The Narrow Path

Steve Gregg: Good afternoon and welcome to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we are live for an hour each weekday afternoon taking your calls. If you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith that you would like to discuss on the air, we will talk about those. If you see things differently from the position espoused by the host and you want to balance a comment or correct something, feel free to give me a call about that. We welcome that every day and we are always glad to hear from you.

The number to call is 844-484-5737. Again, that number, and I will just tell you right now we have a couple of lines open right now so you could get through, is 844-484-5737. Just before we take calls, I have one announcement to make, and that is that today is the final stop on my itinerary. I have been doing this up in the Pacific Northwest for a couple of weeks now, more than a couple of weeks, I think, and I am in Boise, Idaho tonight.

So we have listeners in Boise and the area. Just so you will know, tonight at 6:00, 6:00 to 9:00, I have been asked if I would come and teach on the Kingdom of God and also do a Q&A. So we have got both of those things going on tonight, a lecture on the Kingdom of God and then Q&A afterwards. This is actually being held at a Boise address. It is at Stone Crossing, the name of the facility, and the address is 9600 West Brookside Lane.

That is 9600 West Brookside Lane. If you are not able to write that down, you can find that at our website, thenarrowpath.com, under announcements. Again, that starts at 6:00 tonight. All right, we will go to the phone and talk to DL in Menifee, California. Hi, DL. Good to hear from you again.

Guest (Female): Hi, Steve. How are you?

Steve Gregg: Fine, thanks.

Guest (Female): Okay, so I have a question. I don't know that you can answer it, but it is stuck in my craw, so I thought I would run it past you. In Genesis chapter 4, we start with a list of all the descendants of Cain, and then we get to Lamech, and it gets very specific about his wives and his sons. Then Lamech suddenly makes this declaration about how he killed a man and how he needs to be protected 70 times seven, and then we jump into Seth and all his descendants. My question is, why is that there? It seems like a very random thing to suddenly stick in the middle of a genealogy. Do we know what the purpose of this Lamech declaration is and why it is there?

Steve Gregg: Well, people say that this is perhaps the first instance of a man taking more than one wife. Lamech took two wives, Adah and Zillah, and we don't read of anyone prior to that taking more than one wife. So some people say this is showing how Cain's line through several generations—this is seven generations after Cain, I think—that his line became corrupt to the point where they were practicing polygamy.

Now, but the thing is, there were other lines at the same time. There must have been several lines of Adam and Eve's offspring by this time. Seven generations down, they would have thousands of offspring. We don't know if this is the first man to ever practice polygamy. It could have been. It is the first one we read about, but there could have been many that we don't know anything about. So it is not as if this says, "Okay, here is the first time a man took two wives." If it was, it might be saying that Cain's line started out with murder and then degenerated to the place where marriage is being corrupted and things like that.

Some people feel that is what the story of Lamech tells us. Now, I don't know that that is so, because the Old Testament doesn't actually anywhere specifically forbid polygamy. It certainly isn't God's idea of marriage, but David and Abraham and Jacob and others had multiple wives and it is never mentioned to be one of the things that God held against them. In the New Testament, of course, we don't have the liberty to consider polygamy as an option because we know marriage is to be a picture of Christ and the church. Paul said that was a mystery and that wasn't known in Old Testament times, so God in times of ignorance winked at that kind of thing.

But I don't know if that is why we are told about it. It just happens to be the first time we read of it. It is also the second time, or it is the first time after Cain himself, that we read of somebody committing killing somebody, homicide. So that might simply show that Cain began with the first murder and now his offspring are doing it too. Now, I think the purpose of the speech that Lamech gives is that he is saying, "My ancestor Cain killed a man in cold blood. I have now killed a man, but it wasn't in cold blood. He injured me. This was like self-defense."

He says, "Therefore, if Cain, whose murder was so terrible, was avenged sevenfold according to God, then if somebody kills me, I am less guilty than he is," I think he is implying, "because the man hurt me first, and so I should be avenged 70 times sevenfold." I think what he is saying is my sin or my action may resemble that of Cain, but it doesn't have the same magnitude because I didn't kill in cold blood. This was a fight I had with someone who was hurting me and he got killed. So he is saying, "God didn't let people bring vengeance upon Cain, and so they shouldn't bring vengeance on me either, even less than on Cain."

