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Join us on today's episode of The Narrow Path with Steve Gregg as we delve into the biblical practice of anointing with oil and its implications for modern Christians. With insights from historical traditions and scripture, we discuss the nuances of this ritual and how it applies to the faithful today. Additionally, we explore the phenomenon of apostolic martyrdom, unraveling the truths and myths surrounding the early disciples' commitment and courage.
SPEAKER 1 :
Thank you.
SPEAKER 08 :
Good afternoon and welcome to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we're live for an hour, as we usually are on weekdays, taking your calls. If you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith, we'd love to talk to you. You can call me at this number, 844-484-5737. That's 844-484-5737. And, boy, I don't think I have anything to announce today, so we can just go directly to our callers. Oh, I should mention, yeah, there is something that should be mentioned. A major part of our ministry is our website. It's been up for many years, and it has lots and lots of resources. I give the website out every day on the air so you can go and get those resources, or you can even donate from there. But the website's been down. We don't understand the technology, but we think somebody does. We have a webmaster in Connecticut who I think he feels everything's under control. Something is being copied or something is being done. Whenever something goes wrong with the web, I'm totally at a loss. I have no idea how technology works. But I will say this, that there's a lot of people who kind of are used to going to the website all the time. And it's been down for several days. We're not sure exactly when it'll be back up, hopefully very soon. But in the meantime, although you can't donate from this site, there is a backup site that has all of our stuff on it, or not all of it, but all the audio, all the lectures, the shows, archives, and so forth. And it's working well. That's called Theos, that's T-H-E-O-S, theos.org slash media. So if you go to theos.org. slash media. You can't donate from there, but you can certainly access the resources. So if you become kind of addicted to listening to those and they're not now at the moment available, I don't even think they're on our app because I think our app depends on the website. So this is a kind of a crippling thing, but we have backup. There's another website that has at least the things you can listen to that you want to, the radio shows and the Bible studies and so forth are all at www.theos.org slash media. So you can go there for the time being. Hopefully I will announce when the website's back up. Okay. Having said that, we're going to talk to Benjamin from Greenville, Ohio. Benjamin, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 03 :
Good afternoon, brother. Thank you. I have a question on trying to get your insight on Anointing with oil, for instance, our homes or a sick person. And I guess my questions would be the actual procedure of doing it and the frequency that we should be doing something like that. And I can take the answer offline.
SPEAKER 08 :
All right. All right. Thank you for your call, Benjamin. Well, the Bible doesn't actually advocate the anointing of oil except in the case of a sick person. calling on the elders of the church. In James chapter five, it says, is any of you sick or is any sick among you? Let him call for the elders of the church and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. In the prayer of faith, she'll save the sick and the Lord shall raise him up. And if he's committed sins, they'll be forgiven him. Now, many people think that this is simply what the Roman Catholics call the extreme unction, that when somebody's dying, they're sick and dying, that they should call for the the priests or the leaders of the church, and have them, as it were, kind of baptize them, although it says oil, not water. So it's questionable whether that's what it means. But that's, for example, how Catholics understand it. Most evangelicals, especially charismatic people, believe that anointing with oil is simply a procedure to accompany the prayer for healing. Now, because there's so little said about it, and there's little or no explanation about it, you know, there's some questions as to what its effectiveness is. Some people think it's merely a point of contact for faith. That is that, you know, a person, if you just say, well, just believe, well, that's kind of, for some people, it's a little nebulous. Okay, I kind of believe. Do I believe now? Do I believe enough? You know, when am I supposed to believe? When is something supposed to happen? And there are people who say that, excuse me, sorry, that such procedures as laying on of hands for healing or anointing with oil, that these really only function as a point of contact for faith. So that if a person kind of has a vague idea that God's going to heal them at some point that you, you can, their expectations will be raised that that point will be when hands are laid on them or when oil is put on them. And it becomes sort of a symbolic gesture, uh, Usually the oil is thought to represent the Holy Spirit, but I'm not sure that that's even an essential part of the whole thing. The point is that we're not told why anointing of oil is of use. Now, there are some teachers who have simply said anointing with oil is what is done to a wounded person. You know, in the Good Samaritan parable, the man who fell among thieves, when he was found by the Good Samaritan and ministered to, the man poured wine and oil into his wounds, wine probably to disinfect them and oil to promote healing. And use of oil medicinally, topically, was an ancient medical procedure for certain conditions. And so some say, well, James is envisaging a situation where somebody who's sick has got wounds or festering sores or whatever, and that the elders should come and administer medical procedures with oil. Now, I don't personally think that's what it's saying, but I've heard it said. I'm just trying to tell you there's a lot of different opinions about that. And the reason there's so many opinions is the Bible says nothing to explain it. It just says do this. And so many people will just do it out of obedience to the scriptures without having any particular or precise understanding of what it's supposed to accomplish. But apart from that one passage in James 5, we are not really told to anoint anything with oil. Now in the Old Testament, the priests and the kings, when they were installed into office, had oil poured over their heads, and even a prophet might in some cases. But the point there is simply it's an installation service, probably represented the Holy Spirit coming on them, the oil representing that. But this was not a situational thing where someone's sick or you're trying to accomplish something in particular through it. It's just part of the ceremony of installment. And that's just an Old Testament thing with kings and priests and others who were installed into divine office. But in the New Testament, we only have that one usage of it mentioned. Now, I'm aware of people anointing their houses, their cars, the windows of their houses. And I think the implication they have in mind is they're kind of putting protection upon their house or their car against, I'm not sure what, maybe demons coming in or something. This... I mean, I don't mean to be critical of people who do it. There's simply no biblical grounds for it. It strikes me as superstitious. But on the other hand, one might say, well, it's no more superstitious than anointing a sick person to get well. Well, the one exception to that is that anointing a sick person to get well is a scriptural, you know, a scriptural suggestion where to start anointing all kinds of things for oil for nebulous reasons, you know, seeking undefined results, it just begins to be sort of a, it can be superstitious. Now, I'm not saying God can't honor it if your faith is in him. And somehow, you know, you're just thinking, hey, God, this place I'm putting the oil, I want you to please, you know, protect it there. I don't do that kind of thing. I've been with people who did that kind of thing. I even at the time, I thought it was a little superstitious, but I didn't want to be critical. I mean. It's just not a biblical practice, okay? And I, generally speaking, do not like to include in my Christian practice anything that the Bible does not command and which I cannot see having any obvious value, you know? And therefore, I don't practice it. If you're wondering how often should this be done and so forth, yeah, there's nothing in the Bible that says it should be done at all. So, you know, I personally don't do those kinds of things. And, you know, if someone could come up with a biblical rationale for it, I would certainly relook at my thoughts about that. But I don't know of any. All right. Let's talk to Ryan from Spartanburg, South Carolina. Hi, Ryan. Welcome.
SPEAKER 06 :
Casey, thank you. I had heard it said that all of the disciples of Christ had died as martyrs because they refused to basically admit, or I'm sorry, they refused to affirm that they did not actually see Jesus risen from the dead, and as such, because of their conviction, they were martyred, except for John, I believe. And it was always used as a very powerful argument rationale for the fact that Jesus actually did resurrect from the dead, because the disciples had nothing to gain by lying in that sense and dying for something that they didn't actually believe to be true. And I always thought that that was a very powerful argument, and so then I went in to check what kind of external sources we have if someone was to say to me, well, what evidence is there that they were all martyred in the various ways? And as far as I could find, there was only James, the son of Zebedee, James, the son of Joseph, Peter, and Paul, who we have external sources for that they were martyred. I think the rest, as far as I know, is only church history or church tradition that teaches that they were martyred.
