The Narrow Path 07/16/2026

Steve Gregg: Good afternoon and welcome to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we are live for an hour each day, that's each weekday. The reason we're live is so we can have real-time conversations with listeners who have access to a telephone, and who doesn't have that nowadays? If you have a telephone and you want to raise a question on the air about the Bible or the Christian faith, we'll talk about it. We might even be able to answer it. If I can't, we'll still talk about it and we'll explore it, let's put it that way. Also, you can call if you disagree with the host on anything you've ever heard him express on this show, him being myself, and we'll talk about that too. The number to call is 844-484-5737. Now, a lot of our lines are open right now, so this is a good opportunity for you to get through. That's not always going to be the case five or ten minutes from now. You might want to try to get in line here if you want to get on the show today. The number again is 844-484-5737. One announcement I have failed to make all week long, and I should have been doing so, is that this Saturday, day after tomorrow, is our monthly men's Bible study in the morning, Saturday morning, in Temecula, where I live. I live in Temecula and that's where we have a monthly, the third Saturday of each month, we have our monthly men's Bible study in Temecula. We have a lot of guys who come regularly. Maybe you have never come before, but if you're a guy and you live in the area and want to show up, we'd love to see you. It's at 8:00 in the morning this Saturday. If you want the address, you'll find it at our website, thenarrowpath.com, under the tab that says announcements. That's this Saturday at 8:00. All right, we're going to go to the phones and we'll talk to Allen from Grass Valley, California, first of all. Hi, Allen. Welcome.
Allen: Hi, Steve. My question is about the apostles' understanding of scripture. At one point, they asked Jesus, "Will you at this time restore the kingdom?" It seems at that time they understood the Old Testament prophecy to say that Israel would become a nation as it was under King David or King Solomon under the control of the Messiah. But after Jesus opens their eyes to the Old Testament, that subject never comes up again in scripture. So it seems that they understood those same Old Testament passages in a different way. I'm wondering if you can tell how they interpreted those scriptures before Jesus opened their eyes, and then how they understood it after.
Steve Gregg: Okay, that's a very good question. I will say your chronology is incorrect. They actually asked that question just before He ascended in Acts chapter one, verse six. The next thing we read of is He ascended. He had some 40 or 50 days earlier, on the night of His resurrection, appeared to the disciples in Jerusalem. We do read in Luke chapter 24, I think it's verse 45, where it says that He opened their understanding so they'd understand the scriptures. In other words, on the night of the resurrection, He did that, and yet it was like 50 days later, they still asked that question. But you're right to ask, what were they thinking and were they mistaken? Now, Jesus obviously, when He opened their eyes to understand the scriptures, I need to understand, and I don't know if I can for sure, whether this means He simply explained a lot of the Old Testament scriptures that they hadn't understood properly. Opening their understanding could mean He explained it to them. But then of course, on that evening, He couldn't have gone through all the scriptures. So He would have had to select some of the scriptures that He wanted to clarify to them, possibly about Himself since this is the first time they saw Him after He had died and they had been very puzzled by His death. So it's very possible that He expounded to them the scriptures about His death but not all the scriptures yet about the kingdom and so forth. This would be agreeable with what Jesus did on the road to Emmaus with the two men that He joined them on the path there. It says as they walked to Emmaus, He explained to them the meaning of everything that was about Him in the law and the prophets as they walked along. So it may be that when He opened the understanding of the disciples, it just means He clarified or answered questions they had or gave them understanding of what they hadn't previously understood on some subjects. The other possibility is that He gave them a divine ability to see in the Old Testament scriptures what they had not seen before. That would be with them for the rest of their lives as they studied and reflected on the scriptures, the true meaning would become clear to them. So opening their understanding could mean giving them a gift of being able to decipher correctly scriptures as they would read them, which of course at that moment they hadn't read them all again, so they wouldn't have all of them in their minds. Or it could be that He explained the key ones. In any case, it's very possible, probable I think, that when they asked Him 50 days later, "Will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?", it's very probable they were thinking very much as they had always thought about the Messiah going to reign in Jerusalem like David. He's going to turn Israel into the key capital city of the world, and the Gentiles will be subjected to David's son, the Messiah, and that He will reign in righteousness and justice and so forth. Of course, there was really no reason that they would have to not see it that way because that's the way the Jews had always seen it. Jesus, even in His parables, had not explicitly said that won't happen. In His parables, He did describe the kingdom differently. He described the kingdom as a spiritual phenomenon that is spread by the sowing of seeds, that is to say the preaching of the word of God. Of course, David expanded his kingdom and conquered his enemies by the sword, but Jesus had explained that His kingdom is going to be expanded and embraced willingly by the preaching of the word. Now, the disciples, of course, by the time that Jesus was saying they hardly had opportunity to process all that that might mean or might not mean. So they probably had not, no matter what He had told them, been totally disabused of the idea of the whole rabbinic idea that the Messiah would sit on a literal throne in Jerusalem and reign over the world, and the kingdom therefore would be centered in Jerusalem