The Narrow Path

Steve Gregg: Good afternoon and welcome to the Narrow Path Radio Broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we're live for an hour each weekday afternoon taking your calls so that you can join us on the air. You can bring up questions about the Bible or disagreements you have with the host and we'll talk about them together before our audience.

Right now our lines are full. That's not always the case, it is often the case, but there will be lines opening up later in the program. And when they do, you'll be able to get through if you try. The number to call randomly, say 10 minutes from now or sometime like that, lines will be opening. The number to call is 844-484-5737. That's 844-484-5737. I get all those fours confused in my mind.

Alright, now, an announcement. This Saturday, the 15th, I'm going to be doing this men's Bible study in Temecula, California, that we do the third Saturday of every month. That's in the morning, 8:00 in the morning in Temecula, a Bible study for men. You're welcome to join us, assuming you're in the area and a man. Be glad to have you there. If you want information about its location, the address, and such, you can go to our website and the information is listed there under the tab that says announcements.

Now, I'll be speaking at the end of the month in further north in California. I'm going to be in the Fresno area. I'll be in Oakhurst, I'll be in Clovis. There are some other places around there I will be speaking. I'll also be speaking in Sacramento a couple of weeks later. So if you're in those areas, feel free to, A, look at our website, thenarrowpath.com, under announcements and see if I'm going to be speaking near you and you can join us.

Or, if you do live in those areas and you'd like to book a meeting since I'm going to be in the areas anyway, we are open to the idea of booking another meeting that you may want to host or arrange for. So check that out. It's actually about two weeks from now in the Fresno, Clovis, Oakhurst, Yosemite area and then up in Sacramento two weeks after that.

Alright, no more announcements necessary today. We're going to go to the phones and talk to this full switchboard of people, one at a time. Joanne in Mesa, Arizona, welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Guest (Joanne): Thank you, Steve, for taking my call. I really appreciate it. Right then, my son is dating a woman who has four minor children whose father died. So what they want to do is commit to each other for life and my son told me he wants to make them part of our family.

But they don't believe the state should have any part or involvement in marriage. So what they're doing, they're working on a private contract. They were both raised Christian and they're currently agnostic. So my question for you is in these days, if there's a written agreement, if they will declare their intentions before the family, would you consider that acceptable?

Steve Gregg: Yes, I would. The Bible nowhere speaks of the state issuing a license for marriage. That's just an American convention. It probably goes back to English common law. I'm not really sure when it first began to be practiced in Christian countries that the state issued marriage licenses and also issued divorces.

I will say that whenever that practice began, probably the society that began it had state officials who knew something about what marriage is and what divorce is and hopefully they didn't just issue those things promiscuously at random. Our society has come to the place where it does issue both marriages and divorces promiscuously at random, which means that the state doesn't really have any real authority.

It can claim authority but it doesn't hold any authority in terms of expertise to know who can be married and who cannot be married. The state will marry same-sex couples, the state will marry people who are divorced without grounds and who are not free to remarry, and they'll also give people a divorce who have no grounds at all. So the state really is almost 100 percent incompetent to have any responsibility in this matter.

In the biblical times, these kinds of things were arranged by families. The vows were taken before both families and neighbors and so forth. And the fact that they made a public vow, and often it was a religious ceremony, especially among the Jews, the rabbis were there and so forth. But in the older Old Testament times, there wasn't necessarily a religious ceremony. We don't know of any religious ceremonies in the days before the flood or even in the time of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Isaac sent away for a wife and when she came it says he took her into his mother's tent and they resumed marital happiness or at least marital life. And so the idea is not that the state has issued a license or anybody else has issued a license but that a public agreement has been made that these two are going to be bonded to each other for life, creating a safe environment to bring children into so that the children may be raised reliably and predictably by their two parents. That's what marriage does.

Once you've made a vow, you should keep your vow. And that's true whether you're a Christian or not. Frankly, I do think the courts can enforce contracts and if this couple is planning to make a binding contract, the state should be willing to enforce it. Of course, they should be willing to enforce real marriage contracts, too, but the state for some reason has just chosen that the marriage contract is the only one they will never uphold in court, which is weird.

But for a couple, and they're not Christians now, but even if they were Christians, I do believe it is possible to choose some alternative to a state license for marriage. I personally think that the church ought to license its own marriages and issue its own divorces where that's actually warranted. I don't think that church should ever depend on the state for that kind of thing. Marriage is a sacred thing and the state is secular.

