The following program is recorded content created by The Truth Network. My friends, it is so imperative for pastors and leaders to talk about the pressing cultural issues of the day in church. Welcome, welcome to The Line of Fire.
Michael Brown thrilled to be back in our studio in North Carolina. We've got a lot of crucially important ground to cover. I want to address yet again how imperative it is and I want to encourage and strengthen pastors and leaders how imperative it is to speak to and speak about the relevant cultural issues we are facing as a church, as a society, as a church. As a people today, as families, as individuals, as young people, as old people.
I want to do that and I want to do my best to help equip. I also want to talk to you about more significant pushback. We've told you for years that there was a pushback coming. That there would be a gospel-based moral and cultural revolution that would push back against some of the craziness and the godlessness of the society. It's not primarily a political thing. It's not a spiritual and moral and cultural thing. However, it's broader than just gospel-based.
It's happening in many other aspects of the culture, quite apart from the gospel. We're going to talk about that today. Take your calls. I'm going to be responding to different questions on Friday, but not by phone. I'm going to pre-record that broadcast.
It's going to be a fun broadcast you do not want to miss. I'm going to be talking to you on Friday like I normally do on Friday. So, anything you want to talk to me about, anything you want to ask me about, phone lines are open.
It can be theology, it can be culture, it can be politics. Or you could be someone who does not like me at all and you want to give me a piece of your mind. So, we'll pay for the air time and you get to do that. 866-342-866-348-7884. So, I will get to the calls a little later in the show, but now is a good time to call us later in the show. So, you can get through and we can make sure that we get to your call. Okay. I want to say at the outset that I'm here as a friend, supporter, helper of pastors and Christian leaders.
Not a basher, not an attacker, not one here to say, you're doing this wrong, you're doing this wrong, you're doing that wrong. Unless you have pastor to congregation, you have no idea what's involved with it. Just like, unless you've had kids of your own, you still don't understand everything that's involved with having kids of your own.
There are lots of things, unless you've lived through it, unless you've been in the army and been in the midst of military conflict, you can talk about it, but a lot of things have to be lived out. So, it's the same thing with pastoring a congregation. The difference with pastoring a congregation is that everybody thinks they know better. I have shepherd's hearts.
Yes, that's true. And I've served as a congregation elder for years and I seek to be a spiritual father and mentor to people, right, caring about them and helping them grow in the Lord, helping disciple, mentor, et cetera. But there are gifts that a real pastor has that are not my gifts. I pastored for a few months. We had to remove a colleague because of adultery and now we were bringing in someone new and there was an interim and I threw myself in. And God really sensitized my heart instead of bringing in these strong, like, wake up prophetic, shake up words, much more caring, compassionate and tender.
But boy, did I realize it's just a lot I didn't see and a lot I didn't understand. So, you're a pastor in a congregation, maybe even a smaller one, where you don't have as much staff and help, there's a lot that falls into your thinking, okay, do I just want to teach through a book of the Bible and do that? Or do I want to just have a long series that's really helping to strengthen families? Or how can we better equip young people living today? Or, you know, we need to deepen our prayer lives.
Or, boy, people just don't have their finances ordered. I want to help teach on financial principle. Okay, and, you know, we want to deepen people's spiritual devotion. We want to strengthen marriage and family.
We want to stand with singles. We want to do outreach in our community. We want to have a missions mentality. We want to help the poor.
There's a lot going on. So, my desire here, my purpose here is not to throw something else out and say, you got to do this, but to say, okay, we have plenty of resources, there are plenty of others out there that can help. It is imperative, pastors and leaders, that from the pulpit or whatever settings you have, Bible study setting, small group setting, however you disseminate the word best, that you address depressing moral and cultural issues. You know, I was just talking to a pastor of a multi-ethnic church and he was saying that with the killing of George Floyd, it was very difficult to say things that would seem satisfactory to everybody. Because each side had certain sensitivities and pain and, you know, one pastor was telling me in Texas, he said, my church is basically one-third Hispanic, one-third black and one-third white. And he said, and we lost people from all sides after the George Floyd killing because whatever I said either offended one group or didn't satisfy the other group. So, it's not a matter of pleasing everybody, but this pastor said to me that he sat down with black leaders in his church, with black brothers and sisters, and said, I just want to hear your story. And it was quite overwhelming for him to hear person after person after person with stories of discrimination and mistreatment over the years. Not just imagined, but literal experience they didn't even know about for years and years and years and years. You know, we all have blind spots, but I can share things from my life experience as a follower of Jesus or as a Jewish follower of Jesus or as someone that does debates and whatever it is, I can share things that would shock you that I've gone.
