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 so that you can call in with questions you might have about the Bible for us to talk about on the air, or disagreements you have with the host that you would like to talk about on the air. You are welcome to call in this hour at any time. Our lines just filled up as we are going on the air, so you cannot call right now and get through because the lines are full, but that will be changing within minutes and all through the program.

Have this number ready and call at random. You probably will find a line open before we are done. The number is 844-484-5737. That is 844-484-5737. I only have one announcement to make today and that is that tonight is our monthly Zoom meeting. It is a lot like this program except it is on Zoom and people can look at each other while they talk instead of just wondering what everyone looks like.

If you want to join us for that, that is at 7:00 PM Pacific Time tonight. You do not have to live in the Pacific Time zone; you just have to adjust for your own time. That is tonight and the first Wednesday of every month generally. Wednesday nights at 7:00 PM Pacific Time. If you want to know how to log on there, you go to our website, thenarrowpath.com. There is a tab that says announcements. When you go there, you will see the Zoom meeting announced and it will also have the login information for you.

Just before I start taking calls, I will also be speaking in the Sacramento area, not this weekend, but the following weekend, the 11th through the 13th. It looks like I am speaking maybe half a dozen times on those three days. If you are interested in the Sacramento area, once again, you can find the locations and times of those meetings and what I will be speaking about at our website, thenarrowpath.com, under announcements. We will go to the phones now and talk to Carrie, who is calling from Ontario, Canada. Hi Carrie, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Carrie: Hi Steve, thank you so much for taking my call. I just have a couple questions for you. I will try to be very quick. I know you have so many people in line. I have, just this last year, been through a journey of changing my eschatological views. At first, there was some frustration and then some grief over what I felt was some lost time in my understanding of things. I realize the Lord is sovereign in that, but I am also now at a place where I have one specific question in regards to Daniel 9:27.

A Bible that I had that was older referenced the "he shall make a strong covenant with many for one week" to the Lord's Supper and that is how I perceived that. But that Bible was quite old. My question is that now when I read that and I think about my brothers and sisters around me who are putting a different person in that place of who he is talking about, I have some fear there around that. I do not want them to be reading an Antichrist figure into a place where our Jesus should be. Does that make sense?

Steve Gregg: It makes very good sense. For those who do not know what you are talking about, you are talking about the prophecy of the 70 weeks of Daniel in Daniel 9:24-27. It is a very interesting and important prophecy because an angel appears to Daniel when he is praying and fasting and tells him that from the time of a somewhat nebulous starting point, it says from the time of the decree to restore and build Jerusalem to the Messiah will be 70 weeks. All scholars I am aware of believe that weeks means periods of seven years. In the Hebrew, it does not actually say weeks; it says sevens, 77s. That is 490.

In some respect, the angel is saying that from a certain starting point that would be not very distant from Daniel's own day to the coming of the Messiah, which in fact did come 500 and some odd years later, would be 490 years. The beginning point is the decree to restore and build Jerusalem. The problem is there were three of those in different years. There was one in 536 BC, there was one in 457 BC, there was one in 445 BC by Cyrus and Artaxerxes, different decrees that allowed the Jews to do various things. Of course, for those who do not know, Daniel lived when the Jews had been taken into Babylon a generation or so earlier and they were now going to be released by Cyrus the Persian who conquered Babylon and gave the Jews permission to go back and build their city.

The decree to restore and build Jerusalem is that which was happening around Daniel's time. In fact, it is very possible that Cyrus's decree may have already happened. This prophecy happened in the first year of Darius the son of Ahasuerus. It is not clear whether that is Cyrus or somebody under him, but in any case, the next chapter begins in the third year of Cyrus, which would be after Cyrus's decree. The problem is if the measurement is from Cyrus, Cyrus's decree is 536 years before Christ, so the 490 years does not seem to hit the target of Jesus. Artaxerxes made two decrees and you could take either of them and calculate them various ways and have them end up in the time of Jesus.

The important thing you are asking is not in what way this prophecy points to the timing of the coming of Christ, but rather it says in verses 26 and 27, "after the 62 weeks," that is, he's earlier said there's going to be one week, which is seven years, and then 62 more weeks. Each week is seven years, so the seven weeks and the 62 weeks are 69 weeks. That is 483 years. It says after that point, the Messiah shall be cut off, which apparently means killed, but not for himself. And the people of the prince who is to come, which would be the Romans, shall destroy the city and the sanctuary, which they did.

