Friends, there is no such thing as neutrality in the culture wars. You either push against the tide or get swept away with it. It's time for The Line of Fire with your host, biblical scholar and cultural commentator, Dr. Michael Brown. Your voice for moral sanity and spiritual clarity.
Call 866-34-TRUTH to get on The Line of Fire. And now, here's your host, Dr. Michael Brown. We're going to do what we do today. One reason that you tune into the broadcast, we are going to be who we are and do what we always do, which is push back against the tide of the world with the truths of the Word of God so that we can stand strong together. I want to tell you today, friends, you are not crazy.
You have not lost your mind. You are not the one that's gotten turned upside down. It is the world around us that is upside down and that's why we, as the light of the world, we as the salt of the earth, must fulfill our function and serve as the conscience of the world and bring the truths of God to a dying world, to a dying culture, which has been our mission for 2,000 years.
Michael Brown, welcome to the broadcast. Welcome to The Line of Fire. I'm here by God's grace to infuse you with faith and truth and courage. And my guarantee is if you tune in on a regular basis, you will get a dose of moral sanity and spiritual clarity. And I will not get your blood rising, your blood pressure rising, unless we also get your faith building, your faith strengthened. So we can talk about the craziness of the world, but not in a way that will discourage you or beat you down, in a way that will encourage you and give you hope.
Full lines are open. You can get to weigh in on today's topic. I didn't comment on it yesterday, but I'll comment briefly on Governor DeSantis dropping out and endorsing Donald Trump, as this is the day of the New Hampshire primary and still Nikki Haley running against former President Trump.
I just have a couple of brief comments about that, but they will be more spiritual than political in nature. If you want to call, if you want to weigh in on today's subject or talk to you about anything else, we'll see what calls we can get to. 866-348-7884.
866-348-7884. It was actually an article by a Catholic author of the Ruth Institute, Jennifer Roback Morris, a devoted Catholic, that got me thinking about today's subject. So I'm going to do that in a moment, but first just some general truths from scripture. We are in the world, but not of the world. Meaning we live in this world, on this planet, and we can be thoroughly in it in terms of enjoying nature and having families and doing things like that, but the spirit of the age, the spirit of the world, is not our spirit, is not our mentality, because we know who God is, we know who the Creator is, we know why we are here.
You know, I was thinking about some setting where you're suddenly isolated from everyone that you know, right? And you are just living for survival in an isolated place, or maybe you have a couple people around you and you're just living to survive. So that's your only purpose, to survive to make it another day, not to starve to death, not to be taken out by sickness or disease or a bomb or something like that, just to survive. And that's how animals live from day to day, unless they're pets and they get to play around, but oh, they just live to survive day by day. It's not like a worm is meditating on the purpose of his life, or an owl is sitting there saying the meaning of life and the purpose of life and how can I best use it, utilize life, and obviously a pet does not think about that either.
They just get to enjoy life a little bit more. But for us as human beings, created an image of God, there's a purpose. You're here for a purpose.
You're here for a reason. And I began to think again of the idea of life without God. I've never been able to fully wrap my mind around it and think as an atheist would think.
I've tried, I've meditated on, I've thought about it, I've even shared with you that I've prayed the prayer, God, help me to think as an atheist would think, as if you don't exist. I've prayed to God for that. And the closest I've ever gotten is when suddenly this thing, but then there's no purpose, then there's no destiny. You may have a life that has certain meaning to it, but there can be no sense of destiny and purpose and I'm here for such a time and such a purpose, because there is no purpose.
It's all just random. And when you think of just living to survive, it's that same kind of thing that there's something missing, that that's not why God put us here. There's something more to it. There's a destiny. There's a dream that God put in our hearts.
Ecclesiastes 3 says eternity is in our hearts. So we don't live like the world lives. We live in this world. We work our jobs. We raise our families. We have vacations. We have fun together.
