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 have questions you'd like to raise for conversation on the air about the Bible, the Christian faith, or anything related to those things. If you have a difference of opinion from the host on any issue, maybe you're a Christian who sees things differently, as many Christians do, or maybe you're not a Christian and you'd like to challenge the Bible itself or Christianity itself, you're welcome to call. We always welcome you to join us Monday through Friday at this time. The number to call is 844-484-5737. That's 844-484-5737.

Now, there may be an echo in this room. I'm not sure. Some of you know I've been traveling for the past two and a half weeks in Washington and now Idaho. I was driving around for about an hour before the program looking for a good Wi-Fi connection so I could do the show from my car, which I often do. I couldn't find one, and so I was thinking we'd play a recorded show. Then I told my wife, and she said, "Why don't you just go to the library?" So, I did. It may be that I'm a little hoarse from speaking every day for the past three weeks. Anyway, we will get through the program, Lord willing.

Guest (Male): Those were supposed to be the ethics of the kingdom of God because Jesus was expecting or offering the kingdom of God to the Jews. Now, because the Jews rejected him, that kingdom offer is said to have been postponed, and it will re-emerge at the second coming of Christ. When Jesus comes back, he'll establish the kingdom during the millennium. This is what dispensationalism teaches. So, we live between the time that Jesus' kingdom offer was rejected by the Jews and the time that he will return and establish the millennial kingdom.

This period that we live in is called the dispensation of grace or the dispensation of the church. They say that during this time, it's a different dispensation and therefore a different set of rules, a different policy. If the Jews had accepted Christ, then the kingdom would have been established, and things like the Sermon on the Mount would have been relevant. But because they rejected him, we now are saved by grace with no works involved, and because of that, all the things that Jesus taught about obedience and holiness are really more directly applicable to the kingdom age and will be applicable during the millennium but not now. Now, not all dispensationalists believe this way, and that's because not all dispensationalists know what dispensationalism teaches.

Steve Gregg: Okay, I'm back. That was a recording you were listening to for the last little bit. Hopefully, my connection will stay connected. As I mentioned, I don't know if you heard me, I'm in Idaho. I'm in a library. They've got a pretty good internet, so I'm supposing we won't cut out, but one never can tell. Anyway, my meetings in Kamiah, Idaho, tonight and in Boise Thursday are listed at our website, thenarrowpath.com, under announcements. We're going to go to the phones now, and hopefully, I'll be connected securely. When I'm traveling, especially in Idaho, rural Idaho, it's sometimes hard to get a good connection. Hopefully, that won't be a problem today. Kevin in McMinnville, Oregon, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Guest (Kevin): Hey Steve, thanks for taking my call. My question is about Revelation 20, verse six. At the end of the verse, it says that they will reign with him for a thousand years. If we understand that we are in the millennium and that we are to reign with him during that time, could you maybe explain your ideas of what it means to reign with him? My idea is more along the lines of Deuteronomy 28 where it talks about us being blessed going in and coming out and our sheep and herds and everything will be blessed. I kind of picture that we as Christians, as part of the kingdom, should be kind of on top of the heap, so to speak, and not afraid of what's coming or what's happening in the world. It seems like we should be taking authority of some sort and ruling rather than being ruled by the world that we're living in right now.

Steve Gregg: There are people, there are amillennialists, who believe that when it says that the saints live and reign for a thousand years, it is talking about the present time that we are reigning on earth in some spiritual sense. Those who take that passage that way suggest that we should be probably having more control over things and so forth. But I have always understood Revelation 20, verses five and six, a bit differently than that.

In Revelation 20, verses four through six, it says, "And I saw thrones, and they sat on them, and judgment was committed to them. Then I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their witness to Christ and for the word of God, who had not worshiped the beast or his image, and had not received his mark on their foreheads or on their hands. And they lived and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. But the rest of the dead did not live again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection. Over such the second death has no power. They shall be priests of God and of Christ and shall reign with him a thousand years."

The thousand years in these cases was already introduced in verse two or three, I believe it was. So, it's basically saying this whole period of time, there will be saints reigning. Who are the saints that are reigning? Is it the ones on earth or in heaven? That's where there's a difference of opinion. I believe that during the entire church age, which is symbolically called the thousand years, the saints who have died, who have been martyred, are reigning in heaven with Christ. The reason I say that is because the only people he saw on thrones seemed to be the souls of those who had been beheaded for Christ.

