The Narrow Path

Steve Gregg: Good afternoon and welcome to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we're live for an hour each weekday afternoon, including today. We're live on most stations. Some may be listening to a rebroadcast later in the day. The live broadcast for your information is between 2:00 PM and 3:00 PM in the afternoon Pacific Time daily. That'd be from 5:00 PM to 6:00 PM on the East Coast. But it does re-air on many stations at later times.

Anyway, that's what you're doing. You're listening to the Narrow Path. You can call in, assuming you're listening to the live broadcast. If you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith, or if you want to register some point of disagreement with the host, feel free to give me a call. The number is 844-484-5737. That's 844-484-5737.

Now, often when I'm on the road as I am today, I do the program from the front seat of my car. However, there was a library, a public library nearby and I went and checked where I'm at right now. They had these little rooms you can reserve, so I got one of them. I thought, well, now it'll be nice and quiet, not like doing it in the car. In the library here, there's a lot of noise. For one thing, somebody has their baby here, and every few seconds the baby squeals really loud. I can hear it in this room even with the door shut, as loudly as if I wasn't in the room. So I apologize in advance if it sounds like some baby is being tortured in the background. I don't know if the baby is being tortured, but it's not my baby, and I think it's happy. I think it's just making happy squeals. They're rather not what you would prefer to have in the background on a live broadcast.

Anyway, we're going to go to the phone real quick here, except I need to make some announcements. One, many of you know I'm doing an itinerary. I'm in Oregon right now. I'll be in Seattle, speaking at eight different places, I believe. One of them will not be in the Seattle area. It'll be on Vancouver Island. That's going to be on Friday, June 12th. The rest of the week, starting this Sunday, I'll be in the Seattle area at various locations and various towns. So if you are in the area and want to find out where I'll be, you can go to our website, thenarrowpath.com.

I'm also going to be in Idaho for at least one, probably two meetings the following week. I'll be in Kamiah, Idaho, which I don't imagine very many people know where that is. It's a little tiny town near where I used to live. Then I'll also be in Boise in all likelihood. Those meetings will be the week after this coming week. Kamiah would be on June 15th, on Monday. Then I'll be in Spokane on Tuesday, and then probably the next day or the day after that, we don't have it nailed down. It'll be on our website. I'll be in Boise. So that's where I'm traveling.

I did make a mistake yesterday when I gave this announcement. The only time I'm speaking in Oregon is tomorrow night. I said I'm going to be speaking in a little church in Pedee, Oregon. Apparently that's confused a lot of people. I was confused. It is a little church in Pedee, Oregon that has invited me, but the meeting is not going to be at that church. The meeting is going to be in a private home, and that's in Monmouth, Oregon. That address is found at thenarrowpath.com, along with the rest of them, under the tab that says announcements. So it's going to be Monmouth, Oregon, not Pedee, although it is the church in Pedee that invited me. So I was confused, and I confused some of you. Now the correct information is at the website.

One other point I need to make: this is the first Wednesday of the month. Every first Wednesday of every month, when we can, we have a Zoom meeting at 7:00 PM open to everybody. It's a Q&A, just like this radio show, only it's by Zoom. If you want to be a part of that meeting, you can. There's information about how to log onto that if you go to our website, thenarrowpath.com. All of those things I've just talked about are at the tab that says announcements, including the login information for the Zoom meeting tonight.

Okay, enough blather. Let's go to the radio callers. Don from Sacramento is our first. Welcome to the Narrow Path.

Don: Hello. Thanks for taking my call. I'm thinking about Paul where he describes to us about a day in which the dead would rise and we that are there would be changed. I was wondering if you had some thoughts about how you might envision that event, what that might look like, whether or not we might be recognizing people who have passed on already.

Steve Gregg: Well, I believe it'll be our same bodies that are resurrected and glorified and immortalized, just as Jesus's was. Will we recognize each other? I don't know if we'll look very different than we did in this life. I have no idea. We don't have information about that. But if it's the same body, they'll probably have a very similar look. We're going to have eternity in that condition. If there's anyone we don't recognize, we can get to know them and we'll recognize who they are.

I don't know if people we've never met, people like Moses or David or Elijah, we'd recognize them by sight, but we'd certainly be able to introduce ourselves. Again, we'll be there for eternity, so if there's anybody we don't know, we'll get a chance to get to know them. As far as what that looks like, I can only envision it the way that it's described. The dead in Christ rise first, and then those who are alive and remain at the time that Jesus comes are caught up to meet the Lord in the air. Paul says that in 1 Thessalonians 4:14-17.

