20260319

.

Good afternoon and welcome to the Narrow Path Radio Broadcast.

My name is Steve Greg and we are live for an hour as always or at least as usual.

There are some exceptions occasionally but we are live broadcast by days of week generally

speaking.

We have an hour together with no commercial breaks just to take your calls and to

talk to you as you call in with things that you want to raise for discussion by that

I mean questions you have about the Bible or about the Christian faith or maybe disagreements

you have about the Bible or the Christian faith and want to talk about those.

I'm looking at a very unusual site.

It's a switchboard with no calls waiting.

I don't know, that doesn't happen more than two or three times a year.

I don't think we have the program every day.

So it means a very unusual opportunity for those of you who sometimes try to get through

and find the lines are always full.

So I don't know this is an inexplicable thing but it's to your advantage if you want to

get through right now.

This is a time when you can do so.

So if you want to call and discuss whatever questions you have or disagreements you have,

feel free.

The number to call is this 844-484-5737.

Once again, the number is 844-484-5737 I have a few announcements to make.

Generally speaking on the third Saturday of the month we have a men's Bible study in

Temecula.

I am out of town.

I will not be able to be back for that meeting this Saturday.

So if you are one who regularly attends or we're hoping to attend this time, I'm sorry,

we're going to postpone it until the next month.

So there's no men's Bible study this Saturday morning as they would normally be.

Another announcement and that is some of you know I'm in the central coast of California

right now, Santa Cruz area.

I'm speaking on Friday in Monterey and in San Jose on Saturday night.

Now a bit of a change in the Friday meeting.

The Friday meeting to Friday night from 6 to 830 pm in Monterey was going to be in a private

home.

They have secured a more of a public church location.

When it was in a home, you were supposed to RSVP if you wanted to show up.

But now you don't have to just show up if you want to add the church.

What church is it?

It's the Living Hope Maranatha Church on Jocelyn Canyon Road in Monterey.

If you're not familiar with that location, you can go to our website at binarropath.com.

Look under announcements and there you will see the announcement with the address which

happens to be 1375 Jocelyn Canyon Road, Monterey and that's the Living Hope Maranatha Church.

I'm going to be speaking on the assigned topic eschatology 101 which means it's going

to be basic, probably I expect we'll be talking about the differences between the different

millennial camps, the different pre-millennial options, pre-trib, post-tribumetric, those

kind of things.

Basically what is eschatology, it's the study of the end times, certainly it's a lot of

people discussing it these days.

Many people do not realize that the actual biblical options about this are somewhat more numerous

than popular teachers give the impression we're going to be giving kind of a survey of that

field.

Eschatology 101.

That's day after tomorrow, no that's tomorrow, excuse me, today's Thursday isn't it.

So that's a tomorrow night in Monterey at the Living Hope Maranatha Church and the

next night I'm speaking in Morgan Hill, New Santa Zay.

If you're in that area, check location there at our website, thenarrowpath.com, under

announcements.

Now while I was giving those announcements, all of our lines filled up, let's talk to

Michael from Dearborn Michigan, who's our first caller, hi Michael, welcome.

Hi brother Steve.

I just had a question now, what is your understanding of in Matthew chapter 27 after Jesus was crucified

and resurrected and mentioned that many of the saints that slept or rose and went

into the holy city and appeared to many, what would be your comment on that or what

would happen with that situation?

Okay, first of all, I take the statement as a straightforward historical record, just

like I do with all the other miracles that were associated with the life of Jesus.

This is not the only case associated with the life and death of Jesus that dead people

came alive.

We know that during his active ministry before his crucifixion, he raised at least three

people from the dead that are record, there could have been many more.

Luke mentions one of them, which was the son of a widow, in a town of name, Jesus intercepted

the funeral perception and raised the boy from the dead.

Some of the gospels record the fact that Jesus healed a little girl, 12-year-old girl,

who is the daughter of a gyress, a synagogue president, and he raised her from the dead,

and then, of course, famously, Lazarus in John's gospel was raised from the dead.

Now, these were, of course, evidence is that Jesus is, as he claimed to be, the resurrection

of the life, and he showed it by resurrecting people from the dead.

Now, of course, every one of those no doubt prefigured his own resurrection.

And at the time of his resurrection, according to Matthew, some other people came alive.

To my mind, they were in the same class, as it were, as Lazarus and gyress's daughter and

the others, that Jesus raised from the dead.

The only difference is this happened, not during his lifetime, prior to his death, but

actually, at the time of his resurrection, but they're coming back to life, in my opinion,

is simply the case of people who had died recently, as in the other cases I mentioned.

Lazarus, gyress and daughter, the son of the widow of name, they were, had all died recently,

and Jesus simply resuscitated and brought them back to life again.

Now, why do I make that point?

Because some people, when they read it, says many of the saints who had died, came to life.

And by the word saints, some people in their own mind associate that word with, like,

ancient religious heroes.

And some might think it's not about you, people like Isaiah and Moses and, you know,

Elijah the prophet and those kinds of people came back.

That's not what I see it to say.

In the New Testament, the word saint simply refers to holy people.

Godly people.

And we know they were godly people, even before Jesus was born, and at the time of his birth,

people like Anna and Simeon and so forth were already holy people.

