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Good afternoon and welcome to the Narrow Path Radio Broadcast.

My name is Steve Greg and we're live for an hour each week day after noon.

Taking your calls if you have questions about the Bible, about the Christian faith, anything

like that, or if you have a disagreement with the host, you want to talk about that.

We welcome your call today in this hour.

We have, looks like maybe one line is currently open.

The number to call is 844-484-5737.

That's 844-484-5737 and probably a couple of announcements I have to make.

One of them is that the regular men's Saturday morning Bible study in Temecula that is usually

the third Saturday of the month is not happening this weekend, not happening tomorrow, because

well simply because I'm not home, I'm teaching somewhere else so we're having to cancel

it.

No Temecula Bible study this tomorrow morning.

Now what is happening today and tomorrow for me?

I'm going to be speaking tonight in Monterey, California, and that was originally scheduled

to take place in a home that has been moved into a church facility in Monterey.

It's the Living Hope Maranatha Church.

That's tonight and that's from 6 o'clock to 8.30 tonight.

I'll be talking on the subject eschatology 101, so kind of a basic introduction to various

aspects of eschatology, which is the study of final things, the end times and so forth.

So that's tonight at Living Hope Maranatha Church.

That's on a Jozzlin Canyon road in Monterey, California, so I'll see some of you there tonight.

Then tomorrow I'm going to be in the San Jose area, Morgan Hill actually, and that's going

to be from 5 o'clock to 9 o'clock, I'll be speaking on the kingdom of God, and you're

welcome to join us there.

Now if you don't know where these places are and you probably don't, you can find that

information at our website, thenarrowpath.com, under the tab that says, announcements.

So go to thenarrowpath.com and look for the tab, which is easy to find, it says, announcements

scroll down to tonight, tomorrow's date, so let's see the time and place of those events.

And just show up, we're glad to see you.

All right, we're going to go to the lines, and now they're full.

John from Salureville, Kentucky.

Welcome to thenarrowpath.

Thanks for coming.

I have a comment about the Easter hall of the Easter's, the name of this tower, which

is also the Queen of Heaven in Jeremiah 40 books, and they use the Easter eggs, come from

child sacrifice, that's how they color it, and dissociate that with the blood of Christ,

the sacrifice that he made is an abomination.

Okay, now, could I ask you where you got your information?

It's recorded history all over the world.

Okay, but I would like a source, because on the internet you can read just about everything.

And I haven't found documentation, I've heard all my, I've heard that all my life, by the way.

I've been, you know, I've been hearing for 50 more or more years in ministry that, you

know, Easter and Christmas have come from pagan holidays.

And I kind of thought it was true until I actually tried to research it, and I simply

can't find any resources that say that.

I think you're right that Easter does come from the name of Easter, which is a pagan goddess,

the wife of Bale.

So I, you know, the word Easter might be objectionable because of that.

But as far as, you know, the children being sacrificed to color eggs, you know, I have not

really been able to document that, that's why I ask you, I just wondered what your sources

are.

And it's the spring solstice, the celebration that the pagans have for thousands of years.

I understand.

I understand that.

Yeah, I understand that narrative.

I'm just saying, where did you learn this?

Well, I have several sources I, I'm going along my car, but I'm sure it's an encyclopedia

that's on the internet.

I mean, okay, I think it's multiple sources.

Okay.

Then we can just, I don't have a page.

Then we can just advise our listeners if they're curious about that to go to the encyclopedias

and find out.

That's great.

Thanks for sharing.

I'd say.

Okay.

Talk to you again.

All right.

So we're going to talk next to Michael and Denver, Colorado.

Michael, welcome to the narrow path.

Thanks for coming.

Hi, Steve.

So nice to be with you again and great to talk to you.

How are you?

I'm fine.

Thank you.

What's on your mind?

Good.

Yeah.

So I, a question kind of came into my head earlier when I saw the news about the passing

of Pastor Steve Gaines, who was influential Southern Baptist pastor.

You know, honestly, I don't know much about that denomination other than it's a Protestant

conservative denomination with high levels of daily religious dedication, and it has

really high levels of membership.

And so I was just wanting to kind of get your expert opinion on what Southern Baptist

denomination really is all about.

Well, there's, there's about 40 different denominations of baptists.

Southern Baptist is one of the denominations that's fairly conservative as opposed to some

of the others like the American Baptist, which have a reputation for being more progressive,

more on the liberal side.

Now, there's a full range from very conservative to very well to fairly liberal Baptist types.

Southern Baptist are your typical conservative American evangelical.

They're called Baptist because they belong to a movement that believes in baptizing.

Of course, all Christians believe in baptizing, but baptists believe as do not, for example,

the Catholics or the Episcopalians or the Lutherans or the Presbyterians or some others.

Baptists don't believe in baby in baptizing incense.

