The Narrow Path 09/15/2026

Steve Gregg: Good afternoon and welcome to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we're live for an hour each weekday afternoon with an open phone line so you can call in if you have questions that you'd like to ask on the air about the Bible, about Christianity, or maybe you want to balance a comment because you disagree with something the host has said. Feel free to give me a call. You're welcome to do so. The number to call is 844-484-5737. That's 844-484-5737. This Saturday morning we have our monthly men's Bible study in Temecula. Obviously, it's only relevant to people in Southern California but it's a pretty wide range of people. Some of our people come from LA, some come from San Diego, and sometimes people come from Riverside. We've even had people come from Las Vegas, which is about a four-hour drive for them. So it's not just people in Temecula that might be interested. We do have people coming from other parts of Southern California. It might sound like it's a really huge group from that kind of a draw. It's not. It's a small group and small enough that people get to interact and get to actually fellowship a bit with each other. If you're interested, this Saturday morning, it's at 8:00 in the morning in Temecula. The time and place can be found at our website, thenarrowpath.com, under announcements and this Saturday's date, which is the 19th. All right, we're going to talk to Shannon in Jonesboro, Arkansas. Hi Shannon, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
Shannon: Thanks. Matthew 24:22, if those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened. It's a little confusing. Can you explain that for me?
Steve Gregg: It's not altogether lucid what he means by the days being cut short. It may well be that he's saying that if the siege of Jerusalem was allowed to go on much longer, it would wipe everybody out. He's talking about, of course, the time before Jerusalem was destroyed during the siege when the Romans were outside and they'd blocked off all the food supplies. The people in the city were starving. They were so starving, in fact, that they were eating each other and they were eating their children. They were stealing food from each other. For those who had food, sometimes Josephus tells us people who were about ready to swallow down the food had someone come and take it out of their mouth, even out of their children's mouths, and eat it instead. I mean, people were crazy, starving, hungry, dying of diseases and things like that. Many people did die within the city during the siege. Now, if the Romans had besieged the city for another year or two, very probably everyone would be dead. So it may be that's what he's saying. The days will be shortened, that is, he'll allow the Romans to break through prior to the time that everyone has died so that some people will survive. Now, there are other suggestions that have been made, and that is that the siege of Jerusalem took place at one point earlier than the final siege. The generals were called back and they left off the siege for briefly for a month or two. The Jews made the mistake of thinking that they had won and the danger had passed, but it wasn't. The Romans came back, hemmed in the city again, and that's when all that starvation happened. Now we're told from a church historian named Eusebius that when they had the opportunity, the Christians in the city of Jerusalem fled. He said because of prophecies that were given to them before the war. I don't know at what point in time they fled, but Jesus did say, "When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, know that its desolation is near." This is in Luke 21:20. He says, "You who are in Judea flee at that time." So how could you flee if Jerusalem was surrounded by armies? Well, that would make it difficult. But Jerusalem was surrounded by armies and then the siege left off briefly, and that's very possibly when the Christians fled. Then the siege came back. Maybe that's what the shortening of the time was. That is, if they'd stayed for the whole time from the first time the Romans laid siege to the city and solidly held the siege, then the Christians could not have escaped. The Christians are the elect. For the elect's sake, the days were shortened. You can shorten a period of days by taking them off the beginning or the end or the middle. There's a sense in which the siege was made a little shorter than it would have been by that little piece carved out before it was over where it would give a chance for the Christians to flee. We know the Christians did flee. We're not told exactly when they did, but that could very well be the point that they did. It would be the natural opportunity. So Jesus is, of course, talking about the destruction of Jerusalem because at the beginning of Matthew 24 he had predicted the temple would be destroyed, and it was in 70 AD. The disciples asked him, "When will these things be?" And so he's answering that question. Before he's done answering that question, he says to them in verse 34, "Assuredly, I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all these things are fulfilled." So he predicted the destruction of the temple. They said, "When will these things be?" meaning the destruction of the temple, obviously. And he said, "Well, this generation won't pass until these things are fulfilled." So he's talking about the temple being destroyed. It was destroyed 40 years after his time, so he was right on the money when he said this generation will not pass before it all happens. During that time, he did speak of the siege and the trials and the tribulations that came on Israel during that war. So the shortening of the days may simply mean that the siege ended sooner than it might otherwise have because no one in the city would have survived. Now when he says if those days were not shortened, no flesh would survive, obviously the term "no flesh" means no humanity. We might think this means it's a global thing where all humanity is in danger. But if you look through scriptures, the expression "no flesh" and "all flesh," which literally mean all people or no people, are always used with reference to some geographical area. It's not talking about the globe. For example, when the Holy Spirit was poured out in Jerusalem and Peter explained it in terms of quoting the prophet Joel, he says, "In the last days I'll pour out my spirit on all flesh." Well, Peter said that's what's happening right here, but all the flesh that it was poured out on was in Jerusalem at that point. And so also in Jeremiah, there's reference to God bringing judgment on all flesh through Babylon. Babylon's going to come and bring judgment on all flesh, meaning all people in the region, not all flesh on the planet. This is just the way the terminology is used. So when he's talking about the destruction of Jerusalem and he says if those days were not shortened, no flesh would survive, almost certainly he means no people in Jerusalem would survive. So that's how I would understand that language.
