Welcome friends to the Line of Fire broadcast. Michael Brown continuing our series on the end times. We're going to talk about Israel. We're going to talk about what's happening in the world today.
We're going to talk about can we set dates. All this we've been covering so many biblical issues we want to be as relevant as we can. One of the great points we've made, one of the strongest points we've made is our emphasis should be on the what more than the when.
What happens when he returns and what happens to us and less focused on the when and the details. So we're going to give you some strong warnings about that today. But first, remember friends, our purpose on the air is not to be controversial.
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We'll put you on our welcome tour and we will get you our monthly frontline newsletter. It is very, very dangerous and unhelpful to set dates for the return of Jesus. It is unhelpful.
It is unhealthy. It is unbiblical. Yes, Jesus says no one knows the day or the hour. You can say, but we can know the year. Maybe not the day or the hour, but we can know the year.
Okay, I do believe the closer we get to the return of Jesus, the clearer it will be that the signs are here, that the shaking is here, that it won't be ambiguous. Do you have a debate as to whether you're having a thunderstorm or not? It's not raining. I don't think it's raining. I discern it's raining.
Well, according to scriptures, I see. No, no, it's either raining or it's not raining. It's either thundering and there's rain pouring down or not, right? When it's 90 degrees outside, not a cloud in sight, blazing sun, you're not debating. Is it a sunny day? I don't perceive sun as I'm studying scripture. No, no, it's a sunny day. You know it.
You know it. Well, there are things that are going to be so intense, so worldwide, shaking of such massive upheaval, massive consequence, that there's not going to be any denying that the end is near for those whose eyes are open, for those who are walking in the light. Like 1 Thessalonians 5, we're not children of the night, therefore that day will not overtake us like a thief because we're walking as children of the day. We are sober. We are alert.
We are awake. That's the New Testament mentality. So my understanding is, as we get closer and closer to the end, it will be more and more undeniable that we are at the end, that the return of Jesus is getting very, very near. No one knows the day or the hour, but we will know as we are near. That has not stopped people from setting dates and speculating. We have days listed in the book of Daniel in the 12th chapter, and maybe that's speaking to it, and you get the days and the months in the book of Revelation, and maybe there's something to it. There's a Bible code that's been hidden that's now been revealed.
Caution, caution, caution. I'm looking at a website here, and the website is titled Predicted Dates of the Second Coming of Jesus Through History by Julian Springs, MA. I'm not familiar with Julian Springs at all.
I can't say anything positive or negative just because I'm not familiar with Julian Springs, but it's a very nice compilation here. So AD 180s, the Montanus, or New Prophecy, and their expectation of seeing Jesus, a famous quote from 179, Maximilian, one of their prophets, stated, This is 179. This was clear. It's over.
It's over. 179, friends. How ancient is that? AD 180s, Bishop in Pontus, around the town of Montanus at least two bishops, one in Pontus, one in Syria, were expecting the early return of Christ. One bishop in Pontus declared that the last judgment would come in two years, and those who believe him ceased to cultivate their fields and rid themselves of houses and goods. The bishop in Syria led his flock into the wilderness to meet Christ.
And he's got references, historical books and references for each of the points that he's making here. He's got Commodianus in AD 250 and other speculation. Both Hippolytus and Augustine believed in the cosmic week Jesus had come in the middle of the sixth millennium, so they expected the end in AD 500. There are various legends about events leading up to the year 1000. Some believe that there was teaching that Jesus is coming in the year 1000.
This is when everything is going to culminate. AD 1147, Gerard of Pahide. Gerard taught that the thousand year reign of Christ began when the emperor Constantine came to power. From that he predicted that in 1147 Satan would be released from bondage and would conquer the church. I'm not sure how he got from Constantine to 1147, which is 800 years rather than 1000. He's got date after date, 1260, Joachim of Fiore. He was from Calabria in Italy, became the abbot of the Cisterian abbey. He developed into a Bible teacher, he wrote a number of books including the book of the harmony of the new and old testament and on and on. And he predicted the return of Jesus 1260 and others, 1420, 1490s, 1533s, date after date after date.
Now some of these are not as fixed as others, but are you seeing a pattern? The year 1666, many combined the thousand year millennium with 666 Mark of the Beast to arrive at the date 1666. That was the year of the plague followed by the great fire of London. The Quaker George Fox wrote that in 1966 every thunderstorm aroused end time expectations.
That's what George Fox is saying, there's a thunderstorm, this is it, it's over, it's over with every thunderstorm. And on and on, I mean there's date after date after date, 1789 with the French Revolution, 1844, Adventist, the Millerites, this is when they were predicting the return of Jesus. Jehovah's Witnesses, first 1874 and then other dates. And then of course, the one that was famous decades ago, 88 reasons why Jesus is coming in 1988, Edgar Wisnant. And they gave away tens of thousands of copies and sold tens of thousands of copies.
