On Air
Mon - Fri: 12:00 AM - 12:30 AM & 11:00 AM - 11:30 AM
Join Steve Gregg as he navigates an array of thought-provoking questions from listeners about biblical teachings and their implications on modern faith. The discussions open with a deep dive into whether the Bible foresees exceptions to the general rule of death, referencing the resurrection accounts and the appointed time for judgment. The episode unfolds with nuanced conversations on spiritual power, delving into what Paul meant by the ‘power of his resurrection’ and its relevance to believers today. Listeners are also treated to historical insights into the practices of crucifixion, particularly the role of cultural norms and gender in the
SPEAKER 1 :
Thank you.
SPEAKER 02 :
Good afternoon and welcome to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we are live, as we usually are, Monday through Friday for an hour in the afternoon with an open phone line for you to call if you want to call in with any questions that you have about the Bible or the Christian faith. that you would like to discuss with us on the air. Maybe you have objections or disagreements with something that this host stands for or has said in the past. You’re always welcome to call and say that this is so and why. The number to call is 844-484-5737. That’s 844-484-5737. Our first caller today is Mark calling from Eagan, Minnesota. Mark, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 03 :
Thank you, sir. This stems from the belief that near-death experiences aren’t possible because of Hebrews 9.27, but there are verses in opposition to that, namely Luke 8.52-55, Jesus raises a dead 12-year-old girl. John 11.43, he raises Lazarus. Luke 7.12, He raises a widow’s only son who had died. 1 Kings 17, Elijah raises another widow’s dead son. In Matthew 27, right after Jesus died, the graves, people were resurrected from their graves. And then especially the last one here, Matthew 10, 8, Jesus tells his 12 disciples to heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, and raise the dead. But Hebrews 9.27 says, and as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment. How do we explain Hebrews 9.27 in regards to people only dying one time?
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, well, first of all, there’s also other exceptions because we have Enoch and Elijah who did not die. even once. And then, as you say, there are a few people throughout history who’ve died, and then they were raised supernaturally from the dead, and then we assume that they died again, since they don’t appear to be walking around on earth today. So there are people who’ve died more than once, and there are people who have not died even once. Now, we also have, of course, the statement that Paul makes in 1 Corinthians 15, I show you a mystery. We will not all die. Well, he says we shall not all sleep, but he means we won’t all die, but we’ll be changed. And also in 1 Thessalonians 4, verses 16 and 17, he says when Jesus comes back, the dead in Christ will rise first, then we who are alive and remain will apparently not die, like he said in 1 Corinthians 15, we won’t die, but we’ll be caught up to meet the Lord in the air. So there’s a whole generation of Christians that won’t die. So why does the writer of Hebrews in Hebrews 9, 27 say it is appointed unto man once to die? Well, we have to ask ourselves, what is he affirming and what is he not trying to affirm? Is he trying to say there are no exceptions to this? Let’s face it. I think that even though you and I have recognized cases in the Bible, and even if you believe as I do that the last generation of Christians will not die, then it’s clear that it is not the case that every last person, in fact, dies. But I don’t think anyone would say we’re speaking… wrongly when we say it’s appointed unto men to die. That seems to be a general rule. 99.999% of men who’ve lived have died, and probably a very large percentage of those living now will die, probably all of us, unless Jesus comes back sooner. So it is, in fact, a rule. God has appointed unto men once to die and then to the judgment. Now, are there any exceptions? Well, apparently there are. I mean, Jesus himself died once, but he didn’t go to judgment. And other people have died more than once. And some didn’t die at all, a couple of them. And some more won’t die at all at the end. So, in other words, the writer of Hebrews is not trying to teach a doctrinal statement about how many times people can die. I don’t think he would have thought himself… in need to make that point. I think everybody knows that it’s appointed man what’s to die. I think that he’s, of course, allowing for whatever exceptions God may make. It is a general rule, and that’s what he’s stating. The purpose for stating it in the passage is not to tell us how many times people die, because I think all his audience pretty much knew that already. Any human being who’s been around much knows that. But to make the point, and the point he is making is that Jesus died only once. He doesn’t have to die again. Unlike the high priests who have to offer their sacrifices year after year after year, just a couple of verses after the one you’re quoting in Hebrews, over in chapter 10, it makes it clear that unlike the high priests whose sacrifices didn’t accomplish anything permanent, and they had to repeat them so frequently, Jesus only had to die once. He died once and for all. He offered himself once and for all. So, the point he’s making is he doesn’t have to die again. People really, it’s appointed on men only to die once. Not all men. I mean, you find some exceptions, of course. But, and we could even say, you know, that stage four cancer is inoperable, is a, you know, a death sentence. You know, people are going to die from it. But some people don’t die from it. I mean… I mean, God can heal