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 taking your calls. If you'd like to call in with any questions you might have from the Bible or about the Christian faith, you may do so. If you have disagreement with the host, if you don't believe in the Bible and you want to talk about what your objections are, I welcome your calls. We do this every day for an hour commercial-free so that we can get in as many calls as possible. You can be on our switchboard and we can get to your call today if you call at the proper time. The proper time is not right this minute because our switchboard has filled up.

I'm going to say if you call five minutes from now, ten minutes from now, randomly through the show, lines are opening up continually and there's a very good chance you'll get through certainly if you call within the first half hour. Anyway, I just want to hear from you today if possible. We've got our lines full so we're going to go to the calls real soon. I just need to make some announcements and that is tonight, I'm broadcasting from Vancouver Island, British Columbia and I'm going to be right after the show ends, I'm going to be giving a talk here and then there's going to be a dinner break, then I'm giving another talk.

These talks are independent of each other. If you can't make it early enough for the first one, you're welcome to join us for the second one, which is at 7:00. The first one is at 3:15, like 15 minutes after the show ends here. It's at the Mill Bay Community Hall on Vancouver Island. If you happen to be there or accessible to there, feel free to join us tonight. Then tomorrow I'm going to be in Mercer Island, Washington. The next day I'll be speaking morning and night at a little church in North Bend, Washington. The next day, that is next Monday, I'll be in Spokane, Washington. Then the following day I'll be in Kamiah, Idaho. A couple of days later on Thursday next week, I will be in Boise. That's my whole itinerary tonight as I said in Canada.

If you want to join us at any of those, you can go to our website thenarrowpath.com. Look at the tab that says announcements and you'll find the locations and times and all the relevant information about those meetings on this itinerary. Now we'll go to the phones and talk to Joe in Sechelt, British Columbia. Hi, Joe. Welcome to The Narrow Path.

Guest (Male): Hi, Steve. Thanks for your program. Sounds like you're right across the water from me in Sechelt, Vancouver Island. It’s right across the water from there. I've got one verse of scripture from Exodus 34:26 and I believe it's where the Lord was talking to the Israelites during the Festival of Weeks. The verse specifically says, "Do not cook a young goat in its mother's milk." My question specifically is it seems odd to me that that kind of a command, whether it's literal, I think of people who might have been very poor at the time and only had one goat, or does it refer to something that we currently don't realize that comes from Hebrew scripture or culture that we need to know more about to understand this verse? I leave it to you. Thanks.

Steve Gregg: Well, thank you for asking. The command in Exodus is also, I think, it's found in Leviticus and I know it's found in Deuteronomy also, so it's a repeated command: "Do not boil a kid in its mother's milk." The meaning of that, I think, is quite literal. I think they were not allowed to prepare goat meat that was boiled in the milk of the mother of that goat.

The Jews have typically taken this beyond what God said, so that an observant Jew won't even eat dairy products and meat in the same meal. Of course, that goes very far beyond what was commanded. God did not say that you can't eat dairy products and meat in the same meal. He didn't even say you can't boil a kid in goat's milk, just not the milk of its mother.

There was something there that is no doubt, I've always wondered of course like you did, why that is true. I actually listened to a Jewish commentary on this once on an audiobook. It was actually Dennis Prager's commentary on Exodus. He, I thought, might have some insights from the rabbis or something that I'd never heard. Actually, he said kind of the same thing I felt, so I don't know if there's anything deeper to it than this: it just seems inappropriate to use the milk that was given to nurture the baby goat to be instrumental in cooking it to be eaten.

It's not immoral. Many of the things that the law of Moses forbade were not immoral. It's not immoral to have leprosy, for example. It's not immoral for a woman to have her menstrual period. It's not immoral for you to bury a dead person. But if you do so, you're unclean and those are ritualistic laws. They're different than laws that we would recognize as having a moral background like a law like adultery or murder or stealing or bearing false witness. Obviously, they violate moral standards.

Why? Because moral standards are based on the character of God and God is just. God is merciful. God is faithful. Those are the things Jesus said were the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy, and faithfulness. The reason they're weightier is because they are what God is. He's just, He's merciful, He's faithful, and therefore it's never okay to act in any way toward another person that is unjust or unmerciful or unfaithful. You can't break your promises, can't break your word, you can't violate somebody's rights.

These things are because God is that way. Now the laws that God gave that reflect His character will never change because God doesn't change. In fact, they're not strictly speaking Mosaic laws at all. Mosaic meaning from Moses. Yes, they are found in the Mosaic code, but they existed in other codes too before Moses in the law of Hammurabi. In fact, most secular laws of most secular nations have had laws against murder and adultery and stealing of some kind.

