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Listeners are further engaged as Steve untangles the complexities surrounding Revelation chapter 22, casting light upon the intriguing imagery depicted outside the New Jerusalem. The episode culminates in an examination of the contentious theological debate concerning Judas Iscariot’s role within the inner circle of Jesus’ apostles. Throughout, Steve Gregg invites listeners to question, learn, and explore the depths of their faith in an accessible and thought-provoking manner.
SPEAKER 08 :
This is the best of the Narrow Path Radio broadcast. The following is pre-recorded.
SPEAKER 02 :
Welcome to the Narrow Path Radio Program, hosted by Steve Gregg. Steve is not in the studio today, so calls from listeners will not be able to be taken. In the place of the usual format, we’ve put together some of the best calls from past programs. They cover a variety of topics important to anyone interested in the Bible and Christianity. In addition to the radio program, The Narrow Path has a website. You can go to www.thenarrowpath.com, where you can find hundreds of resources that can all be downloaded for free. And now, please enjoy this special collection of calls from Steve Gray and The Narrow Path.
SPEAKER 05 :
All right, we’re going to talk first of all today to, well, it looks like the name is One. The call screen is written in O-N-E. It sounds like One. Hello, is that One or is it One?
SPEAKER 13 :
It’s Wonay.
SPEAKER 05 :
Wonay. Okay. Good to hear from you. I’ve never heard that name before. Welcome.
SPEAKER 13 :
Hi. I’m a member of a downtown Baptist church in Sacramento. And we were reading something in, I believe it’s Exodus, and it’s about when Moses was headed back to Egypt with his family.
SPEAKER 09 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 13 :
And you probably had this question before, but I guess it says the Lord met him and sought to kill him. But then Moses’ wife circumcised the child, and everything was good.
SPEAKER 09 :
Right.
SPEAKER 13 :
My question is, why would God want to kill him? And I thought no one has ever seen God.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, a number of people have seen God, but no one has seen his unveiled glory. Even Moses asked to see God’s glory and glory. God says, no one can see my face and live, so I can’t let you see it either. Nonetheless, lots of people are said to see God in a different sense. Isaiah, for example, in Isaiah 6-1 said, in the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord. I lifted up. In Exodus chapter 34, it says that Moses and the elders of Israel went up on the mountain to eat before the Lord, and they saw the God of Israel, it says. Jacob wrestled with a man all night long, and in the morning he said, I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved. Genesis 18.1 says that Abraham saw the Lord, and actually God came and ate a meal with him and had two angels with him too. So the Bible does indicate that people have seen God, but it does also indicate no one has seen God in a sense before. as he is without some filters, without a veil. Even Jesus said, if you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father. But he was veiled. He was veiled in human flesh. And so also in the Old Testament, sometimes God appears through a similar kind of veil in what we call a theophany, where God takes on a physical, visible form. But people are only seeing that visible form. They’re not seeing the unveiled glory of God. For example, in the pillar of clouds, or the pillar of fire that led Israel through the wilderness. God was there. They saw him, his glory, but it was veiled through that. Now, as far as what’s going on in Exodus chapter 4, verses 24 through 26, this is puzzling. But I think if we read between the lines, we can reach some conclusions about what it’s about. God has just assigned Moses to go to Egypt. and confront Pharaoh. Moses is at the end of a 40-year absence from Egypt, has not seen Pharaoh or the Egyptians for 40 years. He’s been in Midian tending sheep, and God says, okay, now I’m raising you up to my prophet to address Pharaoh and say, let Israel go, let my people go, that they may serve me in the wilderness. So he’s going to confront Pharaoh and to tell Pharaoh to let the people go. So Moses himself, however, has something in his life that he hasn’t really done quite right. He’s a Jew, but he married a Midianite. And as a Jew, he was under the command given to Abraham, his ancestor, that his sons should be circumcised on the eighth day of their lives. But Moses had not circumcised them. And therefore, Moses was disobedient to God. Now, here God is sending Moses to be his spokesman to call Pharaoh a pagan. to be obedient to God, and Moses, an Israelite, is not obedient to God. So obviously this is a matter of neglected obedience on Moses’ part that has to be rectified before he can have the moral authority to go and confront Pharaoh, as he’s called to do. So this is the issue. But what happened? It says the Lord met him in the encampment and tried to kill him. Now, If the Lord really wanted to kill him, he’d have no trouble doing that. I mean, in the scripture, God struck down Uzzah instantaneously when Uzzah touched the ark. He struck down Ananias and Sapphira without any difficulty in an instantaneous blow. He had an angel of the Lord strike Herod, and he was eaten with worms and died. God could easily have killed Moses or anyone else he wished. God could squish any of us like a bug if he really was determined to do so. But apparently that’s not what God did. He did, however, jeopardize Moses’ life deliberately in some kind of a confrontation. Now, whether that confrontation took the form, as many commentators think, of perhaps Moses getting deathly ill, and maybe he got a very severe fever and he was at the point of death, and this was later recognized, or even at the time recognized, that this was God’s stroke upon him because of his disobedience about the circumcision of his son. Or, Well, there was more like Jacob’s situation where God appeared in a human form and wrestled with him and was about to defeat him, perhaps apparently at the point of killing him, again, because of Moses’ disobedience. Not that God really wanted him dead. He wanted the obedience. But no doubt, Moses’ life was in peril and would have died if not for the actions of Zipporah. Now, Zipporah, Moses’ wife, went ahead and circumcised the child. And that resolved the matter, and God left Moses alone. But there’s some aspects of the story that requires to read some things between the lines. For example, how did Zipporah know that she was supposed to circumcise the boy? I mean, why would Moses, being in peril like this, suddenly dawn on her, oh, we didn’t circumcise the boy, we better do that. And then when she did circumcise the boy, she