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Steve takes a deep dive into the intriguing subject of Communion, challenging historical doctrines against contemporary interpretations. Is Communion merely a memorial, or is there a deeper spiritual presence to be considered? Throughout these dialogues, Gregg remains grounded in scripture while engaging with modern-day Christians’ concerns about ecclesiastical rites and practices. The episode skillfully intertwines these substantial theological discussions with practical guidance for listeners contemplating the role of Christian art and media in their spiritual lives.
SPEAKER 1 :
Thank you.
SPEAKER 02 :
Good afternoon and welcome to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we’re live for an hour each weekday afternoon with an open phone line so you can call in if you want to ask on the air questions about the Bible or the Christian faith or to share some point of disagreement with the host if you have one. I’d be glad to talk to you in any case. The number to call is 844-484-5737. And by the way, it looks like our lines are full at the moment, so don’t call that number now. You won’t get through. But call later. A little later will probably be good enough. And call this number, 844-484-5737. And we’ll be glad to talk to you during this hour. Tonight I’m speaking in the Houston, Texas area in a town called Friendswood. And anyone in the Houston area will know of Friendswood, I’m sure. That meeting is at 6 o’clock tonight, local time. Which, by the way, at the moment it’s 4 o’clock local time. So that meeting is just in two hours from now. And we’d love to have you there. I’m going to be teaching on the subject of what the Bible means by grace. not only the grace that we count on for forgiveness of sins, but also the grace that enables the believer to live the Christian life. Anyway, I’m going to be talking about that tonight at 6 o’clock local time, obviously in Friendswood, Texas. Now, tomorrow night I’m speaking. In the Dallas area, the next three days I’m speaking in the Dallas area. Tomorrow night I’m going to be speaking at actually a Spanish-speaking church. I imagine I’ll have a translator. I’m sure they’re providing one. Or else maybe their audience also knows English. I don’t know. But that’s going to be in the Dallas area in Halton City at a Hispanic church called Puerto Del Rey Church. And then Saturday… We’re in the Dallas area, but not in Dallas. We’re in Arlington. And so that’s from 5. Let’s see here. They’re serving dinner at 5 o’clock to those who come, and there’s a Q&A in the evening there. So if you’re interested in that, I think this is at a home. I’m told that the hosts still have room for some more. If you want to contact them, you can find the information at our website. I’ll give that information in just a moment. And then on Sunday, my last day here in Texas, I’ll be speaking in Dallas at the Preston Road Church of Christ. I’ll be teaching at the Adult Sunday School class on imprecatory psalms. I’ll be having a Q&A in the evening there. So if you heard those things go by and any of them caught your ear, you say, wait, wait, wait, I want to find out where that is. Well, you just go to our website, thenarrowpath.com. And look under announcements. You’ll find all that info at thenarrowpath.com under the tab that says announcements. All right. We’re going to spend no more time with that. We’re going to go to talk to the phones. Ryan from Linwood, Washington is our first caller. Hi, Ryan. Welcome.
SPEAKER 08 :
Hey, Steve. Are you familiar with 2 Samuel 14, 14?
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, I’m familiar with the book. I can’t quote what the verse is without looking it up. What is it?
SPEAKER 08 :
Okay, he’s talking to the woman of Tekoa, and it’s about Absalom. And so it’s in reference to him, but it says, For we will surely die and are like water spilled on the ground, which cannot be gathered up. Yet God does not take away life, but makes plans so that the banished one will not be cast out from him. And… I was just wondering if you think that is a good proof text for universal reconciliation.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, it is sometimes used for it. In fact, in my book on the three views of hell, on the presentation of the Restorationist view, that verse is one of the verses that’s brought up for it. I will say it’s not the strongest verse for it. I think there are other verses that could be stronger. But, I mean, given to the whole testimony of Scripture, this one kind of can be included in there. The woman is not really talking about life after death. So she’s not making a statement about whether God will restore people to himself or give them opportunity for repentance and restoration once they’ve died and gone to hell, which is what the restorationist doctrine would say. Basically, that after people have died and gone to hell, God would still accept repentance and restore them to himself. Now, the woman does say, that God doesn’t cast people off, but he makes a way for them to be restored. But she’s not specifically talking about an after-death situation. Of course, she’s making an appeal for David, the king, to allow Absalom to be restored to him. Absalom had sinned and committed a crime, and he had fled, and then David allowed him to come back, but he said, I won’t see him. And so Absalom then I think persuaded Joab, if I’m not mistaken. Joab persuaded this woman to come to David and make an appeal and kind of gave him a story for him to make a judgment about, sort of like Nathan gave David about the man with the one sheep and had it stolen by the man who had a bunch of sheep. Anyway, it was a story that was to implicate David in this situation of not doing what he should to restore his son to full fellowship. And she makes the statement, God himself doesn’t cast people away, but he makes a way for them to be restored. Now, if we’re saying that’s an absolute statement about God, then it would be, in fact, affirming that even people who have died alienated from God. He still doesn’t cast them off. Ultimately, he makes a way for them to be restored. And that’s what the Restorationist doctrine would teach about the afterlife. She isn’t talking about that. And if she was, we’re not sure how she would know, you know, because obviously her words are not necessarily inspired. She is pointing out what she does know. What she does know is that God… graciously seeks to restore people who are alienated from him. Whether he stops doing so at the point of their death or not is not exactly known. And I don’t think she’s making a comment about that. But given the whole tenor of Scripture about God and his attitude toward people, to point out that God is inclined to forgive people and not to cast them away and to restore them if possible, that could be maybe extrapolated, especially with other scriptures related to it.
