KSCO Radio Interview with Atheists and Agnostics

Individual Topics — Steve Gregg

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KSCO Radio Interview with Atheists and Agnostics

Individual TopicsSteve Gregg

In an interview with Steve Gregg, a host of a Christian radio show, he discussed topics such as the portrayal of God in the Old Testament, the importance of reading and studying the Bible multiple times, the concept of infinite knowledge of God and finite knowledge of humans, and the shift in narrative from the Old Testament to the New Testament. He emphasized the value of repentance for true reconciliation with God and also discussed the ongoing debate around LGBTQ issues and the Bible's stance on homosexuality. Gregg concluded by stating that while the future of Christianity in Western civilization is uncertain, it will not perish.

Transcript

You're listening to AM1080 KSCO, Santa Cruz Flight 1080 is back in the air. It is Monday, April 15th, 2019. Today we are hanging out with you.

If you want to join us, 479-1080-218-5726. With your text messages, dm at ksco.com. We want to invite you to interact with us today. Today's guest, I've been looking forward to for a long time.

Yes, you have. Steve Gregg. How are you doing, Steve? Good, Dave.

It's really good to be back in touch with you. It is nice to see you again. What have you been up to? Well, you know, we haven't seen each other for probably seven or eight years, you and I. But I used to do a program on Sunday nights here, and you were the call screener and engineer of the show.

But I also have a daily show that I've had for 21, now going on 22 years, that I do on Christian stations. And one thing that's different now than was then is back then I was only on about four or five stations. And now we're on 20-something stations across the country.

What's the name of the show? It's called The Narrow Path. And you might remember the show I had here on Sunday. It's called The Road to Find Out, which had a similar name.

The Narrow Path is the name of your show? That is, yeah. And that's also our website, thenarrowpath.com. Okay, good. Good to see you, Steve.

Now, what are we going to be talking about today? Well, I'm the one who was invited. Right, right. You're the one who was invited.

You're here in town tonight. I'm here in town. Of course, I used to live here in Santa Cruz.

I live in Southern California now. But I'm passing through for a number of reasons. I'm having a meeting in a home with some people tonight.

I have two sons who live here in town, and I came to visit them if possible. I got to see one of them. I'm really here for less than 24 hours.

Wow, you're a busy guy, huh? Yeah, but since Michael Olson heard that I was coming, he said, hey, why don't you go on Dave Michael's show? That'd be great. One of my favorite topics, Steve, is to talk about religion. I've been reading the Bible, something that I was never even— I tried to do it a long time ago, bored to death, fell asleep every time.

I still fall asleep every time I start to read it. But you're reading the Old Testament. I'm pushing through it.

I am reading the Old Testament. I'm almost done with it. I'm up to, Isaiah, I guess I still have another 100 pages.

I'm impressed, actually. Yeah, I'm impressed. I can't believe it.

You've been through the hard parts. Yeah, it is hard, man. It gets better as you get it.

It is really, really hard. And the reason why I read that Old Testament is because I want to see what people like you see in God. Because up to this point, I'm starting to see a little more of the forgiving side of him, but only towards his own people.

I mean, he is brutal. It is just a bloodbath. I can't think, Steve, of anything that has made me want to push away religion more than reading the Old Testament.

It has just been gnarly. It's true. And I want to know what people like you see, because I know a lot of good people.

I mean, really, really good people who believe that the Bible is a good thing and all this. I want to see what it is that you guys—I'm not using that in a pejorative way. But what you Christians see, God-loving people, Christians, see in the Bible.

And I'm hoping to see it at some point. I sense that Jesus is coming in this chapter. Isaiah is talking about that somebody is coming and everything is about to change.

Well, that's actually—as Christians understand Isaiah, you're right. It is talking about Jesus in many of its passages. Jewish people would not see those same passages in that light.

They don't see Jesus as the fulfillment of those prophecies. Really? And Isaiah actually wrote 700 years before Jesus actually came. So it's not like he was about to come, but he was anticipated for thousands of years.

Actually, from the earliest chapters of Genesis, most Christians see in Genesis 3 a prediction that Jesus would come. Not by name. His name is not given in the Old Testament, but the idea that a Messiah would come.

And the Jews who are not believers in Christ—I mean, there are Jews who are believers in Christ. But those who are not, they believe the Messiah has not yet come. And some of them are still looking for him.

Some are not. I mean, Orthodox Jews would be, but some of the more liberal types of Jewish religion would not necessarily be looking for a literal Messiah to come. But Christians—of course, Christianity started with Jews.

Jesus was a Jew. His disciples were all Jews. And the first several thousand converts to Christianity were in Jerusalem, and they were Jewish.

And these were people who became convinced from various factors, including Old Testament prophecy, that Jesus was the Messiah. But you brought up something much more interesting in a way, and that is the bloodbath. I say interesting—it may not even be as important as some other things, but it definitely catches people's interest.

When you read Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris or Christopher Hitchens, one of the things you're going to get the impression from these atheists is that, you know, the God of the Bible is like a jihadist. You know, he just has the Jews go out and kill everybody who's not one of them. And that's actually not a very careful reading of it.

The truth is that the Old Testament covers about 4,000 years of history. Well, from the time of Abraham till now, it's been 4,000 years. And there was about 2,000 years of history in the Old Testament before Abraham.

So it's been about 6,000 years of history. But in that 4,000 years of Old Testament history, there were wars that God sanctioned, but nowhere near as many as one would think. For example, one of the huge portions of the Old Testament is the first five books of Moses.

And then you can add to that Joshua. And there's a whole bunch of wars, and even judges. There's a lot of wars in those.

But the wars involved actually all happened within the space of pretty much one generation. Really? Yeah. It's hard to tell that from—I could never tell that reading the Bible.

See, you don't have any of these wars really until the Israelites leave Egypt. And then the Amalekites attack them. And there's a war then, and Israel defeats the Amalekites.

That's back in, I think it's in the 17th chapter, if I'm not mistaken, of Exodus. But there are no more wars after that until the time of Joshua. And Joshua, who is Moses' successor, takes the children of Israel into the land that Moses had talked to them about and that God had promised them.

And then the wars begin. And there was about a 25-year period of war. And it was between Israel and various Canaanite tribes.

After that period of time, there were occasional wars in what's called the Book of Judges, when basically Israel would be invaded. These were all—in Judges, all the wars were the result of Israel being invaded by outsiders and oppressed for years. And then finally, you know, some Jewish heroes would rise up.

We call them the Judges. And they would marshal a makeshift militia of Israelites and fight and win and drive out the outsiders. So, you know, in the first—frankly, the first 2,500 years of the Old Testament history, although it's covered in a very few chapters, but during that history, there's no wars that God ever sanctioned.

And then in the time of Joshua, there were the wars that God sanctioned, which was the conquest of Canaan. And in the Book of Judges, there were simply various wars that occurred because Israel was invaded and they defended themselves. And they were liberated by these heroes who were called the Judges.

And this continued up and through the time of David, pretty much. I mean, the Philistines were oppressing Israel in the time of David. He finally defeated them.

After the time of David, they really weren't invaded that much anymore until 722 BC when the Assyrians came and actually destroyed Israel. We don't even read of Israel fighting them, nor of God fighting on their side. The way the Bible tells it, God was judging them, and the Assyrians were the agents of judgment of Israel.

And Isaiah, that's where I'm at right now. God's telling them, hey, I'm about to let the Assyrians come in and just destroy you. Good news is that I'm going to destroy them after they destroy you, and whoever's left is going to have plenty of whatever, right? You know, I am very impressed that you are paying that much attention.

I told you, I'm really trying to understand. You're doing a good job. I'm trying to, and so I'm going to read it the first time like a book because that's the only way I know how to read.

And then the second time, I'll go in there and try to pick apart things and try to diagnose things a little bit more. But this is what I'm reading the first time around. So, you know, there's a lot of war in the 4,000 years before the time of Christ.

Not anywhere near as much as there is now, you know, in our time. But the difference is that God is fighting usually on the side of Israel in the Old Testament, but not always. Sometimes he's on the side of their enemies because they have been so unfaithful to God.

And he's warned them again and again through the prophets, stop doing these horrible things. They're sacrificing their babies to idols and things like that. Finally, he says, well, I'm going to let the Assyrians come in here and just take you out.

Is there any difference between looking at people who sacrifice their babies as bad, because that is bad, and sending in the army? I don't remember who it was. I'm going to say the Israelites, sending them in to kill everybody in these towns, including their kids. So what's the difference? If you're sacrificing your children, at least you're sacrificing your children and not going around killing other people's children.

Well, that's true. And frankly, the Canaanite conquest, which is what you're referring to, the 25 years of the Israelites conquering the land of Canaan. When God gave them instructions, he gave them instructions that are very offensive to our sensitivities.

He basically said, kill them all. That's fair to say. And now God gave a reason for that.

And of course, his reason didn't apply directly to the infants and children, although the infants and children came under the judgment that came on the society in general. Basically, it was that the adults were killing their own children, offering them to idols in many cases, as almost all pagan societies did in those days. And also, they were extremely morally corrupt.

And God said, okay, I've given these people 400 years while you guys were slaves in Egypt. I've given these people 400 years to kind of mend their ways. And they're getting worse, not better.

So I'm just going to take out their whole society. Now, when you take out the mothers and fathers, you're either going to frankly, I mean, I don't expect anyone who doesn't believe in God to sympathize with what I'm saying here. But I'm just saying, when you take out the mothers and fathers, you're either going to have several hundred thousand orphans, canine orphans for Israel to take care of, or you dispatch them with their parents.

Now, this is something we would never approve of, neither would Jesus at this point in time. But it was one of the things that the Bible assumes, which people who are not Christians and not Bible believers, not believers in God, would simply not accept, is that the story of humanity ever since the Garden of Eden is a story of a rebel race against God. And that from beginning to end, really, of the story, we've got a worldview where the rebels against God are at war against God himself.