SPEAKER 08 :
Is that correct? Well, all of them are church tradition, with the exception of James, the son of Zebedee. We have the record of his death given to us in Acts chapter 12. We don't actually have the record of the death of any of the other apostles in the Bible, but what we do have is early traditions that And since these early traditions, you know, are, you know, they're not all alike for each apostle, even John. I mean, the tradition is that John wasn't killed as a martyr. So we can figure out that, you know, the church didn't decide to make up martyr stories for all the apostles or else they would have done so for John too. I mean, my impression is the church fathers were interested in preserving accurate memories of what happened to these founders of the church as apostles. I know if I were them, I'd want to. I think some people think the church was led by con artists, and therefore they made up stories promiscuously that they thought would be edifying or convincing to people. But I think these men are themselves, many of them, martyrs. I mean, the sources, Christians were being martyred, and especially the leaders of the churches were hunted down and martyred for the first three centuries. And it's from men living at that time that we have the stories about the martyrdom of the apostles and of other Christians like Polycarp and such and James, the brother of Jesus. There's really no reason I can think of why these stories would be fake. Now, uh, you've heard this, the martyrdom of the apostles used as a, uh, an apologetic for the truthfulness of their testimony that they'd seen Jesus after he rose from the dead. Um, And I use it that way, too. I mean, I'll just say I do use it that way. But sometimes the way it's presented is just simply, well, these people could have not been martyred if they'd simply admitted that Jesus was not risen from the dead. And you might get the impression that every one of them stood with, as it were, a gun to his head saying, confess that Jesus didn't rise from the dead or I'll kill you. And each one of them stood with that testimony. that's not exactly how it happened. Many of them were martyred because simply they were church leaders. Some of them were martyred because they wouldn't burn incense to the Caesar. Some of them were martyred just for going against paganism. And so it's not really the case that each one of them was put on a trial where they had a specific question asked to them. And the wrong answer they die for and the right answer they would, you know, be granted freedom for. And that question is, did Jesus really rise from the dead? OK, that's not how it happened. What is true, though, is that they they went into situations facing deliberate danger and martyrdom. because they believe that Jesus rose from the dead. The point is, if they were not persuaded that Jesus rose from the dead, they wouldn't be risking their lives. Paul himself said that in 1 Corinthians 15. He says, if Jesus isn't risen from the dead, why am I facing these wild beasts and risking my life every hour? So it's not so much that they literally died on the spot for saying Jesus is risen from the dead on an occasion when someone would have said, we'll spare you if you say he didn't. But the point is that their whole careers faced death, faced danger, faced hardship, faced imprisonment and beatings. I mean, the apostles had all that. And the only reason they were motivated to do it is because they believed Jesus was risen from the dead. If they hadn't believed it, they would have gone somewhere else and done something else with their lives and avoided all that danger. So when someone says, well, they all died confessing that Jesus is risen from the dead, And therefore he did. Well, that's true. I mean, that was their confession. That is what they believed. But it's not always the case that somebody would have let them off the hook if they had said, OK, he didn't. I mean, because sometimes people just want to kill their mobs. You know, Nero didn't like Christians in general and killed Paul and Peter and others. So, you know, if what you heard, and you could easily have heard it because I've said things very similar myself, is that, you know, if Jesus didn't rise from the dead, these guys wouldn't have risked their lives like this. They all died confessing that Jesus had risen from the dead. And that was, they did. They believed that and they said that right up until the time they died. But it wasn't always that one statement of theirs that was, you know, what got their heads cut off or got them fed to the lions. Sometimes it was more of a the general embrace of Christianity in a hostile world that got them killed.
SPEAKER 06 :
Right. The place that I read that James, the son of Zebedee, the son of Joseph, Peter, and Paul were martyred, or at least the external evidence was in Clement, I believe, 1 Clement 5. I'm not too familiar, however, with that book. Is that a church father?
SPEAKER 08 :
Clement of Rome was a bishop in Rome in the generation after the apostles, but not long after the apostles. He was like before the end of the first century. I'm not sure. I think the Catholic Church places him as like the third bishop of Rome or something like that. But Paul, in writing to Rome... mentions Clement, and many people think that's the same Clement that wrote the book Clement of Rome. It's an epistle to the Corinthians that Clement wrote, or that somebody wrote. So we don't know if he's the same Clement that Paul mentioned, but he was certainly a man of the first century church who would be in a prime position to know how Peter and Paul had died and so forth. Now, we don't have any one church father telling us everything about it, but there is, like in Fox's Book of Martyrs, I'm pretty sure he's got most of the apostles named in there, right in the opening chapters of Fox's Book of Martyrs. Sometimes it's not very much detail, but... I don't think there's very many of the apostles that aren't mentioned there. And I don't know what all of his sources were, but, you know, Fox was a historian and would have looked at all the sources available.
SPEAKER 06 :
Thank you so much. You've all checked that out. Thank you for your time.
SPEAKER 08 :
Okay, Ryan. Good talking to you, brother. Thanks for your call. Bye now. All right. See, Jacob in Orange County, California. Welcome.
SPEAKER 05 :
Good afternoon, Steve. Thank you for this ministry. My question is, would you be willing to give a brief hypothetical defense of dispensational eschatology? I'm familiar with some of their teaching points, but I'm curious to hear someone with a gift for teaching as yourself describe their position, and I'll listen to your answer up there. Thank you, Steve.
SPEAKER 08 :
All right, sure. Thank you. Well, dispensational theology basically was introduced by a very intelligent man. John Nelson Darby, he's sometimes seen as kind of a villain in the minds of anti-dispensationalists. And there were things about him that were not very savory. He could be very divisive in his personality. In fact, he actually excommunicated one of my favorite people, George Mueller. George Mueller and he were acquainted, and both of them were in the Plymouth Brethren movement. And Darby excommunicated Mueller because he didn't agree with Darby about everything. And so, I mean, the guy was a little divisive. Let's just say quite divisive. And so I don't like Darby much, but there's still... The truth, he's a very brilliant man, and he made a complete translation of the Bible, the Darby Translation, which is still available, usually online. And he wrote lots of books. I think he wrote like over 50 books of theology. And they're not lightweight stuff. So, I mean, he was very persuasive in his own generation in certain evangelical circles. He He was Anglican, and he came out of that and became part of the Plymouth Brethren movement. But his theory was that Christians had been inconsistent throughout history in spiritualizing many Old Testament prophecies. The prophecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel and the minor prophets often are spiritualized by all the church fathers, all the medieval church, all the reformers, and in modern times by people like myself, who see many of the prophecies that mention Israel in the Old Testament are in some cases spiritualized, that is interpreted to refer to the spiritual Israel. And that's called spiritualizing. At least that's what people who don't like the practice call it. And so he said, that's not right. If it says Israel, it should be natural Israel. I mean, why do we take Genesis literally and the Gospels literally, but we don't take these prophecies literally when they say Israel and Jerusalem? And so he felt... the church was inconsistent and needed to consistently take things literally, including these Old Testament prophets. And in doing so, of course, he came up with an entirely different theology about Israel than the church had ever held before. And of course, he's living around 1830-ish when this was done. So for the first 1800 years, the church taught a certain theology about Israel and the church And Darby challenged it and said he actually felt he was rediscovering truths that only the apostles had taught. He knew he was going against the whole church for 1,800 years before him. And his view was that there are promises that God made to Israel and Jerusalem that simply have not occurred. That the Messiah was supposed to come and sit on David's throne in Jerusalem and restore Jerusalem to its former glory and glory. And Jesus didn't do that, so that still has to happen. He thought when Jesus comes back, that's got to happen. And so his argument was you find all these prophecies about the Messiah reigning over a restored Israel and Jerusalem and all the nations bringing gifts to him and him ruling the world with a rod of iron and so forth. And since Jesus didn't do that, now Darby's idea was Jesus would have done that. Jesus actually came intending to do that, but couldn't because the Jews rejected him as the Messiah. Now, I'm not sure why God would come and make his program so vulnerable to the Jews' disapproval. I mean, the Jews had rejected all the prophets before. Why would anyone think they'd accept Jesus? You know, I mean, so it's like Jesus comes and says, the time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is drawn near. And yet it's not going to come because God knows very well that the Jews are going to respond to him exactly as they responded to the prophets before him. So in other words, it wasn't near. It was a mistake or it was, you know, I don't know, conditional or something. But Jesus didn't say the coming of the kingdom was conditional. He didn't say it depended on the Jews accepting him. But Darby said, well, because the Jews didn't accept him, Jesus did not bring the kingdom that he said he was going to bring. It was postponed. Jesus went back to heaven, took with him the kingdom that he had in mind. And he'll bring it back when he comes back. And he'll set up the millennial kingdom and set up the temple in Jerusalem. And he'll reign from Jerusalem, from David's throne, for a thousand years. That's the dispensational idea. And Darby also believed that the church and Israel should never be confused with each other. He felt like that was a big problem the church had done for 1800 years is take these prophecies about Israel and apply them to the church. He said, no, no, no, no, no. The church in Israel, different things. He said the church was an institution that was not even anticipated in the Old Testament. It was a mystery that only was revealed to Paul and the apostles, and therefore it didn't even exist in the Old Testament. It wasn't even anticipated. The church is, he said, a parenthesis because the Jews who God came to bring the kingdom to had rejected christ and caused the kingdom to be postponed there was now this parenthetical phenomenon of god going to the gentiles and creating the body of christ and you know doing what he's doing now until he's done doing that and when he's done doing that he'll rapture the church out of the world But then he'll keep working in the world on the Jews, and the tribulation will be his way of disciplining and bringing the Jews to himself. And then they will come to him, and then Jesus will come and set up the millennium. That's Darby's ideas. Now, there are, I guess you wanted me to give an exegetical polemic in favor of dispensationalism. I used to think I could do that, but it really wasn't exegetical. It was more or less just assumption. It was the assumption that my teachers had told the truth about these things and that interpreting the Bible the way my teachers did is the only honest and faithful way of handling Scripture. And it took me years of my own study of Scripture to realize that that's not the best way to interpret Scripture. I didn't know what dispensationalism was. I was dispensational. I never heard the term before. I just thought dispensationalism, or I should say, I thought what they were teaching me was what the Bible teaches. They didn't tell me. My teachers never told me. This is a view called dispensationalism. I had to discover that the hard way over years after teaching dispensationalism without knowing that it was that. But I found out that the early church actually had been more accurate in the way that they handled scriptures. That the apostles in the New Testament, when they quoted Old Testament scriptures, the very ones that Darby said should be taken literally about the literal Israel and Jerusalem, whenever the apostles quoted those scriptures, they didn't take them literally. They applied them to the church. And that's why the whole church understood them that way. They thought the apostles were right. And that Jesus was right because he did the same thing. When they quoted... Old Testament passages, which Darby thinks we should apply to Israel and Jerusalem, and which dispensationalists say we should, the apostles and Jesus didn't take them that way. They took them in a spiritual sense and thought that Jesus actually came to fulfill the prophets and that he did not fail to do so. At the end of his life, Jesus prayed and he said, Father, I have finished the work you gave me to do. He didn't say, hey, I tried, but the Jews wouldn't let it happen, so sorry, God, I couldn't do it. No, he said, I finished it. And this is what the church has always believed, that Jesus did not fail. He succeeded. And I don't think there's a good exegetical case for dispensationalism, but there's just a grid you can read the Bible through in order to think about it that way. Hey, I'm out of time for this segment. I'll be back in about 30 seconds or so. Please stay tuned.