He also talks about it, and I think you alluded to it, in 1 Corinthians 15, where he said that we will be changed. That change is into the likeness of Christ in the resurrection. I don't know what it'll look like. I'm not really even very curious to know, only because I don't waste emotional energy or intellectual energy trying to be curious about things that I have no way of knowing. So I can't really say. I don't believe that we'll be disappointed, even if it turns out differently than we imagine it now. Thank you for your call. Mike from San Diego, California, welcome.

Mike: Hey, Steve. Question on Hebrews 13:17, and specifically the part where it states that the leader would give account for our souls. We have an elder who uses that to get his way in the church, that he'd have to give account. As far as him having services that are godly and biblically, they're pretty sound in that sense. But if something doesn't quite go the way he wants, he's like, "Well, I'm the elder. I'm going to have to give account, so I think this is the direction we should go." How would you counter that?

Steve Gregg: Well, every one of us will give account to God for the things God has assigned us to do. Paul said every one of us will give account of himself to God, and the elders will give account of themselves to God too. Now, what the elders will give account of themselves to God for is doing or not doing what he assigned elders to do, just like every one of us will give account to God for whether we did or didn't do what he gave us to do.

The elder should be overseeing the flock. They are told to shepherd the flock of God. If they do so, all other things being equal, the souls of the flock will probably do well. Some people who are in the flock may go astray. Sheep sometimes do. In which case an elder, if he sees this happening, should go after them and try to bring them back. That'd be back to Christ, not back to the church agenda, not back to the particular theology of the denomination, but back to Christ.

It's not the elder's requirement that he make everybody believe all the doctrines that he thinks are the most sound, since there is liberty where the Spirit is. Everyone does think for themselves. Now, if their doctrines get so far off that they're no longer following Christ, well, then that's where he really needs to go after them in a sense, as after a sheep that's lost. Of course, he can't make them come back. If they won't come back despite his best efforts, when he gives account to God, it won't be his problem. God won't hold it against him that one of the sheep didn't come back.

But the main thing is leaders have an assigned task. They are told to teach, they are told to shepherd the flock, they are told to uphold the weak, and so forth, like the shepherds do. If they don't shepherd and things go badly for the souls under their care, they'll have to give account for that. Jesus, for example, in his prayer in John 17, he's checking in and giving an account of his ministry with the Father just before his arrest. It's at the end of his ministry, at the end of his life, where he's been disciplining and teaching and doing things like that. He tells the Father, those that you've entrusted to me, those that you've given to me, I have kept. He said, I've lost none of them except the son of perdition, who he says was lost so that the scriptures might be fulfilled.

Jesus gave account for the souls of his disciples. One of them he lost, though it wasn't his fault, and of course he makes that very clear. This fulfilled scripture, and more than that, it was Judas's own defection. Jesus did nothing wrong. So when a shepherd gives account at the end and says, "Lord, the ones that you've given me, I faithfully shepherded, although we did lose that one there, but I don't think he was reachable." The shepherd should not be heavy-handed.

In fact, the best way to shepherd is to be an example. That's what the shepherds in the New Testament are usually told to do: be examples to the flock. If a shepherd is a good example, like Paul said, "Be followers of me," or "Imitators of me, as I imitate Christ." That's what he said in 1 Corinthians 11:1. Well, that's being a good shepherd, although he wasn't a pastor per se, he was an apostle. But he was shepherding and he said, "Follow my example as I follow Christ's example."

A person who's really one of Christ's sheep is somebody who wants to follow Christ's example. You don't have to force them to do it. Jesus said, "My sheep hear my voice, and they follow me, and I give them eternal life." So it's in the nature of sheep to follow their master. Those who wander off have either gone against their nature, been drawn off by temptation, or maybe were never sheep in the first place. But you don't have to tend the sheep that aren't sheep. You tend the ones that are. Jesus said, "My sheep are the ones who hear my voice and follow me." That's of course in John 10 where he said that.

Christ's sheep want to follow him. Sometimes they're not quite sure where he is or which direction he's going, and that's where an older brother, an elder, would be of value to them. They can see how he's doing it. If he's following Christ and they follow him, they will be following Christ too. That's what elders are responsible for. They'll give account for the souls of the sheep.