They believe that baptism should be only for those who have consciously and deliberately

converted to Christianity.

And so that's where the name Baptist comes from.

There's all kinds of baptists, but they all have basically what you call evangelical theology.

They believe in the Trinity.

They believe Jesus is God, the second person of the Trinity.

They believe in justification by grace through faith, which is, of course, a reformation doctrine

that became prominent through Luther's teaching.

And they're not highly liturgical.

If someone has raised Catholic or Episcopalian or even, frankly, Lutheran or Presbyterian,

they're probably accustomed to a bit of a liturgical element in their worship services.

Baptists are generally pretty much not that way.

They are a free church movement by that I mean, before there were baptists in Europe,

there were state countries that were Catholic and countries that were Orthodox and countries

that were Lutheran.

And these were state religions.

And you pretty much had to be of that religion.

You couldn't really have an alternative denomination, and people were born into them.

If their parents were in these religions, they baptize their infants into those religions.

And Baptists typically believe that you're not saved as a baby by having Christian parents

and therefore should not be baptized as a baby.

But that every person is born with the need to come to find Christ themselves.

And so they need to decide at some responsible point in life that they will be a follower

of Christ.

And then, an only venture to be baptized.

Now, the baptists are not alone in thinking this, so that's a very common theme in many

evangelical denominations, but Baptists, you said what they believed, that's one thing

they believed.

Now, some other baptists in particular are better than some other denominations at holding

the line on some conservative things which are challenged in our political atmosphere.

For example, things like abortion and, you know, same-sex marriage, those kinds of issues

that are politicized in modern times.

And with some churches, basically, we'll just go along with whatever the culture is starting

to say.

So other baptists are not as likely to do that as some other groups are.

And so I'm not really sure what other matters of curiosity you have about them, but that's

a summary of Baptists.

No, that was a great summary, and it was just popped into my head because I saw that Steve

Gaines died of cancer earlier today, I guess.

But I had read an article that says, Southern Baptists tend to express higher levels of religious

commitment than Americans overall.

And the term religion is very important in their daily lives, and at least 81% of those

that identify Southern Baptists say they pray at least a daily, on a daily basis.

And so that was another interesting kind of comparison to just see the levels of religious

dedication within that combination.

But I don't think there's any denomination, including Southern Baptists, where everybody

in the church is highly committed.

I think churches attract all kinds of people, including highly committed people.

And so the demographic of highly committed believers, as opposed to people who are fairly

apathetic about religion but show up in church for whatever social reasons or whatever,

you're going to find both of those demographics in pretty much every denomination.

Any sense in which Southern Baptists might be more heavily weighted toward those who are

highly dedicated, would be a mere statistical thing where they might differ slightly or

greatly from various other evangelical churches.

But they're not radically different than other evangelical churches, and you could go to

a Methodist church or a Presbyterian church and find most of the people that are highly

dedicated and praying and taking religion seriously.

Or not.

That generally differs from one congregation to the next.

And that's because every congregation is made up of local people.

Each one is led by a different pastor and his emphasis and his temperament will have a

lot to do with coloring those factors in those accounts.

So, yeah, I don't know.

I guess I wouldn't be surprised to hear that the Southern Baptists exceed other denominations

by some kind of factor, but others.

But many other denominations would not be far behind them, that's basically a description

of evangelical Christianity, at least of those who take it seriously.

Some people go to church to an evangelical church and they don't take it that seriously.

Some of those people will be in Southern Baptist churches and some in others, but basically

Evangelicals, if they take it seriously, they are going to fit the description that you

were just giving of Southern Baptists.

Linda and Wallingford Connecticut, welcome to the narrow path, thanks for going.

Hello, and I have a quick question that I know you weren't born then, but do we have any

idea how long it took for the Exodus to get to where the spies were?

And then I know they had to wander around for their disobedience, but do we have any idea

how long that journey took up to when the spies were sent?

Well, that was made in stages, and thank you for giving me credit for not having been

born yet then.

I am pretty old, but not quite that old.

They took about, I think, a month or two to get from Egypt to Mount Sinai, and they

camped there for a year, and Mount Sinai, God, gave them the law, they built the tower

knackle, they remained there for about a year, and then they began to travel.

Now I don't know exactly how long it took them to get from Mount Sinai to the point where

they were looking across the river to the promised land, and where the spies came back and

brought a bad report.

However, we are told it would normally take, I think, 14 days, or 11 or 14 days, the

Bible says it would take that long.

So that's probably how long it took them to get there, a couple of weeks.

So of course they ended up wandering for 40 years after that.

Because I've been following somebody who is going through starting out in Genesis and

stuff.

So I've been trying this year to keep up, and then there was something, and I don't think

the spies have gotten into the picture yet, but they were in their second year.

And I was like, oh, okay.

Well, that's because they spent a year at Mount Sinai.

