I know it's thoroughly Jewish Thursday, but we've got some special guests today. Uh 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. Hey friends, I'm about to get into a wonderful interview with a dear friend and colleague about God's true love. This is a foundational subject.
This is something that every believer in Jesus talks about and knows about on a certain level, but it's amazing. How many misconceptions that we often have when it comes to the love of God. My guest, a dear friend for many years, David Harwood, also a Jewish believer with his wife Elaine. He's led a congregation in Northern Long Island for many years. He is a worship leader and songwriter.
But sometime back, he got really consumed with the issue of God's love. He's written a terrific book on it called God's True Love for the last decade, has done seminars on the subject of God's true love in America and in other locations. And there's been a great impact of life change through these seminars.
So Dave Harwood, my guest, welcome back to the line of fire. Pleasure to be with you, Michael. David, how did you get interested in this subject in your own life? When did you become really focused on the question of the meaning of God's true love?
Well, as far as the focus was concerned, it happened like unpacking it. began to happen after I received an impartation. There was an impartation that transpired in my life after I had spent about 10 years praying through the Philippians 3 prayer wherein Paul spoke of his, well, it's not really prayer, but Paul spoke of his desire. His desire was that he would know the Messiah in the power of his resurrection, the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death. I made that prayer my own and I thought it was going to be my life verse.
Uh after I guess in between eight To 10 years of praying that prayer, there was a day that I was exposed to the prayer of Paul in Ephesians 3 to know the love of God. And I realized that according to that prayer, there was an impartation From the Holy Spirit to strengthen our hearts, that we would have the power to grasp the fullness of the love of Jesus. This was made alive to me, and I prayed to the Lord concerning it, and something happened in my life. I was changed. It was like a switch went off, and all of a sudden, I began to.
lay hold of the love of God in a way which I had never had in my life. And God began to open up to me sort of like the content of that love. It was much more than a feeling. There's a real person that is behind the sense of the love of God. And he began to reveal to me his heart and aspects of that love, which really I had not been exposed to through teaching, I guess.
And David, you're a man of the word and of the spirit, a man who loves God with your heart and with your mind. You began to teach this to students of ours. We had a branch of our ministry school in New York City for a few years. You began to teach this. We've just got a little over a minute, but what happened when you began to unpack the scriptures on God's love to these students?
Well, the Messiah said that if you continue in his word, you'd be his disciple. You'd know the truth. The truth would set you free. And as we began to open up the scriptures to these younger disciples in the school, their lives were changed. That's not an exaggeration.
I was taken aback by how powerful the message was. Really, I shouldn't have been because Jesus said, the words that I speak to you, they are spirit and they are life. All right, and just so we understand this, friends, as followers of Jesus, we talk about the love of God, we know the love of God. Most believers know John 3, 16, for God so loved, and in this way, God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son. And we talk about the love of God.
This is love, not that we loved him first, but that he loved us. We understand these things, and yet there are aspects of the love of God that my guest, David Harwood, would say that we have fundamentally misunderstood based on what Scripture says. And since Paul prays in Ephesians 3 that we would all know breadth and the height and the depth of God's love, we ought to know these things. Let us explore God's true love together. God of light, hear our cry, send a 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. Is there any subject more important?
Then the love of God. than understanding the love of God. walking in the love of God. and making that love known. What if we have some fundamental misconceptions about the love of God?
Would that affect our lives negatively? Would that affect our ministries negatively? Can we afford to live our lives without fully understanding and grasping the love of God, at least as fully as we can in this world. My guest, David Harwood, a Jewish believer in Jesus, like yours truly. He has been a pastor, worship leader, songwriter for many years, and more recently, an author.
And well known now for his seminars on God's true love and his book, God's true love. David, we often hear that in Greek there are three different major words for love. One refers to carnal love, one refers to brotherly love, one refers to divine love. That's called agape or the verb agapa'o. Would you say that that is an accurate statement overall?
Or are there some inaccuracies in it? And if so, where do those inaccuracies lead us? Yeah.
Well Let's see. That understanding is more like a current evangelical tradition that's been going on for the last 60 to 70 years. But the reality is that The word agape As well as the noun, I suppose the verb, is a word that really it just means love. It means love of every description. It's a an all-inclusive love.
And it's not only divine love, it's love that can describe. everything from that which is profane to that which is common to humanity. I'll give an example if that'd be okay. Sure.
Okay, in John chapter 3, we have the word agape used. Uh, three times. Uh, one is in John 3:16, which you had mentioned earlier. Uh, in this way, God so loved, or for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, and that is. uh God, the holy person, the holy person.
Loving a cosmos which is in darkness. Then, a couple of verses later in John 3:19, the word agape is used again. Basically, it's written, This is the judgment. that light has come into the world. And humanity loved, that's the word agape, loved the darkness rather than the light because their deeds are evil.
So you have. Holy divine love, which is motivating God to redemption, to mercy. And then just three verses later, you have a love which, if not turned away from, is damnable. This is the judgment that humanity, agape, loves the darkness rather than the light because their deeds are evil. The third time that agape is used in John 3.
It is the testimony of John the Baptist, John the Immerser, who said that the father. Loves, word agape again, loves the Son and has put all things into his hands. And so there you have the holy person loving the Son. The Holy Son. But the thing which is important is that this word agape is an emotion.
God has an emotional love for the world that prompts him, that provokes him to work. Redemption in the earth, bringing humanity back to himself. Humanity has the emotion of love. towards darkness. and despises the light, loving the darkness in order to I guess cover up their evil deeds, and then finally.
Holy person, Father, loving Holy Son. At the same time, despite This disparity of holy God loving lost cosmos, humanity loving darkness, Father loving the Son, it's speaking of the same thing. But when you listen to much of what's said in the church, What seems to be implied is that agape is this holy, selfless love that does not in any way consider the value of the object of the love. In other words, I love that which is worthless because I am a great lover, I'm a wonderful person, or I have determined to act lovingly and I have great control and so I act in a loving fashion. And in both of those things, What you have is that agape or love has nothing to do with the object of love, but that is not the case.
God really loves the world, wants the world, wants humanity back in relationship with himself. Humanity, at our worst, loves the darkness and wants the darkness to cover up its evil deeds. And at the best, the Father. Holy Father loves the Son, the Messiah, Jesus, and Jesus, we are all in agreement with this, is absolutely worthy of this love. But in the eyes of God, so also is the cosmos, so also is lost humanity.
Agape is an emotion. All right, so we'll unpack this a bit more, the meaning of emotion when we speak of God. But obviously, it doesn't take much study to see. that the verb or the noun associated with agape love is not this supernatural love or this supernatural expression or just this purely theological. expression.
