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Join Steve Gregg on this engaging episode of The Narrow Path as he explores a variety of captivating topics with his listeners. Dive deep into a thought-provoking discussion on Amillennialism, where Steve unravels the complex history of the Rapture and the Second Coming in the Christian faith. Explore how different interpretations of biblical literature shape these views and what the mainstream has taught over the centuries. The episode also sheds light on the extent of grace in Christianity. How can grace extend to those who embrace other religions or have never heard the gospel? Steve carefully navigates these questions,
SPEAKER 1 :
Thank you.
SPEAKER 02 :
Good afternoon. Welcome to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg, and we are live for an hour, as we are most weekdays. Almost every weekday we are, unless something comes up that prevents it. And because we’re live, we can interact in real time, you and I, if you have a telephone and I have time to take your call. Feel free to give me a call here in the next hour. If you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith, I’ll be glad to discuss them with you. By the way, I’m looking at an empty switchboard. So if you’d like to be on the program, this would be a good time to call in. And I’d be glad to take your call. You can be right up at the front of the line if you call right now. This number, 844-484-5754. That’s 844-484-5737. It’s not very common for me to look at an empty switchboard, so I’m not really sure if there’s something wrong with my viewing here. It looks to me like we don’t have any calls right now, so, oh, no, it’s working now. Someone’s calling in now. So, again, the number to call is 844-484-5737. 37. Now, tomorrow morning, I’ll be speaking in Temecula at a gathering. It’s called Coffee and Conversations. A friend of mine named Bill puts this on two weeks each month, Saturday mornings, at his home. It’s a pretty good sized group of men. And I’ve never spoken there before, but they asked me to come and speak, if I would, about the subject of the Jesus Revolution, the Jesus Movement, which of course occurred back in the 70s, especially in Southern California, but it reached all around the world. And since I was there from the earliest times of that movement and got to see a lot of the things that people are curious about, they wanted me to come and talk about it and answer questions about it. So I’m doing that tomorrow morning, but you’d be welcome to join us if you happen to be in Temecula or nearby, 8 o’clock in the morning. It’s for men, I believe only. And the information about it can be gotten by going to our website, thenarrowpath.com, under the tab that says Announcements. Now our lines are full. So we’re going to talk first of all to Todd in Sacramento, California. Todd, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 06 :
Hey, Steve. I appreciate the ministry. I love what you do and how you do it. My question is, Well, basically about the rapture, you were talking, I think you said you were all millennials. So, you know, I’ve been raised in the church learning about the rapture, I guess dispensationalism. And, you know, I was listening to you and I was like, this guy is kind of weird, but The more I said it, I’m like, I’m swinging that way. And now my mind’s kind of blowing. And I’m like, could you explain to me how the all-millennials view works without a rapture? Does it have a rapture? I’m not certain. And I’ll take my answer off there if that’s all right with you.
SPEAKER 02 :
All right. Sure. That’s fine. Thanks, Todd, for your call.
SPEAKER 06 :
All right. I appreciate you.
SPEAKER 02 :
All right. Thank you. Well, you’re correct. I am an amillennialist. I was dispensationalist. I was raised dispensationalist. I began my ministry as a dispensational teacher. I taught dispensationalism for several years. I also studied the Bible the whole time because I was teaching Bible studies in the Jesus Movement, and we were going verse by verse through various books of the Bible, and that required that I actually take verses in context. It’s hard to teach verse by verse and ignore context. So some managed to do so, I’ve noticed, but I couldn’t. because all the verses that I had to support the pre-tribulation rapture, it was easy to see when I taught verse by verse, I was taking them out of context. These were not passages that were talking about the pre-tribulation rapture. I mean, in some cases they were talking about the rapture, but there was nothing in the passage to suggest pre-tribulationism. The rapture simply refers to the phenomenon of Jesus, when he returns, raising… the living Christians to meet him in the air after he has raised the dead Christians to meet him in the air. But around the same time, it appears to be in rapid succession. Paul says the dead in Christ shall rise first, then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up to meet the Lord near. The word caught up is the word which in the Latin Vulgate Bible is based on the word for rapture. So in theology, the church has always taught that there’s a rapture because Paul mentions it, But what has not always been taught, and wasn’t taught really until fairly recent times in church history, was the idea that this rapture would occur some years before the actual second coming of Christ. The dispensational view that arose in the 1800s teaches that the rapture occurs, that is the living Christians are caught up into the air to meet the Lord there, seven years before he actually comes back. which results in the world’s history going on for another seven years after the Christians are zapped out. Now, on that view, of course, there will come a day when all the Christians just apparently disappear. That is, to the eyes of those left on earth, the Christians will have just disappeared, but we will have been caught up to meet the Lord in the air. This is described in the dispensational system as, as if this is kind of a secret rapture. In fact, the word secret is often attached to it. Though, the only passage that really describes that phenomenon is 1 Thessalonians 4, and it doesn’t sound secret at all. It says, “…the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, and the voice of the archangel, and the trumpet of God.” That doesn’t sound very quiet or secret to me. It sounds like it’s going to be very noisy, something that people can’t miss. And he says, “…the dead in Christ shall rise first, then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up to meet the Lord in the air.” So, This will happen quite noisily, and it will happen when the Lord himself descends