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This episode also delves into personal questions related to peace and conflict in interactions, offering advice that is both biblical and practical. As the conversation shifts to topics of historical and theological importance such as burial practices, calendar changes, and the time of Jesus’ birth, listeners are guided through a comprehensive exploration of how ancient traditions and cultural perceptions shape modern beliefs. Tune in for an enlightening journey through history, scripture, and practical faith.
SPEAKER 1 :
Thank you.
SPEAKER 02 :
Good afternoon, and welcome to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg, and we’re live for an hour each weekday afternoon, taking your calls. If you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith, we’d be glad to talk to you today. You can call in, and we will talk to you, assuming we can get to your call. Right now, we have one line open. Most of our lines are full. You can call me at this number, 844-484-5737. That’s 844-484-5737. Now, you don’t need to contact me. Let me know that our website is down. It was this morning. I don’t know if it is now because I haven’t had time to look again. But if you find that you go to our website and there’s some kind of a notice there that’s not accessible, we wondered about that too. And our webmaster, who’s in Connecticut, has told us that there’s some kind of a copying of some aspect of it to another server or something like that going on. So the non-functioning of our website is temporary. And he said he didn’t know how long it would take. Hopefully not much longer because I know a lot of you depend on the website. And last I checked, which was earlier this morning, it was not working still. I don’t know if it is at the moment. But if you find that it’s not, please don’t email me telling me that it’s down. I know, and I’ve gotten flooded with emails about that. So it’ll be up again, Lord willing. I mean, we have no reason to believe that it’s going to be down for very long. Just have to be patient and wait until it’s up again. All right. We’re going to talk first of all today from Ryan from Spartanburg, South Carolina. Ryan, welcome. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 13 :
Thank you, Steve. I just wanted to say before I… ask my question. I wanted to publicly praise you for how patient you are, especially knowing how much you know about the Bible. I’m sure you’ve heard the same questions over and over, and you just have so much patience that I don’t think I would be able to have if I were in your shoes, but I just wanted to say that. My question is about 2 Peter 2.4. Peter talks about angels, and he says something to the effect that fallen angels or angels that sinned are in chains in gloomy darkness awaiting judgment. And I didn’t quite understand because I assumed that fallen angels were demons that are, you know, on the earth tempting people and so on. Maybe there are two categories of angels or some angels that have fallen and they are waiting judgment. If that was the case, how are there still demonic forces on earth today? Yeah.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, well, your thoughts are very much like my own about this. I’ve wondered that too. There are two places that tell us that there are angels who have sinned. Jude tells us that in Jude verse 6, and Peter says it in 2 Peter 2.4. In 2 Peter 2.4, he specifically says that they are held in Tartarus in the King James and some other versions that says they’re in hell. But the Greek word is not the normal word that’s usually translated hell. It’s the word Tartarus, which is used only in that place. We have no other verses in the Bible that mention Tartarus, so we don’t know much about it, except that it’s the place, apparently, where fallen angels… At least some of them, he doesn’t say whether it’s some or all of them, but you kind of get the impression it’s all of them that fell, are being incarcerated in Tartarus until the Judgment Day. Very much like people who are lost are in Hades waiting for the Judgment Day. Tartarus is apparently the same thing to the angels that Hades is to people. The Judgment Day, of course, is at the end of the world. when Jesus returns. So this seems to speak of a temporary place. It indicates it’s temporary because they’re waiting for judgment. But are these all the fallen angels? Like yourself, I was raised believing that when we read about demons and evil spirits in the Bible, that these are fallen angels. And it may be that they are. The thing is that we don’t know that to be so. And there are other theories about who the demons are. I don’t know which theory is correct because the Bible simply does not tell us. We know that there are fallen angels. There actually is no place in the Bible that specifically identifies these fallen angels with the demons. So it may be that fallen angels are something other than the demons. Or it may be that demons are fallen angels and that not all the fallen angels are incarcerated. Some of them are and some are not. I don’t know. We don’t really know more because we’re not told more, and it’s a very curious matter. I will say this. Some people believe… that the demons are the spirits of evil people who had a special pact with Satan during their lifetime, and now that they’ve died, their spirits are forced to serve Satan, and that’s who the demons then are. I don’t affirm this because I’m not sure that’s even a possibility, but But I’m just saying there are other theories. Of