The Narrow Path 07/21/2026

Steve Gregg: Good afternoon and welcome to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we are live for an hour each weekday afternoon to take your calls. If you have questions about the Bible, about the Christian faith, about any of that kind of thing, or if you disagree with the host and want to bring up an alternate viewpoint, feel free to give me a call. Right now, I'm looking at full switchboards, but that changes. We will have lines opening up throughout the entire hour. You will have a chance to get through if you happen to call randomly at the right time. The number is 844-484-5737. That's 844-484-5737. And our first caller today is Richard from Vancouver, Washington. Hi Richard, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
Richard: Thank you, Steve. My question is about the blood of Jesus. I know it might not be popular, my opinion, but I'm calling because I value your opinion. Let me take about 30 seconds to articulate it with you. I do understand that the life is in the blood, but I believe that's because if you have no blood, you're dead. And when the New Testament talks about the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus, I think it's there to remind us of the blood sprinkled on the altar in the Old Testament. So basically, I think that the blood of Jesus in the New Testament is to say that Jesus died for our sins, for the sins of the world. So I think that in a human sense and a material matter, the blood that ran through Jesus Christ's body was no different than the blood that runs through our body. I don't think it was his blood that actually paid for our sin. It was his death on the cross. And then the resurrection to provide life. I just want to say that because I heard a song and it said, "We receive the blood, we receive the blood." It made me think of this. I don't think I receive a dead Savior because the blood represents Jesus' death. I believe I receive a living Savior through his resurrection. And I'll stop there because I can muddy the water by saying more, so I can just hear your response.
Steve Gregg: Well, I don't think you're wrong. I think that when the Bible speaks about us being redeemed by Christ's blood, I think blood means bloodshed, the shedding of blood. Now, as far as the life being in the blood, that statement in Leviticus is interesting. In some ways, it's technically true. In other ways, I don't know how it's meant exactly. But it is said that God gave blood for the atonement of sins, but he was talking about animal blood there. Now, of course, when we talk about the blood of Christ, we're talking about his death that was shed. His blood was shed on the cross. The first discussion about the importance of blood is in Genesis chapter 9 where after the flood, God tells Noah and his family that they can now begin to eat animal food as well as vegetarianism. He says, "But you don't eat the blood. Don't eat the flesh with the blood in it." And then he goes on and says, "Man's blood shall not be shed except as a punishment for man shedding blood." He says, "He that sheds man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed." So the idea here is that blood shed means death. And that's not talking about the blood of Jesus either. We're talking about the death of a human being is the shedding of blood. And so in other words, if a doctor extracts blood from your arm, that's not what the Bible's talking about as shedding blood. If you die in a bloodless death, let's just say you get poisoned or something like that and you die, that's equivalent to bloodshed. I mean, someone murdered you. The idea is you're not supposed to kill a person who's innocent. And so blood is an image, especially bloodshed, is an image for killing or dying. Now, the Bible does refer to Christ's death as his blood shed. Of course, he did die with blood being shed, although it's not like there were great quantities of it. A person could bleed a lot more injured some other way. But the point is it's not the Bible doesn't talk about magic in the blood. There's songs about there's power in the blood and things like that, but that's figurative. I mean, yeah, there's power, there's saving efficacy in the fact that Jesus shed his blood, that is that he died. But it is true, I think what you're coming against is the sort of superstitious approach that some Christians have taken. When you hear people pleading the blood, now, the Bible never talks about anyone pleading the blood. That's a well, I don't want to say superstition, but it can be superstition. It's certainly a traditional way of talking. But some people plead the blood over their house and over their car and over their wallet and over their children and over everything they come in contact with because they have this what is truly a superstitious notion that there's some kind of a magic or power in the pleading of the blood over things. And I've read books when I was younger by people who said, you know, if you plead the blood over your husband, he'll get saved. If you plead the blood over your car, you won't get in an accident. If you plead the blood over your house, it'll protect you from home invasions and from fire and things like that. Now, that's absurd. That's just absurd. The Bible doesn't teach anything like that. It is taking the blood of Christ, which speaks of his death, his paying the ultimate sacrifice for sins. And it's making the blood itself into something magical, something superstitious. Now, I appreciate the fact that many Christians treasure the idea that they can plead the blood over things and get almost magical results. All I can say is the Bible doesn't teach that. The Bible doesn't encourage that. And if anything, I think the Bible forbids what we could call superstitious things. Now, you said you think the blood of Jesus was just like the blood of any other man. I don't know if that's true or not. I would never be in a position to