from heaven with a shout. In other words, at the second coming. This is not sometime prior to the second coming. This is at the second coming. This is what happens. Now, amillennialists have always believed this. So have premillennialists before dispensationalism. There was a premillennial view back in the early days of the church. We call it historic premillennialism. Lots of the church fathers held to that view, but they didn’t include the pre-tribulation rapture. They believed that the rapture was part of the second coming of Christ. And this is also what the amillennialists believe. This is pretty much, to my mind, a fairly indisputable Christian view until Darby’s time, who invented dispensationism. And he’s the one who placed a seven-year interval between the rapture and the actual second coming of Christ. And that’s what I used to teach because I was dispensationalist, but of course you can’t read the scriptures without your dispensational glasses on and still believe that the Bible teaches that. Because I had 20 verses I used to prove the pre-trib rapture, but when I read them without my dispensational glasses on, I realized that, wait a minute, if I didn’t already believe in the pre-trib rapture, none of these verses would teach it. None of these verses actually provide it as a taught doctrine in the Bible, you have to be told that it’s there, and then you can read it into these passages, but that’s not the way you’re supposed to do biblical studies. You don’t decide before you study the Bible what you’re going to find there, and then shoehorn whatever you find there into what you’ve already decided it’s supposed to teach. And yet that’s what dispensationalism does, and that’s why they believe in a preacher rapture. There’s nothing in the Bible that says there will be a preacher rapture. But it doesn’t, believing in a rapture is not strictly a dispensational thing. It’s only the pre-tribulation rapture that is. All Christians, or almost all Christians, including all millennials, have believed historically there will be a resurrection and a rapture at the second coming of Christ. And if one wonders where that is found in, let’s say, the amillennial understanding of Revelation 20, it’s found in verse 9, where fire from heaven comes down and consumes… the wicked, and that’s the second coming of Christ. In the amillennial scheme, that’s the second coming of Christ, and that’s when Jesus raptures and resurrects the church, too. In fact, that’s the very thing you read about next in Revelation, about that, that the grave gives up its dead, and so forth. We know that the resurrection happens just before the rapture, according to Paul, and therefore, when you see the resurrection… there at the end of the thousand years, that’s where you’d also find the rapture. Because, again, resurrection and rapture happen essentially at the same time. All right. I appreciate your call, brother. Let’s talk to Brandon from Linwood, Washington. Hi, Brandon. Welcome.
SPEAKER 04 :
Thanks, Steve. My question is kind of on the extent of grace and getting your thoughts. Like, I’ve been doing a lot of world religious studies, and there’s just a lot out there that teach mercy and compassion and kindness and justice. And, you know, I think of verses like, many will come saying, Lord, Lord, but they’re not getting in. And things like, you know, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, and that just judgment will be on the deeds that were done in the flesh. And I just wonder if the grace of God and Christ’s sacrifice extends to those who’ve never heard the gospel and maybe followed other things. And not to say that their works would get them there, you know, but Yeah, take it from there. You know, that’s just kind of my thought. You know, can Taoists be saved even though they’ve never heard of Christ because they’ve practiced mercy and justice and Christ’s sacrifice extends to them?
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, one thing the Bible makes very clear is that nobody is ever saved apart from the merits of Christ. It is also clear in saying that people who reject Christ will not be saved. On the other hand, it doesn’t say what will happen to people who’ve never heard of Christ. The Bible simply doesn’t describe those people because it’s not written to those people. The assumption, if someone’s reading in the Bible, they’ve heard of Christ. So the Bible does not talk to people who don’t know of Christ or tell much about them. A person who hears about Christ and rejects him has given up on the hope of salvation in Christ. unless they, of course, repent later and come back to him. But people have never heard of him. The Bible doesn’t really describe them, except that they do need to hear about Christ. We know that they need to, and that’s why the church has made it a priority in many centuries, the earliest and the latest, to reach out and try to reach the unlost. Now, some people think that because we are supposed to reach the unlost, that this implies that if we don’t reach them, they can in no way go to heaven when they die. Now, the Bible doesn’t say that. It doesn’t actually talk about going to heaven much. It doesn’t even talk about us going to heaven very much. There’s occasional references. It’s not the focus of Scripture. The focus of Scripture is the kingdom of God, and that God calls us to be part of his kingdom. That’s now. We’ll continue to be in his kingdom when we die, in heaven, of course, but… But the focus of the Bible is not, generally speaking, what happens after people die. The Old Testament says virtually nothing about it, although it covers 4,000 years of history. It’s like there’s almost nothing in it about what happens after people die. In the New Testament, there’s a few more things said about that, but not very many. I mean, if you take all the verses of Scripture that teach things, I’d say you’ve got ten times as many passages talking about how we’re supposed to live for Christ and in his kingdom now for every verse that there is that says anything about the next life. So the focus of the Bible is not on the next life. So it doesn’t tell us, you know, if people don’t hear the gospel, then in the next life such and such a thing will happen to them. We’re not told that. It doesn’t talk about that. What it does say is people need to hear the gospel because, of course, Christ’s kingdom is to fill the whole earth. And Christ calls all men to be part of his kingdom. And if we don’t preach the gospel, they won’t hear about it and they won’t become part of his kingdom. Now, what happens after they die is going to be God’s decision. I think what we see in the Old