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Good afternoon and welcome to the Narrow Path Radio broadcast.

My name is Steve Gregg and we're live for an hour each week day after noon, taking

your calls.

If you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith, feel free to give me a call.

If you have a disagreement with the host, also feel free to give me a call.

If you want to give a little sermon or just add some more on a subject that's already

been discussed, I'd ask you not to call because we have our lines full with people who actually

have questions.

I don't mind if you call to disagree and to prove an opposite point, but we do have some

people who call fairly frequently, I won't name any, who when they do call, it's often

the case they don't have a question and they don't really have a disagreement.

They just have something more to say on a subject that has already been discussed with

a previous caller.

I'm sure that everybody listening has, or I shouldn't say everybody, lots of people

are listening, have more they could say than I get around to saying here on the program

to each caller.

The truth is I have more I could say too.

If you go to my website, you'll find that everything people call that I have lectures

on and usually I can talk for an hour or 90 minutes on any given subject and not run

out of things to say.

So if I don't say the thing that comes to your mind, oh, I'd like to say this, it's not

because I couldn't accept, I couldn't if I was going to give time to all the callers.

I say that because I just want to for warn you if you call and you don't have a question

and then you're not bringing up a disagreement, I'll probably ask you to move along, we'll

take somebody else because it does take a valuable time.

I am away from home at the moment.

I spoke in Petaluma, California yesterday, had a great time, met a lot of people from

the San Francisco Bay area and I'll be speaking in Santa Cruz on Wednesday, that's day after

tomorrow Wednesday at an event in the evening.

If you're interested in that, if you live nearby, maybe in Santa Cruz or Santa Cruz somewhere

around there, you might want to look that up on our website where it's going to be, it's

actually going to be at the Paso Temple Inn just outside of Santa Cruz on Highway 17.

Then I'll be speaking in Monterey on Friday and I'll be speaking in the San Jose area

more than hill on Saturday.

So several different locations and if you live in any of those areas, I want to take

in one of those events, feel free to do so, you can go to our website, veneropath.com

and click the tab that says announcements and there you'll see the dates and the times

for all of these speaking engagements up in the, well it's going to be in Santa Cruz, Monterey

and San Jose and I think I'm leaving something out, no, that's it, that's it, all right.

So again, the information, specific information about those meetings is at the website veneropath.com

and you can look under announcements to find out that out.

Okay, we'll talk first of all to Gil calling from Long Island, New York, hi Gil, welcome

to the narrow path.

My friend, good afternoon, God bless you.

I'm blind as you know and somebody anointed me with oil and they, you know, they told

me to believe because I've been having pain in my eye.

I know that in March 11, 24 it says, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have

received it and it will be yours.

But I also look at first John 514, how do you get faith to believe?

I mean, I want to believe that there's a verse that says, help out my unbelief.

I believe it's in Matthew, how do I believe so that I can be healed because I've been

having pain in my eyes.

I might have surgery in April and stuff like that, you know, because they found some problems.

Yeah.

Well, there are two.

She also prayed for my eyes to be healed.

That's another thing I don't have faith that it's going to happen.

But I believe I think we'll go away.

All right.

Well, yeah, there are really two very different positions that Christians could take from

Scripture, and I take one of them.

But the one I don't take is the one that indicates that God always wants to heal our physical

sicknesses.

That physical sickness is not in the will of God for anyone at any time.

That Jesus died among other things to get us healed from our sicknesses.

They would say that healing of sicknesses is part of the atonement.

And of course, he died for our sins, too, but they would say there's kind of a two-pronged

intention.

When Jesus died, he died for our sins and for our sicknesses.

And these people would generally say, if you don't get healed, maybe you've got sin in

your life or maybe you don't have enough faith, and you really have to believe for your

healing.

And what that means to them is that you have to just believe that that healing you're

praying for is going to happen.

Or even if you don't pray for it, you can just confess that you're healed on the basis

of Christ's atonement.

This is the one view that's out there.

And these people would suggest that it's never okay to say, well, maybe God has a purpose

for you being sick, you know, if you're disabled or sick.

It may be that God is doing something in your life through that which could not be done

as well, as only He would know, if that was not present.

Now that's one view.

Now the other view, and the one I believe is more biblical, is that healing that is

supernatural healing is not guaranteed to anybody anywhere.

It's true.

God does sometimes heal us even not supernaturally.

Sometimes people get healed without prayer and they get healed just over a period of time

of certain sicknesses.

And there are people get healed miraculously.

I do believe in miraculous healing, but I don't believe that miraculous healing was

purchased for us in the atonement.

If it was, then Jesus is getting ripped off because He paid for all of our healing and

we're not getting healed all of this.

I mean, most Christians do not get healed of every disease they have and that includes

the ones who are confessing that they're well.

That includes the ones who have 100% faith that they're going to be healed.

Many of them do not get healed.

It's not a guarantee.

