The Narrow Path

Steve Gregg: Good afternoon and welcome to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we are live for an hour each weekday afternoon taking your calls. If you have questions about the Bible or about the Christian faith, we welcome you to call in today and ask them. We'll talk about them. You can also call if you disagree with the host and want to balance comment.

However, our lines are full at the moment. Don't bother calling now; you'll be wasting your time. But if you call in a few minutes, that will not necessarily be the case. So take this number down and randomly, a few minutes from now or later in the hour, but not too late—we want to be able to get you on before we run out of time—call this number: 844-484-5737. That's 844-484-5737.

So let's go ahead and talk to these friends here on the air. Paul in Buffalo, New York, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Paul: Thanks, Steve. Thanks for taking my call. I would like you to do your normal thorough job on Romans 11:29, if anything pertains to us today in regards to that scripture. And I'll take your answer off the air.

Steve Gregg: Okay, I'd be glad to do that. Thank you for your call, Paul. Interesting, I was just thinking about this verse a few days ago because it is brought up a lot in the debate over whether God has a future for Israel or not. In verse 29 of Romans 11, it says, "For the gifts and the callings of God are irrevocable."

Now, what this usually is taken to mean by popular teachers is that God has a calling and a gifting on the nation of Israel which will not change, and therefore there will be some kind of renewal and calling of the nation of Israel in the end times. Now, Paul doesn't say anything about the end times here. He only states a statement that when God calls people and gifts them, he does so without changing his mind.

Now, he has changed his mind about calling some people to some things. For example, Judas Iscariot was called and chosen by Jesus to be an apostle. And even Jesus said to the 12 when Judas was among them, "You 12 will sit on 12 thrones reigning over the 12 tribes of Israel." Well, Judas won't be there because he defected and he was replaced by somebody else named Matthias.

Now, it's often the case that God will choose somebody and he hasn't changed his mind, but that person changes. And one thing that God has made very clear—and this is before Paul wrote Romans, and God doesn't change, we have no reason to believe he changes in this particular respect—so anything Paul said in Romans would have to take this into consideration.

In Jeremiah chapter 18, which I'm turning to as I speak, Jeremiah 18 verses 7 through 10, God says, "The instant that I speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom to pluck it up and pull it down and to destroy it, if that nation against whom I have spoken turns from its evil, I will repent of the disaster that I thought to bring upon it."

Okay, so that's like Nineveh. Jonah was sent to Nineveh. He said, "40 days Nineveh will perish." However, Nineveh repented, and God, it says in the book of Jonah, repented of the evil he said he'd do to them because they repented. Now, God didn't change; they did. This is his regular policy. He doesn't change from this policy. This is how he is.

And then the next verse says in verse 9, "And the instant that I speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom to build and to plant it," as, for example, he promised Israel when they were first founded. If they were obedient, he said they'd be—he'd build and plant them. He says, "Whenever I do that, whenever I tell a nation—promise that to a nation," he says, "if that nation does evil in my sight so that it does not obey my voice, then I will repent concerning the good with which I said I would benefit it."

So it kind of goes both ways. If God says he's going to curse and destroy somebody but they turn from their evil and do good, he's going to change their fate. They changed it, not him. They were on a collision course with the freight train and they got off the track and started going the right direction. They don't have that collision that was impending. Likewise, if God says he's going to build and plant a nation—and for all we know, Israel is the only nation in history that he ever said something like that to—he said if they turn from their righteousness and do evil, he's going to repent of the good he said he'd do them.

So in other words, whatever God has said he would do for Israel or anyone else, that's contingent on their obedience. When Paul says the gifts and the callings of God are irrevocable, he doesn't eliminate the teaching of scripture that the gifts and the callings of God are for the faithful. And what Paul is saying is God has not revoked that. The faithful will always have the promises of God given to them.

Now, what Paul has been saying in Romans 11 up to this point is he started Romans 11 by saying, "I say then, has God cast away his people?" Now, the Jews thought of themselves as God's people. However, that's not always the case. Earlier in this discussion in Romans 9, Paul quotes Hosea and in the opening chapter of Hosea. And in that chapter, though Paul doesn't quote this particular verse, Hosea says to Israel, God says, "You are not my people."

Okay, so Hosea tells us that God's people are his people when they're faithful. And of course, God said that way back in Exodus. In fact, when he first made his original promise to the nation of Israel in Exodus 19:5 and 6, he said, "If you'll obey my voice, if you'll keep my covenant, then you'll be a special people to me." So if Israel is obedient to God under the Old Covenant, at least before the New Covenant came, that obedience qualified them to be his people. From the very beginning, he made it conditional. His very opening words to them about it in Exodus were conditional: "If you obey my voice, if you keep my covenant."

