The Narrow Path

Steve Gregg: Good afternoon and welcome to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we're live as usual for an hour each weekday afternoon so that you can call in while we're on the air and we can talk to you live and you can call in with questions about the Bible or the Christian faith that you'd like to discuss on the air or to express a difference of opinion from the host and we can talk about that.

We can go a lot of different directions. We have no assigned topic any given day. You basically assign the topic by your question and we'll talk about your question, then the next caller will assign another topic from by their question. That's how it works here and it's how it's been working daily for 29 years on this program, which I'm very thankful to those who have contributed over the years so that we have been able to pay the radio stations for 29 years.

We're on now almost 100 stations. We don't add stations very quickly because we actually pay stations in advance before we use the time. I think we're one of the very few radio shows, if there are others, that pay in advance before using radio time because we refuse to go into debt. And so we move slowly, but just last month we added 10 new stations and we already had like 87 or something like that.

So it's still growing after 29 years. We don't know how much it'll grow. We don't really care. It was never my goal to be on a lot of radio stations. I went on one station for a year, then we added another, then another, only because God provided and the opportunities opened up. Eventually we expanded far more than I ever dreamed. Anyway, but we do thank our donors who have helped us do that. And we thank God because we feel like he's the one who puts it on their hearts.

We have a Zoom meeting coming up this Wednesday night. This happens the first Wednesday of every month and that comes around it seems like very quickly. The months go by and we do have this Wednesday night the Zoom meeting at 7:00 PM Pacific Time. You can join us for that if you want to from whatever time zone you're in, but it'll be 7:00 PM Pacific Time when we're doing it.

You can find out how to log in to that by going to our website thenarrowpath.com. Look under announcements, it gives various things that are going on and you'll find this Wednesday the Zoom meeting log-on information is there. We'd love to have you join us. Apart from that, we're just going to go directly to the calls and we have several. We have one line open. The number to call is 844-484-5737. Once more it's 844-484-5737.

Our first caller today is going to be Stephen in Newport, Arkansas. Hi Stephen, welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Stephen: Yes, thank you. I just wanted your opinion on Revelation chapter 20 through verse 7 through 10.

Steve Gregg: 7 through 10 is where the devil is released for a little while at the end of the thousand years. He goes out to deceive the nations. He gathers the support of nations from around the world and they surround the beloved city, but before any harm can come to the city, fire from heaven comes down and consumes the devil and the armies that he's gathered. And then he and the beast and the false prophet are found to be thrown into the lake of fire by verse 10.

This is what we've got there. Now as far as what it means, this is highly dependent on which view of the millennium somebody takes. I don't know if you're aware, but there's at least three different views of the millennium, probably four. And many people have only heard one, and that's the one that's most popular, but it's not the one I hold.

The one that's most popular is the dispensational view of the millennium, which holds that when Jesus comes back, he's going to establish the temple in Jerusalem again. There will be the Jewish priests offering animal sacrifices again. Jerusalem will be the capital of the world and all the nations will come and worship God in Jerusalem at the temple.

Jesus will be on earth and we will be those of us who have been faithful him be reigning with him over the earth for that thousand years. But according to that view, a lot of people who never have been Christians will be on the earth also. They will have survived the events of the second coming and have been allowed to go into the millennial kingdom, though they have no real commitment to Jesus.

According to that view, at the end of the thousand years, Satan will be released to do harm again as he has not been able to do prior to that since the second coming. They believe the second coming of Christ is at the beginning of this chapter. Then after a thousand years, Satan's released to stage a final rebellion and then of course God puts down the rebellion.

That's the dispensational view, which is also called the pre-millennial view. I should specify though that there are pre-millennialists who are not dispensationalists and they would also believe that when Jesus comes back he'll bind Satan for a thousand years. There will be a thousand years of peace on earth until Satan is loosed and those things happen that we were just talking about.

The main difference between the dispensational view of pre-millennialism and the classic or historical pre-millennialism is that dispensationalism does have this temple in Jerusalem and animal sacrifices and Levites serving as priests, which the historical pre-millennialists do not. But both types of pre-millennialists believe in a pre-millennial return of Christ. Millennium means a thousand years. A pre-millennial return of Christ means they believe Jesus will come back before the millennium and that it will be a consequence of his second coming.

There's also people called post-millennialists and they understand the millennium a bit differently. They believe that the millennium will be a circumstance brought about by the conversion of most of the people in the world. They believe that just as the gospel has been reaching people for 2,000 years, and so that a little movement that started with 120 people 2,000 years ago now encompasses a third of humanity, they believe that's going to keep happening that way and that eventually it won't be a third of humanity but half and then three quarters and so forth.