SPEAKER 09 :
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SPEAKER 08 :
Welcome back to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg, and we're live for another half hour, taking your calls. If you have questions about the Bible or about the Christian faith, feel free to give me a call. The number is 844-825-8000. 484-5737. And you're always welcome to call if you disagree with me about something too. Again, our website has been down for a few days. Hopefully it'll be up. I don't know. It could be up today, tomorrow. I'm not sure. It might be down for a while. If you're used to, you know, listening to things from our website, we've got thousands of things there to listen to on a regular basis. And you're kind of going through withdrawal because the site's down. Go to this alternative website, It's called theos, T-H-E-O-S, theos.org slash media. It at least has all, I think, has the archives of the radio show and it's got the lectures there. And that's mostly what people want when they go to our website. Our website has some other things, too, that aren't there. But essentially, you know, if you're listening to the lectures or the archives, you can get them there, too. All right, at least last I checked. I haven't been there for a long time myself, but I hope it's up and running too. Technology is not always our friend, but it certainly has been convenient sometimes. Okay, let's talk next to Roberto from Kansas City, Missouri. Hi, Roberto.
SPEAKER 07 :
Hi, Steve, Greg. Thank you for taking my call. I would like to ask you, Well, I watch you on YouTube. That's mainly where I get your program and everything. How can we pray in a godly manner for our president not to be set up the way he was today? All we can pray is that, you know, God's will be done. That's all I've been praying for lately is God's will be done. We learned the hard way over the last, like, you know, to elections. And, um, he was set up today to go to this, uh, church service where the, uh, pastor, if you will, uh, was begging him for mercy on, um, on the homosexual community, gay rights and, uh, migrants. Um, how can we pray, uh, for his spiritual direction and leadership? Because he has apparently surrounded himself with the same crowd like, um, Paula White was a prosperity gospel person.
SPEAKER 08 :
Is she still in the picture there? I didn't know she was still in the picture. I thought he'd moved on to someone like Jack Hibbs.
SPEAKER 07 :
I thought she was out of the picture, but I pulled up a video that was just done two months ago. by Forbes, which is, you know, a liberal source. But two months ago, she was praying over him with that type of crowd. So I didn't know that either.
SPEAKER 08 :
Okay, let me jump in. Let me jump in here. I hadn't heard about what happened today. So I don't know anything about that. But as far as being set up, I'm not sure how you mean that. I mean, the president is going to be challenged about lots of things throughout his term and should be. Presidents always should be. And I didn't obviously hear how he responded. So I can't tell. But all I can say, if your question is how shall we pray for him? I mean, if that's not just a way of you making some statements, but you're really wondering how should we pray for him, I think we should pray for him to be wise and for him to be committed to justice. And, of course, we should pray for him and everybody that they be converted to Christ. Now, I don't know. I'm not going to say he's not a Christian. He doesn't. If he's a Christian, I don't think he's a very mature Christian, and I don't think he's been discipled very thoroughly, obviously. So we could pray either that he'll get converted, or if he has been converted, that he'll be properly discipled, that he'll have better Christian influences around him, hopefully, than Paula White, and that he'll be a wise ruler. Yeah. I also pray for his protection since there's, I don't think we've had a more hated president. Although, I mean, some people obviously almost idolize him, which is bad too. We don't want to idolize him, but he's a very polarizing figure. In my opinion, I don't think he did anything to encourage that polarization, but it's just the fact. I think he's following his conscience, if I'm not mistaken. I don't know him, so he might be worse than I think. I've heard him give speeches. I've watched how he governed before. He was a president before, after all. and you know i've actually seen how he conducted himself in the years he was not president since then so my impression is that he's he's got some convictions and he's he's trying to put them forward and fortunately they are agreeable with the constitution and you know if he had constant if he had convictions that were unconstitutional i'd be very concerned because he kind of moves moves like a bulldozer uh you know forward with his programs um But it seems to me, as far as I can tell, the main controversial features of his plans are quite in keeping with the Constitution, which is what the president's supposed to be. Now, some people, but he doesn't follow the Bible. Well, I don't know what he does in terms of following the Bible, but the job description of the president is not about following the Bible. I think everybody should follow the Bible, including the president. I don't know if we have any national leaders around the world who do follow the Bible, and I don't know that Trump does either. But the special job description of the president is to uphold the Constitution. which is something our previous president had no interest in doing. In fact, he allegedly added an amendment to the Constitution just as he was walking out the door, which, of course, a president can't do. That's unconstitutional itself. So, I mean, we've had a president for four years who had no interest in the Constitution, just his own agendas. Now, Trump has agendas, too. No question about that. But as near as I can tell, his main agenda is to restore Congress. a constitutional integrity to the government. He might have other agendas too, but as long as he does restore constitutional integrity, that's a positive. It'll be a net positive that he became president in that case. But we should pray that he will be able to do what's good and that he will fail if he has any plans that are evil, and that he'll be converted, and that he'll be kept safe from assassins, I would say. You know, I didn't specifically pray that for many presidents before, but But this one's had a couple of attempts on his life, and I don't think his assassins or would-be assassins have gone anywhere. I don't think they've gone away. So those are the ways I would pray for him. And, you know, inherent in the prayer that he would have wisdom is that he would know how to address situations like the one you described today. And, of course, presidents have to face those all the time. They face challenges, and they should be able to. I think he's up to it. But on the other hand... He doesn't always know the truth. He's not omniscient. So we should pray that God will give him wisdom in those situations. Thank you for your call. All right, we're going to talk next to Oscar in Napa, California. Oscar, welcome.
SPEAKER 02 :
Hey, Steve. Enjoy your ministry. I learned a lot from it. A lot of Hebrews. about Melchizedek. I heard some people say, I don't know if it's true or not, but some say he wasn't a human being. Was he a real man? Because they say he had no descendants, no mother or father. And I was just curious. Can you answer that for me?
SPEAKER 08 :
I think I can, but not everyone would agree with me. Melchizedek, appeared very briefly at the end of Genesis 14 and met with Abraham. And there's a very brief description of the transaction between them. And it's mysterious because he kind of appears out of nowhere. He's described as a priest of the Most High God and the King of Salem, which most scholars think refers to Jerusalem at the time. Now, remember, Jerusalem in Abraham's day, it was not a Jewish city. There were no Jews. Jerusalem was a pagan city, a Canaanite city in those days. So If he was the king of Jerusalem, he was ruling a pagan Canaanite people. Now, Jewish tradition holds that he was Shem, the last surviving son of Noah. And it is true that Shem, if you follow the chronology, Shem would still be alive at that time. So that would explain why Abraham died. would show such deference to Melchizedek if he was Shem, because Abram was descended from Shem. He is a Shemite or a Semite himself, as Jewish people today understand themselves to be also. So, you know, the Jews think he was Shem. Now, the author of Hebrews did not think that was a satisfying answer. He thought there were things about Melchizedek that would not apply to Shem. And I have to agree. I mean, it does say in Hebrews, he had no father, no mother, no beginning of days, nor end of life. Now, this would suggest he wasn't an ordinary man, that he was a divine being, almost like when an angel comes to earth, although I think it was more a theophany. You remember when Jacob wrestled with a man all night? The man just kind of showed up, wrestled all night, and then went away. The man presumably was God, at least that's how Jacob understood it, God in a human-type appearance to interact with Jacob. And I kind of think Melchizedek is like that, that he just kind of showed up that he is God. We might even say Christ, the Word, in his pre-incarnate state, coming in a human form to meet with Abraham and to bless him and to allow Abraham to interact with him face-to-face as if he was a human. Now, when God does that, and he does it several times in the Old Testament, although the Bible doesn't tell us in the Old Testament that Melchizedek is an example of this phenomenon, but there are other examples of that phenomenon in the Old Testament. I think Melchizedek probably is. because that would be the only case in which he's without father and without mother. and no beginning of days or end of life. Now, those who don't take this view, who think he's maybe Shem, or maybe that he's just some other guy who was a king of Salem at the time, and many commentators don't believe he's Christ, or don't believe he's God, they would say, well, when it says he had no father or mother, it just means his father and mother were not recorded. And when it says he had no beginning of days or end of life, it means his birth and death were not recorded. Well, that's hardly worth mentioning. Most of the people in the Bible who are named, their births and deaths are not recorded. In many cases, their parents are not recorded. But if it was Shem, his parentage is known. He's the son of Noah and Noah's wife. So we don't know the exact birthday to celebrate of his birth, but we do have record of his birth. Noah had three sons, it says. That means they were born. Shem, Ham, and Japheth. So If he was actually Shem, as the Jews believe, the writer of Hebrews wasn't buying it. Because even if he was saying he has no recorded parentage, well, that wouldn't be true of Shem. I don't believe he's saying there's no recorded parentage. He could have said that if he wanted to. And by the way, if it was Shem, I'm not sure why Moses, when he was writing Genesis, wouldn't just mention it was Shem. After all, Moses had recorded that Shem had been one of the sons of Noah who came out of the ark and that Shem was an ancestor of Abraham. That's all recorded in the Genesis. Why would he not refer to him as Shem? Why would he refer to him by a term that means king of righteousness? So I don't think we can easily get away from the fact that the writer of Hebrews was identifying Melchizedek as Christ himself. And I have a whole discussion about that. If you go to my lectures on Hebrews, Hebrews chapter 7, I go into this in great detail. And normally I could say you'd find that at our website, thenarrowpath.com. But as I said earlier, our website's kind of down for the moment, but you can go to theos.org. dot org slash medium and find those lectures and i do go in depth both in my lecture on genesis 14 and in my lecture on hebrews 7. i go into that in much more detail i appreciate your call brother all right thanks thanks for joining us all right we're going to talk next to james from fresno california james welcome
SPEAKER 04 :
Hey, Steve, thanks for taking my call. Just real quick, in regards to the website, I was just on there. I'm on an iPhone. Is it working? It was working, but I had to bypass the warning that Safari gave me saying that somebody was trying to impersonate the website. So I just click on Go Ahead and View Anyway and take the risk. And that way I was able to finish your book today, which was phenomenal, by the way.
