The Narrow Path 09/24/2026

Steve Gregg: Good afternoon and welcome to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we're live for an hour each weekday afternoon taking your calls. If you have questions about the Bible or about the Christian faith or you disagree with the host and want to talk about that, feel free to give me a call. We have one line open. Actually, just a moment ago, there were no lines open then a person hung up and now somebody's taken that line. So, all the lines are full again. But if you want to call the program later, in a few minutes from now, some lines will be opening up again. You can call us at 844-484-5737. That's 844-484-5737. And we're going to go to the phones now since our lines are full and we're going to talk to Peter in the United Kingdom. Hello Peter, good to hear from you again. Thanks for joining us.
Peter: Hi Steve. Thanks for taking my call. Steve, I'm just at a loss as to how to engage biblically with the Lord's supper. I attend a church where it's done religiously, and I also grew up in a Word of Faith background where I was taught to treat it as a ritual with healing power and also taught to take it regularly for that very reason. But as I've been reading the Bible, I understand that it was part of a love feast and I'm just wanting to understand how I should sort of engage with it and do it biblically. I find myself when you take it in church, I'm not in a close relationship with everyone that's there. Should I take it with my own family or with people that I actually have a relationship with? Just wanted some help with that.
Steve Gregg: Okay, could I ask you what kind of church you're attending?
Peter: It's a charismatic church.
Steve Gregg: So, in other words, at the church you go to probably the communion is seen merely as a memorial of the body and blood of Jesus rather than as the real presence of the body and blood of Christ, correct?
Peter: Correct, yes.
Steve Gregg: Right. Well, I don't see any dangerous way to do that. In other words, I have my own ideas about what is required or what is not required with reference to the performance of the Lord's Supper. But what I believe the Bible teaches is not more demanding than what your church is doing. I mean, if they say we're going to remember the Lord's death until he comes by eating this bread as a memorial of his body and drinking this cup as a memorial of his blood, well, that's exactly what the Bible said to do. The fact is, of course, in biblical times, they didn't tag that on where you take a symbolic little piece of bread and a little bit of wine or grape juice as a sort of a tag on the end of a service. It was rather part of a meal, as you know. You mentioned that in your question. It's part of a love feast. Now, most churches don't have love feasts anymore, but the early church did. And they took the bread and the wine as a memorial of Christ at the love feast, as a part of a meal, rather than as a ritual nibble and little sip of something that's not really even intended to nourish. The love feasts are where you get fed, where you eat together and meals are what nourish you. And taking the body and blood of Jesus, or bread and wine as a memorial of the body and blood of Jesus, in connection with that kind of a meal reminds us that as the regular food we're eating nourishes our bodies, so Christ nourishes us spiritually. Now, the Bible doesn't say you have to do it at a meal. That's just the way they did it. That was the assumption in the early church that they did that. It probably never occurred to them that anyone would ever do it differently than that. But we live 2,000 years later where quite a number of traditional ideas have come up, especially the real presence or the transubstantiation of the bread and the wine into the body and blood of Jesus, which the Roman Catholics still do and some Protestant groups have something very similar they believe. But those traditions, of course, are not in the Bible and there's no reason why a person should accept them since the Bible doesn't teach them. Jesus didn't teach it. The apostles didn't teach it. Now you said that the Word of Faith church that you used to go to saw the ritual as something that has healing power to it. And of course they're doing that because in 1 Corinthians 11, it says for this reason many are weak and sick among you and some have died because you've not discerned the body of the Lord. And so what they're saying, they believe the broken body of Jesus acquires our physical healing and that you need to attach faith for healing to your eating of the bread, remembering his body. And they would argue that the Corinthians were failing to do that and that's why some of them were sick when they didn't have to be. Of course, Paul explains it very differently than that. He says the way they were taking the meal wrongly is by feeding themselves first and taking food out of the mouths of others so that some were going away hungry, others were getting too much wine and going away drunk. That's what Paul means by taking the body and the blood unworthily or in an unworthy manner. And he says that for this cause many are sick and weak among you and some have died. He says because if we would judge ourselves, God wouldn't be judging us like this. But when