The Narrow Path

Steve Gregg: Good afternoon and welcome to the Narrow Path Radio Broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and I'm the host Monday through Friday for an hour of this program live so that we can interact in real time with our audience. You can call in, you can ask questions about the Bible or the Christian faith, you can express a difference of opinion from the host, and we'll talk about that on the air. I'd be glad to hear from you. The number to call is 844-484-5737. That number again: 844-484-5737.

And there's one announcement I want to make, and that is that this Saturday, day after tomorrow, in the morning in Southern California, we have our monthly men's Bible study in Temecula. That's at 8:00 this Saturday morning. If you want to join us for that, look at our website, thenarrowpath.com. There's a tab that says Announcements. It has all the places that I will be speaking not only this Saturday but on into the future, so you can check that out and feel free to join us Saturday morning. Our lines are full at the moment. We'll start talking to our callers at this point. Linda from Fresno, California is first. Hi, Linda. Welcome to the Narrow Path.

Linda: Good afternoon. I have a question about Mary K. Baxter. Have you heard of her?

Steve Gregg: I'm not sure that I have. Who is she?

Linda: Well, she wrote a book and it's called *Spiritual Warfare*. I guess she's a preacher or something. I'm trying to find out about her because the spiritual warfare book that she has, it has the answers from the chapter and verse, but the answer is her opinion. I don't know if it's a right opinion or just an opinion, but online it says that she goes with her own opinions.

Steve Gregg: Well, on my shelf, I have probably about a dozen books on spiritual warfare. Several of them are called *Spiritual Warfare*. I don't have her book, so I don't know her opinions. But whenever people write whole book-length treatments of spiritual warfare, it's necessary for them to express opinions about some things. I'm not sure that's a good thing; it's just hard to avoid because there's not very much information.

For example, about demon possession in the Bible, there are stories of people who were demon-possessed and who got delivered. You can kind of cull from those stories principles and maybe in some cases some methods by which demons were cast out. But, for example, you don't have anything that tells you outright where the demons came from, how somebody gets demon-possessed, that kind of thing, or what happens to the demons after they go out.

We don't really have any teaching like that in the Bible, but there are a lot of questions people have and a lot of people willing to answer those questions in their own books and in their seminars. Now, I want to say this: much of what comes up in these books and seminars of necessity is speculation since we don't really have much Bible on it. And you say she gives chapter and verse.

Yeah, I was just looking at a page of notes I took from somebody on another subject, a podcast where a guy was going through almost 40 points of what he says is going to happen in the tribulation time, a different subject. And he had chapter and verse for all of them, but I know all those verses and they don't say what he's saying. So obviously, it's possible for somebody to give a verse and then read their thoughts into that verse and give that as a proof of their position.

Now, I'm not going to say anything against this woman because I don't know her. I'm not familiar with her. Her book might be very valuable and very good. But I will say that when people write book-length treatments of spiritual warfare, it's hard for them to avoid anecdotal stories. Now, I'm not against anecdotal stories. My former pastor years ago said that we don't want to hear the stories about how people conducted spiritual warfare. We just want to see what the Bible says about it. Like, he didn't want to know much about demons that could be learned from people who were in deliverance ministries, for example.

His experiences didn't concern him. And so, you know, their experiences didn't concern him. Now, I think that sometimes people have legitimate experiences and can learn something from them even if the Bible doesn't describe those experiences or analyze them. So I don't throw out all experience, but some people claim to have very wild experiences. I've just been handed a note by my wife here that says that particular author says she went to hell with Jesus.

Now, that's one of those kinds of experiences that some people say they have which you cannot confirm. It's not clear why Jesus would take a Christian to hell. If someone says, "Well, he might do that because then she could come back and warn people of what hell is like," yeah, but there's actually a story in the Bible about somebody who went to hell and wanted to go warn people of what it was like. And he was told, "No, they don't need to be warned. They've got the scriptures. If they don't follow the scriptures, they can find out for themselves what happens to them." And if they have the scriptures, they can certainly avoid going there.

So actually, the attitude of God or Jesus about this very question—let's have someone go to hell, come back and tell people about it and warn them—well, that very scenario is introduced in Luke 16, verse 19 through the end of that chapter, and it sounds like God's not interested in doing that kind of thing. So I haven't heard of her, but I have heard other people claim they went to hell and some say they went to heaven, and then they write a book and teach on Sunday nights at churches and seminars and stuff.