Eventually most of humanity, given enough time, will have become Christians. They believe that as a result of that, there will be a more or less Christianized world. For a thousand years or something like it, there will be a time of peace, no war, and that kind of thing, righteous governments, and then Satan will be released at the end and then Jesus will come back.

According to that view, that's called the post-millennial view. According to that view, Christ will come at the end of the millennium and the millennium will occur without Jesus being here on earth but simply as a result of a continuation of the same processes that have been operating in the church for the past 2,000 years. Some of them suggest it may take another 2,000 years, maybe another 10,000 years, who knows.

But they believe that the church eventually will have such an impact through the gospel as to impact the society as a whole worldwide, and then there will be this different kind of world governed by righteous people in a righteous manner for a thousand years or for a long time. Then comes the end when Jesus comes back. Amillennialism is another view and this view is the majority view of church history.

From about the fourth century onward, amillennialism became the official view of at least the Western church. It was the view of the Roman Catholic Church, it was the view of the reformers, the Protestant churches, and it is still the view of a very large percentage of Christians today, although I think the dispensational pre-millennial view I mentioned first has become more popular in modern times.

The amillennial view is still very credible, still very respectable, and still the historic view of the church. I hold that view myself. In that view, the binding of Satan at the beginning of Revelation 20 is symbolic of what Jesus accomplished over Satan at his coming. The Bible says that he through death destroyed him who had the power of death, that is the devil.

Jesus said in Matthew 12:28 that he had bound the strong man, meaning Satan, and was plundering his house. Colossians chapter 2 and verse 15 says that Jesus through the cross disarmed principalities and powers and made a show of them openly triumphing over them in the cross. This triumph of Christ over Satan at the cross is thought to be symbolically described in Revelation as the dragon with a chain and a bottomless pit and things like that.

This conquest of Satan, which took place, the Bible tells us it took place at the cross. I mean there's unambiguous scriptures that tell us that. Revelation is not unambiguous. Revelation is very symbolic and difficult and controversial. But the uncontroversial, not difficult passages tell us that Jesus conquered Satan at the cross.

The amillennial view thinks that the dragon and the pit and the binding and so forth is symbolic of that victory at the cross. The thousand years is symbolic of the period of time since that time. Now it's been longer than a thousand years, but that's not a problem because thousand in the Bible is often used simply as an indeterminate large number, which is why you'll find the Bible saying that God keeps covenant for a thousand generations. Well I don't think he stops after that.

Or when it says that a day to the Lord is like a thousand years and a thousand years like a day. Or that a day in his presence is better than a thousand. Or that God owns the cattle on a thousand hills. The thousand doesn't refer to a statistic. It refers to simply a very large number. It's not committed to any particular number, just a big number. Binding Satan for a thousand years would simply mean for a really long time.

Amillennialists believe that very long time has already been about 2,000 years and who knows how much longer it may go. But that at the end of that when Satan is released, this would refer to an end-times renewal of persecution globally against the church. Now the church has been persecuted of course all over the world in various times and places, but not all over the world at the same time.

Some countries and some kings have persecuted Christians throughout history, it's always been localized. There's always been a place where Christians if they could get there would be safe. There's refuge countries and so forth. But the idea of Satan having the whole camp surrounded is seen as a symbol of a global persecution of the church.

Then the fire from heaven at the end of that time, which comes down and destroys Satan and the enemies at the end of the thousand years and at the end of that little season, that fire from heaven is a reference to the second coming of Christ, which Paul said in 2 Thessalonians 1:8 would be Christ would come in flaming fire taking vengeance on those who do not know God.

There is the flaming fire coming down and that's the second coming of Christ. Then you've got the resurrection and the judgment and then the new heavens and new earth. All of those things, the resurrection and the judgment and the coming of the new heavens and new earth, in the remainder of scripture those things are placed at the second coming of Christ.

The amillennial view, and that's the one I myself hold, is that everything from verse 7 on in Revelation 20 is still future and it takes place at the end of the age of the church that we are living in. The binding of Satan a thousand years earlier represents the victory of Christ at the cross over Satan a long time ago. So the thousand years is just a long time.

That's my view. You wondered what I think about that. There are four different views essentially and that's the one I hold. The one I hold is the one that the church held pretty much throughout history until fairly modern times.