Assuming they've done everything that shepherds are supposed to do, they'll have no embarrassment giving account of their ministry. If they've neglected some things, then there might be some embarrassment for them. In fact, James said those who teach have the stricter judgment. So when the writer of Hebrews says that those who lead you, whom earlier ten verses earlier he said they are the ones who spoke to you the word of God. In verse 17, he said they watch for your soul, they have to give an account. Well, everybody has to give account. Parents have to give an account for how they parented their children.

Anybody whom God has given authority over somebody else, when he stands before God and has to give account of himself, the way he did that, the way he carried out his duties will be examined among other things. I think that's what's being said there. The writer of Hebrews says, obey them because they have to give an account, and let them do it without grief. In other words, don't be giving them trouble. They're having a hard enough time keeping things going the right direction with the flock. So he says, let them do it. Don't give them any grief about it.

Giving them grief, though, means you don't go off straying into sin where they have to chase you down. I'm not sure what the pastor you're referring to is thinking. You say he kind of uses that to make people obey or insist that people must obey. No, the people don't have to obey him. They have to obey Jesus.

Now, it's true the verse does say, obey those who lead you. But we've already been told ten verses earlier they're the ones who speak the word of God to you. So the one who leads you spiritually is the one who speaks the word of God to you. Not necessarily the one who has gotten a job as a pastor in a denomination by the ordinary candidating process that you'd get any kind of job. They may be godly people. But the ones who are leading you are the ones who speak the word of God to you. Obey them because they're speaking the word of God. When they don't speak the word of God, well, you don't have to obey that because they're not the boss. Jesus is the boss. Jesus is the Lord.

Peter told the elders in 1 Peter 5, don't lord over the sheep. Jesus said the rulers of the Gentiles exercise authority over them, but it shall not be so among you. The exercise of authority and the insisting that people do things one's own way because they have authority is not the way Jesus ordained spiritual leaders to operate. He said whoever wants to be chief among you must be the slave of all. You show Christ, you exhibit Christ in your servanthood and your humility and your giving of your life for them, not by making an agenda and corralling them all into your agenda. As long as the sheep are following Jesus, they're his sheep. If you're a leader, you don't have any more responsibility over them than that. It's when they go astray that that's when you really need to help them out. And you ought to be feeding them, feeding them all the time. Of course, that's what shepherds do.

People use those verses sometimes, especially people in leadership, to make it sound like they can set an agenda for the church and everyone else has to obey it. If they don't obey it, they're disobeying God, and then the leader will have to answer to God for them going the wrong way. Well, if the wrong way doesn't involve disobeying Christ, then it's okay. They may go the way that you don't want them to go, but if it has nothing to do with disobedience to Christ, it's just that they're not fitting into the agenda of the leadership. I don't know anything in the Bible that talks about Christians having to fit into the agendas of any leaders. It's the other way around. The leaders are the slaves, not the bosses. That's a hard thing for leaders to get through their head because churches today operate very much like secular corporations, although Jesus told them not to. He said that's what the rulers of the Gentiles do. Don't you do it. But we do it because almost every church is a corporation and it's got a corporate structure in most cases. They operate many times under the principles of corporate leadership from the world, which means the ones in charge are the ones who are the boss and people have to obey them. That's not really what Jesus set things up like.

Mike: Okay. So if it's not a spiritual matter, if it's regarding meetings and things of that nature where some of the church brothers and sisters think we should meet for some reason, he doesn't think so and he wants it not to happen. I mentioned this to my other brothers and sisters and they say, "Well, at the end of the day, someone's got to make a decision, so why not him?" What would you think?

Steve Gregg: Well, it's true whenever people seek to do something in harmony and in concert with each other, there's got to be somebody who sets the plan. But nobody's obligated to follow the plan unless the plan is the very essence of morality itself. In other words, if someone says, "We're going to start exercising church discipline here like Jesus said," and someone says, "I don't go along with that," the person who doesn't go along with it is not going along with Jesus. The elders have every reason to say, "No, this is the way things are going to be done."

If the leaders say we're going to have X number of meetings a week in this church, that's fine. They can. Someone's got to decide who's going to do it. But if someone else says, "Yeah, but I don't feel like God's calling me to be in that many meetings per week. I'll come on Sundays and any other time I feel God wants me to, but these men don't have the right to tell me how to use my evenings. My family might need me more. I work at night." If you don't fit in with the protocol of the church or the scheduled meetings of the church, it's not a sin if you have something else you have to do.