I mean, they're minor overall, but you just don't know because you don't live in my skin. So, you have to have the conversations. If I'm more familiar with one part of the body or one part of the world, let's say as an American that is an international conflict, well, I know the American perspective, I live here. I lived here my whole life, and I've been overseas several years total of my life, but I'm not an international.
That's when you need to say, hey, what does it look like from where you are, from your country, and just to understand better. So, this week, this past week, Sunday morning did three services, then Sunday night, then Monday night, then a leadership meeting Tuesday morning. So, I was in Valley Stream, Long Island, Bethlehem Assembly of God.
My dear friend, Pastor Steve Malazzo, we've known each other now for 40 years. He came as a student in the ministry school, Christ for the Nations, that used to be on Long Island when I was teaching there. He came as a ministry school student. He was 23. Our oldest granddaughter in a few days turns 23.
Okay, so we've known each other a long time. I first preached in that church to the youth 50 years ago. Yeah, I was 18, 19, and I preached to the youth 50 years ago. Pastor Steve has been there all these years versus just attending, then as a youth pastor, then as associate pastor, then as senior pastor. And the church has grown dramatically, planted other churches, doing so much in the community. I'm so thankful for God's faithfulness through Pastor Steve and the team there and what's happened over the years.
Absolutely wonderful. And he doesn't pull back from the cultural issues, but again, he's not talking about that every week. That's at his major point. And this is the pastor I was talking about that sat with his congregants after the killing of George Floyd to hear a perspective that he might miss. And it's so important we do that that we sit in the same room. And you say to someone from the heart, hey, tell me your story.
Tell me what it was like growing up here. Tell me what you experienced. And we may agree or disagree with their conclusions, but at least it broadens our perspective and sensitizes our hearts. So if you go through membership there at Bethlehem, you will be confronted with what the Bible says about marriage and God's intent with sexuality. So if you're in a same sex relationship, you'll know, remember this church, I can't be in a same sex relationship.
It's displeasing in God's sight. And when you walk in the building, there are signs. There's someone standing there with a sign saying, come as you are. Literally a greeter with a sign, come as you are. Whoever you are, whatever your background, you're welcome here. We're going to love you and we're going to share the love of God with you. All right.
You want to go further, come into membership. Here's where we stand. There's no ambiguity.
Right. So when I was there Sunday morning, I was talking about the state of the of the nation. And I said, that reflects the state of the church. So I spoke very openly, very plainly about different things, including trans activism, saying explicitly, we need to pray for these individuals.
We need to pray for this drag queen story hour. We need to pray for these people, you know, talking about those. Maybe a gay activist pushing an agenda. I said, that's someone for whom Jesus died. That someone created an image of God. I'm not demonizing people.
I need to pray. My issue has been an agenda. So we were clear, we were compassionate. But we talked about these things very openly, about 13-year-old kids, girls having their breasts removed, and 10-year-old boys putting on sterilizing hormone from puberty blockers and things like that. We talked about all that, just about, look at where we are today. And I quoted warnings back from 1944 about the state of America, from 1959. And then even things explicitly talk about where we're at today with transgenderism and the blurring of male-female distinctions from 1968 to say, hey, it's past wake-up time. But that was all to say, that's because we, the church, have not been doing what we're called to do.
And then at night, the whole, not I'm worried about any of this, just recovering our first love and strengthening our consecration to serve the Lord by life or by death. After one of the night's services, a woman came up to me, maybe in her late 40s, thereabouts. She's a widow. She works in the school system department of education in New York, which is extremely liberal.
She said, just out of the blue, her 60-year-old son says that he's now a girl, identifies as a girl, because she's not accepting it. She's under pressure. She's getting persecuted from various sides, and it's very intense. Thankfully, she has the support of the pastor and church there, but she just wanted to thank me for speaking out publicly. When I was there, this was a good time to do it, speaking out publicly about these things, because it was so helpful for her to hear it again. She knows where her pastor stands. She knows where the church stands, but to just hear it in a Sunday message with that clarity. Then on the way to the airport, talking to the youth pastor and young adult pastor, one of them mentioned to me how helpful it was for the kids.