Okay, so that's a requirement if someone wants to be God's people. In Hosea's day, Israel was worshipping idols and Baal. They were not obedient to God, and God said, "You're not my people." But they were still Israelite people ethnically, which means that there is no promise to unfaithful ethnic Israelites anymore than there's promises to unfaithful ethnic Gentiles. That's God's policy. That's what he said was always—that was the Old Testament.

Now, in the New Testament, God is making a New Covenant, and therefore being obedient to God means you're obedient in terms of the covenant he's made, which is through Christ, the New Covenant. So God's promise is still the same. Israel can still be saved by obedience. Of course, it means obedience to the New Covenant, not the old. Where there's a New Covenant, the old one's obsolete, the Bible says.

So to be okay with God, the Jews don't have to just be obedient to the Mosaic Covenant of the Old Testament. No, God made a New Covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah when Jesus was here, and those who have obeyed that covenant, which the Bible calls the faithful remnant of Israel, they are the ones who receive the promises, just like God always said.

So when Paul says the gifts and callings of God are irrevocable, he's saying, yeah, God made this promise. The promise is to the faithful. He also made promises in the Old Testament to the unfaithful Jews. He said in Deuteronomy 28, beginning at verse 15, he said, "If you break my covenant, don't keep my laws," and so forth, "I'm going to bring every kind of curse upon you." Curse, curse, curse, curse, he lists. You'll be cursed in the city, you'll be cursed in the field, you'll be cursed in just about any way you could think of.

And in that list of curses that he says to them in Deuteronomy 28 verse 45 and 46, he says, "Moreover, all these curses shall come upon you and pursue you and overtake you until you are destroyed, because you did not obey the voice of the Lord your God to keep his commandments and his statues which he commanded you, and they—that is, these curses—shall be upon you for a sign and a wonder and on your descendants forever."

Now, a lot of people want to talk about how God made promises to Israel forever. Well, this says also a forever statement. If you disobey, these curses will be on you and your descendants forever. Now, what this means is that God doesn't change his generic policy. He does change the stipulations of different covenants, but like the Old Covenant is different than the New Covenant, but the policy's always been the same. If you're faithful to God, you'll be his people and he'll bless you. If you're unfaithful to God, you will not be his people and he'll curse you. And both of these statements are said to be forever.

And it is forever because God doesn't change. His gifts and callings are not revocable. His gifts and callings are to the righteous, to the obedient, not to some ethnic group because it's that very same ethnic group that Moses said in that verse we just read, "If you guys are disobedient, you and your descendants will be cursed forever." So there's no unconditional calling on people of an ethnic group. In Jeremiah, we read he said, "Whenever I say to a nation, any nation, that I'll bless them or curse them, if they change, I'll change."

So Paul is not saying, "Well, because they are Jewish, there are promises and callings that are upon them which are irrevocable." Well, what are the promises? They are that if they love God and are obedient, they'll be his people. And if they're not, they won't.

Now, in this particular place, he makes the statement you asked about after verse 28. Now, verse 28 is a very important verse to look at carefully, because when he says in verse 29, "For the gifts and the callings of God are irrevocable," "for" means "because of this." Now, "for" means "because," and "because" is not the beginning of a thought; it's a follow-on thought from the previous one, which says, "Concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sake, but concerning the election, they are beloved for the sake of the fathers, for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable."

Okay, who's "they"? Now, the way it reads in the Greek is "Concerning the—" by the way, the words "they are" are not found in the Greek. They're supplied. If you read a good translation, those words will be put in italics, which were supplied by the translator. But if you leave those words out, it just says, "Concerning the gospel, enemies for your sake. Concerning the election, beloved for the sake of the fathers."

Now, there's "enemies" and there's "beloved". The "enemies" are the ones he's just been describing, the Jews who reject Christ. Who are "beloved"? He says "the election". Now, he says concerning the election, they are beloved for the sake of the fathers. Now, who's "the election"? This word occurs earlier in the chapter in verse 7. In Romans 11:7, he says, "What then? Israel has not obtained what it seeks; the election have obtained it."

Oh, okay. Israel as a whole, as a nation, has not obtained what it seeks. However, someone has: the election have. He says specifically in the Greek, the same word as we find in verse 28, "the election have obtained it." So there's a contrast. Romans 11:7 contrasts two groups: Israel in general with the faithful remnant in it who have come to Christ, called "the election".

Now, he makes that same contrast without being quite so overt about it, but it's not hard to reason it through. Verse 28: "Concerning the gospel, they are enemies." Who? Israel, that is the multitudes of the Jews who rejected Christ are. "But concerning the election—" well, he's already told us the election are the faithful remnant who have obtained salvation in Christ, unlike Israel in verse 7. "Concerning them, they're beloved for the father's sake."