And God has a few people like Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Moses and the Israelites, eventually, that God's got some people who are taking his side. Although sometimes they're pretty compromised, too. Sometimes they go over to the dark side.

And that's why they get judged, too. But the idea is, the whole context of the Bible story is, this is a conflict, a war between God and the rebels. Now... It's only because he chooses to let it happen, though, right? Well, he chooses not to stop it.

And choosing not to stop it simply means he gives people free will. He didn't induce anyone to rebel against him. In fact, he always warned them, if you do, there's going to be these consequences.

Actually, he told Adam and Eve, if you rebel against me, you're going to die. You know, death is the consequence. But the interesting thing is that although God threatens death, he often forestalls the judgment.

He often gives a long time to repent. Adam and Eve ate the wrong fruit. They still lived 900 more years.

That's a long time before they died. You know, the penalty for their act was death. But God gave them almost a millennium to mend their ways.

But the Canaanites, in the time of Abraham, which was hundreds of years before Joshua conquered the Canaanites, in the time of Abraham, God said, you know, I'm going to have to, I'm afraid, take the Canaanites out, and I'm going to give you their land. But I'm not going to do it yet because they're just not, you know, they're not so wicked that I can't, you know, endure them any longer. So he gave them 400 more years.

Now, at the time of Abraham, they were doing atrocious things. But God's much more patient than we are. I mean, if I was God and I saw people sacrificing their babies to demonic gods, I would say, you know, this society— So he let it happen for another 400 years then? He didn't stop them.

He didn't stop them. Is that the same as letting it happen? Well, sure. Yeah.

Well, letting it happen, that's what you do when you don't interfere with people who are free will. You let them do what they're going to do. So they were bad, but not that bad.

They were sacrificing kids— No, they were horrible. They were horrible, but he's saying that they, there was, he could tolerate them somewhat more before he wiped them all out. You know, he was willing to let them have more chances to repent so that he wouldn't have to.

You know, Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, was so wicked that at one point God sent a Hebrew prophet to Nineveh, the Assyrian capital, and said, listen, in 40 days, you're going to be wiped out. That was Jonah, of course. And the king of Nineveh and the citizens, they thought, they actually took it to heart.

And he didn't even promise that they could be, you know, prolong their days if they would repent. But they said, well, let's just repent. Maybe God will show mercy.

Well, they did repent. And he did show mercy. He didn't wipe them out.

They lasted another hundred years before they were wiped out by the Babylonians. But the point is that God's always prepared to withdraw his threats if people turn. It says that in Jeremiah chapter 18, verses 7 through 10.

He says, God says through Jeremiah, anytime I threaten to destroy and uproot a nation, if they turn from their evil ways, I will repent of the evil I said I would do to them. But if anytime I say I'm going to plant and bless a nation, if they turn from their righteousness into evil, then I'm going to repent of the promises I made to them. So he's basically saying, I deal with people according to their responses.

You know, if someone's bad, I'm about ready to wipe them out. If they repent, I'm going to give them a break, you know. I don't know how many times that's happened.

It seems like if he didn't like them, he just wiped them out. Well, that's what it seems like to you. But see, you read about it in Joshua that he wipes them out.

But that's after 400 years that you forgot took place while the Israelites were in captivity. See, God threatened that the Canaanites would be wiped out and that the Israelites would take their land. But he made that threat way back in the time of Abraham, which was 400 years before.

But he doesn't say, okay, all the oxen free, just forget it. He holds his word, right? Yeah, well, see, you know, 400 years isn't that long to God. You know, the Bible says a day to the Lord is like 1,000 years and 1,000 years is like a day.

So, I mean, it's a lot of years for us. That's 10 generations. But, you know, God's got nothing but time.

He's very patient. Is he still around, God? Absolutely, yeah. Where does he interact with people the same way, to the same extent that he interacted with people of the Bible? Where does he interact with, where is his interaction with modern day politics, modern day society? To answer that, we need to ask what are we talking about when we talk about the way he did it in times of the Bible.

We sometimes get the wrong impressions. For example, a lot of people say, well, in the Bible, there were miracles all the time. How come we don't see miracles all the time now, God intervening and so forth? Actually, the Bible doesn't show miracles happening all the time.

But the short periods of history that are focused upon are those special times when God did a lot of miracles. For example, we don't read of any miracles after the flood and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah for hundreds of years. No miracles recorded in Scripture.

And then it's when God brought Israel out of Egypt, part of the Red Sea, gave them manna, you know, and so forth. During that time where he was establishing Israel as a nation of liberated slaves to be a nation, over a period of about a generation, he did quite a few miracles. And a lot of the books of the Bible, in the early books of the Bible, are focused on those.

So you get the impression, wow, miracles all the time. And then it happened again hundreds of years later in the time of Elijah and Elisha. But after that, no more.

4,000 years, we're going to have two periods of miracles in the Old Testament. Yeah, quick question before we go to news. Just curious as to what Steve is going to tell Dave when Dave gets out of the Old Testament and into the New Testament.

Oh, that would be good. Well, we got almost two hours together. Oh, yeah.

That is something that I wanted to ask you about too, Steve, is what am I to look forward to as I round the corner, right? Go around the basis of the Old Testament, get ready to approach the New Testament. Before we head out, how old is the earth? Well, I don't know how old the earth is. But people like myself generally would say it's measured in thousands rather than billions of years.

But I wouldn't go to the mat about that. Okay. 479-1080-218-5726.

We're here with Steve Gregg, Kevin Hurley, Michael. Hanging out today with Steve Gregg. Steve Gregg of The Narrow Path.

Is that what it's called now, Steve? That's what it's called. Okay. And is that thenarrowpath.com? It is, yes.

Okay. Steve Gregg, before we went to the break, I asked you how old the earth was. You said you would measure it in thousands of years rather than millions or whatever.

Rather than billions, yeah. Okay. Let's see, where do you want to go next? Well, maybe I should, since we cut off quickly, maybe I should say something more about that question briefly.

Okay, yeah. Yeah, the Bible, it talks about the creation of the earth in Genesis chapter 1. And then in some of the chapters that follow, for example, chapter 5 of Genesis, it traces a genealogy from Adam, the first man, to Noah. And then in chapter 11, at the end of chapter 11, it traces a genealogy from Noah to Abraham.

Now, the time of Abraham's life is known to have been almost exactly 2000 B.C. The genealogies and the years that people lived that are listed from Adam to Abraham, if you add them up, they come to approximately another 2000 years. So, historically, those who take the Bible as a source for this have said that probably the earth was created around 4000 B.C. But most Bible believers are willing to say it could be somewhat more thousands than four. But on the other hand, some go so far as to say, you know, the story in Genesis might be poetic.

It might not be taken literally. Now, I don't have the difficulty some people do in taking it literally. I've got no serious problem with it.

But on the other hand, it's not a hill to die on for me. If the earth is billions of years old, it's no skin off my nose. Well, how can that be, Steve? If you're going to take some things literally, I mean, it's to be taken literally then, right? It's got to be a hill that you're willing to die on.

It has to be. Well, not necessarily, because there are lots of things in the Bible that are not literal. For example, the parables Jesus told are not true stories.

Well, how do you know, how am I supposed to know, Steve, what is real and what is not without somebody interpreting it for me? And how do I know that this guy has his marble, has everything lined up straight? I don't know that it's something I can trust. You've taken the first steps to answer that question by starting to read the Bible. I think reading through the Bible one time, and maybe that'll be all you'll do, is going to answer a few questions.

We're going to raise new questions that'll be unanswered by your first reading. When you've read through the Bible, say, five times, ten times, a lot of the things fall together. You know, the Bible's written in ancient Hebrew and ancient Greek, and it's translated pretty well, in most cases, into English.

But the idioms and the forms of writing, the genres of literature are often unfamiliar to us as modern English-speaking people. And so there's a sense in which you get more of a grasp of that very thing. What is literal and what's not when you become more immersed in the culture of the Bible? It's sort of like when you were born, you didn't speak any English, but you were immersed in a home, or maybe it was Spanish.

I don't know if you were— English. So, you know, you were immersed in a home where English was being spoken all around you, and you eventually became acquainted with it, and you became conversant in it. And that's how it is with other cultures, too.

And when you read the Bible a lot and think about it a lot, you just kind of pick up, almost by osmosis, some of the figures of speech that they use, because they're used repeatedly in different contexts, just like you'd learned words and phrases in English when you were growing up. So it's kind of immersion in the Scriptures enhances your, let's just say, your judgment about what is likely to be literal and what's not likely to be literal. But even so, there's sometimes you can't really know.

And more people are concerned about—I should say many people are concerned about more than I am. I don't care if the earth is thousands of years old or billions of years old. It doesn't really have any impact on my Christian life, because Jesus isn't—you know, he didn't come billions of years ago.

And it's his life that defines my life. You know, the thing about science is that there is no doubt that the world is this many years old. It doesn't leave it up for your interpretation or your analysis of these materials.

The earth is old. The earth is, you know, 3.8 billion years old. There's no—if you're a scientist— 4.5. 4.5. Well, I'm not a scientist, Steve, but you know what I'm saying, right? Billions of years old rather than thousands of years old.

There's no doubt about that. But if you're religious, you can say, oh, maybe this way and that way. With science, there is no doubt, man.

It is this way. Billions of years. That's not entirely true, but it is mostly true.

You're right. The majority of scientists would say they have no doubt that the earth is billions of years old. There are some stubborn people who have equally good scientific credentials who say, you know, there's certain prejudices that are being brought to the interpretation of this data.

And without those prejudices, we don't have to reach that conclusion. But, you know, it could be true. But we can see without those prejudices the same data through a lens of a younger earth.

