Dr. Brown Tackles Your Toughest Questions

The following program is recorded content created by the Truth Network.

Let's answer your questions. Thanks again, Skillet, for leading us in along the way. We resist error with truth. We resist darkness with light. We resist hatred with love. We resist the power of the world with the power of the Spirit. 866-344-866-348-7884.

This is Michael Brown. Any question you have that relates in any way to anything we ever cover on the Line of Fire, by all means, give us a call. There is no topic to stay on today, so any question of any kind, phone lines are open. The earlier you're able to call during the broadcast, the better chance we have of getting to your call as the show goes on.

So we start in Canada with Rod. Welcome to the Line of Fire. Hi, Dr. Brown. Thank you for having my call.

I really love your show. A comment would be, I love the Skillet music. I do miss the old songs, too. Is there a way to work in, like, once in a while, work in the old songs, just as like a throwback? Well, maybe.

We'll play a clip here or there from Shaky Nations or Send the Fire. Yeah. But the Skillet song is definitely growing on me.

I do want to download it. Oh, yeah. I love the energy of it. And you know, Rod, what's funny is I just did an interview for Christian TV Network about my new book, The Silencing of the Lambs, and John Cooper, the lead singer and frontman for Skillet, had written an endorsement for it.

And we're in very, very regular contact. In fact, I just sent all the band copies to The Silencing of the Lambs. So they read his endorsement, but then they began on the radio show talking to me about the book, began to talk about him and what a voice he's become. So I was just blessed to see that happen. Fantastic.

Fantastic. There's so many questions I could ask you, but I'm going to, in light of, like, there's other people who want to call in and talk to you, I'll try to limit this to one question that I've heard that comes up recently is, lately there's been a lot of talk about God and gender. And to me, I mean, it's never, I've never really thought about it.

It's kind of made sense to me and I didn't really know why. But my question was, is, and I haven't read the whole Bible, I read a lot of the New Testament, not the Old Testament, but is God referred to as the Father simply because he was the Father of Jesus? Is that oversimplifying things about why we call God the Father?

Right. It's totally oversimplifying things because he is revealed, yeah, he is revealed as the Father in many, many other ways, not just the Father of Jesus, but the Heavenly Father, our Heavenly Father that we pray to. So we know that God transcends gender on the one hand.

In other words, we are male, female biologically. So God transcends that. And we know that when he creates the human race, he creates us in his image and that is male and female. So those aspects are included in who God is, but he transcends that. However, he did reveal himself as Father and he does incarnate in the world.

The Son comes into the world as a male. So in God's purposes of redemption, that's how he's revealed himself. So he can act towards us like a mother.

He can be kind hearted and sensitive like a mother. You had that image in scripture, but as the Father, he is the one from whom everything originates. He is the ultimate source of creation. Everything comes from him through the Son and he wants us to relate to him as Father. That's just an important truth.

So it's not that male is better than female or father is better than mother, but simply as God has revealed himself as the Heavenly Father, that's as the creator and the sustainer and the one from whom everything derives its existence and therefore we look to him in that way. No. Okay.

Okay, good, good, good. Thank you for that. Thank you for your comment. You're very welcome, Rod.

I appreciate it and may the Lord keep his blessing on you there in Canada. 866-348-7884. Let's go over to Olympia, Washington. Jonathan, welcome to the line of fire. Hello, Dr. Brown. Can you hear me okay?

Loud and clear. All right, cool. So my question is, I know that there is a certain amount of cultural relativity to this question because I know that in India, I remember you saying how men wear more skirt kind of things and women wear more pants kind of thing, but is it... I think it is sinful for a man here in the States to wear makeup and jewelry and wear a dress, but I'm not really sure why that is the case.

Why would that be a sin exactly? Right, so it's not specifically that pants are for males and skirts are for women in all cultures, and it was someone that I know, a pastor that preached in India the first time and in the particular village where he was, the women wore what was like these loose pantsuits and the men wore what looked like gowns to him, so he preached the men are wearing women's clothing without realizing that him wearing pants, that he was wearing women's clothing in their eyes. But the reason that it would be sin within our culture for a man to dress as a woman and to wear makeup as a woman, it is because it is crossing gender lines. It is violating gender distinctions, and male-female distinctions are important in God's sight.

