The Narrow Path 08/20/2026

Steve Gregg: Good afternoon and welcome to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg, and we are live, as is generally the case, Monday through Friday for an hour without commercial breaks. We just take your phone calls the whole time. Those phone calls, generally speaking, we expect them to be either questions that you have about the Bible or the Christian faith that you want to talk about on the air, or disagreements with the host that you'd like to talk about on the air. That's a wide range of possibilities there, so feel free to give me a call. I'm looking at a switchboard that is largely open, not entirely. If you'd like to get through, this is going to be a very good opportunity, possibly the best you'll have in this coming hour. You can call me at 844-484-5737. This weekend, about a week from now, I'm going to be speaking at a variety of places further north in California from where I am. I'm in Southern California. I'll be up in the Fresno, Clovis, Oakhurst area speaking in a number of places. If you live up in that area or you happen to be planning to be in that area and want to join any of these gatherings, feel free to look them up at our website, thenarrowpath.com. If you go there and go on the tab that says announcements, you'll find all the places that I'm going to be. If you're in the Sacramento area, two weeks after that, so about three weeks from now, I'll be speaking at a few places in the Sacramento area as well. Those also are listed at our website. There's some more travels coming up in the following months as well, but we'll just leave it at that right now. Fresno, Clovis, Oakhurst area about a week from now, and about two weeks later, the Sacramento area. You can get all the details from thenarrowpath.com under announcements. We're going to go to the phones and talk right now to Arez in the Bay Area, the San Francisco Bay Area. Welcome to the Narrow Path, Arez. Thanks for calling.
Arez: Hi, Steve. I've never asked you this, but I wanted to ask you as someone that I consider one of the most logical people I've ever met who can see the follies behind people's behavior. I personally believe that speaking in tongues that you hear most of the time in churches is kind of like learned behavior that other people hear, and they do it. It's like emotionalism. I don't think it's real at all. It's just something that, like babies, they mimic other people. With that being said, what's your take on it? Have you done it, and in the past, if you've done it, do you kind of see it now as just kind of this learned behavior, or what are your views on it?
Steve Gregg: I'd be glad to talk about that. First of all, I don't hear people speak in tongues all that much because the churches I go to often are not Pentecostal churches, and that's where you're more likely to hear people doing this. I have certainly visited and been in my share of Pentecostal churches, so I know the phenomenon. As far as whether it's learned behavior or not, this is something that's not always easy to determine because there is such a thing as a gift of tongues. The Bible speaks of it. In fact, it says that church should not forbid people to speak in tongues in 1 Corinthians 14, though it should be done in an orderly way, as Paul says. A lot of churches today fall into more often than not one of two categories: those that allow speaking in tongues but don't do it in an orderly way, and those who simply don't allow speaking in tongues or don't believe in it. Both of those are violating what the Bible says. To find a church where people are permitted to speak in tongues, but they do it one at a time, only when there's an interpreter, and only two or three in a whole service, well, that's exactly how the Bible says it should be done. I don't know why churches just seem to avoid that balance. They either go crazy with tongues sometimes or they don't believe in it at all. I do believe there's a valid gift of tongues. You said the churches that you've been into where people speak in tongues, you wonder whether it's learned behavior or not a spiritual gift. Well, that is possible. Anytime you join a society of people or a church or a denomination, in order to fit in, you do learn the patterns of behavior that belong to that group, unless you're trying to rock the boat or be a troublemaker. Most people who go to church actually want to be a part of the group, and they want people to see them as somebody who's like themselves. If you go to a church where people smoke cigars and drink whiskey, as some of the reformed young guys are doing, then maybe a young guy joining that group will start smoking cigars and drinking whiskey too. If you go to a Pentecostal church, people are certainly going to be speaking in tongues, and maybe you'll be inclined to do the same thing, whether you have the gift or not. In other words, we all sort of try to fit in and in some measure imitate the norms of the groups we want to be seen as a part of. So there is pressure in Pentecostal churches upon people, whether they have the gift of tongues or not, to appear as if they do. In Pentecostal churches, speaking in tongues is actually a rite of passage, and someone who has not spoken in tongues will be viewed at least by some people as someone who's not really fully arrived. They believe that if somebody has been baptized in the Spirit, the first evidence that they have been is that they will speak in tongues, which translates into this: if you haven't spoken in tongues, you have not been baptized in the Spirit as all Christians should be. So there's that pressure. If you're going to be in a group that believes you have to speak in tongues to be filled with the Spirit and that you don't want to be one of those who acts like it's not important to be filled with the Spirit, then you're going to be under pressure to speak in tongues. I'm not saying you'll fake it. Some