20260318

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Good afternoon and welcome to the Narrow Path Radio Broadcast.

My name is Steve Greg and we are live as is usually the case Monday through Friday at

this time.

The live broadcast provides an opportunity for real time interaction between you and me

if you want to call in the program.

If you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith, or if you have a disagreement

with the host, that's basically the two things we talked about.

If you have any question about the Bible or the Christian faith, we'll discuss that.

Or if you've already heard me give an answer to somebody and you say, I don't think that's

right, and you want to balance comment and correct it, you're always welcome to do that.

The purpose of the show is not to showcase the viewpoints and personal opinions of the host

about things, everybody's got an opinion.

And I have one too, but this isn't really about my opinion.

This is about searching the scriptures, and if I'm wrong, you do me a favor by showing

to them.

And so I don't have any problem if you call to disagree.

In fact, I actually kind of enjoy those calls in some respects best.

So feel free to call, but not right now because the phone lines are just filled up.

So there's no place for you to call to come in.

But get this number anyway, because within a minute or two or three or four lines will

open up, and then you'll be able to get through.

The number to call is 844-484-5737, that's 844-484-5737.

I have an announcement to make about today and tonight and Friday night and Saturday night.

I'm in Boulder Creek in the Santa Cruz Mountains right now, but I'm going into town after

the show.

And I'm going to be in the studio of a local Santa Cruz station, KSEO, which is AM-1080.

This is not a Christian station, it's a secular station.

And most of the people who work there, maybe all the people who work there are not Christians.

But they're my friends, because when I lived in Santa Cruz many years ago, I actually

bought time on that station on Sunday nights and had a Christian program directed to non-Christians.

It was a talk show like this.

But I told the people, I'm a Christian, but I don't want Christians calling in.

I want people who are not Christians calling in.

I want to talk with you about your worldview.

I want you to share with me what you believe and why I like to share with you, but I believe

and why I have a conversation.

I did that for 52 weeks on Sunday nights at this station, which I bought time.

And I was the only Christian there except at that time.

The general manager was a Christian, but he's no longer there, but he's still in connection

with him.

But one guy who was there, the guy who screamed my calls for me on Sunday nights, goes

by the on-air name Dave Michaels.

And he now, this year's later, my show is like 17 years ago or something like that.

He now has the whole afternoon, weekdays, his own talk show.

And he's had me on as a guest at least once before.

And since I'm in town, he's had me on as a guest today.

So from five o'clock to six o'clock, specific time, I'm going to be a guest on his program,

I think it's called Flight 1080, 1080 is the dial number for the station.

You can listen live online.

In fact, if you go to our website, then arrowpath.com, and click the tab to his announcements.

You'll find that the actual website, the actual link to go to it or listen to it, shall

live is there.

You can do that.

And that'll be from five o'clock to six o'clock, specific time.

And then an hour later, I'm speaking in Santa Cruz.

Michael Olson, who is the former general manager of KSCO, whom I met when I was doing programs

there.

He has set up a gathering.

He does every year for me to come here, Santa Cruz.

And I think he calls it a Bible challenge.

And he's advertised it as the great debate over the Resertion of Christ.

It's me debating me.

So I guess we couldn't get an actual opponent to debate me.

So I'm going to debate both sides of the Resertion of Christ.

That's tonight.

It has a sample in seven o'clock.

Anyway, so those things are happening today.

I'm doing those, what I'm done here, I'm going to go do that over show from five to six

and at seven to eight thirty we have this other gathering, both in Santa Cruz.

Same way of explaining it, but that's what's going on.

Now on Friday night and Saturday night, I'm still away from home.

I'm going to be teaching in Monterey on Friday night and in San Jose on Saturday night.

So if you're in any of those areas, you can join us if you want to.

You need to go to our website, thenarrowpath.com.

Look under announcements in the time and place of those meetings.

We'll be listed there.

All right.

Enough about me.

Let's talk about you.

Peter and Burbank, California.

What do you think it about?

Good afternoon, Steve.

Thank you for taking my call.

I was just curious.

How's it to Christian's Biblicking date?

How's your Christians Biblicking date?

That's a really a good question and the reason it's a bit of a challenge is because dating

as we know it was not something people did in ancient times.

People of course pared up and got married.

They got engaged.

They got the troids and got married.

But generally speaking, that betrothal in that marriage did not come at the end of a period

of dating and certainly not dating around multiple people.

It's just the whole idea of dating around and finding a mate that way is ultra-modern.

Even in early America, they didn't do it that way and most ancient societies didn't.

So the Bible doesn't even know of anyone who did that and therefore doesn't address it.

Now does that mean we shouldn't have dating?

Well, there are some drawbacks, but I'm not saying it's immoral to have dating.

It depends on whether it's immoral or not.

That is to say whether you do immoral things.

But also it has to do with what you're doing to another person's heart.

The main thing we need to remember is that whatever we do, we need to do for the glory of

God and we also need to be doing to others what we would want to have done to us.

Now there is a case we made against even dating.

There are other things that can happen.