And I'm just not really interested in somebody giving me a litany of their alleged experiences. For one thing, if they're giving a whole lot of their own experiences, it seems like maybe their ministry is more about themselves than about Christ. I'm not saying Christ doesn't come into the picture, but yeah, I can't recommend a person's book even if it's on a different subject if she herself claims she went to hell with Jesus and came back. I don't believe that, and therefore I have to believe she's prone to tell some stories that maybe I would just have to say are not credible to me.

Linda: To sell the book.

Steve Gregg: To sell the book, exactly. Yeah, I had seen that too. Okay, thank you very much and I appreciate you so much.

Linda: Okay, thank you, you too. Bye.

Steve Gregg: All right, I appreciate my wife for handing me that information. She looked it up while I was talking to you. God bless you, Linda. Okay, Fletcher in Arkansas. Welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Fletcher: Yes, sir. I have a question about the preterist position. It's my understanding that the preterist view, everything has to have been fulfilled before 70 AD, not the second coming, but the New Testament was written for that generation, for the first-century generation. So if that is the case, what part of the New Testament can I read that applies to my generation? If all of the writings in the New Testament, all of the epistles and all of that was written before 70 AD, what part can I read legitimately to say, "Well, that is talking to me, not to that generation," so I can apply that to my life? But if all of that is applied to that generation that Paul and Jesus were talking to, how can it benefit me now in the 21st-century generation?

Steve Gregg: I hear you. Well, the whole question of preterism, for people who don't know what preterism is, it's the view that a great number of biblical prophecies were fulfilled when Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 AD and that some of the prophecies that were fulfilled in that event are prophecies that perhaps today more people are looking for them to be fulfilled in the end times, so that they're kind of misplacing the time of fulfillment. Now, you're saying, "Well, that would mean that those prophecies were relevant to the people living at that time."

Well, that is true. I mean, however, we have prophecies in the Old Testament that predicted the fall of Babylon and Tyre and Assyria and things like that, but we still benefit from reading the Word of God. What, you know, it certainly tells us what his attitude is toward such nations. It shows us that he can predict something and it comes true. That's quite faith-building. But really relatively little of the New Testament even contains prophecy. Jesus didn't spend his time giving a lot of prophesying a lot of future things. Neither did Paul. I mean, they it comes up. There's a few books of Paul that talk about those things.

But preterism wouldn't change anything about the applicability of the New Testament to us except the question of when a particular prophecy might have been fulfilled. Now, in my opinion, I'm not a full preterist. Full preterists believe all prophecy has been fulfilled and there isn't even going to be another event like the second coming of Christ. They think that's all been fulfilled in 70 AD. Now, for those who don't know that view, I don't have time to go into it now, but I did write a 300-page critique of it and debunking it, which you can find at our website. Even the audiobook is there; you can listen to it for free at our website.

But there is something else that's not full preterism, and that's simply partial preterism. And partial preterism is like any other Christian outlook of the Bible except that we believe that part of the prophecies in the Bible have been fulfilled in the past, not all of them. And I think, for example, when Jesus, you know, I think everybody believes some prophecies have been fulfilled. Jesus told the two disciples, "You go into Jerusalem, you'll find a donkey there. Let it loose, and if they say, 'Hey, what are you doing?' tell them the master has need of it and they'll let you go." And so they did and it happened just like he said.

Well, we see that as a fulfilled prediction. Okay, then some of the predictions Jesus gave were fulfilled later on when he said in Luke chapter 19 that he wept over Jerusalem and said the armies are going to come against it and they'll lay it to the ground and it will be destroyed. Well, we know that happened in 70 AD. And then there's other things Jesus predicted which some people feel were fulfilled in 70 AD and some think they haven't been and they expect them to be fulfilled in the end of the world. But those prophecies are very few in number.

We're looking at probably the Olivet Discourse primarily and a few other verses here and there in the teaching of Jesus; they make up a very small portion of what Jesus said, and even a smaller portion of what the other writers, what the epistles say in the New Testament. So to say, "Well, if that's true, how in the world can I apply the New Testament to myself?" well, how about apply the parts that aren't prophecies? How about the instructions? How about the commands of Christ? How about the instructions to the churches that Paul gave? I mean, that's really what most of the New Testament is. It's punctuated by occasional prophetic predictions. And, you know, when you come to those you can say, "Well, some people think that's been fulfilled and some don't."

Okay, let's read on and see what else is in the Bible. You know, we don't have to know the fulfillment of these in order to live the Christian life. The Christian life is not defined by your understanding of Bible prophecy. It really isn't. It's defined by your following Jesus. And following Jesus is the same issue for somebody who believes in preterism or who believes in futurism. It doesn't really matter. Jesus is the same Jesus, his instructions are the same.