Now, again, I don't have any bone to pick about the age of the earth. What I'm saying is I have had occasion to look at data. I'm not a scientist either, but I've had a chance to look at data through the normal lens of the secular scientists and see why they believe the earth is billions of years old.

And I've also been able to see through the lens of those who say, well, not so fast. This evidence is capable of another reasonable interpretation that would not compel us to assume that. So I'm more open about more than one option on that.

So, Gary, Dave, you're more hanging on to science than believing? Yes. Yes, absolutely. Well, what you are doing is believing science.

Yes, I am believing science. So it's faith, right. But that's okay.

I mean, lots of people do. It's faith, but it can be proven acceptably. To your satisfaction.

To my satisfaction, yes. Whereas religion cannot be at this point. Yeah, well, that's interesting because when we get to the New Testament, that's when that statement begins to be, you know, open to more question.

If you said that Jesus would not approve of the way that those villages, who were they that was killed? The Canaanites. If Jesus would not approve of that way either, how does he justify or does he justify what happened in the Old Testament? Well, Jesus doesn't discuss what happened in that particular case, but his teaching to his disciples is that they should not do those things. Now, to say that the disciples are not supposed to do those things, he's addressing his disciples as non-military people.

He's not telling what governments should do or how armies should behave. He's talking about to his disciples, listen, if someone strikes you in one cheek, turn the other cheek to him. If someone wants to force you to do something like carry his gear for a mile, which by the way, under the Roman occupation, the Romans were allowed to force a citizen to carry his gear for a mile.

Jesus said, well, take it too. In other words, he's basically saying accommodate your enemies, love your enemies, do good to them. Now, he's saying that to people who don't have, for example, governmental responsibility.

These are fishermen and tax collectors and generally peasants. If he was talking to, let's say, Pilate or to the governing officials, and they were asking him, you know, how should we govern? How should we wage war? How should we practice criminal justice? Well, Jesus, who knows what he would have said to them. He never addressed them.

He's talking to private citizens saying, don't do those kinds of things. Now, when I say Jesus wouldn't approve of that, I don't mean that he didn't approve of what Joshua did, but he wouldn't approve of his disciples now doing those kinds of things. See, there are times when, you know, the rules change for certain situations, and there's not very many times that God would justify.

In fact, we only know of one time, two. There's two times in the Old Testament where God justified, you know, wiping out a whole civilization. One was the Canaanites.

The other was the Amalekites in the time of Saul. But the point is that we're talking, I mean, obviously, people who think that that's immoral, it's not going to satisfy them if we say, well, that only happened twice. You know, I mean, obviously, one time is too many if it's immoral.

But as I was saying, the whole of history is cast in Scripture as a conflict, a war, between people who are in rebellion against God and God himself and those who are on his side, on the other hand. And so really, those who are on God's side, they assume certain things about God that those others don't, that you don't, for example. We were talking during the break, and there's certain reasons why you say you don't believe in God.

Yeah, right. Right. So there are things you assume, well, there's things I assume about God that you wouldn't assume.

And because of that, we're not going to see his actions through the same lens, for example. Yeah. For example, those who are basically sympathetic toward God in the Bible, they believe he created everything, which means that he owns everything, which means he's got all the rights to govern as he will.

But we also believe that he's good and he's wise, more than we are. And therefore, he does some things that we don't understand. But if we understood as he does, we'd recognize why they're okay.

Now, again, everyone who's a doubter listening to me right now is going to say, boy, is that ever stupid. Why? That's what I'm thinking. Because why? You don't assume there's a God.

You don't assume he's wise. You don't assume he's good. You're standing in judgment of him, and you're saying, okay, God, prove to me that you exist, that you're good, and that you're wise.

Those who are on God's side usually have said, that's already been proven to me, and I have to trust him like a child trusts a father. When my daughter, when she was three years old, we'd go to Baskin-Robbins. I'd get two scoops.

She got one. She'd say, that's not fair. She'd say, how come you get two and I get one? Well, to me, as an adult, I could see that and I'm much bigger than she is.

I've got a bigger capacity for handling it. But the point is, whatever. She may never have understood, but that doesn't mean I didn't understand.

It doesn't mean I didn't have reasons that were beyond her level to appreciate. Right. But I'm not a child going out for ice cream.

I'm an adult, and I would say that I see too often that the Lord works in mysterious ways is such a weak, it's a bad excuse. I don't think it's that mysterious. I'm not saying it's that mysterious.

From the standpoint of a Bible-believing Christian, we can actually see much of the reason for him doing it. But many times, we have to just say, if I don't know why he did a certain thing, the question I have to ask myself is, okay, I'm not a child getting ice cream. But the difference in intelligence and knowledge of everything between me and God is almost infinite.

Whereas the difference between the knowledge my daughter had and I had is finite. Got it. And therefore, he does know what people deserve.

He does know what's going to work out best for everybody. And there's another factor, too, and that is that God has said, if you sin, you'll die. I know we're going to have 10 minutes.

We've got 10 minutes. And that all human beings do sin, and all people die. They don't always die immediately for their sins.

In fact, some people who are very sinful live much too long, and some people who are very innocent relatively die very young. But the point is, everyone dies. And again, the Bible gives an eternal perspective of things.

Justice in the Bible has more to do with how God resolves everything in the end. If I am a good person and I'm persecuted, thrown in jail, as Christians are in China and we're in the Soviet Union, if I'm tortured every day, this is very unjust. And maybe I die in that condition.

Many Christians have died as martyrs. But we believe, okay, so we experience injustice. But there is a reckoning in the next life where everything is just.

And therefore, and God knows what's going to work out best for his works now, but he's going to make everything just in the next life. You see, and that's where I see the religions are basically the creations of a weak person or a weak people who can't deal with the lack of justice, complete justice in this life. So that SOB is going to get it in the afterlife.

We're powerless to stop him. He's the king. We can't do anything.

We are powerless. But he's going to get it in the afterlife. Just we have to believe in this.

So you're not a weak person. So how would you deal with being tortured innocently and killed? I would say that it's the evil of that bad person. That guy is just a bad person.

I would agree with that, too. But I would say. I wouldn't blame it on God, though.

What I would blame on God is a tsunami who wipes out a big Indonesian village. Now, why would you blame that on God and not the other thing? Because that is an act that was not caused by humans. It was caused by nature.

Yes, whereas this guy, this human, forget God. I don't believe that he's here in existence with God. He has chosen to do something bad.

He has chosen to do something bad. If there is a God, then he has chosen to send a tsunami and to kill thousands of people. Now, most atheists would not say that God sent the tsunami.

They'd say it was caused by tectonic plates moving in a certain way. I'm not speaking as someone who believes in religion. Is it possible that God does evil things, does bad things? I believe in God, but I also believe tsunamis are caused by the movement of tectonic plates.

Believing in God doesn't tell me that God should intervene every time nature is doing something that might hurt somebody. So, again, he just lets it happen. Well, he doesn't intervene all the time.

We were talking about that. You were saying, does God intervene now like he did in Bible time? Right, right, right. In the Bible, he didn't intervene very often.

You've got 4,000 years of Old Testament history. He intervened half a dozen different seasons of time. There were hundreds, if not thousands of years sometimes, between those seasons when he wasn't intervening at all.

The Bible does not indicate and does not call upon us to believe that God works miracles on a regular basis or that he's intervening in everything that happens. He'll never let anything bad happen. He won't let a volcano destroy Pompeii.

Will he let Israel get overtaken? Yeah. Now, see, his involvement with Israel was much more, let's just say, meticulous than with nature in general. He many times did not let Israel get overtaken even when they were surrounded by armies superior to them.

But when he felt that they needed a lesson taught to them or what deserved the same kind of punishment that the non-Jews deserved, then he would let them get overtaken by the Assyrians and later by the Babylonians as well and then later still by the Romans. So, I mean, Israel has three times come under what the Bible describes as God's judgment upon them at the hands of the Assyrians in 722, at the hands of the Babylonians in 586, and then by the Romans in 70 AD. So, the Bible does have God intervening either to judge or to protect Israel in many different situations depending on how they're standing with him.

But the Bible doesn't indicate that every time a volcano blows up, every time there's an earthquake, every time there's a storm, every time there's a war, that God is somehow tinkering with things and making these things happen. We have every reason to believe, I think, that God set the natural order in place and set it running. And nature has dangers as well as boons to humanity.

Is it possible that he got the whole thing running and then died? Well, God as he's described in the Bible can't die. I know, I understand. So, you would say no.

Right, but deists are people who, they don't say God died, but they say God got it running and then went away and hasn't intervened ever since. I'm not one of those. No, I believe in God who does intervene when it suits him.

So, you believe it's not possible or you believe that that's not the case? Well, see, I would say, how do I know anything about God at all except what he's revealed? Now, I mean, if God has not revealed anything about his activities or himself, then anything I have to say would be 100% speculation, not worth anything more than what's on there. But do you believe that that's possible? Well, no, because I believe that God has revealed himself. And as he has revealed himself, he has revealed himself to be infinitely immortal and, you know, all wise, all good, and so forth.

And so, I either believe what he has revealed about himself, or I'm just thrown out to speculate at random. And infinitely immortal. So, if I was to ask you something so simple as, something so childish as, where did God come from? You would say something so simple and so, I don't know, childlike, to say he's always been here.

Sure, yeah. And if you say, well, I can't believe in a God who's always been here, I'd say, well, what do you think was always here? Matter and energy, probably. That's what science would say.

Except it wasn't always here, because the Big Bang started that. So, where did the egg come from? The cosmic egg that banged. And I would say, I don't know.

But at least I would say, at least I have the honesty to say I don't know, rather than to make up that there's, you know, a God. Or to make up some kind of thing. Which is just as absurd as the Big Bang.

I mean, they're both equally absurd. If there was no God, no doubt people would invent one. That's true.