Elizabeth and Zacharias were holy people.

This is before Jesus was here.

And during his lifetime, there was, of course, holy people too.

That is godly Jewish people, conscientious Jewish, pious people.

Now, these would be saints.

And in my opinion, the ones who came out of their graves in the story recorded in chapter 28,

or 27 of Matthew, I should say, they were probably people of that type.

There were people that had, I think, recently died.

Now, why did I say they'd recently died?

Well, because they would have decomposed if they hadn't died recently.

And one might say, well, couldn't Jesus recollect them and restore them,

even if they decompose?

Yes.

Yeah, he can do that.

He will do that at his coming.

All people who have lived will be reconstituted, as it were,

even though they've turned into dust in any time.

All will be raised from the dead.

But that's a special kind of miracle.

That's not the same thing.

That's not just calling life back into the dead.

That's reconstituting the dead from nothing, essentially.

Now, when that happens, I believe that the righteous will receive glorified bodies.

When Jesus comes back, the Bible says, we will be resurrected in bodies like his resurrection body,

which is not the same as an actual body.

The Paul says the resurrection body is going to be immortal.

It's going to be powerful.

It's going to be glorious.

That's first Corinthians 15, he tells us that.

And Jesus' resurrection body is that.

In other words, Jesus didn't just come back to life.

He came back to life in a different form, a different kind of body, an immortal body, and so forth.

And so will we.

But that hasn't happened to anybody except Jesus yet.

And therefore, that special miracle pulling the dust together and reframing it,

reshaping it as bodies again, which is going to happen to come and press.

I don't think that's ever happened to anybody until that point.

At least I have that impression.

Now, Paul was talking about that very kind of thing.

And he said, as an animal dies, so in Christ, all should be made alive.

This is first Corinthians 15, he says, but each in his own order, Christ, the first roots, okay?

Jesus is the first one to have that kind of a resurrection.

They said, and then those who are Christ at his coming.

Okay, so this is the order.

Jesus was raised that way.

The next batch will be us when Jesus comes back.

That means that apart from Jesus, nobody has yet come back.

And that would mean that Lazarus and Jarvis' daughter, and whoever these people were, who came forward, came out of the graves.

They just came back in their mortal bodies.

Their bodies had not decomposed.

They were probably recently dead.

They were at least recently enough that people recognize them.

You know, if we're pitching Daniel and Jeremiah and people like that coming back from the dead,

that'd be an amazing thing, but no one would know who they were.

No one had ever seen them.

There were no photographs of them.

They'd have no way to identify them.

But it seems clear that these people were recognized by those who saw them.

In Jerusalem, which means they were contemporaries.

They were people who'd probably died not too long ago.

And we're not very decomposed.

And we're familiar to the people who saw them.

That's what I take from the past.

And I just, again, because that's a really weird story.

Well, let's just say it's a very unusual story.

But it's not any more weird than Jesus raising Lazarus.

If we say, you know, Jesus raising any dead people is weird, then I'd agree.

That's the weird story.

But then many things Jesus did were weird in the sense of being extremely uncommon.

They were miracles.

And I believe that's one of them, too.

So that's how I understand that.

Thank you for your question.

Brendan from Butler, Pennsylvania.

Welcome to the narrow path.

Thanks for calling.

No, thank you.

My apologies.

I might have looked at the background.

Right here.

Yeah, it's not very clear.

Are you using your phone?

Is that better?

Yeah, that is better.

Hopefully that's better.

That's great.

I'll go ahead.

Yeah.

So thank you for the call.

Taken the call.

Thank you for your ministry of very thorough answers.

And I apologize for not being more prepared for this.

But I've taken advantage of your open phone lines there.

And my question will make quick.

It's regarding the rapture of the church.

And I believe I heard you say in your program in the past,

you believe the rapture of the church

to be on the last day.

So that'd be after the tribulation,

after the millennial, after everything.

And I suppose if I could sit through your escology 101,

I'd learn a little more.

But most people understand to have the belief

that the rapture would be, or that the,

yeah, the rapture would be pre-tribulation.

And so why do you feel the rapture is post-tribulation

and not pre-tribulation?

Well, that's a very fair question.

I appreciate you asking it.

I would say this that although it may seem

like most people believe in a pre-tribulation rapture,

that would be probably a judgment

we would make if we're listening to Christian radio

and reading popular books.

And we're in denominations that have adopted

something called dispensationalism.

The truth is most Christians throughout history

have not held that view.

And I would dare say it's probably that most Christians

today don't, although the ones who don't

aren't writing popular novels, they don't have radio shows

mostly, you know, there's, in other words,

they're not exploiting the media

the way that dispensationalists always have.

There are a whole major denominations

that reject the pre-trib rapture.

And then there are some denominations

that don't take any position so that you find some people

who are pre-trib and some are not.

But, you know, in the grand scheme of things,

it's those who believe in the pre-trib rapture

that need to explain how it is that they differ

from everybody before 1830 who didn't believe in it.

All the Christians, whether it's Catholic, Protestant,

Eastern Orthodox, pre-Roman Catholic, Apostolic fathers,

none of them believed in the pre-trib rapture.

That was introduced by a man named John Nelson Darby

around 1830 in England.