Now, the one thing that I would say when you say "how about what today, you know, what wouldn't apply to us?" Jesus did teach his disciples who were living under the old covenant certain things which apply to the old covenant, like when he said, "When you bring your gift to the altar," he means when you bring an animal to sacrifice at the temple. He said, "If you there remember that someone has something against you, go back and make peace and then offer your sacrifice."

Well, obviously, one doesn't have to ask, "Does that apply to me?" Well, it does, but in a different way. I don't go to a temple. I don't offer animal sacrifices like that. However, I do worship God. And Jesus is saying if you're coming to the temple to worship God and offer your sacrifices to him, you need to make sure that you have not neglected your relationships with your brother because those things take priority as far as God is concerned. Now, that principle's not hard to apply to me. But you see then, even in such a case, a principle that is universally important is told to the disciples who lived under the old covenant in terms that related to them under the old covenant.

But I don't think any modern Christian is going to read that and say, "Boy, I wonder if I'm supposed to go to the temple and offer an animal sacrifice." No, everyone knows there's no temple and the sacrificial system is over. So one does have to have at least a passing understanding of the context in which the Bible was written. In other words, if somebody doesn't know anything about the Bible, they won't know what I just said. But anyone who's read through the Bible will have a framework for understanding the second time they read that passage. "Oh yeah, that, you know, later on we find that Jesus died and rose again and there's a new covenant and we're not under that covenant. So this going to the temple business is not really necessary."

So I mean, it takes it's not rocket science. It's it is it does take, however, a serious effort to understand. And you know, I knew somebody, she said she went to a dispensational school where they said almost nothing in the New Testament applies to us in this dispensation. They said the Sermon on the Mount and all the teachings of Jesus, that belongs to the millennial kingdom which hasn't come yet. They said the Revelation is about the future after the rapture when the Jews are God's dealing with the Jews and not the church.

The book of Acts simply tells of the transition from the old covenant to the new in the ministries of Peter and Paul. And so the only thing that's left, even the letters of James through Hebrews are really for Jews, they said. So only the letters of Paul were really retained to be relevant to Christians. Now, that's absurd, of course, but that's how weird people get about it.

Now, if somebody tells you that, if someone says, "No, this was just written to people of that generation," or, "it was just written to Jews," then of course, if you're going to believe that, then it's going to confuse you if you don't do some thinking on your own. But I would say anyone who's saying, "Well, I heard somewhere that the New Testament was written to people living before 70 AD and things changed in 70 AD," well, if you say, "Well, I can't read the New Testament then," I would say you need to read the New Testament then. Read through it.

Read through it and keep your mind turned on and think and recognize what's being said. And certainly, I think the New Testament has within it plenty to clarify what's like a universal principle and what's not. The one thing that isn't altogether clear is going to be some of the predictions. Was this one fulfilled already or is it going to be fulfilled in the future? Now, I have my opinion about most of those, but being right or wrong in answering that question would have absolutely nothing to do with being a good Christian and following Jesus and obeying him.

One of the biggest challenges, though, in the New Testament is that Jesus and the apostles do use idioms and hyperbole and metaphors and so forth that were very recognizable in their society and might not resemble the way we talk. But then that's a problem that anyone's going to have reading the Bible. We have to realize we're reading a book from another culture. But so what? You can pick up a book from another culture and read it, and if you have trouble understanding it, read it some more and you'll begin to understand what these idioms are, just like you learned the idioms of the English language growing up with it. Just familiarity is going to be the key. So read it, read it, and read it and think and think and think, and I don't think you're really going to have huge challenges in the areas that you're anticipating. All right. Eric from Compton, California. Welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Eric: Hey, thanks, Steve. Steve, please bear with me. I'm not even sure of the question that I want to ask, but I just keep running into these people who say they believe, but then in their explanations, you see that they don't really believe. And I just wonder how God seems to have cloaked this thing. Like, without the Holy Spirit dwelling within, you can't understand anything.

And I'm just wondering, like Paul, the latest thing I'm running into is Paul seems to be cursing things, and the guy says, "Jesus never cursed anything, but Paul curses people." It seems to be setting up a like Paul disobeyed Jesus. Even with preaching the gospel, as witnesses say preach the kingdom. And I just want to praise the Lord for the Holy Spirit, man. As long as if I keep scripture, it seems that if I just rely on the scriptures and not what people say about the scriptures, they seem to keep me straight. I'm not doubting my faith. My faith is strong.

Steve Gregg: Okay, let me ask you this. If I were to try to write down for our radio archives what your question is in one sentence, what would it be?

Eric: That's a good question. I wasn't sure.

Steve Gregg: Yeah, because you're rambling around about a lot of subjects and I'd like to be succinct. Can you put it in the form of just a question? How about the Paul disobeying Jesus point?