We play sports and so on and so forth. We have hobbies, but ultimately we are not of the world. It's a different spirit. 1 John 2 says this. 1 John 2 beginning in verse 15, Don't love the world, neither the things that are in the world. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but of the world. And the world and its lusts are passing away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever. 1 John 5 19 says that we are of God, little children, but the whole world lies under the power of the evil one. It doesn't mean that every human being is just doing evil and wicked things day and night. It means that ultimately there is a tide that is carrying them and they're going in a certain direction just innately.
That is what is happening. And if you are in that tide, if you are standing there, unless you consciously go against it, if you're just passive, if you just float, you're going to be carried away with it. As a boy, during the summer, go to the beach every day. There was a few minutes away if we drove over the bridge into the neighboring town, the ocean was there, the Atlantic Ocean was there, but we did most of our time just walked a few minutes from the house.
We just had a bay by our town, Harbor Island Park on Long Island. And it didn't have the heavy waves and things like that, so we'd just go in the water and swim and play underwater games and different things like that. And sometimes it's hot out and you just float, just laying there floating.
And every so often you do it and you didn't have your friends around or maybe they decided not to say anything. And next time, whoa, what happened? You kind of open your eyes and you didn't even realize, but the tide carried you much further out than you were comfortable being.
You'd hurry, scurry and swim back. Some years ago, we were in Maryland, family vacation, and I was in a river with our grandson, Connor. And he was just doing different things. And so I was just kind of chilling and having fun while he was doing what he was doing.
These are real outdoors guys, as his dad and family are. And I just remember standing there and the tide was strong. And just to hold my ground, to not move, I had to consciously dig my feet in and lean and push in the other direction. Otherwise, if I just stood there, even not just totally passive, but just slightly passive, I'd be carried away. That's how it is living in this world. That is the reality.
It's just the reality. So I'm not talking about you all have to be culture warriors. You'll have to be standing in front of abortion clinics, preaching the gospel. You all have to be doing what I'm doing, being on the radio and being a voice.
You have to be social media influencers. No, I'm talking about the attitude. I'm talking about the attitude and the mindset, the things we're entertained by, the things that we take in.
They are going a certain direction. And if we do not consciously swim against that tide, if we do not consciously go against that grain, we will be swept away. It is the reality.
And many parents have learned the hard way that TikTok and social media have done a better job of disciplining their kids than they have because the parents didn't realize the degree that their kids were being bombarded. A colleague just sent me a video. It was an article on Town Hall where I write regularly.
And this colleague sent me a video. Oh, gosh, talk about something just grotesque. It is a man who now identifies as a woman and listening to him. It's obviously a male dressing like a female, but obviously a male. And he's talking about getting surgery to.
How do I say this? So probably the little ones won't know what I'm referring to. It's instead of top, it's bottom. And he's explaining the surgery. And this is for children. This is a TikTok video.
He's explaining the surgery he's going to get. But for children who don't understand, he's using a banana to illustrate it. It is grotesque. It is horrific. It is perverse on every level. And it's probably got hundreds of thousands of views.
Who knows, maybe millions of views. It is perversion. It is a form of tacit child abuse or explicit child abuse.
Whatever is being suggested to the kid or to the extent that kids grasp the meaning of it now, think, oh, that sounds cool, too. We do not realize sometimes the level of indoctrination. We do not realize sometimes how subtle things can be in certain ways and how overt they can be in other ways. And by the time we wake up, by the time we realize, by the time we understand what's happening, we've lost a generation or our own lives have been heavily, negatively influenced. Friends, we've got to wake up to reality.
It's not just because we're living in 2024 and the craziness is on steroids and the madness is being displayed for the whole world to see like never before. It's that this has always been the case with believers in the world. When God called Israel, he called them out. Come out from among them and be separate. That was the word. That's the word repeated in 2 Corinthians 6 to believers.
Come out and be separate. So it's not a matter of us living these elitist lives that no one can come near us and these holier than now lives. No, we want to go into the world to win the loss. We want to go into the world and befriend those that don't know God. We want to go into the world and serve the hurting and serve the needy, not in a self-righteous way, but as those who have received mercy, we want to share it. At the same time, Jacob, James 1 27, true religion and undefiled in the sight of God the Father in this to visit the fatherless and the widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unspotted from the world. So there must be that conscious effort as the letter of Judah.