Although you go to a church, you should try to be as cooperative as possible. If the pastor says I want to have four meetings a week and you say I can't do more than two, then that's fine. You don't have to do more than two. If you can fit in as much as you can. That happened to me once when I was in a church and the church wanted to have some extra meetings during the week. I was already running a Bible school and in fellowship with the students and staff every day of the week anyway, and going to the church at its regular meetings. I just told the pastor I can't fit in another meeting.

He said, "Well, we want all the people to go to this Wednesday night meeting." I said, "Well, some of us, it's just not good for my family. I need to spend time with my family sometimes, and we don't have very many evenings free. I don't need the meeting. My family needs me. We don't need the meeting." And I knew we didn't need the meeting because we're not backsliding. We're not falling away, we're not living in sin, we're following Jesus. The meeting is not going to prevent us from falling away because we're not falling away anyway.

The pastor said, "Well, how's a shepherd supposed to lead? How's a pastor supposed to lead his flock?" And I said, "Well, I would do it, if I were a pastor, I'd do it the way Jesus said. Jesus said if a shepherd has 100 sheep and 99 of them are doing just fine and one goes astray, he leaves the 99 who are doing fine and he goes after the one that's straying." In other words, a lot of the sheep are not high maintenance. They can take care of themselves. They can feed themselves. Go for the ones that are high maintenance because they're the ones who need you. The ones that do just fine without your meetings or intrusions into their life, why would you bother trying to get them under your care too when they don't need it?

Jesus said the shepherd should focus on the sheep that go astray. In many churches, a lot of them do. In some churches, the pastor who has the most low maintenance sheep should be the happiest of all. The ones who don't need him to hold their hand because they're not going to backslide. They're doing fine. They're self-feeders. But the ones who can't make it without them, those are the ones the shepherds need to go after. And that's what Jesus taught. So that's how I would suggest shepherds do things.

Mike: Okay.

Steve Gregg: All right. Lori from Huntington Beach, California. Welcome to the Narrow Path.

Laurie: Hello. How are you doing, Steve?

Steve Gregg: Good, thanks.

Laurie: I was looking at your topical lectures and the one under the topical lecture of Knowing God and then Biblical Counsel for a Change and the Council of God 1 and 2. I just want to let you know how much that really helped me going through some things and I've been passing it on and talking about going into seeing secular as well as Christian counselors. I know that our help comes from the Lord, but I'm still wondering if there is some merit in talking with a therapist just since I would have no one else to talk to.

Steve Gregg: Well, therapy is a medical term. Therapy is about things going wrong in the body and fixing them. Unfortunately, moods, attitudes, emotions, these have been treated as if they are mental illnesses when they're not really illnesses at all. They're just behaviors. A sickness is something you have. A behavior is something you do. And so when it comes to behavioral things, I don't know that therapy is needed. Is there a broken bone or something that needs or a pulled muscle that needs to be treated? No.

Now, counsel is good and people who can counsel you from scripture. If your problem is a behavior problem, which is what therapists are there for, I suppose, if they're in the mental health professions, it's behavior. Your moods and things are part of your mental behavior. Well, it seems like if things aren't going right, then the best thing for a Christian to do is start doing them the way that God says to do things. When people are obeying God and following his instructions, they don't usually go to therapists. They don't need to.

Now, if there's something wrong that is a behavioral issue or a mood issue, I would suggest going to Christians who know the Christian answers to those things rather than going to a medical person or one who bills themselves as a medical person as if you have a disease. If there's a definable disease, I mean, if you've got a brain injury or a brain tumor, a chemical imbalance of some kind, well then medical people can address that. But when it comes to counsel for life, the Bible says in Psalm 1:1, "Blessed are those who do not walk in the counsel of the ungodly." So I would want to go to a Christian and receive godly counsel since we are talking, I believe, about behavior when we talk about these therapists who are not treating a physical ailment. They're giving instruction basically, talk therapy, or worse, they're giving drugs. Drugs are not the answer for behavior problems, I don't think. I mean, they can fix it, but it's not God's answer. I shouldn't say they can fix it, they can manage it. Drugs can manage the problem, they can't cure it. But God has different solutions than drugs for behavioral issues. A psychologist who doesn't give drugs is just giving talk therapy or giving they're a teacher. That's all they are, they're a teacher, teaching you how to behave. If you're going to have someone teaching you how to behave, I would certainly go to a Christian who knows something about what God's ideas are about it. I need to take a break, but I hope that's helpful to you. You're listening to the Narrow Path. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. We have another half hour coming up, so don't go away. I'll be back in 30 seconds.