You know, it was a couple of months, a couple of months from Egypt to Mount Sinai.

And then they stayed there for a whole year.

So it was by the time they left Mount Sinai is now the second year, and that's a couple

of weeks later.

Oh, okay.

That was something I missed.

Okay.

Now, the other question I had is they brought all these animals with them.

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Now, they, and you were only to sacrifice the most, the most perfect animals, but what

happened to the ones that didn't make the cut, do they eat them or destroy them?

Well, no, they probably ate them.

You know, the idea was, of course, this was a very unusual time wanting through wilderness,

but a settled community where you've got cattle and so forth, you're going to have ranchers

or farmers who've got their, their, their flocks and their herds that they're breeding

and so forth.

And if they're going to bring a sacrifice, they have to take a, they have to take a flawless

specimen from among their livestock, but the others that are not flawless and that they're

not sacrificed, they can eat them or sell them or do what they want with them.

And no doubt it was the same.

Could say we're screaming for meat, we want meat, we want meat.

Right.

But the point is that they, you know, they were moving around, they weren't breeding cattle

and so forth.

I mean, I'm sure that some of the cattle were getting pregnant stuff, but they were not

in a settled existence.

And if they simply said that we want meat, there's three million people, we don't know

how many cattle they were, they could easily have eaten up the cattle they had in a, you

know, in a few weeks, probably if not less.

And then they wouldn't have any breeding stock when they got into the land.

They had to, you know, I don't know the amount that they had, but I'm guessing they didn't

have the kinds of herds and flocks that they could cultivate once they were settled

on ranches.

They're probably not, they're probably not driving millions and millions of cows and sheep

with them as they're wandering through the wilderness.

So, but there were millions of people.

So again, if they said, well, let's just eat the cattle, that'd be a one and done thing.

They'd be out of cattle, they'd get to the problem center, wouldn't have a livestock.

So they were, they probably had a relatively limited amount of cattle compared to how much

they could produce once they were settled in breeding and cattle and so forth.

So I think that, I think it's simply not a good economy for them to just slaughter the

cattle and eat them when they knew they would need cattle, when they settled and farm

and, you know, need to feed themselves in the new land.

So it's not as if they didn't have any cattle to eat, they did, that they had to economize.

And with the number of people who were hungry, apparently, you know, they didn't think

it was a good idea to just have a steak dinner with everyone and then kind of make the rest

of the trip without much cattle and get to the promised land without much to breed.

I'm assuming that's the case, it makes sense to me.

I've always kind of thought that was true.

Well, thank you very much.

All right, Linda, thanks for your call.

Jimmy from Staten Island, New York.

Welcome to the narrow path.

Thanks for calling.

Hey Steve, I have two questions, but probably before that, I just want to comment on a less

call.

I was listening and I was thinking, what did the cattle eat?

Where did the sheep eat?

They weren't a desert unless God modified them to eat the manor.

I don't know.

Well, anyway, that's just the thought.

Well, manor actually was a little like grain.

I mean, they said it was like flour and they made cakes and stuff from it and cattle will

eat grain.

So maybe they would eat manor too.

On the other hand, you know, what we call desert isn't always just populated by cacti.

You know, it's not always like Arizona and New Mexico or the Sahara desert.

I mean, desert just is a region which is uncultivated and doesn't get a lot of water.

So there's grasses that grow there and stuff like that.

All right.

I have two questions.

I meant two verses, the one question.

I'm trying to bet a hand upon the Jews and the land in the Middle East, where you want

to call it, but I've been listening to you and listening to, you know, other people.

And there's verses I know about Genesis 12 and Galatians where it says the promise was

made to Abraham and his seed singular, but there's other verses that seem to imply

that it is offspring.

And Moses, such as in Exodus 32, 13, remembers Moses was pleading with God and he said, remember

Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, thy servants, to whom thou swearest by thy own self and

sets to them, I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven and all this land that

I have spoken of will I give unto your seed and they shall inherit it forever.

Now I know about Deuteronomy 28, but God brought him through to Bertha Messiah and in 78

B. The temple was destroyed and they were scattered.

But what would prevent somebody now from praying the same prayer?

Now that there are a lot, I know they're not genuine Jews, but some of them may be, prevent

them from praying as prayer because I think a lot of these, I'm sorry, I always pray like

a prayer of repentance to me or what?

Well, it's this prayer that Moses prayed and you know, he's asking God to remember Abraham,

Isaac, and Israel, that the land was promised to them forever and the seed plural.

Okay, what the answer that is, if we say, well, didn't God promise Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob

that their people would inherit the land, yes, and they did.

That's what the Bible says.

God gave them the land and Joshua's day, he gave them the land and they held it.

They held it for a very long time, but then they lost it because they did the things

that Moses told them, God told them through Moses, if you do these things, I'll drive you

out of the land.

