Steve Gregg answers listeners’ questions about Biblical covenants, the implications of Ephesians 2:12, and the influences of early church traditions on modern beliefs. Through open discussions, Steve dissects common misconceptions and provides insights into maintaining loyalty to God’s teachings. Listen as Steve engages with diverse topics, from elite titles in the Christian community to historical views on figures like Lucifer, offering clarity and guidance to believers navigating today’s spiritual intricacies.
SPEAKER 1 :
Thank you.
SPEAKER 02 :
Good afternoon and welcome to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we have an hour together live if you’d like to call in with any questions you have about the Bible or the Christian faith or you’d like to balance a comment if you think something this host has said before needs to be corrected. The number to call is 844-484-5737. And we have some lines open right now. It’s a good time to call. That’s 484-5737. And I want to make an announcement, too. This Saturday, the third, that’s the third Saturday of the month, right? That means we have a monthly gathering in the morning in Temecula, a men’s Bible study, 8 o’clock in the morning, Saturday, only once a month. And you’re welcome to join us if you’re a guy. Temecula. Saturday morning, men’s Bible study at 8 o’clock. And if you are in Orange County anywhere, you might be interested in our evening meeting, which is not just for men. That’s our study of, we’re going to be in 2 Peter and Jude. We’re going to study 2 Peter and Jude. If you’re not familiar, Jude is very, very, very similar to 2 Peter chapter 2. It shares at least half of the material in it. And the relationship between those two books is interesting to discuss. Anyway, I’m going to be talking about 2 Peter and Jude this Saturday night in Buena Park. So, just want you to know, and if you want to join us at any of those meetings, the time and locations can be found at our website, thenarrowpath.com, and that’s under the tab that says announcements. By the way, if you’re not on the computer, I don’t know how you find these churches easily without a computer these days, but The Saturday morning is a little church in Temecula called the Love of Christ Christian Fellowship. And the evening meeting is in Boynton Park at a church called the Way Fellowship. All right. All right, and we still have a line or two open if you’re interested in calling. The number is 844-484-5737. Excuse me. All right, our first caller today is Steve calling from Alberta, Canada. Hi, Steve. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 10 :
Thank you, Greg. Very quickly, how do you reconcile or differentiate between the testing of our faith and which either God allows or orchestrates, and the temptation to sin. So James clearly says that God cannot be tempted by evil, and he himself does not tempt anyone with evil. And yet, God tested Abraham to do evil when he told Abraham to kill his son Isaac. Now Abraham had a choice to make, to obey and trust God, which he did, or to disobey and sever his relationship with God, which he didn’t do. So this is, to me, one form of temptation, is it not? And isn’t the temptation to sin part and parcel with the testing of faith? And then, of course, we have the Lord’s Prayer, where Jesus said, lead us not into temptation. So how would you reconcile or differentiate between these two ideas?
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah. Well, I don’t really differentiate, though there are different nuances of them. The word tempt and the word test, the two things that you’re asking me to differentiate between, are actually in the Greek and Hebrew, they are the same word. They are just different English translations of the same Hebrew word in the Old Testament, and they are different English translations of the same Greek word in the New Testament. So it’s one of those deals where a word can have different nuances, and the translators decide differently. how they want to render them, in this case, either tempt or test. The truth is that the devil is called the tempter or the tester, because that’s what the term also means. And I personally believe that temptation to sin is one of several kinds of testing. You see, I believe the whole point of having the devil in the world, And by the way, I do believe there is a point to the devil being in the world. Obviously, if God had no purpose for him, God wouldn’t tolerate him. There’s no reason for God to put up with him, even for one second, if he doesn’t want to. But God apparently wants to put up with him because I think the devil plays a role, and that’s the role of a tester. And I think that the purpose for there being a devil, the purpose even for us having this earthly life as we do, is to undergo testing. Or we might say vetting, because God has in mind for us a high destiny, that is to rule with him. forever but obviously even if you’re going to put somebody over even if you’re going to ask someone to water your garden while you’re on your vacation you don’t want to put someone in charge of that if they if they’re unreliable and your plants are all going to die while you’re gone much less would you put them over a corporation or over a country or over the world you know if you haven’t any idea whether this person is qualified and loyal and and you know reliable So, you know, God, when he made man, he actually said that his purpose in Genesis 1, 26 and 27, his purpose in making man is to give them dominion over the things that God had made. But before they could be given that dominion, they had to be tested. They had to be vetted. They needed to show that they were loyal, that they could be trusted in that role of responsibility. Now, Adam and Eve failed. And