Answering Your Theology Questions on Social Media

We're going to answer some of your toughest, most pressing questions on the air today. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Hey friends, Michael Brown. Welcome to the broadcast. I'm not taking any calls today. I'm not covering the latest breaking news. We're devoting this entire broadcast to answering questions that you have posted on our Twitter account, which is D.R. Michael L. Brown. Two L's in there.

Get the right person. D.R. Michael L. Brown at Twitter or our Facebook page, AskDrBrown, A-S-K-D-R Brown on Facebook. So don't post your questions now. We solicited these a few days earlier and we're devoting the entire broadcast to answering your questions. We're going to start on Twitter, answer some of your Twitter questions, and then go from there over to Facebook.

So we'll start with our friend David over on Twitter. Why do you think the church now has a culture where we can't confess our sins one to another? Do you think this is a huge reason for many falling away? What is the solution? Or maybe it's a three in one question. So is it a new kind of culture we have now where people are afraid to confess their sins one to another?

Is this contributing to people falling away? What's the solution? Great questions. I think it's always difficult for some people to confess sins to other people or for any of us to humble ourselves and to say to someone, I'm wrong here, I've sinned here.

But perhaps today there are a couple of reasons why it's become harder. One, social media, everybody knows everybody's business. How confident am I that if I can fight in you and I share you, I've been really going through a struggle, I'm fighting depression and just this anxiety and I feel like I don't have any faith in and I share that with you. Am I confident my story will remain with you or maybe you just want to share it with someone else online? I don't know if that's in people's minds, but certainly there's a culture where, what?

No, no, you did. No, I don't mean some blatant thing where, you know, I confess to my leadership team, I just want you to know I've been robbing, I've been part of that bank robbery gang the last five years that hasn't been caught. I'm part of that. At the moment I confess that I'm being marched down to the police.

Okay. Or if someone sits with others and say, I just have to confess, I've been living in adultery with four different partners the last five years, okay, that's going to have to go to your spouse and that's going to have to go to others you're working with in ministry and there will be consequences. I understand that, but sometimes we're just afraid if we fall short the slightest way or show any humanity that we'll get thrown under the bus, that we'll get discarded, and that's our culture and we have a cancel culture in the church. So what we have to do is make clear, hey, we're not condoning sin.

We're not looking the other way. We're not saying it doesn't matter, but we're recognizing all of us need mercy. All of us are works in progress. Let's be open, honest, and help each other and encourage each other and lift each other up.

What we have to do is have an environment where mercy is strongly emphasized, where restoration is strongly emphasized, where forgiveness is strongly emphasized, where humility is strongly emphasized, and where people feel safe, and in that context I believe we can make positive progress. Okay, let's see, Daniel asks the question, are we in the last days? Are we in the last days?

Yes, according to the Bible we've been in the last days, though, since Jesus died and rose from the dead. You know, Romans 13 tells us that the night is nearly past, the day is at hand, the end of Romans 13. But then 1 Corinthians 10, Paul says that the end of the ages has come upon us. That's in 1 Corinthians, the 10th chapter.

James Jacob, the fifth chapter, speaks of wicked people hoarding up riches for themselves in these last days, taking from the poor, oppressing others. 1 Peter 1 talks about the gospel coming to us in the last days. Hebrews 1 talks about God speaking through his son in the last days. 1 John 2 even says it's the last hour. There are those preterists in particular, full preterists, who make the terrible error of thinking that the last days end it with the destruction of the second temple and now we're in the period of the new heavens and the new earth. I mean, a dastardly error.

Full preterists make that. A heretical error, in fact, saying the resurrection is past. However, we have been in the last days, and in terms of human history, is the last major chapter. We've been in the last days since Jesus died and rose from the dead. The outpouring of the Spirit, Acts 2, is on all flesh during this period of the last days. So are we in the last seconds of the last days? God knows the exact timetable.

Okay, 2020DoomPrepper had asked a silly question, but then a serious one over on Twitter. My serious question, what are your thoughts of passages like Leviticus 25 44 to 46 which seem to suggest discrimination against Gentiles in terms of slavery? That is the single most difficult passage dealing with slavery in the Old Testament, because many of the laws you can actually see as humanitarian laws.

In other words, God telling the people of Israel, you will not do to your own slaves slash servants, the Hebrew word could be debated, translate slave, translate servant. You will not do to them what was done to you in Egypt. Your slaves slash servants, they'll serve six years and in the seventh year go free.