complained about it and said to Moses, you’re a bloody husband to me, and apparently she left him. Because we don’t read of her again until after the Exodus when she comes with her father to visit Moses. So she’s been living away from him. And so this apparently was a problem between Moses and his wife. And she left him even over this matter and complained, you’re a bloody husband to me. She didn’t like circumcising the child apparently. And so what should we think about that? Well, first of all, it seems to me that there must have been some conflict over this circumcision on a prior occasion between Moses and Zipporah, or else why would this come to her mind? I mean, if Moses had just neglected to circumcise the child and nothing had ever been discussed about it, why would this jump to her mind suddenly? But if, on the other hand, Moses had, at the time of the child’s eighth day, had said, okay, it’s time to circumcise the child, if she had opposed it and they had had something of a disagreement about it, and he had acquiesced to her and not done it, then she might well know because of the conflict that this was an issue, an issue with God, an issue with Moses, but that she was getting her way. Why would she get away with Moses? Wasn’t he a great man of God? Well, the Bible says he was the meekest man on the face of the earth, which would mean he’s not self-assertive. And so it may well be that this meekness of Moses caused him to cave in to his wife’s objections. And they just went on as if nothing had happened. Their life went on. The child was uncircumcised. All things were more or less normal until this point. But when this came up and it was clear that God was holding something against Moses, it didn’t take long for Zipporah to recognize, okay, it’s this circumcision. And so she did it, but unhappily. And she complained about it. And it’s her complaint that makes me think. that they had a disagreement about this previously. I can’t imagine that Moses had had an objection to circumcision as a Jewish man, but his wife was not Jewish, and they didn’t circumcise in Midian. And so to her, it probably just seemed like a barbaric custom, and she probably objected to it, as many people do today. And therefore, because of her objections, I would imagine, Moses seems to have caved in. and therefore the child was not circumcised when he should have been. But by the fact that Zipporah instinctively knew this was the problem, and that she complained about it and left Moses after that, you can see that this was a bone of contention between them. And I’ve heard an alternative view, but I don’t know that the facts of the case fit the alternative view quite so well, but I’ve heard it suggested that it was Moses who had deliberately neglected circumcision. And Zipporah, because it now fell to her to it, because Moses was indisposed by this problem he was having where God was trying to kill him, Zipporah was now left to do it when Moses should have done it eight days into the child’s life. And so she objected to doing it because she realized it shouldn’t have been her, it should have been Moses. And Moses was just negligent. But in any case, Moses was negligent, whether it was he that didn’t want to circumcise the child originally or his wife. I think all things being considered, especially culturally, Moses would have had no objection to circumcising the child, but the Midianites in all likelihood would, as many, many people do today. They find it very objectionable. So I think that’s what’s going on, and I think Moses had to get that area of disobedience resolved. squared away before he could confront Pharaoh and command him to obey the God that Moses was neglecting to obey.
SPEAKER 13 :
Okay, cool. Well, thank you very much. You guys did great. I’m glad to hear from you.
SPEAKER 05 :
All right, I’m glad to hear from you. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 13 :
Goodbye.
SPEAKER 05 :
God bless you. All right, our next caller is Alice from Escondido, California, it looks like. Alice, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 06 :
Hi, I just have a small question. I’ve been going to a church for many, many years, and during all those years, I would say over 30 years, I knew that they believed in the rapture, but it wasn’t preached about very often. But right now, they’re having a series, like 12 weeks on it. And of course, I enjoy it. I’m older now. I enjoy going to church every Sunday, but I just feel like maybe I don’t want to go right now because of that.
SPEAKER 05 :
You’re talking about the pre-tribulation rapture, I assume.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yes.
SPEAKER 05 :
Okay. Now, you say they’re teaching a 12-week series. Are they teaching a 12-week series all about the rapture or just about the end times in general?
SPEAKER 06 :
I think it’s about the end times.
SPEAKER 05 :
Right. Well, if they’re teaching a pre-tribulation rapture, it’s clear they’re coming from a dispensational point of view. But in doing so, they’re certainly in good company. There’s a lot of churches that are dispensational in their views. It’s just that fortunately, some churches that are dispensational don’t push it. Unfortunately, some do. And so this series may or may not reflect a turning in the policy of the church you’ve been attending. If they have not been pushing dispensationalism, in the 30 years you’ve been there, and now they’re just having a 12-week series on end times, well, you’re going to hear dispensationalism for three months then. But maybe they’ll go back to just, you know, normal Christianity after that. In which case, you can either visit other churches or sit in your own church and listen in. It never hurts to listen to things you don’t agree with. You know, in fact, I think it’s helpful to listen to things you don’t agree with. I do it all the time. I read books by people I disagree with. Because, in a sense, if somebody has a different view than I have, then listening to them will do one of two things. It will either show me that I was wrong and they were right, or it will show me that even though I’ve heard all their arguments, I still realize that mine are better. My view is now stronger in my mind because I’ve heard the objections of the other side and realized how weak they are. And so it doesn’t have to damage anyone to listen to teachings of dispensationalism, even if they’re not dispensationalists. I’ve listened to dispensational teachings a great deal. In fact, I used to teach them, but I wouldn’t be attending regularly a church that was pushing dispensationalism from the pulpit on a regular basis. But for 12 weeks, I could probably endure it.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, because I was raised… My father always said that it really didn’t matter that much about that. What mattered was to be ready for whatever happens.
