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'd be glad to hear from you. If you have a different viewpoint from the host, we especially would love to hear from you if you want to call to balanced comment. Give us a call and we'll talk to you too. The number to call is 844-484-5737.

My lines just filled up when I gave that number out, which means this is not a good time to call, but do not lose hope. These lines will be opening up throughout the whole hour. Call randomly and you stand a very good chance of getting on the air today. The number is 844-484-5737. And as many of you know, I'm traveling around in Washington State this week, teaching in different places. Tonight I'll be speaking in Kent. I'll be speaking in Poulsbo tomorrow night. I'm actually going to be flying up to Vancouver Island to speak there, I think on Friday. Saturday I'll be in Mercer Island and I'll be in North Bend on Sunday.

If you're in any of those places and are interested in joining us, these are open to the public meetings and you can get all the information you need about them at our website, thenarrowpath.com, under announcements. By the way, next week, Monday, I'll be in Spokane, speaking. I'll be in Idaho for a couple of things in Kamiah and Boise next week. All those are listed at the website, thenarrowpath.com, under announcements. And with only those announcements behind us, we'll now go to the phones and talk first of all to Charles, calling in New York City, New York. Hi, Charles. Welcome.

Charles: Hi. My question concerns Jeremiah the 31st chapter. I would like to hear your understanding of what that chapter means.

Steve Gregg: Are you talking specifically about verses 31 through 34 or the whole chapter?

Charles: Well, the whole chapter concerns both northern and southern kingdoms of Ephraim and Judah.

Steve Gregg: Chapter 30, 31, 32, and 33 of Jeremiah are kind of a section that talk about a developed idea in these and scholars refer to that as the Little Book of Comfort. As they call Isaiah chapter 40 through 66 the Book of Comfort, this little section of four chapters in Jeremiah is called the Little Book of Comfort because it talks about after the Babylonian exile, God restoring Israel again to their land and restoring their religion and so forth.

Now, these prophecies often begin with the vision of Israel coming back to their land from Babylon, and then they morph into prophecies about the Messiah and the New Covenant and that kind of thing. The reason for that is because in God's dealings with Israel, he had two periods of time where they were banished from their land and where he supernaturally brought them back. One was of course when Israel had to leave Palestine because of the famine and they went into Egypt and they were stuck there. They became slaves there for hundreds of years. Then God brought them back in what we call the Exodus.

Then a similar thing happened when they were taken away into Babylon and they vacated the land, but then God brought them back from that too when Cyrus the Persian conquered Babylon and let the Jews go back. Now, both the Exodus from Egypt and the return of exiles from Babylon are taken up as themes by New Testament writers as types and shadows of salvation, spiritual salvation, such as we have in Christ. These are some of the passages that New Testament writers will cite.

These passages, their first layer of meaning has to do with the return of the exiles from Babylon. Then it's intermixed with God saving people through Christ as he does today. This is kind of similar to what Zechariah does. In Zechariah chapter 9, the first eight verses talk about God delivering Israel from the advance of Alexander the Great who is conquering the whole region of the Levant and then it says that God will defend his house, meaning the temple. That happened when Alexander came. He did not destroy the temple. God gave him a dream before he got there and made him revere the priests and so forth.

Whereas everyone in Alexander's path was being conquered, he didn't conquer the house of God because God said in Zechariah 9 that he would not let him do that. But as soon as it tells the story of God delivering Jerusalem from Alexander's advances, it then gives the story of Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey: "Your salvation is coming." Now, obviously that didn't happen when Alexander came, but the salvation of Israel from Alexander's advances triggers an interest in the ultimate salvation that God will bring to Israel through Christ.

So this is what the prophets do. Jeremiah does that in this section. So you're going to find references to people coming back from Babylon, but you're also going to see references clearly to Christ or at least to the salvation he brings and the New Covenant. The key section that is most directly related to our concerns would be in Jeremiah 31:31-34 where he talks about he'll make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.

Jesus, of course, made that covenant in the upper room when he had the Last Supper. He said, "This cup is the New Covenant in my blood." And so this is talking about the New Covenant salvation, which is brought to our attention as sort of an extension of the whole saving work of God seen in the return of the exiles from Babylon. So that's how I take this chapter. I'm not going to go verse by verse with it through you, but if you want me to, you can go to my website. I do go through Jeremiah verse by verse and every other book of the Bible verse by verse.

My lectures are free. If you want to go to thenarrowpath.com, look under the tab that says Verse-by-Verse Lectures, look up the book of the Bible you want to go through verse by verse, in this case, Jeremiah, and look, the individual lectures will guide you to this section if you want to and you can hear an exposition on everything in the chapter. In this format on the radio, I can't really go into everything in it, but my overall assessment is as I said. I believe the principal layer, the first layer of this story, is God saving Israel from Babylon, just like he saved them from Egypt. But his saving them from Egypt and from Babylon both are a type and a shadow of Christ and so he talks about that too.