For example, many years ago, many of you know I was married in 1980 and my wife was killed

in an accident that same year.

But the way we connected was we didn't really date, at least not until we were engaged.

We were part of a group of young Christian single men and a group of young single women

just did things together.

We lived in Southern California, went to the beach together, went to church together,

went out to eat after church, all of us.

There was no pairing up, there was just friends.

And in that context, over a period of time, I just discovered that I was very interested

in one of the young women that was available.

I didn't know if she's interested in me or not, but I just, you know, we weren't dating.

We were just in a group of people who weren't, there was no pretensions of romance.

There was no one trying to impress other people.

It's just Christian fellowship.

But in that context, I turned out we both were very interested and so I did take her out

once, intending to propose to her.

Now, you know, I say you hadn't even dated her, that's right, we hadn't dated.

But we'd been out together with other people a lot of times.

I'd gotten to know her pretty well.

In a real life situation, marriage is real life.

Dating is usually not real life.

Dating is everyone on their best behavior.

Dating is people trying to impress each other, trying to win each other.

And you know, I'm not saying it's entirely fake or anything like that, but it's just not

real life.

Once you're married, you don't keep trying to impress each other and win each other.

Hopefully, you don't have to.

But real life is where we met and got to know each other without dating.

And then, of course, I did take her out.

And I intended to propose to her, but the funny thing is that something she said made me

think she wasn't interested, so I'd chickened out.

But I still wanted to marry her, so I took her out a second time and I proposed to her.

She said, yes.

So anyway, I'm not saying it has to be done that way, but I'll say it was, it certainly

prevented a lot of temptation and compromise and stuff that happens even among Christians

when they date.

I'm not saying that everyone who dates is compromising necessarily, but let's face it

when a man and a woman who are single, who are attracted to each other, are out alone

at night, somewhere, bad things often happen.

They don't always happen, but they often do, things that Christians should not do.

And so there is something to be said for alternatives to dating.

What did people do in biblical times?

Well, it was different then.

People didn't move all over every few years, move to a new town and stuff.

They all lived in the same village for generations.

And they knew each other, everyone knew everyone else in the village.

And so a man who married a woman, generally speaking, had grown up in the village with

her new or all his life.

And what happened was that if the boy wanted to marry a certain girl, he'd tell his father.

And his father would go to the girl's father and say, my son's interested in marriage

is your daughter interested.

The girl's father would go to the girl and say, are you interested?

This guy wants to marry you.

If she said yes, then they were betrothed.

If she said no, then the boy had to move along and look for someone else.

But they didn't date.

They didn't need to because they knew each other.

And this is the thing.

One of the most important things about marrying somebody is to really know them, to know

them well, and simply dating in a sort of recreational, romantic setting.

Isn't the best way to really know somebody?

Because like I said, they're not being themselves completely.

But if you get to know someone in a real life situation, whether you've known them all

or live, or you go to church with them, and you've in a social group that you're both

part of, and there's no pressure, you know, the hormonal thing isn't going on.

It's a lot safer.

I'm not saying you can't date, I'm just saying, because the Bible doesn't forbid it.

It's just that the Bible knows nothing of it.

One thing Paul said to Timothy was that he should treat young women, because if he's a

young man, he should treat young women as sisters with all purity.

Now if two people go out on a date, they can still treat each other with all purity,

like brother and sister.

That's not generally speaking what people are thinking of when they go on a date.

But it is possible.

You can get to know someone one-on-one over a period of time.

One thing I would say is that the involvement of parents is really a good thing if it can

be done.

Now of course, if you're a Christian and you look at her Christian girls, she might come

from a non-Christian family.

In fact, her parents might not be approving of Christianity at all, which is a problem,

because you don't really want to marry somebody if their parents don't approve.

I mean, you might.

You might do it, but it's not going to make a smooth situation if her parents don't want

you in the family.

Sometimes marriages survive with that situation, but it's certainly a sub-ideal.

The ideal, I think, is for the whole family to eventually get to know each other.

You can see her family and say, are these the people I want to have as my family, too,

because of my marriage?

They will be.

Do I want this guy for a brother-in-law?

Do I want this person for a mother-in-law?

The ideal is to really get to know each other, whole families and so forth, in a very

situation in no sense sexually charged at all.

Those are the principles I would have in dating.

Now I will say I heard a story once, which I repeat often, and that is a son asked his father.

The son was going out for his first date with a girl, and he was a Christian son, and

the father was a Christian, and apparently so was the girl.

The son said to his father, Dad, I don't really know what to do on a date, and his father

said, I thought we are going to go out to dinner and go see a movie together.

The son said, that's what I mean, you don't know what I mean, I don't know what to do

with her, and his father said, oh, okay, well, how about this?

Do you think you are going to marry her?

The son said, well, hardly know, I don't, I probably not, you know, never know.

And his father said, well, do you think that the girl that you will someday marry might

be going out to somebody tonight that she's not going to marry?

And of course, his son said, I don't know, I don't know who I'm going to marry, and I

don't know what, but it's possible.