people might; I'm sure there are people who would fake things just to please other people. There may be people in those churches that don't speak in tongues because they're too honest to fake it. But also there's probably people who do what others are doing and don't see themselves as faking it. They assume that what they're doing is what everyone else is doing and what you're supposed to be doing. So there is learned behavior in probably every society of people, including Pentecostal churches. And it is true also that in Pentecostal churches, if you hear a lot of people speak in tongues, a lot of them sound very similar to each other. When that is true, I have to assume either there is some language unknown to me where the same sounds and the same words seem to occur frequently, or that perhaps some people are imitating others. I don't know. You wonder if I've spoken in tongues. I have. Did I used to and have I renounced it? No, I still do once in a while. I've never done it in public. I've never done it in a church. So even my wife has never heard me speak in tongues to my knowledge. It's not something I do in front of people, but it's a devotional exercise. It's a devotional gift. No, I don't renounce it. I believe the Bible teaches it. I don't believe everyone has to speak in tongues, but I certainly am persuaded that I have spoken in tongues in a legitimate sense. I know for sure I've never done it to please anyone. I know I've never done it to imitate anyone. I've only done it on occasions when I felt like it was what the Bible describes and when I was as a spirit-filled Christian. I don't do it every day. I'm not saying it would be wrong to, but I just don't. What the Bible teaches is more important. In my opinion, the Bible does teach there is a spiritual gift of tongues, and therefore I'm not going to say all these people who speak in tongues are faking it. But I'm also not going to say that in a society where everyone is in a sense under pressure to speak in tongues, that everybody who does it has the genuine gift. I think there's an element of both: the real gift in some cases and learned behavior, as you called it, in other cases. So I'm kind of going to walk the middle of the line there, not to be cowardly, but just because I think that's the nature of the reality as I see it. All right, let's talk to Brian in Pomona, California. Welcome to the Narrow Path, Brian.
Brian: Hey, Steve. Good afternoon. My question is in regards to the Mark of the Beast. I believe I know your stance on it. You believe that it's symbolic regarding it being on your head and your hand, and I love that view. It makes sense to me. I have another view that I want to run by you. I don't know if you've heard of this, but it basically says that the number 666 and the imagery of the beast in the book of Revelation point directly to Roman Emperor Nero and that ancient languages like Hebrew and Greek use letters to represent numbers referring to Gematria. When you take the Hebrew spelling of Nero's royal title, Nero Caesar, and add up the numerical value of each letter, the total equals 666. Some early biblical manuscripts list the numbers as 616 instead. Scholars note that the Latin spelling of Nero Caesar adds up precisely to 616 in that regard. I wanted to know your perspective on that, Steve. Have you ever heard of this? What are your thoughts?
Steve Gregg: I think you're quite right. I believe the number 666 is a reference to Nero. What I believe about the beast is that the beast is not one man. The beast, of course, has seven heads and ten horns. These seven heads are said to be seven kings, or some people would interpret them as seven Caesars over in Revelation 17:10. We're also told in the same chapter that the ten horns are ten kings, so we've got 17 kings associated with it. Both the numbers seven and ten can be symbolic, which means it could be far more. The idea is that the beast is not one king or one ruler; the beast represents a system of multiple rulers. There's much in the description of the beast that is reminiscent of Rome, when we're told it's the city on seven hills, which is what Rome sometimes was called. Some people believe that the seven kings that are the heads are the emperors. It says that there are seven kings, five are fallen at the time Revelation was written, five of them were in the past, the sixth one was current, and it goes on to give more details. Revelation chapter 17 says that at the time Revelation was written, five of these kings had fallen and one, the sixth one, was current. It doesn't say that these kings represent emperors, but on the suggestion that they do, Nero was the sixth of the emperors, and therefore to say that Nero was the current king of the beast is correct. There were other heads, other kings. The beast doesn't represent just Nero himself alone. It represents the whole series of political powers that have opposed Christ and the church throughout history and that Nero was simply the current head. He was simply the current manifestation of this beast in the days of his readers. And so he gave the number. He says if you want to know the number of the beast, it's the number of a man. He says you who are wise or discerning, calculate his number; it's the number of a name, the number 666. He certainly was suggesting that the name of the beast could be identified by the wiser people in the church, which makes it very obvious he's not talking about a beast that would live 2,000 years later than his time. He's talking about somebody in his time that could be identified by a smart reader. So I believe the 666 is a reference to Nero. But it doesn't mean that the whole beast is Nero. He's one of the heads, one of seven heads, and then there's ten horns. There's a lot of political entities wrapped up in this beast. But the one that was current in the days that John was writing, I believe was Nero. That's my understanding.