Charles: What I was mostly concerned about was whether there was any way to identify the ten lost tribes. It seems like even in secular history, there's no mention of just what happened to them after the Assyrians removed them to the lands of the Medes.

Steve Gregg: Well, the ten lost tribes, the Bible indicates that they were dispersed as the Assyrians conquered Israel, the northern tribe, and that they settled there and I believe history would tell us that the Samaritans of Jesus's day were the descendants of those people. They intermarried with the Gentiles of the region and so their offspring were not strictly speaking pure Israelites in terms of race. That's why the pure Israelites of Judah despised the Samaritans because they thought of them as half-breeds not only in race but also in religion because the Samaritans had apparently, the northern tribes, eventually retained some Jewish ideas about religion, but they also had their own religion, their own temple on Mount Gerizim that was different than Jerusalem and so forth.

So it became a competing religion with that of Judaism. So the ten tribes, in many respects, I'm sure very many of the people simply so intermixed with the Gentiles that any element of Jewish ethnicity was insignificant.

Charles: That's what I thought. I thought they were so mixed up that it would be impossible to identify them anymore.

Steve Gregg: Right, but when the prophet says that God will put all the tribes together with Judah again and make them one nation—and he does that especially in Ezekiel 37 with the two sticks prophecy, he's going to make the northern tribes and southern king one people again—I think this was first to some degree fulfilled when the exiles came back from Babylon. Now where were the ten tribes at that time? Well, like I said, most of them had been exiled by the Assyrians, but before the northern kingdom fell in 722 BC, many persons from those other tribes moved to Judah.

We're told in first of all the Levites did first because they were so offended by the calves in Bethel and Dan that Jeroboam had set up. He made his own priests to worship these golden calves. So the real Levites who had any convictions, they all moved back down to Judah. And then in various points in the books of Chronicles, we read many people from Zebulun and Gad and these other tribes around the time of Hezekiah, around the time of Asa, moved into Judah.

So Judah was a remnant of all the tribes and when Judah was taken to Babylon and brought back, they were a remnant of all the tribes coming back as one nation again. So I believe that's the primary reference to those prophecies being fulfilled.

Charles: Okay, that thank you very much. I appreciate your answer.

Steve Gregg: Okay, Charles. Thanks for your call. God bless you. Don from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is next. Hi, Don. Welcome.

Don: Hi, Steve. Thanks so much for taking my call. My question today is related to these teachers these days that call themselves prophets, like Jonathan Cahn or Johnny Enlow. I'm not reading any of the books myself. I have a very good friend who I trust in lots of ways, but he's really into these guys and I just wanted to know your take on their, maybe it's the New Apostolic Reformation in general, but what's your take? For instance, they'll take verses like from Habakkuk 2:14, that "for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea," and they will say that's today, or they'll link Isaiah to Donald Trump and Isaiah chapter 9 verse 10. So what is your take on these type of teachers, these prophetic voices?

Steve Gregg: Well, I'll say this. I've been in charismatic circles more or less for 55 years, beginning at Calvary Chapel in 1970. Now, Calvary Chapel's not extremely charismatic, but they believe in the gifts of the Spirit and so I became aware of people who prophesy and who speak in tongues and things, of course, and that's something you don't usually find outside of the charismatic movement. But of course, Paul, when he talked about the gifts of the Spirit, talked about how prophecy is the most desirable gift. He said, "seek the best gifts, especially that you may prophesy."

So in those circles, there's sort of a cultural admiration for anyone who can call himself a prophet. Unfortunately, in any society where there's a cultural admiration that goes with any claim to a particular position, there will be people who claim that position simply because they want that cultural admiration and not because they really are those things. Now, whether there's real prophets or not, I'm not here to dispute. I believe the gift of prophecy in some form or another is going to remain with the church until Jesus comes back. I don't believe prophecy as a function of people speaking by inspiration of God to the churches, I'm not going to rule that out.

But in charismatic circles, there's been many offshoots. The Bethel movement, the NAR as you mentioned, the New Apostolic Reformation, even earlier than that, we had the Kansas City Prophetic Movement back in the 90s. These people who call themselves prophets, all I would say is if someone says he's a prophet, he is. He's either a real one or a false one. Now, I've never claimed to be a prophet, so I can't be a false prophet. I could be a false teacher, but I could never be a false prophet because I don't claim to be a prophet. But if someone claims to be a prophet, they are. They're a false prophet or a true prophet.

Now, there are ways given to us in scripture to test whether a prophet is a true prophet or not, and most of the ones who are false one way or another kind of expose this by either going off into weird doctrine or by prophesying things that don't come to pass. This is the general way in which a false prophet would be revealed. Now, I'm not familiar with both of them. Jonathan Cahn, I have read his first book. Not because I wanted to. Everyone was reading it and asking me, so once in a while I have to read a book. I thought he was very clever and I thought he had some very impressive points. Now he's written other books since and he's really got quite a following.