And he was a very brilliant man, a great scholar,

and a very prolific writer.

And his views influenced, first of all,

the Plymouth Brethren in England and he came over

and influenced a lot of evangelical churches in America.

There were Bible conferences in America

in the early 1900s which promoted this.

There were Bible colleges that were founded

to teach this dallas theological seminary in particular.

Moody, Bible college, another one, and many others.

On the school of the Bible, these are dispensational schools

and they crank out dispensational graduates

who in many cases become pastors and so forth.

And so there's several denominations,

although this is a very new idea in church history,

some denominations hold it officially.

Some of the non-denominational groups like Calvary Chapel,

certainly are very strongly in it,

but there are denominations like the Assemblies of God,

are dispensational.

That's an example of Pentecostal denominations,

but many Baptist denominations are dispensational.

Evangelical free church is very often

probably officially dispensational.

And many other well-known and well-populated denominations.

And then, of course, the Christian radio

and Christian literature is very much dominated,

at least in the popular literature,

with dispensational teachers.

So this thing came out of nowhere less than 200 years ago

and has come to dominate Western evangelical thinking.

And I will say it dominated my thinking

because I was trained in Calvary Chapel.

I was a Bible teacher in the Jesus moment.

I was indoctrinated with dispensationalism,

which is pre-tribbed doctrine,

is part of dispensationalism.

And so I knew how to defend it.

I still know how to defend it.

I just don't believe the defense is legitimate.

I mean, I can still give the arguments I used.

It's just that as I studied the Bible,

I realized they aren't, they're not valid.

There's not one place in the Bible, as it turns out,

that teaches there will be a pre-tribulation rapture.

When I believed it, what I did was collected a lot of verses

that could be interpreted in light of the pre-trib rapture.

Though little did, I know they could easily

be interpreted without that too.

But because I had been taught that the pre-tribulation rapture

was, in fact, true, I was taught to look at these proof

texts as if they were supporting it.

What happened in my life, because I've read through the Bible

like 30 or 40, 50 times, and taught through it

more than 16 or 20 times.

I mean, verse by verse return, I've

been through the whole Bible many, many times.

In the process of doing that, I discovered there's

not anything in the Bible that says there

will be a rapture before the tribulation.

There's just nothing there.

And what I found was the 20 or so proof texts

that I regularly used to prove the pre-trib rapture,

none of them said that.

But if you already held that view, you

could read them through that grid and use them as support

for what you believe.

But you'd have to hold the view first.

And that's the problem.

I was wondering, OK, I've got all these verses that

support it.

Where's the verse that teaches it?

Where's the verse that gives me that paradigm

to justify reading these verses through that way?

And I had to get honest.

I mean, I was always honest with myself,

I just had to honestly say, there aren't any.

Now, that didn't make me give it up.

But it certainly let me know that I had been teaching

something for which there was absolutely nothing

solid in scripture, which is no doubt why no Christian ever

found it in scripture until about 1830.

If it was there, probably someone would have seen it.

But it isn't.

And then, of course, you mentioned that I believe the rapture

occurs on the last day, which you rightfully said

would make it after the tribulation.

After everything, the last day means there aren't

other days after that one.

It's the last one or else it's wrongly so named.

So now, the reason I believe it happens in the last days

is because the Bible explicitly says so.

Jesus said in John chapter 6 and verse 39, he said,

this is the will of the Father who sent me that all that he

has given me, of them, I should lose nothing.

But I should raise it up at the last day.

The next verse, verse 40 says, and this is the will of him

who sent me, that everyone who sees the sun and believes

in him, that's Christians, may have everlasting life.

And I will raise him up at the last day.

Then a few verses later, in verse 44,

Jesus said, no one can come to me unless the Father who

sent me draws him.

And I will raise him up at the last day.

And then in verse 54, same chapter, Jesus said,

whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood,

has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.

It sounds like Jesus is trying to get across a particular point

four times in one discussion.

He says, I'm going to raise my people up on the last day.

Now, that doesn't mean the last day of the church age

or something like that.

The last day, which is not in any sense modified by him,

just as the last day, would normally

be understood to mean the day after which no other days are.

And that's the simple meaning of his statement.

And there's no scripture that places the,

excuse me, the racing up of the church

at any other point than the last day.

You can't find a scripture that places that

at some other chronological point.

And I would say this in John chapter 12,

and in verse, I think it's in verse 48, if I'm not mistaken.

Yeah, he says, he who rejects me.

So this is not the Christian, it's not the church.

And who does not receive my words has one that judges him.

The word that I've spoken will judge him in the last day.

Oh, okay, that's the same day, isn't it?

There's, if there's a last day, there's only one last day.

And he said, he's going to raise his people up on the last day.

He's also going to judge the non-Christians on the last day.

And that pretty much goes along with the rest of scripture,

Paul talks very explicitly about the rapture

in 1st Thessalonians chapter 4, verses 16 and 17,

and he makes it immediately after the resurrection.

He says, the Lord himself will descend from heaven

with a shout, and the voice of the archangel,

the Trump of God, and the dead in Christ

will rise first, that's the resurrection.

Then we who are alive and remain,

shall be caught up together with them

to meet the Lord in the air, that's the rapture.