SPEAKER 05 :
That’s correct. It doesn’t really matter when the rapture happens, and that’s why it’s so strange that some churches make it the focal point of their entire ministry.
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, they haven’t, so I, you know…
SPEAKER 05 :
And maybe they won’t. Maybe they won’t. Now, do you have a new pastor or a younger pastor?
SPEAKER 06 :
No, but I don’t think he’s preached on this before.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, if he hasn’t preached on it, if he hasn’t preached on this in many years of ministry there, it must not be a hobby horse of his, as it is for some pastors. And it may well be that some members of the congregation have been pastoring it for a long time, saying, you know, why don’t we ever talk about end times here? So in order to… to redress what he might think is a deficiency that’s been complained about. He might have said, okay, we’ll do a series on the end times just so I’m not leaving anything out. And the only thing he knew about the end times would be dispensational things, so that’s what he’ll teach. But I don’t object to people believing in dispensationalism. I just don’t think churches should teach it as if that’s what the Bible’s all about. Because it’s not.
SPEAKER 06 :
Oh, well, you’ve been very helpful. What’s the difference between dispensationalism You know, the two things that you were talking about.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, there’s multiple views. I mean, dispensationalism is one view. And there’s not just one alternative. There’s several alternatives. But the view that I hold is called amillennialism. And my view, I came to this view having spent many years as a dispensationalist. And the amillennial view does not believe in these elaborate end times scenarios. Amillennialism teaches that there is a coming day that will be the last day, and that Jesus will come back, and he’ll raise the dead, he’ll rapture the church, he’ll create the new heavens and the new earth, and that he’ll judge all the living and the dead. Some will be sent into everlasting life, as it says in Matthew 25, and some into everlasting punishment. And that all happens on what Jesus called the last day, or what Paul called the day of the Lord, or the day of Christ, or the day of our Lord Jesus Christ, or Peter called it the day of God. In every case, All the writers of scripture who spoke about it called it a day. And it’s a particular day, which will be the last one that will bring about the second coming of Christ, the new heavens, new earth, the resurrection of the dead and the rapture and the judgment. So these are the things. Now, what dispensationalism does, it takes all those elements that I just listed and it spreads them out over a period of more than a thousand years. You know, it puts some of them, it puts the rapture seven years before the second coming of Christ. It puts the resurrection of the Christians at the rapture, but the resurrection of the non-Christians, it delays for over a thousand years, and it happens at the end of the thousand years. So you’ve got the rapture, then you have seven years of tribulation, then you’ve got the second coming of Christ, then you have a thousand years, a millennium, and then you have the end of the millennium, You’ve got the resurrection of the wicked and the judgment. And then the new heavens and new earth. So in other words, what dispensationalism does is spreads things out over a period of centuries. And amillennialism, which is the view the church held throughout most of its history, just believes all those things happen on a single day. And therefore, you can’t really, from the amillennial view, teach 12 weeks about the end times. I mean, you can certainly teach a week on the rapture, a week on the resurrection, a week on the new heavens and new earth, but it’s sort of like the left-behind series of books. What they do is 12 volumes of books based on 20 pages of scripture that they interpret a certain way. Obviously, dispensationalism is great at spreading out a meager amount of biblical information and filling volume after volume after volume with their speculations about it. That’s pretty much what dispensationalism has gotten famous doing.
SPEAKER 06 :
Oh, thank you so much. You’ve clarified it so much for me. Okay. And I appreciate your input.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, thank you, Alice, for calling.
SPEAKER 06 :
Okay, thank you.
SPEAKER 05 :
God bless you. Bye now. Our next caller is David from Chula Vista, California. David, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 12 :
Hi, Steve. How are you doing?
SPEAKER 05 :
Good.
SPEAKER 12 :
I’m calling, asking about Revelation chapter 22, verse 15. Uh-huh. For without our dogs and sorcerers and whoremongers and murderers and idolaters and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie. Of course, verse 14, I think they’re outside the gate of New Zealand.
SPEAKER 09 :
Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER 12 :
I would have thought these people in verse 15 would have found that their name was not written in the book of life and would have been cast into the lake of fire. Are they still on, I guess this is the new earth.
SPEAKER 05 :
This is the new earth, the new Jerusalem, and certainly the lake of fire is outside those gates. It’s not within them. So, yeah, those who are in the lake of fire have not entered into the city. They’re outside the gates. Oh, okay.
SPEAKER 12 :
Yeah, that’s where I was making a mistake. I was wondering, I was thinking, why are they still alive and But, okay, they’re in the lake of fire already.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, yeah, I think the point is to make that, you know, only the saved are in this city. This city is the New Jerusalem, the habitation of the saved. And everyone who fits the other descriptions is not in that city. They’re outside that city. And he’s already told us they’re thrown in the lake of fire.