In other words, these moral issues, they're not strictly speaking things that were introduced by the law of Moses. It was wrong for Cain to kill his brother Abel long before Moses ever gave any laws about it. It was wrong to commit adultery in the time of Abraham long before there were laws that Moses gave about it. I mean, even the Philistines knew that. That's why Abraham wanted to lie and say his wife was his sister because he figured that they would want to steal his wife if they didn't know she was available. If they didn't know she was available, they would want to kill him so she would be available because they knew it was wrong to sleep with another man's wife. But if they killed the man and took his wife, then they, these were Philistines, they weren't godly, but they knew that adultery is not okay. You can't sleep with another man's wife.

The instincts of pagans in many times in their laws have laws that reflect morality, but the Jewish law went further and had many rituals and ceremonies that were symbolic. They symbolized spiritual things that were fulfilled in Christ and therefore some of them were not really intelligible at the time. I can't really tell you what the spiritual correspondence is to every single law that God made that was ritual, but it seems obvious that boiling a kid in its mother's milk would be, I mean, that's just a ritualistic thing. That's not a moral thing. It's not immoral to eat food, it's not immoral to kill the kid and eat it. So there's just something about the mother's milk that just seems inappropriate. I think that it seems unnatural and a violation of the whole purpose of the mother's milk was not to boil her child for someone to eat, but to nurture the kid.

That's what I, you know, there's no deeper meaning that I know of than that. It's just it kind of goes against the sensitivities of what the mother-child relationship involves and what the mother's milk is for. There may be analogies in the spiritual realm that have not crossed my mind. I don't know of them. I'm not able to go deeper into it than I have. Did you have any ideas about it?

Guest (Male): No, not at all. I just remembered the time that I had visited in Israel where it was the Sabbath day and I went to push the button on an elevator. They said, "No, no, you can't do any work on the Sabbath." I said, "Well, how am I going to go in?" The elevator stops at every floor. So I thought of the 640 plus laws that they had for the Jews at the time.

Steve Gregg: 613 laws, I think. Yeah. And like I said, an observant Jew, because of that law, will not eat dairy and meat together. And so a truly observant Jew will not eat a cheeseburger because it has meat and cheese in it. Of course, many Jews are not observant, but that's just the position they took from it. But it's hard to imagine any moral reason not to eat a cheeseburger.

Guest (Male): Yeah. Thanks for the explanation, Steve. Appreciate that. Thanks.

Steve Gregg: All right, brother. Thanks for your call. Bye now. Ron from Indianapolis, Indiana. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Guest (Male): Hi, Steve, and thank God for what you do. Steve, I have a couple of questions and I think one of them is going to be this. Have I not heard you say that if you have an extensive type question, maybe I should email you and have you email me back directly?

Steve Gregg: That is sometimes a better idea. I mean, if it's too long for a radio show, it probably is.

Guest (Male): Okay, I'm going to leave that with that. But now I'm going to get to one of my two questions. My first question will be this. I know you're familiar with Romans 9:20, yes?

Steve Gregg: Yes.

Guest (Male): And so is your comment to our listeners, "Why have you made me thus?" Steve, help me understand that and please put it in context and content.

Steve Gregg: Okay, I'll gladly do that. Thank you. Paul in Romans 9 is using the illustration of a potter making things out of clay. And he says, can the clay say to the potter, "Why have you made me thus?" or like, "Why have you made me this way?" Now many people feel that what Paul is affirming is that everything about us is ordained by God and we shouldn't be able to complain about those things because God made us that way. And maybe that would be an application, an extended application, but that's not what Paul's talking about.

Paul is talking about Israel. Romans 9 through 11 is about Israel. And he begins in Romans 9 talking about how God made promises and covenants with Israel and it's how tragic it is that they haven't come into salvation. He says he's so grieved over it that he could wish himself accursed from Christ if it would bring salvation to his fellow Jews. But of course, his musing on the unbelief of the Jews, despite the promises and covenants that were made to them, invites the question, well, why aren't those covenants effectual to the Jews? Why are they not saved?

In fact, didn't the Old Testament prophets say when the Messiah comes, Israel will be saved through him? And Jesus came and he left and they're still not saved. That's the question, the dilemma that Paul is addressing in this discussion. And he begins by answering with a thesis statement. In Romans 9:6, he says, "Well, it's not that God's word has failed to take effect because they are not all Israel who are of Israel." Meaning not everybody who is descended from the Jewish race, not every Jewish person, is really the Israel that is in view.

When God made promises that Israel would be saved, he wasn't talking about every single Jew because then we'd have to assume that just being Jewish would be the way to be saved. He promised to save every Jew. But he says, no, there's an Israel within the larger Israel, a faithful remnant, those who respond to God. And he says this as he goes further into Romans 9 in verse 27, he says even Isaiah said, "Though the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea for a multitude, only the remnant will be saved." And later in chapter 11, Paul says that he's part of that remnant and there is in Romans 11:5, "There's a remnant now according to the election of grace."

