Sobering News from India, and Evaluating Bible Translations (The King James Version)

You'll be shocked to hear what's happening in India today. Persecution of Christians. We'll hear firsthand from my friend Yesu Padam. It's time for the line of fire with your host, activist, author, international speaker, and theologian, Dr. Michael Brown, your voice of moral, cultural, and spiritual revolution.

Michael Brown is the director of the Coalition of Conscience and President of Fire School of Ministry. Get into the line of fire now by calling 866-34-TRUTH. That's 866-34-TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown.

Do you remember in Acts, the ninth chapter, when Saul of Tarsus encountered the risen Savior, the risen Jesus? And Jesus said to him, Saul, Saul, how long will you persecute me? The Puritan author Thomas Watson said the body being hit or hurt, the head cried out. What happens to God's people in this world is of great concern to our Lord and should be of concern to us. We are part of the same body.

And in the midst of persecution and pressure, God is always moving. This is Michael Brown. Welcome to the line of fire. I'm sitting in the studio with two of my dearest friends in the world, Yesu Padam and Monica, from India. Known Yesupada now since 1992 and been to India basically every year the last 24 going on 25 years.

Knew Monica when she was serving in the ministry there before they were husband and wife and had the amazing family that they have.

So, Yesupada, Monica, great to have you back in the studio here. Yeah, thank you. It's great to be with you. Great to be with you. All right, so.

Yesupadam, from the time that we first met, 1992 until today, your ministry has grown dramatically. If we just take a moment... To talk about church planting and tribal regions. What have you seen happen through your ministry in these last 25 years? Man, this is amazing things happening.

And I have to tell you before I share that, that I really felt like Jew and Gentile relationship is a Um is is the only way that God can accomplish his purposes uh through the church.

So God bringing you into our lives, we have seen tremendous blessings of God on the ministry. Even you just coming and putting your foot there, not only just teaching and encouraging us, but you were. the relationship Establishing church on earth.

So, for the last 25 years, you know, the Lord has helped us to plant over 7,000 churches in the areas where the gospel has never been preached before.

Some of those tribes are still naked and they don't have a Bible to their own dialects, but people get saved because of the gospel. And then we trained over 2,000 church planters from the same tribal reasons where each one has like three to five churches. And then the Lord blessing not only that the different aspects of the ministry, you know, we started children homes like where we took care of over 4,000 children so far. They come and live with us and we provide them food, accommodation, education. We started two Christian schools in India.

One of them has 700 students. And then, you know, working with the disabled, poorly affected, disabled young girls. Most of them will be begging on the street. But we provide them training in computers, tailoring, and printing press for 12 months. We give them a government certificate and they get jobs in the government and private and starting their own businesses.

And we started training nurses. We started a nursing school. This is a three and a half years program recognized by the government of India. Once they are trained with us, they can go anywhere.

Some of our children in our children's homes are trained nurses now. And then we have the hospital. We we built a twenty-five bedded hospital and we have four children homes in different areas and this is amazing to see the expansions. And then not only in India, we started work in Madagascar and Sierra Leone and Germany, Canada. And this is amazing to see what the Lord is doing.

And I believe it's because of our relationship, Mike. Yeah, friends, seeing is believing. And when you actually go to India and see firsthand the work and then see what's happening in Germany, these other countries, it's mind-boggling. It's exactly what the gospel is supposed to be and do. We'll be right back.

Call a friend. Tell him to tune in. It's the line of fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Get into the line of fire now by calling 866-34TRUTH.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Thanks friends for being part of a special interview today as I sit with my friends Yesu Pottam and Monica. From India in the States for a little while and then heading back to India. Yes, Upanam, something.

fascinates me in what you said. And I remember early on in our times in India, you talked about the importance of Jew and Gentile working together. And basically, that's been my life in the body. I got saved in a largely Gentile setting, and most of the church around the world is not Jewish.

So that's the setting I'm in all the time. And yet, you felt. Growing up in India, right, having not been to Israel at that point. You felt that there was something sacred in God's sight about this, something important, because of which he poured out special blessing. Where did you get that idea from?

Well, I got it from Genesis chapter 12, that God said to Abraham, I will bless you. And I will bless them that bless you on earth. The next thing I don't want to say about uh that I Thinking about the blessing, it all started from Abraham.

So I would really believe that from the beginning, if you bless Israel, God will bless us. And we being a part of that generation, And that I didn't know much Bible then, but that was very clear to me that if we want to be blessed, we must bless Israel and praying for Israel and the peace in Jerusalem. And then, amazingly, when I was going through that, the Lord brought you into my life and kept us. And many people, the first Jewish man I ever met. In Virginia Beach, on my first visit to America, I spent two or three hours with him.

I had a privilege of leading him to the Lord. Really? Howard Jeff Gold. No, I still remember him. I don't know where he is now.

But amazing the way I felt it. Like that was a wonderful experience for me that I could sit with this man and talk to him about Jesus, share my testimony. How real is Jesus? It's not just a religion. Jesus is real.

The encounter I had with Jesus and I shared with him, I said, Jesus is real. And he's a Jewish man. And he died on the cross and shed his blood on the cross. When I told him, I saw the blood drops coming down. I saw tears rolling down from his eyes.

And that was an amazing experience to me. Since then, the Lord brought so many people into my life. And that's how I know the only way that we, I, being a Gentile, can be blessed. in relationship with the Jewish government. Amazing.

Just so the first Jewish person you met, you led to Jesus. Just amazing. And and when when you started preaching, getting a burden for the lost in your own country injury, you you were in a in a place called Tuni. And you found out that people there didn't even know who Jesus was. What happened with that?

Well, I went there to the village and I started talking to them about the gospel and Jesus Christ, what Christ has done for us, and they didn't know what it was. And then uh Someone's name or the name of a village or did when you asked them about Jesus? They they are I started talking to them about Jesus, but for them, Jesus is a white God, white people's God. And they always thought it's an American religion, American God.

So I started trying to explain them that Jesus is not from America, he's not a white man, he's from Asia, Middle East. And I didn't realize that I was making them mad at that time. They were angry. They said, if you continue to talk, we'll beat you. We hear that number of times, it doesn't happen every time.

I t totally ignored their warning, started sharing, explaining who Jesus was. Then they saw them picking up the rocks and then immediately they started throwing on that one hit on my right uh forehead and right side hand and then it started hurting, then I started touching my head and I saw the blood coming down and uh that was it blessed me. It blessed me just to see my blood. I have seen the blood of many people in gangs, but this time this is my blood for my Jesus who gave all his blood for me. That thought blessed me, and there was a visible smile on my face.

I showed them the blood. I said, I still love you because Jesus loves you. Amazing thing was in two, three months, and the Lord revealed himself to them. And a group of men came to me and they said, Do you remember us? I said, Who are you?

And they said, We are the people that hit you with the rocks. And they said, We want you to come back and build a church. We all accepted the Lord. We are all Christians now. And amazingly, you were there in that city and had dinner at the home of one of the elders, the man that had stoned you years early.

Friends, this is why we're as close as we are. I mean, this is the reality of the gospel.

So, Monica, you shared your story before. On the air with us from Canada, German background, felt a burden for India and a calling for India. God calls you to India, calls you and Yesupadam to be married, now have a family with two wonderful teenage kids. You've been an integral part of the ministry for many years, but working especially with the women there. Obviously, they could tell us about what you've done that's been a help to them and a blessing to them.

What can you tell me about these women, mainly wives, moms with kids, so not superstars and things like that? What has impressed you most about them? The women of India When they become saved, their heart immediately is to see their family saved, to see their community saved, and they're so prayerful. That's the main work of the women of India, is they pray so much. They get up so early in the morning, three, four, five in the morning, spend hours or hours in prayer and just crying out.

We know God hears our prayers. It's in Scripture, it talks so much about women praying, but also For many years we went to village to village with the gospel, the women in our ministry. And many women do that. They walk on the streets singing and then go door to door sharing the gospel. And every village we went to when we went, there were huts.

And now there are nice homes, there's electricity, there's streets. God just transformed the villages. And we saw many women get saved during our time of evangelism.

So the women there just are so faithful to their calling to their homes, but also to prayer. And they just love the Lord. You're also saying, though, that as the gospel went into these completely impoverished Villages that, as a result of people coming to faith and living differently, then they just started to have basic life provisions and not dying from as many health-related things as you just had better water and things, just basic things like that. We're not talking about getting rich, we're talking about just needs met, not starving to death. And so, even on a practical level, you've seen the impact of the gospel.