Brian: And last question, Steve. When Revelation talks about Babylon, I've heard it mentioned that it could be Rome or they even say it's America. I've heard a lot of people talk about it being Jerusalem. Where do you think it is?
Steve Gregg: There's a long list of possible identifications for Babylon. Since most people today assume a futurist view of Revelation, they often are looking at it as some modern entity. Some have suggested America. Actually, back in 1972 when I was 19 years old, the first time I actually went to Europe to preach, I was talking to some Christians there and I was dispensational at the time. I don't know what they were. But I asked people in Europe, who do they identify Babylon as in Revelation? And they said New York City, which I thought was interesting because that was not what most Americans were saying, but the Europeans from across the pond were saying it looks like USA, New York City to me. People who take a futurist view are likely to take maybe America or some modern entity to be Babylon. Many dispensationalists believe Babylon is symbolic for a corrupt religious system, just like the true church is the pure bride, the corrupted idolatrous church is the harlot which is Babylon. Now, I don't take the futurist view of Revelation, so I don't see those as likely. I think that Rome and Jerusalem are both very good candidates for Babylon, and a good case could be made for either of them. It does say in the last verse of Revelation 17, the woman whose name is Babylon whom you saw riding on the beast, she is that great city that rules over the kings of the earth. That sounds like a reference to Rome there, because in the days of John, certainly Rome was that great city that ruled over the kings of the earth. However, there is a case to be made for Jerusalem in that role. The kings of the earth, of course, Jerusalem doesn't really rule over the kings of the earth and didn't in biblical times. But the kings of the earth is a phrase that can be translated the rulers of the land, by land meaning the land of Israel. For example, in Psalm 2, it says the kings of the earth have revolted against the Lord and against his Messiah. The New Testament writers, the apostles in Acts chapter 4, were praying and they quoted that Psalm where it talks about how the kings of the earth have revolted against the Lord and the Messiah. And they interpreted it in their prayer. They said, "You said this, God, in Psalm 2, and surely it has come true, how that Pontius Pilate and Herod and the rulers of the Jews, they all have stood against your holy child Jesus." So it's interesting that the apostles referred to the rulers of the land of Israel as the kings of the earth or identified that phrase in Psalm 2 as being fulfilled in the rulers of Israel. So it's possible that Jerusalem being the ruler over the kings of the earth, if the kings of the earth are understood the way that the apostles understood that phrase in Acts chapter 4, well then if it's the rulers of the land of Israel, then Jerusalem could be seen as the city that rules over the land of Israel. I think that all in all, once all the data is gathered and cross-referenced with the Old Testament and so forth, it does seem like the harlot is probably a reference to Jerusalem, that is first-century Jerusalem, which was destroyed in 70 AD. It is the case that Isaiah and Ezekiel both refer, and Hosea both refer to Jerusalem—well, Hosea doesn't say Jerusalem, Hosea's talking about Israel, but Jeremiah and Isaiah both and Ezekiel identify Jerusalem as a harlot. So the fact that the harlot shows up in Revelation, a book that has a great deal I think to do with Jerusalem, is possibly an indicator. Now why would Jerusalem be called Babylon? Well, earlier in Revelation chapter 11 verse 8, it says that the city where our Lord was crucified, meaning Jerusalem, is spiritually called Sodom and Egypt. Okay, so if Jerusalem's been called Sodom in Revelation 11:8 and Egypt, well, I don't see any reason that they wouldn't also be qualified to be called Babylon. The point is that Jerusalem has become corrupt and apostate and therefore worthy of destruction just like Sodom and Egypt and Babylon. Those are my musings on that. Joe in Santa Fe, New Mexico, welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
Joe: Hi Steve. I found your show a few months ago and I'm really happy with your platform. I have a question about there's a large group of people that believe we're in Satan's little season, and I wanted to hear what you would say about that.
