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. You can call in if you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith you want to raise for conversation on the air, or challenges to the Christian faith or to the Bible.

You don't have to be a Christian to call this show. If you're not a Christian and think you have good reasons to not be a Christian, I'd love to hear what they are. Feel free to call. If you are a Christian and you're struggling with something in the Bible, or maybe you're just struggling with something the host has said, feel free to give me a call. We'll be glad to talk to you about it. The number is 844-484-5737.

This Saturday morning is when I have my monthly men's Bible study in the morning. It is the third Saturday of every month and that's in Temecula in Southern California, so I don't have to go very far to that particular one. Very rarely do I get to speak that closely. That's Saturday morning at 8:00. If you're in Southern California and you're a guy, it's a guy Bible study and you can get the specifics of time and place and all that at our website, thenarrowpath.com under announcements and under this Saturday's date.

I'm going to be speaking at the end of this month in a number of venues north of here, north of where I live in Southern California. In Oakhurst, California, Clovis, California, and possibly a few other places are lined up. If you're interested, if you're in that area, maybe you're in the Fresno area or the Yosemite area, those are kind of nearby. I'll be speaking at the end of this month a few times on the weekend, and there is information about those gatherings also at our website, thenarrowpath.com under announcements. We're going to talk first of all to Linda in Tampa Bay, Florida today. Hi, Linda. Welcome.

Guest (Female): Hi, Steve. I have a question from Revelation Chapter 20, verses seven and eight. Who is Gog and Magog?

Steve Gregg: The term Gog and Magog, of course, is taken from Ezekiel 38 and 39, but this is not the same prophecy. The book of Revelation has often been referred to as a rebirth of images. That is to say there's several hundred allusions in the book of Revelation to things in the Old Testament, but these allusions and these images are reborn with new identifications or new meanings.

Not entirely new. I mean, in a sense, there's a connection in principle to the thing in the Old Testament and the thing in Revelation, but it's not usually the same thing. A good example of this is in Revelation 11 where you're reading about the two witnesses and it says, "These are the two olive trees that stand in the presence of the Lord."

Actually, in Zechariah 4, that's where that comes from. Zerubbabel and Joshua the high priest were called the two olive trees that stand in the presence of the Lord. Obviously, nobody believes that the two witnesses in Revelation are those same two men, but it's the same imagery that's being borrowed from an Old Testament passage and reapplied with some difference in meaning in the new.

Similarly, of course, Daniel has his four beasts that come out of the sea and the beast that comes out of the sea in Revelation 13 have the features of all four. You've got the lion, the bear, the leopard, and the beast with ten horns in both places, but the one in Revelation is being applied differently.

So, what you have is a bunch of imagery from the Old Testament. Literally several hundred have been counted up of images from the Old Testament that are found in the new, but they're not used in exactly the same connection. In the Old Testament we have Gog and Magog. Actually, we don't have Gog and Magog. We have Gog, the chief prince of Magog. Gog is the king's name; Magog is the name of a nation and there's other nations mentioned in there too.

Now, the identity of Gog, the prince of chief prince of Magog, I have to say, is open to dispute. There's a number of theological scholars who take it to refer to Russia and they think it's about the last days. Other scholars have thought it may be a reference to Antiochus Epiphanes or even Haman, the Persian who tried to wipe out the Jews. Of course, Ezekiel, like Revelation, uses very fanciful imagery throughout the whole book. It's got more symbolic language probably than any other Old Testament book has, although all the prophets have some and some have a lot.

Revelation is like that too, with a lot of symbolism. But the Gog and Magog in the Old Testament appear to be some national coalition that comes against Israel after they returned from Babylon. You see the chapters just before it, chapters 36 and 37 of Ezekiel, actually talk about how God brings back the Jews from Babylon and they re-established their nation. This happened in 539 BC.

Then we read that Gog, the chief prince of Magog, has ambitions to come against them. Israel at that point is spoken of as a land of un-walled villages. It's hardly likely this is talking about a modern war. There aren't very many villages or cities that have walls around them anymore. We don't need those anymore. Every city that was significant had walls around it in those days because invaders often were deterred by walls.

Today, if we were at war, having walls around your city would do you no good. Missiles, airplanes, big equipment can knock walls down easy. So, that the cities that Gog wants to invade are un-walled suggests that after Israel came back from the Babylonian exile and many of the cities still didn't have their walls rebuilt, although Jerusalem did eventually, we don't know that many of the cities did.

