The Narrow Path 07/06/2026

Steve Gregg: Good afternoon and welcome to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we are live for an hour each weekday afternoon. That is so that you can call in if you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith you want to raise for conversation. We'll be talking about those here. You have a different view from the host and want to talk about that? I'd be glad to hear from you. The same phone number for each. However, our lines are full at the moment. Now, if you're not a regular listener, you might think they're probably always full. No, they're not always full. We deliberately have a limited number of lines so that nobody has to wait forever. We can't have people waiting ten calls down, which would never get on the air. These calls, when we take them, the line opens, and then you could get through. So, lots of people get through in the course of the program even when the lines are full at the beginning. So, call in a few minutes and you can get through at this number: 844-484-5737. That's 844-484-5737. All right, and I think we should just go directly to our callers right now and talk to Shannon from Arkansas. Hi, Shannon, welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
Shannon: Hey, thanks, Steve. Daniel 9:27: "And he," the Messiah, "will make a firm covenant with many for one week." I've heard a bunch of your lectures on it, but if you could bear down on "for one week." That kind of confuses me. It seems like it's saying make a covenant for seven years.
Steve Gregg: Well, that's what it is saying. Okay, sure. Now, of course, you understand I think this correctly. A lot of our listeners assume when they read Daniel 9:27 that this is not talking about the Messiah, but that it's talking about the Antichrist. Now, of course, Daniel doesn't mention in this prophecy anywhere any Antichrist, but nonetheless, when it says he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week, which is of course in the context a week is not seven days but seven years. And this is referring to what's called the 70th week because there are 70 such weeks prophesied. And 69 of those 70 have been accounted for in the earlier verses. So, of the 70 weeks, there's only one left to talk about and that's the one that's mentioned here: "He shall confirm a covenant with many for one week, but in the middle of the week he shall bring an end to sacrifice and offering." Now, let me just say, and this is not for your benefit but for those who don't know otherwise, it's very common in popular teaching to say that he who is going to make a covenant for seven years is the Antichrist. And they say that he's going to break that covenant in the middle of the 70th week by defiling the temple and therefore bringing an end to the sacrificial system. Now, this idea has no basis in the passage at all nor in any cross-references of the Bible. There's no place in the Bible that ever mentions an Antichrist making a covenant with anybody for seven years. Nor is there any place in the Bible that speaks of an Antichrist defiling the temple and ending the Jewish sacrifices there. This is all what we call the futurist view. It's the dispensational view. But actually, if you read the passage itself, as you pointed out, it's far more likely that the "he" that it's talking about is Jesus because that's who the prophecy is about. There's been no mention in the entire prophecy about anyone called Antichrist, which makes it very bizarre to suggest that the pronoun "he" refers to an Antichrist who's never been mentioned previously. And yet the Messiah has been mentioned previously in verse 25 and in verse 26. That is, in the two verses prior to this verse, the Messiah has been mentioned specifically. And when it says "he" without any other referent, it's obviously talking about the Messiah. It says, "He shall confirm the covenant with many for one week." This, I believe—different people have different ideas about when this started—but I believe the 70th week began with the baptism of Jesus. Now, there's other opinions about that, but I don't have time to go into that right now. The baptism of Jesus, that began the final week, the final seven years. And he came to confirm his covenant, that is, what covenant? The Abrahamic covenant, which he did with his disciples in the upper room when he made the New Covenant with them. That confirmed the covenant. Now, but that was only three and a half years into his ministry. That's only in the midst of the week. Now, it says here, "In the midst of the week he will bring an end to sacrifice and offering." Well, Christians believe that Jesus did just that when he died. He brought an end to the sacrifices of the temple. I mean, not that they stopped doing it, but they stopped being legitimate. They stopped having any reason to be offered. And therefore Jesus brought an end to the sacrificial system of Judaism three and a half years after his baptism. Now, that being so, that gets you halfway through the seven years. What is the remaining three and a half years? Now, there's different ways that this has been looked at. There are indeed people who extend this way off into the future, like into the end of the world. So, you've got this big gap from the time of Jesus' death until the time that this is fulfilled. No such gap is suggested here. Some people think there's a shorter gap, which is also not suggested, but it could be that there is a short gap of maybe a generation and that the end of the sacrificial system then is the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. Jesus actually ended its legitimacy when he died, but it was 40 years later that it came to an end in terms of outward observance too at the temple. And so there's different views on this. My thought is that since the whole period of 70 weeks is said to be the period of time during which God is dealing specifically with Daniel's people, the Jews, and that God had dealt with the Jews pretty much as a unique nation from Sinai until of course the Babylonian exile, and now they'd come back—well, in Daniel's day some of them did go back from the exile, Daniel himself didn't—but God tells him there's going to be another 70 weeks or 490 years that God's going to be dealing with his people and with the holy city, that is, Jerusalem. So, in my opinion, after Jesus died, there came a time shortly thereafter—we don't know the exact number of years, but three and a half years would not be an impossible estimate—where God still only dealt with Jews. Even after Jesus died, he died for the sins of the world, but God was not dealing with the rest of the world. He was dealing only with Jews. The Jewish church in Jerusalem was the only church and there was no gospel preaching to the Gentiles. However, approximately three and a half years, if not exactly—we don't know the exact time—after Jesus died, Saul of Tarsus was called by God to be a missionary to the Gentiles. And this is the first time that an official emissary was singled out to go to the Gentiles and bring the gospel to them. So, it would mark the end of God's exclusive dealings with Israel and his beginning to bring in the nations into the kingdom of God. That's how I understand it.
