Dr. Brown Tackles Your Toughest Questions

The following program is recorded content created by Truth Network. 866-34-TRUTH. That's 866-34-TRUTH.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Thanks, friends, for joining us on the line of fire today. You've got questions. We've got answers.

Any question of any kind that relates in any way to anything we ever discuss on the line of fire or to any area of expertise I have or any area where I've expressed a strong opinion. Give me a call. Do my best to help out. If you differ with me on something, want to probe, want to find out if something is true or not, 866-34-TRUTH, 866-34-8-7-884. That is the number to call. Before I go to the phones, do you get my emails?

If not, can I strongly encourage you? As soon as you get a break, go to our website, AskDrBrown.org. We're letting you know about latest articles, latest videos, special online events. If we're coming to your area to speak, you'll be notified. If we have new special resources available, you'll be notified. We'll also share more about my own testimony from LSD to Ph.D. about the three R's of our ministry and how we can help equip you to be on the front lines standing for righteousness, standing for truth in a very confused generation.

And often, in the midst of a very compromised church. So make sure you sign up today over at AskDrBrown.org. By the way, you also get an immediate free mini e-book, Seven Secrets of the Real Messiah, when you sign up. Alright, with that, we go to the phones, starting with Anthony in New York. Welcome to the line of fire. Hello, Dr. Brown. Thank you for taking my call.

You're very welcome. So my question is about dreams. Many times in the Bible, God has spoken in dreams. For example, God appeared to Solomon in a dream. He gave Nebuchadnezzar a dream, the Pharaoh in Egypt a dream. And my question is just, do you think God still speaks to us in dreams? And this comes from reading the chapter of the book of Job, on chapter 33, beginning in verse 14, how it says that God speaks not once, but twice, three times in dreams, in visions, to keep man from sinning or from falling. So do you think God speaks to us in dreams? Maybe warning us, or maybe, you know, to get closer to him, or maybe, you know, to keep us apart from something? Absolutely. He certainly still speaks in dreams.

The scripture says it plainly, and I can give you many contemporary examples of that. At the same time, dreams are often a reflection of just our own minds, our own thinking. Dreams are often a reflection of what's going on during our day. So we have to learn to recognize whether it's God speaking to us in a dream, or it's just our own thoughts. How can we do that? Okay, right.

So it's got to be over a period of time with track record. We know plainly that God can... So let me explain. We know plainly from the New Testament, Acts the second chapter, quoting from Joel 2, that God will give dreams and visions to young and old in these last days in which we live.

So certainly he continues to do it. But for me, almost 50 years in the Lord now, as much as I've been led by the Spirit in many ways and heard the voice of the Spirit, I've almost never heard from God in dreams or received a prophetic dream. If it happened a couple times, maybe that's it. Otherwise, it reflects what's on my mind or the pressure of the moment, or I got to get up early in the morning, you know, whatever. So how do you know the difference? What I would say is this.

Several things. One is, if you get the same dream repeatedly and it seems to stay with you through the day and it's on your mind, I would say, Lord, are you saying something to me through this? See, the thing with dreams is they only have to be interpreted, right? It's not necessarily a straight out message, which is why you have Joseph or Daniel or others interpreting dreams in Scripture.

But if it's something that as you pray and you're walking with the Lord stays with you, I would say, okay, Lord, are you saying something to me? Or talk with maybe someone spiritually minded in your congregation that's got a good track record of having insight into the meaning of a dream. Another way that I would recognize that a dream was from the Lord would be if the contents of the dream proved accurate and relevant. So let's say you're dreaming and you see someone in a dream you haven't seen in 10 years, and when you see them, they're in great need and you have a gospel answer for them, and three weeks later you run into them completely random. It's like, wow, I dreamed about that.

If things like that happen more often, then that would get my attention. I would more regularly pray about the things that I was dreaming. I would say, Lord, if that's from you, give me insight. So absolutely, God still speaks in dreams today, but it's not the way He speaks to everyone. And even when it is from the Lord, sometimes it requires interpretation. So like anything else, add it into your overall relationship with the Lord. Let me say this last thing, sir. I would never, ever, ever even think for a split second of making a major decision simply based on a dream unless I had years of solid track record of hearing from God in dreams and I had a sense of confirmation in my own heart.

