So, what is the lasting fruit of true revival?
Oh, you're going to be encouraged. 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. Thanks so much for joining us on The Line of Fire. Michael Brown, blessed and delighted to be with you and here every day to infuse you with faith and truth and courage. Thanks for tuning in. However you're listening or watching, so glad you're here. Let me give you a phone number if you'd like to weigh in, if you've got a relevant question or just something you want to talk to me about. 866-34-TRUTH, 866-34-87-884. Just a heads up, everyone listening on the Truth Radio Network, everyone watching on YouTube, listening by podcast, wherever you're listening or watching, come the first Monday of November. This live daily broadcast will be replaced with our Courage in the Line of Fire podcast, broadcast radio show, which is an equipping show. You'll be in and out, 25 minutes. We're going to start with a whole series on getting to know the Holy Spirit.
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You're the core of what we do. If you'd like to join our team, if we blessed you and you want to help us bless a whole lot more people, go to TheLineOfFire.org, click donate, monthly support, TheLineOfFire.org, donate monthly support. All right, so this past weekend we celebrated 25 years of annual missions conferences of Fire International. We're originally called Brownsville International, then Fire International, and we have been sending out missionaries around the world by God's grace for over 25 years now. Fire International was birthed out of the Brownsville Revival School of Ministry. Brownsville Revival School of Ministry was birthed out of the Brownsville Revival, which lasted from 1995 to 2000.
I had the privilege of serving there from 96 to 2000. At its height, and this went on for several years, people would arrive outside the building at six in the morning to begin to line up to get a good seat in the service, which started at seven in the evening. You'd get in line 13 hours ahead, and sometimes at the height of the height of things, you could arrive at six in the morning and the line was already a block and a half long, even though we told people don't arrive before six, people would get there even earlier.
The services would go Tuesday night prayer meeting, but then the main services, four nights a week, Wednesday, excuse me, Tuesday, excuse me, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and then Sunday morning just home service for the local church there. And cumulative attendance, several million people. I used to say at least 130 nations came.
I just spoke to a colleague who stopped counting, stopped writing down names of nations when they hit 150. We know people were touched from around the world. Steve Rabe, who's an award-winning journalist, wrote an article and then a book subsequently about the revival. And he said in 1998, so in the height of the revival, that it would be a century before the full impact of the revival could be assessed. But there were critics, and every revival is going to have critics. As Arthur Wallace wrote in his book, In the Day of Thy Power, if something claims to be a revival and it's not spoken against, check again to see if it's a real revival. Because you can have controversy without revival, but you can't have revival without controversy because revival brings stuff up to the surface. Revival shapes things, and the fire of God brings the impurities up to the surface. And then because God moves through human beings, human beings can go to extremes, so you have things to be corrected within revival.
And then you have those that are going to criticize and reject what God is doing, and those that would rather have their tradition or their standing or their stature rather than God's presence. So revival will always stir things up. And we would always deal with critics who just say it's a lot of emotion. It's just emotionalism. All it is is people getting excited and worked up. It's one of these Pentecostal emotional orgies where people are just falling on the floor and flopping on the ground and yelling and screaming and acting like jerks.
And there's nothing to it, and it's not going to last. And I'd say, well, could you explain this to me? There's somebody that we saw him get saved six months ago. They were a heavy drug addict. They were bound. They were into witchcraft.
They were suicidal. Then, I love Jesus. They're reading the word daily. They're going to church regularly.
They're becoming a real disciple. I said, you know, the flesh can't produce that. The devil can't produce that.
Wouldn't you say that the Lord did? Ah, it's just six months. Just six months.
We'd say, well, okay. Well, they just graduated from our ministry school. Now, three years later, three years later, and want to go on the mission field.
Well, we'll see. Well, now some have been on the mission field for 25 years. 25 years out on the field.
I don't mean that they haven't come back to the States to raise funds, see people, things like that, but they have been on the field, some of them for 25 straight years. And I'm going to share some testimonies with you to tell you, when God really moves and you join that with good discipling, you're going to see fruit that will last and last and last. Now, some of the children of our missionaries who are young adults themselves, they're being sent out to other countries. Some of the children of our missionaries are being sent out to other countries. A leading pastor, critic of the charismatic movement, said this about the Brownsville Revival, which took place in Pensacola, Florida. I was down in Florida.