course, one popular theory, and I don’t affirm this either because I don’t believe the premise of it, one popular theory is that there was a whole society on this planet before Adam. You’ll find this taught, for example, in the Schofield Reference Bible. And a guy named Pember, who wrote, I think he called it the world’s, the Earth’s earliest ages or something like that. He wrote a theory that, and this is based on the gap theory, the gap theory of Genesis, where they say that after God created the heavens and the Earth, there was a big gap. And then the Earth became formless and void, as it says in Genesis 1-2. That theory I don’t hold to. I don’t think it’s right. But those who do hold it have speculated that there was a whole human society or human-like society that went bad before Adam was created and that God judged the world and the world became formless and void. And then he created the six days of creation, including Adam and Eve and our race. but that they would say the demons are the spirits of those pre-Adamic wicked people who suffered God’s judgment prior to the creation of humans. I don’t accept this, but you will hear this sometimes. I don’t think that the theory it’s based on is scriptural. Others believe that the sons of God who took the daughters of men in Genesis 6, 1 through 6, and had children by them, And the Nephilim were in the earth in those days. There are people who assume those sons of God were angels themselves and that we’re talking there about the fall of angels. And that their offspring, the Nephilim, when they were killed in the flood, that their spirits are now the evil spirits. In other words, there’s many theories. And many of them are based on… presuppositions that I don’t hold. I don’t hold to the gap theory in Genesis 1. I don’t even hold to the idea in Genesis 6 that the sons of God are angels. Many Christians do, and some of those who do would identify the origin of the demons as being with these individuals and these stories as they interpret them. I think fallen angels is still a possible identification for the demons, but we’d have to explain what does it mean they’re bound? Does it mean only some of them were bound? Does it mean that they are bound in a figurative sense? Because I don’t think it’s unscriptural to think of Satan as bound in a spiritual sense, not in the most literal sense of being literally chained up somewhere. But he is described figuratively that way. In Matthew 12, Jesus said he had bound the strong man. In Revelation 20, it talks about the dragon being bound with a chain and a pit. And yet, I don’t believe either of those are talking about a literal confinement of Satan. I think they are symbolic. I think they’re telling us something, but it’s not bad. And if we could say that about Satan, perhaps we could say that about the demons too, that they are bound. Jesus bound them when he bound Satan. But their binding then would not be a literal confinement. The fact that Peter does mention a seemingly illiteral place, Tartarus, might argue against that theory. But after all is said and done, we have not really come to any conclusions that could be proven from Scripture. Like yourself, I always assumed the demons were the same as the fallen angels until I did my own study. And I realized, well, if they are, it doesn’t tell us that they are. There’s no place that specifically tells us what the demons are, other than that they’re evil spirits. But whether they’re fallen angels or the spirits of wicked people who lived before, we really don’t know. And, you know, some people are just not satisfied to not know stuff like that. But I figure if we’re submitted to God, we figure God is wise and he’s revealed everything he thinks we should know. And if there’s things we’re curious about, but God has told us nothing about it, and only he would know, we can’t get the information anywhere else than from him. And if he has chosen not to reveal it, I have to conclude it’s not very important for me to know, much as I would like to. And we have to kind of content ourselves that God deals with us and reveals to us things on a need-to-know basis, and sometimes we want to know. things that we don’t need to know. What we do need to know is that the whole hierarchy of demonic forces have been conquered by Christ through his death and resurrection, and he has authority over them. He’s far above all principality and power and every name that is named. So that, I mean, that Christ has absolute authority. And because we’re in Christ and have his authority, we don’t ever have to be afraid of the demonic spirits, no matter where they came from. this is what it really comes down to. Sometimes the abstract questions are not really answered for us, but the practical question is, what do we have to do about it? Well, one thing is we don’t have to be obedient to or afraid of or intimidated by demons at all. In fact, we can exercise authority over them just as Christ did. So that’s the most I can really say in answer to your question.
SPEAKER 13 :
Thank you so much for the clarification, Stephen.
SPEAKER 02 :
Okay, brother. Thanks for your call. Marta from San Jose, California. Welcome.
SPEAKER 12 :
Hi, Steve. Thank you. My question is regarding how non-Christians come to believe. John 6, 44, no one comes to the Father unless the Father draws you. And the next one in 2 Thessalonians, He called you to salvation when we told you the good news. So is there like an order? Does God call us first, or do we tell them and then God? How does it work? Yeah, I’m confused.