Now, not everything is fundamental and foundational. There are things that vary from society to society, but where you have, okay, this is clothing associated with being a male, this is clothing that is neutral, this is clothing associated with being a female, where there is a crossing of those lines, it violates fundamental norms that God has established, it blurs these things, it brings societal confusion and individual confusion, and it's certainly sinful. Now, there's only one verse that addresses it directly in Deuteronomy 22 that says that it is an abomination to the Lord for a man to wear women's clothing. So there is a direct mention of it. You say, well, that was Deuteronomy, we can't apply everything from Deuteronomy directly, someone's just for ancient Israel.

Well, let's look at the principle. And doesn't Jesus say in Matthew 19 that in the beginning God made us male and female? And doesn't Paul speak to men as men and to women as women?

Yes. So as equals in the Lord, there are distinctions. And when we cross lines that are clearly drawn in society, again, many things are neutral, many outfits are neutral, but many are clearly male versus female.

When we cross those lines, we are crossing God-given distinctions, and therefore it is sinful for those reasons. Hey, thank you for asking, Jonathan, I appreciate it. 866-348-7884. We go to Jay in Massachusetts. Welcome to the line of fire.

Hey, Dr. Brown, thank you for taking my call. Sure. I have a question about the Hebrew word Pesach. I was listening to Dr. Mike Heiser talking about Exodus 12, and he went into some commentary, I think it was in JPS, like either TJ or Milgram or one of them, they said that the word actually means protective sacrifice, or that's like another way of understanding the Hebrew. I was wondering if you could comment a bit on that and kind of like the Hebrew background and how we got the word Passover in English if that's not really what it means, if you could kind of break that down.

Right, so I haven't heard that particular podcast with Dr. Heiser. He's quite erudite, and obviously he's looking at things in terms of Hebrew and cognate languages and quoting from top Hebrew and Semitic scholars that sometimes will have a different view than the mainstream. But when you read it in context, in Exodus, it does seem that the fundamental root of Pesach has to do with passing over, and that God will pass over you, hence the Pesach offering was a sacrifice in remembrance of God passing over Israel. That's where we get it from in English, that's where the concept and tradition comes from. Others have said that the root has to do with something else.

I'm sorry, I didn't know if I was cutting in, it was done on my end but I didn't mean to cut you off. He was going for the end-JPS footnote on it, I think it had a little mention or a protective sacrifice, but it didn't really go into it, so I was just curious if you had ... I think there's also a reference in Isaiah or something like that where they were getting the word and it meant, like, protection over there, something like that. Yeah, so these things are possible, the end-JPS scholars were some of the top Hebrew biblical scholars in the Jewish world, but I'm not convinced of that. In other words, the way it's used in Exodus verbally, I don't think we need to move away from it meaning pass over.

It seemed to have to do, at least the root is commonly understood, with some type of physical movement and because of that, in fact, I'll grab a couple of references during the break and pull them up and read them, so I'm going to take some other calls and then come back and do that, but you could say that the root itself, passach, had to do with some type of physical movement and then the idea of passing over comes out of it and then hence this is the remembrance of God passing over Israel, the angel of death, passing over the houses where the blood was put on the doorposts and the lentils and things like that. In any case, there is some debate among scholars and that's what Dr. Heiser was drawing attention to. Did I say lentils rather than lentils?

Anyway, so stick around, keep listening, and I'll give you a couple of examples on the other side of the break. I tell you what, so as not to cut off our next caller, and by the way, we're already on a Friday, but we've got a couple lines open, so a great time to call, 866-344-TRUTH. April 14th, it's coming soon, National Not Ashamed of Jesus Day.

Now, we have officially registered it, we did that some time back, and it's not appearing yet on a national registry, but either way, we don't need that to happen. It's a day when we're encouraging everyone to make a statement. Maybe you're very open about your faith and sharing the gospel all the time, maybe you've been kind of more, kind of behind the scenes, we're encouraging you that day to overtly make a statement, to say we're here, we're not ashamed, we love Jesus, we love you. Go to notashamedofjesus.org. Pastors, leaders, there's a special leadership package for you, giving you ideas of what you can do in your congregations and your networks. Everybody, take a minute, go to notashamedofjesus.org. We'll tell you more about the reason for this, more about the reason 414, why that date, more about what you, every one of us can do, notashamedofjesus.org. Spread the word.