The question is, when we find people telling us about God, we ought to be reasonable to say, now, did they invent what they're saying? Or is this, as they say, something that was revealed to them? Now, Muhammad said that the Quran was given to him by the angel Gabriel. So, presumably, he thinks that's an inspired book, and it was given by God. I don't agree with that.

Joseph Smith said the Book of Mormon was given to him, you know, by an angel, and so forth. Most religions would suggest that their founder had some kind of revelation from God. And, of course, the Jews would say Moses and the prophets.

Christians would say Jesus. Now, these are the options. There may be other options, too.

But these are the big ones. These are the big options of the people who claim that God revealed something to them. What I do, as simply a person interested in truth, and not so much interested in believing some kind of a pleasant fantasy, is what are the truth claims of each of these, and how realistic are they? And I can tell you how the truth claims about Christianity differ from those of Islam or Buddhism or others.

Okay, well, we'll talk about that on the other side. 479108, we should probably get to a phone call. Sure.

Because we only have a few minutes. So, I don't want to leave this guy hanging on for too long. Lucas, you're in the air.

Hey, Lucas. Yeah, hey, no problem. Yeah, I find this very interesting since I was raised in church.

Okay? Okay, been a gospel singer for probably over 45 years. And the Bible is something that, in my opinion, is a life-changing book. Okay? It can change anybody's life just by reading it.

It's not about, like, okay, what happened back in the Old Testament. To me, it's all about what happens today in your everyday life. Okay? And if you read it, it's actually, every day, it can change a person's life.

And I've seen so many lives changed in singing to thousands of people. Okay? Just by certain songs, okay, that people have written over the years that have changed people's lives and have turned it completely around. Thank you for the call, Lucas.

479-1080. Before you were hanging on, do you have a question, Lucas? No, he doesn't. Best we go.

Okay, yeah, the Bible can be very inspirational, but so can Mein Kampf. Sure. It can inspire a lot of people.

Absolutely. I would never make the argument, either. Right.

Yes, really quickly, once again, what is Steve going to tell Dave when Dave turns the pages to the New Testament? Yes, I want to see something good in there. Yeah. We've got to hit the New Testament after this.

Cool. Well, we've got, what, a minute or two? We've got 2.5. Okay, well, do you want me to start on that big subject now, or do you want to hold it off until the second half? Just give me a little thumbnail. What do I expect? Jesus comes onto the scene.

Review to us. Sure. What is the Old Testament? What is the essence of the Old Testament? Let me just piggyback on what Lucas said.

He says, you know, it's not about what happened in the Old Testament. It's what's going on right now. I say, well, what it really comes down to is what's going on right now in my life.

But what the Bible does is it places what's going on in my life right now in a larger narrative that begins in the Old Testament and develops through the Old Testament and has a significant turning point when the New Testament begins, when Jesus enters the world. Okay. And his death and his resurrection and the giving of the Holy Spirit and the founding of his following, that all is part of a narrative that continues even for 2,000 years since then to bring me down to the role I play in this metanarrative.

Now, see, without the Bible, we have to come up with some other metanarrative or say there is no such thing as a metanarrative. There is no metanarrative. It's just all meaningless, really.

Metanarrative meaning some kind of religious aspect to it, right? Well, a metanarrative is one overarching story, one overarching story that kind of includes everything and kind of brings everything into its proper place. And, you know, if we don't have a metanarrative of some kind, then we just have to say I'm here as a random fact. And that's kind of tiring.

I don't like that feeling, Steve. I want to believe there's somebody out there who would love me. Let's talk about the New Testament when we come back.

Okay, good. We'll talk about that on the other side. We're hanging out with Steve Gregg.

He's going to be here for another hour and a half. If you have any questions, 479-1080. Any questions, 218-5726.

You can always e-mail dm at kseo.com with any questions that you have. KSEO Santa Cruz, Flight 1080, KOMY, La Selva Beach, AM 1340. Keep it tuned in.

You're listening to AM 1080, KSEO Santa Cruz. We are back in the air with Steve Gregg, Kevin Hurley, Michael Olsen, Jack Stein, and you, even Phil D. Sets over there. If you want to join us, 479-1080 is the way to do it.

218-5726 with your text messages. DM at kseo.com. We're hanging out with Steve Gregg. Steve is owner of the website, thenarrowpath.com. What is that? What it is is I'm the host of a radio program, a talk show called The Narrow Path, and the website is part of the outreach of the radio show.

So I'm not the owner of anything, but I'm the host of the program. Actually, the guy who started the website for me lives in Connecticut. I've only met him once, and he created and ran our website for years before I ever met him.

479-1080, I would like to get people of the opposite point of view. I tried to invite Satan, but I couldn't get his contact information. I think he showed up anyway.

Don't worry. Steve, okay, so when we left, we were talking about I'm rounding the corner, right? I could see the tunnel. I could see the light at the end of the Old Testament.

I'm almost there. I'm in the homestretch. I come up to the New Testament, and I did peek.

I flipped the pages, and the first book, I guess, is Matthew? Yeah, you're cheating, though. You didn't get to Isaiah. I am cheating, but I didn't read it.

I just went to see the name on it. Okay, then you can be forgiven then. What am I going to see? What transition do I see? What you're going to find is when you get to the end of the Old Testament, the book of Malachi is a prophet who predicted actually the coming of John the Baptist.

After Malachi was written, there was 400 years, and no books of the Bible were written. God wasn't revealing things to prophets during that 400 years. There was a lot of history that took place, and most of it is known to historians, but it's not in the Bible.

So in between the Old Testament, I finished the Old Testament, 400 years, I'm at least beginning the New Testament. Then you come to Matthew, and the first thing you find in Matthew is John the Baptist, who was the last thing predicted in Malachi. So 400 years later, the guy shows up.

You're going to find there's four gospels. Each of them covers the life of Jesus in their own way. The first three of them have a lot of repetition to each other.

They're not identical, and they are independent witnesses. They even tell the stories differently from each other in some cases, enough so that some people think they contradict each other. I personally think they could be harmonized without a problem, but that's neither here nor there.

The fact is they're independent witnesses. Then John is the last of those gospels. His gospel records things that the others left out deliberately.

He supplements them. So you're going to find the story of Jesus there. Now the story of Jesus begins in Matthew telling us that there are prophecies that he was going to come.

You're reading those prophecies now in Isaiah. They actually began much earlier. There's a probable prophecy about Jesus in Genesis 3. So that's right at the beginning of the Bible.

There's some very clear prophecies about Jesus in the life of Abraham. God spoke to Abraham and told him that one of his offspring would be the one through whom all the world would be blessed. Now from Abraham came the Jewish race or the Israelites, and it was through them that Jesus came.

But when Jesus came, the Israelites had come under the domination of the Romans, and that's what you find when you turn to the pages of the New Testament. The Romans are ruling the Israelites, and the Israelites are looking for the guy that Isaiah said would come, the Messiah. And the Bible opens in chapter 1 of Matthew saying that an angel appeared to Joseph and said that his fiance's baby, who was not Joseph's baby, was God's baby, was going to be the Messiah, and that he'd save his people from their sins.

Now the Israelites were looking for a certain kind of Messiah. Jesus never pretended to be that. You know, when people sometimes say, well, when you say Jesus fulfilled prophecies and convinced people he was the Messiah, well, anyone could do that.

He knew the prophecies. He could work that out. Jesus never did anything to try to convince people he was the Messiah.

In fact, they all were looking for someone who did something, who would do something that Jesus didn't even attempt to do. Like? Like drive the Romans out of Israel and liberate the Israelites and draw all the Israelites who were scattered throughout the world back to Israel. Those are the things that they thought the Messiah would do.

Jesus didn't try to do either of those things, didn't even promise to. It wasn't even his interest. Did Jesus never lead an army? He never led anybody to do anything? As near as we can tell from his teaching and behavior, he was a complete pacifist.

So, yeah, there were people who tried to get him involved in what they thought the Messiah should do. Like they tried to get him mad at the Romans. The Roman procurator at that time when Jesus was in the ministry was Pontius Pilate.

And once Pontius Pilate committed a horrible atrocity against some Galileans. Jesus was a Galilean, but there were some Galileans in the temple, and Pontius Pilate sent his Roman soldiers, and they slaughtered them. And this is mentioned in Luke chapter 13 in the first three verses.

But someone brought that information to Jesus thinking he's going to get all riled up and say, okay, that's enough. We've had enough from the Romans. Let's drive them out.

Because that's what the Messiah was supposed to do, they thought. But Jesus just said, well, you know, unless you repent, you're all going to perish like that. I mean, Jesus, it was sort of like, almost like water off a duck's back.

Not that Jesus didn't care. He's basically saying, hey, those people who died like that, they're not exceptional. It's going to happen to all of you.

Because the Romans were, in fact, within 40 years going to destroy the whole city of Jerusalem and wipe out the Jews in general. So he's saying, it's going to happen to all of you if you don't turn around. So Jesus didn't do what they thought the Messiah would do.

And he knew very well what they wanted the Messiah to do. He just didn't, he had no interest in pretending to be the kind of Messiah they were looking for. So when people say, well, Jesus was a fake Messiah, he never even publicly said he was a Messiah.

Because if he had wanted to fill this prophecy, I mean, he knew what to act like, right? He could have, but he didn't have any of that. He said, I'm going to be me. And others in the generations just prior to him had done exactly that thing.

That's correct, right? He could have tailored himself to fit one of these prophecies. Yeah, there were many Jewish false messiahs before Jesus came and some after he had been here who tried to stir the Jews up against the Romans and make themselves the Messiah of prophecy. Tried to do the thing that they thought the Messiah would do.

Jesus was the one person who was recognized by some as the Messiah who didn't try to act like the Jews wanted the Messiah to act like. He said, I'm just doing what my father wants me to do. He's not worried about the image.

He's not even worried about popularity. In fact, he's planning to be crucified and be humiliated. He's not playing the Messiah role as other false messiahs did because he knew what he was supposed to do.