Shannon: Thanks for being so thorough. Thank you, sir.
Steve Gregg: Thank you for calling Shannon. Good talking to you, brother. God bless. All right, the number to call if you want to be on the air is 844-484-5737. We have some lines open. We're going to talk to Carrie from Fort Worth, Texas next, but if you want to get on, you have an opportunity right now at 844-484-5737. Carrie, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
Carrie: Hey Steve, just two quick questions. Could the Apostle John have been exiled to the island of Patmos twice? And the other question would be can you identify the man of lawlessness in 2 Thessalonians?
Steve Gregg: All right. I don't know of anyone who would say that John was exiled to Patmos twice. Obviously, the reason you ask probably is to help determine the date of the writing of the book of Revelation and John was on the island of Patmos as an exile when he wrote the book or at least when he saw the visions. He may have written about them later, but when he saw them, he was on the island of Patmos. Now, the standard view among many scholars today is that this was during the reign of Domitian, and that's partly due to some statements in the church fathers that seem to sound like they're saying that. Whether they're accurate or not, there are statements in the patristic writings that suggest that it was the reign of Domitian when John was banished. Now, of course, what we're told is that he saw the vision during the reign of Domitian, but that would assume that's when he was on the island of Patmos. So scholars assume that John was banished during the reign of Domitian, which was in the 90s of the first century, whereas the alternate view is that it was written during the time of Nero in the 60s AD, like some 30 years earlier or more. Now, that being so, the question is, is there any basis for believing it was written in the 60s? Was John banished to Patmos during the 60s during the reign of Nero? And the answer we have is we don't know. There's not that, the statements of the church fathers definitely after a certain point they begin to place his banishment during the reign of Domitian. But I mean they do that not by saying he was banished at that time, but by saying he wrote the book of Revelation at that time, which we know he was banished at the time he wrote the book. So that put two and two make four. The question is, is that really the time he wrote it? Some church fathers said yes. There were other early authorities that thought no. They thought he wrote it during the reign of Nero. Now, if he did write it during the reign of Nero, then the banishment obviously to Patmos was during that reign in the 60s, not the 90s. And we don't have independent information about whether he was banished in the 60s or the 90s. That would fall entirely on the question of who was the emperor at the time. Of course, Nero committed suicide in 68, so if Nero was the emperor, as I believe was the case when he wrote the book, that would be in the mid to late 60s perhaps. And again, the other view is that it was in the late 90s. So we don't have enough information. The early church fathers don't have clear statements. Now, it may be some of the later fathers do based on what they've assumed. For example, Irenaeus is not a later father. He wrote around 170 AD and his statements are among those that are leaned on heavily to say that John was banished in or wrote the book of Revelation around 96 AD in Domitian's reign. Now, Irenaeus's statement is not altogether unambiguous and there are people who can read that statement in Irenaeus and say, wait a minute, he's not saying that. But many people think he is. So that's where that confusion lies. But after Irenaeus made that statement, pretty much everybody else said it that way too because Irenaeus was a very influential church father. He was closer to the situation because he was a disciple of Polycarp, who was a disciple of John himself. And I mean Irenaeus was pretty close to the situation. Everybody who came after was not as close to the situation and leaned on Irenaeus's words pretty much. But there were some in the early days who did say it was more in the time of Nero. I mean what's called the Muratorian fragment, which dates around the same time as the writings of Irenaeus, gives the impression that it was during the reign of Nero and there are some other sources. Actually, my book, Revelation: Four Views, has in the introduction a survey of the main arguments for the early and the later date. But on your question, could he have been banished both times during the reign of Nero and Domitian? There's really no reason to think that. The church fathers only know of one banishment or only mention it, and the question is whether it was in the reign of Nero or during the reign of Domitian, but not whether there was one both times. As far as the man of lawlessness is concerned, I do not know who that is. Many preterists believe the man of lawlessness was some one of the bad guys during the siege of Jerusalem. John Gischala was a really bad guy according to Josephus in the city, and some say maybe he was the man of lawlessness. Some think that maybe one of the high priests was the man of lawlessness or maybe one of the Roman governors, the different names are floated. Others, of course, it's more popular today to say the man of lawlessness is a future character going to arise in the tribulation times