Jude says that we are to hate even the garment stained by sinful flesh. So we must be conscious friends. We must consciously swim against the tide and go against the grain or without us even knowing it, we will be shifted. We will be pulled. Our values will change. Our theology will change. Our convictions will change.
And it'll happen just like someone going gray or someone gaining weight. It happens. It happens. It happens.
And sometimes you're the last one to notice what has happened. We'll be right back. And I want to get to this article by Jennifer Roback Morris that I think you'll find 866-348-7884. 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.
After that, give you a little more motivation. And we are listener-sponsored. So TriVita is a co-sponsor and you are listeners.
Help us broadcast on radio and in other platforms around the world. 866-34-TRUTH. I've got a question for you.
866-34-TRUTH. I'm not asking you to tell me what church you go to, what your pastor's name is, what denomination you're part of, none of that. I'm just wondering if you feel, as someone attending church, that you are getting equipped as a single person, as a parent, as a young person, as a grandparent, that you are getting equipped to stand against the tide of the world. That you are getting equipped from the teaching or preaching, be it from the pulpit or in small group studies or things like that, that you are getting equipped to stand strong in the midst of the culture wars.
Or do you feel that these these subjects are just considered too hot? And because of that, it seems pastors leaders want to avoid them. You have to remember in 2004, so 20 years ago, when God began dealing with me about pushing back against gay activism and then began to break my heart for the people and gave me a mandate in early 2005, reach out and resist, reach out to the people with compassion, resist the agenda with courage. So when God began to lay on my heart that first part about, that was the second part, but that was first of my heart, resisting the agenda with courage, you know, I thought, well, why me? I don't come out of homosexuality. I've never struggled with gender identity confusion. That's not part of my testimony. If it was, praise God for delivering me from there. That's not part of my testimony, not part of what I've ever struggled with or dealt with in my life. My PhD is in Near Eastern Languages and Literatures from New York University.
I'm not a trained psychologist or therapist or family counselor or anything like that. And our ministry is filled with other divine initiatives, things that God wants us to do and emphasize. And you've already got fine ministries on the front lines here. You've got James Dobson and Focus on the Family. You've got prophetic voices like Chuck Colson.
You've got Tony Perkins and the Family Research Council in terms of political issues and so on. And so why do you need me? There's one thing when God laid on my heart to write a series of volumes on answering Jewish objections to Jesus, it had to be done because it didn't exist. And I'm Jewish and it's my background and I'm a debater and I've got the education and so it was a natural fit. So when I began to wonder, Lord, why me? The sense I began to get was no one gets to sit this one out. This is coming your way.
This is just one little aspect of massive culture wars that we're in. But this is coming your way. And at some point I told people, I feel like an umbrella salesman in the desert. And people are saying to me, Mike, why are you making all these umbrellas? And why are you building more and more warehouses to stock more umbrellas? We're in the desert.
It doesn't rain here. I tell them, big storm's coming. Big storm's coming.
Well, that storm has been here for many, many years to the point that metaphorically speaking, we can't make the umbrellas fast enough. All right, so a few weeks ago, great controversy when the Vatican issues was like a 5,000 word document saying that the priests could informally bless same-sex same-sex couples. So this was not a formal church blessing or a sanction of their relationship or saying that the church now accepted homosexual relations as valid, but rather saying, here are two individuals that want God's blessing and mercy and we should extend that. So before I talked about it on the air, I wanted to see what other Catholic leaders were saying.
I wanted to see how they were reacting. And the ones that I looked to one after another slammed this in the strongest possible terms and then got into the language and got into detail. And then you had Catholic bishops around the world saying, we will not comply with this, we will not agree. I am quite confident they understood what the document said and meant. There were some Catholic apologists that said, no, it's actually a beautiful document and it just reinforces what the church has always taught on these things, but it's extending mercy and grace.
And people said, no, no, no. It goes far beyond that. So Jennifer Roback-Morth was frontline pro-life, culture wars, pushing against LGBTQ activism while compassionately serving people. I've been on her podcast. She's been on my show and she is a devout Catholic. I remember being on her show and she mentioned Michael and here's the prayer to the archangel, Michael, et cetera. Anyway, so she's devout Catholic, very much devoted to the church, not some outside critic.