Stephen: Thank you for your call, brother.

Steve Gregg: Okay, good talking to you. Sam from Tucker, Georgia, welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Sam: Yes, I heard a replay of probably Friday's call-in and you were answering a question about or speculating about a question regarding Jesus as a child and when did he maybe come to know that he was the Son of God. I really enjoyed it and I was waiting for you to mention the possibility that Mary told him what the angel Gabriel told her in Luke 1:32 that the child would be the Son of the Most High. Is there a reason you didn't mention that?

Steve Gregg: Because I don't think that's likely. The reason I don't think it's likely is because Mary herself did not apparently live with the awareness those 12 years when Jesus from the time he was born until he was 12 years old. It wasn't apparently in the forefront of her mind. When Jesus said at age 12, "Did you not know I must be in my Father's house?" or "my Father's business," it says Mary and Joseph didn't understand what he was talking about.

It's interesting because Mary had said when she found him in the temple, "Your father and I have been looking everywhere for you. You had us worried sick." Now it's interesting she referred to Joseph as his father. When Jesus said, "Didn't you know I must be in my Father's house?" he's clearly distinguishing between Joseph and God. The temple was not Joseph's house, it was God's house.

Therefore Jesus was identifying God as his father. Now you'd think if this were the case Mary and Joseph would immediately say, "Oh yeah, well right, it's because of the virgin birth and so forth." But the funny thing is it says Mary and Joseph did not understand what he was talking about. To me that's a funny thing to say, but Luke tells us this is Luke chapter 2, Mary and Joseph didn't understand what he said.

Which is strange because what I think must have happened, it's not that Mary didn't remember that she was a virgin and so forth. I think it's just that in the process of spending 12 years raising kids, including Jesus, and Jesus was basically behaving like any other normal kid I suppose, and Joseph was playing the role of a father in the home and so forth, it just was never in the front of her mind.

It was a miracle how she became pregnant. But over a course of 12 years doing the mundane household things without any exceptional stuff going on, it might retreat to the back of her mind in the sense she's not thinking about it most of the time. Now she may have told Jesus about it, but we're not told that she did. If she did tell Jesus about it, then she shouldn't have been surprised when he said, "Yeah, well this is my Father's house I'm at," right?

I'm the Son of God. So I'm thinking it doesn't sound like this was something Mary talked about or thought much about after a while. I mean when the shepherds came when Jesus was a baby and the wise men were told that when she heard the stories of them seeing angels and stuff, it says she cherished these things, she kept them in her heart.

Which makes it sound like she didn't talk about it much, which is really amazing for a Jewish mother. When people are saying your kid is the Son of God, angels were praising him, most Jewish mothers would say, "You betcha, that's my boy." But she was very restrained. She just kept it quiet in her heart. She may have broken that silence at some point talking to Jesus, or maybe she intended to, but until he was 12 years old, he was just a little kid.

It may be that she planned when he was old enough to be a responsible adult that she'd tell him about that stuff. After all, a 12-year-old kid in old Israel would not really know the birds and the bees stuff. If she said, "Well honey, I didn't get pregnant with you because of having sex with Joseph," I don't think they talked about sex with their 12-year-olds or 2-year-olds or 5-year-olds or 10-year-olds.

I think that probably was something they just didn't get into like we're way over-sexualized in this society and it's strange for a 10-year-old not to know something about sex if they watch TV or if they're on social media. In those days, I think they kept the innocence of children more and I don't think she would have felt that he would understand anything about her virgin conception and things like that.

My guess is she kept it to herself. It wasn't in the forefront of her thinking all the time. She may have planned to talk to him about it when he got older, but he figured it out before, or it was revealed to him before, when he was 12 years old he realized that the temple was his father's house. And she was surprised for him to know that.

I think she knew what that meant, but she was probably, "How'd he know that?" she's probably wondering. Anyway, they found it difficult to process when he said that, we're told that. So that's why I didn't suggest that because I don't think it's a likely answer. It's not an impossible one. It's possible that from age three or four years old Mary told him this stuff.

In a real-life scenario such as they lived in, I'm not sure why she would talk to a baby or a child about such things, which would be hardly intelligible to a child. Anyway, those are my thoughts. You asked why I didn't say it, it's because I don't think that's a very likely answer, but it's not impossible that she did talk to him about it. Thanks for sharing that. Sean from Aldergrove, British Columbia, welcome to the Narrow Path.