And so he's saying that it's not that promises to the Jews have failed to come true. He's saying they have come true, but you have to understand who Israel is to God. Israel isn't the whole nation. It's the faithful remnant. Now realize that throughout Jewish history in the Old Testament, much of the nation, most of the nation was apostate much of the time, worshipping idols, worshipping Baal, Moloch, and so forth. And yet at all times, the Bible says in the Old Testament, even when Israel was totally in rebellion against God, there was a remnant of faithful Jewish people, faithful people who were not breaking the covenant.

And they were the true Israel within Israel. In fact, so much so that there was a point at which it seemed like Moses was the only faithful Israelite because everyone was worshipping the golden calf. And God said to Moses, "Get out of my way. I'm going to destroy them all and make a greater nation than them out of you." Now in other words, all the Jewish people would be reduced to one man, Moses, and then he's going to raise the nation from them because only the faithful are worthy of the promises.

In fact, when God created the nation of Israel at Mount Sinai, he made it a condition. He said, "If you will obey my voice indeed and keep my covenant, you will be a peculiar people unto me. You'll be a kingdom of priests. You'll be a holy nation." So it was if you obey me. So being the chosen people was something that was realized always realized only to the faithful. And that's why so many people who have been Jewish have lived and died without faith and died and it's not like God failed the promises, as Paul says in Romans 3. Maybe they haven't believed but it's not God that failed, "Let God be true and every man a liar." It's the men who are liars. It's the men who fail God, not vice versa.

Now having said that, Paul illustrates that in the passage you raised about the potter and the clay. He realizes that his audience, his readers, at least the Jews among his readers, will not be fully convinced of his point unless he argues it for a while. So he takes three chapters arguing that point, that God's promises were to the remnant and not to all Jews. Now part of his argument is, "What if does not the potter have the right to take one lump of clay and from it to make two vessels, one for honor and one for dishonor?"

Now he later talks about individuals being vessels, but here he's just talking about two vessels, one lump of clay which is Israel because in the Old Testament God said that Israel was the clay and God was the potter. So Paul says God can take the one lump and he can make two vessels. And one vessel represents the faithful remnant of Israel and that's the vessel of honor, and then there's another vessel he's made that frankly is not the faithful and that's the vessel for dishonor.

Now many people would argue that God is the one who individually selects who's going to be saved and not. Of course, that's a Calvinist position. And if that's true, that's not what Paul's saying here. Paul's not talking about individual selection. He's saying when God makes promises to Israel, he's entitled to have one Israel, a vessel of honor, that is not included in the vessel of dishonor, the apostate Israel. That is two collectives. Israel exists as two collective groups, the apostate and the faithful. And so he says the pot cannot say to the potter, "Can it? Why have you made me this way?"

Now what he's anticipating is an unbelieving Jew who is not coming on the promises is going to say, "Well, if God's the potter, why did he make me an unbeliever?" And Paul's going to say, "He didn't make you an unbeliever." He imagines the objector is going to say, "How can God find fault for who has resisted his will?" And Paul says, "Well, you're finding fault. I mean, you're resisting his will, excuse me. Who are you, oh man, to answer against God?"

In other words, they're suggesting that no one could resist God's will and therefore God can't find fault. He's saying, "Well, you are resisting God's will, so people do resist God's will." And he can find fault with that. And so he's in this section, the question you asked was what does it mean why you've made me thus or whatever? It's not a standalone statement. It's part of a protracted argument that begins at the beginning of chapter 9, finishes up at the end of chapter 11 of Romans.

And in the midst of it, he's arguing that if a person, a Jewish person is not in the believing community, they can't complain to God about it. They can't say, "Well, you made a vessel of dishonor and I'm in it, so why'd you make me that way? Why'd you make me an unbeliever?" Paul says, "No, God doesn't make you an unbeliever. You make yourself an unbeliever. Let God be true, every man a liar." So it's part you have to understand where he's going with the whole thing and that line is just a passing line that leads to the next point he's making. So don't pick that sentence out of there just kind of isolated. You've got to follow the flow with Paul's thought. And then it makes reasonably good sense. I would say it makes perfectly good sense. Some people have trouble more than others with it.

Anyway, I hope that's helpful to you, Ron. Thank you for your call. Let's talk to Nelson in Fort Worth, Texas. Hi, Nelson. Welcome.

Guest (Male): Yes, sir. Thank you for taking my call there. I'd like to make a speculation about Acts chapter 1 verse 11 says, "Then this same Jesus which you have taken up from you shall so come in like manner as you've seen him go into heaven." Then jump to chapter 2 verse 2 and that as a preterist, that's what is referring to. In other words, 1:11 is pointing to chapter 2 verse 2 and it already happened.