The raising of the dead and the raising of the living

is the resurrection of the rapture that happened together.

When, when the Lord himself descends from heaven

with a shout, the voice of an archangel,

and the trumpet of God, this is not a quiet, secret thing.

It's at the second coming of Christ.

There's no place in the Bible that places the rapture

at any time other than the second coming of Christ,

which is, in fact, the last day.

You know, in 2nd Thessalonians chapter 1,

in verse 8, Paul said that the persecutors

of the Christians would be punished,

and the Christians would enter into rest

when the Lord Jesus comes with his holy angels

in flaming fire, taking vengeance on those who do not,

no God, and who do not believe the gospel.

So the Christian will be relieved of persecution

and interrest when Jesus comes back in flaming fire,

not at some secret snatch.

This when it comes back in flaming fire

and destroys those who are the non-Christians.

So the consistent teaching, I mean, in clear passages

where you don't have to read anything into them at all,

is that there's a day coming.

Paul calls it the day of the Lord or the day of Christ

or the day of our Lord Jesus Christ,

or similar terms, Peter calls it the day of God,

in 2nd Peter 2, but some people should be.

There's a day, a day of God.

A day of Lord is the last day.

What's gonna happen?

Well, the wicked are be judged.

Jesus is gonna come in flaming fire.

He's gonna come with noise.

He's gonna raise up the dead.

He's gonna raise the Christians with him.

That's the rapture.

So this is the eschatology of the Bible.

There is no other.

Anyone who says there's a preacher, Bratcher,

has the onerous burden of proof

to find a verse of scripture that says anything resembling that.

There is none.

Darby invented the doctrine,

and then he invented verses that would sound

like they could be interpreted in support of it.

But you can, you know, take things out of context.

You can support almost any strange doctrine from scripture.

That's why there's so many cults they all use the Bible.

There's a right way to understand scripture.

That would be in context.

And then there's an infinite number of wrong ways to take it

if you ignore the context.

And I would say that dispensationalism

and the preacher of rapture, I found,

although I had been a champion of it.

I had debated for it.

I had taught it confidently.

But I'm also an honest man.

And when I began to state the scriptures

with an open mind, or critically,

I realized there's nothing there.

It's a big, nothing burger.

And everything the Bible says about when the rapture

places it at the second coming of Christ,

not a moment earlier.

At the same time, he's going to judge the world.

So that's, you know, an answer to your question.

That's how I changed my mind.

Thank you for your call.

Reggie, in an honest location.

Hi, Reggie.

I may have to give you a hold through the break, but let's see.

What's your question?

It's two quick questions about a church joining together

with another church in a small town.

One is a community church and non-denominational.

The other is an Anglican church.

And there's been a lot of really wonderful things

about the services.

But there's two things that have been, you know,

being done that I'm not sure are biblical

and I'm not sure they're not.

One of them is we're invited, although not required,

to come and confess to a priest.

And I understand and everything I've been trying to find

in the Bible that we confess directly to God

and the name of Jesus who begins us from our sin

or we confess to another and then, you know,

take responsibility and make amends.

But I don't see anything about going to a priest

or any reason why I would.

And can he help you with that?

Right, I wouldn't either, but I'll tell you,

the Bible does say in James 5, confess your faults

one to another and pray one for another.

Now, it does say confess to a priest,

but a priest is another.

And therefore, there'll be nothing wrong,

nothing wrong with confessing to a priest.

I like the fact that you said you're welcome to,

but you're not required to.

That's fine, you know, in the Roman Catholic church

you kind of have to do it because only the priest

can absolve you from your sin in that system.

If the understanding is the minister

is not absolving you from your sin, God is doing that.

You're just finding someone to talk about it with

and confess it to.

Sometimes people just want to make a clean breast of it,

you know, they just need to confess and get off their mind.

You know, a priest to whom you can do that in confidence

might not be a bad choice.

Although I don't believe there are what we call priests

in the Bible in the New Testament,

but that's a detail I won't fight about here.

I think that to confess your sins to another person

is not specifically required in every case.

And you're right, just confessing to God can be enough.

A lot of times you still feel like you need to just,

you know, get it off your chest and not keep it a secret,

come out of the dark, come into the light with it,

and a priest or another Christian

might be a good person to do it to.

I, that doesn't sound too terrifyingly unbalanced.

Well, I think I'll take it right here.

Hang on, I'll come back to you.

You're listening to The Narrow Path,

our website'sTheNarrowPath.com.

We have another half hour coming.

I'm gonna be gone off here for 30 seconds

and we'll be right back, don't go away.

Steve Greg has written a number of highly favorably reviewed books

which you can find at your online booksellers,

including Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

His books are Revelation, Four Views,

Hell, Three Christian Views,

and the two value work on the Kingdom of God called

Empire of the Risen Sun.

Find them by searching the name Steve Greg

at Amazon or other booksellers.

Welcome back to The Narrow Path, Radio Broadcast.

My name is Steve Greg and we're live for another half hour

taking your calls.

Our lines are full, so don't bother calling right now.

Later, if you want to try 844-484-5737,

it's the number to call.

I want to remind anyone who's in the Monterey area

or planning to come to my meeting there tomorrow night,

the venue has been changed.

It was going to be in a home.