Mid-roll Promo: If truth did exist, would it matter to you? Whom would you consult as an authority on the subject? 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 how this truth is to be applied to a believer's daily walk and outlook. The Authority of Scripture 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. If you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith, feel free to call them in. The number is 844-484-5737. That's 844-484-5737. We have a couple of lines open right now, so this is a good time to call and we hopefully will be able to get you in before the program's over today. 844-484-5737. Our next caller is Cheryl in Sacramento, California. Hi, Cheryl. Welcome.

Cheryl: Hi, Steve. Thanks for taking the call. You're such a blessing to me. I use Matthew 7:13 all the time. I have a friend, a very close friend, she's a dispensationalist and she goes to a Calvary church. In fact, she left our church about three years ago because this was not being preached there. So my question to you is she has agreed for me to send her my views or your views, which I'm going to use, on dispensationalism. I was wondering what is your best commentary to explain this to someone like that? I know you have a ton of them on longing, but...

Steve Gregg: Yeah, I think there's a single lecture at our website called, I think it's called Deconstructing Dispensationalism. But my lecture series that go into this more would be two different series. One would be "When Shall These Things Be?" Now that goes into all the eschatological questions, the Rapture, the Tribulation, the Millennium, that kind of stuff, and talks about those eschatological things. That's called "When Shall These Things Be?" It's 14 lectures.

Then there's another series very relevant to it called "What Are We to Make of Israel?" It's, I think, 12 lectures. Someone really has to be interested in the subject to want to listen to that many lectures, but once they're into it, they might get interested in listening to a lecture or two. They might find it more interesting and more educational than they imagined. So those would be it. I think there's an individual lecture under individual lectures called Deconstructing Dispensationalism, and then a series called "When Shall These Things Be?" and a series called "What Are We to Make of Israel?" Those would be the best ones that directly speak of dispensationalism. Since it comes up under other topics once in a while or especially in a verse-by-verse, but I don't think any other of my lectures are particularly focused on that subject.

Cheryl: What about your debate with Joel Richardson? Would that be a good one to send her?

Steve Gregg: It might be. I will say, I liked Joel Richardson and I thought it was a good debate. It doesn't cover the whole subject much. But if she's a listener, if she's listened to Joel Richardson, then she might be interested in the debate. The thing is, the debate was on one narrow portion, which if she's never heard anything but dispensationalism, she wouldn't even have the context for it because in a debate, when you're just talking about one narrow thing and one person has a whole paradigm difference from the other person, it's probably easier to follow if you know something about both paradigms. So listening to those other lectures I mentioned to you, they kind of lay out the whole system, both systems.

Cheryl: Is the one "Deconstructing Dispensationalism," is there a series? Is there a lot of them in there?

Steve Gregg: I believe that's just one lecture, right.

Cheryl: Okay, great. Well, I'll check those out. Thanks so much. God bless.

Steve Gregg: Okay, and they're not only at our website, they're also at YouTube. But the YouTube channel, what you do is you go to our website, thenarrowpath.com, and then there's a tab at the top called links and resources. There you'll find the YouTube channels there, and you can look up the lectures by name there too. All right, George in Mesa, Arizona. George, welcome to the Narrow Path.

George: Hey, Steve. Good talking with you. By the way, I had a similar journey with you. I was raised in America Baptist Church and made a journey to Arminianism. But anyway, my question is about the Greek and Hebrew. When I went to seminary, we studied the Hebrew from the Hebrew text and then the New Testament from the Greek. It occurred to me recently, what scripture did Jesus read from? What was commonly used there? Did they use the Septuagint or did they study and limit themselves to the Hebrew, the Jewish people of Jesus's day? Which one would Jesus study?

Steve Gregg: In the time of Christ, Hebrew was not spoken very much even by the Jews. The Palestinian Jews like Jesus and his hearers would have probably spoken Aramaic most of the time, but the Bible's not written in Aramaic. It has been translated into Aramaic, but the original was not in Aramaic with the exception of a few chapters. There's like six chapters in Daniel and I think maybe two chapters or three in Ezra that are written in Aramaic. The rest is all in Hebrew.