It's possible that my future wife is going out tonight with somebody else.

And his father said, well, what would you like that man to do tonight with your future

wife?

He said, Jesus said, what you want done to you due to others.

If you're with somebody else's future wife, well, what would you want done with your future

wife as another man is with her tonight?

That's a pretty good way of deciding how to date if you're going to date.

Anyway, those are some thoughts.

I have a lot of teaching on this general subject at our website under the series, the Radically

Christian Counterculture, a series called Tortor Radically Christian Counterculture.

There's some lectures on the pursuit of a mate, and it talks about dating and these

kinds of things, too, where I also say some of the things I just said, but more.

Anyway, that's the best I can do for you.

I've got a lot of people waiting.

Thank you.

All right, God bless, man.

Howard and Boise, Idaho, welcome to the narrow path.

Thanks for calling.

Hi Steve, I was reading in a mission's report.

Here was a ministry that taught women how to read, how to learn how to do skills.

They realized that they could actually help their kids do homework, you know, that they

had value.

Now, that sounds a lot to me like self-esteem and self-love.

How would you relate those?

I'm not.

Let me see if I can put that together.

You're talking about women teaching their, you know, people teaching women to read, which

results in them feeling better about themselves, having more sense of self-worth, self-esteem

that you're talking about?

Yeah, in cultures, you know, where women are debased.

Right.

Well, I don't know that we, I don't know that our focus should be on teaching people

that's self-worth.

It just depends on, or self-esteem.

It depends on what we mean by those terms.

I think we should make ourselves and others worth as much as possible.

I don't think my goals should be that I have a sense of self-worth.

My goal should be that I am worth something, whether I know it or not, that if God thinks

I am, I need to be the best person that God wants me to be, which will make me a person

who's worth something.

And I don't do that so that I'll feel good about myself, but so that I will have value

to other people and value to God and be able to, you know, that the world will be a better

place because I was here than it would have been if I hadn't been here.

In other words, I should be committed to self-improvement to the degree that I think it will

enhance my usefulness and my, you know, my fruitfulness and my value to others and to God.

And you know, if I do become, let's say a person who can read in most situations is

worth more than someone who can't, for example, you could tell by some, the wages that are

paid to somebody who can read as opposed to wages paid to someone who can't read, generally

speaking, you're worth more.

If you can speak two languages or three, you're worth more yet.

I mean, there's lots of things, lots of skills that make you valuable to people and there's

things you can't do lacking certain skills.

If a person can't read, they can't learn on their own as well because they can't read.

And there's other things that reading allows you to do, like just function normal life,

in most cases, which you're handicapped by, if you don't.

So I think if women are illiterate, I mean, if there are illiterate women who are being taught

how to read, that will increase their value, not their existential value as human beings,

but their value to society, their value to the church, their value to God, their God can use

them in more ways.

Now, most of us can read, but if we can't read, we may still feel like, maybe I should

learn a foreign language.

Maybe I should gain some kind of a skill that I lack that would be useful.

We should always be interested in proving and becoming the best version of ourselves

that God has gifted us to become.

Now will we feel good about ourselves?

Probably, not necessarily in a proud way.

Now if you become an expert at something and everyone else is worse than you, you might

get proud, and that's not good, if that's what self-esteem means, if self-esteem means

I'm really valuable compared to everybody else, I'm not just an ordinary person.

Well then, that's that attitude obviously stinks, but if you actually do have value, there's

no virtue in telling yourself that you don't.

I mean, if you have a gift, let's just say you're really a good preacher, and you don't

want to dwell on I'm a good preacher that makes me proud, but if people tell you you're

a good preacher, there's every reason to say, well, thank God for that, because that's

what I do, I preach, I mean, much worse if I wasn't a good one.

But the point is, there's such a thing as valuing the fact that you have gifts, valuing

the fact that you are competent in some things.

Some categories where competence is not very common among people.

The more you can make yourself useful to God and others, I think the better it is.

So I'm all for teaching any illiterate people to read, I think everyone should learn

to read if it's possible.

Obviously, many people have survived throughout history without knowing how to read, but just

think how much more they could have done if they could read.

Well, if you're concerned, because the people who are teaching literacy to these women

are saying, now they'll have better self-esteem, I'm not sure what they mean by that.

I can read, but that doesn't make me feel especially superior to anyone, because most

people can read.

Now that on the other hand, if it means it'll give them more confidence going into the

workplace or going to school or something like that, well, that's true.

I mean, if self-esteem just means confidence, like you don't feel like you're too inferior

to function in the competitive world, it's good to have confidence.

And as long as you're not pride, you don't want to be a proud person, but there's certainly

nothing wrong with saying, hey, I'm pretty good at this.

I can use this.

God can use this to help people.

It's knowing that you can do something and knowing that there's value in it isn't pride.

Although, of course, some people are proud people, and that may become one of many occasions

to pride in their life, it doesn't necessarily predict for pride, in my opinion, or doesn't

equate to pride.