Steve Gregg: Well, there are people who think that. What you're saying is that in chapter 1 of Acts, the angels announce that Jesus would return and in the next chapter the Holy Spirit came and you're saying that's him returning. Now I don't agree with that, but that's always been one of the theories that people have had out there. As an evangelical, I personally believe in a future return of Christ. I don't believe it was all that that all took place right away.

I think that there's some work that God wanted to accomplish in the church before he comes back and closes things up. But I can see that you have another view. But you're not the first person or even near the first person to suggest that the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came that that was the fulfillment of the promise of the second coming. And there's even some reasons to not see that as a stupid idea. I don't agree with your idea but it's not stupid because in John 14 Jesus said that he was going to send another comforter and as he went on to talk about this he said, "I will not leave you orphans, I will come to you." And although "I will come to you" could refer to the second coming, it kind of sounds in the context he's talking about "I will come through the spirit" because a few verses later he said, "He that has my commandments and keeps them, he it is that loves me, and I will love him and my father will love him and we will come and make our home with them."

And this too is talk about the spirit coming, you know, if you're if you love me and you obey me and you're my disciples, my father and I will come to you and make our home with you. Which I believe is accomplished through the Holy Spirit coming. So there is a strain of discussion about the Holy Spirit in the Bible that sort of identifies the spirit coming with Jesus coming, but that's not the same thing as the second coming in my opinion.

See, Paul even does that in Romans chapter 8 where he says, "But you are not in the flesh but in the spirit if so be the spirit of Christ dwells in you." And he says, "If anyone does not have the spirit of Christ, he's none of his, but if Christ is in you, then he says the body is dead because of sin but the spirit is life because of righteousness" or something like that. But the point is he says if you have the Holy Spirit then he says then Christ is in you, it's the spirit of Christ.

So he recognizes the spirit in us is what is meant by Christ in us. If we say Jesus lives in me, it doesn't mean that the man Jesus with the holes in the hands and the feet has left the throne of God and now has taken up residence in me. He's still at the right hand of God. "The heavens must receive him until the time of the restitution of all things," Peter said in Acts chapter 3. So he hasn't come back yet. But he has sent his spirit. He is present with us in spirit.

Now you say now that's what was meant by the angels when they said Jesus will come in like manner as you saw him go. I just don't think so. I mean, for one thing they said "this same Jesus." Now Jesus spoke of the Holy Spirit coming, he said, "I'm going to send you another comforter," meaning not the same, not me. When the spirit comes, he's another comforter. I'm the comforter you have now, I'm going away, I'm going to send you another one. But the angel said, "No, the same Jesus is going to come back." And they said he's going to come back in the same way that you saw him go.

Now they saw him go visibly, physically into the air, and any other way of coming back that wasn't physical or visible would be another way, a different way, not the same way. So I think while I do agree that there's a sense in which the coming of the spirit is the coming of Christ to the believer, but the coming of Christ to the world to renew the world, I don't believe is to be identified with when the spirit came on the church in Pentecost. But I can see how you could see that view. It's just not a view that I would agree with. All right. Let's talk to Daryl in Sacramento, California. Daryl, welcome. Oh wait, we may not have time. We have a break coming up. Daryl, I'm going to put you back on hold and then I'll come back to you. How's that sound?

Guest (Male): Sounds good.

Steve Gregg: Okay, we'll come back to you after the break. We have a break coming up then we have another half hour of broadcasting. You're listening to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. The Narrow Path has been on the air for 29 years Monday through Friday doing just this thing, an hour every day taking your calls and answering your questions the best I know how. But we pay for the time on radio stations. We don't sell anything. This is not I'm not giving you a commercial right now because I have nothing to sell you. We don't have any sponsors nor will we. We are just a faith ministry and if you want to help us stay on the air that you can, you can write to us at The Narrow Path, P.O. Box 1730, Temecula, California, 92593. That's The Narrow Path, P.O. Box 1730, Temecula, California, 92593. Or you can donate from the website.

Now the website, everything is free. There's nothing for sale there. But there's thousands of lectures, audio lectures you can download for free verse by verse through the whole Bible, also topically on many hundreds of topics. If you have not been to our website, you would not be able to imagine how many resources are there. So let me encourage you to do so if you have not, thenarrowpath.com. You do not have to donate, you don't have to even give us your email address, you don't even have to let us know you were there. You can just download the stuff and use it. If you want to donate, there's a tab there where you can, I think it says donations, something like that. And you can donate if you want. Anyway, it's those donations that keep us able to pay for the radio time. I'm going to take a 30-second break here and then we'll have another half hour of broadcast. Don't go away, I shall be right back.