so has everyone else since. But God has given us the chance to be redeemed from that situation. Of course, Christ redeemed us, but we are still tested to see if we’re going to be faithful unto death. Jesus said in Revelation 2.10, Be faithful unto death, and I’ll give you the crown of life. So to be shown loyal and faithful through testing… is exactly what this life is for, and that’s what the devil’s for. He’s there to test us, and when those tests are no longer needed, he’ll be thrown in the lake of fire, and that’ll be the end of him. So, you know, in this life, in this world, God has a program, which is simply to prepare and vet and qualify people, sons and daughters to reign with him in the next. So that’s what it’s about. Now, temptation to sin is simply the temptation to do something that God has told us not to do. That’s what Adam and Eve were tested to do. God told them not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and the devil tempted them to do that, and they did. And so they fell. They didn’t pass the test. Whenever we are tempted to do something that God has told us not to do, We’re being tested. Will we be loyal to God or will we throw over our loyalty just for a moment’s gratification of our own or to pursue a goal of our own? That’s exactly what temptation is. So, I mean, if we’re tempted to get drunk or to fornicate or to steal or to lie, I mean, these are all things we’re told not to do. And that temptation is a test to see if we will be faithful to God or not. And now, although we all fail the test sometimes, hopefully we have learned to pass tests, too. That’s the idea. And even when we fail, we repent and we’re allowed to continue the testing. And if we pass the final, which is to be faithful unto death to Christ, then we receive a crown. We’ll reign with him. So that’s what it’s about. Now, when the Bible says God is not tempted with evil, neither does he tempt any man with evil. I believe what it’s saying is that God is not trying to get you to do evil. The devil is trying to get you to do that. Now, true, the word tempt can mean simply test. But as I said, it’s a nuanced word. To test someone with evil no doubt has the specific meaning of trying to seduce someone to do evil, trying to persuade someone to do evil. And we are tested, you know, by such seductions of the devil and of the world and of our flesh. So God is not the one trying to get us to do evil. He wants us not to. Now, it’s interesting that James didn’t say at that point, it’s not God testing you or tempting you, it’s the devil. He said it’s not God, it’s your flesh, it’s your lusts that warn your members, it’s those things. But, of course, the devil is mentioned in the book of James twice. Once he says the devils believe and tremble, and once he says resist the devil and he’ll flee from you. So there’s the devil, there’s the flesh, there’s the world. These things are the perfect setup for us to undergo testing, which takes the form of being tempted to do what we should not do, even if it’s to lose our temper or to be impatient or to be angry without a cause. We shouldn’t do those things. We’re told not to. And therefore, you know, this is how we are tested. Are we going to be loyal to God or not? And some people don’t realize that being a Christian means being loyal to God You can’t really be a Christian if you’re not committed to God and going to keep the covenant that he and you have together. So I don’t make a distinction between temptation and sin. Now, when God told Abraham to offer his son Isaac, we’re told that he was testing Abraham. Well, he was testing the loyalty of Abraham. He wasn’t actually trying to persuade Abraham to do anything wrong. In fact, if… Abraham had no reason to believe that that would be wrong. There was no Bible. God had given no commandments. There were no laws. Abraham was just an uneducated person who had had a few visits with God, and that’s about all he knew. There was no Bible written. No part of the Bible was written yet. So, I mean, for God to say, offer your son to me, that would not… would not obviously be evil in Abraham’s mind. He wouldn’t say, wait a minute, that’s got to be the devil. God would never tell someone to do that. For all he knew, maybe God would. I mean, all the other pagan gods did ask people to sacrifice their children. So for all Abraham knew, maybe he always wants the child to be sacrificed too. But we see that God didn’t and wouldn’t allow it. If Abraham had said no, then it would not happen. If Abraham said yes, it still wouldn’t happen because God stopped him. So he was being tested. His loyalty was being tested. Now we can say, but it’s evil to sacrifice children. Well, you and I know that because we have the Bible. He didn’t know that, and God wasn’t going to let him do it. So that’s simply God’s prerogative to do it that way.
SPEAKER 10 :
So then the same Greek word for temptation and testing, you would just delineate. There’s two different meanings to that.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, they’re different nuances of the same thing.
SPEAKER 10 :
Yeah, your nuances, right, yeah.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, and the context would, I think, determine the nuance. Exactly, exactly. Okay, and thank you. Oh, sure. Thank you for your call. You’re welcome. God bless you. Bye-bye. Good talking to you. All right, we’re going to talk next to Sherry from Warren, Michigan. Hi, Sherry. Welcome.
SPEAKER 07 :
Hi, Steve. Still on the covenant theology topic. In Ephesians 2, verse 12, I understand the concept of being aliens, what Paul is talking about from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise. Would those covenants of promise in that verse be referring to all the Old Testament promises?