It doesn't take much study to see that, as you mentioned in John 3, obviously if it is divine selfless love, it doesn't apply to human beings loving darkness rather than light. And we can see this through the use of agape and agapa'o in both the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures, and in the Greek New Testament. But in short, what you're basically saying is we have emptied the love of God of love because we've made it too theological. God has planned to save the world, and even though we are unworthy of his love, yet he loves us. Yeah, we're unworthy of his love, yet that love is not just a cold theological love or an emotionless decision.
So let's get into this issue of emotion for a moment when we refer to God. We're not talking about God having ups and downs, and ooh, don't pray to him today. He's in a bad mood. Oh, he's in a good mood today. He's not like a drunken alcoholic father.
You don't know what to expect from him. We don't mean that. But some theologians speak about God's impassibility. By which they mean that because he is always the same, that terms like God's wrath, God's love, God's joy, God's sorrow, that these are just theological terms that do not actually correspond to realities within God, otherwise God would somehow be changing. How do you feel about that concept?
Well, I prefer the testimony of the scriptures. When I came to the Lord, I humbled my intellect and determined to take. You know, take the word of God, take the scriptures, the words of the apostles, the words of God incarnate, the words of the holy prophets of Israel. I decided to take these words and submit my mind to it.
Now, I empathize with those who want it so that God is in some sort of a You know, state that he doesn't actually interact with creation. He doesn't actually, but God is constantly interacting. He interacts within himself as Trinity. He is interacting with his angelic host. He's interacting with humanity.
And to think that he has no emotions is to actually raise a theological or philosophical concept. and consider that to be more perfect than the way which God describes himself. God describes himself as being holy, yes, but he describes himself also as being an emotional God. And one of the Psalms, I think it's Psalm 94, it says, He who made the eye, doesn't he see? He who made the ear, doesn't he hear?
Well, our sight and our hearing are analogous to God's sight and God's hearing. And along with that, I think we might be able to add, without distorting the meaning of the text, he who made the heart, does he not feel? Does he not love? And he says over and over again that he does. And we're supposed to look, in our case, to Calvary to see an extraordinary expression of love, of desire, of wrath, of a wrath, love, of jealousy, of mercy.
All of these things are emotions. And I think that that's how God wants us to see it. In fact, the scripture says we know love by this. That he laid down his life for us, and therefore we have an obligation to love one another. All right, we're going to unpack this more, friends, to get the full insight.
Get David Harwood's book, God's True Love. But my heart gets stirred as I hear these things because yes, we are fallen human beings and therefore our anger, our sorrow, our joy, our jealousy, our love can be mingled. They're not perfectly pure like God's love, God's anger, God's sorrow are. But we have to realize that when God pours out his love, there is this tremendous deep expression. You know, all of us who have ever loved, we've had heartbreak.
If it's a relative you love dying, if it's a person you love and the relationship broke, you have heartbreak. And you go through this and you say, it's better to have loved, even to go through the heartbreak, than to never have loved at all. That is a reality when it comes to God, a genuine longing and desire for people to come to know him, a genuine pain when he is rejected. And in his sovereign will, this is who he is and how he operates. What does this mean to you as a believer?
We're gonna unpack that with David Harwood, his book, God's True Love. What does it mean in your own life, in your own walk? 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. The scriptures talk about being washed in the word of God. I want you to be washed now in the truths of God's love. My friend David Harwood, author of the book, God's true love.
David, I want you to open up the scriptures. I want you to minister to our listeners and to our viewers and talk to us about God's true love, what it means to us as believers. I would say that the primary thing that it means is that if we make it our serious business. to abide in the love of Jesus, that we're going to bear fruit. Yeah, that makes this really important.
In John chapter fifteen. The Lord is speaking to his apostles. He's about to leave them, and he's telling them the things which are really on his heart. He tells them five times. Abide in me.
He repeats it over and over again, and then the next time that he begins to speak with them, he says this to them: just as the Father has loved me. I have also loved you. Abide in my love. That is the key for abiding in Jesus. He says, abide in me, abide in me, over and over again.
He's teaching these men within the framework of an oral culture where By repetition, they are learning, and Jesus is speaking it over and over again. They're getting it. Abide in me, abide in me. They're concentrating on what He's saying. And then the last time that he uses these words, abide in me, speaking to them, he's like, listen, listen, I want you to know what it means to abide in me.
Just as the Father has loved me, I have also loved you. Abide in my love. So that's the key. That's God incarnate. That's the Messiah giving us understanding of how he wants us to abide in him.
He wants us to abide in him by adapting an inner posture towards him that he has with his father. The Lord knew that the Father loved him. At his immersion, the Father saying, This is my Son in whom I am delighted. This is my beloved Son. I am delighted in him.
It's the same thing at the Transfiguration. This is my beloved Son. Listen to him. Father delighted in Jesus. Jesus knew that the Father delighted in him.
And the Lord is saying to his disciples, on the night he was betrayed. On the night when all of these men are going to leave and perhaps come back, we know that John was a witness at the cross. He says to them, listen, the same delight that the Father has in me, I have the same delight in you. And I want you to remain in a conscious awareness of my love for you. But hang on, how can.
I remain in a state of consciousness of God's love for me when I knew I really didn't have quality prayer today. I neglected time in the word. I kind of read the word in a mindless way. You know, I allowed my mind, I thought some bad thoughts. I wasn't compassionate to, you know, someone had a need and I was consumed with something else or maybe something worse than that.
How can I be conscious of God's love when I'm very conscious of my failings and of His perfection and holiness? I mean, surely, maybe on a good day, on a really good day, I could embrace God's love for me. But what if it's not my best day? And here the disciples, they're about to blow it big time. How could they possibly take hold of this?
Well, they have to take hold of it because the Lord told them. I mean, this is this, we're talking about our best day. This may have been their worst. Yeah.
They've gone to the Seder. The Lord said, one of you is going to betray me. They begin to say, is it me? Is it me? And then that, and that.
A conversation devolves into, well, I'm better than you are, I'm better than you are, and the Lord, the Messiah, gets up from where it is that he is reclining. Takes off his outer garments, girds himself with a towel, washes their feet, and says, Listen, I want you to love one another just like I love you. And then he goes on to say, and this is the same night he's prophesied to Peter, Peter, you're going to betray me. He's saying, You're all going to run away. They all did.
And he's trying to secure them in a relationship with him that they would be able to turn to him at any point in their lives and say, You know, he said on that night, he said it on that night, on the night that he was betrayed, on the night that Peter, Peter, betrayed the Lord with oaths, you know, with curses. You know, I used to think that he was using profanity. And then I came to think maybe a couple of years ago that maybe he was saying, you know, if I know him, may I be disqualified from the life to come. But suppose the curses with which Peter was denying the Lord were curses upon the Messiah. Suppose he was saying, Something like, I don't know him, and let his name be blotted out.
Well, that makes the betrayal a little bit more serious. The Lord made sure that he secured Peter's heart after his resurrection, and these men would always be able to go back to that night, the night that they betrayed him, the night that they ran away and say, he knew, he knew what was to come. And he said that the same way the Father loved him, the same quality of love, the same intensity, the same delight, the same desire. The same way the Father loved him, he loves me. He loves us.