The souls of departed saints, as I understand it, depart from our bodies when we die, go to be with the Lord, and then return to our bodies at the resurrection when Jesus comes back. So, the state in between death and resurrection is the time that our souls are not in our bodies. Since John only sees souls in thrones with Christ, and of course, Christ is enthroned in heaven, I believe he's not talking about us on earth who are Christians reigning during this time, but the departed saints.

During this time, there are people who have finished their race. There are people who have finished their battle. In fact, Paul says that at the end of his life in 2 Timothy, he says, "I've run the good race, I've fought the good fight. From now on, there is waiting for me a crown in heaven." So, he's going to be enthroned when he goes to heaven. He is enthroned there with all the saints who have been faithful unto death.

I believe the reigning for the thousand-year period, which means for the church age, as we might call it, is the reigning of those who have departed, who have finished their race and are now crowned and seated on thrones in heaven with Christ, which is where he's enthroned. Interestingly, there's nothing in this passage in the whole book of Revelation, actually, in Revelation chapter 20, that has Jesus reigning on earth. There's no suggestion in Revelation 20 that he's on earth or that the saints that are reigning with him are on earth.

What about us who are on earth? We're in the kingdom too, aren't we? Yes, we are. But we haven't finished our course. There's a battle still going on. The kingdom of God is at war with the kingdom of darkness, and it has been for 2,000 years. One might even say it has been ever since the Garden of Eden. But especially the saints have been involved in it for 2,000 years. Each of us has our turn to fight the battles of the kingdom. Those of us who are on earth are in the trenches, and that may be why we're not living like kings here.

There are people who say, since we are king's kids, and we certainly are, that we should be living like kings here on the earth. But Jesus didn't, and he was a king's kid par excellence. He didn't live like a king. He lived like a poor man, a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. He said we also in this world will have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world. He says, "In me, you have peace, but in the world, you have tribulation." So, there's a distinction between our status as children of God and our destiny to reign with him on one hand and what we go through in this earthly test and this earthly battle time on the other hand.

There's really not any suggestion here, in my opinion, that our lives should look like the lives of kings but more like the lives of soldiers. Paul wrote to Timothy and said, "Endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ." He said, "No man who wars," that is, who fights in a war, "entangles himself in the things of this life, that he might please him who called him to be a soldier." So, that's where we're at. We're in the foxholes. We are king's kids, and there's a palace that we will inherit with him, and we'll reign with him and so forth when he comes back and even in a sense in heaven until he comes back, as these verses, I think, describe. But I don't believe that we're reigning now.

There's a sense in which we may be reigning, or that is, gaining victory over sin in our lives through the power of the Holy Spirit and the power of God's grace given to us. That'd be one thing, but that would not be related to our reigning over the earth. I think in this time, the task is especially to get a grip and a victory over our own problems, our own sin, and so forth, to be freed from sin, to be victorious over our sins, and then, of course, having done so, if we endure, we will reign with him afterward.

So, my understanding of Revelation 20 is different than some, although I think it's the same as some too. Different amillennialists see that different ways. But if we take the thousand years as a symbol for the church age or the time from the first to the second coming of Christ, the reigning during that period is done by the saints who have been faithful unto death and are reigning with Christ in heaven. That's my take on it. Obviously, there are other views, even among amillennialists, but I think that's the one that fits the data that we're given best. All right, let's talk to John in Gainesville, Florida. Hi John, welcome to The Narrow Path.

Guest (John): Hey, thanks for taking my call, Steve. If I'm not mistaken, I heard somewhere before, I think, that God made man just a little higher than the angels. If that's the case, why would God place man down here in the world down here where he cast out Satan and a third of the angels? If we submit to God, we might have enough strength that maybe helping God defeat Satan down here. I just never could figure that out, why he would place man down here with Satan and all his angels down here.

Steve Gregg: The Bible says in James chapter 4 and verse 7, "Resist the devil and he'll flee from you." In 1 John 4:4, it says, "Greater is he who is in you than he who is in the world," the second "he" being Satan, the first one being Christ. Christ is in us, and John actually begins that verse by saying, "You have overcome them," meaning the false teachers and antichrists. You have overcome them because greater is he who's in you than he that is in the world. That is, you don't have to succumb to their deception and fall into the trap that the devil has laid through what they're teaching.