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'd like to raise a question for discussion on the air about the Bible, about the Christian faith, if you want to raise a disagreement with the host, feel free to do that. The number to call is 844-484-5737. One more time that number is 844-484-5737. All right, we're going to go back to the phone lines and talk now to Alan from Grass Valley, California. Alan, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Guest (Male): Hi, Steve. I think this is going to qualify as a disagreement. I've been listening to your lectures online and you talk about 2 Timothy 3:16 and the word "all scripture" and you say "all," if I remember correctly, and it applies to the scripture that existed at the time that statement was made. Right. So I want to bring up when it says in another place Christ died for all men, we don't restrict the word "all" to only the men that lived at that time, we apply it going forward. And in another place where it uses the word "all," where it says to teach the gospel to all nations, we don't restrict teaching the gospel to only the nations that existed at that time, we say that applies to the nations that exist in today's world that didn't exist at that time. So I'm just questioning why it's right to restrict the word "all" in one case when it's not restricted in these other applications.

Steve Gregg: Okay, so in other words the word "all" in the Bible frequently doesn't mean every last one or it sometimes means more than were existing at the time. You're saying that if we're to disciple all nations, that doesn't just mean the nations existing at that time but also all nations that shall be in the future. So I agree with you, the word "all" has a flexibility in the Bible. Sometimes it literally just means a lot or most, like when one of the plagues of Egypt destroyed all the cattle in Egypt and then a later plague killed some more of them, you know, well how did it kill some more of them if they were all wiped out? So I mean "all" is often you just have to really understand what it what it means in context.

So you're right, if we're supposed to evangelize all people, that doesn't seem to be any restriction on that. Now what you're talking about is 2 Timothy 3:16 where it says, "All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine and for correction and reproof and instruction in righteousness so that the man of God might be complete, thoroughly furnished for every good work." And you're saying "all scripture" would mean including New Testament scripture.

Okay, now of course you're acknowledging that the New Testament scriptures were not yet written when Paul said that, and okay. But that he's saying that everything that is scripture, whether it's now or in some future date, is inspired by God. That would raise questions about when the canon would ever be closed, but we won't get into that right now. I would say you can hold it that way if you want to. I do not believe that's how Paul meant it.

I mean surely the word "all" can extend beyond the things that were present, but in the context Paul told Timothy that he had been Timothy had been instructed in the scriptures, the holy scriptures from his childhood. And "all scripture," say same word in both verse 15 and 16, "all scripture is given by inspiration of God." I believe that he's saying you can count on those scriptures that you were taught from childhood because all the scriptures were inspired by God.

Now Timothy wasn't taught anything from New Testament scripture because no New Testament book existed when Timothy was being trained by his mother. So obviously we can say for certain the scriptures that Timothy was trained in Paul says they're all inspired and and I think that's significant Paul's telling him to count on those scriptures he was raised believing. Now you're saying that in addition to the Old Testament scriptures, Paul's also referring to New Testament scriptures. Well, maybe.

The problem with this is, I mean it's not a not a fatal problem but it's a problem, is that how would Timothy know what New Testament writings were scriptures? There was no canon of the New Testament thoroughly decided until 397 AD at the Council of Carthage. So for the first 400 years of the Christian church, although the New Testament books were in circulation, the decision about which ones were actually scripture was still up in the air.

Now now that'd be interesting because that being so, those 400 years, let's say I don't know if you think Revelation is scripture or the book of Hebrews or the book of 2 Peter. I do, but they weren't counted as scripture by the church until the Council of Carthage 400 years after Christ was born. Now that being so, if Paul was trying to say "all scripture is inspired" and we can use it and he meant New Testament scripture, yet those books weren't scripture yet. They weren't counted as scripture yet. So only when they became recognized as scripture later on we'd have to say, "Okay, those are inspired."

But I don't think Paul's looking forward. I'm not even sure Paul anticipated a collection of New Testament scriptures. He might have, but he doesn't ever mention it. So I don't know, I'm just not going to see that as a convincing argument to me.

Guest (Male): I don't disagree with any of the things that you just brought up, especially about how the canon of scripture formed and that stuff. I still see that. But when we talk about Paul talking to Timothy, we're also saying that Paul was talking to us today. I mean, we apply everything he says to us today as well.

Steve Gregg: Oh, okay, hang on, hang on. There's going to be a point of disagreement. You say when Paul was talking to Timothy, he was talking to us also. Well, if I'm reading the Bible and I read Paul telling Timothy, "Come to me before winter and bring the books and the parchments," I'm going to think, "Okay, if he's talking to me, where am I going to go bring those books to?" You know? I mean, he's talking to his friend Timothy, a fellow minister.