I believe this could be a significant day. 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 for joining us, friends, on the line of fire, 866-34-TRUTH. So about to go back to the phones, your questions on any subject under the sun. By the way, it doesn't bother me at all if you see me attacked online or something posted or video and think, I don't think it's true, but, or I don't know, call. It's fine to ask. I'm not offended by people asking or if they have certain information, wanting to get another side of the story doesn't offend me at all. If you're critical of me and have differences with me, I'm not offended.

If you call, I'm very happy to talk to you. But the thing that's interesting about this root passach, the, the noun for someone who is crippled is piseach and, and it's, it's, or you have it in a verbal form to, to become lame. And then in first Kings 18, the, the false prophets of Baal are hopping around the altar. The new JPS says they're doing a hopping dance. That's the same root, a little bit different verbal form.

It's the same root. That's why I said it was some type of movement going on and some would translate it limp. So they're doing kind of like this weird limping dance.

And then when you can't walk properly, it's not just a limp, you're, you're lame. Then, and then if you're walking or passing by or passing over, that would seem to be how these words relate in these different roots in this, in this same root. Where you get the idea of protective sacrifice from, that's, that's a bit of a separate argument.

But the meaning of pass over in Exodus 12, that's how it's used. Call it the piseach because God will passach over his people. 866-34-TRUTH.

Let's go to Anthony in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Welcome to the line of fire. Hi, how you doing? Thank you. So I'll just get into my question. So my question has to do on a personal level with feeling called to get a Masters of Divinity and then ultimately a Ph.D. in New Testament, but counting the cost of that call. And so just to give you some context, I, I've been serving in full-time ministry for 11 years, almost 11 years. I'm 32, I'll be 33 in a few weeks. I'm married through kids. So just, I'm not a single person that's wrestling with this, just wanted to give that context.

But, you know, I feel God calling me to that. I, you know, I felt that for some years, but, you know, got married, had, had a family and just trying to weigh out the debt. You know, I have a friend who's getting his MDiv currently and it's going to run him about a little over, a little over $30,000.

If he had a Ph.D. on that, I'm sure that's another potentially $20,000. And so is, what do you do with a call that has just such massive amounts of debt? Is it worth it? If it is worth it, how do you navigate it? I know you have a Ph.D., so I figured you might have some insight to, uh, just to share with me.

Yeah. So what I'm about to say would apply to this or to anything else that was similar that you felt called to do, but was going to put great demands on you and your family and potentially put you in debt. So some would say, if God's in it, he'll supply. So it'd be really simple with it. Or you don't take a step to take any course until you can pay for it. And if God's in it, he'll supply. So some would say you don't go into debt period.

I'm sure if you were calling Dave Ramsey's show versus mine, he would just give you the financial answer to that. God provided for me, we had our first child and instead I got married when I was in college. And then our first child, Jennifer, was born, uh, before I graduated college. And then we had our second daughter, Megan, about 15 months after that. So we, we now had two kids and I was just starting grad school and I was given a scholarship.

I didn't know it existed, an academic scholarship from NYU. So after the first couple of classes, I never paid for any more classes and God just supplied. There was just a matter of scheduling time where I could break away from work early one day to get into the city to take classes and working out, you know, schedule with family. Uh, but you and your wife could agree if God's in this, then she's happy for you to invest the time as, as long as God supplies financially. Or there has to be some way in your mind where you say, okay, Lord, if you're in this, then somehow getting these degrees is going to put me in a situation where salary, uh, whatever will increase accordingly to be able to pay this thing off. But if, if, if I were you and I was moving forward with a sense of divine calling, I would be very uncomfortable racking up a whole lot of debt before I'm done. Uh, and then once you're done, that degree might not, might not help you make an extra dime in terms of paying it off. And you know what, what you've learned is wonderful and helpful and beneficial or it should be or could be. But, uh, the price that, that, that has paid the burden that puts on your family, the extra hours now that you have to work to pay it off and how that affects time with the kids, you know, those are big questions. And my feeling would be, Lord, if you're really in this, you need to make a way. And, and there are ways, there's infinite number of possibilities from the Lord as to how he could make this happen.