Jesus was crucified around 30 AD. The Romans came and destroyed the city and the temple in 70 AD. This has been fulfilled and the end of it shall be with a flood, a term that sometimes means an invasion in the figurative language of the prophets, and until the end of the war, desolations are determined. Verse 27 is the really ambiguous one and that is where you're seeing a different interpretation in the popular view than what you believe is correct. It says, "Then he shall confirm a covenant with many for one week; but in the middle of the week he shall bring an end to sacrifice and offering. And on the wing of abominations there shall be one that is one abomination that makes desolate, even until the consummation, which is determined is poured out on the desolate."

That is very confusing, the language of the end of this verse, but the beginning of the verse should not be too confusing. It says, "Then he shall confirm a covenant with many for one week; and in the middle of the week he shall bring an end to the sacrifice and offering." The popular view that you have abandoned recently, and which is held by most popular prophecy teachers, is the "he" who makes a covenant with many for one week is Antichrist. Suddenly, Antichrist has intruded into the prophecy in their minds. They say that the Antichrist is going to make a seven-year covenant with Israel, but he will break that covenant in the middle of the week, three and a half years.

They take this to be the middle of a tribulation period and then they call that the abomination of desolation. The scenario that we have all been taught in modern times is that this is talking about the rise of the Antichrist who will seem to be friends with the Jewish state, will make a seven-year treaty with them, he will allow them to build the temple again, but three and a half years into it, he will violate the treaty, he will put an image of himself in the Holy of Holies of the temple. This is the ultimate abomination that makes desolate and this signals the latter part of the tribulation and Antichrist begins to really persecute the Jews.

We have all heard that scenario if we have listened to popular prophecy teaching. The problem is there is no Antichrist mentioned by Daniel. It does not say Antichrist; it says "he." Now who's "he"? Obviously, when you have a pronoun, you have got to go back and look for the antecedent. They say that the antecedent is in verse 26 where it says the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. They say the prince who is to come is the "he" who will make a covenant with them for one week and will break it in the middle. They also believe that there's a gap of 2,000 years or more between verses 26 and 27, which Daniel never gives a hint about and there's no reason in the world to believe it.

They say the prince who is to come is the Antichrist. That does not really make any sense because verse 26 says after this period of time, the Messiah shall be cut off, that is killed, and the people of the prince who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. That is the Romans. Who's the prince who is to come? It is his people who do this, so the Roman authority, Titus perhaps, the Roman general. But it is certainly not referring to someone in the end times. More than that, the prince who is to come is a minor player in the grammar of the verse. He is not even the subject of the sentence. The people are the subject of the sentence.

It is the people of the prince who do something, which means the prince who is to come is not even the subject of a sentence, he is the object of a preposition. Somehow they think that "he" has bumped the Messiah out of center stage in this prophecy and now he is the one making the covenant with the people. This is fairly absurd if you're really trying to take the scriptures literally and make sense of them. "He" who confirms a covenant with many for one week must be the Messiah because that is what the whole passage is about. The Messiah is mentioned in verse 25. The Messiah is mentioned in verse 26. And now he confirms a covenant with many for one week in 27.

There is no reason why "he" would not be the Messiah, especially since we see that this actually happened. Jesus began his ministry to confirm the covenant that God had made with Israel that he would send the Messiah, he would bring salvation, he would make a new covenant, and so forth. At the beginning of Jesus's ministry, his ministry was a confirmation of these promises to Israel. However, there was only one week left of the 70 weeks, so there is only seven years before this whole dealing with Israel would be ending. But in the middle of that seven years, three and a half years into Christ's ministry, he was crucified.

He brought an end to the temple system. The temple continued to operate until the Romans destroyed it, but not with legitimacy. The sacrifice of Christ, according to Hebrews, was the final sacrifice as far as God is concerned, so in the middle of the week, that is three and a half years into his ministry when he died, he brought an end to the sacrifice and offering. That is why there are no sacrifices and offerings ever again that will ever be legitimate. This is what the church pretty much believed. You have a very old Bible that recognizes this. I assume you mean in your cross references in the Bible that when it says "he will confirm a covenant with many for a week," your cross reference in an old Bible, which must be pre-dispensational, is saying that this is at the Last Supper.