I haven't read his other books. But the points that I thought were very clever and that which he made that were interesting to me, I didn't think were valid. He was working from a passage in Isaiah and trying to apply it to 9/11 and see it as kind of a fulfillment of that. Now, I mean, any man's entitled to interpret the scripture the way he thinks it should be interpreted, but if he's not being responsible, he'll no doubt misinterpret it.

In my opinion, there are no passages in Isaiah that talk about the modern times. Or frankly, I'm not really sure there's anything in the Old Testament at all that speaks about modern times, except for there are passages that speak of the kingdom of God being established by the Messiah, which happened when Jesus was here and continues to be true now. So some things prophesied in the Old Testament have been going on and still go on since the time Jesus established them. But as far as specific events of the future, I just want to say this. I'm not just speaking off the cuff here and I don't mean to claim any expertise, but just so people don't think I'm just making irresponsible statements.

I have taught verse by verse through all the prophets more than 20 times each. That means I've looked at what they say, I've had to interpret what they're saying, I've had to teach it credibly. Those lectures are found at our website and you can hear them for free. But I will say I'm very familiar with what the prophets did and did not say and I do not know of anything in any of the Old Testament prophets that speak of the end times. And yet that's the most common way that popular prophets assume them to be understandable.

In Luke 21, when Jesus predicted that the Romans would come and destroy Jerusalem, he said that "these are the days of vengeance that all things that are written may be fulfilled." Now all things that are written, I presume are written in the Old Testament and he said that when the Romans came and destroyed Jerusalem, that was so that all things that are written would be fulfilled. Now that may not mean that there's absolutely nothing in the Old Testament that needs to be fulfilled still, but it certainly is a sweeping statement.

He's indicating that the destruction of Jerusalem in the first century was a fulfillment of essentially everything in the Old Testament. Now, of course, many things in the Old Testament have predicted the Messiah would come and set up the kingdom, but he did that before 70 AD. So those things were fulfilled before the Romans came. But the final judgment on the Jews apparently was in 70 AD and we don't read of any predictions of another one after that in the Bible.

So I don't see the end times as we think of them as the subject matter that the prophets spoke about. If I'm guided by Jesus in that, I'm going to look at the majority, if not all, the Old Testament events had been fulfilled since the first century. And obviously if Jonathan Cahn or any other modern prophet says otherwise, we're going to disagree. Who's right and who's wrong, I guess time will tell, but my interpretation of scripture is not based on anything I see going on in the world.

Things go on in the world and then they pass and something else goes on then they cycle sometimes. Sometimes similar things happen. Back in 1970, the great prophecy teachers were saying that everything in the world in 1970 was lined up just so for Jesus to come back within that generation. Well, a few other generations have come along since then and he didn't come back and now there's another wave of that kind of talk, but those of us who have been around a long time realize that actually it's been many, many times that people have thought that what they're seeing in their time was the end of the world.

And there's always prophets who rise up in the community of those who are thinking that way to give them exciting connections to their own times and so forth. I maybe when I was young I might have been a little more eager to hear what they have to say, but I don't listen to them very much now. It doesn't mean you shouldn't. I mean, the Bible says let the prophets speak and let the others judge. I'll judge and you judge and we can decide. But I'm not going to say he doesn't have the right to express his opinion.

Everyone has, I suppose, a right to express his opinion. That's one of the great things about being an American: freedom of speech. But the Christian who hears someone speaking also has the freedom to disregard what they say until they can convince themselves from scripture that that person is saying something that is what is true to the scripture. And my perception is that very few people who have called themselves modern-day prophets have been very true to what I consider the scripture to be.

The Kansas City Prophets, for example, they like to talk about the book of Joel and talk about the manifest sons of God and God's army in the end times would rush on those city and run on the wall and so forth. They quote these passages from Joel and they refer to actually the end times saints victorious as Joel's army and so forth. Yeah, if they just study the Bible, they'd realize that Joel's talking about a locust plague. He's not talking about Christians in the end times. He's talking about a plague of locusts that's devastating everything.

So if you learn to study the Bible, you'll be immune to some of the rather strange things that modern-day prophets like to purport. But as again as far as these men's ministries are concerned, I don't know that I discredit them completely. I don't want to do that without being more familiar with them. I just say judge all things and hold fast that which is good, as Paul said.

Don: Okay, thank you so much. Really appreciate it.

Steve Gregg: Okay, Don. God bless you. David in Houston, Texas. Welcome.

David: Hi, Steve. Here's my question. What is the difference between one who adheres to biblical inerrancy and one who believes that the Bible is a very reliable and accurate record of the true word of God?

Steve Gregg: Well, the first one is an American evangelical or fundamentalist. The second one is someone who wants to read the Bible and take it at its own word. I was raised fundamentalist and evangelical and I still regard myself as an evangelical, but I had a very firm idea that every word was literally inspired. But when I began to read and study the Bible and teach it, I realized that I couldn't find the authors all saying that about their words.