Now, he actually did fulfill prophecy, but he did it in a way totally unexpected. The Jews thought there's going to be a political liberation. Jesus came to bring a spiritual liberation.

He came to deliver his people from their sins, the angel told Joseph. And Jesus himself said, if you continue in my teachings, then you're my genuine disciples and you'll know the truth and the truth will make you free. And they said, you're going to free us from something? We're not even in bondage.

And he said, well, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin. And if the son sets you free, you'll be free indeed. So he's talking about a spiritual liberation that God was most of all concerned, again, in this war between God and rebellious humanity.

God's main interest was bringing rebellious humanity back over onto his side, but they were enslaved to their sins. I mean, anyone who thinks they're not slave of sin, just try not sinning for a while and see how that works out. I mean, humanity is enslaved to sin.

We all are. And so Jesus came to save us from that and to bring us back into relationship with God. The prodigal son story is a great example of that.

The prodigal son goes off, lives in sin, but he's able to come back and be reconciled to his father. And that's the picture that God has. I don't know if I like that story, Greg, because that reminds me of, I was telling you off the air, why do people choose to not believe in God? I like to think that me personally is because I like to sin, right? And what is it? I mean, so I go around sinning and doing all kinds of bad things and at the end say, hey, I repent.

Let me in. Okay, Dave, come on in. That's not cool, man.

That's not cool compared to you who's been living your life the right way his whole life. And then Dave over here, parties and sins. And then at the last minute, that's not really cool to you.

Just for the record, I have not lived my life without sin. You've probably a much more. I don't habitually sin.

I mean, I try to avoid it. But the truth is that nobody's perfect and I'm certainly not perfect. I get that.

But the thing is God's grace in forgiving my sins, even though I try to avoid them, would be no more or less than his grace in forgiving your sins if you repent on your deathbed. But the difference is, one difference is. Yeah.

Human nature is not static. It's dynamic. And every day, if the Bible is true, that we are all either submitting to God on purpose or rebelling against God on purpose, we become established in those dispositions.

We build habits of the heart and of the mind. Right, right. And so if you're saying, well, you know, I'll live in sin and I love my sin and I'll do this for the next, what, 40 years or when I'm too old to enjoy it anymore, then I'll turn to God.

Well, 40 years from now, your heart might not be in a position that turning to God genuinely is possible. Because God's not fooled. I mean, anyone can say, okay, I think a doctor's saying I'll die in the next 30 seconds.

Okay, God, I'm ready. Yeah. That's not real repentance.

You know, I would almost sense that. I had this thought this morning, you know, this weekend, I don't know if I told you. I think I did tell you that I spent the weekend with my son hooking up a new, changing the distributor cap and the cables and the spark plugs.

Teaching him man stuff. Teaching man stuff, right? The kind of things that he's going to need to know when I pass away. And I feel myself wanting to do those things with him more.

And I don't know if it's because I'm getting ready more, you know, to, I can, I'm not going to say it, Steve. But, you know, we all get older. And as every day we get older, we get closer to death.

And I'm not so sure that I cannot party in sin and at the end of the day say, oh, my goodness, man, I wish I had changed. I think I'm making that transition now. And I think that if I was to die now in 10 minutes, I don't know, Steve.

Well, let me just say this. I've seen you with your son. Not recently, but it was like eight years ago.

But I always had the impression you were a good dad. Certainly a concerned and caring dad. Now that's exactly the way God is described by Jesus.

He's a caring and concerned father. Now think about your son. If he went through a rebellious patch, maybe he has.

I don't know in the years since I've seen you. But lots of kids do. And let's say he got in the time he was rebellious, he became a heroin addict.

And that defined his life for decades before he finally got clean. But let's say he'd wasted, you know, 40, 50 years of his life. But he finally got it right.

He finally said, hey, Dad, I'm so sorry, you know, I really made some bad choices here. Will you forgive me? Of course you would. You know you would.

I mean, you wouldn't hold it against him. And that's what Jesus is saying is that God, when people truly are broken and repentant over their sin, God is not going to hold it over their head and say, sorry, man, you enjoyed life too much. I'm going to make you suffer for a while.

You know, this makes it harder for me, Steve, to judge him. Because that's the other possibility that I don't believe in God is because I am on this power trip. And I like to think that I can decide whether or not God is real.

That's what I wanted to ask. Can you repent without being broken? Well, Jesus described the prodigal son. And this is a made up story.

So Jesus is making the story fit the analogy he's trying to make. And he's describing what repentance looks like. The son has been alienated from his father by rebellion and self-centered lifestyle.

It's been a dissipated lifestyle. He's been with harlots. He's been drunkard.

He's done all these things. And he's found himself in the pigsty. And he finally says, you know what? Things were better at my dad's house.

You know, my father's servants have it better than I have it. I know what I'll do. I'll go back to my father and I'll say, Father, I've sinned against heaven and in your sight.

I'm no longer worthy to be called your son. Just make me one of your slaves. That'd be better than what I've had out here.

Now, here's the guy who's really broken. He's saying his first thought is I'm not even worthy to be called a son anymore. I mean, I've sinned that privilege away.

I just hope my dad's gracious enough to let me be one of the slaves. Because it's better for them where they are in his house than where I am. And yet, of course, as soon as he came back, he started his little speech.

Father, I've sinned against heaven and in your sight. I'm no longer worthy to be your son. He didn't even get to finish the speech.

His father said, get this guy the golden ring. Get him the special garment. Kill the fatted calf.

My son has come home. And he restored him totally to being a son on good terms. So, I mean, the son didn't even— But what if you're not totally broken? Well, if a person is not totally broken, I don't know that they've really come to believe in God properly.

Properly, huh? Well, I mean, lots of people believe in God, but they're not broken before God. In other words, you could possibly read some C.S. Lewis or something and say, okay, maybe there is a God out there. I don't know.

But you still love your sin. A lot of people love their sin. Yeah, I'm going to go home tonight and sin.

Or they want to, like you said, want to judge God. They believe he's out there, but they think he better prove himself or else they're going to not please him with their approbation of him. But, I mean, believing in God isn't what saves you.

It's once you believe in God, you have to believe that you need to be reconciled with God. Now, to believe that, you have to believe that somehow you've done some wrong things. I mean, if you understand them as you should, those will crush you in a way.

And you'll say, wow, I really am. I really have offended God, but he's gracious. He'll forgive me if I am aware of this and if I decide that I don't want to do this anymore.

So is it possible that I don't believe in God not because I'm judging him, not because I love my sin? Is it possible that I don't believe in God because I'm too strong-headed to admit that I am a sinner? Not really a sinner, but not so much a sinner. Yes, a sinner. But so much a person of weak will to resist.

There are people like that. And I just can't admit that I've been a failure morally for the past whatever years. I'm just not going to admit that.

I'm too headstrong. Forget God. I mean, it's not impossible.

I don't want to know God. It's not impossible that that could be a reason, but I don't know that to be a reason. I wouldn't have judged you.

You're not a psychologist. I'm putting you on an unfair spot here. I can't judge you as far as what your reasons may be because only you really would know that.

Maybe you haven't thought it through enough to even know that yet. Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, that'll be between you and God to figure out, you know, God, why did I— Have you ever thought about that, though? Do you ever think people are just too headstrong to admit that they've lived— Oh, sure.

In fact, my wife was once taking care of an old man who was dying, and he actually said that he had a visitation night where these dark creatures sort of like from the movie Ghost, you know, the demons that come up out of the ground? Right. That demons like that came up out of his floor of his room, and they wanted to take him away, and he fully believed that was what it was, but he says, but I'm not going to turn to God. I'm not going to be weak.

I'm not going to be like other people who, you know, on their deathbed, they finally cave in. He'd been an atheist all his life, but he actually believed that these demons that were coming from were real, but he was, like you said, I'm not going to— Too stubborn to— I'm not going to give in to this. You know, I'm going to die saying what I've always said.

I'm going to die being correct. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I'm not going to admit I was wrong.

I'm not going to admit that I was wrong, yeah. 479-1080-218-5726. When we get back, I promise that we'll get back to the phone calls and text messages and e-mails.

We'll get to that. I don't want to hog up Steve Gregg all to myself. I know we should— Lots of people are excited about you being here, Steve, so we'll get to the phone calls, text messages on the other side.

It's 530. We're going to break for headlines. Phil DeSeth is standing by with your KSEO Radio News.

479-1080-218-5726. You are listening to Fly 1080 KSEO. We're here with Steve Gregg today.

Steve Gregg of thenarrowpath.com. Steve, I didn't know you had books there, too. Can you tell me you have books? I've written a few books. I mean, they're not bestsellers, and I wouldn't expect them.

They're kind of Christian theology books, you know. And they're also available on your website? Well, you can read about them on my website, but I don't sell them because I don't sell anything. The website will tell you, you know, go to Amazon, and you can buy a copy if you want.

Actually, when people write to me and say, I'd like to get one of your books, can I buy one? I just send them a free copy. I don't sell things. What? I've been in the ministry for 49 years.

Right. I've never sold a thing. I've never taken a salary.

I've never asked for money. I've never let people know my needs. That's just my policy.

That's amazing. Because I felt like—it's one thing. If you want to have a business, have a business.

If you want to have a ministry where you're serving God, serve God. And Jesus told his disciples, freely you receive, freely give. So I thought, well, I'm going to serve God.

I'll do it for free. You know what, Steve? I like that answer. I love that answer, and I respect you for doing that.

I admire you for doing that. And maybe someday I could donate—what do you donate? A lot? 50? Maybe I could donate just a little bit. 3% maybe? At this point, yeah, it's quite a big portion of my income, yeah.

Wow. Unbelievable. Let's get to the phone lines, yes? Sure.

Yeah. All right. 479-1080.

