Dr. Brown Answers Your Best Questions

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Phone lines are wide open. You've got questions. We've got answers.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. What a joy to be with you today. I always look forward with special anticipation to the Friday broadcast because you get to call in and ask me about anything. So phone lines are wide open. That is the number to call anything that relates in any way to the Line of Fire broadcast, anything I've ever talked about, written about, have any expertise in whatsoever. If you just need to get a rumor set straight, is this true or not, relates to us, by all means, give us a call friend or foe alike. 866-344-TRUTH. Let's go to Vince in Rock Island, Illinois. Welcome to the Line of Fire. Hello.

You're on the air. Okay, yeah, my question is in Matthew chapter 24, verses 36 and 37, Jesus is talking about what He's on earth that only the Father knew, basically the appointed time. Now my question is, now that He's been resurrected and back with the Father, would He know fully as He was fully known, or is He still placing under Himself that limitation? Everything we understand was that that was while He was here on earth. So even though He is still subjected to the Father in a certain way, in 1 Corinthians 15 says when we come to the culmination of the ages and the finality of God's kingdom on the earth, then the Son will submit to the Father so God is all in all. So I mean the great revelation we have in eternity is the one eternal God. And that's why Revelation 22 speaks of God on the Lamb with one throne and one face, right? So there's this fullness of the one triune God that we worship forever. But everything we understand with those limitations pertained to the earth, well, His time, so He knows everything with full deity, is He simply didn't use those privileges while here. Okay, could I possibly ask one more quick question?

Yeah, yeah, sure, of course. Okay, now I know that, okay, Jesus gave up His glory when He was born as a man on earth. Now my question pertains as to, you know, a lot of people believe that the angel of the Lord is the pre-incarnate appearing of the Christ. Now if that is the case, wouldn't Jesus have had to give up His glory each time He appeared?

Yes and no. In other words, any time that God would reveal Himself to human beings, there had to be some refracting of His glory, right? Otherwise people would die on the spot. So there was, but the idea that He, for example, when He appeared on the earth, that He would have been tired as a human being was, there's no basis for saying that. It's only when He was fully human that He took those things on. So there'd be no reason to think that He was not fully omniscient, one He appeared as the angel of the Lord, that He was not, that this was not just a localizing of His omnipresence, as opposed to when He was physically on the earth, He did take on human form in a way that was for several decades. But there'd be no reason for that. The only reason was Him taking on human flesh, as appearing as a divine angel, a glorious, you know, in the flame of fire, for example.

So He's obviously manifesting Himself in a certain way, right, and localizing His omnipresence. But nothing else would have to be diminished. No divine privilege would have to be foregone in order to do that. Okay, so would that mean that Him, okay, if He is the, if He is the pre-incarnate crisis, would that mean, like, that's 100% true, or that's just a really strong possibility?

I would see no reason. The only time there's any reference to stripping away of anything is Philippians 2, right, and then the words of Jesus that not even the Son knew. So otherwise, there's no other reference. Now, not every time that the Hebrew Bible mentions the angel of the Lord, does that refer to, does that refer to the pre-incarnate Son? In many cases it clearly does. You can't say that every time it says the angel of the Lord that it's referring to Him. But as far as I know, according to everything I know in Scripture, the only limitation came self-limitation when He was here on the earth.

That's the only testimony I have. Therefore, I assume it's never the case at any other time. There'd be no reason for it. Why?

Here, I mean, think logically, but scripturally I would say zero possibility because the Bible doesn't address it. But why would it be necessary? In other words, why, if He's appearing, say, in the flaming fire in the bush in Exodus 3, why would He need to lay aside His privilege of omniscience? For what purpose? There's no sense to it. There's no reason for it.

So I wouldn't even think of pushing that at all. But hey, thanks for the questions. I appreciate it very much. Thank you for your time. You bet. 866-3-4-TRUTH. Let's go to Adam in Montreal, Canada. Welcome to the line of fire. Hi, Dr. Brown. Thank you for taking my question today.

You're welcome. My question is regarding, you know, in the New Testament we see that Jesus relates to God as His Father. And my question is, how is that related in, you know, first century Judaism?

Was that something that was common or known? And how would the disciples have thought about the fact that Jesus refers to God as His Father? Referring to God as the Father of Israel or praying a prayer to our Father in heaven would have been very common in Judaism. To refer to Him as Abba and to enjoy the intimacy that Yeshua did would have been very unusual.

