Is This the Great Falling Away?

The following program is recorded content created by the Truth Network. That's 866-34-TRUTH.

That's 866-34-TRUTH. This is just another one of those cycles. Is it maybe more regional and we're misjudging and misinterpreting what's happening? Or could it be that maybe around the world God's moving and how do we sort this out? What do the scriptures actually say? And how do we address what seems to be some real problems with the faith today?

866-348-7884. Let me put a book title up for you before we go any further. It's a book by Glenn Stanton, who's been for many years with Focus on the Family.

And I just want you to take a look at this title. It is The Myth of the Dying Church, How Christianity is Actually Thriving in America and the World. And this book came out in 2019. So he's not just saying that Christianity is actually thriving around the world in other countries or continents like Asia, Africa, or in Latin America, but that Christianity is actually thriving in America. And then there's an endorsement to the book by Professor Timothy George.

And it's a very insightful endorsement. Listen to what Timothy George said. He said, Accommodated Christianity is in deep decline, but gospel-focused churches are still vibrant and growing explosively around the globe. This study is both a source of encouragement and a summons to faithfulness. So in other words, there is a falling away. People are dropping out of church. Statistics of Christian affiliation in America and Europe are lower and lower and lower. I've read for many years that in England, church attendance is lower, combined, populous, than Muslim attendance at mosques on a weekly basis. I haven't looked into those statistics in depth, but I've heard that for quite a few years now.

And you know, the number one name poisoning in England for years has been Muhammad, same in a number of European cities that have been historically called Christian. We see the declines in America, the turning against the gospel, the hostility towards our faith, young people dropping out, well-known ministers falling away announcing they no longer believe. It seems like things are going down.

It seems like there really is a serious decline taking place. Or could it be that while you do have notable people, Christian authors, worship leaders, different ones, falling away, renouncing their faith, some saying they're atheists, some saying they're agnostic, some saying they have no description, but they know they no longer believe what they once believed. Could it be that we have those cases and we're just hearing more about them because everything is in the news and social media, everything is potentially instant news, but that overall the ones that are falling away or dropping out of churches are the ones who've never really been deeply rooted, the ones who've never really been solidly born again. Or could it be along with that, that most of the apostasy is from people who are not really in the faith.

They're in churches, they were in churches, but they're not really in the faith. Now, we've talked about this before, but I felt it was important to bring it up again today for quite a few reasons. I'm going to open up the scriptures, and then after we do that, we're going to look at some stats, we're going to look at some scripture, and we'll open up the phones, 866-34-TRUTH, 866-348-7884. Now, right now, because of COVID and because of things still not being as regular as they were in many parts of the country, so you can't quite tell have we gained people, have we lost people, we've reached more people via internet, less people in person, it may be a little hard to gauge, but prior to COVID, in the months and years leading up to COVID, what was happening in your own congregation?

Now, look, let me be 100% candid with you, as I always am. When I started traveling and preaching decades and decades ago, I started preaching in 73, and then would travel to local churches, you know, a couple of states around New York in those early years, then my schedule, things really shifted around 83, 84, I started traveling a lot more than started flying to preach instead of just driving to nearby locations, et cetera. But one thing I discovered pretty early on, it wasn't just evangelists who exaggerated, it wasn't just evangelists that kind of stretched the numbers, you know, the word evangelastically.

How many people were in the crowd last night? Oh, it was like 5,000, speaking evangelistically, it was more like 800. And I discovered that with evangelists, now this is a general state, but I discovered that with evangelists, they really did see bigger. I remember being in a meeting and this evangelist was asking the people in the audience who were listening to him, how many of you, before you came to faith, there was a conference with Jewish believers, and he said, how many of you before you came to faith were involved in the occult or a false religion of some kind?

And he said, you know, it's the majority I've found of Jewish believers that they were seeking, they were looking, so before they got saved, they were involved in the occult or in a false religion. He said, how many were? And a good amount of hands went up. He was definitely onto something. A good amount of hands went up. But whatever his number was, he thought it was going to be well over half, and it was clearly under half. And he saw the hands go up, and he said, that confirms what I was saying. And I was sitting next to his wife, and I looked at her, and she smiles because he saw. He saw more hands in his mind.