At the Last Supper, Jesus actually said, "this is the new covenant, this cup is the new covenant," so he is confirming the covenant. In other words, the prophecy is about Jesus, it is not about the Antichrist. Is it blasphemous? You are really concerned that your friends are taking this passage that's about Jesus and they are making it about the Antichrist. They are substituting Christ for the Antichrist in the passage. This is what people do when they do not read the Bible carefully or think for themselves. They listen to their teachers. The dispensational system believes that the abomination of desolation in verse 27 is a future thing in the tribulation period, so they have to have somewhere we jump from Jesus's first coming at the end of the 69th week to sometime 2,000 years later.

There is no indicator in the passage that there is any such jump, but that works for their system. They want this to be about the end of the world, the end times, and it is just not. It is about the end of Israel. The prophecy said there's going to be 490 years concerning your people, Daniel's people, the Jews. After Jesus came, God did not deal exclusively with the Jews anymore. There were still Jews who were saved, of course; all the early disciples were Jews. But God was not dealing with the Jews as a nation. Now if someone says Jesus died in the middle of the week, what happened the next three and a half years?

It is not identified, but it certainly represents the remainder of the time that God was dealing exclusively with the Jews and not sending the gospel out to the Gentiles. Three and a half years after the death of Jesus would be a pretty good estimate of when Paul got saved and was sent out as the first apostle sent specifically to the Gentiles. That could mark the official ending of God dealing only with the Jew. I do not know if that is what it is or not, but I will say that it is quite artificial to imagine that somehow the prophecy has leaped between verse 26 and 27 a chasm of 2,000 years without giving any notice at all when the passage makes perfectly good sense just take it as a straight narrative of what's going to happen or did happen.

Jesus did end the sacrificial system three and a half years after he appeared. As far as any blasphemy associated with people applying this to the Antichrist, I think it is a terribly misleading thing, but most people who take it that way are not trying to be blasphemous. Somebody told them that the Bible is teaching it that way and it never crossed many of their minds that this is talking about Jesus. A lot of people think that the prophecies of the Bible are very concerned about the end times and end time events. I know lots of Christians are, so they figure the Bible should be too. But the Bible has very little to say about the end times.

Most of the prophecies that are applied to the end times by popular teachers were fulfilled even in Old Testament times when God brought Israel back and made them a nation again from all nations in 539 BC. Most people know very little about the history of Israel or the history of biblical times and so it is very easy to fool people and say, "this is predicting what's happening today." If you were right, I'd agree with you, but that simply isn't true. Your friends, I believe, are mistaken. Will it harm their souls? I think not. It is an honest mistake. But I think they should probably, if they love the word of God, they should probably tremble at the word of God instead of letting their teachers manipulate it like silly putty.

The Bible says that God will be with those who tremble at his word. I think we should fear God when we are handling the scriptures. The Bible says teachers will receive a stricter judgment. I used to teach dispensationalism, but that teachers will receive a stricter judgment was always on my mind, which is one reason that when I began to see dispensationalism was false, even though it was embarrassing for me to tell people I'd been teaching wrong, I'd rather be embarrassed now than when I stand before God as a person who taught false things once I actually had reason to know they were false. I suspect your friends don't have any reason to know they're false at this point.

They have heard only one thing from teachers that they respect and just like the Catholics, they'll follow what the Pope says. Protestants do the very same thing with their pastors. They say they don't, but they do. If they're saying, "Carrie, I can't believe what you say because Pastor so-and-so or such-and-such an author who I respect says this is what it's about," who is he? Is he your Pope now? You don't follow the scriptures; you just follow what he says? Look at the passage and then see what it says. If your friends don't see it your way, don't condemn them. People can be blind and I said many fall blindly what they've been taught. But it is a very good thing to question what people say even if everybody's saying it.

The truth is everybody isn't; it is just all the popular novelists and all the popular prophecy teachers. They're saying the same thing because it is that view that's popular. But that's not the teaching of the church throughout history and it certainly should not be. There is nothing in the Bible to support it, so I don't think we should be perpetuating it. Carrie, I've talked to you for a long time, but that's my answer to you. I don't think they're blasphemous; their hearts are probably right, but if they refuse to change when they begin to see what the scriptures say, "I still want to believe what I believe," I'd say that gets to be a little on the edge of blasphemy when they can see enough evidence this is talking about Jesus, but we're still going to make it about the Antichrist. Thanks for your call.

Carrie: Thank you. Bye now.

Steve Gregg: Jay in Memphis, Tennessee, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Jay: Thank you for taking my call, Steve. Let me preface my call by saying I'm totally blind, I'm 77, so I may have sometimes my thoughts are not totally clear. My question is in the parable that Jesus gives in regards to the man that didn't have on the proper garment and was thrown out, Matthew 22. At the end, he concluded by saying, "many are called but few are chosen." That seems to be out of place to me. Can you give me some insight on that scripture and why it's said there about this one person?