and He's going to restore the kingdom to the Jewish people, the Israelites. Now, frankly, their wording was quite okay. It's what they probably thought it meant that might require some rethinking. But we don't have to worry about what they thought it meant because whatever they thought it meant, they may well have changed their mind after the Holy Spirit came and they began to have greater understanding of spiritual things. Remember, Paul said that the natural man cannot receive the things of the spirit of God because they're spiritually discerned. So the spiritual aspects of the kingdom of God probably were not fully accessible to them, and they probably hadn't had much time to think about it in the short time since all this happened. So I'm going to just guess, and I think most people would agree with this guess, that when they asked the question, they probably were thinking the same way that the Jews thought generally about that the Messiah was going to drive out the Romans and set up his kingdom of righteousness that will be global from Jerusalem as its center and so forth. That was the hope of the rabbis and it could be that the disciples at this point had not understood enough to be disabused of that notion. However, their question was strong enough: "Will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?" Well, in fact, that's exactly what Jesus was about to do. The pouring out of the Holy Spirit was going to include all the faithful of Israel into the kingdom, and that happened ten days after this conversation. It was actually 40 days, Jesus was 40 days between the resurrection and the ascension, but then there was ten more days until Pentecost. So He didn't say yes or no. Probably the reason is because the answer could have been yes if you understand kingdom and Israel as Jesus did and as the apostles later did themselves. But the fact that they may not have understood it caused Jesus to deflect and He didn't say yes or no. He just said, "Well, it's not for you to worry about the timing. You just do what you're told," basically. "Stay here in Jerusalem until the Holy Spirit comes upon you and then you'll be my witnesses to all the world." So He kind of deflected the question because, as He had said a few nights earlier or a few weeks earlier in the upper room in the 16th chapter of John, John 16, I think it's verses 12 and 13, just before He was crucified, He told these same men, He said, "I have many things to tell you but you can't bear them yet. However, when the Holy Spirit comes, He'll guide you into all truth." In other words, there's a lot of things that are true and that you'll eventually know to be true, but you're not prepared, spiritually prepared to hear them right now. However, when the Holy Spirit comes, He'll bring you up to date. He'll bring you up to speed. So Jesus had said that and no doubt even when they asked the question, though it was a fair question, their understanding of the terminology probably was still mistaken. Instead of saying, "Well, let me correct you about all that," these were among the things that they weren't ready for yet. The idea that Israel would include the Gentiles, they didn't understand that, at least most of them didn't, until the Jerusalem Council 20 years later in AD 50. They had the Jerusalem Council and that's when some of the apostles hadn't really figured out yet that the Gentiles are part of the faithful remnant of Israel too. Paul knew it and Barnabas knew it, but the Jerusalem apostles didn't. So we see though they were promised that the Holy Spirit would lead them into all truth and He did, they didn't have it all going on at the moment Jesus ascended. So the question they asked was fair: "Are you going to restore the kingdom to Israel at this time?" Well, actually the answer would have been yes. Ten days from now, the spirit's going to come down. The remnant of Israel's going to be saved. They'll come into the kingdom. As Paul later said to the Colossians, who were Gentiles who later came into the kingdom, he said at their conversion they had been delivered, he said in Colossians 1:13, delivered from the power of darkness and translated into the kingdom of His own dear Son. So yeah, that happened to these Jews, these faithful Jews, ten days later. It happened to Gentiles later. But Jesus just said, "Listen, we don't have time for all that right now," and I believe a subtext of it was, "You remember I said there are things that you wouldn't bear now and I'm not going to tell you those. The Holy Spirit will lead you to know those things." Well, that's one of those things. So how did they come to understand it? Well, we know that because their writings later tell us how they did. I mean, Paul, for example, who was not in that group yet but he was an apostle later on, Paul said in Romans 14:17, he said, "The kingdom of God is righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit." In other words, it's a spiritual phenomenon. The prophets of the Old Testament said that when the Messiah comes, the kingdom would be a kingdom of righteousness, that is of justice. They said it'll be a time of rejoicing. The young man and the virgin and everyone will be dancing around in joy, they said. They said it'd be a time of peace. People would take their swords and beat them into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. They're not going to learn war anymore. The kingdom in the Old Testament was said to be a kingdom of justice or righteousness and of joy and of peace. Paul says, "Yeah, that's exactly right but it's in the Holy Spirit." The kingdom of God is righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. It's not politically, not physically. This is something that when you come into Christ's kingdom, you experience those things through the spirit of God and so does the whole community of the kingdom of God together because they share the same spirit. So the apostles understood this kind of stuff later on. But exactly how they meant their question could be disputed. I'm going to go along with most people and say they probably were thinking the same way the Jews did at that point. And as far as them having their understanding opened to understand the scriptures, that may have only involved some of the scriptures at the time and an ongoing increase in their understanding as they would later contemplate and read the scriptures throughout the rest of their lives that they'd be having understanding of them. Those are my speculations about that.
