Troubled if Pre-Trib Rapture Incorrect? - Steve Gregg

Added: 2026-05-20

[00:00:12]Holly in Pine Grove, California. Welcome to the Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

[00:00:18]>> Hi, Steve. So, uh, my husband and I were watching a recent YouTube video of you debating with another gentleman. I can't remember his name. And then you had a moderator on the pre-trib.

[00:00:30]>> Yes. That was probably a recent recent debate with Mondo Gonzalez perhaps.

[00:00:34]>> Yes. Yes. With Mondo. Yes. And um I've been listening to you for a few months now. This is my second call and predominantly have gone to Calvary or non-denominational churches my entire walk with the Lord. Um I um the the issue and I'm not quite sure how to manage it other than we all have our own free will is my husband was extremely bothered by your points and your position because he's like so all of these Christians have been believing this way and now it might be something else and they're going to be very troubled. And I go well why would they be troubled? I said it's not a salvational issue, >> right?

[00:01:17]>> And it's it's just a way of interpretating the word of God and each person can look at the same passage and interpretate it differently. Um, but he was really bothered with it and it it it um it almost uh it didn't cause a rift between us, but I'm very I'm very open and um he was just very concerned. Um I just I'm I guess I'm looking for I don't I I really don't even know how to pose that into a question. Um >> Okay. Well, let me let me address that if I could. Um, first of all, I I don't want to I don't want to say anything negative about your husband's expertise. I I would just say it seems like uh his knowledge of church history and theological history may be like like most people's, you know, fairly provincial. In other words, you get saved, you hear your teachers teach you a certain thing. Uh you're surrounded by thousands of people who say the same thing. You hear the same thing on the radio. You read a bunch of popular books on the same thing and they're all saying the same thing. You think this must be what Christians have always believed.

[00:02:29]This must be mainstream Christianity because it certainly is in my experience. Everyone around me believes it. uh and and and and and therefore uh especially for someone who doesn't want to think very hard and make up their own mind or or criticize something and see if it's true like Bereans are supposed to do um you know it's it's unnerving to think wait a minute you know could all these people be wrong in fact I've had people actually say I can't believe they're wrong because how could that many people be wrong well a whole lot of people have been wrong historically you know if your husband may be aware of something called the Reformation. For a thousand years before the Reformation, Roman Catholic theology was mainstream.

[00:03:11]And if you've been in Europe, uh in those during that thousand-y year period, the only theology you would have ever heard would be Roman Catholic. U along comes Luther and he's saying, "Wait a minute, that that's not taught in the Bible." And he teaches, you know, he he basically undermines many of the Catholic doctrines. And I'm sure that it must have been traumatic for many people at that time who'd only known Catholicism and all their priests were Catholic and all the theologians they'd ever read were Catholic and all their friends were Catholic to suddenly be saying, "Well, no, you need to look at the Bible again because actually uh the Catholic traditions often are not uh in line with what the Bible teaches." Now, I don't agree with Luther about everything, but I do agree with him that we need to correct our theology as soon as we find out that uh no matter how many people have believed or how popular it's been in certain circles, uh it's if it doesn't square with scripture, well, we need to find out what does. That's always been my mindset even when I was a dispensations myself in Calvary Chapel movement and even as a teacher in that movement. But um you know I just felt like you know when I began to question the preerttrib rapture and that was a very long time ago 50 years or more ago.

[00:04:26]Um then I you know it wasn't it wasn't too unnerving to me. What was unnerving to me is that I had taught it so confidently and defended it so much. But but if I began to see fault lines in it, I mean, it made me a little nervous, but but I I thought, well, if there's problems with what I teach, I'd better find them out before I teach it longer, you know, before I spend more years teaching wrong. You know, teachers will have the stricter judgment, the Bible says. And I realize that if I if I'm teaching something wrong and God has allowed me to begin to suspect that from by from my study of the Bible that it is wrong that what I've been teaching, then I become a dishonest teacher. I'm suppressing the truth because I don't want to change. I don't want to think about it. I don't want to be unpopular.

[00:05:16]And that's that's when I become a teacher who really deserves a stricter judgment. You know, if I'm honestly unaware of other views and I've read the Bible and been taught the Bible, I see it a certain way and I've never heard of anything else and I I my mind just doesn't know how to think about it differently and I teach it faithfully, I don't think God's going to hold that against me, even as a teacher. But but if I begin to see fault lines and cracks in the foundations of what I've been teaching and I just say, "Oh, I can't go there. I can't let myself go there. I mean, I you know, I've been I've been too committed to this viewpoint too long. I can't look at it." Then I'm saying I don't care about the truth so much. I like the status quo because it's treating me pretty well. You know, I've got a lot of popularity in this teaching and uh you know, I just don't really think the truth is worth embracing if it's going to cause so much of a problem with me and other people.