And sometimes it's hard to gauge when hands go up until you ask the opposite, and then it's like kind of balances out. But anyway, I found out over the years, it's not just evangelists who may exaggerate at times, or at least the stereotype, but pastors too. Oh man, things are happening.

Oh yeah, we're packing in this amount. And each time I think, oh wow. And I get to the church, and it was like half of the people that we were expecting, and things were not quite as pumped up. And then you sit at local leaders' meetings and local pastors sharing what's going on over breakfast and things. And if the first guy's got a great report, it's really hard for you to come in and say, yeah, things are dead. We're like losing members. People are just not meeting with God. People are backsliding.

I'm not doing well. And that's why often honesty is not cultivated and openness, because everybody's got these great stories to tell. But having said that, I know firsthand churches all over America that are growing rapidly, that are seeing people saved on a regular basis, that it's not just lateral transfer, you know, that you go from one church to another church to another. There's plenty of that in America. You know, you eat the grass from one pastor, get tired of that, move on to the next, move on to the next, move on to the next.

I mean, that happens endlessly. But I'm talking about people coming to faith, people living away from God, coming back to God, believers getting set ablaze. I know churches all over America that are growing, that are seeing people pressing in, that are seeing spiritual hunger and spiritual thirst.

So how do we sort this out? Does the Bible explicitly say that before Jesus returns, there will be great apostasy? Does the Bible explicitly say that? Let's take a look at some verses, starting in Matthew 24, verse 12. Matthew 24, 12, Jesus says there, because lawlessness will multiply. Some would translate that with iniquity. It's anomia in Greek, which could literally be lawlessness, or iniquity will multiply, will abound.

The love of many will grow cold. Now, you could first say, well, that was a more direct answer to a question of the disciples leading up to the destruction of the Second Temple in the year 70. So he's talking about what was going to happen back then.

Well, I believe that's true. But I believe it's like a mirror image also about the future and about the end of the age. A lot of Matthew 24 has fulfillment in that first generation leading up to AD 70 and the final generation leading up to the Lord's return, that we see some fulfilled back then and other aspects fulfilled in the future. So could that verse be used to say that before Jesus returns, there will be great falling away? Could be.

It could be. And certainly as we see lawlessness abound and iniquity abound and temptation more present than ever, it's really easy to see how many will fall away and many do fall away. But is that the only verse about this? Well, let's take a look in 1 Timothy. 1 Timothy chapter 4. Now the Ruach, the spirit, clearly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith following deceitful spirits and teachings of demons through the hypocrisy of false speakers whose own conscience has been seared.

They forbid people to marry. They command people to abstain from foods that God created for the faithful to share with Thanksgiving, having come to know the truth. Is that speaking of a final apostasy? Well, the first thing is why would Paul be warning Timothy about this?

That's the first thing. Why would Paul be warning Timothy about an apostasy in later times, meaning at the end of the age? Could it be that later times is saying, hey, Timothy, in these last days in which we are living, the last day's era from the death and resurrection of Jesus until his return, that's clearly the last days in the New Testament, that in these later times there is apostasy?

Well, they're certainly true. There were all kinds of apostasies then and heresies in the early church. So that was relevant then. Will it be relevant at the end of the age? Yeah, I believe it would be relevant as well, but will the end of the age be in particular marked by apostasy? Maybe there'll be two extremes, great harvest and great falling away, great outpouring and many saved, many others falling away. Could it be that the end of the age will be marked with parallel extremes?

That's my own view. Parallel extremes at the end of the age, great darkness, great light, just like in one part of the world now it's dark and in another part of the world it's light as the sun shines, as the earth turns. In the same way, I believe at the end of the age there'll be great satanic activity and great divine activity.

And if you could pick one to live, a time with lesser satanic activity and lesser divine activity, greater satanic activity and greater divine activity, you go for the greater because greater divine activity is the thing that we focus on. Anyway, we're going to sort this out. We're going to talk through what's happening in the world in America. I'm going to show you some stats that will encourage you, some of the things that will be sobering. Then I want to hear from you. What are you seeing in your world?

Falling away, revival, combination of both? 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 866-34-TRUTH. There's no question that many are falling away from the faith. There's no question that people are getting picked off.