There was a Christian school with about 700 kids, and many of the kids in the services, middle school, high school, how helpful it was for them to hear me talk about these things, because they see it. It's the world they live in 24-7. I don't mean they're talking about this every single moment, but maybe not in Christian school every day, but all around them, friends, family members, colleagues. It's just, this is the world we live in, and it's not a political issue. It's a spiritual issue. It's a moral issue, and it's not even like, how could we live during the days of slavery and not address slavery? We all think that's reprehensible, that churches didn't address it more still, that churches supported it.
It's not even that. It's just, this is what our kids are dealing with all the time. As I said over these days of meetings in New York, TikTok has done a better job of discipling our young people than many of the churches have. So it's a pastoral responsibility to say, I'm stretched out already. I don't know where to go. Reach out to us. We've got all kinds of resources. We can recommend you to others. We can recommend you your videos to watch. There's school curricula that we can refer you to. There's speakers that can come in.
You can play some of our videos. There are all kinds of ways that we can help equip you, but people are hurting. People have need. To not speak is to be negligent in a critically important moment in our history when so many, especially young people and families, are hurting and confused and under pressure.
They need the help of the shepherds. I remember at times feeling so hopeless that our marriage could ever be good. Guess what? I felt the exact same thing. This is Real Family Life with Dave and Ann Wilson. But the thing that you can never forget that saved us and I think will save any marriage is this fact. Jesus rose from the dead. God raised the dead man back to life and he can do it again. He raised our dead marriage back to life.
So let's get real. Nothing is impossible with God. Don't quit. Hang on to Jesus. Ask him to help you and he will meet you right where you are.
Cry out to him. Help us, God. We're Ann and Dave Wilson and that's Real Family Life.
Get more at familylife.com slash real. You are, you are, still the goodness in my life. This is Michael Brown, your voice of moral, cultural and spiritual revolution. Join me for our next broadcast here on The Line of Fire. We'll dig into the Word of God together. We'll tackle some theological and biblical controversies. We'll take your calls and we'll do our best to set the record straight according to the Word of God.
This is how we rise up. It's The Line of Fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Get on The Line of Fire by calling 866-34-TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Yes, so I'm opening the phone lines today, all subjects, because I won't be taking live calls on Friday.
So anything you want to talk to me about, 866-348-7884. So everybody say out loud with me, if you don't mind, supplements are not substitutes. Supplements are not substitutes, but supplements can help.
So, you know, before the meetings getting up early Sunday morning, I guess picked up a few minutes after 8 in the morning, getting back to the hotel around 2. So the number one thing that empowers me to be full of energy is when you're 69 years old, full of energy, vision, faith, vitality, literally jumping for joy in the services, that's the healthy diet. That's number one. Then exercise, that's important too. And I'm trying, I'm doing my best to change sleep habits to get even better sleep than I've gotten before. And then these Triveda supplements are a real blessing as well. And some of you aren't doing the diet or the exercise. All right, well you at least do the supplements and maybe that'll give you a little motivation to work in those or they'll still help in other ways. You add it in with other good steps.
Boy, it's tremendous. So check out these great health supplements or to just ask questions and say, I've got an issue with this or I need struggling with energy or there's inflammation or a threat, whatever. Give a call, 800-771-5584, 800-771-5584.
Or you can go online, triveda.com and use the code BROWN25. All right. Let us go to the phones.
We'll start with Brian in Louisville, Kentucky. Welcome to the Line of Fire. Hey, I appreciate you having me on.
It's a pleasure to be with you. I was just wondering, because I know that when you've given your testimony before, you talked about in the early 70s going through substance abuse issues before you came to Christ. And I feel like there might be a connection between the left wing or far left wing side of the culture wars and people turning to substances.
Because when you preach that either there's no God at all or that there is a God, but he hasn't revealed himself through the Scriptures so you can make your own version of God, that maybe when people get to college and they're young, maybe that makes for a happy life, that they come from a good financial background and that allows for freedom and to explore different things in college. But once they reach later in their lives and they're looking for something deeper, and they've come to the realization there is no God, there is no greater meaning, we've got to find it in ourselves that, especially if you have mental health issues already, that it's easy to go down the path of substances and things of that nature. And I feel like when you take God out and you've got postmodernism and all that, that opens the door for substance abuse because you're trying to find an escape somewhere. Yeah, let me take it even further.
Let me affirm that and take it further. First speaking personally, the drug use was just hedonistic. It was just flesh-filled, pleasure-seeking.