It's now going to be in a church building.

It's living hope, Maranatha Church, in Monterey.

If you want the address, it is at our website,

the announcements which previous to give,

the other information now have been updated

at TheNarrowPath.com.

Look under announcements, you can find

information about that.

The meeting, I'm going to be seeing on the topic,

Eschatology 101, and it's from 6 to 830,

two tomorrow night in Monterey.

Check our website for the location or just show up,

if you want to, at Living Hope,

Maranatha Church on Jocelyn Canyon Road in Monterey.

Okay, we're going to go back and talk as we were before

the break to Reggie, we kind of had to take an abrupt

interruption.

Reggie said, you're going to church,

it's two churches joining, an Anglican church

and a kind of a non-denominational community church.

And some things they are doing, you're not sure about.

One of which is that, of course, in the Anglican tradition,

their ministers are called priests.

And as in the case of Roman Catholics,

you can confess your sins to a priest.

Now, I don't know much about Anglicanism as far as how much

they depend on the priest to absolve you of sin.

I mean, I believe it's always healthy

if you're feeling fine to do it.

I don't think it's mandatory, but I think it's healthy

to confess your sins to somebody whom you know will keep

confidence.

Now, most of us have friends and Christian people

that we could confess to, but it's not always clear

if they're going to keep it a secret.

And you're much less likely to come clean

if you think what you say may be spread around town

or through the church and it may become the subject of gossip.

One thing about priests, whether Catholic or Anglican

or any other kind, they're kind of like lawyers and doctors.

They kind of have a client privacy obligation, say,

a lawyer can't share much about your case with anyone

who's not you, your doctor can't share anything

about your health issues with anyone you don't approve of.

And priests, I mean, I don't believe the church has priests.

Okay, I believe the church has ministers,

but I don't think priests are what the Bible calls them.

But, I mean, we got what we got.

If the church has someone who's called a priest,

a priest doesn't really understand this is in confidence.

You can tell me anything you want.

It, you know, it's not going anywhere from here.

And, you know, I think a lot of times,

when you've done something that you're really feeling

guilty about and you've confessed to God

and you really aren't forgiven by God.

There's just something that feels kind of unresolved

when you feel like you're keeping this dark secret

from everybody and you haven't let anyone know.

And so I would imagine, I haven't done this myself,

but I would imagine some of that state might find it desirable,

beneficial to find somebody who you know

is not going to share it with anyone

and who is, you know, a Christian who's sympathetic with you,

but, and might counsel you,

but to know that you can tell somebody

and it's not going to become the gossip of the town.

So, I mean, I don't go to a church like that.

I never have.

I don't know that I would prefer a church like that,

but you said that with this merger,

the community church that's turning the Anglican Church,

obviously, didn't have a priest before

and didn't have this practice,

but you said that they're not requiring people

to go to a priest, which is unlike the Catholic Church,

because the Catholic Church basically holds

that the priest is pretty much alone in the position

to grant you absolution of sin.

So you confess to them and he says,

okay, go light this many candles,

say this may hail Mary's and it's okay, you're forgiven.

I don't know what Anglican priests do.

I don't know if it's if they pretend to be in the position

that you can't be forgiven without their permission,

but I doubt it, but I don't know.

So I would have a lot to do with what they're understanding is,

but the fact that they don't require it

would mean that they don't think that you have to do that

to be forgiven and that sounds healthier

than say the Roman Catholic position as I understand it.

Right, and the other question is really related

to your comment and I appreciate your answer.

They call people father and when they introduce themselves

that way, I said, I'm sorry, I can't call you that.

Can I call you brother?

And he said, no, but you could just call

being eagabious first name and I thought, well,

that's reasonable, but I also was reading the Bible

and I thought Jesus was very specific

about not calling someone, you know, father

in the sense of a title and a religious title.

I mean, obviously there's our biological father's

and I think Paul, maybe in Timothy,

had a special relationship with like a spiritual father

and son, but it wasn't a title,

it's uncapitalized relationship relating to them personally.

So can you comment on that?

Yes, I think the way you see it is exactly as I do.

When Jesus said, call no one father.

It was in a context where he said the scribes

in the first, he's loved to be called rabbi or father.

They like people to call them by honorific titles

which signals their spiritual superiority

or at least that they are higher in rank

in the spiritual system than you are.

You're calling them something like you call a judge,

your honor, you know, or something like that.

And father in that setting is to give a special honor

to somebody because of his position.

And Jesus said, yeah, there aren't any positions

like that available in the church.

He's talking to the apostles.

Certainly no one was above them other than Jesus.

The apostles were the highest authorities in the church

and Jesus talking to them said, don't let anyone call you

father or you said, don't let anyone call you teacher or rabbi.

You've got one teacher, the Christ, he said,

and don't be called father or don't call anyone father

or you have one father, God.

So I mean, he's telling them to not speak that way

to others and not let others speak that way to them.

What way?

In a way that gives them some kind of a special rank

and honor by the very title.

Now, of course, when I say that to Catholics as it well,

Paul said he was a father to the Corinthians.

Well, he was.

He had led them to Lord.

He had fathered the church.

It's not wrong to call somebody father

if that's the actual relationship you bear to them.

If you call your dad, father,

that's not a violation what Jesus is saying.