For example, none of the Gospels are written by any man who claimed to be prophets or who claimed that they were inspired. They said they were telling the truth and I trust them. They were credible witnesses. I've got a good reliable account of what Jesus said and did and that's all I really need from the Gospels. I read the Gospels to get to know Jesus, not to get to know the Gospels per se. Statements about the Gospels that the authors don't make, I would say there was a time I'd say everything Matthew wrote he was under inspiration and I'm not against saying that.

I could say that too if he said it or if somebody else in the Bible said it about him, but I just don't have any biblical statements that affirm that so I don't need to. What I do need to know is that these people were telling the truth. You know, if I tell you the truth and one person says, "You know, Steve, I think Steve was inspired," another person says, "I don't think he was," well, what would be the difference if I'm telling the truth whether I'm inspired to tell the truth or whether I tell the truth anyway? The theories about me being inspired would be rather moot.

I believe I can trust everything in the Bible. I believe the Bible was written by inspired prophets and approved apostles. The Old Testament is written essentially by prophets and I believe they were inspired because they say so. They say, "Thus saith the Lord," "The word of the Lord came to me," "I saw God gave me this vision and here's what I saw." I accept everything that they claim about themselves. So I have no problem believing in the inspiration of prophetic writings.

The apostles, we accept their teaching not because they were necessarily inspired because they don't mention that they were and apostles are not the same thing as prophets. Apostles are ones who are official agents sent. Apostolos means one who is sent and Jesus officially sent the apostles to be his agents and he said, "He that receives him that I send receives me." So if I read something from Peter or Paul or any of the apostles, if I reject it, I'm rejecting Christ's own authority. He authorized them.

I can't stand against anything the apostles said. I have to agree with them. But I don't have to know whether they were inspired or not. Most of the time they don't really claim that they're inspired, but they certainly claim to have information that is true and inside information about Jesus and about theology because the Holy Spirit was given to them. And Jesus told them the Holy Spirit would lead them into all truth.

But Paul will do something like in 1 Corinthians chapter 1. He'll say to the Corinthians, "I thank God I didn't baptize any of you except Crispus and Gaius." Then two verses later he'll say, "Oh, I just remembered I also baptized the household of Stephanas. I don't remember if I baptized anyone else," he says. Okay, well, I don't think the Holy Spirit would inspire him to make a mistake and have to correct himself. On the other hand, his book is reliable because although he did misspeak, he corrected himself. So we got honest men who knew what they're talking about.

Now, I don't have any objection to someone saying and everything the apostles wrote in the Bible was inspired. I'd say I've got no problem believing that because it would be the same New Testament as I see. It would be true. If the Holy Spirit inspires them, they're going to tell the truth. Men sometimes can tell the truth whether inspired or not. I don't consider myself inspired, but I endeavor to tell the truth and I hope people can trust me, but that doesn't require my being inspired to do it.

So if someone says, "Well, they said the truth and they were inspired," I say, "Okay, doesn't change anything for me." I used to say that, but as I got older, I wanted only to say about the Bible what the Bible itself said. I didn't want to say things about authors that they didn't say about themselves. Especially if, for example, it required me to say when Paul says about those who are single, "I have no word from the Lord. I'll just give my judgment, my opinion as one who's received mercy to be faithful."

When I was younger, I used to say he said he didn't have a word from the Lord, he just didn't know, he's inspired. And then I thought, well, if he didn't know it, how do I know it? If he didn't think he had a word from the Lord, who am I to say he did? But on the other hand, he said he was giving his judgment as one that God had given mercy to be faithful and it is true. On anything that Paul would say, he knows a lot more about it than I would and Jesus chose him to speak for himself so I've got no problem whatsoever accepting everything he says.

But the Bible doesn't really give us a theology of inspiration. It gives us examples of inspiration. The prophets were inspired and they spoke under prophetic inspiration and that's what Paul says in 2 Timothy 3:16. He said all scripture, he means the Old Testament, is given by inspiration of God. We know he means the Old Testament because in the previous verse he said that Timothy had been taught all the scriptures from his childhood and there were no New Testament books written when Timothy was growing up so it's clearly describing Timothy's education at the hands of his Jewish mother in the Old Testament scriptures.

And of those scriptures, Paul said they're all inspired by God. Good. He never said that about his own writings, though I have no reason to doubt anything the apostles said because I don't think Jesus was incompetent in his choice of people to be his spokesmen. You can find people who will speak truthfully for you and I don't think Jesus settled for someone who wouldn't. So I think every apostle knew what they're talking about and were honest. Maybe they were inspired too. I will not deny the inspiration. I will say the Bible doesn't tell me whether that's the case or not for some of them.

Okay, we're going to take a break. I'll be back in 30 seconds. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. We have another half hour coming up. Don't go away.

Welcome back to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. By the way, I am broadcasting today from our affiliate station in Seattle, KCIS 630 AM, sitting in their studios, looking at their staff here. And we had lunch together and I don't see these people very often, but since I'm in Seattle, that's where I am and I appreciate them letting me come in here and buying me lunch too.