We don't have to be, we're certainly not pawns of Satan by any means. But it says in the Scripture, actually in Psalm 8, it says that God has made man a little lower than Elohim, which normally is translated God. So, it can be translated "you have made him a little lower than God," although it seems like we are a great deal lower than God. The Septuagint translated it "you have made man a little lower than the angels." Now, when Hebrews quotes it, it quotes the Septuagint and says that God has made us a little lower than the angels. Then he says, and Jesus, because he became a man, he also was made for a while to be a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, but now he's been crowned with glory and honor and is far above all the angels.

I believe we will be too because the angels are mere servants. It says that in Hebrews 1:14. It says they are serving spirits, sent forth to serve those who are the heirs of salvation. So, the role of angels is to serve God and his saints, his children. The role of children is to rule with him eventually. So, though we're made for a little while lower than angels, those of us who are faithful to death will be given a position above the angels. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 6, "Do you not know that you will judge angels?" Judging may well mean rule over angels because the word judge is sometimes used that way in Scripture, or it might simply mean that at the judgment, when the angels are judged, we will also have a role with God in judging them. Whichever way you look at it, it looks like the angels are going to be subject to our judgment, not vice versa. So, we're only temporarily lower than the angels if we become children of God in our lifetime. Then, of course, we will be above them someday. I appreciate your call, brother. Ned in Idaho, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Guest (Ned): Hi Steve, I'm glad you came to our great state.

Steve Gregg: Me too. You know, I used to live in Idaho a long time ago.

Guest (Ned): Yeah, I know that. You're one of the only people I ever know that went from Idaho to California. Usually, it's the other way around.

Steve Gregg: Well, I first went from California to Idaho.

Guest (Ned): In my reading today, I was going through Ephesians chapter 2 and I got to verse 20, which is a familiar verse to me about having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone. I've got a couple commentaries that I look at. One was the Tyndale commentary that you recommended, and it steered me to chapter 3 verse 5, where it also says apostles and the prophets. I looked at some other commentaries, and anyway, back to verse 20, they were saying that that refers to prophets in the New Testament. I had always heard that that was the Old Testament prophets. Matter of fact, if I'm not mistaken, I almost think I heard you say that it's built on the foundation of the prophets, which I always thought was the Old Testament. What do you say?

Steve Gregg: That is actually something that has been disputed. I remember reading Wayne Grudem's doctoral dissertation was on New Testament prophecy, and this was decades ago I read it. But it seems to me that he was actually discussing that very thing. When Paul says the church is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, does it mean the Old Testament prophets or New Testament prophets?

I think he concluded it was New Testament prophets, but clearly, there are people who conclude it's the old ones. We could say the church is built on the Scriptures, which are the writings in the Old Testament of the prophets and in the New Testament of the apostles. So, the apostles and prophets would be the Old and the New Testament. Now, the problem with assuming that without further discussion is that Paul always in Ephesians, and he does use the term apostles and prophets at least three times, he puts the apostles first, as if the apostles were first and then there's the prophets.

Even in 1 Corinthians 12, it talks about how God has given different gifts to the church: first apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers, fourthly workers of miracles, and so forth. So, he indicates that the apostles stand first prior to prophets. But if that's also chronologically first, then he must not be talking about the Old Testament prophets because they wrote and came before the apostles were chosen by Christ. But we know there were prophets in the New Testament church too. The church had the spirit of prophecy given to it, which had been given to Old Testament prophets before.

In other words, Paul may be saying the church is built on the foundation of living apostles at the time as well as the words of living prophets. Now, we don't know of very many living prophets in the early church, but we have the names of some. We know that Agabus is mentioned a couple of times as a prophet in the church. Philip's four daughters, we're told, were prophesying. Silas was one person who was called a prophet. Of course, he later traveled with Paul and probably would be regarded as an apostle at that point, but he was said to be a prophet before that.

So, we know that we know a lot about the apostles because the Acts of the Apostles follows the Acts of the Apostles, you know, and it gives us the activities of the apostles. It doesn't follow the ministries much of people who held the rank of prophet, though there must have been plenty who were. In 1 Corinthians 14, Paul tells the church of Corinth that they should only let prophets speak, three of them per meeting, and suggests that there are other prophets that wouldn't speak every meeting. So, the church of Corinth seemingly had numerous prophets, and that's just one church.