Yeah, I've seen India transformed by the gospel. Amazing. Our area, our state of Andhra Pradesh, just transformed with the gospel. Every village we went to preached the gospel, built churches. Then God came through the government actually, brought the blessings physically to the villages.

And I've seen them change. And that's what God does. That's what the gospel does. Amazing. Now, Yesupan, you've seen this not just in India, but you've seen it in European countries like Germany.

You've seen it in African nations like Madagascar. We've just got two and a half minutes before the break, but give us an overview of what's happened in Madagascar as one of your spiritual sons, a Korean young man, is over there ministering. And Cho and Deborah went there five years ago and they called me and said, You need to come here. I'm like, Madagascar is not on my radar, you know, but they said and we went there, it broke my heart to see the fourth largest island in the world with twenty two million people, six poorest country. I saw the children sleeping under the trees, so many single mothers.

It broke my heart. That's that's where I second time I went there, I took twenty two people with me from America, Canada, and Australia and India. And when we went there, we s we did the crusades there, open crusades and pastors' conferences and amazing results, like a hundreds and hundreds of people giving their hearts to the Lord. In four years by God's grace, we planted 12 schools. We started 12 schools for the children.

And we give them lunch every day. And we started doing giving lunch at the streets every day for at least 100 people, seven days a week. And then we planted churches. I went to a prison with 1,000 inmates. They let me go with all our friends, 22 people, and we preached the gospel.

And I asked them at the end of it, how many of you want to accept Jesus? 800 people raised their hands. And we had a privilege of distributing Bibles to each one of them. Then the prison authorities came to us immediately there, would you like to build a church here? I said, Sure.

In three months, by God's grace, we built a church in the prison, the most beautiful building in a dirty prison there. And every day the prisoners go there and worship. And we started doing medical camps there and, you know, medical, also providing different things. I couldn't even keep up with what is happening. Joe and Deborah, they're doing a great job.

We trained local people, and the local people are doing all the work. It's like an explosion amid the gospel explosion, what the Lord is doing there. Amazing. So, same God, same gospel. Same results, not just in India, Madagascar.

We come back, let's talk about what's happening in Germany, of all places, and then some...

Some sobering news as India needs prayer in the midst of a rising tide of persecution. We'll be right back. God changed the world. 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, friends, for being with us today on the line of fire 866-34TRUTH number to call. By the way, we've got some very, very important new videos and very important new articles. Online now.

Go to ask Dr. Brown, ASKDRBrown.org. A very moving call came in last week from a woman, Christian woman, working in Planned Parenthood under deep conviction of the Spirit and knowing she had to leave there.

Some recent articles I've written on political issues and biblical issues. Lots of great material. Check out Ask Dr. Brown, ASKDRBrown.org to catch up with us. All right.

It it's easy to think Well Certain things work in India. Euro Africa. You know, people aren't as educated and they'll believe anything. You could put a tree in front of them and tell them this is God, and they'll worship the tree. But I mean, where people are educated, where people have better theological backgrounds, this won't work.

Well, the gospel works anywhere. Right. God calls you years back, Ace of Pottam, to start ministering in Germany. Your wife Monica from Canada, but with German lineage, German background. And Canada's different than India.

Germany's even more different. Very different. Monica, how would you just in a nutshell? Summarize the differences between Germany and India: the mentalities, the lifestyle. Wow.

Well, as far as the East is from the West, that's how different they are from each other. Even Canada is everything is different. There's nothing that's the same really. And uh, yeah, it it's not easy when you're going into a western country and they're uh really more atheist and not looking for God, whereas in India everyone is searching for God, so it is easier to to show them the way to their real true God, but in Germany much more closed and, you know, they have everything they need, so they They don't need God really.

So it's been hard to break through. And then even just the mindset of discipline and on time and very analytical. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was preaching one time at a pastor's convention. These are Pentecostal pastors, so believing the things of the Spirit, but still very analytical and so on.

And I was teaching a message on holiness. At a national pastor's convention, and afterwards, a couple of guys came up to me and said, You're using your English Bible has the same word for holiness here and here, but they're two different words in the Greek. And if you'll study it in the Greek, you'll see that your message doesn't work.

So, of course, I knew I was right.

So, the next time up there, I got up, I said, Let's look at the Greek and smash there. But, you know, only in Germany kind of thing is that going to happen. And if the service in Germany is going to start at 7, it starts at 7. Service in India is going to start at 7. If I'm there by 9, I'm all right for the preaching.

I mean, just lots of things different. You were determined in Yesupatum, you were going to show them. that same gospel, same faith produces the same results.

So you started feeding homeless people at a train station, the types that most people would even bother with. What's happened to the homeless ministry? You're still doing that with the church there regularly going out on Saturdays, but what's happened beyond that?

Well, as you said, gospel is the same everywhere. Gospel is the power of God unto salvation. When I went there first time, I saw the a a man on a wheelchair. His maybe his wife. pushing him And I felt like I need to go and talk to him about Jesus.

I have my German friend who invited me with me. And I talked to him. I said, Can I go talk to him? He said, No, you can't do that in Germany. I said, I need to do that.

I really feel it is God. I really dragged him with me and went to this man, stood before the wheelchair, stopped the wheelchair in the middle of the road. And I said, I am from India, Pastor from India. God sent me here, and I started sharing the gospel with him. He looked at me, listened to me for some time.

He said, You are a bad man. You need Jesus. I don't need Jesus. I not only heard his voice, but I saw the hurt. I saw the pain.

I saw the anger. I went back and I started praying for him. The evening, the Lord showed me a shape of a heart and scars on the heart. And I felt like the Lord was telling me, Son, my people are hurting. Remind them my eternal, unchanging love and plan for this nation and the people.

And the Lord put so much love in me. And I have been going every year. And 2007, the Lord spoke to me and said, go for a long time. I'm going to send revival again in Germany. And Germany is going to touch Europe with the gospel.

I was preaching in the churches. God opened doors, but. In 2009, we went to the train station. We saw so many hundreds of people at the weekend sitting there taking drugs and drinking and hopelessness. There is like I can smell death literally there.

And the Lord laid them in my heart. And we went and talked to some of the pastors asking their advice. Every one of them said the same thing. It won't work in Germany. We don't go to the streets.

We don't do that. It won't work. And I went finally to a Christian social worker who was involved in so much social work, expecting him really would encourage me. And I went to him and I talked to him what God was telling me to do. He said, Who do you think you are?

You are a poor Indian man. There's no poor people in Germany for your hot dogs. You go back to India or to Africa. And that made me more. I mean And that I need to do this.

I smiled at him. I said, thank you. Then we went, we bought 80 hot dogs, May 2009. went to the train station, invited them. We said we are having a picnic.

Would you like to come and join us? They all said yes, the black dressed people, the satanic worshippers, the drug addicts, homeless people and we started loving on them. They started asking me, Why are you doing it? Then we said, We love you because Jesus loves you. Mike, for the last eight years and you were there what day?

Eight years, it's a non stop.

So many changed lives and uh so many we saw so many tears and so many baptisms. Then I started realizing they don't belong to the street. We want to bring them into your home. My desire was to change their thinking. They don't belong to the street at all.

We prayed for a house in 2010. The Lord provided us a house to use it for free. And it is, we named it a Jesus house. We invite them every Thursday to come for a hot meal and a worship time and like a family gathering. And one of them immediately, you know, after a week or two, they said, It's like a family.

I heard that. The tears started rolling down from my eyes. That's what I wanted for them to know that they have a family. And the third step, we bought it by God's grace after a year. They wanted to sell it.

And the Muslims want to buy it. But we bought it by God's. God provided us the money, totally paid for. But I realized it's a three-step program: going to them, bringing them into the home, and providing a home for them.

So as we are praying three years ago, the Lord provided us, actually donated. Five acres of land with five buildings on that. It never happened.

So, nothing free in Germany. Trust me, nothing free in Germany.

So, that was a miracle. There are other Christian organizations and churches who wanted to take that property. But I asked them, why did you give it to us? And the leader of the ministry told me, They have people, they have the money, but they have no vision. You have no money, you have no people, but you have the vision.

That's why we gave it to you. Amazing. This is a ministry you need to get behind. We want to tell you when we come back how you can get directly involved sponsoring children. Sponsoring pastors on the front lines.