Shannon: Okay, yeah, that's why it says for one week, seven years, with the Jews. Yeah. Okay, yeah, I understand. Very good. Thanks a lot, brother.
Steve Gregg: Okay, Shannon, thanks for your call. Good talking to you. Gerhard in Downey, California, welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
Gerhard: Hi, Steve. My question comes out of Matthew 12:22 and following, where the scribes and Pharisees have decided not only they don't like Jesus anymore but they're going to kill him, or they want a plan to kill him. And then there's the story that the opposition to our Lord, they attribute his miracle healing of the exorcism to the devil.
Steve Gregg: They attribute his healing to the devil, right.
Gerhard: Right, yeah. And here's what he easily refutes them. I mean, he's using common sense in answering them and it says, "You can't go into a house unless you restrain the owner, and if it doesn't make sense that Satan would cast out Satan."
Steve Gregg: Yes, I know the passage. So, what is your question?
Gerhard: My question has to do with the Pharisees and the scribes being in opposition to God. And they're in opposition to God and I guess they don't even know or realize that they're working against God. And it's almost like the Apostle Paul; he was in the same boat.
Steve Gregg: Yeah, he was one of them.
Gerhard: Right, but other than a supernatural revelation by God to Saul, how would you know that you're in opposition to God?
Steve Gregg: Well, I think that most people by default have an interest in their own advantages, in their own well-being, in their own security, in their own promotion, in their own wealth and so forth. I mean, people are born selfish. And religious people are not automatically different than that. I mean, many, many people who embrace religion do it entirely for selfish reasons. There are charlatans who go into the ministry who don't have any love for God whatsoever, and that's what Jesus said about the Pharisees. In John chapter 5, he says, "I know you that you don't have any love for God in you." Okay, well these guys are like professional religionists and they don't love God. Well, how can that be? Well, they're not the last to fit that category. There are people today in pulpits who have no love for God. They're in it for their own self. They're in it to make a reputation for themselves, or to make money for themselves, or to just enjoy power or whatever. And again, I'm not saying who is and who isn't that. I just know I've been in ministry for 55 years in many churches. I've probably encountered many hundreds of ministers and I know. I mean, you can tell. A lot of them love God and a lot of them don't. And you can tell when they don't because when you confront them with truth they get all offended instead of wanting to know the truth. They want to put you down, they want to throw you out, just like the Pharisees did with Jesus and with the people he healed. So, I mean, there's bad people in the world. Some of them go into religion as a profession. The Pharisees were among them. There was status, there was probably money in it, and there was power and respect that they got from people. And that's entirely selfish, that you don't have to love God to want those things. Now, of course, loving God is something that if you do love God I think you would know you do. Because you wake up thinking about how can I please God? How can I make God happy? I love God. Just like a good husband or wife wakes up, "How can I please my wife?" or "my husband?" You say, "Oh, people don't wake up thinking that." Well, speak for yourself. I do. And I've always done that. I've been married, unfortunately, had to be married more than once, but that's always been—when I get married I wake up thinking, how can I please my wife? How can I bless her? When I had children I felt the same way about them. And I assumed every decent person does. Now, if there's someone out there who says, "I don't do that," well, maybe your marriage isn't as happy as it should be. Maybe it could be if you were better at it. But the point I'm making is that when you love somebody, God included, your main desire is that they would be pleased, not you. You will impoverish yourself to bless them if you can. If there's something that they need and it'll cost you everything you have, you'll give it happily. That's what love is. And that's how a person who loves God is. You know, the way I see it, if you love God—and by the way, I've had to test myself about this all through my whole life. You know, I put the test—Paul said this in 2 Corinthians, "test yourselves and see if you are in the faith." So, I mean, you need to check it out once in a while and say, "Am I really a Christian? Am I really loving God?" I mean, one thing you could ask is, "If there was no heaven or hell, would I still serve Jesus with all my heart?" That is, if I had nothing to gain in this life or in the next by doing so, would I do it just because of him? Just because he's worth it? Just because I love him? I mean, David and many people in the Old Testament apparently served God without knowing anything about the next life. There's no indication that Abraham or Isaac or Jacob or Moses knew anything about the next life. They served God because they valued God. And I think that, you know, if you want someone to love you, you want them to love you not because they get something from you, but because they