There are very few examples of rabbinic leaders referring to God as Abba. It's not in any of the prayer books that have been developed over the centuries. We know, for example, what's called the Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6 and Luke 11 reflects prayer traditions that were known in those days. Not every line, but a number of the lines reflect traditions that we know developed in early Judaism. And in other words, it was not a prayer made up out of thin air. It was taking key themes and putting them together in a concise way. But Romans 8 and Galatians 4 that say that God put the Spirit of His Son into our hearts by which we cry Abba Father.

There's an intimacy beyond the norm that would have been experienced. Also, notice the Lord's Prayer is our Father in heaven. Jews were used to praying in corporate ways. So it's not that you could not say God is my King, but you would be more likely to say He's our King. Malkeinu, Moshenu, our Savior, Arvinu, our Father.

So that's just typical. If you look at a Jewish prayer book today, you'll see prayers addressing God as Father, our Father. But it's all corporate. So even the relating to God, corporately they were more used to doing, but the individuality of it and the closeness of calling God Abba, which is kind of in between Daddy and Father. It's very familiar, but it's not quite Daddy.

It's kind of in between. That would be the thing that's more unusual. And that intimate relationship and that closeness that perhaps the prophets enjoyed, that would have been unusual. You know, it reminds me when I came to faith and was talking to the local rabbi, conservative rabbi, we became good friends. And he said to me, Mike, why is it seems like your relationship with God is like one of the prophets in the Old Testament? And I thought, this is just the way it is with the people in my church. We all seem to relate to God a certain way and have a certain fellowship with Him, a certain intimacy. And it struck him as very different than what he was used to in Judaism.

And I would say as sincere and passionate as many religious Jews are, and as much as they would say they love God deeply, that there is something distinctly different in the born-again experience in knowing God as Abba. Okay, excellent. And could I just ask one more question?

Sure, go ahead. Okay, just very briefly from Galatians 4, when Paul is giving that whole dissertation there about bondage and he talks about law and adoption and so on. What's the connection that you see between the law and sonship?

How does that whole scenario work out? Yeah, look at it like the law is kind of like a tricycle that has that extra wheel to help balance you because you're younger and you can't ride a bicycle yet and then you graduate to the bicycle. Or look at it that the law is like the scaffolding on the side of the building, and then once the building is completed, the scaffolding is not needed. So when we enter into a deeper maturity in God, when we enter into a closer relationship with Him and mature on a certain level, then those other things are not as necessary. So when we are younger children growing up, we need more structure and rules in our lives. As we get older and mature, we now live like that out of discipline and out of what we've learned and how we've matured. So Paul sees the Torah as divinely given, holy, just, and good, but as bringing us into this deeper place with God and relationship with Messiah.

Now by the Spirit, we keep the righteous requirements of the law which are written on our heart. That would be the connection there. Okay, excellent. Thank you so much. You are very welcome. 866-34-TRUTH.

Let's go to Carl in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Welcome to the line of fire. Hi, good afternoon, Dr. Brown.

I hope you're doing well. Yes, thank you. Yeah, I have two quick questions.

The first one is from Daniel 9-27, where he says that he will give a firm, he will make a firm covenant with many. Does the he refer to the Prince who is to come or to Christ? And it's also for one week, right? So one week.

Yeah, seven-year period. Right, so it's a very controversial and difficult passage. The three possible references are this Prince who is to come, so this would be a Roman emperor who would make a treaty with the Jewish people, then break it, and then destroy, so this would be culminating in the destruction of the year 70. Another way to read it is it's speaking, right, right, then it's speaking of the Messiah, speaking of Jesus, who puts an end to sacrifice and offering by dying on the cross in the middle of the week, right, in the middle of the 70th week.

The last possible way to read it, which could be kind of a final culmination of the Titus one, is that it's going to be a future figure with Antichrist, and that he's the one that's going to make some type of covenant with Israel, and hence with the nations, and then break it midway through a final seven-year tribulation period. So it's a controversial passage, but stay right there. We'll be right back. 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, friends, for joining us on The Line of Fire.