Allen: Thank you sir. That helps a lot. I think there's still a lot of people today that think there's going to be a national Israel restored.
Steve Gregg: Oh yes, oh yes. That's the official doctrine of the dispensationalism. So dispensationalism believes exactly what the rabbis thought. In fact, there's a sense in which dispensationalism could be called rabbinic Christianity because although they believe Jesus is the Messiah, they also believe all the rabbinic teachings pretty much about the kingdom and stuff. They don't, they have not embraced Christ's kingdom or the apostles' teaching on the kingdom. At least if you hear them explain it, they think the kingdom of God has been postponed. They think that when Jesus came to town and was crucified that the kingdom was postponed. It would have come but the Jews rejected it and so they think some 2,000 years later or so, the kingdom is going to be instituted at the second coming of Christ in the millennium. There's nothing in the Bible that says anything like that but if you have that paradigm, you can read anything in the Bible you want to through those rose-colored glasses, which I myself did for many years, which is why I'm familiar with the status of the arguments. I myself argued for it but once you take off those glasses and start just reading the Bible for what it says, you find there's nothing there. There's nothing there that says anything like that in the New Testament. In fact, it says something very different. Anyway, Allen, thank you for your call. God bless you. Colton in Sacramento, California, is next. Welcome.
Colton: Hi, Steve. I was hoping you had some scripture to maybe help me with a question I've kind of had or a thought. I've been thinking about 501(c)(3)s and the Amish and I'm troubled with how sovereign the Amish are and how their whole way of life isn't troubled like some of us that live in the city, Sodom and Gomorrah lifestyle, I should say, where you sort of need... I was just hoping to maybe you could clarify like I'm like compelled that unless you're farming and being Amish, you can't really do anything Christian. I hope that makes some sense.
Steve Gregg: Do you mean to say, do you mean to say you can't really live out the Christian life if you're intermixed with in a society of unbelievers and you have to kind of be off in a quasi-monastic separation with other Christians in order to pull it off?
Colton: That's one way to look at it. It's more of like ignoring the fact of sovereignty that people don't want to earn their keep and so we're living in a life of delusion and sort of like spiritual chaos because we're trying to make something that doesn't make sense because we're born into it essentially, right? Like that's why we don't want to bring our children into it.
Steve Gregg: Okay. Well, there's a lot of things in the world that don't make sense. I'm not sure what specific thing you're referring to. You're talking about how the Christians should live their life more or less aloof from the governmental approval or authorization, that kind of thing?
Colton: More just the Sodomite lifestyle that is told... like there's Christians today that push the rainbow flag, they let women preach.
Steve Gregg: Right. Well, I don't know if those people actually qualify for what the Bible calls Christians because the Bible says it was the disciples who were called Christians in the Bible. Nobody is a disciple who rejects what Christ said about fornication and about marriage and things like that. Christ gave very specific teachings about those things and if someone says, "Yeah, well, I don't care what he said, I believe this anyway," those people are not followers of Christ. They may like to name His name. Everyone would like Jesus to be on their side. You know the New Agers, they think He was one of them. The Buddhists think He was one of them, the Hindus think He was one of them. All the religions want Jesus to be on their side. And that's true of churches too where they've already adopted a different religion in practice. They call themselves Christian but they're following something other than what Jesus said. Well, if you're not following what Jesus said and if you say, "I don't care what Jesus said, I want to believe this," then of course you're not really Christians. Now, I'm not saying everybody who's ever sat in one of those churches is not a Christian but I don't have any interest in the opinions of somebody who blatantly advertises that they don't care what Jesus said and yet they call themselves Christians. But so I mean, all religion is corruptible and certainly Christians and churches can be corruptible. But the answer's not necessarily to go off and live in a farm with other Christians, not that I'd be opposed to it. I actually spent some of my younger life living in Christian, what we'd call communities. They were not common purse communities, they weren't communistic communities but they were gatherings of people living together in a Christian kind of place so that we could raise our kids differently. But yeah, I'm not against that. I mean, there's drawbacks to that too. Jesus never called His disciples to leave the world. In fact, He prayed in John 17:15, He says, "Father, I do not pray that You take them out of the world but that You would keep them from the evil one." Now, I realize there's some real some Christians very weak and if they're in the world, the world really draw has a draw upon them like a magnet and draws them away. They're weak Christians. They should be stronger. And one thing that would make them stronger perhaps is for them to live in close proximity and tight fellowship with godly Christians who can encourage them in the right way and keep them accountable. So I mean, that's the kind of thing that could help some weak Christians. But ideally, Christians shouldn't be so weak that they would necessarily be corrupted by being intermingled with non-Christians. You know, there's a really interesting difference between the Old Covenant and the New. The Old Covenant didn't change anyone's heart. The New did. God wrote His laws on the hearts of people in the New Covenant, which is Christians, true Christians. The Old Covenant didn't write its law on anyone's hearts. It just kind of imposed the law on normal people who were not exceptional people. They hadn't had a spiritual rebirth or anything like that. So the Jews were just told to behave a certain way. Now, God knew that because the Old Covenant couldn't give people really much incentive or power to live a holy life, He needed