them, or there might even be some medical technologies that make some exceptions. But there are things that are so generally true that, I mean, you could state it with, you know, if it’s stated as a doctrinal statement, okay, everybody, the Word of God is making this declaration. Only one time will anyone ever die, period. And then they’ll go to judgment. That’s not what the writer of Hebrews is doing. He’s arguing that Christ’s death was good once and for all. He doesn’t have to die again. He was a man. He came as a man. It says that in Hebrews chapter 2. He was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death. And in Hebrews 9 it says, and he did die. He died and he doesn’t have to do it again. Because really, people really only have to die once. Generally speaking. And that’s the point he’s making. He’s not trying to insist that everyone must die. If he was, then he’s disagreeing with Paul. He’s disagreeing with many angels. cases. Well, not many cases, but some. Many at the end time when Jesus comes back, and then a few in the Old Testament, Enoch and Elijah. And he’s not saying there can’t be any cases that a man would die more than once, but there aren’t many of those that we know of. There’s like Elijah raised one, Elisha raised one. I think that makes up the whole Old Testament group that raised from the dead. Then there’s a few, some who raised when Jesus came out of the grave, and we know three that he raised during his three years ministry, and he told the disciples to raise them too, so they must have raised a few. So let’s just say there’s a dozen people or so, maybe a couple dozen, out of billions and billions of people who are exceptions to that general rule. That doesn’t make the general rule not true. It just means there are exceptions to that rule, but not very many. So that is how I understand that. I don’t think he’s trying to make a an absolute statement of doctrine that cannot be ever deviated from. He’s just saying this is the way things are, generally speaking. Are they not? People die. After that, they’re dead, and then they go to the judgment later on. So that is the general truth, and I think that’s what the writer of Hebrews is trying to say. I think he knew. I think he knew about Elijah. I think he knew about Enoch, and I think he knew about the people that Jesus had raised from the dead. If he didn’t, he wasn’t a very informed biblical writer because he obviously was a companion of the apostles. It would be surprising if he didn’t know of the exceptions. Okay. Thank you. All right. Thanks for your call, Mark. Okay. Let’s talk to – we’re going to talk next to Van from Dallas, Texas. Hi, Van. Welcome. Hello, Steve.
SPEAKER 08 :
I have a question here. Hi. Hi. The phrase, the power of his resurrection, what does that really mean, the power? Could you elaborate on this, please?
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, you’re referring to Philippians 3, I believe, where Paul said, you know, all the things that were gained to me, I counted them as dung, that I might know him in the power of his resurrection, the fellowship of his sufferings. Right, so the power of his resurrection, of course, could refer to the fact that Paul’s looking forward to being resurrected, and others experiencing the power of resurrection that Christ initiated by his own resurrection, and he was the first fruit, so the rest of us will rise too. And it’s only a few verses later that Paul says, I have not yet attained, I have not yet attained to the resurrection of the dead. So in that case, he’s just talking about the physical resurrection, which he anticipates, that he wants to follow Christ and have a part in that resurrection. And you can see a few verses where he does mention that, you know, I want to have part in that resurrection of the righteous. It’s also possible that, since Paul believed this too, that the resurrection of Christ has also brought the power of resurrection to us in a spiritual sense, that we’ve been born again, we’ve passed from death unto life, and that can only be done by having Christ. So Paul had experience of that. And he expects to experience a physical resurrection, too. So I don’t know. He might have both in mind. He might have one or the other. He doesn’t clarify. He doesn’t say enough to choose between those two. But I think that even the spiritual power of resurrection, that is our being regenerated, our passing from death to life, our being dead in trespasses and sins from which he made us alive, he says in Ephesians 2 and Colossians 2. Those things in John 5, 24, where he says, whoever believes in him has passed from death unto life. I think that’s the power of regeneration, the power of our conversion, which is a spiritual kind of resurrection. And it is made possible by Christ’s resurrection. So it is the power of his resurrection that brings this miracle about in our lives. But there’s also, of course, the future resurrection, of which that’s simply the continuing harvest of which Christ was the first fruits. It’s his resurrection, and we’ll be following in his train in the same experience of resurrection. So we can go either way on that.
SPEAKER 08 :
Okay.
SPEAKER 02 :
Just curious. Yeah.
SPEAKER 08 :
With power, I was thinking more like spiritual warfare or something like that, or…
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, Paul doesn’t really associate our experience of resurrection with our warfare, though it doesn’t mean that he wouldn’t see any connection to it. We don’t have any cross-reference where he says, you know, we can defeat the demons or we can successfully resist Satan because of the power of Christ’s resurrection. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t the case. It just means that we don’t know if he had that in mind since he never mentioned that particular connection before or elsewhere.