It's amazing what your dollars will do to change lives in India. We'll be right back. 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 866-34TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Thanks, friends, for joining us on the line of fire, 866-34TRUTH. Here's the website to go to lncministries.org, as in Love and Care, LNC.

C. Love and Care Ministries, lncministries.org. And when you're there, you want to see how you can sponsor a child in the children's home. These kids are raised in the faith, taught in the faith.

Some of them are orphans.

Some of them have parents who pastor in tribal regions and still they can't raise kids there because there's no education.

Sometimes nutritional issues are still a factor there.

So they have their kids in a home where they can be raised with other godly children. I remember just a few years ago when the kids got their first beds. Before then, they slept on the floor and they were the happiest, most content kids you could imagine. You can support a pastor on the front lines. How much is that full-time support for a pastor on the front lines in India?

$50 a month. Can you imagine that, friends?

Sometimes you might go out with a family, you got a family of four, and you go to fast food, and whatever you spend, you go to a halfway decent restaurant, you spend more than that. Think of how freely we can spend that money. That's full-time support for a pastor and his family, planting churches and unreached areas and pastoring believers there. Monica, to sponsor a child, how much? It's $25 a month.

And $25 a month, what does that provide for them? Food, accommodations, health care, and education. All right. Did you hear that, friends? I mean, some of you, like, I could sponsor 10 a month.

Others, as a family, put aside your change, figure out, like, we sponsor a child a month.

So they go to lncministries.org, and where do they go to sponsor? There's a sponsor a child or a sponsor a pastor on the top corner there. All right. And friend, you may be a web designer and say, boy, I'd like to really help get this word out, help with that. Write to them, and perhaps your gifts and talents can be used there as well.

And Yesu Pottam, you were telling me that you've had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of kids go. through the school there.

So they start every morning, early morning in prayer and the word. They're trained by fine Christian teachers. They're in a great environment and get a fine education and three meals a day and all this. Growing up night day different than you did as an untouchable, almost starved to death as a boy. But you've had many, many kids go through that.

Some are pastors today? Yes, some are pastors, engineers, doctors.

Some of them are professors, some of them are in different nations working. It's amazing to see how they've grown up. And what percentage of them fall away? I mean, they're raised in this environment, and you imagine a lot of them when they get older turn away from the faith. What about that?

In India, you don't normally see that. What's that believe in the Lord? They believe the rest of their lives. Yes, I mean, you're amazing. Right, so you've never heard back from one kid that said, you know, thanks for what you did, but I've thrown this stuff out.

Yeah, we don't normally hear that. Yeah, and amazingly, so some of the kids that might have died on the streets or might have just had a typical Hindu upbringing or something like that instead. I remember when I was there years ago, there was a Muslim woman, came to faith, her husband put her out. She had two kids, couldn't raise them herself, took them in the school.

So, here they're raised in a godly environment, hear the gospel, and you know, now years later, one could be a doctor, an American is a pastor now. Seriously, yeah, amazing. One of those boys is a pastor. Amazing. So, friends, go to lncministries.org, get involved, help out.

And I really believe that as you do this, God will smile on it. I really believe that if you make a sacrificial effort to support people. People in India in this way. And here's where it goes. I mean, it's not like 90% disappears at administrative costs.

You know, $25 a month, $25 goes to help a kid full-time. And just think, moms and dads here in America, what we might spend $25 on for one of our children, joyfully, happily, glad to do it, as opposed to full room, board, education, health care in India for a child that's going to grow up as a gospel servant. We come back, I want to talk to you about a faith miracle, financial miracle that happened in Germany, and then some of the heavy news, some of the sobering news from India. We'll be right back. 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. Mm-hmm. I do want to talk about some of the serious persecution.

that is rising in India. We'll talk about that in a moment when Yeshupana Monica and I had dinner on Saturday night. I just saw a short video of One particular instance of persecution that was very hard to watch, very disturbing. And of course, in almost 25 years of going to India, there have been different seasons where there has been a wave of persecution, things got very intense, then things got better, or certain states more extreme than others. But there are some real reasons for concern.

Now, we'll talk about that in a moment. But first, I want to encourage you again. that the same God is capable of doing the same things wherever you are. And that's one of the reasons that God laid it on Yesuponum's heart to go to a country like Germany: one, for the good of the German people, for love for them, and two, to demonstrate the same God, same gospel.

So, here you get five acres of property given to you with a number of buildings on it. Other people come with money, they've got the money, they've got the people, but no vision. You come with no money, no people, but with vision, they donate it to you. You bring in an army of volunteers to renovate some of the buildings and do stuff that God knows how much it would cost and gets done for almost nothing as people throw themselves in. the German believers, and there are many fine people of faith in Germany, but just again, it's a different world.

Many of them stepping out, believing now.

So, Monica, you shared a testimony yesterday at FHIR at our home congregation about a financial provision. And again, When we're talking about finances, we're talking about finances for the gospel. Finances for the gospel. Yesupadan told me one of the number one plagues now in India is the prosperity gospel. You know, Jesus died to make you rich.

We renounce that. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about provision for the gospel.

So what happened with this financial miracle in a little church?

Okay, well, we are on our third part of our ministry there, building that up, and that's building a home for the homeless people, those who are getting saved in our ministry and want to be discipled, be in community, and grow in the Lord. We want to bring them to this beautiful property that we got three years ago tomorrow. And so we started building last November. Totally by faith, trusting the Lord to provide as we went. And we had nothing when we started, just like everything we do with our ministry there.

And as we do it, God provides.

So we started, and then shortly after, a team from Holland came and they helped put up the first floor in five days. They built all the walls of the first floor. Then a team from South Africa came and built the second floor.

So God sent volunteers all along the way, and also German people helping us. And really, everything just done by trusting the Lord.

So then we had to put the roof on the building, and that we needed a contractor. We couldn't do with volunteers. And so we hired a contractor, set the date. They said 18,000 euros it would cost. And then we needed 4,000 for the scaffolding.

And how much is a Euro compared to dollar right now? I believe it's 1.2 difference. Oh, 1.3. Got it.

Okay.

So. We hired a contractor, we had about five weeks till he was coming, two weeks till he was coming, and we only had a thousand euros in the bank. And just praying, Lord, we need your provision because we got to pay 'em right after they come. And they would bring the big crane and put everything on for us and we would help as much as possible.

So two weeks before, we went to a church we'd never been at before, went in, we knew the pastor, he took us to the front row, and uh we were just Getting ready to sit down, and this little old lady comes to us with this huge envelope and says, This is 10,000 euros for your work.

Somebody gave it to me. They don't want you to know who they are. This is for your work.

So we accepted it. We're starting, you know, in shock. And then just right after that, the pastor comes with two envelopes, gives it to us, said, Somebody at the door gave this to you for you, and I don't know who they are. And he walked away. And then two little ladies walked up with two big envelopes and gave it to us, all within a few minutes.

And you hadn't started talking about the project and the service? We had not even sat down yet. The church was practically empty still.

Okay, and how many people were there total for the service overall? A couple hundred finally.

Okay.

Once they all came in. Got it.

All right. So Yesipam preached.

So this is before you've gotten up, before you preach, before anything. Yes.

Okay.

So five envelopes. We went home. It took all day to get home. Finally got to count the money. It was four.

40,000 Euros cash, 100 Euro bills, 50 Euro bills. Incredible. Yeah, that's how we've seen God provide just in miraculous ways every step of the way. Not always with that much money, but just step by step, you know, providing. And in India, Isipadam, when you first started, which was basically taking in children, orphans, and other children that.

didn't have uh their families didn't have sustenance or they they were completely orphaned and things like that. You had two little houses when we first came there. That was a faith step that you took then. Yeah. Those were the rented houses.

Not knowing. But the Lord provided us everything that we needed. Amazing to see, you know, when we talked about the Germany, that miracle, I called the pastor and I told him, Pastor, do you know how much that was all money? He said, I didn't know that. And I told him how much was that.

He couldn't believe it. We couldn't believe it. Then some of them started te telling That could be angels. Yeah. I mean, like they're not, she doesn't know them.

It could have been maybe one person behind it all just giving envelopes to the person. I mean, who knows? That's amazing to just watch that happening. Many German friends are in shock. We are still in shock.

It never happens in Germany.

So much cash. Just like that. Remarkable. And again, without soliciting it, without saying a word. And then yesterday in our service at our home congregation, I told you it was summer that didn't know what the attendance would be and things like that.