He said, yeah, he said, if you, if you do the things the canas did, he says, I'm causing

the land to vomit out the canas because they're so vomitable, but he said, Israel, if you

do the things that they did, I'll cause the land to vomit you out too.

So in other words, you don't have any more unconditional lease to the land than they did.

If you obey God, it's yours, if you don't, it's going to vomit you out too, like it did

the canas.

That's what happened.

So I see that, but the dispensation, let's believe that nobody's going to be, it's going

to look like Israel's going to be destroyed and God is going to jump in and he's going

to say, until the last minute, which is, I think it's faulty thinking and it's magical

thinking, but I have one more verse that I'm a little foggy on.

This is in Genesis 15, 18 to 21.

I may read it.

In the same day, the Lord made a covenant with Abraham saying unto the Iceded, have I given

this land from the river of Egypt, unto the great river of the river of Euphrates.

And then there's a semicolon, it says, the canaids and the canaids and the cabinets and

the hitteites and the perisites and the referiums and the amaroids and the canaids and the

garbushites and the gibbushites.

So that's saying that God gave them the land and the people.

I know they went into conquered them when they went over the Jordan River, but it seems

that they own these people from this promise.

No, I think it's saying he gave them the land of all these people, not that he gave them

all people themselves.

Now he actually told them not to take servants of them.

Now everything did not fully obey that command and they did leave some of them alive and

kept them the servants, which wasn't to their advantage, but he's just saying, take

the land of these tribes and he names the tribes.

So that's what that's talking about.

Thank you.

Have a blessed weekend.

All right.

Same to you Jimmy.

Good talk to you.

Bye.

Bye now.

All right.

Let's see here.

Stephen from San Diego, California.

Welcome to the narrow path.

Yes.

Thank you.

All right.

I understand the only way to the fathers through Jesus and the kingdom of heaven, but Jesus

said that no one comes to me unless sent by the father.

That doesn't God want everyone to come to Jesus.

I'm sorry.

I'm not sure what you're quoting.

He said, no one comes to you unless they're sent from the father, you say?

God Jesus, he said, no one comes to me unless he is sent by the father, correct?

Yeah.

Actually, what he says, no one comes to me unless the father who sent me draws them.

Okay.

Okay.

I'm sorry.

But anyway, yeah, but that stands to say that maybe the father doesn't draw some people

to Jesus.

Doesn't draw everyone to Jesus.

Well, I think he does desire to, because in John chapter 12, Jesus said, if I am lifted

up, meaning on the cross, I will draw all men to myself.

You know, there were people who didn't come to him even though God was drawing them.

God can be drawing, and they can be resisting.

And for example, Jesus, Jesus wept over Jerusalem in Matthew 23, I think it's maybe 37.

Thereabouts.

Yeah.

He said, you know, how many times I would have gathered you as a hengatherer chicks under

her wings, but you would not.

So he was trying to draw them, but they weren't coming.

So Jesus is saying no one can come to me unless the father draws him.

And of course, even if the father does wrong, that doesn't guarantee they'll come.

It's just, you know, God drawing them is a necessary condition, but not a sufficient

condition.

That is, he has to be drawing them to come.

But his drawing is not the only factor that will determine they're coming.

Understood.

Thank you.

And could you touch on the man who was given an extra 15 years of life, God, but then he

disgraced himself and dishonored God.

I'll hang up.

Thank you, Steve.

Thank you.

The man you're talking about is Hezekiah.

He was the king and he got, he was dying.

He had no son to take his throne.

He was childless, at least sunless.

And the prophet Isaiah told him, you're going to die from this sickness and he's going to

pray and ask God to kind of change his mind.

And God gave him 15 more years.

He said, Isaiah came back to God and says he's going to give you 15 years.

Now during that 15 years, Hezekiah did have a son, Manasseh, sadly.

Because when Hezekiah died then, Manasseh was 12 years old and became king and worse

king of all.

Hezekiah did do something wrong before he died and that was, he showed all the wealth

of Jerusalem to the visiting Babylonian emissaries.

And Isaiah said, well, because that happened, they're going to come and take it away, not

in your time, but in your offspring's time.

So that was Hezekiah, the story can be found in Isaiah, chapter 38 and 39.

Thank you for your call.

I've got to take a break.

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Welcome back to the narrow path, radio broadcast.

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You have questions about the Bible, the Christian faith, the difference of opinion with the

host.

You want to balance comment.

So that's what we're here for.

Feel free to give me a call.

The number is 844-484-5737.

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So the next two people who call will get in right away, I mean, they'll be online to get

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But the number is 844-484-5737.

All right.

We're going to talk next to Colin from Morgan Hill, California.

Hi.

Hi, Colin.

Welcome.

Hi, Steve.

I'm listening to your astrology teaching on the narrow path website, and I was just wondering

how have you used about what you taught back then, changed over time, did they face it

all?

