Class is now in session. Michael Brown, welcome to the Line of Fire, our digital school of the Word and Spirit, here to infuse you with faith and truth and courage to help you stand strong on the front lines. And we are continuing in our study, getting to know the Holy Spirit, getting to know the Holy Spirit. Remember, we have got lots of other, we have got. We have lots of other things to do. Lots of other great content on our YouTube channel.
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And we have in Acts 2, with the outpouring there at Pentecost, Shavuot, the Feast of Weeks. We have the believers now speaking in new languages, which at that time, in that situation, were languages that were understood by the people. Now some claim the miracle was in the hearing. That they were just speaking in their native languages or they were speaking in a heavenly language and the miracle was in the hearing. But the simplest reading would indicate that the miracle was in the speaking. Now they thought they were drunk.
Well, maybe they just heard and saw one. You know, you could watch the same thing and hear the same thing and come to different conclusions. But the miracle of speaking there and then subsequently prophecy is mentioned. So the Lord speaking to a person who then speaks his word, so that person in a sense becomes a mouth, a mouthpiece of God. And then dreams and visions are mentioned.
Dreams and visions. And then the last one, and that's the real idea, is that the Holy Spirit, it's not just the Holy Spirit speaking to us. It's the Holy Spirit speaking to us. It's the Holy Spirit speaking to us. And the Holy Spirit is telling us how they were kept. It doesn't explain that. But somehow the Holy Spirit kept them from doing it. And it doesn't necessarily even speak of God blocking them as much as they, the Spirit led them.
Don't go this way. When they came to the Mark of Kings, they came to the board of Messiah they tried to enter Bithynia but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to. That's a question I and many others have wondered about. What's the difference between the Holy Spirit and the Spirit of Jesus? Why does Luke use that different terminology?
I don't have a definitive answer. So they passed by Messiah and went down to Troas. During the night Paul had a vision of a man of Macedonia standing and begging him, come over to Macedonia and help us. Come over to Macedonia and help us. After Paul had seen the vision we got ready at once to leave for Macedonia concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them.
Come over to Macedonia and help us. So Paul has a vision at night. So the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus leading them, don't go here, don't go here. Then Paul having a night vision, God communicating. We also have reference here to dreams.
Now here's the deal, we want to talk about at the moment contemporary. God is going to lead us and move in our lives in different ways. So those of us who believe that the Bible is the authoritative Word of God, end of subject, you can't add to it, take away from it. And as the Bible says, Jesus sheep hear his voice, John 10. We have communion with the Holy Spirit, 2nd Corinthians 13.
The outpouring of the Holy Spirit with prophecy and tongues is for the last days, the entire period from the death and resurrection of Jesus until the end of the age. So we believe in tongues today, we believe in prophecy today, we believe in dreams and visions based on what the Bible itself says. Because the Bible's my authority when the Bible tells me this is how God continues to speak and act, I receive that, I believe that.
But don't compare your own life with someone else's life. If their devotion to the Lord, their walk with the Lord, their intimacy with God is such, is such that it can provoke you to know the Lord more deeply wonderful. But everyone walks with God relates to him differently.
So he has certain standards we all live by, but everyone relates to him differently. So I've never heard the audible voice of God, never, in my life, not once. I have heard the voice of God inside of me so strongly that I was ready to burst. I have experienced the conviction of the Spirit so deeply that I wanted to crawl out of my skin, absolutely, a hundred percent, a hundred percent, without question whatsoever. But I've never heard the audible voice of God. I have never seen an outward vision where, I mean, right now I'm looking at the camera in our studio and instead I see someone else standing, I see the Lord standing there speaking to me. Now before I was saved, I was a heavy drug user.
I was known as Drug Bear and Iron Man. I did heavy hallucinogenics, LSD, mescaline. I saw a lot of stuff then, all drug-induced, all just playing with my brain. But I've never had an open vision. Now I have seen, only a couple times, the cloud of God's presence.
I'll give you an example, the most conspicuous time it ever happened to me. I was teaching Korean Christians in New York City, and beginning in 1982 I would commute from Long Island into Manhattan. It was an extension of Valley Forge College, Christian College, and these were Bible seminary related classes.