So when you disagree with the people who are trying to build self-esteem or love yourself

as I mean, the main difference is, you know, is this going to be something useful to

the Lord, as opposed to just me, I think you proudly?

Well, if I just want to be better just so I want to feel better than other people, that's

obviously not humble, but you can say, I want to be better because I believe in the

range of things that God may wish to use me in, it would be very important for me to

get better at this particular thing.

That's not pride.

Pride is a sinful, self-centered, inward competition you have with others to be the best and

be admired and to be to beat them out in a competition.

That's not, that's, that's what I'd be pride, but yeah, I mean, just to want to be better

than you are, to be able to be more functional in the difference, no, I don't think that's

pride.

Although some people I call that self-esteem, the Bible doesn't use the term self-esteem,

so when someone says, well, self-esteem bad, I, I think the wording sounds kind of contrary

to Christianity, but on the other hand, it may be being used in a way that isn't.

You've got to ask what they mean by self-esteem.

If it just means that these women, once they learn to read, they can function more confidently

in the workplace and so forth, I'd say, yeah, I don't say anything wrong with that.

There's no sin in that.

I appreciate your call.

Sean and Vallejo over the, Vallejo, California, welcome to the narrow path.

Yeah.

I give Vallejo even a big area, but thanks for taking my call, quick question in regards

to whether or not Christmas and Easter are pagan holidays, and if Christians should

observe or celebrate the resurrection and celebrate the birth of Christ during that time

of year.

If we participate in those days, you know, like with the Christmas tree and with the,

you know, the children have an Easter bunny and eggs, is that, are we worshiping idols,

you know, in a sense?

Well, not if you're not.

I mean, some people worship idols.

Very possible.

It's not hard to imagine that people could turn any holiday into something pagan.

Now as far as celebrating Easter and Christmas in the New Testament, we don't read that any

of the disciples ever celebrated holidays like that, but we don't read that they condemned

celebrating holidays, celebrating the resurrection of Christ as we don't Easter.

That was something, I think the early Christian understood that their whole life is a celebration

of the resurrection of Christ, that the resurrection of Christ is the defining thing that makes

them Christians and being Christians is like what makes them who they are and they live

their lives, you know, in a world view that is dominated by the fact that Jesus rose

from the dead, he's at the right hand of God and he's the reigning over the universe.

That's kind of the whole mentality that makes one a Christian.

Now if you want to take a special day out of the year to focus on it in a different way,

I don't see any sin in doing that, but the early church didn't see a necessity of doing

that apparently.

They, you know, they just, I think they just lived their whole lives as a celebration of

the resurrection of Christ.

And likewise of the birth of Christ, there's no evidence at all that anyone was celebrating

the birth of Christ during the first century and they never really even preserved at least

in Scripture any knowledge of when Jesus was born.

Now a good case can be made and I've read about this just the past year or two things I

didn't know because I had heard otherwise.

Maybe I've heard what you had heard that I heard that Easter and Christmas were adopted

by Christianity from pagan religions.

As it turns out, there's not really any evidence historically of that.

It is true that some things are practiced by some people in the celebration of Easter

that might have some connection with some pagan ideas, though they don't have to be.

The question is, am I celebrating a pagan God, not if I'm not, you know, what are you

doing on Easter?

Well, you might be celebrating a pagan God if you are a pagan and you worship pagan

God.

If you're celebrating the resurrection of Christ, I can't think of anything more pure and

harmless than that.

Now, so says, yeah, but pagans, they celebrate that day too, well, so what?

You know, you know, today is, well, not today, but tomorrow is Thursday.

Thursday is named after four, but in order God, what we still call it Thursday, but we

don't worship Torah.

See, what has happened is the pagan world has been conquered by the gospel of Christ.

The fact that many things that might have some pagan connotations no longer do, because

they've been totally overtaken by a different worldview, a different God, a different religion

called Christianity, means that things that were once pagans, like some of you listening

were once pagans, are now Christians.

It seems to me like certain cultural things can become Christian too, and it certainly

seems to me that Easter and Christmas would be among them, because I don't know any, I

don't know anyone who's selfish Christmas as a celebration of, you know, false gods.

So I don't, you know, keep it or not, there's no mandatory command of God to keep it, but

you don't have to condemn it either.

You're listening to the narrow path.

We have another half hour.

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Welcome back to the narrow path, radio broadcast.

Finding a Steve Greg and we're live for another half hour.

We have open phone lines.

We did not have half hour ago when we went on the air, our lines were full, they are not

all full now.

We have calls waiting and we have open lines as well.

If you'd like to call any of the questions about the Bible or the Christian faith, or

you want to disagree with the host, feel free to give me a call.

Here's the number.

844-484-57-37, again, 844-484-57-37, you can get right through if you call now because

there are some lines open.

It may not be five minutes from now.

Let's go back to the phone and we'll talk to Matt, you're calling for new jersey.

Hi Matt, you're welcome.

Hey Steve, thanks for taking the call brother.

There's two questions.

One biblical, one not so much.

First book of Jude, and probably just giving you the chapter in the book, you're popping

up the question.

Book of Jude chapter 9.