love you. And God wants to be loved that way too. And Jesus said he knew the Pharisees didn't have any love for God in them. They apparently were doing their religious stuff for themselves. And I would say that, you know, again, anyone can test himself. You say, "How can you know if you're like them or not?" Well, just ask this. If there was absolutely no advantage to me in serving Christ, if I didn't receive any status or accolades for it, if I didn't believe there was any life after this one, and if I didn't believe there was any reward after this, would I still serve him? Well, if you love him you would, because that's what you do when you love somebody. Now, if you say no, I wouldn't, then probably you're serving God for some other reason than loving him. And that's—that would be I would say the best way to test. You say, "How can we know if that's what we're doing?" That's how I would check it out.
Gerhard: Okay. Thank you.
Steve Gregg: All right, brother. Thanks for calling. Greg in Chicago, Illinois, welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
Greg: Hi, Steve. Yeah, that your answer to the previous question may tie into my question here a little bit. So, I've been listening to your recording about God's sovereignty and man's salvation. And one question I had, I guess regarding Calvinism, if you know, what do you think their view is of somebody who's a Christian that is struggling with sin? I'm in a non-denominational church and I don't know if we necessarily have Calvinism, but it sounds like some people in the church, and sometimes we talk in a Calvinistic way, I guess, like saying if they got over a sin, "It's like God changed my heart. I was unable to overcome and behavior modification doesn't work." I mean, what do they, if they feel that God's the one choosing before anybody's born, and then if they're struggling with sin, if God's doing all the work, I guess, do you understand my question?
Steve Gregg: Well, kind of. I mean, the idea of the Calvinist is that God is sovereignly ordaining everything that happens. Not only is he ordaining everybody who receives Christ, that is, he pre-ordained that they would before they were born, and it was inevitable and unavoidable that they would because that was God's sovereign election or choice. Likewise, anyone who does not become a Christian, God foreordained that according to Calvinism and he didn't want them to be saved because he could have elected them but he didn't. And therefore he made it impossible for them to be saved, so clearly he didn't want them saved. Now, what about the ones who are elect? Let's say you're a Christian. He wants you to live a holy life. The Bible says that. Paul says that in 1 Thessalonians 4 in the opening verses, he said, "This is the will of God, your sanctification," that is that you be holy. He said that you would abstain from fornication, for example, he gives as an example. Well, there's a lot of Christians who struggle with temptation in those areas, and sometimes they fall. So, I guess asking the Calvinists, okay, why do you suppose that is? I mean, if God doesn't want you to sin and you are elect, that is you are one of the people that he's chosen to be saved and his will is you be holy, what if you do sin? Who is making that decision then? Was it God? Was God making you sin? Now, a person who's not a Calvinist, like myself, I'm not, would say, "Well, this is the battle we fight. This life is a battle. It is a test. We are waging war on the behalf of the kingdom of God against the default influence of the kingdom of Satan and seeking to take Satan's victims out of his hands and bring them over to Christ so that they can be saved." But we actually believe there's something at stake. We don't believe that God has predetermined everyone we meet will either necessarily get saved or necessarily not. We figure they have a choice in that matter. Now, because they have a choice, there are things that come upon them, temptations and so forth, that are not something God wants them to do. Now, I believe he wants us to be tested. If I experience a temptation, I believe God wants me to experience that. Though it doesn't mean he's tempting me. The Bible says God does not tempt anyone. But it's very clear the Bible says in a couple of places that the Holy Spirit led Jesus in the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. I mean, it was God's will that Jesus go and be tempted like that. Adam and Eve were put into a situation by God where they would necessarily be tested. Job, at the devil's prompting, God allowed him to be tested. Now, God could have prevented it. In fact, he did up to that point. The devil complained that Satan had absolutely no power to do anything to Job because God had put a hedge around him. So, he needed God to allow it, and God did allow it. Now, it's evident from this that God wants us in the battle. He wants us to struggle. He wants to teach our hands to war, as David put it. He wants us to learn how to overcome. It's like it says I think in the Book of Judges that when God brought Israel into the land, he didn't drive all the enemies out all at once. He said so that generations that had not known war could learn war. That is, there had to be enemies there in order to keep them on their toes, keep them at the ready and so forth. And I mean, God has us in a war zone here. This world is a war zone. Now, what you talk about, what