SPEAKER 08 :
To me, I know the context is about Absalom, but it does make me just say, well, at the end of the day, you have three choices, and we just go off of God’s character, and so this just means to at least give weight to the character.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, that is true. As I say in my book, all three views of hell have the ability to make a scriptural case in their favor. Not that all the scriptural cases are equally strong, but they all have a scriptural case. And it may just come down to a decision about what God’s going to do. Well, what do we know about his character? You know, which view is really consistent? Go ahead.
SPEAKER 08 :
Are you able to do an audio book for that book?
SPEAKER 02 :
There is one. There is? Oh, yeah. But I don’t have it posted because it’s a Zondervan publication. And so they have a financial connection to it. Now, the books I have self-published, the audio books are at our website. You can listen to them for free. If I had self-published the Hell book, I would obviously offer it for free. But Zondervan has a financial interest in it, and they sell it at the Amazon Audible store.
SPEAKER 05 :
Okay.
SPEAKER 02 :
All right. But I wasn’t reading.
SPEAKER 08 :
It looks like you’re coming up my way soon.
SPEAKER 02 :
Pardon?
SPEAKER 08 :
It looks like you’re coming up my way soon, next month.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, the plan is I’ll be up in the Washington area next month. I hope that won’t have to change. We’ve got some surprise things that came up in our home, but we will pause. I think I’m coming. We don’t plan to cancel it or anything.
SPEAKER 05 :
Okay. All righty. Well, God bless.
SPEAKER 02 :
All right. God bless you, Ryan. Bye now. All right. John from Orlando, Florida. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 09 :
Hey there, brother. Good to have you today. Yeah, good to hear from you. Yeah, yeah. I feel like your next story is swing by to Orlando. But, say, knowing you as I do, historically, I know that we’ve, Agreed when it comes to the subject of the Lord’s Supper and it representing a remembrance, a memorial, symbolic remembrance and memorial. But I just kind of wanted to confirm that. So I spent some time in the archive pulling up some of the calls in the past. on the subject. And yeah, sure enough, it was confirmed. Usually when it’s brought up, it’s brought up with the options of being the real presence, as we understand, you know, the Catholics teaching with transubstantiation and the remembrance, spiritual remembrance memorial. However, first of all, I got to, part one of this is, are you familiar with the other views of
SPEAKER 02 :
Are you speaking of the Episcopalian views or the Eastern Orthodox views or even Presbyterian views? Because they’re all somewhat different. Which views are you thinking of?
SPEAKER 09 :
Yeah, you know, this shocked me. In particular, I’m thinking, of course, when it comes to a real presence, historically I’ve only been familiar with the idea of being the – Transubstantiation and consubstantiation.
SPEAKER 10 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 09 :
And then I basically say this. I’ve come to the persuasion that I think I’ve been off on this a bit. And I want to hear your thoughts on this, because I’ve always seen it as just being the two. Real presence or memorial? And now I’m realizing, I’ve come to realize that the idea and the concept of it being a spiritual memorial and remembrance is just really the new kid on the block, so to speak, popularized more by swing lanes.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, it was actually popularized by Jesus and Paul because Jesus said, do this in remembrance of me. And Paul quoted him saying that. So if you do it in remembrance of Jesus, and until that date they were doing the same thing in remembrance of the Exodus. So he’s changing the Passover that they were taking. It was never seen as anything more than a remembrance. And what they were remembering was the Exodus. And Jesus said, okay, from now on when you do the same thing, Do it in remembrance of me. So he said it was a memorial, and he never said it was more than that, and certainly no one thought Passover was more than that. But go ahead. I’ll hear your case. Go ahead.