Testament before Jesus came, there were people who went to heaven when they died, I think. or at least who were saved. They died saved. We call them the Old Testament saints. We know many of their names. Now, were there people besides them who died saved in the Old Testament? Yeah, I think probably so. I mean, I don’t think that Isaiah was the only man of his generation, or that, you know, Joshua was the only one of his generation who was a saint. I think there were Jews who were faithful to God, and Gentiles too, actually. But they had never heard of Jesus. But But Jesus saved them anyway. You see, the point we have to understand is that no one can be saved without Jesus doing it. Only he is the Savior. There’s no other Savior besides Christ. But we don’t know that he can’t save somebody who’s never heard of him, especially if he sees in them a heart that is likely to receive him if they heard. Or, as some theologians say it, The people have responded positively to the light that God gave them. The light that God gave them in this life, if they lived in a country that was never evangelized, might not include hearing the gospel as we hear it. But that doesn’t mean they don’t have light. All people have some light. And the response to the light appears to be what determines if God is favorable or unfavorable toward them. Job, for example, Job had never heard the gospel. Job had no Bible, so he hadn’t read any scripture. But God thought very highly of him. He said he was a just man, a righteous man, who sought to avoid evil. And we know that Job was seeking to worship God. And much of the God that he worshipped was not well known to him. He had a picture of God being a just and good God, but he didn’t have a Bible, never heard of Jesus. But on the other hand, God thought well of him. And no doubt there would be others in that category. But nobody is saved by a different religion. Let’s say, could a Buddhist be saved by being a good Buddhist, or a Hindu by being a good Hindu, or Muslim by being a good Muslim? No, because those are religions, and religions can’t save anyone. Even the Christian religion can’t save anyone. Christ saves, not religion. No one’s going to get saved by religious activity, but people who are parts of various kinds of Churches, for example, Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, different kinds of Protestant churches, though their theology is different from each other, they may have hearts for God that God recognizes as, you know, they’re not his enemies. And we don’t know that he doesn’t see people elsewhere in the world who have never heard the gospel that way. We’re not told. But it wouldn’t matter to us. I mean, it matters to God, and he’ll sort that out, fortunately. But for us… even if we did believe that God has a way of reaching or responding to people who look for him in other societies and who die without finding him, if we could say, well, God will see that they responded to the light they had in a way that pleases him, and Christ, who is the only Savior, will save them because of him, because he did die for everybody after all. And so if they didn’t reject him and they sought God but didn’t have much access, then why can’t Christ save them? I mean, doesn’t he want to? I mean, some people think that God doesn’t want to save anybody, but he’s kind of forced to if we get to them with the gospel first and they receive it. But God doesn’t want anyone to be lost. What the Bible says is God doesn’t want anyone to perish. He has no pleasure in the death of the wicked. It’s not that God is looking to damn whoever he can unless they squeak through this little narrow portal because they had the good luck of hearing the gospel at a time when they’re vulnerable to it. Now, God doesn’t want anyone to be lost, though some will be. But certainly, if there are people who are seeking him and would have loved him, but through no fault of their own, they never heard of him, but they responded rightly to the light he gave them, it’s very difficult for me to know how Christ, who died for them, would not recognize them. You know, that’s a different thing than hearing about Christ and rejecting him. So, I don’t answer for God about what he’s going to do about those cases. But if you ask, do I think it’s possible there will be some people in heaven who never heard the gospel? Well, I know there are, because all the Old Testament saints are, and they never heard the gospel, not as we know it. So, yeah, there’s people in heaven who’ve never heard the gospel. But that doesn’t mean they don’t need to hear it if they can. The more people who can hear it, the more can respond and become part of God’s kingdom and play a role. in his kingdom mission here on earth and fulfill the role that he created them for. Also to be part of the body of Christ. Also to be delivered from their sin and their demons, which they can’t without Christ. I mean, let’s face it, going to heaven isn’t the only advantage of knowing Jesus, although maybe some Christians have never thought about any other advantage. It is certainly not the advantage that God mentions or emphasizes most in Scripture. Rather, being freed from sin being delivered from darkness, being able to serve God and please God in this life. Those are the things that are emphasized throughout Scripture, in all the epistles, in all of Jesus’ teaching. And so, you know, the part about whether they go to heaven when they die, that’s the smaller part of the question, and the Bible says the least about it. But even if I thought they could, God has a plan for them in this life, and if we don’t reach them, if they don’t hear about Christ and their life is wasted, then that’s a loss to Christ himself because he had something he hoped for them to do, and they didn’t do it because they never heard about it. So it’s on us. It’s on us that people don’t hear. But it’s on God to decide what he does with those who don’t, and he will do the right thing in every case because he never does wrong. Thank you, Brennan. Okay, let’s see. Danny from Dallas, welcome. Welcome.
SPEAKER 07 :
Steve, appreciate your ministry. I’ve got a question for you. Maybe I heard it on your station or from you. The Bible records in Jesus over three years of ministry. The Bible records, what, 30, 40, 50 days of his stuff, of the stuff he did?
SPEAKER 02 :
About 39. About 39 days.
SPEAKER 07 :
About 39? Okay. Okay. Any ideas on about the others? I remember John wrote, you know, if everything was written and done, there’s not enough books and libraries to hold it all. And I’ve kind of figured that as a guideline, but I was trying to remember what that number was. I appreciate it.