analyze it. After all, his father was God. And so we don't know much about what his DNA would show, but he was human. He had a human body. He did have human blood. Whether there's any difference between his blood and that of any other human, I have no idea. And it's not something the Bible brings out. I'm going to guess that you're right. I could be wrong and you could be wrong, but I think you might be right that the blood of Jesus was just ordinary human blood. And the idea that there's some kind of power in the blood of Jesus is really, as I said, it's a figure of speech saying that Christ's death had effective power to redeem humanity. Through his death, he conquered Satan. His death acquired God's favor. Whatever, those kinds of things are true, but it's really his death that he's talking about when he talks about his blood. So to look at the blood of Jesus that came out of his veins and say, "Oh, there's something supernatural in that blood," well, all I can say is the Bible does not affirm this at all. The Bible doesn't give any hints about that. And to suggest it seems to muddy up certain actual theological things in the Bible. The wages of sin is not blood, the wages of sin is death. And but of course, blood, as I said, when it means bloodshed, it is another term for death. And that's the main thing. The Bible teaches that through death, Jesus redeemed those who were under its condemnation. And there's nothing wrong with speaking of the blood that way. The Bible uses the word blood that way. But I think people don't think through their theology very much, and I think it's very I think people are very susceptible to, I don't know what to say, sensational theological claims that somebody gets in a moment of excitement and says from the pulpit, and suddenly it becomes a theology for a movement. The Bible doesn't teach that particular thing. And I've heard, I won't mention the country, but I've heard people say that over in a certain country that has a lot of Christians in it overseas, that a lot of the Christians just walk around the streets saying, "Blood of Christ, blood of Christ, blood of Christ" over everything. "Blood, I plead the blood of Christ" as if there's something in doing that that provides some kind of major protection from harm of all kinds. Well, apparently the apostles never learned about that because they certainly knew what the blood of Christ was. They're the ones who wrote the books about it, and yet they weren't protected from harm at all except when God wanted to protect them. But you can't just kind of use it as a magic saying or like a magic charm. The blood of Christ prevents me from an accident, prevents me from sickness, prevents me from violence. No, no, the blood of Christ doesn't do that. The angels might, God certainly can, but that's not what the blood of Christ is about. What is the blood of Christ about? Well, it says in Ephesians 1:7, "In him we have redemption through his blood," meaning through his bloodshed, "the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of his grace." So what's the blood for? Well, we have redemption through that blood. He paid a price of his own life, the shedding of his blood. And as a result, the forgiveness of sins. That's Ephesians 1:7. John says the same thing in 1 John 1:7. He says, "If we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship one another and the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin," meaning the fact of his blood being shed for us. So anyway, I mean, one can speak figuratively of being washed in the blood, but of course it's not literally the case that there's liquid blood somewhere that's in a bathtub that we're washed in. It's simply a figure of speech. Because of Christ's blood shed for us, we are cleansed. We have redemption, we have forgiveness of sins. That's really what the Bible teaches about it. Now, some people I think they get more of a what should we say, other functions for the blood in their mind when they read Revelation 12:11 where it talks about how the saints in warfare against Satan, it says they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony and they did not love their lives unto death. Now, it doesn't say in what sense they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, but some people think that means we plead the blood. We plead the blood of Jesus and that beats the devil. Well, it does in fact beat the devil in one of his activities, and it's the one activity that that verse is talking about. Revelation 12 is the only place in the Bible which refers to Satan as the accuser of the brethren. And it says they overcame him, that is they overcame his accusations by the blood of the Lamb. That is to say, if the devil accuses you and says you are guilty before God and you know otherwise because Christ died for your sins and God has justified you, you defeat those accusations by appealing to the fact of the blood. Now, even then, the Bible doesn't say pleading the blood, but I mean, that would be, you know, appealing to the fact that Jesus' blood was shed for me. Like in the song "Just as I Am, Without One Plea, But That Your Blood Was Shed for Me." Now, that's not Scripture, but that's I think that's a theologically accurate hymn. So our plea is that Christ died for us. It's not that we're applying literal or mystical or spiritual blood through our words to something that somehow gives the devil sets up a barrier against the devil. No, it's in the sense that he's the accuser of the brethren, which he's called in Revelation 12:10, that in the next verse it says they overcame him by the blood, by obviously the fact that Jesus died for them is how they overcome the accusations of the enemy. Anyway, Richard, I appreciate you sharing. All right, was that Richard? I believe so. Now I'm not sure. Yeah, I believe it was Richard. All right, brother, thanks for your call. Okay, John in Sacramento, California, welcome to The Narrow Path.