he does judge us, he's chastening us. So in other words, Paul doesn't see the taking of the bread as a means of avoiding sickness as the Word of Faith people might. He sees the taking of the bread as a memorial of the body of Christ, which is us now. And when you take food out of the mouth of your brethren, you're depriving the body of Christ. That is, you're depriving members of Christ's body and you're not discerning that the company you're in is the body of Christ. You're not discerning the body. Notice he doesn't say you're not discerning the blood. So when you're not discerning the body, he means you're not discerning that the church is the body of Christ. And what you do to the church is done to Christ. So it's an affront to him to wrong his body. And therefore the sickness has come not because they didn't have enough faith to be well, but because they were misbehaving in such a way and not correcting themselves so that God had to discipline the church with sickness and even death of some of the members. That's what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11. If you're going to a church where they aren't having a love feast, and if that's the case then it's about average, most churches don't have a love feast. But if you do have a love feast there, even so, we don't know exactly how they performed the ceremony during the love feast. I assume they just interrupted the meal at a certain point and said, let's remember the Lord with the taking of the bread and the wine, but I'm not sure they did it that way. We don't have really an explanation of how they inserted it. But the one thing I would say is we don't have any evidence that the taking of the Lord's Supper was done by the early church in a very ritualistic, ceremonial kind of a way as if doing it wrongly would somehow forfeit some kind of spiritual blessing that comes from doing it rightly, like we have to follow the right procedure or the right ritual. There's no suggestions like that in the Bible. What is suggested is that we need to be remembering Christ and being considerate of our brothers at the table. So, I grew up in a church, in fact, I've always been in churches like the one you described. When I take the bread and wine, I just, because they say let's remember the body and blood of Jesus, I call to mind the body and blood of Jesus. But the truth is, I'm not really more conscious of the broken body and shed blood of Jesus at that moment than I am at other times because that's kind of in my mind most of my life, the fact that Jesus died and rose again. I mean, that's kind of the defining events in history of my whole life. So I don't really know that taking communion places that memory more vividly before me than I have it most other times. But I'm not legalistic about it. I'll just go along with whatever the church does, as long as they're not doing something dangerous and I don't see any danger in what they're doing.
Peter: Yeah, that's reassuring to know because when I read in the commentary that they had love feasts, I was wondering if that was a standard by which we should follow. But you've clearly explained that we don't actually know how they did it.
Steve Gregg: Right. I think as much as possible, churches should try to include love feasts or I think what today we might call a potluck meal in their church fellowship. It doesn't have to be on Sunday mornings and it doesn't have to be extremely formal. The idea of the agape feast I think was simply that the church was a community and enjoyed table fellowship with their brothers. And that's what we would have at a church potluck, I suppose, if it's done with Christ in mind. And I think that the church, everything they did in those days was with Christ in mind. I mean, Christ had changed their whole lives. Unfortunately, a lot of people are in churches today who Christ either hasn't changed their lives much or they don't know Christ. Or maybe they have had their lives changed many years ago, but church has become just a ritual to them, in which case it might be missing some of the dynamics that the early church had. But as far as commands in the Bible as to how to do this, we don't have any.
Peter: No, thank you Steve. It was great to talk to you again. Have a good rest of your day or evening where you are. Thank you.
Steve Gregg: God bless you brother. God bless. Okay, let's see. We're going to talk next to Daniel in Washougal, Washington. Hi Daniel, welcome to the Narrow Path.
Daniel: Yes, good afternoon Steve. I wanted to thank you first of all for your ministry. It's been life-changing for me. It's really done me really good, my whole family as well. So thank you for your ministry and everybody that is involved and contributes.
Steve Gregg: I'm delighted to hear it. Thank you.
Daniel: So I have one word and a question. My word is, I was thinking today about the present condition of the church, specifically in the Western world, and where we are at in our Western culture. And the word that struck me was time is short. So I wanted to share that. And my question today is from Revelation chapter 20 verses 7 through 10. I was specifically wondering about your take on the saints being surrounded by the enemy and then the judgment of God coming down. Yes, can you expand on that? Thank you.