Gog goes in and sees them as vulnerable and seeks to take them. However, in Ezekiel 38 and 39, we find that God is against Gog and intervenes from heaven to destroy Gog and does so. Now again, there are people who think this is a future battle, although in Ezekiel 38 and 39 the battle is described as fought on horseback with bows and arrows and spears and shields and things like that, so it doesn't look very much like it's a modern battle.

There's every reason to suspect it's not since it takes place in the general time period in Ezekiel after the Jews come back from Babylon, which of course was over 500 years before Christ. So there were some invasions or some attempts to eliminate Israel as a nation again, like I said. Haman the Persian tried to do that and then Antiochus Epiphanes also put the nation through a crisis. In both cases, that threat was put down by God's intervention and by God causing the Jews to have a surprising victory over overwhelming odds and enemies that came against them.

Those two victories which happened in what we call the intertestamental period pretty much, at least the latter one did, are now celebrated every year by an annual holiday by the Jews. The defeat of Antiochus Epiphanes is celebrated by Hanukkah by the Jews and the defeat of Haman and the Persians is celebrated at Purim. So those were significant battles that the Jews have commemorated ever since. There's excellent reason to think that one or both of those battles are symbolically described in Ezekiel 38 and 39.

In Revelation 20, we see not Gog, the chief prince of Magog, we see Gog and Magog as the head of a coalition of all the nations from around the world coming with armies like the sand of the seashore. Obviously a figure of speech but a very huge army and they surround the beloved city. Now in Revelation, the beloved city is the church. We see that in the very next chapter. She's dressed like a bride, the city is the bride of Christ, it's the church.

Some people think, well why not Jerusalem? Isn't Jerusalem the beloved city? Well, they were in Old Testament times. In the New Testament, Jerusalem in Revelation, in fact in Revelation 11:8, Jerusalem is spiritually called Sodom and Egypt. So it's not the beloved city anymore. It's the city that abandoned God and crucified the Messiah and resisted the Christian movement.

The beloved city is not Jerusalem in Revelation; it's definitely the church, which is the city of God. Paul referred to it as the heavenly Jerusalem and so forth. There's many references to the church as the city of God. Now, so the church is under attack.

The imagery, which is of course not literal, is that the beloved city is in one place as if it's a walled city, sort of like Jerusalem used to be in the old times. Again, a modern Jerusalem, it would do it no good to be walled anyway because modern warfare isn't fought with weapons that cannot penetrate walls or can't get over them. So it's the language of old warfare.

The idea here seems to be that the church as a whole is attacked by a global coalition of hostile nations under Satan's leadership and they are referred to as Gog and Magog. Now, not because Gog and Magog are a particular actual geographical nation and certainly not because it's the same war spoken of in Ezekiel, but because what happened in Ezekiel was that Jerusalem was essentially defenseless and while it was, a very significant anti-Jewish host came against them.

Well, the church is relatively defenseless when it comes militarily. Of course, there are nations that are strong militarily that have a mind to defend the church, but if those nations were turned, as in Revelation 20, against the church, if Satan has deceived the whole world except the church, then those nations that currently defend Christianity will not be doing so. Christians will be. We're not an armed camp and so we're vulnerable just like Israel was. The invaders are in principle very much like the invaders in Ezekiel 38 and 39 and therefore the name Gog and Magog is applied to them.

However, of course, how does it end? It says fire from heaven comes down and consumes the enemies. Well, that happened in Ezekiel 38 and 39 also. The Gog, the chief prince of Magog in Ezekiel, is destroyed by fire and brimstone from heaven. Not literal, but that's how the prophecy reads.

In the New Testament, I believe because I'm an Amillennialist, that this little season of danger to the church is a short period of time at the end of the present age. I'm not premillennial so that makes my thoughts different on this than many popular teachers would give. And that the church does face an era, a short period, I don't know how short, hopefully very short, at the end of time when the nations of the world under Satan's leadership certainly threaten its existence, but it is rescued by fire from heaven.

Now, is this literal fire from heaven or not? I don't know how literal it is, but I do know that at the second coming of Christ, 2 Thessalonians 1:8 says that Christ will come in flaming fire, taking vengeance on those who don't know God and don't obey the gospel. As an Amillennialist, I see that fire from heaven in Revelation as the second coming of Christ in the terms that Paul described it in 2 Thessalonians 1:8. So I think Gog and Magog in Revelation simply are representative of the hostile nations like Gog and Magog in Ezekiel who tried to wipe out God's city. In Ezekiel, God's city was Jerusalem. In the New Testament, God's city is the heavenly Jerusalem and we see that through multiple Scriptures. So that's what I think it is.