And this was a related school, Valley Forge is in Pennsylvania, the school is in New York City. And I go in there one day a week and teach morning and afternoon. I would teach them Book of Hosea or Old Testament survey.
I would teach them reading Hebrew. Did it for a couple years, if I remember the chronology. Well, I come in one morning, it was cold winter morning, and it's a little class, I mean we got 15-20 people in the class, and I come in and the whole room is completely, completely covered in, it's like a cloud is in there. Just the whole room is completely steamed up, completely steamed up. Now it was one of those old buildings that had heaters on the wall, and I just assumed they were steam heaters. It was cold winter, the room must have just gotten heated quick and everybody in there, so it was filled with steam.
That's what I thought. But I mean it was, it wasn't like, oh I think I foresee I closed my eyes, I think I see something. No, no, it was, it was as visible to the eye as anybody sitting there in that class. In fact, it was hard to see everybody because the steam was so thick. But they didn't say anything, so I didn't say anything. They're not bringing it up, it's like, okay, obviously it's a heating issue. So as the, as the class is going on, it little by little, by little disappears, and I said to them, by the way, what was that steam when I came in?
We just missed a cloud when I came in here. And I see suddenly their eyes get really big, and I said, well you know the, what was the room, the room was filled with steam. And they look at me, I remember one of them says, Reverend Brown, maybe our coffee?
And they all, and I thought, shut up, they didn't see anything you did. Oh, we had chapel that day, and nothing unusual happened. But I heard the Lord say to me, this is a sign of my presence, just like the cloud that went with the children of Israel in the wilderness, this is a sign of my presence. And sure enough, we had an outpouring, the Holy Spirit came powerfully in those chapel services, and people were dramatically touched.
That happened on a lesser level, within a year or two after that, I would say, but I haven't seen that. Again, I don't look for, I don't look for, I don't think, I don't, I don't look for visions, I don't look for dreams. As for prophetic dreams, I don't have prophetic dreams.
If I do, I don't know it. And you know, I dream about, I'm late for a flight, I dream about I left my luggage somewhere, almost all these airports, I wonder why, I wonder why all the airport dreams. Yeah, I've only been out of the U.S. a couple hundred plus times overseas, like 180 times overseas, so, but that's me, or whatever is on my mind, or I'm pressured or stressed about it, you know, that's what I'm dreaming about. Now, on two occasions, I had a dream that really struck me, and that there was something to it, and then that thing actually happened. But, come on, I mean, that's like one out of a thousand, ten thousand, or two out of ten thousand, so, I've said, God, if you, if you want to speak to me through dreams, go ahead, you're a God.
But he hasn't thus far. And no matter how much I pray and read the word right before I fall asleep, to my knowledge, he has not spoken to me through dreams. Now, it is a way that he does speak, and I'm gonna give you a couple of examples, examples as we come back, it is a way that he does speak, but we can't ultimately rely on dreams to be led by, by God. One reason is we can't sleep all the time. What if we need to hear from God now?
What if you're in a crisis? All right, let me just take a nap, give me a minute, take a nap. So, we can't sleep all the time. If we encounter a situation, need to make an immediate decision, we can't take a nap, and hope God gives us a dream. And then dreams genuinely require interpretation. So, like Joseph and Daniel had to interpret for Pharaoh, for Nebuchadnezzar, what the dreams meant. Dreams, then I was clear and definite, they still require we go to God for an interpretation. So, those prophetic people I know who have more expertise in dream interpretation have said, first you have the, the, the actual revelation. Then you have, what's the interpretation of that?
And then what's the application? And when you look at the dreams, the language is often symbolic. If we take it more literally, we're gonna miss it. I do not have insight on the interpretation of dreams. I'm thinking of one dream recently, where colleagues of mine were violently divided.
I mean, I don't mean physically violently, but this is not of God, this is of God. And they were both spiritual people. And I was just kind of like, I don't know, I don't, I don't get interpretation of dreams. So, and the other question is, how do you know it wasn't just a random dream or something you're thinking about, unless you have some witness in your spirit or you have it repeatedly? I have colleagues that, that do get prophetic dreams and they say often they get the dreams recurring. The same dream over and over and over, that's how they know it's the Lord. But you can't just rely on dreams as a primary way of being led by God. Again, one simple reason, you can't sleep all the time.