Steve Gregg: The doctrine that we are in Satan's little season could take one of two forms. But the one that's become popular on the internet is quite a conspiracy theory. For those who don't understand, the little season they're referring to is in Revelation 20:7-8, where Satan is loosed after the thousand years of being bound, he's loosed for a little season to go out and deceive the world prior to Jesus coming back. Now, the amillennial view, which is widely held and has been widely held throughout church history, is that the thousand years in Revelation 20 is symbolic for the church age and that at the end of the church age, Satan will be allowed to bring great deception and persecution on the church just before Jesus comes back, and that for a little while. But the popular view that has just arisen, I hadn't heard of it a year ago and I hear about it a lot now, the little season doctrine is very different than that. That is the view that the thousand years was a literal thousand years that ran from the time of the first century until about 1000 AD, and then Jesus came back. He actually literally came back around 1000 AD somewhere around there, and Satan has been released to confuse everyone about that. And so what they actually believe is Jesus came back in 70 AD, and that there was a thousand years of peace, a thousand-year reign of peace from 70 AD till a thousand years later, and then Satan was loosed and has brought deception. That deception is seen in the fact that we don't believe that Jesus came back in 70 AD. We don't believe there was a thousand years of peace on earth. The history has all been rewritten, and we don't have any real reliable information about anything more than about a thousand years ago because ever since Satan was released, history's been rewritten. It's been hidden from us that Jesus came back and brought the thousand-year reign of peace, and that the only reason we don't think so is because we don't have our history correct, and so we're all deceived. Now, this to my mind is a total conspiracy theory, and it's not even one of the ones that makes a lot of sense. Because the time of deception is said to be a little season, a little while in Revelation 20. And this is contrasted with the thousand years, which presumably is a long time. A thousand years is definitely a long time by any measure. And so the time of the little season is contrasted with the thousand years in terms of length, that the little season is short compared to the thousand years. But on this view, the thousand years has now been passed and the little season has now been another thousand years, apparently. Or maybe they don't think it's been a thousand years. Maybe they think it's only been a hundred years, but all the history from before a hundred years has been changed. It's so conspiratorial that it doesn't merit any consideration. First of all, it's not the best interpretation of Revelation 20. There have been much better ones around. In fact, almost all the other interpretations of Revelation 20 are better than that one. It's not a responsible way of reading the Bible. But even if it were true, there'd be no way for us to know it's true, and nothing we could do about it. And that's the problem with conspiracy theories. They profess to know secrets that can never be revealed fully to the public and about which nothing can be done. I've heard about the Illuminati, I've heard about global Jesuit conspiracy, I've heard lots of conspiracy theories over my life. And the one thing that comes to my mind first is, what am I supposed to do about that? Even if it's true, which I have no reason to believe it is, but even if it is, I can't know that it's true, and if I did know that it's true, I can't do anything about it. So I'm not going to worry about it. How about if I just stop speculating about stuff that can't be known and nothing can be done about and get about the business God gave us to do? How about occupy until he comes? So this idea of the little season that has become popular just in recent times, to my mind, it's total nonsense. And if it were not total nonsense, we'd have no way of knowing it was not total nonsense. And if we did know it's not total nonsense, there's nothing we could do to change it. So it's one of those things that people want to play with in their brains instead of going out and doing the serious work of following Jesus and spreading the kingdom of God. I'm Steve Gregg. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. Check it out, everything's free there. You can donate there if you want to. thenarrowpath.com. I'll be back in 30 seconds. We have another half hour, don't go away. Almost every resource found at thenarrowpath.com can also be enjoyed by downloading our mobile app to your phone or tablet. You cannot get this app at the App Store or Google Play as with other apps. Instead, use your browser and go to the website thenarrowpath.app to find instructions for downloading this valuable resource to your device. Then treat yourself to almost limitless learning. Welcome back to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we're live for another half hour taking your calls. 844-484-5737. Our next caller is Tim from north of Seattle, Washington. Hi Tim, welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
Guest (Male): Hi, is this good or better off speaker?