I should be verse 9, excuse me, but Michael the Archangel, when he was disputing with

the devil, was arguing about the body of Moses did not pronounce it against him or blessed

him with judgment but said the word revealed to you.

What exactly is this situation that he's referring to?

I've obviously researched this, I'm interested in hearing your opinion, and secondly, do you

do a, is there any opportunity to like a one-on-one with you, whether it's Zoom or phone

call, not necessarily even in person, because it's something that you would be willing to

do or have them?

Well, yes, as for the second call, second question.

I like to spend as little time on the phone as possible.

I like to be face-to-face with people or I like to correspond with people.

Being stuck to my phone, I'm very busy and anytime I spend on the phone is time I, you

know, I just feel I'd rather be talking to that person face-to-face or if that's not

possible, I'd rather dialogue in writing with them.

That doesn't mean I'll never phone anybody if you write to me and tell me what you want

to talk about and ask if we can talk to the phone.

It may be that I could say yes, but in any case you can email me and ask me specifically

what it is you want to talk about or whatever, and I can see if I can fit something in.

As far as Jude are quoting or making reference in Jude verse 9 to Michael the Archangel, disputing

with Satan over the body of Moses, this is a very interesting story, but it's not in

the Bible elsewhere.

Now, the story of Moses, of course, is in the Pentateuch in the first five books of the

Bible, but that doesn't contain any reference to Satan disputing for the body of Moses,

Michael, and so forth, which means that the story he's referring to is not in the Bible.

Now it happens that there is a book that it is in, or I should say there was a book that

it was in.

The book he's referring to is called the Assumption of Moses, and it was a book that was written

not an inspired book, not a book of the Bible, just one of the apocryphal books, there were

many apocryphal books that people wrote religious books in the general period of the New Testament

times and before, about famous people, and sometimes even claiming to be written by those

famous people, though they were in fact written much later by someone else anonymously,

who claimed to be the famous people.

Books like that exist in abundance.

Many of them I'm sure have perished, as they know and copied them enough for us to have

copies that survived.

Scholars have survived, and so scholars have quite a bit of inter-testaminal literature that

is not inspired, not part of the Bible, but was Jewish in origin.

It was written as, you know, edifying Jewish fiction, basically.

And then there was the Assumption of Moses, which is what Jude is referring to, that has

not survived.

We don't have it.

However, it did survive after biblical times for a while before it just passed out of existence.

And that when Jude cited it, it was obviously a book that people were reading at the time.

Later on, I think it was origin of Eusibius a few centuries later, they knew that book

too, and they recognized some of the church fathers knew what he was referring to because

that book was still around, but it's not now.

So it was not a true story, but we have to ask them, why did Jude quote it?

Why did Jude refer to it?

Why did Jude talk as if it happened?

Well, when we preach the gospel in a certain culture, we are also mindful of what other

influences are in that culture, and whether any of them can be turned to the advantage of

our presentation.

Paul, for example, when he spoke to the Greek philosophers on Mars Hill, he quoted Greek

poets to make some of his points.

Actually, even writing to Titus about the Cretans, because Titus was in Crete, Paul quoted

a Cretan poet, not at all saying that they're inspired, not all came into the Scripture,

but knowing that these were well-known writings that had an impact on the culture of the people

that he's writing to or about, or speaking to.

Now Jude was writing to people who were very familiar with the book of Enoch, and he quotes

Enoch.

They were apparently also familiar with the book of the assumption Moses.

Now neither of these are biblical books, neither of them are inspired books, and we might

even dare say they aren't even true books, necessarily.

They could be, but there's no reason to believe they are true.

They are just books that people were familiar with.

And if you've listened me a long time, you'll know I compare it with, like, if a preacher

would use an illustration from The Chronicles of Narnia.

As audience knows, The Chronicles of Narnia are not true stories.

But some things in those chronicles make really good serenostrations.

And when Jude says, you need to not resist authorities and use abusive languages toward

them.

Remember the story of Michael the Archangel, just being with Satan, he didn't bring

any accusations, he simply said the Lord rebuke you.

Now he's referring to a story that the audience was familiar with.

Not necessarily a true story, but one they knew.

And to my mind, it's not very different than, let's just say, if I was talking about the

need to turn the other cheek, and for people who had seen the movie, to kill a mockingbird,

which most people in my generation have even read the book or seen the movie.

And I said, you know, remember that Mr. Vuel spit in Atticus Finch's face and a very

tense situation.

Atticus Finch was a lot bigger than him, could have decked him, but he just kind of wiped

off the spit off the face with his handkerchief and walked away calmly.

That's very much like what Jesus is teaching.

Now I just told the story of Atticus Finch being spat on as if it really happened.

But everyone knows it didn't.

It's a fiction story.

But it's familiar enough that I can allude to it as if it's a true story without implying

that it is a true story.

It's just a very picturesque illustration of the kind of principle I'm talking about.

And one familiar to the here.

So that's kind of what I think Jude's doing when he uses Enoch and uses this other book

that we don't have.

I think he's using books.

