The ‘He Gets Us' Super Bowl Ad

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So, what should we make of the He Gets Us ad in the Super Bowl and the He Gets Us campaign overall? It's time for The Line of Fire with your host, biblical scholar and cultural commentator, Dr. Michael Brown. Your voice for moral sanity and spiritual clarity. Call 866-34-TRUTH to get on the line of fire. And now, here's your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Yes, today friends, you get a dose of moral sanity and spiritual clarity with God's grace and help.

Michael Brown, welcome to the broadcast. Every single day around the air, we have the same goal. We want to equip you. We want to empower you in the Lord. We want to help you engage on the front lines. As every single one of us today, we stand squarely in the line of fire. But we're together. We're part of a family. We're part of the same spiritual army that overcomes evil with good and overcomes hatred with love and overcomes lies with truth and overcomes the power of the flesh with the power of the Holy Spirit. That's the revolution that we're in. That's the battle that we fight under the Lordship of Jesus. Not hating people, not attacking people, but serving the Lord and declaring His truth boldly and clearly. That's what we're here to do and we want to do our best to sort through some issues, not to overreact, not to go from one extreme to another, but to sort through some issues before the Lord.

You can weigh in. You can give your own viewpoint on today's subject, namely the He Gets Us ad campaign, 866-34-TRUTH, 866-348-7884. Now, I wrote an article about it already. It's on our website, TheLineOfFire.org, and it's basically about when the He Gets Us campaign presents a Jesus who is too much like us and not like the Jesus of Scripture.

I'm going to share a couple of other articles with you and give my perspective, but I've commented in general, now stepping back, now it's a couple plus weeks later, that we're just going to have a conversation about this. If you're not familiar with the He Gets Us ad campaign, some very wealthy Christians felt it was important to help the world think differently about Jesus. How many of you remember the old song, Jesus Is Just Alright With Me? And it's been sung by different groups.

I mean, gospel groups and then secular groups, the Doobie Brothers, maybe that was the most famous version of it. But for many hippies, radicals in the late 60s, early 70s, of which I was one, for many back then, Jesus was cool. Organized religion was bad. Christianity was bad. That was part of the establishment.

That was part of the authority structure. That was part of the old man's tradition, our parents' religion. We were much more enlightened. But Jesus was cool. Jesus himself was cool. Now, you say, was that the Jesus of the Bible?

Well, in many cases, it was not. In many cases, it was Jesus the hippie, Jesus the socialist radical, Jesus the Marxist, you know, Jesus and Che Guevara. You had these kind of images, and obviously it was a destroyer to Jesus. But for many others, what they knew about Jesus was cool, that he himself was rejected by the establishment, that he himself was persecuted for being an outsider, that he hung with the marginalized and the oppressed and the outcast, and that he turned a lot of traditional religion upside down, and that he gave himself for us in sacrificial love.

That was very appealing. And many were drawn to that Jesus and then got radically born again. That's why we had the Jesus People movement, the Jesus revolution in the late 60s into the early to mid 70s, maybe around 67 to the mid 70s at its highest.

And this is something God did. He drew people to that Jesus. So, there are many today in America especially who think of Jesus in political terms.

Jesus is the God of the Republican Party. Jesus and Donald Trump. Jesus and gun control. Jesus and secure borders. Jesus and being anti-abortion. Jesus and being anti-gay. Now, for those who don't know my position, I have voted Republican. I voted for Donald Trump.

I believe we should secure our borders. I am unapologetically pro-life, and I am unapologetically pro-marriage and family as God ordained it. However, Jesus is much bigger than that, and Jesus cannot be identified with a political party. God forbid you identify Jesus with a political candidate like Donald Trump with all of his baggage, and God forbid you reduce Jesus to just being pro-life and that's it and that's the end of it. That's just one aspect of the great heart of God for hurting sick, dying humanity. In the same way, you might come from another faith tradition and Jesus is associated with the Democrat Party, and Jesus is associated with Barack Obama, and Jesus is associated with social justice, and Jesus is associated with care for the poor. So, on that score, I'm all for biblical justice. I'm all for care for the poor and reevaluating where our policies are wrong or biased or where there's discrimination.