SPEAKER 02 :
Go ahead. Well, yeah, all of the Gospels admittedly give us a very abbreviated life of Christ. I mean, if I was going to write your biography, I’d do some research and try to find out where you were born, maybe who your parents were, how you were educated, what your goals were as a young man, what education you got, what you did at the beginning of your career. I’d want to cover a lot of things because that’s what biographies usually concern themselves with. Two of the Gospels don’t even mention the birth of Jesus, nor his childhood. And the two that do mention his birth tell us nothing about his childhood except the first few years. And one exception is that Luke tells one brief story about Jesus when he’s 12. Then it skips over 18 years. And many of the Gospels just start when Jesus is 30 years old. So it’s obvious they’re not trying to give us a complete biography of Christ. Well, what are they trying to do then? Well, John, as you mentioned, near the end of his gospel, he says, there’s lots of other things Jesus said and did besides those that are written in this book. He said, but these are written so that you might believe that Jesus is the Son of God. You might have life in believing. Now, the other gospels didn’t tell us exactly why they wrote, but we might assume that they all wrote for a similar purpose. and that is to give a reader who is not otherwise aware of Christ an acquaintance with him sufficient for them to responsibly place their faith in the fact that he’s the Son of God and that they can have life through him. And I believe that all the Gospels do that quite well. Apparently, they, I mean, Jesus, lots of times it says in Matthew, it’s a summary statement, it’s like, Jesus went through all the villages of Nazareth healing all their sick and casting out demons. Well, those are perhaps scores of miraculous healings that simply are not recorded in detail. They’re just summarized. Healing everybody, you know. So, I mean, there’s obviously a lot more miracle stories that could be told, but the Gospels choose to tell a select few. And they choose them for purposes of making some kind of a point of who he was, In many cases, like in John’s gospel, John specifically selected miracles that would underscore what Jesus said about himself. So, in John 15, Jesus said, I’m the true vine. And in John 2, it records that Jesus turned water into wine, which is what vines do. He did it miraculously, though. In chapter 6, he says, I’m the bread of life, in the context of actually feeding people with multiplied loaves and fishes. In the case of Raising Lazarus from the dead in chapter 11 of John. This is to illustrate what Jesus said earlier, a few verses before he raises him, saying, I am the resurrection and the life. And, of course, he said, I’m the light of the world. In John 8, I believe it’s in John 8, and then in John 9, he heals a blind man, gives him light, you know, as it were. So there’s these different miracles here. John almost matches these miracles one for one with sayings that Jesus made about himself. And these miracles are symbolic. I mean, they’re true miracles, but they symbolize him being, you know, the light of the world. He’s the light of the world in a non-literal sense, but he literally heals a blind man to demonstrate that symbolically and so forth. Now, the other Gospels don’t connect the miracles of Jesus one and one for one with things Jesus said necessarily. But no doubt they had the same intention. They didn’t need to record thousands of miracles, even if you did them. No doubt many miracles were a lot like others. But they give us a sampling of various kinds of miracles, you know, walking on water, walking. stilling a storm, healing various kinds of sickness and blindness and leprosy, casting out demons in different situations. I think they don’t intend to give us a catalog of everything Jesus did. They wrote a very selective, in each case, a very selective biographical treatment to provide only enough information as would be helpful to us in getting us to see and able to believe responsibly, as I said, that Jesus is who he is. And so… It is surprising to us that a man who lived such a short life, such a significant one, would have even of that short life only a few days recorded. But apparently all the authors thought that the things they recorded were sufficient to make their points.
SPEAKER 07 :
Man, I sure appreciate it. Thank you so much.
SPEAKER 02 :
All right, Danny. God bless you. Good talking to you.
SPEAKER 07 :
Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye now.
SPEAKER 02 :
Let’s see here. Oh, we’ve got a break coming up here, but we have another half hour or two. We’ve got a lot of calls waiting, and we’ll get to all of them. In the next half hour, The Narrow Path is a listener-supported ministry. We pay lots of money to radio stations, and we’re on a lot of radio stations across the country, and they’re not cheap. But you notice we don’t have any commercial breaks. Even this is not a commercial break. We have nothing to sell. You can’t buy anything from us at our website. We sell nothing over the air. We don’t sell anything at all. We are simply listener-supported. So if listeners keep supporting it, we’ll stay on the air. Otherwise, we don’t. I will say this, though. The money that is given to The Narrow Path all goes to paying for radio time. When I say all, I mean like maybe 0.5% of it might be used on office supplies or things like that. But we have no salaries, no overhead, nothing. And so the gifts that are given, they go to the radio so people can hear the program just like you’re hearing it right now and hopefully can benefit from it. If you’d like to donate to us, you can. You can go to The Narrow Path, P.O. Box 1730, Temecula, California, 92593. Or you can do it at our website, thenarrowpath.com, where everything is free. That’s thenarrowpath.com. I’ll be back in 30 seconds. Don’t go away.
SPEAKER 03 :
The Narrow Path is one feature of the teaching ministry of Steve Gregg. Steve’s philosophy of teaching is to educate, not indoctrinate his listeners. He believes that Christians should learn to think for themselves about the Bible and not be dependent on him or any other teacher for their convictions. We hope to teach Christians how to think, not what to think about the Bible.