So this is back in the mid late 1990s. I was down in Florida and people are being rocked down there by this Pensacola craziness that's going on in the name of revival and people flipping and flopping and diving on the floor and gyrating and speaking in bizarre and unintelligible fashion and all of this kind of wild thing is going on. And they keep saying, this is God. This is of God.
He said, can I be very straightforward with you? Is it offense to our rational truth-revealing God? Is it offense to the true work of his son? Is it offense to the true work of the Holy Spirit to use the names of God or of Christ or of the Holy Spirit and then the mindless emotional orgy marked by irrational, sensual and fleshly behavior produced by altered states of consciousness, peer pressure, heightened expectation or suggestibility? He said, this is socio-psycho manipulation and mesmerism and is a prostitution of the glorious revelation of God toward clearly and powerfully to an eager, attentive and controlled mind would feed sensual desires pragmatically or ecstatically cannot honor God. You have to preach the truth to the mind. That's where the real battle is fought. So we bring God to people through his word. That's the only way we can do it. That's a pretty wild quote.
Of course, the description that he gives is an over-the-top description. Yes, people would shout out being touched by God. Yes, people wept under conviction. Yes, people shook and fell to the floor.
There's only one thing we look for. That was people getting truly born again, people getting truly cleaned up, people becoming true disciples. Steve Hill, the evangelist whom God used in the midst of the revival, used to say, the true test of an evangelist ministry is five or 10 years down the line. So yeah, we know at least 300,000 different people responded to the altar calls. At least 300,000 different people responded to the altar calls.
We know that. And then, of course, many of them left and led others to the Lord. Some were first-time converts. Some were backsliders getting right with God. Others were believers that came under conviction because of sin in their lives. But the centerpiece of every service, the centerpiece of every service was an extended message preached from the Word of God, a clear gospel message, a clear holiness message, a clear repentance message, a clear love of God message through the cross, a clear Jesus died and rose message.
Those themes would be preached, weaved in sermon after sermon after sermon after sermon after sermon. And I wrote an article in the year 2013, and I was saying, let's look back now. We're now 13 years after the end of the revival. Now we're talking almost 25 years out.
But I said, let's take a look. This is almost 20 years since the revival began. And I said, the good fruit of that outpouring continues to grow as many of those transformed by the Spirit in Pensacola are now serving as missionaries and church planters and teachers and preachers and leaders around the globe, feeding the hungry, establishing orphans, bringing the good news to the unreached and raising their children and grandchildren in the truth of the Lord. And I said, what's interesting is that if you went to services in Brownsville, so if you went, say, four nights, you hear then almost four hours of preaching. Then if you went to my day sessions, Friday, Saturday, Friday for leaders, Saturday for everyone, you get another three hours. So that's seven hours, and then the four hours at night.
So three plus four, seven hours. Then if you're there Sunday morning, you get another full message. If you went to Sunday school on top of it, you get another full teaching.
Then we had other day sessions at it, and you could have gotten even more. And if you're in the school of ministry, you get another 16 hours of teaching. So you're talking about the Word, the Word, the Word. But it wasn't just the Word, it's the Word and the Spirit. Romans 14, 17, the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating, drinking, but righteousness, peace, and joy, and the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit speaks through the Word and lives are changed, and when lives are changed, yes, there's emotion. And I've said many times during the revival and since, I'd rather have the noise of the maternity ward than the quiet of the cemetery. And the maternity ward's going to be a little messier when you're getting people saved, seeing people saved and transformed instead of free week in, week out, week in, week out. Yeah, you'll have more dirty laundry to deal with than in a church that hasn't seen a new convert in 20 years. But we'll take the new converts with the dirty laundry too.
When we come back, I'm going to share some wonderful testimonies from some of our missionaries to encourage you, when God really works, you will see lasting fruit, 866-348-7884. Welcome to the ad for the beetroot gummies from our co-sponsor TriVita. So, okay, I got my drink here, which I have daily, not only first thing in the morning or before a workout, but today I just was running hard.
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800-771-5584. All right, would you like to hear some of the lasting fruit of revival? One of our missionaries, been in the Philippines for over 20 years now with his wife and kids. He came to Brownsville and he'd been in youth ministry.
He's publicly shared his testimony but struggled with porn and ultimately had to step down from ministry until he got his life in order. Was radically, dramatically touched at Brownsville, set free for life and came to our ministry school, graduated. He and his wife with their growing family went to the Philippines and he has been serving there, has preached in many other parts of the world, carries the fire of revival.