You know, it was just once I started doing drugs, started getting high at 14, and then I had a high resistance to drugs, my body just had this high tolerance, so I had to do harder drugs quickly to get high and then even harder drugs. It was just a pleasure-seeking thing. It was fleshly, it wasn't that I was in need or I was on a spiritual search, it was just fleshly. You know, like a lot of people go out and get drunk, it's fleshly.
They sleep around, it's fleshly. So it was a fleshly thing. At the same time, at the same time, for many, there was a spiritual search.
People were, and I got involved, we all asked spiritual questions back then, but my drug use was mainly just fueled by the flesh. But for many, they realized there had to be something more, right? There had to be something more in the American dream.
We're seeing the assassinations of our leaders. There's the Vietnam War, there's the shaking of the society in so many ways, and I think there's got to be more than just the American dream and the whole peace, love, pursuit, and then it ends up just getting hijacked by sex, drugs, rock and roll, Eastern religion, all this other stuff. But fast-forwarding to today, it's not just you have to wait until you get older to see that a philosophy without God or a philosophy without moral absolutes or a philosophy that causes you to question even basic biological reality. You don't have to wait until you're older to begin to develop additional anxiety and pain and frustration and challenge. And in point of fact, Brian, when you really think about it, when a child has clear boundaries, let's say a stable mother and father home environment and clear boundaries that this is what we do, this is what we don't do, there's a sense of security for the child. There's constant change in different partners in the home and who is dad?
We don't even know dad, and this one disciplines you harshly and this one lets you do whatever you want. You end up with kind of wildness and rebellion and a lot of uncertainty, insecurity. So in the same way, there's a reason, and this is not to criticize, this is for empathy, that Gen Z is the loneliest generation in terms of survey history in America, the most depressed, the most anxious, the most suicidal, the most medicated. Even the social media phenomenon has hurt, not helped. It's created greater isolation.
It's put people under more pressure because your friend posts the happy life and the happy day and this is what they want you to see of their life, so it's not even real relationships. Of course it leaves holes, and that, yes, is the place where we come with the whole message, where we come with the glorious message of salvation and transformation in Jesus, where we say there's only one way to really have life in this world and the world to come, and that's in Him. So, amen, it's a great time for us to be praying. Thank you for the call.
Let's go over to David in Cleveland. Welcome to the line of fire. Yes, greetings, Dr. Brown. Totally appreciate your message, your writings. I read your books and so do a couple of my close friends.
Thank you. With that said, got kind of a couple of comments first on the subject, why pastors address the culture wars, and just to give you my background, very briefly, was a public school teacher at one time, was ordained in large Pentecostal denomination, was involved in campus ministry at Kent State University, and now I'm involved with trying to reach an unreached people group in Central America, so I've been immersed in this my whole life. With that said, I see we have executive pastors, administrative pastors, youth pastors, children's pastors, but I don't see the rest of the five-fold ministry active in the local church almost nowhere. I don't see real prophets, though I believe in prophets. I don't believe, let's say, evangelists.
Let's take on that for a moment, and this is kind of a question then. Why can't we support evangelists whose main mission is to be out there with the unsaved, not sitting inside of a church building, but we'll hire all kinds of pastors to sit inside the building? And I actually heard at a pastoral meeting when I was still part of a denomination, and I was involved again in campus ministry, one pastor spoke up who had a large church in the area, basically said, our campus students, they're future tithers. They didn't look at them as souls to be saved. They looked at them, they're our future tithers.
Now listen. Yeah, so listen, I'm going to respond, David, on the other side of the break in more detail, but let me just say this, thank God for the many healthy churches that I know and work with around America and different parts of the world that really do focus on reaching the lost as well. However, without doubt, there is a major void here. In my book, The Silencing of the Lambs, one of the chapters is called, Calling All Evangelists. And evangelists don't just go out to the lost, they equip the body to reach the lost. So whether it's a full-time staff member or whether it's just an elder or anointed leader within the congregation that is really gifted with evangelism, yeah, it's not just pastoring and teaching and pastoring and teaching. There needs to be the prophetic perspective and those that have that particular burden, and then yes, yes, yes, for the health of the church, we must be reaching out, we must be multiplying, we must be duplicating. And the key way that it happens is when the believers get mobilized. So if you've got a strong evangelistic leader, they help mobilize the believers. As everybody starts to evangelize where they are, it becomes contagious. It just becomes part of who you are.
It is essential for the life and health of the body. And it's why we're here. It's why we're here. I thank you for the call.
Hey friends, Michael Brown here. My delight to serve as your voice for moral sanity and spiritual clarity. We are living in such urgent times today, friends, that all of us are in the line of fire.