That is, God made promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that through his seed all the nations would be blessed. Yeah, but not every one of his seed. Not through Ishmael. Not through Esau. Not through Midian; they're descendant from Abraham also. No, not everyone who's from Abraham, but from the faithful remnant, the faithful remnant of Israel are the ones who bring blessing. And that and his calling upon that faithful remnant has not been revoked.

In fact, he says, though the Israelites in general are enemies for the gospel's sake, the remnant, the election, they're still beloved for the father's sake. Now, let me just say this. This is not how most people see it; in fact, that's not how most translators take it. And don't trust me; look it up in your Greek interlinear or whatever you want. I have, and you can too. But the word "the election" refers to the remnant in both Romans 11:7 and in Romans 11:28.

And in both cases, it's contrasted with the generality of Israel which were enemies of God, but the election is not. They have—Israel has not obtained it; the election have obtained it. Israel in general are enemies, but the election are not enemies; they're beloved for the father's sake. For the father's sakes, for the patriarchs' sake, God has saved a faithful remnant and they're the election. They are the remnant. That's what he says: "For the gifts and callings of God are irrevocable," as God has not let those promises drop. He always promised to save the faithful, and that's exactly what he's done in Christ: the faithful Jews and of course faithful Gentiles with them.

So that's what Paul is saying there. And by the way, if he was saying something else—for example, if he was saying, "Well, the Jews today, they're all enemies of God, but the same Jews are specially beloved for the father's sakes, and by that he means they're going to be saved because of special promises he made to their fathers"—the problem with that is an awful lot of Jews, like 50 generations of Jews, have lived and died since the time of Paul who didn't get saved, and they had the same fathers, same ancestors.

If having the—if having Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as your ancestors put you in a special class of beloved people before God, well, what happened to all those generations of people who had that same—those same ancestors who died lost and are not saved? And you know, that's something to consider. It's also important to consider that John the Baptist said to the Jews, "Don't think to say that you have Abraham for your ancestor, as if that counts for anything. God could make of these stones children of Abraham." In other words, it doesn't count for anything to have Abraham as your ancestor.

What does? Obedience does. Faith does. Being loyal to God does. And that's what Paul teaches throughout all his epistles including here. And the promises of God are to the faithful. Now, let me just say one more thing because he said the gifts and the callings of God are irrevocable. Earlier in the same discussion in chapter 9, he said in verse 23, "And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy," which he's contrasted with the vessels of destruction in the previous verse, "that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory, even us whom he called."

Okay, the gifts and the callings of God are without repent. All right, here's who has he called: "us whom he has called, not of the Jews only, but also the Gentiles." And then he quotes some Old Testament passages supporting it from Hosea and Isaiah. So Paul, the callings of God, as far as God's concerned, are not on ethnic Jews; they're on faithful people, both of the Jews and the Gentiles. Well, what about the unfaithful people, Jews and Gentiles? Well, they're not called. That is, they don't have the promises. The promises have always, from Exodus on through the entire Bible, the promise has always been denied to the unfaithful. Therefore, being Jewish by ancestry or Gentile by ancestry doesn't make a lick of difference. Any Jew or Gentile can be faithful to God or not. The ones who are are the followers of Christ, and of course God's promises are fulfilled to them as they always would be. God always fulfills his promises, but he doesn't promise anything good to people who are unbelievers, Jew or Gentile.

All right, let's talk to Rags from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Hi, Rags. You're not usually calling from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Rags: First off, Steve, thank you very much for your ministry. Oh, a different Rez. Is your name Rez? Oh, the reason I ask is we have a regular caller named Rez from like the San Francisco Bay Area. That's interesting. Go ahead. I was just confused. I muffled my voice when I answered you. It's actually Rags, R-A-G-S. Rags, Rags of riches.

Steve Gregg: Oh, okay. My call screener heard it wrong. Go ahead.

Rags: I'm sorry, it was my fault. My voice is muffled today. But we have a weekly family Bible study group. We're studying in Matthew and I was reading ahead in Matthew 27 where it speaks of the curtain temple being torn down from top to bottom, the earth shook, rocks split, tombs were broken open and bodies, many holy people who had died, raised to life. They came out of the tombs and after Jesus's resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many people.

And I know you talked about this the other day on your program about the 144,000 remnant. And I guess my question was, were the folks that were raised after Christ died on the cross? The tombs were shaken and people came out of the tombs, but didn't actually appear to anyone until after Christ was resurrected.

Steve Gregg: So what's your question?

Rags: So the question is, were these bodies that came out of the tombs, were they part of the 144,000 remnant?