His wife doing an amazing job raising godly kids and pouring into women there, the Philippines and both of them wonderfully used. So now, last year we sent out one of their daughters who's a missionary to Japan. So you get touched in the revival over 20 years earlier, go to the school of ministry, go on the mission field and now you've been on the mission field long enough to raise your family. So your oldest kids, so one of the daughters we commissioned last year, she's been in Japan serving as a missionary there. Now beginning to know the language and finding better ways to reach the people. Another daughter says, hey I want to stay as a missionary in the Philippines.
So she's old enough so we have officially commissioned her. Another one of our leaders in the Philippines came to the revival. He was not a believer. He was a binge drinking alcoholic, came to the Tuesday night prayer meeting. The presence of God was so strong at the prayer meeting he got born again at the prayer meeting, then made a formal profession of faith after hearing the gospel and the subsequent services.
He came to the Brownsville Revival School of Ministry with his growing family. Before they left for the Philippines they lost a child, precious baby boy, died, so much prayer, a young boy, so much prayer, so much agony, praying for him and you got him dying in one part of the hospital, his mom giving birth to a new child in another part of the hospital. I mean you talk about trauma and challenge and they overcame that with their faith strong, went to the Philippines and now they have they served at a garbage dump for years just trying to provide better way of living for people who lived at the garbage dump and that was their community going into the burning garbage and trying to pull stuff out just to live off of. They worked there, ministered there for years and then God really began to burden them about human trafficking and they have a home where they take in girls who've been trafficked. In some cases you have a girl that's 12 and they find out she's pregnant so now they have the girl and the baby that she bore because she was raped and abused and they've been doing extraordinary ministry there.
This is the lasting fruit. The people that wrote, oh it's just emotionalism, it's just this or that. Maybe you meant well, maybe you had a bad spirit but either way what a shameful legacy when you see the real result of what God has done. All right, here's testimony from Andy. Andy and Karen came to Brownsville. Their lives were dramatically rocked.
They go with their young family. August 13, 2019 with our three kids, pretty much everything we own stuffed into our 1995 Ford Windstar. Andy says we arrived in Mexico. Over the years we've seen God do so much in our lives and the lives of those we are around.
It's been amazing watching him work in and through us. The first couple of years were really about getting the Spanish language down and getting accustomed to the Mexican ways. We moved to the Mexican state of Oaxaca. In 2001 started the Bible school with the Mixteco Indians for three years. One of our graduates has traveled the world ministering mainly to indigenous groups while another graduate learned another Mixteco dialect so she could live with and share the gospel with them. 2005 we moved to Guadalajara and started going to the streets and local churches preaching, teaching, and leading worship with Fire Band. Through our school of supernatural ministry we've graduated just over 200 students during the past 12 years. Many we've been equipping, mainly we've been equipping Christians to walk in their destiny as supernatural believers serving a supernatural God. We were about to send out a Mexican couple to Asia in 2025, met them, prayed for them.
We're super excited about that. We continue to visit the homeless downtown and throughout the streets of Guadalajara bringing them the gospel and creative ways from giving food, providing wound care as a nurse, and doing dream and tattoo interpretations. You go, what?
What's that? Well you got someone with tattoos all over this. Hey let me pray and get some insight. You know and it could be you know you had that because of death in your life and depression and fear or this is Satan wanting to take you out but God has a remedy for you and they'll just pray God give us insight and ways to communicate the gospel to people. Or someone said I've had this dream I don't understand it they'll say Lord give us insight into the meaning of the stream so that we could share the truth with these people.
And they're preaching Jesus to them, they're preaching the word to them. We also have the opportunity to travel the world to visit other FI missionaries, foreign international ministries, missionaries and ministries bringing encouragement, freedom, and fuego, fire, in all sorts of crazy ways. Has it been worth it? Absolutely. 100% by life or by death. We have had death threats, rocks pelting me in the head, our churches burned down, stranded vehicles in the middle of nowhere, and insects infesting my toes with eggs. Would we do it again?
Absolutely 100%. Through it all God has been so faithful it's just who he is and their kids serving the Lord and and now in the states doing excellent ministry. Friends this is what happens when real revival comes. It brings change that lasts for generations.