Now when we say he applies to us, we do apply the the writings of the New Testaments and rightly so, but only in this respect that Paul in his writings and Peter in the other writers, they say things that are of eternal and universal truths to all Christians. And they also say things that are personal like when Paul says, "I remember your tears when we parted," he said to Timothy. Well, I didn't part with Paul with tears.

You know, I mean when he talks about how Timothy learned the scriptures from Lois and Eunice. Well, I didn't learn them from them. So you know when he's talking to Timothy, he's not talking to me. He's talking to Timothy. I have the advantage of recognizing that many of the things he says to Timothy are relevant beyond Timothy. They're relevant to all Christians or they're they're universal truths that we can apply and do.

So in other words, the proper way to understand these letters is they were not written to us but we can say they are for us. They are for our advantage. We can read what he wrote to somebody else and say, "Okay, if he said that to them about that, I have a situation in my life that's somewhat parallel. That's what he would say to me about it too." So I can I can get the mind of God from what Paul said to the Corinthians or to the Galatians or to the Ephesians or to Timothy or Titus or to Philemon.

Philemon wasn't written to me. The very specific circumstances of the book of Philemon, I've never been in any of them, but there are lessons there that, you know, in his communication with Philemon, come across as relevant to me and relevant to Christians in general. So yeah.

Guest (Male): Okay, I think I see. If what he's saying is "Timothy, this is how you need to understand the truth about scripture," then I see how that applies. And if I if I took that passage as saying, "Okay, he's telling me what applies to scripture," as opposed to applying then I come away with a different understanding. So I think I see your point. Thank you.

Steve Gregg: Yeah, because I mean first of all, if he's saying, "Timothy, you need to know this about scripture," he has just mentioned the scriptures that Timothy had been trained in from his youth, so he means of course "I'm telling you this about those scriptures." Now if we conclude that the New Testament is also scripture, well that conclusion about some of those books didn't come until hundreds of years later, but we I accept them all as scripture, so I see them as a means by which God talks to me. I see them as profitable for doctrine and for reproof and correction and so forth, although when he says it's all given by inspiration, of course the actual word in the Greek is it's God-breathed.

It's not entirely clear how God-breathed looks but it's it means that God has they've come from God's mouth. They've come from God's heart and mind. And I accept that and I accept the authority of all New Testament books. I've never had any doubt about them. But in terms of how they were inspired, my what I guess what I said that might be hard to swallow is that the Old Testament was written by prophets who said, "Thus saith the Lord." They were inspired oracles through whom God was practically dictating his word to the people. Whereas in the New Testament, none of the New Testament writers were identified as prophets, but they were apostles.

Now apostles have absolute authority to speak for Christ, so what they say is as good as if Christ said it. But it doesn't mean that they were experiencing the same phenomenon while writing that the prophets were experiencing of inspiration while they were prophesying. I don't know what they were experiencing, the prophets or the apostles. I'm not either. I'm not a prophet or an apostle.

But I'm just saying we do see a difference in the way God gave the Old Testament to a very large extent through oracles and visions and dreams. Some of those appear in the New Testament but in the narrative, I mean that is to say in Acts we read that Paul had a dream about a Macedonian man saying come over and help us. But the story in Acts is not said to be written as a result of a dream. Luke said that he wrote as a result of research. He said many before him had written these things and he he had researched it and he had thorough knowledge of it.

And I mean he doesn't claim that he's like a prophet going into a trance and and dictating the book of Luke and Acts. But he is telling us it's true and that's absolutely and the story of Jesus is an inspired story. So exactly how inspiration took place with Luke, he does not say and in fact he doesn't even claim it. But we can certainly say that everything Jesus said was inspired. And when the apostles spoke through the Holy Spirit, they were inspired. But the main thing we can say, I don't think that the book of Luke was written the same way the book of Romans was, and I don't think that the book of Acts was written the same way the book of Revelation was.

I mean God makes his word known to us in different ways through different experiences of his messengers, but everything they say is reliable. That's my position. I don't have to have a theory about how the inspiration may or may not have taken place. If these guys are speaking for Christ and he chose them and he trusted them to do it right, I'll trust them to do it right too. I'll believe what they say. That's my approach. Anyway, I appreciate that call, brother. Thanks for joining us.

Guest (Male): You definitely cleared it up for me. Goodbye.

Steve Gregg: Bye now. Okay, let's talk to Gerhard in Downey, California. Lots of California today. Hi, Gerhard. Welcome.

Guest (Male): Hi, Steve. I'd like to maybe add a little bit of clarification to the first caller you had about the kid not being boiled in its mother's milk. My source is the same one that you had, Dennis Prager. I remember him saying in the book of Genesis there were separations, separation from light and dark, good and bad.