SPEAKER 02 :
Sure. Well, it’s very important what Jesus said there in John 6, 44, that no one can come to me unless the Father draws him. And the interpretation of that has gone sideways, I think, for a lot of people who’ve said, well, if God draws you, well, then you’ll be saved because you can’t be saved unless he does. And therefore, they’d say, well, God apparently hasn’t drawn everybody because everyone’s not saved. And if he drew you, you’d be saved. Therefore, God has not chosen to draw everyone. And therefore, God has not chosen to save everyone. And therefore, God has an elect few that he chooses to save, and he effectually and irresistibly draws them to Christ. Now, all of this coming from that verse says, is reading way too much into it. Jesus did not say that those who are drawn by God all come to him. He said that you can’t come to Christ unless God draws you, but he didn’t say that if God draws you, you inevitably will come to Christ. After all, Jesus said in John 12, if I am lifted up, I will draw all men unto myself. which, by the way, is the same word, draw, helko. In the Greek, it’s helko. It means to draw some. Now, the Calvinists say it means to drag because they want to make it clear that they think it’s an irresistible drawing, that if you’re chosen, God’s going to drag you to himself. Well, you know, the word can mean something like drag in some context. For example, when Jesus appeared to the disciples after his resurrection on the seashore and said, put the net on the other side of the boat, and the net got full. It says they came dragging the net or drawing the net ashore. Now, obviously, they were dragging it with full efficiency. It’s the same term as used for drawing a sword. If a soldier draws a sword, the same word helco is used for that action. So one could say, well, see, the sword can’t resist, so obviously it’s an irresistible drawing. Although, frankly, the sword can resist if it’s rusted in the scaffold or whatever. You might not be able to draw it out. And it’s also possible the fish in the net could be just too heavy for the available muscle to draw it out. So the fact that something is drawn or dragged does not mean that it’s irresistibly dragged or drawn. In some cases, it may be. But the word draw here, or helko in the Greek, is also used in the Old Testament, the Greek Old Testament, the Septuagint. In the book of Hosea, where God says that after he brought Israel out of Egypt with loving cords, he drew them. Same word. He drew Israel to follow him. And yet it says, but they went after Baal. So obviously he was drawing them, but they went the wrong way. He was not irresistibly drawing them. So to say, no one can come to me unless the Father draws him, does not mean that God can’t be drawing some people who actually do not come. And Jesus said he’ll draw all men to himself. So apparently he’s desirous that all men be drawn to him, and God is doing what he can to draw them, but he doesn’t do it by force. He does it, you know, like Paul said in Romans 2, it’s the goodness of God to lead you to repentance. God wins, he woos us with his kindness and his goodness and his love. And, you know, a certain kind of person responds. A certain kind of person doesn’t. But they’re all being drawn. I think of, you know, Matthew 23, I think it’s verse 37, if I’m not mistaken, where Jesus said, Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how many times I would have gathered you. or obviously it’s a different word, but same idea, gathered them as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you would not. So, you know, I wanted to gather you all. I wanted to draw you to me, but you didn’t come. That is, you know, in the end, it’s your decision. So I believe that no one will come to God unless God, in some sense, is drawing them. He’s convicting them of their sin. He may be working in their circumstances to make them miserable in their present sinful state so that they, like the prodigal son says, I think it was better at my father’s house. Maybe I’ll go there. You know, there are ways that God can work in a person’s life and even in their mind and heart to make them think about coming to Christ. But apparently… He doesn’t do it in such a way that if they wish to be stubborn, they can’t. Stubbornness is obviously something that people are capable of. And God often complains about the stubbornness of people, which is interesting. If he actually has some kind of a tractor beam called irresistible grace and he can draw them irresistibly to himself, then why doesn’t he do it with everybody? And why does he complain about the people who don’t come? You know, it just wouldn’t make sense for God to talk that way if this idea was true. And the Bible does not say it is true. So I would say I could not have come to Christ and you could not have come to Christ unless God drew us. But he may be drawing many other people who just reject Christ anyway. He’s trying to draw them, he’s trying to woo them to himself, but they’re just not receptive. I believe that if the Holy Spirit had not convicted you or me or any other person of sin, they simply would never have repented. If God didn’t reveal Christ to them in their heart, if God didn’t arrange their circumstances so they would at least hear the gospel. You know, I mean, some people have never heard the gospel. If I heard the gospel, that was God’s intervention. That’s part of God’s attempt to draw me. And so it is the case that, you know, we…
SPEAKER 12 :
follow as much as it depends on us to live at peace with everyone who is not willing to come because sometimes, you know, we could be doing the wrong thing and people don’t want us around.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, no, we should, like you’re quoting there from Romans 12, Paul said, as much as lies in you, live at peace with all men. The very fact that he says, if it is possible, as much as lies in you, means that you probably will not be able to live at peace with all men, because it’s not always possible, and it doesn’t all lie in you. To live at peace with someone requires that they participate in the effort to be at peace, too. It takes two people to live in peace. It only takes one to cause a rift. It takes two committed people to make a marriage work. It takes only one to cause a divorce. Alienation can be the part of one person. So that’s why Paul said, I want you to live at peace with everyone, you know, insofar as it’s in your power to do it. And if it’s possible, which is a way of saying it won’t always be possible. There are people who won’t let you live at peace with them, but you should want to. And I think God wants to live at peace with all people, but some won’t live at peace with him. So I think that the idea here is, should you be friendly with people who are not being friendly to God, who are resisting his drawing? And I think Paul’s answer would be, yeah, yeah, as long as you can be at peace with him. But it doesn’t mean you have to cooperate with him. There’s many people who are not responding to God but it’s affecting few people other than themselves, and God’s still working on them, and he’s going to have to do more to get them to come. But there are also people who are enemies of God who are doing great damage on purpose. I mean, they may be, for example, in political office, or they may be in some place of power where their corruption is hurting others. And I think for you to resist them, to vote against them or whatever, is not… a violation of living at peace with them. If they don’t like you resisting them, then they won’t be at peace with you. But that’s not your fault. We have to resist, you know, evil. You know, we have to protect others against evil if we can. But we try to do so without having animosity toward those who are causing the problem. But, I mean, you can resist somebody’s activities without hating them or without being unkind to them. Yeah.