SPEAKER 12 :
Okay, yeah, that’s where I was making my mistake. I thought they were still alive outside the city in the New Earth, but okay, that makes sense.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, there are people who take it that way, but I think that judging from what it said in chapter 20 and verse 15, that they’re all in the lake of fire, and that, of course, is outside the city. It’s not in the city.
SPEAKER 12 :
Yeah, that’s what was confusing me. Yeah, okay, that makes sense now. Thank you very much, Steve. God bless you.
SPEAKER 05 :
Okay, David, thanks for your call. Good talking to you. All right, let’s go to Judy from Maple Valley, Washington. Judy, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 07 :
Thank you, Mr. Gregg. I just so appreciate your ministry. I’ve just been so helped by it.
SPEAKER 09 :
Thank you.
SPEAKER 07 :
I have just a quick question. I have a tendency to believe that Judas, the traitor to Jesus, was a true apostle right from the very beginning, but that he fell away from being an apostle, from being a follower of his. But most people think that he never was. What’s your opinion on that?
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, I think I lean in your direction about that, although there certainly can be a case made either way. And there are definitely people on both sides. There are people who believe that if you ever really were a true Christian, it’s impossible to fall away. Of course, those would be the Calvinists who believe that. Other people, like the Catholics and Arminians, believe that it is possible to fall away after you’ve been a true Christian. And so the case of Judas would be, in a sense, a test case. If Judas was a true Christian and apostle who fell away, then that would prove that eternal security, as it is taught by some groups, is not true. On the other hand, if he was a fake from the beginning, just pretending to be a Christian, and then left and rebelled, then that would prove nothing. In other words, it would not prove that people can’t fall away, but it would mean that he’s not an example of one who did. I mean, the doctrine that you can lose your salvation could still be true, even if Judas was not an example of it. But I think that the Bible does say, Jesus said, many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, did we not do many mighty works in your name and prophesy and cast out demons in your name? They’ll say, I never knew you. And so… People point that out, especially Calvinists will point that out and say, you see, Jesus said there’s people like Judas who did mighty works and cast out demons and so forth, but he’ll be told on the day of judgment that God never knew him, so he was never really a Christian. Now, Jesus didn’t name Judas in that particular statement. He said there would be many in that category. He didn’t tell us whether Judas would be one of them or not. Judas might have been a real Christian because the Bible also says that that many will fall away from the faith. And the book of Hebrews tells us that there is that danger and warns us continually about the danger of departing from the living God through an evil heart of unbelief. And apostasy is one of the great things the New Testament warns us against. And so we know that apostasy is a danger, else there would be no warnings against it. And if a person can apostatize, well, that would mean someone who had been a believer but has departed from the faith. Paul said many will do so, and there are other places that speak of people doing that. So whether Judas was one of those or not, I don’t know. It’s hard to believe that Judas was not sincere at the beginning for the simple reason that if he knew he was a fake, if he was an imposter, he had to live in close proximity with Jesus and these other men for, what, three years or so, and they wouldn’t get a hint of it. And they were so impressed with Judas’ sincerity. that after Jesus announced at the Last Supper, one of you is going to betray me. And so everyone’s looking at themselves. But you’d think they’d all be looking across the table to the other students and say, is it him? Is it him? They’re all saying, is it I, Lord? But it seems like they’d be looking around and saying, well, who of our number seems like the type who could do that kind of a thing? And it never crossed their mind that it was Judas. And more than that, Judas almost immediately gets up and leaves the room. which we would think called special attention to him. But they didn’t suspect that it was him. They said, oh, he must be going out to buy some food for the Passover. He must be going out to give some money to the poor.
SPEAKER 07 :
I thought about that, too.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, Judas had a tremendous cover. If he was not a real disciple, then living in proximity with him, traveling with him day and night for three years did not expose that cover even a little bit. Because, you know, at the time that Jesus starts predicting that someone’s going to betray him, Judas is beyond suspicion.
SPEAKER 07 :
Right, right. Also, he never seemed to oppose in any way, kind of like what you were talking about. He never caused any trouble or opposed other than the fact that he used to rob some of the money, you know, from them. That’s right. And also, isn’t the term apostle mean sent from God? And isn’t there a sense in which if Jesus chose him, that he was kind of chosen by God?
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, the word apostle doesn’t necessarily mean sent by God. It just means a sent one. Oh, okay. And so the fact that they were sent by Jesus, for example, when he sent out the 70 and sent out the 12 to villages and so forth and gave them power to work miracles and cast out demons and so forth, They were sent out, and they were sent in a special sense as emissaries, even after Jesus’ departure. But Judas was now dead at that point. But, yeah, I mean, it does seem strange that Jesus would choose somebody that he knew to be not a real Christian. And so I think he probably was, but it can’t be proven. And there’s an awful lot of people that would strongly object to that suggestion. But I guess I’m going to lean your direction on that particular question, Judy. Thanks for your call. The music playing just means that we’re at the halfway point of the program where some of our stations leave our network and some of our listeners will no longer be listening to the second half of the program. Those of you who are waiting online, please stay there. Within a few seconds, we’ll be going on for another half hour. For those of you who are leaving, you can hear the rest of the program every day on our website, thenarrowpath.com. And please know that we are a listener-supported ministry. You can donate from the website or by writing to us. There’s an address at the website. The website is thenarrowpaths.com. And thank you who are leaving for joining us today. We’ll talk to you again tomorrow, Lord willing. The rest of you, please stay tuned for 30 seconds. We’ll be right back.
