the sky was clear and they could see the sun and the moon then. And so they appeared at that time visible, but they had existed before. So that’s a very common way that Christians have sometimes spoken of this. Now I don’t need that explanation necessarily. I mean, I won’t say it’s wrong, but I think what we’re being told is that prior to providing the sun and the moon to be the light bearers on earth, God provided light without them.

And you know, just like in the New Jerusalem in Revelation 21, it says the city had no need of the light of the sun or the moon to light them because the glory of God did lighten them. In other words, God can give light with or without the sun and the moon. And we see there was light because they were now delineating between morning and evening, days and nights, and even the plants were made on the third day, which was a day before the sun and the moon were said to be put there.

But you see, plants don’t need specifically sunlight. They can grow under any kind of light, artificial, you can grow plants indoors under artificial light. So God could provide light from frankly from himself if he wished, just like in the New Jerusalem we read that he does. I don’t know if he did that here, but I think it’s significant. Now you mentioned John chapter 1. Of course John 1 begins with "In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, the Word was God, the same was in the beginning with God, all things were made by him, without him was not anything made that was made." And then it says "In him was light" or life, and that life was the light of men.

So we’ve got light and life, but obviously spiritual life and light in that because the life is the light. Now of course the sun isn’t life, the sun and moon aren’t life. And so it is possible that the light that we read of in Genesis 1:3 was prior to the sun and the moon and it came from Christ himself. Now the significance of that and of it being mentioned, I think would be as follows: virtually every religion among the pagans deifies the sun and the moon.

The sun is considered a god, the moon is a god or a goddess, and the stars are gods or goddesses. I mean, this is paganism, they worship these objects. But the sun especially. In Egypt, which is where Moses grew up before he led the children in the exodus and Moses did after all write Genesis, in Egypt the one of the chief gods, maybe the chief god was Ra, the sun god. And the Greeks and the Romans had the sun god was certainly one of the chief gods also and so forth.

Because the sun in the natural sense is the source of all life today. The sun is the source of light that causes crops to grow and therefore we can eat and animals can eat and we can eat the crops and we can eat the animals, but we wouldn’t have either without the sun. So I think ancient people recognized that on a natural level and therefore venerated the sun as the source of life.

But what God has done here, I mean he could have made the sun on the very first day, which is the normal way that ever since the fourth day day and night have been distinguished from each other. But I think he’s trying to say, you know, anyone who wants to tell you the sun is the source of life, they don’t know. God didn’t do it that way. After all, plants are life and they were made before the sun, at least before the introduction of the sun to the narrative. And the light was nonetheless there. The source of life and light is God himself.

Now he later relegated the light-bearing functions to the sun, moon, and stars, and they may have already existed at this time as some people say, I don’t know. I don’t need to know that. But the point is, it’s told to us in such a way as to give us the information that the sun did not precede life on this earth and therefore it is not the source of life. It’s not the life-giver that pagans always worshiped it as. But who is the life-giver? Well, God is. And that’s how I understand God’s reasons for doing things the way he did in that description. That doesn’t mean I’m right, but that’s what I think.

Thank you for your call, brother. I’m going to take another call here. Mark from Dearborn, Michigan’s been waiting a long time. Hi, Mark, welcome.

Mark: Hi, brother Steve. I had a question. I’m sure you can help me out with this one. I hear about when the Antichrist comes on the scene, he’s going to sign a seven-year peace treaty and you’re going to have to have a mark of the beast to sell, buy, or trade. I know a couple preachers that are preaching this and they’re preaching the word for as much as I can understand. And then I hear something different recently like it happened before Jesus Christ or shortly after Jesus Christ was crucified. So I’m not really sure on this one.

Steve Gregg: Well, you’re hearing for the first time probably a preterist position whereas the only thing you hear elsewhere or have heard before was the futurist position. All I can say is that when it comes to end time scenarios, a great deal that is taught is in the imagination of the teachers. And much less is said about this in the Bible than they think.