By the way, anyone who's in the Seattle area, I'm speaking all week in the general area if you want to take a look at our website, thenarrowpath.com, look at the announcements tab and you'll see where and when I'm speaking and if you're available, you're welcome to join us. Okay, we're going to go back to the phones, but let me give you the phone number because we have two open lines and that's really pretty good for you if you want to get through. 844-484-5737. That's the phone number: 844-484-5737. All right, let's talk to Nelson in Fort Worth, Texas. Hi, Nelson. Welcome. Are you there, Nelson? Doesn't sound like it. Did you mute your phone by accident? Going once, going twice... sorry, gotta take another call. Let's talk to Brandon in Phoenix, Arizona. Brandon, welcome.

Brandon: Hey, brother Steve, how you been? Hope you're doing good.

Steve Gregg: Thank you. Well enough.

Brandon: So my- I'm going to try to cut it short and simple because I know we only have this limited time. So I talked to you last time about the church that I go to. I go to Harvest Christian Fellowship in Phoenix, Arizona. And I talked to you about it, you told me to pray about it before I step down because of the pastor didn't want to put us into decisions. And the windup was that I wound up stepping down because he wanted to be the leader of all that and he wanted to make the decisions on his own, like you said first John.

And cut the long story short, I just want to know if this is heresy or not. We had a meeting the other day and they were saying that I'm not filled with the Holy Spirit because I don't surrender to the pastor's will, to his authority, so I don't pray, I don't fast, I'm not broken for Jesus.

Steve Gregg: And where are they getting that from scripture? You don't fast, okay, and so you don't have the Holy Spirit. Is there a statement like that in scripture somewhere?

Brandon: Well, I mean, I do all those things and I'm broken for Christ and I live for Jesus. I go and preach the gospel. I die daily for Christ.

Steve Gregg: Okay, let me jump in here. Sounds to me like you're a Christian. I don't judge anyone and I don't know you, but I'm going to say from everything you've told me, I would not have any reason to doubt that you're a Christian, that you're filled with the Spirit. So now your pastor may know you better, but he also might not be an objective judge because it depends on his personality.

Some pastors are very humble, very servant-minded, very cooperative with others in leadership and so forth, and that's a good thing. Jesus said if you're going to be chief, you got to be the servant of all. Other pastors, and I don't know yours, but I feel like I do from what you've said because I've known pastors who seem to have that same attitude. They're more like Diotrephes in 3 John who loves to have the preeminence in the church and if people didn't go his way, it was the highway.

So I've been in churches like that. I mean, I can't blame them for kicking me out, but they've kicked other people out they shouldn't have and you know, so I'll say this. I think more important than the doctrinal accuracy of the pastor, though I would hope that a pastor would be as doctrinally accurate as possible. Nobody's perfect, but I would hope that a pastor would be spiritually accurate and that he'd have the spirit of Christ and that he would not be a boss, but he'd be a servant.

I don't know all the nature of the conflicts between you and the pastor and I therefore can't really say I know you're right and he was wrong. He knows more, you know more than I do about the situation. All I'm going by is what you told me. If there's other factors that I don't know, my opinion would be of no value. But I do know there's many pastors who are threatened by somebody who gets along well in their Christian life and doesn't need them. There's just a personality type. A person who says everybody's got to do what I say or else you're not doing well with God.

And when they meet someone who does just fine with God and did so before they ever met him and you know, they don't have to do everything the pastor says, they still do fine with God, they don't know how to put that into their picture of the way things are supposed to be. And again, this is because so many times, and I say general statements, I just want to say this is many times, this is not universal in the church, but many times the churches have devolved into basically a religious form of a secular corporation.

They have a CEO, they have a board of directors, they've got a clientele, which is called the congregation. They're selling a religious product and they're charging for it with tithes or whatever. I mean, this is just like a business. Now, Jesus never started a business that we know of. Jesus started a family. He called prodigal sons to come back to their father and he told his- the leaders that he chose, the apostles, he said the rulers of the Gentiles exercise authority over them, but it shouldn't be done among you that way.

Whoever wants to be chief among you has got to be the slave of all, he said. He also said to Pharisees, "Love to be called Rabbi, Rabbi," or you know, "Father," or "Teacher." And he said, "Don't- don't call anyone Rabbi and don't be called teacher. There's only one teacher. And don't call anyone your father. You have one father. You're all brothers," he said. And he's talking to the leaders of the church. You're not above other people. You're just brothers with them.

This is a family. Now you might say, "Well, then how can a church function?" Well, it needs leaders, but the leaders are not political bosses. The leaders are leading by example and by teaching Christ's ways so that followers of Christ can follow Christ better. That's what leaders- a shepherd should be leading people to follow Christ. Now what often happens is because the churches are corporations, they get business plans and agendas. They want to build a wing on the church, they want to pave a bigger parking lot. Now they may need to and that may be a good thing.