SPEAKER 08 :
Which one is that, The Empire of the Rising Sun?
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, I just finished both books, and I've got to say, I've been waiting to read that for years. I just didn't know it was out there. I came across it recently, and man, I'm so impressed. I feel so blessed that I was able to read that. You explain things in a way that, like I said, I've just been waiting to hear for a long time. You did it in a way that you just take out all all the biased theology, all the denominationalism, and I really appreciate your honesty and your integrity in writing that. Thank you. In fact, I just finished it a couple hours ago, like I said, and I really just wanted to call and thank you. But I did have one question that's been bugging me for a long time, and I was hoping you could elaborate a little more. In the book, you said that the disciples prayed to the Father, and that we as disciples... should pray to the Father also. And I was just wondering if you could maybe get a little more in-depth on what's the difference in our prayer life when we pray to the Father, pray to Jesus, and how we include the Holy Spirit in that. And one more thing I just want to know, do you have any kind of curriculum about discipleship that I can share with my church, and maybe I might be able to lead, I might be able to borrow from you?
SPEAKER 08 :
I haven't prepared any curriculum, but the second book of the Empire of the Risen Sun, you know, book two?
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes.
SPEAKER 08 :
I intended that to be, you know, at least functional as a curriculum for discipleship. It definitely is. It's all about discipleship, and I think it's quite practical and goes into the weeds, even about, you know, application and so forth. So I I don't have it laid out as sort of a curriculum with lead questions and workbooks or anything like that. But I could see, and I'd certainly welcome anybody taking that material and developing it into a curriculum. You know, I would think that, you know, if someone wanted to, or I mean, they could, like I said, they could make a curriculum out of it. But if they didn't want to go to that trouble, they could just have a study group where they'd each read it. You know, they'd read a chapter of it each week and get together and discuss it and look up the scriptures in it and talk about it. You know, there's 40 chapters in those two books. So it'd make almost close to a year's curriculum. But I don't have anything prepared in the form of a curriculum. No, I'm sorry to say.
SPEAKER 04 :
Okay. Well, I'm so thankful that you have the book, at least. And I'll definitely use that.
SPEAKER 08 :
All right, brother.
SPEAKER 04 :
All right. Thank you, brother.
SPEAKER 08 :
Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes.
SPEAKER 08 :
I'll talk about the prayer. Thank you. Yeah. Jesus said that we should pray to the Father in his name. That is in Jesus' name. Now, the Bible also talks about us praying in the Holy Spirit. And praying in the Holy Spirit, I believe, means directed by the Holy Spirit and, you know, through empowered by the Holy Spirit. So, I mean, the Holy Spirit is living inside of us, so he's active in our prayers, at least he should be. We need to count on that to be so, that the Holy Spirit will be guiding us and directing us in our prayers, energizing our prayers, convicting us about what we need to pray about, and so forth. But our prayers, of course, are the actual utterances, the actual petitions we present. to God, external to us. The Holy Spirit is in us, but we're addressing God who's out there, just like Jesus did. Obviously the Father was in Christ, but Jesus spoke to the Father as someone external also. So praying to the Father is simply what Jesus taught us to do. He said, when you pray, say, Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be your name. Or Paul said, I bow my knee to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. in, I guess it's Ephesians chapter 3, you know, the apostles, when they prayed in Acts... chapter 4, when they addressed their prayer, they said, Lord, which could be Jesus or could be the Father, but as you read on what they said, they go on and speak to the Lord and say, for truly against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed. So they refer to Jesus as the holy servant of the one they're speaking to, which of course would be the Father. So we find, you know, prayers to the Father just as Jesus instructed us to pray to the Father. Now, prayer in Jesus' name, many people don't understand what that means, but that simply means praying to the Father with the authorization and access that Christ's name grants us. You know, it's like if there's a, you know, a card slot to enter into the throne room, and you've got Christ's access card, you know, you're authorized, as long as you got it legitimately. You know, you've got authorization to come in. And that's what the name of Jesus is. Jesus is our authorization to come before the Father as if we were him. And, of course, with that authorization comes the obligation to pray in his interest for In other words, Jesus doesn't just give us an Aladdin's lamp and says, listen, say Jesus, and that's like rubbing the lamp, and then whatever comes out, your wish is our command, God's command. No, when you act in someone else's name, you're acting on their behalf. You're acting as their agent. You're doing what they would do. And with their authorization to do it. So praying is that way, too. When you pray in Jesus' name, you're going to the Father, authorized by Christ, to go as if you were him. And to pray such prayers as he would be inclined to pray, according to his will. And that's what prayer in Jesus' name means. But it's the Father we're praying to. Now, some people say, well, is it okay if I pray to Jesus or pray to the Holy Spirit? Well, I'll just tell you. Prayer, technically, is presenting petitions to God. And Jesus said, present your petitions to the Father. That doesn't mean you can't speak to Jesus or even to the Holy Spirit. But I think we've tended to use the word prayer to be kind of an umbrella term for every time we say anything to God, that's part of our prayer life. Well, prayer is part of our relationship with God. But there are other parts of our relationship with God, too. are thanksgiving, worship, praise. Those aren't exactly the same thing as prayer, but they are presented to God just as petitions are. So prayer and praise and thanksgiving are all parts of our relationship with God. Now, Jesus made it very clear when we present our petitions, we should present them to the Father. And that's what the apostles did when they prayed. They put presented petitions to the Father. That doesn't mean you can't praise Jesus or that you can't even just, as far as I'm concerned, converse with him. I find it very natural to converse both with Jesus and with God and, you know, in my life. So there's nothing wrong, I think, at least the Bible doesn't say there's anything wrong with speaking to Jesus or even to the Holy Spirit, though I don't know of any case of that being done. The thing is, It's not wrong. I mean, we have a relationship with God. We have with the Father and with the Son and with the Holy Spirit. It's just that the Father is the one that Jesus tells us to bring our requests to. Because it's the Father who will grant them. And he'll grant them because we're praying as agents of Christ, authorized by Christ, presenting the prayers that Christ himself would approve of being prayed and that he himself would pray. So that's what it means to pray to the Father in Jesus' name. I appreciate you asking. Let's talk to Tim from Marietta, Georgia. Tim, welcome.
SPEAKER 01 :
Hi. Good afternoon, Steve Gregg. I hope you're doing well. So I had a quick question. I have a grandfather who's about in his late 80s and his son or my uncle who is in his late 50s. you could say converted maybe a decade ago to Islam, even though my grandfather raised all of his kids in a Christian upbringing, but maybe he was not faithfully secure. But recently, my uncle, when he visits my grandfather, he would bring his mat and demand to pray, or choose to pray in my grandfather's house, and in one of the rooms, not like within the presence of my grandfather, but in a room within his house. And I was just wondering if, you know, what steps, whether that's, whether my grandfather has the ability to communicate to him that he's not able to pray in the house, or what steps he should take as a Christian man. Because I know in Deuteronomy 7, they talk about not worshiping or not encouraging the worship of idols, but I'm wondering if that's a plus to that situation.