There's a target on your back, there's a target on my back. If you simply seek to live by biblical values or just conservative moral values, you could be canceled, you could be cast out, you could be put down, you could be silenced. I'm here to say, friends, that I am not about to be silenced, and I don't believe you are either. It is time for us to stand up. It is time for us to say, enough is enough. It is time for us to push back in Jesus' name. Not fighting the way the world fights.
No. Overcoming evil with good. Overcoming hatred with love. Overcoming the flesh with the power of the Spirit. Overcoming lies with truth. And that's what we're here to do on the Line of Fire broadcast.
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Donate monthly. This is how we rise up. It's the Line of Fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Get on the Line of Fire by calling 866-34-TRUTH.
Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Thanks for joining us on the Line of Fire because I will not be taking calls Friday. It's going to be a great show. You don't want to miss it, but I won't be taking live calls. You can call in now, as you would on Friday, and shortly we'll get to all kinds of other topics.
866-34-TRUTH. All right, just getting back to comment a little bit more on what David had to say. Was it Oswald Smith, pastor, missionary statesman, who said, The church that does not evangelize will fossilize. It's been said that new souls are the lifeblood of the church. Pastors have a calling to shepherd. So it is natural that their first thought is going to be the well-being of the flock and the health of the flock and the nurturing of the flock and the grounding God's people in the Word and in sound teaching and lifestyle.
So that's obvious. But unless that pastor also has a strong evangelistic gift, and I know, some of my colleagues are very strong pastors slash evangelists, and they function in both effectively. Unless that's the case, then others have to be raised up as well. Just like, for example, if your primary calling was an evangelist and you planted a church, you better believe you need to bring on pastors and teachers to help shepherd the flock, or if it's not paid staff, just raise up those people in your midst, because that is body ministry. Just pointing the index finger, this prophetic word, that's wonderful, but that's just one finger. What about the rest of the hand?
What about the function there? So it's the same with the body. And we tend to be, with the church model that we have, kind of everything taking on the characteristic of the senior pastor. You can't expect one person to do everything. That's why team ministry is so important. So plurality with headship.
You have a team of leaders with one leader as the head leader leading the way. And again, it's not to criticize. It's to say, hey, get yourself some help or recognize the need. Pray it in. Pray it in. You know, in our own ministry, I don't make financial decisions. I don't.
It's not my gifting. I tend to step out prematurely or not budget things well. Maybe want to pay out more money, be generous in a certain place here where we can't, or give here where we can't. Or, okay, we'll take this step in faith, and it's just my own optimism, and it's not real faith. So any major financial decisions day by day, if this and I can be consulted, you know, the key couple that leads our ministry, one directing the operation and the other overseeing the finances, they work together every day. And, you know, we'll talk about it, but I leave the decisions to them because they're gifted in it, and they're strong in it, and they're anointed to do it.
And they do an amazingly excellent job. So it's freeing for me. It's not a bad, it's freeing for me. So pastors, leaders, you know the saying, staff your weaknesses. Where you're strong, be strong, but raise up others, or bring on other staff that does the things that you're not able to do so that the body can have overall health. Going for the loss and recognizing that this is why we're here. Yes, a healthy body, making disciples, right? Winning the loss, making disciples, that's why we're here. We're here to know God and make Him known, to be disciples and make disciples. That's why we're here. All right, I'm going to go to the phones again in a moment, but thank you for that call, David.
I appreciate it. So I've been talking for years about an expected pushback. I've been saying it's coming. I've been saying that as the radical left will have more and more victories in court and more and more influence in society, that it's going to cause a pushback, that the radical left will overplay its hand. And from day one, I mean, very early on when God began to burden me about gay activism in America and break my heart for the people, I saw that those who came out of the closet fighting for what, in their mind, is just equality and freedom, right? Why can't they live their lives the way a heterosexual lives his or her life? Why can't their relationships be as open and public as ours are? Why do they have to face harassment on the job just for being who they are when heterosexuals can be who they are?
And why are they blamed for all the evils in society and so on and so forth and just they want to live their lives, right? They may have come out in crude ways, were here, were queer, get used to it, but it's basically, in their mind, this is equality, et cetera, and fairness, liberation. At the same time, what I saw immediately was that ultimately those who came out of the closet wanted to put us in the closet. That was the inevitability. Those who came out of the closet wanted to put us in the closet.