Guest (Female): Well, thank you for that explanation.

Steve Gregg: All right, Linda. Hey, good talking to you. Thanks for your call. Michael in Inglewood, California. Welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Guest (Male): Hi, Steve. I'm calling because me and my son—well, my son watches this cartoon called *Steven Universe* and it had to do with different species kind of mating and how it doesn't make sense, except that like a lion and tiger can make a liger. And then somehow it got off into Nephilim, you know, Genesis 6:4. The movie did? Oh, this was like an explanation on YouTube of the movie. Yes, it did. And so Nephilim were in the earth in those days, but not necessarily as most people believe, sons of angels and women. But so then we got off into: can angels possess a man and then sleep with the woman and have a Nephilim? Or there is also one case in the Bible where one spirit did actually impregnate one lady, of course Mary. What do you think about that?

Steve Gregg: Well, I would not make comparisons between the Holy Spirit and fallen angels. First of all, the Holy Spirit is not merely a spirit; He's God. The parallel to fallen angels would be un-fallen angels. Now, God can do whatever He wants to. God is sovereign and omnipotent. So if He wants to supernaturally add the genetic information to a woman's egg that would normally be provided by a man's sperm but without that agency, if He simply wanted to create a zygote by adding the missing information to the egg cell, God can do that. I mean, He made a whole human out of dirt in Genesis. There's nothing He can't do.

On the other hand, angels in the Bible, they sometimes do appear in human form. Usually as God's messengers and God's agents. In fact, the word angel in the Hebrew means messenger. So a messenger from God, sometimes even if it's a superhuman spirit, can appear as a human form.

Now, I say as a human form cautiously because I believe that when an angel appears as a human, it takes on the gross morphology and anatomy of a human temporarily. I don't believe it actually becomes a human and as such, I don't think it has DNA. DNA is a distinctly human thing in the human race. Of course animals have it too and plants, but the point is that humans can reproduce with other humans because they have matching DNA.

And for no other reason. You take a species that doesn't have human DNA and it doesn't matter how close it is to human, it's not close enough if it's not perfectly human DNA. The species cannot mate and produce viable offspring and fertile offspring with humans at all. Just like you mention lions and tigers mating and coming up with an offspring called a liger, they do have those, but as I understand it, the liger is not fertile. Like most hybrids, it doesn't reproduce beyond that.

Now, if an angel can take on a human form in the Bible and they do sometimes, couldn't a fallen angel do that? And as a human form, could it reproduce? Well, couple things that I'm just not sure about and the Bible doesn't answer them for us, but I mean in the absence of any information, common sense would make me doubtful about these things.

One is: can angels who are not on God's mission take on human form? I mean, the only ones that we know of that are said to take on human form are the ones that God sends to communicate with humans and even to physically interact with humans like to wrestle or to fight or to defend humans physically. But these angels don't actually become humans. They're still angels. They're still not of our species. And if they're not of our species, it hardly seems likely that they are human all the way down to the genetic and cellular level. They may take on a physical appearance that can be described as human form, but to suggest that they're human all the way down to the germ cells or the stem cells or whatever, I don't think that's asking a lot since they don't have the purpose of reproduction. There doesn't seem to be any reason why God would give them the apparatus for reproduction for human.

So in other words, if fallen angels are not on God's mission, I don't even know if they can take on human form. Like you said, they could possess humans, I would think. I mean, spirits can possess humans. But that's not the same thing as them themselves becoming human.

Now, the other question is even if they could take on the human form like angels sometimes have by God's—maybe if God didn't make it happen but they just had that power in them, it still would be questionable whether they would be human to the bone, human all the way through. Again, the angels that appeared to Abraham, I don't think they were human all the way through. I think they came in the forms of men and but I don't think that they had the genetic code of men.

And by the way, when we talk about genetic code, we're talk about information inherited from ancestors. That's why you can go to 23andMe and find out who your ancestors were because the DNA in every cell of your body has the marks of previous ancestors—your mom and your dad, your grandparents. So in other words, if a non-human, an angel, good or bad, could take on a human form, would it have in every cell—would it really be made of cells at all? And if it was, would it have DNA which bespeaks human genetics going back to ancestors?

I don't see how it would. So I just don't see how that would be necessarily possible. Now if the Bible said it was possible, I'd, of course, I don't have to understand how it could be possible. God could make it so or He could have made a world in which such things are possible. I just don't see a world in which those things appear to be possible or read of one in the Bible. So I'm just not—you know, I can't be dogmatic but I can say my own common sense makes me doubtful of whether that's possible.