That truth, if taken by faith, is enough to undo our hearts, open our hearts up to his love. Turn us to Him, and if we determine to do that on an ongoing basis, we will never be the same, and we will. We will bear fruit. According to the promise, abide in me, you will bear fruit. Yeah, and we could live lives that bring God joy or lives that bring God sorrow, but that's because of the intensity of his love for us.
And someone could determine to walk away from God entirely, but God's commitment to us is that he's not going to walk away from us in our time of weakness, in our time of pain, any more than we as parents would walk away from our children in a time of weakness and a time of pain. And David, what has so blessed me as I've watched you and Elaine pour yourselves out for others in these ways for so many years is that you are as passionate about this truth now as when it opened up in your heart years ago. And I remember having lunch with you and Elaine one day, I think you would, or dinner, you had just finished teaching like six hours straight on this. And over the meal, you were both getting all excited about the love of God, how wonderful this is. This is something that we can walk in forever in this world and in the world to come.
Friends, I encourage you to get David Harwood's book, God's True Love. And David, you often post some very insightful things online, articles, blogs. Where can folks find you online? Yeah.
Well, they could always find me via Facebook and our Our ministries Our ministry's website is loveofgodproject.org, or just, you know. Look for my name, David Harwood, and put in love of God. I'm sure that will send you to me. Yeah, and David Harwood being a less common name than Michael Brown, that works. But also, loveofgodproject.org, another place where you can go.
David, always a joy to fellowship with you, even on the radio. And I trust our listeners were blessed. Thanks so much for joining us. It was my privilege. Thanks for having me, Michael.
All right, again, the book. God's True Love by David Harwood. Check out my latest audios, videos, articles on my website, AskDr. Brown, ASKDRBrown.org. My bottom line today, a greater revelation and understanding of the love of God will transform us.
and allow us to bring a message of transformation to many, many others. 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. The deity of Jesus. and the deity of Jesus and the subject of God's triunity, the Trinity, God's complex unity. Are these beliefs that were created after the writing of the New Testament, perhaps even centuries after?
Were these beliefs that were not really codified or believed strongly until the Nicene Council in the early 4th century? Is it orthodox to say that the first disciples, the apostles, and the disciples of the apostles held to firm belief in the deity of Jesus? Or is that a view that should be challenged? There's a lot of debate and discussion on that, and you'll often hear in popular circles that the Nicene Council kind of invented the Trinity or made Jesus into a God. Is there any truth to that?
I'm going to be joined today by a dear friend and colleague, Dr. James White. Many of you, most of you, are familiar with Dr. White's ministry. He's a foremost Christian apologist, a well-known author, a debater.
He's debated Muslim leaders, Catholic leaders, Mormon leaders, well-known atheists. And within the faith, he and I have. debated different issues. He's debated other believers on things where we may have minor differences. And I want to address this subject with James today because he's focused very intensely for many years on the New Testament text, but he's also made himself familiar with church history.
So, James, welcome back to the line of fire. Great to have you with us today. Always great to be with you, brother. All right. You are a believer in sola scriptura, as am I, which would mean that the scriptures are the final authority for faith and life, that we base our doctrine on what's written in scripture, and that is our final authority.
Why is it important to know what the early church leaders taught? If we hold to sola scriptura, why does that matter?
Well, because that gospel went out into the world and we live in a day where because of the internet being absolutely ubiquitous attacks upon the faith We can't hide our people from these things. We need to prepare them for it. And obviously, it makes sense if you make the argument, well, The teaching of the New Testament, they will say, is ambiguous or there's different perspectives. And then we look at the early church, these are things that developed over time, evolved over time. And of course, unfortunately, we have books like the Da Vinci Code with Dan Brown.
all over the place and people reading this kind of fiction and it was fiction but Uh and so as a result You know, it's one thing most Christians have a New Testament. They've read Least of. major portions of it. But when it comes to the early church fathers, a lot of people don't even know where to look. They don't spend any time reading these sources.
And so if those sources are brought up as an objection to the faith, it can pretty much end a witnessing opportunity. It can end a testimony opportunity because most Christians today don't know much about. Church history and especially about early church history. And so I think it's vitally important, especially when we discover that the testimony. to the deity of Christ is extremely early and extremely deep.
All right, if you had a minute just to make a case for the deity of Jesus in the New Testament, what are some key texts that you would draw, point to in just a minute?
Well, in just a minute, it's pretty difficult to do, but it depends on who I'm talking to. If I'm talking to a Jehovah's Witness, I'm going to answer that very differently than if I'm talking to a Muslim, for example. Jehovah's Witness, in one minute, I would emphasize the identification of Jesus. with the tetragrammaton.
So in other words, I'd go to Hebrews chapter 1, I'd deal with verses 10 through 12 in comparison to Psalm 102, 25 through 27. Because for the Jehovah's Witness They already believe that Jesus is a God, so all the references to Jesus as God really wouldn't have that much impact upon them. It's the demonstration that the New Testament writers were willing to take those texts, which were uniquely about the God of the Old Testament, and apply them to Jesus in that same context, which is the key issue of Hebrews chapter 1, the immutability of the Creator in Psalm 102, applied to the Son specifically. in Hebrews chapter 1, also John chapter 12 and the citation from Isaiah 6. For the Jehovah's Witness, that's the key issue.
For a Muslim, I would give a different presentation, and I would emphasize the Lordship of Christ and the identification of him as God, and especially the fact that he's worshiped. All right, I'm going to have to jump in. We'll continue. We'll be right back with Dr. James White.
Change the world. 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. I'm continuing my discussion with Dr. James White about the deity of Jesus and what did the early church leaders believe, the apostolic fathers, the early church fathers as they are called. I had to cut James off a moment ago talking about an apologetic to Muslims about the Lordship of Jesus. The Muslims believe the Bible is God's word, but it's been corrupted as we have it today as followers of Jesus, yet there's much that they do accept.
So, James, if you are dealing with a Muslim, doing apologetics with a Muslim, you've actually done these debates. Does the New Testament present Jesus as deity, Jesus as God? What do you do that would be different than just dealing, say, with a Jehovah's Witness or someone else that denied the deity of Jesus?
Well, one of the things I suggest to folks is to sort of undercut a lot of the objections that most Muslims, especially westernized Muslims, if you're talking to a Muslim who's come from another country, Um then you can pretty much focus just upon basic texts that identify Jesus as God and things like that. But if they've been exposed to an apologetic in the in the Western realm, Then what I like to try to do is sort of undercut the objections by going to the earliest traditions in the New Testament to demonstrate that the earliest followers of Jesus clearly believed in his deity. I won't go to John. I'll go to Mark because they've heard that Mark is the earliest and I'm not going to argue with them about that, but... Mark plainly teaches the deity of Christ.