to keep them separate from the pagans who were worshipping idols and doing horrible things. That's why He had them drive the Canaanites out of Canaan because He said, "If you don't do it, they will corrupt you." He knew that under the Old Covenant, His people had no particular power to overcome the world and therefore they had to be, in a sense, separated from the world to keep themselves from being polluted by idolatry and things like that. Now, the New Covenant though is different than that. The New Covenant, God doesn't tell us, "Avoid the nations, avoid the Gentiles." He says, "No, you go into all the world and make disciples of those Gentiles. You go and change them." You have something in you now. You have the new life, the resurrection life of Christ. You've got the Holy Spirit. You've got a changed heart. That being so, you now have something that no other people have and it makes you potentially immune to corruption. That is, if you walk in the spirit, you'll not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. Now, not all Christians do that well and some people who call themselves Christians probably aren't even born again so they don't have this going for them at all. But true Christians in the Bible, they weren't afraid to be around the pagans. They actually sought the pagans out. There's an old story about some general who he was in the middle of battle and one of his lieutenants came up and said, "General, the enemy has us surrounded." And he said, "Good, they can't escape us now." You know, I mean, it's like we can defeat them. Let them come. Let them come. Let them be there. We won't have to go out and chase them. Because when you've got the superior force, which you do if you have Christ, then greater is He who's in you than He who is in the world and you don't have to be corrupted. Now, Christians can be corrupted and there's many warnings in the Bible against letting yourself be corrupted and many Christians have succumbed to that. But that's because they don't walk in the spirit. If you walk in the spirit, Paul said you will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. That's in Galatians 5:16. And that being so, we have a dynamic that the Old Covenant did not provide. We have a New Covenant reality which is energized by the life of Christ, the resurrected life of Christ and His spirit, and therefore we don't have to be afraid to be among the world. They should be afraid of us, not because we're going to do them harm but because we are going to live our lives the way they don't want to live and the way they wish they could compromise us so we wouldn't live. But we're going to do it anyway and in fact we're going to do our best to change them too. So, you know, the Jews had to be kind of cowering in the Old Covenant behind walls of laws that separated them from defilement. In the New Covenant, it's the heathen that should be on the run from us because we don't have to be afraid of them. Now, they could kill us by the way, Jesus made that very clear. You know, we're like sheep among wolves but and we're harmless as doves but we're not afraid to die. That's another reason they should be afraid of us. They are afraid to die and we're not. Now, you might say, "Well, hey, I've gone to church all my life and you're describing Christians different than the people I know who call themselves Christians." Well, I guess the worst for them. I mean, this is I'm describing Christians the way the Bible does. There's an awful lot of people in churches that call themselves Christians that probably do not have a clue what Christianity is because they don't get their ideas from the Bible. They get them from their preachers or from skimming certain Bible passages they like and ignoring other ones. Now, if you read the Bible you find out what being a Christian is and you don't need to go off and live in a farm with other Christians like the Amish do, though I'm not opposed to it because I mean, it's a good fellowship situation. I will admit that to be a robust disciple today is very difficult in the cities and in the world, not because Christians shouldn't be able to handle it but because Christians should have in the city communities of faithful disciples that encourage each other and build each other up and uphold their standards. Many Christians today in cities don't know of any churches that do that. And on to tell you the truth, I don't know of a lot of churches that do that. They did in the first century. So I mean, what we need is not to run off into the woods with other Christians to be protected, what we need is to establish some rather uncompromising churches where we are and then we can continue outreach. We're not on the retreat at this point. We're still in the outreach mode. So that's those are my thoughts. You had other parts of your question but I wasn't sure what they were about and we need to take a break here. You're listening to the Narrow Path. My name is Steve Gregg. We are listener-supported ministry. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. We're not done here. We have another half hour so don't go away. Our website again is thenarrowpath.com. You can donate if you want but everything there is free and there's a lot that's free. Check it out thenarrowpath.com. I'll be back in 30 seconds. Steve Gregg has written a number of highly favorably reviewed books which you can find at your online bookseller including Amazon and Barnes and Noble. His books are Revelation: Four Views, Hell: Three Christian Views, and the two-volume work on the kingdom of God called Empire of the Risen Son. Find them by searching the name Steve Gregg at Amazon or other booksellers. Welcome back to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we're live for another half hour taking your calls. You have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith, you have a disagreement with the host you want to talk about, these are the reasons that we have a phone line open for you. You can call, we have one line open at the moment. The number to call is 844-484-5737. That's 844-484-5737. And I will repeat as I said a half hour ago, we have a monthly men's Bible study on a Saturday morning, the third Saturday of every month, in Temecula, California. And that's this Saturday. So anyone interested in joining us for the men's Bible study there, you'll find out location and such at our website, thenarrowpath.com, under the tab that says announcements. All right, we're going to go back to the phones now and speak with Earl in Eugene, Oregon. Hi, Earl. Welcome.