Steve Gregg: The one person that gets thrown out is really representative of a class of people. He gives one example of someone who came to the wedding feast inappropriately attired. To come to the King's wedding feast without proper attire is to show disrespect for the King and anyone would know that. The person who came knew that he was not coming on the terms the King would approve or anyone would approve when they invite you to the wedding. He's coming on his own terms; he shows up because I guess he likes the meal, but he doesn't come on the King's terms. He's called out on it and he's thrown out of the feast.

Jesus said for many are called, few are chosen. The earlier part of the parable, many people had been called or invited to the wedding feast and a lot came. It says good and bad came specifically mentions that good and bad people showed up and the feast was furnished with guests. This is, of course, a reference to Gentiles coming into the church if you read the context of the whole parable. The King had first invited his friends who represented the Jews. They didn't come and therefore he burned down their city, which is what he did to Jerusalem in 70 AD. Then the message went out far and wide to the Gentiles and they came in, but they weren't all good either.

Then at the end of that gathering in of the Gentiles into the church comes the final judgment. Now this man who's not properly attired at the wedding, he just represents a class of people. There's no reason to believe he's the only one, but he's singled out in order to make the point. The point is you can come on God's terms or you can come on your own terms. If you come on your own terms, you're not going to stay. If you come to Christ and you're still setting your own agendas and not surrendered to his and you're still trying to please yourself and not please him, you'll be called at the end and thrown out.

It is a parable, it is not literal, but the whole thing is saying is that there are people like this that will be excluded at the judgment because although they may have come into the church and they may have come to Christ in some way, they didn't come on the terms he said. They came on their own terms and so they'll be thrown out. When he says many are called, few are chosen, I think chosen would mean chosen to go on into eternal life in the resurrection in the new earth to reign with Christ and so forth. Only a few who have come, many have been called in. The church has gathered many in, but not all of them are really have come on God's terms.

Only the ones who have are going to be chosen. In Revelation, there's a passage about Christ and his armies coming and those who are with them, it says, are called and chosen and faithful. It is interesting not all who are called are chosen and perhaps not all who are chosen are faithful. I don't know, but these are the three things that they have to have; they have to have all three of these traits. They were called, they were chosen, and they're faithful. But in this case, he's saying not everyone who is called is chosen because he's simply making the point that showing up isn't all that's required.

A lot of people have been evangelized by preachers who said, "all you need to do is come forward, just show up here and you'll go to heaven when you die. Just come forward, I'll pray for you." A lot of people have come forward and been prayed for and have not in any sense surrendered to Christ in their hearts. They have not laid down their own agendas; they have not forsaken all they have that Jesus said you must do in Luke 14:33. At the end, although these people may spend their life in church, at the end they'll find out they didn't do the will of God. Remember what Jesus said at near the end of Matthew 7 at the end of the Sermon on the Mount?

He said not everyone who says to me, "Lord, Lord," will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father in heaven. Not just talking about being a Christian, but doing what God calls you to do. He says many will say, "Lord, we prophesied in your name, we cast out demons in your name, we did many mighty works in your name." He said, "I'll say to you, I never knew you; depart from me." This is the same kind of message put in a different story. These people have come. They have joined the Christian movement, but they haven't really become Christians and they've only fooled themselves like those people that Jesus said, "I never knew you." They thought they were Christians, but they apparently weren't listening to what being a Christian is.

That could be the fault of the preachers because in many cases the preachers have an obligation to tell people what being a Christian is. But if the preachers don't tell them, they still have Bibles and so they're still responsible. You still, if you have the word of God on your shelf, there's no reason for you to die ignorant of what God expects of you. I need to take a break. You're listening to The Narrow Path. We have another half hour coming. Don't go away. We are listener-supported. You can go to our website, thenarrowpath.com, and take all our resources free or you can donate there if you want at thenarrowpath.com. I'll be right back.

Steve Gregg's ministry and radio program, The Narrow Path, has many avenues for learning through ancillary websites including YouTube channels and various debates. Complete transcripts of Steve's lectures are available at another website, opentheo.org. Also, enjoy the free phone app available by going onto your browser to www.thenarrowpath.app. Welcome back to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. That announcement that we just played mentioned a website with the transcripts of all of my lectures, and by all of my lectures we're talking about 1500 or so lectures, verse by verse through the Bible, lectures on hundreds of topics.