Well, in case just so people know what we're talking about, I don't believe in astrology.

But there is a line of thinking which many evangelical teachers have written books about

that suggest that the signs of the zodiac, while they do not function the way that astrology

suggests, they do have a purpose and that God has put them in the sky for signs.

Now, a sign doesn't govern your life.

It just conveys information.

It says in Genesis 1, verse 14, that God put the stars in the sun and moon for signs

and for seasons and for days and years.

So, these suggestions is that God is communicating something as you do with the sign.

The sign has information on it.

And so, whereas Satanic or occultic astrology views the houses of the zodiac as almost like

having divine powers, and they dictate the fate of those who are born in certain relations

to them, that's idolatry, that's superstition, but that's simply the way the devil has perverted

something that really exists that God did make.

What he made was constellations which have been fairly recognized by most cultures around

the world, that some people think these constellations represent elements of the gospel.

And that vergo represents the virgin that Jesus was born from, and that Sagittarius or

whatever, the centaur or whatever, it's part man, part beast, kind of pictures how Jesus

is part divine and part animal, the part human.

And that, you know, some people think the twins, Gemini represent the two natures of Christ.

You know, now there's, it's not possible to prove that this is so.

And even the people who have written extensive books on the subject are some pretty thick

books written by Christians on this, they go into great detail.

They don't claim that they can prove it.

But they do put out what they consider to be a plausible case that these signs that

God has put in the heavens, and which are recognized by people of virtually all societies

throughout history, that they are communicating something in what, what in the world would

they be communicating?

Well, the suggestion is they're communicating the gospel in some way.

Now it does say in Genesis, excuse me, in Psalm 19, the opening verses says, the heavens

declare the glory of God, you know, the firmament in the sky shows forth his handiwork, says

night and tonight they utter speech, day and today they reveal knowledge, it says there

is no speech or language where their, you know, their voice has not heard.

Now it says that the stars and the heavens are declaring the glory of God and their voice

and the knowledge that they convey are really heard by everybody.

That is, it's like a universal message in the sky.

Now because it has been corrupted by occultic adoption of, you know, their own way of

looking at these signs, I think that the devil may have obscured the message and there's

not many modern people, maybe none, that we know of, who can really decipher them in quite

the right way.

And so this is a very theoretical something that in earlier times, these signs were easily

understood by the philosophers and the astronomers and the, you know, people just who looked up

and studied these things and that the message was the message of Christ.

It's interesting that when God told Abram to go out and look into the sky and number

the stars, God said, so shall your seed be.

Now, of course, generally speaking, we understand him to be saying, as numerous as the stars,

your seed should be like that.

But something that there's a sort of another kind of shade of meaning that your seed,

the Messiah, will be like that which is portrayed in these signs.

And Paul actually quotes in Romans 15, I think, no, sorry, it's chapter 10, Romans 10.

He quotes from Psalm 19 and he says, he's talking about the people who are unbelievers,

he says, well, haven't they heard?

He says, low, they have heard.

And then he quotes from Psalm 19, you know, their voice went out to all the earth.

There's no language or tongue that their voice has not heard.

And then he basically quotes the Psalmist who's saying that the heavens are declaring the

glory of God and Paul's saying, well, have they heard about Christ, have they heard about God?

He says, they have.

And he quotes the Psalm that says that.

And so this is the basic thesis of the things I was saying in my teaching on astrology.

I guess what I would say, you say how have my views changed on it?

My views have simply been softened on it.

There was a time when I read some of these books when I was a young man that they're pretty persuasive

and I taught it is that that's definitely the case.

And I would say now, having gotten older and more cautious, I'd say, you know, it could be,

you know, it's plausible, but I would not be able to be dogmatic on the subject at this point.

That's how I would have changed.

I assume that would be our answer.

It sounded like it was an older lecture, but thank you so much.

All right, God bless you.

You're going to see me in Morgan Hill tomorrow?

Yes, sir.

Great, I look forward to it.

God bless you.

All right.

All right, let's talk today then Louisville, Ohio.

Hi, Dave, welcome.

Yeah, um, can you hear me there?

Sure.

Okay, so I've not done this for like 30 years, so, but I somehow got to hold your book

the four different versions of use of revelation a number of years back.

And so when I found you on on YouTube and start listening to your stuff, I was really,

really fascinated.

I recommended your book to other guys to buy.

I grew up Amish midnight, and so we had about half of my teachers in Bible school were

pre-millennial and half were omelennial.

So I'm really was fascinated by your material there.

But I have, I have about six or seven questions, which I know you can't answer all, but I'm

serious what you think of Jean Edwards and the house church movement.

Well, I, you know, I read some of Jean Edward's stuff back in the 70s.

His book, The Tale of Three Kings, was pretty popular in the circle I was in.