At the same time, to connect Jesus to a political leader like Barack Obama or Donald Trump, to connect Jesus to a political party, Democrat or Republican, is to reduce him, defile him, diminish him, misrepresent him, misrepresent him, and to reduce him to a particular social or political cause is to miss the fullness of his heart. So, I get it. I get the idea of reintroducing Jesus to the society. I love it.

I love the concept. And, go ahead, break the mold. Go ahead, think outside of the box. Go ahead, challenge some of our religious and traditional sensibilities where they need to be.

Maybe we just got locked in on our own way of thinking, our own American way of thinking, our own political party way of thinking, our own conservative versus liberal way of thinking, our own church denominational way of thinking. Go ahead and rock our boat. I welcome all of that. The question is, does the Ed campaign do it? I'm not questioning the creativity. I'm not questioning the initiative behind it. Now, many have said these are sold out companies. They've all gone woke and their whole purpose is like partnering with the devil in the world.

I don't see it like that. I see it as sincere but misguided. Now, I don't know the people involved. I don't know the people funding this. I haven't sat, so I don't know who they are, number one. Number two, I haven't sat and spoken with them.

How can I know their ultimate motivation other than what I've heard and been told? I look at it as sincere but misguided. That's how I look at it.

Hopefully, we'll do better in the future. You say, well, why do you say misguided? I've watched a few. I don't see a lot of the ads. I don't know how many they produce.

I don't know if it's 10 or 20 or five. Maybe I've seen three of them so far, maybe four. Maybe you're like a drug dealer on the street or you're some outcast and being thrown in jail. Hey, well, Jesus was called the law breaker too.

I'm not saying this is one of the ads. I'm just painting a hypothetical picture. Well, Jesus, he was persecuted as a law breaker and so on and he understands what it is.

Maybe you're being falsely accused. You could get the idea in some of what I've seen. Again, what I just gave was an accurate representation but you could get the idea in some of what I've seen is if you're in sin, if you're in rebellion, hey, yeah, Jesus, he gets us because he was accused of being in rebellion but he wasn't in rebellion.

In other words, it could be a justification for our position. It could be not just that he gets us but that he's okay with us. He gets us to the point that he dies for our sins. People say, well, Jesus understand my sin. Yes, and he said, go and sin no more. I forgive you. Go and sin no more. He understood our sins deeply enough to die for our sins.

Yes, yes. So, we can never forget that. He gets us which is why he died for us. He gets us which is why he called us to repentance. Now, one pastoral colleague, if you're listening now, you know exactly who you are, shot me a note.

He's looked to me as a mentor, honors me deeply. And so, Dr. Brown, I hope you understand fully the purpose of this ad campaign. It's just to get a lost sinner to have a first entry point to be open to hear more about Jesus. That's all it is. It's not there to present the whole gospel. It's not there to convict him of sin. It's just there for the first entry point level to present a little different image of Jesus than they're used to to get them wondering, okay, well, maybe he doesn't understand me. Maybe he's a sympathetic after all. You know, the Bible often speaks of him being moved by compassion or how we have a great high priest who's sympathetic to our weaknesses. It paints those pictures in different passages. So, that's all it's trying to do is say, hey, he gets you. Jesus gets you.

That's all it's trying to do. My contention is that in presenting it, it can give you the impression that that's all you need to know is that he understands you. So, yeah, it's not your fault you're an alcoholic.

It's not your fault that you left your spouse. Even if it is, he gets it. He understands. Yeah, of course it's on the streets doing this, that, but he gets it because he was on the streets himself. There could be this false impression. And then, specifically the Super Bowl ad, which we'll get into more, which is these very poignant images, these still pictures of people washing the feet of others. There is one, some question was lesbian, a gay, so you're washing the feet of a gay person. The other was washing the feet of a woman in front of a family planning clinic, in other words, an abortion center. And you're washing that person's feet. So, my big questions are, aside from do people get what that means, washing someone's feet? That's another subject, right?

Washing someone's feet and what's that all about? Let's just say you got it. Let's just say that was understood.

Okay. What does it say when this is now who Jesus is? Because he washed his disciples' feet, right? He washed feet, he didn't spread hate. That's the message at the end. So, he is, before the woman goes in to have an abortion, he's washing her feet. Hey, I love you.