Steve Gregg: Sure. Now as far as the point that time is short, I wouldn't be surprised if you're right. I don't know how short it may be, but to say time is short may not even mean what some people think it means. Some people might think that means because Jesus is definitely coming very soon. And maybe he is, I hope he does. But whether he does or not, time might be short for us in terms of the preservation of the way of life that we have known all our lives in this part of the world as that which was established in this country over 200 years ago is definitely challenged by other forces that seek to undermine and possibly totally destroy the country. Whether they'll succeed or not, I do not know. I certainly hope not. But time may be short in more ways than one for us here. As far as my understanding of Revelation, you may know that I'm an amillennialist and that means I think the thousand years in Revelation 20 is symbolic for simply an indeterminately long period of time. And that it stands for the time between the first coming of Christ and the second coming of Christ, the present time, in other words. Now at the end of the thousand years, Satan is loosed for a little while and he goes out to make trouble to deceive the nations. He does so, he brings them like the sand of the seashore from the four corners of the earth to surround the camp of the saints, the beloved city. And then fire comes down from heaven and destroys Satan and his people, obviously rescuing the city from harm. At the end of the thousand years, Satan is loosed for a little while and he goes out to make trouble to deceive the nations. He does so, he brings them like the sand of the seashore from the four corners of the earth to surround the camp of the saints, the beloved city. And then fire comes down from heaven and destroys Satan and his people, obviously rescuing the city from harm. Now you're saying what do I believe about that? I believe, first of all, the beloved city is the people of God, the community of Christ, what's called the church in the New Testament. It's the city that comes down from heaven in Revelation 21, which is the bride of the Lamb, the new Jerusalem and so forth. So the beloved city is the camp of the saints. That just simply refers to the church on earth. Of course, the church today is not all geographically located in one place with walls around it. In fact, cities today don't have walls. It wouldn't do any good since most weaponry would be able to breach or simply ignore walls, go over them. But in the imagery of the Bible times, the city is besieged and the walls are surrounded. Now, since the real church isn't really surrounded in a geographical sense, because the whole church isn't located in just one place, it's throughout the whole world. I assume this means simply that globally the body of Christ will be under siege from the deceived people who are following Satan at that time. And that to my mind would speak of a global persecution of the church. Fire from heaven coming down I believe is a reference to the second coming of Christ, which we of course anticipate on the last day. Now in 2 Thessalonians 1:8, Paul said that Christ will come with his holy angels in flaming fire taking vengeance on those who don't know God and who do not obey the gospel. So I mean that's sort of what we see, fire from heaven comes down and destroys the enemy once and for all. This is the second coming of Christ in my opinion. And therefore what I take that chapter to be saying is after a very long time, symbolically represented as a thousand years, after the church age essentially, between the first and second coming of Christ, the end of that will be characterized by a brief resurgence of demonic deception, satanic deception upon the world, which puts the church in peril in one way or another. But the church will not be taken. The church will not be defeated because Christ will come and that'll be the end of that conflict forever. And then we have, of course, the new heavens, the new earth mentioned immediately after that. So that's my understanding of that portion of Revelation. That's a very amillennial position, of course. Many people who are listening are probably premillennial or even postmillennial, but I make no secret about the fact I'm amillennial and that's the way we would understand that kind of a passage. Thank you for your call brother. Let's talk next to Mike from Tampa, Florida. Hi Mike, welcome.
Mike: Steve, question on 1 Timothy chapter 3 verse 10. It says and let those also first be proved. What does proved mean there as far as in leadership? Our church has ministers put in for a certain time period and they use this verse to prove them in that role before they're confirmed in the ministry. Is that a correct use of that word?