John: Hey, thanks for taking my call. I was wondering your thoughts about the difference between or discerning between emotions and the spirit or the leading of the spirit or the spirit working through you. In my case, I was born again as a young adult and was just super on fire, just serving all the time everywhere. Ended up getting a bad case of Lyme disease, which has really debilitated me mentally and physically. And so now I still believe everything I used to believe, but I don't have that fire. I don't feel like God's leading me and guiding me like he was. I used to feel like he was answering my prayers and was that all just youthful vigor and emotion or was it legitimately the spirit? Because I don't feel that anymore. I don't have a desire to go to church or pray. And I still believe those things are good and necessary, but it's just like, man, I don't have that and I was wondering was that the spirit? Not just the thrill, but everything.
Steve Gregg: Before I speak about it, just let me ask you, are you seeing any compromise in your life sinfully or anything like that?
John: I am definitely more tempted. Like things are very tempting that used to not I didn't give a second thought. And now it's just like because I'm irritable. I'm at the end of my rope. It doesn't take a lot to agitate me. And I used to be very patient when I was healthy and all that. But I'm not like living in sin or something like that, but yeah.
Steve Gregg: Okay, well let me see if I can give some response of any value. You know, the Christian life is a especially when you get young in your youth or get saved in your youth like you said, it's a lifetime thing. It's like marriage. You make a commitment when you're young and you stay committed throughout your life. That's how it is when you get saved, too. And listeners who hear me all the time may get tired of me making the analogy of marriage, but it's a biblical analogy. It's one of the closest biblical analogies we have for the Christian life. It's a covenant relationship where we're told to love our wives as Christ loves the church. Our wives are supposed to submit to their husbands as the church submits to Christ. I mean, this is something the Bible I mean, it's the first institution God made in Genesis 2:24 is the one that Jesus and Paul both appeal to marriage as a picture of our relationship with Christ. So I mean the fact that I bring it up a lot and I make a lot of use of the analogy of marriage because I believe we're supposed to. I think God gave us marriage to be a helpful, instructive analogy of what he's looking for for us. When you get married, typically well, always when you get married you make a verbal commitment, a lifelong commitment to love that person. Now, when people are young, what they mean by love might very well mean to them what they're feeling at that moment because young people, especially when they're new in a relationship and they're obviously marrying someone that's very beautiful to them and that they're smitten by and so forth, there's definitely a lot of emotional love there. Now, it's not the case, at least it should not be thought to be the case, that if I promise to love and cherish my wife and she promises to do the same toward me for all our lives, that we're promising to have the exact same feelings for the rest of our lives that we had at the moment of our wedding or our honeymoon. The closer we can approximate that, the closer the better, let's put it that way. The more we can keep that kind of happiness and that kind of being enamored with each other, well, of course the happier the marriage will be. But when we say we'll love and cherish, at least the vows themselves don't mean I'm going to feel the same emotions all the time. You can't promise that simply because you can't control that. You do not control your emotions. I mean, maybe in some measure you do, that is when you mention you get irritable. Okay, well that irritation, you don't ask for that. You do control it in the sense that you don't lash out at people when you're irritated, I hope. That's succumbing to temptation. But to have feelings of irritation when there's irritable things going on, and especially since you say you have Lyme disease and it's messed with you, it's messed with your health and your mind and things like that, obviously you're not going to be able to live without irritation. And this defines your battle as a Christian. Everyone has their own particular battle and that's yours, apparently. And I'm sorry to hear of it because I'm not unsympathetic. But now when you know what your battle is, you know the challenge. You know you have to say, "Okay, I need to be on the lookout for this. I may not feel as excited about Jesus or anything else most of the time, maybe any of the time, hard to say." But it's like if you lose the excitement for your wife, let's say your wife is deformed in an accident or she becomes an invalid or she gets very heavy and unattractive or something like that, you're going to say, "Well, I don't have the same attraction, I don't have the same dynamics of interaction that we had when she was young and beautiful and vivacious and energetic." Okay, well, that comes with the territory. Most people do get old. Some get ugly and some get fat, you know, men and women, but that's all factored in to your vows. For better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and health, I'm making this commitment. I'm going to keep it. And that's how it is with Christ. Now, in other words, in any relationship with another person, and that's what Christianity is, it's relationship with God, it's relationship with Christ. In any relationship, there are emotional seasons. And when you're well, when you're young, when it's new, when prayers are being answered more apparently than other times, then those are seasons where obviously you naturally feel good. When those emotions wane, when you're not feeling well, when you're drained of energy, when the prayers that seem to matter most to you are not being granted, maybe in a case like yours it might be for