So she posted this on January 15th, but I just got an email from the Ruth Institute yesterday. Has Pope Francis changed Catholic church teaching? She said, my friends at the Christian post have asked for my insights as a faithful Roman Catholic regarding the recent Vatican document and the Latin name, fiducia supplicant.
I am honored to be asked. The Vatican's recent actions have caused tremendous confusion. All of us who are committed to traditional Catholic sexual morality must keep our wits about us if we are to investigate this mess. The sexual revolution is intrinsically seductive. The revolution claims that people can have all the sex they want under any circumstances they want and nothing bad will happen.
Lots of people would like to believe this despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The sexual revolution has corrupted every authority structure in the West, political, educational, academic, all the professions, and yes, pretty much all the major religious structures. She said, I remember what the Episcopalians went through when their leadership insisted on ordaining homosexually active men and even consecrating an openly gay man as bishop, Eugene Robinson. The denomination split. In many cases, the most traditional members lost their church property.
Many placed themselves under the authority of African bishops. I thought to myself, our brothers and sisters are in agony. Now, she says, it is our turn to suffer. Sola Scriptura, saying that the scriptures alone are authority, so contrary to the Catholic Church that would say we have church authority as well as scripture, has not protected you from the ravages of the sexual revolution. Papal infallibility has not protected us. I conclude that unless a person or institution specifically and intentionally resists the sexual revolution, it will sweep you away. Let me read again what Jennifer Roback Moore said.
I conclude that unless a person or institution specifically and intentionally resists the sexual revolution, it will sweep you away. Some Catholics are taking comfort from the idea that the doctrine reaffirms important points of Christian teaching, and that is technically correct, but no one needed a new 5,000 word document to reaffirm things that could have been stated in less than 100 words. The remaining 4,900 words were weasel words. The weasel words are the point of the document.
In my opinion, this document is psychological warfare, a psy-op, one more psychological operation in an ongoing campaign to disarm set opposition to the sexual revolution. Let me be as clear as I possibly can about how Catholics understand themselves and their church. Pope Francis has not changed the teaching of the church because he does not have the authority to change the teaching of the church, and she goes on rejecting what's in the document for good reason.
Just as we would say that no bishop, no leader, no pope, nor anybody could change what's written in scripture, Jennifer is saying that that no pope as a Catholic can change what is historic church teaching. But the takeaway, the takeaway, and this is the key point I want to drive home, unless you are consciously resisting, which means that is always part of our mindset as followers of Jesus, whatever generation we live in, we are constantly resisting the tide of the world. We are consciously pushing back against the seduction of the age. Unless we are doing that in our mind and our heart, recognizing that we're always going against the grain and swimming against the tide, we will be swept away.
That's the reality. The good news is we have everything we need in God to stand strong and to push back, and our ways, the ways of God that we follow, are ways of life. But we must be sober and vigilant. We are not in a game you're in a war. We'll be right back. It's The Line of Fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Get on The Line of Fire by calling 866-34-TRUTH.
Here again, is Dr. Michael Brown. Welcome back, friends, to The Line of Fire. Shout out to all of our torch bearers around the country and around the world. Thank you for standing with us.
And as your numbers multiply, friends, together we are making a great impact and great difference together. Another reminder, if you're not getting my Frontline newsletter, it will equip you, it will challenge you. We're putting together content for next month's Frontline newsletter. Now, sign up. Go to thelineoffire.org. If you're getting our emails, then you already got our first Frontline newsletter, and we've got great reports from folks who did receive it. If not, go to thelineoffire.org.
Sign up right on the home page. 866-34-TRUTH, 866-348-7884. Let us go to the phones over to Winston-Salem.
Jamal, welcome to The Line of Fire. Thank you, Dr. Brown. How are you doing today? I'm doing very well. Thanks, sir.