One reason is that they do take a lot of passages that are actually about things that have been fulfilled in the past. One of the most significant things that happened after the resurrection of Christ, maybe the most significant thing that has happened since the resurrection of Christ that was prophesied was the destruction of Jerusalem, which wasn’t just like the fall of Troy or of Rome or something. Jerusalem was God’s city. I mean, the temple was there, the house of God was there, the people of God were associated with it. Jerusalem was the capital of God’s people the Jews.

And he said, "Nope, that’s done," and he allowed the Jews to be scattered throughout the world for 2,000 years. He destroyed the temple, he destroyed the whole system. And this was a major, major turning point in world history in terms of significance from God’s point of view. And there was a great number of prophecies in the Bible that talk about this.

But because many Christians are I don’t know what I guess they’re just not that familiar with the events or they’re not familiar with the way the prophets write, a lot of these things that talk about the destruction of Jerusalem, which happened in AD 70, have been popularly interpreted to be about the end of the world and a future seven-year tribulation and this whole scenario with the seven-year covenant that the Antichrist makes with the Jews and then he breaks it in the middle and so forth. There’s nothing in the Bible that teaches that.

Now I know where the verses they’re using. It’s just that those verses don’t teach that. There’s no place in the Bible that mentions a seven-year tribulation in our future or even in the past. A seven-year tribulation just isn’t mentioned in the Bible. Revelation has seven of almost everything. It’s got seven letters to seven churches, seven stars, seven lampstands, seven seals on the book, seven trumpets sound, seven vials are poured out, seven thunders utter their voice. I mean, there’s just about seven of everything in the book of Revelation. The only thing you don’t find seven of is years. You don’t find a seven-year tribulation mentioned.

Now some people think it’s implied by the several references to three and a half years. Each of those makes up half of seven. Well, if you say so, but I don’t have to follow what you say. I don’t see the book of Revelation telling us that. Many people have thought, in fact maybe most Christians have thought throughout history that the three and a half years which appears five times in the book of Revelation is the same three and a half years mentioned every time and that there’s no hint in the book of Revelation that you’re supposed to join one three and a half years with another to make seven.

Well, why do they do it then? Because they identify, I think wrongfully, the period of tribulation in Revelation with the 70th week of Daniel. Now the weeks of Daniel chapter 9 verses 24 through 27 are seven years long each and they think one of them remains to be fulfilled in the end times. Again, that’s not taking the Bible very literally at all to say that. The 70 weeks of Daniel, if we’re taking it literally, have been fulfilled thousands of years ago. But they say, well, 69 of those weeks have, one is still in the future. Where does it say that in the Bible? I’ll save you the time. It doesn’t say that anywhere in the Bible.

And therefore, there’s nothing in the Bible to identify the 70th week or any other seven-year period with any future thing that we’re looking forward to. It’s a popular view, it’s the dispensational view. They also talk about a pre-tribulation rapture which was pretty much made up a couple centuries ago. They have the Antichrist. What’s the Bible say about the Antichrist? Well, the word Antichrist is found only about three times, four times in the Bible, all in First John, except for one time in Second John, the little epistles of John.

So First John mentions Antichrist I think three times and Second John mentions Antichrist one time. And they do not refer to a future Antichrist. They say that there are many antichrists and they say that whoever denies that Jesus is the Christ is antichrist. So you don’t have anywhere in the Bible that the word Antichrist is applied to a particular individual. You’ve got a beast in Revelation 13 which some people call Antichrist but the Bible doesn’t. You’ve got a man of sin, a man of lawlessness in Second Thessalonians 2 that some people call Antichrist but the Bible doesn’t. You’ve got a little horn in Daniel 7 that some people call Antichrist but the Bible doesn’t. You’ve got a willful king at the end of Daniel 11 that some people call Antichrist but the Bible doesn’t.

What you’ve got is a bunch of people saying things that the Bible doesn’t say. And part of the reason they do that, there may be other reasons, but part of the reason they do that is that they do not recognize how many of the things in Bible prophecy came to their fulfillment with the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. And because they don’t recognize that, they think we must look forward to a later fulfillment. Then you have to take all kinds of things out of context, non-literally and so forth.