SPEAKER 01 :
Small is the gate and narrow is the path that leads to life. Welcome to The Narrow Path with Steve Gregg. Steve has nothing to sell you today but everything to give you. When the radio show is over, go to thenarrowpath.com where you can study, learn, and enjoy with free topical audio teachings, blog articles, verse-by-verse teachings, and archives of all The Narrow Path radio shows. We thank you for supporting the listeners supported Narrow Path with Steve Gregg. See you at thenarrowpath.com.
SPEAKER 08 :
This is the best of the Narrow Path Radio broadcast. The following is pre-recorded.
SPEAKER 02 :
Welcome to the Narrow Path Radio Program, hosted by Steve Gray. Steve is not in the studio today, so calls from listeners will not be able to be taken. In the place of the usual format, we’ve put together some of the best calls from past programs. They cover a variety of topics important to anyone interested in the Bible and Christianity. In addition to the radio program, The Narrow Path has a website you can go to, www.thenarrowpath.com, where you can find hundreds of resources that can all be downloaded for free. And now, please enjoy this special collection of calls from Steve Gregg and The Narrow Path.
SPEAKER 05 :
Our next caller is Mike calling from Jefferson, Oregon. Mike, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, thanks, Steve. I appreciate it. The reason I was calling is I just had a question. And if you have a second, I’ll kind of explain a little bit. So Saul’s raised up post-tribulation rapture dispensationalism. Is that correct? Does that sound like something?
SPEAKER 05 :
Instead of dispensationalism, that would be better called historic premillennialism. Like I told the lady who called earlier, there’s lots of alternatives to dispensationalism. But, yeah, you’re probably historic premillennialist, which would be, in many respects, like the dispensationalists and a believer in a future millennium, but not in a pre-tribulation rapture.
SPEAKER 03 :
Sure, yeah. And the church that I grew up in was kind of a branch off of the Seventh-day Adventists, which then eventually was Church of God Seventh-day, and then eventually they split, and it turned into Armstrong Worldwide Church of God type of stuff.
SPEAKER 05 :
Okay, uh-huh.
SPEAKER 03 :
Anyways, throughout the years, I’ve been kind of… I mean, I sat down, wanted to take ownership of Scripture for myself and really… really get to know it for myself instead of just kind of relying on what other people say. And I did that for the first few years in some of your stuff. And I’d go out and I’d listen to what other different viewpoints and stuff. And so years back, I’d listen through your amillennial teachings and the four views and revelations and some stuff like that. And anyways, so I got a question. The question is, with the historical premillennial viewpoint, where it would be like, okay, you got the tribulation, you got the rapture, and then you got the… I could have it all wrong. And then anyway, you end up having the millennial reign for a thousand years, and then you have Satan being released for a short period of time, and then the great white sword judgment. Is that correct in the layout on that?
SPEAKER 05 :
That is correct, yeah.
SPEAKER 03 :
And so if I’m understanding the amillennial viewpoint correct, is you have the… The thousand years actually started with Christ when his ministry on earth, and the thousand years is not literal. It’s just kind of figurative for a long period of time. And then the next thing we’d be looking for would be the… The second coming of Christ. Satan being released for a short period of time, and then the great white thorn judgment. Is that correct?
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, yes. The release of Satan for a little while would be next, although I’m not sure if we’d recognize it immediately. It depends on what form that would take. Certainly it does say at the end of the thousand years Satan will be released from his prison and he’ll go out and deceive the nations and gather them against the beloved city. And the beloved city, of course, is the church. So there’s some kind of situation foreseen there for a little while at the end where Satan has the power to basically draw the nations against the church so that it looks like, although it’s really hard to know exactly how this is pictured, It looks like perhaps a mounting persecution worldwide against Christianity. Maybe what that will look like. But we aren’t really given a clear description. It’s not like the devil appears visibly at the head of armies or something and surrounds a literal city. Speaking of the church as a city, of course, would suggest almost a local geographical walled fortress. in one location, whereas, of course, the church is a spiritual entity around the world. So to encompass the church or to besiege the church would be something that’s not literally surrounding the walls of a city, but something more probably globally suppressing Christianity. And so some people think that’s already happened, or that is happening now. Others feel like it’s still in the future. So it’s not easy to know exactly how we’ll know when that has happened, but we do know The one thing that will be evident is when Christ comes again. And that’s the only thing that we’re told to watch for.
SPEAKER 03 :
So, like, before Christ came, it says that darkness was upon… It says he came and then light sprung up. And there were prophecies in the Old Testament which talked about him coming and light springing up. And so when Christ came, he kind of set free the captives and he went through and light sprung up. And I think, if I’m understanding correctly, Satan was deceiving the world prior to Christ coming. And so… And so he was bound, and then when he’s set free again, he’ll go back to deceiving the world the way he was before Christ came. Does that sound logical?
SPEAKER 05 :
Yes, I would say so. And I should clarify that Satan always has deceived the world, including at this present time he deceives the world. But he has not been able to deceive the whole world ever since Christ has come, because the gospel of Christ has gone out into the world. and therefore the light has come, and Satan can no longer deceive the whole world.