And I would, if an angel could take on a human body and mate with women, that would not be at all analogous to the Holy Spirit providing the genetic information necessary for Mary to become pregnant. So I'm just not buying that. I mean, some people do and they're welcome to do so. I mean, lots of Christians believe that angels, fallen angels mated with women and produced Nephilim.

The Bible doesn't say that those marriages produced the Nephilim. If you read the carefully in Genesis 6, it simply says there were Nephilim in the earth in those days. What days? The same days that the sons of God married the daughters of men. There were Nephilim in the world in those days and it says and there were Nephilim thereafter also when these marriages took place. That is to say, the marriages took place within the range of time that Nephilim were on the earth. Apparently Nephilim were there before and after, which doesn't give us any information that would incline us to believe that the Nephilim were the offspring of these marriages. Many people read that into it, but the Bible doesn't actually say that. Okay, Randall in Tacoma, Washington. Welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Guest (Male): Thanks for taking the call, Steve. In Revelation 11:3, do we know who the two witnesses are?

Steve Gregg: Well, some people think they do. In fact, I've met them. At least I've met people who think they are the two witnesses. When I was a younger person hitchhiking, a couple of hippies in a VW bus picked me up and they told me in no uncertain terms that they were the two witnesses. So of course I didn't believe them because I'm not insane, but they were taking it very seriously.

Since then in modern times, even as an old man, I've gotten emails from—like Enoch wrote to me once and said that Elijah was going to be joining him soon and they're going to be the two witnesses. So yeah, there's lots of people who think they know who the two witnesses are. Most modern dispensationalists think that one of them is Elijah and the other is either Moses or Enoch and those are common theories among futurists.

Those who are not futurists, some of them are preterists. Preterists sometimes think that they represent maybe the law and the prophets or maybe the religious and the civil authority of Jerusalem that they're humanized or anthropomorphized representations of these concepts.

I'll tell you my thought, though I'm not going to try to prove it to you because I don't really care. But I believe they represent the church. I believe that the two witnesses represent the church during the entire age, from at least from the fall of Jerusalem until Jesus comes back. And that I do because of the length of time they minister and other features of them.

The length of time they minister is said to be 42 months, but that period is used symbolically apparently in the same chapter actually in verse one or two of Revelation 11. It says that Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot for that period of time also. The same period of time the two witnesses are prophesying.

Well, why would that tell me what I'm thinking? Well, because Jesus said Jerusalem would be trampled down by the Gentiles from the time that Jerusalem is destroyed until the times of the Gentiles are over. And I personally don't think the times of the Gentiles are over. Some people could argue that they are, but in my reading would suggest that the period of time from the fall of Jerusalem until the end of the times of the Gentiles is the period that Revelation symbolically describes as 42 months or 1260 days.

So I believe the two witnesses' ministry lasts the whole period, couple millennia at least. And then at the end of it, they are overcome by the beast, but then they rise again, which I think is very similar as an Amillennialist to what Revelation 20 talks about. The church is successful and invulnerable to its enemies for 1000 years symbolically, but is then seemingly stopped or defeated or rendered ineffective for a little season when the beloved city is surrounded. But it's vindicated.

So I think the two witnesses' career parallels in principle the so-called millennium chapter in Revelation 20. Now, I don't expect anyone unfamiliar with my views to hear that and say, "Oh, that makes totally good sense." And the reason is most people don't make the presuppositions I make about the whole nature of the book of Revelation and what it's mostly about.

But for those who are curious about that and wonder whether there's a very good scriptural case to make for what I'm saying, there's a cost-free method of finding that out. And that's go to our website, thenarrowpath.com, and go to the tab that says Verse-by-Verse Lectures and find the book of Revelation because I have verse-by-verse teachings through the whole Bible and you can listen to them for free. And as you listen to my verse-by-verse through Revelation, you'll understand the reasons behind my suggestions. It doesn't mean you'll agree and you don't have to. Why should anyone have to agree with me or with anyone else for that matter? I'm going to take a break here and we're going to come back. We have another half hour coming. You're listening to the Narrow Path. We are listener-supported. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. I'll be back in 30 seconds and then like I said, we have another half hour. Stay tuned.

Welcome back to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we're live for another half hour. We have some lines open. If you're interested to call in, we take the whole hour and we're now in the second half of the show to just take phone calls from people who have questions or maybe challenges to the host. We welcome those. There's two or three lines available right now, very opportune time for someone to call if they hope to get on the program before we run out of time today.