Steve Gregg: Usually it's better off speaker.
Guest (Male): Okay, sorry. I thank you for your ministry, longtime listener and cradle Catholic, and I've recently heard infomercials I guess while I was watching YouTube that pop up about the Ethiopian Bible with more books that aren't in our other ones. I'll take it off the air if you understand the question. Could you just elaborate on this, is there truth to it, and if there is, should we try to, I think they said you could purchase this full complete Bible they say, Ethiopian Bible?
Steve Gregg: Well, as far as I'm concerned it's a gimmick, but the people who are selling it may very well believe that they've got a good product for people to get. The Ethiopian Bible simply refers to a different canon or list of books in the Old Testament than you have in the Western Bible or the Eastern Orthodox Bible. The New Testament is pretty much the same in all Bibles. And the Protestant Old Testament canon, which if you're not Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, or Ethiopian and you're a Christian, you probably have a Protestant Bible, the Old Testament books in the Protestant Bible are acceptable to all the different Old Testament canons. It's just that the Catholic church has like seven more books than we have. The Eastern Orthodox church has a few more books than the Protestants have. The Ethiopian Bible I think has more than anyone else books in their Old Testament. In other words, there are 39 Old Testament books which everybody agrees are the Bible books of the Old Testament. Now there's 27 New Testament books, as far as I know all Bibles have the same 27 books in the New Testament. But the 39 that the Protestant Bible has in the Old Testament are pretty much accepted by everybody. Now it's just that some churches have added a few books to their Old Testament that the Protestants don't recognize. Well, why not? Why don't we recognize them? Well, the books of the Hebrew Bible are the 39 books of the Old Testament that the Protestants accept. These are also the books that the Jews accepted as their Bible called the Tanakh, what we call the Old Testament. Now, after the Hebrew books of the Bible were written, there came a time when Hebrew wasn't really being spoken or written much anymore after the time of Alexander the Great, who imposed the Greek language on the entire Mediterranean world, including North Africa and Syria and Israel and places like that. So people began to speak and read Greek instead. I'm not saying they didn't know any Hebrew or that they didn't know their local dialects, but Greek was being used as the literary language more often. And so more books were written, some of them by the Jews, some of them religious in nature, in Greek. And this is during what we call the intertestamental period. The last Old Testament book to be written was Malachi, but that was 400 years before Christ. So between Malachi and Christ was a 400-year period where there were no Hebrew prophets, there were no Christians yet. And in that 400-year period, the Jews continued their literary projects, and they wrote a number of books in Greek. All of the books that are accepted in these other Bibles, but that are not accepted in the Protestant Bible, were written in Greek if I'm not mistaken. They were all written after Malachi, which means after the Old Testament prophets had ceased to write. Now, the books that they wrote, some of them were widely read by Jews and even the early Christians read many of them: the books of Enoch, there's more than one; the books of Maccabees, there's four of them; there's additional books of what we would say Ezra, but in the Greek it's the word Esdras. These other Old Testaments of these other church traditions have added some more or less of these Greek books to their Bibles. The Catholic church I think has added only seven. I think the Eastern Orthodox church might have added more; maybe they have the same seven the Catholics do, but the Ethiopian, I think they have maybe 14 or more of them, I forget. There's a lot of them in there, which would include Enoch for example. Now, one reason that Protestants are not interested in having those books in the Bible is they were not written as far as anyone knows by anyone with prophetic inspiration. The idea of the books of the Bible being in the Bible is that they were written by inspired authors and therefore they can be called the Word of God. The fact that Jewish people wrote lots of other books of a religious nature doesn't mean they're inspired or belong in the Bible. Just like many Christians have written books. I've written several books and none of them belong in the Bible either. Christian books and Jewish books don't belong in the Bible simply because they were written by Jews or Christians. However, books that don't belong in the Bible can still be very edifying and can be popularly read by religious people, and that was the case with many of these intertestamental books. So there's nothing wrong with reading those books. Luther, for example, basically rejected the apocryphal books that the Catholics have in their Bible, the seven extra books, but he said they were edifying. He said they're not scripture, but they can be read for edification. And probably that would be true of these others as well. However, I would rather have a Bible that has only the inspired books in it, and if I have other books I want to read, I'll have them bound separately so I don't get them mixed