It's just the way it was going to unfold. I don't mean your average gay or bi person, I mean the activists. So we've seen that, and the more pressure, pressure, pressure, pressure to get in the closet, the more opposition for us just living our lives, and the more pressure a kid in school has to get preferred gender pronouns so they're out, or a teacher has to agree to go along with some radical agenda for preschool, people are going to start to push back.
So we've been saying that for years and years and years, and now it's been happening more and more and more. Even the pro-life movement, even though there's push back and forth and court victories and then political losses and so on, the overturning of Roe v. Wade, that was another major part of it. Having said all that, friends, where we're also seeing the pushback now is in the realm of education and in the realm of business, because the radical leftist agenda is self-destructive.
It ultimately does not work. So it's one thing, for example, to say we really want to look carefully to make sure that we are not excluding candidates because of race, because of ethnicity. We want to make sure that our structure, just the way it's set up, or our presuppositions, or the people that we are potentially looking at, that the way we've set things up, that we're not discriminated, that we are not excluding certain people. Look, you could give a test to a kid in the suburbs and a kid in the inner city. You could use inner city vocabulary for the kid in the suburbs, they'll flunk.
You could use suburbs vocabulary for the kid in the inner city, they might flunk. And we're just looking at this intelligence where a lot of times it's just vocabulary and culture, right? I mean, give me a slightly exaggerated point, but you get my point.
So it's a great thing to say. We want to do our best to have equal opportunity, right? But the way DEI has worked itself out has been very destructive, because what it means is, here's a CEO saying, I want the best man or woman for this job, because this is a critically important job, and the success of our company hinges on this person doing their job well. But I can't hire that person because basically a quota or an expectation that it has to be a woman, or it has to be a person of color, or it has to be someone who identifies as someone of the LGBTQ spectrum, or, well, now it's no longer a meritocracy, but now it's no longer may the best person win the job. And, again, may we look at our systems, our structures, so that there is equal opportunity for all and there's not discrimination against people built in, which we've had over the years, right? I mean, Harvard had quotas against Jews, schools were letting blacks.
I mean, these are things that have happened over the years, right? So we've had that. And wherever it still exists, tacitly, explicitly, let's deal with it. But you end up with this reverse discrimination, so you have Asians taking major universities to court saying, we've been discriminated against. Even though we were a minority because we're successful, now we're not in the minority anymore. I mean, Jews in America are a lot smaller minority, say, than African Americans, yet we're not really looked at as a minority because of our success. So it's not just minority status, it's success status. So these Asians said, we got discriminated against. And others have said, we're getting discriminated against. I saw one radical leftist saying, the next president of Harvard University must be a black woman. Why? If the best candidate to run the university was a black woman, awesome, man, I'm cheering her on. More power to her, awesome.
If it's a white woman, if it's a black man or a white man or a Jew or a Gentile or a Native American or a Hispanic or Asian or whoever, go for it. Let the best person get the job. But you end up with this reverse thing where you can't hire the best people. And then the whole ESG thing in business places, and they're saying, what is this? So people are seeing the radical left mentality, the Marxist thinking that has permeated our universities and has even made its way into our children's schools where everybody's either in the class of the oppressor or the oppressed or the colonized or the colonizer.
They see the way the world is being divided, and they're pushing back. What is this? And where's the education I sent my kids to school for?
Where is this? And as it's getting exposed more and more, there's so much egg on the face of these major universities as the anti-Semitic atmosphere in so many schools that I've known about for years. Now it's coming out more and more and more. And instead of that degree saying, I got a degree from MIT or I got a degree from Harvard, it almost becomes an embarrassment. They've taken hits at these schools, massive hits in enrollment or new applications and massive hits in donors. And then on the business end, a lot of business people are saying, we're getting rid of this stuff because we've got to hire the best people for the best job. So again, you have discrimination against people that keeps qualified people out because they're a minority or they don't fit our ethnic profile.
We want our company to be pristine, white. That's been our history, so you don't even have a door open for people of color. So okay, we've denounced those things, said they're wrong.
But then you swing the other way and there's a pushback. This is another aspect of cultural pushback. We have been talking about these things coming for years and here they are.
So let me say this again. What is critically important is for the church to lead the way. Yes, we're glad that educators are waking up or wealthy business people are waking up. And more students are speaking up and more and more are saying, yeah, the emperor has no clothes and they're finally speaking up. And they're saying, but this is madness. What are we doing? Why are we having drag queens shaking their hips, reading to toddlers, celebrate?
Where did the madness come from? And on and on and I'm just throwing out one example out of many. That's positive.