See, we know that Jesus died for our sins and we can count on that because there's

never in a case where somebody came to Christ on his terms and didn't get forgiven.

Other sins, it happens every time.

Sickness, however, doesn't happen every, healing of sickness doesn't happen every time.

No matter how much faith you have, no matter how holy you live, no matter how exceptionally

you are in the Christian faith.

Even if you're Paul and you have a foreign and you're flesh that you pray three times,

God would take it away and the Lord says, no, I'll give you the grace for it.

It's advantageous for you to have this weakness because my strength is made perfect in your

weakness or if you're a Timothy who's got frequent stomach infirmities, probably amoeba

dysentery from drinking third world water and Paul says, we'll take a little wine with

that.

That will help balance things out.

He didn't say, get healed and say, claim your healed.

There was a man named Trophimus that Paul traveled with until Trophimus got really sick

and Paul had to leave him behind.

Paul said he'd left Trophimus sick in Meletus.

He didn't say he was well but failed to have the faith be healed.

His sickness is something that exists.

It existed in the Old Testament, existed when Jesus was on earth.

He didn't heal everybody.

He healed lots of people because that was part of what he was here to demonstrate that

he was the one who fills the prophecies about the one who'd healed the nation of their

spiritual sicknesses.

His healing and physical sicknesses demonstrated that.

Just like his physical turning of water into wine proved that he was one who spiritually

is the true vine and creates the fruit of the vine as a vine does.

Jesus' healings and his miracles were demonstrating something about him and about the kingdom of

God.

Now those things he demonstrated are still true.

He still is those things.

But the Bible does not indicate that at all times equally there will be miracles happening.

Now they could happen anytime.

I believe in miracles to this day.

I believe there are miracles.

I just don't believe that the church has been promised miracles whenever we'd want them.

If God promised this miracles every time we wanted one and only had to do us enough faith,

there wouldn't have to be any laws of nature at all because a miracle would violate the

laws of nature after we wanted it to.

And we'd always wanted to.

I mean we'd want to violate the law of gravity so we could float around and go places we'd

like to turn invisible so we could spy on people and they wouldn't know.

There's all kinds of things we'd like to do that would be the violation of the laws of

nature and it would be miracles.

But you see God isn't just interested in sensational miracles.

We are.

But he's not.

Miracles do not impress him.

He's got a million of them and he could do it.

He created the universe as a miracle of speaking it in existence.

So he's not.

He's not as impressed with miracles as we are.

He's impressed with character.

When Paul wanted a miracle to heal the thorn of this flesh which was I believe in I problems,

no one knows for sure but it seems like it was from other things he said.

Jesus said, hey my grace is sufficient for you.

I'm not going to heal this because while you're weakened by this my strength has made

perfect in your life.

And Paul said, okay then I'll rejoice in my infirmities because of this.

In other words the Bible does not teach that healing of the sickness is always God's desired

response.

So now in you mentioned Mark 11 where Jesus said what's over things you desire when you

pray believe that you receive them and you shall have them and then you counterbalance

that rightly so with 1 John 5, 14 which says, and this is the confidence we have at him

that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us.

And if we know that he hears us then we know that we have the petitions that we desire

to him.

Now those two things sound like they either contradict each other or supplement each

other.

And when it comes to prayer, prayer is the whole of our interaction with God.

It's our communion, our communication with God.

And there's a lot to it just like there's a lot to our communication with anyone else.

Not all communication is the same.

Not all of it has the same results but it's a complex thing, our relationship with God.

And lots of things are said about prayer.

We're told that we have to pray in faith, okay, that's one thing.

We need to pray in the name of Jesus, that's another thing.

We need to pray according to the will of God, well that's another thing.

We need to pray with good motives, says James.

James says you ask and you do not have because you ask for our motives.

Okay, well that's another thing.

In other words, there's lots of aspects of prayer that make it suitable.

It's not just faith as maybe Mark 11, 14 would suggest, taken by itself.

It's not just that you're asking something in the will of God.

It's all these things.

It's a holistic relationship with God.

And each verse of prayer tells us one aspect of it but not to the exclusion of the others.

So when I say these verses that you mentioned together, they don't contradict each other

but they do supplement each other.

When Jesus said, believe whatever you ask for, believe that you receive it and you have

it, that's not to be taken out of context with the other things he says, like when the

verse says we have to pray according to the will of God, what if I pray that I will win

the lottery and I'll just make myself believe it's going to happen, but what if it's not

the will of God for the will of the lottery?

Well then that verse isn't saying all I need to know about prayer.

We need to take the whole counsel of God, the whole teaching of God about prayer and petitions

and communication with God.

Now as far as you say how can I believe for healing, well the woman who told you that

God wants to heal you, she may be right.

She might be hearing something from God that I don't know about you because there are people

who know things about people that I don't know anything about.

So I'm not going to say that it isn't God's will to heal you.

But how can you believe for healing then?