about someone who's struggling with sin? Well, we're supposed to struggle with sin. I mean, if struggling with sin means I fall to sin regularly, I'm not saying we're supposed to do that. But we are in the zone. God has us living in the war zone where struggling with sin is exactly the task. That is, sin wants to dominate you and God wants it not to, and you're on his side, so you struggle against sin. Jesus had to be tempted, every godly person that's ever lived has been tempted. And temptations can take various forms. They can take the form of persecution where you're put in jail and tortured and stuff. I mean, that's one test to see if you'll stay faithful to God. Another is they can take the form of ease and wealth and prosperity where you forget that you even need God because everything's going so well for you, you forget all about God. Or it can take the form of really hard temptations that some people have more than others. For example, I have had plenty of temptations in my life and still do, but they're not the ones that some people go through. I know people who've struggled with the temptation for smoking or drugs or alcohol. I've never had those. The first temptation has never occurred to me. I've never had the slightest interest in getting drunk or using drugs. It just wasn't in my life. I just never been there and I couldn't ever understand why anyone would want to do that. So, but I've got my own flaws. You know, I've had to struggle with sin. Everyone does. Jesus did. That's the point. We're struggling against it, which means we don't own it. If somebody is trying to put something on you, like the devil's trying to get us to succumb to temptation, well, if you're fighting it, you're not on his side. You're fighting him. That's why Paul talked about how we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers and against the rulers of the darkness of this age. He also, Peter says in 1 Peter chapter 5, that the devil is out there like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. It says "whom resist," or it says "resist him." You've got to fight him. In James chapter 4 and verse 7 it says, "Resist the devil and he'll flee from you." So, we've got—we're in a realm where this is a battleground, not a playground. And therefore we struggle with sin. Now, a Calvinist might see this the same way I do because I'm not really sure that the whole concept of struggling with sin is different for them than for us theologically. We all agree we live in a world of temptation. We all agree that God wants us to overcome temptation. Now, the Calvinist of course goes a step further than I would because they'd say, "Well, if you win the battle, that's because God predestined you to win it. And if you fail in the battle, that's because God predestined you to fail." But it really seems strange for God to predestinate anyone to fail. I mean, to put somebody in a battle where they're supposed to be doing something that pleases God instead of something that pleases the enemy, and then for God to cut their ankles off so that they fail. What's up with that? I mean, the character of the God that Calvinism preaches is a very different character than the God in the Bible. And that's why no Christians held to Calvinistic doctrines before Augustine's time, which was 400 years after Christ. So, the first 400 years of Christianity, not one Christian, not one apostle, not one church father ever came up with the idea that God predestined all this stuff. It was Augustine that did that and he became the father of Roman Catholicism and of the Protestant Reformation. And as a result of that, it became a fairly standard doctrine we hear. But there's not a reason in the world for people who actually have Bibles to believe that doctrine. Hey, I'm out of time for that question. We have a break and then we have another half hour coming up. Don't go away. You're listening to the Narrow Path. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. I'll be back in 30 seconds. We have another half hour. Stay tuned. Is the Great Tribulation about to begin? Are we seeing the fulfillment of biblical prophecy unfolding before our very eyes? In the series "When Shall These Things Be?" Steve Gregg answers these and many other intriguing questions. The lecture series entitled "When Shall These Things Be?" can be downloaded in MP3 format without charge from our website, thenarrowpath.com. Welcome back to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we're live for another half hour taking your calls. A half hour ago when we started the program, we had all our lines full. Right now there's two lines open. That's your opportunity if you want to be on the air, if you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith, or you have a different view from the host you want to balance comments. Here's the number to call: 844-484-5737. That's 844-484-5737. All right, we're going next to talk to Michael in Inglewood, California. Michael, welcome to the Narrow Path.
Michael: Hi, thanks, Steve. I watched your debate with Chris last week and it was kind of hard to watch it because I was spending so much time defending you in the comments, so it's almost like I missed the whole thing. But my question is, I know he mentioned John 4:14 about never thirsting again if you drink of this water. I didn't really catch an answer to that one because that does kind of seem like once saved always saved.