SPEAKER 12 :
That’s a very satisfying answer. Thank you so much. I like that.
SPEAKER 02 :
All right, Marta. Thank you for your call. God bless you. Bye now. Gary from Nutley, New Jersey. Never heard of Nutley, New Jersey. Welcome.
SPEAKER 08 :
Hi. Hi, Steve. Thank you for taking my call. Steve, I have one question. How many years ago did Jesus actually walk the earth? And does that say that? anywhere in the Bible? Because I was trying to look that up. People said, and I looked it up on Google, and it says, according to historians. Is there anything more factual, like in the Bible, when the Lord did actually walk there? Thank you. I’ll take my call answer off the air. Thank you.
SPEAKER 02 :
Okay. Okay. Thanks for your call. Well, in Luke chapter 3, it says that this happened in the 15th year of Tiberius Caesar, and that John was baptizing and Jesus came to be baptized by him. And we know that that’s the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. Jesus had been on earth already for about 30 years, but he became a public figure in the 15th year of Tiberius Caesar, which is in Luke 3.1. And that year was 27 A.D., So we can pretty well calculate how long ago he was here by knowing that it’s no longer 27 AD, and we can calculate the number of years since it was. So it’s almost exactly 2,000 years ago because it’s not 2,027, it’s 2,025, but that’s awfully close. So we’re just two years removed from exactly 2,000 years from the time Jesus was here. So, yeah, we do have knowledge of that besides secular history. Although, if we didn’t have the Bible telling us, we could still get it from secular history because the Roman historians mention that Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate. And we can narrow down the years that Pilate was governing in Palestine, and it would limit it to the very same range of time. that the Bible would suggest that Jesus lived. So we’ve got the Bible and we’ve got secular history, both telling us essentially when Jesus lived and died. Thank you for your call. Let’s talk to Elijah from Windsor, Connecticut. Hi, Elijah. Welcome.
SPEAKER 07 :
What up, Steve? Thank you for your ministry, man. It’s blessed me and my family greatly.
SPEAKER 06 :
Thank you.
SPEAKER 07 :
I’m 24 years old. I’m married, and I got three boys, one of them being a newborn, and I’ve been blessed with five weeks off of work. My question to you is what do you think is the most productive way to spend my time for me, my family, and our relationship with the Lord?
SPEAKER 02 :
You have a newborn, you say. How new?
SPEAKER 07 :
One month.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, probably since you got that time off, one of the best things you can do is stay home and help your wife with the other kids and with the baby and help her get some sleep. If you know how to cook, cook the meals. I mean, I would just say serving your family is among the most godly things a man can do, especially since it’s his duty and especially at times when there’s a special need for that. And so loving your wife and being helpful to her, I think, is probably the most godly thing you can do. Now, I mean, if you had other duties besides staying home, for example, if supporting your family required you to go to work, Well, I guess it’d be as loving to go to work and support your family, but you’ve got the luxury of being home. And, you know, obviously your kids are going to be in bed probably before you are and stuff, and in your evenings you can spend time, you know, reading the Bible maybe more than you’d have time to do if you were… I don’t know what your gifts are. I think in general, people serve God best by doing whatever God has given them the gift to do. But anyone who’s married has the gift of marriage. And so that’s at least on the list of gifts. And at a time when your wife is in particular need of assistance, I think that becomes the highest priority. Unless something else comes up that’s like something else, like an emergency, that something else may take priority.
SPEAKER 07 :
Right, right. Okay, awesome. Thanks, Steve. God bless you, man.
SPEAKER 02 :
All right, Elijah. Thanks for calling. Good talking to you. Let’s see here. Patty in Carmichael, California. Welcome to The Narrow Path.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yes. In Exodus chapter 4, verses 22 through 26,
SPEAKER 02 :
I know the passage you’re referring to, yeah.
SPEAKER 11 :
Okay, 22 and 23 seem like God is talking to Moses, let’s say to the Pharaoh. What in the world is happening from 24 to 26? When God tries to kill Moses?
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, Moses is on his way to confront Pharaoh, as God said. But there’s an area of obedience to God that’s been neglected by Moses. Namely, he didn’t circumcise his own son, which is a very high priority for an obedient Jew to do. And therefore, since he was going to confront Pharaoh about the need for Pharaoh to obey God, yet he, the messenger, wasn’t obeying God. This was an area that had to be cleared up before he could confront Pharaoh with any moral authority. So God came to him. And it says God sought to kill him, but we’re not sure what that really means. If God really wanted to kill him, it’d be easy. You know, he could just strike him dead. But apparently, some people think that he made Moses really sick and he almost died. I think it’s possible he may have wrestled with him like he did with Jacob and was, you know, it was a… life and death struggle but his wife circumcised the child which is of course what the issue was and then God left him alone and let him go forward but he wasn’t going to let Moses fulfill his mission and his commission while he was still in significant disobedience to God his wife bailed him out of that one and so he was able to go on and finish his mission but that’s what’s happening there it is a very surprising story that’s stuck in there but I believe it’s simply that that God thought if Moses is going to tell Pharaoh to obey then at the very least Moses had better be obedient too hey I need to take a break I hope that’s helpful to you our website’s thenarrowpath.com I’m Steve Gregg we have another half hour coming up so don’t go away I’ll be back in 30 seconds
SPEAKER 01 :
Are you aware of the wide variety of teachings available without charge at the Narrow Path website? In several hundred lectures, Steve Gregg covers every book of the Bible individually and gives separate teachings on approximately 300 important biblical topics. There’s no charge for anything at our website. Visit us there and you’ll be amazed at all you’ve been missing. That web address again is www.thenarrowpath.com.