Sean: Steve, thank you very much for what you do on behalf of all your listeners, I'm sure we all appreciate it, I know I do. My question is in regards to Job and the story of Job. I always thought it was basically a story when you're going through hard times you could say, "Well, it's not as bad as Job." But it just kind of came to my attention today was God basically initiated it. And I know you're probably going to say, well that's because it was God's plan, which I agree with, but the fact that he said to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job?"

Steve Gregg: Oh yeah, there's no question that God initiated it. God definitely initiated it.

Sean: Yeah, that's just hard to wrap my head around.

Steve Gregg: What is it that makes it hard to understand? What makes that hard to accept?

Sean: Job was a godly man and then he got put through all that, especially with the kids.

Steve Gregg: Well, I think it's very common for godly men to go through troubles. Probably before Job's time, Joseph, who was a very godly man, was sold into slavery by his brothers and went through some horrible things—falsely accused, served as a slave and then a prisoner and so forth. God exalted him as he later exalted Job too, but the path to glory is often through hard times.

David, who was eventually glorified as king in Israel, the greatest king in Israel, as a youth he had to during some of his years he spent running from Saul and living in caves and as he put it, one step away from death and when he had done nothing wrong. I think the idea that people who do nothing wrong and are God's favorites are often tested with hardship.

Jesus certainly was God's favorite and think of what he went through. He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief and he went through the beatings and the crucifixion and so forth, but that's after he went through periods of rejection from his people and misunderstanding from his brothers and things like that. To me, what happened to Job is a very remarkable case, but it's not out of character with the general teaching of scripture.

It seems to me that if you are a godly person, God will showcase that. And that showcase is not just so he can show you off, but it's also so that you can learn things, you can grow. If you want to become a football player, the coach is going to put you through training that's going to be pretty hard—harder than people who aren't football players have to go through.

You have to get up early, have to control your diet, have to go running in the sand in the beach if you're on the coast, like I grew up, although I was not playing football. You're going to have to do hard things. Going through hard things, we're lazy, we're wimps, and we would prefer not to have to go through hard things as if this life somehow has an option available of not having hard things happen.

It's not only the godly people who have hard things happen. Everything that happened to Job, these things happened to him in a series of a few days it seems, but a very large percentage of humanity goes through most of the worst of those things at some point in life. They lose their children, or at least some of their children, unless their children lose them first.

Everyone's going to die. If I die and my children are still alive, I will have escaped the grief of losing my children, but I will die knowing that they too will die and that if I lived another 50 years, I'd probably have to suffer the loss of them. This is just reality in the world. People die, everyone dies. Our children will die, we're going to die, everyone we love is going to die. People get sick, Job got sick. People lose their estate, people get robbed and that happened to Job.

Job didn't go through any supernaturally unique trials. He went through sort of the basic range of trials that people go through. It's just that they were pounded upon him one upon another in a very short period of time. That made it hard. But the point is that Joseph went through trials, David went through trials, Moses went through trials.

All godly people go through trials. And so I don't really see how that's somehow, I don't know how Job fits. Job fits perfectly into the idea. I guess the problem is that people think for some reason that the Bible teaches that if God is on your side, you're going to have a rosy life. In fact, there's some people teach that if you trust God enough, you'll never get sick and you'll never be poor and that kind of thing.

There's nothing in the Bible that teaches that. The Bible is realistic, but it does say, and what Job shows us is when troubles do come upon us, there's a purpose for one thing. God is testing us and if we pass those tests, he's giving us a chance to glorify him, which is a wonderful privilege. That's the greatest privilege in the world is to glorify God as far as I'm concerned.

And also, God makes it up to you at the end. I mean the truth is what Job shows us is that the devil can't hurt you at all unless God lets him, and God won't let him unless he has a great reason for it. Need to take a break. I hope that's helpful to you. You're listening to the Narrow Path, we have another half hour coming so don't go away.

Our website's thenarrowpath.com. I'll be back in 30 seconds, stay tuned.

Welcome back to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we're live for another half hour taking your calls. I'm looking at a couple of open lines. If you want to call now with your questions about the Bible or the Christian faith or your disagreements with the host you'd like to express, feel free. The number is 844-484-5737. If you missed it, here it comes again: 844-484-5737.

I want to remind you that this Wednesday is the first Wednesday of the month, which means it's the Wednesday that we have our monthly Zoom meeting. It's a Q&A time for me and whoever's on there. Up to 100 people can be on it. If you'd like to join us, it's this Wednesday night at 7:00 PM Pacific Time. The log-on information can be found at our website, thenarrowpath.com, under announcements.