Steve Gregg: Right, and I mentioned that. I mentioned that that is somewhat different in its form than some of the verses that say "whoever does such and such will never do this and that." For example, it says in John 3:16, "Whoever believes in him will not perish," or it says "whoever eats this bread and drinks this wine shall have everlasting life," or "whosoever lives and believes in me shall never die." John is full of these statements where Jesus says whoever does this—and he uses the present tense—will never—that is in the future tense—will never die or be hungry or thirst or whatever. But in John chapter 4, there's a similar statement but it's not really in the same form. It sounds like it in English because it says—verses 13 and 14, John 4: Jesus answered and said to her, "Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again. But whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst, but the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life." Now, the verb tense here is different than in the other verses that I mentioned that are similar to it. That is, whoever is present tense doing these things will never have these consequences. In this case, it's not the present tense. It's whoever has done it or whoever did it or whoever drank of it. So, it is a different form. However, here's what I think he's saying. He said, "Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again." Okay, sure. I mean, he's talking about the water in the well. The woman and all the people in that village were drinking regularly from that well, but it didn't solve their thirst permanently. They had to come back and drink some more. That's in fact what she says after he makes his statement. She says, "Sir, give me this water so that I do not thirst or have to come here to draw." He's basically saying this water will not satisfy you permanently. If you drink it, you're going to thirst again. You're going to have to come back and get some more. It's not a permanent thirst quencher. But the water I'm giving you, if you drink that—and apparently he basically means if you drink it just once—he says, it will become in him, in the person who drinks it, a fountain of water springing up to everlasting life. Well, if instead of having to draw water from the well, you've got within you living water springing up like a geyser, like a fountain in you, well you don't have to keep drinking it, although I guess it could be said you're drinking it all the time. The point is, you will not have to drink it intermittently like you do when you come to the well. You'll have this permanently in you. Now, does this mean that a person who once drank that water and then walks away from Christ will still have this fountain in him? It'd be rather strange to assume that. I mean, frankly, the fountain of living water, by the way, is the Holy Spirit. We know that because there's another passage in chapter 7 of John and verse 39, where Jesus, having said that whoever believes in him will have this living water in him, John says he spoke this of the Holy Spirit who had not yet been given. So, the living water is the Holy Spirit. If you drink of Jesus one time, the Holy Spirit will come to be in you and will be a fountain of water in you. Now, whether he'll continue to do so if you renounce Christ is the other issue. The conflict that Chris and I had in that debate was that he was saying if you become a Christian at one point, then even if you walk away from God and live for the devil and die a Satanist, you'll still forever be saved. Now, I don't think there's anything like that that Jesus is saying. I think he's telling the woman, "You're drinking of this water regularly and you have to keep coming back because it doesn't satisfy you permanently. I can give you water that will satisfy you permanently. You just need to drink it and you'll find there's a fountain in you springing up of this water. And obviously that means you can continually drink it. You don't have to drink intermittently. It'll be a constant reality in you." But he doesn't say it'll never go away if you go away. You know, if you say, "Well, I received this gift from God, but I don't want God anymore. I don't want him or his gifts. I want nothing to do with him. I want to serve Satan. I want to be a Muslim or a Satanist or a Buddhist or something else." Well, I mean, Jesus isn't talking about that contingency. He's telling her something that is applicable to her right there at that moment. If you want the water I can give you, it will become this fountain in you. Okay, well that's true whether he believed that it unconditionally remains a fountain in her even if she totally becomes an unbeliever and an atheist. No, I mean, I don't think he believed that at all. He certainly doesn't say that. So, you know, he is talking about a one-time thing it looks like. If you drink this water, you won't have to thirst. He said you won't thirst, but the reason you won't thirst is because you'll have this fountain in you. So, the question becomes: Does that fountain remain in you if you renounce Christ? Because neither—I mean, Chris knew that when I'm saying that you can depart from Christ, and you can pass from being a believer and a Christian and a saved person to another state where you're not a Christian and not a saved person, he knew very well I wasn't saying you lose your salvation when you sin. I don't believe that. I think all Christians, unfortunately, sin sometimes. But they shouldn't. But the loss of