But sometimes they just get it in their head that they need to get these projects going that have to do with the facility, the campus or something, or maybe just get a chance to raise their own salaries or whatever, or to write a book or to become a conference speaker so they want to have a real big church and stuff. And I mean, I don't know what motivates certain people, but they sometimes just think, I need to have all these people on my team. I need to have all these people backing me up. And as soon as they're doing that, they are acting like a CEO, they're not acting like a Christian leader because a Christian leader doesn't- the congregation is not his team. He's their team. He's there to bless them, he's there to feed them.

Remember it says in Ezekiel 34:1, "Woe to the shepherds that feed themselves. Should not the shepherds feed the flock?" Many times the pastor has an agenda which is to build his church up big and do things that will make his church have some prestige, which means it'll give him some prestige and it's not really making the Christians any more Christian, it's not making them more holy, it's not- they just they need their clientele to support their business. And pastors who feel that way, I'm being pretty blunt here because it sounds pretty cynical, but I don't mean to be.

I want to leave room for all the godly pastors, humble pastors who are not this way. But let's face it, I've been in the church for 65 years or more and I've been in a lot of churches. I've been in leadership in a lot of churches and also in the congregations. I know church leaders. Many of them. And there are many who are exactly the way I'm talking about. I hope your pastor's not that way, but if he says that you can't be filled with the Spirit if you're not following his plan, well, I thought following Jesus's plan was what walking in the Spirit was about. Isn't the pastor supposed to get you following Jesus's plan?

And Jesus's plan is for you to be holy, for you to be freed from the bondage of sin in your life, to become more loving, to be a better servant of Christ. And if Christ wants you to get involved in your pastor's project, maybe you'll do that. I hope you will if Jesus wants you to. But you don't know because the pastor saying God wants you to get into this project doesn't mean God does, it means he wants you to and he's hoping to use your devotion to God as an incentive.

So I would just say churches can become cults without going into heresy. A church can have perfectly good doctrine, but they've got a cult leader running them sometimes. Again, I'm not saying that's true of your pastor. It is true of some pastors I've known and from what you've told me your pastor kind of evokes that kind of a feeling in me.

Brandon: Yeah, Steve. So basically he was saying like for me to stop listening to you. He said stop listening to Steve Gregg because he believes in a hierarchy.

Steve Gregg: No wonder! That's very wise of him.

Brandon: Right. And he was telling the leadership, and the other leadership said, well, the church is like an army, there's ranks... and I'm just looking at these guys. I'm like, where is this biblical? Like what do you mean stop listening? And then they're saying that I have to submit to the pastor. If I'm not submitting to the pastor, then I don't have the Holy Spirit.

Steve Gregg: No, what Hebrews 13:17 says is "obey those who lead you." Who lead you, not rule over you. Right, not rule over you, who lead you and ten verses earlier it says about those who lead you are those who've spoken the word of God to you. Follow their faith, it says. Remember the outcome of their faith. The man who leads you isn't the man who managed to get a position as the CEO of a religious corporation that says church in front of it. That's not spiritual leadership, that's leading an organization.

Jesus didn't start that kind of an organization, at least I don't read of it in the Bible. Sounds like he started a family. We're all followers of God and the church is there to help us do that better. It's not there so that the pastor can build a kingdom and recruit the people who come into financing his agenda. That's many churches are built that way, but that's simply not what Jesus did or taught. And so yeah, if somebody's teaching you the word of God, that's what it says. Remember those who lead you who have spoken unto you the word of God. Follow their faith, it says.

Brandon: He brought up Romans where the governor authority...

Steve Gregg: Romans 13? Well, Romans 13 isn't talking about church authority, it's talking about political authority. Yeah, he's making that up. Well, it sounds like maybe he's not very interested in understanding the Bible well. It sounds like he's a little more interested in finding verses to support his way. But I don't want to spend my time blasting your pastor. I do not know the man. Can you keep me and my family in prayer? I'm going to leave the church. I'm leaving the church, I'm going to find a different church after 20 years.

Steve Gregg: That's always hard. It's traumatic to leave a church and it's a shame that pastors would force sheep into that position because you've developed for 20 years you've developed relationships with people, they're your family friends, your children's friends are in that church, your wife and you have relationships there and you should not be forced by some Diotrephes to have to leave the church because you're not sponsoring his agenda. It's none of his business. If you're doing well in the Lord, he should be glad, just serve God faithfully, brother.

But if you serving God faithfully doesn't lead you to follow his program, that doesn't make him happy. My goodness, if I were a pastor, I'd be delighted to have a whole bunch of people who didn't need me to hold their hand to keep them walking on the narrow path. I'd prefer that they do it on their own, you know, and leave me my time free to go after the ones that are in trouble. Anyway, brother, I'm sorry to hear that. I've been through that situation before myself and I'm sure many listeners lot of people feel that way.

Brandon: Love you, Christ be with you, Steve.