Let me ask you one question. What do you ultimately feel called to do with these degrees? Um, well, you know, I'm serving specifically in college ministry, um, um, so ultimately, uh, being able to, to have a place of influence among professors, um, and then, and then secondarily, um, uh, being able to, uh, adjunct, whether at my university and in their religious studies department or, um, uh, or maybe just even, uh, with another seminary, just as a, uh, kind of a second line of income.

But I know that that second line of income is only meaningful if it's not, you know, being used to, uh, to chip away at your debt. Now, Anthony, do you have, do you have a support base in any kind of people who, who support your ministry, friends, donors, anything like that, or are you just on salary somewhere? Oh, absolutely. No, I'm 100% donor supported.

Yeah. So then here, here's, here's my last word of advice that you really pray about this. You and your wife come to agreement that you believe that you're to take this step and then you put out the vision to your donors and you ask them to pray and see if they feel the Lord is in this and would they help with an additional gift. And then you, you look for, for ways to expand your donor base to see if people believe in what you're doing and, and want to stand behind you. You know, our, our folks that serve on the mission field that have graduated from, from our schools over the years, uh, they write to friends, family, we've got a vision to be on the field, to be out in Malaysia or to, to be out in Mexico or to be out in Ukraine, it's going to cost us this much to live and we're going to be very much full time doing this.

And then as the money comes in, they go out. So that's the other way to do it. And then if you and your wife agree, okay, if when we get to this threshold, 50% or 80%, then we take that next step, then you can, you give the opportunity to God to say, okay, I'm calling you to do this and I'm going to back it and I'm going to help or to say, okay, it's just not time. That would be the way I would proceed with these things. I appreciate that. All right. May the Lord guide you, Anthony, and may He use you on the campuses. I appreciate it. 866-34-TRUTH. Let us go over to Mike in central Indiana. Welcome to the line of fire.

Thank you, Dr. Branfield, for taking my call. Sure. I just have two questions. The first one is, where did water baptism come from before John the Baptist?

How did that become an idea or way of doing? And the second is, if you have a group of people around that are Christians and you're praying for someone, do you think that it's important to remove those who don't truly believe in a healing? And I'll get off of here. Thank you. Okay, sure.

Sure thing. So your first question about baptism. So the idea of washing, the idea of being cleansed is just part of our normal life, right? We bathe, we shower, we wash our bodies, right? So it's very natural that in many cultures there is a spiritual significance to this.

You bathe in this river, you wash in this place. We know in the tabernacle that the priest, before they would come in to minister, that you had the basin and they would wash their hands and things like that. Before certain key events, they would cleanse their whole bodies.

Or if someone had touched something, accidentally touched a dead body, so they have to stay out of the camp overnight, and they come back in and they have to be immersed. So ritual immersions were part of ancient Israelite culture, and then it became a wider part of culture, ritual immersion for repentance. So this was a widely practiced custom in the ancient Jewish world. And if you're on one of our tours in Jerusalem, or anybody's tour in Jerusalem, and they're taking you around the old city and where the temple would have been, and they're saying, you see all these here steps down here, and then this little pool here, no water in it now, right? This little basin here, and now steps up the other way. This is where people would go and get ritually immersed, where they could do it by a river or something like that. So ritual immersion, it makes sense in terms of just washing, cleansing in our culture, then having a spiritual significance to it, then ritual immersion as part of ancient Israelite law, then it expands from there, ritual immersion as a sign of repentance, new beginning, washing, cleansing.

So this was a widely known custom, not a new thing that Christians developed, but a widely known Jewish custom that then was practiced by the followers of Jesus. On the other side of the break, I will answer the question about if you're praying in a group for someone's healing, should you exclude those who do not believe in healing or do not believe this person will be healed? We'll answer that on the other side of the break. Take time to call in now. 866-348-7884.

We'll be right back. 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. Thanks so much for joining us on The Line of Fire. You've got questions, we've got answers. It is my real joy to be with you. If you're listening and hear the smile in my voice, it is always there because I absolutely love being on radio with you. We started 2008. Some of the stations we've been on with you ever since then.