All right, we're going to talk next to Fred from Alameda, California. Hi Fred, welcome.

Fred: Hi, yes. I remember listening to the radio several years back and there was a Billy Graham Crusade and I remember Billy Graham said Jesus will stand at the door and knock but he'll never force that door open, you have to turn the handle. So I would think that's a choice that man has to make. But what I wanted to ask you is I don't understand why Calvinism would say that there's no such thing as good behavior. Because if they believe, if Calvinists believe that God is a God of love and a literal hell and that there's a literal hell, so then what would Calvinists say, well then why should anybody go to hell because that would make God kind of cruel and unfair. What do you think about that?

Steve Gregg: There's a couple of things I'm trying to sort out. You start out by saying why do people say that there's, why do Calvinists say there's no such thing as good behavior? And then you went off into the subject of hell. Are these directly related to each other or are these two separate questions you have?

Fred: No, no, they're related to each other because I'm assuming, and I may be wrong, that Calvinists believe that God's a God of love and that there's a literal hell. So if Calvinists believe that people are going to hell and that God's a God of love, why would God discriminate? I mean that makes God unfair and kind of cruel.

Steve Gregg: Okay, gotcha. Well you're right, that is a peculiarity of Calvinist belief, which I do not hold. But yeah, the Calvinists do not believe that people have genuinely free will to choose to be saved or not. Now some Calvinists say there is no such thing as free will at all. Luther, for example, said that free will was an illusion and it was a nonsense.

Lots of Calvinists have said, "No, God has ordained everything that happens including every sin we commit and every choice we make." So in other words, if God ordained it before we're born, then we're not making those choices in real time in a free way. We're making the choices that were already choreographed for us and written for us in the script and we have no possibility of making any other choices because of the sovereign decrees of God.

Now some Calvinists lighten up a little on that and they'll say, "Well, we can make choices. We can make choices that are consistent with our total depravity, which means we can choose between one sinful thing and another sinful thing." Or we can make choices between a sinful thing and maybe a less sinful thing. Like a non-Christian has the power perhaps to decide that he will remain faithful to his wife as opposed to taking the opportunity to have an affair with his secretary.

I mean not all non-Christians do all the bad things that they could do. I mean some make better choices than others. But this is called generally speaking compatibilism or compatibilistic free will, and they would say that man can make choices even for better or for worse, but they can't make ultimately good choices like to give their life to God completely.

That's simply not something people can do. Now I disagree with them because God requires people to give their lives to him and there are penalties for not doing so. And it'd be a kind of a silly thing, I mean God would be playing games rather than a real God who's really dealing with reality if he was going to punish everyone who didn't receive him, but he ordained that no one could except for a few that he chooses.

And that's of course the picture of Calvinism that God has sovereignly left the majority of humanity in bondage under sin, dead in trespasses and sins, unable to make a choice toward God at all, and yet he has the power to select among them and frankly if he wanted to he could select all of them and just put repentance in them. He can bring them to life and put repentance and faith in them.

That's what Calvinism teaches brings us to salvation is when God makes us alive from being dead to trespass, he makes us alive, he regenerates us and puts faith and repentance in us sovereignly. Okay, well that means and this is very important. They make it very clear that the people that God does that to, that is the people that God puts faith and repentance in and who he makes life, they're not any different morally or otherwise. They're not different from the ones he doesn't do that to.

That means he doesn't do it to some because they're a little bit better than the rest. No, he does it without any regard to whether they're good or bad, soft-hearted, hard-hearted, it doesn't matter. He just does it unilaterally. Now that means, of course, since in Calvinism God has the ability to simply do that, to simply look at a hardened, depraved sinner and just unilaterally bring them to life spiritually and put faith and repent in them so they become a saint.

If God can do that with some people, he could do it with all people. In other words, if he wants to, he could do that to 10% of the population or 30 or 70 or 99 or 100%. That is to say, it's all him. No one else is making any decisions about it, it's strictly his decision according to Calvinism. It's his sovereign choice. And that means that when people do go to hell, God chose for that to be the case, they didn't, because they really had no real choice.

Now a Calvinist would say, "Well they deserve to go to hell because they're sinners and hell is what sinners deserve." Well okay, it's one thing to say they deserve it. It's another thing to say he could have saved them from it. Now you're saying, "Why would they say he's a God of love if he's discriminating between people like this?" That's a very good question. I don't think Calvinists really believe God is a God of love.