I'm going to go to other texts that come from the earliest generations, the very earliest years. And so 1 Corinthians chapter 8, the Carmen Christi in Philippians chapter 2, I'm going to go to these extremely early sources and say, look. From the very beginning, this is what Christians believe. This is not something that develops the Council of Nicaea. It's not something that comes a couple hundred years later.
It is in the earliest traditions we have in the New Testament. And that sort of helps get past a lot of the objections and really down to the meat of the matter with the Muslim. All right, so now let's get back to the issue of church history and the earliest writings after the New Testament. Obviously, again, we base our faith on scripture. But if in fact it is a living faith that was then handed on to subsequent generations, you would expect to see that the leaders in those next generations reaffirmed the things that we understand in the New Testament.
So, for example, if the subsequent leaders, all of them in the first couple of centuries after the New Testament, all of them denied the resurrection of Jesus, all of them spoke of Jesus as just a glorified man, then you'd think, what? How could that possibly be? Are we reading the New Testament rightly? Conversely, if they reaffirmed fundamental things we believe, then we'd say, well, that was what was passed on to them, and that's why we see it clearly in the New Testament and clearly in their writings. Yeah.
What about the case for the deity of Jesus and the apostolic fathers? Where would you start if you wanted to say, hey, this is not just our interpretation of what's taught in the New Testament. It's clearly reaffirmed by what the next generation of leaders taught. I think personally, if I have the opportunity, I'm not going to go to the Didique, which is one of the earliest writings, simply because it wasn't meant to communicate those things. It's just simply...
a manual of church discipline and life and things like that. Um uh Clement's epistle to the Corinthians is interesting. There are definitely some high statements about Jesus there, but it's talking about church discipline. It's focused upon something else as well. If you really want to go to the richest source, uh go to the genuine epistles of ignatius of antioch and we have a really cool illustration of this uh back in the 90s somewhere the watchtower bible and track society jehovah's witnesses decided to do a series where they went through early church fathers and tried to paint them as Jehovah's Witnesses.
When they got to Ignatius, They ha they really had to work hard because Basically what they ended up doing was only quoting from what are called the pseudo-Ignatian epistles, the epistles that we know Ignatius himself didn't write. There are seven genuine epistles that he wrote to various churches and church leaders on his way to Rome to be martyred. They never quoted from them because they couldn't. Because the reality is in those epistles, And the numbers vary, but minimally in the strongest form, minimally 10 times, most people would say 14 times in those epistles, he specifically refers to Jesus Christ as our God. And so they couldn't quote from Ignatius because Ignatius Is about as far away from a Jehovah's Witnesses as you possibly could be.
And so when we look at those epistles, we are struck not only with the ease with which Ignatius refers to Jesus as God, But Michael, for me, one of the things it's extremely... It's just exciting to me. I know most people don't get excited about Ignatius of Antioch, but... I do, because here you have a man who gave his life in the faith. He knows the last of the apostles.
He's living in the very first decade. of the second century.
So he's right there. I mean uh about as contemporaneous as you can as you can get. And yet the level of his Christology. is absolutely astounding. In fact, I'm going to read you a text from Ignatius.
But I'll be perfectly honest with you. I think you'd agree with me on this. If we were to ask most modern seminary graduates, to give us Only two lines, two typed lines. describing their theology of Christ. I doubt could equal what I'm about to read you from Ignatius, I would be shocked.
And this is the first generation. This is the very first generation. And what we're told and what our young people are told. when they go to community colleges and universities, is this belief in the deity of Christ and especially the whole realm of Christology, God in man, of the two natures, oh, that was way, way down the road someplace. Not according to Ignatius.
Let me in his epistle to the Ephesians. in what we would call the seventh verse, the seventh division. Here's Here's what we have. There is one physician. Of flesh?
and of spirit generate and ingenuate. God in man. True life in death. Of Mary. And of God.
First passable. and then impassable. Jesus Christ our Lord.
Now I want to go through that carefully so you can hear. the the couplets that he gives there and how deep they are in what they communicate.
So there's one physician. There is one who can bring healing, spiritual healing to mankind, who can bring salvation to mankind. And here's the description. Why is there only one? Because he's of flesh.
and of spirit. I mean, remember, this is, he dies in 107 or 108 AD. This is long before the Council of Nicaea, long before Chalcedon. of flesh and of spirit.
So there's a denial of the Gnostic perspective where he did not partake of flesh. There was no true incarnation. He is of flesh and of spirit. There's two natures. And that scene as well.
Degenerate? and in generic.
So what would that refer to?
Well, generate in the sense of the flesh has not eternally existed, but came into existence. But as to his divinity, he's ingenuate. Yeah, born and unborn. Exactly. Exactly.
God in man. I mean, en anthropotheos. God and man.
Sounds like John 114 to me. Yeah, sounds like incarnation to me. Not something way down the road, not something with Emperor Constantine. Uh but very early on from a martyr bishop. We have incarnation very clearly presented, God and man.
True life in death. And so we have resurrection. Uh we have the the giving of life. that is so very important to the understanding of the gospel. Um both from Mary.
and from God.
So again, maybe not in the technical language it's going to be used at Chalcedon or something like that, once there's been all these debates and things like that, but in very biblical language. Both from Mary. and from God, the two natures once again. First passable literally sufferable.
So in the incarnation, he can suffer. Then impassable. as the resurrected Lord. No possibility of that physical suffering any longer, the resurrection life, so on and so forth. Jesus Christ our Lord.
Again. If we were to ask Most seminary graduates today to write a summary of Christ. in a single sentence. How many would be able to do as well as Ignatius did? In the first decade, of the second century.
Yeah, and what what that so confirms is what Professor Larry Hurtado has sought to demonstrate from the New Testament witness that the earliest strata, the earliest strands of witness in the New Testament point to Jesus as an object of worship. Point to Jesus as someone that can even be prayed to, like Stephen said, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit, or the early Aramaic saying, Morana tha, our Lord, come.
So that this would confirm the highly exalted status of Jesus among the apostles. And again, we have to realize that as he rises from the dead, ascends to heaven, sits at the right hand of the Father, sends the Spirit, that he is not just a glorified man. Ignatius confirms it. We're going to dig deeper, see if Ignatius had anything else to say about this important subject. 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. Yeah, I have whole books when Jesus became God, when people made a man into a God, and it's later church history, it's Constantine, and it's not what the New Testament teaches.
They didn't believe in the deity of Jesus the Messiah. Of course, we can demonstrate the deity of the Messiah beginning with the Hebrew scriptures and then overwhelmingly through the witness of the New Testament. But my guest, Dr. James White, foremost Christian apologist and author. Is showing us today that you can go to the Apostolic Fathers, the disciples of the Apostles.