Otherwise, if someone tells me they had a dream about me and I should do thus and such, or I just had a dream, I would never act on it without it being part of my ongoing relationship with the Lord and having substance behind it. Does that make sense? Yes. All right. Thank you so much. Hey, that being said, 866-348-7884, that is the number to call.

Before I go to the phones, let me tell you a couple of dream stories. I know my friend Sid Roth is very controversial and some of you love his TV show and some of you don't. So I don't mean to draw controversy around my friend Sid or guests he's had on the air or anything. I just want you to hear the story. There is a book that he put out, oh, 25, 30 years ago called They Thought for Themselves.

That was the initial name of it. It was the stories of 10 Jewish believers, someone who was a former Hindu guru, you know, a Jew that got into that got saved, someone that's a Holocaust survivor, someone that was crippled in Israel and was miraculously healed through Christian TV, all different testimonies and mine. I was one of the 10. And I was asked by Sid, excuse me, to share my testimony in there. And I felt ultimately to write something a little bit different, a bit more academic, which was why I didn't believe in rabbinic tradition to be authoritative. That's the direction as we talked, felt right to go. Anyway, I remember when he called me and he said, Mike, the Lord gave me this assignment and I've got to put this book out, et cetera, and I want you to be one of the 10.

Okay, I did it. Well, that book has been distributed literally by the millions, several million copies combined in English, in Russian, in Spanish, in Hebrew, and sent into the hands of millions of Jews who don't believe in Jesus. And I've run into people who have received the book and I've seen it out in different places. Well, I didn't know that Sid received those directions in a dream. Yeah, in a dream. It was the first prophetic dream he had, but he got this dream and it was just as if God spoke to him audibly. It was, I mean, just as, cause I remember he called me. It's like, Mike, I've got this clear directive.

Boom, boom, boom. It was just like someone gave him a sheet and check, check, check, check. And here God used it incredibly. Of course, no one's made it down from it. It's given out for free.

It's given out freely around the world. So that was a prophetic dream. I'll give you another example.

I want to get to more calls, but I'll give you a striking, amazing example that ties in with that very passage from Job 33 that was cited to us a moment ago. All right, we go to Daniel in Fremont, Michigan. Thank you for calling the line of fire. Hi, Dr. Brown. Thank you for taking my call.

You're welcome. Question about spiritual gifts. An evangelist has been teaching in our church. He says that there are two main ways to operate more effectively in the supernatural with spiritual gifts. The first is to pray in tongues, and the second is to practice the gift, like your faith in action, so stepping out in faith and praying for someone who's sick or verbalizing what you think is a word of knowledge, you know, things like that, doing that frequently. He didn't give any specific scriptures to support this, but he's sharing based on his own personal experience.

What are your thoughts on that? First, in terms of experience, I agree with his experience. In other words, I would give that same advice as two ways to strengthen our walk and strengthen us in serving the body, glorifying the Lord, reaching the lost in terms of spiritual gifts. So why the first one, praying in tongues? Well, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 14 that tongues is primarily something between us and God, unless it's delivered publicly with an interpreter, because our spirit is praying, which is important.

Our mind is unfruitful. That's why we need to have understanding ourselves as we pray by the Spirit. But he says we speak mysteries in the Spirit to God, and we edify ourselves. That's not a negative there.

He's not saying that it's negative. He's saying, I'm edifying myself, so the goal is not to get up in public and speak in tongues for three hours, because that's going to edify me and nobody else. So if I'm in public, I'd rather speak five words in a known tongue than 10,000 in an unknown tongue. But Jude tells us to build ourselves up in our most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, which certainly includes praying in tongues. So we are building up that spiritual dimension in our lives. Think of it just like a muscle that's being exercised. We're building ourselves up in the Spirit and sensitizing ourselves to the spiritual realm.

That's one reason I agree. For those that are non-charismatic, think, what are these guys talking about? Well, maybe you get something out of it.

If not, wait for the next call. The second thing is that we grow in grace. We grow in knowledge. We grow in faith, and much of it is by doing. It's the same in any area of life. Now, it doesn't mean that we experiment with prophecies or turn sick people into guinea pigs.