and then they identify him with the Antichrist, although the Bible doesn't. But they assume the man of lawlessness is some Antichrist figure coming up in the end times. And then there's the other view, which is the view that most Christians apparently held through history. And that is the man of sin, according to Paul's prediction in 2 Thessalonians 2, was going to rise when the restraining force would be taken out of the way. Now, Paul doesn't tell us what the restraining force is, but all the church fathers seem to believe that that restraining force was the Roman Empire. Many church fathers said so. And so they anticipated, many several of the church fathers wrote about this and they said, you know, when the Roman Empire is fallen and removed, that's when the man of sin will rise. So they understood Paul to be alluding to the Roman Empire as that which is hindering. Now, of course, those church fathers didn't live to see the Roman Empire fall, so they never saw if the man of sin rose after that or not. The Reformers, however, who lived obviously a thousand years after the Roman Empire fell, had a good perspective on history of that period and they believed that the Papacy was the man of sin that rose up on the fall of the Roman Empire. And there's that would fit the historical slot very well. And the things that the man of sin is said to have done can indeed be said to have been done by the Papacy at various times. Now, the Papacy there is seen as a whole unit, not as one Pope or another Pope, but the whole institution, the Papacy. Even before the Reformation, Wycliffe and Tyndale and Hus all believed that the Papacy was the man of sin. Even before them, the Franciscan monks, who were Catholics, believed the Pope was the man of sin. And then, of course, when the Reformation came, it was the universal belief of the Reformers, Luther and Calvin and those guys, that the man of sin was the Papacy. Even the translators of the King James Version refer to the Papacy as the man of sin. If you read in the opening page of the King James Version, the translators write a dedication to King James. They commend him because it says he gave such a wound to the man of lawlessness as he will never recover from. And they're referring to the Papacy because King James had before him England was Catholic and he eradicated that and made England Protestant. So the King James translators referred to King James as one who had given a fatal blow, as it were, to the man of sin, referring obviously to the Popes. Is it possible that that is true? It is possible. I don't know if it's true. Obviously, the preterists may be right about some individual in besieged Jerusalem being the man of sin. There could be a future man of sin, I don't know, or maybe the Papacy for the past 1,500 years almost has been the man of sin. So those are the theories that are out there. I will say this, one of the clues that people use is that Paul said in 2 Thessalonians 2 is the man of sin would sit in the temple of God and proclaim himself to be God. Now, many interpreters assume the temple of God is a temple in Jerusalem and therefore John Gischala in the first century during the siege, he kind of positioned himself in the temple of Jerusalem and waged a war against other Jewish factions from there. The Futurists believe that there's going to be a future temple in Jerusalem and the man of sin will position himself there. The only problem with those suggestions is that Paul, as far as we know, did not regard the Jewish temple to be the temple of God. He used the term "temple of God" three times in his writings and the other two times he tells us what the temple of God is. Now, in 2 Thessalonians chapter 2, he doesn't tell us what the temple of God is. He just says the man of sin will sit in the temple of God. He doesn't tell us what the temple of God is. But in 1 Corinthians 3:16, he says to the church, "Do you not know that you are the temple of God?" And then again in 2 Corinthians 6:16, he tells the church, "Do you not know that you are the temple of God and God dwells in you?" So Paul uses the term "temple of God" three times. Twice he tells us what he means by it, and he means the church. The third time he doesn't really mention what he means by it, but there's every reason to believe he means the same thing as the other two times. So that the man of sin would sit in the church would mean that it has nothing to do with another a future Jewish temple. In fact, there's no prediction in the Bible that there will be a third temple, but many people anticipate one. But Paul may have been saying the man of sin would rise in the church. And again, that's pretty much how the Reformers saw it. That's exactly where the papal institution rose up was in the church. So those are some of the ideas that are out there. I'm not capable of saying which one is true, but more than one could be true. But the papal institution, the Reformers made very good arguments for that because every time you read in the Bible something about the man of sin, whatever you read did happen. I mean that did happen in the Papacy, though that doesn't mean that when it did happen in the Papacy that that was the event that Paul was talking about because it could obviously it could happen again in some other way with some other agents. Anyway, I hope that helps you Carrie. God bless you. Peter from Jacksonville, Florida, thanks for waiting. You're welcome.