I'm here to serve you. Go have that abortion. What picture does that present? What picture does it present about all those who for decades who've been selflessly giving themselves some pro-life work in front of that same abortion clinic, sharing the gospel, loving on people, offering to help with adoption, saying there's a better way? If there's a gay picture involved in that, what does that say as far as Jesus' heart there?

Those of us who say marriage is the union of a man and a woman, does that mean that Jesus is against us? That there's an activist who wants to deeply impact our children and school system, and we as parents get up in the school board and say this is wrong? You're indoctrinating our children?

Would Jesus wash the feet of a boy who identifies as a girl before he walks into the girl's bathroom? So, it presents questions which to me then become problematic and do more harm than good, which is why I have concerns. I'm not condemning the whole thing. I'm saying they need to do better, and I hope and pray they'll do better. I'm going to read some strong critiques on the other side of the book. What's your take?

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1-800-771-5584 or online at TriVita.com. This is how we rise up. It's the Line of Fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Get on the Line of Fire by calling 866-344-TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown.

Welcome, welcome to the Line of Fire broadcast 866-348-7884. Did you see the Super Bowl ad He Gets Us? Did you see any other ads of He Gets Us, the campaign? Do you think positively of them? Do you think they've been impacting? Maybe you're someone that doesn't consider yourself a Christian, you've watched, you happen to tune into this broadcast, you want to weigh in with your thoughts.

866-344-TRUTH. Okay. I was about to write an article after it, and my article title was going to be He Gets Us, Doesn't Get Him. That was given by my article title. And then before I wrote, I spotted an article by Ryan Baumburger with that actual title. Ryan was adopted into a home, I believe, multiracial home of 15 kids, so he's strongly in the pro-life movement, pro-adoption movement. So let me read what Ryan Baumburger said. I want to share a few different perspectives with you. He said, he introduces things about Super Bowl, over 100 million people watching, I think over 123 million watched it.

He says, a creative professional who loves creating stuff that's fearless, factual, and freeing. I enjoy some of the annual overly-priced creativity. Well, it came time for commercial break. INXs never tear us apart, played as highly stylized photos made to look like illustrations, showed various scenes of people washing other people's feet. The visuals were beautiful. Each image showed contention, sorrow, brokenness, and humility over a pensive piano ballad.

It seemed to cover every social issue under the sun, and I was moved. Then, a jarring thing happened. The piece was interrupted by distorted musical hits and the words, Jesus never taught hate, he washed feet. Wait, what?

As the He Gets Us website came up, I sighed. That was an $18 million rebrand of Christianity gone woke. He said, I hate to see ads claiming hate.

It's lazy. Jesus never taught hate. Yes and no. Certainly he called us to love one another as I have loved you, in John 1334. His word however also clearly tells us to hate what is evil, clean to what is good. Notice the Bible says what, not who. Loving every human being is not the same as loving every human doing. This ad campaign seems to get these things confused.

You can still love someone and passionately disagree with the something they're doing. As a marketer, he says, I have to question, who is the ad for? If it was for those who are not Christians, who know little of the word of God, what message does it send to them? What does feet washing even mean? That was the response I saw on some social media posts. Jesus' humble act as he washed his disciples feet was not a prescription for encounters with strangers, contrary to the ads assertion. It was the result of his closest friends fighting over who was the greatest among them. So the savior literally stooped low to symbolically show humility and servanthood by washing their nasty feet. It was their pride that led him to the shocking display but those who don't know Luke 22 wouldn't understand the significance of a king who came to humble himself to serve and to save. If the ad was for Christians, why did it need to be inflammatory? Couldn't it just as easily have said Jesus taught us to love? Nope, because he says there is a political bent to this initiative, to pretend that foundational moral issues are simply talking points in needless cultural wars. Jesus was fed up with politics, they claim on their site. No, he was fed up with religious folk distorting God's word, his love and his desire for us to pursue justice and righteousness. The image of the young woman in the ad having her feet washed by a middle-aged woman outside of an abortion business, aka family planning clinic, could have instead been a young pro-abortion activist having her feet washed outside of a pregnancy care clinic by a pregnant staff member.