He's alluding to stuff that's well known in the religious culture.

No one knew it was not inspired.

He knew it was not inspired.

He wasn't claiming that it was.

But these were some things in popular literature of the time that illustrated some of the points

he wanted to make.

Now if he was saying they were true stories or if his audience thought they were and

he knew they weren't, then that'd be very deceptive.

But if we're talking about something that's very commonplace that everybody knows, okay,

we know this story but we don't think it's true, but we can still, there's something

in it.

That's a good illustration for what I'm talking about.

Then to use those stories is not disingenuous.

And I believe that not only Paul, like I said, quoting Greek poets and things like that

as if they were true, you know, shows an example of doing that same thing.

In some ways, I think Jesus did the same thing with Phariseic traditions.

I think sometimes he just went ahead and accommodated their traditions whether they were true or not.

For example, when they said he's cast out demons by Biels above the Prince of demons.

Well, there's nothing in the scripture that says Biels above is the Prince of demons.

Biels above was a God of the Philistines, which in the Jewish traditions, the rabbis had

come to identify this God of the Philistines as the Prince of the demons.

There was no inspiration behind that.

But when the Pharisees said Jesus cast out demons by Biels above the Prince of demons,

Jesus just went with it and he said, well, if I'm cast out demons by Biels above,

then who years since cast them up, I mean, she just kind of accepted their premise

and made his point from it.

I actually think the story of Lazarus and the rich man is another example of Jesus doing this kind of thing.

That story seems to be something the rabbis told or something very much like it,

because there are stories like it in the Talmud.

But I'm not sure that Jesus is saying this is a true story.

Any more than the Pharisees did when they told similar stories and just like it.

But I think he may have been taking the Pharisee familiar scenario

and using it for an illustration of a pointy one of them.

That's just me.

Other people would explain these things differently.

I appreciate your call, brother.

Thanks for joining us.

Thank you.

I know.

Angela from Vancouver, Island, British Columbia.

Hi.

Yes.

That was excellent advice you gave to the end person about dating thieves.

That was excellent.

But anyway, my question is in Genesis, chapter 1, verses 5 and verse 10.

And you know, this is something that I've gone over.

I don't know how many hundreds of times, and the other day it just came to light.

And I can't quite figure it out.

Verse 5, God called the light day and the darkness he called night.

And then God called the dry land earth and he called the water seas.

But those words are capitalized day and night and earth and seas.

And I don't quite understand why that would be capitalized.

Well, they don't have to because the Hebrew doesn't capitalize on the translators.

I think it says since God called the light day, it's like he gave it a name.

You know, let's give it that name day.

So the English translators decided to capitalize it as if it was a title or a name.

Right.

But the Hebrew doesn't do that.

It's simply a translator's choice.

Okay.

So, yeah, it wasn't anything especially significant.

You know, well, I've been looking at the NIV for so many years and then my husband now

has a new King James version and there it was and we couldn't figure it out.

I thought it would be something simple like that.

Yeah, sure.

But I have one other.

Yeah.

It's like, yes, sometimes the pronouns that are used for God, he and him and some translations

are capitalized.

That's to help you know when the he or the him is actually a reference to God or Christ.

But in the Hebrew and the Greek, they're not capitalized.

It's just a transition.

No.

Oh, well, that's good to know too because I'm old school and whenever I'm writing anything

out, I always capitalize the each and he and he and him.

I do too.

In all my books, in all my books, when I say here, he'll talk about God or Jesus and

I was capitalized.

It's just habit.

Yeah.

Just habit and sort of a reverence it almost seems when you're referring to God.

But my other question is I've been doing a little lesson on some children in our little

group have been given their first Bibles and I wanted to do a little history on how

we got our Bibles and in this one, one passage that I came across, it says, it is a library

of 66 books written over 35 different authors in a period of approximately 1,500 years.

And that's what Stein made me with the period of 1,500 years because of course, they started

writing the Bible many, many centuries ago.

And so it's the 1,500 years from when it was all collected into one place.

No.

Now, 1,500 years is the period or 14 or 1500 years is the period between the writing of

the first earliest book of the Bible and the writing of the last book of the Bible.

So the whole Bible is written over a period of 1,500 years.

So Moses, as far as we know, Moses was the earliest author.

Now we don't know who wrote, we don't know who wrote Job.

Job definitely is telling a story that goes earlier than Moses' time, but Moses might

have written Job.

No one knows who wrote Job, but the earliest, you know, time we know of on both the internet

where the books that Moses wrote, that was 1,400 years before Christ.

And of course, the last books were written in the generation of Christ by the Apostles.

So the total amount of time is about 1,500 years from the earliest book of the Bible to

the latest.

Now, as far as the history covered, it's much longer, of course, right?

Moses was writing around 1,500, 1,400 BC about things that happened long before his time

when he was writing Genesis, you know.

Yes.

So there's more history than that, but as far as the span of time that these books were

written is about 1,400, 1,500 years.

Okay.

Well, thank you kindly.

Okay, Angela.

Good talking to you.