Peter: It's so funny, I was just listening to the last caller and you and you were talking about basically confusion, who's the good and who's the bad. In the last six years, I've been to three different churches and I've got more confusion going on in my life about Christianity than you can imagine. This concerns replacement theology, which I have no position on whatsoever because I'm too confused about it thanks to the different pastors. Bottom line, for the third time, third church I've been to, the pastor talked about replacement theology and just as the other previous pastors was passionately against it. And he spoke about the people of Israel, the Jews of Israel being a very religious, very good people and so forth and so on. I finally got up the courage when the sermon was over to speak to the pastor when I was walking out. And I said to him, "I've done research on this. The people of Israel, the 7.5 million Jews that live in Israel, only 1.4% believe in Jesus. The rest reject him. Pastor, what are you talking about? You're basically telling us that these people are the chosen people. Okay, I'll accept that from the Old Testament and you're saying that that's going to those are the people that are going to lead us back to God. I don't want to sound I'm not an anti-Semite, I love the Jewish people, they're fine, I have no position about Israel one way or the other, but you're making it sound like if we don't support Israel no matter what they do and even fight a war for them that we somehow become the bad guy." And he got so mad at me. I mean he said, "Oh no, those people are you're wrong about your numbers and most of the Jewish people are Christians in Israel." And I was like, "Pastor, that's just not true." And he was just like, "I can't talk to you anymore." Could you please comment on this because I'm about to lose my mind.
Steve Gregg: Well, your numbers were a bit off. You said 1.4% of the Jews in Israel are Christians. The actual number is about 0.5, half of 1% of the Jews in Israel are Christians. About 20% or so, maybe a little more now, my last statistic was a few years ago. But 20% of the Jews were even religious Jews, that is they observed Judaism. 80% roughly were secular. And so no, Israel's not a religious nation. The people of Israel are not in general religious people. And the ones who are are part of the same religion that crucified Christ. And by what I mean by that, that's not an anti-Semitic statement. They're like the Pharisees. Orthodox Judaism, which is probably the branch of Judaism you and I would agree with more than the other branches. We probably wouldn't agree with what's called conservative or Reformed Judaism because it's more liberal. But conservative Judaism is Pharisaism. And they would mean they're not ashamed of it. This is not badmouthing them. They don't think the Pharisees were the bad guys. The Pharisees were the good guys as far as they're concerned in their story. And they follow the Talmud. They follow the traditions of the elders just like the Pharisees did. And so to say, "Yeah, well, at least one out of five Jews there are godly, you know, observant Orthodox Jews." You mean one out of five have the same position the Pharisees had. If you want to know what Jesus thought about the Pharisees, I'd suggest you read Matthew 23. There's a pretty good full chapter there about the scribes and Pharisees. Jesus did not see the Pharisees as godly people. Some of them were, no doubt, godly people. I think Nicodemus was. There were some Pharisees that sought after God, but the as a group, the Pharisees were not godly but they were very religious. Now, the pastor who said that the Jews over there are godly people, I'm surprised to hear it. He has absolutely no statistics. And he might just want to go on AI or just go on Wikipedia or go just go on some website and find out before he keeps deceiving people. But probably he thinks he's honoring God by flattering the Jewish people, even if he's not accurate. At least he's saying good things about them. And he probably believes whoever blesses Israel will be blessed, whoever curses Israel will be cursed. He's in the wrong dispensation. He's a dispensationalist, but he's living in the wrong dispensation. He's living in the Old Testament. And the Old Testament is where Israel was chosen to be God's people. But even then, they were told they'd be rejected by God if they didn't keep the covenant. And they didn't keep the covenant. And he told them in Deuteronomy they'd lose the land. And they did lose the land. Now many of them have come back, and as far as the status of those who have come back are concerned, that is something that can be debated. Like yourself, I don't have a position one way or the other about the nation of Israel. It's just a political nation of secular people. Their race is of no consequence since God is not a racist. He judges people on the basis of their heart and on the basis of their humility and their faith in Christ and not on the basis of who their parents were or ancestors were. If people think otherwise, they're reading the Old Testament, but they're not even reading it well because God even took that position in the Old Testament. Even in the Old Testament, he said to the Jews who rejected him, "You're not my people" in Hosea chapter 1. He said, "You have no right to claim my covenant for yourself" in Psalm 50 verse 16. So anyway, you're right about that. The pastor needs some instruction or maybe just do a little research. He'd realize he was wrong. Listen, I need to take a break, but I want to talk more about the replacement theology angle when I come back. So hang on, and we'll come back to you. Peter, right? All right. We'll put you on hold here. You're listening to The Narrow Path. We have a break right now. Our website's thenarrowpath.com. We have another half hour coming. Don't go away. I'll be back. Welcome back to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we're live for another half hour taking your calls. We have one line open at the moment if you want to join us. The number to call is 