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, probably mainly the promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Right. But many of those were repeated. in the Sinaitic Covenant. But, of course, the Sinaitic Covenant was a conditional covenant made with Israel, but Gentiles could be part of it if they wanted to be faithful to God back when that covenant was relevant. It’s not now. But the Abrahamic Covenant was kind of subsumed within the Sinaitic Covenant. Actually, the covenant God made with Israel at Sinai was simply his giving the Israelites the opportunity to be the people that would experience the blessings of Abraham. Now, Israel didn’t do real well, and they defected. And so we now read in the New Testament that only the faithful of Israel are the children of Abraham, and so are the Gentiles who are faithful. So faithful Jews and Gentiles now are part of that covenant. Paul is writing to the Ephesians in Ephesians 2.12, because they are Gentiles primarily. I say primarily because the church probably had some Jews, but it was mainly a Gentile church. And he’s saying that the Gentiles were alienated from Israel. They weren’t part of Israel. They had no part in the covenants that God had made with Israel. But he says that’s changed now through Christ. God has broken down the middle wall of partition between the Jew and the Gentile, made both one in Christ. He’s made peace between them so that we’re no longer, he goes on to say, strangers. and aliens, but we are now part of the household of God, just like the faithful Jews are. So he’s saying we didn’t have any role in the covenants when we were unbelievers. Now, he doesn’t say we. He’s talking about the pagan. I mean, his converts, they were pagans until they were adults. Ephesus was evangelized by Paul. And all the people that he converted were adults probably. I mean, there might have been some children too. But he’s writing largely to people who spent their lives in pagan religion until they became Christians through Paul’s ministry. And so he’s saying, as pagans, they were aliens from the covenants of God. Why? Because they didn’t have the faith of Abraham. But now they do. And so they’re not aliens of the covenant anymore. They now are participants in it.
SPEAKER 07 :
And how would you get into the covenant? As a child today, could you be put into the covenant?
SPEAKER 02 :
Same as anyone else. Same as anyone else. Fortunately, since faith is possible even for a child, a faithful child. Now, I personally, not all agree about this, but I believe in something called the age of accountability. Reformed people generally don’t believe in an age of accountability. They just believe everyone’s an enemy of God until they’re regenerated. But I believe there’s indicators, several in the Old and New Testaments, That would suggest that when a little child is born, although they are prone to be selfish and sinful, God doesn’t hold that against them when they’re infants and little children don’t know better. Their total ignorance more or less kind of covers for them. And Jesus did die for them, after all. So if they’re not knowing rebellion against Christ or God and have not had a mature choice to follow or not follow Christ, I believe they’re under the age of accountability, which means I don’t think God holds them accountable for their sins until they reach a certain age. I don’t know what age that is. The Bible doesn’t really tell us, but it does talk about a child reaching the age where he knows to refuse the evil and choose the good in Isaiah 7.16. And Paul talks about his own childhood in Romans 7 where he says, I was alive without the law. until the commandment came to me, and then it slew me. So he was spiritually alive as a child until he knew the law of God, and then it kind of spiritually killed him. So there is the suggestion there and elsewhere. Jesus said about little children, he said, of such is the kingdom of God. That is, the kingdom of God is made up of people like them, like children. So since children are very much like children, they are among those that the kingdom of God includes. But when they reach an adulthood or a maturity where they can actually make some responsible choices, if they do not follow God, they then fall into condemnation, I believe. So I believe that a child can believe in Christ and can be saved as a child. But I also believe that whatever faith they have has got to be reaffirmed once they reach an age where they know right from wrong, too. But to enter the covenant is not a hard thing for children or for people.
SPEAKER 07 :
A baby it would be, though. A baby, because Presbyterians want to put babies into, they say that the parent is actually putting the child into the covenant through baptisms.
SPEAKER 02 :
I know, I know, but the Bible doesn’t teach that anywhere. I think what the Bible teaches is that a child is more or less under his parents’ umbrella until a certain age. That’s at least how the Jews through the centuries believed it, and the New Testament doesn’t teach otherwise. The Jews believed that you could circumcise a baby at day eight of his life, which in fact they were commanded to do, And then that baby was pretty much under the moral and spiritual covering of the parents until about age 13, which is when, you know, bar mitzvah took place or bat mitzvah too. Boys and girls at about that age would undergo a ceremony suggesting that they are no longer morally under their parents’ protection, but they are now considered adults and responsible before God to keep the law themselves. It doesn’t mean they’re not subject to the parents, but it means that whereas when they were younger, Their parents, you know, spiritual protection of them was all that was apparently required of a circumcised child. But, of course, we don’t circumcise anymore, nor do we necessarily baptize children. Lots of our listeners do because Presbyterians and Lutherans and Episcopalians and Wesleyans and obviously Catholics and so forth, they do baptize children. In the Bible, we don’t read of anyone ever doing so. So it doesn’t, there’s nothing in the Bible that says that baptism should be done to children, but the Jews did circumcise their children. But they still had to reach an age of accountability before they were considered to be responsible for their own obedience to God, as opposed to simply covered by their parents.
SPEAKER 07 :
Thank you so much, Steve.
SPEAKER 02 :
All right. God bless you. Thanks for your call. Thank you. All right, let’s talk to, let’s see, it’s going to be Mike from New Brighton, Minnesota. Hello, Mike. Mike, are you there? Hello. Hello.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yeah, this is Mike Cook calling.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes, yes, go ahead. What is your question?
SPEAKER 08 :
Hi, Steve. Could you just listen for one second before you answer? My father’s a minister and he has many Catholic priests that are friends. He has many Jewish rabbis that are friends. And I had called in about a month ago and I told you that in Matthew, Jesus said, no one calls me rabbi or no one calls me minister. And you said that you had friends that were ministers and you were going to still call them father. Well, I went in and I talked to my dad about it and he said, you’re a pretty wise man. And I reread that chapter and I really realized that he was speaking to the priest at that time and those people there about their hearts. And that’s what you said to me. And so I want to apologize because I thank you for helping me not be so fundamentalistic and realize there is a person’s heart that counts, not just their title.