So that is what I see here. I don't know of any deeper meaning of it other than to just tell us that this happened. It is recorded in the genealogy. It is like a little snippet of the life of one of the families between Adam and Eve and Noah. Now, this was not in the family line of Noah, but it was before the time of Noah. So what happens next is we have the family line from Seth down to Noah's time. The only story we have of any family life or activities of anyone specifically between Adam and Eve and Noah's time is this one little thing from—well, of course, we have Cain killing Abel, then we have one of his descendants killing somebody too. Perhaps it is just showing that this kind of behavior continued for generations through the family, but I don't know of any deeper meaning of it.

Guest (Female): Okay. All right. That is what I was wondering. Thanks, Steve.

Steve Gregg: All right, good talking to you again. Bye now. Janice in Iowa, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Guest (Female): Hi. The reason why I am calling is because I have a direct question for you. Our daughter-in-law recently passed away at 41 years old with bile cancer. So the family was in a—yeah, right, it has been pretty bad. It has been hard. So we asked for the community in the prayer group to pray for her and also pray for my Danny who's going through a difficult time even besides his wife's death.

The question is, the family was disputing whether to cremate her or to bury her. My son believed in burial, but because of the expense and everything that goes with it, her family chose to cremate her. So the question is, if on Judgment Day when we ascend into heaven and God comes back and rises all the dead to go into heaven, if you're cremated, do you come back in a full body and then arise into heaven with him? Or just because you're cremated doesn't mean you're not going to heaven, right? You'll go to heaven because your soul leaves the body at death.

Steve Gregg: Right, that is right. And I am so sorry for your loss. I don't think cremation has any impact at all on whether a person will be raised from the dead on the Judgment Day because what cremation does is it immediately reduces a dead body to ashes. What nature does is reduce a dead body to dust and ashes. The Bible says only it takes a longer time.

Anyone who's been dead for hundreds of years is already dust and ashes. So clearly, if God's going to raise them from the dead, he has to be able to do that from the dust. And so I really don't see how it would be any more difficult for him to raise somebody who's cremated than somebody who's in the same condition as a cremated person only came to that state naturally over the process of decomposition. We have to remember the first human body was made from dust and God had no problem making a complete man from dust of the ground.

Now, I don't believe God's going to just make new bodies that aren't related to the old ones because it would be hard to know how is that the same person then. I suppose if the same soul was in a different body, perhaps. The Bible does talk about the bodies rising, and it sounds like it's the same bodies, but they're changed. The Bible says the body is sown, or he means buried, in weakness and it's raised in power. It's sown in dishonor, it's raised in glory. It's raised a natural body, it's raised a spiritual body.

Now, by spiritual body, I think Paul means supernatural. He's not saying it's not physical because the Bible teaches that when we rise from the dead, we'll have bodies that are like the body that Jesus had when he rose from the dead, and it was physical. He had flesh and bones and was touched and ate food and so forth. So it's not like it's not a physical body, but Paul calls it a spiritual body in contrast to being a natural body. A natural body isn't supernatural. Our new bodies will have supernatural aspects and they'll be immortal and free from pain and sickness and so forth.

So some Christians think that cremation is a wrong thing to do, and it does seem in a way more respectful to the dead to bury them than to burn them to ashes. But that's kind of a sentimental feeling. I don't know of anything moral or immoral about one choice or the other. That is, the Bible doesn't give instructions that people must be buried and cannot be cremated. And by the way, if being cremated had an adverse effect on God's ability to raise someone from the dead, well then there would be a whole bunch of people who miss out through no fault of their own because very few people have cremated themselves. I mean, there are people who burn themselves up, but there are Christian martyrs who were burned at the stake. There are godly people, missionaries and so forth, who burned down in huts and houses and so forth. There's Christians who've died in flaming accidents with planes or cars and burned up. Obviously, dying and burning up is not a sin. It's not a sin and you're not held responsible for doing it.

Guest (Female): Okay. And then I just ask that as my son goes through this other problem he's having in life, that everyone could pray for him.

Steve Gregg: What is his name?

Guest (Female): Danny.

Steve Gregg: Okay. I am sure there's people listening who are always mindful to pray for needs they hear about, so we won't ask you for specifics, but God knows Danny's needs. Thank you for calling. I am sure there will be in fact people praying for him. Michael in Inglewood, California, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Guest (Male): Hey. That was quick. So I was reading Psalm 8:5 and I don't know, I heard you speak about this before. It mentions Elohim, but I'm wondering first, my first question is why does it use Elohim instead of angels, instead of gods? And then the second question from Psalm 8:3, it mentions the moon and stars, and the word for stars is Kokab in Hebrew. But then in the Song of Deborah in Judges 5:20, it says the stars fought. Can you explain Judges 5:20 considering that they both use the word Kokab and they seem like different kinds of stars?