So I'm not against people having a state marriage license but the problem is when the state that issues a license can also revoke that license and give a divorce whether there's reason to or not. If the church licensed its own marriages and divorces then they could follow the instructions of scripture and of Jesus and they could make sure they only married people to each other who could morally be married to each other and they would only grant divorces where there's strictly speaking biblical grounds. That would be a better thing for Christians and maybe it may come to that since the state has drifted so far away from its competence to do that kind of thing.

Guest (Joanne): Precisely. I am in full agreement there. I really appreciate your counsel. This is rather an unusual situation when I present it to other people, other family members I've discussed, and they really don't know, but I feel confident that it is the right thing to do.

Steve Gregg: Yeah, well, I've thought through this many, many years ago and I continue to do so and I think that what I've said is very compatible with scripture.

Guest (Joanne): Alright, well thank you so much for your ministry and your help today. Bye-bye.

Steve Gregg: Alright, Joanne. God bless. Thanks for your call. John in Michigan is next. Welcome to the Narrow Path, John.

Guest (John): Hello, Steve. Thank you for taking my call. I would like to ask my question and then I will hang up and listen to your answer on the radio.

Steve Gregg: Okay, so long as I understand the question before you hang up. Go ahead.

Guest (John): It's very clear. I would like you to describe your disagreement with the Jehovah's Witnesses.

Steve Gregg: Well, I have a number of disagreements with Jehovah's Witnesses. A lot of them are theological. In fact, that's the main difference that many Christians identify between themselves and Jehovah's Witnesses, for example, the doctrine of the Trinity. Christians generally believe in the Trinity. Jehovah's Witnesses do not. And that's one of the big controversies between the Jehovah's Witnesses and most other Christians.

There are others, too. Jehovah's Witnesses have their own kind of strange practices. They don't believe in getting blood transfusions and so many of them have died who could have been saved by having blood transfusions. They take that to be an application of Acts chapter 15 where it says that the Gentile believers should refrain from blood, meaning eating blood.

But they take that to include taking blood into their bodies at all so that that would mean they couldn't have blood transfusions and so if they bleed out, even if there's plenty of blood available, they usually choose to die rather than to violate that. One thing that can be said in favor of the Jehovah's Witnesses is they usually are serious about what they believe.

Someone told me years ago, and it wasn't a Jehovah's Witness, that in Nazi camps, prison camps and so forth, the people who bore up best under torture and did not give up their faith were the Jehovah's Witnesses. Now, I happen to know lots of Christians also didn't give up their faith and I don't know how many other kinds of religions were persecuted, but the Jehovah's Witnesses are typically very serious about what they believe.

But what I disagree with them about very strongly is their cultic attitude. A cultic attitude in my opinion is when somebody has adopted a religious system not because the Bible teaches it but because a leader teaches it who claims special authority. It's a cult, we sometimes even talk about a personality cult. Mormonism is a personality cult. Joseph Smith claimed to be a prophet and your loyalty to Mormonism stands or falls upon your loyalty to Joseph Smith and his teaching.

Jehovah's Witnesses, your loyalty to your religion is in fact loyalty to an organization called the Watchtower Society. And they issue a complete theological system for their believers, for their members, to believe. And they're not allowed even to read religious books from other religious groups. For example, if they come to your house, they'll be glad to give you all kinds of literature, but if you try to give them literature from your church or from your beliefs, they're not allowed to take it.

In other words, it's very close-minded. They're not allowed to test all things and hold fast to that which is good. They have to simply believe prior to investigation that their teachers are telling the truth and anyone who disagrees with their teachers are lying. Now, that's what cults are. Cults are groups of blind followers of some human authority.

Now, Christ doesn't call anyone to be a blind follower of human authority. Of course we're supposed to follow him and believe him, but he's not merely human, he's the Son of God. God sent him down and gave him the authority to be king. Now, people who don't believe he is would have every reason to see Christianity also as a cult. But Christians who believe that Jesus is the king in following him completely are not being cultic, they're simply following God.

Now, that's what cults think they're doing, too, but they think they're doing it when they follow their leaders, their human leaders who are not God, who are not sons of God per se, they don't have the authority of God. Usually cults are started by people who call themselves prophets, sometimes apostles, or something else. The Jehovah's Witness organization, the Watchtower Society, is referred to by them as the prophet of God, the prophet of Jehovah.