The area code is 831. Let me just read these text messages real quick. Please tell your guests the Bible was written in a way so any person at any point in their spiritual understanding could glean something good out of it.

It also is metaphysics, not literal. The stories represent states of mind. Well, I mean— I don't like that answer.

That opinion has been out there. I don't like that. I mean, Philo, the philosopher in the first century in Alexandria, thought that too.

And so did Origen, an early church father. But, you know, as a person who's been teaching the Bible straight through, cover to cover, for 50 years almost, I have formed a different opinion. I'm not sure how many times that person has read the Bible, and maybe a lot, maybe more than I have.

But I've read through the Bible over 30 times, and I have enough familiarity to form a reasonable opinion, though my opinion would not be the last word on the subject. There's certainly people who know more than I do. Yeah, I don't like it when they say, well, you're just open to interpretation.

Well, that's not— Yeah, I don't agree with that person's opinion. Okay, let's get to a phone call. Let's see who's up first.

It is—oh, geez, Daddy Bird. Holy cow. I mean, I just hung up on Daddy Bird.

I hit the button twice by accident. Daddy Bird, call back and we'll get you up. You'll be the next guy up.

Sorry about that. Oh, my goodness, I blew it. Dave and Salinas, you're in the air.

That's all right. It's Dave and Salinas, Double Nickel. What's up, Dave? You're talking about a really touchy conversation, but I don't know if you ever saw Jim Carrey.

He did a skit when he was supposedly Jesus being nailed to the cross, and it is the greatest skit, I think, that I've ever seen. And one of his lines is, my dad is going to be awful mad at you people for doing what they did to him. But for myself, I've probably died three times in my lifetime.

I've come close. And religion is something that I don't need to go to a church to. I can just go out in my backyard and look up at the stars and be thankful and grateful that I'm still alive.

And I try to treat other people the same way I would want them to treat me. Well, that's a good thing. You know, I'd be interested in seeing Jim Carrey's skit where he imitated Muhammad.

I don't think he did one. He wouldn't be alive today. Thank you for the call, Dave.

479-1080-218-5726. DM at KSO.com. Daddy Bird, I won't mess up this time. You're in the air.

Thank you for calling back. Hi. I watch on YouTube about Israel and the Middle East and all that, and they have these people on that are settlers.

They're Jewish settlers in Israel, and they say things that are, they don't like it. They don't like Jesus, and they curse at Jesus and curse in Jesus' name, and they tell people that they're going to kill Jesus and all that. What's that all about? I mean, is that part of their faith or what? Well, if they want to kill Jesus, they've come pretty late to that party.

That was already done 2,000 years ago. But as far as hating Jesus, yeah, Israel's full of people who hate Jesus. There's only a relatively small percentage of the Jews who actually would call themselves Messianic Jews.

Well, you know that Reverend Hagee? Yeah, I sure do. Down in Texas? Yeah. I don't agree with him.

He makes a big deal about how we have to give money to Israel, and then they'll be our friends or something. I don't understand. What's he all about? Well, he's what we call a dispensationalist, which is a theological camp that I strongly disagree with.

He believes that basically Israel is God's chosen people no matter what they do, even when they reject God and when they reject Jesus. In fact, he believes that people who are not Jewish, in order to be saved, need to receive Christ, but Jews don't need to. He believes Jews need to only kind of go along with the Moses covenant that they received, and that's called dual covenant theology.

It's not accepted by very many Christians. I certainly don't accept it. Well, he sure got a big, big church down there.

He's got all kinds of people in there. Oh, sure. There's a lot of big churches.

Joel Osteen has a big church, too, and I don't agree with him either. I don't agree with him either. In fact, the Mormons have a big church, too, and I don't agree with them.

In fact, the Muslims are a pretty big religion, too, and I disagree with them. The size of a religion or the size of a movement doesn't tell you anything about its correctness. Jesus' movement was pretty small when he was on earth.

He, at one time, had thousands of people following him, and he drove them away by saying hard things that they wouldn't like, and then there were only 12 left after a while. You know, I think a lot of evangelicals don't know what Israel is like. Their preachers tell them Israel is God's chosen people.

God's brought them back. These are the last days. We need to support Israel.

This is what they're told. Many Christians, when you tell them Israel is not a religious nation, it's certainly not a Christian nation, and the majority of people in Israel are not even religious Jews, and the Knesset, the government, is a pluralistic government like the United States. It's not a Christian or Jewish religious government.

It's a secular democratic government, so they don't realize that Israel is not. Today, Israel's not the nation that it was in the Old Testament. In the Old Testament, they were formed around the temple and the worship of Yahweh.

That's what Israel was based on. Israel today is just another secular democracy. It's not a holy nation.

Thank you for your call, Daddy Bird. Are they not still the chosen people? I mean, wouldn't God defend them? No. No.

Not necessarily. I mean, God has sent Jesus to Israel first to give them the first opportunity to be God's people, but only a small number of Israelites accepted him, and others crucified him, and others were apathetic toward him, and eventually their nation was destroyed by the Romans, and they became just like everybody else in the world. But like everybody else, they can become Christians.

They can follow Christ. So do you believe that Jews who don't believe that Jesus is the Son of God, that they're going to go down? I don't make judgments or assessments about who's going to go to hell. God knows the heart.

But I would say that by being a Jew, one does not have necessarily a higher standing in the eyes of God than a person who's not a Jew. I mean, God is looking at the heart. God is looking for people to be followers of his Son.

And Jews can do that. Gentiles can do that. Anybody can do that.

And Jews and Gentiles in that respect are not really different. How would somebody prove that they're the Son of—is Jesus supposed to come back? Yes? He is supposed to come back. Yes.

How would he prove to you, Steve Gregg, that he's Jesus? Well— What evidence would you need to— The description is of him coming in the clouds of heaven and raising the dead and calling the Christians to meet him in the air and bringing fire on the earth. Are those zombies? Somebody got mad at us the other day for suggesting that those were zombies, the undead walking. Well, as I understand it, zombies are not alive, whereas resurrected people are, just like Jesus when he rose from the dead.

They come back to life? Absolutely, yes. What if they're halfway rotten? Well, many people would be 100% rotten. But they'll be reborn.

Resurrected. I mean, if the Bible is true, God made the first human body out of dust. And even the first chapters of Genesis say that when people die, they'll go back to the dust.

So there's not some new scientific challenge to being resurrected from the dead that they didn't know about in ancient times. That people die and they go back to the dust is well known. It's just that, you know, the Bible—let me just say this about that.

In order for my body to be raised from the dead centuries after it was dead and decomposed, all that really requires is that God has my DNA on file, you know. Because right now, every cell in your body that you have in your body right now was not there seven years ago. Your cells replaced themselves.

And yet you get new cells every several years, but it's still the same person. Why? Because it's the same DNA. Every cell in your body has your DNA, and it's uniquely so.

And so if all my cells disappear into dust, I'd be the same person if the DNA is used to create new cells. So he would just use your DNA to rebuild the meat, muscles, hair, all that stuff? Well, I don't know that's what he'll do, but it certainly is a possibility. Or would you just be a cloud of dust resurrected? No, no, no.

Jesus, when he rose from the dead, was himself and was a full body. But he had only been dead for a few days, correct? Right. He had not decomposed.

But the Bible says that when he came out of the tomb, his body had been transformed into the same kind of body that he will raise us in. So Paul said in Philippians that Jesus, when he comes, will transform our bodies into the likeness of his glorified body. Now, his glorified body is the resurrection body.

It was human. He could eat food. He could be touched.

He still had the holes in his hands, same body, but different in nature. He could disappear. He could reappear in a room when it's locked.

And this is the way everybody will be once they're resurrected? Well, apparently, the features of his resurrected body will be, they are the prototype for the resurrected bodies of everybody. Because the Bible describes him as the first begotten from the dead, meaning like the first of a family that are all the same. Or it also calls him the first fruits of those who've died.

The first fruit was like the beginning of the harvest. The rest of the harvest is the same as the first fruits, but the first fruits happens to be the guarantee that the rest is coming. 2185726, that's the text line, 218 KSEO.

What is the meaning of the narrow path? I believe the width of the path is perfectly tailored for each soul, perfect because it is tailored by God. Why narrow? Well, the term comes from something Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus talked about a narrow gate and a wide gate and the path that leads to them.

The narrow gate is approached by a narrow path. The broad gate by a broad path. It's a figure of speech, but a path is a metaphor for the way you live, the way you walk.

It's your path in life. Jesus said that most people are on the broad path, which he said is an easy path. It is.

It's the path of least resistance. They want to go through the broad gate, but he said that's the gate that leads to destruction. He said very few are going to make it through the narrow gate.

They're on the wrong path. That is, the few are on the right path, which is a narrow one, and he said a difficult one. He's basically just saying, now he's speaking to a Jewish audience who all thought they were God's chosen people.

They all just figured we're all okay with God. He's saying, well, look around you. Most of these people are not really okay with God.

They're on a path that's going to lead them to destruction. There's only a few that are doing the right thing, living the right way, and going to go through the narrow gate, which leads to eternal life. 218-5726, Don Husing in the hallway.

This might not mean anything to you, but here some of the board ops have said that we see things walking up and down the hallway at night. I've seen it myself. Spirits.

Do you believe in ghosts? Do you believe in supernatural things? Is that anti-God? Are those demons? Do they exist? They could be demons. The Bible teaches that in addition to God, who is a spirit, there's an entire spiritual world. Angels belong to that world.

Demons belong to that world, and who knows what else. There's cherubim and seraphim and other things too that are in that spiritual realm. Many people think that human spirits, once a person is dead, sometimes stick around and haunt a place.

The Bible does not say that that is so, but the Bible does teach that humans have spirits that do survive beyond their death. The impression is given in the Old Testament that human spirits go to a place called Sheol, which is not in contact with us here on earth. But that might be just generally so.