your health or something like that, the Bible does not necessarily indicate I mean, there are verses that sound like it does, but the Bible doesn't promise that every prayer we ask will be answered. There are some verses that don't mention any modification or any exception where they say, "Just ask what you will and you'll have it." But on the other hand, there's verses that say, "Well, if we ask according to the will of God, if we ask with the right motives," and things like that. So there are suggestions that if prayers are to be answered, there are conditions to be met. And of course, asking according to the will of God is a big one. What if what I'm asking for God has something else in mind than what I'm asking for? Well, as a follower of Christ, as a servant who's been bought with a price and not my own, I yield to his veto. In fact, when I pray, I hope that he will veto it if it's a bad if it's a prayer that goes against his will because prayer is not a means of getting what we want from God. Prayer is a means of yielding ourselves to God and inviting him to have his way in the earth as in heaven and in our lives too. And if we're we can ask for specific things, but we do so with the with the subtext, "You know, this is what I think would be good. I hope you'll see it that way and do it. But if you don't see it that way, God, then do what you want. I'm yielded to you." Now, that being so, that God does take us through testing periods of life. Sometimes when you're a young Christian, he does answer more of your prayers. Some of them may be less consequential things he's answering about and then when the tests come and the trials and the sickness and things like that, to relieve you would not be as much in keeping with the purpose of those things. Some of those things are there to test you or to teach you to yield to God and to be resigned to his will. And God didn't come to make life on earth better. That's one thing that modern preachers often mislead people about and which the Bible is obviously not teaching. The Bible does not teach that God, Jesus came to make your life here on earth better. Jesus said, "In the world you'll have tribulation, but cheer up, I have overcome the world." He said, "You'll have peace in me, but the world's going to be a place of hardship for you. It's going to be a place of tribulation, of pressure, of pain." Jesus didn't make any bones about that. And Paul said the same thing. Jesus said it of course in John 16:33. Paul said the very same thing in 1 Corinthians chapter 3, verse 4. He said, "For in fact we told you before when we were with you that you would suffer tribulation just as has happened and you know." Now tribulation for some people is persecution, for some it's sickness, for some it's other things, but when you're in tribulation, it's unusual for you to feel all those light emotions and happy emotions that you felt when that wasn't happening to you. So you just need to realize that you're going through a season. It might I don't know if the season will end before your life ends. It may or may not. I have no predictions about that. But I will say this, eventually life itself will end in the will of God and you'll graduate from this to a life of no afflictions at all. In the meantime, I wouldn't worry about the emotions, although emotions can make life enjoyable when it wouldn't otherwise be. But I would worry more about whether I'm keeping my promises to God, whether I'm still focusing on him, whether I'm still going to remain faithful to him even when it doesn't appear that I have any of the consolations I had when I was younger. This is a test. I sometimes refer to this as going through tunnels. You're on the path, the path has sunny stretches and it has tunnels you go through. When you go through a tunnel, it's dark, it's cold, and it's not you're not feeling the good vibes you felt out there. It's not permanent, but it is, in a sense, it's a test. On that I'd suggest that Isaiah has something to say in Isaiah chapter 50. He says, "Who among you fears the Lord? Who obeys the voice of his servant? Who walks in darkness and has no light? Let him trust in the name of the Lord and rely upon his God." That's Isaiah 50, verse 10. Hey brother, I'm sorry to hear about your situation. I hope some of these things may be helpful to you. I need to take a break. You're listening to The Narrow Path. My name is Steve Gregg. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. We have another half hour coming up and our lines are full. I'll be back in 30 seconds. Don't go away. The Narrow Path is on the air due to the generous donations of appreciative listeners like you. We pay the radio stations to purchase the time to allow audiences around the nation and around the world by way of internet to hear and participate in the program. All contributions are used to purchase such airtime. No one associated with The Narrow Path is paid for their service. They all volunteer. Thank you for your continued support. Welcome back to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we're live for a half hour more taking your calls. If you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith or you disagree with the host and want to say so, give me a call. The number is 844-484-5737. That's 844-484-5737. Our next caller is Enrique from Los Angeles, California. Hi Enrique, welcome.
Enrique: Yes, thank you. I have two questions. I don't know which one to ask you about the book of Enoch or Jude. But you know, let's just do this one. The nation of Israel, what do we make of it in connection with the book of Romans, think chapter 11? I think Israel as a nation or maybe there is a remnant in the nation Israel today as we speak, maybe the Orthodox or the Torah-following Jews. Maybe in the future God is going to do something because the thing is it says that Jesus is going to return on the Mount of Olives. That can't be figurative or imagery language, that he's literally Jesus is going to return to the Mount of Olives, which is over there in Israel. So what do we do? How do we understand this?