I personally don't prefer to use the expression to believe for healing.

I think we believe God, we believe in God faith is a relational description of how we are

toward God.

He's trustworthy, he's on our side, he's our friend, he's a father who cares about his

children, he's made promises, he can be counted on.

That's saying more about his character than anything else, that we have a relationship

with somebody we trust.

Now when I was growing up, my dad would give me things I needed, but he sometimes didn't

give me things that he didn't think I needed, even if I asked for them.

Now it's not that he didn't love me, but it's just in the nature of fathers and children,

fathers give good things to their children as the father evaluates goodness.

That is whether it's an appropriate thing, whether it's something that's going to be

the best thing.

My God knows what's really the best thing for me, and therefore when I'm sick, I don't

just assume the best thing is to be healed, so I'm going to ask God to heal me and I'm

going to just trust him to do it.

Now I'm going to trust God himself to either do that or do whatever is else's best.

In other words, I'm not trusting in a result, I'm trusting in a person, I'm trusting in

God.

And I know that he can do anything that needs to be done for my good, and if I'm yielded

to him, if I'm submitted to him, and I make my request to him of something I would like,

and if he thinks that's the best thing, he'll do it.

If he doesn't think it's the best thing, he'll do something else, and I trust him in

that.

If he doesn't do what I ask him to do, I trust him still.

I trust that he's got a good reason that he's got something better in mind, and I often

give the example of Lazarus sisters.

This is what I always give in this case because it's a good, difficult example.

Lazarus sisters sought for Jesus to come and heal their brother.

He was sick to the point of death, and he was a good friend of Jesus, so they figured

he'd respond.

And when Jesus heard he was sick, he did nothing.

The body says he just waited around for Lazarus to die.

Now after that, he went down and raised him from the dead, which apparently Jesus

thought was a better thing than healing him.

The sisters couldn't imagine anything better than healing him.

When you're sick or somebody who loves to sick, you can't imagine what would be better

than for God to heal him, but sometimes God has more imagination than you do.

Sometimes God's going to do something that's more important, more lasting, more significant,

more edifying than the thing we're asking for.

And so when we pray, we do it Jesus said, Jesus said, Father, if it's your will, let

this cut pass from me, but not my will, but yours be done.

That's how we pray.

We don't pray that our will will be done.

We pray that God's will will be done.

We let our request be made known to God according to Philippians 4, but the truth is our

request for simply that children asking their father for something that they would like

for him to do, and leaving it with him to decide if that's the best thing or not, and

trusting that if he does something else, then that's the best thing.

If he does this better, even if it's not what I prefer, remember Christians are people

who have resigned themselves to the will of God.

We have denied ourselves and taken off our cross.

That's in the very act of becoming a Christian.

And as such, we are now concerned more about what God wants than what we want.

We certainly have strong feelings about what we'd like many times.

But once we find that it's not what God wants, we learn to resign ourselves to it and

do the will of God in the midst of whatever situation God has chosen for us.

Now I don't know this woman who tells you that God wants to heal your eyes and so forth.

I hope he does.

I hope that is what he wants to do.

And you said, how can you trust God?

Trust that he's a great physician and he's a great father.

And if healing your eyes is the best thing for you and for him and for his kingdom and

for all concerned, then that's what he'll do if you're trusting him.

But if you're trusting him and he doesn't heal your eyes, you have to still be trusting

him to be doing the right thing when he doesn't do what you ask.

So in others, you don't believe specifically to be healed.

You believe in God.

You believe for God's will to be done.

You may ask that you be healed knowing that God can do that if he wants.

And having that faith that God can heal you.

And that if that's truly the best thing, that's exactly what I'll do.

But also knowing sometimes he has something better in mind and he may not.

I cannot imagine how hard it is to be blind.

Gil, I sometimes think of all the disabilities that would do one of the hardest for me to adjust to.

And so my heart is really with you and as I certainly would love to find that God healed your eyes.

But I just in the real world of walking with God and biblical Christianity.

The truth is not everyone who wants you to be healed, including yourself, will get their way.

But what you want most is that God gets his way.

And there are people who are disabled.

I think of Johnny Erickson Tata who has injured.

He got a neck injury when she was 19 years old and had died in accident.

And she's in her seventies now.

And she's been in a wheelchair, you know, paralyzed from the neck down for what's it been just 75 years.

No, I mean, a 55 years, excuse me, something like that.

And then she's also a cancer survivor.

She got cancer.

I think she's survived that.

So she's had some real rough goes.

But these things have made her not only very godly because if you respond to your disability in a godly, trusting way,

it draws you nearer to God.

But also her condition has put her in the position to reach out to a certain community.

In her case, you know, people in wheelchairs in a way that, I mean, she could have if she wasn't disabled,

but they know she's been there, you know, I've had some trials too.

They're not physical in my body.

But some of the trials I've had that have made my life very hard at times have put me in a position

where when I meet people in that condition, I can speak to them as one who knows.