Earl: Oh, hi, Steve. A few days ago you had a caller ask what should you do if your Catholic friends invite you to church? Can you come forward and partake of the mass? And I'm not Catholic but I've observed some things and since the Catholics and the Protestants take the mass differently, it really just wouldn't work for the Protestants to partake it with them. But if they don't know any better and they come and do anyway, the Catholics are very gracious, they'll give you a pass. The Catholics also allow the Orthodox to have communion with them because they believe more or less the same way. And there's another option if you can't take the mass with them, you can come forward and fold your hands like in prayer and the priest will give you a blessing that way everybody's happy. I just thought I'd throw that in.
Steve Gregg: Okay, Earl, thanks for that information. Yeah, after that call, I did receive more information from another listener. And they said, yeah, the Catholic Church, just like you said, they said they don't serve the mass to those who are not believers in their religious ideas. But they will you can cross your hands over your chest or something they'll give you a blessing. So, yeah, thank you for sharing that. But someone did share that with me afterwards, this is a few weeks ago I suppose. Let's talk to Carrie in Fort Worth, Texas next. Hi, Carrie.
Carrie: Hi, Steve. I understand that refuting dispensationalism can take some time and I was wondering where you thought was the easiest and best place to start and what they believe.
Steve Gregg: Well, yeah, what depends on who you're talking to? You know, when you talk about starting to refute dispensationalism, I assume you're talking about with an individual that you're who's a dispensationalist and you're trying to say, "Where do I start with these people?" There's many possible starting places which would all lead to the opportunity to make all your points. It depends on perhaps what might more most naturally come up in conversation. If they make some kind of affirmation which is clearly a dispensational one, you could you could say, "Could we explore that? You know, what does the Bible actually say about that?" and start with that subject. One very good place to start in many cases would be in discussing what you think about Israel and God's promises He made to Israel because obviously the Bible teaches that Christ is the fulfillment of all the promises that God made to Israel. Whereas dispensationalists think He's not. They think that most of the promises make God made to Israel are not fulfilled in Christ. They're fulfilled in a geopolitical situation in the Middle East at the end times, which of course they believe that's being fulfilled right now even though Christ has no evident presence there. I mean, most of the people in Israel today don't believe in Christ. And when I say most, I mean like over 99% don't of the Jews. And so, you know, I don't see any evidence that what's going on in the Middle East has very much to do with Christ except that it's kind of in rebellion against Him. But the dispensationalists say, "No, no, this is part of God's fulfilling promises to them." So in other words, Christ, who is the biblically speaking, Christ is the fulfillment of the promises God made to Israel, they have replaced Christ with a geopolitical situation in the end times which doesn't necessarily include Him. Of course, they believe it will, but it's been going on for about a century now and it hasn't yet. So I mean, when I say about a century, I know that 1948, which about what almost 80 years ago, is when Israel became a nation. But there were Jews coming to Israel from Europe and other places and settling there from the beginning of the 20th century. So it's been over a century these things have been happening. And yet there's been no mass conversions as as the dispensationalists predicted. Point five percent of the Jews in Israel are believe in Christ, less than 1%. So I mean, this is not a fulfillment of anything the Bible talked about. The Bible did talk about when the Israelites were scattered in the Babylonian exile that God would turn their hearts around. He'd give them a different heart and He'd bring them back to their land and restore them. Well, He did. That's what happened. That's what happened in 539 BC. Those promises were fulfilled. After they were fulfilled, there were no more predictions of that kind made. So once a prediction has been fulfilled and is never repeated, there's not much reason to look for another fulfillment. And certainly anyone who reads what those prophecies say could not really mistake what's happening right now in Israel as a fulfillment of any of those prophecies because in all the prophecies, God's central. Everything about God's restoration of Israel is a restoration to Himself. And nothing that has happened in the past century or more in the land of Israel has had anything to do with God restoring Israel to Himself, only to a geographical piece of land where several generations have lived and died and gone to the same doom that they would have gone to had they died without going to Israel. Israel doesn't save anyone. So there's no no restoration to God that's taken place. All that the prophets cared about was the restoration of the Jews to God and then He's going to restore them to their land too. Hasn't happened. So I mean, talking about Israel, most dispensationalists don't really think very hard about what Israel is. They just say, "Oh, there's something special since 1948. There's a nation that has the name Israel over there." They don't realize that there never was in the Bible any mention of any nation called Israel that didn't have a temple or didn't have God as the central defining phenomenon. Israel became God's special nation at Mount Sinai when and He had them build the tabernacle. From that time until 70 AD, with the exception of a brief period of 50 or less years while they were in Babylon, you know, from that time to this, the