In addition to the apostles, there were the Christian prophets, and we don't have any of their writings because the New Testament is apostolic writings. It's just that in the apostolic writings, sometimes there's mention of those prophets. Now, does that remove from us the ability to say we're built on the foundation of both the Old and the New Testament since the Old Testament prophets wrote the Old Testament and the apostles wrote the New? I think what we'd have to say is New Testament prophets are just a continuation of the gift of prophecy from the Old Testament.

Some people have said, and sometimes charismatic and sometimes non-charismatic people say this, that Old Testament prophets primarily told the future, whereas New Testament prophets primarily just proclaimed God's word in terms of what he has to say to the church today but not about the future. Like John the Baptist, of course, John did make reference to the future, but he mainly was calling people to repentance. He was the greatest of the prophets.

The thing is, to distinguish between the Old Testament prophets and the New Testament prophets that way, in saying that the Old Testament prophets foretell future events and the New Testament prophets by contrast only forthtell, that is, speak forth the word of God, not foretelling future, is a mistake. There's nothing in the Bible that would make that distinction. As I said, Agabus is one of the very few men in the New Testament who's called a prophet, and what he said was about the future. He predicted that there would be a famine that would affect the people of Jerusalem, and later on in the Book of Acts, he predicted that Paul would be bound when he goes to Jerusalem. So, he's like the most conspicuous instance of a New Testament prophet named for us, and his prophecies were telling the future, both of them, both examples are telling the future.

It'd be seemingly strange to say that Old Testament prophets told the future but New Testament prophets didn't since in the New Testament, at least one of them did and maybe more. It's also strange to characterize the Old Testament prophets as if they only told the future. The truth is, most of what the prophets wrote was not speaking of the future but rebuking Israel for their sins and calling them to repentance and so forth. So, they were speaking forth, they were forthtelling the will of God and the word of God as well as foretelling. Both things are done by prophets, and we have every reason to believe that both things are done by prophets in both Testaments.

The spirit of prophecy is the same spirit. Really, when Moses was told by God to bring 70 of the elders to the tent door, the Tabernacle door, and God said he'd put his spirit on them, we read that the spirit came upon them and they prophesied. At that time, Paul said, "I would to God that all the Lord's people were prophets and that he would put his spirit upon them," which is what Joel said God would do. He says, "In the last days, I'll pour out my spirit on all flesh, and your sons and daughters will prophesy." These statements in the Old Testament, no doubt, were related to the phenomenon of Old Testament prophecy, and yet the fulfillment is in the New Testament. Therefore, we'd have reason to believe it's the same phenomenon.

Why am I saying all that? Because New Testament prophets and Old Testament prophets have this in common: they get divine revelations and speak oracles from God. In addition to apostolic authority, there's the authority of the oracles of God spoken by prophets. That would be both in the Old Testament and the New. Now, when Paul's writing Ephesians, he's mainly talking about the ministries that are current in the church. I believe he probably is thinking of New Testament prophets along with New Testament apostles. But he might be not seeing a great distinction between New Testament prophets and the prophets who wrote the Old Testament. In other words, it's the same phenomenon, that the church is built on the authority of Christ's appointed leaders, the apostles, and also on the authority of inspired spiritual spokesmen, the prophets, Old and New Testament.

So, I'm thinking Paul probably is primarily referring to New Testament prophets since he also mentions them in Ephesians 4:11: "God gave some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers for the building up of the saints," and so forth. So, he's obviously talking about New Testament prophets there. So, I'm going to say, probably has New Testament prophets in line, but Old Testament prophets were of that order too, and they wrote the Old Testament. So, there's a sense in which what prophets have said are the foundation for the church as well as what the apostles have said. I can see it go both ways. I think the statement could be used to make both points. I appreciate that, Ned. Thanks for calling. I need to take a break here. I'm out of time. Our website's thenarrowpath.com. We have another half hour coming. Don't go away. I'll be back in 30 seconds. Thanks for joining us. Stay tuned.

Steve Gregg has written a number of highly favorably reviewed books which you can find at your online booksellers, including Amazon and Barnes & Noble. His books are Revelation: Four Views, Hell: Three Christian Views, and the two-volume work on the kingdom of God called Empire of the Risen Son. Find them by searching the name Steve Gregg at Amazon or other booksellers.