Steve Gregg: I don't think so. I don't identify these with the 144,000. The 144,000 I believe is a symbolic number, but I believe it refers to all the early Christian converts from Judaism. The reason for that is that in Revelation 14, I think it's verse 4 or 5, it says that the 144,000 are the firstfruits unto God.

Now, in Revelation 7, we're told that there's 12,000 from each of the 12 tribes of Israel, which I again think it's a symbolic number, but I believe they're Israelites. And they are in Revelation 7, they're contrasted from another group who are said to be a great multitude from every nation, tribe, and tongue and race, who no one can number. So there's a international multiethnic body seen at the latter part of Revelation 7 who are innumerable, but the 144,000, a large group—their number is given. And they're said to be Jewish.

So I think there's two groups here in Revelation 7. The 144,000 would be the Jewish believers, and the innumerable group would be the Gentile believers. Now, in Revelation 14, the second and only other place that the 144,000 are ever mentioned, it says they are the firstfruits to God. Now, I believe that that tells us pretty much all we need to know to identify them, because James, who was the leader of the Jerusalem church and kind of the head of Jewish Christianity in the first century, he wrote in his letter to the 12 tribes that are scattered abroad. It says that in James 1:1: "James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the 12 tribes which are scattered abroad."

Okay, so we know the 144,000 were members of the 12 tribes; we're told that. And to these people, he says in verse 18, "Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth—that is, converted us through the gospel—that we might be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures." Okay, the Jewish believers from the 12 tribes, the ones who came to be born again, who received the gospel like James himself and those that he's writing to who were clearly Christian Jews of the first century, he says, "God has made us a firstfruits of his creatures."

What that means is the firstfruits usually means some of the sheaves that are brought in from the harvest before the general harvest. When the harvest begins, the firstfruits come in first. And the 144,000 are said to be the firstfruits. And James said that the Jewish Christians of his day, the first century, were the firstfruits. And that makes sense. The first people converted were the Jewish people, that is the Jewish church, and then later Gentiles came in, but the very firstfruits of the gospel were the Jewish believers in the first century. And that's who I believe the 144,000 are.

Of course, I don't believe Revelation's talking about the end times, as you probably know. I think it's talking about the first century, things that happened to Israel and Jerusalem and so forth. But that's another story. Now, those who came out of their tombs when Jesus died in Matthew chapter 27 verse what, 52, 53? I don't know. I mean they might have become part of the church too. If they lived long enough, they probably did.

My guess is that these are people who had died not very long earlier, which is why people could recognize them when they came back. If they had died a generation or longer earlier, no one would recognize them or know who they were, but these people who clearly were recognized as godly saints walking in Jerusalem and recognized for that, obviously they had not died very long ago because people could still recognize them. And we don't know how many there were.

The number "many" it says, many is used, but how many are many? I mean when you're talking about something that almost never occurs, namely someone rising from the dead, if you knew of ten who did, that'd be a lot. That'd be many. It could even be a smaller number than that. Frankly, if I knew three people who had risen from the dead, I'd say I know quite a few people because three is a lot for something like that. But we don't know how many there were. Some probably smallish group of people who were godly Jews who had died not very much earlier and who were raised in connection with Jesus's death and resurrection.

This would be—they'd be people very similar to Lazarus or Jairus's daughter or others that Jesus had raised from the dead when he was still alive. They were recently dead. As a sign to others, they were raised from the dead, and I think these people would be of that same class. That is to say, they're people who died and came back, but they were not resurrected like Jesus was into an immortal glorified body. He's the only one who's ever had that happen to himself so far. He's the firstfruits of that, but afterward we at his coming will also be.

So these people, whoever they were—I don't know how many there were. I'm going to guess there weren't more than a handful or so, but let's just say there were—let's say there were a dozen of them. I'm just guessing; it could be any number larger or smaller. They would have died again at some point. They were brought back to life but not given immortal bodies, so at some point they would have died again. Now, if they lived long enough to be part of the church, then yes, they'd be part of the so-called 144,000 that's mentioned in the Revelation, but the number does not refer specifically to those who had been raised from the dead. It refers to Jewish Christians in general in the first century, at least as I understand the passage.

I hope that clarifies that one thing. I need to take a break. We have another half hour coming so don't go away. You're listening to The Narrow Path. We are listener-supported. If you'd like to help us stay on the air, we pay large amounts of money to radio stations all across the country to carry the program, but we have nothing for sale and we don't charge for any of our resources. It's just listener-supported. You can go to our website thenarrowpath.com and take anything we have there for free, and there's a lot. You can donate there too if you wish at thenarrowpath.com. I'll be back in 30 seconds. Don't go away. We have another half hour.