SPEAKER 08 :
Right. Well, first of all, your grandfather has every right to forbid any activity in his house that he doesn't want happening there. It is his domain. It's just like he could forbid someone from bringing their girlfriend over and sleeping with them when they're a guest in his house. It's his home. He can maintain it and its sanctity however he sees fit. Different people have had different opinions. Different Christians have had different opinions exactly about the identity of Allah. I personally would not feel comfortable having anyone praying to Allah in my house because I don't believe that that's necessarily acceptable to God. Some people have seen things a bit differently than that. But I think that if your grandfather has objection to it as a Christian, He should just tell, is it your cousin I think you're talking about? You should tell him that he, you know, he can't do that there. I mean, if he wants to pray outside on the lawn, you know, or out in the car or whatever, he could do that. But he doesn't want that happening under his roof. Now, some might feel it's unkind or unfair, but once again, A person has to go by their own convictions. You know, I mean, some people would not allow statues in their home, even if they're not in any sense being worshipped. But they might say, well, this is this, you know, we got this from, you know, some African tribe or something. We don't know. They might have worshipped it. So I don't want it in my home. I mean, a person would have every right to do that. Although, I mean, I also think that'd be up to them because I'm not so sure that a statue, you know, is itself an idol unless someone's worshipping it. So anyway, that'd be simply a matter of conviction. I think your grandfather's convictions about that should be honored by anyone who comes into his home. I'm not saying what his conviction should necessarily be about it, simply because I'm aware of more than one Christian way to look at this whole issue of Allah. You know, the Athenians were worshipping a god they didn't know. They had an altar to the unknown god. And when Paul saw it, he said, I saw a lot of false gods, a lot of idols in your city, but there was also an idol to one you call the unknown God. And I'm here to tell you about him, this one that you worship ignorantly. I'm here to tell you who he is. In other words, he considered that the Athenians may well have been worshiping the true God, but didn't know him and needed to know him. And so it's possible that some Muslims are worshiping the true God, but they don't know him properly. They don't have accurate knowledge of him. So, I mean, that's one way that some have understood it. I'm not pushing one way or the other of seeing this. But, yeah, I'd just say your grandfather should make his own decision according to his conscience about that. Oh, I'm sorry, we're out of time. I'd like to tell you, you can donate at the website, but I'm not sure you can get there. So if you wish to donate to help us stay on the air, you can write to The Narrow Path, P.O. Box 1730, Temecula, California, 92593. And our website is thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for joining us. Let's talk tomorrow.
Join us as we unravel the profound yet often misunderstood concept of the 'old man' in Christian theology. By examining Paul’s teachings in Romans, we uncover the distinction between our natural humanity and the spiritual life offered through faith in Christ. This episode challenges common misconceptions and emphasizes the freedom and common sense that comes with understanding the sacrifice of Jesus as our divine representative.
SPEAKER 01 :
So here we are in Romans chapter 6, and we're at verse 6, where Paul says, Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin. Now, this is very interesting. It's strange as well. And, you know, I'm not sure how I can explain it to you, but I see the book of Romans in a very different way now from how I saw it when I first started teaching this book decades ago. I still saw the gospel in it decades ago, but I see it with a difference now. You see, I thought Paul was simply talking atomistically, shall I say, and that is his own personal experience. And he was simply talking about his having been, let's see, how does it say, that his old man had been crucified with Christ. What I didn't understand then, and I do now, I think, is that Paul is talking about the whole of humanity. Paul is talking about humanity in a personal way so that we get it personally, but it applies to all humanity. Well, let's go on, and then we'll perhaps see that more. Knowing this... What do we know? That's what you and I have to ask ourselves as Christians. Because, you see, we live in a fallen world, and we are part of that fallen world. We have a broken-down human nature, a sinful human nature. a nature that is corrupted. And so the inclination of our hearts and our minds is downward. It's towards sin. It's towards misery. It's towards evil, towards other people and to ourselves and before God, because we are in a state of suppression, as Paul says in chapter 1 of Romans verse 18. But now we've seen Jesus Christ. Christ has revealed himself to us. God sent his Son to reveal himself to the world and to reveal the Father to the world through his Son. And so something has happened to some of us, not all of us at this point. You see, Paul is talking with two voices. He is reminding us that as one man brought sin and death into the world, Adam, so one man brings righteousness and life to the world, Christ. As one man brings about death to everyone, so one man brings life to everyone. That's the good news that we're looking at here, you see. So, in general terms, he's talking about all the world, but then he gets specific about himself and about Christians who know something. What is it we know? That our old man was crucified with him. Now, what is this old man? Well, it's our human nature. It's the whole of us. It is this humanity that is all broken down, that goes in the wrong direction when we want it to go in another direction. This humanity... that would not naturally lift its heart up to God, but naturally go down into the ways of Satan, that humanity of ours, that's what we are, was crucified with him. Well, you say, that sounds weird, ridiculous. I wasn't there even. We're talking about 2,000 years ago at the cross. How could I be crucified with him? And this is where you have to understand the background that Paul is talking about Jesus as a representative for the whole of humanity. Now look, we have recently seen, or today, we have seen the inauguration of a new president. That president represents now the country. Whether we like him or not, that's not the issue. I'm not being political here. I'm simply saying that a person represents the whole. Many, many times we know this. You may have a favorite football team, and you say, we won. And you say, we? Well, we weren't on the football field, were we? But we won because our team represented us. This is what it means when we talk about Jesus as being the representative. What Jesus did for the world was to take the judgment of the world upon himself. And that means that you and I, by faith, are no longer under that judgment. It's as if our natural humanity had already been executed. You see, Jesus' death was not simply the death of a natural death. Obviously it wasn't. It was a crucifixion. But it was an execution. It was an execution for crime. We are the criminals. We are the ones who have suppressed the image of God in us, and we have gone our own way and followed idols, and ultimately that means the dehumanization of every human being. That's what our problem is, and that's what our old man is. That old man then is now counted as if it had been executed because Jesus, the representative of the human race, the sort of spiritual president of all humanity, was executed on our behalf. Now there are some people who turn this into insanity, because what they do is to say, oh well, there's an old man and there's a new man in me, and the old man now is crucified. Well, it's supposed to be anyway, they say, but I haven't succeeded in crucifying it yet, but if I keep working at it, I'll be able to finally kill it off. and they go into all kinds of spiritual insanity. This is what I call religious neurosis. And they try to kill off their old man. And they go on fasts, and they go into rituals, and they go into extensive meditation. And what they're trying to do is eliminate that old man that exists in them. You can see, can't you, how absolutely erroneous that is. Paul is not talking about an old man in us, like a part of us, while we have the new man also in us, that other part. He's not talking about a divided humanity. The old man is our human nature, our humanity. and it is crucified, but not in itself. It is crucified in Christ who represents us before the Father. So this, you see, is Paul identifying by faith with Jesus Christ. This is one of the most amazing and intimate verses you will find anywhere in the Bible. Because this is Paul feeling or knowing that he is so close to Jesus, rather more accurately, Jesus is so close to him that Jesus is identifying with Paul. Now look, you and I need to say, Jesus is identifying with me. I'm not simply identifying with Jesus, because that would be an eternity's work, and I may not be able to do it in this world totally, and I certainly will not be able to do it to identify totally with him. There are people who try to do this. There are crazy people in the Philippines, for instance, I mentioned this the other day, who actually get on a cross and nail themselves to it during the Easter season. It's insanity. It is utterly false religion. They try to identify with Jesus. The faith life is that Jesus identifies with me. You say, well, Colin, how could he identify with me? I'm a sinner. But that's precisely the point. That's why he died. He died a sinner. And this gives you and me the courage to go forward. We are faced every day with our utter corruption. Well, if you're in reality, you're faced with your corruption. If you're in delusion, you think you're an angel about to go to heaven if you don't overshoot. But the truth is, that Jesus has said, I know how messed up you are, Colin, and I am going to identify with you and take all the judgment that you deserve, and I'm going to take it upon myself. And that is how and why Jesus died on the cross. So you and I, on a daily basis, lift up our heart before God and we say, Jesus, thank you so much for identifying with me to the extent that you took my judgment. Thank you that I'm free from judgment, even though I'm a sinner still. You see then, that your old man that is crucified with him, that's not a psychological reality, because if you think it is that, then you're going to go into this religious neurosis where you're trying to spiritually kill yourself. and it is absolutely sick. Don't try it. But when you, by faith, lift up your heart, and you say, oh Jesus, thank you so much, that the burden of guilt, the sense of judgment that I feel I should take, is not upon me anymore. You took it. And as you speak this way to God, you begin to experience a freedom in your spirit that enables you to move forward with some common sense. You understand what I mean by common sense. Common sense only comes to people of faith because men and women without faith are ridden with guilt and shame. And if you're ridden with guilt and shame, you can never think in a common sense way. You're always evaluating the world and how you look before people and how other people look before you with loads of guilt and shame. You're thinking, how do I look? What do they think of me? Whatever will they think of me if they knew what I do? Or you are evaluating them. They're no good. They're stupid. They're useless. And you're contemptuous of other people because guilt and shame are floating around in your mind and heart, and you're evaluating yourself that way, and so you have no common sense at all. But when it comes to faith, we then can look at ourselves and say, I know I'm a sinner, but my Savior Jesus has taken my judgment. And so my old man, the natural humanity that I am in, is finished. It's condemned, and it has been executed. Now, you notice that Paul uses the word old man. Don't use the word old in the sense of time. Well, that was my old man a year ago when I was converted, but now I no longer have an old man because I'm converted. No, the old man is simply your natural humanity in one way of looking at it, in one sphere of existence. But you are now resurrected with Christ. And so you have a new humanity. And that humanity is the way you look at things through the eyes of Jesus Christ. So don't get bowled over by false teaching about, I was this years ago, but now I'm this now. Rather, I'm in myself, an old man, but that's not reckoned against me anymore because I'm crucified in him. And now I'm in Christ, and I have a new humanity. Thanks for listening today. Colin Cook here. You can hear this program on your smartphone any time of the day or night. Simply download a free app, soundcloud.com or podbean.com and key in how it happens with Colin Cook when you get there. Thanks so much for all your support and I'll see you next time. Cheerio and God bless.