I think they believe he's a God of love to the elect. That's actually what Calvin said when he in his commentary on 1 John 4:8 where it says "God is love." In his commentary he said John is saying that love is what we the elect find God to be. That is because we're the elect, he loves us and we find his love saving us because we are the elect.

But to Calvin, the elect were selected from among humanity before the world began. So you're born elect or born non-elect. If you're born elect, you're going to get saved inevitably. But God who could have saved everyone doesn't do that. He didn't choose everybody. Why? It's a mystery. What Calvinists think is that God is glorified in the salvation of the elect.

But he's also glorified in the damnation of the reprobate, which is the term they use for someone who's not elect. Well, I mean no doubt God is glorified in the condemnation of the reprobate. If I, let's just say there's a rabid dog trying to kill me and my family and I run in there and by brute strength and skill I strangle it to death and I don't get it doesn't bite me and I win.

Okay, well I probably get some praise for my heroism. Probably people say, "Man, you're really amazing, you're like Tarzan with this animal, it's a wild animal, and what a heroic, brave thing to do." Yeah, I'd get a lot of glory for that perhaps. But how much more if I had the power to heal that rabid dog and turn it into a faithful puppy, a faithful pet, a useful pet.

What glorifies God more? His salvation of sinners or his condemnation of those that are rabid and incurable. But they're not incurable. That's the thing. Under Calvinism, no one really is incurable. God can do whatever he wants. He could cure them all. And why he did not is inexplicable if God is a God of love. Which is why Calvin himself did indicate God is not love.

Love is only what we find him to be. Love is what we find him to be, we the elect. He loves the elect. You know I was debating a Calvinist teacher and I said, "You know if what you're saying is true, we cannot tell an unbeliever that God loves them because we don't know if they're the elect yet. If they're the elect God loves them and if they're not he doesn't."

And the Calvinist teacher, who is by the way a fairly well-known Calvinist teacher, writes books and things and has broadcasts, he said, "You're right, we can't tell anyone who's not saved that God loves them." So I mean some Calvinists may be mealy-mouthed about this but the strident Calvinist will say, "You're right, God is not love. He shows love to the elect but not to the non-elect."

So I mean that's to my mind that's not really the God that the Bible talks about. So I've got serious problems with that view of things. Thanks for your call. John in Oklahoma, welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

John: Thanks for taking my call, Steve. I've got a couple questions for you. The first one when we're looking at New Testament prophecy, like a gift from the Holy Spirit, what does that prophecy look like nowadays?

Steve Gregg: Well that's a good question. You know when we think of the gift of prophecy and we look at people in the Bible who are called prophets like Agabus, for example, in the New Testament. Or of course in the Old Testament lots of prophets—Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel. Prophets who bear that title actually they give oracles.

They say "Thus says the Lord, this is going to happen," or "Thus says the Lord, this is my word to you." And they speak like in the first person as if God is I mean they're not, but it's almost like they're channeling God's word. I'm not saying they are channeling, but I'm saying that it's kind of like God is just speaking through them in the first person.

That's how prophets speak in the Old Testament and in the New. But there's also the wider broader range of what's called prophecy in which it seems that any inspired speech or any speech that the Holy Spirit is guiding could be regarded as prophecy perhaps. For example on the day of Pentecost, the Spirit was poured out and the people spoke in tongues.

And when the crowd was curious about that, Peter explained it. He said, "This is what Joel talked about in Joel chapter 2 where he said in the last days, says the Lord, I will pour out my spirit on all flesh and they shall prophesy." He said "Your maid servants and your servants will prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions, and my servants will prophesy."

Okay, well Peter said that's what's happening here, but we don't read that people were prophesying in the traditional sense of that word. They were speaking in tongues. And if we wonder what the tongues meant, well the people who understood them said, "These people are speaking about the mighty works of God." Now speaking about the mighty works of God is a little bit different than God speaking an oracle to them.

And yet it was inspired speech and yet it was considered to be kind of what prophecy is too. When the woman at the well was told by Jesus that she should go and get her husband, she said, "I have no husband." And Jesus said and this is in John 4, Jesus said, "You've spoken truly that you have no husband because you've had five husbands and the man you have is not your husband."

She said, "Sir, I see you are a prophet." Now notice she called him a prophet and not wrongly. He was speaking the way she would recognize only a prophet could do. He was giving what we might call if we were charismatic Christians, we might call that a word of knowledge. Sometimes the word of knowledge is a term we use for somebody who gives who has information about another person which is revealed to them and isn't known by natural means.