SPEAKER 02 :
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 right now. If you’d like to call, the number is 844-484-5737. That’s 844-484-5737. 844-484-5737. And if you’re not familiar with the program, people call in because we talk about the Bible here. If you have questions about the Bible, maybe you have a different view of the Bible than I have. You’re welcome to call and say so. I’d be glad to talk to you. It’s an open forum about really biblical stuff. So feel free to call if you have questions. 844-484-5737. Our next caller is David from New Mexico. Hi, David. Welcome. Hi, Steve. How are you?
SPEAKER 08 :
Good. I had a couple questions. The first question, if you haven’t heard about it, then I’ll just move to the second question. But I was wondering, have you heard about a video that’s on YouTube called Messiah 2030? Do you know anything about that, who it’s from and what it’s about?
SPEAKER 02 :
No, I have never heard of it. Never heard of it.
SPEAKER 08 :
Okay, well, just give me a little rundown, because you may hear about it later on. Someone forwarded to me, and basically it’s this idea that even though we can’t know the day or the hour of Christ’s return, supposedly they’ve done this biblical chronology that you can know the year. And so, of course, they’re claiming that Jesus will return in 2030. So it’s a very lengthy video, but if you ever want to check it out, It is on YouTube.
SPEAKER 02 :
Oh, I haven’t the least interest. David, let me ask you just out of curiosity, how long have you been a Christian?
SPEAKER 08 :
Oh, I’ve been a Christian for a long time, and I’m not calling because I believe this video.
SPEAKER 02 :
The reason I ask is if you’re a Christian long enough, you will have heard this very claim made about a dozen or more different dates over the years. I’ve been in the ministry for 55 years, and I literally have heard at least a dozen dates that were calculated by Bible experts and so forth and different years and so forth. And they’ve all been perfectly wrong. And there’s not the slightest reason to believe that anyone in the future will get it right. You know, if they do, it’s only by chance, not by their expertise. Because Jesus said, it’s not for you to know the times or the seasons that the Father’s put in his own power. So that people would make an effort to try to calculate the times or the seasons that the Father’s put in his own power. When Jesus said, that’s not for you to know. It just means they’re in a rebellion. That’s rebellion against him. He says, listen, don’t worry about that. Don’t think about that. That’s not for you to know. But I’m going to spend a lot of time calculating that. I’m going to have a whole website about it. I know whole radio programs that almost every day, that’s their focus. Oh, we’re living near the end and so forth. And I think, why would you want to have a whole ministry in rebellion against what Jesus said? I don’t understand that.
SPEAKER 08 :
Exactly. I hear what you’re saying. Yeah, I understand what you’re saying. The only other question I was going to ask you real quick was I hear a lot of people talk about the chronological Bible, and I realize that it puts things in chronological order, but I guess what I kind of wonder about is when we obviously look at our regular Bible from Genesis to Revelation, obviously it begins at the beginning of the world, the creation of the world, and it goes forward in somewhat of a chronology of a history. So How different is a chronological Bible in that regard to putting things in order, and do you believe those are helpful?
SPEAKER 02 :
Apparently they’re helpful for some people, and I could see how they would be. I mean, if a person’s not familiar with the Bible, they might get a little confused. You see, here’s why our Bible doesn’t read strictly chronologically, and that’s because some books are parallel to other books. For example, the books of 1 Chronicles, for example, is parallel in its material to the books of 1 and 2 Samuel. So, you know, if you read through the Bible, you’re going to read 1 and 2 Samuel. But later on, you’re going to come to the same stories and same information, much of it, in 1 Chronicles. And likewise, when you read 1 and 2 Kings. you’ll read that, and then eventually you’ll come to 2 Chronicles, and it’s going to be the same stories that are in 1 and 2 Kings. Now, when I say the same stories, I don’t mean identical, but it’s the same time period, and many of the same stories are there. Chronicles will have different details, but many of the same ones, too. It’s like they’re telling the same history, but including and excluding different parts. It’s like reading the four Gospels. If you read the Gospel of Matthew… You do have a chronological story, a roughly chronological story of Jesus. But then when you read Mark, you’re going to start at the beginning again and get the same story. Mark doesn’t follow chronologically after Matthew. It parallels it, and so does Luke. So this is why, and then when you have the epistles of Paul, they’re not arranged in our Bible in the order they were written. They’re generally arranged in order of descending size. So the larger epistles of Paul are near the front, and then they dwindle down to Philemon, which is the smallest. But, I mean, the Psalms, for example, you’re not going to run into the Psalms until you’ve finished all the history books of the Old Testament. But the Psalms, of course, belong to some of those historical periods you’ve already read about in the historical section. David was, you know, the story of David’s in 1 Samuel and Chronicles. So you’re going to be interlacing the Psalms. with those stories. So that’s why chronological Bibles have moved things around to be you encounter them at the right time in the overall narrative. Now, I have never used a chronological Bible. Once you’re familiar with the Bible, you know what time period you’re reading about. And so you realize, oh, yeah, this is all sort of talked about over here. But for people who are maybe just getting acquainted with the Bible, it may be helpful. There were not chronological Bibles through most of church history, so Christians had to get to know their Bibles without that aid. But it can be an aid to some people, I suppose. So I wouldn’t say not to do it. It might, however, be that if you’re reading only a chronological Bible, you would not pick up, as you would just reading your Bible through, sometimes what the contents of a given book is. Because you’re going to have the book of Jeremiah interlaced with with stories in Kings, you know, and Chronicles. And same thing with Isaiah. Whereas you might not, if you read through the whole book of Isaiah or the whole book of Jeremiah as a single book, as you’re reading through the Bible, you may remember, oh, this was in Isaiah or this was in Jeremiah. And, you know, just by reading through the Bible, you remember, oh, it was in the Psalms I read this or, you know, in Amos or whatever, you know. But if it’s all laced together as you’re reading through it, you’re not really getting a sense of when you’ve changed from one book to another and which book contains which. But it has its place. It has its place. And I would say that someone who’s never read through the Bible might want to read through a chronological Bible in their first time. I’m not saying they should, but they might want to. But if they do, I wouldn’t do it again. I would probably just start reading through the Bible ordinarily. Get acquainted with each book. Oh, gee.