Announcer: In a 16-lecture series entitled The Authority of Scripture, Steve Gregg not only thoroughly presents the case for the Bible's authority, but also explains specifically how this truth is to be applied to a believer's daily walk and outlook. The Authority of Scripture, as well as hundreds of other stimulating lectures, can be downloaded in MP3 format without charge from our website, thenarrowpath.com.

Steve Gregg: Welcome back to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we're live for another half hour taking your calls. Once again, our lines are full, so don't bother calling right now, but later in the half hour, lines will open up and you just might catch one open if you call randomly later on at this number: 844-484-5737. Our next caller is Dallas from Tishomingo, Oklahoma. Never heard of Tishomingo; I don't even know if I pronounced it right. Hi, Dallas. Welcome.

Dallas: Hey, you got it right. How you doing, Steve?

Steve Gregg: Good, thanks.

Dallas: Hey, so I got a question. I've been watching you for close to a year now and would consider myself a partial preterist as well. And I'm just curious how you would answer the objection that if the early church left Jerusalem and fled to Pella during 70 AD, why wasn't there necessarily a well-formed doctrine of partial preterism in the early church? And I'll take this off the air.

Steve Gregg: Okay. Well, I think there was. I'm not sure everyone held to it, but we know that in the early 4th century, the earliest church historian other than Luke who wrote Acts—but the most famous early church historian was Eusebius around 325 AD. And he records that when Jesus gave the Olivet Discourse in Matthew 24, he said that he was foretelling what the Romans did in 70 AD. So, and he also is the one who recorded that the Christians in Jerusalem fled to Pella at that time.

Now, he obviously had that information from somewhere. We could say, well, that was pretty late, 325. Why didn't anyone know about it before? Well, I'm sure someone did. When historians write things like that, like Eusebius did, they generally don't make stuff up off the top of their head; they have sources. How old those sources were, I do not know. But now you might say, but they didn't think of Revelation as fulfilled in 70 AD.

Now, that's probably true of most of them. We usually think of both the Olivet Discourse in Matthew 24 and Revelation both as to be fulfilled in the end times. Now, here's the thing: the early church saw the Olivet Discourse fulfilled, at least part of it, fulfilled in 70 AD. We know that from what Eusebius said, and again he obviously had earlier sources than his own. So some earlier than him must have passed it down, possibly in writing or possibly just everyone knew it.

But Revelation was a different story because in Eusebius's time, Revelation wasn't even part of the New Testament canon yet. Revelation was withheld from the canon of the New Testament until 397, which would have been—if Eusebius was still living at that time, he'd be a very old man—it was like 75 years after he wrote. So he's probably dead by then. And Eusebius himself lived at a time where the book of Revelation was not considered necessarily part of the canon. It was among the books that were considered disputed at that time.

Later, at the Council of Carthage, it was included. But since people before Eusebius and during Eusebius's time didn't necessarily have Revelation even in the canon of scripture, it would not have been a priority for most of them to really figure out what it was about. So you know, there are passing statements earlier than Eusebius's time from people like Irenaeus and others who tell us they have some kind of a passage they quote in Revelation, and they have some kind of an idea about what it is.

But if you read the different statements by church fathers wherever they do make allusions to Revelation, they definitely do not have a thoroughly worked out scheme to find out the whole plan of the book of Revelation. It is also the case that I don't think we have any evidence of them being preterists; that is, I don't think we have any evidence of them assigning it to 70 AD. But we have so little said on the subject of Revelation by early church fathers and by so few of them that we don't know that the view didn't exist, maybe even prominently among others who never—whose writings have not survived.

We probably only one in a hundred thousand of Christians who lived in those days wrote about it or their writings were preserved. So we don't know what most of them thought. It's true we don't have any evidence from the writings of the first three centuries of the church fathers that would confirm that they saw Revelation as being about 70 AD. We have later ones, like from the 8th century or the 9th century, there were writings that confirmed a belief that Revelation was about 70 AD and so forth.

But Revelation's always been one of those controversial books, not only in whether it would be included in the canon or not, and it wasn't until very late relatively, but also once it's in there, even what is it talking about? Revelation's very symbolic. So even to this day, there are among scholars four different views of what Revelation is. I'm not sure that anyone had worked out a—there certainly was no unanimous opinion about what Revelation was talking about even in the church fathers as near as we can tell.

So I can't answer for why we don't have them all seen it that way. It seems to me like they should have, but maybe some of them did and the ones that did we don't have any writings from them, because certainly we have writings from what, a couple dozen maybe church fathers out of thousands. Who knows if those others wrote stuff and their writings were lost? We even know the Apostle Paul wrote a letter or two that were lost. He mentions them in our Bible. So important works of the early church, many of them were lost and we don't know what they had in them. So I'm not going to argue anything about Revelation based on what the early Christians thought, especially the ones who lived at a time when Revelation wasn't even—they weren't even sure it belonged in the Bible. So that'd be my thoughts on that particular issue.