So, I mean, the spirit moved wonderfully, and you guys did a great job presenting everything. And we shared a need about this truck that you can go into villages and dig wells with this. And it costs, what, $70,000, $80,000? $80,000. $80,000.

So you needed $15,000 down, and then you get a loan for the rest of it and enable you to go into poor villages, dig wells, and then bring the gospel message with that. And you had $8,000 down. You needed $15,000 to get the loan. You had $8,000 down, you needed $7,000. And I remember last year when we received an offering for you, it was about $3,000.

And we were all, oh, that's great that came in because there weren't a lot of people there.

So we find out. Yesterday, first, when the service is over, a gentleman comes up to me. I didn't know who he was, hands me a piece of paper with his name, phone number. He said, Whatever you're short on that $7,000, because we wanted to get that extra $7,000. Whatever you're short, let me know and I'll make it up.

So we said, Hey, one way or another, it's going to be met. But when we found out all the money that came in, it was $17,000. And it's the same kind of deal, just like, where did it come from or who gave it? You know, because we know a lot of our people in financial need and we're always praying for funds for school and things like that. This is God backing his work.

And you folks have lived sacrificially, you've lived with your whole family sometimes in a little room in Germany. The money goes in the gospel. When we live to care for others, God really backs it. And on a daily basis now in Germany, in India, how many meals are you responsible for at the home base? In one of our bases, we prepare 2,000 meals.

We have three bases, like children's homes in different areas.

So at least 3,000 meals a day. A day. Yeah, in India alone. And how much... As you've been doing that, how much guaranteed support do you have from the West and other countries where you know that money's there, someone's writing you a check every month and it's always there?

Honestly? No. Promised checks every month. Except to two churches, they give us like a three three hundred dollars every month. Other than that, we don't have a guaranteed monthly income coming into the ministry.

And and how many days have the kids gone without food because there was there was nothing? By God's grace not even a single male. They have three meals a day. plenty of food. They can eat As much as they want.

Don't limit. and God has been so faithfully providing it. Yeah, friends are Come with me to India one year, or go over, visit the ministry, and see. It'll impact you, and here's what you'll think. Yeah, I can go back home.

Where I live there people indeed. And see, friends, this is not the way to get your ministry blessed. This is not the way to bring in. great financial blessing. This is God's heart for hurting people.

For needy people, for dying people, for most that most of us don't really care about because it's more exciting to deal with other people that are not so needy. But here's where God's heart really beats. And as they've extended themselves, they've seen God's smile. And when Yeshupan goes to start a new work, these are the people he looks for because he cares and that's the background that he came from. And you'll be amazed to see how God will smile on this and say, hey, I'm with you.

I want to help. Again, lncministries.org, love and care ministries. Sponsor a child there, several children, sponsor a pastor on the front lines, make a difference, and think if you never meet in this world, when you meet in the world to come and exchange stories, and they find out you were the ones that helped them through the years, how amazing it's going to be. All right, we come back. We want to take these final minutes to bring you a sober word about what's happening.

in India. We'll be right back. Shake the knee. It's the line of fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown.

Get into the line of fire now by calling 866-34TRUT. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Thanks friends for joining us on the line of fire. Michael Brown with my dear friends Jason Ponham and Monica from India.

So, Yesu Padam, we know that in the last couple of years there's been a shift in the government. and strong Hindu leadership uh India primarily a Hindu nation, but it has the third largest Muslim population in the world, right behind Indonesia and Pakistan, and it has a rapidly growing Christian population. And the the government wants India to be a Hindu nation. They've said these things publicly. There's now pressure talking about wanting to reconvert people so that especially the poor that have become Christians, turn them back to Hinduism.

Certain states, laws where you can't convert people, things like that.

So on the ground, what does this actually look like? And what are the concerns you have so we can pray here in America and other countries? India is a great country with the great people. and constitutionally we have given a freedom. We have a right to exercise our own religion and to propagate it.

And we have been enjoying that in the middle of little persecution here and there in different states. But right now, we really feel like there's so much pressure on the Christian community than ever before in the history of the nation of India. And we started realizing like though for 2,000 years, church has gone through a lot of persecution. I have a broken head, broken bones, and all that. Put gun to my head, but right now, what is happening is.

totally different than what We have ever experienced before. The present government, everybody knows that, around the world, and we have been feeling it. They want to make India as a Hindu nation. And I would not believe that's going to happen. But because the government is backing it, local small groups of very little percentage of the strong Hindu groups are coming up against the church and breaking, destroying the churches.

Even recently, You know, one of the pastors in Gujarat was shot dead and there are other pastors who has been killed. It's been very clear, clear, clear that the enemy really wants to bring fear in the hearts of the Christians and uh trying to come against it. Even the the Compassion International, they they s they shut they have to shut down their organization. They have been helping One hundred and forty seven thousand children. all these years, so many children are being fed and taken care of.

So government it's a very clear sign that government wants to involve with us.

So I ma we really believe that we need the Christ community around the world, Lord, to stand with us. Praying for us supporting us And we know that God can take care of us. We are not afraid of our lives. We are willing to lay down our lives as our Christ. Is our Savior has laid down his life.

We are not afraid of our lives, but there's no reason for a government to do that. And the Christians around in India are really taking a stand for this leadership. We, as our leaders, really feel our responsibility.

Some people ask me how they can pray for us. I want you to remember this. I was reminded in Acts chapter 4 when Peter and the apostles were going through the persecution. The church prayed for two things: that God will give us both. Boldness in the middle of the persecution that we will stand and proclaim this glorious gospel more than ever before.

that this gospel will go forth with power and authority even to the point that the ruling government Politicians or intellectuals who are involved with that will understand the power of gospel is more powerful than any other thing that exists on the surface of the earth. God changed the governments, God changed the prime ministers and presidents and the kings in the history. But gospel has never been stopped. God warned me last year that through Acts chapter 1, there will be a heavy persecution in the nations of the world as a herod came up against the church. He killed James.

He put He put Peter into prison to be killed. But God took care of it. The church prayed. The church prayed. God woke up.

His people And the hair earth was removed, but the word of God went out powerfully. That's what I'm expecting in India to happen: that no power on earth can come against the gospel of the living God. We, Christians in India, were committed to preach this gospel at whatever it costs, whatever it takes. But I want our brothers and sisters around the world to pray for us that we will be bold to preach this gospel till the last breath of our lives. And that's what I say: what's going to happen in India, respect of what the government wants to do.

But we, with Jesus, will prevail for the gospel of Jesus Christ. And Monaco When you hear your husband Father of your kids, talk publicly and not afraid to die for the gospel. You knew what you were marrying into. Do you see that same spirit, that same courage in the hearts and lives of others in India as well? Yes, absolutely.

They know when they're saved, from the moment they're saved, they start going through opposition and persecution. And even when I was a young believer and growing in the Lord, the Lord asked that of me, Are you willing to lay down your life? And when I went to India and married, from the beginning, Yesupa was always saying, You know, it could be any time, I'm willing to lay down my life for the Lord. God kept him all these years. God really protected our ministry in supernatural ways.

Although we've had so many threats and so much opposition, God has kept us. if it's time, you know, i if he wants to do that through our lives, we're we're willing for that. And every every believer I know in India, even the small children, will give testimony and say, I'm I want to be a martyr for Jesus.

So Christians in India are willing and ready to lay down their lives for the Lord. Friends, that is the gospel. It is the heart of the gospel. In Acts 12, James Jacob is killed, Peter's rescued, but the church goes on strengthened in the midst of this.

So pray for the government of India that God would turn their hearts to do what is right and best. There are many fine people in India that. love religious liberty and love the Christians there. pray for their voices to be heard, but above all Pray for the believers there to be bold. Pray for the believers there to be fearless.

They'll act with wisdom. They are not trying to start trouble. but they will not back down from preaching the gospel even under persecution and pressure. And friends, go to lncministries.org. get behind this work.

This is real gospel, friends. This is why we go to India. And when I go, I don't proselytize. I go there to be with the brothers and sisters and to serve the ministry there to participate in graduation and things like that. But we get to be side by side and we see the spirit, the dedication.

And that's why I'm honored to call Yesu Padam and Monica dear friends, friends for life, by life or by death for the gospel. Amen. Amen. Amen. Well, let's take a careful look at some Bible translations.