Steve Gregg: God bless you too, brother. Christ be with you. Hope as God will lead you to another fellowship I guess. In the name of Jesus. Amen. Thank you. Okay, Donna from Warren, Michigan. Welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Donna: Hi, Steve. I've been listening to you for a while and I've watched your debates and listened and I very, very rarely, very rarely do I even see you get slightly irritated when someone doesn't agree with you and you don't tend to pick up on getting emotional when they lash out at you. That's one of the struggles I have that I don't like to discuss with other people because I get emotional attached and I'm curious to know is it a skill that you've had since you were young or did you have to hone it to be able to be neutral when someone is disagreeing with you venomously?

Steve Gregg: Well, I don't know any other way to be as a Christian. I will say perhaps a lot of it has to do with the way I was raised. My dad was a very easygoing kind of a guy, mild-mannered, even-tempered and didn't get angry easily and of course lots of times little boys grow up to be a lot like their dads. But I'm going to really think more in terms of how God worked in me that way because I went through an era where I was kind of thinking everyone should think like I do too and it made me angry if they didn't see that I was right and things. I mean when I was a teenager in my early 20s.

It's kind of hard to find a young man who's not arrogant, but if you grow in the Lord, continue growing in the Lord, you don't tolerate arrogance in your life. You realize that God gives grace to the humble and he resists the proud. And if you fear God, you do not want to do anything to make him resist you. You want to avoid pride and you want to learn to be humble and you pray for that and you work at it and you humble yourself when you can. And sometimes you feel like you're just outwardly being humble but you really feel proud inside. I've known that.

But over time, you know, when you commit yourself to being Christ-like, eventually you become more like Christ. His Holy Spirit works in you to do so. Now to me to be not aggravated when someone disagrees with me, to me it's the most natural thing to be because I can't see why I would be upset with them about it. They have no obligation to agree with me. I'm not the beacon of truth that everyone is commanded to agree with. I'm just a follower of Jesus who reads my Bible just like you or someone else.

So I realize that people read their Bible and don't see it the same way. We're all growing, we're all learning. And in the meantime, we don't see it all the same way. Maybe we will someday perhaps when we all see Jesus. But in the meantime, if someone's sincerely following the Lord, trying to understand the scripture, doing their best, and they reach conclusions different than mine, they've got as much right to do that as I do. You'd have to be kind of proud to think how dare they disagree with me? Well, how dare you think they should? Why does anyone have to agree with me?

I can't think of a reason in the world. And they don't threaten me. Now another thing may be helpful and this is just a natural thing not a spiritual thing. And that is that if I were starting a movement, a cult, a church or something like that, I'd be threatened by people who don't agree. If I were finding my identity was in my denomination and my theology or my, if I was trying to start a group that required my ego to be affirmed by the agreement of everyone who's around me, then it would then I could feel kind of threatened if somebody who's free-thinking doesn't see things my way.

But that's a big if. I don't have any interest in doing that. I'm not starting a movement. I'm part of a movement that was started 2000 years ago and I'm just trying to fit in and do what I can to be faithful. And I realize many people who don't see things my way are also doing what they can to be faithful. And I'm not a better person than them, so why should I be angry at them? The only way you can be angry at someone for disagreeing with you is if you think they're doing something wrong by disagreeing with you.

Now if it looks like they're resisting truth, if you're pointing out scripture and they're just saying I don't believe that, well, they are resisting truth and let God be the one to get mad at them. They've got enough trouble with him. They don't need trouble with me too. I don't need to get mad at them. But I just don't find being mad to be a pleasant experience spiritually. I don't like my spirit to be ruffled and I don't believe that I should allow other people to have control over my spirit.

The Bible says he that has no rein over his own spirit—and reigning over your spirit in Proverbs typically means being slow to wrath or slow to anger—it says he that has no rule over his own spirit is like a city broken down without walls. In other words, what's a city like that's broken down without walls? Well, it's defenseless. Someone else will come and rule it. If you don't rule yourself, someone else will rule it. If you don't maintain your calm and decide to love the person who's your enemy and so forth, as Jesus said to do, well then people will be able to ruffle you. They'll be able to make you upset.

Sin makes me upset, but I don't think most of the people who disagree with me are advocating sin. I think they're advocating truth as best they understand it. So at least I feel love gives the benefit of the doubt. So I mean I don't know maybe that answers your question. That would be how I think to answer it.

Donna: Thank you, it does. I appreciate it.

Steve Gregg: All right, Donna. Thanks for your call. God bless you. Bye now. Nathan in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. Welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Nathan: Yeah, I was having dinner with my family and a lot of times we open up the scriptures and read together and we're going through John right now. So was reading John and noticed that John the Baptist baptizes people before the public ministry of Christ. Yes. And he was just kind of wondering, my daughter actually had the question, wondering why he was baptizing you know if not in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and then what is a baptism if not a Christian baptism?