Change that's so real that can help you in the midst of a war-torn region like Ukraine. So we come back on the other side of the break I want you to hear from one of our missionaries, Leanne. She had friends went to Brownsville during the revival they were dramatically touched and she said I want to be in this place where God is moving powerfully. She enrolled in our school and after graduation went on the mission field with some other women, single women and Leanne recently got married just what about six months ago but the first 20 plus years she served as a single woman one of her other colleagues got married one of her friends got married a few years back but for years they served as single women and did amazing things by God's grace and it's because the revival fire got in them because they were trained and discipled grounded in the word and the spirit that now all these years later even in the midst of a war-torn place like Ukraine and some places it's like hell on earth they're bearing fruit and seeing God's faithfulness. So I want to glorify the Lord today I've been part of this it's part of my own history we were so humbled to see what the Lord's done these last 25 years and we know in him we are just getting started.
If you've got a question for me if you wonder about revival reports you've heard give me a call 866-348-7884 and I may have time for even some random Bible questions 866-348-7884. This is how we rise up. It's our resistance.
You can't resist us. 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. Thank you friends for joining us on the line of fire 866-348-7 884. Hey a reminder to everyone listening on the Truth Radio Network you normally listen to me the second half of the hour we will not be here we're only here the first half of the hour with our equipping broadcast so make sure you don't miss that wherever you get your podcast just subscribe to courage in the line of fire this will begin the first Monday of November so wait to the end of next week and then subscribe to right now you subscribe to line of fire but the name will change to courage in the line of fire so when you don't hear us like oh that's right that's right wherever you get your podcast just subscribe to courage in the line of fire or subscribe to our YouTube channel the line of fire on YouTube and this way you won't miss anything at all all right let me let me share one more testimony with you just to glorify Jesus for the lasting fruit of revival so Leanne had friends mightily touched in the Brownsville revival she came this was the year 2000 she came joined our school of ministry graduated from the school of ministry began was going on admissions trips ended up working with some of her friends sisters in the lord single women in Ukraine and she and her main co-worker have been there now 21 years in Ukraine so this is what she has to say I've seen Jesus do so much in Ukraine in the past 21 years it's been an adventure and a journey so she's one of our fire international ministries a missionaries Jesus is alive and well and changing lives across this lane in the past 21 years I've been able to help many people come to salvation in Jesus Christ I was a single woman on the field for about 20 years and many people would just discount single women missionaries as being incapable but because of that God was able to use me and Amanda her friend to do great things in Ukraine nobody expected much from a single American woman and now I'm married to a wonderful Ukrainian man ministry began all those years ago traveling from village to village gathering all the villages together villagers together and preaching the gospel our team saw withered hands restored on several occasions spine seal a babushka who was completely hunched over get miraculously healed and start running down the road as well as deaf ears open many of these those living in villages are elderly and they were so thankful that we came as they felt forgotten we would bring gifts of food and pray with them they were so touched by by the Lord many gave their lives to Jesus in their 60s 70s 80s and 90s I will never forget one babushka who showed us the tattoo on her arm from a German concentration camp she said we were the first Americans she had messed and she was freed by American soldiers at the end of World War II she received Jesus that same day as Savior through our work in the villages we helped to plant many churches around Ukraine and support the pastor and leaders of those churches there were years of ministry and orphanages children's shelters children's rehab centers and children's camps so many children were introduced to the bible and Jesus through our ministry many of the orphans I know that were once little are now adults and some are living their lives for the Lord to this day I still have connection with some of those I ministered to 20 years ago the children's camps were intense but so fruitful and fun I've worked with the special needs homes for many years up until COVID and believe that when the war ends we'll be allowed to return and minister that was my joy to pray with the precious men and women who the world had forgotten it's my passion to receive that to see them receive the love of Jesus and his hope and joy recently one of the pastors I worked with for many years told me that even that he and his family were experiencing some hardships as they are now refugees in Israel because of the war he was encouraged because he remembered our friendship and all that I've been through as a missionary he said that encouraged him that they will get through this difficult time too street evangelism is one of my passions I have incredible team of people that love to witness and pray for people but has been most effective as offering free tea coffee and juice it gives an opportunity to speak with so many people they've repented been healed right here by our table one meeting in particular asked us to pray for her mother who was dying a few weeks later we ran into her again during evangelism she ecstatically told me that her mother