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 be on the program today, the number to call is 844-484-5737. If you're in central Idaho, I'm going to be speaking in a small town, Kamiah, in the Clearwater Valley, which, if you look at it up on a map, it doesn't look like it should be pronounced Kamiah. It looks like it should be pronounced Kamiah. It's K-A-M-I-A-H. I guess it's a Nez Perce Indian word, and they pronounce it Kamiah. So, that's where I'll be tonight. Then on Thursday, I'll be speaking in Boise area around Eagle, I think. If you live in those areas or want to join us, come on. I'd be glad to see you tonight or Thursday. The specifics about those meetings can be found at our website, thenarrowpath.com, under the tab that says announcements. We're going to talk next to Paul in Northern California. Hi, Paul, welcome.

Guest (Paul): Hi, Steve, how you doing?

Steve Gregg: Great.

Guest (Paul): I really enjoy your material. Thank you very much for all that you have for us. I've learned so much over the years. I'm calling because I listened to your latest YouTube video, End Time Prophecy, whatnot, which was very informative. I already knew I believed all that stuff already, so it was just nice to hear it all in one sum. I really enjoyed that. I did have a question about the 490 years. Two questions. The first one was: the 490 years is accounting for the 400 years of silence between Malachi and Matthew, correct?

Steve Gregg: I don't know that there's a connection for it, yet. But it is until the coming of Messiah, so it would include that period of the silent years, yeah.

Guest (Paul): Okay. And then another question was that when Christ died and it said "It was finished" on the cross, would that be where the coming of Messiah would end, the 490 years right there, or is it on his birth or when he entered the temple?

Steve Gregg: When I teach on that, I mention that all those views have been considered, and there are people who support each of them. You're talking about the 70-week prophecy of Daniel, which is in Daniel chapter 9, verses 24 through 27. For those who don't know it, it's a period of 490 years, 70 weeks of years. That is, a week is seven years in this prophecy, not seven days. So, there's a week is seven years, and there's 70 such weeks, so that makes 490 years. The prophet says, or the angel says to the prophet, that that period spans the gap between what he calls "the command to restore and build Jerusalem" until "Messiah the Prince."

We know Jesus is the Messiah, so the end of that time is going to be around the time Jesus came. But which event in Jesus' life? His birth? I mean, in a sense, he came when he was born in Bethlehem. Was it the day of his birth it's predicting, or is it the day he appeared publicly when he was baptized? Some people say that, and it would reasonably be so. I mean, although the Messiah was born in Bethlehem, he was not known publicly and didn't have any public ministry or do anything like that until he was baptized. So, maybe that, which was 30 years after his birth, maybe that's the endpoint.

Some think the endpoint is even later than that. Many people, usually dispensationalists, put the end in view at the time of his triumphal entry, although they say that's only the end of the 69th week, not of all 70. I won't go into that right now. But the point is, many people and some place the end of it at the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. So, you've got at least four different positions out there that people have held, which means they see the end of the period at different times, different years.

So, the end of the 490 years is rather difficult to nail down because the prophecy's not more specific. More than that, the beginning part of the prophecy is not fully agreed upon because the angel began the period of 490 years with what he called "the decree to rebuild and restore Jerusalem." Historically, there were like three different decrees like that. In 539 BC, Cyrus the Persian conquered Babylon and gave the Jews permission to go back and build the city and their temple again, which some of them did under Zerubbabel. Reasonably, we would think, well, that's the decree that you start measuring from. The only problem with that is that if you measure forward 490 years from the decree of Cyrus, it's going to end about 80 years too soon and it won't include the life of Christ.

But, of course, nobody came 80 years before Christ who would in any sense fulfill the prophecy, and there's not even a candidate for it. So, the decree of Cyrus is usually ruled out. There's some interesting discussion about whether our traditional year for the fall of Babylon is really correct or whether the history has been confused a bit there and it was really later, which would possibly allow Cyrus's decree to serve as the beginning point and the end would be when Jesus comes, perhaps at his baptism.

Now, there's two other decrees that came later than Cyrus's decree. Both of them were by another Persian king, Artaxerxes. Artaxerxes made one decree, I think it was in 457 BC, and then another time he made another decree in 444 or 445 BC. Anyway, a lot later than Cyrus's decree, and you can measure forward from that, and it definitely comes up in the time period of Christ's life. But depending on which one you choose, the end falls at different stages in Christ's life. So, it could end with the birth or with the presentation of Jesus in the temple as a child. It could end with his baptism. It could end with his crucifixion. There's different views about this.