Today we'll start with the strengths and weaknesses of the King James Version. It's time for the line of fire with your host, activist, author, international speaker, and theologian, Dr. Michael Brown, your voice of moral, cultural, and spiritual revolution. Michael Brown is the director of the Coalition of Conscience and President of Fire School of Ministry. Get into the line of fire now by calling 866-34-TRUTH.

That's 866-34-TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Yes, there's a lot, a lot happening in the news and the world around us and a lot that we could be talking about, but... Today, we are going to start on a series.

We may do this another day this week. We may do it next week, next month. Don't know exactly when. But I am going to look at different versions of the Bible, popular versions of the Bible, and give you a talk about strengths and weaknesses in these different translations. And we'll take your calls.

We get calls about this so much, we thought, well, let's put out some quality shows that focus even more on specific versions and things like that.

So we're going to start today with King James. And if you have a question about the King James, a comment, about a strength or a weakness, we'll be taking some calls as well. 866-348-7884 is the number to call. Before we get into that, though. Here's a story.

It's my latest article. Do DNA Discoveries prove that the Bible is wrong. In reality, The new DNA discoveries confirm the biblical narrative. But here's what happened. There were scientists, a team of scientists, who studied bones.

of those who lived in what is today Lebanon thousands of years ago, at the time that the Bible would have talked about the Canaanites inhabiting the land of Israel, and found that these people had The bones, the same DNA virtue, is 90% of the population of Lebanon. And These people are saying, and all these science journals, well, and Time, New York Times, and others, well, This proves the Bible is wrong because the Bible says the Israelites drove out the Canaanites. The Israelites vanquished the Canaanites. Here are some of the headlines. Study disproves the Bible's suggestion that the ancient Canaanites were wiped out.

Bible says Canaanites were wiped out by Israelites by scientists just found their descendants living in Lebanon. Bronze Age DNA discoveries: the Bible claimed the Canaanites were wiped out. Study says their genes live on in modern-day Lebanese people. Scientists find evidence that ancient Canaanites survive today. Was the Bible wrong?

New DNA study casts doubt on Bible claim the Bible was wrong. Civilization God ordered to be killed, still alive and kicking, and on and on and on. One example after another.

Okay?

So in in point of fact, Uh the opposite is true. When you read the biblical accounts, and I get into it in my article, you'll see first in Joshua the 13th chapter. that it says when Joshua was was old, well advanced in years. That they still had not taken much of the promised land. Joshua 13, 1.

Now Joshua was old and advanced in years, and the Lord said to him, You are old and advanced in years, and there remains yet very much land to possess.

So, towards the end of Joshua's life, Joshua led the conquest of Canaan. Israel had not completed its mission by far. Not only so, it tells us. In verses 5 and 6 in Joshua 13, that the places that they had not yet taken included all Lebanon. All right, all Lebanon.

So it says they did not conquer Lebanon and drive out the Canaanites there. Then Judges the third chapter, verses one through six, it gives another listing there. Judges one tells us that they didn't drive out the inhabitants of Sidon, which is one of the major cities in Lebanon, Sidon. And then it tells us in Judges 3, 1 through 6, that they didn't drive out all the Canaanites and the Sidonians and the Hivites who lived on Mount Lebanon.

So the people of Israel lived among the Canaanites, etc.

So this confirms the new discoveries confirm exactly what the Bible says. We come back, Strengths and Weaknesses of the King James. Stay tuned. Change the world. Change the world.

It's fire we want. For fire we please. It's the line of fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Get into the line of fire now by calling 866-342.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. So let's look at the scriptures together. Let's look at the word of God together. And let's do some analysis.

Let's look at the most famous English Bible translation of all, the King James Version. And let's consider some of the strengths of the King James. and some of the weaknesses of the King James. If you have a question you'd like to raise specifically about it, give me a call at 866-34TRUTH, 866-348-7884. The plan is in weeks to come to take another day to look at another major translation and another day to look at a different one so that we can do this a bit more in depth because we get asked lots of questions about this very subject.

Now, I want to play something for you. Grab clip number three. This is what Pastor Stephen Anderson has to say, a well-known proponent of what would be called King James only, or that the King James Version is the version to use in English, and other contemporary versions are not just bad, but not to be used at all. Let's listen to what he had to say.

Now, there's an agenda today, and it's a satanic agenda to change the Bible. A lot of people just think, well, the King James Bible is a great translation. It's very poetic, and these other versions are inferior. Maybe they're not as well translated. But I'm here to tell you, it goes much deeper than that.

These new versions are actually Satan's attempt at corrupting the Word of God.

Now, is he Correct. I've been involved in different translation work. I've been involved at a couple different translations where I gave input one more than others. The people that I know involved with these are God-fearing people, people who love the Lord, who love the Word, who reverence the Word, who take the Word seriously, who are trained in the original languages, who have the highest esteem for Scripture. I can tell you for a fact that Satan had nothing to do with any of those translations that I was involved with.

But is there a satanic attack against the King James? Is there something in the modern translations that is so bad that it should be avoided like Satan himself was behind it? Let's first talk about some of the strengths of the King James Version of the Bible. It was the primary version used among English-speaking people for hundreds of years. That in itself is major.

That in itself is an accomplishment. That in itself is a testimony to the care with which the translation was done. That's number one. Number two, for me personally, I got saved reading the King James Bible, read it through cover to cover, a Bible without special notes or commentary or anything like that, cover to cover, about five times in the first two years that I was a believer. And I memorized verses out of the King James.

To this day, I can still quote verses that I memorized from the King James. In those early days, I used to memorize 20 verses a day. I did that for six straight months as a fairly new believer when I was saved about a year to year and a half. And so by the time I was 18 years old and started preaching, I'd memorized over 4,000 verses from the King James Bible and have great appreciation for it on a personal level.

So I'm not a King James Version basher. And number three, there are beautiful literary qualities to the King James Bible that even an atheist like Richard Dawkins acknowledges in terms of impact on the English language.

So there is something powerful that has been used in the King James Bible. By the way, the German translation done by Martin Luther had a great impact on the German language as well in a way that is similar to the impact of the King James on the English language.

So I have great appreciation for the King James. Number four, the normal argument that that arises about New Testament Greek manuscripts, whether the Byzantine or Alexandrian texts should be used, whether the so-called majority text, which then lies behind the Textus Receptus, whether that versus the older texts which are superior for New Testament, I'm not even going to debate that. In other words, if you are convinced that the Greek manuscripts for the Greek New Testament that lie behind the King James Version, that you were convinced by your own study that those are superior. Then I would say, well, then fine, use something like the New King James or the MEB, the modern English version, which are in the same spirit as the King James, and use the same ancient Greek text that the King James uses. By all means, then, use something like that.

If you're convinced that the older texts are better, which would relate to the Alexandrian texts, and you feel it's better to use something like the ESV or some other, the NASB or the NIV or the HCSB or the NET, that's a whole other debate. We won't even debate that part, okay? We won't debate the strengths or weaknesses of the Greek manuscripts. But let's just talk about some of the challenges, some of the weaknesses that are found in the King James Bible. And let me say this, it is a fine translation, but it is far from a perfect translation.

in small ways and big ways. One of the biggest issues is this. even if it was a perfect translation, the English language has changed dramatically. In these hundreds of years. In fact, you are not reading, if you have a King James Bible online or in your home and you're reading it, you're not reading the original King James, though it was translated in 1611.

The spelling is very different. A lot of it is English that would be even harder to recognize.

So you are reading normally a revision of the King James, one of several that was done over the centuries. But even so, The English language has changed dramatically.

So, what may have been an accurate translation then. will not convey the same thing today.

So even if it was translated perfectly well, just the change in the English language will bring about some level of confusion. I'll give you just one example of this. Let's say, for example, you are reading the offerings that were required under the law in the Old Testament. and you read about meat offerings, meat offerings, okay? It's a little peculiar.

because it's actually meal offerings, grain offerings, not meat, but grain.

Well, why did the King James translators say meat? Did they get it wrong? Obviously, they didn't get it wrong. They knew what the Hebrews said. But meat just had a wider meaning of food.

And hence included in that was grain offerings, but it's is not the right translation. The right translation would have been meal offerings or grain offerings. And what follows elucidates that it's grain.

So the King James translators knew what they were doing, but what the word meant then is not what the word means today.

So why have a Bible where what a word meant in those days is not what the word means today because you're reading it today. Remember the King James Bible, which built largely on the Geneva Bible before that, and then there were previous translations like the Tyndale Bible that were leaned on. But let's remember this, that the purpose of the translation was not to put the scriptures in magisterial old English, but to put the scriptures in the language of the people. It was not an attempt to take language that was everyday common speech. For example, the Greek New Testament is written in what's called Koine Greek, which is basically the everyday Greek that was used.