Join us on a reflective journey through Job chapters 25 and 26 where Bildad questions the righteousness of man before the divine presence of God. Witness Job's magnificent recognition of God's unsearchable majesty. Delve into personal insights from years of Bible reading, exploring the timeless questions of purity and the humility in understanding God's omnipotence.
Welcome to Add Bible, an audio daily devotion from the Ezra Project. Alan J. Huth shares a Bible passage with comments from over 35 years of his personal Bible reading journals and applies the Word of God to our daily lives.
Today we come upon Job chapter 25 and 26. We haven't heard from Bildad in a while, so he has something to say about Job concerning righteousness. Then Job gives us his reply that God's majesty is unsearchable. So let's listen to Bildad in chapter 25 and Job in chapter 26. Job 25
Then Bildad the Shuhite answered and said, "'Dominion and fear are with God.
He makes peace in His high heaven. Is there any number to His armies? Upon whom does His light not arise? How then can man be in the right before God? How can he who was born of woman be pure?' Behold, even the moon is not bright, and the stars are not pure in his eyes. How much less man who is a maggot, and the son of man who is a worm!
Job 26 Then Job answered and said, How you have helped him who has no power!
How you have saved the arm that has no strength! How you have counseled him who has no wisdom, and plentifully declared sound knowledge! With whose help have you uttered words, and with whose breath has come out from you? The dead tremble under the waters and their inhabitants. Sheol is naked before God, and Abaddon has no covering. He stretches out the north over the void, and hangs the earth on nothing. He binds up the waters in his thick clouds, and the cloud is not split open under them. He covers the face of the full moon and spreads over it his cloud. He has inscribed a circle on the face of the waters at the boundary between light and darkness. The pillars of heaven tremble and are astounded at his rebuke. By his power he stilled the sea. By his understanding he shattered Rahab. By his wind the heavens were made fair. His hand pierced the fleeing serpent. Behold, these are but the outskirts of his ways, and how small a whisper do we hear of him. But the thunder of his power, who can understand?
In 1984, I read Job chapters 24 through 28 on the same day. And concerning chapter 25, I wrote, How can a man be right before God? In 1997, I read Job 22 through 28 on the same day, and part of my journal entry is, Man cannot figure out God or His ways, yet we try in our limited wisdom to do so. And in 2015, I read Job 24 and 25 on one day, and 26 and 27 on the next day. Concerning chapter 25, I wrote, Bildad reminds us that none are pure before God. True. True. None righteous. No, not one. Concerning chapter 26, I wrote, Though his friends speak, Job is unsure they are hearing from God. And I was referencing verse 4 of chapter 26. Job offers some amazing science as he credits God with hanging the earth on nothing. 26, verse 7. He credits God with so much that his majesty is not understandable by men.
26, 14.
Let's take a look at Job 25 and 26. In chapter 25, Bildad speaks. Verse 4 is the key to this short chapter. He says, "...how then can man be in the right before God? How can he who is born of woman be pure?" I'd like to refer to my English Standard Version Study Bible footnote concerning this question. My footnote says this question is repeated several times throughout the dialogue between Job and his friends in slightly different forms. It is asked originally by Eliphaz, recast and used by Job in his second speech, repeated and reinforced by Eliphaz, and returned to again here by Bildad in the final speech of the friends. So let's go back and see where this question has already appeared in our study of the book of Job. It was first raised in chapter 4, verse 17 by Eliphaz. That time it was phrased this way. Can mortal man be in the right before God? Can a man be pure before his maker? Next, Job refers to this thought in chapter 9, verse 2. He says it this way, Truly I know that it is so, but how can a man be in the right before God? Eliphaz again repeats this thought in chapter 15, verse 14. He says it this way, What is man that he can be pure, or he who is born of a woman that he can be righteous? And that brings us here to chapter 25, where Bildad states it this way, How then can man be in the right before God? How can he who is born of a woman be pure? However the question is cast, the answer is the same. Man cannot be righteous before God. We have a sinful nature. God is holy. That is the great divide bridged by the cross of Jesus. If you expect to stand before God in your purity or your righteousness, you will fail. Good is not good enough before a holy God. These questions in their various forms remind us of this. But praise God, there is an answer. It's in the New Testament. Jesus bridges the gap between sinful people and a holy God. My prayer as we go through Ad Bible is that you understand this concept. It is vital to your eternity. Jesus says in John 14, 6, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. That's not religion. That's not theology. That's the words of Jesus himself. I pray you've made such a decision to accept Jesus as your Savior, allowing him to bridge the gap between your sinful nature and the holiness of our Almighty God. Now let's look at chapter 26, where Job declares the majesty of this Almighty God. let's begin with verse seven he stretches out the north over the void and hangs the earth on nothing he binds up the waters in his thick clouds and the cloud is not split open under them he covers the face of the full moon and spreads over it his cloud he has inscribed a circle on the face of the waters at the boundary between light and darkness The pillars of heaven tremble and are astounded at his rebuke. By his power he stilled the sea, by his understanding he shattered Rahab. By his wind the heavens were made fair, his hand pierced the fleeing serpent. Behold, these are but the outskirts of his ways, and how small a whisper do we hear of him, but the thunder of his power, who can understand? Yes, God's majesty is unsearchable. That's why man cannot stand before a God like this. Father, we thank you that in our humanity, we try to understand you, but we cannot. Your majesty is unsearchable. It is unfathomable to the human mind. So often we are guilty of putting you in a small box. It's our attempt to somehow grasp who you are, to understand your attributes. Forgive us, Lord. Thanks for reminding us in Job chapter 26. that you are majestic, you are glorious, you are holy. Thank you for reaching down from your heavenly throne and providing Jesus, your Son, to bridge the gap between sinful humanity and you, a holy, majestic God. What a gift. We accept it. In Jesus' name, amen. Thanks for listening to AdBible today. You know, sometimes we need a plumb line, a true north, a solid basis of truth to live life. We're not going to find it in the media or in social media or Google or your friends, but it is available right at your fingertips. Pilate asked Jesus in John 18, 38, what is truth? The chapter before, Jesus had answered the question in his prayer to God for his disciples. In the 17th verse, Jesus pleads with the Father, Sanctify them in the truth. Thy word is truth. So what would it be like if everyone, everywhere, read the Bible every day? Wow, it might be heaven on earth. What would it be like if every Christian read the Bible every day? Would we be better ambassadors for Christ? What would it be like if everyone in your community read the Bible every day? Would we have greater impact in our communities? And what would it be like if you personally read the Bible every day? Could you use a closer walk with Jesus? Could you use a light unto your path and a lamp unto your feet to walk through this life? Could you use a spiritual power surge in your life? Matthew 22, 29, Jesus speaking to the Sadducees said, You are mistaken not understanding the scriptures or the power of God. Yes, the scriptures can give us power to live this life. So I'm going to give you three easy action steps to make the Bible worth your time each and every day. Number one, commit to daily Bible reading. Commit to seek God and His Word daily, every day. And if you miss a day, start again the next day. Change your belief about God's Word to behavior in God's Word. Use any of our Ezra Project resources to help you. Visit EzraProject.net to get an Ezra Project Bible reading journal or one of our day-by-day through the Bible books. Commit today and visit EzraProject.net for easy-to-use resources for your daily time in God's Word. Number two, be intentional. Decide what you want out of your Bible reading. I got to visit the headquarters of Back to the Bible once in Lincoln, Nebraska, and in one hallway down one side, they had scribbled all the reasons people say they don't read the Bible. On the other side were all the reasons people do read the Bible. And I want to give you some of those to encourage you. On that wall, it said, God wants me to. Yes, God wants you to read the Bible. Do you want to meet with Him daily? Because He'll meet with you every day through His Word. Number two, it changes me. Where could you be in one year with more Bible reading in your life? Number three, it improves my outlook on life. Yeah, turn out the bad news and saturate yourself with good news from the Word of God. Number four, it keeps me grounded. Yes, when the storms of life come, and they will, can you stand? Yes, you'll stand better and more solid because you're in the Word of God. Next, it keeps my heart soft. Yeah, Nehemiah 8, when people heard the Word, they wept and they worshipped. You will do the same as the Word softens your heart. Lastly, on the wall, it said, it keeps my daily focus on God. Yeah, that's a great reason to read the Bible. You'll gain the spiritual power to live life in our secular world. And then thirdly and lastly, feed your soul. Let God minister to your soul. Hebrews 4.12 says the Word of God pierces between your soul and your spirit, between joints and marrow, and is the discerner of the thoughts and intents of your heart. Nothing else goes that deep. I don't know where the place is between my soul and my spirit, but I want to put the Word of God there each and every day of my life. I hope you do too. God bless you as you spend time in God's Word.