Those transcripts are free to you if you go to that website. If you didn't catch it, it's opentheo.org. Open and then the second word is t-h-e-o, Theo like in theology, opentheo.org. Check it out; you'll see the transcripts of everything are there and also the audio. You can actually listen to the audio while the transcript is before you and the part that's being spoken on the audio will be underlined in the transcript so the underline will move forward as the lecture goes. Very cool at opentheo.org. And he also mentioned the app and I just want to repeat, you get our app from a browser page, not from the App Store.

Wherever you normally get your apps, that's not where our newest app is found. I recommend you go to if you want the app and I definitely think you'd be amazed at all that's available there for you on it. You go to a browser, Safari, Google, whatever browser you use, and go to the website there and do this on your phone or your iPad, you go to the website thenarrowpath.app. It is almost like our website, but it has app. It is .app, thenarrowpath.app. You'll find there instructions about how to download the thing onto your device and it'll operate just like any other app only with better information. Check it out; it's another of our many free resources that we provide, or that God provided because volunteers did all the work on these things. I didn't do it. We'll talk to Michael in Inglewood, California. Hi Michael, welcome.

Michael: Thank you Steve. You were just talking about many are called and that's kind of cool; it has to do with my question. I've always had this, I don't know, about Romans 8:28. Of course in the KJV it says "the called" with the definite article. Also in Romans 1:6 it says "the called" but the Greek doesn't have the definite article in 1:6 while most other people quote it they'll say, for people who are called, they don't say "the called". I'm kind of wondering why does Paul only use that here and it's only used once in the Bible and what does it mean to say "the called" instead of just saying "many are called"?

Steve Gregg: In my Bible, Romans 1:6 does have the definite article: "among whom you also are the called of Jesus Christ". Are you saying in yours it doesn't have that?

Michael: Not in the Greek.

Steve Gregg: I'm not looking at the Greek, but usually if it wasn't in the Greek it should be here in italics. I'll have to check that out separately. But "the called" obviously means "the called ones," just like "the elect" or "the chosen" would mean "the chosen ones" or "the elect ones". It is just a manner of speaking. Or even "the dead" are "the dead ones". It is when an adjective is used nominally; an adjective becomes a noun in those kinds of usages. And so the Christians are the called or the elect or the chosen because we have been called. Paul said in 1 Corinthians that the gospel is foolishness to the Greeks, it is a stumbling block to the Jews, but to those of us who are called, it is the wisdom of God and the power of God.

Paul does refer to us as people who are called. And of course here he's using it somewhat differently than Jesus because, although maybe not very differently, but I mentioned that Jesus spoke of those who are called simply are those who are evangelized. But the ones who are chosen are the ones who pass muster when the King comes and judges all things. Paul is assuming that all his readers are "the called". I guess because they've heard the gospel; that's the call, hearing the gospel is the call. Maybe he's not assuming they're all going to be passing the final exam because he does say to the Corinthians, who he referred to "called people" in 2 Corinthians 13, "examine yourself, see if you're in the faith".

He says, "don't you know that Jesus Christ is in you unless you're reprobate". I guess some of the readers at Corinth he wasn't so sure about, but they were all called. Anyway, I don't know why sometimes the definite article would be used and otherwise not. I would think the definite article simply means that the adjective is being used as a noun, as a subject. Is that the whole of it?

Michael: Yes.

Steve Gregg: Okay, Michael. Thanks for your call, brother. Thanks for calling. Eric in South Indiana is next. Eric, welcome to The Narrow Path.

Eric: Hi Steve, can you hear me? So I have a quick question for you. There's one pattern I notice after a Christian dies or maybe living out the end of his life is a smear campaign, and I hear you talking about Lonnie a lot and defending him. That's one of my favorite stories. Can you tell me about Haile Selassie and how did he become a Rastafarian? How did that happen?

Steve Gregg: It is a really hard thing for me to answer because I don't know the life story of Haile Selassie. But the Rastafarians view him as sort of Christ and as an object of worship. He was of course at one time the Emperor or King or whatever of Ethiopia. I don't really know how he came to be viewed that way. I don't know if he encouraged that or if I mean I think Rastafarianism began in Jamaica, didn't it? I mean not necessarily in Ethiopia, but it was made up of Ethiopian ideas about the Ethiopian King there. I'm afraid I'm going to be have to plead ignorance here because I've never really studied the man.

