The Narrow Path

Steve Gregg: Good afternoon and welcome to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we're live for an hour each weekday afternoon so that we can take your calls. Right now I'm looking at a switchboard that has some lines open, so if you want to get through, it may be more accessible right now than it will be at any other point in the hour. But we do have more than one line open if you want to take it. If you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith, this is a good time to call. If you disagree with the host and want to say why, we always love to hear from people like you. The number is 844-484-5737. That number again is 844-484-5737.

And just now as I said, if you disagree with something I say we want to hear from you, I just realized how old school that is. Maybe some of the younger people listening don't realize this is literally true. I was raised at a time when interaction between people who disagree was considered to be intellectually helpful. It was never assumed that if someone disagrees that they hate you.

I realize there's a younger generation or two that basically have been raised with the notion that if someone doesn't agree with your position, they hate you and you have to hate them back. I'm sorry, I'm not going to run with those changes in the culture. The interest of truth is best served by both sides being articulated on some issue. My slogan since my childhood has been, "The truth will always have the best arguments." And therefore, if you have the best arguments on your side, then you have the truth, or at least if your arguments are better than mine, you're closer to the truth than I am.

By the way, Christians are people by definition who love truth. If you don't love truth, I don't know that you can be said to be converted since Jesus said, "I am the truth." Truth is itself a huge value on the short list of the huge values of the Christian. If you are a Christian and you hold a view different than my own, one of us is further from the truth on that point than the other. For us both to discover what is true is certainly to the advantage of all concerned including both of us.

So I truly do invite and welcome people who disagree and I don't get offended by people who disagree, nor should anyone else be offended when someone disagrees. That's simply a modern, thin-skinned snowflake kind of an idea that has been foisted on the younger generations—that if someone doesn't agree with you, you have to hate them. Nonsense. You have to love the truth, and if you love the truth, you love to hear all sides so that you can evaluate where the truth lies in the controversy.

That's my philosophy, and it's not original with me. That's simply the way people thought for thousands of years until day before yesterday. So I'm old school. This program is definitely old school in that respect. We don't mind discussion, we don't mind debate, we don't mind disagreement. Every day I say that. If you disagree with the host, feel free to call, bring correction, balanced comment.

I realize that I'm not sure people take me seriously when I say that. Some do, but some younger people might think, "I disagree, but I don't want to say anything because it might hurt his feelings." You're not going to hurt my feelings. If you don't agree, let's talk about it. I'd love to hear from you. All right, well we're going to talk first of all—by the way the number is 844-484-5737. And our first caller today is Russ who's calling from Denver, Colorado. Hi, Russ. Welcome. Thanks for joining us.

Russ: Hi, Steve. Thanks for taking my call. I love that intro because I'm actually calling in to disagree with you about an answer you gave yesterday. Respectfully, of course. I love your show, I love what you're doing, and I'm definitely calling to respectfully disagree and hopefully get closer to the truth myself.

Yesterday you took a caller who had questions about his belief in the Eucharist and if it was the body of Christ. I come from an Orthodox Christian perspective, and I actually agree with a lot of what you said. You're right that the Last Supper was a Passover meal that Jesus was reinterpreting around himself, and you can't understand it without the Jewish background around it.

Steve Gregg: Hey, by the way, your voice is getting garbled at times. Are you in a bad spot?

Russ: I didn't think so, but I might be.

Steve Gregg: Well, I think I've been able to follow so far. I want to hear every word, but go ahead. Your voice is simply disappearing now. Are you on a cell phone?

Russ: I am.

Steve Gregg: Okay, I think you're in a bad spot. But please find a good spot if you want or call back from a good spot because I'd love to talk to you about your issues.

Russ: Sure. I tell you what, if you can put me on hold, take the next caller and then take me second, I'll try to find a better spot.

Steve Gregg: Okay, that'd be great. I'll do that because I'd love to hear what you have to say. All right, you're on hold now. Okay, let's talk to CJ in Plymouth, Michigan. Hi, CJ. Welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

CJ: Hi, thanks. I called before and it was the last second of the show, so I didn't get to ask my question correctly. I was curious on all the teachings on Satan being a fallen angel named Lucifer, the best angel, leader of worship—I've even heard Archangel—and I just can't find none of that in the Bible. So I was wondering do the schools teach that? And I was wondering do you think that the devil, Satan, do you think that's a fallen angel?

Steve Gregg: Well, the Bible doesn't tell us whether he is or whether he's not. You are right that almost all Christians take it for granted that Lucifer is a name for Satan and that he was once a great angel, some would say an Archangel, and that he rebelled against God because of his pride. He waged a war against the angels in heaven with the third that were on his side and he lost and he was cast to earth. Ever since then, he's been the enemy of God and of God's people called Satan. Now Satan, of course, is a Hebrew word that means the adversary.