He is your father.

When Paul talked to Timothy and said,

Timothy was his son, well, he was.

He converted him.

He converted the Corinthians.

In other words, he's saying we actually are

in the position of parent and child.

That's how you came into being.

That's the relationship we have.

It's not wrong to compare that to a parental relationship.

But he didn't ask any of them to call him father

as if that's, you know, stop calling me Paul.

Stop calling me brother.

Call me father.

Well, Paul never was like that.

And, you know, it's not like if I call my dad, dad.

You know, I'm not, I'm not given a special title

that he doesn't actually possess.

Here's the thing.

I mean, if somebody leads you to the Lord,

it's reasonable and simply accurate

to refer to them as sort of a spiritual father to you

or mother to you, because that's the role they played.

But in most cases, the priest in a, you know,

in a parish church or something,

isn't the one who converted the people in his church.

He might be younger than they.

They might have been Christians before he was born.

But he gets the title father, not because he has

any actual relationship of having father

spiritually or otherwise any of these people.

But because it's just an honorific title.

And so I'm exactly where you are now.

I'm not opposed to calling people father

if there's a sensible reason for doing so.

But if the person is in no sense of father to me,

but wants me to call him father, I think, you know,

that doesn't sound right.

It certainly sounds exactly like what Jesus said not to do.

Okay, great.

Well, I had one more question,

but I, Daddy, you probably have a lot of other calls.

I do, my lives are full.

Thank you so much.

God bless you in your ministry.

Okay, Ray, do you call about something else sometime?

I will. Thank you.

All right, by now.

All right, we're going to talk to Inger

in Tampa, Florida.

Hi, Inger. Welcome to the narrow path.

Hi, how are you?

I'm well.

My question is about the scripture in Acts,

where they talk about the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

And we're, I think, was Peter that said,

have you received the Holy Spirit since you believed?

And the evidence of it, some churches

say, the evidence is that you spoke in tongues

and stuff like that.

Can you address that?

Yeah, the story you're thinking about is in Acts chapter 19.

And it was actually Paul who encountered a group of people

who had responded to the message of John the Baptist

and had even been baptized in water.

But without knowledge of Christ,

they had received the baptism of John the Baptist.

The minister, these were 12 people,

actually, in Ephesus where he ran into them.

And he noticed that they weren't like Christians

in some notable research.

He said, hey, do you guys have the Holy Spirit?

And they said, we haven't even heard of the Holy Spirit.

Didn't even know he existed.

And so Paul realized that they hadn't been evangelized

by a Christian evangelist.

So he preached the gospel so they should receive Christ.

And they did.

He baptized them in water.

And then when they had been baptized as water,

he laid hands on them and says they got filled

with the Holy Spirit.

And now, I believe in that case, as in several others,

it does mention they spoke in tongues.

Now, I believe that every Christian who was evangelized

be the apostles or correctly evangelized

in the first century by evangelists,

after being watered, baptized also had hands laid upon them

to be baptized in the Holy Spirit or filled with the Spirit.

I believe that, in other words,

there must have been hundreds and hundreds of cases

in the early church of people who were baptized

in the Holy Spirit.

We don't have their specific stories told to us.

So it was going on all the time

without necessarily records being made of it.

And therefore, we don't know if they all spoke in tongues

or not.

We do know that there are five such cases recorded

in the book of Acts, five cases where people

got baptized in the Spirit.

Three of those five cases, they did speak with tongues.

We know because it mentions it.

The other two cases, we don't know if they did or not.

They might have.

The Bible doesn't say that they didn't.

And there may be some reason to believe that they did,

but it doesn't say so.

In other words, out of five instances recorded

of people being baptized in the Spirit in the Bible,

three of them, we know they spoke in tongues.

We don't know whether they did or not

in the other two cases, and they might have.

But it's not declared that they did.

Now, even if all five of those cases,

let's just say we could go back and interview those people,

those five instances, and say, did you speak in tongues

when you were baptized and they all said, yes,

that still wouldn't let us know that those five cases

were the same as all other hundreds of cases,

thousands of cases that took place.

We could say, in those cases, they spoke in tongues,

and maybe lots of other cases too.

But we don't know that in every case they did,

we don't have a big enough sample to choose from.

And nothing in the Bible says that if you get baptized

in the Spirit, the evidence will be that you speak in tongues.

Now, I personally believe in speaking in tongues.

I'm not one of those people who thinks that that's passed away.

But on the other hand, I'm not in favor of adding to scripture.

If we tell people something the Bible doesn't tell them,

we might do some unintended damage to their Christian heart

and life.

For example, the Bible does not say that you only

can know that you were filled with Spirit

because you speak in tongues.

That's called the initial evidence doctrine.

This is the doctrine that Pentecostal churches believe

that it is the initial evidence of baptism

so that you speak in tongues.

And therefore, the implication is if you haven't spoken

in tongues, you have not been baptized in the Spirit.

Now, I find that problematic.

First of all, because the Bible doesn't say that.

Second, there may be people who are baptized in the Spirit

and don't speak in tongues.

And if you tell them otherwise and they believe you,

they might despair.

I say, I've done everything I know.

I've asked God to fill them in the Spirit.

I've had hands laid on me.