What it means is this. If I sense I have a word for someone, you know, I'm sitting next to someone after church service, you know, we're just chatting, and I sense, are you going through like a really difficult financial trial now? Like something really, really intense that you need prayer, you just haven't wanted to talk about it, draw attention to yourself? Ask, right? If you feel it, ask. Not, thus saith the Lord, I am, if I'm wrong, then the Bible's not true. No, don't do something foolish. But if you sense something, ask like, wow, that was the Lord.

That was accurate. The same thing with prayer. It's not a matter of just going up to a sick person in the mall and say, God told me you're going to be healed, and if you're not healed, Jesus is not risen.

No, don't do something silly like that. But if you're talking to someone, they're sick, and you feel the Lord wants you to pray, say, hey, can I pray for you? I believe in praying for the sick. And as you begin to see God move more, then your confidence grows. It's a matter just like everything else in our lives in the Lord.

We grow by doing, we grow by acting on our faith, but we do it with wisdom. Hey, thank you, sir, for the call. It's the Line of Fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Get into the Line of Fire now by calling 866-34-TRUTH.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. We have a phone line open, which often doesn't happen on Friday. 866-348-7884. I love taking your questions. I look forward to doing radio every single day, those watching or video broadcasts. I look forward to it literally every single day. But Fridays are especially fun because it's just whichever way your calls take us, and often unexpected questions. So 866-34-TRUTH.

Let's go to our buddy Eddie in Madison, Connecticut. Welcome to the Line of Fire. Dr. Brown, how you doing today?

I'm doing good, man. Here's my question, Dr. Brown. A little commotion again in the Bible study. We were talking about just what that last guy was saying with tongues, and I said, wasn't the original—as soon as we heard the word tongues in the Scripture, it says they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they began to speak in other tongues. So I said, ladies and gentlemen here, I said, did you hear what I said? And we all know that's languages of the earth, different languages.

It's stated. I said, why is today's tongue, 99.9 percent, all—I'm not going to say crazy, but it's all—I never heard a language. I never heard the guy speak French or in church.

I never heard an Italian language. I'm just trying to find out, Dr. Brown, where did it jump from languages—where did it jump in the Scripture to languages to unintelligible—nobody knows nothing. And I have one more quick question, a great one for you. The guy said to me, he was praying for an hour in tongues, and he feels edified, he feels great. So I said, what do you mean? He said, I said, did you know what you were doing, saying? He said, oh, no, I just went in there, and so basically you made noises, and you came out, and I never heard of anything like that. And you feel good, I said. He said, I feel tremendous. I said, so I'm going to go into a room—go ahead, I'm sorry. First thing for those that are not familiar with our buddy Eddie, he brings the New York spirit from Connecticut, but it's normally a discussion that comes up in a Bible study that they're having, and he takes the kind of the minority position, and sometimes I tell him he's right, and sometimes I differ with him.

So I'm going to differ with you today, bud. So number one, what was the purpose of tongues there in Acts 2, the purpose of these languages? It was to declare the praises of God in foreign languages so that all the listeners from around the world could recognize, wow, this is a miracle. These people who are just local Galilean Jews are speaking, they're praising God in our language.

Now, half the crowd, or the other part of the crowd, all they heard was gibberish, like that they're all drunk, what are they doing? So some heard, and others didn't. There are some who believe that the miracle is not in the speaking, but in the hearing. But either way, just remember, right from the start, it was like one of your Bible studies.

Some said, this is great. Others are like, what are you talking about? That being said, there is, if I'm in a group of 10 English speakers and I'm speaking in tongues, why would I, what's the benefit of speaking French or German or Portuguese or Mandarin Chinese or Arabic or anything? In other words, it's an unknown language to anyone there. If I start speaking now in Hebrew over the air, unless you're a Hebrew speaker, it's an unknown language.

So there was a purpose there on that day. When it mentions tongues later in Acts, in Acts the 10th chapter, in Acts the 19th chapter, it doesn't tell us anything about foreign languages or a miracle of foreign languages. But when Paul talks about it in 1 Corinthians 14, he's very detailed.

So that's what you need to do. You need to, when we're done, take out 1 Corinthians 14 and read it all the way through. He says, when I'm praying in tongues, my mind does not understand. And he said, in fact, no one understands. We speak mysteries in our spirit to God.