SPEAKER 09 :
Okay, yeah, good call. Good call. Yeah, I agree. I totally agree there. I guess that where I’m coming from and what I’ve come to realize is that it’s more than that, and that historically speaking, during the Protestant Reformation, the idea was never – not only objected to the idea of real presence, but rather how we understand the real presence, that the real presence of Christ as understood by the Catholics is, of course, transubstantiation, or by the Lutherans, the consubstantiation, but that all the other Protestants believed that there was real presence, but that the real presence was understood spiritually, that it was a spiritual presence.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, I realize that. Go ahead. Go ahead. I was going to say, I realize that, of course, through the whole era of Roman Catholicism before the Reformation, most people were scripturally illiterate. They didn’t have Bibles. There were no printing presses. The average person couldn’t get a Bible by hook or crook. There was nothing available to get. The priests may have had them, the few that existed. But frankly, the people, they didn’t have access to the Bible, and the priests were Their job was to promote the religion that was traditionally passed down from the early Roman church. So there was really no challenges that were significant. And then, of course, Luther was a big challenger of many things in the Catholic church, but he didn’t challenge the real presence. It apparently didn’t occur to him. I mean, Luther didn’t say everything. But Zwingli, contemporary Luther, may have been the first person in modern history to recognize that, just like the Anabaptists at the same time as Zwingli were the first people in 1,300 years to practice believer baptism and to reject infant baptism. It’s amazing how tradition can be perpetuated when no one has a Bible to challenge it. But when the Bibles came out in print, Luther and Zwingli and these other guys They began to read it and say, wait a minute. And some of them didn’t say, wait a minute. Some of them said, okay, I can read it through that way. I’ll just say the way I’ve always seen it. But, you know, I don’t think the fact that Zwingli may have been the earliest modern person, if we could call him modern, to teach that it was a memorial. That’s simply an indictment, I think. on the church of the first 1,500 years in that they didn’t teach the scriptures. They had their superstitions. And, you know, to make the bread something supernatural. Now, I’m not saying God doesn’t do supernatural things, but there’s no indicator that he did anything supernatural with it. And since, you know, it was a Passover, Jesus never said it would ever be anything more than a Passover. And a Passover, no one thought there was anything supernatural going on there. Yeah. Go ahead.
SPEAKER 09 :
Yeah, I should clarify. I’m not talking about actual, like, any change in the elements. Okay. But I’m talking about actual spiritual presence. So what this would say is that, yes, it’s a remembrance. Yes, it’s a memorial. But it’s so much more than that, that the spiritual presence of Christ is very real. In just the same way, some thoughts come to my mind on this. At first I thought that there might be more of an analogy, but I think it’s more parallel than anything. And when we come together, we could all come together in remembrance of what the Lord has done. However, I think that we would be wrong to relegate it to that because we know from Matthew 18 that where two or more are gathered, there he is in our midst. So his presence is very real in our midst. Similarly in worship. I think that it would be right and good for us to worship and bring stirring our minds by way of remembrance the things that the Lord has done. But I think that it would be really unfortunate if we just simply relegated it to just the remembrance, knowing that God actually inhabits the praises of his people, that there is a fellowship happening there. And that’s why, you know, when I think about 1 Corinthians, chapter 10, verse 16, Paul says, the cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? And communion with the body. And that communion is koinonia. So how would it be possible that we could ever have a communion and a koinonia without his actual presence? So I… I no longer see it as being a either or, but a both and, and that I would think it would be really unfortunate for us to speak of it as just simply a remembrance when there’s just so much more.