We don't know if there's exceptions. Nobody claims that everyone who's died has a ghost walking around here, but a lot of times there's ghost stories about certain houses where someone was murdered or committed suicide or something. I don't know what to make of those stories.

Obviously, they're sort of like those claims of the appearance of the Virgin Mary. They're all over the place. How do you verify them? But I don't believe the Virgin Mary has appeared to anyone, but I do believe that it's not impossible that people have seen spirits, which they may have been the spirits of the deceased, or they may simply have been mistaken for those.

They may be demons. They may be some other kind of spirit, and the human being who sees them doesn't have a frame of reference for identifying them. So that must be a ghost.

479-1080-2185-726. Mr. Olson? Oh, boy. Oh, boy.

So, Steve, how long have you been teaching the Bible? I started in 1970 as a vocation, so that's been 49 years. 49 years, going on 50. You've seen a lot of change in that 50 years.

Culturally. Culturally. Sure.

Well, we seem to be going through an extraordinary period of cultural change right now, and taking us back to the Old Testament and its rules for getting by in the world seem to be thrown by the wayside in great dispatch here. One of them, you know, we now have a presidential candidate who is a self-described homosexual and married to a man of the same sex. In Leviticus, the Old Testament book, 1822 reads, do not have sex with a man as one does with a woman.

Now, a lot of people think this is simply out of date and that perhaps the Bible should be rewritten to conform to modern times. How would you answer them? Well, a lot of people think that the Bible is misinterpreted. I mean, homosexual churches, for example, don't necessarily argue that that's out of date, but that we're misunderstanding it, you know, that it was talking about, you know, men abusing boys and things like that.

But actually, the Bible is very clear on what God made sex for. He made it to exist between a man and a wife, and he didn't make it unclear what a wife is. A wife is a female, and a man is a man.

And so God, when he made the first couple, he made a man and a woman to reproduce and fill the earth. Now, Jesus was asked in Matthew chapter 19 whether divorce was okay, which is a different question, but it has a similar answer because Jesus said, well, don't you know how God made marriage in the beginning? He said, and he quotes from the Old Testament, for this cause, a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. And Jesus said, well, what God has joined together is one flesh.

Men should not separate. So he takes the paradigm of marriage from Genesis, and he makes it a basis for a moral argument about divorce. But in the course of doing so, he has affirmed the definition of marriage that was in Genesis.

And so I have no doubt that if they had said, well, what do you think about two men being married? He no doubt would have given the same answer. Have you not read how it was made in the beginning? He basically said that the way God made it in the beginning was God's idea of what marriage is supposed to be. Now, divorce, he said, God never really liked divorce.

He allowed it in the Old Testament, but that's because of the hardness of your heart. God tolerated some things. He tolerated polygamy.

It wasn't really his design. That's not how he made it in the beginning. In the Old Testament, he let people get away with that and also let them get away with divorce and things like that, which were not really part of his purpose.

At this point, there are people of same sex who are married and God is not, you know, he's not lowering the boom. They're getting away with it, as it were, and that's fine, I guess, if they want to just get away with it for a while. But the point is, if somebody says, well, what is God's idea about marriage? Well, it's gonna be the same as what Jesus said.

There were homosexuals from earliest times. It's not like Jesus was unaware of the phenomenon. Leviticus certainly knew about the phenomenon, enough to forbid it, and Paul knew about it, too.

Paul wrote about homosexual activity and said that that's not appropriate for, you know, that's not how God designed things to be. Can't we just make it appropriate by rewriting the Bible? Well, it depends on who's gonna do the rewriting, you know, and where they're gonna get their authority. You know, the Bible doesn't claim to be written by people of an ancient culture who are giving their opinions.

In fact, the Bible specifically says it isn't. The biblical writers were going right against the culture in many respects around them, but it's claimed that God revealed to Moses and to the prophets, and later Jesus and the apostles, his will for humanity. Now, if we got, you know, somebody says, well, I think we should rewrite it and change the rules.

Okay, if the people who wrote the Bible were prophets and apostles and the Son of God, what are your qualifications? You know, I mean, if they said it's this way, why should I believe it's the way you're saying it is? Who has the ability to trump that which God has revealed? Now, if we say, well, you know, cultures change. Well, it's true, but some cultures don't change much. The Muslim culture hasn't changed much on this point, and they wouldn't, if they rewrote the Bible, they wouldn't approve of homosexuality.

So whose culture is gonna rewrite the Bible for everybody? You know? Isn't that a good reason that it needs to be rewritten? Because if you leave it the same and follow the same rules, outdated, then you're gonna live in an outdated society. Take, for example, the Muslims, who are living 700 years in the past. Well, the problem with the Muslims is that they're not following the Bible, and they're following the Quran.

You know, Christianity has always been able to be true to the Bible and still move with the times in terms of accommodating science, in fact, frankly, inspiring science. Most of the great discoveries in science were made by people who believe the Bible. Right.

And technology. And not so much with the Quran. No.

Well, I think they probably have learned to use cell phones to blow things up. Sure, sure. Yeah, but the thing is that Christianity has always actually been a progressive influence in culture, but not morally progressive.

See, that's the thing. I mean, Christianity can change with the technological and scientific knowledge of times, but let's say the changed opinions about marriage, those don't come from any scientific discoveries. There's no scientific discoveries that tell us that marriage should be redefined.

That's simply a cultural mood. Wouldn't you get a lot more people following your church and get a lot more people donating money if you did that? Well, some churches might. I've never been interested in how many people come to my church or how many people donate money, but some people might.

I mean, but to tell you the truth, I mean, a lot of churches speak out very harshly against homosexuality. They get more people coming to their churches and giving them money than the churches that are embracing homosexuality, but who knows, they may change. The main thing is, without any concern about how many people approve or how much money comes in, if the Bible is the word of God, then it would take no one less than God to change it.

Let's take one more call. Maria, calling from Santa Cruz. You're in the air.

Hey, Maria. Maria, are you there? All right, let's head out to Marguerite, calling from Santa Cruz. You're in the air.

Thanks, Maria. Hi, guys. Great show.

I was just quickly wondering if you had seen the documentary on Guadalupe, Amazing Scientific Facts. Let's see, it's Amazing Scientific Analysis. Our Lady of Guadalupe documentary.

I mean, come on. Now, I know that you responded to my statement earlier that I said I don't believe Mary has appeared to people, and you're referring to a case where she allegedly did, and apparently there's some very impressive evidence. The problem is, how do we know it was Mary? That's the issue I would have.

I mean, maybe some people saw something. Maybe you can even document and even prove scientifically that something happened, but to make sure that's really Mary and not some other kind of spiritual apparition from another source is something that would have to be tested by means other than science. In my opinion, you'd test it by the authority of what the Bible says on something like that.

Thank you for calling Marguerite, 479-1080-218-5726. We're hanging out with Steve Gregg. If you want to find out more, check out thenarrowpath.com. Did I get that right, Steve? That's correct.

thenarrowpath.com. We're going to be hanging out with Steve Gregg until 630. If you want to speak with him, get online right now. The number to call is 831-479-1080.

The number to text is also 831-218-KSEO. Emails can be sent to dm.kseo.com. You're listening to AM1080 KSEO Santa Cruz Flight 1080. Back after this.

You're listening to AM1080 KSEO Santa Cruz. It is 613 on this beautiful Monday. We're hanging out with Steve Gregg, Kevin Hurley, Michael Olsen, Jack Stein, me, Dave Michaels, and you if you want to join us, 479-1080.

Steve, let's get to the phone calls, yes? Sure. Let's get to these phone calls. I'm going to hit next.

All right. Who's on the line? Kenny and Salinas, you're in the air. Welcome, Kenny.

Yes, sir. Mr. Michaels and Mr. Gregg, I'd like to thank you for coming on board there with Flight 1080. I'd like to ask you, Steve, sir, with all due respect, I've been listening to you off and on for like 20 years.

What do you think about a place of work that has Ouija board parties like they do at Flight 1080? We just did that once. Dave Michaels encouraging a Ouija board party a week before. People wanted to call in and say, and they were wanting to conjure up spirits to beat up Jesus.

Maybe that's why they have the spirits walking around here. That's enough. He's snitching on me.

He's a snitch. Yeah, I like to play with the Ouija board. I thought it was fun.

What do you think about that, Steve? What do you think about the Ouija board? Well, the Ouija board, insofar as it is real at all, I believe is demonic. It's not a way that God ever authorized to be contacted himself. And the Bible does indicate there's a wide variety of ways that people contact evil spirits.

And the Ouija board is not mentioned, but divination and other forms of the occult are. And the Ouija board would be one of the modern forms of divination that are out there. So I've known people who've contacted, they say, spirits from the Ouija board.

And generally speaking, it wasn't friendly ones. Let's just say that the Ouija board is bunk. It's just a toy.

Is it still a sin to want to contact? Is that in itself a sin, the desire? Well, the desire is simply a temptation. To do it is a sin, I believe. To attempt it.

Because it's forbidden. It's forbidden in Deuteronomy. Even if it doesn't work, just the attempt at it is a sin.

The fact that God has forbidden us to get in touch with spirits like that, because he wants us to be in touch with him instead, means that if we want to, then we're, of course, putting them instead of him. We're not seeking to do what he said. We're seeking to do what we want to do.

Thomas Edison tried to invent a machine to talk to the dead. Yeah, Thomas Edison. Bad idea? Well, he was not a Christian either.

Yeah, he was an occultist in many respects. I didn't know that. Yeah, so was Arthur Conan Doyle and a lot of famous, brilliant people in our past.

But, you know, what do I think of a company that has Ouija board parties? I say, well, if they're not calling themselves Christians, then I don't expect them to act like Christians. So they can do things that aren't Christian. 479-1080, it is.

Colonel Terry, you're in the air. Hey, Colonel Terry. Yes, gentlemen, briefly, you made the comment, your guest did, if the Bible is true.