And when the translators of the Hebrew scriptures were translating those, you know, Proverbs is just proverbial sayings and things like that, and history, just history being written. In other words, these books were not written in a high Hebrew that was this lofty magisterial language that was difficult to understand, but language that people could understand, and even more so with the Greek New Testament.

So if that was God's intent behind the scriptures, to put them in a language that the people of that day could understand, that that's what we want to do. In other words, you might be responsible for a translation today that's the finest translation available, but let's just say our society went on another 200 years and the English language continued to change and change dramatically, then words that had one meaning today. would have a different meaning tomorrow.

So even if the King James Translate is translated correctly, The fact of the matter is, meat means something very different. Why have your translations saying something different than the word is intended to mean today? I'll give you another example. famous verse Study to shew thyself approved unto God. a workman that needeth not be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

Now in King James English, the word study meant do your best. Try your hardest. Strive. That's what it meant. It did not mean study in terms of pick up a book and read.

That's why Paul wrote to the Thessalonians instead, study. to be quiet. He didn't mean read a book about secrets to quietness or tips to quietness. Study to be quiet means do your best to be quiet. learning person, listening person, right?

But That's not what study means to us today.

So reread the verse, and we think Paul is saying, study the Bible to be approved to God. Yes, he wants us to study the Bible. And later in the verse, it refers to rightly handling the word. But study does not mean today what it meant when the King James translators translated. Why use antiquated English?

Oh God of burning, cleansing flame, send the fire. 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, friends, for joining us on the line of fire. This is Michael Brown. We're evaluating Bible versions and thought, well, we'll start with the grandest English translation of all, the King James Version, talking about strengths and weaknesses. When I was writing my commentary in the book of Jeremiah, initially the plan was to have the NIV and the NASB as the two texts that would be on every page. It ended up just with the NIV.

I often would take issue with the trip. No, different with that. No, I wouldn't assist. No, it got that wrong. That's just the reality of dealing with the text and looking at it carefully, having different viewpoints.

Many times preaching out of the NIV over the years, I thought, I like the way this preaches, but it's got to be corrected. It flows nicely in English, but it missed something in Greek or in Hebrew. And then sometimes improvements were made with new additions, and sometimes I think things have gone backwards.

So every translation I talk about has strengths. and weaknesses. But let's just understand the King James is not a perfect translation. The Bible is perfect, but the King James is not a perfect translation. How about Acts chapter 12, for example?

I just want to give you some examples. For those of you who think it's perfectly accurate. And again, other translations we'll talk about will address issues, will address weaknesses. But I want to say plainly, if you love the King James tradition, you love the Greek manuscripts on which the New Testament is based in the King James Version, think those are the most accurate, well then use the New King James, or use the modern English version, the MEV, or other modern improvements of the King James. But let's just take an example.

Acts chapter 12, it mentions Easter. The Greek does not say Easter. Greek says the Passover. And virtually every translation you'll find outside of the King James says the Passover. There was no such thing as Easter during the time of the book of Acts.

And to say Easter is 100% inaccurate and misleading. It's a mistake. And every other time that the Greek words there for Passover occur in the New Testament, they're translated Passover. Not Easter. That's a mistake.

Is it corrected in New King James MEV? Of course it is. Is it corrected in all other English translations since the... Yeah, to my knowledge, yeah, of course. It's just wrong.

It's an error. why they did it, what the purpose was. Can't say I've read different accounts about that, but It's an error, plain and simple. Or I'll give you another example. For those of you who think that the King James is always hyperliteral, In other words, that every word is going to be translated the same way in different contexts.

So, Luke. Chapter 9 verse 1. Then, I'm reading King James. Then he called his twelve disciples together and gave them power, that's Greek unimis, and authority, Greek ecclesia. gave them power and authority over all devils and to cure diseases.

Now, the word devils there is the wrong word. It should be demons. They're not devils. They're demons. The Greek word for devil is diabolus.

The Greek word for demon comes, that's where we get demon from. In other words, it's related to demon.

So you're not talking about devils. Devils would have been different in Greek. You're talking about devils. Demons, all right, so. Better to translate that accurately.

But let's put devils, demons aside for the moment. All right. Uh Luke 9, 1. Jesus gives his disciples Power? dunimus, and authority exusia.

over all devils and to cure diseases.

Now we go to chapter 10. Chapter 10 and verse 19. And here's what we have in the King James. Behold, I give unto you power. Hang on.

That's the Greek word exosia. That's the Greek word authority. How is it in the New King James? Authority. How is it in all other English versions I'm looking at?

Authority. Oh, the same author, Luke. Similar context, Luke 9, Luke 10.

So exosia was rightly translated as authority just a few verses earlier, now power. Here's where it gets worse. Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy, the same English word power, power, except it's two different words in Greek. Greek Exosia Authority Then Greek Junimus power.

So the King James had it exactly right in Luke 9:1, as all other translations would. Jesus gave them power and authority, which are related but different. Here he gives them authority, exosia, over all the power, dunamis, of the devil, and the King James translates with power and power. That's wrong. That is not an accurate translation of the Greek, and especially it's misleading if you're reading the English and you don't know that Luke 9, where it says authority, is the same word as Luke 10, where it says power, and in the same verse, power, power are two different words in Greek.

It's just a mistake. Why? That can be debated. But it's simply A mistake. Tell you what, let's go to the phones that I want to explain this a little bit further to you.

866-34-TRUTH. Let's go to Charles in Virginia. Welcome, sir, to the line of fire. Hey, how you doing? Doing well, thank you.

Yeah, I didn't know I'd get elicited to you a little bit there. If you'd let me, I'd love to make a quick comment on what you just now said. Yeah, please.

Okay, because it's pretty interesting. From my own personal studies, which isn't as expensive as other people, Um I believe that it's really um it's kind of a slippery slope though. It's it's kind of the error of the King James only people. Uh when they say that Every single word that's translated in any nuance or any different way is an error. I think that that's a big mistake.

And in a similar way, I would say maybe 400 years ago when they translated the King James that There was a little bit of nuance in leeway, maybe, with the interpretation or the translation rather of power and authority. Would you at least give that? you know A possibility of instead of it being an error, just like maybe a a slight nuance on Well no, here's the problem. Here's the problem. Certainly the translators had reasons for what they did.

We can't get into their heads in every case.

Sometimes we know why they did what they did. But... Uh in point of fact, because they the two words are different words in Greek, okay? It's not an ambiguous thing. Authority is one thing, power is another thing.

Because they got it exactly right just a few verses earlier, where it has the two side by side, now it has the two side by side again, there's no good reason for it.

So it's just wrong. But look, when I say mistake, The NIV makes many mistakes in my view. The the NASB makes mistakes. The ESV makes mistakes. They're judgment calls.

But then certain things aren't judgment calls and the next time around you fix it.

So I would feel confident. that if you had the team of King James scholars and they were still working on, you know, 20 years later came together again, or 50 years later, you know, you had another team, that these are the kind of things they'd fix up. They get rid of Easter in Acts 12. They get rid of power here in Luke 10, 19 and change it rightly to authority.

Well, one of the one of the things that's really interesting though is kind of like the The development of the English language and words, how words change over time, even in our lifetime, words have changed.

So, all I'm saying is, it's a very slippery slope when you start. Saying it's an error when I mean, if we was to use the word authority and power right now in conversations. Uh they were Majority of the time that's denoted, man. I mean, they're going to be standing in baseball. Ah, but here's what you're missing, though, Charles.

And again, and I appreciate your spirit in raising this, sir. Number one, God put two different words there for a reason, because they mean different things. That's number one. And number two, the King James had it exactly right the previous chapter.

So if you're just reading in English, how would you know those are two different words?

So that is a mistake. We're just being honest, but hey, thank you, sir, 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 866-34 TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. We are doing something special on today's broadcast. This is Michael Brown.

Welcome to the show. Not focusing on what's happening in the news around us or taking general questions on Bible theology or Israel, but rather focusing on the translations of the Bible, focusing on the question of evaluating translations. And over the weeks ahead, God willing, different days I'll pick different translations. And if you have specific questions or comments on that translation, and today we focus on the grandest translation of all in English, the King James Version, if you have specific questions or comments or differ with the point I'm making on that, give me a call 866-348-7884.