866-342. You've got questions, we've got answers. Don't forget, visit vitaminmission.com. I just got in the quercetin supplements that Dr. Stengler has been recommending, along with immune wellness, to help fortify your body dealing with COVID and other related issues. So go to the vitaminmission.com website when you're there. Make sure you use the Dr. Brown code. You get a special discount, and a donation is made to our ministry with every order. So fantastic health supplements, you get a discount, we get a donation, we're all blessed together. May God bless Dr. Stengler and his team.

866-342. So getting back to Carl, Carl, the reading that to me seems the least likely — is that it's referring to Jesus in context there, especially in light of the destructive language. And I just want to read to you Joyce Baldwin, her commentary in the book of Daniel in the Tyndale Old Testament commentary series is an excellent commentary.

It's accessible, it's not super lengthy, but it's got good scholarship behind it. And she said, the last seven sees the completion of God's purpose. If he refers to the last named person, the prince who is to come, the subject is the enemy of God's cause. Again, that seems to be the most likely reading.

The unusual verb used in Make a Strong Covenant bears this out, for it has the implication of forcing an agreement by means of superior strength, by causing sacrifice and offering to cease he evidently was successful in his opposition to God's people. For half of the week will mean for half the period intended by the seven God's people will not have to experience such intense suffering throughout the whole of the last period of time, but obviously that end of it, that last period. So again, it's difficult to be dogmatic because the language is, it's prophetic and there's some mystery in it, but that to me seems to be the best way to read it, especially because the events have to do with the destruction, what happens during the Second Temple period, redemption being brought in by God's anointed, and then this final destruction coming. So that's why it seems most likely to read it that way.

Okay, thank you. And the other question has to do with the parable in Luke 15, which we call the prodigal son. The father says that this son of mine, or my son, was dead and now he's alive, and then when he's talking to the older brother, he says your brother, you know, your brother was dead and now he's alive. So is that a reference to spiritual death? Yeah, in other words, when the Bible talks about us being dead in our sins, it doesn't mean that we're incapable of response, it means we're separated from God.

I agree. You know, Jesus says in Revelation 3, you have a reputation for being alive, yet you're dead, so some of their members were backslidden. Right, so when Paul says, for example, about the widow living in sinful pleasure, 1 Timothy 5, that she's dead. Right, so the Calvinist idea that you're dead, therefore you can't respond, it's not what the language means, and this is a perfect example in Luke 15. It means you've been separated spiritually, and you've been separated spiritually. That's what death is, not incapable of responding, but spiritually separated and therefore lacking the life of God, that divine fellowship, and when we turn to him, then we come alive, we come from death into life, right? From the kingdom of Satan into the kingdom of God, but that's a good example of it, exactly. Yes, yes, and also too, if this son was originally a father and he left, and then he repented and came back. You got it, I know where you're going, that that means that it's possible for someone who is in faith and spiritually alive to walk away and become spiritually dead. I believe that.

Yeah, exactly. Even though it's a parable and you want to get the main truths from it, it is in harmony with what other scriptures say about spiritual death. Hey, thank you for the call, appreciate it. 866-348-7884.

We go to Andy in Hinsdale, New Hampshire. Welcome to the line of fire. Hey Dr. Brown, I feel blessed to hear your theology and your wisdom, thank you very much. I had a question, I don't know if it's referred to in the Old Testament, but I believe in the Dead Sea Scrolls, which certainly aren't biblical, they refer to God the Father as, I believe, Eli, and it's a plural. Is that polytheistic, or is it considering the Holy Trinity? No, no, first, Eli just means my God. Well, Eli just means my God. The word Elohim, which is frequently used to speak of God in the Old Testament, is an intensive plural form. The word for compassion in Hebrew is rachamim, that's a plural. The word for face in Hebrew is panim, that's a plural. So you have singular nouns that have plural forms, and when it comes to, you can speak of someone's earthly master as Adonim, Lord's plural. It is a plural of majesty or a plural of ownership. So Elohim, depending on the context, can speak of gods, like the gods of the nations you could describe as Elim or Elohim, or you could refer to the one true God as Elohim, and it's a plural of majesty.

So it has nothing to do with polytheism there, it simply has to do with the Semitic way of speaking of God in power, or again, even an earthly ruler or authority could be referred to in the plural, in certain cases. Okay, now secondly, regarding the Holy Trinity, my wife and I have a disagreement. She doesn't believe in the Holy Trinity, she just believes that Jesus is the Son of God, and I believe Jesus was truly man, truly God, truly God. What is your take? Yeah, he is truly man, truly God, that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I would ask your wife a simple question.