Good deal. Glad to hear it. To the topic you were asking about, if you're being fit at your church, I would unfortunately have to say not to the extent that I would like. It's a good church, good pastor, good pastor family. They really care about the people in the church. However, when it comes to the topics of today, when it comes to building deep into scripture, as people call to exegete the Bible, and to kind of give us a mission statement to give us some marching orders to fight against the cold cure, to kind of, you know, I would say, kind of put the words, to implement the words in our daily lives, I would say. And not just about our personal issues, our personal concerns about health and money.
There's more to it than that. Yeah. So that's what I wanted to say at first, but I wanted to ask the question for you. What would you say would be some concerns that the church needs to take up?
Yeah, so thanks for asking that. And again, my goal is to stand alongside of pastors and leaders and say, well, let's help. You can't be an expert in everything. Let's help. But if you just take what we've been talking about in the previous segment, sexual revolution, right? So the degree that porn has infiltrated our culture, so that you get kids as young as eight years old seeing porn for the first time, you have maybe half the men in the church struggling with it, many women as well, many leaders struggling with it. If we don't address that from the pulpit, if we don't talk about sexual temptations, you just give one example, right?
Then how are we going to help the people struggling? And you're going to feel like I'm the only one. I'm the only one who's not being spoken about publicly.
And then, first, you're not the only one. There is an assault. So what can we do to help? And then you don't maybe have to preach endlessly on it, but you deal with what scripture says, right? And listen, we're going to have some special discipleship classes or equipping classes for those who are struggling there. You know, reinforcing the biblical covenant of marriage and the sacredness of marriage. And then, of course, we're going to have some of marriage and the sacredness of marriage and what the Bible says about divorce.
You know, it's not just no-fault divorce because you don't like each other anymore. And then with that, why marriage is the union of a man and a woman. And then dealing with even gender issues and God creating us male and female and helping young people understand those things. Those are obviously pressing issues that everybody deals with. You know, for example, we could say, well, securing the borders, that's important.
Right, right. But that's not your average person in the church is dealing with that or living in a border, you know, in Texas or Arizona or something like that. So, yeah, it's a political issue of importance, but that's not affecting the day-to-day life of the congregation the same way. Even when we're dealing with issues having to do with racial conflict, that's something we need to talk through together as a body and to do our best to understand, OK, where is there a legitimate issue?
What is it? What's the spirit of the age? How does the world respond? How do we respond as believers, you know, to to ignore certain things as if they don't exist?
It doesn't help. So it's pretty much just, you know, and then obviously just the degree of people living in a sense of isolation, the question of why the younger generation is the most depressed, the most medicated, the loneliest, the most suicidal, the most atheistic, what's contributing to that? What can we do to address, you know, just real life, where we live kind of stuff. And it's, you know, I remember talking to one woman, Jamal, who was a real woman of prayer. She she worked with an international ministry and would get to an area weeks and weeks before the the the preaching team would come and gather churches to begin to pray for the meetings because they knew that intercession was the driving force behind everything. And she said, you know how I would find out what the spiritual strongholds were in the city? She goes, I read the newspaper. And she says, you know, you're reading, OK, you know, crime rates off the charts or, you know, this or, you know, it's like, OK, that's obviously what you're dealing with. So sometimes we just have to open our eyes and look around.
I remember David Wilkerson saying that that some of the news magazines like Time and Newsweek seemed to have more insight into what was happening in the culture than the church often did. Wow. So it's just like, what's happening in this world? Let's let's help get through it.
And I'm all for expository preaching where you just preach through the Bible, but it's going to be intersecting with culture a lot along the way, you know, you know, and even, you know, understanding why we hold to what we do about the sanctity of life and things, even if things are just taught once a year for a few weeks, emphasized and then themes return to and then classes where people can learn more. I think we cover the basis. Hey, thank you, sir, for the call. I appreciate it.
Hey, Dr. Brown, go ahead. And I guess put out a point for a former thing. I'm glad that you kind of change your format to kind of equip the saints, so to speak. I think we need more of that. And that's something else I'd like to add.
I think the church needs to get needs to get into more of more of apologetics to defend our faith and to call our other false face face, because if we build into more apologetics, then we stand stronger in our faith and we can answer questions anybody might have, and we can defend our faith against any questions, any attacks that might be against it. Yes. So I want to put that out there and I'll take the answer offline. God bless, sir. Thank you.