So they believe that the Watchtower Society collectively, the organization, is the prophet of Jehovah and therefore they follow blindly whatever is said to them. And if you interpret scripture in their presence differently than they do, they are not even allowed to give any serious consideration to what you have to say. And that's an attitude more than a set of beliefs.

Of course, Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons and other cults do have their sets of beliefs, but those sets of beliefs arise and are defended on the basis of blind loyalty to human leaders, the founders usually of the group. So that's what I have against the Jehovah's Witnesses. They're not allowed to think for themselves. And they don't believe in someone having a personal relationship with Christ or God.

They just believe that you follow Christ by following the organization. And if you testify to them of your own relationship with God, it'll be strange to them, the idea that anyone would claim to know God or that God leads them. This would consider to be not agreeable with Christianity as they've been taught it by their leaders. And no wonder, because if they were allowed to be led by God, he might quickly lead them to disbelieve what their leaders are saying.

So anyway, there would be the core of my disagreements with the Jehovah's Witnesses. Thank you for your call. Let's talk to Yossi from Knoxville, Tennessee, next. Hi, Yossi, welcome.

Guest (Yossi): It's actually Yossi. My question is from Hebrews chapter 9, verses 3 and 4. I tend to see Hebrew 9 as pretty non-literal as in I don't really see the author of Hebrews portraying Christ as literally, actually in heaven performing priestly Levitical duties in a sense.

But in verses 3 and 4, it says that the altar of incense is categorized in the holiest of holies. And I guess my question or I just want to hear your thoughts on if you think the author of Hebrews did that intentionally just for the purpose of symbolic type or just to show the fulfillment of Christ being the high priest of him fulfilling that role and maybe him doing that on purpose to show that this isn't literal? I don't know if that makes any sense.

Steve Gregg: Well, there have been various ways that people have tried to explain why it was that the writer of Hebrews associated the incense altar with the Holy of Holies and seems to indicate that it was in the Holy of Holies, which of course it was not. In verse 3 it says behind the veil, the part of the tabernacle which is called the holiest of all, which is also the Holy of Holies, which had the golden altar of incense and the ark of the covenant overlaid with all sides with gold.

Now, the problem here is of course, as you know, the golden altar was not in the Holy of Holies. The ark of the covenant which is mentioned was and it was the only piece of furniture in there. It had a lid on top called the mercy seat. You might consider that part of the same piece of furniture or a separate one, but the point is besides the ark of the covenant and the mercy seat, there was no actual furniture in the Holy of Holies.

But the golden altar in the arrangement of the tabernacle, and we assume the temple too, was outside the veil of the Holy of Holies. It was just outside. In fact, the high priest would have to stop there at the golden altar and offer incense before going into the Holy of Holies. So it's definitely very much associated with it, it's in the proximity of it, but it's not in it.

What does the author mean by saying the Holy of Holies had the golden altar, which in a literal sense did not? You're suggesting maybe he altered things deliberately in such a way as to tell the reader not to take this entirely literally, but to look to the spiritual meaning of it. But I'm not really sure how this particular alteration would convey that necessarily.

I'm not sure that the reader would say, "Oh, he's put the golden altar inside the Holy of Holies so he's telling us not to take this literally." It's possible but it doesn't strike me as something that would gain its desired effect necessarily. But I couldn't rule it out because I don't know the right answer. There are a couple of other answers that have been given, whether they're adequate or not again remains to be seen.

If one of them completely answered it, then we wouldn't need additional possibilities. When it says "which had the golden altar", some might just say, well, the ceremony of going into the Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur, which is what he goes on and talks about in this chapter, it also was associated with that and was part of that ritual and so forth. That would be true but it's not really stated in a way that you'd think of it that way. So that seems a little weak.

Another alternative explanation that some have given is that the word "golden altar" actually is a reference not to the altar itself but to the censer. Or if it's simply that there was an incense censer, that is an incense burning tool, that was part of the golden altar. On the Day of Atonement, the priest would take incense into the Holy of Holies with that incense censer and he'd leave it there and he'd come back out and he'd go back in and so forth. Eventually he'd bring it out again later in the day.

So the incense censer, which was actually part of the apparatus of the golden altar, was on the Day of Atonement in the Holy of Holies. And so some think that when the author says that the Holy of Holies had the golden altar, it really means more literally it had the golden censer from the altar in it during Yom Kippur. I don't know which of these answers would be true. I would certainly not rule out anyone's right to have a sensible answer of their own.