And if you knock a tooth out, you get angry with them, hit them, knock a tooth out, they go free based on that. And they rest on the Sabbath just like you do. You won't treat them the way you were treated in Egypt. But a passage like this that says that you can acquire slaves from the surrounding nations. So, you know, there's a war and someone's taken captive in war now they're enslaved.

You can acquire slaves from the foreign nations. You just can't totally mistreat them, but they can be passed on as property in the next generations. How do we justify that? There are some who will try to argue that the same laws still applied to them in terms of a fair treatment. If they were mistreated, they could go free. So that's a whole separate discussion. But certainly they were not treated the same as Israelite slaves.

They didn't have just the six-year cycle. They could be passed on to the next generation. So maybe you're 70 and you acquire a slave and now you die when you're 73 and that slave becomes your son's slave. I look at that as part of the Sinai covenant that was given to Israel to teach, to instruct, and so they could conduct themselves in this world a certain way, but was not God's ideal, was not God's ultimate good. Just like divorce, Jesus says, was given for the hardness of heart.

You say, well, how can we weigh these things out? Well, it was God's law for Israel and it was appropriate in those times and it was in common with other law codes. In certain ways, the Israelite law code is far better and transcendent in terms of its worship of the one true God. But look, stoning adulterers, stoning sorcerers or burning sorcerers and witches, and things like that, that was to teach, that was to instruct, that was to establish standards of righteousness, that was to weed out evil so that evil would not destroy Israel, and if there was no Israel, there'd be no Messiah, there'd be no salvation. That being said, we have to look at the rest of scripture, which has an ethic of the slaves and captives being set free, and look at that as God's ultimate heart. You say, well, couldn't you say the same thing about like homosexual practice?

Because that was just under the law. Well, it's also forbidden and condemned by the New Testament just as well. So these things are universally affirmed, just like murder is condemned in Old New Testament, adultery is condemned in Old New Testament, but slavery is never set forth as an ideal.

So it's a difficult passage. It's one that we say was part of the Sinai covenant, but that we're not under today. Let's skip down and Cliff, Cliff asks this question, Cliff asks this question, what would God have us to do about the lawlessness we're seeing in our nation beside pray and vote? So one thing we can do is go into the midst of lawless situations and share the gospel. And people have been doing that in the midst of the riots, the protests, obviously you have to have wisdom and be led by the Lord, but to go into the midst of lawlessness and preach the gospel, don't preach politics, don't preach Trump, don't preach Biden, don't preach police, don't preach Jesus, preach Jesus, and seek to go in the midst of these situations with worship like Sean Foyt has done, and just take worship teams out in the midst and just worship the Lord, seek to change the atmosphere, share the gospel, and then do what you can in your local community to stand with law enforcement and say let's work together. What can we do to bring harmony in the community? How can we get sit downs between people who are alienated and people in law enforcement?

What can we do to have a spirit of camaraderie working together for the good of our communities? Those would be some things that could be done. Geo asks this question, does infant baptism count, former Catholic, should I be baptized again as an adult? I feel a strong urge to. What's the difference between baptism by water and by fire?

Okay, yes, I would strongly encourage you to. Baptism is something we do in response to our faith. With all respect to my friends who are baptized as infants and who believe that's what scripture teaches, I'm quite of the opinion that the Bible calls for baptism in response to the gospel. Believe and be baptized, repent and be baptized. So I can't mention how many thousands of people I know that were baptized as infants but realized it was just a religious ritual that had no impact on their lives when they came to faith, made a profession of faith, it's like I believe, I want to be baptized now.

So by all means, absolutely be baptized as an adult, as a believer. The baptism of water is when we go under the water and symbolize dying to sin, dying to self, and now rising in newness in life. Baptism by fire, Jesus speaks in Matthew 3-11 of the baptism of the Holy Spirit and fire, and I understand them to be one and the same. Some read it differently, I understand it to be one and the same there, where the baptism of the Holy Spirit is a baptism in the fire of God, that's why there are tongues of fire in Acts 2 when the disciples are filled with the Spirit, a baptism in purity, a baptism in passion. Others would use the phrase separately a baptism of fire, meaning going through a fiery trial, or wow that was a baptism of fire, it's more of a figure of speech that wow that was an eye-opening experience, that was like getting thrown in the deep end with the sharks, that's a hard way to start, that'd be a baptism of fire. But in the biblical terminology of baptism of the Holy Spirit and fire, I see it as one.