I've never really studied Rastafarianism either; of course I've known plenty of Rastafarians but I've never explored very deeply the origins of their beliefs. Obviously if someone thinks Haile Selassie was the Messiah and they think that smoking weed is a sacrament, it is not a religious system I'd be interested in joining. You know what you could do? There is a thing called Wikipedia; that could tell you probably everything you're asking me about that because I'm not I don't know. Thanks, Eric, for your call. Max in the Bronx, New York, welcome to The Narrow Path.

Max: Hey Steve, thanks for taking my call. I trust all is well. Before I continue with my question, I just want to give a shout-out; I think your screener is David, he's doing an amazing job. Just wanted to give him some recognition.

Steve Gregg: Good to hear. He works behind the scenes there every day and I don't hear many comments about him. David, our call screener.

Max: Very amicable, nice guy. To the question, I called you a while back, maybe a couple of months back, and I asked a question pertaining to this virgin woman who was being duped, hoodwinked, by a man who said that he you know, he didn't say anything actually. He didn't disclose the fact that he was impotent sexually and that he had ED, erectile dysfunction.

Steve Gregg: I don't remember that call. When did you call me about that?

Max: It had to be like three or four months ago. And I said that he kept talking to her that night when they're supposed to consummate from the fact that they went to sleep. The next night he did the same thing. Finally she said, "hey what's going on?" and he mentioned, "oh well you know, I'm being honest, I got ED". You said that it wasn't a marriage because they didn't consummate, so it was okay for her to annul it or get a divorce.

Steve Gregg: Well, let me say this. That is my opinion. I think the Catholic Church, and I'm not expert on Catholic doctrine because I'm not a Catholic, I think the Catholic Church would see that as one of the kinds of things that they would annul a marriage for if the man deceived a woman and didn't let her know that he's marrying her but they're not going to be able to consummate the marriage. That certainly is fraud on his part and they didn't consummate it. Generally speaking, I say what makes a wedding binding is the vows. When you make vows, you're supposed to keep those vows.

But if you make vows under fraudulent circumstances and you've been mistaken because someone a very important part of what being married is he's not planning to do that, then he's totally fraudulent. I would think that there's a reason why the Bible speaks of the sexual act between the couple as the becoming one flesh. Paul speaks about it even in case of a man with a prostitute becomes one flesh and he's made no vows to her. Jesus said what God has joined together let no man put asunder, but if they're not one flesh yet, then I don't think that they've been joined together and therefore I think breaking up is there's a good case for it.

Max: Yes, and actually I thought that was a great insightful way of seeing it and I actually agree. But what came to mind to ask you, unfortunately I only get a chance to follow it up, but this was my question: what lies, if any, or what deception, if any, after now, not before, after consummation warrant a dissolution or divorce? Could it be something someone says that they are financially secure and they're really broke? Could it be health issues like the guy with AIDS, maybe they have herpes, maybe they have ED, whatever problems they have?

Steve Gregg: Are you asking about lies that are discovered after consummation but they were lies before the marriage took place? If a guy has venereal disease and therefore just like the guy with ED can't consummate, I mean venereal disease he shouldn't consummate and the woman shouldn't expect the woman to want him to, that would be I think a similar case to what I was just saying. Now if he said he had a lot of money and he didn't, shame on him, but having a lot of money or not having a lot of money is not one of the things that defines marriage.

Max: No, the person with let's say AIDS or anything crazy disease, they lied but they did consummate. The consummation has occurred and then the woman finds out the scenario.

Steve Gregg: I think that she has every right to cut off relations at that point. I don't think any woman or man is required to have sexual relations with a spouse who did not tell them that they've got a contagious possibly life-threatening disease that's sexually transmitted. That is terrible. In fact, I think if somebody has a fatal disease, potentially fatal disease, and they don't let somebody know it and they sleep with them, whether it is their spouse or anyone else, I think they should be brought up on charges of attempted murder.

Max: I agree; that's actually a law. And just one other thing, obviously today we're having people who are in the trans community and all that stuff and some people you won't know because everything is done so neatly, if you know what I mean. Of course that would absolutely absolve someone if they found out the person was born a certain way and they actually transformed to another way, then that would also be grounds for "I'm out of here," correct?