salvation, if it can be had at all, comes deliberately. It's not just by being weak and stumbling and falling into sin you've lost your salvation. Jesus said that no one can pluck us out of his Father's hand. We can be fooled, we can be tripped up, we can be deceived into sin, but no one can take us from God. Only we could do that. You know, the sheep, in the context of John 10 where he talks that no one takes them from my Father's hand, you know, sheep can wander off. But he describes in the verse in John 10 just before the one about his Father's hand, it says, "My sheep hear my voice and they follow me." Now, that's present tense. You know, my sheep are following me, my sheep are hearing me. That's who are my sheep. What if a person stops hearing him and following him? Well, then they don't qualify as sheep anymore. That's not the definition of a sheep. The definition of a sheep is someone who hears him and follows him. We're not static entities. We are dynamic entities. We have to make decisions every day of whether we'll listen to God or not, whether we'll follow God or not. I'm not saying it's so difficult that we have to re-commit every day or else it may slip out of our hands. I mean, if you make a true commitment to Christ, that's a lifetime commitment you're making. But just like marriage is a lifetime commitment, people when they make that commitment, if they take it seriously, they'll stay married for a lifetime. But some people who've made that commitment and maybe even meant it at one time, they break down under temptation and they cave in and they divorce. That's not okay, but it's a possibility. Likewise, if you make a commitment to follow Jesus and be loyal to him, if it's real, that's what you'll attempt to do every day. But it doesn't mean you could never wander off over time, be led astray. There's all kinds of warnings against that in the Bible. So, it's obviously possible. But the question is that Chris and I were debating: He was saying even if you are led astray, even if you're led off into atheism or Satanism, once if you accepted Jesus once, you're saved anyway. And I didn't bring this up, but I thought about bringing up a case of a man I actually knew, a friend of mine who's a Christian musician. He had a brother who was unsaved. They both came out of really hard backgrounds, drugs and alcohol, all that stuff. And one night my friend led his brother to the Lord. His brother was weeping, repenting of his sin, prayed for Christ to save him and so forth. And my friend came to me, "Oh, my brother just got saved last night." He described it. It sounded like a very dramatic conversion. But then the next day, somebody said to my friend's brother, "Oh, I heard you gave your life to Christ yesterday." He said, "Who, me? No, no way, that didn't happen." In other words, he renounced Christ the very next day. Okay, so according to my opponent in the debate, he would have said, "Well, he did get saved, and he'll die saved, even though he renounced Christ the next day and hasn't professed Christ at all. He had a few hours where he was believing and repentant and serious. So, he's saved forever even though he walked away from Christ the very next day." That's a case I actually know of. I'm sure there's plenty of others, but that was a very dramatic case. I've known many Christians who served God for years and then became totally anti-Christian. To say that someone who's anti-Christian is still saved is absurd. And Chris, my opponent, was saying even if you deny Christ and he denies you, like he said he would, you're not lost. He's just denying you the right to have rewards and so forth. And this is usually what they say when they say you can't lose your salvation. They say, "Well, you can lose your rewards." Well, okay, but isn't salvation a reward also? If he says, "No, it's a gift," well, everything's a gift. Every reward is a gift. Every breath we take is a gift. Salvation being among them. But if you can lose the benefits that are yours by birthright as a Christian by going the wrong way, who's to say the essential connection to God and salvation isn't one of those benefits that could be lost along with all the others? Well, there's just people who want to believe otherwise. The ones who are very strongly emotionally attached to the once saved always saved doctrine are typically either people who've fallen away from being Christians and they hope they go to heaven anyway, or they're apparently very weak Christians who are afraid they might fall away and they hope that even if they do they'll be saved, or they are the parents of people who've fallen away. I've often found that the mothers and fathers of backslidden Christians are the ones who are very emotionally attached to this doctrine. Yeah, but being emotionally attached to a doctrine doesn't make it true. The Bible doesn't teach it. And that's just the point. All right, Michael, hey, thank you for your call, brother. Good talking to you. Tom from Portland, Oregon, welcome. Hey, Tom.
Tom: Yeah, hi, Steve. I have a question about the Nephilim and about the fallen angels. I'm just wondering what does the Bible say about the origin of demons, if it says anything at all. And unclean spirits, are they fallen angels or are they Nephilim? And what are the Nephilim if the Bible talks about them? What are they? And I'm wondering if they're not on the earth, are they in the abyss? And how do they make doctrines of demons and how do they spread them? So, that's my question.