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So appreciate their great wellness products and part of my daily life, part of my daily routine. What about what about visions? Does God often lead through visions? So there there are outward visions and then they're maybe called inner visions. We see something in our mind's eye.
I get that a lot. I see things in my mind's eye. But outward visions I've never had and God does speak in these ways. But it seems to be more rare in Scripture, rarer in Scripture, than other means of God speaking and leading. Although certainly there in the Old Testament and the New Testament. But another issue is many visions require interpretation. Okay, go ahead explain the visionary imagery in Revelation to me. Scholars still debate this. People write 1,500 page commentaries on Revelation and come to different conclusions.
Someone else who writes a 1,500 page commentary on Revelation. So visionary language is different, requires interpretation. That's one thing. A second thing is you can't initiate it. You can't initiate a vision. Okay, I need a vision now. Once again, what if you're in a situation and you need the Lord to speak to you now? You need leading now. You need guidance now.
You have to make major decisions now. What about that? So if you need to know the will of God today, you can't just initiate a vision. And in terms of something in your inner eye, how do you really know in your mind's eye that it's just your own imagination?
So these are good questions to ask, fair questions to ask. For me though, when I'm with the Lord and something pops up in my mind's eye, it's just like if I say, hey, think about, remember when you're at that ballgame or just think about what you're doing next week, what your plans are. It's just kind of picturing things. I don't mean something like, oh, oh, amazing!
No, that would be more of a striking vision. But something just pops up and bears witness with me. See, that's the thing. It's something, wow, I see that. For example, long before I was writing op-ed pieces, and I've written over 3,000?
I think over 3,000. I'd never done that. I wasn't doing that. And then I started reading.
I was reading somebody else's op-ed piece on a conservative platform and I thought, you're supposed to be doing that. I just saw myself doing it. I didn't have any ambition to, no desire to. I've seen myself preaching in different settings.
I'm not even thinking about it. I have no ambition to do it, but I see it. And then next day I get an invitation or next week, can you come? It's like, yeah, I already saw myself there.
I'll do it. A couple years ago, exactly two years ago, I'm at home and out of the blue, I see myself in New York City, sitting under the sukkah, the tabernacle, that you make one and you have meals there and you spend time there during Sukkot Tabernacles. I see myself there with ultra-orthodox Jewish rabbis that I knew in the New York, New Jersey area. I saw myself there with them. And it was a little bit before Sukkot of 2022. And I said to myself before Tabernacles, I said, be realistic.
When is your schedule ever gonna let up? That you just have the luxury of just going to New York and spending a few days and hanging out with some of these rabbis, I mean people that oppose me, hanging out with these rabbis in New York. And I kind of rebuked myself for being silly, yet I saw it and it felt real to me. Within a day or two of that, very shortly after, I get a text from a secret believer that I know. A Jewish man, secret believer. And the family member was asking a question. He wanted to know how I'd respond. And I told him and the family member said, why don't we invite him to sit under the sukkah with us?
I thought, you gotta be kidding me. We've interacted over the years. That never happened. Never happened.
So, and he was in that, you know, larger New York, New Jersey area than millions of Jews there, you know. And I told Nancy, she said, oh you gotta go. I said, I know it. So I just had a shift, had a prayer retreat for that weekend, but I had a free weekend after, so I moved it to that. And sure enough, the rabbis I saw myself with, I was with. Yeah, yeah, this one was free, that one was free.
You gotta be kidding me. I've had that happen, you know, so many times where there's something really negative and bad, but everything I see in the future is everything good, everything fine, we keep going, we keep going, we keep going. So, but it comes with that witness, it comes with that assurance. So what I want to say first and foremost is whether you get dreams from God or visions from God or feel you hear his voice outwardly or inwardly, how do you know it's really from the Lord? Well obviously you test it against the Bible, but there are other ways he makes it.