Generally speaking, I leave the exact calculations to others because different people do the calculations and come up with different starting dates and different ending dates. What I can say is there were three possible starting dates, which makes it rather difficult to know what the ending point is. However, apart from the decree of Cyrus, both decrees of Artaxerxes have been argued to be the one, and depending on whether you calculate a 365-day year like ours or 360-day year like the Jews observed, it comes out with different dates too.

So, we're kind of impossible to be certain the exact years. But that's not a problem to me. That Jesus is the Messiah is still demanded by the prophecy because whichever of those dates you start and whichever length of years you're calculating from and whichever event in the life of Jesus you're seeing as the endpoint, there's no one else in history that came anywhere near around that time who's in any sense a candidate for the Messiah. While Jesus' lifetime, things in his life can be calculated by certain ways, starting from certain starting points, to say it happened exactly on the day that he was baptized or the day that he rode into Jerusalem on a donkey or something, I'm not sure which of those calculations is correct.

But one thing I can say is Jesus came at the time, the general time if not the exact moment, that Daniel pinpointed. If someone wants to say, well, he's not the Messiah because we can't find the exact date, okay, who else lived at that time that has any credible claim to be the Messiah? The answer, if you know history, is exactly nobody except for false messiahs. There were false messiahs, quite a few false messiahs came around that time because the Messiah was expected at that time because of Daniel and perhaps other considerations too. But plenty of false messiahs came along, but they were all killed, and they didn't rise from the dead, and they weren't the Messiah. Jesus was. So, the prophecy of Daniel definitely points to Jesus, but exactly how the calculations are to be made is something I'm willing to be uncertain about since people like to be dogmatic, people don't like to have uncertainty, they want to be able to prove their particular theory by mathematics. I'm not that kind of person. All I know is since there's different ways to calculate, I'm not going to decide which one's the right way. The main point of the prophecy is to identify who the Messiah is, and all the calculations end up with the same person in that role. I appreciate your call. Thanks for joining us, brother. Michael in Santa Cruz, California, welcome to The Narrow Path.

Guest (Michael): Hi, Steve. Good to hear you. I wanted to follow up on our last conversation. You acknowledged the fruition of the Buddhist path in terms of how people live might be similar, living with more peace, with more benevolence and so forth. But you said the Christian is doing it for the sake of God, is living for God, Jesus, and the Buddhist is only doing it for self. You said that the Buddhist wants to feel better and that's a selfish gesture, and the Christian only cares about serving Jesus. Is that more or less accurate?

Steve Gregg: Well, that's what Christians are supposed to do. I think there's a lot of Christians who, just like any other religious person of any other religion, they're in it for their own benefit. But Christianity as presented in the Bible is God-centered. Many people who are religious, even Christians, are very self-centered, which is not the way we're called to be. But the truth is Christianity is different than Buddhism in that Buddhism doesn't even acknowledge the existence of God and Christianity calls us to put God's will ahead of our own in all things. So, that's what I see as the main difference.

Guest (Michael): All right, but what I wanted to clarify is something that perhaps you're not familiar with and maybe many Christian people might not understand. The sort of de facto mode of the view is different, where Christianity seems to be saying that it's an inherently flawed or sinful original sin and so forth. The basic Buddhist teaching is the inherent nature is pure, but it gets veiled, it gets defiled, contaminated. So, by removing those veils, then one simply becomes what one can truly be, and that's not selfish. That's inherently benevolent because of connecting with the innate disposition of loving-kindness and so forth.

Steve Gregg: So, the ultimate goal is, of course, to be reincarnated in a better place repeatedly until you reach whatever the goal is. I'm not saying it's a bad thing to want that. I mean, to say that selfish, I think selfish is too negative a word. I think it's just self-interested, and being self-interested isn't always bad, but it isn't what Christianity is about. It's not selfish to want to have inner peace instead of inner turmoil or to want to advance on the karmic scale upward to do that. It's not sinfully selfish to wish for those things, but it is entirely self-interested as opposed to God's interest. So, that's again the focus. The question is Christianity's about God. It's not about me. And the more I make it about me, the more corrupt my Christian faith is in terms of comparison with the original.