I didn't speak in tongues.

I guess maybe it's not going to happen to me.

Maybe it doesn't happen to me.

No, that's not a fair thing for them to assume.

Only what I consider to be a false teaching

would give them that impression.

And false teaching sometimes have negative consequences.

I believe there are many people I've met

who have as much evidence of being filled with the Spirit

as I have, of being filled with the Spirit.

I have no doubts that I'm filled with the Spirit,

that I don't have doubts about them either,

but some of them have not spoken in tongues.

If I tell them, sorry, I can't accept

that you're filled with the Spirit

if you haven't spoken in tongues.

I'm making a distinction that God does not

in any outward sense make.

He never says it.

We're never told that everyone did.

We're never told that everyone should.

And so the doctrine that you must have the evidence

to speak in tongues is a man-made doctrine.

It may be in general,

accurate that most people who are baptized in the Spirit

in God all times and may be the now do speak in tongues,

but it is impossible to argue biblically

that there's a direct one to one relationship

between everyone who speaks in tongues

and everyone who is baptized in the Spirit.

Paul said, in 1 Corinthians 13,

if I speak with tongues,

and he's talking to the gifted tongues,

if I speak with the tongues of men or of angels,

if I don't have love,

it's just a lot of noise I'm making.

It's nothing.

Now love is the true evidence of being filled with the Spirit.

That's the fruit of the Spirit.

And so if a person is filled with the Spirit,

the way they'll know it,

is that the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts

by the Holy Ghost, it says in Romans 5.

And I think it's 5.5 if I'm not mistaken.

And so the Holy Spirit creates in us a new heart

where we love because God is love.

Whoever doesn't love doesn't know God.

The Bible says in 1 John 4.

So being filled with the Spirit is gonna be first manifest.

Well, I mean, in some case,

it might be manifest in speaking in tongues before,

before it's manifest in anything else,

but it's not as important

or the person facing tongues as that they love

because you know more about a tree by its fruit

than what gifts people have hung on it.

A Christmas tree might have gifts,

expensive things are on it,

but the greatness of the gifts,

or even the absence of the gifts,

don't tell you anything about the value of the tree.

It's the same tree whether people put gifts on or not.

The tree is not more valuable or more of better quality

because people put gifts on it

than otherwise.

The gifts are quite unrelated to the value of the tree

because the gifts tell you more about the people

who gave the gifts than the tree that did not produce them.

The fruit of the tree, however, does tell you a great deal

about the value of the tree.

If it produces good apples, it's a good apple tree.

Fruit is the true evidence of the quality

of the spiritual life.

The fruit of the spirit tells you much more

about a person's spiritual life

than whatever gifts they have

because Paul indicated he could be speaking in tongues,

which is a gift,

but if he didn't have love, it's nothing.

It's not just less good, it's nothing.

Gifts are nothing.

If they aren't done in love, that's what Paul is saying.

And love is the true mark of being filled with the spirit.

I do believe that in biblical times,

speaking in tongues is a very common thing

and I believe it still is in many places,

but the Bible does not authorize us

to make it the necessary evidence

that tells us for sure that someone's filled with the spirit.

And by the way, all the gifts of the spirit can be faked.

All the gifts of the spirit even can be counterfeited by demons.

There are people who practice voodoo

and hatey who speak in tongues.

That's not the Holy Spirit.

That's demons.

Now, the fact that demons can do that

means that the fact that someone doesn't prove

that they're filled with the spirit,

it might have some other interpretation that's more accurate.

So, but if you see someone who walks as Jesus walks

and loves people like Jesus did

and lays down his life for the brethren, like Jesus did,

you're talking about it.

That's somebody who's walking in the spirit

and that's far more important.

Thank you for your call.

Okay, let's talk to Richard and San Diego, California.

Richard, welcome.

Hi, good afternoon, Steve.

I've got a couple questions for you

and I'll take my answers off the air.

So, me and my son are having a lot of discussions

and I know you've probably didn't bomb hard as I guess,

but we have a lot of discussions about Israel

and the stuff that's going on.

And he keeps attacking me with the police

and the people using the talisman.

Is there anything that you know about the talisman

and the two versions?

I know there's a Babylonian version

and the Jerusalem version.

Yeah.

And my second question would be,

should we still support Israel?

Both of us are in your camp as far as we don't believe

in this inflation movement.

And, but I still struggle because I'm 67 years old

and this is the way I was brought up.

So, I have a hard time with it

and he's much younger than I.

Sure.

And so, he does not have that up, that up.

Right, naturally enough.

And naturally enough, you as an older person

are influenced by the evangelical culture

of your generation and he is perhaps influenced more

by the evangelical culture of his generation

and that has changed with reference

to attitudes toward Israel.

When I was growing up and when you were

in the evangelical church, it was a given.

God's chosen people are Israel.

He's working with them in the end times.

It's a very important.

We need to focus on Israel.

And the younger evangelicals are not given

to emphasize that as much.

Some do, of course some do,

but there's many more who are not.

I never met anyone when I was young

who didn't believe Israel was that important in that way.

But now you meet them all the time.

In fact, it's about 50-50.

It seems to me if you meet a young evangelical,

he may be dispensational or not.

And may think Israel's special or not.