SPEAKER 02 :
Right. Jesus was saying that he did not. He actually he actually didn’t say don’t call him rabbi. He said, don’t don’t you be called rabbi and don’t you call any man rabbi because you have only one teacher. That is the Christ, he said. So Jesus said he was the only one who could rightfully be called rabbi. But everybody else was just just a brother. And so he what he didn’t want is for the church to be. stratifying into persons who were in the lower echelons and people who were regarded to be in higher echelons as indicated by their titles. Now, you might, in fact, be a leader and someone else might contribute relatively little to the church life, but the person who’s a leader should not have it in his mind at all to receive any kind of honor from others for it. And that’s what the point was. He said the Pharisees loved to be called rabbi, rabbi. Okay, so in other words, they were leaders, and they loved the accolades and the titles. And Jesus said, don’t call anyone rabbi. He says, don’t you be called rabbi either. Don’t call anyone father either. But he didn’t mean that the word rabbi or the word father were actually evil words to use, even in describing somebody. But he’s just saying, don’t be like the Pharisees who are proud and like to have those titles mentioned. waved around to let people know that they have status. That’s just the wrong heart. And so that’s actually what Jesus was saying there.
SPEAKER 08 :
The word is making themselves feel more honored. And I realize what you meant. And I realize what you’re saying. And I want to thank you. And I apologize for being so fundamentalistic in my thinking. Oh, well, no offense, Kevin. Okay, well, God bless you and thank you. I listen to you all the time. I’m just so surprised at how the Holy Spirit works in your life and how intelligent that you use his word to answer so many questions. So I’ll just hang up and say God bless you, and I’ll keep praying for your ministry. Thank you, brother. I appreciate your call.
SPEAKER 02 :
Bye-bye. Bye now. All right. Eric in Sacramento, California. Hi, Eric.
SPEAKER 11 :
Hey, Steve. How you doing?
SPEAKER 02 :
Good. How’s the family?
SPEAKER 11 :
Doing well. Doing well. How are you guys?
SPEAKER 02 :
Good. Been a long time.
SPEAKER 11 :
Good. Yeah, yeah. Hey, so I had two quick questions. I was wondering, I was doing a little research trying to find out which church fathers spoke about Lucifer, like Satan being Lucifer. and I was reading that they were saying that Origen actually used the name Lucifer. Have you come across where Origen said that, or is that true?
SPEAKER 02 :
I have not, but I wouldn’t necessarily be surprised. I have heard that Tertullian identified Lucifer with Satan. That’s the earliest church father I had heard about. But that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t fairly common in his day for Christians to look at it that way. So, I mean, in other words, very early on, the Christians apparently took it that way.
SPEAKER 11 :
To say that Satan was a fallen angel, correct?
SPEAKER 02 :
Right, yeah, that Satan was. They were getting it largely, I think, probably from maybe the book of Enoch, which was a Jewish book that was around a couple centuries before Christ. But I’m not sure they got it from there. But I will say that Jewish beliefs, Christian and Jewish beliefs about angels and such and demons were very much affected by the book of Enoch in the early centuries. So it may be that the church pretty much bought that. Now, of course, there’s nothing in the Bible that says they’re wrong. I mean, there’s nothing in the Bible that says that Lucifer can’t have been a name for Satan, although it doesn’t seem very natural in the context, of course. The word Lucifer, which just means light bearer, is found in the King James Version and the New King James Version in the same chapter that said it’s addressed to the king of Babylon. And just a few verses after the word Lucifer is found, it’s still speaking to the same person. It says, those who see you will narrowly look at you and say, is this the man that shook the nations? So certainly the passage indicates it’s written to the king of Babylon and that he’s a man. And there’s actually nothing in the passage that suggests otherwise. So the early church picked it up somewhere. And by the way, the early church picked up all kinds of traditions. You can’t be safe just going back and saying, well, the earliest church fathers said this. They didn’t all say the same things. They were just like the church today. They had a lot of different opinions about things. So that was one they had. Can I ask you one more?
SPEAKER 11 :
Can you hold me over?
SPEAKER 02 :
I’ll hold you over. I’ll hold you over through the break and come back to you. All right.
SPEAKER 11 :
Thank you, Steve.
SPEAKER 02 :
All right. We have another half hour coming up, but right now we have to take a hard break. You’re listening to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg. We are listener supported. You can help us out if you wish by going to our website, thenarrowpath.com. There’s a donate tab there at thenarrowpath.com. I’ll be back in 30 seconds. Don’t go away.
SPEAKER 01 :
The Narrow Path is on the air due to the generous donations of appreciative listeners like you. We pay the radio stations to purchase the time to allow audiences around the nation and around the world by way of Internet to hear and participate in the program. All contributions are used to purchase such airtime. No one associated with The Narrow Path is paid for their service. Thank you for your continued support.