Thank you for your call. Dwight in Denver, Colorado. Welcome to The Narrow Path.

Dwight: Thank you, Steve. In Ezekiel 3:18 and 20, we see Ezekiel is told if he does not warn the wicked and the wicked dies in his sin, that God would require his blood of Ezekiel. Or if a righteous man turns away from his righteousness and Ezekiel does not warn him and he dies in his sin, once again his blood would be required of Ezekiel. Is this same warning given to Christians today if we do not warn the unsaved?

Steve Gregg: Well, we don't have anything in the New Testament applying it to Christians. I would say the prophets are referred to in the Old Testament as watchmen, and of course Ezekiel in this passage was said to be like a watchman on the wall. Isaiah speaks of God giving them watchmen too, which means the prophets, certain people called to receive God's message and to alert the nation of the danger they were in.

Now, there were other godly people who weren't prophets, and whether they had the calling to—whether they had the responsibility like the prophets did, I don't know. I would say there are Christians, some of them are in the position to have the ears of many, many people, and they should warn people if they see danger. On the other hand, of course, Israel was God's people supposedly. I mean they were the chosen nation, and the prophets were told to warn them.

I would say ministers today who address God's people, meaning the church, they certainly should not withhold anything that God has to say, including warnings. And I think if a pastor does not address or a preacher does not address to his congregation dangers that he sees, then of course he'd be kind of parallel to that of the prophet. Now, the average Christian—you, for example, unless you're a pastor or something or have a—I mean I have a radio show, so I guess that responsibility could rest on me because I do have a voice out there. But many Christians don't have a large voice; they're not in a position to address the church as a whole.

In which case they're not really in parallel circumstances to those of Ezekiel or the prophets who spoke to the whole nation. I'd say those who speak to the whole people of God definitely, if they see dangers coming that God has shown them, they should report them and warn people. Now, when I was a child raised up in the Baptist church, we used to hear about Ezekiel and this thing about the blood on his head if he doesn't warn people and so forth. And that was kind of taken or applied—I'm not sure who did it, my pastor or someone else, but I remember getting the impression—that this meant that I'm a Christian, I know the gospel, if anyone outside the church, if any unbeliever dies without knowing the gospel, their blood is on my head.

Well, I mean if God puts someone in my way and gives me opportunity to speak to them and have influence on them and I see a danger that they're—a peril that they're in and I don't say anything about it, I could see that being true. However, the unbeliever is not in a parallel situation to Israel and the Christian who's simply an ordinary Christian going about his business is not in a situation parallel to Ezekiel. Ezekiel was addressing the whole people of God. Today, that'd be someone addressing the church. And those who have access to address the whole church, they certainly had better not be cowardly about what they say; they better tell the whole truth and the whole counsel of God and not hold back.

But I had the impression that if some unbeliever goes to hell and before they did, I had crossed their path on a sidewalk and didn't speak to them about Christ, that I'm responsible for that. Now, it's not a parallel situation. First of all, I don't have the ear of the whole church. I do my best to speak the truth when I do to those who do, but I certainly don't have the ear of the unbelievers. I'm not in that parallel situation. So we have to be careful. I mean there are principles we see in certain Old Testament people that we could say, well, this could apply to me in such and such a situation.

But we have to remember that we aren't in the position that some Old Testament people are, especially the prophets of Israel. I mean some people in the church might be in a position analogous to that in the church, but not every Christian is. For example, God didn't in Ezekiel's time didn't say every faithful Jew was going to have the blood of the Babylonians on his head if he didn't tell them about God. And here they were living in Babylon. That's not what the statement was. It wasn't that if you're a Jew and you know about God and you're living among Babylonians who don't, you have to tell them or else their blood is on your head. No, this was a man who belonged to the believing community and he was a spokesman to them, and it was the concern of the believing community that was focused on in this passage.

So it's really quite a different situation. But I would say in general, if you see a—like if you see a brother going astray, like it says at the end of James: "Brethren, if any of you do err from the truth and one converts him, let him know that he that converts the sinner from the error of his way shall save his soul from death and hide a multitude of sins." Yeah, if you see your brother going astray, go after him. It says in Galatians 6:1: "If any of you see a brother who's at fault, you who are spiritual, go and restore him." So we do—we are our brother's keeper. And in that sense, yes, if God gives us a commission, an obligation to speak to somebody and we don't do it and they come to harm because we were disobedient, I would say, yeah, we bear responsibility for that. But there's not a one-to-one correspondence in the situation that Ezekiel was in with Israel and most of us. But it's a great principle; we should be very concerned that we don't neglect to speak when God gives us that power and that obligation.