SPEAKER 08 :
Okay.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, some pastors, teachers use that phrase a lot, and just wanted clarity where they were coming from. Okay. If we were talking about spiritual warfare, I don’t think the word power would be the right word. I think it would be authority because Christ cast out demons because he had the authority to do it. He had the authority to heal. He gave his disciples authority over serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy. Authority has to do with his unique position of being over all things, and he has delegated his authority to us. Now, power would be, I think, something more like what you’d want in a wrestling match physically. you know, you have a certain amount of strength and your opponent has a certain amount of strength and if you’re going to win, it’ll either because you have better strength or better skills. But I think when it comes to spiritual warfare, what’s more important is the authority of Christ. That’s what it means to do something in the name of Christ. It means in his authority. Just like somebody might do something in your name if you authorize them to do it. It doesn’t give them technically power or energy, but it gives them the right to act on your behalf and to have their decisions honored and, you know, considered official. Yes. Very interesting. Well, thank you, sir. All right, Ben. Good talking to you, brother. Thanks for your call. Okay. We’re going to talk next to Barbara from Roseville, Michigan. Hi, Barbara. Welcome.
SPEAKER 04 :
Oh, hi, Steve. Now, in biblical times, they would hang men on the cross and crucify them. Did they ever hang women on the cross? And if they didn’t, what did they do to punish the women?
SPEAKER 02 :
I do believe women were crucified. The historians, like Josephus, say that the Romans actually crucified thousands of people. And I don’t think that the Romans would have spared a woman if she did something wrong. that would get a man hanged on the cross. That is, if a woman was found to be part of a terrorist cell trying to overthrow the Roman authority or something like that, along with the men, I think they’d all be hanged. I don’t know of any cases where women were hanged on the cross. I mean, the Jews, of course, if a woman did something worthy of death, the Jews would stone them to death. They didn’t have the power of crucifixion. But the Romans, the people that a Jew would stone, the Romans, if they had the same complaint against them, would crucify them. So I don’t think that there’d be any deference given to women if they did things that the Romans thought were worthy of death. But I don’t know of any cases. But I do know that it was the commonplace method of executing a criminal by the Romans if that criminal was not a citizen of of Rome. Now, all over the Roman Empire, there were people who had the privilege of Roman citizenship. Paul was one of them, for example, though Peter was not. And for that reason, Peter was crucified and Paul was beheaded because the Roman citizens, by virtue of being Roman citizens, they were exempt from crucifixion. Crucifixion is like the most awful way, the most hideous, heinous, painful way to die that probably people could have thought of in those days it was absolutely horrible terrifying in fact whereas being beheaded no one’s eager to get beheaded but it’s quick and painless so if a Roman citizen like Paul had done something worthy of death and at the end of his life the Romans decided he had by being a Christian he’d get beheaded Peter on the other hand was killed under the same emperor Nero but Peter was crucified because he was not a Roman citizen So I think anyone who did something that the Romans thought was worthy of death, they’d be crucified unless they were a Roman citizen. If they were a Roman citizen, they’d probably be beheaded as Paul was. They’d have to hang up their naked? Well, they might have to hang up their naked, true. I mean, they weren’t a Christian society, the Romans. They were pagans, and they didn’t have the… modesty conventions that usually come along with the conversion of a society to Christianity. For example, the Assyrians and the Babylonians, who were not much different than the Romans, they would strip women naked to lead them out into captivity. They’d put a hook in their nose and drag them off. Well, they’d let them walk, I hope. Dragging them by the nose wouldn’t last long. But, you know, they’d put a hook in their nose and they’d lead them off naked. It was part of the humiliation that they intended for their conquered peoples. So the Romans wouldn’t be any more squeamish about a woman’s, you know, being naked or not than Assyrians or Babylonians were. That’s paganism. We live in a society… that has been influenced by Christianity for many centuries, so that there’s the assumption that women should be treated with some deference. Because that’s what Christianity would suggest. We give honor to women as the weaker vessel, the Bible says. And so, I mean, there’s just a certain civility that comes to a nation when it adopts Christian ideas. And along with civility comes a… a care to exempt the weaker parties, women and children and so forth, from the kinds of pains and severe punishments that often men have. Though, I mean, even in our country, women will have capital punishment if they deserve it, don’t receive it. But there just aren’t many women who commit crimes that are, compared to men, there aren’t many women who commit capital crimes. Anyway, I don’t think the Romans would have spared them. At all. Okay, let’s talk to Daryl from Maine. Hi, Daryl. Welcome.
SPEAKER 08 :
Hi, how are you doing, man?
SPEAKER 02 :
Good.
SPEAKER 08 :
I have a joke for you.
SPEAKER 02 :
A joke?
SPEAKER 08 :
Yeah. It’s a really, really good one, okay?
SPEAKER 1 :
This dog is man’s best friend.
SPEAKER 08 :
What’s that little dog? The opposite?
SPEAKER 02 :
I’m sorry. You know, every time you call, and I don’t blame you for this. I know you have Parkinson’s, but I have a hard time understanding you.
SPEAKER 07 :
I didn’t hear what you said. If a dog is man’s best friend, what’s that make God the opposite?