And they can appreciate that.

God knows what's necessary.

I don't.

So Gil, I gave you a really long answer, but it's one because, I mean, I take your question very seriously.

And I care about your situation, but those are the answers I would derive from scripture.

And I don't agree with those who say, you know, God always wants to heal.

He'll always eventually heal when we rise from the dead.

Like he didn't heal Lazarus, but he raised him from the dead.

Well, he'll raise you from the dead someday, too, whether he heals you beforehand or not.

All right, Tom in Port Washington, Wisconsin, welcome to the narrow path.

Thanks for calling.

Hey Steve, how you doing?

Just double the clock with your contents a month or so ago.

And I'm really appreciating first off this forum because it's, I've been searching for an answer on this for a long time.

And I'm really interested to get your perspective on it.

So I'll try and keep this short.

I do need to frame it a little bit.

Margaritum has been something that's been somewhat given a session for me, probably in an unhealthy way.

She's ever since I was a preteen.

And I remember our church showing us back in the late 70s, a beef in the night,

which has this kind of horrific guillotine scene at the end of it.

And just really stuck with me, kind of was refreshed again.

When I heard about the tens of thousands of guillotines that government supposedly has in our country's domes.

You know, and anyway, so, you know, I know Jesus in the scriptures are very clear that we should expect persecution.

I also know that the scriptures are very clear in this.

And I think this is the most pervalent commanding is to fear not.

And I've got this book here, 365 verses, but that passes.

Let's get to your questions quickly as we can.

I don't need to know.

All right.

Well, my question I guess, I'm serious.

How do you square, you know, fear not with like, you know, the persecutions and I'm reading about Fox's book of martyrs here.

I mean, they didn't put into a, I mean, what same person doesn't fear those things.

You feel I'm searching for some nugget that God may provide some supernatural shielding during these persecution moments.

It's like, you know, I kind of rock.

Okay. I hear your question about.

Yeah.

Yeah, I hear your question.

Well, you're, in some ways, you're a lot like me because ever since I read Fox's book of martyrs, which when I was 17 years old,

I've always thought of the glorious thing to be a martyr.

I've always thought that since we're certainly not going to escape death, you know, ultimately, I mean, we're all going to die.

And we only get to do it one time.

What could be more meaningful than to die meaningfully, to die for Jesus?

I mean, someday we'll be in heaven with all the other people who've died various ways.

And I think those who've died for Jesus will be the ones who feel the most satisfied with their death as opposed to dying in an accident,

or especially as opposed to dying in some stupid way.

I mean, ever's going to die.

We should never resist the possibility of dying for Jesus.

In fact, we should even think that's a great privilege.

We should make ourselves martyrs, you know, just to be stupid.

But we should not be afraid to be martyrs.

Now, when, how do we deal with the, Jesus said,

if anyone come after 11 to die himself, take up his cross and follow me,

he said, whoever will seek to save his life will lose it.

But whoever will lose his life from us, they will find it to return a life.

So, you know, when he says, if you seek to save your life, you'll lose it.

Well, we seek to save our lives all the time.

Simply by not doing things that would be fatal for us to do, we're smart.

You know, wisdom avoids doing stupid things that will kill you unnecessarily.

That's not what Jesus is talking about though, when you talk about don't seek to save your life.

What he's saying is you need to bear a cross.

Your cross is going to include persecution, in some cases even martyrdom.

And you might prefer not to be a disciple, so to avoid those kind of things.

No, then you're seeking to save your life at the expense of doing the right thing.

The right thing is to follow Jesus, whether it's going to cost you your life or not.

Something's going to get you, something's going to cost you your life someday.

And certainly, when you do die, you'll be much happier to know that you did that,

because the way you died is because you were obedient rather than disobedient.

Now, do we fear death?

I would say, for example, right now, if I heard that

the building I'm in is going to be bombed in the next 20 minutes,

I would probably, instead of finishing the radio program, I'd probably get off the air.

And I'd probably go to another place, not this building, because I don't want to be bombed unnecessarily.

I mean, you do wise things that don't involve compromise.

Or just stay alive and to prolong your life, and you're stewarding your life this way.

God's giving you life. You should take care of it.

But if I heard that terrorists have locked all the exits to the building,

we're stuck in the building, and they're going to bomb the building in the next 20 minutes,

I think, well, that's different.

But I guess now I know how I'm going to die.

I've never had any doubt that I'm going to die.

I never knew how. I guess this is how. I wouldn't be afraid to die.

I've been in airplanes that were facing such turbulence, and in lightning storm stuff.

I literally thought, well, this could be one of those that's going to go down.

It's in bad shape. But I just thought, well, if it does, okay, this is how I'm going to die.

And I don't care. However, God wants me to die.

You avoid fear by caring only for the will of God, and trusting God,

that you will not, while you're trusting Him, you will not die in some way that He doesn't want you to die.