That's good. That's inevitable because this radical left mentality does not work when it actually plays itself out in real life, it doesn't work. And if you're, let's say, being hired as an accountant somewhere, a CPA, and a lot of your training was looking at how math is racist or asking how you feel about particular things as opposed to just learning math.
You're going to do well as a CPA. Again, a slightly exaggerated example, but making the point. So as these things flesh themselves out and as the parents and the families and the students that worked hard to get into the most prestigious universities graduate and now the degree is a liability more than an asset, you've got to believe change is coming. But we can't just sit back and say, good to see the change.
We, as gospel witnesses, as those called to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world, have to do our best to put forth biblical values, to put forth a wise way of living based on scripture, based on understanding who God is and who we are, and that we help lead the way by living it and by propagating it through the gospel. We'll be right back going straight to your calls. Let's hear what TriVita customers are saying. And then yesterday I did a back workout and I was doing weight that I haven't done since my twenties. And I usually ride my bike to the gym.
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This is how we rise up. It's the line of fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Get on the line of fire by calling 866-34-TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown.
All right. Here go the phones. 866-34-TRUTH.
By the way, I can't believe I did this. The very first thing I wanted to do at the beginning of the show is to tell you it should be next week we send out our first ever frontline newsletter. We're going to share some neat things happening in Jewish ministry that will really bless you.
Every month there's Hebrew Word of the Month. We've got book excerpts, quotes, testimonies. You're going to really look forward to getting this.
It's absolutely free. It's coming your way digital so you can read it on any platform. If you're not getting my e-mails right now, I meant to do it at the beginning of the broadcast and a few times since and I didn't.
Okay. Go to thelineoffire.org. Thelineoffire.org. Right on the home page. Sign up for the frontline newsletter as we stand together on the front lines making a difference for the Lord.
Thelineoffire.org. Sign up for the frontline newsletter. Tell your friends and we should be sending it out. We're just finishing the formatting and everything this week.
You should be sending out the first one and you'll get it once a month starting hopefully next week. All right. We go to the phones in Franklin Square, pretty close to where I just was, Franklin Square, New York. Rick, welcome to The Line of Fire. Hi, Dr. Brown? Hey, I'm here. Hi, Dr. Brown? Yes, sir. Go ahead. Hey, this is Rick. Sorry I didn't make it to Bethlehem Assembly of God.
My work schedule wouldn't allow me to get there but I really wanted to be there. All right. Well, it happens. So I wanted to ask about Revelation 16 verse 15.
Okay. I wanted to get your interpretation of this particular verse because I believe this verse insinuates a lot. And if you could read this and interpret it, I'd appreciate it because there's something in there that I don't understand. Yeah, Revelation 16, 15. Behold, I'm coming like a thief.
Blessed is the one who stays awake, keeping his garments on, that he may not go about naked and be seen exposed. So as I always understand this, just in generalities, okay, this is, he's speaking this, the wrath of God is being poured out on the earth. He hasn't come yet, an indication that his coming is not before the tribulation but at the end of.
So this is Jesus still speaking about his return as the wrath of God is being poured out on the earth. And when he threatens to come like a thief, it's for those who are asleep. And it says in 1 Thessalonians 5 that we all know that the coming of the Lord is like a thief in the night. But for those of us who are in the Lord who are children of the light and children of the day, his coming is not like a thief.
Because the thief comes in the night and we're children of the day. So to those of us who are serving him alert and ready and longing for his return, he doesn't come like a thief. He comes with signs of expectation and then we lift our eyes in readiness.
And he catches up to meet him as he returns to establish his kingdom on the earth. To those... Now when he, Dr. Brown, when he is stating here, make sure your garments are on lest you be exposed with your shame. Is that insinuating that pretty much everybody could possibly, if it weren't for those garments, that everyone could possibly be exposed as a shameful person? Yeah, I mean certainly, and I was about to get to that part, so thanks for pushing me over there. Yeah, remember in Revelation 3, he's used this language with Laodicea, the church in Laodicea. You say I'm rich, increased in wealth, and of need of nothing, but don't realize you're rich and pitiful, poor, blind and naked.
So buy from me. Stop for your eyes so you can see, and gold so you can be rich, and garments to clothe your nakedness. So we are... If there are people claiming to be followers of Jesus, but who are living in sin, caught up in the ways of the world, living in self-deception, they may be church-going, but they're still naked, and they will be exposed on that day. And the garments that we wear, later in Revelation, it speaks about the white linen garments that we wear, which is the righteous deeds of the saints. So we are cleansed with the blood of Jesus, we live out lives that are pleasing in His sight, and those are the garments that we wear, living in readiness of His coming. Those that are living profligate, sinful, hypocritical lives, they're naked, and when He comes, it's going to catch them off guard, and they'll be exposed.