But the Hebrew language had fallen out of popular use pretty much in the time of Jesus and Aramaic had largely replaced it. But everybody also knew Greek. The whole Mediterranean world had Greek forced upon them by Alexander the Great and that was 300 years before Christ. So by the time Christ came, Greek had been spoken throughout the whole civilized world, really, for several hundred years. And so everyone knew Greek.

Now, that's why the Septuagint was translated from Hebrew into Greek by the Jews in Alexandria, Egypt. That was almost 300 years before Christ when they started translating it. By the time of Christ, the Greek Septuagint was read probably more than the Hebrew text was, largely because the Hebrew language wasn't spoken as much and Greek was. So the Greek Septuagint was very accessible to everybody, Jew and Gentile.

When the disciples quoted from the Old Testament more often than not, they were quoting from the Septuagint and Jesus also did too. Now, that's not in every case. Sometimes their quotations follow the Hebrew text a bit more. Sometimes they even make their own free translation. So it doesn't follow the Hebrew word-for-word or the Septuagint. But more often than not, they quote the Septuagint. So that would have been probably what Jesus spoke most of the time.

It's not impossible that he could have quoted from the Hebrew and that it was translated into Greek when the Gospels translated his life into Greek. But the Septuagint definitely was used in all the letters because they were written to non-Jews. Except for the book of Hebrews. But interestingly enough, the book of Hebrews was written to Jewish Christians and yet every time it quoted the Old Testament, it quoted the Septuagint, the Greek. So that just shows how widespread the use of the Septuagint was even among the Jews at that time.

George: So, okay, so what I read from the Bible on my phone, I have English on the left, Greek on the right. If it's the Old Testament, it has the Septuagint. So that would be basically what the apostles and Jesus would have read when they read the Old Testament. Is that right?

Steve Gregg: For the most part, I think, yes.

George: All right, well, thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Steve Gregg: All right, George. Thanks for your call. We're going to talk next to Wanda in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Hi, Wanda. Welcome.

Wanda: Hi. Can you hear me?

Steve Gregg: Now I can. Did you hit the mute? Is that it?

Wanda: I did. I'm sorry. Okay. I'm not going to keep you. I'm a new listener. My daughter was searching for Daniel 9:27 a few months ago and she came up with you. So that's how we found you. But that's not my question. We've been enjoying your videos ever since. The question I have first is how do you view a Christian who commits suicide? I know of two Christians that committed suicide. One I went to church with for years and a good Christian. And he lost his wife. But when he committed suicide, he just did so much damage to his family.

Steve Gregg: Oh yeah. It's a very selfish thing to do. Well, let me just say this. Of course, what I think about them doesn't matter half as much as what God thinks about them. I believe if the person is a true follower of Christ and their committing of suicide was just a moment of weakness, let's just say it wasn't premeditated over a period of time and just in a moment of depression they just did what they did. Well, that in my opinion would be very similar to what we all do sometimes as Christians. We do things that we shouldn't do. Christians do not always do what they should do.

Now, I believe that when Christians sin, God still knows that they are his. And of course, if it's not suicide that they do, if they live long enough after they sin, they also repent. But I don't believe that they lose their salvation between the moment that they sin and the moment that they repent. I believe that they're saved by their basic commitment to Christ that God recognizes that he recognizes they belong to him. And therefore, although suicide is a terrible, terrible sin, no less than murder, probably more than murder, I'm not sure. Some people even think it's less than murder because you're only hurting yourself. But you don't belong to yourself. You don't have any more right to kill yourself than to kill somebody else. You're not your own, you've been bought with a price.

Besides the fact that God owns you and therefore you got no right to kill yourself, there are many people who have reason to believe that you belong to them. Your wife or husband, your children, your parents. Certainly it's irreparable loss to them whenever somebody commits suicide. It's a very cruel thing for a person to commit suicide.

Now, I realize that some people who do it are in extreme agony, they're not in their right mind. They might even be drugged out on pain medications and things like that and they're not being themselves and they do something that they would never do if they were in their right mind. But the thing they do is a terrible thing whether they do it whether there's some kind of thing that softens the guilt of it or not. It does the same amount of damage.