Your suggestion is not impossible, also. I probably lean toward the last option more, but I don't have complete confidence in it.

Guest (Yossi): Okay, yeah, that's helpful. Another question: do you think Christ is literally or maybe also symbolically is in heaven performing priestly duties?

Steve Gregg: I believe that no, not necessarily. I mean, he could be, I'm not going to rule it out, but I just don't think we are required to take this in the kind of literal sense of Jesus moving about with a golden incense altar or censer and sprinkling blood on the Holy of Holies and so forth.

I think what the author is saying is the ritual behavior of the priests when they did sprinkle blood on the mercy seat and when they did perform the duties of Yom Kippur, they correspond to, not motion by motion but in terms of their meaning, they correspond to what the High Priest did on Yom Kippur. And so Jesus has entered behind the veil into heaven itself, he says, and he doesn't offer the blood of bulls and goats, he offers his own blood for us.

Some people do picture it very literally: Jesus up there sprinkling his own blood on the mercy seat up there. I don't know that we're required to see it that way. I'm not sure that the author would press for that. I think what he wants us to see is in terms of the rituals of the tabernacle of Yom Kippur, Jesus has done that which is the counterpart of it in heaven. It may not look the same but it is indeed true.

Romans 8 tells us, and so does Hebrews, that Jesus is making intercession before God for us. And again, it's not clear even what that looks like. It does apparently mean that because of our sins, Christ stands in between and intercedes before God for our forgiveness, which is exactly what the high priest did in the Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur.

So it may be simply this intercessory ministry of Christ that is summarized or compared with the rituals of Yom Kippur, which were in principle doing the same thing. However, they did so as a type and a shadow of that intercession which Christ would give. That's my thought. I'm not going to be too insistent on the literalness of Jesus moving around in there like the priest did in the Holy of Holies.

Guest (Yossi): Yeah, well thank you for the insight then. Thank you.

Steve Gregg: Alright, good talking to you. We'll talk again. The number to call if you want to be on is 844-484-5737. We have one line open at this moment. Now, I would take a call right now except I'm looking at a hard break coming up in about 60 seconds. So instead of taking a call and having to cut it off quickly, I'm going to give you some information here and then we will wait until after the break, short break at the bottom of the hour, to talk to the rest of these callers.

Many of you do not know, and many of you probably would benefit by knowing, that there is an app, a mobile app for your phone or your pad or whatever, of The Narrow Path. But the best place to get it is not going to Google Play or to the App Store. I think there are some older apps for The Narrow Path at those places. I'm not sure they're even still functional because I don't think anyone is maintaining them.

Years ago, there was an iPhone app and an Android app at those normal locations for getting apps, but you had to get a separate one, the apps were not the same, they had to be maintained. And what we have instead is we have one app that works for iPhone and Android because it is web-based. That means you go to a website and download a link to it. And it looks just like any other app on your phone once you've got it there.

But you go to your browser. So if you're on iPhone, you go on Safari, perhaps. If you're on Android, you might go to Google and you go to a website just like you would any other website. Go to thenarrowpath.app.

Now, as you know, our website is thenarrowpath.com. But we're talking now about thenarrowpath.app. And there will be instructions there. There's a dropdown menu in the top left corner that one of them says "how to" and it'll show you how to download the little icon onto your phone. And once you do, it's as simple as can be anytime you want to open up that app from your phone. You can listen to the lectures, you can listen to the program, anything you want.

Check it out at thenarrowpath.app. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. I'll be back in 30 seconds. We have another half hour coming. Do not go away.

Welcome back to The Narrow Path Radio Broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we're live for another half hour. We're taking your calls as we did in our first half hour. If you have questions about the Bible or disagreement with the host and want to bring those up for conversation with our audience too, feel free to do that.

We've got our lines full. We'll be talking to callers all through this half hour. You can try later on if you'd like because sometimes these lines will open up. The number is 844-484-5737. And our next caller is Daryl from Sacramento, California. Hi Daryl, welcome.

Guest (Daryl): Hi, Steve. Would you clarify whether the three and a half years in Revelation 11 and 12 is the same as the thousand years in chapter 20 in Revelation? And do you put these in the same category as the church age?

Steve Gregg: Alright, yeah. The answer is in my opinion, yes. I believe that the three and a half years, that is the 42 months, the 1260 days, the time, times, and half a time, that are mentioned five times in Revelation chapters 11, 12, and 13. I believe that what they symbolize is the period from the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70 till the coming of Christ at the end of the world.