Steve Gregg: Well, no, it's the same reference to the same stars. It's just that in Judges, Deborah's song is using figures of speech. The destruction of Sisera and his armies by Israel, after Israel had been oppressed by them for so long, is seen as a great deliverance from God. In the Bible, great deliverances from God are often, especially in poetry like this, given a cosmic significance. So like the fall of a nation is sometimes the stars are falling from the air, the moon turns to blood, the sun goes dark. These are language that's not literal. It's just talking about the earthly victory, the earthly deliverance as if it has cosmic significance. It's poetic. When people read poetry, they should know they're not reading literal stuff.

As far as Psalm 8:5, where it says "you have made him a little lower than the angels," yes, it's true, in the Hebrew it says the "elohim," which means God or the gods. And so it could be read "you have made him a little lower than God." However, the Septuagint, which was the Greek translation of the Old Testament, rendered Elohim as angels, "angeloi." And so the New Testament quotes this verse in Hebrews chapter 2, and it quotes the Septuagint. So it says "God has made man a little lower than the angels." That's what the Greek translation says. The Hebrew said Elohim, which more literally means God, but it's just that the New Testament writers are always quoting the Greek Old Testament, not the Hebrew.

Guest (Male): Okay. Thanks.

Steve Gregg: All right, thank you for your call. Leah in Seattle, Washington, welcome to The Narrow Path.

Guest (Female): Hi, Steve. Yes, thank you. I just wanted to ask your opinion about a life situation. Everyone in this story that I'm going to say is a professing Christian, but my brother is going through his second divorce and not biblically grounded divorce. Before he's actually divorced through the state or whatever, because we don't know when that's going to be, maybe six months or a year from now, he's started dating another woman who is also a professing Christian. My family, like my parents, are accepting of this. My husband and I feel really unacceptable of this. If he's saying he's a Christian, we should call him out and say, "What are you doing? You're not even divorced yet," let alone if there's a biblical reason for you to ever get married again, but just that aside, I guess. We don't know really how to address them. My parents are like, "Well, I can't alienate my son. If I don't hang out with him and his new girlfriend, then he's just going to get so mad at me." He has kids in the mix. So I just wanted to know, what do we do?

Steve Gregg: Okay, so your brother is the one who's going through this divorce?

Guest (Female): My brother. And we're very close.

Steve Gregg: And he divorced his wife without cause, or the other way around?

Guest (Female): His first wife, I think biblically he was okay to get remarried. And then the second wife—

Steve Gregg: I'm asking if he divorced his wife or if she divorced him.

Guest (Female): He filed for divorce after she left, yes.

Steve Gregg: Okay, now she left first. What did she do after she left?

Guest (Female): Nothing. She had asked to come back to their house. They were on vacation, she decided not to go home.

Steve Gregg: Okay, I won't need the whole story. I'm just trying to get answers to a few questions.

Guest (Female): Sorry. She wanted to come home. He said she couldn't unless they go through counseling. Then she never came back home and he filed for divorce.

Steve Gregg: Okay, but he said that if she would go through counseling with him, he would take her back? He told her, and she refused?

Guest (Female): They had been through counseling. She wanted a different counselor, he didn't. Yes, correct.

Steve Gregg: Well, it sounds like he's not as eager to restore the marriage as he should be. Is she a believer?

Guest (Female): She's a professing believer.

Steve Gregg: Okay. Well, it sounds like—I don't know why she left him in the first place, but the fact that she wants to come back and they were not divorced should mean that he'd be eager for reconciliation. Now, if he knows her well enough to know that she's coming back on terms that aren't any better than before she left, and he wants to go through some counseling first with her to make sure she's really coming back and not just coming under the roof because it's cheaper to live there, obviously a man when his wife has left him, he has every right to determine the terms, at least reasonable terms, upon which he'll take her back.

But even if he's reluctant to take her back at this point, the fact that she wants to come back means he can't really claim that he's the victim of an unbelieving wife who's abandoned the marriage because she claims to be a Christian and she's trying to come back. So I don't think he has grounds for divorce on that count. So I think it's a mistake for him to divorce her. I assume they had a hard marriage? Not that that gives anyone grounds for divorce, but I'm just saying so he's not really willing to keep trying.