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. If you have questions about the Bible or about the Christian faith, If you have a disagreement with the host, want to bring that up, I’d be glad to hear from you. This is a very good time to call. Most of our lines are open at the moment. Probably in about two minutes, they’ll all be full. So if you’d like to get on, this is a great time to call. The number is 844-484-5737. That’s 844-484-5737 if you’d like to be on the program. By the way, before I take the next call, I kind of had to rush through the previous call because we were at the hard break and I had to come to an end. The question that we were addressing can be answered more briefly or more fully, and I gave the briefest possible answer to it. Let me just say there’s more that can be said. In Exodus chapter four, when it says that Moses was on his way to confront Pharaoh, And God came and sought to kill, says he sought to kill Moses. And Moses’ wife Zipporah circumcised his son, and that caused God to leave Moses alone. Now, I only addressed that part of the story. And that was that Moses, as God’s prophet, had to make sure that he didn’t have compromise in areas of disobedience in his life if he’s going to stand before Pharaoh. He’s got to have a clear conscience. He’s got to have moral authority. You can’t do that when you’ve got some compromises in your own life. But there’s another part of that. And that is that apparently this was the end of Moses’ marriage to Zipporah. We later read, I think it’s in chapter 18, that Moses at that point sent her away because she wasn’t supportive. Well, it sounded like she was supportive. She helped him out. the child needed to be circumcised. Moses was incapacitated. She stepped up and circumcised the child. But there was apparently conflict between them over that because it says once she circumcised the child, she threw the severed foreskin at his feet and said, surely you’re a bloody husband to me, which is certainly not a compliment. It’s not clear exactly what it means. She’s apparently upset. that he required her to do this kind of bloody deed. Her being married to him caused her to be responsible to do that, or compelled to do that, which she’s implying wouldn’t have to be done if she hadn’t married him. And it’s clear that there was some lack of support there on her part. She complied, but not happily, and it appears that she did not make the rest of the trip with him. He went to Egypt, he confronted Pharaoh, the ten plagues happened, and And finally, Israel was released and came out of Egypt through the Red Sea and out in the wilderness. And after all that happened, she and her father paid Moses a visit. And it says that he had sent her away. And it looks like they didn’t, it seems like they were not reunited. She and her father came out to visit Moses. And her father came out to, you know, congratulate and give some counsel to him. But it would appear that she went home with her father again, back to Midian. She was not an Israelite. and her father was not an Israelite, they were Midianites. So it looks like the marriage ended there, but exactly why she was upset about it is never explained, and there’s different theories about that. The point is, though, she didn’t like the fact that she had to do that. Either she objected to circumcision, if she came from an uncircumcised people, I can see how someone would, how they’d object to doing this seemingly unnecessary, painful operation on a baby. But she may have objected to it for that reason. I’ve heard it suggested that she may have objected to the fact that she had to do it and Moses should have done it earlier or whatever, and that’s a possibility too. But anyway, there was friction between them over this thing. She did what she knew had to be done, but she didn’t do it without complaining about it. And that would appear to be the last time they lived together. We later read in the book of Numbers of Moses marrying somebody else, an Ethiopian woman. So either he had two wives or else he kind of divorced his first wife and only had one at a time. Hard to say. He wouldn’t have been the first person in their lineage to have more than one wife. Abraham had more than one wife and Jacob had more. So it’s not like polygamy was… disallowed in those days, but it sounds like he was no longer married to her after this event. Okay, well, we’re going to go back to the phones now. Our lines are now full, and so let’s talk to David from Portland, Oregon. David, welcome.