And that's of course what Jesus was doing. We could say that's a word of knowledge, but she recognized that as prophecy and rightly so because the prophets in the Old Testament sometimes had this word of knowledge—Elisha did toward his servant Gehazi when he knew what Gehazi did that was otherwise unknown and things like that.

So prophets and prophecy could include more than what we think of as standard prophecy. It could be in general that people speaking by the Holy Spirit no matter what they're speaking, even if it's not your traditional oracles, although there are such things in the Bible both Old and New Testament, that any inspired speech might be under the general umbrella of prophecy. Prophecy could just mean inspired speech.

Now here's a thing. Paul made it very clear in 1 Corinthians 12 that not everybody is a prophet. He said at the end of 1 Corinthians 12, "Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers?" And the it's those are rhetorical questions. The answer is no, not all are apostles, not all are prophets, not all are teachers. That's the point he's making. There's different gifts.

So not everyone's a prophet. And yet Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians chapter at the end of chapter 12 and the beginning of chapter 14 that people should desire the best gifts, especially that they should prophesy. Now okay, not everyone's a prophet but apparently everyone should desire to prophesy. That doesn't mean to be a prophet but to speak prophetically at times.

You might not be a prophet in the sense that you hold that office in the church, but God could speak through you in many different ways. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 14, "You may all prophesy that the church may be edified." But he's not necessarily saying that everybody is a prophet. So when we think of a prophet like the biblical prophets, we think of an Isaiah or a Jeremiah or an Agabus in the New Testament. They're prophets.

But prophesying could be a much broader term than just the people who give such oracles. But every Christian now has the spirit of prophecy, the Holy Spirit. Remember when Moses complained to God that his burden of leadership was too great. God said "Get 70 men and bring them to the tabernacle door." God said, "I'll put the spirit on them too." And so God put his spirit on the 70 and they prophesied it says.

But two of the 70 weren't there, they were in the camp where they shouldn't be, they should have been at the tabernacle door. And the spirit came on them and they prophesied and a man came running and told Moses, "Eldad and Medad are in the camp, they're prophesying. They're not where they should be and they're prophesying there." And Joshua said, "Moses, forbid them."

Moses said, "Are you jealous for me? Would to God that all the Lord's people were prophets and that he would put his spirit upon them." Now not many people had the spirit of God on them in the Old Testament, only prophets and a few other people like anointed kings and things. And Moses certainly did and those 70 did.

But Moses said, "I wish God would put his spirit on everybody, on all his people, and they'd all be able to prophesy." And really that wish was not out of sync with God's will because Joel later said, "I will pour out my spirit on all flesh and they will prophesy." And that's what happened at Pentecost. So not every Christian is a prophet, but the spirit of prophecy that allows one to speak with God's inspiration as it were is upon all genuine born-again people.

Remember Jesus told the disciples in Matthew chapter 10, "When they bring you before the Sanhedrin or before councils to judge you, don't premeditate what you're going to say, don't worry about it. Just the spirit of your Father will give you the words in the time that you need them." Now here he's not talking about giving what we would call prophecy, he's talking about giving a defense.

And we find that fulfilled in Stephen's defense in Acts chapter 7. We're told in Acts chapter 6 Stephen was a man filled with Holy Spirit and power and when he spoke he gave a defense which apparently was not premeditated, just off the cuff, just extemporaneous, and you can tell the Holy Spirit was guiding him and it struck the people's hearts and so forth.

So speaking by the spirit doesn't always look like traditional prophecies, oracles. But any situation in which the Holy Spirit aids a Christian or gives them words to speak—could even be in teaching or evangelizing or just counseling somebody—the Holy Spirit can give you the words that they need to hear and that could be maybe a species of prophecy, though that doesn't make you a prophet.

It's just that all Christians are in a sense imbued with the prophetic spirit. That doesn't mean everything we say is prophetic, but it does mean that prophesying may be a much broader thing than we think of if we're thinking only of someone standing up in the church saying, "Thus saith the Lord, I have told you and I will do this and blah, blah, blah." People do that too.

And we think of that as prophecy if you're in charismatic churches. But I'm not really sure that we should restrict it to that kind of thing. Probably not. All right, Allen in Juliet, Georgia, welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Allen: Hey, good afternoon brother. I had a question about Matthew 24. I am right in between, I'm not settled on whether I'm a preterist or a futurist but I'm interested in the best argument you've heard from a futurist perspective dealing with Jesus' word in Matthew 24 and elsewhere in sister passages where he says truly I say to you all these things will come upon this generation before it passes away. So I've asked some friends who are dispensational, premillennial, how do they deal with that and so I was wondering what's the best argument you've heard and then maybe you could respond to it also.