up with the Word of God. That's my position on the Ethiopian Bible. I think there's a big push to make money on the Ethiopian Bible, but I'm not saying that those who are publishing it are doing it strictly for mercenary reasons. I think many of them probably believe that is the correct Bible. So, obviously, people who believe it's the correct Bible will want to get it into your hands. But I don't think they have a good case to be made that we should have all those books in our Old Testament. The Ethiopian Bible has a total of 46 books in the Old Testament, oh and 35 in the New Testament. So they actually have a total of 81 books. I didn't realize they had some others in their New Testament too. But again, there were lots of books written in New Testament times that were not written by the apostles or anyone associated with them, which is a reason we don't have them in our New Testament. I can't say much about the books that the Ethiopian Bible adds to the New Testament; I wasn't aware of them. The Catholic Bible does not. The Catholic Bible doesn't have additions to the New Testament, only the Old Testament intertestamental books. All right, we're going to talk next to Troy in Hampton, Virginia. Troy, welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
Troy: Yes, I'm asking about the universal reconciliation view of hell. You'd say it's more than reasonable to think God would continue to work on a soul after death. If that is the case, can Satan work on the saints in heaven? Also, I don't recall you mentioning the Unitarian Church in your history lectures. Would you comment about them if you have time?
Steve Gregg: The Unitarian Church isn't strictly speaking a Christian church. They don't believe in the deity of Christ. They just believe he's a great teacher from God or something, but they have the same thing in common with the cults like Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons and other cults like Christian Science. They don't believe that Jesus is God. So I don't include them in church history except perhaps if I were to survey various cults. Now the Unitarians of course do believe in universal reconciliation, that is they believe everybody is going to heaven. They believe everyone's saved. But their view is not the same as evangelical universalists. The evangelical universalists believe all the doctrines that all Christians have always held. They believe Jesus is the Son of God, they believe he died for our sins, they believe he's the only way of salvation. But the difference of course is that evangelical universalists believe that while Jesus is the only way of salvation, that someday all people will be saved through him. And that would include people who've died without knowing him and gone to hell, and God continues to work on them to elicit their surrender to Christ, which was not able to be done during their lifetime. Unitarians don't believe that you have to believe in Jesus to be saved, and they don't believe that everyone who is saved even after this life would be saved because of Christ particularly, at least if I understand them correctly. It's a very different thing than believing that through Christ all people will be saved by turning to Christ; it's just that they may not do so in this lifetime. God may give them opportunities after this lifetime. So that's what the evangelical universalists would be saying. Now you said if God can keep working on unbelievers in hell, could Satan keep working on believers in heaven? Well no, of course not. The difference between God and Satan is infinite. God is the Creator, Satan is a created being just like you and I are. He's not the same kind we are, but he is as finite and impotent compared to God as you and I are. And after this life, God claims his own to be safe with him. Satan has no right to continue trying to drag them to hell. He had our whole lifetime to do that and that was enough for him, that's all God gives him. It's not a parallel situation if we say, "Yeah, but God can keep working on people in hell," because first of all, hell is not the devil's domain. It's not like the devil is the lord of hell like God is the lord of heaven. The devil's going to be thrown into hell and tormented there just like any other lost individual. He's not in charge there. God is in charge of the whole universe of heaven and hell and all the worlds there are. So if God wants to continue, if God's not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance, then he would have every right to continue to work on people who are in hell. That's his domain just as much as any other. The devil doesn't have any special rights. God is sovereign, which means he has all the rights. He can do whatever he wants to. So the real question is whether he wants to or not. There are people who say that God doesn't want to and that once people are gone to hell, they've had their chance, they've actualized their choice, they can't change it, there's nothing God can do. But some say well, even if they have free will, that doesn't mean God can't continue to seek to influence their free will even after death. I'm not saying he does; I'm simply arguing that the suggestion of that doctrine does not necessarily imply the counter-suggestion that once people are in heaven, the devil can keep working on them. As far as I know, the last place the devil's ever going to be, and that's going to be when Jesus comes back, is in the lake of fire, and he doesn't get out of there.