SPEAKER 02 :
Let me speak autobiography about this, because… I was raised Baptist, so I totally rejected the whole Catholic thing that something happened that was special. I was raised believing it was just a memorial. And then, you know, I read a lot of the mystics, you know, Christian mystics. I think A.W. Tozer introduced me to some of them. And obviously a lot of the Christian mystics were Catholics or Lutheran and so forth. And they often venerated Christ. you know, the host and so forth, and they had immense mystical, you know, some great mystical experiences with it, and, you know, they adored it and felt like they were in communion with God more when they took it. And, you know, as far as people feeling like they’re closer to God, you know, that’s a very subjective thing, especially if they expect it to have that effect on them. But the thing is, I actually thought maybe I’ve been missing something. This is when I was, this would be in the 1970s, mid-70s. I thought maybe there’s something really more there. Maybe we should be taking communion more. Maybe we should, maybe Jesus is more present in some way there because so many of the Christian mystics felt that way. And so I kind of went through, I toyed with that for a while and kind of felt that way for a while. But then I got back to the scripture again and said, well, everyone who said there’s something more than a memorial here, is saying something the Bible does not say. What about 1 Corinthians? Yeah, I was just about to say it. 1 Corinthians 10 said the bread that we bless is the communion of the body of Christ. The cup that we drink, it’s the communion of the blood of Christ. Well, I believe that. When the church got together for their agape feasts, and they remembered Christ in fellowship with him, you know, they were doing what Jesus said, remember Christ. My body, my blood. You know, it’s the basis of all of our fellowship. We are one body because of what Jesus did, his sacrifice. And so it is, when he says it is fellowship, I mean, that’s a strange sentence because how is the blood the fellowship? I mean, even you’re saying the blood is sort of the real presence of the blood, but what does it mean it is the fellowship? You know, I think that like when Paul said, In the previous chapter to that, 1 Corinthians, no, the same chapter, earlier in that chapter, he said, you know, they all drank from the rock that followed them. Which rock is Christ, you know? I think, you know, Christ, I don’t think Christ was literally a stone in the desert that water came out of. I think he’s saying the rock is, it reminds us of Christ, or it is a type of Christ or something like that. It represents Christ. And I think, you know, Paul and Jesus used the expression, this is, for example, this is my body. This is my blood. But then David used that expression when his friends went and got him some water from the well of Bethlehem. And he poured it out on the ground, wouldn’t drink it. This is the blood of the men that went and got in a great peril of their lives. He’s not saying their blood was actually in the water or anything like that. It’s a manner of speaking, and it’s a very common one to say this is that when it means this corresponds with that or represents that or is a type of that or something like that. And so I don’t think I’m going to read all of that into it for the simple reason that if it was true… that it was more than a memorial, I think Jesus would have told us so. And, you know, the real presence of Jesus was with the disciples in the upper room when they took the meal because Jesus was sitting there. The real presence was definitely there. And the real presence is with us. Wherever two or more are gathered, the real presence is there. He’s present with us in the Holy Spirit. I don’t think that when I take communion, I’m supposed to have, you know, it’s like if the presence of Jesus is on a dial, And most of the time, you know, I’m at five. But when I go to church and there’s more people, maybe it dies up to seven. When I take communion, it goes all the way up to nine or ten. You know, I don’t think the presence of Jesus is on a modulator. I think actually Jesus is always with us. And I don’t think he’s more with us when we eat bread or drink wine. You know, 1 Corinthians 11, the next chapter, when Paul’s talking about the Corinthians taking communion at the Lord’s table, He said some people were drinking too much wine and they’re getting drunk. You know, I think, well, would the real presence of the blood of Jesus, would you get drunk if you had too much of that? You know, it’s just wine. It’s just alcoholic wine is all it was. And, you know, if you abuse it, It has the same effect as wine would have in any other circumstances. So it doesn’t somehow sanctify or make the wine safe to drink too much or anything like that. I’m thinking, I’ll just say what Jesus said, what Paul said, and of course put it in its context, which was the Passover. No question, it was a Passover meal. And when Jesus said, this bread is my body, it was just a substitution for what they usually said at Passover. This bread is the bread of affliction that our fathers ate in the land of Egypt. Yeah, but the bread of affliction that their fathers ate wasn’t really present there at the average Passover feast, nor did the statement mean to imply that. They weren’t saying, the bread of suffering that our fathers suffered in Egypt is right here in my hand. But they would use the words, this bread is the bread of affliction, It means it represents it or it’s a memorial of it. And that’s what Passover was. So Jesus only changed the wording a little bit and said, this bread. You know, it’s not the bread of affliction your fathers ate. This is the bread of the affliction I’m going through. This is my body broken for you. So, again, I mean, to make it more than that is something that Christians have done for centuries and centuries. And I don’t, you know, if they do that, I don’t say they’re going to go to hell or there’s anything, you know, I don’t say there’s necessarily anything deficient with them, but I just think it’s adding a layer of superstition. To some rather simple teaching?
SPEAKER 09 :
I don’t know about it. I wouldn’t know that superstition is the right word. Rather, if there’s something that we can know in reality spiritually, here’s what I think. We see through the eyes of faith, and we receive with open heart spiritual realities. Even as you know, it’s the nature of the kingdom. So, like, the nature of the kingdom is such that it’s not local and carnal in the sense that we can point to borders. There are no borders or governors that we can point to. But we know that the kingdom of God is real in our midst. And so, too, like I say, with worship and with fellowship, that there is a depth of communion. I just don’t know what… great value there would be in establishing that institution if it be merely to relegate it to remembrance.
SPEAKER 02 :
Okay. Well, John, my lines are full. We’ve been talking for a quarter of the program, so I’m going to have to move on. I don’t, you know, I hear you. I hear you. And we’ve been friends for 30 years or something. But, yeah, I’m just not, I’m not seeing it. I’m not persuaded.