All right. David from Foley, Alabama, welcome to The Narrow Path.

David: Hey, Steve, thanks so much. I've been very edified by your teaching the last three years or so since I've found you. My question is regarding tongues. I am a charismatic. I've been saved for about a decade now and about six months after I got saved, I was just in a time of prayer and had a very intense and ecstatic moment and I just began to speak in tongues. I'm always amazed how much emphasis seems to be placed on tongues in the charismatic church and I don't believe that everyone has to speak in tongues to show that they have the Holy Spirit.

So in my experience—and I'll get to my question, I'm sorry, I'm long-winded—only about 20 times or so in the last decade has this kind of, like I said, ecstatic experience happened with me and I have spoken out in tongues, usually in a private setting or a very small setting with close friends in prayer. And I would just like to know what your thoughts are. Is this a gift that most people exercise seemingly on demand? And on Wednesday you were speaking to a gentleman about prophecy and you said that your understanding was that prophecy is—it's not on demand, that it happens when the Lord moves. And that's kind of how I feel about tongues. So I don't know if you care to share your experience—I know that you have said that you speak in tongues or spoken in tongues—or just your understanding of the on-demand or is it more of a—like I'm saying in my experience—more of just when the Holy Spirit decides to move and God gives a gift, like the gift of healing is not going to happen all the time or a gift of miracles or prophecy is going to happen in certain times. So I appreciate your explanation on that. Thank you.

Steve Gregg: All right. Well, thanks for your call, David. My experience is somewhat different than yours, but yours sounds to me every bit as valid as mine. I've never assumed that God has to follow a pattern in the moving of the Holy Spirit with an individual. Paul makes very clear that the Holy Spirit's manifestation in different people is very different from his manifestation in others. He uses that very word: "The manifestation of the Spirit is given to profit everybody." And then he begins to list certain gifts of the Spirit. He does the same thing in Romans 12 and there are other gifts, I'm sure, that aren't listed in either list.

But even though he says one has this gift, one has another, he's talking about things other than tongues, but it would also fit the pattern of God to be individualistic in the way he dealt in each case with these gifts. Like a person who has—is used in healing, God might use them in quite a different way than he uses somebody else in healing or in prophecy or in tongues. So I wouldn't say that there's some kind of a pattern that the Bible lays out and if speaking in tongues for you doesn't fit that pattern, then it's not okay.

I myself have never had what I'd call an ecstatic experience. Now, it's very common for those who don't speak in tongues or don't believe in tongues even to refer to tongue speaking on the part of Pentecostals and charismatics as an ecstatic experience. I mean if you look it up in a dictionary or something, an encyclopedia, someone's going to refer to it as an ecstatic experience, which means it's accompanied by tremendous enthusiasm and emotion and things like that. Now, I guess for some people that would be true.

I know there's a lot of—well, I can't say I know, but I believe there's a lot of fake tongue speaking that takes place in certain environments. I think there's certain churches where people are under pressure to speak in tongues and so they do it just to fit in. It's a rite of passage in certain denominations to do it and so there's real tongues and then there's probably an awful lot of unreal tongues. I'm not going to judge particular cases; I just believe I've encountered that. That being so, I would say that in some circles—and I would say many Pentecostal groups, not all Pentecostal groups are this way, but many Pentecostal groups are this way—everyone's excited, everyone's emotional. I've been in churches—I never go back a second time—where they run up and down the aisles screaming and roll on the floor and crawl on the floor and they're screaming out in tongues and stuff. I've only been to a few of those because if I know a church is like that, I don't go. And if I go there once, I don't go again. But I mean obviously these people are full of emotion. I'm not sure if they have any genuine gifts of the Spirit there, but they've got a lot of ecstasy.

Speaking in tongues to me is not an emotional experience anymore than speaking in English. When I pray, I usually pray in English. Sometimes I pray in tongues. I've never spoken in tongues publicly. If I did, I would do so in a situation where I would expect an interpretation. But I don't speak in tongues publicly; it's simply part of my devotional life and it doesn't happen every day. But it could, I think. I mean it's not like I'm praying in English and suddenly, boom, something comes out of me and the Holy Spirit's just making me speak in tongues.

Now, some people, it sounds kind of like that's how it is with you and I think more power to you. I don't have any problem with that at all. And you know, I have to say, God just deals with different people differently. But my own case, I think that when I speak in tongues—it's not every time I pray—but I'm generally just praying in English first and then I start praying in tongues. And the emotions I feel when doing so don't change. When I change from English to tongues, I don't feel a different emotion. Tongues is a spiritual gift, which means—by the way, spirit and emotion are not the same thing, but you can have emotions when you're in a spiritual state. Being emotional isn't a spiritual state in itself. Some people mistake their emotions for spirituality. I don't. And I don't mind being emotional, but I'm just temperamentally, that's just not me as much as it is some other people.