Steve Gregg: Well, what Paul is doing, in the verses before this he's talking about the qualifications for an elder. And then in the verses you're talking about, these are qualifications for deacons. Now when he talks about elders, he says in verse 6 the person that you choose as an elder should not be a novice, which means a new convert, lest he be puffed up etcetera etcetera. And then when it comes to the deacons, they also need to be vetted. In other words, you don't just immediately thrust somebody into a position. Paul in the same epistle tells Timothy not to lay hands suddenly or prematurely on anyone, neither to be a partaker of other men's sins. Which means that don't put somebody in charge. Laying hands on someone is you're ordaining them to a position. And since he's talking about ordaining deacons and elders, he means don't be careless about who you choose. Paul in the same epistle tells Timothy not to lay hands suddenly or prematurely on anyone, neither to be a partaker of other men's sins. Which means that don't put somebody in charge. Laying hands on someone is you're ordaining them to a position. And since he's talking about ordaining deacons and elders, he means don't be careless about who you choose. Before you put someone in charge of the finances, like deacons would be, and distribution of goods to the poor, those are the kind of things the deacons did, make sure he's trusted. That he's trustworthy, you vet him. The idea would be make sure that you don't put someone in that role without knowing them well enough to know whether they can be trusted with money and with responsibility like that. Just like you don't put a person in the role of eldership if he's not mature and invulnerable to the dangers of pride and things like that. What you're talking about sounds like your church is giving them some responsibility but not really with full confidence until they've been proven, is that what you're saying?
Mike: Yeah, they give them like a certain time period and they have pretty much full responsibility and then it's more of, I guess, for the church to see how well they convey a message more so because they don't dig into their past or things of that nature. And if the church feels okay, I'm getting fed by this person, then they get confirmed by a certain percentage of the church.
Steve Gregg: You're talking about pointing deacons and ministers?
Mike: Ministers, like pastoral ministry.
Steve Gregg: Oh okay, well that'd be the elders then in this passage rather than the deacons. Sure, yeah, I mean if you, see what I believe is that elders should be chosen whom the congregation looks up to as leaders even before they're so recognized. That is, the church is a community of people. Unfortunately, too often it's like an organization where you elect leaders, kind of they run for office or whatever, they candidate for positions or whatever. In the early church, the church was a community. People knew each other and there'd be people that everyone looked up to because they were mature, they were godly, they were wise. And if they could teach, then they would be people that would be a shoo-in. There'd be no question that they would be chosen as elders. I was in a position when I started my school in Oregon that someone said we should start appointing elders here because we not only had a school but we had a fellowship. So we decided to point elders. And I just said, okay, everyone here, write down on a private sheet of paper, write down the names of everyone in this fellowship that you would recognize as an elder. Okay, now I didn't expect that everyone would have all the same names, but I assumed that some names would be on all the lists. And I said, all the names that are on everybody's list will be elders. Why? Because everyone recognizes, it's a consensus. Now there might be some good people that some people trust but aren't on all the lists, but that would mean if you made them elders, there'd be some people in the community who don't recognize them as such. So to my mind, choosing by consensus. Now you're right, hearing them preach first if they're going to become teachers in the church, hearing them do so would be one of the things that people would need to know before they know if they want that person in that position. But there's no specific testing manner that the Bible tells us. It just wants us to make sure that we don't put people in a position that are unqualified and that are more or less strangers to us as far as how they'll do. I need to take a break. You're listening to the Narrow Path. Our website is thenarrowpath.com. But we're not done. We have another half hour. So I'll be back in 30 seconds. Don't go away. We'll be taking more calls in the second half hour. Welcome back to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we're live for another half hour taking your calls. We've got a couple lines open on our switchboard. This is a good time to get through. The lines have been full for the most part since the beginning of the program a half hour ago. Right now there's some opportunities to get through. If you want to call the program, the number is 844-484-5737. That's 844-484-5737. You might be able to get through if you don't call now, but we might not be able to get to all the calls if you don't. That is, we might not get to your call. So call as soon as you can. 844-484-5737. All right. Our next caller is Joshua calling from Phoenix, Arizona. Hi Joshua. Welcome to the Narrow Path.
Joshua: Hey Steve. Yeah, I just had a question. If by doing miracles, the prophets and Jesus were proven to be sent by God, would it not follow that if Catholic saints, when asked for their help, do miracles, they are from God? That's all my question is.