In the Old Testament, it's not clear that the word Satan is used as a personal name. It may be, but in Job where it talks about Satan came before God and made requests to do Job, actually it says "the Satan" which in Hebrew would be "the adversary." It's not clear that Satan was a proper name in that place. And Satan doesn't really appear in the Old Testament very many times. Very seldom is the devil referred to as the Satan. But in the New Testament, which was written in Greek, they retain the word Satan as the name of the devil.

In other words, Satan is actually a Hebrew word, but when the Greek New Testament is written, they don't use the Greek word for adversary. They don't translate it. They take the Hebrew name. So they're using Satan in the New Testament as a proper name for the devil. Of course, the Greek word is diabolos and that is used when you find the word devil in the New Testament. That's diabolos, but when you see Satan, it's actually using the proper name borrowed from the Old Testament Hebrew.

Now, what about Lucifer? The word Lucifer doesn't appear in the Hebrew Bible at all and it doesn't appear in most English Bibles because the only place it ever occurred in an English Bible was in the King James Version in Isaiah 14:12. The New King James follows the King James pretty closely and also uses the word Lucifer. But Lucifer is not in the Hebrew Bible. Since Isaiah wrote in Hebrew, not English, we might be surprised that although we do find the word Satan in Hebrew, we don't find the word Lucifer.

Lucifer is a Latin word. In the Latin Bible, which was translated before the English Bibles existed—the Vulgate—it used the word Lucifer, which means light bearer or some would say morning star, as the translation for the Hebrew word in Isaiah 14:12, which was a different word. The Latin Vulgate translated the Hebrew word, which means morning star or light bearer, into the Latin word that means that, which is Lucifer.

When the translation of the English was made, translators for some reason retained the Latin name Lucifer and they didn't translate it. They just retained it as a name even though in the Hebrew it was not a name and even in the Latin it was not a name. It's a flattery to a king. According to Isaiah 14, the prophecy is given to the King of Babylon. By the way, chapter 13 and 14 of Isaiah are both about Babylon. The King of Babylon there in chapter 14, verse 12 is referred to as the light bearer, the shining one, the morning star.

Therefore, it is a flattery to a king. Jesus is called the morning star in Revelation 22. It's not the same person obviously. It's just a term that might be used in the flattery of a king just as Jesus is called in the New Testament the King of Kings. Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, was called King of Kings in Daniel chapter 2. So we can see that there are non-names that are titles, illustrious titles like we might say Your Majesty or something like that in English. The Hebrew word behind it was used to speak of the King of Babylon.

When the English chose not to translate the word Lucifer but just to retain it as a proper name, then suddenly the English-speaking world began to think of Lucifer as a name and as a name for Satan. Now the other thing is that Isaiah 14 doesn't mention Satan. Isaiah 14 doesn't mention the devil at all. The entire chapter, with the exception of the last part which is about the Philistines, is about Babylon and the King of Babylon.

It's not talking about an angel because in verse 16 it tells us that this so-called Lucifer is cast into Sheol or the grave, and those who are already there will meet him and say, "Is this the man that shook the nations?" In other words, the person who's being addressed is a man, a human. That's what the King of Babylon was. He was a human. There's no suggestion at all in Isaiah 14 that an angel is in view. So the idea that Lucifer is a name for the devil has no basis in the Hebrew Bible.

It's just a peculiarity of the early English translations. There's also no basis in the Bible for saying that the devil was an angel at all. There's nothing in the Bible that mentions him being an angel. It does say in Second Corinthians that the devil is transformed into an angel of light. Which doesn't mean he is an angel. He disguises himself as an angel of light. We know that it means that because in the next line Paul says, "So it shouldn't be surprising that his ministers, the devil's ministers, transform themselves into ministers of righteousness."

In other words, they impersonate ministers of righteousness. They don't actually become and they are not ministers of righteousness. They are the ministers of Satan, but they impersonate ministers of righteousness. So Satan, using the same word, is said to impersonate an angel of light. But there's nothing in the Bible that says ever he was an angel himself. Now he might have been. I'm not saying he was or wasn't since the Bible doesn't say he wasn't or was.

The fact that Christians speak about it as if it's a given means I think that they haven't done very much work on their own in looking at the reasons that people have said this. The verses they use are really not talking about that. Ezekiel 28 is another passage that is thought to be about Satan, at least some people think so. I don't. There's no mention of Satan in it. Ezekiel 28 is addressed to the King of Tyre. Once again, it's found in a grouping of chapters that are about the city of Tyre, a Lebanese city up north of Israel.

Tyre's king is addressed in Ezekiel 28, verse 12 and following. He is said to have been a cherub. He is said to have been in the garden of God. These kinds of statements have given the impression to some people who don't know very much about the book of Ezekiel I guess, that Ezekiel is using literal language. It's clear if you read Ezekiel that Ezekiel doesn't know what literal language even is for the most part. He later talks about the Assyrian as a tree in the Garden of Eden, which is no more literal than that the King of Tyre was a cherub in the Garden of Eden.