Some of you have been listening regularly ever since then. I know you when I see you because we're perfect strangers physically in the natural. I see you walking up to me at a grocery store or an airport or somewhere with this big smile on your face as if you've known me for years. I know what's coming. I listen to you on radio every day.

I could see the smile of a friend from someone that I don't know, but we do know each other. Talk radio, you get to share your heart, share your life. This is your time to call in.

866-348-7884. A question from Mike, I just want to finish answering. What if you're praying for someone that's sick? Maybe it's a life and death situation. You've got 15 people in the room praying, and you know for a fact that three of those people do not believe God heals today. And in fact, they've been very vocal saying nothing's going to happen. This person's not going to be healed.

If there was open, vocal, known opposition, I would ask those people to leave. And they say, well, we just want to see what happens. Hey, listen, if this person's miraculously healed, you'll see the results in front of your own eyes in the next few minutes or the next few hours or days. But that being said, if there are just people in the room and I'm praying, unless I distinctly feel something is wrong, something is getting in the way, I'm not going to poll everyone in the room. Remember, when Jesus goes in to raise Jairus' daughter from the dead, and the people are wailing and he says to everyone, she's not dead, she's sleeping, and they mock him, he has everyone leave except the parents and some disciples.

Otherwise, everybody is out. And he does not want that attitude of mockery and unbelief that's there. So if I don't know who's in the crowd or what's going on, I'm just going to pray. Say, let's ask God together to heal. If I feel as I'm praying that there's clear resistance and something's not right, then I might dig a little deeper and find out, oh, there's some people there that are mocking and absolutely hostile to the idea of healing. Or if they've made their opposition known, I would say, listen, we just want an atmosphere where we're agreeing together as we pray. And we just feel more confidence as we pray to do that. So I'm not going to go on a witch hunt, but if it does come to my attention, then I would say, look, if you're believing with me, let's come together, let's be in agreement as we pray. And if your attitude is very different, hey, I'm not your enemy, but this is not the right place to be right now. That's how I'd approach it. 866-34-TRUTH.

We go to Kyle in North Alabama. Welcome to the Line of Fire. Hey, Dr. Brown, thanks for touching my call. I love the Lord and I appreciate you showing me everything you do.

So I have a question concerning the last day. So I'm going to have the all-male position, the way I see it. And I believe I've seen maybe some of your previous podcasts that you do as well. No, no, I'm historic pre-male. I'm not a dispensationalist and I don't believe in a pre-trib rapture, but I'm historic pre-male, that there will be a literal millennial kingdom on the earth. So I'm not all-male, but pre-male, yeah. Okay.

I was thinking maybe from the book. So then, my question would probably be all different together context. But so, the way I was saying Scripture is the reference to one single, or one single resurrection of the just and the innocent. And then, as in the Scripture we all know, where Paul says that we which are alive and remain will be called up together. So I guess I was kind of having a hard time trying to figure out about the living saved, if that was, if they were all called up to judgment maybe at the same time, or I guess it's Revelation 20, where Satan is loosed for a little season and gathers the nations that deceive.

I didn't know if that was the unsaved. So I was kind of hoping maybe you could talk about some of those. Yeah, sure. So again, I'm going to answer it in a way that's not amillennial. In fact, that's against amillennial. But clearly, clearly there are different resurrections. Revelation 20, which is a major amill passage, and to me it's the passage that refutes amillennialism itself, with all respect to my amillennial friends. Obviously, we don't divide over this. Yeah, no offense.

Right, right. But you have the resurrection of the righteous, and then in the 21st chapter, you then have the resurrection of those that are going to be finally judged and cast into the lake of fire. They are raised up and they appear before the throne, and you've got a clear separation between them. So the resurrection of the righteous is something, the first stages that takes place before the millennial kingdom were caught up to meet the Lord as he descends from heaven, glorified those that are dead in the graves rise up, we descend together with him, he sets up his kingdom on the earth. And during that time, that thousand year period, that's when Satan is bound.