Steve Gregg: And life and death.

Guest (Male): And life and death and this one is life and death. You're right. What you have for life is the mother's milk and so you don't mix the mother's milk with death.

Steve Gregg: Thank you, you're correct. Yeah, you're correct. Dennis Prager did mention that that from the beginning of Genesis God made separations of light and darkness, good and evil and things like that, and that there's a distinction made between life and death. And the mother's milk of the goat is a life-giving thing, but boiling the kid is a death-giving thing and so mixing life and death was considered to be inappropriate. Yeah, I remember Dennis Prager saying that. So I appreciate you reminding me of that. Thank you.

All right, let's talk to Tony in Langley, British Columbia. Hi, Tony. Welcome.

Guest (Male): Yeah, hi. Yeah, welcome to British Columbia pretty soon. I heard you're going to Vancouver Island.

Steve Gregg: I'm there now.

Guest (Male): Oh, you're there now. Okay, cool. Well, I'm across the water near Vancouver. I've got a situation happening within my family. One of my granddaughters has just turned 13 and she wants to transition to become a boy. And it's just really kind of T-boned me at the intersection of life.

Steve Gregg: I know that's a problem in Canada.

Guest (Male): And I have been so, my wife and I have just been really upset about this. So I'm not sure what to do about it.

Steve Gregg: How old is the girl?

Guest (Male): 13.

Steve Gregg: 13. Yeah, the sad thing is a lot of these kids who want to transition when they're 13, if they don't do it, they outgrow it and by the time they're 18 or 19 they can't even imagine why they wanted to do that.

Guest (Male): And that's what I'm hoping for.

Steve Gregg: Yeah, but of course in Canada you're not even allowed to discourage them from transitioning and so I mean you're going to have to pray, you're going to have to speak the truth to them in some context. People in Canada have gotten in lots of legal trouble for trying to prevent their children from transitioning but sometimes you lay your life down for your kids.

Guest (Male): Yeah, I can't prevent anything up here because I just can't. It's her choice. But I'm having a problem with her wanting to be called by a male name when I know her as a female. So I just can't do it for some reason.

Steve Gregg: Right. Now I wouldn't call her by a male name. And although it may be considered deadnaming her, as they say in the movement, to call her by her real name instead of the name she wants, and it's sometimes considered to be hate speech if you don't use the pronouns she wants, I would just have to say when you're around her I would have to just avoid all pronouns and and avoid calling her by name.

Guest (Male): Yeah, that's what I'm going to do.

Steve Gregg: Yeah, if she doesn't want to be called by her real name and her real gender, well then she'll be upset if you do that. On the other hand, you don't want to call her by a name that represents a lie about her gender. So I would just say avoiding the names and the pronouns altogether.

Guest (Male): Yeah, I've already been accused of being judgmental and religious and intolerant.

Steve Gregg: By her or by her parents?

Guest (Male): By her parents and by her. No, not by her, I haven't even talked to her yet. That's the crazy part. It's been absolute silence from all of them because I've been basically cut off of communication because of this.

Steve Gregg: Well, brother, I wish I could give you the the answer to what to do there. I would just say speak the truth. Don't don't cave into the lie. And if people say you're being hateful by speaking the truth, then maybe don't speak to that issue at all. But if you do speak, you can't lie. And if they think you're hateful, just say, "No, I love you, that's why I won't lie to you. You don't lie to people you love. If you're mistaken, I can't help you be mistaken because then I'm not your friend. I'm just enabling you to hurt yourself in my opinion." Now if you say that much, you might even get in trouble in Canada and in some parts of America, probably where I live, in the hyper-woke liberal areas, you could probably go to jail or something if they think you're hating.

Guest (Male): Yeah, I have to be very, very careful. I don't want to lose my kids. I don't want to lose communication with them because of my opinion and my stance, my moral stance on the issue. So I'm just going to, you know, I don't know what Jesus would do. This is what I'm questioning. What would Jesus do in a situation like this?

Steve Gregg: Well, Jesus would be loving. He would not be a hater. But he would also not approve of a lie. In other words, he would I mean I don't know how he would finesse a situation like this. It really is something that takes real wisdom and I'm not as wise as he is. But Jesus would not lie and therefore he would not pretend to a lie, especially a lie that's hurtful spiritually to somebody to believe. So you can't agree to that, but you can perhaps avoid the subject and pray.

You know, we are living in in times where Christians are having their freedoms taken away even to speak the truth. I mean there have been times in history where if you were in China or the Soviet Union or in North Korea, probably still that way there or Cuba, you know, that just saying Jesus is Lord, which is the ultimate truth, could get you in jail. And Christians have been in that stage in that state with reference to their countries throughout history in some places.