Steve Gregg: Absolutely. If you're a man and you think you're marrying a woman but it is really a man who now has had surgery to look like a woman, yes, I would say that's the kind of fraud that would definitely nullify the marriage. All right brother, thanks for your call. Let's talk next to Daryl in Indiana. Daryl, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Daryl: Hey Steve, thank you. Something I think is worthy of consideration when a lot of people call in about questions about the last days and being chosen of God, I think there's a scripture in Joel 2:28-29 where the Lord is referencing this through the apostle Peter. In the last days he will pour out his spirit upon all flesh and on the day of Pentecost Peter quoted this scripture showing that there was a fulfillment. But what I think is my comment is a lot of people are misled about biblical salvation. In other words, they believe that they can be saved just by believing and not receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost and being baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ for forgiveness of sins. Without the biblical salvation there's a lot of error in their interpretation and understanding of the scriptures just like Nicodemus was confused when Jesus came to him. What is your view about the new birth according to Jesus Christ about what he told Nicodemus to be born of the water and the spirit?

Steve Gregg: A lot of people, and maybe you, believe that being born of water and the spirit means being baptized in water and baptized in the spirit. I fully believe in the mandatory nature of water baptism for a person who becomes a Christian. They should be baptized in water and they should be as soon as possible. I also believe in the baptism of the spirit, so I'm not coming against anything about the baptism in water or the baptism of the spirit. I'm just saying that when Jesus talked about being born of water and the spirit, I'm not sure that he was talking about baptism there, only because there's no reason why Nicodemus would be expected to understand it of baptism.

He's talking about being born and if Jesus was talking about being baptized, I think it would be very easy for him to say unless a man is baptized in water and baptized in the spirit he can't enter the kingdom of God. That would be a better way to make it clear. After all, John the Baptist had already used the term "baptized in the Holy Spirit" and also in water, so Jesus could simply and no doubt Nicodemus came to Jesus partly because John the Baptist had commended him. If Jesus had used the same language John did, "you need to be baptized in water, you need to be baptized in spirit," I think that he would have been clearer.

If he said you have to be born again, and he did, and Nicodemus said, "well, does a man have to go back into his mother's womb and be born over again?" Jesus made it very clear: "No, you have to be born of water and you have to be born of the spirit." There's nothing in that statement that would communicate to at least if I were Nicodemus there I would have no reason to believe he's talking about baptism there. Being born of water is mentioned in verse 5, but in verse 6 he seems to exchange that term for born of the flesh. Because in both verse 5 and 6 he uses the term "you got to be born of the spirit" and in both verses he contrasts being born of the spirit with another kind of birth.

In verse 5 that other kind of birth he calls being born of water, in verse 6 he calls that other kind of birth being born of the flesh, which means physical birth. When people are physically born there is a bursting forth from the waters, a breaking of the waters as the baby's about to come out. I'm not sure that that's enough of a phenomenon to explain why you'd call natural birth being born of water, but you are born through water and when Jesus said "that which is born of the spirit is spirit, that which is born of the flesh is flesh," he seems to be contrasting physical birth with spiritual birth as opposed to water baptism with spiritual baptism.

I don't think that's what he's talking about there. On the other hand, I know that you want to emphasize baptism and so do I because I think lots of people who have been evangelized have not been told that once you have repented of your sins and believed in Christ, you're commanded to be baptized in water. If somebody can do that they should. Now if somebody were, let's just say, they gave their heart to Christ and they repented of their sins and they determined they're going to follow Christ the rest of their life and they just have no way of getting baptized in water.

There are some people, maybe you, I don't know, some people in the Churches of Christ do and some people in the Churches of Christ don't think that there can be special mercy for those who have no possibility of being baptized in water. Let's just say they're going down in a flaming airplane and they cry out to God and repent and they're dead a few seconds later on the ground, didn't get baptized. Some people say, "well, snooze you lose, you go to hell because you didn't get baptized earlier in your life." Others would say baptism obviously what God's looking for is somebody whose heart is right.

He commands people whose hearts are right to get baptized and to receive the spirit, but if they have no possibility of doing so I think if their heart is right toward God that's what matters and that's what rebirth is. But how many people really are in that position that they can't be baptized? I'm just going to say we are commanded to be baptized; it's not optional. It is a mandate and if somebody can be baptized they should. It is hard to imagine someone who can't be baptized unless let's just say they got saved reading a Gideon's Bible in a motel and they don't know anyone to baptize them.

You can't just walk up to a stranger on the street and ask, "hey would you baptize me?" Basically you get baptized by Christians into a church and if you don't know what church you're going to be in and if you don't have any guidance about that then you're going to have to do some research. You should join a church, but even if they can't be baptized the moment they are converted they should be baptized as soon as they are connected with other Christians and that should be as immediately as possible. I appreciate your call, brother.