No one who's a Christian would ever seriously plan to commit suicide because we don't plan to make other people's lives miserable for the rest of their lives. The reason a person commits suicide is they feel miserable themselves, obviously, for one reason or another, like you mentioned, they lost their wife or their girlfriend broke up with them or their boyfriend broke up with them or somebody posted embarrassing tweets of theirs on Twitter. They feel miserable. They feel like I can't go on. I feel absolutely devastated. Yeah, well that may be true. But that doesn't give you an excuse to devastate everyone who ever cared for you, especially your parents, your children, your spouse.

At the moment they commit suicide, they might think, well there's really no one out there who will suffer because I'm gone. They have no idea. They have no idea. And it's absolutely destructive to other people's lives. It's destructive to a person yourself whom God owns and does not authorize you to kill you. So it is murder. It is murder. And a Christian should not want to toy around with murder at all. Now, if somebody does, I'll leave it to God to judge whether there's some kind of extenuating circumstances, some kind of mental blackout or something that he knows about that none of us do. But so I'm not going to say there's no possibility that he sees them as genuinely committed to him, though they did a terrible thing. I mean, many Christians do terrible things that aren't suicide, and that's not good either.

Wanda: Well, his mom really hurt his mom and his whole family, but she thinks that he just told God before he killed himself, "Lord, just please forgive me."

Steve Gregg: Well, that's a selfish thing, isn't it? That's a selfish thing. In other words, I'm going to inflict horrible pain on everyone who loves me, but God, please don't let me suffer the consequence of what I'm doing. Even though I'm inflicting everyone else with unutterable pain and mine, if I'm saved, mine pain will be momentary, if at all. A bullet in the head, you might not ever feel it, but everyone else who loves you will feel it for the rest of their lives and they'll never get any relief from it. That's absolutely satanic way of thinking. It's satanic thinking.

But on the other hand, we don't know what God knows about the situation. And so God is the judge, we're not. He was a Christian for years that I went to church with him for years, and he lost his wife. She'd been dead just a few months, and he just couldn't handle it. I had a wife who was killed in an accident when I was 28 years old, and I wanted to die. I wouldn't kill myself, but I wanted to die. I understand how that feels. But you don't do that. You're cutting out right now. I'm going to let you go, and I'll call another time. Thank you so much. Wanda, thanks for your call. Sean in Abbotsford, British Columbia, welcome to the Narrow Path, Sean.

Sean: Thank you, Steve, for what you do. I appreciate it. I'll make it quick. Two questions. One is, was Jesus in the lion's den, in the fiery furnace, Melchizedek? And the other one is, is it okay to praise and worship the Holy Spirit?

Steve Gregg: Well, I don't know if Jesus was in the lion's den. Daniel said when he survived it the next day, he said, "God sent his angel and he closed the mouths of the lions." Could have been Jesus. The word angel means messenger. It could have been Jesus. Now you said is Melchizedek. I believe that Melchizedek was what we call a theophany. And there are others in the Old Testament where Christ, I believe, came momentarily and appeared for certain purposes before he was ever even born as a man in Bethlehem. But that's because he pre-existed as God before. But I don't know if the one that was in the lion's den was a simple angel or was a theophany. I suppose it could be either way.

Is it wrong to worship the Holy Spirit? I don't think it's wrong to worship the Holy Spirit, though I'm not sure that there'd be any biblical approval of it. I don't think it's idolatry since I believe the Holy Spirit is God. I believe Christ is God also and that the Father is God. I believe in the Trinity. And so people did worship Christ and do, and worship the Father. We don't have any case in the Bible where people worshiped the Holy Spirit. Of course, when Jesus said to pray, he didn't even want us praying to him. He said, "Pray to the Father." He says, "Don't ask me anything, you'll ask the Father." And so if people are asking the Holy Spirit to grant wishes or even Jesus to do so, they're not praying the way that Jesus told us to pray. But at the same time, I don't think it's like praying to an idol or anything like that. Why do you ask?

Sean: We're kind of taught that the Trinity is equal, but I don't get that from the Bible. I think God the Father is number one and Jesus is number one of this world. But I don't see them as being equal, because only the Father knows when the end day's going to be if they're all equal. And Jesus even said, "Hey, there's only one good and it's not me, it's my Father," right?