I'd ask her this, with all respect, I understand why she would have that particular view, but I would ask her this. Is it only true that God has no beginning and no end, that he is the first and the last? Is that true of only of God? If Jesus somehow comes after, if the Son of God comes later and is not eternally God himself, then he could not be the first and the last, or the Alpha and the Omega. I'd ask her that, and then I'd say, well, why is it in the book of Revelation that both the Father and the Son identify themselves as the first and the last, the Alpha and the Omega? How could that be true of the Son?

I would ask you that. I'd also ask you to read through Hebrews 1 with you, and see if it does not plainly refer to the Son as God, God. So Hebrews 1, and if it does not refer to him plainly in Psalm 102, which is quoted in Hebrews 1, as the Creator.

So ask those questions. And then last thing, Andy, on my website, askdrbrown.org. So you want to ask about the first and the last in Revelation. How can that be said of both Father and Son, if the Son is created being? Hebrews 1, why is he called God outright, and why is he spoken of as the Creator? Not the one through whom everything came, but the Creator himself in Psalm 102. So I would go there, and then go to my website, askdrbrown.org, and just type in TUGGY, T-U-G-G-Y, TUGGY.

And you and she together can watch my debate on this very subject with Dr. Dale Tuggy, and you can come to your conclusions based on our discussion there. So may the Lord give insight as you open the word together. 866-34-TRUTH. Let's go over to Seth in Moses Lake, Washington, which I've just heard of for the first time now. Welcome to the broadcast. Hey Dr. Brown, thanks for having me on. Sure.

Yeah, I had a question. So I'm preaching through the book of Genesis, and I was just curious, you know, just from kind of a Hebrew background, what your opinion is, and I've come to the conclusion, like I'm 100 percent certain, that the sin of Ham was not his seeing his father's nakedness, but the euphemism or idiom of uncovering the nakedness of your father is also equated to uncovering the nakedness of your mother, and that Canaan was actually the offspring of Ham and his mother, and then the Canaanites obviously are a curse, you know, people. Then you go down to the curse, and part of the curse is, you shall be a servant to your brothers.

And then the next verse is, you shall be a servant unto Japheth and as well as Shem. And so the brothers mentioned as part of the curse, if we look at it traditionally, would have been his uncles, not his brothers. And then also, you know, you have the Canaanite line that would have come from that offspring, but then you see like a parallel story with Lot and his daughters in Sodom and Gomorrah, Genesis 19, which resulted in then the Moabites and the Ammonites, I believe, which are also, you know, sort of a people group that are excluded from the assembly of the temple. And so I wanted to get your take, your take, and, you know, the same thing with like the feminine suffix on like his tent versus her tent, and, you know, that potential maternal incest being the only potential scenario where the cursing of Canaan becomes legitimate or makes sense versus some of the other other theories. So just one question, was Canaan alive when that word was spoken, when that curse was spoken? So at least how I've been looking at it, there's potentially maybe two options, just as like, it says when Noah was 500 years old, he had Shem, Ham, and Japheth, obviously they didn't have triplets, but it kind of squishes the chronology together, so it could be a potential squishing of chronology in that, awaking from that. Yeah, so the reason I ask, because for your theory to be right, that's the biggest glitch to me, is that the impression that you have is that Canaan is alive and that this is spoken immediately after this. Now you can say, well, how quickly did Noah get drunk, et cetera. So come back on the other side of the broadcast to address that and mention some interesting Jewish traditions.

But it's a fascinating theory you're presenting, and it's certainly not the first time it's been thought of. 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 for joining us. You've got questions, we've got answers, 866-34-TRUTH. So getting back to Seth in Moses Lake, Washington.