The angel of the Lord and camps around about those who fear Him, and delivers them, it says in Psalm 34,

and God's got enough angels to protect you from dying if that's His will.

But it's always His will first to die sometime.

So, you know, I'll let Him send the angels to the west, save me.

I'm going to do the will of God and leave the consequences with Him.

That's what I would suggest. Then just don't be afraid.

I mean, once you know that the dangerous thing can't be avoided, then just accept it and say,

well, this is when I'm going to go see Jesus. Wonderful.

And you take a break. You're listening to the Narrow Path.

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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 the Christian faith or you have a difference of opinion

from the host and want to balance comment. I would be glad to hear from you.

It looks like we have one line open at the moment. The number to call is 844-484-57-37.

Our next caller today is Bob in London, Dairy, New Hampshire.

Hi, Bob. Welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

Well, thank you Steve for taking my call. I certainly enjoy your program.

The question I have is probably a left field.

But anyways, I published a book recently called scripture and poetry.

And I've been getting the book self-reli, but recently it was a gentleman came to me

and I sold him a book. And that night I came home.

The word I got was freely you received, freely give.

So, sadly, I'm going to a book fair.

All your material, you give away free. Help me understand how I can continue this freedom, giving away free.

Well, you know, I hear as a publishing and all that.

I hear you. Yeah. Well, first of all, the material in your book.

If you feel like God is giving you those insights that you wrote about to bless the body of Christ,

I assume he gave those to you freely. And so, you can give out those insights freely.

However, the book in which they're printed, you may not have been able to publish for free.

I mean, there is a certain cost to publishing books.

And so, if you recovered your cost while getting the information out free, that would be...

I mean, I don't do that. I don't sell my books at all, but...

But I mean, that would not be an violation of freely you receive freely give.

So, I mean, you know, if you buy cartons of your book and you sell them for the exact price or whatever that you put into them,

then you're still given away the information. It's the physical book that cost you money and you're recovering your cost.

When I ran a Bible school for 16 years, we housed students, adult students, for nine months in our dormitories and stuff.

And we fed them. And we had classes like six hours a day, most of which I taught.

And we were trying to decide how to afford this. And what we decided, we'll charge for a Roman board,

the cheapest we can give it to them, we'll give them for that cost, and we'll charge no tuition.

So, we're giving the word of God freely. But the Roman board didn't come to us free, and so we had to recover it.

Actually, we charged $200 a month for food and a bed. So, it costed us $200 a month for a Roman and three coat meals and then six hours a day of classes.

But, I mean, the idea is to make it available to people as inexpensive as possible.

Now, I've had people say, well, if you just give yourself away, people don't value it. You need to sell it and then they won't throw it away or whatever.

Well, I don't know if that's true. I mean, that's between them and the material.

My books can be bought at Amazon, but that's the only reason is because I can't afford to go buy the books and send them free to everybody.

And then I assume you can't either with your book. I don't sell books. You can't buy my books from our website.

When I travel, I take a limited number of books with me. I usually fly, I can't take a lot.

But I take some to give away to people. And if I could take cartons of them, I'd give them away to people.

I just don't like to travel that heavy with the boxes of books. But I just know that I'll give books away to those who ask for them.

But most people don't ask for them free. Most people, I guess, say something they can buy them. And if they can buy them, they can.

Do I get part of that? I do. But I'd be glad to give up my royalty in order to make it cheaper at Amazon, but the publishers make those decisions. I don't.

So anyway, you just form your own policies. The truth is, I could probably sell some of my stuff because some of it cost me something to do to make.

But I don't want to. I don't want to sell anything. Someone asked me yesterday to me, why don't you sell yourself?

And the reason was that 55 years ago when I went into the ministry, I decided I did not want my ministry in any way to be a business.

To me, there's a difference between giving things to people because you're serving God for free, you're just laid, you're not a paid laborer, you're not a contract laborer, you're a slave of God.

So you just serve as people free as much as you can. And other people do like to sell their stuff and merge and maybe charge for their speaking and stuff like that.

That's between them and God. To me, though, that's too much business. In fact, it's hardly distinguishable from business at all. I'm not sure what part of that is ministry.

To me, business and ministry are different things. When I went into the ministry, I made this conscious choice not to be going into business. So that's why I don't sell anything.

But you can do something else. I mean, as long as you're not just trying to make money off the word of God and it doesn't sound like you are, then I mean, if you recover your costs, I don't think you're doing anything that offends God.

God, no one has to do what I do. I do what I do because I love to do it that way and I've always wanted to do that. I always have.

But you're going to have to be just as God. What do you want you to do? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's. That's it. And you know what? I feel I honestly feel that I just give it away. And if you're going to provide that, that's that would provide. I can afford it to a point. Sure. So, okay. I thank you so much for your insight.