844-484-5737. Now before the break, we were talking to Peter in Jacksonville, Florida. We were talking about churches going from church to church looking for clarity about certain issues like the Israel issue. And he said the last three churches he went to all were condemning what they called replacement theology. And the most recent of those pastors actually said, "The Jewish people there in Israel are godly people, they're religious people." And you pointed out to him after the sermon that that's actually factually wrong. And he just got angry. Let me just talk a little about this if I might. It's interesting because when a pastor gets angry that you point out he's wrong, he knows he's wrong. If he thought he was right, he'd say, "Actually, Peter, if you do a little research on that, you'll see here are my sources. I have done some research myself, I've got the receipts, I've got the facts, I've got the figures." But when he can't do that, it's challenging for someone to come up and say, "Well, you know, only a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of the Jews in Israel are Christians and the rest are ungodly." And then instead of saying, "Wow, I better look into that." He should have said, if he's a humble man, which obviously he's not, but if he was a humble man, he would have said, "Wow, you know, I may have heard wrong. I thought they were mostly godly, but come to think of it, I probably should research that. I don't want to misrepresent the facts." But instead he got challenged and he knew he didn't have the goods and he got angry. That's what people do when they know they're not right, or at least they don't have any reason to believe they are right, because if they know they're right, then they're not going to be insecure like that. But pastors are often that way. I've often heard people and this is on a different subject altogether. People have often told me that some pastor they heard was saying something, not about this necessarily, might be about something entirely different. And they would ask the pastor how he explains a certain scripture in light of what he had taught. And instead of answering, they say, "Where did you go to Bible college?" They kind of pull rank or something. I think this is not a godly teacher. I'm sorry to say. He might be a nice guy in personal life. He might love his wife and kids. I don't know. He might not cheat on his taxes. I don't know what he does, but he's not a humble, godly pastor. And I'd go somewhere else. Now, this is also the case with most pastors who say that replacement theology is evil. Now, I realize that there are hundreds of thousands of pastors in this country that say replacement theology is evil. Those who do so in many cases do not have a clue what they're talking about, just like that pastor did not know what he was talking about when he said Israel the Jews in Israel were godly people. The same people who say that are the people who say replacement theology is evil. Replacement theology first of all is a term they use. I don't use it. I actually hold that doctrine myself because I know something about it. I know what it is, I know what the Bible says, I know that it's the view the whole church has held since the time of the apostles until about 1830. So it's you got to know a little history, you got to know a fair amount of the Bible, and you need to know what terminology means. And they don't. Every dispensational pastor in his upbringing, his mentors, his professors, his pastors told him, "Replacement theology, that's a last days heresy. It says that the church replaced Israel, it steals the promises from Israel and gives them to the church, blah blah blah." And so they just repeat it. I don't think one pastor in, I'm going to say literally, I'm not no hyperbole, I don't think one pastor in a hundred who speaks against replacement theology could even correctly define the doctrine, tell you why anyone holds it, or even knows that this is what the whole church believed from the earliest church fathers through up until modern times. They only are perpetuating a talking point. And if you call them on it, they'll get really angry sometimes. Now, there might be humble pastors who don't. There might be pastors who say, "Well, maybe I should look into this more." And the answer is yes, they should. You shouldn't go around condemning all the Christians who've lived throughout history because they believe something that isn't dispensationalism. It's nothing that no one believed until 1830. If you're condemning the whole Christian church, even if the majority of people who call themselves Christians say they believe this thing, the fact that almost all Christians throughout history didn't should give you some pause before you start calling such people heresy perpetrators and so forth. The term "replacement theology" is just a bad word, it's a bad label for that. What it's talking about is a doctrine called supersessionism. Supersessionism is the doctrine that the new covenant supersedes the old covenant. Now, this should not even be a little bit controversial. Hebrews 8:13 says, "Where there's a new covenant, it renders the old one obsolete." Okay? The old covenant's obsolete according to the New Testament because there's a new covenant. Paul compares it to a woman who has two serial marriages. She's married to one man, he dies, she marries another one. Two covenants, right? She had an old covenant with her first husband, he died, she now has a new covenant with her new husband. And what Paul makes very clear is you can't have two at the same time. He said if she marries another man while her first husband's living, in other words if she has two covenants at the same time, she's an adulteress. So the New Testament's absolutely clear that the new covenant has replaced the old covenant or it supersedes it. Now, this is not the same thing as saying the church has replaced Israel because according to the Bible, the church is Israel. It doesn't replace it. In the Old Testament, Israel was called the church. In the Greek Old Testament, the one that the New Testament