Join Roger Marsh in an enlightening conversation with Gary Bauer on Family Talk, as they unpack the current political climate following the Inauguration Day of 2025. Amidst a new presidential term and changing policies, the dialogue flows around maintaining Christian principles while engaging in today's societal debates. Reflecting on the previous administration, they analyze how political decisions affect cultural values and discuss the necessary involvement of faith communities in shaping moral standards.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, hello, everyone. I'm James Dobson, and you're listening to Family Talk, a listener-supported ministry. In fact, thank you so much for being part of that support for James Dobson Family Institute.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, welcome to Family Talk, the broadcast ministry of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute. I'm Roger Marsh, and today here on the program, a very, very special installment of Family Talk. Today is Inauguration Day 2025, and who better than to join me in studio to have a conversation about what we're anticipating with a brand new presidential administration than Gary Bauer. Gary is our Senior Vice President of Public Policy here at the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute and And he knows, he's been around Washington a little bit. He knows a little bit about what happens on Capitol Hill. Gary, Happy New Year and welcome back to the broadcast.
SPEAKER 02 :
Thank you, Roger. It's an exciting day in Washington, D.C. You know, this is one of the little things that happens every four years here. We inaugurate a president, but this year seems particularly profound. And it's also historic, as you know, because we're inaugurating a president who was Wow, wow. We've already made some history today. Yeah.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, I love the fact that we do have this history. It does seem like the Trump administration is now going into its third term because the last four years were somewhat tumultuous. I think first and foremost, we are giving glory to God, not because we here at the JDFI were backing any particular candidate, but I know the work that you did and Dr. Dobson did and we did with our Countdown to Decision 2024 program. The whole name of the game there was to encourage people to vote biblically, if you're a Christian, especially to vote for your biblical values. But secondly, to get Christians who typically sit on their hands to get engaged. And I think we saw a huge turnout of people who ordinarily don't engage get engaged.
SPEAKER 02 :
You're absolutely right, Roger. This is something that's been dear to the heart of Dr. Dobbs in his entire career. He and I, over the years, over the decades, have been complaining about Christians not being good Christian citizens. It seems like for about 100 years we've been complaining about that. But in fact, in recent years, and particularly in this last election, there has been a more encouraging turnout. of men and women that believe the Bible and believe that our liberty comes from God, not from government. And they made a difference. And, of course, it needs to be mentioned. You know this, Roger, but I know a lot of Christians are still confused about it. We hear over and over again from people that say, look, I'm just going to go to church on Sunday. I'm going to worship God. I'm going to leave all that noise outside of the church. It has nothing to do with me. Well, that's really flawed thinking. This is a country whose founders believed that it could only exist, it could only survive if the population were moral people. Everything they built was was based on that idea. It's also a country that has sent more missionaries around the world to bring the good news about our Savior Jesus Christ than any country in the history of the world. So America is deeply intertwined with our Christian faith. So that means today on Inauguration Day, the battle really begins in a very profound way. And one of the things we want to do at JDFI is keep people informed and let them know when they're going to need to weigh in on legislation that's pending or something that the president is or isn't doing as we deal with these great issues that will determine the future of our country.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, you know, it's interesting, Gary, because I appreciate the position that you have with us here at the JDFI as the senior vice president of public policy, because a lot of people don't realize. They think, well, that's politics and those are laws and that's not my lane, if you will. And realizing that as Christians, that's absolutely something that we should be concerned with. The policy decisions that are made by an administration have huge ramifications in the culture. And then this year, we also launched, brought in Dr. Owen Strand as our senior director of the Dobson Culture Center to help us understand the policies, kind of set the agenda for what the administration is going to do. And then the cultural impact causes us as believers to head back to Scripture and say, wait, is this forcing me to compromise my values or not? Maybe one of the black eyes, if you will, of the Biden administration has been the fact that they have sought so aggressively to to seek out ways to basically undermine biblical and traditional values that, beyond the fact that they're an offense to God, but they really do bring havoc in society. Talk about, from your vantage point, what we've seen over the past four years and why Donald Trump being in the White House means we're going to see a shift in those policies.
SPEAKER 02 :
It's a great question, Roger. And I think all of us here at JDFI, we get a little nervous. Maybe that's not the right word, but we don't want to come across as being political partisans or tied to one political party or whatever. But there is a certain reality in American political life and public life right now. And one of the ways we've addressed this is to look at the platforms of the two parties. And nobody in the Democrat Party is going to disagree with what I'm getting ready to say. The Democrat Party platform is all in on abortion on demand, to give you just one example. And it's all in on the political demands of the LGBTQ community or special interest group, however you want to refer to it. And because of that, the Biden years have been four years where our religious liberty, our rights of conscience, have been under constant attack. It's not just that the president promoted abortion and promoted LGBTQ issues. President Biden did that at the expense of our right to not be involved in those things. That's good. So, in fact, right now we're part of a lawsuit against the outgoing Biden administration over regulations they issued to try to make Christian ministries and Christian businesses – violate our conscience by promoting abortion or paying for abortions or promoting LGBTQ issues or being implicated in the whole transgender movement and all that's going on with that that threatens our children. All that ends, all those things that were coming out of Washington, all that ends today on Inauguration Day.
SPEAKER 01 :
Amen. You know, Gary, you brought up an excellent point in the fact that there are a lot of people who don't see the interrelativity, if you will, the interconnectivity of the things that the previous administration, the outgoing one, thank the Lord that we've survived four years of that. But isn't that a testament to the great American system that we have here, Gary Bauer? I mean, let's face it. There are a lot of people every four years who say, I'm so glad that person's not president anymore. Other people who say, thank the Lord they are. But the system still works. I mean, it really does. It's a testament to the Constitution and to God's hand of providence on our nation that even a fascist dictatorial type and maybe fascist is a bit too strong. But the Biden administration really did have those tendencies in terms of saying, look, we're going to push abortion rights. We're going to push transgender ideologies at the expense of religious liberty. I mean, if it weren't a zero sum game like that. There's no way you can do one without the other, and yet they keep saying, no, no, no, everybody can be accepted. Everybody's welcome. But as you duly noted, that's a place where Christians have to stand in the gap and say, wait a minute, not only is that not morally right, it's also unconstitutional.
SPEAKER 02 :
That's a great summary, Roger. You know, to stay on the LGBTQ part of this, and I don't know if any new letters have been added since our show began, it seems to be a growing phenomena. But early on in that movement, the appeal that it made to the American public and, quite frankly, to Christians was – look, we know you don't agree with us, but we're not asking you to marry somebody of the same sex. We're not asking you to have an abortion. We're just saying, let us live our lives the way we want to. If we love someone, who are you to question our love? And that was a very effective argument. And I think, quite frankly, there's a lot of evidence that particularly younger Christians believe Found it persuasive and said, well, yeah, why are you being so mean-spirited and not letting those people have the same rights that we do? Well, now that that movement got traction, the LGBTQ movement got traction, it was no longer a live and let live movement. It was an iron fist movement. You will participate and bake cakes for our weddings. Right, right. And all the rest of it, you will not preach about this in your churches or we will sue you for denying us our constitutional rights. So it's been very, I think, instructive to see the live and let live argument really doesn't play out. And there's no society that's neutral. Right. Every society will have a set of things that it admires, that it looks up to, that it wants to teach its children to follow and to be committed to. And it will have a series of things, of ideas and ways of living that that society will say, no, don't do that. That is not right. That is wrong. Somebody always wins in a society. in our society over these sorts of things. And thank God for JDFI, and thank God for Dr. Dobson's voice over the decades, because we have said that the things to look up to here in America are faith, family, and freedom. That's what the country was built on, and that's what we remain committed to following and to defending.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, today here on Inauguration Day, Gary Bauer is with us here in studio on Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk. I'm Roger Marsh, and we're talking about what this new administration, we used to call President Trump President 45, now he's also President 47, which is kind of interesting, hasn't happened in this country in well over 100 years. But as I was just thinking, Gary, of the image as Donald Trump placing his hand, left hand on the Bible, right hand in the air to take the oath of office, I could hear the border closing. You know, I could hear the gates, the doors shutting up. And not only that, but I could hear Homeland Security under the capable direction of former South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem coming in and saying, OK, we're shutting things down now. That open border issue, I think that's a hand that the Democrat Party horribly overplayed in the election as kind of downplaying the fact that, well, it's really not that important to American families. And yet the open border has put so many families at risk. So many communities are being overwhelmed. We think about right even here in Colorado, you know, I mean, the gang activity moving into taking over apartment complexes and things of that nature. A lot of Christians are going to say, but Gary, you know what, though? It's not right. People are coming here. And they need a place to flee their homeland and they need a safe place to land. Why is it good and godly for us to close the borders and have not keep people out necessarily, but have a better way of filtering those who come in?