The idea that Satan is bound now to me is completely contrary to the entire New Testament witness that says he's going about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour here and now is anything but bound. And then you have those that would have died during the millennial kingdom. After that, they rise and then the wicked rise for the final judgment. And when the first resurrection is spoken of and the second death won't have power over you, so there is that separation. So one of the reasons I strongly believe in a premal teaching is that Peter writes in Acts 3 that Jesus must remain in heaven until the time of the restoration, the restitution of all things spoken of by the prophets comes to pass. So the prophets spoke of a literal kingdom with Israel and the nations serving God together, and Jesus spoke of the regeneration of all things in Matthew 19, and the apostles would rule over the 12 tribes of Israel, obviously in this millennial kingdom.

So I just look at what the Old Testament prophets prophesied, and it literally has to happen. And it will happen when Satan is bound. And that's why you have a distinction in the resurrections there. That's where there's a first resurrection and a second resurrection. And by all means, what we want is we want to be part of the first resurrection.

That's our ultimate goal, and to then be with him forever. So read it through those eyes, Revelation 19, when Jesus comes publicly, that's the first resurrection, and then after the thousand-year kingdom, then the second resurrection, which includes the resurrection of the wicked for final judgment. So hopefully that's helpful, just as you think it through some more, okay? Yeah, that's, thank you, and so yeah, thanks for the perspective and for taking my call.

Sure thing, you bet. And look, when we're dealing with the book of Revelation, I understand the symbolism. Well, let me say this, I understand it's symbolic, I don't understand all of the symbolism. In other words, I'm not going to pretend to tell you I can give you a definitive exposition of every aspect of Revelation. But there are certain things that are laid out with great clarity, the return of the Lord in the 19th chapter of the millennial kingdom where a thousand years is mentioned, what, five times? In the 20th chapter, and in the new heavens and the new earth, eternal age, chapters 21 and 22. I see all those as still future.

I understand the application of the book of Revelation to first-century believers and many things it speaks of have special pertinence for them, but the end, the ultimate fulfillment, is still in the future. All right, let's go over to Brian in Springfield, Virginia. Thanks for calling the line of fire. Hey, Mike, how you doing? This is your longtime follower in the days when you were in Bethesda under ICN. I used to come up to your office there and buy your tapes and so forth, so it's a joy to speak to you again. Thank you.

So, great. I have a two-part question for you regarding God's name. I know, you know, in what mention it could be Yahweh or it's Jehovah.

For decades, I've personally leaned towards Jehovah simply because of the phonic patterns like Yehoshua, Yehoshuah, Yehoshaphat, Yehoshadak, et cetera. But I know that, have you, based on your scholarship in the languages, have you actually, my understanding is the Leningrad Codex actually has the vowel points in there that point to Yehova in the Alepio context, Aleppo. Have you actually had the opportunity to look at the Leningrad Codex regarding those vowel points? No, no, the vowel, of course the vowel points are there, but it points to the opposite because the name was considered too sacred for Jews to pronounce, so the fact that it has vowel points that would be pronounced Yehova is telling you don't say it like that. It's the wrong vowel points.

They don't belong there. In other words, of course they're there. In fact, if I just pull up on my computer here, I've got facsimiles of the Leningrad Codex and I've got Bibles based on the Aleppo Codex and the reading. So, no one is disputing that you have thousands of Masoretic manuscripts that have those vowel points, but the vowel points are there because this is what's called the Kree Perpetuum. This is something saying when you see this word, don't read it as written, read it differently. Okay.

Right, right. So everyone that knows Hebrew knows that the very thing they're not going to put is the vowels for a name that was universally considered too sacred to pronounce. Now, Nehemiah Gordon is literate. He's a Hebrew scholar. He argues for a Yehova pronunciation, so he's literate.

He's a scholar. He's in a tiny, tiny, tiny minority, and I believe for good reason, and ultimately there are phonetic patterns that would argue against a Yehova reading and other things, even indications of the Masoretes when you have certain, it's a technical thing, but grammatically certain words next to each other, vowels next to each other, things change a certain way. But I have no reason to question the most likely theory in terms of Yahweh being the original pronunciation and especially different with Nehemiah Gordon, that the vav was not originally pronounced as a w. We cannot be absolutely certain though, and if you're listening to someone giving arguments that's popular and Nehemiah Gordon at least is giving good literate arguments, I just believe he's wrong on that. But yeah, the fact that the vocalization is there tells you the exact opposite because they would not put the vowels that they don't want you to say when the name in Jewish tradition was universally considered too sacred to pronounce.