If he's not willing to keep trying, he might not be any better than she is. I mean, she left because she didn't want to keep trying. Now she wants to try again and he doesn't want to. So I think he's at fault here. Now, sometimes you don't want to tell somebody they're at fault because it'll offend them or it'll alienate them. Yeah, well, that's just the thing we're not supposed to be worried about. We need to speak the truth in love and a person who loves the truth will be glad we did, even if it stings to hear it.

When Peter preached on the day of Pentecost, the Bible says the people were cut to the heart and they said, "What must we do?" and they were told to repent and 3,000 of them did. When Stephen preached to the Sanhedrin, it also says they were cut to the heart, but they killed him. When you convict people by your words, their reaction is unpredictable. They might repent and say "What must I do?" or they might want to kill you or alienate from you. A Christian cannot operate in the fear of man.

I can't not tell my children something they need to hear just because they'll be unhappy I did, or tell another person that, or my brother or sister. So he should be told because if you guys don't tell him, I don't know if there's anyone else in his life who would do so. And if he goes through with this, he shouldn't divorce his wife. But if he does, he should stay single because he doesn't have grounds for divorce. Now, I think he should still be working on his marriage. And if he says, "Oh, you don't know how hard my marriage is," it's true, I don't. But I know how hard my marriage was. My ex-wife and I, I wouldn't divorce her. If you put a gun to my head, I wouldn't divorce her because I wouldn't. I just made vows. I'm a man with some measure of character and conscience. I would just not divorce somebody who I swore I'd be with for life. And a man who doesn't take his vows that seriously, I'm not sure what kind of Christian he is. I mean, his wife might not be a very good Christian either. But when you make vows—

Guest (Female): Can I ask one follow-up? So my parents—well, now this second wife doesn't even want to come back, but my parents said, "I've already told him I don't agree with this new girlfriend." He knows how they feel, but then they do activities with the girlfriend and him. And they say, "Well, he'll cut us off and we won't have access to the grandkids." And he's also super wealthy, so I think that has something to do with people getting cut off, maybe I don't know. So do you agree in me telling my parents as well, like you have to confront him as your son? Like you said, if you're not going to tell your kids right from wrong, who is?

Steve Gregg: Well, I would tell them this. Paul made it very clear, he said fornicators will not inherit the kingdom of God. Now, it depends on how important it is to inherit the kingdom of God. If you don't want to inherit the kingdom of God, do whatever you want. But if you want to inherit the kingdom of God, you don't want to be a fornicator because fornicators won't inherit the kingdom of God. Paul said that twice.

So here's the deal. If my brother or my son was fornicating and was hoping to enter the kingdom of God, I'd have to tell him, "Hey, you can't do it." Now, he may not be sleeping with this new woman, although I don't know how good a Christian he is, maybe they are. But he shouldn't be. If he is, it's adultery. And even if he marries her, and God does not see him as having grounds for divorce, he's committing adultery. That's what Jesus said. "If a man divorces his wife for any cause other than fornication and marries another, he commits adultery."

So this is something that someone who values their soul would want to make sure they don't misstep here. It's always tempting to misstep when we're lonely or when we've been hurt by somebody else and we want the comfort of somebody else in our life. But that's—yeah, I mean, the question is, do you want to enter into life? If so, you might have to cut off your hand or pluck out your eye, so to speak. It's not comfortable, but better to do that than to be cast into Gehenna fire, Jesus said.

So I don't know how much your brother values his soul, but anyone who does value his soul would want to make absolute sure that he's not getting involved with a woman other than his wife until he's absolutely sure that God considers that he's free from his wife. And from what you've told me, if I were in his shoes, I certainly wouldn't be absolutely sure of it. So he should stay unattached. And I would tell him that. He might not like it, but the Bible doesn't say we're supposed to say the things that will make people like us. Jesus said, "Beware when all men speak well of you. They did so to the false prophets too."

And Paul said in Galatians 1:10, "If I was pleasing man, I wouldn't be a servant of Christ." So it's a hard thing. You might become alienated for a period of time. But it says in Proverbs, "He that rebukes a man afterward finds more favor than he who flatters with the lips." A man who's godly, if your brother is or will be that, he'll be happier for the people, more thankful for the people who told him he was wrong than for the ones who just let him go his way to destruction.

Hey, I need to take a break. Thank you for your call. You're listening to The Narrow Path. We have a little break to take just for a few seconds and we'll take more calls in the next half hour, so stay tuned. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. Tons of stuff there, check it out thenarrowpath.com. I'll be back in 30 seconds.