Eric: Okay, let's go with that.

Steve Gregg: Okay, let's talk about that one. Well, it is true that Paul pronounced a curse in 1 Corinthians chapter 16:22, I think it is. He said, "If anyone does not love the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema or a curse." And Jesus said, "Don't curse your enemies, bless those who curse you." Okay, well, Paul wasn't dealing with people who were cursing him, although some of them might have been, but he wasn't thinking in terms of "my enemies who are cursing me, who I have to be forgiving toward." I'm talking about a whole class of human beings that are, you know, opposed to Jesus Christ.

Now, it's not Paul's curse that's going to make them be damned; it's their actions and God's reaction. But he's announcing that there's a curse upon them if they don't turn to Christ. Now, Paul also kind of swore by oaths, and some people say Jesus said not to do that. Jesus said don't use oaths. But Paul on occasion—and so did Jesus, by the way, Jesus was put under oath on trial—and Paul did the same thing. Paul would say, "You know, before God, I'm not lying" in Galatians chapter 1. And he'd do similar things.

"This is a worthy saying, this is true, God is my witness." That's kind of taking an oath. But it's not violating what Christ had in mind. When Jesus talked about oaths in Matthew chapter 5, he's talking about how people use oaths even when they're lying because they will curry the confidence of the people they're talking to for their lie. That is, their lie is "I swear this is true."

Now, this is actually something that was being done. He's not saying that taking oaths to verify what you're saying is wrong in itself. I know it says don't swear at all, but what he's saying there is instead of adopting a system of oaths like the Pharisees had—some of them they thought were binding and some were not—how about you just don't swear at all? Just how about just say yes or no and be honest about it? He's not saying that taking an oath is a bad thing in itself.

And Jesus himself was put under oath on trial when he wouldn't speak to Caiaphas. Caiaphas said, "I adjure you by the living God, are you the Christ, the son of the Blessed?" Well, that's putting him under oath by the living God. It's like swear by God is what he's saying. And swearing oaths is not itself bad because in the Old Testament, the law even said, "You shall swear in the name of Yahweh and in his name you shall take your oaths." So there's nothing wrong with oaths per se.

But the Pharisees, Jesus said, the Pharisees had oaths that they secretly considered to be not binding as well as oaths that were. So they thought if you swear by the temple, it's not binding. If you swear by the gold of the temple, it is. That means they could lie to somebody and say "I swear by the temple," and the person would believe them, but then the Pharisee could be lying and not even keep his promise and say, "Well, I didn't swear by the gold of the temple." So this idea of taking oaths of different kinds which was commonly used apparently to deceive people was more or less impugning God or whoever you're taking oath by by setting his name to a statement that was a lie.

Now, Jesus doesn't say all of that in one place, but we do find that in the New Testament taught through, and we also find that Jesus and Paul didn't have any problem taking an oath when they were telling a truth. So I think your friend just doesn't understand. Paul was devout, there's very few people probably who've ever lived more committed to following Jesus to the death and to torture and to imprisonment and beatings and so forth. I mean, Jesus was his king, his Lord.

If he thought that Jesus didn't want him to say what he said in 1 Corinthians 16:22 about a curse, or if he thought that no oath-taking was something that Christ was requiring, well, he would have obeyed easy enough. Certainly wouldn't have disobeyed in writing. I mean, it's one thing if you say, "Well, I'm not supposed to use the word damn," but then I slam my thumb with a hammer and I accidentally said damn. Well, first of all, there's no law against saying damn or saying you can't say damn.

But the point is that if you say, "Well, I did it in a heat of the moment," well, that's one thing. But when you're writing a letter and you're representing Christ and you use an oath or something like that, then you better know that Paul did not consider that using an oath in that way was what Christ was forbidding. I think the man who thinks that Paul was disobeying Christ, maybe he ought to just not worry about Paul and make sure that he's obeying Christ because he's not going to be judged for what Paul did or didn't do. He'll be judged for what he did, and maybe we ought to stop looking at other people and judging them, maybe wrongly in this case. Hey, I need to take a break. You're listening to the Narrow Path. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. We have another half hour coming. We're not done, so stay tuned. I'll be back in about 30 seconds and we will go on for our second half hour. Stay around.

Welcome back to the Narrow Path Radio Broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we're still taking calls for another half hour. If you'd like to join us on the air with your questions about the Bible or your disagreement with the host, the number to call to get to me and to our audience is 844-484-5737. That's 844-484-5737. If you'd like to be on the program today, we have a half hour and we have a couple of lines open. If you want to do it now, you can reach us and we'll probably be able to get to your call, almost certainly. All right, we'll talk to Aaron from Worcester, Massachusetts next. Hi, Aaron. Welcome.