Steve Gregg: Well, miracles are not the only thing that can demonstrate somebody is from God, because the Bible says in 2 Thessalonians 2 that the man of sin himself will deceive people by signs and wonders and lying works by the power of Satan. So obviously Satan can do false miracles too. And in Deuteronomy chapter 13, the first verses, verses 1 through 3 or 4, it says if there arises among you a prophet or dreamer of dreams and he gives you a sign or a wonder, and it happens, but he says let's go after other gods, don't believe him. He says the Lord your God is testing you to see if you love the Lord with all your heart and all your soul. In other words, can you be drawn away by shiny things that distract you from God and that lead you in the wrong direction because someone was able to do something remarkable? Not if you realize that if they're trying to take you away from what God himself has said and take you a different direction, then they're not from God. And in fact, God has allowed them to show up to test you to see if you're going to go that way or stay loyal to him, just like Adam and Eve were tested by the presence of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the serpent was there claiming that if they ate it, it would go well for them. But the truth was that God had told them otherwise, so they should have known better. They were tested and they failed the test. So did Israel many times. But God warned them not to. Now that means, of course, that people who are not trustworthy, that you can't really trust them to speak for God and might even be serving the interests of the devil, may yet be found to do supernatural things because there's other supernatural forces in the universe besides God. They're inferior to God. We see that for example when God gave Moses the power to throw his rod on the ground to become a serpent. Well, the satanic magicians in Egypt, they could throw their rods on the ground and they became serpents too. But it's significant that the Bible says but Moses' serpent ate their serpents. I mean, yeah, they could make serpents too. They could do a kind of a magic trick, they could do something supernatural to impress, but their serpents were inferior to Moses'. I mean, when God does miracles, they are superior. Like in Acts chapter 19, there were some exorcists, Jewish exorcists who were not believers in Christ, who could cast out demons sometimes. But Paul did it better in the name of Jesus and so they decided to imitate his way of doing things because it was very clear he was more successful. The devil can imitate some of the gifts, but God has more power. But if God sends a messenger, and that messenger in all other respects is faithful to God in his message and so forth, but you're not sure if he's just a guy who's right or if he's actually a prophet from God, God has sometimes given the power to do signs and wonders. So it says in the last verse of the gospel of Mark, that the apostles went everywhere preaching the gospel, the Lord working with them, confirming the word with signs following. So the miracles the apostles did were God's way of confirming their words. But of course their words, they didn't depend on miracles to verify their words themselves, they depend on scripture. I mean, every sermon of theirs, they're quoting scripture, Old Testament scripture, because they're showing that their message is indeed faithful to what the Word of God says. And so I'm frankly more impressed by a preacher who can show me that his message is a true representation of what scripture teaches than one who maybe I would have doubts about that but he can do signs and wonders. The signs and wonders can confirm the word if the word already has credentials as being true because it's scriptural. But signs and wonders by themselves will not adequately do that, will not adequately verify the legitimacy of a prophet. There are false prophets who do those things too. So that'd be why I don't follow some of the Catholic apparitions and things like that of Mary that there are miraculous things that have been reported throughout history occurring in the Catholic church. And I believe it. But like I said, God is not the only one who can do miracles. And so we have to test miracle workers by something more reliable than the fact that they do miracles, namely that they speak the truth according to scripture. All right, let's talk to Ken from Winters, California. Hi Ken, welcome to the Narrow Path.
Ken: Hi Steve. I just had a question about some of Paul's writings. In one area it sounds like he's speaking of soul sleep that no one will be awakened from those who are in Christ until the resurrection. But then the verse where he says absent from the body, present with the Lord. I'm having trouble putting those two together where they make sense to me.