SPEAKER 08 :
All right. Well, thanks. I appreciate your insight.
SPEAKER 02 :
All right. God bless you, David. Good talking to you. Let’s see. Esther from Long Beach, California. Welcome.
SPEAKER 05 :
God bless you, sir. Thank you. I hear a lot of the programs that come on. They’re saying, Paul said this, Isaiah said this, but I think As nemesis and as Christian, we need to let that sinner out there know that God wrote the Bible. God told Paul what to say. And all those writers and all the 66 books in the Bible. And that’s what I hear a lot on the radio. Paul said this. John said this. Isaiah said this. And another thing that I heard a lot of during the Christmas said that Mary was 13 years old. I don’t believe that. Because Mary and Elizabeth lived many, many miles. And Mary went to visit Elizabeth. And if she had been 13 years old, I don’t think they would have had the conversation or the closeness that they had. And our Bible tells us that Mary, after she left Elizabeth’s home, she stayed there until John was born. And she went to her own home. And I never believed, I don’t care what the traditions were back then those days, that Mary was only 13 years old. To me, that’s a baby. And I wonder sometimes if that’s why some men think they can molest a 13-year-old. No, I believe that Mary was a woman. The Bible says she was born of a woman. And when Isaac was carried up on the mountain by Abraham, he was 13 years old. And I do not believe that Mary was a 13-year-old.
SPEAKER 02 :
All right. Well, you’re certainly entitled to that belief. The fact is that you say to you, 13-year-old is a baby. Yeah, I think in our society, some people who are 35 are still infantile because people aren’t made to grow up in modern society. Some of them do, and some just don’t. And in our society, we have this category called adolescence. You’ve got children who are prior to adolescence called children, and then they reach an age which in old times they would have been called adults. But we call them adolescents, and they get about 10 years there of adolescence almost. And they’re neither children or adults, and we don’t treat them like either. We don’t treat them exactly like children, and we don’t treat them exactly like adults. That’s our culture, though. And, of course – whatever our culture has done for decades and generations is going to seem natural to us. So to us, a 13-year-old girl seems like a child. In almost all cultures previous to ours, a 13-year-old girl was a woman. But she wouldn’t be like our modern 13-year-olds because our modern 13-year-olds aren’t raised to be women at 13. They’re raised to be adolescents, and they get to live kind of an irresponsible, childlike life but they have a little more privileges than childhood. Adolescence is a very artificial category. But if you lived in a society where it was understood, when you reach puberty, you’re now grown up. And that’s why in the Jewish society, which is, of course, the society the Bible is written to, a boy at age 13 is bar mitzvahed. And the word bar mitzvah suggests he’s now a son of the covenant. He’s like a responsible adult. When he was up to 12 years old, he was under his parents’ spiritual umbrella, as it were. But then when he’s 13, he takes on adult responsibility, not only before God, but in many cases in business. I mean, they might take over the family business. I mean, there are children in places like India and places like that today who are not any older than that, and they run shops because, I mean, that’s what they’re raised to do. So culture is different in different places. And I do believe that it was commonplace in biblical times and in probably many parts of the world today for young women especially, who are 13, to actually get married. Now, you said you wonder if that belief is what causes men to think it’s okay to molest children. I doubt if men who molest children are basing their actions on any biblical belief at all. I have a feeling they’re just being jerks and evil. And people who do that aren’t really following their interpretation of the Bible, generally speaking. They’re just doing evil things they want to do. But a good man will not molest a little girl even if he does believe Mary was 13, even if he believed that in biblical times 13-year-olds usually were married or did get married shortly after that. Because that seems to be culturally the case. historically known, but it doesn’t provide any excuse for anyone to molest a child or to molest anybody, even an adult. But I appreciate your thoughts there. That’s certainly why we have an open line.
SPEAKER 05 :
Could I say this? Could I say this?
SPEAKER 02 :
Okay, quickly. I have more people to take. Could I say this?
SPEAKER 05 :
Could I say this?
SPEAKER 02 :
Please do.
SPEAKER 05 :
When I go by, the Bible says he was born of a woman. And she went to her own home.
SPEAKER 02 :
I heard that. Yes, I heard you say that.