SPEAKER 03 :
He’s been restrained.
SPEAKER 05 :
Right, but when he is released, it would appear that the whole world, it seems to me like the growth of the church will stop at that time, that there won’t be more people coming into the church for a little while. How long? I mean, it could be hours or years. We don’t know how long the little while is. It’s very inexact, very general. So there’s much we don’t know.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, so let’s say someone right now is looking for the tribulation to come. And on the dispensational viewpoint, they’re looking for, obviously, the rapture and then the tribulation. But let’s say they’re looking for the tribulation to come, and the amillennial viewpoint is looking for the, obviously, the returning of Christ, but the releasing of Satan. Those two would look, to me, I think those two would look pretty similar.
SPEAKER 05 :
It could well be. No, I mean… the release of Satan could even result in a charismatic anti-Christian leader wielding global power, which is exactly what dispensationalists are looking for in what they call the Antichrist. But the release of Satan might not take that form. So, I mean, we really don’t know. And I have a friend who’s been calling me for years, and he’s always trying to persuade me to recognize. He’s actually a historic premillennial, like what you’ve been raised to be. And he always wants me to be noticing and recognizing the Antichrist coming up. I think, why? Why do I need to recognize the Antichrist now? And he says, well, because otherwise we might be deceived if you’re not looking for it. I think, well, why would I be deceived? I mean. If Adolf Hitler rose today, do you think Christians would be deceived by him? I don’t know.
SPEAKER 03 :
If we’re not on the right path, originally we were going to be deceived.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, I mean, people will be deceived if they’re not following the truth. If people follow the truth, then the truth itself reveals what the error is.
SPEAKER 10 :
Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER 05 :
So, in other words, we might not know. We might not even live to know whether, you know, we have a seven-year tribulation or whether it’s a little season of Satan being released. But, you know, there are Christians in some parts of the world that it couldn’t be worse for them or it would be hard to imagine being worse for them, you know, already for many parts of the world. So, I mean, you know, if the same thing happened, let’s say, in America, we would assume it’s the end of the world. However, when that has happened for, you know, centuries in certain parts of the world, Christians being persecuted officially, It wasn’t the end of the world for them, and it isn’t necessarily for us if it happens. When Satan is released, I don’t know that we’ll be able to tell because there’s no quantitative measure given to us of how different that will look than the rest of the time. Satan has always deceived those who are rejecting the truth. But when he’s released and obviously can deceive in a way similar to the way he did before Jesus came, how do we know?
SPEAKER 03 :
Someone was telling me, I was listening to this thing a little while back, and it says Satan being, Satan could be, it could be that Satan is bound right now. And the power that he had before Christ came was different than the power that he has now. And so he has the ability to be able to really, before he had the ability to be able to possess and deceive and just pretty much run the whole world. And now it’s kind of like a lion that’s tied up to a chain. He really doesn’t have any teeth. He’s being declawed into a few things. And really all he has is a roar.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, yeah, I appreciate that attempt to explain it. I would have some differences on some of the points. For example, there are definitely people who say that demon possession ended in the first century. But there’s no reason to believe that. I mean, demon possession is encountered on a regular basis today.
SPEAKER 03 :
Not that there can’t be demon possession, but what he was saying is that it’s not so much as prevalent as it was back then. Now it’s more he has to deceive us, he has to draw us in, oppress us, and then possess us.
SPEAKER 05 :
You’re right.
SPEAKER 03 :
I think that demon possession is not as prevalent as it was in places where the gospel has influenced us.
SPEAKER 05 :
society for hundreds of years. I think that every society had a lot of demon possession visible in it back in Jesus’ time and when the apostles traveled throughout Europe. But after Christianity came to power, I’m not saying there was no demon possession in those areas, but it definitely, I think the light drives back darkness to a great extent. Jesus himself, although he had not cast every demon out of every demon possessed person, he did describe his generation as a man who had demons driven out of it, but would have seven worse come back. And he’s talking about his society. He had driven demons out of that society. There were still some demons as people around, but for the most part, he had cleaned up. And a lot of people were now liberated. So Christ’s gospel brings liberation. The sense in which Satan is weakened during the thousand years is stated fairly clearly in Revelation 20. It says he is bound so that he cannot deceive the nations anymore. And then when it speaks about him being loosed, it says he’s loosed and he goes out and deceives the nations. So his binding and loosing have to do with his ability or inability to deceive the nations. Now, this is why so many people have trouble with the idea of seeing Satan as bound today. They say, well, certainly the nations are deceived today, too. The devil still is deceiving the nations. Yeah, but not anything like before. You see, the nations were his domain. Israel was the only nation that was an exception in the whole world. All the nations worshipped demons and were reigned over by witch doctors and priests of Baal and demonic people. And this is how the whole world was until Jesus’ gospel came. And when the gospel came, Satan could no longer deceive those nations as before. I mean, anyone who rejected the gospel could remain in deception, and they still do to this day. But the nations as a whole, as a block, as a geographical category, the nations as an ethnic category, the Gentiles, they were under deception until Jesus came. And now the Gentiles have the light. To those who sat in darkness, a great light has dawned, it says in Isaiah 9. And that is the change. Satan cannot deceive the nations as before. They were his, he had a hegemony over them. They were his total and unique domain. Only Israel had the revelation of God. But now all the nations get the revelation of God because Jesus told his disciples, go out and disciple all the nations. And so Jesus laid claim on the nations. And it says in Psalm 2, God says to Jesus, ask of me and I’ll give you the nations for your inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for your possessions. And that is fulfilled through the advance of the gospel throughout the nations. And God is giving Christ the heathen, the nations, in this way. Now, there’s still plenty of nations or individuals in nations who are deceived by the devil. But that’s not what is being denied in this passage. The binding of Satan is not talking about an individual experience. It’s talking about a global situation. Satan had no resistance globally in the nations until Jesus sent his disciples out to the nations to make disciples there. Listen, I’m going to run out of time if I don’t move along, but I appreciate your call, Mike.