Jesus speaks of a baptism he had to undergo in Luke 12, the sufferings he was going to endure, but that again is a figure of speech there. All right, we come back, going to take a couple more Twitter questions and then go over to Facebook. Remember, not taking calls today, not catching up on latest breaking news, just taking questions that I solicited a few days ago on Facebook, on the ASKDearBrown, the Ask Dr. Brown Facebook page, and on Twitter, Dr.

So D.R. Michael L. Brown. Don't post your questions now, we're only answering those that were posted a few days ago. We will be right back, don't go anywhere. It's the line of fire with your host Dr. Michael Brown, your voice of moral, cultural, and spiritual revolution. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Hey friends, welcome to the line of fire.

Michael Brown, delighted to be with you. Not taking calls today, answering questions that I solicited a few days ago on Facebook and Twitter. I'm not catching up on breaking news.

If there's something earth-shattering happening right now, we're just concentrating on your questions. By the way, if you're watching on Facebook, on the ASKDrBrown Facebook page, you see a donate button. If you click on that button, you can give directly to our ministry work.

It's super convenient, many have done that already. Whether it's a $5 gift or $5,000 gift, we deeply appreciate it. It helps us do what we're doing and reach more and more people with excellence and with, I believe, a voice that you back and are encouraged by. So you can give there on Facebook, just click on the dollar sign. If you're watching on YouTube, so both the ASKDrBrown channels on YouTube or the Facebook page, ASKDrBrown, if you're watching there, beneath the chat box is a dollar sign.

You can click on that and donate, or you can go to our website, ASKDrBrown.org, and just click on donate there. All right, back to Twitter for a few more questions, then I'm going to switch over to Facebook. Peter asked the question, how would you best counter open theism? How would you best counter open theism? What is open theism?

Open theism is the view that although God is all powerful and all knowing and all wise, that he can only know what is knowable. And because the future is still to unfold and people have free will to make decisions, that the future can be changed. There are possibilities about which ways things will go, and God does not know for sure every decision that will be made.

So things are open in that respect. I have an excursus in my Jeremiah commentary where I deal with this very question, because there are verses in Jeremiah where God speaks as if he doesn't, I was really hoping for this, I was expecting this, and it didn't happen. Or Jeremiah preached to the people, perhaps they'll listen, as if God really doesn't know what's coming.

So I address the issue in depth there, and the best way to reject it to me is twofold. First, look at the statements that God makes about himself in the Bible. Descriptive statements, like in Isaiah 40 through 48, where he describes himself in distinction from the false gods, that he knows the end from the beginning, that he can predict things before they happen, whereas the false gods can't. Where he sees eternity, Isaiah 57 tells us, 57-15, that he inhabits eternity, so the whole view of everything is before him.

So look at self-descriptive statements. Psalm 139, the psalmist says, before words even on my tongue, you know it, you know it. So these passages indicate to us that God knows everything, every detail of everything that will happen before it happens, not because he fixed and ordained everything that will happen. Certain things he has fixed and ordained, but many things he hasn't, given to choice and free will. But he knows in advance what's going to happen because he inhabits eternity, because time is something created and God dwells above and beyond time. So I look at the statements God makes about himself and say, based on those statements, we understand that God has eternal foreknowledge. The other thing I would do is logically think through the passages where God seems genuinely disappointed or surprised. Was he actually surprised? For example, in Genesis 22, when Abraham's ready to sacrifice Isaac, and through the angel of the Lord he says, now I know, now I know that you really fear me.

Oh, now I know that you really fear me. God says, God didn't know that before. God was uncertain how Abraham would act. God didn't already say in Genesis 18, I'm going to tell him what I'm going to do because he's going to order his children after himself to follow me. Or in Genesis 12, where God says that through you the whole world will be blessed. God didn't already know how Abraham would respond.

Really? And God telling Jeremiah from the outset how judgment and destruction are going to come, that God was genuinely surprised when his people didn't listen. No, rather, God speaks as incarnated in our world, just like he incarnated himself in Jesus, incarnated himself in the Son, so that Jesus experienced legitimate joy and sorrow and grief and surprise. He literally experienced those things.

I believe God has the ability to incarnate himself in our world day by day so that he feels grief and joy and disappointment and expectation, even though he knows the end from the beginning. You say, how is that possible? Well, first he's God, we're not. But second, we do it all the time.

Say, what do you mean? You ever watched a movie you've seen before, maybe a classic you've watched with your kids? Every time you watch it, you're like, oh, let's do it! But you know the outcome.