Steve Gregg: Well, soul sleep is never mentioned in scripture. It's true that when people are dead, they are sometimes said to be asleep. But that's a metaphor. There's a difference between a sleeping person and a dead person. And so when Jesus said our friend Lazarus is sleeping, I'm going to wake him up, he was referring metaphorically to him being dead. And when the disciples thought he just meant regular sleep and said, well if he's asleep he'll get better, Jesus said no, he's dead. And the same thing with the Jairus's daughter, he said she's not dead, she's sleeping. And Paul says those of us who sleep in Christ will be raised first before the living are raised. He means dead people. The metaphor of sleep used in the place of the word death is simply telling us something about death that we don't know from the word itself. The word death doesn't convey everything that God wants us to know about that state. He wants us to see it as in some ways analogous to sleeping. Now, those who believe in soul sleep think of sleeping as an unconscious state and therefore they assume that if death is like sleeping, it must be an unconscious state too. Well, the Bible never suggests that death is an unconscious state, nor that sleep is, and for that matter sleep is not. Most people I know when they sleep have dreams. They're not unconscious. They are definitely in another realm than this one when they're dreaming, but they're not unconscious. Their mind isn't blank. Sleep is not an unconscious state and if it was the desire of the scripture writers to say death is an unconscious state, sleep would not be a good analogy for it because sleep isn't. Now, what then is it about sleep that they'd want to compare death to? Well, in my opinion, it's that the fact that sleep is temporary. It's a temporary state. When people are sleeping, you plan for them to wake up. When people are dead, maybe you don't. There's a difference between death and sleep in the mind of the natural man. When a person dies, that's considered to be the end. When a person's asleep, it's not considered to be the end, just an interruption in their life from which they'll wake up just fine the next morning or whatever. And that's what death is being compared to sleep as. People think of death as a permanent state, but they should think of it more like sleep, a temporary state.
Ken: So what would Paul have meant when he said those that sleep in Christ?
Steve Gregg: He means those who have died. Those who have died.
Ken: Yeah, I understand that. But what is their state before the Lord while they're waiting for their bodies to be given to them in the resurrection? I guess that would have been a better way for me to put my question.
Steve Gregg: Well, I believe that Paul tells us that being absent from the body, which means having died, is essentially to be present with the Lord. He says that in 2 Corinthians 5, but he also says in Philippians chapter 1 that he was willing, he's talking about death, he's eager to depart and be with the Lord. So he considered that when he dies he's going to go be with the Lord. And that's we have nothing in the Bible to suggest otherwise. Being absent from the body, which means having died, is essentially to be present with the Lord. He says that in 2 Corinthians 5, but he also says in Philippians chapter 1 that he was willing, he's talking about death, he's eager to depart and be with the Lord. So he considered that when he dies he's going to go be with the Lord. And that's we have nothing in the Bible to suggest otherwise. So Jesus said that those who believe in him will never die. But he doesn't mean they won't physically die. So we do physically die, but we don't die. We move out of our dead bodies and move elsewhere. We relocate. Now the "we" that we're talking about here is our soul or our spirit, our non-physical self, which lives in this body, which Paul says when we're alive, we are present in the body. Now, being present somewhere means that you are somewhere and that somewhere is something other than you, it's a place that you are. I'm present in my body currently. I live here in my body. But he said when we're dead, we're absent from the body, which means we've moved out. But we're still us. It's just us, we're just somewhere else. We were present in the body now we're absent from the body. Every time Jesus or Paul used the term sleep in this way, they were talking about in the context of raising the dead. Jairus's daughter was asleep, he raised her. Lazarus was said to be asleep, he raised him. Paul said we're not all going to sleep, but the ones who do, he will raise, the dead in Christ will rise first. So in the resurrection, the bodies that appear to be asleep will wake up like a body that wakes up from sleep. And that's why sleep is used as an analogy of death. That's my understanding.
Ken: Good explanation. Thank you.
Steve Gregg: All right Ken. Thank you for your call. Have a great day. You too. All right, Kevin in River Rouge, Michigan. Hi.