So to briefly summarize the strengths of the King James Version, it has been the leading primary version in English for centuries. That's a great strength. It helped shape English language and culture. That's a great shape, a great strength, a great virtue. It is a magisterial translation and powerful in many ways.

But it is not a perfect translation. We now have more manuscript evidence. For example, the Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in the 1940s the King James translators didn't have. We have further knowledge of the Greek and Hebrew language than they had. These are blessings that God has given to us.

That certainly is positive. The English language has changed, and since the King James language wanted to be a Bible in the language of the people, we should continue in that spirit and have translations that are in the language of the people today. And although many think of the King James being extremely accurate word for word or consistently translating the same word the same way in the same context, often that doesn't happen. And there are some words in the King James that do not exist in the original Bible, 1 John 5, 7 being the most notable. That says there are three that bear witness in heaven, the Father, the Word, the Holy Ghost.

These three are one. Do I believe in God's triunity? Yes.

Do I believe in the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit? Yes.

But 1 John 5, 7 Is not found in ancient Greek manuscripts. It is not found in the ancient Aramaic translation of the Greek, the Peshitta. It is simply a later edition. In fact, we know pretty well the history of how and when it got added in to Greek manuscripts. almost 1500 years after the fact, okay?

I mean, you're talking about something that's just not part of the original Bible.

So these are some of the reasons that I say that if you love the King James, it's best to use a modern adaptation, a modern translation, be it the New King James or the MEV, the modern English version, or there's some other updates, because the King James, like any other translation, has errors. In it. Here, uh and let me just give you an example. All right, let me give you an example. Lotirtzach and the Ten Commandments, the Hebrew words Lotir Tzach, what do they mean?

you shall not murder. There's a different word for kill in Hebrew. Murder is something very specific. For example, you can't murder an animal. You can only murder a human.

You can kill an animal. But you can't murder an animal. In war, if you're fighting in war, you can kill the enemy, you don't murder the enemy because it's war. God does not murder people. He puts them to death.

He kills because murder. is the wrongful taking of a human life. You're not talking about execution for the death penalty. You're not talking about a battle where someone's trying to kill you in war and you take out the enemy. That's not called murder.

So God specifically said, you shall not murder. The King James famously translated with Thou shalt not give. Chill. And many have wondered, well, can we go to battle? Can we kill ISIS terrorists if they're trying to kill us?

And what's right or wrong? And, well, if it was translated rightly... Shall not murder, then there would have been less ambiguity. You say, Well, did the King James translators distinguish between murder and killing? Yeah, in other verses they did.

In other verses, they got exactly right. That something should have been murder from day one. We'll be right back. It's the line of fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown.

Get into the line of fire now by calling 866-34TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. So let me say it once more. I love the King James Version of the Bible.

I memorized 4,000 verses out of the King James, the first year or two I was a believer. Read through it cover to cover five times first couple of years, and the Lord have great appreciation for the King James, but it's not a perfect translation. And those who claim that all modern translations are demonic or that it's Satan behind them, or if you can find a contradiction between the Hebrew and the Greek and the King James, and that means there's an error in the Hebrew and Greek. I mean, I've heard some extremists actually say this. That's just bogus.

That's just ridiculous. Here, let me give you a couple examples. Then we'll take some calls: 866-34-TRUTH.

Something as minor as say didoskylos in Luke 6, 47, 40. Didoskylos means teacher. not master. It's a different word for master. And sometimes Jesus will be referred to as Master in the New Testament.

And you have, for example, in Luke 5, there's a master word in Greek, or just the common kyrios, Lord. right can also be master. Didoscolos is teacher. It shouldn't be translated master. It's just simple.

It's a little thing, but it's simple. Or how about this? A cherub. isn't a particular type of of angel, Keruv in Hebrew. A cherub is a particular type of of angel.

And in in The plural It's with I am. Hebrew plural, you add I am in most cases. If it's masculine, you add I am.

So that would be cherub is one. Cherubim is plural. All right. So cherub is an individual. angelic being Cherubim.

or plural. How is it in the in the King James cherubims. It's it's a false plural. It'd be like saying brethrens. It's just It's an English error.

It's just wrong. Okay, it's not a big deal. It's just wrong. I mean, I'll give you example after example, or the unicorn. All right.

A particular type of animal wrongly referred to as the unicorn. as if the Bible was speaking of a one-horned. animal You say, well, no, no, if you go back, unicorn made, oh, okay, but today, what does unicorn mean as we understand it? All right, what does it mean? Today Therefore, we shouldn't use something that could be misleading because we're jealous for God's word.

I'll give you one more example, then I'll go to the phones. One more example. Oh, okay. Here, another minor one. 1 Kings 18.

Elijah Praise And the King James says he prays, hear me, O God, hear me. No, no, the Hebrews answer me. Answer me. You say that's close. But who cares about close?

They're two different words. in Hebrew. and in English. and answer me is even stronger than hear me. Why use a translation that has these?

Look, these are just examples.

Now, again, when we get into other versions on other days, when we get to that next, I'll have lots of issues with lots of specific verses. I'll give you an example. When I was working on my Jeremiah commentary and had the NIV in front of me every day, I actually found one place in Jeremiah 2 where just a whole Hebrew phrase was left out. It just is an accident. The the translator missed it and the team missed it.

Thus says the Lord, yeah, that was just left out. They fixed it in in in a in an updated version. It's just left out. See, how could that happen? It happened with all the oversight in the back and the proofreading.

It still happened. These things do happen.

So, okay, one more example than the phones. Psalm eighty four, one of the verses that I grew up loving. was blessed be the Lord. our God who daily loadeth us with benefits in the King James, who daily loadeth us with benefits. When I started learning Hebrew and and I had a Jewish translation in front of me, I saw, wait it.

Right, that's not there. That's not there in the Hebrews.

Something's funny.

So uh I I went and checked and the Hebrew is literally Day by day he bears for us or he carries for us. And some translations say it means he carries our burdens, and that's the most likely what it means.

Well, somehow. The King James took it that rather than carry, that he's loading us, and he's loading us, what does he load us with? Benefits. And that's all in italics, because none of that's in the Hebrew. David loadeth us with benefits.

With benefits part is not there, it's just added in.

So that's in italics telling you it's not the original Hebrew, but it got it wrong. And I remember being kind of traumatized because to me, I mean, I memorized the exact grammar, the exact punctuation, exactly the way it was in the King James. And that's different than that. I thought something was wrong. And it was traumatizing to find out, wait, this is not.

Exactly what it says. And I went to the pastor and I said, I'm troubled by this. I'm troubled. And it seems that. It's different than what the Hebrew says.

And he said to me, But Mike, If God carries our burdens, isn't that loading us with benefits? Oh, yeah, I appreciate that, but that's not what the text says. That's my issue. 866-34 Truth. And we will go to the phones.

We'll start in Tennessee. Charles, welcome to the line of fire. Hey there, Michael. I got cut off last time and then hung up on. I hope that doesn't happen again.

I never got to ask my question. Go ahead. I don't guess you got too many phone calls, so I'll go ahead real quick. You're a focus. No, actually, we.

Yeah, go go ahead. Not not sure what the phone call comment was about. you're focusing a lot on plurals and this and that. I'm at work, I can't lose these things up. But what I find really interesting in my own personal study has been that rather than just focusing on translational issues, the bigger issue is actually the textual issue.

And when you get to places like in modern versions or whatnot, you have Mark 16, the entire ending. Bracketed and removed. And when I looked at the textual information that underlined it, there were 1,700 manuscripts for it. and only two or three that did not have it. And some of the ones that didn't have it, and just those couple, actually showed that they knew that the ending should be there and willfully omitted it.

So, I mean my question would be this. when we're talking about Bible translations and versions, Understanding that you can't go from Greek and Hebrew perfectly over to the English, you know, as you wish you could. Yeah. When you're picking up versions Would you recommend any version that brackets or negates the entire ending of the gospel that basically removes the resurrection account of Christ? Yeah, well first thing.

If you feel that way about manuscripts, then read the New King James or the Modern English Version, the MEV. Because they use the same manuscripts. That's number one. Number two, we know that that was not the original ending of Mark. The vocabulary is totally different, very different than the rest of the book.

I don't want to cut you off, but I've actually read a book by Bergon. I would really love to. No, it's a famous defense. I reject it, okay? The vast majority of scholars.

I would love for you to write a book.