It's not a literal period of time, it's not a literal number, and I believe that in the context of those chapters, it is the term that is used to represent this age, which you referred to as the church age. Yeah, I think it's the same thing. Now, the thousand years is almost essentially the same thing. I believe the thousand years begins at the first coming of Christ and ends with the second coming of Christ.

Again, the number is symbolic, the number is not literal. Now, that being so, it differs only a very little bit from what I said about the three and a half years because I said the three and a half years represents the period of time from the destruction of Jerusalem till the coming of Christ, whereas I understand the thousand years to begin with the binding of Satan, which happened in Jesus' first ministry at the cross and from there to the second coming of Christ.

So, the two symbolic periods I believe cover essentially the same period of time with within a few years' time. And that period of time in my judgment is, in fact, what you're calling the church age. Alright? Thanks for calling, Daryl. Gil in New York City, hello, good to hear from you again. Gil, you've got to talk to me. Okay, Gil's not talking to me. Let's go and talk to John in Loveland, Colorado. John, welcome to the Narrow Path.

Guest (John): Thank you, Steve. I was just wondering if you would find it strange that God would think so highly of circumcision that he would try to kill Moses in Exodus 4 and then in Galatians where Paul says if you are circumcised Christ will profit you nothing. It just seems strange to me that there's such a radical difference between the Old and the New Testament there.

Steve Gregg: Well, the difference between the Old and the New Testament is that rituals in the Old Testament are replaced by spiritual realities in the New Testament. So all of the rituals of the Old Testament were what the Bible calls types and shadows. They were not really spiritual things at all, but God appointed them as symbols of spiritual things until those spiritual things became a reality.

Now, in the New Testament, the reality is that God requires people to be circumcised in their heart. He does not require them to be circumcised physically. And if a person does get circumcised in order to get right with God now, they are making a mistake. They're thinking that Judaism is the means to be right with God because circumcision is the ritual of Judaism, it's not the ritual of Christianity.

So the reason that Paul said it's so important for his Gentile readers not to be circumcised is because in doing so they're changing religions. Jesus didn't have to talk much about circumcision because everyone he preached to was Jewish. And because they were Jewish, they already were circumcised. Every Jewish boy was circumcised when he was eight days old, he had nothing to say about it.

So every boy in Israel who was over eight days old, which would be the vast majority, and every man, was already circumcised. There was never an issue of should they be? No, they already were. There's no reason to discuss it. But when Gentiles began to be converted, and that was through Paul's ministry, then the question arose, well, all Christians up to this point have been Jewish. Shouldn't these Gentiles become Jewish too?

And Jewish means circumcised. And so there were some people pressing Paul's converts to get circumcised. Now, it may be a small matter to you or me. I mean, little boys of my generation mostly are circumcised Jewish or not. It's a kind of hygienic practice. When I was a baby, for babies to be circumcised pretty much at birth. I didn't have a choice in the matter.

In those days, generally speaking, the only circumcised people were the Jews. And when a Gentile got saved, the question was a live one: "Am I supposed to become a Jew now since Christ came to the Jews? Christ is the Jewish Messiah, Christianity is the outgrowth of the Jewish hope and the Jewish religion. Am I supposed to become a Jew so I can appreciate it just like all the Christians before me have before Gentiles were converted?"

Paul's answer was no, not at all, because while a Jewish believer in Christ doesn't have the option of being uncircumcised, it's not really that reversible, and so it's not a problem that they are circumcised. For a Gentile to get circumcised would be his way of saying "I'm becoming a Jew now." And Paul's argument is Judaism is a different religion. In fact, Judaism is an anti-Christian religion. Modern Judaism, Orthodox Judaism, is Talmudism and Talmudism is very antagonistic toward Christ, very insulting toward Christ. The Jewish religion is an anti-Christian religion just like Islam is and just like other religions of the world are.

So for someone to tell a Gentile believer in Christ "You need to get circumcised," they're saying "You need to join the Jewish faith." And Paul says no you don't, you're not part of that religion. Now, why did God care so much about it in the Old Testament that he would even threaten to kill Moses over it in Exodus chapter 4?

Well, because God had ordained through Abraham in the 17th chapter of Genesis that Abraham and everyone descended from him, all the males should be circumcised. And God said, "This is the sign of the covenant we have." Now, being circumcised is not in itself virtuous, it doesn't confer spiritual benefit on anyone, but obeying God does. Obeying God is virtuous as opposed to rebelling against God, and there was a special privilege in being part of the covenant that God made with Abraham.