There is a lot of bombardment. There are a lot of attacks on the Bible that people are not ready for. There is a generation raised with a certain hostility towards evangelical faith or biblical faith. Then to the extent that evangelicals were identified with Trump or identified just with politics in general, that's definitely hurt things.

Then just the availability of sinful temptation. When I was a boy, I was a teenager. I didn't have access to pornography. I didn't have access to it.

There were a few magazines that were out. My dad didn't subscribe to them so we didn't have them in the home. I didn't have friends whose dad subscribed to them and my friends had access to them. So you didn't have access to them. There were theaters you could go to. You had to be a certain age to get in.

Pointe theaters, few and far between. And most of us didn't even know where they were if they did exist. So you just didn't have access to it until you got to a certain age unless you hung out with certain people. Whereas now, any kid that can operate a cell phone can access all kinds of porn and stuff that's not age restricted. And then the amount of distractions in terms of, let's just say that sports is a stronghold in your life.

You're just obsessed with watching sports. Well, there was a time I remember growing up in New York, we had our number of stations on TV. So channel 2 was CBS. Channel 4 was NBC. Channel 5 was at WOR, I think. Channel 7 was ABC. Or maybe channel 5 was one. There was channel 9. Then channel 11, that was the station we would watch the New York Yankees games. And then channel 13, that was public broadcasting. And then that was black and white. Then color came out, of course. Amazing.

Wow. You know, watch, you know, the Flintstones together as a family. But if I want to watch sports, every so often the game would be on. You know, I remember when Monday night football came out. So you could watch, I could watch the New York Giants or Jets game on Sunday.

So I'd get one of those games. And then Monday night, it's football. And then maybe I could get a hockey game sometimes or a basketball game. Now New York had a lot of sports teams, but still, depending on the season, it wasn't like you just watch something all the time. But now it's almost everything available, almost all the time.

And then video on demand. There's so many distractions. There's so much available temptation, sexual sin, always being powerful, a powerful pull on human beings. And then just the distraction of social media, the things that pull us away from the word, that pull us away from prayer.

It's definitely a time where people are falling away. And when you look at religions worldwide, you'll see that Islam is being threatened in certain areas or Hinduism is just people have access to more information and are questioning and things like that. So you have that element and that affects Christians too, that they have access to more things, access to more questions. When I was newly saved, if you said, okay, well, what about the major arguments of the atheist? Well, unless I was in a class where the professor was an atheist or I knew a strong atheist, I have to read a book, go out and get a book from some atheist as opposed to just flip on the internet now.

Any number of choices, of thousands of choices of atheists and others bashing the faith or questioning the faith or giving their sincere stories as to why they differ. So it's definitely a challenging time. Now, is God worried like, oh no, what am I?

No, no. The gospel remains the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, first the Jew, then the Gentile. And the power of God keeps us. We are kept by God's power. God's not slack or lacking or wanting in any way here, whatsoever. But we are facing serious times.

I just want us to get a larger global perspective. The first couple more scriptures, 2 Timothy chapter 3, beginning in verse 1, Paul says that in the last days, treacherous times will come. Right? Timothy, understand this. In the last days, treacherous times, hard times will come. And people say, oh, well, that's an end time prophecy. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, blasphemous, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, hard-hearted, unforgiving, backbiting, without self-control, brutal, hating what is good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to an outward form of godliness but denying its power. Stop there just for a second, but we'll leave the scriptures up. Doesn't that sound like just about every generation? I remember hearing that read when I was newly saved, thinking, wow, what a perfect description of our day. But then you see preachers quoting it 100 years earlier, a thousand years earlier. It's like, what a description of our day. That's a description of the human race. But notice, I stopped reading, holding to an outward form of godliness but denying its power.

What does Paul then say? Avoid these people. Avoid these people.

Okay. So, what's the point? Paul is telling Timothy, in these last days in which you live, don't just think it's going to get better and better and more wonderful and everybody's going to believe and it's going to be spectacular and amazing and, no, it's going to be treacherous and difficult and people are going to be like this. In other words, we are living in these days, so avoid those kind of people. Obviously, reach out to them.

Throw his fellowship in that. No, avoid these kind of people. They're trying to infiltrate the church and take you down.

Avoid these kind of people. So, yes, the end is marked by apostasy on the one hand. Here, 2 Thessalonians chapter 2.