Steve Gregg: Okay. Well, for one thing, I don't know if Jesus is going to return to the land of Israel or not. The Bible does mention the Mount of Olives in Zechariah chapter 14, but it doesn't say Jesus is going to return there. People have often thought that it says that, but it does not. What it says in Zechariah 14:4 is, "In that day his feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, which faces Jerusalem on the east." Now, his feet will stand. Whose feet? Well, Christians sometimes say, "Well, that's the Messiah coming back." Well, the Messiah hasn't been mentioned anywhere here. Chapter 14 mentions Yahweh or God, you know, judging and fighting against nations and things like that, but it does not mention the Messiah. It just says then like the previous verse, verse 3 says, "Then Yahweh will go forth and fight against those nations as he fights in a day of battle. In that day his," seemingly Yahweh's, "feet will stand on the Mount of Olives." So it doesn't say the Messiah is going to come back and stand on the Mount of Olives. It says God is going to stand on the Mount of Olives. And this is not the first time because in Ezekiel 11, Ezekiel saw a vision where the glory of God departed from Jerusalem, went out the east gate to the Mount of Olives and stood there on the Mount of Olives. So what was that about? Well, in the vision in Ezekiel, if you read it chapters 8 through 11 in Ezekiel, it shows all the abominations that were happening in Ezekiel's day in Jerusalem and the reasons why God was going to give them over to their enemies, namely the Babylonians, who were going to destroy Jerusalem. Now, they couldn't destroy Jerusalem as long as God's in there. As long as God's in the city owning it, that's his home and so forth, there's no way anyone's going to destroy it. But he left it. And that's what Ezekiel sees. Ezekiel sees the glory of God departing from the temple, departing from the city, going out the east gate to the mountain on the east and standing there. Why? What's the imagery here? It means that he's abandoned the city and he's nearby. He's standing by to watch the results, which is that the I mean what Ezekiel makes very clear is the result is the Babylonians are going to come to the unprotected city and destroy it and burn the temple down and take the Jews off into captivity in Babylon. That's Ezekiel's whole prophetic vision there. And in it he sees God has left the city. He's not there. Where is he? He's standing on the Mount of Olives, which is near enough by to watch the thing happen, but far enough outside the gate to not be in the city to protect it. Now, that happened when the Babylonians not literally, this is a figure this is a vision he had, just like Zechariah has visions. These are symbolic. Now, in Zechariah chapter 14, we see that the city's going to be destroyed again. It says in verse 2, "I will gather all the nations," this is Zechariah 14:2, "I will gather all the nations to battle against Jerusalem. The city shall be taken, the houses rifled, the women will be raped." Okay, so we're talking about the destruction of Jerusalem a second time. And it's in that context, "In that day God's feet will stand on the Mount of Olives." Oh, just like he did when the Babylonians came. God left the city. He was not in the city. He had left it to be taken by its enemies in in the case of Ezekiel, it was the Babylonians. Now, Zechariah lives after the city was rebuilt and the temple was rebuilt. But before his prophecy ends, he argues that the city's going to be destroyed again. And it was. In 70 AD it was destroyed by the Romans. And just as in order for the Babylonians to destroy the city, it was necessary for God to leave the city, leave it unprotected and stand on the Mount of Olives. Zechariah is saying he's going to do that again. He did. He left Jerusalem again in 70 AD and stood on the Mount of Olives. In fact, as an emblem of that, Jesus himself, we read in Matthew 24:1, he left the temple, he left Jerusalem and went out and stood on the Mount of Olives. And there he gave his prophecy about how the city's going to be destroyed by the Romans in that generation. So in other words, what Zechariah's predicting is, "Okay, God had let the Babylonians destroy the city once. It's now been rebuilt in Zechariah's day, but it's going to go down again. There's going to be another time." And it did happen again forty years after Jesus died. And he's predicting that. God will abandon the city to its enemies again, just like he did in Ezekiel 11. And now in it's going to happen again in 70 AD in Zechariah 14:4. So that's how I see it. You say you can't take it symbolically. Well, I kind of do, but the thing is, I don't really see it as having anything to do with the second coming of Christ. I don't see anything about the last days mentioned here. I don't mention anything about the second coming of Christ mentioned here. I think Zechariah's talking about the same thing that many of the prophets did and that Jesus himself talked about. That is that remember when Jesus wept over Jerusalem in Luke 19? He said, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, if you'd only known this your day, you know, this that things that make for your peace, but now they're hidden from you." He says, "Your enemies are going to come and they'll besiege you, they'll cast siege mounds around you. They'll destroy you and your children within you and not one stone will be left standing on another." He's weeping over Jerusalem in Luke 19. That did happen. Jesus predicted that it would happen. In fact, Jesus said in Luke 21 that this destruction of Jerusalem would fulfill all things that were written in the prophets. Jesus