That would have been a wonderful alternative. I've noticed in meetings with some liberal evangelicals they seem to omit or ignore the expansive care and compassion that happens in our nation's 3,000 pregnancy centers and 450 maternity homes. Hate is not what drives side and what counts as to our nation's abortion bills, it's an intense love, often born out of their own loss and regret. It's a false assertion to say disagreement inherently means hate. It diminishes having moral clarity on issues that matter. Truth and love are inextricably tied.

Put simply, love doesn't lie. Under the page, did Jesus really struggle like I do? The campaign writes, the idea that Jesus is just like me, as opposed to the message that I need to change to become more like him is extraordinary to me. It completely transforms my thought process around Jesus. It allows me to separate the idea of Jesus from the idea of religion. I'm immediately skeptical of any religious message, but this message doesn't come with a request or any action item.

Baumburger says, what? That's the exact opposite of scripture. We are to be like Christ, not on our own strength of course. 1 Peter 2 21 says, for God called you to do good, even if it means suffering, just as Christ suffered for you, he is your example and you must follow in his steps. He never leaves us unchanged. Jesus isn't an idea. He's the ideal. What's the point of a hundred million plus Jesus campaign, a hundred million dollar plus Jesus campaign if there's not a route to salvation.

It shouldn't be website visits or video views. Ultimately it's the eternal followers of the Christ that died for our sins. If the he gets us has an agenda page, they clearly state the more ideologically defensive we become, the more we are willing to sacrifice things like kindness, patience, and respect and dignity of others for the sake of victory. The righteous ends justify the dehumanizing means and it's tearing us apart. Well, the more ideologically ambiguous we become, the more we are willing to sacrifice truth and love for the sake of meaningless relevance. Jesus causes division. Luke 12 51 he talks about this declaring, do you think I've come to bring peace on the earth? No, I've come to divide people against each other.

From now on families will be split apart, three in favor of me and two against or two in favor and three against. He loves us deeply, but he wasn't really the world's most radical love activists as the he gets us campaign strangely proclaims online. He is the savior.

In fact, never mentioned in their agenda. He's more than a story through our confession and repentance. He becomes the creator of our transformed stories.

And any effort to share Christ with the world has to get this simple truth. He changes us. Yeah, well, well said.

I agree with that article deeply. And I love the little catch phrases that Ryan has in that or catchy phrases I should say that are good takeaways. And to sum it up again, it's not just he gets us, but he changes us. And something I've said for many years, we don't win the world by becoming like the world. We win the world by becoming like Jesus. And you say, well, Jesus understands us.

Yes, say it again. He understands us and he offers us a way out. He understands us and he dies for our sins. He understands us and he calls us to repent. He understands us and he warns us of the consequences of disobedience and tells us if we don't repent, we will all perish because he understands us so well. He comes into this world and sheds his blood so we could have a possibility, a chance, a way to know God in ourselves. We would never have it through him. He can purchase our eternal salvation infallibly forever, and we can belong to him and no one can snatch us out of his hand.

He gets us, which is why he died for us and calls us to repent. 866-348-7884. We'll be back.

Take some of your calls on the other side of the break. And I've got a few more articles that I want to share with you as well. Again, if you're not getting our monthly newsletter, the frontline newsletter full of edifying information, great testimonies, a lead message that I really pray about, a lead article every month, a Hebrew word study we've done so far, shalom, and then kana.

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Sign up for the frontline newsletter. We want to get it out to you, bless you, help you, equip you, minister to you however we can. We'll be right back on the other side of the break.

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Welcome back, friends, to The Line of Fire. If you want to weigh in, I'm only taking calls on this subject. Weigh in, he gets us ad campaign or the Super Bowl ad specifically, 866-348-7884. My colleague, Professor Robert Gagnon, author of the most important book on homosexuality and the Bible, the foremost scholar on the subject on the planet today.

We don't get to see each other much, but we are colleagues and very much see a lot of these issues the same way. I love how he cuts to the chase. He's a scholar, he's a professor, but he's got this insight where he really cuts to the chase on things.