I appreciate the thought behind where you're going, but here's where I would question it. The Hebrew is used for he saw his father's nakedness, which is different than the Hebrew for uncovering the father's nakedness, which theoretically could refer to having sexual relations with his wife. That's one thing. A second thing is that the brothers then go in and uncover the father. So it seems quite clear that something happens directly with Noah and with his son there. So there's Jewish tradition that says, Yeshua Reim sersover, Yeshua Reim revo, that there are some who say that he sodomized him and others who say he castrated him. And Rabbi Daniel Lapin has the theory that because hand castrated his father Noah and therefore could not have another son himself, that therefore judgment was placed on Ham's son. That's the argument that's raised. Robert Gagnon, Professor Gagnon, who's the foremost authority on the Bible and homosexual practice, believes that it speaks of sodomizing, that he raped his father. I'm not sure that we can go that far in the text, but something horrific enough happens that this curse comes down the line. So if you were going to put your theory forward, especially because Gagnon doesn't even exist at this point, that it raises further questions.

I love the digging. I think it's incredibly important that we do that with the word. I just couldn't come to those same conclusions. And one question, when you mentioned the difference in feminine and masculine pronouns, what were you thinking of in particular? I don't have it in front of me, but there was something that was referring to whether the translation of his tent should have been her tent. Right, right.

Just like with Abraham and Sarah, Isaac going into her tent, her tent. Oh, okay. All right. So I thought you were talking about in the curse, because I couldn't figure out what you meant there. Oh, yeah.

Right, right. Now, all that is, it's orthography. In other words, the final hey, if you had a different vowel, would be her. But there is an orthography where you can use a final hey with the cholom, the o sound, and it just means his. So again, that would mean that there was a change in the Hebrew text as we have it in the vowels, which is not impossible, because the vowels were not originally written. But no, that form occurs quite frequently as masculine. And as it's... Well, another... Yeah, go ahead.

Go ahead. Oh, I was going to say, another translation thing is that in Leviticus 2017, it talks about, it actually uses the word saw, which I think is different. I don't know if it's seeing versus uncovering in relation to uncovering versus seeing the nakedness of your sister, which seems maybe another evidence that whatever happened in the tent was in some way sexual. And does that seem right, the Hebrew saw versus uncover? Oh, yeah. And that would be an argument.

Again, it's not the language used in Leviticus 18 in the same way. But yeah, in other words, if you're making these points, you're not making them out of thin air. You have to push and speculate. If I were you, right, what I would do, because you've obviously devoted time to this and you feel strongly about it, I would say now most commentators understand it like this, but I want to present another possibility. And it would require this, this, this, and then give your evidence for it as opposed to present anything in a dogmatic way. So I would differ with you, but I don't think you're being ignorant or obscure interest or trying to read something into the text. But when you said you're absolutely convinced, I would not want to present it like that because there's too much pushback. You'd say, hey, here's another thing I want you to consider as I've looked at and makes a lot of sense to me. I just present it in a more tentative way. But otherwise, yeah, I appreciate where you're going with it, all right?

Yeah, well, I guess one last quick question with that is, of all the potential, you know, interpretations of what happened in that scripture, what in your opinion seems the most logical as far as the pronunciation of the curse upon, not upon Ham, but upon Canaan? Right. I haven't landed.

In other words, it's one of these passages, right? I see the arguments, and I have not come to a firm conclusion. I find the different theories interesting, but sometimes until I really thought if I know something and five different top scholars have five different views and I'm not sure until I really focus on it, dig deep, give it serious study, work it through till I come to a conclusion, then then I remain, you know, tentative about views. And that's that's the case here. I haven't landed. So sure, yeah, I give you the different possibilities, but I haven't landed myself. I really questioned the idea that there was rape that took place.

But Professor Gagnon does present a strong case for it in his book on the Bible and homosexual practice. Hey, thank you for the call. I appreciate it. 866-34-TRUTH.

We go to Jay in Boston, Massachusetts. Welcome to the line of fire. Hey, Dr. Brown, thank you for taking my call. I was in a discussion last night with a Muslim academic, and the discussion was about Numbers 31 verses 17 to 18. And the larger context was basically, you know, I engage a lot in apologetics and polemics, and so one of the things that I bring up is, you know, Muhammad's age and Aisha's age. So this was brought up, this was brought up to sort of counter that, and there's a couple different translations that render the Hebrew a little differently in terms of, like, are you keeping the young girls to yourself or the young woman to yourself, and is there any indication that anything is going on there in terms of sexual captivity or slavery or anything like that?