I think we cover the cost. Yeah. And that's what I'll tell you this. My policy when people wanted to order stuff from me, because we used to, we used to have all my lectures on cassette tape. And people would order those. So there were hundreds of them. And, and other things like my books and so forth. I mean, my policy would be in those days free as long as the supplies last.

Meaning I can't, you know, I can't predict that I'll be able to send out thousands of tapes or books to people at my own expense. If I can, I will. If I can't, I'll just have to say, sorry, we're out until next time. I have more money to my more. But it's that's still being free. It's just saying, you can have these things for free.

As long as the supplies there as long as I can eat the cost, I'll do it. But of course, now with the internet, all my stuff is online. So we just make it online for free. And it doesn't cost me anything. So I'm not, it's not costing me to give it out to thousands of people now. That's wonderful thing with the internet. But, you know, God will have to guide you in the way that you distribute your, your ministry to others.

And I would just say if you really believe in your book, if you really believe that this is something God gave you for the body of Christ, then do it until you can't afford to do it anymore. I mean, don't, I'm not saying to publish yourself, but, you know, figure out your budget. How much can I put out to buy books and give them away to people? It might not be much, but whatever God has provided for you will be the thing that determines answers those kinds of questions.

Yeah, appreciate your call, brother. We're going to talk next to Ed and Detroit, Michigan. Ed, welcome to the narrow path. Thanks for calling.

Hi, Steve. How's it going?

Proverbs 15, 20. What a foolish man despises his mother. What do I do about that? If my mom really doesn't really want to have a relationship with me?

You honor that.

Okay. You know, to despise your mother, the word despise in the, in the Bible usually refers to, to, to not respect, to show a little respect to, despising to us means I absolutely love somebody. I hate them or something like that. But that's, that's not really what the word usually means in the Bible.

It means to disrespect or to have little regard for somebody. And so he that despises his mother is doing the opposite of what the commandment is to honor your father and your mother.

Now, honor them. And if she said, I don't want to do with you saying, okay, I'll honor that. I mean, I think that's a bad choice you're making. I think when you're old and dead or dying, you're going to wish you had your kids around you, but, you know, I can't force myself on you.

So it's, it's a sad thing when parents come to that point. Now, do you have any idea why she doesn't want to do with you? Is it something you've done? Or she just got issues?

I think it's his, it's just divorce with my father and I always say that I look like a father and such things like that.

Yeah, we had a friend like that friend whose, whose mother and grandmother, you know, were not very receiving of him. And we wondered if it's because he reminded her of the father or something. But it's a, it's such an immature and frankly evil thing for a parent to blame the child for mistakes that they themselves made.

Yeah, but, but, you know, send her mother's day card every year, a birthday card. Just said, I'd love to talk to you sometime whenever you're wanting to. And then, you know, just give her as much liberty as she, as she insists upon.

I just give her a Bible that's, that's, that's, I found that trying to just spread the, spread the gospel to her, but she just, yeah. Well, thank you. I appreciate it, brother.

It's a strange thing for mother to be that way, but there's not much you can do to change her. Probably just be loving. Yeah. All right, let's start to hear about this.

Oh, you said that said situation. God bless you. I know. All right. Let's see. Res in the Bay Area, California. Welcome to the narrow path.

I wish I would have known you were better. Luma. I live about 10 minutes from there, but well, I've been asked that every day for a week or two. Yeah.

That's great. I never show up somewhere by surprise. Where were you in a church over there?

Uh, in a house. Oh, okay. Yeah. So what's your question? Thanks.

I'm having a hard time understanding something in terms with it. Um, so we seem, seems like people criticize this long because there's some Muslims who take the Quran out of context and they murder people based on certain verses.

However, yet it seems like right now in the past couple of years, the Zionists in Israel have been using the Old Testament to justify their crimes against Palestinians and other people in the world as saying their God's chosen people.

That's the first question. Second question is they also take out the world as is awakening to the atrocities that they're committing as prophecy in which everybody is going to come against Israel, but yet they're going to prevail against everybody.

I think it's the war of God and may God. So those are my two questions. All right. Well, first of all, um, people who take the Quran to say that they should kill.

They should kill all infidels may not be taking it out of context. I don't, I'm not an expert on the Quran. I know there are peace loving Muslims who say that that is taking it out of context and there are other Muslims who say, no, that's not out of context at all.

There are some early parts of the Quran where Mohammed urged, you know, kindness toward people at the both the Jews and the Christians and then later parts of the Quran where he said to kill anyone who's who won't convert.

And so I mean, I don't know, I don't know the context because I don't study the Quran. I do know the context of the biblical instructions to the Jews and there's nothing in the instructions to give it to Moses or Joshua that tells them that they should kill Palestinians.

The people that they were told to replace were the Canaanites. The Canaanites were gone. And so I mean, there was no mention of the Palestinians who are, you know, Arabs of various kinds that were in Palestine before Israel recombination. So certainly what God told Joshua to do did not apply to the Palestinians.