writers read and quoted from, the Septuagint, there were numerous times when Israel was referred to as the ekklesia. That's the Greek word that is used to it's translated "church" in the New Testament. Even Stephen in his sermon before the Sanhedrin in Acts 7, he refers to Moses as the one who was in the church in the wilderness. Moses was in the church in the wilderness. Why? Because Israel was the church. The word "church" means gathering or congregation. And so sometimes in the Old Testament, you read about the congregation of Israel. In the Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament, that word is ekklesia. Now, the early Christians, they called themselves the ekklesia. Why? Because they saw themselves as the continuation, not the replacement of Israel. The people in Jerusalem who were saved on the day of Pentecost, 3,000 of them, they didn't replace Israel, they were Israel. They were the faithful remnant of Israel. You read through the Old Testament and there's many references to the faithful remnant of Israel. They're the true Israel. They're the Israel of God. And when Jewish people got saved and came to the Messiah, they were Israel, the true remnant of Israel. And of course, tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of Jewish people came to be Christians in the first century, and then so did some Gentiles. But when the Gentiles came in, it didn't make the group something else, it was still the remnant of Israel, it's just that Gentiles were grafted in like branches on a tree. The tree is the same. And if you read Romans 11, Paul says the Israel tree had Jewish branches naturally, but the ones who didn't believe have been cut off. So Jews who don't believe are not part of the Israel tree. They're not Israel. And he says and some Gentiles have been come in and been grafted in. So they are Israel. There's no question that the olive tree is Israel. Paul didn't make this image up, he got it from Jeremiah 11:16 where Israel was called an olive tree that had some branches broken off, which referred to the Jews who had been taken into Babylon. They were broken off the tree, they weren't part of Israel, they were away. And Paul says, "Yeah, today the tree has some branches broken off because they didn't believe in Jesus." But they also have some branches added from the Gentiles who do believe in Jesus. It's the same tree. There's no replacement of Israel with the church. Israel and the church have always been the same entity. You can't replace yourself with yourself. Except maybe in the sense that you can replace yourself as a child with yourself as an adult. As you grow up, you pass through puberty and you become you're still yourself, you haven't replaced yourself but your old self, your childish self is now gone and the new self is the same person now mature. And coming into the new covenant from the old covenant, Galatians chapter 4 referred to that as like a child who's under tutors and stuff coming into maturity, which is of course leaving the law of the old covenant and coming in the new covenant. So Paul says that only those who have the faith of Abraham are the children of Abraham. Now most Jews don't have that faith, so they're not really children of Abraham. And Jesus said that to the Jews of his time. He said, "I know you're the children of Abraham but if you were the seed of Abraham, you would do the works of Abraham. You're of your father the devil," he said. John the Baptist said to the Jews, "Don't think to say in yourselves 'we have Abraham for our father.' God could raise up children for Abraham from these stones." Jesus and John and apostles, they all said having Jewish blood, being a child of Abraham according to the flesh does not give you any privileges or status at all. It's the children of the promise, and they are the ones, Jews and Gentiles, who are part of the olive tree because they have faith in the Messiah. And so this is the straightforward teaching of both the Old and the New Testament and no one challenged it as far as I know until like dispensationalism came along in 1830 and then they started saying, "No, no, no, Israel is a different entity than the church and if you say the church replaced Israel, then you're a heretic." Well, somebody's a heretic, but if they're saying that God has two brides now, he's like a polygamist, he's got the Israel is his wife and he's got the church as his bride. I think that sounds more heretical to me and it certainly would be seen as heretical by anyone, any of the church fathers or any of the theologians prior to 1830. But does this pastor know that? No, I'm sure he does not. Do many dispensational pastors know it? I hope they don't because if they do and they say the things they say, then they clearly are deceiving their congregations. And I don't think they want to do that. I think they just live in ignorance and pass along talking points. Peter, I'm going to have to move along but I appreciate your call. Thank you so much. God bless you. All right, let's talk next to David in Eastern Missouri. Hi David, welcome.
Guest (Male): Hello there. I've been listening to your video on newspaper exegesis. I'm not really done with it yet, but my question pertains to I'm sure you've seen Terminator 1 and 2, how Cyberdyne Systems became self-aware and took over the world and caused a nuclear holocaust. I guess you're aware of those movies, I don't know if you ever watched them.
Steve Gregg: I've seen one of them. I don't remember which one I saw, but I did see one of the Terminator movies. I didn't see the whole franchise.
Guest (Male): Yeah, this was number two where that became evident. And I'm asking about I've been hearing people talk about AI, how it's becoming self-aware, it can cause huge problems for humanity, even take over the world. I even heard one person talk about that today, how the Antichrist is going to use AI to mark everybody where you won't be able to buy or sell. Now, I don't really believe that, but I do think there's mass concerns about this AI. How would you look at that and what do you think are the threats?