So this is a way to edify ourselves. And Paul says, I speak in tongues. I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you. So he prayed in tongues a lot by himself and he said, so what am I going to do? He said, if I pray with my spirit, then my mind is unfruitful. He said, so pray that you can interpret, so you understand what you're praying. Or the other thing is, if you speak publicly a message in tongues, if there's an interpreter there, great. So someone who, remember, it's not someone who speaks the foreign language. It's someone who has the gift of interpretation.

Why do you need the gift? Because it's not an earthly language. Otherwise, Paul would have said, if nobody there speaks your language, then be quiet. He says, no, unless there's someone who can interpret the gift of interpretation, don't deliver public messages. Then he says, the other thing I'm going to do, I'm going to sing with my spirit, meaning tongues. I'm going to sing with my understanding. I'm going to pray with my spirit.

I'm going to pray with my understanding. I have, for periods of years in my life, prayed at least an hour a day in tongues. And it's been absolutely critically important in my own growth in God.

You say, well, what happens to your brain? My mind is communing with God. In other words, I'm getting built up on the inside and feeling this rising sense of intimacy and closeness to God. And then I'm feeling directed. Now my mind is communing with God. My mind may be praying. Maybe my mind is understanding what I'm praying. Key books that I've written have come out of that.

I've prayed in tongues for a period of time, which then led me to pray in English a specific way, which then led me to tackle a certain book. So this seemed to be the norm. I just had one other quick one, real fast. I'm sorry. You said it just a minute ago. You said the guy speaking mysteries to God. What mystery am I telling God? I'm stumping them.

What am I saying it from? No, no, no, no. It's mysteries from our perspective. I love the way you asked the question, Eddie. It's not a mystery to go like, all right, God, solve this.

There was a murder in the mansion and it could have, who was it? No, it's not. Or solve this one, God. How can there be a good God in the problem of evil? No, it's mystery. It's just like Romans 8.

What does it say there? We don't know what to pray as we ought. You ever look at just the evil suffering pain of the world, Middle East crisis, racial conflicts? It's like, I don't know how to pray, but the Spirit prays for us with words that cannot be uttered in human speech, sometimes with groaning. Have you ever been so burdened that you just wept or so burdened that you're just like, oh, through the Holy Spirit, those things can actually be prayers of burden and pain just going up to God and the Holy Spirit praying through us in those ways or with tongues. We don't know what to pray. These things are mysterious to us, so the Spirit intercedes through us. That's another passage to look at, Romans 8-26.

So read Romans 14 and 8, excuse me, 1 Corinthians 14, Romans 8-26. Thank you for the call, as always. 866-34-TRUTH. Let's go to Joseph in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Welcome back to The Line of Fire. Hi there, Dr. Brown.

Hey. So my next question is, I just want to state that this is merely to be a question to address people who might have concerns or maybe they want to point out something that they believe to be a contradiction. The question I have is, in the first three Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, it says when Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, he was led into the wilderness to be tempted, and he was there 40 days. In John, it says the next day after he was baptized, he's walking by, and John the Baptist says, Behold, the Lamb of God. And so it says in the other Gospels that immediately after he was baptized, he went into the wilderness. But then we see in John that the next day he's going by, and John the Baptizer says, Behold, the Lamb of God. So, you know, the way it's presented, some people might be confused about it and might see that as a contradiction. How do we present this to them in a way that helps them understand to harmonize all four Gospels together? So the first thing is you tell them it's really great that we have these examples like this, because when people are checking the authenticity of stories, the veracity of accounts, when everybody says it exactly the same way without any variation, you normally assume that somebody got in there somehow to adjust the story, because generally if several different witnesses tell the same story, you're going to have minor differences that on the surface level could appear contradictory.

J. Warner Wallace, who became well known as a cold case detective, so here's a case 30 years old, a homicide no one can solve, he begins to look at the evidence afresh and looks at it and is able to put things together, and they're able to solve the case. So when he began reading the Gospels, he thought, wow, these really have the ring of authenticity, because different witnesses are all going to bring a slightly different perspective or say the same thing differently. So, you know, for example, I could say a week from now or after six days or on the eighth day and each thing is the same date, or three different people could say you have the Gospels with the transfiguration. They basically say the same thing, three different ways. So if I was looking for an answer here, I would say, okay, if he's immersed one day and the next day goes into the wilderness, that would be an immediate, that would certainly be an immediate thing, he doesn't go out and start doing ministry, he goes to the wilderness, you could say, well, next day is on his way to the wilderness.