said, "Jerusalem will be trodden underfoot by the Gentiles so that all things written might be fulfilled." Well, some of the things written were written in Zechariah chapter 14. And so I think that you know what happens? Let me just tell you something that's going on here. We live in a time where Christians have been given the impression that somehow everything in the Bible focuses on the second coming of Christ. The New Testament writers indicated that everything in the Old Testament focused on the first coming of Christ and the subsequent destruction of the old order in Jerusalem because the new order had come. As the writer of Hebrews said in Hebrews 8:13, "Where there's a new covenant, the old covenant is obsolete." Then he said, "And that which is growing old and obsolete is about ready to vanish away." So the writer of Hebrews just before 70 AD says the new covenant has rendered the old covenant, which Jerusalem and the temple and all that was part of that, it's obsolete. And the writer of Hebrews said, "And it's about ready to vanish away." He's referring to the fact that it's all the temple's going down. The end of everything related to the old covenant was coming to an end soon. This is the message of the Bible. Now, is there anything in the Bible about the second coming of Christ? Yes, I believe there is. I believe there are times when both Jesus and Paul and Peter speak of the second coming of Christ and John. But when people say, "Oh, it's you know we just want everything to be about that," when if we read things in their context, their historical context, we'll realize, "Wait, there's not a reason in the world to apply this to the second coming of Christ," especially when you know, for example, Zechariah 12 through 14, that last three chapters of Zechariah, the New Testament writers quote from it numerous times and they apply it to their own time. Jesus did, like chapter 13, just a chapter earlier than the one we're talking about, Zechariah 13:7, Jesus quoted that his betrayal and his death were going to fulfill Zechariah 13:7 where it says, "Strike the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered." The New Testament writers took Zechariah to be about their time, not the end times. And the idea that it's about the end times has become very, very popular. In fact, people quote it as if there's no question about it. But if you study it in context, you'll say, "Wait a minute, who says this is about the end times? The author doesn't. The New Testament writers don't. Who authorized that?" You know, that everything is the end times. We are obsessed with the end times. And no wonder, you know, the world's getting pretty bad, there's scary things happening, who wouldn't rather escape here? Well, we're all going to escape one way or another. We'll die or Jesus will come back. But to be obsessed with the second coming is certainly not justified by anything in the scripture and certainly to impose that subject on passages that say nothing about it is a big I believe a mistake because then of course we won't recognize when prophecies have already been fulfilled because we're thinking they're going to talk about we think they're talking about something still future when they're not. So there's that. As far as Israel in the Middle East, well, lots of questions could come up about that. But let me just say, because I have a lot of people waiting and not a lot of time, I have lectures at our website thenarrowpath.com. There's also by the way an app you can get on your browser, thenarrowpath.app. Go to that website, you can download it onto your phone. But I have lectures there, lots of lectures, hundreds of lectures. But there's one series in particular called "What Are We to Make of Israel?" which kind of I think that's almost your exact words you used in your question, "What are we to make of Israel?" Well, there's a series on that and I go into great detail about all the relevant scriptures. Now, you mentioned Romans 11. Romans 11 doesn't mention anything about the nation of Israel. It says "all Israel shall be saved," but it doesn't say they'll be a national entity. In the Bible, Israel can refer to the people of Israel. It can refer to the remnant of Israel. It can refer to lots of different things in different contexts. But of course the remnant of Israel will be saved. But the remnant of Israel, according to Paul, includes him. And what was Paul? He was a faithful Jew, faithful to the Messiah. And to Paul, all Jews who are faithful to the Messiah are faithful Jews. They're also called Christians. They're also part of what we call the church. If someone's faithful to Jesus, Jew or Gentile, they're part of what the Bible calls the church. And that, according to Paul, is the "all Israel" will be saved is the Jewish and the Gentile branches of the olive tree as he's talking about. So anyway, I go into that much more detail at the website thenarrowpath.com. You can go to the tab that says topical lectures. You can also go to the other tab that says verse by verse. I have verse by verse lectures through all the books of the Bible, all the prophets of Zechariah and so forth. You can hear my commentary verse by verse through the whole books. Or you can go to the topical lectures and find the series "What Are We to Make of Israel?" and that gives a much longer, more thorough, in-depth treatment of all the relevant scriptures on the subject. I appreciate your call, brother. I need to take some more calls. Thank you for joining us. Okay, let's see here. Let's talk to Ron in Orange County, California. Ron, welcome to The Narrow Path.
Ron: Hey Steve, I hope you're well today. Can you hear me okay?
Steve Gregg: Yes sir.