Ultimately hundreds of thousands of copies distributed. This was it, this was the end. I remember churches that did quote rapture practice where, I mean it was tongue in cheek, but they would jump up and down to get ready for the rapture. And I read of Christians who fell into heavy debt because hey, Jesus is coming, he's coming September 12th, I knew the date, he's coming September 12th, 1988, that's when it's going to happen.
So it doesn't matter if you're in debt because you're just going to leave your debt to the Antichrist. Do you realize the amount of spiritual devastation that brought? Do you realize how many people lost their faith over that? How many people stopped believing in God after that? Rather than thinking Edgar Wisnant was wrong, they just thought this whole thing was wrong because it was so real to them, it was so clear and his arguments were so persuasive. And yes, he did put out a new book the next year, 89 reasons why Jesus was coming in 1989, and then for several years after we give an update, well it's the next year and the next year and then of course fades into oblivion, sadly enough. And then Harold Camping, numerous dates that he had, but 1994, that's it. He was president of Family Radio USA, he predicted the world would end September 1994.
And then that failed, he had other books written and then finally it didn't happen. I remember running into people in the streets of New York City and they're preaching this and they're telling me this. And they've got all this stuff worked out. I'm thinking, you poor souls. Camping could not have been more wrong, this whole Bible teaching method is complete error.
What are you talking about? But they were sincere. I mean it seemed like good people, sincere. And then Camping deeply distressed when his views finally did not come to pass and everything did not unfold, deeply distressed. And then of course dies, old man lost in terms of his false teaching of the end.
There is no purpose to it, there is no benefit to it. In fact, I saw some posts on my ex-account, formerly Twitter, and I thought, who in the world is this guy? What is this about? So before blocking the person, I took a picture of his bio, generic messianic figure. I'm the wizard that's going to wrestle and defeat Amira Antichrist on September 29, 2030 like a thief in the night.
Now, the whole thing could just be spoofed, silly, making fun of those who set end time dates, but it's that whole thing. We got it all figured out. We got it worked out. We discovered the secret.
Forget about it. There's no secret. There's no secret. What God said is plain and clear. And when it unfolds, if we're walking with the Lord, we'll all see it. We'll all know it.
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So date setting is not only unhelpful, it is unhealthy. I mentioned in a previous broadcast that in 2023 I started seeing all these posts and people directing me to a video. Dr. Brown, you need to see this.
Dr. Brown, please look at this. And the video had been posted five years earlier. It had millions of views on YouTube. There was a book that accompanied it. The video was over an hour long and it purported to open up the opening word of Genesis in Hebrew, bereshit. So those letters, beit, resh, aleph, shen, yud, tov, the words there of bereshit. And to show how these opening letters not only had hidden pictographic meanings, which I knew as a Hebrew scholar was false. That even though the original letters came from pictures, it's the same with the English alphabet. The A, B, C, D. That goes back to the same early alphabet that was used by the early Hebrew speakers that goes back to pictures. So our original A goes back to a picture. Our original B goes back to a picture. But they have no more pictographic meanings.
Once they become an alphabet, they have no more pictographic meanings. I knew that for a fact. But not only that, friends, it claimed that these hidden pictographic meanings, so that's false, not only had a spiritual meaning about redemption, but if you dug in deep enough, you would find that they laid out the exact year, or the terminal year, of the return of Jesus.
That he would come by 2018, and specifically by September. I watched the beginning of it, I watched the end of it. There was no reason to watch all of it, because it was completely bogus out of the gate. If someone wants to tell you that George Washington and Abraham Lincoln were best friends, and that they also used to hang out with Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama, and here's some of their conversations, well you don't need to listen to the conversations to know the whole thing's false. The whole thing is completely bogus.
So this was just as bogus, in fact, even more bogus, even more ridiculous. So I watched the beginning, and I watched the end. And then I did a video, and I wrote an article. And I said, here's what you do. Archive my article, archive my video, and then archive this gentleman's video and his book. And let's see which one ages better, because I guarantee you that Jesus is not coming by the end of 2023.
I guarantee it. So how could you be so arrogant? I wasn't being arrogant. The Bible's laid certain things out, those things have not yet come to pass. There are things that remain to come to pass before the Lord's return, therefore it was clear and simple to me, aside from the fact the whole thing was bogus. Whose article, whose video, aged better?
Yeah, over here, the guy whose last name is Brown. Because I'm so smart? No, because the Bible's so simple, and it's so plain, and it's so clear, and this guy was engaging in spiritual fantasy. It does not help at all. The speculation does not help. Why does God give us prophecy? What's the purpose of it? Is it for the purpose of speculation? Is it for the purpose of, ooh, wow, isn't that something? Is it to titillate our interests?