Aaron: Hey, Steve. Thanks for taking my call. I just had a recent passing away. My mother passed recently, and it was a little bit of a family feud. My oldest sister who's become a lesbian a long time ago, she had a discussion where she started talking about how she thinks the Bible isn't real and she thinks she doesn't believe in it basically. And so we had kind of a discussion about it and basically she doesn't want my family or anything over her house during the holidays or anything else if I'm going to preach the gospel. But going forward, that's obviously going to cause a divide for Christmas and the holidays going forward. And I'm frankly not comfortable celebrating Jesus's birth or Easter or anything else under the LGBTQ flag. But my parents, even though they were Christians, they tried not to cause a divide because it's their children, if that makes sense. So what do you think going forward and then inviting her? I have my daughter's birthday coming up and normally she would be invited to be here, but there was obviously a divide.

Steve Gregg: Well, first of all, you don't have to preach the gospel every time you're at a family gathering, especially to people that you've shared the gospel with before, probably many times, and they know the gospel. You're not obligated every time you're with people to talk only about Christ and salvation and things like that. It seems like you could go to family gatherings without bringing that up if it's only a few hours together with the family.

On the other hand, it sounds like she's made the decision. It sounds like you're conscientiously trying to keep the family from dividing over this matter, but she's the one who's made the division. She said, "I don't want you coming over if you don't agree with me." Okay, well, that solves the problem. And then when your kid's birthday parties come up and she's not invited and she says, "Why didn't you invite me to the party?" you say, "Well, you told me you don't want to do family things with us if I'm a Christian." I mean, I don't know if when you've been together with her you've laid into her frequently about being a lesbian. I don't really think you should.

Aaron: I have not, no. Over the course of the years, we have all had to walk on eggshells, so to speak. Nobody's ever mentioned it.

Steve Gregg: Exactly. So she's the one causing the division then, in other words.

Aaron: Right. She talked about homeschooling because we chose to homeschool our children, and she said the manuscripts of Jesus Christ, 25,000 to 28,000 manuscripts of his existence, she said she thinks it's all a farce and everything else and if you keep bringing it up—so she essentially started the division. And all I did was respond with, because she has a 13-year-old daughter who she's telling her that she's telling her daughter that she doesn't have a father, she only has two mothers and stuff like that. I basically told her, she told me everything's fake, and I just told her the truth. I said, "No, you were born a woman. God created you as a woman and you were not created as a lesbian. It was Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve" essentially. And she didn't like what I had to say.

Steve Gregg: Okay, well, that, yeah, I can see why she as a lesbian would be upset that you're not affirming her or whatever. You have no obligation to affirm her, though of course, you don't have any obligation whenever you're around her to confront her sin. She is not a Christian, and Paul makes it very clear in 1 Corinthians 5 we don't have to judge non-Christians; God will judge them. We are to judge people who claim to be Christians but are living in fornication and that kind of thing.

So 1 Corinthians 5 is very clear on that. So the idea here is she is not a Christian, she doesn't claim to be a Christian. So you don't have any obligation to correct her behavior. If she was professing to follow Christ and living in sin, then every Christian's obligation, especially whatever church she was going to, would have the obligation to correct her and say, "No, if you're going to follow Christ and wear his name, you can't be living in abominable behavior."

That's something that the Bible's very clear about. But the Bible doesn't say that non-Christians have to live like Christians. Non-Christians, they've got other problems worse than how they're behaving; they're non-Christians because they're rejecting God. And that's their big issue. But again, you don't have to confront it every time you see them, especially if you've done so many times before. It might be that you shouldn't do it anymore at all. I mean, she knows what you think.

It's not like if you evangelize someone enough times and they're getting angrier and angrier that you're increasing your chances of converting them by continuing to confront them. I think in many cases you're increasing your chances of cutting off all communication if you keep doing that. I mean, I'm all for evangelism, but preaching the gospel presumably is to be done to people who don't know the gospel. Once they know it, it's on them, and if they reject it, you don't have to keep telling them over and over again. I mean, if it comes up, if they bring it up, you can decide whether it's a good thing to go into it again, whether they're more open than before.

But you don't have to feel an obligation. I realize because she's a sibling you feel in the family you've got some responsibility for her. But she's an adult and so are you, and therefore being siblings apparently doesn't mean that much. Jesus was approached by his mother and his brothers, his siblings, who wanted to talk to him, and he knew he was there for no good purpose and he wouldn't see them. He said, "Who's my brother? Who's my mother? Who's my sister? Those who do the will of my father in heaven are my mother, my brother, my sister."