You know what I'm saying? It's not that it has to mean that split second, but rather what we're being told is he doesn't begin his ministry publicly at that time. No, the first thing he does, immediately he now goes into the wilderness. It could be a few days later and it would still count as immediately in the course of his whole life. So that's how I would explain it. What Augustine and others pointed to, this has been discussed, you know, for centuries, is that there's a certain internal harmony that you see there, they're all giving the same accounts, but from little different angles.

And I would use that not as a weakness, but as a strength. Now, if something is a blatant contradiction, one thing says black, the other is white, one thing says yes, there is no, then you have to dig deeper to see, okay, what's going on here? But in cases like this, chronological statements, you can expect a little different perspective. So that helps us realize this was not just organized by one group saying it must be like this. The different voices spoke and all the early witnesses said, amen. That's how it went down. It's the line of fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown, your voice of moral, cultural, and spiritual revolution.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Thanks for joining us, friends. You've got questions, we've got answers, 866-34-TRUTH. So I was asked a question about John 1 29, which tells us the next day after Jesus was baptized, John the Immerser sees him and says, Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And then that seems to be a contradiction to the other gospels that say immediately after Jesus was baptized, he was driven by the Spirit into the wilderness. So I said you could interpret that by saying, well, the next day, Jesus on his way to the wilderness, John sees him. But then when you keep reading in John, it's another next day, another next day, it seems that Jesus doesn't go into the wilderness immediately.

So when you dig deeper, it appears that the contradiction would remain. So then you go back and look, okay, do the gospels make it clear that it had to be the same day he was baptized, or the next day or two, or is it in terms of any major developments, the next thing so hence immediately next thing that happens is he goes in the wilderness? Or could it be that there's something significant about the next day as it's referenced in John 1, meaning the next day that John sees him? Is there a significance to it?

It's the beginning of a new creation, a new era or epoch. So you have to dig a little deeper in sorting that one out. So you give the first glance possibility, like if I didn't know the text at all, I was always giving the text, giving the first glance possible answer, my mind would say, yeah, but what about what follows in John 1? So that's the issue. So you have to dig a little deeper.

Some commentators suggest that there's significance to the term the next day in John 1.29, meaning something more than just the next day chronologically. So these are things you dig deeper. But when people raise questions, there seems to be a contradiction. The best thing to do is say, well, let's take a look at it. Yeah, let's take a look.

And scholars have been doing that very thing for centuries. In some cases, the contradictions are easily resolved. In other cases, other instances resolved with some difficulty. In other instances, unresolved. You say, what do you do with those? You leave them unresolved. In other words, when you have a testimony of truth that is mountains high and a couple of inches of unresolved questions, I'm happy to leave them.

There are things I'm getting insight into now after almost 50 years in the Lord that I didn't have insight into five years ago, 10 years ago, let alone 40 or 50 years ago. So we are happy to have some unanswered questions next to the mountain of solidly answered questions. 866-3-4 truth. Let us go over to, hang on, my mouse has disappeared for a moment.

There we go. Let's go over to Bobby in Lewisburg, North Carolina. Welcome to the Line of Fire. Hey, Dr. Brown. Can you hear me okay?

Oh yeah, you bet. Okay, so I got a couple of questions. The first one is in reference to predestination or election. I got a couple of thoughts about this, because I've been mulling through this over in my mind for years, and I've heard you in the past speak on it and others, but there's a lot of people that talk about it, you know, around me and in my life, Christian brothers. So I know that God is not unjust, but to us, with the understanding of election, it might could seem that way, with the predestination, those who are predestined to be saved and those who are not. That's one thought. Another thought is that, I know Chuck Missler, I've done some listening to Chuck Missler, and he addresses how God is actually not bound by time, and he is not within time like us. So time is the only way that we can see things with a perspective of predestination, election.

That's another thought. And I'm thinking, well, I made notes, I'm trying to read my notes here. It doesn't seem to me to be within God's character, of my understanding of God's character, to create human beings for the intent to ultimately destroy. Even though I've listened to John MacArthur do some teaching on predestination and election, and he goes through multiple, multiple, multiple verses, and the Scriptures seem very clear that election, it's true. I think somewhere there's a point where we understand and what we don't understand. So my thoughts are that it's a mystery of God that we just can't fully understand there. So to respond, Bobby, and I appreciate the questions and the thoughts. Number one, there's no question the Bible teaches election and predestination. The question is, what does it mean?