The original Christian faith, Jesus said, "If anyone comes after me, let him deny himself," which means self ceases to be for the first time in your life your governing concern. Your concern now is otherwise. He says you deny yourself and take up your cross and follow me. So, you and I have talked about that many times over the past 20 years or so that you've been calling. So, I would hope that'd be clear by now, at least the difference. You don't have to agree with me, but that's where the difference lies, I believe. Thank you for your call. I've only got 15 minutes left and my lines are full, so I can't spend too much time discussing what's been discussed 400 times with you before, but we'll talk again. No problem. I don't mind talking with you when we have some time. Dennis in Paso Robles, California, welcome.

Guest (Dennis): Thank you. 1 Samuel 15, verses 11 and 35, it talks about where God repents or regretted making Saul king. That's a strange comment, as if God didn't know that Saul was going to go south on him.

Steve Gregg: As if he didn't know. Yeah, God sometimes uses anthropomorphic language where he talks like he's ignorant of things that he's not. We read similarly in Genesis 6 that God repented that he made man because man turned out so bad. It makes it sound like God didn't know, but there's lots of places in the Bible where God talks as if he doesn't know things that he actually does know. For example, when Adam sinned and was hiding in the trees of the garden, God said, "Where are you, Adam?" as if he didn't know. Adam said, "I'm here, I was naked so I hid." God says, "How did you know you were naked? You didn't eat of the tree that I told you not to eat of, did you?" Again, acting like he didn't know when he truly did.

Even when he confronted Cain, when Cain killed Abel, God said, "Cain, where's your brother?" like God doesn't know. Cain says, "How am I to say? Am I my brother's keeper?" Then God revealed that he did know all along. He says, "Your brother's blood has called out to me from the ground." So, God sometimes talks as if he's one of us. Perhaps that's because it'd be incredibly intimidating if he didn't reduce himself to our level to communicate with us. But we do find the phenomenon, and I just gave a couple cases, but I could give you half a dozen more off the top of my head where God talks as if he's ignorant of something.

That would include when it says he's sorry that this happened, he's sorry he did this. Now, of course, he's not saying that he didn't know it would happen. He's saying that the thing that I did made me sorry. I made myself sorry by doing that. Repent can mean to be sorrowful. The word naham in the Hebrew means sorrow. It's often translated repent. Also, another word shub in Hebrew is translated repent, that means to turn around. But sometimes the two are very much linked. The point here is that for example when it says that God repented that he made man at the time of Noah, it says, "And it grieved him to his heart." Now, it's not saying he didn't know that this would happen. It's saying that whether he knew it would happen or not, and I think he did, when it actually happened, it brought grief to him. It would simply be saying that God allows himself to be vulnerable to things happening that he wishes wouldn't happen, and that's simply a consequence of making creatures with free will.

So, I don't think these statements are supposed to tell us that God didn't know. Although in the cases of the flood and of Saul being king, one could take it that God didn't know the future, and some people take it that way. But in the cases I gave otherwise, it had nothing to do with God knowing the future. He acts as if he's ignorant of the present. "Where are you, Adam?" "Where's your brother, Cain?" Later, in chapter 18 of Genesis, God says to Abraham, "I've heard Sodom's really bad. I'm going down there just down the road to see if it's as bad as I've heard, and if it is, I'll know." Well, obviously, that has nothing to do with knowing the future. That has to do with knowing what's going on a few miles down the road right now and has been going on a long time in Sodom.

So, the seeming ignorance of God about these things, I believe, is simply a manner of expression. Theologians usually call that anthropomorphisms because that's God speaking and communicating, revealing himself as if he was a man at that moment, though the Bible clearly teaches that he's not. I understand how that raises an issue. But when you take it in the light of the whole divine revelation, we find God often saying he's ignorant, or not saying he's ignorant, but he's talking as if he was ignorant of things that we know he was not. I appreciate your call. Thanks for joining us. Let's talk to Linda from Auburn, Washington. Hi, Linda, welcome.