SPEAKER 03 :
What’s that?
SPEAKER 05 :
I’m going to have to move along, but thank you for your call. All right, let’s talk to Bob from Fair Oaks, California. Bob, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, thank you, Steve, very much. I listen to you as much as I can, and I’ve been on a journey you got me started on just Just as you spoke in kind of the years, I was raised in a sense and taught in a dispensational sense. And over the last couple of years, I’ve been digging in and trying to decide for myself based on it. My question is, just yesterday, as a matter of fact, on Sunday in our Sunday school meeting, A new series was started, and I wanted to know if you knew anything about this guy called Derek Frank, who did this, I guess, docu… not documentary, but some kind of a video called Let the Lion Roar. I do not know.
SPEAKER 05 :
I do not know anything about that, no.
SPEAKER 04 :
Wow, yeah. It’s… It’s a portrayal, I guess, but even there’s lots of talk of those of us who are involved about, you know, what was he trying to say? Was he claiming this? And the more I viewed it and thought about it, it’s a classical, I guess, dispensational, except it’s so much focused on really kind of, we need to fulfill the Reformation. The Reformation went so far, but it didn’t go far enough, all associated with anti-Semitism. Calvin was an anti-Semitist. Luther was an anti-Semitist. And they were in error, and we’ve been led down this road, and on and on and on and on. And, of course, they used the term replacements. theology which gave it away. But I was really disturbed by it because it seemed to go to the extreme. I’ve seen your recent debate, or not debate, but what you did with Jack Hibbs and those two guys and how you kind of analyzed what they went through. And this language, I really picked up on this sense of, man, just attacking and using words of heretic and danger and all the rest of it. And this even went farther than that. But it was really, and it made me think of what you’ve talked about, like of the Jewish roots thing. It’s like, I’m not sure because we’ve got six weeks of study on it. Yeah. But I just wanted to be prepared as I could.
SPEAKER 05 :
You think they might move toward the Jewish roots idea, huh?
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, because, I mean, it was all about the Jews. If we would just have not, you know, if we would just accept them, or there were statements like they don’t like us because we want them to come in, and we’ve got to go to them, and just that kind of stuff.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, it’s hard to know the context of those statements. If he’s saying, you know, we shouldn’t expect them to come in, maybe he means that instead of just hoping they’ll walk through the church doors and we can evangelize them, we need to go out to where they are and evangelize them. If that’s true, if that’s what they’re saying, then I would say that’s true of unbelievers in general. We shouldn’t just hope that the unbelievers come into the church. But if it means that we are wrong to expect them to come into the kingdom of God by receiving Christ as their Messiah, then… then it would seem they might be holding a view like that of John Hagee, the dual covenant theology.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes, most definitely the dual, yes. It was more of that, that they definitely, but they seem to soften it to the point of, well, we’ll be there together. We both have to walk together, but it’s definitely a dual covenant. A dual association, and both have to be completed separately, and God has a plan for the church that’s different than the plan for Israel.
SPEAKER 05 :
Now, see, anyone who says that, if you say, where is that in Scripture, they will never have a New Testament reference. They’ll quote from the Old Testament, and generally what they quote from the Old Testament, they will be interpreting differently than that same Old Testament passage was interpreted by the New Testament writers. You know, the New Testament writers knew all of those verses that these guys used, but they interpreted them differently. And so the question has got to be, are we New Testament people or Old Testament people? According to Paul, if we’re under the law, we’re condemned. The law condemns, it doesn’t save. And so, you know, he says, you who seek to be justified by the law, you’ve fallen from grace. You’re alienated from Christ, Paul said in Galatians. And, you know, anyone who would read Galatians or Ephesians or Colossians or, frankly, any of Paul’s letters, with the question in their mind, how much does Paul make the Jews an important focus of our lives? It’s going to come away saying not much. I mean, Paul addresses the Jews many times, generally speaking, to evangelize them or to rebuke them for their attitudes, along with Gentiles, whom he has to convert. But Paul’s letters present the emphasis of the Christian message, which is not that the Jews are special, but the opposite, that there’s no Jew or Gentile or Gentile.
SPEAKER 04 :
bond or free or male or female in christ and you find this in epistle after epistle this kind of thing so i mean when people are focused so much on the jews we think well why can’t we focus on jesus like the new testament exactly that’s exactly what i was that’s exactly what i was sensing at the time it just doesn’t and yet there seems to be an unusual in our sunday school teacher unusual it’s like this is so intriguing and it’s so fascinating and uh that it’s just drawn in, and that was exactly what I thought. I thought we focused on Jesus. Now, is it fair to say that God’s purpose for the Jewish nation was to bring Jesus, the Messiah, into the world?