[00:06:12]Yeah. Well, I mean, if Luther had thought that way, of course, uh you know, there we we'd all still be Catholics today. But but the thing is even among the Protestant movement there's disagreement among them and the dispensational Protestants of course dispensationalism is strictly strictly within the Protestant movement. Uh the dispensational view is a uh what should we say it's it's a provincial view. It has it has come up late in history. It has never commanded the loyalty of most Christians.

[00:06:47]It has at this point in time commanded the loyalty of probably the most vocal Christians, the loudest Christians, the ones who write the most books and have the most broadcasts. But but but it is not the case that the majority of Christians living today are necessarily dispensational and nor certainly throughout history. So when I began to realize that I think okay well maybe I shouldn't be so afraid or or offended at someone questioning it. Maybe maybe I happened to have been converted into a minority view which isn't the right one.

[00:07:19]I mean imagine if you had been uh the first influence you had from the Bible was the Jehovah's Witness coming to your door and they taught the Bible and they they they could quote a lot of Bible verses. They sounded persuasive. You start going to the Kingdom Hall and after a few years, maybe several years, the only people you know who who believe in Jesus are the Jehovah's Witnesses because that's who you're with. You're surrounded by them. uh and you're and you're being indoctrinated by them. And if someone begins to say, "No, those doctrines are wrong, you know, I can see that they JW would begin to feel threatened by that because they they've embied it so thoroughly." Now, it's it's hard for any of us to think that the church we're in would be in any way analogous to Mormons or Jehovah Witnesses or any other group that dictates a narrow interpretation of things which has not been held by the church through most of history. But some teacher came up with it as a newly discovered truth.

[00:08:13]The funny thing here, an irony I guess is that John Nelson Darby came up with dispensationalism around 1830, which is the same time that Joseph Smith started Mormonism. And both of them felt they were rediscovering true apostolic teachings which had been lost since the time of the death of the apostles. They knew they weren't teaching historic Christianity. They knew that no one had taught it since the time of the apostles to their own time.

[00:08:39]But they believed nonetheless that they were rediscovering it. And everyone at their time in the church knew that. They knew that Joseph Smith was interesting uh in introducing a novel idea of Mormonism. And everyone knew that Darby was doing that too. In fact, most uh evangelicals of Darby's time thought his view was liberal. Nowadays, it's the essence the essence of fundamentalism is Darbyism.

[00:09:08]uh in the perception but you know in 1830 when Darby came up with it the mainstream Christianity thought this is liberalism this is not following the Bible and uh and yet because it grew and became popular again if you if you were first converted into a Mormon church or Jehovah's Witness church dispensational church I mean what the point is whatever you were converted into is going to seem right it says in the book of proverbs he that is first in his own cause seems right until his neighbor comes and examines him. We have to realize that there's no doctrine that we we shouldn't reexamine from scripture. We are 2,000 years removed from the time of Christ and the apostles. And a great number of human ideas and traditions have become available. And you know, the ones that seem right to us are usually the first ones we heard when we became Christians.

[00:10:04]But it's a helpful thing if a neighbor comes and cross-examines.