Okay, can I ask you this? I looked at this Greek word for thief, and it's the word kleptis in the Greek, and it's defined as an embezzler or a pilfer, according to BibleStudyTools.com, interlinear word study. This word embezzler and pilfer, does that really match up with what you're describing as far as Jesus coming as a thief?
Because I'm a little confused about the definition of the word kleptis. It just means thief. In other words, it could use in different contexts, like an embezzler could be a thief, or a pilfer could be a thief. But the Greek word itself just means thief. In fact, when I'm even looking at lexicons just here in my software, the definition is thief. So, yeah, don't try to read too much into that. Sometimes, you know, it's just like in English, when we say thief, we mean thief, right? And someone that doesn't know English, they're trying to understand what's the difference between a thief and a robber, or between a thief and a burglar, but we pretty well understand it. So sometimes we try to read too much into it.
But remember... Well, I appreciate your help with this. Yeah, let me say this last thing, Rick. If you remember, in one of the parables of Jesus, he talks about being ready for his, you know, a king goes on a journey, right? And one of his servants thinks, yeah, he's away for a long time, he's not coming back for a while, so they begin to party, they begin to get drunk and, you know, beat other servants and things like that.
He says, that master, that king, is going to come at a time when the servant wasn't expecting it. And that is really what happens. So again, the key for us is very simple. It is living as children of the light.
Let me just take this a little further. I want to read a few other relevant references here. So let's go to Romans 13. The end of Romans, the 13th chapter.
And look at what Paul writes there. He says, beside this, verse 11, you know the time that the hour has come for you to wake up from sleep, for salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. The night is far gone. So here we have this night-day imagery again. The night is far gone.
The day is at hand. So then, let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy, but put on the Lord Jesus the Messiah and make no provisions for the flesh to gratify its desires.
So you have this imagery. Walking in the light means walking in purity, walking in holiness, walking in love, walking in truth. And in the darkness, when nobody is looking, behind closed doors, people commit all these other sins. That's why they do it behind closed doors.
That's why the person breaks in at night when no one can see them. We go over to Ephesians, the fifth chapter, and Paul has just laid out guidelines for how we live. Verse 1 of Ephesians 5, that we should be imitators of God as beloved children and walk in love, as Christ loved us, gave himself for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
Then it calls us to live godly and pure lives, no immorality, etc., etc. And then he says this, verse 7, speaking of the children of disobedience, Therefore do not become partners with them, for at one time you too were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. So the way I used to live, shooting heroin, stealing money from my own father, living a decadent, rebellious life full of pride, self-will and anger, I was darkness. Now we are children of light. Walk as children of light, for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true, and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them, for it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret.
But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible, for anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says, Awake, O sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you. One last passage, 1 Thessalonians chapter 5. Let's get bathed with truth from the word of God so we know how to live together on the front lines. Now concerning the times and the seasons, brother, 1 Thessalonians 5. You have no need to have anything written to you, for you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying there is peace and security, then sudden destruction will come upon them, as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.
So maybe during the time of the Antichrist it's going to be fine, good, and then suddenly destruction comes and then the return of Jesus. But you are not in darkness, brothers, for that day to surprise you like a thief. For you are all children of light, children of the day. We are not of the night or of the darkness. So then let us not sleep as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober.
For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk are drunk at night. But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation. For God has not destined us for wrath. So in other words, we are protected from God's wrath as it's poured out. And above all, we are saved from eternal wrath, but to obtain salvation.
That's the emphasis there, eternal wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ who died for us, that whether we are awake or asleep, we might live with him. Therefore, encourage one another and build one another up just as you are doing. Alright, so another reminder, sign up for our frontline newsletter. One of the neat things we're going to do as we talk about the line of fire, not just a radio broadcast, but an army of men and women all around the world making an impact, glorifying Jesus, changing lives. People that we've had the privilege of raising up, sending out, you're going to hear more of their stories. And every month you're going to be edified, like, hey, what can God do through me?
Why not? Let's believe God together. So make sure you go to thelineoffire.org, sign up, get our frontline newsletter. It's coming your way. It should be next week. Another program powered by the Truth Network.