No. It is to prepare us. It is to help us to be ready. And it is to show us that God controls the future. God controls the world. So when God tells us that he's going to scatter the Jewish people from the land, that we'll be disciplined for our disobedience, but not fully destroyed, and that in the latter times he will bring us back to the land in unbelief, and then pour out cleansing water on us.
When he says it in advance, it's going to happen. And then we see it unfold through history. We say, wow, that's God.
He keeps his word. The God of the Bible is the God of history. The God of the Bible is the one true God.
So when he prepares the way for the coming of the Messiah, and the people don't see it, they don't recognize it, they don't understand about his suffering and his death and his resurrection, now after he suffers and dies and rises, he points them back. Yeshua points his disciples back to those scriptures, points them back to the Bible and says, look, look, it's happened just as I said. It's happened as is written.
I said it would happen because it is written. You see it's all there. It's like, ah, it's all there.
Wow. And you see the reality of the promises and you know the rest is going to happen because the first part happened. When Agabus prophesies in Acts 11 about a coming famine, was it just so that they could say, wow, Agabus is amazing, he's so accurate? No, it's so that they could say, well, if a famine is coming, that means the believers in Jerusalem are going to go through a hard time, we better take up a collection for them.
It was practical. There was a reason for it. When Jesus tells Peter in Luke 22 that Satan has desired to sift him, but he's prayed for him that his strength won't fail and when he turns back, strengthen the brothers, well, that's now for Peter to know, okay, when you go through that hard time and when you deny the Lord, don't lose all hope because Satan wanted to destroy you and it's only my prayers that got you through, even though you failed, my prayers have still sustained you. So now turn back and now strengthen the brothers. All right, so prophecy is given us for reasons, friends. So we understand because of prophecy that the regathering of the Jewish people back to the land is of great significance. Therefore, this tremendous spiritual battle over there, tremendous spiritual battle, I'm going to open this up more, the spiritual battle over Israel and why we need to understand this, why this is spiritually relevant for us today.
We understand the world controversy over Jerusalem. This is the city to which Jesus is returning and we understand that before he returns, there will be wars. There will be rumors of wars. There will be earthquakes.
There will be famine. These things will be happening. The end is not yet. And Jesus has told us there will be tribulation. There will be testing. There will be upheaval. But he says, be encouraged, be of good heart.
I've overcome the world. He's with us in the midst of the tribulation and testing. But the purpose of prophecy, friends, is not so we can figure out the secret and set the date and then, OK, you set the date and then what? Now you think Jesus is coming in a year.
So does that mean you take your foot off the gas? Well, Jesus is coming in a year. So there's no reason to participate in the local school board elections because Jesus is coming. And if we bring on the school board, we'll only be on for a few days or a few months and then we're out of here. Or the reason to vote the presidential elections because, hey, he's going to be here by the end of that year and we're out of here.
What does it really matter? Or no reason to work on making disciples and teaching and training. Just get everybody saved, saved, saved, saved, saved because Jesus is going to be here by the end of the year. Or financial planning or plans for kids or grandkids. There's no reason to do any of that because we have the years.
It doesn't do any good anyway. And aside from the fact that that when people set dates, every single one who set a date that's already happened. So every date before the day in which you're listening to this radio broadcast.
All right. Every date leading up to then that has been set has been wrong, wrong, wrong. One hundred times out of one hundred.
Yes, one hundred times out of one hundred. So forget about it. Forget about the date setting. It's unhealthy. It's unhelpful. It's unbiblical. God does not give us sufficient information in his word by which we can set the year of his return or predict the year of his return. Moreover, those claiming to have discovered a secret in the Bible or received a secret revelation or a special insight or unfolded a mystery.
The Hebrew and the Greek are deceived and they are deceiving others. I say that with out any hesitation whatsoever. And I say these things, friends, not to take away your excitement, but to save you from error, to save you from pain, to save you from grief and to say, I live excited because Jesus is Lord. I live excited because I have another day to serve God. I live excited because the Holy Spirit lives in me. I live excited because we have the living, we have the word of God, the treasure of scripture. I live excited because every day I can make an impact for Jesus. I live excited because the Holy Spirit is moving on the earth in power. I live excited because one day we'll be with him forever. That's enough. I don't need dates.
I don't need years. The reality of who God is and our service of him is more than enough. This is Dr. Michael Brown. Thanks so much for tuning in. Just a reminder that we are listener supported. If we have been a blessing to you, if you're being enriched in the word, in prayer, in your own walk with God through this broadcast, then stand with us so that we can reach many, many more and bless many, many more. Together, friends, we're making a difference. So go to thelineoffire.org, thelineoffire.org, and click donate.