Steve Gregg: Wow, that's a big subject. I'll try to answer as briefly as I can, but I will say this: After I have, I won't have covered everything in depth, unfortunately. You can go after this call, you can go to matthew713.com, matthew713.com, and look up Nephilim. And what matthew713 is, it's a topical index of about 30,000 past calls from this radio show arranged in a topical index. You just look up the topic and all the calls from the past 12, 15 years or so are cataloged there. So, if you look up Nephilim, you'll get the bigger—you'll get more answer from it. Also, I do have a series at our website under topical lectures called "Spiritual Warfare" and I do talk about demons, I do talk about the origin of Satan, things like that there. But I'll give you a short answer here. The short answer is that the Bible really doesn't have a passage that sets out to tell us who the demons are or where they came from. The term "evil spirit" is used interchangeably in the gospels with the term "demon." So, we know they're spirits and we know they're evil. Now, some people say that Satan was an angel, a great angel, one of three archangels some people have said, and had a third of the other angels kind of under his command, and that when he rebelled against God and was thrown out of heaven, this third of the angels that were with him also were cast out and they became the demons. Now, I want to say, I can't say that didn't happen. All I can say is the Bible doesn't say that it did. There's nothing in the Bible that describes that happening. You know, if anyone says, "Where do we get the idea that a third of the angels fell with Satan?" It comes from one verse. It's in Revelation 12:4 where it talks about the dragon. It says, "With his tail he dragged a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth." Okay, so the dragon's tail drags a third of the stars from heaven. Now, are those the angels? Well, maybe. What timeframe are we looking at here? Well, in the context, it's while he's waiting to kill the male child of the woman who is the Messiah. This is back—I have a chapter on this in my book "Empire of the Risen Son," book one, chapter seven has an extensive discussion of Revelation 12. But the point here is that the stars are not identified as angels. In fact, the idea of a person or someone casting stars to the ground is from Daniel chapter 8 and verse 10. And anyone who reads Daniel and Revelation knows there's a lot of borrowing of imagery from Daniel and from other Old Testament prophets in Revelation. But the only other place that talks about stars being cast to the ground, as it is in Revelation 12, is in Daniel 8:10 where Antiochus Epiphanes, around 167 B.C., is said to have cast some of the host of heaven, that is the stars, to the ground and trampled on them. Now, he didn't cast any angels down, but he did horrible things to the righteous Jews. In Daniel, the stars usually represent righteous people, not angels, because in Daniel 12 it says, "Those who turn many to righteousness will shine like the stars forever." So, in my opinion, Revelation is probably borrowing the imagery from Daniel, and in Daniel it's not angels that are cast down, it's righteous people that are compared to stars. And so it's possible that Revelation 12 also is speaking of Satan casting down righteous people, as he did in the persecution of the faithful Jews under Antiochus and under the Romans and so forth. Anyway, what I'm saying is the one verse in the Bible from which everybody has taken this idea that a third of the angels fell is by no means an obvious reference to angels falling at all, and certainly not saying that they were the demons or whatever. Now, I'm not saying the fallen angels are not the demons. They may be. Although in 2 Peter 2:4 and Jude verse 6, I think it is, it tells us that some angels have fallen, but it does say that those angels who fell are kept in chains under darkness awaiting the judgment of the great day, which raises serious questions as to whether they're out and about doing the demonic stuff that demons did in the Bible. You know, we're not given much information about that. But the fact that there are fallen angels is mentioned, but that they are chained up awaiting for the judgment is also said in the same places that we learn of their existence. So, it's hard to identify those with the demons or not. Now, you mentioned the Nephilim. The Nephilim are mentioned only twice in the Bible. The word is found in Genesis 6 and then in Numbers chapter 13. In Genesis 6, it says "the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were beautiful to look at and they took wives of them as many as they chose," and it says "there were Nephilim in the earth in those days." But then it says, "And also after that, when the sons of God came into the daughters of men and children were born to them." Now, there were Nephilim in the earth in those days and apparently in the days before those marriages took place and also after those marriages took place. In other words, there's nothing in Genesis 6 that actually says that the Nephilim were the product of those marriages. They were contemporary with those marriages taking place. There were Nephilim in the world in those days and also after that, after those marriages took place, which means that the first reference is before that. So, anyway, it's hard to say that the sons of God and the daughters of men produced the Nephilim. They may have. But it sounds like it's saying they were Nephilim before then too. Now, we will say this too: whatever Nephilim there were in the earth in the days before Noah's flood in Genesis 6 would have been wiped out in the flood. And yet in Numbers 13 the Nephilim were seen again in the promised land when the spies that Joshua sent in came back. They said we saw the Nephilim there and the Anakim. Now, the Anakim were giant people. We know of them from a number of other places. Some of the Canaanite cities were populated by the Anakim and the Nephilim are mentioned alongside them. Nephilim probably—no one knows how to translate it exactly, but "giants" is the main way it's translated. There's no suggestion in the Bible that they were