So, he posted a bunch of things on his Facebook page, Robert A.J. Gagnon, G-A-G-N-O-N, about that he gets us ad in the Super Bowl, but I want to read some of it to you. He said, the Jesus judgment sayings and the he gets us Super Bowl ad. He said, if your idea of Jesus represents the theology, which as in quotes, communicated by the he gets us folks, who, by the way, include unbelievers and LGBTQ activists, you might wonder how, if Jesus went around washing the feet of non-disciples all the time, of which there is no evidence in the Gospels, and never speaking a word of judgment, except against those who judge, how he ended up crucified. So, if all he did was go around washing people's feet and said, don't judge, don't judge, and the only ones ever criticized were the ones who did judge, why was he crucified? He said, as it happened, about 40% or more of all Jesus sayings incorporated a strong element of judgment, and not just against hypocritical Pharisees.

Here is a sampling drawn safely from the material in Mark and the double tradition sayings shared by Matthew and Luke. I'm not touching here the judgment sayings found only in Matthew, where the frequency rises to 60%, or only in Luke, only in John. So, the petition in the Lord's Prayer asks God to forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. It puts an important qualifier on divine forgiveness. The ongoing application of God's forgiveness hinges on our forgiveness of those who offend us.

And he goes on with more examples of that. Getting angry and insulting your brother can get one thrown into hell. Attraction to material goods can put one at enmity with God and exclude one from the kingdom of God.

Those who attribute Jesus' miraculous power to satanic influence can never be forgiven. Those who do not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will not enter it. Only those who do the will of God belong to Jesus' family will enter the kingdom. No one who goes back to their former life is fit for the kingdom of God.

In order to enter the kingdom, the rich man not just must only obey the commandments of the law, but also give all of his possessions, sell all his possessions, give to the poor and follow Jesus. People must fear those, but not fear those who can kill the body, but only the one who can send both body and soul to hell. The door to eternal life is narrow and few will find it. Many who knock on the door at the end will be turned away with the words, I do not know you.

Those who do not respond to the invitation to the great supper will have the invitation withdrawn. I'm just touching on the list here. It goes on and on and on and on and on where there are judgment sayings of Jesus in the gospels, repentance sayings of Jesus in the gospels, warnings of Jesus in the gospels. He's only posting certain ones that occur in Mark, Luke, Mark, Matthew, et cetera. There are many, many others. And I only read probably less than half of his list here.

Less than half as I'm looking at this whole list here. Lengthy passages calling down judgment for those who refuse to believe him and take heed to the miracles. He said it is not hard to understand from these sayings why Jesus was crucified. Along with his self claims to be the Messiah, Son of God and authoritative Son of Man, with the power both to amend the law of Moses by intensifying its demands and to forgive sins as though he were God. He certainly didn't get crucified because he went around washing people's feet and being non-judgmental. Can I say that again? Quoting Professor Robert Gagnon.

Jesus certainly didn't get crucified because he went around washing people's feet and being non-judgmental. Robert has a bunch of other posts. There's video commentary as well.

I'm just looking for one more here. He says, does anyone have a clue as to why he gets a Super Bowl ad? We didn't see a scene of a Whisperer Baptist member with a sign saying God hates gay and trans people, a message that I do not affirm, having his feet washed, but instead saw foot washing for a woman getting abortion and a self-affirming LGBTQ person. Answering that question will go a long way to understanding what's wrong with the ad.

Talk among yourselves. Good points, good points all the way around. Okay, let me say once more, I don't know the people involved behind it. If there are people involved who are not believers or who have a worldly agenda, then all the more what I stand against the campaign wholeheartedly. If there are sincere Christians involved trying to do the right thing but misguided, either through their own minds or through the advisors they have or the creative people they're working with, then they need to do better. Because my concern is they end up doing more harm than good. They paint a wrong picture of Jesus and thereby mislead people as to who he really is, which means when you come with the real picture of him, they will reject that real picture because they believed a wrong picture. That's the first thing. The second thing is the ads could make true Christians look bad as we obey the Lord and honor him with humility and with love and preach the truth.

We could now look bad because we don't fit the image of the He Gets Us campaign. So those are the concerns that I have. Again, if there are people involved that are not believers or believers with a very, very misguided agenda, then all the more would I fully oppose what they're doing and not just say they're misguided.