And you have very clear witnesses in some of their writings as to the deity of Jesus. If you're not familiar with Dr. White's ministry, want to find out more, go to aomin.org. Aomin.org for a wealth of relevant and always controversial material because he's tackling the controversies. James, what else does Ignatius of Antioch have to say?
You mentioned that he dies as a martyr around 107, 108. We have his seven letters written to different churches as he's on his way to martyrdom. Any other important witnesses about the deity of Jesus and his writings? There are a lot. I mean, even his epistle to the Ephesians begins by saying, by the will of the Father and of Jesus Christ our God.
This is common when he writes to the Romans, the same kind of language.
So this direct use of Jesus Christ our God. But I wanted to sort of continue in the thought of the one physician text because you have that deep christology there And then within about two sentences. in his epistle to the Ephesians in the ninth uh i'm uh in the um Ninth verse. Listen to this. You are stones of a temple.
Which were beforehand prepared for a building of God the Father. being raised to the heights through the engine of Jesus Christ, which is the cross. and using as a rope The Holy Spirit.
Now again, this is This is first generation. And yet we have Trinitarian language just as we have. In Ephesians in Colossians and 1 Corinthians, the ease with which the Christian people can associate Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the one work of salvation. And yet a clear distinction between the persons. There's no modalism here.
There's no Sabalianism. There's no confusing the persons. It's having one person acting like another person or something like that. You have the temple is being built to the glory of God the Father, but the, and it's interesting that the term for engine there is where we get mechanism. That's the very Greek term that's used there.
The the uh engine Is of Jesus Christ, which is the cross. And I just stop briefly to point out. that in light of my constant apologetic witness to Muslims, Here is very early evidence outside the New Testament of the centrality of the cross in light of the denial of Surah 4, 1 to 7 that the cross ever took place.
So the the cross is the the the the engine the power by which this building process is going on and yet being raised to the heights using as a rope. The Holy Spirit, the role of the Holy Spirit in the formation of the church, the bringing together of the people as the stones, pretty obviously borrowing from Peter's language here in regards to the building of this temple. Again, I just, I realize that a lot of folks are probably going, why is that strange looking man so excited about this? when you realize how common it is. for scholarship to just dismissively assert That this kind of stuff was unknown to the early Christians.
Okay, well. Even a certain fellow that I talked to at a debate where this man debated Bob Gagnon. on homosexuality. He had said in the debate, we need to start learning to think even differently than Paul did or even differently than Jesus did. When I approached him, I said, Don't you believe, you know, in in Basically Nicene Orthodoxy and his response was, well, you don't really believe that the disciples of Jesus believed he was God, do you?
And here you have the disciples of the disciples, and they certainly believed it, and what the disciples give us in the New Testament certainly taught it there as well. the consistency of this, but the problem, Michael, is. Because of the nature of the internet and the fact that There really aren't any controls on it. Lies can get repeated so often that they become taken as truths. And that's what's being presented to our people, that's what's being presented to our young people when they go to the university and the community college.
And they need to realize there's much more out there if you actually read the sources themselves. But how many people actually end up doing that? Yeah, and obviously, so we have to do our best to popularize things, get them out in tweetable soundbites as well as in lengthy scholarly articles and formal debates. You know, I remember an article I read many years ago by B.B. Warfield where he was showing some of Paul's language, the way that the grammar in the prayers in Thessalonians, when he would direct a prayer to the father and son, but it would be directed as the prayer was to one person, the way it was prayed.
You think, okay, that's a little hard to break down, to explain to someone, and I'm doing a poor job of explaining the Greek grammar here. But when you have, for example, Titus 2, 2 Peter 1, references to our God and Savior, Jesus, that's a lot easier to understand. And you're saying that Ignatius repeatedly uses that, refers to our God, Jesus Christ. How can you deny that he believed that he was deity with that simple language? I mean, it's so straightforward, isn't it?
Well, the only way to do it is to do it the way the watchtower did, and that is lie about it. Ignore it. Quotes in the pseudo-Ignatian epistles, or I was listening to an atheist today trying to pretend he was making a presentation on the development of the canon of scripture, skipped right over Ignatius, numerous misrepresentations, and how many people can catch it. How many people have enough background or even know someone they can go to? to ask the question.
to be able to expose this kind of inaccuracy.
So much of what's on the internet is just not even semi-truthful. It's not even semi-accurate. But there's really no way for most people to filter that kind of stuff out. Yeah, so one good thing that you ought to do, friends, if you see something reported on internet, try to get it back to the original source.
So-and-so said thus-and-such.
Okay, where? I had a caller the other day say he heard this quote from an Egyptian president that allegedly said this and that. It was Time magazine and thus and such year.
Well, then when I went to check it out, well, one said Time Magazine, another said National TV in Egypt. But then another said it was quoted in another book. I could never get back to the source except that somebody once alleged it was said, and then it becomes this internet meme.
So try to trace it back. Find the original source. And James, we've got less than a minute. Do you find it exciting to read the Apostolic Fathers to see that these people are willing to die for their faith as well? Most definitely, but the one thing I do want to say very, very quickly.
We need to let the Apostolic Fathers be the Apostolic Fathers. Most of us in the modern day try to turn them into whatever we are. But they weren't. They were what they were. They weren't Roman Catholics.
They weren't Protestants. Trying to cram them into our box is going to cause a tremendous amount of confusion. Many of them didn't even have an entire New Testament. Keep that in mind when you're reading them. They have their flaws.
But we can learn a lot from them, especially those that gave their lives as testimony to Jesus. Yeah, and also reminds us. that there's no perfect church, you know, your specific fellowship. We do our best to honor the Lord and we all grow in grace just as these godly men did as well. Hey, James, thanks for joining us and illuminating us to those texts.
And you're going to get a few more readers for Ignatius of Antioch as a result. Remember, visit James's website, a-omin.org. You are listening to a previously recorded broadcast. I'm about to talk to a biblical and Semitic scholar about the unseen realm. Uh 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. Every single day as we look at the news, we're looking at what we see. big debate tonight between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. another shooting in the States, leaving nine people Wounded and the shooter dead, upheaval around the world, around the nations. All these things are important, but you know.
There is an unseen realm. There are things happening in an unseen realm. And the Bible often talks about this unseen realm. This is Michael Brown. You're listening to The Line of Fire.
And we're going to talk about the unseen realm with a biblical and Semitic scholar, Michael Heiser. We had a Conversation about this last year that was very popular. We actually re-aired the interview.
So I'm so delighted to have Mike back with me for an hour today. He is the scholar in residence at Logos Bible Software. He earned his PhD in Hebrew, Bible, and Semitic Languages at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. And his main research interests are Israelite religion, especially Israel's divine council. Ooh, we'll talk about that.
Contextualizing biblical theology with Israel and ancient Near Eastern religion. Jewish binatarianism, what's the difference between that and Trinitarianism, biblical languages, ancient Semitic languages, textual criticism, comparative philology and Second Temple period, Jewish literature. A lot of overlap with my fields of interest, but we're going to make this practical, clear for everyone. And Dr. Heiser's book, The Unseen Realm, is written for everyone to understand.