The number is 844-484-5737. One more time it's 844-484-5737. And I mentioned I'm going to be up in the Fresno, Clovis, Oakhurst area speaking at the end of this month. A couple weeks after that, I'm also speaking in the Sacramento area. So if you're in the Sacramento area, you can check our website and see where I'm going to be. In fact, if you want to set up a meeting in that area adjacent to the meetings we have going, feel free to contact us about it. We'll see if we can do that. That's so in about two weeks from right now I'm going to be up in the Fresno, Clovis, Oakhurst area and then about two weeks after that, I'll be in the Sacramento area. So there's two different trips and you can look those up at thenarrowpath.com under the tab that says Announcements. Our next caller is Brad from Vancouver, British Columbia. Hi, Brad. Welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Brad, are you there? I've got to hear you or I'm going to have to go. Maybe have your phone muted? Sometimes when you're holding the phone next to your face it hits the mute button. Going once, going twice. All right, Brad. If you can call back, feel free to do so. Make sure your phone's not muted if you do. Roderick in Everett, Washington. Welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Guest (Male): Hi, Steve. Thank you for getting my call. You dropped me yesterday. Anyway, yeah, I just want to thank you. I don't really have a question. Just one question is the whistling sound, can we download that? Because it's so soothing. I can make it as my alarm every morning.

Steve Gregg: Well, you can download any of the radio shows you want to and you can clip off the music at the beginning, or better yet, the whole song with the words and everything can be found—if you go to our website, thenarrowpath.com, you're going to see at the top of the page, there's these different things. You click on one says Resources/Links. So there's some buttons at the top of our page. Resources/Links is one of them.

You go there and if you scroll down and see all the things that are listed, there's one thing that says "Like the Arrows Do" MP3 and MP4. And what that does is it takes you to a YouTube video. And by the way, you can just go to YouTube and do this too and find it there, but the song is called "Like the Arrows Do." I did not write it or perform it. My friend John Marr did. He was one of my students at the time and it's a really nice song and he sings it, but it does have a long intro which is why I was able to use that for our theme music. And I've done so for 29 years since we've been on the air. I've never changed it because I like it.

But if you want to know what the song's about, the song is about raising children and it's based on Psalm 127, verses four and five, about how children are like arrows in the hands of a mighty man and blessed is the man who has his quiver full. So it's a pretty cool song. If you go to again, you could just go to YouTube and look up "Like the Arrows Do," like arrows from a bow and arrow. Like the arrows do. And you'll see a video there. You'll have the whole song there then and actually a friend of ours has put a slideshow with it so it's got some visuals with it. Anyway, that's that. And is that all you wanted to know?

Guest (Male): Yeah. I remember something regarding the first person who talked about the liger. I think it's the same thing as the donkey, you know, or the mule. The mule. Yeah, the same thing as the mule. That's right. And then another one, there was a lady yesterday who called up regarding the United States not on the Bible. Yeah. I just want to share if you may, there's a pastor in Anaheim, Florida and he has a great analogy of the teaching regarding United States somehow but not really mentioned with you know with the harlot and the dragon and the seven-headed dragon. He's got a good description. If you may, the pastor is Bruce Mejia of the First Works Baptist Church. He has a good teachings too. Thank you so much brothers. Appreciate your time and I hope you still have a more years to do your teachings. Thank you so much.

Steve Gregg: All right, brother. Well, we'll see, won't we? Thank you. Let's talk next to Joel in South Carolina. Hi, Joel.

Guest (Male): Yeah, hello. Thank you for taking my call. Yes, sir. I have in the military in the '80s and '90s, I was honored or blessed to go travel Israel a lot and got into kind of biblical archaeology obsession to say the least. And I was questioning or had some questions about the lineage of Judah and how we see throughout the Bible, Abraham always rescuing his nephew Lot and you know from the first one of Sodom kings took him and Melchizedek and then anyways the whole back down to Sodom Gomorrah before its destruction they saved I guess the town of Zoar.

And make a long story short, the Moabites and the daughters of Lot, they somehow intertwined. There you had a Semitic and then we know through Naomi and Ruth that that became Boaz and Boaz through that lineage Jesus came from the tribe of Judah. But the question is do we have any other than you know Byzantine and digging up, is there anything that would say that they can prove that the seed of Abraham through Lot and through the two daughters that Ruth, how much Judah or Semitic did she have in her when she married Boaz already? That was my question. It's kind of complicated but...