SPEAKER 02 :
Oh, I see. Okay. Well, I guess that’s a joke. Okay. If a dog is man’s best friend, is God the opposite? Because God is spelled differently, backward from dog. Yeah, that’s not really a question you have, but Thank you for, you know, a moment of comic relief here. I appreciate you. I hope you’re doing well. All right, let’s talk to Tim from La Mesa, California. Tim, welcome.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yes, Steve. I had a question about Isaiah 7. When the sign is given about, behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and he will, you know, know the good news, know how to refuse evil and choose the good, etc. Now, to us, of course, Christians, the whole thing about a virgin bearing a son is applied to Christ. But in the day of Isaiah there, was the sign… Did the sign have anything to do with a virgin conceiving? Or was it, you know, since the word in Hebrew can mean young woman or virgin, was it just that a young woman…
SPEAKER 02 :
supposedly the king’s wife because you know it’s a royal royalty i think here was that the sign that uh that he will know things or refuse the good and evil before a certain age and all that yeah that passage has caused a lot of confusion obviously christians and matthew and his gospel in chapter one quotes verse 14 where it says behold the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and and shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us. So we recognize that as having a fulfillment when Jesus was born of a virgin. However, most scholars, including conservative ones, and I don’t know that I call myself a scholar, but I also hold this view, but it’d be this standard view of almost all conservative scholars, is that this prophecy, first and foremost, is not referring to Jesus alone. but is referring to a child that would be born in Isaiah chapter 8. Now, why? Why would we say that? Well, for one thing, the child born in chapter 8 is also called Emmanuel. In chapter 8, verse 8, he is called O Emmanuel, which is the same name that this child in chapter 7 would be. More than that, the occasion of the prophecy was that the kings of Syria and Israel were gathered with their armies to destroy Judah and conquer Judah so they could take it over. And King Ahaz was concerned about that, and Isaiah was sent to assure Ahaz that these kings would not defeat Judah, and told Ahaz, ask God for a sign, and he’ll show you. He’ll give you a sign to prove it, so you don’t have to worry. Ahaz refused to ask for a sign. He thought it was irreverent. So Isaiah said, well, God will give you a sign then. He’ll pick one for you. The virgin shall conceive and bring forth a son. Now, that’s not all of it. It says, And by both her kings, it means the king of Israel and the king of Syria, which were threatening Judah. And so these kings of Syria and Israel would be defeated before this child would… have reached an age of accountability where they know to refuse the evil and choose the good. Now, the next chapter, chapter 8, God tells Isaiah to go into the home of this woman and have a baby by her. Now, most Christians assume this woman was his wife. which is possible, or maybe she wasn’t yet his wife. Maybe she was a virgin at the time that the prophecy was made, and then he married her, and then, of course, as a married couple, they had a child. We’re not told exactly how that relationship was, but we are told that he was supposed to have a child by this woman, and the child’s actual name was Meher Shalel Hashbaz, but it says about this child, chapter 8, verse 4, Before the child shall have knowledge to cry, My father and my mother, the riches of Damascus, that’s Syria, and the spoils of Samaria, that’s Israel, will be taken away before the king of Assyria. And then this child is spoken to, and in verse 8 he’s called Emmanuel. So notice the comparison here. Ahaz, the king, is told that a child is going to be born before that child reaches any advanced age, before he knows good from evil. that the two kings of Syria and Israel will be gone and will no longer be a threat to Ahaz. And this child will be called Immanuel. Now, the next chapter, as soon as he’s finished giving the prophecy in chapter 7, Isaiah is told to actually make this happen. He goes and has a child by a woman. They call it Immanuel, although that’s not his name. Of course, Immanuel is not Jesus’ name either. It’s a title more than a name. And they do refer to the child as Immanuel. And it is said of him, the kings of Syria and Israel will be gone before this child knows to say mommy or daddy. In other words, both children are said to be a signal. that the kings of Syria and Israel will be defeated before the child has reached more than a few years old. Now, it’s interesting because from this point in time when Isaiah’s child was born, Syria did fall to Assyria, and Samaria, the capital of Israel, fell to Assyria also within a few years. And so this child… Initially, his prophecy is about Isaiah’s child. And, by the way, it is said to be a sign to King Ahaz, so it had to be something that happened in his lifetime. What Matthew tells us is that that child obviously was a type and a shadow of Christ, because Christ was born of a virgin, and he is God with us. Not everything in the prophecy in Isaiah 7 applies to Jesus, for example. Syria and Israel would not be destroyed before he reached the age of accountability. That was true of Isaiah’s child, not of Jesus. But that’s the way it is with typology in the Bible. You know, something is true of someone in the Old Testament, and some aspects of it are true also of the Messiah. Now, I could end that here, but I want to say more about the word virgin here. But I have to take a break, so I’ll come back after the break and talk about the significance of the word virgin in this place. You’re listening to The Narrow Path. We have another half hour coming up, so don’t go away. We are listener supported. You can go to our website, thenarrowpath.com to find out more. I’ll be back in 30 seconds. Don’t go away.