What does Paul write in 2 Thessalonians, the second chapter? Now we ask you, brothers and sisters, concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus the Messiah and our gathering together to Him, not to get shaken out of your mind or disturbed, either by a spirit or a word or a letter as if through us, as though the day of the Lord has come. Let no one deceive you in any way, for the day will not come unless the rebellion comes first. That's the right way to understand it, apostasy. Unless the rebellion comes first and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the one destined to be destroyed. So there he is saying that there will be a final apostasy before Jesus returns.

That would absolutely seem to solidify this idea that before the end there will be a time of great falling away. But that's not the only picture that the Bible paints. How about what Peter says in Acts the second chapter? The outpouring at Pentecost.

What does he say? He's explaining that the 120 that have received the spirit, they're not drunk. Verse 16, but this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel, and it shall be in the last days, says God, that I will pour up my ruach, my spirit, on all flesh. Peter adds the words in the last days.

They're not there. They're not there in the Hebrew or in the Greek. Peter adds them to say, hey, this time that we're talking about is the last days.

Let's go back to the text. He says, in the last days I will pour up my spirit on all flesh. Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy. Your young men shall see visions.

Your old men shall dream dreams. Even in my slaves, male and female, I will pour up my spirit in those days and they shall prophesy. And he goes on to talk about the outpouring, the signs in the heavens, and whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. So we see that in the last days, in which we live, and in which Peter lived, and in which believers have lived for the last 2,000 years, there will be great outpouring.

There will be great visitation. There will be great moving of the Spirit. And there will also be great falling away, great apostasy.

And as I understand it, exponential increase of both at the end of the age. The greatest outpouring we've ever seen, the greatest attack on the faith. Those who are properly grounded will not fall away. Those who put their roots down deep and who walk in obedience to the Lord, they will not fall away. God has given us ways to be kept. The question is, with what we see around us today, is there a great falling away? Is this the final apostasy that Jesus spoke of, that Paul spoke of?

Is this that? Well, here's my question. There's no question. Many are falling away. There's no question it's challenging time.

No question. My new book, Has God Failed You? addresses these issues and helps those who are falling away.

I'll tell you more about that in a moment. But let me just draw your attention to a couple of stories here. Let's start with the Washington Post. This is 2015.

2015. Now I had been hearing these exact same reports since around 1983 or 1984, when David Barrett, working with about 4,000 volunteers all around the world, getting data, sociologists, anthropologists, missiologists, all these different ones, getting data as to what was happening in the world of religion around the world. And they put together the World Christian Encyclopedia. To their shock, they found everywhere that spirit and power of Christianity was the fastest growing religious expression on the planet. So the article says, 2015, think Christianity is dying? No, Christianity is shifting dramatically.

Now look at this. While Christianity may be on the decline in the United States, the world is becoming more religious, not less. While a rising number of nuns, those who claim their religious affiliation when asked, claim the attention of religious pundits, the world tells a different story. Religious convictions are growing and shifting geographically in several dramatic ways. It says, the religious landscape is particularly changing for the world's Christians.

A century ago, 80% lived in North American Europe, compared with just 40% today. In 1980, more Christians were found in the global south and the north for the first time in a thousand years. Today, the Christian community in Latin America and Africa alone account for 1 billion people. Over the past 100 years, Christians grew from less than 10% of Africa's population to its nearly 500 million today. One out of four Christians in the world presently is in Africa. And the Pew Research Center estimates that will grow to 40% by 2030. Asia is also experiencing a growth as world's Christianity centers move down to the south, but also east. In the last century, Christianity grew at twice the rate of population in that continent. Asia's Christian population of 350 million is projected to grow to 460 million by 2025. What do you make of that? I just started a Twitter poll minutes before the show started today, so we barely even have our first hundred votes, 90-something in.

But I asked this question. There are several New Testament verses that seem to speak of an end-time apostasy. Are we in that season now? Or is it mainly in the west? Or do these come and go cyclically? Or is there actually global revival taking place?

This is over on Twitter. So the responses so far, the first 95 votes now, yes, 38.9% think yes, that we are in the final end-time falling away. 17.9% say only in the west. 31.6% say it's just cyclical.

And then 11.6%, the smallest, say there's actually global revival taking place. Interesting perspectives. All right, phone lines are open. Any question of any kind.