Steve Gregg: Okay. Well, first of all, Lot was not descendant from Abraham. So Moab and Ammon, who were the two sons of Lot, they were not descendant from Abraham. Lot was Abraham's nephew and therefore he and Abraham had a some connected ancestry back a couple generations back. But Lot and Abraham were separate branches of the family. So there's no Abrahamic blood that was ever in the Moabites or the Ammonites until of course Ruth who was a Moabite, a long time later like 1000 years after Abraham, she married a man of Judah. And of course she and that man, Boaz, became ancestors of Jesus or David and then Jesus.

So Moabites could marry into the Jewish lines, although initially in the after the exodus there was a forbidding of it or not a forbidding of it but a person of Moabite background could not enter the house of the Lord for ten generations. So there was a penalty there but that didn't mean that after ten generations that they didn't sometimes do so. So yeah, we're not talking about anyone related to Abraham when we talk about the Moabites or the Ammonites. Both of those came from Lot and his two daughters and that being so, they're they're not very closely related to Abraham certainly not descended from him.

Now, the Ishmaelites would be descendant from Abraham and I don't know if you're looking for modern peoples that would have any connection with Abraham but aren't Jewish. Well, Ishmaelites would be that people but and many people believe that the Arabs, in fact most Arabs themselves believe that they are the descendants of Ishmael. So there are Arabs who have Abraham in their lineage but they're they are not the Moabites or the Ammonites.

Guest (Male): So when Abraham had the five sons under Keturah, the Midianites, there's a Abrahamic but back to the daughters of Lot so you're saying there's no they were not part of Shem at all or Abrahamic genes.

Steve Gregg: No, no, no, I didn't say they're not part of Shem. Lots and lots of nations were part of Shem. I mean, Abraham came from Terah and Terah was descendant from Shem, but then Terah had other sons besides Abraham. And so Lot was the son of one of Abraham's brothers and because his father died, he was taken under the wing of Abraham and kind of treated like an adopted son, but not descended from Abraham.

Guest (Male): I see. That makes sense. I had thought that when the two daughters slept with Lot in the caves of Zoar, that somehow maybe that's the seed of Ruth and I was just thinking there is no connection into Judah, I mean excuse me to Abraham directly to Ruth and we have no proof of that. She was a straight out Moabite.

Steve Gregg: She was a straight out Gentile. Naomi brought her into the seed fields of Boaz and that's where the bridge came and I see where the Moabites the talking donkey story. Yeah, it's not unusual in the Bible for Jewish people to marry people of other races. And so Boaz marrying a Moabite, the only issue with that was that she had to be converted. Any Gentile could become part of Israel if they converted to the religion of Israel. Now the Moabites generally were worshippers of a demon god named Chemosh but Ruth expressed her concern to be part of Naomi's religion and family. She said, "Your God will be my God, your kin will be my kin." So Ruth was a convert from a Gentile nation to Judaism and therefore she was part of Israel because it was always possible for non-ethnic Jews to become Jews in that sense as it still is.

Okay, we'll talk to Roger in Surrey, British Columbia next. Hi, Roger. Welcome.

Guest (Male): Hello, fantastic. I've got everything all organized here. I'll be as quick as I can before I go off the air. Okay? In 2 Samuel 1 starting at verse 10, the Amalekite, Saul said to the Amalekite "Kill me," and so the guy killed Saul like he asked him to. Why did David have one of his younger soldiers kill the other one and and the man who did what David told him to do was cursed. Who was David talking to? The dead guy or the young man who did what David ordered him to do?

Steve Gregg: What did David order him to do? I didn't hear of any orders from David here.

Guest (Male): David ordered the the Amalekite to be killed because he killed Saul.

Steve Gregg: Okay, and and so that's true, that's true. So what are we wondering here about that?

Guest (Male): I was just wondering who was David talking to? The dead guy or the young man who did what David ordered him to do?

Steve Gregg: Right. Well, King Saul talked to a dead guy once. He went to a witch to do that, but David never talked to dead people that we know of. So what we have is in the last chapter of 1 Samuel, we have a record of how Saul died. He was injured in battle on Mount Gilboa, I believe it was, one of the mountains there and—yeah, it was Mount Gilboa. And he was injured frankly fatally injured, but he was not yet dead. He was bleeding out and he told his armor-bearer to kill him. And the reason was because as King of Israel, the Philistines would make an example of him, torture him, possibly dissect him alive and things like that.

And Saul just didn't look forward to that happening to him and he was going to die anyway, so he just asked his armor-bearer to put me out of my misery, you know, save me from being abused by these Philistines. Well, the armor-bearer didn't want to do it. It says he was afraid to kill the king. And so Saul fell on his own sword and he died that way. We're told that very specifically in the narration in chapter 31 of 1 Samuel. It says that Saul fell on his sword and died that way.