Guest (Male): Yeah, I'm trying to see beyond her, to what who she really who she is in her DNA and who she can become in Christ. You know, just like when Jesus saw Nathaniel under the tree and he said, "You are this but you shall be that." Yeah, Nathaniel. I'm just trying to see past her.

Steve Gregg: Yeah. I understand you need someone to talk to about this because it's a crisis although I don't have anything I can say to help. I can say pray, pray hard. You know, in the United States we were going very rapidly that same way, I mean just before the last presidential election. I'm not here to make a political statement about Trump or Biden or anything like that. But before the last election our country was plummeting that way and if I think if the election had gone the other way, we'd probably be like Canada in this respect now. But people prayed. People prayed and they prayed and they prayed. I think that I think that that avalanche has been stopped or slowed down. I mean there are still plenty of that problem but I don't think that the government is going to be intervening like they were doing before. I don't know, just pray.

Guest (Male): Yeah, and I was actually wondering that whole discussion you had about the mother's milk thing. I was wondering about the application on a moral basis about parents enabling their kids in that direction and using that metaphor as don't boil your kid in the mother's milk. In other words, the condescending part of it. Because I know a lady pastor here in my community who's a pastor but her kid has transitioned into another sex and she's very permissive about it.

Steve Gregg: Hey, Tony, I'm going to be off the air in five minutes and I've got a lot of people waiting to talk to me. I don't want to sound unsympathetic. I'm not unsympathetic, brother.

Guest (Male): No, I got it. I got it. Thanks, Steve. I appreciate your help. Thank you.

Steve Gregg: All right. God bless you, man. Bye now. Sad. Let's talk to Eli in West Linn, Oregon. Hi, Eli. Welcome.

Guest (Male): Hi, Steve. Can you hear me okay?

Steve Gregg: I can. Go ahead.

Guest (Male): Okay. I heard you speaking either late last week or perhaps early this week to a gentleman that was a Buddhist. And you were talking about the topic of peace and how that varies from religion to religion, or worldly peace and godly peace. I didn't hear the extent of that conversation due to time constraints on my end. But a couple scriptures came to mind and I don't know the references: "Seek peace and pursue it" and "So much as it depends on you, be at peace with all men." I know that one's New Testament but again, I can't recall the reference. I'm just on my lunch break. I'll take your comments off the air. I was just wondering if you could expand on that a little bit more and how I can better apply that to my married life, my work life, so on and so forth.

Steve Gregg: All right, I'll take that. First of all, the passages you mentioned are both in the New Testament and they're not really talking about what the Buddhist was talking about. When Paul says "seek peace with all men," I think Peter says "pursue peace and ensue it," they're talking about, of course, peaceable relations between persons, not having conflict and not having friction between people unnecessarily, being having a peaceable relations. Whereas the Buddhist and I were talking about inner peace. The sense of inner peace is a very different thing than inter-interpersonal peace or interpersonal peace.

So anyway, yeah, I mean you want to know how to how to apply those particular verses. They're kind of self-explanatory it seems to me. They say you should seek peace with people. How do you do that? Well Jesus said in the sermon on the mount, Matthew 5, "If you're ready to offer your offering to God and you remember your brother has something against you, leave your gift at the altar and go back and make peace with him, reconcile with him." Now what's that involve? Well presumably the brother is upset with him because he's done something offensive. Maybe he has failed to repay a debt. Maybe he's sinned against him. Well, how do you make that right? You're going to have to go back and apologize, make restitution if that's necessary. I mean you're going to have to whatever it takes to make peace with your brother.

That's what Jesus said, go back and make peace with your brother, then come back and offer your offering to God. Now what if the brother doesn't want peace? Well, Paul talks about that situation of course in Romans chapter 12. He said, "If it is possible, as much as lies in you, be at peace with all men." And those qualifying clauses, "if it is possible," "as much as lies in you," is a way of saying, you know, there's going to be times when you probably won't be at peace with all men, but if you aren't, make sure it's not that you were neglecting your duty. Make sure that whatever lies on your side in the way of responsibility, make sure you don't neglect your attempts to make peace.

If somebody doesn't like you because you sinned against them, you certainly need to go back and repent. If he was injured by your sin, you need to do what you can to make restitution. If even then he won't be at peace with you, well you're not obligated to go further. I mean you do what you can. So in other words, you try to be at peace with everyone the best you know how and of course not violate people and try to reconcile with people when you're when they're alienated. But even after you've done everything you know to do, there will be some people who just don't want peace. David said, "I have lived too long with him who hates peace. I am for peace, but when I speak, they are for war." And all of us probably have had some situations where we could relate with that.

I'm out of time. I appreciate your calls today. You've been listening to The Narrow Path. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. Go there, everything's free. You can donate if you want. thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for joining us.