Steve Gregg: Well, that's a good question and the Bible does bring that out, especially in Acts chapter 19 when Paul encounters 12 people who are somehow called disciples. It doesn't clarify whose disciples of, but he felt that they didn't seem like normal Christians and he said, "Have you received the Holy Spirit since you believed?" And they said, "We haven't even heard that there was such a thing as the Holy Spirit." He said, "Well, into what baptism were you baptized then?" They said, "Into John the Baptist's baptism."

And Paul made a distinction between John's baptism and Christ's. He says John came baptizing under repentance, but he said that people should believe on him who came after him, that is Jesus Christ. And it says when they heard that, they got baptized in the name of Jesus at the hands of Paul. So it's clear that they had been baptized with John the Baptist's baptism, but Paul saw that as having different significance than Christian baptism so they got baptized again.

So what was John the Baptist doing? There's some reason to believe that the Jews typically baptized converts to Judaism. When Gentiles wanted to become Jewish, they could convert and become what's called a proselyte. Now the Old Testament only required a Gentile who wanted to convert to be circumcised, but the rabbis had started adding other requirements too. So a Gentile who wants to be a Jew would have to be circumcised and do some other things and at a certain point the rabbis instituted a baptism or washing of Gentiles who wanted to be Christians. It basically had the image of cleansing.

The Jewish law had a number of washings in it, especially you know if you were unclean after you touch something you're unclean seven days and then you wash your clothes and take a bath and you're clean again. That was part of the law. But the Jews added all kinds of washings for different things, much more than the law did. And one of those things was they decided when Gentiles get converted they should be cleansed too because they're dirty Gentiles.

And so John's baptism was kind of of that nature. You guys need to repent of your sins and be cleansed of your sins even though you're Jews, you're not Gentiles. You believe in baptizing Gentiles to become Jews, but you're Jews and you need to repent of your sins. So that was kind of the meaning of his baptism I think.

Now of course Paul likens baptism for Christians to entering the kingdom of God through rebirth. He said we're buried with Christ in baptism and raised into the newness of life as a new creation in Romans 6 and in Colossians 2 he likens baptism to that. In another place in 1 Corinthians 10 he likens it to the Israelites coming out of Egypt and being baptized unto Moses in the cloud and the sea. In 1 Peter chapter 3 Peter likens it to Noah's family going through the water of the flood. Now in all those cases it represented leaving an old world or an old life behind and embracing an entirely new world or new life.

And that's of course what it is. When a person becomes a Christian, they're putting away the old life altogether and experiencing a rebirth and beginning a new life. They're entering a new kingdom, a new environment, a new world as it were. And so that's what Christian baptism is. But John's baptism didn't have all of that meaning in it because like you say Jesus hadn't died and resurrected yet. So John's baptism was more of a generic cleansing kind of a thing, an acknowledgment on the part of the people that they were dirty, that they were sinners, they had to repent.

Which is a good thing. It's a good thing and Jesus spoke well of it. In fact Jesus allowed himself to be baptized by John, but it's not the same thing as Christian baptism. And it's probably not the same thing the Jews were doing before John in baptizing proselytes. So washings as a religious ordinance or something can mean different things to different religious groups, but to Christianity, to Christians, it means that we're actually leaving behind totally as if we're dead our old life and burying that once and for all but we're rising from the water and from the grave as it were into a new life with new definition and new identity in Christ and so forth. So in other words to make it brief John's baptism had a different significance than Christian baptism.

Nathan: Okay. Well, I guess it could also be like in infant baptism. It's not necessarily a bad thing but just not what the apostles commanded us to do.

Steve Gregg: Right. To me people who are baptized as infants are also doing something that's not quite the same as Christian baptism though it's interpreted by the groups they're in as such and I'm not going to pick a fight with them over it, but there simply is no reference in the Bible to infant baptism, no advocacy of it, no examples of it, and seemingly no approval of it since the Bible says repent and be baptized in Acts 2:38. It says whoever believes and is baptized will be saved in Mark 16. As far as we know everybody in the Bible who was baptized first became a believer and we don't know that baptism is appropriate for anyone who's not a believer.

So I mean even the Pharisees came to John and he wouldn't even baptize them until he thought they really were repenting. You can't just get baptized with no heart in it and have that mean something to God. And since babies don't have any heart for God, they don't know anything, it really doesn't correspond in principle or anything to baptism in the Bible. Therefore those who were baptized as infants might be in the same situation as those men who were baptized with John's baptism. They got wet, but they're still sinners. They got wet but they're still not followers of Christ and Paul had them get baptized again.

I would usually recommend people who were baptized as infants but who later came to Christ, I'd normally recommend that they be baptized again and I think that'd be something we could even derive from that experience that Paul had in Acts 19.

I'm out of time for today's show. We've got some more callers. I'm sorry not to get to today. Hope you'll call tomorrow so I can get to your calls. The Narrow Path is listener supported. If you'd like to help us pay the radio bills, you can write to us at The Narrow Path, PO Box 1730, Temecula, California 92593. You don't have to write to us, our website, everything is free at the website, but you can donate from there if you wish. That website is thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for joining us.