Troy: What about the fallen angels?
Steve Gregg: I don't know about them. What I do know, both 2 Peter 2 and Jude 6, it says that the angels who sinned, or in one place it says who did not keep their first estate, are reserved in chains under darkness waiting for the judgment of the great day. So they're going to face judgment on the great day just like all people are. Now of course the universal reconciliation view holds that it's appointed unto men once to die and after this the judgment, but at the judgment people will be given their sentence. And many will be thrown into the lake of fire. But the question is what happens there? Some people think in the lake of fire people will be burned up and don't exist anymore, that's called conditional immortality or annihilationism. Some people think people are preserved supernaturally in the lake of fire forever and ever so they can just keep suffering. And some think that the lake of fire serves as a rehab where God continues to try to deal with people and bring them to repentance. Now these different views are held by different evangelical Christians and all of them were held by different church fathers, all of them orthodox church fathers, none of them were heretics. So people do go to the judgment and some go into the lake of fire. Now whether they ever come out of there or not, whether they're burned up to ashes there or whether they're just tormented there are views that some people can bring a biblical case to in each case. The angels, we don't know, there's no information given about them except that they're waiting for the judgment. It's possible that at the judgment they will be in the lake of fire tormented forever and ever or annihilated or whatever.
Troy: I was just thinking that they would have had to be tempted in heaven by Satan in order to fall. Seemingly, yeah. But you're saying that Satan can't operate in heaven.
Steve Gregg: Not when he's in the lake of fire, no. He's not in the lake of fire now, but he will be. But yeah, he had access to heaven at one time until Jesus came. We read that he accused the brethren before God day and night, but in Revelation 12, it says that when Jesus arose and ascended into heaven, that salvation came and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ, and that the accuser of the brethren was cast out of heaven. Because of Christ, Satan cannot accuse those in heaven before God anymore.
Troy: So that would mean that angels aren't falling anymore either.
Steve Gregg: Well no, I think they probably are. I'm not sure why it would mean that. Angels are different than people, and we're not told anything about the ultimate fate of the angels. And there's a reason for that, because the Bible wasn't written to angels for their benefit, it was written to people. I don't know how much God has revealed to the angels about themselves and their fate, but the Bible isn't the place where God discusses that. He discusses things relative to man. Men are sometimes very curious to know what's going to happen to other beings and other people. Remember when Jesus told Peter that he was going to die and Peter saw John and said, "What about this man? What about him?" Jesus said, "If it's my will that he continue until I come, what is that to you? You just go and follow me." In other words, we always want to know what about these angels? What's going to happen to them? What about Satan, what's going to happen to him? What about the people who never heard the gospel, what's going to happen to them? Well, they're not us. And God wants us to apply his words to us and to follow them, and our curiosity is merely a distraction. All right, we need to talk to a couple more before we're out of time. One of those is David in Victorville, California. Hi David.
Guest (Male): Hi Steve. I just had a quick question about healing. For example, in Acts 14:9, that Paul saw that the guy had enough faith to be healed. And other examples like that where the people had enough faith to be healed. Why did they need an intercessor to have them healed, and how did they know it was the will of God for that person to be healed when the apostles just said, "In the name of Jesus, you're healed"? And kind of on that note, Paul had a lot of faith and he didn't get healed. He said he prayed for himself, but he didn't just make a declaration, "In the name of Jesus, I need this thorn out of my flesh."