Welcome back to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we have another half hour together. I'll be taking your calls if you have questions you want to ask on the air about the Bible, the Christian faith. Looks like there's one line open right now. The number is 844-484-5737. That's 844-484-5737. Once again, I want to mention, because it's my last chance, tonight I'll be speaking in Boise, Idaho. And if you want information about that, if you're in the area and want to join us, you can go to thenarrowpath.com, our website, under the tab that says announcements. The information is there. Meeting is from 6:00 to 9:00. It'll be a talk I'm giving on the Kingdom of God followed by Q&A, and Q&A can be on anything. Okay, so you've been warned. Don't miss it. All right, we're going to go to the phones again and talk to, let's see who's been there the longest, it's going to be Carrie from Fort Worth, Texas. Hi, Carrie, welcome.

Guest (Female): Hey, Steve. A lot is spoken about the blood of Christ. We sing about it a lot. A lot has been written about it in the New Testament. And I understand as far as the blood representing the life, and I can see it in the sacrifice of Christ, but I was wondering if it also represents the resurrected life of Christ and what it does for us.

Steve Gregg: Well, I don't know that in the New Testament the references to the blood refer to that. Certainly the death of Christ for our salvation also is inseparable from his resurrection, and from his resurrection we have a new life because he had a new life and we are in him. So if we're crucified in him and risen in him, that's something he experienced and we share in that as believers. But the blood, I think whenever the mention of the blood is made in the New Testament of Christ, I think it's just shorthand for saying his death. It's talking about his bloodshed, when his blood was shed, meaning when he died, it accomplished certain things.

Sometimes it's spoken of as a purchase price for us, as when Paul said in Acts 20, speaking to the elders of Ephesus, that Jesus or God purchased the church with his own blood. So it's like a purchase price or a price of redemption. Paul says in Ephesians 1:7, "In him we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins." And of course, so being purchased and forgiven are things that occur because of the blood. It also says, of course, in 1 John 1:7, "If we walk in the light as he's in the light, we have fellowship one with another and the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin." It says in 1 John 2:1 that Jesus is a propitiation for our sins, which means a sacrifice offered on behalf of them.

It seems to me every time the blood is discussed in the Bible, it's talking specifically about the death of Jesus and what it purchased. And what it purchased was our reconciliation with God, the forgiveness of sins, our God purchasing us back from bondage to sin and from the enemy. So I don't think the specific reference to blood in the New Testament has all the same connotations that new life or resurrection life or thing have. I do think the resurrection of Jesus, which is inseparable from his death in our theology, is that. But since you can't separate them, of course, when we talk about the blood of Jesus, we're talking about the whole transaction where we became his, our sins were forgiven, we were given new life and so forth. But I'm not sure that the reference to the blood specifically speaks of that new life. I think it's almost always a reference to his sacrifice, his death, and therefore for the atonement.

Guest (Female): Well, I guess that's what I was thinking, that it was just—you could not separate the two. And I guess there are people who do separate the two or concentrate on one and ignore the other.

Steve Gregg: Well, you're not going to benefit the one without the benefit of the other. But they are different aspects. There's several different aspects of what Christ has done for us and different statements reflect on different aspects. So all those aspects are true and you can't have any of them without the rest of them. But nonetheless, when one of them is spoken of, it usually is discussing one part of the picture, one piece of the puzzle, then something else will be talked about to discuss the other parts. All right, I appreciate your call, Carrie. We'll talk next to David in Missouri. David, welcome to The Narrow Path.

Guest (Male): Hello there. The reason I'm calling is it sparked interest that you're going to be speaking on the Kingdom of God tonight. And I wanted to give you my version. I've been associated with churches of Christ for decades. And in Colossians 1:13, it says, "He has delivered us from the power of darkness and has translated us into the kingdom of the Son of his love." And then Revelation 1:9, John said he was in the kingdom. So we look at the kingdom as the church. And also, it also seems like it's used synonymously in Matthew 16, that kingdom and church. The way you look at it, maybe I'm missing a little bit, but how do you look at it?

Steve Gregg: Same as you.

Guest (Male): Okay.

Steve Gregg: All right, well, thank you for calling, brother. Nick from Nashville, Tennessee, welcome to The Narrow Path.