As we do on Friday, we try to open up phones other days when we can. Any question of any kind, anything you want to challenge me on, probe, question you've been wondering about in your Bible studies, have you heard of church? 866-34-TRUTH, 866-348-7884.

So unrelated to what we're talking about, apostasy, revival, any question of any kind, 866-34-TRUTH. Before I take you into a very interesting article, I want to make two, three, three special announcements. First, in about 41 minutes, we'll be back on YouTube.

So Ask Dr. Brown, Ask Dear Brown on YouTube. We'll be back there for our weekly exclusive YouTube Q&A chat. So it's a great way for you to join if you're unable to call or you just prefer typing out your questions. We go 45 minutes or an hour with every imaginable question you come up with. We get to answer them, interact with them.

So that'll be 4.15 Eastern Time on YouTube. Okay, first announcement. Second, prayer update. Prayer update. I shared earlier in the week, talked about it yesterday, posted on social media on Monday that I got a very disturbing email from a pastor in Pakistan, a brother that I met in the States a few years ago. I wrote an endorsement for his book about the suffering church in Pakistan. I can't tell you more information where he is, who he is.

It's just not good for me to broadcast that here. But he told me that in the country, 25 to 30 girls a month are abducted. So just about on a daily basis, Christian girls are abducted by Muslims. They're kidnapped and they are basically forced to convert.

They may be raped, they may be beaten, their families may be threatened, and then the Muslim men go ahead and marry them. So he writes to me and he said, I'm really heartbroken. She was in our service this morning at 5.30 a.m. She's only 16 years old. She's part of our choir. There's someone from my church she's saying was kidnapped. So we put out a prayer alert. Thousands responded with prayer. I didn't hear anything for two days and got back to him.

So it was right around a two-day period. I got back to him, asked him for an update, and he said she appeared before the court trembling and saying she's now a Muslim. So whatever they did to her or however they threatened her family, whatever, you know, he had reported the incident to police. But now that she says she's a Muslim, they can't do anything.

However, just got another update from him minutes before the show. They now claim that she is marrying this Muslim man and she's 18 years old. Well, he has proof that she's only 16, which would be further proof that the thing is fraudulent.

So he's trying to go to the high court with this, but obviously we need divine intervention. So pray for the deliverance of the 16-year-old girl. I mean, there's so many others like her, but as we pray for her, may God hear prayers for her and for many others, and that God will even save the people that kidnapped her. So pray for her. I don't know her name.

If I had it, I wouldn't give it out anyway, but I did see her pictures. I saw the man in front of the police station as they were going to report things. So please pray for that. Third thing, how did I come to write Has God Failed You? How did I come to write Has God Failed You?

I was approached by one of the publishers that I work with and they said, Mike, how do you feel about writing a book on the great falling away and are we in that great falling away now? And as I began to lean into it, I said, you know, I feel more to address the problems, the struggles that people are having and not just what's and not just what's happening, but helping people who've lost their faith, helping people who aren't even sure if God is there, helping people in the church who are secretly struggling, quietly struggling. And I'm speaking to many of you. Some of you battled doubt for decades, but you just outwardly try to live a certain way. It wouldn't surprise me if right now I'm speaking to a pastor's wife and you have lived with the agony of doubt for decades, but you can't say anything because you're the pastor's wife. You might be the pastor and you struggle in certain areas, but hey, this is just what we believe.

You're the associate pastor. We just preach this, do this, and quietly on the inside you're hurting and you're dying. Then suddenly you hear so-and-so fell away. Well, it wasn't sudden. It wasn't sudden. Often there's the inability to have a forum or place where people can ask questions.

With a lot of young people, they need to be given space, especially when they're bombarded by so many other ideas and say, hey, okay, well tell me what you're struggling with. Okay, no, I'm not going to judge you for it. I don't think you're crazy. I had those same questions.

I hear that a lot. I don't have an answer to that, but I know we're going to find it. Let's dig together. Let's go on a journey of exploration together.

Let's do that. Instead, someone has a question like, what? You doubt? You're not believing? You're not? Oh, something wrong with you? Or who's going to listen to Mike Brown if Mike Brown can find out? I don't doubt. I'm not even sure what I believe. No, it's obviously not the case, but where would I go if I was struggling?