Steve Gregg: You're right. It does say that he saw that this man had the faith to be healed and he said, "Get up, Jesus heals you." But then Paul had certainly plenty of faith and he didn't get healed, which tells us something important: when it comes to people getting miraculously healed, faith is not the only consideration. A man with faith can fail to be healed and a man with faith can be healed. Faith is however not the only consideration or else everybody who had faith would get healed. Now there are people who tell us that everyone who has enough faith will be healed, and if someone doesn't get healed, they say they didn't have enough faith. However, these people are saying things the Bible doesn't say. The Bible also talks about the will of God. Jesus walked up to a man at the Pool of Bethesda who it says there were a multitude of sick people there. And Jesus went up to one of them, said, "Do you want to be healed?" The guy did, he got healed, and Jesus left the others, didn't even address them. Obviously, it wasn't God's will to heal them, it was God's will to heal that one. When Jesus left this world, he left behind a lot of sick people even in the towns where he had lived. To say it's always God's will to heal is wishful thinking. The Bible does not ever say it's always God's will to heal, and there are many cases where it's very plain it's not God's will to heal. Lazarus was not healed, though no one can argue that he and his sisters didn't have plenty of faith, but God didn't heal him. He let him die and then raised him. God's will for different people is different. And so in addition to faith, we have to know it's the will of God. Now how did an apostle know that a man had enough faith to be healed? I'm going to have to say God must have revealed it to him. And how did he know that it was God's will to heal him? I'm going to say the same thing; it must have been revealed to him that this is so. We do know the apostles did receive revelations from God and other Christians do too sometimes. So if God reveals to someone that it's God's will to heal, you can confidently tell them to be healed, as happened in that case. But a lot of times we're not really sure. And it's often hard to be certain because there's many cases that we think God certainly would want to heal someone and Lazarus was Jesus's good friend. The sisters assumed he'd want to heal him, but they were mistaken. Why did he need someone to intercede, why did he need someone to say be healed? Because there's gifts of healings in the Bible and the healings and the miracles were specifically, the Bible says, to verify the truth of what the apostles taught. So by the apostle preaching the gospel in a town where no one knew who he was or whether his message was true or not, and then doing a miracle of healing, it gave credentials to the speaker and to his message. And it does say in the last verse of the gospel of Mark, they went preaching the word everywhere, the Lord working with them, confirming the word with signs following. And these healings and so forth were among the kinds of signs that God worked to confirm the word. Steven in San Diego, California, we don't have much time, go ahead.
Guest (Male): Yes, is there anything in the Bible that gives consolation, how to cope with people who you've loved or influenced you for good in your life but you know they're not saved, they had no interest in being saved?
Steve Gregg: Well, there is consolation in knowing that God is good, that he never judges wrongly, that his concern for the souls of those people is greater even than yours. He died for them, you didn't. So it's obvious that he's made it very clear that their souls are of utmost concern to him. And therefore we have to assume that if he can find any excuse for saving them, he will. Now some people perhaps don't give him good enough reasons to save: maybe they're hard-hearted against him, maybe they hate him, maybe they avoid him, maybe the light has come and they love darkness rather than light. On the other hand, there may be people that God knows that if they understood better who he was, they would receive him, and God may judge on that basis. I have no idea. The Bible makes it very clear to us that we're supposed to believe in Jesus and that if we reject him, knowing what we know, that we're rebelling against God and there's judgment for that and condemnation for that. But we don't know how much other people really understand. God does though, fortunately, and he's the one who will judge. So the consolation I have if somebody I care about dies without seeming to be saved is that God knows better than I do and if he can find any excuse to save them, he will. It says in 1 Corinthians 4:5, "Therefore judge nothing before the time until the Lord come who will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness and reveal the counsels of the hearts and then each one's praise will come from God." God's the one who's going to evaluate and he's going to do so when he comes and brings to light all the hidden things in their hearts. He's going to do so from a standpoint of a merciful God. That doesn't mean everyone's going to just be given a pass, but it means that he wants them to be saved. There's nobody that God doesn't want to be saved. He's not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. And that being so, if God doesn't save them, it'll only be because he couldn't find any excuse for doing so, because he's extremely committed to the salvation of the world and to sinners. That's how I understand the matter anyway. God is our consolation. If we understand God for who he is and who he says he is and who he's demonstrated himself to be in Christ, then that's a great consolation to know that this is the God with whom we will all have to do in the final analysis. He's the one that will be arbitrating and disposing fates to people. He is, after all, as the Bible says, a friend of sinners. But some sinners simply will not let him be their friend. I'm out of time. I hope that's helpful to you, brother. You've been listening to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. If you'd like to help us stay on the air, you can write to us at The Narrow Path, PO Box 1730, Temecula, California 92593 or go to our website thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for joining us.