And of course, he was pioneering in a house church kind of movement, which I think he started

in the Santa Barbara area in California that he moved in.

I believe the Jacksonville, Jacksonville, Florida.

And, and I don't imagine he's alive today.

I haven't kept track.

You know, he'd be very old.

I was at his burial two years ago in Texas.

Okay, so I didn't, I didn't think I hadn't heard he had died, but it doesn't.

Surprisingly, he's a lot older than me.

I don't want to speak evil of the dead because he had a lot of goods to say.

I just know that some people who have been part of this community in Jacksonville,

I talked to it later, and they, apparently they felt it has sort of a controlling kind of a cult

like a thing about it.

I can't say that from my own experience, but I will say when I read his book, The Tale of Three Kings,

there was a certain tone to it that I thought, I don't know, I kind of almost like, you know,

how, I'm not going to say he's a cult leader because I don't, I can't say that.

But you know how it cults, the leaders get the impression that they're the ones

who are really enlightened, and you know, virtually everyone else in the church messed up,

and that's, I mean, that's how cults get their following.

They say, yeah, why go to any of the church when they're so in the dark, whereas I've got the light

here? He didn't say it like that, and I, and I don't want to, I don't want to slander him,

but I kind of got that kind of vibe.

I kind of got that kind of vibe, and then later on when I met people who'd been in his church,

that's kind of what they said too.

So I'm not going to, I've never met the man, so, you know, I don't like to criticize people,

though I'm not expert about. I will say that what he wrote in the books I've seen

was not heretical, you know, and a lot of people in the House Church movement kind of trace their

their history to, you know, being with him there.

Yeah. Yeah, well, I, I went to bunch of this seminars, meetings, talk to him, and, and he was,

he was a very, very strong opinionated person, and, you know, one of their situations where,

you know, like, like Paul and Peter, sometimes I have tough time getting along with Paul and

everything. Yeah. Yeah, I sort of sort of what I thought, but I, I appreciate a lot of his books,

and, yeah, so, hey, another question, and you can tell me when, when you're getting done.

Let's take one more because my life is full.

Yeah, love your enemies. What's your thoughts on Christians going to war, killing other,

other people, Christians, or non-Presidents in war?

You know, growing up, I never met a men and a night, but reading the Summer of the Mount,

in my early years, I became quite anabdistic in my, in my understanding of violence,

you know, just the Summer of the Mount kind of made me a pacifist, and I actually wrote a

manuscript against Christians fighting in war and things like that back when I was in my early

years. What's the name of this? It's not published. I never read that. It's not published. It was just

a manuscript. I didn't get it published. Is it available, like, even in a rough form?

I don't think so. I mean, there may be, there may be a folder somewhere in my files of it.

It was before we had computers, so it isn't digitally. It's on tight paper with a typewriter,

but I certainly couldn't easily lay my hand on it right now. But I made a good case for pacifism,

but I have to say that as I studied the Summer of the Mount, studied other parts of the Bible too,

including the Apostles, writings, and so forth, and synthesize it, I came to believe that Jesus

teaching about turning the other cheek and such and loving your enemy was primarily in the context

of your neighbor who doesn't like you, a man who wants to insult you by slapping you across the

face, just absorb it and be gracious about it and turn the other cheek humbly. Don't let your pride

get the best you can get you into a conflict. I'm not saying that Jesus wouldn't say that we

should love our political enemies. I think we should. I think we should love every human being on

the planet, but to take what Jesus said in that subject, say, therefore God would never approve of

any war, I think goes beyond, I think Jesus actually said, or Paul, because frankly they didn't

address war, because they both lived at the time of what we call the Pox Romana, where the Romans

had conquered all the area around and everyone was at peace. They just wasn't any war. And so Jesus

didn't have to instruct his disciples about war. He instructs them about their interpersonal

relationships with people who are antagonistic toward them. But the example between the other

cheek, if somebody is doing that to you, absorb it, love your personal foe and don't fight back,

just love him even though he doesn't love you. But when it comes to a different situation,

it's not just you. Let's just say someone breaks into your house and wants to kill your wife and

children. Well, that's not the situation Jesus is talking about. And then it's not just

a matter of loving the enemy. You've got to love your wife and kids too. And the question is, am I

supposed to love the bad guy more than I love the good guys? Or does God still, as he always did in

the Old Testament, still stand on the side of the innocent against the unjust? I mean, God is for

justice. God always, even in the Old Testament, sent people to love their enemies in the law of

Moses. And Exodus says, if the man who hates you, his donkey has fallen under his load, help him up.