Now, the next chapter, which is 2 Samuel chapter 1, we find David is waiting for news at Ziklag, waiting for news of the battle and an Amalekite comes running to him carrying Saul's crown and bracelet. Now, this man had apparently come upon Saul's body after he had died in the midst of the war and grabbed the bracelet and the crown of Saul and decided that he'd go and tell David that he had killed Saul so that David might exalt him to power. Because Saul, as you know, had been trying to kill David. He was a mortal enemy of David.

And so this Amalekite assumed that if he took credit for killing Saul, this would get him some reward from David who would now no doubt be the next king. But he miscalculated David's mind about this. David had had occasion to kill Saul in a couple of times and felt it would be impious to kill the man that God had anointed. Even though the man that God had anointed was trying to kill David, David wanted to honor God and not kill the man that God had chosen.

But this Amalekite had no concern about that and he claimed to have killed Saul. Now, the man didn't kill Saul. We know he didn't because we read in the previous chapter, Saul killed himself. But this guy thought, well, I can take credit for this. So he told David, "I found Saul wounded, he was almost dead, he said 'kill me,' so I killed him and and I brought you his crown and bracelets to prove that I was there."

And David had the messenger killed. Now, first of all, he said, "How dare you kill the Lord's anointed?" I mean, this is something that David, whose life was directly threatened by Saul, would not do. And here this Amalekite, not even a Jewish man, you know, he's trying to take credit for killing the Jewish king that God had anointed. So David was furious about that.

We know also that at a later time in David's life, his own son Absalom tried to kill him also as Saul had tried to do, and when Absalom was killed in battle, David wept over him. David didn't really like seeing these persons killed, his son and the previous king, even though they had sought out to kill David himself. He just wasn't vindictive in that way. And he punished in both cases the person who killed Saul and the person who claimed to have.

Now, I don't know if David really thought this man had killed Saul or recognized that the man was just kind of trying to get some kind of credit and such. But we do read later on in chapter 2 of 2 Samuel that David mentioned that he killed the—he's talking to somebody else, the people who killed Ishbosheth, and he mentions that—oh here, it's in chapter 4. That's where it is.

A couple of guys killed Ishbosheth, Saul's son, thinking that that would please David too and they came to David and said they had done it. And he said in verse 10, David said in 2 Samuel 4:10, "When someone told me saying 'look Saul is dead,' thinking to have brought good news, I arrested him and had him executed at Ziklag, the one who thought I would give him a reward for his news."

So in other words, when David killed this Amalekite, he discerned that the man hoped he'd get a reward for the news. Now, whether he knew the man was lying or thought the man was bringing a true report and expect the reward, I don't know. But the Amalekite shouldn't have been alive in the first place because Saul had been told back in 1 Samuel to kill all the Amalekites. And this man who brought news of having killed Saul, though he was lying, was one of those men that was supposed to have been killed.

So, you know, how David was thinking about this is hard to say. He may have known the guy was lying. He may have thought, "Well, here's an Amalekite that Saul was supposed to kill and didn't. I'll kill him." Or he may have known it may have just been whether the man was telling the truth or not, David did not think it was okay for someone to kill the defenseless King of Israel even if he was dying. So I mean, I'm not sure what David was thinking at that point. There's a number of ways he could have in his own mind justified his actions. But the person he had killed was not the one who had actually killed Saul because Saul killed himself. But it was a guy who inaccurately or lying to David said that he had killed Saul. And so David had him killed on the basis of his own confession, whether it was a true confession or not, the man had claimed to do something which David felt should not be tolerated and was a capital sentence. So that's how all that happened. All right.

Guest (Male): Do you think Saul is still anointed even though God sent an evil spirit to Saul?

Steve Gregg: No, he's not. But he had been. At one time, God selected Saul and anointed him with the Holy Spirit. Yes, Saul had fallen away, the Spirit had actually left Saul and had come upon David at the time that David was anointed in Bethlehem. And then a evil spirit replaced the Holy Spirit in Saul. So he was no longer operating in God's anointing, but he had been anointed.

David feared God and feared God's decisions. He felt like whatever may be the case of Saul now, he is the man that God chose to be King of Israel at one time. Now David at this time knew that God had now chosen him to be the king of Israel, but he still wanted to say, "I'm not going to show disrespect to the choice that God made of this man."