The last thing they're going to do is put those actual vowels there. We'll be right back. We'll get your other question out of the set of the break. 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 on The Line of Fire. If you want to get just a short statement about the name Yahweh versus Jehovah, just go to my website, AskDrBrown.org, just type in Yahweh and you should get it coming up pretty quickly. All right, so Brian, your other question, what was that, sir? Yes, you've already answered a portion of it, but I guess if I could have more detail. What's the evidence that you have leaning towards Yahweh and the pronunciation?

Why do you lean more towards that way? Right, so there's a lot of evidence. There are transcriptions or transliterations of the pronunciation that you have, for example, in Greek, in different manuscripts when different ones are talking about it, either leaders talking about the name or translations where it's coming up, that's one thing. You have forms, for example, names like Eliyahu, so my God is Yahweh, where you have what would be called an apocapated or shortened form where Yahweh just pushes back a syllable and then you end up with Yahu at the end. The shorter form of the name Yah would be something else, to me, very difficult to explain if it was originally Yahó sound, the fact that the meaning would have been he who causes things to be or brings things into existence, which then works well with I am who I am with the wordplay that is there.

Along with that, you have in other Semitic languages Amorite and things like that, parallels, verbal parallels that would push in this direction. So there's actually, it's cumulative, it's a good amount of evidence, you just can't be a hundred percent sure. I would say you could be virtually a hundred percent sure it wasn't Yehova, with all respect to those who argue for it, but you could be very sure, just not a hundred percent about the pronunciation Yahweh. And Brian, let me say this last thing. What's interesting to me, though, is that to this moment, God's name is shrouded in mystery, that we can't even agree on the pronunciation, but we can agree on who he is.

And there's something about that, that feels right to me in terms of the mystery of just trying to put everything in a little box. But hey, thank you for the call. I appreciate it. By the way, for years, everyone knew me as Mike Brown. And then at a certain point, everybody started to know me as Dr. Brown.

And I can sometimes tell at what point people got to know me, whether it was in the Mike days or the Dr. Brown days, but same person here. Brian, nice to hear from you. 866-34-TRUTH. Let's go over to Jared in Anchorage, Alaska. Welcome to the line of fire. Hey, Dr. Brown, thanks for having me.

Sure. Real quick, I just really love your ministry. All glory to God. Your testimony, it really helped me with mine, and it helped me through a crisis of faith and learning how to grow as a Christian. I'll praise the God for that. Well, that's so good to hear, thank God.

I really appreciate that. Real quick, since the last year, I kind of got out of the crisis of faith and went to actually starting, going from serving two Masters to actually starting to want to desire God and actually becoming an actual Christian here. And the church I was kind of at is one where my in-laws go to, and they've got deep roots there. My problem is, as I've been growing in knowledge of all the theology and stuff, listening to your stuff, Dr. Michael Heiser and the like, I've just kind of noticed that a lot of the preaching at my current church is really sloppy, and at times blatantly incorrect. And I'm just trying to see, is there a way... this is a problem that I'm seeing, and I want to fix it, but I'm not an appointed elder of this church. In fact, I'm actually still pretty new there. And I just kind of wanted to ask, do you have the same thing when you're going to your first church where the teaching kind of... you started to notice it wasn't... that's when you noticed you should probably move on.

Yeah, so just general principle, Jared. First, I'm glad that you're getting strengthened in your faith again, and that's so positive. So if the church, in terms of majoring on the majors, was sound and healthy, right? In other words, the overall points being made were good, the overall application of the sermon was good, the church was seeking to be a great commissioned church when the lost make disciples, and was building people up in the body. If that was the case, but the method of preaching was somewhat sloppy, in other words, the way the pastor got to his conclusion, or the fact that he would butcher the Greek or the Hebrew as he's trying to get somewhere, but the overall message was biblically sound, the overall application was biblically sound, then I'd just say, okay, whatever, it's a little frustrating, you know, the way he does certain things, but that must be the way he got trained.

I could live with that. If what's being put forward in terms of conclusions, or emphases, or alleged truths were clearly not biblical, or were clearly painting outside the lines, I wouldn't be able to stay. And it's not for you to change the church, because God didn't make you the leader of the church, and if a congregant just writes to the pastor and says, you know what, could you change your preaching style, that's not going to happen, you know? So, like I said, you have to evaluate, is it, look, I've sat in sermons and services for decades, where the person says the Hebrew says this, and it doesn't.