You know the outcome, but you experience the moment. Why can't God do that? See? All right. All right. Tyler asked the question, is the kingdom now, not yet, or both? Is the kingdom now, not yet, or both? The kingdom is here and is growing, but the kingdom will not be fully manifest or fully come until Jesus returns and establishes his kingdom on the earth. All right?

All right? So there is a kingdom now teaching that's been popularized in recent decades. You don't hear about it as much now, that basically everything in the kingdom is here now.

Take it now. That can lead to dominionism. That can lead to a false identity of Christians as these superior beings that rule everybody else or some misnomer like that. But the kingdom is already here. The kingdom broke in with Jesus coming into the world.

And the kingdom did not just pay a visit and depart. Dispensationalists may teach it like that, but the kingdom of God did not pay a visit and depart. The kingdom of God broke in, all right, and has been growing and expanding through the preaching of the gospel. The kingdom of God is the rule of God. So as there are more and more people under the dominion of God, more and more people honoring him, serving him, loving him, the kingdom is expanding. More and more people getting set free and liberated from the kingdom of Satan into the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is spreading, as D.A. Carson and Craig Keener say in their Matthew commentaries, that when we pray, your kingdom come, we're praying for the full manifestation. We're praying for the return of the Lord and the full establishment of the kingdom of God on the earth. So it's here, but in incipient form. We will not see the fullness of the kingdom in its entirety until Jesus returns.

All right, we'll grab, um, all right, two more questions on Twitter and then we'll switch over to Facebook. Um, mosem276, I was reading in Leviticus that if anyone offers their children to Molech, they must be put to death. And why didn't God require King Manasseh to be put to death when he allowed human sacrifice to Molech or death for adultery, yet King David was allowed to live? Simple answer to your question, because they were the kings. Manasseh and David were kings, and kings were kings and did what they wanted to do. And no one had the authority over them to say, all right, we're taking you off the throne and putting you to death now. They worshiped idols, some of them. Manasseh was involved with the shedding of innocent blood. He should have been put to death. Now, ultimately, there was divine judgment. Those things happened.

There were various penalties. The prophets would bring words of rebuke, but the king was the king. In that sense, he's going to do what he's going to do.

And it was not going to be punished the way others would be punished. And last Twitter question, James, how could a Christian support any political party and possibly an unbeliever without becoming unequally yoked and losing their witness? Okay, it depends on to what degree we support the party and how we support the party.

In other words, if I say that I stand with the Republican policies on A, B, C, D, E, and I differ with the Democratic policies on those same issues, therefore I'm voting for the Republican candidates, and you say, well, what about this? No, I don't agree with that point, but that's secondary to me. Yeah, but this one, the way he behaves or the way she behaves, yeah, I don't like that. I agree, but I see bad behavior on both sides, but here I'm voting for these reasons.

We can maintain a Christian witness, a godly witness. I have no issue saying I wish Donald Trump wouldn't say certain things or do certain things. I have no issue differing with a policy decision or something like that. I wish that Trump would be more consistent, for example, in opposing gay activism. You've got one side saying he's the most pro-gay president we've ever had, and the other side saying he's the most anti-gay president we've ever had.

We should be more consistency there. I wish his behavior and demeanor were different in ways, many ways. We should be more accurate and honest when he speaks.

I can say that freely. He's my president, not my savior. But when it comes to the role of the president, who's going to do a better job?

Him or Hillary Clinton, him or Joe Biden, in my view, Trump. So I'm not married to the party, to the person. I want my proclamation of Jesus to be a thousand times stronger and louder than my vote for the president. If you're one that you wear a MAGA hat and you've got a Trump Pence 2020 bumper sticker and you've got a sign in your front yard, but nobody knows you're Christian, something's wrong with that picture. Something's wrong with that picture. So if we defend a candidate at all costs, if we put our trust and emotions into politics far more than we do into God and the service of God, if we look to a political party to save the nation or a political leader to save the nation, then we're making a mistake.

Then it's unhealthy, and then we do compromise our witness. But when we lay out, here's why I vote, okay? Here, I'm going to the store and I have to pick up paper towels. Which is the best brand, you know? Or I've got to get this to work on a clogged drain.

Which is the best brand that works for this or that? Whatever the question is, you put everything in its category. Got to get the oil change.

Which is the most reliable place here that's quickest in and out? You make your choice. Okay, when it comes to the role of the president, what's the role of the president? What's the role of the president? What's the role of a senator? What's the role of a state rep? What's the role of a local city council member or a school board member?