Yes. So I'm so glad you mentioned that. So that that's and of course, absolutely that absolutely could have addressed that. When I got saved, unless I was in college, which I was, I was in secular college shortly after that, I would not have been bombarded with the objections to the faith and attacks on the Bible. It was just the world that we lived in. We did not have the constant stream of attacks against our faith that today's world has. That many of the talking points of the new atheists from what, 15 years ago, a little bit longer, many of them have just trickled down into the larger culture. This idea that the God of the Bible is a misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, petty, tyrant deity, bloodthirsty, that the Bible is just a bunch of Bronze Age and Iron Age myths and those kinds of things, that the Bible is a translation of translations of translations that can't be trusted. These things that are put out, they've just become talking points.
They've just become memes. They've filtered their way down so that questions that maybe you would deal with in seminary, how to deal with attacks on your faith and attacks on the Bible or other philosophies and religions and how we respond. Now, as Josh McDowell has been saying for years, that the issues and objections that he used to deal with with college age young people, he's now dealing with kids who are 12 or 13.
And a 12 or 13 year old does not have the ability to think through and understand an issue, on average, the way a college age young person would. So absolutely, just the basic defense of our faith, why we believe what we believe. My book, Why So Many Christians Left the Faith, has a chapter on the Bible being relevant. Why should we care about what the Bible says? And I can't locate the actual quote, but I know I read it, that Franklin Graham was asked why he talked about political and cultural issues more than his father did. And he said, well, when my father went to school, they read the Bible in school, in public school.
So it was a very different mindset in terms of importance of scripture or reverence for scripture that was in the larger society and things have shifted. So we do need to be ready to give an answer. When Jamal mentioned the new format of our show, so our one hour talk show, we've always been here to equip and help everywhere we can, but we felt there was a need to have a more focused equipping broadcast that many stations have wanted us on the air across the country, but one hour live has not worked in their slots. So we now have a new 30 minute equipping broadcast. Right now it's just available on radio.
We haven't released it on internet more widely yet. We launched January 8th on close to 200 stations across America. So many of you are getting the broadcast now and it's intensive teaching. The first month we just focused on the subject of revival and this coming month we're just going to be focusing on the subject of Jewish Roots of the faith and why Israel's salvation matters.
We're going to be dealing with culture war issues and equipping. So we will be getting that on more and more stations across the nation, but that's our goal. It's always been my goal to equip and help, but we're trying to offer more resources to do that in a targeted way. In fact, as you support us and help with the ministry, it enables us to go on more and more stations and reach more and more people.
You can do that by going to the line of fire dot org, clicking on donate monthly support. This way you join our support team and together we make a difference across the nation. Okay, one last comment and thank you, sir, for the call.
Thank you, Jamal. One last comment before we totally switch subjects and take some other calls. So Governor DeSantis threw in the towel. It was fairly inevitable and it might have been inevitable from the start that former President Trump's popularity was such that he was going to win reelection. And right now, barring something completely unexpected, he will be the GOP nominee. And I imagine it can't be that long before Nikki Haley drops out. We shall see.
She's saying she's in it for the long haul. We'll see what happens in New Hampshire. Governor DeSantis did say that he still had differences with President Trump, but recognized the voice of the people behind him and he couldn't see a path forward, didn't want to strain people's resources and time and energy.
So I appreciate that. Then he, in turn, endorsed President Trump. Here's the key thing I want to say. Whether you're voting, and we don't know what's actually going to happen come November 2024, but I want to be a voice in your ear all the time saying, keep your perspective, keep your perspective, keep your perspective. Whoever you vote for, there is no political savior. Whoever you vote for, unite around Jesus rather than dividing around the candidate. Whoever you vote for, don't get caught up in election fever and reading the polls every single day.
I want to be a broken record about that leading up to the election. Let's keep our priorities straight. Let's keep our emphases straight. Let's keep our focus straight so that we can glorify the Lord, be salt and light, win the loss, and then we cast our votes as well.