No, it's not the thing itself, that's the point, because we have a relationship with the Holy Spirit. So one of our, one of my friends many years ago, let's see, mid 19, no, no, late 80s, early 90s, I'd say early 90s, early 90s, we're in Maryland, colleague of mine says, Mike, God gave me your dream, and I'm to publish a book with testimonies of ten different Jewish believers, you know, one is a former Hindu guru, and one is a Holocaust survivor, and, and your testimony is to be in it. It is as if God had just dictated the thing to him, I want you to do this, I want you to have this one, this one, this one, this one, this one.
Okay, all good. And he just tells me, the Lord gave me a dream, and we're to do this, and we're to publish it, and send it out to non-believing Jews. I said great, so I, I felt to do mine on tradition versus truth, why I'm not a rabbinic Jew, so mine was more rabbinic, mine was more, excuse me, academic, and arguing a point, so my testimony, but that, so mine was a little different, but he felt great, good, do it. Well, I found out subsequently, it was the first time God ever spoke to him in a dream, the first time God ever spoke to him in a dream, but it was as if he just got the download, and told me, Mike, God told me to do this, this, this, this, this.
Wow, okay. Second thing is, he did put the book out, and you say, what happened to it? Well, it has gone out by the millions, out of everything I've ever written or touched, that has my words in it, so it's not because of me, I'm just saying, I get to be, I got to ride on this boat, all right? Multiplied millions of non-believing Jews, a significant percentage of Jewish people around the world who do not believe, have received that book.
Yeah, I don't, I don't mean 1% or 10%, I mean more, it could be 20%, I don't know what the numbers, could be higher, but not just in English, in Russian, in Spanish, I was in Israel, I saw it in Hebrew, and it was mailed out to Jewish families in different parts of the world, and only a tiny percent of them are believers, so the rest were unbelievers, so what happened with it? God knows all the details, but that was in response to a dream, and I could give you other examples of friends of mine who hear from God in dreams, but the ultimate thing, here's the biggest thing, there is the inner witness of the Spirit. Now for those of you who don't believe dreams, visions, those things are for today, hey, I'm not here to argue with you, I want to come alongside and serve and equip, but I would challenge you to show me from the New Testament where it says these things would stop, because Peter does say in Acts 2, these were the last days, for the last days, so that's from the death and resurrection of Jesus to the end of the age, this for the last days, we're in the last days, where does it say it would stop? No, to the contrary, Acts 2 39 says this, the promises to you of salvation, forgiveness, and the Spirit, the promises to you and your children and all that are far off, as many as the Lord our God shall call. So, so, here's what I want to encourage you, maybe God gives you dreams, beautiful if he does, but you have to know that it's for him, so if he communicates to you, he needs to communicate in such a way that you know could be a multiple dream thing, you have it multiple times, or you have it, your spouse has that same dream, or you have it, and you wake up knowing this is from God, I can't shake this, this is from God, then say, Lord, I need understanding, insight, show me what it means, because many of them are not forthright, some are, like this one my friend had, others are not, the same with the vision, okay, God got your attention with a vision, Lord, why, what do I need to do, how do I respond, and everything always, first and foremost, of course, is tested by the Word, but to me ultimately, and you'd be audible voices, so many other ways God can lead and speak, but ultimately, along with the Bible, is that inner witness, that inner voice, that inner knowing, that's the biggest, biggest, biggest, biggest, so let's develop a deeper relationship with God through the Holy Spirit, we've got much more to cover in the days ahead, but we've been laying foundations these first two weeks, I hope they're helpful, you miss any of the broadcast, just go wherever you subscribe to Courage in the Line of Fire, or to our YouTube channel, and you can have archives of this entire series on getting to know the Holy Spirit, if you're not getting our frontline newsletter, thelineoffire.org, click subscribe, thelineoffire.org. This is Dr. Michael Brown, thanks so much for tuning in, just a reminder that we are listener supported, if we have been a blessing to you, if you're being enriched in the Word, in prayer, in your own walk with God through this broadcast, then stand with us so that we can reach many, many more, and bless many, many more together, friends, we're making a difference, so go to thelineoffire.org, thelineoffire.org, and click donate.