SPEAKER 05 :
And then to embrace him, yeah.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, but is there anything left for him to do? Well, no, there’s no promises. There’s no promises unfulfilled. Individual Jews into the kingdom?
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, no, there’s no unfulfilled promises that apply to a nation called Israel, because there’s a new covenant. The nation of Israel was founded at Sinai with the old covenant being established, and the New Testament has replaced the old covenant. The Bible says that. Where there’s a new covenant, the old one is obsolete, Hebrews tells us in Hebrews 8.13. So the nation of Israel began to be a nation at Sinai. Now, they were a family before that. For hundreds of years, they were a family of Abraham. Abraham’s seed had certain promises made, but Paul tells us in Galatians 3 that Abraham’s seed is Christ. And it wasn’t until Sinai that a nation was formed called Israel. There was a race of Israelites before that. But the covenant was made with them when God formed them into a nation. And then, of course, that nation came to an end in 70 A.D. Now what dispensationalists are so excited about is that Israel, some kind of a nation of Israel, has reestablished since 1948. And they say, wow, this is miraculous. Well, not necessarily. It depends on how you have to look pretty closely about how that happened. You know, you mentioned you saw my rebuttal of Jack Hibbs. and Mark Hitchcock and Paul Wilkinson. Since then, I have bought a book by Paul Wilkinson, and it’s about how Darby, that is the founder of dispensationalism, influenced Zionism. And, you know, it is true. I’d read it from other sources, but he goes into it in more detail. And I thought it was interesting. Here’s a dispensationalist who embraces Darbyism. And many times people say that the proof of dispensationalism is that Israel has become a nation again. But here’s a dispensationalist you know, pastor, writing a book pointing out how dispensationalism influenced Zionism, how dispensationalism had a major role in causing Zionism. And so it’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Anyway, the point is that there’s two ways of going. There’s the way of Jesus and there’s the other way. Now, the other way divides into lots of different wrong paths and wrong paths. are a multitude. We live in a day of all kinds of distractions from the right way. Whether it’s the Hebrew Roots Movement, whether it’s just dispensational fascination with end times prophecy, whether it’s fascination with signs and wonders, whether it’s even focusing on Calvinism. And I’m not saying that Calvinism is the worst thing. I’m just saying that many people, that’s their focus. They’re not focused on Jesus. They’re focused on making Calvinists out of everybody. I mean, the early church was interested in bringing people into Christ, into his body, and into discipleship where he is their head and he is their Lord. And now… Of course, there’s Christians doing that too, but now there’s Christians going a lot of other ways besides, and their focus is getting off of Jesus, onto Israel, onto signs and wonders, onto something else. And this is, I mean, there’s always been distractions, but I’ve hardly seen a time in my particular lifetime where there’s been so many wrong ways for sincere Christians to go. I mean, there’s been cults for centuries, but but like deviations of Christianity that are still considered evangelical. This is an amazing time we live in, and I just say, I just warn people, don’t go there. Don’t be following anything except Jesus. Following Israel is not what we’re called to do.
SPEAKER 04 :
Hey, thank you, Steve, so much. I appreciate your input. Thank you.
SPEAKER 05 :
Okay, Bob, thanks for your call. Let’s talk to Nick from Riverside, California. Nick, not much time. Go ahead.
SPEAKER 11 :
Hey, how you doing, Steve?
SPEAKER 05 :
Good.
SPEAKER 11 :
Hey, I’m hoping that you could just shed some wisdom on – can you hear me?
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, but you’ll have to hurry because we only have a couple minutes. Go ahead.
SPEAKER 11 :
Okay. That you just could shed some wisdom on someone who’s wrestling with unbelief and feels like it’s just challenging to be fully convinced in their mind with who Jesus is and the Bible being the Word of God. What can they do to help that?
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, I mean, it depends on the nature of their objections. We have to realize that unbelief is something the devil works very hard at promoting, and therefore there could be almost supernatural resistance to belief going on. But generally speaking, we believe those things that we perceive to be true, and we perceive things to be true if we see that there is good reason to believe them and not very good reason to not believe them. Now, a person who’s finding it hard to believe that the Bible’s true or hard to believe in Christ, is a person who doesn’t realize that the evidence for Christianity is so overwhelming that to believe it is far more in line with the best evidence, historical, archaeological, you name it. It’s far more consistent with evidence. then to not believe it is. I would suggest there’s a lot of good books out there a person could read that present a lot of the evidence, but belief isn’t always a matter of just evidence because it’s a spiritual battle too. The devil wants you to just feel, kind of, that it’s ridiculous to believe. Why? Well, because your friends are going to say so. Your college professors are going to say so. Maybe your family says so. Or maybe the Christians you know have been ridiculous people. I mean, there’s lots of reasons to make it seem ridiculous to believe. But if a person’s a searcher for truth, there’s plenty of data out there. You don’t have to even buy the books. You can go online and get the data. The evidence is all in favor. You can go to my website and listen to my lectures called The Authority of Scripture. It might help. Or my lecture, Why I’m Still a Christian. God bless. God bless. God bless.