We'll be right back. to get on the line of fire. The reality is, though, we're all in the line of fire today.
That's the spiritual reality. It's been the reality for generations, but we're more acutely aware of it today. A colleague of mine, his late 70s, contacted me and said that his grandkids were pulling their four-year-old at a preschool.
I think it was four-year-old at a preschool after they found what the kid was being taught in preschool. Yeah, that's why we've been sounding the alarm for so many years. 866-34-TRUTH, before we go to the phones, in case you didn't hear this news item, Martina Nabritilova, one of the greatest female tennis players of all time and herself open lesbian, has been one of the loudest voices speaking out against men who identify as women participating in women's sports. And as she said, male bodies do not belong in female sports.
She's been an open and clear advocate. Recently, the U.S. Boxing Association had said that men who identify as women can fight against women. When you're talking about a violent contact sport like boxing, you're talking about potential fatalities. You're talking about something that could very easily lead to a woman's death. I mean, this is not just socially wrong. No, no, this could be deadly.
This could be deadly. So in a less physically threatening way, but in an equally wrong way, news now of a man who identifies as Hayley Davidson as a woman, 30 years old, won a golf tournament, an NXXT women's golf classic, and Davidson is Scottish living in Florida. So for some years now has been on hormone therapy to make him more female and had surgery, et cetera.
And he's saying, yeah, you know, in the early days, he would have had an advantage, but not anymore. It's still a male body. You cannot undo the advantages of a male body, even if you don't have all the advantages, which is why you have the PGA and the LPGA, right?
The Professional Golf Association and the ladies version of it. Or when you have the NBA and the W, the women's NBA, where you have men's Olympics and women's Olympics in terms of competition and on and on and on it goes. When my colleagues pointed out to me, even in chess, you have men's chess and women's chess just because of certain advantages in certain ways.
And there are other ways that women have advantages over men, et cetera. In any case, in any case, there's an outcry because this male could now be part of the LPGA. So there's the outcry, the pushback has happened. And Daily Caller reports, there's been an incredible amount of backlash against Davidson and prompts to the tour. They responded with common sense, human decency and protection of female sports and XXT responded, allowing the players to vote on the Davidson situation, basically killing the transgender golfers progression without having to get their hands dirty. So the group that allowed him to play said, well, let the ladies vote and that'll do that. But here's what Riley Gaines said.
Riley Gaines, the swimmer who came to prominence, female swim champ who came to prominence because she openly spoke against having to compete against a male who identified as a female. She said, public pressure works. Don't make the mistake of assuming people will do the right thing unprovoked. So it's not a matter of hating people. If I got to know Haley Davidson, I would share the gospel with him and do my best to introduce him to the transforming love of God and help him to find wholeness from the inside out and then to undo whatever he can in terms of the mutilation of his body and what the hormones have done, et cetera. But get him in right relationship with God and befriend him.
That would be my goal. Not mock him, not criticize him or attack him. But simply say you're a man you can't and you'll always be a man no matter how you dress, no matter what surgery you have, no matter what hormones you take. That's just a biological reality.
Cells throughout your body, your DNA will be shouting out that you are a male. But let's help you embrace that and let's get healing for the wounds and pain on the inside. But we must push back against the social madness. We must not because we hate people, because we love people, because we know what's best for human thriving.
It is that simple love compels us to swim against the tide and go against the grain. All right, with that, we're going to totally switch subjects and go back to the phones with Mark and Roswell. Welcome to the Line of Fire. Hello, thank you, Dr. Brown.
You're welcome. I've got two related questions. One, so I know and I agree that we should not divide over pre, mid, and post-trip. However, I've had conversations with some good friends who are very knowledgeable in the Bible and from two different locations. And something that concerns me greatly is their understanding of the pre-trip rapture is that pre-trip rapture is only for the church and that's then the bride is going to be for seven years at the marriage supper of the lamb. But I asked them, well, what about all of the Jews, the 144,000 and all of those who get saved during the millennium? Are they not going to be part of the bride then? And they said, no, only the church is part of the bride and God deals with Israel during the tribulation, but they will only be guests at the wedding and not part of the bride, which to me seems like replacement theology. And then my second part of the question is, the way I understand it, is the actual marriage, though, after the end of the millennium, when the new Jerusalem comes down, out of heaven, adorned as a bride for her husband?