SPEAKER 02 :
welcome back to the narrow path radio broadcast my name is steve greg and we’re live for another half hour taking your calls if you want to ask questions about the bible or the christian faith or try to bring some correction to something that has been mistakenly advocated here, feel free to join me today at this number, 844-484-5737. Now, right now, our lines are full, so you won’t get through. And I’ve been getting emails lately from people who say they call the number, and their phone tells them this number is out of service or something. Well, the number is certainly not out of service. The lines are full, and we have had no interruption of service on this line. But I have been told that when our switchboard is full, different phone services, if you call when our switchboard is full, different phone services carriers give various messages. Some will just give a busy signal, which would be the least confusing thing. But some apparently give the message that the line is out of service, which is not the case. So, Anyway, our lines are full right now. I don’t know what your phone would do if you called right now, but if you call later and you do get through, then we’ll be glad to take your call. 844-484-5737. We were talking to Eric from Sacramento just before the break, and we held him over because he had another question. Go ahead, Eric.
SPEAKER 11 :
Oh, hey. Thanks, Steve. So just real quick to follow up to the question I just asked about origin and and lucifer the reason i asked that was because um when i was speaking with some lds mission missionaries you know how like they say that lucifer is the you know brother of jesus brother of jesus um and so joseph smith had you know the revelation um of this and he confirms like lucifer and all this stuff so i was thinking that if Lucifer wasn’t, you know, it’s not like a name that was known in the early church or it’s not, you know, in the Greek, then, you know, that could be something like kind of help them kind of see things a little different. And then, but when I looked it up online, they were saying that same question that I had, I found it online on like a Mormon, like an LDS website. And they were saying that it was Origen that was saying it. And that’s why I kind of was wondering if you’ve ever… Well, I wouldn’t doubt that Origen may have taken that view.
SPEAKER 02 :
Like I said, I think Tertullian may have taken it before him. Or maybe everybody back then was thinking that way. I don’t know. I mean, we don’t have record of everything that the early church thought because not all the early people wrote books. We do have Tertullian. We do have Origen. We have many others. And I’m I’m not trying to make any kind of a point here. It’s just a statement. Yeah, yeah. I’ve read before that Tertullian, at least in the time of Tertullian, Lucifer was being used as a name for Satan.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yeah, which would make sense because he was spoken Latin, right, Tertullian?
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, he was a Latin father.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yeah, because I was wondering how would Origen know about that because he was a Greek father, correct?
SPEAKER 02 :
That’s correct, yeah.
SPEAKER 11 :
Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah. But he read Greek and Latin. He knew a lot of languages. He was very brilliant, one of the most educated Christians of his generation. But Tertullian was what we call a Latin father, so he wrote Latin and stuff like that. Now, let me just say about Joseph Smith, I’m not surprised that Joseph Smith would use the name Lucifer in the way that it was being used commonly today. In the church, he grew up in a country that was very familiar with the Bible, and he probably heard a lot of preaching. And, you know, generally speaking, it’s kind of common. We know that the Mormons still use the King James. I mean, Joseph Smith used the King James. So Lucifer is in there. And Joseph Smith, not being a very enlightened man anyway, probably would have just taken Lucifer the way that the churches of his time understood it. And so, I mean, I’m not going to be not he didn’t read Greek. It’s certain he didn’t read Greek or Hebrew or Latin, you know, so he didn’t know any of those languages. So he just went with the King James. But, you know, Satanists also refer to Satan as Lucifer. But again, they’re just borrowing. They’re just borrowing from the conventions of the churches. The churches have called Lucifer Satan for a long time and. And I think Satanism exists largely just to get in the face of Christians and to tweak them and anger them and so forth. So since Christians have traditionally called Lucifer Satan, so do they. The difference is that Satanists worship him and Christians don’t. But anyway, yeah, I mean, there’s a long tradition of identifying Lucifer with Satan. And, you know, if we were to get our theology from long traditions, then I think we’d be probably obliged to. to say Lucifer was Satan. If we want to say, well, where did the word Lucifer come from? Where is it in the Bible? In the passage where it appears, there’s only one, in the passage where it appears, what was it talking about? What do the verses before and after it suggest? I mean, this is how we do exegesis. But a lot of people have never done exegesis or even had the conception of doing exegesis. So they’ll just go with whatever’s traditional. I mean, they’ll just assume, you know, all these church fathers before me were a lot smarter than me. Well, maybe they were. But they didn’t always do good exegesis.
SPEAKER 11 :
All right. Well, hey, I appreciate it. I wanted to follow up on that. I have some other questions, but I’ll call back another day.
SPEAKER 02 :
Okay, Eric. Good talking to you.
SPEAKER 11 :
Hey, brother. Talk to you soon. All right. All right. Bye now.
SPEAKER 02 :
Okay, our next caller is John from Staten Island, New York. Hi, John. Welcome. Welcome.