Steve Gregg: All right, I myself believe that the first part of the Olivet Discourse, Matthew 24 verses 1 through 34 are about AD 70. But I believe after that when in verse 35 to the end where Jesus introduces the idea of heaven and earth will pass away but my words will not pass away, then he says but of that day no one knows. I think that's talking about the end times and the second coming of Christ because he predicts things there that have never happened yet and which are associated with the second coming in other parts of the Bible.

But the first 34 verses, he gives them and the signs he mentions—the events, earthquakes, famines, wars, false prophets—those things all happened. Those things all happened in that generation. And at the end of that he says in verse 34, "Assuredly I say to you this generation will by no means pass away until all these things are fulfilled." So I believe that those are the things we know they happened and I think he's referring to the occurrence of the destruction of the temple in AD 70.

And of course that's what he had predicted in verse 2, "Do you see all these things that not one stone of this temple will be left standing, they'll be thrown down." He described the destruction of the temple, he said it's going to happen and they said, "When will this be?" And so he answers them, "It's going to happen in this generation." Now the dispensationalists of course don't generally believe that.

They believe that he's talking all the way through here about the end times and that these prophecies have not been fulfilled. I'm not sure why they would get that idea, maybe they just don't know much about history, usually I think that is the case. But clearly all these things did happen that he said would happen. But they would say, "No he's not talking about his generation."

When he says this generation will not pass, he's not referring to his generation. There's two ways they take it—there's two different alternatives. One is they say he's talking about a future generation, not the one he's living in at that point. They think that he's made some kind of prediction in the verses before this about the restoration of the nation of Israel in the end times.

Now Jesus never mentions the restoration of Israel in the end times, not in this passage or anywhere else. But he does say, "Learn this parable from the fig tree: when its branch has already come tender and puts forth leaves, know that summer is near." Now they're saying that's a very cryptic remark about Israel becoming a nation in the end times. If so, it's very cryptic indeed, there's not one word in it that mentions Israel.

There's not one word in it that would reasonably or logically refer to that. But they read that right into it and then they say when he says "this generation will not pass till all these things are fulfilled," they say he means the generation that will see Israel restored in the end times. And they say, "Well that happened in 1948." So he's talking about the generation that saw that.

Now of course that generation that saw that has passed almost entirely and two or three other generations have come since then. But they say, "Well maybe a generation could be 100 years, who knows. Could be 70 years, could be 100 years." And so they kind of leave it open that he's talking about a final generation, which will be marked by seeing the fig tree budding or as they interpret it, Israel becoming a nation again.

Another way they argue is that the word generation means a race or a family. The Greek word can mean that, it can mean a race or a family. It doesn't necessarily mean that. It usually means what we mean by a generation, but it can speak of a race. And they say this is talking about the Jewish race when he says "this generation," meaning the Jewish race will not pass away until all these things are fulfilled.

Which would be a strange thing to mention because no one had suggested any expectation that they would. In fact there's no mention of the Jewish race at all in this entire sermon, it doesn't mention the Jewish race anywhere. So for him to make that statement would be rather you know kind of just out of left field. But they say he's saying the Jewish race will last until the end of the world.

But the problem here is that Jesus in four or five other places in Matthew uses the expression "this generation." And in their context he's always referring to his own generation—the people living at the same time as him. And there's even another passage, which is in Matthew 16 and verse I think it's verse 28 if I'm not mistaken, where he said, "Some of you standing here will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom."

So the thing he predicted, which he also mentioned in Matthew 24 they'll see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom, that "this generation will not pass" is substituted in Matthew 16:28 with the words "some of you standing here will not taste death before that." So obviously he's talking about his contemporaries when he means "this generation."

And the reference to the Son of Man coming in that particular place obviously refers to something that happened within that generation. And it's a figure of speech, very common one in Jewish prophetic literature to speak of a judgment coming, not the literal second coming of Christ. Now there is a literal second coming of Christ coming, but this apparently is not referring to it because that didn't happen during the lifetime of those people.

It will happen in the future. I'm out of time sorry to say. You're listening to the Narrow Path. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for joining us. Let's talk again tomorrow. My apologies to the rest of you waiting. Call tomorrow please so I can talk to you.