[00:10:08]At least for me, it is. I'd be very happy. I Now, to tell you the truth, I I cross-examined myself and studied my own way out of dispensationalism before I even knew that it was a, you know, a relatively modern theory. Uh, I just I just rejected on biblical grounds before I knew very much about its history. But uh you know if if a person reads a book or something that that introduces them to a new idea, they don't have to believe the new idea, but they certainly should say with if there's any scripture being quoted here that doesn't look like it's being twisted, then maybe I should consider it as a legitimate challenge to what I've been thinking. And uh you know, I've never been afraid to challenge my thinking. Uh which is why I've changed my view on many things. But at least now I've come to a place which dispensations I don't think can possibly be at which is I don't have to worry about anyone challenge me about any point of scripture because I've what I have come to has gone through all those challenges. I was a dispensationalist. I was you know in some of these camps that I now critique and I know the case for them. I defended them and the reason I don't believe now is because I studied it out and and what I arrived at I I didn't just pick up somebody else's viewpoint somewhere. I piece by piece I developed my own alternative understanding of it which happened fortunately fall into the majority viewpoint of Christianity over the history. I didn't know that at the time, but uh but in doing so, I realized that, you know, that that's going to cause some waves. And I don't like to cause waves. I'm not a controversialist. And it's almost ironic that this is controversial because Darbyism, dispensationalist, when it first appeared was the controversial thing. It's the thing that introduced new ideas to Christianity that hadn't been there for, 1800 years. and uh you know, but now it's it's spread and so has Mormonism, so has Jehovah Witnessism. And I'm not saying that dispensationalism is exactly on the same plane with those, but what it's like is if that's the view that you first heard and you've spent your whole spiritual life learning in that environment by people who reinforce it. Well, there's a very good chance there's something out there that you haven't heard that maybe you should take a look at because much as we may be devoted to our teachers and we do come to love our teachers and our pastors, uh, you know, I can love my pastor. Chuck Smith was my pastor. I got thoroughly indoctrinated with dispensationalism by Chuck Smith and I love him. I've I've given up I've given up dispensationalism. It took a grad a lot of study and gradual, but I still I still love Chuck Smith. You know, you don't have to stop loving your pastor just because you say, "Okay, I think he's I think he's seen this wrong." U and you don't have to stop loving me if you think I'm seeing things wrong. You should love all the brethren. Love everybody. Uh there is a fear that some people have of change. Uh and and we need to overcome that fear. Other people become excited about change, maybe too excited. You know, right now we're living in a time, see, I gave up dispensationalism about 50 something years ago. But there's people giving up right now who are so excited about they're swinging way over into anti-semitism and anti-sionism and anti, you know, stuff because that's in on on podcasts and stuff now. And I think, okay, come on. You're getting a little too enthusiastic about this. The the truth is dispensationalism gave Israel an exalted position that the Bible in the New Testament does not support. But once you stop, you know, thinking like a dispensation, it doesn't mean you have to hate it or hate the Jews or be against the Jews.

[00:14:07]I'm not I'm not against Israel or the Jews. But some people just get excited by a new way to think about things. Uh I'm just a little more sober than that.

[00:14:16]I just want to believe what the Bible says. I don't want to go wild with anything uh except my loyalty to Jesus.

[00:14:25]Anyway, I I hope your husband can think clearly, but I mean, you don't have to he doesn't have to change his views. If it makes him uncomfortable to to hear my arguments, uh then he doesn't have to listen to them. If he does listen to them rather than reject them, he might want to consider them and look at the Bible and see if I'm right or not. But I don't care. I mean, it doesn't I'm not trying to convince anybody. Listen, I need to take a break. I appreciate your calls. Uh, we have another half hour coming, so don't act like we're gone.

[00:14:52]We're not gone. Uh, we have to take a break. Uh, this is the Narrow Path Radio broadcast. My name is Steve Greg and our website is the narrowath.com.

[00:15:03]Going to take about a 30 second break and, uh, I'll be right back.

[00:15:11]Everyone is welcome to call the narrow path and discuss areas of disagreement with the host, but if you do so, please state your disagreements succinctly at the beginning of your call and be prepared to present your scriptural arguments when asked by the host. Don't be disappointed if you don't have the last word or if your call is cut shorter than you prefer. Our desire is to get as many callers on the air during the short program. So please be considerate to others.

[00:16:00]Welcome back to the Narrow Path Radio broadcast. My name is Steve Greg and we're live for another half hour. Our lines are full, so I won't give up the phone number at the moment, but uh we are on Monday through Friday for an hour and with open phone lines, you can call in with questions about the Bible or to disagree. Our last caller, we're going to we're going to move along and take some more callers, but the last caller I was addressing when we came to the break, uh her husband was made uncomfortable by hearing challenges to the theological system, which she and he had heard all their Christian lives, which is dispensationalism.

[00:16:36]And uh so we're talking about that, but I just want to say if if she's still listening, um there are a lot of um a lot of lectures at my website that deal with that. And boy, we do use the scriptures. We go deep into the scriptures. But uh there's also a a podcast or a YouTube that you might find interesting where I address some points made by Jack Hibbs. Jack Hibbs is a Calvary Chapel pastor who posts a lot online and on the radio. And um if you if you look up on YouTube, Steve Greg Jack Hibs, put those two names together, you'll see that um I give a point by-point response to a video that he posted that is on these subjects. And uh I think my response to the subject, my explanation of things might might be something your husband would benefit from hearing. So if you if you just look up on YouTube Steve Greg and Jack Hibbs, you'll find that video.

[00:17:37]You're listening to The Narrow Path. Our website's the narrow path.com.

[00:17:41]Thanks for joining us.