SPEAKER 01 :
Thank you very much.
SPEAKER 02 :
Welcome back to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg, and we are live for another half hour, taking your calls. If you’d like to be on the program, you can call this number, 844-484-5737. Now, before the break, there was a call, a question, about Isaiah chapter 7. the famous passage about the virgin shall conceive and bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel. And I was talking about how almost all scholars, including conservative ones, believe that the first application of that prophecy was to Isaiah’s own son, who was born as recorded in the very next chapter. the same things are said about Isaiah’s son as are said about this child that is prophesied. However, Matthew, recognizing that the name Emmanuel means God with us and realizing how that obviously is more true in the case of Jesus than of anyone else who’s ever been with us, he saw that this is also, that Isaiah’s child is like a type or a shadow of Christ and that the ultimate fulfillment of it is in Christ. And that he was, in fact, born of a virgin because the Bible says that when Mary was told she’d have a child, she said, I’m a virgin. I’ve never known a man. How can this happen? And the angel told her, well, that’s not a problem. God’s going to miraculously make it happen. So, you know, the fact that she was an actual virgin… is another connector there that Matthew sees. This has relevance to Christ. Now, you asked, what about the virgin? What does that mean? I mean, obviously, the Hebrew word Alma, which is used there, can mean a virgin, but it also can just mean a young woman. In fact, Hebrew scholars mostly say that Alma… the Hebrew word for virgin in this passage, in Isaiah 7.14, just means a young woman. That’s not really talking about a woman who’s literally a virgin. That’s not what the word means in Hebrew. And that this is referring to Isaiah’s child being born of a young woman, the woman through whom he fathered the child. And so they say that’s that. Now, one thing that’s interesting and more in support of the literal virgin meaning is that when the Jews translated the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek about in the 3rd century B.C., long before Jesus was around, long before there were Christians making claims about the virgin birth of Christ, the Jews themselves translated this passage back as they did the rest of the Old Testament, into Greek. And when they chose to translate this verse in the place of the word Alma, they used the Greek word Parthenos. And Parthenos apparently means a literal virgin. At least in almost every case where it occurs, it’s actually talking about a woman who’s never had sexual relations. So it’s kind of interesting because although the Hebrew word Alma may not be that specific, It could just mean a young woman. Yet, the Jews recognized the prophecy almost three centuries before Christ. They recognized the prophecy as having to do with a Parthenos, a literal virgin. Now, how is this fulfilled in Isaiah’s child, if it is talking about a literal virgin? We know that Mary was a literal virgin, so there’s no problem with that. But what about Isaiah’s child? We know that Isaiah’s wife was not a virgin. He was told to go into her, meaning a Hebraism means go have sex with her and conceive a child. So he did. She wasn’t a virgin. So what do we make of that? Well, it is possible that at the time the prophecy was made, that woman was a virgin. She was not yet married to Isaiah. It’s a prophecy about a woman, a virgin. who would yet have a child it doesn’t say she would necessarily still be a virgin at the time that happened so he may have married this virgin woman and then you know impregnated her in the normal fashion so that at the time that you know after they were married she wasn’t a virgin but she was a virgin at the time the prophecy was made that’s one possibility um Of course, that doesn’t make it a miracle. And some people say, see, it has to be a miracle because it says this is going to be a sign to Ahaz. And how is it a sign that a young woman has a baby? That happens all the time. How is that a sign? Well, the sign is not said to be that the child will be born, but that when the child is born, that’s going to signal a very short period before the kings of Syria and Israel will be defeated by the Assyrians. In other words, any child that was born after that, it happened to be that Isaiah’s child fit the bill, but any child born just after that would be three or four years old or less when this process was fulfilled. In other words, the sign is not that there was a miracle done. The sign was that it was a signal of the shortness of the time when this child was born, whether it’s conceived supernaturally or not, once this child was born, there’d be only a few years, very few years before any child that was born could know good from evil or say mommy or daddy, it says, then this would be done. So this is more of a time marker than a miracle. And by the way, there’s no need that this has to be a miraculous thing that he’s talking about here. just because it was a sign, because Isaiah had two sons, and neither of them were born supernaturally. And yet, he says in Isaiah 8.18, Here I am, and the children whom the Lord has given me, we are for signs and wonders in Israel. So Isaiah had Meher Shalel Hashbaz in chapter 8. Before that, he had another child named Shir Jashub. He had two sons, and he said, my sons and I are a sign to Israel. Now, he’s not saying that any of them were born supernaturally or that any miracle had occurred in connection to their lives. A sign doesn’t have to be a miraculous sign. It’s an indicator of something, and the birth of this son was an indicator of the nearness. of the coming of the disasters on the enemies of Judah. So the birth of any child, in any way, could serve as a sign that way. But there’s another possibility. I said it’s possible that the word virgin applies because the woman in question was, in fact, a virgin at the time of Isaiah giving the prophecy, though she didn’t remain one that long after that. But there’s also the fact that in the book of Isaiah, elsewhere, the nation of Israel, or Jerusalem at least, is referred to as the virgin. Now what’s interesting is that the the prophecy doesn’t say a virgin will conceive and bring forth a son. The prophecy in Isaiah 7.14 says the virgin will conceive and bring forth a son. And that’s kind of interesting. It’s as if the virgin is like a technical term as opposed to any old virgin. Now, what’s interesting, although the word virgin is different in this passage, but in Isaiah chapter 37, When Hezekiah is sending a response to Sennacherib, who has sent a threatening