What's their role? Who's the best candidate? And you vote accordingly. But you proclaim to the whole world, the one who gets my heart, my soul, my life, my devotion, my all in all is Jesus, not a presidential candidate or any other candidate.

You don't have to compromise or witness one item. We'll be right back. It's the line of fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Get into the line of fire now by calling 866-34-TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Thanks, friends, for joining us on the line of fire.

This is Michael Brown, delighted to be with you. Hey, our ministry name is Ask Dr. Brown. And because of that, we get lots of questions sent in to us. And we have staff and team that helps answer questions for me and with me. And of course, on the air, we answer as many questions as we can. So that's what we're doing today. But I solicited these questions a few days earlier.

So if you're just tuning in, don't call in, don't post the question. I already solicited these on Facebook. So the Ask Dr. Brown Facebook page and on Twitter, the Dr. Michael Brown, so Dr. Michael L. Brown Twitter page.

But we've finished with Twitter for now and we're going over to Facebook. And let's start with this question from Kevin. And he asks this, how does sola scriptura justify itself without tradition in some way? There's no God-given table of contents handed down to us. At some point, the books of canon came to us through tradition, correct?

Yeah. So first, Kevin, many things come to us by way of tradition, but we believe that God is superintending the process, meaning the canon of scripture that we have, recognizing the Old Testament, the books of the Hebrew Bible. Those come to us by way of Jewish tradition, right? The canon of scripture was ultimately decided on in terms of Old Testament by Jews and then received by subsequent generations of Jewish believers of Jesus and then Gentile Christians as well. Or as we go on in history, the preservation of the Hebrew Bible that has been at the hands of Jews who did not believe in Jesus through the centuries, right? And then manuscripts preserved by Catholic monks. Well, Greek Orthodox and Russian Orthodox believers use those same manuscripts, even though they have some different traditions. And Christians in Ethiopia that have a little bit different canon, they use the same Greek manuscripts, et cetera. So if you're going to just try to say if something's been preserved by tradition, it must be true, then which way do you go? Do you become a traditional Jew?

I mean, which way do you go there? So yeah, the decisions as to ultimately what books were part of the Bible, those were made by human beings, but we believe they simply recognized what God was doing and that God superintended that process. And that's why, for example, all branches of Christianity agree on the canon of the New Testament, right? That, you know, if you get a Roman Catholic Bible, you get an evangelical Bible, you get an Ethiopian Bible, they're still going to have the same books in the New Testament. Now, you may have a disagreement about some other books, but you have the same books for the New Testament.

Okay, so in any case, I justify Sola Scriptura by saying, what is it that is quoted as authoritative in every age? It's Scripture. So you go back to God revealing himself at Mount Sinai and through the Exodus as the only true God, and the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, so that verifies what comes before. Now, the prophets have to speak in conformity with what's written in the law of Moses. Now, Jesus comes into the world to not abolish the law, but to fulfill.

And each thing builds on what comes before it. Then he sends his disciples out to teach and preach, and then they refer back to the words of Jesus. And then, ultimately, there's an acceptance and recognition of the words of the apostles and of other writings in the New Testament.

So God superintends that process. But now I'm going to balance and weigh everything based on Scripture, because that's always been the authority, all right? And we know that some traditions are good, like Paul saying, follow the traditions we gave you. And then Jesus doing things by tradition, like going to a synagogue, that was a Pharisaical tradition. But then it was rebuking some of the Jewish leaders for the hypocritical traditions and traditions that violated the Word of God, as he does in Matthew 15 and Mark 7 and Matthew 23, for example. So everything is tested by Scripture. And when I see Church tradition violating Scripture, just like when I see rabbinic tradition violating Scripture, I have to go back to Scripture, what is written. So the other things are interesting and can bring support and further information, but Scripture is the ultimate guide.

Let's see. Cecil, what do we say to replacement theology people, and is it a biblical duty to take the side of Israel on the political front? To what extent do we stand with Israel? What we say to replacement theology people is, Israel's still here, Jerusalem's still here, how'd that happen? It happened because God made promises, not because Israel's better, not because God is into racial or genetic superiority, but because God made promises that he'd keep his people, that he'd bring them back to the land, even in unbelief, and that he turned their hearts to welcome the Messiah.

He's going to do all that. You can check my videos on this, a short one, what is replacement theology. You can check that out at S. Dr. Brown YouTube channel or S. Dr. Brown.org, or better still, get my book, Our Hands Are Staying with Blood, and I have three chapters.