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, it gives me comfort. We agree so much that I’m always comforted when we see something a little bit different. That way you know you’re not a cult follower then.
SPEAKER 02 :
It’s good to have some confirmation that you’re not a cult follower. All right, brother.
SPEAKER 09 :
God bless you, my brother.
SPEAKER 02 :
God bless you, John.
SPEAKER 09 :
Bye.
SPEAKER 02 :
Bye now. Okay. Well, we’ve got to take a break at this point, then we’re going to take as many of these calls as we can in the second half hour. We do have another half hour coming up, but at the break here at the bottom of the hour, we’d like to let people know that we are listener-supported. We pay a lot of money to radio stations, so you can catch the program every day if you want to, or even listen to it from the website or the app. But that money has to come from somewhere, and we don’t have sponsors. We don’t sell anything, so we just let our listeners know. If you like the program, you want it to continue, you may want to help support it so it can continue. You can write to us at TheNarrowPath, P.O. Box 1730. Temecula, California, 92593. That address, again, is the narrow path. PO Box 1730, Temecula, California, 92593. Now, you can also go to our website. You won’t find anything for sale there, but there is a tab. This says Donate. And you can donate online if you want to do that at thenarrowpath.com. And you can also find, of course, under announcements, where I’m speaking tonight, tomorrow, and the next few nights in Texas. It’s thenarrowpath.com. I’ll be back in 30 seconds, so don’t go away. We have another half hour ahead of us.
SPEAKER 01 :
If you call The Narrow Path online, Please have your question ready as soon as you are on the air. Do not take much time setting up the question or giving background. If such detail is needed to clarify your question, the host will ask for such information. Our desire is to get as many callers on the air during the short program. There are many calls waiting behind you, so please be considerate to others.
SPEAKER 02 :
Welcome back to the Narrow Path Radio Broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg, and we’re live for another half hour. The number to call if you’d like to be on the air is 844-484-5737. Our lines are full again, so we may not get more calls than we have waiting on before the show ends, but you can always try 844-484-5737. Our next caller is Michael from Denver, Colorado. Hi, Michael. Welcome.
SPEAKER 03 :
Steve, thank you for taking my call. It’s always a pleasure to speak with you. and I just had kind of a comment and a two-part question that goes along with it today. So I actually heard David Hawking talking about this earlier. The book of Daniel, where King Belshazzar was holding a feast, and a hand had appeared. It started writing a message on the wall in Aramaic, and Belshazzar said, he didn’t know what that message meant. So he summoned all these enchanters and divinities to decipher the message, and they couldn’t. And then he was told Daniel was very gifted and he could interpret the message. And Daniel right away came in and told him exactly what it meant. He said that his days were essentially numbered and that his reign would be brought to an end And amazingly, as you probably know, that very night, Belshazzar was slain. And so I wanted to ask you about, like, how do you think Daniel was able to know this when all these, you know, divinators and astrologists couldn’t? And was God giving him the information? And who was writing the message on the wall? Was this someone being influenced by God or an angel writing this?
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, the Bible certainly indicates this is God speaking. It is certainly, if it’s not God writing on the wall himself, it would have to be an angel or something speaking for him. The message is God’s message to Belshazzar. So I think the simplest conclusion is simply this is God doing it. It was miraculous. It was just a hand appeared, and it was writing in the plaster of the wall with its fingers. And it wrote like four words, many, many tekel yufarsin. And as I understand, that means numbered, numbered, weighed. And then yufarsin, it kind of is seen by Daniel as a reference to the Persians. And, you know, it’s not that the wise men couldn’t read the words. If someone wrote words on the wall and said weighed, weighed, numbered Persians, or something like that. Well, okay, the words, but the meaning, what’s that? Now, Daniel was a prophet, and that’s why the whole book of Daniel is written about him, because he did have revelations from God, and he could interpret dreams, he could interpret visions. That’s how he became prominent in Babylon back in chapter 2, when he interpreted Nebuchadnezzar’s dreams. In chapter 4, he interpreted another dream by Nebuchadnezzar. So now he’s interpreting this cryptic saying, which is just a bunch of words not connected in a sentence. And he said, well, your kingdom has been weighed in the balances and found wanting. And your days are numbered, and, you know, the Persians, the Medes and the Persians are coming to conquer, which happened that night. So if we say, how did Daniel know? Well, I think the implication is Daniel knew the same way that he knew how to interpret, you know, other things like dreams and so forth. It was a prophetic ability that God gave him. So that would seem to be the answer of Scripture. All right, let’s talk to Jim from San Jose, California. Jim, welcome. Jim.