The Greek means this, and it doesn't. And they'll interpret the verse and get it wrong, but the overall message was a great message. The overall truth was a very sound truth.

The overall use of scripture was good, but they made some misstatements along the way on secondary issues. I live with that. And in fact, it happens all the time.

If you have enough scholarship, it's going to happen all the time. For a while, I just got proud and critical and started judging people, and here they're being blessed, and I'm sitting there stewing, and I'm thinking, okay, this is not right. So what you want to do is, again, I don't know the church that you're in, I don't know how many other congregations there are where you are, but if the overall church is healthy, if overall doctrine is sound, if overall they are active and doing the Lord's work, and it's a place where you can receive ministry, great, the fact that they may not know some of the Near Eastern background Dr. Heiser is bringing or may not have the best expository method, that's going to be secondary. But if what's being put forward is sloppy overall, doctrinally sloppy, sloppy in application, then that's not the place for you. There'd be other, better places. But remember, the key thing is God wants you to be growing spiritually based on truth, and you want to major on the majors.

Make the main thing the main thing, and secondary and tertiary issues keep them in the right perspective. May the Lord guide you, and thank you for the call. All right, let's go over to Ann in Huntressfield, North Carolina.

Welcome to the line of fire. Yeah, Huntressfield, North Carolina, and I'm one of your friends from the Whole Foods grocery store when you gave me that great advice that bumped into you and said I was just wanting to talk to you, and you gave me the best advice in terms of disagreeing, in terms of sometimes the doctrine you said, just be yourself. Wonderful. Great three words. Oh, wonderful. Yeah.

It was just on my screen wrong, but yeah, the Huntressville Whole Foods, in fact. Yeah. All right, maybe we'll run into each other again because I'm there pretty frequently. Yeah.

Such a riot. Anyway, because I've been wanting to talk to you, but couldn't with this question. Anyway, this is a very fast, because I know we're getting close to the end of the show. And I know this sounds ridiculous, but I had talked to another radio apologist, you know, the Bible apologist, who was saying Jesus was sprinkled by John, not under the water, and he was making it very significant.

And then I asked him, I said, how can, in Matthew 3, 15 and 16, it said when he had been baptized, he just came up immediately from the water. I mean, 100,000. Of course.

No, there would be no reason for sprinkling. Well, that's it. He tried to make it very symbolic. No, no, no.

And here's what I love. You didn't mention who it was, so I can just give a really blunt answer without worrying about, and folks, that's a good pattern to follow. Ask me the general question without saying, you said it this way, I don't have to worry about it, I want to embarrass this one or offend it.

That's why I didn't. Right, right. And I'll still give you the truthful answer, but I can just do it more simply and bluntly.

Okay. So the practice of immersion in that day in the Jewish world was absolutely going under the water. Now, it was not, from our knowledge, the way that we're used to doing it, where you push the person back and they stand up, but rather you would self immerse.

Someone would be there with you and you would squat down and go under the water and come up. That's the way it was done. But it was absolutely it was it was known as immersion. It was ritual immersion and dipping in. Right. Right. Well, mikvah is the gathering of water.

That's all that means. But tfilah, which would be the Hebrew equivalent of baptism, is a dipping in the water. So you would go down and you would come up.

So no, sprinkling is something that's later. It's mentioned in the dakkei in the early church, so maybe early second century, you know, if you didn't have a body of water to do it in or something. But especially in the River Jordan, you know, and you have endless numbers of mikvahs that were available. And we know again how it was practiced. It was ritual immersion. So I have no idea why they would make that a point of emphasis. You know, if they if they wanted to say in certain situations where you couldn't immerse, you could be sprinkling. But this was not even even if that existed at that time, a separate question. But there's no reason for it because you're in the River Jordan. Yes. So absolutely.

Your point was that he came out of the water because he went under the water. You call the right apologist on this one. All right, friends, out of time. Make sure you visit the website over the weekend. Ask Dr. Brown dot org. A.S.K. D.R. Brown dot org. Let us know how we can help and serve you.