I was arguing that that's not the case. I read a little bit about this from Dr. Mike Heiser, and I have John Walton's commentary, and I was really confused where he was coming from in terms of making this accusation that this is actually about children and something to do with something sexual. I think in verse 35 it actually refers back to this event, like when it's recounting the booty of the conquest, and it's saying, like, you know, the donkeys and the cat, all the things that you, and it refers back to in verse 35 as to the woman, so it doesn't actually use that word, like, young in front of it or the word hataf, I think, in the Hebrew.

So yeah, if you could shed some light on that, Dr. Brown, I'd really appreciate that. Yeah, certainly it is part of ancient warfare. It is part of the destruction that would come in terms of killing men or killing married women, etc., or sparing children, so that's part of the larger brutality of ancient war in the ancient world. The Hebrew taf, speaking generically of women there, is definitely a word that's used for children elsewhere, but there's nothing that says that, even if, let's just say that that's what's being said, that you're to spare the young girls, right? Where does it say that you now take them as wives and have sex with them? That's what the Muslims are reading into it. It doesn't say that. It's simply saying, okay, you know for sure that those kids have never been with a man, they haven't had sex, so, you know, they're virgins, they can be safely kept alive, and then when the time comes for them to be married, they can be incorporated into the nation in marriage. So, there's nothing that says, I'm not aware of the Hebrew word being used for older women in the Bible, to my knowledge.

I mean, here, let's just check really, really fast while we're here, and I've looked at this before, you know, because the question does come up in Islamic apologetics, but I would just push back and say, okay, it would be logical that the young girls are virgins, they wouldn't have been married, they wouldn't have had sex, so they're kept alive, so that when they're older, they can marry. Where does it say anything about being with them now? Where does it say anything about having sexual relations with them now?

It says nothing. Whereas we know about Muhammad and Aisha and, you know, the Hadith and, you know, being with her when she was nine, etc. So, that's the pushback that I would give there. Okay, one more thing, Dr. Brown. I made a statement and I said that as far as I'm aware, and of course this is your area of expertise, that's on you, as far as I'm aware, people don't make that charge of, like, people in your field of engineering studies, they don't make the charge against Israelites of marrying children or taking them as sex captives or anything like that. Is that accurate or did I misrepresent?

100 percent accurate. There's no, that's never brought up. It's never brought up, it's never considered, it's never addressed that this was a common practice. No, you don't even have, you know, critical Old Testament scholars who are not believing the Old Testament, just looking at it scholastically, making the comment, oh, look, the Israelites were raping little girls here under Moses' approval.

No, so that's something, honestly, the first time I ever encountered that was not reading the text for myself, but someone asking me about a question like this from a Muslim apologist. Wow, okay. Well, I really appreciate it, Dr. Brown, that helps a lot, thank you. Yeah, and again, just push back and say, okay, well, since we're going by text, please show me where it says that, and keep up the good work. Keep engaging. 866-34-TRUTH.

We go to Joshua in Cleburne, Texas. Welcome to the line of fire. Hey, Dr. Brown, thank you so much. So I'm coming out of, like, a lot of hyper grace movement, I'm halfway through your book, I just ordered your new book, and there's certain things that doesn't make sense to me still. I believe God does good and only does good.

He doesn't put cancer on people to teach molested. So my question is, I do not understand Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5, 1-11, what they did, and then it's like, they died. I don't understand that, and sometimes I hear it put into, you know, a tithe thing, like, you better not take the Lord's Supper in an unworthy manner, you know, you better forgive, so you be forgiven. So I don't understand those two things together, and I have a second question if you have time.

Yeah, sure. Well, the first thing is, the Bible does plainly speak of God bringing judgments on people, right? So it's not a blessing for obedience or, oh, just going to put cancer on you because you didn't pray enough today. But, you know, the very verse, Exodus 15 26, where God says he's Israel's healer, and he won't put any of the diseases on them which he put on Egypt, he says, I put them on Egypt, right? So throughout the Old Testament, and right through the New, God takes responsibility for bringing judgment on the wicked. In other words, that's a good thing, bringing judgment on the wicked is an expression of God's goodness. It would be like your church building is surrounded by radical, crazed terrorists, and they're about to start shooting up the building and killing everyone in size, and a lightning bolt strikes from heaven and kills them all.