Ron: Okay. I have a couple questions about three different Olivet Discourse passages. I wanted to get your feedback on. So in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21. Matthew uses the "abomination of desolation" language and then he says "when you see Jesus coming with the clouds of heaven." Mark does the same thing. And then when we get over to Luke, he says "when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies," which would be non-Jewish idiomatic language. Yet if you go down a few verses, he says "they will see the Son of Man coming with the clouds." He switches out of the idiomatic language and into or he switches out of the non-idiomatic language into the idiomatic language. Why do you think he does that? And then the follow-up question to that is does that cause any kind of a problem with Jesus saying both things where he either said the one thing or the other, either he said "abomination of desolation" or he said "Jerusalem surrounded by armies," but probably not both?
Steve Gregg: Okay. Well, I think it's almost certain that Jesus used the term "abomination of desolation." Both Matthew and Mark use that expression. And that what Luke is doing is paraphrasing for the sake of his Gentile reader, Theophilus. Theophilus is a Greek name. I think everyone agrees that Luke wrote the book to a man, a Greek man, either a new Christian, he's certainly a man who had heard the gospel. He says that I write these things so you'll know the certainty of the things which you've heard. So he's either a Christian or someone very important that Luke is hoping to convert. But the man is not a Jew. The man is a Greek. And therefore he would not know the Jewish idioms like the Jews would. Now Matthew, of course, writes to Jewish people and he preserves all of Jesus' Jewish idioms, including the one "abomination of desolation." Mark did the same thing, though he wasn't writing to Jews probably, he didn't paraphrase it, he just used the idiom that Jesus used. Luke now by the way both Matthew and Mark say "when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of in the prophet Daniel, he who reads let him understand." Now both Matthew and Mark use the Jewish idiom and say "he that reads let him understand." Luke doesn't do that. Luke doesn't figure that his reader Theophilus would understand. So he just paraphrases, "When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies," which means Luke, whom we understand to be a reliable writer writing scripture for us, he interprets. And if you believe Luke is inspired, then this would be an inspired interpretation of the expression "abomination of desolation" as the coming of the Roman armies against Jerusalem. Now, and you noted that. Now what you're wondering about is we also might suggest that when it says "they'll see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven," that too is Jewish idiomatic language, but Luke doesn't change that. I think that's the point you're making. Why does Luke change the idiom of "abomination of desolation" into something more understandable, but he doesn't change the idiom of the sun and the moon and the stars being in distress of nations, men's hearts failing for fear, the powers of the heaven being shaken and seeing the Son of Man coming in the cloud with power and great glory? Now, I don't know. I don't know why he doesn't. It's possible that he doesn't know a great way to paraphrase that. But Matthew and Mark and Luke, I think, are all themselves familiar with the language of the Old Testament scripture where all these things are phenomena or I should say they're idioms. They are terms that are used when the Old Testament prophet speak about the fall of some great nation, whether it's Babylon in say Isaiah 13:10, whether it's Egypt in I think it's Ezekiel 32 around 5 and 6 if I'm not mistaken, whether it's Edom, which that kind of language is used in Isaiah 34, Joel uses it several times. It's very common in the Old Testament to speak of God judging a nation, an ancient nation that has already been judged, but the prophet's predicting it use language like, "God is coming, he's coming with the clouds, the earth will shake, the mountains will reel, they'll melt like wax, the stars will fall from the heavens." This is all very apocalyptic language which was very common in the prophets. The Jews familiar with the Old Testament, maybe even Theophilus who was not a Jew but, you know, might have been might have been instructed to know these are common expressions for the fall of an empire, not the end of the universe as they sound like. And for that reason, we can say that this language too in the Olivet Discourse can be used to speak of the fall of Jerusalem to the Romans in 70 AD. Now, whether it is or not, that's something to judge from context and all of that. But you're asking, "Why doesn't Luke clarify that too? Why does he use the same the apocalyptic imagery that you find in Matthew and Mark?" I don't know except that, like I said, I don't know if he couldn't he couldn't think of a brief way to make that clear and just assumed that this his reader would learn that somehow or know that from someone telling him in the Old Testament, I don't know. You know, I can't tell you why the gospel writers left out things, included specific things that others left out, paraphrased here, didn't paraphrase there. Each author has their own purpose and for doing what they do. But as far as what we can make of it, I do believe that we have grounds for seeing that apocalyptic imagery as merely that, apocalyptic imagery, even though Luke helps us out a little bit on the "abomination of desolation" by paraphrasing that. He doesn't paraphrase everything Jesus says. For example, Jesus often spoke of the kingdom of heaven. Whenever Luke refers to those statements that Jesus made about the kingdom of heaven, Luke paraphrases it as "kingdom of God." Why? Because heaven is an idiom for God among the Jews. It's a euphemism for God in many cases in Jewish literature and speech. Theophilus was not a Jew, he wouldn't necessarily know that. So that's another case where Luke paraphrases "kingdom of heaven," he paraphrases it to "kingdom of God." And we assume he's correct. So but that he doesn't paraphrase everything Jesus says or clarify it, we can't answer for why he did or didn't in a given case, but it doesn't have to prevent us from understanding what what Jesus said. Hopefully. All right, Ron, thanks for your call. All right, another Ron in Indianapolis, welcome to The Narrow Path.