So he's got new family relations, a new identity. I'm the family with my dad, God. If they follow my dad, if they're his children, then they're my siblings. If they're not, kind of they're on their own. Not that I don't love them, not that I wouldn't help them to be converted, but they're grown-ups, they can make their own decisions about that. So your sister has made the decision: she does not want you to be in family situations with her family because you don't affirm her sinfulness. And you don't have to.

Here's the thing: she's trying to control you and the whole family and say, "Listen, you do things my way or you don't get me." And frankly, I'd say, "Well, we'll miss you, you know, but you are not in the position, sister, to tell me what I have to think or do or say. If you don't like me enough to tolerate differences of opinion, that's up to you. Don't show up. But however much I might like or love you, I do not surrender my freedom to say what I believe or to do what I believe. And if you—I can even tolerate the difference between us, but you can't. So I'm not the intolerant one, you are."

I mean, if you were more tolerant we could still have these gatherings together. We could, you know, we could be at peace with each other. We could still be a family. We'd disagree about your lifestyle, but family members often disagree about different things. But there's a certain kind of thing that family members often will not tolerate disagreement about, and that's especially if someone is a homosexual or trans. The reason is they're not secure. They don't have any reason to believe they're correct. If they did, they wouldn't be threatened.

Honestly, anything I believe, I can hang out, I can eat, I can go to a gathering with people who don't believe what I believe on anything. Anything at all. They don't believe in God, they don't believe I'm a decent person, they don't believe in what I do. Okay, I could still hang with them. Because you know why? I'm secure. I have reasons for what I believe. I know what those reasons are, and somebody disagreeing with me doesn't threaten me. I say, "Okay, maybe someday they'll learn what I've learned and that'd be great." Love to have them be aware of it. But I know what I believe and I haven't just picked my beliefs out of a hat. I've formed my beliefs from evidence and from consideration and thought, and I know that my beliefs have a much greater chance of being correct than theirs, and it doesn't bother me if they don't buy into it. I mean, I wish they would, but they don't have to. They're grown-ups. But see, she doesn't feel so secure about it. If she really knew she was right, she could be in your presence and she'd feel sorry for you for being not as enlightened as she is. But she's threatened. She's morally threatened. She has no assurance that she's doing the right thing, and the best thing she can do to be happy is to stay away from people who remind her that she might in fact be doing the wrong thing.

Aaron: So, Steve, do you continue to invite these people going forward?

Steve Gregg: Well, not now. No, no, she says she doesn't want to be with you. I think, yeah, I mean, she knows she should know that she's welcome to be with you anytime she wants to be. But if she says, "I don't want to be in family gatherings with you," well, I say, "I'm going to respect that. I'll respect that. I'm not going to try to persuade you to come to family gatherings where you feel uncomfortable." That's how I'd say it. I mean, if she changes her mind and says, "Well, you know, some things are more important than me defending my sexual preferences. Maybe I should connect with my family more." Well, she should know she's always welcome to do that. But she shouldn't complain if you don't invite her to things when she's already said she doesn't want to be there with you. I'm not sure why she'd have any grounds for complaining.

Aaron: Okay, I appreciate that. Thank you very much. God bless you.

Steve Gregg: Okay, God bless you too. Bye now. All right, we'll talk to Carrie from Fort Worth, Texas next. Carrie, welcome.

Carrie: Steve, I have a couple of things that are kind of related. A few shows ago, you were talking to somebody about the term the end times or the age to come, and I believe you were telling them that every time the apostles used that, they were using it in reference to the church age or in the time that they were living. Is that correct?

Steve Gregg: No, it's not quite correct. I do believe there are times in the especially when Jesus was speaking that when he talked about like the end of the age, that the age he was talking about was the Jewish age and that the age that followed that would be the age of the new covenant which he inaugurated at the end of his life. So I mean, yeah, there is that. There is the suggestion that sometimes the word age does refer to the seasons before or after the new covenant coming.

Jesus and his disciples lived together under the old covenant. At the end of it, he inaugurated the new covenant, and so Christians have always lived under the new covenant since then. Those are different ages. However, the Bible does say, or at least Paul speaks of ages to come, in the ages to come. So there's not just one age or even just two. It's a very common thing for Bible teachers to say the Jews thought in terms of only two ages which they called this age and the age to come, and then they speculate about what all applies to the age to come which they may argue began at the cross or some argue it began with the destruction of the temple.