SPEAKER 05 :
Oh, hi. I wanted to… I’ve had this idea about the Exodus, and I was thinking that… Maybe it was sort of like a wagon train, but not a covered wagon train, but a wagon train because they had to carry a lot of stuff. And, you know, you’ve got millions of people moving. So are you calling to ask if your vision is correct? Well, I’m just seeing what you think about this idea about having a wagon train.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, the Bible definitely talks about them having wagons that carried the equipment. Eventually, they were moving the parts of the tabernacle on wagons, but I’m sure that when they carried gold and silver, those are pretty heavy things, and wood and cloth and family things, of course they wouldn’t have carried those all on their back. So, yeah, what happened was, of course they had been slaves and didn’t have the convenience of having wagons to carry things around, but before they left, God told them, told the Israelites to ask for things like that from the Egyptians. Now, the Egyptians, probably under normal circumstances, would say, no, no way am I going to give you those things. But the Egyptians had just been through ten horrible plagues, which they knew very well were associated with God standing for the Israelites. And most recently, their firstborn had died in their homes, and they realized that, hey, this is getting very costly, and we don’t want to make this God any more mad, so we’ll just give these people. They almost were like paying them off to leave. Please get out of here. You being with us has become a disaster to us. So the Bible indicates that the Israelites were to ask for those kinds of things from people and the people gave them to them. So, yeah, it’s definitely the case that they had. Now, when we say a wagon train, I don’t know if you’re just thinking in terms of a single file row of wagons or what. But I have a feeling there were probably wagons. several wagons moving abreast, getting through the Red Sea with, you know, three million people in one night. They couldn’t have been going single file. They had to be, you know, big crowds of them going together. But, yeah, they had wagons, if that’s what you’re asking. So I’m going to confirm that for you. Okay, let’s talk to Cynthia from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Hi, Cynthia. Welcome.
SPEAKER 10 :
Hi, Steve. Pleasure to speak to you. So I have a question about burial. Does the Bible give us instructions on burials? Because I’m trying to get my final arrangements in order, and I want to know what the Bible says about cremation.
SPEAKER 02 :
Right. Well, the Bible gives no instructions about burial. Of course, it describes burials a lot of times, but it doesn’t really tell us anything about the rituals or the ceremonies associated with it. Now, you’re interested in cremation, and the Bible doesn’t say anything at all about cremation. Virtually everybody in the Bible that we read of who died was or wanted to be buried. The idea of being burned up, having your body burned up, even postmortem, it was considered to be showing an indignity to the body. You wanted to give it a nice, honorable burial. And, of course, their belief in the resurrection of the dead made them not wishing to destroy the body fully. So, I mean, it was very culturally customary. to honor the dead by burying them. No particular ceremony is required or dictated, so I imagine almost any ceremony would do. But most people in biblical times would not wish to think they were going to be burned up after they died. That’s just the way they thought culturally. Now, that’s not the same thing as saying it’s a bad thing to be burned up. Obviously, there have been good Christian people whose bodies have been burned up. Some have even died being burned at the stake. There have been Christians who’ve died in flaming holocausts, their houses burned up. There probably were some believing Jews who were burned up in ovens in Nazi Germany. There’s people who’ve died in flaming air disasters. Christians, I’m sure, whose bodies were burned up. You can’t help the fact Your body’s burned up. Almost no one chooses that for themselves. But it obviously does not in any way interfere. with the hope of the resurrection. Some people say we shouldn’t cremate bodies because how then is the body gonna be raised from the dead? But that’s kind of a not very thoughtful question. If you think for a moment, it shouldn’t be a problem. God made Adam from dust of the earth. And he told him, from dust you are, and to dust you will return. And that’s a reference to the fact that when we die, we decompose back into basic elements. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Now, of course, if a person is cremated, they’re turned into ashes very rapidly. If they’re not cremated, they’re turned into dust and ashes over a long period of time. Maybe not very long, maybe a few decades. But I mean, if you bury someone and dig them up probably, I mean, I’ve never done this, I don’t know. I imagine if you dig them up 20 years later, 30 years later, they’re probably mostly gone back to dust. Worms eat them and worms turn what they eat into soil. And so that’s what we do, we go back to soil. And the Bible mentions that. So, you know, if being dust or if being totally reduced to ashes is something that would prevent God from raising the dead, then there’s an awful lot of good people who, through no fault of their own, will not be raised from the dead, including virtually everyone who died more than, let’s say, a couple generations ago. There’s certainly nothing left of them but maybe bones. And even those may be gone. Wild animals may have yanked them apart and taken their bones all over the place. So what happens to your body after you’re dead in no way creates any problems for God to resurrect it. Now, some people say, well, but it’s still an indignity to burn a body. It’s made in the image of God. You know, Paul said in 1 Corinthians 6, you know, your body’s the temple of the Holy Spirit, and whoever destroys the temple of the Holy Spirit, God will destroy. So, I mean, you know, my body’s a temple of the Holy Spirit, so if I die, you don’t want to destroy it, or else you’re destroying the temple of the Holy Spirit, they say. Well, frankly, if you just bury it and leave it alone, it’s the same as destroying it more slowly. When you die, your body is no longer inhabited. Even you are not there, much less the Holy Spirit. I mean, your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit while you are alive and while the Holy Spirit dwells in you. He doesn’t stay there when you leave. You know, when you’re absent from the body, it’s not like the Holy Spirit’s still present in your body as you get buried