You'd all fall on your face and worship God and say, thank you, God, for delivering us, right? So stay right there. We'll be right back. It's The Line of Fire with your host, activist, author, international speaker, and theologian, Dr. Michael Brown. Your voice of moral, cultural, and spiritual revolution. 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. All right, getting right back to Joshua. So Acts 5 is clearly divine judgment in the very beginning of this community of believers when the Holy Spirit is moving so powerfully that they blatantly, husband and wife, conspired to lie to the Holy Spirit. So no one was forcing them to give all their possessions or sell what they had, but they wanted to put on a spiritual show just as Nadav and Avihu, the sons of Aaron in Leviticus 10, right when the tabernacle is being dedicated and they're being set apart as priests, that Aaron offers his sacrifices and obedience and fire comes from the presence of the Lord, consumes the sacrifices. Then his sons offer unauthorized fire and fire comes from the presence of the Lord and consumes them. It's one of these moments when God is so present that there's severe judgment for doing something this ugly, conspiring to lie to the Holy Spirit, and they drop dead.

And what happens? Great fear falls on the congregation. In other words, they realize you don't play with God. You don't mess with God. So God judged them. Acts 12, when Herod gives his speech and all the people praise him, and this is the voice of a God, not a man, and he doesn't give glory to God, the angel of the Lord comes and smites him and destroys him. So God does bring judgment, but it's a good thing. The teaching that one prominent hyper-grace teacher has that Ananias and Sapphira were false believers trying to intrude on the body and God saved the church from their intrusion. And why does it say great fear came on the whole church? They recognized, boy, this is holy and you don't mess with God. So it's one of those times when God is so present and so real and so near and you do something that ugly that God makes a public display of it.

It doesn't speak to what happened to their souls eternally, but they certainly came under divine judgment in the here and now, which is another expression of the goodness and holiness of God. So can you take that and still use it with the Lord's Supper when people use it like that? Like, hey, God done this before in these examples, this could very well happen right now if you're grieving the Holy Spirit or if you're conspiring against the church. Can you biblically say that God takes people out and better doing harm to the church now? No, if, again, we have to apply things carefully, and this didn't happen every day, right? Just like in ancient Israel, they ended up, you know, having homosexual prostitutes in the temple and worshiping idols in the temple, and they didn't die, but then the whole nation went into exile, right?

But here, let me say this. Can we still apply 1 Corinthians 11? Absolutely, in terms of if we were doing what the Corinthians were doing. So they didn't just have, like, communion during a service. They would have, you know, a love feast. They'd fellowship, get together, and in the midst of that, they would celebrate the Lord's death and resurrection with bread and wine. So you had people getting there early, getting drunk on the wine, right, and eating all the food, and then others poor coming, and there was nothing for them. And this was supposed to be pointing to and symbolic of the body and blood of Jesus, and Paul says that's why many of you are sick and some have died, and then he said if we judge ourselves, we won't be judged by the Lord. So during a time of great outpouring in early 1983, the church I was part of, the Holy Spirit was moving more powerfully than I'd ever seen in my life than this church had ever seen, and it was Communion Sunday, and we were about to partake of Communion, and someone very sober in the congregation brought a prophetic word that there was so much sin in our midst and gossip and division and uncleanness that if we partook of Communion, that we would come under judgment. And we had all the elders there like, nope, nope, I'm not serving it. We all just stepped back, and it turned into a time of people just getting up and confessing sin. That's the one and only time I was ever in a meeting like that, and I don't know what would have happened if we partook, but I felt like God warned us, but God was so real and so near, and it was a powerful time of confession, and the Spirit fell dramatically at night and touched some of those who we confessed by. I still remember one guy getting up, we'd known for years in the church, getting up, confessing to be an alcoholic in front of everyone, and then that night getting dramatically set free. So we can't, we need to cultivate an attitude of knowing the love of God, which hyper-grace teachers do, you know, and understanding the beauty of His grace. So I live 24-7 feeling secure in God's sight, feeling loved by God. I never feel condemned. I know His goodness, but the thought of like crossing certain lines and committing certain things, I can't imagine, you know what I'm saying?