Ron (Indy): Thanks, Steve. Steve, as briefly as you could do it, I've heard two different explanations of what heaven is supposed to be or the afterlife is supposed to bring. Some people believe that we're going to spend all of our afterlife in heaven forever. And I've heard other people say it's going to be on earth and heaven's going actually wind up being similar to earth as it is now.
Steve Gregg: Well, I take the second view. I believe that the Bible never indicates that the believer's destiny is to be in heaven forever. I believe that when I die, my spirit which now possesses eternal life because of my faith in Christ will continue to live although my body will die. My body will be buried, it'll decompose here on earth, and my spirit will depart. Paul talked about how he's eager to depart and be with the Lord. I am too. So I plan to go to heaven when I die. But I don't plan to be there forever because Jesus isn't going to be there forever. The Bible says Jesus' going to come back here. And he's going to and he's going to restore the earth to what it was before the fall. He's the second Adam. He's going to undo the works of the first Adam. God made earth as the habitation for man, not heaven. In fact, it says in Psalm 115, verse 16, "Heaven even the heavens are the Lord's, but the earth he has given to the sons of men." It's just that the sons of men blew it by Adam's sin and our sins, we've kind of destroyed in a sense the earth. So Jesus' going to come back and it says he's going to destroy those who destroyed the earth and he's going to renew the earth and there'll be no more curse. So whatever curse came on the earth because of Adam's sin will no longer be there. We read that in Revelation 21:3. And so yeah, I believe that God intended for Adam and Eve to live on earth. If they had not sinned, then they would not have been forbidden to eat of the tree of life. If they had eaten of the tree of life, they would live forever, the Bible says. Where? Well, on earth, apparently, that's where they lived. When would they transfer to heaven, if they didn't die? The only reason we go to heaven is because we're going to die here. And he's got to he's got to keep us, our spirits safe somewhere in the meantime until he comes and renews the earth and raises our dead bodies to live in it. So that's what I understand. If people say we're going to live forever in heaven, they don't have any verses in scripture that really say that in my opinion. And lots of verses talk about Jesus is going to inherit the earth, we're going to inherit the earth, the meek shall inherit the earth. Jesus' going to rule from sea to sea from the river to the sea, all kinds of stuff. He's going to reign on the earth and so are we going to reign with him. We're joint heirs with him and we'll reign with him forever in the New Jerusalem which comes down from heaven in Revelation chapter 21 and then resides on earth, which is where where God intended for man to live in the first place. And now what God intended to be so will be. Now is it going to be very much like this earth? I don't know. It won't have any of the cursed things, but I don't know. It may be very much like paradise, that is like the garden was and how it was intended to be before the fall. That we're we don't have much information about that. But I hope that helps you, brother. I appreciate your call. And we're just about out of time, I'm sorry to say. Maybe not completely, let's see if we can get Seth from Greenville, South Carolina, a quick answer. Go ahead quickly. Welcome.
Seth: Hey Steve, just a quick question for you. Thank you. I appreciate you taking my call. Just had a question about a chart that you spoke about on on your series "When Shall These Things Be?". I think it's the second episode at the end, it's a chart that you had about the Old Testament kingdom passages from the Old Testament and the New Testament passages in a chart that kind of compares those two.
Steve Gregg: It should be available at matthew713.com. If it's not available there, email me and I'll send it to you. My email is at the bottom of the first page of our website thenarrowpath.com. My personal email is down there at the bottom of the page. And it's supposed to be there at matthew713.com. But once in a while people let me know that they can't find something I said is there. Matthew 7:13, yeah, that's a very good website to search through matthew713.com. But look under charts or notes or something like that. You will find at matthew713.com the notes for that series. And the chart should be among them. But if it is not, it might be a separate chart. And if for some reason you can't find it, just email me and I'll send it to you.
Seth: Perfect, thank you very much, brother. I appreciate you and your ministry. Praying for you.
Steve Gregg: All right, Seth. Thanks for your call, brother. Thank you very much, I appreciate that. Bye now. You've been listening to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. Sorry for those who were still waiting to come on the air. Call tomorrow, please, and we'll be glad to talk to you. As you know, I sometimes give long answers, makes it hard to get all the callers on. We are listener-supported. If you'd like to write to us, the address is The Narrow Path, P.O. Box 1730, Temecula, California 92593. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. Have a great day and we'll talk to you next time.