SPEAKER 04 :
Steve, it’s an honor to speak with you. Thank you for your ministry. Just a real quick comment on the caller about communion. I wish we could land somewhere in between, in the middle. I don’t think transubstantiation is correct, but I also don’t think relegating communion to just a wafer and a piece of bread is right either. I think it’s lost its reverence. My question is, I’m going to flatten out almost all of Scripture today, to be fulfilled in AD 70 with the exception of 1 Corinthians 15, 24. And I’d like to get your thoughts. 1 Corinthians 15, 24, then comes the end when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father, when he puts an end to all rule and authority and power. And the reason why I’m flattening out all of Scripture with the exception of that one is based on Matthew 16, Matthew 25, and Revelation 22. They all talk about judgment and rewards. And then when you look at 1 Corinthians 4 and you do a verse-by-verse comparison with Matthew 24 and 1 Thessalonians 4, the similarities are eerie. They both say when God’s trumpet call, believers meet Christ in the air, and then the contemporary you is applied there as well in Matthew 24 and 1 Corinthians 15-24. So I see basically where we’re at right now is judgment and reward is pretty much an ongoing reality from the time of Christ until now and until 1 Corinthians 15, 24. And I hope that made sense, and I’ll just get your thoughts on that. Thank you very much, Steve. God bless.
SPEAKER 02 :
Don’t go away. Don’t go away. I need to ask something. When you say judgments and rewards are an ongoing reality since the time of Christ, you mean in the afterlife or you mean just in life?
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, I believe that so if somebody passes into the next life now, then they’re going to be, you know, faced before God and judgment and reward will take place. That’s kind of like what I think Matthew 16 is saying where it says, you know, it talks about judgment and reward.
SPEAKER 02 :
Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. Well, up to a point, of course in Matthew 16 what it says is the man will come with his holy angels in the glory of his father and he’ll give to every man his reward for his works. And, you know, if you’re saying that when a person dies, the Son of Man comes with his holy angels and the glorious Father and takes them to their reward, I would say I think that language probably means something less generic than that. I think there’s something very, an event there. He goes on to say, of course, some of you standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming into his kingdom, which I believe is a reference to 70 AD. Have you seen my book called Why Not Full Preterism?
SPEAKER 04 :
No, I have not, but I don’t consider myself a full preterist. Because I do believe that Christ will come again. I do believe in the second coming when Jesus hands the keys to the kingdom back to the Father.
SPEAKER 02 :
well the reason I ask is because a person wouldn’t have to be a full preterist to benefit from some of the chapters in that book because I do deal with you know Matthew 16 verse 28 and 29 there I do deal with all the eschatological passages some of which you and I would not understand the same way but the main thing is although there is more than one passage about the judgment and I don’t believe there’s I don’t think there’s the Bible speaks at cross purposes with itself. I think that there is a final judgment. And I think most of the passages about the judgment at the coming of Christ, or at least some of them, are about that last judgment. Now, some of them are about the judgment in 70 AD, in my opinion. But you can kind of tell which are which by, you know, they’re not just naked statements without a context. They are statements that have other things mentioned. And A lot of the passages speak about the judgment that comes as a result of Christ coming and resurrecting the dead. And, you know, full predators think all that’s spiritual. It’s a spiritual resurrection, spiritual judgment, or something, and a spiritual coming. But I believe that there’s some passages you can’t get around very well. And you yourself have one. In 1 Corinthians 15, 24, you said that you think that’s future. I think there’s more than that future. But honestly, I mean, I’m not going to debate about it. We both believe there’s a second coming. And, you know, I guess we’d have difference of opinion about some of the passages as to whether they’re about that or something else. That’s kind of the thing about partial preterism is that all Christians are partial preterists and that they believe that some prophecies have been fulfilled. but they don’t agree about how many of them are which ones. I mean, some of them. All reasonable Christians would say, oh, yeah, well, that’s obviously happened. And all reasonable Christians would say about others, oh, that obviously hasn’t happened. But there’s quite a few of them that reasonable Christians might not agree. Some might say, well, I don’t think that’s happened. Or I do think that happened in such and such a time. So there’s room for disagreement about those things. But I’m not sure. Did you have a question for me or just wanted to share that?
SPEAKER 04 :
I guess I was just trying to give thoughts on, you know, I mean, sometimes… this is a lesser-known topic, right? And you don’t have a lot of people in your circle to kind of flesh this out with. So I guess I just wanted your thoughts on that, about flattening out the Scripture as much as I have. And I think you provided an answer. Okay, well, I just want you to know that… Revelation 22, all the time texts that surround it, before and after, and then it’s… I have a whole… I have about two chapters on time texts in my book.