SPEAKER 09 :
Oh, hi, Steve. I’m glad that I can listen to you on 570 WMCA, The Mission, in New York on my AM dial. I listen to you from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m., and then 4.30 they have a half-hour broadcast that I listen to also in the morning. So God bless, and I appreciate having your ministry on my radio. Christian radio station in A.M. in New York, 570 A.M.
SPEAKER 02 :
So what’s your question, brother?
SPEAKER 09 :
Thank you. Happy New Year to you, by the way. Happy 2025. So what is your question?
SPEAKER 02 :
Go ahead.
SPEAKER 09 :
My question is, are you familiar with Brother Stare from the Overcomer Ministry? No. Okay, well, he was a prophet. He passed away But I listened to him, and he’s out of South Carolina. So what would your question be?
SPEAKER 02 :
What would your question for me be?
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, your question was, I just wanted to know if you were familiar with him at all. No, I was not. Okay, my other question real quick is the Seventh-day Adventists, Ellen G. White, are they considered a cult, or how would I perceive the Seventh-day Adventists?
SPEAKER 02 :
All right, well, it would depend, of course, on how one defines a cult. The Bible doesn’t use the word cult, so we have to decide how we will use it. We don’t have a biblical guide on that. some people would say a cult is a religious group that teaches a heresy. And a heresy would be something that is out of step with Christian teaching, something that’s outside the pale of what Christians can believe. And cults are sometimes defined by the heresies they teach. But to me, a cult is better understood in terms of its sociological aspects. In other words, A cult would be a society that follows a leader to the exclusion of their own independent thinking, and worst of all, to the exclusion of even the Bible. I mean, they might read the Bible, but their leader’s interpretation of the Bible is all that they are willing to consider. That’s cult-like. I mean, every person should have the liberty to think and to read and to study and to understand the Bible according to the words that God has given. Many different people have different interpretations, and no one person’s interpretation should be allowed to shut down our thinking about any passage. So you sometimes will find groups, even evangelical denominations. I mean, I was raised Baptist, for example, and certainly the church I was in was not a cult. But I’ve found Baptist churches where the pastor was so feared, and honored that the people would not dare believe differently than he interpreted Scripture. To my mind, that’s cultic, even though he might not have even been teaching anything heretical. I don’t even know what he was teaching, but if he taught everything that I agree with, and I couldn’t find any fault with his teaching, that very phenomenon in his church would make it a cult, as far as I’m concerned, because I wouldn’t define cults by merely their theologies. Obviously, if they have really bad theology and people are following it thoughtlessly, then that would be cultic. But they might even have, you know, unobjectionable theology. But if they are following it thoughtlessly and would be afraid to consider some other viewpoint for fear that their leader would, you know, discipline them or, you know, something like that. Any group, any group that just follows a leader blindly, or surrenders their rational thinking and their independent thinking to somebody else whose own independent rational thinking is setting the norm for everybody. That’s cultic to me. That’s cultic. Now, Ellen G. White, many Seventh-day Adventists do follow her in a cult-like way. A lot of times they will quote her instead of Scripture to make a point. See, if I’m talking to a Seventh-day Adventist, there’s going to be several doctrines I disagree with them about. But I will never argue by quoting some man. I won’t quote my favorite evangelical scholars. I won’t quote the church fathers. I’ll quote the Bible. They quote Ellen G. White many times. And the fact that they would appeal to her, rather than Scripture, suggests an unhealthy adherence to her claimed authority. and that is cultic. But not all Seventh-day Adventists have been that way. Some Seventh-day Adventists, I don’t know, I guess they’re trying to think for themselves. They don’t hold LNG white up in that kind of reverence and so forth. So I wouldn’t necessarily say they are cult followers. I’d say a cult has more to do with the followers than the leader. If the followers are viewing their leader as some kind of a, you know, infallible person that they have to be loyal to, that’s cultic. At least that’s how I would define it. Like I said, the word cult is not found in the Bible, so a person could, you know, define it however they prefer. That’s how I would do so. Okay, Kevin from Rogue River, no, River Rogue, no, River Rouge says, Okay, there is a rogue river. Okay, the way my call screen is spelled is River Rouge, Michigan.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, you got it right. River Rouge? Yeah, River Rouge, about 15 minutes south of Detroit. I talked to you two or three years ago about whether or not our enemy can enter into this dimension. I had a lot of, a couple weeks of staying in the VA hospital with the uh, pitting edema and itching and scratching. And I talked to you and you said that you agreed with that possibility and reality. Um, but I finished your CD series on psychology yesterday and just loaned them to a friend of mine. He’s a veteran like me. And, um, first of all, I want to congratulate you as, uh, thorough as you’ve been with Roman seven. Um, I agree that, uh, I’ve had three or four friends that had committed suicide over the years. One was my best friend, a Swiss exchange student. And that being said, I think there’s a lot of misnomer in the church regarding the ventriloquism of the enemy, especially when people who have gone through depression… Somebody asked, do you have a question for me? Yeah, I was wondering about… Erwin Lutzer’s book, The Eclipse of God, how the moon is a reflector and not producing its own light, and how the Catholic, I was raised Catholic for 12 years, the infused righteousness, which is a head type of assessment of Christ, as opposed to imputed righteousness of accepting Christ in our heart.