The new edition came out last September. I have three whole chapters in the book dealing with the error of replacement theology. So Israel's here by the will of God. The Jewish people have not ceased to exist, not been totally wiped out.

Why? Romans 11, 28, and 29. Even though Paul writes to the Gentiles, they're enemies now, for your sake, on account of the fathers, they are loved, for the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable. So the promises remain. That's the only explanation for the Jewish people being here and being back in the land. As for to what degree we stand with Israel, we stand with Israel when it's righteous to. In other words, we make clear that we stand with Israel overall, believing that God brought the Jewish people back to the land, and this is the promised land. We stand with them overall in the larger picture, absolutely. And we stand with them righteously when they are doing the right thing in the Middle East and with the Palestinians and things like that. And when we differ, we differ as friends. We say we stand with you, we believe that God has raised us, we believe that it's the enemy who wants to destroy, we stand with you. However, we stand for righteousness above all, and when we disagree with you, we'll call you out. We'll say this is wrong or that is wrong, and that happens on a regular basis.

Let's see. Adele, it seems like what primarily happens in church is we go over and over, more or less, and it's almost like we're overfed doctrine and completely disregarded the power and presence of the Holy Spirit's thoughts. Well, it all depends on what church circles you're in.

That's absolutely the case in some. During the days of the Welsh Revival, it was said before the revival in 1904, 1905, that the people were taught to death. And yeah, it's the Isaiah 29 cycle that Jesus refers to. I just quoted some of the passages in Matthew 15, Mark 7, I referred to them, where he said, you draw near and you draw near, where he said, you draw near with your mouth, but your heart's far from me. Taught and taught and taught and taught and doctrine and doctrine, but there's no vibrant relationship with God. But then you have other circles, maybe ultra-charismatic circles, where it's all about encountering the Spirit, encountering God, and very little doctrine. We need both. We need the Word and the Spirit. We need the Word and the Spirit. The Father wants people who will worship Him in Spirit and in truth.

It's both and, not, either, or. And if you're in a place where maybe you love the congregation there and it's a place where you can put roots down, your family's been there for years and you're at home there, but you feel there's a real lack of vibrancy in the Spirit, then do your best to supplement it elsewhere. Or get into a place where there's a good balance between Word and Spirit. My book, Authentic Fire, I think you'll find really helpful. Authentic Fire, if you haven't read it. Let's see, let's go to Marie Eve. Hello, I finished reading your book, Israel's Divine Healer.

Really good. I'm not sure if you answered this question that I have, so forgive me to have not seen it while reading it. If you take this passage, the passage in Isaiah saying, by the stripes were healed, you believe that a lot of Christians don't get healed because they don't believe in the literal meaning of the sentence. I know you don't believe everybody will be healed on earth, but do you think complete divine healing is available? Some Christians don't believe the right way to get healed. And if you believe that, when is someone who believes that should be healed once they begin to think the right way? I'm not talking about you need to get the right amount of faith.

I know you don't believe that. Thanks. Marie, first, congratulations on reading through the book. It's a serious academic book and it's got even more words in the footnotes than the main text. In fact, every other book in that series, Studies in Old Testament Biblical Theology, has footnotes. So you're reading the text and the footnotes. In this case, I reference footnotes, it's endnotes. Mine are in the back.

Say why? Because the text looked too intimidating with so much footnote, so they moved them to the back. 80,000 words of main text, 85,000 words of endnotes. But I do deal with it in the passage when I treat Isaiah 53, and then I get into Matthew's usage of it. In short, I do not believe that the text is saying that we were already healed at the cross, and therefore are healed now, in that sense, like some faith teachers would teach it. I understand you have a havratonir pa'lanu to mean, at the cost of his wounds, there is healing for us.

What does it mean? Healing for the whole person. 1 Peter 2.24 quotes it with reference to our salvation. For you were like sheep going astray, but you have returned to the shepherd and bishop of your souls, by whose stripes, by whose wounds you were healed. So speaking there of returning to the Lord, coming to God, being forgiven, healed, in that sense. But I do believe that everything needed for our redemption was purchased at the cross, and at the cost of his wounds, there is healing for us. And if we'll take hold of that, we can receive physical healing. No, we won't receive it 100% in this world, but it is available through the cross.

It has been paid for at the cross, and therefore is available to us as believers today. Sean, how do we get more Christians to engage culture with a Kingdom mindset? Have them listen to and watch the line of fire.