nation existed with a temple or tabernacle and it was because it was the nation had no reason to exist except as a holy nation worshipping God. Well, it's there's a nation over there but it's not a holy nation worshipping God and it's not related to anything the Bible ever described as Israel. It's strictly a secular nation just like the United States or Germany or France and so I mean, for some over this fulfillment of prophecy. Yeah, which ones? I don't see any. But that talking about Israel and actually showing people what the Bible says instead of what their dispensational teachers have claimed it says can be very helpful. I myself have two lecture series on our website that would either of them would go a long way in addressing dispensationalism. One of the one is my eschatology series called "When Shall These Things Be?" and I it interacts with dispensationalism all the way through. And the other series is called "What Are We to Make of Israel?" which also interacts with dispensationalism all the way through. So they are a very close examination of the things that dispensationalists claim and a rebuttal too. Now, there may be other ways to approach the subject. You say, "Where do you start?" The thing is, once you get started if they want to continue, you can go on a very long time a lot of different directions because dispensationalism is a system that is fundamentally at odds with the teaching of the New Testament scriptures. So you can go many places with it. Anyway, I can't tell you where to start because I don't know who you're talking to or what they're what they're bringing up. I if I were you, I mean, and I am me and I practice this myself, I don't go out looking for fights with people. I don't feel like I have to confront every dispensationalist and say, "Listen, you're wrong, here's here's what's right." But when you're actually in fellowship with people and they're bringing up and counting on certain things being true that their preachers have told them and you know they're not true, yeah, just showing them the scriptures. That's where I would start with them, you know, if something comes up and you can just say, "Well, let's examine what scripture is that based on that thing you said? Where is that in the Bible?"
Steve Gregg: Yeah, there's plenty of scriptures all over the Bible that can refute their points if they just want to talk about it. Some of them don't want to because everybody they know and all the people they listen to and all the books they've read, they're all dispensationalists, and they don't want to rock the boat. In fact, they don't want to think for themselves because it would I know this because I was a dispensationalist. And when I began to on my own, you know, study the Bible and realize, "Wait a minute, this is not what the Bible says. What I was told isn't what the Bible says here or anywhere." I mean, it took some years for me but and I didn't know anybody who wasn't a dispensationalist. I was just study on my own. Later I was very glad to find that most most Christians were like what I had become and most Christians are not dispensationalists, certainly have not been throughout history. But the thing is, when I began to see things differently, it scared me a little. Not in terms of thinking, "Oh, God's going to be mad at me if I follow what the scriptures say against what my teachers say," but really, my teachers will be mad at me. The people who are influenced by my teachers will be mad at me. You know, this is a death knell to my ministry if I don't teach this stuff. But I just thought, "Well, it's a death knell to my ministry if I don't believe this stuff and I teach it anyway." So I'd rather have the ministry die completely than be on artificial life support by teaching things I don't believe are true. So, I mean, many pastors right now listening to me are in that very position. They've begun to realize that dispensationalism they learned in their Bible schools and so forth doesn't have a leg to stand on scripturally. But but if they change their mind, they're going to lose their positions or at least risk it. I've known pastors who had the same fear when they were re-examining their Calvinism. There was a Presbyterian pastor who wrote to me some years ago. He said, "Man, I'm re-examining Calvinism. I'm starting to doubt it. I don't think the Bible's teaches it." And he was a little afraid but he kept going and later he wrote to me and said, "Well, I told the congregation I'm not Calvinist, I lost my job, now I'm looking for a good home church." Now, that's a terrifying thing for a pastor who's made his living and it's his career, you know, he's got some reputation. There's people who think he's the, you know, the bee's knees and and they're going to think he's a heretic if he changes. Very, very hard. Paul said, "If I was still pleasing men, I should not be the servant of Christ," and that's really the position all ministers are in and every Christian too, frankly. Anyway, Carrie, those are my thoughts on it. I don't know where to start, but I would start wherever they're at or whatever comes up in conversation rather than rather than you saying, "Hey, come over my house I want to disabuse you of all your wrong views." I would just say in fellowship, a dispensationalist if you're talking about the things of God, they're going to say some stuff that's not true and you and you can start from there. You know, gently, lovingly. It's not the most important it's not the most important thing that you disabuse them of it, but if you do, you'll find that a gentle approach probably is going to be more conducive to keeping the conversation going.
Carrie: Well, I've always thought that asking good questions can be helpful. Like, you know, what do you think Paul meant when he said the Gentiles are now part of the commonwealth of Israel? What do you think that means? Or what do you think it means when Paul says that if you're a believer in Christ, you are now a child of Abraham? I mean, what do you think that means?