What would I use for it? Just keep it down. This constantly happens. Or you experience some abuse within the church, but you can't talk to anybody about it because in that congregation, the leadership has an abusive setting where they kind of protect their turf and you differ with them. You get smashed.

What do you do? So I wrote this book to help you or to help someone you love work these things through. There's a chapter, does prayer really work? There's a chapter, what if there's no God? There's a chapter, permission to doubt.

So I think this will really help you. I wrote it. I would get on my knees and say, God, I need your help. I don't have what it takes to write this. I've had intense battles with doubt, but they've been very short. They've been intense, but short. I've known spiritual warfare the last sometimes for years that you're battling something and I understand what it is to go through battles. I understand that, but as far as getting hit with deep doubt, does God even exist? It's been the rarest of times in almost 49 years in the Lord. I've been through many challenges to my faith, many challenges, but that agonizing, is it real? Is it, those have been short and I haven't lost as much as some of you have lost.

I haven't had to live with chronic pain or having to bury a child or something like that. And I say, Lord, how can I help people that are struggling? How can I help people that are hurting? I know I understand your word and I know I know you and I know you've given me wisdom, but Lord, I need more.

Why are my words going to help when someone else's didn't? And then I talked to Nancy, we've talked endlessly in the 47 years that we've been together, 45 married in 47 years total. And because she came out of atheism when she got saved and became an atheist when she was not even eight. Because of that, she understands the mentality and she understands the struggles better and has learned over the years in her own walk with God so many things.

So we would talk a lot. So I believe this book will really help. Comes out May 11th. If you want to pre-order a signed, numbered copy, I just got through praying over a bunch more that we just sent out. And as I'm doing, I'm praying over them. Just print, Lord, use this to touch this person. Use this, Lord, use this book for this person to love when they're sending it to.

So I really believe it'll help. You can pre-order a signed, numbered copy of the first printing. So it's like a collector's item. But we're also including an additional audio teaching on God's true grace, just as a bonus and additional thank you for ordering. So you can still do that on our website and we'll be sending them out within a day of when you order, all right, because we have them in for pre-order. So it's at askdrbrown.org, A-S-K-D-R brown.org.

You'll see it right on the home page. Or if you like to book, get an e-book, you know, on Amazon or Barnes & Noble or Christian Book Review order, those are available for pre-order or in other forms as well. And then the audiobook should be out at some point soon, just don't know when. But I wrote the book initially, asked the question, are we in the great falling away? It is definitely a season of apostasy. It is definitely a season of people having their faith challenged on a deeper level.

But I do not believe that if there is a final worldwide falling away, we're in it now. Much of it's happening in America, much of it's happening in Europe, other countries, but most of it is happening in churches that weren't strongly rooted in the first place. Most of it is happening in churches that had compromised the gospel decades ago. Most of it is happening in places where the word of God does not have full authority or in places where the Holy Spirit is not allowed to move.

That's where most of the falling away is. My experience has been where God's moving, people are flocking, people are hungry, people are thirsty, and I'm finding young people wanting to be challenged. Okay, so look at these stats here. This is an article on religiousnews.com from a little over a year ago, February 25th, 2020. And there was a major study that was done, Gordon Commonwealth Theological Seminary, Oral Roberts University, and the Empower 21 Network released this research on the Pentecostal Charismatic Movements. So Gordon Commonwealth, non-charismatic school, one of the top seminaries in the country, Oral Roberts Charismatic University, but with great scholarship.

So you've got an interesting mix here. So I'm just going to scroll down to some bullet points in the article. Ready for this? From 1900 to 2020, Spirit-empowered Christianity grew at nearly four times the growth rate of both Christianity and the world's population.

Did you get that? Over a 120-year period, Spirit-empowered Christianity grew at nearly four times the growth rate of both Christianity in general and the world's population. Currently, Spirit-empowered believers comprise one-quarter of the entire Christian community, which is expected to grow to one-third by the year 2050. Asia and Oceania experienced the most rapid growth of Spirit-empowered Christianity. However, the Spirit-empowered population in Africa is expected to grow more quickly within the next 30 years. Today, the countries with the most Spirit-empowered Christians are Brazil, United States, still here, and Nigeria.