And Sean Zagrat, I could have a little fun with the question too. And have them read my daily articles, and the other good stuff that's on the other websites where I publish. Basically, what we have to do is understand that we play a role in every aspect of society as Kingdom-minded people. That we're not trying to take over, we're not trying to set up a theocracy, we're not trying to force everyone to follow our faith, or set up clergy to rule the nation.

Rather, we're seeking to be salt and light. We're seeking to make a difference. And you just asked the perennial question, what would have been the right thing for us to do during the days of slavery as followers of Jesus? As Kingdom-minded, as Kingdom-minded people following Jesus, what would the right thing to do have been? Well, what's the right thing to do today when it comes to abortion? What's the right thing to do today when it comes to racial reconciliation?

What's the right thing to do today when it comes to the deterioration of the family? What's the right thing to do today when it comes to sex trafficking and things like that? And what can we do as God's Kingdom people to make a difference that we believe, we're convinced, we're called to make a difference? I encourage everyone that can pre-order my new book, the new edition of my Revolution book coming out October 6th. You can do it at Amazon.

We'll have it up on our website with special offers soon. It is called Revolution, an urgent call for moral uprising. It'll really give you a picture of how we being changed by God are called to go out into the world around us and bring about positive change. All right, a few more questions on the other side of the break. It's The Line of Fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown, your voice of moral, cultural, and spiritual revolution.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Thanks for joining us today on The Line of Fire. I'm answering your questions that I solicited a few days ago on Facebook and Twitter. So don't post now, don't call now. And if there's breaking news happening right around us, we're focused just on your questions right now. So breaking news, major news, I'll be writing about it. You can watch my articles, but right now, just focusing on your questions.

All right, so Joe asked this on our Ask Dr. Brown Facebook page. Why do influential Christians go with religious pluralism, the theological position that all religions are valid paths to salvation? Why even Fuller Theological Seminary has professors who say Islam is better than Christianity?

I don't know, Joe, exactly who you're speaking about at Fuller, but why do some well-known Christian leaders or professing Christian leaders go the way of religious pluralism? First, I do not believe if you are a true Christian leader, you can go that way. You can be compassionate towards people in other religions. You can see good qualities in some of the belief systems or moral values in other religions. But if you say that all religions lead to God or that all monotheistic religions lead equally to God, then you're no longer a true Christian. You are denying fundamentals of the faith in saying that. Why do people go in that direction? It's the spirit of the world. It's the spirit of compromise.

There can be many different reasons. One can just be, we lose sight of God's truth and try to be reasonable. Let's say every Baptist, isn't that the reasonable position? Oh, my church, my group, my religion is right, everybody else is damned. Is that what we're going to believe?

Really? It doesn't seem reasonable. You get to know people, decent Muslims, decent Buddhists, decent Hindus, decent atheists, and just, well, you don't need a religion. I mean, all we're just going the same direction, right? You're trying to better the human race and have good lives and honor whatever's out there.

Well, so you try to be reasonable or you want to look enlightened, you want to be accepted by the world. You know, Paul was talking about people who were preaching how to be circumcised and obey the law of Moses in order to be safe. And he said, the only reason they do that, they were telling this to Gentiles, is to avoid the offense of the cross. So some of this is to avoid persecution for the offense of the cross. Others are more subtle reasons, but it could be any of the above.

It could be someone who really doesn't know the Lord, but is intellectually convinced of the validity of all these different religions and therefore they come up with this belief. All right, let's see. Andrea, why was it so important not to mix fabrics in the Old Testament? Why was it so important not to mix fabrics in the Old Testament?

Well, it wasn't that big a deal. It's barely mentioned, and it's not like a death penalty for it, but it was part of God teaching Israel to be separate from the nations. It was in everything they did they learned to be separate. Don't worship the gods of the nations, don't intermarry with them, you can't eat with them because of dietary laws, and you are a separate people. Separate people. One of the meanings of holiness is to be separate, kadosh in Hebrew, kadushah, holiness. One of the meanings, hagios in Greek, is to be separated. So separated from sin, separated to God ultimately is what holiness is about, but you're a separate people. So constant learning, okay, you don't mix fabrics, no mixtures, no mixtures, right?

The incense, you make it exactly as you can't mix in other ingredients. You sow seeds in your field, you can't sow two different kinds of seeds in the same field, segregate them, separate them. So it was to teach them separation. This was just part of that concept. Does it apply today? No.