or burned or whatever happens, or the animals eat you. So, I mean, Paul is not making any statement there about, you know, make sure you don’t burn dead bodies. But no one in the Bible recommended burning dead bodies, partly because it was kind of unthinkable, not for moral reasons, but cultural reasons. It was just considered to be dishonorable. But I’m not sure that that was necessarily God’s attitude. That was a cultural attitude. I don’t know why it would be dishonorable. And the Bible doesn’t say that it is. It’s just that we know that that’s what their culture was like. People would prefer to be buried in those days. I don’t have any preference about my body. If I were burned or buried, it doesn’t matter. I don’t have a burial plot prepared, so I might end up being burned into ashes. But I would not feel that if I was cremated that the people who did so were somehow sinning against me. I’m not even there, you know. And I wouldn’t think I was somehow going to suffer in eternity because somebody else burned my body. I think it’s more of an emotional thing. In biblical times, culturally, they had an emotional revulsion to being burned up. And some people still do. But I don’t think there’s any biblical reason why you’d have to. I would not oppose cremation. But I do know many ministers who do. I’ve heard, you know, I’ve had pastor friends who oppose cremation. I know that in Hank Hanegraaff’s answer book, I remember somebody asked about cremation. He thought it was not right. And there’s lots of Christians who feel that way. But all I can say is the Bible doesn’t say anything about it. So regardless what Christians may feel, it’s more of a feeling than a moral absolute. so i would say um no one should condemn you for whatever you decide to do about that all right uh let’s talk to um it’s going to be wendell from atlanta georgia wendell welcome to the narrow path thanks for calling my question uh is it written where the name of the
SPEAKER 09 :
person in power at the time of jesus’s birth the one who changed the calendar to zero bc i’ve read where he was born possibly three to six years before bc but they didn’t give the person who changed the calendar Do you have records of that of any way, who the person was?
SPEAKER 02 :
There are records of it. I forget the year this happened. It wasn’t changed in the lifetime of Jesus or of the time of his death, and partly because the Jews were not in a position to change the whole world’s calendars. The reason that the world’s calendars did kind of shift is that eventually the Roman Empire, the leading… cultural influence in the world was converted. And this was not until the fourth century, of course, A.D. And sometime after that, I don’t know if it was Constantine or some later emperor, but someone else I’ve heard before. I’ve heard more than once. I just don’t remember the details. Somebody into the fourth century or beyond decided they’d change the dates to B.C. and A.D. And they didn’t have all the historical information we have to be able to pinpoint the date. So the date that they chose… as the starting point for the birth of Jesus. Later historical discoveries have found that it was actually, his birth was just a little before that. We don’t know exactly how much. For example, in the Bible, King Herod was still alive when Jesus was born. He’s the one who sent troops out to kill all the babies of Bethlehem, so obviously Jesus was born during the reign of king herod the great uh well herod the great died in the year 4 bc so obviously i mean the date that has come to be called 4 bc so obviously jesus was born before that so um my wife has kindly looked this up for me and she said it was the monk dionysius um who did it, and it was in the year 525. So about 500 years after the death of Christ, a monk, and then the Roman Empire adopted this, calculated what he thought was the time of Christ. Now, the reason for changing the dates at all was simply to reflect the fact that the Roman Empire had come to believe that Jesus had started the final empire, and he was the king at the right hand of God, and from the time Jesus came till now is the reign of our Lord. You see, the word A.D., the letters A.D. stand for Anno Domini, which means the year of our Lord. Now, you’ll note in the Old Testament, before Jesus was born, when dates are given, it’s like it was the third year of Jehoiakim, or it was the second year of Nebuchadnezzar, or it was the third year of Hezekiah, or the tenth year of Hezekiah. The dates of events were dated from the beginning of the current king’s reign. So in Babylon, of course, they call a certain year the third year of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign. The same year in Babylon. In Israel, it would be called the fourth year of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign because they had another way of calculating it from the reign of Jeconiah. But the point is that different societies had different dating conventions based on who their kings were. Now, when the Roman Empire adopted the view that Jesus is the King of Kings, Lord of Lords, the Messiah, it seemed natural to date things from his reign. And so they considered his reign to begin essentially when he came to earth because the angel said, unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior who is Christ the Lord. Christ means the Messiah, the King. And so they figured, okay, the king came in such and such a year. They miscalculated what year it was because it had been over half a millennium earlier. So they didn’t know all the things that pinpointed the date right. But they were close. But we now know that Jesus had to have been born before the year 4 B.C. since Herod was still alive. And it may have been like 6 B.C. The B.C. and A.D. are simply we can’t change all the calendars in the world, all the history in the world. So we just live with the fact knowing that those dates are not exactly true dates. But again, ever since the 6th century A.D., the entire Western world has dated everything from the birth of Christ, or the assumed birth of Christ, because they recognize that he is the king and has been reigning that many years. So that’s all I can say about it. I don’t know much more. Thank you for your call. Let’s talk to A.J. in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. A.J., welcome. Welcome.
SPEAKER 03 :
Hi, how are you doing? Can you hear me?
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes, sir. Go ahead.
SPEAKER 03 :
Okay, my question is, how did we get from when Jesus said, let him who is without sin cast the first stone, to now where Christians are pretty much evangelizing, to me, for things that are anti-Christian? Like what? He says… He that is without sin cast the first stone.