So I'm in agreement with you. Number one, God exists outside of time. He works within time, but he exists outside of time.

All we cite here, Isaiah 57, 15, he inhabits eternity. So for him, tomorrow is no different than yesterday in that regard. He sees it as already happened. You say, how does that happen?

Because he's God. So look at this analogy. If you decide you want to watch in full a sports event, but you're going to miss it because you're working, so you set up your TV to record it. Well, that event happened live and those players made real plays and some played harder and won and some didn't play as hard and lost. That really happened and people made free choices. But by the time you watch it, it's already fixed and done. Now, it's not fixed and done because it was predestined.

It's fixed and done because it already happened. So God sees the future in that way as if it already happened, but it happened based on choices we freely made. I also agree with you, with all respect to my Calvinist friends, that it is contrary to the nature of God to create a being with the express intent of damning that being. You say, well, that's not what Calvinists teach. Well, they would agree with John Calvin that some are doomed from the womb for certain destruction, that God in creating them fully had the power to save them, but chose not to for reasons unknown to us and chose to save others. With all respect to my Calvinist friends, and I was a Calvinist for five years, as many of you know from 77 to 82, I reject that as contrary to the nature of God. And when he says whosoever will, it's a genuine invitation.

When he says choose, it's a genuine invitation. When the Bible speaks of Jesus dying for each of us, for all of us, for the world, for the whole world, for all people, for Jew and Gentile, I don't know any other way that it can be expressed, but that he died for all. And then, lastly, while I do believe that there are things clearly laid out in Scripture, that Jesus did die for all, gives the possibility of salvation to all, that all who will receive God's gracious invitation can be saved, and that those that are in Christ, in the Messiah, are then in him predestined to a certain eternal destiny, because we're dealing with God and his work, there will always be some level of mystery. My feeling is that sometimes we try to tie the loose ends together.

It's kind of like under the table, unseen, where we've got to tie those loose ends together to make it all fit in a nice little package, when God hasn't given it to us in a nice little package. So Bobby, I'm with you in your thinking. I'm in harmony with a lot of where you're going in your points. Thanks for the call, sir.

866-34-TRUTH. We go to Robert in Australia early in the morning again. Welcome back to the line of fire. Hey, Dr. Brown, how are you doing? Doing well, thanks. So I'm actually sensual apologetics. I sent you that super chat yesterday about Dr. Bowen, and I'm friends with him. Okay, wonderful. All right, got it. That explains his sentinel apologetics. Okay, great. Yeah, I happened to see that post.

Okay. Now, my question, in hindsight of all the speaking in tongues, so this is like a tongue-in-cheek question, but I guess this is a languages question. I was looking at Arnold Fruchtenbaum's commentary in Genesis, in Genesis 33 verse 20, and he argues that, in hindsight of the singular and plural forms, he says that, and I could be butchering the pronunciation here, but El Elohim Israel, he argues that Elohim should be translated God's plural, and he says God, the gods of Israel, and then he's basically saying, well, then that fits right in line with, say, scholars like Michael Heizer, who point out in their works the two powers in heaven, the plurality and the god head. Is that actually a fatal rendering of the Hebrew there? Because the Net Bible in its notes doesn't actually say that. Literally, in the Net Bible, it says we don't know how to translate this.

All we know is that El is singular God, and then Elohim, you know, we don't know what to do with that. So what's your thoughts on that? So first, we'll un-butcher the Hebrew.

We'll start there. How's that, right? So it's El Elohim Yisrael.

So what exactly does it mean? Dr. Heizer's a friend and a fine Old Testament Semitic scholar. I differ with that reading here.

Arnold Fruchtenbaum is a respected Messianic Jewish colleague, a scholar, so certainly both of these people are coming with lots of thought into this. Oh, just to clarify, Heizer doesn't make this argument. Ah, got it. In the context of that. Okay, that's right.