Kevin: Hey Steve, how are you? I just wanted to first say thanks for that and I compliment you on that first caller yesterday regarding Mariology. And I was raised Catholic 12 years so I know the 1 John chapter 4 verses 1 through 5, test the spirits can be a litmus test. Yeah, so I have a question on the Anabaptists. I've been doing a lot of studying in the Reformation. The Anabaptists I know that they were rejected by Calvin, Zwingli, and Luther so much so that those three had wanted to nationalize or regionalize Europe regarding the state. And it's interesting how they stood firm regarding christening children as a prerequisite to going to heaven and that even Charlemagne would have the parent if they didn't christen their child in Catholicism killed. I know this from studying this. And my question is about whether or not Anabaptists were cult-like? I know that's not the word, but as far as not allowing these three major reformers to influence them to the degree of accommodating the state and allowing the state, you know, they were just saying no, listen, we're not going with that.
Steve Gregg: So you're saying were they cult-like? Is that your question? Were they cult-like?
Kevin: No, no, what I was saying is that why did they stand so firm and not have, like today we're on the verge of the New World Order and all that stuff and the one-world religion.
Steve Gregg: Okay, let's not keep going. Let me just get to your question. Why did they stand firm? Okay, yeah, they stood firm for the same reason Luther stood firm. They just had different beliefs than he did. When Luther was commanded by the Catholic Church to reneg and to burn his books, he said I can't. He said here I stand, I can do no other, so help me God. So he knew his life was at risk. He knew that the Catholic Church had burned John Huss a hundred years earlier for saying the same things Luther was saying, and that the church hadn't changed or repented of that. So he was very much in danger of being arrested and killed, but he escaped. Actually he had powerful friends in Germany who kidnapped him and hid him from the Roman Catholic Church long enough that he ceased to be under their gaze. But the point here is that reformers and reformers generally speaking are a tough-minded sort. And by tough-minded, I mean they've got backbone. Doesn't mean they're hard to get along with, but they may be, but they've got backbone. They have strong convictions. The Anabaptists are referred to as the radical Reformation and their view was that while Luther and the reformers had said we need to get back to the scriptures and follow Sola Scriptura, the Anabaptists agreed with that but they thought the reformers hadn't done so. They thought that because Luther and Calvin and Zwingli all still believed in baptizing infants, which isn't in the scripture, that these groups had retained Catholic traditions and they felt like the Bible teaches against this and teaches that people should only be baptized if they are believers, which infants are not. That somebody has to become a believer and a follower of Christ and make that decision to do that before they can be baptized legitimately. If they said, contrary to Luther and Calvin and Zwingli and contrary to the Catholics, if they said the infant baptism that the church administered when I was a baby was not scriptural or not legitimate, they're calling into question the legitimacy of the whole state that endorsed those religions. Every European state had a state religion and all of them practiced infant baptism. And so to say I don't recognize that is to call into question the legitimacy of the state religion and therefore of the state that sponsored it. And therefore it was seen as a treasonous act and thousands of Anabaptists were killed as martyrs. When I say thousands, I'm not using it as a hyperbole. Zwingli himself, just Zwingli alone, authorized the deaths of 4,000 Anabaptists for no better reason but that they followed their Bible more closely than he did and they got baptized in order to be obedient to Christ. And Zwingli killed them, Luther believed in killing them, Calvin was against them too, because the Anabaptists were radical reformers. They were radical reformers. That means they went back to the root. The word radis in Latin means the root and like radical surgery means you're going to the root of where the cancer is or something like that. Radic means going back to the root. So they were, Luther, Calvin and Zwingli were reformers. The Anabaptists were radical reformers. They went back more to the root. They believed they should go back to the Sermon on the Mount to Jesus himself, not to some practices the church had done from let's say the 4th century onward. But let's go back all the way to the root of the church, Christ and the apostles and let's just do what they said. And that, strangely, that was controversial among the reformers. The reformers were intolerant of that. And so the Anabaptists, the ones that survived the persecutions, formed groups like the Mennonites and the Hutterites and the Amish and those groups still exist. They were called the quiet of the land. They were harmless people, minding their own business, just trying to follow Jesus according to their conscience and bad Protestants and Catholics were hunting them down to kill them and they killed a lot of them. But many of them came