Now, I don't know exactly.

You said your son and you were having a discussion about this.

What is the position he is taking?

And the position you're taking specifically

that you are disagreeing about, not everything,

but the arguments you're having.

Oh, there's a lot of discussion this.

I still support Israel in a way,

but I have a hard time with it because I,

just as he does, I believe there are secular nations.

And I don't agree with everything

that they are doing and how they are coming about

the decisions and stuff that's going on within the world.

And it's hard for me to separate that.

For him, it's not that hard to separate.

And then my other question I'm gonna ask

is it covered in what to do about Israel?

Yes, I mean, next.

My series, What Are We To Make Of Israel?

Which is free to hire, like all my lectures are,

at our website, veneropaths.com.

What Are We To Make Of Israel Is A Very Thurough Teaching

On All This Stuff?

Now, there's so many different aspects of this.

And I have so little time, I'm trying to think of what,

what specific point am I gonna be able to speak to

that helps you in the conflict you're having with this?

My position is this.

We do not have a divine mandate to support Israel

as a state today because the Bible does not predict

that there will be a secular nation

in the Middle East that we're supposed to honor.

Israel in the Bible was not a secular nation.

It was a God-centered nation.

They were often disobedient.

They worshiped idols, but they still had a temple

right in the middle of their capital.

And they went there many times, it was at least overtly

and sometimes very sincerely placing Yahweh at the center.

In fact, the whole nation of Israel came into this distance

through a covenant God made with them.

Placing his havernacle at the center in Exodus,

when he brought them out of Egypt.

And they continued to have that status

and they were a theocratic nation

that is a nation based on the relationship with God

and the religion until they were destroyed in 70 AD

and they hadn't had a temple since.

Now, it's true when the Israelites were dispersed

from Israel in 70 AD, they lived in foreign lands

for almost 2000 years, but then many of them have come back.

I think almost half of the Jews in the world

have gone back to Israel into the land now.

Does this mean that we now have the same nation

that the Bible talked about?

I don't see any temple.

I don't see any talk about a theocratic nation.

I don't see any evidence that they're different

than any secular democracy.

In fact, they have a smaller percentage

of religious people in them than America does.

80% of the population of Israel is secular.

About 20% are religious Jews.

And about half of 1% are Christians.

So I mean, less than, well, I mean, more than 80%

are approximately, I think in America,

there's a larger percentage of Christians

and observant religious people than there are there.

So they're not any more of a religious nation

than America is, and America is definitely a secular nation.

And even if they were religious,

if they did build a temple and started putting God

in the center, that's too late for that.

The temple doesn't mean anything anymore.

God does not dwell in temples made with hands.

He dwells now in a living temple made of living stones.

The New Testament says, he has moved out of a brick house

and moved into a flesh house made of people.

And so they can build brick houses or stone houses

all they want and say, this is the temple.

That doesn't mean God has any interest in it.

The Jews can come to God if they want to,

but they have to come through Christ, not through the temple.

So in other words, the nation of Israel has no resemblance

in its character or charter to any nation

called Israel in the Bible.

And now how should we assess them?

I believe we should assess them

the way we assess any other secular nation.

How do I assess Ukraine or Russia in their conflict?

How do I assess America in its conflict with Iran

or with any of our enemies in China?

Well, what I have to do is say, well, what are we doing

and what's the enemy doing?

Okay, it seems to me like this party A

has a more just cause in this conflict than party B does.

That might in another age, another decade,

the situation might be reversed.

Party B might have the more just cause

in a given conflict that arises later on.

Then party A, we don't just say, I'm in favor of this nation.

Now, of course, in some senses, we are by default

loyal to our own nation because, frankly,

it's the, our neighbors and our friends

and our fellow brothers and sisters are there.

And frankly, America has typically been a very good nation

to be loyal to, but that doesn't mean always will be.

If America becomes like another Nazi Germany,

then we Christians have to reassess it

and say, well, I'm not sure if I'm going to be loyal

to this country anymore because it's very demonic now.

At this point, I don't see the necessity of looking

at America that way, but it's not impossible

that such a thing could happen.

Same thing with Israel.

Israel could be very much more righteous

than their enemies in some given conflict.

But at another time, it may be their enemies

that have the more just cause.

So I look at the Israel conflict with her enemies,

kind of the same as I do Ukraine and Russia.

They're both secular countries.

They're at war long term.

Sometimes one is the worst and sometimes the other is the worst.

And I'm not just going to say, I'm going to be on this side

because I don't know, I was raised to be on this side.

No, as a Christian, I'll be on the side

that I think God is in their corner at the moment.

And God is on the side of the righteous.

So if a nation is a righteous nation,

righteous is exaltation.

But sin is a reproach to any people,

including Israel or any other nation.

So in others, we have to kind of be,

let us as above the whole issue of political allegiance

and say, hey, my allegiance is to the kingdom of God.

How does my king evaluate this situation?

Who's more in the right who's in the wrong?

I'll take his side if I can figure it out.

That's my general approach to this kind of thing.

I'm sorry about a time.

I'd love to talk more about this.

You've been listening to the narrow path.

We are listeners supported.

Our website is TheNarrowPath.com.

Thanks for joining us.

Let's start begin tomorrow.