But separation, the spiritual separation, but not these physical aspects that were required. Okay, let's see here. Austin, does systemic racism exist, and what can we as Christians do to help stop injustices, abortion, systemic racism, etc., in our country? All right, I am not trying to be ambiguous in my answer. I have no problem being black and white clear in my answers. Systemic racism on the one hand, the idea that it exists across the nation today, is absolutely false, meaning that there are intentional things built into the system of American justice, American economy, American education, that are intentionally rigged to keep people of color down, black people in particular.

In that sense, it is a tool that is often used by the left, even by socialists, to try to advance a social agenda or to drive a wedge between people and play identity politics. On the other hand, depending on how you define it, yes, there is systemic racism, meaning that even if it's not intentional, there are things set up in our system or passed on through the generations that still make for inequality almost by default. So what is the reason that from what I understand, black Americans on average for the same crimes receive a stiffer prison sentence than white Americans committing the same crimes with the same backgrounds and so on, right? In other words, the same person committing the same crime the same number of times, whatever.

From what I understand, I know there's dispute of this, but it seems from a meta-analysis of different studies that the percentage that court sentences will be longer, stiffer, harder for black Americans than white Americans. Is it an intentional thing through the system where judges agree? No, I don't think that's it at all.

I don't believe that is the case. But it is a perception that has been inherited. It is something that is part of a larger mindset. So those are the things that I believe we have to address. If something still is in the system, then of course, intentionally we address it. But so much of that was eradicated really with the Civil Rights Act of 64 and progress that's been made since.

But there's still a legacy of generations and generations and generations of slavery and then segregation and then racial superiority, white supremacy in different aspects of our history that even if it's not actively in the system, there's still a legacy that remains. So how do we address these things? Well, we pray for God's heart and burden. We get a scriptural perspective on what's right and wrong. We have uncomfortable conversations with people whose experience is different than ours to widen our own perspective. And then we do what we can to bring about positive change. You vote for pro-life candidates, you get involved, decide what counseling in front of a local abortion clinic or work with an abortion crisis center, or maybe you can donate money to good pro- life causes to help women that want to have their babies and change their minds and don't have the abortion. When it comes to race issues, you can be a bridge builder. You can be one to sit with people in different communities and ask about their life experience and then try to identify problems together and address them. Okay, how can we fix this? How can we bring more public awareness?

Those are the kinds of things you can do. Let's see, Gregory, when Jesus wrote up on the fig tree and he even acknowledged that it was out of season, why did he curse the fig tree for not having for not having any figs? This question comes up a lot of times and it's a very good question. One answer would be that because it gave the appearance of being ready to bear figs and it wasn't, that this was a larger statement he was making. In other words, Jesus was, the fig tree was not so much the guilty party, but it was a symbol of a people that was supposed to be bearing fruit and wasn't, and gave the appearance of it. So it was purely symbolic.

The other answer, why won't this come up? Okay, I'm just trying to pull up my friend Craig Keener's Bible background commentary on this. Here we go. So let's just go to say Matthew 17 and let's see if Jesus deals with this there.

No, let's go to Mark 11 and see if he deals with it there. And the cursing of the fig tree temple and the tree judgment coming. Craig says this, at this time of year edible figs were still about six weeks away, but the bland fruit had recently appeared on the tree in late March. They would become ripe by late May.

These were the early figs that preceded the main crop of late figs, which were ripe for harvest from mid-August into October. If only leaves appear without the early figs, that tree would bear no figs that year early or late, because everyone would know that it was not yet the season for real figs. Jesus is making a point about trees that only pretend to have good fruit. In some Jewish stories, exceptionally holy men could curse others or objects and so destroy them. Jesus exerts genuine authority to curse only here as an acted parable to his disciples. So in other words, Craig's saying that you could tell if the tree was going to bear fruit or not. So even though it wasn't the time, you could tell when the time came if it was going to bear fruit or not, and therefore it was right to say you're cursed.

You give the appearance, but you're not actually doing it. So one is just it's a prophetic parable. The other is that it was actually accurate.

It was a tree that looked like it was going to bear fruit, but it actually wouldn't. And you could tell to live in that society. We're used to it even at that moment. All right, friends, we are out of time. Again, if you want to stand with us on the broadcast on our Facebook page, just click the dollar sign at the bottom. You can excuse me, the donate button. Your gift of any size is appreciated. Same on YouTube, the dollar sign beneath the YouTube chat or join our Patreon team. I haven't mentioned that in weeks.

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