letter, in Isaiah 37.22, Hezekiah’s response says this, The daughter of Zion has despised you and laughed you to scorn. The daughter of Jerusalem has shaken her head behind your back. Now, the daughter of Zion or the daughter of Jerusalem is a poetic way that the prophets often speak of the population of Jerusalem. The people of Jerusalem are the daughter of Zion or the daughter of Jerusalem. Now, that daughter of Zion is called the virgin, not a virgin, the virgin. The letter of Hezekiah says the virgin, the daughter of Zion, has despised you. Now, if the Jews thought of the population of Jerusalem as being, you know, something they could call the virgin, then when Isaiah said the virgin will conceive and bring forth a son, I’m thinking perhaps it’s talking about Jerusalem. Perhaps it’s the people of Jerusalem that are going to bring forth a child. And if Isaiah’s wife was, in fact, a woman of Jerusalem, which is possible since Isaiah was a man of Jerusalem, that would seemingly explain it. That the thing is that it was a Jewish girl that Isaiah married. And she bore a son. So I’m thinking that could be what the virgin is. The virgin could be a reference to Jerusalem itself. And that would explain it too. And that could explain why the translators of the Septuagint rendered it Parthenos, even though it was only Alma in the Hebrew. Anyway, those are some thoughts on that. The bottom line is that I believe… The passage has its first application to Isaiah’s own son mentioned in the next chapter, and then it has its ultimate application to Christ, who is, of course, the child of a literal virgin. And we don’t need the translation of that word to be considered in order to know that, because Mary herself mentioned that she had never been with a man, which means she was a virgin in the sense that we use that word today. Okay, let’s talk to Jeff from Minneapolis, Minnesota. Hi, Jeff. Welcome.
SPEAKER 07 :
Hi, Steve. Thank you for taking my call. My question is about the flood narrative in Genesis, and I’m wondering if you, in your studies of Hebrew and Genesis, do you feel there are biblical interpretations of the flood that would support a local or regionalized flood? In particular, I’ve heard some arguments that the Hebrew terms for a planet’s earth and land, I believe it’s Eretz, are quite ambiguous. And just what are your thoughts? Is there a biblical argument that supports a regionalized flood?
SPEAKER 02 :
There are arguments for it. There are arguments for a regional flood as opposed to a global flood. I still favor the global flood theory, but you’re right. The word Eretz, which is translated the earth, whenever it says, you know, all the earth will be covered with water and everything that dwells on the earth shall perish. And so for the word earth, we use that term usually for the planet Earth. Now, of course, we might use it less frequently to speak of dirt. If you pick up dirt, you’re holding a handful of earth. But that’s not as common. When we use the word earth, we’re almost always talking about the planet Earth. Not necessarily so in the Bible. In fact, there’s hardly ever. I think there are some cases, but they’re very rare in the Bible. When earth or Eretz in the Bible means the planet earth, because the same word means ground or land. In fact, the land of Israel is often called the Eretz, the land, the same word. Now, of course, the flood didn’t cover the land of Israel. Noah and his family didn’t live in the land of Israel. They lived in Mesopotamia. But the region, the land there, you know, it could be that the word earth speaks of a limited region. range of land. All the land in the region that was flooded was covered and all the things died there. I mean, there are people who have argued that the word Eretz is perhaps ambiguous enough that it doesn’t have to refer to all the planet Earth. And that’s one of the arguments they make. And then they have other arguments too, but that’s the main one I think that would be drawn from scriptural language. However, there are things about the flood that make me think it’s not regional, though if it was, that’s fine with me. I have no preference. You know, I have an opinion about many things about which I have no preference. So I have opinions about the age of the earth, about the global flood, things like that, but I don’t have any interest in whether it’s correct or not. I just I just try to follow what I see as likely from Scripture. And if I turn out to be wrong, there’s nothing lost from it. But I do believe that the Bible indicates that the flood covered all the highest mountains to a depth of 22.5 feet above the highest mountains. Now, I’m not sure how you contain a local flood when all the mountains, which would be the natural perimeters, The mountain range would be the one thing that would contain the flood in a certain valley. If the water’s above the mountains by, you know, as much as a two-story building above, then I would say probably it wasn’t confined to that area. Another thought is that we know that when the rain stopped, when there was no more water being added to the flood, it took a whole year. for the waters to drain off to the point where Noah and his family could get out of the ark and live on the ground again. It took many, many months before they could even see the tops of mountains. Now, in a local flood, You know, no matter how much water there is, within a few days or weeks, it’ll drain off once you stop adding more, once it stops raining, you know. Whatever is on the ground will simply drain off. You know, the most abundant waters in a region will run off in, you know, I would say less than a few weeks. The reason that the flood didn’t go down for about a year… in any considerable way, would have to be because it had to evaporate. It wasn’t running off anywhere. There’s no place to run off to. That’s what I think. And then there’s, of course, the whole issue of if God wanted to preserve two of every kind of animal and Noah’s family, and he gave them 120 years advance notice to build a boat, why? Why build a boat? Why not just leave the valley? Why didn’t God just say, hey, Noah, this valley is doomed. There’s a mountain range over there. On the other side of it, there won’t be any flood. You’ve got 120 years to get over there. No one would take 120 years to go over the next mountain range. So he could more easily have relocated than built a boat that big. So it strikes me as if the Bible is describing something that wasn’t just locally contained. And if it turns out that it was, I’ve got no problem with it. But if it wasn’t, I mean, if you take seriously some of the descriptions of things, I would have to say I don’t think it works out for it to be a local flood.