This is just poetic language. But taking it as if it's literal, people have said, "The King of Tyre certainly wasn't in the Garden of Eden, so this must not be referring to the King of Tyre even though it says it is." Even though he is named as the addressee, it isn't really him. It's really the devil because the devil was in the Garden of Eden. Well, you can't work that from the passage because, although the devil was in the Garden of Eden, he was not a cherub. He was a serpent.

The serpent and the cherub are not the same thing in the Garden of Eden. There was a serpent there, which was the devil, and there was a cherub that God put to guard the way to the tree of life. So there are two different individuals in the Garden of Eden. One was the devil and one was a cherub. Then, of course, there was Adam and Eve and then God himself. Unless we're going to say that the King of Tyre actually was the cherub that God placed in the Garden of Eden to guard the way to the tree of life, in which case we're denying that it's the devil who is the serpent, then we're going to have to say this is all symbolic.

Which of course is the reasonable thing to say about the passage to anyone who has ever really read the book of Ezekiel and tried to pay attention to how he writes. I'm not one of those who says that the devil is necessarily a fallen angel. He could be. We simply have no information in the Bible on that subject. So those who insist upon it certainly are going to be going beyond the testimony of the Bible.

I'm sorry, I actually accidentally—I thought I was hanging up on that caller and I accidentally hung up on the previous caller. Hi, CJ. It's the other caller that I had on hold I accidentally hung up on. Please call back. We want to put you to the front of the line. The caller who wanted to disagree with me about the Eucharist. He had gone looking for a better place for his cellular call because it was going bad.

I put him on hold and accidentally hung up on him instead of on the caller I was talking to. My mistake. Please call back 844-484-5737. 844-484-5737. We have a line open for you. Please call right back. My apologies. All right, Joshua in Knoxville, Tennessee. Welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Joshua: Hey Steve, I have a question about a heresy that I've come across over the last couple of months I didn't know existed, that Paul being a false apostle. I actually have a specific question because I've looked up and seen where you've dealt with this subject on a broad scale. For me, it's pretty easy to dispute this. It's kind of like a flat earth theory. It's pretty silly to me.

But there is one point that they bring up where Paul talks about the meat sacrificed to idols. The Jerusalem council told him to not promote that, but he's like, "Hey it's okay." Then they bring up how in Revelation 2 with the church of Pergamos that Jesus is refuting, he says that one of the things he has against them is that they eat things sacrificed to idols. So Paul says it's okay but then Jesus himself in Revelation says that no it's not. How do I square that circle? How does Paul say it's okay to eat meat sacrificed to idols but then Jesus himself in Revelation says that no it's not?

Steve Gregg: Okay, well in Revelation, Jesus certainly is not referring to Paul when he says there were those who were teaching to eat meat sacrificed to idols. Paul did not teach people to do that. In Pergamos and Thyatira, there were false teachers who were teaching people to eat meat sacrificed to idols and to commit fornication. No biblical writer came out more strongly against fornication than Paul, so it can't be a reference to him.

Now did he tell people to eat meat sacrificed to idols? He did not. He did not. In First Corinthians chapters 8 through 10, he discusses that subject. It comes up probably as an extension to what he is discussing also in Romans 14 and 15. What Paul says is it's not what you eat that matters. Now it is true that the Jerusalem council said we're not going to put the Gentile believers under the law of Moses, but let's ask them to abstain from certain things which are offensive to the Jews because Moses has in every city those who've been teaching him in the synagogues.

Therefore, there's a whole bunch of Jewish people in every city that have been conditioned by the teaching of the law to be repulsed by certain things. If we give the Gentiles total liberty, we want to at least tell them to be careful not to do the things that are going to repulse the Jews. We don't want to turn them off. After all, this was the Jerusalem council, so they were concerned about reaching Jewish people.

They were concerned that Gentile Christians who are careless with their liberty might do some things that Gentiles were famous for doing, which would offend Jews and probably drive them away from Christ. So what the four things were: tell them to abstain from the pollutions of idols, meaning eating them in idol feasts; blood; things strangled; and fornication. So there's four things. They said let's ask them not to do these things because those things are offensive to Jews.

Now they didn't say it in those terms, but that's what they implied. They said because in all these cities where the Gentiles live, there's lots of people who for generations have been conditioned by the teaching of Moses in their synagogues. So obviously you've got to be careful not to overstep. Paul himself in First Corinthians 9 said he observed those principles. That is he didn't want to offend people by doing things in front of them that displeased them.

He said when I'm with those who are under the law, I behave as if I'm under the law, meaning he puts himself under the same restrictions that the Jews do. He says so I can win those who are under the law. But he says when I'm with those who are not under the law, that is when there's no Jews present or no one in the Jewish religion present, I live as one without the law. So he can do the things that the law forbids Jews to do when he's with people who won't be offended by it.

He does this as a strategy. When he came to Corinth, according to Acts, he was carrying with him the letter from the Jerusalem council, which told the Gentile Christians they don't have to be...