Just like a woman who gets married and a man might generally speaking in our society wear wedding rings. There's nothing magical about a wedding ring, but a woman in a culture where women who got married were supposed to have wedding rings to show that they were in a covenant relationship with her husband, a woman says "No, I'm not going to do that, not going to wear a ring." Well, that's kind of an insult to her husband, she's advertising to the world outside she's not committed to him, she's not his, she's not married.

And that's how circumcision was. It was the sign that they were in a covenant, a special covenant relationship with God. Not everyone was in that covenant, but the Jews were and therefore it was their privilege, it was what set them apart from others. And if they didn't do it, they're basically saying "I don't care about obeying God about this, I don't really care about this covenant with God." Well, that's a big slap in the face to God.

It's not that circumcision itself has any inherent value. It might or might not, but that's not the issue. The issue is obeying God and valuing the covenant and being willing to wear the marker of the covenant is important in that marriage relationship with God. But see, God made a new covenant through Christ and the new covenant doesn't require physical circumcision, but circumcision of the heart. So that's a spiritual thing.

So circumcision just like all the other rituals of the Old Testament wasn't really a spiritual thing in itself although obedience to God in that matter or in any other is a spiritual matter. But today he doesn't require that for obedience, he requires something deeper, something more, something that really is spiritual. So that's why the New Testament treats circumcision very differently than the Old does.

Guest (John): Thank you. I was reading in Acts 15 where people were saying why tempt God by putting a yoke on their disciples which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? But I was wondering before Christ came that yoke or those rituals were supposed to be followed and yet he called it... he said we couldn't bear it and our fathers couldn't bear it. It doesn't sound like anybody was happy under the Old Testament like that.

Steve Gregg: Yeah, in Galatians 4 he talks about how the Jews under the law were under bondage to it and he tells his readers in Galatians chapter 5 in verse 3, he says if any of you become circumcised, that man is a debtor to keep the whole law. In other words, circumcision was the mark of entering the Old Covenant, which is now defunct. There's a New Covenant now.

Christians are in the New Covenant, Jews are in the Old one, though they should leave the Old one and come to the New one like Christ called them to. If a Gentile Christian gets circumcised and the idea is "Now I'm becoming a Jew," well okay, you become a Jew, you're obligated to keep all the laws. And that is quite a burden. There's 613 laws. Most Jews probably couldn't have told you what all 613 laws were and therefore probably violated them on occasions.

Even the obvious ones they violated many times. They apparently found themselves unable in the absence of loving God, which must have been the issue for many of them, impossible to resist worshipping idols and committing adultery and murdering and stealing and bearing false witness. They did all those things in the Old Testament, though they were commanded not to.

So it was a burden that they couldn't bear. The reason they couldn't bear it is because they weren't really lovers of God. Jesus said that to the Pharisees, he said in John 5, "I know you that you have no love for God in you." They were law keepers to a certain extent, though he actually told them they didn't keep it completely.

To the degree they did, they did it legalistically, not because they loved God. And when you put a bunch of rules on people who don't love God and say do this because God wants you to, it's hard. It goes against our rebellious nature. When you love God, you're pleased to do what he wants you to do. It's written in your heart that way. But when it's not in your heart, it's awfully hard to keep it outwardly.

Guest (John): Seems like there were very few people that really enjoyed God in the Old Testament, maybe the little captive maid who witnessed to Naaman and a few others like that.

Steve Gregg: Well, there were some who did and some who didn't. You're right. And that's true in every society. The Jews don't seem to have been different than any other nation in that respect. Among the Jews, as among non-Jews, there's a certain small percentage who just really love God and want to please him and are delighted to do so because they love him.

And then in the Jewish nation as well as all others, there's a large percentage who don't love God. The difference is the Jews who didn't love God were expected to obey him just like the ones who did and that was a burden on them. Of course, what makes it not burdensome now for us is that we do love God and our hearts are changed and he's written his laws on our hearts. Alright, let's talk next to Mary from California. Hi Mary, welcome.

Guest (Mary): Hi Steve. Thank you so much for taking my call. I have a question. For a few years, Katherine Krick calls herself an apostle. She has a ministry all over the world and such millions of people. I'm questioning because people are questioning her as this has come about and have you talked to anyone about this or do you have something to say about it?