SPEAKER 05 :
She went to her own home. Uh-huh.
SPEAKER 02 :
No, her own home. You mean that she owned a home? No, she didn’t own a home. She wasn’t married yet. She would be living with her family until she was married. That was always the case in biblical times. Yeah, I think you’re, again, it’s natural enough to be kind of thinking of a 13-year-old in terms that we think of 13-year-olds, right? And you say, well, a 13-year-old wouldn’t have her own home. Well, her father’s home was her own home. That was her home. Her home was with her parents. She went to be with her relative, Elizabeth, for a while, and then she went back to her own home, which was her parents’ home. And girls that age would live with their fathers. In fact, even older women would live with their fathers until their fathers died or until they got married. But most girls got married before their fathers died. But, yeah, I mean, and it does say she was a woman, exactly. But what I’m saying is in that culture, a girl who had reached puberty was now regarded as a woman, and a boy who had reached puberty was regarded as a man. We just prolong infantilism in children longer than they need to be. Other cultures didn’t indulge in that so much, partly because they were poorer than we are. Parents can afford to raise their kids until they’re in their 20s or 30s in many cases in America. In ancient times, families were dirt poor. And so you’ve got a kid who can carry adult responsibility, they start carrying it. They start helping to support the family and so forth. They’re not kept infantile like we keep our children so many times. Anyway, thank you for your call. Good talking to you. I didn’t hear what you just said. It sounded like you said you’re not through, but that’s for me to decide. And I think you are. But thank you. I appreciate you calling. Let’s talk to Peter from Avon, Connecticut. Hi, Peter. Welcome. Hi, Steve. How are you?
SPEAKER 01 :
Good, thanks. Hey, I’m kind of in a tough situation. I wanted to call and talk to you about miracles and what advice you can give and maybe some direction. I was just diagnosed with ALS. I’m sorry.
SPEAKER 07 :
Oh, wow.
SPEAKER 01 :
Horrible, horrible. I know. Horrible disease. I know it is. And there’s so many miracles in the Bible. They don’t appear to me to be as numerous nowadays as they were in the Bible. I understand Jesus was trying to build this community, and, of course, he had to prove to people that he was God. But I don’t know if he’s still doing the amount of miracles, but I certainly need one because I really don’t look forward to what lies ahead of me.
SPEAKER 02 :
I don’t blame you. I mean, I know. I know what ALS is like. I had a friend who I lost my age with that. And, of course, I know of other cases. Well, I’ll tell you, I certainly would wish a miracle for you. But to answer you very honestly, the Bible does not present miracles as the norm. In the Bible, there are seasons where God did a lot of miracles and seasons where there were centuries between miracles. For example, I mean, God did a lot of miracles. Probably the first time he did a lot of miracles was when he delivered Israel from Egypt and took them through the wilderness and brought them with Joshua into a promised land. There are a lot of miracles associated with that. But then after that, we don’t read of miracles much until the time of Elijah. And Elisha. Now, Elijah and Elisha were like, what, 600 years after the Exodus, something like that, 600, 700 years later. There are a lot of miracles there, too. But there were centuries in between where we don’t read of any miracles or many. And then after Elijah and Elisha, there’s another 700 years or so before Jesus comes along. And before Jesus comes, John the Baptist comes. And the Bible specifically says John the Baptist didn’t do any miracles at all. But Jesus, of course, did a lot. So did his apostles. So, we don’t really see miracles as the norm in the Bible. And even in Jesus’ ministry, we were just talking to an earlier caller, Jesus did a lot of miracles. But he lived 33 years, and he didn’t do any of them until he was 30. So, all the miracles he did in his ministry were confined to the last 10% of his lifetime. And the first 90% was… not particularly miraculous except at birth. So, you know, we do read a lot about miracles in the Bible because those miracles are associated with significant events, and those are the significant events that the Bible wants to talk about because of their significance. Now, miracles still happen. I know that miracles still happen. The Bible doesn’t ever say that the age of miracles has passed. But it also, you know, the age of miracles was not passed in the days of Jeremiah. But no miracles were being done. But, you know, there are seasons where God does miracles and seasons where he doesn’t do so many. Now, I would not want to discourage you from trusting God for a miracle. I also wouldn’t want to give you a falsehood and say there’s a guarantee of miracles. The Bible does not guarantee miracles to us. So… I mean, if I were running things, I would certainly want to provide a miracle for everyone who’s in such a terrible circumstance. But I will say this, when God doesn’t provide miracles, I have to assume that he could, and the fact that he doesn’t means he has something better in mind. I’m sure that Paul’s thorn in the flesh was not as severe a condition as Lou Gehrig’s disease, but it But it was a torment to him, apparently a constant torment. He begged God to take it away from him. And even though God worked miracles of healing and even raising the dead through Paul’s ministry, he denied Paul a miracle in this case. He said, my grace is sufficient for you. My strength is made perfect in your weakness. Now, Paul still believed in miracles, but not in his case. He felt God had told him, no, I’ve got a better idea. I’ve got something better in mind. And, you know, when we’re suffering… A horrible situation that only God can fix. We ask him to do it. We can’t imagine that he’d have something better in mind or that there could even be such a thing as something better than for us to be healed. But even those who don’t get, you know, debilitating sicknesses go through