SPEAKER 02 :
Roger, you're absolutely right. This is another one of those issues that there's been division in the church about. Although when you do polling on it, Americans overwhelmingly are against what they watched the last four years. And that goes for men and women of faith, men and women who are in church every Sunday. Just their common sense told them you can't have 8, 10, 12 million people walk into America without having a profound impact on the country. And now some of it might be a positive impact, but a lot of it is a very negative impact. If a good person can walk across the border and now go wherever they want and never leave, even if a court demands that they leave, well, then what would stop a bad person from walking across the border?
SPEAKER 01 :
Exactly.
SPEAKER 02 :
Or a terrorist from walking across the border. And in fact, we know that that has happened. And the reason we know it is that American citizens – The people that our government has the first responsibility to defend and protect have been raped and killed and robbed. That's unacceptable. There's nothing Christian about that. I will often hear someone, usually a progressive, self-identified progressive in the church, who thinks that the argument is over if that person simply says, Jesus loves migrants. Well, Jesus loves all human beings. He sent his son to die for our salvation as the perfect lamb. The fact that Jesus loves men and women that he created does not in any way settle the argument about what a nation's border policy should be. Jesus loves taxpayers. Jesus loves American citizens. So you've got to bring a more— well-thought-out moral mindset to deal with these sorts of issues.
SPEAKER 01 :
I remember one theologian one night, the guy was trying to do the open border thing with him, and his response was, well, do you lock your door before you go to bed?
SPEAKER 02 :
Exactly right, yes.
SPEAKER 01 :
I mean, of course we do. So that's the thing, and last time I checked too, heaven does have a gate and does have a narrow way in, and there is a way that people can get in, but there's also... provisions for keeping people out. That's a godly principle.
SPEAKER 02 :
You know, there's a half million children we shouldn't forget about. That's the number of children during the Biden years that crossed our border, many of them unaccompanied by an adult. And those children were given to other adults in the United States that claimed they were a relative or claimed that they were somebody that there had been a prearrangement made with the family in the home country. child comes from to take care of that child. And we found out in the closing months of the Biden administration that we were no longer able to locate the great majority of those children. There is absolutely no doubt that some of those children are being abused. They've been trafficked. Others are no doubt working in sweatshop factories as illegal minor workers for businesses that are off the grid. So this is a human tragedy. No country can legitimately allow something like that to happen, and yet that's exactly what happened over the last four years. And I know that the Trump administration – has said all during the transition period, they're going to do everything they can to find those children and rescue them wherever they are. That is something that Jesus would be smiling about.
SPEAKER 01 :
Amen. Well, we're smiling about it here at Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk in the JDFI. Gary Bauer is our Senior Vice President of Public Policy. He's the host of the Defending Faith, Family, and Freedom podcast and a regular contributor, of course. to the Family Talk program. And today here on Inauguration Day, Gary, also having served in the Reagan White House for many years, and also you served President Trump in a capacity. I didn't want to make you a cabinet member or anything like that at that point if it wasn't more to give you that promotion. But you served the last couple of years of his first term working in an area that I know a lot of people think is kind of an anomaly. Donald Trump and religious liberty, especially as it pertains to Christians, And yet he's got to look at all his foreign policy decisions. Look at the Christians that he's picked to cabinet posts and ambassadorships and things of that nature. It's a very exciting time for Americans, again, to see men and women of faith put in these positions.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes. Well, it's an old saying in Washington that personnel is policy. A president brings six, seven, 8,000 people with him to all these posts. There are Christians everywhere. all over the Trump administration. There wasn't his first term. You mentioned the assignment I had. It was not a paid assignment, but he nominated me to be one of the nine members of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. And our job was to look at every nation in the world and rate them on whether they were allowing the citizens of their country to enjoy the most fundamental right that all human beings should have, which is to seek God and worship God as they see fit. And President Trump was very committed to that issue, remains committed to it.
SPEAKER 01 :
Did I read this correctly, Gary? There's a new faith office that's going to be coming in as part of the Trump 47 administration? Yes.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes, there is going to be a faith office. Now, he had an office in the administration in his first term, and it was very effective. But it still had to deal with bureaucracy and so forth, like all these departments and commissions and agencies do. This faith office is going to report directly to the president. And there's going to be an individual in each government cabinet agency that is part of that faith office and will represent it in each of those agencies around Washington, D.C. For years, Donald Trump has had a faith advisory board— He had that in his first term, and Dr. Dobson is a member of that faith advisory board, continues to be a member of it today. And it will this time report directly to the president, this faith office. So I think it's another example of how seriously Donald Trump is committed to religious liberty. One other thing on this, Roger, that I think a lot of Christians forget – Religious liberty right now at the Supreme Court is in a stronger position than it's been in in 50 years. And the reason for that is that in his first term, Donald Trump had three Supreme Court vacancies that he was able to fill. And that gave us, depending on the issue, somewhere between a five or six vote margin. majority on the Supreme Court in defense of religious liberty. We don't know what's going to happen in the next four years. I believe there could be another vacancy of another one of the liberal justices. And if that happens, I have no doubt that Donald Trump will appoint somebody that is committed to the First Amendment. and its guarantee of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, what we call the first freedoms that are part of our Constitution.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, it's an exciting time. It's an exciting day, Inauguration Day 2025. We've been having this conversation with Gary Bauer, who's the Senior Vice President of Public Policy here at the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute, former Undersecretary of Education, and served on the advisory board for the—I always get the lettering wrong—the
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, it's USURF is the alphabet name, but it's U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom. And by the way, Roger, the most persecuted group in the world, we found at the commission, and this won't surprise anybody, are followers of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER 01 :
It's come to that point. So this is the world we live in. For such a time as this, we are very hopeful and anticipating that the next four years are going to be years of not necessarily just easy-feasy for Christians, but rather to see the biblical worldview carried out from the highest level of government here in the United States. Gary, thank you for handicapping that with us. Would you take the final moments of our time together and just offer a prayer for the incoming administration, for our nation, and also for maybe believers who are kind of scratching their heads saying, wait a minute, why would God put this man? As our president, how is that a good thing from God, if you would be so kind?
SPEAKER 02 :
Of course, Roger. Well, Father God, we just thank you for the incredible blessing we received when you allowed us to be born or to immigrate legally to the United States of America. Of all the places in the world that someone could be born in, to be born here is an unbelievable blessing. This is a nation built on the idea that liberty comes from you. You weren't surprised by the fact that we were born in America. You knew exactly where we were going to be born. And so because of this gift you gave us, Father God, we have an obligation to preserve it, to take care of it, to protect it. Otherwise, we would be ingrates. Nobody would want to abuse or ignore a wonderful gift given to them. And you've given us this gift to be citizens in the United States. So thank you for that blessing. Give us the courage as Christian citizens to speak up for our faith and to stand for faith, family, and freedom. And Father God, for some who still don't understand why Christians voted by massive margins for Donald Trump, help them to have the wisdom to know that the Bible is full of stories of heroes and heroines, often unlikely and fallen men and women. who you used for your purposes in ways that helped the world of the time they lived in. Father God, we pray for your protection on President Trump and the members of his administration, that you would keep them safe. We would pray, Father, that all those in the administration, followers of Jesus Christ, would be strengthened in their faith, but also members of the administration that may not yet understand you and your message of salvation to us that may be during their time of public service. This will be when they find Jesus and being even better in the jobs that they've given us. Father God, finally, we ask that this great country that has done so many good things, we're a flawed nation, as all nations are, but we pray, Father, that you would continue to help America follow your will to make us a nation that, in fact, is a shining city on a hill. Father God, we know that America can't be great again until it's godly again. We ask these things in Christ's name and for his sake. Amen.
SPEAKER 01 :
Amen. Gary Bauer, thank you so much for helping us to get the proper spiritual perspective on Inauguration Day 2025 here on Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk. Gary, it's always a pleasure to be with you.
SPEAKER 02 :
Always great to be with you, Roger.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, you've been listening to Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk, featuring an insightful conversation about Inauguration Day 2025 with our own Gary Bauer, our Senior Vice President of Public Policy here at the Dr. James Dobson Policy Center. Now, if you missed any portion of today's historic broadcast, or if you'd like to share it with others, go to drjamesdobson.org forward slash Family Talk, or you can also access this audio through the Family Talk app. And speaking of apps, you can now follow JDFI on the Bible app, the YouVersion Bible app, which is utilized by millions of people worldwide. You can join the nearly 100,000 people who have subscribed to three-day devotional plans with practical biblical insights to strengthen marriages and equip others. parents. For example, you can get started with one of these popular plans, Dr. Dobson's three-day marriage plan for improving communication skills or finding true love in your marriage. You'll also benefit from Dr. Dobson's three-day parenting plan for a mother's impact on her children and opting for effective discipline. You can follow JDFI when you access the YouVersion Bible app, and you'll find that information in Google Play or the App Store. Well, I'm Roger Marsh, thanking you so much for listening to the broadcast today. Be sure to join us again next time for another edition of Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk, the voice you trust for the family you love. This has been a presentation of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute.