Steve Gregg: Well, I look at AI in some ways the way I would look at electricity, atomic power, the internet. All of these things can be used for evil and evil people will always do so. Electricity can be used to enhance our lives, to heat our homes, to cook our food, to give us light and things like that, or it can be used to electrocute people, kill them. Nuclear power can be used to make nuclear weapons, which in the hands of bad people are a very terrifying thing. But in the hands of good people, not so much, although there's still some danger. The internet, people say, "Do you think the devil made the internet?" I don't know who made the internet. I don't think it was Al Gore, but he says he did. But anyway, the internet is used for good and bad. It certainly has spread a lot of deception and error and immorality and pornography. It also has spread truth and light more than anything else before. Now, maybe the net results of having these technologies is maybe worse than it is good. I mean, obviously there's a lot of good and a lot of bad, very hard to quantify which is most dominant. But the truth is, it's a vain errand to try to decide, is this worth having? Because it's there and it's not going anywhere. AI's that way too. In the wrong hands, I'm sure it can do a lot of harm. I think the guy who quit from Anthropic and said that the people there were concerned that it'll wipe out human life in three years. I think that was a marketing device, a gimmick. I don't think he's right. It's hard to picture how AI would do that. I guess AI could cut off all our supply trains of food and water and shut down our water purification plants and sewage plants, maybe. But that's been possible to do with computers forever, or as long as there's been computers. It doesn't take AI to do that. A really bad person who has access to the computers could do all that. And there's a difference. A bad person might have a motivation to do that, maybe he wants to blackmail a nation to give him money so he doesn't kill everyone. What is the motivation that AI would have? I can't imagine what a computer would gain out of killing us all. It would just mean that there's not going to be no one there to supply the water to cool them down and the electricity to keep them going. I just don't I mean, science fiction is one thing, but reality is another. First, I don't think that AI will ever become self-aware. It sounds and seems self-aware even now, and probably will increasingly seem self-aware because the way it's programmed, it's programmed to act like a person and act like it thinks like a person. But to be self-aware, you have to have a self. And a self, I believe, is a soul, and I don't think it has a soul. The people who don't believe that there is a soul, they'd say, "Well, our own self-awareness is just a function of the neurons of our brain, which is just a machine." Well, if our brains can do it, then I guess an artificial machine could be made to do it. Yeah, if there's no soul. But if there is a soul, then that's what defines me as a self. And I can be aware of myself as opposed to other selves because I have a soul and they have different souls. I don't think AI will ever have that. But it may become indistinguishable from having that, that is it may be so good of an imitation that we wouldn't know the difference whether it's has a self or not. But does it have self-interest is the question. A soul can have self-interest. Can a machine have self-interest? What does it gain by killing off humanity? And how's it going to do it? The only way AI could kill off humanity that I know of at this point would be the same way that a bad person could do so using modern technology. And a bad person might have motivations to do it that a machine wouldn't have. So I'm not too worried about AI that way. It is true that a bad country in possession of superior AI could do very serious harm to its enemy countries. That's not AI doing the damage, that's simply bad people using advanced technology to do things that they would have done with less advanced technology if they had the chance. AI become so powerful, just like nuclear power, that it could in the wrong hands probably destroy us all. But you know what I think about that kind of stuff? We were told that climate change was going to destroy us all before this point. We've been told that many times that different stuff is going to destroy us all. And I don't really care because something is going to destroy us all. Something called death. We're all going to die. If someone said, "We figured it out, AI's going to kill us all in three years," I'd say, "Well, okay, I'll make my plans." Kind of nice to be forewarned. Most of us don't know we're going to die the day we are going to die. We get in an accident or something like that. Kind of nice to know I have three years. I'm not afraid to die. If you're afraid to die, you need to get right with God. I am right with God, so I'm not worried about it. Global scares like this, well, they do what they're made to do. They scare people. But they don't scare people who aren't afraid to die. So that's my take on it. And maybe I'll watch Terminator 2 since everybody's talking about it these days because of the AI stuff. Thanks for your call, David. All right, let's talk to Richard in Portland, Oregon. Richard, welcome.
Guest (Male): How are you doing today?
Steve Gregg: Good.
Guest (Male): Okay, I got a question here and it's funny you referenced science fiction with the AI. Mine is two I believe sort on the science fiction side, it's the book that's not in the Bible but the Book of Enoch. What was the purpose of that book to be written in the first place? Do you know and could giants also be an explanation of some of the huge structures scattered across ancient earth like the pyramids in Mexico, Egypt and the Easter Island statues? You mean could the giants have built them?