I had not heard him make that argument. Yeah, all clear. No, the way I understand it is simply this. El was a common name for God in the ancient Near East. El was the head of the Canaanite pantheon. So El can simply mean God, or El can be the name of the chief god of the Canaanite pantheon. In Akkadian, you would say God that was Elu. In Arabic, it's Elah, right? In Hebrew, you have El, and then you have other forms.

Eloah is another, and Elohim, the plural of that. So I would take it that he is making a proclamation that God is the God of Israel, that he is identifying the preeminent God as the God of Israel, the God of Jacob. So it's making a statement about who El is, namely, the God of Israel. And of course, El is used for the God of Israel in the Bible. But just like we could say today when people say, you know, the Muslims worship Allah as God, or Hindus have many different gods, that God is a generic term, right, for a deity. There are different gods, deities, or the one we worship, the one true God, God, I'm coming to you.

So same with El. That's what I take it to me, though. I don't agree with that interpretation. Hey, thank you for the call. It's The Line of Fire with your host, activist, author, international speaker, and theologian, Dr. Michael Brown. Your voice of moral, cultural, and spiritual revolution. Get into The Line of Fire now by calling 866-342.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Hey, friends, be sure to visit my website, AskDrBrown.org, A-S-K-D-R, Brown.org. Sign up for our emails. You'll be enriched and blessed and helped as you do.

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It helps us reach more people for free. 866-34-TRUTH. Let us go to Lauren in Cary, North Carolina. Thanks for calling the Line of Fire.

Hey, Dr. Brown. Thank you for taking my call. I appreciate your ministry and your radio show.

Thanks. I was calling about my hometown church in Lumberton, North Carolina. They have installed a prayer labyrinth in the church yard.

And they have a bulletin. My parents still go to this church. And when I saw the labyrinth, I was just really sort of mortified. And then when she showed me the bulletin, it talks about going into the prayer labyrinth and centering and finding, you know, your center. And it was just very new age. And she told one of the matriarchs of the church what I had said, you know, about it being new age or whatever.

And they got really angry with me. So I was like, can you address the issue of a prayer labyrinth? Yeah, I have to say, honestly, in all of my years of doing radio and taking questions, I don't remember being asked about a prayer labyrinth before. So the whole concept is I'm just looking at pictures, you know, obviously labyrinths, so you've got this complex thing, kind of like a puzzle, you know, to walk your way through and where you come out. There are obviously, there's some level of history to this before, in terms of before a new age type thing. This is something, I'm just looking for information to confirm what I understood. There is a history through the centuries of things like this.

So it's not new age. In fact, if you just look at gotquestions.org, what is your prayer labyrinth? And just look for gotquestions. A labyrinth is a path which leads me to security, through to the center of an intricate design and back out again, et cetera. A prayer labyrinth is a labyrinth used to facilitate prayer, meditation, spiritual transformation, and or global unity.

The most famous prayer labyrinths today include an ancient one in the cathedral of Chartres, France, and other kinds. So there is history to it. That much I understood. But is there a purpose to it? So I would look into this, look into the history, okay? See how far, it goes back centuries and centuries. In that case, go back and say, hey, I thought this was just a new age practice.

I apologize for saying that. But then it's a totally separate question as you think it's a good practice. In other words, does it help someone get into a meditative place in prayer with God? It's an odd thing to me. I don't relate to it in any way, nor do I see how it would help me center my focus in prayer.

But for some, it might. Again, you have to find out what was the practice. Did monks do a certain thing with it? Was it a way of getting from the exterior thoughts into a deeper place of communion with God? Or a way to try to, okay, here's this outer level, I pray for this.

And then here, I pray for this. You know, people have different prayer practices, et cetera. So I would first educate myself on the history of it, all right? You know, apologize for thinking it was new age. It could be that the people that did it are totally new age. That's always another possibility.

But if you haven't... I do think they had pure intention. Right.

Yeah, so here, I mean, I'm just looking. The modern rediscovery of the labyrinth and its use in church settings is celebrated by groups such as the Labyrinth Society, et cetera. According to these groups, the labyrinth is a divine imprint, a mystical tradition, a sacred path, a sacred gateway. God questions, says our prayer labyrinth's biblical. No, they are not. Not only are labyrinths never mentioned in the Bible, they also conflict with several biblical principles of worship and prayer.

I don't know that they definitely conflict with principles of worship and prayer. Again, it's an odd practice to me. But I would look into the history first.