If you see the ox of your enemy wandering free, take it back to him. And in Proverbs, it says,

if your enemy is hungry, give him food, if he's thirsty, give him drink. And the Old Testament

self said that you should be kind and loving to your enemy. But that didn't cancel out the fact that

when they were invaded by people who wanted to slaughter their women and children, they took

up arms to defend them. And this is something that is just painful for me because I don't hate anyone

enough to want to kill them. But if they have a question of, you know, if I'm in the position to

save the life of some innocent people who are being attacked by somebody who, in God's sight,

what they're doing is worthy of death, the Bible says, then I mean, I don't want to be the

executioner. But if it's up to me or nobody, I don't know. I think I could justify defending

the innocent. I'm still a very nonviolent person. And I've only been struck once by someone

hospital. I mean, I did, I literally did turn the other cheek. And I'd like to do that every time

that happened. But I've never been in a situation where people who were under my care were in mortal

danger from some other source where, you know, the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

I'd hopefully lay down my life for them. But if laying down my life just means that the attacker

now has me out of the way and he's going to get them next, maybe it's more loving to stop him first,

you know. So this is a hard call. What I would say is I do believe Christians have one obligation

and that is to love their neighbor as himself. But when it comes to war, different Christians interpret

that differently. Some Christians say, I love my enemy so I can't go to war and fight against him.

I can't kill him because I'm supposed to love him. Others say, well, I love my neighbor and that's

why I will defend him from monsters who are violently trying to kill him. And, you know, if you won't

save somebody from a violent death when you can, how can it be said that you love them?

So the question is, who am I supposed to love most? Obviously, I should love everybody. All other

things being equal. But what if all things are not equal? And there's a bad guy trying to hurt innocent

people. And I can love him by just keeping my hands in my pockets and letting him do what he's

going to do to those people, or I can love them by stopping him. And I have to say, thinking

through a holistically of the whole, the whole Testament scripture, it seems like stopping him

is the more loving thing to do. But, of course, the Bible doesn't address it because there

wasn't war at the time of the New Testament. And therefore, none of the people that were addressed

by Jesus or of the apostles were in the position to make a decision of going to war or not.

So what we are told is to love our neighbor. And I can appreciate someone who says, I can't hurt

my neighbor because I'm so so loving. And I can also appreciate the person who says, because I love

my neighbor, I will defend my neighbor from people who are evil and nasty monsters who want to

just kill them for no good reason. You know, so I think just you need to always love your neighbor

and then act as love would dictate at the time, I would say. And I'm not going to predict exactly

what that would be in every situation because there definitely are various ones. Hey brother,

I've got my lines before I need to take some more call as before I'm done, but I appreciate

you joining us. Yes sir, you're good day, God bless. God bless you, Dave. All right, let's talk to

Eddie from Dearborn Michigan. Eddie, welcome. Hi, Steve. I'm glad you are still around and on the

air. God bless you for your ministry. I've learned everything I had to learn about Satan pretty much

from you and your ministry. My only combative statement is the statement that is often presented

to me by others, which is if it's God made evil in order to test us, isn't he the author of

evil? And is he the one who made Satan, not an angel who fell, but Satan himself as a being who

tests us? Isn't he then the author of evil? I will hang up and take your answer off the air.

Thank you so much for your ministry. Okay, sure. Thank you. Now for those who don't know this

ministry, well, what Eddie's referring to is the fact that I do not claim to know details about

the origin of Satan. The most common view that almost all Christians have been taught and teach

themselves is that Satan was a good angel, a supreme angel, and he got proud. He waged war against God,

the holy angels made war against him, and he got cast out of heaven and became the devil.

So their view is that the devil is a former angel. Now my position is the Bible doesn't ever tell

us that. I know, I know Isaiah 14, I know Ezekiel 28, I know Luke 10, 19, I know Revelation 12,

9 through 11, I know these passages, they do not tell us none of them speak of Satan ever being an

angel. Okay, that being so, I cannot affirm with certainty that he was, but what's the alternative?

Well, an alternative might be, and I can't affirm this either. Maybe he was made as he is now

in order to perform the function that God has him functioning. You say, well, what? The devil,

you say God's using him for some? Of course, why would he let him exist? God doesn't have to

permit Satan to exist one second. There will come a time when Satan will throw him in the, I mean,

God will throw Satan into the lake of fire and that'll be the end of it. Why does he do that today?

Why didn't he do that 6,000 years ago? I don't know, but God always does things for a good reason.