SPEAKER 02 :
Okay, well, Edwin Lutzer is a respected evangelical leader. I believe, if I’m not mistaken, he was the pastor of Moody Church in Chicago, if I remember correctly. I think I read a book by him once years and years ago, and that was decent. But this idea that the church is like the moon and God is like the sun, and we simply reflect the sun’s light to the world, That certainly is true. That certainly is true. But if it’s taken too far so that it says the moon, since the moon never has any light of its own, the moon never becomes any more like the sun. It just forever is just a dead rock, and the only light that it ever presents is just like a mirror reflection off its surface to the world. I think that that is a good analogy, but it can be put too far. In other words, it’s not a perfect analogy. I don’t know if we very often do have perfect analogies for spiritual things. But I do believe that if he’s saying since the moon never becomes light itself, it just remains a dead reflective surface, right? And therefore, the church never gets any better. The church never becomes any more godlike. The church never becomes a light bearer from its own godly character and so forth. I don’t know that I’d want to go there because the Bible does say that we, as we behold the glory of the Lord, sort of like the moon is beholding the glory of the sun, that we are changed from glory to glory into that same image. And if he is saying, you’re never going to be a better person than you ever were before you were a Christian. You’re just forgiven. I mean, I don’t know if Luther is saying that, but lots of times Christians have had that attitude. Like, there’s no need for us to change. No need for us to ever become better because we’re forgiven as we are. And if we try to do better, we’ll just become legalistic. And, you know, it’s better just to to not even expect to change, just hope that God’s glory is seen, perhaps his grace is seen reflected in our failures and so forth. I don’t know anything about what Luther says about that. But if he is saying what I’ve seen on bumper stickers for the last 50 years, sometimes it says Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven, I think that’s not the right message. It is true that Christians are not perfect, and that in our imperfection we are forgiven. I believe that. But to say we’re just forgiven suggests that perfection is not to be aimed at. We’re just forgiven. We are imperfect, and we’re forgiven, and that’s all there is to say about it. We’re just forgiven. I don’t think that’s all there is to say about it. I think that we are imperfect, and we are forgiven. And we are supposed to become perfected. It says in Hebrews 6, verse 1, let us go on to perfection. Paul said in Colossians, he endeavored to present every man perfect in Christ. Now, of course, the word perfect in the Greek can be translated mature and probably should be in those two passages. But being mature, I mean, what’s the standard of maturity we’re aiming at? Christlikeness. So it is kind of a perfection. We want to be made like Jesus, from glory to glory in that same image. So I think some preachers want people to feel okay about the fact that they’re not really saved, but want them to think they are. If you’re really saved, Jesus saves us from our sins. And that means that in the course of walking with him, we defeat sin and are liberated from sins. We are never so liberated that we can say we never sin anymore. But it certainly should be the case that before we were Christians, when we had besetting sins that we could not overcome, that’s supposed to be something that Jesus is supposed to be able to overcome. But it only happens for people who are really converted. I think many people preach the gospel in such a way that it doesn’t always result in conversion because it’s a watered-down gospel. and then people who are not really converted because they responded to a watered-down gospel and never really got converted, then, of course, the church tries to make them feel okay about where they are. They’re no better than they were. They sin as much as they ever did. They’re not Christ-like any more than they were 10 years ago, and they’ve been Christians all that time. But that’s okay. We’re just forgiven. No, that’s not okay. It’s not okay if we’re not growing, if we’re not becoming more like Christ, if we’re not becoming light-bearers, simply because God is changing us into the image of Christ, then I think that gospel is a deficient one, and I think it’s not helpful because changing is the mark of being converted. In fact, the very word convert, if you’re converting something from 110 to 220, what does convert mean? It means to change. If you’re changing something from analog to MP3 digital files, convert means change. And when we’re converted, that means we’re changed. And I think a lot of people aren’t changed, but they’re told that they’re converted, which doesn’t make any sense at all. Anyway, those are thoughts I have about that. But I have not read his book, and I don’t want to criticize or say I disagree with his book because I don’t really know exactly what he said, obviously. But I appreciate your call, brother. Hey, I need to take some more calls. We’re running out of time very quickly. Fred from Alameda, California. Welcome to The Narrow Path.
SPEAKER 06 :
Hi, yes. Very quickly, I’ll try to make this as short as possible. This may seem like a trivial question, but I’m going to give it a shot.
SPEAKER 02 :
So far, you’re not making it as short as possible.
SPEAKER 06 :
Okay, okay. Anyway, okay, so Billy Graham said in the twilight of his ministry… It’s gotten to the point, quote, where I won’t kill an insect anymore because I know it’s part of God’s creation, end quote. Now, I shared this with a friend, and he said, well, you have to remember this is a fallen world. I don’t think we’re supposed to be so neurotic that we consider something so intricate. And then he said, I think if you see something crawling around on the ground… You should just step on it. So what do you think about these views? Does God care about the insect?
SPEAKER 02 :
Did you hear Billy Graham say that? Because I seriously doubt that he would say that. But did you hear it or read it somewhere that he said it? Yeah.