I just, I couldn't imagine, I couldn't imagine doing that and then just kind of going to sleep like all is well. It's like, oh my God, you don't cross certain lines. So I, you know, it's the devil who's trying to attack us, destroy us, seduce us, and all of that. At the same time, we honor God, and we recognize Him as a holy God, and we don't play games with that, you know, and if God forbid, you know, you're, someone's leading a ministry, and they're lying to the people about where the money's going, and secretly taking the money from the poor and the widows. I remember Leonard Ravenhill telling me, you know, big ministries, you're gonna have to give account for every dollar a widow, an old widow, sent you, you know, and they're lying to the people, and they're secretly taking the funds and abusing them, right? And they're, you know, they're, they're abusing them, right? You know, some guy is feeding his prostitution habit in Thailand or something by raising money in the States, and I would not want to be in that person's shoes for one split second, and yes, it could well be divine judgment that would follow him, which is the exact opposite of how I feel before my father every day, right?

Just knowing his love, knowing his kindness, his goodness, so it's that healthy balance. Hey, Joshua, I appreciate the call, and let's see, yeah, I've got time for another call or two. Let's go to Anne in Los Angeles. Welcome to the Line of Fire. Thank you so much. I am enjoying and I really appreciate your commentary on Job, and I'm getting ready to teach Job to a Bible class, and I need to get a study guide for that, and I wondered if you have anyone that you could recommend. Yeah, study guide on Job.

Well, thanks, thanks for appreciating the commentary, and obviously any questions on Job that I, if I have the answers, they're in the commentary, but a good study guide on Job. You know, I never even thought of that once in writing the commentary because I was just, you know, looking at other scholarly literature. Let's just see. Let me just see. There's one by J.I.

Packer, and I know that that could be good, but I'm a little hesitant because I think of him as maybe being Calvinist, and I don't want to read Job as a kind of a Calvinist. Well, here's the thing. Yeah, I'm just looking at study guides that are coming up, and you know, I'm looking to see if there's any that I'm familiar with. You know, there's one that the Navigators have, and of course they're well known for taking people through the Scriptures, and that might be worth considering. So what's the name of it?

Yeah, it's Life Change. That's their series, Job, the Navigators. So as far as I know, it's a study guide as opposed to a commentary, but you'll have to check. I'm not sure, but if J.I. Packer has a study guide, yeah, so here and there you will see, because of who he is in his theology, something that could be a Calvinistic deduction, maybe going a little further than I would go in how you apply Job 1 and 2, etc.

to today, but J.I. Packer being so full of Scriptural truth and wisdom and knowledge of God, I would think you'd get a lot of rich stuff out of that. But when you say a study guide, though, you mean actually a study guide, not like a short commentary, right? No, a study guide for a group, questions that they can think about. Yeah, so unfortunately I'm not a study guide kind of person. The one we put out was a multi-year process with my series on Countering the Counter-Missionaries, so I don't really think in those terms, but yeah, check out to see. One other one, Eric Oertlund is one, O-R-T-L-U-N-D, or is that the one?

Okay, you know, hang on, J.I. Packer edited that series. He didn't write it. I was not aware.

I'm thinking, how did I not know Packer did that? No, it's the series edited by Packer, by Eric Oertlund. Yeah, I would think just knowing the scholarship theology behind it, that'd be a good place to go. And then look, in a discussion group, that's always a healthy place to say, now there's this perspective, do we agree or do we see things a little differently, right?

Right. But it's not like they're going to be, and look, there are going to be statements about the sinfulness of man, that from there, there might be a little bit more said about total depravity in ways beyond what we might say it, but it should be a good sound series. If you're evaluating one, like which verses would you expect to see that really show up on the most? So, I would think there might be a certain application in Genesis 1 and 2, excuse me, Job 1 and 2, for today that would not recognize that we have a different authority over Satan and revelation of Satan than Job would have, you know, on the other side of the cross. So, it might come up there more just like whatever God dishes out to us, we accept. Now, of course, whatever God does, we worship and accept, but we have a perspective beyond what Job would have had. So, I would say that that would be colored a little bit, and then perhaps passages like Job 4 or Job 15, where there's statements about the sinfulness of human beings and things like that, that you might get a statement about total depravity that goes a little further, but I would certainly, you know, trust the folks contributing to this series that it would be a good solid study guide.

And then from there, that's where you as the group leader, you know, give guidance and insight and say, hey, let's discuss this or other different perspectives. But again, thanks for enjoying the commentary, and may God bless all of you as you study. Friends, did you get my emails? No? All right, really quick, do it. Go to AskDrBrown.org. Sign up today. We've got a bunch of free things that'll come your way. Another program powered by the Truth Network.