superhuman beings any more than Goliath, who also was a giant, was a superhuman either. Just genetic giants. And there have been genetic giants in various times, of course, and lands. There's some pretty big people in the NBA right now, not quite as big as Goliath, but some pretty big ones. So, I mean, we don't have any reason to say that they are demons. Or even that the sons of God who married the daughters of men were demons. They could have been. Certainly "sons of God" are mentioned in lots of connections in the Bible. Sometimes referring to the leaders of Israel, sometimes referring to godly people in general, and sometimes referring to angels as in the Book of Job it would appear the sons of God that gathered before God appear to be angels, although some people think not. The point is that "sons of God" is ambiguous enough it's used more than one way, used several ways in the Bible. Even we are called sons of God in the New Testament. There's no necessity of saying the sons of God were angels. They may have been. But this is all ambiguous stuff. The idea that the sons of God were angels and they married the daughters of men and produced Nephilim as their offspring comes from the Book of Enoch. You know, obviously the story he's referring to is in Genesis 6, but there's no place in the Bible that tells us that those sons of God were angel things or that the Nephilim were their offspring. But the Book of Enoch, which appeared about two centuries before Christ, is a very fanciful retelling of some of those Genesis stories by some anonymous author who claimed wrongly to be Enoch. And he's the one who popularized the idea that the sons of God were fallen angels. And the Jews accepted this after the time of the Book of Enoch. Many of them thought it was a popular book, many Christians did too. But Enoch isn't really part of the Bible and wasn't really written by an inspired author. So, we don't know if the Nephilim have anything to do with the demons. There are people who hold to what's called the Gap Theory and they think there was a pre-Adamic race between Genesis 1:1, which says "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," and Genesis 1:2, which says "And the earth was formless and void." And they say between the time God created the heavens and the earth in verse 1 and the time it became formless and void in verse 2, there was a long history where there were other human-like things before Adam. And there was a fall there and a flooding that destroyed them all, though we don't read of it anywhere in the Bible. They just kind of insert it there between those two verses. And they say that the demons are the spirits of those wicked people who were judged in the prior to Genesis 1:2. Now, again, this is speculative in the extreme. And there are people who teach it. All I can say is there's people who teach several different theories about this. Each of them requires going far beyond anything the Bible actually tells us. Which is a very sad thing to have to say for a person who likes to answer Bible questions because people always want to know the answer to that. I want to know that. Where'd the demons come from? We aren't told. One of the most notable modern cases of exorcism that was very well documented by a pastor named Pastor Blumhardt in Germany, whose case was well known by Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Karl Barth and people like that in Germany. He dealt with a woman who had thousands of demons. Took him two years to cast them all out. He was a Lutheran. He wasn't a Pentecostal or anything. He didn't even believe in demon possession until he had to come up against it. But took him two years and he got all the demons out of her. She became a normal person. She—it was like the Exorcist. I mean, the stuff she was doing while she was possessed makes the movie the Exorcist seem tame, really tame. But the thing is, he held the view that the demons he was dealing with were wicked people, the spirits of departed wicked people who in their lifetime had given their souls to Satan by some kind of selling-their-soul kind of deal and that they were now forced to serve him in the afterlife. Again, I won't affirm that to be true. This is yet a fourth idea. So, all I can say is there's lots of ideas. The Bible doesn't clearly tell us which one is correct.
Tom: Well, one more thing. I was just wondering: Does Satan have power over the weather like when Job's children were killed? Did Satan actually send that wind to smash the house down and kill all of his children? And can Satan start fires and storms and things like that?
Steve Gregg: I think the way that Job records that gives the impression the answer is yes. You know, I mean, it was when God allowed Satan to go and take Job's family and stuff that we're told this wind came and blew the house down. Sounds like it was a direct result of Satan's being released to do this. And so I'm going to say yes. Satan can control weather if God allows it. God does too, you know, sometimes. You know, it's interesting that when Jesus was with the disciples in the boat and the storm came up and threatened to sink the boat and Jesus was asleep, the disciples woke him up and it says he stood up and he rebuked the storm and said, "Peace, be still." Now, he also rebuked a fever once in Peter's mother-in-law, but most of the time when Jesus did miracles he wasn't rebuking anyone, he's just doing a miracle. There's some suggestion there might have been a demonic source that he was addressing. Interestingly, the storm occurred while he and the disciples are on their way across the lake where they would soon encounter the man of the tombs and all his demons. So, some have thought that the devil was bringing that storm to avoid this encounter between Jesus and one of the devil's chief victims, knowing that Jesus would deliver him. So, I think that there may be suggestion there, not altogether clear, that that storm was brought by Satan. In any case, Jesus rebuked it as if it was doing the wrong thing. Tom, I'm out of time, I'm sorry to say. We've been talking a long time. Our website's thenarrowpath.com. Thank you for joining us. Let's talk again tomorrow.