I wouldn't worry too much about that. There's ages to come, and so like when Jesus talked about in the resurrection, says those who are appointed worthy of that age do not marry and do not give in marriage. Okay, some people say, "Well, that age began at 70 AD," that's what the preterists say, and I don't. And therefore, we shouldn't have marriage. But he didn't say the age that begins at 70 AD. He said the age of the resurrection. Now, if they want to say there's only two ages, so the age of the resurrection must be either before or after 70 AD, it must be after, they don't recognize there's other ages.

There's the age before Christ came, there's the age since Christ came, there's an age coming beginning with the resurrection when Jesus comes back. And there may be many ages to come. Paul said in, I think it's in chapter 3 of Ephesians, he said that in the ages to come God will make manifest to us the riches of his glory or whatever. So no, I wouldn't say that. Now, I do say that there are times when the term this age or or the end of the age could refer to the end of the Jewish age or the second temple Judaism, which ended in 70 AD.

But the word age is very generic. An age is simply a period of time. And an age is sometimes labeled by things that are characteristic of it. We talk about the age of the dinosaurs or maybe the age of the Crusaders or something like that. These are periods of time that are characterized by certain things, and we sometimes speak of them as ages. It simply means an epoch, a period of time. So no, I would never say that it's always referring to that.

Carrie: Okay. Well, and I did just listening to your teaching on the future of the church. And I mean, if I could be amillennial or not amillennial but post-millennial, I love that position. I mean, the triumph of the church. And a lot of what you said kind of has that ring to it. But then I'm also hearing the falling away and I don't know how to reconcile the two.

Steve Gregg: Well, that's just it. That's the only reason I'm not post-millennial in the strict sense of thinking that all people will be saved when Jesus comes back is because we do read of Satan being loosed for a little while and deceiving the nations. We do read of the tares being gathered up at the time of Christ's coming and thrown into the fire. There's still tares, in other words. We do read about different situations where at the end some people are still not Christians.

Now, post-millennialists, they believe that the victory of the church over Satan is going to progress continually until essentially the whole world becomes Christian. But they will admit that that might not mean every last person. They would suggest that, you know, basically it'll be a Christian world, but there might be an individual here or there who's not really a Christian, but they live under the system that is ruled by Christians. Everyone's a Christian mostly, and the odd non-Christian isn't influential enough to really change that.

But they also have to believe there's a releasing of Satan for a little while at the end before Jesus comes back. And they do admit that, but sometimes they just think that's momentary. They don't think it's like a season where it's, you know, strictly speaking very threatening to us, but rather that it's it's just momentary. Satan's loosed, he tries to destroy us, but within moments or whatever, God destroys him. So the final rebellion is definitely aborted in scripture, but whether it's aborted in moments or in years or decades, we don't know.

But you say, you know, I kind of lean that way. I do kind of. I mean, I'm an amillennialist, I'm not a post-millennialist, but I think that there are and I think everybody knows this who knows about these positions: there's pessimistic amillennialists and there's optimistic amillennialists. And certain post-millennialists like say Gary North would say that an optimistic amillennialist is just a closeted post-millennialist. You know, he says it as a bit of a humor, but it's close to the truth.

An optimistic amillennialist does have high view of the power of the gospel to transform nations and can look back at the past 2,000 years and see the degree to which that exactly has happened and how much the world has been changed just by the amount of influence the gospel's had since the time of Christ. And so I'm of that view, as you could tell in or hearing my lecture on that. But see, I'm optimistic about the church; I'm not entirely optimistic about the world. So I could believe that the church becomes very holy, becomes very united, becomes very influential, makes many converts, without suggesting that the whole world is changed.

The church is changed. God's working is with the church in the world. And of course, one of the tasks the church has is to bring the change to the world that the kingdom itself represents. I mean, the kingdom is justice and peace and so forth, and that is certainly one of the things that comes along with converting people and converting nations. But I don't believe we have to postulate that the nations as a whole will in fact be all converted. I think there will still be non-Christians.

But I do believe that what God is waiting for is the maturity and the holiness and the purity and the unity of his body and his bride. That's that's the delay, I believe. And there's, remember in Revelation 19, it says when I believe it's talking about when Christ comes, it says "his bride has made herself ready." She's without spot and blemish. Ephesians chapter 5 says that Christ's going to make her without spot and blemish. A number of the parables about the kingdom being like a seed growing or like a field of grain growing speaks of the maturing of the crop and before the harvest.

So, you know, I believe the church is being transformed through the ages not as quickly as I would like to see it, but God is not in as much a hurry as we are. You know, we kind of look at things in our time say, "Well, things are really bad, that view can't be correct." Well, wait a minute, that view could be correct and things could still be quite bad. Who knows? Maybe we're still 20,000 years out from its fulfillment.