to America where that couldn't be done and so you have the Amish of course in Pennsylvania and other places, Ohio, places like that, you've got the Hutterites and you've got Mennonites all over the country that are they're still Anabaptist. Are they cultic? Well, they're only cultic in the sense that they are they're following their convictions. Cults do that too, but so do real Christians. So I wouldn't call them cultic necessarily. I mean, many denominations have some overlap in their practices with what we'd call cults. The real problem is are they following Jesus faithfully? And the answer is yes of many of them. I believe the Anabaptist movement in fact was the most faithful movement to Christ in at the time of their founding. But of course that's been hundreds of years ago and now you know, Mennonites and Amish and Hutterites, I wouldn't say that they're the most accurate theology in the world, but they certainly are still following what they think the Sermon on the Mount teaches. And the Sermon on the Mount is the teachings of Christ and they believe we should follow the teachings of Christ and I agree with them about that. I interpret some things in the Sermon on the Mount differently than they do, but that's just, you know, Christians don't see everything alike, nor do they have to. All right. So I appreciate you asking about them. I like that movement. It's a good movement. My lectures on church history at our website thenarrowpath.com, I have 30 lectures on church history, four of them are about the Anabaptists. So that gives you some idea of how important I think they were. All right, we're going to talk next to, let's see who's been here longest. It looks like it's going to be Hank in Wake Forest, North Carolina. Hi Hank, welcome to the Narrow Path.
Hank: Hi Steve. Thank you very much for taking my call. I've got a question for you relating to a caller that called in yesterday about A cappella singing and you did an excellent job of responding to him. I was told when I was a member of the Churches of Christ that the reason they do not use instrumental music is that you do not add and you do not subtract from the Word of God. And I now of course know that that is not true. However, one has preferences. My preference is not to listen to rock music, gospel rock or whatever they call it, which can be very loud and irritating and sometimes is badly performed as well, the same as badly sung A cappella music. But my question is what about one's preference for in worship? What kind of approach can be... what can my approach be to that? My preference is not to listen to rock music in a church service.
Steve Gregg: Right. Well, that's also my preference and it's not that I don't like rock music, I just don't find it to be worshipful. I don't mind listening to Christian rock music or frankly, I'm not opposed to listening to some oldies, 60s and 70s rock. I don't spend much time doing it, but when I hear it I kind of like it. But I don't find it worshipful and therefore I don't care for a church that has a rock band leading worship. I mean, that's my taste. I'm not sure how many people in the congregation do find it worshipful. I will say that when I'm in churches that are playing this loud music and I can't hear my own voice because the band is so loud, I just stop singing because I don't first of all I don't know the songs they're using and secondly I can't hear myself anyway so what's the point? And I look around and literally two out of three, if not more, of the people in the congregation are also not singing. So I have to say I'm not alone in not finding it conducive to worship apparently. A lot of people find it not conducive to worship because they endure it for whatever, 15-20 minutes before they're waiting for the sermon or something. When they say that if you use instruments, you're adding to the word of God, how so? The Bible actually tells us to sing the Psalms. Three times the New Testament tells us to, and the Old Testament of course has 150 Psalms, some of them actually command us or exhort us to use musical instruments, loud musical instruments. So I mean there is such a thing as biblical basis for using instruments. So I've never understood how people could say well if you use instruments you're adding to the Word of God. No, I'm actually just paying attention to the Word of God and trying to follow it. Anyway, thank you brother. Veronica from Vancouver, BC, we don't have much time. Oh, I'm sorry. I thought we had more than we do. We don't have enough to even take your call. Please call tomorrow. I'd like to talk to you. We when the music starts playing, I have less than a minute to wind it up. And I thought we had another minute before the music would start. My mistake and I apologize. It seems very rude of me to put you on and then hang up. But yeah, I make mistakes. You're listening to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we're live Monday through Friday for an hour a day taking your calls, like we did today. We've been doing for 29 years. Pretty soon I'm going to have to start saying 30 years. It's been pretty close to that. We are listener-supported. If you'd like to help us pay the radio bills, you can write to us at The Narrow Path, P.O. Box 1730, Temecula, California, 92593. Or go to our website thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for joining us.