The people who do this are the ones who tell us we should take the Bible literally. Nobody taking the Bible literally would find a gap between the 69th week of Daniel and the 70th week of Daniel. That’s not literal. And so many other things they claim are not literal.

So you’ve heard two different things now. You’ve heard the futurist view and you’ve heard apparently also the preterist view. And that’s why you’re confused about it. I think that I’m not a full preterist. People who are full preterists believe that everything was fulfilled in 70 AD. I don’t believe that. But I believe a lot of things were. I still think there’s a future second coming of Christ, a future judgment, a resurrection, rapture of the church, new heavens, new earth. I believe those things are all future.

But they all kind of happen in one day. The day that the Bible calls the last day. Jesus called it the last day. He said he’s going to raise his people on the last day, he’s going to judge the wicked on the last day. Paul refers to it as the day of the Lord, the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. Peter calls it the day of God. It’s a day that’s coming when Jesus will return, he’ll raise the dead, he’ll rapture the church, he’ll judge all people and consign people either to the lake of fire or to the New Jerusalem and the new earth.

That’s what the Bible actually does say. You can do all kinds of fancy things with the passages to make it try to say something different than that, but the Bible does teach there is that future day when Jesus will in fact return to earth. But almost all the stuff that popular teachers apply to the end times, certainly everything that you find in the "Left Behind" books or the popular teachers who teach that, they either are making it up completely because so much of what they say isn’t found anywhere in the Bible, or they’re taking things that were fulfilled in the past and trying to persuade themselves that they are going to be fulfilled in the future instead.

This is throughout history, Christians have made various kinds of interpretive mistakes and this is in our late church history, modern times, that this particular mistake has become commonplace. Anyway, so there’s different views. And by the way, those two views are not the only ones. But like we were saying to an earlier caller earlier in our first half hour, it doesn’t really matter if Jesus is coming soon or not. We’d better be serving Christ when he comes. If he comes in my lifetime, wonderful. If he doesn’t, that’s wonderful too because I’m going to go to where he is.

So in other words, people who are very obsessed with end times things, I think it’s an obsession of children. I realized that sounds condescending, I don’t mean to be condescending but when I was a child I thought as a child, when I became a man I put away childish things and started deciding I better live for Jesus now and stop speculating about the future. All right, Mark, thanks for your call brother. Amanda, Portland, Maine, welcome.

Amanda: Hi. I was listening to Ken Ham and he was saying that a young earth position is necessary in order to understand God and that it’s foundational to Christian doctrine. I haven’t really researched it off the top of my head, I couldn’t really think of anything that would conflict or how an old earth would necessarily undermine doctrine, especially the core message of the gospel. I just wondered in your experience what someone’s argument might be.

Steve Gregg: All right, well I like Ken Ham and I even am very sympathetic toward the young earth doctrine, but I disagree with him in saying that the young earth is somehow a foundation of Christianity. That God is the creator is absolutely a foundation to Christianity. One might even argue that the existence of Adam and Eve as the first couple is essential to Christianity strictly because Jesus quoted from it and indicated that that’s true and normative. That is, that a man should leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife. This was said in Genesis 2:24 and Jesus quoted it as a definition of what marriage is. Paul quoted it too. So they seem to take very seriously and literally the account of creation.

But again, between the creation of the earth and the creation of Adam and Eve is represented in Genesis 1 as if it’s only six days. But that’s taking the literal reading, which I have no problem with. I have no problem with taking a literal reading. But many people have argued it’s not necessary to take a literal reading. That is, the time from the creation of the heavens and the earth till the creation of Adam and Eve doesn’t have to have been six literal days. There’s different ways people argue this. I’ve got no problem with the 24-hour days, but some people think the days are simply representative of longer periods of time.

There were people who believed in what’s called the Gap Theory. They think there’s some billions of years between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. I don’t take that view at all but many Christians do. And they’re still Christians, even though they don’t believe the earth is 6,000 years old, but they’re still Christians. Believing the earth is 6,000 years old is not a foundational necessity of Christians.