trials which seem like there can be no good in them. And yet God has promised he’ll bring some good from it. Now, Obviously, some diseases greatly shorten people’s lives or greatly diminish their quality of life before they die. And ALS, obviously, is one that typically does that. And I’d hate to have it myself. I hate that you have it. Of course, if hating something made it not exist, we wouldn’t have any troubles at all in the world. But let me just say that If you can trust God when you’re healthy, you can trust him when you have a disease as well, because he doesn’t change. We trust God because he’s faithful. We trust him because he’s good, because he always does the very best thing that he can imagine for his plans, for each individual who’s trusting him. And so the best we can do is trust him. It is not impossible for him to heal. I know of people who were healed of cancers that were said to be incurable. I’ve heard of people cured of all kinds of amazing things. But again, it’s not the norm. If God wants it to happen, it can happen. And I would certainly pray for that. I’d certainly pray for your healing. But I’d also pray, if I were you, for God to bring you close to him so that you will do well In this test, whether you receive a healing or not, I don’t say that with any callousness at all. My heart breaks for you. I just know. I’m a realist. I know that sometimes when it’s our time to go, God takes us all different ways. And sometimes he takes us sick. But he never does anything wrong. And so miracles, yeah, miracles are something God can do and sometimes does do. But it’s people who guarantee you that if you have enough faith, you’ll have a miracle are probably going to disillusion you. It’s better to just take the Bible for what it actually does say. Even Paul couldn’t get a miraculous healing, even though he raised other dead people. You know, he couldn’t help his friends from chronic illnesses they had, like Timothy and like Trophimus. So we live in a world that if we could work miracles, we’d do a lot more of them probably than God does. But we’re not as wise as he is either. So many… I’m sure that we have thousands of people listening who are praying for you right now, and I hope many of them will remember to pray for you. But you did call to ask about a miracle, and I’m just saying ask God to give you the miracle of grace to glorify him in the midst of whatever his will may be for you and to heal you if it’s his will. And then I would leave it at his door because it’s only he can do anything about it. No man can. So I just leave it with God, and I would trust him to do what he sees as the right thing. I’m terribly sorry to hear about your circumstance, Peter.
SPEAKER 01 :
It’s not pretty. No, it’s not. And that’s what I’m looking for, as I told you, direction. And you’ve given me some that I… Don’t feel all that enthusiastic right now.
SPEAKER 02 :
I don’t blame you. I don’t blame you. Peter, let me recommend something. Have you been to our website before?
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 02 :
Okay. If you go to thenarrowpath.com under Topical Lectures, there’s a series there called Making Sense Out of Suffering. It’s only four lectures long, but I would suggest you listen to those lectures. It might be helpful.
SPEAKER 01 :
And what is it called again? I didn’t quite catch that.
SPEAKER 02 :
Making Sense Out of Suffering.
SPEAKER 01 :
Okay. Okay.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, at thenarrowpath.com, there’s a tab that says Topical Lectures, and those series are listed in alphabetical order.
SPEAKER 01 :
Okay. All right. So at this point, there’s just not much for me to do except to try to keep my faith.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, don’t just try. Just put your faith in Christ. Maintain your faith in Christ. And we all need to do that. And all of us, at some point, will come to the end of our lives. So it may not be. We may be younger or older than other people, but we’ll all have the same test at the end, and that’s whether we’re hanging on to Christ and trusting in him when life has kind of dealt us our final day. Or God can heal. It’s up to him.
SPEAKER 01 :
I’m sorry. I didn’t hear that.
SPEAKER 02 :
I said, or God can heal you. It’s up to him. We need to trust him to do it right there.
SPEAKER 01 :
All right. Well, brother.
SPEAKER 02 :
All right.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, God bless you. Thank you, Steve, and I appreciate your prayers.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes, and again, there are thousands of people listening. I’m sure many of them are praying for you right now. And probably a lot of the people listening to us are people who do believe that miracles are guaranteed. And I don’t believe they’re correct, but maybe according to their faith, be it unto you. Maybe God will honor it. All right?
SPEAKER 01 :
Thank you, Steve. Appreciate it. Nice to talk to you.
SPEAKER 02 :
God bless you. Have a good weekend. Bye now. Well, we have our lines almost full still, and I’m looking at a clock that’s going to say I’m off the air in about two minutes. I usually don’t do this, but I’m going to see. I mean, sometimes I do. Someone’s been waiting a long time. Connor from Bradford, Pennsylvania. Can you do anything with two minutes or one? Oh, I’m sorry. I had less. I had one. I apologize. The music’s playing. I’ll be cut off here in less than a minute, so my apologies. Feel free to call Monday, and I’ll try to take all the calls then. God bless you. You’ve been listening to The Narrow Path. My name is Steve Gregg. I always try to squeeze in as many calls as we can, but sometimes I miscalculate how many we can get in. Anyway, we are a listener-supported ministry. As I said earlier, if you’d like to help us stay on the air, you can write to The Narrow Path, P.O. Box 1730, Temecula, California, 92593. Or you can go to our website. Everything at our website is free. The series I recommended to Peter just now, we have lectures, hundreds of them. If you go to thenarrowpath.com, look under the tab that says Topical Lectures and click on Making Sense of Suffering. The website, thenarrowpath.com. Have a good weekend.