Well, I don't have. There are plenty of. Charles, Charles, can I talk? Sure.

Okay.

It's been refuted many times over. Many, many times over. Just people don't accept it. Charles, Charles, tell you what, tell you what. Let me talk and maybe I can help you here.

Number one, it's been refuted many times. I don't know who you are on Twitter. I can't reply to everyone on Twitter. That's why we have a live radio show so folks can call in. But just study Donald Carson's book on the King James-only controversy or James White's book on King James only.

Either Donald Carson or James White, they'll help you there. But the Greek vocabulary is different. from the rest of Mark's gospel as opposed to verses 9 through 20. And there's a grammatical shift which does not work from verse 8 to 9. We don't have the original ending of Mark's gospel, but I believe that mark 9 16 9 through 20 are an early account that was put as the ending of Mark's gospel that was widely received by the church.

Personally, I'm happy to use it. All right. So there is a debate among scholars among it. Bergen's been refuted numerous times. People say it's never refuted.

Again, they just don't accept the evidence on it. Or just get any good Greek commentary on the Gospel of Mark, an in-depth Greek commentary on the Gospel of Mark, and they'll get into the details there. But I'm perfectly happy to have it bracketed with the background. And the fact is, these translators, Charles, are not denying. They are not denying what the Old Testament, excuse me, the resurrection accounts.

They're not doing that at all. It should concern you that 1 John 5, 7 is not there. That should concern you. That that's not there in the Greek, and that's part of the King James, and it's not there. That's an addition.

Someone added to the Bible. That should concern you. as well. But again, if you're most at home with those manuscripts, and I said earlier in the broadcast I won't be debating that part, then by all means use the New King James or the Modern English Version. And we're talking about issues that matter.

I'm giving specific examples for those who think it's perfectly inspired, all right? And I want to get to some other calls as well. But in point of fact, I could give you other major examples. I'll give you one, for example, in a moment from 2 Corinthians 12 that changes the feel and makes Paul say something he wasn't saying up to that point. And again, a kill instead of murder, that's a big issue for the Ten Commandments.

I think we want to get that accurate.

So let's look at it like this. Putting the manuscript debate aside, don't we want a translation that is contemporary with the language we speak today? Has the benefit of the great discoveries God has provided for us since the King James that help us understand Hebrew and Greek better and have better manuscript evidence? And shouldn't we correct errors when we have the opportunity? We're talking about God's word, after all.

Give us strength to always do what's right. 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.

Let me give you just another example of where King James Made a switch. It was using the same word consistently which Paul was using over and over and over in Greek. Weak, weakness, weaknesses, weak, weakness, weaknesses, in 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians. And the King James was rightly translating with weak, weakness, weaknesses, time and time again, one time after another, after another. And this is the whole point that Paul is making.

That's why he's using these same words in Greek.

So we get to 2 Corinthians chapter 12, and he says in verse 7, lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan, to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure. For this thing I besought the Lord thrice that it might depart from me. And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee, for my strength is made perfect in Weakness. All right. Weakness.

Correct. That's the correct word. It's the word that's been used. over and over and over again in 1st and 2nd Corinthians. Weak, weakness, weaknesses.

My strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly, therefore, will I rather glory in my infirmities. that the power of Christ may rest upon thee. That same word, weakness, should be translated weaknesses. I will glory in my Weaknesses that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

But the King James changes from weakness to Infirmity.

Now when you hear infirmity, what do you think? Sickness. He's not necessarily talking about sickness. In fact, I'm 99% sure by the context. He's not talking about sickness.

at all.

Alright, so so... What do we have then? We have... The same Greek words or word clusters translated differently in the same verse to give a misleading impression. Because he's been talking about weakness, weaknesses, time and time again in verse after verse after verse before that.

Verse 10, Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches and necessities and persecutions and distresses for Christ's day, for when I'm weak, then I'm strong. It shouldn't say infirmities. It should say weaknesses. Because otherwise you'd think Paul's saying, I glory in being sick all the time, whereas that was not his point, whether he's sick or not, that was not his point. His point was the weakness of persecution, the weakness of distress, the weakness of being under satanic attack.

He glories in the midst of that because when he's weak, Then he's strong. Again, just an example. Of something that should have been translated differently and could have been translated differently. In other contexts, weakness could have the nuance of infirmity and hence should be translated as such, but not here. Not here.

To change it here is to change Paul's meaning. 866-34-TRUTH. Let's go to Killeen, Texas. Brojo, welcome to the line of fire. Pains are.

Good. I d you just faded out wherever you are. You're not there anymore.

Okay, am I here now? You are, go ahead. Yeah, I have a quick question. I was wondering 'cause, you know, my friend the King's become a King James only. And he posed a question I thought was interesting.

He said Okay, well If we're to believe that the only inspired word of God was from Witch, or the original manuscript.

So what about the Ethiopians? But what about several people? in the Bible where Jesus says You know what they have is the scriptures in their hands. Are we believing that? People were running around with the original copies of the Bible.

No, no, they had They had, I'm not sure what the question would be, they had copies of copies.

So in other words, if you're reading it In the I've got no issue with the King James being a translation that has blessed many. but it's not the translation or the perfect translation, so we have manuscripts that differ. We have tens of thousands of manuscripts in different languages of the Old Testament, of the New Testament. And then we've had more recent discoveries. Yeah.

I guess his point would be Well, all scripture is given by inspiration of God. And if Jesus calls that copy, scriptures, then wouldn't that be given by inspiration of God?

Well, what's that got to do with the King James?

Well, what his point is that not only the original manuscripts aren't the only Wow.

Well then that would apply to any translation then. We're still saying it's Scripture. It's just not the King James is not a perfect translation. Anyone that can read Hebrew and Greek can see it's not a perfect translation. But you could say that about any other translation then.

So the NIV or the ESV or the TLV or the MEV, that they're all inspired the same way then. Why make the King James unique and special? Yeah, that's just an interesting question because I figured well they weren't running around with the originals. The copy is are called scripture and all scriptures inspired by God.

So now if we're going to believe it's inspires of how can we say there's error. There's error in translation of the scriptures. The King James is a translation. There's error in translation. Where does the Bible say every translation is perfectly inspired?

It doesn't. The original writings are perfectly inspired. They haven't always been perfectly kept, but the original writings were perfectly inspired. That's why we sift through all the different manuscripts to do our best to see that which is original. But the King James is a translation, one among many, many, many foreign language translations.

Be it Aramaic, be it Latin, be it Ethiopic, be it German, be it Chinese. There are many, many translations. The King James is one of many, and it's one of many English translations. And there's some things that Tyndale got right, for example, translating Ecclesia with congregation rather than church, that the King James changed to church. That was an error even from Old English translations.

But nothing says that translations are inspired. Let me try to get one more call. 866-34-TRUTH. Let's go to Steve in Tonnington, Connecticut. Welcome to the line of fire.

Hey, doctor Brown. I'll try to squeeze this in quick. I'm just concerned oftentimes when I hear the textual and translational issues debated. of so much emphasis being placed on intellectualism and scholarship. When that wasn't really what the Lord Jesus proposed.

Would would how we would know what his words were. I mean, you know, the Holy Spirit was going to bring that to remembrance. And so I just wonder with these. Scholars Um that the common person is now required to trust in You know, how do we know that they're telling the truth? I mean, do we do the fruit?

Right, so I mean, right, so how do we, how do we test the King James scholars, right?

Well, fine. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so so number one, and all essentials. All essentials of the faith, if you read through the entire Bible and look at it as a whole. all essentials of the faith.

All of the major translations agree. We all agree on the fundamentals of the faith as supported by Scripture. That's number one. Number two. Common sense just tells you to read something that's in your own language.

In other words, not to read something where the English has changed and you don't know the meaning of the English or it's obscure because the Bible is written in the language of the people.

So common sense will tell you, read something in the language of the people. But... Don't worry about it because the discrepancies and differences overall, when you look at the testimony scripture as a whole, end up being very, very minor.

So that's why we have the great benefit of whatever your favorite translation is. Just get online, go to BibleGateway.com, and compare it to 10, 15, 20 other translations. And if you see they all go one way and your favorite goes another way, say, oh, that's probably the most accurate reading there. But either way, if you believe what's written in the King James, or the New King James, or the ESV, or the NIV, you're going to believe the same. gospel.

So feel secure in that. And that's a great point. Be secure in that, be secure in the translations we have and walk closely with. Fill more