Well, let's talk about the Bible and whether it's true or not. As the honest, intelligent genius of Stephen Hawking observed, God and religion are fairy tale fantasies for adults and make-believe nonsense that is no more provable real than is the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus. So was Stephen Hawking an expert about God? Stephen Hawking was an expert about reality.

No, about astrophysics and so forth. Yeah, that's not the same thing as the subject of God. All of that.

There are experts in every realm of science who would say what he said, and there are equally expert people in every realm of science who would not agree with him. So it's a separate issue. You could be a great scientist.

You could be a great biologist like Richard Dawkins. But Dawkins doesn't know one thing about God. He's a theorist.

There's no scientist who can prove there's no God. You know, Stephen Hawking, who you said is so brilliant, and he is, or was, but the point here is that Stephen Hawking in his most recent book said this statement. He said, given the existence of the law of gravity, the universe would inevitably create itself out of nothing.

Now, wait a minute. But he said the law of gravity is there. Where did it come from? The universe is going to create itself out of nothing if there's the law of gravity, but gravity is not nothing.

So, you know, he's trying to explain what atheists cannot explain, is how could something come from nothing? He says, well, it would happen if there's gravity. But gravity isn't nothing. You've already got gravity.

Who put that there? So, I mean, his— There won't be time to debate it, but you're taking him out of context. And as the New Testament Bible, by the way, is fiction, and the Old Testament is mostly Hebrew historical records with similar fictions about a never ever seen God or Allah or Yahweh, it's filled with aphorisms and manipulations to dominate people with fears of death, superstitions, myths, and a shared delusional faith indoctrination. Well, before you go, I'd just like to ask you, because, I mean, those are pretty strong statements.

Could you tell me what your authority is to say those kinds of things? Where's your area of expertise? Well, I've studied science. I went through the Catholic indoctrination, and I saw what a total fraud it was. Okay, but how much have you studied the Bible itself? I've learned to respect reality.

How much have you studied the Bible itself? Because everything you said is about the Bible. How much have you studied of the Bible? Well, the Christian Bible was written by men to be manipulated. I'm not asking you to make statements about the Bible.

You already did that. Could you tell me how you know what you know about the Bible? Did you study the Bible? Adequately to know that, as Dawkins says, it's nonsense. Dawkins did not study the Bible well either.

Okay? There are people who do. You know, there are people who've made a life study of this subject, and they don't necessarily agree with you. But you're welcome to your opinion, certainly.

Thank you for the call, Colonel Terry. Jack Stein? Yeah, I just wanted to say that Colonel Terry owes me five bucks, because I told him that he wasn't allowed to say smart or reality. And he did it.

Pay up, Colonel Terry. Five dollars. Two minutes.

Let me just go on a two-minute tangent. God was always there, right? You say Stephen Hawking is trying to do something that nonbelievers always try to do, and that's to explain where something came from nothing. You say God was always there, right? Because I could say, hey, where did God come from? And you're going to say he was always there.

And couldn't a scientist say, well, it was the Big Bang, boom, and then you've got the universe contracts, and it happens again, boom, boom, boom. This just keeps happening again, and there you go. There's your answer.

You could say that. Of course, it's an entirely untestable theory. Now, that there was a Big Bang is something that can probably be demonstrated very convincingly, but that there was ever a previous one to that would be entirely conjecture.

So one thing we do know is that when the Big Bang was first floated as a credible theory back in the 1950s, most atheists hated the theory. Even Einstein said he did not like the theory. He finally came around, but he rejected it at first because they said it will encourage the creationists too much.

Because scientists, or I should say atheists before that time had always said, like Bertrand Russell said back in the early 1900s, well, you don't have to have a God that's always there. You could have a universe that was always there. But then the Big Bang says, well, but it wasn't always there.

It had a beginning. So, you know, we can say the universe may be exceedingly old, but not infinitely old. You know, it had a beginning.

And therefore you've got to kind of say, well, then where did that come from? Unless there's something about it that makes it eternal. 4791080, Marie calling from Santa Cruz. You're in the air.

Marie, are you there? I think her name might be Lillian. I'm not sure. Lillian, are you there? Sounds like Marie.

Hello? Hey, Lillian. Hello? Yes, are you there? Hi, Dave. It's Lillian.

Hey, Lillian. What do you got? I have something like really fast. I hope I can explain this so that you'll understand.

But I've been listening to a theologian, apologist for a few years every day. He comes on the radio for three hours, and I listen to him every day. And this is about sin.

What he says is that, like, when Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden, when they turned their backs on God, they were, like, before that, made perfect in every way. You know, they were on the same level as angels as far as intellect and their physical bodies. We were immortal and disease-free.

Okay, so when they turned their backs on God and disobeyed, we inherited a thing called concupiscence, which comes from natural sin, because they call it natural sin when they disobeyed God. And we lost our intellect, became darkened, and our physical bodies were prone to disease and death and old age. And so, like, we inherited concupiscence as a thing where you find a great pleasure in committing sin.

Steve, I'm sorry, what is your question? I don't have a question. I was defining sin. Well, sin is rebellion against God.

Sin is violation of God and of His rights and of His commands. So, there is sin that is an element of our nature, and then there is sin that is an actual act. You know, you commit a sin.

But the reason we commit sins is because there's something that is in our nature that makes us want to do so. I actually think the root of sin is simply that it's self-interest, that we have the choice to do what we want to do or what God wants us to do. And the choice to do what you want to do is natural.

I think we're all born with self-interest at the core of our motivations. And God calls upon us to, as Jesus put it, deny yourself and take up your cross and follow Him and make His will our will. Our failure to do so is what sin is.

And even those of us who are Christians, we still sin, unfortunately. But we actually are trying not to. We've decided we don't want to.

That's the difference between us and someone else, perhaps. Thank you for your call, Lillian. 479-1080.

Tons of text messages and emails, but I don't think we have time for that. Instead, Steve, I want Mr. Olson to ask you a great question that we talked about briefly. This is good.

Well, here we go. Steve, you've got quite a world we live in right now. A lot of contention over the secularists of the world and the religious people of the world.

And in the religious community, I count Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and the religious. And, of course, up against a secular world that is trying its best to fight for supremacy. And it's doing that by trying to erode all of the morality and structure of Christian and Judaism and Islam.

Now, it looks to me like Islam is standing up very well against this secular onslaught. If you look at Europe, where you see the two really going head to head, it appears to me that Islam is winning that battle. If you look at the Christian world, we seem to be giving in to the secularists on all fronts.

Where is this going to take us? What the future may be of the influence of Christianity in Western civilization, the jury is out. We can't really read the future. Christianity has had its surges, its peaks, and its valleys in terms of its acceptance culturally.

And we are living at a time where we seem to be entering a valley in this part of the world. Now, Christianity is growing like crazy in many other parts of the world. So, Christianity isn't just an American phenomenon or a Western phenomenon.

It's a global phenomenon. And China, for example, is one of the places where Christianity is growing faster than any time in history. I was just saying during the break, and you stopped me when I was saying it on the air, but when Mao Tse-Tung came to power in China, there were like 700,000 or 800,000 Christians in China, less than a million.

And then all missionaries were driven out. Communication with the West was ended. Christian leaders in China were hunted down, imprisoned, and killed, and so forth.

And Christianity in China came under some of the most intense persecution for several decades, like 40 years, which would seemingly predict that it would come to an end, because the Christians who remained were meeting underground, meeting secretly, and so forth. And it was assumed in the West, because no information was coming out of China during that time, that Christianity must have been stamped out. Those few Christians that were there at the beginning must have been totally wiped out.

Well, after Mao died and the West started having communication from China and going in and so forth, they began to discover that the Christian movement had grown during that time. In fact, those who went in and did research conclude there was something between 50 and 100 million Christians in China at the end of that 40 years of persecution. So, from fewer than a million Christians to somewhere between 50 and 100 million in 40 years, under the most intense persecution in history, saw the most dynamic and largest growth of Christianity in any comparable period of history.

And so, but of course, these Christians, they were suffering, and they were meeting secretly and so forth, but their movement was thriving and growing. And so, I mean, something like that could happen in the West. And there will always be Christians in the West.

They may be hiding out eventually because it's not legal to believe what they believe. And some people say, oh, come on, no one's ever going to outlaw Christianity here. Yeah, I would have said that about 40 years ago too, but I mean, the trend is, you know, there's certain things that I can say on the air now that probably five years from now it'd be illegal for me to say on the air from a Christian standpoint about certain moral subjects and so forth.

At least in Canada, it's illegal already for Christians to say them. But so, I mean, a preacher in Canada was fined $52,000 recently, I heard, because he said that he believed marriage was between a man and a woman. And that's, you know, if I could be penalized for that, I wouldn't be able to say that on the air very often.

But who knows? It may become illegal for us to be outspoken in our beliefs, but it's not going to be the end of the world. And the reason is because Christianity is not just another religion. Jesus didn't start a religion.

People turned it into a religion. Roman Catholicism and other churches are religious. Jesus started a kingdom.

We have a king, an almighty king, and those who follow him are his kingdom. Religions come and go. They're man-made.

But Christianity is a kingdom with a king, and it's not going to die. It's never going to perish. Praise the Lord.

Thank you for saying that. I hope you're right about that, man, because I tell you what, I'm not a Christian, but I certainly would never, ever want to live under Muslim rule. Holy smokes.

That would be bad times. I agree. 479-1080-218-5726, dm at kseo.com. We've been hanging out with Steve Gregg.

Steve, thank you for joining us here on Flight 1080. Thanks for having me. Check out thenarrowpath.com. Steve is off to his next mission.

We want to thank him again for joining us here on Flight 1080. What did you think about Steve's skills? I thought Steve was very kind. He's a very good, he's a very nice man, very calm, very understanding guy.

Yeah, Steve's a great guest. It was an excellent show.