Thank you for your call.

Okay.

God bless you.

All right.

Let's talk to Priscilla, who's also in British Columbia.

She's a Vancouver.

Priscilla?

Welcome.

Hi, Steve.

Greetings.

Okay.

I want to, if you may, and thank you so much for your administrative work.

The works here that comes in the Bible, for example, 2nd Timothy 1, 7, forgot, has not

given me a spirit of fear, but one of power, love, and a sound mind.

We also have, for example, a, you probably know Steve, Proverbs, the fear of the Lord

is the beginning of wisdom.

Yeah.

What?

Why?

Like, I don't think that.

Why does that are off air?

Okay.

Yeah.

So why do some passes?

Right.

Okay.

Sure.

So why is fear sometimes commanded or commended and other times kind of forbidden or discouraged?

They're not supposed to be, some passes, they don't be afraid.

One of the most common statements in the Bible ever is, do not fear.

I mean, almost every time an angel appeared or got a beautiful, the first thing says,

don't be afraid.

Don't fear.

Now, let's face it, fear is a broad, emotional subject.

And there are times when there are things to fear and times when there are not things

to fear.

If you were sick and I handed you a liquid that you were unfamiliar with and I said, don't

be afraid, drink it, it's good for you.

Well, if you trusted me, you'd do it and everything would be fine because there's nothing

to be afraid of in the suggestion drink this although you might wonder or if somebody has

a big dog and you go to their house, a big dog and you're a little nervous around big

dogs.

Oh, don't be afraid.

You know, he's gentle.

Okay.

Sometimes when people should be told, don't be afraid.

When people saw angels or appearances of God, that was fairly intimidating to them and

they were told, don't be afraid.

You know, I'm not here to hurt you is the idea.

There are times to tell people not to be afraid.

There's other things that you should be afraid of.

You know, if your child is prone to stick objects into light sockets, you should know

that's usually afraid to do that, that you could kill yourself doing that, you know.

There are things that you should be afraid to do.

Now we should fear God in some sense, but in another sense, not.

In one sense of us is perfect love casts out all fear.

Well, why?

Because if you're living in perfect love, you're not doing things that will put you on bad

terms of God.

You don't have to be afraid of God, because he's on your side.

On the other hand, there is something called the fear of God, which I sometimes liken it

to the fear of trains.

You know, I'm not afraid of trains.

Sometimes when they go roll and bind, I'm standing near the tracks.

It's an awesome thing.

The ground is shaking.

There's all this noise.

It's a huge thing going to high speed.

It's awesome.

You know, it's an awesome power.

I'm not afraid of it.

Unless, of course, I'm on a collision course with it.

Then I'm afraid.

You see, there are things that are in themselves awesome, which we're not afraid of, unless

we're on bad terms with them, and we're in a bad relationship with them.

So when I look at a tiger and a cage, I'm not afraid of it.

Take away the cage.

I'm in a somewhat different relationship with that tiger.

One that is justifiably inspiring a fear.

There are times we shouldn't be afraid because there's nothing in that situation to be

afraid of.

Now when Paul says God has not given us the spirit of fear, he's talking about, in Timothy's

case, Timothy was intimidated by older people.

He was a young man.

Paul told him, don't let people despise your youth.

He actually wrote to the Corinthians and said, when Timothy comes to you, let him be

among you without fear.

He was young.

He was probably intimidated by older people.

Maybe older people made him feel that way.

Maybe they looked down on him because he was a youth.

But Paul said, listen, the spirit God's giving is not a spirit of fear.

You don't need to be afraid of these people.

It's a spirit of love and power of a sound mind.

So there's certain fear that you need to ignore, and there's another fear that you need

to cultivate.

So a person doesn't fear God in the sense that they are on a collision course with God

and it doesn't bother them.

They need to be told, hey, you need to fear God.

So fear in one situation is very appropriate, another situation is not, and that's why in

some context, the Bible says fear.

And other contexts don't fear because those are different situations, different contexts.

So fear is not always good or bad.

There's actually a very good thing, if you're in a dangerous situation, fear will help

you to escape and or leave it or avoid it.

If you have no fear, like a little kid that runs out into busy traffic, he's too little

to know there's danger there.

He should fear it because it'll kill him.

But he doesn't know it.

If a person doesn't know there's something to be afraid of, you need to inspire their

fear.

You need to be afraid of that.

And if you had that fear, you will behave wisely with reference to that thing you fear.

You won't cross the street without looking both ways.

You won't lie down and sleep on the railroad tracks that are commonly used by a train.

You will not go, you know, pulling on Superman's cape.

You won't go, you know, something God on the nose with you're flicking him with your

finger.

You know, you don't do that.

You don't do that with lions, you don't do that with God.

You know, he's big, he's awesome and you don't want to provoke him.

If you're smart, you will fear doing that.

And that says this, that's the beginning wisdom.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning wisdom.

That is, you've got to have enough respect for what the consequences are if you're on

his bad side.

If you understand that, it'll be something called fear.

If you don't understand it, you're just not smart.