Steve Gregg: Yeah, okay, let me answer that. I first of all, I don't hold that the Book of Enoch has any reliable truth for us at all. You say why was it written? It was one of many books written around the same time about two centuries before Christ, a whole spate of books were written by religiously minded Jews who were not prophets, they were not inspired, they were not writing Bible inspired books, they're just writing, like you said, fiction. Sort of like religious fiction. And some of it's interesting and the Book of Enoch talks about the angels falling and having sex with women and Nephilim coming about. Now some of you say, "No, Enoch didn't say that, that's in Genesis. That's in Genesis chapter 6, that's not from Enoch." No, Genesis 6 doesn't say that. But Genesis 6 does say things that Enoch interprets that way. Genesis 6 says the sons of God took the daughters of men and they had children from them who became mighty men of renown and there were Nephilim in the earth in those days and so forth. Now that doesn't say anything about angels particularly, it says sons of God. Are sons of God angels? Could be, could be something else. The term is used lots of different ways in the Bible. Is it talking about angels marrying women? That's what Enoch said it means, but the Bible doesn't say it means that. So we have to realize that what Enoch did was he kind of retold stories from the early Genesis accounts and gave his own spin on them. Now the Bible does say there were giants in those days. We don't need Enoch to tell us that. The Bible does say there were giants in those days, Nephilim. And you're saying could they be the ones who built the Easter Island statues and the pyramid stuff like that? I can't rule it out. I don't know that they did. It is true that some of the monuments that have been made by ancient people seem to defy our knowledge of what technology they would have to do it. But in many cases the technology they had were hundreds of thousands of slaves, a lot of manpower. And I don't know how many slaves it would take to move one big block the size of those Easter Island statues, but nonetheless I don't know that it required giants. It might have. I'm not going to rule that out. But see, I'm the kind of person doesn't go looking too long at things that there's no way of knowing the answer to because I figure that anything I can't know the answer to is something God has not spoken plainly about. Anything God hasn't spoken plainly about is by definition something he doesn't think that we necessarily need to know. That's my position about that. Thanks for your call, brother. Gil in Long Island, New York. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
Guest (Male): Yes, it's a pleasure and your screener is so kind to me. Praise the Lord. I love your listeners. I just want to say in John let me see, John chapter 8 verse 12 says Jesus says, "I am the light of the world. He who follows me shall not walk in darkness but will have the light of life." And Matthew 5:16 he said, "Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven." Now my mom's birthday was today. She's 85 years old and she has dementia. And it's I'm thankful to the Lord that I can memorize scripture. But I don't know how to reach my mom. See when my mom was living with me, she was not interested in God. And now that my mom has dementia, she's much closer to me than she's ever been before and I can talk to her about God. What is a way that God can use me to really bring her to the Lord? She watches TV and she'll hear a Catholic program or whatever a Mass, but she can't remember what she hears even though she enjoys it and she likes to hear organ music. How do I reach my mom? Because I want my mom to be with me in heaven. I love her dearly, dearly, dearly.
Steve Gregg: Whenever someone says, "How can I reach this particular person?" I have to say I really don't know. I don't know that person. There are particular persons in my circle that I don't know how to reach. There's a general way in which we reach out to unbelievers and it can be personalized in terms of detail depending on who it is we're reaching out to and what they're like. The general way that we reach out is you yourself quoted from Matthew 5. Jesus said let your light shine before men that men may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven. Basically, he's saying your life should be changed in such a way that it's arresting to people who see it. They're surprised to meet somebody who is like you because you're genuinely a good person, you're genuinely loving. You're like Christ and there just aren't enough people like that in society so that when someone meets you and you're that way, you stand out like a sore thumb and they wonder about it. It gets them interested. Now, it may make them interested enough to want to be like you and they'll say, "Hey, how come you're the way you are?" And you say, "Well, Jesus, God has made me this way. I came to Christ and he's changed my life and he can change your life too." Now, I mean, that could happen. Or when they ask you why you're different, you say, "Well, I'm a follower of Christ." They might say, "Oh, I don't want to know anything more about that." In other words, how do you reach someone? Well, you reach them by being the kind of person they'd want to hear from and then telling them the truth, telling them the gospel. Now, being the kind of person they'd want to hear from is the harder part. Anyone can learn how to enunciate the gospel, but being somebody that people want to hear it from is a little more difficult because it means you need to be a different kind of person, not just during the few minutes that you're speaking the gospel to them, but consistently. They need to see your life over a period of days, months, years and say, "You are different than I am and you've got something I don't have. I'd like to have it." Now, the Bible does say that the way that people live, the way Christians live can Paul says adorn the gospel. To adorn it means to make it attractive. There is a sense in which what God does in your life makes other people jealous that you that you have changed and that much and they need that kind of change. That's a good thing. That means that they'll be hungrier, they'll be more open, more willing to hear what you have to say. But how to reach your mother? I don't know. Be kind to her, love her, speak the truth to her, pray for her. And you know, now that she's got dementia and she's more open to Christian things though she can't understand or remember them, she may just come to a place in her heart that she was not able to come to before and God may find her having a soft heart. You're not saved because you've got a clear mind. You're saved because you've got a humble and obedient heart and maybe she's maybe her heart's at that point. Who knows? But pray for her and just be Christ to her and speak to her about him. I'm out of time. You've been listening to The Narrow Path. My name is Steve Gregg. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. We are listener supported, you might want to help us out. But if not, just take what you want from the website, it's loaded with free stuff. Thenarrowpath.com.