Whereas in 1900, the nations with the most were South Africa, Nigeria, and the United States. And Afghanistan and Cambodia, where Christianity remains relatively new, are the countries currently experiencing the fastest upsurge in Spirit-empowered Christianity. Wow!

Friends, these stats have been steady since they were discovered in the 1980s. Growing, growing, growing. God's moving.

He is. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Thanks for joining us, friends, on The Line of Fire, and we head straight to the phones. Remember, 4.15, so 27 minutes from now, 4.15 Eastern time, we'll be back on YouTube, A-S-K-D-R Brown, for our weekly Q&A chat.

Let's go to John in Everett, Washington. Thanks for calling The Line of Fire. Hey, Dr. Brown, can you hear me okay? Yeah, I can. All right. Yeah, hey, really appreciate everything you do, man.

God bless you, pray for you, and all that stuff. I was wondering, I was watching a debate with you and Bart Ehrman from, I guess it was probably several years ago, and you were debating the subject of suffering, and there was one part in the exchange where you guys were talking about hell a little bit, and you said—I don't want to misquote you—but you said something along the lines of, the picture I get is not one of God, like, flipping us on a frying pan on a grill. You know what I'm talking about? Yep, sure.

And obviously that's not the picture I get either, but I just was wondering if you could clarify. Do you believe in eternal conscious torment? You believe in hell for those who die without their sins forgiven, yeah? Right, so let me clarify. The first thing is, there are many exaggerated pictures of hell and the Dante's Inferno-type thing, and when I'm debating a former evangelical, now agnostic slash atheist like Bart Ehrman, who is aggressively trying to bash our position and make the God that we love seem evil, I'm going to push back against the caricatured interpretations.

That's the first thing. And even those that have preached eternal hellfire over the centuries have often emphasized the metaphorical nature of the language, so I would say that. The next thing is that I have emphasized that the consequences of rejecting Jesus are irreversible, are utterly horrible, and of eternal nature. Now, is the eternal nature that ultimately someone is destroyed, whoever does not believe in me will perish, the wicked will be cut off, you'll be punished with eternal destruction from the presence of the Lord, you know, to just quote a few verses, or will there be conscious torment? To me that's a fair question to discuss scripturally. You have Matthew 25 46, those going into eternal punishment, then someone would say well it's eternal punishment not punishing. In other words, if you forfeit life, if you were destroyed, Matthew 10 28, fear the one who can destroy both body and soul in hell. So that to me is something that can be scripturally debated. The consequences are utterly dreadful and forever. Is there forever that at some point in time that person ceases to exist?

Is there forever that they are consciously suffering? That can be debated to me scripturally. And what I decided decades ago was that the best thing was to quote the scriptures and let them stand for themselves, you know, to give the warning in the words of Jesus, in the words of Paul, you know, Daniel 12 2, those that rise to everlasting shame and contempt. Is that that forever they're suffering shame and contempt or forever they are remembered with shame and contempt? That to me is a fair scriptural debate and so I've tried to say let's discuss that scripturally while warning in the strongest way.

I'll say this last thing. I did a show years ago with a proponent of annihilationism and I actually thought, because this book is so strong, I thought some of his arguments on the air would be strong. Maybe we didn't have the best phone connection, whatever, but yeah, yeah, it was, but I, yeah, so his book The Fire That Consumes is important to read in this regard. Knowing how strong his book was, I think we may have had a bad phone connection that day, so I didn't want to speak negatively of him. That's why I didn't mention that, but in any case, I raised, I think it was during that show, if not it was after, that from my perspective, if you think that the punishment is not forever and ever, then there's still something in your mind saying, okay, well at least it ends at a certain point, so if someone doesn't hear the, if I don't share the gospel with somebody, it's not that bad, or you know, so in other words, it's going to be a disincentive to go share the gospel, but then people called in and said actually the doctrine of eternal conscious torment was so monstrous that they found it very difficult to share the gospel, because when people raised it, they had no answer, and now that they see God's justice in a different way, they're much more zealous to share the gospel, so that was, that was an interesting perspective. The key to me is that we carry the burden, that whatever it is that drove missionaries to the ends of the earth to give their lives for the lost, that that same burden is in us, and then however we parse the difference there, we can debate that.