Steve Gregg: Well, he didn't say it's not him. He said there's none good but God only. Now, he's either saying that he's God since clearly Jesus was in fact good, or else he's saying that he's not good. There's really only two ways that one could go on that. He says, "Why do you call me good? There's none good but God."

Sean: Why would he say, "Why do you call me good?" Why would he say that?

Steve Gregg: It's a searching question. He's asking the man his motives. Do you recognize who it is that I am? Why did this particular term come to your mind? But it's an awkward statement. The question is and certainly perhaps it could be taken more than one way. In fact, there are some manuscripts that have him saying, "Why do you ask me about what is good?" There's none good but God. But then that's an interesting thing too because the guy didn't so much ask him what is good, he called him good. But on the other hand, the man did say, "What good deed must I do to inherit eternal life?" So maybe he was simply asking about good.

But the way it stands in most of our Bibles, "Why do you call me good? There's none good but God only." He's either saying he's God and he's good, or he's saying he's not God and he's not good. But it'd be less blasphemous, I think, to say he's God than to say he's not good, because he certainly is.

Sean: I think he was acknowledging his human nature as well and saying that therefore like I am God, but I also have this human nature that God can't be tempted, right? But Jesus has been tempted in all things.

Steve Gregg: Yeah, very clearly Jesus when he was a man took on certain weaknesses, though not sin. Okay, well thanks for your call, brother. Good talking to you. Sandra in Memphis, Tennessee. Welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Sandra: Well, hello, Steve. Thank you. I appreciate you answering our Bible questions.

Steve Gregg: Do my best.

Sandra: So the question that I have concerns the days of the week, specifically the Sabbath. So if the days of the week were not actually named in the Bible, how do we determine which day of the week is the Sabbath? And since God only said the first day, second day through the seventh day, how do we determine which day is the Sabbath?

Steve Gregg: Well, what they called the first day of the week was the day that we call Sunday, and therefore the Sabbath was the seventh. We would think of the same way in our calendar, Sunday's at the front of the calendar. Some other societies that aren't affected by Christianity might think differently, might think Monday or Tuesday is the first day of their week, or might not even have a seven-day week. There's nothing about a week that is determined by astronomy, unlike months or years.

But the thing is that the Bible, of course, is written in a Jewish context where everyone knew that Sabbath was the seventh day, and Sabbath happened to be the day we call Saturday. Now, we don't have to call it Saturday and they didn't have to call it that. They knew which day was the seventh day. It's just that in other cultures, these days are called by different names. So what the Jews called the first day of the week, we call Sunday. And what they called the seventh day of the week, we call Saturday. But there's nothing in the Bible that authorizes the use of those names or forbids them. It's just the way we distinguish days just like we have names in our language for how we distinguish places and people. So they didn't have the names Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and so forth in the Jewish culture. So they just talked about the first day of the week or the third day of the week or the fourth day of the week or seventh or whatever.

Sandra: I heard a minister at one time say that God said to work six days and on the seventh day rest. So he concluded that as long as you were working six days and resting on the seventh day, then the seventh day was your Sabbath.

Steve Gregg: So the seventh, he took "seventh" just to mean the one that follows your six days of working, whatever six days those were, the next one is the seventh. Well, the Jews wouldn't have understood it that way because they all kept Sabbath on the same day. But I don't believe that keeping the Sabbath is a New Testament obligation. I believe the Sabbath, keeping the Sabbath, was an Old Testament obligation and it's not actually commanded by Christ or the apostles anywhere in the New Testament.

Christians have typically said, and this is a tradition that goes back many hundreds of years, that Sunday is the new Sabbath. But the Bible doesn't agree with that. The Bible does mention the first day of the week, which is what we call Sunday, but they never call the first day of the week Sabbath. They call the seventh day Sabbath. So we don't have to keep the Sabbath. I don't think. I mean, the Bible doesn't teach for Christians to do it. Jesus didn't teach it. The apostles didn't teach it. So in my opinion, it's not an obligation for Christians.

I appreciate your call. Thanks for joining us. You've been listening to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we're live Monday through Friday at this same time. We are listener-supported. We pay lots of money to radio stations. You notice we do not have any commercials. I don't sell anything, don't have sponsors. We're just listener-supported. If you'd like to help us stay on the station you listen to, or if you're listening on the internet, you might still want us to stay on the radio where other people can hear us. You can write to The Narrow Path, P.O. Box 1730, Temecula, California, 92593. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for joining us.