SPEAKER 07 :
Excellent. Thank you so much.
SPEAKER 02 :
Okay. Thanks, Jeff. Okay. Our next caller is Lito from Spokane, Washington. Lito, welcome.
SPEAKER 06 :
Sure. Thank you for taking my call. My question is in reference to when Jesus tells those that I never knew you, what is it, in your opinion, that we need to do to make sure that Jesus knows us?
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, yeah, that’s at the end of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter 7. And I think he gives the answer there before he gives that little anecdote. Here’s what he said, of course, that you’re referring to. Verse 22, Matthew 7, 22 and 23. He said, Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name and cast out demons in your name and done many wonders in your name? And I will then say to them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness. So here’s people calling him Lord. And they’re saying they cast out demons in his name and prophesied in his name and did wonders in his name. So it seems like they were Christians. They certainly thought they were. And yet he says, when they stand before him, he’s going to say, I never knew you. Which is kind of scary, really. We think, well, if these people had that kind of credentials and weren’t the real deal, maybe I’m not. Do I have better credentials than those? Have I cast out demons and done mighty works in God’s name? If not, then they seem more like convincing Christians than I am. And he didn’t know them. So maybe we’re all in trouble. But it’s not so, because the verse that leads to that bit there, that interchange, is verse 21. And Jesus said, Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father in heaven. This is very similar to what he said in, I think it was Luke 6.46, if I’m not mistaken, or maybe Luke 6.40. He said, Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and you don’t do what I say? In other words, the people to whom he said, I never knew you, they didn’t do the will of the Father. They didn’t do what he said. Now, they did stuff. They did stuff that was impressive, but it wasn’t what he told them to do. You know, Moses, the second time he struck the rock and got water to come out of it, God had told him not to do it. God told him to do it the first time, 40 years earlier, and he got a miracle. He struck the rock and water came out. The second time, God told him to speak to the rock, and water would come out. That was 40 years later. But Moses was angry, and he didn’t obey God. And he struck the rock again, and it worked again. But then God reproved him and said, I told you not to do that. Now you’re not going to be able to go in the promised land because you didn’t obey me. You didn’t sanctify me before the people. Now, here’s the thing. A man can work a miracle in the name of God at times, and yet be doing it in disobedience to God. Or it may be that God simply had nothing to do with his doing it or didn’t command him to do it. But doing the will of the Father means that I am now reoriented from the position I was born into. I was born interested in my will. I was born looking out for my interests, trying to make sure that everything around me worked for my good, for my comfort. for my gratification. That’s how babies are born, and that’s how people remain when they grow up from being babies if they don’t change. Now, change means convert. The word convert means change. The change is this. When you become a true disciple of Jesus, you now say, not my will, but God’s will be done. I’m no longer living for my agenda. I’m no longer seeking my dreams. I’m no longer doing anything because I want to specifically. I’m doing it because I believe this is what God would have me do. I’m seeking God’s will has displaced my will in that part of me that determines who I’m going to serve and who I’m going to please. Now, it doesn’t mean that once you’ve made that decision that you never do anything wrong. The Bible makes it very clear. Paul said, I desire to do good, but I sometimes do things that aren’t good. That’s true. He said in Galatians, you know, the flesh lusts against the spirit, the spirit against the flesh, and these two are contrary to one another. So you don’t do what you want to do. Well, when you’re sinning as a Christian, you’re doing what you don’t want to do, he said. And you don’t want to do it because you want to do the right thing. You have decided and reoriented your life toward doing what’s pleasing to God. When you succumb to the flesh, when you’re tricked, when you’re deceived, when you’re weak and you stumble, well, then you end up doing what you don’t want to do. But the fact that you didn’t want to do it indicates that you have been reoriented. Because before you’re a Christian and you do something that pleases you or your flesh, you don’t have any objection to it. It’s not a problem. It’s quite agreeable with your general orientation. But conversion changes your orientation. You are converted when you say, I will no longer seek my own will. I will seek God’s will from now on. And then you begin to live that way. You’ll have failures. You won’t be consistent all the time. But your commitment never changes. At least it doesn’t have to. No matter how many times you stumble, you don’t have to ever change your commitment to be, I’m going to follow God. If I stumble, I’m going to get back up again. I’m going to repent and move forward