And so to me, I wouldn't divide over it, but when it comes to saying that Israel is not part of the bride, yeah, of course, it's a complete error. Are there two different kinds of salvation? Are there two tiers of salvation? Is there not one body of Christ, one body of Messiah?
Are we not children of Abraham by faith, so all in the same spiritual family, Jews and Gentiles? Is not the ekklesia, the church, the messianic congregation that Jesus is building, does not that include all those who've been washed with the blood? Either you're saved because you're washed in the blood of the Lamb, or you're not.
There is no salvation outside that. You may have been an Old Testament believer that believed what was revealed at that time and followed accordingly. You didn't have the fullness of the revelation, so you're looking forward to redemption which comes through the cross, but Hebrews 11 is explicit that it's the old with the new. They without us could not be made perfect, so it's all of us together who are now one, and even the vision of the 144,000 which I take is symbolic of the fullness of Israel at the end of the age. In Revelation 7, you have that group and then a multitude that no one can number. It's all for the nations.
It's all the same family. Here's the other thing that's odd with dispensationalism, with the pre-trib view, is on the one hand it's pro-Israel and believes in Israel today as restoration according to prophecy, etc., and many Christian Zionists are pre-tribious dispensationalists, but the real tragedy of it is this idea that the church feasts in heaven, a seven-year marriage feast, which by the way the Bible nowhere speaks of in terms of seven-year marriage feasts, but that we're going to feast in heaven with Jesus for seven years while the Jewish people on the earth are slaughtered in the most horrific ways, so the good stuff is for the church and the bad stuff is for the Jews. That's classic replacement theology in that regard. So again, you have to say, well how are these people saved? If they're saved by works, then Jesus didn't need to die, right? Galatians 2, if righteousness could come by the law, then Messiah died in vain. So if there was a way of salvation by works or obedience or suffering or beheading or whatever, then you wouldn't need the Messiah to come. If they're saved by grace and by blood, then Romans 10-12 applies.
There's no difference in terms of salvation between Jew and Gentile. The same Lord is Lord of all, richly blessing all who call upon Him, and then Romans 10-13, whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. So as for the marriage supper, it seems to me that that takes place at the beginning of the millennial kingdom. If I write the understanding prophecy, what's prophesied in Isaiah 25 and 26, this great feast that's going to take place, is Messiah returns, sets up his kingdom on the earth, and that's when we have the great celebration, the marriage feast, that's when He, with us in that sense, drinks the new wine of the new kingdom. Because He said, I won't drink it until I drink it with you in the kingdom. He says that to His disciples at the last supper.
So that's what I understand that will take place. There's the marriage supper in Revelation 19 of judgment. That's not the marriage feast of the bride and the lamb. That's all the animals of the world feasting on the dead bodies as a result of that final destruction.
So that's a bloody gory image there. Yeah, but I look at it as something that will take place during the thousand year reign, and then the new Jerusalem, as we enter eternity in Revelation 21 and 22, that the new Jerusalem is like a bride adorned. But I don't look at that as the marriage supper there. You know what's interesting though, for my pre-trib friends, that put a big emphasis on where do you place the marriage feast, where do you place the marriage feast, where do you place the marriage feast. I ask them, give me your favorite five verses that talk about the marriage feast, that explicitly talk about this time when when the church, the bride and Messiah will sit with the Messiah and feast together. Give me your favorite five verses on it. We're going to have five? Well tell me, give me your favorite three on it.
You have three? How about your favorite verse? Ah, it's one of these things that is not explicitly taught in that way. But if you read through Isaiah 25, which as I understand it is a millennial passage, millennial promise, that's the best place to look for the marriage supper. Hey friends, if you're not getting our Frontline Newsletter, equipping, edifying, building up, encouraging, with the Hebrew word of the month, two, make sure you sign up today thelineoffire.org, right there on the home page. Back with you tomorrow, right here on The Line of Fire.