Steve Gregg: Well, I've never heard of her but what is it you would think I would have to say about her? I mean, what do you know about her?

Guest (Mary): She is considered an apostle, they call her Apostle Katherine Krick.

Steve Gregg: Well, that doesn't tell me anything because almost every cult leader is called an apostle or a prophet by their followers. I'd be more interested in knowing what she teaches and why people call her an apostle.

Guest (Mary): She started off in the park in Los Angeles and when she addresses people that have demons and she prays and demons are released from these people.

Steve Gregg: That's good. But why is she called an apostle, though?

Guest (Mary): There is a fellow in Africa that anointed her and she calls him daddy and he's supposed to minister...

Steve Gregg: Okay, so she's an apostle of his, not an apostle of Christ. Apostles of Christ do not trace their authority back to some man who ordained them. Paul made that very clear in Galatians chapter 1. He said an apostle of Christ, not of man, but of God, of Christ. To be an apostle means one who is sent as an official emissary of somebody.

And if you're an apostle of Christ, it's because Christ personally sent you as a personal emissary representing him. If you're an apostle of some guy in Africa or anywhere else, well then okay, you're not an apostle of Christ, why even call yourself an apostle? If somebody sends me somewhere, like the first time I went to Germany to preach, Chuck Smith sent me there. I actually had papers of commendation from Chuck Smith and Calvary Chapel.

I never had to show them, which is fine, but if I had shown them, all they would prove is that Chuck Smith believed in my ministry. It wouldn't show that God did. If people trust Chuck Smith, then his commendation would mean something. But if people didn't trust Chuck Smith, having papers from him wouldn't mean anything. There's no sense talking about how you're sent as an official representative of somebody if the somebody that sent you is not particularly recognized or known.

I mean, fine if there's somebody that you answer to, I guess. But no, I don't understand why a person would call themselves an apostle if it didn't refer to any more authority than any other preacher has. Most preachers don't call themselves apostles. It's kind of a cults and also branches of Christianity, Pentecostals do this sometimes, they confer titles of respect on their leaders: bishop, apostle, evangelist or something, just because everybody has to have a title.

When I was in Africa, I was teaching a bunch of black pastors from Nigeria and Cameroon for a couple of weeks and they asked me "What do we call you?" and I said "Call me Steve." They said "No, no, but what is your title? Are you an elder, a bishop, what are you?" I said "I'm Steve. I'm nothing. I'm just Steve. Why do I have to be something more?"

They didn't quite understand that mentality but see, Jesus said "Don't let anyone call you father or rabbi or teacher." In other words, don't let people give you titles, honorary titles that put you on some kind of pedestal above others. Why do you need that? If you're teaching the truth, the truth has its own authority.

The fact that someone calls himself an apostle might be his way of saying "If you don't believe what I say, believe it because I'm an apostle." But if I don't already believe what he said, why should I believe an apostle? Now, the word apostle adds nothing to somebody's credibility unless they really are sent by Christ and nobody I know can really make that claim.

So why even give it? Why not just cast the demons out, why not just preach the gospel, why not just do what you're going to do and not claim to be an apostle? It seems like everybody who does that is trying to claim some importance for themselves. I think that's exactly the opposite of what Jesus told the disciples to do even though they were apostles.

So, yeah, I don't know that she's teaching good stuff or bad stuff but just the whole culture of calling herself an apostle and calling some guy in Africa her dad who laid hands on her, this is all bizarre, doesn't confer any credibility upon her at all. But if she's casting out demons in the name of Jesus, good, she probably won't speak evil of Jesus very quickly. Okay, Gil from New York City is back, I hope. Hi Gil.

Guest (Gil): Hey, it's a pleasure and a treasure. Sorry, I was eating. I wanted to mention to you that I know someone else that knows you and he debated with you about 25 years ago and you and him are both very, very sweet to me. I'm sure you're familiar with Matt Slick on the radio. He spoke nice of you too. And he told me he would love to do another debate, he said it with a smile, he'd love to do another debate with you on reformed theology or whatever you want to call it.

Steve Gregg: Well, I would do that because when we debated on Calvinism it went really well. We had three radio shows in a row, three days one week, and it was very cordial. I mean, some people have had less cordial contact with him apparently, but my contacts with him were only cordial. We had a good time and I even invited him to come speak at our school to our students in Oregon the same week. Anyway, yeah, if he wants to debate me again I'm sure I'd be glad to do so.