Daryl: Can I make a comment?

Steve Gregg: Well quickly, I've got a lot of calls waiting and I've only got a few minutes left. Go ahead.

Daryl: Can I make a comment about what you just said?

Steve Gregg: Okay you're not going quickly enough. I want to get some more callers on here please. We'll talk to Matt in Whittier, California. Hi Matt, welcome.

Matt: Hi Steve. My question is regarding A.W. Pink's book "The Attributes of God". In it he presents the view that everything that happens in the world has been preordained by God and that Jesus Christ dying on the cross didn't actually change who God is or was. My question would be does the Bible refute or affirm these claims and how does Pink's view differ from your hermeneutics?

Steve Gregg: A.W. Pink was a very emphatic Calvinistic writer, a good inspiring writer, he loved the Lord, he loved the word of God, and many people think he's among the most top commentators. But like many commentators, he was Calvinistic. A Calvinist is one who believes that all things are ordained by God and in many respects that ordination by God refers to God actually actively making things happen. R.C. Sproul, another Calvinist, also said if there's one atom in the universe that's not being controlled by God, then he's not sovereign. Well, depends on what you mean by controlled.

I would say this: if there's anything in the universe that God doesn't allow and it happens anyway, then he's not sovereign. And he is; he is sovereign. But his sovereignty, the word sovereignty does not refer to someone who controls everything. That's kind of how Calvinism uses the term and assumes it to mean that. It assumes that if we say God is sovereign over everything, that means he micromanages. It is also called meticulous providence, that everything that happens down to the smallest detail is happening through God's direct providence making it happen. The Bible does not teach that specifically because it does teach that people do things that God was not happy about; in fact he even says, "I didn't tell you to do that, it didn't even cross my mind," he told them in Jeremiah.

There are things that people do that God did not ordain for them to do. But does that mean he wasn't sovereign? No, it means that his exercise of his sovereignty is such as to allow some people to make their own decisions that he's not directly controlling. Now he doesn't let them do everything they want to because there would be some things that if they chose to do it it could interfere with his purposes. And he is sovereign; sovereign means he's got the right to do whatever he wants. But having the right to do whatever you want doesn't mean that you choose to involve yourself in every little thing.

Kings of countries are sovereigns. They can do what they want, but most of them don't want to interfere in the private lives of their citizens 24/7. Most of them don't care what the average peasant eats for dinner or how early in the morning he gets up or what clothes he puts on. Most kings, though they have the right to do what they want, they don't have any problem letting some of the people subject to them make some decisions for themselves. This does not compromise their sovereignty. Calvinism, at least many Calvinists teach that everything has to be ordained directly by God, every move, every choice that people make, or else somehow God's not in control.

If somebody's going to make a choice that God did not ordain and he doesn't want them to do it, he can stop them because he can do whatever he wants to. But that doesn't mean he always does stop them and we find people do things that upset him. We could say he didn't stop them but he didn't give permission either. They're doing what he told them not to do like Adam and Eve eating the fruit. According to Calvinism, Adam and Eve ate the fruit because God ordained that they would and it was inevitable before they were even born, before they were created; it was decreed in the councils of God that Adam and Eve would eat that fruit.

I believe that's not true. It is awfully kind of harsh to make people do something then punish them because they did it. I believe God gave them a free will. I don't say he was surprised at the way they exercised it, but the point is he could give them free will or not. When he made the animals he didn't give them free will like he gave people. God doesn't have to give free will, but when he made people he didn't want just another kind of animals. He wanted a being that is in his own image, a being that has some volitional rational functions like he does.

In doing so, I believe, and I think all Christians do except for Calvinists, that God made humans with the freedom to do things that God would actually prefer they didn't do. But he doesn't stop them unless he feels he has to and he can, but he doesn't get involved in every mistake they make. He lets people choose, he lets the consequences come for their actions and 40 men wanted to kill Paul, they said they wouldn't eat or drink anything until they'd killed Paul. God didn't tell them to do that, but he also didn't want Paul dead so he stopped them. The Bible says God intervened and they weren't able to get to Paul.

God can stop people from doing things if they'll foul things up badly. But also many times he lets us make decisions so he doesn't control every little thing, though he can if he wants to. I'm out of time. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. We do have a Zoom meeting tonight; find out how to get on it at our website. God bless you.