In fact, when David, when Saul was in perfectly good health and pursuing David to kill him, David had a chance more than twice to kill Saul and his soldiers said, "Why don't you kill him?" And David said, "God forbid that I'd touch God's anointed." And he said, "If God wants to kill him, He can kill him in battle or some other way, but I'm not going to do it." And lo and behold David was right. God did have him killed in battle, but of course he literally died at his own hand not by the hand of this Amalekite.

Okay, Kay in Scottsdale, Arizona. Welcome.

Guest (Female): Hello, Steve. wishing you well and thank you for all the spiritual food. I was calling in reference to someone called Apostle John Eckhardt from Crusader Ministries in Chicago, Illinois. He's got a book out called *Prayers That Rout Demons* and this book I had for two years and it just looked for it, couldn't find it, it disappeared and it showed up again and something spilled on it and I just have such a conflict about reading this. It was given to me by a young Native American gal and I just wondered if you knew anything about this particular individual and if his writings or ministry—it sings thing like prayers against spirits of the valley, against spirits of birds and lions and serpents and all kinds of deliverance and releases. So I just didn't feel terribly comfortable about it and I just thought I might share that with you in case you had some thought on it.

Steve Gregg: Well, I've never heard of Apostle John Eckhardt and if I did meet him, I would not regard that I was meeting an apostle just because he said so. In fact, his saying so makes me all the more suspicious about it. I mean, it's true that Peter and Paul and others said they were apostles but we know they were and they said it only so they could identify themselves as people that Jesus had undoubtedly sent to represent Him.

But I don't know of anyone alive today that Jesus has undoubtedly sent to represent Him and that, if Paul wrote to a church, it's as good as if Jesus did. Jesus said, "He that receives him that I send receives me." Apostle means "one who is sent." So the early apostles were men whose authority was second to none. That as if they spoke, they spoke with the authority of Christ to the church and to reject them was to reject Christ. I don't think any man alive has that authority today.

Now, if he just means "I'm a missionary," because the word apostle comes from the Greek word or the Latin equivalent of that Greek word is missionary. In English we'd say "sent."

Guest (Female): He uses the word overseers of the Crusader ministries.

Steve Gregg: Yeah, well overseer is like the word *episkope* in the Greek which is like a bishop. But bishops are not generally apostles, at least not biblically so. When people call themselves apostle, I'm thinking, how about instead of telling me you're an apostle, how about let me be exposed to what you say and do and I'll decide if you're an apostle or not.

Because it says in Revelation chapter 2 that the church of Ephesus was to be commended because they tested those who said they were apostles and were not and rejected them. So it was a good thing for the church of Ephesus in Revelation 2 when they heard someone claiming to be apostles, if it was questionable, they tested them and found that at least in some cases, maybe all the cases, they weren't apostles.

So it's a good thing to test a claim like that because if a person claims to be apostle, he's usually making a claim of some special authority just like if I claimed to be a congressman or the president, I'm claiming to have some kind of expect some deference to my authority.

Guest (Female): His claim is perfecting the saints.

Steve Gregg: Well, that's what the Bible says in Ephesians 4:11-13 that God did give apostles and prophets and evangelists and pastors and teachers to perfect the saints. But in the same epistle, in chapter 2, Ephesians 2, Paul said that the church is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets. Now the church is a building, the temple of the Holy Spirit, which began to be built in the first century with Jesus as the cornerstone, the apostles are the foundation stones in the city of the New Jerusalem and the church has been built on those people for the past 2000 years.

And I believe that. I don't believe the church is built on any living man. That doesn't mean that a living man can't call himself an apostle or be called an apostle if by that he means nothing more than just a missionary. But if he's claiming to be an apostle like Paul or the twelve or someone like that, then I don't believe him. But if God does have an apostle like that somewhere, I'd like to test them and see.

Where are, for example, the signs of an apostle that Paul spoke about? In 2 Corinthians 12:12, he's defending his apostleship against false teachers who say he's not one. And he says, "Surely the signs of an apostle were wrought among you with all signs and wonders and mighty deeds." That is, when Paul was with them, he demonstrated he was an apostle by the signs of an apostle, the miracles and so forth.

Now, this guy might claim some miracles, but I haven't seen them. I've heard a lot of people on TV and the internet who claim they do miracles, but I haven't actually been there to see those miracles. I just think the guy's talk about spirits of birds and spirits of valleys. The Bible doesn't really talk about those. It doesn't mean that there aren't demons like that, I don't know if there are or not, but I wouldn't trust him for it. So I wouldn't put special authority on him just because he calls himself apostle somebody.

Hey, I'm out of time. I wish I wasn't. You've been listening to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for joining us. Let's talk again tomorrow. Same time.