SPEAKER 02 :
You know, my book on full preterism is, the audio book is at our website free. You can listen to the whole book for free. If you go to thenarrowpath.com, there’s a tab that says books. And if you do that, it’ll show several of my books. And the audio books can be just, you can click on it to listen to the audio books. And you’ll find that not everything in my book is preterism. only related to full preterism. There’s certain things that would be relevant to everybody. But I do have a couple of chapters on the time text there, which is, of course, what you’re referring to in Revelation 22. So anyway, yeah, I just recommend if you want more of my thoughts about it, my book has teased those things a lot more than I can here. But thank you for your call, Jim. It’s good to talk to you. Let’s talk to Eddie from Sacramento, California. Welcome to the narrow path, Eddie.
SPEAKER 05 :
Okay. Okay.
SPEAKER 02 :
I need to hear more than just okay. I need to hear a question.
SPEAKER 05 :
Okay. I’d like to know, did God do this before, and is he going to do it again, and UFOs? And I’ll take your answer. I’ll take your question off the air.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, when you say, did God do this before, is that what you said?
SPEAKER 05 :
Yes.
SPEAKER 02 :
Did God do what before?
SPEAKER 05 :
Is he going to do it again?
SPEAKER 02 :
What?
SPEAKER 05 :
Is he going to do it again?
SPEAKER 02 :
Do what again?
SPEAKER 05 :
The Holy Spirit, the earth, the universe, Jesus.
SPEAKER 02 :
I don’t quite understand what you’re asking. What is it that you’re asking if he’s going to do it again? Don’t just give me a word. Give me a sentence or something that I can understand what you’re talking about.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, is he going to do it again? Is he going to do this whole thing?
SPEAKER 02 :
The whole creation?
SPEAKER 05 :
The whole thing. The universe? The Earth?
SPEAKER 02 :
I don’t even know what you’re talking about. But if you’re saying, is Earth’s history going to be repeated someday, like, Is there like, does history repeat itself in cycles? And so when we get to the end of this cycle, is God going to start another one and go through it? This whole thing is going to happen again? If that’s not what you mean, you haven’t given me enough information to know otherwise. But I don’t think so. I don’t think history is circular. I think it’s linear. God had a beginning and he has an end and he has a project. Once he has finished it, he doesn’t need to do it again. As far as UFOs go, I don’t know anything about UFOs. I’ve never seen one. They could exist or not. I mean, obviously there are unidentified flying objects, which simply means there’s things in the sky flying that people have not identified. Whether they are interplanetary vessels with, you know, living life forms from other planets to them, that I would have no way of knowing. The Bible doesn’t mention it, so they could be or not. I just don’t have any. I can’t. Who can answer that without something solid? I’ve never seen a UFO, never met an extraterrestrial being, and the Bible says nothing about them. Okay? Thank you for your call, though. Let’s talk to Ed from Loveland, Colorado. Hi, Ed. Welcome. Yes. Hello, Steve.
SPEAKER 06 :
Hi. Hi.
SPEAKER 05 :
So…
SPEAKER 06 :
I have a broader question. I’m not looking to ask you any exact questions about the Bible, and so I’ll try to be as brief as I can, and it’s going to span a little bit over my life.
SPEAKER 02 :
Okay, let me just say we have very little time, so be as brief as you can.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yes, sir. And so I was saved in 1968. I have some education issues and I have not really, I’m quite ignorant to a large portion of the details in the Bible and I’m deeply, you know, desire edification in that and I am trying to go in that direction. But I was wondering, like, with that, the question about UFOs, I believe the same thing, that God has never mentioned anything about creation outside of the earth and the world. And I was just wondering, with everybody asking exact questions to, you know, decipher whether the Bible is true or not true, I find that the church is really separating itself from humanity in general. Like, a few years back, I was with a group of Christians, and it was more important to them to know what Christian bands I liked and, you know, things of that nature. And now that there’s Christianity with their own music, their own movies, and stuff like that, I feel like the body of Christianity is trying to fight a battle against humanity and do it for God and not with God.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, there’s always been Christian music. I mean, in the Middle Ages, you know, there was a gregorian chants and so forth and luther wrote hymns and so did the wesleys and there’s there’s always been christian music christians have always had their own music now what you’re saying i think is that there’s now christian contemporary music which is true although 500 years ago the music that luther wrote was contemporary christian music at the time um And, you know, so, I mean, I’m not sure what that’s saying. You say it sounds like the church is separating itself from the world. There’s a sense in which we are to be separate from the world and another sense in which we’re not. We can’t go out of the world and, like, go live in a cave. We’re not to be separated from the world in that sense. But we have different values than the world. And many people feel that, you know, the movies that Hollywood puts out, And the music that the world puts out does not reflect their values. It’s not the kind of thing that they rejoice in or are entertained by. They find some of it objectionable, which is, of course, normal for people who have morals to find immoral things objectionable. So I don’t see that as a problem. Now, if they make their own movies and they make their own music, And if that satisfies them, that’s fine. Of course, for many, many years, Christian movies and Christian music was underfunded and had a much smaller talent pool to draw from than the world has. So, you know, movies and music put out by Christians wasn’t quite as good in some respects, but it was better than worldly music and movies in terms of their morals. I only have a few minutes left. I want to take another call. This is going to be Bill from Boise, Idaho. Bill, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 07 :
Thank you, Steve. Let me start out by saying I saw your debate with Ted Batchelor a month or so ago, and I don’t remember everything that you talked about, but if I had to judge a winner, I would say you were the winner.