Steve Gregg: Yeah, you're Abraham's seed and heirs of the promise if you belong to Christ. Yeah, yeah. Dispensationalists don't ever have any good things to say about that. But like I said, they don't use the New Testament for their Israelology, they use the Old Testament. They don't use the New Testament for their eschatology, they use the Old. I mean, I'm not saying they don't quote New Testament passages. They just have to ignore their context and impose the context that comes from their Old Testament assumptions. I mean, I know because that's I mean, I've been in in this in these turbulent waters for 50 years, 60 now almost. So I mean, I'm aware of how they think and what they depend on and, you know, what assumptions they bring. And I used to do so myself. It's just I escaped. And now I'm the heretic, except I'm the heretic who believes what the church always believed until 1830. Yeah. Anyway, brother, I appreciate your call. But yeah, asking questions is always good. I mean, if they say something that you know is a dispensational assumption, just say, "Okay, what scripture are you using? You know, what scripture you basing that on and let's look at that. Let's look at the context and see what that does say." Anyway, brother, I appreciate your call.
Carrie: Thank you, Steve.
Steve Gregg: Thanks for calling. Bye now. All righty, Vicky from Las Vegas. Welcome.
Vicky: Hello. Hi. Let me take you off speaker. Yeah. I have a question, Steve. I go to a Christian church and somebody, you know, sometimes tongues are speaking and I was praising the Lord and raising my hand and just talking to the Holy Spirit and all of a sudden my spirit within me from the Lord didn't agree with the way that they, you know, speaking in tongues and walking around and bouncing around. So from within my body from my belly, I was going, "No, no, no, no," and it felt like I was going to talk in tongues and then I stopped. Is that abolishing the Lord? I mean...
Steve Gregg: You mean is that quenching the spirit?
Vicky: Oh, wait a minute, I can't hear you. Hold on. Hold on.
Steve Gregg: Okay, can you hear me now?
Vicky: Yes.
Steve Gregg: Okay. It sounds to me like you were probably in a Pentecostal or very charismatic church when you talk about people bouncing around things like that. Yeah, I would be a lot like you there. When I'm in a church where the people do that, I don't want to come back and I'm not sure I want to stay to the end. It generally speaking is distracting from what you go to church for. I believe you should go to church to be put more in touch with Jesus and with members of His body who will exercise edifying gifts to the edification of the whole church. Bouncing around is not edifying. It's just having a good time. And this is the thing that you know, it's not just Pentecostals, most Christians want to have a good time. Though that's not necessarily what you go to church for. You don't go to church to have a good time. You go to church so that God will have a good time, that God will enjoy what you're doing. That your submission to God and your reverence for God and your obedience to God are enhanced. I've never seen in one of these groups where they dance and bounce and laugh and do all these other things, I've never seen anyone who does that who comes out who's more humble and submissive to God and more obedient and their life reflects the values of a disciple more. And I don't think those churches are doing it. I don't certainly there's nothing like that that Paul set up or Peter or any of the early Christians. So it's a cultural thing. You know, if you go to a Catholic church or an Orthodox church, maybe even a high church Lutheran or Presbyterian church, there might be a lot of liturgy, a lot of practices that's part of their culture. And it never crosses their mind to ask, "Did Jesus and the apostles do these things? In the churches that Paul wrote to, were they doing these things?" And they don't realize that in the time since the apostles, a lot of Christian churches have just developed cultural things they do, different from other churches. Some of them very liturgical and formal, some of them very wild and ecstatic, some of them more intellectually based, and some of them more emotionally based in some more less crazy ways or whatever. You're right to question those things. And if they distract you, if you feel like the Holy Spirit's telling you, "This is not good," then honestly I would suggest you look for another church. But you don't have to look for that church first. I would first talk to those who are in charge of the church you're going to and say, "Tell me exactly how these behaviors are consistent with what the Bible teaches about the church meetings." If they can do a good job, fine. If they can't, then you'd ask them, "Well, if that's not what the Bible teaches, are you trying to limit these things? Are you trying to reel these things in and make the church more scriptural?" If the answer is effectively, "No, we're not," then I'd look for another church in that case. I know very well, I mean, not just those behaviors. Lots of churches have things they do, not those same things, but things they do that you know, a Christian going there who hasn't isn't immersed in that culture already, that is to say they're not a fish that's already whose body temperature's already adjusted to the temperature of that water. You go in there and you've got your own human body temperature, you begin to realize, "Wait, this this is not comfortable." And lots of churches I'm not comfortable in, so I just wouldn't join them. If you feel like you want to stay because you've got friends there you don't want to leave, well then I'd certainly try to prevail if possible on the leadership to see things and do things a little more scripturally so that you can feel comfortable worshipping there and not distracted from God by going to church. All right. Let's talk to Richard in North Carolina. Hi, Richard. Welcome.