My assumption is that whether he created Satan that way, or whether Satan was created good and

became that way, before humans came along, Satan was the way he is now. So whatever happened before

that, there's no record of it, we don't know, but the question is, when man was created, why did God

allow Satan to exist? Why did God allow him into the garden? Well, the answer was that he wanted him

to test Adam and Eve, and he tested Jesus, the Holy Spirit lived Jesus in the wilderness to be tested

by the devil too. He tested Job, and he tested all of us, I believe. And I think God wants us to be

tested. Now, someone says, well, then is God the author of evil? Well, if we mean human evil,

certainly not, and certainly evil doesn't, no one is required to do what Satan says. So

simply if we could say Satan exists, whether he's a fallen angel or not, he exists today because

he provides an alternative to obedience to God. And it therefore tests us. Do we want to be

God or do it? It takes the alternative. With no alternative, there'd be no test. And so

it's possible that the existence of a tester is not in itself evil, but it results in evil if people take

that way. You know, if Satan's there saying, oh, don't obey God, do this, eat the forbidden fruit

or whatever, well, then then people do an evil. But they created not the devil. The devil didn't

make them do it, and God didn't make them do it. It says in James chapter one, let everyone say,

when he says, but no one say when he's tempted, I'm tempted by God. He says for God does not

tempt people with evil, neither does, or he got his not tempted with evil, neither does he

exempt any man. He says, everyone is tempted who is drawn away by his own lusts and ties. Now,

he's not denying the devils they're involved, but he doesn't think that's the significant thing.

There is a devil there, but you don't sin because the devil, so you sin because you're drawn

away by your own lusts and ties. If Satan offers an alternative to obedience to God,

that's a choice you have to make. And you do not have to make the wrong one. Face it, we all do make

wrong ones too, but that wasn't absolutely necessary. We can't say that by putting a tester there,

God determined that everyone would fail. Any more than if your college professor says, okay,

here's the final exam. I taught you all the stuff you need to know. Here's the test. Now,

if you fail that test, that's not the college professor's fault. You should learn the stuff.

He taught you the stuff. Before Adam and Eve failed, God told him the right answer to his test.

They were going to test it on whether they should either the tree of the nausea or the evil. God said,

no, the answer is no, don't do that. It's like a college professor telling his class on the first

day, your grade, your past fail is going to be based on your answer to one question from the

final exam at the end of the semester, and I'm giving you the answer to it right now. Okay,

I think everyone is being set up for success. If anyone fails into those conditions,

don't blame the professor because he had a test. And the same thing is true. God said,

if you're tested in this area, here's the answer. Adam and Eve didn't believe the answer

and they went the wrong way. So God's not the author of evil. To say God's the author of a test,

doesn't tell you whether he wants people to pass or fail the test, but since he's God and he's not

willing that they should perish, his desire was able to pass the test and he gave them every

advantage to do so. There's no excuse for not doing so. So I don't see God as the author of evil,

whether or not Satan is a fallen angel. I don't take a position on it, but many people object

partly because they've never heard it before and partly because there are maybe philosophical

questions they have about it. They object to the idea that God could have made Satan as a tester

rather than as an angel who became one. I'm saying the Bible is silent on that, so one view or

another may be right. If we say that there's problems with the idea of God making a tester,

yeah, there's problems with him making an angel that fell too. How could an angel that saw the

face of God be so stupid as to think he could overthrow God? I can't imagine that. I'm not even

that stupid. How could an angel who sees God face to face be so such an idiot as to think, oh,

I can take this guy. That big guy's going down. How could he be called wise if he had such as

stupid miscalculation? That's a problem with the traditional view. Also, there's other issues too.

We just don't have the answer given to us in black and white. I appreciate your call,

maybe I can fit another question in here barely. It's going to have there in Westbrook, Maine. Hi,

Heather. Welcome. Yes, hi. How are you? Good. Put your question. Quickly. If you can't hear me,

I can't move on. Can you hear me? Please give me a question. Yes. Oh, yes. I heard. I think it

might be from Corinthians. I know it was a scripture about, you know, what am I praying for because

my prayer is not being answered, and it was just about the fact that you should just play anyway.

I don't know what it was, but it was a really good one. I don't know if it was volumes or

Corinthians or is that ring about? Well, I'm not sure. Yeah, I'm not sure what you were reading.

I don't know if I don't know of a scripture that says that outright. I think it's true

that if your prayer isn't immediately answered, you keep praying anyway. But I don't know

the scripture that says that. The only place I know of where it actually says that God decided not

to answer a prayer was when Paul and second Corinthians chapter 12 said that he had this thorn in

his flesh who was tormenting him. And three times he asked the Lord to take it away from him.

And the Lord said, I have a better idea. My grace is sufficient for you,

and I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to take away your your your thorn because your

weakness is is a good thing spiritually. My strength has made perfect in your weakness.

Paul himself in that passage said this thorn was giving him so he wouldn't be exalted above measure.

So it was keeping him humble. It was keeping him weak enough that God could have his way

showing his power through him. And that's the only case I know of. There might be others. I don't

know of hand, but I don't think there's one that says even if God's not answering a prayer,

just keep praying. Go that is a good thing to do. Just keep it up. And because God doesn't always

answer the first time he has. I'm out of time. You've been listening to the Nero Path Radio

broadcast. My name is Steve Greg. Our website is Dunnero Path dot com. We're listening to

a supporter. You can help us if you want from the website. The Nero Path dot com. Let's talk

again Monday. Have a good weekend.