So I'd say my experience is different than yours. You said about 20 times or something, maybe in your life, it's kind of come over you and happened. That's fine; to me, that sounds totally valid to me. In my case, it's been far more than 20 times, but it's not like something has come over me so that, boom, I have to start speaking in tongues. I believe it's under the control of the person, at least in my case I believe it is. So yeah, it's just different. I don't have any interest in standardizing the experience for myself or others. And what you've shared sounds very genuine to me, so I'm not going to be critical of it, though my experience is somewhat different in that respect.

David: Yes, sir. I appreciate it, Steve. Thank you.

Steve Gregg: All right, David. God bless you. Good talking to you.

David: God bless. Bye now.

Steve Gregg: All right. Philip from Petaluma, California. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Philip: Hi, Steve. Thanks for taking my call. So my question has to do with Matthew 27:3: "Then Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself and brought again the 30 pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders." My question is: do you believe that Judas was condemned or was he saved?

Steve Gregg: Well, I think the Bible indicates that he was lost. At the end in his prayer, Jesus said to his Father, "Of those that you've given me, I've lost none except the son of perdition, that the scripture might be fulfilled," and he's referring to Judas there. So sounds to me like he lost Judas. Now, it is true Matthew says that Judas repented. But then the word "repent" simply can mean to feel sorry or change your mind about something. It doesn't always refer to a saving changing of the mind. I can change my mind about something I did that I approved when I did it and I don't now, but that doesn't mean I got saved if I wasn't saved in the first place.

True repentance is a part of conversion, but there can be a repenting that isn't part of conversion, I believe. And Judas, John the Baptist said, "Show fruits of repentance," and Paul said, "Works befitting repentance." What Judas did when he repented was hang himself, which isn't really what the Bible would describe as a work befitting repentance. So my thought is that his repentance was not salvific. I don't think he got saved. But if I went to heaven and found out otherwise, I'd be delighted because I think Jesus would be too. I think Jesus wants all people to be saved including Judas. So you know, if it turns out God forgave him, I'm not going to complain.

Philip: Great. Could I ask one quick other question? You mentioned that everything that we find in the gospels is considered to be apostolic by connection. And to my knowledge, Hebrews, they haven't completely determined who exactly wrote that. And I'm wondering if you've heard some people say they thought it was Paul. But why do you believe that Hebrews was brought in if they don't know the actual author?

Steve Gregg: Yeah. Well, for that same reason that Luke's writings are. Luke traveled with Paul for years, you know. So I mean when Luke was doing his research, when he was in Jerusalem interviewing people who'd seen Jesus and stuff, he was there because he was with Paul. Paul and he traveled together. I'm sure that both books, Luke and Acts, were written under Paul's supervision. It's hard to imagine Luke publishing those without showing them to Paul, especially since Acts is mostly about Paul. I think he'd definitely pass that by Paul for inspection.

So the assumption is that Luke's writings, because he was a close associate with Paul, were written with his imprimatur, with Paul's approval. Now, some actually think Luke might have written Hebrews. It's not one of the majority views. But the one thing interesting is that the best style of Greek written in any New Testament books are Luke's writings and the book of Hebrews. And there was a church father, Clement of Alexandria, thought that Paul wrote it in Hebrew and that Luke translated it into Greek because the Greek style is so good.

I don't think that's correct, but it does have a lot of Pauline thoughts. And while I don't think that Luke wrote it—well, I mean it's not impossible that Luke wrote it—the author at the end of his epistle says something about Timothy. He says in Hebrews 13:23: "Know that our brother Timothy has been set free, with whom I shall see you if he comes shortly." Now, the readers knew who was writing. He didn't say his name, but he expected them to know who he was: "I'm going to come along with Timothy."

Now, the fact that he traveled with Timothy means that he was definitely in Paul's circle, like Luke was and like Timothy was. Timothy during Paul's lifetime anyway was inseparable from Paul. And whoever this was that wrote it must have been awfully close to Paul too if he was traveling in that circle. It could have been Luke because Luke and Timothy sometimes were with Paul together. Some think it was Barnabas. Barnabas was a Levite and traveled with Paul and whoever wrote it was really into Levitical priesthood type stuff. So some people think Barnabas wrote it. There's other theories too. The main thing is that his mention of Timothy there strikes me as being very indicative that he was close to Paul as was Luke. Also, many of the thoughts in Hebrews are very Pauline although it's not likely that Paul wrote it. Some think he did, and he may have, but I think someone else wrote it who was close to him, but I think we accept it because of that closeness to Paul.

I'm out of time. You've been listening to The Narrow Path. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for joining us.