Guest (Male): Hi, Steve. I just had a question about a situation I'm in at church and I just wanted to get your advice on it. It's a very loving church, I love the people, my whole family goes there. But as I dove into the Scriptures, and I do appreciate your YouTube postings because it's helped me learn a lot more about my theology and eschatology—the elders in the church are very dispensational, premillennial, and I asked the pastor his views on it and he seems like he just hasn't studied it all that hard. And after a lot of discussion, he has dropped the dispensational view but still doesn't have a solid view on premillennialism or amillennialism. He just hasn't come to a view on that yet. Fair enough. I do have the privilege of—I get to teach, they'll offer me to teach on Wednesday nights and Sunday nights on occasion. I'm afraid because some of the, especially some of the older ladies, hold the premillennial view and the millennial reign and stuff very near and dear to their hearts, that I'm afraid if I dove in on a teaching from a different perspective that it may upset them and I just don't want to sow discord in the church. I just wanted your advice on should I stay with that church and use my platform to try to let them see another perspective, or should I look for a different church?

Steve Gregg: Well, it sounds to me like your pastor's open-minded if he gave up his dispensationalism. And by the way, the fact that he's not sure whether to go with premillennialism or amillennialism, that's fine. The early Christians were not dispensational, but some of them were premillennial and some were amillennial. So you can be premillennial without being dispensational. That's usually called historic premillennialism. Or you can be amillennial. Now, neither of them—frankly, historic premillennialism isn't very objectionable. Dispensational premillennialism is because dispensationalism specifically thinks the millennium will be when there'll be a restored Jewish temple with Jewish animal sacrifices and Jewish priests offering them. That's just, first of all, it's biblically atrocious and it doesn't make any sense. The New Testament says the Old Testament is kaput and so forth.

Historic premillennialists, who are not dispensational, they believed there'd be a millennium, but they didn't believe it'd be a restoration of Judaism or anything like that. They just thought we'll be living with Jesus on a millennial kingdom and then there'll be new heavens and earth. Whereas amillennialists don't believe there's that thousand-year reign. They believe we're just going to live in a new heaven, new earth with Jesus right from day one after he comes back.

Of course, those are very different views. But there's nothing—I would never leave a church over it, especially if the pastor hasn't made up his mind. I can relate with him because nobody ever led me out of dispensationalism. I did. I hope to say the Holy Spirit did, but I don't want to—if I say that, it sounds kind of demeaning to dispensationalists. But of course I think the Holy Spirit led me out. But gradually. I gave up the pretrib rapture first, my studies required that. Eventually, my views on Israel moved from a dispensational to a more biblical understanding. But I still believed the millennium. I didn't even know there was people who didn't. And so I was kind of like a historic premillennialist for a while without even knowing so. And then I moved gradually into amillennialism. Again, this is all a gradual thing for me.

Now, if you got ladies in your church who are very affectionately attached to the millennial view, it may be of some help to disabuse them of that at some point, but I wouldn't go in there like gangbusters and just like a bull in a china shop. I think if you're fellowshipping at a church long-term, what's more important is your relationship with the people, more important than your eschatology. So you don't want to damage that relationship by being bullish about your eschatology.

On the other hand, if you're going to teach or could teach and your pastor approves, what I would start out doing—and this could change over time—but I would start out introducing them to the fact that there's two different views on the millennium. That is, one is that the millennium is a literal thousand years after Jesus comes back prior to the new heavens and the new earth. The other view is that the millennium is a symbol for the time between the first and second coming of Christ, the time in which we're actually living. To not really—what I do when I teach people who aren't familiar with this, I just tell them what the premillennial view is and what I taught when I was premillennial, and the steps I took that led me to where I am now. And I realize that there's two views out there that Christians—there's always been Christians holding them. And this way, kind of softly, without saying that they're wrong, just lets them know there's another possibility.

Even if you say, "I lean toward this other possibility, I tend to think that's the correct one," you can say that in a way that's not just insulting to their intelligence or to their belief or damaging to them. I don't think it's so important to teach against premillennialism, although I think it's a false view. I don't think it's a damaging view unless it's dispensational. Dispensational premillennialism, of course, removes the focus from Christ and places it on Israel, which is obviously, to my mind, idolatry. To replace Christ with Israel as the focus of your eschatology is—well, I don't believe it's safe to replace Christ with anything. And so I would move slowly if you're in a church that's been dispensational or you got women there who are dispensational and it matters to them. Yeah, I wouldn't want to crowd them out of their position. I'd just want them to—I might open out a wall so they could see outside their position and just let some fresh air come in, let them breathe it for a while and see if it's better air. But I would take it very slow. I mean, assuming if your pastor's letting you speak and teach, then it sounds to me like you have an opportunity to be there for some long-term. And I wouldn't ruin it by just chasing off all the premillennialists the first time I spoke, or anytime I spoke.