I'd say you need to repent and just get the right people involved and do it the right way. I simply don't know all those involved behind the scenes. Okay, my Catholic colleague writing for The Stream. I write nearly one exclusive article each week for Stream.org, a website launched by James Robison to be a source of wisdom and truth for the body. It uniquely has a lot of Catholic writing alongside many evangelicals on the site. In many cases, we really share the same perspective. Where the Pope needs to be blasted or the Catholic Church needs to be blasted, then the Catholic authors do that.

And where evangelicals need to be blasted, evangelical leaders need to be corrected, then evangelicals do that. In any case, my articles appear in many, many different sites, always on our own website, TheLineOfFire.org, but many, many other sites from Christian Post to Charisma Media to Town Hall to One News Now to World Night Daily and others and The Stream. But once a week, I write an exclusive for The Stream.

And John Szmerak writes lots of exclusives every week for The Stream as a main contributing editor there. So just to say this, I'm just going to let John speak in an unfiltered way. All right? There are going to be things that he'll say differently than I would say.

Just put that at the outset. That's who John is, but I want to share some of what he wrote about this. To give you a perspective, it's not just people being mean spirited and bigoted and you don't get it.

No, no. There are other things going on here. John writes, it isn't just a silly video paid for by goofball Christian businessmen with more money than sense.

Okay, so you see out the gate, he's putting it differently than I would. Not a merely well-meaning failure intended to reach the lost and scandalized. And we can't even write off he gets us simply one more instance of liberal Christians trying to foist the social gospel on us as a replacement for the creed. It's all of those things but more. There's something deeper going on throughout our culture, a temptation that threatens us all.

However conservative or based or red pilled we might think we are. In Flannery O'Connor's brilliant, if dark Christian novel, Wise Blood, the protagonist is a disillusioned foreign believer who feels a messianic urge and a rage at human wickedness. But the Christians he has known have all scandalized him by their worldliness and hypocrisy. So he starts up his own church without Christ and finds new Jesus in the form of a mummy he steals from a local museum. That impulse to make up an ersatz church with a dummy Christ is ever at our elbow whispered by quote angels of light who tickle our ears with honeyed words. When the church was still in its infancy Saint Paul warned already of false gospels and antichrist.

These we will always have with us and in every point of the theological spectrum from left to right. The final great Christian heresy was Markianism, promoted by a rich convert who craved the power to refashion the church. This was the first great Christian heresy. It's the ur heresy, the template and the seed of all others. Put simply it rejects the entirety of the Old Testament, the apostolic teachings of the church in favor of simply quote reading the gospel and figuring out what Jesus means to us.

Does that sound familiar? Does it sound like what progressive Christians who don't study history and likely have never heard of Marcin are saying constantly in their winsome little videos and earnest and passioned posts? That meaning we get from an isolated, lazy, emotive reading of Jesus life won't be guided by what his father had said before nor what the apostles taught.

So what we'll direct it instead. Not the Holy Spirit but the spirit of the age, the pressures of secular culture or the heavy-handed dictates of Caesar, Mammon and Sodom. In previous eras and contexts the temptation came not from the left but the right.

The churches in Germany were explicitly encouraged by the Nazis to treat Marcin not as a heretic but a prophet and strip Christianity of all its quote Jewish traits such as love for the downtrodden and mercy for the sinner. There are some groups today that are tempted to theocratic tyranny and abuse of those outside the church as the stream has warned. Satan doesn't care which path we take if we march down to hell, the escalator on the right or the fireman's pole on the left. So long as we end up where he thinks we belong he's equally satisfied. But today at this historical moment in the US as opposed to say Russia the gravest dangers lie on the left so that deserves our focus. For that reason let's focus on one distortion of the gospel that seems to bedevil progressive Christians with enthusiastic encouragement and heavy financial support from pro-abortion zealots and the priests of the LGBT cult of Baal.

It's fairly sophisticated and slippery which is why we must think it through one step at a time. One of the most powerful moments in the gospel is surely this speech of Jesus. When the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels with him then he will sit on his glorious throne before him will be gathered all the nations and he will separate them one from another as the sheep separates the sheep from the goats and will place the sheep in his right hand the goats had left.