And some people say, well, God gave them the land and if taking the land means killing the people, that's what it takes. No, that's not quite how it was. God gave them the land conditionally and told them if you do the right things, if you obey my commandments and keep my covenant, you can stay in the land.

If you break my covenant and do the wrong things, you will be expelled from it. I myself, God said, I'll make the land vomit you out just like it. Vomps out the Canaanites before you.

The second thing that considers that the Canaanites were not like the Palestinians, the Canaanites were horrible pagans. I mean, they were sacrificing their babies to demons and things like that.

The Palestinians are, you know, the ones that are not Muslims, a lot of them are Christians. There are Christian Palestinians, a lot more Christian Palestinians than Israeli Jewish Christians.

And so I mean, that's, it's not similar. God was judging the whole society of the Canaanites for their horrible wickedness.

We don't know that the Palestinian dirt farmers who got run off their farms and lands when Israel became a state and the Israelis took some of the territory from them.

We don't know that those Palestinians were bad people. I mean, they weren't Christians, but neither are the Jews. The Jews aren't Christians either. The only people that are God's people are Christians, people who follow Christ.

Jesus said, if you don't honor the son, you don't honor the father. Who sent him? Well, okay. Jews don't honor Jesus. Muslims don't honor Jesus. The Islam as a religion does honor Jesus more than Judaism as a religion does.

But most Jews in Palestine aren't even Jewish by religion. Only about 20% of the population of Israel are Jewish by faith. Only half of 1% are Christian by faith.

And the rest are secular. The Jews who are killing Palestinians, they're not carrying out some kind of a mission like God gave to Joshua.

And anyone who says they are is going to have to look for all kinds of tenuous connections that make it similar. But it's not similar. The Canaanites were of people under curse.

The Palestinians, we don't read of that being the case with them at all. A lot of them were very innocent, harmless people. Yeah, I know Hamas and the leadership of the Palestinians has been some pretty wicked people.

And there's been some wicked people in Israel who've done terrible atrocities too. You're going to find bad people in every country, including this one we live in. But, you know, wiping out a whole society should happen only when God has said it has to happen.

And he hasn't said that about the Palestinians. So there's no excuse for any kind of atrocities done today on some kind of a basis of what God told the Jews back when they were first taking the land.

Now, as far as the prophecy is concerned, and you said people saying the prophets say that all the nations are going to come against Israel, but Israel is going to prevail. Well, it did say that. And then it happened. The prophecies they're referring to are, as you said, the God and the May God War, but also Zechariah chapter 12 through 14.

But those prophecies, in my opinion, have been fulfilled in the past. They're not about today. And even let's just say someone disagrees with me. It says they are for today. They are for the end times.

Okay, well, that doesn't mean that Israel gets to be bad guys too. In those prophecies, Israel are being persecuted, presumably innocently, by people who are really nasty people.

Well, Israel today, yeah, they got some nasty enemies, but Israel is a pretty nasty enemy to other people too. We simply don't have a righteous nation over there. There's not a righteous nation in Israel, there's not a righteous nation in Palestine. So what do we have there? We have secular nations at war with each other.

Very similar, however, in the Ukraine and Russia, secular nations, both of them bad guys in many respects, a lot of people innocent who are getting killed.

It's a secular war between secular entities. Nothing that's happening in Israel today is fulfilling anything that the Bible predicted.

And I say that not just as a hyperbole or not as some kind of an irresponsible off the top of my head kind of thing.

I did teach through the Bible 16 times, first by verse, all the prophets in 16 years when I read my school. I'm definitely familiar with what the prophets do and don't say.

And I'm also from Earth when they were fulfilled. And I can say there's nothing going on in Israel today that is predicted to happen in the end times.

So I realize that's, you know, maybe in the minority in saying that. But I don't say that, say, and so just shut up and believe me.

No, I say that with an open microphone so you can call in. If someone says, wait a minute, Steve, I know some prophecies that are being fulfilled today.

I've got a public phone number here. I'll talk to you on the air. You can quote the verses. We'll talk about them. We'll look at the context together. We'll see if you're right.

And in other words, if I'm making statements that sound controversial to you, just know I'm not saying them like most radio programs have it where they just say it and you can't say anything back to them.

You can call me up. If you disagree with me, I'll put you at the front of the line. Love to talk to you. All right. So rest. No. I mean, I don't think that the Muslims or the Jews have any right to, you know, try to annihilate each other or commit genocide against each other.

I think they're both bad when they do that. Now, what are we thinking about the nation of Israel in general? In general, I'm pro-Israel.

A lot of people say that, you know, if you don't think the Jews are the special people of God, you're anti-Semitic. That's not true. Why would you have to believe that?

I don't think the Irish or the special people who are out of the Brazilians, but that doesn't make me anti-Irish or anti-Brazilian. I just believe all people who are alike to God. Jew, Gentile, you name it. God loves them all.