was healed the next day after we prayed the doctor said no idea how it happened God is good there are many people who are now part of our church because of our evangelistic outreaches it goes on and on she said I was sharing Jesus recently at a meeting for refugees and an older man named Calia in his 60s was in tears the entire time I prayed with him and he told me his whole life he's been searching for something that is true he joined the karmenist party when he was young and so it was empty he tried lighting candles in North York's church he said it was empty now because he has lost his home literally lost everything came to our city he met me and for the first time in his life he heard something that is actually true Calia said I have waited my whole life to hear this truth about Jesus he finally found the truth he longed for his entire life in his 60s and one more even my husband while we were dating he was fighting on the front lines it is not for the faint of heart but God is so faithful he has so many miraculous testimonies of how God protected him his band of 13 men that he fought with when they went into bakmoud artem that's her husband told the men that because he is a Christian God is with them and because of that that none of them would die either 117 men from their company went into the battle and eight days later only 17 men returned and all 13 of the men in his band survived they were part of that 17 the details of that story are intense there is no way any of them should have survived the two companies that went before artems were completely destroyed within six hours about 300 men so here they are in the middle of middle of this horrific horrific situation and and sirens going deadly bombs dropping people dying they're about 80 miles from their front lines and the fire continues to burn in Leanne touched in the midst of revival trained in our ministry school that's what you call lasting fruit listen Jesus alone gets the credit it's not our school it's that the preachers the teachers Jesus alone gets the credit this is the work of the spirit but this is why we pray so fervently for revival because we see when God moves there can be a generational impact people so radically transformed that decades later the fire is still burning and the fruit is getting greater and greater and greater and greater thank God for the lasting fruit of a true move of God the proof of the pudding is in the eating the way you test something that claims to be a move of the spirit you use the creedal test and the fruit test what is preached what is being taught does it line up with the main clear foundations of the word of God of fundamental orthodox faith so that's that's the test all right not the emotional response not the jumping shouting not other outward signs does it line up with scripture and what is the lasting fruit what is the lasting fruit so here we can look at the what was I know it was taught in the school oversaw the school I know what I taught in the day sessions I was in hundreds and hundreds of services I know the meat and potato evangelistic message that Steve Hill would preach so the word was preached we lined up with basic fundamental doctrine and the fruit you can now see 25 plus years later that's Jesus that's the spirit that's that's something to be thankful for eight six six three four truth ah all right let's let's grab a couple of calls here let's go over to Colorado Springs Paul welcome to the line of fire thank you so much for taking the call you're welcome I've got a question about Zechariah 3 there's a lot of talk about Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord and I've been looking at some of the Hebrew and it looks like the word for Joshua is Yeshua not Yehoshua which as I understand are two distinct words similar root meaning I'm trying to figure out why in Zechariah 3 it is Yehoshua his name in Zechariah yeah it is Yehoshua in Zechariah 3 and Zechariah 6 but Yeshua is the short form of Yehoshua and if you'll see in Ezra in the Amaya he's oftenly referred to often referred to as Yeshua but the Hebrew in Zechariah 3 and Zechariah 6 speaks of Yehoshua I'm a hundred percent certain of that there's no question Yehoshua okay the high priest Joshua however just like Mike and Michael all right that is a Mike is a short form of Michael Yeshua is the short form of Yehoshua so there about 27 times that Yeshua occurs in the in the Old Testament and it's for quite a few different people but the best known Yeshua in the Old Testament is this one Yehoshua the high priest so this Yehoshua who is a type and sign of the branch who is the Messiah actually has the name of the Messiah Yehoshua slash Yeshua so Yeshua is the short form of Yehoshua just like Mike is the short form of Michael wonderful thank you so much for clarifying that you are you are very welcome absolutely 8 6 6 3 4 truth now what's interesting is that the Septuagint renders Joshua like the book of Joshua Joshua the successor of Moses Joshua the high priest Joshua and Yeshua the same way as Jesus the whole way through so that's that's interesting how did Joshua then get rendered in the Septuagint as Yeshua Yeshua that would make sense because and I'm not going to get into the phonetic correspondences but that's the interesting one that it renders both as Yeshua which is why in Hebrews 4 which says if if Yeshua could have given them rest it means Joshua there as most of our translations will will indicate all right let's go over to Philadelphia Eric welcome to the line of fire good afternoon Dr. Brown thank you so much for taking my call it's always an honor to speak to you Dr. Brown thank you sir great thank you so my question has to do Dr. Brown just to give you a bit of context I have suffered from doubt my whole life and it has to do with the historicity of the exodus and Moses now let me pose this question to you if there was an archaeological discovery made tomorrow that completely disproves the exodus right and we're talking about you know the heavyweights in archaeology like Kenneth Kitchen