Yeah, I get that. I guess the only thing that I see that could be kind of dangerous with the view of annihilationism, which I believe is a heretical view personally, I think like when you read Jeremiah 9, I think it's 23 that says, let him who boasts in this that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord, and I think it says that who executes loving kindness, justice, and righteousness on the earth, these things I delight, and when Scripture says that justice, righteousness are the foundations of his throne, and if you're sort of omitting what our sin looks like in the eyes of a holy and just eternal God, and you can kind of make him into a god that is sort of mocked, and here's the other issue I see with it is that, at least in my experience, so I've known one friend in particular who fell into this view, and it ended up, I'm not saying this is like how it goes with everyone, but he ended up just falling into all sorts of other areas. Oh yeah, no, I've definitely seen that, John, and I share those concerns in terms of, are you just struggling with, let God be God, because bottom line to me, God is good and faithful, and I bow to him.

I don't tell him what's right or wrong. You know, on the flip side, on the flip side, people could say, well, God put his sense of justice in us, that sense of righteousness, and we would not allow or sentence someone to suffer forever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever, no matter what they did, and then the answer is, well, it's a sin against an eternal God and an infinite God, but in any case, you got my view on the subject, and we share the concern that people lessen the intensity of the burden for the lost and the severity of God's judgment. Hey John, thank you, thank you for the call. 866-34-TRUTH, let's go to Pedro in Nevada. Welcome to The Line of Fire. Hello sir, thank you so much for taking my call. I really appreciate your ministry.

Thank you. I like, especially when you and you and James White are talking together, I think it's an awesome example of how, you know, we have freedom in Christ to have some different views but still believe the core tenets, so thank you for all of that. My question is a theological one. It's concerning the immutability of God. When somebody asks me, well, what about this verse where God changed his mind?

And I'm sure you already know him, so I'll skip to the punch. My answer, when they ask me that, is, well, the Bible can be read in a normative fashion where you're going to have descriptive, prescriptive passages, and from the perspective of specifically God and specifically man, I would say from the view of man you can see God changing his mind, but divinely he already knew what was going to happen, so is that a good answer or what would you say? Yeah, no, that's certainly true.

I would phrase it slightly differently. I would say first, God communicates with us in human language, right, so when he says he's a jealous God, well, he's not jealous the way we can be jealous, right, but there's a holy jealousy, so when he changes his mind it means he said he was going to do A and then based on a certain response instead he's going to do B, but he's already laid that out in Jeremiah 18. He's already said when I promise to bless a nation and that nation now sins, then I'm going to change the blessing into a curse, and when I promise to curse and that nation responds with repentance, I'm going to turn the curse into a blessing, so you could say that God in his nature never changes. He remains exactly the same. He is consistent, perfectly good, perfectly righteous, perfectly merciful, perfectly pure, never changes, no deviation, but his actions will be determined on how we respond, you know, just like a parent with a child.

All right, you're going to be punished for xyz when the child shows real ownership of what they did and truly repents of what they did with humility, then the parent might say, you know, I've seen the way you've responded. I'm going to lessen this, so it's all, the course is set. You're exactly right in that. God is God based on how we respond, then he will respond accordingly, and that's because elsewhere it tells us he never changes his mind, meaning he never deviates in that regard. So what you would, the good thing to say, take him through 1 Samuel 15, where God changes his mind, it seems, he grieves, you know, over Saul, but then it's clear that he never changes his mind, and it's all in the same passage. So that would be saying, hey, there's a way to understand it.

So you're definitely on the right track with that page. Hey, got to run out of time here. Okay, Brian, I'm just going to answer this couple of questions that I can't pick up the phone now for lack of time. Have I ever left the faith? No.

By God's grace, no. Never fell away, never apostatized. I definitely had a season, late 70s, early 80s, where I left my first love. I was a committed Christian. I was teaching the Word, adult Sunday school, elder in training in church, active in ministry, bringing the poor and needy in our home, etc., committed to the Lord, but had left my first love. And there have been times over the decades where I've been battered and attacked and really felt the enemy trying to pull me down, but by God's grace, no, never left the faith. All right, friends, join me now, 15 minutes, on YouTube, A-S-K-D-R, Brown, and I'll be answering your questions there starting 4-15 Eastern Time. God bless. Another program powered by the Truth Network.