And he's angry at all the ones who don't follow Christ. So there's nothing anti-Semitic about this in general. At least most of my life, up to the present moment, I'm relatively pro-Israel.

Conditionally, you know, if they do bad things, I'm not for that. But I'm not anti-Israel. I'm not one of these people to say Israel has no right to exist.

If we start saying that, we can say America has no right to exist. You know, if somebody lived here before we did, and we took the country through war, that's about average. That's how all nations exist today as they took someone else the same way.

And Israel took land from the Palestinians through war and through UN mandate. We might say it was a bad decision of the UN, but it's done now.

And we can't say they don't have any right to exist anymore than we can say we don't have a right to exist. Or any other country that's sitting on land that someone else lived in before they took it over.

Anyway, geopolitics is one thing. The Bible and Christianity, you know, addressed them, but not in the way that some people think. They don't address them in the sense of predicting these things.

All right. Let's talk to Wendell from Evansville, Indiana. Wendell, welcome to the narrow path. Thanks for calling.

Steve, I agree with your personal terrorism, but in the early date of revelation, but with that in mind, I would be expecting the letter to be written to Jerusalem, not the seven churches of Asia Minor.

I hear you just kind of took me off balance there and I was wondering what your thoughts are about that.

Yeah, it's a good point. This question is often raised. Of course, I thought about it myself many times. For those who don't know, what you're referring to is that people like myself think that the book of Revelation, which is seven letters to seven churches in Asia, has as its subject matter, the impending war between Israel and Israel.

Which eventually ended up with the destruction of Jerusalem and the scattering of the Jews throughout the world.

And so it's largely talking about the Jewish war, but it's written to people who lived in Turkey pretty far from Jerusalem.

And so what Wendell saying is, if this is true, if it's about the Jewish war, why wasn't it sent to Jerusalem? Why wasn't it sent to the church there?

Well, there's a couple of reasons I would say possibly. One is simply that God had already given them this warning in the olive discourse. Jesus, who is sending this letter to the seven churches of Asia, had already set an amount of olives and warned about this very thing in similar detail.

So a lot of the language of Revelation echoes language in the olive discourse and told them it would take place in that generation and that Jerusalem is going to be sent by armies and things like that and take it over.

So in other words, the Jerusalem church had gotten this straight from the mouth of Jesus some 30 years earlier.

So he didn't have to send them a special letter about it. But again, the question would be, but why did the people of Turkey need to know about it?

I mean, why do the churches there care? I mean, they're not in Jerusalem, they're not even in the battle zone. They're not going to be directly affected by this.

Well, that is probably true. But again, John had a relationship with the church in Ephesus. He lived in Ephesus when he wasn't in Patmos.

And Ephesus was the main city in Turkey and Asia Minor. And Paul had established all the churches in Asia Minor probably a little bit earlier than this.

And you know, very possibly Paul was either in prison or dead by the time this revelation was given.

And John, perhaps as a resident of Ephesus, probably the last living apostle, was the one that God chose to reveal this to and sent it to the churches of Asia.

Now, why would they care? Well, I think they might because I care. I find it interesting. It's interesting to me to read about what God did in the destruction of Jerusalem.

Not that I like it, but it's fascinating because it has to do with a very major thing. The end of the old covenant and the independence of the new covenant without the temple and all that stuff.

And this is very spiritually significant to Christians of all time. Not least, those of the first century who lived just across a little bit of the Mediterranean from Israel, we have to remember too that there were a lot of Jews in the churches everywhere.

When Paul evangelized that region, he went to the synagogues first. And although not very many Jews were converted, the first people converted were Jews and synagogue members.

So there was a Jewish population in every church and they would be interested in this because their families and stuff were there in Jerusalem.

Like I said, there would be lots of people who would be interested in it besides those who lived in Jerusalem. Obviously it would be most relevant to ones who did live in Jerusalem.

But see, Jesus had said to the disciples, when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, know that it's desolation is near. Then you who are in Judea flee to the mountains, and they did.

The church in Jerusalem actually fled according to Eosiveus, they said during they fled at the beginning of the war, they'd be around 66, at the beginning of the war before the war broke out.

Jesus appeared to the Christians in Jerusalem and told them to flee and they did.

So the church wasn't even in Jerusalem anymore by the time that war was in full swing. They had left the country.

So, you know, they had already benefited from the information because Jesus had given that warning.

But to have this kind of a revelation given concerning that matter for all of time, I'll say this as a partial preters who believes that's what's about.

I don't think that that's uninteresting to me. I think it's very fascinating.

But I also personally think that some parts of Revelation are not just about AD 70.

I personally think that parts of it are about the church age that we live in, but I don't have time to go into that now, but my lecture is on Revelation.

Bring out which parts those are.

Anyway, it's a good and challenging question, and I appreciate you asking it for a lot of time.

Even listening to the Narrow Path, our website is veneralpath.com. We are listed or supported if you want to help us out.

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