SPEAKER 02 :
Right. But what do you think Christians today are doing against that? What do you think Christians are doing today about that?
SPEAKER 03 :
What today seems to me is that we’re taking up the people who are doing the stone cast.
SPEAKER 02 :
I’m sorry. I couldn’t quite understand that. Are there some people throwing rocks near you? I haven’t seen anyone do that.
SPEAKER 03 :
No, I’m saying what I’m saying.
SPEAKER 02 :
casting stones i’m saying we’re casting stones at each one another well i think you’re using that metaphorically jesus was using it literally uh it it may be that you’re thinking that he’s saying let him that is without sin criticize another person jesus was not talking about criticism he’s talking about killing somebody The woman had done a capital offense, and the Pharisees wondered whether they should kill her or not, because she’s a capital offender. And Jesus said, well, only if you’re without sin, then I guess you’re qualified to carry out the sentence, is what he’s saying. But killing someone is a very different thing than criticizing them. All the prophets of the Old Testament criticized the kings and the society when it was doing evil. Jesus criticized people who were doing evil, the scribes and the Pharisees. John the Baptist criticized Herod and all the evil things he did. The apostles criticized bad behavior and sometimes required the church to exercise church discipline. To be critical of what is evil is not what Jesus is forbidding. I would also point out that the story you’re quoting from is not in the older manuscripts, and there are some people who think it’s not part of the original Gospel of John, but I’m not going to get into that. I accept it fine, but the fact is, it’s one thing to say don’t kill somebody unless you’re a valid executioner qualified to do it, which is essentially what Jesus was saying, on the one hand, and on the other hand saying, don’t tell anyone they’re doing the wrong thing. Don’t oppose bad behavior. No, I think Christians have to oppose bad behavior. How could we have any positive influence on the world if we don’t oppose what’s evil? Uh, we’re the ones who actually are instructed by God about what people should do. We have the word of God. And if the society rejects the word of God is doing things they shouldn’t, I think it’s our responsibility. Jesus said, go and disciple the nations and teach them to observe everything I’ve commanded you. Now he’s not telling us to get politically involved, but he is saying that we should tell the nations what Jesus said. We should, we should command them to be obedient to Christ. Uh, You know, the nations are, you can’t really turn people to the right without at the same time saying that what they’re doing now is wrong. And it sounds to me like you’re upset that Christians are critical of bad behavior. I think you’re probably thinking of… I’m just reading between the lines. I don’t know where you stand. But I’m thinking you’re maybe saying we shouldn’t criticize abortion or shouldn’t criticize transsexuals or whatever. I mean, well, we certainly should not be stoning people. I agree with you about that. But if we believe that abortion is killing innocent human beings… and that supporting transsexualism is confusing or taking confused people and exploiting them and destroying their lives by supporting their delusions rather than correcting them, well, then I’m afraid we have a very different idea of what it means to throw stones. I have never thrown a stone at anybody in my life, but I have said that some people are wrong. And, you know, that’s something that we are supposed to do, actually. Thanks for your call, though. Let’s talk to, let’s see. We don’t have much time. Randy in Riverside. Got just a couple minutes. Go ahead. Okay, Randy’s not. Yeah.
SPEAKER 04 :
Okay, yeah. Hello.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, go ahead.
SPEAKER 04 :
My question’s based on John chapter 6, verse 37. There Jesus said, all those the Father gives me will come to me. And whoever comes to me, I will never drive away. So my question is, if Jesus says that all those the Father gives me will come to me, then A, why doesn’t the Father give more people to Jesus, let alone all? Or what do you think he means by that?
SPEAKER 02 :
All right. Well, it’s true. Everyone who God gave to Jesus came to him. But who were the ones that God gave to him? Well, if you read in John chapter 17, Jesus answers that for us because he says in verse 6, John 17, 6, I have manifested your name to the men whom you have given to me. Okay, this is the group, the group that God gives to Jesus. Come to him. He says, I have manifested your name to the men whom you have given to me out of the world. They were yours. and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. In other words, these were not the devil’s people. These were the faithful remnant of Israel. These are the same people who, if they had lived 100 years earlier, or 700 years earlier, they would have followed Isaiah. These were the faithful Jews of the faithful remnant. They were looking for the Messiah. They were obedient to God. They were the ones that were God’s people, as opposed to the devil’s people. Remember, Jesus said that there was other Jews who were of their father, the devil. But there was always a remnant of people who were God’s true remnant people. And they are the ones that God gave to Jesus because they were looking for Jesus. So he could easily predict, you know, they’re going to come to me. If God gives them to me, they’re going to come to me. He’s not saying that God takes some of the devil’s people and gives them to Jesus. I’m not saying he never can or would, but that’s not what he’s talking about. He’s talking about those who God gave him are the ones that were already the faithful people following Yahweh and obviously looking for the Messiah. And so God turned them to Christ and revealed him to them. Hey, I’m out of time. Thanks for your call. You’re listening to The Narrow Path. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for joining us.