Guest (Male): What are your views on the Coptic Orthodox Church?

Steve Gregg: Well, I don't hold to the Coptic scriptures or I'm not Eastern Orthodox. I think the Coptic Orthodox are probably pretty close to Eastern Orthodox. I'm not Roman Catholic either. There's a bunch of regional dominant churches around the world that I see things differently than them. But at the same time, in some cases, almost all the Christians in a particular region are of that brand. And so the real question's not is it possible to or even desirable to dislodge them from everything they believe that's wrong. I'd be more interested in finding out if the person who holds that, who's in that church, actually knows Christ. Because I think that people who know Christ can be found in every kind of church.

And if somebody knows Christ, I'd say they're saved. Even if they're in a church that has things I don't agree with. And then if you're in a relationship with such people, then and they're interested, you can talk about issues of disagreement over time. Again, here's the thing. Many people think that God's going to be pleased or displeased with you based on whether you hold the right opinions and are affiliated with the right movement or the right branch of the church. I don't think any of that matters to God. What matters to God is your heart toward him and your surrender to him. If you're following Jesus, I don't think God is offended if you're persuaded that the Eastern Orthodox or the Roman Catholic or the Lutheran or Methodist or Presbyterian—if you're following Christ the best you know how, God knows. And he can correct you. All of us have some views that need to be improved. We don't know everything. So I would just say when I meet someone of another group, it is no part of my agenda to go in and dislodge them from that group. I want to find out if they know the Lord. If they know the Lord, if they're living for Jesus, who am I to judge another man's servant? But quite apart from judging them, there's such a thing as instructing, such a thing as learning together. Iron sharpens iron. The way I see it, anyone who loves Jesus, if they see things differently than I do, I want to know why, because maybe they know something I don't, and maybe I know something they don't. Fellowshipping together over issues.

Guest (Male): I've been considering visiting the Coptic Orthodox Church because I guess I just see the Protestant church being very loose on beliefs and theology and stuff, and it just seems like a very long-standing historical church that maybe they have things right that we have wrong, and I just want to seek truth.

Steve Gregg: Yeah. Well, when you say the Protestant church is X, you have to realize the Protestant church exists in lots of denominations, and some of the denominations are much better than others, and there's a lot of non-denominational Protestant churches, some of them might be better than any of the denominations. The only thing I'm saying is I won't say which group is the best because I'm not the final judge of that. I will say that there's some groups that I encounter Christ in and some that I don't. And the ones I don't, it's because usually the behavior on stage is too distracting. But if I'm in a worshipping community that loves Jesus, I can encounter God there where two or more gathered, he's there.

On the other hand, if I find that a particular church I attend places undue stress on certain rituals and liturgy, it may be that that is distracting them. If I go to an evangelical church, I might be distracted by the band, by the antics on stage, even by the pastor's pep talks or whatever. I'm wanting to hear the word of God and I'm hearing something else, it's distracting. The entertainment element is what distracts there. But if you go to a liturgical, ritualistic church, you might be distracted by that from Christ. The devil always wants to distract you from Christ and he'll do it any way he can and different churches may have a tendency to do that.

So I'm not going to speak against any one group per se. I would say I would have differences. I'm not a liturgical type of person. Some people feel closer to God in a liturgical church. I was raised in a Baptist church, which was not a high church, not liturgical, but it was even more formal than I am now because I came to realize I want to follow Jesus like the disciples did. And I don't think any of the disciples with Jesus genuflected or had a liturgy. I don't think on the Sabbath days or the Sundays or whatever, Jesus sat down with them and they had a liturgical service. I think it was all relational. I think salvation is a relationship with God. Although people can—their hearts can be elevated to worship through many different things and probably their tastes and their temperaments will have a lot to do with which things do elevate their thoughts to God and which things don't. But there's no reason you couldn't visit a church like that. But I would say you'd make a mistake if you thought, "Wow, these people say things and do things very differently than I'd heard of, they must know something I don't know." Well, they might, but they might not. They could be—some of the things they do differently might not be any more valid than the things you've rejected at the Protestant churches. I'd say the main thing is your walking with God and finding other people who are walking with God to fellowship with and studying the scriptures. And where you meet people who have different views of the scriptures, I like to talk them out. We can argue them, but we don't have to require that the other person come around to our view. All right, Nick, good talking to you, brother. Thanks. We're going to talk to Scott from Reno, Nevada next. Scott, welcome.