We'll tell you how you can get a copy of that in a moment. But without further ado, hey, Mike, welcome back to the line of fire. Thank you, Michael. Thanks for having me back. Oh, my joy.
You know, it's interesting. One of the calls I got on my show Friday, someone was asking me. about the name or the noun Elohim and how that referred to God and was there a divine counsel and did the Israelites believe in many gods? I actually got a couple of questions about that last week and I said, well, we'll talk about that with Michael Heiser, who wrote about these very issues on Monday.
So, Michael, how is it that you got so interested in this unseen realm that a lot of believers don't understand, let alone think about?
Well, I I my uh watershed moment or the shot across about spiritually speaking, came in graduate school. I mean, I'd taught you know, undergrad at a Bible college for five, six years. Had a couple of master's degrees. I'm in the Hebrew Studies department, you know, at Wisconsin. Before church, one day, I don't I don't know what m I was talking about with this guy.
He was in the Hebrew department too, but the conversation ended with him handing me his Hebrew Bible and saying, You need to read Psalm eighty two in Hebrew. And I had never done that. And you go to the first verse: Elohim Natav Ba'ad El, God has taken his place or taken his stand in the divine council. And without getting a grammar spasm here, Elohim is singular there, capital G-O-D, because nitsab is a singular verb form, it's a participle. And the next line is Bekerab Elohim Yeshpot, in the midst of the gods he passes judgment.
And the second one is plural, you know, because of the character. You can't be in the midst of one. We knew we weren't talking about a Trinity because of verses 2 through 5. God is angry. With this group of Elohim.
And I looked at that, and two thoughts popped into my head. One was Wow, that looks a lot like a pantsy office.
Okay. You know, that was like a disturbing thought, you know, before church. And the second one, fortunately, providentially was I bet Jesus knew this passage. I bet Paul knew it. I bet the apostles knew it.
In other words, I'm not looking at anything that nobody you know, none of these people had ever seen. And so it's like this has an answer because obviously, you know, an Orthodox Israelite, if we can use that term, you know, would not be a polytheist. Jesus wasn't a polytheist. The apostles were a polytheist.
So, what's going on here? And that experience sort of really propelled me in a number of ways.
Alright, so that is the watershed moment. The Israelites were not polytheists, but did they believe other gods existed? I thought Yahweh said that he alone was God. We're going to continue this conversation with Dr. Michael Heisen.
We'll be right back. You are listening to a previously recorded broadcast. Hey friends, this is Michael Brown. I want to encourage you to join our support team today. Become a torchbearer, one of our regular monthly supporters that enables us to broadcast the line of fire in America and around the world.
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Michael Brown, your voice of moral, cultural, and spiritual revolution. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Welcome back, friends, to the line of fire. I'm speaking with Dr.
Michael Heiser. Author of the book The Unseen Realm.
So, here I have a biblical and Semitic scholar. Who has done his research and has come to conclusions that might surprise many of us? And some here and there, I'd say, hey, let's have a discussion about that. But one of these eye-opening things that if you've studied the Bible in Hebrew and studied it in an ancient recent context, you're not surprised by this, but many people reading it the first time like, oh my, or how could that be? Were the Israelites polytheists?
Did they believe in different gods or did they believe in one supreme God? Or I thought Yahweh was the only God. And friends, if you want to get a copy of Dr. Heiser's book, The Unseen Realm, you can get it together with a complete 12-hour course I taught on angels, demons, and deliverance. Just go to the website, askdr.
Brown, A-S-K-D-R-Brown.org, to find out more. And if you have a question, if you'd like to ask Dr. Heiser a question, call 866-34TRUTH. That's 866-348-7884. As long as it's relevant for Dr.
Heiser, he will gladly take your question.
So, Mike, what... Did the Israelites Believe, were they polytheists? Did they believe in monolatry or henotheists? How do we understand that there's only one true God? And yet the Bible talks about other gods, like Exodus 15, Mikamocha, Baileim, Adonai, who is like you among the gods, O Yahweh.
Right. Yeah.
H my view is that Verses like that mean exactly what they say. Really? Yeah, I mean that that that we don't have we don't have you know oh Lord who is like you among you know Cartoon characters or unicorns or leprechauns. I mean, these are beings that actually exist. God challenges them and defeats them, and He is superior to them.
when I came across um you know Psalm eighty two I naturally tried to find, you know, evangelical sources and, you know, like help me through the woods here. And unfortunately, a lot of them just fudged the issue. And a lot of translations fudge Psalm eighty two. We go down in Psalm eighty two, God is speaking again to these other Elohim, this group of Elohim, and says, I said, You are Elohim, sons of the Most High, the B'nai El Yon, all of you.
So we know who the Most High is. Again, that's the God of Israel.
So these are the sons of God. And a lot of evangelical You know, sources would say, well, these are just people, these are just the Israelite judges. But if you go over to Psalm 89, You have the sons of God there in the same council language, and there it's in heaven, in the sky.
So, this is quite obviously a spiritual council, council of divine beings, disembodied spirit beings. And I didn't know what to do with it. But eventually, you know, again, God providentially led me to think carefully through this, and it became the subject of my dissertation and lots of other things. And here's what you have. Here's why there's a disconnect.
When we see the letters G, O, and D, In a Bible or anywhere on a screen or, you know, or whatnot. Our brain, again, just because of who we are as modern Westerners or modern Christians. Our brain immediately assigns a specific set of unique attributes to the letters G, O and D. But that is not the way an Israelite thought about the word Elohim. You say, well, how do you know that, Mike?
Are you making that up? Does that make you feel better? No, we know that because of the way Elohim is used. It's actually used of half a dozen different things in the Hebrew Bible.
So the the deceased you know, Samuel in 1 Samuel twenty eight, thirteen is called an Elohim. The gods of the nations are called Elohim. The gods of this council are called Elohim. You've got Deuteronomy 32:17 with the Shadim. Which most English Bibles translate as demons, are called Elohim.
Now, that alone should tell you. That a biblical writer, when he wrote Elohim in a text, was not assigning a specific set of attributes to that word. If he thought that way, he would never use that word of any other entity other than the God of Israel. But he doesn't do that. You know, we just do that because of the way we're trained.
What Elohim actually means, the reason why it's used of different entities. is you would use that term if you were describing or labeling. A being in the spiritual world, a being that is by nature disembodied and belongs in the spiritual realm. What would an Orthodox Israelite believe? What would David believe?
Or Abraham or Whoever. He would believe that, yeah, over there in the spirit realm, there's lots of Elohim because Elohim means spirit being. Just like a synonym for Rouja, spirits.