Richard: Hey, how are you? I'm probably missing something here, but I've been down this rabbit hole, if you will, about the name Lucifer. It's mentioned one time in Isaiah 14:12. And why is a Latin term replacing the Hebrew term *Halel* in Isaiah? Messiah's spoken of Himself as Bright Morning Star in Revelation 22:16. And then 2:28 it talks about giving the Morning Star to those that overcome. And 2 Peter 1:19, "day star rise in your hearts." It seems like they're metaphorically connected which doesn't make sense to me. Can you just, if you are able, explain why that name, a Latin name, is used there and not a Hebrew name?
Steve Gregg: Okay, yeah, I think I can. And I got your question and we're running out of time, so I'm going to just jump in here. The word "Lucifer," as you say, is found in Isaiah 14:12 and only there. There's no other place in the Bible that uses the term Lucifer, which means there's no cross-reference for Lucifer that would tell us that it is, for example, the devil, as most people assume Lucifer is the devil. But if he is, all the information that would point that direction is found in that one passage, Isaiah 14. And I don't think there is information that points that direction in that passage. Of course, it says that the prophecy is addressed not to the devil, it's addressed to the king of Babylon. And that's not surprising because the whole previous chapter is addressed about the doom of Babylon. So Isaiah 13 and 14 are a prophecy against Babylon, and in chapter 14:12 a lament against the king of Babylon is found. Now, he's referred to as Lucifer in our in some of our English Bibles. Not most of them, because modern translations do not have the word Lucifer. And this bothers some King James only types. They say, "Oh, they've taken out the name Lucifer." Yeah, well, the reason is there's no name Lucifer in the Hebrew Bible. And our Bibles are trying to get in English what the Hebrew text said. Now, the Hebrew text doesn't have the word Lucifer in it because there's no word Lucifer in the Hebrew language. You're right, Lucifer is Latin. For some reason, when the early English translators translated the Bible into English, they weren't doing it from Hebrew, they were doing it from Latin. And when they came to the name Lucifer in Isaiah 14:12, they took Lucifer to be a proper name. So instead of translating it as they normally would, like they did the others, I mean, they're translating the whole book of Isaiah into English. Instead of translating the name Lucifer into the English equivalent, which is light bearer or Morning Star, they didn't do that. They just took it right out of the Latin and treated it like a proper name. It was not a proper name. As you pointed out, *Halel*, the word in the Hebrew text, is not a name. It just means a light bearer or a morning star. Now, that being true, we seem to have in our King James and New King James a mistake made by treating Lucifer as a proper name. And that's why when modern translations are translating directly from the Hebrew, which is what modern translations do in English, they don't have the word Lucifer because the word Lucifer's not anywhere in the Hebrew text. They instead do what the original translators should have done: they just translate the Hebrew word into the English, which is light bearer or shining one or Morning Star. Now, since the prophecy is addressed to the king of Babylon, who was a human being, we recognize that morning star or light bearer is simply a term of flattery to a king. Just like you would not speak normally to a king, you'd say, "Your Majesty." Or as Daniel referred to the king of Babylon in Daniel chapter 2 as a king of kings. Now, these are simply flattering titles that people would use in speaking to a king. Light bearer or morning star is one of them also. So Isaiah uses that. Now, by the way, we know that Jesus in the New Testament is called the morning star, as you pointed out in Revelation 22:16. He's also called king of kings. Both of these are terms that were used of the king of Babylon in the Old Testament, but that wasn't their name and it's not Jesus's name. Jesus's name is Jesus. It's not morning star. It's not king of kings. Those are titles. Those are terms to address him. Now, because Jesus is a great king, the greatest of all, to use the same kind of terms of honor that would commonly be used of earthly kings, such as Your Majesty, speaking to Christ would make sense. Now, the Bible doesn't use the term Your Majesty, but it does use the term king of kings, which was earlier applied to Babylon's king but now applied to Christ. Or the term morning star, which again was used in Isaiah 14:12 of the king of Babylon but used of Christ. It just means that terms of honor by which one would address a king are naturally enough used to address King Jesus. And it doesn't mean that he is Lucifer. Nobody is Lucifer. It's that the king of Babylon, among the other laudatory titles he was given, was the light bearer, the morning star, and such laudatory titles apply to other great kings too. And Jesus is a great king, so that's why he's the bright the morning star in Revelation. So there's should be no confusing Jesus with the character who's addressed in Isaiah 14:12. It's just that kings, many kings, are called by the same great titles and as we refer to Jesus as a king, that too is a title that's given to other kings. To use other flattery titles is not unusual either. Therefore, to apply the term morning star to Jesus is quite appropriate even though other kings including the king of Babylon had been dressed by that title but they weren't him. He's the king over all the kings, so he's the most bright morning star but that's why the term is being used. I'm out of time. The music's playing. I wish I didn't have to hang up on you. I need to go forward and sorry for those still waiting to talk to me. There's always tomorrow if the Lord tarries. You're listening to the Narrow Path. Our address is The Narrow Path, P.O. Box 1730, Temecula, California, 92593. Our website, thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for joining us.