I would apologize for accusing them of new age. But then I'd ask them, okay, what's the motivation? How is this supposed to help?

What prompted you to do this now? Is it some unbiblical thing? Is it some weird new modern tradition? Are you trying to keep up with something? Are you thinking it's not enough for us to just get on our knees and pray or talk to God alone?

I would ask honestly, but not in an accusatory way. Again, for me, it's bizarre, and I see no purpose to it. But I'm not necessarily going to brand it new age or demonic. So, hey, when you do have that discussion, shoot us a note through the website AskDrBrown.org or call again in a few weeks and just let us know how it goes.

And for others, if you want to weigh in why prayer labyrinths are demonic or why prayer labyrinths could be beautiful, feel free to do it in the future. Hey, thank you. Thank you for the call. 866-34-TRUTH.

Let's go to Langston in Cleveland, Ohio. Welcome to the Line of Fire. Hello, yes, I have a quick Hebrew question. So in Micah 5-2, you have the ruler that is coming out of Bethlehem who's going forth, or from old. Now some translations translate that origin, and forgive my pronunciation, but I believe the word is like Mosiah, his going forth.

So I was doing some research. I want to know the difference between Mosiah and that Hosea 6-3, you have let us know, let us press on to know the Lord is going out, Isher as the dawn, and there is Mosiah, which I believe is like the masculine. What's the difference between those two? Right, so it's the same root, yahtzah, and this is so the verbal root is yahtzah, and then the noun, motsah, or you can have masculine motsah, ah is feminine, motsahot is plural, and the nuance of the word really is determined by context. It could be going out from, it could be origin, so for example with Micah 5-2, is it saying that the Messiah's ultimate origins are in eternity past, that it's speaking of him being eternal? Is it speaking of him having an ancient pedigree going back to Bethlehem?

No, that's the scholarly debate. As to the difference grammatically between the words, there are times when you have a feminine form of something, a masculine form of something, so here just grabbing Micah 5-2, and that's actually 5-1 in Hebrew, but 5-2 here, yes, so just making sure I have this correct in my head. Right, so motsahotav, which is is a plural, a feminine form, his going forths plural, and then speaking of, but the fact it's feminine as of now, it doesn't mean there's anything special about the origin.

Just every Hebrew word has to be either masculine or feminine, you know, like table or car or pen is either going to be masculine or feminine. Then in in Hosea, which is just a beautiful passage of restoration, yeah okay, so is it is it Hosea 6-2 or 6-3? In like the English it's 6-3.

Yeah 6-3, sorry, that's why when I looked it up it wasn't there. Right, yeah, motsahot, right, so motsahot, oh there it's it's masculine, singular, just different different forms of the same word or slight differences in nuance, but nothing, you're asking the right questions, but there's no significance in the difference, basically. Okay, so his going forth is still a, if I could, you could say it's a faithful translation. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so in here for example the, oh let's see, JPS, let us know, let us know eagerly strive to know the Lord who's going forth is sure as the morning. So one would be, motsahot would be the origin in terms of going forth from there, and motsahot here, the going forth in terms of a moving forward, so one is from whence it comes, the other is where he's going, you could say, or in which direction, but again all nuances from the same root.

So put it like this, very very minor differences, but reflect it in English translations. Hey thank you sir for the call, much much appreciate it. Hey listen, we are at a time, but I promised I was going to share an amazing story. A man visited the Brownsville Revival, the Brownsville Revival, a non-believer, his wife had been a Christian, he pulled her away into drugs, they had parties at their home, he saw a report on CNN about the revival, it's kind of a negative report but not too bad, it had little good parts in it, he watched it with his wife and said, basically not for me, he doesn't speak my language, went to sleep, has a jarring dream, so he's sleeping as a jarring dream and he comes under conviction of sin, tries to wake his wife up, she's sound asleep, well they had a Bible in the bedroom just because of her background, he takes it out, gets along to read, opens to Job 33, God speaks to a man once in a dream, twice, it shakes his life, he wakes up a born-again transformed believer. We heard his testimony shortly after and then well over a year later at the revival and of course he responded formally to an altar calling quote, God saved, but he encountered God in a life-changing way in a dream, yeah it really happened. Another program powered by the Truth Network.