Bible Questions with Michael Pearl
Episode 069: What does the word "Strive" mean?

Episode Transcription:

Michael Pearl:  Alright, here I am, Mike Pearl, still in the Studio Beat—is that we decided it was? What it is—actually, it's part of our book storage shop out here. It's kind of over in one corner and we fixed this up to do our filming to answer your Bible questions. So, Jared has the questions and we're going to try to come up with some answers. So, what have you got, Jared?

Gretna:  Hi! My name is Gretna. I'm calling from California, and, Mr. Pearl, I would like to ask you what the word "strive" means in Luke 13:24. What does that verse mean, "Strive to enter in at the strait gate"? It kind of sounds like I have to work towards entering heaven and I'm really confused about that. Thank you! Bye bye.

Mike:  Alright. If we look at the context there, he talks about—in Luke, in verse 18—he said then, "…what is the kingdom of God like? and whereunto shall I resemble it? It is like a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and cast into his garden; and it grew, and waxed a great tree; and the fowls of the air lodged in the branches of it. And again he said, Whereunto shall I liken the kingdom of God? It is like [unto] leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened. And he went through the cities and villages, teaching, and journeying toward Jerusalem” and so forth. And “Then said one unto him, Lord, are there few that be saved? And he said unto them…” Now, why did they ask that question? Because he told them the Kingdom of Heaven is like unto leaven, which is corrupting…leaven is a rotting process that—you put it in bread, you put it in yogurt and it deteriorates it, and causes it to puff up, blow up, and that's why the bread rises—and, so all the way through the Bible, symbolically, leaven is used for corruption—never for anything good.

So he said the Kingdom of Heaven will be like that. In other words, the church, the family of God in the earth, will start off as a pure lump of wheat. But then—another parable he uses—a woman comes and hides a little leaven in the bread, to keep it hidden, secret. But it starts rising; the bread starts rising. It gets bigger and bigger and it's no longer a secret.

The leaven pretty soon balls the bread right out of its pan, and spills over on the side. He said the church is going to be like that. It's going to be like a little corruption is going to blow the whole thing apart. So, the disciples said, "Wait a minute. Here you come preaching the Kingdom of God. Now you tell us that it's going to get corrupted? The whole thing is going to corrupt? You're telling me that the church is going to get worse and worse? Wow, who then can be saved? How can we do that?"

They said unto him, "Lord? Are there few that be saved? Sounds like you're saying not many will be saved..." He said, "Strive to enter in at the strait gate: for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be able. When once the master of the house is risen up, and hath shut to the door, and ye begin to stand without, and to knock at the door, saying, Lord, Lord, open unto us; and he shall answer and say unto you, I know you not whence ye are:”

“Then shall ye begin to say, We have eaten and drunk” in thy house and so forth. And he said, “I know you not…There shall be weeping, [wailing] and gnashing of teeth, when ye shall see Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets, in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrust out. And they shall come from the east and…the west…and sit down in the kingdom of God…behold, there are last which shall be first, and there are first which shall be last.”

He's talking about the aspect of the Kingdom of God that occurs during the millennial reign of Christ upon the earth. He's talking to Jews here, and he said, "You'll see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob enter into this Kingdom. They're from the past; they've been dead a long time. They've been dead 1600 to 2000 years.” He said, "You'll see them come and enter into this future Kingdom, but you'll be cast out because you didn't enter in it the strait gate: the narrow gate. They tried the broader approach to God, and they missed God. So He said, "You need to come [by way of] the narrow approach."

You know, when I was in college, for instance—I'd been a Christian several years—but they had Humanities (this was a secular college where half the people ran around in their underwear half the time). It was an Academy. (I wasn’t there very long, by the way.) I didn't know what I was getting into; it was a place of great immorality. So, they taught all sorts of things this little country boy had never heard of. And they had all kind of experiences—all pot‑head, doped up and acid and dropping acid and what-all. And it didn't take me very long to find that I was in the wrong place. I quit and went to Bible college. But, during my brief sojourn there, I was challenged with lots of ideas that I’d never heard before—never in any detail, that is—from evolution to drugs to immorality to atheism, agnosticism. One of my professors was a Unitarian preacher. He, too, was a great sinner.

But, during that time, I had to wrestle with these ideas. I remember one time I was swimming in a lake in the summertime; a big storm came up. Clouds got dark. I was standing in the water about waist-deep and I imagined what it would be like if I were a product of evolution; if those little fish bumping against my legs were my great, great granddaddies, and the turtle swimming over there was what I was; and, just as they die and wash up on the shore, their bodies rot—a turtle gets caught on a hook and somebody cuts its head off and throws it on the bank and it swells up and rot—that my life had no more meaning than that. And I just imagined myself existing in primeval ooze, evolving into this conglomerate of biological tissue that thought it had some worth. It thought love was love, and truth was truth, and meaning was meaning. How foolish I was. So I cast myself into that role for just a little while. The darkness was so great, so deep, so unfathomable.

I quickly fled back to what I knew was the truth: that the Lord Jesus Christ is God; that I was created and I have meaning; that love is indeed love, truth is indeed truth and eternity is real. And I'm real. All the good and holy things I've experienced are real.

So I had to strive in my thinking for the narrow gate. Now, I was already saved. But I had to strive in my intellect—in my emotions— to resolve what was truth and what was error.

Christians need to strive. You need to wrestle with—if you're a Mormon, you need to strive to find out if what you're taught is the truth. If you're a United Pentecostal Holiness, you need to get your Bible and your concordance and you need to start striving and searching out to find if you're in the way of truth or not, if you're in the narrow way. Strive to enter in at the narrow gate. The narrow gate is the place you exercise faith. But, you know, a lot of times, there’s a striving between here and faith. A lot of times there's a struggle. If you're an atheist, you need to strive. You need to examine, you need to do some research.

Josh McDowell told how he was in college being taught atheism. He went to the library and decided to check it out. So he looked up the documents on history, and science, and he examined it.

Wernher von Braun, head of the Space Program—responsible for putting our first rockets up there—was a Bible‑believing Christian who strived to discover the truth. This rocket scientist believed that the Bible was the Word of God.

So, he strived, and Josh McDowell strived, and they came to a knowledge and understanding of the truth.

This is not about striving to be a good person so you can go to heaven; this is about striving to go through the right gate. And the right gate is the Lord Jesus Christ, by faith. It says in Acts that there's none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved.

So, if you're Roman Catholic, and you're taking that little wafer, and you think you're receiving the grace of God, you need to strive to enter in at the narrow gate—not the Roman gate, but the narrow gate. If you're Church of Christ, and they teach you that the water washed away your sins, you need to strive. If you're a Baptist, and they taught you that when you were six years old  you went down the aisle and made profession of faith, and now you're saved, you need to strive and find out if, in fact, you are, or not. So, that's the proper word. It means what it exactly says and the context is great and I love it. Thanks for the question.

Announcer:  If you would like to ask a Bible question, email us at [email protected] or call at 931‑805‑4820.