Israel Finkelstein William Deaver and they're all on board together they're all in agreement which you know they it's very rare that you have professionals like that that are in agreement but they're all in agreement that they say to each other well it looks like Moses didn't exist the exodus never occurred what would that do to your faith since Jesus spoke so much about Moses yeah so great question thank you for it of course you know you you mentioned top scholars from different perspectives and I assume you have Kenneth Kitchen's book on the reliability of the Old Testament right yes okay yes right right and of course there are other books that that do talk about the the historicity of the exodus you know written by egyptologists like James Hoffmeyer who's one of the top egyptologists in evangelical so the first question I would ask is how definitive is the evidence because there's the great debate about the dating of the exodus do we date that's right a literal 480 years from Solomon's dedication of the temple in 966 or does 480 simply singer signify 12 times 40 you know numbers in the bible often can be debate about exactly how to interpret so that'd be the first thing in other words do we have the the right time the right story how can you to prove a negative takes a lot of work right yeah that's right doctor it's one thing to say I'm holding a piece of paper in my hand if you say that God does not exist okay how does one prove that so answer your question I'll finish on the other side of the break hang in 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 866-34-TRUTH so let me go back to eric in philadelphia so first on a personal level I'm so sorry that you struggled with doubt and I relate a little because I got bombarded by rabbis when I was first saved and they raised so many objections I didn't have answers for his new believer and then all the way through college and grad school I never studied with a believer and some of them were you know aggressive and hostile and I didn't have answers in the early days so although by God's grace I haven't struggled with doubt over the decades in a serious way we're getting hit in those early days I remember it's like okay what I've got a problem because I know Jesus changed my life but how does this line up so the first thing I would say is if I don't know what definitive evidence could be discovered that would prove that Moses didn't exist or that the exodus never happened but let's say theoretically that that scholars or even evangelical scholars right yeah they all said this seems to be definitive all right I don't expect I don't expect that to happen any more than when you die there's no God there's no afterlife you know and the joke's on you kind of thing but just theoretically theoretically yes but again you understand I to me that's an impossibility for for many reasons but theoretically then the next thing would be okay have I had an undeniable experience of God in my life with undeniable times of divine intervention and undeniable answers to prayer and you know I could detail the things that there's no possible human rational explanation for there's absolutely no question I'd stake my eternity on it as I have and then how many people do I know who have had undeniable supernatural experiences okay so I line all that up and the idea that the Bible isn't true that the promises aren't true all right are utterly impossible for me so then the only alternative you're left with in in my thinking is okay were these meant to be literary stories to inspire you know based on certain truths that then became told in a madrasic expanded way and and that's how it was understood through history and then over time was believed to be actually historical but was only just meant to be tales I would have to ask that question because I can't deny the truth of God I can't deny the reality of God I can't deny my experience in God I might as well deny my humanity I might as well deny that the air I'm breathing is real I mean he's that real to me he's been that real in my life over the decades and in the lives of people that I know so his non-existence is not a possibility nor is it possible that Jesus is not the real Savior the God of the Bible is not true which would then mean that somehow we were misreading the Bible again I don't see this as a possibility at all I mean I'm sure it will never happen I'm a hundred percent sure it will never happen but honestly that's how I would process it you know and the the struggle that you would have is if you struggle with doubts if you struggle with doubts then how can you be sure about anything correct I mean that would be your pain so yeah yeah yeah so obviously you've talked to God about these things are you ever in a place where you feel confident that God is listening to you or that he's real I mean I don't you know I've heard a lot of stories I've heard your testimony I don't know it's a tough question to answer not the round because you know I don't I don't know why I've had this doubt like I'll just like tell you like for example a lot of people even you know James Hoffmeyer he'll point to let's say the brick making an exodus and how that matches up to what they find on a Rechmeyer's tomb of the Asiatic slaves brick making so I take it to another level I say well it's as if it's as if some people will say that brick making only occurred between the 15th century and the 13th century which will cover the early and the late dating how do we know that brick making in Egypt didn't occur in let's say the 8th 7th and 6th century and the Israelites retroactively injected this into the exodus you would have to go and look at the history of brick making I just find that a lot of Christians are ready to accept things very easily and not question things well they say oh well they see the the Asiatics on the Rechmeyer's tomb well that's it that matches up with the exit is that's it but here's here's here's the thing here's the thing um number one the people are only responding to an objection in other words someone will