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, thank you.
SPEAKER 07 :
You’re welcome. I’m a non-denominational Christian and have been for about 39 years. And up until a year and a half ago, I went to any church I wanted to, and I was a Sunday worshiper. I’ve been attending a Seventh-day Adventist church, and I’m enjoying it. My question for you is, though, and the reason I’m giving you the question is because I haven’t been able to get any scholar or any Bible teacher or any pastor or preacher answer this for me, and so here it is. In Genesis 2, 2, when God said, and on the seventh day… God ended his work, which he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work, which he had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it he rested from all his work, which God had created and made. Now, keeping that scripture on the back burner, or on the side for a second, if you go to Exodus 20, verse 8, where it talks about remembering the Sabbath, the language states this. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. My question is this. Is the word Sabbath a numerical denomination or a concept of an idea of resting?
SPEAKER 02 :
The word Sabbath, Shabbat in the Hebrew, means cessation or ceasing. So when you’ve been doing some activity and you cease from it or you’re resting from that activity, that’s what the Hebrew word Shabbat would refer to. So when the Bible refers to the seventh day as the Sabbath, in Hebrew that would be it is the cessation, it’s the rest.
SPEAKER 07 :
Okay, I’m writing this down as you’re talking.
SPEAKER 02 :
Sure. Because God rested or he ceased from his acts of creation on the seventh day, that made it a different kind of day because every day so far until then had been a day of work for God. Agreed. And this was the first day in the series of days ever in history that God didn’t do any creative work. And so it was a day, a different kind of day. Now, the word sanctified, he sanctified it, means he set it apart. If something is sanctified, it means it’s set apart. It’s in a different category than something else. Now, this day, the seventh day, was in a different category than others because he didn’t do any creative work on it. Well, what’s the significance of that? He didn’t do any more work because there’s no more to be done. His creation had reached its cumulative goal, and his resting was his way of saying, this is the first day ever. then I don’t have to do any creative work because I’ve finished it in the last six days. And therefore, it was a separate kind of a day, a day of rest. Now, God didn’t at that time tell anybody else to rest on the seventh day. He rested on the seventh day, but there’s no record of anybody else resting on the seventh day or being told to do so until the time of Moses. And the first time anyone was told to rest as God had rested… is in Exodus 16, when they were gathering manna, Moses told the children of Israel that the seventh day was going to be a Sabbath to the Lord, and that they shouldn’t go out and gather manna then. And then in chapter 20, when the Ten Commandments are given, he said, now remember to keep the Sabbath holy, and don’t do any work. He had to explain what that means. Don’t do any work, he said. It’s interesting, he didn’t just say keep the Sabbath, which would be enough. If everyone had been doing, keeping Sabbath, if everyone knew what keeping the Sabbath meant, he wouldn’t have to explain it. Well, he said, I want you to keep the Sabbath, and here’s what it means. You work six days, and on the seventh day you don’t work anymore. So the fact that he had to explain that one suggests that it was an unfamiliar concept and needed to be defined. So that is the first time in the Bible that we read of a command to keep the Sabbath. That is in Exodus 16, and then when it was incorporated in the Ten Commandments in chapter 23. Brother, I’d love to talk to you more, but as you can hear, the music’s playing and I’m out of time. But feel free to call back any other time, and we can continue this discussion if you’d like. You’re listening to The Narrow Path. My name is Steve Gray. The Narrow Path is a listener-supported ministry. You notice we don’t have any commercial breaks? Not a single commercial break. No sponsors. If you pay, we stay. That’s pretty much how it goes. You want to write to us? Write to The Narrow Path, PO Box 1730, Temecula, California. 92593 or go to the website, thenarrowpath.com. You can take everything free there, but you can also donate at thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for joining us.