Guest (Linda): Hi. I've been listening to your lectures on the kingdom of God, and I wanted to give you some input that on the second lecture, when you said that 50% of Christians get divorced, there's a book out that a woman looked into it and that is an incorrect statistic. It's more like 80% stay together. Okay, good. And then on the lecture on the aspects of the kingdom, you mentioned that it looks bad now in the US, maybe because the church has been delinquent or not good to bring more people in. Well, it came to my attention a few years ago that after the Civil War, we got 22 million immigrants, and most of them were from southern Europe, and 2 million were Jewish, and that they came in nearly 1900s, and I think some came in that other immigration, and so these are non-Bible readers, and even a lot of them could have had an antichrist spirit. So, we and others have prayed we don't have any antichrist spirit, especially in our country. So, this is some of our battle is the evangelism right here, so many.

Steve Gregg: Right. And you know, what I said was the prosperity of the kingdom of God fluctuates over time, but over the long haul increases. So, what you're telling me is you think one reason that the prosperity of the kingdom of God took a dip after the Civil War had to do with immigration of non-Christian people. That's possible. It doesn't change anything I said. Regardless of why it happens, I think at different times in history, Christianity suffers setbacks in certain areas and it might be caused by various causes at different times. But I appreciate your information there. I need to go talk to another caller before we're out of time, which is very soon. John in Oklahoma, welcome to The Narrow Path.

Guest (John): Hi Steve. I just have a couple quick questions for you. I've been listening to your lectures on the series titled "Some Assembly Required," and I was curious if you've seen the study done by Tom Wadsworth where he kind of gets into New Testament worship and assemblies. If you've heard of him, second question: I was curious what your thoughts are when Jesus says that we are to worship in spirit and in truth.

Steve Gregg: You know, he was recommended to me. I think I may have bought his book, but I haven't read it yet. Of course, worship in spirit and truth has been taken different ways. Some people think it means worship through the power of the Holy Spirit and the truth of the word of God. Some have said it means worship with the heart and with the mind, the heart being the spirit and the mind being the truth. I think, as I read it in the context of the Jewish and Samaritan people, which is the context of the statement, I think in truth specifically means genuinely. The expression "in truth" means truthfully. In spirit could be contrasted from the ritualistic worship that was common among the Jews that wasn't spiritual, it was just ritual.

To worship in truth would be in contrast to the Pharisaical kind of worship that was hypocritical, not truthful, they were hypocrites. To worship in spirit would mean as opposed to ritualistically in outward rituals, it would be from the inward impulse of the spirit, whether it's referred to the Holy Spirit or just the human spirit. I don't know that we'd have to eliminate one of those possibilities since after the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost, our spiritual worship involves our human spirit and the Holy Spirit. Of course, when Jesus spoke, the Holy Spirit had not yet been given, so he might be talking about the human spirit. That instead of externalistic worship, just things that can be seen by man, the faithfulness in doing the rituals but having no heart for it, having no spirit in it, that's not what God's looking for. He's looking for people whose worship is not hypocritical but in truth, that is, authentic, and in spirit, which means not merely external and ritualistic. That's how I take it. But again, different commentators have given different explanations of that. So, my views is only one of several possibilities. Thank you. Paul in Mobile, Alabama, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Guest (Paul): Hey Steve, appreciate your show and love listening to it every day. My question is on Job 41 about Leviathan, the word Leviathan. I see it in Psalms and Isaiah too, where I see the translations from different types of Bibles, translations of Bibles in those two, Isaiah and Psalms, as dragon, right? But in Job 41, I've been told for so long that it's an actual beast. I mean, I can look it up on a website and it'll tell me it's a rhinoceros or it's a this or that. But I've never been able to wrap my head around writing an entire chapter about one beast, and when I get to the last verse, "He beholds all high things, he is a king over all the children of pride." Most of the translations go to that. I take it that he's talking about Lucifer or Satan in this chapter, and I just wanted to get your opinion on that.

Steve Gregg: I think he is talking about an animal simply because that follows a couple of chapters where he is talking about animals. He talks in chapter 39 about the mountain goats and the wild donkey, the wild ox, the ostrich, and the horse. He mentions these animals, the hawk, the eagle, and the hawk, and then of course he talks about Leviathan and Behemoth. He talks as if those are also familiar animals. God's saying, "Look at that animal, look at him. What do you learn about God from that?"

So, I don't think, I mean, maybe there's a secondary hidden meaning that also refers back to the devil in some way, but I think God is calling Job's attention to these animals and God's work in creating and maintaining them. It's all part of that whole thing. So, I'm going to see it as an animal, but you can certainly consider other possibilities. I'm out of time. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for joining us. Goodbye.