So and Yahweh lives there. Yahweh is an Elohim. but no other Elohim is Yahweh. Yahweh gets singled out in the Hebrew text, the Hebrew Bible. And as described In unique ways as all-sovereign, omnipotent.
the creator of everything visible and invisible. That's what makes Yahweh unique. I like to use the phrase he is species unique. And that's what a a true you know orthodox Israelite would have believed. There is only one of those.
But in the spirit realm, there's lots of Elohim, but none of them are Yahweh. Yahweh is distinct and unique, and to use academic terminology. He's ontologically different and superior. to all other gods.
So in the sense that we would define God as the eternal Creator. There is one and only one God. Everything else is created by him. Is that what God is saying of himself in the book of Isaiah? Yeah, I think the statement that there's none beside me, there's none like me.
They're not statements of exclusivity, like I'm the only Elohim that exists, because that creates a pretty obvious self-contradiction in the Hebrew Bible. Their statements that I am alone unique. There's none like me in various respects.
So there's none like me. You know, in in addition to me, there's no other like me. And that phrase, I mean, there's about 10 different phrases that scholars call incomparability statements. There's about 10 different ways to say that in Hebrew. two of the most common, there's none beside me, actually show up in Isaiah and Zephaniah.
where respectively you've got Babylon and Nineveh. Claiming in the text, there's none beside me.
Well, obviously, they're not, the text isn't saying that. only Babylon exists in the world. You know, Babylon is the only city in the world. And then Nineveh for Zephaniah. It's very obviously not what the text means.
It means that Babylon and Nineveh are claiming to be. Superior. incomparable. And that's the sense that we need to approach these phrases because I don't believe that scripture is internally contradictory. I think it's a consistent worldview.
Where God is saying the Hebrew Bible is telling us. In the spirit realm, there's lots of beings that an Israelite would call Elohim, just generically. Is that sort of the umbrella term? But Yahweh among them is unique. There is no God like him.
He is the God of gods. He is the Elohim of Elohim. He is the Lord of Lords. You know, all these famous, you know, unfamiliar descriptions we get. of the God of Israel.
There's no question that there's only one of those by definition. And the way that Yahweh gets described. It's just that all of that isn't packaged and transmitted. through the term Elohim. And really, when you just go over to a New Testament mentality.
that in certain ways pulls the curtain back even more. And Paul says in Ephesians 6, we're battling principalities and powers and heavenly places. or in 1 Corinthians 10 or 2 Corinthians 10 that these are not gods, these are demons.
So he's saying of course there's a spiritual realm, and Jesus was dealing with spirit beings constantly.
So if, and this is obviously not a precise translation, but if someone just translated Elohim with spirit beings, because we know the root has to do with power and things like that, but let's just say we translated with spirit beings and said, but there's only one ultimate spirit. the creator of all things. I mean, that's what's being said. And yet in our Western mentality, we really downplay the spiritual realm, which was so real in ancient Israel and real for the New Testament writers. Yeah, and you know, it it's it's really, I mean, you know this as well as I do, the academic community will.
Will somehow miss this. They'll take references to plural Elohim and then try to argue that Israelite religion evolved from polytheism to monotheism. You know, I I rejected that in my dissertation.
So that was quite a tap dance to get a PhD in a secular institution. You know, and reject that because that's what everybody's thinking. But it's so obvious Again, that this one Elohim gets described in ways that none of the other ones do. Uh, but somehow that well, I that just fits the paradigm, you know, that that's that reinforces what they want to say now. You used a couple of terms, monolatry and henotheism, early on.
Israelites versus Orthodox Israelites were certainly monolatrists. That's a word that refers to worshiping only one. And it's very clear the Old Testament demands that of a faithful, believing Israelite. You worship only Yahweh. Chenotheism, I think, is also ruled out.
Uh by The the whole Hanoply of the usage of Elohim because look at what henotheism presumes. Panotheism presumes, yeah, there's one God among many and he's He's on the top of the heap. But he could be replaced.
Okay, and henotheism itself doesn't really distinguish the one at the top. Ontologically, or in terms of attributes. It just says, well, he got there because he was the most popular, or he was perceived as beating the other gods, or something like that. That's the Israelite thinking goes well beyond that. Yeah, and then is absolutely ruthless in terms of worshiping idols and bowing down to these other spirits that are all created by the one true God and many of whom are in rebellion.
Is there a rebellion against God in the Bible, in the spiritual realm? You are listening to a previously recorded broadcast. 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. Hey, just a quick reminder, in case you don't know this, if you don't own Logos Biblical Software, they've just come out with version 7, the premier Bible software. I keep realizing how little I know about how much is there. I keep being stunned by what I have in the software and how much is available.
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So it's a great thing to take advantage of. Hang on, make sure I'm giving you the right code here. Let me just check to be sure. Yeah, Line of Fire 5. You get a 15% discount on all packages that you order.
And then And Logos is kind enough to donate 15% of each sale to us.
So, even if you have it, you keep buying new things, use that code, and you'll be a blessing to us at the same time. Speaking with Dr. Michael Heiser, author of the book The Unseen Realm, Mike, I want to talk to you about a battle in the heavenlies. Was there some type of cosmic conflict? Does the Bible allude to that?
Are there seven-headed monsters that Yahweh defeated? I want to ask you that in a moment. First, let's grab a couple of calls. We'll start in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Max, welcome to the line of fire.
How you doing, Doc? You're doing well. Go ahead, sir.
Okay, uh just getting back to the argument that we had about The geeks of Wow. Yeah.
field and there's mainly Okay, to I just want to bring more evidence. Uh-oh, do you have a quest do you have a question for Dr. Heiser? We don't have I've got to respect the time of my guest In fact, since you give me a different name than when you called last time, we're going to pass on this right now. Feel free to call me another day.
We'll chat. Eric, in Boston, your question for Dr. Heiser. Hi, Dr. Brown, Dr.
Heiser. Great to speak to you both. Um my question has to do with How do we go about what's the methodology that you use, Dr. Heiser, in determining what is just ancient Israelite belief? Perhaps maybe like I've I've seen you write about this, they you know, the ancient Israelites believed and like a flat earth with a dome and stuff and But you don't believe that.
So how do you go about determining, okay, this is actually true and this is just the perspective of the ancient Israelites in the Bible?
Well, I I like to say that I give God credit for knowing what he was getting, you know, when he called people and moved people to produce scripture. In other words, if God wanted Uh science. you know, and material produced through the tools of science. when he chose someone in the second millennium BC, that is sort of a counterintuitive proposition. God knew what he was getting.
God knew what his own purposes were. He's not going to prompt an ancient writer. To produce things that the ancient writer cannot know. And God was perfectly fine with that. And that ought to tell us if we assign intelligence to God, which I think we obviously should.
that God knew what he wanted, he was wise when he chose, and what was produced he was happy with. It should tell us that his goals, again, were not to have a second millennium or first millennium BC Israelite produce modern. science and modern cosmology. God, it would have been absurd for God to expect that. And God does not do absurd things.