So you know the passage which he quotes in full. To the goats he'll say I was in prison you didn't visit me I was sick you didn't care for me I was hungry didn't feed me etc. And they'll say when didn't he say when you didn't do it to the least of these my brothers you didn't do it to me. Conversely the sheep you did it when did we do it when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers you did it to me. So he then continues if that doesn't haunt you a little then you're not doing Christianity right my own involvement in the pro-life movement beginning in age 12 has been driven first unconsciously and openly by the wish to serve the least of these the most abandoned Americans as if they were Jesus himself. Now it's going to go on from there to say this is what our Lord did not say. This is what our Lord did not say.

We'll be right back. Are you experiencing fatigue heart palpitations or tingling in your hands and feet? These may be signs that you are deficient in vitamin B12 which may increase your risk of serious cardiovascular conditions without you even knowing it. I'm Paul Burnett a board-certified doctor of holistic health and director of wellness services at TriVita and I have some exciting news for you introducing TriVita's HCYGARD the breakthrough sublingual B12 natural supplement scientifically formulated to support maximum absorption and support healthy levels of homocysteine. What is homocysteine you may ask?

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These statements are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. This is how we rise up. It's the line of fire with your host Dr. Michael Brown. Get on the line of fire by calling 866-34-TRUTH.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Thanks, friends, for joining us. When today's broadcast is over I am going to be doing a video interview with a brother out in the western United States talking about the book Nancy and I wrote, Breaking the Stronghold of the Food, talking about lifestyle change. It's something Nancy and I literally talk about every single day because we live it. We live it out with the meals we eat. We live it out with all the things we don't eat. We live it out with the joy of being healthy. We live it out with the memory of how we felt when we were fat and how it inhibited us in terms of health or other things.

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There's no thought of when we're bearing everybody. No, it's like, thank God he was merciful. Thank God he helped. Thank God he helped.

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And then thereafter with all the discounts people get and all that, we still afford to give over a tithe of everything else that comes in donated back. So this has been ongoing over a year now and we are so blessed and so grateful. And what I'm thrilled to see is how many of you reorder, which means you're finding the, the, the resource is good. You're finding them to be helpful. You're finding them to be healthful, not just helpful, but healthful and great supplements. So I always say it's not a substitute for lifestyle change, but it's a great supplement up. So this part of my daily routine, I supplement super healthy living and exercising super healthy eating with these others.

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With repeat order, use the same code. You get the same discount and monies will be donated back to help us. Every single dime that has come in since Trivita started donating goes right back out to our radio broadcast. 100% of it.

Every single dime. So everybody's getting blessed in the process. All right, back to the John Zamirak critique of the He Gets Us ad campaign. He said, now after reflecting on what Jesus said about you've done it for the least of these, you've done it for me. When you visited a hurting person, a needy person, you cared for someone that's sick, you fought for the life of the unborn, you gave yourself to help a child in distress.

You stood with persecuted believers who were outcast and without a home and you took people into your home and when you did it for them, you did it for me. John Zamirak says this, but how could you follow such a profoundly Christian impulse into evil by letting yourself be tempted to conclude one or more of the following which our Lord's words don't really imply. First, real Christianity consists of social service work, not preaching, teaching, rebuking, warning, or punishing injustices. People who feel called to do these things are secretly Pharisees. Jesus never said that, taught that, or implied it. Two, if it's good for each of us to serve the needy voluntarily, it would be even better for the government to compel every person to do that whether he wants to or not.

That's, quote, building up the kingdom. Jesus never said that or implied that. Three, if we're to see each needy person as Jesus, then we should make marginalized people and groups a fetish and worship them since they're now Jesus to us. Let's meet all the demands, move them here en masse, tear up all Laura's, reshape our system of government and lavish taxpayers monies on these victim groups as the Magdalene poured her tears over Jesus' feet.

John says each of these diabolical conclusions lies at the heart of progressive Christianity today of the kind preached by he gets us. Yes, that's a sobering message. If someone gets angry when you pass it on to her, you should paraphrase the cop on the old TV show dragnet. Ma'am, I don't make the natural law.