God is not in a hurry, we are. And many generations of Christians have been in a hurry for Jesus to wind it up and come back, but obviously he hasn't been in a hurry. He's taken 2,000 years, that's not so long for him. Another 2,000 or 3,000 wouldn't be long for him. It just seems long for us. But if God has a project he's been working on, then we have no reason to believe he's going to interrupt that project for no good reason simply because we're getting impatient.

If another 100 or 200 or 300 years would bring about the conversion of a lot more people or the maturing of the Christian church, there's nothing going on today that would suggest that can't happen. And there's stuff in the Bible that says that's what God's looking for to happen. So I would just say I don't know. People say, "Do you think Jesus's coming back today?" I don't think he is. I mean, he can come back whenever he wants to; I'm not against it, I'm for it.

But it seems to me like there's something he's looking for, something he's working on. He hasn't just been sitting around, you know, watching TV in heaven for the past 2,000 years and looking down on us once in a while to see if how things are going. But he's he's been working actively in the world through the gospel, through through his hands and his feet which is the body of Christ. And he's got a project. And to suggest that he'll say, "Oh well, I've had this project for the past 2,000 years. I think I changed my mind. Let's just end it here. Let's just rapture the church." Well, I don't know. I don't see anything in the Bible that suggests that's likely at all. And I do think the church is to grow up. And I don't know how long that will take. It doesn't matter; it's not my business. Jesus said it's not for you to know the times of the seasons that the Father has put in his own authority. So but I'm not post-millennial, but I'm probably closer to the post-millennialist than I am to the pre-millennialist. Let's put it that way.

Okay, Carrie. Oh, I'm sorry, I hit the button and then you started talking. We got only a few minutes, a lot of people waiting. I'm not going to get them all in, I'm afraid. I'd love to. Let's talk to it's going to be Frank in Bellevue, Washington. Frank, welcome.

Frank: Hi, Steve. Thanks for taking my call. I actually hail from Milton, Washington, but I'm on the road. So my question is, I'm looking for one of your topical lectures on losing your salvation. I heard you talk to a caller a couple of weeks ago and I liked your position on the fact that we believe in Christ and therein lies our salvation, is that correct?

Steve Gregg: Right, our salvation is in Christ. Outside of Christ, there's no salvation. So that's why Jesus said we have to abide in him. If we're in him, that's where eternal life is. If we're not in him, that's where eternal life is not. So you're wondering about which lecture to listen to about that at the website? Okay, if you go to thenarrowpath.com, click on the tab that says Topical Lectures. You're going to see a set of lectures listed called Content of the Gospel. Okay, so under Topical Lectures, it's Content of the Gospel and you'll see a list of six lectures; one's called Eternal Security. That'd be the one you'd want to listen to.

Frank: Perfect. Thank you very much. I'll let you go.

Steve Gregg: All right, God bless you and thanks for joining us. Yeah. Let's see, we're going to talk next to David in Atlanta, Georgia. David, welcome.

David: Hey, Steve. Question is: are there any reasons the crucifixion can't be the abomination that caused desolation?

Steve Gregg: Well, if it is, the disciples didn't recognize it as such because Jesus said, "When you see the abomination of desolation, you who are in Judea flee to the mountains." Now, they did that in 66 AD as the Jewish war began, but they didn't do that at the crucifixion. They stayed in Jerusalem for a whole generation and evangelized Jerusalem. So it's true that the crucifixion is an abominable thing seen one way, but the disciples did not recognize it as the abomination of desolation because they would then have fled from Jerusalem at that time.

So I'm going to say probably it isn't. And the way that Luke 21:20 paraphrases the expression abomination of desolation—now, Jesus uses the expression abomination of desolation in Matthew 24, what is it, verse 14 or 15—but at that very point in the discourse when Luke is telling the same discourse, he paraphrases the phrase abomination of desolation and says, "When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, know that its desolation is near, then you who are in Judea flee to the mountains."

So it's the same statement, just paraphrased in different words. So Luke understood, and we generally feel that Luke knew what he was talking about, that when Jesus said the abomination of desolation, what he was talking about was the Roman armies coming to besiege Jerusalem. And that's when the disciples in Jerusalem actually did flee. So yeah, I mean, if you say is there a reason not to take the crucifixion as the abomination of desolation? That would be the reason I would have, is that the disciples didn't understand it that way.

Hey, I appreciate your call, brother. I need to take off now. The music's playing, we only have a few seconds left. You've been listening to the Narrow Path Radio Broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg. We are listener-supported. If you'd like to write to us, the address is The Narrow Path, PO Box 1730, Temecula, California 92593. Our website, everything is free at the website; you can donate from there if you want to, it's thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for joining us.