in the right direction again. That’s what being a follower of Christ is. That’s how the disciples who followed Jesus were. They did wrong things too, but they kept following him. And so doing the will of my Father refers to following Jesus. I mean, that’s clearly what he called people to do. And when he said, why do you call me Lord, Lord, and you don’t do the things I say, it’s obviously saying, well, I don’t recognize you as my followers if you’re not doing what I say. But again, I want to make it clear. Doing what he says is, no one does that perfectly. Paul didn’t. Peter certainly didn’t. I don’t. And you don’t probably. So if no one does it perfectly, then how do we know if we’re really saved? Well, you’ll know if you’re saved by the fact that, just ask yourself, what is the purpose of my life? What am I determined to do with myself? And if the answer is to please God, to do what he wants, to make whatever sacrifice is necessary to fulfill his purposes for my life, if that’s where you can honestly say, you can say that to yourself, then you’re certainly, he’s never going to say, I never knew you, because he does know you. And you know him. So that’s the thing. When Jesus said there are people who think they know him, but they’ll find out that he didn’t know them, he makes it clear that there are also people that he won’t say that to. They are the ones who do the will of his Father, which I think speaks of an orientation toward, well, let’s just say an orientation away from a commitment to doing our own will. Now, why would I say that? Because Jesus said in Matthew 18, 24, excuse me, 16, 24, he said, if anyone come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. So that’s the basic thing. You’re not a Christian yet if you haven’t denied yourself. And what does that mean? It means I’m going to deny myself the right to dictate the pattern and goals of my life. I used to do that. I’m going to change from that. I’m going to deny myself that position and place the will of God in its place and follow Jesus. So anyone who does that has no reason to doubt that when Christ sees them, he’ll say, well done, good, faithful servant. But people who have never done that and who are using religion as something just for their own good, whatever good they think it may be, they haven’t really changed. They haven’t denied themselves. And they’re not doing the will of the Father. They’re doing their own will still. So Jesus actually, in the passage, gives enough information for us to know how to answer that. All right. Thank you for your call. Linda from Auburn, Washington, you’re our last caller. We only have a few minutes. Go ahead.
SPEAKER 05 :
Hi, I wanted to say two things related to the flood issue and two more things related to… There may not be time, so do the most important things first because we don’t have much time. Okay, so the first one is that there’s evidence for it not being a worldwide flood, and that is that Australian Aboriginal people have had continuous culture for 50,000 years, and there’s also evidence of them making it to South America. And the second is evidence in clay tablet writings that there can be a thousand feet of stope over Uganda and Kenya region, and they may have very rich soil, so it at least looks like it went that far, but maybe not the whole planet.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, the Bible says that everybody in the world descended from Noah’s family, so… When we say, well, the Australian aboriginals, their history goes back 50,000 years. Yeah, where are the records of that? Were they keeping accurate records that long? How do we know that? You see, cultural anthropology that looks at the traditions and the mythologies and so forth of ancient peoples, the Chinese, let’s say, there’s a lot of people say, well, their history goes back tens of thousands of years, aboriginals. The Chinese, I think, are more likely to have kept records than the Aborigines. I mean, what do the Aborigines do, writing on dirt? I don’t think we can prove that. I think it’s a claim.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, there’s a – yeah. Well, I mean, people could look into it, how they’ve kept the records. That’s what I heard, and that was from, like, a listener of God.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, I’ll tell you this. I’ll tell you this. There’s no society – that has kept records for 50,000 years that anyone has ever discovered. So, you know, if they say, well, we have oral traditions of our kings or our chiefs going back thousands and thousands and thousands of years, well, okay, that’s what was passed on orally. The longer something is passed on orally, the more likely it is it’s, you know, changed.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, they have found new archaeology that’s covered with water around, like, Egypt area, India, I believe. Right. Japan off the coast of Japan.
SPEAKER 02 :
Right.
SPEAKER 05 :
And it has to do with the thawing of the poles and stuff.
SPEAKER 02 :
But to me, yeah, I think the evidence is strong that it was a global flood. But that’s fine. If you want to say that, that’s fine. All right. Thanks for your call. You’ve been listening to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg. We are out of time for today’s program, so thanks for joining us. Let’s talk again tomorrow. And, by the way, we are a listener-supported ministry.