I just enforce it. All right, so let me back up now and turn this in a direction not just of being critical of what has fallen short and explaining why so many of us are grieved by the Ed campaign. Let me go back to the beginning and let me talk about us making Jesus known. We are all products of our environment. What do I mean? Well, I speak English. I speak English wonderfully well. And if you grew up here in America, you probably speak English wonderfully well as well. You don't have a problem pronouncing any syllable, any letter, any phoneme.

Why? Because it's our alphabet and this is what we grew up with. I did not grow up in an Arabic speaking country. I have not lived in an Arabic speaking country. So my Arabic pronunciation is very weak. For example, in Arabic, you have the ha sound, H like an H in English in the word hat or hole or happy ha.

Then you have a soft guttural ha and then a hard guttural ha. Now, I just made them very distinct, but when I'm reading Arabic and trying to pronounce it properly, I'm either too strong or too weak. And an Arabic speaker would notice that instantly. If I grew up speaking Arabic, I'd be able to pronounce the kha and the tah and the rayan and the rayan and the sod and the dold far better than I do. My Hebrew pronunciation is very weak. Now, modern Hebrew has less of these difficult phonemes than Arabic does, but it's very weak. When I studied Spanish a little bit, the Spanish are rolling the R properly. I didn't do that well, but if I grew up in a Spanish speaking home from childhood or an Arabic speaking home or Hebrew speaking home, then I'd speak it fluently and with proper pronunciation.

I remember speaking in Hong Kong with a translator from mainland China, and I remember she was translating as I was teaching the book of Jeremiah. I'm thinking, there's no way she's saying the same words I am. How do you even pronounce that?

Where do you get the sounds from? Doesn't your mouth have to develop differently? It sounded so foreign to me because I was around a day and night, but that's just totally natural and normal for her. Look, there are some languages where you talk to someone and if the word has w in it, welcome, with a w, they can't say it. Vel- vel- come. Vel- come.

No, no. W- welcome. That's why I said vel- come. No, you said vel- come. I'm saying welcome. They can't say it.

Or, for example, some people can't pronounce th. Thank you. Thanks a lot. No, no, no. Thanks. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Thanks. No, no. It's th.

Why? Because we're products of our environment. You go up with certain foods. Oh, it's our favorite food.

Someone else is like, they vomit when they eat it. Because we're products of our environment. So, you get that. We understand that.

But it's much deeper than you realize. It's the way we think. It's the way we see the world. Our American independent can-do freedom at all costs mentality is very different mentalities than other countries.

And what matters most to the people in other countries. And we each have our ways of doing things. And some of them are just the way we do things, neither right nor wrong.

Some of them are very right or very wrong. In the same way, our perceptions of Jesus are colored by our spiritual upbringing. By our cultural environment. By how we read the Bible. Even if how we read the Bible as a man versus a woman. As an old person versus a young person.

As an American versus an Indian or someone from China or somewhere else. So, what we constantly have to do is do our best to go before God on our faces. I'm not talking about fundamental truths of redemption.

I'm talking about other perceptions. Fundamental truths of redemption. I've traveled the world and we have these things in common.

Fundamental truths of what saves us or damns us. I've traveled the world and find instant deep commonality with people from all different cultures and all different backgrounds and all different languages and shapes and sizes. Because it's the Gospel that unites us. Even though we're so different culturally, we're totally united in the Gospel. And I've been in endless meetings where once the Spirit falls we're all weeping together. We're all worshiping together.

We're all rejoicing together. And the harmony is massive. At the same time, there's a lot of cultural baggage we bring with us that we don't know about because it's what's used to us. Just like I'm not speaking with an accent, I'm just speaking English. To someone in England, I'm speaking with an accent. Or in Australia or South Africa, I'm speaking with an accent.

To me, they're speaking with an accent. So, let's do our best to go before the Lord and say help us to make the real Jesus known to the world. Help us to make the Jesus of the Bible known to the world. Not the contemporary American Jesus or contemporary some other Jesus or the Jesus of our church or religious or synagogue tradition. Help us to make the Jesus Yeshua of the Bible known to world that doesn't know Him. As best as we can, in the most unvarnished way we can, as best as we can, presenting who the Word says He is, whether we're rejected or whether we're embraced. Can we do that before the Lord and honor Jesus and honor those with love that He died for by telling them the real truth? I'm not speaking with an accent, I'm speaking with an accent.