I don’t want to misrepresent him but I think Professor John Lennox, I’ve read his book and it sounds like he might believe that there were six days of creation, but there were long spaces in between them that God created something and then I guess let time go by and modifications and variations take place and then another day he did it. That may not be his view but that’s kind of what I picked up from reading his book "Seven Days That Divide the World."

Anyway, there’s lots of different views out there. Some people think that Genesis 1 is poetic rather than historic narrative. Now again, Ken Ham and young earth creationists believe Genesis 1:1 should be taken literally. Now these people are often dispensationalists also because dispensationalism teaches that everything in the Bible should be taken literally. But nobody really takes everything in the Bible literally, certainly dispensationalists don’t. They only say that they are the ones who do and no one else does. Now they don’t do it any more than anyone else.

There are many things in the Bible that are not literal. There’s poetry, there’s parables, there’s metaphors, there’s hyperboles, there’s lots of stuff in the Bible that’s because of the literary variety in the Bible, there’s different ways besides the literal way to understand what’s being said. Now again, I repeat, I have no problem with the literal interpretation of Genesis 1, but if somebody says, "I’m a Christian and I simply believe that Genesis 1 is not intended to be taken literally," well they may be right or they may be wrong, but they’re not denying the faith.

They’re not undermining the whole grounds for Christianity. No, that’s just not the Bible doesn’t make that the grounds for Christianity. That God is our creator, that he made everything and he made it all through Christ, and then he came and dwelt among us, lived and died and rose again and reigns in heaven, those are the foundations of Christianity. But the length of time he took to create things and whether this particular chapter in Genesis is required to be taken literally or figuratively, those are not things that are the foundation of Christianity and it’s not just modern people, not just evolutionists that are like this. Augustine back in the 4th century did not believe the days of creation were to be taken literally. I’m not saying he was right, I disagree with Augustine about many things. But the point is, it’s not some newfangled modernist rejection of the Bible, it’s just the fact that people have understood certain passages of the Bible differently than others and they don’t compromise their Christianity by doing it. So I would not agree with Ken Ham in making that so central as he does. But I do like the guy, I’ve learned a lot from him over the years. Keith from Sacramento, California, welcome to The Narrow Path.

Keith: How you doing, Steve?

Steve Gregg: Good, we don’t have much time. Go ahead.

Keith: My question is simple. I’ve been looking for a single good woman for a long time and I’m also a Christian.

Steve Gregg: I found her, she’s not available anymore. I found her. I looked a long time too. So what’s the basic question?

Keith: Will I ever find her? Because I’ve been looking for a long time.

Steve Gregg: Well, I don’t know you and I don’t know her. I don’t know who’s going to be the good woman for you. I will say it’s hard to find. When Proverbs 31:10 says "Who can find a virtuous woman? Her price is far above rubies," it’s saying they’re not easy to find. The question "Who can find one?" is not saying they’re all over the place, it’s saying they’re rare.

Of course, Proverbs also says each man will proclaim his own goodness, but a faithful man who can find? The implication is not easily. Good people are hard to find. Now people who act like they’re good people and want you to think they’re good people but aren’t really that good, they’re easy to find.

And I would suggest some people never find one. I don’t mean to discourage you. I hope you do. If God wants you to find one, you will. You’re asking me will you ever find her? I’m not God, I don’t know that. I will say this though, if you’ve been trying to find her and you haven’t found her, then one thing you can do and I would suggest that you do is try to be the best man that a woman could find. You want a really good woman, only God can direct you to find a really good woman, but you yourself can choose to be the best man that any woman could ever find and work on yourself that way. Because if you’re the catch, then she’ll be looking for you.

Now you might find an excellent woman and meet her and she might say, "I don’t want you because there’s something about you that’s a defect." I’m not saying there is, I’m just saying be the kind of man that when she finds you, she’ll say, "I can’t find anything wrong with this one," and then you’ll have much better chance. I appreciate your call and also your predicament. I’m sorry to hear about that. Lots of men and women are in your situation. You’ve been listening to The Narrow Path, our website is thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for joining us.