say well brick making didn't exist then and it's anachronistic the biblical account doesn't line up and then you respond with no it did exist it's not to say it didn't exist later right but but the whole thing is that that it's it's not it's not there in the account to prove historicity right it's not it's not there to prove anything so the fact it could have existed a thousand years after is not the issue right it's the account is just telling you a story and people are saying it couldn't have happened they were saying no it it well could have happened they weren't they were making bricks at that time so it doesn't it doesn't prove it's right it simply dismisses an objection so that's what you have to remember in other words we're not trying to counter every possible objection that can be raised but simply if someone says well that's anachronistic because this didn't exist back then it's like no it did so for example if someone's talking about uh the iphone in 1940s well there was no iphone in 1940s right um but but from a certain date on it was there so that's that's all that that is but but look i i don't want to get caught in the weeds here so yes sure yeah but i i'm not i'm not demeaning or diminishing your question or what you're going through it's a matter of okay how do we help you connect with god in such a way that he causes you to know that you know because at a certain point you you stop worrying about objections in other words when when someone has proven trustworthy over and over and over again you know they said hey i'll be there to get you don't worry and they're always there and then one day they're running late it's like hey they'll get there they're reliable so i i every objection i got hit with for years i mean even into grad school i thought okay let me take a serious look at this i know my faith is real i know jesus has changed my life i know i have a living relationship with god but all right this is a serious objection and i'm not going to stick my head in the sand at a certain point i thought okay i don't need to prove anything i've been doing this for like 20 years you know or 15 years i've been doing it in every setting with languages and background and all this so at a certain point there there are always going to be loose ends because you're talking about an ancient book and you're talking about relatively uh little attestation that could be preserved in the land of ancient israel you know the physical characteristics there um etc uh but what has been striking is not how many loose ends there are it's like no i can't explain that interesting question i can't explain that which i just let sit rather than come up with a cheap answer i think that's a great question and i don't have an answer for it yet but i'll let it sit because the last one took me five years but then when i got the answer was amazing what keeps me striking is you know there's no reference to david nature oh there's an actual inscription and he's mentioned and it's you know that same time period or or um you know whatever whatever the thing might be uh you know for example the the onomastica the the names on broken pieces of pottery uh that were found in samaria and then in jerusalem and the great preponderance of of of yahweh names in in jerusalem and the preponderance of bottle names and samaria it's like yeah you know and then the kuntalaj root inscription where this is scripting to yahweh and his ashura on the doorposts and you know pointing to the idolatry that was there but even writing things on doorposts and so to me the confirmation has been amazing but at a certain point honestly that that didn't matter to me either because i i was so overwhelmed and you know the messianic prophecy i kept bombarded with over and over and over the more i dug it's like wow it's real it's accurate it's true so i i by all means we don't turn our brains off we don't but somehow there has to be a hard connection with god that's so deep that our mind could be at peace while the answers come down the road and it is have you have you asked god to make himself real to you outside of biblical authority and biblical apologetics just say god if you're really there the god of the bible i need to know in a way that i know for sure have you asked him to do that um yes i don't i i don't know dr brown i've um i don't know i it's tough it's tough um well let me encourage you oh go ahead i'm sorry no no no it's it's you know i mean i can you know i sound me i sound like a non-believer but you know i can defend the bible pretty well like a lot of people think the 12 tribes of israel are myths i mean if you look at the moabite stone it mentions the the tribe of gad the tribe of gad dwelling in adiroth and that matches up exactly with the book of numbers i mean how does that that's phenomenal so you know i can definitely defend it but it's relational though ultimately it's it's relational yeah and we're called to have a relationship with god through jesus so what what's what would stop you not on the air now not with me but just getting alone and say okay god if you're really there then you're listening to me now if you're not or you're some other being then i'm just talking to the wall but if you're really there i really want to know you i want to love you i want to be with you i want to find out about you i want my life to have the purpose you want it to have i don't want to live with this doubt and pain so if if you're really there make yourself real to me in a way that you know will be real to me because you you made me you wired me you know the way i think so i'm asking you god to make yourself real to me in in a way that i will know for sure in fact we're out of time eric everybody listening right now pray for eric that god would make himself real to eric in a life transforming way and that the doubts would be dealt with also eric you might want to check out my book has god failed you finding faith when you're not even sure god is real has god failed you it's not so much intellectual but spiritual has god failed you