SPEAKER 06 :
I mean, I saw him on TV. That’s what he said. He said he’s gotten to the point to where I won’t kill an insect anymore because I know it’s part of God’s creation.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, maybe he meant he would not just step on it. It’s like just because it was there. I’ve known people. who would kill animals just for fun. And some of them were Christians. And I never could figure out why no one would do that. I knew somebody who told me that when he was a teenager, and he was a church kid and a Christian, he’s been a minister since then, but when he was a teenager, if he and his friends were driving down the street and they saw a possum walk down the side of the street, they’d get out with baseball bats and stuff and beat it to death. I thought, what? I don’t understand. I mean, that sounds so cruel. It sounds so… I mean, I’m not saying that it’s a sin to kill an animal. It’s not. But I just don’t know why anyone would want to kill something gratuitously. Now, a lot of people do. Some little boys like to pull wings off of flies and things like that or throw cats out the window on the freeway. I mean, to me, that’s kind of perverted. But as far as I don’t think Billy Graham became a vegetarian, for example. which means that he, at least I’m sure, he probably ate cows and probably bacon and stuff until the end of his life. I don’t think he ever converted to Hinduism, in other words. So, you know, I think maybe you need to take some context for what he said, because every Christian knows that eating meat is all right. Paul said every creature of God is good and nothing is to be refused if it’s received at Thanksgiving in prayer. Although every animal we eat is a creature of God, we recognize, for example, that many creatures of God were made to be prey for predators. I mean, that’s the only function they fulfill in the food chain. You know, there are creatures that are predators, and they would not be able to live unless there were certain creatures that were prey. And those that are prey… the only purpose they serve, generally speaking, besides, I guess, being pretty and glorifying God that way, is that they reproduce, so there’d be more food for the predators, too. So, bugs, of course, some of them have good purposes. Some of them are just nuisances. I would, myself, not kill a bug unnecessarily, or, I mean, just because it’s there. I don’t say, oh, there’s a bug, I can squish it, so I will. In fact, I’m I’m not saying people should be like me about this, but I won’t even kill a spider. I’ll just take it outside the house. I think spiders fulfill a good purpose. But I would kill a mosquito. They’re the most dangerous animals in the world. More people die from mosquito bites than any other animal on the planet. And I think the killing of mosquitoes is a very good thing. It’s a good thing to do to help people not die. I think it’s good to eat animals, which requires their death. And I’m pretty sure Billy Graham… Wouldn’t have disagreed about that. I mean, I listened to Billy Graham all my life. He was my hero from my childhood until he died. And I never heard if he became a vegetarian or, you know, something like that. I doubt it. But if he simply meant because I value everything God created, I would not gratuitously kill even a bug. You know, I believe that probably if there was a cockroach in his kitchen, he probably would kill it. But I can’t speak for them. I just never heard them say that. But they would have some context. So I wouldn’t agree with the idea of not killing a bug. Though I don’t like to kill bugs. I don’t like to kill anything. Barbara from Roseville, Michigan. Welcome to The Narrow Path. We only have a couple minutes.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes, I want to just make a comment regarding Lucifer and Satan. It wasn’t uncommon for God to change names when you changed personalities, whether it was Jacob. Or Israel, Sarah, Sarah.
SPEAKER 02 :
I agree. I agree. Lots of people had their name changed. And you’re suggesting that Lucifer had his name changed to Satan. Which, if God did that, you’re right. That would be not unlike things that God sometimes did. He changed names. And if Lucifer, which means, you know, light bearer, became a nasty guy, and God changed his name to Satan, which means adversary, that would be a very reasonable name change. The problem is we don’t have any evidence in the Bible that God ever did that. That’s the point. There’s nothing in the Bible that tells us that Lucifer and Satan are the same being. So, I mean, I’ll agree with you. If we had something in the Bible that told us that Lucifer became Satan, then we could say, well, that’s not too different than what God did with a lot of people. He changed their names. But that’s, of course, we can’t just postulate that God did that without any biblical authority, since not only is there nothing in the Bible to suggest it, there’s some things in the passage, Isaiah 14, to suggest it’s not so. So anyway, I appreciate your thoughts, and I don’t disagree with you that God changing names is a fairly common thing in Scripture, both in the Old and the New Testaments. I appreciate your call, Barbara. You’ve been listening to The Narrow Path. My name is Steve Gregg. We are on Monday through Friday and have been for 28 years. We pay for the time on radio stations, hundreds of thousands of dollars, actually well over a million dollars a year to pay radio stations so you can listen to us for free. We have no commercial breaks and we spell nothing. But we are dependent on donors to pay the radio bills, and there’s no overhead here. We have no offices, no perks, no salaries, nothing here. We just do the show for free, but we have to pay for it on the radio station. So if you’d like to help us do that, you can write to us at The Narrow Path, P.O. Box 1730, Temecula, California, 92593. Or as I said earlier, you can donate from the website, though everything there is free. The website is thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for listening. Let’s talk again tomorrow.