So again, these are the sort of thoughts that I have again, and just say, well, then what did He actually want them to do? God allowed ancient writers to use the language that was at their disposal in their head, in their framework, to communicate to people of their own time. And if you think about it, if the point is affirming dualism, clear creator-creation distinction. Who the creator is. That we're created, we're responsible to that creator.
Again, big picture theological thoughts. Those things transcend science. Science will change constantly. But God was wise enough to have biblical writers produce theology for us. Using whatever language they could, that transcends all that and is timeless.
Now for if to take this a little bit further, I think we are bound to embrace as revelation. What God had these writers write when it comes to the spiritual world, because that world cannot be tested with the tools of science. That world is beyond the tools of Scriance.
So, while on the one hand, again, God would not choose people to produce something they couldn't possibly know, okay, and preventing the absurdity. we can evaluate the natural world of science. God, of course, knew we would do that. He would move people to discover this or that thing in Providence, and that was fine with God. But we don't have those tools at our disposal because we are embodied beings.
We live in the terrestrial world God has created for us. And so we have to trust God that the biblical writers produced again something he was completely satisfied with. And we need to embrace those truths from the spirit world, the world that, again, just can't be analyzed. and evaluated with the tools of science. Yeah, so i if an ancient Israelite actually believed that there were windows in heaven.
windows in the sky that were opened up and the rain came down through the windows. Or if they believe that that was just metaphorical language, that's not what the Bible is seeking to communicate, which is what it is seeking to communicate is God's the creator and God controls this. And God has purposes for all of this as opposed to That an ancient Israelite probably would have thought that the sun rose and the sun set. That would be the logical thing. And what's interesting is through history, until people realized that the earth went around the sun.
If the Bible had taught the other, people would have dismissed the Bible for being wrong for most of history. Yeah, you know, we have to give God some credit here. I mean, if he wants to produce, again, something that would satisfy the modern twenty first century scientific mind. God is fully aware of what someone writing in a thousand BC is writing. You know, can we give God enough credit to say, no, no, no, no, no, I didn't want that.
Okay, but don't write that because that's going to be wrong three or four thousand years from Again, God knew what he was doing and he knew what he was getting, and he had providentially prepared all of the writers to produce the thing he wanted produced. And if if they're incapable of it at some point, Again, God wouldn't require that of them. He would step in and make sure that the revelation that He wanted given to us. Was sound. Again, but we and I know why we do it.
You know, we do it as a reaction to. Scientific atheism, which many people, and I frankly, I'm frankly one of them, I think that's an oxymoron. But we do it because of this sort of atheist compulsion to use science to beat the Bible, you know, over the head. And my retort is always, you know, Well, why are you mad at the Bible? for not producing what it was never intended to produce.
Why are you mad at the Bible for not being what it was never intended to be? Are you mad at your dog for not being a cat? Are you mad at your son for not being a daughter? I mean, if you can if you can show me, Mr. Atheist, that this approach makes any sense at all in the real world, Well, then we can have a conversation.
But right now, your proposition is looking kind of dumb. Because it's just it produces such a misguided result. and proceeds from a deeply flawed assumption. But again, we play into the atheist hands when we try to make scripture. you know, biblical writers produce things that God knew they weren't capable of producing.
We actually entrap scripture with our own good intentions to defend the scripture, which is a big mistake, again, in my view. Yeah, and listen, and thank you for a great question, Eric. When we understand that the purpose of Genesis 1 is to teach us about God, more than to teach us about science, then we're supposed to get out of it and understand that everything that God says that we're to follow and believe. Is true. Hey, go to askdrbrown.org, check out a really great resource offer with the Unseen Realm in the teaching series by yours truly.
You are listening to a previously recorded broadcast. 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. This is the kind of conversation I can have for many hours speaking with Dr. Michael Heiser. His book, The Unseen Realm, came out last year, and we got lots of great responses to the interview we did.
In fact, we re-aired it a couple of times when I was traveling, the two hours we spent.
So, so glad to get another hour with Dr. Heiser. If you enjoy Lagos biblical software, which so many of you do, you can thank Dr. Heiser for his expert work as scholar in residence, overseeing so much of the work and tagging. If you've been through it, man, I can just hover over this word in English and it'll tell me what it is in Hebrew or Greek.
You're talking to the man who tagged verse after verse after verse in the Bible. Michael, what was it like? Going through word for word the Bible, the way you did. Obviously, it was grammatical, you were doing things like that, but uh. You know, that's something that most of us will never, ever, ever do, even if we can read the original language, is to go through it that meticulously.
Were you able to get more out of Scripture or were you so absorbed line by line it was it was challenging? You know, I I I actually enjoyed it. Um and and you do notice things. I felt like a scribe, you know, some days you do notice things that you otherwise wouldn't notice. You know, when you have to hand link.
Every word of a translation. I did the whole King James, I did part of the NIV. And there was another one, I can't remember which one I did, but we've done lots of these different projects. But when you have to hand link Every word of a translation to the word or segment in the Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek from which it derives. You really do notice things at a granular level, and yeah, I took notes.
Well, I got to go look that up, I got to run this search. I loved it. It was an enjoyable experience. It took a year. It takes a year to do one reverse interlinear, working two or three hours a day.
So I love to get questions about the King James because I'm probably the only person in the world. You know, who has ever gone through every word, you know, hand-linking it to these segments.
So you get to know it really well uh as a translation. Um it was fun. I I really enjoyed it. Yeah, let's just think of one little thing. Obviously, the King James is beautiful classic.
As a new believer, I read it cover to cover several times, memorized thousands of verses out of it. And many times it is consistent with the use of a word, same word by the same author in the same context, should be translated the same way. But it takes them like Asthenia, having to do with weakness. And when you're going through Paul talking about weakness, and then it changes to infirmity. I mean, the King James isn't perfect on that either.
Yeah, we we sometimes forget that the King James was, you know, like modern translations, a committee translation. you know, and and the the translators at different points in different books you can tell, again, if you did the exercise I did for work, You could tell when you had a translator who really knew his Hebrew better than one of the other guys that worked in a different portion. I'll give you an example. Again, In in Hebrew you have the demonstrative pronoun. Let's just say who, functioning as a demonstrative or a personal pronoun.
And you're taught in Hebrew grammar while it has these two possible functions.
Well, it can also be used. as the copula, you know, the linking verb to be. or is uh in English because that's just the way it was used on occasion.
Well, there are books in the King James where the the translator just spotted every instance of that, knew his Hebrew really well. and caught all of them. And then there'd be another place where they really didn't know what to do with it.
So There are things like that in the King James where they may again, have had a difficulty with a word. A grammatical point like that, where you have quote unquote inconsistencies. But by and large, the King James. Is a good translation. There's a reason it's held up so long.
I was like you, I was weaned on it as a Christian. read it through several times and went