Guest (Male): Hey, Steve. I'd like to talk to you a bit about this idea that the English translations supply verbs that are not in the original Greek.

Steve Gregg: Okay.

Guest (Male): I've heard you say that in a number of—we don't get your radio show here in Reno, but I've watched a lot of your debates and teachings online and really enjoying them. And specifically, the debate that you had with Dr. Michael Brown about Israel and the church, which I actually agree with you. But Romans 9, if you want to go to Romans 9, this might be a great example of the idea that I'm talking about. So you stated essentially that Romans 9:4, that the verb "is," who pertaineth or whose are the adoption and the glory and the covenants and the giving of the law and the service of God and the promises, whose are the fathers—you said the verb is not there in the Greek.

Steve Gregg: Yes.

Guest (Male): Which is true. Then you also went on to say, we really could just supply a past tense verb, "whose were the adoption and the glory and the covenants." So the reason I want to just bring this up is that actually there is a verb in that verse, and it's at the very beginning of the verse where Paul says "who are Israelites."

Steve Gregg: Right, they are.

Guest (Male): Okay, he's saying, "I wish myself accursed for my brethren according to the flesh, who are Israelites, to whom pertaineth," in the King James version, "the adoption, the glory." So in Greek, the verb "is" is oftentimes not written out. This is a very common thing in Greek literature.

Steve Gregg: Just implied, right.

Guest (Male): The verb is implied, correct. It's kind of like when we say, "She wrecked his car and his heart."

Steve Gregg: Yeah. So what is your point? Because I'm looking at a clock that says we're almost out of time. What's your point?

Guest (Male): My point is that we don't just because the verb's not there in the English translation, we don't have the option to just say, "Well, it could be a past tense verb or it might be a future verb." The nearest precedent, the nearest preceding verb in the clause or in the thought passage would normally control the following verbs. So when he says "they are Israelites," the verb "to be" or the verb "is" is there, and so that would carry on through the rest of the passage. And in the lecture I saw, you actually went down to verse 5 and it says, "There is a verb there and it's past tense, of whom Christ came." You said there's only one verb in that sentence and it's, I think, the word "came," specifically concerning the flesh, "Christ came." When actually there is no—the word "came" is not there.

Steve Gregg: That's not in the Greek either. "Came" is not there. I know. But what I was saying is the verb is implied in the past tense because Christ isn't coming, he's came. The point is that when they supply a verb, they have to decide whether the author is thinking of a present tense thing or a past tense thing. And for him to say "they are Israelites," well, of course they are. There's no question about that. But then he says things about them that you don't know if he's saying these are true now or these were true in the past.

Guest (Male): Given the function of the language and the common method of dropping the copula, the verb "is," if he meant to change tense, he would have changed tense. That would be kind of the scholarly argument. Now part of the reason is that Hebrew does not have the present tense verb "is." And Paul was probably thinking in Aramaic or Hebrew. So this is part of the problem. Paul leaves the word "is" out a lot. In fact, in the New Testament, it's left out a lot, and that's partly because the Hebrew language does not have present tense "is."

Steve Gregg: Okay, well, the point I was making is that the things he—in the King James, New King James, it says, "to whom pertain the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service of God, the promises, of whom are the fathers"—that's a present tense verb stuck in there in italics—"from whom according to the flesh, Christ came." That's a supplied, but it's clearly talking about the past tense. "Who is overall eternally blessed, amen." So I'm saying the things he lists were all true of Israel. Not all of them are now, because some of them are past tense things, like the adoption. They were adopted a long time ago. They're not adopted now. They're not being adopted now. So God adopted them in the past. The glory, that was the Shekinah glory. It's not there now. They had it. The covenants, well, that's up to dispute if they're now or not. The giving of the law, well, that's past. He's not giving the law now. He was—the giving of the law is a past thing. The service of God, that was the tabernacle service. He's talking about things that were given to them in the past, which aren't true now. And so I don't believe he's speaking in the present tense. But you certainly can. I don't agree that the verbs and the structure of the sentence require what you're suggesting, but I don't have time to dispute it now simply because I've got 10 seconds to end the show. But thank you for your call.

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