So that's, that's why the whole idea of fear is used differently in different contexts.

I appreciate your call.

Let's talk to Tom and Penn, Pengburn, Arkansas.

Hi, Tom.

Welcome.

Hey Steve.

Thanks for taking my call.

I listened to a lot of Christian radio and a lot of times at the end of a lesson, there

will be a prayer offered and if you pray his prayer, then you've been accepted by Christ

and stuff.

I'm just wondering, are we leaving the lot off to the table for people who have never

really known Christ and now they just set up, you know, a 15 second prayer and now they're

going to heaven, but I read so much more in the Bible that it's that God says do, you

know, keep my commandments, you know, it's one of the things Jesus did.

You know, there's, there's not forsaking assembly, there's baptism, there's, I hear you

giving of your, of your means is that what can you tell me about our responsibility to

the public, to nonbelievers, to tell them there's actually more than the, the so-called

center's prayer.

And I'll let you answer that also, also on.

Thank you so much.

All right, Tom, good to hear from you.

Well, I share your pet peeve on this.

American evangelicalism has evolved into its own kind of thing.

You know, Christianity during the reformation wasn't the same.

Obviously during the medieval period it wasn't in apostolic times, it wasn't even in some

parts of the world today that aren't affected by American evangelicalism.

It's different.

It's just a feature of modern evangelicalism, especially in America, to make salvation

and easy transaction.

Sometimes they say, you know, all you have to do is come forward and say this prayer.

Well, that's how things have been done in America for at least since, you know, times

of people like Diel Moody and people like that, and Billy Graham, even before that in

the times of Athenians, so forth, and Wesley, and they didn't get, they were Protestant

but they didn't say, just say a prayer and you'd be saved.

They recognized that they need to tell these people, they need to come to God really.

They need to repent of their rebelling against God.

They need to embrace Christ as King and Lord and their life has to show it.

Yeah, maybe they'll say a prayer too.

Certainly Christians say lots of prayers, but you don't get saved by saying a prayer,

at least generally speaking, that's not how the Bible presents it.

We do have, of course, one of the parables Jesus taught of a Jewish man who said, God,

be merciful to me, a sinner, and he went home justified.

Of course, that wasn't even a real man, and he wasn't even a Christian.

It's just a Jew who was a publican who was sorry for his sins.

The thief on the cross said, Lord, remember me when you come to your kingdom, I guess

you could call that a sinner's prayer, but he didn't say Jesus come into my heart.

In the Bible, people generally didn't get saved by saying a prayer of any kind.

Jesus would say, come and follow me, and they would leave what they were doing and follow him.

That's how they became Christians.

They became followers of Jesus.

Did they say a prayer at that time?

Not in any of the cases we have record of.

They might have, but probably not.

They probably just started following.

And, of course, prayer became part of their life to be sure.

But conversion through saying a prayer, I'm not saying it can't happen.

But it just isn't modeled in the Bible.

It's not what they did.

They didn't, on the day of Pentecost, when Peter preached the gospel, and the people said,

what must we do?

He didn't say, say this prayer, repeat after me, close every head, bow, and every eye closed.

You know, no, he said, you need to repent.

You need to get baptized.

You need to be filled with holy spirit.

And that's the beginning, you know?

You are becoming a follower of Christ.

That's what repenting is.

Being baptized is your way of declaring that you're making that decision.

Being saved means being a disciple of Jesus, being a follower of Jesus.

Some people, when they decide to do that, they do say a prayer.

And they do get saved.

But many people say prayers, all kinds of prayers, including probably so-called sinners'

prayers, especially if they're fed to them line by line by the preacher who's trying

to get them saved.

And they can say those prayers without doing business with God at all.

They may be thinking about something else when they're praying.

They may be not even understanding what it is they're saying or the implications of it.

Many people have said prayers at the encouragement of pastors or edicts, who have never really

had a change of heart toward God.

And yet they're given a false assurance that because they said that prayer, they're saved.

That's an American evangelicalism.

It's not historic Christianity and it's not biblical Christianity.

Now I have to say that I've said sinners' prayers when I was young.

I don't know if I got saved at that time or some other time.

I'm not saying people won't be saved if they say sinners' prayer.

I'm saying they aren't saved by saying the sinners' prayer.

They are saved by becoming followers of Christ.

So in a pastor on the radio says, pray this prayer to me, oh now you're saved.

How does he know they are?

He doesn't know them.

He doesn't know if he was sincere.

He doesn't know anything about them.

Now he's given them a false assurance that they're saved.

They can go off and they don't even know what it means to be a disciple.

They don't even know what it means to follow Christ.

The pastor hasn't told him that.

He just said, say this prayer, this I agree with you.

That is not a biblical practice.

And I would certainly think people who do it should rethink their methods.

My book Empire the Risen Sun actually has a chapter that can talk about this subject.

I'm out of time.

You may listen to the narrow path.

Our address is the narrow path, keelbox1730, to make De La California 92593, our website,

thenarropath.com.

Thanks for joining us.

Let's talk again tomorrow.