Guest (Gil): Dr. Barnhouse and Martin Lloyd-Jones, I wonder what you think about them because I seem to benefit from them a lot recently.

Steve Gregg: They're good preachers. Both of them. I like Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones just because he seems really charitable. He was a medical doctor before he was a pastor and he's got a very good bedside manner and he's a sharp guy. He's a Calvinist, I'm not, but same thing with Barnhouse.

But they're good old, good old God-loving preachers. I think they're very sincere men. I have my disagreements with them but I believe they're very sincere. And like any preacher, I would never recommend any preacher I know and say to you, "Hey, whatever he says, just go with that." Or even me. I wouldn't recommend me like that.

Appreciate your call. I'm almost out of time but we got another caller I'd like to fit in here. Julian in Vancouver, British Columbia, welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Guest (Julian): Hey, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my call. I wanted to ask you to articulate some things about the early church, how they were as in Revelation, and they didn't have a lot of authority and how they prospered in that way. I've been rolling those things around in my head because I'm looking for a church myself, a church family, and it's really hard to find something that's suiting a peaceful heart.

Steve Gregg: Okay, let me address that. We only have a few minutes so I need to get started if I'm going to address it. The churches in Revelation were not necessarily ideal churches, as you can tell. Five of them were told they had to repent or else Jesus was going to do something very severe to them. Although two of them, the church of Smyrna and the church of Philadelphia, he had no complaints about them. He spoke well of them, he comforted them because both of them were persecuted and never called them to repent of anything.

The other five churches, he had good things to say about most of them. There were two of them he had nothing good to say about: Sardis and Laodicea. But most of the churches he had something good to say, but he also in many cases said, "But I have this against you or a few things against you." These churches are not perfect churches, but they were the only churches there were. Notice there was a church in Ephesus. Now, Ephesus was a big city, but only one church there.

That doesn't mean there was one building with a steeple in Ephesus and all the Christians went there. They didn't have church buildings back then. They met in congregations in homes and other places, in the school of Tyrannus or somewhere, they would actually just find places to meet and get together.

And their meetings were not all in one place, they were just too many Christians in many cases to all fit together in one place. But whether there were 10 or 100 congregations in homes in the town, they were all one church, they were the church of Ephesus. They weren't the First Baptist Church, the First Presbyterian Church, and the Assembly of God Church, and the Episcopal Church, and the Catholic Church, and the Lutheran Church of Ephesus. There was just one church in each town.

All Christians in one town are the church. Now, some congregations of the church probably are doing better than others. Depends on, of course, how they conduct themselves, who leads them, what kind of teaching they get, what kind of problem people are attending. Churches have their problems.

But so long as they are doing all they can to maintain the headship of Christ over all things, as long as they're trying to make disciples by teaching people to observe everything Jesus said, as long as they're seeking to be filled with the spirit and be led by the spirit, I would say they're legitimate churches. And the church in Thyatira, for example, even had a woman there who was a false prophetess who was teaching people really wrong.

Now, she had to be taken care of, she had to be disposed of from the church. Church discipline has to be practiced. Churches can be very imperfect without them being an abomination. But they do become abominable when they permit blatant sin to be practiced in their ranks and they don't practice church discipline.

Now in the Bible, church discipline means the church officially tells somebody that because they will not repent of what they've been doing, they're going to have to not go to church, not their church. And since there's only one church in the city, even if there's lots of congregations, if one congregation said this person should not be allowed in fellowship, the other congregations would agree because they're all one body.

In our modern church, things are not that way. Churches operate very independently of each other, they don't recognize the church discipline that other churches have decreed, they often don't cross-pollinate or fellowship with each other, sometimes they're in competition with each other. This is carnality.

Paul said that in 1 Corinthians 3, the opening verses, as long as you're saying "I'm of Paul" or "I'm of Apollos," you're carnal, you're babes in Christ. If you're going to a group of people who love God, trying to honor Christ, trying to obey Christ, teaching others to obey him, seeking to be led by the Holy Spirit, loving each other, serving each other, those are the things that make a good church.

Now, some of the churches in the Bible that received epistles were doing better than others. The church of Philippi Paul was real pleased with them. Church of Corinth, they were a headache. But they were still churches. They were still the Christians of that town and they had to be regulated and corrected but any time two or more gather in Christ's name seriously, I believe you've got a church or a representation of the church.

I'm out of time for today's program. You're listening to The Narrow Path. We are listener-supported. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. Check it out and we'll talk again tomorrow.